This company had you agree that if you violated the terms of the license (fairly loose - basically use it like a book, only one copy running at a time, as I remember) in any way, the ownership of your immortal soul passed to them, with the understanding that anytime that a demon showed up they could pass it along to said demon or its assigns for any use (eternal torment, consumption as wine ala Screwtape Letters, etc) desired by the new owners.
I was an adult, had a job, and never bought (mainly because I wasn't especially interesting in their software, although also because, as understand it, seriously contemplating selling ones soul is enough of a sin that one is probably damned, even if that particular contract is not accepted). The demons that visited me were the usual ones that visited any MS-DOS or Windows user at the time, and entirely unrelated to that license.
> Considering that jet engines have a service life of around 20 years, > if you can save 50% in fuel costs over those 20 years, you win.
Not if the engines start fatiguing out in 10 years or less. That would change the lifetime costs a bit. Ignoring the replacement costs, a much heavier inspection schedule would cost a lot, as well.
Now presumably they did actually evaluate these games, but it sure gives the appearance of something being a bit more commercial than charitable if they gave their endorsement of these games in return for a $1.5 million donation.
I am sure that the AHA would never have endorsed Wii for just $1.5 million if the games were not potentially good for the user's heart. I am sure that Blizzard would have had to bribe^H^H^H^H^Hcontribute far more to get the same benefit.
So send him more Jack Daniels "from a secret admirer." At the beginning of the stack, his annoyance with grading papers will be reduced by pleasant thoughts about the secret admirer, and at the end of the stack he will still have bottle left.
The only problem is if he recognizes how bad his taste is, that he actually likes drinking Jack Daniels, and if he drinks mixed drinks you don't even have to worry about that.
> The 70% savings in fuel cost will be sucked up somewhere,
The article mentioned that moving the engines to the rear increased stresses. Replacing engines will use up that savings; replacing airframes even more so. There is a reason that commercial jets have engines in separate nacelles, nowadays, despite the obvious benefits of locating them inside the wing or fusilage.
OTOH, the super-wide bodies might be a real win, unless moving the fuel tanks from the wings decreases crash safety too much.
The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Actually, that was "on the gripping hand." On the third hand is probably an old joke about "on the one/other hand" arguments always having more complications than you think when you start.
> the vast majority of opinions here are merely expressions of confirmation bias
Did you do a proper statistical analysis on the data (the hundred posts that you could see at the time), or are you cherry picking through them to confirm your bias towards the theory that people let their biases control their perceptions?
Or watch a war movie with military veterans. My father's one cousin and another cousin's husband were both Air Force colonels, and the only thing that they talked about after watching Saving Private Ryan was all the mistakes in the uniforms.
> What kind of security system tells you if you're warm and helps you break in?
Supposedly, the original DEC-20 password system used the same command completion as its command line. Type a character, hit escape, and if it matches, the password was completed for you, and not in hidden text like when you entered it the hard way. A friend claimed to have worked on a project to harden the OS, and amazingly that was not the first thing that they found or fixed (I didn't work on the project, so I can only assume that he wasn't kidding).
> In the movie, it was simplified to just "Joshua."
If this was a novelization, the movie came first, and the book is based on it. Therefore, "Joshua5" was used in the book because someone thought that just Joshua was just too simple (for a backdoor password? I suppose that the password to improperly bypass security should be secure, according to the Orange Books). Sometimes the book comes out before the movie release, but then it is based on the shooting script, and might have dropped scenes still included.
For any other purpose, you must get a license from MPEG-LA and pay them royalties for each copy sold. I personally find this utterly unacceptable.
Then move to California. I understand that there is a colony of patent ignorers in Hollywood, near Los Angelos.
At least, that is what happened when Thomas Edison (on the East Coast) had all the patents on moving pictures. Maybe you should think of something similar.
> Didn't the internet really take off without regulation?
No, but the regulation was easier as no one was making money from it.
Then, Al Gore ruined everything by opening it to everyone.
OTOH, your objections are arguments in favor of net neutrality, not against (well, the CIA question is orthogonal to all that).
