I agree completely. However, this isn't just a problem with the TV market; the book sci-fi market has taken a similar tack in recent years.
Another thing about SF books - what has happened in the USA, land of Asimov, Heinlein, Doc Smith, Dick, Harrison, Herbert, Niven etc?
In the last 10-15 years the majority of the SF books I've bought have either been from England (Stephen Baxter, Peter F Hamilton, Micheal Marshall Smith, Douglas Adams, Neil Asher, Richard Morgan, Alistair Reynolds, Phillip Pullman*, Terry Pratchett*); Scotland (Iain M Banks, Ken McLeod) or Australia (Greg Egan) - and I'm not consioulsy selecting "local authors".
(* OK, Pullman's "Dark Materials" is borderline SF/Fantasy; and Pratchett published two SF books before hitting the big time).
...on the "since Star Wars" list (but in no particular order):
Brazil
2010
Donnie Darko
Dune
Cube
eXistenZ
AI
A Scanner Darkly
You may or may not like them all, but I'd argue that they were all "serious".
The other flaw in the "Blame Lucas" theory is that written SF has the same problem with being taken seriously by the "establishment" (...and I just watched a film clip of Philip K Dick shot in 1970-something complaining about that). Essentially the genre doesn't fit the value system of the artistic establishment (which is a polite way of saying that you need to know the difference between an atom and an electron to understand SF).
An adult show in Britain isn't so afraid of a little skin and naughty language as the US
True, as long as they don't decide that, because its Fantasy it has to be for kids. The BBC cut "Buffy" so they could show it at 6pm, and what Channel 4 did to "Angel" can't be mentioned on a forum like Slashdot where Wheedon-loving nerds of a sensitive disposition may be reading. Then the BBC suddenly find the cojones to ignore the silly complaints about Doctor Who scaring kids* (could the good ratings have anything to do with it?). Basically, the British pointless, arbitrary censorship rules are just inconsistent with the US pointless and arbitrary censorship rules (you know the film censors cut that bit from the Abyss where they drown the rat...? WTF?)
* Hah. Kids these days never watched Pertwee-era Doctor Who in black and white during the 70s miners strike, knowing that the daily power cut was due and at some point during the episode the lights would go out... Mummy!
Variable - its wort a watch, but it is trying to be an "adult" show in a universe established by a "family" show. As a friend of mine nicely put it "Its not really adult, just unsuitable for children".
I felt a bit let down by the season finale which degenerated into the "big giant monster summoned by creepy bad guy for no readily apparent reason" mould. Plus, the characters tend to spontaneously change depending on who's job it is to french the alien this week. As others have mentioned, I wouldn't expect it to show on US terrestrial with the way the wind is blowing at the moment - lots of naughty words, sex and refernces to homosexuality.
If you want disturbing, grown-up Brit fantasy then try "Ultraviolet" (the late-90s miniseries from UK Channel 4, NOT the recent and hopefully unrelated film) or maybe (if you want some eye candy with that) "Hex" from Sky.
Oh, by the way, there's been a pilot of a "children's" Doctor Who spinoff called "The Sarah Jane Adventures" too. If you're a Futurama fan you may recognise part of the plot...
(Yawns and dons anorak) the revied series is made by a totally different production team in a different branch of the BBC (BBC Wales) so for administrative purposes they started from 1 again. Fortunately, I think the "classic" series still ran long enough to piss on Stargate SG1's "longest running sci-fi show" fireworks so its not a big deal.
Anyway, the new version would count as a Galactica-style reboot if the original show hadn't rebooted more often than Windows ME anyway.
1. Everybody over 20 has now finished replacing their vinyl and cassettes with CDs
2. The only records you get to hear about are the handful of rubbish on the radio playlists that you're already sick of.
3. Under 20s are now pissing their money away:
Buying DVDs
Buying expensive games for consoles
Walking around with a mobile phone glued to their ear talking about nothing in particular
Or, voting people out of the Big Brother house at HOW MUCH!? a minute
Buying Crazy Frog ringtones without realising that they're subscribing to a "we'll take your money away" service at $$/month
Getting legless every weekend on sticky drinks in little bottles sold for exorbitant prices in night clubs (of course, in the UK under-21s can buy alcohol without proving that they drive a car and own at least two guns).
