I certainly support full and fair trials (international terrorism is trickier)
I don't see what's "trickier" about it. We should lead in terms of rule of law by insisting that everybody, US citizen or not, domestic or abroad, get a fair trial.
But when we do confirm that somebody was, indeed, a terrorist in the strict sense... well, part of the reason the courts exist, helping us separate the innocent from the guilty, is so that we can then go on to wipe the guilty ones off the face of the Earth without any reservations.
The intended purpose of courts is not retribution, it is utilitarian, and for good reason.
The Total FUD: It only affects SOME Free liscences. Even if the APIs are confidential, this does NOT stop BSD code, but only viral liscences like GPL.
The GPL quite clearly says that the OS can be under whatever license it wants to be. GPL'ed software runs on SunOS, Solaris, Windows, AIX, Symbian, and lots of other systems with weird licenses. GPL software does not infect software that isn't derived from it in some way.
The problem here is that Apple is trying to be viral and infect software that they did not develop. The GPLv3 just says that it won't allow itself to be infected by viral corporate licenses.
I've owned about a dozen Macs over the years. I'm so pissed of about Apple's recent bullshit that I'm not going to buy another Apple product until they change or hell freezes over.
May Apple II had an SSD disk. Sun workstations had them. They have been used with and without battery backup, as a write cache for disks, to speed up NFS, whatever. Since the disk controller and disk driver imposes such overhead, it matters little what you do on the card, other than a little write leveling and parallel I/O for slow flash. Whatever you do with them is trivial engineering.
What's next? Patents on blinkenlights? Patents on the power switch?
If it wasn't clear to you that governments love to use "terrorism" to demonize inconvenient political, social, or economic movements, you really haven't been paying attention. This has been going for as long as there have been governments.
For a stupid and corrupt movie script writer to do this really is only the tip of the iceberg.
The emulator appears to work by downloading big chunks of the runtime environment from Google. That doesn't remove "lock in", because Google has both legal and technical means for stopping that.
What is needed is either an open source implementation, or for Google to release the runtime in open source form.
Geez, don't these people get that lowering the price of a product (even down to zero) is (1) what the free market is supposed to accomplish, and (2) good for everybody other than the people who keep selling overpriced shit?
What's next? Mother Theresa terrorists try to destroy the food industry by giving away free soup to the poor?
My problem is that not all embed/phone/PDA/cameras/camcoder have a complete Javascript stack, and not all website have a fallback solution for them.
That has nothing to do with a Microsoft monopoly, and it's not a problem either.
[Flash] a plugins widely available only exclusively on Intel x86 32bits machines running either Windows XP or Linux
Bullshit. Flash exists for Macintosh and many cell phones as well. Furthermore, there are open source implemenations. And Flash is not a Microsoft product.
Almost none of the platforms you mention in your previous post has it. Yet, an incredible amount of website rely on it for navigation.
Nonsense. Almost no serious web site uses Flash for navigation. It's used for games and video, something for which there simply is no alternative.
site's navigation menu (Zalman and Auzentech come as example just out of the top of my head) even if there's no obvious reason why it should be implemented that way.
Sites like that are very rare. I usually browse with Flashblock, and I don't encounter them. Furthermore, they are illegal in many countries because they violate accessibility regulations.
It's just a perfect example of why web desiner will start (ab)using XAML
Of course, some web designers will stat using XAML, but that's different from your fear mongering about XAML taking over the Internet. Microsoft-proprietary technologies are insignificant on the Internet already and Microsoft isn't going to be able to set any web standards. Just about the only proprietary technology that has any significance is Flash, and even there, Adobe had to move towards opening the specs and donating large chunks to the open source community because they know that if they don't, SVG and similar standards would kill them.
No, it isn't. I've seen the stacks of resumes myself, and I've personally recommended quite a few domestic candidates that were qualified for the open positions, only to have their resumes round-filed in favor of less-skilled and cheaper help from overseas.
That's not relevant here. It's not a question of hiring a US citizen or a foreigner on an H1b; the people Cohen & Grigsby are talking about are already working for the company on H1b visas. The company is trying to get them off the H1b and get them a green card. People who criticize H1b's as slave labor should be happy about that. Instead, they are misrepresenting this as H1b "fraud".
