Yes, I wanted to tell my story in direct response to the parent of my post. Maybe you lost the thread, sorry.
Besides, it was an interesting story. If people stop telling interesting stories because other people get too concerned about "ontopicness", Slashdot will become significantly less worthwhile.
Now, I grant you that my girlfriend already thinks that Slashdot isn't worthwhile, but that's another story.
... it is _their_ decision to make and the government has no say in it.
Unless you're an IP lawyer (or have consulted one) you really can't make that claim. Non-lawyers (like me, for example) are often surprised by how often the law contravenes rationality or common sense. Granted, sometimes there are deeper or more important concerns addressed by a given law than are apparent at first glance. But not always. So, I'd not be at all surprised if the government has a legal (if not ethical or moral) right to poke their noses into this.
Not saying they would bother: but odds are they could if they wanted to.
Yes, and they appear to be rather arbitrary in what apps they decide to disallow. This would be less of a problem if Apple were less capricious about it.
Not that I disagree that there's a lot of stupidity in the world over, but, to me it's interesting to note that all your examples are idiocy in America.
So, let me get this straight. Your complaint is that the largely American visitors to a pre-eminent American tech news Web site in a discussion revolving around voting procedures in the United States aren't concerning themselves with the price of hashish in Istanbul?
{sigh} well, don't concern yourself about it... we'll get around to your particular brand of idiocy soon enough.
Allowing Hitachi America to get away with exporting a multiaxis milling machine complete with the software to drive it.
Yeah, that shocked me at the time. Still, the real danger of that sale is less a matter of the Russians having it, but that everyone else has it now. Mainly because Russian security pretty much disappeared after the Soviet Union collapsed. That applies across the board: technologies they stole from others, or developed internally, have ended up on the open market.
Not that we're much better, when you get right down to it. Nowadays, we're selling ourselves off piecemeal. Heck, we're not even selling it: we're just giving everything away.
really, the restrictions verge on the absurd, especially when you consider that the papers describing most of the interesting technologies that i work on are published in international journals and freely available, often themselves as a result of gov't funded research.
Well, we're the country that has basically outlawed Estes rockets as potential terrorist weapons. What you're saying comes as no surprise to me.
Actually, I think you're way off-base on this one. A heavily-militarized China with hydrogen warheads and the space/missile technology to deliver them is not a stabilizing influence. We're not talking about DVD players, medicines or cellular phones here.
You've apparently failed to consider the vast expense of military and space development: the American and European taxpayers have spent trillions of hard-earned {insert monetary unit here} and have a right to expect that such technology not be handed over to an inimical totalitarian state "just because they'll have it eventually anyway." In fact, they might not get it anyway, not if they have make a similar expenditure. Remember, China is not our friend. They're not anyone's friends. There's another Cold War developing, only this time it's with an enemy that's far more dangerous, long term, than was the Soviet Empire at its height.
If you look at the history of war, the one thing you don't do is give your enemy your best weapons. Quite the opposite: you make him divert as many resources into achieving technological parity as possible, thereby rendering him impotent against you for as long as possible. In the meantime, your own investment in R&D keeps you ahead, so that he won't dare attack you. That defines the modern scene when it comes to strategic warfare, and it's not going to change anytime soon. China is pulling ahead, and if we let them get too far ahead we'll probably regret it.
Unless, of course, we succeed in giving away our entire candy store. We're in the midst of the greatest transfer of wealth and technology from one nation to another ever. China is cheerfully sucking it up, and our stupidity and shortsightedness will inevitably come back to bite us in our collective asses.
They are doing this all the time: The last one I can remember is the Airbus deal, under which China buys a bunch of planes in exchange for the construction of Airbus plants in China. So, Airbus is screwed on the long term.
It absolutely astounds me how many thousands of companies, worldwide, sell their collective soul to China for, well, really not even a quick buck. They give up their own manufacturing capability, give up their hard-won R&D and production techniques, and end up as hollowed-out marketing fronts so some Chinese manufacturer can use the brand name for a while until they've cheapened it so much that nobody wants it. Then they just do the same thing under a different name.
Boggles the mind. It's almost like there's some kind of mass psychosis among business leaders around the world.
