>How much do you think the cost of development would be reduced if drugs were cooperatively developed, instead of in secrecy?
The thing is, there's nothing stopping people now from cooperatively developing stuff, except economics. You don't have to restrict others with IP law, it's just that self-interest is the way to get most people off their butts and working. Let's face it, there's plenty of things that need doing that no one would ever choose to do without being paid for it.
Not knowing the particulars, it's possible Wankel would have come up with this engine without IP, and Mazda might have funded it's development. But I think it's more likely Mazda funded its development simply because they thought it would pay off, so with no IP, you would never had heard of it. Given a choice between waiting 17 years for the patent to expire and not having the Wankel engine at all, I'll take the former.
>This article isn't very well thought out, but I thought one part was interesting - where he said congress is EXTENDING COPYRIGHT to a century after the authors death for the sake of establised publishing companies.
I for one would contribute to the legal defense fund for anyone who would challenge these extensions on the basis of unconstitutionality. The Constitution grants the power to establish IP protections "for a limited time". 100+ years is in no meaningful sense a limited time.
If you used one you would be charged with battery...
Sorry, but I had to.
Re:Relax and enjoy school and Life. Work can wait.
on
The Dark Side of IT
·
· Score: 1
>Is getting a Master's Degree worth it?
I have two master's (EE and CS), and worked towards a Ph.D. I'm finally starting to achieve pay parity with a friend who got his B.S. a year after I got mine. Now, maybe I'm just not good at selling myself, but I haven't found it the ticket to wealth. (Workwise, though, my current job is good and uses a lot of the fun stuff I learned in grad school, so it wasn't a total waste -- just a serious economic drain.)
My company fired the only programmer it had with a Ph.D., so they don't guarantee job security either.
>Is the only use of a Phd to be able to become a teacher?
Not the only use, you can do corporate research with a Ph.D. (I have a friend who does that for Hughes) It's not a financial win, but it's good if that's what you want to do.
>I don't know of any mother board that has even 2 AGP slots, so a board with 4 isn't avail.
I b'leeve the Metabyte approach is to use a single AGP board, and the other board(s) PCI. They connect via a special feature connector. Check out this article.
By the way, I suggested doing something like this game (I think I called it Tux64) on Slashdot about six months ago. I'm glad you started working on it so promptly you started six months before I even suggested it...:-)
(Original poster following up) Actually, it turns out IE was handling it better than Netscape 4.51, which would just sit and spin its wheels. I had just downloaded the new Mozilla -- which didn't render the page right, but didn't wig out either -- so had been using that as the basis for judgement. So of the latest non-development browsers from the Big Two, best implementation goes to IE5.
I just tried IE5 with Slashdot, and it does not like the banners at all -- so much so that it stops rendering the page and displays a page of complaints about the problem. To get around this, I have to hit the stop button before it has completely loaded the banner.
Do you have this problem? Is Rob intentionally driving IE users nuts?:-) Do you turn off images? Seems to me like it's overreacting a bit to hide the whole page because of a problem with a single element.
With these movies coming out so much time after the originals, they're coming out when many of us who saw it as kids now have kids of our own to take to it. (My boy is just a little young for it right now, but by the time Eps 2 & 3 roll around, I should be able to take him.) So while I hate the overhyping, I've got to admit, there's a certain amount of hope that he'll find it enjoyable enough that it will be sort of a vicarious shared experience between us.
As is, it feels kind of strange realizing I'm part of the last generation of first world humanity (barring catastrophe) not to grow up with computers -- at least, not until I was 15 or 16 -- VCRs, cable TV, etc. Heck, I probably would have had a younger sibling if medical technology had been just a couple of years more advanced. (My dad was RH+, my mom RH-.)
Sometimes a power outage can be a good thing
on
Star Wars Toy Mania
·
· Score: 1
The power got knocked out at my office, so I started my lunch time errands early. As I went in to Tos'R'Us to see if they had Star Wars lego for me to get my boy, I discovered three of my fellow employees buying figures for themselves. And it turns out even more of them had been there or were about to get there, all thanks to the power outage.
Got the Lego sets (after months of looking for them), woo hoo! Sometimes having a kid is a great excuse...
Yellow could be called "banana", to keep the flavor analogy going.
I think I want a bunch of blinking LEDs on the front of my next machine, that blink randomly most of the time but occasionally show short random messages.
One thing I miss in the ASCII editors for Linux I've looked at so far is the ability to mark a block for copying/cutting by holding down the shift key while using the cursor control keys. I even went so far as to run Notepad with Wine to get this on Linux. Are there any native text editors that support this? Double-clicking to mark a word would also be nice.
>I came to the conclusion yesterday that commercial software is for people who hate their job so much you have to pay them to do it.
Like Linus and Alan Cox? Or all the guys who improved Apache as part of their jobs keeping web servers going?
