Re:Mouse could still be slower in the big picture
on
Interface Zen
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· Score: 1
IIRC, the study (in Tog On Interface) concluded that while it feels like a keyboard is quicker, a mouse provides the ability to multitask in certain circumstances. 'Course, as has been mentioned, Tog worked for Apple, and with a Mac, there's no question that your productivity very quickly goes to zero if you ignore the mouse.
In the twentieth century, however, the examples of Nazi Germany, Cuba, Russia and Yugoslavia show us that the popular militia is almost always on the side of the totalitarian power.
Thus the second amendment to the US consititution, protecting the right of the unpopular militia to own firearms as well. Your point is well made, but flawed, in that a state that reserves the right to decide who is allowed to possess a firearm will inevitably produce the "popular militia" (as the state will only allow those who agree with it's political views, and thus pose no risk to the state, to possess firearms.)
I'd have to argue that the cDc would never be at the recieving end of a lawsuit like this - they simply aren't worth it. There is no money to be won from the cDc, or at least, not enough to make it worth the effort of suing them. More and more often, responsibility isn't the issues - compensation is. The wronged party much more interested in being compensated for the wrongs done to them than they are in seeing the person responsible brought to justice.
A more correct analogy would be someone putting together a class action lawsuit against MS for producing an OS that permits an application like BackOrifice to work. Yes, I know that's a ridiculous assertion - take some time, dress it up however you want to make it sound more reasonable, even if it's still incorrect. Now you have a chance, and probably a pretty decent chance at that, of convincing some judge and jury somewhere that MS should give you a pile of money in damages - much more than you could ever get off of the cDc, or someone who abused and misused their software.
Even if he did implicitly agree to a contract modification (he may have; IANL, and the law has stranger things in it...) - did he also implicitly enter into an assumed modification that assigned intellectual property of his creation to the company? If not, and there was no such assignment in his original contract, then he owned the code, and was free to do with it as he wished.
Once he undertook the duty, he was obligated to due so correctly.
Legally, or morally? Morally, I'd agree with you... if he made the commitment, I think he should have followed through. Legally, though, I don't think there was a commitment, and he can't be held accountable for not doing work he was never hired to do.
You know, I'd agree with you except for one statement he made:
I was working in a PC Support role at the time and there was no mention of programming in my contract.
They asked him to do something that he was not contractually obligated to do, that he was not being paid to do, and he did it anyways... and he's a thief? From the looks of it, the company was the thief - they were trying to do an end-run around a contract and receive extra value above and beyond what they were willing to pay for.
He might have had a different attitude if they had told him that doing a good job could lead to a change in position, reworking of his contract, or that there was some other kind of possible future compensation for doing something that he was not hired and not being paid to do.
As it stands, the company essentially tried to get something for nothing. He gave them something which was certainly less than what they might have potentially gained - which was surely more than what they paid for.
Not to nitpick - but please get your terminology straight. "Innovative" and "new" do not have identical meanings.
From what I've seen, Q3 obviously has a lot of new code (as in "new and improved") that enhances the overall performance and impact of the game. Aside from the fact that id's releasing a cross-platform, highly customizable, FPS designed primarily for real-time network play, I don't think Q3 is all that innovative (no sarcasm intended there... well, maybe a little. End users never seem to appreciate the architecture:-)
Maybe I'm just seeing this from my own point of view, but the brunt of the questions on the exam seemed focused on privacy, not guilt; though "privacy" doesn't really express the idea properly. "Freedom" would be a better term, in that the only way you can really have true privacy is if you have the freedom to decide for yourself what information you wish to reveal, and who you wish to reveal it to.
If you're antagonistic to the point of telling me to shut up, why do you expect me to spoon-feed you information?
Try Google, and search for "clinton scandal", "waco delta", "clinton executive order", or just "white house abuse".
Information related to these or any other governmental crimes (Iran-Contra, Watergate, Mena, and various other activities by previous administrations) aren't that difficult to find. The only real distinction that Clinton and his administration have brought to the table is that they have been so amazingly blatant about their disregard for the citizens, laws and Constitution of the United States, that finding evidence of any number of potential illegalities is hardly difficult.
