Once you start thinking that improving your life is the key to happiness, you'll never be happy. Anything can always be improved, whether it's your annual salary or how much your kids love you.
This is irrespective of the assumption that it is either possible or desirable to be happy in the first place.
My lineage grandmaster, Cheng Man Ching, when asked what the difference between the Buddhist meditation and the Chinese tai chi mediation, says that it gets to the same place, but if he's meditating alongside a Buddhist monk and they are attacked by bandits, Master Cheng will be able to neutralize the attackers, protecting himself and the Buddhist monk, without interrupting his meditation.
Not if the bandits have a GE M134 minigun he won't.
If we can get onions to grow, then I have no problem covers Mars in onions. If we could add a legume or potatoes, so much the better.
Hemp is the ideal crop for Mars as it's tough and versatile. Plus it would help encourage space tourism and even migration to Mars, as long as we didn't impose antiquated Earth laws there.
Martian soil is a weathered volcanic type similar to soils found in the Hawaiian Islands
Now all it needs is air pressure, oxygen, water, more sunlight, an ozone layer, a magnetic field, arable soil, flora, and fauna--and we can live there no problem!
As this is slashdot, I'm just waiting for smeone to say that these are merely technical details, which with the use of highly paid computer scientists and engineers we can solve before too long, probably in the next five to ten years.
The internet was and is opt-in: one opts in by putting up a public website and opening web server port to the internet. Afterwards, everyone - including you, search bots, mash up services etc. - can read it and do everything the copyright laws allow them to.
Internet is meant to be crosslinked and accesible by default. If you wish to make your site only for your limited circle - you're welcome to use access restrictions. But most sites are meant to be read and linked to.
That was fine until money got involved in the internet.
For-profit organisations don't necessarily care about freedom, whether of information or anything else.
At some point newspapers and other media outlets are going to have to face facts. What they produce, no matter how much it may cost them, appears to be worth significantly less in the Internet Age.
I look forward to the massive increase in objectivity, accuracy and professionalism that will follow when the only internet news you can get comes from government or teenage bloggers.
I don't understand why it seems to be a moral right make money from anybody who makes money from you.
If you are admitting that Google does indeed make money from Google News (which seems only logical, as I don't hold to the general slashdot fantasy that Google are some sort of super cool quais-charity) then it seems to be a matter of reasonable business practice that Google should pay something to the people who provide all the content of Google News.
The food industry and coke are selling their own product, they are not piggy-backing off anyone else's.
people outside France will just not bother and drop French content
No they won't. You can't just ignore what countries like France, Germany, China, India, Brazil, Russia or the US are doing, however much you like or dislike them.
It's very simple: either Google listings are good for the newspapers, or they aren't. If the listings are not good for the newspapers, the newspapers can shut them off right now via robots.txt. If Google listings are good for the newspapers, then why are they demanding payment from Google and not vice versa?
Because Google News is not the same as being listed on Google search?
They want to receive Google's indexing service free and they also want Google to pay them for the privilege of giving them free indexing services.
I thought they wanted Google to pay them for the privelege of using more of their content than can be justified by "fair usage", to the extent that people can read the excerpt on Google News and not even have to visit the original news website? Either I am misunderstanding something obvious here, or maybe I just don't believe that Google has the right to copy anything it wants for free and then make money from it.
Not quite. They want to get paid by force since they haven't tried to earn money via adapting to changes to technology.
Fuck off. They want to get paid by advertisers the same way Google is. The difference is that Google has to spend very little money to copy headlines from other websites, whereas the actual news sites have to pay journalists, editors and so on to ensure that the stuff they publish is as accurate, fair and honest as possible.
Google are essetially stealing some of their advertising money off them, but that's fine here on slashdot because (a) Google are American and not evil French socialists and (b) because copyright is simply a Bad Thing, Google should just be allowed to reproduce the French news sites' content verbatim anyway.
I, for one, do not look forward to the day news sites like the Guardian and BBC have been replaced by some bland Google News Blog.
The reason the news sites don't like summaries is, it gives people a chance to decide if they are interested in reading the article before they click. It saves us from wasting our time. So... my heart just pumps purple piss for them.
So let Google set up their own fucking news site then.
I don't get the sympathy for Google here, I really don't. I know information wants to be free and so on, but it's not: and Google are the ones making money off it.
They're already providing these paranoid schmucks with a valuable service by indexing their content and making it available to inquiring netizens across the globe,
why would they then agree to pay to provide this service?
Ooh, perhaps because Google are making money off advertising which isn't going to the content providers? You make it sound like Google are some big charity linking to all this wonderful information for the good of humanity. Well, they're not, they're just doing it to get advertising revenue, and they are being underhand by providing enough of the meat of articles without linking to the original website, that people don't go to those websites, and all the advertising revenue goes to Google.
Google wants other people's information to be free so they can make money off it. They're parasites.
Bullshit, I can find local pizzerias without using Google easily enough. My town's website has a listing for all restaurants, something like Trip Advisor gives me reviews if I want, etc.
