10,000 lines of code? You have to be kidding me. By that definition, there quite a few open source apps that aren't copyrightable. That does seem pretty high. I spent most of a full-time job for five years on a program for creating telephone bills. If you don't count the PostScript library that went with the early versions or the XSL library that went with the later ones, it never got bigger than about 8,500 lines.
Why is it putting arbitrary restriction on what I can do with something I own legally ? You and I may disagree with the requirement for a DRM stack, but it isn't arbitrary; it's the only way DRM can ever work (it won't, anyway, but this gives it a chance if you're insanely optimistic). What *is* an arbitrary requirement is that you can't use hi-def cablecards in a home-built PC. The whole PC has to be certified, but then you can make changes, so it's no more secure than just certifying the motherboard/video card combination.
The fact is, they willingly copied software and got caught and they paid the consequences. Although it seems based on the article it was only 8% unauthorised Do you really think they intentionally pirated only 8% of their software? That's pretty obviously a combination of losing a few receipts and individual employees installing software on their own computers (quite possibly legally, but without registering receipts with IT -- I know I've done that).
the compiled bytecode is so close to the source, you can replicate the original fairly well from the bytecode That's probably a reasonable way to port between VB.Net and C#, if you felt like switching. Compile what you wrote, and then decompile into the other.
The movie fricking starts with them landing half a fricking starship on a landing strip, rather than, you know, in a giant self-made crater. I know it's sci-fi, but come on. You have that, you have laser swords that somehow stop at a given length and impede each other, and you have landing bays open to space, none of which are at all plausible. Add The Force, prophecies, the basic Hero With a Thousand Faces character set, and I think it's clear that Star Wars is not sci-fi, but fantasy.
Yup, the big one: Darth Vader, whose hatred, bitterness and resentment was purged by love. I honestly kinda like the way Revenge of the Sith changed the Vader story. Now, he's basically uninterested in larger ideologies, all the way through. He wasn't really corrupted by the Sith, and he wasn't really redeemed by Luke. His loyalties were consistently to his friends, and especially his family.
Like I said in a previous post, it's a lot easier to run on the platform of taking care of the poor if you create more poor. And you got a +5 insightful for both. That's a pretty good trick.
Serious question, and perhaps that's how it works in your state. It definitely varies by state. Michigan was due to have a new service tax beginning January 1, and I think it just got repealed because the rules on what was and wasn't taxed were just too complicated. Previously, no services were taxed.
In that same light, nobody wants computers that growl like sleeping dinos. I want a loud computer for the bedroom, to cut down on how much my wife complains about my snoring. I wouldn't like something like that as an HTPC, though.
Take your panoramic screen and turn it sideways. Nvidia drivers have a setting for this so you can use your PC normally. Really? Can you get any widescreen monitor and nVidia video card, say, for a desktop, turn it sideways and get a tallscreen monitor?
and they have to have VPN access. The VPN access is kinda the point, isn't it? If working at home isn't just like working at work, they might as well just be using their home computers.
Very, very few people do upgrades on their computers nowadays... Technology changes too quickly and parts are not that backwards compatible. In case you haven't noticed, it's slowed down quite a bit lately, apart from drives.
I put together the oldest computer at my house, that my son and I share, in January 2001. I've upgraded the CPU from an Athlon Thunderbird 1.3Ghz to an Athlon XP 2400+, only because I had the part sitting around (long story), and didn't really notice any difference. I've upgraded drives a couple of times, and I'll be putting in a new video card soon, as the original GeForce 2 graphics are finally becoming a problem (yes, the AGP choices are a little limited, but there are several decent choices). And I have 2GB of RAM to install on my wife's computer as soon as I dig it out from all the old bills piled on it; her 1GB will then replace the 512MB currently in this computer.
I reinstalled WinXP from scratch a year ago when I put in a new hard drive, as the old installation was getting too crufty. That made a huge difference, and I expect this PC to be perfectly serviceable for at least another two years. I might even make a point of stretching it out to three more years and a few months to get a full ten years from it.