Buying expensive clothes (sorry, buying expensive logos attached to clothes made in China for 10c per gross)
Buying expensive trainers (ditto the above)
Buying cosmetics (Even the boys, god help us - must be the chemicals leeching into the water supply)
In severe cases, still doing all the above while also having kids.
Paying huge amounts of interest having used a credit card for all the above
If boring, sensible and nerdy and NOT doing all the above, desperately saving money in the hope of being able to afford the downpayment of a small shoe-box nearly within a days commute from the city before they hit 30.
I personally don't think the future has to be doom and gloom.
I'd rather be a pleasantly surprised pessimist than a permanently disappointed optimist. You start thinking that there may be some hope for humankind, then someone invents the disposable mobile phone.
So your definition of a storage medium is one where we create it, such as hydrogen, compared to one we extract from the earth like Hydrocarbons?
A source is one that brings new energy into the system. A storage medium is one that is used to store and transport existing energy within the system.
Agreed, by chosing what you mean by "system" and "energy" you can make anything either a source or a storage medium. If you confine yourself to Earth's surface and atmosphere during the current geological era and define energy as "usable energy for heating things or doing work (sorry, redundant, I know)" then I think my definition makes sense.
Hydrogen is a bit iffy because there are (broadly) two ways of getting it - (a) by using some nice clean energy source* to crack water (which is fairly obviouly using it as a storage medium, as the only energy you get out is the energy you put in) or (b) from oil, in which case its little more than the ultimate clean-burning gasolene. Of course, that's the big bait and switch game with the Hydrogen Economy.
Now, is alcohol an energy source or just a "storage medium" for solar energy... (probably neither if you use oil to fuel the tractors and heat the still).
(* or nuclear. Choices are a bitch)
If we go on using resources as if there were no tomorrow, there won't be - whether its global warming, the oil running out or one to many Chernobyl.
We're locked in a catch 22 where the only way for scientists to raise awareness of a serious risk is to make over-dramatised pronouncements of doom and get pundits like Al Gore to promote their cause - then, surprise surprise, we get other pundits "debunking" the science based on the fact that Al Gore waved around a pretty ice core chart that he clearly didn't fully understand himself.
Meanwhile, the media are more interested in arranging entertaining slanging matches between pundits than actually trying to investigate the competing evidence and explain it to the public, leaving the politicians free to use it as a pretext for new taxes, subsidies and "carbon trading" schemes (cash cow for middlemen and speculators) provided that they don't actually change anything.
Lets face it, if, tomorrow, someone invented a machine that turned garbage into clean energy, the human race would soon be using so much energy that the "waste" heat would start heating up the earth directly without any need for CO2 - even assuming that the "most economical" solution to the resulting garbage shortage wasn't to use oil to manufacture AOL CDs, platic bags and six-pack rings to feed directly into Mr Fusion.
C'mon - did you really expect the media to finally "get" the difference between an energy storage medium (batteries, hydrogen, compressed air) and an energy source* (Oil, solar, nuclear)?
As for the "free" air con - nope, its pretty much the same principle as regular air con, except the motor is back at the gas station. Conservation of energy is a bitch. One can hope they use the waste heat from the compressor to run the donut fryer. Plus, you'll need a heater in the winter to stop you from freezing, even if there's enough heat from friction etc. to stop the engine from turning into a snowball.
OK, all these things shift the smog from the city, but they're not going to solve the carbon problem unless you also have a renewable (or nuclear) energy source.
(* OK, you can get pedantic about where the energy actually came from but you know what I mean)
Back in the 1980s, Apple would ruthlessly try and sue anyone who attempted to sell a GUI that looked even remotely similar to their own
I never said apple were soft fluffy nice guys - I just said they never had a monopoly. GEM 1 wasn't just "remotely similar to Mac OS" - it had pretty clearly been designed to look as much like Mac OS as possible (I had an Atari ST for a while, which managed to hold on to the old version of GEM) As for MS Windows, MS already had a near monopoly so my heart fails to bleed. I don't think Apple can be blamed for tha fact that windows versions 1.x and 2.x failed to take off - lack of software and running under DOS on clunky 186/286s did that.
