These companies need to get smart. These protocol changes are going to be reverse engineered. There's just too many people who are too smart and too willing to work in groups for lockout strategies to work. A protocol change won't chase away these guys; it makes them drool.
What lockouts do, however, is annoy the rest of the user base. Some people won't want to upgrade. Some people don't want to use Yahoo!'s software or can't. Most people don't want to be warned about impending protocol changes every time they login. Almost everyone wants to be able to talk to their friends, regardless of their friends' software choices. These lockouts hurt the people using the official client just as much as everyone else. The only way Yahoo!'s going to stay a step ahead of hackers is to kill their service: repeated protocol changes will do it.
What needs to happen is cooperation. IM providers can make life easier on developers by offering specs. These benefits trickle down to users, since they always have the latest and greatest. Developers can return the favor to the IM providers by agreeing to introduce branding. The IM provider benefits overall by not threatening its userbase with lockouts, in addition to the publicity (and credibility) boost among geeks and others. "Don't like our software? Yahoo! supports the Open Source and Free Software movements by providing protocol documentation for our popular services. Read more here!" Imagine that!
One has to wonder if AIM would be faring better had AOL committed to this strategy, rather than going only a quarter of the way.
Ever since Potiphar's wife came on to Joseph, and Joseph had to say "thanks, but no thanks" and suffer the consequencs.
In other words, you believe it's unprofessional because you believe it's immoral. You may as well have put this out on the table to begin with, rather than shamefully trying to hide your convictions behind vague claims.
Which causes transient failures, typically at different locations in the code every time. Fact. You obviously have never had to work with code that has a memory leak. And a buffer overflow is a type of memory allocation error.
The only failure a memory leak can cause is through exhaustion. In the absence of resource limits, this is very unlikely on systems with virtual memory. Assuming that we can exhaust memory in a reasonable amount of time, that no-one notices the process size is many magnitudes larger than what it ought to be, and that the programmers never bothered to check for allocation failure, then we get a segmentation fault. This is an utterly predictable, completely uninteresting type of bug. It is, as I said, a very unlikely candidate.
A buffer overflow is NOT a type of memory allocation error. An overrun may indicate that you did not allocate enough memory (typically one byte less than what you needed). Or it may indicate a logic error, such as a loop that runs too many times. Or even a data error in some (perhaps bad) designs, such as a filename that is too long for the buffer that's supposed to store it.
Of course, there's still the larger point that these errors are not the only causes of transient bugs. Not all of these are trivial to debug (many, in fact, are damned hard); most are a much more likely source of bugs than a memory leak. So you obviously don't know what you're talking about or aren't making yourself very clear. Whatever the case, you're a judgmental asshole. Fact.
Read it and weep. What I find so disturbing is the non-technical community's (read: Salon, Book Editors) lack of censure for her non-professional approach.
I don't even know where to begin. Since when is it inhernetly unprofessional to maintain personal relationships with co-workers/clients? And since when is accurately recalling your life, even its mistakes, censure worthy? (It is, after all, a MEMOIR, as you kindly pointed out.) And why is it your place to judge her for it?
A bug that only happens
sometimes at different places in the code? Christ on a bicycle, hasn't she ever fixed a freakin' memory leak before? [...] Oh well, guess that's the difference between her "20 years of programming" and my 25.
A memory leak is a failure to deallocate memory causing the program to consume ever more system resources. This does not fit the description of a transient bug. Perhaps you meant a buffer overflow? (But, then, at least one of your debugging suggestions doesn't support that notion.) Besides which, memory errors aren't the only source of transient bugs in programs. Maybe by year 30 you'll have this all figured out?
We could make do with today's keyboard if we just invent a USB-powered Habile User Madefying Motorized Effleurage Rod device.
Imagine the millions of geeks able to surf pr0n with two hands on the keyboard in the near future! Or better, yet, don't. It's a rather distressing image.
Yes, but the acceptance speeches are shown at the taping. The results are, like any other awards show, calculated in advance. (They are not prearranged.) MTV doesn't take their awards show as seriously as the bigger shows do, so if a winner cannot be there, they try to arrange for an acceptance speech. This is much more entertaining than some dope accepting the award "on behalf" of the winner.
Being poor doesn't make you stupid. And, more importantly, being wealthy doesn't make you smart. In fact, assuming you're not self-employed, your boss is probably an example of a person richer and dumber than you.
The sad thing is that the very rich often believe they're richer than others because they're smarter or better than others.
