"People tend to target the United States because as we have the largest economy in the world, we're more likely to simply step in and write a large check. (The amount of money the US gives out in foreign aid grants is larger tha many countries's total GNP.)"
The amount of money paid to the US by third world countries in interest payments exceeds the amount given out by the US in aid grants.
But the Chinese can't sneak hacks into Linux either, since they have to provide source code and it has to pass review by Linus and the other kernel hackers.
But there's also nothing to stop the Chinese Govt making law that every linux box in China also has to install an 'official chinese govt linux patch' which provides root access to anyone/any bot in the Chinese equivalent of the NSA with an appropriate access code.
The fact that this patch would never get back through Linus et al & into the normal kernal distro is all very sweet for the rest of the world, but isn't going to give you much joy if you're a sys admin out in western China wondering if any of your users are expressing unpatriotic thoughts in any of their files..
Since an economy is a closed system, you say it may be beneficial to pirate software since your money stays in your wallet for other uses. So by that rationale, even if you stole stuff it is fine, since the $ stay in your wallet and are used productively elsewhere.
Software is not 'stuff' - if I steal a chair, I deny its previous owner the use of it, including the abilty to on-sell it; if I steal a copy of Office, I have not denied M$ the use of it or the ability to on-sell. Unless I've stolen the source & managed to wipe every copy of the source in their hands..
if you like the product, it creates awareness of it and makes you likely to buy more of it! Woo hoo!
Back when I was a 'starving student' I pirated quark - there was no way I could afford it at the time. Several years later & I now run a small business which has several licensed copies of quark. Extensive illegal use of it as a student had given me some appreciation of its usefulness for my purposes, & had also convinced me that it was a better fit to my current needs than, say, pagemaker (which I'd also pirated & used). In the long run, I'd say Quark has benefitied from my original act of piracy.
AutoCensor(tm) features turn 'shit' and 'fuck' into Australian Approved words as you type!
Both 'shit' and 'fuck' have been declared "non-offensive" by courts in Australia. Shit & Fuck are "Australian Approved words" : )
The 'fuck' ruling came down within the last month after NSW police tried to charge a young aboriginal man with offensive something-or-other after he told a cop to get fucked. The local court upheld the cops, the appeal court decided in this day & age (and in the context of an Australian street) that 'fuck' could not reasonably be held to be offensive.
Although the US is non-standard by following it's own measurement systems for lenght, volume, and weight, it is not necessarily bad. Ask just about any professional machinist what measurement system (s)he uses and you'll find more often than not that they use the US "Standard" system over the Metric.
Well, in the US perhaps. The other thing you might want to consider is the impact of building stuff to US/Imperial standard on your export markets: I used to work as a blast hole driller in the mines in Aust. & the company I worked for chose to place a half-million US$ order of drills with a Japanese company over a US company. There wasn't much between the two types of drill except that the Japanese ones were all in metric (bolt sizes, shaft sizes etc) and the US ones were all in US/Imperial. While we're used to working on machines built to both standards, our metric toolboxes are a hell of a lot better equipped, & it was enough of an issue on an otherwise close bid to decide who got the contract.
The background of how you first became interested in Slashdot.
Read an article in The Australian [national, fairly conservative print press] on Geoffrey Bennet's success with getting the M$ refund which made reference to the story being picked up by 'online magazine SlashDot (which describes itself as "news for nerds")'. I'd never heard of Linux at this point, but being a good little sociologist who'd taken an interest in the role of intellectual property issues on the way people use 'emerging technologies' (that's the way sociologists describe the internet, sorry) the idea of an open source OS was pretty interesting. One click on 'I'm feeling lucky' at google later, here I was.
Six months of lurking & reading later, and a whole lot of rummaging around linked sites, and, well, I know a lot more than I did. I haven't written a line of code since high school fifteen years ago (C64 assembly : ), & I still haven't gotten around to installing Linux on something for a look & a play, but that's not really why I'm here. The articles that get posted here, the discussions that take place here represent the best source I've found on the thinking going on around the development of the technologies behind what the average punter experiences as 'technological progress'. Traditional print press & broadcast media do report on technology, and even on the cultural impacts of technology, but usually in a reactive way and, with few exceptions, without the benefit of any real expertise in the area. I've never seen a discussion in the print press on, for example, gift economies. I've almost never seen a discussion on the business models that can make something like open source development financially viable in 'the real world'. And I've certainly never seen discussions of the implications of things like open source on the way we think about things like the wider world of intellectual and property rights.