Furthermore, every company I have worked for has had very active recruiting programs for US citizens going on at the same time while they posted these kinds of job ads. That's because the recruiting programs don't satisfy the stupid legal requirements, while the legally required newspaper postings only bring unhireable people that still risk completely screwing both the company and the worker.
Now, Microsoft comes out with XAML, rolls it out with Vista, waits a few years and suddenly 90% of the internet has XAML support.
Microsoft may have 90% of some nebulously defined subset of machines called "PCs", but they don't even get close to controlling 90% of the browser market. Browsers are everywhere, on every platform: phones, embedded systems, self-service terminals, large displays, webpads, game consoles, game handhelds, PDAs, cameras, camcorders, etc. And the vast majority of pages on the Internet are generated by software that has nothing to do with Microsoft; people aren't going to rewrite that software for no good reason, let alone if it means losing a big part of their visitors.
Microsoft has no control over web standards, other than a little feet dragging on IE. Even there, they have to be careful, because every time they drag their feet too much, they lose another percent or two of market share.
Why would you need OOXML, when you've got XPS (a subset of XAML)? It can replace ))XML, PDF and Postscript.
So? There are dozens of formats and technologies that "can replace" XML, PDF, and Postscript, and have been for years.. What matters is which formats are adopted and deployed, whether they are patent encumbered, and how they are supported.
Of course, this is all an open standard right? And Microsoft has released the specs and is working with Mono on Moonlight, right? Well, yes, just when they're launching all of their tools that utilize it.
Microsoft's tools are becoming less and less relevant. If they think they are going to get the market to adopt their formats because of their tools, they are seriously confused.
Perhaps you've not seen the infamous Cohen & Grigsby video?
Yes. If you think it has anything to do with labor shortage, you are an idiot. That video is about how a company, after it has spent years getting an application to that point, doesn't want to see it torpedoed by an unqualified US code monkey. The requirement to find a US worker is meaningless at that point in the application process and it should just be removed entirely.
Of course, US wages aren't rising. Why should they be?
In the 1950's, the rest of the world was in ruins, free trade didn't exist, developing nations didn't have access to education or communications, and the US basically ran the show. All that has changed. Your average US assembly line worker is in competition with several billion people around the world, H1Bs or not.
The US had it good for half a century, but that was an anomaly that is correcting itself. I wish it wouldn't be, but that's the real world.
Instead, what happens is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave -- to evaporate, if you will.
Well, they don't just disappear off the face of the earth. And although a bad IT job may make people want to jump off a cliff, as a rule, they don't. So where do they evaporate to? To companies that treat them better.
So, the companies that treat their employees badly end up with the bad engineers, and the companies that treat their employees well end up with the good ones.
Seems to me the job market is working the way it should.
Trying to link this specifically to Bill Gates is a lame attempt to get Microsoft haters to come over to the side of H1B foes. This isn't a Microsoft problem; pretty much all large technology companies have problems with not being able to hire people on H1Bs. And, although there are a lot of Java and Perl code monkeys in the US, they just aren't qualified to do these jobs.
You cannot increase the distance between you and the following car and slowing down enough to make the distance safe would just result in driving at maybe a third of the speed limit
Read the fscking context: if you are on a residential street with kids and someone is following you too closely, you need to slow down. If you're on a highway and someone is following you too closely, either speed up or let them pass.
Some situations just require braking (large object or person suddently moving on the road) and not hitting the brakes because you're worried about the car behind you will probably kill other people.
You have multiple options, and you need to pick the best one. That may be braking, it may be swerving, it may be just driving ahead. If you just slam on the brakes, you may be at fault, at least partially.
If someone rear-ends you and pushes you into a pedestrian that's their fault, not yours and they get the charge (forensics can verify if that happened).
As I was saying: fault isn't black and white, it's assigned partially. If you could have anticipated the accident and avoided it, you will be at least partially at fault.
"you may only brake if it is safe to do so". That statement, at least legally, is flat out wrong in most jurisdictions [...] If a child steps out in the road in front of you, and you slam on the brakes, and get rear-ended, that is somehow *your* fault?
