Oh wait, maybe they were just rolling their eyes and sighing. Honestly, don't mean to troll, but you Windows users put up with so much trouble an annoyance just so you can avoid learning how a computer actually works...
Methinks you guys would be better off just biting the bullet and switching. Sure, Macs are more expensive, and Linux has a steep learning curve, but isn't it worth avoiding all of the frustration you're going experience over the rest of your tech lifetime? Or are you one of those folks who relishes the semi-annual Windows reinstall? Perhaps you like paying an annual license fee to keep your computer from getting infected with a virus?
When you think about it, even if you don't factor in the cost of your time, Microsoft Windows systems are easily the most expensive systems to run on the planet, and the least useful (unless you expect your corporate users to play games all day...) Microsoft has been leveraging fear of the unknown to blackmail and intimidate non-technical users into supporting their monopoly, and the only winners I see in the whole thing are Microsoft and Intel. The users aren't any better off, and sysadmins risk their careers (not to mention their marriages!) on the capricious reliability and security of Windows systems.
But I guess that's why there's an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Microsoft fooled me once. I'm not getting fooled again.
Even though Congress hasn't officially declared war, the mantra in Washington is that we are at war. With a noun. And this stretched definition of war ("We are constantly under threat of invasion by terrorists!") is sufficient to convince the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the Executive branch that the suspension of liberties is not illegal, per se. Yes, it is probably against the spirit of the Constitution, but that's hard to prove. Even so, you'll have people who would argue that if the founding fathers could have forseen Islamic terrorism, they would have included it in the Constitution as well.
The interesting thing, though, is that Clinton was impeached for lying about having "sex" with an intern, while GW has misinformed the Congress and the whole United States about WMD, and Congress does nothing.
So, IOW, we've elected a bunch of spineless Senators. While you might be able to claim election fraud wrt to Presidential elections, it would be a quite a stretch to claim the same for the Senate, especially considering the majority party is the Democrat Party.
So where is the voter outrage? Why hasn't GW been called on the carpet in the same way as Clinton? Do you really expect us to believe that the Democrats are part of the conspiracy as well?
It just might be that America is getting the government they deserve. The system of checks and balances is either completely broken, or our current situation is the result of indifference, or perhaps even support for, the "illegal" spying program. (As IANAL, I don't know if the program is legal or not, but I do know that I certainly don't like it.)
And it should be taken for granted that corrupt and partial interests are trying to control government. But we as the voters have the responsibility to root out corruption. Sadly, it appears that all too many Americans are content to endorse the Bush interpretation of the Constitution. Even the Democrats.
What Bush & Co have been doing is legal, at least according to the letter of the Constitution. The Constitution allows the President to suspend civil liberties (even habeas corpus) in cases of warfare, or for national defense. And the interesting thing is that the determination of national defense purposes lies with the executive branch.
If you have a problem with this, then you have a problem with the Constitution. Maybe the Constitution needs to be changed to support civil liberties even in times of war; maybe the American people believe terrorism warrants this erosion of civil liberties. Regardless, in a democracy, people get the government they ultimately deserve - you, and every other voter, chooses the President and members of Congress. If you feel your liberties are being unfairly compromised, rather than blaming Bush & Co (or Congress, who despite having a Democratic majority, continues to support the President), blame your fellow Americans. They elected Bush not once, but twice. If their civil liberties have been eroded, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Rather than whine about how our liberties have been eroded, we need to take the issue to the public, and present it in terms the average American can understand. And if you can't make it relevant to the average American, maybe the issue is not that important.
While I appreciate your sentiment, there's no time like today for the electronics hobbyist. Granted, you can't design something on the level of today's PC in your basement on a shoestring budget, but you can build 1970's and 1980's era hardware for song these days. Check out Futurlec for an example. And some places offers PCB fabrication for around $2.50 per square inch.
Times have changed:
In 1984, an Apple IIe system was around $2500. Nowadays, if you can even find a 6502 processor, they're only a few dollars. You could probably build a complete Apple IIe replica these days for around $100 in parts, including the PCB fabrication.
In the 70's and 80's, TTL parts were several dollars a piece and consumed 50 to 100 mA per package while offering top speeds of only a few megahertz. Today, the CMOS equivalents cost only tens of pennies per package (at retail, no less), consume only a few microamps of current, and run ten times faster than their TTL ancestors.
As part of a hobby project, I designed a CPU using only discrete gates, and I estimate it would take about 80 IC packages, including the main memory system. At today's prices, the ALU would cost $12; the instruction decode and control logic ~ $18; and the register pack (sixteen 8 bit registers) $17.
