That's the claim, but it's bunk. A contract is supposed to represent a meeting of minds, an agreement between two entities. If one of those minds can't even understand it, there is no meeting of minds. A sane court system would void any such thing on sight. Especially the ones so bad even lawyers are befuddled when reading them.
As for ambiguity, I have NEVER heard a lawyer state anything in absolute terms when it comes to contracts. It's always probably this and most likely that.
One of my favorites was a diesel generator with a small local tank and a larger tank installed well behind the building. Never a problem during the monthly tests where they actually failed over to the generator.
Actual power failure happens, generator picks up the load just fine. An hour later, the generator shuts down. Turns out the transfer pump that fed the small local tank from the large tank was connected to grid power only.
OTOH, municipal broadband has consistently kicked private offering's asses in spite of having to fight lawsuits and captured state legislatures just to exist.
Public transit works OK for the level of funding it sees. In many cases, semi-privatization is what ails it. Care to point to a fully private service that doesn't suck or cost too much for most people using public transit?
Nah, they'll just build out municipal broadband that's ten times as fast for half the price.
That's when those same carriers that won't touch the state with a ten foot pole will run crying to Uncle Sam and moan about unfair competition (in a market they refuse to enter).
I WISH ISPs were like restaurants. Because then there would be dozens to choose from AND I would have the option to roll my own at home too.
To make your analogy work, there would have to be no more than one or two restaurants available, no grocery stores, and hunting, fishing, and growing a vegetable garden all illegal.
Meanwhile, THE restaurant (or BOTH) offer reasonably priced food, but then there's the table fee, the utensil fee (charged by the bite) the air fee, the door fee, of course a fee for walking on the floor, etc.
Finally, there's a surcharge if they don't like what you do with the energy you gain from eating food.
I am still amazed that many people are fixated on minimizing rocket fuel cost.
The rest was just an odd speculation about a "solution" that nobody is considering. Air breathing first stages have NEVER included an oxygen liquification mechanism. They operate more akin to a jet. Or, in cases like Space Ship One, the first stage IS a jet. The cost of fuel/oxidizer had nothing to do with that decision.
Even with domestication and breeding efforts, we have never had full control over breeding of dogs. Sometimes the dogs make the decision. But note that for a few traits that a breeder is well in control of, there have been lawsuits similar to manufacturing defect cases.
Yes, some forms of AI do produce results that aren't fully understood, but those results can be tested exhaustively and exactly reproduced. Process control software can have race conditions where it will occasionally behave in a manner not intended. If that unintended behavior injures someone, the manufacturer is liable.
Consider, a particular model of circular saw occasionally turns itself on. Guess who's getting sued...
Of course, in the case of the processors being dropped, you just about have to be a developer yourself to have any interest in continued Linux support. It's not like you could ever just put a DVD in a drive and install Linux on anything that has one of those processors.
So if there is anyone out there who wishes support would continue, they weren't interested enough to actually do anything about it.
The difference is, a dog is "designed" by evolution and each starts out in a similar but unique state. Even if we wanted them to all start out with identical "factory defaults", we don't know how to do that.
OTOH, an AI is very definitely designed by a legal entity that then makes certain promises about it's functionality. They all start out in a specific and known factory default.
The logic isn't wrong. What use is a system that cannot be successfully implemented 90% of the time? A few failures here and there are just that, butif a system fails 90% of the time, it isn't the people, it's the system.
Yes, if 90% of people can't eat "right", then it's useless to blame the people. Perhaps you have an unworkable definition of "right". Ask yourself why. Perhaps it demands more prep time than people actually have. Perhaps it isn't actually meeting people's needs. Perhaps the foods "right" calls for are too expensive or hard to find. Or perhaps people are doing it "right" but it only actually works for the small minority of advocates. It's often easier (and more profitable) to blame implementors than it is to admit that "right" isn't right.
The problem is that Agile, like most management fads is based on observing the interactions in a few rare highly productive teams of unicorns.
Of course, being management based, they remove all elements of the spontaneous nature of the teams organization and turn lose guidelines into hard rules.
