The GPL has no provisions relating to the price of the compiled binaries. You can set these to whatever you want for whatever reason you want.
I can't recall offhand if you can charge anything for source code, if you can, charging more than distribution even if permitted would definitely be iffy from an ethical perspective IMO.
There is no universal ethical tradition regarding selling GPL code, provided you fullfill the terms of the license and don't exploit any loopholes you find to restrict source availability- any such loopholes you find should be reported to the FSF and the copyright holder(if different) so they can be plugged, you should not take any advantage of them.
So it's really up to you. Just remember that while you have a right to expect credit, if someone takes your port, compiles it, and starts distributing it for free, you cannot do anything to stop them. The most you might be able to do is demand credit for your part of the code.
If the entire project team asks you to stop charging, I'd consider it, but it's really not their call to make. I personally think you should be nice and consider their request, but keep it firmly in mind that it is a request only, it has no legal force, and only as much moral force as you choose to give it.
Perl's strength for a new programmer is in the wide variety of programming techniques it directly supports.
It is not, however, all that accessible beyond the most basic stuff. It has historically been designed such that every time a conflict between ease for the experienced programmer, and ease for the learner, exists, the experienced programmer won out. Always.
This is apparently changing somewhat for Perl 6, I haven't read much about it but apparently Wall and the other leading Perl people do want to make things easier for people learning it. But without a break from the past so substantial that the new language is "Perl In Name Only", there really isn't a huge amount of progress they can make on that front.
Perl's flexibility, especially for tasks bigger than a shell script but smaller than an application, makes it very good to know. Especially if your programming is primarily to support sysadmin or other duties rather than being the job itself. But it really isn't suitable as a first language. I'd probably even recommend C over Perl, integrating with the OS and various APIs needed to do real work is often easier that way.
Python or Ruby are probably the best bets. Easy, flexible, and powerful enough for real world tasks. On Windows, C# or VB.NET(do not go to 6 or earlier, it was really a mess then) aren't too bad if the learner focuses on structure rather than the language. Objective C via XCode can serve a similar role on OS X.
I've seen entry level hell desk jobs call for a 4 year compsci degree. Not even a supervisor or lead position. Grunt tech on the phones.
A good argument can be made that most of the tech jobs, perhaps even most programming jobs, shouldn't require a degree, or at least not a 4 year degree. But the fact of the matter is they do. You don't get the degree, you can't get the job no matter how qualified you actually are.
Some places will budge a bit from the formal job requirements(but you have to be that much better in other ways), and there are some that are smart enough to not even officially require it when they don't actually need it, but many will just toss your resume in the reject bin without a thought.
Basic procedure for building important databases and data processing apps, is to fill it with test data. Some realistic, some not realistic, and some that should be impossible. See what happens before the system goes live.
I'm not seeing anything in this report that conclusively rules out the possibility this is test data. Though, I suppose something might have gotten lost in translation.
The modern general purpose computer, even Macs, are very open products compared to typical consumer goods.
A CD player is a CD player. It has to work properly with itself, and CDs. Even componentized systems have a very limited environment within which they have to work. Precisely defined interfaces in and out, and they are limited in number.
A general purpose computer program though, is another beast entirely. There are thousands, if not millions, of other programs that they may have to coexist with. Most only need to worry about one OS, though with Java getting more popular for general applications, there might be several OSes to consider. And hardware... Even with Macs, there are several different models with different hardware configurations, and wierd stuff occasionally happens between them.
And then you get into end user use patterns and configurations. It's really a miracle that software is as reliable as it is, it really shows how good the compiler/linker/OS people are, even on Windows, given that it all mostly works in the real world.
A liability law is a nice idea, but this stuff would ahve to be taken into account.
Bad Stuff happens. Billions of lives are at stake, and the Federation needs to respond immediately.
Enterprise, Farragut, several other ships end up crewed nearly entirely by cadets because no other ships are available, and they don't have experienced officers on hand to crew them. Eventually, Pike has to leave Enterprise(if he hadn't, we're talking Game Over for the Federation, so the departure from protocol is justified by the extremity of the situation), and names Spock as acting Captain and Kirk as acting First Officer.