The Detroit salt mines have been seriously suggested as a possibility, yes, largely because they're completely dry so it's considered reasonably certain that they are well isolated. I believe they only closed because salt prices went down, not because it was getting difficult to extract salt.
the place they really wanted (Yucca Mountain) would appear to be the only reasonable place that could be found. The old Detroit salt mines would be fine, and yes, I live in Detroit.
Give me a break. Turn your house up 1 degree in the summer and down 1 degree in the winter and you will save more money than that! When I suggest turning down the thermostat to my wife, she points out that she would have to put clothes on. That's usually where the discussion ends.
I suppose that tells you where energy conservation falls in my priorities...
Sincere question -- why on earth does any one person need more than a laptop, a desktop computer with monitor and one printer at home? (OK, I'll throw in a "media center", also.) Not that one necessarily needs even that, but I'm always baffled by these comments here about home networks that sound more like 15 person businesses. We don't all live alone. My wife, my son and I have two desktops and a laptop in active use, a TV with a DirecTivo and a Wii attached, and we'll probably be getting another desktop and a PS3 (mainly as a BluRay player) before long. And I will be setting up a database/web server somewhere for data related to an annual fundraiser at my son's school, although it may wind up at the school.
That's a god bit of stuff, but it's still well short of your list, accounting for the number of people.
most votes are basically between a douche and a turd. It was a douche and a turd sandwich, wasn't it? The olive on the toothpick in the turd sandwich was what really made it funny.
Perhaps the problem is too many people voting for the "right party" instead of the "right person"? Carrying that further, it's that we have too many elected positions to be familiar with all the candidates, apart from their party.
But even then, no. In the legislature, what party has the majority is what matters, so only looking at the candidate isn't the right thing to do.
In my opinion, voting for either a Democrat or Republican in a national election, at this point in time, is equivalent to a vote for the "status quo" of corruption in our "democratic system". I'll be voting for the party that is *not* trying to remove the judicial branch as a significant part of the government. If it weren't for that, yes, I might be looking at minor parties.
Recent examples, what was the most effective aircraft of the first Gulf War, that spiffy stealth bomber OR the dirt cheap unloved A10 tankkiller.
They hastily had to extend the life of that plane because all of sudden the US needed to destroy lots and lots of cheap tanks. Sure you can blow them up with missles that cost many time the cost of the enemy tank, but the A10 does it for peanuts.
The problem with the A-10 is that the air force flys them, but they do a job for the army. The air force is always trying to drop them because they don't care about the job that it does.
The reason they ain't expensive is that it was thought they were mostly obsolete. No one thought they were obsolete. They're quieter than nuclear subs when they run on batteries. The U.S. just doesn't keep them around because they don't fit the kind of long-distance roles we want submarines for.
If the US carriers go down, or even can be credibly threatened, that reduces the US position as a superpower considerably. So everyone else's subs matter to us Yes, absolutely. I think it is pretty clear, though, that we have a lot less need of our own submarines than we used to. The SSBN force is not disappearing, but is shrinking appropriately for deterrence against J. Random Lunatic rather than world-ending Mutually Assured Destruction. We do still need a few attack submarines to shadow Russian and Chinese SSBNs, and a few for secondary roles like listening to radios, landing SEALS on beaches, launching Tomahawks (although usually a surface ship would be fine -- we're not sneaking up to the Soviet coast anymore), etc.
The primary role of an attack submarine, though, is attacking powerful surface fleets with ships worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars each. The only navies that have such things are us, England, France, Russia, Ukraine, China, India, Taiwan (now that we sold them the Kidds, anyway) and maybe a couple others. None of those are significant enough threats to us to warrant keeping a lot of submarines around rather than a couple more of the more versatile carrier groups.
Subs can indeed travel faster underwater than on the surface, however their props are designed for stealth first and speed second. That priority almost guarantees that the prop would cause cavitation at high speeds, which would basically destroy a very expensive item, so even if a captain *could* push his boat that fast, he would likely cripple it.
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I programmed in PostScript maybe 10 hours a week for six years or so, and I miss it. It's like Lisp turned inside out.
10,000 lines of code? You have to be kidding me. By that definition, there quite a few open source apps that aren't copyrightable.
