If he's now rich tell him to stop trying to make himself richer through extortion. Rich people who think that they should be richer if only the world was fair should take a look at people dying in the third world who think that, if only the world was fairer, their children could eat.
Aside from hating the abhorrent selfishness he's displaying, I also hate patent trolls.
I don't care if you like him, he's being a twat. Feel free to tell him I said that.
Actually, it's the US currency that's bogus, as is the case with any fiat currency. US dollars are backed by nothing but the whims of the federal reserve, and it's this very fact that has brought about America's current financial predicament.
E-Gold holds audited stocks of gold to the value of its deposits, which is a far safer store of wealth than the US dollar.
a) As a technical project, Concorde was actually a complete success. A single failure on matter how catastrophic, does not mean that Concorde's 30 year history of flying without incident and its revolutionary nature is any less impressive.
b) I'm not European. I'm just anti pompous Americans who think that nothing worthwhile gets done by anyone who is not American.
"The submitter requests that the moderators terminate all T-1000 jokes."
The only way to do that would be to wait until the thread becomes stale, assess people who made the jokes, and then send back a cybernetic soldier to kill their mothers.
"According to conspiracy theorists..."...who have since been demonstrated to be correct. Echelon's massive capability has been widely, if quietly, known for some time.
Fool! Everyone knows that Ninjas are without peer! They creep through the night and take what they want from your PC, with or without a P2P app running!
It seems to me that the best way to get this done would be for a bunch of guys (ideally with the paranoia of the OpenBSD guys) set about creating a Linux distro with all these things built in. It would obviously not be one built for performance, but it would be fully secured out of the box with encrypted swap,/tmp set as a ramdisk (optionally for users with enough ram or encrypted for those who don't), all installed apps (from vim to OpenOffice) configured to use secure areas for temp files etc etc.
Such a distro would mean having that level of paranoia would not arouse as much suspicion, as you could just say "Meh, I run Paranoia Linux coz I heard it was secure" and not look like you put much effort into it.
So, any takers on this project? I would, but I'm sucky at this kind of thing.
I disagree. There should be a short period of protection, after which the product of your creativity is put into the public domain. The period should be set based on things like how valuable to the wider public that kind of thing is versus the need to create incentives in the first place.
Pharma for example, does and rightly should, only be protected for a relatively short period, 6 years or so. Beyond that, it's in everybody's interests for medicine to be available at the lowest possible delivery price.
I don't see why music and movies need such an insanely long period of protection. There should be a short period of exclusivity (say 5 to 10 years) after which it is in the public domain. If your music is good enough that people want it and you can't make a profit in a decade then bad luck.
You know what you get when you try to set up a complex set of rules protecting the output of human creativity? Modern copyright and intellectual property laws.
I think you underestimate the current that can be pumped out by a gas vehicle's alternator. Those things can pump out 50 amps or more. They can easily supply mains-range power. 20 minutes or so should give you enough juice to get home at least.
The first world produces surpluses?! Have you seen the state of the US federal budget lately?
No net goods importer (as all first world nations are without exception) can be said to produce surplus, by the very definition of the word. The first world only produces a surplus if the word "surplus" is used synonymously with "waste".
You are not poor. If you have a PC with broadband, you are richer than approximately 90% of the planet. Malaria tablets are under $1 each, yet *millions* die every year because they can't afford it. I'm not seeing much trickling down over there, I lament to say.
Given that it will be a while before gasoline cars go away, surely you could "jump start" an electric car to get 12v out of a gas car's alternator and use that to give you a charge for a while, just enough to get home.
Could it perhaps be that the infestation of Earth with this parasitic species called "humans" is bad for everything else?
In the (paraphrased) words of Agent Smith, human effect upon the Earth is comparable to that of a virus upon an organism.
Whether you agree with them of not, hippies' (sometimes overzealous) efforts to bring to everyone's attention the effect humans have on the world is not ignorable. You may not know it, but your lifestyle is dependent on that "fucking rare tortoise" you demean so crassly. Ever component of the ecosystem co-operates to bring you everything from the wood used to construct your house to the meat in that microwave meal. As unbelievable as it may seem, those things still primarily consist of natural ingredients that rely on the wider ecosystem on this planet.
Things that are going to change the world I think don't need to be super high tech or invented 5 years ago. Personally I predict that it will be the mundane tech deployed in just the right places is what will change the world in the next few decades. Things like commodity telecommunications to the other 90% of the planet who currently don't own a PC (OLPC I feel lacks the velocity and momentum to make a difference, but is on the right trajectory) and recycled cellphones sent to Kenya and Uganda to provide affordable communication capacity for populations there. Projects like this are the cutting edge of this millennium.
We as humans have invented everything that we need to make this world a wonderful place to live, we just need to learn how to distribute it fairly and use it sustainably.
