a tyrannical military government that nobody wants in power
...with the possible exception of that little country up north... now whazzit called... Mongolia... nah. Russia? Doesn't sound right either... Come on, help me out here! Lots of people there, lots of bikes, and lots of VWs in the not too distant future, which will probably not run on Burmesian rice wine. Now what was it? Brain like a sieve, let me tell you.
*buntu only releases security updates. Even bug fixes are hard to get backported to released versions of the distribution. Don't even dream about feature updates.
And that's of course where you're missing the point. GNOME, XFCE and MacOSX attempt to be usable by default.
The parent may miss your point, but this doesn't invalidate his own. Which is that for him Gnome and Xfce fail in this attempt (I'm leaving out OSX because parent didn't comment on it). And they do for many other users as well - if this were not so, KDE would be dead.
The police officers in question belonged to the regular force, not to any kind of secret (Geheime) state (Staats) police. Furthermore the restrictive laws you mention are very clearly narrowed to specific cases and topics. Whereby Freedom of Speech is established by article 5 of our constitution; yep, we actually thought we'd better include this right away instead of amending it. But as in every country under the rule of law you don't get unconditional freedom of anything, there are always constraints. I'm sure there are precedences in the US limiting Freedom of Speech in very specific circumstances.
I won't even go into the silly "Germany - Nazis" Pavlovian reaction you displayed.
in the story of his ongoing ordeal, I have to ask myself (and you): why doesn't he get a lawyer already? I'm by no means an expert on the way the US judicial system works, but shouldn't it be rather easy by now to find a good lawyer who will know how to use the publicity for his client and himself, how to get a large chunk of money out of this and also do the whole thing pro bono? Or have I watched too much Boston Legal?
Re:I have no problem with this kind of thing
on
Manhattan 1984
·
· Score: 0
I find that most people who reject number plate tracking, CCTV cameras, automatic logging and vehicle license MOT test (legal UK vehicle check to ensure it is road worthy) and the like generally have something to hide.
Everyone has something to hide, so this is a moot point. You don't? In that case I'd like your address to drop by for a visit and rummage through your drawers. And please forward all your private e-mails to me. Thank you.
I'm sorry, this is slashdot. I need a car analogy in order to understand your point.
Compare being raped for an hour
to
not being able to DRIVE to the pizza place on the corner because there's some guy there that the management refuses to kick out who will scream obscenities at you.
This is about possible copyright infringement, not theft. Morality about stealing is hardly relevant.
If only that were true. Sadly the industries involved, ignoring all legal facts and defintions, have always been trying hard to suggest that in fact it IS about theft. Probably because they are fully aware that it's hard to influence people's consciences with talk about mere "copyright infringement". It just doesn't have the desired effect because people realize that - compared to other illegal activities - copyright infringements are rather harmless offences (as long as not commited on a really, really large scale).
Therefore, sadly, since people inevitably get influenced by biased industry campaigns and superficial press coverage, morality about stealing is definitely relevant in this context.
Oh come on. People who dissolve their liver in alcohol are sick. People with lung cancer are too. Someone who just sawed of his hand definitely has a serious health problem.
But internet addiction? Quit making up new "diseases". There are enough real ones to cure.
Keep in mind that popular voodoo economic theory has attributed the first bubble phenomenon to 'a combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital.'
What, they didn't mention banks signing an insane amount of IPOs for upstarts with hilarious business plans which next to no venture capitalist in his right mind would back up (but of course the banks raked in money on the signings alone)? They didn't attribute it at least in part to a change of mentality (or loss of sanity) where suddenly 99% of the stock market companies would now be assessed based on their revenue instead of their (mostly non-existing) profits? Ookaay....
And of course there was a dot.com bubble. Saying "it's always been like this" is human, but daft nonetheless.
So this time it is different. This time it's not about taking that IPO money and running the company into the ground as soon there is no easy money to be made anymore. This time venture capital seems to be involved. And this time it will hardly become a mass phenomenon, because you actually need a noteworthy (perhaps not useful, innovative or sensible, but at least noteworthy) product and a decent sized user base. Before you can be bought by Google.
