I recently corresponded with the guy who runs PG. I wanted to write an application to interface with PG that allowed people to view the texts to their own liking. You can't customize a web browser to the hilt just for one damn page, so this way you could have a centralized place where you went to read these electronic books, it would allow you to highlight passages, email quotes, save bookmarks, all kinds of great shit. The only problem with writing it was that the index files on the FTP sites are total shit for a program to parse. Partial author names, partial title names, some places like "[Reserved for 2001, by Arthur C Clarke]", all kinds of stuff that makes parsing it almost impossible.
So I wrote him asking if he would make the destailed database or an ascii export of it available on the mirrors and such (the web page features all kinds of complex search features and a great browsing funciton to find certain books with ALL information in FULL, so he's got to have one somehwere). What did he reply with? "Sure, the aim of project guttenberg is to provide etexts to as many individuals as possible?" Hell no! He got pissed off and started saying he thought the website was a better idea (the website is shit, sir, sorry to let you in on it, but you can't have close to the kinds of features I was going to provide) and he would not provide any kind of computer-readable index file in order to prevent such things from happening!
So much for "Free texts readable by humans and computers alike" and the entire concept behind PG. They tell people they can feel free to convert the collection to HTML if they want and similar things, but I'm guessing that if that was done, PG would speak out against it and get quite pissed off. I wasn't even thinking of changing the format, just giving the user a really nice configurable reader!
Do a survey sometime, I would bet a very large majority of users don't use Linux. Slashdot COULD keep stats on this very easily by snooping headers, but its funny they don't isn't it? What would hapen is they found out that 1% of the Slashdot community is Linux users?
It doesn't say anywhere on Blizzards site that the selection will be random... it simply says you'll have a chance of getting in no matter how late... they may be doing it random, but I'd guess they're doing as you said and picking a good cross-section of machines and OS combinations and such and also looking for certain types of people to test it... like programmers and junk, they can help more in a test than just some guy who wants to play the game.
Hey, they were 2 days late on it (no doubt they rejected between 300 and 400 submissions of this on the 15th when it was posted on blizzard.com), your wishes were not totally unrealistic;)
yeah, they're going to have you download a game that spans 4 CDs. I think I'm one of the few people on the planet who would actually deal with that download (if it was resumable).
There's a reason why they ask for your shipping address...
Esperandi I swear I mirrored the entire ftp.etext.org/pub directory over a 56k connection.
Go back into Torment and replay it. What's that? Everything is the same and its boring?
Replay value kicks a good games ass almost every single time.
Esperandi Diablo's dungeons and all kinds of crap were randomly generated BTW in case you didn't know... personally I prefer real roguelikes, but Diablo was a good shot.
Well, most people chosen for beat tests are not chosen because they are Joe Q. User. Pointing out that you are a programmer and would be able to give comprehensive and detailed information about every fluke (for instance instead of trying to explain to them what it looked like when their collision test failed while you were up against a wall, you can tell them exactly that. even if its not right, its easier to decrypt than "I went up to this wall and then half the screen was a yellow-ish purple and somethin that looked like a rock was in the middle, my computer seems slower now, do you think it was a virus?!?!?").
Altho I think the real reason they want to do this is so that you can't signup a million times. I could have shipping addresses to a PO box, my home, all my relatives homes, my friends homes, my college box, my friends college boxes, etc, etc, etc and a free email address for every single one... but getting that many legit addresses is jus too much effort for most people to cheat to get in.
Plus, if you fuck with them like giving copies to all your friends, they can find out who you are.
Wrong. In order to set a cookie on your machine it must be set in the HTTP header. This means that if you go to xyz.com or whatever and they have a banner ad, xyz.com generates the HTTP header and puts in it a link to the banner ad when you go there. Doubleclick can not send you anything whatsoever because they are not sending you an HTTP header.
"If your paying for the access, then you should be able to use it as you wish. "
Quite wrong... if you're paying for the access, you agreed to pay for the access with restrictions on how you would use it according to the Acceptable Use Policies. If you enter into this agreement with the intent of violating the Acceptable Use Policies, they can cut your connection off. If you try to take them to court (why not? School rules are not laws, LAWS are laws. If a teacher takes your hat, nail them for petty theft. If a student tells you they're going to kick your ass, press assault charges.) they can very easily argue that you made the agreement in bad faith and you'll be left high and dry.
