They were replaced by teenage emplyees in Mcdonlads
Oh great. So this business plan will fail because it's cheaper to get bored adolescents to copy the books out by hand?
I can see it now:-
"...depending upon the age of your motherboard you may need to upgrade the BIOS in order to use newer processors, although physically it is able to TAKE A CRAP this sucks. FUCK THIS i'm not even getting paid overtime for this. MD RULES YA BAS 2004!"
Meanwhile, where the diagram of a ZIF socket should be is a crudely-drawn picture of a large penis.
I bet they never had this problem when they had monks doing it.
Do your history and check out Korea, Japan, Indea, and China. They are (my emphasis) growing like mad
Are you suggesting that Japan is an "up-and-coming" power? Japan's economic growth spurt occurred *years* ago! It's been stuck in a recession since the early 90s...
In short, your argument might have come across better if you'd omitted Japan (Korea you can probably get away with, although it's at least one stage ahead of China and India).
It's too bad I'm not President then, because if I were I'd put an end to all foreign aid of any kind, for any reason. Of course, I'd just LOVE to see what the rest of the world would say once the U.S. gravy train came to a dead halt....
I'd assume your definition of aid included (for example) military support of your allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc. If not, why not?
As for the rest, I think the rest of the world would say "Mmm.. no. I don't think that we *will* let them use our airspace to invade XYZland", "No, we won't implement those pro-capitalist reforms, fuck off Haliburton and friends", "Let's resume our nuclear weap... I mean power program after all", etc.
The great fallacy; many of those "donations" are actually loans, and of the remainder, many are dependent on implementing privatisation of the receiving country's industries and opening up the free market in a manner that happens to be beneficial to US industry. (That was a great success in Russia)
And what about all the "generous" donations for AIDS programs which are required to promote a particular agenda (e.g. abstinence-based programs) instead of using it in the manner that is likely to be most effective?
And I'd agree with the other replies that basically said: "Uh, I don't believe that you *are* supporting most other countries' jail systems."
By the way, I'm not going to say that all US aid money is bad; the Marshall plan after WWII was one of the best examples of enlightened self-interest in recent times. The recent stuff I'm not so impressed with.
we only kill mass murderes, and serial killers, and even then maybe 5 a year at most....
Your last sentence makes absolutely no sense. Do the executed criminals come back to life after five years or something?
The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.
Already been thought of! Courtesy of the Unix Fortune cookie program:-
"Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design.
Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor
any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.
Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the
center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will
usually know what's wrong."
Ha ha ha.... you've made the same mistake that the Doctor made when running up a staircase to escape from the Daleks (Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks).
Yep; levitation technology. I heard that Hawking got it roundabout the same time he got his hands on the Daleks' laser-gun technology.
In fact, I heard he's getting plastic surgery to look more like Davros.
Think of the terrorists. They commit crimes for their "justice".
Argument flaw: the terrorists are unlikely to belong to your society (whatever that is- the US?). They are not necessarily breaking their laws, they are breaking *your* laws. So, the analogy is poor, because you're concerned with your society breaking its own laws.
Would you care about breaking Nigerian laws? Probably not, you might think it's justified. You might be right. If their law system supports ripping you off, screw them and their law system, right? (*)
Similarly, a "terrorist" from another country might (rightly or wrongly) consider that whilst the US is internally democratic (sort of...), it doesn't care about democracy outside its own borders *if* the undemocratic action is in its interests. So, they use the same reasoning as (*) above.
I'm trying to make two points here; (a) Breaking your own laws isn't the same as breaking someone else's laws and (b) You breaking someone else's laws might also enter into the picture, even if you think those laws are against you.
i personally think that it's usually not worth it to get to the touch. If it were for tracking, a neurotoxin-impregnated fake $100 bill that costs around $1 would do better.
Ah, yes. The scammer is going to keep the $100 bill in his/her wallet for ever and ever and never spend it. Thus only the scammer gets hurt!
That's one of the biggest problems with American capitalism: firms compete not only to produce the best products and services, but to shape the playing field to their advantage.
Of course they will. A firm's business is to make money; anything they *can* get away with to make money, they *will* do, so long as the benefits outweigh any consequences.
Now; if your only business is to make money, and you can see a way to eliminate (or enter into a cartel with) the competition, isn't this preferable to playing the business game "fairly" (by selling better and cheaper)? Of course; it's common sense that this will happen. They'll also exploit any loopholes in democracies, tender out to countries with repressive regimes, etc...
Which, in short, is why I think that anyone who assumes that an entirely "free" market is a good, or "democratic" thing is an idiot.
Particularly idiotic are those who can't differentiate between "democracy", "liberty" and "capitalism".