To state the bleeding obvious, technological change almost always induces social and cultural change. I'm interested in the processes surrounding social and cultural change, and for me, Slashdot is a finger on one of the more interesting and potentially most influential processes of change going on at the moment.
I'm currently going through the motions of applying for a US immigrant visa (sigh) & have been asked to submit a number of 3/4 profile mug shots to fairly precise specs. *Now* i know why..
Other funny questions on the application form:
"Are you:
b. An alien convicted of, or who admits having committed a crime involving moral turpitude or violation of any law relating to a controlled subtsance;... [or] who is coming to the United States to engage in prostitition or commericalized vice.. YES/NO
c. An alien who seeks to enter the United States to engage in espionage, sabotage, export control violations, terrorist activities, overthrow of the Government of the United States or other unlawful activity; who is a member of or affiliated with the Communist or other totalitarian party; who participated in Nazi persecutions or genocide; or who has engaged in genocide. Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the US Secretary of State?
YES/NO
..
i. An alien who is coming to the United States to practice polygamy;..
YES/NO"
'objectivity' & 'trained, professional journalists
on
Wired on Slashdot
·
· Score: 1
"Whenever discussing do-it-yourself reporting as exemplified by Slashdot, traditional newshounds inevitably return to the issue of integrity and reliability. They say that consumers must rely on trained, professional journalists to ensure a report is unbiased and free of agendas."
What!!??? Any journo who honestly believes they're totally free of all cultural, political & personal biases is, pretty much by defenition, not worth trusting.
Someone posted the url to this review last week sometime in a comment - 'gods counter' was up to about 29,000. This morning it's past 133,000. I'd love to hear what our little christian nutter friends are making of that : )
Slashdot Mirror
The amount of money paid to the US by third world countries in interest payments exceeds the amount given out by the US in aid grants.
But the Chinese can't sneak hacks into Linux either, since they have to provide source code and it has to pass review by Linus and the other kernel hackers.
But there's also nothing to stop the Chinese Govt making law that every linux box in China also has to install an 'official chinese govt linux patch' which provides root access to anyone/any bot in the Chinese equivalent of the NSA with an appropriate access code.
The fact that this patch would never get back through Linus et al & into the normal kernal distro is all very sweet for the rest of the world, but isn't going to give you much joy if you're a sys admin out in western China wondering if any of your users are expressing unpatriotic thoughts in any of their files..
Is anyone producing "Judge Jackson Fan Club" T-shirts yet?
Since an economy is a closed system, you say it may be beneficial to pirate software since your money stays in your wallet for other uses. So by that rationale, even if you stole stuff it is fine, since the $ stay in your wallet and are used productively elsewhere.
Software is not 'stuff' - if I steal a chair, I deny its previous owner the use of it, including the abilty to on-sell it; if I steal a copy of Office, I have not denied M$ the use of it or the ability to on-sell. Unless I've stolen the source & managed to wipe every copy of the source in their hands..
if you like the product, it creates awareness of it and makes you likely to buy more of it! Woo hoo!
Back when I was a 'starving student' I pirated quark - there was no way I could afford it at the time. Several years later & I now run a small business which has several licensed copies of quark. Extensive illegal use of it as a student had given me some appreciation of its usefulness for my purposes, & had also convinced me that it was a better fit to my current needs than, say, pagemaker (which I'd also pirated & used). In the long run, I'd say Quark has benefitied from my original act of piracy.
AutoCensor(tm) features turn 'shit' and 'fuck' into Australian Approved words as you type!
