No, stars form however the rules of the universe allow them to.
P.S. Sorry, but it's one of my pet peeves when people anthropomorphize inanimate objects.
It is currently an unknown as to whether or not stars are living beings or inanimate objects. Our understanding of plasma physics and the internal electrical structure of stars is simply too small to tell for certain.
P.S. Sorry, but it's one of my pet peeves when peope assume we know more than we do.
(this is a little tongue in cheeck, but only a little: I don't believe for a minute stars harbor life or are themselves alive, much less intelligent--but that is a belief based on lack of evidence stemming more from lack of knowledge than any evidence to the contrary)
Studies of earth based photos/images and drawings over decades have also suggested the South Polar Cap has been shrinking for a couple of decades. Nice to see the MO data supports this.
Not only that, if we send humans to mars, we could examine CO2-ice cores at the poles and get thousands/millions of years of data there as well. THAT would be interesting to see--does it correlate strongly to earth's climate changes (implying solar/other celestial factors), or not? Maybe that is where the first human mission to mars should go.
But there isn't going to be any wheat in Nunavut any time soon. Soil profiles in the tudra are very poor. You need somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years (depending on your source) of grasses growing, dying, rotting into the ground, fixing nitrogen and building up a proper soil profile before you can grow wheat or any other major crop.
A new immigration policy for us Americans trying to flee North to escape the Jesus Freaks and their post-Nazi masters in the White House: You can come on in, but you have to bring all the topsoil out of your yard/farm in the process. Sorry city dwellers, a minimum of 50 cubic/feet per person, no exceptions (that rules me out).
Think of it as a poor-man's Terraforming of the erstwhile tundra.
Which part of EMBEDDED Linux startups didn't you grok?
Linux is one of the top, and arguably the top, choice for embedded projects. Hell, my wireless router/firewall/hub runs Linux, my TiVo runs Linux, even my damn cell phone runs Linux.
This isn't to say there aren't other products competing, but it isn't surprising that a free, open, portable, fairly lean kernel with more applications available than God has risen to the top, and to anyone who has done any work with embedded devices, it is no surprise that this kernel was indeed Linux.
The nearest example I could relate to would be getting a job offer (which isn't what this was either, btw) from the RNC. As much of a die hard liberal and Democrat as I am (and given that politics matters a lot more then software, imho anyway) I would not use this type of language in declining such a job offer.
Yeah, but you might not be quite so polite if the White Pride Party offered you a job, with insinuations that you'd be "just perfect" for the party.
Do not forget that patents can be struck down. And if a standard is adopted by an official body with clout, especially a government department, then they probably will do exactly this;
Also do not forget the software patents are an AMERICAN problem. Europe and most of the rest of the world have thankfully rejected this nonsense, despite the lobbying of Microsoft, IBM, Trading Technologies, and others.
The fact is, the same people pointing out that Bush was on vacation during the hurricane and he was too slow to dish out support while people were dieing are the same people who said he was too quick to dish out support when last years hurricanes hit Florida.
No, they are the same people that point out how Bush favors his brother's state over everyone else. Which is a problem for any citizen or taxpayer living outside of Florida.
It seems to be telling me what I can do with other software as well, not just the GPL software that I might be using.
No, you can do whatever you like with your software. But if you're going to incorporate MY software into your software, you damn well better adhere to the conditions of my license. Otherwise, use someone elses software or write your own.
In a company, somone can find it most beneficial and cost effective (sometimes, wrongly so) to support the browser that has 80-90% market share (I'm probably off on that stat, but that's not the point). However, when it comes to providing aid to hurricane victims, the government is simply not allowed to only provide to 80-90% of the people.
Sure it is.
Do you see anyone brave enough to stand up to the Bush family, or congress, or the state and local governments, for having provided aid to only 80-90% of the people during and after the mandatory evacation, much less during and after the storm itself?
Bush sat on his ass, on vacation, while people died and his incompetent, nepotistic administration did nothing, then too little too late, and turned around and blamed state and local officials who were reduced to using the media to get their pleas for help to the president because, as democrats, they weren't allowed by the president's handlers to talk to the man personally (for a number of days).
