I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper, and then shooting everyone in the place with it.
Show the paper to a teller and she will take it as a threat, as she is trained to do.
In real life most of us aren't being paid enough to sort out the real crazies from the geek playing a prank. We'll assume the worst and let the geek - who should know better - fend for himself.
Would you feel the same way if a financial advisor intentionally stole all the money your parents had for retirement?
The financial advisor isn't a geek ---
and the geek should never have to serve hard time.
That is the argument as it usually plays out on Slashdot.
Prison sends the message that the white guy with a six or seven figure income will be treated the same as the poor and the black.
It sends the message that intangible property is still property.
Something that the geek --- who spends his entire working life inside a digital universe defined by the value given to endless streams of ones and zeroes --- ought to be applauding,
My intuition is that I'd be just fine with the only content available being content that did not seek a revenue stream. I thought the internet was better back then anyway.
The geek always thinks that way
Because way back then the Internet was his personal playground. He was the both content provider and consumer. I haven't forgiven him yet for the multitude of user-unfriendly clients he devised for communication over the snail slow connections of the dial-up modem days.
The Government did not invent roads. Roads existed long before the Government made them, in fact most towns and cities had roads without a Government mandating and taxing people for using and building them.
Surveying a road, grading and maintaining it always comes with a pretty stiff price tag.
Local roads and bridges were traditionally paid for by taxes, tolls and contributions of labor and materials.
Long distance travel by car was damn near impossible before the US federal government became directly and deeply involved. [untitled photograph] [
Lots and lots of people cycle to where they need to go in the winter, and -28 is a pretty common winter temperature
I would like to see a real breakdown by age, sex, martial status, income, injuries and deaths in traffic, and reports of medical emergencies like hypothermia, heart attacks and so on,
You pick any laptop with Windows pre-installed and buy another and let me install and configure Linux and put it in a box. You will then see how a Windows system when compared to a Linux system is inferior "out of the box."
How much say will I get in how you will configure the system?
You are a geek but I am not and we have a very different set of interests, values and expectations.
My desktop computer at home is running Linux for more than a decade now.
"Winning the desktop" has never been about winning over the geek.
It's always about winning over the full time office worker, the temp and the senior volunteer. The billion or so clerical workers in this world who keep things running behind the scenes.
Helsinki has some 390 cars per 1000 inhabitants. This is less than in cities of similar density, such as Brussels' 483 per 1000, Stockholm's 401, and Oslo's 413.
Today, Helsinki is the only city in Finland to have trams and metro trains. There used to be two other cities in Finland with trams: Turku and Viipuri (Vyborg, now in Russia), but both have since abandoned trams. The Helsinki Metro, opened in 1982, is the only rapid transit system in Finland.
Yep. And then all that money that would be used to pay salaries that would be used on expenses locally, making the local economy work, will be redirected to Bill Gate's pockets.
The Munich economy is working just fine.
Munich is considered a global city and holds the headquarters of Siemens AG (electronics), BMW (car), MAN AG (truck manufacturer, engineering), Linde (gases), Allianz (insurance), Munich Re (re-insurance), and Rohde & Schwarz (electronics). Among German cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants purchasing power is highest in Munich (26,648 euro per inhabitant) as of 2007. In 2006, Munich blue-collar workers enjoyed an average hourly wage of 18.62 euro (ca. $23).
The breakdown by cities proper (not metropolitan areas) of Global 500 cities listed Munich in 8th position in 2009. Munich is a centre for biotechnology, software and other service industries. Munich is the home of the headquarters of many other large companies such as the aircraft engine manufacturer MTU Aero Engines, the injection molding machine manufacturer Krauss-Maffei, the camera and lighting manufacturer Arri, the semiconductor firm Infineon Technologies (headquartered in the suburban town of Neubiberg), lighting giant Osram, as well as the German or European headquarters of many foreign companies such as McDonald's and Microsoft.
as to that new corporate headquarters in Munich that makes the geek so suspicious:
Microsoft Deutschland decided to relocate its [30 year old] headquarters [from a suburb about 17km north of the city] and establish new, modern headquarters in Parkstadt Schwabing. Commencement of the construction works is planned for 2014. As of summer 2016, approximately 1,800 employees will find a new working environment in the new headquarters in Munich-Schwabing.
The basic office-type products for Linux still kind of suck.
The geek still thinks in terms of the stand-alone office suite ca. 1995,
Its 2014 and LibreOffice doesn't include a plausible alternative to Outlook, OneNote and so on.
Microsoft sees MS Office as one component of an integrated Office system --- client, server, web and cloud --- that makes collaboration easy and scales well to an enterprise of any size.
