If I remember correctly Asimov even went into figuring out how much it would take to keep a planet-city like that running - it was rediculous amounts of imports and exports on a daily basis just to keep things from falling apart.
Just pointing out that Storm Troopers weren't clones. Clone Troopers were clones, and there was only the one giant batch of them used in the clone wars, and since they were fighting on the "good" side most of the time, they had excellent aim. Storm troopers were recruited, apparently given shitty ass training, and called "the pride of the Empire" even though none of them could hit the broad side of a barn.
The real reason they couldn't aim was not because of their training, it was because they were "bad guys". Faceless bad guys are not allowed to kill protagonists, no matter how rediculously easy it should be at the time.
I believe his primary function is a flight droid so they were built to interface with ships. Not a lot else. John Scalzi seems to suffer from the "must have everything" school of thought and doesn't think the future will focus on minimalism and getting one thing right. Thank god he's not writing software and just another hot air blogger. I reject Episodes I, II & III so I don't know what he's talking about with the oil slick and jets.
Nice try, except that he DOES communicate with Luke, constantly, and apparently ALL astro-mechs communicate with their pilots audibly.
In this case, there is absolutely no reason NOT to design them with a voice chip other than to screw with your customers. Same with the wheels, why not tracks? It doesn't make any difference for interfacing with the ship, since they have to make allowances for the arms and wheels that stick out on three sides of the 'bot already. I like R2-D2, but a third grader could come up with a better design.
Again, you're overlooking his primary function. C-3PO is a protocol droid designed to serve humans, and boasts that he is fluent "in over six million forms of communication." So he's got arthritis, well, you didn't build him to be flexible or fight. You built him to look pretty and translate. Everything else is bells and whistles. I think he was meant to stand in a corner for some rich merchant or politician and translate any language imaginable. Are you going to tell me that my car is flawed because I couldn't afford a $20 toaster to put in the dash?
Again, you're purposely overlooking terrible design. He is a communications droid that cannot do sign language and does not understand body language, nor communicate good body language. Body language is 90% of all communciation - a good protocol droid would be more like a stuffy assistant with excellent body language and fluent in 6 million languages - including sign language. There is no reason for him not to have human level or nearly human level range of motion. The technology required to make him stand on two legs and stay on two legs is vastly more complicated than allowing his arms to move around.
Uh, the second Death Star was never completed, you idiot. The rebels learned about it and attacked it before it had everything completed so anything like "four paths to the central core" or "exposed shafts" could well have been necessary during its construction. Haven't you seen Clerks or watched Robot Chicken's parody of Palpatine trying to talk to the foreman?
Why were there four paths to the central core? Why did they need to lead to the central core? When building a building, it's not necessary that the back door be a straight shot to the generator. In fact, common sense tells you that something vulnerable to attack should be well hidden and protected, and not have its sole protection be a shield generated on another planet. In real life, the first Death Star would have had a bend somewhere in the shaft, taking the chances of blowing the entire station up with a shot down an exhaust pipe from a million to one down to zero. For the Second, they would have put friggin doors (you know, like in the docking bay?) up if they needed ship access (dunno why they would, they have ship access elsewhere and one assumes they would design a way to get heavy equipment down there). The four huge tunnels were far more than they needed for exhaust.
He's a farmer. You should have seen the "vehicles" and ATVs I drove while working on farms. One was a modified bus with huge water tanks on the back and an upside down bucket for a seat. They make a Yugo look like a dream car. Are you going to complain about the blast marks and carbon scoring adorning the rag tag rebel ships next?
That was his car, not an ATV. It was designed for passenger carry, as can obviously be seen, and it was unmodified. He even complains about how un-popular it is since the new models
That's because republicans and computer rarely meet.
That's funny, cause see I work in an office full of engineers and software programmers, who work on their computers all day and automate their homes for fun (they are automation engineers, btw - you're not a geek until you write drivers in assembly to marry industrial automation hardware with your OS of choice), and every single one of them is a Republican, and some are hard-line conservatives.
It's also odd, considering I just saw on C-SPAN last night a conferance of people belonging to "RightOnline" - a group of right-wing bloggers.
Finally, what really gets me, is that Democrats only make up 36.8% of the population, Republicans make up 33.3%, and Unaffiliated make up 29.9% (everyone is up a point or two except the Dems, btw) as of August 1, according to Rassmusen.
Now, follow allong with me here, the US has a penetration rate of 74.7% according to internetworldstats.com. Assuming Republicans rarely use computers, and Democrats - 36.8% - plus Unaffiliated - 29.9% - equals 66.7%, where's the missing 8%? Well, obviously it must come from Republicans!
Ok, so assuming that's true, around 12% of computer users in the US must be Republicans. You say that's not significant, but look at it the other way! It means that a minimum of 25% or so Republicans use a computer, and that can hardly make a republican owning a computer a rare thing.
Since we've debunked the idea that Republicans owning a computer is rare, and since a large portion of democrats are old people (65% of whome don't own a computer) and elitist erudite snobs who shun technology (look at the senate, seriously, holy frickin cow!), clearly 100% of democrats and 100% of the Unaffiliated is not an accurate figure for computer use.
We can safely assume it's about 75% in each catagory.
link to one that uses material that is in copyright?
