With no conceivable way to find another $1.1 trillion/year in the federal budget, and the example of Tennessee who nearly bankrupted the state government with a public health care handout that wasn't anywhere near universal.
Then how can most european contries afford it, if US can not? Sure, we have higher taxes, but not *that* much higher.
Maybe a combination. Retinal scan + fingerprint (several fingers) scan + spoken passphrase using voice recognition.
Should be reasonably secure, unless someone steal the whole data package and figure out a way to feed it to the analyzing devices. Would also make for fun watching sessions at beginning of work days when everyone logs in.
"Put your thumbs on these plates, look into the camera and say "Redmond Rules"".:)
Also, you don't leave your smartcard at every place you visit, which is the case with fingerprints. You can easily make a gelatine film with fingerprints collected on everyday objects. No fancy equipment required either. When researches tested the technique at a recent show, every fingerprint reading device they were allowed to test, were fooled.
Retinas at least doesn't leave traces everywhere, but then you still run the risk of data theft.
Why? Because it's only free to anyone who has an operating system capable of running it.
Nope, the source of Firefox is available. You can always download it and make it work on your platform. It would be a lot of work making it run on an APPLE II and probably not much fun, but the possibility is still there. That is how the BeOS camp solved the situation when no one wanted to release a decent browser for the platform.
There are degrees of freedom. On that scale Firefox is a damn lot closer to "totally free" than Internet explorer.
Or rather, if it is free, then so is IE - because that, too, is a free download for anyone who has an operating system capable of running it.
In order to have an operating system for which IE is downladable for free today (Windows) you will have to pay, one way or another, unless you pirate it.
Microsoft has weaknesses like any company, but particularly in research and software engineering, I think they're among the more innovative companies. Just MHO.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but unfortunately, I must politely disagree.
I can give you that innovations in the software business are often made gradually. Defining innovation in such an environment is not an easy thing. However, compared to similar products released by other companies, I can't see more new ideas in most of the products you listed than you would find in the other ones. Microsoft might be along with the competition, but calling them innovative would imho be a far stretch.
That is an interesting idea. The dead sea scrolls lasted a couple of millenia. A burnable CD's estimated lifespan is somewhere between 10 to 50 years.
Now, how many sheep/lambs would I need for storing my 80GB worth of data? Is there any automatic interface developed or will I have to perform the messy business myself?
Far reaching consequences ahead. A man's riches will soon once again be measured in how much (dead?) livestock he owns, as opposed to hard drive capacity, today.
Let's say BMW promise they will give away their latest model to any customer at least 12 feet tall. Would you say that BMW model is free? No, what you might say is that BMW's latest model is free for people of a bit more than average hight.
Exactly. My guess is that we will get a very american movie based on very british novels.
In a perfect world the movie would be made by the same team that created Red Dwarf, which in many ways felt like a HHGTTG ripoff anyway. A nice one, though.
I think that by "Can anyone think of something useful they developed first in the past five years?" he meant innovation. Ideas developed from scratch. Not buying other companies or getting inspiration from other camps.
Most things in your list might be OK products, but I wouldn't say all of them were brand new ideas when released.
Some people are capable of working longer hours and, gasp, actually ENJOY that.
You are gasping because you can't believe what you are saying? Me neither. Seriously though, several people I know thought the same when they started their careers. Some got burnt out, some got sick and some quit in time. The human body/mind has its limits, the limits may vary, but 10 to 12 hours a day, five to six days a week is more than most can take for extended periods of time. You might be the exception, but then another problem will arise. Management will start using your long hours as an example for everyone to follow, which will hurt your coworkers not capable of the same.
The government has no right to tell anyone how long they may work.
So you say. I do not agree, and most goverments won't either. Using ideology for fact doesn't make it fact.
You want to work less? Fine, you do that.
I already do. I work 30 to 40 hours a week at times I see fit and make a decent living.
But let others who wish to work longer do so.
I am not in power to let people do this or do that, but I can argue against practices that I think is disadvantegous for society at large.
If working longer hours is hurting a company, then the free market will fix things by making that company less productive.
So you say. My guess is if working long hours is hurting a company, the company will solve it by letting the people hurt by the policy go when they can't cope with the workload any more. Replacing with new personel as they see fit. If they are working in a "glamorous" field like computer games, there is no shortage of willing fools. Again, it's a matter of ideology. I don't think "the free market" is a magic silver bullet.
If I wish to work somewhere that requires 80 hours a week, then I should be allowed to do so.
No, you should not. That is why most societies have established laws that govern what goes in a working environment.
Basicly, it comes down to resource efficiency, burnt out employees don't work very well. Instead they cost society/the company money when they need sick leave (or welfare in severe cases).
First problem is, you get an introductional boost in productivity in the first period of long hours work, but in the long run it is diminished below levels of what normal work hours would produce.
