They were moving my machine and saw the firefox icon in the start menu, then asked why I had installed an unapproved program.
No worries though. I left that crap-tastic job and am now working for a company that not only will buy me a G5, but uses Firefox and Thunderbird except for compatibility testing.
I'm comforted by the fact that one day, maybe soon, the whole house of cards that is the "global economy" will come crashing down. Perhaps then no one will profit when a tree is cut down or someone gets cancer.
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
So, the decendents of Og, inventor of the wheel, should receive royalties from everyone who rides, drives, pushes, or pulls devices with "circular freely rotating attachments designed to facilitate movement"? In perpetuity?
Yes. Well, until the descendants of Lur of Omicron Persei 8 show up and claim prior art.
I just requisitioned a Power Mac G5 for work. I'll be able to steal my company's data! HA!
Incidentally, maybe they should also look into disabling command-line FTP. I got into a heap of trouble once because I was able to get a contraband file via FTP without anyone knowing.
Property is something that is owned. Something that is owned *can* be owned. So property is something that is owned that also can be owned.
What is owned? If something is owned, it has an owner. That owner is the sole possessor of that thing, and the only one who can control its use.
But in order to be controlled, a thing must be able to be controlled. That is, someone is able to limit how many people use the item. To use IP, all you have to do is know it. If you know Darth Vader is Luke's father, you've got IP from George Lucas. If you paid money to him for letting you know it, you haven't used the IP, you've used the medium to communicate the IP.
Of course, if you figured out Luke is Vader's son without paying, you don't owe Lucas anything. You didn't use a medium that he controls to get that knowledge.
Until we can bill people for knowing things, IP can't be considered property. The medium is property, but the information on it is not, since it's just thoughts.
The rooms aren't really big enough to need wireless anyway, though.
Spoken by someone who doesn't know what the freedom of WiFi feels like. If I want to compute from my couch, I can. If I want to put the laptop in the kitchen and stream audio, I can. Both of these locations are less than 10 feet from my WAP, but I wouldn't do it if it meant running Cat5 cables all over creation. (I have enough cable to do it, believe me.)
But I'm sure they'll change their tune once they find 200 foot Cat5 cables running down the halls. Hmm... I see an untapped market. Bulk Cat5 is about $0.25/foot, and you could sell them for $1/foot... Hrm.
Re:Michael YOU killed Jeopardy! Lone Gunmen redux!
on
They Killed Ken!
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· Score: 1
Could someone explain this for me? Michael killed the Lone Gunmen?
I took the parent to mean that anyone living in society has two options: Accept the rules or leave. I'm saying they have three options: Accept the rules, leave, or work peacefully to change them.
Someone could lie and enter the country without abiding, but then they would not be accepting the rules and would suffer the consequences. Either way, it's their choice.
So, really, someone entering the country has four options, that I will display as pseudocode:
switch (choice){ case "Don't agree to rules": "Change rules peacefully" or "Go in peace."; break; case "Agree to rules": "Abide by rules." or "Suffer Consequences."; break; }
It sounds trite, but different pupils have different learning styles too, so having some computer incompetent teachers may actually be a good thing.
Having different teaching styles is great. However, if you force students who learn best with whizzy technology to sit through a lecture, they're not going to be learning the best way.
The *very* best way to teach is to give students a task and tell them to finish it. They'll learn what they need to finish the task in the way that *they* learn best. If that means reading, they'll read. If it means experimentation, they'll experiment.
Herding children in school just makes them realize that it doesn't matter what their preference is, just what society thinks is right for them. And we wonder why so many flunk out of college...
Do you remember trips to the computer "lab" as a student? It consisted of taking ten minutes to herd the class down the hall, then watching the instructor fumble with equipment that they didn't know how to use and/or didn't work while the more technically savvy students had the assignment finished already and got nothing out of it, and who walked everyone else through the task while they got nothing out of it except learning that a couple people were good with computers.
Computers could be useful, but only if they're used all the time by every student. Recent successes in Maine with their iBook program show that students will figure out new uses for the computers to solve their own problems.
Computing shouldn't be a class, it should be a tool, like graphing calculators. You don't herd everyone up and drag them down to a room to use the graphic calculator, do you?
Depending on how the polls look before the election, I'll probably vote for the Green candidate if it's not close in my district, which is predominately Republican.
Then I'll contact the Dutch consulate and see if I can get political asylum.
There was an Enterprise episode about how freighters were the targets of piracy, and how their captains feel ignored by the Earth government and start taking laws into their own hands. Why not make a few more shows like that, about how ordinary citizens are coping with the incredible technological and political changes in their world?
