slogged through the GPL? I did, admittedly sometime in the early nineties, and I found it to be one of the most self-agrandizing masturabtory exercises in literature that I have ever encountered (even worse than that last sentence). Instead of making clear statements, RMS prefers to build a series of statements that are dependent of each other for reference or support.
I do not know if there is any real value to it, or if RMS just wants to believe that it requires a 'greater intelligence' to read his work
that I asked myself when I read the GPL. why the FUCK doesn't Stallman communicate directly and get away from the obsufcated communication style that he uses.
People that write code like RMS communicates are widely hated by the poor fools that try to maintain the pile of spaghetti.
I gotta admit that I imagine throwing some red shells while driving after playing mario kart, but I can't find the button on the steering wheel so it's "back to reality" and no multi-car pileups for me.
I agree with you about the downward pressure the market puts on textbook pricing, but the publishers have written their high profit margin into their business plans and stock prospectus, not to mention their personal mortgages and car loans.
They will lose investors if they fail to meet their projections, so the cost of putting this case through the courts (even if it is without legal merit) is negligible compared to their losses if they cannot continue to charge exorbitant prices for their products.
Considering the business leanings of recent Supreme Court rulings, we 'little people' (as opposed to corporate Big People) should all be damned concerned and start supporting legal groups that will take up the cause to preserve fair use rights to materials.
Aside from all of the fun with malicious code and all, the potential to lead people down a mental path through 'conversation' seems to have the potential to expose a LOT of people to make self-incriminating statements
It's like a photo-radar gun for thought crime, an investigator doesn't even have to be there to do it. Just set your bots out there to lead people into talking about laundering money, seducing teens, killing their neighbor and WHAMO an adventurous district attorney is pressing charges.
Nah, what was I thinking, we live in way to free of a society for that to ever happen. What a relief
All you have to do is wipe out 90% of the human population and the whole energy-problem goes away... for a few decades at least
Other than that... Most forms of energy generation besides nuclear are either too dirty, too expensive or too widely displaced to be of much use to our crowded population centers.
As far as nuclear goes, the same people who argue that 'there is no safe place to store the waste' actually work to block the creation of a safe place to store the waste, and will continue to do everyting possible to prevent the use of (provenly) safe nuclear energy.
So, what's the deal with that? Irrational fear or nuclear energy, or just a general hatred for humanity?
That value seems out of range, considering that you could finance two wars, clean up the BP spill and probably have enough left over to coat New Orleans in gold leaf...
In most scientific pursuits, getting a value that far out of range would lead a person to conclude that some of their underlying assumptions are invalid and cause them to form a more realistic hypothesis.
Apparently, in the riaa's world it means that they will develop superpowers and start traveling past the speed of light.
I am not surprised that the Republican from Alabama is against SpaceX, seeing how Huntsville is the home of Morton-Thiokol, a major contractor for the solid rocket boosters that were to be used on the canceled program.
Aside from the fact that Senators never notice federal government waste when the money is being spent in their own state, the is very much a red-blue issue since Republicans are currently looking for anything to call a fail on the current administration
What really matters then is the breakdown of income sources for the government entity that employs the judge.
Many cities, counties and states have reduced their property taxes and other sources of income. Money received from issuing speeding tickets can be seen as 'only affecting outsiders' and is not an issue in local political campaigns. It could very well be that a significant source of income for the judge's employer is speeding tickets, so the judge would have every reason to 'play along' and keep the income stream going.
Many areas also have local pd patrolling highways and using their traffic stops as an opportunity to seize property under RICO statutes that also allow the local government to auction or use seized property.
There is every opportunity for corruption (collusion if you are nice) in these matters and you are being remarkably naive
Maybe... just maybe they can lay a claim that prior exposure to Zappa albums may make a person more likely to adopt Linux...
For instance, my early years of tripping to Billy The Mountain while playing Risk might, just might, have made it easier for me to accept software packages that sings its own tune, an os that requires text file manipulation to properly use a display adapter and made me willing to install Linux on a Sparc10 even though it took me a couple of weeks to replace the Sun bitmap with a penguin
So there you go, prepare for a career in Linux by receiving brain damage while listening to Zappa
I agree with you, this is far from a 'silly' law that has no real impact. This is in fact a completely misguided fear-driven law that will eliminate research into a promising technology because of some poorly defined moral yuck-factor.
