Then why is does their patent on a system comprising a specially-programmed computer to perform the steps of x, and/or an apparatus comprising a processor, memory element, and means for performing x, prevent me from making my own?
Because the purpose of patents is control. Because in this society, power comes from creating scarcity, controlling supply and holding the threat of deprivation over everyone's head, not from creating wealth and being a treasure to all humanity. When you have to pay the powers that be for permission not to act stupid, it's pretty hard to knock them off their roost. Course, that creates waste, violence and poverty in the short term and eventually calamity, war and utter collapse of civilization, but you've got to take the bad with the good...
Wizards of the Coast are trying to do the same thing with DnD that they do with their card games. Make rule changes constantly that make anything old defunct. It's the ultimate in forced obsolescence.
Just fucking go out of business already. Dungeons and Dragons was finished when I was a little child. Your existence serves no useful purpose. You deserve nothing. Doubly so because you had no part whatsoever in creating it.
I was going to get a copy of those books for my kid next week too... but now that I've read this, I'm going to buy a used set.
Don't mind me... I've only been delivering software professionally for ten years with zero failed projects under my belt to companies who without exception grow dramatically after my software goes live or get bought out for millions of dollars... What the hell do I know...
Tip for you... just because you don't know how to do requirements gathering and plan a project doesn't mean everyone else shares your incompetence.
Management keeping you in the dark has nothing to do with the software development model adopted by an organization. It is a result of their business model. Waterfall (which, incidentally, was presented by Royce as a model that does not work) does not restrict management from communicating clearly and frequently any more than Agile does.
Waterfall means think about what you're building, articulate what you're building, then implement what you're building.
Agile means start building something, never think further ahead than what you can code in two weeks, and never articulate what you're building, period.
It's great for disorganized shops producing trivial code for idiots who have no idea what is going on and don't want to. And there are a lot of such idiots with lots of money who want to get a piece of this internet thing but don't like being asked questions and forced to confront their own ignorance.
If you're happy to make lots of money pissing your time away producing irrelevant garbage, Agile can probably help.
Agile is about keeping coders dumb by not allowing them to look more than two feet in front of their nose. It's about protecting managers from being cut out of the decision process entirely. Which they should be.
As for the actual article, seems to me that it's the managers whose days are numbered. Coders who have people skills will become managers, coders who don't will remain serfs, and managers who have no technical skills will become unemployed. It won't happen overnight... some existing businesses will continue to employ those managers. But that choice will kill those businesses, because they're basically putting blind men in charge. It'll take time though...
Yes, shame on the faulty system. However, just because something is done to the letter of the law doesn't mean it's done with the spirit of the law in mind. Of course this may be EXACTLY the kind of thing this loophole was designed for.
Perhaps it's time to recognize that contracts and the laws that support them are contrary to a free and democratic society. If we dominate each other through trickery and exploitative contracts, how is that better than dominating each other through violence and force of arms?
Power in the modern world comes from directing the efforts of the society of which we are a part. If that power that comes from leverage rather than the abiding support of the people that make up the society, it is tyranny. Contracts are the mechanism by which that tyranny is enforced. They are the mechanism that has been used to turn us against ourselves and cause us to labor relentlessly for arbitrary and wasteful things while the important things are being neglected and allowed to fall apart.
We will not see things improve until we rectify this situation. Though, realistically, chances are good we will die before our time in this bed we have made without ever having even tried, and protest how unfair life is.
Assuming these people are not crooks, they earned more from society by providing society with some form of goods or services. They've already given to society what society wanted. Why should society now get freebies? If what society wants is "more for less" then they should stop paying sixty fucking dollars for a video game, or over a hundred dollars for a damn concert ticket. These people are filthy stinking rich because 'society' keeps giving them money.
The way I see it you have three options. Either become one of those people, stop giving them money, or shut the hell up.
The thing you're missing is, you can't get that kind of rich without being a crook, and every one of them are. Either you're naive, and you don't understand the realities of the situation, or you're one of the crooks, and you've normalized what you did to get there. There are no nice rich people.
Why are you assuming every mobile operator in the world (cuz they practically all have the same policies) are Evil(tm)? Doesn't that strike you as rather unrealistic?
I blame it on Ayn Rand, personally. She made evil sound noble.
The real point is, the people who purchase Vista are funding the Trusted Computing group that sees the need to put encryption between my computer and my stereo and my television to make sure my computer is hobbled, and my mom's computer is hobbled, and so on and so forth.
It doesn't matter if they like Vista or not. They are responsible for funding and empowering these antisocial saboteurs, and should be punished for the part they play in it.
The right reason not to buy from Microsoft is that someone might grab your laptop and smash it on the ground and send your teeth to join it if you do, and you would deserve it.
Since nearly all of these services only stream to the USA that's kind of expected.
If they were someday to become international targeting ads by using IP geolocation is pretty easy.. so it's a non-issue.
All I know is, if they keep making it harder and harder to keep their propaganda away from my kid, it's going to become more of an issue than it is now...