The fact is, they probably will get away with this, just as they have gotten away with a growing list of appallingly atrocious behavior that would have resulted in the impeachment of any other president, Democrat or Republican.
That one is bold. And is not a good idea IMHO. Almost every company today uses GPLed software, also those with software patents (e.g. Nokia, Motorola). Making it illegal for them will only make GPL enforcement harder.
Enforcement might be a better clause, and since the article doesn't reveal the exact wording, that may in fact be what is intended. I.e. filing for and receiving a patent may not invalidate your license to use GPLed V. 3 software, but enforcing the patent might be. An additional clause allowing a patent to be enforced if it has also been granted without strings attached to any and all GPLed software might be another stance.
You definitely don't want to hamstring GPL friendly companies from enforcing patents if they are attacked by Microsoft's patent portfolio, or make it impossible for companies to use GPLed software because they feel they have to file defensive patents, but you also don't want to allow Microsoft et. al. to use GPLed software when their policy is to destroy it via software patents.
So, perhaps the best approach:
"This License (GPL V. 3) is revoked if a person or company files for and receives a software patent and does not explicitly license any and all use of that patent to all GPLed software free of any requirements (monetary or otherwise) except those stated in the GPL, and if they ever seek to enforce that patent in a non-defensive matter. I.e. the only enforcement of said patent which will not revoke this license is one that is in direct retaliation of a patent enforcement action by another firm or person."
Of course, the lawyers would need to clean up the language quite a bit, but you get the gist.
GPL friendly companies can then patent software, use it to defend themselves against the depridations of Microsoft, Apple, etc., but any and all Free Software released under the GPL would be protected in perpetuity.
"Uncompetitive, indulged, and entitled" does indeed accurately describe our leadership, particularly our president, but that does not describe the average American at all.
We are on the whole overworked, more often than not underpaid, and almost never get enough vacation or time off to recover. One of the reasons people can't muster up enough energy to be outraged at their plight (and the list of legitimate reasons to be outraged to the point of taking to the streets in just the last 5 years is quite prolific), is because we are simply too exhausted after working a 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 hour plus week to be bothered to care.
"Laze about the ranch in the sun, refusing to meet with the distraught mother of a dead soldier killed in one of his pointless military campaigns, and remaining on vacation while New Orleans drowns" president.
Which shouldn't be surprising, since he has been on vacation nearly a fifth of the time he has been in office.
It should be no surprise he supports Bill's monopoly--he and Bush are peas in a pod.
Just a question. This patent seems completely stupid, but are there valid examples of patented technologies that anybody can provide, or does everyone here hate patents in total?
Not "everyone here" hates patents. However, many, many well-informed people do.
The Wright Brothers invention of the airplane is definitely a valid patent, if you believe in the patent system at all.
They invented the wind tunnel, did the science, gained an understanding of aerodynamics no one had had before, and were the first to be able to perform heavier-than-air powered flight, and repeat the experiment as often as necessary (i.e. they didn't just "get lucky and walk away from a somewhat controlled crash" as others have done, they could fly and control an aircraft over and over again).
They were awarded a patent and steadfastly refused to license it to a number of companies (including Curtiss Aircraft). Aviation technology was stifled in the United States -- Orval and Wilber were all too willing to sue anyone into oblivion who dared build upon their patented technology.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the American patent was not valid and aviation technology leapt forward in leaps and bounds. Remember, any invention more complex than the wheel builds upon earlier inventions (which in turn build upon earlier inventions, all the way back to the invention of fire, brick, the wheel, and arguably the use of a large Bison's femer as a club).
Enter World War I. The US is hopeless behind the Europeans (Germany in particular) in aviation technology, and the Wright Brothers still stubbornly refuse to license their technology to competitors (as is their right under the government entitlement to a monopoly on their invention that the USPTO granted them when it approved their patent).
What does the government do? What it always does in times of crises--it changed the rules, nationalized the Wright Brothers' patents, and licensed them for anyone and everyone to use. It was an explicit admission that patents do not, in fact, promote the development of the arts and sciences, much less technology, but in fact actively stifles it. Which was just fine, until war came and we suddenly needed that technological development we had been content to stifle before.
There are many other historical examples, but that should be sufficient to make the point.
