"Java has a single organization which sets/guides the development of the whole platform."----- you mean OWN don't you, or is it CONTROL? Let's remember that Sun could have allowed the language to become a standard but refused to give up control by turning the language over to either ANSI or IETF. In the end you have to question the motivation that decided upon that course of action. What do they stand to gain by keeping control of the language?
All good points. Yeah the guide that comes with AIW allows you to do some pretty refined searches by genre, actor, rating, format, etc. and you can set favorites by any of those but it ends up still be a somewhat manual process to record what you want. You filter out the favorites and click the little checkbox thing to schedule. Good points though for people wanting to weigh their options.
The service is Guideplus from gemstar and allows for regular scheduling (i.e. every monday, weekly, onetime, etc.) and then there is the hotword selection which allows the PVR to monitor channels and when a hotword which you've chosen appears it will record the program. Interface is extremely simple. The freebie software that ships with the card is actually pretty good quality. No it doesn't look for similar programs or "season pass" but then most of the Tivo users I've talked to hate some of the junk that gets taped using those features. I guess it's all up to personal preferences.
BTW "NVIDIA Personal Cinema Redefines PC Home Entertainment" all the features listed in that article ATI has had for the past 3 or 4 years now. (Hardware DVD, PVR features (adjustable compression, zoom, pause, cc, video magazine, multichannel preview, editing), 3d acceleration etc.). And while ATI is playing catch up in the 3d accelleration market I think some of the new hardware they've had come out has proven that they can play with the big boys like nVidia.
This is nothing new. My wife and I have been doing this for awhile with the ATI AIW cards. We have three computers running with the card and their default software (which includes guide and PVR functions) all hooked up over a home network. Movies can be shifted back and forth over the network and viewed from any machine/tv in the house. Additionally they can be DIVX'd and sent to CD, etc. It cost me around $150 for each card (the newer much faster Radeon is $200 and the even faster 8500 is around $500 w/RF remote). 20 gig hard drive is about $69 bucks...so for about 219 you can have most of the functionality that is offered by this set top box plus be able to play your favorite games on the big screen. Or you can overpay, or your can wait for nVidia to play catch up in this area.
The official stance of the Chinese government on religion is that religion == mysticism == backwards == innefficiency. Workers should never be innefficient in a communist country therefore religion should not be tollerated. Chinese are allowed to follow "religions" or practices that make no mention of miracles, magic, God, etc. If it's science based, it's good (makes me wonder why Scientology hasn't taken off, it's science based right?).
Chiu is a walking contradiction and the perfect representative for communist china's government and psuedo-moralistic stance.
Chiu:"No really it just looks like he's on fire and in pain. When it's all done there will be some dust left behind from the "secret process" we use but that's easy to clean up. Really he's being transported to a far away world, that's lush and green and has many naked women. And for 19.95 you too can go, please help us with population control by 'transporting' yourself to a better place."
First I didn't see anything serious in the article discussing an ACTUAL REAL LAW BEING LEGITIMATELY DISCUSSED that would bar new mothers from working. Just because two guys get drunk and start a pissing contest over what they should "make their women do" doesn't constitute actual discussion. And quoting some other Jackass doesn't make the issue any more legitimate.
The difference is that in the west we call an adulterer, liar, theif, what-have-you, names give them dirty looks at worst lock them in a cell for awhile and are on our way. In other countries they lob off arms, drop you in a well, behead you, sell you, or the least harsh but still cruel - disown you (you never existed). The so-called conservative movement in the US is a farce. A small minority of backwards buraucrats wants to pass some ignorant law that they think will help children while funnelling money to their favorite pet project. This non-sense happens all the time, morons wanting to send up bills that they no won't pass just to eat up time so the larger issues don't get voted on.
Additionally this is what the US has a judicial and executive branch for to balance out the airheads in congress. If the prez doesn't veto the issue the judges will deem it unconstitutional (especially when NOW starts chewing them a new one).
But on to the original point of my post. The poster before me equated "civilization" with technological superiority. Nothing could be further from the truth. Technology does not in and of itself define the civility of a nation/state. After all a civilization is made up of people not made up of the technology of the people. While the technology of the people says something about them, their treatment of others is what really defines who they are. So while the first poster took up the flag and said that the "west" (which way are you facing? China is west from where I am.) brought government trade etc. to the area assuming that those items would also bring civility compassion and western moral views (incorrect). The second poster to which I responded shot back with a statement about technology of street lamps which still addressed nothing about the civility of either people.
Now I'm not saying that there's no xenophobia or isolationism ( there's those six guys down in alabama still filing petitions to cecede from the union), but it's nowhere near as rampant as some people would want you to believe. It's like this ignorance with the "right" and the "left" the "east" and the "west". All that directional crap just depends on which seat you are sitting in and what conversation you are having. I sit beside people every day that call themselves democrats, republicans, left, right, easteners, westeners, and every day we break bread together and discuss the topical issues of the day and more often than not we agree on almost every single issue. The fact is that we agree on more than we disagree on, and you'll find that the majority of people sitting down to a serious discussion end the discussion in agreement despite rhetoric to the opposite.
Is the US civilization perfect, hell no, what civilization is? Do we act like nationalists and puff up how great are country is, hell yah! Tell me a country that doesn't! I'm sure the Romans looked at Christianity in much the same way as you look at Western Society. "Oh, it's just another silly stage". How many times has China's culture and government flip flopped, how many stages have they gone through, and yet they shout from the roof tops the age of their civilization and it's "stability and endurance". The civilization survived because of the people not the governments, not the technology, not the theology, the PEOPLE. And that civilization is still to this day defined by the way it TREATS it's people.
