Maybe within the next few thousand years we'll finally start doing population control, for instance.
Simple population control is not a good idea. I just saw a news story about the declining population in Europe. In the future, that will include the total population, including the immigrants. If we are to survive as a species, we must infest the entire galaxy. We need as many people as possible. The planet can easily sustain 20 billion people. With proper use of technology, there will be no shortages. This will provide us the needed brain power for getting off the planet with little hassle. Remember, we are parasites. We are a virus. We need a host to survive. If we kill the host, we kill ourselves.
Complexity is no excuse. The Concorde is the most complex airliner ever flown, to this day. That aircraft flew for over 30 years(!) without a single crash. NO other vehicle of any type has ever accomplished that. The engineers expected Challenger to be destroyed on launch. They were off by a little over a minute. Management overruled them. In addition to that, Reagan wanted to have a civilian in space to talk about during the State of the Union Address. The delays were becoming intolerable. Politics destroyed Challenger directly. It stank from the beginning. It did so a little lees directly with Columbia with the very nature of its design. Better designs were rejected due to budget constraints.
It may be the fault of the people because of their ignorance but then you would have to blame the media for not reporting it, the politicians for hiding it, and the corporations for doing it.
Just like ignorance of the law is no excuse, neither is ignorance of the facts. It's all there for you to see. It's not their fault if they don't spoon feed it to you. Do your own investigations. Don't buy from corrupt corporations. Wanna have a real effect? Pay off your credit card debt, and quit using the card. Nobody's going to help you to kill their jobs. If you vote for either of the majors, if you continue to buy from Walmart or Best Buy,etc, if you bank with Citibank, you are partially responsible, along with your neighbors for doing the same thing. You all know full well that voting for them will bring about absolutely no change. Yet there they are...recieving a full 99% approval in every election. That is not the government's, corporation's, or mass madia's fault. The majority has simply decided that they are not that uncomfortable. They see no reason to rock the boat. And copyright law, along with other IP law will continue to follow its natural course, that it has been doing for 295 years.
...and minority parties realistically won't make it...
Especially if you don't vote for them. You are allowed to vote for unbought politicians, I believe. The only thing stopping you is your will to do so. Editorially speaking, of course:-). You just have to be better at convincing your neighbors than the other guy. If all of you are just going to rely on spoon-fed info, there's not a lot that can be said to you. I'm extremely cynical about the whole situation also, but for me, it's easy to see where the real problem is. I'm not a believer in majority rule, but if you are, and you not using it to your best ability, what other conclusion can you draw that doesn't lead to the other believers(voters)? At this point, you're working with a ballot that effectively says, "approve" and "disapprove". Guess what? 99% of the voters said they approve. So, tell me again. Just whose fault is that?
This just shows how powerful corporations have become.
Care to share just how those corps got their power? If you're going to say the gov't, then I'll just have to ask you just how the gov't got its power. Hint, look in the mirror. Look next door, next city, next county, next state.
Family Movie Act of 2005 - Exempts from copyright and trademark infringement, under certain circumstances: (1) making limited portions of the audio or video content of a motion picture for private home viewing imperceptible; or (2) the creation of technology that enables such editing. emphasis mine
But this technology is so dangerous that it had to be banned from public possession??!! Hoarders and speculators unite! We must not allow this! What a sick bunch.
Voting matters a lot. That's why the gov't is afraid of it. They want to nip this thing in the bud before people stop voting the party line en masse. Let's just say they're prepping for it in advance. Stop all voting AND enrich the prison industry. It's win-win. Both the gov't and corps win. The rest of us? We'll be making Nikes for the congressman's son and appliances for Walmart. See? There's another benefit. All this complaining about outsourcing will come to a complete stop. All our factories can move back onshore. And labor(thus prices) will be cheaper than ever.
While I acknowledge the noble ends in mind behind such a law (to promote the useful arts and sciences)...
Even there you acknowledge too much. The mind behind these laws was, and still is nothing more than the protection of entrenched interests( the various guilds of the time), and it was also intended to silence gov't and corporate critics. To these ends the law is working very well. And now, as it gets worse, a fairly new industry will recieve a big boost from these kinds of laws. The prison industry. They have to be loving this. In fact they probably had some influence on getting it passed.
Good call! Just a reminder. When posting about the problem originating with the voters, you might note that in general, you will be ignored. The people here who vote don't want to be told they fucked up. It's like telling a parent that their kid drowned in the inflatable pool, "fell" down the stairs, swallowed a bottle of Drano, is flunking out of school, or went on a killing spree after playing Grand Theft Auto because they(the parents) were negligent.
The only difference is the first two letters. The people, the concpect, the rules behind this are all the same. They represent the entertainment cartels. They are interchangable. You're picking nits when you should be fumigating. You're trying to kill an elephant with a fly swatter. Let's stay focused on the main problem.
