"Obscene copyright laws" are not what allows them to charge outrageous amounts for what are, essentially, non-existent goods; market demand does.
No, it's obscene copyright laws which are essentially perpetual. A perpetual government granted monopoly is as anti-market as you can get. They can cherge that price because there is no market.
I went to public school. My upbringing to a certain point should have been my parents responsible. Being born wasn't my idea. Up to a certain point you can't expect a human to be responsible for itself. I worked my ass off and payed for all my education beyond public education. I think that's a big problem with our society. Make parents responsible for their children. Unfortunately in our society parents are pretty much absolved of any responsibility for the children they bring into the world. If parents were held responsible I believe it would resolve a great many of societies ills.
you stop using the services and infrastructure that "stolen money" pays for
Hmmm...I pay some $4000 dollars a year for schools. I don't have kids. Why am I paying for other peoples crotch fruit to be baby sat (and maybe even learn a little) 8 hours a day.
I'll gladly pay for services I use. Mind you I'd expect complete openness about how that money is being spent. Quarterly reports on what was payed to who for what and the like. Kinda like SOX for the government. When I pay for something from a business I usually have some selections to choose from. Features are detailed and limitations are typically reported on. The exceptions are the cases where the government has stepped in to limit things. You know, like patents and copyrights and cellular and internet. In those cases competition is limited by government regulation thus the choices are constrained and the prices are ridiculous. Why does the US, the country that invented the internet (don't bring up Berners-Lee, he came up with one protocol that runs on the internet), have the worst and most expensive cellular and internet service of developed nations? Take an e-book for example. It's marginal cost is way less that that of a printed book and primarily due to DRM it's worth is actually less to me yet publishers are able to charge MORE than a paper book costs because of obscene copyright laws.
First to file only applies when two different parties each file a patent application that covers the same subject
Once and for all: If 2 people file for a patent at the same time it should be taken as pretty strong evidence that it's obvious to someone skilled in the art. So unless you're an idiot that thinks the patent system actually serves some useful purpose as it's currently implemented first to file just makes a bad system worse.
What first-to-file solves is having two inventors almost simultaneously filling for a patent. They may have never heard of each others work, and it becomes difficult to find who really invented it first. The only sane thing is to award it to the first person to file.
Huh. I would have thought the only thing to do in that case is to reject the patent as obvious to someone skilled in the art. But I guess that's just me.
[shakes head in amazement] What have we gotten to...
I'm no Apple fan, but to say that they didn't put work into them is lying to yourself.
Ummm...all Apple's crap is built on technologies that were designed, developed and refined over decades. Ever heard of BSD? That's the bases of there operating system. Want to bet there's several orders of magnitude more code in that part then the part Apple actually developed? All they did was put a semi-original shiny cover on it and then sue anyone else who developed something shiny.
I'm pretty sure it actually is to present the truth in the best light for their clients.
Hmmm...seems to me that taking a part of a quote out of context and presenting it such that it appears to say the exact opposite of what it actually meant in context is at best unethical and I would consider it an outright lie on the ethical scale I grade myself by. It seems to me in any profession other than advertising it would be considered so. Lawyers by definition of their trade are not supposed to act unethical. (I know. You can stop laughing now. I live in a fantasy world.)
Cyclists should wear helmets because it can save their life if hit by a car, not to stop a bruise when they fall over at traffic lights because their fancy shoes didn't unclip.
Do you wear a helmet in your car? Well then your an idiot because in a car accident hitting your head is a prime cause of serious injuries.
There is no doubt that technical background or training is highly desirable, but there is also an intuitive aspect that makes it more than just fitting blocks together. Given the right tools, I think anyone can code, but programming beyond basic HTML form processing or Excel macros takes something more.
I agree with your conclusion but not with your premise. It's not some inherent intuition that's needed. It's a thorough understanding of what's happening at all those levels below the programming language. That knowledge gives you the "intuition" to program well.
Programming classes at reputable colleges have an horrible attrition rate that can be largely laid at the door of people just not being able to grasp it.
Programming classes are NOT where one learns to program. They are where you learn a particular language syntax. Language theory, discreet math, compiler design, OS design, etc...are where one learns to program. The belief that you actually learn to program in a programming language class is one of the major failings on our industry.
Now compare to Linux: I can take any distro that was released the same quarter as Vista, which is supposed to be the shittiest MSFT OS since WinME which I agree with, place it and Vista RTM side by side, patch them both to current...what do I get? All the hardware on the Vista machine still works, the hardware on the Linux box is fucked.