Eventually Spock has to relinquish command. Watch to find out details. McCoy says somethign about they have noone who can be captain, which suggests that there were no fully commisioned officers available. Either none on board in the first place apart from Pike and Spock, or those they did have had gotten killed in previous scenes(their original CMO had died at least)
"I don't understand how this works. If this was the case, what incentive would the professor have to require four of his books and never use them in the course?"
Spanish department at my school requires the textbook and a workbook. Recommends an audio CD set that costs close to 70USD.
Not only will the school library copy the CDs for you if you provide blanks, but all of the material from the CD set is available at the publishers website for free. Don't even need to register or provide a code from the book!
iPhone uses a capacitive touchscreen. In short, this means it depends on the electrical charge of the users body to track touch.
Styli and gloves are pretty much guaranteed to block this charge, though I suppose conductive ones could be made to work if the resistance is low enough.
Windows Mobile devices, and at least all the palms I've seen, use different technology that is based in pressure rather than charge. Fingers work, but in my experience they just don't have the precision to work well with this sort of touchscreen, at least on a smartphone scale.
I should have been clearer, I was referring to retraining costs when they need to replace the hardware, in the event that Apple no longer has a suitable product available.
Initial training, iPhone probably has a small advantage, but these things will have to be replaced eventually. If Apple no longer makes suitable hardware, they'd have to switch platforms and incur the resultant retraining costs.
I like the idea. Smartphones have enough computing power and sufficient battery life to perform militarily useful functions, with a minimum of added weight to the soldiers gear.
I'm not sure about the platform choice though. One company controls the hardware and software. There are no alternatives in either category that allow you to benefit from prior investments- replacing the hardware or OS requires junking everything you already have. And if the public APIs don't let you do what you need, and Apple can't or won't, it won't do what you need and thats that.
Android, or even Windows Mobile, I think would be better. A lot easier to switch to another device and minimize training costs, a lot easier and cheaper to get a device custom designed and built for specific military applications. These two are far more open- anyone with a properly trained engineering team and some money can make devices for these platforms. You need a specialized gadget integrated? You'll have a dozen companies salivating at defense budget dollars. You'll get it done, balancing capability and cost will be a meaningful choice and you can make it based on the needs and the budget, not because it's the best of limited options.
for that long, just about anything currently on the market should be fine.
Others are discussing hardware, I'll discuss the OS choice a bit.
A 64 bit OS might be worth considering, in the timespan you are dealing with they will probably become standard. He might be fine keeping the computer, but at some point he might need a software upgrade that requires it.
As much of a mac fan as I am, in 10-15 years, who the fuck knows what sort of processor they will be using. I'd be hesitant to recommend one for such a long service life due to their propensity to change processors more often than that. Scratch them off consideration entirely if they are even on your list.
Linux is a possibility, if all the software he needs(or equivalents) is available. This can work now.
Windows Vista... Some find good luck with it. If this needs to happen now and he needs or demands windows, research heavily the hardware and software that works well under Vista. Vista can be made to run well, but there are a lot of crap drivers and a lot of applications that really don't like the security features.
If you can delay the purchase, consider Windows 7. It's like Vista, only done right.
You could get any old thing and run XP, but looking that far into the future, you really should be looking at a 64 bit OS. Sure, any hardware you get now should run a 64 bit OS ok, but it would be best to plan from the start specifically for it.
C, C++, and Java, for all their differences, are related languages.
Learn something entirely different.
Assembler is good. You don't need to know enough to actually be able to use it on the job as a primary language, but you should learn enough to give yourself a practical understanding of how data is manipulated by the computer. Just because modern programming tools hide this stuff, doesn't mean it isn't useful to understand it.
As far as high level languages go, you already know a procedural language(C), an Object Oriented language(Java), and a hybrid Proc./OO language(C++). Learn a functional language next. You may not ever use it in the real world, but exposing yourself to a new way of looking at problems can only help.
And learn SQL. Download Postgre or MySQL or some other free RDBMS and play around with it. Even if you never use it specifically, it gets you thinking about how to organize data effectively to solve a given problem.
Ok, if the tax laws say they should get this refund, and they aren't getting it, they have a right to petition in court to force the issue.
And if the bailout law specifies exact amounts they are getting, well, they have a legal right to those amounts in addition to what the government already owes them.
