Re:Americans throw away freedom for capitalism
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 1
How did this get modded up? This post touches on a million different things, but not once makes a single, clear and precise argument for or against anything.
However current intellectual property law is designed to reduce our abilities to express ourselves via code or even to copy a file.
This is too vague to hold meaning. Please reveal how you are being limited to express yourself via code or to copy a file, and we can talk.
Copyright and Intellectual property is out of control right now and its slowly removing our freedomm of speech and our right to expression.
Are you referring to the DMCA or RIAA? Again - Dont just blurt out little tidbits... Expand, give examples, etc.
Why is it ok to censor people in the name of capitalism, no one but rogue pirates dare step forward and say what we all know is happening.
Its NOT ok to censor people in the name of capitalism, widgets, or anything else... But please give an example of how capitalism is censoring you... (and please do not say the DMCA/RIAA... the problem with them is a distinct *lack* of a capitalistic free market)
Freenet, GNU, etc etc, its all about freedom of speech. Alot of people claim "well if you are going to have freedom to be open source you should also have freedom not to be"
I have no idea what this means.
However when you arent open source and you support the patent system you support censorship.
Sure, to some extent... but I dont dislike MS because I feel they are censoring me. I just like having choice in the matter, and should not have to give my money to a company I do not like.
Its very funny how Americans can jump to complain about China and the evils of Communism
Um, first off any American who thinks Communism is "evil" is a by-product of McCarthyism, and is a dying breed. I suggest you ignore these people like the rest of us do. My complaints of China are that they lack many of the freedoms we take for granted, such as freedom of the press... Can you imagine if Dubya controlled our newspapers? Scary thought indeed...
... claiming USA is all about freedom, claiming the constitution, but its all bullshit.
Again, how is this "bullshit?" I feel, as an American, that I am relatively free... Where am I going wrong when I make that assertion?
This sucks that Java has died. I just finished up my first week of a Java programming course. And, now, I find out that I am learning a dead language?
Relax... First, Java is not dead... It is dead on the client... Java is used extensively on the server side. Second, any skills you learn from taking a Java course easily translate into other languages, especially languages like C#. The most important thing is that you learn how to program - dont concentrate too much on the particular syntax.
... and the best thing to come from Sun was JavaScript.
<splitting hairs>Except that Sun did not develop JavaScript - Netscape did</splitting hairs>
Re:Call me an alarmist, but...
on
eSuds
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· Score: 1
A good (and scary) point... but is this really any different than walking by a laundromat and looking in? I suppose this would make John Q Psycho's job easier and would save him a few strolls around the block, but I wouldnt go so far as to say this would open up new windows of opportunity...
I think in the end the sad conclusion must be drawn: assume its dangerous to be *anywhere* by yourself at 3AM... especially if female.
That is interesting... (this is speaking from a person who does *not* do a lot of video editing BTW) But I always thought video editing was more a matter of having 2 gigs of RAM versus a processor intensive thing... Is splicing videos together really that processor intensive? or does that factor come in when adding filters or effects of some sort? Just curious...
Re:Not a troll, just a question ...
on
AMD's Athlon XP 2700+
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm still not exactly sure what I need all this speed for.
You probably dont;) If you have an Athlon 2000+ you should be all set for some time... Even games do not require a processor like that, as the graphics card plays a much more important role in game-performance. I have an Athlon 1200 and a Geforce2GTS, and I have yet to play a game that does not run beautifully.
Processor speeds are most important if you do a lot of heavy number crunching, such as video encoding, etc... or if you just want to kick a$$ on Seti-at-home
You didn't get the memo? It ends June 17th 2004... From then on all technology will be at a stand-still, and most of us will find new jobs involving drills...
I think you responded to the wrong post... But I will counter anyways;)
The parent post said MS products are only known as "buggy" because they are used by the majority and therefore more bugs are revealed, as opposed to them just having more bugs in total. I said this is not always the case, because Apache typically has a lot less problems than IIS as far as exploits and security bugs are concerned, yet is more widely used than IIS. So in other words, the number/severity of bugs found is not always proportional to the market-share percentage of the product. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isnt.
All software is inherently flawed, I have yet to see ANY software put out by ANYONE that is bug free. Just because 90% of the computers in the world run a certain piece of software thus giving any bug more exposure that doesn't make microsoft products any worse than any other product out there.
You make some good points: Most software is buggy... But MS *does* have a bad track-record in this arena, and it is not always because 90% of users run that particular software.