Second problem, the more severe, is manegement failing to make this connection. They can't see the very basic fact that overworked people don't work very well. "Huh? Too much work? But first five weeks of overtime increased production a lot. It's just you bastards getting lazy.".
Some country, or a large company, I think it was in france anyway, cut work time from 8 hours a day to 6. Lo and behold, production increased, workers were happier and sick leave were less than ever.
we want free speech beacuse free speech is good and free speach enables us to write messages to forums sucha as slashdot without free speech we would not be able to. If you dont like that. that is your problem. but some people might not need free speach beacaause theyve learned how to write without proper puctations or grammar. then the feds cant find them anyways cause without prper punctatons and grammar noone is able to read the message and it is hard to prosecute for messages that are incomprehensible. without first decoding them. it further helps having a broken shift key. without a functioning shift key the message is even harder to read and in this case. it is good. if people only learned to whrite in this fashion no one would find them selves deserving of arrest anyway. yay. im starting to like riting this way no capitals no grammar and disfunctional punctation sure makes it easy writing large blocks of text ill tell yall. over and out.
Um, VCR and audio tapes are analog media, with quality loss for each generation of copies made. MP3 or DivX are digital media that can be copied as many times you please without quality loss, if you don't mind the initial destructive compression.
That is the reason why disorganized copying wasn't a problem in those days and might explain why the same thing might be today.
The question whether disorganized copying should be illegal is a completely different debate. My guess is that you and I would share the same opinion in that one.
Being a highly skilled game player they have already proved that they can focus most of their attention at a single subject with lots of patience, unless they are very gifted with a particular game.
This is still a good thing when they decide to switch to other games.
Well, every american tourist I've ever seen fit Bertie's description to the point. Every German tourist I ever saw looked like something recently released from the 80's, with large hairs, pastel coloured clothes and too large sunglasses.
Only problem is american or german tourists not looking/behaving like american or german tourists. You never realize they are american or german tourists to begin with. Bastards.
Slashdot Mirror
With no conceivable way to find another $1.1 trillion/year in the federal budget, and the example of Tennessee who nearly bankrupted the state government with a public health care handout that wasn't anywhere near universal.
Then how can most european contries afford it, if US can not? Sure, we have higher taxes, but not *that* much higher.
Maybe a combination. Retinal scan + fingerprint (several fingers) scan + spoken passphrase using voice recognition.
:)
Should be reasonably secure, unless someone steal the whole data package and figure out a way to feed it to the analyzing devices. Would also make for fun watching sessions at beginning of work days when everyone logs in.
"Put your thumbs on these plates, look into the camera and say "Redmond Rules"".
Which movie is that now? The one with the eye ball mounted on the pencil.
Blade runner?
All election and no play makes Skyshadow a dull boy.
Now, hand me that axe.
I agree with the points you made, though.
Also, you don't leave your smartcard at every place you visit, which is the case with fingerprints. You can easily make a gelatine film with fingerprints collected on everyday objects. No fancy equipment required either. When researches tested the technique at a recent show, every fingerprint reading device they were allowed to test, were fooled.
Retinas at least doesn't leave traces everywhere, but then you still run the risk of data theft.
Well, you can't be sure. He might be a dentist.
Why? Because it's only free to anyone who has an operating system capable of running it.
Nope, the source of Firefox is available. You can always download it and make it work on your platform. It would be a lot of work making it run on an APPLE II and probably not much fun, but the possibility is still there. That is how the BeOS camp solved the situation when no one wanted to release a decent browser for the platform.
There are degrees of freedom. On that scale Firefox is a damn lot closer to "totally free" than Internet explorer.
Or rather, if it is free, then so is IE - because that, too, is a free download for anyone who has an operating system capable of running it.
In order to have an operating system for which IE is downladable for free today (Windows) you will have to pay, one way or another, unless you pirate it.
I am not a Mac guy, but Exposé comes to mind.
Microsoft has weaknesses like any company, but particularly in research and software engineering, I think they're among the more innovative companies. Just MHO.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but unfortunately, I must politely disagree.
I can give you that innovations in the software business are often made gradually. Defining innovation in such an environment is not an easy thing. However, compared to similar products released by other companies, I can't see more new ideas in most of the products you listed than you would find in the other ones. Microsoft might be along with the competition, but calling them innovative would imho be a far stretch.
That is an interesting idea. The dead sea scrolls lasted a couple of millenia. A burnable CD's estimated lifespan is somewhere between 10 to 50 years.
Now, how many sheep/lambs would I need for storing my 80GB worth of data? Is there any automatic interface developed or will I have to perform the messy business myself?
Far reaching consequences ahead. A man's riches will soon once again be measured in how much (dead?) livestock he owns, as opposed to hard drive capacity, today.
Argue with that.
Ok.
Let's say BMW promise they will give away their latest model to any customer at least 12 feet tall. Would you say that BMW model is free? No, what you might say is that BMW's latest model is free for people of a bit more than average hight.
Hint, free with prerequisite doesn't equal free.
Disney just doesn't get it.
