So to get the benefit you suggest you learn the language, but don't let on that you know it.
I worked for a company (gah, some twenty five years ago) where the receptionist actually had an advanced degree in linguistics and spoke several languages. One day in the lunchroom she became visibly upset, and eventually turned around and snapped some rapid-fire Spanish at the next table over, where several Hispanic workers were sitting. They all blanched, grabbed their food, and ran out of the room. She was a very attractive woman who was remarkably well-endowed, and they'd been discussing her tits among themselves. They had assumed (incorrectly, as it turned out) they she couldn't understand them. They had had no intention of giving offense, and I actually felt more sorry for them than I did for her. I mean, honestly, I'd been thinking along the same lines they were anyway. She later admitted that she should have just let it go and not said anything.
Hell, English is almost necessary in China due to all the non-mutually-intelligible "dialects" of Chinese.
That's the case in a lot of countries. Africa, for example, has so many dialects that you can move one village over and not be able to communicate. Consequently, you need a common language: French and English are the most heavily used there, I understand.
Yea, I remember this kind talk about the Japanese back in the 1980s( yea I'm old, get off my lawn ). Ooooh, better learn Japanese if you want to succeed in business, Ooooh, they are going to take over the world with their mysterious asian cunning, that us round-eyes will never be able to match.
Glad I could put it into perspective for you. My work is done here.
Well, last I heard (and yes, I remember the same things you do, they can stay the hell off my lawn too), China had more people learning English than the entire population of the United States. I don't think we're going to have to worry about learning Mandarin. Generally, the dominant economic power of any given period in history finds its major tongue becoming the lingua franca of the times. Nations that wish to do business with that power find it beneficial to be able to communicate with it, at least for the purposes of trade. English is that language now (thanks as much to the British Empire's influence as our own) and China wants to be able to use the world's facility in English to its own advantage. That's just smart, because it takes a lot of time to convert the global business community to another international language. If China wants to be part of the global economy, they're just going to have to deal with that, and to their credit, they are.
Whether or not China's ruling elite has visions of Empire is hard to say: I'm not sure they're a. into that or b. would be able to pull it off anyway. Time will tell. But I'm not rushing out to learn Mandarin.
Spanish, maybe. That would be far more immediately useful to me.
You said "not".
Let's see how robustly you defend patents once you've had a call from the m$ lawyers.
Irrelevant to a discussion about the intent and purpose of patents. That an entirely different issue (excessive litigiousness) that really does need to be addressed, I agree, but has nothing to do with what the Founders intended the patent system to achieve.
Patents and copyrights are designed from the beginning to restrict the transfer and sharing of knowledge.
No they were most certainly not. They were designed to (temporarily!) restrict the monetary rewards received from creative activities to those who owned the rights to utilize or disseminate that information, that's all. At no point was the information itself meant to be confidential: if you didn't want to disclose your invention then you simply didn't patent it, or did your best to keep it a trade secret. Especially in the case of patents, the requirement for disclosure was intended for the exact opposite purpose you're suggesting, in that anyone could examine the details of a patented invention, and possibly invent an improvement that would, in itself, be patentable, or at least non-infringing. That way more ideas are turned into implementations, more creation and invention occurs, and society as a whole benefits.
The Founders meant for information to be free, even if the application of it was not. Furthermore, the social contract implicit in this arrangement has since been broken (shattered, really) by Congress and the IP lobby.
Roundabouts (or rotaries, or traffic circles, as they're known in parts of the U.S.) induce confusion and fear in many drivers
Some years ago I drove around the Boston area, and Rockport, and those goddamn things were everywhere. I absolutely hated them. I suppose you can get used to anything, but I found them perfectly irritating and the other drivers were anything but "spontaneously co-operative." Actually, they were fucking jackasses and I hope I never have to drive anywhere near there ever again.
Governments are the only thing in the world that is by, for, and of the people.
