"... and violatation-of-not-actually-contracts-but-verbally-they-felt-like-them in that specific case..."
Here is a little bit of Contract Law 101:
If you agreed to something in good-faith negotiation, and there is "consideration" on both sides, and it doesn't otherwise violate law, then it's a contract. It doesn't have to be on paper. That piece of paper is nothing more than evidence of your contract; it is not, in itself, the contract. (Though it must be said that it can be pretty powerful evidence.)
"If you work in a big company (i.e. an employee), it is not your patent."
That is by no means a given in the U.S. It depends on many factors. The only time it is automatic (and not even all of those times), is if it came from work you do for the company, in the normal course of your duties as an employee, for pay, and there are no other agreements.
If it is something you did on your own time, it only belongs to the company if you have a specific agreement saying that any inventions you create while in the employ of Company X belong to Company X. (Such agreements do exist, though I would never sign one. My father got screwed over by one of those. He threw his own time and expertise into inventing a tool that is now in common use, but the company got the patent rights because he had signed that sort of agreement.)
Otherwise, if it is something you did on your own time, it is yours. But you might have to prove it in order to keep it.
"It seems crazy, but this may not be as braindead as it seems."
I think that is very much a matter of opinion. And my opinion is: it *IS* just exactly as braindead as it seems.
Just what we need: "modern" software bloat in the kernel. [sarcasm] Thanks, but no thanks.
I have right here a program that is more than 45 times the size of the entire hard drive from one of our office computers back in 1994... and that hard drive had a full install of that year's Microsoft Office, plus WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, with lots of room to spare for files.
Sure... that was '94. But is there REALLY call for programs that large, and by the way slow? And that is by no means the largest application I have on my machine right now. It's on the larger side but I have some many times as big.
"My learning so far has been that if you are really talented, you never think like you have just done."
GP did not state that such people are a dime a dozen, or disposable. GP stated that there is no shortage of such people. That is different, and it is a true statement.
To be honest, the one who comes across with the greater ego is you.
"So, you believe that connecting some unrelated cases trumps the constitution itself?"
WHERE did you get the idea that these cases were unrelated? They had to do with this very thing. Further, they don't "trump" the Constitution at all. On the contrary: SCOTUS ruled that way because that's what the Constitution says.
I think maybe you should go back and read it, and maybe read some history surrounding it. Your interpretation of it does not jibe with reality.
I WAS REFERRING TO EXISTING SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ABOUT THIS!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT OR NOT???
You can predict all you like. But it HAS NOT passed judicial muster in the past, and in order to do so now, the Supreme Court would have to reverse its own prior decisions!
Further, the Constitutional ability to "regulate" interstate commerce is only that; an ability to regulate. It does NOT give Congress authority to make it legal for one state to tax a transaction that happens in a completely different state!
Sheesh, man. Get a dose of reality. Based on PAST, EXISTING decisions, even if Congress tried to do that, the Supreme Court would overturn it as unconstitutional.
"Further away == less eye strain. The further away the better. You cram in more coding, less rest needed, finish sooner, make more money. take longer vacation in Vail. Or Sandestin. whatever float your boat."
That's probably true. But most people are limited to the width of their desks. That's too close for a 27" monitor at 1920 x 1200 to look good.
There is a pill that does the same thing, and it has been around for a very long time now. The only difference I see is that the difference is irrevocable.
What the article doesn't mention, though, is that the gene responsible for this (which is also present in many Native Americans, by the way) has a strong positive correlation with alcoholism. Populations that have a high incidence of this mutation also tend to have MORE alcoholics.
TFA is wrong. The reason the Supreme Court said States can only tax transactions made with companies that "have a physical presence" in that state, is because (follow along now):
(A) States have no legal authority to tax transactions that take place in other States, and
(B) an Internet transaction is deemed to have taken place at the seller's place of business, and
(C) the Federal government has no legal authority to collect taxes on behalf of the States.
