Comment Re:Abolishment? (Score 1) 324
Pi aren't square. Cornbread are square. Pi are round!
Pi aren't square. Cornbread are square. Pi are round!
> I've also read (though this may not be quite right) that our large complex brains use
> lots of energy, and therefore require greater amounts of food.
To cite Wikipedia from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain#Brain_energy_consumption :
Although the human brain represents only 2% of the body weight, it receives 15% of the
cardiac output, 20% of total body oxygen consumption, and 25% of total body glucose
utilization.
(this is footnoted in case you care about the original source).
That -does- make sense. Too often, though, the rest of the conversation would go like this.
"Ok, that's fine. Do you have any OTHER software we don't know about?"
"No. None!"
"Ok, we'll do a quick audit and get back to you."
(a short time later)
"Well, I'm afraid we found several pieces of additional software. Several were expired trial versions, which according to the license, we're obliged to buy since you continued using them past the trial date. Then there's this other package..."
"But that ones free!"
"No, it's free for "noncommercial use", which doesn't cover us. And what about $EXPENSIVE PACKAGE? We never bought that."
"Oh, that's my own copy. I have a license."
"Yes, we know. An academic license. It doesn't cover your use of that software here."
I agree with you in principle. As long as everybody plays nice, there's no reason to lock things down. The people who won't play nice mess it up for everyone.
"there are lots of low density areas where the Telcos have not bothered to put in the infrastructure to handle DSL"
And this despite the monthly charge that appeared on all our phone bills that was supposed to fund that infrastructure build-out. It probably paid for more DC lobbyists to fight regulation instead of what it was intended for.
With the client's full knowledge and permission is key.
I've seen people fired for doing the same without permission. Ask them, and they "needed it to do their job!". Ask the client,and no they didn't. Companies often understand perfectly well that some of the hoops they make us jump through are less efficient. Sometimes there's a reason, like write documentation so we don't lose your work if you get hit by a bus, sometimes it's misguided.
Another reason to DENY companies person-hood
I don't see what that has to do with copyright at all.
The reason copyright terms have been extended so many times for so long is that large corporate media has exerted its large influence in Congress to get these laws passed. The interests of the general public are not represented by lobbyists, giving the corporations a monopoly on the attention of Congress. Limiting the size (and thereby the power) of these corporations would break part of that monopoly power.
-1 Insightful, really, Really REALLY?
The poster above him did not see what my comment had to do with Copyrights. This post explained it well enough for the average Joe to understand, thus I saw no reason to reply again until I saw the moderation.
While copyright can be assigned to a corporation, the materials mentioned in the slash dot post were assigned to people, not corporations, think of the time frame people.
Think about it. If Corporations have the same rights as people and those copyrights were granted/assigned to people, the abuse of extending copyrights for additional years (THE VERY point of the slashdot post to begin with) seems to be perpetuated by companies/corporations (specifically various media companies that also want to inflict DRM BS on us...that's another related topic to copyrights.) Here are two quotes from the slashdot article, so meta moderators see that this post and the last are on topic:
If the 1790 copyright maximum term of 28 years was still in effect, everything that had been published by 1981 would be now be in the public domain
and
...maximum term of 56 years (if renewed)...
Obviously corporate person-hood and laws giving corporations the same rights as people is very much a part of this problem, if not part of the heart of the problem.
Corporations have limited rights, per our Constitution and our Bill of Rights (which the above poster has made valid points how our rights have been eroded over the years...great link/article, and still on topic as well). The abuse of copyright laws by corporations is most definitely part of the problem and impacts all of us directly by denying us access to the materials, as the system intended, after the copyright period ran out.
Its like the companies have no interest in innovation and providing new entertainment, spending money on new work, helping new artists get discovered and bringing us all quality entertainment. Nope all they want to do is use their corporate lobbyist power to extend the copyright laws further out, denying our use of the material as originally intended after the first 28 year term ran out...
To the companies, I say innovate or die! And while you are at it, try to create some jobs and help recover the economy, wasting all that money to extend copyright laws to enrich yourself and hurt Americans. Shame on you, I most certainly call that un-American!
Someone please mode the posters up, this topic of person-hood most definitely applies to Copyright!
I'd like to see two reforms (besides revoking personhood to corporations, and if what I've read is correct it wasn't even a Supreme Court ruling, but an error made by a law clerk):
Since that K5 article my 4th amendment rights were abused twice, once on the day we commemorate those who died defending those same rights that were abused!
I recognize the irony in asking this question as I am an American; however, shouldn't there be a little more discussion from the rest of the planet when dealing with the potential of a huge asteroid destroying the planet if someone calculates a trajectory incorrectly?
That's a big assumption, though. Look at the current state of health in this country. Our baseline is *waaaaaay* below that. For the average overweight, malnourished, sleep-deprived adult, any one of those boring answers would result in a very noticeable improvement.
Assuming you already have someone who has properly cared for their body, my next step would be to train the mind. Try an assortment of methods to improve the efficiency with which you think. Play with things like mnemonics to help your memory, for example.
Another boring answer, I know, but I see artificial solutions as a proper choice only when you have exhausted the natural solutions. Much like the focus on muscle size. I'd rather take X pounds of muscle and learn how to utilize it twice as efficiently than ingest some random magic powder to double my muscle mass while remaining at the baseline efficiency.
> vim is more concerned with text editing.
Vim users often state this, but when I last compared Vim and Emacs, the latter was vastly superior for editing plain text lists [1] and tables [2], which are used extensively in my notes and other non-code documents.
With the exception of Vim being arguably more ergonomic, in what way is Vim superior to Emacs for editing text?
[1] http://orgmode.org/manual/Plain-lists.html
[2] http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/tables.php
in principal, if simple common sense is also followed.
In principle common sense is common. In practice you'll find it's quite rare.
Of course, short term traders provide liquidity for long term holders to sell into; I wouldn't be surprised if the tax scheme you proposed simply ended up shifting many transactions such that the trader got more of the advantage, approximately correlated with the expected tax rate of the investor.
Or maybe markets would still be highly liquid.
From what part of my posts do you conclude that I "plan to feed humanity with the plants" ?
I just corrected the dependency direction in your post. Animals depend on plants, not the other way round.
"Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!" -- Buckaroo Banzai
