20,000 people who prize individual freedom above all else will move into a state and then trample over the wishes of the previous populace to get their preferred form of government enacted.
Er... that's kind of the entire history of the American settlement of this continent. Talk about prior art!
It is a little weird though... like when the Anarchist candidate actually wins the election and stands around nervously on the podium, wondering what to do.
As a rabid stealthchaser myself, I resent be called a terrorist or spy. Most of us are journalists, just doing our job, reporting things of interest to the public
The very fact that the government classifies this stuff as secret is reason enough not to investigate and publish.
Our reporting has never resulted in aid to an enemy or resulted in the inadvertant disclosing of secret information.
How can that possibly be, if you only investigate secret information?
We "stealthchasers" consider ourselves the unofficial taxpayer oversite comitee.
Bear in mind that about the only action taken by the OSS crowd 'against' a giant like Microsoft, and about the only action a bazaar could take, is to steadily improve their product and public awareness of same.
Er... what about researching what are Microsoft's best-selling products (operating system and office apps) and writing equivalent-functionality versions of these, and releasing them for free.
It is highly (and enjoyably!) debatable whether this is some weird kind of dumping, but it must be extremely aggravating to the MS crowd.
We have these Vax's at work, biggest single computer I've ever seen in my life. 7 feet talk, 5 feet wide, 5 feet back. You walk by it and your fillings hurt.
Makes your fillings hurt? Christ, man, what is this machine's radiation doing to your genome?
"That we who declare ourselves to be righteous Muslims, should not participate in wars which take the lives of humans. We do not believe this nation should force us to take part in such wars, for we have nothing to gain from it unless America agrees to give us the necessary territory wherein we may have something to fight for".
The problem with this belief: The Qur'an and Sunnah are crystal clear on the necessity of going to war when the situation demands it.
Given current events, are you really sure that you prefer the mainstream Islamic doctrine?
I've broken all of my fingers (most twice), most of my toes, a few ribs, both ankles and both wrists. I have a 10" long "depression" in my skull [...] I just didn't feel it when something broke [...] I've had a tooth (accidentally) removed without anesthesia. That hurt a lot. [...] I'm not Dutch. Scotch-Irish/English, with a teensy bit of Polish.
Maybe, boyo, you're a little more Polish than you think.
Apart of those prohibitions stated upon laws created and accepted by a nation, state, community or organisation, no one has the right to tell anyone whom he can sell and what he can sell on the basis of a service that is not based on a common agreement of rights and duties, for which, each party shares a common profit of the service.
I'd say that the license *agreement* is this "common agreement" you speak of. Larry's "price" for the free version of his software is a promise that you won't use it to undermine his market.
If you are not willing to pay his price -- either the cash or the behavioral, don't use the software. He's not taking away any rights, because as it stands you have no right to use his software. He's adding rights, with some conditions attached.
I see this as no different than the GPL restrictions that you not make proprietary your code.
Does all this 'Generation whatever' crap annoy the hell out of anyone else?
Actually, it's only Gen-X folks who are annoyed about this.;)
For a different perspective, look up "The Fourth Turning", a book which claims to be able to track a four-generation cycle of general attitudes. According to this book, Gen X makes a lot of sense. It's worth checking out from the libe.
DEV: [Jittering, shaking] Okay, I've been up all night coding this to meet our deadline. It will ship. It must ship.
QA: [Shaking, jittering] Don't complain to me, I've been up all night testing. Hmm... the colors on the buttons don't match the feature specification. I'm not shipping this.
PHB: [Fresh, rested] Oh, didn't I tell you, they extended the deadline two weeks.
It's "boxes," you twat. There's no such word as "boxen."
Oh come on, let people have their fun. This is why they do it. It gets better.
Just good, harmless fun, and a little bit of furtive linguistic engineering; who knows if those knuckleheads at the OED will ever get around to including verben like boxen?
Warning The referenced site (everything2.com) is extremely dangerous and addictive, and can shatter your productivity for a whole afternoon if you let it. Don't follow the link unless you have some free time on your hands, or iron willpower.
If I copy some bits which, in their particular sequence, can represent a movie, song, or piece of software, I have not deprived anyone of anything.
What you have "stolen" is *permission* to use the content in question. You are taking something you do not have permission to take, which you are supposed to pay for. It's like sneaking into the circus tent without paying. You just don't do that.
Copyright violations are called "copyright violations" and not "theft" for a reason. Blurring the two is a scare tactic used by copyright holders to inflate the perceived moral injustice.
By the very same logic, anyone who provides a product that competes with mine and "steals" my business would be guilty of theft.
Except that people who start competing businesses make money, and people who violate copyright go to jail. Seems like you're trying to use language to *downgrade* the moral impact of ip theft.
What many anti-ip folks seem to miss is this: people who write software (or whatever) worked hard to create that software. It belongs to them. They made it. They own it, and they get to say who can use it. The fact that p2p and digital copying make it easy and safe to (ahem) "get" the software for free has absolutely no bearing.
(Websters [dictionary.com])1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny."
Maybe Websters just has an outdated business model.
I'll just input the bit patterns directly. That sure makes me much smarter than those fools using Lisp...