Item (B) came about because of the rise of mail-order businesses, well over 100 years ago. The internet brings NOTHING new to the table... it just means a bit more business is being done remotely. (In case you hadn't noticed, the rise of the Internet has created a corresponding fall in traditional mail order business. It has not made as big an impact on sales taxes as many people would have you believe.)
If a mail-order (or Internet) business has a "physical presence" in your State, then it is not unreasonable to conclude that the business transaction took place in your State. Thus, sales tax is applicable. But if it doesn't, then the sale took place in the seller's state and your state can't charge sales tax.
And the reason (B) says that the transaction takes place in the seller's state, is because doing it the other way around is not practically possible; EVERY business would have to keep track of all Federal, State, and local tax laws, everywhere in the United States. Even today, there is no practical way to overcome this. Small businesses simply could not operate.
There is NOTHING that Congress has legal authority to do to change this situation, except amend the Constitution. They simply cannot give States additional taxation power, and they cannot give themselves power to tax on behalf of the States, without amending the Constitution.
This is not mere theory. These are past SCOTUS rulings and the stated reasoning behind them.
(NOTE: most if not all States have a separate tax, called a "Use Tax", that taxes the use of an item that is purchased out-of-state. But that is a separate issue. A Use Tax is not a Sales Tax... the transaction is not being taxed, the use of the item is. So it is legal. The problem is that States have no way to know what purchases you have made out-of-state, unless you tell them. Which makes it an enforcement nightmare. In my experience, many people do not even know that Use Taxes exist... unless they buy a car in a different state.)
Stupid idea? It's the ONLY constitutional method of raising revenue for the Federal Government.
Supposedly (according to that same Federal Government), the 16th Amendment authorized "income taxes". But according to the Supreme Court itself, it actually bestowed no new taxing power on the Federal government at all.
There are other reasons why the income tax is unconstitutional. The 16th Amendment was also never properly ratified by the States (the historical record clearly shows this), but the Secretary recorded it as having been ratified anyway.
So this "stupid idea" is actually the only legal way for the Feds to collect taxes.
I wasn't referring to any "official" system... just the general consensus in the open-source world on how version numbers should go. General guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules.
"As the context shows, that's quite clearly not the "whole point" of what I was responding to in GP."
Since, from that same context, *I* am said GP, I rather think it was. At least, it was the only intended context, on my part.
"Nope, there's no conventional key. The ignition is entirely computerized."
Okay, but that's Renault. Based on past products of theirs, I rather expect bonehead design from them. Apparently, this story is just an illustration of that very thing.
"The problem with semver is that it works well enough with upfront and unchanging release feature sets but doesn't work with development methodologies where releases are fixed in time but features are less fixed and whatever isn't ready gets kicked down the line."
I disagree. I worked in an Agile shop where we followed it pretty closely, and it worked fine for us. Features might get delayed, though releases were regular. I don't understand why you say it's less appropriate. Are you sure we're talking about the same thing?
Major version numbers are incremented when there are major features added. Minor versions are incremented when fewer or less important features are added, or bug fixes. Build or release numbers are incremented at every build (or release). Why would that "not work"?
"Well, in the Mozilla (and Google Chrome, and Ubuntu, and...) case it is emphatically because they don't agree that semver or any similar "standard" is appropriate for that product."
Sure. But I think the whole point here is: a great many of us disagree with them.
"No, Excel won because it was very much better.. at what the majority of users use spreadsheets for: keeping simple lists."
Disagree. I worked at a technical company and almost everybody there used it for doing calculations. Including in the word processing pool, who were sometimes called upon to write up project budgets.
If they wanted lists, they used a word processor. At the time, that was Word or Wordperfect, in our office.
And frankly, a lot of the employees there thought Excel rather sucked. That's why we had Lotus for Windows, and similar programs.
Nice to get a large monitor. But there are a few things to keep in mind.
If you get a 27" monitor, it had better be very high resolution (2560 x... or more). If you get a 27" with only, say, 1920 x 1200, it has to be too far away before it will look halfway decent. Maybe farther than the width of your desk. You're paying more money for less functionality.
