Because tool is all that computer is. It's not a piece of art, it's not a personal friend -- it is a mere tool.
Leaving aside the fact that traditional tools have been used in art (not just to create art) and that an experienced professional craftsman does come to know "his" tools...
A physical hammer is akin to the original "word processors" (remember those beasts?) or a non-programmable calculator. Each is built for one task; you may be able to use it to do something else, but that's purely an accident of form and design. There's a reason why word processor machines are almost extinct - we (as a culture, possibly as a species) have decided that advantage of increased flexibility is worth the cost of increased complexity.
Computers are the first truly general purpose tool that mankind's invented. Imagine a chunk of matter that responded to your thoughts; if you think clearly enough, and in the right way, you can cause that chunk o' stuff to take the form of any tool you've ever seen, or any tool that you can imagine.
That's what a computer is. Not a hammer - but something that can be a hammer, or a screwdriver, or a socket wrench... as long as you know what you want, and how to turn it into the tool your interested in. The complexity is not in the use or the particular shape that the tool takes, but the fact that it can take many (any!) shape you can imagine, either perfectly or imprefectly suited for the job at hand.
Modern tools already do and will continue to incorporate elements of computers. That's progress for you. But don't confuse the technology that goes into the tool with the tool itself. Just because it's used in a simple tool doesn't mean that it's simple, or that more complex uses of that same technology are wrong.
Throw out X11 - since no desktop user needs its network functionality
I'm a desktop user, and I need its functionality.
There are a couple of different flavors of desktop user...
At one extreme, there's my mother, who expects her computer to boot up and work. She's not going to configure it, at least not intentionally. She wants a truly simple, iOpener-like system that lets her read and send email and see pictures of her granddaughter on the web. She uses a desktop all the time.
At the other are the sysadmins, developers, and IT folks who understand the hardware, the software, and how it's all glued together. They want X, ssh, and a wide selection of tools and capabilities; and if they can't find what they want, they'll build it themselves. They use a desktop when it's convenient.
Halfway in between are the "power users", the folks who know there's more to the machine than the desktop. They might be comfortable learning a bit about the shell, or a scripting language; but that's not their job. They want options and flexibility, but not too much - just enough to keep it all straight in their heads and get their jobs done. They use a desktop unless there's a very big advantage to using a CLI.
To be honest (and I don't mean to flame you), it sounds like you'd be happier using something like BeOS or MacOS. Why go to the trouble of using a complex, powerful Unix-like kernel if you're immediately going to rip out half of its functionality?
For a couple of reasons...
To use that "powerful kernel" to run powerful software that makes difficult tasks simple.
To provide a common platform for interoperability.
To optimize software for certain types of usage patterns.
To provide a simple "upgrade" path.
That last one is the real killer. I put "upgrade" in quotes because with the same system being used by multiple types of desktop users, it becomes a whole lot simpler for someone to learn a little bit here, a little bit there, and slowly expose the full functionality of a system by adding or exposing new pieces as they feel the need to.
There are many patterns, the most obvious one being that the product of any number of consecutive primes starting at 2 plus 1 is a prime.
Hmm. I believe the correct statement is that "1 plus the product of any n consecutive primes starting at 2 is either a prime number or has a prime factor greater than n."
He didn't get in anyone's face, the cop got in his. (At least as the story is told here.)
Good. That's the cop's job. Whatever the situation, the police thought Vergil looked suspicious, and stopped to talk to him.
The cop confronted him. The cop is guilty of confrontational behavior, not Vergil.
Again, good - as mentioned, that's his job. The kind of cop who waits around for someone to get shot before they get suspicious sure as hell aren't doing their jobs.
Nonsense. No one has a right not to be told to fuck off. Especially not a cop who's harassing someone.
As has been mentioned, IT WAS HIS JOB . You're the one who's decided that Vergil was being harrassed; in my mind, he got exactly what he came there looking for - a confrontation with the police. Real harrasment does occur, but you know what? Those people aren't looking for it. All Vergil's managed to prove is that an obnoxious, vulgar, irritating and badly-dressed twit can manage to act bizzarely enough to make a cop suspicious of him. What news.
Uninformed - perhaps; I haven't been keeping on top of the political maneverings of Bush and Gore. I was really taking a pot shot at the troll who seemed to think that supressing free speech through threat of violence was a noble goal.