From the article (and the letter published by SearchKing):
SearchKing never broke a law, yet was accused, judged and executed without so much as a notice of intent. This affected thousands of innocent people without just cause.
Hello? He filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that it committed improprieties. He called Google a monopoly and said that its actions were intended to squash competition. He's wrongfully accused Google of breaking a variety of laws and then has the audicity to claim that he's the victim?
A wake-up call: SearchKing was never accused of anything. Bob Massa publically stated that SearchKing was selling links in an attempt to boost his customers' PageRanks; a practice explicitly forbidden by Google (as described here):
However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index. If you think your site may fall into this category, you might try 'cleaning up' the page and sending a re-inclusion request to help@google.com. We do not make any guarantees about if or when we will re-include your site.
This is obviously Google's prerogative and, moreover, what's best for Google's users (and the Internet) as a whole. So while SearchKing CEO Bob Massa is whining about Google attempting "to restrict the legal business of another without due process" and the "thousands of innocent people" that have suffered because of this decision, the truth of it is that he's the one trying to restrict the legal business of another and reduce the usability of Google, thereby negatively affecting the vast majority of Internet users.
That cements the asshole part. The cluelessness is even easier to prove. The lawsuit obviously never had a leg to stand on and everyone knew it. And while some might attribute it to a shrewd marketing move by Massa, it's garnered only niche coverage and a lot of negative publicity; the inevitable loss has effectively ended his business of attempting to sell PageRank and cost him legal fees besides. He releases a settlement offer, too, which means he either expects us to believe that this suit was ever about a noble endeavor to better the Internet or he honestly believed that there exists some legal standard by which he might've won the case. Yet more evidence: his settlement offer demands that Google put sites who have broken Google's terms of service on notice -- but Google's policy concerning people trying to artificially inflate PageRank is both obvious and public. His whole settlement offer would be laughable if it weren't so tragically stupid.
My vote, then, is that Bob Massa is both clueless and a complete asshole. This ought to be a poll, really.
It's like the word "the" appearing in two texts or the same idiom used in disparate places. If the judge must decide just on his own understanding (and, fortunately, he doesn't), I don't think the natural similarities between two pieces of code would fool him. If the judge were tasked with a case of plagiarism in Japanese texts and did not read kanji, would he be fooled by the fact that some of the same ideographs appear in the two texts or that they look very much alike to the untrained eye? I doubt it.
Of course, as pointed out, the judge does not have to decide, himself, what constitutes a significant similarity.
Why? If the theory's wrong, then cosmic rays don't do it. And if cosmic rays don't do it, then the LHC won't do it. It's not as if a bunch of Scientists and oversight committees have suddenly forgotten how to do science or employ common sense for public safety. Sheesh.
Software (and information in general) is a public good, which according to economic theory should be distributed for free (because it can be replicated for free and hence is not scarce; you should only charge for scarce resources).
This is a rather stupid argument. The works of William Shakespeare can be copied in perpetuity, as well, but that doesn't mean that plays by Shakespeare aren't a scarce resource. What a hollow philosophy! An information economy doesn't work on the idea that copies are rare and thus costly; it works on the idea that the original -- the time, effort, and ingenuity that went into creating it -- is rare.
Free software is about liberty, not about cost. When we confuse this issue, we start to argue for an intellectually bankrupt and downright disgusting position. It must be economically viable to be an artist and the way to achieve that is through (properly applied) copyrights. It must be economically viable to be an inventor and the way to achieve that is through (properly applied) patents.
Information does want to be free. When it's shackled by abuses of the system, the answer is not to throw out the entire system. If we argue that paintings or programs or plays ought to be free because they can be easily copied, then we argue that creators ought to starve or get a "real job." Were this economic theory of yours ever seen in practice, we would all be worse for it.
I think that the Mozilla people are doing a shitty thing and that they should back off and find another name.
I think there's no reason to believe that the shared name will confuse anyone and the value judgments from people (like you) in the Firebird database camp are bolstering supporters of Mozilla rather than creating empathy.
Stop acting like you're being oppressed. Since when did the word "Firebird" become IBPhoenix's creation to tell people what they can and cannot do with it? How does it help the situation for the Firebird database community to use rhetoric like, "Our marks are not there for the taking and our advise is that the law is on our side?" Or, "we take this as a slap in the face to the entire open source community?" Trust me, this was not a slap in the face -- a slap in the face would've knocked some sense into these witless people.
