No, an open source project is not obliged to provide support for its users. They're giving you the software (and sometimes documentation) for free.
It depends on what you mean by obligated. Certainly, legally they are under no obligation. But if you want a userbase (again, the something that other people develop with their time), testing, and relevency outside a small circle of people willing to do their own debugging, then yes, they do.
OSS cannot just take that libertarian attitude and be expected to be taken seriously. Call it one example of the "RTFM n00b"-type mentality. For most people outside of school, time is more valuble than money. So, feel free to rest on the "free as in beer" mentality, and don't get surprised when Microsoft continues to dominate the OS/Office space.
I guess, what I'm saying is, if you want users, you have to support them.
because you can't trademark and patent the same things - functional elements, which are covered by patents, can't be trademarked
Functional elements cannot be trademarked: true
Non-functional elements cannot be patented: false.
There are design patents that cover non-trademarked, non-functional parts of devices. I think that's what razor companies use to lock me into their replacement blades.
It's not that money in politics is evil. The problem is when corporations, lobbyists and other undemocratic organizations are able to give massive contributions to a candidate.
That's your view. Mine is that money in politics is evil because instead of "rubber banding" the candidates together, "winning" candidates are given more power. Basically, the money is what allows the media to determine the presidency.
I wouldn't mind if after a while the money could factor in (say, after primary season), but the difficulty of interesting people getting nominated by their parties is no doubt due in large part to the money issue.
Ahh... That's correct. I had only remembered that Obama reneged and McCain did not, and forgot that he could exceed the limit without renenging because of the conditional.
The overarching point still applies though. Because of Obama, the media got $830 million more, and Obama controlled approx. 2/3 of the dollars.
This election was amazing, if for no other reason than because a Democrat had a warchest almost twice as large as a Republican, instead of vice-versa.
Well, only the wife beating question is really posing a false dilemma. The article, your question about Linux being awesome, your IE 7 question all have a "neither" valid response. The Windows 7 devs dining on flesh is a push-poll type question, and so outragous no one would belive it, but hardly has a trap built into the answers. I can explain how I can afford not to use Linux for certain applications.
However, only one question really sets the trap, the Balmer/wife-beating question. That's because only that question is crafted so that the correct response (assuming Balmer has never beaten his wife) of "no" is misinterperted.
Hehe, maybe that's why the major media outlets loved him? He gave them a ton of money in advertisement.
That's not a joke, that's quite accurate. Have you ever noticed the full page video game ads in the same publications that give those games a 9.6 or so? Major advertisers can exert a lot of influence.
McCain stayed within public financing limits. Obama exceeded them.
Second, what is the one percent based on? Previous months use? Historical and adjusted values for same month use?
Third, do the increases adjust for changes in fall activities. For instance, were the kids all going to school at the same time? Does the start of school effect the figures?Do the number of holidays effect the figures?
To answer questions about methodolgies, it seems fairly straightforward. Indiana had counties that observed and did not observe DST. In 2006, it mandated that all counties use DST. Hence, there you can compare the counties before and after DST (using year-to-year data), while comparing neighboring counties changes over the same time period to correct for seasonal variances, etc. Or you can compare neighbors side by side in the past, and then compare them currently, to determine what differences are due to geography vs. DST.
The right comparison, IMHO, should be between how much your salary costs, compared to how much would be spent if everyone did by themselves the work you do.
I would assume that everyone wouldn't do more maintence work than the population at large. I would look at the average downtime of Windows XP boxes (assuming that's what you use) in homes, subtract the downtime of your boxes, and call the results the additional hours of productivity that you delivery per employee. Then you can multiply that by their salary to determine much money you save.
Not as much as you'd think. Depending on the benefits you provide, and including the additional 7.5% social security tax, you're looking about 20-40% of the salary cost (often including employer retirement fund and 401k matching contributions).
It's demonstrably more than you think. Computers, electricity, office space, oversight, office supplies, etc.
Since Gödel proved that a formal system must be either incomplete or inconsistent -- and we do not really know which one applies to mathematics
That's a strange characterization. Gödel's first theorem demonstrated that any system will have such premises, using logic much like how the diagonal proof demonstrates that the the number of irrational numbers is greater than aleph-null infinity. And, just like computers could sit down and work forever on just rational numbers, computers could sit down and work forever on provable theorems.