I mean, I know many Americans like to believe the US invented absolutely everything and are ahead of everyone else technologically, but in fact they really didn't and aren't.
Absolutely. I mean, I know many non-Americans think they know everything about Americans and feel they can legitimately slam us for any reason at all, but in fact, you really don't and can't.
The blind assumptions you make about us are just as arrogant and unappealing as the thoughts and feelings you ascribe to all 300-odd million of us. You might want to ease off on the generalizations. Kinda makes you look stupid, as if the only thing you know about the United States and its people is what you've read on Slashdot.
Sour grapes on your part, really. Nobody I know has ever claimed that America knows everything and invented everything (more of your useless generalizing again) but the fact is, we do know a lot and invented even more.
So far as this mess is concerned, a good deal of it can be traced back to the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Now, some argue that this law, by repealing the much-older Steagal-Glass Act, was merely bringing the U.S. banking industry in line with Europe's. Maybe so, but considering that a goodly chunk of Europe is suffering a similar meltdown it probably wasn't such a great idea. I don't really know, I'm not an economist.
Slashdot Mirror
My office didn't especially like them, so we called them Brain Damaged Monkeys.
Big deal, man.
And the guy in my story was a spy. And I'm not going to elaborate on what made the van different, as I said in my post.
Well, that does tell me he wasn't a very good spy. Either that, or he was a decoy.
Yes, I wanted to tell my story in direct response to the parent of my post. Maybe you lost the thread, sorry.
Besides, it was an interesting story. If people stop telling interesting stories because other people get too concerned about "ontopicness", Slashdot will become significantly less worthwhile.
Now, I grant you that my girlfriend already thinks that Slashdot isn't worthwhile, but that's another story.
Signed integer limit is +32767. 32768 is only possible in the - domain!
He went long.
Anonymous Anger Rampant On the Web
Can we please find a good synonym for rampant? The RIAA has milked that word of its last milligram of impact.
... it is _their_ decision to make and the government has no say in it.
Unless you're an IP lawyer (or have consulted one) you really can't make that claim. Non-lawyers (like me, for example) are often surprised by how often the law contravenes rationality or common sense. Granted, sometimes there are deeper or more important concerns addressed by a given law than are apparent at first glance. But not always. So, I'd not be at all surprised if the government has a legal (if not ethical or moral) right to poke their noses into this.
Not saying they would bother: but odds are they could if they wanted to.
Apparently you don't live in LA.
Yes, and they appear to be rather arbitrary in what apps they decide to disallow. This would be less of a problem if Apple were less capricious about it.
The iPhone crowd is still dominated by affluent males between the ages of 18 and 35
Those of us who don't bask in the glow of all things Apple might say they're afflicted as well as affluent.
Wally: I'm in charge of the office relocation. Where do you want your cubicle?
Dilbert: What's this huge structure?
Wally: Wallyville. It's two floors of luxury housing, shopping, and gambling.
Dilbert: Do you think you might be abusing your power?
Wally: What would be the other reasons to have power?
I can't think of any company that has openly worked this hard to piss off it's customers.
I take it you don't live in an area with Comcast? ;)
Yeah, it's definitely a toss-up.
-1 Redudandant
Dude! I've seen some great typos on Slashdot, but that's definitely in the top three.
Because, apparently, I am retarded. That and the fact that the Firefox dictionary thinks that people will be talking about giving out rope.
Ha ... thanks for the chuckle.
When you purchase Spore, you are licensing software.
So which is it?
they said "If you complain in a decent constructive way you're fine to post what you want."
In other words, if we get pissy over what you say, we can ban you because we got pissy.
EA has definitely killed my future revenue bonus, and I don't even have an account on their forums, or play online.
Sounds like EA is taking customer-service lessons from Paypal.
(witness how much havoc was wreaked by "Hanging Chads" and other problems)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've seen that guy hanging out here on Slashdot. I think he's hiding somewhere in this thread.
Not that I disagree that there's a lot of stupidity in the world over, but, to me it's interesting to note that all your examples are idiocy in America.
So, let me get this straight. Your complaint is that the largely American visitors to a pre-eminent American tech news Web site in a discussion revolving around voting procedures in the United States aren't concerning themselves with the price of hashish in Istanbul?
... we'll get around to your particular brand of idiocy soon enough.
