The "standing" problem is what keeps most of the hidden surveillance in place. Since you can't show that they spied on you, you can't sue. It even went so far that even when people had evidence that their phone calls had been tapped (as happened when some attorney got a list of tapped phone calls from the FBI by mistake) the evidence was declared classified and inadmissible. No list, no standing, no law suit. And the telecom industry hides behind a statute that forbids them to talk about the surveillance, and so can claim they cannot defend themselves, and get the suits tossed on that basis.
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I'm sure you do know sailplanes. And I'm sure that knowledge translates well to commercial airliners, since sailplanes are going through all those pressure cycles, are flown in every weather, are never hangared, and have a 30 year lifespan with 10,000 take-offs an landings.
The virgin properties of carbon fiber composites are well understood. But damage tolerance and aging are a totally different thing. There is a reason why, at least in the US, the military still funds basic research and development on these things.
Boats don't go through pressure cycles, and boats don't swing from +40C to -70C in 15 min and back. Also, fiberglass is much more damage tolerant than carbon fiber, and boats usually don't fail catastrophically if they get damaged. You see your kajak buckling, you get out of the water. If your wing buckles in flight, you might not notice it until you loose control.
Carbon fiber composites can be recycled. There are at least two companies, one US, one British, working on commercial facilities to reclaim the fiber. Here's a link to a recent article on it.
http://www.compositesworld.com/hpc/issues/2007/May/111534
While the carbon fiber does not corrode, a carbon fiber composite does age - and potentially rapidly. The interface between the epoxy matrix resin and the carbon fiber is notoriously sensitive to delamination, especially in the presence of moisture. But as with all new materials, time will tell.
Before Boeing was the big star in the civilian airliner market with their 707 they were years behind Britain's DeHavilland in technology. Until DeHavilland came out with an all-aluminum pressurized aircraft, and engineers learned too late that aluminum, if cycled repeatedly due to pressurization, tends to fatigue crack. The Comet had a series of spectacular crashed, and DeHavilland went belly-up.
The biggest issue actually on the composite aircraft is maintenance. It's very hard to inspect a composite part for hidden flaws, and you cannot simply cut out a panel and rivet a replacement in if you're worried about a section.
"IT shops *want* to do the right thing. Don't fight us, help us"
One of the best statements in years. I'll pay for software to be in compliance, but I hate to wrangle licenses. Best example, Antivirus. I used Norton for years on every machine, paid up. Than came the single activation key. Unlike an OS install where the license key is done once and locked away, Norton wanted an individual key every year, and in about 10% of installs the activation key failed at some point, and disabled the upgrades. Also, for small businesses, Norton did not offer any kind of decent volume program.
I switched to Avast, purely for licensing issues. They offer
- volume program with great discounts for multiple installs
- one key for all machines
- the key is good for 3 years
Yes, I probably could install more than the 15 licenses I bought using that key, but why? For $13 a year I don't expose my business to liabilities, one meeting with an attorney to straighten out something like that costs more than the license in the first place.
And for something as big as project planing software - no business that needs something like that (which usually aims at multiyear use) would risk being caught with their pants down due to unlicensed software that might go puff one day and leaving multi-million dollar business up in the air.
The reason we accept the lack of freedom is called "commercial success", guaranteeing continuity of product lines. I'm just buying 20 copies of Office 2007 to replace 20 copies of Office 97. That means I got 10 years out of one product, with one training effort, for $30 or so a year. And unless Redmond is wiped out by a tsunami, most likely I will be able to keep that cycle time.
I rolled out 2 open source type programs, Firefox and Thunderbird, when they looked like things to stay. Firefox is still going strong, but Thunderbird lost its financial backing, the calender apps never make it to a 1.0 release, and the general opinion in my shop is that we need to go back to Outlook. For which there is no good way to transfer data smoothly from Thunderbird. It will be a long time before I trust an OS program again (or my boss trusts my judgment on that issue).
For 90% of users, programs are a tool to get work done, not something that you fiddle with and discuss the merit of licensing philosophies over. Linus seems to have gotten that message. RMS would cut of his nose to spite his face.
same here, reinstall after hard drive failure on a laptop, used the sicker key on from dell, failed to validate despite it (being one of the first XP laptops) having what looked like a true OS disk. Call in got me a key and passed validation. Experience was not quite as smooth so, person obviously had not dealt with the issue before and was reluctant to proceed.
Millions might download it, but those are not the people the industry wants to stop from copying. The college kids doing the downloads don't have the money to buy most of the stuff in the first place. It's to prevent the "middle class" from widespread copying, from exchanging every kid's DVD in the church cycle for every other parent to spread around.
