Ok, the company as a whole tanked rapidly, as one might expect, but according to friends who lived in its territory at the time, one reason the service was so popular was that one of the things it delivered was weed. The company itself didn't sell it, but the drivers did that themselves, so they were happy and the customers were happy, and there were an awful lot of deliveries that had only one random item on the books (plus weed.)

Skype used a server-based system to set up calls, going through supernodes if possible (so it was semi-P2P), which handled subscriber lookup functions and also NAT transparency (which was the big thing that Skype did better than standard VOIP protocols such as H.323 and SIP.)

For the actual media path, if it could go directly, it would, but otherwise it would carry the call through supernodes (again, the NAT traversal problem.)

These days it seems to be mostly central servers, partly as a result of Microsoft buying them and partly because there was a lot of corporate pushback against supernodes using your corporation's bandwidth to complete somebody else's call.

Well THAT is fucking offensive, the way you said "codifying" it sounded like "codpiece".

Yes? Well then...

Baldric... Bring me... The Black Russian!

Needless to say, by disagreeing, I mark myself as an un-person.

Needless, pointless, and untrue. Someone else may so choose to regard you; you, however, are not that at all, and anyone who takes the attitude that you are, as you put it, an "unperson", is solely responsible for that attitude. You're still you, just as worthy as ever.

Consider the source, soldier on. Defy invalid social norms.

Some things are just not done, and are socially unacceptable this is one of them.

Socially unacceptable is one thing. And the appropriate response from you when faced with something you identify as such is also social: adjust your respect, relationship(s) and commentary according to the social cues you are given.

Relying on coercion and/or violence exerted by your government so you can assure that the general social environment is only populated by speech you approve of is something else entirely. It reeks of abject failure on your part, and on the part of your legislators. Such government-based active repression is one of the very few things that is more despicable than intentionally offensive speech presented without even a suggestion of humor.

> But as an athiest, my very existence is 'offensive' to muslims.

I'm an atheist as well. And I am aware that some Muslims proactively take offense because of my lack of belief.

However, you should be aware that of the five pillars of Islam, none say or imply one word about "hating atheists." That's just crap out of the Koran, which is a mish-mosh of uncorrelated and unordered quotes. Only fanatics take the violent sections of the Koran seriously. Not that there aren't enough fanatics to go around, of course.

> Are you suggesting that I should commit suicide to appease the Muslims?

Not in the least. I wasn't suggesting anyone should commit suicide, or in any way alter who or what they are. These are not things that give offense. You have not chosen to be atheist in order to give offense, have you? I presume you're atheist because you find that to be a comfortable state of mind, one that correlates well with what you observe of the world around you. Nothing to do with giving offense at all. I'm not wrong, am I? If I am, please let me know... that's a whole 'nuther bag of wolverines.

Simply being (existing as) atheist is not giving offense. That is the same as the case where someone is simply "being atheist" or "being Christian" or "being Muslim" or "being a rock collector."

When such provokes an "offended" response, we are merely seeing examples of the common practice by muddy thinkers of taking offense for any, or no, sane reason...

> Go Fuck Yourself ...Just as you have here. Brilliant to have so cleverly put yourself in exactly the same unreasonable club with those nasty, hateful, offended Islamists, isn't it? :)

There's an entire episode of ST: Enterprise devoted to ripping off Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy

TFTFY.

Seriously, read Citizen... RAH handles it so much better than TV.

No. Offense can surely be given. But trying to magically legislate it away is a horrific, cowardly, hubris-ridden mistake. Offense arises because of difference in opinion and grasp of fact, intentional or not.

Because of this, it can and will always arise, no matter how narrow you choke down the channel of discourse, unless or until all have the same opinions and grasp of facts, which, one hopes, will never, ever come about.

The most productive course is to try not to give offense, and if received, to assess it and take value (warning, insight, stance, new information) from it if possible — otherwise, let it go.

Restricting opinion by legal means is one of the worst ideas ever. Offense is not a legitimate mitigating factor for censorship and repression. When enacted into law as justification for anything, what it tells us is that we need new legislators, because the ones we have demonstrated fundamental incompetence.

No one has the "right to not be offended." Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a collective, or a group, or a society, or a community; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (collective, society, community) may not offend another; and in the final analysis, it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another. And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient... it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not. Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. Law that bans something based upon the idea that some group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration or others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.

