Seriously, what kind of kid eats non-edible beads when they are 10 years old? This seems like a case of Darwinism at work... Are people just supposed to be able to be as dumb as they want, do anything, disregard all common sense, and still somehow make it through life? Geez...
Children make mistakes often potentially fatal ones and often obvious ones. Parents are supposed to reduce the possible consequences of children making those mistakes, so that mistakenly swallowing a few of beads does not send the kid to hospital. Swallowing all the beads he wants should at worst lead to really bad indegestion and a blocked up intestine which after a few days will pass. It should not lead to a fatal overdose of GHB! Swallowing drain cleaner can be fatal so I don't let my kids play with drain cleaner. Just like playing with a gun.
Here's an experiment. Walk into your local bank or 7-11 or whatnot wearing a ski mask.
You might be doubtful, but I have the suspicion that you'll find out ski masks are pretty much banned already in every location but the ski slopes.
So wear a bandage around your head instead. When asked (who'd ask?) tell them you have severe head tramua and would they like to see the pussey scabs. Use a good bandage with some mucous stains for effect. Dosen't matter that ski masks are/might be illegal bandages are not. Same effect though.
If an ISP can do a man-in-the-middle on HTTPS then anybody can and HTTPS is useless. The whole point is to secure the connection before any data is transmitted, and securing the connection requires a unique certificate. You have to fake the certificate or break the encryption to get in the middle, and SSL was designed specifically to prevent this.
Nope, don't think this would work. The ISP can't return a redirect response because certificates have not been exchanged and validated, so the browser / client will flash a warning and not redirect. The browser insists the certificates are exchanged and validated via the correct domain - else a warning about the domain not matching is popped up. In other clients - such as a java web service proxy - the connection is simply droipped with an exception thrown.
This succeeds, and your browser does a key exchange with the ISP. The ISP key exchanges with the remote site, and proxies all traffic.
And even if it did succeed (which it won't) the URL in the browser changes. An obvious effect even for mindless technophobic newbies.
This scenario is exactly the reason why SSL certificates are validated against the domain. To stop man-in-the-middle attacks.
Unfortunately, most people don't realise what DRM is or why it's bad...
They believe the marketing hype, designed to make people think it's a good thing. The people need to be educated about the dangers of DRM, and stories like this are good examples. People won't believe you without hard evidence, they're more likely to believe mass market propaganda.
People don't want education about DRM. They want to believe the marketing hype. They are not buying a product, they are buying the dream.
Its like eating MacDonalds or other take-out. Everyone knows its not quality food, nor that cheap, nor hygienic even. They know that better quality food is out there. They couldn't be bothered and don't care. They just want to believe take-out is good - or good enough - and that's it. If they get caught out, or feel a little sick or a little overweight its "Oh well, better luck next time" or "So what, its my money" or "Its not my fault, I didn't know".
Mindless cattle who want to be led around by the nose by marketing types.
The reality is that all products are composed of other products. Japan went after domestic manufacturs of key electronic components and essentially wiped them out. Once that happened, it didn't really matter if the box had "Made in USA" stamped on it. The guts all came from overseas, and the profits all went there, and the U.S. worker was out in the cold.
Nobody forced US executives to source components from Japanese companies. They did it for the holey dollar - or more precisely for holey dollars in their pockets. They did it to make more profit. Consumers chose cheaper imports so they could get more stuff for less. Consumers could have supported companies who didn't source from Japan - but they didn't, so all companies started doing it to stay competitive. All the government did was not interfere. In fact, most governments deregulated, dropped tariffs and tried to get more out of the way of market forces. And according to you that was their sin.
You seem to demand that the government step in to save the American people from themselves both consumers and the execs who run the companies. Oh Congressman Save Us From Ourselves!!!! We want cheap large screen TVs and we want high paying jobs for doing very little.
You can always "vote with your dollars". Its just 250 million others voted a different way. Now if 250 million had voted "Made In USA" or even "Made and Owned Wholly With USA By America Citizens Not Illegal Aliens" then you'd have a point.
