I know the poster and moderator who modded this "funny" are trying to be ironic jackasses, but the comment is absolutely dead on. Whatever faults or problems you have with the US, there can be no denying the freedom of speech we have and uphold.
Actually, my statement was a bit of a back-handed compliment. Yes, the US does have more freedoms than do most countries - and it seems that Singapore is coming up quite the jerks on this one. But with the feds looking at the possibility of prosecuting the NY Times for treason for reporting leaked classified information, and the prosecution of ordinary citizens under the espionage act for even possessing information that is considered classified...
Then add domestic spying, etc. - and you can see that we have a government of extreme secrecy that WILL go to measures to stop people from critisizing the current administration. How many times has the current Executive branch of this government used the State Secrets privledge to dismiss lawsuits against it that seek to check the power of the federal government against the Constitution?
Don't be surprised at Singapore. In at least one forseeable scenario, you're looking at the future of the United States.
I wonder what the board room meetings of SCO are like with the lawyers that have undoubtedly drained SCO's coffers of every red cent...
"Na guys, we're feelin good about this thing. The judge keeps giving me a vibe - I'm so gonna hit that. But back to the case, na, we're doing well. I'm feeling judgement for us, no problem. IMB is (what's that? oh, IBM) IBM is SO gonna pay through the teeth. Leanux is going down!
"Oh, um, here's your bill. Pay that whenever. No rush."
As per the DOD: Terrorism is "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
And DAMN MySpace for aiding them in the intimidation and upheaval of our government!
Oh, and the children. Won't someone think of them too, when you get a chance.
Hey - any takers on what the next big rally cry will be? It's been:
Communism
Nuculeaaar War
Children, and the thinking of them
Flag burning
Gay marriage
Terrorism (if you haven't been paying attention, they use it a lot)
So what's next?? Because when people are tired of hearing of one thing, they innevitably cry about something else to get what they want.
They're a tech company that currently brings in the majority of revenue on advertising.
Gotta love this:
Google still hasn't produced a huge winner
No... except for the search engine, AdWords (thank you for that Google...) and Google maps, which is mashed up just about everywhere and basically launched the AJAX craze.
Besides, what's a huge winner?? Gmail has millions of users... but I guess due to their market cap, Gmail will only be a big winner if it has BILLIONS of users??
Besides - yeah, they're giving MS a run in certain areas, but let's not also forget that they're also forcing Yahoo! into this century as well.
Hell, I was working with a commercial framework called 'Persistence' in 1997 that used a similar approach (albeit in C++).
Right, but once the patent is issued, remember that getting it unissued is a long process (which probably will not delay trial) and even when (and this kills me) a patent is revoked, it's still valid for like 6 months after the time of revokation, basically allowing the lawsuit to procede.
So it doesn't matter if TopLink has prior art - even if RedHat is able to get the patent revoked TOMORROW, the patent lawsuit can still go forward. That's basically why Blackberry paid up in the NTP suit even though by the time they settled, NTP didn't have a single patent left.
Because some people want some g-damn credit for their work. Spending umpteen hours of off-work time creating a piece of software (or contributing to) for the better of all that choose to freely use said software deserves some accolades.
Why do you think that virus writers get caught? Usually it's their own hubris and desire for credit that outs them in the end.
And OSS writers SHOULD get credit, with big, fat, annoyingly large banners for their contributions. Patents forcing them underground would be a shame.
I think there's more to the story here than we know.
There may be, and I agree with you about the whole "treat your neighbor as you would be treated" thingy... BUT...
The fact remains that he was arrested at the police station where he voluntarily went, with video tape in tow. They didn't arrest him until they found out they had been taped by a security camera. Now, apparently security cameras are legal for businesses, for govn't installations, but according to the police department, are now illegal for securing your own home without the consent of the person that you don't want at your house.
Further, the police were there without a warrant, which means they are unallowed to sieze anything, including the video tape. Beyond that, although I suppose the man's front stoop is considered private property, you have no right outside of your own home to not be videotaped, as is apparent in any store/stadium/street/elevator/etc. as well as upheld by courts.
Now, I have to imagine that this will be crushed by the courts - I cannot believe that you cannot tape your own premises for safety - or WHATEVER - reason. Should you be allowed to, I am having flashbacks to reading 1984 with our hero hiding from the eyes of the ever-on cameras in his home.