Of cause, I would like to point out that Commodore filed for Chapter 11 some time ago, so you are really unlikely to see a 64, 128 or 1000 sold in stores, much less one running Windows.
I was thinking of these - of course, it just means that someone has bought the brand name and logo in a fire sale. The point was, there used to be lots of diverse "platforms", but they were bulldozed by the IBM/MS PC.
Only when Company B was the market leader, they were much worse than Company A. And nobody did anything about it.
In which parallel universe did Apple ever have an international near-monopoly on the personal computer market?
Yes, there have been a few occasions when they dominated a subset of the market for a few years (Spreadsheets with the Apple ][, DTP with the Mac, iPod/iTunes at the moment) - often after playing a major role in defining that market. That has usually ended when serious competition (often from the MS Monoculture) emerged. They've never got themselves into the sort of untouchable position, with a near total monopoly of the wider market, that MS have.
If I walk into a typical PC Superstore, I'll see MP3 players from half-a-dozen companies (and if I want to buy digital music for it there's half a dozen record stores in town, plus Amazon et. al. online selling it on CD - a far more convenient format than iTunes, so don't start on that). However, apart from maybe a small selection of Apple "in selected stores" all the PCs (and a rising proportion of phones, PDAs and games consoles) come with Microsoft software, take-it-or-leave-it. If you find a Commodore or Acorn there it'll turn out to be a PC running windows. Heck, a good store will probably install Windows on your iMac for 100 bucks. Its been that way since the late 80s and it's not Apple's fault that they are the only alternative.
Plus, I'd wager that the typical person who wants (and knows they want) Linux is also less likely to be seen dead buying from Dell or Gateway, and more likely to assemble their own PC.
I stopped worrying about such firms years ago when (fortunately before I'd parted with cash) one of their phonedroids informed me that I'd void the warranty if I set it up to dual boot WinNT and Win98 (forget Linux!)
Meanwhile, lets see: Company A has 95%+ of the desktop operating system market, has had its wrists slapped for monopolistic practices several times, also pwns the office productivity market, and is consequently in a position to "strongly encourage" anybody who sells computers into bundling its OS. Company B only has a few % of the market, sells its own computers with its own OS and has been the driving force behind getting any number of new technologies and concepts to market
Seems to me, if you could look "beyond" our universe - whether that means "before", "outside", or "quirpside and a bit to the b'zhak" - you are going to find one of three things:
Another "universe" of some description with discernable physical laws that can be used to explain the existence of ours within it. If so, you haven't really found the boundaries of the universe, you've just redefined the term "universe", so rinse and repeat until you encounter one of (2) or (3)...
The back of your head (i.e. some sort of closed, continuous, folded-back-on-itself system that has no outside).
Absolute Nothing. Not the cheap imitation nothing we get in this universe, full of dimensions, quantum foam, asymetric time, zero-point energy and little bowler-hatted daemons with clipboards enforcing the laws of thermodynamics, but real not-filled-with-anything-because-there's-nothing-t o-fill Nothing.
Now, if you encounter Nothing you have to ask your self "in the midst this Nothing (if it even has a midst) what is to stop a universe like ours suddenly popping into being?"...and the answer is, of course, Nothing. If it had any sort of laws to stop that sort of thing it wouldn't be Nothing - just anouther layer of skin on the universal onion.
The only fly in that ointment is that, in such a physical anarchy, you could also get giant men* with white cloaks and beards turning up spontaneously - but they'd only be middlemen, since the universes would be quite capable of creating themselves without any help from management.
You can't go past Greg Egan for sci-fi with science. More physics and info-science than otherwise.
...and lots of philosophy about the nature of consciosness, plus a certain amount of fairly subtle allegory/satire about how the scientific community works - plus the occasional joke (e.g. posthuman AIs scared of a coke can - which they see as a replecating viral meme).
