But it's not an inherently level playing field -- the US has a 150 year head start and near-global economic and military hegemony. From China's point of view, manipulating their currency is just a way of trying *to* level the playing field. "Fair competition" is a totally abstract concept that covers up what's really important -- the ebbs and flows of power.
China is already manipulating their currency and are engaging in UNFREE trade which is putting alot of people out of work.
That is true of the US too. Look up the "softwood lumber dispute" with Canada, where the US has put thousands of Canadians out of work through levies that both NAFTA and the WTO has ruled against. The US has no problem being blatantly protectionist when it suites them, and everyone in the world knows this. And also, *every* country tries to manipulate their currency.
Online PDFs have their place. For example, many journals that offer online fulltext versions online for subscribers offer both PDF and html files of articles; I generally stick with the PDF versions, since they mirror the printed version more exactly. It's nice to have the original page numbers on the bottom of the page, instead of inserted amongst the text.
I think you're being a little harsh. The goal is only a marketing one; it helps a group of producers maintain a distinct brand. This may help even the marketing playing field a bit by giving smaller companies association with a trademark(ish) value normally available only to large multinationals. Why not?
Re:And we thought it was because they have patents
on
EU to Ban Macs
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· Score: 1
No, the Canadian and EU tariffs aren't over agricultural subsidies; they're over the soltwood lumber tariffs the US slapped on Canada several years ago. The US has collected over $2 billion dollars from Canadian businesses, and just to make it even more blatantly protectionist, plans to hand over those funds *directly to US lumber companies*. This has been found, in international arbitration, to be contrary to many trade agreements the US has signed,notably those relating to NAFTA and the WTO.
It's stuff like this that puts the lie to American claims of being "free trade". Throw some lobbying money at your Congress and they'll gladly break every agreement they've signed in order to screw over their largest trade partner (putting thousands of people out of work in the process, btw). How do you think that makes the rest of the world feel?
The package should only know what type of thing a file is. The distribution should determine where every type of thing should go.
No, this is why it shouldn't replace apt, yum, etc. -- it looks like the whole point of AutoPackage is to deal with packages from *outside* your distro. For example, a project would only have to release one package -- an AutoPackage -- instead of different ones for each distribution. If you install something from source, it can still keep track of dependencies. I think their point is that apt, urpmi, etc are good for keeping a distro together, but not so good for third party stuff.
It also claims to be able to keep track of dependencies regardless of how you installed the package: source, rpm, etc. That is also very nice. I hope this works well and catches on with projects -- I imagine it would make both developer's and user's lives easier.
If I wasn't busy at the time, I would probably answer a survey like that. I think it can be a good idea to respond to surveys when the subject is of interest to you. Wouldn't it be *good* if there were surveys on spam out there that showed, say, hightened levels of frustration and a very low spam success rate?
The difference is that/. doesn't actually *reproduce* any content -- it just links to it. If/. mirrored and hosted pages linked to on the front page itself, as is sometimes suggested, it probably would get in trouble.
The only practical use I can think of at all is to keep track of what windows are bordering your current one -- might make managing several smaller windows easier?
I used to think like you do, but then I moved to Montreal. I check just about every time I leave my apartment, because knowing exactly how cold it is (hmm, -13 C right now) helps you judge how much you need to bundle up.
Even if you cut your wrists vertically, the chances are the blood will clot before you actually die. Taking drugs that thin the blood and doing it in a warm bath will help, but your chances are still pretty slim. Even getting past that, each wrist, if done properly, will bleed a *lot*. Cutting the second wrist would be very difficult under those circumstances -- you can easily pass out and then wake up.
Cutting your throat from ear to ear certainly loses in the "pain" category. Again, the mind has in-built guards against stuff like that. It's not like you can simply hold your breath until you die.
Shooting yourself in the face is indeed pretty "safe", but firearms are very difficult to come across in some countries (such as where I live). Not everyone is an American. Some people might want to entertain the notion of an open-casket memorial, too. And lots of people screw up the shooting thing too -- if you just point it at your face or temple you could flinch and be in trouble.
The garage thing also isn't guaranteed -- it seems to be going the way of the gas oven. Most cars sold in the western world have too good catalytic converters to guarantee anything unless you are very careful. Plus, it will be a very, very unpleasant death -- the air will get *terrible* far before it's bad enough to kill you or make you pass out.
I think there's a lot more people out there who have failed attempts than there are people who succeed. Jumping is probably the method with the highest success rate -- if you can get access to a tall enough building.
Have you ever seriously considered suicide? It isn't easy to find a relatively fool-proof and painless method. People who are serious about suicide are *very* concerned with the hows. You don't want to wake up from a failed attempt.
I would hope so, but I'm not so optimistic. The US patent regime still benefits large companies like Apple a helluva lot more than it does smaller companies (individuals are, for all intents and purposes, completely irrelevant). Apple will be able to finance a good fight to challenge this (searches for prior art, hiring expert witnesses, etc). Joe Blow can't do that -- he'd be completely screwed in this situation.