So, referencing my original post... you believe that the governments of Russia and China are "by, for, and of the people"? Are you serious? Those governments are by, of and for themselves. Period. End-of-statement.
It turns out, these companies did choose to do business in the EU, and the conduct in question even happened there. So yeah. The whole "keep out" thing is silly; a company implicitly agrees to follow the rules in an area when they choose to do business there
Yeah. Wasn't that pretty much what the whole flap about Google pulling out of China was all about?
Unfortunately, a frustrated China could not be reached for comment.
Yeah, he didn't mean to kill himself for real, it was just a joke gone wrong, right?
No, the CIA got the wrong guy.
Re:Just because you think there is a conspiracy
on
FBI Wiretapped Hemingway
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
...doesn't mean there isn't one. I am quite sure a large percentage of the paranoid notions out there are not true, but then there are the facts that surface much later that prove to have been true.
it's exactly this kinda crap that keeps the seeds of doubt sewn in my mind each and every time the government tells the people something.
Put it this way: every single time some government official, from the President of the United States on down says, "we need new power 'x' in order to make you safe from 'y'", We the People need to reply with a resounding "Prove it!" Make these bastards fight for every new power they try to assume. Sometimes they're right... but I want to hear more than fear-mongering and manufactured statistics.
I've dealt with these fuckers, and believe me, they are not about doing what is honest or
what is right. They are a tool of the government, and they have been used for plenty of
evil and will continue to be used in that manner. Just because that sick bastard J. Edgar
Hoover is gone, don't believe for one second that the FBI is suddenly kind and gentle,
because that would be very far off the mark.
They never were kind and gentle, nor do I particularly care if they're not. What I want them to do is follow the law.. Unfortunately for us, nowadays they generally are, and that's the problem. After Hoover, Congress reined in the FBI and put a lot of restrictions on their behavior. Most of those were removed (and new powers granted) in the wake of 9/11 by the ill-named Patriot Act and others like it. It's not the FBI you have to blame for this, but a power-hungry and fundamentally irrational Congress.
[Hemingway] 'had stood his ground against charging water buffaloes, who had flown missions over Germany, who had refused to accept the prevailing style of writing but, enduring rejection and poverty, had insisted on writing in his own unique way, this man, my deepest friend, was afraid — afraid that the FBI was after him, that his body was disintegrating, that his friends had turned on him, that living was no longer an option.'
Most of Hemingway's paragraphs didn't contain that many different thoughts.
That's because Hemingway actually knew how to write.
Ha. Funny. What the GP actually described is nearly every form of government ever invented by the hand of Man. That's the facts, jack. I mean, you wouldn't be claiming that the governments of oh, say, Russia or China don't take extreme steps to protect themselves from their own citizens. Would you now?
If you can't sell your patent (including when a company gets bought) then there would be no more patent trolls.
So what happens when a company folds, or gets sold? Do any patents revert to public domain? It's not as simple as all that. Personally, as a developer, I'd rather we just abolish the whole thing. Software patents are bad for business, that is, if you're trying to actually develop something.
Good pharmaceuticals never reach obsolescence either; many of the more commonly prescribed meds used today were developed in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.
Except for drugs like Darvocet and Percocet... of course, I suppose they aren't considered "good" drugs anymore. Too bad really: when I had abdominal surgery a few years ago (incredibly painful) I survived the ten days of recovery with Darvocet. They wanted to give me Dr. House's drug of choice, but I wanted something that would actually work.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not enough. They need to be made to fight to keep the powers they have, not just the ones the want.
True, but if we'd been doing just that for the past hundred years we wouldn't be in the position we're in now.
That's just not on the same level of civilization as we are.
Maybe. But you don't need to be "civilized" to own things. Or people.
So to get the benefit you suggest you learn the language, but don't let on that you know it.
