My big problem with trial lawyers is that they don't make life one bit better for anyone. When I program, I feel like I'm saving people some time and making life a little better for everyone. Trial lawyers do nothing but obstruct the progress of those that try to make life better. I think of them as financial and quality-of-life terrorists.
I have a great idea: let's kill all the lawyers! Then, when your boss fires you because he doesn't like your hair, you can go suck your thumb. When your deadbeat son gets arrested for drug possession and thrown in jail for 50 years, you can whine like a baby. When your REAL freedoms get squashed, you can bitch and moan and post half-assed raving nonsense on Slashdot. Because that's all you'd be able to do without trial lawyers. [/sarcasm]
Why is everyone here so down on lawyers? Realize that many class-actions cost millions to litigate, and you, the beneficiary, aren't paying squat for it. If the law firm loses, they eat it, not you, and it could cost seven or eight figures. Did you want to pay the RIAA $14 if they won their case, and not the other way around? Did you? If you think equity redistribution is unfair in a class-action, propose a better solution, don't just accuse people of being terrorists.
And while I'm ranting, there's one more thing I'd like to get off my chest. Lawyers, despite what people may think of them, generally do what they do out of a desire to help people. Yes, it sucks that some people profit off of other people's misery; however, if there weren't a system of redress of grievances, everyone would suffer. Injustices aren't righted by computer, they're righted by people, and those people have to get paid.
Some of the lawyers I know work just as long as the programmers I know (including myself), and many work much, MUCH longer. Maybe, if you'd get off your elitist high-horse and actually TALK to a lawyer, you might get a different impression of them. Oh, and one more thing: if you want to maintain your attitude, then that's your business, but I never heard of a trial lawyer getting ass-pounding prison time when he was in dire need of a good programmer.
The word people are looking for is severability. IANAL either, but I'm pretty sure that any contract which claims to be the entirety of the agreement between the parties must include a severability clause, or you don't get its benefits. It isn't necessarily automatic, although it might be by State law (you'd have to check each State's individual contract laws, tho).
Not all implementations depend on Sun. Check out Classpath. Granted, there's a lot of work to be done on it, and it's nowhere near production-ready, but my hat's off to them.
Higher courts generally deal with legal meta-issues, and many appeals are brought on the basis that one or the other party didn't follow proper procedures. The Supreme Court is generally concerned with the big meta-issues, Constitutional issues and issues of overall social morality, although the Justices can hear any case they choose. If the RIAA wants to open themselves up to attack on the front of the applicability of copyright law to digital media (legal grey area with lots of wiggle room for arguments), or even whether or not copyright should apply to digital media (another big legal grey area), then they'll appeal all the way up. I think if it does happen, it will show unequivocally that they're desperate.
... and watch the fabulous free market kick your ass when no one shops with you any more because they can get it for $1 less across the street. Of course, I've only had a year of rudimentary economics, I'm sure those marketing geniuses must know something I don't.
My source is the CIA World Factbook. Their page on Niue is pretty interesting. Seems they're actually 10% Mormon. Oh, and if you want to get there, you have to take Polynesian Airlines. No one else flies into the one Niuean airport. For those of you planning to go there from the States: you have to go thru American Samoa, via Los Angeles or Honolulu. AFAIK, Polynesian have one airplane, and their timetable only has it going from Apia to Niue Monday morning at 5 AM. All well and good, except that the flight from LA/Hawaii to Apia is on (the previous) Wednesday. Of course, this is only a problem if you don't want to spend a few days in Samoa. For more information on Niue, check out this page. It looks spectacular.
The ratio of currencies on the international market doesn't match the ratio of buying power indices. A dollar has a lot more buying power in India than in the US after you figure in the exchange rate. That's why job positions which can, are moving to India.