As fucked up as it sounds, if the law says they are owed this money, thats what the law says, and they should get it. Congress should look at the situation though, and see about changing the law so that their next stimulus payments get reduced by, oh, 165 million plus whatever these bonuses were for(can't remember the exact amount).
I'm not a fan of how this bailout is proceeding in general. Ok, this is a big problem, and the failure of these companies risks a full blown economic depression. We can prevent that from happening by spending hundereds of billions of dollars to prop up these companies.
Ok, fine. If thats what it costs to prevent the second Great Depression, I'm fine with the government spending that much. Not happy about it, but its definitely the lesser of two evils IMO.
But it seems more like a nationalization plan than temporarily propping them up so they have time to fix the problems that lead to this situation. I don't like this.
At least this time they have a plausible mechanism to link video games and bad things happening to people. Most are like "gamers do bad things so games are bad" without further thought as to why that correlation exists or if it's even more significant a correlation than non-gamers doing bad things.
Granted, though, this effect really has nothing to do with video games. For video games to be worse than other sedentary activities you'd need to show a great deal more information.
Interestingly, this comes as more and more video games are requiring physical activity beyond agile fingers. So this problem, as it relates to video games, is being mitigated by some of the most popular video games on the market now. I'd be interested to see studies comparing the lifespans of gamers relative to other sedentary activities, though I'm not sure these active games have been out long enough to have a significant effect on the numbers.
Another thing to consider is the mental and social aspects of some games. Sure some games are just silly games you zone out and mash buttons, and those are fine, but many require some real strategy and quick thinking that can't simply be taken from a strategy guide or walkthrough. The rise of cooperative and competetive online play adds additional strategic thought practice and social engagement needed to be succesful. The potential risks of being more sedentary need to be weighed against the potential advantages of the more intelligent and social games before deciding games are overall bad.
Still, I'd call this better than most "video games are bad" articles. Not that improving on those would be all that much of a challenge.
Shutting down Erotic Services isn't going to help. Maybe it would have helped if they never had it in the first place, but at this point with so many people looking for that stuff thinking of Craigslist, they'd just move their ads to other sections. Which would simply increase the difficulty of enforcing any relevant laws, and would screw over the legal erotic businesses that sell their services there.
Even stricter regulation carries a risk of this. When Erotic Services ads started to require phone verification, hooker ads in the personals sections increased dramatically.
I'm not saying that there isn't more that Craigslist can do. There might be. But simply shutting down Erotic Services, or simply regulating it more strictly, is probably not the answer. Screws over legitimate businesses and doesn't even help the people you are trying to help and makes enforcing the law harder. If there is a solution to this, we'll need a more creative mind than someone who simply comes up with "shut down that section".
Ok, with open source it should be a lot easier for bad guys to identify and even insert security holes.
However, security holes are a severe problem mainly when we don't know about them. Once we know about them, workarounds and fixes can be devised. And, in the case of open source, it is much easier to find and fix security holes.
The holes are found by the community or the maintainer and generally the existence is made public pretty much immediately whether it's a small or large hole. Closed source you might wait months before you hear of it and still longer for a fix. Open source you know RIGHT NOW, and if it's a popular piece of software a fix is probably in the works within minutes of hitting the bugtracker.
Now an argument could be made that this doesn't work well for smaller, less popular projects. Maintainers might have dissapeared, and there might not be enough people who know the code to produce a prompt fix from the community. Ok, fine, I won't argue against this. However, closed source apps put out by companies in similar situations will suffer the same problem. No company is behind it that has the resources to fix problems. With open source, you can at least hire someone to fix your unmaintained app. Sure it might be expensive, but at least you have the option, with closed source, you're just screwed if it's mission critical.
Do not forget to include the power source specifications.
While I don't see it as terribly likely for standard wall outlets to change in 50 years, it is possible that a new technology will emerge that prompts the standard to change. It could be a different frequency, different voltage, different physical pin arrangement... All must be specified so that adapters can be constructed in the event of a standard change.
Are these old documents they've just now gotten around to reviewing, or are these bugs largely in new material?
If the latter, how does the bug per page ratio stack up with the past?
Depending on the answers to these questions, the quality of the documentation may actually be improving. It may be going down as the summary and article seem to imply, but we can't really say either with any confidence given the information provided.
