This isn't about sexual harassment, but controlling the internet, and implicitly people in general. A lot of the powers that be have decided that, like other forms of media, they need to sanitize it in the name of control. (even with games, google gamergate) They want a name and an ID behind every post, they want to create "accountability". They gleefully ignore the fact that any woman, gay person, person of color, persecuted minority can take on an anon alias and argue their beliefs, do their work on merit alone. Seriously, how do we even know that Satoshi, the bitcoin creator, isn't a black lesbian? The internet frees productive people from race and gender in a way that before was never even remotely possible.
So maybe, just maybe, the people who want to make it an issue now, are the doing it not because of some high morality, but because they are discovering they can't compete on merit. But the issue is way deeper that that. In today's world, a lot of media and games are controlled via copyright, but copyrights by their very nature require centralized control by those who control them to work. Yet the internet is doing just the opposite, it is moving into the direction of decentralized control, threatening a lot of people, who happen to have a lot of money.
After reading the comments here, it's surprising how few people seem to understand that taxes are just theft. Yeah yeah yeah, I know the government provides public "services", but that's all just a pretext to justify stealing from people. It's pathetic when people think these programs are about helping them.
If the mafia went from business to business extorting money from people, and one of the business people found a way out of it via a technicality. That is not a bad thing. And neither is it getting out from under the thumb of government criminals either. It amazes me how easy it is to see all the evil and crap done by the government, yet people still want to give them money. It's like there is some kind of disconnect.
If a slave escaped from the plantation, would people go off and say that is evil because the master will just make the other slaves work harder... yet this is the exact kind of logic people use when they see others escape taxes. The gov will take more from us! Less money for our programs! The Mexican mafia has charity programs too, do you think they're doing it just because they are nice guys?
The state is already taking the max they can, and giving back the least they can get away with to justify themselves. People escaping them will not make things worse for us, but instead create more opportunity out there for us to escape too as well.
The wage gap is a symptom, not the problem. The problem is self entitled democracies, and the fiat money banks created to accommodate populist demands. It'd be like trying to cover up herion convulsions, with seizure medication. It reminds me of the old south. When the plantation masters beat the fuck out of their slaves, they wanted to micro-regulate the treatment of slaves, instead of getting rid of slavery. In retrospect, the people advocated those regulations, were just prolonging the problem, and head so far up their fucking ass, they were beyond stupid.
Today, our fiat/populist systems create all these credit bubbles, housing bubbles, stock bubbles, excessive government debt, high prices, inflated executive pay. And these retards want to go around regulating everything, instead of attacking the problem at the source. Fuck them, just fuck them. Irrelevant worthless idiots who will accomplish nothing anyhow.
For chrissake, there has never been a day since the birth of humankind where journalism has been impartial. Right now, the powers that be seem to be changing hands, and so all the old partialities are falling to the new ones. Maybe the old minions are whining about impartiality, but in practice they are really just whineing that their partiality is being subbed out for somebody elses.
IMHO, copyright is a manifestation of a severe misunderstanding of why a society even has any property rights at all. Property rights do not exist to help people make profit, that's a consequence property. Property exists to deal with the truth that not everybody can use everything at the same time. We create property so we can resolve disputes over scarce resources without beating the crap out of each other. While it's true that when people stop knocking the crap out of each other, society tends to be prosperous and happy. That is a consequence of property rights, not the reason for them.
Well, with content and information, everybody can use everything at the same time. Copyrights impose a restriction on use, not for the sake of resolving conflicts over scarce resources, but for the sake of controlling how people distribute information for optimum profit. They are an abomination of everything free markets, property rights, and capitalism were ever created for. They are a fraud, and likewise everything we have ever been taught about them is a fraud too.
Ever since childhood, we have all been taught that copyrights are a property right that protects creators and incentives creation. But in the real world copyrights act nothing like normal property rights, they protect cartels, and incentive lawyers. This is a fact, it is impossible to deny. The few creators who do win the copyright game are like people who win the lottery, no mention of the countless others locked out. They don't incentive creation, all they do is force the market to centrer around creation controls instead of creation services. They aid the people who control, far more than they aid the people who create.
All Microsoft problems really indirectly boil down to one problem. They try to be a licensing company, rather than a technology solution company. This is why google nailed them in both search and phone and now tablet. Even IBM got the message, and moved toward a Linux datacenter strategy.
I just amazes me to see all their "reforms" all their "restructuring" all their products that have been doomed to fail, and they still don't get it.
I'll believe it when the NSA is actually defunded.
The more cynical side of me says this is bullshit politics as usual.
Here's what's really going to happen: the congressman is going to go to the NSA leadership, and say "look, I have hundreds and thousands of constituents who want to shut you down, but if you let me spy on my political opponents, and listen in on their calls, and help me sabotage them, then I can justify and risk continuance of your funding"
The more we petition them, the more they will be able to use shutting them down as a threat to get more political power that is turned against us. I predict it will be a cold day in hell before political leaders in DC give up that kind of power to spy on and blackmail people.
