I always saw us as more like a virus, as Agent Smith put it. We go around consuming resources and transforming the world to our needs. Once the host is dead, on to another one!
You know what else does that? Deer! The only difference is our ability to consume and our ability to think about it.
My bank account is represented by a bunch of 1s and 0s in some database in the sky. There's no real paper behind it. It's virtual. Now, if someone wiped out the 1s to 0s, I'd have grounds to sue.
Your bank account is backed by the FDIC and, therefore, the US Govt. Your RPG profile is backed by nothing at all. If it gets wiped out, they may restore it, but don't hold your breath.
Once internet service is provided by the government, it will be politicized. The FBI will be snooping and logging everyone's internet activity. They won't need to get a court order to look at a private ISP's servers because they own the servers. Religious fundamentals will insist that taxes dollars not allow people to access pr0n and violence. Look at all of the issues with internet access in public libraries.
How does that work? The FBI is a federal agency, these networks are done by cities. Fundies will look like the fools they are just because of the small scale. The public library thing is a good example if how things should work - the feds attempted to restrict what people could do and got smacked by the courts.
Your "free" internet will severely regulated and built on outdated equipment. When your internet service goes offline, you will just have to suck it up because you can't threaten to switch to another ISP.
Because that's how the power company works, right? When your internet goes offline, your phone will probably go too, because it'll most likely be a major disaster that does it.
People will complain that they are paying for internet service taxes, but they don't have a computer. Does the government now have to hand out "free" computers or subsidize computer purchases?
People bitch about paying for schools when they have no kids. Do we assign them orphans?
And what happened? The cable companies stepped in to provide "high-speed internet". Do we have 12Mb/s for $20/month? No, not yet (although I'm about halfway there). On the other hand, how much of that $20/month is subsidized via taxes? How much does that bandwidth really cost?
The point is that telcos won't provide additional services unless forced to. In fact, they will first work to prevent others to provide that service before competing. What we're seeing now is a lot of cities getting fed up with the attitude of cable and baby bells and going it alone. Rather than try to compete or work out a deal, the bells are attempting to block it in the statehouse and persuade the locals that they don't actually want city-funded networks.
Another thing: publicly owned networks have another advantage, namely that, since they are public, content and server restrictions are less frequent. Small scale city projects seem more interested in providing a service than keeping the customer in a box, which is something I've never seen from a bell.
I think that the scope of the government should be limited at this point, not increased.
True enough, but utilities such as power and water (and now, network) benefit from government regulation. It's the sort of thing where it isn't really feasible to have more than one organization running the physical infrastructure. When that happens, it may as well be government-run, since there's some oversight involved.
If governments (city, federal, state, it doesn't matter which) then the competition aspect disapears.
You appear to have forgotten what the baby bells did to prevent high speed internet (threat to revenue) 10 years ago. While they were fighting tooth and nail, Japan and Korea deployed fiber. They now have about 12Mb/s for $20/month. Telcos aren't competitive.
Finally, business is the lubrication that prevents the gears of democracy from locking up.
Quite the opposite. Big business, especially telcos tends to aggregate money and power, bending laws to their will and impeding democracy.
When you park a vehicle with the Coca Cola logo at a place that exclusively serves Pepsi products, what do you think management is going to think of your company loyalty?
Change the resolution, color depth, etc. and I change the checksum for the image, so the index fails to recognize that one picture is the "same" as another, just resized, etc.
So resize the image to a standard max size and depth (256x256 max size jpeg with retained aspect ratio), then hash the individual luminance data into a thumbprint that can be compared. Checking for dupes becomes easier and similarity checks are doable.
All they are is greedy, and want to continue making money. For a corporation, "sane" = "greedy".
Gee, that's my point - company after company allows it's lust for cash to kill its revenue stream. They get good returns for a few quarters, then crumple. You call that sane?
In that unlikely occasion, any sane corporation will make up for the lost publicity by cheap additional measures. For an easy fix, they could release the first 10-20% of the episodes as free online samples. (Even allowing them to be freely distributed in unmodified form, so they don't even have to pay for bandwidth).
Point of order: please demonstrate that corporations are interested in a free market or are even sane. Counterexamples: RIAA, MPAA, Disney all by itself.
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IT folks can gladly use 512 MB, while home users might be hesitant.
Guess you've never head of evercrack, huh?
Umm it's made by Apple?
Nah, then it'd be
I always saw us as more like a virus, as Agent Smith put it. We go around consuming resources and transforming the world to our needs. Once the host is dead, on to another one!
You know what else does that? Deer! The only difference is our ability to consume and our ability to think about it.
FFS it's a big barren rock. Who cares what gets done with it?
Apparently you haven't dealt with the true enviro-weenies - they talk about preserving the fragile ecosystem OF THE MOON!
So the Commercial License should be renamed the Proprietary License, don't you think?
Not really. I don't see how they're giving up a proprietary interest in their code. It comes down to whether you intend to sell your app for money.
My bank account is represented by a bunch of 1s and 0s in some database in the sky. There's no real paper behind it. It's virtual. Now, if someone wiped out the 1s to 0s, I'd have grounds to sue.
Your bank account is backed by the FDIC and, therefore, the US Govt. Your RPG profile is backed by nothing at all. If it gets wiped out, they may restore it, but don't hold your breath.
Where is the intelligent discussion?