The opening of "Diaspora" - an in-depth description of an artificial intelligence being "born" within a virtual digital space - is superficially info science but its very symbolic of the way an embryo develops, and what self-awareness actually means. There's also a theme about scientific dogma - a fact that proves to be critical was unexplored because N-dimensional models were unfashionable (probably a referenc to string theory) - and the schism between theoretical and applied science (the faction that goes out and explores the universe is a minority - the mainstream prefers to stay at home, play with virtual universes while trying to prove Goedel by exhaustion). The latter is rather important, because one of the other themes is that, if you are truly immortal, you might start worrying about what that means when the system that you inhabit only has a finite number of states, so anything that offers a promise of inexhaustible variations will be rather attractive.
So, while I rather rate "Disapora" and Egan's other books as the best hard SF I've ever read, they might be a bit deep (but certainly not irrelevant) for high school biology students.
Even people with some scientific higher ed. need to look beyond whether his theories are correct. (He actually stresses in the end-notes that they are fictitious - before citing enough references to suggest that he is very comfortably ahead of the game!)
Plus - please, SF is entertainment - by all means include it in scientific discussions where relevant, but
please don't make it HOMEWORK (unless the alternative is Jane Austin [shudder]).
I know that the really good games cost a small (sometimes a large) fortune to produce..... thousands of manhours, artists, programmers, layout people, scripters, a good game can be more complex to produce than a good movie.
And of course every penny of the ad revenue is going to go to those people. The executives, distributors, publicists, lawyers and other B-Ark candidates are too enlightened to see a new revenue stream as simply a way of increasing their share of the pie while they outsource the actual work to Khasakstan. Whups, sorry - my irony filter has just burnt out.
...as long as they don't start using those anamorphic ads that they paint on sports fields, distorted so that they look "square" when the camera points at them. There are better ways to get a splitting headache because of Budw... oh, wait, maybe not.:-)
AFAIK, at least I haven't seen working NTFS R/W on macos yet.
macfuse claims to support ntfs-3g under OSX. Looks like you'll have to compile ntfs-3g from source though & mount from the command line - they've only got binaries and a GUI mounter for SSHFS at the moment
There is no such thing as "limits on free speech" or "Free speech going too far". It either is free speech or it is not.
Trouble is, true free speech also requires intelligent listening.
If we could rely on people not to make important decisions without looking critically at the evidence, laws on defamation would not be necessary.
If your employer fires you because a.n. blogger accuses you of kitten huffing, then it is your employer who should be held accountable - not the teenage troll who doesn't know any better.
No one is really going to think that these things happen as regularly (or at all) in real life as they do in the movies.
Greetings traveller, and welcome to Earth.:-)
Seriously, its worth drawing a distinction between fantasy like "The Matrix" and programmes like "24" and "CSI" which don't say "fantasy" on the tin and, sadly, are liable to be seen as realistic. Otherwise, where are the US and UK governments getting their current stunning insights into the terrorist threat and the potential of high-tech crime fighting?
TFA citing the Simpsons is no fair, though - anything on that show is ironic by default, including green-glowing radioactive waste, three-eyed fish and the fact that ANY wheeled object involved in a collision in Springfield ALWAYS explodes in a fireball.
To have a capitalist market, you need to have controls, but you can't have it set up so that it's selective; you can't just selectively pick on the big companies because they're big.
No, you selectively pick on the companies that grow so big that they start to rise above market forces. Its quite hard to pick on monopolies without also picking on big companies. If you apply the same rules to small companies it becomes logically impossible for anybody to launch a genuinely new type of product or service.
What you are advocating is not Capitalism, because your ideal has more to do with socialism than capitalism.
I'll take that as a compliment - the only desirable aspect of capitalism is its annoying tendency to actually work[*1]:-) Without monopoly control (which most supposedly capitalist societies have in some form) you risk ending up with something that's only distinguishable from communism because the Party is on the Dow Jones.
You really can't have it both ways.
Why not? its worth a try.
How does that apply to this situation?