(For the record, I favor Bush only because I despise Gore more... that's polticial reality these days; sad, but true... oh, crud, do I owe Metallica royalties now?)
Just to point out something - if something similar happened at a Democratic convention (No! Never!) and I responded "The point is to make a Democratic convention something that no city wants" - I would be shouted down by liberal Democrats as a hate-mongering, spiteful, example of exactly why Republicans should be rounded up, sterilized, and run out of town on a rail. Of course, the last part is a best-case scenario; given their druthers, I'm sure most far-left liberals would rather see everyone who disagreed with them locked up in a re-education camp.
Seriously, if I write a critical article and I point out hard, technical facts to back up my claim there is *ZERO* basis for the suit and it should be thrown out.
Until they haul in UCITA, and show that you couldn't have installed their software without agreeing to their licensing agreement, which happen to prohibit benchmarking, profiling, comparisons, or any other mention of their product without their express permission.
And before you state how silly that is... MS, Oracle, and I'm sure other database vendors routinely put these kind of restrictions in their licenses, today, without having the 1000-pound gorilla of UCITA to back them up. I seem to recall MS, at least, trying to enforce it in one case.
Like I said, ENOUGH with the Ben Franklin. Franklin didn't live in the kind of world that we live in today.
You're absolutely right. If idiots like you get their way, though, we'll soon live in a world where our government will have free reign to do whatever they want to us, whenever they want. In Ben's time, they did it - well, because they were the government. They had the power to tell you to silence you, sieze your property at the slightest excuse, throw you in jail for no particular reason, or otherwise do whatever they wanted because they had the power to do so.
Since that time, we're progressively limited government's powers; until sometime around the early 20th century in America, when the federal government started grabbing for more an more powers - the power to tax; to limit discourse; to sieze property and silence critics without a need to pay attention to all those annoying civil liberties.
Sorry - you've got it wrong; it's the far left that consistently drags out the "Save the children" campaigns (almost always related to "the war on guns", "don't let poor children starve", etc.).
Occaisionally, you see the far right do the same, but it usually ends up being done with a lot less umph and verve, and a lot less publicity (the whole "war on drugs" child-protection stance being a strange but effective anomoly.)
Both attempts - from the far left and far right - are manipulative, and generally disgusting. As soon as a politician mentions "for the children", "for grandma", "for our elderly"... they've stopped talking about the issue, and it's a fair bet they've done so because they realize they don't have a leg to stand on and the only way to win your support is an emotional appeal.
All in all, when you think about it, it means that the RIAA's appeal to stop digital music "for the artists" is exactly what it sounds like, a badly-played emotional appeal from an association that realizes they're sinking fast...
Nobody (outside X-box product development) knows whether X-Box will be hackable in this way, but I think it's pretty safe to say they'll be sticking to the standard console business model of "if you want to develop for our console, pay us $$$ for the licenced devkit".
Why would they do this? They want to sell X-boxen... making it outrageously expensive for small development companies to work on the platform will doom it. Even making it moderately expensive to do so would be pushing things; they'll want the cost of developing for the platform to be as low as possible, in order to entice more development for it early on.
On top of that, one thing MS does have a history of doing is shipping every possible DSK and development platform as part of MSDN... and I mean, everything. They'll probably include the X-box SDK along with the other SDKs in the MSDN, which will make it available to a few thousand companies without their having to actually do anything at all about it.
Anybody who reads Heinlein with any sort of reverence or respect who is past the age of 21 is suffering from Stunted Growth.
My, what witty reparte... you have stunned me, sir, and shown me the error of my ways! Yea, and verily, I have changed - from this point on, I will glory in my newfound knowledge of right and wrong, and be steadfast in the knowledge that I can simply dismiss any who disagree with me just by calling them a stupid-nah-nah-poo-poo-head!
On a more serious note... ad homenin arguments and character attacks are a refuge of the incompetent in any debate. If you were trying to troll, well, take this as a gentle bit of criticism. A good troll can be entertaining without having to descend to this level.
If you think you have a good argument, I suggest reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. Attacking someone is probably the simplest way to convince them that your point is not worth examining, let alone acception.
Finally, if you happen to think that you presented a rational, informaed argument on a fine point of political and phiosophical thought, well, let me know what you've been smoking - it sounds like it must be some damn sweet stuff.
This is just sad. Can't the PETA folks take a joke?
