Not to mention that Mexico was largely controlled by Spaniards or their descendants. It would be like the Han complaining if Russians colonised Tibet and kicked them out.
... had absolutely nothing to do with starting this "backlash". Why do we even care what the average Chinese citizen thinks about this issue? They have no power, and would be arrested if they tried anything like the Paris protests.
The whole point of the protests is to embarrass the oligarchs, not to get the Chinese people to pay attention.
Linux won't be "ready for the masses" until it either sneaks onto peoples systems without them noticing and runs all their old programs. Or is sold as the first choice OS with a lot of grey boxes.
Ordinary people do not care about the OS. Ordinary people don't even know what an OS is. Ordinary people do not install their OS.
As far as I am concerned Linux has been "ready for the masses" for about the past five years (at least Mandrake Linux was). That was the time it got automagic systems the equivalent of Windows, and the only thing stopping it being as good as Windows was poor driver support. Poor driver support won't be solved until Linux starts to be seriously adopted by the masses.
If you seriously want to increase Linux adoption rates then look to business. They are the only ones who really pay for MS software.
If that is the case then the constitution should be changed, or amended, using the legal process to do so. The ability to change the constitution was put in precisely for this reason. Government does not get to skip due process simply because it is convenient.
Australian law makers aren't entirely beholden to corporate interests. So we have legal avenues to pursue against anti-competitive practices before they allow a company to become a monopoly.
Oh and btw, I wouldn't be suprised if eBay and PayPal had enough of a market share to be declared monopolies. I don't even know the name of another generalist online auction service, or online payment service.
Why is the creationism debate on Slashdot always posed as "Idiots who think God magiced the Earth into existence last tuesday*" vs "Reasonable people"? Outside the American South there are plenty of Christians whose belief as to the origins of life is compatible with the current science. I'm Christian and I believe Evolution is perfectly compatible, as do most other mainstream denominations. If God controls a complex system like the weather, then why would He have a problem with bringing about life through the mechanisms of the universe He created?
* And dicked around with the fossil record/geology etc because God is apparently the original troll. If these people are right I hope they get rickrolled after entering the pearly gates.
Isn't the whole point of a corporation to shield the controlling members from responsibility for the actions of the corporation? At the very least it is to shield them from the financial responsibilities of their poor decisions, so shielding them from other responsibilities is a logical extension.
Why? You think China and others wouldn't be starting massive conventional wars if the West didn't have nukes? A few nuked cities now and then is much preferable to another non-nuclear world war.
But if you haven't noticed computers aren't getting faster like they used to. They are getting the ability to do more in parallel. The question is if ray tracing scales to parallel processing as well as current methods do.
Then punish people for their actions, not for things that could lead to those actions.
Re:NOT the same old entrenched politics
on
Has Ron Paul Quit?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Or he actually realised that the world isn't black and white, despite what most liberals seem to think. There are times when things like waterboarding (which is NOT TORTURE, you can spin it however you want but it's not) are necessary. It's amazing how many 'smart' people are really so stupid.
So would you voluntarily undergo water torture to prove this point? Would you be happy with other countries using it against your spies and soldiers?
I don't see how something that tricks a persons brain into thinking they are drowning could not be called torture. Torture is not equal to causing physical damage.
Real encyclopedia's pay people for content, if you want free content you better not annoy the people that write it. Personally I enjoy all the weird facts and trivia you used to find on wikipedia, I like pop culture. If I want a bunch of elitists dictating what information is citable I will pay for content written by people who are actual experts, and not just non-lifers who can admin wikipedia all day.
Bomb design is trivial these days. Most of the information is easily available, and one modern computer has far more power then the systems used to design most current US weapons (most of which are 60's/70's tech). Iran doesn't need a three stage hydrogen bomb that can fit in a suit case, even low yield "fat man" style bombs would radically alter the balance of power in the region.
The hard bit is the massive infrastructure needed to get weapons grade fissionable's.
