I submitted this story a few days back (as I'm sure millions other readers did), but/. didn't see fit to publish it until there was a "computer geek" slant to the story.
For goodness sake, will the Slashdot Editors start being more open minded about what makes a good slashdot news article!! Surely the "achievement of the generation" deserves a passing mention on Slashdot even without the computer geek slant to it???
The US should cut back on emissions, and so should every other country in the world. No matter about those industrializing countries, whose populations live way below the poverty level, and are desperately in need of modern infrastructure.
If you've bothered to read about the issue, you'll see that the problem is that the US is unwilling to cut back on its emissions - while industrializing countries that need development most are being asked to bear the cost of reducing emissions.
Ok, so we start enacting controls that cost trillions of dollars on the basis of a small chance
I exaggerated when I said that the chance of global warming is small. There have been repeated warnings from credible scientists.
Even if you don't buy their story completely, if there's even a fair chance (say 20% chance) that global warming will occur, then spending trillions of dollars to avert it is well worth the expense. Think of it as insurance against a global catastrophe.
Reducing emissions, making industries more fuel efficient pays for itself in the long run - lower fuel costs, lower medical bills from pollution related illnesses. During the fuel crisis of the 70s, industries retooled themselves - as a result, oil consumption has actually decreased since its peak in the 70s.
Then in twenty years we find out that all the CO2 we've been dumping into the atmosphere has been the only thing between us and the next ice age and, whoops, we've stopped putting out so much.
Where's the data for this? In any case, it is easy to insert CO2 into the atmosphere if necessary.
Global warming may or may not be happening, but climate simulations tell us absolutely nothing. In fact, it's worse than nothing because it is intentionally misleading.
Look, if there's even a small chance that Global warming is occuring, then we should do something about it, right now - because it takes time to fix the problem, and the consequences can be catastrophic.
A group of us have come with what we think is an amazingly cool, unique, idea. We'd love to open source it, but we realize that we can't make much money off it if we open source.
We want adequate compensation for the time and creativity that went into it. Open sourcing doesn't seem to make sense, from the point of view of making money - unless you were redhat and could just resell something that was already done (with relatively little developmental expense on your part).
Wise sages of Slashdot, teach us how we can open source it and still make the money we think we deserve.
I got interested in BEAM after seeing a documentary featuring Mark Tilden and his robots. However, after looking through the plans for some BEAM robots, these things appear to be little more than glorified wind up toys.
"Nothing would be preprogrammed"? This is untrue. The programming is done through careful design of the analog circuitry.
I don't see tilden's approach as scaling to even true insect like intelligence.
Windows itself, however, is of debatable quality. I know if Windows had worked as well as I thought it should have, I would never have bothered to learn how to use Linux
1. What can Linux do that Windows cannot?
2. What can Windows do that Linux cannot?
The problem is that consumers will _expect_ "professional" applications to be signed. Which, as the article points out, will be a real burden on shareware programmers and small developers.
Anyone who thinks that unix, with its wonderfully arcane command line tools, has "natural appeal" for aspiring programmers, should slap themselves twice and think again.
Dude, making people work 70 hours a week on some silly web site is not going to give them the time to become the next Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman.
And what happens when your programmers grow "old" (turn 30), get married, have children, and don't want to work 70 hour weeks? Fire them?
Just think about the huge amount of money flooding every day towards Redmond and think again how great Win2K and IE really are. It amazes me how people praise those products and forget at the same time the incredible amount of resources it takes Microsoft to create them. To me Win2K is less than impressive in that light.
There is a huge amount of money flowing towards Redmond because people like their products and buy them. Duh.
I assume that CRC Press does in fact own the rights to most of the material found in Mathworld. Then the right thing to do would be for Wolfram to pay CRC Press for the rights to publish Mathworld online (I would be surprised if CRC isn't willing to work out some sort of licensing deal with Wolfram).
Wolfram is after all a commercial enterprise, and obtains considerable publicity and prestige from the publication of the material; it would be unreasonable to expect CRC to allow Wolfram, a rival publisher, to benefit from this without benefit to itself.
On the other hand, anime (especially manga) has historically been no better than pornography: it systematically dissects women into their component anatomical parts, except they're just fictionaly women
Complete rubbish. How much anime/manga have you seen? If that were the case, why would there be so many female manga authors, female manga readers, and female anime convention attendees?
Who CARES? The point is: society didn't work, didn't earn the money; the rich man did. If he wanted his son to have the property, why should someone step in and say, 'well, society would benefit more from it'?
If it's determined that redistributing the contents of wealthy persons' bank accounts would 'benefit society more,' is that justification enough for stealing?
I'm not american but these are the principles that your country is founded on (i assume you're american). e.g. read up the justification for intellectual property and apply it to this case. I think you will see that it is analogous.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes you think that BN wants to change the tide of IP law? They just happen to be on the wrong side of the fence this time around.
I submitted this story a few days back (as I'm sure millions other readers did), but /. didn't see fit to publish it until there was a "computer geek" slant to the story.
For goodness sake, will the Slashdot Editors start being more open minded about what makes a good slashdot news article!! Surely the "achievement of the generation" deserves a passing mention on Slashdot even without the computer geek slant to it???
