The perspective is tainted because it's not rational.
With life comes death. Only people who are afraid of dying are the people who can't accept it. Those are the same people who sued over the columbine incident, who made false claims over the WTC incident, and who would look to benefit from anothers misfortune.
If you don't live by universal law, if you don't put the highest principles above your own pety emotions, then you will always be irrational.
You will die someday, and there is a high chance that it will not be when and how you expect to die. And more than likely everyone you know will be shocked, will have a hard time 'coping', and will be remorseful. But if you die with regrets or unhappy, then it will be you who determined the worth of your life, not the people who cared about you.
There is no perspective to the worth of ones life. It's all objective, it's all rational.
How about this then.. I'll put a car bomb in your vehicle.. then.. I'll wait until your unsuspecting family gets in the car. As your parents and sister wave to you, you have the pleasure of watching the flames lick the sky from the windows of the car, hhear their screams as their skin melts to the leather seats, then watch in horror as the car accelerates into your home... burning it to the ground.
And imagine every single one of your neighbors saying, "No don't fight back, we have people still looking for the car bomb stuff. Just wait." You wait about a year. Still nothing. You threaten me and tell me I'm gonna be in big trouble for what my friend did to you. I laugh at you and think what a silly man you are as I beat my own children, because that's how I run my house. Then I take their lunch money. Then I beat them some more. And everyone you know is telling you to just leave me alone.. even the cops; even though I'm good friends with the guy that forced you to watch your family burn.
Multiply that times about two thousand nine hundred and ninety two, and you will have your explanation.
When you die, I hope you feel your valuable life was spent doing something productive and memorable. Quick, fight the power before it's too late!
I hope you don't dictate your religion the same way you dictate your business, though you sound like some Reverends I've heard.
This discussion came up in conversation the other day, and I have a simple solution for an organization that obviously can't find a way to cope with technology, and is far from embracing it.
The RIAA has access to something the rest of the world does not; recording studios. If they wish to create a means by wish to have some sort of attainable profit, I suggest the creation of an all-powerful mp4 (or other aptly named codec) by which can only be created by the RIAA and other joint factions.
If the RIAA were to create, and copy-write, previously said codec, then the rest is all business. This particular codec would be written to eliminate *perfectly* the access information not needed in digital music, and even have a proprietary compression algorithm. It doesn't matter how they would do it, but once they had, then next step is to have software industries such as Roxio, Ahead, WinAmp, and every other audio software and hardware company pay nominal fee's, perhaps on a units-sold basis, much like the music industry. The benifits of the codec would be supperior music from the mp3, smaller file sizes, which means the Pionneer system you purchased would be able to read *more* music.
Now I'm not entirely sure how you would prevent 3rd party rebels from creating their own mp4 encoder, as I am not a software developer, but something about the foundation of the mp4, the studio, would mean that it would be impossible to a degree.
Just my thoughts, but once such royalties are being paid, they can let the music flow for free. So essentially the music itself wouldn't cost anything, but the only way you can listen to it is to have a device or peice of software that has paid the necessary dues.
I think the best solution would be to use some sort of p2p blacklist system to elude such problems. Much like has done to elude tracking and offer an alternative to centralized file sharing.
These same companies could create software that would *all* have black lists in them, and all blacklists would be available to anyone using *any* piece of software with the required protocol written into it. Each client software would then ricochette their existence off several other hard-coded (myabe another way) server, and retrieve the blacklist from another client. These black lists would be updated by some mysterious power. It could easily be checksumed or encrypted or key'd somehow so clients wouldn't download 'fake' blacklists... I dunno.. just a thought.
If every single person who used sendmail, also allowed a way of someone getting a list off them.. the blacklist would probably never have such DDoS issues. That's why kazaa and such is still around.. can't DDoS every single kazaa user..... can you?
Theorems are crap. It's just a word used to creatively disguise people as having some sort of grasp on the way things work. The fact that this world survives ignorance by believing in a defined and unchallenged form of mathematics is astounding. Who, or what, is to determine the essence of mathematics? Mathematics itself is a theorem. It's a concept, a religious belief even. It can be twisted and distorted in so many fashionable ways until finally you're left to question the very subsistence of whatever you happen to be putting into equation.
Math, my fellow slashdotters, is a tool much like the Swiss Army Knife. While highly functional and infinitely flexible, it can't save you from choking on those delightful honey-roasted peanuts.
The Smart One: I'll take "Things you should know" for 200.
Alec: Since the beginning of time, this specific method was used to avoid being prosecuted by others.
The Smart One: What is not breaking the law?
Alec: Correct.
The Smart One: I'll take "Things you should know" for 400.
Alec: The 20th century is marked by the loss of this great leader and moral officer, which dawned an era of weak men and scared little boys who cried out for some sort of empathetic revenge due to their faces being barried in a surealistic existence, one which their brains try to forcefully merge with reality.