The money is not with the "in-crowd". The real money is made from the Barry Manilow and Garth Brooks fans.
I've been a big fan of the thumb-controlled track ball variety for a long time. The large Kensingtons always gave me shoulder cramps after a couple hours, while the thumb controlled variety allows you to rest everything from the wrist up on something solid. MS actually had a decent optical model a couple of years back, I bought 3 so I can swap parts.
Now if I wouldn't be developing arthritis in my thumb, I'd think I'd be set for the future.
I agree wholeheartedly. Thunderbird was the first open source application I introduced at my workplace, mainly to get out of having to maintain three or four different iterations of Outlook and Outlook Express. If I know have to tell the money people I need to buy a dozen new office packages after all to get everyone one the same page Outlook wise, and than spend a week trying to get everyone's Thunderbird mail back into Outlook - I think the next OSS project will have to wait for hell to freeze over to have a chance at my company.
If I have to google for legal codices, and than buy one to be legal, the whole "it's cheaper to go Linux" disappears fast. My time managing software is included in the price of software. Thanks for making my point: if it's not an all inclusive all legal package, I don't want to see it.
In regards to the "do they check for codices" I have no idea. But I did have someone ask to see the licenses for my security package (which is available as "free for home use" and as professional edition.
Your post that shows that you have no idea whatsoever of legal realities in the US business world. My company does business with government agencies. For this, we have to allow the government to audit any aspect of our business at any moment, and a DCAA audit is not pleasant, and the people know what they are doing.
Having once gone through a 20 person network to "legalize" everything, basically a wipe, reinstall, lock process - I would never risk the jobs of all my employees by installing questionable software for something as basic as listening to MP3s. As bad as MS products are, at least I have someone to hold responsible when commercial software turns out to be "legally defective". With a 5 year upgrade cycle for OS and Office, that's less than $100 per year per machine.
So I'm spending 0.1% of my government revenue on being compliant with their rules.
And I'm not hip, cool or geek.
But I sleep better.
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The "standing" problem is what keeps most of the hidden surveillance in place. Since you can't show that they spied on you, you can't sue. It even went so far that even when people had evidence that their phone calls had been tapped (as happened when some attorney got a list of tapped phone calls from the FBI by mistake) the evidence was declared classified and inadmissible. No list, no standing, no law suit. And the telecom industry hides behind a statute that forbids them to talk about the surveillance, and so can claim they cannot defend themselves, and get the suits tossed on that basis.
Playerauction: Selling VERIFIED female character account Have all the fun you want cybering the innocent teenager who KNOWS you're a true female sharing his love! Only $1000
NoScript add-on seems to do the trick too. Restored my old laptop from doorstop back to "browse while gaming" 3rd machine.
I'm sure you do know sailplanes. And I'm sure that knowledge translates well to commercial airliners, since sailplanes are going through all those pressure cycles, are flown in every weather, are never hangared, and have a 30 year lifespan with 10,000 take-offs an landings. The virgin properties of carbon fiber composites are well understood. But damage tolerance and aging are a totally different thing. There is a reason why, at least in the US, the military still funds basic research and development on these things.
Boats don't go through pressure cycles, and boats don't swing from +40C to -70C in 15 min and back. Also, fiberglass is much more damage tolerant than carbon fiber, and boats usually don't fail catastrophically if they get damaged. You see your kajak buckling, you get out of the water. If your wing buckles in flight, you might not notice it until you loose control.
Carbon fiber composites can be recycled. There are at least two companies, one US, one British, working on commercial facilities to reclaim the fiber. Here's a link to a recent article on it. http://www.compositesworld.com/hpc/issues/2007/May/111534
While the carbon fiber does not corrode, a carbon fiber composite does age - and potentially rapidly. The interface between the epoxy matrix resin and the carbon fiber is notoriously sensitive to delamination, especially in the presence of moisture. But as with all new materials, time will tell. Before Boeing was the big star in the civilian airliner market with their 707 they were years behind Britain's DeHavilland in technology. Until DeHavilland came out with an all-aluminum pressurized aircraft, and engineers learned too late that aluminum, if cycled repeatedly due to pressurization, tends to fatigue crack. The Comet had a series of spectacular crashed, and DeHavilland went belly-up. The biggest issue actually on the composite aircraft is maintenance. It's very hard to inspect a composite part for hidden flaws, and you cannot simply cut out a panel and rivet a replacement in if you're worried about a section.
Odd, looks to me most of the complainers are the RMS Free Software folks that don't like a commercial business in charge of the program.