What made DS9 the best (my opinion) was how it didn't ignore what was happening around it. In TOS and TNG I got the feeling like as soon as some good issues got raised, they were off to some other planet (usually EXACTLY LIKE EARTH except for ONE CRAZY DIFFERENCE).
Maybe ENT shouldn't have created the Xindi. Maybe they should have focused on the important events happening to the people of Earth? Things are changing quickly in their world just like ours. And they wouldn't have to shit all over Star Trek lore to do it.
Phillip Torrone and his wife share their Seattle house with five Sony Aibo dog robots, two Segway motorized scooters, a suitcase-size robot whose brain is a laptop computer, and dozens of other gadgets.
Man, I can't wait till I'm rich enough to blow my money on useless, expensive crap so I can waste my time breaking them.
I wonder if... with a little work, this could be used as a 2004 presidential voting machine?
In other news, Nintendo saw sales of its GBA drop as people realized that the previously cool device would be used for the decidedly uncool task of voting.
Therefore if the tenets (and history!) of Christianity are not taught in school, there will be people in ever growing numbers who do not know about or understand the concept of Freedom of Religion, and who will be completely ignorant of the ass kicking awaiting them should they transgress against it.
How about we just teach them what is in the Constitution; that all people are endowed with the same rights because they are people. There's nothing inherently Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist about that. It's a humanist philosophy.
In practical terms it means that while he is not required to eat bacon himself, his company does not have the right to declare bacon verboten for all employees.
Unless it interferes with the work the person must do. If a person is a telephone operator, and is eating bacon while trying to talk to customers, they can get fired. If a Muslim policeman wants to go to the mosque five times a day, regardless of what he's doing, he'll get fired for the same reason an armless man would get fired from data entry; it affects job performance.
A Conservative would state it thusly: "Welcome to my country. These are the rules. Play by them and there won't be any trouble. If you don't like the rules, go in peace."
I can't imagine what a Liberal would say, my mind won't bend that far into hyperspace. Probably depend on what day of the lunar calendar it was.
I'm a liberal, and here's what I'd say: "Welcome to this country. It's not mine, but here are the rules we've all decided to live by. If you have a problem with them, you can work to change them peacefully, accept them and abide by them, or go in peace."
You see, unlike a Conservative, I am tolerant of independent thought and realize people should be able to change the rules.
Why school is a society based on popularity. In a culture where people don't do any actual work all day (eg. school, wealthy ladies who leech off their husbands), that society invariably turns against itself, creating arbitrary judgements about the value of its members.
Gatto's got it almost right, and has a lot of good ideas. Like having kids work from 14 on.
I notice you don't list Macs. That's probably because my Mac doesn't bug me about burning the disc until after I tell it to eject. Until then I can erase and copy to my heart's content.
First Impressions on LinuxSucks.org from a Mac user: Wow. A bunch of sociopathic thirteen-year-olds complaining about something they're too stupid or lazy to understand.
Why can't you regulate and contain a small fusion reaction with control rods or some other mechanism like you can with fission?
Show me a control rod that can take ten million degrees and we'll use it.
The problem isn't containment, it's making the temperatures and pressures needed to start the reaction. There has been a lot of research into using high-powered lasers to start the reaction, which is then contained within a magnetic vessel like the tokamak.
Slashdot Mirror
No worries though. I left that crap-tastic job and am now working for a company that not only will buy me a G5, but uses Firefox and Thunderbird except for compatibility testing.
I'm comforted by the fact that one day, maybe soon, the whole house of cards that is the "global economy" will come crashing down. Perhaps then no one will profit when a tree is cut down or someone gets cancer.
Yes. Well, until the descendants of Lur of Omicron Persei 8 show up and claim prior art.
Incidentally, maybe they should also look into disabling command-line FTP. I got into a heap of trouble once because I was able to get a contraband file via FTP without anyone knowing.
That contraband file? Firefox.exe.
What is owned? If something is owned, it has an owner. That owner is the sole possessor of that thing, and the only one who can control its use.
But in order to be controlled, a thing must be able to be controlled. That is, someone is able to limit how many people use the item. To use IP, all you have to do is know it. If you know Darth Vader is Luke's father, you've got IP from George Lucas. If you paid money to him for letting you know it, you haven't used the IP, you've used the medium to communicate the IP.
Of course, if you figured out Luke is Vader's son without paying, you don't owe Lucas anything. You didn't use a medium that he controls to get that knowledge.
Until we can bill people for knowing things, IP can't be considered property. The medium is property, but the information on it is not, since it's just thoughts.