This has more to do with economics than anything else. What evidence do you have to show where MS "leaned" on a hardware manufacturer to not produce drivers. The key factor is market share. Linux in the past has been a hobbyist market, people taking older out of date equipment and running with it. The problem there is that some of the hardware makers for those machines no longer exist so the community had to make the drivers. The manufacturers that do still exist don't want to put forth the effort to support a product that they abandoned 4 years ago. Manufacturers also see very narrow margins for profit in a venture where Linux only holds about as much market share as Mac. So they look at the numbers and figure that they could get some good press by creating linux drivers for the 500-1000 people that still use their 4 year old video card, or they could spend that development money on their new product which will sell to a million people or more and make them millions.
Okay so you have a spammer; known, identified, caught in the act. How do you stop the spammer, shut down all traffic to that site from the backbone so that the site effectively dissapears? I guess that's effective, except that it really doesn't stop the spam from going out, it still gets sent but just never makes it to a destination. Additionally it blocks people who are legitimately and legally doing business from doing said business. That company could then turn around and take legal action against any company that willfully attempted to keep it from doing business. To date only a few states have any laws limiting spam and there is currently no federal law that I know of that does so.
Now if I choose to filter out spam or websites for ME, then it's my choice to do so. Just like it's my choice to turn the channel when a commercial comes on. I guarantee that if a company made a device that filtered commercials there would be thousands of companies lined up to bash their head in for loss of potential profit. Now the bashing wouldn't come because there's not a market for the product or because the product isn't good for or accepted by the consumer. The bashing and lawsuits would come from the disruption of legal marketing and loss of profit posed by the product.
All this hoohah about 'let the market sort it out' and 'let your money do the talking' is pretty much crap and I can give you one excellent example: AOL. Here's a company that's even more morally bankrupt than MS. They market a product using mostly peer pressure and spin. Their best product/service is pretty lackluster in it's performance and features and is one of the very few products that has ZERO handicap accessible features and ZERO plans to build such in. There's hypocracy, greed, heavy handedness, intimidation, lying, and a host of other reprehensible behavior that could be added to their pedigree. Most of the people you will talk to, current members or not, would agree with some if not all of the above, and yet year after year the company gains more subscribers, controls a little more of the net and a little more of the media. So don't come to me and say that lovely catch phrase "let your money do the talkin'". That phrase might work with some local business that can't afford negatvie press or the spin doctors that are needed to correct it, but it doesn't work on multimillion/billion dollar companies and companies that noone even knows they are paying (like above.net).
If you wanna take to killing flies with sledgehammers be my guest, but do it in your own place not mine. I know how to ignore spam just like I do commercials and better still I know how to avoid getting spam unfortunately unlike commercials. Make a law or set up some ethical guidelines and peer review boards and I'm all for it, but this crap just isn't the way to go
1. We only saw one do nothing goof and that was Jar-jar. The rest of his people seemed to be organized and diligent (large bubbled cities under water - does that sound like it was built by lazy people), but because they were peace loving they had little in the way of weapons.
2. How many variations are their in speech to create accents from before a made up accent begins to sound like one we already have. Likewise how many physical characteristics do we have that can be used before we begin to repeat what already exists.
3. Nobles? Except that the most noble of all the Jedi are made up of more races than any other group. Additionally the "nobles" with their "civilization" would also appear to be corrupt, greedy, and dishonest. How's that for a portrayal and stereotype?
4. There was one black security guard who also happened to have the HIGHEST ranking as the queens Captain of the Guard. You also leave out the fact that some of the Jedi are black.
5. Jabba is fat and corrupt. Who else is? The little shop keeper? What about the leader of Jar-jar's people he was quite large and yet honorable. Plus Senator Palpatine and other quite evil characters are of medium to slight build. For every fat evil guy theres a skinny one.
6/7. I think the corruption goes both ways. There have been some monarchies with benevolent leaders and their have been some democracies with benevolent leaders. You see the same thing in the movie. You get the idea that the Queen is not just a regal sitting up high on her thrown looking down. You also get the idea that Palpatine is going to use the democracy to insert himself as a monarch. So you see both a good side of monarchy (when it works) and the bad side (when it works FOR someone). Just as in any democracy there are people who are working for good and then there a those working for themselves. We see that very much in our current party systems in the US.
Again just like with Mummy Returns people take a little detail and put way too much thought into it.;)
The problem with your argument is that the law does not define what media you are REQUIRED to use to make your backup copy. Suppose I wanted to backup my BetaMAX or old laser discs to VHS or my tapes to CDs or vice versa. The law doesn't require that I back up a CD to a CD or Tape to Tape. The law doesn't demand that I use any particular type of equipment in which to perform my backup. So under your scenario that exact format copies should only be allowable if you purchase same equipment and media, where can I get a vinyl press so I can make backups of my Beatles records?
Management rejected the On-call scenario presented by the Union, therefore the Union did not get their requested options in the contract, which to me makes it sound like the Union LOST. So if the Union LOST how does it turn right back around and get it's way. How is the employee "right" by refusing to do his/her contractually obligated job?
To me this just sounds like the "bullet proof union employee" crap. Instead of Union employees showing what they are worth by doing good honest work and being an asset to the company that they work for they band together and hold the company hostage for more pay, less work, more comps. The company has very little it can do because if they refuse the contract the Union employees just slow production, walk away, or sit and because of other similar contract negotiations the company has little they can do to get workers back on the line except give in to the Union demands.
I've seen some crappy stuff done by Unions. Mostly it's mid contract renegotiations siting "safety concerns" - which typically get pressed while the extra money and comps part gets quietly stuck somewhere in the back and glossed over by the spinnners. "Oh yeah we are requesting a small monitary change, but the main issue is safety."