If you download Lantern in an uncensored region, you can connect with someone in a censored region, who can then access whatever content they want through you. What makes the system so unique is that it operates on the basis of trust....the amount of information any single Lantern user can learn about other users is limited to a small subset, making infiltration significantly more difficult.
Outside of the geek's virtual worlds and ways of thinking ---
The more you know about someone, the more you are willing to trust them. Particularly when the stakes are high.
Hahaha, you make it sound as if "being licensed" has some implication of advanced skill.
and maybe you don't know as much as you think you do:
The following are required by 1st time applicants for a Personenbeforderungsschein
Formal Application Antrag (obtained at the driver licensing office, usually the Road Traffic Office of the Community or Parish)
Personalausweis or passport (in combination with a valid personal registration)
Fuhrerschein (only the standard EU-Driving Licence is acceptable)
Medical Report from a Doctor specialised in ''Arbeitsmedizin'' or a Dr. with a qualification in ''Betriebsmedizin'' or a Report from a Reporting Institute for physical and mental driving competence. Info regarding which Drs. can do this is given by the Road Traffic Office. (The diagnostics relate to Stress, Reaction and Perception testing.)
Opticians Report or Certificate
Medical confirmation of Physical and Mental ability.
Fuhrungszeugnis (Criminal Record Report) with NO entries (for Official use only)
Extract from the Central Traffic Register Kraftfahrt-Bundesamtes in Flensburg
Ortskenntnisnachweis Proof of Knowledge (for the relevant district for Hire cars in Communities with population over 50.000).
Questions are to be answered regarding Places of Interest, Public Buildings, City districts. Generally routes will also be tested by giving starting and finishing points and allowing the candidate to describe the shortest route. Usually the Taxi company intending to employ the candidate will assist with the preparation for this test.
They also still use faxes for similar reasons impenetrable and unfathomable.
To someone unfamiliar with the language and culture.
Handwritten messages have long been a necessity in Japan, where the written language is so complex, with two sets of symbols and 2,000 characters borrowed from Chinese, that keyboards remained impractical until the advent of word processors in the 1980s.
A decade ago Yuichiro Sugahara learned the hard way about his country's deep attachment to the fax machine, which the nation popularized in the 1980s. He tried to modernize his family-run company, which delivers traditional bento lunchboxes, by taking orders online. Sales quickly plummeted.
Today, his company, Tamagoya, is thriving with the hiss and beep of thousands of orders pouring in every morning, most by fax, many with minutely detailed handwritten requests like ''go light on the batter in the fried chicken'' or ''add an extra hard-boiled egg.''
''There is still something in Japanese culture that demands the warm, personal feelings that you get with a handwritten fax,'' said Mr. Sugahara, 43.
Faxes continue to appeal to older Japanese, who often feel uncomfortable with keyboards. Demographics have left Japan dominated by older generations who are still more likely to have a fax number than an e-mail address.
In Japan, with the exception of the savviest Internet start-ups or internationally minded manufacturers, the fax remains an essential tool for doing business. Many companies say they still rely on faxes to create a paper trail of orders and shipments not left by ephemeral e-mail. Banks rely on faxes because customers are worried about the safety of their personal information on the Internet.
Even Japan's largest yakuza crime syndicate, the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, has used faxes to send notifications of expulsion to members, police say.
Scanning travel documents for hits in criminal (or other databases) is yet another case of data being re-purposed for uses other than the original intent.
Your passport is proof of your identity, citizenship and right to travel outside your own borders. It has always been subject to verification through whatever means are available.
In its beginnings, a passport was a formal letter of introduction to your hosts and in the strongest possible language spoke of the legitimacy of your mission, your good faith and common sense. To be signed by someone highly placed and credible.
IP has always been an imaginary government monopoly meant to enhance the business interests of a certain caste; originally that was the author/inventor, but that ship has long sailed - now it's corporate profits almost exclusively (and you may find exceptions that prove the rule.
There is nothing imaginary about the power backing up your ownership of a patent, a copyright, a quarter acre lot or a '57 Chevrolet Bel Air.
I have never understood how a geek manages to survive in a digital universe without coming to grips with the fundamental differences between the intangible and the imaginary.
If we had continued to keep the automobile speed limit at 10 mph year-after-year because a few lazy old farts refused to give up their goddamned horses and buggies, we'd still be driving around today at 10 mph.
Bad car analogy time.
The problem wasn't the horse and buggy.
The problem was the expense of paving roads, replacing bridges and so on.