Tin-foil hat aside, to your idea of whether or not this person was a PITA to the police at his house that night, well... it's apparently all on tape;)
So, at first glance, Google Checkout seems worse than PayPal from the seller's perspective
Actually, I'm inclined to disagree. There is a full API, and you can practically (as a seller) hide the fact you're using Google to process payments from the user if you wish. I'm writing an online store right now, and integration with Google appears to be less costly than having to get a merchant bank account and integrate with annoying APIs like Paymentech.
I like that Google placed the service on both a Paypal and full-out merchant level. Now I can do all payment processing on my site via the available web API, but still put the Google badge on the site to put buyers at ease.
Ya know, this is probably the biggest problem with our patent system - assignability. A patent should not be assignable. The right to license, maybe... But "buying up" thousands of patents is not any effort to "protect" valuable IP assessts that assist said purchaser against infringement of an invention they had anything to do with.
Patents are supposed to protect theft of an idea from those that toil away at a process to invent a new... thing.
Assignability of patents (other than in death to family, lets say) means assignability of a monopoly meant strictly for the inventor, not the purchaser of the IP rights.
Oh for Christ sake people! They found a stable wireless solution capable of supporting the type of deployment they wanted, and they bought it!
This "it runs Linux OMG!!1!!11" shit is just meant to ruffle the feathers of people like the Linux zealots or MS haters on/.
I'm not going to make analogies, come up with metaphors, or anything. Why anyone thinks MS should disregard a stable, capable wireless solution because it runs embedded Linux is such a political waste of time it hurts my head.
I sent an email and it was posted here, along with many others. The Bergen County Community Library System made sure that I knew they were standing behind their director:
Mr. xxx,
I have forwarded your message to Ms Reutty.
Let me assure you that the library association _has_ stood firmly behind Ms Reutty from the beginning of this affair. I have included your message in this page... http://www.bccls.org/reference/2006-06-23.shtml
the easiest way to fix this would be to call in and ask for them to replace your SIM card
But at $25/SIM card, that's $50 for something that TMobile should really handle themselves. ($25/sim replacement is accurate as of a week ago, when I had one replaced.)
Strongspace is cool, but I've quickly become a fan of Amazon's S3, using the likes of Jungledisk - which has a Mac and Windows client which mount themselves as hard disks so any backup solution can do a copy over.
1TB/space and 1TB/transfer will cost $25/month at $.10/G/month storage and $.15/G/transfer. Can't beat those prices...
Maybe a starry-eyed idealist programmer would agree with you, but to the bean counters, expensive frequently purchased trinkets is exactly what should be done.
I've got it for you - playing FPS and a lot of MMORG games are just so much easier with your keyboard and mouse. Ever tried to play one with a standard game controller?
Playing games with the keyboard and mouse increase your degree of acuracy, speed, and control exponentially over controller-based games. Maybe the consoles need to start coming with keyboard/mouse controllers... more games like WoW would translate over a lot easier.
Oh, the Mayor - Mayor Ronald R. Jones - is the man accusing Ms. Reutty of obstructing the police. Further, she faces punishment for... I don't know... following the law.
Sorry to post this here, as it's not really a legit response, but here is the contact page for the library system. Be sure to send in an email or give a call to the Bergen County Cooperative Library System in support of Michele Reutty.
Is it just me, or are librarians like the only ones taking a unified stand against the coming police state??
So limiting the idiots and morons that screw things up helps make the ration of intilligent to idiot much higher.
BugMeNot has basically destroyed that mold. I wonder if the "sign-up" thing is like, a DefectiveByDesign is actually an RIAA shill that's trying to collect the names of people who call in who are likely pirates...
Sorry, what with the NSA and State Secrets and such, these days, anything that requires me to give personal information has me second-guessing motives (as implausable as this one probably is.)
Re:Restrike while the iron is still warm?
on
Futurama Returns
·
· Score: 1, Informative
The difference is that Family Guy and American Dad are funny the first time you watch them while the Simpsons and Futurama are funny every time you watch them.
Actually, Family Guy will hopefully be the mold for Futurama. I find Family Guy hillarious every time I watch them - so does the entire Adult Swim viewing audience, because when they took Family Guy off for a week, the message boards went crazy, and Family Guy was returned to the Adult Swim lineup.
Further to that, the new episodes stuck to the original formula and are as funny for a single reason - Seth McFarland is still at the helm. Hopefully, Futurama will retain the same writing staff, geniuses in their fields, people who actually understood and could properly mock science and physics.
Yeah, but it isn't Linux that's raking in the cash, it's supporting Linux. And if you're making millions and millions supporting and fixing people's Linux installations, what does that say about Linux?
