You write source code in the way you do because it has a specific audience that is intended to be able to understand it and behave according to that understanding. That audience is a computer.
You write laws because there is a specific audience that is intended to be able to understand them and behave according to that understanding. That audience is a citizen.
These facts being true, which they are, I have two questions for you:
a) What makes you think it's impossible to craft laws in a way that the citizen can understand when it's possible to craft programs that a hunk of silicon can understand?
b) What makes you think it's important to dedicate such efforts to creating programs that a computer can understand, and yet not worth the trouble to make sure the laws that govern your behavior are understandable to you?
I consider the fact that laws are written in language that only the lawyers can understand to be one of the fundamental problems that needs to be put a stop to. How can you possibly be in control of your political power when you don't even understand the laws that are passed? If Joe Sixpack can't understand it, it needs to be rewritten in such a fashion that he can, or it should not exist.
I've always thought that a direct democracy, in which everyone has the right to vote on every issue, would be a good base.
It's historically been determined to be impractical because most of the population works at labour and doesn't have access to information, and because the capacity to communicate your vote in a timely fashion was too impractical.
However, with the current state of technology being what it is, these issues are no longer the barriers that they once were.
As a way to deal with the information overload, after the baseline system has been established, citizens should be able to nominate a representative to cast their vote on their behalf. Not someone who has chosen to run, but anyone who they feel they trust most.
This should be revocable at any time.
If we did this, during times of crisis, the natural pack tendencies of humans will cause them to self-organize into something resembling the modern political structure because it is efficient and a powerful tool to deal with problems.
However, there would be a built in mechanism in the system to allow that consolidation of power to cease when the threat is gone, allowing greater autonomy.
Basically, a new constitution is needed that lays all this out, and supporting infrastructure needs to be built.
This is a practical solution to the problems of corruption. It won't, of course, protect people from their own stupidity, but then, nothing ever does...
There is a difference between "strongly encouraged" and "required". Until it is required then it is not going to change much - the big hardware providers hold too much sway for Dell et al. to cancel multimillion (if not billion) dollar contracts because they won't provide the source code for a couple of piddly little drivers.
It does, however, send a clear message to the companies as they look for ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors that this is one of those ways, and that it will carry some weight.
The code has enough merit that it achieved a great deal of market penetration. People think it's important. But, it was one persons baby, and now they're gone. Now, we hear that this "open source" is supposed to be a benefit in that it allows other people to pick up the code and continue to support and extend it. That sounds like a great solution.
So, airy-fairy rhetoric aside, how exactly do you go about doing that in a timely fashion?
The question has nothing at all to do with file systems. It has to do with how to take the theoretical value of open source that is always bandied about and realize it in the real world.
See, the thing that should worry you is, there are many people who wouldn't see anything wrong with those choices, and they're faced with them every day.
Personally, I would commit any of those acts to save my child from such circumstances. And after I was done, I'd torture the perpetrators with pliers and a blowtorch after my victory, just to punish him for making me sacrifice my humanity to save my child.
If I was on a jury, I wouldn't find anyone guilty who had been put in such a position.
If someone wants to deny you life saving drugs because you're broke, and you'll die if you don't get them, can any action you take to get those drugs be wrong?
Pressing a button to put in a quarter is my favorite part.
When I think of the number of times my weekly allowance was ALMOST enough money to beat Double Dragon... now it's "Hahahah, fuck you Willy. Click, click, click, click..."
Once you've got MAME, you need a set of current ROM files for it. You can find ROMs on BitTorrent or on any P2P application.
As MAME evolves, the ROM sets get replaced with new and better extractions, so you'll want a piece of software to manage them.
ClrMAMEPro is a tool that will use the data files from the latest version of MAME, and scan a big huge mess of old ROM files, extracting whatever is useful from them into a nice, neat set that works with the current version
To get yourself set up, download any new or old MAME ROMs you can find, then use ClrMAMEPro to make a proper and current set out of them and burn it to backup.
There are also emulators floating around out there for Playstation, Nintendo 64, NES and Super NES. I've gotten good performance out of Project 64, an emulator for Nintendo 64. MarioCart plays quite well.
When you're choosing GamePads, you should look for something wireless that has as many buttons as you can possibly find. You want to be able to map the controller you choose to every possible controller from history, so you're going to need something that is flexible.
Like I said. You're a supporter of totalitarianism, and to you, it's all about the rule of force. You could have just conceded the point in the first place.
War must be declared between two nations. Even if some foreigner wanders into the country without getting stopped at the boarder and kills a thousand people, that still isn't an act of war unless it was sponsored by a foreign nation. By definition, war can only exist between two nation states.