As you can tell my biased opinion is that Unions are just organized extortion, protection for employees but only the ones who pay. Notice some of the dot com layoffs that have happened union employees are the last to go. Not because of their intrinsic value but because of the contractual obligations set forth and the added cost laying off union employees would entail.
When you stop worrying about your job security you get lazy. I've seen Union employees come to work drunk, stoned, sleeping on the job, get hurt due to their own negligence, refuse work and yet the employer is unable to terminate because the Union won't allow it. Solidarity and all.
Back to the topic on hand: You should be able to speak with your employer and discuss your issues amicably. If you cannot do this it's probably a good sign that the employer you are with is not where you should be. There are many many companies out there that are willing to compensate their employees adequately for their time and good work. I would suggest that you approach your employer and if they are unwilling to set a monitary value to compensate you for your time they might find another mechanism for support. Collect some data to take with you such as yearly support cost from third party vendors, comparisons of other support mechansisms pros/cons, salary/hourly comparisons of other IT workers and plans. Market your skills show them that they should be paying you according to your worth to the company and the value that you bring in your service.
Personally I'm on call on a rotation basis, primary one week, secondary one week, then off one week. I'm not penalized if I don't answer a call because there is a secondary, as long as I'm not abusive about it. I can usually work out any out of town time with my coworkers to provide adequate support for the company. My compensation is my salary plus a yearly bonus equivelant to 10% (up to 20%) of my salary and a minimum of 4% (max 10%) raise per year, all based off of MY performance. This is what I negotiated with my employer for my valued services. Look at the task from a partnering point of view instead of a us/them point of view and things go amazingly well.
Neither side wants to admit it may have been their fault. Neither side really really want the FACTS of the situation to be known by thier public.
Both sides are waging a war in the media, bolstering public sentiment against the other party. Neither side is looking to educate their people on the viewpoints of the other culture. Both want to be able to say "See I told you that's just what that country is like, you see it now don't you!"
Both sides have alterior motives in the negotiations. There are little side issues that are going to come up, trade-offs to make, further "discussion". Both sides want to walk away with something they can show to their people. Like so many countries want to do "Hey look we stood up to the 'mighty' Americans and won." or just to say "We were right and you were wrong".
If either side were interested in the truth this whole issue would already be resolved. Investigators for both sides would take a look at the evidence and we'd have a conclusion on who exactly bumped who and then an apology would ensue or punishment depending on the nature of what happened. I find it hard to believe that a prop plane could so quickly change course as to ram a Chinese jet. It seems logical to me to assume that the jet was flying much too close in an attempt to scare and/or provoke the US plane into an "improper" action. This cat and mouse action happens all the time whether it's US/China or Russia/US. It's the nature of military might to attempt to appear threatening.
Mostly this is just a war of egos and agendas. No one wants to be an adult, everyone wants to be the "agressor" and end up "winning". We are constantly reminded (the US) that we are still a young country and should bow to the might of China which after all has survived for thousands of years. But technically isn't China in it's current incarnation Communist China a much younger country than the US? And assuming that China is by far the older country shouldn't it as a country be more refined and have past all of these petty rivalry issues long ago?
The hardest but best lesson that I have learned is that being an adult one has to face up to ones mistakes, take responsibility for them, name it and claim it, and then move on. With one old country that should be well into it's "adulthood" I ask that it's people ponder that issue. With one new country wanting to appear "mature" and "seasoned" I ask that they ponder how to get there.
Force, bullying, lies, and treachery are not the ways of a teacher nor the ways of a leader.
It should be noted somewhere that FIRST is a group started by Dean Kamen to get kids into science. He's got the whole idea that scientist should be revered like rock stars. I would say that slowly he's getting his wish.
These competitions are drawing crowds of thousands and seem to be harder to contain to highschool football fields and gyms. A big shift in the culture at least here in the US is happening. There are now 3 robot competitions on TV (BattleBots, Robotica, and Robotwars) with rumors of a fourth coming along. More and more toys are turning to scientific pursuits. The majority of people I know through work, church, and web spend most of their TV time watching TLC/Discovery/History channels instead of MTV/AllyMcBeal/Buffy.
While I think sports are good for our youth I wish that arts and sciences could get equal funding. And while the argument is that arts and science don't bring people in and get them involved and winning science teams don't seem to get people willing to part with money, I think that events like these disprove that.
Again this all goes to a matter of definition and degrees. It's been found that trees during a fire release chemicals that other trees consume and causes leaves to curl/turn etc. This could be seen as communication, communication would seem to be purposeful and require thought.
Our own thought can be seen to be defined as "A reaction to external stimuli". Our thoughts always turn to stimulus "i'm hungry, horny, drunk, lonely, etc.". The mind then chooses a path to resolve the stimuli and then the mind is off to other stimuli. Since all plants/animals respond in some way to external stimuli then they all, in essence, think, just not to the same level that we would want to define thought. To us thought is something more abstract and undefinable. I think we take this view to help seperate ourselves from the "lower" life forms on the planet, as opposed to lumping ourselves in and having to take responsibility for being part of nature.
When we deny that artificial life can have some of the same characteristics as we ourselves have then we begin to again show our own ego and vanity. We will eventually get to a point where the issue of rights for AI is discussed and will again try to show ourselves as superior by declaring the "faults" or limitations of other entities.
Actually yes my VCR does know who's using it, it has a lock on it and the cable box has parental control. My kids don't watch a movie unless I help them with it. They don't play games unless I've pre-approved them and set them up on their computer (the computer will prevent them from installing anything or running anything not in the list). They have limited access to websites (10 sites at present through the proxy server), anytime they want a new site or can't get somewhere they know to just come and ask.
