This is what I also was thinking. If stream processing is so damn useful for so many things other than graphics, why should the graphics people have all the control over the microarchitecture and instruction set architecture? There should be a standard ISA so that the software end is uniform, and I assume that AMD and Intel would be the ones to make standard hardware interfaces for each one's own architecture, so that hardware in the same generation is mostly interchangeable.
I think the reason people don't see infringement as immoral is because they don't understand the social contract that underlies copyright law. And that's because the social contract has been trashed so thoroughly by the media industry that it's effectively invisible. Joe Average isn't stupid, but he's not an IP lawyer and given that he has never seen any copyrights expire during his lifetime, and may never see it, the notion that copyright is a tradeoff of short-term disadvantage for long-term advantage never occurs to him, because as far as he knows it's just a permanent restriction. Ask Joe who owns the copyright to Shakespeare's works and he's likely to think it's a reasonable question.
Well, then why don't they do the right thing and provide us with the name of the company we should be contacting? Or is this very knowledge also supposed to be top secret for some idiotic and bizarre reason? (The way things tend to go, it wouldn't surprise me if this is the case.)
The negative is that we let failing companies fail, jobs are lost, etc., but the positive is that there's actually a real INCENTIVE to innovate.
is not always so. If you have enough influence, you can get the government to bail you out (airline industry), change the laws (entertainment industry), etc, at the expense of everyone else. Large companies in expensive industries do not respond to market forces gracefully.
I don't disagree with everything you're saying, but I do take exception to the intensity and the spite of your argument.
It is a reasonable compromise to grant things like patents and copyrights. However, the current timeframes are out of sync with the pace of information creation and transfer. Entire generations are born and die before their culture---if you even at all recognize that what authors, artists, writers, and the like produce belongs* to all of humanity---whether popular or obscure, ever legally passes to the people and to other producers of culture. Entire generations of products are many times obsolete before their key methods and concepts, perhaps already well-known, may be used freely in mature, more perfectly competitive market, to the point where price level without the patent is effectively zero (e.g., FOSS). The artificial pace imposed by the legal constructs are greatly out of sync with the actual pace of science, technology, and culture.
Yes, an entity deserves to be compensated for its mental labor. But if the compensation goes on for too long, the entity will be more inclined to allow its work to stagnate. Now, this particular case is complicated by failures in other markets (remember, this is the music cartel we're talking about), but I would consider MP3 to be stagnant. More advanced formats have come out, with better quality than what MP3 offers; but then again, many of them may only come with the price of DRM, making files in those markets inferior goods, perhaps even in the technical sense of the term.
All I'm suggesting is that you really take a look at what it is that you're backing. Ask yourself if it's the proper compromise between individual and collective interests, keeping in mind the increasing tendency of information to favor the collective, and the law's increasing tendency to favor the individual; do you support the discord of the status quo?
* Well, having now looked at your bio, I expect a nasty flame in response to this tinderbox of an opinion.:P
Noli nothis permittere te terere works too, I suppose. As with any translation, it's not 1:1. I like my selection of "commolo" over "tero", but I see the merits of using the imperative over the subjunctive.
We should be willing to put up cash for licenses. Money is the only language businesses understand, and we can't dent their sales enough to put up an effective boycott. I personally would concentrate on specifications without NDAs and with sublicensing rights: if we're putting up extra money, I damn well expect these things at the minimum.
We know a thing or two, but we can't feed everyone. We have satellites orbiting the Earth while people live on sidewalks.
What are you going to do about it? Give arbitrary power to somebody, who will feed and house the poor with the wealth of the rich? You think some form of collectivism wouldn't quickly degenerate into totalitarianism?
We are what we are. We can only build on what we have previously done. There is no magic of the gods that will allow us to become a species of greater beings; that only happens through the analysis and synthesis of our environment and our own imaginations.
Please keep in mind that even the best of us have flaws, and that the worst have many, many more.
Knux ain't a villain, but you could consider him the complement to Sonic: Sonic is chaotic, Knuckles is dutiful; Sonic is slow to anger, Knuckles is quick to anger; etc. They both represent good, but they often fight because their styles are different. In fact, I would cite the presence of Falco to complement Fox as a precedent.
I've always thought that while Pat should continue to maintain Slackware stable and current, several people should maintain a full or mostly-full Slackware testing distro, so that making new packages and newer versions of existing packages ready for inclusion into mainline Slackware can be expedited. There's no reason why the Slackware philosophy cannot be extended to newer packages.
Slashdot Mirror
Ditto here. Except I finally switched a while ago.
The GRUB command line is very, very useful.
This is what I also was thinking. If stream processing is so damn useful for so many things other than graphics, why should the graphics people have all the control over the microarchitecture and instruction set architecture? There should be a standard ISA so that the software end is uniform, and I assume that AMD and Intel would be the ones to make standard hardware interfaces for each one's own architecture, so that hardware in the same generation is mostly interchangeable.
Um... no?