When you buy something, ANYTHING, you do it as an agreement with the seller. The seller sets conditions. If you don't like those conditions, you don't buy it, its as simple as that. I'd LOVE it if AT&T weren't complete moron jerkoff assholes and would unlimit the upstream of cable modems, but I want that bandwidth even with the restriction so I will buy them if they ever come ot this area (I don't know why I believe them every time they tell me it'll be a month or 2, they've been lying about it for over 3 years). I will not attempt to override this limit, I will not bitch about this limit, I will not claim I was FORCED to accept the limit, because I wasn't. I was presented with a choice and I took it. End of story.
Esperandi Personally I'd like it if our school networks were run into the ground with Napster, you have no idea how absolutely putrid out network is. NOTHING works on it. No reverse DNS so you can't access about half of the FTP sites out there including huge ones like export.andrew.cmu.edu. Through ICQ you can't send messages longer than 450 chars, you can't transfer files, hell until a couple months ago they blocked ICQ completely. Students have done significant research to determine why inTRAnet page grabs of the schools own site from within their network are slower than shit (about 50x slower than going outside to the net), determined the problems, went to the administrators and then were told if they didn't stop looking into how the network worked they would be fired from their campus jobs and all net access would be revoked. Thank gawd I don't live on campus.
Basically, you're switching because why? It uses Google (so does google), its pages are small and load fast (so does google), and it has a well-designed interface (so does google). So why did you say you were switching again?
If they called it Google, would that entice you even further to switch?
Cookies do not gather data on you. A cookie can be read by a site only if that specific site has set the cookie in the first place. The worst a cookie could do is track what you do ON THEIR SITE. Things that people attribute to cookies like tracking your movement on the web are not the function of cookies, that is something that is included in the HTTP header. I've never understood why people insist that cookies violate your privacy... at the very worst, they notice that you go to the "Hard drives" section of THEIR OWN SITE more often than other places... so what? Its not like they can tell you just came from Jack's Booty Shack from them, that's the job of the HTTP headers.
Good point, I was just thinking of Computer Science, but even there we really need someone to back real software engineering for corporations to rebut the socialist Open Source chaos development model (maybe I've just overlooked the requirements, specification, etc documents for Linux)
Esperandi And we don't really need multiple philosophy professors, just one type - mine.;) Sure, tel yourself I'm joking, but I really am that sure of my philosophy.
yeah, there are several jobs open at the USPTO for people to evaluate computer-oriented patents, and I mention this every time it comes up but for gods sake, don't apply for those jobs or even mention that they exist, bitch because they're not computer literate!
Yeah, and I'm highly offended by aboriginals because they don't know a lot about computers! Don't educate them, bitch!
These files have been available on the net and thru the FBI site for *YEARS*...
Esperandi
From the machine to the network
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The End of Unix?
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I find this idea laughable, we made this transiton long ago.. look at how many people use their PC solely to surf and as a really heavy typewriter.
What you will see in the future is more things like Napster, Quake 3, etc. Things which take advantage of the network but do so by using the power of the PC and not relying on something like a web server so much. I can definitely see the web shriking in the near future. Imagine how fast, efficient, manageable, customizable, etc, etc, eBay could become if it was a simple client application with the logo graphics cached, connecting to a distributed server farm, keeping track and tracking your auctions pulling data straight from the eBay databases, etc? Think of how efficient Slashdot could be as a distributed client application, relying on the PC to do a lot of the computation like sorting, getting the slashbox data, etc, etc...
Esperandi And hopefully it will be fueled by adware. Programers get paid, users get to use for free, and the babies who don't realize that advertisement is subsidizing a life they wouldn't be willing to pay for get a fe more sharp kicks to the crotch.
Wouldn't an online univeristy be quite inexpensive? Instead of having departments you would have 1 professor in each area. The "classes" would just be a set of web pages, maybe even tests and the like. I guess the "professors" would have to stick around to update the pages, but its not like they have to show up in a room and talk for an hour...