Only when they only admit freedom-based societies as voting members will it be a body that can work for actual good. Fear-based societies, who mistreat their own people, have no business telling other countries how to treat their people.
What's the difference between the two? If a citizen of a country can stand in what amounts to the town square and criticize his/her government without fear of reprisal, it's a freedom-based society. If not, it's fear-based.
What a load of bullshit.
Someone standing in the town square and criticizing is someone who fancies themselves a dictator but doesn't have the power to enforce. If you want to effect change, you get in there and get your hands dirty and make the change. Tyranny, and fear, come from the invisible lines that prevent you from doing so.
When you can draw a line in the sand, and put the government on one side of it and the people on the other side, that's a society based on estrangement, tyranny and fear. When you cannot do this, when the line between the people and the government is too blurry to do so, that is a society that is based on freedom and involvement.
If you don't learn how to ask for freedom properly, you will never get it.
In older cameras, there was no protective plastic cover, the chemicals were exposed to the air, and shaking or blowing on the picture would make it dry faster.
In newer cameras, there is a protective plastic cover, the chemicals are not exposed to the air, and shaking will not cause it to dry faster.
And RedHat is a publicly traded company which is concerned with (that's right) profit.
Profit comes from relevance. Relevance does not come from profit. Reducing long term relevance for short term profit is something you do when you're retiring and moving to the countryside to grow old and die.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they ought to put their data centers in the Arctic instead of in California. Seems pretty obvious...
Then why is does their patent on a system comprising a specially-programmed computer to perform the steps of x, and/or an apparatus comprising a processor, memory element, and means for performing x, prevent me from making my own?
Because the purpose of patents is control. Because in this society, power comes from creating scarcity, controlling supply and holding the threat of deprivation over everyone's head, not from creating wealth and being a treasure to all humanity. When you have to pay the powers that be for permission not to act stupid, it's pretty hard to knock them off their roost. Course, that creates waste, violence and poverty in the short term and eventually calamity, war and utter collapse of civilization, but you've got to take the bad with the good...
Did you think they served some other purpose?
Wizards of the Coast are trying to do the same thing with DnD that they do with their card games. Make rule changes constantly that make anything old defunct. It's the ultimate in forced obsolescence.
Just fucking go out of business already. Dungeons and Dragons was finished when I was a little child. Your existence serves no useful purpose. You deserve nothing. Doubly so because you had no part whatsoever in creating it.
I was going to get a copy of those books for my kid next week too... but now that I've read this, I'm going to buy a used set.
If I had one of those, I'd want to yell "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" at people while I was driving it...
Now did they terminate HIM or only his EMPLOYMENT?
If the former, I begin to get an inkling of America's problem with the copyright mafia.
You just leaked the plot for 20th Century Fox's big 2010 blockbuster. Who told you about it? Who?
I'm warning you, you better tell us, right now, or your family will be on the street or you'll be locked in a box...
Don't mind me... I've only been delivering software professionally for ten years with zero failed projects under my belt to companies who without exception grow dramatically after my software goes live or get bought out for millions of dollars... What the hell do I know...
Tip for you... just because you don't know how to do requirements gathering and plan a project doesn't mean everyone else shares your incompetence.
Management keeping you in the dark has nothing to do with the software development model adopted by an organization. It is a result of their business model. Waterfall (which, incidentally, was presented by Royce as a model that does not work) does not restrict management from communicating clearly and frequently any more than Agile does.
Waterfall means think about what you're building, articulate what you're building, then implement what you're building.
Agile means start building something, never think further ahead than what you can code in two weeks, and never articulate what you're building, period.
It's great for disorganized shops producing trivial code for idiots who have no idea what is going on and don't want to. And there are a lot of such idiots with lots of money who want to get a piece of this internet thing but don't like being asked questions and forced to confront their own ignorance.
If you're happy to make lots of money pissing your time away producing irrelevant garbage, Agile can probably help.
Agile is about keeping coders dumb by not allowing them to look more than two feet in front of their nose. It's about protecting managers from being cut out of the decision process entirely. Which they should be.
As for the actual article, seems to me that it's the managers whose days are numbered. Coders who have people skills will become managers, coders who don't will remain serfs, and managers who have no technical skills will become unemployed. It won't happen overnight... some existing businesses will continue to employ those managers. But that choice will kill those businesses, because they're basically putting blind men in charge. It'll take time though...
You got me. They're in my data center. On the moon. Next to the easter bunny. Behind Jesus.
Note to self: Install claymores in data center.
Whoever invented it should eat a back of dicks for breaking something that everyone believed worked just fine.
I'm curious... how many dicks are in a back, exactly?
Yes, shame on the faulty system. However, just because something is done to the letter of the law doesn't mean it's done with the spirit of the law in mind. Of course this may be EXACTLY the kind of thing this loophole was designed for.
Perhaps it's time to recognize that contracts and the laws that support them are contrary to a free and democratic society. If we dominate each other through trickery and exploitative contracts, how is that better than dominating each other through violence and force of arms?