The capacity of batteries has increased several times - today, I can get 2500 mAh AA rechargeable batteries, where 20 years ago even the D cell NiCds were only 300 mAh.
Today, thanks to the internet, you can have a fab house build your PCB for you - you can design circuits and have them built without even picking up a soldering iron. Some of these places will build boards for under $100 if you're willing to wait a few weeks.
In light of the above, today you can build a battery-powered computer system from discrete gates for less than $100. In 1970, you couldn't even run TTL off batteries. And if you did build a system from only TTL gates, it would have cost more than the Commodore 64.
If you follow the more practical route and use a motorola or intel 8086/8088 processor, you could build the mainboard (cpu & memory) for under $20.
Atmel, etc... already offer USB controllers with embedded AVR microntrollers. For a few dozen dollars, you too can build your own USB interface board for your project.
So there's no time like the present for the computer tinkerer. Sure, you can't match the performance of today's processors with something you'd put together in your basement, but you don't need to. Even a 100 MHz DSP can encode NTSC video in real time.
What has changed is that the average system of interest to the hobbyist is now 100 or 1000 times cheaper than it was in 1970. In 1970, $50 worth of electronics wasn't even programmable, but today it can run Linux and can hold more code than the average hobbyist could generate in 10 years.
It really saddens me that those agencies charged with upholding the public trust and regulating natural monopolies to prevent their abuse have actually been using their power to turn the United States into a technological backwater. It won't be long before third world countries have better technology infrastructure than we, and unfortunately, we the consumer will foot the bill.
Nothing like the Telcos getting rich as the US falls farther and farther behind, technologically speaking. Nothing like trashing your home country's economy for the sake of short term profit, eh?
When has AT & T ever abused your info? Or the Government, for that matter? I mean, just today, Congress passed a bill that gave retroactive immunity to the telecoms, in part so that the current administration could continue their unconstitutional activities. Do you really think that once you've given all your personal info to Google that the government will ignore the fact that Google is a one-stop-shop for data mining and surveillance on individuals?
The problem is not that they haven't abused it yet, but that once they get all of it, they'll be able to abuse it at will. They could care less if you no longer trust them - they'll have your info, and you'll be suffering the consequences.
You shouldn't make Google a target in the first place. If they have all of your personal information, it is much easier for corrupt government officials to get it and abuse it. Sure, Google may not abuse it, but they have to comply with the law, and you're creating a situation ripe for abuse.
extends our Constitution beyond American soil to our enemies who want to cut the heads off Americans,
Actually, that's more like extending our laws beyond American soil. The Constitution can't even be extended past the executive branch these days, much less beyond our borders.
I can't help but wonder if a notarized letter stating something to the effect of, " Failure on your part to accurately verify the identity of the participant in a financial transaction does not incur a liability on my part. However unfortunate your loss, it was not caused by me, and I will not be held liable for it. Subsequent attempts to contact me on this matter will be ignored. " would work.
I'm pretty sure you could turn it into a form letter, and send it to any debtors you didn't recognize.
But I'm not going to think highly of you for doing so.
In fact, when I hear someone swearing, the first thing that comes to mind is that they're some uneducated, undisciplined ignoramus who can't be bothered to think for themselves or respect the rights of others. Overcoming this impression is often quite challenging - because more often than not - the speaker is of lax moral and intellectual growth. I've never heard a highly performing engineer or programmer swear.
However, I have heard many highly professional engineers and programmers express frustration and dissatisfaction with their employer, and do it in a manner which explains the issue at hand while proposing a workable solution.
For some reason, they get a lot more respect than the guy who goes off into a litany of profanity. That kind of behavior often gets one branded as 'uncooperative' or 'adversarial' on their performance review, should they remain employed long enough to get one.
Being professional involves learning how to work through a difference of opinion with others without making oneself look like an idiot.
Having worked on video in the past, all of these are easily caught. In fact, the most economical way of catching infringers is to simply pass both videos through low pass filters, and compare the videos over a distance of several frames. If you can find a series of frames in which the majority of the pixels are close, chances are good that it's a copy.
And the clip-backwards technique could likewise be defeated by mimicking your player.
You know, the interesting thing about satire and parody is that they often employ blatant copying, with a twist, for the sake of humor.
The interesting thing about Led Zeppelin is that they employed blatant copying, with a twist, to add a depth and a character to works that many had regarded as long since dead.
But, they weren't only about copying other artists. They were fairly creative in their own right, and added more to music as a whole than they took away from it.
The Beatles were certainly original, and creative, but they were more of a pop-music kind of band. Led Zeppelin explored a lot of different styles, and did all of them well.
