Did you even read my post? I specifically said "Despite the stereotypes, not all of rural America is full of bigotted hicks, and things are on the whole getting better even where there are bigotted hicks." I consider a lot of places in the American heartland to be desirable, just not Central PA or Oklahoma. Both I and the person who responded to me (Deekin_Scalesinger (755062)) have lived in Central PA. I actually did know some very nice people there. It's just that there are some severe problems that still exist there. I have friends who moved to Oklahoma who complain about the problems they have there since they are neither white for fundamentalists. I have never lived in California, but my in-laws do. They don't much care for it, but not for reasons of bigotry. They are of the opinion that most people there are too rude. I couldn't say one way or the other.
While some people on the coasts do think of the heartland as "flyover country", if you had bothered to read my post you would realize that I am not one of them. I just have a problem with places like Central PA that tend to treat people who are not from their own state as foreignors (and of course all foreignors are bad to them). To give you a particular example that stands out above my own personal experience, the residents of State College, PA tried to pass a law that would require all students to live in a particular section of State College, since the locals did not want the students to be able to live near them. It was only after tremendous protest that the locals realized that maybe they shouldn't alienate the people who keep them from having an abysmal economy like most of the rest of Central PA. But the final insult is all the locals who carp about the fact that very few of the Penn State graduates want to stay in "Happy Valley". When I hear things like that, I don't know whether to cry or to weep.
If a job can be sourced to someone in a small town in America, 99% of the time it can be sourced to someone in India, for pennies on the dollar.
Well, outsourcing to rural America could also be to forestall any future backlash against outsourcing to other countries. Outsourcing is not so much in the spotlight now, but it probably will be again in the future. Then, they can say something to the effect of, "Yeah, we outsource some to India and China, but we also outsource to rural America. We are keeping America working and letting people live and work where they grow up." If they only outsource to other countries, most people won't stand for it and an opportunistic politician (which is unfortunately what we would have to wait for) could take advantage of that situation.
The other nice thing about outsourcing to rural America is that, if you are the type that doesn't look busy because you get it done right the first time (or you just really kick gluteous maximus at multi-tasking), you can hold down two jobs on a 50 hour per week schedule. Of course, it depends on what type of outsourced job you have. Or, if you are more sane, you can do your one job in less than 40 hours a week and enjoy your nice, big house with a few acres out in wherever. Despite the stereotypes, not all of rural America is full of bigotted hicks, and things are on the whole getting better even where there are bigotted hicks. Well, except Oklahoma and Central Pennsylvania. I have no hope for either of them anytime this century. Although, if people living in big cities who are only there because they like the kind of work they are doing can move back, maybe things will improve even more.
That still doesn't make it less wrong. They already have extorted people out of their money with this patent, and they still have 11 months to do so.
Oh, I'm not arguing that. My point was more about practical possibilities rather than morality. What I meant was that the patent is almost expired, so there is no point in trying to get it invalidated now. In October 2006, the patent goes into the public domain. It would probably take longer than that with the courts to get it invalidated. I guess I didn't make that clear, especially considering the post I was responding to.
Kind of like your president, right? He seems perfectly happy to babble on and on about warfare and the enemy and what it takes to eliminate terrorism, but he didn't serve when he had the chance either. Make sense?
Um, you do realize that the patent was filed in October 1986 and granted in October 1987, don't you? I actually don't see what the big deal is anyway. The patent term is set to expire soon - October 2006 if they filed under the current system. I assume that they filed under the current system since, if the old system of 17 years after the granting of the patent were in place at the time of filing, the patent would have already expired over a year ago.
Especially if Microsoft designs the software for it. I mean, with Word for example, when I am writing a paper and use "et al." it automatically changes to the French dictionary, even though this is a common term for English language papers when you are referencing a document with multiple authors. I guess if they designed the toaster, it would assume you want it black because you turned in a particular direction one morning. Then, every morning after it assumes you want your toast black.
A good troupe of actors with a good director can take even the archaic language of four centuries ago and perform it in a way that's easy to follow and, believe it or not, entertaining. Action, body language and inflection can do wonders for making the meaning clear.