This is just plain a blatant lie. In the past 10 years I've installed OSes on at least 40 systems ranging from old clunky desktop hardware to netbooks. With Linux I've almost never had problems other than wireless and even that hasn't usually been an issue for years. Every time I've installed Windows it's been a battle with drivers. With XP you couldn't even install to SATA drives until Service Pack 2 years after SATA came out. Then you had to load network drivers to a CD just to get them to the system so you could even get the rest of the drivers. Then you have to figure out what video and sound drivers you needed while operating at 640×480. Now Windows 7 is greatly improved in this respect. At least the basics like networking seem to work so you can just pull video drivers from the web (mind you still, running at 640x480).
Her Windows desktop, on the other hand, seems to need some kind of repair every time I visit.....
Amen to that, brother. I use to have to book special trips to fix my mothers Windows systems, printers not working, email broke, browser won't work on web site, system real slow, weird crashes, viruses like you wouldn't beleive, and on and on... Finally her laptop broke and she took it Geek Squad (mind you against my repeated admonitions not to). They charged her $70 to tell her their Windows diagnostic CD wouldn't even start and she had serious hardware problems and it would cost at LEAST $200 more just to diagnose the problems. I told her to send it to me. I installed Ubuntu. Went up there and showed her where the menus were, how to find all the nice free software for doing whatever she needed to do and set up her email in Thunderbird. Haven't had to touch it since and that was more than 3 years ago. Mind you she is about as computer illiterate as they come. I could tell several more stories of conversion. Linux is better on the desktop than Windows for everyone, not just "computer geeks". The ONLY reason it's not more wide spread is it doesn't come pre-installed. Mind you it's a lot easier to install than Windows also.
One thing you have to give you Brits is stoicism. I don't think there has ever been a group of people ever that could come close to your ability to just "Keep Calm & Carry On." This is especially the case of their Army. Never in history has a greater group of line solders been led by a more mindless group of morons than in the Boer War. Yet what ever idiotic situations their leaders managed to get them in the line dogs just kept calm and carried on. No one ran. They mostly just died in place very calmly and carrying on. The Monty Python skit was closer to reality than anyone would admit.
In so far as it was America's embargos on Japan (including oil) that were choking the life out of their industry, you can make a good case that we did bring Pearl Harbor down on ourselves.
Yeah, because not selling them our stuff because we didn't like what they were doing is a heinous act of war. Huh? Even though it was in protest of their unprovoked, brutal and inhumane invasion of China.
1. Image the drive.
2. Plug it into a good Linux system.
3. Only mount it in a VM or booted off ROM (Live CD/DVD).
4. Profit...errrr...have fun.
First rule of any damaged system. Image it. You've got a copy of everything. If you don't boot the drive or run any software on it it can't hurt you. If you mount it in a VM you can even enable/disable the network interface at will. Might be fun to backtrack the scammers and mess with'em.
When Google does the same thing it's okay, because Google has only goodness and altruism in its heart.
You have got to be kidding. Apple starts suing (Google Android) smart phone makers demanding bans on sales and imports because others have the audacity to copy there innovative design concepts of a rectangular shaped phone with rounded corners. Cause we all know no one in the world would have thought of making a smart phone or tablet rectangular. Nope. Only the god man genius of Steve Jobs could come up with such an idea.
Hmmm...more like there is no Linux for morons. I've installed Linux on my mother's and an ex-girlfriend's computer and both love it. The ex-girlfriend even installed on someone else's computer when it was so infested with viruses as to be unusable. Just had to explain to her how to burn an ISO and she did the rest on her own. Because, you know, it just works. Unlike windows where you have to spend hours finding drivers and anti-virus and digging up all your CDs and keys so you can re-installing applications...
Both are very much novices. But neither is a moron.
Re:If your customers aren't always right...
on
IT Calls of Shame
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· Score: 1
The Fine Person on the other side of the line kept on insisting
Me: I can't ping the default gateway or the DNS server with my laptop configured with one of my public IPs and connected directly into the box on the outside of the house.
Tech: Sir, I need you to open Internet Explorer and try going to www.google.com.
Me: Is there someone there who actually knows something about computers I can talk to?.
And this was Business Tech Support. I go nuts ever time I hear Tech Support idiots complain about users. I'd rather go to the dentists and get some teeth pulled than call Tech Support. Sad thing is back when DSL was the fast internet and the phone companies were required by law to sell service wholesale to other ISPs I had a great ISP where I'd call and the first person I talked to actually know what they were about. Amazing what competition does to a market.