Typical liberal ad homenim response. The ideas expressed in Harrison Bergeron were hardly unique; yet, instead of pointing out something you would consider a better exmaple, you're content to denigrate the author.
Then again, I guess you can do whatever you want when you're an AC.
...the most recent abuses of the Clinton regime: over a thousand FBI files on political opponents delivered to the white house, individuals jailed for asking non-scripted questions at "town hall" PR events, the use of the FBI and IRS to persecute political enemies - oh, and the recent allegations of sening in US military forces to "help force a resolution" at Waco because the whole thing was getting politically embarassing.
"Intel P266, 4 gig HD, 4x CD-ROM, 15" monitor, color inkjet printer, and 1 year of FREE internet access via MSN with $1000 credited to your Microsoft Passport account!"
Please tell me... HOW many CDs, DATs, zip cartridges, and floppys get shipped out of the US every day, either as part of a commercial shipment or carried in someone's luggage?
Crypto source, like any information, doesn't need to be continually exported. It just needs to make it out *once*. After that, there's no need to risk smuggling anything again, when you can make a million electronic copies if you'd like.
Given the number of highly guarded, classified, ultra-top-secret US government documents that routinely turn up in places like Russia, China, Great Britain, Israel, Iran... I think it's fairly safe to assume that whatever Janet Reno thinks is worth guarding, is already gone.
The article mentioned someone owning the Australian trademark on the name Linux... any pointers to that story?
In any case, you'd think that there would be some sort of prohibition on trademarking a name that (a) you did not come up with, (b) was already in common use, and (c) described a product you did not create, produce or own.
If that's not the case, I'm gonna fly to Germany and start trademarking every steenkin' noun, proper or not, in the dictionary.
So someone doesn't respect Katz. Fine - that doesn't require him/her/(it?) to be blatantly disrepectful in a way that even a three-year old child would regard as simplistic.
There are any number of folks who routinely pan Jon and his articles in ways that entertain, raise issues, and show lack of respect for his work without showing him disrepect as a person. The inability - or unwillingness - to do so seems to be a prime characteristic of a small segment of attitude-sporting fools trying to convince each other they're k00l.
Using NTFS for video? He deserved what he got. Keep in mind that NTFS was designed for increased reliability, not raw speed.
The times I've dealt with video capture on NT, I've given the capture software/hardware a raw AV scsi drive to play with... anything less really isn't worth your time unless your just fooling around.
Just out of curiosity, I took a look at native.exe (from the applications article) - the only dependency is on NTDLL.DLL, which weighs in at 347kb on my NT4 SP4 machine. Keep in mind that ntdetect.com, ntldr, hal.dll Though I have to admit the exports for it look a little weird... it looks like it implements a good chunk of the standard C library, and I want to know who thought exporting functions like "PropertyLengthAsVariant" were absolutely vital to the kernel...
Another option is to extract a different sort of price for the settlement of new territories - risk and death.
If the "newly opened" continent is a hideously dangerous, wild environment - one that will effectively take years of gameplay by thousands of people to tame - then the virtual economy will probably boom instead of being destabalized, as support of the "brave explorers" and first few colonists becomes a part of the economy...
Of course, the new continent would need to have the riches (resources) to make settling it potentially worthwhile. Still, that can be managed easily enough; and unlike the real world, the expansionist economy can literally be kept up forver, since the virtual space is limitless.
Take a look at the Cryptonomicon FAQ - he mentions that it's essentially just a case of parallel thinking. There's also an interesting link to a page describing Solitaire on the Counterpane Systems site. -Samrobb
Please. Folks like this are apoloitical - they'll call themselves liberals when they need to, conservatives when they have to, whatever they need to maintain their position and power base.
Democrats and republicans have about as much in common with that particular type of gutter slime as most developers have in common with marketing.
Hmmm... that's probably going to torque off more than a few people - her in Pittsburgh, we have a random collection of geeks that have already arranged for (and I think, paid for) a Saturday-morning showing.
Besides - what the big deal with theater rentals? How is renting a theater different from having 400+ people get in line at the same time?
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC, the study (in Tog On Interface) concluded that while it feels like a keyboard is quicker, a mouse provides the ability to multitask in certain circumstances. 'Course, as has been mentioned, Tog worked for Apple, and with a Mac, there's no question that your productivity very quickly goes to zero if you ignore the mouse.