Of course, government regulation worked so well for the peoples of the USSR, China, India, Zimbabwe...
I think what people are expressing is that the Congress should not expect ethical behavior from corporations when their actions have been ethically questionable and it's their job to regulate the corporations.
It's not a question of ethics or corporate responsibility. All companies must obey local laws and local governments. If you don't wish to play by those rules don't trade in the countries with governments whom have laws you don't agree with. Chinese operations of Yahoo, Google, et al all play by Chinese rules in China. As do all companies of all nations.
The US Congress expects US operations of Chinese companies to play by US rules. At best its hypocritical to expect US companies not to play by Chinese rules in China. Not that hypocrisy concerns anybody these days. Its also a vocalisation by the American Congress - and therefore its people - that the rest of the world should play by American rules.
The US states only supports the concept of sovereignty when the sovereign state follows American values.
WHY is it that everything sold in America is Made in China? It's because our government refused to do it's job and prevent the predatory conduct of China's industrialists.
Have to disagree with you there. The US government is not responsible for rising imports of foreign made goods. Blame "The Market". Ie, blame US citizens. Blame yourselves.
The US people decided to purchase the China made goods and shun US manufacturers, thus leading to a reduction in demand for US goods and therefore a reduction in supply and reduction in jobs. You want to keep US jobs - buy American. Want a cheap large screen TV - buy China.
Or at least you - and all your fellow citizens - should have over the last twenty years. Too late now. You all have cheap TVs - and the need to replace them every three years - and no manufacturing industry. Same in most western nations.
Not that Slahdotters - nor indeed humans - accept such arguements and therefore blame. Its all "somebody else's fault". That's great for hiding couches at Lord's but won't change the economics. Same story down here. Interest rates go up and half the voters are blaming the current government and yelling "we're going to change our vote!". Like the government can do anything about interest rates. In fact removing such measures is one of the reasons we all have big screen TVs.
Stick your fingers in your ears and scream "I'm right! I'm not listening! The government's to blame for everything!"
A -1 rated Anonymous Coward post so I shouldn't even consider this as a worthy comment, but then again...
People do not value others' work in general, and to get any respect from the "That's nothing, I could do that, probably better"/. group of toppers...
You're right in a sense here. I don't value other people's work in general. Most of the jobs I see around society I probably can do better than those that are doing them, given proper training. Most people are lazy, prepared only to do the minimal amount of work at any given task, with little thought for tomorrow or how it makes other lives easier or harder. They aren't prepared to think about what their doing, and certainly can't be bothered inventing better ways of doing it nor tools that could be used.
Most people never create anything in their whole lives. They simply buy it from a store or ask a family friend to build/fix/create it for them. They don't want to invent or create - they want to use.
Give 'em all big screen TVs, a comfy couch and an internal drip and they'd be happy to live out their existence never budging.
The Matrix had it right. Most of humanity really are nothing more than chemical batteries. And most of humanity don't read/. (thank fuck)
So the fact that you might need a financial planner who has experience/knowledge of the wide array of options that benefit many people is *not* a bad thing.
Yes it is. Money is an overhead. Manging money is an overhead. It interferes with achieving. Fact is its a necessary overhead due to the nature of humans. People should be encouraged to build and create as a way to improve their lives and society, rather than focussing on the value of their assets.
Managing finance in this day and age is a more massive overhead then it should be cause the financial system is far to complex. Its so easy to do nothing more than work that system - be very wealthy and buy all you want - and achieve nothing in your entire life. Why build anything, when if you know and work the money system you can simply buy it? Let others do the hard work, eh, while we just watch our big screen TVs?
Everyone agrees that _excessive_ complexity is a bad thing, but in some cases, complexity is good. You wouldn't argue that all software should be simple enough for the ordinary person to understand the _code_ would you?
A good point and I agree. Excessive is the key word.
For maintaining software I'd expect a suitably skilled software engineer with enough domain knowledge should be able to make at least small changes to the code base with enough confidence that things won't break. And how many systems need "the guy that wrote it"?