Gödel's second theorem explains why no consistent system can prove it's own validity. Kinda like science cannot prove the universe is predictable/repeatable, because an attempt to do so utilizes the scientific method, which is based on prediction/reproducibility. Or how math can never prove a=a. You just have to take it on faith.
Please do not take my response that way. But my question is - why is it so "tragic" these days if someone is single?
It's not tragic that everyone is single. The people who say that would derive great pleasure from being paired up. Hence, it is tragic they cannot achieve their goals.
Other phrases with the same structure abound: tragically I'm not rich; tragically I'm not handsome/pretty; tragically I'm manic-depressive.
I don't really want to be rich (I would prefer to be rich, but I have higher priorities that I knowningly allow to block my becoming rich), so I wouldn't call it a tragedy.
As for why not to be single, I always enjoyed being with someone. Hence, I am tragically single. Because I cannot fulfill my desire.
Speaking of which, there are girls out there, correct? Anyone girls tragically single?
They certainly CAN prove that God exists... if he really does. It would be a rather simple matter. A big bearded guy in a white robe would come strolling into the main research lab of the LHC, wave his hand in the air, and atomize 99% of the scientists in the room
Well, that's a poor proof. As others have said, it's not reproducible. It's also not divine. What you would need him to do is impossible, largely because "sufficent technology is indistinguishable ffrom science". And some would always claim he as an alien.
Also, your statement is unfairly composed. It should have said "if the Almighty existed, and wanted to make his presence known, but only to a small group of people who would have seen a miracle and thus go forth and spread the word of the Almighty's existence, like in the past, doing so to the LHC would be possible.
And, while I think it would be possible to prove the existence of the Almighty scientifically (uncovering, let's say, architectual remains of some number of miracles.; discovery that Carbon-14 used to decay x times faster; proof that the earth ceased rotating for 12 hours). However, how would it disprove the Almighty's existence?
hat exactly do you think has changed, or what to you see as the time table to be looking for all this "change"?
I think we'll actually have a centrist, bipartisan president. Which is what we would have had under McCain. Gore/Bush was a very important election, a lot of differences between the candidates. Kerry/Bush was important as well. Obama/McCain was the definition of low-impact. Both are Senators who want bipartisan solutions. However, once you look at their VPs, it's similar to the past two elections. I doubt either will die in the next four years, so it hardly matters.
And bipartisanship is why I disliked Obama. After 8 years of ultra-right-wing partisanship, balancing left-wing-partisanship is called for.
I imagine that he will stop the wiretaps on US Citizens, although I doubt he will expose what happened in the past. I think that he will decline to push for a new Patriot Act when this one expires. I think he'll pull us out of Iraq in the next two years by a significant amount, in time for the midterm elections. And I think the economy has been fixed already. It was a bubble. It burst. It will rebound in a bit. You cannot hurry it. The "economy being broken" was the bubble, not the popping of it.
And all of that is what I expect McCain to have done, with the exception of Iraq.
Are you serious??? A tax code that is over 3500 pages long that no one person can completely understand
All laws are like that. Because you can get by with a simple law "Thou shalt not kill" until someone kills in self-defense. Then it becomes "Thou shalt not kill, except in self-defense". Fast forward to when someone eats too many sugary treats, and thinks the victim was an evil mythological creature, but the sugar induced hallucination was not foreseeable because it was due to a recent and temporary trama, and you get even more hairs split. But all large organizations suffer from the same effect, government and private.
But the IRS seems able to administer the rules and collect the money with a large degree of sucess.
Given the current state of the trust fund, all funds will be depleted by 2041. So...that's a good thing I guess?
That's when most of the baby boomers will be dead I suppose. The trust fund isn't required for social security. It's just a cushion. But I do think that retirement ages should rise with life expectancy.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and their under capitalization kicked off this whole mess.
I would say that greedy bankers who made subprime loans kicked it off.
They led the way on relying on the government to bail them out.