The Smart One: What is "Responsibility, son of Accountability"?
Alec: Correct. No.. wait.. someone is complaining, that must mean we are in the wrong. Okay, whoever said that our show is against constitutional rights, that's just not funny!
This is where someone reminds you that the "because it's not from Microsoft" statement is what instigated the responses.
Negate the price of any piece of software, then decide what is inferior/superior. Oh, wait, first take out your holier-than-thou attitude, your extended expertise and experience with basic software operations, and your ability to provide free seminars and documentation that can contend with most of the $40 books you have to purchase just to understand how to manipulate the software. THEN compare them.
Sorry son, but the cranks that push that money into Microsoft are RAW copies of Gates. They're CEO's and CFO's and CTO's and Presidents and Vice Presidents and Board Members who have several million dollars on the line and would prefer not to have some ADHD, short attention span, impatient prick kid copping an attitude because his mind is on a golden contract and not what button to click.
Anyone who believes Exchange to be a 'simple' application is short minded and has never actually administered an exchange server.
Solid is a good way of describing Microsoft's company as a whole.
Software, especially when designed to be universally compatible per priority, as easy to use out-of-the box yet infinitely functional, and provide a shrine of knowledge and wealth through things such as their Devkits and the MSDN.. the money they charge is pennies in comparison to the overall dollars that are inevitable used in other, more indirect fashions.
I'm not as narrow minded as to assume that 130 dollars for a piece of software goes directly to the developers and is meant to represent the actual cost of that software; instead, that money is fronted into the Nile River of all software resources, discounted educational prices, free software, free seminars, etc etc.. not to mention a lot of those prices are made to offset the amount of software piracy that takes place.
How many Microsoft software products have any of you actually purchased? Are you so simple as to think that Microsoft could not foresee their Xbox console being what it is now? They know damn well what they're doing. Everyone who has an Xbox successfully purchased a Microsoft computer, and now buy *only* Microsoft software. Got an Xbox? You just bought into the biggest micromonopoly of them all.
As I stated above, the good that you fail to see in IP is the protection it provides you of original ideas.
The non-profit position you take misleads you to thinking patents are only for creating a profitable connection between the inventor and the companies that pay royalties. You would not have any problem with an individual providing you with valuable research that could aid you in your own goals, but you have great problems with a corporation capitalizing on whatever useful information you uncover. That patent protects you, and that's all there is to it.
And since everyone is making a big fuss on the problem::solution, I'll add my own. The problem is the corporations that submit several patents every day just to beat others to the punch. Corporations should not be allowed to patent intelectual property, period. They *should* be able to patent only markitable materials they are directly responsible for creating. They should have a seperate devision where all corporate level patents are grossly drilled to make sure that it protects the corporations 'intellectual property' while not denying someone the ability to significantly improve that patented... uh.. thing.
This would allow individuals such as you and I to protect our unique ideas that another corporation which could afford to do so quickly, would profit from. It would also provide the corporations with that "it's all mine" intuition to keep it.. to an extent. What say you?
The idea behind a patent is to secure that an original idea is not dublicated and claimed as original work by another. Royalties are just part of the package.
I think you'd be pretty fscking pissed if you found yourself in a position desperately needing a grant to continue your developement, yet I got the grant for taking your exact idea and claiming it as my own. When Banks R' Us sees my idea before yours, they immediately assume that your's is not the original.
What's the point of a patent? To make sure that someone doesn't capitolize unfairly on an idea that, regaurdless of how you use it, was not their's from the start.
On another note, your reference to open source software is hugely deluted. The GPL is equivilant to a non-profitable patent. You can't take Red Hat source and release it as your very own distro in exactly the same format as theirs. I don't know two cents about GPL, but that one cent I do know I'm fairly clear on.
On that same note, diamonds and any rare gem or metal for that matter, are regulated. There are a *huge* number of available diamonds that get traded back and forth between companies for millions of dollars every day, but they regulate the number of diamonds, from grade to clearity, in order to induce such value.
If I sold the only teleportation devices on the planet and I merely chose to sell them when I pleased, then setting your own price wouldn't be so tough..
You know.. it just occured to me how old this thread is and that no one will every read that.. *shrug* Game on!
As far as I'm concerned everything is inevitably fallible in its own nature. Much like basing your belief system off text written by another man, basing measurements on laws written by man is a sure fire way to take a giant bloody step over the 'key', whatever that may happen to be.
Funny how simple discussions with your neighbor can key you in on undeniable 'facts' that remain as such simply because a text book professor tells you so, or a laboratory tells you what can't really be defined, such as time. Time itself doesn't truly exist, as it was created as a means of measurement, which in comparison to other incomparably larger objects in same space, is pretty fucking limited. I won't deny that these laws have brought us to the point we are at, but they've limited us to an infinite degree.