Kinda like the eight year delay in embryonic stem cell research, but that has got to make some voting group pretty happy. I just can't wait to see if their opinion changes when they are on an organ donor waiting list.
" I understand how the engines work now. It came to me in a dream. The engines don't move the ship at all. The ship stays where it is and the engines move the universe around it." Cubert Farnsworth
I have noticed fewer incidents of dangerous driving since the cameras have been deployed, and I have become a safer driver since I need to check my speed every few miles.
This is all about an unrealistic sense of entitlement that some drivers feel to drive in an unsafe manner, and very little else.
More people WILL die as a result of the removal of speed cameras, and since you have worked to remove them, the blood WILL be on your hands.
The lesson here is to do whatever your boss says, even if it is incredibly stupid and will make your job entirely unmanageable...
Well, I would have to agree that my 'inner security geek', would have had to swallow really hard a few time before stating production passwords over a teleconference with unknown people. Hell, I would expect to be fired just for doing that.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Sometime you just have to suck it up and go look for another job. The sad part is that Terry was probably just a conscientous civil servant, and the boss was a know-nothing political appointee. Terry had probably seen more than a few of these appointed ass-hats come and go, and figured this was just another little tempest that would blow over.
I did y2k review on Iridiumat the Satcom facility in Chandler. Worked with software developers, QA and project managers mostly.
Technically, it was amazing... very much a Bond-villian scale project. There were a number of firsts on the project, first satellite assembly line, first common off-the-shelf (mostly) desktop processor used in space, first use of mixed/hybrid launch vehicles (Boeing, Orbital Sciences, Soviets, Ariane... Probably some Long-March thrown in too)
As far as business plans goes, it was a cluster-f*ck.
They sold rights to a hundred or so nations to get downlinks to terrestrial networks. They FAILED to mention that it worked best with a clear horizon (no canyons or city streets) They provided limited modem capability
So... Sales never were what they projected (I do remember seeing dozens of sales-reps making calls from the field adjacent to the facility using actual Iridium phones, just to impress customers), the hundred-odd nationalist companies folded and the US Military ended up with a useful asset.
If you ask me, that was the plan all along... Freakin Brilliant!
Then call it an Oligarchy... they still reaped monopolistic profits by controlling the entire network, slowed rollout of new technology and never would have changed until the government stepped in an broke them up.
Something funny happened about the same time, somehow congress got it right and allowed relatively few controls on the 'internet'. People liked it, in fact they LOVED it!
Now another provider pops up and wants to gain absolute control over their portion of the network. Turns out that the 'last mile' gives a great amount of leverage and they are prepared to wring every last dime out of it.
So, yeah I'm looking towards government to establish some reasonable rules to last mile access, rules that encourage the free market and that keep last miles companies from strangling growth
Like maybe the government should have just "stayed out of it" and allowed the ATT monopoly to continue...
I mean 14kB modems, paying a lot of money for ISDN (128kB), or a whole ton of money for T-1 (1.44MB), that was just AWESOME, and GOD DAMN those pushy gov'ment types for breakin up ATT and lettin them nastly little cable, dsl and bandwidth providers go and provide dramatically increased bandwidth for less and less money.
The free market is great, until it reaches equilibrium. At that point you just have a few winners looking to expand their profit margins.
A decent 'free' market, like a nice sauce, needs to be stirred every now and then to keep it from getting clumped up. As far as I know, the government has the only spoon big enough to deal with multi-national companies.
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slogged through the GPL? I did, admittedly sometime in the early nineties, and I found it to be one of the most self-agrandizing masturabtory exercises in literature that I have ever encountered (even worse than that last sentence). Instead of making clear statements, RMS prefers to build a series of statements that are dependent of each other for reference or support.
I do not know if there is any real value to it, or if RMS just wants to believe that it requires a 'greater intelligence' to read his work
that I asked myself when I read the GPL. why the FUCK doesn't Stallman communicate directly and get away from the obsufcated communication style that he uses.