If your gut reaction is to think that this entire post is in support of socialism or communism, then I'd guess you were one of the people described in the last paragraph.
Solution for those who *really* don't want customers disassembling their products; screws with the holes in the shape of a popular (and very copyrighted(*)) character; e.g. Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty, etc.
Now you can sue anyone making a compatible screwdriver under copyright laws as well (since a compatible screwdriver is likely to resemble the cartoon character)! Company restricts compatible screwdrivers to those who are "meant" to have them; problem "solved".
One possible problem; it might be possible to make a Hello Kitty compatible screwdriver that doesn't infringe the Hello Kitty image by omitting *just* enough bits that it can still grip whilst not looking like Sanrio's cash cow, er... kitty.
(*) Yeah, or whatever the law that covers this sort of thing is; IP, copyright, trademark, whatever.
Talking of which, isn't IE a great cracker tool? All those lovely security holes built in, just waiting to compromise someone's machine. All we need to do now is convince lots of important people to install it on their PCs and the world is ours!
He liberated this information, and should be celebrated as the freedom fighter he is!
No, if this story is correct, he hasn't "freed" it, he's smuggled it out of its AltaVista jail and re-incarcerated it in the Microsoft Super-Max prison.
If he'd (illegally) GPLed it, then it would be "free" and hiding in the "freedom-fighter"/"terrorist"s house, and enemy forces would use this as an excuse to engage in punitive destruction of GPL-supporting villages.
Oooh... didn't think men could do that, but if it were possible, biologically, I guess that would mean, realistically, the only hole it could be born through would be Gates'... urethra.
Yeah, if they could fix it that way, I'd like Gates to have your baby too.
And exactly how is "You can see nothing? And at such distance? What eyes you have child!" not dream-logic?
Reread my post; I said it did contain dream-logic.
However, my most fucked-up dream-logic can't really survive in "this world"; as soon as I try to analyse what I was thinking, it falls apart. The closest I ever get to holding it is (*was*) when I was at university, not getting enough sleep, and sitting in lectures *almost* asleep. That was actually very pleasant sometimes; came out of the lecture feeling nice, if still damned tired.
You know when you think you're still awake, and suddenly you realise that your thoughts make *no* sense at all- you're entering dream-state? Sometimes I can hold onto it then, but generally, trying to explain "dream-logic" doesn't work even to myself because I'm trying to understand it in a conventional framework in my waking state-of-mind and it just won't fit into that. It sure as hell couldn't fit into a book.
Anyhow, if I ever come across that version you mentioned I might check it out.
Alice in Wonderland (okay; bad book, crap analogy)
Bad book? Thems fightin' words, pardner.
Bit harsh, I'll admit. I never read the book itself as a kid, perhaps because I perceived it as a girls' book. I read it recently, wanting to like it, but it did absolutely nothing for me.
Possibly because of its influence on 1960s culture, it seemed a bit tired, although I appreciate its invention and so on. Bit like I never 'got' Jimi Hendrix because I'd been too exposed to the people who were influenced by him, I guess.
Anyway; the book seemed nonsensical, but didn't really have a coherent feel I was hoping for. I was going to say that I was looking for "dream-logic" (you know, "logical" thinking that seems to make perfect sense when you dream, then you wake up and realise it was nonsensical), and didn't find it. However, I think the book *does* contain this.
I also think my dislike is part reaction to its "childrens' book that adults think that children should read" reputation.
Really, I feel that it's ultimately a children's nonsense book and not *that* much more, despite the inventive imagery; coupled with the above, this might explain why I didn't particularly like it.
Slashdot Mirror
They were replaced by teenage emplyees in Mcdonlads
Oh great. So this business plan will fail because it's cheaper to get bored adolescents to copy the books out by hand?
I can see it now:-
"...depending upon the age of your motherboard you may need to upgrade the BIOS in order to use newer processors, although physically it is able to TAKE A CRAP this sucks. FUCK THIS i'm not even getting paid overtime for this. MD RULES YA BAS 2004!"
Meanwhile, where the diagram of a ZIF socket should be is a crudely-drawn picture of a large penis.
I bet they never had this problem when they had monks doing it.
Do your history and check out Korea, Japan, Indea, and China. They are (my emphasis) growing like mad
Are you suggesting that Japan is an "up-and-coming" power? Japan's economic growth spurt occurred *years* ago! It's been stuck in a recession since the early 90s...
In short, your argument might have come across better if you'd omitted Japan (Korea you can probably get away with, although it's at least one stage ahead of China and India).
