The odd thing is that you're not the customer of the Simpsons, you're the product. You're sold to advertisers with the promise that some of you might just possibly not skip their commercials or walk out of the room while their messages are broadcast.
By downloading the episode, you've broken that relationship.
An important point to remember here is that you haven't broken any relationship. You never signed up to any of this. No one who watches TV signs an agreement guaranteeing that they will watch ads. No one.
If people stop watching ads, for whatever reason, they are certainly NOT "stealing" TV (a ridiculous concept). They may not be obeying time honored consumer models, but that is not, yet, a crime, or even morally ambiguous. It just is.
Technically, what your describing is authoritarianism, not socialism.
But I think we can all agree that government should have the minimum amount of powers necessary to accomplish its goal, that being; to manage the running of the state according to the mandate given to it to do so by the people. As far as I can see, collecting everyones DNA does not seem to aid the state in doing this, and indeed may hamper that other important task of democratically elected government, that being; try not to let us slip into a dictatorship please.
Big Central Government forcibly collecting and retaining information on people for the "public good" and "collective security" is not Capitalism. It is Socialism. Not when they employ private companies to do this work for them. Then it's dog eat dog capital-erfic-ism. YEEEEEE HAAAHHHH!!!
Step 1. Detain suspect. Step 2. Obtain DNA. Step 3. Sell DNA to private companies for various research Step 4. Profit!!
From private companies point of view.
Step 1. Obtain ultra cheap source of DNA. Step 2. Patent private citizens DNA sequences. Step 3. Profit!!
From Joe averages point of view.
Step 1. Get arrested, detained and have DNA sample taken. Step 2. Be released without charge. Step 3. Have results of own DNA sold back to self. Step 4. ??? Step 5. Profit.
God bless capitalizm. So much better than all that capitalism rubbish with its silly respect for people and all that rubbish.
I've become confused. I'll stay here and await further instruction. Good Citizen! You betters will be along shortly with proper instruction for your inferior plebian mind. Praise the Lord!!!
Seriously though, under what logical ethical theory should pornographers be punished?
I believe the theory is known as the "WON'T ANYONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN" WAPTOC greater theory of social conformity, where by society is deemed to be best lead towards at state where no child can ever encounter an object or idea which may cause them to ask a question that in any way makes their guardians uncomfortable. This theory has the added benefit that when children reach adulthood they will be uncomfortable asking questions of their new "guardian", i.e. the state.
WAPTOC theory also enables both males AND females to remain completely ignorent for the maximum possible time of any details regarding their icky reproductive anatomies, enabling even minimally trained medical professionals to charge exorbident fees for "expertise" otherwise rudimentary knowladge.
I wonder how Google are operating in China. I think they'll have to change their slogan to, "Don't be Evil (may not apply in some jurisdictions)".
Who are we kidding. Private companies will gladly sell out and kowtow to anyone as long as it helps them rake in the cash. Companies don't care if China never becomes a democracy, in fact they probably prefer it the way things are.
Personally, I feel the Chinese model is so attractive to business that pretty soon people in western nations will begin to lose their rights as companies demand more and more harmonisation with the superior Chinese model.
It seems capitalism can achieve what the soviets could not.
"Can you bring the table downstairs?" (The asking party is to stay upstairs.)
To me, the grammar is still wanting here and wrong; the party should have said, "Can you take the table downstairs?"
From answers.com: bring: To carry, convey, lead, or cause to go along to another place take: To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice
I would say that the usage of bring is the more correct choice. I think this is a case where the grammar nazi's pedantic and inflexible rules concered with wherefors, first persons, possessives and participles will actually casue them to chose the least correct word in certain circumstances.
The purpose of language is to convey meaning from my head, to your head, via speech text or some other medium. Trying to do so while conforming to arbitrary and often excessively complicated grammar rules of one dialect will often impair the first objective, making you less understandable.
For example, consider the following sentences. Which is more grammatically correct, and which conveys the writers meaning more aptly.
"Grammar rules are unnecessarily complicated, and restrictive." "Grammar goons is da suX0rs!"
In example if you use only MySQL, which is GPL, as database for you application, MySQL has defined this as linking, so making your own application also GPL. The thing goes complicated because developers of PostgreSQL haven't seen the matter as same. So in my intepretion I could use PostgreSQL as my database but not MySQL
I'm obviously not a lawyer, and I really haven't delved deeply into the GPL, but I instinctivly know that what you're suggesting is plain wrong.
