If you RTFA, you'll find out that Ubiquity is really just a fancy word for "client-side scripting." The "natural language-like interface" nonsense is really about how you invoke a script and enter the arguments. Someone has been parroting too many marketing buzzwords; by that logic Bash is a "natural language like" interface too.
So does separation of church and state, which is what enables the debate to take place. It is precisely because the government can't quash or marginalize religious groups, that religious groups can seek to influence policy.
And if they can ever convince a majority of the population that teaching creationism in public schools really is a good idea, they should get their way. Good luck with that.
Seriously, most things I use the Web for -- shopping, reading news, message boards, even Facebook -- work fine. All it takes is a couple of extra mouse clicks to set the NoScript permissions.
Here's a little parable. When I was a child, I lived in the country and my family never locked the front door of our house. Now I live in a multi-family home in the city and every time I go out, I lock both the door to my home and the door to the building. Man, I tell you, it is a pain in the neck to have to fumble for my keys every time I want to go inside my home. I still think it beats leaving the door open.
It boils down to whether you think anything bad will happen if you leave your door open. I consider a popup ad to be "something bad," and I am well aware there are also far worse things a script can do to you.
A simpler solution would be for the U.S. government to stop paying taxpayer money to embed RFID chips into passports. That saves money and eliminates the risks to everyone, not just the tech-savvy.
I wonder how much money the government would save if they just stopped doing everything that is stupid. (I realize that in order to do that Congress would have to agree on what constitutes stupidity, and agreeing on things ain't their strong suit. Still, I wonder how much money.)
It's not a good analogy as homicide is a criminal offense and software piracy a civil offense.
You must not have watched a DVD lately: "Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and carries penalties of [insert long prison sentence] or [insert whopping monetary fine], or both." There's also the international warning that Interpol will hunt you down if you live overseas.
I'd agree with you that copyright infringement should be a civil matter, but it's also a criminal offense in most countries, thanks to the lobbying efforts of the MPAA, RIAA, and related racketeer^H^H^H^H^H^H industry groups.
I don't really see why "market share" is that important. Linux works for me, and is a whole lot more suited to what I want to do and how I want to do it than Windows or OSX is. I can buy hardware that will run Linux just fine; I can get tech support if I want it; there are plenty of development projects turning out high-quality software. In a nutshell, it works for me. Isn't that what matters?
This case of coincidental independent invention that you seem to think invalidates the whole system - how often do you think it really occurs in practice?
I don't think independent invention invalidates the patent system. I think it invalidates the idea that patents are a natural right and that holding a patent gives some kind of moral superiority to the patent holder. And to answer your question, I think it happens pretty often, which is why Slashdot has a whole category for patent-abuse stories.
I'd take Iran at face value for everything they say. They are going to get a nuclear capability. They are going to get a delivery system. They are going to act to expand their values world wide. Israel is only the beginning.
You say all that like it's a bad thing. The U.S. and NATO have dealt with an adversary with nuclear capability, and satellites, before. Perhaps you remember: it was called the Soviet Union. It doesn't exist any more, in part because it spent all its state resources on an arms race instead of providing for the prosperity of its people. If Iran goes down the same road, I guarantee it will arrive at the same destination.
I'll never understand why Slashdot, primarily a group of code-authors are so willing to shoot themselves in the feet and claim that they have no property rights in their works.
I don't claim authors have no rights. I only claim that copyright is not the same as property rights, and to confuse the two is a serious misrepresentation of both the law and the business climate.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Exactly; the difference between "exclusive right" and "ownership" is the difference between intellectual property and physical property. Using your patented idea without your permission is violating your exclusive right to that idea. It's not stealing the idea. Some people think the distinction is overly fine but I think it's critically important not to confuse control of an idea with ownership of physical property.
If two people independently cut down trees and use the wood to build cabinets, each of them owns a cabinet. If two people independently come up with an idea, only one of them gets to patent it. So your "right" to get paid for "your labor" can result in your "stealing" the profits of the other guy, who thought of the same thing but applied for the patent one day later than you did. Does that seem right?
Patents and copyrights serve useful purposes. But don't confuse them with physical property.
Yes, it means exactly that. It's credit card fraud. Also illegal, but not stealing. I would not be surprised if the penalties for $1000 in credit card fraud were totally different from the penalties for stealing $1000 in cash.