The problem was that the funding, construction and maintenance of roads and bridges was considered a local responsibility ---- down to the township level or below.
The "last mile" problem in its primal form.
It was never so politically simple as drawing a line between A and B and saying that this what we need to do.
Re:And this is the same for copyrights.
on
Patents That Kill
·
· Score: 1
I agree there should be a limit on copyrights, but it shouldn't be much more than 10 years. At this time, people can use your characters and such, but guess what, after 10 years of the public enjoying something, it is a part of their life too.
The geek imagination rarely extends beyond fan fiction.
The geek tends to forget that patents and copyrights are meant to be an incentive to create something of your own, something new and something better. It's telling, I think, that the only two video game themed movies that are arguably worth a damn, Tron and Wreak-It-Ralph, both came from Disney.
perhaps if these people saved up and bought their own homes rather than renting, they wouldnt be in this mess.
The median price for a new or existing single family home or condo in San Francisco is one million dollars.
The median is the price for which half of homes sold for more and half for less.
The nosebleed price is a result of limited inventory and an influx of cash buyers willing to pay whatever it takes.
Many are tech workers with stock compensation from an initial public offering or takeover. Realtors call them "Google" kids even if they are 40 years old and work on biotech.
A secondary group of cash buyers are [mostly Asian investors] who see San Francisco as a relative bargain.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper, and then shooting everyone in the place with it.
Show the paper to a teller and she will take it as a threat, as she is trained to do.
In real life most of us aren't being paid enough to sort out the real crazies from the geek playing a prank. We'll assume the worst and let the geek - who should know better - fend for himself.
Come on, Slashdot, you're a bunch of engineers, right?
Wrong.
If by engineer you mean a licensed professional who stands by his work, and can be called to account for his failures.
It's the height of hubris for outsiders (especially lawyers in the state legislature) to come in and dictate low-level engineering details.
It also the height of hubris for the geek to allow Google to be the sole judge of its own work.
Would you feel the same way if a financial advisor intentionally stole all the money your parents had for retirement?
The financial advisor isn't a geek ---
and the geek should never have to serve hard time.
That is the argument as it usually plays out on Slashdot.
Prison sends the message that the white guy with a six or seven figure income will be treated the same as the poor and the black.
It sends the message that intangible property is still property.
Something that the geek --- who spends his entire working life inside a digital universe defined by the value given to endless streams of ones and zeroes --- ought to be applauding,
My intuition is that I'd be just fine with the only content available being content that did not seek a revenue stream. I thought the internet was better back then anyway.
The geek always thinks that way
Because way back then the Internet was his personal playground. He was the both content provider and consumer. I haven't forgiven him yet for the multitude of user-unfriendly clients he devised for communication over the snail slow connections of the dial-up modem days.
The Government did not invent roads. Roads existed long before the Government made them, in fact most towns and cities had roads without a Government mandating and taxing people for using and building them.
Surveying a road, grading and maintaining it always comes with a pretty stiff price tag.
Local roads and bridges were traditionally paid for by taxes, tolls and contributions of labor and materials.
Long distance travel by car was damn near impossible before the US federal government became directly and deeply involved. [untitled photograph] [
Lots and lots of people cycle to where they need to go in the winter, and -28 is a pretty common winter temperature
I would like to see a real breakdown by age, sex, martial status, income, injuries and deaths in traffic, and reports of medical emergencies like hypothermia, heart attacks and so on,
You pick any laptop with Windows pre-installed and buy another and let me install and configure Linux and put it in a box. You will then see how a Windows system when compared to a Linux system is inferior "out of the box."
How much say will I get in how you will configure the system?
You are a geek but I am not and we have a very different set of interests, values and expectations.
My desktop computer at home is running Linux for more than a decade now.
"Winning the desktop" has never been about winning over the geek.
It's always about winning over the full time office worker, the temp and the senior volunteer. The billion or so clerical workers in this world who keep things running behind the scenes.
Finland has about 3 million passenger cars in use by a population of 5.46 million.
Finland, Vehicle stock grew in 2012
Helsinki has some 390 cars per 1000 inhabitants. This is less than in cities of similar density, such as Brussels' 483 per 1000, Stockholm's 401, and Oslo's 413.
Today, Helsinki is the only city in Finland to have trams and metro trains. There used to be two other cities in Finland with trams: Turku and Viipuri (Vyborg, now in Russia), but both have since abandoned trams. The Helsinki Metro, opened in 1982, is the only rapid transit system in Finland.
Helsinki
It is within Google's capability to dynamically map every speed trap and even moving police cars.
If a police car can be tracked so can you.
If a speed trap is fullt automated, how does Google detect it before you have been ticketed?