The majority has decided that we have too much freedom, and they won't be happy until the entire other 49% is behind bars, making their cheap tennies and VCRs. Think it can't get worse? "You aint seen nothin' yet!". Your IP laws(among others) are despicable, and have only brought out the worse in all of you with your damn hysteria over property. And all this are just tiny baby steps to what's really coming at you. I can only wish that you will live long enough to see the results of the choices you have made.
do you people insist that any IP law actually promotes any kind of innovation? The only result we have from these laws is speculation and hoarding. Human progess will be forever stuck in this quagmire as long as these laws remain on the books. You seem to think that without those corporate billions, we wouldn't have anything more advanced thatn a donkey cart. Well, you would be wrong. Quit the nit-picking, and cut to the chase, would ya? IP law,ALL IP law is designed to protect vested interests, nothing more. It has always been this way for all 295 years of this atrocity. Yet you all continue to gulp down that "kool-aid". Anything less than complete abolition is a sham designed to maintain the status quo.
I'm not just talking about my drives. Our enviroment down here may be a bit harsh, but I still expect the equipment to hold up. All are operating within temp and humidity specs stated in the book. I shouldn't expect shorter life expectancy until I go outside the spec. Yet I see plenty of malfuctions if the temps drift even a little warmer than "normal". I consider that to be defective.
Ive had one in use for 8+ years...
Lucky you. My mom still uses her 19 year old CD player. Her fax machine is almost the same age. These are the exceptions. They should be the rule. It used to be. Until we got computers, almost all of our electronics would last over 15 years, with little or no service at all. There seems to be no profit in durability. I guess that's just the nature of the beast.
I tend to believe that the convenience of broadcast radio will keep it alive for a good long time. I don't want to spend my day downloading and programming my music. I'll let the DJ do it, and I'll put up with his/her choice and the ads, just to avoid all that other nonsense. I just want to turn it on and hear an agreeable noise come out. I'm very impulsive about my entertainment, and if I have to spend all this time programming what I want to hear, I lose interest. It's a little like losing your hard...er...desire while trying to put on the rubber. Between public radio and the college stations, there's more than enough out there to keep me listening. Of course this only applies in the metropolitan areas. For those of you in more remote parts, satellite is the only way. Chances are you don't have high speed internet for all that downloading.
I have yet to see any computer optical drive last more than four years. Most of them barely work when they're new. I guess they're telling us not not expect much for 60 bucks. We shouldn't let then get away with it. We all really fell for that hype about the durability of CDs and DVDs. And now we will have to buy new players and media every few years. I know I won't have the ability to build a long term solution until I can hack my turntable to back up my data to vinyl.
Now if the update system would just not require a reinstall.
That's why the suite is so nice. Download the zip file. Extract the archives. Delete the old one if you wish. You can run the extracted program right there where you extracted it, or you can place the folder anywhere you want. I put mine in Program files just for consistancy. None of this silly install, re-install, uninstall nonsense.
Too bad they don't have a zip file version that doesn't require any installation. It's one reason I stick with the Mozilla suite. No installation required. Just unzip and use. Works perfectly every time(almost), and I can simply toss it out when I upgrade. Or just toss it out if I decide not to use it at all. But that would be highly illogical.
...And I really don't give a flying shit where my information goes.
I agree completely. The rest of you are a bunch of paranoid ninnies. Your information is gone. Forget about it. The only reason your personal info has any value at all is because you try to cling so tightly to it. That you allow anyone who presents this info to make transactions or do anything physical is your own problem. You shouldn't give info such power. You want (almost)secure communication? You just have to do it face to face.
I guess you could say that your co-op has been co-opted. People are the same all over, whether they run a co-op or a giant corporation. They always do what they think they can get away with. It's nature in all its glory. I like to think you can keep the co-op small enough to make it easy to control. That should be their advantage, that they serve a small enough group that's more likely to reach a somewhat unanimous consensus. Naturally, no co-op should enjoy any mandate outside the co-op itself. The situation you descibe seems to be a normal, run of the mill government.
I believe this "protecting personal information" is a very clever disguise. Well, not really. I can see right through it. It seems to have riled up the natives a bit. First, it was censored because it violated IP law. Then, it was censored because it was classified "top secret". Then, it was cansored because it had no socialy, artistically, scientifically redeeming value. After that, it was censored to protect personal information. What's next, eh? Keep it up, and you all will become mute.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe within the next few thousand years we'll finally start doing population control, for instance.