For using the software then any person with training in the concepts that the software is designed for should be able to use it. CAD should be usable for any architect or mechanical draftsman, office software for any office worker, without the need for a software engineer pushing the mouse for you.
Let the lawyers, patent experts and politicians maintain and fix the patent system. But the patent system is for the ordinary inventor, and if they can't use it fairly effectively without masses of specialists. then I'd argue the system is excessively complicated.
No. Those parts were invented because they are useful. Useful things
will continue to get invented for the simple fact that people have
work do do. The lack of a "carrot" in the form of some egregious
state sanctioned monopoly will not eliminate the need that genuinely
drives innovation.
Yes, the probably would have been invented as they are useful and would have been needed by some smart guy. Or even just wanted or stumbled upon. But the "carrot" of patenting is the ability to make money of the invention, and that's what's needed to encourage smart guys to tell other people about there invention and allow others then to mass-produce and market it. Bragging rights and ego only go so far. Without that the average person never sees the invention, and so others don't buld on that invention and invent more complicated stuff and society doesn't advance.
The smart guys will always invent new stuff to solve their problems. All throughout history many have done this. With think of them as "ahead of their time". In reality, everybody else is just behind.
You probably spend more on your car in a year than you would pay for filing a patent.
I'd bloody well hope so, but then my car is a valuable tool I - and most other people in the free world - use daily to go about our lives. A patent is not.
I don't understand how your mention of "building systems" is even relevant. It's not that special of an idea. You screw together a few parts, none of those parts are anything you could possibly make on your own.
It's the KISS principle, mate. Any moron can screw together a few parts that others have built. That just leads to piles of mess. Screwing together the right parts in the right way leads to new technologies and can lead to effecient, useful, systems that benefit all, including the common man.
I've seen lots of the former and few of the latter. One of the ways of distinguishing between them is the amount of overhead and specialists required to use the system on a day to day basis by ordinary folk. High overheads are bad.
The patent system, our financial system and most certainly our legal system (which underlie both) have very high overheads especially for the people that they are supposed to support - the common man. They both require more and more time of specialists - more overheads, wasted time and expense. The point of my post is that our civic systems are supposed to support the common man. As soon as it is required to spend hours/days/weeks and thousands of dollars on a specialist to use that system then the system is not able to be used by the common person effectively.
If common folk can't use it - or it becomes a large burden - they won't. Then its just a game played by the corporates and specialists. That's a failed civic system and should be thrown away and rebuilt.
Legal costs are simply part of doing business in a civilized society that uses courts of law to protect rights and enforce standards of conduct. You seem like a smart guy, draft your own patent applications if you can't afford my expertise.
The fact that an ordinary smart guy can't draft their own patent applications - as you imply - demonstrates the fallacy that this great society is so civilised. If an ordinary "smart" Joe can't file the appropriate paperwork to protect his efforts and concerns of being swamped then I put forward the system has failed.
The fact that an ordinary nuclear family "needs" a financial advisor just to get them through the hurdles of our financial system in order to get ahead, demonstrates a large failure of our financial system. Think of it as a computer system that needs a large number of sys admins and programmers just to keep the thing running and how poorly designed we all know them to be (how many of them have we bemoaned). Good systems run themselves providing efficiencies of scale with minimal overheads. Civic systems are the same else they are of little good to the little guy.
Who would own a car if you needed a mechanic to spend an hour a day performing maintainence on it for you and a driver to operate it? Not the ordinary person. Only rich folk and corporations would use them - as they once did in the early days.
Patent system is the same. If it's harder to file a patent claim then it is to invent new technologies and products then there is little money to be gained from releasing your invention into the wild. That's why I build systems for myself, my family and friends. Somebody else can come up with their own ideas for the rest of humanity.
If its faded, its still valid (which makes me wonder if you even have a license - most licenses nowadays are a bit more durable - you know, plastified, picture, etc).