Contrast ratios are touted to be in the many millions to one, these days. Big deal. As long as it's over 100,00 to 1, you probably won't notice the difference.
Usually, it should have a fast response time. 5ms or less. Beware of companies that leave that number out. Having said that, if you're just reading or displaying documents most of the time, that figure is less important.
Here's another thought: you can often get two mid-size monitors for less than the price of one big one. If you only have a single DVI or HDMI output, you can put your best monitor on that, and then get a USB display interface for a second, cheaper monitor that will normally be used to display semi-static stuff, like documents, terminal windows, etc. The USB interfaces are available pretty cheaply, at decent resolutions, but bog down when asked to display things like video.
"While on the surface I agree, most new car models use electronics for both starters and transmissions."
That would be a bonehead way to design an automobile. I don't mean electronic controls, I mean no way to bypass them. To the best of my knowledge, your ignition switch goes to a relay that physically disconnects power to the high-voltage ignition system.
"You're thinking of an old-fashioned car, like the Model T. Today's cars don't do that, grandpa. Computer controlled."
B.S.
I don't know about Renault, but in the U.S. all gasoline cars that I know of have an ignition switch that literally shuts off electrical power to the cylinders, rendering them incapable of firing. This is regardless of whether they are computer controlled. (That's what "ignition switch" means.)
If any computer controlled cars lack this feature, it should be added back in, yesterday.
Slashdot Mirror
"... and violatation-of-not-actually-contracts-but-verbally-they-felt-like-them in that specific case..."
Here is a little bit of Contract Law 101:
If you agreed to something in good-faith negotiation, and there is "consideration" on both sides, and it doesn't otherwise violate law, then it's a contract. It doesn't have to be on paper. That piece of paper is nothing more than evidence of your contract; it is not, in itself, the contract. (Though it must be said that it can be pretty powerful evidence.)
"If you work in a big company (i.e. an employee), it is not your patent."
That is by no means a given in the U.S. It depends on many factors. The only time it is automatic (and not even all of those times), is if it came from work you do for the company, in the normal course of your duties as an employee, for pay, and there are no other agreements.
If it is something you did on your own time, it only belongs to the company if you have a specific agreement saying that any inventions you create while in the employ of Company X belong to Company X. (Such agreements do exist, though I would never sign one. My father got screwed over by one of those. He threw his own time and expertise into inventing a tool that is now in common use, but the company got the patent rights because he had signed that sort of agreement.)
Otherwise, if it is something you did on your own time, it is yours. But you might have to prove it in order to keep it.
I like the sign that says: "Beware! The dog has an attitude problem, and a .357."
"It seems crazy, but this may not be as braindead as it seems."
I think that is very much a matter of opinion. And my opinion is: it *IS* just exactly as braindead as it seems.
Just what we need: "modern" software bloat in the kernel. [sarcasm] Thanks, but no thanks.
I have right here a program that is more than 45 times the size of the entire hard drive from one of our office computers back in 1994... and that hard drive had a full install of that year's Microsoft Office, plus WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, with lots of room to spare for files.
Sure... that was '94. But is there REALLY call for programs that large, and by the way slow? And that is by no means the largest application I have on my machine right now. It's on the larger side but I have some many times as big.
"My learning so far has been that if you are really talented, you never think like you have just done."
GP did not state that such people are a dime a dozen, or disposable. GP stated that there is no shortage of such people. That is different, and it is a true statement.
To be honest, the one who comes across with the greater ego is you.
"So, you believe that connecting some unrelated cases trumps the constitution itself?"
WHERE did you get the idea that these cases were unrelated? They had to do with this very thing. Further, they don't "trump" the Constitution at all. On the contrary: SCOTUS ruled that way because that's what the Constitution says.
I think maybe you should go back and read it, and maybe read some history surrounding it. Your interpretation of it does not jibe with reality.