Well, the g.p. seemed to be generalising somewhat - anyway, although this case probably ended up with the right result, it is right that the question should have been raised, although free speech getting entangled with the free market in this way is one of those "only in the USA" issues.
So basically, it's OK for any of us that own a website to allow any kind of advertisers we want, but if you're a large company like Google or Microsoft, you all of a sudden have to be charity?
Yes.
Capitalist society relies on free competition to compel businesses to adopt an "enlightened self interest" approach - i.e. you are unlikely to turn away business (that will probably end up going to a competitor) without a good reason. This is all fine and dandy until a few big players reach such a dominant position that they have a captive market and can give the finger to competition. Hence, yes, the big dogs need to be held to a different set of standards.
Nonsense. That sentence is perfectly reasonable; it doesn't state that every software patent is used in that regard,
Not the point - it unnecessarily convolutes the software patent argument with the allegation that you-know-who is continuing to abuse their monopoly. However much the/. community might agree with that allegation it is still a sensitive issue that a politician would have to keep at arms length. As you say, there are plenty of other good arguments against SW patents.
Software patents are used by convicted monopolists to threaten customers who consider using rival software.
Who wrote this? Kudos for starting the petition, but folks! Its hard enough to get a relevant response out of a politician at the best of times, without asking them if they have stopped beating their wives.
No political advisor worth their salt is going to let their charge tacitly support that unneccesary little swipe at... who could it be?... tacked on to a not-directly-related issue. Any slim chance of getting a politician to respond directly to the issues raised (instead of the sort of bland re-statement of policy seen here) goes straight out of the window.
The patent issue is a lot wider and deeper than our favorite convicted monopolists... who risk Mutually Assured Destruction by last-century's favorite convicted monopolist (and others) if they finally stop the FUD bombardment and launch their missiles at Linux. Darn, that's another metaphor not to try on a politician at the moment:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Another thing about SF books - what has happened in the USA, land of Asimov, Heinlein, Doc Smith, Dick, Harrison, Herbert, Niven etc?
In the last 10-15 years the majority of the SF books I've bought have either been from England (Stephen Baxter, Peter F Hamilton, Micheal Marshall Smith, Douglas Adams, Neil Asher, Richard Morgan, Alistair Reynolds, Phillip Pullman*, Terry Pratchett*); Scotland (Iain M Banks, Ken McLeod) or Australia (Greg Egan) - and I'm not consioulsy selecting "local authors".
(* OK, Pullman's "Dark Materials" is borderline SF/Fantasy; and Pratchett published two SF books before hitting the big time).
...on the "since Star Wars" list (but in no particular order):
You may or may not like them all, but I'd argue that they were all "serious".
The other flaw in the "Blame Lucas" theory is that written SF has the same problem with being taken seriously by the "establishment" (...and I just watched a film clip of Philip K Dick shot in 1970-something complaining about that). Essentially the genre doesn't fit the value system of the artistic establishment (which is a polite way of saying that you need to know the difference between an atom and an electron to understand SF).
Especially when they've written the electric sheep out of the film (as well as the electic ones)...
True, as long as they don't decide that, because its Fantasy it has to be for kids. The BBC cut "Buffy" so they could show it at 6pm, and what Channel 4 did to "Angel" can't be mentioned on a forum like Slashdot where Wheedon-loving nerds of a sensitive disposition may be reading. Then the BBC suddenly find the cojones to ignore the silly complaints about Doctor Who scaring kids* (could the good ratings have anything to do with it?). Basically, the British pointless, arbitrary censorship rules are just inconsistent with the US pointless and arbitrary censorship rules (you know the film censors cut that bit from the Abyss where they drown the rat...? WTF?)
* Hah. Kids these days never watched Pertwee-era Doctor Who in black and white during the 70s miners strike, knowing that the daily power cut was due and at some point during the episode the lights would go out... Mummy!
Variable - its wort a watch, but it is trying to be an "adult" show in a universe established by a "family" show. As a friend of mine nicely put it "Its not really adult, just unsuitable for children".