But just a few examples:
The guitar solos on Led Zeppelin, particularly Good Times Bad Times and Communication Breakdown. No one but Jimmy Page was playing guitar like that in 1969.
The Angels of Everlorn?! And this from a rock band - only Zeppelin could have pulled this off and not come across as cheesy. Granted, everyone loves Stairway to Heaven, and it was good, but it wasn't the most original track on the album.
The vocals on Whole Lotta Love are entirely unlike anything before it.
The Ocean is likewise original, and it works. Where was Fusion before this? I'm not sure I can name any (fusion) bands prior to 1980 that were anywhere close to this level of excellence.
Hot Dog - so country isn't original, but not something you'd expect from them. It's completely out of the blue, not even a variation on anything else they'd done previously.
Yeah, so Willie Dixon sued them for copying him. They still produced a lot of completely original and very inspiring tracks.
listening to Led Zeppelin, I can say they are easily one of the best rock bands of all time. Unlike a lot of recent 'talent' which seems to be concerned only with imitating others, Led Zeppelin pioneered rock and roll and actually brought creativity back to a genre which many had dismissed simply as hippie music.
Good to see their catalog online; however, a few years ago I had a rather revealing experience after buying one of their earlier works on CD: I could definitely notice the limitations of the analog equipment used for recording. I hope that the tracks offered online are of better quality, or it will be a little bit of a disappointment.
Of course, there are folks that say, "If they would have designed it properly the first time..." But, you know what, a project the size of an OS, kernal, Office app is very hard to weed out all the problems.
No, if you had designed it properly the first time, it would have been easier in the long run to weed out all of the problems. The fact that MS has such a difficult time producing secure and stable software is itself evidence of a design failure. It's not that the programmers make mistakes - it's that the designers and architects didn't account for this fact in their original design.
At this point, Microsoft does not have the option of producing secure software. They either go with a new, secure design which breaks backward compatibility (and cedes much of their marketshare to Linux), or they patch the old one at a rate just fast enough to keep users from switching to a Mac or Linux.
Microsoft Windows is, I suppose, an example of a classic computer science axiom: design your software as if it will be used forever, because it just might. The things which computer programmers underestimate the most is the frequency with which quickly, poorly-written code becomes the baseline for a company's new product, promises of a rewrite notwithstanding. Suddenly, some shoddy code becomes a standard, and the rest of the world has to suffer billions of dollars in lost productivity and endless hours of frustration attempting to get their computers to work as they should.
One of the fundamental aspects of sex is sharing a unique and wonderful feeling with another human being. Marriage is sharing oneself with another. Sadly, sex with a robot doesn't approach either. While a robot may be able to induce pleasure, it cannot feel it. In fact, it's more like expensive masturbation than anything else. At least sex with a prostitute involves another human being.
Why would anyone marry a robot, when you could already own one? It makes about as much sense as marrying a car. Sure, a car, like a relationship, requires maintenance, but you own the car, where as in a marriage your spouse is your equal partner. It wouldn't make sense to grant equality status to some other entity which isn't even human. A robot will always be a machine, no matter how intelligent. It will never possess any quality worthy of respect on a human scale; it cannot love; it cannot pity; it cannot possess virtue; it does only as it is programmed, nothing more, nothing less. And regardless of how well it is programmed to mimic humans, it will never possess a soul with which to have a relationship. No matter how many tears it is programmed to shed, it can't mourn it's owner's passing as a human would mourn the loss of a spouse.
Sure, our relationship with robots is bound to get closer, but it will be closer in the manner of familiarity, not of emotional attachment. A robot cannot truly love another person. And while there's no shortage of masturbation in our society, there is a definite shortage of love, and those who try to "marry" a robot only call attention to their depraved circumstances.
It is sad that such a suggestion (of marrying robots) is actually carried forward to debate. Clearly, those who debate such matters have great minds for technical issues, yet are as ignorant as a stone when it comes to matters of human interaction. Perhaps their talents would be better put to use solving the human aspect of our problems rather than assuming technology will provide a cure. It won't; it can't. Since recorded time, the human problem of relationships has been the fundamental defining attribute of human existence. It is the oldest and most pressing question, and not one which can be solved by technology.
So you mean that making a patent deal with Microsoft doesn't really protect Novell from patent infringment suits? Well, isn't that the strangest thing...
I think Novell is about to figure out that no matter how you look at it, they got the short end of the stick in the Microsoft deal. They paid a lot of money so that firms other than Microsoft could sue them for patent infringement. Wonder if they'll just pay off this company like they did Microsoft. Wonder if they can afford to pay off all of the companies that will bring patent infringement suits against them.
