thanks for the historical edjamakashun! I hope with the clarifications my thoughts were still 'clear enough", missing a century or so here and there. mea culpa.
Ok, to continue this, I most certainly recognize it as a problem today, along with benefits - to some. How would you arrange it, in some *ideal* fashion? So far,and my fingers actually hurt from typing this much,I just posted another real loiong reply elsewheres here, I advocate total openeness, that no pure ideas my be hoarded under "law". Now, they are, in various ways. How, if in any way, would you change it from what it is right now? Or would you? Is it better to just let..well, let the lawyers completely take over? Is there an extreme that this will lead to?
couple of topics. One, you have no exact endpoint as to how minute and fine tuned and obscure patents and copyrights may be enforced. In addition, you keep calling an idea a product, that's your choice of words, I still call it an idea. I know our society calls it a product, that's what I think is severely broken. Second and most important, your assertion, or to be more fair, it appears a fear, you gain nothing by sharing. That is an ingrained belief system, that's the part I think that needs to be changed very broadly speaking and very generally speaking by current idea comer uppers with. I've done it, invented a tool that was patentable, I just had some made, sold them immediately,recouped my expenses, made a couple hundred bucks, that's it, a pittance as those sorts of things go,then it was wild, and I know several other people and companies then took the idea and ran with it. And it's because I have received good ideas from people, for gratis, they were shared with me. As far as I know, there's no patent on that tool, but it's been some years now so I can't say that for sure, but I know I just dumped it out there, because I wanted my fellow tool users to HAVE the dang thing to make their jobs easier and better. I've walked my talk before.
Third, and to address it specifically with your example, that I didn't pick but was presented to me,, I think the stock market as it stands now is heinous, it's a congame and more lie than truth and more harm than good. Originally, it was a lot different, I understand how it came about, but now, it's an abortion of a concept. It's the casino.. yes, you would be better off and society would be better off without it, in my opinion. I'd say your theoretical two years would have been wasted to make a system to rip people off better and more efficiently. Doubt me? How dare I? Contemplate a simple change in the laws, to reflect INVESTING over shilling and gambling, here it is. New law passed, the "investor honesty and protection act" of 2003. Stocks may be sold only after being held for a minimum of one year from date of purchase, a time limit that allows a company to actually build a widget, for that "investment" action. Scared? Why, it's an "investment" for the masses of stock purchasers, isn't it? The way it is now, programmed trading and large moves can shill it up in the morning and dump it in the afternoon. Tell me, in exact detail, how acme widgets is supposed to research, develop and market a product between morning and afternoon? You know it's impossible, hence, it's just high brow gambling, snakeoil, scams passing itself as a business. the IPO is one percent of the market, the market most people think of is this daily bushwah of casino shilling ands gambling and technical blinkenlights and everyone using their pet "wave" at each other. It's unneeded in well over 90% of it's incarnation now. All it does is *rearrange wealth*,after first promising the magic beans to people for their cows, it produces nothing with that sort of market and how it's run now, and is the main reason we had the bubble, it was pushed via *greed* and *lies*, telling people that everyone could get something for nothing. I think people and corporations and shillers who are responsible for siphoning off TRILLIONS of dollars from other people are *not very nice* people. Maybe very smart, maybe smooth, maybe powerful, maybe very technically skilled-but not very nice.
Sorry,I respectfully have to disagree, I stand firmly by my original statement, owning ideas is a bad idea,but IMPLEMENTING the ideas to *produce* wealth is totally legitimate. Not rearrange someone elses produced wealth, but to use an idea to create wealth is legit. That is the exact dividing line. I know most people don't agree, so be it, I don't agree with theft by deception and organized extreme buncoism either. Nor usury for that matter, but now I have drifted.
Society benefits by sharing ideas-note, I didn't say transfer wealth around, by seizing someones wealth and giving it to someone else by force of law,we
There was plenty of evidence of nazi atrocities and not nice behavior available to the press before the man of the year fiasco/embarassment. Also what they intended, I mean, let's get real here, the words are there in posterity. Same as there was in the previous Olympics in germany. How much more of a clue of "aryan master race" and whatnot does it take to make a point. You see, MANY top leaders in the western countries outside germany LIKED them and still like now the concept of massive structured command and control type governments, and they don't care if they are so called left wing,right wing, or whatever. Those sorts of schims are carefully constructed to keep the most of folks who wind up being commanded and controlled at odds with each other, instead of turning their notice to the ones actually spewing for the commands. It's an old dodge, but it works so well the ruler types keep using it. It's the concept of an "elite" ruling class that gives orders, something that THEY belong to when you are talking about very large media concerns. It perpetuates to this day. The media in particular has always been as rigorously controlled as they can get away with. They CHOSE to not speak the truth about the nazis early on, because they supported those sorts of viewpoints, in particular then, some were really nazis at heart, others just wanted a nice big fat juicy war, lots of profits to be made in war. The two main purposes of the really big old media houses are to make money, and to perpetuate propaganda for political agendas, which gets around back to making money and getting more control and power. They are equal endeavors. EQUAL. People always deny the propaganda part (mostly anyway, I am really generally speaking in all this of course), when all you have to do is look back and see what was said, and when, then contrast it with what comes out later. They have been 100% consistent in being exposed as liars and manipulators, yet, people still believe them because they never got called on it, they are allowed to continue, year after decade after generation, and they hide behind a corporate front man, and use the excuse of "we must protect the stockholders" and whatnot. These global billionaires who actuall own this big media thing ALSO have a lot of other "stock" in this or that and are on on other "boards". They PROTECT that.
Top levels of government, being composed of these same exact global corporatists, all benefit from this, because they are part of the command structure, no matter which "party" they belong to,again,part of a front effort. Executive, legislative,and judicial, with hardly an exception to the rule. It perpetuates. Some small examples, thee are thousands, these are just a few at random. Just recently this year some judge "ruled"-notice that term 'ruled'?- that news organizations have no law that requires them to report the truth, even when they have access to the truth. The case was FOX news versus one of their contract reporters/employees, a developed story on bovine growth hormone in milk. Oh, another biggee, when the Liberty was bombed and strafed by the Israelis. That story, even though completely known about in government and top levels of media, was just ignored, because it didn't fit some political agenda of the time. it took years and years to come out, way past the time that a timely realease would have altered public opinion differently. The gulf of tonkin "attack", now some person like mc namara can admit it was a lie, but back then, it was reported as "the truth". Many people knew it was a lie at the time, yet the lie was pushed forward,because it fit an agenda.
Back to the nazis. My own uncle, now passed on, was an immigrant from germany before that Time cover deal. To be more fair, he would have stayed in germany, he considered himself a political ex patriate, he vamoosed because it was obvious to anyone there that germany had become quite the obnoxious place to be at, and that it was getting worse pretty fast, so he split. Anmd it wasn't because he was a target per se, h
Re:technology and human nature
on
Copyright Defeats?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Not in the least. Not even close. Build and sell your widgets, make the best widgets you can. Profit from them. Ideas are not widgets, THAT'S the basic difference here.
*Forcing* an idea to be a widget is the feudal model, it is neither capitalistic nor socialistic, except by the *forcing* of it, as it is not a natural widget in nature.
Once you go down the path of make believe that an idea is a tangible, as you can see right this second, then the complexities and exceptions and the entire artificality of the endeavor tends to become a theater of the absurd. And the main reason is-there's no end point to it. None. Zero. Finer and finer and yet finer again nuances of the ideas become tangibles. And those themselves become yet again other sub sets and divisions of tangibles.
I'll throw it right back to the ones who insist ideas are tangibles, where is your EXACT endpoint on how minute they can become before you are sated? At what point of a subtle twist or slight variation does it revert back to an idea? Extrapolate it, carry it beyond today, look back 5 years, then 10, then 20, then 100 years ago how things were. Now turn around, keeping in mind what is happening today, now what will the future, 5,10,20, 100 years from now look like? With these increasing sub divisions and minutiae of ideas being "owned"? What are many of the topics NOW we discuss, the ridiculous patents, the copyright issues? IS there an endpoint, and EXACTLY and SPECIFICALLY what is the end point on increasing the definition of what a thing is as opposed to an idea of a thing? I see nothing that supports any notion that ANYONE is really satisfied with the level we are at now on the idea owning side, they want more, and more, and more. So if it's answerable, when will you- a general collective "you"- have supped enough? When will you be sated?
technology and human nature
on
Copyright Defeats?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Copyrights are an artificial construct. From day one. Yes, the creator made them, he owns them, directly on the media he created the idea on. Yes also, anything copied-outside the original, on some sort of physical media, is a copy of an *idea*. Ideas by their very nature are just that, ideas, what came out of humans brains. Ideas get used, and other humans see them, then use them, modify them, combine them with other ideas. This is HOW humans got to be advanced. Joe caveman builds a knapped flint knife. Joe caveman #2 sees this. If #2 steals #1s knife, that is stealing. If #2 sees the design and the technique, then he can build his own knife, then two humans have a knife, two families now have a means to cut food more effectively, to work skins, carve wood into other useful articles, defend the family cave. This is a *good* idea. Joe#2 has used sticks to poke hole in the ground to drop seeds, but the sticks always splinter and break. he tries just the knife, but his arm is too short to get a good enough swing. he gets another idea, ties the knife on the end of the stick, now he has a hoe, perhaps he grows so much that one first year famine for his family and tribe are averted. The ideas have expanded, everyone benefits. Joe #1 played a tune on an old falling down log, sang a little around the fire, and all was well. Joe #2 copied that idea when he went over to the next valley, perhaps it was an icebreaker for him, to show his worth to strangers perhaps, they liked it. Maybe he was a bachelor, and enchanted a new mate, widening the gene pool. His ideas spread, his DNA got more variables. It worked, the concept of idea sharing caught on.