Case in point: Apache is more widely used than IIS, yet you rarely hear of problems with Apache... IIS, on the other hand....
If MP3 is going to rapidly lose its status as "the standard," then the field becomes open to all of the other formats to replace it. Sure, Ogg Vorbis would be the ideal choice - but in reality does this not present MS with a nice advantage to further its proprietary format? (by offering free de/encoders, etc)
What are you smoking? They start charging for something that people can get for cheaper/free elsewhere, and people will go elsewhere... How is that a failing of capitalism? If anything it is a good example of capitalism... freedom of choice.
Yeah I met some dudes in college from China and they swore by their minidisc players... And once I saw their advantages, I realized they were superior than our CD players in a few ways - most importantly that you could write/re-write to them easily, yet still skip around them like a CD.
OK, for perspective -- what's the relative dollar cost of convenience store robberies vs. recent corporate fraud? what's the relative dollar cost allocated to preventing/resolving?
Tell me how much one dead convience store-owner or customer is worth (or any victim of violent crime for that matter), and Ill try to find how many were killed in the last X year(s) during such robberies. Putting the two together, we should be able to come up with a rough "cost" which we can then compare with Worldcom and Enron.
Add to this the budgets of police departments around the country who spend most of their time fighting violent (i.e. not white collar) crime, and you will easily dwarf the corporate accounting scandels. Just to give you an idea at just how much money we are talking here, NYC's police budget alone is over 2 billion annually. Anything else?;)
Prizoners manufacturing goods for nearly no pay will be the new form of slavery.
Update - This just in! America has lost the cheap-manufacturing sector of global trade a long time ago, and will never get it back. Our economy is now service and skilled-labor dependent. Having an army of Prizoners as you call them will not help our economy - on the other hand, we spend tremendous amounts of money supporting these prisons (and the occupying Prizoners) so it is much more a burden than boost.
More even then China. Land of the free? Tell that to the non-violent drug offenders who are locked up.
Ahhaha you can be executed in China for tax evasion.. I suggest you make even a cursory investigation and educate yourself a little bit. Also if you have a minute for a google search, take a quick read on how China's "Strike Hard" initiative treats "non-violent drug offenders" and compare with the U.S.A.
For the record, I am against the "War on Drugs" - though not for the reasons you specify... Drugs should be made legal because they are not all dangerous, and those that are can be better controlled (and taxed) if legal.
Hehehe ok, if you would rather be held up at gunpoint than have to pay insurance - to each their own I suppose...
In all seriousness, I (of course) dont have all the answers to the whole Health Care situation... A socialist-umbrella type program? Take less taxes but demand that people take responsibility for themselves? Some mix of the two? Its a complicated question... hence, the political fallout on both sides. Its even further complicated by the extraordinary costs of hospital care... I dont think open-heart or brain-related surgeries will ever become "cheap" in the short term, which leads me to think that some sort of insurance/umbrella system is necessary. However, in the end I get far more in return from my medical insurance (despite our flawed system) than I would from some thug at gunpoint... Try again.
Actually statistics show that there is actually a higher ratio of what would be crime in the high income bracket, it is just ignored. Think about the recent corporate scandels.
Statistics? Do you have a reference? I would find this incredibly interesting if it were indeed true, but I have never seen any studies on the matter...
As for the recent corporate scandels - Man, get over it... They were but a few companies out of thousands... Granted, their "take" was much higher than that received by some troubled youth ripping off a 7-11, but keep things in perspective. The media will have you believe that the sky is falling as far as corporate America is concerned, but I think you will find that the vast majority of companies are fairly straight shooters. Remember, drastic headlines sell and are therefore used.... Remember the "summer of the shark" ?? Nevermind that the number of shark attacks was lower than average - thats just not exciting is it?;)
Yeah, the bike is a mixed bag... A lot of people use them, but whether its a good idea depends more on your particular route than, say, distance, etc.
Parts of Boston/Cambridge are bike friendly, other parts are really rather dangerous... One guy I work with says he gets in somewhat of a "close call" almost every single day on the way into work... thats just crazy... There are some nice paths along the river though, so again it depends on the route.
Me too... Allston to LECHMERE - the end of the Green line... The mapquest-reported distance is less than 5 miles for the trip, yet it usually takes 45 mins to an hour on those big, hot/sweaty rattling boxes on wheels.
Boston's only excuse for having the worst public transit line in the world is that it is also the oldest... what can you do...