If they were really interested in just straightening out the situation, they wouldn't be making such inflammatory remarks. They could've registered their opposition in a more civil manner and not incited their users. And if Mozilla chose to ignore these complaints, then they should have just accepted it, rather than trying to badger Mozilla into using a different name. Even if you don't believe that Mozilla should use the name "Firebird," you cannot agree with IBPhoenix's attempt to generate negative publicity for another open-source project and strong-arm Mozilla into using a different name. It's an absolute shame that a good project is run by such complete assholes.
I don't know, since I never got into the Superman comic books, but I can guess. Kryptonite is radioactive. The radioactivity robs Superman of his super powers. I guess that Krypton's sun also gave off lower levels of the same type of radiation, which is why we didn't see people flying around in tights and underwear there.
On their introduction page, they say that Firebird(DB) has been around since 1981...
Actually, they don't say that. They say that Firebird has been used, under various names (i.e., InterBase), since 1981. The point being that Firebird is mature software with twenty years of testing behind it, even if the Firebird project itself is only a couple of years old.
That's begging the question. The spaghetti diagram claims to be an example of a fundamental flaw in the model. We cannot begin refuting this claim by throwing out the example on the grounds of a design principle, no matter how good it is.
Looking at it from a different angle, we may reasonably posit that the spaghetti diagram tacitly assumes that the illustrated design is the one arrived at for some application. It's not claimed to be an absolute taxonomy, after all. And while it's worthwhile to say, "This captures the mathematical concepts, but those probably have little relevance to the computational problem that the application is trying to solve; this design is probably flawed," that's not an answer to the claim. Best design practices can still lead you to a situation where you end up with (effectively) the same set of classes. How then do we create the class hierarchy to take advantage of the (probable) roles of these classes in the application, but without the complexity the diagram implies is fundamental? That's the question I was answering.
OOP Spaghetti and Object Taxonomies
on
The Post-OOP Paradigm
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· Score: 2, Insightful
What's the appeal of the OOP Spaghetti diagram? It illustrates a design problem, not a limitation of the model. The problems that diagram shows can be solved quite admirably in current OO languages. A few immediate solutions:
#1. Observe that there's no benefit in Convex and Simple inheriting from Polygon. They are abstract classes of polygons classes for which instances cannot reasonably be constructed (because polygons need a number of sides) and, presumably, cannot implement many of the base operations of Polygon that they're inheriting. Thus, the hierarchy can be simplified by making Convex and Simple interfaces.
#2. Another solution to the above observation is to make Convex and Simple mix-ins (if your OOP language supports them).
#3. Don't try to account for two separate properties in a single taxonomy. Make either the number of sides or the type of polygon an instance attribute, rather than part of its type. For instance, we might decide that all polygons, regardless of number of sides, have the same basic set of operations, and so only work with Convex and Simple classes.
Another distinct problem with the diagram is that it mixes what we assume to be instances (a star) with what we assume are classes (Pentagon). From what I've seen, the article deals with class-based OOP, so this is an odd confusion. In fact, the problem it illustrates is perhaps mitigated, if not eliminated, in moving to a prototype-based system.
Ahh..the liberal left-wing communists get their way again...
Why would the Communists act in favor of large, independent corporations? (Aren't we a bit beyond McCarthyism and the red scare?) And, being one of those liberals (but not a Communist), I must refute your claim that I got my way... I just checked under my desk; I can assure you that none of the women I wanted to be under there, were.
[...] the govt is NOT the enemy..it's our fellow man!
I thought ours was the government by, for, and of the people? What article was it in which the Founders called the US Government evil?
Seriously, I hope every US citizen knows why there is the right to own and bare arms in the constitution.
Piffle! There's a huge gap between the intent of the Second Amendment and its role today. The Second Amendment has provided no protection against the Government for around a century. In case you missed the memo, the United States has a very large, very powerful standing army. If you and your hunting buddies want to face off against a tank when you think the Government has crossed the line, feel free -- we'll scrape you up afterwards. Should you try to refute this claim of my mine (and I encourage and enjoy reasoned debate), please avoid some common, utterly avoidable errors.
First, don't tell me how much force the Government would or wouldn't use should their be a violent uprising and revolution. If we're going to deal in hypotheticals, we should at least do so in a consistent, logical manner. A violent uprising of a significant number must be prompted by something that polarizes and emboldens the great many that don't already live on political extremes. Thus, inherent in our argument is the assumption that this hypothetical Government has become so evil, that its people are left with no course but to (violently) rebel. It's clearly illogical to place limits on what this evil Government would be willing to justify -- especially when it has no-one to answer to.