I'm just going to take this opportunity to agree with you and vent. Flash does have a useful function -- I'm thinking of Homestarruner and other cartoon-type places here. But most uses of Flash are *totally* inappropriate. There's a great rep movie theatre by my place -- but their site is Flash. If I want to check what time a movie is playing, I have to deal with shitty "artistic" Flash interfaces. That's bullshit. There is *no* reason to use Flash for sites that are there to deliver *information* to you. Sites like that should be useable (if not optimized) under Lynx if it comes down to that, thank you very much.
Companies are like Nietzsche's ubermensch (in this limited respect, at least) -- they are beyond good and evil. Those categories do not apply to their actions; they are amoral, not immoral. The only thing that matters to them is their own self-interest and how to achieve them. IBM's goals and the open source community's goals simply happen to coincide by chance.
You're absolutely correct, but it is probably safe to assume that the/. crowd is talking about digital reproduction; if a copy of that movie was on the net, you could freely download it.
Where things get a bit more complicated is with performances. A song, for example, may be in the public domain, but a specific recording of that public domain work is still protected by copyright. This comes up with classical music a lot; most of the concert rep is public domain, but you can't freely distribute, say, a Berlin Phil recording of a public domain work.
Although the wording is ambiguous, I think the implication of the reviewer's wording is that of "concert music" which can imply symphonic music specifically. In that sense, I think that this is, perhaps, quite significant. The first symphonic concerts of film music, many years ago, gave the genre increased legitimacy and drew more attention to it.
If you haven't read any other Kafka, go for the short stories next ("The Penal Colony" in particular is pretty directly related to this thread). He is really a master of the form.
Thanks for bringing up the Trial in this thread, btw; it hadn't occured to me, but now that I think about it the Parable of the Law Joseph K. hears in the cathedral seems very appropriate...
This case brings up other and more frightening comparisons to the old USSR and other totalitarian governments. The USSR, for example, had a constitution that supposedly guaranteed many of the same rights the US constitution grants; in practice, however, these rights were non-existent due to various secret "exceptions". If your government is enforcing laws that the public doesn't have access to, democracy is impossible. It is essential that the people have the right to inspect and critique the laws they are subject to.
So it doesn't bother you that you are subject to laws that you don't even have the right to *look at*? That is what this case is about, in case you didn't RTFA. You have a secret law which arguably curtails your constitutional rights. Letting stuff like that stuff slide is very, very dangerous. It makes a mockery out of the whole idea of government by the people, for the people.
Rumours would be far, far better than mistaking an obvious and admitted joke for the truth (and Taco still won't even admit the mistake!). Even mere rumours can, on occasion, be noteworthy; this story proves how utterly worthless and unprofessional the/. "editors" are.
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But it's not an inherently level playing field -- the US has a 150 year head start and near-global economic and military hegemony. From China's point of view, manipulating their currency is just a way of trying *to* level the playing field. "Fair competition" is a totally abstract concept that covers up what's really important -- the ebbs and flows of power.
That is true of the US too. Look up the "softwood lumber dispute" with Canada, where the US has put thousands of Canadians out of work through levies that both NAFTA and the WTO has ruled against. The US has no problem being blatantly protectionist when it suites them, and everyone in the world knows this. And also, *every* country tries to manipulate their currency.
Online PDFs have their place. For example, many journals that offer online fulltext versions online for subscribers offer both PDF and html files of articles; I generally stick with the PDF versions, since they mirror the printed version more exactly. It's nice to have the original page numbers on the bottom of the page, instead of inserted amongst the text.
I think you're being a little harsh. The goal is only a marketing one; it helps a group of producers maintain a distinct brand. This may help even the marketing playing field a bit by giving smaller companies association with a trademark(ish) value normally available only to large multinationals. Why not?
It's stuff like this that puts the lie to American claims of being "free trade". Throw some lobbying money at your Congress and they'll gladly break every agreement they've signed in order to screw over their largest trade partner (putting thousands of people out of work in the process, btw). How do you think that makes the rest of the world feel?
No, this is why it shouldn't replace apt, yum, etc. -- it looks like the whole point of AutoPackage is to deal with packages from *outside* your distro. For example, a project would only have to release one package -- an AutoPackage -- instead of different ones for each distribution. If you install something from source, it can still keep track of dependencies. I think their point is that apt, urpmi, etc are good for keeping a distro together, but not so good for third party stuff.
It also claims to be able to keep track of dependencies regardless of how you installed the package: source, rpm, etc. That is also very nice. I hope this works well and catches on with projects -- I imagine it would make both developer's and user's lives easier.
If I wasn't busy at the time, I would probably answer a survey like that. I think it can be a good idea to respond to surveys when the subject is of interest to you. Wouldn't it be *good* if there were surveys on spam out there that showed, say, hightened levels of frustration and a very low spam success rate?