I WAS REFERRING TO EXISTING SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ABOUT THIS!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT OR NOT???
You can predict all you like. But it HAS NOT passed judicial muster in the past, and in order to do so now, the Supreme Court would have to reverse its own prior decisions!
Further, the Constitutional ability to "regulate" interstate commerce is only that; an ability to regulate. It does NOT give Congress authority to make it legal for one state to tax a transaction that happens in a completely different state!
Sheesh, man. Get a dose of reality. Based on PAST, EXISTING decisions, even if Congress tried to do that, the Supreme Court would overturn it as unconstitutional.
I repeat: these are NOT my ideas. What I wrote about were past SCOTUS rulings. If you want to think they're idiots, go right ahead.
"Wow, you're right. There is nobody who can pass laws that affect commerce between states. If only the constitution mentioned interstate commerce."
Don't be an ass. Try thinking instead.
Of course the Feds can "regulate" interstate commerce. But they cannot bestow new taxation powers on the states. Those are two very different things.
"Further away == less eye strain. The further away the better. You cram in more coding, less rest needed, finish sooner, make more money. take longer vacation in Vail. Or Sandestin. whatever float your boat."
That's probably true. But most people are limited to the width of their desks. That's too close for a 27" monitor at 1920 x 1200 to look good.
There is a pill that does the same thing, and it has been around for a very long time now. The only difference I see is that the difference is irrevocable.
What the article doesn't mention, though, is that the gene responsible for this (which is also present in many Native Americans, by the way) has a strong positive correlation with alcoholism. Populations that have a high incidence of this mutation also tend to have MORE alcoholics.
TFA is wrong. The reason the Supreme Court said States can only tax transactions made with companies that "have a physical presence" in that state, is because (follow along now):
(A) States have no legal authority to tax transactions that take place in other States, and
(B) an Internet transaction is deemed to have taken place at the seller's place of business, and
(C) the Federal government has no legal authority to collect taxes on behalf of the States.
Item (B) came about because of the rise of mail-order businesses, well over 100 years ago. The internet brings NOTHING new to the table... it just means a bit more business is being done remotely. (In case you hadn't noticed, the rise of the Internet has created a corresponding fall in traditional mail order business. It has not made as big an impact on sales taxes as many people would have you believe.)
If a mail-order (or Internet) business has a "physical presence" in your State, then it is not unreasonable to conclude that the business transaction took place in your State. Thus, sales tax is applicable. But if it doesn't, then the sale took place in the seller's state and your state can't charge sales tax.
And the reason (B) says that the transaction takes place in the seller's state, is because doing it the other way around is not practically possible; EVERY business would have to keep track of all Federal, State, and local tax laws, everywhere in the United States. Even today, there is no practical way to overcome this. Small businesses simply could not operate.
There is NOTHING that Congress has legal authority to do to change this situation, except amend the Constitution. They simply cannot give States additional taxation power, and they cannot give themselves power to tax on behalf of the States, without amending the Constitution.
This is not mere theory. These are past SCOTUS rulings and the stated reasoning behind them.
(NOTE: most if not all States have a separate tax, called a "Use Tax", that taxes the use of an item that is purchased out-of-state. But that is a separate issue. A Use Tax is not a Sales Tax... the transaction is not being taxed, the use of the item is. So it is legal. The problem is that States have no way to know what purchases you have made out-of-state, unless you tell them. Which makes it an enforcement nightmare. In my experience, many people do not even know that Use Taxes exist... unless they buy a car in a different state.)
s/raising revenue/raising TAX revenue/
"National sales tax is a stupid idea."
Stupid idea? It's the ONLY constitutional method of raising revenue for the Federal Government.
Supposedly (according to that same Federal Government), the 16th Amendment authorized "income taxes". But according to the Supreme Court itself, it actually bestowed no new taxing power on the Federal government at all.
There are other reasons why the income tax is unconstitutional. The 16th Amendment was also never properly ratified by the States (the historical record clearly shows this), but the Secretary recorded it as having been ratified anyway.