The GPL says nothing about the data the program handles, either as a service or some file i/o or whatever. The scenario you're suggesting is highly analougous to the GPL on Apache meaning you can only host GPL'ed webpages and content, and can only serve webpages to GPL'ed browsers like firefox.
Defining sending requests to a service as linking to the program is a pretty far stretch by any definition. Again, if that's the case, every program I run is "linked" to my kernel, and any program that connects to a remote Apache server is also "linked" to it somehow.
OK, maybe the boys at MySQL have been spreading, intentionally or otherwise, little white lies about their licence. I doubt it, but even if they were, you can tell them to shove it. The GPL (currently) affects the source code only (as I shallowly understand it).
This is like those stories of lawyers who glance over the GPL and declare that any data outputted by it is automatically GPL'ed and must be shared. FUD! And people pay money for these guys!?
There's only one real restriction with GPL software. You are restricted from restricting access to the source code.
Forget all this rubbish about being spherical. What the hell is "spherical" anyway? Most planets are NOT spheres.
Use gravity. Have the definition of a planet as being a body whose normal surface gravity at any point on its surface is not below some minimum value of X gals, where X gals is some practical value chosen for its ability to support adequately people walking and/or living for a short period on the object.
The nice thing about such a definition is that very small objects with sufficient gravity will be planets (unlikely), very large objects with low gravity will not be planets (unlikely), and best of all, even objects that are not very "round" can still be planets as they are suitable for "expeditions".
I hearby patent this method of naming planets ON A COMPUTER. The USPTO should therfore grant me a 20 year domination of the galaxy shortly.
Patents don't apply to military devices. Lucient is a private company that is a part of the military-industrial complex. Patents apply to Lucient. Ergo, patent do apply to military devices.
Google is a poster-child for the successful deployment of Linux
I hardly see why Google specifically boosts Linux deployment. I'm sure Mac OSX, Solaris, and other *nixes are benefiting from this as well. In fact, in the case of OSX I'd say Apple is benefiting more than Linux.
What's it going to be like when all of China is wired?
Quite frankly I'm thinking something like the opening sequence of XenoGears, with the mass tentacles of spam reaching out to engluf us all, and the scrolling messages of "And Ye Shall Be As Gods" replaced by countless repititions of "Make Money Fast", "Strong Erections", "FREE!!!!!" and the like.
I'd like to play the part of the captain, giving a faint smile as I detonate the self destruct. Gods know it'll be better than the alternative.
What happens in civil court when you show up and tell the judge that you can't afford to hire a lawyer?
The judge says "We goin' give you a fair trial... And then we goina hang yuh!"
He then begins cackling in unison with the RIAA's lawyer goon squad while the blind lady begins to darken and cry blood. Her scales have also been replaced with something that looks suspiciously like an electronic bill counting machine.
I can easily take half a second out of my day to figure out what type a variable should be, and end up with more readable code.
Ahh, but just think of all those poor migrating Visual Basic programmers whose only expierience of a c type syntax has been a spattering of javascript. They'll feel right at home.
With any luck, we'll make programmers of them yet.
I'd have to say that in terms of preventing war driving and the like, MAC address filtering is the best thing since... well actually it's really the only thing going to keep unwanted devices off your network. WEP is useless, and WPA is unsupported by most devices.
The ability to only allow specific devices to operate on a network is very attractive(Hopefully it actually works on most routers). Lazy sysadmins might complain that it entails extra workloads, but honestly lazy admins are half the reason for all this war driving nonsense anyway!
It's more likely that the requirement for most jewish boys to read hebrew at the age of 13(bar mitzvah?) lead to their increased empoloyment in clerical jobs, as most if not all were taught to read and write in their native language as well.
This was at a time when most people could not read or write. Hence the average jewish male was much more eligable for employment in a clerical position than the average male in the population as a whole.
The higher salaries conferred in clerical positions leads in turn to suppossedly higher "intelligence", due to the increased ability to afford higher education. You'll find most "intelligencia" come from relatively wealthy backgrounds.
Economic factors, not genes, have lead to the results the article describes.
So I think I can get by without spatial mode (or 3D effects, or any other stupid, distrating eye candy).