People that write code like RMS communicates are widely hated by the poor fools that try to maintain the pile of spaghetti.
I gotta admit that I imagine throwing some red shells while driving after playing mario kart, but I can't find the button on the steering wheel so it's "back to reality" and no multi-car pileups for me.
They are taught in business school that their business ethics are based on their need to enhance shareholder value.
They absolutely must preserve profits and will only stop if legal issues or public outcry result in more cost than the profits they gain.
The concept of 'common good' or any concern about the impact on society (as long as it doesn't cost them money) is secondary if it is there at all.
I agree with you about the downward pressure the market puts on textbook pricing, but the publishers have written their high profit margin into their business plans and stock prospectus, not to mention their personal mortgages and car loans.
They will lose investors if they fail to meet their projections, so the cost of putting this case through the courts (even if it is without legal merit) is negligible compared to their losses if they cannot continue to charge exorbitant prices for their products.
Considering the business leanings of recent Supreme Court rulings, we 'little people' (as opposed to corporate Big People) should all be damned concerned and start supporting legal groups that will take up the cause to preserve fair use rights to materials.
Aside from all of the fun with malicious code and all, the potential to lead people down a mental path through 'conversation' seems to have the potential to expose a LOT of people to make self-incriminating statements
It's like a photo-radar gun for thought crime, an investigator doesn't even have to be there to do it. Just set your bots out there to lead people into talking about laundering money, seducing teens, killing their neighbor and WHAMO an adventurous district attorney is pressing charges.
Nah, what was I thinking, we live in way to free of a society for that to ever happen. What a relief
Thank you
Hmmm... like radio, television, microwave, computing, internal combustion...
Yeah, you're right I am delusional /sarcasm
All you have to do is wipe out 90% of the human population and the whole energy-problem goes away... for a few decades at least
Other than that... Most forms of energy generation besides nuclear are either too dirty, too expensive or too widely displaced to be of much use to our crowded population centers.
As far as nuclear goes, the same people who argue that 'there is no safe place to store the waste' actually work to block the creation of a safe place to store the waste, and will continue to do everyting possible to prevent the use of (provenly) safe nuclear energy.
So, what's the deal with that? Irrational fear or nuclear energy, or just a general hatred for humanity?
Right... I have NEVER seen commercial products made from experiments where the resulting product was smaller than the experimental rig...
Green-skinned space hookers with diamonds for eyes and souls as black as the record company executives' hearts...
That value seems out of range, considering that you could finance two wars, clean up the BP spill and probably have enough left over to coat New Orleans in gold leaf...
In most scientific pursuits, getting a value that far out of range would lead a person to conclude that some of their underlying assumptions are invalid and cause them to form a more realistic hypothesis.
Apparently, in the riaa's world it means that they will develop superpowers and start traveling past the speed of light.
freaking morons
I am not surprised that the Republican from Alabama is against SpaceX, seeing how Huntsville is the home of Morton-Thiokol, a major contractor for the solid rocket boosters that were to be used on the canceled program.
Aside from the fact that Senators never notice federal government waste when the money is being spent in their own state, the is very much a red-blue issue since Republicans are currently looking for anything to call a fail on the current administration
What really matters then is the breakdown of income sources for the government entity that employs the judge.
Many cities, counties and states have reduced their property taxes and other sources of income. Money received from issuing speeding tickets can be seen as 'only affecting outsiders' and is not an issue in local political campaigns. It could very well be that a significant source of income for the judge's employer is speeding tickets, so the judge would have every reason to 'play along' and keep the income stream going.
Many areas also have local pd patrolling highways and using their traffic stops as an opportunity to seize property under RICO statutes that also allow the local government to auction or use seized property.
There is every opportunity for corruption (collusion if you are nice) in these matters and you are being remarkably naive
Maybe... just maybe they can lay a claim that prior exposure to Zappa albums may make a person more likely to adopt Linux...
For instance, my early years of tripping to Billy The Mountain while playing Risk might, just might, have made it easier for me to accept software packages that sings its own tune, an os that requires text file manipulation to properly use a display adapter and made me willing to install Linux on a Sparc10 even though it took me a couple of weeks to replace the Sun bitmap with a penguin
So there you go, prepare for a career in Linux by receiving brain damage while listening to Zappa
that most of the judge's wages are paid from speeding fines?