You need to make the right decision based on the traffic around you, and you need to anticipate.
So, yes, you may well be at fault, not just logically but also legally. Children don't materialize out of thin air. If you're on a street with children, you need to pay attention. If someone follows you too closely, you need to slow down. And if a child steps out in front of you, slamming on the brakes may be the wrong thing to do, because often you're not going to stop in time and not only get rear ended, but also hit the child. And the momentum of the car behind you may cause you to hit the child even if you could have stopped in time otherwise.
Pay attention to the road and stop being so stupid.
The only exception I'd make to this is if some idiot just decides to slam on his brakes for no reason at all and causes an accident, but the basic principle is that, there are many reasons to *need* to brake, so you should always leave enough distance.
If you slam on the brakes in your shiny new super-ABS-equipped BMW sports car because you got spooked by plastic bag in front of your car, you come to a dead stop, and a family with kids in their 20 year old sedan with regular brakes slams into your back and dies, you are at fault and courts will throw the book at you.
Which is why it's so important to leave sufficient distance between you and the car in front of you - it gives a 'time cushion'.
Whether you "leave sufficient distance" isn't up to you, since if you leave that kind of distance, people will jump in there. And if those people then slam on their brakes for no good reason, you'll rear end them.
If you are 6 inches from the car in front of you, you basically *must* pay constant attention to the car in front of you. Whereas if there's 10 feet or so, you have more ability to pay attention to other things.
Your following distances and statements are so ridiculous and out of line with reality that I have to wonder whether you have ever even driven a car. It's impossible to follow at "6 inches" at any speed. It's impossible even to follow at 10 feet a highway speeds.
If you find yourself 10ft behind another car at just about any speed, it is absolutely pointless to pay attention to that car, because, given human reaction times, you will inevitably hit it if its driver slams on his brake for no good reason. Your only hope is to anticipate that driver's action by looking at traffic ahead; that way, you are fairly safe from predictable actions, but there is nothing you can do about unpredictable actions.
You need to drive responsibly and pay attention to everything around you. And, in particular, you need to know what's going on behind you when you slam on the brakes, otherwise you will be held responsible at least in part.
UAC is annoying people into uninstalling Vista and switching to Linux and OS X. So, it's working: UAC really is improving PC security.
For the next release, however, maybe Microsoft should be more straightforward and simply boot into a display that says "please go to www.ubuntu.com to upgrade your OS and applications".
Putting artificial intelligence on a Pentium, putting the whole thing on a mobile platform, giving it the ability to connect to the Internet, and to top it all off, give it a bunch of machine guns. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What could possibly go wrong?
with a following distance of every vehicle being able to stop if the car in front of them slammed on their brakes
You need to be aware of traffic all around you; if you slam on your brakes for no good reason while someone is following to closely, you'll be at least partially responsible for the accident you cause.
That doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't see how it would fly. If you hit someone in the rear, you're following too close!
And if you're slamming on the brakes while someone is following you too closely, you are also at last partially (or even fully) responsible for the accident: you may only brake if it is safe to do so.
Furthermore, you're a bad driver if you pay constant attention to the car in front of you; traffic provably flows smoothly because drivers pay attention to traffic ahead of the car that they are directly following, and that means that you cannot pay constant attention to the car you're following directly.
There is no reason in the world why a hardware provider should get any percentage of the revenue from traffic cameras. Traffic fines should never go to private companies, and they should never benefit any organization related to handing out traffic tickets, otherwise there is just too much potential for abuse.
Slashdot Mirror
I certainly support full and fair trials (international terrorism is trickier)
I don't see what's "trickier" about it. We should lead in terms of rule of law by insisting that everybody, US citizen or not, domestic or abroad, get a fair trial.
But when we do confirm that somebody was, indeed, a terrorist in the strict sense... well, part of the reason the courts exist, helping us separate the innocent from the guilty, is so that we can then go on to wipe the guilty ones off the face of the Earth without any reservations.
The intended purpose of courts is not retribution, it is utilitarian, and for good reason.
maybe they won't. I sure know that most of the searches I do have little to do with my profile.