The patent was valid by any measure: new, unique, well documented, and non-obvious. The Wright Brothers deserved to be granted that patent. That didn't make it wise, because the patent system of granting monopolies and restricting the use of new technologies itself is unwise, particularly in a competition-driven free-market economy.
In the old days, an announcement like this would have been an instant death blow to the competing company. I am happy to note these days it is a relative non-event.
Yeah, with pungent vapor like this, who needs Vic's Vapor Rub?
Chances are if this actually does come out, it will be late, vastly inferior to Skype, bug ridden, and have all kinds of "Big Daddy Gates wants to monitor your communications" crap built into it (for those Microsoft apologists who are about to collectively scream "that's unfair bashing of our Holy Order", I would refer you to the long, long history of Microsoft doing exactly that sort of thing, on all points.)
People stupid enough to use "Microsoft Phone" deserve to have their private communications posted to the web and broadcast on the six o'clock news. Think of it as social evolution in action.
Learn. I generally hate to make sweeping statements about any group of people, but Mormons are quite fucked up.
As one whose immediate family has been taken into that cult (and had their lives devastated by it), I can only add my voice to yours.
Mormons are quite fucked up. There is a brokenness of spirit that makes many of them quite recognizable in a crowd, a terrible fear of the world and an inability to cope with the tenants of mainstream society that is heart wrenching to behold. You won't see this in Utah, where Mormons surround one another, but it becomes readily apparent when you see one out of their element, in a crowd of "gentiles." Many of them are good people (a great many others are anything but), but their minds and souls have been terribly crippled.
When I saw the headline about the "Free WiFi trend", I foolishly assumed they were talking about actual free WiFi, like when a private resident or coffee shop opens up their 802.11g encryption so anybody in range is free to use it.
Sadly, they are talking about pre-billed, manditory WiFi, in which residents of a city are forced by the state to fund a WiFi connection with their taxes, whether they have better alternatives available or not.
When I saw the sign "Freeway", I foolishly assumed they were talking about actual free Ways, like when a private residence or rancher builds a road through their property and opens it up so anyone passing through is free to use it.
Sadly, they are talking about pre-billed, manditory Freeways, in which residence of a city (or state) are forced by the state to fund a FreeWay connection with their taxes, whether they have better alternatives available or not.
Now it seems we need three different definitions of "Free":
1. Free as in "speech" 2. Free as in "beer" 3. Free as in "pay for it or go to jail"
Network infrastructure (as opposed to services like webhosting, etc.) is extremely analogous to the highway system, including the lack of economic growth and monopolism that arises when said infrastructure is privately owned (think of the last mile of copper, and the 98% unused fiber that results from the baby bell's local monopolies, for example). Much of the FCC's efforts are a (failing) effort to mitigate this fundamental problem through regulation. Competative markets only exist, and work, when the underlying infrastructure is publicly owned. If we had privately owned highways, no little startup would even be able to drive to work, much less ship a product (or even receive parts to build their product) using their competitor's highway system.
San Francisco is doing exactly the right thing. There is a place for free market capitalism, and there is a place for public works. The Highway System, and Communications Infrastructure, are two examples of the latter.
Yes, I know the difference. I typically don't make a huge deal to differentiate between the two because they are virtually identical in the PUBLIC conciousness. I guess I just slip into that mode since I deal with non-IT folk all the time.
I agree. Let's streamline the language, since the dumbed down public can't grasp much anyway.
I suggest we refer to all worms, trojans, and viruses collectively as "marklar". I furthermore suggest we refer to those who install, create, use, benefit from, are harmed by, or unnaffect by, said "marklar" "marklar" as well. I would furthermore expand the definition to include all actions by said "marklar" as "marklar", as well (thereby streamlining cause, effect, action, and miliue as one all encompassing, comprehensive concept: "marklar").
Thus, quoting you:
Marklar, Marklar marklar the marklar. Marklar marklar marklar marklar a marklar to marklar marklar the marklar because marklar marklar marklar in the MARKLAR marklar. Marklar marklar Marklar marklar markar marklar marklar Marklar marklar with marklar marklar marklar marklar.