And so forth, to where we are now
Putting restrictions on the sharing of ideas slows down human progress. It is an artificiality that was introduced in the feudal period of human development and society, it was designed to seperate the "classes" to restrict knowledge and enjoyment and ideas in general from "the royals" and "the commoners". Among all things, the "royals" were known for greed and exploitation. That "owning" the ideas let them enjoy that power, to maintain it, but it stagnated our humaness, and created more problems than it solved. It was...wrong. it was an extension of gluttony and greed. It was abnormal before that time. It's a relatively short time period in our human history that "owning" an idea has been considered normal. We have a term for that part of our history, it was the "dark ages", aptly named.
That concept and society, that aspect of feudalism, was and is a flawed civilization. We can recognize that that fork of humaness had serious flaws by merely looking at the historical record. We should strive to get beyond that, we should go back to our roots as humans who cooperated, voluntarily, for everyones mutual benefit, by sharing ideas, and not by force, but just because it's right, and it works better, the idea of sharing ideas IS the better idea, because it has empirical proof that it worked when we did it.. who really wants a return to feudalism? then why should we strive to one of the more heinous aspects of the feudal gestalt? It is illogical.
Our technology is such now, in extremely recent times, that copies of ideas are practically free,effortless, and the sharing far and wide just as easy. It is THE closest thing to a "replicator" we have. This is an amazing time. Would anyone really complain about a material object replicator? I doubt it, if everyone got to use one. It would be so fantastic the inventor would be feted across the planet. So, this complaining by the royal feudal idea owners about our only true replicator is a demand to stay stuck in that sort of archaic feudalism, the dark ages, the age of incredible greed, and incredible want.. That's all it is once you strip away the rhetoric.
Yes, it will cause some adjustment in our world, so have all other advances with technology. This time you would think we might be smart enough to not look this incredible gift horse in the mouth, to take this "idea replicator" and run with it, see where this renaissance of sharing of ideas can take us. Hopefully we can, if we are as smart and as advanced and as civilised as we insist we are.
can't you pick out what you want to run, then use rpm2html(or whatever that is, rpmfind, maybe both) for the list of what you need, then use just normal ftp download then?
Or am I misunderstanding how that works. Seems like you could pick out all the stuff you want to install and just do it, even with RPMs, or SRPMs.
note: I said you, not me of course, I am a helpless noob still. I got as far as being able to go further than the regular packages and get to apt and using synaptic, that's about as exotic as I've gotten, only a small number of pure source compiles. I only do those when I am really wanting something that isn't available as rpms.
With that said, if you can do it, perhaps make an ISO image of it for others, add in the anaconda installer?
I'm sort of different, I want a regular old joe surfer desktop, one cd image only, redhat based. that should be enough you would think, and still cover a big variety of normal apps.
I wish apple would throw all the millions of the faithful a bone and release al the classic OSs, plus make them open source. I mean, they aren't selling them now. I really wanted to follow the evolution of classic. I am sure there were dozens of reasons for them to switch, but still, plenty 0 good times.
--to put on the "no business, never visit" list, if this passes. I boycott every lame state or large metro area that institutes big brotherr action. Tell me I must be disarmed anyplace, even in my vehicle? No probs, on the boycott list. Tell the citizens they need to be tracked and taxed for travelling? No probs, on the boycott list. I take my constitution serious, this stuff is pure big brother action. There is NO way I would allow one of these devices in my vehicle. I tell you, these various governments will NEVER be satisified until no matter what you do, it's taxed, regulated, and you have no choice but to break some stupid law. It's none of their beeswax WHERE I drive, or HOW MUCH I drive. that's between me and my wallet and my interests, and that's IT. If they want to tax the fuel at the pump, swell,if it gets too high I'll make my own fuel somehow, beyond that, screw em. I am against surveillance cams, random checkpoints, dna samples, all that stuff. And putting a tracker in the vehicle, along with ALL the new cars have blackboxes now? I do NOT think so, screw em. I'll keep driving old cars forever, and I'll move if any place insists on a "tracker" of any type. They can have an odometer reading on title transfer, that's it, and that's fair to the next owner. And if it ever gets THAT bad, all over the nation, I WILL switch to a horse, 100% of the time, I'll scrap my last vehicle. I'll hand paint an anti big bro rant all over it, and abandon it in the middle of some court house lawn some place. Triple screw em.
F***! big brother, he's a perv, a liar, a cheat , a thief,a bungler, and a fool. If people don't learn to say NO, they'll just keep on dumping it on you. Geez, you'd think "geeks, highschool, bullies" would have clicked with the analogy in the adult world. This stuff don't stop until mr bully gets his ass handed to him and you say "no more, not only am I smarter than you, but my physical skills are better too, WHOMP!". MAN this gets to me, I grew up dissing and putting down them "bad" places like nazi germany, then russia and east germany. Now people are sucking up the SAME crap. Sucking it up. It's disgusting. It's EASY to see that governments are pushing the envelope, I mean ridiculous easy. I wouldn't recognize a block of java from a buncha lines of C, but THIS I can read. This is PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING as much as some new lame tax, to get you CONDITIONED to accept more and more restrictions and loss of personal freedoms and the ability to own property. To OWN property, not lease it from the state with their "permission".
Find an old mac tower someplace for cheap. Put in one of the G3 or G4 upgrade cards,also make sure the ram is maxed out, and look for aftermarket generic ram that is compatible and cheaper. Install OSX. There ya go, it will work. If you want exact recommendations as to best possible deals and which make/model of older used machine to look for, perhaps try a post at mac central. Your current PC monitor will work with it, with a very inexpensive adapter ` 10$ or so. I've always used just generic monitors. I am just guessing, but I imagine you can pull this off for as low as 300$, plus the OS disk. Last I looked they had upgrade cards for about 200$, maybe not the top of the line upgrade cards, but something that will be fast enough. As has been pointed out, it's more a RAM deal than the cpu deal, same as generic PCs running any other OS.
I just looked on ebay, cheapest tower was some AV model that is upgradeable to a G3 and is 45$ buy it now. Lots of under 200$ G3s that can be upgraded to G4's. I imagine if you looked at the mac specific used for sale places on the web you can find even better deals. Probably some more advanced mac guys here can steer you to some of them,I'm sort of out of the loop for a long time now. I do remember though that their old PPC server towers, the 9500 or 9600 series, I forget now, one of those, were really nice, plenty of expansion bays and lots of ram slots and card slots. Big guys. That would probably be my first choice on finding a used one, pay a bit more for a manly machine that you can play around with.
Looks like the potential for some serious buck passing here, with everyone pointing fingers--> upstream to the companies, who will then turn around and point this way --> code and sales jocks.
Ya all devgeeks, LOOKOUT! CYA over there in cal, DOCUMENT THE LIVING HECK out of whatever you do know if it involves "cash" and "customer data" downstream anyplace.
lawyers/legislators -gotta love 'em! At least THEY know how to profit in a recession! heh heh heh
Idea! EVERYONE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE get a law degree! Then, CREATE new elected positions, and EVERYONE get elected to something! That'll solve that! No one has to work, we can all sit around and SUE each other,and pass laws against each other, perpetual economic and political motion, woohoo, solved!
no idea. Maybe he goes over to idi amins pad in saudi arabia for drinks and "barbecue". "Hey,Robert, let's have some missionaries and prisoners over for lunch" "good idea,Idi, I'll bring the 'tenderiser'".
There's a guy who updates what's going down in SA and Zimbabwe over to rense.com site once in awhile, he has some good insights, IMO, name of Jan Laprecht. If you search around that site you can find the articles and links to past audio archives. Interesting stuff. There's a woman who does that as well, but her name escapes me at this point.
Just 5 minutes ago I was reading google news latest string of updates there about the strike that has started, your typical beatings, tea gas, a little shooting, etc. We'll see how it goes. Read one last night, people at what's left of the grocery stores are shelling out big boxes of phony zim bongo bucks for a pittance of what food is left. Bogus knowing they used to export huge quantities of food as little as two-three years ago. Their idea of "affirmative action" and "land redistribution" should be a clueski to the forced collectivists. Get rid of dictators, sure, have honest government where ALL the people have some sort of say, sure, but DON'T go nutjob fanatic and wipe out the productive members of your society and economy, that's just serious lame thinking.
It's unfortunate, like with slobovich in serbia, or lately saddam, (or maybe a nation close to anyone most likely, pick one, it probably won't matter) that the police (and usually the military) are always the DEAD LAST groups in dictatorship nation x whatever, to "notice" they are "serving" dictators, and that doing so is a "bad idea" and their nations have turned into cesspools, and usually are swimming in blood as well. So it goes with humans, paychecks, priorities, and governments.
Couldn't it be coded such that pure leechers get cut off in mid download then?
note: no idea what I am talking about, just wondering is all
With that said, it would seem the berries for something like the mandrake subscribers or redhat subscribers, or any other large frequently downloaded package or collection. How about mozfireseabirdmoneky?