Because I'm not - and I hope no one else is - surprised in the least. I'm actually surprised it's attached to a telecommunications bill at all. I expected that the oft-defeated broadcast flag would be snuck through in a farm bill, or a bill that feeds homeless children (you wouldn't vote against a bill that feeds homeless children!!)
Washington sucks. Once an idea is shot down, it shouldn't be legal to attach it to another bill. Why did line-item veto's fail again?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, my statement was a bit of a back-handed compliment. Yes, the US does have more freedoms than do most countries - and it seems that Singapore is coming up quite the jerks on this one. But with the feds looking at the possibility of prosecuting the NY Times for treason for reporting leaked classified information, and the prosecution of ordinary citizens under the espionage act for even possessing information that is considered classified...
Then add domestic spying, etc. - and you can see that we have a government of extreme secrecy that WILL go to measures to stop people from critisizing the current administration. How many times has the current Executive branch of this government used the State Secrets privledge to dismiss lawsuits against it that seek to check the power of the federal government against the Constitution?
Don't be surprised at Singapore. In at least one forseeable scenario, you're looking at the future of the United States.
Well thank God I live in the United States!
I wonder what the board room meetings of SCO are like with the lawyers that have undoubtedly drained SCO's coffers of every red cent...
"Na guys, we're feelin good about this thing. The judge keeps giving me a vibe - I'm so gonna hit that. But back to the case, na, we're doing well. I'm feeling judgement for us, no problem. IMB is (what's that? oh, IBM) IBM is SO gonna pay through the teeth. Leanux is going down!
"Oh, um, here's your bill. Pay that whenever. No rush."
And DAMN MySpace for aiding them in the intimidation and upheaval of our government!
Oh, and the children. Won't someone think of them too, when you get a chance.
Hey - any takers on what the next big rally cry will be? It's been:
So what's next?? Because when people are tired of hearing of one thing, they innevitably cry about something else to get what they want.
Gotta love this:
No... except for the search engine, AdWords (thank you for that Google...) and Google maps, which is mashed up just about everywhere and basically launched the AJAX craze.
Besides, what's a huge winner?? Gmail has millions of users... but I guess due to their market cap, Gmail will only be a big winner if it has BILLIONS of users??
Besides - yeah, they're giving MS a run in certain areas, but let's not also forget that they're also forcing Yahoo! into this century as well.
Right, but once the patent is issued, remember that getting it unissued is a long process (which probably will not delay trial) and even when (and this kills me) a patent is revoked, it's still valid for like 6 months after the time of revokation, basically allowing the lawsuit to procede.
So it doesn't matter if TopLink has prior art - even if RedHat is able to get the patent revoked TOMORROW, the patent lawsuit can still go forward. That's basically why Blackberry paid up in the NTP suit even though by the time they settled, NTP didn't have a single patent left.
Because some people want some g-damn credit for their work. Spending umpteen hours of off-work time creating a piece of software (or contributing to) for the better of all that choose to freely use said software deserves some accolades.
Why do you think that virus writers get caught? Usually it's their own hubris and desire for credit that outs them in the end.
And OSS writers SHOULD get credit, with big, fat, annoyingly large banners for their contributions. Patents forcing them underground would be a shame.
There may be, and I agree with you about the whole "treat your neighbor as you would be treated" thingy... BUT...
The fact remains that he was arrested at the police station where he voluntarily went, with video tape in tow. They didn't arrest him until they found out they had been taped by a security camera. Now, apparently security cameras are legal for businesses, for govn't installations, but according to the police department, are now illegal for securing your own home without the consent of the person that you don't want at your house.
Further, the police were there without a warrant, which means they are unallowed to sieze anything, including the video tape. Beyond that, although I suppose the man's front stoop is considered private property, you have no right outside of your own home to not be videotaped, as is apparent in any store/stadium/street/elevator/etc. as well as upheld by courts.
Now, I have to imagine that this will be crushed by the courts - I cannot believe that you cannot tape your own premises for safety - or WHATEVER - reason. Should you be allowed to, I am having flashbacks to reading 1984 with our hero hiding from the eyes of the ever-on cameras in his home.
Tin-foil hat aside, to your idea of whether or not this person was a PITA to the police at his house that night, well... it's apparently all on tape ;)
Actually, I'm inclined to disagree. There is a full API, and you can practically (as a seller) hide the fact you're using Google to process payments from the user if you wish. I'm writing an online store right now, and integration with Google appears to be less costly than having to get a merchant bank account and integrate with annoying APIs like Paymentech.