Meanwhile, exactly what *are* you going to do to earn a living? Most of us picked our employment based on what we liked doing and thought we could make a living doing.
>How many tens of thousands of people were murdered in New York or Los Angeles last year alone?
Ten thousand is approximately the total number of murders in the US in an average year. New York had the second-most murders of US cities for 1998, with a total of 629 (Chicago, at 689, had the dubious distinction of first place.) Given that New York's population is around 10 million, this means the murder rate was about 4 times as high.
An excite search on +new +york +murder returned this page, among others: http://204.202.137.113/sections/us/DailyNews/mur ders990101.html You have an immense amount of information at your fingertips. Consider using it.
I and others have said it before, but it seems to me it would hugely reduce Slashdot bandwidth if the comments were accessible via NNTP. Perhaps we could persuade Rob to work on that rather than submitting so many stories? Rob, I promise I'll buy a Slashdot T-shirt if you do...
If the stories themselves were only accessible via WWW, the banner hit count shouldn't be changed much. (I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen any rude remarks about the recent Ziff-Davis banners, BTW...:-)
I realize the following avoids fixing the root problem, but anyway...
If you really hate high school, but are a good student, see if there's a chance you can graduate early. A friend of mine skipped 11th grade by taking English in summer school. Just think, one less year of torture...
>Why should I boycott the company that, without it's existence, wouldn't allow me to experience some great titles?
The people who would use a hacked emulator are largely the same people who will be able to get their hands on one now anyway, since the code exists. Meanwhile, I had no interest in Playstation titles until I heard about Bleem. So by taking legal action against the emulators, they've lost me as a customer for Playstation titles.
Meanwhile, I find the precedent of "I can stop you doing X, because X *might* allow someone else to do Y" to be intolerable in general.
He did! Note that he didn't say anything about suing a commercial vendor if something goes wrong, just about having a salesperson to berate if it did. He's learning. Just a bit, but it *is* progress.
Slashdot Mirror
>How much do you think the cost of development would be reduced if drugs were cooperatively
developed, instead of in secrecy?
The thing is, there's nothing stopping people now from cooperatively developing stuff, except economics. You don't have to restrict others with IP law, it's just that self-interest is the way to get most people off their butts and working. Let's face it, there's plenty of things that need doing that no one would ever choose to do without being paid for it.
Not knowing the particulars, it's possible Wankel would have come up with this engine without IP, and Mazda might have funded it's development. But I think it's more likely Mazda funded its development simply because they thought it would pay off, so with no IP, you would never had heard of it. Given a choice between waiting 17 years for the patent to expire and not having the Wankel engine at all, I'll take the former.
>This article isn't very well thought out, but I thought one part was interesting - where he said congress is EXTENDING COPYRIGHT to a century after the authors death for the sake of establised publishing companies.
I for one would contribute to the legal defense fund for anyone who would challenge these extensions on the basis of unconstitutionality. The Constitution grants the power to establish IP protections "for a limited time". 100+ years is in no meaningful sense a limited time.
If you used one you would be charged with battery...
Sorry, but I had to.
>Is getting a Master's Degree worth it?
I have two master's (EE and CS), and worked towards a Ph.D. I'm finally starting to achieve pay parity with a friend who got his B.S. a year after I got mine. Now, maybe I'm just not good at selling myself, but I haven't found it the ticket to wealth. (Workwise, though, my current job is good and uses a lot of the fun stuff I learned in grad school, so it wasn't a total waste -- just a serious economic drain.)
My company fired the only programmer it had with a Ph.D., so they don't guarantee job security either.
>Is the only use of a Phd to be able to become a teacher?
Not the only use, you can do corporate research with a Ph.D. (I have a friend who does that for Hughes) It's not a financial win, but it's good if that's what you want to do.
>Yeah, and the police will be that much more inclined to USE this thing than fire a bullet.
Indeed, it makes a handy torture device, both for bad cops and bad non-cops. Haven't tasers been outlawed in many states for this very reason?
>I don't know of any mother board that has even 2 AGP slots, so a board with 4 isn't avail.
I b'leeve the Metabyte approach is to use a single AGP board, and the other board(s) PCI. They connect via a special feature connector. Check out this article.
By the way, I suggested doing something like this game (I think I called it Tux64) on Slashdot about six months ago. I'm glad you started working on it so promptly you started six months before I even suggested it...:-)
(Original poster following up)
Actually, it turns out IE was handling it better than Netscape 4.51, which would just sit and spin its wheels. I had just downloaded the new Mozilla -- which didn't render the page right, but didn't wig out either -- so had been using that as the basis for judgement. So of the latest non-development browsers from the Big Two, best implementation goes to IE5.
I just tried IE5 with Slashdot, and it does not like the banners at all -- so much so that it stops rendering the page and displays a page of complaints about the problem. To get around this, I have to hit the stop button before it has completely loaded the banner.