Spoken by someone who doesn't know what the freedom of WiFi feels like. If I want to compute from my couch, I can. If I want to put the laptop in the kitchen and stream audio, I can. Both of these locations are less than 10 feet from my WAP, but I wouldn't do it if it meant running Cat5 cables all over creation. (I have enough cable to do it, believe me.)
But I'm sure they'll change their tune once they find 200 foot Cat5 cables running down the halls. Hmm... I see an untapped market. Bulk Cat5 is about $0.25/foot, and you could sell them for $1/foot... Hrm.
Could someone explain this for me? Michael killed the Lone Gunmen?
*cave = my darkened cube, my basement laboratory, my total lack of interest in any news.
Someone could lie and enter the country without abiding, but then they would not be accepting the rules and would suffer the consequences. Either way, it's their choice.
So, really, someone entering the country has four options, that I will display as pseudocode:
Having different teaching styles is great. However, if you force students who learn best with whizzy technology to sit through a lecture, they're not going to be learning the best way.
The *very* best way to teach is to give students a task and tell them to finish it. They'll learn what they need to finish the task in the way that *they* learn best. If that means reading, they'll read. If it means experimentation, they'll experiment.
Herding children in school just makes them realize that it doesn't matter what their preference is, just what society thinks is right for them. And we wonder why so many flunk out of college...
Computers could be useful, but only if they're used all the time by every student. Recent successes in Maine with their iBook program show that students will figure out new uses for the computers to solve their own problems.
Computing shouldn't be a class, it should be a tool, like graphing calculators. You don't herd everyone up and drag them down to a room to use the graphic calculator, do you?
But, then again, I'm lazy, impatient, and full of hubris.
"I tried to warn them that proto-mortars were unstable, but they wouldn't listen!"
Do I get extra points because I used a pun and a Star Trek reference?
Then I'll contact the Dutch consulate and see if I can get political asylum.
What made DS9 the best (my opinion) was how it didn't ignore what was happening around it. In TOS and TNG I got the feeling like as soon as some good issues got raised, they were off to some other planet (usually EXACTLY LIKE EARTH except for ONE CRAZY DIFFERENCE).
Maybe ENT shouldn't have created the Xindi. Maybe they should have focused on the important events happening to the people of Earth? Things are changing quickly in their world just like ours. And they wouldn't have to shit all over Star Trek lore to do it.
"That was a kick ass 'In Search Of', with Leonard Nimoy, kickin' out the jams!"
Man, I can't wait till I'm rich enough to blow my money on useless, expensive crap so I can waste my time breaking them.
In other news, Nintendo saw sales of its GBA drop as people realized that the previously cool device would be used for the decidedly uncool task of voting.
How about we just teach them what is in the Constitution; that all people are endowed with the same rights because they are people. There's nothing inherently Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist about that. It's a humanist philosophy.
In practical terms it means that while he is not required to eat bacon himself, his company does not have the right to declare bacon verboten for all employees.
Unless it interferes with the work the person must do. If a person is a telephone operator, and is eating bacon while trying to talk to customers, they can get fired. If a Muslim policeman wants to go to the mosque five times a day, regardless of what he's doing, he'll get fired for the same reason an armless man would get fired from data entry; it affects job performance.
A Conservative would state it thusly: "Welcome to my country. These are the rules. Play by them and there won't be any trouble. If you don't like the rules, go in peace."
I can't imagine what a Liberal would say, my mind won't bend that far into hyperspace. Probably depend on what day of the lunar calendar it was.
I'm a liberal, and here's what I'd say: "Welcome to this country. It's not mine, but here are the rules we've all decided to live by. If you have a problem with them, you can work to change them peacefully, accept them and abide by them, or go in peace."
You see, unlike a Conservative, I am tolerant of independent thought and realize people should be able to change the rules.
Gatto's got it almost right, and has a lot of good ideas. Like having kids work from 14 on.
I notice you don't list Macs. That's probably because my Mac doesn't bug me about burning the disc until after I tell it to eject. Until then I can erase and copy to my heart's content.
It's like I'm back in 97 again!
If you want to change the law, get disgustingly rich and BUY a NEW one!
Jeez, it's like the commies never paid off a government official before!
There wouldn't be activist judges overturning laws if there weren't activist Congressmen making them.
Show me a control rod that can take ten million degrees and we'll use it.
The problem isn't containment, it's making the temperatures and pressures needed to start the reaction. There has been a lot of research into using high-powered lasers to start the reaction, which is then contained within a magnetic vessel like the tokamak.