So, I guess any Shakespearean movie with either Keanu Reaves or Ben Afleck would be out of the question then? [shudders violently] "Avaunt ye horrible shadow!"
Re:[OT] Re:How to boycott? mercantilism
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
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· Score: 1
Roads, bridges and schools can be much better built, maintained and managed by the free market of competition than by the force/coercion market created by government and the cronies of government.
The biggest problem I see here is that there is this little economics concept called a "natural monopoly". Schools I would grant you, but I would have trouble with allowing some of the poorer people to languish in illiteracy since they cannot afford a private school. Plus, there are many people who come from a poor background who are quite talented and would have no way to achieve anything without some form of public school.
Roads and bridges, on the other hand, are natural monopolies. You can't just design a bunch of different competing road systems. It doesn't work in the real physical world. There is a finite amount of space in a city and noone needs multiple roads to go to the same place. Having openly competitive contracts through a government agency, while it does get a little bogged down in red tape, is probably the best way to go. The problem with the current administration is that, in so many cases, they ignore the whole concept of competitive bidding and simply hand lucrative, overpriced no-bid contracts to their cronies who are now making assloads of money on warfare and natural disasters.
I study at last 40 hours a week the various documents that help me reinforce the views I hold dear to me.
With all due respect (and I'm honestly not trying to insult), this is probably part of the problem. If you spend all your time studying things that simply reinforce your views, you are doing your intellect an incredible dis-service. Nothing is ever as simple as a single ideal or philosophy and no matter how good an idea is in one situation, it usually doesn't work very well in others. If an ideal or philosophy makes perfect sense to you and seems perfectly logical, you have missed something.
Even the whole idea of a Political Spectrum is nonsense, despite what the Ann Coulters and Al Frankens try to tell you. True politics should be at least an N-dimensional space, with N equal to the number of possible issues. The political spectrum from Liberal to Conservative is just picking one of a set of teams to root for.
Take the Sony case, for example. It shows how screwed up the whole corporate system is in America (and just about everywhere else, too). Limited and controlled corporations to serve the public good (like utilities) can be good, but the kind of corporations we tend to get now are very much a problem. You get corporations like Sony who, relying of Intellectual Property for their business model, try to gobble up all the intellectual property they can. That's why they try insane and inane nonsense like this rootkit and why all the different IP related corporations try to stretch the boundaries of what IP they can obtain. Instead of simply owning the rights to particular music or particular books, they try to obtain ownership of IP down to the most fundamental level that they can. If they could get away with it, they would own all possible forms of expression and require you to pay them for it (or go to jail). In a similar vein, you have corporations like Monsanto trying to own the IP to the smallest piece of the genetic code that they can. And they have teams of reptilian lawyers (think Serpentor or Cobra Commander with a briefcase and a docket clerk) that are more than happy to try to get it for them, all the while patting themselves on the back for how "smart" they think they are.
Anyway, my apologies to the parent poster. I was going to make a simple reply, but got stuck in rant mode.
Thank you. I was wondering what the actual patents were since/.'ers tend to shoot off at the mouth without actually reading anything. Plus, I wanted to know if this was an actual patent or just a published application. This incredibly significant difference is utterly lost on so many people here.
To anyone submitting a story about patents:(1) Make sure to mention whether it is a patent or a published application, (2) link to the friggin' patent or publication, which is easy to do since they are all readily available at www.uspto.gov, and (3) if it is a granted patent, RTFClaims! This is what the actual patent protection comes down to: each and every limitation of the independent claims has to be met for something to infringe (or an obvious variation). I mention all this because, without these three things, you can't even begin to discuss problems with the patent. Not that it ever stopped anyone here, though...
I assumed he meant James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, which is who I meant. If you are simply joking around, forgive me. A week with eleven hour workdays wears out the ability to find humor.
Not sure about the last decade, since it will take a while to see who makes it big. Even the prosecution of a patent application can take five years or so. But Wozniak got a lot of patents back in the late 70's and early 80's, when he was basically a nobody. And then, as one poster mentioned, there is Dyson. I'm sure there are others (and remember there are other areas of technology besides computers), but I can't think of them off the top of my head and I'm too lazy to look.