{sigh} well, don't concern yourself about it
Allowing Hitachi America to get away with exporting a multiaxis milling machine complete with the software to drive it.
Yeah, that shocked me at the time. Still, the real danger of that sale is less a matter of the Russians having it, but that everyone else has it now. Mainly because Russian security pretty much disappeared after the Soviet Union collapsed. That applies across the board: technologies they stole from others, or developed internally, have ended up on the open market.
Not that we're much better, when you get right down to it. Nowadays, we're selling ourselves off piecemeal. Heck, we're not even selling it: we're just giving everything away.
really, the restrictions verge on the absurd, especially when you consider that the papers describing most of the interesting technologies that i work on are published in international journals and freely available, often themselves as a result of gov't funded research.
Well, we're the country that has basically outlawed Estes rockets as potential terrorist weapons. What you're saying comes as no surprise to me.
Actually, I think you're way off-base on this one. A heavily-militarized China with hydrogen warheads and the space/missile technology to deliver them is not a stabilizing influence. We're not talking about DVD players, medicines or cellular phones here.
You've apparently failed to consider the vast expense of military and space development: the American and European taxpayers have spent trillions of hard-earned {insert monetary unit here} and have a right to expect that such technology not be handed over to an inimical totalitarian state "just because they'll have it eventually anyway." In fact, they might not get it anyway, not if they have make a similar expenditure. Remember, China is not our friend. They're not anyone's friends. There's another Cold War developing, only this time it's with an enemy that's far more dangerous, long term, than was the Soviet Empire at its height.
If you look at the history of war, the one thing you don't do is give your enemy your best weapons. Quite the opposite: you make him divert as many resources into achieving technological parity as possible, thereby rendering him impotent against you for as long as possible. In the meantime, your own investment in R&D keeps you ahead, so that he won't dare attack you. That defines the modern scene when it comes to strategic warfare, and it's not going to change anytime soon. China is pulling ahead, and if we let them get too far ahead we'll probably regret it.
Unless, of course, we succeed in giving away our entire candy store. We're in the midst of the greatest transfer of wealth and technology from one nation to another ever. China is cheerfully sucking it up, and our stupidity and shortsightedness will inevitably come back to bite us in our collective asses.
They are doing this all the time: The last one I can remember is the Airbus deal, under which China buys a bunch of planes in exchange for the construction of Airbus plants in China. So, Airbus is screwed on the long term.
It absolutely astounds me how many thousands of companies, worldwide, sell their collective soul to China for, well, really not even a quick buck. They give up their own manufacturing capability, give up their hard-won R&D and production techniques, and end up as hollowed-out marketing fronts so some Chinese manufacturer can use the brand name for a while until they've cheapened it so much that nobody wants it. Then they just do the same thing under a different name.
Boggles the mind. It's almost like there's some kind of mass psychosis among business leaders around the world.
I wouldn't mind visiting your house to see what you've got that's worth taking. ;-)
Not much. It's been pretty thoroughly picked over already.
I mean, I know many Americans like to believe the US invented absolutely everything and are ahead of everyone else technologically, but in fact they really didn't and aren't.
Absolutely. I mean, I know many non-Americans think they know everything about Americans and feel they can legitimately slam us for any reason at all, but in fact, you really don't and can't.
The blind assumptions you make about us are just as arrogant and unappealing as the thoughts and feelings you ascribe to all 300-odd million of us. You might want to ease off on the generalizations. Kinda makes you look stupid, as if the only thing you know about the United States and its people is what you've read on Slashdot.
Sour grapes on your part, really. Nobody I know has ever claimed that America knows everything and invented everything (more of your useless generalizing again) but the fact is, we do know a lot and invented even more.
America will get to jump from the frying pan and into the fire.
You underestimate the severity of the situation. We've been in the fire for some time. Now we jump from the fire and go straight to Hell.
You're welcome.
So far as this mess is concerned, a good deal of it can be traced back to the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Now, some argue that this law, by repealing the much-older Steagal-Glass Act, was merely bringing the U.S. banking industry in line with Europe's. Maybe so, but considering that a goodly chunk of Europe is suffering a similar meltdown it probably wasn't such a great idea. I don't really know, I'm not an economist.