But is this really a "slashdot" article. I mean is it really big news to the general public that you can shave 28 seconds off a burn?
I didn't get the memo that states "slashdot articles" must always cover ground-breaking events...
Do you have any idea how many slashdot articles cover Star Wars, Star Trek, D&D, or myriad other extremely-unimportant-on-the-grand-scale-of-things topics? I agree that this particular article is not *terribly* interesting, but hey, some people out there might find discussion about it useful... if you dont, why are you reading this?;)
I agree with you in that I do not see any "clear dividing lines" per se, and I did consider the beaver, as my own post states.:) I think the difference between taming your environment and having to adapt to it is more of a gradiant than a clear line, and we as humans are simply very, very high up in that gradiant and to the point that for some of us, our day-to-day struggles bear at best a very detached and distant relationship to every other organism on this planet. One random example from an extremely long list:
Predators that have evolved for millions of years to be efficient killers can be wiped out by humans almost as an afterthought - heck, sometimes we do it unintentionally. If a "pesky" animal like a thylacine is hurting my bottom line by eating some of my chickens - no problem, we simply wipe them off the face of the earth... Some classify this as simply a case of one species competing with another, but I think that is a bit of a stretch considering that the act can be performed by only a relative handful of individuals and is often for completely arbitrary reasons (e.g. humans like boats - humans make boats - humans drive around in boats trailed by flailing human on waterskiis - manatees become endangered) It rarely if ever has anything to do with improving the lot of our species as a whole, or with finding food or shelter, or other *natural* reasons why species come into conflict.
I mean, how can I honestly feel part of the evolutionary, survival-of-the-fittest world when I know in certain parts of my country air-conditions are required by law as "necessary" ???? This implications of this alone are staggering.:)
This is an interesting question, and one that I have grappled with for a while. I certainly do not think modern man fits in with the natural world at all, but I would say Neanderthals did.
The critical distinction I came up with comes when an animal tames their environment, instead of adapting to the environment. Sure, some animals tame their environments to a degree (beavers make dams, alligators push away vegetation to create "alligator ponds," etc) but not even close to the extent that humans do.
Slashdot Mirror
How did this get modded up? This post touches on a million different things, but not once makes a single, clear and precise argument for or against anything.
... claiming USA is all about freedom, claiming the constitution, but its all bullshit.
However current intellectual property law is designed to reduce our abilities to express ourselves via code or even to copy a file.
This is too vague to hold meaning. Please reveal how you are being limited to express yourself via code or to copy a file, and we can talk.
Copyright and Intellectual property is out of control right now and its slowly removing our freedomm of speech and our right to expression.
Are you referring to the DMCA or RIAA? Again - Dont just blurt out little tidbits... Expand, give examples, etc.
Why is it ok to censor people in the name of capitalism, no one but rogue pirates dare step forward and say what we all know is happening.
Its NOT ok to censor people in the name of capitalism, widgets, or anything else... But please give an example of how capitalism is censoring you... (and please do not say the DMCA/RIAA... the problem with them is a distinct *lack* of a capitalistic free market)
Freenet, GNU, etc etc, its all about freedom of speech. Alot of people claim "well if you are going to have freedom to be open source you should also have freedom not to be"
I have no idea what this means.
However when you arent open source and you support the patent system you support censorship.
Sure, to some extent... but I dont dislike MS because I feel they are censoring me. I just like having choice in the matter, and should not have to give my money to a company I do not like.
Its very funny how Americans can jump to complain about China and the evils of Communism
Um, first off any American who thinks Communism is "evil" is a by-product of McCarthyism, and is a dying breed. I suggest you ignore these people like the rest of us do. My complaints of China are that they lack many of the freedoms we take for granted, such as freedom of the press... Can you imagine if Dubya controlled our newspapers? Scary thought indeed...
Again, how is this "bullshit?" I feel, as an American, that I am relatively free... Where am I going wrong when I make that assertion?
Hahha ok I suck... I just read your "sarcasm" comment at the end of your post... *slaps head repeatedly*
This sucks that Java has died. I just finished up my first week of a Java programming course. And, now, I find out that I am learning a dead language?
:)
Relax... First, Java is not dead... It is dead on the client... Java is used extensively on the server side. Second, any skills you learn from taking a Java course easily translate into other languages, especially languages like C#. The most important thing is that you learn how to program - dont concentrate too much on the particular syntax.
So relax - All is not lost
... and the best thing to come from Sun was JavaScript.