"IT shops *want* to do the right thing. Don't fight us, help us" One of the best statements in years. I'll pay for software to be in compliance, but I hate to wrangle licenses. Best example, Antivirus. I used Norton for years on every machine, paid up. Than came the single activation key. Unlike an OS install where the license key is done once and locked away, Norton wanted an individual key every year, and in about 10% of installs the activation key failed at some point, and disabled the upgrades. Also, for small businesses, Norton did not offer any kind of decent volume program. I switched to Avast, purely for licensing issues. They offer - volume program with great discounts for multiple installs - one key for all machines - the key is good for 3 years Yes, I probably could install more than the 15 licenses I bought using that key, but why? For $13 a year I don't expose my business to liabilities, one meeting with an attorney to straighten out something like that costs more than the license in the first place. And for something as big as project planing software - no business that needs something like that (which usually aims at multiyear use) would risk being caught with their pants down due to unlicensed software that might go puff one day and leaving multi-million dollar business up in the air.
The reason we accept the lack of freedom is called "commercial success", guaranteeing continuity of product lines. I'm just buying 20 copies of Office 2007 to replace 20 copies of Office 97. That means I got 10 years out of one product, with one training effort, for $30 or so a year. And unless Redmond is wiped out by a tsunami, most likely I will be able to keep that cycle time. I rolled out 2 open source type programs, Firefox and Thunderbird, when they looked like things to stay. Firefox is still going strong, but Thunderbird lost its financial backing, the calender apps never make it to a 1.0 release, and the general opinion in my shop is that we need to go back to Outlook. For which there is no good way to transfer data smoothly from Thunderbird. It will be a long time before I trust an OS program again (or my boss trusts my judgment on that issue). For 90% of users, programs are a tool to get work done, not something that you fiddle with and discuss the merit of licensing philosophies over. Linus seems to have gotten that message. RMS would cut of his nose to spite his face.
I have to sneak some T2O in your water ...
same here, reinstall after hard drive failure on a laptop, used the sicker key on from dell, failed to validate despite it (being one of the first XP laptops) having what looked like a true OS disk. Call in got me a key and passed validation. Experience was not quite as smooth so, person obviously had not dealt with the issue before and was reluctant to proceed.
Millions might download it, but those are not the people the industry wants to stop from copying. The college kids doing the downloads don't have the money to buy most of the stuff in the first place. It's to prevent the "middle class" from widespread copying, from exchanging every kid's DVD in the church cycle for every other parent to spread around. The money is not with the "in-crowd". The real money is made from the Barry Manilow and Garth Brooks fans.
I've been a big fan of the thumb-controlled track ball variety for a long time. The large Kensingtons always gave me shoulder cramps after a couple hours, while the thumb controlled variety allows you to rest everything from the wrist up on something solid. MS actually had a decent optical model a couple of years back, I bought 3 so I can swap parts. Now if I wouldn't be developing arthritis in my thumb, I'd think I'd be set for the future.
I agree wholeheartedly. Thunderbird was the first open source application I introduced at my workplace, mainly to get out of having to maintain three or four different iterations of Outlook and Outlook Express. If I know have to tell the money people I need to buy a dozen new office packages after all to get everyone one the same page Outlook wise, and than spend a week trying to get everyone's Thunderbird mail back into Outlook - I think the next OSS project will have to wait for hell to freeze over to have a chance at my company.
We need the equivalent of Godwin's law for /. The Troll law, invoked as soon as somebody mentions something not positive about Linux.
I did re-read book 6, but didn't make it all the way through before the end. Had to finish the last 50 pages to figure that one out too.
If I have to google for legal codices, and than buy one to be legal, the whole "it's cheaper to go Linux" disappears fast. My time managing software is included in the price of software. Thanks for making my point: if it's not an all inclusive all legal package, I don't want to see it. In regards to the "do they check for codices" I have no idea. But I did have someone ask to see the licenses for my security package (which is available as "free for home use" and as professional edition.
Your post that shows that you have no idea whatsoever of legal realities in the US business world. My company does business with government agencies. For this, we have to allow the government to audit any aspect of our business at any moment, and a DCAA audit is not pleasant, and the people know what they are doing. Having once gone through a 20 person network to "legalize" everything, basically a wipe, reinstall, lock process - I would never risk the jobs of all my employees by installing questionable software for something as basic as listening to MP3s. As bad as MS products are, at least I have someone to hold responsible when commercial software turns out to be "legally defective". With a 5 year upgrade cycle for OS and Office, that's less than $100 per year per machine. So I'm spending 0.1% of my government revenue on being compliant with their rules. And I'm not hip, cool or geek. But I sleep better.