Hey, this is slashdot, home of the socially maladjusted linux freak.
And on top of this, the Africans are slowly discovering that the simplest, cheapest and most effective AIDS "drug" is monogamy.
That, and condoms (no thanks to rome).
(4) what the hell would the private entity do with a space telescope?
Ever fry ants with a magnifying glass? Well, multiply that by 1000.
So... when are we going to get the "Bill and Melinda Gates" Super Orbiting Scope ? I'm sure Bill can easily afford the $1Bil... ;)
Sorry, they're busy fighting AIDS in Africa ;).
Once internet service is provided by the government, it will be politicized. The FBI will be snooping and logging everyone's internet activity. They won't need to get a court order to look at a private ISP's servers because they own the servers. Religious fundamentals will insist that taxes dollars not allow people to access pr0n and violence. Look at all of the issues with internet access in public libraries.
How does that work? The FBI is a federal agency, these networks are done by cities. Fundies will look like the fools they are just because of the small scale. The public library thing is a good example if how things should work - the feds attempted to restrict what people could do and got smacked by the courts.
Your "free" internet will severely regulated and built on outdated equipment. When your internet service goes offline, you will just have to suck it up because you can't threaten to switch to another ISP.
Because that's how the power company works, right? When your internet goes offline, your phone will probably go too, because it'll most likely be a major disaster that does it.
People will complain that they are paying for internet service taxes, but they don't have a computer. Does the government now have to hand out "free" computers or subsidize computer purchases?
People bitch about paying for schools when they have no kids. Do we assign them orphans?
And what happened? The cable companies stepped in to provide "high-speed internet". Do we have 12Mb/s for $20/month? No, not yet (although I'm about halfway there). On the other hand, how much of that $20/month is subsidized via taxes? How much does that bandwidth really cost?
The point is that telcos won't provide additional services unless forced to. In fact, they will first work to prevent others to provide that service before competing. What we're seeing now is a lot of cities getting fed up with the attitude of cable and baby bells and going it alone. Rather than try to compete or work out a deal, the bells are attempting to block it in the statehouse and persuade the locals that they don't actually want city-funded networks.
Another thing: publicly owned networks have another advantage, namely that, since they are public, content and server restrictions are less frequent. Small scale city projects seem more interested in providing a service than keeping the customer in a box, which is something I've never seen from a bell.
I think that the scope of the government should be limited at this point, not increased.
True enough, but utilities such as power and water (and now, network) benefit from government regulation. It's the sort of thing where it isn't really feasible to have more than one organization running the physical infrastructure. When that happens, it may as well be government-run, since there's some oversight involved.
If governments (city, federal, state, it doesn't matter which) then the competition aspect disapears.
You appear to have forgotten what the baby bells did to prevent high speed internet (threat to revenue) 10 years ago. While they were fighting tooth and nail, Japan and Korea deployed fiber. They now have about 12Mb/s for $20/month. Telcos aren't competitive.
Finally, business is the lubrication that prevents the gears of democracy from locking up.
Quite the opposite. Big business, especially telcos tends to aggregate money and power, bending laws to their will and impeding democracy.
if EA's employees unionized I imagine they would find themselves looking for new jobs very quickly as their positions were outsourced.
How do you think EA would handle the sudden 3+ month delay in all their software projects?
And im not blaming Bu$h, but the coperate infiltrators in the senate.
This seemed appropriate.
And the great thing about having a licence to use a computer is the immense power it gives the government over you.
Right. Try driving in California for a bit and see how well the government prevents uninsured Mexicans from driving.
What makes you think that big fancy words are going to make you sound "more correct"?
What makes you think microcosm is a big, fancy word? Any why are you treating an explained joke like some sort of debate?
you buy them at Wal-Mart from brands you've never heard of in sizes Gucci wouldn't be caught dead making.
Let me guess: 6?
When you park a vehicle with the Coca Cola logo at a place that exclusively serves Pepsi products, what do you think management is going to think of your company loyalty?
Your personal car has a big Coca Cola graphic?
Actually, no one can survive with a .5 BAC.
Tell that to the guy I saw in the ER with a .6 (sitting on a gurney, no less).
Does this 0.08 "blood alcohol level" have any units?
It's percent. That means that a sufficiently dedicated drunk can survive 1 proof blood.
Change the resolution, color depth, etc. and I change the checksum for the image, so the index fails to recognize that one picture is the "same" as another, just resized, etc.
So resize the image to a standard max size and depth (256x256 max size jpeg with retained aspect ratio), then hash the individual luminance data into a thumbprint that can be compared. Checking for dupes becomes easier and similarity checks are doable.
Yeah, this seems contrary to a full free search, but at least the results are on subject.
How much do you think they'd charge to put the goatse.cx guy in a search for sailboats?
All they are is greedy, and want to continue making money. For a corporation, "sane" = "greedy".
Gee, that's my point - company after company allows it's lust for cash to kill its revenue stream. They get good returns for a few quarters, then crumple. You call that sane?
In that unlikely occasion, any sane corporation will make up for the lost publicity by cheap additional measures. For an easy fix, they could release the first 10-20% of the episodes as free online samples. (Even allowing them to be freely distributed in unmodified form, so they don't even have to pay for bandwidth).
Point of order: please demonstrate that corporations are interested in a free market or are even sane. Counterexamples: RIAA, MPAA, Disney all by itself.