The ban on exporting computer hardware to certain countries is retarded when average consumer electronics have more power then the super computers of a few decades past.
MMO: Game Owners Create money and distribute to players at a fixed rate.
Real Life: Federal Reserve creates money and distributes it by buying government debt which pays interest.
What do you mean fixed rate? ISK (EvE's currency) just doesn't appear in your eve-mail. You have several ways of earning, only one of which (killing NPC's) generates new money. And there are taxes on nearly every thing to make sure that the increase in new money is in scale with new players. But different trends can majorly effect the amount of NPCing that people do (eg mission rewards get nerfed or increased, difficulty gets changed).
MMO: Game Owners tax citizens in Non-MMO money
Real Life: Government taxes citizens in order to repay federal reserve and decrease inflation for goods and services that they need in their government function (otherwise they'd just borrow even more money from the fed). Wrong, most MMO's have taxes and money sinks. EvE has a lot of them because it has a nearly 100% player run economy.
MMO: No Lending/Credit
Real Life: Almost all economic activity is tied indirectly to lending and/or credit in one form or another.
That is only because most people are not the elite cream of society who can be fully economically self-sufficient, unlike EvE pod pilots (you can honestly go build a space station out in deep space and never need to interact with an NPC ever again). The economy of EvE favours the small guy building himself up, it is easy to get the initial capital to be a trader. But there have been several large business ventures that depended on IPO's, and player to player lending and credit is fairly common (but "unseen").
MMO: No banks with fractional reserve lending ability
Real Life: Fractional reserve lending multiplies the money supply 10x and creates debtor/lender relationships that structure economic activity Nope, because there are no real policemen in EvE. There is no real way to force an individual debtor to pay, or persecute a bank CEO that runs off with the money. Such things happen person to person.
If you where a real Warhammer fan you would know that skaven are supposed to be so secretive that most people don't believe in them. The frequency of armies fighting on the table top has nothing to do with the frequency of those battles occurring in the background fluff (eg most battles would be between humans and orcs). Skaven openly attacking a city is some what less frequent then a full scale Chaos invasion.
Play EvE for over six months and say there is no grind. The only way to make money is to either be incredibly skilled, incredibly lucky, or grind your little heart out. At least in warcraft if all you want to do is PVP then you have to touch very little PVE content (and semi-decent gear is easier to get in PVP), but in EvE if you die you lose your ship and everything on it. Which means you either have to be so good you die very little, or spend significant amounts of time grinding to buy new ships. I played in high end PVP corps and we spent the majority of our time doing PVE content so that we could afford to PVP. EvE is a game of logistics, not of tactics and strategy.
That's pretty much the conclusion I draw. The main fun in EVE is player based emergent conflict (but CCP do run NPC's to start some conflicts).
However the problem with EVE is that because of its focus on player conflict (economic as well as martial) it becomes a second job. To do any of this "high level" content you will need to put in 5+ evenings a week, and the core of your group will be no-lifers playing 10+ hours a day (I did this for a year and a half). There are very few safety nets in EVE, so if you don't show up to protect your star systems or stations you will lose them. And it will get written up in the forums and everyone will know how you failed (the forum and communities in EVE are very strong).
There is also the added bonus that occasionally, no matter what your occupation in eve, a group of old players will come crush you for the fun of it. Have fun fighting off a fleet of thirty battleships while you are flying a frigate. This is exactly the player based emergent behaviour the article writer wanted. He should go play EVE. Most other people seem to be happy playing WoW, where you only need to sacrifice three nights a week to raid high end content, and your achievements are safe from hostile players.
The simple fact is that the vast majority of wikipedia articles are written by a tiny handful of people. So I hardly think it is indicative of the thoughts of even industrialized nations, let alone humanity as a whole. Forums and blogs give a much better idea what a fairly large portion of industrialized peoples are thinking.
I hardly think a great portion of humanity is concerned with the intricacies of Star Trek or Pokemon, or the other geeky culture that predominates on wikipedia.