Simple population control is not a good idea. I just saw a news story about the declining population in Europe. In the future, that will include the total population, including the immigrants. If we are to survive as a species, we must infest the entire galaxy. We need as many people as possible. The planet can easily sustain 20 billion people. With proper use of technology, there will be no shortages. This will provide us the needed brain power for getting off the planet with little hassle. Remember, we are parasites. We are a virus. We need a host to survive. If we kill the host, we kill ourselves.
Complexity is no excuse. The Concorde is the most complex airliner ever flown, to this day. That aircraft flew for over 30 years(!) without a single crash. NO other vehicle of any type has ever accomplished that. The engineers expected Challenger to be destroyed on launch. They were off by a little over a minute. Management overruled them. In addition to that, Reagan wanted to have a civilian in space to talk about during the State of the Union Address. The delays were becoming intolerable. Politics destroyed Challenger directly. It stank from the beginning. It did so a little lees directly with Columbia with the very nature of its design. Better designs were rejected due to budget constraints.
It may be the fault of the people because of their ignorance but then you would have to blame the media for not reporting it, the politicians for hiding it, and the corporations for doing it.
Just like ignorance of the law is no excuse, neither is ignorance of the facts. It's all there for you to see. It's not their fault if they don't spoon feed it to you. Do your own investigations. Don't buy from corrupt corporations. Wanna have a real effect? Pay off your credit card debt, and quit using the card. Nobody's going to help you to kill their jobs. If you vote for either of the majors, if you continue to buy from Walmart or Best Buy,etc, if you bank with Citibank, you are partially responsible, along with your neighbors for doing the same thing. You all know full well that voting for them will bring about absolutely no change. Yet there they are...recieving a full 99% approval in every election. That is not the government's, corporation's, or mass madia's fault. The majority has simply decided that they are not that uncomfortable. They see no reason to rock the boat. And copyright law, along with other IP law will continue to follow its natural course, that it has been doing for 295 years.
...and minority parties realistically won't make it...
:-). You just have to be better at convincing your neighbors than the other guy. If all of you are just going to rely on spoon-fed info, there's not a lot that can be said to you. I'm extremely cynical about the whole situation also, but for me, it's easy to see where the real problem is. I'm not a believer in majority rule, but if you are, and you not using it to your best ability, what other conclusion can you draw that doesn't lead to the other believers(voters)? At this point, you're working with a ballot that effectively says, "approve" and "disapprove". Guess what? 99% of the voters said they approve. So, tell me again. Just whose fault is that?
Especially if you don't vote for them. You are allowed to vote for unbought politicians, I believe. The only thing stopping you is your will to do so. Editorially speaking, of course
This just shows how powerful corporations have become.
Care to share just how those corps got their power? If you're going to say the gov't, then I'll just have to ask you just how the gov't got its power. Hint, look in the mirror. Look next door, next city, next county, next state.
Family Movie Act of 2005 - Exempts from copyright and trademark infringement, under certain circumstances: (1) making limited portions of the audio or video content of a motion picture for private home viewing imperceptible; or (2) the creation of technology that enables such editing. emphasis mine
But this technology is so dangerous that it had to be banned from public possession??!! Hoarders and speculators unite! We must not allow this! What a sick bunch.
Voting matters a lot. That's why the gov't is afraid of it. They want to nip this thing in the bud before people stop voting the party line en masse. Let's just say they're prepping for it in advance. Stop all voting AND enrich the prison industry. It's win-win. Both the gov't and corps win. The rest of us? We'll be making Nikes for the congressman's son and appliances for Walmart. See? There's another benefit. All this complaining about outsourcing will come to a complete stop. All our factories can move back onshore. And labor(thus prices) will be cheaper than ever.
While I acknowledge the noble ends in mind behind such a law (to promote the useful arts and sciences)...
Even there you acknowledge too much. The mind behind these laws was, and still is nothing more than the protection of entrenched interests( the various guilds of the time), and it was also intended to silence gov't and corporate critics. To these ends the law is working very well. And now, as it gets worse, a fairly new industry will recieve a big boost from these kinds of laws. The prison industry. They have to be loving this. In fact they probably had some influence on getting it passed.
I sure do miss the old days when trojans and viruses were used to erase files.
Good call! Just a reminder. When posting about the problem originating with the voters, you might note that in general, you will be ignored. The people here who vote don't want to be told they fucked up. It's like telling a parent that their kid drowned in the inflatable pool, "fell" down the stairs, swallowed a bottle of Drano, is flunking out of school, or went on a killing spree after playing Grand Theft Auto because they(the parents) were negligent.
The only difference is the first two letters. The people, the concpect, the rules behind this are all the same. They represent the entertainment cartels. They are interchangable. You're picking nits when you should be fumigating. You're trying to kill an elephant with a fly swatter. Let's stay focused on the main problem.