What a way to paint a big, red, sue-me-for-patent-infringement-target on their company.
States that a plaintiff may not collect for damages compounded by the plaintiff's actions, or failure to act.
Of course, IANAL. But this is/., so...
For example, if a plaintiff knows his patent is being infringed, he cannot simply wait until after the infringer has produced the product for a number of years and then sue for an inordinate sum. In such a case, the court is not likely to grant royalties for past infringement because the plaintiff knew about it and did nothing to stop it. Future royalties may be awarded, but it is unlikely that any loss which was brought about by the plaintiff's failure to act, or caused by the plaintiff's actions, is unlikely to be recoverable in a court of law.
But there is another aspect to this as well. Corporations go to considerable lengths to protect their trade secrets, and it is very possible this was hidden, as best as possible, from the general public. Because a company seldom publishes the designs for their products - even after production has begun - it is difficult for an inventor to discover patent violations, in general. In this particular case, the inventor(s) probably had to buy one of each manufacturer's hard drives and inspect them. The cost for doing this alone probably ran several thousand dollars.
So while inventors should be vigilant, there are legitimate reasons why patent violations sometimes take years to discover. Companies are often very secretive about their product designs (and for good reason), so it makes discovering a violation difficult. Most independent inventors do not have the resources to buy one of every product on the market and disassemble it, looking for violations.
Patents are one of the few weapons that cannot be easily countered by an open source software movement, particularly if the patents have the effect of shutting open source software out of certain markets altogether.
Not true. In the same way a DDOS is effective against single boxes on the network, a plethora of patents by open-source contributors could effectively stall closed-source development. Imagine if:
One of every 10 OS developers filed for a patent on the things they invented, and agreed to license the patent free of charge only to those who distributed source code (kind of like a GPL for patents).
Key visionaries in the OS movement predicted where technology was likely to go next, invented pieces critical for the implementation, and patented those.
OS foundations like the FSF and RedHat actively policed closed-source software for patent violations, in much the same way commercial vendors do, and the FSF already does with copyrights.
I know it sounds kind revolutionary, but OS needs to use patents in the same way it used copyrights. It takes only $600 to file for a patent, and the contribution by most OS developers is worth far more than that in any given year.
Even if only one in 10 patents was granted, there would be hundreds, if not thousands of patents in the open source world. To achieve such a feat would leave closed source vendors in a veritable minefield of patents - they would either be forced to open their source code, or forego any OS patent litigation whatsoever.
But no, this is/., where we're more happy to whine about it, and complain that the USPTO is granting patents for the patently obvious. If USPTO is granting frivolous patents, why not jump on the bandwagon and cash in? Or is it that actual innovation is not as simple as it's made out to be?
Don't whine about Big Bad Corporations. Do something.
What would happen if open source organizations, such as the FSF, looked at a technology, predicted where it was going, and then came up with the most probable solutions, and patented them?
And then offered indemnity only to those companies which published their source under an open source license?
I hear a lot of whining and moaning about bad patents, but not a lot of people are willing to invest the mere $600 it takes to file a patent application. When you think about it, if even 1/10th of the open source contributors filed patent applications for their inventions in code, Corporate America wouldn't be able to make an electric toothbrush without releasing the source code.
Yet, for all of the collective intelligence of the geek community, we'd rather sit on our collective asses and whine, rather than actually do something about the abuses of patent law.
Don't like patent law? Then get thinking, and at least publish your ideas, if not patent them. The FSF used copyright law to protect the freedom of software; we can use patent law in a similar manner.
I know you're being unscientific, but I'd at least like some sources for your statements about unhealthy and overweight.
Because, you know, correlation does not always imply causation. Did it ever occur to you that diabetes might cause the weight gain, rather than the other way around? I know of several people who have developed diabetes in spite of the fact that their jobs involved rigorous physical activity, and in spite of the fact that they ate diets no different from the rest of the general population.
One of the problems in this country is that people assume overweight people are overweight simply because they eat too much food, when in reality, a person's size has a lot more to do with heredity than with their diet (assuming the diet is not nutritionally deficient). And some diseases, like heart disease and diabetes, heredity plays a much larger role than diet and exercise. For example, I know of physically fit people who had their first heart attack in their late thirties. I also know of a recent heart attack victim - at 58, who had eaten essentially a vegetarian diet for 15 years prior to the attack.
Sure, I suppose if one wanted to have a heart attack, eating nothing but lard and sugar would be a good start. But I have always been told that heredity plays the largest factor in determining heart disease and diabetes, with lifestyle and diet coming in second.