On the gripping hand, net neutrality is defined in such a hand-waving fashion that it would be hard to write regulations to guarantee it without requiring excessive effort to demonstrate it, or freezing the technology of the Internet. For instance, if Comcast upgrades its connection to Google but not to Bing (at least, not yet), that makes Google a faster responding search provider, customers use Bing less, and Microsoft is screwed (or at least, so the lawyers will argue) by the obviously improper improvement in responsiveness of one section of the Comcast portion of the Net before another. Prove that something LIKE this could not possibly occur in the real world of delayed upgrades, especially with all two company combinations and all providers.
Clearly, what we need is a better definition of how much net *un*-neutrality is permitted under Net Neutrality, which the FCC had never tried, Congress had never specifically authorized, and I do not believe that net neutrality advocates ever cared about since their goal was perfect neutrality despite an imperfect world.
Why is it that people aren't willing to take responsibility for their own lives and then complain about a "nanny-state" governement??
I don't know. Why do people complain about the waste of duplicated services, then complain about the effects of a monopoly??
Obviously because there are more than one "people" under discussion, and you want to conflate them for the sake of a good line. That is almost as whacked as the car analogy in the GP (Seriously, what metropolitan area has just three car dealerships?).
> How long before the evil empire starts paying ALL ISPs to redirect everybody to bing?
You mean Baidu.com. The ISP is located in Hong Kong, which is not PRC only by its current forbearance, so them redirecting Google when Google is about to be banned is no more surprising than it would be if they were in Beijing.
Or do you really think that Microsoft has enough money to bribe the PRC?
> Wrong, try enforcing diplomacy or declarations of war with armed sheriffs.
Wrong, again. Diplomacy cannot be "enforced" by its nature; OTOH, try telling a court that a local sheriff that arrested German or Japanese agents just landed from a submarine has to let them go because he doesn't have the right to enforce laws coming into force from the declarations of war against Germany or Japan (obviously, this would be during WWII, unless we have a rematch like Cordwainer Smith suggested), and see how far they would listen to you.
As for the good sheriff, he was forbidden from enforcing those laws, but not because he had never had that authority, but because he misused it. He can still arrest you when you violate some other federal law (assuming that he can investigate it -- I doubt that he can handle interstate securities fraud by himself).
This was all worked out during the litigation against the Fugitive Slave Laws, which decided that state authorities HAD to assist in recapturing slaves, regardless of whether the state allowed slaves or even had laws forbidding assisting slave catchers.
> You understand that there are powers granted to the Federal > government that the States Constitutionally cannot enforce, right?
False. A local authority always has the right to enforce the laws of the higher levels of government. Granted, your local police are not likely to arrest you for treason, but they certainly can, just as they could arrest you for fleeing arrest across state lines. OTOH, you could murder someone in front of an FBI agent (while not on a Federal reservation or property), and he or she can only make a citizen's arrest, until a local officer can take you in custody, because Federal authorities have no power to enforce state or local laws.
There is a reason that state government oaths of office include swearing to uphold the US Constitution and its laws, usually before the clause to uphold that state's laws, and local authorities swear to uphold the constitutions and laws of all their higher levels. It is not just to make the oaths of office longer.
So? That year, I was working in a private company that ran equipment based on PDP-11s, including one that had to be booted from switches. Our 8 inch floppies were soft sectored, though, so I guess that was more advanced than you:-)
Instruments usually run on older hardware, since who wants to redo something that worked properly, years ago, unless there is a really good reason to change to a new design (like not being able to get parts for the old designs, any more). Any improvements that do show up will most often be in the form of better sensors, not human or machine interfaces.
> George inherited 10 slaves, and by the time of his death had hundreds of them.
Because he married a rich (much richer than him) widow, with lots of slaves. The reason that he freed his wife's slaves after her death was that he couldn't legally do that before her death, since most were hers or mostly hers (in the cases where the slaves were born after his marriage).
> And only supported emancipation of his slaves as long as he could find a buyer to pay him for it.