Not that I think there is no place for research into new pharmaceuticals and microchips and superconductors etc, but they will bring, at this stage in our history, incremental gains to welfare, and only for the rich. The giant leaps of living standards now will be made by advances in our capacity to deal equitably with each other.
Speaking from experience I can tell you that an "opt-in" program would never collect enough data to be useful.
I'd suggest an "opt-out" system along with restrictions on *what* data was sent. At least I'd say that nothing personally identifiable can be sent, there's no need for it. There may be other restrictions I can't think of right now.
IMHO, this issue is about what data gets sent, not that data gets sent at all. It should be clear and verifiable what data is being sent, so that users who are that way inclined can check to ensure that nothing untoward is being sent to the developers.
d) The "movers and shakers" of the world would die without the third world nations, but the third world would thrive without the "movers and shakers". If you believe otherwise, you're either deluded and ignorant, or 12 years old. Every rich nation in the world today is only rich riding on the back of cheap labor to produce gigantic amounts of consumer goods to fuel their consumption-dependent economies. Taking away the third world would be taking away factories, plants and workshops. How long do you think the "movers and shakers" would survive without that?
a) The wealthiest 10% (referring to the population of the first world) live the way they do because the wealthiest 0.0001% of the world find it profitable to maintain them in a state of fat, mindless consumption.
b) Where do you think your TV, DVD player, cellphone, shoes, socks, PC are manufactured? I guarantee you that the hard labor required to manufacture these goods is not carried out by the fat, lazy people of the first world. They are too busy doing mindless administrative jobs in the office and then asking for time off due to a stubbed toe.
c) Your "survival of the fittest" attitude is a pathetic attempt at rationalizing your own profligate, wasteful and totally unsustainable lifestyle. You're like a child trying to tell yourself that stealing cookies is actually OK. Go travel, realize that the people in the third world actually are people, who work hard for their families and have the same hopes, dreams and ambitions that you have. The only difference between them and you is that their opportunity is undermined by the first world in the name of "profit" and they don't use abhorrent, broken logic to justify their own existence.
Slashdot Mirror
If he's now rich tell him to stop trying to make himself richer through extortion. Rich people who think that they should be richer if only the world was fair should take a look at people dying in the third world who think that, if only the world was fairer, their children could eat.
Aside from hating the abhorrent selfishness he's displaying, I also hate patent trolls.
I don't care if you like him, he's being a twat. Feel free to tell him I said that.
Around 1997 is when Slashdot started, I believe.
Actually, it's the US currency that's bogus, as is the case with any fiat currency. US dollars are backed by nothing but the whims of the federal reserve, and it's this very fact that has brought about America's current financial predicament.
E-Gold holds audited stocks of gold to the value of its deposits, which is a far safer store of wealth than the US dollar.
Is that anything like this?
a) As a technical project, Concorde was actually a complete success. A single failure on matter how catastrophic, does not mean that Concorde's 30 year history of flying without incident and its revolutionary nature is any less impressive.
b) I'm not European. I'm just anti pompous Americans who think that nothing worthwhile gets done by anyone who is not American.
Because, you arrogant little fart, *you* (referring both to your country as a whole and to you personally) are not building it.
"ADSM"
I don't suppose that's in any way related to BDSM?
Yep. Fun and games when your sodium conduit breaks at the same time as the conduit on your water cooling system.
"The submitter requests that the moderators terminate all T-1000 jokes."
The only way to do that would be to wait until the thread becomes stale, assess people who made the jokes, and then send back a cybernetic soldier to kill their mothers.
For a person who spends his time getting first posts on Slashdot, they might as well be.
"According to conspiracy theorists..." ...who have since been demonstrated to be correct. Echelon's massive capability has been widely, if quietly, known for some time.
They don't call it the "public sector" so that they can serve their own private agenda with our nation's resources.
Fool! Everyone knows that Ninjas are without peer! They creep through the night and take what they want from your PC, with or without a P2P app running!
It seems to me that the best way to get this done would be for a bunch of guys (ideally with the paranoia of the OpenBSD guys) set about creating a Linux distro with all these things built in. It would obviously not be one built for performance, but it would be fully secured out of the box with encrypted swap, /tmp set as a ramdisk (optionally for users with enough ram or encrypted for those who don't), all installed apps (from vim to OpenOffice) configured to use secure areas for temp files etc etc.
Such a distro would mean having that level of paranoia would not arouse as much suspicion, as you could just say "Meh, I run Paranoia Linux coz I heard it was secure" and not look like you put much effort into it.
So, any takers on this project? I would, but I'm sucky at this kind of thing.
I disagree. There should be a short period of protection, after which the product of your creativity is put into the public domain. The period should be set based on things like how valuable to the wider public that kind of thing is versus the need to create incentives in the first place.