But why is it necessarily a comic coming from Japan? If a Japanese comic writer creates a comic in the Western style, would you still consider that to be Manga, and if so, why?
So a Japanese comic that doesn't adhere top this "style" is not manga?
I would say that it is not. If a Japanese makes a comic in the more common American (or at least Western) style, would you call it Manga? So the question really is, is Manga about a comic coming from Japan, or is it about the particular style of comic?
historically it is much easier to retain your original culture and still be considered an American.
Well, legally you are considered American, but a lot of the actual people will consider (for example) a third generation Asian-American as still being a "foreigner".
Slashdot Mirror
Change "islamic" to "fundamentalist Christian" and you have described Pat Robertson's definition of oppression.
While some people on the coasts do think of the heartland as "flyover country", if you had bothered to read my post you would realize that I am not one of them. I just have a problem with places like Central PA that tend to treat people who are not from their own state as foreignors (and of course all foreignors are bad to them). To give you a particular example that stands out above my own personal experience, the residents of State College, PA tried to pass a law that would require all students to live in a particular section of State College, since the locals did not want the students to be able to live near them. It was only after tremendous protest that the locals realized that maybe they shouldn't alienate the people who keep them from having an abysmal economy like most of the rest of Central PA. But the final insult is all the locals who carp about the fact that very few of the Penn State graduates want to stay in "Happy Valley". When I hear things like that, I don't know whether to cry or to weep.
Well, outsourcing to rural America could also be to forestall any future backlash against outsourcing to other countries. Outsourcing is not so much in the spotlight now, but it probably will be again in the future. Then, they can say something to the effect of, "Yeah, we outsource some to India and China, but we also outsource to rural America. We are keeping America working and letting people live and work where they grow up." If they only outsource to other countries, most people won't stand for it and an opportunistic politician (which is unfortunately what we would have to wait for) could take advantage of that situation.
The other nice thing about outsourcing to rural America is that, if you are the type that doesn't look busy because you get it done right the first time (or you just really kick gluteous maximus at multi-tasking), you can hold down two jobs on a 50 hour per week schedule. Of course, it depends on what type of outsourced job you have. Or, if you are more sane, you can do your one job in less than 40 hours a week and enjoy your nice, big house with a few acres out in wherever. Despite the stereotypes, not all of rural America is full of bigotted hicks, and things are on the whole getting better even where there are bigotted hicks. Well, except Oklahoma and Central Pennsylvania. I have no hope for either of them anytime this century. Although, if people living in big cities who are only there because they like the kind of work they are doing can move back, maybe things will improve even more.
Oh, I'm not arguing that. My point was more about practical possibilities rather than morality. What I meant was that the patent is almost expired, so there is no point in trying to get it invalidated now. In October 2006, the patent goes into the public domain. It would probably take longer than that with the courts to get it invalidated. I guess I didn't make that clear, especially considering the post I was responding to.
Kind of like your president, right? He seems perfectly happy to babble on and on about warfare and the enemy and what it takes to eliminate terrorism, but he didn't serve when he had the chance either. Make sense?
Um, you do realize that the patent was filed in October 1986 and granted in October 1987, don't you? I actually don't see what the big deal is anyway. The patent term is set to expire soon - October 2006 if they filed under the current system. I assume that they filed under the current system since, if the old system of 17 years after the granting of the patent were in place at the time of filing, the patent would have already expired over a year ago.
Some people already find the actions of our politicians and corporations barbaric.
And this is so obvious, even a Cro Magnon can figure it out :-p
Especially if Microsoft designs the software for it. I mean, with Word for example, when I am writing a paper and use "et al." it automatically changes to the French dictionary, even though this is a common term for English language papers when you are referencing a document with multiple authors. I guess if they designed the toaster, it would assume you want it black because you turned in a particular direction one morning. Then, every morning after it assumes you want your toast black.
So, I guess any Shakespearean movie with either Keanu Reaves or Ben Afleck would be out of the question then? [shudders violently] "Avaunt ye horrible shadow!"
The aquaduct?
The biggest problem I see here is that there is this little economics concept called a "natural monopoly". Schools I would grant you, but I would have trouble with allowing some of the poorer people to languish in illiteracy since they cannot afford a private school. Plus, there are many people who come from a poor background who are quite talented and would have no way to achieve anything without some form of public school.