You realize all photographs are copyrighted, right? It's no longer something you must apply for, it's been automatic for decades.
Have you seen the picture in question? in infringes on Time and the Joker...
The image in question can't infringe on both, as both were separate images orginially. Putting them together (i.e. replacing Obama with the Joker) is called Parody, particularly political parody, and falls well within fair use. So much so, that Flicker hasn't bothered to remove any other parodic photos from their website, just the Obama pic.
SCOTUS defined parody as "the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works."
The Obama pic is certainly a new composition, and it definitely comments on the original work. It is both making a comment on the TIME cover (by mocking it), as well as making an association between Obama and The Joker. It's all parody.
Have you ever watched Fox News? What their pundits like to do (at least when not attempting to cram their ideas down your throat via monologue) is stack a panel with a right-winger, a moderate, and a liberal. With themselves (often the furthest right-wing person on the panel) as moderator, they then attempt to make the liberal's idea look foolish. They often succeed, at least within a limited scope. The idea is to overwhelm them, but the panel is only stacked 2-1-1
Have you seen how MSNBC does it? It's normally a liberal pundit with one or two liberal guests - they "might" get a moderate, but they don't tend to like them. Then they bash right-wingers and, to me anyway, it all seems disingenuous. They don't often have the "panels" that Fox likes, at least not the times I've seen it, but their interviews are generally stacked 2-0 or worse.
Other news organizations like to do round-tables with groups of like minded individuals, but generally speaking for any news outfit other than Fox the interviews are almost always stacked two or three to one in favor of liberals. Often the only republican they'll allow is a moderate, decidedly non-conservative republican. John McCain was one of those, remember him? He was the media darling as long as the Republican party wasn't behind him. He was all over the liberal media. Now they mock him and openly loath him. He didn't change at all either, they were just done with him.
So which is more fair?
For the liberal equivalent of the Fox News pundits (like Beck or Hannity), watch Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. He's about the only liberal I've seen lately who makes an attempt to be fair - and he gets some really interesting discussions out of it too.
Yes, you can parody a public official, that doesn't mean you can use other peoples copyrighted material to make parody of something else.
Yes it does.
This has been seen many, many time.
What has been seen "many, many time" is that parody of all forms, so long as it changes the original copyrighted piece in meaning or content to a significant degree, is fair use. What is NOT fair use is reproducing a work in whole or in part without adding new content or meaning to the original that is significant.
You do understand what Parody is, right? Because you don't sound like you do. Parody and satire even have specific mention in the Copyright code.
Flicker, and everybody else for that matter, knows this is not copyright infringement. You can brows flicker for a number of parodies of Bush, and they never pulled those, because they are not infringement and everybody knows it.
They pulled it because Obama is sending business their way and/or someone in management at Flicker has a hard-on for Obama and was offended by the pic.
If someone from the Obama administration sent a note to Flicker demanding it be pulled, that's fucking censorship.
Flicker, by citing copyright concerns (which is bullshit and they know it), is basically saying the government made them do it.
Not that anything bad would come of a simple claim like that, but it could be construed as government censorship, since parody and satire are well established as fair use.
In fact, the #1 criteria for being racist is being white, and the #2 criteria is thinking that there is such a thing as racism against white people exists. Coming in a close #3 is having a southern accent, and when combined with being poor you've got the top 4 ways of telling someone is a racist.
Damn, I had no idea, all this time it turns out all clowns are just racist motherfuckers.
2. censorship is not a unilateral action -- it's a government mandated action (i.e., anyone else can publish this image if they so choose without government recriminations)
From Meriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
Main Entry: 2censor Function: transitive verb Inflected Form(s): censored; censoring \sen(t)-s-ri, sen(t)s-ri\ Date: 1882 : to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable ; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable
Nothing in there about the government. You're right that free speech does not apply when a the forum is private is censoring something within their personal control. However, it's still censorship, which is generally frowned upon regardless of forum, and we certainly have the right to criticize the censor for doing it.
3. freedom of speech does not apply in non-public fora -- the forum owner decides what will fly, and what will not
An attempt by a non-government entity to censor outside the private forum is covered by freedom of speech, though that is not really the case here.
I guess it's time every American who wants to vote should have to pass the citizenship test -- or get the hell out. We'd have a few less republican'ts then...
If you think it's primarily the Republicans who would fail that test, you need to look again at who your powerbase is.
It's also disgusting to even think about going back the days when polling tests or other criteria (like land ownership) were use to prevent the poor, newly immigrated, and women out of the political arena.
Only the most despicable ingrates would attempt to cheat at something as important as democracy, but apparently you're all too willing to do so.
We would write the code in assembly, then run a couple of command line programs over it to compile it into something that would actually run on the chip, then burn it to the firmware.
That's an assembler, not a compiler. Assembly language is a unified set of mnemonics that translate into machine code. For assembly language to be assembled into a binary that the machine can run, you need an assembler that assembles assembly language into machine code.
Compiled languages (like C, C++, C#, Fortran, VB, etc) run through a compiler, which compiles the high-level language into what is the equivalent of an assembly language, before assembling it into the binary machine-readable code.
It's called a compiler because it takes the commands you entered in the source code and compiles all the instructions necessary to execute those commands into machine readable code. In assembly, you are already writing all the instructions in machine code format, you are simply using mnemonics to make it easier. The assembler replaces the mnemonics with the correct machine instructions and away you go.