Funny quote. pretty close too, but It's actually "725" to 1. The fact that I can still quote most of the lines from the original trilogy (numbers included) is a little disconcerting for an adult.
And the fact that this got modded Insightful is a nice reminder that this is Slashdot.
However, the Negroponte plan, as I understand it, is meant to provide access to resources (eg, ebooks, the web) not available to students otherwise.
Funny. The plan, as I understand it, is meant to provide Negroponte access to resources (e.g. development aid money) not available to him otherwise. What with him selling the crapt^H^H^H^H^Hlaptops directly to the respective governments and asking them to buy one for each child in the country or none at all.
It's because they make crap products that are successful. It goes against the principles of the marketplace, and about what is supposed to make it work.
(...) Now, while I am by no means a capitalist, I nevertheless hold the notion of "quality wins" to be rather important to a healthy market.
No need to emphasize that you're not a capitalist, your views (with which I concur BTW) clearly show this. Capitalism does not mean that quality wins. It means the product with a good balance of affordability and not-yet-being-completely-crapiness wins.
I really wonder why people continue to be suprised about quality not being a characteristic trait of capitalism. It really never has been. And whoever may have claimed otherwise lied.
Re:Jobs is like General MacArthur, "I" vs "We" ...
on
I, Woz
·
· Score: 0
"Woz, was and is a brilliant engineer. But there are hundreds like him. But there aren't many like Steve Jobs."
"I'm sorry but you have that backwards. Exceptional engineers are far less common than exceptional saleman."
How about you both agree on exceptional people being not common? (Which is one of the things making them exceptional in the first place...)
About 90 Billion USD in development assistance have flown to developing countries in 2005 from the DAC member countries alone. And at least guys like Negroponte don't even want to sell their extremely helpful products via retailers, they try to get the money directly from the developing countries' governments. (Heck, why give local retailers or anyone else a chance to profit from this - just generates unnecessary interests and all that... naah, keep it simple, eh?)
BTW, measured againt gross national income the US rank at one before last in the list of development assistance spenders. So where will most of the money come from that African countries might spend on 100$ laptops and other gadgets? You do the math.
Slashdot Mirror
True. Of course, for the average exec the "long term" lasts exactly until he quits his current position and gets his compensation.
...with the possible exception of that little country up north... now whazzit called... Mongolia... nah. Russia? Doesn't sound right either... Come on, help me out here! Lots of people there, lots of bikes, and lots of VWs in the not too distant future, which will probably not run on Burmesian rice wine. Now what was it? Brain like a sieve, let me tell you.
*buntu only releases security updates. Even bug fixes are hard to get backported to released versions of the distribution. Don't even dream about feature updates.
The parent may miss your point, but this doesn't invalidate his own. Which is that for him Gnome and Xfce fail in this attempt (I'm leaving out OSX because parent didn't comment on it). And they do for many other users as well - if this were not so, KDE would be dead.
The police officers in question belonged to the regular force, not to any kind of secret (Geheime) state (Staats) police. Furthermore the restrictive laws you mention are very clearly narrowed to specific cases and topics. Whereby Freedom of Speech is established by article 5 of our constitution; yep, we actually thought we'd better include this right away instead of amending it. But as in every country under the rule of law you don't get unconditional freedom of anything, there are always constraints. I'm sure there are precedences in the US limiting Freedom of Speech in very specific circumstances.
I won't even go into the silly "Germany - Nazis" Pavlovian reaction you displayed.
Which is why he was released after being interrogated.
in the story of his ongoing ordeal, I have to ask myself (and you): why doesn't he get a lawyer already? I'm by no means an expert on the way the US judicial system works, but shouldn't it be rather easy by now to find a good lawyer who will know how to use the publicity for his client and himself, how to get a large chunk of money out of this and also do the whole thing pro bono? Or have I watched too much Boston Legal?
Compare being raped for an hour
to
not being able to DRIVE to the pizza place on the corner because there's some guy there that the management refuses to kick out who will scream obscenities at you.