Power in the modern world comes from directing the efforts of the society of which we are a part. If that power that comes from leverage rather than the abiding support of the people that make up the society, it is tyranny. Contracts are the mechanism by which that tyranny is enforced. They are the mechanism that has been used to turn us against ourselves and cause us to labor relentlessly for arbitrary and wasteful things while the important things are being neglected and allowed to fall apart.
We will not see things improve until we rectify this situation. Though, realistically, chances are good we will die before our time in this bed we have made without ever having even tried, and protest how unfair life is.
Assuming these people are not crooks, they earned more from society by providing society with some form of goods or services. They've already given to society what society wanted. Why should society now get freebies? If what society wants is "more for less" then they should stop paying sixty fucking dollars for a video game, or over a hundred dollars for a damn concert ticket. These people are filthy stinking rich because 'society' keeps giving them money.
The way I see it you have three options. Either become one of those people, stop giving them money, or shut the hell up.
The thing you're missing is, you can't get that kind of rich without being a crook, and every one of them are. Either you're naive, and you don't understand the realities of the situation, or you're one of the crooks, and you've normalized what you did to get there. There are no nice rich people.
a nice, easy, reliable way to detect a conficker infection.
:P
As long as it doesn't get slashdotted... that might cause a new panic
Why are you assuming every mobile operator in the world (cuz they practically all have the same policies) are Evil(tm)? Doesn't that strike you as rather unrealistic?
I blame it on Ayn Rand, personally. She made evil sound noble.
Yes, and instead of a pension we should sell them into slavery when they are no longer useful.
The good news is, all you need is love...
The bad news is, you screwed that one up long ago, and substitutions are not permitted...
Hey Dad, I want to make games every day and not do anything productive!
Ok Junior. I'll keep going to work on the farm, and you go play.
Thanks Dad!
Ok Junior... I'm old now, and I can't keep working on the farm like I used to. You're going to give up on playing games and go work it.
Awh... Dad! Can't you just go play with the numbers some more and send some soldiers to steal someone elses food?
No, sorry. I tried... but it's not working. Half of them are in the same boat as us, and the others keep shooting back...
But I don't know how to do anything but play games all day!
Yeah... looks like I made a big mistake...
The real point is, the people who purchase Vista are funding the Trusted Computing group that sees the need to put encryption between my computer and my stereo and my television to make sure my computer is hobbled, and my mom's computer is hobbled, and so on and so forth.
It doesn't matter if they like Vista or not. They are responsible for funding and empowering these antisocial saboteurs, and should be punished for the part they play in it.
The right reason not to buy from Microsoft is that someone might grab your laptop and smash it on the ground and send your teeth to join it if you do, and you would deserve it.
Since nearly all of these services only stream to the USA that's kind of expected.
If they were someday to become international targeting ads by using IP geolocation is pretty easy.. so it's a non-issue.
All I know is, if they keep making it harder and harder to keep their propaganda away from my kid, it's going to become more of an issue than it is now...
Only when they only admit freedom-based societies as voting members will it be a body that can work for actual good. Fear-based societies, who mistreat their own people, have no business telling other countries how to treat their people.
What's the difference between the two? If a citizen of a country can stand in what amounts to the town square and criticize his/her government without fear of reprisal, it's a freedom-based society. If not, it's fear-based.
What a load of bullshit.
Someone standing in the town square and criticizing is someone who fancies themselves a dictator but doesn't have the power to enforce. If you want to effect change, you get in there and get your hands dirty and make the change. Tyranny, and fear, come from the invisible lines that prevent you from doing so.
When you can draw a line in the sand, and put the government on one side of it and the people on the other side, that's a society based on estrangement, tyranny and fear. When you cannot do this, when the line between the people and the government is too blurry to do so, that is a society that is based on freedom and involvement.
If you don't learn how to ask for freedom properly, you will never get it.
unless you've had the mob turn it's attention on you then you probably have no idea just how important anonymity can be to your safety and well-being.
What happens when you face the mob so many times, and broken, and been broken, until finally they don't phase you anymore?
It's not like this is actually anonymous... I've already had lawyers attempt to attack my character in court on the basis of my slashdot postings.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/02/17/polaroid.warns.reut/index.html
In older cameras, there was no protective plastic cover, the chemicals were exposed to the air, and shaking or blowing on the picture would make it dry faster.
In newer cameras, there is a protective plastic cover, the chemicals are not exposed to the air, and shaking will not cause it to dry faster.
Are you willing to back that statement up by giving us your real name and address?
If I did, would that prove that my statement was true?
Which will just as effectively cripple free speech as going directly after the posters in the first place.
If you need to post anonymously, you didn't have free speech in the first place.
And RedHat is a publicly traded company which is concerned with (that's right) profit.
Profit comes from relevance. Relevance does not come from profit. Reducing long term relevance for short term profit is something you do when you're retiring and moving to the countryside to grow old and die.