In the twentieth century, however, the examples of Nazi Germany, Cuba, Russia and Yugoslavia show us that the popular militia is almost always on the side of the totalitarian power.
Thus the second amendment to the US consititution, protecting the right of the unpopular militia to own firearms as well. Your point is well made, but flawed, in that a state that reserves the right to decide who is allowed to possess a firearm will inevitably produce the "popular militia" (as the state will only allow those who agree with it's political views, and thus pose no risk to the state, to possess firearms.)
I'd have to argue that the cDc would never be at the recieving end of a lawsuit like this - they simply aren't worth it. There is no money to be won from the cDc, or at least, not enough to make it worth the effort of suing them. More and more often, responsibility isn't the issues - compensation is. The wronged party much more interested in being compensated for the wrongs done to them than they are in seeing the person responsible brought to justice.
A more correct analogy would be someone putting together a class action lawsuit against MS for producing an OS that permits an application like BackOrifice to work. Yes, I know that's a ridiculous assertion - take some time, dress it up however you want to make it sound more reasonable, even if it's still incorrect. Now you have a chance, and probably a pretty decent chance at that, of convincing some judge and jury somewhere that MS should give you a pile of money in damages - much more than you could ever get off of the cDc, or someone who abused and misused their software.
Even if he did implicitly agree to a contract modification (he may have; IANL, and the law has stranger things in it...) - did he also implicitly enter into an assumed modification that assigned intellectual property of his creation to the company? If not, and there was no such assignment in his original contract, then he owned the code, and was free to do with it as he wished.
Once he undertook the duty, he was obligated to due so correctly.
Legally, or morally? Morally, I'd agree with you... if he made the commitment, I think he should have followed through. Legally, though, I don't think there was a commitment, and he can't be held accountable for not doing work he was never hired to do.
You know, I'd agree with you except for one statement he made:
I was working in a PC Support role at the time and there was no mention of programming in my contract.
They asked him to do something that he was not contractually obligated to do, that he was not being paid to do, and he did it anyways... and he's a thief? From the looks of it, the company was the thief - they were trying to do an end-run around a contract and receive extra value above and beyond what they were willing to pay for.
He might have had a different attitude if they had told him that doing a good job could lead to a change in position, reworking of his contract, or that there was some other kind of possible future compensation for doing something that he was not hired and not being paid to do.
As it stands, the company essentially tried to get something for nothing. He gave them something which was certainly less than what they might have potentially gained - which was surely more than what they paid for.
Not to nitpick - but please get your terminology straight. "Innovative" and "new" do not have identical meanings.
From what I've seen, Q3 obviously has a lot of new code (as in "new and improved") that enhances the overall performance and impact of the game. Aside from the fact that id's releasing a cross-platform, highly customizable, FPS designed primarily for real-time network play, I don't think Q3 is all that innovative (no sarcasm intended there... well, maybe a little. End users never seem to appreciate the architecture :-)
"Why is this news? It was (on some other site/on some news show/in some publication/already posted on /.) weeks ago!"
Ah, but they never claimed the *server* was compliant. The *html file*, though, is unlikely to harbor any Y2K bugs :-)
Maybe I'm just seeing this from my own point of view, but the brunt of the questions on the exam seemed focused on privacy, not guilt; though "privacy" doesn't really express the idea properly. "Freedom" would be a better term, in that the only way you can really have true privacy is if you have the freedom to decide for yourself what information you wish to reveal, and who you wish to reveal it to.
If you're antagonistic to the point of telling me to shut up, why do you expect me to spoon-feed you information?
Try Google, and search for "clinton scandal", "waco delta", "clinton executive order", or just "white house abuse".
Information related to these or any other governmental crimes (Iran-Contra, Watergate, Mena, and various other activities by previous administrations) aren't that difficult to find.
The only real distinction that Clinton and his administration have brought to the table is that they have been so amazingly blatant about their disregard for the citizens, laws and Constitution of the United States, that finding evidence of any number of potential illegalities is hardly difficult.
Typical liberal ad homenim response. The ideas expressed in Harrison Bergeron were hardly unique; yet, instead of pointing out something you would consider a better exmaple, you're content to denigrate the author.