I usually disagree with myself, but I won't allow words and definitions to guide my theories. The only reason I don't believe it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light is because the math is based on a fallible scale. As I like to tell people 1+1 does not always equal two. Who's to say the entities being added aren't already of a single greater entity, or that their matter doesn't coexist in a frame of reference yet to be determined? Just because you can't mush them together like Play-doh doesn't eliminate the possibility they are one. Everyone has theories; Einstein just had some that worked, until Hawking fixed a few typos and filled in the text where the toner ran out...
So basing the world's evolution in theoretical physics and chemistry on fallible laws of our own made up and obviously insufficient scale is the crippling wound which refuses to heal. This whole kilogram business is nonsense; as the scale is inferior. The temperature scale is universal (despite calculation difference between them), as they all agree on an absolute zero. Until they determine mass at absolute zero, then there will be no unit of measurement that crosses every continent, planet, solar system, galaxy, etc. In my own theory, a black whole is opposite of science beliefs. It is zero mass, and the math won't agree because of all the previously mentioned.
We started it. We went over to the middle east, messed around with their politics, financed wars and revolutions for our own gain. They didn't just pick the US out of a hat when deciding who to hate.
Last time I checked the Soviet Union was at one point trying to take over that very same area. Regaurdless of history, their decision to declair a religious based war on America doesn't run parallel to any reasons you've provided as to why it was America and no other.
Very admirable, however most of the actions of "big brother" seem to bring about change that is helpful to ourselfs. Name a war/conflict we have taken part in that doesn't satisfy our own gains, finacial, political or idological. There are only a few. The rest are a little bit suspect, to say the least.
I would agree. I don't know how else you would view defending your own values as anything but a gain. WWII we didn't get involved, we were attacked. Korea was the UN, not America. Most of our responsabilities as I mentioned above are only implied. Our strength means we are the first ones called upon when another country needs our assistence; and yes, business plays a VERY big role. Not getting involved in a war that might cost you a resource you have come to rely on for basic survival is not only a bad decision but down-right stupid. If a group of X is one-by-one getting people evicted from their homes in your neighborhood and replacing them with likes of the same kind, but you choose not to get involved because it isn't obvious yet that your turn will come, then you disserve to be evicted. Yet you would choose, hopefully, to get involved and prevent any further damage from taking place. Even if that means having group X hate you and from that point on commit autrocious acts against you.
Any countries involvement in -any- war is for gain, if not the prevention of a major loss. Period.
Conversly, how is it the fault of the USSR, another country, that capitalist countries wish to rule the world and will stop at nothing aside from a nuclear explosion in order to achieve that goal? Not so much different is it? Just because we have more freedom, it doesn't mean we have any justification to force our ways on other people.
How the fuck can you make that comparison?! You give me a creditable example of a capitalist country that was forcefully OCCUPYING another country with the *intent* of completely converting and altering that countries way of life. The USSR is WELL aware of their faults but it is THEIR fault the rulers had too much pride in *que accent* THE GREAT MOTHER RUSSIA! On another note, I never complained about any one of the politically defined economic structures.
I apologize man, but that was just about one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard.
But, their beliefs are their beliefs. We are supposed to respect that. OK, women have zero rights and that sucks, but there are plenty of other countries that have similar problems that seem to be ignored. The human rights issues in Afganistan were only used for propaganda, much like the UK govenment is trying to do the same [bbc.co.uk] in Iraq. You don't hear people complain about the treatment of women in Saudi, or the punishments handed out to people. Rest assured, should our leaders ever want to go to war with them, you'll find there are a lot of nasty things can be shown about any country.
Again with the ignorance. *sigh* What's your issue with confusing completely seperate entities of propaganda? Especially in America.. The Government has far too much to deal with than to worry about such petty things. The media is the fuel for citizen fires, not the government. Has it not occured to you that these dispicable forms of manipulation never occur until after the war starts? If it were the Governments wish to create such hysteria they would do it well before they declared war so that people wouldn't disagree with their decision to declare war. And if you said "our leaders" in reference to the Channel 2 news anchors, then you have been forgiven. Also, I'd like to remind you they've been attacking Americans and our embassies well before 1998.
Tip: Go take a class on psychology. No, take several.
Genocide, for the sake of arguement, is the total annihilation of a race. There, by no means, has been any total annihilations of any races. Human beings were manufactured to include and excercise power over others. When you prove your obviously superior strength, you keep those who are still standing as your underlings to make up for the fight that you should never have been involved with in the first place.
The problem is that society wont let us kill off all those people who disserve to be skull fscked. I personally wouldn't have a problem with taking out an individual, a group, a city, a country, or a faction that has a prioritized goal of putting my life at risk because of whatever beef they have with someone other than myself.
Jeez. I thought/. was populated by intelligent people...
Heh. Same to you. As "intelligent" as you may be, you may have overlooked the fact that these people have been attacking us for many years.
