You are alreay free from everything except consequences.
Depending on how you mean that, it's either utterly wrong, or an inane truism.
Taken one way, of course you're free from everything except consequences. Everything is a consequence. Getting erroneously added to a no-fly list and having your vacation wrecked is a consequence of you not voting out the people who mandated it, not leaving the USA, and not changing your name from Mohammed. Sorry, that's not a natural consequence of your actions - that's an artificial consequence imposed on you by other human beings. Being sued out of existence because you uploaded a song or two is a consequence of your action, as well as the consequence of having a corrupt system of government that does not truly represent who it is supposed to. Again, that's not a natural consequence unless you expand the meaning of "natural" to the point of becoming a meaningless distinction.
This is the culture in Scandanavian countries, who have been at the top end of the standard of living charts for a very long time now.
How are they on the R&D front? How many new things have they conceived of and brought to market? Because it seems to me that a system that rewards people according to their achievements has a greater chance of encouraging people to achieve, than one which has the philosophy that none of your achievements are yours anyway, they all belong to society, so no reward for you. And, while there are certainly other factors involved, a very large proportion of the world's "new ideas" are coming out of America, not Scandanavia.
And, just to head off the usual responses, I'm also an Australian, not an American, so my comments aren't the result of ra-ra patriotism. I don't believe that capitalism is a flawless system for distributing wealth, nor do I worship Rand, and I do think that, despite it's track-record of innovation, the American system is deeply flawed in (most?) other areas.
The post office business is booming. They might not be delivering many letters, but they're delivering many, many more expensive parcels. If they go bust, it'll be due to their own internal inefficiencies, not because the market vanished.
Yes. It is true. The statement itself may or may not be true, but the fact that that's what the GP was claiming, is. I was clarifying that by the statement "brain is telling you you're all alone", the GP was referring to depressed people. I make no determination whatsoever to the truth or falsity of the GPs claim, just that the LateArthurDent didn't adequately address the claim.
Um, I agree, but what the hell does that have to do with what the GP was saying?
Depressed people (people whose "brain is telling you you're all alone") do everything they can to feel some sort of human connection. Whether they're extroverted, and go to lots of parties, or they're introverted, and connect to people in a manageable online environment, or they're extroverted, and use online communications because the barrier of entry is lower, is irrelevant according to the GP's argument.
Sounds like you're jumping on your introverted/extroverted hobbyhorse without even checking to see if it makes sense in the context of the argument you're addressing.
They also have different properties, which makes them not exactly a drop-in replacement. People I know who don't like CFLs tend not to like them due to the nature of the light they product (white rather than slightly coloured) when compared to incandescents (although I believe newer CFLs can ameliorate that). Also, AFAIK, CFLs can't be dimmed.
I can't comment on the rest, but Heroes was like that only when it started to slide. The first couple of seasons, it was all about the mystery - who's Sylar? Who's the man with the horn-rimmed glasses? What are all these powers? What does it all mean? When it had answered half of those, showed no sign of answering the rest, and substituted them for melodrama, the show tanked.
I get the feeling Lost was similar, although I never watched it myself.
It's too late to prevent the dissemination of secrets now; that's not what they're trying to do. What they're trying to do is find some way to punish an entity that has broken no law. They're trying to twist laws to serve that purpose, so they can serve up Wikileaks as an example, not so they can prevent them sharing things.
I can't comment on Comcast (I live in Australia), but we frequently have these caps, and frequently have exemptions for internal traffic. In our case, it's because traffic transmitted out of Australia is far more expensive than local traffic, which is frequently peered. People here did exactly what you suggest, and modded P2P clients that only shared with others on the PIPE peering network sprung up. The ISPs were perfectly fine with that (The anti-piracy goonsquad not so much, and took down the modded P2P clients)
While Comcast may not be an unbiased source, I'd consider it more reliable than an Anonymous Coward's backside, which is where the GGP's statistics have been sourced from.
Yeah, great idea. The company just pays extra to add more 4 hours to every day, and make people who've been working for 20 of them still be productive. Money can do anything! The OP said they outsourced when they exceeded capacity. He didn't say they stopped paying their own developers.
Terrorism's a solved now isn't it? They killed Osama, and we've got all those TSA people preventing terrorism all over the place. The government's doing something, so there's no more risk.
Meanwhile, cyberterrorism? I don't really understand all this cyber stuff. If I don't understand it, it must be scary. Also, where's the TSA for cyberspace? We need the TSA to be secure don't we? I can't see any cyberterrorism countermeasures in my every day life. We must be doing nothing! And it's scary!
Yeah, when my parents were raising me, there was no internet When my grandparents were raising them, there were no baby monitors When my great-grandparents were raising them, there was no electricity
It's called progress. No, it's not necessary. Yes, it's nice to have. No, the fact that it's not necessary doesn't mean the OP shouldn't try to have it.
Would you consider Steve Jobs "seriously involved in the development of software products?"