The only way to prevent companies from engaging in overseas outsourcing is to artificially lower either the buying-power ratio or the exchange ratio. The former won't happen unless the foreign country's economy grows relative to yours, which isn't easy when 'you' are the US. There will always be some country that's poor, with people looking for cheap work. As for artifically devaluing the dollar, that is already happening to some extent due to Our Glorious Leader pissing everyone off. Maybe we should get W. to invade someone everyone likes, maybe Switzerland. That'd shoot the dollar straight to hell.
And of course we have to have Ian McKellen playing Gandalf too, simply because he loves doing it
He doesn't particularly mind doing Gandalf, but I wouldn't say it's his favorite, by a long shot. Read the White Book entry from three weeks ago, especially the part about signing autographs. For more of his take on LOTR, read his journals. I'd reproduce the relevant paragraphs here, but the site doesn't allow it.
Drug companies get no patent protection, and medical and pharmaceutical research is done by the government, funded by tax dollars. I think it a resonable position that drugs research benefits all of society, and is therefore justified under the umbrella of government. Furthermore, any product so developed will be free of patent- and trade secret encumbrance. Manufacturers will be free to compete on the basis of process cost, with no artificial price overhead justified by having to recoup research losses. Individual companies are free to do private research, of course, but must realize that their results will not be protected.
I believe that profits should never be allowed to take precedence over medical treatment. Moving the responsibility for research to the government reduces medical profiteering. If the government refuses, but the research is truly important, it will be done by private enterprise.
really sickens me. It's not about giving up freedom for security, we're now reduced to giving up freedom for TV shows?
The agency's move to allow encryption-like protection for digital shows takes away one more excuse from the broadcasters to delay the rollout of high-definition TV.
Cry me a river. You can live without television. I did it when I backpacked in Europe. I felt so much more energized that I can't describe it. Riding bicycles, meeting people and making friends, and answering to the border police is a hell of a lot more rewarding than pissing away your life watching other people embarrass themselves (Jackass, Funniest Home Videos, [insert reality show here]).
When the next West Wing won't be ripped off Napster-style, producers will likely air more HDTV programs.
You can live without HDTV. We have for more than 50 years. Disclaimer: I own an HDTV set (for watching import DVDs, mostly, but I do watch INHD and the occasional football game).
Moreover, nothing in the FCC's scheme will limit viewers' freedom to make a copy of Friends for their personal use, just as they do now.
Yeah, nothing except the hardware manufacturers. And they're loathe to do it, because it means they have to charge more for appliances which every one knows (or should know) is broken.
If consumers want their HDTV, they have to accept limits on the ability to redistribute TV shows on the Web. Shelter from pirates will help broadcasters venture into the digital era. And that will benefit everyone except the pirates.
I don't give two shits about HDTV if it means I give up the freedom to do what I want with products I buy. If you like movies, songs, and TV, that's fine with me. But if you're gonna trespass on my property to beam high-energy waves into my head, I'll do what I please with them. If you don't like that, don't broadcast to my house.
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
-- 17 USC 1201(a)(1)(A)
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
-- 17 USC 1201(a)(2)(A)
I don't see "encryption" mentioned anywhere.
For those who don't know, the United States Code is the collection of the Acts of Congress (federal laws). Whenever a bill is signed into law, it goes into the Code. Title 17 contains the laws that pertain to copyrights, and Chapter 12 is the DMCA.
Nothing prevents you from making such a device. Of course, up until recently, US law prevented jack-booted thugs from kicking down your door and arresting you for building devices that bypass copyright security features. Now they can, even if you do it "for educational purposes only".
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, someone just got a (+5, Interesting) for soliciting anonymous cybersex. Are all you people really that fucking desperate?
He, actually, and unless you have stellar qualifications, don't bother applying. A small excerpt:
Dr. Billington is an elected member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been decorated as Chevalier and again as a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, as Commander of the National Order of the Southern Cross of Brazil, awarded the Order of Merit of Italy, and a Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany. He has also been awarded the Gwanghwa Medal by the Republic of Korea, and the Chingiz Aitmatov Gold Medal by the Kyrgyz Republic.