I have a friend, lives metro atlanta. I honestly don't think he's paid much at all for phone service now for years. He plays one service off another. He found out you can dicker with them, and they have levels they will go to, so what he does is just work that deregulated system and he switches service providers, snarfs down the freebie sign up bonuses they offer.(this is LD of course I am talking about now) He's got it down to a consumer art form! As he gets to close to the actual "you need to start paying now" point, he just starts his round of calls again, takes that days best "switch to us offer" he can find. It's really funny, but it works!
The heinous and lame government of robert mugabe won't last for 23 more days with the planned total nation wide strike. Hopefully he and his goons will be split out of the nation or perhaps hanging from trees soon. He and his "party" single handedly took a nation that was a net exporter and could feed itself and was on it's way to joining the modern world all the way back to stone age tribalism. Rhodesia/zimbabwe is a prime example of what happens when the political-problem baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. One extreme to a much worse extreme, zero got any 'better'. Contrast it with nearby mozambique, similar political situation at the similar time,they sorted out that racism nonsense, but didn't destroy their economy in the process. I mean, mugabe is even embarrasing to other black african leaders, he's not even just a murdering thieving racist goon, he's a plain old stupid bozo as well. He gives a bad name to the despotic dictator guild!
pretty funny! How about "where the bidder accesses the internet via a dialup modem whereby the data is sent over wires constructed of a copper alloy with a covering of plastic". Then add another patent "over a radio signal as the initial contact". Then they can patent how it is routed. Then approach it from the other guys side of the transaction, and the various combinations, each all unique in some small way. Then add in "using color representatiuons on a screen as opposed to only shades of gray". Then the variations of how much depth the colors have. Then the combination of words and pictures. Then the combinations of words, pictures, and sound. Then the possible combinations of monetary exchange units involved. Then the differences with various layers of "security". Then the differences with timezones. Then the ability to have it in different languages. Then,then,then...
Buy it now for a fixed price is just normal retail structuring. Bidding in various auction formats is just that, bidding. The combination of them isn't unique either, as other businesses have also been doing this for ages. Example, acme widgets has a normal business model, they sell their widgets. One day they decide, after the release of "new and improved" widgets, that they won't be selling their older ones in stock normally, they just want to dump them, so they have an out at the back docks lot-auction. The same docks and the same company are shipping the absolutely fixed price new widgets while the old ones get hauled off from a winning bid of less than a dollar on the old fixed dollar price,whatever that was an to whomever won. There's prior art all over, this entire case and a lot of other of these patent cases are examples of artificially constructed and X-treme governmental and lawyering busy-work, mostly to justify their existence as profitable institutions, mandated by law,and by "force". It's quite beyond ridiculous it appears,it got there a long time ago, and shows no evidence of getting any better in the future.
I think you got it closer to reality. We lost control ages ago with the conflict of interest in congress where lawyers pass laws that enhance their profession, combined with the now contrived "two party" system where two private organizations have hijacked the entire government. Very few judges are not members of one of those two gangs who "share the wealth" on monopoilising government, through coercion and fraud amonth other methods. I mean, c'mon, they decide to only have their candidates in the "national debates", excluding even the candidates of very large third nationally recognized parties.
It's a junta all the way to the top. Once you realise that, all the rest of the discrepancies make sense. It doesn't make them right, it just makes sense then.
The second part is the destruction of jury nullification system, which was designed as one of the more key components in the checks and balances system, that "laws" themselves may be judged by the people. Too many cases out there where people even attempting this were actually threatened by "judges" or actually arrested on contempt charges. At a minimum, any truly informed potential juror will be excluded if either of the lawyers involved detects a hint of decent IQ or knowledge of the system. That is criminal in my book.
The system is broken, it's too far gone to fix without removing 90% (WAG obviously) of the employees involved. They will never give up their extremely lucrative cash and power cow voluntarily. And the obvious bribery that goes on with campaign contributions and lobbying is so blatant as to be laughable.
Short of armed anti-junta counter-coup which has occurred revolution, the best idea is mass shunning, al la the ghandi method. For real, I am completely serious about this. Just like what is about to occur in zimbabwe, a complete shunning and ignoring of the established junta, top to bottom and sideways. If everyone just one day sat down and stopped supporting them,stopped following their dictates and edicts, that's what would do it. Make everyone beforced to make a personal decision, you support the junta, or you do not,this perpetual hanging in the middle hoping it will be fixed or that the next computer controlled election will result in a fix is delusional and I'll go so far as to say cowardly at this point.
Any rookie lawyer has an open season on this one. It is so vague as to be almost useless. Reads more like IT "feelgood" legislation. It is somewhat well intentioned, but way vague. I understand the intent, this is obvious, but those darn pesky details are always the bugger. Encrypted data? That means *any* encryption technique.(note, maybe they have a codofied definition of that, if so, that would change things) A directory name written in pig latin would might fly as an example of that. "eekritsay ustomercay ataday hisawaytay" And notification? Postcard to someone -> "Hey, vern, looks like someone got your stuff, you should have been more careful, donchaknow". And as pointed out, it really would be much cheaper for companies now to not give a care about security, it actually encourages them to *not find out* about breaches. It's a variant of "don't ask, we won't look, so no one has to tell". Of course the counter argument would be like "well, then businesses would face possible loss when customers found out on their own, and the word got around, and etc". Sounds nice, doesn't work / hasn't worked in the real world so far though.
I don't see this radically changing things though, I expect that most companies will continue more or less like they are now. Possible exception might be some really large companies would have to individually notify all their licensed users with any security related bug shows up, because once THEY have been notified of an exploit that has been used,not just proposed theoretically but used, it would *seem* to mandate they must notify their thousands or millions of customers, per the description of who is doing business inside the state. Technically anything discovered in house applies, realistically, perhaps some shredding might happen if it looks like a bad breech occurred, cyber shredding and paper shredding, as a more cost effective solution. Or just a canned response, "we have discovered a minor security breech, our crack team of professionals have fixed the problem" whatnot. who knoweth....
Probably take several examples before case law sorts this out, or it might be challenged and dropped on the first case as too vague and unenforceable.
Probably that is all not that accurate of a statement. People don't like microsoft that much because microsoft does things to OTHER companies and to peoples computers that are extremely annoying, and in several cases now, illegal. And they just..keep... doing it, they refuse to stop or get a clue. Purposelly coding their stuff so it breaks third parties stuff, etc, etc. Strong arming companies with carrot/stick action to only use their OS, or they'll kill them by releasing it to other hardware companies much cheaper, and so on and so forth. Ignoring bugs for months or years, whatever. Taking security as job #9765, and putting profits over better quality, using marketing instead of coding to sell software. Just bogus business ethics that go beyond the normal "create a decent product, release it, make it better, no lying or shenaningans", which is a much better business model. It's their ethics above even their quality that causes concern. If they hadn't done all that stuff, there wouldn't be near the acrimony. You can do business in our society, but it's considered uncool to be a lying weasel predator. When other companies get caught at something similar, they get noticed and put down as well. They don't get any get out of jail free card just "because". They deserve all the dissin they got and still get, because they started it frankly. It was their choice, people asked them not to, they told the world to F off, they were going to do whatever they wanted to, because they were/still are strong enough to get away with it.. So screw them, thankewverymuch, they suck, that's why they sucked in the past, and why they will continue to suck in the future, because they are unrepentent and recidivist felons. The corporate officers deserve JAIL TIME, not just fines, sitting in club fed..
Early on in the raids on japan, they determined that fire was the perfect weapon against concentrated japanese cities, because of all the wood and paper construction. Before they had "the bomb" perfected, one of the techniques they were contemplating was attaching small incinderary(sp?) devices to bats, of all things. The scheme was to release the bats over a wide area, they would fly down and immediate try to hide up under eaves, etc in buildings, then the devices would go off and start a fire. I think it was attempted once or twice but was never much of a success. The japanese had a variant they used against the US, but it was simpler, cheap high altitude weather baloons modified to carry devices, they floated them over the US from far away, hoping to cause massive forest fires. Sort of real slow stealth ICBB-type action. That was only marginally sucessful for them, a few fires started.
Another weird one-I think they perfected it and it's a secret now, and most likely there have been human experiments-was they had dogs wired so the handlers could "steer" them remotely. I remember seeing an army newsreel on this one. They attached explosives to the dogs, then aimed them down the battlefield, and the plan was to use them to take out tanks, machine gun emplacements, other bunkers, etc. Kamikaze dogs. I have forgotten now the exact details, but they used radios and the dogs brains or whatever were wired up. That was pretty spooky, because they were doing this in the 50s when I saw the piece. No telling how far they've gotten since then with that initial research.
oh ya, 20 k is impossible for me too, I always got to wait untill I get stuff like vehicles used. maybe 5 to 10 years from now there might be enough hybrids or fuel cell whatevers out there so anyone can grab one. for the time being, well, just got to shop smart. I missed an opportunity to get a rabbit pickup diesel used (and cheap) in good running shape. I saw one, had the cash,decided not then, went home. Couple days later to myself I go --> "you fool! Suppose fuel gets to 3 or 5 clams a gallon or something?? that's a cool ride then, plus it's a tiny truck you can haul stuff in! what's not to like???" so I drove back to the place, a carlot, the owner had a change of heart, too, and decided to make it his parts runner.45 to 60 MPG is nothing to sneeze at. He had already had it painted with his lot logos, etc. Rats! anyway... For 20k I could get a car, truck, bike, a boat, an RV,a mountain bike, inline skates, and still have cash for a downpayment on some really cheap property. Joe cheapskate frugal poor guy here. Used is *where it's AT* for us'ns around here....