No. He was an executive, spokesperson and visionary. I very much doubt he was seriously involved in the development of software products, except at a very high level. And the products his company makes use industrial design as a differentiating factor much more than software (with the exception of OSX).
but nobody who is seriously involved in the development of software products can claim that software patents are a good thing.
It depends on what you mean by "development" - and also "good thing". Certainly, no software developers I know of love software patents. But the company's they are employed by do.
It's like saying that no soldier can claim guns are a good thing - after all, they've killed many soldiers on both sides of every conflict they've been involved in. Guns aren't made for soldiers. They're made for the politicians who use those soldiers to exert their influence on other parties. Same for software patents. They don't exist for software developers, or even for making money in their own right. They exist so that business executives can use them as leverage for forcing their will on other companies.
Have you ever looked at kickstarter? Find me one project that has enough technical information on its project page to even think about qualifying for a patent.
BitTorrent is a really nice, elegant protocol (I wrote a client for it once), but the designer's criteria are likely not that of the current users. Bram Cohen was trying to design a protocol for a publisher with limited resources to publish to a lot of consumers. There was resilience baked in, but only for stuff like data corruption over the wire. All the stuff to protect against intentionally-poisoned torrents, decentralization (trackerless torrents), anonymity and encryption have been retro-fitted, generally by third parties, and through informal consent to a standard among the various client devs.
a) It costs too much money to actually get to the jury-stage of a trial, for an individual in civil court (no court-appointed lawyer) b) Juries are instructed (contrary to fact) that they are not allowed to nullify, and any jurors that display any knowledge of that right are eliminated during selection
Of course it would be really slick to have a setting similar to what email clients have which is to display all email messages, regardless of formatting as "plain text". Thereby getting rid of all the formatting people have paid for and display it in plain text (like it is now)
Actually, abstract squares have been a pretty persistent representation for "stop", along with the abstract triangle for "play", and the abstract parallel lines for "pause" (which, these days, is often synonymous with stop anyway). This just goes to support your argument though - these abstractions do not graphically represent anything; their meaning is solely derived from their common, consistent use.
Slashdot Mirror
You are alreay free from everything except consequences.
Depending on how you mean that, it's either utterly wrong, or an inane truism.
Taken one way, of course you're free from everything except consequences. Everything is a consequence. Getting erroneously added to a no-fly list and having your vacation wrecked is a consequence of you not voting out the people who mandated it, not leaving the USA, and not changing your name from Mohammed. Sorry, that's not a natural consequence of your actions - that's an artificial consequence imposed on you by other human beings. Being sued out of existence because you uploaded a song or two is a consequence of your action, as well as the consequence of having a corrupt system of government that does not truly represent who it is supposed to. Again, that's not a natural consequence unless you expand the meaning of "natural" to the point of becoming a meaningless distinction.
This is the culture in Scandanavian countries, who have been at the top end of the standard of living charts for a very long time now.
How are they on the R&D front? How many new things have they conceived of and brought to market? Because it seems to me that a system that rewards people according to their achievements has a greater chance of encouraging people to achieve, than one which has the philosophy that none of your achievements are yours anyway, they all belong to society, so no reward for you. And, while there are certainly other factors involved, a very large proportion of the world's "new ideas" are coming out of America, not Scandanavia.
And, just to head off the usual responses, I'm also an Australian, not an American, so my comments aren't the result of ra-ra patriotism. I don't believe that capitalism is a flawless system for distributing wealth, nor do I worship Rand, and I do think that, despite it's track-record of innovation, the American system is deeply flawed in (most?) other areas.
Hey, this might even save the post office...
The post office business is booming. They might not be delivering many letters, but they're delivering many, many more expensive parcels. If they go bust, it'll be due to their own internal inefficiencies, not because the market vanished.
You repeated this as if it were true
Yes. It is true. The statement itself may or may not be true, but the fact that that's what the GP was claiming, is. I was clarifying that by the statement "brain is telling you you're all alone", the GP was referring to depressed people. I make no determination whatsoever to the truth or falsity of the GPs claim, just that the LateArthurDent didn't adequately address the claim.
Um, I agree, but what the hell does that have to do with what the GP was saying?
Depressed people (people whose "brain is telling you you're all alone") do everything they can to feel some sort of human connection. Whether they're extroverted, and go to lots of parties, or they're introverted, and connect to people in a manageable online environment, or they're extroverted, and use online communications because the barrier of entry is lower, is irrelevant according to the GP's argument.
Sounds like you're jumping on your introverted/extroverted hobbyhorse without even checking to see if it makes sense in the context of the argument you're addressing.
They also have different properties, which makes them not exactly a drop-in replacement. People I know who don't like CFLs tend not to like them due to the nature of the light they product (white rather than slightly coloured) when compared to incandescents (although I believe newer CFLs can ameliorate that). Also, AFAIK, CFLs can't be dimmed.