I like that Google placed the service on both a Paypal and full-out merchant level. Now I can do all payment processing on my site via the available web API, but still put the Google badge on the site to put buyers at ease.
Imagine being the poor DBA of this project:
Cute chica at bar: "So, what do you do for a living?"
DBA: "I am the DBA for the largest single collection of child pornography on the planet. You?"
Ya know, this is probably the biggest problem with our patent system - assignability. A patent should not be assignable. The right to license, maybe... But "buying up" thousands of patents is not any effort to "protect" valuable IP assessts that assist said purchaser against infringement of an invention they had anything to do with.
Patents are supposed to protect theft of an idea from those that toil away at a process to invent a new... thing.
Assignability of patents (other than in death to family, lets say) means assignability of a monopoly meant strictly for the inventor, not the purchaser of the IP rights.
Oh for Christ sake people! They found a stable wireless solution capable of supporting the type of deployment they wanted, and they bought it!
/.
This "it runs Linux OMG!!1!!11" shit is just meant to ruffle the feathers of people like the Linux zealots or MS haters on
I'm not going to make analogies, come up with metaphors, or anything. Why anyone thinks MS should disregard a stable, capable wireless solution because it runs embedded Linux is such a political waste of time it hurts my head.
But at $25/SIM card, that's $50 for something that TMobile should really handle themselves. ($25/sim replacement is accurate as of a week ago, when I had one replaced.)
Strongspace is cool, but I've quickly become a fan of Amazon's S3, using the likes of Jungledisk - which has a Mac and Windows client which mount themselves as hard disks so any backup solution can do a copy over. 1TB/space and 1TB/transfer will cost $25/month at $.10/G/month storage and $.15/G/transfer. Can't beat those prices...
I've got it for you - playing FPS and a lot of MMORG games are just so much easier with your keyboard and mouse. Ever tried to play one with a standard game controller?
Playing games with the keyboard and mouse increase your degree of acuracy, speed, and control exponentially over controller-based games. Maybe the consoles need to start coming with keyboard/mouse controllers... more games like WoW would translate over a lot easier.
Really? Because my land-line is unlisted, and my cell phone doesn't appear in there either. So, how exactly does this "magical book" include me?
Oh, the Mayor - Mayor Ronald R. Jones - is the man accusing Ms. Reutty of obstructing the police. Further, she faces punishment for... I don't know... following the law.
Mayor Ronald R. Jones - (201) 288-4111
http://www.hasbrouck-heights.nj.us/
Sorry to post this here, as it's not really a legit response, but here is the contact page for the library system. Be sure to send in an email or give a call to the Bergen County Cooperative Library System in support of Michele Reutty.
Is it just me, or are librarians like the only ones taking a unified stand against the coming police state??
http://www.bccls.org/hasbrouck/contactus.htm
BugMeNot has basically destroyed that mold. I wonder if the "sign-up" thing is like, a DefectiveByDesign is actually an RIAA shill that's trying to collect the names of people who call in who are likely pirates...
Sorry, what with the NSA and State Secrets and such, these days, anything that requires me to give personal information has me second-guessing motives (as implausable as this one probably is.)
Actually, Family Guy will hopefully be the mold for Futurama. I find Family Guy hillarious every time I watch them - so does the entire Adult Swim viewing audience, because when they took Family Guy off for a week, the message boards went crazy, and Family Guy was returned to the Adult Swim lineup.
Further to that, the new episodes stuck to the original formula and are as funny for a single reason - Seth McFarland is still at the helm. Hopefully, Futurama will retain the same writing staff, geniuses in their fields, people who actually understood and could properly mock science and physics.
American Dad was never funny.
Reminds me of one of my favorite Onion articles: CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years
Yeah, but it isn't Linux that's raking in the cash, it's supporting Linux. And if you're making millions and millions supporting and fixing people's Linux installations, what does that say about Linux?
Same thing it says about Windows?
Because I'm not - and I hope no one else is - surprised in the least. I'm actually surprised it's attached to a telecommunications bill at all. I expected that the oft-defeated broadcast flag would be snuck through in a farm bill, or a bill that feeds homeless children (you wouldn't vote against a bill that feeds homeless children!!)
Washington sucks. Once an idea is shot down, it shouldn't be legal to attach it to another bill. Why did line-item veto's fail again?
<offtopic> There sure is a lot of blood... </offtopic>