Incidentally, studies have shown that having two servings of alcohol a day are more effective at reducing the risk of heart attack than exercise (60% reduction, versus 42% for cardio exercise, and 23% for weight lifting). So it makes you wonder if those beer-swilling couch potatoes aren't actually doing themselves a favor.
It understands neither security, nor the enterprise market. The thought that they could be responsible for securing my health history is particularly troubling.
Yes, I understand that a lot of healthcare providers use MS products internally. However, gaining access to that information requires a concerted attack against a particular target, rather than just "listening" on a wire for healthcare info... The difference is that attempting the first is a crime, while even succeeding in the latter is not. Knowing Microsoft, they're going to leave holes in their scheme somewhere, and crackers will have exploits ready soon. Knowing Microsoft's lawyers, their licensing/contract with the provider will absolve them of any responsibility whatsoever.
I mean, think about it: if Microsoft cannot prevent their OS from being cracked and pirated (which they do value), how could they possibly have the means and motive to protect my health information (about which they could care less)?
Slashdot Mirror
Just breathed a collective sigh of relief...
Oh wait, maybe they were just rolling their eyes and sighing. Honestly, don't mean to troll, but you Windows users put up with so much trouble an annoyance just so you can avoid learning how a computer actually works...
Methinks you guys would be better off just biting the bullet and switching. Sure, Macs are more expensive, and Linux has a steep learning curve, but isn't it worth avoiding all of the frustration you're going experience over the rest of your tech lifetime? Or are you one of those folks who relishes the semi-annual Windows reinstall? Perhaps you like paying an annual license fee to keep your computer from getting infected with a virus?
When you think about it, even if you don't factor in the cost of your time, Microsoft Windows systems are easily the most expensive systems to run on the planet, and the least useful (unless you expect your corporate users to play games all day...) Microsoft has been leveraging fear of the unknown to blackmail and intimidate non-technical users into supporting their monopoly, and the only winners I see in the whole thing are Microsoft and Intel. The users aren't any better off, and sysadmins risk their careers (not to mention their marriages!) on the capricious reliability and security of Windows systems.
But I guess that's why there's an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me . Microsoft fooled me once. I'm not getting fooled again.
Even though Congress hasn't officially declared war, the mantra in Washington is that we are at war. With a noun. And this stretched definition of war ("We are constantly under threat of invasion by terrorists!") is sufficient to convince the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the Executive branch that the suspension of liberties is not illegal, per se. Yes, it is probably against the spirit of the Constitution, but that's hard to prove. Even so, you'll have people who would argue that if the founding fathers could have forseen Islamic terrorism, they would have included it in the Constitution as well.
The interesting thing, though, is that Clinton was impeached for lying about having "sex" with an intern, while GW has misinformed the Congress and the whole United States about WMD, and Congress does nothing.
So, IOW, we've elected a bunch of spineless Senators. While you might be able to claim election fraud wrt to Presidential elections, it would be a quite a stretch to claim the same for the Senate, especially considering the majority party is the Democrat Party.
So where is the voter outrage? Why hasn't GW been called on the carpet in the same way as Clinton? Do you really expect us to believe that the Democrats are part of the conspiracy as well?
It just might be that America is getting the government they deserve. The system of checks and balances is either completely broken, or our current situation is the result of indifference, or perhaps even support for, the "illegal" spying program. (As IANAL, I don't know if the program is legal or not, but I do know that I certainly don't like it.)
And it should be taken for granted that corrupt and partial interests are trying to control government. But we as the voters have the responsibility to root out corruption. Sadly, it appears that all too many Americans are content to endorse the Bush interpretation of the Constitution. Even the Democrats.
What Bush & Co have been doing is legal, at least according to the letter of the Constitution. The Constitution allows the President to suspend civil liberties (even habeas corpus) in cases of warfare, or for national defense. And the interesting thing is that the determination of national defense purposes lies with the executive branch.
If you have a problem with this, then you have a problem with the Constitution. Maybe the Constitution needs to be changed to support civil liberties even in times of war; maybe the American people believe terrorism warrants this erosion of civil liberties. Regardless, in a democracy, people get the government they ultimately deserve - you, and every other voter, chooses the President and members of Congress. If you feel your liberties are being unfairly compromised, rather than blaming Bush & Co (or Congress, who despite having a Democratic majority, continues to support the President), blame your fellow Americans. They elected Bush not once, but twice. If their civil liberties have been eroded, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Rather than whine about how our liberties have been eroded, we need to take the issue to the public, and present it in terms the average American can understand. And if you can't make it relevant to the average American, maybe the issue is not that important.