There's no reason a public school system should have the right to dictate education without parental approval, unless you believe in something other than the freedoms America no longer stands for, of course.
So it's ok for parents to dictate what's taught except where it's something you don't like ("freedoms America no longer stands")? You realize that many believe this is a christian nation and therefore that should be taught in school.
Thing is, 95% of consumers don't really care about repairing their own electronics,
It's not about people repairing there own electronics. It's about being forced to go to the manufacturer if you need even minor repairs or maintenance. Think how much an oil change in your car would cost if you were required to only go to the dealer or your warranty was voided.
Why do you think the us is the only one out to get him?
I don't. I think the government in the US would be much more likely to bypass rule of law to throw him in jail without due process. Just look at what they did to the guy accused of leaking the documents.
The fact is that the GOP pretty much is an enemy of freedom
This is the third time I've posted in this thread on this theme.
WAKE THE FUCK UP PEOPLE
You do realize we're under a supposed left wing liberal administration at the moment. You know, the ones that just passed a law allowing the government to jail anyone indefinitely without due process by simply labeling them a terrorist. The ones that almost managed to pass PIPA/SOPA. The ones that somehow committed the USA to an international treaty, ACTA, without approval of congress. The ones that granted the teclos retroactive immunity for illegal spying on US citizens. I could go on and on and on.
It ain't GOP or Democrats. It's all of them.
See. That's how they're controlling us. They have you focused on the "bigoted, theocratic religious whackjob religious nutjobs" and the "bigoted, theocratic religious whackjob religious nutjobs" focused on the "commie, perverted, whackjob god hating, faggot loving, nutjobs".
It's about how the "Religious Right" teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country.
This right here. See, you're part of the problem with quotes like this. The current administration (which last I checked wasn't from the "Religious Right") has been at the very least as bad in this regards as the one before it from the "Religious Right". You could make a pretty good case that it's been far worse.
God damnit people. Wake up. It's not left or right. That's how they're controlling us. It's all of them. But see, they keep the left and right focused on each other while both side's politicians turn this into a fascist state, for the children mind you. It's all for the children. Must protect the children.
Slashdot Mirror
"Obscene copyright laws" are not what allows them to charge outrageous amounts for what are, essentially, non-existent goods; market demand does.
No, it's obscene copyright laws which are essentially perpetual. A perpetual government granted monopoly is as anti-market as you can get. They can cherge that price because there is no market.
And what poor sap paid for your education?
I went to public school. My upbringing to a certain point should have been my parents responsible. Being born wasn't my idea. Up to a certain point you can't expect a human to be responsible for itself. I worked my ass off and payed for all my education beyond public education. I think that's a big problem with our society. Make parents responsible for their children. Unfortunately in our society parents are pretty much absolved of any responsibility for the children they bring into the world. If parents were held responsible I believe it would resolve a great many of societies ills.
you stop using the services and infrastructure that "stolen money" pays for
Hmmm...I pay some $4000 dollars a year for schools. I don't have kids. Why am I paying for other peoples crotch fruit to be baby sat (and maybe even learn a little) 8 hours a day.
I'll gladly pay for services I use. Mind you I'd expect complete openness about how that money is being spent. Quarterly reports on what was payed to who for what and the like. Kinda like SOX for the government. When I pay for something from a business I usually have some selections to choose from. Features are detailed and limitations are typically reported on. The exceptions are the cases where the government has stepped in to limit things. You know, like patents and copyrights and cellular and internet. In those cases competition is limited by government regulation thus the choices are constrained and the prices are ridiculous. Why does the US, the country that invented the internet (don't bring up Berners-Lee, he came up with one protocol that runs on the internet), have the worst and most expensive cellular and internet service of developed nations? Take an e-book for example. It's marginal cost is way less that that of a printed book and primarily due to DRM it's worth is actually less to me yet publishers are able to charge MORE than a paper book costs because of obscene copyright laws.
First to file only applies when two different parties each file a patent application that covers the same subject
Once and for all: If 2 people file for a patent at the same time it should be taken as pretty strong evidence that it's obvious to someone skilled in the art. So unless you're an idiot that thinks the patent system actually serves some useful purpose as it's currently implemented first to file just makes a bad system worse.
What first-to-file solves is having two inventors almost simultaneously filling for a patent. They may have never heard of each others work, and it becomes difficult to find who really invented it first. The only sane thing is to award it to the first person to file.
Huh. I would have thought the only thing to do in that case is to reject the patent as obvious to someone skilled in the art. But I guess that's just me.
[shakes head in amazement] What have we gotten to...
I'm no Apple fan, but to say that they didn't put work into them is lying to yourself.