Terminology should always be dictated by, and pandered to, the least common demonintor persons discussing the topic they know nothing about. To do otherwise my be to do the unthinkable: educate the ignornant.
I believe his quote was, "Gramps, this game fucking sucks."
Real stand up grand kid ya got there, pops. So did you do a crummy job raising your son, and this is just the by-product of it, or did that loose tramp of a daughter-in-law result in that garbaged mouth punk?
Go back to church and prostrate yourself before your psychopathic, misogynous, murderous God and let the rest of us get back to living life--normally.
BTW why, since you work for them, are you still scraping up stories about John Kerry? The last time I checked he didn't actually win. Your guy did.
Perhaps because there is significant evidence that Kerry DID in fact win, and local republicans stuffed the ballot box (electronically and otherwise) in both Ohio and Florida, where traditionally very accurate exit polls differentiated from official talleys by a greater percentage than those in the Ukraine that sparked international protest and a new election.
This is bound to come out, sooner or later, regardless of how long Ohio continues to violate the law and refuse to release voter records and ballots for a recount (where they exist--electronic ballots cannot be recounted), and demonizing the other party will, of course, mitigate the social and political fallout somewhat, and may even set the stage for the American populace to tolerate another series of stolen elections in 2008 and 2012.
The hope on the extreme right is that everyone will "let bygones be bygones" and finally drop this matter. Then they can brazen out the public fallout of their actions without consiquences and continue to do what they like, irrespective of laws and the will of the American People(tm).
I suspect, however, that the willingness of the population to accept these sorts of abuses is about used up, Wallstreet Journal editorials and Junk Theology misrepresenting itself as Science notwithstanding.
Now THAT looks cool! As someone who uses multiple languages (English, German, a bit of French) and has to keep a piece of paper with keycodes attached when entering numbers in sexagesimal truetype fonts in openoffice, this keyboard would be perfect. Please say there will be ways to program the layout AND key displays under GNU/Linux. The help when using sexagesimal would be worth it alone!
When you have billions you can be really generous with millions. The price of good advertising is probably higher. Giving the paltry five million away buys a lot of good will from New York state.
Not only that, one is also forced to wonder what sorts of "cybercrime" this money is targeted at. Will it be used to go after phishers, spammers, virus, trojan, and worm authors, or will it be used to persecute teenagers trading Britanny Spears tunes and television episodes they forgot to tivo (or don't receive in their area, like particular british sitcoms not broadcast in the ever-more-prudush United States)?
It isn't a given that this money is going toward "the public good" at all. It could be driving a particular agenda many here would consider anti-social at best (legalities aside).
One would hope not, but without further information, and given Microsoft's past behavior in other areas, we probably should reserve judgement (and maintain some skepticisms) until we know more.
I didn't claim that there are no alternatives, I just said that GMail notifier is Windows only, though Google has promised (a long time ago) to port it to Linux and Mac OS X.
As another said, I'd rather they used those resources to port google earth to Linux instead. My gmail notifier plugin in firefox works just fine, and as others have said, if I want a notifier on my desktop I can use any atom/rss feed notifier and plop it into my KDE toolbar.
The problem that GMail notifier solves has already been solved several other ways. Far better to put one's resources into solving problems that haven't been solved--like not being able to run google earth on anything but a monopolist's shoddy operating system.
Open Office Version 1.9.122 (2.0-beta) is quite good for this.
Load Micro$oft Word file.
Export to HTML/PDF/whatever format you like. I've used it for my novel, and use both export-as-pdf and save-as-html, and with the exception of multi-columned text, saving as HTML works perfectly. Saving as PDF works perfectly for everything (including multicolumned entries and embedded fonts), as this example shows.
We Just need to switch from base-10 to sexagesimal (base-60). Degrees, minutes, seconds (angle) and minutes/seconds (time) will already be set. Just start using 60 hours in a day instead of the archaic 24-hours we're used to, and switch all the other units to base-60 as well, and everything will be hunkydory.
Oh, and dump daylight savings time too. It's even more annoying than base-10. Of course, some people will need to grow an extra fifty fingers to keep count in base-60, but I look at that as more of a challenge in bio and genetic engineering than a "problem" per se.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
No, stars form however the rules of the universe allow them to.