I think you'll find in most jurisdictions you have to have a readable license on you at all times whilst driving. You have to be able to prove to a cop you have the authority to drive. having the authority isn't good enough - you have to prove it on demand. Just like you have to display a registration plate on the vehicle, and a visible registration certificate. Try driving a vehicle with a faded - well, damaged beyond recognition - license plate.
Same deal with software licenses: Its not that you have a license - you have to prove it when demanded.
Your "bad car analogy" also doesn't work - if I lose my copy of my driver's license, I don't have to take the test over to get a new license, just pay the handling fee (which is less than 1/10 the license, btw cost), have my picture taken again, and wait a few minutes.
you mean you missed the point of my analogy entirely. What if it was "policy" of the State in your jurisdiction to charge you a handling fee of 200% of the driving fee instead of 10%? Then Microsoft's handling fee of 100% would sound reasonable, right?
You're wrong, of course - the certificate isn't the license. Otherwise, you would be able to transfer the license without transferring the software,
The certificate is the license: the EULA is the conditions of the license, or in addition to the license. you can transfer the license without transferring the software, 'cept then you are using unlicensed software and whomever bought it off you has a license to use software they don't have.
Again, back to my "bad car analogy": You can be granted a driving license and own a car, but you can't drive the car on public roads without the license, and there isn't much point in owning a license if you never intend to own or drive a car. If you lived in an area where there weren't many cars, and you didn't need one and had no intention of driving one in the near future, would you still pay your annual driver's license fee to keep it current?
I love *nix, but it it not ready for primetime yet, with bugs like that. I shudder to think of the call from my old man, where I have to explain that he has to rebuild (like he could of in the first place) his PC with pci=nomsi and acpi=forceirqpoll in the boot options so his high dollar toy isn't ruined.
At least you can change it in Linux. In Windows you either can't outright, or its a tricky registry "fix" that might bring your hole machine down.
Tell your old man when he calls that as its a Windows box he has no chance of him - or you - fixing it and he should just throw his high dollar toy out the window and get another one. That's the Windows fix.
A lot of Windows users say Linux ain't for primetime because when something breaks or you want to tweak you have to go to the command line or tweak a little script. That power is apparantly "bad". At least Linux gives you the ability to tweak and fix it.
With Windows you just throw it out and get a new one. Guess what - if you want, you can do that with Linux too.
Demanding that you buy another copy because the certificate has become illegible, even though you have the original install CD, or that you have the original receipt for the machine, is abusive...
That's the same policy with most manufacturers and retailers when it comes to getting a refund or warranty repair. It's proof of ownership, nothing more. The certificate is the license, not the CD.
What happens when you get pulled over by a cop and you don't have a license on you or its faded? How is Microsoft's actions and different from the cop or every other company?
Don't like those license conditions? Don't buy the product. Simple. You have a choice. Stop whinging about the choices you made.
I bought the software. It is a physical thing and I paid money for it, therefore I own it.
The CD is the physical thing you purchased, not the data on the CD. Do what you like with the CD, but the data - and all activities resulting from using that data - are licensed to you by Microsoft. That is a distinction made by the State and Microsoft (all software companies) are using the powers granted to them by the State.
Don't like that distinction? Vote for somebody who cares, and get half your countrymen to do the same.
No, I didn't agree to the license, at least not in terms of a contract, because they didn't present their license to me before I bought the software.
You agreed to it by installing and using it. If the license is not visible from within the shrink-wrap (which it is) then you have the right to open the package, read the license and take it back to the store if you don't agree with the license.
You don't have the right to install it anyway. Much like you don't have the right to eat a badly cooked steak and then demand another more to your liking. If the steak isn't cooked as required you send it back before eating it.
Software publishers do not have law enforcement powers - that is reserved for the state.
And the State will enforce them on behalf of the software providers according to the laws of said State. Enforcement is a different issue. Speeding on the freeway is illegal. Getting caught is another matter. Many people don't speed because they don't want to get caught even if they believe its safe enough to drive faster.
Linux teaches students about computers Windows teaches students how to use Windows
And that in a nutshell is the point. People don't want to learn about computers. People / students want to learn the skills needed to get a job and business wants people to use Windows not understand computers. Only IT professionals need to learn about computers for their jobs - and unfortunately a lot of them still only know how to use a computer.