What does it mean *without* the apostrophe?
you can thank the good ol' English from England for it. :)
I don't think you'll persuade the English to take responsibility for it until the Americans can learn to spell 'colour' correctly. (^_^)
It's too bad I'm not President then, because if I were I'd put an end to all foreign aid of any kind, for any reason. Of course, I'd just LOVE to see what the rest of the world would say once the U.S. gravy train came to a dead halt....
I'd assume your definition of aid included (for example) military support of your allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc. If not, why not?
As for the rest, I think the rest of the world would say "Mmm.. no. I don't think that we *will* let them use our airspace to invade XYZland", "No, we won't implement those pro-capitalist reforms, fuck off Haliburton and friends", "Let's resume our nuclear weap... I mean power program after all", etc.
Anyone willing to take a bet that the name of the sequel will be "II Robot"?
Joking? We're dealing with Hollywood here- the sequel to "Ocean's Eleven" is called "Ocean's Twelve".
'Nuff said.
all you other countries who get money FROM US
The great fallacy; many of those "donations" are actually loans, and of the remainder, many are dependent on implementing privatisation of the receiving country's industries and opening up the free market in a manner that happens to be beneficial to US industry. (That was a great success in Russia)
And what about all the "generous" donations for AIDS programs which are required to promote a particular agenda (e.g. abstinence-based programs) instead of using it in the manner that is likely to be most effective?
And I'd agree with the other replies that basically said: "Uh, I don't believe that you *are* supporting most other countries' jail systems."
By the way, I'm not going to say that all US aid money is bad; the Marshall plan after WWII was one of the best examples of enlightened self-interest in recent times. The recent stuff I'm not so impressed with.
we only kill mass murderes, and serial killers, and even then maybe 5 a year at most....
Your last sentence makes absolutely no sense. Do the executed criminals come back to life after five years or something?
The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.
Already been thought of! Courtesy of the Unix Fortune cookie program:-
"Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong."
As long as it isn't a stair climbing bet.
Ha ha ha.... you've made the same mistake that the Doctor made when running up a staircase to escape from the Daleks (Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks).
Yep; levitation technology. I heard that Hawking got it roundabout the same time he got his hands on the Daleks' laser-gun technology.
In fact, I heard he's getting plastic surgery to look more like Davros.
Y sues Z for trade secrets, copyright infringement, violation of license, etc.
"By letting this virus infect your machine, you agree to the terms and conditions of the license. Even though we didn't ask you first."
Hmm... I'd like to see Y prove that anyone broke a license that they reasonably had a chance to accept/reject.
Not that this would ever happen in real life, obviously. The question is; could it? Answer- not in this situation!
X writes a program that, whilst it may have virus-like possibilities, is not a virus in itself. Y uses X's program as the basis of the virus.
Company Z reverse-engineers Y's virus and in the process reverse-engineer's X's program and reveals its secrets. X finds out.
What now?
Think of the terrorists. They commit crimes for their "justice".
Argument flaw: the terrorists are unlikely to belong to your society (whatever that is- the US?). They are not necessarily breaking their laws, they are breaking *your* laws. So, the analogy is poor, because you're concerned with your society breaking its own laws.
Would you care about breaking Nigerian laws? Probably not, you might think it's justified. You might be right. If their law system supports ripping you off, screw them and their law system, right? (*)
Similarly, a "terrorist" from another country might (rightly or wrongly) consider that whilst the US is internally democratic (sort of...), it doesn't care about democracy outside its own borders *if* the undemocratic action is in its interests. So, they use the same reasoning as (*) above.
I'm trying to make two points here; (a) Breaking your own laws isn't the same as breaking someone else's laws and (b) You breaking someone else's laws might also enter into the picture, even if you think those laws are against you.
i personally think that it's usually not worth it to get to the touch. If it were for tracking, a neurotoxin-impregnated fake $100 bill that costs around $1 would do better.
Ah, yes. The scammer is going to keep the $100 bill in his/her wallet for ever and ever and never spend it. Thus only the scammer gets hurt!
You're a genius.
That's one of the biggest problems with American capitalism: firms compete not only to produce the best products and services, but to shape the playing field to their advantage.
Of course they will. A firm's business is to make money; anything they *can* get away with to make money, they *will* do, so long as the benefits outweigh any consequences.
Now; if your only business is to make money, and you can see a way to eliminate (or enter into a cartel with) the competition, isn't this preferable to playing the business game "fairly" (by selling better and cheaper)? Of course; it's common sense that this will happen. They'll also exploit any loopholes in democracies, tender out to countries with repressive regimes, etc...
Which, in short, is why I think that anyone who assumes that an entirely "free" market is a good, or "democratic" thing is an idiot.