LOCKHEED: "Thank you. We downloaded the program off your c: drive using bittorrent last night. No we're not going to pay you for it."
Dude, did you read the intellectual property waiver you signed? Your employer already owns everything you produce. Their obligation to pay you is not based on fair exchange for your ideas, it derives from labor laws that say you work for them and they pay you for your hours on the job. They could fire you tomorrow and then patent your ideas and make a billion dollars.
Well then I guess we should have kept those unpaid laborers in the South. After all, they didn't "lose" anything when they picked cotton all day.
They lost the cotton. The difference between tangible property and information is that if someone else takes your tangible property then you don't have it any more, and if someone takes information then both of you have it.
Put another way: only one person can use a boll of cotton. An unlimited number of people can use an idea. Someone else using my idea does not preclude me also using it; Microsoft publishing a book I wrote does not preclude my also publishing it. It may make it impractical for me to profit from the book I wrote, but that falls under the category of "unfair competition," not "taking away a piece of property that I own." It's wrong, and it's also fundamentally different from stealing.
The language of copyright holders - "own an idea," "intellectual property," "stolen ideas," "piracy," is calculated to make the public forget the fundamental differences between ideas and objects, and support laws and policies that equate intellectual property with physical property. This is to the benefit of copyright (and patent) holders, who can then rely on the government to bear the cost of enforcing their copyrights, among other benefits.
The preponderance of people who claim that we have a "right" to "own" and profit from ideas shows how well this brainwashing is working. Apparently it goes so far as to make some think that a company can "steal" profits that haven't even been earned yet. The reality of intellectual property cases is quite different; see Polaroid v. Kodak.
In most districts, per-pupil spending is $5000-$10,000 per year. Give that money directly to kids, and take government out of schools.
You seem to be suggesting abolishing the public-school system altogether. I see the merit in that idea, but do you think the public would accept the idea of a taxpayer-financed but privately-operated school system? The end result might be no more efficient than, say, the typical defense contractor. (yikes)
The other thought that just occurred to me is that we'd end up with private schools fighting each other for the affluent suburban market, but refusing to do business in poor rural or urban areas.
Since I never open spam, I don't know how many messages connect to sites that really sell the advertised products, and how many only seem to sell as ruse to get people's credit card numbers. I would presume the latter far outnumber the former. Given that the only way to tell phishing from spam according to your definition is to try to buy something, it seems to me you're making the distinction overly fine.
What should be really obvious is that well run schools succeed and poorly run schools fail. What is a bit less obvious is that not every school can be well run in exactly the same way because the needs of the student body, community, and dare I say faculty (yes they have needs too!) differ from one school to another.
Much time, money, and ink has been spent on trying to find the magic bullet that will "reinvent our concept of education." Funny thing is, non-educators are rarely able to make their ideas work by imposing reform from the top down. What that suggests to me is that A) perhaps schools are harder to run than they appear to be, since outside "reformers" are no better at it than "insiders"; B) maybe professional educators are not the problem after all since no one else seems to be able to consistently do their jobs better than they can; and C) centralized mass production of education via curriculum mandates may not be the way to go (since when that approach is applied broadly, it still succeeds only narrowly).
Instead maybe it's time to look at schools one at a time and recognize that properly running a school is a management challenge like any other.
Actually, I disagree. Requiring the user to click "I agree" isn't security, it's nagging. A judge might agree that the user's responsible for whatever if he clicks "I agree," but I am less forgiving. If a botnet is trying to take over the system and the only thing standing in the way is a dialog box, then security has already failed.
all I see around is stuff with the label "Made in China."
Yes, but the stuff made in China is generally designed in Europe or America. That will change, but it will take a few decades. Japan was building cheap knock-off products through the 1950's and '60's, and didn't begin to really rival U.S. design and engineering until the '80's. If China follows the same path then we're about 10-15 year away from quality products designed in China.
TFA even has a link to the bill's page at Thomas (which is the server that Congresspersons use to keep track of legislative business, and is open to the public). Current status is:
Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Also note that the bill's sole sponsor, Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), does not sit on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The most likely scenario is that this bill will sit in committee until it quietly dies (a very common fate, I would add).
There is a more pressing and immediate question: Can a matching donor be found in time to make the transplant effective? Once the match is found, then the next question is whether any other patients are compatible with it and could be saved by it. Only then does the question come down to "who gets it?"