Obligatory car analogy: A driving school may not teach you how to maintain, fix nor build your car. It teaches you how to drive it. Ordinary people don't want to understand cars, they just want to drive them. Understanding how cars works is for mechanics.
Now I'm a geek like most here and I want to learn how something works as I use it. Helps me use it better and fix it when it breaks down (and it always does). Enquiring minds want to know. Most humans aren't that way inclined. They just want to use stuff and don't care how it works. When it breaks they get another one or yell at somebody who does understand until it works. "Users" is such and apt term for most humans.
I didn't know whether it was going to be any good, so I paid 0.
Do you do the same with other goods? Not sure if you gonna like that ice cream, so grab it, eat it and if you like it go back and pay the store owner depending on how much you liked it? What about a hamburger? Or even an amplifier?
You're just making excuses cause you don't want to pay anything. Pay what you consider a fair price for the article. The fact that they allowed you to pay 0 is irrelevant. The fact that you agree its worth nothing is telling.
True, so the question becomes: Does Ubuntu appropriately configure or use the chip to make use of that choice?
If the O/S doesn't step down the chip when the not in heavy use then the chip burns along at full speed for longer than necessary. A faster, more modern chip will therefore use up more juice.
No need to state this explicitly. The rest of us can tell your knowledge of Weblogic and J2EE is inaccurate insignificant based on your comments alone. Hell, if you can spell "Java" I bet your mother is proud.
Slashdot Mirror
DNS lookup is independent of protocol. A DNS client asks for an IP address for domain without specifying the protocol. So
I think 2) would get noticed rather quickly and really would be worth the effort...
Children make mistakes often potentially fatal ones and often obvious ones. Parents are supposed to reduce the possible consequences of children making those mistakes, so that mistakenly swallowing a few of beads does not send the kid to hospital. Swallowing all the beads he wants should at worst lead to really bad indegestion and a blocked up intestine which after a few days will pass. It should not lead to a fatal overdose of GHB! Swallowing drain cleaner can be fatal so I don't let my kids play with drain cleaner. Just like playing with a gun.
I'd let your kids play with drain cleaner though.
So wear a bandage around your head instead. When asked (who'd ask?) tell them you have severe head tramua and would they like to see the pussey scabs. Use a good bandage with some mucous stains for effect. Dosen't matter that ski masks are/might be illegal bandages are not. Same effect though.
If an ISP can do a man-in-the-middle on HTTPS then anybody can and HTTPS is useless. The whole point is to secure the connection before any data is transmitted, and securing the connection requires a unique certificate. You have to fake the certificate or break the encryption to get in the middle, and SSL was designed specifically to prevent this.
Nope, don't think this would work. The ISP can't return a redirect response because certificates have not been exchanged and validated, so the browser / client will flash a warning and not redirect. The browser insists the certificates are exchanged and validated via the correct domain - else a warning about the domain not matching is popped up. In other clients - such as a java web service proxy - the connection is simply droipped with an exception thrown.
And even if it did succeed (which it won't) the URL in the browser changes. An obvious effect even for mindless technophobic newbies.
This scenario is exactly the reason why SSL certificates are validated against the domain. To stop man-in-the-middle attacks.
People don't want education about DRM. They want to believe the marketing hype. They are not buying a product, they are buying the dream.
Its like eating MacDonalds or other take-out. Everyone knows its not quality food, nor that cheap, nor hygienic even. They know that better quality food is out there. They couldn't be bothered and don't care. They just want to believe take-out is good - or good enough - and that's it. If they get caught out, or feel a little sick or a little overweight its "Oh well, better luck next time" or "So what, its my money" or "Its not my fault, I didn't know".
Mindless cattle who want to be led around by the nose by marketing types.
