The funny thing is that a lot of foreigners don't realize that the American lifestyle that they see is based on a heavily indebted society in general. I recently read a story about Ukrainian "mail order brides" who were coming over to the U.S. to marry husbands who they believed to be wealthy, only to be shocked to find out that their new husband's house was heavily mortgaged and that his fancy car was also largely owned by the bank. Apparently mortgages and credit purchases in general are a lot less common in the Ukraine, and these women didn't understand that most U.S. home "owners" don't actually *own* their houses (we only own a share in conjunction with a bank, sometimes a very small share).
The Apple OS would be considered a copyrighted work. And, from what I understand, jailbreaking involves breaking technological measures aimed at preventing users from modding this OS.
It's a awful and ill-conceived law, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, many laws are like that. This law was pushed through a Congress with way more concern about the media companies that supported it than with whether or not it made for good law.
From what I've heard of it, jailbreaking is not aimed at the device itself, but at its software. While you might have a point if jailbreaking involved completely wiping the Apple OS from the phone and putting your own OS on it, IIRC it's actually aimed at modding the existing Apple software, which would certainly be considered a copyrighted work. If I am wrong here, I welcome correction.
Certainly a worthy moral argument, but thanks to the WIPO copyright Treaty (which everyone, except for a few of us crazies who were warning about it, completely ignored back when it was being debated), such circumvention of technology (specifically if it's designed to access protect copyrighted content) is nonetheless illegal in many WIPO countries, including the U.S.
From the anti-circumvention section of the DMCA: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
And notice the language there. It doesn't say "no company may do this for profit" or "no one can do this for anyone else" (as many mistakenly believe), it says "No person." That means you sitting at home jailbreaking your own cellphone. Now, maybe you could make the case that an iPhone and its OS is not a "work protected under this title" but I think that would be a hard sell.
Yeah, except coders usually make *TERRIBLE* GUI designers. And FOSS coders are often too arrogant to think they need to work with actual designers. It's why so many FOSS projects have absolutely abysmal GUI's (and piss-poor documentation, since coders also think they don't need technical writers). So expecting a bunch of coders to produce a great browser and a markup language that's largely aimed at layout without a strong team of designers behind them (like they have at Mozilla) is likely to produce horrid (if amusing) results.
I suspect that if you dug into the root causes, you would find a massive amount of pressure on Chinese academics to "publish or perish." Of course, publish or perish is a problem throughout academia worldwide, but with the Chinese government exerting such an extraordinary amount of Nationalistic pressure *on top of* the normal academic pressure, the temptation to fake results must be even stronger (and many academics have resorted to this under much less pressure). It's bad enough when grant money is at stake, but add to that the government breathing down academics' necks wanting them to make the country look good and I can understand why this is so pervasive.
Actually, many of us don't like the idea of ANY interest group, corporation, religious zealot, etc. forcing their lifestyle on us. There is always some causenik out there that wants the government to force everyone to do this or that, whether it's a Mormon telling me what kind of beer I can drink, to some environmentalist who wants to force me to use a crappy low-flow toilet (no pun intended), to some corporation who wants my tax dollars going into a sweetheart deal for them. Everyone thinks they've got it right, and that gives them to right to make me do it their way too.
It's like grandpappy used to say "Kid, if you ever want to see everyone in the world all at once, just yell out 'Will everyone who thinks they're doing it better than I am please come here'."
That's not flamebait, it's human natue. Like all other self-righteous do-gooders and cause-sellers who want to tell you how to live your life, the ALA wants you to do it THEIR WAY and their way ONLY.
Also, an environmentalist doesn't want you to just pick any old way to reduce carbon (i.e. clean coal, hyrdro-electric, nuclear), they want you to pick THEIR chosen ways of doing it (wind and solar) and those ONLY.
Also, a bible-thumper doesn't want you to come to Jesus just any old way, they want you to do it through THEIR particular sect or denomination and theirs ONLY.