Now while that might seem a bit draconian it's really not as bad as it sounds. The issue is that I have communicated with my children about what the boundaries are in their life at this point (my oldest of three is 6, and my neice living with us is 7). I've also explained to them that as they get older more and more responsibility will be given to them to make the correct choices. I fully expect that by the time they become teenagers they will understand the difference between right and wrong and be able to make their own correct decisions.
It's all about communication, giving your children the time and attention that they deserve and guiding them to become responsible adults. Where the problem comes up is that a great many parents are just too damn lazy to get off the couch or so wrapped up in "living their own life" that they don't/won't take the time to raise their children. For those parents V-Chip, Parental controls, proxy, filtering, rules are all just extra work for them that they already "don't have the time for". For the parents that are taking the time with their children all the extra control devices being implimented are tools to help them nurture their children.
As a parent I understand that I can't be in control, standing over, my child 24/7 but if I present a consistent set of rules, even helped along by technology, then I think I have a better chance than anyone else of having a child that follows those same rules outside of the home.
Oh and as for your "tried and trusted solution" it's bunk. I've seen 6 or 7 year old kids walk out of BlockBuster with violent (marked Mature) games and never get called on it. Having worked in a movie theater, I've seen plenty of kids go and see R rated movies and not be accompanied by an adult. The reason these hardware control issues are coming out is because those so called tried and true methods aren't being enforced and therefor aren't working. So enters another tool. And that's the issue here, you can look at this as a tool and either use it or don't, or you can look at it as just another hinderance/time waster/blockade. Which kind of parent are you or will you be?
Database goes kaput on first day, boss starts wondering what the hell he's paying you for, dumps you for contractor who does it right the first time and you go back to being head fry boy at McDonald's. Lucky you.
I dunno that article sounds like the problem is pretty simple and that thread safety can be acheived either through proper client calls or specific compile options.
This article assumes that you are having clients hit a webserver which is in turn calling the Jet ODBC driver to get at the database. From what I have read this is not going to be the case. The post states that Access will be used as the front end on the client machine it will make calls to the Jet ODBC on the client which will in turn call the database on another server (linux). Two completely different situations
I hate to bash you on this one but neither of the articles you provided really shed any light on the issue at hand and make the appearance that you are simply attempting to find ways in which to bash Microsoft. Microsoft fully acknowledges the fault in both articles, provides a reasonable answer as to why the problem occurred, and gives a reasonable solution. If you need unlimited users/high concurrency/24-7 support there are simply much better options to look at.
Note also that at the end of the article there are links to newer drivers. Some of the information in the followed documentation give the appearance that the issue is really problematic in Jet 3.5 but possibly resolved in 3.51/3.52
Being a long time (l)user of Access (since 2.0) I can say that it definitely has it's strong points. Want to create a quick front end point it at a database and go? Want to build a system to spit out some simple reports that others can use with excel/word/whatever? Want to create a small database to keep track of employee's, performance, general information? Access is a great way to do all of that without spending an ass load on development costs or high end server liscenses and hardware. Need something to hookup to a webpage, more than 50 people to use, handle more than a few hundred thousand records, like headaches? Access will not be your answer for those issues.
Use what works, stop trying to find excuses to further obfuscate the problems
Well as Apple begins to fail (again) it would appear that they are doing the great money grab by patenting other people's ideas as their own, meanwhile bitching about how everyone is copying them. Hypocracy!
So Apple has now harrassed several theme sites including Stardock about Aqua themes but I have yet to hear anything about them harrassing Kaleidoscope.net who interestingly enough make a GUI themeing software for the Mac. So then the question that begs to be asked/answered is "will Apple begin suing companies that offer software for the Mac and further cut their own throats?" I mean if they are so very interested in protecting their alleged IP then shouldn't they by law have to protect it across the board and not be able to draw lines over who they do and don't go after. Otherwise someone might be able to point out in court that Apple wasn't interested in truly protecting their IP but merely used the actions as a means to hinder other companies from cashing in on a trend that they themselves had nothing to do with.
Now if Apple truly has some unique method of skinning the entire OS GUI that's non-obvious then more power to them. BUT, someone else could just come up with another method in which to do it that is different than Apples and we all still retain the right to do what we want.
It's somewhat ironic that Apple started the whole think different phrase some time ago and yet what they really meant was "think different, just like us".
So by all the assumptions made, Genes are basically called upon like functions in an organic object oriented programming language. Each function can be called upon in order to create ever more complex objects/structures and dependent on the time in which they are called could effect the outcome of the created object. It would also appear that the organic functions will accept some parameter that would cause different structures to appear, so that one function can actually create more than one type of object (although the ensuing objects may have many of the same characteristics). Scientists are already using similar but very basic techniques in nanotech to create small structures and build upon them just through the combination of chemicals and the proper use of timing. So the next questions will be:
1) What is(are) the timing mechanism(s)? 2) what is the programming sequence that creates a certain structure correctly? 3) How do we control the process so that birth defects/organ damage can be avoided while not interfering with the natural processes of mutation and evolution? 4) Will we be a happier society in having the benefit of genetic correction of certain defects (ie. will we be more appreciative of what we have without the little natural reminders of just how precious life is)? Will we be as driven to succeed without certain adversity? (Would Stephen Hawking be as awesome/well known/driven/smart if he were not physically disabled?)
the Netscape argument just doesn't hold water anymore. I saw an interview in Wired before IE was even a player in the game and Andressen stated that (paraphrased) "We don't want to sell a shrink wrapped product. We want to package our software with new systems and partner with providers for distribution to the end user" and fairly soon after MS began doing that very thing. Then what happened? NS cried foul. Navigator after all was really a tool to help sell a back end server system software, it was never supposed to be the money maker even if it was the starting product. NS had aspirations of taking the server market and just never quite did anything that hit big. IMO.