Conversely, when people are truly harmed (not just offended) without their informed consent (and legitimate defense is not the cause), then the matter is one that should arguably be considered for law. Otherwise, no.

Oblig/meta: Orwell was an optimist

It sure as hell is the property of the person who created it.

No. It's not. I can prove it.

You think of X. You're happily sitting there thinking it's your "property." But Joe also thought of this. Do you imagine you now own "half" the "property"? Or that you both "own" all of the "property"? What if it's so obvious that everyone thinks of it at the same time? Whose "property" is it then?

You see, it's not property. It's an idea. A flux of neural activity that you cannot prevent from happening in someone else's head. You can certainly pretend it's property, but none of logic or the legal system or the constitution supports that position, so I really don't see any reason to take your position seriously.

And why should they get a chance?

Because it's just an idea. It's not property. Also because that's the ultimate intent of our system. Patent owners get a short-term monopoly, society gets the idea after that. I'm trying to formulate a way that the benefit to society arrives sooner, as does at least some of the reward for the inventor -- without in the process creating a coerced monopoly at all.

To your perceived actual value of the invention?

No, not mine. I am suggesting first as an estimate by a group of people who understand the technology and the relevant market(s) at the moment, pre-release, then later on, after its actual value has been demonstrated by adoption, in a much more precise manner.

That business that starts ABCs is a complete strawman. I didn't say anything about legality. I'm proposing an alternate means of reward than monopoly. Also, the intent of patents was not at all what you say. The intention of patents was to obtain the benefits of invention for all of society, and in order to do that, a temporary monopoly on some rights in granted. Learn your history. Lastly, don't think to lecture me about business. I've run a few, still own three, and actually know a thing or two about profit, market and invention, among other things. From the constitution:

[The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" is the point. Not your nonsense about "the person who invented the product or sold the invention to makes the profits and not someone who had nothing to do with it." Profit is used as the motive to get people to invent, so society (in other words, yes, people who had nothing to do with it) will benefit. Invention isn't protected in order that individuals profit. That's ass-backwards.

Are you willing to share 10% of your salary with homeless people?

Income, not salary. And we (the SO and I) do. Except it's more than 10%. And the majority of that is consequent to my own creative output, none of which was facilitated by patent monopoly. Presently, I give away *all* of my new creative output. Some of which is quite sophisticated; but none of which is anything someone else could not have done, either. I don't pretend to own ideas, even the ones I had first as far as I've been able to determine. I enjoy invention; I don't think invention confers ownership. I respect invention; I think it represents a great force for good. Monopoly, in my opinion, does not. Monopoly seems to me to be a force for retarding progress.

Exactly my point. How things "are" is entirely dependent upon what your own challenges and successes are, and whether they are increasing or decreasing.

Nothing I said in any way denies the advance of technology or the shift of cultural values. My point is, what that means is relative to the individual. Your world view is not mine, and vice-versa. It's just ridiculous for me to say the world is better, or worse, for you. Only you can say that.

One person will rave about the positive aspects of kids having cellphones. Another will mourn the childhood exploration and freedom that the face-in-device, helicopter-parented youth culture has lost. One will rave about television, next person points out that the "gift" of Fox News and the rest is no favor to accuracy, education or sanity. A hundred years ago, the pledge of allegiance hadn't been suborned by the religious in violation of the 1st amendment. A hundred years ago, female and male roles were very different. Some of those changes may seem positive, some quite negative. A hundred years ago, you could buy a home on the wages of pretty much any job. Today, it is difficult to do without very, very expensive loans from third parties. 100 years ago, one could make many personal choices that are forbidden today. Marijuana, cocaine, etc. Just over a hundred years ago, the state began interfering with the choice to enter into a polygamous relationship, and we're still stuck with that coercion. You mentioned jury nullification, and you did so as if less of it was a good idea -- but to me, it's about the only power remaining that can save citizens from an overzealous and out of control justice system.

Many things have changed, and everyone can have an opinion on every change. It's all very much relative and personal. There's no way to say "things are much better overall" because you can't obtain or synthesize an "overall" viewpoint.

It would be ok if the message said "Manifest file contains correctly formatted checksum - still need to verify."

That might also give you the hint that, if no message about "checksum verified correctly" appears later, probably no verification has been done.

I'm holding out for the 4-movie 16-hour extended-trilogy version of Farmer Giles of Ham and the first part of Leaf by Niggle: An Unwanted Journey.

That, or if I do watch Hobbit 3, I'll need some good pipeweed first.