If you have billions in capital, it is extremely hard to move around billions in assets without all the small traders taking notice, and piling on before you can reach your full position. That's why large traders like Buffet absolutely hate day traders, and has never split his stock, causing shares in his company to be valued at over $65000 per share last I checked. Being able to trade freely and quickly is one of the few great equalizers in large capital markets.
I think the problem is that people find themselves going to the licensing zoo, because they need to find a way to undo a lot of the damage caused by the very nature of copyright and patents (and the DMCA, etc...). A better solution is just to get rid of copyright and patents (at least on things like media and software)
... that way I can hire somebody from India to clean my house, mow the yard, do dishes, and laundry remotely over the internet. At an estimated 70K for this one, I don't think that's going to work out for me anytime soon.
>So instead of the load being distributed properly, you want the government to shift most of the load to your back?
that argument is no logically different than saying, "well if that nigger escapes from the plantation, the master will make us other niggers work harder"
"I have spent a lot of time fighting far larger lobbying organizations in DC and believe that the right way to win on a cause is to argue the merits of that cause"
HAHHHA HAHHA HH AHA HA HAH AH HAH A HA HAH A HH A HAHA
2^31 = 2,147,483,648 = $21,474,836.48 when counted in pennies. I once worked for a software company where a call came into the support desk from one of our customers accounting departments. Once their sales reached a certain point, their books were suddenly off by exactly that amount (minus 1 cent). While everybody else was scratching their heads about the missing 21 million dollars, I recognized the number, and knew exactly what the problem was. They were storing the number as a 32 bit signed int which had overflowed. That's also how I got promoted from the support desk to a software developer.
IMHO, this is possibly why the max number of bitcoins was designed to be 21 million. Even though the number is not stored as an int in the bitcoin clients, it still avoids a lot of potential problems across platforms, and in scripts, and in data transfer to other systems in other formats. Just a thought.
You see, between all the proprietary crap messing with peoples heads, and all the technology egos, and those daytime prisons they call public schools, it becomes really hard to find a good programmer.
IMHO, the best way to find a great programmer is to find some high-school kid who hasn't been corrupted by the public school system, who can think analytically, and who has a good attitude, and train him.
... but you made my point though, (the same is true with MS security too) you can get it right if you go through a bunch of bullshit, but they always make it a pain in the ass, or gouge you.
Everything abut Microsoft is frustrating. Constant popupups, talking nagging paper-clips, can only log in one user account at a time unless you pay out the nose, a window8 GUI trying to shove apps down out throats even if we're a desktop, all versions of word are more incomparable with each other than open office is, how they try to force me into bing, how they try to obsolete older versions like XP - even though it works perfectly fine on older PC's, even worse, how they try to obsolete older versions of office. Don't even get me started with VB VBscript, and their basterdized versions of html and javascript.
However, all of these annoyances are not problems, they are symptoms of a company who can't compete on service, so instead they try to compete by shoving proprietary crap down our throats. Then they wonder why companies that 'get it' like google, waltz in and rip them a new asshole, while linux effectively kicked their ass in the dataceter market. I know being able to gouge the fuck out of people with proprietary licensing is like a security blanket to them, but really, in order to compete they just need to give it up. It's dulling them.
IMHO, the problem is that these companies with the help of the government want to use intellectual property rights laws to control people. These (IPR) laws are the problem, and DRM is the tool they intend to use to impose them. That's why I don't think fighting DRM will solve our problems. They'll never stop this crap till we cut it off at the root, and stand up against the laws being imposed on us.
Oil and fuel can be re factored from both coal and natural gas if necessary, so in truth, it's not a matter of amount, but a matter of price. Once the price reaches a certain level - other means of getting fuel become more economical. In fact, once oil reaches a certain price, you can literally use nuclear power (or hydro/solar) and pull co2 from the air, and reprocess it into fuel.
In the end, there is no one foundation or company. We have to use technology to create p2p/distributed types of solutions that can bypass the state and proprietary controls, even assuming they have 100% control over the infrastructure.
Does anybody else just wish ReactOS and/or WINE would just take over, and reach a point where everything can run on them. That way we could kick out Microsoft and not have to play their upgrade and licensing games all the time.
Because in the USA, at least, you can't patent an interface. You can patent all sorts of other stuff, but interface patents are one of the few things you can't patent? That's why AMD and Compaq were able to waltz in and kick IBM's and Intel's ass when it came to pin-socket compatible PC's.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't about sexual harassment, but controlling the internet, and implicitly people in general. A lot of the powers that be have decided that, like other forms of media, they need to sanitize it in the name of control. (even with games, google gamergate) They want a name and an ID behind every post, they want to create "accountability". They gleefully ignore the fact that any woman, gay person, person of color, persecuted minority can take on an anon alias and argue their beliefs, do their work on merit alone. Seriously, how do we even know that Satoshi, the bitcoin creator, isn't a black lesbian? The internet frees productive people from race and gender in a way that before was never even remotely possible.