Particularly idiotic are those who can't differentiate between "democracy", "liberty" and "capitalism".
If your gut reaction is to think that this entire post is in support of socialism or communism, then I'd guess you were one of the people described in the last paragraph.
Solution for those who *really* don't want customers disassembling their products; screws with the holes in the shape of a popular (and very copyrighted(*)) character; e.g. Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty, etc.
Now you can sue anyone making a compatible screwdriver under copyright laws as well (since a compatible screwdriver is likely to resemble the cartoon character)! Company restricts compatible screwdrivers to those who are "meant" to have them; problem "solved".
One possible problem; it might be possible to make a Hello Kitty compatible screwdriver that doesn't infringe the Hello Kitty image by omitting *just* enough bits that it can still grip whilst not looking like Sanrio's cash cow, er... kitty.
(*) Yeah, or whatever the law that covers this sort of thing is; IP, copyright, trademark, whatever.
Talking of which, isn't IE a great cracker tool? All those lovely security holes built in, just waiting to compromise someone's machine. All we need to do now is convince lots of important people to install it on their PCs and the world is ours!
Ohhhh.... hang on, I just realised something...
nobody here gets dates out of anything except a calendar!
Whatever happened to Slashdot/OSDN Personals?
He liberated this information, and should be celebrated as the freedom fighter he is!
No, if this story is correct, he hasn't "freed" it, he's smuggled it out of its AltaVista jail and re-incarcerated it in the Microsoft Super-Max prison.
If he'd (illegally) GPLed it, then it would be "free" and hiding in the "freedom-fighter"/"terrorist"s house, and enemy forces would use this as an excuse to engage in punitive destruction of GPL-supporting villages.
Rumors have abounded for years that usenet was going to just fade away (of course it hasn't)
Nah; it's going to be outlawed soon though. After all, it *is* a P2P network, isn't it?
but alas majority wins
Don't worry; they'll be first against the wall when the revolution^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h metamoderation comes.
*Sigh* Parent comes up with a moderately amusing twist on the old "*BSD is dying" meme and gets marked down as a troll.
Are BSD users really that prickly? If the guy/girl/penguin was really trolling, I'm sure they'd come up with something spikier than that.
Enough said. Mod up parent and not this slightly boring post, please.
I want Bill Gates to have my baby
Oooh... didn't think men could do that, but if it were possible, biologically, I guess that would mean, realistically, the only hole it could be born through would be Gates'... urethra.
Yeah, if they could fix it that way, I'd like Gates to have your baby too.
And exactly how is "You can see nothing? And at such distance? What eyes you have child!" not dream-logic?
Reread my post; I said it did contain dream-logic.
However, my most fucked-up dream-logic can't really survive in "this world"; as soon as I try to analyse what I was thinking, it falls apart. The closest I ever get to holding it is (*was*) when I was at university, not getting enough sleep, and sitting in lectures *almost* asleep. That was actually very pleasant sometimes; came out of the lecture feeling nice, if still damned tired.
You know when you think you're still awake, and suddenly you realise that your thoughts make *no* sense at all- you're entering dream-state? Sometimes I can hold onto it then, but generally, trying to explain "dream-logic" doesn't work even to myself because I'm trying to understand it in a conventional framework in my waking state-of-mind and it just won't fit into that. It sure as hell couldn't fit into a book.
Anyhow, if I ever come across that version you mentioned I might check it out.
Alice in Wonderland (okay; bad book, crap analogy)
Bad book? Thems fightin' words, pardner.
Bit harsh, I'll admit. I never read the book itself as a kid, perhaps because I perceived it as a girls' book. I read it recently, wanting to like it, but it did absolutely nothing for me.
Possibly because of its influence on 1960s culture, it seemed a bit tired, although I appreciate its invention and so on. Bit like I never 'got' Jimi Hendrix because I'd been too exposed to the people who were influenced by him, I guess.
Anyway; the book seemed nonsensical, but didn't really have a coherent feel I was hoping for. I was going to say that I was looking for "dream-logic" (you know, "logical" thinking that seems to make perfect sense when you dream, then you wake up and realise it was nonsensical), and didn't find it. However, I think the book *does* contain this.
I also think my dislike is part reaction to its "childrens' book that adults think that children should read" reputation.
Really, I feel that it's ultimately a children's nonsense book and not *that* much more, despite the inventive imagery; coupled with the above, this might explain why I didn't particularly like it.
It ain't the Matrix.
You forgot the "legendary final battle between Neo and Smith" aka the largest anti-climax ever to reach the silver-screen.
:-)
Yeah, sorry.
That really gave me the feeling of "here we go again, big climactic fight scene... yawn". Hollow, boring.