A lot of transplant patients die waiting for a donor. That's not necessarily because anyone was "ahead of them in line." It's at least as likely that none of the (regrettably few) organs donated during their lifetimes matched their needs.
Slashdot Mirror
If you RTFA, you'll find out that Ubiquity is really just a fancy word for "client-side scripting." The "natural language-like interface" nonsense is really about how you invoke a script and enter the arguments. Someone has been parroting too many marketing buzzwords; by that logic Bash is a "natural language like" interface too.
So does separation of church and state, which is what enables the debate to take place. It is precisely because the government can't quash or marginalize religious groups, that religious groups can seek to influence policy.
And if they can ever convince a majority of the population that teaching creationism in public schools really is a good idea, they should get their way. Good luck with that.
Google went public, that's what happened.
You're missing the point! I don't see any ads! ;-)
Seriously, most things I use the Web for -- shopping, reading news, message boards, even Facebook -- work fine. All it takes is a couple of extra mouse clicks to set the NoScript permissions.
Here's a little parable. When I was a child, I lived in the country and my family never locked the front door of our house. Now I live in a multi-family home in the city and every time I go out, I lock both the door to my home and the door to the building. Man, I tell you, it is a pain in the neck to have to fumble for my keys every time I want to go inside my home. I still think it beats leaving the door open.
It boils down to whether you think anything bad will happen if you leave your door open. I consider a popup ad to be "something bad," and I am well aware there are also far worse things a script can do to you.
I use Firefox with the AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and FlashBlock add-ons installed. I haven't noticed any pop-up ads.
A simpler solution would be for the U.S. government to stop paying taxpayer money to embed RFID chips into passports. That saves money and eliminates the risks to everyone, not just the tech-savvy.
I wonder how much money the government would save if they just stopped doing everything that is stupid. (I realize that in order to do that Congress would have to agree on what constitutes stupidity, and agreeing on things ain't their strong suit. Still, I wonder how much money.)
You must not have watched a DVD lately: "Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and carries penalties of [insert long prison sentence] or [insert whopping monetary fine], or both." There's also the international warning that Interpol will hunt you down if you live overseas.
I'd agree with you that copyright infringement should be a civil matter, but it's also a criminal offense in most countries, thanks to the lobbying efforts of the MPAA, RIAA, and related racketeer^H^H^H^H^H^H industry groups.
I don't really see why "market share" is that important. Linux works for me, and is a whole lot more suited to what I want to do and how I want to do it than Windows or OSX is. I can buy hardware that will run Linux just fine; I can get tech support if I want it; there are plenty of development projects turning out high-quality software. In a nutshell, it works for me. Isn't that what matters?
I don't think independent invention invalidates the patent system. I think it invalidates the idea that patents are a natural right and that holding a patent gives some kind of moral superiority to the patent holder. And to answer your question, I think it happens pretty often, which is why Slashdot has a whole category for patent-abuse stories.
You say all that like it's a bad thing. The U.S. and NATO have dealt with an adversary with nuclear capability, and satellites, before. Perhaps you remember: it was called the Soviet Union. It doesn't exist any more, in part because it spent all its state resources on an arms race instead of providing for the prosperity of its people. If Iran goes down the same road, I guarantee it will arrive at the same destination.
I don't claim authors have no rights. I only claim that copyright is not the same as property rights, and to confuse the two is a serious misrepresentation of both the law and the business climate.
Exactly; the difference between "exclusive right" and "ownership" is the difference between intellectual property and physical property. Using your patented idea without your permission is violating your exclusive right to that idea. It's not stealing the idea. Some people think the distinction is overly fine but I think it's critically important not to confuse control of an idea with ownership of physical property.
If two people independently cut down trees and use the wood to build cabinets, each of them owns a cabinet. If two people independently come up with an idea, only one of them gets to patent it. So your "right" to get paid for "your labor" can result in your "stealing" the profits of the other guy, who thought of the same thing but applied for the patent one day later than you did. Does that seem right?
Patents and copyrights serve useful purposes. But don't confuse them with physical property.
Yes, it means exactly that. It's credit card fraud. Also illegal, but not stealing. I would not be surprised if the penalties for $1000 in credit card fraud were totally different from the penalties for stealing $1000 in cash.