A lot of Cory Doctorow's science fiction deals with these subjects in a very creative way (much better than Stallman). And a most of it is availablefor free on the web too.
Not necessarily an advantageous mutation. Such an attitude can get you ostracized or even physically harmed if you don't learn very quickly that not everyone shares it.
Behold my amazing precognitive abilities, as I look into the future of crime and predict:
Most crime will take place in that part of town with the highest concentration of check-cashing and liquor stores, between 5 pm and 3 am. Most of the alleged defendents will not be college educated and will have prior criminal records. Very few actual crime arrests will involve white collar fraud or the elaborate, diabolically-planned crimes that make up the bulk of criminal activity shown in popular TV shows, comic books, and movies. The vast majority of accused criminals will be, in fact, guilty of the crime they are accused of. Very few criminals will be represented by a crusading public defender with the resources to conduct a thorough analysis of their case and order elaborate DNA tests to prove their innocence in a last-minute dramatic countroom reveal.
Agreed. DS9 was definitely the best of the Trek series. It was about the only one where characters regularly criticized and mocked the self-righteousness of the Federation. One of my favorite moments was a conversation between Quark and Garek over root beer. I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like Quark having Garek try a root beer, Garek complaining that it was too syrupy sweet and bubbly "just like the Federation," Quark replying "Yeah, doesn't it just make you sick?" and Garek finishing with "...just like the Federation." A pretty reasonable view of what real people would probably think of the Federation as it was fictionally presented, I thought.
Wasn't *that* uncommon in its heydey
on
Is OS/2 Coming Back?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
"2 guys who had it" jokes aside, back around 1994-95, OS/2 was way more common than Linux seems to be today. I knew several friends who had it and it blew Win 3.1 away. I actually considered getting it myself, until MS started touting Win 95. I remember them selling OS/2 pretty much everywhere you could buy software. IIRC, you could even buy it at Walmart. I suspect this was one of the main reasons that MS launched such a heavy-duty ad campaign for MS 95 (one of the biggest software ad campaigns ever launched up until then). After Win 95 came out, it pretty much disappeared, but there for a while it was pretty well regarded in computer-savy circles as a superior choice to Windows.
Well, he's on Caprica now if you still really want to see him. But if you're still harboring fantasies, you should know that he's pushing 50 now and not really pulling off the "I'm much younger-looking than I actually am" thing very well anymore.
That doesn't mean it will every materialize. Nicholas Cage signed a $20 million contract to play Superman in "Superman Lives" (and that was a generous single-picture "pay or play" contract too). It all comes down to how far the studio is willing to stick its neck out before it cuts its losses and says "This is just too risky."
A $10 million opening weekend for a major science FX-driven movie these days is a *megaton* bomb. A typical major movie these days has about $25 million spent on promotion alone.
"Dollhouse" made me think of one of those prime-time soaps from the 90's about pretty people (i.e. "Models, Inc." "Melrose Place"). It probably didn't help that Whedon used the show to once again to overindulge his most annoying and silly personal fetish (90-lb. waif girls who kick ass, in defiance of all laws of common sense or physics). "Firefly" was probably his best because it was the one series he's done where the characters were reasonable adults in a somewhat realistic setting, with the 90-lb waif removed from ass-kicking duties. Broke my heart to watch that awful "Serenity" movie and see that Tim Minear apparently was unable to stop him from indulging in his ass-kicking waif sexual fantasies in the movie version.
I feel the same way about a lot of the Trek series. With the original series, I kept wondering what fool would put Kirk in charge of a ship, since he gets several crewmembers killed every week with some reckless or cocky move that doesn't even usually serve any purpose. And on The Next Generation, I always pegged the Federation as an alliance of psychotics for allowing CHILDREN on a ship that gets threatened with destruction/invaded by hostile aliens on a weekly basis.