He also has 33 honorary degrees and has authored at least five history books.
The focus of the space program, then, should be on the efficient mitigation of risk.
Engineers build complex things and watch them fail. Then they learn from their mistakes, and build something better. That's the nature of engineering: to build things no one has ever seen before, to do things no one has ever done before. You WILL break things exploring.
Safety CANNOT be the purpose of NASA. The purpose of the space program MUST be to explore space, whatever it takes, no more and no less. It's time for a reality check, folks: do we Americans think manned space exploration is worth the cost or the risk? If not, then we should all stop deluding ourselves, shut the fuck up, and let someone else do it. Why fund a program whose purpose we don't support? It's time to piss or get off the pot.
Abundance Destroys Capitalism. This is obvious to anyone who studied even one term of Micro. As supply increases, price falls. In the limit supply becomes infinity, price drops to zero. Doesn't matter which market or good, the price drops to zero. Period. There is no more 'market'. Capitalism as we all know and love it is obliterated.
When something is abundant, it's free. Witness the Internet. Once software/movies/music gets out, it's available gratis. Anything that can be digitized (i.e. any information) can be made available for zero price. That scares the hell out of the Entrenched Capitalist, as well it should.
As far as information goes, creativity isn't a team sport. Ever hear of a fiction novel written by 12 people? Didn't think so. It may be true that developing ideas may require resources and manpower, but inspiration strikes individuals.
Maybe the legacy of the Information Age will be that eventually, only tangible goods and artificially scare information will carry a price tag. This is a Good Thing. It means everyone benefits from the collective thought of the creative, but you still have to work building things to make a living. We could have that utopia, or just sell information through Absolute DRM, which we're well on the way to having. It's obvious that The Powers That Be know this future, and are actively lobbying for it. It's long past time we sent our own legions of Smart People up to Capitol Hill to sell our vision of the future, too.
The claim that the GPL is unenforceable is, frankly, an obvious affirmative defense that really needed to be made in the reply. I would think, though, that SCO would prefer not to have to prove that particular defense.
Anyone here think that the counterclaim was a masterstroke by the IBM lawyers? They knew that SCO would have to throw the kitchen sink into the list of ADs, and they knew that this would be one of them, and they knew that even though the SCO lawyers didn't want to, they'd have to include it. The counterclaim was a brilliant trap, and it worked perfectly.
Branding is what you do when you have a product to sell. It's not the only thing, but when your product sucks it's one of the only things you can do, so it gets a bad rap.
If you're going to compete with other products, you have to play by the rules of the market. There's an established marked for web browsers and email clients, and the people who shop in that market are most easily brainwashed with strong branding, rock- and sports stars, and loud commercials. If you don't like it, you can take your software and share it amongst your little friends, secure in the knowledge that you have a better product. Meanwhile, the thronging masses are screaming for IE and Outlook, which have household names and brand identity.
The world outside the OSS community only works when people buy things, and if you're no good at selling them, then your 1337 coding skills are worth less than the dirt on my shoe.
Disclosure: I'm an employed programmer, and have been for years. I also took some entrepreneur classes in college, and I'm sick and tired of the narrow-minded, holier-than-thou attitude I get around here sometimes. Grow the fuck up.
There's probably a logic gap in my solution: any suggestions?
There's more than a logic gap, there's a comprehension gap. No voting system with barcodes will work, because people don't parse bar codes. Imagine locating the barcode for the recent CA Governor election. It was hard enough finding the candidate's name, much less some silly jumble of lines.
You've heard of social Darwinism, now in the US we have social Daltonism: classifying people based on their weight. You do know that Americium is an unstable, overweight atom...
