My government officials are hell bent on making me a criminal then so be it.
Heh heh. I renounced living within the bounds of the law YEARS ago. How can a rational mind do otherwise? Consider:
In Oklahoma, it is illegal for a woman to style her own hair without being licensed by the state.
In Massachusetts it is illegal to go to bed without first having a full bath.
I was going to mention the sodomy laws (some of which I have broken), only to discover (just now) that they have (finally) been declared unconstitutional. Well, maybe common sense hasn't been completely abandoned after all. Nevertheless, for many a year, those worthless laws were undoubtedly broken by millions.
The point of my post is this: Ridiculous laws like these only serve to erode respect for the law in general. Once you break an unfair law and justify the act because of its unfairness, it is a little easier to break another, and another, and another.
P2P isn't any more convenient than the half-dozen music stores that already exist. It's a halfway convenient source for movies and television--but the former you have extant mail-order services, and for the latter you can just build a box and record the darn shows yourself.
Yeah, and the postal system isn't any more convenient than a telephone or an e-mail.
Let's outlaw paper, envelopes, pencils & ink pens. Because, you never know, those damn citizens MIGHT be copying song lyrics and guitar tablature and sending them through the mail in absolute secrecy thereby escaping detection. But, we could tap all the telephones and monitor all the e-mail to catch those thieving pirates!
Now I know this is heresy, especially on Slashdot, but there was a time in the not so distant past when people somehow (I know it's hard to believe), yes somehow managed to learn the three R's without the aid of computers. Don't shoot me! It's true.
So, exactly WHICH applications that run exclusively on WINDOWS are of such importance that the high schools cannot fulfill their mission statement without them?
As for the rest of your comment...
Windows is the more common operating system -- irrelevant. We should be teaching the applications, not the operating system. If the students absolutely need Windows specific information, they can get their MCSE after graduation. Next please.
More hardware is supported -- irrelevant. Do these boxen need to be able to support every conceivable graphics/sound card combination, SCSI, RAID, and 3-dimensional printing? No. Determine which widely supported hardware will do the job for the least amount of money, and purchase as many of these identical machines as necessary.
Don't get me wrong, Windows absolutely should be in the school. But, in the name of diversity and fairness (and the fact that the graduates never know which type of box they may end up sitting at) the schools should also have *nix boxen as well.
After all, the day may come when Windows is NOT more common OS.
True, people aren't "entitled" to free music, any more than the RIAA and other conglomerations/corporations aren't "entitled" to buy the political machine to serve their greed-fueled whims. But, the lack of entitlement doesn't stop a thing, does it?
The RIAA, Disney, et.al. buy politicians to pass laws that are not in the interest of the people -- because they can.
The little guy downloads music and movies without paying -- because he can.
The law doesn't even enter into the equation for these people. Everyone can argue until they are blue in the face about right and wrong. The scope of what is "right" is a function of culture, place and time. Moralizing aside, the simple fact is, people do what they do because they can.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." - Aleister Crowley
... most younger people act like idiots, and aren't mature enough to conduct themselves in a responsible manner.
Now, why is that? Maybe it's because most ADULTS act like idiots and aren't mature enough to conduct themselves in a responsible manner. After all, monkey see, monkey do. Consider the last two presidents of the US:
Bush whips up a fictitious story about WMD's in Iraq to justify ousting the legal leader of that country, and wants to use the Constitution as a shopping list of things he wants changed (Ammendment to ban gay marriage) in order to win political points with bigoted citizens.
Then Clinton (a married man) got his dick sucked in the oval office, lied under oath, and tried to fast-track MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment -- if you don't know how bad this nasty stuff is, look it up).
And, here's the icing on the cake -- people seem to adore these unscrupulous assholes. Now, where are the role models for the kids?
Phillips & Du Pont Optical replaced a disc of mine for free (well, almost... I covered the shipping to send it to them.) The disc had "disc-rot" or "bronzing". I read on a website that they would replace it with a shiny new defect-free disc -- and they did. Man am I happy, that cd is OOP.
Not all corporations are evil money-grubbing bastards -- some occasionally back up their product.