And wherever you are, THANKS rich guys for buying those new peecees so I can get one cheap now, used.
Now, hurry up and get rid of them 21 inch monitors, mkay??
not sure around where you are, but around here, 20 grand for a new vehicle, car or pickup, is pretty normal. I know some guys have dropped that on just a bassboat they might use a dozen times a year. It just depends on what is important to people. Anyway, they seem to sell a lot of new cars for serious big bucks, I mean, that's where all the used cars and trucks come from, heh. Just perhaps if they were actually *there* to look at and purchase on the lots, more of them would be sold.
For an example, I know from previous slashdot articles and other places, that the GM EV1 vehicle was really a success, and most of the owners really wanted to keep them, but GM is making them turn them in at lease end and then is smashing them. they issued various reasons, but down to the nitty gritty, the owners LIKED them and used them for the purpose they leased them for, a normal commuter car, and for that purpose they seemed to work quite well.
I think there's something to do the entrenched monopolies just paying lip service to the alternatives, both in transportation and in electricity production. They appear to be "trying", but they always postpone actual large scale releases, perhaps they don't want to lose profits with the older techniques somehow. I can't really say, but it appears that way to me. The hondas and toyota hybrids sure seem to be selling well, though. It's like any other product, if you wait for this "perfect" gadget, you'll never have one. Remember computers 20 years ago? Thank God enough people bought them so that now we can have cheaper better ones. I distinctly remember all sorts of people telling me they (personal PCs) would never work, too expensive, blah blah blah, aw phooie,short sighted pompous luddites. Sure, the original ones were slow, choices limited, programs limited, but once people actually started buying them and using them, WHAM, it got way cool pretty fast, and just shows signs of always getting better. Same with any other commercial products. Nothing right now is perfect, but there's enough out there right now you CAN get all sorts of alternative transportation and you CAN produce your own electrical power. I run on solar, and I know if I had the cash I can drive around 80 miles away and purchase a hybrid honda or toyota. Once it hits the point that every dealer has some,sitting right on the lots, in different body styles, and with truck or suv options, that you'll see them just take off. People like new stuff, and when they go to buy something new, they just might pick one of the new technologies. If they are a hassle to find, nope, people won't even know they are there, and fall prey to a lot of FUD that they don't exist or aren't practical yet. Well, compared to what will most likely be available 20 years from now, no, nothing sold right now, conventional or alternative, is "practical" but really, we have to get the show on the road sometime, and *now* is a good time. And hey, our economy could stand a good kick in the pants and jumpstart entire new industries, as in "a million more cool jobs would be nice now". The early adopters, just like the earlier computer adopters,or television adopters (my folks had the very first TV in our whole area, BTW,it was way cool, I remember it, neat stuff at the time) get the benefits of use.
wind plants, they have discovered, if made the correct size and importantly, to the correct height, are right now just at the same costs as conventional plants. I did a quick google and found this
and I know there's more out there with better breakdowns of cost, efficiency, etc. There's also a lot of work being done on solar thermal > electricty, using heliostats or the solar trough methods, and efficient heat transfer media and conventional boilers/generators/turbines then.
Also, and exciting to me anyway, the recent breakthroughs with various algae that give off hydrogen gas, that can be scaled from as small as single family home sized up to whatever you want.
I don't think there is right now or fort the near future any single "one" type of alternative energy that will totally replace the conventionals, but the variety that is avaialable now, and the different ways to do it, are most encouraging, and really just need more interest, adoption, use and further R & D from those efforts. I'd have to look, but I believe I have read, IIRC, that last year, that more new wind generators (watts to watts) were introduced world wide than any other source of electrical generation. I think it's kinda neat. I have a small wind charger, but haven't installed it yet, waiting until after we move, the owners here where I live and work don't want me to put up a tower, although we all are cruising on solar PV right now. After we move, that baby is going up! I really like the PV, and having the wind addition will immensely help out in the winter, when we get less sun but a lot more wind. That is usually the most common alternative hybrid system you will see alternative energy enthusiasts running in most most places, it works out pretty well, you just really need a detailed site survey to see which of all the alternatives are best for your location. Ideally, I would like microhydropower, perhaps that will be possible.
I'm running a PP200 with redhat 7.2, with all the critical updates now. It was sort of slow until I beefed up the ram, now it's fine. Using mozilla 1.3b as a browser. I tried RH8.0 but it just didn't work all that well,and I didn't like the design, so I went back to this version. I've also had win 95, 98, and NT4 on this machine, I'd have to say I much prefer the linux OS, although you do have a point with 95, is was OK running, and certainly small, but very limited, especially with a default install, compared to a more modern OS.
With that said, I know bunches of people still running 95 or 98 on older machines, they really have yet to come up with any major reason to upgrade, because those machines fit the bill for them. For other people, of course, their personal business needs or hobby needs demand a much newer machine with more power, etc, but millions of people just need/want a basic computer with internet capability. I always tell people to just max their ram out before they spend mega bucks on something new, see if under 100$ makes more sense for them than 500 to 1000$. It's amazing, but many don't do that, they get sucked in by marketing hype that they "need" an expensive total upgrade and they don't get educated on how critical RAM is. I just missed an opportunity for a friend of mine, he had a perfectly adequate for him box that developed some sort of hardware glitch, but it was out of warranty by then. Well, he didn't ask me first, went and bought an expensive new machine, so he's telling me about it complaining of the unnecesary cost. All he does is web surfing, email, listen to some tunes with winamp, a little home office stuff, no mega weather modeling or advanced hollywood video editing, and he's not a gamer at all. I told him "you know, you could have gotten just a nice new pretty decent motherboard/cpu for 100-150$ and replaced the one you had, and reused everything else that was still working". He was floored, he didn't realise you could do that fairly easily. Saving 5 or 6 hundred dollars for the exchange of one hours work to swap everything around is a nice chunk of change for some people, they just don't know it's possible or relatively easy to do, or cheap if you have some hired person/whitebox shop do it for you. Now he knows. Oh well.
... I think there's a huge, verifiable example that disputes your point, and sort of proves mine. Russia. Russia was on a centralised system that used a graduated tax, they switched a few years ago to a flat tax, and now their economy is finally struggling out of the doldrums again. I cannot recall even reading one article that praised the older system and advocated them switching back to it. I am forgetting the rate right now but I believe it's 13%, but don't quote me. Just about every big economist who's written on it says it's a success, along with a lot of the "man in the street" interviews I have read. I am sure you can find a lot of data on this with a normal google news and web search.
The graduated income tax, with it's millions of obscure little exceptions and whatnot, is a freaking disaster in this nation. You simply MUST have seen those examples where they have a competition, using good accountants and tax lawyers and even IRS employees, they give them a set of theoretical data to work from, none of them arrive at the same tax figures. That's a failure, that's an economic segfault. It's designed just wrong, it's too big, too complicated, too stupid, too expensive, wastes millions of man hours a year in unnecessary busy work. Millions and millions of unnecessary man hours of work. I'll tell you an anecdotal situation,an example of how flawed it is, relevant to my family. I have a family member who for 6 months had TWO different IRS offices insisting they "owed" this sum of money. BOTH the offices where threatening arrest, confiscation, etc. BOTH the offices had totally different figures. NEITHER office would talk to the other office, not even with in person visits to both offices, which caused lost work and expense, hauling all the paperwork to stick in their faces. they refused to even talk to each other, but both offices were 'correct" and were threatening. What would you do? This is an example state sponsored TERRORISM if you ask me, or is being threatened with arrest and bankruptcy, etc considered a "good thing" now? Eventually, FINALLY, with expensive lawyers that were never needed in the first place, the two offices decided to communicate with each other and stop the harassment, and what was "owed" turned out to be a lot less than both those bureaucratic bufoonery attempts claimed in the first place. And this is not an isolated case, every congressional investigation into the IRS has resulted in tip of the iceberg scandals and inefficiency and outright criminality on their parts. I remember seeing when they had to have some of their own employees have disgusies so they could testify before congress and not suffer retribution. I'd call that a failure, not a success. With a flat tax, or a VAT, or a return to more import/export excise taxes, anything else but this montrosity that is the graduated tax, with it's millions of lines of obscure code,this would never had happened. Nor would it happen with millions of other people, nor would 9/10ths of their tax bureaucracy be needed, we could eleiminate a large and costly segment out of government, quite easily.
Please to google for articles on russias success they are enjoying now since switching over to a flat tax, you might find it interesting. I understand the original rationale behind the graduated income tax, I ALSO now when it was first implemented that something like 98% of the population still paid zero federal taxes directly. It's grown over the years and generations to a complete bloated...piece of crap. It's broken, that tax kernel is a disaster, it needs to be chucked out, something else a lot simpler and fairer over all put in. And government needs to stay inside a budget, having peoples grandchildren that aren't even born yet having a "debt" they owe from past bungling, inefficiency, etc, by the government is just INSANE, and it's criminal, it just is. It's just plain old fashioned *wrong*.