Since they are government run, this makes sense. AIG and the $700 billion less so.
when mortgages SHOULD have been harder to get and therefore home prices should have naturally dropped, good ole Fannie and Freddie keep them artificially inflated by giving loans to anyone who asked. (basically) So, no, they're not helping, they started it.
I agree morgages should have been harder to get. But I would say that it's a direct result of lowering the highest tax rates. This led to increased risk taking which led to subprime morgages.
The fact is, whatever I've paid over the last, say five years, is a shadow of what I would have paid had I not bought insurance. It sucks to pay the bill, but it's *worth* the price. I drive a shittier car, but hey...my family has coverage
And I think it would be less expensive to have one government run system, thus saving you all those issues.
So you're cool with paying half your income to taxes?
I'm not happy about it, but I think it's worthwhile, and I think it's my patriotic duty. Certainly accumulating debt to increase taxes in the future is just screwing over the future. Providing for the needy and less fortunate is a burden on me, but one I owe my society.
And certainly if I get more healthcare for an increase in my taxes than I do if I had to pay out of pocket, I'd be an idiot not to go for it. As someone once said "If you offer me a choice between a premium and a tax, my question is 'which one is cheaper?'"
Your last sentence there is a bit garbled. If I get your meaning, well, they don't supply the only radio dating isotope, just the most common and reliable one for recent history.
Sorry about the garbled-ness. I meant to write something to the effect of: plants provide one method of carbon-fixing, but can there be other methods?
And to answer my own question, based on what you said: Theoretically yes, however, for most purposes, they are the only practical one.
How's the IRS working out for you? And the TSA, how's that for a government program. Oh yeah, and social security, how's that looking lately. Freddie Mac? Fannie Mae? Why would Health care be different?
The IRS seems to work fine. I can understand people disliking them because they are the ones who collect the taxes, but other than that, they seem to operate well. Social Security seems to be fine, the earliest complaints are in 2027, and I doubt will be the crisis everyone expects. It's doing better than my 401k at the moment certainly. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae may be th only thing preventing a horrible depression.
But you are right, the TSA is insane. One counterexample.
But tell me how good your HMO is. Do they let you see any doctor? A specialist right away? Do they make you wait for treatment while they cross the i's and dot the t's (reversal intentional). I've seen most of the problems that people assume exist in a "socialized" medicare system in every HMO. It's called bureaucracy, and private enterprise is not a panacea that magically makes it disappear.
(BTW, talk to a Marine and ask them how smooth the military runs)
I talk to a lot of NCO's for my job, although usually Navy/Air Force. I'm not sure that I entirely trust a Private more than a Command Master Sergant.
Can't we spend time just reforming private health care? How about figuring out how come it's way more expensive (administrative costs and malpractice insurance) and just go about fixing that
Well, it's because that doesn't seem to make sense. Medicare administrative costs are less than 10% that of private enterprises, so that seems to be the best way to lessen administrative costs. And lowering costs on goods does not lead to lower prices. That's never been true even in theory. (For some markets yes, but not for medical markets).
And I assume that the US government can do it because every other western country somehow can.
I think the overwhelming idea is that given the way our government runs *anything*, it's impossible to imagine how they would provide health care for all citizens in any efficient manor.
Ummm... the government manages a giant military, can put people on the moon, invented the internet and GPS, manages the largest economy in the world, and you're going to hold road construction against it? It's not even the same bloody level of government.
You might not be able to get a physical but any type of emergency will not go untreated in this country
Which is why 911 gets calls every four hours because the ambulence will give them one dose of asprin for free to treat their baby's fever. And so poor people just learn that is the only way to get medicine. It'd be cheaper to just have an office they can visit for free non-emergency care.
That's, of course, discounting all the other valid theories about what socialized medicine would do to the fabric of our nation. Increased taxes, less incentive for doctors to be doctors, less medical innovation
All they are is theories. They haven't been demonstrably proven. Well, I suppose taxes would go up, but the question is would they go up as much as health insurance premiums are right now? And given that so many people want to be doctors and are not allowed to be, are we worried about less incentives? Is there even any evidence that the government will lower doctor's fees? And since lots of medical research is carried out with federal grants, would there be less incentive. Or look at prospect theory and understand why having the government sponsor reasearch will INCREASE the bang for the buck, instead of it being all driven by results.