They don't hate our foreign policies. You don't announce Jihad *cough*religious war*cough* on a country due to foreign policies.
Why is it so hard for people to believe that they hate us.. regaurdless of why. Lemmie guess, you're one of those people who would suggest that things would be better if we just listened to them right? Maybe they just need a shoulder to cry on.. heh.
Here's a bit of logic for you: America is a world power. By that sense we have almost elected ourselves to be the big brother for all the arguing and bickering siblings of the world. When a country asks for our help, assessments take place and whatever percentage of the time we side with X, and successfully get Y to hate us, almost indefinately.
How is it the fault of America, a free country, that communist countries wish to rule the world and will stop at nothing aside from a nuclear explosion in order to achieve that goal? And accordingly, how is it the fault of America that the Taliban have the same approach to religion that the Nazi's had to the human race? The Taliban want nothing more than to cleans the planet.
If you think otherwise, go ask one yourself. Quit wasting my money to protect these fucking psycho's, just shoot them and let the civilians figure out who to invest their lives in next.
Join the club, now is the perfect time to join America's Bandwagon Patriots in this exclusive one time offer!! Never again be hassled by those who would denounce your gratitude to live in this country!! What does it take you ask? Why it's simple:BUY A FLAG, CONFUSE YOURSELF WITH RELIGIOUS POPPY-COCK, AND USE SEPTEMBER 11TH AS A SCAPE GOAT TO ALL OF YOUR LIFES PROBLEMS!
I like the part where the entire country "wept" for the 3500 people that died. Sorry, I didn't happen to know any of them. Yay firemen. What do you mean I can't have a knife to cut my airline meal with?
Again: they won.
on a side note, i found this picture to be extremely funny. hah.
All it tells me is that you're afraid of your mortality.
While you're busy protesting the psuedo and taboo colors of civilization's acceptable behavior for dealing with life's quasi-random trajedies, others are colaborating to wipe out your entire city, and still others accept the very thing you protest: death.
It's 10:00 pm, are you sure the doors are locked and double-bolted shut?
Don't worry. You're not alone. There's an epidemic of fear. The point is: they won. And we have you to thank.
Microsoft@HOME:
While on the surface the client application would collect information on software vulnerabilities and then simulate different instances of a MS installation and try to exploit the system, but the client would also have a built in backdoor that would continuously send microsoft information about how badly you want to find these vulnerabilities, all on accident of course.
recode@HOME:
The client would access google's web database, access pages that used certain kidns of code, specified by the user of course, and then analyse that code and try to produce a faster less bloated replica. Thus providing webmasters much more efficient versions of their own pages allowing the internet to be much easier to navigate.
ada@HOME:
This client software would also use Google's cache, however it would simply analyze a website for ADA compatability. If a violation is found, a lawsuit is immediately set against the offending website and the money goes to.. um.. me.
Second of all, for the record, I would have to say 90% of the geeks in the world that do distributed anything do it for stats. Hell, I didn't spend two weeks compromising the computer lab at DeVRY in order to setup RC5 as a system service just so I could 'help out', hell no, it was all about the stats baby. 120 kkey/s was well worth the trouble. And I'm on SETI right now because I want to catch up to some of my friends, and I have some available horse power to do it.
It's all about the stats.
In some fashions I would agree with that, but being that the internets developement and birth place resides here in the US, I have always seen it as an American root, while the technology itself branches out into other countries. That's the same reason there is.com.tw and.com.fr; to distinquish between 'native' sites and 'foriegn' sites. Foriegn governments receive access to.gov.* TLD's in order to distinguish themselves from the United States. And I also believe that the/greater/ reason for these distinctions is to catagorize a given tongue.
It's -extremely- difficult to define certain genre's of electronica.. it's also hard to define them without some sort of working example to go off of. The roots of most electronic music start from the days of disco and 80s retro.. mix the two together, and you've got yourself some elecronica. Hell, even Disco House is nothing more than some good old fashioned disco with an over-exagerated use of high-hats..
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the last resource you'll ever need for a foundation of electronic genre definitions.
It's nice to know that all this RTS experience will pay off in the next couple of decades. By then we can control entire armies simply by dragging a mouse over the desired units, and then clicking an area of the map, while we get real-time feedback of our oppositions placement.
I am however, keeping in mind that when most of us play those games we loose a hell of a lot more men than our government would ever again allow... on the alternative, a nationwide broadcast would make for a most excellent form of entertainment...
I am curious however... which would be more appropriate when the time came, 'zug-zug' or 'Come get some!'??
Well considering fiber optics are simple pulses of light, how could it not carry information? Even basic code should be able to be transfered... simple standards like Morse and binary.
On another note, I wonder how close this will bring us to developing the most awesome of phenomenons at our own will. Human waste could possibly cease to exist. Just thinkin.. that's all.
Slashdot Mirror
The perspective is tainted because it's not rational.
