Unfortunatly, in our day and age, that's so true. it used to be that an AS or BS ment you know something, a MS meant you knew something well, and a PhD meant you knew something so well that you contribute to the wealth of knowledge in an intellegent way.
Although all of that is thrown out of the window in our day and age. Thanks to the internet and libraries, colleges and universities, you can, with a little smarts, build just about anything you could ever want and then some and add to research intellegently. The only problem, then, is prooving you know something. Which is why most people go out for a degree in this day and age. If you're actually going to college to learn something, you won't get more than a drop in the pond from most if you pass with an A. Only the really good colleges like MIT can teach you something useful, but those are off limits to most people unless they get A's and demonstrate their ability to care about being controlled by a boss (although many can fake such care by really being into a subject).
(as guys say further down) MS has to unbundle their player from the operating system, which is probably no small undertaking considering they built it in as a part of the OS, in addition to properly documenting their API's and releasing them for all to see/hear/use; we all remember how they released their API's when the US DOJ said they had to, which was half assedly. Besides, it's microsoft, it's more profitable to pay a team of lawers a few million and postpone a fine for a few years or eliminate a fine altogether.
Inotherwords, the ruling would go pretty far in leveling the battlefield, so to speak. OSS people and various companies would love to make their software windows compatable because it generally increases their marketability; instead of selling support to a few customers on linux rigs, they can sell support to tons of people using windows rigs, and windows certs are a bit more common so teaching your staff the basics on linux would be pretty easy. Not to mention all the fun you can have with making better linux emulators and drivers. If linux handled DirectX 9 games and were compatable with them, I'd dump win2k and run to suse or redhat.
Now, if everyone began running towards other solutions for their needs and abandoning windows, microsoft would have a buffer time to reorganize their company with all those dollers they have stored and to attempt to squash it with the slush fund.
and the MPAA's, and the porn industries, and virus writers. This will be a good test of the viability of open source solutions for real-world security applications; real corporations have real economic incentive to destroy the networks, and now that the source is out and the lock is off, they're sure going to try.
So says the king of tin-foil wearing freaks of nature!
*Tyrran gets into the lawn chair with his popcorn and AR-15, waits for the country to go tits-up.
Seriously, a cellular bill of rights...what the hell happened to the other bill of rights, and the constitution? You know, the ones that ACTUALLY MATTER?
They want the massive database to fight "terrorism", as they say it. Now, lets just think about what's been going on lately;
1: Police officers have been taking pictures of protesters to throw into databases. Additionally, wearing masks is now illegal in most cities.
2: Facial recognition software enabled camera's are going up everywhere. Sure, the software barely works but it'll get better. This is first justified in protecting people in high crime areas like chicago, and then will move out as far into the suburbs as they can justify it.
3: Our economy is going to shit and we're going farther and farther into that hole.
4: Massive databases of personal information are being assembled by our goverment.
5: Our constitutional rights are gone.
6: And to put the decorations on the cake, at the G8 summit at Sea Island in Georga, an order to "fire to kill" was given to all police officers in the state in regards to whoever they found was acting suspiciously. This means that if you're a protester outside of the building, the cops and military in the area can legally shoot and kill you.
So, we've got our reichstag fire (9/11), we've got our Decree of the Reich president(Patriot act), now we're waiting for the enabling law (aka, the law that let the reichstag put people into concentration camps).
Correction, they just gave me a big tool to take out the agri-business corps.
I creat a genetically modified corn that can seed with other corns; it produces some trace chemical that it normally doesn't for some kind of industrial application. I then distribute some to some of my friends via the internet, and wait for it to propegate throughout the agribusinesses crops.
1 or 2 years, I find out, OMIGOSH! They've stolen my genes! Lookie, they have to destroy all their crops!
Or, they can sign the lisencing agreement, which is like GPL. You can only install the gene on a plant that has GPL'd genes, and therefore, they have to lisence all theri genes under GPL. You die if you do, and you die if you don't. The lisencing agreement also stipulates that they have pay me 1 penny for each seed produced.
