I hope this is not a sneaking attempt to force-feed us monopoly food. Like, you know, you get your full pay-cheque only if you eat this Monsanto-produced GM stuff. If you choose organic, we'll deduct 20%.
After all, this isn't Soviet Russia, where the govt. controls the megacorps!
Say corporations A, B & C have a certain market cornered, each owning 33% of it.
B is really a non-profit, being sustained by donations from A.
A's long-term goal is to drive C out of the market.
I am no game theorist, but common sense tells me that A should dispose of B later rather than sooner, since B is in its pocket anyway. Together, their 66% has a much better chance of taking over the other 33%.
Whereas if A first destroys B by withdrawing funding, then B's userbase is likely to bifurcate and go to A and C, in which case A's 50% would be fighting C's 50%, a much less advantageous situation than the first.
What I should do if I were A:
1. Keep sponsoring B, and together with it drive C out of the market
2. Withdraw funding from B, hopefully destroying it
3. Profit!
Good developers don't care for unnecessary licensing politics. They don't create software when there are perfectly fine alternatives they could use instead.
I have no idea about the Gnome development process or the community, so I won't comment on that specific point.
But if you're making the general statement that political ideology is unnecessary, and is mutually exclusive with technical skill, you may want to think again.
Writing the best code is an important goal, but don't you also need to think why and for whom you're coding? I'm sure you wouldn't want to think of yourself as a coding machine that mindlessly churns out the best code for whoever happens to own it. If you discern on that point, then you are already politically aware.
It is the hegemony of the have-s that makes some have-nots regard the politically motivated as zealots and lunatics.
Don't let them take you unawares, and turn you into their willing shill.
That's the problem with you geek types. You see, all you can think of playing with is your wife's iPhone. And then you complain about not getting it enough!!!
As far as I know, there aren't too many actual horror stories about GM animals messing up ecosystems.
However, there are hundreds of years worth of horror stories from introducing some species of animal or plant to help control another bothersome species.
You want to continue till there are too many horror stories and ecosystems are fucked up? GM technology hasn't had hundreds of years for us to observe the scale of its impact. If mankind continues to poke at the balance of ecosystems, you might just get your wish.
Slashdot article from June 2006: Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space
Slashdot, August 2010: Abandon Earth Or Die, Warns Hawking
Once, I would have written it off to deja vu and went on with my life. But the same article, 3 times? I might be human, but my memory is not that terrible, Slashdot!
Well, what can he do. He's been trying to warn us since 2006, but are we going? He'll keep repeating conscientiously every few years until we're gone.
There does not exist on earth more carbon than the earth can process.
All the carbon came from the earth. It was "processed" into the earth in the past after the living material was "done" with it.
you're being disingenuous. our planet is not a uniform, homogeneous body. the physical state and the location of carbon matters as much as, or even more than, its quantity. you wouldn't enjoy eating faeces or drinking urine, would you? yet those came from you, this morning.
If you are having a hard time with the way they handle the money, make a billion dollars, contribute half, then tell them what you think. 'Til then, shut up with the pedantry and nitpicking.
I can't criticise Bill Gates until I have a billion dollars? You realise that makes him answerable only to the handful of super-rich of the world?
Let me tell you this, as someone hailing from a not-so-free country: these kinds of leaks would have much less effect in non-free societies than they do now in the free West. For a very simple reason: in the West, the freedom of press may be imperfect, but by and large it still exists. You can disseminate that information far and wide. Just look at the list of newspapers which published the stories based on the leaks!
the freedom of speech and the press is a fiction that the western corporates/governments have to maintain, because that is an essential element of this whole democracy and free-country illusion that allows them to exploit their citizens largely with their complicity.
but when anyone is naive enough to take it for real, and exercise those freedoms without regard for the status quo, then they come out in their true colours.
russia and china do not need to maintain the illusion. they follow a different exploitation model.
Ideas do not belong to the first being to hold them in their mind. Art does not belong to the artist. I'm not going to say some hippie crap like art belongs to everyone, rather I say it doesn't belong to anyone, it just is. You can't own blue, righteous indignation, the smell of napalm, or the force (sorry Lucas).
You're confusing copyright with patents. Disembodied ideas can be patented, but not copyrighted. Copyright pertains only to specific implementations of artistic ideas. You can't have copyright over the colour blue, but you can have copyright over your painting that uses a certain shade of blue that you envisioned. You could have an idea to write a story about a lame sailor chasing a white whale, but to enjoy actual copyright, you'd have to write Moby Dick.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean given a chance to clone Einstein or Shakespeare, you'd choose not to?
Dude, if you're a US citizen, you should have posted that as AC.
could it not have been a dramatic deterioration of his ability to hear his off-key notes?
We've long established that the source of the human "soul" is in the brain.
eh? who established that? citation please.
Plato, is that you ???
http://chomikuj.pl/Enouqh/E-booki/txt/Arthur+C.+Clarke/Arthur+C.+Clarke+-+Silence+Please,71861083.txt/
After all, this isn't Soviet Russia, where the govt. controls the megacorps!
- t.
B is really a non-profit, being sustained by donations from A.
A's long-term goal is to drive C out of the market.