Aside from a big discussion about what treason is or isn't, you are placed in this position:
I say there are circumstances in which actions that you label as treason are justified, and that the laws of a civilization are a contract to which its members must willingly agree. You say this is false.
If I am right, then your country deserves to exist, the claims of the British to that land hold no weight, and the members of your citizenry have the moral right to do to their current legal system what your ancestors did to the British. That being, refusal to be bound.
If you are right, then by your own definition, your country does not deserve to exist, you are under the jurisprudence of the British Crown, and all private property in your entire country, having being illegally transfered from a traitor to his children without exception, belongs to the Queen of England.
That was obviously a very heartfelt post. It's a shame you don't have the first clue what treason actually is.
Being that you're an American, treason in your country is defined in this way:
-//- Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. -//-
In other words, treason is a crime that does not exist except where there is war.
If you want to get right down to brass tacks, the US was created because they were traitors to the British Crown. Your entire nation is founded on treason.
And, of course, the Confederates of the Civil war were also, one and all, guilty of treason against their own nation. By law, the wealth of traitors is not subject to inheritance.
Therefore, according to your own laws, the entire south is government land, and no private citizen there has any right to it. Political concessions, how sweeping the changes they create, eh?
You need to develop a slightly more mature attitude about these things. It's going to be very important, very soon.
And liberation? Whose fault is it that the people of the world suffer tyrants and murderers ruling them, really? If all the people go together we could overthrow them without too much difficulty. But then, we'd have to overthrow the new tyrants who led the last revolution, and so on.
I'll have you know that I, as an enlightened being, have been liberating lesser beings for years. I have personally liberated hundreds if not thousands of civilizations of ants. I've also liberated civilizations of bees, wasps and hornets. I'll tell you... the totalitarianism they were subjected to would make a civilized person weep.
They must have been captives, because once I slew their rulers and set them free, they all left and I never saw them again. But I'm sure they were singing my praises, whatever happened to them.
Misappropriated? That's a rationalization. They do it because they rationalize their own bad decisions into a sense of victimization and convince themselves they are entitled to do something wrong.
No. They decide that the prevailing social contract is not one they are prepared to accept. Law and order is not an inviolate thing. It is a social contract, agreed to by all participants in the society. If you agree to be a part of the social contract, it is wrong to violate it. If you do not agree to it, it is not wrong to violate it, any more than it is wrong to violate the laws of a foreign land when you are not on their soil.
When societies laws only serve the few at the top, the rest of the people have no inherent obligation to obey them.
If it is your opinion that my statements are false, then that means you are a supporter of totalitarianism. This is the only perspective that allows the rule of law to overrule a citizens desire not to participate in a society. Free societies are made of people who voluntarily participate because the co-operation and leadership empowers them.
What the hell are you talking to me like it's my new idea for? There have been safety inspectors acting as a barrier to keep dangerous goods off the market since before I was born. Go ask them about how much of a barrier they impose.
I don't propose anyone should get patents. I would say, reveal your process, or you are flat out not allowed to sell anything to anyone. If you're caught, your property is seized and you go to jail, the same as if you sold cars or drugs or food without passing safety inspections right now.
The difference between the rich and the poor is greater than ever, and power over the unwilling must be maintained through security.
What... criminy... can you put down your Karl Marx for a second and look at the reality.
The solution is to re-engineer the economic system, to prevent people from having the capability of getting so rich that poor people feel they are better off attacking or exploiting the system than they are living within its boundaries.
There's always going to be jealousy and that jealousy is more the fault of the have-nots than the haves. Guess what? If you are stupid, you will not get rich.
I always love how socialists argue that we are too caught up in property while they, more than anyone else, continually keeps score on who has what.
I am quite sure that your Choir, which is quite large, will appreciate your preaching.
However, it is not the stupid people who are successfully destroying security. It is the smart people. And it is not the smart people who are rich. It is the vicious people who are rich, and they are quite often stupid.
If you were right, and I were wrong, then this article would not have been written, and the situation would not be in the state it is in. The evidence is not on your side.
Slashdot Mirror
You write source code in the way you do because it has a specific audience that is intended to be able to understand it and behave according to that understanding. That audience is a computer.
You write laws because there is a specific audience that is intended to be able to understand them and behave according to that understanding. That audience is a citizen.
These facts being true, which they are, I have two questions for you:
a) What makes you think it's impossible to craft laws in a way that the citizen can understand when it's possible to craft programs that a hunk of silicon can understand?
b) What makes you think it's important to dedicate such efforts to creating programs that a computer can understand, and yet not worth the trouble to make sure the laws that govern your behavior are understandable to you?
