Surely, the amount of money they spend doing this outweighs the "brownie points" they'll be winning.
It is not just "brownie points". I presume that
lots of home users find spam sufficiently annoying
/ offensive that they stop using email. Many of
these will stop using the internet or even home
computers. This translates to fewer people
buying replacement home computers, and hence
fewer people paying for new Microsoft licenses.
Pulling some numbers out of the air, (say) 1%
of (say) 500 million computers at (say) $100
a pop is... a LOT of lost revenue.
And, why wouldn't they just focus on writing anti-spam filtering software, and then _sell_ it as a solution to the spam problem?
Because we all know that (by itself) spam
filtering is not an effective solution.
I own this vehicle, because there are occasions when I *NEED* the carrying capacity and 4WD (hiking, whitewater kayaking etc).
That doesn't make sense to me! If I were you,
I'd save on insurance, gas, expensive tires, etc by *HIRING* an SUV when I wanted to go bush.
My neighbours take it one step further. They don't own a car at all. They do most of their travel on foot, or by public transport. On the odd occasion when this is too inconvenient, they book a taxi or hire a car for a day.
It's attitudes like this that make me want to see SCO sue the crap out of the Linux community, and win, one machine at a time.
FYI: your comment comes across as just as
unreasonable the comment you were reacting to.
For a start, it is not reasonable to equate
the minority of loud-mouthed Linux advocates
on/. with the Linux community. Second, you
are "wishing ill" on the Linux community
because they (in your mind) they "wish ill"
on Sun.
IMO, the best way to deal with malignant / ignorant "advocates" is to ignore them.
Even so, how can the courts verify your PGP key really belongs to you?
If you want to see if a paper signature is
a forgery, you compare it against other
examples.
Similarly, you can verify that a PGP
key belongs to someone by looking at
other emails of theirs signed with
the PGP key in question. Does the writing
style match? Are the email headers similar?
Of course, this
isn't absolute proof, but a judge or jury
only needs proof "beyond reasonable doubt"... based on all of the admitted
evidence.
Given you don't know what the current codebase
is like, that is BAD advice. If the code is
moderately well written, the chances are that
a total rewrite would not improve things much.
In short, it would be a waste of time / money.
Don't confuse poor software engineering processes
with bad code.
That stops traces of antibiotics going into you, where they may or may not do you harm.
But it does not stop the much larger doses being fed to chickens on thousands of non-organic farms, etc. where the resistant bacteria are evolving.
Unless you can think of a way to persuade just about everyone to boycott non-organic chicken, etc., eating organic does not address this issue. The only solution I can think of is a legislated ban on the use of antibiotics as growth promoters.
Even so, one of the chief problems with the use of antibiotics as growth promoters is that this drives the evolution of bacteria with antibiotic resistance. For example, there is now a strain of Staphylococcus Auraeus (aka "Golden Staph") that is resistant to all antibiotics approved for human use. If there are now detectable levels of antibiotics in waterways, this can only make things worse.
Frankly, if I could choose between more expensive chicken meat and dying in 10 years time because of a multi-resistant bacteria infection, I know which option I'd take. But we (the public) don't get to make that choice.
And so as a Catholic you must be opposed to laws that promote abortion, or provide govenment funding for it.
Since you are not an official representative
of the Catholic Church, you have no business making such statements.
Only the Catholic Church has any right to say what a Catholic must or must not believe or do. Furthermore, the fact that the Church does not try to force lay Catholics to take a stance against anti-abortion should tell you that you are plain wrong... as well as talking out of turn!
Presumably by the most common process of cave formation; i.e. by CO2 rich rainwater dissolving limestone. Dissolution typically starts at
weak areas in the limestone; e.g. faults. Over
time, the dissolution creates tiny channels through the limestone. These join together
and acquire flow, eventually growing into
passages that are large enough for cavers.