For goodness' sake, the same people on here who make fun of the religious for hanging onto their beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence have no problem doing so with their philisophically based economics theories.
Why couldn't I take of an isolated bubble of atmospheric air, and examine the breakdown from CO2 to N2 and 02 as the C-14 decayed into N-14? I mean, I understand that the carbon would have to be 'fixed' to be part of the physical object somehow, but other than plants providing a method of fixation, why would they have to supple to only one?
here in America, we have upwards of around 20% that believes in creationism of some form
I do. I am not a wack job.
It's not really falsifiable, so you cannot prove me wrong. Of course, the reverse does not apply, it could theoretically (if science supported it) be proven correct. That is, I can always add "and then the Almighty altered the laws of physics", whereas an atheist has to assume that they are constant throughout time and space.
That said, I recognize it's a religious belief of mine, and has no place in a scientific class room. To quote Indiana Jones, "[Science] is not about truth, it's about facts. If you're interested in truth see Dr. [?] of Philosophy down the hall."
On a totally different note, why would carbon dating only work on things that were once living? Assuming that carbon got into the blade (through the process of making the steel or as air bubbles trapped within it) why wouldn't it work?
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on what you mean by obligated. Certainly, legally they are under no obligation. But if you want a userbase (again, the something that other people develop with their time), testing, and relevency outside a small circle of people willing to do their own debugging, then yes, they do.
OSS cannot just take that libertarian attitude and be expected to be taken seriously. Call it one example of the "RTFM n00b"-type mentality. For most people outside of school, time is more valuble than money. So, feel free to rest on the "free as in beer" mentality, and don't get surprised when Microsoft continues to dominate the OS/Office space.
I guess, what I'm saying is, if you want users, you have to support them.
Functional elements cannot be trademarked: true
Non-functional elements cannot be patented: false.
There are design patents that cover non-trademarked, non-functional parts of devices. I think that's what razor companies use to lock me into their replacement blades.
At least, being game developers, the fact that unicorns only associate with virgins isn't an issue.
Actually, I knew that. He changed his name when he went off to college. You know how I learned it? CNN played it for a week straight.
Sorry to burst your "I never get news outside of Fox News/Talk Radio but still know what they say" bubble.
Article I, Clause 10. A strange place for it, but that whole clause limits state powers.
That's your view. Mine is that money in politics is evil because instead of "rubber banding" the candidates together, "winning" candidates are given more power. Basically, the money is what allows the media to determine the presidency.
I wouldn't mind if after a while the money could factor in (say, after primary season), but the difficulty of interesting people getting nominated by their parties is no doubt due in large part to the money issue.
I could've sworn IBM was in New York.
The US Constitution explictly states one state cannot discharge your contractual obligations made legally in another state.
Ahh... That's correct. I had only remembered that Obama reneged and McCain did not, and forgot that he could exceed the limit without renenging because of the conditional.
The overarching point still applies though. Because of Obama, the media got $830 million more, and Obama controlled approx. 2/3 of the dollars.
This election was amazing, if for no other reason than because a Democrat had a warchest almost twice as large as a Republican, instead of vice-versa.
Well, only the wife beating question is really posing a false dilemma. The article, your question about Linux being awesome, your IE 7 question all have a "neither" valid response. The Windows 7 devs dining on flesh is a push-poll type question, and so outragous no one would belive it, but hardly has a trap built into the answers. I can explain how I can afford not to use Linux for certain applications.
However, only one question really sets the trap, the Balmer/wife-beating question. That's because only that question is crafted so that the correct response (assuming Balmer has never beaten his wife) of "no" is misinterperted.
That's not a joke, that's quite accurate. Have you ever noticed the full page video game ads in the same publications that give those games a 9.6 or so? Major advertisers can exert a lot of influence.
McCain stayed within public financing limits. Obama exceeded them.
To answer questions about methodolgies, it seems fairly straightforward. Indiana had counties that observed and did not observe DST. In 2006, it mandated that all counties use DST. Hence, there you can compare the counties before and after DST (using year-to-year data), while comparing neighboring counties changes over the same time period to correct for seasonal variances, etc. Or you can compare neighbors side by side in the past, and then compare them currently, to determine what differences are due to geography vs. DST.