That does seem pretty high. I spent most of a full-time job for five years on a program for creating telephone bills. If you don't count the PostScript library that went with the early versions or the XSL library that went with the later ones, it never got bigger than about 8,500 lines.
Why is it putting arbitrary restriction on what I can do with something I own legally ?
You and I may disagree with the requirement for a DRM stack, but it isn't arbitrary; it's the only way DRM can ever work (it won't, anyway, but this gives it a chance if you're insanely optimistic). What *is* an arbitrary requirement is that you can't use hi-def cablecards in a home-built PC. The whole PC has to be certified, but then you can make changes, so it's no more secure than just certifying the motherboard/video card combination.
I might try that sometime to see what C# does with optional parameters...
The fact is, they willingly copied software and got caught and they paid the consequences. Although it seems based on the article it was only 8% unauthorised
Do you really think they intentionally pirated only 8% of their software? That's pretty obviously a combination of losing a few receipts and individual employees installing software on their own computers (quite possibly legally, but without registering receipts with IT -- I know I've done that).
the compiled bytecode is so close to the source, you can replicate the original fairly well from the bytecode
That's probably a reasonable way to port between VB.Net and C#, if you felt like switching. Compile what you wrote, and then decompile into the other.
The movie fricking starts with them landing half a fricking starship on a landing strip, rather than, you know, in a giant self-made crater. I know it's sci-fi, but come on.
You have that, you have laser swords that somehow stop at a given length and impede each other, and you have landing bays open to space, none of which are at all plausible. Add The Force, prophecies, the basic Hero With a Thousand Faces character set, and I think it's clear that Star Wars is not sci-fi, but fantasy.
Yup, the big one: Darth Vader, whose hatred, bitterness and resentment was purged by love.
I honestly kinda like the way Revenge of the Sith changed the Vader story. Now, he's basically uninterested in larger ideologies, all the way through. He wasn't really corrupted by the Sith, and he wasn't really redeemed by Luke. His loyalties were consistently to his friends, and especially his family.
Speed dial.
Like I said in a previous post, it's a lot easier to run on the platform of taking care of the poor if you create more poor.
And you got a +5 insightful for both. That's a pretty good trick.
Serious question, and perhaps that's how it works in your state.
It definitely varies by state. Michigan was due to have a new service tax beginning January 1, and I think it just got repealed because the rules on what was and wasn't taxed were just too complicated. Previously, no services were taxed.
In that same light, nobody wants computers that growl like sleeping dinos.
I want a loud computer for the bedroom, to cut down on how much my wife complains about my snoring. I wouldn't like something like that as an HTPC, though.
Take your panoramic screen and turn it sideways. Nvidia drivers have a setting for this so you can use your PC normally.
Really? Can you get any widescreen monitor and nVidia video card, say, for a desktop, turn it sideways and get a tallscreen monitor?
(Seriously, I'm not being sarcastic here.)
and they have to have VPN access.
The VPN access is kinda the point, isn't it? If working at home isn't just like working at work, they might as well just be using their home computers.
Very, very few people do upgrades on their computers nowadays... Technology changes too quickly and parts are not that backwards compatible.
In case you haven't noticed, it's slowed down quite a bit lately, apart from drives.
I put together the oldest computer at my house, that my son and I share, in January 2001. I've upgraded the CPU from an Athlon Thunderbird 1.3Ghz to an Athlon XP 2400+, only because I had the part sitting around (long story), and didn't really notice any difference. I've upgraded drives a couple of times, and I'll be putting in a new video card soon, as the original GeForce 2 graphics are finally becoming a problem (yes, the AGP choices are a little limited, but there are several decent choices). And I have 2GB of RAM to install on my wife's computer as soon as I dig it out from all the old bills piled on it; her 1GB will then replace the 512MB currently in this computer.
I reinstalled WinXP from scratch a year ago when I put in a new hard drive, as the old installation was getting too crufty. That made a huge difference, and I expect this PC to be perfectly serviceable for at least another two years. I might even make a point of stretching it out to three more years and a few months to get a full ten years from it.