I'm not knocking Google, but access to that sort of low level local information barely requires the internet at all.
Did I miss the headlines when all those services decided they refused to be listed unless they got a share of phone book profits? Last I noticed all of those services paid to be listed more prominently in phone books and anywhere else they can get their name and contact information displayed.
That is a ludicrous analogy. You don't ring up for a taxi or pizza and then decide that just reading their details in the phone book will do instead of actually calling a cab or ordering a pizza..
We Americans talking about oil drilling (myself included) because we want to stop buying it from countries that hate us, like the Middle East and Venezuela.
Maybe you should concentrate on working out why they hate you so much first. Hint: it's not because US foreign policy has taken an isolationist, hands off approach to that region or country.
With various organics I'd expect significant variation in the fuel, and a much more difficult to control process.
That never stopped us before. Ever since microcomputers were invented, we actually like difficult to control processes. With more and harder technical problems standing between us and our goals, I predict more jobs for highly qualified workforce.
Personally, I'm just waiting for the singularity and the discovery of virtually free limitless fusion energy in ten or so years' time, then the machines can do all the work and humankind will bask in eternal glory and we'll never have to worry about anything else ever again.
You're right on the rest, though. I laugh my ass off the hippies trying to "live green" as if it would make a difference. The behaviour of individuals is irrelevant when the industry down the block is burning fuel and releasing chemicals into the river; regulate them, not the consumers. I would happily buy "greener" products as long as they were better or at least as good as the dirtier alternatives.
This is known as the "but what difference would it have made if I as an individual had stood up to the Nazis as a German citizen in the 1930s, they were going to kill all the Jews and communists anyway" defence.
Maybe you're the kind of person who goes around saying: "Oh, if everyone does their part...".
What, like the kind of person who now recycles a lot of waste instead of burning/dumping it? who insulates their home to save wasted energy? who drives a more fuel efficient car because it works just as well at going to the shops or to work as a 5 litre gas guzzler?
Slashdot Mirror
Once you start thinking that improving your life is the key to happiness, you'll never be happy. Anything can always be improved, whether it's your annual salary or how much your kids love you.
This is irrespective of the assumption that it is either possible or desirable to be happy in the first place.
My lineage grandmaster, Cheng Man Ching, when asked what the difference between the Buddhist meditation and the Chinese tai chi mediation, says that it gets to the same place, but if he's meditating alongside a Buddhist monk and they are attacked by bandits, Master Cheng will be able to neutralize the attackers, protecting himself and the Buddhist monk, without interrupting his meditation.
Not if the bandits have a GE M134 minigun he won't.
If we can get onions to grow, then I have no problem covers Mars in onions. If we could add a legume or potatoes, so much the better.
Hemp is the ideal crop for Mars as it's tough and versatile. Plus it would help encourage space tourism and even migration to Mars, as long as we didn't impose antiquated Earth laws there.
Martian soil is a weathered volcanic type similar to soils found in the Hawaiian Islands
Now all it needs is air pressure, oxygen, water, more sunlight, an ozone layer, a magnetic field, arable soil, flora, and fauna--and we can live there no problem!
As this is slashdot, I'm just waiting for smeone to say that these are merely technical details, which with the use of highly paid computer scientists and engineers we can solve before too long, probably in the next five to ten years.
This would be pretty stupid.
The internet was and is opt-in: one opts in by putting up a public website and opening web server port to the internet. Afterwards, everyone - including you, search bots, mash up services etc. - can read it and do everything the copyright laws allow them to.
Internet is meant to be crosslinked and accesible by default. If you wish to make your site only for your limited circle - you're welcome to use access restrictions. But most sites are meant to be read and linked to.
That was fine until money got involved in the internet.
For-profit organisations don't necessarily care about freedom, whether of information or anything else.
Except of course that most people who read the article have never even heard of the paper before seeing it listed on Google.
Then they are fairly stupid people. Something doesn't have to show up on Google to be real.
I wouldn't know the majority of news sites if it weren't for Google's aggregation.
Why would you boast on an internet forum about your laziness and ignorance?
At some point newspapers and other media outlets are going to have to face facts. What they produce, no matter how much it may cost them, appears to be worth significantly less in the Internet Age.
I look forward to the massive increase in objectivity, accuracy and professionalism that will follow when the only internet news you can get comes from government or teenage bloggers.
From the raging lefties over at Fox News, here's a comparison of US to French annual health spending:
US: 17.4% of GDP / ~$8000 per capita France: 11.8% of GDP / ~$4000 per capita
You were saying?
The main criticism of the US healthcare system has always been that is BOTH expensive AND unfair.
I don't understand why it seems to be a moral right make money from anybody who makes money from you.
If you are admitting that Google does indeed make money from Google News (which seems only logical, as I don't hold to the general slashdot fantasy that Google are some sort of super cool quais-charity) then it seems to be a matter of reasonable business practice that Google should pay something to the people who provide all the content of Google News.
The food industry and coke are selling their own product, they are not piggy-backing off anyone else's.
Their content helps make Google rich. They're fine with that but want their cut.