Exactly. My guess is that we will get a very american movie based on very british novels.
In a perfect world the movie would be made by the same team that created Red Dwarf, which in many ways felt like a HHGTTG ripoff anyway. A nice one, though.
I think that by "Can anyone think of something useful they developed first in the past five years?" he meant innovation. Ideas developed from scratch. Not buying other companies or getting inspiration from other camps.
Most things in your list might be OK products, but I wouldn't say all of them were brand new ideas when released.
Some people are capable of working longer hours and, gasp, actually ENJOY that.
You are gasping because you can't believe what you are saying? Me neither. Seriously though, several people I know thought the same when they started their careers. Some got burnt out, some got sick and some quit in time. The human body/mind has its limits, the limits may vary, but 10 to 12 hours a day, five to six days a week is more than most can take for extended periods of time. You might be the exception, but then another problem will arise. Management will start using your long hours as an example for everyone to follow, which will hurt your coworkers not capable of the same.
The government has no right to tell anyone how long they may work.
So you say. I do not agree, and most goverments won't either. Using ideology for fact doesn't make it fact.
You want to work less? Fine, you do that.
I already do. I work 30 to 40 hours a week at times I see fit and make a decent living.
But let others who wish to work longer do so.
I am not in power to let people do this or do that, but I can argue against practices that I think is disadvantegous for society at large.
If working longer hours is hurting a company, then the free market will fix things by making that company less productive.
So you say. My guess is if working long hours is hurting a company, the company will solve it by letting the people hurt by the policy go when they can't cope with the workload any more. Replacing with new personel as they see fit. If they are working in a "glamorous" field like computer games, there is no shortage of willing fools. Again, it's a matter of ideology. I don't think "the free market" is a magic silver bullet.
Well, boo-fucking-hoo. What goes around comes around.
Imho, people are worth more respect than legal entities such as companies.
But hey, what do I know? I'm just a tree hugging commy liberal.
If I wish to work somewhere that requires 80 hours a week, then I should be allowed to do so.
No, you should not. That is why most societies have established laws that govern what goes in a working environment.
Basicly, it comes down to resource efficiency, burnt out employees don't work very well. Instead they cost society/the company money when they need sick leave (or welfare in severe cases).
First problem is, you get an introductional boost in productivity in the first period of long hours work, but in the long run it is diminished below levels of what normal work hours would produce.
Second problem, the more severe, is manegement failing to make this connection. They can't see the very basic fact that overworked people don't work very well. "Huh? Too much work? But first five weeks of overtime increased production a lot. It's just you bastards getting lazy.".
Some country, or a large company, I think it was in france anyway, cut work time from 8 hours a day to 6. Lo and behold, production increased, workers were happier and sick leave were less than ever.
we want free speech beacuse free speech is good and free speach enables us to write messages to forums sucha as slashdot without free speech we would not be able to. If you dont like that. that is your problem. but some people might not need free speach beacaause theyve learned how to write without proper puctations or grammar. then the feds cant find them anyways cause without prper punctatons and grammar noone is able to read the message and it is hard to prosecute for messages that are incomprehensible. without first decoding them. it further helps having a broken shift key. without a functioning shift key the message is even harder to read and in this case. it is good. if people only learned to whrite in this fashion no one would find them selves deserving of arrest anyway. yay. im starting to like riting this way no capitals no grammar and disfunctional punctation sure makes it easy writing large blocks of text ill tell yall. over and out.
Huh? I thought everyone knew.
"These are actually copies of the minutes of the last meeting of the Melee Island(TM) PTA"
And mum said I wouldn't learn anything from playing computer games. Hah!
Cool!
I hereby declare that I believe that I now own all IP that up until now belonged to Microsoft corporation.
Expect to hear from me again in 2013.
Actually, the parent is dead on. If you are too lazy to follow provided links, maybe you shouldn't be reading the story at all.
Very true, but the parent of my post clearly stated "I use Firefox" to which I responded.
No, you use Firefox with the "Plain Text Links" extension. Without that extension you'd copy&paste like everyone else.
Um, VCR and audio tapes are analog media, with quality loss for each generation of copies made. MP3 or DivX are digital media that can be copied as many times you please without quality loss, if you don't mind the initial destructive compression.
That is the reason why disorganized copying wasn't a problem in those days and might explain why the same thing might be today.
The question whether disorganized copying should be illegal is a completely different debate. My guess is that you and I would share the same opinion in that one.
Being a highly skilled game player they have already proved that they can focus most of their attention at a single subject with lots of patience, unless they are very gifted with a particular game.
This is still a good thing when they decide to switch to other games.
Well, every american tourist I've ever seen fit Bertie's description to the point. Every German tourist I ever saw looked like something recently released from the 80's, with large hairs, pastel coloured clothes and too large sunglasses.
Only problem is american or german tourists not looking/behaving like american or german tourists. You never realize they are american or german tourists to begin with. Bastards.