Replace "America" with "stupid people in general" and that entire thing is completly true. Americans aren't the entirety of the worlds problems, everyone just likes to blame us because we're here and our goverment has done some stupid and evil shit.
Yes, the american style brainwashing isn't as pandemical as elsewhere, but you can't yell inanely at some dumbfuck and have them understand. I'm sick of my country as well, hopefully we can use the information age to fix that.
Interestingly enough, it'd be a quick n' easy way to get rid of lots and lots of dead bodies in a more useful way...just send all the "code red's" and "code yellows" ; aka terrorists, into these things...
*shutter*
Frankly, the proper way of reducing agri-waste isn't to throw it into a machine and make gas. The ground can only creat so much stuff before the natural resources in it are used up, and our poo poo and pee pee is what is broken down and thrown back into the ground to replenish those resources.
The proper way to break the waste down is to break it into compost; spread it out over a large area, turn, capture the methane from the decomposition and after it's turned back into grade-a dirt, sell it back.
Society is about trust. Without it, it degrades into dust and everything dies. Many companies don't seem to understand this consept as their exploites of betraying trust are shown on black and white paper. Little do they know it'll be our demise if they keep it up and we let them.
They want the BBV servers in connection with the theft of diebold documents, which is a completly frivilous accusation. They just want to shut her down. If people mirror it, then they've got to come up with a whole bunch of reasons to go into people's houses and confiscate servers; one for each server. Think of the media event; the fbi shuts down several people's servers who mirrored the site and had nothing to do with the theft. The more desperate the actions of my enemy, the apparent his motive really is.
And as for the spelling, yes, I think I like conniving better than kniving. I need to fix my head...
No, not slashdot you moron. People in general; the internet media in general. The governmet knows that if they go after the black box voting people it'll reach a large audience of people. Who'll get the attention first? The crazy conspiracy nuts websites, because that's where the stories will start on this one and be hyperlinked and muckraked from. You can ignore the daily demoralization of our country on every major news site through the death of our soldiers and the making them out to be torturing assclowns. But when someone says "our voting system is being screwed with, here's a book full of proof the goverment just tried to shut down", that's a bit different.
And yes, we do have a gestapo; the FBI and CIA, although it isn't on soviet levels as of yet. Frankly, let the FBI come, I'll invite em' in and serve them some nice natural hot coco or coffie, have a talk where they get absolutely no information from me except the fact that I'm just a really really nice guy who gets angry sometimes and spews junk on the internet, as well as muckraking on occasion for an internet radio station. They'll leave with 3-4 burned CD's of rantradio goodness and when they listen to it themselves, they'll become wogs and begin working for xenu! w00t w00t. You never ever treat the police and fbi without respect, sure many of them are assholes but if every crazy gun nut and conspiracy theorist was an upstanding citizen (many of them are, some of them are crazy in a harmless way) and moreso, didn't mind serving them dinner while they were investigating and talking to them, they'd think we're nice people adn get pissed when they're ordered to shoot or round us up.
Nah, I smell a time when us hackers finally get straight A's in the classroom:D. These pieces of software always have bugs, weither intentional or unintentional. Kids'll cheat, as they always do, cept they'll have to be real smart about it. Remember a typing program where you could hold down the space bar and it'd give you 0 errors, and tons of words per minute.
In any case, why the hell is a computer teaching a human language? I can see it helping to teach math, helping to teach science, and helping to teach social studies, but english can't be taught by a machine. English is learned by reading books and writing inspired writing, a machine can help you check grammar and spelling errors, it can't give you advice on a story through. This is why those of us who rot away on UBB's and do a lot of arguing have excellent spelling and grammar and writing in general (although everyone makes mistakes and has a different style, grammar tends to restrict the style imo).
Oh, you have a policy of not keeping logs? We don't believe you. Mind if we visit your house and confiscate all of your computers and servers? We still need to know if your website is associated with the theft of Diebold documents.