Or you can spin it "Google provides a free service of directing traffic to their site."
Yes, you can spin it like that if you're a fucking drooling Google fantard.
people outside France will just not bother and drop French content
No they won't. You can't just ignore what countries like France, Germany, China, India, Brazil, Russia or the US are doing, however much you like or dislike them.
It's very simple: either Google listings are good for the newspapers, or they aren't. If the listings are not good for the newspapers, the newspapers can shut them off right now via robots.txt. If Google listings are good for the newspapers, then why are they demanding payment from Google and not vice versa?
Because Google News is not the same as being listed on Google search?
And the real point is that these news sites don't want you to find the news even on their own sites, they want you to buy a newspaper.
You do know that newspapers make most of their money from advertising, not income from physical newspaper sales?
The only reason they care about circulation figures is that it lets them up their rate cards compared to the competition.
So if they think Google are eating into their avertising revenue, they potentially have a serious problem.
They want to receive Google's indexing service free and they also want Google to pay them for the privilege of giving them free indexing services.
I thought they wanted Google to pay them for the privelege of using more of their content than can be justified by "fair usage", to the extent that people can read the excerpt on Google News and not even have to visit the original news website? Either I am misunderstanding something obvious here, or maybe I just don't believe that Google has the right to copy anything it wants for free and then make money from it.
I can access French (or wherever) news sites quite easily by going there directly. I don't need fucking Google to help me.
Not quite. They want to get paid by force since they haven't tried to earn money via adapting to changes to technology.
Fuck off. They want to get paid by advertisers the same way Google is. The difference is that Google has to spend very little money to copy headlines from other websites, whereas the actual news sites have to pay journalists, editors and so on to ensure that the stuff they publish is as accurate, fair and honest as possible.
Google are essetially stealing some of their advertising money off them, but that's fine here on slashdot because (a) Google are American and not evil French socialists and (b) because copyright is simply a Bad Thing, Google should just be allowed to reproduce the French news sites' content verbatim anyway.
I, for one, do not look forward to the day news sites like the Guardian and BBC have been replaced by some bland Google News Blog.
The reason the news sites don't like summaries is, it gives people a chance to decide if they are interested in reading the article before they click. It saves us from wasting our time. So... my heart just pumps purple piss for them.
So let Google set up their own fucking news site then.
I don't get the sympathy for Google here, I really don't. I know information wants to be free and so on, but it's not: and Google are the ones making money off it.
They're already providing these paranoid schmucks with a valuable service by indexing their content and making it available to inquiring netizens across the globe, why would they then agree to pay to provide this service?
Ooh, perhaps because Google are making money off advertising which isn't going to the content providers? You make it sound like Google are some big charity linking to all this wonderful information for the good of humanity. Well, they're not, they're just doing it to get advertising revenue, and they are being underhand by providing enough of the meat of articles without linking to the original website, that people don't go to those websites, and all the advertising revenue goes to Google.
Google wants other people's information to be free so they can make money off it. They're parasites.
Bullshit, I can find local pizzerias without using Google easily enough. My town's website has a listing for all restaurants, something like Trip Advisor gives me reviews if I want, etc.
I'm not knocking Google, but access to that sort of low level local information barely requires the internet at all.
Did I miss the headlines when all those services decided they refused to be listed unless they got a share of phone book profits? Last I noticed all of those services paid to be listed more prominently in phone books and anywhere else they can get their name and contact information displayed.
That is a ludicrous analogy. You don't ring up for a taxi or pizza and then decide that just reading their details in the phone book will do instead of actually calling a cab or ordering a pizza..
We Americans talking about oil drilling (myself included) because we want to stop buying it from countries that hate us, like the Middle East and Venezuela.
Maybe you should concentrate on working out why they hate you so much first. Hint: it's not because US foreign policy has taken an isolationist, hands off approach to that region or country.
With various organics I'd expect significant variation in the fuel, and a much more difficult to control process.
That never stopped us before. Ever since microcomputers were invented, we actually like difficult to control processes. With more and harder technical problems standing between us and our goals, I predict more jobs for highly qualified workforce.
Personally, I'm just waiting for the singularity and the discovery of virtually free limitless fusion energy in ten or so years' time, then the machines can do all the work and humankind will bask in eternal glory and we'll never have to worry about anything else ever again.
You're right on the rest, though. I laugh my ass off the hippies trying to "live green" as if it would make a difference. The behaviour of individuals is irrelevant when the industry down the block is burning fuel and releasing chemicals into the river; regulate them, not the consumers. I would happily buy "greener" products as long as they were better or at least as good as the dirtier alternatives.
This is known as the "but what difference would it have made if I as an individual had stood up to the Nazis as a German citizen in the 1930s, they were going to kill all the Jews and communists anyway" defence.
Maybe you're the kind of person who goes around saying: "Oh, if everyone does their part...".
What, like the kind of person who now recycles a lot of waste instead of burning/dumping it? who insulates their home to save wasted energy? who drives a more fuel efficient car because it works just as well at going to the shops or to work as a 5 litre gas guzzler?
That sort of person? Normal?