Danm straight! I run in 1024x768 screen resolution. Any higher and, surprise surprise, I'm squinting to read the text.
I run with plain grey windowing style. Any fancy widgets blinking or animated widgets and surprise, surprise, I get distracted.
I have never, and probably will never, use transparent windows. Why? Turn them on and, surprise, surprise, I can't see what I'm working on clearly anymore.
Me, I use big icons, bottom of the screen taskbar and clear legible fonts. I like to see what I'm doing, not what the developers would like me to see. This is why GNOME's new pulsing windowbars instead of popup windows is just delicious. Now if only they would get their asses in gear and add bookmarks to nautilus, and naturally for gods' sake get rid of the spatial browsing.
I would say that Maschio came quite close to being in contempt of court here. The Court had to go out of its way to censure him.
This is typical of the attitude that the RIAA has towards the courts. they expect the court to, in effect, rubber stamp the RIAA's private laws and fines.
Maschio quite brazenly tried to reverse the courts decision that council for both sides discuss the matter, instead insisting that Santangelo be dragged into the RIAA's private interrogation chamber, so that they may have their way with her. Maschio tried this no less than three times. If the judge was not so lienient with him, he would have been considered to be in contempt.
It's clear that simply going before a court to force someone into private arbitration is a waste of the courts time, and the judge made that clear. Hopefully more judges will beging to realise they are being taken for granted by large corporations.
For the patent to be granted, it has to contain enough specifications to make it unique. You cannot patent an idea.
Here at the USPTO, we grant patents with predjudice to trivial and outdated concepts such as gross obviousness, prior art and indeed patentability itself.
This reminds me of that novel Jennifer Government, where in the dystopian anarcho-capitalist future, companies can sue former employees for losses in productivity which might result from an employee leaving their job.
Here, we have a company suing over potential losses in intellectual property which might result an employee leaving their job.
Slashdot Mirror
The odd thing is that you're not the customer of the Simpsons, you're the product. You're sold to advertisers with the promise that some of you might just possibly not skip their commercials or walk out of the room while their messages are broadcast.
By downloading the episode, you've broken that relationship.
An important point to remember here is that you haven't broken any relationship. You never signed up to any of this. No one who watches TV signs an agreement guaranteeing that they will watch ads. No one.
If people stop watching ads, for whatever reason, they are certainly NOT "stealing" TV (a ridiculous concept). They may not be obeying time honored consumer models, but that is not, yet, a crime, or even morally ambiguous. It just is.
Technically, what your describing is authoritarianism, not socialism.
But I think we can all agree that government should have the minimum amount of powers necessary to accomplish its goal, that being; to manage the running of the state according to the mandate given to it to do so by the people. As far as I can see, collecting everyones DNA does not seem to aid the state in doing this, and indeed may hamper that other important task of democratically elected government, that being; try not to let us slip into a dictatorship please.
Big Central Government forcibly collecting and retaining information on people for the "public good" and "collective security" is not Capitalism. It is Socialism.
Not when they employ private companies to do this work for them. Then it's dog eat dog capital-erfic-ism. YEEEEEE HAAAHHHH!!!
From the governments point of view.
Step 1. Detain suspect.
Step 2. Obtain DNA.
Step 3. Sell DNA to private companies for various research
Step 4. Profit!!
From private companies point of view.
Step 1. Obtain ultra cheap source of DNA.
Step 2. Patent private citizens DNA sequences.
Step 3. Profit!!
From Joe averages point of view.
Step 1. Get arrested, detained and have DNA sample taken.
Step 2. Be released without charge.
Step 3. Have results of own DNA sold back to self.
Step 4. ???
Step 5. Profit.
God bless capitalizm. So much better than all that capitalism rubbish with its silly respect for people and all that rubbish.
.... The Reds name YOU!!!
I've become confused. I'll stay here and await further instruction.
Good Citizen! You betters will be along shortly with proper instruction for your inferior plebian mind. Praise the Lord!!!
DVDA?
Danm you. And danm Google.
Seriously though, under what logical ethical theory should pornographers be punished?
I believe the theory is known as the "WON'T ANYONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN" WAPTOC greater theory of social conformity, where by society is deemed to be best lead towards at state where no child can ever encounter an object or idea which may cause them to ask a question that in any way makes their guardians uncomfortable. This theory has the added benefit that when children reach adulthood they will be uncomfortable asking questions of their new "guardian", i.e. the state.