That said, I think this suggests a need for the government to set up some sort of official email system for transition officials. @transition.whitehouse.gov maybe, and set up autoforwarding on the 20th.
Oh, I should point out another thing that is relevant. Video games influence crime. that much is proven. Assume they figure out the bit I discussed above, there is still another important question.
In what manner do video games cause someone to criminally behave in a certain manner? Does it alter their personality directly? Does it trigger underlying mental problems? Were they simply the victim of horrible parenting?
It's not as simple an issue as either sides hardcore defenders seem to think.
Ok, there are crimes that occur from time to time that are apparently patterned after something that happened in a game. This is pretty solid- it only takes a single verified instance for this to be proven, and it's happened.
So we know that video games can influence crime. The question becomes "In what ways do video games influence crime?"
Are these crimes that would have happened anyways, and the game just influenced how they were commited?
Or do the games inspire commision of the crimes in the first place, crimes that simply wouldn't have happened without the influence of the game?
From what I've seen of various studies I've looked into, none of them seemed capable of distinguishing between these two very different conclusions.
It gets more complex. Say someone plays GTA and decides to kill a prostitute because it was fun in the game, must be fun for real. This seems to fit the latter category, but does it really? Sure, the thought process that lead to the crime started in the game. But it's possible that in the absence of the game, something else would have set him off and he still would have killed someone. In tis case, it would fall under the first category.
Better studies are needed, to distinguish between the crime itself being inspired by the game, and the form of the crime being inspired by the game. It isn't always the simplest distinction to make, but making it will help to determine the best way to deal with the issue.
Cablevision offers Optimum Online Boost, a 30/5 service. Being cable I don't always see the full speed, but I see it often enough that it's worth the expense over their basic 15/5. They also have an Ultra service, 50/50, but I think that exists mainly as a test project though a few customers have it.
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The GPL has no provisions relating to the price of the compiled binaries. You can set these to whatever you want for whatever reason you want.
I can't recall offhand if you can charge anything for source code, if you can, charging more than distribution even if permitted would definitely be iffy from an ethical perspective IMO.
There is no universal ethical tradition regarding selling GPL code, provided you fullfill the terms of the license and don't exploit any loopholes you find to restrict source availability- any such loopholes you find should be reported to the FSF and the copyright holder(if different) so they can be plugged, you should not take any advantage of them.
So it's really up to you. Just remember that while you have a right to expect credit, if someone takes your port, compiles it, and starts distributing it for free, you cannot do anything to stop them. The most you might be able to do is demand credit for your part of the code.
If the entire project team asks you to stop charging, I'd consider it, but it's really not their call to make. I personally think you should be nice and consider their request, but keep it firmly in mind that it is a request only, it has no legal force, and only as much moral force as you choose to give it.
Perl's strength for a new programmer is in the wide variety of programming techniques it directly supports.
It is not, however, all that accessible beyond the most basic stuff. It has historically been designed such that every time a conflict between ease for the experienced programmer, and ease for the learner, exists, the experienced programmer won out. Always.
This is apparently changing somewhat for Perl 6, I haven't read much about it but apparently Wall and the other leading Perl people do want to make things easier for people learning it. But without a break from the past so substantial that the new language is "Perl In Name Only", there really isn't a huge amount of progress they can make on that front.
Perl's flexibility, especially for tasks bigger than a shell script but smaller than an application, makes it very good to know. Especially if your programming is primarily to support sysadmin or other duties rather than being the job itself. But it really isn't suitable as a first language. I'd probably even recommend C over Perl, integrating with the OS and various APIs needed to do real work is often easier that way.
Python or Ruby are probably the best bets. Easy, flexible, and powerful enough for real world tasks. On Windows, C# or VB.NET(do not go to 6 or earlier, it was really a mess then) aren't too bad if the learner focuses on structure rather than the language. Objective C via XCode can serve a similar role on OS X.
Because the jobs call for a degree.
I've seen entry level hell desk jobs call for a 4 year compsci degree. Not even a supervisor or lead position. Grunt tech on the phones.
A good argument can be made that most of the tech jobs, perhaps even most programming jobs, shouldn't require a degree, or at least not a 4 year degree. But the fact of the matter is they do. You don't get the degree, you can't get the job no matter how qualified you actually are.