Second, don't rely on some fluff like, "If enough people,..." as that's vague, trivially true, and wholly unlikely. It's vague because there's no possible, concrete determination of how many is enough. It's trivially true because if you got everyone to fight for your cause, then you'd have no-one to fight against (and, thus, be victorious). It's wholly unlikely because you need a significant number to fight a vastly better connected, better supported, better armed, better trained army. Who would arm, mobilize, and tend to such a large militia? Besides, I can't imagine that this big bad US Government would somehow live in isolation of all other countries, if the situation became so dire. That the International community would neither interfere with the US's evil deeds (step in to fight for you) or assist in squelching the mass uprising (step in to fight against you) doesn't make a whole lot of sense outside of Hollywood and other ill-conceived fantasies.
They take away thew right to protect ourselves from them, and they win...
Your argument is broken. It's assuming that the Second Amendment does protect us from the Government (which, if you can't guess, I believe to be utter hogwash), that it's the only protection we have against the Government (it isn't; the inherent disorganization and ebb of Government protects us -- this is why Bush's dictatorial grab for broader executive power is dangerous), and that there is some surreptitious "they" already waging a war against you (I'm guessing, of course, for any person, X, "they" is the group, real or imagined, that doesn't agree with X's politics).
Speaking of Coming Attractions, the bottom of the parent's linked page aims to put kibash on the Keanu rumor:
Latino Review also claims that they spoke to another journalist at the press event who said he asked Ratner if there was any truth to the rumor that Keanu Reeves will play Superman. According to the story LR reported, Ratner told the journalist it's false.
It's hearsay, but, really, the Keanu rumor doesn't sound terribly likely. (Then again, Nick Cage was connected to the thing at one time, so who knows?)
I can distill the author's sentiment to a single sentence: "How dare the EFF use the same sort of fear-mongering tactics that the Corporations use to pass legislation like the DMCA?" Of course, inherent in that question, there's the loaded assertion that the fears the EFF raises are illegitimate. To make this seem so, the article mentions nebulous probabilities ("almost zero!" is such a comfort). And, to reassure us that everything is right with the world, even tells us that the DMCA even allows for limited forms of certain activities (although it neglects to mention that these aren't allowances, but restrictions on already legal activities).
The author stipulates that the EFF cannot be taken seriously because they're scare-mongering. Yet, all he can provide is arbitrary quotations amounting to, "It's unlikely the DMCA will be used in this manner," as if that somehow excuses a bad, over-reaching law or invalidates the possibility that it will be used in the future for things it's not being used for, yet. And the actual assertion is inane -- too few people laughed when Big Media began whining about how they were losing so much profit from people circumventing copy-protection schemes; why should more laugh when there's actual cause for concern on a personal level?
Well, it's really easy to not be fooled by the notice when you already know it's not from your provider. The customers in question, however, are receiving a timely "renewal" notice at a time when their current provider's identity is in flux. It's quite easy to see how they can be confused.
The wording is not the sole reason for the spam being (decidedly) deceptive. The repeated use of "renewal" and "upgrade" only help to assure the already unsuspecting customer that the notice is from their current, recently bought-out provider. Those who go in with more caution will have the red flag raised by a more careful reading (as you've done) of the actual language of the notice.
Without question, people should be more cautious when it comes to such things. However, not everyone's going to catch on to everything all of the time -- a lot of bright people have been known to fall for April Fool's jokes every now and then. It's much easier to overlook the clues that more objective/critical readers spot when you don't have a reason to suspect something's wrong.
Uh, well, if he sees it, it makes the movie studio more money. If a movie makes good money, the movie studios are more willing to fund other projects of that actor, leading to the actor getting more pay checks.
Before anyone starts hopping up and down, yelling that this guy's boycott won't do anything: I strongly doubt he's under the impression that he, alone, will have any impact. It's more likely a decision made on principle than on the potential of actually forcing studios to stop, in effect, sending their checks to the Scientologists.
Answer: By sparing Spidey an ass kicking and just making him an indestructable hero that goes from place to place kicking ass and then going home to M.J.
Despite the dialogue, Spider-man wasn't that dumb of a movie. The hero had weaknesses, he didn't get the girl (although only because he turned her down out of fear she was going to be Spider bait again), and they didn't shrink away from making the Green Goblin Parker's friend's father or from showing Peter's inaction leading to his uncle's death.