Esperandi
Perpetuating urban legend
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Happy Pi Day!
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I can't believe you say it came from an URBAN LEGEND site and then speak it as if it were truth, do you have any clue what an urban rumor is?
Go look it up, but be careful not to rustle the cactus by the bookcase, its filled with spidr eggs and if they hatch we'll have to burn down the house.
Esperandi
Pi Day only in the U.S.
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Happy Pi Day!
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I usually want to spank anyone who makes observations like this, BUT, i might as well make such an observation myself... Most other countries take note of the date as 14-3-00, not 3-14-00. It may look different to you, but it makes a lot more sense. Day, month, year. A progression. Insated of month, day, year which makes no sense.
I only know this kind of trivia because this is the way the mainframe at work keeps track of dates;)
"If you own every expression ever produced by another person, then every person owns every expression ever produced by you. Not "just" any music you've created, or movies you may have made, but everything you've ever typed, every Slashdot post you've ever made, no longer belongs to you, and none of the copyright protections apply to it, including some nice ones like "the right to be credited with authorship". "
I imagine that you thought this paragraph would perhaps prompt a few people to question their undying devotion to a socialism of expressions. I'm sorry, but it will fall on deaf ears. You see, the people who advocate free exchange (its not even truly exchange, that implies mutual agreement, they want to take no matter what the creator thinks) of expressions have no capacity for expression or else they doubt that their expressions are any good.
They look around and see that either they have not the ability to create a movie or possibly they think their movies aren't as good as the next guy... but if only there was no such thing as censorship, you could basically do whatever you want and never have to worry about getting scorned for making a terrible movie (it was a product of the community! they'll cry). The only sacrifice they have to make is the other end of the spectrum, they have to sacrifice takign credit for great achievements they make. Look around Slashdot, you will find that a great many people have already made this sacrifice and are offended by anyone who has not. You get paid for your work? Heretic! You want people to use your product and not use your competitors product? Monopolist! There are a hundred situations in which people can defend their right over property for having created it and Slashdot has an epithet for every one.
The poster brings up a good point about ethics when he says the DMCA does not support morality. However, he does not support his claim with any argument at all, so apparently it was just a weak, mean jab at the thing and not a seriously held position.
But let's look at this. Way back when the RIAA first formed, they were formed to protect artists and record companies from the mafia which was reproducing records and selling them at slashed prices, totally bootlegging the music industry. What has changed from then and into today? As I've seen other people mention, it has become extremely convenient for individuals to take on the role of the mafia in redistributing music which they had no part in creating (and most likely don't have the talent to even conceive of creating such a thing). I know a few people will argue that money is evil and since no one is getting any money at any point of the chain, the interaction must be holy. That's bunk. We've got to trade something in order to be able to get paid justly for our work and in order to pay other people justly for their work which you use. If we stop trading money, we'll have to go back to trading men, and I don't think anyone wants that.
So, in a day and age when thievery has become extremely simple, does this change the principle behind thievery? Is it moral to do anything easy? How about immoral to work hard?
Think about the principles behind your arguments and not the end result (ie you getting to get every song you ever like for free).
I guess the people who made the movie (Touchstone I think, Disney owns them I know) are kinda in hot water because one of the trailers says "Twenty five years of conspiracy are about to be unveiled" and NASA consulted HEAVILY on the movie (as they have done for MANY Disney movies in the past)... NASA didn't know that trailer was going to run and from their reaction, it seems they're quite miffed about it. Apparently its all about the treatment of the face on mars in the movie..
From pre-reviews I've heard, there are points in the movie where the audiences actually shouted "GOOD! I'm glad you're dead!" and the reviews haven't been all that good but I think I'll see it anyways...
On the fact of life on Mars now or in the past, its way possible. Just yesterday I read on the AP Wire that in this metal mine in California they've found these microbes that thrive in 115F environments and eat iron and secrete sulphuric acid... never before seen and they have no idea how they got there and anyone previously would have guessed life would never have existed there. Similar to the things that live down at the vents at the ocean floor miles down (well, 2) every guess beforehand would have been that life could not exist in such a toxic environment. After hearin about all that, I don't see how anyone would be really stupefied if they found microbes and maybe bigger things on Mars, though Europa looks amazingly promising in comparison...