Slashdot Mirror
I have a great idea: let's kill all the lawyers! Then, when your boss fires you because he doesn't like your hair, you can go suck your thumb. When your deadbeat son gets arrested for drug possession and thrown in jail for 50 years, you can whine like a baby. When your REAL freedoms get squashed, you can bitch and moan and post half-assed raving nonsense on Slashdot. Because that's all you'd be able to do without trial lawyers. [/sarcasm]
Why is everyone here so down on lawyers? Realize that many class-actions cost millions to litigate, and you, the beneficiary, aren't paying squat for it. If the law firm loses, they eat it, not you, and it could cost seven or eight figures. Did you want to pay the RIAA $14 if they won their case, and not the other way around? Did you? If you think equity redistribution is unfair in a class-action, propose a better solution, don't just accuse people of being terrorists.
And while I'm ranting, there's one more thing I'd like to get off my chest. Lawyers, despite what people may think of them, generally do what they do out of a desire to help people. Yes, it sucks that some people profit off of other people's misery; however, if there weren't a system of redress of grievances, everyone would suffer. Injustices aren't righted by computer, they're righted by people, and those people have to get paid.
Some of the lawyers I know work just as long as the programmers I know (including myself), and many work much, MUCH longer. Maybe, if you'd get off your elitist high-horse and actually TALK to a lawyer, you might get a different impression of them. Oh, and one more thing: if you want to maintain your attitude, then that's your business, but I never heard of a trial lawyer getting ass-pounding prison time when he was in dire need of a good programmer.
[/rant]
The word people are looking for is severability. IANAL either, but I'm pretty sure that any contract which claims to be the entirety of the agreement between the parties must include a severability clause, or you don't get its benefits. It isn't necessarily automatic, although it might be by State law (you'd have to check each State's individual contract laws, tho).
Not all implementations depend on Sun. Check out Classpath. Granted, there's a lot of work to be done on it, and it's nowhere near production-ready, but my hat's off to them.
Disclaimer: IANAL (yet).
... and watch the fabulous free market kick your ass when no one shops with you any more because they can get it for $1 less across the street. Of course, I've only had a year of rudimentary economics, I'm sure those marketing geniuses must know something I don't.
Windows crashes enough. You don't need to get the FBI involved.
What do you expect after wearing a jacket for 3 days? I'm amazed the clasps lasted the first night's sleep.
My source is the CIA World Factbook. Their page on Niue is pretty interesting. Seems they're actually 10% Mormon. Oh, and if you want to get there, you have to take Polynesian Airlines. No one else flies into the one Niuean airport. For those of you planning to go there from the States: you have to go thru American Samoa, via Los Angeles or Honolulu. AFAIK, Polynesian have one airplane, and their timetable only has it going from Apia to Niue Monday morning at 5 AM. All well and good, except that the flight from LA/Hawaii to Apia is on (the previous) Wednesday. Of course, this is only a problem if you don't want to spend a few days in Samoa. For more information on Niue, check out this page. It looks spectacular.
The only way to prevent companies from engaging in overseas outsourcing is to artificially lower either the buying-power ratio or the exchange ratio. The former won't happen unless the foreign country's economy grows relative to yours, which isn't easy when 'you' are the US. There will always be some country that's poor, with people looking for cheap work. As for artifically devaluing the dollar, that is already happening to some extent due to Our Glorious Leader pissing everyone off. Maybe we should get W. to invade someone everyone likes, maybe Switzerland. That'd shoot the dollar straight to hell.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, anyone?
He doesn't particularly mind doing Gandalf, but I wouldn't say it's his favorite, by a long shot. Read the White Book entry from three weeks ago, especially the part about signing autographs. For more of his take on LOTR, read his journals. I'd reproduce the relevant paragraphs here, but the site doesn't allow it.
Drug companies get no patent protection, and medical and pharmaceutical research is done by the government, funded by tax dollars. I think it a resonable position that drugs research benefits all of society, and is therefore justified under the umbrella of government. Furthermore, any product so developed will be free of patent- and trade secret encumbrance. Manufacturers will be free to compete on the basis of process cost, with no artificial price overhead justified by having to recoup research losses. Individual companies are free to do private research, of course, but must realize that their results will not be protected.
