The point is not whether they would have bought it had they not had a chance to steal it. It is the principle that they OWN this stuff, it is theirs by right, by virtue of the fact that they conceived of it, and created it. It is patently immoral to steal from them. If you claim a right to steal it, you claim a lack of property rights. If this is the case, I ask you: Where do you live, and what time will you be at work, because I could use a new couch, maybe a bigger TV, etc.
Oh come on, "subjected"? Is this "A Clockwork Orange"? Is someone tying you down and making you listen to Brittany Spears? No? Then quit whining and don't listen/watch/buy what you don't like. You DO have a free will of your own, even if your will is merely to emulate America's crap-pop, you still chose it. And btw, how does this have anything to do with the MPAA's attempt to defend its legitimately owned property? If someone steals from you, you expect just compensation, right? So do they, and rightly so. They CREATED this content, they own it, and "sharing" it is theft. Copying a DVD onto a video tape to watch at a friend's house because they don't have a DVD player is fair use. Copying it to tape and giving it to a friend for his personal use, while you retain the original DVD for your personal use, is theft and copyright infringement. If you do this, the MPAA is right to sue you (if they can find you), and I for one applaud their actions as a defense of basic property rights.
I am so very tired of NASA. They may have accomplished some amazing feats, but they screw up so many things (sensors upside down, feet not meters, bad insulation, etc), and every time someone there miscalculates, BAM! there goes $10 billion of misappropriated taxpayer money. Leave it to the private companies, they've given ample evidence of capability superior to NASA's.
When will people (i.e. workers at the patent office) realize that you CANNOT patent an idea, you can only patent an IMPLEMENTATION of an idea. As applied to situations like this, it means you can patent a SPECIFIC ALGORITHM, not the idea behind the algorithm. This is the same problem we've been seing with other ridiculous patent claims lately.
Don't be an ass, no one forces you to watch TV, this is not "A Clockwork Orange". Straping someone down and doping them up (and I've never heard of this happening. If you can find one verifiable incident of this, I'd be surprised) has a couple of legal names: assault and kidnapping.
In short the whole project would be a charity. A bunch of people would have to do a lot of non-trivial work which they could be financially well rewarded for were they to do it for any of a number of commercial enterprizes
How does that differ from development of anything GPL? I mean, we're talking about an arena of hardware/software development where you can download specs and source code free. The entirity of Linux development has been largely charity, because even those companies that make money off of it make the vast bulk of it from service and training, not from selling copies in stores.
You're right, people do have to be induced to this kind of behavior. Now if I wanted to do that, how would I go about it? I would start by transforming money into a non-objective substance I could create at whim. I would then spend 80 years convincing people that my arbitrary creation of fiat currency was the only thing stabilizing their economy. I'd further start shouting about waging a "war on poverty", and once I had convinced people they had a "duty" to help those "less fortunate" (i.e., less successful, less capable), I'd begin stealing from the successful to pay the unsuccessful. This would limit incentive to produce, i.e. profit motive, because people would learn two lessons:
1.) Even if you work to earn a living, your money will be stolen to give to those who cannot earn it, because they cannot earn it, and
2.) If you cannot or will not earn a living, the government will provide it for you, either by taking from those who do earn a living, or making up new money.
Most people don't understand, and don't bother to learn, the complex relation that exists between interest, inflation, central banking, fiat currency, government wealth redistribution, and all the other sure signs your economy has collapsed into unsustainable socialist democratic rule, which brings me to the other part of the scam.
I'd further convince people that, despite the present condition of their government being a direct affront to the constitution (for example, massive legislative and war-making powers vested in a near-supreme executive), the nation was intended to be, and therefore is, a direct democracy, and the will of the majority will circumvent the "inalienable" rights of all others (for example, property rights like the right to keep wealth you have created).