P.S. Sorry, but it's one of my pet peeves when people anthropomorphize inanimate objects.
It is currently an unknown as to whether or not stars are living beings or inanimate objects. Our understanding of plasma physics and the internal electrical structure of stars is simply too small to tell for certain.
P.S. Sorry, but it's one of my pet peeves when peope assume we know more than we do.
(this is a little tongue in cheeck, but only a little: I don't believe for a minute stars harbor life or are themselves alive, much less intelligent--but that is a belief based on lack of evidence stemming more from lack of knowledge than any evidence to the contrary)
There is more than 3 years worth of data.
Studies of earth based photos/images and drawings over decades have also suggested the South Polar Cap has been shrinking for a couple of decades. Nice to see the MO data supports this.
Not only that, if we send humans to mars, we could examine CO2-ice cores at the poles and get thousands/millions of years of data there as well. THAT would be interesting to see--does it correlate strongly to earth's climate changes (implying solar/other celestial factors), or not? Maybe that is where the first human mission to mars should go.
But there isn't going to be any wheat in Nunavut any time soon. Soil profiles in the tudra are very poor. You need somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years (depending on your source) of grasses growing, dying, rotting into the ground, fixing nitrogen and building up a proper soil profile before you can grow wheat or any other major crop.
A new immigration policy for us Americans trying to flee North to escape the Jesus Freaks and their post-Nazi masters in the White House: You can come on in, but you have to bring all the topsoil out of your yard/farm in the process. Sorry city dwellers, a minimum of 50 cubic/feet per person, no exceptions (that rules me out).
Think of it as a poor-man's Terraforming of the erstwhile tundra.
Which part of EMBEDDED Linux startups didn't you grok?
Linux is one of the top, and arguably the top, choice for embedded projects. Hell, my wireless router/firewall/hub runs Linux, my TiVo runs Linux, even my damn cell phone runs Linux.
This isn't to say there aren't other products competing, but it isn't surprising that a free, open, portable, fairly lean kernel with more applications available than God has risen to the top, and to anyone who has done any work with embedded devices, it is no surprise that this kernel was indeed Linux.
The nearest example I could relate to would be getting a job offer (which isn't what this was either, btw) from the RNC. As much of a die hard liberal and Democrat as I am (and given that politics matters a lot more then software, imho anyway) I would not use this type of language in declining such a job offer.
... my bad.
Yeah, but you might not be quite so polite if the White Pride Party offered you a job, with insinuations that you'd be "just perfect" for the party.
Oh wait, that was your example
*duck*
Do not forget that patents can be struck down. And if a standard is adopted by an official body with clout, especially a government department, then they probably will do exactly this;
Also do not forget the software patents are an AMERICAN problem. Europe and most of the rest of the world have thankfully rejected this nonsense, despite the lobbying of Microsoft, IBM, Trading Technologies, and others.
The fact is, the same people pointing out that Bush was on vacation during the hurricane and he was too slow to dish out support while people were dieing are the same people who said he was too quick to dish out support when last years hurricanes hit Florida.
No, they are the same people that point out how Bush favors his brother's state over everyone else. Which is a problem for any citizen or taxpayer living outside of Florida.
It seems to be telling me what I can do with other software as well, not just the GPL software that I might be using.
No, you can do whatever you like with your software. But if you're going to incorporate MY software into your software, you damn well better adhere to the conditions of my license. Otherwise, use someone elses software or write your own.
In a company, somone can find it most beneficial and cost effective (sometimes, wrongly so) to support the browser that has 80-90% market share (I'm probably off on that stat, but that's not the point). However, when it comes to providing aid to hurricane victims, the government is simply not allowed to only provide to 80-90% of the people.
Sure it is.
Do you see anyone brave enough to stand up to the Bush family, or congress, or the state and local governments, for having provided aid to only 80-90% of the people during and after the mandatory evacation, much less during and after the storm itself?
Bush sat on his ass, on vacation, while people died and his incompetent, nepotistic administration did nothing, then too little too late, and turned around and blamed state and local officials who were reduced to using the media to get their pleas for help to the president because, as democrats, they weren't allowed by the president's handlers to talk to the man personally (for a number of days).