They'll specify "all electronics and papers pertaining to logging", and they'll take everything. The only reason they aren't already gone is because we're here and if they go after em', it'll look aufuly suspicious now won't it? A website exposing the republicans' (the guys who are in power right now) connections to fixing voting machines all of a sudden gets raided by the FBI because the FBI thought they might have logs pertaining to the theft of logs at Diebold, a corporation republicans have a lot of dealings with.
Of course, it won't be spun that way in the mainstream media. No mention will be made to the connection between Diebold and republicans, and Diebold will be spun as a nice corporation that had some critical documents stolen by nefarious kniving hackers. Not to mention the humiliating defeat in california the company had, this'd just begin to really get the ball rolling at the top of the snow hill, so to speak.
Now, if you l33t haxors really want to do something useful, MIRROR THE WEBSITE! Think about it this way; Blackboxvoting.org goes down due to an FBI raid, an organized mirror is available. The main mirroring page has a nice paragraph or two explaining the websites position. The blackboxvoting owner then requests the website be redirected to the mirror site. The news hits mainstream media the day after the raid, whammo, everyone's typing blackboxvoting.org into their web browser and checking the website out, as well as reading their position on the whole thing. I'll leave the rest upto your imagination, but I think people will begin to get even more uneasy knowing congress is screwing around with their right to vote.
Of course, the ensuing media debacle will be, as always, phased out in a blast of confusion, but at least a couple thousand more Americans know their voting system is going down the toilet.
It's kinda wierd, the old countries like the middle east, it's custom for an entire family to live in the same house generation after generation. I had a teacher who's family lived in a house for 800 years. The boon to that system is that the grandparents and great grandparents get to see their kids and educate them about their childhood every day. Tradition stays and sticks.
Then in Europe, there's different expectations. Either you move out when you marry or you move out when you have to financially. Depends on the culture.
Here in america, it's usually you goto school for 18 years, then college and at college either you stay at home or at a dorm. Then, you move into your own place. There are people who are smart enough to move out when they're 18 or 19. Hell, back in the early 1900's it was customary for kids to stay at home until they married.
The only advantage to the american way is freedom from tradition. I kinda think that it's bad that way myself, considering the fact we've got girls who are pregnant as young as 14 or 15 around here.
He bought a Linux distribution for as much money as Windows would have cost. He installed it on his PC. It didn't work as advertised.
He didn't have to buy it ya know. He could've spent some money on a DSL connection or something and downloaded distro's until he was blue in the mouth.
He's got some point's I agree; until linux gets support for lots of hardware it really isn't something you'd want to throw at normal people. As the OS gets more advanced and is marketed to normal people for less money ($30 vs $199 right now) we'll see it evolve into an entirely different beast. But calling the move suicidal is just stupid, especially when the guy doesn't even have his pricing research down right.
Yup, every company can pass on costs to customer when the cost of business increases. This creates demand for a cheaper way of doing business since there's competition, and therefore, society advances, in theory.
Introduce the monopoly, which has no incentive to creat a chepaer way of doing business since there is no competition. You fine MS, they'll jack up the price and spit in our faces. The only reason they get away with it is because they are a monopoly, if they jacked up the prices and they had competition, they'd die. The fine did nothing but increase the taxes on us.
There are no laws saying MS can't jack up their prices, but there are laws saying MS can't be a monopoly.
You have to understand tho, the indian goverment isn't even halfway as ursurped as ours is. You'll notice that our goverment seems to think that if it isn't expensive, it isn't worth spending money on, especially if it isn't run by a buddy of someone in power. Not to mention the fact that Diebold is run by republicans, and there's proof of loss of votes. The only reason they're able to get away with it is, well, our country is falling apart and most of the media is owned by 6 corps, and within 10 years, 1 corp.
If the American people knew what their goverment has done to them, there'd be a civil war no doubt. Infact, as the middle class dissapears I think more and more people will begin asking pesky questions, and our gestapo FBI won't be able to handle it all.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't throwing the PC out the window work better? Or mabye a nice computer barbecue...
Unfortunatly, in our day and age, that's so true. it used to be that an AS or BS ment you know something, a MS meant you knew something well, and a PhD meant you knew something so well that you contribute to the wealth of knowledge in an intellegent way.