I worked for a company (gah, some twenty five years ago) where the receptionist actually had an advanced degree in linguistics and spoke several languages. One day in the lunchroom she became visibly upset, and eventually turned around and snapped some rapid-fire Spanish at the next table over, where several Hispanic workers were sitting. They all blanched, grabbed their food, and ran out of the room. She was a very attractive woman who was remarkably well-endowed, and they'd been discussing her tits among themselves. They had assumed (incorrectly, as it turned out) they she couldn't understand them. They had had no intention of giving offense, and I actually felt more sorry for them than I did for her. I mean, honestly, I'd been thinking along the same lines they were anyway. She later admitted that she should have just let it go and not said anything.
Hell, English is almost necessary in China due to all the non-mutually-intelligible "dialects" of Chinese.
That's the case in a lot of countries. Africa, for example, has so many dialects that you can move one village over and not be able to communicate. Consequently, you need a common language: French and English are the most heavily used there, I understand.
I think China's willingness to do 'whatever is needed' is its biggest flaw because the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And you're assuming that the intentions are even good. It's not like their government is particularly transparent about its goals.
They are learning English at a much faster rate than any Americans can learn Chinese.
Hell, they're learning English faster than any American can learn English.
Probably because they have schools that actually teach the subject well.
Yea, I remember this kind talk about the Japanese back in the 1980s( yea I'm old, get off my lawn ). Ooooh, better learn Japanese if you want to succeed in business, Ooooh, they are going to take over the world with their mysterious asian cunning, that us round-eyes will never be able to match.
Glad I could put it into perspective for you. My work is done here.
Well, last I heard (and yes, I remember the same things you do, they can stay the hell off my lawn too), China had more people learning English than the entire population of the United States. I don't think we're going to have to worry about learning Mandarin. Generally, the dominant economic power of any given period in history finds its major tongue becoming the lingua franca of the times. Nations that wish to do business with that power find it beneficial to be able to communicate with it, at least for the purposes of trade. English is that language now (thanks as much to the British Empire's influence as our own) and China wants to be able to use the world's facility in English to its own advantage. That's just smart, because it takes a lot of time to convert the global business community to another international language. If China wants to be part of the global economy, they're just going to have to deal with that, and to their credit, they are.
Whether or not China's ruling elite has visions of Empire is hard to say: I'm not sure they're a. into that or b. would be able to pull it off anyway. Time will tell. But I'm not rushing out to learn Mandarin.
Spanish, maybe. That would be far more immediately useful to me.
This must hands down be the weirdest reply I've ever read on Slashdot... and I've read quite a few strange ones...
No shit, but I almost had my drink running out of my nose.
You said "not". Let's see how robustly you defend patents once you've had a call from the m$ lawyers.
Irrelevant to a discussion about the intent and purpose of patents. That an entirely different issue (excessive litigiousness) that really does need to be addressed, I agree, but has nothing to do with what the Founders intended the patent system to achieve.
Patents and copyrights are designed from the beginning to restrict the transfer and sharing of knowledge.
No they were most certainly not. They were designed to (temporarily!) restrict the monetary rewards received from creative activities to those who owned the rights to utilize or disseminate that information, that's all. At no point was the information itself meant to be confidential: if you didn't want to disclose your invention then you simply didn't patent it, or did your best to keep it a trade secret. Especially in the case of patents, the requirement for disclosure was intended for the exact opposite purpose you're suggesting, in that anyone could examine the details of a patented invention, and possibly invent an improvement that would, in itself, be patentable, or at least non-infringing. That way more ideas are turned into implementations, more creation and invention occurs, and society as a whole benefits.
The Founders meant for information to be free, even if the application of it was not. Furthermore, the social contract implicit in this arrangement has since been broken (shattered, really) by Congress and the IP lobby.
Roundabouts (or rotaries, or traffic circles, as they're known in parts of the U.S.) induce confusion and fear in many drivers
Some years ago I drove around the Boston area, and Rockport, and those goddamn things were everywhere. I absolutely hated them. I suppose you can get used to anything, but I found them perfectly irritating and the other drivers were anything but "spontaneously co-operative." Actually, they were fucking jackasses and I hope I never have to drive anywhere near there ever again.