No, they can't. They're an (unfortunately) very common subvariety of the American Liberal Democrat, largely characterized by an inability to see anything humorous, period. All issues are life-and-death to these individuals, who find themselves in a near-constant state of outrage that other people, institutions, and in fact the entire world does not conform to their views of What Should Be.
In the wild, they often associate with and assume the colorings of other, more palatable subvarieties of the Liberal Democrat (for example, Fruvous Liberals). This provides them with some obvious benefits, primarily the fact that they are much more likely to get invited to good parties. While in these groupings, an American Liberal Democrat's normally combatative nature and desire to verbally abuse non-Democrats can usually be repressed, at least until the entire flock encounters a Conservative (of any subvariety, either Democrat or Republican.)
One solution is to put the nice, glitzy, eye catching - but empty - boxes on the shelves, with a stack of CDs below/beside it. The consumer can oh and ah over the packaging, then just toss the CD into their cart. Nah - too reasonable.
Re:C++ as a teaching language/programming obscure?
on
Who's Afraid Of C++?
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· Score: 2
C++ programmers won't use a pointer even when it's the best solution.
Please - stop generalizing. I'm a C++ programmer; I first learned C++, not C. I'm perfectly comfortable with pointers, and willing to use them when it makes sense. I'm also perfectly willing to write a perl script, or a VB test harness, or a bit of assembly if I need to. I can work in C if need by, though I prefer the C-subset of C++ for a number of reasons. I've seen poorly written C programs; would you like me to take that as an example of exactly how suitable C is as a development language?
Languages are tools. If C allows you to express an idea simply and effeciently, then it gets the job done. C++ is better than C in expressing some concepts and ideas. Perl is better than either in other arenas. A good developer understands this, and works to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the tools, so that s/he can use the most suitable tool for a task. A poor developer learns one tool and winds up with a "All I have is a hammer, therefore everything must be a nail" mentality.
But I would not under any circumstance introduce someone to programming through C++. BASIC, maybe.
Any possible brain-damage that I perpetuate in my programs can be traced back to my BASIC heritage:-)
I can see that this page is going to be attract free software wannabees, who see the opportunity to take responsibility for an already partially complete codebase in order to try to get kudos as the project manager.
Actually, my first thought was that here's a place I can get my feet wet in *nix development without screwing anything up too badly:-)
I'm sure there may end up being some glory-seekers who jump in and adopt a project just to be in charge of something; but there are probably just as many people like me, who want to contribute, but don't have the skills or knowledge to contribute to a high-profile "live" project like Apache or BSD or Linux. Think of it as a chance at an open-source development internship.
It was Heinlein, I think - I belive he signed a deal using the Model Contract simply to make a point for the SFWA, as his agent immediately renegotiated for a much more lucrative contract:-)
IANL - from what I understand, though, yes, minors are unable to participate in certain kinds of legal contracts. Marriage and a military enlistment contracts come to mind. Don't know off hand if it applies to this type of agreement, but I'd tend to suspect that it would, as your average minor (heck, your average adult, even) would be hard pressed to explain (legally) what a trade secret was, why safeguarding one was so important, and what the possible repercussions could be. Then again, I might be wrong. I'm a programmer, not a lawyer, and logical thinking doesn't always make sense as far as the law is concerned...
It's bypassing the click-thru that's important. Having the license printed on every page may seem intimidating, but consider what would happen if you were to print it out and "loose" the printout. Whoever found it would most certainly not be bound by the license - hell, maybe they don't read English, or maybe they're a minor and legally unable to enter into this kind of agreement.
In short, MS doesn't really have a legal leg to stand on. What they do have, however, is an excuse to drag whoever they want (Samba team, anyone?) into court and sue them into bankruptcy. They don't even have to win, just have enough cash - which they do - to be able to pay their lawyers longer than you can pay yours.
Every system has it's weak points. Where does the open source model (and the GPL) break down and becaome ineffective or inhibiting? What are the alternatives to the open source/GPL model under these circumstances?
But the fact remains that universal, state-mandated and state-funded education has brought historically unprecedented levels of literacy. Ditching the educational system is not the answer to the educational problems that we have.
You know, Anomalous, I was about to jump in and attack your position, but on reflection, I think you're on target. Like so many other things involved with the government, though - the patent office, social security, and legal system, to name a few - public education is a good idea with a (currently) flawed implementation.