YouTube enforcing copyright is only useless to you. Many people go there with the primary intent of watching vlogs or other user created content. And you are a complete idiot if you thought that YouTube could get away with not removing infringing material eventually. I am sure Google aren't such complete idiots that they didn't consider that such material would be removed (and are likely negotiating to get such material back legally).
Seriously is the only reason that people go to YouTube about viewing copyrighted material? Thats why I first went, but now I mostly watch the user created content. I actually think what makes YouTube popular is not all the copyrighted material (though it does increase popularity), because normally the format is only good for small clips or cartoons (most of the non-user content I have watched was Robot Chicken). If you really want to watch movies and TV series in decent quality you will use traditional P2P methods to obtain them.
So I don't actually think that YouTube cracking down harder on people who post copyright material will matter. They have been removing any copyrighted materials reported to them for a long time. This is not a new thing.
If YouTube is popular only because of the copyright material it will die, otherwise there won't be much of a change. Personally I think it is popular because of the community it has encouraged and help build, and the free content that community creates.
By that logic if I create a product that sells better than my competitors I am guilty of stealing. How dare I deprive someone of the expectation for being compensated for their product, by producing something people would rather buy.
If I don't pay the barber who cuts my hair, then I have directly taken his time. But if someone creates a song for the general public and I don't buy it (whether I infringe his copyright, just listen to the radio instead of buying albums or don't listen to it at all), I am not directly taking their time.
I buy most of my copyrighted works, but every time I see an idiotic anti-"piracy" campaign (which really is the equivalent of calling not tipping, "rape"), I get closer to the point where I will stop paying for such material. Using inflamatory language does undermine the message of your campaign.
...., it leads to far to much confusion between copyright, trademarks and patents. Which are only similar in that they are designed to protect and grant rights over, intangible ideas. Personally I think that this confusion is the very reason businesses use the term "Intellectual Property" so much. Im sure they would love to be able to copyright things which are currently under the patent system (this is why software patents are bad, as software is already copyrighted), and enjoy that near century of government mandated monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
Any web coder with half a brain knows how to prevent "deep linking".
Not to mention that Mexico was largely controlled by Spaniards or their descendants. It would be like the Han complaining if Russians colonised Tibet and kicked them out.
... had absolutely nothing to do with starting this "backlash". Why do we even care what the average Chinese citizen thinks about this issue? They have no power, and would be arrested if they tried anything like the Paris protests.
The whole point of the protests is to embarrass the oligarchs, not to get the Chinese people to pay attention.
Linux won't be "ready for the masses" until it either sneaks onto peoples systems without them noticing and runs all their old programs. Or is sold as the first choice OS with a lot of grey boxes.
Ordinary people do not care about the OS. Ordinary people don't even know what an OS is. Ordinary people do not install their OS.
As far as I am concerned Linux has been "ready for the masses" for about the past five years (at least Mandrake Linux was). That was the time it got automagic systems the equivalent of Windows, and the only thing stopping it being as good as Windows was poor driver support. Poor driver support won't be solved until Linux starts to be seriously adopted by the masses.
If you seriously want to increase Linux adoption rates then look to business. They are the only ones who really pay for MS software.
If that is the case then the constitution should be changed, or amended, using the legal process to do so. The ability to change the constitution was put in precisely for this reason. Government does not get to skip due process simply because it is convenient.
Australian law makers aren't entirely beholden to corporate interests. So we have legal avenues to pursue against anti-competitive practices before they allow a company to become a monopoly.
Oh and btw, I wouldn't be suprised if eBay and PayPal had enough of a market share to be declared monopolies. I don't even know the name of another generalist online auction service, or online payment service.
Why is the creationism debate on Slashdot always posed as "Idiots who think God magiced the Earth into existence last tuesday*" vs "Reasonable people"? Outside the American South there are plenty of Christians whose belief as to the origins of life is compatible with the current science. I'm Christian and I believe Evolution is perfectly compatible, as do most other mainstream denominations. If God controls a complex system like the weather, then why would He have a problem with bringing about life through the mechanisms of the universe He created?
