Freedom is not subjective. It can be scientifically measured and is therefore objective. But the reasons for freedom are subjective. The most freedom that can be had is complete anarchy, since then you can do whatever you want at any time. However, there are other issues that make anarchy less than desirable for most people. You propose we take away the freedom for people to take away freedom, thereby ensuring future freedom remains at the maximum. The problem with that idea is that people don't love freedom for freedoms sake, but for what freedom provides. If something other than freedom provides something I want even more (ie going to jail to make sure that my wife and kids are in a better position), that's a viable trade off.
I haven't been in the industry for that long, but I can tell you that I'd be bored out of my mind with any job. I took a programming job not because it was the most fulfilling, or because it was the most fun, but because it was the most lucrative. No matter what job I took, I'd end up bored and hating it, so I've kept my hobbies personal and made sure that the job I have is one that will ensure my own and my family's comfort.
Of course, I'm looking from the perspective of just starting on my career path, whereas many of you are looking from the middle or end of it, so I have no idea if this concept will remain true.
As a library worker, it's his job to make sure that the computers run the best they can for the least amount of money. If he's more capable with the free software than he is with the proprietary stuff, then he's not so much an "evangelist" as a good employee.
Considering their more aggressive stance against AMD right now, I'd say it's more likely that they're going to try to compete in the graphics arena. AMD now has the ability to bring strong integrated graphics to the table which could result in a net gain in spite of the loss in performance they've suffered recently. The more I think about it, the more I realize that buying ATI put AMD in a very good position (other than that whole "no money to spend on anything" problem).
And everyone with a brain will point out that more americans have died in american shuttle mishaps than have died in russian shuttle mishaps. Space is inherently dangerous, everyone knows it, and the public outcry against the shuttle disasters up to this point hasn't been that severe; I doubt it'll be too severe when an American dies on a foreign craft.
he points out that there really is little chance of it being used in the real world, that is an understatement I believe it was George Guninski who saw the possible exploit in buffer overflows several decades ago and said something along the lines of "this is possible, but the difficulty in crafting the message makes this seems unlikely". If there's the possibility of an attack vector, then someone will use it. Computers are fast enough to try hundreds of attacks per second; "unlikely" often means "only works 1/1000 times, therefore used every day".
You aren't making much sense. First, Microsoft will support XP through 2014, so there's nothing to worry about there. Second, I don't continue to pay a dime for my OS, so I'm not sure what you're referring to there. I use regularly two computer with Ubuntu and two with Vista because Windows supports things that Linux can't. When I want to play Galactic Civilizations 2 or Medieval: Total War, I want it to work. With Wine, the new lines are all wrong and it'll randomly crash for no reason.
Also, Windows just works. Most people are familiar with windows, and there are far more people who know windows and get confused by linux than vice versa. My wife won't do anything more than start firefox on my ubuntu desktop, but she can troubleshoot problem in windows just fine. Never underestimate familiarity and the large difference in preference for small difference in ability.
it finally becomes untenable and something major changes, I find that doubtful, because tests are the first step to fixing the problem. If we can specifically identify genes that cause a certain disease, then within a generation or two we'll have a fix, at least one that can be applied to a bundle of undifferentiated cells. When it can be fixed in utero and the only people that can be born with the disposition are those whose parents chose it, the arguments against discrimination will lose a lot of their power.
The other reason I find it doubtful that it will build up that strongly is that insurance inherently doesn't make sense from the perspective of saving money. People don't buy insurance because they expect to pay less, they buy insurance so that they don't become bankrupted on a one in a million chance. Since genetic markers only show a predisposition, these "highly testable" conditions can still affect someone without these markers. So it may be 75% less likely that my son will have leukemia, I'm still going to want him insured against it.
If you take any two insurance companies, company one is given the advantage of genetic testing with the ability to discern some general risk factors from it, and company two doesn't have the advantage of the testing. The first will be able to offer lower rates to those with lower risk and higher rates to those with higher risk. If my family's pre-disposed to skin cancer, the insurance company will raise my premium. Now, for lower rates, everyone checks with company one for insurance before trying company two. If they don't get a good rate, then they have to go to company two, who makes their proposal based on less data. Pretty soon company two's rates are going up because they have everyone who dies of heart attacks at 40 while taking 15 prescription medications while company one has every one of their patients live through their 90s without taking more than 2 prescription medications.