.02
Both 'shit' and 'fuck' have been declared "non-offensive" by courts in Australia. Shit & Fuck are "Australian Approved words" : )
The 'fuck' ruling came down within the last month after NSW police tried to charge a young aboriginal man with offensive something-or-other after he told a cop to get fucked. The local court upheld the cops, the appeal court decided in this day & age (and in the context of an Australian street) that 'fuck' could not reasonably be held to be offensive.
'Specially not when addressed to racist cops : )
Just my
Although the US is non-standard by following it's own measurement systems for lenght, volume, and weight, it is not necessarily bad. Ask just about any professional machinist what measurement system (s)he uses and you'll find more often than not that they use the US "Standard" system over the Metric.
Well, in the US perhaps. The other thing you might want to consider is the impact of building stuff to US/Imperial standard on your export markets: I used to work as a blast hole driller in the mines in Aust. & the company I worked for chose to place a half-million US$ order of drills with a Japanese company over a US company. There wasn't much between the two types of drill except that the Japanese ones were all in metric (bolt sizes, shaft sizes etc) and the US ones were all in US/Imperial. While we're used to working on machines built to both standards, our metric toolboxes are a hell of a lot better equipped, & it was enough of an issue on an otherwise close bid to decide who got the contract.
The background of how you first became interested in Slashdot.
.02
Read an article in The Australian [national, fairly conservative print press] on Geoffrey Bennet's success with getting the M$ refund which made reference to the story being picked up by 'online magazine SlashDot (which describes itself as "news for nerds")'. I'd never heard of Linux at this point, but being a good little sociologist who'd taken an interest in the role of intellectual property issues on the way people use 'emerging technologies' (that's the way sociologists describe the internet, sorry) the idea of an open source OS was pretty interesting. One click on 'I'm feeling lucky' at google later, here I was.
Six months of lurking & reading later, and a whole lot of rummaging around linked sites, and, well, I know a lot more than I did. I haven't written a line of code since high school fifteen years ago (C64 assembly : ), & I still haven't gotten around to installing Linux on something for a look & a play, but that's not really why I'm here. The articles that get posted here, the discussions that take place here represent the best source I've found on the thinking going on around the development of the technologies behind what the average punter experiences as 'technological progress'. Traditional print press & broadcast media do report on technology, and even on the cultural impacts of technology, but usually in a reactive way and, with few exceptions, without the benefit of any real expertise in the area. I've never seen a discussion in the print press on, for example, gift economies. I've almost never seen a discussion on the business models that can make something like open source development financially viable in 'the real world'. And I've certainly never seen discussions of the implications of things like open source on the way we think about things like the wider world of intellectual and property rights.
To state the bleeding obvious, technological change almost always induces social and cultural change. I'm interested in the processes surrounding social and cultural change, and for me, Slashdot is a finger on one of the more interesting and potentially most influential processes of change going on at the moment.
Just my pretentious
I'm currently going through the motions of applying for a US immigrant visa (sigh) & have been asked to submit a number of 3/4 profile mug shots to fairly precise specs. *Now* i know why..
... [or] who is coming to the United States to engage in prostitition or commericalized vice..
Other funny questions on the application form:
"Are you:
b. An alien convicted of, or who admits having committed a crime involving moral turpitude or violation of any law relating to a controlled subtsance;
YES/NO
c. An alien who seeks to enter the United States to engage in espionage, sabotage, export control violations, terrorist activities, overthrow of the Government of the United States or other unlawful activity; who is a member of or affiliated with the Communist or other totalitarian party; who participated in Nazi persecutions or genocide; or who has engaged in genocide. Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the US Secretary of State?
YES/NO
..
i. An alien who is coming to the United States to practice polygamy;..
YES/NO"
"Whenever discussing do-it-yourself reporting as exemplified by Slashdot, traditional newshounds inevitably return to the issue of integrity and reliability. They say that consumers must rely on trained, professional journalists to ensure a report is unbiased and free of agendas."
What!!??? Any journo who honestly believes they're totally free of all cultural, political & personal biases is, pretty much by defenition, not worth trusting.
Someone posted the url to this review last week sometime in a comment - 'gods counter' was up to about 29,000. This morning it's past 133,000. I'd love to hear what our little christian nutter friends are making of that : )