There are also interpreted languages, like Java or Python and others, which are not compiled - they are assembled on the fly by an interpreter.
Programming in assembly is basically removing a step in the process, and it is very hardcore as far as programming goes. The only thing more hardcore would be programming directly into machine language, which needs no assembling or compiling. Of course, if you do that your code will only work on one specific type of CPU - like the intel 80386 or the 80486 or pentium pro, etc. The machine language for each of those is slightly different, programming in assembly avoids that pitfall. Programming in a compiled language makes your program portable across hardware architectures, and interpreted languages are potentially portable across all architectures and OS's - so long as a compatible interpreter exists for a given setup.
I mean it's not a commericially viable product, and if it's meant to spur research and development then why not chose some sort of free software license.
Says you, they stated in TFA that they are targeting embedded devices, where size and low-resource usage is paramount. They've got a full os+gui that runs quake (granted, not the most high-tech game) and fits on a floppy disk.
MS DOS didn't even fit on one floppy disk, and this is way beyond DOS. It will be interesting to see where this goes, they are currently working on multithreading and networking. If it works out this could be viable for use as an "instant on" bios OS for simple things like playing DVDs or browsing the web.
Obviously it won't replace Windows or OSX, but to say it isn't commercially viable is just a statement pulled out of thin-air.
Also, they did use a free license - the 32bit version is free to all, and the 64bit version is free to all but commercial enterprises.
It's not "open", if that's what you meant, but why should it be? Assembly is hard as hell, and that OS represents a lot of work by two guys, why should they give it away? Especially if they want to commercialize it eventually?
It's copyright, not readright. The copyright limits what you can -copy-, not read.
In this case, under the terms of the license you are free to use (i.e. "read") the program, free of charge, but as soon as you disassemble it your right to use the software is revoked. What's tricky with software, is that in the simple act of "reading" involves copying the program several times (moving it from one drive to another, loading it into ram, loading the machine code into the cpu cache, etc).
Now, reverse-engineering is legal, so this is not much more than a CYA on their part, and an attempt to discourage the disassembly of their product. However, technically speaking, if you run it through a disassembler your right to use the software is revoked. If it went to court, though, it would probably be considered a fair use given the case-law behind reverse-engineering.
...Should they ever become a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporate behemoth we will revisit the situation.
You mean like Sun, and soon Oracle?
Just because a product is free doesn't mean the company responsible isn't loaded to the gills with $billions.
Oracle doesn't have as many $billions as Microsoft has, sure, but they still have $billions. That Open Office is open makes it a choice target if it does, in fact, infringe on any patents.
Most people don't mind if there is some unknown business sticking it some other unknown businesses.
That's just it, the BSA doesn't "stick it" to anybody. All they ask is that you purchase licenses for any software you don't have licenses for, or stop using the software. It's exactly what you'd expect an organization like that to do.
With the BSA, it goes like so: BSA: "We have proof you have not purchased 50 licenses, purchase the licenses or we'll sue." BSA Customer: "Ok."
Now, if BSA Customer refuses to purchase the licenses, they'll get raped in court for up to $90k per license violation, but not many people are that stupid.
The RIAA, on the other hand, pulls this number: RIAA: "We have proof you pirated 25 songs, pay us $10,000 or we'll sue." RIAA Customer: "Can't I just pay the $25 the songs are worth to keep them?" RIAA: "Pay up $10,000 now and admit all guilt or we'll take you to court for $10,000,000."
If RIAA Customer refuses at that point, you get RIAA v Thomas, where they too almost $2 million dollars for 25 songs.
THAT is why the RIAA is reviled, and the BSA is not. One cares about getting paid, the other cares about bludgeoning its customers to death.
Microsoft doesn't ever truly get rid of anything. Just about all the software they have sold in the last 10-15 years is still available from them, though not necessarily via direct purchase. Since the XP authorization is nothing more than a little algorithm they run, there is no reason to think they will stop re-authorizing old software for years. If they don't, you can sue them and become the next lawsuit millionare, if you like.
The real problem you will run into if you keep upgrading the motherboard and such won't be with Windows authorization, it will be with driver and feature support. If you keep upgrading, at some point you will be forced to upgrade to Windows 7 to upgrade your hardware at all (only a fool would upgrade to Vista at this point). So long as you are smart with THAT (i.e. getting the business or ultimate edition, not home), you will even be able to maintain full compatibility with your XP programs via the included XP VM. MS has apparently learned its lesson from the XP > Vista boondogle, XP > 7 won't hurt nearly as bad, and you will be able to take advantage of much better hardware.
No catch-22, you can still get Windows 2000 media via MSDN. In the scheme of things, it's not that expensive to purchase, $700 for just the operating systems and library, it scales up from there (up to $10,000 if you want VS2008, all server software, and an unlimited number of users). Both server and standard versions come with at least one license with the MSDN subscription (it's written on the inside cover of the CD case they give you), as well as physical media for just about everything MS sells. I've got every iteration of Windows since XP on disk, and when Windows 7 is officially released (I get the betas RTMs via a TechNet subscription) I'll recieve all the retail and volume licensing versions on disk. Nearly everything discontinued is downloadable via the online MSDN library as well.