Pardon? You seem to have skipped a clause or two, here.
Slashdot Mirror
I was an adult, had a job, and never bought (mainly because I wasn't especially interesting in their software, although also because, as understand it, seriously contemplating selling ones soul is enough of a sin that one is probably damned, even if that particular contract is not accepted). The demons that visited me were the usual ones that visited any MS-DOS or Windows user at the time, and entirely unrelated to that license.
> Considering that jet engines have a service life of around 20 years,
> if you can save 50% in fuel costs over those 20 years, you win.
Not if the engines start fatiguing out in 10 years or less. That would change the lifetime costs a bit. Ignoring the replacement costs, a much heavier inspection schedule would cost a lot, as well.
I am sure that the AHA would never have endorsed Wii for just $1.5 million if the games were not potentially good for the user's heart. I am sure that Blizzard would have had to bribe^H^H^H^H^Hcontribute far more to get the same benefit.
At least $3 or 4 million, maybe more.
The only problem is if he recognizes how bad his taste is, that he actually likes drinking Jack Daniels, and if he drinks mixed drinks you don't even have to worry about that.
> The 70% savings in fuel cost will be sucked up somewhere,
The article mentioned that moving the engines to the rear increased stresses. Replacing engines will use up that savings; replacing airframes even more so. There is a reason that commercial jets have engines in separate nacelles, nowadays, despite the obvious benefits of locating them inside the wing or fusilage.
OTOH, the super-wide bodies might be a real win, unless moving the fuel tanks from the wings decreases crash safety too much.
No, decreases drag.
Obviously, they thought that you meant South Park was Days of Our Life in Texas. That certainly would be flaming.
Actually, that was "on the gripping hand." On the third hand is probably an old joke about "on the one/other hand" arguments always having more complications than you think when you start.
> the vast majority of opinions here are merely expressions of confirmation bias
Did you do a proper statistical analysis on the data (the hundred posts that you could see at the time), or are you cherry picking through them to confirm your bias towards the theory that people let their biases control their perceptions?
Or watch a war movie with military veterans. My father's one cousin and another cousin's husband were both Air Force colonels, and the only thing that they talked about after watching Saving Private Ryan was all the mistakes in the uniforms.
> What kind of security system tells you if you're warm and helps you break in?
Supposedly, the original DEC-20 password system used the same command completion as its command line. Type a character, hit escape, and if it matches, the password was completed for you, and not in hidden text like when you entered it the hard way. A friend claimed to have worked on a project to harden the OS, and amazingly that was not the first thing that they found or fixed (I didn't work on the project, so I can only assume that he wasn't kidding).
> In the movie, it was simplified to just "Joshua."
If this was a novelization, the movie came first, and the book is based on it. Therefore, "Joshua5" was used in the book because someone thought that just Joshua was just too simple (for a backdoor password? I suppose that the password to improperly bypass security should be secure, according to the Orange Books). Sometimes the book comes out before the movie release, but then it is based on the shooting script, and might have dropped scenes still included.
Then move to California. I understand that there is a colony of patent ignorers in Hollywood, near Los Angelos.
At least, that is what happened when Thomas Edison (on the East Coast) had all the patents on moving pictures. Maybe you should think of something similar.
> I consider the presumption of hostility on the part of the machines rather unfounded.
No more hostility than I feel towards the ants or big spiders that show up in my bedroom.
> and if machines ever became sentient enough to :P
> understand what their users wanted, so would programmers.
Followed fairly rapidly by the users.
> Didn't the internet really take off without regulation?
No, but the regulation was easier as no one was making money from it.
Then, Al Gore ruined everything by opening it to everyone.
OTOH, your objections are arguments in favor of net neutrality, not against (well, the CIA question is orthogonal to all that).