I believe that profits should never be allowed to take precedence over medical treatment. Moving the responsibility for research to the government reduces medical profiteering. If the government refuses, but the research is truly important, it will be done by private enterprise.
For those who don't know, the United States Code is the collection of the Acts of Congress (federal laws). Whenever a bill is signed into law, it goes into the Code. Title 17 contains the laws that pertain to copyrights, and Chapter 12 is the DMCA.
Nothing prevents you from making such a device. Of course, up until recently, US law prevented jack-booted thugs from kicking down your door and arresting you for building devices that bypass copyright security features. Now they can, even if you do it "for educational purposes only".
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, someone just got a (+5, Interesting) for soliciting anonymous cybersex. Are all you people really that fucking desperate?
Engineers build complex things and watch them fail. Then they learn from their mistakes, and build something better. That's the nature of engineering: to build things no one has ever seen before, to do things no one has ever done before. You WILL break things exploring.
Safety CANNOT be the purpose of NASA. The purpose of the space program MUST be to explore space, whatever it takes, no more and no less. It's time for a reality check, folks: do we Americans think manned space exploration is worth the cost or the risk? If not, then we should all stop deluding ourselves, shut the fuck up, and let someone else do it. Why fund a program whose purpose we don't support? It's time to piss or get off the pot.
When something is abundant, it's free. Witness the Internet. Once software/movies/music gets out, it's available gratis. Anything that can be digitized (i.e. any information) can be made available for zero price. That scares the hell out of the Entrenched Capitalist, as well it should.
As far as information goes, creativity isn't a team sport. Ever hear of a fiction novel written by 12 people? Didn't think so. It may be true that developing ideas may require resources and manpower, but inspiration strikes individuals.
Maybe the legacy of the Information Age will be that eventually, only tangible goods and artificially scare information will carry a price tag. This is a Good Thing. It means everyone benefits from the collective thought of the creative, but you still have to work building things to make a living. We could have that utopia, or just sell information through Absolute DRM, which we're well on the way to having. It's obvious that The Powers That Be know this future, and are actively lobbying for it. It's long past time we sent our own legions of Smart People up to Capitol Hill to sell our vision of the future, too.
Anyone here think that the counterclaim was a masterstroke by the IBM lawyers? They knew that SCO would have to throw the kitchen sink into the list of ADs, and they knew that this would be one of them, and they knew that even though the SCO lawyers didn't want to, they'd have to include it. The counterclaim was a brilliant trap, and it worked perfectly.
There seems to be a working Appgen web site here, although the for-pay downloads aren't working.
If you're going to compete with other products, you have to play by the rules of the market. There's an established marked for web browsers and email clients, and the people who shop in that market are most easily brainwashed with strong branding, rock- and sports stars, and loud commercials. If you don't like it, you can take your software and share it amongst your little friends, secure in the knowledge that you have a better product. Meanwhile, the thronging masses are screaming for IE and Outlook, which have household names and brand identity.
The world outside the OSS community only works when people buy things, and if you're no good at selling them, then your 1337 coding skills are worth less than the dirt on my shoe.
Disclosure: I'm an employed programmer, and have been for years. I also took some entrepreneur classes in college, and I'm sick and tired of the narrow-minded, holier-than-thou attitude I get around here sometimes. Grow the fuck up.
[/rant]
There's more than a logic gap, there's a comprehension gap. No voting system with barcodes will work, because people don't parse bar codes. Imagine locating the barcode for the recent CA Governor election. It was hard enough finding the candidate's name, much less some silly jumble of lines.
You've heard of social Darwinism, now in the US we have social Daltonism: classifying people based on their weight. You do know that Americium is an unstable, overweight atom...
"Because the military budget is already quadruple what people think it is."