MS doesn't give a shit about the media, they'll make that available forever (I'm not sure if you can still get Win98, but I'm tempted to say you can). They even give you pre-made.iso's so you can keep them on a central server and distribute/burn them as-needed. What they care about is, did you pay for a license to use the software?
Compared to the RIAA, the BSA is downright progressive. Some companies are still a-holes with wierd software protections, but the higher volume they sell, the less they care about protecting the media. It's all about the licenses.
The Business and Ultimate editions of Windows 7 have a built in Windows XP virtualization for exactly that reason.
Why the hell do think Vista was replaced so quickly and XP's life extended so long? They wanted to stop selling it when Vista came out, but they couldn't. Why?
You don't really think the reason Vista tanked and XP was extended was because all of us geeks were badmouthing its issues with DRM and resource usage do you?
Of course it wasn't, it was because businesses - Microsoft's Golden Goose, their cash cow - refused to upgrade due to compatibility with existing software. Expensive software. You think $20k per seat is expensive, you ain't seen nothin. What about a custom system that cost $10million to install for 30 users 5 years ago? Completely incompatible with Vista, you think that company is going to upgrade? HELL no.
But see, now that same expensive software can be run side-by-side with Windows 7 apps via the virtualization. Now they can upgrade at a cost of maybe a few grand per user, once the migration and configuration is done.
My laptop came with vista about two years ago, and maybe 4 months in it pissed me off so much I switched to Linux. There were issues that I found annoying, like the broadcast flag you mentioned (my laptop was never powerful enough to play anyting outside the monitor at any quality anyway, so that was purely ideological) and the heavy resource usage. But there were also some dealbreakers, mostly hardware issues that were taken care of with Win98 - like my USB mouse, a plain-jane generic usb mouse, I had to manually apply the generic usb mouse driver because Vista couldn't find it (it was sitting in with all the other drivers, btw). I found that unacceptable, and was on the verge of switching when suddenly Vista stopped recognizing my laptop keyboard. It was 100% Vista doing this, there was no hardware problem, this was a standard laptop keyboard with a standard interface protocol, and I was pissed. I could have fixed it, I do that sort of thing as my day job, but I found it unacceptable.
Fast forward a year and a half, and I started having issues with Linux. Little stuff, fixable stuff (most of it I actually did fix), the biggest two annoyances were getting good sound on all my apps and not being able to reasonably expect that a non-repository app would make and install correctly. Again I could fix all these problems, but I shouldn't have to. I wasn't doing crazy things with my laptop, just using it, and occasionally I'd see an app I wanted and it was a crapshoot whether or not it would actually compile and run correctly without work on the code or script itself.
That's probably my biggest gripe with Linux. In Windows, great effort has been put in over the years to ensure an application will reliably install and work on any windows machine. The OS may be different, which could break the app itself, but the install process is the same and - provided the executable is compatible with that version of the OS - you can expect the rogram will install without a hitch. There are even simple tools that snapshot your before and after system and build the install script based on that, ensuring that you won't miss a thing when you deploy the package. Why doesn't anybody do something similar for Linux? It would make things a hell of a lot easier for the end user, for anybody who wants to install a program that does not exist inside the repositories.
With Linux, often the assumption is made that you are running a similar configuration as the developer, and critical libraries may be missing and the response is just "well, you should have that already". Well, I don't, and now I have to scour the web to find the missing libraries - which also aren't in the repositories - in order to install an app.
A month or two ago I switched back to Vista, this time with SP2, and I'm happy with the switch. It's clean, nice, and works like it is supposed to. I probably didn't pay for Vista retail, but since it came with my Laptop I'll use it, and since SP2 I'm pleased with it.
Unable to configure the system as I see fit (unless I install a hack to make it work right).
The difference between Linux and Windows is, in Linux if you want to do anything outside of what Debian, or Ubuntu, or Fedora think you should need to do you have to hack it. Hacks and workarounds are the norm in Linux, and don't tell me it's not because I've used it off and on for the last 15 years. In Windows that only happens when you want to do something that is technically illegal (like removing/working around the broadcast flag). DRM definitely sucks, but you should be bashing your senators and congressmen, not Microsoft. If not for the broadcast flag and HDCP compatibility, the only way to watch BlueRay movies would be on a set-top box.
When you can play BlueRay discs on your Linux box, then you can feel superior about DRM in Vista. Till then, DRM isn't necessary in Linux, because you can't do it anyway, and that seems to be a common theme.
Maybe because data is delivered over the internet via containers, called packets. These packets move individually along a path, change directions at certain points depending upon the destination, and they carry stuff.
There are other vehicles on the net, which are essentially the same but don't have the capacity of an ordinary data packet. You could liken these to cars, and tend to have a shorter range or a purpose other than carrying large amounts of data (broadcast packets would be the former, various handshake packets would be the latter).
The vehicle/highway analogy is nearly perfect for describing the way the internet works. It wouldn't work so well for describing say, token ring networks.
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If I remember correctly Asimov even went into figuring out how much it would take to keep a planet-city like that running - it was rediculous amounts of imports and exports on a daily basis just to keep things from falling apart.