For more information, read the paper.
I would assume that everyone wouldn't do more maintence work than the population at large. I would look at the average downtime of Windows XP boxes (assuming that's what you use) in homes, subtract the downtime of your boxes, and call the results the additional hours of productivity that you delivery per employee. Then you can multiply that by their salary to determine much money you save.
It's demonstrably more than you think. Computers, electricity, office space, oversight, office supplies, etc.
I must be new here.
That's a strange characterization. Gödel's first theorem demonstrated that any system will have such premises, using logic much like how the diagonal proof demonstrates that the the number of irrational numbers is greater than aleph-null infinity. And, just like computers could sit down and work forever on just rational numbers, computers could sit down and work forever on provable theorems.
Gödel's second theorem explains why no consistent system can prove it's own validity. Kinda like science cannot prove the universe is predictable/repeatable, because an attempt to do so utilizes the scientific method, which is based on prediction/reproducibility. Or how math can never prove a=a. You just have to take it on faith.
It's not tragic that everyone is single. The people who say that would derive great pleasure from being paired up. Hence, it is tragic they cannot achieve their goals.
Other phrases with the same structure abound: tragically I'm not rich; tragically I'm not handsome/pretty; tragically I'm manic-depressive.
I don't really want to be rich (I would prefer to be rich, but I have higher priorities that I knowningly allow to block my becoming rich), so I wouldn't call it a tragedy.
As for why not to be single, I always enjoyed being with someone. Hence, I am tragically single. Because I cannot fulfill my desire.
Speaking of which, there are girls out there, correct? Anyone girls tragically single?
Well, that's a poor proof. As others have said, it's not reproducible. It's also not divine. What you would need him to do is impossible, largely because "sufficent technology is indistinguishable ffrom science". And some would always claim he as an alien.
Also, your statement is unfairly composed. It should have said "if the Almighty existed, and wanted to make his presence known, but only to a small group of people who would have seen a miracle and thus go forth and spread the word of the Almighty's existence, like in the past, doing so to the LHC would be possible.
And, while I think it would be possible to prove the existence of the Almighty scientifically (uncovering, let's say, architectual remains of some number of miracles.; discovery that Carbon-14 used to decay x times faster; proof that the earth ceased rotating for 12 hours). However, how would it disprove the Almighty's existence?
I think we'll actually have a centrist, bipartisan president. Which is what we would have had under McCain. Gore/Bush was a very important election, a lot of differences between the candidates. Kerry/Bush was important as well. Obama/McCain was the definition of low-impact. Both are Senators who want bipartisan solutions. However, once you look at their VPs, it's similar to the past two elections. I doubt either will die in the next four years, so it hardly matters.
And bipartisanship is why I disliked Obama. After 8 years of ultra-right-wing partisanship, balancing left-wing-partisanship is called for.
I imagine that he will stop the wiretaps on US Citizens, although I doubt he will expose what happened in the past. I think that he will decline to push for a new Patriot Act when this one expires. I think he'll pull us out of Iraq in the next two years by a significant amount, in time for the midterm elections. And I think the economy has been fixed already. It was a bubble. It burst. It will rebound in a bit. You cannot hurry it. The "economy being broken" was the bubble, not the popping of it.
And all of that is what I expect McCain to have done, with the exception of Iraq.
All laws are like that. Because you can get by with a simple law "Thou shalt not kill" until someone kills in self-defense. Then it becomes "Thou shalt not kill, except in self-defense". Fast forward to when someone eats too many sugary treats, and thinks the victim was an evil mythological creature, but the sugar induced hallucination was not foreseeable because it was due to a recent and temporary trama, and you get even more hairs split. But all large organizations suffer from the same effect, government and private.
But the IRS seems able to administer the rules and collect the money with a large degree of sucess.
That's when most of the baby boomers will be dead I suppose. The trust fund isn't required for social security. It's just a cushion. But I do think that retirement ages should rise with life expectancy.
I would say that greedy bankers who made subprime loans kicked it off.