The first thing I thought of when I read the summary was 'lazy coders' when garbage collection was cited as a driving factor While I somewhat agree with you, there are two things that I think you're overlooking. First, there are going to be bad programmers no matter what you do. Someone can sound good in an interview and turn out to be awful. Until everyone realizes that and comes to the decision that the programmer in question should be fired, they're introducing code to the system. Or, even worse, they're not bad enough to fire, but bad enough that it could be a problem. These people will always be there, so you have to try and work around them.
Second, everyone makes mistakes. I don't care who you are, if you write 1 million lines of code, there's going to be a bug in there somewhere. Given enough bugs, there's going to be one you don't catch. Garbage collection takes away a class of bug and makes it so that even the very good programmers can write more stable code.
There's a lot to be said for programmers getting taught better and applying those principles better, but in the end, taking away a class of bugs is going to be useful in the long run. Even with garbage collection it's possible to run into memory management problems, but it's a lot harder.
its far from dead when your are needing to squeeze every last ounce of power out of your hardware, or even that other 25-30% of it. While this is true, it's also something that doesn't come up that often really. Garbage collection and other automated features for languages can eliminate the vast majority of bugs in software. If you don't have to worry about buffer overflows and memory leaks, your code will be more secure, more stable and cost less to maintain. Being resource hungry is a tradeoff that most companies would make and many consumers as well.
Besides, C and C++ will live on forever in most of the languages that have come since and as the foundation for those languages. Sure, PHP is popular, but the engine's C, same with perl and the other scripting languages.
The lesson here is: If you're going to try to court people active in OSS development, then you're going to have to be nice to them, and you're going to have to let them take some ownership. And not doing that is being a dick. Sun's open license isn't compatible with the most popular OSS license in the world. They don't have good follow through on opening things up and they generally just aren't that good to work with if you're trying to be, well, open. OpenOffice.org is one big exception to this, but the closing of part of mysql's source is just as big an indicator that they're not committed to being open.
From the small amount I've dealt with them, it seems like they're trying to gather an open source community without being truly open themselves, ie keeping some things proprietary so they can keep earning money from them. They're trying to have their cake and eat it, too.
As long as the burden of proof to show harm to consumers isn't too high, this should be relatively simple. Explain to a judge how the PC market grew and evolved into one where all parts are interchangeable and show the benefit that's had to the consumer. Then show how the actions that rambus took fragmented the market artificially, resulted in artificially high prices from rambus and set back the ram industry overall.
The ooxml case is a little harder, especially since it's so early in the game that you can't see all the blowback yet, but considering the fact that even MS Office isn't compliant with the standard, it should be fairly simple to show that it's hurt the standards industry as a whole.
The biggest downside is that this ruling encourages lying and backstabbing between competitors trying to work together to build good standards.
Interesting point: apple updates their products so fast and brings out new products so fast that a lot of people wait to buy something. When I was considering getting an iphone, everyone that already had one was advising that I wait another 6 months to get one since they're bound to come out with something better.
Overall I think it works for them just fine, since they time things well and their products are always a good value. But part of me wonders if they wouldn't make more money if they would just wait a little longer before bringing out new generations/products.
Seriously, this is no moral question. "Poisoning" Storm is nothing but a good idea. Unless there's a problem with the command you send out and it completely wipes the end users hard drive and all their personal data or does something else destructive to the infected user. Just because their computer's being ordered around without their permission doesn't mean that it's right for you to start ordering it around without their permission too. Then there's the issue of liability if something goes wrong, etc.
It would be far better to monitor the botnet, find the computers involved and then help them clean their computer and prevent another infection. It's not as simple or efficient in the short term, but it's more moral and more effective in the long run.
Agreed. The GPL and their programmers are a lot like a group of construction workers who build buildings for free, with the stipulation that the people who end up owning the building can't charge for other people to use it. Also, although some people get paid to do this, most do it in their free time while getting paid to work another, "real" job.
Great, another Unfunded Mandate, but instead of bankrupting your friendly state or local governments with no funding to pay for the requirement, they are going to start hitting the citizenry directly. Whereas with a Funded Mandate they would just hit the citizenry indirectly through the taxes, thereby adding another few layers of bureaucracy that would require paying for. Much more efficient.
As long as Congress clearly specifies what needs to be stored, and as long as what's being stored isn't ridiculous, then I have no problem with this. Storing which IP addresses are assigned isn't that big of a deal. My IP address changed maybe once a month, for dialup maybe even 3x per day. Worst case scenario, less than 1 megabyte / month / customer. That's less than 30 gigabytes of storage per customer to keep two years worth of records; somehow, I think the ISPs will be able to afford it. Much more than that, however, and it gets ridiculous.