<splitting hairs>Except that Sun did not develop JavaScript - Netscape did</splitting hairs>
A good (and scary) point... but is this really any different than walking by a laundromat and looking in? I suppose this would make John Q Psycho's job easier and would save him a few strolls around the block, but I wouldnt go so far as to say this would open up new windows of opportunity...
I think in the end the sad conclusion must be drawn: assume its dangerous to be *anywhere* by yourself at 3AM... especially if female.
That is interesting... (this is speaking from a person who does *not* do a lot of video editing BTW) But I always thought video editing was more a matter of having 2 gigs of RAM versus a processor intensive thing... Is splicing videos together really that processor intensive? or does that factor come in when adding filters or effects of some sort? Just curious...
I'm still not exactly sure what I need all this speed for.
;) If you have an Athlon 2000+ you should be all set for some time... Even games do not require a processor like that, as the graphics card plays a much more important role in game-performance. I have an Athlon 1200 and a Geforce2GTS, and I have yet to play a game that does not run beautifully.
You probably dont
Processor speeds are most important if you do a lot of heavy number crunching, such as video encoding, etc... or if you just want to kick a$$ on Seti-at-home
When will the CPU race finish? Will it ever?
You didn't get the memo? It ends June 17th 2004... From then on all technology will be at a stand-still, and most of us will find new jobs involving drills...
I think you responded to the wrong post... But I will counter anyways ;)
The parent post said MS products are only known as "buggy" because they are used by the majority and therefore more bugs are revealed, as opposed to them just having more bugs in total. I said this is not always the case, because Apache typically has a lot less problems than IIS as far as exploits and security bugs are concerned, yet is more widely used than IIS. So in other words, the number/severity of bugs found is not always proportional to the market-share percentage of the product. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isnt.
All software is inherently flawed, I have yet to see ANY software put out by ANYONE that is bug free. Just because 90% of the computers in the world run a certain piece of software thus giving any bug more exposure that doesn't make microsoft products any worse than any other product out there.
You make some good points: Most software is buggy... But MS *does* have a bad track-record in this arena, and it is not always because 90% of users run that particular software.
Case in point: Apache is more widely used than IIS, yet you rarely hear of problems with Apache... IIS, on the other hand....
If MP3 is going to rapidly lose its status as "the standard," then the field becomes open to all of the other formats to replace it. Sure, Ogg Vorbis would be the ideal choice - but in reality does this not present MS with a nice advantage to further its proprietary format? (by offering free de/encoders, etc)
What are you smoking? They start charging for something that people can get for cheaper/free elsewhere, and people will go elsewhere... How is that a failing of capitalism? If anything it is a good example of capitalism... freedom of choice.
Yeah I met some dudes in college from China and they swore by their minidisc players... And once I saw their advantages, I realized they were superior than our CD players in a few ways - most importantly that you could write/re-write to them easily, yet still skip around them like a CD.
OK, for perspective -- what's the relative dollar cost of convenience store robberies vs. recent corporate fraud? what's the relative dollar cost allocated to preventing/resolving?
;)
Tell me how much one dead convience store-owner or customer is worth (or any victim of violent crime for that matter), and Ill try to find how many were killed in the last X year(s) during such robberies. Putting the two together, we should be able to come up with a rough "cost" which we can then compare with Worldcom and Enron.
Add to this the budgets of police departments around the country who spend most of their time fighting violent (i.e. not white collar) crime, and you will easily dwarf the corporate accounting scandels. Just to give you an idea at just how much money we are talking here, NYC's police budget alone is over 2 billion annually. Anything else?
Prizoners manufacturing goods for nearly no pay will be the new form of slavery.
Update - This just in! America has lost the cheap-manufacturing sector of global trade a long time ago, and will never get it back. Our economy is now service and skilled-labor dependent. Having an army of Prizoners as you call them will not help our economy - on the other hand, we spend tremendous amounts of money supporting these prisons (and the occupying Prizoners) so it is much more a burden than boost.
More even then China. Land of the free? Tell that to the non-violent drug offenders who are locked up.
Ahhaha you can be executed in China for tax evasion.. I suggest you make even a cursory investigation and educate yourself a little bit. Also if you have a minute for a google search, take a quick read on how China's "Strike Hard" initiative treats "non-violent drug offenders" and compare with the U.S.A.
For the record, I am against the "War on Drugs" - though not for the reasons you specify... Drugs should be made legal because they are not all dangerous, and those that are can be better controlled (and taxed) if legal.