The United States, until recently, didn't have a professional soccer league. The fact is that many people in the states don't care about the sport because they simply haven't been exposed to a good quality of play with players that we should care about.
Note that most fans care about the teams that represent their locale in regional sports and their country in international sports. Until recently, we didn't have regional soccer and the US team didn't generate excitement.
As for the game's name, Americans will continue to prefer the term soccer because (1) like many other countries, we have a game already called football with a popular following; (2) it's an officially recognized term for the game internationally. We could've done far worse and invented our own term for the game...
Oh, and American football had semi-pro teams in the early 20th century. The modern game of soccer branched from rugby in the late 19th century according to FIFA. Given that American football shares much of soccer's history, I don't know how you can really claim that one's far older/younger than the other.
(Observation: Most messages that begin with expressing confusion over why X and Y are compared are the authors' comparisons of X and Y.)
first, as far as the olympics go, "dirty trick"? [...] the american winner ended up being disqualified in a later event for doing the same thing; i don't know if you can call it a dirty trick.
How would the fact that our skater did the same thing and got the same punishment for it make it less of a dirty trick? Maybe we Americans have a different definition of "dirty trick" than other countries? Just because one of our countrymen does it, doesn't make it okay. Cutting over and impeding another skater is not allowed regardless of who you represent..
what calls did korea have for them when they beat poland? portugal? the u.s.?
Er, they dind't beat the US; the game ended in a tie. Korea beat Portugal 11 on 9. And no one, despite the US's embarrassing loss, needed help to beat the Polish.
I'm not going to conjure any conspiracy theories about the (co-)host nation. Those are all rather absurd. The simple fact is that there was a lot of bad calls, but more went for South Korea than against them. The US got its fair share of bad calls in its favor (the handball against Mexico) and questionable/unpopular calls against it (the no handball, no goal against Germany). Bad calls happen, but when they consistently favor one team, it looks very bad.
there were certainly marginal calls in the game against spain, but the italians were just whiny losers.
If whining over a loss meant you didn't deserve a fair game, then the Korean team, whose mock speed skating celebration against the US was certainly a form of whining, shouldn't have made it out of the first round. Italy, for all their bad sportsmanship, did suffer some bad calls against them in the game against Korea; as did Spain and a few other teams.
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What lockouts do, however, is annoy the rest of the user base. Some people won't want to upgrade. Some people don't want to use Yahoo!'s software or can't. Most people don't want to be warned about impending protocol changes every time they login. Almost everyone wants to be able to talk to their friends, regardless of their friends' software choices. These lockouts hurt the people using the official client just as much as everyone else. The only way Yahoo!'s going to stay a step ahead of hackers is to kill their service: repeated protocol changes will do it.
What needs to happen is cooperation. IM providers can make life easier on developers by offering specs. These benefits trickle down to users, since they always have the latest and greatest. Developers can return the favor to the IM providers by agreeing to introduce branding. The IM provider benefits overall by not threatening its userbase with lockouts, in addition to the publicity (and credibility) boost among geeks and others. "Don't like our software? Yahoo! supports the Open Source and Free Software movements by providing protocol documentation for our popular services. Read more here!" Imagine that!
One has to wonder if AIM would be faring better had AOL committed to this strategy, rather than going only a quarter of the way.
In other words, you believe it's unprofessional because you believe it's immoral. You may as well have put this out on the table to begin with, rather than shamefully trying to hide your convictions behind vague claims.
The only failure a memory leak can cause is through exhaustion. In the absence of resource limits, this is very unlikely on systems with virtual memory. Assuming that we can exhaust memory in a reasonable amount of time, that no-one notices the process size is many magnitudes larger than what it ought to be, and that the programmers never bothered to check for allocation failure, then we get a segmentation fault. This is an utterly predictable, completely uninteresting type of bug. It is, as I said, a very unlikely candidate.
A buffer overflow is NOT a type of memory allocation error. An overrun may indicate that you did not allocate enough memory (typically one byte less than what you needed). Or it may indicate a logic error, such as a loop that runs too many times. Or even a data error in some (perhaps bad) designs, such as a filename that is too long for the buffer that's supposed to store it.
Of course, there's still the larger point that these errors are not the only causes of transient bugs. Not all of these are trivial to debug (many, in fact, are damned hard); most are a much more likely source of bugs than a memory leak. So you obviously don't know what you're talking about or aren't making yourself very clear. Whatever the case, you're a judgmental asshole. Fact.