... but when you have 98% (or somewhere thereabouts)of the desktop market, you will also have 98% of the malware directed at you.
That doesn't follow AT ALL. Suppose in a given town, when the sun goes down, 98% of the residents have a Ford pickup parked outside and leave the front door wide open, while the other 2% have a Chevy pickup parked outside, with the front door triple bolted, and two pit bulls in the back.
Do the neighborhood burglars preferentially select the 98% because the Fords are more abundant, or do they pick them for the path of least resistance?
I started reading Marvel comics when I was about eight years old. Not only did they stimulate my interest in reading, but also in sketching. My friends and I competed over who could most faithfully reproduce Thor or the Hulk. Then we would go out to the playground and act out the characters. Of course, the other students thought we were weird -- which is fine, weird people are interesting!
Now, 30 years later, I still read comics. I recently discovered the old EC comics -- Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, etc. Wow! Now those are great comics! I'm gradually building up my Heavy Metal collection as well.
Hell, I'll never grow up -- which is good, as my kids and I can share all this cool stuff.
It is also not inconceivable that a black hole might wonder through the solar system and land at Redmond -- but somehow, I doubt that will happen.
Open source has momentum now. It is being rapidly adopted both by home-users, governments, and big business. If the U.S. kills it locally with legislation, we will fall behind the rest of the world: Our proprietary software will be more expensive than and incompatible with that produced elsewhere. Ergo, people will not buy our software.
People have voiced similar fears regarding DRM in hardware killing Linux -- it's not going to happen. We in the U.S. like to think that when we say "Jump!", the rest of the world asks "How high?" But "The times, they are a-changin'."
Interesting position. However, there are consequences -- namely, even the intelligent and educated are affected by the "choices" of the ignorant. Case in point -- spam, viruses, worms, etc. flood the internet, eat up storage and bandwitdth, and reduce productivity. Extra time and money must be allocated to hire and train people to combat the problem.
Here's another -- I read an article in a medical journal a few years back. It discussed doctors giving too many antibiotics to the ignorant masses -- who demand antibiotics for everything from a common cold to a stubbed toe. This results in selecting for antibiotic-resistant bacteria -- super-bugs, if you will. The result is disease that can no longer be combatted by antibiotics. There are several bacteria that now exhibit resistance to penicillin -- for a long time, the most powerful weapon in the antibiotic arsenal.
It is in the best interests of EVERYONE that people lose their ignorance. Many need help to do it. Are you going to chip in? Or are you going to sit on the sidelines when the social, environmental, and financial systems collapse and giggle about how fucking smart you are?
just becuase users are "too busy" to educate themselves?
Just exactly how much self-education do you think the general populace is capable of? Our (the U.S.) public education does a lousy job of teaching the masses the three R's, much less anything technical. How about this one, mister infinite-amount-of-time-on-my-hands -- Do you know by heart all of the local ordinances of your municipality? You are supposed to! After all, ignorance of the law is no excuse, right? So, you better not be ignorant.
Sit back and chill, while I relate my little tale. I went to drop my boy off at kindergarten. I parked at the curb beside the school and escorted him in. As I returned to my truck, a janitor relayed a message from a cop that if I continued to park there, I would be ticketed! Now, bear in mind that I was legally parked (correct distance from the curb, no "no parking" signs anywhere, I wasn't in an intersection or crosswalk, etc. etc.) So, I went to the P.D. and asked some cops what the deal was. Guess what? Of three cops questioned, none knew for certain what I had done wrong. One said something about the street maybe being to narrow (it wasn't). Another said he thought there was some law about not parking at the curb of a school (there isn't). They suggested I go to the public library and read the book of local ordinances. I did that, and it turns out that I was in the right -- I was legally parked.
Things I learned:
1) Laws I wasn't aware existed, and where to find them.
2) The cops themselves DID NOT KNOW THE LAW! They are supposed to be trained in these matters, right? I mean, if they don't know the law, how can they ticket you for breaking it?
Now, It being the case that everyone is supposed to comply with the law, and that ignorance is no excuse for breaking it, we can conclude that everyone should be familiar with the regulations -- right? But, but, the book runs about 1000 pages! A personal copy costs a whopping $800, unless you photocopy it. There are only three copies in the city (of about 20,000 people) available for public viewing. Now do the math!