Some places will budge a bit from the formal job requirements(but you have to be that much better in other ways), and there are some that are smart enough to not even officially require it when they don't actually need it, but many will just toss your resume in the reject bin without a thought.
Basic procedure for building important databases and data processing apps, is to fill it with test data. Some realistic, some not realistic, and some that should be impossible. See what happens before the system goes live.
I'm not seeing anything in this report that conclusively rules out the possibility this is test data. Though, I suppose something might have gotten lost in translation.
The modern general purpose computer, even Macs, are very open products compared to typical consumer goods.
A CD player is a CD player. It has to work properly with itself, and CDs. Even componentized systems have a very limited environment within which they have to work. Precisely defined interfaces in and out, and they are limited in number.
A general purpose computer program though, is another beast entirely. There are thousands, if not millions, of other programs that they may have to coexist with. Most only need to worry about one OS, though with Java getting more popular for general applications, there might be several OSes to consider. And hardware... Even with Macs, there are several different models with different hardware configurations, and wierd stuff occasionally happens between them.
And then you get into end user use patterns and configurations. It's really a miracle that software is as reliable as it is, it really shows how good the compiler/linker/OS people are, even on Windows, given that it all mostly works in the real world.
A liability law is a nice idea, but this stuff would ahve to be taken into account.
The timeline with Kirk taking command..
Bad Stuff happens. Billions of lives are at stake, and the Federation needs to respond immediately.
Enterprise, Farragut, several other ships end up crewed nearly entirely by cadets because no other ships are available, and they don't have experienced officers on hand to crew them. Eventually, Pike has to leave Enterprise(if he hadn't, we're talking Game Over for the Federation, so the departure from protocol is justified by the extremity of the situation), and names Spock as acting Captain and Kirk as acting First Officer.
Eventually Spock has to relinquish command. Watch to find out details. McCoy says somethign about they have noone who can be captain, which suggests that there were no fully commisioned officers available. Either none on board in the first place apart from Pike and Spock, or those they did have had gotten killed in previous scenes(their original CMO had died at least)
"I don't understand how this works. If this was the case, what incentive would the professor have to require four of his books and never use them in the course?"
Spanish department at my school requires the textbook and a workbook. Recommends an audio CD set that costs close to 70USD.
Not only will the school library copy the CDs for you if you provide blanks, but all of the material from the CD set is available at the publishers website for free. Don't even need to register or provide a code from the book!
So why do they bother recommending this CD set?
iPhone uses a capacitive touchscreen. In short, this means it depends on the electrical charge of the users body to track touch.
Styli and gloves are pretty much guaranteed to block this charge, though I suppose conductive ones could be made to work if the resistance is low enough.
Windows Mobile devices, and at least all the palms I've seen, use different technology that is based in pressure rather than charge. Fingers work, but in my experience they just don't have the precision to work well with this sort of touchscreen, at least on a smartphone scale.
I should have been clearer, I was referring to retraining costs when they need to replace the hardware, in the event that Apple no longer has a suitable product available.
Initial training, iPhone probably has a small advantage, but these things will have to be replaced eventually. If Apple no longer makes suitable hardware, they'd have to switch platforms and incur the resultant retraining costs.
That clause says nothing about using the products to support the use of such weapons.
I like the idea. Smartphones have enough computing power and sufficient battery life to perform militarily useful functions, with a minimum of added weight to the soldiers gear.
I'm not sure about the platform choice though. One company controls the hardware and software. There are no alternatives in either category that allow you to benefit from prior investments- replacing the hardware or OS requires junking everything you already have. And if the public APIs don't let you do what you need, and Apple can't or won't, it won't do what you need and thats that.
Android, or even Windows Mobile, I think would be better. A lot easier to switch to another device and minimize training costs, a lot easier and cheaper to get a device custom designed and built for specific military applications. These two are far more open- anyone with a properly trained engineering team and some money can make devices for these platforms. You need a specialized gadget integrated? You'll have a dozen companies salivating at defense budget dollars. You'll get it done, balancing capability and cost will be a meaningful choice and you can make it based on the needs and the budget, not because it's the best of limited options.
Maybe not.
