Comment Re:PI KERNEL (Score 1) 132
That would be irrational.
Dammit. Something actually a bit witty and I'm all out of mod points.
At least I never wasted any of them modding up the repetitive "sharks with lasers" memes.
That would be irrational.
Dammit. Something actually a bit witty and I'm all out of mod points.
At least I never wasted any of them modding up the repetitive "sharks with lasers" memes.
easy.... americans are corrupt fuckers
No. What they are is lazy, childish, obese, opiated by entertainment, naive, and self-centered. This enables the corruption by the minority who really run things.
The rest of the world only thinks Americans are evil and corrupt because of the myth that the US government and US corporations are representing the will of the American people and operating on their behalf.
Most Americans would be shocked and horrified if they learned about what their government and major corporations have done to places like South America, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, let alone what goes on at home.
I know I'm going to look foolish for saying this, but I actually watched part of the video (enough to know how apple products are portrayed)! The apple product in the video is being used to file for a patent. There is _nothing_ in the video about patents owned by apple, or patents involving apple products. The suggestion by Samsung that the video biases jurors is absurd.
Yes, just like the Pepsi Cola in the action movie is merely being used by the badass hero to quench his thirst, and certainly no claim is being made that it is superior to Coca-Cola or any niche brand of soft drink.
Yet Pepsi Cola paid a lot of money to make that happen.
Why should Apple get this treatment for free with government support? When it would be so easy to create a video with none of these questions? That's the take-away here.
I can see what they're complaining about. I skimmed through the video, and the Apple logo was clearly shown on Apple devices. I didn't notice other brands shown anywhere. They should have been a little better about covering up all references to specific devices (i.e., the logos).
I could see the implied "Apple is ok, they're even in our instructional video". So
Indeed. The court showing an Apple logo (or if they ever showed a Samsung label) for even a moment is a potential problem. The effect of a large, official establishment of some sort showing acceptance of such things, for even a moment, is not to be underestimated. It's the entire basis of all celebrity endorsements, for example.
"This major actor used Product X and says he likes it, therefore maybe I will like it too!" sounds silly and full of fallacies. But it works. There is no reason to assume that "this official government organization displayed one logo and not the other" has zero effect. It's so easy to avoid these problems and it would be worthwhile even if it were difficult.
There's a quick video montage of inventions starting at the 2:55 mark which features an old polycarbonate MacBook (or a late-model iBook?), an iPad, and an iPhone, but the logos are not visible on any of them. To be perfectly honest, despite having owned an iPad and that model of iPhone, I didn't even recognize them as being Apple products until I re-watched the video, just because of the angles they were shot at and the actions the scenes were focusing on. Had I not been looking for them, I wouldn't have seen them.
This sounds so much like the product placements in movies, or the subliminal advertising experiments conducted decades ago. Whether these methods work or not, the intention is rather clear. Why do judges recuse themselves from trials in which they may have an interest? It is not because we have proof positive that the judge cannot maintain objectivity, but rather because in a fair trial we wish to eliminate such concerns entirely. The outcome and the precedent are simply too important.
Whatever you think of such methods, all of this could be neatly put to rest, at the satisfaction of both litigants, by merely creating a video using fictitious brands to illustrate the same point. Compared to the cost of carrying out this trial, it would be negligible, and that's assuming it would have to be created from scratch, that there are not already such videos available.
These are shown for about 5 seconds of a 20 minute instructional video, and none of them even show an Apple logo. Later in the video it shows people using an Apple laptop to do work, not as an example of a patented technology.
This is such a tea pot tempest. It'd be silly to not use this video.
The problem is that we have two standards. One is the level of objectivity and reasonable thinking you should be able to expect of adult people. The second is the actual thinking you really get from adult people.
According to the first, it's truly a tempest in a teapot. According to the second, the cost of producing a video that would put to rest entirely such objections is negligable compared to the cost of the rest of the trial.
Branding, logos, and emotional situations associated with them are used in marketing for the precise reason that they bypass the former standard and appeal to the second. All major corporations engage in this. Apple is not in any way special and neither is Samsung. They do it because on the vast majority of soft-minded and easily influenced people, they work. Just consider, why would beer commercials show vibrant parties and bikini babes instead of telling you about how the beer was brewed and why it's better? Why do car commercials show families and small children to tug at your heartstrings instead of explaining why their engineering principles are sound? They want the second standard to prevail; it is much more malleable and easier to manipulate by far.
Not only Americans... just check your neighborhood... or in the mirror.
I was with you until "in the mirror". The fact is, most people in most places are not this corrupt. Most people are subject to a minority who happen to "run things".
As a matter of fact, this is part of the problem: the average person working a job and raising a family cannot comprehend the greed, the self-interested several-moves-ahead strategy that looks like things "just worked out that way", the corruption, the ruthlessness, and the dehumanization. If the average person fully understood these forces, then you would in fact have a situation where public awareness keeps these abuses in check.