Since they are government run, this makes sense. AIG and the $700 billion less so.
I agree morgages should have been harder to get. But I would say that it's a direct result of lowering the highest tax rates. This led to increased risk taking which led to subprime morgages.
And I think it would be less expensive to have one government run system, thus saving you all those issues.
I'm not happy about it, but I think it's worthwhile, and I think it's my patriotic duty. Certainly accumulating debt to increase taxes in the future is just screwing over the future. Providing for the needy and less fortunate is a burden on me, but one I owe my society.
And certainly if I get more healthcare for an increase in my taxes than I do if I had to pay out of pocket, I'd be an idiot not to go for it. As someone once said "If you offer me a choice between a premium and a tax, my question is 'which one is cheaper?'"
Citation please. It has a clause that allows foreign treaties to override chunks of state constitutions.
Sorry about the garbled-ness. I meant to write something to the effect of: plants provide one method of carbon-fixing, but can there be other methods?
And to answer my own question, based on what you said: Theoretically yes, however, for most purposes, they are the only practical one.
The IRS seems to work fine. I can understand people disliking them because they are the ones who collect the taxes, but other than that, they seem to operate well. Social Security seems to be fine, the earliest complaints are in 2027, and I doubt will be the crisis everyone expects. It's doing better than my 401k at the moment certainly. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae may be th only thing preventing a horrible depression.
But you are right, the TSA is insane. One counterexample.
But tell me how good your HMO is. Do they let you see any doctor? A specialist right away? Do they make you wait for treatment while they cross the i's and dot the t's (reversal intentional). I've seen most of the problems that people assume exist in a "socialized" medicare system in every HMO. It's called bureaucracy, and private enterprise is not a panacea that magically makes it disappear.
I talk to a lot of NCO's for my job, although usually Navy/Air Force. I'm not sure that I entirely trust a Private more than a Command Master Sergant.
Well, it's because that doesn't seem to make sense. Medicare administrative costs are less than 10% that of private enterprises, so that seems to be the best way to lessen administrative costs. And lowering costs on goods does not lead to lower prices. That's never been true even in theory. (For some markets yes, but not for medical markets).
And I assume that the US government can do it because every other western country somehow can.
Ummm... the government manages a giant military, can put people on the moon, invented the internet and GPS, manages the largest economy in the world, and you're going to hold road construction against it? It's not even the same bloody level of government.
Which is why 911 gets calls every four hours because the ambulence will give them one dose of asprin for free to treat their baby's fever. And so poor people just learn that is the only way to get medicine. It'd be cheaper to just have an office they can visit for free non-emergency care.
All they are is theories. They haven't been demonstrably proven. Well, I suppose taxes would go up, but the question is would they go up as much as health insurance premiums are right now? And given that so many people want to be doctors and are not allowed to be, are we worried about less incentives? Is there even any evidence that the government will lower doctor's fees? And since lots of medical research is carried out with federal grants, would there be less incentive. Or look at prospect theory and understand why having the government sponsor reasearch will INCREASE the bang for the buck, instead of it being all driven by results.
For goodness' sake, the same people on here who make fun of the religious for hanging onto their beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence have no problem doing so with their philisophically based economics theories.
Why couldn't I take of an isolated bubble of atmospheric air, and examine the breakdown from CO2 to N2 and 02 as the C-14 decayed into N-14? I mean, I understand that the carbon would have to be 'fixed' to be part of the physical object somehow, but other than plants providing a method of fixation, why would they have to supple to only one?
I do. I am not a wack job.
It's not really falsifiable, so you cannot prove me wrong. Of course, the reverse does not apply, it could theoretically (if science supported it) be proven correct. That is, I can always add "and then the Almighty altered the laws of physics", whereas an atheist has to assume that they are constant throughout time and space.
That said, I recognize it's a religious belief of mine, and has no place in a scientific class room. To quote Indiana Jones, "[Science] is not about truth, it's about facts. If you're interested in truth see Dr. [?] of Philosophy down the hall."
On a totally different note, why would carbon dating only work on things that were once living? Assuming that carbon got into the blade (through the process of making the steel or as air bubbles trapped within it) why wouldn't it work?