Although all of that is thrown out of the window in our day and age. Thanks to the internet and libraries, colleges and universities, you can, with a little smarts, build just about anything you could ever want and then some and add to research intellegently. The only problem, then, is prooving you know something. Which is why most people go out for a degree in this day and age. If you're actually going to college to learn something, you won't get more than a drop in the pond from most if you pass with an A. Only the really good colleges like MIT can teach you something useful, but those are off limits to most people unless they get A's and demonstrate their ability to care about being controlled by a boss (although many can fake such care by really being into a subject).
(as guys say further down) MS has to unbundle their player from the operating system, which is probably no small undertaking considering they built it in as a part of the OS, in addition to properly documenting their API's and releasing them for all to see/hear/use; we all remember how they released their API's when the US DOJ said they had to, which was half assedly. Besides, it's microsoft, it's more profitable to pay a team of lawers a few million and postpone a fine for a few years or eliminate a fine altogether.
Inotherwords, the ruling would go pretty far in leveling the battlefield, so to speak. OSS people and various companies would love to make their software windows compatable because it generally increases their marketability; instead of selling support to a few customers on linux rigs, they can sell support to tons of people using windows rigs, and windows certs are a bit more common so teaching your staff the basics on linux would be pretty easy. Not to mention all the fun you can have with making better linux emulators and drivers. If linux handled DirectX 9 games and were compatable with them, I'd dump win2k and run to suse or redhat.
Now, if everyone began running towards other solutions for their needs and abandoning windows, microsoft would have a buffer time to reorganize their company with all those dollers they have stored and to attempt to squash it with the slush fund.
It's the smell of the sweatshop...far more putrid in the boxes of appliances.
Gee, that'd explain why all these morons can't spell!
"Toe Curling"
So this essay will kill the evil witch of the west, huh?
Sounds 'bout right.
and the MPAA's, and the porn industries, and virus writers. This will be a good test of the viability of open source solutions for real-world security applications; real corporations have real economic incentive to destroy the networks, and now that the source is out and the lock is off, they're sure going to try.
So says the king of tin-foil wearing freaks of nature!
*Tyrran gets into the lawn chair with his popcorn and AR-15, waits for the country to go tits-up.
Seriously, a cellular bill of rights...what the hell happened to the other bill of rights, and the constitution? You know, the ones that ACTUALLY MATTER?
They want the massive database to fight "terrorism", as they say it. Now, lets just think about what's been going on lately;
1: Police officers have been taking pictures of protesters to throw into databases. Additionally, wearing masks is now illegal in most cities.
2: Facial recognition software enabled camera's are going up everywhere. Sure, the software barely works but it'll get better. This is first justified in protecting people in high crime areas like chicago, and then will move out as far into the suburbs as they can justify it.
3: Our economy is going to shit and we're going farther and farther into that hole.
4: Massive databases of personal information are being assembled by our goverment.
5: Our constitutional rights are gone.
6: And to put the decorations on the cake, at the G8 summit at Sea Island in Georga, an order to "fire to kill" was given to all police officers in the state in regards to whoever they found was acting suspiciously. This means that if you're a protester outside of the building, the cops and military in the area can legally shoot and kill you.
So, we've got our reichstag fire (9/11), we've got our Decree of the Reich president(Patriot act), now we're waiting for the enabling law (aka, the law that let the reichstag put people into concentration camps).
I tell you all! We were right! Tin foil hats will protect you!
Did we need any more proof the RIAA is there to control people by making profits?
Correction, they just gave me a big tool to take out the agri-business corps.
I creat a genetically modified corn that can seed with other corns; it produces some trace chemical that it normally doesn't for some kind of industrial application. I then distribute some to some of my friends via the internet, and wait for it to propegate throughout the agribusinesses crops.
1 or 2 years, I find out, OMIGOSH! They've stolen my genes! Lookie, they have to destroy all their crops!
Or, they can sign the lisencing agreement, which is like GPL. You can only install the gene on a plant that has GPL'd genes, and therefore, they have to lisence all theri genes under GPL. You die if you do, and you die if you don't. The lisencing agreement also stipulates that they have pay me 1 penny for each seed produced.