Dude, did you read the intellectual property waiver you signed? Your employer already owns everything you produce. Their obligation to pay you is not based on fair exchange for your ideas, it derives from labor laws that say you work for them and they pay you for your hours on the job. They could fire you tomorrow and then patent your ideas and make a billion dollars.
They lost the cotton. The difference between tangible property and information is that if someone else takes your tangible property then you don't have it any more, and if someone takes information then both of you have it.
Put another way: only one person can use a boll of cotton. An unlimited number of people can use an idea. Someone else using my idea does not preclude me also using it; Microsoft publishing a book I wrote does not preclude my also publishing it. It may make it impractical for me to profit from the book I wrote, but that falls under the category of "unfair competition," not "taking away a piece of property that I own." It's wrong, and it's also fundamentally different from stealing.
The language of copyright holders - "own an idea," "intellectual property," "stolen ideas," "piracy," is calculated to make the public forget the fundamental differences between ideas and objects, and support laws and policies that equate intellectual property with physical property. This is to the benefit of copyright (and patent) holders, who can then rely on the government to bear the cost of enforcing their copyrights, among other benefits.
The preponderance of people who claim that we have a "right" to "own" and profit from ideas shows how well this brainwashing is working. Apparently it goes so far as to make some think that a company can "steal" profits that haven't even been earned yet. The reality of intellectual property cases is quite different; see Polaroid v. Kodak.
"You can't steal information." It's intangible. Thank you.
You seem to be suggesting abolishing the public-school system altogether. I see the merit in that idea, but do you think the public would accept the idea of a taxpayer-financed but privately-operated school system? The end result might be no more efficient than, say, the typical defense contractor. (yikes)
The other thought that just occurred to me is that we'd end up with private schools fighting each other for the affluent suburban market, but refusing to do business in poor rural or urban areas.
Since I never open spam, I don't know how many messages connect to sites that really sell the advertised products, and how many only seem to sell as ruse to get people's credit card numbers. I would presume the latter far outnumber the former. Given that the only way to tell phishing from spam according to your definition is to try to buy something, it seems to me you're making the distinction overly fine.
What should be really obvious is that well run schools succeed and poorly run schools fail. What is a bit less obvious is that not every school can be well run in exactly the same way because the needs of the student body, community, and dare I say faculty (yes they have needs too!) differ from one school to another.
Much time, money, and ink has been spent on trying to find the magic bullet that will "reinvent our concept of education." Funny thing is, non-educators are rarely able to make their ideas work by imposing reform from the top down. What that suggests to me is that A) perhaps schools are harder to run than they appear to be, since outside "reformers" are no better at it than "insiders"; B) maybe professional educators are not the problem after all since no one else seems to be able to consistently do their jobs better than they can; and C) centralized mass production of education via curriculum mandates may not be the way to go (since when that approach is applied broadly, it still succeeds only narrowly).
Instead maybe it's time to look at schools one at a time and recognize that properly running a school is a management challenge like any other.
Well we've got to get rid of that guy then!
Actually, I disagree. Requiring the user to click "I agree" isn't security, it's nagging. A judge might agree that the user's responsible for whatever if he clicks "I agree," but I am less forgiving. If a botnet is trying to take over the system and the only thing standing in the way is a dialog box, then security has already failed.
Yes, but the stuff made in China is generally designed in Europe or America. That will change, but it will take a few decades. Japan was building cheap knock-off products through the 1950's and '60's, and didn't begin to really rival U.S. design and engineering until the '80's. If China follows the same path then we're about 10-15 year away from quality products designed in China.
TFA sure doesn't shed any light on that question. I suppose you can sell laptops at any price you want, as long as you don't care about breaking even.
TFA even has a link to the bill's page at Thomas (which is the server that Congresspersons use to keep track of legislative business, and is open to the public). Current status is:
Also note that the bill's sole sponsor, Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), does not sit on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The most likely scenario is that this bill will sit in committee until it quietly dies (a very common fate, I would add).
There is a more pressing and immediate question: Can a matching donor be found in time to make the transplant effective? Once the match is found, then the next question is whether any other patients are compatible with it and could be saved by it. Only then does the question come down to "who gets it?"
A lot of transplant patients die waiting for a donor. That's not necessarily because anyone was "ahead of them in line." It's at least as likely that none of the (regrettably few) organs donated during their lifetimes matched their needs.