So maybe, just maybe, the people who want to make it an issue now, are the doing it not because of some high morality, but because they are discovering they can't compete on merit. But the issue is way deeper that that. In today's world, a lot of media and games are controlled via copyright, but copyrights by their very nature require centralized control by those who control them to work. Yet the internet is doing just the opposite, it is moving into the direction of decentralized control, threatening a lot of people, who happen to have a lot of money.
After reading the comments here, it's surprising how few people seem to understand that taxes are just theft. Yeah yeah yeah, I know the government provides public "services", but that's all just a pretext to justify stealing from people. It's pathetic when people think these programs are about helping them.
If the mafia went from business to business extorting money from people, and one of the business people found a way out of it via a technicality. That is not a bad thing. And neither is it getting out from under the thumb of government criminals either. It amazes me how easy it is to see all the evil and crap done by the government, yet people still want to give them money. It's like there is some kind of disconnect.
If a slave escaped from the plantation, would people go off and say that is evil because the master will just make the other slaves work harder ... yet this is the exact kind of logic people use when they see others escape taxes. The gov will take more from us! Less money for our programs! The Mexican mafia has charity programs too, do you think they're doing it just because they are nice guys?
The state is already taking the max they can, and giving back the least they can get away with to justify themselves. People escaping them will not make things worse for us, but instead create more opportunity out there for us to escape too as well.
The wage gap is a symptom, not the problem. The problem is self entitled democracies, and the fiat money banks created to accommodate populist demands. It'd be like trying to cover up herion convulsions, with seizure medication. It reminds me of the old south. When the plantation masters beat the fuck out of their slaves, they wanted to micro-regulate the treatment of slaves, instead of getting rid of slavery. In retrospect, the people advocated those regulations, were just prolonging the problem, and head so far up their fucking ass, they were beyond stupid.
Today, our fiat/populist systems create all these credit bubbles, housing bubbles, stock bubbles, excessive government debt, high prices, inflated executive pay. And these retards want to go around regulating everything, instead of attacking the problem at the source. Fuck them, just fuck them. Irrelevant worthless idiots who will accomplish nothing anyhow.
For chrissake, there has never been a day since the birth of humankind where journalism has been impartial. Right now, the powers that be seem to be changing hands, and so all the old partialities are falling to the new ones. Maybe the old minions are whining about impartiality, but in practice they are really just whineing that their partiality is being subbed out for somebody elses.
IMHO, copyright is a manifestation of a severe misunderstanding of why a society even has any property rights at all. Property rights do not exist to help people make profit, that's a consequence property. Property exists to deal with the truth that not everybody can use everything at the same time. We create property so we can resolve disputes over scarce resources without beating the crap out of each other. While it's true that when people stop knocking the crap out of each other, society tends to be prosperous and happy. That is a consequence of property rights, not the reason for them.
Well, with content and information, everybody can use everything at the same time. Copyrights impose a restriction on use, not for the sake of resolving conflicts over scarce resources, but for the sake of controlling how people distribute information for optimum profit. They are an abomination of everything free markets, property rights, and capitalism were ever created for. They are a fraud, and likewise everything we have ever been taught about them is a fraud too.
Ever since childhood, we have all been taught that copyrights are a property right that protects creators and incentives creation. But in the real world copyrights act nothing like normal property rights, they protect cartels, and incentive lawyers. This is a fact, it is impossible to deny. The few creators who do win the copyright game are like people who win the lottery, no mention of the countless others locked out. They don't incentive creation, all they do is force the market to centrer around creation controls instead of creation services. They aid the people who control, far more than they aid the people who create.
All Microsoft problems really indirectly boil down to one problem. They try to be a licensing company, rather than a technology solution company.
This is why google nailed them in both search and phone and now tablet. Even IBM got the message, and moved toward a Linux datacenter strategy.
I just amazes me to see all their "reforms" all their "restructuring" all their products that have been doomed to fail, and they still don't get it.
I'll believe it when the NSA is actually defunded.
The more cynical side of me says this is bullshit politics as usual.