What we have is a program that's been around for over a hundred years - it's gone past the point of being a legacy system, and morphed into a nightmare of political maneuverings. The original point of the program, education, has almost completely been lost; and because of the political implications, nobody is willing to even consider scrapping everything, going back to square one, and building something new to correct the problems inherent in the current system. They just want to patch, add a new feature here, tweak something there, and end up introducing two new problems for each one they correct...
There's some hope, though. I just read an article about schools in Arizona, where it sounds like they're essentially trying to build a hybrid between state/private education, where the state puts up the money for education on a per-child basis and certifies schools, but schools are run privately and parents can choose which school(s) their children attend within their area. From what I've read, it looks like it's working, and may be the kind of architectural overhaul that could keep the current system viable for another hundred years (or however long it takes politics to screw that up, as well.)
Oh, man, you got that right. How in the world could anyone fall for that line of baloney? She's tremendously charismatic, true, but she's also a demagogue, willing to twist the truth to suit her needs, and and to lie or simply ignore reality whenever it inconveniences her. Under even the most modest scrutiny, even her most simplistic ideas are revealed for the hollow, shallow, self-serving scams that they are.
But enough about Hillary Clinton. Let's get back to Ayn Rand.
*shrug* I think s/he did - though not as clearly as he could have. If it had been a laywer posting, we no doubt would have gotten a dissertation on precisely what was meant by "best price":-) As it stands, I think there's enough latitude in the wording that both interpretations are possible - and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and take the least damning.
At least two, IIRC - read Cringley' s book on the history of Sillicon Valley, I believe he mentions 'em. AFAIK, at the time he wrote it, one of 'em still worked for MS.
In any case, looking at MS stock price and valuation over the last five years - couldn't dig any further than that on quicken.com - MS has had three stock splits; if you extrapolate backwards, I think that 5 splits since 1990 isn't too unlikely. Which means that anyone who had 500 shares or options in 1990 - including employees with MS stock in their 401ks and the like - and who still holds those shares, has been a millionaire for the last couple of years.
Given that, I'd be surprised if there weren't multiple secretaty/administrative assistants/salepeople/HR persons/others at MS who are - or have been - millionaires.
Pardon me, but you ignored a critical part of his point:
Using the company as a social proxy is in-efficient compared to making a
normal buying decision...
In my mind, a "normal buying decision" includes things like, oh, does this company exploit third-world child labor? Do they try to legally abuse their employees, or use the law to silence critics? Have I ever heard of them being entangled with violations of environmental laws - and if I did, was it a real violation, or some tin-pot beaureaucrat making political hay?
In other words, someone making a "normal buying decision" wouldn't think your murderer's offer of a Rolex for $10 was a good deal. They might end up looking at the same Rolex from a bunch of different companies, none of which was obviously more "socially conscious" than the others, and end up deciding none of them are either socially conscious or socially corrupt, and that saving $10 and giving it to the Little Sisters of the Poor is more worthwhile than spending 3 weeks researching Rolex resellers to determine which one was more worthy of your money.
Slashdot Mirror
Leaving aside the fact that traditional tools have been used in art (not just to create art) and that an experienced professional craftsman does come to know "his" tools...
A physical hammer is akin to the original "word processors" (remember those beasts?) or a non-programmable calculator. Each is built for one task; you may be able to use it to do something else, but that's purely an accident of form and design. There's a reason why word processor machines are almost extinct - we (as a culture, possibly as a species) have decided that advantage of increased flexibility is worth the cost of increased complexity.
Computers are the first truly general purpose tool that mankind's invented. Imagine a chunk of matter that responded to your thoughts; if you think clearly enough, and in the right way, you can cause that chunk o' stuff to take the form of any tool you've ever seen, or any tool that you can imagine.
That's what a computer is. Not a hammer - but something that can be a hammer, or a screwdriver, or a socket wrench... as long as you know what you want, and how to turn it into the tool your interested in. The complexity is not in the use or the particular shape that the tool takes, but the fact that it can take many (any!) shape you can imagine, either perfectly or imprefectly suited for the job at hand.
Modern tools already do and will continue to incorporate elements of computers. That's progress for you. But don't confuse the technology that goes into the tool with the tool itself. Just because it's used in a simple tool doesn't mean that it's simple, or that more complex uses of that same technology are wrong.