That would be a seriously foolish move for Apple partly because they make so much money off of hardware, but also because one of their main design philosophies is designing the whole "widget" I think you've hit the nail on the head here. By owning their own company, and one that has a reputation for being the most efficient, they have the opportunity to start creating devices completely on their own terms. They're moving closer to completely building ipods and other small devices themselves. If they just made all the chips for their portable devices I'm sure this acquisition will be profitable in the end, even if it's just because they can make chips specifically for their own needs.
But this also gives them a nice intermediate step for making their own desktop/laptop chips. They manufacture their own CPUs for the ipod, they could start making their own CPUs for the desktop with some work. Whether they want to do this or not, it takes them one giant step closer while being profitable if they never do. At the very least it gives them a more powerful bargaining position against Intel, because now Apple really doesn't need them. They can switch to AMD in the short term, get their own chip manufacturing capacity and design up to speed, then dump AMD.
All things considered, I'm surprised they haven't made this move earlier. Makes me wonder if this means they're going to be announcing a new product line soon.
I think that you're confused and assuming that this gasoline will add carbon to the atmosphere. In reality, the carbon that's being added to the atmosphere is carbon that was taken out to make the gasoline in the first place. The reason oil's such a problem is that the carbon was sequestered in the earth's crust and not being released until we got to it. In this case the carbon would have almost certainly made it back into the atmosphere, which means it's effectively carbon neutral (although there might be some electricity costs that would add more carbon to the air).
That brings an interesting thought to mind, though. I know that we can't sequester carbon very well in a gaseous form, and that other forms are expensive to produce, but what if we were to grow plants, cut them down, and stick them underground in some salt mines or something?
Search and seizure's been allowed at border crossings for a long, long time. Hell, I even had to declare any fruits or vegatables at the california border the other day. The only thing that's new about this is it happened on a laptop.
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I haven't been in the industry for that long, but I can tell you that I'd be bored out of my mind with any job. I took a programming job not because it was the most fulfilling, or because it was the most fun, but because it was the most lucrative. No matter what job I took, I'd end up bored and hating it, so I've kept my hobbies personal and made sure that the job I have is one that will ensure my own and my family's comfort.
Of course, I'm looking from the perspective of just starting on my career path, whereas many of you are looking from the middle or end of it, so I have no idea if this concept will remain true.
People should only be allowed freedom as long as it's the right freedom. Get with the movement, man!
As a library worker, it's his job to make sure that the computers run the best they can for the least amount of money. If he's more capable with the free software than he is with the proprietary stuff, then he's not so much an "evangelist" as a good employee.
Considering their more aggressive stance against AMD right now, I'd say it's more likely that they're going to try to compete in the graphics arena. AMD now has the ability to bring strong integrated graphics to the table which could result in a net gain in spite of the loss in performance they've suffered recently. The more I think about it, the more I realize that buying ATI put AMD in a very good position (other than that whole "no money to spend on anything" problem).
And everyone with a brain will point out that more americans have died in american shuttle mishaps than have died in russian shuttle mishaps. Space is inherently dangerous, everyone knows it, and the public outcry against the shuttle disasters up to this point hasn't been that severe; I doubt it'll be too severe when an American dies on a foreign craft.
You aren't making much sense. First, Microsoft will support XP through 2014, so there's nothing to worry about there. Second, I don't continue to pay a dime for my OS, so I'm not sure what you're referring to there. I use regularly two computer with Ubuntu and two with Vista because Windows supports things that Linux can't. When I want to play Galactic Civilizations 2 or Medieval: Total War, I want it to work. With Wine, the new lines are all wrong and it'll randomly crash for no reason.
Also, Windows just works. Most people are familiar with windows, and there are far more people who know windows and get confused by linux than vice versa. My wife won't do anything more than start firefox on my ubuntu desktop, but she can troubleshoot problem in windows just fine. Never underestimate familiarity and the large difference in preference for small difference in ability.
Oh, yeah, me neither. *wink*
The other reason I find it doubtful that it will build up that strongly is that insurance inherently doesn't make sense from the perspective of saving money. People don't buy insurance because they expect to pay less, they buy insurance so that they don't become bankrupted on a one in a million chance. Since genetic markers only show a predisposition, these "highly testable" conditions can still affect someone without these markers. So it may be 75% less likely that my son will have leukemia, I'm still going to want him insured against it.