Nobody forced US executives to source components from Japanese companies. They did it for the holey dollar - or more precisely for holey dollars in their pockets. They did it to make more profit. Consumers chose cheaper imports so they could get more stuff for less. Consumers could have supported companies who didn't source from Japan - but they didn't, so all companies started doing it to stay competitive. All the government did was not interfere. In fact, most governments deregulated, dropped tariffs and tried to get more out of the way of market forces. And according to you that was their sin.
You seem to demand that the government step in to save the American people from themselves both consumers and the execs who run the companies. Oh Congressman Save Us From Ourselves!!!! We want cheap large screen TVs and we want high paying jobs for doing very little.
You can always "vote with your dollars". Its just 250 million others voted a different way. Now if 250 million had voted "Made In USA" or even "Made and Owned Wholly With USA By America Citizens Not Illegal Aliens" then you'd have a point.
Of course, government regulation worked so well for the peoples of the USSR, China, India, Zimbabwe ...
It's not a question of ethics or corporate responsibility. All companies must obey local laws and local governments. If you don't wish to play by those rules don't trade in the countries with governments whom have laws you don't agree with. Chinese operations of Yahoo, Google, et al all play by Chinese rules in China. As do all companies of all nations.
The US Congress expects US operations of Chinese companies to play by US rules. At best its hypocritical to expect US companies not to play by Chinese rules in China. Not that hypocrisy concerns anybody these days. Its also a vocalisation by the American Congress - and therefore its people - that the rest of the world should play by American rules.
The US states only supports the concept of sovereignty when the sovereign state follows American values.
Have to disagree with you there. The US government is not responsible for rising imports of foreign made goods. Blame "The Market". Ie, blame US citizens. Blame yourselves.
The US people decided to purchase the China made goods and shun US manufacturers, thus leading to a reduction in demand for US goods and therefore a reduction in supply and reduction in jobs. You want to keep US jobs - buy American. Want a cheap large screen TV - buy China.
Or at least you - and all your fellow citizens - should have over the last twenty years. Too late now. You all have cheap TVs - and the need to replace them every three years - and no manufacturing industry. Same in most western nations.
Not that Slahdotters - nor indeed humans - accept such arguements and therefore blame. Its all "somebody else's fault". That's great for hiding couches at Lord's but won't change the economics. Same story down here. Interest rates go up and half the voters are blaming the current government and yelling "we're going to change our vote!". Like the government can do anything about interest rates. In fact removing such measures is one of the reasons we all have big screen TVs.
Stick your fingers in your ears and scream "I'm right! I'm not listening! The government's to blame for everything!"
A -1 rated Anonymous Coward post so I shouldn't even consider this as a worthy comment, but then again...
You're right in a sense here. I don't value other people's work in general. Most of the jobs I see around society I probably can do better than those that are doing them, given proper training. Most people are lazy, prepared only to do the minimal amount of work at any given task, with little thought for tomorrow or how it makes other lives easier or harder. They aren't prepared to think about what their doing, and certainly can't be bothered inventing better ways of doing it nor tools that could be used.
Most people never create anything in their whole lives. They simply buy it from a store or ask a family friend to build/fix/create it for them. They don't want to invent or create - they want to use. Give 'em all big screen TVs, a comfy couch and an internal drip and they'd be happy to live out their existence never budging.
The Matrix had it right. Most of humanity really are nothing more than chemical batteries. And most of humanity don't read /. (thank fuck)
Yes it is. Money is an overhead. Manging money is an overhead. It interferes with achieving. Fact is its a necessary overhead due to the nature of humans. People should be encouraged to build and create as a way to improve their lives and society, rather than focussing on the value of their assets.
Managing finance in this day and age is a more massive overhead then it should be cause the financial system is far to complex. Its so easy to do nothing more than work that system - be very wealthy and buy all you want - and achieve nothing in your entire life. Why build anything, when if you know and work the money system you can simply buy it? Let others do the hard work, eh, while we just watch our big screen TVs?
A good point and I agree. Excessive is the key word.
For maintaining software I'd expect a suitably skilled software engineer with enough domain knowledge should be able to make at least small changes to the code base with enough confidence that things won't break. And how many systems need "the guy that wrote it"?