Like the semi-mythical island cultures who believed that by building a bamboo mockup of a runway and tower, they would cause the planes full of magical objects to return, they expect that by dictating the form, the managers can cause the average dev team to turn into unicorns.
When it fails to produce stunning results, the whole thing devolves into arguments over who has failed to understand the scripture in their holy book of choice.
It simply HAS to be that someone isn't following the micro management to the latter because it CAN'T be management's fault.
The monetary cost of the oxidizer is not the issue. If it was, the launch company would just build their own land based plant to liquify oxygen.
The issue is that the LOX and associated insulated tank and vent system is heavy. They'd like to replace that weight with payload that they'll get paid for. A close second is that holding all that LOX in close proximity to all that fuel is dangerous.
Only presidential alerts cannot be turned off on a phone. The rest are configurable.
I haven't turned them off on mine because they're potentially a good thing, but if they keep sending alerts that can't possibly be relevant for someone in my area, I'll have to turn them off.
I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't get alerts for places that are hours away at times when I'm not that likely to be going anywhere further than the corner store. Meanwhile, tornado warning in my area = silence from the phone.
Actually, it DOES point out that the target group is people with advanced Parkensons and that there is likely to be a large number of deaths due to that. It also DOES point out that other studies showed that the death rate is the same as those on placebo. You may have stopped reading too soon.
It also points out that some patients saw a lot of improvement and others saw none.
That is an argument for having the ABILITY to use secure boot with a locked down kernel (Linus is fine with that). It is not an argument for why the kernel MUST be locked down if you use secure boot. The latter is what others are arguing for without providing Linus a good reason.
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That's the claim, but it's bunk. A contract is supposed to represent a meeting of minds, an agreement between two entities. If one of those minds can't even understand it, there is no meeting of minds. A sane court system would void any such thing on sight. Especially the ones so bad even lawyers are befuddled when reading them.
As for ambiguity, I have NEVER heard a lawyer state anything in absolute terms when it comes to contracts. It's always probably this and most likely that.
The thing is, those EULAs are so bad I know practicing lawyers who have admitted to not reading or understanding them.
One of my favorites was a diesel generator with a small local tank and a larger tank installed well behind the building. Never a problem during the monthly tests where they actually failed over to the generator.
Actual power failure happens, generator picks up the load just fine. An hour later, the generator shuts down. Turns out the transfer pump that fed the small local tank from the large tank was connected to grid power only.
Nobody wants subtle nuance in a tech manual, save it for poetry and novels. Otherwise you just read like an 8th grader trying to sound sophisticated.
The AC post is mine. Sorry about that, /. apparently decided to forget I was logged in even as I was typing the reply.
OTOH, municipal broadband has consistently kicked private offering's asses in spite of having to fight lawsuits and captured state legislatures just to exist.
Public transit works OK for the level of funding it sees. In many cases, semi-privatization is what ails it. Care to point to a fully private service that doesn't suck or cost too much for most people using public transit?
Show me those private roads paved with gold!
Nah, they'll just build out municipal broadband that's ten times as fast for half the price.
That's when those same carriers that won't touch the state with a ten foot pole will run crying to Uncle Sam and moan about unfair competition (in a market they refuse to enter).
I WISH ISPs were like restaurants. Because then there would be dozens to choose from AND I would have the option to roll my own at home too.
To make your analogy work, there would have to be no more than one or two restaurants available, no grocery stores, and hunting, fishing, and growing a vegetable garden all illegal.
Meanwhile, THE restaurant (or BOTH) offer reasonably priced food, but then there's the table fee, the utensil fee (charged by the bite) the air fee, the door fee, of course a fee for walking on the floor, etc.
Finally, there's a surcharge if they don't like what you do with the energy you gain from eating food.
OP said
I am still amazed that many people are fixated on minimizing rocket fuel cost.
The rest was just an odd speculation about a "solution" that nobody is considering. Air breathing first stages have NEVER included an oxygen liquification mechanism. They operate more akin to a jet. Or, in cases like Space Ship One, the first stage IS a jet. The cost of fuel/oxidizer had nothing to do with that decision.