The Total FUD: It only affects SOME Free liscences. Even if the APIs are confidential, this does NOT stop BSD code, but only viral liscences like GPL.
The GPL quite clearly says that the OS can be under whatever license it wants to be. GPL'ed software runs on SunOS, Solaris, Windows, AIX, Symbian, and lots of other systems with weird licenses. GPL software does not infect software that isn't derived from it in some way.
The problem here is that Apple is trying to be viral and infect software that they did not develop. The GPLv3 just says that it won't allow itself to be infected by viral corporate licenses.
I've owned about a dozen Macs over the years. I'm so pissed of about Apple's recent bullshit that I'm not going to buy another Apple product until they change or hell freezes over.
May Apple II had an SSD disk. Sun workstations had them. They have been used with and without battery backup, as a write cache for disks, to speed up NFS, whatever. Since the disk controller and disk driver imposes such overhead, it matters little what you do on the card, other than a little write leveling and parallel I/O for slow flash. Whatever you do with them is trivial engineering.
What's next? Patents on blinkenlights? Patents on the power switch?
If it wasn't clear to you that governments love to use "terrorism" to demonize inconvenient political, social, or economic movements, you really haven't been paying attention. This has been going for as long as there have been governments.
For a stupid and corrupt movie script writer to do this really is only the tip of the iceberg.
The emulator appears to work by downloading big chunks of the runtime environment from Google. That doesn't remove "lock in", because Google has both legal and technical means for stopping that.
What is needed is either an open source implementation, or for Google to release the runtime in open source form.
Geez, don't these people get that lowering the price of a product (even down to zero) is (1) what the free market is supposed to accomplish, and (2) good for everybody other than the people who keep selling overpriced shit?
What's next? Mother Theresa terrorists try to destroy the food industry by giving away free soup to the poor?
My problem is that not all embed/phone/PDA/cameras/camcoder have a complete Javascript stack, and not all website have a fallback solution for them.
That has nothing to do with a Microsoft monopoly, and it's not a problem either.
[Flash] a plugins widely available only exclusively on Intel x86 32bits machines running either Windows XP or Linux
Bullshit. Flash exists for Macintosh and many cell phones as well. Furthermore, there are open source implemenations. And Flash is not a Microsoft product.
Almost none of the platforms you mention in your previous post has it. Yet, an incredible amount of website rely on it for navigation.
Nonsense. Almost no serious web site uses Flash for navigation. It's used for games and video, something for which there simply is no alternative.
site's navigation menu (Zalman and Auzentech come as example just out of the top of my head) even if there's no obvious reason why it should be implemented that way.
Sites like that are very rare. I usually browse with Flashblock, and I don't encounter them. Furthermore, they are illegal in many countries because they violate accessibility regulations.
It's just a perfect example of why web desiner will start (ab)using XAML
Of course, some web designers will stat using XAML, but that's different from your fear mongering about XAML taking over the Internet. Microsoft-proprietary technologies are insignificant on the Internet already and Microsoft isn't going to be able to set any web standards. Just about the only proprietary technology that has any significance is Flash, and even there, Adobe had to move towards opening the specs and donating large chunks to the open source community because they know that if they don't, SVG and similar standards would kill them.
I still can't understand the glossy screens.
They give you a bit higher contrast, as long as you avoid reflections. I'm typing on one right now, and I don't see a problem.
If you don't like it, put a matte screen protector on the glossy screen and it will behave like a matte screen. The reverse is not true.
And the massive amount of website that require a full Javascript stack
That's standard.
Adobe Flash
That's a widely available plug-in, and it's only being used where it's needed.
ActiveX, or VBscript
None of those run on any of the machines I use day-to-day and I have yet to find a web site that requires it.
The fact that you might want to surf the web with your homebrew linux-running-on-a-toaster doesn't bother them at all.
I do run Linux on my "toasters". That's, in fact, all I run, and I can tell you: IE-specificity simply is not significant anymore.
as the main scripting language tells us that the biggest fraction of web designer don't give a damn fuck if your fridge is web enabled.