Just pointing out that Storm Troopers weren't clones. Clone Troopers were clones, and there was only the one giant batch of them used in the clone wars, and since they were fighting on the "good" side most of the time, they had excellent aim. Storm troopers were recruited, apparently given shitty ass training, and called "the pride of the Empire" even though none of them could hit the broad side of a barn.
The real reason they couldn't aim was not because of their training, it was because they were "bad guys". Faceless bad guys are not allowed to kill protagonists, no matter how rediculously easy it should be at the time.
I believe his primary function is a flight droid so they were built to interface with ships. Not a lot else. John Scalzi seems to suffer from the "must have everything" school of thought and doesn't think the future will focus on minimalism and getting one thing right. Thank god he's not writing software and just another hot air blogger. I reject Episodes I, II & III so I don't know what he's talking about with the oil slick and jets.
Nice try, except that he DOES communicate with Luke, constantly, and apparently ALL astro-mechs communicate with their pilots audibly.
In this case, there is absolutely no reason NOT to design them with a voice chip other than to screw with your customers. Same with the wheels, why not tracks? It doesn't make any difference for interfacing with the ship, since they have to make allowances for the arms and wheels that stick out on three sides of the 'bot already. I like R2-D2, but a third grader could come up with a better design.
Again, you're overlooking his primary function. C-3PO is a protocol droid designed to serve humans, and boasts that he is fluent "in over six million forms of communication." So he's got arthritis, well, you didn't build him to be flexible or fight. You built him to look pretty and translate. Everything else is bells and whistles. I think he was meant to stand in a corner for some rich merchant or politician and translate any language imaginable. Are you going to tell me that my car is flawed because I couldn't afford a $20 toaster to put in the dash?
Again, you're purposely overlooking terrible design. He is a communications droid that cannot do sign language and does not understand body language, nor communicate good body language. Body language is 90% of all communciation - a good protocol droid would be more like a stuffy assistant with excellent body language and fluent in 6 million languages - including sign language. There is no reason for him not to have human level or nearly human level range of motion. The technology required to make him stand on two legs and stay on two legs is vastly more complicated than allowing his arms to move around.
Uh, the second Death Star was never completed, you idiot. The rebels learned about it and attacked it before it had everything completed so anything like "four paths to the central core" or "exposed shafts" could well have been necessary during its construction. Haven't you seen Clerks or watched Robot Chicken's parody of Palpatine trying to talk to the foreman?
Why were there four paths to the central core? Why did they need to lead to the central core? When building a building, it's not necessary that the back door be a straight shot to the generator. In fact, common sense tells you that something vulnerable to attack should be well hidden and protected, and not have its sole protection be a shield generated on another planet. In real life, the first Death Star would have had a bend somewhere in the shaft, taking the chances of blowing the entire station up with a shot down an exhaust pipe from a million to one down to zero. For the Second, they would have put friggin doors (you know, like in the docking bay?) up if they needed ship access (dunno why they would, they have ship access elsewhere and one assumes they would design a way to get heavy equipment down there). The four huge tunnels were far more than they needed for exhaust.
He's a farmer. You should have seen the "vehicles" and ATVs I drove while working on farms. One was a modified bus with huge water tanks on the back and an upside down bucket for a seat. They make a Yugo look like a dream car. Are you going to complain about the blast marks and carbon scoring adorning the rag tag rebel ships next?
That was his car, not an ATV. It was designed for passenger carry, as can obviously be seen, and it was unmodified. He even complains about how un-popular it is since the new models
That's because republicans and computer rarely meet.
That's funny, cause see I work in an office full of engineers and software programmers, who work on their computers all day and automate their homes for fun (they are automation engineers, btw - you're not a geek until you write drivers in assembly to marry industrial automation hardware with your OS of choice), and every single one of them is a Republican, and some are hard-line conservatives.
It's also odd, considering I just saw on C-SPAN last night a conferance of people belonging to "RightOnline" - a group of right-wing bloggers.
Finally, what really gets me, is that Democrats only make up 36.8% of the population, Republicans make up 33.3%, and Unaffiliated make up 29.9% (everyone is up a point or two except the Dems, btw) as of August 1, according to Rassmusen.
Now, follow allong with me here, the US has a penetration rate of 74.7% according to internetworldstats.com. Assuming Republicans rarely use computers, and Democrats - 36.8% - plus Unaffiliated - 29.9% - equals 66.7%, where's the missing 8%? Well, obviously it must come from Republicans!
Ok, so assuming that's true, around 12% of computer users in the US must be Republicans. You say that's not significant, but look at it the other way! It means that a minimum of 25% or so Republicans use a computer, and that can hardly make a republican owning a computer a rare thing.
Since we've debunked the idea that Republicans owning a computer is rare, and since a large portion of democrats are old people (65% of whome don't own a computer) and elitist erudite snobs who shun technology (look at the senate, seriously, holy frickin cow!), clearly 100% of democrats and 100% of the Unaffiliated is not an accurate figure for computer use.
We can safely assume it's about 75% in each catagory.
In other words, you're an ass.
link to one that uses material that is in copyright?
You realize all photographs are copyrighted, right? It's no longer something you must apply for, it's been automatic for decades.
Have you seen the picture in question? in infringes on Time and the Joker...
The image in question can't infringe on both, as both were separate images orginially. Putting them together (i.e. replacing Obama with the Joker) is called Parody, particularly political parody, and falls well within fair use. So much so, that Flicker hasn't bothered to remove any other parodic photos from their website, just the Obama pic.