WAPTOC theory also enables both males AND females to remain completely ignorent for the maximum possible time of any details regarding their icky reproductive anatomies, enabling even minimally trained medical professionals to charge exorbident fees for "expertise" otherwise rudimentary knowladge.
I wonder how Google are operating in China. I think they'll have to change their slogan to, "Don't be Evil (may not apply in some jurisdictions)".
Who are we kidding. Private companies will gladly sell out and kowtow to anyone as long as it helps them rake in the cash. Companies don't care if China never becomes a democracy, in fact they probably prefer it the way things are.
Personally, I feel the Chinese model is so attractive to business that pretty soon people in western nations will begin to lose their rights as companies demand more and more harmonisation with the superior Chinese model.
It seems capitalism can achieve what the soviets could not.
Thank you for your informative and educational comment!
"Can you bring the table downstairs?" (The asking party is to stay upstairs.)
To me, the grammar is still wanting here and wrong; the party should have said, "Can you take the table downstairs?"
From answers.com:
bring: To carry, convey, lead, or cause to go along to another place
take: To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice
I would say that the usage of bring is the more correct choice. I think this is a case where the grammar nazi's pedantic and inflexible rules concered with wherefors, first persons, possessives and participles will actually casue them to chose the least correct word in certain circumstances.
The purpose of language is to convey meaning from my head, to your head, via speech text or some other medium. Trying to do so while conforming to arbitrary and often excessively complicated grammar rules of one dialect will often impair the first objective, making you less understandable.
For example, consider the following sentences. Which is more grammatically correct, and which conveys the writers meaning more aptly.
"Grammar rules are unnecessarily complicated, and restrictive."
"Grammar goons is da suX0rs!"
In example if you use only MySQL, which is GPL, as database for you application, MySQL has defined this as linking, so making your own application also GPL. The thing goes complicated because developers of PostgreSQL haven't seen the matter as same. So in my intepretion I could use PostgreSQL as my database but not MySQL
I'm obviously not a lawyer, and I really haven't delved deeply into the GPL, but I instinctivly know that what you're suggesting is plain wrong.
The GPL says nothing about the data the program handles, either as a service or some file i/o or whatever. The scenario you're suggesting is highly analougous to the GPL on Apache meaning you can only host GPL'ed webpages and content, and can only serve webpages to GPL'ed browsers like firefox.
Defining sending requests to a service as linking to the program is a pretty far stretch by any definition. Again, if that's the case, every program I run is "linked" to my kernel, and any program that connects to a remote Apache server is also "linked" to it somehow.
OK, maybe the boys at MySQL have been spreading, intentionally or otherwise, little white lies about their licence. I doubt it, but even if they were, you can tell them to shove it. The GPL (currently) affects the source code only (as I shallowly understand it).
This is like those stories of lawyers who glance over the GPL and declare that any data outputted by it is automatically GPL'ed and must be shared. FUD! And people pay money for these guys!?
There's only one real restriction with GPL software. You are restricted from restricting access to the source code.
Forget all this rubbish about being spherical. What the hell is "spherical" anyway? Most planets are NOT spheres.
Use gravity. Have the definition of a planet as being a body whose normal surface gravity at any point on its surface is not below some minimum value of X gals, where X gals is some practical value chosen for its ability to support adequately people walking and/or living for a short period on the object.
The nice thing about such a definition is that very small objects with sufficient gravity will be planets (unlikely), very large objects with low gravity will not be planets (unlikely), and best of all, even objects that are not very "round" can still be planets as they are suitable for "expeditions".
I hearby patent this method of naming planets ON A COMPUTER. The USPTO should therfore grant me a 20 year domination of the galaxy shortly.
Patents don't apply to military devices.
Lucient is a private company that is a part of the military-industrial complex. Patents apply to Lucient. Ergo, patent do apply to military devices.
See also: Mussolini's Italy and Soviet Russia.
Google is a poster-child for the successful deployment of Linux
I hardly see why Google specifically boosts Linux deployment. I'm sure Mac OSX, Solaris, and other *nixes are benefiting from this as well. In fact, in the case of OSX I'd say Apple is benefiting more than Linux.