No, it isn't. I've seen the stacks of resumes myself, and I've personally recommended quite a few domestic candidates that were qualified for the open positions, only to have their resumes round-filed in favor of less-skilled and cheaper help from overseas.
That's not relevant here. It's not a question of hiring a US citizen or a foreigner on an H1b; the people Cohen & Grigsby are talking about are already working for the company on H1b visas. The company is trying to get them off the H1b and get them a green card. People who criticize H1b's as slave labor should be happy about that. Instead, they are misrepresenting this as H1b "fraud".
Furthermore, every company I have worked for has had very active recruiting programs for US citizens going on at the same time while they posted these kinds of job ads. That's because the recruiting programs don't satisfy the stupid legal requirements, while the legally required newspaper postings only bring unhireable people that still risk completely screwing both the company and the worker.
Now, Microsoft comes out with XAML, rolls it out with Vista, waits a few years and suddenly 90% of the internet has XAML support.
Microsoft may have 90% of some nebulously defined subset of machines called "PCs", but they don't even get close to controlling 90% of the browser market. Browsers are everywhere, on every platform: phones, embedded systems, self-service terminals, large displays, webpads, game consoles, game handhelds, PDAs, cameras, camcorders, etc. And the vast majority of pages on the Internet are generated by software that has nothing to do with Microsoft; people aren't going to rewrite that software for no good reason, let alone if it means losing a big part of their visitors.
Microsoft has no control over web standards, other than a little feet dragging on IE. Even there, they have to be careful, because every time they drag their feet too much, they lose another percent or two of market share.
Why would you need OOXML, when you've got XPS (a subset of XAML)? It can replace ))XML, PDF and Postscript.
So? There are dozens of formats and technologies that "can replace" XML, PDF, and Postscript, and have been for years.. What matters is which formats are adopted and deployed, whether they are patent encumbered, and how they are supported.
Of course, this is all an open standard right? And Microsoft has released the specs and is working with Mono on Moonlight, right? Well, yes, just when they're launching all of their tools that utilize it.
Microsoft's tools are becoming less and less relevant. If they think they are going to get the market to adopt their formats because of their tools, they are seriously confused.
The "labor shortage" in the IT world is a myth.
The labor shortage is quite real.
Perhaps you've not seen the infamous Cohen & Grigsby video?
Yes. If you think it has anything to do with labor shortage, you are an idiot. That video is about how a company, after it has spent years getting an application to that point, doesn't want to see it torpedoed by an unqualified US code monkey. The requirement to find a US worker is meaningless at that point in the application process and it should just be removed entirely.
Of course, US wages aren't rising. Why should they be?
In the 1950's, the rest of the world was in ruins, free trade didn't exist, developing nations didn't have access to education or communications, and the US basically ran the show. All that has changed. Your average US assembly line worker is in competition with several billion people around the world, H1Bs or not.
The US had it good for half a century, but that was an anomaly that is correcting itself. I wish it wouldn't be, but that's the real world.
Instead, what happens is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave -- to evaporate, if you will.
Well, they don't just disappear off the face of the earth. And although a bad IT job may make people want to jump off a cliff, as a rule, they don't. So where do they evaporate to? To companies that treat them better.
So, the companies that treat their employees badly end up with the bad engineers, and the companies that treat their employees well end up with the good ones.
Seems to me the job market is working the way it should.
Trying to link this specifically to Bill Gates is a lame attempt to get Microsoft haters to come over to the side of H1B foes. This isn't a Microsoft problem; pretty much all large technology companies have problems with not being able to hire people on H1Bs. And, although there are a lot of Java and Perl code monkeys in the US, they just aren't qualified to do these jobs.
You cannot increase the distance between you and the following car and slowing down enough to make the distance safe would just result in driving at maybe a third of the speed limit
Read the fscking context: if you are on a residential street with kids and someone is following you too closely, you need to slow down. If you're on a highway and someone is following you too closely, either speed up or let them pass.
Some situations just require braking (large object or person suddently moving on the road) and not hitting the brakes because you're worried about the car behind you will probably kill other people.