The Detroit salt mines have been seriously suggested as a possibility, yes, largely because they're completely dry so it's considered reasonably certain that they are well isolated. I believe they only closed because salt prices went down, not because it was getting difficult to extract salt.
the place they really wanted (Yucca Mountain) would appear to be the only reasonable place that could be found.
The old Detroit salt mines would be fine, and yes, I live in Detroit.
Give me a break. Turn your house up 1 degree in the summer and down 1 degree in the winter and you will save more money than that!
When I suggest turning down the thermostat to my wife, she points out that she would have to put clothes on. That's usually where the discussion ends.
I suppose that tells you where energy conservation falls in my priorities...
Sincere question -- why on earth does any one person need more than a laptop, a desktop computer with monitor and one printer at home? (OK, I'll throw in a "media center", also.) Not that one necessarily needs even that, but I'm always baffled by these comments here about home networks that sound more like 15 person businesses.
We don't all live alone. My wife, my son and I have two desktops and a laptop in active use, a TV with a DirecTivo and a Wii attached, and we'll probably be getting another desktop and a PS3 (mainly as a BluRay player) before long. And I will be setting up a database/web server somewhere for data related to an annual fundraiser at my son's school, although it may wind up at the school.
That's a god bit of stuff, but it's still well short of your list, accounting for the number of people.
most votes are basically between a douche and a turd.
It was a douche and a turd sandwich, wasn't it? The olive on the toothpick in the turd sandwich was what really made it funny.
Perhaps the problem is too many people voting for the "right party" instead of the "right person"?
Carrying that further, it's that we have too many elected positions to be familiar with all the candidates, apart from their party.
But even then, no. In the legislature, what party has the majority is what matters, so only looking at the candidate isn't the right thing to do.
In my opinion, voting for either a Democrat or Republican in a national election, at this point in time, is equivalent to a vote for the "status quo" of corruption in our "democratic system".
I'll be voting for the party that is *not* trying to remove the judicial branch as a significant part of the government. If it weren't for that, yes, I might be looking at minor parties.
Recent examples, what was the most effective aircraft of the first Gulf War, that spiffy stealth bomber OR the dirt cheap unloved A10 tankkiller.
They hastily had to extend the life of that plane because all of sudden the US needed to destroy lots and lots of cheap tanks. Sure you can blow them up with missles that cost many time the cost of the enemy tank, but the A10 does it for peanuts.
The problem with the A-10 is that the air force flys them, but they do a job for the army. The air force is always trying to drop them because they don't care about the job that it does.
The reason they ain't expensive is that it was thought they were mostly obsolete.
No one thought they were obsolete. They're quieter than nuclear subs when they run on batteries. The U.S. just doesn't keep them around because they don't fit the kind of long-distance roles we want submarines for.
If the US carriers go down, or even can be credibly threatened, that reduces the US position as a superpower considerably. So everyone else's subs matter to us
Yes, absolutely. I think it is pretty clear, though, that we have a lot less need of our own submarines than we used to. The SSBN force is not disappearing, but is shrinking appropriately for deterrence against J. Random Lunatic rather than world-ending Mutually Assured Destruction. We do still need a few attack submarines to shadow Russian and Chinese SSBNs, and a few for secondary roles like listening to radios, landing SEALS on beaches, launching Tomahawks (although usually a surface ship would be fine -- we're not sneaking up to the Soviet coast anymore), etc.
The primary role of an attack submarine, though, is attacking powerful surface fleets with ships worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars each. The only navies that have such things are us, England, France, Russia, Ukraine, China, India, Taiwan (now that we sold them the Kidds, anyway) and maybe a couple others. None of those are significant enough threats to us to warrant keeping a lot of submarines around rather than a couple more of the more versatile carrier groups.
Subs can indeed travel faster underwater than on the surface, however their props are designed for stealth first and speed second. That priority almost guarantees that the prop would cause cavitation at high speeds, which would basically destroy a very expensive item, so even if a captain *could* push his boat that fast, he would likely cripple it.
There's one notable exception, which was probably involved in that story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_class_submarine