IANAL of course, but I know that anything over 200 miles off the coast in the ocean is complete legal limbo, I would imagine the same thing applies in space, although there may very well be UN agreements of something because we couldn't have people making attack satellites to kill ours and getting away with it just because its in space (like you can go 200 miles out from the coast into the ocean, slay a bunch of people, then come back with no repercussions (at least from what I've read about hospice cruises where they euthenize dozens of elderly sick people once they get 200 miles out))
No, they don't have to worry about those things. I don't think anyone is taking the care packages that get to Ethiopia, there is no elite king there like there is in Iraq. And they don't have to worry about the armed guys showing up, the US will come along and save them again. So they spend their time waiting for food from the skies, and they get it. Why do more?
And yes, painters and writers and inventors had a place to live and stuff to eat - because they worked and they earned it, either getting it from the patron in return for their work or by working a job like a patent office clerk like Einstein did. Which proves my point. When people are subsidized and everything is given to them on a silver platter, they simply see no need to get up and make things better.
Esperandi Besides, if Ethiopians suddenly started pulling in great crops and feeding everyone adequately, how often would those big crates of food come? In a system of charity like this, your virtue is your poverty. The whispered phrase behind all of these actions is "Rich only become rich by exploiting the poor, therefore it is virtuous to be poor, the poorer you are, the more virtuous."
You're right, I did partially contradict myself, I apologize, I should have made the distinctions clearer. In the countries I'm thinking of (I don't think of Pakistan or any other country that has the atomic bomb or technological advance that great as third world countries, I honestly don't know the real definition... I'm guessing it might be something to do with GDP per capita in which case it is literally impossible to eliminate them similar to the impossibility of removing the poor in the U.S. (unless everyone has EXACTLY the same number of pennies and lives in EXACTLY the same place, some will always be poorer)). I was mainly thinking of Iraq, China, etc, etc, the countries whose main control over its people is arguing that capitlist countries are harsh and evil, they drain you of your humanity, they isolate you and extort you. If they get on the net they'll find out the inventors in capitalist countries are not in actuality chained and forced to produce for their grand imperialist system. I can easily see other countries believing that the US oversteps its power and would like to be a world government - i think our government pretty much is like that right now. But, the real difference to the common people in China or Cuba who are told the government will take care of them because making them take care of themselves is evil and harsh, is that they will find out that if they were left to their own devices, they really COULD do great things (although this point of view is being greatly reduced in the U.S.). The governmnet can't have that. At best, people in communist and socialist countries in the eyes of the government should believe that they are great enough to sacrifice themselves for the country.
An englishman from a few years back, can't recall even remotely who it was, was talking about how englishmen and americans view their country so VERY differently that Americans can't understand it. They sincerely and for-fact believe that they are property of the country. They know in their deepest soul that the Queen provides for them and would die in a minute for her. In America, people don't believe that. They understand the truth, that they provide for themselves (well, if they're employed). If people in communist and socialist countries are shown THAT and shown that things as great as the Internet come from it... how could they stand such a stifling government? When you tell people in China that they'd be freer in the U.S. they'd say to you "What do you mean freer? I am free, aren't I?" I've talked to missionaries who do work in China a few times and they say the most common question the Chinese ask him is how America could be a good country without a communist system. They simply can't understand it. And he can't explain it to them because they not only won't understand it but they CANT. it takes a profound culture-shock to bring them around to understanding. He usually has to tell them its because we've got lots of natural resources and they can understand that, not having a lot of those. So they're left thinking that China would be amazingly great if it was red as blood but had good natural resources...
Sadly, a lot of people in America don't realize half of this and they actually see a lot of good in socialist and communist systems. God help us all if those people come to power and make any significant changes...
Just wait until they actually DO package the VCLs with a distro and Delphi programmers from Windows start coming over to Linux... I'll be surprised if something as extreme as a firebombing doesn't happen.
Linux zealots are just that, zealots.