Vague. Verrry vague.
Care to expand a bit?
Hehehe ok, if you would rather be held up at gunpoint than have to pay insurance - to each their own I suppose...
In all seriousness, I (of course) dont have all the answers to the whole Health Care situation... A socialist-umbrella type program? Take less taxes but demand that people take responsibility for themselves? Some mix of the two? Its a complicated question... hence, the political fallout on both sides. Its even further complicated by the extraordinary costs of hospital care... I dont think open-heart or brain-related surgeries will ever become "cheap" in the short term, which leads me to think that some sort of insurance/umbrella system is necessary. However, in the end I get far more in return from my medical insurance (despite our flawed system) than I would from some thug at gunpoint... Try again.
Actually statistics show that there is actually a higher ratio of what would be crime in the high income bracket, it is just ignored. Think about the recent corporate scandels.
;)
Statistics? Do you have a reference? I would find this incredibly interesting if it were indeed true, but I have never seen any studies on the matter...
As for the recent corporate scandels - Man, get over it... They were but a few companies out of thousands... Granted, their "take" was much higher than that received by some troubled youth ripping off a 7-11, but keep things in perspective. The media will have you believe that the sky is falling as far as corporate America is concerned, but I think you will find that the vast majority of companies are fairly straight shooters. Remember, drastic headlines sell and are therefore used.... Remember the "summer of the shark" ?? Nevermind that the number of shark attacks was lower than average - thats just not exciting is it?
Yeah, the bike is a mixed bag... A lot of people use them, but whether its a good idea depends more on your particular route than, say, distance, etc.
Parts of Boston/Cambridge are bike friendly, other parts are really rather dangerous... One guy I work with says he gets in somewhat of a "close call" almost every single day on the way into work... thats just crazy... There are some nice paths along the river though, so again it depends on the route.
Me too... Allston to LECHMERE - the end of the Green line... The mapquest-reported distance is less than 5 miles for the trip, yet it usually takes 45 mins to an hour on those big, hot/sweaty rattling boxes on wheels.
Boston's only excuse for having the worst public transit line in the world is that it is also the oldest... what can you do...
Hope you dont have to take the Green line... that thing kills me every single day ;)
But is this really a "slashdot" article. I mean is it really big news to the general public that you can shave 28 seconds off a burn?
s topics? I agree that this particular article is not *terribly* interesting, but hey, some people out there might find discussion about it useful... if you dont, why are you reading this? ;)
I didn't get the memo that states "slashdot articles" must always cover ground-breaking events...
Do you have any idea how many slashdot articles cover Star Wars, Star Trek, D&D, or myriad other extremely-unimportant-on-the-grand-scale-of-thing
I agree with you in that I do not see any "clear dividing lines" per se, and I did consider the beaver, as my own post states. :) I think the difference between taming your environment and having to adapt to it is more of a gradiant than a clear line, and we as humans are simply very, very high up in that gradiant and to the point that for some of us, our day-to-day struggles bear at best a very detached and distant relationship to every other organism on this planet. One random example from an extremely long list:
:)
Predators that have evolved for millions of years to be efficient killers can be wiped out by humans almost as an afterthought - heck, sometimes we do it unintentionally. If a "pesky" animal like a thylacine is hurting my bottom line by eating some of my chickens - no problem, we simply wipe them off the face of the earth... Some classify this as simply a case of one species competing with another, but I think that is a bit of a stretch considering that the act can be performed by only a relative handful of individuals and is often for completely arbitrary reasons (e.g. humans like boats - humans make boats - humans drive around in boats trailed by flailing human on waterskiis - manatees become endangered) It rarely if ever has anything to do with improving the lot of our species as a whole, or with finding food or shelter, or other *natural* reasons why species come into conflict.
I mean, how can I honestly feel part of the evolutionary, survival-of-the-fittest world when I know in certain parts of my country air-conditions are required by law as "necessary" ???? This implications of this alone are staggering.
Say it with me now...
LAN.
... at what point did man become "unnatural?"
This is an interesting question, and one that I have grappled with for a while. I certainly do not think modern man fits in with the natural world at all, but I would say Neanderthals did.
The critical distinction I came up with comes when an animal tames their environment, instead of adapting to the environment. Sure, some animals tame their environments to a degree (beavers make dams, alligators push away vegetation to create "alligator ponds," etc) but not even close to the extent that humans do.