The US should cut back on emissions, and so should every other country in the world. No matter about those industrializing countries, whose populations live way below the poverty level, and are desperately in need of modern infrastructure.
g lobal_warm.html
If you've bothered to read about the issue, you'll see that the problem is that the US is unwilling to cut back on its emissions - while industrializing countries that need development most are being asked to bear the cost of reducing emissions.
See http://www.thegully.com/essays/environment/001204
Ok, so we start enacting controls that cost trillions of dollars on the basis of a small chance
I exaggerated when I said that the chance of global warming is small. There have been repeated warnings from credible scientists.
Even if you don't buy their story completely, if there's even a fair chance (say 20% chance) that global warming will occur, then spending trillions of dollars to avert it is well worth the expense. Think of it as insurance against a global catastrophe.
Reducing emissions, making industries more fuel efficient pays for itself in the long run - lower fuel costs, lower medical bills from pollution related illnesses. During the fuel crisis of the 70s, industries retooled themselves - as a result, oil consumption has actually decreased since its peak in the 70s.
Then in twenty years we find out that all the CO2 we've been dumping into the atmosphere has been the only thing between us and the next ice age and, whoops, we've stopped putting out so much.
Where's the data for this? In any case, it is easy to insert CO2 into the atmosphere if necessary.
These things are common sense. Lets hope the new US leadership understands.
g lobal_warm.html
I don't think so.. the US has just elected a president who lacks common sense
See http://www.thegully.com/essays/environment/001204
Global warming may or may not be happening, but climate simulations tell us absolutely nothing. In fact, it's worse than nothing because it is intentionally misleading.
Look, if there's even a small chance that Global warming is occuring, then we should do something about it, right now - because it takes time to fix the problem, and the consequences can be catastrophic.
This is a case of someone doing doing his job too well. Take it as a cautionary tale, and embrace the world of built-in-obsolescence
A group of us have come with what we think is an amazingly cool, unique, idea. We'd love to open source it, but we realize that we can't make much money off it if we open source.
We want adequate compensation for the time and creativity that went into it. Open sourcing doesn't seem to make sense, from the point of view of making money - unless you were redhat and could just resell something that was already done (with relatively little developmental expense on your part).
Wise sages of Slashdot, teach us how we can open source it and still make the money we think we deserve.
There are data types (int, float, etc.) which are not objects in Java.
Great. Java teaches that good engineering solutions require compromises.
Cornell researchers have used the genome sequence of the Arabidopsis to obtain information on its origins as a species. See here.
I got interested in BEAM after seeing a documentary featuring Mark Tilden and his robots. However, after looking through the plans for some BEAM robots, these things appear to be little more than glorified wind up toys.
"Nothing would be preprogrammed"? This is untrue. The programming is done through careful design of the analog circuitry.
I don't see tilden's approach as scaling to even true insect like intelligence.
Windows itself, however, is of debatable quality. I know if Windows had worked as well as I thought it should have, I would never have bothered to learn how to use Linux
1. What can Linux do that Windows cannot?
2. What can Windows do that Linux cannot?
If it fits on a finite board, then it can only be an approximation to a turing machine since the TM requires infinite tape.
http://falcon.aben.cornell.edu/
The problem is that consumers will _expect_ "professional" applications to be signed. Which, as the article points out, will be a real burden on shareware programmers and small developers.
Anyone who thinks that unix, with its wonderfully arcane command line tools, has "natural appeal" for aspiring programmers, should slap themselves twice and think again.
Younger kids are usually relentless about getting what they want. If they want to program They'd get their hands on something like djgpp or cygwin
If they want to program, they'll get themselves a pirated copy of Visual Studio.
Dude, making people work 70 hours a week on some silly web site is not going to give them the time to become the next Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman.
And what happens when your programmers grow "old" (turn 30), get married, have children, and don't want to work 70 hour weeks? Fire them?
Just think about the huge amount of money flooding every day towards Redmond and think again how great Win2K and IE really are. It amazes me how people praise those products and forget at the same time the incredible amount of resources it takes Microsoft to create them. To me Win2K is less than impressive in that light.
There is a huge amount of money flowing towards Redmond because people like their products and buy them. Duh.
What web browser will they use? Mozilla, Netscape? Yuck.
I assume that CRC Press does in fact own the rights to most of the material found in Mathworld. Then the right thing to do would be for Wolfram to pay CRC Press for the rights to publish Mathworld online (I would be surprised if CRC isn't willing to work out some sort of licensing deal with Wolfram).
Wolfram is after all a commercial enterprise, and obtains considerable publicity and prestige from the publication of the material; it would be unreasonable to expect CRC to allow Wolfram, a rival publisher, to benefit from this without benefit to itself.
On the other hand, anime (especially manga) has historically been no better than pornography: it systematically dissects women into their component anatomical parts, except they're just fictionaly women
Complete rubbish. How much anime/manga have you seen? If that were the case, why would there be so many female manga authors, female manga readers, and female anime convention attendees?
"In the best of all possible worlds, all is for the best."
I don't see how it can right itself with a shape like that.
Who CARES? The point is: society didn't work, didn't earn the money; the rich man did. If he wanted his son to have the property, why should someone step in and say, 'well, society would benefit more from it'?
If it's determined that redistributing the contents of wealthy persons' bank accounts would 'benefit society more,' is that justification enough for stealing?
I'm not american but these are the principles that your country is founded on (i assume you're american). e.g. read up the justification for intellectual property and apply it to this case. I think you will see that it is analogous.