I don't even know where to begin. Since when is it inhernetly unprofessional to maintain personal relationships with co-workers/clients? And since when is accurately recalling your life, even its mistakes, censure worthy? (It is, after all, a MEMOIR, as you kindly pointed out.) And why is it your place to judge her for it?
A memory leak is a failure to deallocate memory causing the program to consume ever more system resources. This does not fit the description of a transient bug. Perhaps you meant a buffer overflow? (But, then, at least one of your debugging suggestions doesn't support that notion.) Besides which, memory errors aren't the only source of transient bugs in programs. Maybe by year 30 you'll have this all figured out?
The problem in Egypt (and much of the rest of the world) is not Islam, it's terrorists. It just so happens that terrorists use religion.
Imagine the millions of geeks able to surf pr0n with two hands on the keyboard in the near future! Or better, yet, don't. It's a rather distressing image.
Yes, but the acceptance speeches are shown at the taping. The results are, like any other awards show, calculated in advance. (They are not prearranged.) MTV doesn't take their awards show as seriously as the bigger shows do, so if a winner cannot be there, they try to arrange for an acceptance speech. This is much more entertaining than some dope accepting the award "on behalf" of the winner.
The sad thing is that the very rich often believe they're richer than others because they're smarter or better than others.
Says she, "I may look different, but I still feel the same on the inside." To which I say: I'll be the judge of that.
Hello? He filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that it committed improprieties. He called Google a monopoly and said that its actions were intended to squash competition. He's wrongfully accused Google of breaking a variety of laws and then has the audicity to claim that he's the victim?
A wake-up call: SearchKing was never accused of anything. Bob Massa publically stated that SearchKing was selling links in an attempt to boost his customers' PageRanks; a practice explicitly forbidden by Google (as described here):
This is obviously Google's prerogative and, moreover, what's best for Google's users (and the Internet) as a whole. So while SearchKing CEO Bob Massa is whining about Google attempting "to restrict the legal business of another without due process" and the "thousands of innocent people" that have suffered because of this decision, the truth of it is that he's the one trying to restrict the legal business of another and reduce the usability of Google, thereby negatively affecting the vast majority of Internet users.
That cements the asshole part. The cluelessness is even easier to prove. The lawsuit obviously never had a leg to stand on and everyone knew it. And while some might attribute it to a shrewd marketing move by Massa, it's garnered only niche coverage and a lot of negative publicity; the inevitable loss has effectively ended his business of attempting to sell PageRank and cost him legal fees besides. He releases a settlement offer, too, which means he either expects us to believe that this suit was ever about a noble endeavor to better the Internet or he honestly believed that there exists some legal standard by which he might've won the case. Yet more evidence: his settlement offer demands that Google put sites who have broken Google's terms of service on notice -- but Google's policy concerning people trying to artificially inflate PageRank is both obvious and public. His whole settlement offer would be laughable if it weren't so tragically stupid.
My vote, then, is that Bob Massa is both clueless and a complete asshole. This ought to be a poll, really.
Of course, as pointed out, the judge does not have to decide, himself, what constitutes a significant similarity.
Why? If the theory's wrong, then cosmic rays don't do it. And if cosmic rays don't do it, then the LHC won't do it. It's not as if a bunch of Scientists and oversight committees have suddenly forgotten how to do science or employ common sense for public safety. Sheesh.
This is a rather stupid argument. The works of William Shakespeare can be copied in perpetuity, as well, but that doesn't mean that plays by Shakespeare aren't a scarce resource. What a hollow philosophy! An information economy doesn't work on the idea that copies are rare and thus costly; it works on the idea that the original -- the time, effort, and ingenuity that went into creating it -- is rare.
Free software is about liberty, not about cost. When we confuse this issue, we start to argue for an intellectually bankrupt and downright disgusting position. It must be economically viable to be an artist and the way to achieve that is through (properly applied) copyrights. It must be economically viable to be an inventor and the way to achieve that is through (properly applied) patents.
Information does want to be free. When it's shackled by abuses of the system, the answer is not to throw out the entire system. If we argue that paintings or programs or plays ought to be free because they can be easily copied, then we argue that creators ought to starve or get a "real job." Were this economic theory of yours ever seen in practice, we would all be worse for it.
I think there's no reason to believe that the shared name will confuse anyone and the value judgments from people (like you) in the Firebird database camp are bolstering supporters of Mozilla rather than creating empathy.