It is entirely UNREALISTIC to expect every member of society to inform themselves of the laws they are bound to obey, much less the web-browsing alternatives to IE. They are bounded by their level of reading comprehension, the amount of free time at their disposal, their level of mathematical ability, and their access to information itself. Get real.
Whatever, dude. Educating oneself -- what a laugh. Let me tell you something. I teach at a college where the majority of students have recently completed 12 years of "eduction"; and yet, they still cannot write a grammatically correct essay, add two fractions correctly, or tell you who the main players were in WWII. And you say these people should "educate themselves". Har dee har har!!! What country do you live in?
I love this stuff. Continuing in this vein, we should sue the petroleum industry (for providing the fuel for automobiles and electricity, and the raw materials for plastics) and the metal industry (for providing the raw materials for wires -- which conduct the wares, and guns -- which do the killing.)
Taking this to its logical conclusion, let's just sue GOD, since (S)HE created all this stuff to begin with, along with all the "criminals", and therefore is ultimately to blame. And who are GOD's mortal representatives? That's right, religious leaders! Let's sue all the churches. Put their leaders and followers in jail! Make 'em pay! Everything will be alright if we can just MAKE 'EM PAYYYYYYY!!!
Actually, the matrix-vector equation Ax=Lx, can be generalized to Af = Lf, where A is an operator (linear/differential/integral), f is a function belonging to a vector space of functions on some suitable domain (like the reals) on which the operator is meaningful, and L is a scalar (real or complex). This is useful, for example, in quantum mechanics.
exactly what deep insights into the workings of the human mind are we supposed to get from researchers tripping on LSD?
How about this one: A particularly common motif experienced by "acid heads" is to hallucinate patterns reminiscent of ancient Mayan artwork. So, where is the insight? Apparently, some people -- who had never before been exposed to this imagery -- have seen these patterns after dosing on LSD! What does this say about the human mind? It says to me that there are latent images and symbols present in our neural matrix that are common to people from different regions and cultures. Now, where do these patterns come from?
Here is another: Why do these compounds have reality distorting effects -- like video, audio, and tactile hallucinations? Because our brains rely upon native chemical analogs in order to form our perception of reality. To put it succinctly, everyone is tripping on drugs all the time. If you could extract all the psychoactives that your body naturally makes and put them in a bottle, you would be subject to arrest for possesion of an illegal substance.
... as an unaffected third party its pretty clear LSD has some pretty clear permanent mind altering effects, beyond the short term hallucagenic effects.
Pretty clear, huh? Well, I can speak from first hand experience that no permanenet effects occurred, other than the registration of memories. Who you gonna believe? To paraphrase something I read somewhere, you cannot trust ANYONE'S assessment of drugs or the effects thereof:
If the "authority" has done drugs, they are an unreliable source of information as their brains have been fried.
If the "authority" has not done drugs, they are unreliable because they don't know first hand what they are talking about.
Revenue generation is indeed the true objective. Ticketing speeders is ostensibly done to reduce the number of speeders thereby saving lives. However, consider this: More lives could be saved by having fewer drivers on the road, no? By making driving tests more difficult, and by testing people yearly (how about those old grannies that crouch down so only their hands on the steering wheel are visible?) we could eliminate a lot of the dangerous drivers.
Now, this is total heresy, but we could go one step further -- if the goal is to "save lives" and all -- by banning personal automobiles altogether. After all, automobiles are the NUMBER ONE cause of death for people aged 5 to 44. We could replace them with public transport, and bicycles. There could be exceptions for people whose job requires the use of an automobile. Not only would lives be saved, but we could reduce the landfill, energy consumption, and pollution. But, NO! Personal automobile ownership is as American as baseball and apple pie (wasn't that a Chevy commercial some years back?)
Slashdot Mirror
My government officials are hell bent on making me a criminal then so be it.
Heh heh. I renounced living within the bounds of the law YEARS ago. How can a rational mind do otherwise? Consider:
In Oklahoma, it is illegal for a woman to style her own hair without being licensed by the state.