For using the software then any person with training in the concepts that the software is designed for should be able to use it. CAD should be usable for any architect or mechanical draftsman, office software for any office worker, without the need for a software engineer pushing the mouse for you.
Let the lawyers, patent experts and politicians maintain and fix the patent system. But the patent system is for the ordinary inventor, and if they can't use it fairly effectively without masses of specialists. then I'd argue the system is excessively complicated.
Yes, the probably would have been invented as they are useful and would have been needed by some smart guy. Or even just wanted or stumbled upon. But the "carrot" of patenting is the ability to make money of the invention, and that's what's needed to encourage smart guys to tell other people about there invention and allow others then to mass-produce and market it. Bragging rights and ego only go so far. Without that the average person never sees the invention, and so others don't buld on that invention and invent more complicated stuff and society doesn't advance.
The smart guys will always invent new stuff to solve their problems. All throughout history many have done this. With think of them as "ahead of their time". In reality, everybody else is just behind.
I'd bloody well hope so, but then my car is a valuable tool I - and most other people in the free world - use daily to go about our lives. A patent is not.
It's the KISS principle, mate. Any moron can screw together a few parts that others have built. That just leads to piles of mess. Screwing together the right parts in the right way leads to new technologies and can lead to effecient, useful, systems that benefit all, including the common man.
I've seen lots of the former and few of the latter. One of the ways of distinguishing between them is the amount of overhead and specialists required to use the system on a day to day basis by ordinary folk. High overheads are bad.
The patent system, our financial system and most certainly our legal system (which underlie both) have very high overheads especially for the people that they are supposed to support - the common man. They both require more and more time of specialists - more overheads, wasted time and expense. The point of my post is that our civic systems are supposed to support the common man. As soon as it is required to spend hours/days/weeks and thousands of dollars on a specialist to use that system then the system is not able to be used by the common person effectively.
If common folk can't use it - or it becomes a large burden - they won't. Then its just a game played by the corporates and specialists. That's a failed civic system and should be thrown away and rebuilt.
The fact that an ordinary smart guy can't draft their own patent applications - as you imply - demonstrates the fallacy that this great society is so civilised. If an ordinary "smart" Joe can't file the appropriate paperwork to protect his efforts and concerns of being swamped then I put forward the system has failed.
The fact that an ordinary nuclear family "needs" a financial advisor just to get them through the hurdles of our financial system in order to get ahead, demonstrates a large failure of our financial system. Think of it as a computer system that needs a large number of sys admins and programmers just to keep the thing running and how poorly designed we all know them to be (how many of them have we bemoaned). Good systems run themselves providing efficiencies of scale with minimal overheads. Civic systems are the same else they are of little good to the little guy.
Who would own a car if you needed a mechanic to spend an hour a day performing maintainence on it for you and a driver to operate it? Not the ordinary person. Only rich folk and corporations would use them - as they once did in the early days.
Patent system is the same. If it's harder to file a patent claim then it is to invent new technologies and products then there is little money to be gained from releasing your invention into the wild. That's why I build systems for myself, my family and friends. Somebody else can come up with their own ideas for the rest of humanity.
They are in marketing. I'd say probably about 200K of them. You can always use more people to push your product and sell more.
I think you'll find in most jurisdictions you have to have a readable license on you at all times whilst driving. You have to be able to prove to a cop you have the authority to drive. having the authority isn't good enough - you have to prove it on demand. Just like you have to display a registration plate on the vehicle, and a visible registration certificate. Try driving a vehicle with a faded - well, damaged beyond recognition - license plate.
Same deal with software licenses: Its not that you have a license - you have to prove it when demanded.
you mean you missed the point of my analogy entirely. What if it was "policy" of the State in your jurisdiction to charge you a handling fee of 200% of the driving fee instead of 10%? Then Microsoft's handling fee of 100% would sound reasonable, right?
The certificate is the license: the EULA is the conditions of the license, or in addition to the license. you can transfer the license without transferring the software, 'cept then you are using unlicensed software and whomever bought it off you has a license to use software they don't have.