I'm not on Facebook. I graduated before it even started.
I'm not on Facebook either. I graduated before there was an Internet.
Governments are the only thing in the world that is by, for, and of the people.
So, referencing my original post ... you believe that the governments of Russia and China are "by, for, and of the people"? Are you serious? Those governments are by, of and for themselves. Period. End-of-statement.
So mr. anarchist, you don't think large companies and corporations are capable of significantly worse effects of oppression on our lives?
Ah ... what? I think you need to re-read the two posts above mine ... and then re-read mine. Cripes.
Awesome, so your concept of an ideal government is China or Russia?
Cool, you got it!
Huh? That actually made no sense. Apparently, whatever there was to get ... you didn't.
It turns out, these companies did choose to do business in the EU, and the conduct in question even happened there. So yeah. The whole "keep out" thing is silly; a company implicitly agrees to follow the rules in an area when they choose to do business there
Yeah. Wasn't that pretty much what the whole flap about Google pulling out of China was all about?
Unfortunately, a frustrated China could not be reached for comment.
Yeah, he didn't mean to kill himself for real, it was just a joke gone wrong, right?
No, the CIA got the wrong guy.
...doesn't mean there isn't one. I am quite sure a large percentage of the paranoid notions out there are not true, but then there are the facts that surface much later that prove to have been true.
it's exactly this kinda crap that keeps the seeds of doubt sewn in my mind each and every time the government tells the people something.
Put it this way: every single time some government official, from the President of the United States on down says, "we need new power 'x' in order to make you safe from 'y'", We the People need to reply with a resounding "Prove it!" Make these bastards fight for every new power they try to assume. Sometimes they're right ... but I want to hear more than fear-mongering and manufactured statistics.
I've dealt with these fuckers, and believe me, they are not about doing what is honest or what is right. They are a tool of the government, and they have been used for plenty of evil and will continue to be used in that manner. Just because that sick bastard J. Edgar Hoover is gone, don't believe for one second that the FBI is suddenly kind and gentle, because that would be very far off the mark.
They never were kind and gentle, nor do I particularly care if they're not. What I want them to do is follow the law.. Unfortunately for us, nowadays they generally are, and that's the problem. After Hoover, Congress reined in the FBI and put a lot of restrictions on their behavior. Most of those were removed (and new powers granted) in the wake of 9/11 by the ill-named Patriot Act and others like it. It's not the FBI you have to blame for this, but a power-hungry and fundamentally irrational Congress.
You missed a perfect opportunity for a good pun by not opting for "dam(n) you Hoover" or even "Hoover sucks"
I think "Hoover blows" would be better.
you're not paranoid if they're really out to get you.
No, you can still be paranoid even then, if it's unreasonable to believe that they're out to get you. Of course, they can still get you.
Most of Hemingway's paragraphs didn't contain that many different thoughts.
That's because Hemingway actually knew how to write.
A: The United States of America.
Ha. Funny. What the GP actually described is nearly every form of government ever invented by the hand of Man. That's the facts, jack. I mean, you wouldn't be claiming that the governments of oh, say, Russia or China don't take extreme steps to protect themselves from their own citizens. Would you now?
If you can't sell your patent (including when a company gets bought) then there would be no more patent trolls.
So what happens when a company folds, or gets sold? Do any patents revert to public domain? It's not as simple as all that. Personally, as a developer, I'd rather we just abolish the whole thing. Software patents are bad for business, that is, if you're trying to actually develop something.
Good pharmaceuticals never reach obsolescence either; many of the more commonly prescribed meds used today were developed in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.
Except for drugs like Darvocet and Percocet ... of course, I suppose they aren't considered "good" drugs anymore. Too bad really: when I had abdominal surgery a few years ago (incredibly painful) I survived the ten days of recovery with Darvocet. They wanted to give me Dr. House's drug of choice, but I wanted something that would actually work.