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thanks for the historical edjamakashun! I hope with the clarifications my thoughts were still 'clear enough", missing a century or so here and there. mea culpa.
Ok, to continue this, I most certainly recognize it as a problem today, along with benefits - to some. How would you arrange it, in some *ideal* fashion? So far,and my fingers actually hurt from typing this much,I just posted another real loiong reply elsewheres here, I advocate total openeness, that no pure ideas my be hoarded under "law". Now, they are, in various ways. How, if in any way, would you change it from what it is right now? Or would you? Is it better to just let..well, let the lawyers completely take over? Is there an extreme that this will lead to?
couple of topics. One, you have no exact endpoint as to how minute and fine tuned and obscure patents and copyrights may be enforced. In addition, you keep calling an idea a product, that's your choice of words, I still call it an idea. I know our society calls it a product, that's what I think is severely broken. Second and most important, your assertion, or to be more fair, it appears a fear, you gain nothing by sharing. That is an ingrained belief system, that's the part I think that needs to be changed very broadly speaking and very generally speaking by current idea comer uppers with. I've done it, invented a tool that was patentable, I just had some made, sold them immediately,recouped my expenses, made a couple hundred bucks, that's it, a pittance as those sorts of things go,then it was wild, and I know several other people and companies then took the idea and ran with it. And it's because I have received good ideas from people, for gratis, they were shared with me. As far as I know, there's no patent on that tool, but it's been some years now so I can't say that for sure, but I know I just dumped it out there, because I wanted my fellow tool users to HAVE the dang thing to make their jobs easier and better. I've walked my talk before.
Third, and to address it specifically with your example, that I didn't pick but was presented to me,, I think the stock market as it stands now is heinous, it's a congame and more lie than truth and more harm than good. Originally, it was a lot different, I understand how it came about, but now, it's an abortion of a concept. It's the casino.. yes, you would be better off and society would be better off without it, in my opinion. I'd say your theoretical two years would have been wasted to make a system to rip people off better and more efficiently. Doubt me? How dare I? Contemplate a simple change in the laws, to reflect INVESTING over shilling and gambling, here it is. New law passed, the "investor honesty and protection act" of 2003. Stocks may be sold only after being held for a minimum of one year from date of purchase, a time limit that allows a company to actually build a widget, for that "investment" action. Scared?
Why, it's an "investment" for the masses of stock purchasers, isn't it? The way it is now, programmed trading and large moves can shill it up in the morning and dump it in the afternoon. Tell me, in exact detail, how acme widgets is supposed to research, develop and market a product between morning and afternoon? You know it's impossible, hence, it's just high brow gambling, snakeoil, scams passing itself as a business. the IPO is one percent of the market, the market most people think of is this daily bushwah of casino shilling ands gambling and technical blinkenlights and everyone using their pet "wave" at each other. It's unneeded in well over 90% of it's incarnation now. All it does is *rearrange wealth*,after first promising the magic beans to people for their cows, it produces nothing with that sort of market and how it's run now, and is the main reason we had the bubble, it was pushed via *greed* and *lies*, telling people that everyone could get something for nothing. I think people and corporations and shillers who are responsible for siphoning off TRILLIONS of dollars from other people are *not very nice* people. Maybe very smart, maybe smooth, maybe powerful, maybe very technically skilled-but not very nice.
Sorry,I respectfully have to disagree, I stand firmly by my original statement, owning ideas is a bad idea,but IMPLEMENTING the ideas to *produce* wealth is totally legitimate. Not rearrange someone elses produced wealth, but to use an idea to create wealth is legit. That is the exact dividing line. I know most people don't agree, so be it, I don't agree with theft by deception and organized extreme buncoism either. Nor usury for that matter, but now I have drifted.
Society benefits by sharing ideas-note, I didn't say transfer wealth around, by seizing someones wealth and giving it to someone else by force of law,we
There was plenty of evidence of nazi atrocities and not nice behavior available to the press before the man of the year fiasco/embarassment. Also what they intended, I mean, let's get real here, the words are there in posterity. Same as there was in the previous Olympics in germany. How much more of a clue of "aryan master race" and whatnot does it take to make a point. You see, MANY top leaders in the western countries outside germany LIKED them and still like now the concept of massive structured command and control type governments, and they don't care if they are so called left wing,right wing, or whatever. Those sorts of schims are carefully constructed to keep the most of folks who wind up being commanded and controlled at odds with each other, instead of turning their notice to the ones actually spewing for the commands. It's an old dodge, but it works so well the ruler types keep using it. It's the concept of an "elite" ruling class that gives orders, something that THEY belong to when you are talking about very large media concerns. It perpetuates to this day. The media in particular has always been as rigorously controlled as they can get away with. They CHOSE to not speak the truth about the nazis early on, because they supported those sorts of viewpoints, in particular then, some were really nazis at heart, others just wanted a nice big fat juicy war, lots of profits to be made in war. The two main purposes of the really big old media houses are to make money, and to perpetuate propaganda for political agendas, which gets around back to making money and getting more control and power. They are equal endeavors. EQUAL. People always deny the propaganda part (mostly anyway, I am really generally speaking in all this of course), when all you have to do is look back and see what was said, and when, then contrast it with what comes out later. They have been 100% consistent in being exposed as liars and manipulators, yet, people still believe them because they never got called on it, they are allowed to continue, year after decade after generation, and they hide behind a corporate front man, and use the excuse of "we must protect the stockholders" and whatnot. These global billionaires who actuall own this big media thing ALSO have a lot of other "stock" in this or that and are on on other "boards". They PROTECT that.
Top levels of government, being composed of these same exact global corporatists, all benefit from this, because they are part of the command structure, no matter which "party" they belong to,again,part of a front effort. Executive, legislative,and judicial, with hardly an exception to the rule. It perpetuates. Some small examples, thee are thousands, these are just a few at random. Just recently this year some judge "ruled"-notice that term 'ruled'?- that news organizations have no law that requires them to report the truth, even when they have access to the truth. The case was FOX news versus one of their contract reporters/employees, a developed story on bovine growth hormone in milk. Oh, another biggee, when the Liberty was bombed and strafed by the Israelis. That story, even though completely known about in government and top levels of media, was just ignored, because it didn't fit some political agenda of the time. it took years and years to come out, way past the time that a timely realease would have altered public opinion differently. The gulf of tonkin "attack", now some person like mc namara can admit it was a lie, but back then, it was reported as "the truth". Many people knew it was a lie at the time, yet the lie was pushed forward,because it fit an agenda.
Back to the nazis. My own uncle, now passed on, was an immigrant from germany before that Time cover deal. To be more fair, he would have stayed in germany, he considered himself a political ex patriate, he vamoosed because it was obvious to anyone there that germany had become quite the obnoxious place to be at, and that it was getting worse pretty fast, so he split. Anmd it wasn't because he was a target per se, h
Not in the least. Not even close. Build and sell your widgets, make the best widgets you can. Profit from them. Ideas are not widgets, THAT'S the basic difference here.
*Forcing* an idea to be a widget is the feudal model, it is neither capitalistic nor socialistic, except by the *forcing* of it, as it is not a natural widget in nature.
Once you go down the path of make believe that an idea is a tangible, as you can see right this second, then the complexities and exceptions and the entire artificality of the endeavor tends to become a theater of the absurd. And the main reason is-there's no end point to it. None. Zero. Finer and finer and yet finer again nuances of the ideas become tangibles. And those themselves become yet again other sub sets and divisions of tangibles.
I'll throw it right back to the ones who insist ideas are tangibles, where is your EXACT endpoint on how minute they can become before you are sated? At what point of a subtle twist or slight variation does it revert back to an idea? Extrapolate it, carry it beyond today, look back 5 years, then 10, then 20, then 100 years ago how things were. Now turn around, keeping in mind what is happening today, now what will the future, 5,10,20, 100 years from now look like? With these increasing sub divisions and minutiae of ideas being "owned"? What are many of the topics NOW we discuss, the ridiculous patents, the copyright issues? IS there an endpoint, and EXACTLY and SPECIFICALLY what is the end point on increasing the definition of what a thing is as opposed to an idea of a thing? I see nothing that supports any notion that ANYONE is really satisfied with the level we are at now on the idea owning side, they want more, and more, and more. So if it's answerable, when will you- a general collective "you"- have supped enough? When will you be sated?
Copyrights are an artificial construct. From day one. Yes, the creator made them, he owns them, directly on the media he created the idea on. Yes also, anything copied-outside the original, on some sort of physical media, is a copy of an *idea*. Ideas by their very nature are just that, ideas, what came out of humans brains. Ideas get used, and other humans see them, then use them, modify them, combine them with other ideas. This is HOW humans got to be advanced. Joe caveman builds a knapped flint knife. Joe caveman #2 sees this. If #2 steals #1s knife, that is stealing. If #2 sees the design and the technique, then he can build his own knife, then two humans have a knife, two families now have a means to cut food more effectively, to work skins, carve wood into other useful articles, defend the family cave. This is a *good* idea. Joe#2 has used sticks to poke hole in the ground to drop seeds, but the sticks always splinter and break. he tries just the knife, but his arm is too short to get a good enough swing. he gets another idea, ties the knife on the end of the stick, now he has a hoe, perhaps he grows so much that one first year famine for his family and tribe are averted. The ideas have expanded, everyone benefits. Joe #1 played a tune on an old falling down log, sang a little around the fire, and all was well. Joe #2 copied that idea when he went over to the next valley, perhaps it was an icebreaker for him, to show his worth to strangers perhaps, they liked it. Maybe he was a bachelor, and enchanted a new mate, widening the gene pool. His ideas spread, his DNA got more variables. It worked, the concept of idea sharing caught on.