Generally speaking, cave formation is determined by the direction of water flow. Vertical cave formation will stop either at the level of the water table or at an impermiable rock layer beneath the limestone. At that point, the cave tends to form horizontal passages in the direction of the flow. If the water table drops, or the
water finds a fissure in the impermiable rock,
vertical formation can resume.
Normally, limestone beds are not that deep; e.g.
less than 100 metres. However, in mountainous regions, geological processes can result in major faulting and tilting of the originally horizontal limestone beds. In unusual cases, this can lead to very deep limestone beds... and very deep caves.
I hate to shatter your illusions, but the chances of finding a new species in there are not great. You tend to get cave life if the conditions are mild (e.g. not too cold, not too much water flow) and if there is a steady input of digestible matter (e.g. vegetable matter or bat droppings) from the outside. This more likely to occur in a shallow cave than a deep one. In this case, the cave sump is very cold, and judging from the geometry, it probably takes major seasonal water flows; e.g. spring meltwater.
But seriously, before you go over the top in
plotting your revenge on your current boss,
don't forget that he can do other things than
sack you. He can withhold your last paycheck,
your accrued holiday. He can track you down
at your new job and spill the beans to your
new boss. If you do something illegal,
he can call in the police. Or much, much
worse!
Common sense says that California should go back to the tried-and-true method of putting ticks in boxes
on a piece of paper. It is the most transparent
voting system that there is.
Well, since they didn't bother to test the machines, then the state shares in some of the blame.
Well, no.
The purchasor has no legal obligation to verify that claims made by the vendor are true. The obligation is entirely on the vendor. And if the vendor makes untrue claims, a court may award damages, or even find the vendor guilty of fraud.
Mayber caveat emptor doesn't apply to the gov'ment?
Caveat emptor is common sense, but it is
not a legal principle.
Caveat emptor says that if I buy second hand car, I would be wise to get an independent mechanic
to check its condition. After all, everyone expects used care salesmen to be a bit shonky.
But it I buy a brand new car, I shouldn't have
to do this. I should be able to trust Ford / General Motors to design and build cars that are mechanically sound when they leave the showroom.
In this particular case, it is not clear to
me whether the State of California or individual voting districts (?) purchased the machines. Either way, the purchaser was entitled to believe Diebold's assertions about the products' fitness for use at face value. Given that Diebold does not disclose its source-code, the purchasors
have little choice wrt voting integrity issues.
There are big differences between flexible working and outsourcing. For example
Flexible working retains management control of how things are done, where outsourcing largely surrenders it.
Flexible working retains key knowledge / skills within the organisation, where outsourcing quickly results in their loss.
You can always pull in a "flexible working" employee in for a face-to-face meeting. With (offshore) outsourcing, this is often not an option.
With "flexible working" employees, you can resort to the civil/crimoinal law; e.g. if an employee leaks IP or confidential customer data. With outsourcing, it is much harder to sue, especially if you have outsourced overseas.
... but I was referring to students paying other people to write their essays for them. I've even heard of students paying other people to sit their exams!
Whether or not Novel owns the entire copyrights, or not,m there are postions of the code which IS copyrighted to other companies (CA, Sun, HP, IBM, etc). Putting UNIX into public domain would require permission from EVERY copyright holder.
That is true. (And I didn't realise that other
companies had residual copyright claims on bits of UNIX.) However, given the SCO attack, you'd think that both Novell and the residual copyright holders would be keen to reconsider releasing UNIX now.
"It is strange because the legal system always gets credit for a slow, burdensome and painful process. And it is that. But there is a real effort as well to finalize whatever issues can be resolved. The court does have that as an objective. You just have to do it in the right way or it boils over again anyway. Sort of like the USL v BSD case. Everyone thought that was put into the deep freeze. Well it may be that the Unix copyrights will again be placed into the deep freeze. But the power can go out and the whole thing thaws again down the way. (Of course Novell may add a padlock to that freezer and invest in an UPS unit as well. But a freeze is not the same treatment as cremation. And you can not cremate Unix anymore than you can cremate Linux.)"