In Massachusetts it is illegal to go to bed without first having a full bath.
I was going to mention the sodomy laws (some of which I have broken), only to discover (just now) that they have (finally) been declared unconstitutional. Well, maybe common sense hasn't been completely abandoned after all. Nevertheless, for many a year, those worthless laws were undoubtedly broken by millions.
The point of my post is this: Ridiculous laws like these only serve to erode respect for the law in general. Once you break an unfair law and justify the act because of its unfairness, it is a little easier to break another, and another, and another.
P2P isn't any more convenient than the half-dozen music stores that already exist. It's a halfway convenient source for movies and television--but the former you have extant mail-order services, and for the latter you can just build a box and record the darn shows yourself.
Yeah, and the postal system isn't any more convenient than a telephone or an e-mail.
Let's outlaw paper, envelopes, pencils & ink pens. Because, you never know, those damn citizens MIGHT be copying song lyrics and guitar tablature and sending them through the mail in absolute secrecy thereby escaping detection. But, we could tap all the telephones and monitor all the e-mail to catch those thieving pirates!
will they get sued by SCO?
That's Chewbacca. I know being a "grammar nazi" is frowned upon around here, but Star Wars is one of the holy grails of Slashdot! Go spank thyself!!!
Now I know this is heresy, especially on Slashdot, but there was a time in the not so distant past when people somehow (I know it's hard to believe), yes somehow managed to learn the three R's without the aid of computers. Don't shoot me! It's true.
...
So, exactly WHICH applications that run exclusively on WINDOWS are of such importance that the high schools cannot fulfill their mission statement without them?
As for the rest of your comment
Windows is the more common operating system -- irrelevant. We should be teaching the applications, not the operating system. If the students absolutely need Windows specific information, they can get their MCSE after graduation. Next please.
More hardware is supported -- irrelevant. Do these boxen need to be able to support every conceivable graphics/sound card combination, SCSI, RAID, and 3-dimensional printing? No. Determine which widely supported hardware will do the job for the least amount of money, and purchase as many of these identical machines as necessary.
Don't get me wrong, Windows absolutely should be in the school. But, in the name of diversity and fairness (and the fact that the graduates never know which type of box they may end up sitting at) the schools should also have *nix boxen as well.
After all, the day may come when Windows is NOT more common OS.
True, people aren't "entitled" to free music, any more than the RIAA and other conglomerations/corporations aren't "entitled" to buy the political machine to serve their greed-fueled whims. But, the lack of entitlement doesn't stop a thing, does it?
The RIAA, Disney, et.al. buy politicians to pass laws that are not in the interest of the people -- because they can.
The little guy downloads music and movies without paying -- because he can.
The law doesn't even enter into the equation for these people. Everyone can argue until they are blue in the face about right and wrong. The scope of what is "right" is a function of culture, place and time. Moralizing aside, the simple fact is, people do what they do because they can.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." - Aleister Crowley
... most younger people act like idiots, and aren't mature enough to conduct themselves in a responsible manner.
Now, why is that? Maybe it's because most ADULTS act like idiots and aren't mature enough to conduct themselves in a responsible manner. After all, monkey see, monkey do. Consider the last two presidents of the US:
Bush whips up a fictitious story about WMD's in Iraq to justify ousting the legal leader of that country, and wants to use the Constitution as a shopping list of things he wants changed (Ammendment to ban gay marriage) in order to win political points with bigoted citizens.
Then Clinton (a married man) got his dick sucked in the oval office, lied under oath, and tried to fast-track MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment -- if you don't know how bad this nasty stuff is, look it up).
And, here's the icing on the cake -- people seem to adore these unscrupulous assholes. Now, where are the role models for the kids?
You are my hero of the day!
Phillips & Du Pont Optical replaced a disc of mine for free (well, almost ... I covered the shipping to send it to them.) The disc had "disc-rot" or "bronzing". I read on a website that they would replace it with a shiny new defect-free disc -- and they did. Man am I happy, that cd is OOP.
Not all corporations are evil money-grubbing bastards -- some occasionally back up their product.
... but when you have 98% (or somewhere thereabouts)of the desktop market, you will also have 98% of the malware directed at you.