And so forth, to where we are now
Putting restrictions on the sharing of ideas slows down human progress. It is an artificiality that was introduced in the feudal period of human development and society, it was designed to seperate the "classes" to restrict knowledge and enjoyment and ideas in general from "the royals" and "the commoners". Among all things, the "royals" were known for greed and exploitation. That "owning" the ideas let them enjoy that power, to maintain it, but it stagnated our humaness, and created more problems than it solved. It was...wrong. it was an extension of gluttony and greed. It was abnormal before that time. It's a relatively short time period in our human history that "owning" an idea has been considered normal. We have a term for that part of our history, it was the "dark ages", aptly named.
That concept and society, that aspect of feudalism, was and is a flawed civilization. We can recognize that that fork of humaness had serious flaws by merely looking at the historical record. We should strive to get beyond that, we should go back to our roots as humans who cooperated, voluntarily, for everyones mutual benefit, by sharing ideas, and not by force, but just because it's right, and it works better, the idea of sharing ideas IS the better idea, because it has empirical proof that it worked when we did it.. who really wants a return to feudalism? then why should we strive to one of the more heinous aspects of the feudal gestalt? It is illogical.
Our technology is such now, in extremely recent times, that copies of ideas are practically free,effortless, and the sharing far and wide just as easy. It is THE closest thing to a "replicator" we have. This is an amazing time. Would anyone really complain about a material object replicator? I doubt it, if everyone got to use one. It would be so fantastic the inventor would be feted across the planet. So, this complaining by the royal feudal idea owners about our only true replicator is a demand to stay stuck in that sort of archaic feudalism, the dark ages, the age of incredible greed, and incredible want.. That's all it is once you strip away the rhetoric.
Yes, it will cause some adjustment in our world, so have all other advances with technology. This time you would think we might be smart enough to not look this incredible gift horse in the mouth, to take this "idea replicator" and run with it, see where this renaissance of sharing of ideas can take us. Hopefully we can, if we are as smart and as advanced and as civilised as we insist we are.
can't you pick out what you want to run, then use rpm2html(or whatever that is, rpmfind, maybe both) for the list of what you need, then use just normal ftp download then?
Or am I misunderstanding how that works. Seems like you could pick out all the stuff you want to install and just do it, even with RPMs, or SRPMs.
note: I said you, not me of course, I am a helpless noob still. I got as far as being able to go further than the regular packages and get to apt and using synaptic, that's about as exotic as I've gotten, only a small number of pure source compiles. I only do those when I am really wanting something that isn't available as rpms.
With that said, if you can do it, perhaps make an ISO image of it for others, add in the anaconda installer?
I'm sort of different, I want a regular old joe surfer desktop, one cd image only, redhat based. that should be enough you would think, and still cover a big variety of normal apps.
I wish apple would throw all the millions of the faithful a bone and release al the classic OSs, plus make them open source. I mean, they aren't selling them now. I really wanted to follow the evolution of classic. I am sure there were dozens of reasons for them to switch, but still, plenty 0 good times.
--to put on the "no business, never visit" list, if this passes. I boycott every lame state or large metro area that institutes big brotherr action. Tell me I must be disarmed anyplace, even in my vehicle? No probs, on the boycott list. Tell the citizens they need to be tracked and taxed for travelling? No probs, on the boycott list. I take my constitution serious, this stuff is pure big brother action. There is NO way I would allow one of these devices in my vehicle. I tell you, these various governments will NEVER be satisified until no matter what you do, it's taxed, regulated, and you have no choice but to break some stupid law. It's none of their beeswax WHERE I drive, or HOW MUCH I drive. that's between me and my wallet and my interests, and that's IT. If they want to tax the fuel at the pump, swell,if it gets too high I'll make my own fuel somehow, beyond that, screw em. I am against surveillance cams, random checkpoints, dna samples, all that stuff. And putting a tracker in the vehicle, along with ALL the new cars have blackboxes now? I do NOT think so, screw em. I'll keep driving old cars forever, and I'll move if any place insists on a "tracker" of any type. They can have an odometer reading on title transfer, that's it, and that's fair to the next owner. And if it ever gets THAT bad, all over the nation, I WILL switch to a horse, 100% of the time, I'll scrap my last vehicle. I'll hand paint an anti big bro rant all over it, and abandon it in the middle of some court house lawn some place. Triple screw em.
F***! big brother, he's a perv, a liar, a cheat , a thief,a bungler, and a fool. If people don't learn to say NO, they'll just keep on dumping it on you. Geez, you'd think "geeks, highschool, bullies" would have clicked with the analogy in the adult world. This stuff don't stop until mr bully gets his ass handed to him and you say "no more, not only am I smarter than you, but my physical skills are better too, WHOMP!". MAN this gets to me, I grew up dissing and putting down them "bad" places like nazi germany, then russia and east germany. Now people are sucking up the SAME crap. Sucking it up. It's disgusting. It's EASY to see that governments are pushing the envelope, I mean ridiculous easy. I wouldn't recognize a block of java from a buncha lines of C, but THIS I can read. This is PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING as much as some new lame tax, to get you CONDITIONED to accept more and more restrictions and loss of personal freedoms and the ability to own property. To OWN property, not lease it from the state with their "permission".
Find an old mac tower someplace for cheap. Put in one of the G3 or G4 upgrade cards,also make sure the ram is maxed out, and look for aftermarket generic ram that is compatible and cheaper. Install OSX. There ya go, it will work. If you want exact recommendations as to best possible deals and which make/model of older used machine to look for, perhaps try a post at mac central. Your current PC monitor will work with it, with a very inexpensive adapter ` 10$ or so. I've always used just generic monitors. I am just guessing, but I imagine you can pull this off for as low as 300$, plus the OS disk. Last I looked they had upgrade cards for about 200$, maybe not the top of the line upgrade cards, but something that will be fast enough. As has been pointed out, it's more a RAM deal than the cpu deal, same as generic PCs running any other OS.
I just looked on ebay, cheapest tower was some AV model that is upgradeable to a G3 and is 45$ buy it now. Lots of under 200$ G3s that can be upgraded to G4's. I imagine if you looked at the mac specific used for sale places on the web you can find even better deals. Probably some more advanced mac guys here can steer you to some of them,I'm sort of out of the loop for a long time now. I do remember though that their old PPC server towers, the 9500 or 9600 series, I forget now, one of those, were really nice, plenty of expansion bays and lots of ram slots and card slots. Big guys. That would probably be my first choice on finding a used one, pay a bit more for a manly machine that you can play around with.
Looks like the potential for some serious buck passing here, with everyone pointing fingers--> upstream to the companies, who will then turn around and point this way --> code and sales jocks.
Ya all devgeeks, LOOKOUT! CYA over there in cal, DOCUMENT THE LIVING HECK out of whatever you do know if it involves "cash" and "customer data" downstream anyplace.
lawyers/legislators -gotta love 'em! At least THEY know how to profit in a recession! heh heh heh
Idea! EVERYONE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE get a law degree! Then, CREATE new elected positions, and EVERYONE get elected to something! That'll solve that! No one has to work, we can all sit around and SUE each other,and pass laws against each other, perpetual economic and political motion, woohoo, solved!
no idea. Maybe he goes over to idi amins pad in saudi arabia for drinks and "barbecue". "Hey,Robert, let's have some missionaries and prisoners over for lunch" "good idea,Idi, I'll bring the 'tenderiser'".
There's a guy who updates what's going down in SA and Zimbabwe over to rense.com site once in awhile, he has some good insights, IMO, name of Jan Laprecht. If you search around that site you can find the articles and links to past audio archives. Interesting stuff. There's a woman who does that as well, but her name escapes me at this point.
Just 5 minutes ago I was reading google news latest string of updates there about the strike that has started, your typical beatings, tea gas, a little shooting, etc. We'll see how it goes. Read one last night, people at what's left of the grocery stores are shelling out big boxes of phony zim bongo bucks for a pittance of what food is left. Bogus knowing they used to export huge quantities of food as little as two-three years ago. Their idea of "affirmative action" and "land redistribution" should be a clueski to the forced collectivists. Get rid of dictators, sure, have honest government where ALL the people have some sort of say, sure, but DON'T go nutjob fanatic and wipe out the productive members of your society and economy, that's just serious lame thinking.
It's unfortunate, like with slobovich in serbia, or lately saddam, (or maybe a nation close to anyone most likely, pick one, it probably won't matter) that the police (and usually the military) are always the DEAD LAST groups in dictatorship nation x whatever, to "notice" they are "serving" dictators, and that doing so is a "bad idea" and their nations have turned into cesspools, and usually are swimming in blood as well. So it goes with humans, paychecks, priorities, and governments.
Couldn't it be coded such that pure leechers get cut off in mid download then?
note: no idea what I am talking about, just wondering is all
With that said, it would seem the berries for something like the mandrake subscribers or redhat subscribers, or any other large frequently downloaded package or collection. How about mozfireseabirdmoneky?