Even with domestication and breeding efforts, we have never had full control over breeding of dogs. Sometimes the dogs make the decision. But note that for a few traits that a breeder is well in control of, there have been lawsuits similar to manufacturing defect cases.
Yes, some forms of AI do produce results that aren't fully understood, but those results can be tested exhaustively and exactly reproduced. Process control software can have race conditions where it will occasionally behave in a manner not intended. If that unintended behavior injures someone, the manufacturer is liable.
Consider, a particular model of circular saw occasionally turns itself on. Guess who's getting sued...
Of course, in the case of the processors being dropped, you just about have to be a developer yourself to have any interest in continued Linux support. It's not like you could ever just put a DVD in a drive and install Linux on anything that has one of those processors.
So if there is anyone out there who wishes support would continue, they weren't interested enough to actually do anything about it.
The difference is, a dog is "designed" by evolution and each starts out in a similar but unique state. Even if we wanted them to all start out with identical "factory defaults", we don't know how to do that.
OTOH, an AI is very definitely designed by a legal entity that then makes certain promises about it's functionality. They all start out in a specific and known factory default.
The logic isn't wrong. What use is a system that cannot be successfully implemented 90% of the time? A few failures here and there are just that, butif a system fails 90% of the time, it isn't the people, it's the system.
Yes, if 90% of people can't eat "right", then it's useless to blame the people. Perhaps you have an unworkable definition of "right". Ask yourself why. Perhaps it demands more prep time than people actually have. Perhaps it isn't actually meeting people's needs. Perhaps the foods "right" calls for are too expensive or hard to find. Or perhaps people are doing it "right" but it only actually works for the small minority of advocates. It's often easier (and more profitable) to blame implementors than it is to admit that "right" isn't right.
The problem is that Agile, like most management fads is based on observing the interactions in a few rare highly productive teams of unicorns.
Of course, being management based, they remove all elements of the spontaneous nature of the teams organization and turn lose guidelines into hard rules.
Like the semi-mythical island cultures who believed that by building a bamboo mockup of a runway and tower, they would cause the planes full of magical objects to return, they expect that by dictating the form, the managers can cause the average dev team to turn into unicorns.
When it fails to produce stunning results, the whole thing devolves into arguments over who has failed to understand the scripture in their holy book of choice.
It simply HAS to be that someone isn't following the micro management to the latter because it CAN'T be management's fault.
The monetary cost of the oxidizer is not the issue. If it was, the launch company would just build their own land based plant to liquify oxygen.
The issue is that the LOX and associated insulated tank and vent system is heavy. They'd like to replace that weight with payload that they'll get paid for. A close second is that holding all that LOX in close proximity to all that fuel is dangerous.
Since SpaceX actually does reuse the recovered boosters, it's obviously more than a publicity stunt.
WHAP! No sleeping at your desk. Shake off that dream and get to work!
Nope, 3 A.M. is bed time. We can resume at noon. We'll knock off at 8 P.M.. You're on MY schedule now. All day every day.
But as the events following the U.S. withdrawal show, it was an entirely unnecessary price.
New plan, we'll give you a call at 2 A.M. for nightly meetings where we can discuss it fully.
Except my observation is free of assumptions that it's some sort of government oppression.
Only presidential alerts cannot be turned off on a phone. The rest are configurable.
I haven't turned them off on mine because they're potentially a good thing, but if they keep sending alerts that can't possibly be relevant for someone in my area, I'll have to turn them off.
I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't get alerts for places that are hours away at times when I'm not that likely to be going anywhere further than the corner store. Meanwhile, tornado warning in my area = silence from the phone.
Actually, it DOES point out that the target group is people with advanced Parkensons and that there is likely to be a large number of deaths due to that. It also DOES point out that other studies showed that the death rate is the same as those on placebo. You may have stopped reading too soon.
It also points out that some patients saw a lot of improvement and others saw none.
That is an argument for having the ABILITY to use secure boot with a locked down kernel (Linus is fine with that). It is not an argument for why the kernel MUST be locked down if you use secure boot. The latter is what others are arguing for without providing Linus a good reason.