Slashdot Mirror
The funny thing is that a lot of foreigners don't realize that the American lifestyle that they see is based on a heavily indebted society in general. I recently read a story about Ukrainian "mail order brides" who were coming over to the U.S. to marry husbands who they believed to be wealthy, only to be shocked to find out that their new husband's house was heavily mortgaged and that his fancy car was also largely owned by the bank. Apparently mortgages and credit purchases in general are a lot less common in the Ukraine, and these women didn't understand that most U.S. home "owners" don't actually *own* their houses (we only own a share in conjunction with a bank, sometimes a very small share).
Except Apple would argue that you bought the device, but not the software on it or the right to access its network.
The Apple OS would be considered a copyrighted work. And, from what I understand, jailbreaking involves breaking technological measures aimed at preventing users from modding this OS.
It's a awful and ill-conceived law, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, many laws are like that. This law was pushed through a Congress with way more concern about the media companies that supported it than with whether or not it made for good law.
From what I've heard of it, jailbreaking is not aimed at the device itself, but at its software. While you might have a point if jailbreaking involved completely wiping the Apple OS from the phone and putting your own OS on it, IIRC it's actually aimed at modding the existing Apple software, which would certainly be considered a copyrighted work. If I am wrong here, I welcome correction.
Certainly a worthy moral argument, but thanks to the WIPO copyright Treaty (which everyone, except for a few of us crazies who were warning about it, completely ignored back when it was being debated), such circumvention of technology (specifically if it's designed to access protect copyrighted content) is nonetheless illegal in many WIPO countries, including the U.S.
From the anti-circumvention section of the DMCA: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
And notice the language there. It doesn't say "no company may do this for profit" or "no one can do this for anyone else" (as many mistakenly believe), it says "No person." That means you sitting at home jailbreaking your own cellphone. Now, maybe you could make the case that an iPhone and its OS is not a "work protected under this title" but I think that would be a hard sell.
Yeah, except coders usually make *TERRIBLE* GUI designers. And FOSS coders are often too arrogant to think they need to work with actual designers. It's why so many FOSS projects have absolutely abysmal GUI's (and piss-poor documentation, since coders also think they don't need technical writers). So expecting a bunch of coders to produce a great browser and a markup language that's largely aimed at layout without a strong team of designers behind them (like they have at Mozilla) is likely to produce horrid (if amusing) results.
I suspect that if you dug into the root causes, you would find a massive amount of pressure on Chinese academics to "publish or perish." Of course, publish or perish is a problem throughout academia worldwide, but with the Chinese government exerting such an extraordinary amount of Nationalistic pressure *on top of* the normal academic pressure, the temptation to fake results must be even stronger (and many academics have resorted to this under much less pressure). It's bad enough when grant money is at stake, but add to that the government breathing down academics' necks wanting them to make the country look good and I can understand why this is so pervasive.
IF he thinks that's hard, he should try using the Java GUI on an Android app sometime.
Duh, he's the guy that created Babylon 5.
Actually, many of us don't like the idea of ANY interest group, corporation, religious zealot, etc. forcing their lifestyle on us. There is always some causenik out there that wants the government to force everyone to do this or that, whether it's a Mormon telling me what kind of beer I can drink, to some environmentalist who wants to force me to use a crappy low-flow toilet (no pun intended), to some corporation who wants my tax dollars going into a sweetheart deal for them. Everyone thinks they've got it right, and that gives them to right to make me do it their way too.
It's like grandpappy used to say "Kid, if you ever want to see everyone in the world all at once, just yell out 'Will everyone who thinks they're doing it better than I am please come here'."
You cool with me legislating how you can live your life too, or is your way the only right one?
That's not flamebait, it's human natue. Like all other self-righteous do-gooders and cause-sellers who want to tell you how to live your life, the ALA wants you to do it THEIR WAY and their way ONLY.
Also, an environmentalist doesn't want you to just pick any old way to reduce carbon (i.e. clean coal, hyrdro-electric, nuclear), they want you to pick THEIR chosen ways of doing it (wind and solar) and those ONLY.