Taking a bet with a hooker that you could get her off, then nailing her hooker-friend until dynamo finally got into it enough to get off???
I mean, I can't say that I ever got a balky machine to install an rpm just by doing it to another machine in front of it.
Am I missing something here?
I agree with you, this is far from a 'silly' law that has no real impact. This is in fact a completely misguided fear-driven law that will eliminate research into a promising technology because of some poorly defined moral yuck-factor.
Kinda like the eight year delay in embryonic stem cell research, but that has got to make some voting group pretty happy. I just can't wait to see if their opinion changes when they are on an organ donor waiting list.
" I understand how the engines work now. It came to me in a dream. The engines don't move the ship at all. The ship stays where it is and the engines move the universe around it."
Cubert Farnsworth
I am also a citizen of Arizona.
I have noticed fewer incidents of dangerous driving since the cameras have been deployed, and I have become a safer driver since I need to check my speed every few miles.
This is all about an unrealistic sense of entitlement that some drivers feel to drive in an unsafe manner, and very little else.
More people WILL die as a result of the removal of speed cameras, and since you have worked to remove them, the blood WILL be on your hands.
Good luck with that
The lesson here is to do whatever your boss says, even if it is incredibly stupid and will make your job entirely unmanageable...
Well, I would have to agree that my 'inner security geek', would have had to swallow really hard a few time before stating production passwords over a teleconference with unknown people. Hell, I would expect to be fired just for doing that.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Sometime you just have to suck it up and go look for another job. The sad part is that Terry was probably just a conscientous civil servant, and the boss was a know-nothing political appointee. Terry had probably seen more than a few of these appointed ass-hats come and go, and figured this was just another little tempest that would blow over.
Poor guy
I did y2k review on Iridiumat the Satcom facility in Chandler. Worked with software developers, QA and project managers mostly.
Technically, it was amazing... very much a Bond-villian scale project. There were a number of firsts on the project, first satellite assembly line, first common off-the-shelf (mostly) desktop processor used in space, first use of mixed/hybrid launch vehicles (Boeing, Orbital Sciences, Soviets, Ariane... Probably some Long-March thrown in too)
As far as business plans goes, it was a cluster-f*ck.
They sold rights to a hundred or so nations to get downlinks to terrestrial networks.
They FAILED to mention that it worked best with a clear horizon (no canyons or city streets)
They provided limited modem capability
So... Sales never were what they projected (I do remember seeing dozens of sales-reps making calls from the field adjacent to the facility using actual Iridium phones, just to impress customers), the hundred-odd nationalist companies folded and the US Military ended up with a useful asset.
If you ask me, that was the plan all along... Freakin Brilliant!
Then call it an Oligarchy... they still reaped monopolistic profits by controlling the entire network, slowed rollout of new technology and never would have changed until the government stepped in an broke them up.
Something funny happened about the same time, somehow congress got it right and allowed relatively few controls on the 'internet'. People liked it, in fact they LOVED it!
Now another provider pops up and wants to gain absolute control over their portion of the network. Turns out that the 'last mile' gives a great amount of leverage and they are prepared to wring every last dime out of it.
So, yeah I'm looking towards government to establish some reasonable rules to last mile access, rules that encourage the free market and that keep last miles companies from strangling growth
Like maybe the government should have just "stayed out of it" and allowed the ATT monopoly to continue...
I mean 14kB modems, paying a lot of money for ISDN (128kB), or a whole ton of money for T-1 (1.44MB), that was just AWESOME, and GOD DAMN those pushy gov'ment types for breakin up ATT and lettin them nastly little cable, dsl and bandwidth providers go and provide dramatically increased bandwidth for less and less money.
The free market is great, until it reaches equilibrium. At that point you just have a few winners looking to expand their profit margins.
A decent 'free' market, like a nice sauce, needs to be stirred every now and then to keep it from getting clumped up. As far as I know, the government has the only spoon big enough to deal with multi-national companies.