Roads and bridges, on the other hand, are natural monopolies. You can't just design a bunch of different competing road systems. It doesn't work in the real physical world. There is a finite amount of space in a city and noone needs multiple roads to go to the same place. Having openly competitive contracts through a government agency, while it does get a little bogged down in red tape, is probably the best way to go. The problem with the current administration is that, in so many cases, they ignore the whole concept of competitive bidding and simply hand lucrative, overpriced no-bid contracts to their cronies who are now making assloads of money on warfare and natural disasters.
I study at last 40 hours a week the various documents that help me reinforce the views I hold dear to me.
With all due respect (and I'm honestly not trying to insult), this is probably part of the problem. If you spend all your time studying things that simply reinforce your views, you are doing your intellect an incredible dis-service. Nothing is ever as simple as a single ideal or philosophy and no matter how good an idea is in one situation, it usually doesn't work very well in others. If an ideal or philosophy makes perfect sense to you and seems perfectly logical, you have missed something.
Take the Sony case, for example. It shows how screwed up the whole corporate system is in America (and just about everywhere else, too). Limited and controlled corporations to serve the public good (like utilities) can be good, but the kind of corporations we tend to get now are very much a problem. You get corporations like Sony who, relying of Intellectual Property for their business model, try to gobble up all the intellectual property they can. That's why they try insane and inane nonsense like this rootkit and why all the different IP related corporations try to stretch the boundaries of what IP they can obtain. Instead of simply owning the rights to particular music or particular books, they try to obtain ownership of IP down to the most fundamental level that they can. If they could get away with it, they would own all possible forms of expression and require you to pay them for it (or go to jail). In a similar vein, you have corporations like Monsanto trying to own the IP to the smallest piece of the genetic code that they can. And they have teams of reptilian lawyers (think Serpentor or Cobra Commander with a briefcase and a docket clerk) that are more than happy to try to get it for them, all the while patting themselves on the back for how "smart" they think they are.
Anyway, my apologies to the parent poster. I was going to make a simple reply, but got stuck in rant mode.
Now we know why the national anthem is O Canada!
To anyone submitting a story about patents:(1) Make sure to mention whether it is a patent or a published application, (2) link to the friggin' patent or publication, which is easy to do since they are all readily available at www.uspto.gov, and (3) if it is a granted patent, RTFClaims! This is what the actual patent protection comes down to: each and every limitation of the independent claims has to be met for something to infringe (or an obvious variation). I mention all this because, without these three things, you can't even begin to discuss problems with the patent. Not that it ever stopped anyone here, though...
I assumed he meant James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, which is who I meant. If you are simply joking around, forgive me. A week with eleven hour workdays wears out the ability to find humor.
Not sure about the last decade, since it will take a while to see who makes it big. Even the prosecution of a patent application can take five years or so. But Wozniak got a lot of patents back in the late 70's and early 80's, when he was basically a nobody. And then, as one poster mentioned, there is Dyson. I'm sure there are others (and remember there are other areas of technology besides computers), but I can't think of them off the top of my head and I'm too lazy to look.
But why is it necessarily a comic coming from Japan? If a Japanese comic writer creates a comic in the Western style, would you still consider that to be Manga, and if so, why?
I would say that it is not. If a Japanese makes a comic in the more common American (or at least Western) style, would you call it Manga? So the question really is, is Manga about a comic coming from Japan, or is it about the particular style of comic?
Well, legally you are considered American, but a lot of the actual people will consider (for example) a third generation Asian-American as still being a "foreigner".
So, Paris is going to be overrun with crazed, angry, rioting panda bears? Who knew that Tai Shan was just another rioter-in-the-making?
No, just a stupid Rush Limbaugh fan. He's been blathering the same stupidity on his website (and I assume his show as well) ever since this started.
I can just see Samuel L. Jackson hopping out of a squad car, pointing his gun at some rioter saying, "Enchanté, motherfucker!"
Yes, it's the code for their new computer-controlled vacuum cleaners.
Sure, he bought a virtual island in cyberspace. But in the real world, he lives with a roommate in a U-Stor It room.