Once you have reached this point, you have created generations unfamiliar with the concepts of self-reliance (they get their income, in whole or in part, from the government) and personal responsibility (even if they don't agree with the welfare state, they perpetuate its existence with excuses like "Well, sure I'll take a welfare check. After all, my tax dollars paid for it, so I'm just getting mine back."), who believe they have a sanction to lay first claim to the property, rights, and lives of others by virtue of belonging to "The Majority". In this state, people naturally assume little if any responsibility for their financial condition, as they've rationalized away their oposition to socialism and have no desire for self-reliance, because they never saw any example of its benefits. So, without knowing their system is unsustainable, they willingly go into debt on the assumption their government will take care of them. How? SHHH!!! Don't ask questions like that, just assume it will work, or you might jinx the whole thing!
The truth is that if people are made to be dependant on a government, their personal responsibility collapses, and of course they will buy on a whim. The government will bail them out, they can keep borrowing, they can dig deeper in, and they really don't believe anyone will ever call in the debt. Well, we've been accumulating debt as a nation for well over a century, we're about to accumulate $15 trillion more from social insecurity when the boomers retire, and our international creditors are going to start getting nervous.
Don't blame the marketers, they're just working with what we've been giving them, and what we're giving them is what most people have been screaming for as an ideal, and what we've been practicing on a national scale, whether they admit it or not.
I hear you! Just recently, I was reading (in disgust) PETA propoganda directed against KFC because one of KFC's suppliers has video footage of a slaughterhouse employee playing soccer with a chicken. Of course, this wasn't KFC's fault, and the constant banter about chickens being sentient beings was starting to make me hungry, so on my lunch break it was off to the Colonel's for a bucket of Extra Crispy! Mmmm, sentience...
Hey, gimme a break, I read BNW five years ago! Uh-oh, looks like my conditioning is starting to fail! Guess I'm up for another round of indoctrination!
And don't you forget it you damn dirty Beta! Why don't you go do some manual labor?! And all your complaining leads me to suspect you haven't been taking your soma!
Great, that sounds like just the thing we need: more legislation protecting us from ourselves. The only way they could legislate something like this is through a direct denial of free will. The only way one could be compelled to buy something in this manner (i.e. they have no choice) is if one was incapable of making independent decisions. Legislating the end of free will: the ultimate goal of AmSoc (that's American Socialism; for the uninitiated, you no longer live in a capitalist constitutional republic, but a socialist democracy).
Yeah, supposedly they found a particular sequence of flashing lights of particular colors that could be used to fashion signs for popcorn and refreshments that made people more inclined to purchase said products.
It could still be considered Orwellian. Don't discount our dear old friends the Thought Police. The Orwellian fear is that this could be exploited to monitor people for deviant thoughts and preferences. The Huxleyan (never heard that term before, but I like it. Don't mind if I steal it) fear is the more obvious one that people's preferences can be dictated to them via advances in neurophysiology.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
Wow. Just got a chance to read responses to this. I just wish I had heard of these "notebook computers", as you call them, before spending all this money on a system that I wanted as a portable DESKTOP. Whence came this great wonder of modern science?
Sarcasm aside, I see that my fellow slashdotters have already done an excellent job shooting this (very predictable) response down, so I'll refrain from further comment.
These things are great! It's got the power of a desktop, almost as portable as a laptop (with the right accessories, of course. That's what I'm working on here), it has more upgrade potential than a laptop, and chicks dig it 'cause it's "cute".
Well, I'd say it's the follow up poster who's lazy here. Either didn't read my question, or didn't read the article he linked to. First, this requires an available 5.25" bay, and that is not an option for a shuttle, unless you omit the optical drive, but who would do that? Second, why would I want a screen so small it could fit into a 5.25" bay anyway? The method I'm interrested in is mounting it ON TOP of the case, so it can flip up. This would allow me to use a screen that was a couple of inches wider, or alternately one that had integrated speakers (however crappy). Finally, the author of the posting you pointed to is lamenting the lack of availability of such a device, and no one seems to be able to point him to anything useful. So thanks for your insightful help, but next time, read the article you point to, not just the title.