Esperandi Not a Linux zealot, but a very good predictor of them;) (that statement offended all Linux zealots more than suggesting they might firebomb a place, I guarantee)
Slashdot Mirror
I recently corresponded with the guy who runs PG. I wanted to write an application to interface with PG that allowed people to view the texts to their own liking. You can't customize a web browser to the hilt just for one damn page, so this way you could have a centralized place where you went to read these electronic books, it would allow you to highlight passages, email quotes, save bookmarks, all kinds of great shit. The only problem with writing it was that the index files on the FTP sites are total shit for a program to parse. Partial author names, partial title names, some places like "[Reserved for 2001, by Arthur C Clarke]", all kinds of stuff that makes parsing it almost impossible.
So I wrote him asking if he would make the destailed database or an ascii export of it available on the mirrors and such (the web page features all kinds of complex search features and a great browsing funciton to find certain books with ALL information in FULL, so he's got to have one somehwere). What did he reply with? "Sure, the aim of project guttenberg is to provide etexts to as many individuals as possible?" Hell no! He got pissed off and started saying he thought the website was a better idea (the website is shit, sir, sorry to let you in on it, but you can't have close to the kinds of features I was going to provide) and he would not provide any kind of computer-readable index file in order to prevent such things from happening!
So much for "Free texts readable by humans and computers alike" and the entire concept behind PG. They tell people they can feel free to convert the collection to HTML if they want and similar things, but I'm guessing that if that was done, PG would speak out against it and get quite pissed off. I wasn't even thinking of changing the format, just giving the user a really nice configurable reader!
Esperandi
Do a survey sometime, I would bet a very large majority of users don't use Linux. Slashdot COULD keep stats on this very easily by snooping headers, but its funny they don't isn't it? What would hapen is they found out that 1% of the Slashdot community is Linux users?
Esperandi
It doesn't say anywhere on Blizzards site that the selection will be random... it simply says you'll have a chance of getting in no matter how late... they may be doing it random, but I'd guess they're doing as you said and picking a good cross-section of machines and OS combinations and such and also looking for certain types of people to test it... like programmers and junk, they can help more in a test than just some guy who wants to play the game.
Esperandi
Hey, they were 2 days late on it (no doubt they rejected between 300 and 400 submissions of this on the 15th when it was posted on blizzard.com), your wishes were not totally unrealistic ;)
Esperandi
yeah, they're going to have you download a game that spans 4 CDs. I think I'm one of the few people on the planet who would actually deal with that download (if it was resumable).
/pub directory over a 56k connection.
There's a reason why they ask for your shipping address...
Esperandi
I swear I mirrored the entire ftp.etext.org
Go back into Torment and replay it. What's that? Everything is the same and its boring?
Replay value kicks a good games ass almost every single time.
Esperandi
Diablo's dungeons and all kinds of crap were randomly generated BTW in case you didn't know... personally I prefer real roguelikes, but Diablo was a good shot.
Well, most people chosen for beat tests are not chosen because they are Joe Q. User. Pointing out that you are a programmer and would be able to give comprehensive and detailed information about every fluke (for instance instead of trying to explain to them what it looked like when their collision test failed while you were up against a wall, you can tell them exactly that. even if its not right, its easier to decrypt than "I went up to this wall and then half the screen was a yellow-ish purple and somethin that looked like a rock was in the middle, my computer seems slower now, do you think it was a virus?!?!?").
Altho I think the real reason they want to do this is so that you can't signup a million times. I could have shipping addresses to a PO box, my home, all my relatives homes, my friends homes, my college box, my friends college boxes, etc, etc, etc and a free email address for every single one... but getting that many legit addresses is jus too much effort for most people to cheat to get in.
Plus, if you fuck with them like giving copies to all your friends, they can find out who you are.
Esperandi
Wrong. In order to set a cookie on your machine it must be set in the HTTP header. This means that if you go to xyz.com or whatever and they have a banner ad, xyz.com generates the HTTP header and puts in it a link to the banner ad when you go there. Doubleclick can not send you anything whatsoever because they are not sending you an HTTP header.
Esperandi
"If your paying for the access, then you should be able to use it as you wish. "
Quite wrong... if you're paying for the access, you agreed to pay for the access with restrictions on how you would use it according to the Acceptable Use Policies. If you enter into this agreement with the intent of violating the Acceptable Use Policies, they can cut your connection off. If you try to take them to court (why not? School rules are not laws, LAWS are laws. If a teacher takes your hat, nail them for petty theft. If a student tells you they're going to kick your ass, press assault charges.) they can very easily argue that you made the agreement in bad faith and you'll be left high and dry.