Isn't it ironic that the coach was fined by the NFL for cheating?
Maybe the ticket scalpers are just following the coach's lead - cheat until you get caught.
While I appreciate your sentiment, there's no time like today for the electronics hobbyist. Granted, you can't design something on the level of today's PC in your basement on a shoestring budget, but you can build 1970's and 1980's era hardware for song these days. Check out Futurlec for an example. And some places offers PCB fabrication for around $2.50 per square inch.
Times have changed:
So there's no time like the present for the computer tinkerer. Sure, you can't match the performance of today's processors with something you'd put together in your basement, but you don't need to. Even a 100 MHz DSP can encode NTSC video in real time.
What has changed is that the average system of interest to the hobbyist is now 100 or 1000 times cheaper than it was in 1970. In 1970, $50 worth of electronics wasn't even programmable, but today it can run Linux and can hold more code than the average hobbyist could generate in 10 years.
But never in New York.
It really saddens me that those agencies charged with upholding the public trust and regulating natural monopolies to prevent their abuse have actually been using their power to turn the United States into a technological backwater. It won't be long before third world countries have better technology infrastructure than we, and unfortunately, we the consumer will foot the bill.
Nothing like the Telcos getting rich as the US falls farther and farther behind, technologically speaking. Nothing like trashing your home country's economy for the sake of short term profit, eh?
When has AT & T ever abused your info? Or the Government, for that matter? I mean, just today, Congress passed a bill that gave retroactive immunity to the telecoms, in part so that the current administration could continue their unconstitutional activities. Do you really think that once you've given all your personal info to Google that the government will ignore the fact that Google is a one-stop-shop for data mining and surveillance on individuals?
The problem is not that they haven't abused it yet, but that once they get all of it, they'll be able to abuse it at will. They could care less if you no longer trust them - they'll have your info, and you'll be suffering the consequences.
You shouldn't make Google a target in the first place. If they have all of your personal information, it is much easier for corrupt government officials to get it and abuse it. Sure, Google may not abuse it, but they have to comply with the law, and you're creating a situation ripe for abuse.
extends our Constitution beyond American soil to our enemies who want to cut the heads off Americans,
Actually, that's more like extending our laws beyond American soil. The Constitution can't even be extended past the executive branch these days, much less beyond our borders.
I can't help but wonder if a notarized letter stating something to the effect of, " Failure on your part to accurately verify the identity of the participant in a financial transaction does not incur a liability on my part. However unfortunate your loss, it was not caused by me, and I will not be held liable for it. Subsequent attempts to contact me on this matter will be ignored. " would work.
I'm pretty sure you could turn it into a form letter, and send it to any debtors you didn't recognize.
But I'm not going to think highly of you for doing so.
In fact, when I hear someone swearing, the first thing that comes to mind is that they're some uneducated, undisciplined ignoramus who can't be bothered to think for themselves or respect the rights of others. Overcoming this impression is often quite challenging - because more often than not - the speaker is of lax moral and intellectual growth. I've never heard a highly performing engineer or programmer swear.
However, I have heard many highly professional engineers and programmers express frustration and dissatisfaction with their employer, and do it in a manner which explains the issue at hand while proposing a workable solution.
For some reason, they get a lot more respect than the guy who goes off into a litany of profanity. That kind of behavior often gets one branded as 'uncooperative' or 'adversarial' on their performance review, should they remain employed long enough to get one.
Being professional involves learning how to work through a difference of opinion with others without making oneself look like an idiot.
Having worked on video in the past, all of these are easily caught. In fact, the most economical way of catching infringers is to simply pass both videos through low pass filters, and compare the videos over a distance of several frames. If you can find a series of frames in which the majority of the pixels are close, chances are good that it's a copy.
And the clip-backwards technique could likewise be defeated by mimicking your player.
You know, the interesting thing about satire and parody is that they often employ blatant copying, with a twist, for the sake of humor.
The interesting thing about Led Zeppelin is that they employed blatant copying, with a twist, to add a depth and a character to works that many had regarded as long since dead.
But, they weren't only about copying other artists. They were fairly creative in their own right, and added more to music as a whole than they took away from it.
The Beatles were certainly original, and creative, but they were more of a pop-music kind of band. Led Zeppelin explored a lot of different styles, and did all of them well.
But just a few examples:
Yeah, so Willie Dixon sued them for copying him. They still produced a lot of completely original and very inspiring tracks.
listening to Led Zeppelin, I can say they are easily one of the best rock bands of all time. Unlike a lot of recent 'talent' which seems to be concerned only with imitating others, Led Zeppelin pioneered rock and roll and actually brought creativity back to a genre which many had dismissed simply as hippie music.