Wow, that could almost have been funny if someone else hadn't already mentioned the same thing about 5 times. If I wanted a notebook, I'd get one. As I explained in my original post, I'm trying to use a very portable desktop system. Why? More easily (and less expensively) upgradable and more powerful (unless you really want to pay an extra $1000 for a notebook with equivalent specs).
I like that mod, but unfortunately it wouldn't work with my system, as I need the 3.5" bay. I've looked at Suhdian Forums, but unless I missed something, I didn't see anything too useful. That's not really the look I'm going for, anyway. The internals of my system are already quite cramped (even for a Shuttle), and internal mods are basically impossible, which is why I'm going for the flip-up approach.
I'm using the SN45GV2 (only difference from V1 is 250W PS instead of 200) with the NForce 2 400 Ultra, running an AthlonXP 3200 OC'd to 2.6GHz, with 1 GB Corsair TwinX Xtra Low Latency matched modules, a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 256bit 256 MB, Mitsumi floppy/card reader, NEC 2510 8X DL DVD+/-RW, Linksys 802.11b.
I'm not really worried about getting signal to the connectors. All the monitors I've looked at do have standard composite/S-Video inputs, it's just that since the proprietary connectors are inteneded to plug into the back of the game system when mounted to it, and since there are obviously no such connectors on the back of the Shuttle, the plugs will press against the case, preventing me from mounting it. And I'd prefer to leave hacksaws out of this.
Much as I hate to have to sing the praise of anything Gates and M$ do, I have to say, as someone who has just begun programming games, Direct3D is a pretty good API. Granted, not portable like OpenGL, but still very feature-rich and functional.
TOM RIDGE?!!! Is this a list of technology trend setters, or the frontrunners in the battle to institute socialism and fascism around the globe? I mean, the guy looks like he could be a villain from an Ayn Rand novel!
Slashdot Mirror
The point is not whether they would have bought it had they not had a chance to steal it. It is the principle that they OWN this stuff, it is theirs by right, by virtue of the fact that they conceived of it, and created it. It is patently immoral to steal from them. If you claim a right to steal it, you claim a lack of property rights. If this is the case, I ask you: Where do you live, and what time will you be at work, because I could use a new couch, maybe a bigger TV, etc.
Oh come on, "subjected"? Is this "A Clockwork Orange"? Is someone tying you down and making you listen to Brittany Spears? No? Then quit whining and don't listen/watch/buy what you don't like. You DO have a free will of your own, even if your will is merely to emulate America's crap-pop, you still chose it. And btw, how does this have anything to do with the MPAA's attempt to defend its legitimately owned property? If someone steals from you, you expect just compensation, right? So do they, and rightly so. They CREATED this content, they own it, and "sharing" it is theft. Copying a DVD onto a video tape to watch at a friend's house because they don't have a DVD player is fair use. Copying it to tape and giving it to a friend for his personal use, while you retain the original DVD for your personal use, is theft and copyright infringement. If you do this, the MPAA is right to sue you (if they can find you), and I for one applaud their actions as a defense of basic property rights.
I am so very tired of NASA. They may have accomplished some amazing feats, but they screw up so many things (sensors upside down, feet not meters, bad insulation, etc), and every time someone there miscalculates, BAM! there goes $10 billion of misappropriated taxpayer money. Leave it to the private companies, they've given ample evidence of capability superior to NASA's.
When will people (i.e. workers at the patent office) realize that you CANNOT patent an idea, you can only patent an IMPLEMENTATION of an idea. As applied to situations like this, it means you can patent a SPECIFIC ALGORITHM, not the idea behind the algorithm. This is the same problem we've been seing with other ridiculous patent claims lately.
Don't be an ass, no one forces you to watch TV, this is not "A Clockwork Orange". Straping someone down and doping them up (and I've never heard of this happening. If you can find one verifiable incident of this, I'd be surprised) has a couple of legal names: assault and kidnapping.