But if we added up all the ideas we are tempted to dismiss due to apparently trivial benefits, we'd probably see a worthwhile dent in overall usage.
for that long, just about anything currently on the market should be fine.
Others are discussing hardware, I'll discuss the OS choice a bit.
A 64 bit OS might be worth considering, in the timespan you are dealing with they will probably become standard. He might be fine keeping the computer, but at some point he might need a software upgrade that requires it.
As much of a mac fan as I am, in 10-15 years, who the fuck knows what sort of processor they will be using. I'd be hesitant to recommend one for such a long service life due to their propensity to change processors more often than that. Scratch them off consideration entirely if they are even on your list.
Linux is a possibility, if all the software he needs(or equivalents) is available. This can work now.
Windows Vista... Some find good luck with it. If this needs to happen now and he needs or demands windows, research heavily the hardware and software that works well under Vista. Vista can be made to run well, but there are a lot of crap drivers and a lot of applications that really don't like the security features.
If you can delay the purchase, consider Windows 7. It's like Vista, only done right.
You could get any old thing and run XP, but looking that far into the future, you really should be looking at a 64 bit OS. Sure, any hardware you get now should run a 64 bit OS ok, but it would be best to plan from the start specifically for it.
C, C++, and Java, for all their differences, are related languages.
Learn something entirely different.
Assembler is good. You don't need to know enough to actually be able to use it on the job as a primary language, but you should learn enough to give yourself a practical understanding of how data is manipulated by the computer. Just because modern programming tools hide this stuff, doesn't mean it isn't useful to understand it.
As far as high level languages go, you already know a procedural language(C), an Object Oriented language(Java), and a hybrid Proc./OO language(C++). Learn a functional language next. You may not ever use it in the real world, but exposing yourself to a new way of looking at problems can only help.
And learn SQL. Download Postgre or MySQL or some other free RDBMS and play around with it. Even if you never use it specifically, it gets you thinking about how to organize data effectively to solve a given problem.
Ok, if the tax laws say they should get this refund, and they aren't getting it, they have a right to petition in court to force the issue.
And if the bailout law specifies exact amounts they are getting, well, they have a legal right to those amounts in addition to what the government already owes them.
As fucked up as it sounds, if the law says they are owed this money, thats what the law says, and they should get it. Congress should look at the situation though, and see about changing the law so that their next stimulus payments get reduced by, oh, 165 million plus whatever these bonuses were for(can't remember the exact amount).
I'm not a fan of how this bailout is proceeding in general. Ok, this is a big problem, and the failure of these companies risks a full blown economic depression. We can prevent that from happening by spending hundereds of billions of dollars to prop up these companies.
Ok, fine. If thats what it costs to prevent the second Great Depression, I'm fine with the government spending that much. Not happy about it, but its definitely the lesser of two evils IMO.
But it seems more like a nationalization plan than temporarily propping them up so they have time to fix the problems that lead to this situation. I don't like this.
At least this time they have a plausible mechanism to link video games and bad things happening to people. Most are like "gamers do bad things so games are bad" without further thought as to why that correlation exists or if it's even more significant a correlation than non-gamers doing bad things.
Granted, though, this effect really has nothing to do with video games. For video games to be worse than other sedentary activities you'd need to show a great deal more information.
Interestingly, this comes as more and more video games are requiring physical activity beyond agile fingers. So this problem, as it relates to video games, is being mitigated by some of the most popular video games on the market now. I'd be interested to see studies comparing the lifespans of gamers relative to other sedentary activities, though I'm not sure these active games have been out long enough to have a significant effect on the numbers.
Another thing to consider is the mental and social aspects of some games. Sure some games are just silly games you zone out and mash buttons, and those are fine, but many require some real strategy and quick thinking that can't simply be taken from a strategy guide or walkthrough. The rise of cooperative and competetive online play adds additional strategic thought practice and social engagement needed to be succesful. The potential risks of being more sedentary need to be weighed against the potential advantages of the more intelligent and social games before deciding games are overall bad.
Still, I'd call this better than most "video games are bad" articles. Not that improving on those would be all that much of a challenge.
Shutting down Erotic Services isn't going to help. Maybe it would have helped if they never had it in the first place, but at this point with so many people looking for that stuff thinking of Craigslist, they'd just move their ads to other sections. Which would simply increase the difficulty of enforcing any relevant laws, and would screw over the legal erotic businesses that sell their services there.