I'm a desktop user, and I need its functionality.
There are a couple of different flavors of desktop user...
At one extreme, there's my mother, who expects her computer to boot up and work. She's not going to configure it, at least not intentionally. She wants a truly simple, iOpener-like system that lets her read and send email and see pictures of her granddaughter on the web. She uses a desktop all the time.
At the other are the sysadmins, developers, and IT folks who understand the hardware, the software, and how it's all glued together. They want X, ssh, and a wide selection of tools and capabilities; and if they can't find what they want, they'll build it themselves. They use a desktop when it's convenient.
Halfway in between are the "power users", the folks who know there's more to the machine than the desktop. They might be comfortable learning a bit about the shell, or a scripting language; but that's not their job. They want options and flexibility, but not too much - just enough to keep it all straight in their heads and get their jobs done. They use a desktop unless there's a very big advantage to using a CLI.
To be honest (and I don't mean to flame you), it sounds like you'd be happier using something like BeOS or MacOS. Why go to the trouble of using a complex, powerful Unix-like kernel if you're immediately going to rip out half of its functionality?
For a couple of reasons...
That last one is the real killer. I put "upgrade" in quotes because with the same system being used by multiple types of desktop users, it becomes a whole lot simpler for someone to learn a little bit here, a little bit there, and slowly expose the full functionality of a system by adding or exposing new pieces as they feel the need to.
Hmm. I believe the correct statement is that "1 plus the product of any n consecutive primes starting at 2 is either a prime number or has a prime factor greater than n."
Good. That's the cop's job. Whatever the situation, the police thought Vergil looked suspicious, and stopped to talk to him.
Again, good - as mentioned, that's his job. The kind of cop who waits around for someone to get shot before they get suspicious sure as hell aren't doing their jobs.
As has been mentioned, IT WAS HIS JOB . You're the one who's decided that Vergil was being harrassed; in my mind, he got exactly what he came there looking for - a confrontation with the police. Real harrasment does occur, but you know what? Those people aren't looking for it. All Vergil's managed to prove is that an obnoxious, vulgar, irritating and badly-dressed twit can manage to act bizzarely enough to make a cop suspicious of him. What news.Uninformed - perhaps; I haven't been keeping on top of the political maneverings of Bush and Gore. I was really taking a pot shot at the troll who seemed to think that supressing free speech through threat of violence was a noble goal.
(For the record, I favor Bush only because I despise Gore more... that's polticial reality these days; sad, but true... oh, crud, do I owe Metallica royalties now?)
Just to point out something - if something similar happened at a Democratic convention (No! Never!) and I responded "The point is to make a Democratic convention something that no city wants" - I would be shouted down by liberal Democrats as a hate-mongering, spiteful, example of exactly why Republicans should be rounded up, sterilized, and run out of town on a rail. Of course, the last part is a best-case scenario; given their druthers, I'm sure most far-left liberals would rather see everyone who disagreed with them locked up in a re-education camp.
Until they haul in UCITA, and show that you couldn't have installed their software without agreeing to their licensing agreement, which happen to prohibit benchmarking, profiling, comparisons, or any other mention of their product without their express permission.
And before you state how silly that is... MS, Oracle, and I'm sure other database vendors routinely put these kind of restrictions in their licenses, today, without having the 1000-pound gorilla of UCITA to back them up. I seem to recall MS, at least, trying to enforce it in one case.
You're absolutely right. If idiots like you get their way, though, we'll soon live in a world where our government will have free reign to do whatever they want to us, whenever they want. In Ben's time, they did it - well, because they were the government. They had the power to tell you to silence you, sieze your property at the slightest excuse, throw you in jail for no particular reason, or otherwise do whatever they wanted because they had the power to do so.
Since that time, we're progressively limited government's powers; until sometime around the early 20th century in America, when the federal government started grabbing for more an more powers - the power to tax; to limit discourse; to sieze property and silence critics without a need to pay attention to all those annoying civil liberties.
Sorry - you've got it wrong; it's the far left that consistently drags out the "Save the children" campaigns (almost always related to "the war on guns", "don't let poor children starve", etc.).
Occaisionally, you see the far right do the same, but it usually ends up being done with a lot less umph and verve, and a lot less publicity (the whole "war on drugs" child-protection stance being a strange but effective anomoly.)