With life comes death. Only people who are afraid of dying are the people who can't accept it. Those are the same people who sued over the columbine incident, who made false claims over the WTC incident, and who would look to benefit from anothers misfortune.
If you don't live by universal law, if you don't put the highest principles above your own pety emotions, then you will always be irrational.
You will die someday, and there is a high chance that it will not be when and how you expect to die. And more than likely everyone you know will be shocked, will have a hard time 'coping', and will be remorseful. But if you die with regrets or unhappy, then it will be you who determined the worth of your life, not the people who cared about you.
There is no perspective to the worth of ones life. It's all objective, it's all rational.
You still see no explanation?
How about this then.. I'll put a car bomb in your vehicle.. then.. I'll wait until your unsuspecting family gets in the car. As your parents and sister wave to you, you have the pleasure of watching the flames lick the sky from the windows of the car, hhear their screams as their skin melts to the leather seats, then watch in horror as the car accelerates into your home... burning it to the ground.
And imagine every single one of your neighbors saying, "No don't fight back, we have people still looking for the car bomb stuff. Just wait." You wait about a year. Still nothing. You threaten me and tell me I'm gonna be in big trouble for what my friend did to you. I laugh at you and think what a silly man you are as I beat my own children, because that's how I run my house. Then I take their lunch money. Then I beat them some more. And everyone you know is telling you to just leave me alone.. even the cops; even though I'm good friends with the guy that forced you to watch your family burn.
Multiply that times about two thousand nine hundred and ninety two, and you will have your explanation.
When you die, I hope you feel your valuable life was spent doing something productive and memorable. Quick, fight the power before it's too late! I hope you don't dictate your religion the same way you dictate your business, though you sound like some Reverends I've heard.
This discussion came up in conversation the other day, and I have a simple solution for an organization that obviously can't find a way to cope with technology, and is far from embracing it.
The RIAA has access to something the rest of the world does not; recording studios. If they wish to create a means by wish to have some sort of attainable profit, I suggest the creation of an all-powerful mp4 (or other aptly named codec) by which can only be created by the RIAA and other joint factions.
If the RIAA were to create, and copy-write, previously said codec, then the rest is all business. This particular codec would be written to eliminate *perfectly* the access information not needed in digital music, and even have a proprietary compression algorithm. It doesn't matter how they would do it, but once they had, then next step is to have software industries such as Roxio, Ahead, WinAmp, and every other audio software and hardware company pay nominal fee's, perhaps on a units-sold basis, much like the music industry. The benifits of the codec would be supperior music from the mp3, smaller file sizes, which means the Pionneer system you purchased would be able to read *more* music.
Now I'm not entirely sure how you would prevent 3rd party rebels from creating their own mp4 encoder, as I am not a software developer, but something about the foundation of the mp4, the studio, would mean that it would be impossible to a degree.
Just my thoughts, but once such royalties are being paid, they can let the music flow for free. So essentially the music itself wouldn't cost anything, but the only way you can listen to it is to have a device or peice of software that has paid the necessary dues.
Thoughts?
I think the best solution would be to use some sort of p2p blacklist system to elude such problems. Much like has done to elude tracking and offer an alternative to centralized file sharing.
These same companies could create software that would *all* have black lists in them, and all blacklists would be available to anyone using *any* piece of software with the required protocol written into it. Each client software would then ricochette their existence off several other hard-coded (myabe another way) server, and retrieve the blacklist from another client. These black lists would be updated by some mysterious power. It could easily be checksumed or encrypted or key'd somehow so clients wouldn't download 'fake' blacklists... I dunno.. just a thought.
If every single person who used sendmail, also allowed a way of someone getting a list off them.. the blacklist would probably never have such DDoS issues. That's why kazaa and such is still around.. can't DDoS every single kazaa user..... can you?
Theorems are crap. It's just a word used to creatively disguise people as having some sort of grasp on the way things work. The fact that this world survives ignorance by believing in a defined and unchallenged form of mathematics is astounding. Who, or what, is to determine the essence of mathematics? Mathematics itself is a theorem. It's a concept, a religious belief even. It can be twisted and distorted in so many fashionable ways until finally you're left to question the very subsistence of whatever you happen to be putting into equation.
Math, my fellow slashdotters, is a tool much like the Swiss Army Knife. While highly functional and infinitely flexible, it can't save you from choking on those delightful honey-roasted peanuts.
The Smart One: I'll take "Things you should know" for 200.
Alec: Since the beginning of time, this specific method was used to avoid being prosecuted by others.
The Smart One: What is not breaking the law?
Alec: Correct.
The Smart One: I'll take "Things you should know" for 400.
Alec: The 20th century is marked by the loss of this great leader and moral officer, which dawned an era of weak men and scared little boys who cried out for some sort of empathetic revenge due to their faces being barried in a surealistic existence, one which their brains try to forcefully merge with reality.