Ummm...all Apple's crap is built on technologies that were designed, developed and refined over decades. Ever heard of BSD? That's the bases of there operating system. Want to bet there's several orders of magnitude more code in that part then the part Apple actually developed? All they did was put a semi-original shiny cover on it and then sue anyone else who developed something shiny.
I'm pretty sure it actually is to present the truth in the best light for their clients.
Hmmm...seems to me that taking a part of a quote out of context and presenting it such that it appears to say the exact opposite of what it actually meant in context is at best unethical and I would consider it an outright lie on the ethical scale I grade myself by. It seems to me in any profession other than advertising it would be considered so. Lawyers by definition of their trade are not supposed to act unethical. (I know. You can stop laughing now. I live in a fantasy world.)
Cyclists should wear helmets because it can save their life if hit by a car, not to stop a bruise when they fall over at traffic lights because their fancy shoes didn't unclip.
Do you wear a helmet in your car? Well then your an idiot because in a car accident hitting your head is a prime cause of serious injuries.
There is no doubt that technical background or training is highly desirable, but there is also an intuitive aspect that makes it more than just fitting blocks together. Given the right tools, I think anyone can code, but programming beyond basic HTML form processing or Excel macros takes something more.
I agree with your conclusion but not with your premise. It's not some inherent intuition that's needed. It's a thorough understanding of what's happening at all those levels below the programming language. That knowledge gives you the "intuition" to program well.
Programming classes at reputable colleges have an horrible attrition rate that can be largely laid at the door of people just not being able to grasp it.
Programming classes are NOT where one learns to program. They are where you learn a particular language syntax. Language theory, discreet math, compiler design, OS design, etc...are where one learns to program. The belief that you actually learn to program in a programming language class is one of the major failings on our industry.
Majority of the population isn't capable of programming anything more than something very basic.
From my experience most programmers aren't capable of programming anything more than something very basic.
Now compare to Linux: I can take any distro that was released the same quarter as Vista, which is supposed to be the shittiest MSFT OS since WinME which I agree with, place it and Vista RTM side by side, patch them both to current...what do I get? All the hardware on the Vista machine still works, the hardware on the Linux box is fucked.
This is just plain a blatant lie. In the past 10 years I've installed OSes on at least 40 systems ranging from old clunky desktop hardware to netbooks. With Linux I've almost never had problems other than wireless and even that hasn't usually been an issue for years. Every time I've installed Windows it's been a battle with drivers. With XP you couldn't even install to SATA drives until Service Pack 2 years after SATA came out. Then you had to load network drivers to a CD just to get them to the system so you could even get the rest of the drivers. Then you have to figure out what video and sound drivers you needed while operating at 640×480. Now Windows 7 is greatly improved in this respect. At least the basics like networking seem to work so you can just pull video drivers from the web (mind you still, running at 640x480).
Her Windows desktop, on the other hand, seems to need some kind of repair every time I visit.....
Amen to that, brother. I use to have to book special trips to fix my mothers Windows systems, printers not working, email broke, browser won't work on web site, system real slow, weird crashes, viruses like you wouldn't beleive, and on and on... Finally her laptop broke and she took it Geek Squad (mind you against my repeated admonitions not to). They charged her $70 to tell her their Windows diagnostic CD wouldn't even start and she had serious hardware problems and it would cost at LEAST $200 more just to diagnose the problems. I told her to send it to me. I installed Ubuntu. Went up there and showed her where the menus were, how to find all the nice free software for doing whatever she needed to do and set up her email in Thunderbird. Haven't had to touch it since and that was more than 3 years ago. Mind you she is about as computer illiterate as they come. I could tell several more stories of conversion. Linux is better on the desktop than Windows for everyone, not just "computer geeks". The ONLY reason it's not more wide spread is it doesn't come pre-installed. Mind you it's a lot easier to install than Windows also.
Keep Calm & Carry On.
One thing you have to give you Brits is stoicism. I don't think there has ever been a group of people ever that could come close to your ability to just "Keep Calm & Carry On." This is especially the case of their Army. Never in history has a greater group of line solders been led by a more mindless group of morons than in the Boer War. Yet what ever idiotic situations their leaders managed to get them in the line dogs just kept calm and carried on. No one ran. They mostly just died in place very calmly and carrying on. The Monty Python skit was closer to reality than anyone would admit.
In so far as it was America's embargos on Japan (including oil) that were choking the life out of their industry, you can make a good case that we did bring Pearl Harbor down on ourselves.