When it comes to breaking the speed limit or being run over by a semi, I'll break the speed limit every time.
To what advantage if the semi is also being driven far above the speed limit?
Realistically, what are your chances of actually keeping pace with the thing or out-running it without losing control of your own vehicle?
Slashdot is a haven for rational thought
Stop it, please. You're killing me.
I don't get why people want to lock themselve in an echo chamber. That seems silly to me.
--- and a bizarre question to be asking here.
You can see the posters here circling the wagons when topics like gender equality come up on Slashdot.
Yep. And then all that money that would be used to pay salaries that would be used on expenses locally, making the local economy work, will be redirected to Bill Gate's pockets.
The Munich economy is working just fine.
Munich is considered a global city and holds the headquarters of Siemens AG (electronics), BMW (car), MAN AG (truck manufacturer, engineering), Linde (gases), Allianz (insurance), Munich Re (re-insurance), and Rohde & Schwarz (electronics). Among German cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants purchasing power is highest in Munich (26,648 euro per inhabitant) as of 2007. In 2006, Munich blue-collar workers enjoyed an average hourly wage of 18.62 euro (ca. $23).
The breakdown by cities proper (not metropolitan areas) of Global 500 cities listed Munich in 8th position in 2009. Munich is a centre for biotechnology, software and other service industries. Munich is the home of the headquarters of many other large companies such as the aircraft engine manufacturer MTU Aero Engines, the injection molding machine manufacturer Krauss-Maffei, the camera and lighting manufacturer Arri, the semiconductor firm Infineon Technologies (headquartered in the suburban town of Neubiberg), lighting giant Osram, as well as the German or European headquarters of many foreign companies such as McDonald's and Microsoft.
Munich
as to that new corporate headquarters in Munich that makes the geek so suspicious:
Microsoft Deutschland decided to relocate its [30 year old] headquarters [from a suburb about 17km north of the city] and establish new, modern headquarters in Parkstadt Schwabing. Commencement of the construction works is planned for 2014. As of summer 2016, approximately 1,800 employees will find a new working environment in the new headquarters in Munich-Schwabing.
http://www.eversheds.com/globa..." a>Microsoft Deutschland GmbH relocates its headquarters[Nov 2013]
The basic office-type products for Linux still kind of suck.
The geek still thinks in terms of the stand-alone office suite ca. 1995,
Its 2014 and LibreOffice doesn't include a plausible alternative to Outlook, OneNote and so on.
Microsoft sees MS Office as one component of an integrated Office system --- client, server, web and cloud --- that makes collaboration easy and scales well to an enterprise of any size.
If you download Lantern in an uncensored region, you can connect with someone in a censored region, who can then access whatever content they want through you. What makes the system so unique is that it operates on the basis of trust. ...the amount of information any single Lantern user can learn about other users is limited to a small subset, making infiltration significantly more difficult.
Outside of the geek's virtual worlds and ways of thinking ---
The more you know about someone, the more you are willing to trust them. Particularly when the stakes are high.
Hahaha, you make it sound as if "being licensed" has some implication of advanced skill.
and maybe you don't know as much as you think you do:
The following are required by 1st time applicants for a Personenbeforderungsschein
Formal Application Antrag (obtained at the driver licensing office, usually the Road Traffic Office of the Community or Parish)
Personalausweis or passport (in combination with a valid personal registration)
Fuhrerschein (only the standard EU-Driving Licence is acceptable)
Medical Report from a Doctor specialised in ''Arbeitsmedizin'' or a Dr. with a qualification in ''Betriebsmedizin'' or a Report from a Reporting Institute for physical and mental driving competence. Info regarding which Drs. can do this is given by the Road Traffic Office. (The diagnostics relate to Stress, Reaction and Perception testing.)
Opticians Report or Certificate
Medical confirmation of Physical and Mental ability.
Fuhrungszeugnis (Criminal Record Report) with NO entries (for Official use only)
Extract from the Central Traffic Register Kraftfahrt-Bundesamtes in Flensburg
Ortskenntnisnachweis Proof of Knowledge (for the relevant district for Hire cars in Communities with population over 50.000).
Questions are to be answered regarding Places of Interest, Public Buildings, City districts. Generally routes will also be tested by giving starting and finishing points and allowing the candidate to describe the shortest route. Usually the Taxi company intending to employ the candidate will assist with the preparation for this test.
Knowledge test for taxi drivers in Germany. Is there one? Advice on working as a cabbie.
[Germany's English-speaking crowd. May 2010]
They also still use faxes for similar reasons impenetrable and unfathomable.