Also, a bible-thumper doesn't want you to come to Jesus just any old way, they want you to do it through THEIR particular sect or denomination and theirs ONLY.
etc.
A lot of Cory Doctorow's science fiction deals with these subjects in a very creative way (much better than Stallman). And a most of it is available for free on the web too.
A passion project is easy. Doing the boring crap that you couldn't care less about is hard.
Not necessarily an advantageous mutation. Such an attitude can get you ostracized or even physically harmed if you don't learn very quickly that not everyone shares it.
Behold my amazing precognitive abilities, as I look into the future of crime and predict:
Most crime will take place in that part of town with the highest concentration of check-cashing and liquor stores, between 5 pm and 3 am. Most of the alleged defendents will not be college educated and will have prior criminal records. Very few actual crime arrests will involve white collar fraud or the elaborate, diabolically-planned crimes that make up the bulk of criminal activity shown in popular TV shows, comic books, and movies. The vast majority of accused criminals will be, in fact, guilty of the crime they are accused of. Very few criminals will be represented by a crusading public defender with the resources to conduct a thorough analysis of their case and order elaborate DNA tests to prove their innocence in a last-minute dramatic countroom reveal.
Agreed. DS9 was definitely the best of the Trek series. It was about the only one where characters regularly criticized and mocked the self-righteousness of the Federation. One of my favorite moments was a conversation between Quark and Garek over root beer. I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like Quark having Garek try a root beer, Garek complaining that it was too syrupy sweet and bubbly "just like the Federation," Quark replying "Yeah, doesn't it just make you sick?" and Garek finishing with "...just like the Federation." A pretty reasonable view of what real people would probably think of the Federation as it was fictionally presented, I thought.
"2 guys who had it" jokes aside, back around 1994-95, OS/2 was way more common than Linux seems to be today. I knew several friends who had it and it blew Win 3.1 away. I actually considered getting it myself, until MS started touting Win 95. I remember them selling OS/2 pretty much everywhere you could buy software. IIRC, you could even buy it at Walmart. I suspect this was one of the main reasons that MS launched such a heavy-duty ad campaign for MS 95 (one of the biggest software ad campaigns ever launched up until then). After Win 95 came out, it pretty much disappeared, but there for a while it was pretty well regarded in computer-savy circles as a superior choice to Windows.
Well, he's on Caprica now if you still really want to see him. But if you're still harboring fantasies, you should know that he's pushing 50 now and not really pulling off the "I'm much younger-looking than I actually am" thing very well anymore.
That doesn't mean it will every materialize. Nicholas Cage signed a $20 million contract to play Superman in "Superman Lives" (and that was a generous single-picture "pay or play" contract too). It all comes down to how far the studio is willing to stick its neck out before it cuts its losses and says "This is just too risky."
A $10 million opening weekend for a major science FX-driven movie these days is a *megaton* bomb. A typical major movie these days has about $25 million spent on promotion alone.
Except when his career is in a state where he has to.
"Dollhouse" made me think of one of those prime-time soaps from the 90's about pretty people (i.e. "Models, Inc." "Melrose Place"). It probably didn't help that Whedon used the show to once again to overindulge his most annoying and silly personal fetish (90-lb. waif girls who kick ass, in defiance of all laws of common sense or physics). "Firefly" was probably his best because it was the one series he's done where the characters were reasonable adults in a somewhat realistic setting, with the 90-lb waif removed from ass-kicking duties. Broke my heart to watch that awful "Serenity" movie and see that Tim Minear apparently was unable to stop him from indulging in his ass-kicking waif sexual fantasies in the movie version.
Seriously Joss, seek help.
I feel the same way about a lot of the Trek series. With the original series, I kept wondering what fool would put Kirk in charge of a ship, since he gets several crewmembers killed every week with some reckless or cocky move that doesn't even usually serve any purpose. And on The Next Generation, I always pegged the Federation as an alliance of psychotics for allowing CHILDREN on a ship that gets threatened with destruction/invaded by hostile aliens on a weekly basis.