Good to see their catalog online; however, a few years ago I had a rather revealing experience after buying one of their earlier works on CD: I could definitely notice the limitations of the analog equipment used for recording. I hope that the tracks offered online are of better quality, or it will be a little bit of a disappointment.
Of course, there are folks that say, "If they would have designed it properly the first time..." But, you know what, a project the size of an OS, kernal, Office app is very hard to weed out all the problems.
No, if you had designed it properly the first time, it would have been easier in the long run to weed out all of the problems. The fact that MS has such a difficult time producing secure and stable software is itself evidence of a design failure. It's not that the programmers make mistakes - it's that the designers and architects didn't account for this fact in their original design.
At this point, Microsoft does not have the option of producing secure software. They either go with a new, secure design which breaks backward compatibility (and cedes much of their marketshare to Linux), or they patch the old one at a rate just fast enough to keep users from switching to a Mac or Linux.
Microsoft Windows is, I suppose, an example of a classic computer science axiom: design your software as if it will be used forever, because it just might. The things which computer programmers underestimate the most is the frequency with which quickly, poorly-written code becomes the baseline for a company's new product, promises of a rewrite notwithstanding. Suddenly, some shoddy code becomes a standard, and the rest of the world has to suffer billions of dollars in lost productivity and endless hours of frustration attempting to get their computers to work as they should.
One of the fundamental aspects of sex is sharing a unique and wonderful feeling with another human being. Marriage is sharing oneself with another. Sadly, sex with a robot doesn't approach either. While a robot may be able to induce pleasure, it cannot feel it. In fact, it's more like expensive masturbation than anything else. At least sex with a prostitute involves another human being.
Why would anyone marry a robot, when you could already own one? It makes about as much sense as marrying a car. Sure, a car, like a relationship, requires maintenance, but you own the car, where as in a marriage your spouse is your equal partner. It wouldn't make sense to grant equality status to some other entity which isn't even human. A robot will always be a machine, no matter how intelligent. It will never possess any quality worthy of respect on a human scale; it cannot love; it cannot pity; it cannot possess virtue; it does only as it is programmed, nothing more, nothing less. And regardless of how well it is programmed to mimic humans, it will never possess a soul with which to have a relationship. No matter how many tears it is programmed to shed, it can't mourn it's owner's passing as a human would mourn the loss of a spouse.
Sure, our relationship with robots is bound to get closer, but it will be closer in the manner of familiarity, not of emotional attachment. A robot cannot truly love another person. And while there's no shortage of masturbation in our society, there is a definite shortage of love, and those who try to "marry" a robot only call attention to their depraved circumstances.
It is sad that such a suggestion (of marrying robots) is actually carried forward to debate. Clearly, those who debate such matters have great minds for technical issues, yet are as ignorant as a stone when it comes to matters of human interaction. Perhaps their talents would be better put to use solving the human aspect of our problems rather than assuming technology will provide a cure. It won't; it can't. Since recorded time, the human problem of relationships has been the fundamental defining attribute of human existence. It is the oldest and most pressing question, and not one which can be solved by technology.
So you mean that making a patent deal with Microsoft doesn't really protect Novell from patent infringment suits? Well, isn't that the strangest thing...
I think Novell is about to figure out that no matter how you look at it, they got the short end of the stick in the Microsoft deal. They paid a lot of money so that firms other than Microsoft could sue them for patent infringement. Wonder if they'll just pay off this company like they did Microsoft. Wonder if they can afford to pay off all of the companies that will bring patent infringement suits against them.
What a way to paint a big, red, sue-me-for-patent-infringement-target on their company.
The patent race has begun.
Anyone taking bets on how long it will take for the OS community to provide a workaround?
States that a plaintiff may not collect for damages compounded by the plaintiff's actions, or failure to act.
Of course, IANAL. But this is /., so...
For example, if a plaintiff knows his patent is being infringed, he cannot simply wait until after the infringer has produced the product for a number of years and then sue for an inordinate sum. In such a case, the court is not likely to grant royalties for past infringement because the plaintiff knew about it and did nothing to stop it. Future royalties may be awarded, but it is unlikely that any loss which was brought about by the plaintiff's failure to act, or caused by the plaintiff's actions, is unlikely to be recoverable in a court of law.
But there is another aspect to this as well. Corporations go to considerable lengths to protect their trade secrets, and it is very possible this was hidden, as best as possible, from the general public. Because a company seldom publishes the designs for their products - even after production has begun - it is difficult for an inventor to discover patent violations, in general. In this particular case, the inventor(s) probably had to buy one of each manufacturer's hard drives and inspect them. The cost for doing this alone probably ran several thousand dollars.