The Smart One: What is "Responsibility, son of Accountability"?
Alec: Correct. No.. wait.. someone is complaining, that must mean we are in the wrong. Okay, whoever said that our show is against constitutional rights, that's just not funny!
This is where someone reminds you that the "because it's not from Microsoft" statement is what instigated the responses.
Negate the price of any piece of software, then decide what is inferior/superior. Oh, wait, first take out your holier-than-thou attitude, your extended expertise and experience with basic software operations, and your ability to provide free seminars and documentation that can contend with most of the $40 books you have to purchase just to understand how to manipulate the software. THEN compare them.
Sorry son, but the cranks that push that money into Microsoft are RAW copies of Gates. They're CEO's and CFO's and CTO's and Presidents and Vice Presidents and Board Members who have several million dollars on the line and would prefer not to have some ADHD, short attention span, impatient prick kid copping an attitude because his mind is on a golden contract and not what button to click.
Anyone who believes Exchange to be a 'simple' application is short minded and has never actually administered an exchange server.
I'm probably not done with this one...
Solid is a good way of describing Microsoft's company as a whole.
Software, especially when designed to be universally compatible per priority, as easy to use out-of-the box yet infinitely functional, and provide a shrine of knowledge and wealth through things such as their Devkits and the MSDN.. the money they charge is pennies in comparison to the overall dollars that are inevitable used in other, more indirect fashions.
I'm not as narrow minded as to assume that 130 dollars for a piece of software goes directly to the developers and is meant to represent the actual cost of that software; instead, that money is fronted into the Nile River of all software resources, discounted educational prices, free software, free seminars, etc etc.. not to mention a lot of those prices are made to offset the amount of software piracy that takes place.
How many Microsoft software products have any of you actually purchased? Are you so simple as to think that Microsoft could not foresee their Xbox console being what it is now? They know damn well what they're doing. Everyone who has an Xbox successfully purchased a Microsoft computer, and now buy *only* Microsoft software. Got an Xbox? You just bought into the biggest micromonopoly of them all.
It's irritating hearing the excuse for not using a piece of software, "Microsoft made it."
That's pish-posh.
You know what the open-source communities problems is?
The same problem that plauges Microsoft; the bad always out-weighs the good.
As I stated above, the good that you fail to see in IP is the protection it provides you of original ideas.
The non-profit position you take misleads you to thinking patents are only for creating a profitable connection between the inventor and the companies that pay royalties. You would not have any problem with an individual providing you with valuable research that could aid you in your own goals, but you have great problems with a corporation capitalizing on whatever useful information you uncover. That patent protects you, and that's all there is to it.
And since everyone is making a big fuss on the problem::solution, I'll add my own. The problem is the corporations that submit several patents every day just to beat others to the punch. Corporations should not be allowed to patent intelectual property, period. They *should* be able to patent only markitable materials they are directly responsible for creating. They should have a seperate devision where all corporate level patents are grossly drilled to make sure that it protects the corporations 'intellectual property' while not denying someone the ability to significantly improve that patented... uh.. thing.
This would allow individuals such as you and I to protect our unique ideas that another corporation which could afford to do so quickly, would profit from. It would also provide the corporations with that "it's all mine" intuition to keep it.. to an extent. What say you?
Heh.
The idea behind a patent is to secure that an original idea is not dublicated and claimed as original work by another. Royalties are just part of the package.
I think you'd be pretty fscking pissed if you found yourself in a position desperately needing a grant to continue your developement, yet I got the grant for taking your exact idea and claiming it as my own. When Banks R' Us sees my idea before yours, they immediately assume that your's is not the original.
What's the point of a patent? To make sure that someone doesn't capitolize unfairly on an idea that, regaurdless of how you use it, was not their's from the start.
On another note, your reference to open source software is hugely deluted. The GPL is equivilant to a non-profitable patent. You can't take Red Hat source and release it as your very own distro in exactly the same format as theirs. I don't know two cents about GPL, but that one cent I do know I'm fairly clear on.
On that same note, diamonds and any rare gem or metal for that matter, are regulated. There are a *huge* number of available diamonds that get traded back and forth between companies for millions of dollars every day, but they regulate the number of diamonds, from grade to clearity, in order to induce such value. If I sold the only teleportation devices on the planet and I merely chose to sell them when I pleased, then setting your own price wouldn't be so tough.. You know.. it just occured to me how old this thread is and that no one will every read that.. *shrug* Game on!
My thoughts: Bah. I've seen attention whores, but you my friend are an attention dictator.
As far as I'm concerned everything is inevitably fallible in its own nature. Much like basing your belief system off text written by another man, basing measurements on laws written by man is a sure fire way to take a giant bloody step over the 'key', whatever that may happen to be.