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"Java has a single organization which sets/guides the development of the whole platform."----- you mean OWN don't you, or is it CONTROL? Let's remember that Sun could have allowed the language to become a standard but refused to give up control by turning the language over to either ANSI or IETF. In the end you have to question the motivation that decided upon that course of action. What do they stand to gain by keeping control of the language?
All good points. Yeah the guide that comes with AIW allows you to do some pretty refined searches by genre, actor, rating, format, etc. and you can set favorites by any of those but it ends up still be a somewhat manual process to record what you want. You filter out the favorites and click the little checkbox thing to schedule. Good points though for people wanting to weigh their options.
The service is Guideplus from gemstar and allows for regular scheduling (i.e. every monday, weekly, onetime, etc.) and then there is the hotword selection which allows the PVR to monitor channels and when a hotword which you've chosen appears it will record the program. Interface is extremely simple. The freebie software that ships with the card is actually pretty good quality. No it doesn't look for similar programs or "season pass" but then most of the Tivo users I've talked to hate some of the junk that gets taped using those features. I guess it's all up to personal preferences.
BTW "NVIDIA Personal Cinema Redefines PC Home Entertainment" all the features listed in that article ATI has had for the past 3 or 4 years now. (Hardware DVD, PVR features (adjustable compression, zoom, pause, cc, video magazine, multichannel preview, editing), 3d acceleration etc.). And while ATI is playing catch up in the 3d accelleration market I think some of the new hardware they've had come out has proven that they can play with the big boys like nVidia.
This is nothing new. My wife and I have been doing this for awhile with the ATI AIW cards. We have three computers running with the card and their default software (which includes guide and PVR functions) all hooked up over a home network. Movies can be shifted back and forth over the network and viewed from any machine/tv in the house. Additionally they can be DIVX'd and sent to CD, etc. It cost me around $150 for each card (the newer much faster Radeon is $200 and the even faster 8500 is around $500 w/RF remote). 20 gig hard drive is about $69 bucks...so for about 219 you can have most of the functionality that is offered by this set top box plus be able to play your favorite games on the big screen. Or you can overpay, or your can wait for nVidia to play catch up in this area.
Seven!
facetiousness is not nearly as fun when it's taken seriously.
The official stance of the Chinese government on religion is that religion == mysticism == backwards == innefficiency. Workers should never be innefficient in a communist country therefore religion should not be tollerated. Chinese are allowed to follow "religions" or practices that make no mention of miracles, magic, God, etc. If it's science based, it's good (makes me wonder why Scientology hasn't taken off, it's science based right?).
Chiu is a walking contradiction and the perfect representative for communist china's government and psuedo-moralistic stance.
Chiu:"No really it just looks like he's on fire and in pain. When it's all done there will be some dust left behind from the "secret process" we use but that's easy to clean up. Really he's being transported to a far away world, that's lush and green and has many naked women. And for 19.95 you too can go, please help us with population control by 'transporting' yourself to a better place."
First I didn't see anything serious in the article discussing an ACTUAL REAL LAW BEING LEGITIMATELY DISCUSSED that would bar new mothers from working. Just because two guys get drunk and start a pissing contest over what they should "make their women do" doesn't constitute actual discussion. And quoting some other Jackass doesn't make the issue any more legitimate.
The difference is that in the west we call an adulterer, liar, theif, what-have-you, names give them dirty looks at worst lock them in a cell for awhile and are on our way. In other countries they lob off arms, drop you in a well, behead you, sell you, or the least harsh but still cruel - disown you (you never existed). The so-called conservative movement in the US is a farce. A small minority of backwards buraucrats wants to pass some ignorant law that they think will help children while funnelling money to their favorite pet project. This non-sense happens all the time, morons wanting to send up bills that they no won't pass just to eat up time so the larger issues don't get voted on.
Additionally this is what the US has a judicial and executive branch for to balance out the airheads in congress. If the prez doesn't veto the issue the judges will deem it unconstitutional (especially when NOW starts chewing them a new one).
But on to the original point of my post. The poster before me equated "civilization" with technological superiority. Nothing could be further from the truth. Technology does not in and of itself define the civility of a nation/state. After all a civilization is made up of people not made up of the technology of the people. While the technology of the people says something about them, their treatment of others is what really defines who they are. So while the first poster took up the flag and said that the "west" (which way are you facing? China is west from where I am.) brought government trade etc. to the area assuming that those items would also bring civility compassion and western moral views (incorrect). The second poster to which I responded shot back with a statement about technology of street lamps which still addressed nothing about the civility of either people.
Now I'm not saying that there's no xenophobia or isolationism ( there's those six guys down in alabama still filing petitions to cecede from the union), but it's nowhere near as rampant as some people would want you to believe. It's like this ignorance with the "right" and the "left" the "east" and the "west". All that directional crap just depends on which seat you are sitting in and what conversation you are having. I sit beside people every day that call themselves democrats, republicans, left, right, easteners, westeners, and every day we break bread together and discuss the topical issues of the day and more often than not we agree on almost every single issue. The fact is that we agree on more than we disagree on, and you'll find that the majority of people sitting down to a serious discussion end the discussion in agreement despite rhetoric to the opposite.