Then again, I guess you can do whatever you want when you're an AC.
...the most recent abuses of the Clinton regime: over a thousand FBI files on political opponents delivered to the white house, individuals jailed for asking non-scripted questions at "town hall" PR events, the use of the FBI and IRS to persecute political enemies - oh, and the recent allegations of sening in US military forces to "help force a resolution" at Waco because the whole thing was getting politically embarassing.
"A $1000 value, absolutely FREE!"
"Intel P266, 4 gig HD, 4x CD-ROM, 15" monitor, color inkjet printer, and 1 year of FREE internet access via MSN with $1000 credited to your Microsoft Passport account!"
Waiting for the first spotting...
Please tell me... HOW many CDs, DATs, zip cartridges, and floppys get shipped out of the US every day, either as part of a commercial shipment or carried in someone's luggage?
Crypto source, like any information, doesn't need to be continually exported. It just needs to make it out *once*. After that, there's no need to risk smuggling anything again, when you can make a million electronic copies if you'd like.
Given the number of highly guarded, classified, ultra-top-secret US government documents that routinely turn up in places like Russia, China, Great Britain, Israel, Iran... I think it's fairly safe to assume that whatever Janet Reno thinks is worth guarding, is already gone.
The article mentioned someone owning the Australian trademark on the name Linux...
any pointers to that story?
In any case, you'd think that there would be some sort of prohibition on trademarking a name that (a) you did not come up with, (b) was already in common use, and (c) described a product you did not create, produce or own.
If that's not the case, I'm gonna fly to Germany and start trademarking every steenkin' noun, proper or not, in the dictionary.
There are any number of folks who routinely pan Jon and his articles in ways that entertain, raise issues, and show lack of respect for his work without showing him disrepect as a person. The inability - or unwillingness - to do so seems to be a prime characteristic of a small segment of attitude-sporting fools trying to convince each other they're k00l.
Using NTFS for video? He deserved what he got. Keep in mind that NTFS was designed for increased reliability, not raw speed.
The times I've dealt with video capture on NT, I've given the capture software/hardware a raw AV scsi drive to play with... anything less really isn't worth your time unless your just fooling around.
Heh. Just realized the completely abbreviated version of the name is POS... which I can't help but think says something about their feelings for NT.
Inside the Native API
Inside Native Applications
Just out of curiosity, I took a look at native.exe (from the applications article) - the only dependency is on NTDLL.DLL, which weighs in at 347kb on my NT4 SP4 machine. Keep in mind that ntdetect.com, ntldr, hal.dll Though I have to admit the exports for it look a little weird... it looks like it implements a good chunk of the standard C library, and I want to know who thought exporting functions like "PropertyLengthAsVariant" were absolutely vital to the kernel...
Interesting... even if the DOJ can't force MS to break up, then perhaps a shareholder lawsuit could?
Another option is to extract a different sort of price for the settlement of new territories - risk and death.
If the "newly opened" continent is a hideously dangerous, wild environment - one that will effectively take years of gameplay by thousands of people to tame - then the virtual economy will probably boom instead of being destabalized, as support of the "brave explorers" and first few colonists becomes a part of the economy...
Of course, the new continent would need to have the riches (resources) to make settling it potentially worthwhile. Still, that can be managed easily enough; and unlike the real world, the expansionist economy can literally be kept up forver, since the virtual space is limitless.
-Samrobb
Just from a brief glance, wouldn't various database replication technologies cover many of the points in the patent?
-Samrobb
Take a look at the Cryptonomicon FAQ - he mentions that it's essentially just a case of parallel thinking. There's also an interesting link to a page describing Solitaire on the Counterpane Systems site. -Samrobb
Please. Folks like this are apoloitical - they'll call themselves liberals when they need to, conservatives when they have to, whatever they need to maintain their position and power base.
Democrats and republicans have about as much in common with that particular type of gutter slime as most developers have in common with marketing.
-Samrobb
Hmmm... that's probably going to torque off more than a few people - her in Pittsburgh, we have a random collection of geeks that have already arranged for (and I think, paid for) a Saturday-morning showing.
Besides - what the big deal with theater rentals? How is renting a theater different from having 400+ people get in line at the same time?