When you buy something, ANYTHING, you do it as an agreement with the seller. The seller sets conditions. If you don't like those conditions, you don't buy it, its as simple as that. I'd LOVE it if AT&T weren't complete moron jerkoff assholes and would unlimit the upstream of cable modems, but I want that bandwidth even with the restriction so I will buy them if they ever come ot this area (I don't know why I believe them every time they tell me it'll be a month or 2, they've been lying about it for over 3 years). I will not attempt to override this limit, I will not bitch about this limit, I will not claim I was FORCED to accept the limit, because I wasn't. I was presented with a choice and I took it. End of story.
Esperandi
Personally I'd like it if our school networks were run into the ground with Napster, you have no idea how absolutely putrid out network is. NOTHING works on it. No reverse DNS so you can't access about half of the FTP sites out there including huge ones like export.andrew.cmu.edu. Through ICQ you can't send messages longer than 450 chars, you can't transfer files, hell until a couple months ago they blocked ICQ completely. Students have done significant research to determine why inTRAnet page grabs of the schools own site from within their network are slower than shit (about 50x slower than going outside to the net), determined the problems, went to the administrators and then were told if they didn't stop looking into how the network worked they would be fired from their campus jobs and all net access would be revoked. Thank gawd I don't live on campus.
Basically, you're switching because why? It uses Google (so does google), its pages are small and load fast (so does google), and it has a well-designed interface (so does google). So why did you say you were switching again?
If they called it Google, would that entice you even further to switch?
Esperandi
Cookies do not gather data on you. A cookie can be read by a site only if that specific site has set the cookie in the first place. The worst a cookie could do is track what you do ON THEIR SITE. Things that people attribute to cookies like tracking your movement on the web are not the function of cookies, that is something that is included in the HTTP header. I've never understood why people insist that cookies violate your privacy... at the very worst, they notice that you go to the "Hard drives" section of THEIR OWN SITE more often than other places... so what? Its not like they can tell you just came from Jack's Booty Shack from them, that's the job of the HTTP headers.
Esperandi
Good point, I was just thinking of Computer Science, but even there we really need someone to back real software engineering for corporations to rebut the socialist Open Source chaos development model (maybe I've just overlooked the requirements, specification, etc documents for Linux)
;)
Esperandi
And we don't really need multiple philosophy professors, just one type - mine.
Sure, tel yourself I'm joking, but I really am that sure of my philosophy.
yeah, there are several jobs open at the USPTO for people to evaluate computer-oriented patents, and I mention this every time it comes up but for gods sake, don't apply for those jobs or even mention that they exist, bitch because they're not computer literate!
Yeah, and I'm highly offended by aboriginals because they don't know a lot about computers! Don't educate them, bitch!
Esperandi
GRR
These files have been available on the net and thru the FBI site for *YEARS*...
Esperandi
I find this idea laughable, we made this transiton long ago.. look at how many people use their PC solely to surf and as a really heavy typewriter.
What you will see in the future is more things like Napster, Quake 3, etc. Things which take advantage of the network but do so by using the power of the PC and not relying on something like a web server so much. I can definitely see the web shriking in the near future. Imagine how fast, efficient, manageable, customizable, etc, etc, eBay could become if it was a simple client application with the logo graphics cached, connecting to a distributed server farm, keeping track and tracking your auctions pulling data straight from the eBay databases, etc? Think of how efficient Slashdot could be as a distributed client application, relying on the PC to do a lot of the computation like sorting, getting the slashbox data, etc, etc...
Esperandi
And hopefully it will be fueled by adware. Programers get paid, users get to use for free, and the babies who don't realize that advertisement is subsidizing a life they wouldn't be willing to pay for get a fe more sharp kicks to the crotch.
Wouldn't an online univeristy be quite inexpensive? Instead of having departments you would have 1 professor in each area. The "classes" would just be a set of web pages, maybe even tests and the like. I guess the "professors" would have to stick around to update the pages, but its not like they have to show up in a room and talk for an hour...