Stop acting like you're being oppressed. Since when did the word "Firebird" become IBPhoenix's creation to tell people what they can and cannot do with it? How does it help the situation for the Firebird database community to use rhetoric like, "Our marks are not there for the taking and our advise is that the law is on our side?" Or, "we take this as a slap in the face to the entire open source community?" Trust me, this was not a slap in the face -- a slap in the face would've knocked some sense into these witless people.
If they were really interested in just straightening out the situation, they wouldn't be making such inflammatory remarks. They could've registered their opposition in a more civil manner and not incited their users. And if Mozilla chose to ignore these complaints, then they should have just accepted it, rather than trying to badger Mozilla into using a different name. Even if you don't believe that Mozilla should use the name "Firebird," you cannot agree with IBPhoenix's attempt to generate negative publicity for another open-source project and strong-arm Mozilla into using a different name. It's an absolute shame that a good project is run by such complete assholes.
I don't know, since I never got into the Superman comic books, but I can guess. Kryptonite is radioactive. The radioactivity robs Superman of his super powers. I guess that Krypton's sun also gave off lower levels of the same type of radiation, which is why we didn't see people flying around in tights and underwear there.
Actually, they don't say that. They say that Firebird has been used, under various names (i.e., InterBase), since 1981. The point being that Firebird is mature software with twenty years of testing behind it, even if the Firebird project itself is only a couple of years old.
Looking at it from a different angle, we may reasonably posit that the spaghetti diagram tacitly assumes that the illustrated design is the one arrived at for some application. It's not claimed to be an absolute taxonomy, after all. And while it's worthwhile to say, "This captures the mathematical concepts, but those probably have little relevance to the computational problem that the application is trying to solve; this design is probably flawed," that's not an answer to the claim. Best design practices can still lead you to a situation where you end up with (effectively) the same set of classes. How then do we create the class hierarchy to take advantage of the (probable) roles of these classes in the application, but without the complexity the diagram implies is fundamental? That's the question I was answering.
#1. Observe that there's no benefit in Convex and Simple inheriting from Polygon. They are abstract classes of polygons classes for which instances cannot reasonably be constructed (because polygons need a number of sides) and, presumably, cannot implement many of the base operations of Polygon that they're inheriting. Thus, the hierarchy can be simplified by making Convex and Simple interfaces.
#2. Another solution to the above observation is to make Convex and Simple mix-ins (if your OOP language supports them).
#3. Don't try to account for two separate properties in a single taxonomy. Make either the number of sides or the type of polygon an instance attribute, rather than part of its type. For instance, we might decide that all polygons, regardless of number of sides, have the same basic set of operations, and so only work with Convex and Simple classes.
Another distinct problem with the diagram is that it mixes what we assume to be instances (a star) with what we assume are classes (Pentagon). From what I've seen, the article deals with class-based OOP, so this is an odd confusion. In fact, the problem it illustrates is perhaps mitigated, if not eliminated, in moving to a prototype-based system.
Why would the Communists act in favor of large, independent corporations? (Aren't we a bit beyond McCarthyism and the red scare?) And, being one of those liberals (but not a Communist), I must refute your claim that I got my way... I just checked under my desk; I can assure you that none of the women I wanted to be under there, were.
I thought ours was the government by, for, and of the people? What article was it in which the Founders called the US Government evil?
Piffle! There's a huge gap between the intent of the Second Amendment and its role today. The Second Amendment has provided no protection against the Government for around a century. In case you missed the memo, the United States has a very large, very powerful standing army. If you and your hunting buddies want to face off against a tank when you think the Government has crossed the line, feel free -- we'll scrape you up afterwards. Should you try to refute this claim of my mine (and I encourage and enjoy reasoned debate), please avoid some common, utterly avoidable errors.
First, don't tell me how much force the Government would or wouldn't use should their be a violent uprising and revolution. If we're going to deal in hypotheticals, we should at least do so in a consistent, logical manner. A violent uprising of a significant number must be prompted by something that polarizes and emboldens the great many that don't already live on political extremes. Thus, inherent in our argument is the assumption that this hypothetical Government has become so evil, that its people are left with no course but to (violently) rebel. It's clearly illogical to place limits on what this evil Government would be willing to justify -- especially when it has no-one to answer to.