Funny how simple discussions with your neighbor can key you in on undeniable 'facts' that remain as such simply because a text book professor tells you so, or a laboratory tells you what can't really be defined, such as time. Time itself doesn't truly exist, as it was created as a means of measurement, which in comparison to other incomparably larger objects in same space, is pretty fucking limited. I won't deny that these laws have brought us to the point we are at, but they've limited us to an infinite degree.
I usually disagree with myself, but I won't allow words and definitions to guide my theories. The only reason I don't believe it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light is because the math is based on a fallible scale. As I like to tell people 1+1 does not always equal two. Who's to say the entities being added aren't already of a single greater entity, or that their matter doesn't coexist in a frame of reference yet to be determined? Just because you can't mush them together like Play-doh doesn't eliminate the possibility they are one. Everyone has theories; Einstein just had some that worked, until Hawking fixed a few typos and filled in the text where the toner ran out...
So basing the world's evolution in theoretical physics and chemistry on fallible laws of our own made up and obviously insufficient scale is the crippling wound which refuses to heal. This whole kilogram business is nonsense; as the scale is inferior. The temperature scale is universal (despite calculation difference between them), as they all agree on an absolute zero. Until they determine mass at absolute zero, then there will be no unit of measurement that crosses every continent, planet, solar system, galaxy, etc. In my own theory, a black whole is opposite of science beliefs. It is zero mass, and the math won't agree because of all the previously mentioned.
Don't be a zealot.
We started it. We went over to the middle east, messed around with their politics, financed wars and revolutions for our own gain. They didn't just pick the US out of a hat when deciding who to hate.
Last time I checked the Soviet Union was at one point trying to take over that very same area. Regaurdless of history, their decision to declair a religious based war on America doesn't run parallel to any reasons you've provided as to why it was America and no other.
Very admirable, however most of the actions of "big brother" seem to bring about change that is helpful to ourselfs. Name a war/conflict we have taken part in that doesn't satisfy our own gains, finacial, political or idological. There are only a few. The rest are a little bit suspect, to say the least.
I would agree. I don't know how else you would view defending your own values as anything but a gain. WWII we didn't get involved, we were attacked. Korea was the UN, not America. Most of our responsabilities as I mentioned above are only implied. Our strength means we are the first ones called upon when another country needs our assistence; and yes, business plays a VERY big role. Not getting involved in a war that might cost you a resource you have come to rely on for basic survival is not only a bad decision but down-right stupid. If a group of X is one-by-one getting people evicted from their homes in your neighborhood and replacing them with likes of the same kind, but you choose not to get involved because it isn't obvious yet that your turn will come, then you disserve to be evicted. Yet you would choose, hopefully, to get involved and prevent any further damage from taking place. Even if that means having group X hate you and from that point on commit autrocious acts against you.
Any countries involvement in -any- war is for gain, if not the prevention of a major loss. Period.
Conversly, how is it the fault of the USSR, another country, that capitalist countries wish to rule the world and will stop at nothing aside from a nuclear explosion in order to achieve that goal? Not so much different is it? Just because we have more freedom, it doesn't mean we have any justification to force our ways on other people.
How the fuck can you make that comparison?! You give me a creditable example of a capitalist country that was forcefully OCCUPYING another country with the *intent* of completely converting and altering that countries way of life. The USSR is WELL aware of their faults but it is THEIR fault the rulers had too much pride in *que accent* THE GREAT MOTHER RUSSIA! On another note, I never complained about any one of the politically defined economic structures.
I apologize man, but that was just about one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard.
But, their beliefs are their beliefs. We are supposed to respect that. OK, women have zero rights and that sucks, but there are plenty of other countries that have similar problems that seem to be ignored. The human rights issues in Afganistan were only used for propaganda, much like the UK govenment is trying to do the same [bbc.co.uk] in Iraq. You don't hear people complain about the treatment of women in Saudi, or the punishments handed out to people. Rest assured, should our leaders ever want to go to war with them, you'll find there are a lot of nasty things can be shown about any country.
Again with the ignorance. *sigh* What's your issue with confusing completely seperate entities of propaganda? Especially in America.. The Government has far too much to deal with than to worry about such petty things. The media is the fuel for citizen fires, not the government. Has it not occured to you that these dispicable forms of manipulation never occur until after the war starts? If it were the Governments wish to create such hysteria they would do it well before they declared war so that people wouldn't disagree with their decision to declare war. And if you said "our leaders" in reference to the Channel 2 news anchors, then you have been forgiven. Also, I'd like to remind you they've been attacking Americans and our embassies well before 1998.
Tip: Go take a class on psychology. No, take several.
Genocide, for the sake of arguement, is the total annihilation of a race. There, by no means, has been any total annihilations of any races. Human beings were manufactured to include and excercise power over others. When you prove your obviously superior strength, you keep those who are still standing as your underlings to make up for the fight that you should never have been involved with in the first place.
