What I want to know is why anyone would pay someone to license a DRM scheme when they can be certain that the same person they're paying is going to turn around ad give their customers a tool to crack the DRM. Why not just save yourself the money and release your media without DRM (which will also work on the iPod) which will have the exact same effect (except for some minor inconvenience for your customers)?
I believe "transition" is code for "We built a nice new power plant years ago, decided that there wasn't enough demand for electricity and never actually brought it online, and are now passing on the cost to you even though it turns out we were really incredibly stupid in our predictions of future demand. Go buy a fucking windwill if you don't like it."
"All e-mail going back and forth from Sourceforge and Gmail" is certainly not being bounced. My Gmail account has been getting plenty of email from Sourceforge during the period when "all e-mail" has supposedly been bouncing.
Of course, this is the sort of accuracy I expect from Slashdot.
If a man with a gun comes into my house and wants to take all of my possessions, I'd certainly want eeryone in my community to pay money to some other guys with guns with nice cars with flashing lights who might want to try to stop him. I may even wish they'd hired enough of these guys with guns to provide a deterrant so the bad guys with guns would think twice before breaking into people's houses.
But why would my neighbors, who haven't been threatened by anyone with guns, want to be required to pay for these people? What if they've got guns of their own, and are reasonably confident that no one's going to try to take away their possessions? Why should my misfortune fall upon their shoulders?
Are you certain that society is a better place because we have armies and police forces to keep us away from total chaos? Wouldn't it be rational to try chaos for a while first, to see for sure?
Actually, the "War on Drugs" actually makes a lot more sense than the "War on Terror". At least drugs are tangible things, that you could, theoretically, track down and violently eliminate. Sure you'd need a nearly infinite amount of manpower, time, and technology, but at least on some level it makes sense.
"Terror", on the other hand, is an abstract concept. Unlike the War on Drugs, it's not merely infinitely unlikely that the War on Terror could be won, it's actually completely impossible.
On a side note, that "turn the other cheek thing" doesn't mean what people think it means.
...According to some people who don't like the message Jesus was trying to get across. I suppose they have a good figurative explanation with "historical and other factors in support" for the whole "blessed are the meek" thing, too. Yes, you too can have your Nietzschean Supermanness and your Judeo-Christian Morality all rolled into one!
The 1-click patent is problematic, sure, but it's not really in the same category as this one. This is more like is Amazon tried to patent selling books on the Internet.
Hydrogen and helium molecules also produce a "truly tiny" amount of gravity. Therefore, it's impossible that the Sun could actually be exerting enough pull on the Earth to keep it in orbit.
Wait, there might be a flaw in the logic here somewhere.
Nice how your earlier example of a "heavily edited" article was the one on Jews, and when it's pointed out that this "heavy editing" is often malicious vandalism you switch your example to "harmless, but not really helpful" edits to the article about a recently deceased celebrity. Why does that sort of rhetoric make me think your real problem is with the NPOV policy?
He thought it was total crap until he saw that a majority of the employees were Bush supporters.
I don't care if the majority of his fellow employees were in favor of reanimating Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and putting them on a ticket together; it's still total crap. Anyone who's only against suppressing political speech when he believes a majority of the speech that will be suppressed agrees with him is an idiot. Would he be happier with a "No Pro-Bush stickers" policy that allowed pro-Kerry stickers than he is with a "no political stickers at all" policy? If so, he's exactly the sort of person who makes worrying about stolen elections necessary in the first place.
I'd argue that the percentage of Wikipedians who know about the notability guidelines for articles is probably larger than the percentage of Americans who know their constitutional rights.
Right. The rule that subjects of articles in Wikipedia must be notable is "some obscure rule" in much the same way that the Constitution is "a technicality" when the police get in trouble for violating a suspect's civial rights.
Umm, because using a space elevator to put gold into orbit around the moon wouldn't be very profitable?
Or were you suggesting that the space elevator connect a point on the moon with a point on the Earth? If so, I recommend you go out one night and watch the moon for a few hours. You may notice a slight problem with your plan.
Hell, the problem of just creating puzzles that will present human solvers with varying degrees of difficulty is a whole lot more interesting than the "problem" of solving the puzzles.
Yes, and theoretically Buddha probably wouldn't have been in favor of people joining strict hierarchical monastic orders in order to follow his teachings. And Jesus would have a lot to say about American megachurches, too. Oddly enough, things in the real world differ from "theory" a bit.