I am no game theorist, but common sense tells me that A should dispose of B later rather than sooner, since B is in its pocket anyway. Together, their 66% has a much better chance of taking over the other 33%.
Whereas if A first destroys B by withdrawing funding, then B's userbase is likely to bifurcate and go to A and C, in which case A's 50% would be fighting C's 50%, a much less advantageous situation than the first.
What I should do if I were A:
1. Keep sponsoring B, and together with it drive C out of the market
2. Withdraw funding from B, hopefully destroying it
3. Profit!
You know who A, B and C are.
Good developers don't care for unnecessary licensing politics. They don't create software when there are perfectly fine alternatives they could use instead.
I have no idea about the Gnome development process or the community, so I won't comment on that specific point.
But if you're making the general statement that political ideology is unnecessary, and is mutually exclusive with technical skill, you may want to think again.
Writing the best code is an important goal, but don't you also need to think why and for whom you're coding? I'm sure you wouldn't want to think of yourself as a coding machine that mindlessly churns out the best code for whoever happens to own it. If you discern on that point, then you are already politically aware.
It is the hegemony of the have-s that makes some have-nots regard the politically motivated as zealots and lunatics.
Don't let them take you unawares, and turn you into their willing shill.
- t.
64-bit Unix time will run out on December 4, precisely at 3:30:08 PM, 292,277,026,596 AD. It will be a Sunday.
What a coincidence -- that is also the year of Linux on the Desktop!
Personally, I've played with my wife's iphone
That's the problem with you geek types. You see, all you can think of playing with is your wife's iPhone. And then you complain about not getting it enough!!!
As far as I know, there aren't too many actual horror stories about GM animals messing up ecosystems.
However, there are hundreds of years worth of horror stories from introducing some species of animal or plant to help control another bothersome species.
You want to continue till there are too many horror stories and ecosystems are fucked up?
GM technology hasn't had hundreds of years for us to observe the scale of its impact. If mankind continues to poke at the balance of ecosystems, you might just get your wish.
Let me guess -- you do not live in a tropical country.
Expect a sudden influx of new slashdot members in a few years.
since you seem to be a fan, i'll request you to get his name right, else your quotes lose credibility. it's GANDHI, not GHANDI.
Well, what can he do. He's been trying to warn us since 2006, but are we going? He'll keep repeating conscientiously every few years until we're gone.
He was a Pakistani man who was copying and selling those copied games and jailbreaking devices.
[...]
Slashdot at its best.
Your justification includes the fact that he is Pakistani?
Racism at its worst.
There does not exist on earth more carbon than the earth can process.
All the carbon came from the earth. It was "processed" into the earth in the past after the living material was "done" with it.
you're being disingenuous. our planet is not a uniform, homogeneous body. the physical state and the location of carbon matters as much as, or even more than, its quantity. you wouldn't enjoy eating faeces or drinking urine, would you? yet those came from you, this morning.
Some uncontacted tribes literally have had no idea that sex even causes pregnancy
So how do you know this?
They were hoping electrons were shaped like Pac-man. This would where the antimatter went.
But would it where your went?
While agriculture requires backbreaking labour, hunter-gatherer societies only worked a couple of days a week.
That's because hunters hunt only for themselves, while farmers grow food for whole communities.
If you are having a hard time with the way they handle the money, make a billion dollars, contribute half, then tell them what you think. 'Til then, shut up with the pedantry and nitpicking.
I can't criticise Bill Gates until I have a billion dollars? You realise that makes him answerable only to the handful of super-rich of the world?
Shameless cock-sucking, really.
My only regret is that he's not 30 years younger, so that he'd have the energy and lifespan needed to better advance his goals.
Assange was born in 1971. That makes him 39 now. Lifespan yes, but energy (etc.) to do what he's doing at 9 years of age?
Not the politics, certainly, and I hope you don't mean the sex!
Let me tell you this, as someone hailing from a not-so-free country: these kinds of leaks would have much less effect in non-free societies than they do now in the free West. For a very simple reason: in the West, the freedom of press may be imperfect, but by and large it still exists. You can disseminate that information far and wide. Just look at the list of newspapers which published the stories based on the leaks!
the freedom of speech and the press is a fiction that the western corporates/governments have to maintain, because that is an essential element of this whole democracy and free-country illusion that allows them to exploit their citizens largely with their complicity.
but when anyone is naive enough to take it for real, and exercise those freedoms without regard for the status quo, then they come out in their true colours.
russia and china do not need to maintain the illusion. they follow a different exploitation model.
Ideas do not belong to the first being to hold them in their mind. Art does not belong to the artist. I'm not going to say some hippie crap like art belongs to everyone, rather I say it doesn't belong to anyone, it just is. You can't own blue, righteous indignation, the smell of napalm, or the force (sorry Lucas).
You're confusing copyright with patents. Disembodied ideas can be patented, but not copyrighted. Copyright pertains only to specific implementations of artistic ideas. You can't have copyright over the colour blue, but you can have copyright over your painting that uses a certain shade of blue that you envisioned. You could have an idea to write a story about a lame sailor chasing a white whale, but to enjoy actual copyright, you'd have to write Moby Dick.