What's it going to be like when all of China is wired?
Quite frankly I'm thinking something like the opening sequence of XenoGears, with the mass tentacles of spam reaching out to engluf us all, and the scrolling messages of "And Ye Shall Be As Gods" replaced by countless repititions of "Make Money Fast", "Strong Erections", "FREE!!!!!" and the like.
I'd like to play the part of the captain, giving a faint smile as I detonate the self destruct. Gods know it'll be better than the alternative.
What happens in civil court when you show up and tell the judge that you can't afford to hire a lawyer?
The judge says "We goin' give you a fair trial... And then we goina hang yuh!"
He then begins cackling in unison with the RIAA's lawyer goon squad while the blind lady begins to darken and cry blood. Her scales have also been replaced with something that looks suspiciously like an electronic bill counting machine.
I can easily take half a second out of my day to figure out what type a variable should be, and end up with more readable code.
Ahh, but just think of all those poor migrating Visual Basic programmers whose only expierience of a c type syntax has been a spattering of javascript. They'll feel right at home.
With any luck, we'll make programmers of them yet.
I'd have to say that in terms of preventing war driving and the like, MAC address filtering is the best thing since... well actually it's really the only thing going to keep unwanted devices off your network. WEP is useless, and WPA is unsupported by most devices.
The ability to only allow specific devices to operate on a network is very attractive(Hopefully it actually works on most routers). Lazy sysadmins might complain that it entails extra workloads, but honestly lazy admins are half the reason for all this war driving nonsense anyway!
It's more likely that the requirement for most jewish boys to read hebrew at the age of 13(bar mitzvah?) lead to their increased empoloyment in clerical jobs, as most if not all were taught to read and write in their native language as well.
This was at a time when most people could not read or write. Hence the average jewish male was much more eligable for employment in a clerical position than the average male in the population as a whole.
The higher salaries conferred in clerical positions leads in turn to suppossedly higher "intelligence", due to the increased ability to afford higher education. You'll find most "intelligencia" come from relatively wealthy backgrounds.
Economic factors, not genes, have lead to the results the article describes.
So I think I can get by without spatial mode (or
3D effects, or any other stupid, distrating eye candy).
Danm straight! I run in 1024x768 screen resolution. Any higher and, surprise surprise, I'm squinting to read the text.
I run with plain grey windowing style. Any fancy widgets blinking or animated widgets and surprise, surprise, I get distracted.
I have never, and probably will never, use transparent windows. Why? Turn them on and, surprise, surprise, I can't see what I'm working on clearly anymore.
Me, I use big icons, bottom of the screen taskbar and clear legible fonts. I like to see what I'm doing, not what the developers would like me to see. This is why GNOME's new pulsing windowbars instead of popup windows is just delicious. Now if only they would get their asses in gear and add bookmarks to nautilus, and naturally for gods' sake get rid of the spatial browsing.
Trys cats. All the pet, half the mess, three times the clean. And if you ever forget to feed them, they even catch their own food!
Massive local bird stock depletion and contemptuous arrogance may result.
I would say that Maschio came quite close to being in contempt of court here. The Court had to go out of its way to censure him.
This is typical of the attitude that the RIAA has towards the courts. they expect the court to, in effect, rubber stamp the RIAA's private laws and fines.
Maschio quite brazenly tried to reverse the courts decision that council for both sides discuss the matter, instead insisting that Santangelo be dragged into the RIAA's private interrogation chamber, so that they may have their way with her. Maschio tried this no less than three times. If the judge was not so lienient with him, he would have been considered to be in contempt.
It's clear that simply going before a court to force someone into private arbitration is a waste of the courts time, and the judge made that clear. Hopefully more judges will beging to realise they are being taken for granted by large corporations.
For the patent to be granted, it has to contain enough specifications to make it unique. You cannot patent an idea.
Here at the USPTO, we grant patents with predjudice to trivial and outdated concepts such as gross obviousness, prior art and indeed patentability itself.
You must be new here!
This reminds me of that novel Jennifer Government, where in the dystopian anarcho-capitalist future, companies can sue former employees for losses in productivity which might result from an employee leaving their job.
Here, we have a company suing over potential losses in intellectual property which might result an employee leaving their job.
You tell me which is more surreal.
The future, is.... now?