* And dicked around with the fossil record/geology etc because God is apparently the original troll. If these people are right I hope they get rickrolled after entering the pearly gates.
*Whoosh* The OP's point was that an opt out of advertising website can't make money through ads.
Isn't the whole point of a corporation to shield the controlling members from responsibility for the actions of the corporation? At the very least it is to shield them from the financial responsibilities of their poor decisions, so shielding them from other responsibilities is a logical extension.
Why? You think China and others wouldn't be starting massive conventional wars if the West didn't have nukes? A few nuked cities now and then is much preferable to another non-nuclear world war.
But if you haven't noticed computers aren't getting faster like they used to. They are getting the ability to do more in parallel. The question is if ray tracing scales to parallel processing as well as current methods do.
Then punish people for their actions, not for things that could lead to those actions.
So would you voluntarily undergo water torture to prove this point? Would you be happy with other countries using it against your spies and soldiers?
I don't see how something that tricks a persons brain into thinking they are drowning could not be called torture. Torture is not equal to causing physical damage.
Real encyclopedia's pay people for content, if you want free content you better not annoy the people that write it. Personally I enjoy all the weird facts and trivia you used to find on wikipedia, I like pop culture. If I want a bunch of elitists dictating what information is citable I will pay for content written by people who are actual experts, and not just non-lifers who can admin wikipedia all day.
Bomb design is trivial these days. Most of the information is easily available, and one modern computer has far more power then the systems used to design most current US weapons (most of which are 60's/70's tech). Iran doesn't need a three stage hydrogen bomb that can fit in a suit case, even low yield "fat man" style bombs would radically alter the balance of power in the region.
The hard bit is the massive infrastructure needed to get weapons grade fissionable's.
The ban on exporting computer hardware to certain countries is retarded when average consumer electronics have more power then the super computers of a few decades past.
You can fly from one end of the continent to the other. But you need to load when ever you visit another continent, outland or enter a dungeon.
Real Life: Federal Reserve creates money and distributes it by buying government debt which pays interest.
What do you mean fixed rate? ISK (EvE's currency) just doesn't appear in your eve-mail. You have several ways of earning, only one of which (killing NPC's) generates new money. And there are taxes on nearly every thing to make sure that the increase in new money is in scale with new players. But different trends can majorly effect the amount of NPCing that people do (eg mission rewards get nerfed or increased, difficulty gets changed).
MMO: Game Owners tax citizens in Non-MMO money
Real Life: Government taxes citizens in order to repay federal reserve and decrease inflation for goods and services that they need in their government function (otherwise they'd just borrow even more money from the fed).
Wrong, most MMO's have taxes and money sinks. EvE has a lot of them because it has a nearly 100% player run economy. MMO: No Lending/Credit
Real Life: Almost all economic activity is tied indirectly to lending and/or credit in one form or another.
That is only because most people are not the elite cream of society who can be fully economically self-sufficient, unlike EvE pod pilots (you can honestly go build a space station out in deep space and never need to interact with an NPC ever again). The economy of EvE favours the small guy building himself up, it is easy to get the initial capital to be a trader. But there have been several large business ventures that depended on IPO's, and player to player lending and credit is fairly common (but "unseen"). MMO: No banks with fractional reserve lending ability
Real Life: Fractional reserve lending multiplies the money supply 10x and creates debtor/lender relationships that structure economic activity
Nope, because there are no real policemen in EvE. There is no real way to force an individual debtor to pay, or persecute a bank CEO that runs off with the money. Such things happen person to person.
If you where a real Warhammer fan you would know that skaven are supposed to be so secretive that most people don't believe in them. The frequency of armies fighting on the table top has nothing to do with the frequency of those battles occurring in the background fluff (eg most battles would be between humans and orcs). Skaven openly attacking a city is some what less frequent then a full scale Chaos invasion.