Esperandi
I can't believe you say it came from an URBAN LEGEND site and then speak it as if it were truth, do you have any clue what an urban rumor is?
Go look it up, but be careful not to rustle the cactus by the bookcase, its filled with spidr eggs and if they hatch we'll have to burn down the house.
Esperandi
I usually want to spank anyone who makes observations like this, BUT, i might as well make such an observation myself... Most other countries take note of the date as 14-3-00, not 3-14-00. It may look different to you, but it makes a lot more sense. Day, month, year. A progression. Insated of month, day, year which makes no sense.
;)
I only know this kind of trivia because this is the way the mainframe at work keeps track of dates
Esperandi
"If you own every expression ever produced by another person, then every person owns every expression ever produced by you. Not "just" any music you've created, or movies you may have made, but everything you've ever typed, every Slashdot post you've ever made, no longer belongs to you, and none of the copyright protections apply to it, including some nice ones like "the right to be credited with authorship". "
I imagine that you thought this paragraph would perhaps prompt a few people to question their undying devotion to a socialism of expressions. I'm sorry, but it will fall on deaf ears. You see, the people who advocate free exchange (its not even truly exchange, that implies mutual agreement, they want to take no matter what the creator thinks) of expressions have no capacity for expression or else they doubt that their expressions are any good.
They look around and see that either they have not the ability to create a movie or possibly they think their movies aren't as good as the next guy... but if only there was no such thing as censorship, you could basically do whatever you want and never have to worry about getting scorned for making a terrible movie (it was a product of the community! they'll cry). The only sacrifice they have to make is the other end of the spectrum, they have to sacrifice takign credit for great achievements they make. Look around Slashdot, you will find that a great many people have already made this sacrifice and are offended by anyone who has not. You get paid for your work? Heretic! You want people to use your product and not use your competitors product? Monopolist! There are a hundred situations in which people can defend their right over property for having created it and Slashdot has an epithet for every one.
Esperandi
The poster brings up a good point about ethics when he says the DMCA does not support morality. However, he does not support his claim with any argument at all, so apparently it was just a weak, mean jab at the thing and not a seriously held position.
But let's look at this. Way back when the RIAA first formed, they were formed to protect artists and record companies from the mafia which was reproducing records and selling them at slashed prices, totally bootlegging the music industry. What has changed from then and into today? As I've seen other people mention, it has become extremely convenient for individuals to take on the role of the mafia in redistributing music which they had no part in creating (and most likely don't have the talent to even conceive of creating such a thing). I know a few people will argue that money is evil and since no one is getting any money at any point of the chain, the interaction must be holy. That's bunk. We've got to trade something in order to be able to get paid justly for our work and in order to pay other people justly for their work which you use. If we stop trading money, we'll have to go back to trading men, and I don't think anyone wants that.
So, in a day and age when thievery has become extremely simple, does this change the principle behind thievery? Is it moral to do anything easy? How about immoral to work hard?
Think about the principles behind your arguments and not the end result (ie you getting to get every song you ever like for free).
Esperandi
I guess the people who made the movie (Touchstone I think, Disney owns them I know) are kinda in hot water because one of the trailers says "Twenty five years of conspiracy are about to be unveiled" and NASA consulted HEAVILY on the movie (as they have done for MANY Disney movies in the past)... NASA didn't know that trailer was going to run and from their reaction, it seems they're quite miffed about it. Apparently its all about the treatment of the face on mars in the movie..
From pre-reviews I've heard, there are points in the movie where the audiences actually shouted "GOOD! I'm glad you're dead!" and the reviews haven't been all that good but I think I'll see it anyways...
On the fact of life on Mars now or in the past, its way possible. Just yesterday I read on the AP Wire that in this metal mine in California they've found these microbes that thrive in 115F environments and eat iron and secrete sulphuric acid... never before seen and they have no idea how they got there and anyone previously would have guessed life would never have existed there. Similar to the things that live down at the vents at the ocean floor miles down (well, 2) every guess beforehand would have been that life could not exist in such a toxic environment. After hearin about all that, I don't see how anyone would be really stupefied if they found microbes and maybe bigger things on Mars, though Europa looks amazingly promising in comparison...