If you take any two insurance companies, company one is given the advantage of genetic testing with the ability to discern some general risk factors from it, and company two doesn't have the advantage of the testing. The first will be able to offer lower rates to those with lower risk and higher rates to those with higher risk. If my family's pre-disposed to skin cancer, the insurance company will raise my premium. Now, for lower rates, everyone checks with company one for insurance before trying company two. If they don't get a good rate, then they have to go to company two, who makes their proposal based on less data. Pretty soon company two's rates are going up because they have everyone who dies of heart attacks at 40 while taking 15 prescription medications while company one has every one of their patients live through their 90s without taking more than 2 prescription medications.
Second, everyone makes mistakes. I don't care who you are, if you write 1 million lines of code, there's going to be a bug in there somewhere. Given enough bugs, there's going to be one you don't catch. Garbage collection takes away a class of bug and makes it so that even the very good programmers can write more stable code.
There's a lot to be said for programmers getting taught better and applying those principles better, but in the end, taking away a class of bugs is going to be useful in the long run. Even with garbage collection it's possible to run into memory management problems, but it's a lot harder.
Besides, C and C++ will live on forever in most of the languages that have come since and as the foundation for those languages. Sure, PHP is popular, but the engine's C, same with perl and the other scripting languages.
From the small amount I've dealt with them, it seems like they're trying to gather an open source community without being truly open themselves, ie keeping some things proprietary so they can keep earning money from them. They're trying to have their cake and eat it, too.
As long as the burden of proof to show harm to consumers isn't too high, this should be relatively simple. Explain to a judge how the PC market grew and evolved into one where all parts are interchangeable and show the benefit that's had to the consumer. Then show how the actions that rambus took fragmented the market artificially, resulted in artificially high prices from rambus and set back the ram industry overall.
The ooxml case is a little harder, especially since it's so early in the game that you can't see all the blowback yet, but considering the fact that even MS Office isn't compliant with the standard, it should be fairly simple to show that it's hurt the standards industry as a whole.
The biggest downside is that this ruling encourages lying and backstabbing between competitors trying to work together to build good standards.
Interesting point: apple updates their products so fast and brings out new products so fast that a lot of people wait to buy something. When I was considering getting an iphone, everyone that already had one was advising that I wait another 6 months to get one since they're bound to come out with something better.
Overall I think it works for them just fine, since they time things well and their products are always a good value. But part of me wonders if they wouldn't make more money if they would just wait a little longer before bringing out new generations/products.
It would be far better to monitor the botnet, find the computers involved and then help them clean their computer and prevent another infection. It's not as simple or efficient in the short term, but it's more moral and more effective in the long run.
Agreed. The GPL and their programmers are a lot like a group of construction workers who build buildings for free, with the stipulation that the people who end up owning the building can't charge for other people to use it. Also, although some people get paid to do this, most do it in their free time while getting paid to work another, "real" job.
As long as Congress clearly specifies what needs to be stored, and as long as what's being stored isn't ridiculous, then I have no problem with this. Storing which IP addresses are assigned isn't that big of a deal. My IP address changed maybe once a month, for dialup maybe even 3x per day. Worst case scenario, less than 1 megabyte / month / customer. That's less than 30 gigabytes of storage per customer to keep two years worth of records; somehow, I think the ISPs will be able to afford it. Much more than that, however, and it gets ridiculous.
CowboyNealslist is awful, every entry's a joke.
But this also gives them a nice intermediate step for making their own desktop/laptop chips. They manufacture their own CPUs for the ipod, they could start making their own CPUs for the desktop with some work. Whether they want to do this or not, it takes them one giant step closer while being profitable if they never do. At the very least it gives them a more powerful bargaining position against Intel, because now Apple really doesn't need them. They can switch to AMD in the short term, get their own chip manufacturing capacity and design up to speed, then dump AMD.
All things considered, I'm surprised they haven't made this move earlier. Makes me wonder if this means they're going to be announcing a new product line soon.
I think that you're confused and assuming that this gasoline will add carbon to the atmosphere. In reality, the carbon that's being added to the atmosphere is carbon that was taken out to make the gasoline in the first place. The reason oil's such a problem is that the carbon was sequestered in the earth's crust and not being released until we got to it. In this case the carbon would have almost certainly made it back into the atmosphere, which means it's effectively carbon neutral (although there might be some electricity costs that would add more carbon to the air).
That brings an interesting thought to mind, though. I know that we can't sequester carbon very well in a gaseous form, and that other forms are expensive to produce, but what if we were to grow plants, cut them down, and stick them underground in some salt mines or something?
Search and seizure's been allowed at border crossings for a long, long time. Hell, I even had to declare any fruits or vegatables at the california border the other day. The only thing that's new about this is it happened on a laptop.