I felt a bit let down by the season finale which degenerated into the "big giant monster summoned by creepy bad guy for no readily apparent reason" mould. Plus, the characters tend to spontaneously change depending on who's job it is to french the alien this week. As others have mentioned, I wouldn't expect it to show on US terrestrial with the way the wind is blowing at the moment - lots of naughty words, sex and refernces to homosexuality.
If you want disturbing, grown-up Brit fantasy then try "Ultraviolet" (the late-90s miniseries from UK Channel 4, NOT the recent and hopefully unrelated film) or maybe (if you want some eye candy with that) "Hex" from Sky.
Oh, by the way, there's been a pilot of a "children's" Doctor Who spinoff called "The Sarah Jane Adventures" too. If you're a Futurama fan you may recognise part of the plot...
(Yawns and dons anorak) the revied series is made by a totally different production team in a different branch of the BBC (BBC Wales) so for administrative purposes they started from 1 again. Fortunately, I think the "classic" series still ran long enough to piss on Stargate SG1's "longest running sci-fi show" fireworks so its not a big deal.
Anyway, the new version would count as a Galactica-style reboot if the original show hadn't rebooted more often than Windows ME anyway.
How about
1. Everybody over 20 has now finished replacing their vinyl and cassettes with CDs
2. The only records you get to hear about are the handful of rubbish on the radio playlists that you're already sick of.
3. Under 20s are now pissing their money away:
PS: Kids! Get off my lawn!!!
I'd rather be a pleasantly surprised pessimist than a permanently disappointed optimist. You start thinking that there may be some hope for humankind, then someone invents the disposable mobile phone.
A source is one that brings new energy into the system. A storage medium is one that is used to store and transport existing energy within the system.
Agreed, by chosing what you mean by "system" and "energy" you can make anything either a source or a storage medium. If you confine yourself to Earth's surface and atmosphere during the current geological era and define energy as "usable energy for heating things or doing work (sorry, redundant, I know)" then I think my definition makes sense.
Hydrogen is a bit iffy because there are (broadly) two ways of getting it - (a) by using some nice clean energy source* to crack water (which is fairly obviouly using it as a storage medium, as the only energy you get out is the energy you put in) or (b) from oil, in which case its little more than the ultimate clean-burning gasolene. Of course, that's the big bait and switch game with the Hydrogen Economy.
Now, is alcohol an energy source or just a "storage medium" for solar energy... (probably neither if you use oil to fuel the tractors and heat the still). (* or nuclear. Choices are a bitch)
If we go on using resources as if there were no tomorrow, there won't be - whether its global warming, the oil running out or one to many Chernobyl.
We're locked in a catch 22 where the only way for scientists to raise awareness of a serious risk is to make over-dramatised pronouncements of doom and get pundits like Al Gore to promote their cause - then, surprise surprise, we get other pundits "debunking" the science based on the fact that Al Gore waved around a pretty ice core chart that he clearly didn't fully understand himself.
Meanwhile, the media are more interested in arranging entertaining slanging matches between pundits than actually trying to investigate the competing evidence and explain it to the public, leaving the politicians free to use it as a pretext for new taxes, subsidies and "carbon trading" schemes (cash cow for middlemen and speculators) provided that they don't actually change anything.
Lets face it, if, tomorrow, someone invented a machine that turned garbage into clean energy, the human race would soon be using so much energy that the "waste" heat would start heating up the earth directly without any need for CO2 - even assuming that the "most economical" solution to the resulting garbage shortage wasn't to use oil to manufacture AOL CDs, platic bags and six-pack rings to feed directly into Mr Fusion.
C'mon - did you really expect the media to finally "get" the difference between an energy storage medium (batteries, hydrogen, compressed air) and an energy source* (Oil, solar, nuclear)?
As for the "free" air con - nope, its pretty much the same principle as regular air con, except the motor is back at the gas station. Conservation of energy is a bitch. One can hope they use the waste heat from the compressor to run the donut fryer. Plus, you'll need a heater in the winter to stop you from freezing, even if there's enough heat from friction etc. to stop the engine from turning into a snowball.