Esperandi
IANAL of course, but I know that anything over 200 miles off the coast in the ocean is complete legal limbo, I would imagine the same thing applies in space, although there may very well be UN agreements of something because we couldn't have people making attack satellites to kill ours and getting away with it just because its in space (like you can go 200 miles out from the coast into the ocean, slay a bunch of people, then come back with no repercussions (at least from what I've read about hospice cruises where they euthenize dozens of elderly sick people once they get 200 miles out))
Esperandi
No, they don't have to worry about those things. I don't think anyone is taking the care packages that get to Ethiopia, there is no elite king there like there is in Iraq. And they don't have to worry about the armed guys showing up, the US will come along and save them again. So they spend their time waiting for food from the skies, and they get it. Why do more?
And yes, painters and writers and inventors had a place to live and stuff to eat - because they worked and they earned it, either getting it from the patron in return for their work or by working a job like a patent office clerk like Einstein did. Which proves my point. When people are subsidized and everything is given to them on a silver platter, they simply see no need to get up and make things better.
Esperandi
Besides, if Ethiopians suddenly started pulling in great crops and feeding everyone adequately, how often would those big crates of food come? In a system of charity like this, your virtue is your poverty. The whispered phrase behind all of these actions is "Rich only become rich by exploiting the poor, therefore it is virtuous to be poor, the poorer you are, the more virtuous."
You're right, I did partially contradict myself, I apologize, I should have made the distinctions clearer. In the countries I'm thinking of (I don't think of Pakistan or any other country that has the atomic bomb or technological advance that great as third world countries, I honestly don't know the real definition... I'm guessing it might be something to do with GDP per capita in which case it is literally impossible to eliminate them similar to the impossibility of removing the poor in the U.S. (unless everyone has EXACTLY the same number of pennies and lives in EXACTLY the same place, some will always be poorer)). I was mainly thinking of Iraq, China, etc, etc, the countries whose main control over its people is arguing that capitlist countries are harsh and evil, they drain you of your humanity, they isolate you and extort you. If they get on the net they'll find out the inventors in capitalist countries are not in actuality chained and forced to produce for their grand imperialist system. I can easily see other countries believing that the US oversteps its power and would like to be a world government - i think our government pretty much is like that right now. But, the real difference to the common people in China or Cuba who are told the government will take care of them because making them take care of themselves is evil and harsh, is that they will find out that if they were left to their own devices, they really COULD do great things (although this point of view is being greatly reduced in the U.S.). The governmnet can't have that. At best, people in communist and socialist countries in the eyes of the government should believe that they are great enough to sacrifice themselves for the country.
An englishman from a few years back, can't recall even remotely who it was, was talking about how englishmen and americans view their country so VERY differently that Americans can't understand it. They sincerely and for-fact believe that they are property of the country. They know in their deepest soul that the Queen provides for them and would die in a minute for her. In America, people don't believe that. They understand the truth, that they provide for themselves (well, if they're employed). If people in communist and socialist countries are shown THAT and shown that things as great as the Internet come from it... how could they stand such a stifling government? When you tell people in China that they'd be freer in the U.S. they'd say to you "What do you mean freer? I am free, aren't I?" I've talked to missionaries who do work in China a few times and they say the most common question the Chinese ask him is how America could be a good country without a communist system. They simply can't understand it. And he can't explain it to them because they not only won't understand it but they CANT. it takes a profound culture-shock to bring them around to understanding. He usually has to tell them its because we've got lots of natural resources and they can understand that, not having a lot of those. So they're left thinking that China would be amazingly great if it was red as blood but had good natural resources...
Sadly, a lot of people in America don't realize half of this and they actually see a lot of good in socialist and communist systems. God help us all if those people come to power and make any significant changes...
Esperandi
Just wait until they actually DO package the VCLs with a distro and Delphi programmers from Windows start coming over to Linux... I'll be surprised if something as extreme as a firebombing doesn't happen.
;) (that statement offended all Linux zealots more than suggesting they might firebomb a place, I guarantee)
Linux zealots are just that, zealots.
Esperandi
Not a Linux zealot, but a very good predictor of them