On the gripping hand, net neutrality is defined in such a hand-waving fashion that it would be hard to write regulations to guarantee it without requiring excessive effort to demonstrate it, or freezing the technology of the Internet. For instance, if Comcast upgrades its connection to Google but not to Bing (at least, not yet), that makes Google a faster responding search provider, customers use Bing less, and Microsoft is screwed (or at least, so the lawyers will argue) by the obviously improper improvement in responsiveness of one section of the Comcast portion of the Net before another. Prove that something LIKE this could not possibly occur in the real world of delayed upgrades, especially with all two company combinations and all providers.
Clearly, what we need is a better definition of how much net *un*-neutrality is permitted under Net Neutrality, which the FCC had never tried, Congress had never specifically authorized, and I do not believe that net neutrality advocates ever cared about since their goal was perfect neutrality despite an imperfect world.
> In the data-driven future I plan to be Blank Reg (look it up).
But the REAL Blank Reg is using that identity. You will have to be Blank "Concerned Onlooker" or something.
> He works for the IRS dosnt he? So yeah, he has his own slice of hell.
Not necessarily. One of the Disciples/Apostles was a tax collector, too (actually, probably a tax farmer, which is far worse).
I don't know. Why do people complain about the waste of duplicated services, then complain about the effects of a monopoly??
Obviously because there are more than one "people" under discussion, and you want to conflate them for the sake of a good line. That is almost as whacked as the car analogy in the GP (Seriously, what metropolitan area has just three car dealerships?).
> How long before the evil empire starts paying ALL ISPs to redirect everybody to bing?
You mean Baidu.com. The ISP is located in Hong Kong, which is not PRC only by its current forbearance, so them redirecting Google when Google is about to be banned is no more surprising than it would be if they were in Beijing.
Or do you really think that Microsoft has enough money to bribe the PRC?
> Having been there three months ago and a wife there now, I *think* I can say that much.
But can you say the opposite (assuming that you aren't looking to upgrade the spouse)?
> Wrong, try enforcing diplomacy or declarations of war with armed sheriffs.
Wrong, again. Diplomacy cannot be "enforced" by its nature; OTOH, try telling a court that a local sheriff that arrested German or Japanese agents just landed from a submarine has to let them go because he doesn't have the right to enforce laws coming into force from the declarations of war against Germany or Japan (obviously, this would be during WWII, unless we have a rematch like Cordwainer Smith suggested), and see how far they would listen to you.
As for the good sheriff, he was forbidden from enforcing those laws, but not because he had never had that authority, but because he misused it. He can still arrest you when you violate some other federal law (assuming that he can investigate it -- I doubt that he can handle interstate securities fraud by himself).
This was all worked out during the litigation against the Fugitive Slave Laws, which decided that state authorities HAD to assist in recapturing slaves, regardless of whether the state allowed slaves or even had laws forbidding assisting slave catchers.
> You understand that there are powers granted to the Federal
> government that the States Constitutionally cannot enforce, right?
False. A local authority always has the right to enforce the laws of the higher levels of government. Granted, your local police are not likely to arrest you for treason, but they certainly can, just as they could arrest you for fleeing arrest across state lines. OTOH, you could murder someone in front of an FBI agent (while not on a Federal reservation or property), and he or she can only make a citizen's arrest, until a local officer can take you in custody, because Federal authorities have no power to enforce state or local laws.
There is a reason that state government oaths of office include swearing to uphold the US Constitution and its laws, usually before the clause to uphold that state's laws, and local authorities swear to uphold the constitutions and laws of all their higher levels. It is not just to make the oaths of office longer.
Instruments usually run on older hardware, since who wants to redo something that worked properly, years ago, unless there is a really good reason to change to a new design (like not being able to get parts for the old designs, any more). Any improvements that do show up will most often be in the form of better sensors, not human or machine interfaces.
> George inherited 10 slaves, and by the time of his death had hundreds of them.
Because he married a rich (much richer than him) widow, with lots of slaves. The reason that he freed his wife's slaves after her death was that he couldn't legally do that before her death, since most were hers or mostly hers (in the cases where the slaves were born after his marriage).
> And only supported emancipation of his slaves as long as he could find a buyer to pay him for it.
Pardon? You seem to have skipped a clause or two, here.