SCOTUS defined parody as "the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works."
The Obama pic is certainly a new composition, and it definitely comments on the original work. It is both making a comment on the TIME cover (by mocking it), as well as making an association between Obama and The Joker. It's all parody.
Have you ever watched Fox News? What their pundits like to do (at least when not attempting to cram their ideas down your throat via monologue) is stack a panel with a right-winger, a moderate, and a liberal. With themselves (often the furthest right-wing person on the panel) as moderator, they then attempt to make the liberal's idea look foolish. They often succeed, at least within a limited scope. The idea is to overwhelm them, but the panel is only stacked 2-1-1
Have you seen how MSNBC does it? It's normally a liberal pundit with one or two liberal guests - they "might" get a moderate, but they don't tend to like them. Then they bash right-wingers and, to me anyway, it all seems disingenuous. They don't often have the "panels" that Fox likes, at least not the times I've seen it, but their interviews are generally stacked 2-0 or worse.
Other news organizations like to do round-tables with groups of like minded individuals, but generally speaking for any news outfit other than Fox the interviews are almost always stacked two or three to one in favor of liberals. Often the only republican they'll allow is a moderate, decidedly non-conservative republican. John McCain was one of those, remember him? He was the media darling as long as the Republican party wasn't behind him. He was all over the liberal media. Now they mock him and openly loath him. He didn't change at all either, they were just done with him.
So which is more fair?
For the liberal equivalent of the Fox News pundits (like Beck or Hannity), watch Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. He's about the only liberal I've seen lately who makes an attempt to be fair - and he gets some really interesting discussions out of it too.
Yes, you can parody a public official, that doesn't mean you can use other peoples copyrighted material to make parody of something else.
Yes it does.
This has been seen many, many time.
What has been seen "many, many time" is that parody of all forms, so long as it changes the original copyrighted piece in meaning or content to a significant degree, is fair use. What is NOT fair use is reproducing a work in whole or in part without adding new content or meaning to the original that is significant.
You do understand what Parody is, right? Because you don't sound like you do. Parody and satire even have specific mention in the Copyright code.
Flicker, and everybody else for that matter, knows this is not copyright infringement. You can brows flicker for a number of parodies of Bush, and they never pulled those, because they are not infringement and everybody knows it.
They pulled it because Obama is sending business their way and/or someone in management at Flicker has a hard-on for Obama and was offended by the pic.
If someone from the Obama administration sent a note to Flicker demanding it be pulled, that's fucking censorship.
Flicker, by citing copyright concerns (which is bullshit and they know it), is basically saying the government made them do it.
Not that anything bad would come of a simple claim like that, but it could be construed as government censorship, since parody and satire are well established as fair use.
*h n, 've lst ll my vwls
Depending on how you interpret the rules of English - which always have an exception, only the "e" needs to come out.
You're more right than not though.
That's right.
In fact, the #1 criteria for being racist is being white, and the #2 criteria is thinking that there is such a thing as racism against white people exists. Coming in a close #3 is having a southern accent, and when combined with being poor you've got the top 4 ways of telling someone is a racist.
1. whiteface is not "criticism" -- it's racism
Damn, I had no idea, all this time it turns out all clowns are just racist motherfuckers.
2. censorship is not a unilateral action -- it's a government mandated action (i.e., anyone else can publish this image if they so choose without government recriminations)
From Meriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
Main Entry: 2censor
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): censored; censoring \sen(t)-s-ri, sen(t)s-ri\
Date: 1882
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable ; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable
Nothing in there about the government. You're right that free speech does not apply when a the forum is private is censoring something within their personal control. However, it's still censorship, which is generally frowned upon regardless of forum, and we certainly have the right to criticize the censor for doing it.
3. freedom of speech does not apply in non-public fora -- the forum owner decides what will fly, and what will not
An attempt by a non-government entity to censor outside the private forum is covered by freedom of speech, though that is not really the case here.
I guess it's time every American who wants to vote should have to pass the citizenship test -- or get the hell out. We'd have a few less republican'ts then...
If you think it's primarily the Republicans who would fail that test, you need to look again at who your powerbase is.
It's also disgusting to even think about going back the days when polling tests or other criteria (like land ownership) were use to prevent the poor, newly immigrated, and women out of the political arena.
Only the most despicable ingrates would attempt to cheat at something as important as democracy, but apparently you're all too willing to do so.
We would write the code in assembly, then run a couple of command line programs over it to compile it into something that would actually run on the chip, then burn it to the firmware.
That's an assembler, not a compiler. Assembly language is a unified set of mnemonics that translate into machine code. For assembly language to be assembled into a binary that the machine can run, you need an assembler that assembles assembly language into machine code.
Compiled languages (like C, C++, C#, Fortran, VB, etc) run through a compiler, which compiles the high-level language into what is the equivalent of an assembly language, before assembling it into the binary machine-readable code.
It's called a compiler because it takes the commands you entered in the source code and compiles all the instructions necessary to execute those commands into machine readable code. In assembly, you are already writing all the instructions in machine code format, you are simply using mnemonics to make it easier. The assembler replaces the mnemonics with the correct machine instructions and away you go.