Replace "America" with "stupid people in general" and that entire thing is completly true. Americans aren't the entirety of the worlds problems, everyone just likes to blame us because we're here and our goverment has done some stupid and evil shit.
Yes, the american style brainwashing isn't as pandemical as elsewhere, but you can't yell inanely at some dumbfuck and have them understand. I'm sick of my country as well, hopefully we can use the information age to fix that.
Interestingly enough, it'd be a quick n' easy way to get rid of lots and lots of dead bodies in a more useful way...just send all the "code red's" and "code yellows" ; aka terrorists, into these things...
*shutter*
Frankly, the proper way of reducing agri-waste isn't to throw it into a machine and make gas. The ground can only creat so much stuff before the natural resources in it are used up, and our poo poo and pee pee is what is broken down and thrown back into the ground to replenish those resources.
The proper way to break the waste down is to break it into compost; spread it out over a large area, turn, capture the methane from the decomposition and after it's turned back into grade-a dirt, sell it back.
Society is about trust. Without it, it degrades into dust and everything dies. Many companies don't seem to understand this consept as their exploites of betraying trust are shown on black and white paper. Little do they know it'll be our demise if they keep it up and we let them.
They want the BBV servers in connection with the theft of diebold documents, which is a completly frivilous accusation. They just want to shut her down. If people mirror it, then they've got to come up with a whole bunch of reasons to go into people's houses and confiscate servers; one for each server. Think of the media event; the fbi shuts down several people's servers who mirrored the site and had nothing to do with the theft. The more desperate the actions of my enemy, the apparent his motive really is.
And as for the spelling, yes, I think I like conniving better than kniving. I need to fix my head...
No, not slashdot you moron. People in general; the internet media in general. The governmet knows that if they go after the black box voting people it'll reach a large audience of people. Who'll get the attention first? The crazy conspiracy nuts websites, because that's where the stories will start on this one and be hyperlinked and muckraked from. You can ignore the daily demoralization of our country on every major news site through the death of our soldiers and the making them out to be torturing assclowns. But when someone says "our voting system is being screwed with, here's a book full of proof the goverment just tried to shut down", that's a bit different.
And yes, we do have a gestapo; the FBI and CIA, although it isn't on soviet levels as of yet. Frankly, let the FBI come, I'll invite em' in and serve them some nice natural hot coco or coffie, have a talk where they get absolutely no information from me except the fact that I'm just a really really nice guy who gets angry sometimes and spews junk on the internet, as well as muckraking on occasion for an internet radio station. They'll leave with 3-4 burned CD's of rantradio goodness and when they listen to it themselves, they'll become wogs and begin working for xenu! w00t w00t. You never ever treat the police and fbi without respect, sure many of them are assholes but if every crazy gun nut and conspiracy theorist was an upstanding citizen (many of them are, some of them are crazy in a harmless way) and moreso, didn't mind serving them dinner while they were investigating and talking to them, they'd think we're nice people adn get pissed when they're ordered to shoot or round us up.
Nah, I smell a time when us hackers finally get straight A's in the classroom :D. These pieces of software always have bugs, weither intentional or unintentional. Kids'll cheat, as they always do, cept they'll have to be real smart about it. Remember a typing program where you could hold down the space bar and it'd give you 0 errors, and tons of words per minute.
In any case, why the hell is a computer teaching a human language? I can see it helping to teach math, helping to teach science, and helping to teach social studies, but english can't be taught by a machine. English is learned by reading books and writing inspired writing, a machine can help you check grammar and spelling errors, it can't give you advice on a story through. This is why those of us who rot away on UBB's and do a lot of arguing have excellent spelling and grammar and writing in general (although everyone makes mistakes and has a different style, grammar tends to restrict the style imo).
Oh, you have a policy of not keeping logs? We don't believe you. Mind if we visit your house and confiscate all of your computers and servers? We still need to know if your website is associated with the theft of Diebold documents.