The fact is, they probably will get away with this, just as they have gotten away with a growing list of appallingly atrocious behavior that would have resulted in the impeachment of any other president, Democrat or Republican.
That one is bold. And is not a good idea IMHO. Almost every company today uses GPLed software, also those with software patents (e.g. Nokia, Motorola). Making it illegal for them will only make GPL enforcement harder.
Enforcement might be a better clause, and since the article doesn't reveal the exact wording, that may in fact be what is intended. I.e. filing for and receiving a patent may not invalidate your license to use GPLed V. 3 software, but enforcing the patent might be. An additional clause allowing a patent to be enforced if it has also been granted without strings attached to any and all GPLed software might be another stance.
You definitely don't want to hamstring GPL friendly companies from enforcing patents if they are attacked by Microsoft's patent portfolio, or make it impossible for companies to use GPLed software because they feel they have to file defensive patents, but you also don't want to allow Microsoft et. al. to use GPLed software when their policy is to destroy it via software patents.
So, perhaps the best approach:
"This License (GPL V. 3) is revoked if a person or company files for and receives a software patent and does not explicitly license any and all use of that patent to all GPLed software free of any requirements (monetary or otherwise) except those stated in the GPL, and if they ever seek to enforce that patent in a non-defensive matter. I.e. the only enforcement of said patent which will not revoke this license is one that is in direct retaliation of a patent enforcement action by another firm or person."
Of course, the lawyers would need to clean up the language quite a bit, but you get the gist.
GPL friendly companies can then patent software, use it to defend themselves against the depridations of Microsoft, Apple, etc., but any and all Free Software released under the GPL would be protected in perpetuity.
Indulged, entitled.
"Uncompetitive, indulged, and entitled" does indeed accurately describe our leadership, particularly our president, but that does not describe the average American at all.
We are on the whole overworked, more often than not underpaid, and almost never get enough vacation or time off to recover. One of the reasons people can't muster up enough energy to be outraged at their plight (and the list of legitimate reasons to be outraged to the point of taking to the streets in just the last 5 years is quite prolific), is because we are simply too exhausted after working a 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 hour plus week to be bothered to care.
Which of course, is the intent.
"fiddle-while-Rome-burns" president
Or, indeed, "fiddle-while-New Orleans-drowns".
I believe that is more correctly:
"Laze about the ranch in the sun, refusing to meet with the distraught mother of a dead soldier killed in one of his pointless military campaigns, and remaining on vacation while New Orleans drowns" president.
Which shouldn't be surprising, since he has been on vacation nearly a fifth of the time he has been in office.
It should be no surprise he supports Bill's monopoly--he and Bush are peas in a pod.
Just a question. This patent seems completely stupid, but are there valid examples of patented technologies that anybody can provide, or does everyone here hate patents in total?
Not "everyone here" hates patents. However, many, many well-informed people do.
The Wright Brothers invention of the airplane is definitely a valid patent, if you believe in the patent system at all.
They invented the wind tunnel, did the science, gained an understanding of aerodynamics no one had had before, and were the first to be able to perform heavier-than-air powered flight, and repeat the experiment as often as necessary (i.e. they didn't just "get lucky and walk away from a somewhat controlled crash" as others have done, they could fly and control an aircraft over and over again).
They were awarded a patent and steadfastly refused to license it to a number of companies (including Curtiss Aircraft). Aviation technology was stifled in the United States -- Orval and Wilber were all too willing to sue anyone into oblivion who dared build upon their patented technology.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the American patent was not valid and aviation technology leapt forward in leaps and bounds. Remember, any invention more complex than the wheel builds upon earlier inventions (which in turn build upon earlier inventions, all the way back to the invention of fire, brick, the wheel, and arguably the use of a large Bison's femer as a club).
Enter World War I. The US is hopeless behind the Europeans (Germany in particular) in aviation technology, and the Wright Brothers still stubbornly refuse to license their technology to competitors (as is their right under the government entitlement to a monopoly on their invention that the USPTO granted them when it approved their patent).