In short the whole project would be a charity. A bunch of people would have to do a lot of non-trivial work which they could be financially well rewarded for were they to do it for any of a number of commercial enterprizes
How does that differ from development of anything GPL? I mean, we're talking about an arena of hardware/software development where you can download specs and source code free. The entirity of Linux development has been largely charity, because even those companies that make money off of it make the vast bulk of it from service and training, not from selling copies in stores.
You're right, people do have to be induced to this kind of behavior. Now if I wanted to do that, how would I go about it? I would start by transforming money into a non-objective substance I could create at whim. I would then spend 80 years convincing people that my arbitrary creation of fiat currency was the only thing stabilizing their economy. I'd further start shouting about waging a "war on poverty", and once I had convinced people they had a "duty" to help those "less fortunate" (i.e., less successful, less capable), I'd begin stealing from the successful to pay the unsuccessful. This would limit incentive to produce, i.e. profit motive, because people would learn two lessons:
1.) Even if you work to earn a living, your money will be stolen to give to those who cannot earn it, because they cannot earn it, and
2.) If you cannot or will not earn a living, the government will provide it for you, either by taking from those who do earn a living, or making up new money.
Most people don't understand, and don't bother to learn, the complex relation that exists between interest, inflation, central banking, fiat currency, government wealth redistribution, and all the other sure signs your economy has collapsed into unsustainable socialist democratic rule, which brings me to the other part of the scam.
I'd further convince people that, despite the present condition of their government being a direct affront to the constitution (for example, massive legislative and war-making powers vested in a near-supreme executive), the nation was intended to be, and therefore is, a direct democracy, and the will of the majority will circumvent the "inalienable" rights of all others (for example, property rights like the right to keep wealth you have created).
Once you have reached this point, you have created generations unfamiliar with the concepts of self-reliance (they get their income, in whole or in part, from the government) and personal responsibility (even if they don't agree with the welfare state, they perpetuate its existence with excuses like "Well, sure I'll take a welfare check. After all, my tax dollars paid for it, so I'm just getting mine back."), who believe they have a sanction to lay first claim to the property, rights, and lives of others by virtue of belonging to "The Majority". In this state, people naturally assume little if any responsibility for their financial condition, as they've rationalized away their oposition to socialism and have no desire for self-reliance, because they never saw any example of its benefits. So, without knowing their system is unsustainable, they willingly go into debt on the assumption their government will take care of them. How? SHHH!!! Don't ask questions like that, just assume it will work, or you might jinx the whole thing!
The truth is that if people are made to be dependant on a government, their personal responsibility collapses, and of course they will buy on a whim. The government will bail them out, they can keep borrowing, they can dig deeper in, and they really don't believe anyone will ever call in the debt. Well, we've been accumulating debt as a nation for well over a century, we're about to accumulate $15 trillion more from social insecurity when the boomers retire, and our international creditors are going to start getting nervous. Don't blame the marketers, they're just working with what we've been giving them, and what we're giving them is what most people have been screaming for as an ideal, and what we've been practicing on a national scale, whether they admit it or not.
I hear you! Just recently, I was reading (in disgust) PETA propoganda directed against KFC because one of KFC's suppliers has video footage of a slaughterhouse employee playing soccer with a chicken. Of course, this wasn't KFC's fault, and the constant banter about chickens being sentient beings was starting to make me hungry, so on my lunch break it was off to the Colonel's for a bucket of Extra Crispy! Mmmm, sentience...
Hey, gimme a break, I read BNW five years ago! Uh-oh, looks like my conditioning is starting to fail! Guess I'm up for another round of indoctrination!
And don't you forget it you damn dirty Beta! Why don't you go do some manual labor?! And all your complaining leads me to suspect you haven't been taking your soma!
Great, that sounds like just the thing we need: more legislation protecting us from ourselves. The only way they could legislate something like this is through a direct denial of free will. The only way one could be compelled to buy something in this manner (i.e. they have no choice) is if one was incapable of making independent decisions. Legislating the end of free will: the ultimate goal of AmSoc (that's American Socialism; for the uninitiated, you no longer live in a capitalist constitutional republic, but a socialist democracy).