Is the US civilization perfect, hell no, what civilization is? Do we act like nationalists and puff up how great are country is, hell yah! Tell me a country that doesn't! I'm sure the Romans looked at Christianity in much the same way as you look at Western Society. "Oh, it's just another silly stage". How many times has China's culture and government flip flopped, how many stages have they gone through, and yet they shout from the roof tops the age of their civilization and it's "stability and endurance". The civilization survived because of the people not the governments, not the technology, not the theology, the PEOPLE. And that civilization is still to this day defined by the way it TREATS it's people.
Unfortunately they continued to treat people, women especially, like cattle well past the point where Europeans acquired street lights.
This has more to do with economics than anything else. What evidence do you have to show where MS "leaned" on a hardware manufacturer to not produce drivers. The key factor is market share. Linux in the past has been a hobbyist market, people taking older out of date equipment and running with it. The problem there is that some of the hardware makers for those machines no longer exist so the community had to make the drivers. The manufacturers that do still exist don't want to put forth the effort to support a product that they abandoned 4 years ago. Manufacturers also see very narrow margins for profit in a venture where Linux only holds about as much market share as Mac. So they look at the numbers and figure that they could get some good press by creating linux drivers for the 500-1000 people that still use their 4 year old video card, or they could spend that development money on their new product which will sell to a million people or more and make them millions.
Okay so you have a spammer; known, identified, caught in the act. How do you stop the spammer, shut down all traffic to that site from the backbone so that the site effectively dissapears? I guess that's effective, except that it really doesn't stop the spam from going out, it still gets sent but just never makes it to a destination. Additionally it blocks people who are legitimately and legally doing business from doing said business. That company could then turn around and take legal action against any company that willfully attempted to keep it from doing business. To date only a few states have any laws limiting spam and there is currently no federal law that I know of that does so.
Now if I choose to filter out spam or websites for ME, then it's my choice to do so. Just like it's my choice to turn the channel when a commercial comes on. I guarantee that if a company made a device that filtered commercials there would be thousands of companies lined up to bash their head in for loss of potential profit. Now the bashing wouldn't come because there's not a market for the product or because the product isn't good for or accepted by the consumer. The bashing and lawsuits would come from the disruption of legal marketing and loss of profit posed by the product.
All this hoohah about 'let the market sort it out' and 'let your money do the talking' is pretty much crap and I can give you one excellent example: AOL. Here's a company that's even more morally bankrupt than MS. They market a product using mostly peer pressure and spin. Their best product/service is pretty lackluster in it's performance and features and is one of the very few products that has ZERO handicap accessible features and ZERO plans to build such in. There's hypocracy, greed, heavy handedness, intimidation, lying, and a host of other reprehensible behavior that could be added to their pedigree. Most of the people you will talk to, current members or not, would agree with some if not all of the above, and yet year after year the company gains more subscribers, controls a little more of the net and a little more of the media. So don't come to me and say that lovely catch phrase "let your money do the talkin'". That phrase might work with some local business that can't afford negatvie press or the spin doctors that are needed to correct it, but it doesn't work on multimillion/billion dollar companies and companies that noone even knows they are paying (like above.net).
If you wanna take to killing flies with sledgehammers be my guest, but do it in your own place not mine. I know how to ignore spam just like I do commercials and better still I know how to avoid getting spam unfortunately unlike commercials. Make a law or set up some ethical guidelines and peer review boards and I'm all for it, but this crap just isn't the way to go
1. We only saw one do nothing goof and that was Jar-jar. The rest of his people seemed to be organized and diligent (large bubbled cities under water - does that sound like it was built by lazy people), but because they were peace loving they had little in the way of weapons.
2. How many variations are their in speech to create accents from before a made up accent begins to sound like one we already have. Likewise how many physical characteristics do we have that can be used before we begin to repeat what already exists.
3. Nobles? Except that the most noble of all the Jedi are made up of more races than any other group. Additionally the "nobles" with their "civilization" would also appear to be corrupt, greedy, and dishonest. How's that for a portrayal and stereotype?
4. There was one black security guard who also happened to have the HIGHEST ranking as the queens Captain of the Guard. You also leave out the fact that some of the Jedi are black.
5. Jabba is fat and corrupt. Who else is? The little shop keeper? What about the leader of Jar-jar's people he was quite large and yet honorable. Plus Senator Palpatine and other quite evil characters are of medium to slight build. For every fat evil guy theres a skinny one.
6/7. I think the corruption goes both ways. There have been some monarchies with benevolent leaders and their have been some democracies with benevolent leaders. You see the same thing in the movie. You get the idea that the Queen is not just a regal sitting up high on her thrown looking down. You also get the idea that Palpatine is going to use the democracy to insert himself as a monarch. So you see both a good side of monarchy (when it works) and the bad side (when it works FOR someone). Just as in any democracy there are people who are working for good and then there a those working for themselves. We see that very much in our current party systems in the US.
Again just like with Mummy Returns people take a little detail and put way too much thought into it. ;)
The problem with your argument is that the law does not define what media you are REQUIRED to use to make your backup copy. Suppose I wanted to backup my BetaMAX or old laser discs to VHS or my tapes to CDs or vice versa. The law doesn't require that I back up a CD to a CD or Tape to Tape. The law doesn't demand that I use any particular type of equipment in which to perform my backup. So under your scenario that exact format copies should only be allowable if you purchase same equipment and media, where can I get a vinyl press so I can make backups of my Beatles records?
Okay I don't think I'm following the logic here.
Management rejected the On-call scenario presented by the Union, therefore the Union did not get their requested options in the contract, which to me makes it sound like the Union LOST. So if the Union LOST how does it turn right back around and get it's way. How is the employee "right" by refusing to do his/her contractually obligated job?