I consider the fact that laws are written in language that only the lawyers can understand to be one of the fundamental problems that needs to be put a stop to. How can you possibly be in control of your political power when you don't even understand the laws that are passed? If Joe Sixpack can't understand it, it needs to be rewritten in such a fashion that he can, or it should not exist.
I've always thought that a direct democracy, in which everyone has the right to vote on every issue, would be a good base.
It's historically been determined to be impractical because most of the population works at labour and doesn't have access to information, and because the capacity to communicate your vote in a timely fashion was too impractical.
However, with the current state of technology being what it is, these issues are no longer the barriers that they once were.
As a way to deal with the information overload, after the baseline system has been established, citizens should be able to nominate a representative to cast their vote on their behalf. Not someone who has chosen to run, but anyone who they feel they trust most.
This should be revocable at any time.
If we did this, during times of crisis, the natural pack tendencies of humans will cause them to self-organize into something resembling the modern political structure because it is efficient and a powerful tool to deal with problems.
However, there would be a built in mechanism in the system to allow that consolidation of power to cease when the threat is gone, allowing greater autonomy.
Basically, a new constitution is needed that lays all this out, and supporting infrastructure needs to be built.
This is a practical solution to the problems of corruption. It won't, of course, protect people from their own stupidity, but then, nothing ever does...
There is a difference between "strongly encouraged" and "required". Until it is required then it is not going to change much - the big hardware providers hold too much sway for Dell et al. to cancel multimillion (if not billion) dollar contracts because they won't provide the source code for a couple of piddly little drivers.
It does, however, send a clear message to the companies as they look for ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors that this is one of those ways, and that it will carry some weight.
Let me explain it.
The code has enough merit that it achieved a great deal of market penetration. People think it's important. But, it was one persons baby, and now they're gone. Now, we hear that this "open source" is supposed to be a benefit in that it allows other people to pick up the code and continue to support and extend it. That sounds like a great solution.
So, airy-fairy rhetoric aside, how exactly do you go about doing that in a timely fashion?
The question has nothing at all to do with file systems. It has to do with how to take the theoretical value of open source that is always bandied about and realize it in the real world.
Still can't believe Tomboy could get someone that excited
The problem is indeed persistent. It's pretty easily summarized:
The price of ignorance is subject to inflation.
"The XP stands for "eXPerience"
Yeah, I think you can just STFU now...
My DBA brain thought "What kind of idiot assembles SQL as a string and runs it inside a stored procedure like that?"
Good point. No one will get it though.
Yeah, she's all right. Drags her teeth a bit though...
They're worth killing for. That is the point.
See, the thing that should worry you is, there are many people who wouldn't see anything wrong with those choices, and they're faced with them every day.
Personally, I would commit any of those acts to save my child from such circumstances. And after I was done, I'd torture the perpetrators with pliers and a blowtorch after my victory, just to punish him for making me sacrifice my humanity to save my child.
If I was on a jury, I wouldn't find anyone guilty who had been put in such a position.
That's what chain smoking is for...
You totally miss the point.
You wear the patchouli. Some women go "Ewh, gross!". Some like it.
The ones that like it will still have sex with you when you just came off a marathon coding session and haven't had a shower in a while.
Those are the ones you want to go out with.
If someone wants to deny you life saving drugs because you're broke, and you'll die if you don't get them, can any action you take to get those drugs be wrong?
Pressing a button to put in a quarter is my favorite part.
When I think of the number of times my weekly allowance was ALMOST enough money to beat Double Dragon... now it's "Hahahah, fuck you Willy. Click, click, click, click..."
Petty I know. But very satisfying.
I would suggest emulators.
For arcade games, you can use MAME
http://mamedev.org/
Once you've got MAME, you need a set of current ROM files for it. You can find ROMs on BitTorrent or on any P2P application.
As MAME evolves, the ROM sets get replaced with new and better extractions, so you'll want a piece of software to manage them.
ClrMAMEPro is a tool that will use the data files from the latest version of MAME, and scan a big huge mess of old ROM files, extracting whatever is useful from them into a nice, neat set that works with the current version
http://www.clrmame.com/
To get yourself set up, download any new or old MAME ROMs you can find, then use ClrMAMEPro to make a proper and current set out of them and burn it to backup.
There are also emulators floating around out there for Playstation, Nintendo 64, NES and Super NES. I've gotten good performance out of Project 64, an emulator for Nintendo 64. MarioCart plays quite well.