Somebody on Ars pointed out a post here on Slashdot that is, IMO, the most clear and succinct argument against life-plus copyright that I have ever seen, saying (in part):
I think the reason people don't see infringement as immoral is because they don't understand the social contract that underlies copyright law. And that's because the social contract has been trashed so thoroughly by the media industry that it's effectively invisible. Joe Average isn't stupid, but he's not an IP lawyer and given that he has never seen any copyrights expire during his lifetime, and may never see it, the notion that copyright is a tradeoff of short-term disadvantage for long-term advantage never occurs to him, because as far as he knows it's just a permanent restriction. Ask Joe who owns the copyright to Shakespeare's works and he's likely to think it's a reasonable question.
(Emphasis mine.)
Well, then why don't they do the right thing and provide us with the name of the company we should be contacting? Or is this very knowledge also supposed to be top secret for some idiotic and bizarre reason? (The way things tend to go, it wouldn't surprise me if this is the case.)
It's a "feature" that wasn't there before that throws entire match strategy right out the window.
It adds realism. Real terrorists don't always have the best equiptment available.
I agree with everything else you said, but:
The negative is that we let failing companies fail, jobs are lost, etc., but the positive is that there's actually a real INCENTIVE to innovate.
is not always so. If you have enough influence, you can get the government to bail you out (airline industry), change the laws (entertainment industry), etc, at the expense of everyone else. Large companies in expensive industries do not respond to market forces gracefully.
Although that might not please you if you have a 16:9 TV...
Maybe it's just elitist of me, but I can't stand a picture being out of aspect ratio. I would rather see black bars than see people with oblong heads.
Sometimes they tell the story better.
I don't disagree with everything you're saying, but I do take exception to the intensity and the spite of your argument.
:P
It is a reasonable compromise to grant things like patents and copyrights. However, the current timeframes are out of sync with the pace of information creation and transfer. Entire generations are born and die before their culture---if you even at all recognize that what authors, artists, writers, and the like produce belongs* to all of humanity---whether popular or obscure, ever legally passes to the people and to other producers of culture. Entire generations of products are many times obsolete before their key methods and concepts, perhaps already well-known, may be used freely in mature, more perfectly competitive market, to the point where price level without the patent is effectively zero (e.g., FOSS). The artificial pace imposed by the legal constructs are greatly out of sync with the actual pace of science, technology, and culture.
Yes, an entity deserves to be compensated for its mental labor. But if the compensation goes on for too long, the entity will be more inclined to allow its work to stagnate. Now, this particular case is complicated by failures in other markets (remember, this is the music cartel we're talking about), but I would consider MP3 to be stagnant. More advanced formats have come out, with better quality than what MP3 offers; but then again, many of them may only come with the price of DRM, making files in those markets inferior goods, perhaps even in the technical sense of the term.
All I'm suggesting is that you really take a look at what it is that you're backing. Ask yourself if it's the proper compromise between individual and collective interests, keeping in mind the increasing tendency of information to favor the collective, and the law's increasing tendency to favor the individual; do you support the discord of the status quo?
* Well, having now looked at your bio, I expect a nasty flame in response to this tinderbox of an opinion.
Well, pending another retroactive extension of copyright (I don't even want to start on that...), works will begin to enter the public domain.
Noli nothis permittere te terere works too, I suppose. As with any translation, it's not 1:1. I like my selection of "commolo" over "tero", but I see the merits of using the imperative over the subjunctive.
:)
Latin on the Internets: Serious Business.
That's not even correct Latin! It should be "Ne spurii te commolant", or something like that.
It's "Dog eats dog"!
We should be willing to put up cash for licenses. Money is the only language businesses understand, and we can't dent their sales enough to put up an effective boycott. I personally would concentrate on specifications without NDAs and with sublicensing rights: if we're putting up extra money, I damn well expect these things at the minimum.
It's obligatory!
We know a thing or two, but we can't feed everyone. We have satellites orbiting the Earth while people live on sidewalks.
What are you going to do about it? Give arbitrary power to somebody, who will feed and house the poor with the wealth of the rich? You think some form of collectivism wouldn't quickly degenerate into totalitarianism?
We are what we are. We can only build on what we have previously done. There is no magic of the gods that will allow us to become a species of greater beings; that only happens through the analysis and synthesis of our environment and our own imaginations.
Please keep in mind that even the best of us have flaws, and that the worst have many, many more.
Knux ain't a villain, but you could consider him the complement to Sonic: Sonic is chaotic, Knuckles is dutiful; Sonic is slow to anger, Knuckles is quick to anger; etc. They both represent good, but they often fight because their styles are different. In fact, I would cite the presence of Falco to complement Fox as a precedent.
http://samusnaked.ytmnsfw.com/
(No, it's not really Samus naked. Just a bit of bad language.)
Anyway, I personally would love to see Sonic in there, but I readily admit that would feel so weird, almost wrong.
I've always thought that while Pat should continue to maintain Slackware stable and current, several people should maintain a full or mostly-full Slackware testing distro, so that making new packages and newer versions of existing packages ready for inclusion into mainline Slackware can be expedited. There's no reason why the Slackware philosophy cannot be extended to newer packages.
Let my failure to use the objective case be an indication of the severity of my anger.
I'm going to start hitting people, and I won't care who.
That's all I'm going to say.
ZOMGWTFBBQ!!! Quit it with the TLAs and FLAs!
It's because MS (and Big Content, too) has most of the hardware companies by the balls.
But did anybody check for vandalism of pages about bears?