Second, don't rely on some fluff like, "If enough people, ..." as that's vague, trivially true, and wholly unlikely. It's vague because there's no possible, concrete determination of how many is enough. It's trivially true because if you got everyone to fight for your cause, then you'd have no-one to fight against (and, thus, be victorious). It's wholly unlikely because you need a significant number to fight a vastly better connected, better supported, better armed, better trained army. Who would arm, mobilize, and tend to such a large militia? Besides, I can't imagine that this big bad US Government would somehow live in isolation of all other countries, if the situation became so dire. That the International community would neither interfere with the US's evil deeds (step in to fight for you) or assist in squelching the mass uprising (step in to fight against you) doesn't make a whole lot of sense outside of Hollywood and other ill-conceived fantasies.
Your argument is broken. It's assuming that the Second Amendment does protect us from the Government (which, if you can't guess, I believe to be utter hogwash), that it's the only protection we have against the Government (it isn't; the inherent disorganization and ebb of Government protects us -- this is why Bush's dictatorial grab for broader executive power is dangerous), and that there is some surreptitious "they" already waging a war against you (I'm guessing, of course, for any person, X, "they" is the group, real or imagined, that doesn't agree with X's politics).
It's hearsay, but, really, the Keanu rumor doesn't sound terribly likely. (Then again, Nick Cage was connected to the thing at one time, so who knows?)
The author stipulates that the EFF cannot be taken seriously because they're scare-mongering. Yet, all he can provide is arbitrary quotations amounting to, "It's unlikely the DMCA will be used in this manner," as if that somehow excuses a bad, over-reaching law or invalidates the possibility that it will be used in the future for things it's not being used for, yet. And the actual assertion is inane -- too few people laughed when Big Media began whining about how they were losing so much profit from people circumventing copy-protection schemes; why should more laugh when there's actual cause for concern on a personal level?
The wording is not the sole reason for the spam being (decidedly) deceptive. The repeated use of "renewal" and "upgrade" only help to assure the already unsuspecting customer that the notice is from their current, recently bought-out provider. Those who go in with more caution will have the red flag raised by a more careful reading (as you've done) of the actual language of the notice.
Without question, people should be more cautious when it comes to such things. However, not everyone's going to catch on to everything all of the time -- a lot of bright people have been known to fall for April Fool's jokes every now and then. It's much easier to overlook the clues that more objective/critical readers spot when you don't have a reason to suspect something's wrong.
Before anyone starts hopping up and down, yelling that this guy's boycott won't do anything: I strongly doubt he's under the impression that he, alone, will have any impact. It's more likely a decision made on principle than on the potential of actually forcing studios to stop, in effect, sending their checks to the Scientologists.
Despite the dialogue, Spider-man wasn't that dumb of a movie. The hero had weaknesses, he didn't get the girl (although only because he turned her down out of fear she was going to be Spider bait again), and they didn't shrink away from making the Green Goblin Parker's friend's father or from showing Peter's inaction leading to his uncle's death.
Note that most fans care about the teams that represent their locale in regional sports and their country in international sports. Until recently, we didn't have regional soccer and the US team didn't generate excitement.
As for the game's name, Americans will continue to prefer the term soccer because (1) like many other countries, we have a game already called football with a popular following; (2) it's an officially recognized term for the game internationally. We could've done far worse and invented our own term for the game...
Oh, and American football had semi-pro teams in the early 20th century. The modern game of soccer branched from rugby in the late 19th century according to FIFA. Given that American football shares much of soccer's history, I don't know how you can really claim that one's far older/younger than the other.
(Observation: Most messages that begin with expressing confusion over why X and Y are compared are the authors' comparisons of X and Y.)
How would the fact that our skater did the same thing and got the same punishment for it make it less of a dirty trick? Maybe we Americans have a different definition of "dirty trick" than other countries? Just because one of our countrymen does it, doesn't make it okay. Cutting over and impeding another skater is not allowed regardless of who you represent..
Er, they dind't beat the US; the game ended in a tie. Korea beat Portugal 11 on 9. And no one, despite the US's embarrassing loss, needed help to beat the Polish.
I'm not going to conjure any conspiracy theories about the (co-)host nation. Those are all rather absurd. The simple fact is that there was a lot of bad calls, but more went for South Korea than against them. The US got its fair share of bad calls in its favor (the handball against Mexico) and questionable/unpopular calls against it (the no handball, no goal against Germany). Bad calls happen, but when they consistently favor one team, it looks very bad.
If whining over a loss meant you didn't deserve a fair game, then the Korean team, whose mock speed skating celebration against the US was certainly a form of whining, shouldn't have made it out of the first round. Italy, for all their bad sportsmanship, did suffer some bad calls against them in the game against Korea; as did Spain and a few other teams.