There are also interpreted languages, like Java or Python and others, which are not compiled - they are assembled on the fly by an interpreter.
Programming in assembly is basically removing a step in the process, and it is very hardcore as far as programming goes. The only thing more hardcore would be programming directly into machine language, which needs no assembling or compiling. Of course, if you do that your code will only work on one specific type of CPU - like the intel 80386 or the 80486 or pentium pro, etc. The machine language for each of those is slightly different, programming in assembly avoids that pitfall. Programming in a compiled language makes your program portable across hardware architectures, and interpreted languages are potentially portable across all architectures and OS's - so long as a compatible interpreter exists for a given setup.
I mean it's not a commericially viable product, and if it's meant to spur research and development then why not chose some sort of free software license.
Says you, they stated in TFA that they are targeting embedded devices, where size and low-resource usage is paramount. They've got a full os+gui that runs quake (granted, not the most high-tech game) and fits on a floppy disk.
MS DOS didn't even fit on one floppy disk, and this is way beyond DOS. It will be interesting to see where this goes, they are currently working on multithreading and networking. If it works out this could be viable for use as an "instant on" bios OS for simple things like playing DVDs or browsing the web.
Obviously it won't replace Windows or OSX, but to say it isn't commercially viable is just a statement pulled out of thin-air.
Also, they did use a free license - the 32bit version is free to all, and the 64bit version is free to all but commercial enterprises.
It's not "open", if that's what you meant, but why should it be? Assembly is hard as hell, and that OS represents a lot of work by two guys, why should they give it away? Especially if they want to commercialize it eventually?
It's copyright, not readright. The copyright limits what you can -copy-, not read.
In this case, under the terms of the license you are free to use (i.e. "read") the program, free of charge, but as soon as you disassemble it your right to use the software is revoked. What's tricky with software, is that in the simple act of "reading" involves copying the program several times (moving it from one drive to another, loading it into ram, loading the machine code into the cpu cache, etc).
Now, reverse-engineering is legal, so this is not much more than a CYA on their part, and an attempt to discourage the disassembly of their product. However, technically speaking, if you run it through a disassembler your right to use the software is revoked. If it went to court, though, it would probably be considered a fair use given the case-law behind reverse-engineering.
Parody is dead.
Insightful satire is doomed, as the youth of today cannot percieve such a simple thing as sarcasm.
Zero tolerance works great, as long as it's a flexible zero tolerance policy. ...
...Should they ever become a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporate behemoth we will revisit the situation.
You mean like Sun, and soon Oracle?
Just because a product is free doesn't mean the company responsible isn't loaded to the gills with $billions.
Oracle doesn't have as many $billions as Microsoft has, sure, but they still have $billions. That Open Office is open makes it a choice target if it does, in fact, infringe on any patents.
Most people don't mind if there is some unknown business sticking it some other unknown businesses.
That's just it, the BSA doesn't "stick it" to anybody. All they ask is that you purchase licenses for any software you don't have licenses for, or stop using the software. It's exactly what you'd expect an organization like that to do.
With the BSA, it goes like so:
BSA: "We have proof you have not purchased 50 licenses, purchase the licenses or we'll sue."
BSA Customer: "Ok."
Now, if BSA Customer refuses to purchase the licenses, they'll get raped in court for up to $90k per license violation, but not many people are that stupid.
The RIAA, on the other hand, pulls this number:
RIAA: "We have proof you pirated 25 songs, pay us $10,000 or we'll sue."
RIAA Customer: "Can't I just pay the $25 the songs are worth to keep them?"
RIAA: "Pay up $10,000 now and admit all guilt or we'll take you to court for $10,000,000."
If RIAA Customer refuses at that point, you get RIAA v Thomas, where they too almost $2 million dollars for 25 songs.
THAT is why the RIAA is reviled, and the BSA is not. One cares about getting paid, the other cares about bludgeoning its customers to death.
Microsoft doesn't ever truly get rid of anything. Just about all the software they have sold in the last 10-15 years is still available from them, though not necessarily via direct purchase. Since the XP authorization is nothing more than a little algorithm they run, there is no reason to think they will stop re-authorizing old software for years. If they don't, you can sue them and become the next lawsuit millionare, if you like.
The real problem you will run into if you keep upgrading the motherboard and such won't be with Windows authorization, it will be with driver and feature support. If you keep upgrading, at some point you will be forced to upgrade to Windows 7 to upgrade your hardware at all (only a fool would upgrade to Vista at this point). So long as you are smart with THAT (i.e. getting the business or ultimate edition, not home), you will even be able to maintain full compatibility with your XP programs via the included XP VM. MS has apparently learned its lesson from the XP > Vista boondogle, XP > 7 won't hurt nearly as bad, and you will be able to take advantage of much better hardware.
No catch-22, you can still get Windows 2000 media via MSDN. In the scheme of things, it's not that expensive to purchase, $700 for just the operating systems and library, it scales up from there (up to $10,000 if you want VS2008, all server software, and an unlimited number of users). Both server and standard versions come with at least one license with the MSDN subscription (it's written on the inside cover of the CD case they give you), as well as physical media for just about everything MS sells. I've got every iteration of Windows since XP on disk, and when Windows 7 is officially released (I get the betas RTMs via a TechNet subscription) I'll recieve all the retail and volume licensing versions on disk. Nearly everything discontinued is downloadable via the online MSDN library as well.