Both attempts - from the far left and far right - are manipulative, and generally disgusting. As soon as a politician mentions "for the children", "for grandma", "for our elderly"... they've stopped talking about the issue, and it's a fair bet they've done so because they realize they don't have a leg to stand on and the only way to win your support is an emotional appeal.
All in all, when you think about it, it means that the RIAA's appeal to stop digital music "for the artists" is exactly what it sounds like, a badly-played emotional appeal from an association that realizes they're sinking fast...
Why would they do this? They want to sell X-boxen... making it outrageously expensive for small development companies to work on the platform will doom it. Even making it moderately expensive to do so would be pushing things; they'll want the cost of developing for the platform to be as low as possible, in order to entice more development for it early on.
On top of that, one thing MS does have a history of doing is shipping every possible DSK and development platform as part of MSDN... and I mean, everything. They'll probably include the X-box SDK along with the other SDKs in the MSDN, which will make it available to a few thousand companies without their having to actually do anything at all about it.
My, what witty reparte... you have stunned me, sir, and shown me the error of my ways! Yea, and verily, I have changed - from this point on, I will glory in my newfound knowledge of right and wrong, and be steadfast in the knowledge that I can simply dismiss any who disagree with me just by calling them a stupid-nah-nah-poo-poo-head!
On a more serious note... ad homenin arguments and character attacks are a refuge of the incompetent in any debate. If you were trying to troll, well, take this as a gentle bit of criticism. A good troll can be entertaining without having to descend to this level.
If you think you have a good argument, I suggest reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. Attacking someone is probably the simplest way to convince them that your point is not worth examining, let alone acception.
Finally, if you happen to think that you presented a rational, informaed argument on a fine point of political and phiosophical thought, well, let me know what you've been smoking - it sounds like it must be some damn sweet stuff.
Actually, Lycos has dropped their original search technology, and moved to using the Fast engine (read the press release.)
No, they can't. They're an (unfortunately) very common subvariety of the American Liberal Democrat, largely characterized by an inability to see anything humorous, period. All issues are life-and-death to these individuals, who find themselves in a near-constant state of outrage that other people, institutions, and in fact the entire world does not conform to their views of What Should Be.
In the wild, they often associate with and assume the colorings of other, more palatable subvarieties of the Liberal Democrat (for example, Fruvous Liberals). This provides them with some obvious benefits, primarily the fact that they are much more likely to get invited to good parties. While in these groupings, an American Liberal Democrat's normally combatative nature and desire to verbally abuse non-Democrats can usually be repressed, at least until the entire flock encounters a Conservative (of any subvariety, either Democrat or Republican.)
One solution is to put the nice, glitzy, eye catching - but empty - boxes on the shelves, with a stack of CDs below/beside it. The consumer can oh and ah over the packaging, then just toss the CD into their cart. Nah - too reasonable.
Please - stop generalizing. I'm a C++ programmer; I first learned C++, not C. I'm perfectly comfortable with pointers, and willing to use them when it makes sense. I'm also perfectly willing to write a perl script, or a VB test harness, or a bit of assembly if I need to. I can work in C if need by, though I prefer the C-subset of C++ for a number of reasons. I've seen poorly written C programs; would you like me to take that as an example of exactly how suitable C is as a development language?
Languages are tools. If C allows you to express an idea simply and effeciently, then it gets the job done. C++ is better than C in expressing some concepts and ideas. Perl is better than either in other arenas. A good developer understands this, and works to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the tools, so that s/he can use the most suitable tool for a task. A poor developer learns one tool and winds up with a "All I have is a hammer, therefore everything must be a nail" mentality.
Any possible brain-damage that I perpetuate in my programs can be traced back to my BASIC heritage :-)
Actually, my first thought was that here's a place I can get my feet wet in *nix development without screwing anything up too badly :-)
I'm sure there may end up being some glory-seekers who jump in and adopt a project just to be in charge of something; but there are probably just as many people like me, who want to contribute, but don't have the skills or knowledge to contribute to a high-profile "live" project like Apache or BSD or Linux. Think of it as a chance at an open-source development internship.