They'll specify "all electronics and papers pertaining to logging", and they'll take everything. The only reason they aren't already gone is because we're here and if they go after em', it'll look aufuly suspicious now won't it? A website exposing the republicans' (the guys who are in power right now) connections to fixing voting machines all of a sudden gets raided by the FBI because the FBI thought they might have logs pertaining to the theft of logs at Diebold, a corporation republicans have a lot of dealings with.
Of course, it won't be spun that way in the mainstream media. No mention will be made to the connection between Diebold and republicans, and Diebold will be spun as a nice corporation that had some critical documents stolen by nefarious kniving hackers. Not to mention the humiliating defeat in california the company had, this'd just begin to really get the ball rolling at the top of the snow hill, so to speak.
Now, if you l33t haxors really want to do something useful, MIRROR THE WEBSITE! Think about it this way; Blackboxvoting.org goes down due to an FBI raid, an organized mirror is available. The main mirroring page has a nice paragraph or two explaining the websites position. The blackboxvoting owner then requests the website be redirected to the mirror site. The news hits mainstream media the day after the raid, whammo, everyone's typing blackboxvoting.org into their web browser and checking the website out, as well as reading their position on the whole thing. I'll leave the rest upto your imagination, but I think people will begin to get even more uneasy knowing congress is screwing around with their right to vote.
Of course, the ensuing media debacle will be, as always, phased out in a blast of confusion, but at least a couple thousand more Americans know their voting system is going down the toilet.
Got Gestapo?
It's kinda wierd, the old countries like the middle east, it's custom for an entire family to live in the same house generation after generation. I had a teacher who's family lived in a house for 800 years. The boon to that system is that the grandparents and great grandparents get to see their kids and educate them about their childhood every day. Tradition stays and sticks.
Then in Europe, there's different expectations. Either you move out when you marry or you move out when you have to financially. Depends on the culture.
Here in america, it's usually you goto school for 18 years, then college and at college either you stay at home or at a dorm. Then, you move into your own place. There are people who are smart enough to move out when they're 18 or 19. Hell, back in the early 1900's it was customary for kids to stay at home until they married.
The only advantage to the american way is freedom from tradition. I kinda think that it's bad that way myself, considering the fact we've got girls who are pregnant as young as 14 or 15 around here.
I certainly hope it won't be used to spy on your harddisk like, say, g-mail...
He bought a Linux distribution for as much money as Windows would have cost. He installed it on his PC. It didn't work as advertised.
He didn't have to buy it ya know. He could've spent some money on a DSL connection or something and downloaded distro's until he was blue in the mouth.
He's got some point's I agree; until linux gets support for lots of hardware it really isn't something you'd want to throw at normal people. As the OS gets more advanced and is marketed to normal people for less money ($30 vs $199 right now) we'll see it evolve into an entirely different beast. But calling the move suicidal is just stupid, especially when the guy doesn't even have his pricing research down right.
Yup, every company can pass on costs to customer when the cost of business increases. This creates demand for a cheaper way of doing business since there's competition, and therefore, society advances, in theory.
Introduce the monopoly, which has no incentive to creat a chepaer way of doing business since there is no competition. You fine MS, they'll jack up the price and spit in our faces. The only reason they get away with it is because they are a monopoly, if they jacked up the prices and they had competition, they'd die. The fine did nothing but increase the taxes on us.
There are no laws saying MS can't jack up their prices, but there are laws saying MS can't be a monopoly.
You have to understand tho, the indian goverment isn't even halfway as ursurped as ours is. You'll notice that our goverment seems to think that if it isn't expensive, it isn't worth spending money on, especially if it isn't run by a buddy of someone in power. Not to mention the fact that Diebold is run by republicans, and there's proof of loss of votes. The only reason they're able to get away with it is, well, our country is falling apart and most of the media is owned by 6 corps, and within 10 years, 1 corp.
If the American people knew what their goverment has done to them, there'd be a civil war no doubt. Infact, as the middle class dissapears I think more and more people will begin asking pesky questions, and our gestapo FBI won't be able to handle it all.
Mod this man up +5 funny. :D