I have a friend, lives metro atlanta. I honestly don't think he's paid much at all for phone service now for years. He plays one service off another. He found out you can dicker with them, and they have levels they will go to, so what he does is just work that deregulated system and he switches service providers, snarfs down the freebie sign up bonuses they offer.(this is LD of course I am talking about now) He's got it down to a consumer art form! As he gets to close to the actual "you need to start paying now" point, he just starts his round of calls again, takes that days best "switch to us offer" he can find. It's really funny, but it works!
The heinous and lame government of robert mugabe won't last for 23 more days with the planned total nation wide strike. Hopefully he and his goons will be split out of the nation or perhaps hanging from trees soon. He and his "party" single handedly took a nation that was a net exporter and could feed itself and was on it's way to joining the modern world all the way back to stone age tribalism. Rhodesia/zimbabwe is a prime example of what happens when the political-problem baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. One extreme to a much worse extreme, zero got any 'better'. Contrast it with nearby mozambique, similar political situation at the similar time,they sorted out that racism nonsense, but didn't destroy their economy in the process. I mean, mugabe is even embarrasing to other black african leaders, he's not even just a murdering thieving racist goon, he's a plain old stupid bozo as well. He gives a bad name to the despotic dictator guild!
%^)
pretty funny! How about "where the bidder accesses the internet via a dialup modem whereby the data is sent over wires constructed of a copper alloy with a covering of plastic". Then add another patent "over a radio signal as the initial contact". Then they can patent how it is routed. Then approach it from the other guys side of the transaction, and the various combinations, each all unique in some small way. Then add in "using color representatiuons on a screen as opposed to only shades of gray". Then the variations of how much depth the colors have. Then the combination of words and pictures. Then the combinations of words, pictures, and sound. Then the possible combinations of monetary exchange units involved. Then the differences with various layers of "security". Then the differences with timezones. Then the ability to have it in different languages. Then,then,then...
Buy it now for a fixed price is just normal retail structuring. Bidding in various auction formats is just that, bidding. The combination of them isn't unique either, as other businesses have also been doing this for ages. Example, acme widgets has a normal business model, they sell their widgets. One day they decide, after the release of "new and improved" widgets, that they won't be selling their older ones in stock normally, they just want to dump them, so they have an out at the back docks lot-auction. The same docks and the same company are shipping the absolutely fixed price new widgets while the old ones get hauled off from a winning bid of less than a dollar on the old fixed dollar price,whatever that was an to whomever won. There's prior art all over, this entire case and a lot of other of these patent cases are examples of artificially constructed and X-treme governmental and lawyering busy-work, mostly to justify their existence as profitable institutions, mandated by law,and by "force". It's quite beyond ridiculous it appears,it got there a long time ago, and shows no evidence of getting any better in the future.
I think you got it closer to reality. We lost control ages ago with the conflict of interest in congress where lawyers pass laws that enhance their profession, combined with the now contrived "two party" system where two private organizations have hijacked the entire government. Very few judges are not members of one of those two gangs who "share the wealth" on monopoilising government, through coercion and fraud amonth other methods. I mean, c'mon, they decide to only have their candidates in the "national debates", excluding even the candidates of very large third nationally recognized parties.
It's a junta all the way to the top. Once you realise that, all the rest of the discrepancies make sense. It doesn't make them right, it just makes sense then.
The second part is the destruction of jury nullification system, which was designed as one of the more key components in the checks and balances system, that "laws" themselves may be judged by the people. Too many cases out there where people even attempting this were actually threatened by "judges" or actually arrested on contempt charges. At a minimum, any truly informed potential juror will be excluded if either of the lawyers involved detects a hint of decent IQ or knowledge of the system. That is criminal in my book.
The system is broken, it's too far gone to fix without removing 90% (WAG obviously) of the employees involved. They will never give up their extremely lucrative cash and power cow voluntarily. And the obvious bribery that goes on with campaign contributions and lobbying is so blatant as to be laughable.
Short of armed anti-junta counter-coup which has occurred revolution, the best idea is mass shunning, al la the ghandi method. For real, I am completely serious about this. Just like what is about to occur in zimbabwe, a complete shunning and ignoring of the established junta, top to bottom and sideways. If everyone just one day sat down and stopped supporting them,stopped following their dictates and edicts, that's what would do it. Make everyone beforced to make a personal decision, you support the junta, or you do not,this perpetual hanging in the middle hoping it will be fixed or that the next computer controlled election will result in a fix is delusional and I'll go so far as to say cowardly at this point.
Any rookie lawyer has an open season on this one. It is so vague as to be almost useless. Reads more like IT "feelgood" legislation. It is somewhat well intentioned, but way vague. I understand the intent, this is obvious, but those darn pesky details are always the bugger. Encrypted data? That means *any* encryption technique.(note, maybe they have a codofied definition of that, if so, that would change things) A directory name written in pig latin would might fly as an example of that. "eekritsay ustomercay ataday hisawaytay" And notification? Postcard to someone -> "Hey, vern, looks like someone got your stuff, you should have been more careful, donchaknow". And as pointed out, it really would be much cheaper for companies now to not give a care about security, it actually encourages them to *not find out* about breaches. It's a variant of "don't ask, we won't look, so no one has to tell". Of course the counter argument would be like "well, then businesses would face possible loss when customers found out on their own, and the word got around, and etc". Sounds nice, doesn't work / hasn't worked in the real world so far though.
I don't see this radically changing things though, I expect that most companies will continue more or less like they are now. Possible exception might be some really large companies would have to individually notify all their licensed users with any security related bug shows up, because once THEY have been notified of an exploit that has been used,not just proposed theoretically but used, it would *seem* to mandate they must notify their thousands or millions of customers, per the description of who is doing business inside the state. Technically anything discovered in house applies, realistically, perhaps some shredding might happen if it looks like a bad breech occurred, cyber shredding and paper shredding, as a more cost effective solution. Or just a canned response, "we have discovered a minor security breech, our crack team of professionals have fixed the problem" whatnot. who knoweth....
Probably take several examples before case law sorts this out, or it might be challenged and dropped on the first case as too vague and unenforceable.
Probably that is all not that accurate of a statement. People don't like microsoft that much because microsoft does things to OTHER companies and to peoples computers that are extremely annoying, and in several cases now, illegal. And they just..keep... doing it, they refuse to stop or get a clue. Purposelly coding their stuff so it breaks third parties stuff, etc, etc. Strong arming companies with carrot/stick action to only use their OS, or they'll kill them by releasing it to other hardware companies much cheaper, and so on and so forth. Ignoring bugs for months or years, whatever. Taking security as job #9765, and putting profits over better quality, using marketing instead of coding to sell software. Just bogus business ethics that go beyond the normal "create a decent product, release it, make it better, no lying or shenaningans", which is a much better business model. It's their ethics above even their quality that causes concern. If they hadn't done all that stuff, there wouldn't be near the acrimony. You can do business in our society, but it's considered uncool to be a lying weasel predator. When other companies get caught at something similar, they get noticed and put down as well. They don't get any get out of jail free card just "because". They deserve all the dissin they got and still get, because they started it frankly. It was their choice, people asked them not to, they told the world to F off, they were going to do whatever they wanted to, because they were/still are strong enough to get away with it.. So screw them, thankewverymuch, they suck, that's why they sucked in the past, and why they will continue to suck in the future, because they are unrepentent and recidivist felons. The corporate officers deserve JAIL TIME, not just fines, sitting in club fed..
there ya go
Early on in the raids on japan, they determined that fire was the perfect weapon against concentrated japanese cities, because of all the wood and paper construction. Before they had "the bomb" perfected, one of the techniques they were contemplating was attaching small incinderary(sp?) devices to bats, of all things. The scheme was to release the bats over a wide area, they would fly down and immediate try to hide up under eaves, etc in buildings, then the devices would go off and start a fire. I think it was attempted once or twice but was never much of a success. The japanese had a variant they used against the US, but it was simpler, cheap high altitude weather baloons modified to carry devices, they floated them over the US from far away, hoping to cause massive forest fires. Sort of real slow stealth ICBB-type action. That was only marginally sucessful for them, a few fires started.
Another weird one-I think they perfected it and it's a secret now, and most likely there have been human experiments-was they had dogs wired so the handlers could "steer" them remotely. I remember seeing an army newsreel on this one. They attached explosives to the dogs, then aimed them down the battlefield, and the plan was to use them to take out tanks, machine gun emplacements, other bunkers, etc. Kamikaze dogs. I have forgotten now the exact details, but they used radios and the dogs brains or whatever were wired up. That was pretty spooky, because they were doing this in the 50s when I saw the piece. No telling how far they've gotten since then with that initial research.
oh ya, 20 k is impossible for me too, I always got to wait untill I get stuff like vehicles used. maybe 5 to 10 years from now there might be enough hybrids or fuel cell whatevers out there so anyone can grab one. for the time being, well, just got to shop smart. I missed an opportunity to get a rabbit pickup diesel used (and cheap) in good running shape. I saw one, had the cash,decided not then, went home. Couple days later to myself I go --> "you fool! Suppose fuel gets to 3 or 5 clams a gallon or something?? that's a cool ride then, plus it's a tiny truck you can haul stuff in! what's not to like???" so I drove back to the place, a carlot, the owner had a change of heart, too, and decided to make it his parts runner.45 to 60 MPG is nothing to sneeze at. He had already had it painted with his lot logos, etc. Rats! anyway... For 20k I could get a car, truck, bike, a boat, an RV,a mountain bike, inline skates, and still have cash for a downpayment on some really cheap property. Joe cheapskate frugal poor guy here. Used is *where it's AT* for us'ns around here....