Yeah, because not selling them our stuff because we didn't like what they were doing is a heinous act of war. Huh? Even though it was in protest of their unprovoked, brutal and inhumane invasion of China.
You go right ahead a try to make that case.
Do not back up anything that's executable though.
1. Image the drive.
2. Plug it into a good Linux system.
3. Only mount it in a VM or booted off ROM (Live CD/DVD).
4. Profit...errrr...have fun.
First rule of any damaged system. Image it. You've got a copy of everything. If you don't boot the drive or run any software on it it can't hurt you. If you mount it in a VM you can even enable/disable the network interface at will. Might be fun to backtrack the scammers and mess with'em.
When Google does the same thing it's okay, because Google has only goodness and altruism in its heart.
You have got to be kidding. Apple starts suing (Google Android) smart phone makers demanding bans on sales and imports because others have the audacity to copy there innovative design concepts of a rectangular shaped phone with rounded corners. Cause we all know no one in the world would have thought of making a smart phone or tablet rectangular. Nope. Only the god man genius of Steve Jobs could come up with such an idea.
Google has no choice but to respond like this.
There is no linux for a novice.
You have to work for Microsoft.
Hmmm...more like there is no Linux for morons. I've installed Linux on my mother's and an ex-girlfriend's computer and both love it. The ex-girlfriend even installed on someone else's computer when it was so infested with viruses as to be unusable. Just had to explain to her how to burn an ISO and she did the rest on her own. Because, you know, it just works. Unlike windows where you have to spend hours finding drivers and anti-virus and digging up all your CDs and keys so you can re-installing applications...
Both are very much novices. But neither is a moron.
The Fine Person on the other side of the line kept on insisting
Me: I can't ping the default gateway or the DNS server with my laptop configured with one of my public IPs and connected directly into the box on the outside of the house.
Tech: Sir, I need you to open Internet Explorer and try going to www.google.com .
Me: Is there someone there who actually knows something about computers I can talk to?.
And this was Business Tech Support. I go nuts ever time I hear Tech Support idiots complain about users. I'd rather go to the dentists and get some teeth pulled than call Tech Support. Sad thing is back when DSL was the fast internet and the phone companies were required by law to sell service wholesale to other ISPs I had a great ISP where I'd call and the first person I talked to actually know what they were about. Amazing what competition does to a market.
There's no reason a public school system should have the right to dictate education without parental approval, unless you believe in something other than the freedoms America no longer stands for, of course.
So it's ok for parents to dictate what's taught except where it's something you don't like ("freedoms America no longer stands")? You realize that many believe this is a christian nation and therefore that should be taught in school.
Thing is, 95% of consumers don't really care about repairing their own electronics,
It's not about people repairing there own electronics. It's about being forced to go to the manufacturer if you need even minor repairs or maintenance. Think how much an oil change in your car would cost if you were required to only go to the dealer or your warranty was voided.
Why do you think the us is the only one out to get him?
I don't. I think the government in the US would be much more likely to bypass rule of law to throw him in jail without due process. Just look at what they did to the guy accused of leaking the documents.
If they wanted him dead or in prison he'd be dead or in prison.
What do you think his odds would be if he came to the US? I know you'd have to do much better than 100 to 1 for him before I'd touch the bet.
The fact is that the GOP pretty much is an enemy of freedom
This is the third time I've posted in this thread on this theme.
WAKE THE FUCK UP PEOPLE
You do realize we're under a supposed left wing liberal administration at the moment. You know, the ones that just passed a law allowing the government to jail anyone indefinitely without due process by simply labeling them a terrorist. The ones that almost managed to pass PIPA/SOPA. The ones that somehow committed the USA to an international treaty, ACTA, without approval of congress. The ones that granted the teclos retroactive immunity for illegal spying on US citizens. I could go on and on and on.
It ain't GOP or Democrats. It's all of them.
See. That's how they're controlling us. They have you focused on the "bigoted, theocratic religious whackjob religious nutjobs" and the "bigoted, theocratic religious whackjob religious nutjobs" focused on the "commie, perverted, whackjob god hating, faggot loving, nutjobs".
It's about how the "Religious Right" teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country.
This right here. See, you're part of the problem with quotes like this. The current administration (which last I checked wasn't from the "Religious Right") has been at the very least as bad in this regards as the one before it from the "Religious Right". You could make a pretty good case that it's been far worse.
God damnit people. Wake up. It's not left or right. That's how they're controlling us. It's all of them. But see, they keep the left and right focused on each other while both side's politicians turn this into a fascist state, for the children mind you. It's all for the children. Must protect the children.