When you're choosing GamePads, you should look for something wireless that has as many buttons as you can possibly find. You want to be able to map the controller you choose to every possible controller from history, so you're going to need something that is flexible.
Like I said. You're a supporter of totalitarianism, and to you, it's all about the rule of force. You could have just conceded the point in the first place.
Your point wasn't missed. It was wrong.
War must be declared between two nations. Even if some foreigner wanders into the country without getting stopped at the boarder and kills a thousand people, that still isn't an act of war unless it was sponsored by a foreign nation. By definition, war can only exist between two nation states.
Aside from a big discussion about what treason is or isn't, you are placed in this position:
I say there are circumstances in which actions that you label as treason are justified, and that the laws of a civilization are a contract to which its members must willingly agree. You say this is false.
If I am right, then your country deserves to exist, the claims of the British to that land hold no weight, and the members of your citizenry have the moral right to do to their current legal system what your ancestors did to the British. That being, refusal to be bound.
If you are right, then by your own definition, your country does not deserve to exist, you are under the jurisprudence of the British Crown, and all private property in your entire country, having being illegally transfered from a traitor to his children without exception, belongs to the Queen of England.
You can't have it both ways.
That was obviously a very heartfelt post. It's a shame you don't have the first clue what treason actually is.
Being that you're an American, treason in your country is defined in this way:
-//-
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
-//-
In other words, treason is a crime that does not exist except where there is war.
If you want to get right down to brass tacks, the US was created because they were traitors to the British Crown. Your entire nation is founded on treason.
And, of course, the Confederates of the Civil war were also, one and all, guilty of treason against their own nation. By law, the wealth of traitors is not subject to inheritance.
Therefore, according to your own laws, the entire south is government land, and no private citizen there has any right to it. Political concessions, how sweeping the changes they create, eh?
You need to develop a slightly more mature attitude about these things. It's going to be very important, very soon.
And liberation? Whose fault is it that the people of the world suffer tyrants and murderers ruling them, really? If all the people go together we could overthrow them without too much difficulty. But then, we'd have to overthrow the new tyrants who led the last revolution, and so on.
I'll have you know that I, as an enlightened being, have been liberating lesser beings for years. I have personally liberated hundreds if not thousands of civilizations of ants. I've also liberated civilizations of bees, wasps and hornets. I'll tell you... the totalitarianism they were subjected to would make a civilized person weep.
They must have been captives, because once I slew their rulers and set them free, they all left and I never saw them again. But I'm sure they were singing my praises, whatever happened to them.
Misappropriated? That's a rationalization. They do it because they rationalize their own bad decisions into a sense of victimization and convince themselves they are entitled to do something wrong.
No. They decide that the prevailing social contract is not one they are prepared to accept. Law and order is not an inviolate thing. It is a social contract, agreed to by all participants in the society. If you agree to be a part of the social contract, it is wrong to violate it. If you do not agree to it, it is not wrong to violate it, any more than it is wrong to violate the laws of a foreign land when you are not on their soil.
When societies laws only serve the few at the top, the rest of the people have no inherent obligation to obey them.
If it is your opinion that my statements are false, then that means you are a supporter of totalitarianism. This is the only perspective that allows the rule of law to overrule a citizens desire not to participate in a society. Free societies are made of people who voluntarily participate because the co-operation and leadership empowers them.
What the hell are you talking to me like it's my new idea for? There have been safety inspectors acting as a barrier to keep dangerous goods off the market since before I was born. Go ask them about how much of a barrier they impose.
I don't propose anyone should get patents. I would say, reveal your process, or you are flat out not allowed to sell anything to anyone. If you're caught, your property is seized and you go to jail, the same as if you sold cars or drugs or food without passing safety inspections right now.
The difference between the rich and the poor is greater than ever, and power over the unwilling must be maintained through security. What... criminy... can you put down your Karl Marx for a second and look at the reality. The solution is to re-engineer the economic system, to prevent people from having the capability of getting so rich that poor people feel they are better off attacking or exploiting the system than they are living within its boundaries. There's always going to be jealousy and that jealousy is more the fault of the have-nots than the haves. Guess what? If you are stupid, you will not get rich. I always love how socialists argue that we are too caught up in property while they, more than anyone else, continually keeps score on who has what.
I am quite sure that your Choir, which is quite large, will appreciate your preaching.
However, it is not the stupid people who are successfully destroying security. It is the smart people. And it is not the smart people who are rich. It is the vicious people who are rich, and they are quite often stupid.
If you were right, and I were wrong, then this article would not have been written, and the situation would not be in the state it is in. The evidence is not on your side.