That doesn't follow AT ALL. Suppose in a given town, when the sun goes down, 98% of the residents have a Ford pickup parked outside and leave the front door wide open, while the other 2% have a Chevy pickup parked outside, with the front door triple bolted, and two pit bulls in the back.
Do the neighborhood burglars preferentially select the 98% because the Fords are more abundant, or do they pick them for the path of least resistance?
Wrong on all counts. Have a nice day.
I started reading Marvel comics when I was about eight years old. Not only did they stimulate my interest in reading, but also in sketching. My friends and I competed over who could most faithfully reproduce Thor or the Hulk. Then we would go out to the playground and act out the characters. Of course, the other students thought we were weird -- which is fine, weird people are interesting!
Now, 30 years later, I still read comics. I recently discovered the old EC comics -- Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, etc. Wow! Now those are great comics! I'm gradually building up my Heavy Metal collection as well.
Hell, I'll never grow up -- which is good, as my kids and I can share all this cool stuff.
It is also not inconceivable that a black hole might wonder through the solar system and land at Redmond -- but somehow, I doubt that will happen.
Open source has momentum now. It is being rapidly adopted both by home-users, governments, and big business. If the U.S. kills it locally with legislation, we will fall behind the rest of the world: Our proprietary software will be more expensive than and incompatible with that produced elsewhere. Ergo, people will not buy our software.
People have voiced similar fears regarding DRM in hardware killing Linux -- it's not going to happen. We in the U.S. like to think that when we say "Jump!", the rest of the world asks "How high?" But "The times, they are a-changin'."
Interesting position. However, there are consequences -- namely, even the intelligent and educated are affected by the "choices" of the ignorant. Case in point -- spam, viruses, worms, etc. flood the internet, eat up storage and bandwitdth, and reduce productivity. Extra time and money must be allocated to hire and train people to combat the problem.
Here's another -- I read an article in a medical journal a few years back. It discussed doctors giving too many antibiotics to the ignorant masses -- who demand antibiotics for everything from a common cold to a stubbed toe. This results in selecting for antibiotic-resistant bacteria -- super-bugs, if you will. The result is disease that can no longer be combatted by antibiotics. There are several bacteria that now exhibit resistance to penicillin -- for a long time, the most powerful weapon in the antibiotic arsenal.
It is in the best interests of EVERYONE that people lose their ignorance. Many need help to do it. Are you going to chip in? Or are you going to sit on the sidelines when the social, environmental, and financial systems collapse and giggle about how fucking smart you are?
just becuase users are "too busy" to educate themselves?
Just exactly how much self-education do you think the general populace is capable of? Our (the U.S.) public education does a lousy job of teaching the masses the three R's, much less anything technical. How about this one, mister infinite-amount-of-time-on-my-hands -- Do you know by heart all of the local ordinances of your municipality? You are supposed to! After all, ignorance of the law is no excuse, right? So, you better not be ignorant.
Sit back and chill, while I relate my little tale. I went to drop my boy off at kindergarten. I parked at the curb beside the school and escorted him in. As I returned to my truck, a janitor relayed a message from a cop that if I continued to park there, I would be ticketed! Now, bear in mind that I was legally parked (correct distance from the curb, no "no parking" signs anywhere, I wasn't in an intersection or crosswalk, etc. etc.) So, I went to the P.D. and asked some cops what the deal was. Guess what? Of three cops questioned, none knew for certain what I had done wrong. One said something about the street maybe being to narrow (it wasn't). Another said he thought there was some law about not parking at the curb of a school (there isn't). They suggested I go to the public library and read the book of local ordinances. I did that, and it turns out that I was in the right -- I was legally parked.
Things I learned:
1) Laws I wasn't aware existed, and where to find them.
2) The cops themselves DID NOT KNOW THE LAW! They are supposed to be trained in these matters, right? I mean, if they don't know the law, how can they ticket you for breaking it?
Now, It being the case that everyone is supposed to comply with the law, and that ignorance is no excuse for breaking it, we can conclude that everyone should be familiar with the regulations -- right? But, but, the book runs about 1000 pages! A personal copy costs a whopping $800, unless you photocopy it. There are only three copies in the city (of about 20,000 people) available for public viewing. Now do the math!