What does the government do? What it always does in times of crises--it changed the rules, nationalized the Wright Brothers' patents, and licensed them for anyone and everyone to use. It was an explicit admission that patents do not, in fact, promote the development of the arts and sciences, much less technology, but in fact actively stifles it. Which was just fine, until war came and we suddenly needed that technological development we had been content to stifle before.
There are many other historical examples, but that should be sufficient to make the point.
The patent was valid by any measure: new, unique, well documented, and non-obvious. The Wright Brothers deserved to be granted that patent. That didn't make it wise, because the patent system of granting monopolies and restricting the use of new technologies itself is unwise, particularly in a competition-driven free-market economy.
In the old days, an announcement like this would have been an instant death blow to the competing company. I am happy to note these days it is a relative non-event.
Yeah, with pungent vapor like this, who needs Vic's Vapor Rub?
Chances are if this actually does come out, it will be late, vastly inferior to Skype, bug ridden, and have all kinds of "Big Daddy Gates wants to monitor your communications" crap built into it (for those Microsoft apologists who are about to collectively scream "that's unfair bashing of our Holy Order", I would refer you to the long, long history of Microsoft doing exactly that sort of thing, on all points.)
People stupid enough to use "Microsoft Phone" deserve to have their private communications posted to the web and broadcast on the six o'clock news. Think of it as social evolution in action.
I think you need some education about what Mormonism is and what they really believe in.
Your education begins here: http://www.exmormon.org/
Learn. I generally hate to make sweeping statements about any group of people, but Mormons are quite fucked up.
As one whose immediate family has been taken into that cult (and had their lives devastated by it), I can only add my voice to yours.
Mormons are quite fucked up. There is a brokenness of spirit that makes many of them quite recognizable in a crowd, a terrible fear of the world and an inability to cope with the tenants of mainstream society that is heart wrenching to behold. You won't see this in Utah, where Mormons surround one another, but it becomes readily apparent when you see one out of their element, in a crowd of "gentiles." Many of them are good people (a great many others are anything but), but their minds and souls have been terribly crippled.
Sadly, they are talking about pre-billed, manditory WiFi, in which residents of a city are forced by the state to fund a WiFi connection with their taxes, whether they have better alternatives available or not.
Network infrastructure (as opposed to services like webhosting, etc.) is extremely analogous to the highway system, including the lack of economic growth and monopolism that arises when said infrastructure is privately owned (think of the last mile of copper, and the 98% unused fiber that results from the baby bell's local monopolies, for example). Much of the FCC's efforts are a (failing) effort to mitigate this fundamental problem through regulation. Competative markets only exist, and work, when the underlying infrastructure is publicly owned. If we had privately owned highways, no little startup would even be able to drive to work, much less ship a product (or even receive parts to build their product) using their competitor's highway system.
San Francisco is doing exactly the right thing. There is a place for free market capitalism, and there is a place for public works. The Highway System, and Communications Infrastructure, are two examples of the latter.
Yes, I know the difference. I typically don't make a huge deal to differentiate between the two because they are virtually identical in the PUBLIC conciousness. I guess I just slip into that mode since I deal with non-IT folk all the time.
I agree. Let's streamline the language, since the dumbed down public can't grasp much anyway.
I suggest we refer to all worms, trojans, and viruses collectively as "marklar". I furthermore suggest we refer to those who install, create, use, benefit from, are harmed by, or unnaffect by, said "marklar" "marklar" as well. I would furthermore expand the definition to include all actions by said "marklar" as "marklar", as well (thereby streamlining cause, effect, action, and miliue as one all encompassing, comprehensive concept: "marklar").
Thus, quoting you:
Marklar, Marklar marklar the marklar. Marklar marklar marklar marklar a marklar to marklar marklar the marklar because marklar marklar marklar in the MARKLAR marklar. Marklar marklar Marklar marklar markar marklar marklar Marklar marklar with marklar marklar marklar marklar.
Terminology should always be dictated by, and pandered to, the least common demonintor persons discussing the topic they know nothing about. To do otherwise my be to do the unthinkable: educate the ignornant.
I believe his quote was, "Gramps, this game fucking sucks."
Real stand up grand kid ya got there, pops. So did you do a crummy job raising your son, and this is just the by-product of it, or did that loose tramp of a daughter-in-law result in that garbaged mouth punk?