The difference is that /. doesn't actually *reproduce* any content -- it just links to it. If /. mirrored and hosted pages linked to on the front page itself, as is sometimes suggested, it probably would get in trouble.
The only practical use I can think of at all is to keep track of what windows are bordering your current one -- might make managing several smaller windows easier?
I keed, I keed!
I used to think like you do, but then I moved to Montreal. I check just about every time I leave my apartment, because knowing exactly how cold it is (hmm, -13 C right now) helps you judge how much you need to bundle up.
Those ridiculously annoying ads with that bearded guy. That's what's wrong with them. ;)
Even if you cut your wrists vertically, the chances are the blood will clot before you actually die. Taking drugs that thin the blood and doing it in a warm bath will help, but your chances are still pretty slim. Even getting past that, each wrist, if done properly, will bleed a *lot*. Cutting the second wrist would be very difficult under those circumstances -- you can easily pass out and then wake up.
Cutting your throat from ear to ear certainly loses in the "pain" category. Again, the mind has in-built guards against stuff like that. It's not like you can simply hold your breath until you die.
Shooting yourself in the face is indeed pretty "safe", but firearms are very difficult to come across in some countries (such as where I live). Not everyone is an American. Some people might want to entertain the notion of an open-casket memorial, too. And lots of people screw up the shooting thing too -- if you just point it at your face or temple you could flinch and be in trouble.
The garage thing also isn't guaranteed -- it seems to be going the way of the gas oven. Most cars sold in the western world have too good catalytic converters to guarantee anything unless you are very careful. Plus, it will be a very, very unpleasant death -- the air will get *terrible* far before it's bad enough to kill you or make you pass out.
I think there's a lot more people out there who have failed attempts than there are people who succeed. Jumping is probably the method with the highest success rate -- if you can get access to a tall enough building.
Have you ever seriously considered suicide? It isn't easy to find a relatively fool-proof and painless method. People who are serious about suicide are *very* concerned with the hows. You don't want to wake up from a failed attempt.
I would hope so, but I'm not so optimistic. The US patent regime still benefits large companies like Apple a helluva lot more than it does smaller companies (individuals are, for all intents and purposes, completely irrelevant). Apple will be able to finance a good fight to challenge this (searches for prior art, hiring expert witnesses, etc). Joe Blow can't do that -- he'd be completely screwed in this situation.
I'm just going to take this opportunity to agree with you and vent. Flash does have a useful function -- I'm thinking of Homestarruner and other cartoon-type places here. But most uses of Flash are *totally* inappropriate. There's a great rep movie theatre by my place -- but their site is Flash. If I want to check what time a movie is playing, I have to deal with shitty "artistic" Flash interfaces. That's bullshit. There is *no* reason to use Flash for sites that are there to deliver *information* to you. Sites like that should be useable (if not optimized) under Lynx if it comes down to that, thank you very much.
Companies are like Nietzsche's ubermensch (in this limited respect, at least) -- they are beyond good and evil. Those categories do not apply to their actions; they are amoral, not immoral. The only thing that matters to them is their own self-interest and how to achieve them. IBM's goals and the open source community's goals simply happen to coincide by chance.
Where things get a bit more complicated is with performances. A song, for example, may be in the public domain, but a specific recording of that public domain work is still protected by copyright. This comes up with classical music a lot; most of the concert rep is public domain, but you can't freely distribute, say, a Berlin Phil recording of a public domain work.
Although the wording is ambiguous, I think the implication of the reviewer's wording is that of "concert music" which can imply symphonic music specifically. In that sense, I think that this is, perhaps, quite significant. The first symphonic concerts of film music, many years ago, gave the genre increased legitimacy and drew more attention to it.
Thanks for bringing up the Trial in this thread, btw; it hadn't occured to me, but now that I think about it the Parable of the Law Joseph K. hears in the cathedral seems very appropriate...
This case brings up other and more frightening comparisons to the old USSR and other totalitarian governments. The USSR, for example, had a constitution that supposedly guaranteed many of the same rights the US constitution grants; in practice, however, these rights were non-existent due to various secret "exceptions". If your government is enforcing laws that the public doesn't have access to, democracy is impossible. It is essential that the people have the right to inspect and critique the laws they are subject to.
So it doesn't bother you that you are subject to laws that you don't even have the right to *look at*? That is what this case is about, in case you didn't RTFA. You have a secret law which arguably curtails your constitutional rights. Letting stuff like that stuff slide is very, very dangerous. It makes a mockery out of the whole idea of government by the people, for the people.
Rumours would be far, far better than mistaking an obvious and admitted joke for the truth (and Taco still won't even admit the mistake!). Even mere rumours can, on occasion, be noteworthy; this story proves how utterly worthless and unprofessional the /. "editors" are.
Hey, if the readers of /. don't RTFA, why should the editors? /sarcasm