:-) Do you turn off images? Seems to me like it's overreacting a bit to hide the whole page because of a problem with a single element.
Do you have this problem? Is Rob intentionally driving IE users nuts?
cypherpunks/cypherpunks as login/password works just about everywhere!
With these movies coming out so much time after the originals, they're coming out when many of us who saw it as kids now have kids of our own to take to it. (My boy is just a little young for it right now, but by the time Eps 2 & 3 roll around, I should be able to take him.) So while I hate the overhyping, I've got to admit, there's a certain amount of hope that he'll find it enjoyable enough that it will be sort of a vicarious shared experience between us.
As is, it feels kind of strange realizing I'm part of the last generation of first world humanity (barring catastrophe) not to grow up with computers -- at least, not until I was 15 or 16 -- VCRs, cable TV, etc. Heck, I probably would have had a younger sibling if medical technology had been just a couple of years more advanced. (My dad was RH+, my mom RH-.)
The power got knocked out at my office, so I started my lunch time errands early. As I went in to Tos'R'Us to see if they had Star Wars lego for me to get my boy, I discovered three of my fellow employees buying figures for themselves. And it turns out even more of them had been there or were about to get there, all thanks to the power outage.
Got the Lego sets (after months of looking for them), woo hoo! Sometimes having a kid is a great excuse...
Just $356000 apiece, plus $17000 for installation. When does the home version come out? It could be great fun at parties...
Yellow could be called "banana", to keep the flavor analogy going.
I think I want a bunch of blinking LEDs on the front of my next machine, that blink randomly most of the time but occasionally show short random messages.
Black, but with neon lighting strips, perhaps one above the top-most drive and one below the bottom-most.
One thing I miss in the ASCII editors for Linux I've looked at so far is the ability to mark a block for copying/cutting by holding down the shift key while using the cursor control keys. I even went so far as to run Notepad with Wine to get this on Linux. Are there any native text editors that support this? Double-clicking to mark a word would also be nice.
>I came to the conclusion yesterday that commercial software is for people who hate their job so much you have to pay them to do it.
Like Linus and Alan Cox? Or all the guys who improved Apache as part of their jobs keeping web servers going?
Meanwhile, exactly what *are* you going to do to earn a living? Most of us picked our employment based on what we liked doing and thought we could make a living doing.
>How many tens of thousands of people were murdered in New York or Los Angeles last year alone?
r ders990101.html
Ten thousand is approximately the total number of murders in the US in an average year. New York had the second-most murders of US cities for 1998, with a total of 629 (Chicago, at 689, had the dubious distinction of first place.) Given that New York's population is around 10 million, this means the murder rate was about 4 times as high.
An excite search on +new +york +murder returned this page, among others:
http://204.202.137.113/sections/us/DailyNews/mu
You have an immense amount of information at your fingertips. Consider using it.
I and others have said it before, but it seems to me it would hugely reduce Slashdot bandwidth if the comments were accessible via NNTP. Perhaps we could persuade Rob to work on that rather than submitting so many stories? Rob, I promise I'll buy a Slashdot T-shirt if you do...
If the stories themselves were only accessible via WWW, the banner hit count shouldn't be changed much. (I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen any rude remarks about the recent Ziff-Davis banners, BTW...:-)
I realize the following avoids fixing the root problem, but anyway...
If you really hate high school, but are a good student, see if there's a chance you can graduate early. A friend of mine skipped 11th grade by taking English in summer school. Just think, one less year of torture...
>We're talking about Apache, GIMP, Wine....
No we're not, you said Red Hat only paid GNOME developers. Having been shown to be wrong, the polite thing to do would be to admit it.
>simply "leeching" as Hon. Torvalds put it!
Care to quote him? Linus *wants* Linux to spread, and Red Hat is helping to do that. Heck, it pays his "Lieutenant" Cox.
>The most lethal weapon of mass killing in American history was a gas can and a match: remember that.
Actually, it's second to fertilizer (Oklahoma City).
>You just gotta shake your head and ask "why?"
What's that quote again? "Never ask a hacker why, just smile and slowly back away" or something very similar.
>Why should I boycott the company that, without it's existence, wouldn't allow me to experience some great titles?
The people who would use a hacked emulator are largely the same people who will be able to get their hands on one now anyway, since the code exists. Meanwhile, I had no interest in Playstation titles until I heard about Bleem. So by taking legal action against the emulators, they've lost me as a customer for Playstation titles.
Meanwhile, I find the precedent of "I can stop you doing X, because X *might* allow someone else to do Y" to be intolerable in general.
>When is Berst going to catch a clue?
He did! Note that he didn't say anything about suing a commercial vendor if something goes wrong, just about having a salesperson to berate if it did. He's learning. Just a bit, but it *is* progress.