MS doesn't give a shit about the media, they'll make that available forever (I'm not sure if you can still get Win98, but I'm tempted to say you can). They even give you pre-made .iso's so you can keep them on a central server and distribute/burn them as-needed. What they care about is, did you pay for a license to use the software?
Compared to the RIAA, the BSA is downright progressive. Some companies are still a-holes with wierd software protections, but the higher volume they sell, the less they care about protecting the media. It's all about the licenses.
The Business and Ultimate editions of Windows 7 have a built in Windows XP virtualization for exactly that reason.
Why the hell do think Vista was replaced so quickly and XP's life extended so long? They wanted to stop selling it when Vista came out, but they couldn't. Why?
You don't really think the reason Vista tanked and XP was extended was because all of us geeks were badmouthing its issues with DRM and resource usage do you?
Of course it wasn't, it was because businesses - Microsoft's Golden Goose, their cash cow - refused to upgrade due to compatibility with existing software. Expensive software. You think $20k per seat is expensive, you ain't seen nothin. What about a custom system that cost $10million to install for 30 users 5 years ago? Completely incompatible with Vista, you think that company is going to upgrade? HELL no.
But see, now that same expensive software can be run side-by-side with Windows 7 apps via the virtualization. Now they can upgrade at a cost of maybe a few grand per user, once the migration and configuration is done.
My laptop came with vista about two years ago, and maybe 4 months in it pissed me off so much I switched to Linux. There were issues that I found annoying, like the broadcast flag you mentioned (my laptop was never powerful enough to play anyting outside the monitor at any quality anyway, so that was purely ideological) and the heavy resource usage. But there were also some dealbreakers, mostly hardware issues that were taken care of with Win98 - like my USB mouse, a plain-jane generic usb mouse, I had to manually apply the generic usb mouse driver because Vista couldn't find it (it was sitting in with all the other drivers, btw). I found that unacceptable, and was on the verge of switching when suddenly Vista stopped recognizing my laptop keyboard. It was 100% Vista doing this, there was no hardware problem, this was a standard laptop keyboard with a standard interface protocol, and I was pissed. I could have fixed it, I do that sort of thing as my day job, but I found it unacceptable.
Fast forward a year and a half, and I started having issues with Linux. Little stuff, fixable stuff (most of it I actually did fix), the biggest two annoyances were getting good sound on all my apps and not being able to reasonably expect that a non-repository app would make and install correctly. Again I could fix all these problems, but I shouldn't have to. I wasn't doing crazy things with my laptop, just using it, and occasionally I'd see an app I wanted and it was a crapshoot whether or not it would actually compile and run correctly without work on the code or script itself.
That's probably my biggest gripe with Linux. In Windows, great effort has been put in over the years to ensure an application will reliably install and work on any windows machine. The OS may be different, which could break the app itself, but the install process is the same and - provided the executable is compatible with that version of the OS - you can expect the rogram will install without a hitch. There are even simple tools that snapshot your before and after system and build the install script based on that, ensuring that you won't miss a thing when you deploy the package. Why doesn't anybody do something similar for Linux? It would make things a hell of a lot easier for the end user, for anybody who wants to install a program that does not exist inside the repositories.
With Linux, often the assumption is made that you are running a similar configuration as the developer, and critical libraries may be missing and the response is just "well, you should have that already". Well, I don't, and now I have to scour the web to find the missing libraries - which also aren't in the repositories - in order to install an app.
A month or two ago I switched back to Vista, this time with SP2, and I'm happy with the switch. It's clean, nice, and works like it is supposed to. I probably didn't pay for Vista retail, but since it came with my Laptop I'll use it, and since SP2 I'm pleased with it.
Unable to configure the system as I see fit (unless I install a hack to make it work right).
The difference between Linux and Windows is, in Linux if you want to do anything outside of what Debian, or Ubuntu, or Fedora think you should need to do you have to hack it. Hacks and workarounds are the norm in Linux, and don't tell me it's not because I've used it off and on for the last 15 years. In Windows that only happens when you want to do something that is technically illegal (like removing/working around the broadcast flag). DRM definitely sucks, but you should be bashing your senators and congressmen, not Microsoft. If not for the broadcast flag and HDCP compatibility, the only way to watch BlueRay movies would be on a set-top box.
When you can play BlueRay discs on your Linux box, then you can feel superior about DRM in Vista. Till then, DRM isn't necessary in Linux, because you can't do it anyway, and that seems to be a common theme.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Windows is
Maybe because data is delivered over the internet via containers, called packets. These packets move individually along a path, change directions at certain points depending upon the destination, and they carry stuff.
There are other vehicles on the net, which are essentially the same but don't have the capacity of an ordinary data packet. You could liken these to cars, and tend to have a shorter range or a purpose other than carrying large amounts of data (broadcast packets would be the former, various handshake packets would be the latter).
The vehicle/highway analogy is nearly perfect for describing the way the internet works. It wouldn't work so well for describing say, token ring networks.
...you cum guzzling gutter slut pig whore.
Damn, we sure have come a long way from "draggle-tailed guttersnipe", haven't we?
...certainly not the case.
Woops, preview is my friend.