To me this just sounds like the "bullet proof union employee" crap. Instead of Union employees showing what they are worth by doing good honest work and being an asset to the company that they work for they band together and hold the company hostage for more pay, less work, more comps. The company has very little it can do because if they refuse the contract the Union employees just slow production, walk away, or sit and because of other similar contract negotiations the company has little they can do to get workers back on the line except give in to the Union demands.
I've seen some crappy stuff done by Unions. Mostly it's mid contract renegotiations siting "safety concerns" - which typically get pressed while the extra money and comps part gets quietly stuck somewhere in the back and glossed over by the spinnners. "Oh yeah we are requesting a small monitary change, but the main issue is safety."
As you can tell my biased opinion is that Unions are just organized extortion, protection for employees but only the ones who pay. Notice some of the dot com layoffs that have happened union employees are the last to go. Not because of their intrinsic value but because of the contractual obligations set forth and the added cost laying off union employees would entail.
When you stop worrying about your job security you get lazy. I've seen Union employees come to work drunk, stoned, sleeping on the job, get hurt due to their own negligence, refuse work and yet the employer is unable to terminate because the Union won't allow it. Solidarity and all.
Back to the topic on hand: You should be able to speak with your employer and discuss your issues amicably. If you cannot do this it's probably a good sign that the employer you are with is not where you should be. There are many many companies out there that are willing to compensate their employees adequately for their time and good work. I would suggest that you approach your employer and if they are unwilling to set a monitary value to compensate you for your time they might find another mechanism for support. Collect some data to take with you such as yearly support cost from third party vendors, comparisons of other support mechansisms pros/cons, salary/hourly comparisons of other IT workers and plans. Market your skills show them that they should be paying you according to your worth to the company and the value that you bring in your service.
Personally I'm on call on a rotation basis, primary one week, secondary one week, then off one week. I'm not penalized if I don't answer a call because there is a secondary, as long as I'm not abusive about it. I can usually work out any out of town time with my coworkers to provide adequate support for the company. My compensation is my salary plus a yearly bonus equivelant to 10% (up to 20%) of my salary and a minimum of 4% (max 10%) raise per year, all based off of MY performance. This is what I negotiated with my employer for my valued services. Look at the task from a partnering point of view instead of a us/them point of view and things go amazingly well.
Suffice it to say noone is free from blame.
The U.S. was spying (surveillance) so does China.
Neither side wants to admit it may have been their fault. Neither side really really want the FACTS of the situation to be known by thier public.
Both sides are waging a war in the media, bolstering public sentiment against the other party. Neither side is looking to educate their people on the viewpoints of the other culture. Both want to be able to say "See I told you that's just what that country is like, you see it now don't you!"
Both sides have alterior motives in the negotiations. There are little side issues that are going to come up, trade-offs to make, further "discussion". Both sides want to walk away with something they can show to their people. Like so many countries want to do "Hey look we stood up to the 'mighty' Americans and won." or just to say "We were right and you were wrong".
If either side were interested in the truth this whole issue would already be resolved. Investigators for both sides would take a look at the evidence and we'd have a conclusion on who exactly bumped who and then an apology would ensue or punishment depending on the nature of what happened. I find it hard to believe that a prop plane could so quickly change course as to ram a Chinese jet. It seems logical to me to assume that the jet was flying much too close in an attempt to scare and/or provoke the US plane into an "improper" action. This cat and mouse action happens all the time whether it's US/China or Russia/US. It's the nature of military might to attempt to appear threatening.
Mostly this is just a war of egos and agendas. No one wants to be an adult, everyone wants to be the "agressor" and end up "winning". We are constantly reminded (the US) that we are still a young country and should bow to the might of China which after all has survived for thousands of years. But technically isn't China in it's current incarnation Communist China a much younger country than the US? And assuming that China is by far the older country shouldn't it as a country be more refined and have past all of these petty rivalry issues long ago?
The hardest but best lesson that I have learned is that being an adult one has to face up to ones mistakes, take responsibility for them, name it and claim it, and then move on. With one old country that should be well into it's "adulthood" I ask that it's people ponder that issue. With one new country wanting to appear "mature" and "seasoned" I ask that they ponder how to get there.
Force, bullying, lies, and treachery are not the ways of a teacher nor the ways of a leader.
These competitions are drawing crowds of thousands and seem to be harder to contain to highschool football fields and gyms. A big shift in the culture at least here in the US is happening. There are now 3 robot competitions on TV (BattleBots, Robotica, and Robotwars) with rumors of a fourth coming along. More and more toys are turning to scientific pursuits. The majority of people I know through work, church, and web spend most of their TV time watching TLC/Discovery/History channels instead of MTV/AllyMcBeal/Buffy.
While I think sports are good for our youth I wish that arts and sciences could get equal funding. And while the argument is that arts and science don't bring people in and get them involved and winning science teams don't seem to get people willing to part with money, I think that events like these disprove that.
Our own thought can be seen to be defined as "A reaction to external stimuli". Our thoughts always turn to stimulus "i'm hungry, horny, drunk, lonely, etc.". The mind then chooses a path to resolve the stimuli and then the mind is off to other stimuli. Since all plants/animals respond in some way to external stimuli then they all, in essence, think, just not to the same level that we would want to define thought. To us thought is something more abstract and undefinable. I think we take this view to help seperate ourselves from the "lower" life forms on the planet, as opposed to lumping ourselves in and having to take responsibility for being part of nature.
When we deny that artificial life can have some of the same characteristics as we ourselves have then we begin to again show our own ego and vanity. We will eventually get to a point where the issue of rights for AI is discussed and will again try to show ourselves as superior by declaring the "faults" or limitations of other entities.