I can't comment on the rest, but Heroes was like that only when it started to slide. The first couple of seasons, it was all about the mystery - who's Sylar? Who's the man with the horn-rimmed glasses? What are all these powers? What does it all mean? When it had answered half of those, showed no sign of answering the rest, and substituted them for melodrama, the show tanked.
I get the feeling Lost was similar, although I never watched it myself.
Our current patent system was around then, doofus, and the lightbulb was patents. Patents != Copyright.
Of course, sometimes he was out of touch with reality and had no sense of business
If we had more of that sort, instead of the people who are firmly grounded and really good at business, the world would be a better place.
They sue them in, say, France. Government works aren't public domain in all countries, just the US.
It's too late to prevent the dissemination of secrets now; that's not what they're trying to do. What they're trying to do is find some way to punish an entity that has broken no law. They're trying to twist laws to serve that purpose, so they can serve up Wikileaks as an example, not so they can prevent them sharing things.
Either you missed the joke, or you meant to reply to the parent.
Of course, your fiendishly clever non-standard spelling of et cetera would fool any such dictionary attacks.
I can't comment on Comcast (I live in Australia), but we frequently have these caps, and frequently have exemptions for internal traffic. In our case, it's because traffic transmitted out of Australia is far more expensive than local traffic, which is frequently peered. People here did exactly what you suggest, and modded P2P clients that only shared with others on the PIPE peering network sprung up. The ISPs were perfectly fine with that (The anti-piracy goonsquad not so much, and took down the modded P2P clients)
While Comcast may not be an unbiased source, I'd consider it more reliable than an Anonymous Coward's backside, which is where the GGP's statistics have been sourced from.
Yeah, great idea. The company just pays extra to add more 4 hours to every day, and make people who've been working for 20 of them still be productive. Money can do anything! The OP said they outsourced when they exceeded capacity. He didn't say they stopped paying their own developers.
Terrorism's a solved now isn't it? They killed Osama, and we've got all those TSA people preventing terrorism all over the place. The government's doing something, so there's no more risk.
Meanwhile, cyberterrorism? I don't really understand all this cyber stuff. If I don't understand it, it must be scary. Also, where's the TSA for cyberspace? We need the TSA to be secure don't we? I can't see any cyberterrorism countermeasures in my every day life. We must be doing nothing! And it's scary!
Yeah, when my parents were raising me, there was no internet
When my grandparents were raising them, there were no baby monitors
When my great-grandparents were raising them, there was no electricity
It's called progress. No, it's not necessary. Yes, it's nice to have. No, the fact that it's not necessary doesn't mean the OP shouldn't try to have it.
Would you consider Steve Jobs "seriously involved in the development of software products?"
No. He was an executive, spokesperson and visionary. I very much doubt he was seriously involved in the development of software products, except at a very high level. And the products his company makes use industrial design as a differentiating factor much more than software (with the exception of OSX).
but nobody who is seriously involved in the development of software products can claim that software patents are a good thing.
It depends on what you mean by "development" - and also "good thing". Certainly, no software developers I know of love software patents. But the company's they are employed by do.
It's like saying that no soldier can claim guns are a good thing - after all, they've killed many soldiers on both sides of every conflict they've been involved in. Guns aren't made for soldiers. They're made for the politicians who use those soldiers to exert their influence on other parties. Same for software patents. They don't exist for software developers, or even for making money in their own right. They exist so that business executives can use them as leverage for forcing their will on other companies.
You should thank coinreturn. That's the most karma I've ever seen someone get just by repeating the same phrase:
"show me a browser that doesn't require Safari, and does rendering on device"
Have you ever looked at kickstarter? Find me one project that has enough technical information on its project page to even think about qualifying for a patent.
BitTorrent is a really nice, elegant protocol (I wrote a client for it once), but the designer's criteria are likely not that of the current users. Bram Cohen was trying to design a protocol for a publisher with limited resources to publish to a lot of consumers. There was resilience baked in, but only for stuff like data corruption over the wire. All the stuff to protect against intentionally-poisoned torrents, decentralization (trackerless torrents), anonymity and encryption have been retro-fitted, generally by third parties, and through informal consent to a standard among the various client devs.
a) It costs too much money to actually get to the jury-stage of a trial, for an individual in civil court (no court-appointed lawyer)
b) Juries are instructed (contrary to fact) that they are not allowed to nullify, and any jurors that display any knowledge of that right are eliminated during selection
Of course it would be really slick to have a setting similar to what email clients have which is to display all email messages, regardless of formatting as "plain text". Thereby getting rid of all the formatting people have paid for and display it in plain text (like it is now)
GreaseMonkey.
Abstract Square, not so much.
Actually, abstract squares have been a pretty persistent representation for "stop", along with the abstract triangle for "play", and the abstract parallel lines for "pause" (which, these days, is often synonymous with stop anyway). This just goes to support your argument though - these abstractions do not graphically represent anything; their meaning is solely derived from their common, consistent use.