Lois: What pointless commercials. They certainly don't make me want a Mintos! Brian: Totally ineffective! Peter: Must... Kill... Lincoln...
Yeah, supposedly they found a particular sequence of flashing lights of particular colors that could be used to fashion signs for popcorn and refreshments that made people more inclined to purchase said products.
It could still be considered Orwellian. Don't discount our dear old friends the Thought Police. The Orwellian fear is that this could be exploited to monitor people for deviant thoughts and preferences. The Huxleyan (never heard that term before, but I like it. Don't mind if I steal it) fear is the more obvious one that people's preferences can be dictated to them via advances in neurophysiology.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?" Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
Wow. Just got a chance to read responses to this. I just wish I had heard of these "notebook computers", as you call them, before spending all this money on a system that I wanted as a portable DESKTOP. Whence came this great wonder of modern science? Sarcasm aside, I see that my fellow slashdotters have already done an excellent job shooting this (very predictable) response down, so I'll refrain from further comment.
These things are great! It's got the power of a desktop, almost as portable as a laptop (with the right accessories, of course. That's what I'm working on here), it has more upgrade potential than a laptop, and chicks dig it 'cause it's "cute".
Well, I'd say it's the follow up poster who's lazy here. Either didn't read my question, or didn't read the article he linked to. First, this requires an available 5.25" bay, and that is not an option for a shuttle, unless you omit the optical drive, but who would do that? Second, why would I want a screen so small it could fit into a 5.25" bay anyway? The method I'm interrested in is mounting it ON TOP of the case, so it can flip up. This would allow me to use a screen that was a couple of inches wider, or alternately one that had integrated speakers (however crappy). Finally, the author of the posting you pointed to is lamenting the lack of availability of such a device, and no one seems to be able to point him to anything useful. So thanks for your insightful help, but next time, read the article you point to, not just the title.
Wow, that could almost have been funny if someone else hadn't already mentioned the same thing about 5 times. If I wanted a notebook, I'd get one. As I explained in my original post, I'm trying to use a very portable desktop system. Why? More easily (and less expensively) upgradable and more powerful (unless you really want to pay an extra $1000 for a notebook with equivalent specs).
I like that mod, but unfortunately it wouldn't work with my system, as I need the 3.5" bay. I've looked at Suhdian Forums, but unless I missed something, I didn't see anything too useful. That's not really the look I'm going for, anyway. The internals of my system are already quite cramped (even for a Shuttle), and internal mods are basically impossible, which is why I'm going for the flip-up approach.
I'm using the SN45GV2 (only difference from V1 is 250W PS instead of 200) with the NForce 2 400 Ultra, running an AthlonXP 3200 OC'd to 2.6GHz, with 1 GB Corsair TwinX Xtra Low Latency matched modules, a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 256bit 256 MB, Mitsumi floppy/card reader, NEC 2510 8X DL DVD+/-RW, Linksys 802.11b.
I'm not really worried about getting signal to the connectors. All the monitors I've looked at do have standard composite/S-Video inputs, it's just that since the proprietary connectors are inteneded to plug into the back of the game system when mounted to it, and since there are obviously no such connectors on the back of the Shuttle, the plugs will press against the case, preventing me from mounting it. And I'd prefer to leave hacksaws out of this.
Much as I hate to have to sing the praise of anything Gates and M$ do, I have to say, as someone who has just begun programming games, Direct3D is a pretty good API. Granted, not portable like OpenGL, but still very feature-rich and functional.
TOM RIDGE?!!! Is this a list of technology trend setters, or the frontrunners in the battle to institute socialism and fascism around the globe? I mean, the guy looks like he could be a villain from an Ayn Rand novel!
Wow, if this thing sees through smoke and fog, maybe we could point it at our presidential candidates and get a picture of what they're really saying!