Acutally, Lisp programmers are not smart. They don't have to be... after the first couple builds, the application writes itself, executes a leveraged buyout of the company, and lays off all the developers.
Sun submits patches to the relevant projects that guarantee behavioral compatibility.
The "we can't upgrade because stuff will break" crowd really gets on my nerves sometimes.
On the other hand, there is much serenity and beauty in knowing that you can write your scripts and then not worry about having to rewrite them every 3 years.
Sure, Sun could conceivably patch all the gnu utils so that they have a system V compatibility mode, but it would likely not work out (what do you mean the "-x" flag is "already taken"? What do we do now?). Seems like a huge effort for exactly zero gain, unless I'm missing something.
I make a product, I can design it to work however I want. If I build the thing to play advertisements, and you still want to buy the thing, that's my decision.
No! No! No! Under the first sale doctrine, when you BUY a product, you can DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH IT!!
Under the "it's my research lab, bitch" doctrine, when you MAKE a product, you can DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH IT.
That includes, sadly, the non-skippable ad feature on your dvd player.
You are free to disable it. If you can.
One further note about the first-sale doctrine. That really applies to the object you bought; the CD, book, clay tablet, whatever. You can take that object and sell it to someone else, smash it, paint it, or anything you want. What you can't do is violate the copyright on the contents. That is, if I buy a copy of the latest Stephen King novel, I don't get the right to re-print it. If I buy a copy of the latest (insert lame band here) CD, I don't get the right to post it to napster.
Certainly, the state of Linux distros is getting pretty interesting. Debian and Gentoo have worked perfectly for me. I keep hearing good things about SuSE and Redhat's newest releases.
Perhaps some of the myths about Linux are beginning to fall?
Yeah, like the one about how there are so many near-identical distros that people get confused and stay away from Linux altogether.
doh.
Re:It's a long way down...
on
Life on Pluto?
·
· Score: 1
> "What we need is a mad scientist with a gi-ant 'la-ser' cannon!"
Do you have any idea how hard it is for mad scientists to get funding today?
Great Jupiter, man, what's the matter with you? When I was a Mad Scientist I didn't wait around for "funding"! I went out by God and colonized my own desert island full of unruly mutant monsters, whom I cruelly mistreated, secure in the knowledge that it would never occur to any shipwrecked explorers to raise them in rebellion against me. Um, I digress.
To truly be a Mad Scientist you need to come from Old Money. Preferably deposed Eastern European nobility. Sure it's unfair, but Mad Science is not really about "fair", now is it?
Slashdot Mirror
How bout ... Egotopia.
It is a little weird though
Actually, I think this plan was secretly advanced by one Jack Valenti.
It is highly (and enjoyably!) debatable whether this is some weird kind of dumping, but it must be extremely aggravating to the MS crowd.
That sounds a lot like 'taking action' to me.
What price big iron?
If they open-source the Linux Passport server, won't that make for an even more efficient lock-down?
If you are not willing to pay his price -- either the cash or the behavioral, don't use the software. He's not taking away any rights, because as it stands you have no right to use his software. He's adding rights, with some conditions attached.
I see this as no different than the GPL restrictions that you not make proprietary your code.
For a different perspective, look up "The Fourth Turning", a book which claims to be able to track a four-generation cycle of general attitudes. According to this book, Gen X makes a lot of sense. It's worth checking out from the libe.
DEV: [Jittering, shaking] Okay, I've been up all night coding this to meet our deadline. It will ship. It must ship.
QA: [Shaking, jittering] Don't complain to me, I've been up all night testing. Hmm
PHB: [Fresh, rested] Oh, didn't I tell you, they extended the deadline two weeks.
Just good, harmless fun, and a little bit of furtive linguistic engineering; who knows if those knuckleheads at the OED will ever get around to including verben like boxen?
Warning The referenced site (everything2.com) is extremely dangerous and addictive, and can shatter your productivity for a whole afternoon if you let it. Don't follow the link unless you have some free time on your hands, or iron willpower.
What many anti-ip folks seem to miss is this: people who write software (or whatever) worked hard to create that software. It belongs to them. They made it. They own it, and they get to say who can use it. The fact that p2p and digital copying make it easy and safe to (ahem) "get" the software for free has absolutely no bearing.
I've seen it happen many times.
Sure, Sun could conceivably patch all the gnu utils so that they have a system V compatibility mode, but it would likely not work out (what do you mean the "-x" flag is "already taken"? What do we do now?). Seems like a huge effort for exactly zero gain, unless I'm missing something.
Please advise.
That includes, sadly, the non-skippable ad feature on your dvd player.
You are free to disable it. If you can.
One further note about the first-sale doctrine. That really applies to the object you bought; the CD, book, clay tablet, whatever. You can take that object and sell it to someone else, smash it, paint it, or anything you want. What you can't do is violate the copyright on the contents. That is, if I buy a copy of the latest Stephen King novel, I don't get the right to re-print it. If I buy a copy of the latest (insert lame band here) CD, I don't get the right to post it to napster.
doh.
To truly be a Mad Scientist you need to come from Old Money. Preferably deposed Eastern European nobility. Sure it's unfair, but Mad Science is not really about "fair", now is it?