The problem is that society wont let us kill off all those people who disserve to be skull fscked. I personally wouldn't have a problem with taking out an individual, a group, a city, a country, or a faction that has a prioritized goal of putting my life at risk because of whatever beef they have with someone other than myself.
Jeez. I thought /. was populated by intelligent people...
Heh. Same to you. As "intelligent" as you may be, you may have overlooked the fact that these people have been attacking us for many years.
They don't hate our foreign policies. You don't announce Jihad *cough*religious war*cough* on a country due to foreign policies.
Why is it so hard for people to believe that they hate us.. regaurdless of why. Lemmie guess, you're one of those people who would suggest that things would be better if we just listened to them right? Maybe they just need a shoulder to cry on.. heh.
Here's a bit of logic for you: America is a world power. By that sense we have almost elected ourselves to be the big brother for all the arguing and bickering siblings of the world. When a country asks for our help, assessments take place and whatever percentage of the time we side with X, and successfully get Y to hate us, almost indefinately.
How is it the fault of America, a free country, that communist countries wish to rule the world and will stop at nothing aside from a nuclear explosion in order to achieve that goal? And accordingly, how is it the fault of America that the Taliban have the same approach to religion that the Nazi's had to the human race? The Taliban want nothing more than to cleans the planet.
If you think otherwise, go ask one yourself. Quit wasting my money to protect these fucking psycho's, just shoot them and let the civilians figure out who to invest their lives in next.
Bandwagon Patriotism
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I like the part where the entire country "wept" for the 3500 people that died. Sorry, I didn't happen to know any of them. Yay firemen. What do you mean I can't have a knife to cut my airline meal with?
Again: they won.
on a side note, i found this picture to be extremely funny. hah.
All it tells me is that you're afraid of your mortality.
While you're busy protesting the psuedo and taboo colors of civilization's acceptable behavior for dealing with life's quasi-random trajedies, others are colaborating to wipe out your entire city, and still others accept the very thing you protest: death.
It's 10:00 pm, are you sure the doors are locked and double-bolted shut?
Don't worry. You're not alone. There's an epidemic of fear. The point is: they won. And we have you to thank.
First of all; better uses for spare cycles:
Microsoft@HOME:
While on the surface the client application would collect information on software vulnerabilities and then simulate different instances of a MS installation and try to exploit the system, but the client would also have a built in backdoor that would continuously send microsoft information about how badly you want to find these vulnerabilities, all on accident of course.
recode@HOME:
The client would access google's web database, access pages that used certain kidns of code, specified by the user of course, and then analyse that code and try to produce a faster less bloated replica. Thus providing webmasters much more efficient versions of their own pages allowing the internet to be much easier to navigate.
ada@HOME:
This client software would also use Google's cache, however it would simply analyze a website for ADA compatability. If a violation is found, a lawsuit is immediately set against the offending website and the money goes to.. um.. me.
Second of all, for the record, I would have to say 90% of the geeks in the world that do distributed anything do it for stats. Hell, I didn't spend two weeks compromising the computer lab at DeVRY in order to setup RC5 as a system service just so I could 'help out', hell no, it was all about the stats baby. 120 kkey/s was well worth the trouble. And I'm on SETI right now because I want to catch up to some of my friends, and I have some available horse power to do it.
It's all about the stats.
In some fashions I would agree with that, but being that the internets developement and birth place resides here in the US, I have always seen it as an American root, while the technology itself branches out into other countries. That's the same reason there is .com.tw and .com.fr; to distinquish between 'native' sites and 'foriegn' sites. Foriegn governments receive access to .gov.* TLD's in order to distinguish themselves from the United States. And I also believe that the /greater/ reason for these distinctions is to catagorize a given tongue.
It's -extremely- difficult to define certain genre's of electronica.. it's also hard to define them without some sort of working example to go off of. The roots of most electronic music start from the days of disco and 80s retro.. mix the two together, and you've got yourself some elecronica. Hell, even Disco House is nothing more than some good old fashioned disco with an over-exagerated use of high-hats..
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the last resource you'll ever need for a foundation of electronic genre definitions.
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music
On a side note, straight from the author: iIf you don't like my definitions, don't bitch at me, go create your own f*cking version.'
It's nice to know that all this RTS experience will pay off in the next couple of decades. By then we can control entire armies simply by dragging a mouse over the desired units, and then clicking an area of the map, while we get real-time feedback of our oppositions placement. I am however, keeping in mind that when most of us play those games we loose a hell of a lot more men than our government would ever again allow... on the alternative, a nationwide broadcast would make for a most excellent form of entertainment... I am curious however... which would be more appropriate when the time came, 'zug-zug' or 'Come get some!'??
Well considering fiber optics are simple pulses of light, how could it not carry information? Even basic code should be able to be transfered... simple standards like Morse and binary. On another note, I wonder how close this will bring us to developing the most awesome of phenomenons at our own will. Human waste could possibly cease to exist. Just thinkin.. that's all.