To someone unfamiliar with the language and culture.
Handwritten messages have long been a necessity in Japan, where the written language is so complex, with two sets of symbols and 2,000 characters borrowed from Chinese, that keyboards remained impractical until the advent of word processors in the 1980s.
A decade ago Yuichiro Sugahara learned the hard way about his country's deep attachment to the fax machine, which the nation popularized in the 1980s. He tried to modernize his family-run company, which delivers traditional bento lunchboxes, by taking orders online. Sales quickly plummeted.
Today, his company, Tamagoya, is thriving with the hiss and beep of thousands of orders pouring in every morning, most by fax, many with minutely detailed handwritten requests like ''go light on the batter in the fried chicken'' or ''add an extra hard-boiled egg.''
''There is still something in Japanese culture that demands the warm, personal feelings that you get with a handwritten fax,'' said Mr. Sugahara, 43.
Faxes continue to appeal to older Japanese, who often feel uncomfortable with keyboards. Demographics have left Japan dominated by older generations who are still more likely to have a fax number than an e-mail address.
In Japan, with the exception of the savviest Internet start-ups or internationally minded manufacturers, the fax remains an essential tool for doing business. Many companies say they still rely on faxes to create a paper trail of orders and shipments not left by ephemeral e-mail. Banks rely on faxes because customers are worried about the safety of their personal information on the Internet.
Even Japan's largest yakuza crime syndicate, the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, has used faxes to send notifications of expulsion to members, police say.
In High-Tech Japan, the Fax Machines Roll On
If you can't hide in Nepal, where can you hide?
There are maybe 3,000 expats living in Nepal. Living in Nepal - What it's like after 1.5 years
The odd man out is one of the oldest stereotypes of police work. Living on the run? Forget the flight to Kathmandu. Take the bus to New York City.
Scanning travel documents for hits in criminal (or other databases) is yet another case of data being re-purposed for uses other than the original intent.
Your passport is proof of your identity, citizenship and right to travel outside your own borders. It has always been subject to verification through whatever means are available.
In its beginnings, a passport was a formal letter of introduction to your hosts and in the strongest possible language spoke of the legitimacy of your mission, your good faith and common sense. To be signed by someone highly placed and credible.
IP has always been an imaginary government monopoly meant to enhance the business interests of a certain caste; originally that was the author/inventor, but that ship has long sailed - now it's corporate profits almost exclusively (and you may find exceptions that prove the rule.
There is nothing imaginary about the power backing up your ownership of a patent, a copyright, a quarter acre lot or a '57 Chevrolet Bel Air.
I have never understood how a geek manages to survive in a digital universe without coming to grips with the fundamental differences between the intangible and the imaginary.
If we had continued to keep the automobile speed limit at 10 mph year-after-year because a few lazy old farts refused to give up their goddamned horses and buggies, we'd still be driving around today at 10 mph.
Bad car analogy time.
The problem wasn't the horse and buggy.
The problem was the expense of paving roads, replacing bridges and so on.
The problem was that the funding, construction and maintenance of roads and bridges was considered a local responsibility ---- down to the township level or below.
The "last mile" problem in its primal form.
It was never so politically simple as drawing a line between A and B and saying that this what we need to do.
I agree there should be a limit on copyrights, but it shouldn't be much more than 10 years. At this time, people can use your characters and such, but guess what, after 10 years of the public enjoying something, it is a part of their life too.
The geek imagination rarely extends beyond fan fiction.
The geek tends to forget that patents and copyrights are meant to be an incentive to create something of your own, something new and something better. It's telling, I think, that the only two video game themed movies that are arguably worth a damn, Tron and Wreak-It-Ralph, both came from Disney.
perhaps if these people saved up and bought their own homes rather than renting, they wouldnt be in this mess.
The median price for a new or existing single family home or condo in San Francisco is one million dollars.
The median is the price for which half of homes sold for more and half for less.
The nosebleed price is a result of limited inventory and an influx of cash buyers willing to pay whatever it takes.
Many are tech workers with stock compensation from an initial public offering or takeover. Realtors call them "Google" kids even if they are 40 years old and work on biotech.
A secondary group of cash buyers are [mostly Asian investors] who see San Francisco as a relative bargain.
$1 million city: S.F. home price hits seven figures for the first time [July 17, 2014]
The median household income in the U.S. is $53,000. State & County QuickFacts [2008-2012]
"Guardians of the Galaxy" was not a sequel or a reboot.
It suggests as well that audiences have grown more than a little weary of "dark" sci-fi and fantasy.
As much as I admire B5, I think its time may have passed.