OK, all these things shift the smog from the city, but they're not going to solve the carbon problem unless you also have a renewable (or nuclear) energy source.
(* OK, you can get pedantic about where the energy actually came from but you know what I mean)
I never said apple were soft fluffy nice guys - I just said they never had a monopoly. GEM 1 wasn't just "remotely similar to Mac OS" - it had pretty clearly been designed to look as much like Mac OS as possible (I had an Atari ST for a while, which managed to hold on to the old version of GEM) As for MS Windows, MS already had a near monopoly so my heart fails to bleed. I don't think Apple can be blamed for tha fact that windows versions 1.x and 2.x failed to take off - lack of software and running under DOS on clunky 186/286s did that.
I was thinking of these - of course, it just means that someone has bought the brand name and logo in a fire sale. The point was, there used to be lots of diverse "platforms", but they were bulldozed by the IBM/MS PC.
In which parallel universe did Apple ever have an international near-monopoly on the personal computer market?
Yes, there have been a few occasions when they dominated a subset of the market for a few years (Spreadsheets with the Apple ][, DTP with the Mac, iPod/iTunes at the moment) - often after playing a major role in defining that market. That has usually ended when serious competition (often from the MS Monoculture) emerged. They've never got themselves into the sort of untouchable position, with a near total monopoly of the wider market, that MS have.
If I walk into a typical PC Superstore, I'll see MP3 players from half-a-dozen companies (and if I want to buy digital music for it there's half a dozen record stores in town, plus Amazon et. al. online selling it on CD - a far more convenient format than iTunes, so don't start on that). However, apart from maybe a small selection of Apple "in selected stores" all the PCs (and a rising proportion of phones, PDAs and games consoles) come with Microsoft software, take-it-or-leave-it. If you find a Commodore or Acorn there it'll turn out to be a PC running windows. Heck, a good store will probably install Windows on your iMac for 100 bucks. Its been that way since the late 80s and it's not Apple's fault that they are the only alternative.
Plus, I'd wager that the typical person who wants (and knows they want) Linux is also less likely to be seen dead buying from Dell or Gateway, and more likely to assemble their own PC.
I stopped worrying about such firms years ago when (fortunately before I'd parted with cash) one of their phonedroids informed me that I'd void the warranty if I set it up to dual boot WinNT and Win98 (forget Linux!)
I think what you want is a P-P-P-PowerBook :-)
Meanwhile, lets see: Company A has 95%+ of the desktop operating system market, has had its wrists slapped for monopolistic practices several times, also pwns the office productivity market, and is consequently in a position to "strongly encourage" anybody who sells computers into bundling its OS. Company B only has a few % of the market, sells its own computers with its own OS and has been the driving force behind getting any number of new technologies and concepts to market
Which one are we going to have a go at?
Now, if you encounter Nothing you have to ask your self "in the midst this Nothing (if it even has a midst) what is to stop a universe like ours suddenly popping into being?"
The only fly in that ointment is that, in such a physical anarchy, you could also get giant men* with white cloaks and beards turning up spontaneously - but they'd only be middlemen, since the universes would be quite capable of creating themselves without any help from management.
* or turtles**.
** with or without the white cloaks and beards
...and lots of philosophy about the nature of consciosness, plus a certain amount of fairly subtle allegory/satire about how the scientific community works - plus the occasional joke (e.g. posthuman AIs scared of a coke can - which they see as a replecating viral meme).
The opening of "Diaspora" - an in-depth description of an artificial intelligence being "born" within a virtual digital space - is superficially info science but its very symbolic of the way an embryo develops, and what self-awareness actually means. There's also a theme about scientific dogma - a fact that proves to be critical was unexplored because N-dimensional models were unfashionable (probably a referenc to string theory) - and the schism between theoretical and applied science (the faction that goes out and explores the universe is a minority - the mainstream prefers to stay at home, play with virtual universes while trying to prove Goedel by exhaustion). The latter is rather important, because one of the other themes is that, if you are truly immortal, you might start worrying about what that means when the system that you inhabit only has a finite number of states, so anything that offers a promise of inexhaustible variations will be rather attractive.