I'm curious: If you are never going to play it again, why do you keep it at all?
If only that were true. Sadly the industries involved, ignoring all legal facts and defintions, have always been trying hard to suggest that in fact it IS about theft. Probably because they are fully aware that it's hard to influence people's consciences with talk about mere "copyright infringement". It just doesn't have the desired effect because people realize that - compared to other illegal activities - copyright infringements are rather harmless offences (as long as not commited on a really, really large scale).
Therefore, sadly, since people inevitably get influenced by biased industry campaigns and superficial press coverage, morality about stealing is definitely relevant in this context.
Oh come on. People who dissolve their liver in alcohol are sick. People with lung cancer are too. Someone who just sawed of his hand definitely has a serious health problem. But internet addiction? Quit making up new "diseases". There are enough real ones to cure.
What, they didn't mention banks signing an insane amount of IPOs for upstarts with hilarious business plans which next to no venture capitalist in his right mind would back up (but of course the banks raked in money on the signings alone)? They didn't attribute it at least in part to a change of mentality (or loss of sanity) where suddenly 99% of the stock market companies would now be assessed based on their revenue instead of their (mostly non-existing) profits? Ookaay....
And of course there was a dot.com bubble. Saying "it's always been like this" is human, but daft nonetheless.
So this time it is different. This time it's not about taking that IPO money and running the company into the ground as soon there is no easy money to be made anymore. This time venture capital seems to be involved. And this time it will hardly become a mass phenomenon, because you actually need a noteworthy (perhaps not useful, innovative or sensible, but at least noteworthy) product and a decent sized user base. Before you can be bought by Google.
And the fact that this got modded Insightful is a nice reminder that this is Slashdot.
However, the Negroponte plan, as I understand it, is meant to provide access to resources (eg, ebooks, the web) not available to students otherwise.
Funny. The plan, as I understand it, is meant to provide Negroponte access to resources (e.g. development aid money) not available to him otherwise. What with him selling the crapt^H^H^H^H^Hlaptops directly to the respective governments and asking them to buy one for each child in the country or none at all.
It's because they make crap products that are successful. It goes against the principles of the marketplace, and about what is supposed to make it work.
(...)
Now, while I am by no means a capitalist, I nevertheless hold the notion of "quality wins" to be rather important to a healthy market.
No need to emphasize that you're not a capitalist, your views (with which I concur BTW) clearly show this. Capitalism does not mean that quality wins. It means the product with a good balance of affordability and not-yet-being-completely-crapiness wins.
I really wonder why people continue to be suprised about quality not being a characteristic trait of capitalism. It really never has been. And whoever may have claimed otherwise lied.
"Woz, was and is a brilliant engineer. But there are hundreds like him. But there aren't many like Steve Jobs."
"I'm sorry but you have that backwards. Exceptional engineers are far less common than exceptional saleman."
How about you both agree on exceptional people being not common? (Which is one of the things making them exceptional in the first place...)And yes it's normally viewed as less prestigious.
Or less bigheaded.
Holy cow, you're right! Who knows if it doesn't turn out to be cheaper than the 18 carat gold with 63 diamonds MP3 player by that other company?
Military and intelligence sources in the US (...)
Gee, finally the allegations of military sources being in any way influenced by intelligence have stopped. It's about time!
How will they teach the bacteria to move the devices where they want them to be?
Of course one could call the allegation that all these points could not be presented in a non-trollish way trollish in itself.
About 90 Billion USD in development assistance have flown to developing countries in 2005 from the DAC member countries alone. And at least guys like Negroponte don't even want to sell their extremely helpful products via retailers, they try to get the money directly from the developing countries' governments. (Heck, why give local retailers or anyone else a chance to profit from this - just generates unnecessary interests and all that... naah, keep it simple, eh?)
BTW, measured againt gross national income the US rank at one before last in the list of development assistance spenders. So where will most of the money come from that African countries might spend on 100$ laptops and other gadgets? You do the math.
"What is right isn't always popular, and what is popular isn't always right."
Now if copyrights and patents just were about "right" and "wrong" these days.