It was Heinlein, I think - I belive he signed a deal using the Model Contract simply to make a point for the SFWA, as his agent immediately renegotiated for a much more lucrative contract :-)
IANL - from what I understand, though, yes, minors are unable to participate in certain kinds of legal contracts. Marriage and a military enlistment contracts come to mind. Don't know off hand if it applies to this type of agreement, but I'd tend to suspect that it would, as your average minor (heck, your average adult, even) would be hard pressed to explain (legally) what a trade secret was, why safeguarding one was so important, and what the possible repercussions could be. Then again, I might be wrong. I'm a programmer, not a lawyer, and logical thinking doesn't always make sense as far as the law is concerned...
It's bypassing the click-thru that's important. Having the license printed on every page may seem intimidating, but consider what would happen if you were to print it out and "loose" the printout. Whoever found it would most certainly not be bound by the license - hell, maybe they don't read English, or maybe they're a minor and legally unable to enter into this kind of agreement.
In short, MS doesn't really have a legal leg to stand on. What they do have, however, is an excuse to drag whoever they want (Samba team, anyone?) into court and sue them into bankruptcy. They don't even have to win, just have enough cash - which they do - to be able to pay their lawyers longer than you can pay yours.
Every system has it's weak points. Where does the open source model (and the GPL) break down and becaome ineffective or inhibiting? What are the alternatives to the open source/GPL model under these circumstances?
You know, Anomalous, I was about to jump in and attack your position, but on reflection, I think you're on target. Like so many other things involved with the government, though - the patent office, social security, and legal system, to name a few - public education is a good idea with a (currently) flawed implementation.
What we have is a program that's been around for over a hundred years - it's gone past the point of being a legacy system, and morphed into a nightmare of political maneuverings. The original point of the program, education, has almost completely been lost; and because of the political implications, nobody is willing to even consider scrapping everything, going back to square one, and building something new to correct the problems inherent in the current system. They just want to patch, add a new feature here, tweak something there, and end up introducing two new problems for each one they correct...
There's some hope, though. I just read an article about schools in Arizona, where it sounds like they're essentially trying to build a hybrid between state/private education, where the state puts up the money for education on a per-child basis and certifies schools, but schools are run privately and parents can choose which school(s) their children attend within their area. From what I've read, it looks like it's working, and may be the kind of architectural overhaul that could keep the current system viable for another hundred years (or however long it takes politics to screw that up, as well.)
Oh, man, you got that right . How in the world could anyone fall for that line of baloney? She's tremendously charismatic, true, but she's also a demagogue, willing to twist the truth to suit her needs, and and to lie or simply ignore reality whenever it inconveniences her. Under even the most modest scrutiny, even her most simplistic ideas are revealed for the hollow, shallow, self-serving scams that they are.
But enough about Hillary Clinton. Let's get back to Ayn Rand.
*shrug* I think s/he did - though not as clearly as he could have. If it had been a laywer posting, we no doubt would have gotten a dissertation on precisely what was meant by "best price" :-) As it stands, I think there's enough latitude in the wording that both interpretations are possible - and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and take the least damning.
At least two, IIRC - read Cringley' s book on the history of Sillicon Valley, I believe he mentions 'em. AFAIK, at the time he wrote it, one of 'em still worked for MS.
In any case, looking at MS stock price and valuation over the last five years - couldn't dig any further than that on quicken.com - MS has had three stock splits; if you extrapolate backwards, I think that 5 splits since 1990 isn't too unlikely. Which means that anyone who had 500 shares or options in 1990 - including employees with MS stock in their 401ks and the like - and who still holds those shares, has been a millionaire for the last couple of years.
Given that, I'd be surprised if there weren't multiple secretaty/administrative assistants/salepeople/HR persons/others at MS who are - or have been - millionaires.
Pardon me, but you ignored a critical part of his point:
In my mind, a "normal buying decision" includes things like, oh, does this company exploit third-world child labor? Do they try to legally abuse their employees, or use the law to silence critics? Have I ever heard of them being entangled with violations of environmental laws - and if I did, was it a real violation, or some tin-pot beaureaucrat making political hay?
In other words, someone making a "normal buying decision" wouldn't think your murderer's offer of a Rolex for $10 was a good deal. They might end up looking at the same Rolex from a bunch of different companies, none of which was obviously more "socially conscious" than the others, and end up deciding none of them are either socially conscious or socially corrupt, and that saving $10 and giving it to the Little Sisters of the Poor is more worthwhile than spending 3 weeks researching Rolex resellers to determine which one was more worthy of your money.