Actually yes my VCR does know who's using it, it has a lock on it and the cable box has parental control. My kids don't watch a movie unless I help them with it. They don't play games unless I've pre-approved them and set them up on their computer (the computer will prevent them from installing anything or running anything not in the list). They have limited access to websites (10 sites at present through the proxy server), anytime they want a new site or can't get somewhere they know to just come and ask.
Now while that might seem a bit draconian it's really not as bad as it sounds. The issue is that I have communicated with my children about what the boundaries are in their life at this point (my oldest of three is 6, and my neice living with us is 7). I've also explained to them that as they get older more and more responsibility will be given to them to make the correct choices. I fully expect that by the time they become teenagers they will understand the difference between right and wrong and be able to make their own correct decisions.
It's all about communication, giving your children the time and attention that they deserve and guiding them to become responsible adults. Where the problem comes up is that a great many parents are just too damn lazy to get off the couch or so wrapped up in "living their own life" that they don't/won't take the time to raise their children. For those parents V-Chip, Parental controls, proxy, filtering, rules are all just extra work for them that they already "don't have the time for". For the parents that are taking the time with their children all the extra control devices being implimented are tools to help them nurture their children.
As a parent I understand that I can't be in control, standing over, my child 24/7 but if I present a consistent set of rules, even helped along by technology, then I think I have a better chance than anyone else of having a child that follows those same rules outside of the home.
Oh and as for your "tried and trusted solution" it's bunk. I've seen 6 or 7 year old kids walk out of BlockBuster with violent (marked Mature) games and never get called on it. Having worked in a movie theater, I've seen plenty of kids go and see R rated movies and not be accompanied by an adult. The reason these hardware control issues are coming out is because those so called tried and true methods aren't being enforced and therefor aren't working. So enters another tool. And that's the issue here, you can look at this as a tool and either use it or don't, or you can look at it as just another hinderance/time waster/blockade. Which kind of parent are you or will you be?
Database goes kaput on first day, boss starts wondering what the hell he's paying you for, dumps you for contractor who does it right the first time and you go back to being head fry boy at McDonald's. Lucky you.
I dunno that article sounds like the problem is pretty simple and that thread safety can be acheived either through proper client calls or specific compile options.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/This article assumes that you are having clients hit a webserver which is in turn calling the Jet ODBC driver to get at the database. From what I have read this is not going to be the case. The post states that Access will be used as the front end on the client machine it will make calls to the Jet ODBC on the client which will in turn call the database on another server (linux). Two completely different situations
I hate to bash you on this one but neither of the articles you provided really shed any light on the issue at hand and make the appearance that you are simply attempting to find ways in which to bash Microsoft. Microsoft fully acknowledges the fault in both articles, provides a reasonable answer as to why the problem occurred, and gives a reasonable solution. If you need unlimited users/high concurrency/24-7 support there are simply much better options to look at.
Note also that at the end of the article there are links to newer drivers. Some of the information in the followed documentation give the appearance that the issue is really problematic in Jet 3.5 but possibly resolved in 3.51/3.52
Being a long time (l)user of Access (since 2.0) I can say that it definitely has it's strong points. Want to create a quick front end point it at a database and go? Want to build a system to spit out some simple reports that others can use with excel/word/whatever? Want to create a small database to keep track of employee's, performance, general information? Access is a great way to do all of that without spending an ass load on development costs or high end server liscenses and hardware. Need something to hookup to a webpage, more than 50 people to use, handle more than a few hundred thousand records, like headaches? Access will not be your answer for those issues.
Use what works, stop trying to find excuses to further obfuscate the problems
Well as Apple begins to fail (again) it would appear that they are doing the great money grab by patenting other people's ideas as their own, meanwhile bitching about how everyone is copying them. Hypocracy!
So Apple has now harrassed several theme sites including Stardock about Aqua themes but I have yet to hear anything about them harrassing Kaleidoscope.net who interestingly enough make a GUI themeing software for the Mac. So then the question that begs to be asked/answered is "will Apple begin suing companies that offer software for the Mac and further cut their own throats?" I mean if they are so very interested in protecting their alleged IP then shouldn't they by law have to protect it across the board and not be able to draw lines over who they do and don't go after. Otherwise someone might be able to point out in court that Apple wasn't interested in truly protecting their IP but merely used the actions as a means to hinder other companies from cashing in on a trend that they themselves had nothing to do with.
Now if Apple truly has some unique method of skinning the entire OS GUI that's non-obvious then more power to them. BUT, someone else could just come up with another method in which to do it that is different than Apples and we all still retain the right to do what we want.
It's somewhat ironic that Apple started the whole think different phrase some time ago and yet what they really meant was "think different, just like us".
1) What is(are) the timing mechanism(s)?
2) what is the programming sequence that creates a certain structure correctly?
3) How do we control the process so that birth defects/organ damage can be avoided while not interfering with the natural processes of mutation and evolution?
4) Will we be a happier society in having the benefit of genetic correction of certain defects (ie. will we be more appreciative of what we have without the little natural reminders of just how precious life is)? Will we be as driven to succeed without certain adversity? (Would Stephen Hawking be as awesome/well known/driven/smart if he were not physically disabled?)
the Netscape argument just doesn't hold water anymore. I saw an interview in Wired before IE was even a player in the game and Andressen stated that (paraphrased) "We don't want to sell a shrink wrapped product. We want to package our software with new systems and partner with providers for distribution to the end user" and fairly soon after MS began doing that very thing. Then what happened? NS cried foul. Navigator after all was really a tool to help sell a back end server system software, it was never supposed to be the money maker even if it was the starting product. NS had aspirations of taking the server market and just never quite did anything that hit big. IMO.