And, having read the actual article (and not the Al-Jazeera blurb in which, I have to assume, quotations from the author were taken from an interview or some other source which isn't cited), nowhere in the peer-reviewed material is any comparison to goldfish made. So his most controversial "findings" are apparently off the cuff remarks made to some journalist, then interpreted to mean that some published biologist says that goldfish are smarter than dolphins.
I don't think real dolphin researchers are going to take this any more seriously than virologists take claims by other South African "scientists" who claim that AIDS isn't caused by HIV.
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What I want to know is why anyone would pay someone to license a DRM scheme when they can be certain that the same person they're paying is going to turn around ad give their customers a tool to crack the DRM. Why not just save yourself the money and release your media without DRM (which will also work on the iPod) which will have the exact same effect (except for some minor inconvenience for your customers)?
I believe "transition" is code for "We built a nice new power plant years ago, decided that there wasn't enough demand for electricity and never actually brought it online, and are now passing on the cost to you even though it turns out we were really incredibly stupid in our predictions of future demand. Go buy a fucking windwill if you don't like it."
Of course, this is the sort of accuracy I expect from Slashdot.
But why would my neighbors, who haven't been threatened by anyone with guns, want to be required to pay for these people? What if they've got guns of their own, and are reasonably confident that no one's going to try to take away their possessions? Why should my misfortune fall upon their shoulders?
Are you certain that society is a better place because we have armies and police forces to keep us away from total chaos? Wouldn't it be rational to try chaos for a while first, to see for sure?
Actually, I am not, nor have I ever been, a Christian.
"Terror", on the other hand, is an abstract concept. Unlike the War on Drugs, it's not merely infinitely unlikely that the War on Terror could be won, it's actually completely impossible.
Unless there's a correlation between who you vote for in an election and how likely you are to participate in an exit poll, your analogy is flawed.
I recommend you get yourself an old malfunctioning terminal right away, so you can see the joys those of us old enough to remember them went through.
The 1-click patent is problematic, sure, but it's not really in the same category as this one. This is more like is Amazon tried to patent selling books on the Internet.
If its content consists of facts, then no, it's not copyrighted. You can't copyright your address and phone number.
To be fair, it's a bit tricky to murder someone over the Internet.
Oddly enough, many Toronto residents for some reason don't qualify for a SSN.
Wait, there might be a flaw in the logic here somewhere.
Nice how your earlier example of a "heavily edited" article was the one on Jews, and when it's pointed out that this "heavy editing" is often malicious vandalism you switch your example to "harmless, but not really helpful" edits to the article about a recently deceased celebrity. Why does that sort of rhetoric make me think your real problem is with the NPOV policy?
I don't care if the majority of his fellow employees were in favor of reanimating Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and putting them on a ticket together; it's still total crap. Anyone who's only against suppressing political speech when he believes a majority of the speech that will be suppressed agrees with him is an idiot. Would he be happier with a "No Pro-Bush stickers" policy that allowed pro-Kerry stickers than he is with a "no political stickers at all" policy? If so, he's exactly the sort of person who makes worrying about stolen elections necessary in the first place.
There's a big difference between "heavily edited" and "often vandalized by anonymous users".
I'd argue that the percentage of Wikipedians who know about the notability guidelines for articles is probably larger than the percentage of Americans who know their constitutional rights.
In terms of the morality of violating each, of course not.
Right. The rule that subjects of articles in Wikipedia must be notable is "some obscure rule" in much the same way that the Constitution is "a technicality" when the police get in trouble for violating a suspect's civial rights.
Or were you suggesting that the space elevator connect a point on the moon with a point on the Earth? If so, I recommend you go out one night and watch the moon for a few hours. You may notice a slight problem with your plan.
Hell, the problem of just creating puzzles that will present human solvers with varying degrees of difficulty is a whole lot more interesting than the "problem" of solving the puzzles.
Yes, and theoretically Buddha probably wouldn't have been in favor of people joining strict hierarchical monastic orders in order to follow his teachings. And Jesus would have a lot to say about American megachurches, too. Oddly enough, things in the real world differ from "theory" a bit.
And don't even get me started about those fools over at the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Sounds made up to me.
I don't think real dolphin researchers are going to take this any more seriously than virologists take claims by other South African "scientists" who claim that AIDS isn't caused by HIV.