And wherever you are, THANKS rich guys for buying those new peecees so I can get one cheap now, used.
Now, hurry up and get rid of them 21 inch monitors, mkay??
%^)
not sure around where you are, but around here, 20 grand for a new vehicle, car or pickup, is pretty normal. I know some guys have dropped that on just a bassboat they might use a dozen times a year. It just depends on what is important to people. Anyway, they seem to sell a lot of new cars for serious big bucks, I mean, that's where all the used cars and trucks come from, heh. Just perhaps if they were actually *there* to look at and purchase on the lots, more of them would be sold.
For an example, I know from previous slashdot articles and other places, that the GM EV1 vehicle was really a success, and most of the owners really wanted to keep them, but GM is making them turn them in at lease end and then is smashing them. they issued various reasons, but down to the nitty gritty, the owners LIKED them and used them for the purpose they leased them for, a normal commuter car, and for that purpose they seemed to work quite well.
I think there's something to do the entrenched monopolies just paying lip service to the alternatives, both in transportation and in electricity production. They appear to be "trying", but they always postpone actual large scale releases, perhaps they don't want to lose profits with the older techniques somehow. I can't really say, but it appears that way to me. The hondas and toyota hybrids sure seem to be selling well, though. It's like any other product, if you wait for this "perfect" gadget, you'll never have one. Remember computers 20 years ago? Thank God enough people bought them so that now we can have cheaper better ones. I distinctly remember all sorts of people telling me they (personal PCs) would never work, too expensive, blah blah blah, aw phooie,short sighted pompous luddites. Sure, the original ones were slow, choices limited, programs limited, but once people actually started buying them and using them, WHAM, it got way cool pretty fast, and just shows signs of always getting better. Same with any other commercial products. Nothing right now is perfect, but there's enough out there right now you CAN get all sorts of alternative transportation and you CAN produce your own electrical power. I run on solar, and I know if I had the cash I can drive around 80 miles away and purchase a hybrid honda or toyota. Once it hits the point that every dealer has some,sitting right on the lots, in different body styles, and with truck or suv options, that you'll see them just take off. People like new stuff, and when they go to buy something new, they just might pick one of the new technologies. If they are a hassle to find, nope, people won't even know they are there, and fall prey to a lot of FUD that they don't exist or aren't practical yet. Well, compared to what will most likely be available 20 years from now, no, nothing sold right now, conventional or alternative, is "practical" but really, we have to get the show on the road sometime, and *now* is a good time. And hey, our economy could stand a good kick in the pants and jumpstart entire new industries, as in "a million more cool jobs would be nice now". The early adopters, just like the earlier computer adopters,or television adopters (my folks had the very first TV in our whole area, BTW,it was way cool, I remember it, neat stuff at the time) get the benefits of use.
wind plants, they have discovered, if made the correct size and importantly, to the correct height, are right now just at the same costs as conventional plants. I did a quick google and found this
0 3/ 05/19/daily14.html
http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/20
and I know there's more out there with better breakdowns of cost, efficiency, etc. There's also a lot of work being done on solar thermal > electricty, using heliostats or the solar trough methods, and efficient heat transfer media and conventional boilers/generators/turbines then.
Also, and exciting to me anyway, the recent breakthroughs with various algae that give off hydrogen gas, that can be scaled from as small as single family home sized up to whatever you want.
I don't think there is right now or fort the near future any single "one" type of alternative energy that will totally replace the conventionals, but the variety that is avaialable now, and the different ways to do it, are most encouraging, and really just need more interest, adoption, use and further R & D from those efforts. I'd have to look, but I believe I have read, IIRC, that last year, that more new wind generators (watts to watts) were introduced world wide than any other source of electrical generation. I think it's kinda neat. I have a small wind charger, but haven't installed it yet, waiting until after we move, the owners here where I live and work don't want me to put up a tower, although we all are cruising on solar PV right now. After we move, that baby is going up! I really like the PV, and having the wind addition will immensely help out in the winter, when we get less sun but a lot more wind. That is usually the most common alternative hybrid system you will see alternative energy enthusiasts running in most most places, it works out pretty well, you just really need a detailed site survey to see which of all the alternatives are best for your location. Ideally, I would like microhydropower, perhaps that will be possible.
I'm running a PP200 with redhat 7.2, with all the critical updates now. It was sort of slow until I beefed up the ram, now it's fine. Using mozilla 1.3b as a browser. I tried RH8.0 but it just didn't work all that well,and I didn't like the design, so I went back to this version. I've also had win 95, 98, and NT4 on this machine, I'd have to say I much prefer the linux OS, although you do have a point with 95, is was OK running, and certainly small, but very limited, especially with a default install, compared to a more modern OS.
With that said, I know bunches of people still running 95 or 98 on older machines, they really have yet to come up with any major reason to upgrade, because those machines fit the bill for them. For other people, of course, their personal business needs or hobby needs demand a much newer machine with more power, etc, but millions of people just need/want a basic computer with internet capability. I always tell people to just max their ram out before they spend mega bucks on something new, see if under 100$ makes more sense for them than 500 to 1000$. It's amazing, but many don't do that, they get sucked in by marketing hype that they "need" an expensive total upgrade and they don't get educated on how critical RAM is. I just missed an opportunity for a friend of mine, he had a perfectly adequate for him box that developed some sort of hardware glitch, but it was out of warranty by then. Well, he didn't ask me first, went and bought an expensive new machine, so he's telling me about it complaining of the unnecesary cost. All he does is web surfing, email, listen to some tunes with winamp, a little home office stuff, no mega weather modeling or advanced hollywood video editing, and he's not a gamer at all. I told him "you know, you could have gotten just a nice new pretty decent motherboard/cpu for 100-150$ and replaced the one you had, and reused everything else that was still working". He was floored, he didn't realise you could do that fairly easily. Saving 5 or 6 hundred dollars for the exchange of one hours work to swap everything around is a nice chunk of change for some people, they just don't know it's possible or relatively easy to do, or cheap if you have some hired person/whitebox shop do it for you. Now he knows. Oh well.
... I think there's a huge, verifiable example that disputes your point, and sort of proves mine. Russia. Russia was on a centralised system that used a graduated tax, they switched a few years ago to a flat tax, and now their economy is finally struggling out of the doldrums again. I cannot recall even reading one article that praised the older system and advocated them switching back to it. I am forgetting the rate right now but I believe it's 13%, but don't quote me. Just about every big economist who's written on it says it's a success, along with a lot of the "man in the street" interviews I have read. I am sure you can find a lot of data on this with a normal google news and web search.
...piece of crap. It's broken, that tax kernel is a disaster, it needs to be chucked out, something else a lot simpler and fairer over all put in. And government needs to stay inside a budget, having peoples grandchildren that aren't even born yet having a "debt" they owe from past bungling, inefficiency, etc, by the government is just INSANE, and it's criminal, it just is. It's just plain old fashioned *wrong*.
The graduated income tax, with it's millions of obscure little exceptions and whatnot, is a freaking disaster in this nation. You simply MUST have seen those examples where they have a competition, using good accountants and tax lawyers and even IRS employees, they give them a set of theoretical data to work from, none of them arrive at the same tax figures. That's a failure, that's an economic segfault. It's designed just wrong, it's too big, too complicated, too stupid, too expensive, wastes millions of man hours a year in unnecessary busy work. Millions and millions of unnecessary man hours of work. I'll tell you an anecdotal situation,an example of how flawed it is, relevant to my family. I have a family member who for 6 months had TWO different IRS offices insisting they "owed" this sum of money. BOTH the offices where threatening arrest, confiscation, etc. BOTH the offices had totally different figures. NEITHER office would talk to the other office, not even with in person visits to both offices, which caused lost work and expense, hauling all the paperwork to stick in their faces. they refused to even talk to each other, but both offices were 'correct" and were threatening. What would you do? This is an example state sponsored TERRORISM if you ask me, or is being threatened with arrest and bankruptcy, etc considered a "good thing" now? Eventually, FINALLY, with expensive lawyers that were never needed in the first place, the two offices decided to communicate with each other and stop the harassment, and what was "owed" turned out to be a lot less than both those bureaucratic bufoonery attempts claimed in the first place. And this is not an isolated case, every congressional investigation into the IRS has resulted in tip of the iceberg scandals and inefficiency and outright criminality on their parts. I remember seeing when they had to have some of their own employees have disgusies so they could testify before congress and not suffer retribution. I'd call that a failure, not a success. With a flat tax, or a VAT, or a return to more import/export excise taxes, anything else but this montrosity that is the graduated tax, with it's millions of lines of obscure code,this would never had happened. Nor would it happen with millions of other people, nor would 9/10ths of their tax bureaucracy be needed, we could eleiminate a large and costly segment out of government, quite easily.
Please to google for articles on russias success they are enjoying now since switching over to a flat tax, you might find it interesting. I understand the original rationale behind the graduated income tax, I ALSO now when it was first implemented that something like 98% of the population still paid zero federal taxes directly. It's grown over the years and generations to a complete bloated