Even stricter regulation carries a risk of this. When Erotic Services ads started to require phone verification, hooker ads in the personals sections increased dramatically.
I'm not saying that there isn't more that Craigslist can do. There might be. But simply shutting down Erotic Services, or simply regulating it more strictly, is probably not the answer. Screws over legitimate businesses and doesn't even help the people you are trying to help and makes enforcing the law harder. If there is a solution to this, we'll need a more creative mind than someone who simply comes up with "shut down that section".
Ok, with open source it should be a lot easier for bad guys to identify and even insert security holes.
However, security holes are a severe problem mainly when we don't know about them. Once we know about them, workarounds and fixes can be devised. And, in the case of open source, it is much easier to find and fix security holes.
The holes are found by the community or the maintainer and generally the existence is made public pretty much immediately whether it's a small or large hole. Closed source you might wait months before you hear of it and still longer for a fix. Open source you know RIGHT NOW, and if it's a popular piece of software a fix is probably in the works within minutes of hitting the bugtracker.
Now an argument could be made that this doesn't work well for smaller, less popular projects. Maintainers might have dissapeared, and there might not be enough people who know the code to produce a prompt fix from the community. Ok, fine, I won't argue against this. However, closed source apps put out by companies in similar situations will suffer the same problem. No company is behind it that has the resources to fix problems. With open source, you can at least hire someone to fix your unmaintained app. Sure it might be expensive, but at least you have the option, with closed source, you're just screwed if it's mission critical.
Windows 7 Beta 1 is better known as Vista.
Beta 2 is Vista SP2
RC1 is officially called Beta 1
RC2 is officially called RC1.
Windows 7, basically, looks like Vista done right.
Do not forget to include the power source specifications.
While I don't see it as terribly likely for standard wall outlets to change in 50 years, it is possible that a new technology will emerge that prompts the standard to change. It could be a different frequency, different voltage, different physical pin arrangement... All must be specified so that adapters can be constructed in the event of a standard change.
Are these old documents they've just now gotten around to reviewing, or are these bugs largely in new material?
If the latter, how does the bug per page ratio stack up with the past?
Depending on the answers to these questions, the quality of the documentation may actually be improving. It may be going down as the summary and article seem to imply, but we can't really say either with any confidence given the information provided.
Palin already had an official government account.
That said, I think this suggests a need for the government to set up some sort of official email system for transition officials. @transition.whitehouse.gov maybe, and set up autoforwarding on the 20th.
Oh, I should point out another thing that is relevant. Video games influence crime. that much is proven. Assume they figure out the bit I discussed above, there is still another important question.
In what manner do video games cause someone to criminally behave in a certain manner? Does it alter their personality directly? Does it trigger underlying mental problems? Were they simply the victim of horrible parenting?
It's not as simple an issue as either sides hardcore defenders seem to think.
Ok, there are crimes that occur from time to time that are apparently patterned after something that happened in a game. This is pretty solid- it only takes a single verified instance for this to be proven, and it's happened.
So we know that video games can influence crime. The question becomes "In what ways do video games influence crime?"
Are these crimes that would have happened anyways, and the game just influenced how they were commited?
Or do the games inspire commision of the crimes in the first place, crimes that simply wouldn't have happened without the influence of the game?
From what I've seen of various studies I've looked into, none of them seemed capable of distinguishing between these two very different conclusions.
It gets more complex. Say someone plays GTA and decides to kill a prostitute because it was fun in the game, must be fun for real. This seems to fit the latter category, but does it really? Sure, the thought process that lead to the crime started in the game. But it's possible that in the absence of the game, something else would have set him off and he still would have killed someone. In tis case, it would fall under the first category.
Better studies are needed, to distinguish between the crime itself being inspired by the game, and the form of the crime being inspired by the game. It isn't always the simplest distinction to make, but making it will help to determine the best way to deal with the issue.
Cablevision offers Optimum Online Boost, a 30/5 service. Being cable I don't always see the full speed, but I see it often enough that it's worth the expense over their basic 15/5. They also have an Ultra service, 50/50, but I think that exists mainly as a test project though a few customers have it.