Here's what's really going to happen: the congressman is going to go to the NSA leadership, and say "look, I have hundreds and thousands of constituents who want to shut you down, but if you let me spy on my political opponents, and listen in on their calls, and help me sabotage them, then I can justify and risk continuance of your funding"
The more we petition them, the more they will be able to use shutting them down as a threat to get more political power that is turned against us. I predict it will be a cold day in hell before political leaders in DC give up that kind of power to spy on and blackmail people.
pick up a bunch of Surface tablets, and put Linux or Android on them
If you have billions in capital, it is extremely hard to move around billions in assets without all the small traders taking notice, and piling on before you can reach your full position. That's why large traders like Buffet absolutely hate day traders, and has never split his stock, causing shares in his company to be valued at over $65000 per share last I checked. Being able to trade freely and quickly is one of the few great equalizers in large capital markets.
I think the problem is that people find themselves going to the licensing zoo, because they need to find a way to undo a lot of the damage caused by the very nature of copyright and patents (and the DMCA, etc ...). A better solution is just to get rid of copyright and patents (at least on things like media and software)
... that way I can hire somebody from India to clean my house, mow the yard, do dishes, and laundry remotely over the internet. At an estimated 70K for this one, I don't think that's going to work out for me anytime soon.
... but does anybody else think the whole world should just move to 24 hr GMT, and get it over with.
... but once you get in, you can take any ride you want.
>So instead of the load being distributed properly, you want the government to shift most of the load to your back?
that argument is no logically different than saying, "well if that nigger escapes from the plantation, the master will make us other niggers work harder"
It's just plain stupid.
"I have spent a lot of time fighting far larger lobbying organizations in DC and believe that the right way to win on a cause is to argue the merits of that cause"
HAHHHA HAHHA HH AHA HA HAH AH HAH A HA HAH A HH A HAHA
Yeah, uh huh.
2^31 = 2,147,483,648 = $21,474,836.48 when counted in pennies. I once worked for a software company where a call came into the support desk from one of our customers accounting departments. Once their sales reached a certain point, their books were suddenly off by exactly that amount (minus 1 cent). While everybody else was scratching their heads about the missing 21 million dollars, I recognized the number, and knew exactly what the problem was. They were storing the number as a 32 bit signed int which had overflowed. That's also how I got promoted from the support desk to a software developer.
IMHO, this is possibly why the max number of bitcoins was designed to be 21 million. Even though the number is not stored as an int in the bitcoin clients, it still avoids a lot of potential problems across platforms, and in scripts, and in data transfer to other systems in other formats. Just a thought.
You see, between all the proprietary crap messing with peoples heads, and all the technology egos, and those daytime prisons they call public schools, it becomes really hard to find a good programmer.
IMHO, the best way to find a great programmer is to find some high-school kid who hasn't been corrupted by the public school system, who can think analytically, and who has a good attitude, and train him.
... but you made my point though, (the same is true with MS security too) you can get it right if you go through a bunch of bullshit, but they always make it a pain in the ass, or gouge you.
Everything abut Microsoft is frustrating. Constant popupups, talking nagging paper-clips, can only log in one user account at a time unless you pay out the nose, a window8 GUI trying to shove apps down out throats even if we're a desktop, all versions of word are more incomparable with each other than open office is, how they try to force me into bing, how they try to obsolete older versions like XP - even though it works perfectly fine on older PC's, even worse, how they try to obsolete older versions of office. Don't even get me started with VB VBscript, and their basterdized versions of html and javascript.
However, all of these annoyances are not problems, they are symptoms of a company who can't compete on service, so instead they try to compete by shoving proprietary crap down our throats. Then they wonder why companies that 'get it' like google, waltz in and rip them a new asshole, while linux effectively kicked their ass in the dataceter market. I know being able to gouge the fuck out of people with proprietary licensing is like a security blanket to them, but really, in order to compete they just need to give it up. It's dulling them.
IMHO, the problem is that these companies with the help of the government want to use intellectual property rights laws to control people. These (IPR) laws are the problem, and DRM is the tool they intend to use to impose them. That's why I don't think fighting DRM will solve our problems. They'll never stop this crap till we cut it off at the root, and stand up against the laws being imposed on us.
Oil and fuel can be re factored from both coal and natural gas if necessary, so in truth, it's not a matter of amount, but a matter of price. Once the price reaches a certain level - other means of getting fuel become more economical. In fact, once oil reaches a certain price, you can literally use nuclear power (or hydro/solar) and pull co2 from the air, and reprocess it into fuel.
In the end, there is no one foundation or company. We have to use technology to create p2p/distributed types of solutions that can bypass the state and proprietary controls, even assuming they have 100% control over the infrastructure.
Does anybody else just wish ReactOS and/or WINE would just take over, and reach a point where everything can run on them. That way we could kick out Microsoft and not have to play their upgrade and licensing games all the time.
Because in the USA, at least, you can't patent an interface. You can patent all sorts of other stuff, but interface patents are one of the few things you can't patent? That's why AMD and Compaq were able to waltz in and kick IBM's and Intel's ass when it came to pin-socket compatible PC's.
http://thepiratebay.se/
Seems legit to me :)