So this "stupid idea" is actually the only legal way for the Feds to collect taxes.
"Then that's not open source, by definition."
Well, that's true. But it's open in the sense that it's distributable. I suppose I should have said "free software", rather than "open".
"As the context shows, that's quite clearly not the "whole point" of what I was responding to in GP."
Since, from that same context, *I* am said GP, I rather think it was. At least, it was the only intended context, on my part.
"... an ignition switch that literally shuts off electrical power to the coils..."
I started to write coils, but not all cars/trucks have them anymore. I have seen some with solid-state electronic modules instead.
"Nope, there's no conventional key. The ignition is entirely computerized."
Okay, but that's Renault. Based on past products of theirs, I rather expect bonehead design from them. Apparently, this story is just an illustration of that very thing.
"The problem with semver is that it works well enough with upfront and unchanging release feature sets but doesn't work with development methodologies where releases are fixed in time but features are less fixed and whatever isn't ready gets kicked down the line."
I disagree. I worked in an Agile shop where we followed it pretty closely, and it worked fine for us. Features might get delayed, though releases were regular. I don't understand why you say it's less appropriate. Are you sure we're talking about the same thing?
Major version numbers are incremented when there are major features added. Minor versions are incremented when fewer or less important features are added, or bug fixes. Build or release numbers are incremented at every build (or release). Why would that "not work"?
"Well, in the Mozilla (and Google Chrome, and Ubuntu, and...) case it is emphatically because they don't agree that semver or any similar "standard" is appropriate for that product."
Sure. But I think the whole point here is: a great many of us disagree with them.
"No, Excel won because it was very much better .. at what the majority of users use spreadsheets for: keeping simple lists."
Disagree. I worked at a technical company and almost everybody there used it for doing calculations. Including in the word processing pool, who were sometimes called upon to write up project budgets.
If they wanted lists, they used a word processor. At the time, that was Word or Wordperfect, in our office.
And frankly, a lot of the employees there thought Excel rather sucked. That's why we had Lotus for Windows, and similar programs.
s/100,00/100,000
Nice to get a large monitor. But there are a few things to keep in mind.
... or more). If you get a 27" with only, say, 1920 x 1200, it has to be too far away before it will look halfway decent. Maybe farther than the width of your desk. You're paying more money for less functionality.
If you get a 27" monitor, it had better be very high resolution (2560 x
Contrast ratios are touted to be in the many millions to one, these days. Big deal. As long as it's over 100,00 to 1, you probably won't notice the difference.
Usually, it should have a fast response time. 5ms or less. Beware of companies that leave that number out. Having said that, if you're just reading or displaying documents most of the time, that figure is less important.
Here's another thought: you can often get two mid-size monitors for less than the price of one big one. If you only have a single DVI or HDMI output, you can put your best monitor on that, and then get a USB display interface for a second, cheaper monitor that will normally be used to display semi-static stuff, like documents, terminal windows, etc. The USB interfaces are available pretty cheaply, at decent resolutions, but bog down when asked to display things like video.
"The brake pedal causing the car to accelerate seems highly unlikely without some major hacking,"
TFA states that the driver was "disabled", so presumably his car was equipped with hand controls. Yes, that's a major hack.
"While on the surface I agree, most new car models use electronics for both starters and transmissions."
That would be a bonehead way to design an automobile. I don't mean electronic controls, I mean no way to bypass them. To the best of my knowledge, your ignition switch goes to a relay that physically disconnects power to the high-voltage ignition system.
"You're thinking of an old-fashioned car, like the Model T. Today's cars don't do that, grandpa. Computer controlled."
B.S.
I don't know about Renault, but in the U.S. all gasoline cars that I know of have an ignition switch that literally shuts off electrical power to the cylinders, rendering them incapable of firing. This is regardless of whether they are computer controlled. (That's what "ignition switch" means.)
If any computer controlled cars lack this feature, it should be added back in, yesterday.