Play EvE for over six months and say there is no grind. The only way to make money is to either be incredibly skilled, incredibly lucky, or grind your little heart out. At least in warcraft if all you want to do is PVP then you have to touch very little PVE content (and semi-decent gear is easier to get in PVP), but in EvE if you die you lose your ship and everything on it. Which means you either have to be so good you die very little, or spend significant amounts of time grinding to buy new ships. I played in high end PVP corps and we spent the majority of our time doing PVE content so that we could afford to PVP. EvE is a game of logistics, not of tactics and strategy.
That's pretty much the conclusion I draw. The main fun in EVE is player based emergent conflict (but CCP do run NPC's to start some conflicts).
However the problem with EVE is that because of its focus on player conflict (economic as well as martial) it becomes a second job. To do any of this "high level" content you will need to put in 5+ evenings a week, and the core of your group will be no-lifers playing 10+ hours a day (I did this for a year and a half). There are very few safety nets in EVE, so if you don't show up to protect your star systems or stations you will lose them. And it will get written up in the forums and everyone will know how you failed (the forum and communities in EVE are very strong).
There is also the added bonus that occasionally, no matter what your occupation in eve, a group of old players will come crush you for the fun of it. Have fun fighting off a fleet of thirty battleships while you are flying a frigate. This is exactly the player based emergent behaviour the article writer wanted. He should go play EVE. Most other people seem to be happy playing WoW, where you only need to sacrifice three nights a week to raid high end content, and your achievements are safe from hostile players.
The simple fact is that the vast majority of wikipedia articles are written by a tiny handful of people. So I hardly think it is indicative of the thoughts of even industrialized nations, let alone humanity as a whole. Forums and blogs give a much better idea what a fairly large portion of industrialized peoples are thinking.
I hardly think a great portion of humanity is concerned with the intricacies of Star Trek or Pokemon, or the other geeky culture that predominates on wikipedia.
YouTube enforcing copyright is only useless to you. Many people go there with the primary intent of watching vlogs or other user created content. And you are a complete idiot if you thought that YouTube could get away with not removing infringing material eventually. I am sure Google aren't such complete idiots that they didn't consider that such material would be removed (and are likely negotiating to get such material back legally).
Seriously is the only reason that people go to YouTube about viewing copyrighted material? Thats why I first went, but now I mostly watch the user created content. I actually think what makes YouTube popular is not all the copyrighted material (though it does increase popularity), because normally the format is only good for small clips or cartoons (most of the non-user content I have watched was Robot Chicken). If you really want to watch movies and TV series in decent quality you will use traditional P2P methods to obtain them.
So I don't actually think that YouTube cracking down harder on people who post copyright material will matter. They have been removing any copyrighted materials reported to them for a long time. This is not a new thing.
If YouTube is popular only because of the copyright material it will die, otherwise there won't be much of a change. Personally I think it is popular because of the community it has encouraged and help build, and the free content that community creates.
By that logic if I create a product that sells better than my competitors I am guilty of stealing. How dare I deprive someone of the expectation for being compensated for their product, by producing something people would rather buy.
If I don't pay the barber who cuts my hair, then I have directly taken his time. But if someone creates a song for the general public and I don't buy it (whether I infringe his copyright, just listen to the radio instead of buying albums or don't listen to it at all), I am not directly taking their time.
I buy most of my copyrighted works, but every time I see an idiotic anti-"piracy" campaign (which really is the equivalent of calling not tipping, "rape"), I get closer to the point where I will stop paying for such material. Using inflamatory language does undermine the message of your campaign.
...., it leads to far to much confusion between copyright, trademarks and patents. Which are only similar in that they are designed to protect and grant rights over, intangible ideas. Personally I think that this confusion is the very reason businesses use the term "Intellectual Property" so much. Im sure they would love to be able to copyright things which are currently under the patent system (this is why software patents are bad, as software is already copyrighted), and enjoy that near century of government mandated monopoly.