So while inventors should be vigilant, there are legitimate reasons why patent violations sometimes take years to discover. Companies are often very secretive about their product designs (and for good reason), so it makes discovering a violation difficult. Most independent inventors do not have the resources to buy one of every product on the market and disassemble it, looking for violations.
Patents are one of the few weapons that cannot be easily countered by an open source software movement, particularly if the patents have the effect of shutting open source software out of certain markets altogether.
Not true. In the same way a DDOS is effective against single boxes on the network, a plethora of patents by open-source contributors could effectively stall closed-source development. Imagine if:
I know it sounds kind revolutionary, but OS needs to use patents in the same way it used copyrights. It takes only $600 to file for a patent, and the contribution by most OS developers is worth far more than that in any given year.
Even if only one in 10 patents was granted, there would be hundreds, if not thousands of patents in the open source world. To achieve such a feat would leave closed source vendors in a veritable minefield of patents - they would either be forced to open their source code, or forego any OS patent litigation whatsoever.
But no, this is /., where we're more happy to whine about it, and complain that the USPTO is granting patents for the patently obvious. If USPTO is granting frivolous patents, why not jump on the bandwagon and cash in? Or is it that actual innovation is not as simple as it's made out to be?
Don't whine about Big Bad Corporations. Do something.
"It's safe, it works, all the hardware is fine, and everything is great," -Mother of a 13 year old and Microsoft user.
Yes, she actually was quoted as saying those words, though not in reference to Vista....
Why don't Linus and RMS go around claiming that GPL code is in Windows, and there will come a time when MS will be forced to open the source?
I mean, honestly, Ballmer's patent claims are just as ridiculous.
What would happen if open source organizations, such as the FSF, looked at a technology, predicted where it was going, and then came up with the most probable solutions, and patented them?
And then offered indemnity only to those companies which published their source under an open source license?
I hear a lot of whining and moaning about bad patents, but not a lot of people are willing to invest the mere $600 it takes to file a patent application. When you think about it, if even 1/10th of the open source contributors filed patent applications for their inventions in code, Corporate America wouldn't be able to make an electric toothbrush without releasing the source code.
Yet, for all of the collective intelligence of the geek community, we'd rather sit on our collective asses and whine, rather than actually do something about the abuses of patent law.
Don't like patent law? Then get thinking, and at least publish your ideas, if not patent them. The FSF used copyright law to protect the freedom of software; we can use patent law in a similar manner.
I know you're being unscientific, but I'd at least like some sources for your statements about unhealthy and overweight.
Because, you know, correlation does not always imply causation. Did it ever occur to you that diabetes might cause the weight gain, rather than the other way around? I know of several people who have developed diabetes in spite of the fact that their jobs involved rigorous physical activity, and in spite of the fact that they ate diets no different from the rest of the general population.
One of the problems in this country is that people assume overweight people are overweight simply because they eat too much food, when in reality, a person's size has a lot more to do with heredity than with their diet (assuming the diet is not nutritionally deficient). And some diseases, like heart disease and diabetes, heredity plays a much larger role than diet and exercise. For example, I know of physically fit people who had their first heart attack in their late thirties. I also know of a recent heart attack victim - at 58, who had eaten essentially a vegetarian diet for 15 years prior to the attack.
Sure, I suppose if one wanted to have a heart attack, eating nothing but lard and sugar would be a good start. But I have always been told that heredity plays the largest factor in determining heart disease and diabetes, with lifestyle and diet coming in second.
Incidentally, studies have shown that having two servings of alcohol a day are more effective at reducing the risk of heart attack than exercise (60% reduction, versus 42% for cardio exercise, and 23% for weight lifting). So it makes you wonder if those beer-swilling couch potatoes aren't actually doing themselves a favor.
It understands neither security, nor the enterprise market. The thought that they could be responsible for securing my health history is particularly troubling.
Yes, I understand that a lot of healthcare providers use MS products internally. However, gaining access to that information requires a concerted attack against a particular target, rather than just "listening" on a wire for healthcare info... The difference is that attempting the first is a crime, while even succeeding in the latter is not. Knowing Microsoft, they're going to leave holes in their scheme somewhere, and crackers will have exploits ready soon. Knowing Microsoft's lawyers, their licensing/contract with the provider will absolve them of any responsibility whatsoever.
I mean, think about it: if Microsoft cannot prevent their OS from being cracked and pirated (which they do value), how could they possibly have the means and motive to protect my health information (about which they could care less)?
Very troublingt indeed.