The majority has decided that we have too much freedom, and they won't be happy until the entire other 49% is behind bars, making their cheap tennies and VCRs. Think it can't get worse? "You aint seen nothin' yet!". Your IP laws(among others) are despicable, and have only brought out the worse in all of you with your damn hysteria over property. And all this are just tiny baby steps to what's really coming at you. I can only wish that you will live long enough to see the results of the choices you have made.
do you people insist that any IP law actually promotes any kind of innovation? The only result we have from these laws is speculation and hoarding. Human progess will be forever stuck in this quagmire as long as these laws remain on the books. You seem to think that without those corporate billions, we wouldn't have anything more advanced thatn a donkey cart. Well, you would be wrong. Quit the nit-picking, and cut to the chase, would ya? IP law,ALL IP law is designed to protect vested interests, nothing more. It has always been this way for all 295 years of this atrocity. Yet you all continue to gulp down that "kool-aid". Anything less than complete abolition is a sham designed to maintain the status quo.
Guess you're right. Looks like pain though. Besides, it doesn't matter really. I just like the suite anyway.
I'm not just talking about my drives. Our enviroment down here may be a bit harsh, but I still expect the equipment to hold up. All are operating within temp and humidity specs stated in the book. I shouldn't expect shorter life expectancy until I go outside the spec. Yet I see plenty of malfuctions if the temps drift even a little warmer than "normal". I consider that to be defective.
Ive had one in use for 8+ years...
Lucky you. My mom still uses her 19 year old CD player. Her fax machine is almost the same age. These are the exceptions. They should be the rule. It used to be. Until we got computers, almost all of our electronics would last over 15 years, with little or no service at all. There seems to be no profit in durability. I guess that's just the nature of the beast.
I tend to believe that the convenience of broadcast radio will keep it alive for a good long time. I don't want to spend my day downloading and programming my music. I'll let the DJ do it, and I'll put up with his/her choice and the ads, just to avoid all that other nonsense. I just want to turn it on and hear an agreeable noise come out. I'm very impulsive about my entertainment, and if I have to spend all this time programming what I want to hear, I lose interest. It's a little like losing your hard...er...desire while trying to put on the rubber. Between public radio and the college stations, there's more than enough out there to keep me listening. Of course this only applies in the metropolitan areas. For those of you in more remote parts, satellite is the only way. Chances are you don't have high speed internet for all that downloading.
I have yet to see any computer optical drive last more than four years. Most of them barely work when they're new. I guess they're telling us not not expect much for 60 bucks. We shouldn't let then get away with it. We all really fell for that hype about the durability of CDs and DVDs. And now we will have to buy new players and media every few years. I know I won't have the ability to build a long term solution until I can hack my turntable to back up my data to vinyl.
Now if the update system would just not require a reinstall.
That's why the suite is so nice. Download the zip file. Extract the archives. Delete the old one if you wish. You can run the extracted program right there where you extracted it, or you can place the folder anywhere you want. I put mine in Program files just for consistancy. None of this silly install, re-install, uninstall nonsense.
Too bad they don't have a zip file version that doesn't require any installation. It's one reason I stick with the Mozilla suite. No installation required. Just unzip and use. Works perfectly every time(almost), and I can simply toss it out when I upgrade. Or just toss it out if I decide not to use it at all. But that would be highly illogical.
The icon for a Word document, for example, is a tiny iteration of the first page of the file.
Cool. I won't have to buy Word or photoshop. I can just use a screen magnifier. Just make sure all your docs are only one page.
...and results in a massive trade deficit that's only good for China, American executives, and their puppet politicians.
It's also good for all those Walmart shoppers who vote for them.
...And I really don't give a flying shit where my information goes.
I agree completely. The rest of you are a bunch of paranoid ninnies. Your information is gone. Forget about it. The only reason your personal info has any value at all is because you try to cling so tightly to it. That you allow anyone who presents this info to make transactions or do anything physical is your own problem. You shouldn't give info such power. You want (almost)secure communication? You just have to do it face to face.
I guess you could say that your co-op has been co-opted. People are the same all over, whether they run a co-op or a giant corporation. They always do what they think they can get away with. It's nature in all its glory. I like to think you can keep the co-op small enough to make it easy to control. That should be their advantage, that they serve a small enough group that's more likely to reach a somewhat unanimous consensus. Naturally, no co-op should enjoy any mandate outside the co-op itself. The situation you descibe seems to be a normal, run of the mill government.
It's evolution in action.
Everything that exists is evolution in action.
I believe this "protecting personal information" is a very clever disguise. Well, not really. I can see right through it. It seems to have riled up the natives a bit. First, it was censored because it violated IP law. Then, it was censored because it was classified "top secret". Then, it was cansored because it had no socialy, artistically, scientifically redeeming value. After that, it was censored to protect personal information. What's next, eh? Keep it up, and you all will become mute.