Again, back to my "bad car analogy": You can be granted a driving license and own a car, but you can't drive the car on public roads without the license, and there isn't much point in owning a license if you never intend to own or drive a car. If you lived in an area where there weren't many cars, and you didn't need one and had no intention of driving one in the near future, would you still pay your annual driver's license fee to keep it current?
At least you can change it in Linux. In Windows you either can't outright, or its a tricky registry "fix" that might bring your hole machine down.
Tell your old man when he calls that as its a Windows box he has no chance of him - or you - fixing it and he should just throw his high dollar toy out the window and get another one. That's the Windows fix.
A lot of Windows users say Linux ain't for primetime because when something breaks or you want to tweak you have to go to the command line or tweak a little script. That power is apparantly "bad". At least Linux gives you the ability to tweak and fix it.
With Windows you just throw it out and get a new one. Guess what - if you want, you can do that with Linux too.
That's the same policy with most manufacturers and retailers when it comes to getting a refund or warranty repair. It's proof of ownership, nothing more. The certificate is the license, not the CD.
What happens when you get pulled over by a cop and you don't have a license on you or its faded? How is Microsoft's actions and different from the cop or every other company?
Don't like those license conditions? Don't buy the product. Simple. You have a choice. Stop whinging about the choices you made.
The CD is the physical thing you purchased, not the data on the CD. Do what you like with the CD, but the data - and all activities resulting from using that data - are licensed to you by Microsoft. That is a distinction made by the State and Microsoft (all software companies) are using the powers granted to them by the State.
Don't like that distinction? Vote for somebody who cares, and get half your countrymen to do the same.
You agreed to it by installing and using it. If the license is not visible from within the shrink-wrap (which it is) then you have the right to open the package, read the license and take it back to the store if you don't agree with the license.
You don't have the right to install it anyway. Much like you don't have the right to eat a badly cooked steak and then demand another more to your liking. If the steak isn't cooked as required you send it back before eating it.
And the State will enforce them on behalf of the software providers according to the laws of said State. Enforcement is a different issue. Speeding on the freeway is illegal. Getting caught is another matter. Many people don't speed because they don't want to get caught even if they believe its safe enough to drive faster.
No you didn't. You licensed it. Microsoft still "own" it. you agreed to abide by their license when you handed them money.
The license forces it. It is a legal document. Microsoft have every right to demand you agree by their license.
And that in a nutshell is the point. People don't want to learn about computers. People / students want to learn the skills needed to get a job and business wants people to use Windows not understand computers. Only IT professionals need to learn about computers for their jobs - and unfortunately a lot of them still only know how to use a computer.
Obligatory car analogy: A driving school may not teach you how to maintain, fix nor build your car. It teaches you how to drive it. Ordinary people don't want to understand cars, they just want to drive them. Understanding how cars works is for mechanics.
Now I'm a geek like most here and I want to learn how something works as I use it. Helps me use it better and fix it when it breaks down (and it always does). Enquiring minds want to know. Most humans aren't that way inclined. They just want to use stuff and don't care how it works. When it breaks they get another one or yell at somebody who does understand until it works. "Users" is such and apt term for most humans.
Do you do the same with other goods? Not sure if you gonna like that ice cream, so grab it, eat it and if you like it go back and pay the store owner depending on how much you liked it? What about a hamburger? Or even an amplifier?
You're just making excuses cause you don't want to pay anything. Pay what you consider a fair price for the article. The fact that they allowed you to pay 0 is irrelevant. The fact that you agree its worth nothing is telling.
True, so the question becomes: Does Ubuntu appropriately configure or use the chip to make use of that choice?
If the O/S doesn't step down the chip when the not in heavy use then the chip burns along at full speed for longer than necessary. A faster, more modern chip will therefore use up more juice.
No need to state this explicitly. The rest of us can tell your knowledge of Weblogic and J2EE is inaccurate insignificant based on your comments alone. Hell, if you can spell "Java" I bet your mother is proud.