Pharma for example, does and rightly should, only be protected for a relatively short period, 6 years or so. Beyond that, it's in everybody's interests for medicine to be available at the lowest possible delivery price.
I don't see why music and movies need such an insanely long period of protection. There should be a short period of exclusivity (say 5 to 10 years) after which it is in the public domain. If your music is good enough that people want it and you can't make a profit in a decade then bad luck.
You know what you get when you try to set up a complex set of rules protecting the output of human creativity? Modern copyright and intellectual property laws.
I think you underestimate the current that can be pumped out by a gas vehicle's alternator. Those things can pump out 50 amps or more. They can easily supply mains-range power. 20 minutes or so should give you enough juice to get home at least.
The first world produces surpluses?! Have you seen the state of the US federal budget lately?
No net goods importer (as all first world nations are without exception) can be said to produce surplus, by the very definition of the word. The first world only produces a surplus if the word "surplus" is used synonymously with "waste".
You are not poor. If you have a PC with broadband, you are richer than approximately 90% of the planet. Malaria tablets are under $1 each, yet *millions* die every year because they can't afford it. I'm not seeing much trickling down over there, I lament to say.
Given that it will be a while before gasoline cars go away, surely you could "jump start" an electric car to get 12v out of a gas car's alternator and use that to give you a charge for a while, just enough to get home.
Could it perhaps be that the infestation of Earth with this parasitic species called "humans" is bad for everything else?
In the (paraphrased) words of Agent Smith, human effect upon the Earth is comparable to that of a virus upon an organism.
Whether you agree with them of not, hippies' (sometimes overzealous) efforts to bring to everyone's attention the effect humans have on the world is not ignorable. You may not know it, but your lifestyle is dependent on that "fucking rare tortoise" you demean so crassly. Ever component of the ecosystem co-operates to bring you everything from the wood used to construct your house to the meat in that microwave meal. As unbelievable as it may seem, those things still primarily consist of natural ingredients that rely on the wider ecosystem on this planet.
Things that are going to change the world I think don't need to be super high tech or invented 5 years ago. Personally I predict that it will be the mundane tech deployed in just the right places is what will change the world in the next few decades. Things like commodity telecommunications to the other 90% of the planet who currently don't own a PC (OLPC I feel lacks the velocity and momentum to make a difference, but is on the right trajectory) and recycled cellphones sent to Kenya and Uganda to provide affordable communication capacity for populations there. Projects like this are the cutting edge of this millennium.
We as humans have invented everything that we need to make this world a wonderful place to live, we just need to learn how to distribute it fairly and use it sustainably.
Not that I think there is no place for research into new pharmaceuticals and microchips and superconductors etc, but they will bring, at this stage in our history, incremental gains to welfare, and only for the rich. The giant leaps of living standards now will be made by advances in our capacity to deal equitably with each other.
No, but it appointed them after they demonstrated their loyalty to the party line.
Speaking from experience I can tell you that an "opt-in" program would never collect enough data to be useful.
I'd suggest an "opt-out" system along with restrictions on *what* data was sent. At least I'd say that nothing personally identifiable can be sent, there's no need for it. There may be other restrictions I can't think of right now.
IMHO, this issue is about what data gets sent, not that data gets sent at all. It should be clear and verifiable what data is being sent, so that users who are that way inclined can check to ensure that nothing untoward is being sent to the developers.
Oh, and
d) The "movers and shakers" of the world would die without the third world nations, but the third world would thrive without the "movers and shakers". If you believe otherwise, you're either deluded and ignorant, or 12 years old. Every rich nation in the world today is only rich riding on the back of cheap labor to produce gigantic amounts of consumer goods to fuel their consumption-dependent economies. Taking away the third world would be taking away factories, plants and workshops. How long do you think the "movers and shakers" would survive without that?
My guess is not very.
a) The wealthiest 10% (referring to the population of the first world) live the way they do because the wealthiest 0.0001% of the world find it profitable to maintain them in a state of fat, mindless consumption.
b) Where do you think your TV, DVD player, cellphone, shoes, socks, PC are manufactured? I guarantee you that the hard labor required to manufacture these goods is not carried out by the fat, lazy people of the first world. They are too busy doing mindless administrative jobs in the office and then asking for time off due to a stubbed toe.
c) Your "survival of the fittest" attitude is a pathetic attempt at rationalizing your own profligate, wasteful and totally unsustainable lifestyle. You're like a child trying to tell yourself that stealing cookies is actually OK. Go travel, realize that the people in the third world actually are people, who work hard for their families and have the same hopes, dreams and ambitions that you have. The only difference between them and you is that their opportunity is undermined by the first world in the name of "profit" and they don't use abhorrent, broken logic to justify their own existence.