You have multiple options, and you need to pick the best one. That may be braking, it may be swerving, it may be just driving ahead. If you just slam on the brakes, you may be at fault, at least partially.
If someone rear-ends you and pushes you into a pedestrian that's their fault, not yours and they get the charge (forensics can verify if that happened).
As I was saying: fault isn't black and white, it's assigned partially. If you could have anticipated the accident and avoided it, you will be at least partially at fault.
"you may only brake if it is safe to do so". That statement, at least legally, is flat out wrong in most jurisdictions [...] If a child steps out in the road in front of you, and you slam on the brakes, and get rear-ended, that is somehow *your* fault?
You need to make the right decision based on the traffic around you, and you need to anticipate.
So, yes, you may well be at fault, not just logically but also legally. Children don't materialize out of thin air. If you're on a street with children, you need to pay attention. If someone follows you too closely, you need to slow down. And if a child steps out in front of you, slamming on the brakes may be the wrong thing to do, because often you're not going to stop in time and not only get rear ended, but also hit the child. And the momentum of the car behind you may cause you to hit the child even if you could have stopped in time otherwise.
Pay attention to the road and stop being so stupid.
The only exception I'd make to this is if some idiot just decides to slam on his brakes for no reason at all and causes an accident, but the basic principle is that, there are many reasons to *need* to brake, so you should always leave enough distance.
If you slam on the brakes in your shiny new super-ABS-equipped BMW sports car because you got spooked by plastic bag in front of your car, you come to a dead stop, and a family with kids in their 20 year old sedan with regular brakes slams into your back and dies, you are at fault and courts will throw the book at you.
Which is why it's so important to leave sufficient distance between you and the car in front of you - it gives a 'time cushion'.
Whether you "leave sufficient distance" isn't up to you, since if you leave that kind of distance, people will jump in there. And if those people then slam on their brakes for no good reason, you'll rear end them.
If you are 6 inches from the car in front of you, you basically *must* pay constant attention to the car in front of you. Whereas if there's 10 feet or so, you have more ability to pay attention to other things.
Your following distances and statements are so ridiculous and out of line with reality that I have to wonder whether you have ever even driven a car. It's impossible to follow at "6 inches" at any speed. It's impossible even to follow at 10 feet a highway speeds.
If you find yourself 10ft behind another car at just about any speed, it is absolutely pointless to pay attention to that car, because, given human reaction times, you will inevitably hit it if its driver slams on his brake for no good reason. Your only hope is to anticipate that driver's action by looking at traffic ahead; that way, you are fairly safe from predictable actions, but there is nothing you can do about unpredictable actions.
You need to drive responsibly and pay attention to everything around you. And, in particular, you need to know what's going on behind you when you slam on the brakes, otherwise you will be held responsible at least in part.
"At fault" isn't a black or white issue. You will be partially responsible if you slam on the brakes.
UAC is annoying people into uninstalling Vista and switching to Linux and OS X. So, it's working: UAC really is improving PC security.
For the next release, however, maybe Microsoft should be more straightforward and simply boot into a display that says "please go to www.ubuntu.com to upgrade your OS and applications".
Putting artificial intelligence on a Pentium, putting the whole thing on a mobile platform, giving it the ability to connect to the Internet, and to top it all off, give it a bunch of machine guns. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What could possibly go wrong?
with a following distance of every vehicle being able to stop if the car in front of them slammed on their brakes
You need to be aware of traffic all around you; if you slam on your brakes for no good reason while someone is following to closely, you'll be at least partially responsible for the accident you cause.
That doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't see how it would fly. If you hit someone in the rear, you're following too close!
And if you're slamming on the brakes while someone is following you too closely, you are also at last partially (or even fully) responsible for the accident: you may only brake if it is safe to do so.
Furthermore, you're a bad driver if you pay constant attention to the car in front of you; traffic provably flows smoothly because drivers pay attention to traffic ahead of the car that they are directly following, and that means that you cannot pay constant attention to the car you're following directly.
There is no reason in the world why a hardware provider should get any percentage of the revenue from traffic cameras. Traffic fines should never go to private companies, and they should never benefit any organization related to handing out traffic tickets, otherwise there is just too much potential for abuse.