Go back to church and prostrate yourself before your psychopathic, misogynous, murderous God and let the rest of us get back to living life--normally.
BTW why, since you work for them, are you still scraping up stories about John Kerry? The last time I checked he didn't actually win. Your guy did.
Perhaps because there is significant evidence that Kerry DID in fact win, and local republicans stuffed the ballot box (electronically and otherwise) in both Ohio and Florida, where traditionally very accurate exit polls differentiated from official talleys by a greater percentage than those in the Ukraine that sparked international protest and a new election.
This is bound to come out, sooner or later, regardless of how long Ohio continues to violate the law and refuse to release voter records and ballots for a recount (where they exist--electronic ballots cannot be recounted), and demonizing the other party will, of course, mitigate the social and political fallout somewhat, and may even set the stage for the American populace to tolerate another series of stolen elections in 2008 and 2012.
The hope on the extreme right is that everyone will "let bygones be bygones" and finally drop this matter. Then they can brazen out the public fallout of their actions without consiquences and continue to do what they like, irrespective of laws and the will of the American People(tm).
I suspect, however, that the willingness of the population to accept these sorts of abuses is about used up, Wallstreet Journal editorials and Junk Theology misrepresenting itself as Science notwithstanding.
Logitech definitely isn't the first company to consider a keyboard which can be used for gaming. I'm really excited about: http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/
Now THAT looks cool! As someone who uses multiple languages (English, German, a bit of French) and has to keep a piece of paper with keycodes attached when entering numbers in sexagesimal truetype fonts in openoffice, this keyboard would be perfect. Please say there will be ways to program the layout AND key displays under GNU/Linux. The help when using sexagesimal would be worth it alone!
When you have billions you can be really generous with millions. The price of good advertising is probably higher. Giving the paltry five million away buys a lot of good will from New York state.
Not only that, one is also forced to wonder what sorts of "cybercrime" this money is targeted at. Will it be used to go after phishers, spammers, virus, trojan, and worm authors, or will it be used to persecute teenagers trading Britanny Spears tunes and television episodes they forgot to tivo (or don't receive in their area, like particular british sitcoms not broadcast in the ever-more-prudush United States)?
It isn't a given that this money is going toward "the public good" at all. It could be driving a particular agenda many here would consider anti-social at best (legalities aside).
One would hope not, but without further information, and given Microsoft's past behavior in other areas, we probably should reserve judgement (and maintain some skepticisms) until we know more.
I didn't claim that there are no alternatives, I just said that GMail notifier is Windows only, though Google has promised (a long time ago) to port it to Linux and Mac OS X.
As another said, I'd rather they used those resources to port google earth to Linux instead. My gmail notifier plugin in firefox works just fine, and as others have said, if I want a notifier on my desktop I can use any atom/rss feed notifier and plop it into my KDE toolbar.
The problem that GMail notifier solves has already been solved several other ways. Far better to put one's resources into solving problems that haven't been solved--like not being able to run google earth on anything but a monopolist's shoddy operating system.
Open Office Version 1.9.122 (2.0-beta) is quite good for this.
Load Micro$oft Word file.
Export to HTML/PDF/whatever format you like. I've used it for my novel, and use both export-as-pdf and save-as-html, and with the exception of multi-columned text, saving as HTML works perfectly. Saving as PDF works perfectly for everything (including multicolumned entries and embedded fonts), as this example shows.
Don't push for getting rid of base 60 time, push to change our number system to base 12.
How about base-60 instead>
And while on the topic... who thought up this crazy 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day.
:-)
:-)
We need metric time damn it!
Metric-60 is the answer my friend.
We Just need to switch from base-10 to sexagesimal (base-60). Degrees, minutes, seconds (angle) and minutes/seconds (time) will already be set. Just start using 60 hours in a day instead of the archaic 24-hours we're used to, and switch all the other units to base-60 as well, and everything will be hunkydory.
Oh, and dump daylight savings time too. It's even more annoying than base-10. Of course, some people will need to grow an extra fifty fingers to keep count in base-60, but I look at that as more of a challenge in bio and genetic engineering than a "problem" per se.