Adolph Hitler himself described the phenomenon with surprising candor. He said: "The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one."
Because they themselves do not use this level of deceit, it does not occur to them that others do. Therefore there is a certain innocence or naivete that prevents the average person from suspecting and guarding against such things.
A gaze into this mirror for most would reflect not such corruption, but a kind of innocence that ideally would know better. History is replete with examples, but of course that only happens elsewhere. It can't happen here. It certainly cannot happen in a manner that is subtle, not publicised, not obvious, not easily detectable. Or so the thinking goes.
The truth is, the corrupt are competing not with a vigilant and wise public, but against other sociopaths. Other sociopaths deal with this not by exposing all corruption, for that would harm themselves, but by carving out their own little niche that doesn't encroach upon the terriority of their competitors more than necessary. The average person has no clue how much they're being lied to on a daily basis by governments, corporations, and other institutions which enjoy an automatic credibility they have not earned.
How hard is it to understand? Anybody who agrees with me is informed. Anybody who holds a dissenting viewpoint is an ignorant sheep. Very simple.
It depends on whether it's a factual matter.
What ignorant sheep do: post sometimes vehement/passionate opinions concerning subjects they haven't even bothered to read up on, let alone understand. Then get upset when someone who is informed constructively corrects them. It's standard ego-childishness.
Most things that make sense to the informed are "crazy talk" to the rest.
Having the same priorities as you and being "informed" are not the same thing.
It's not a priority for me to be informed about, say, interior decorating. I don't know anything about it. That's why you won't see me making statements and giving opinions on it. Simple?
It's a conspiracy with car repair shops! What if these procedures were so simple that people could do them at home? We just can't have that.
Consider that the Joe Sixpacks of automobiles tend to get their cars serviced at the same branded dealerships from which the car was purchased, and this becomes simple two-party collusion between the dealership owner and the car company allowing them to use the logos.
That's extremely disingenuous; you characterized the whisky rebels as manifesting superior and contrary values to celebrity-obsessed moderns. If you aren't saying they were fighting for the true values of the revolution, which we should all say were enlightened, then what are you saying?
I have already clarified what I said about the Whisky Rebellion and that there was a reason why I stopped short of characterizing it. I can tell a man that two plus two equals four, or that there is not in fact a Venusian standing in the corner, but it is ultimately up to that man whether he will believe me.
I think what's going on is you're one of those people that constructs an argument so abstruse and subtle, so obfuscated by insinuations, and so muddled by generalization, that it fails to say anything, and for every 100 words of positive argument you spend 1000 words telling people they're interpreting you wrong.
Neither the mods operating in this thread nor the two other posters replying to it had any difficulty interpreting my meaning. That tells us something. It tells us that some, like you, want to play the "hostile audience" and be intentionally obtuse because they just have to make the other guy wrong. Meanwhile, other more reasonable people will read what was written with the intention of trying to understand what I am saying, and find that it really isn't difficult. It wouldn't be difficult for you either, if you had any intention of doing it.
They didn't tax whisky because it was an opiate, they taxed it because it was being used as a commodity currency.
Note I never said that whisky was an opiate. Again you are deliberately failing to comprehend what was written. I said that entertainment, sports, and excess food ("becoming obese") are currently opiating the population today, unlike back then. This manner you have of twisting around what was said, it would be much more successful in a verbal conversation. In a written conversation where what I said is right there for all to see, it is doomed to fail. Re-read the post yourself, you will see that I said the people living during the Whisky Rebellion lacked the opiates so common today.
But then, you already knew that. You have painted yourself into a corner and your chief concern is saving face. Your only sensible option now is to admit that you failed to comprehend what I read. But we both know you won't do that. It would require more honesty and security than you possess. You'd rather continue hopelessly and pointlessly bickering in an effort to wear me down. Because if you never, ever admit you were wrong, then no one will notice, right?
These childish ego games are destroying the fun of Slashdot more than any shitty Beta redesign could ever hope to do.
I used to think living in the country somewhere, a drive away from a WalMart but out where a man's rights are respected, was crazy talk. Now it seems like a nice way to lay back and watch the world spin.
Most things that make sense to the informed are "crazy talk" to the rest.
Now, that does not mean that open source is not useful.
Please, please stop this culture of disclaiming things that were never claimed. The only purpose is to placate hostile-audience douchebags who have no reading comprehension.
They don't deserve the accommodation.
You wear strange glasses. Most people I know criticize the president and the rest of the admininstration. They'v e even pretty much stopped saying "Well, they're well intentioned." And I'm talking about generally liberal people here. (Yes, I do know some who criticize the adminstration for not being conservative enough, for some definition or other of conservative, but I think of most of them as dingbats.)
My criticism of this administration is the same as my criticism of every administration I can remember during my lifetime: the failure to recognize that the federal government is too large and too powerful and take effective steps to reduce its scope.
Happiness is twin floppies.