So, while I rather rate "Disapora" and Egan's other books as the best hard SF I've ever read, they might be a bit deep (but certainly not irrelevant) for high school biology students.
Even people with some scientific higher ed. need to look beyond whether his theories are correct. (He actually stresses in the end-notes that they are fictitious - before citing enough references to suggest that he is very comfortably ahead of the game!)
Plus - please, SF is entertainment - by all means include it in scientific discussions where relevant, but
please don't make it HOMEWORK (unless the alternative is Jane Austin [shudder]).
And of course every penny of the ad revenue is going to go to those people. The executives, distributors, publicists, lawyers and other B-Ark candidates are too enlightened to see a new revenue stream as simply a way of increasing their share of the pie while they outsource the actual work to Khasakstan. Whups, sorry - my irony filter has just burnt out.
...as long as they don't start using those anamorphic ads that they paint on sports fields, distorted so that they look "square" when the camera points at them. There are better ways to get a splitting headache because of Budw... oh, wait, maybe not. :-)
Trouble is, true free speech also requires intelligent listening.
If we could rely on people not to make important decisions without looking critically at the evidence, laws on defamation would not be necessary.
If your employer fires you because a.n. blogger accuses you of kitten huffing, then it is your employer who should be held accountable - not the teenage troll who doesn't know any better.
Greetings traveller, and welcome to Earth. :-)
Seriously, its worth drawing a distinction between fantasy like "The Matrix" and programmes like "24" and "CSI" which don't say "fantasy" on the tin and, sadly, are liable to be seen as realistic. Otherwise, where are the US and UK governments getting their current stunning insights into the terrorist threat and the potential of high-tech crime fighting?
TFA citing the Simpsons is no fair, though - anything on that show is ironic by default, including green-glowing radioactive waste, three-eyed fish and the fact that ANY wheeled object involved in a collision in Springfield ALWAYS explodes in a fireball.
No, you selectively pick on the companies that grow so big that they start to rise above market forces. Its quite hard to pick on monopolies without also picking on big companies. If you apply the same rules to small companies it becomes logically impossible for anybody to launch a genuinely new type of product or service.
I'll take that as a compliment - the only desirable aspect of capitalism is its annoying tendency to actually work[*1] :-) Without monopoly control (which most supposedly capitalist societies have in some form) you risk ending up with something that's only distinguishable from communism because the Party is on the Dow Jones.
Why not? its worth a try.
Well, the g.p. seemed to be generalising somewhat - anyway, although this case probably ended up with the right result, it is right that the question should have been raised, although free speech getting entangled with the free market in this way is one of those "only in the USA" issues.
[*1] For a given value[*2] of work
[*2] That'd be a dollar value, too.
Yes.
Capitalist society relies on free competition to compel businesses to adopt an "enlightened self interest" approach - i.e. you are unlikely to turn away business (that will probably end up going to a competitor) without a good reason. This is all fine and dandy until a few big players reach such a dominant position that they have a captive market and can give the finger to competition. Hence, yes, the big dogs need to be held to a different set of standards.
Not the point - it unnecessarily convolutes the software patent argument with the allegation that you-know-who is continuing to abuse their monopoly. However much the /. community might agree with that allegation it is still a sensitive issue that a politician would have to keep at arms length. As you say, there are plenty of other good arguments against SW patents.
Who wrote this? Kudos for starting the petition, but folks! Its hard enough to get a relevant response out of a politician at the best of times, without asking them if they have stopped beating their wives.
No political advisor worth their salt is going to let their charge tacitly support that unneccesary little swipe at... who could it be?... tacked on to a not-directly-related issue. Any slim chance of getting a politician to respond directly to the issues raised (instead of the sort of bland re-statement of policy seen here) goes straight out of the window.
The patent issue is a lot wider and deeper than our favorite convicted monopolists... who risk Mutually Assured Destruction by last-century's favorite convicted monopolist (and others) if they finally stop the FUD bombardment and launch their missiles at Linux. Darn, that's another metaphor not to try on a politician at the moment :-)