It is entirely UNREALISTIC to expect every member of society to inform themselves of the laws they are bound to obey, much less the web-browsing alternatives to IE. They are bounded by their level of reading comprehension, the amount of free time at their disposal, their level of mathematical ability, and their access to information itself. Get real.
Whatever, dude. Educating oneself -- what a laugh. Let me tell you something. I teach at a college where the majority of students have recently completed 12 years of "eduction"; and yet, they still cannot write a grammatically correct essay, add two fractions correctly, or tell you who the main players were in WWII. And you say these people should "educate themselves". Har dee har har!!! What country do you live in?
I love this stuff. Continuing in this vein, we should sue the petroleum industry (for providing the fuel for automobiles and electricity, and the raw materials for plastics) and the metal industry (for providing the raw materials for wires -- which conduct the wares, and guns -- which do the killing.)
Taking this to its logical conclusion, let's just sue GOD, since (S)HE created all this stuff to begin with, along with all the "criminals", and therefore is ultimately to blame. And who are GOD's mortal representatives? That's right, religious leaders! Let's sue all the churches. Put their leaders and followers in jail! Make 'em pay! Everything will be alright if we can just MAKE 'EM PAYYYYYYY!!!
Actually, the matrix-vector equation Ax=Lx, can be generalized to Af = Lf, where A is an operator (linear/differential/integral), f is a function belonging to a vector space of functions on some suitable domain (like the reals) on which the operator is meaningful, and L is a scalar (real or complex). This is useful, for example, in quantum mechanics.
It is 0.23 eV in the film.
plus were is the great spider-man chatter during fights? He's a smart-ass yet he's was quiet.
"Here's your change!"
I was trying to be cute ... although I have pronounced the book "pickle" rather than spell it out.
How do you pronounce these titles? Tickle? Pickle?
exactly what deep insights into the workings of the human mind are we supposed to get from researchers tripping on LSD?
How about this one: A particularly common motif experienced by "acid heads" is to hallucinate patterns reminiscent of ancient Mayan artwork. So, where is the insight? Apparently, some people -- who had never before been exposed to this imagery -- have seen these patterns after dosing on LSD! What does this say about the human mind? It says to me that there are latent images and symbols present in our neural matrix that are common to people from different regions and cultures. Now, where do these patterns come from?
Here is another: Why do these compounds have reality distorting effects -- like video, audio, and tactile hallucinations? Because our brains rely upon native chemical analogs in order to form our perception of reality. To put it succinctly, everyone is tripping on drugs all the time. If you could extract all the psychoactives that your body naturally makes and put them in a bottle, you would be subject to arrest for possesion of an illegal substance.
How's that for insight?
... as an unaffected third party its pretty clear LSD has some pretty clear permanent mind altering effects, beyond the short term hallucagenic effects.
Pretty clear, huh? Well, I can speak from first hand experience that no permanenet effects occurred, other than the registration of memories. Who you gonna believe? To paraphrase something I read somewhere, you cannot trust ANYONE'S assessment of drugs or the effects thereof:
If the "authority" has done drugs, they are an unreliable source of information as their brains have been fried.
If the "authority" has not done drugs, they are unreliable because they don't know first hand what they are talking about.
Revenue generation is indeed the true objective. Ticketing speeders is ostensibly done to reduce the number of speeders thereby saving lives. However, consider this: More lives could be saved by having fewer drivers on the road, no? By making driving tests more difficult, and by testing people yearly (how about those old grannies that crouch down so only their hands on the steering wheel are visible?) we could eliminate a lot of the dangerous drivers.
Now, this is total heresy, but we could go one step further -- if the goal is to "save lives" and all -- by banning personal automobiles altogether. After all, automobiles are the NUMBER ONE cause of death for people aged 5 to 44. We could replace them with public transport, and bicycles. There could be exceptions for people whose job requires the use of an automobile. Not only would lives be saved, but we could reduce the landfill, energy consumption, and pollution. But, NO! Personal automobile ownership is as American as baseball and apple pie (wasn't that a Chevy commercial some years back?)
Autogeddon Blues.