This is an interesting point. But I think there
is a way that Novell could resolve the UNIX
copyright issue once and for all. They could
release the UNIX source into the public domain.
Once that has been (properly) done, there is
no way the Novell or possible "successors in interest" could reverse it.
Alternatively, they could put the UNIX source under the GPL and assign copyright to FSF.
Many other companies already have the right
to ship products based on the UNIX source code,
so slapping a GPL copyright on UNIX won't
affect them. But for the others, Linux is probably a (technically) better place to
start than SVR4. So GPLing UNIX (rather than
puting it into the public domain) would tend to
discourage the emergence of new SVR4 derivitives.
That's probably a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not just "brownie points". I presume that lots of home users find spam sufficiently annoying / offensive that they stop using email. Many of these will stop using the internet or even home computers. This translates to fewer people buying replacement home computers, and hence fewer people paying for new Microsoft licenses.
Pulling some numbers out of the air, (say) 1% of (say) 500 million computers at (say) $100 a pop is ... a LOT of lost revenue.
And, why wouldn't they just focus on writing anti-spam filtering software, and then _sell_ it as a solution to the spam problem?
Because we all know that (by itself) spam filtering is not an effective solution.
I think you meant "noir" not "rouge", n'est pas?
Fair enough. But then "every weekend for 4 months" is not what most people would call "occasional"!
That doesn't make sense to me! If I were you, I'd save on insurance, gas, expensive tires, etc by *HIRING* an SUV when I wanted to go bush.
My neighbours take it one step further. They don't own a car at all. They do most of their travel on foot, or by public transport. On the odd occasion when this is too inconvenient, they book a taxi or hire a car for a day.
FYI: your comment comes across as just as unreasonable the comment you were reacting to.
For a start, it is not reasonable to equate the minority of loud-mouthed Linux advocates on /. with the Linux community. Second, you
are "wishing ill" on the Linux community
because they (in your mind) they "wish ill"
on Sun.
IMO, the best way to deal with malignant / ignorant "advocates" is to ignore them.
As a rule, politicians don't sue people because it tends to lose them votes ...
If you want to see if a paper signature is a forgery, you compare it against other examples.
Similarly, you can verify that a PGP key belongs to someone by looking at other emails of theirs signed with the PGP key in question. Does the writing style match? Are the email headers similar?
Of course, this isn't absolute proof, but a judge or jury only needs proof "beyond reasonable doubt" ... based on all of the admitted
evidence.
Given you don't know what the current codebase is like, that is BAD advice. If the code is moderately well written, the chances are that a total rewrite would not improve things much. In short, it would be a waste of time / money. Don't confuse poor software engineering processes with bad code.
Unless you can think of a way to persuade just about everyone to boycott non-organic chicken, etc., eating organic does not address this issue. The only solution I can think of is a legislated ban on the use of antibiotics as growth promoters.
Frankly, if I could choose between more expensive chicken meat and dying in 10 years time because of a multi-resistant bacteria infection, I know which option I'd take. But we (the public) don't get to make that choice.
If you are organised, it is no more obvious than taking the picture off the wall.
Since you are not an official representative of the Catholic Church, you have no business making such statements. Only the Catholic Church has any right to say what a Catholic must or must not believe or do. Furthermore, the fact that the Church does not try to force lay Catholics to take a stance against anti-abortion should tell you that you are plain wrong ... as well as talking out of turn!
Presumably by the most common process of cave formation; i.e. by CO2 rich rainwater dissolving limestone. Dissolution typically starts at weak areas in the limestone; e.g. faults. Over time, the dissolution creates tiny channels through the limestone. These join together and acquire flow, eventually growing into passages that are large enough for cavers.
Generally speaking, cave formation is determined by the direction of water flow. Vertical cave formation will stop either at the level of the water table or at an impermiable rock layer beneath the limestone. At that point, the cave tends to form horizontal passages in the direction of the flow. If the water table drops, or the water finds a fissure in the impermiable rock, vertical formation can resume.
Normally, limestone beds are not that deep; e.g. less than 100 metres. However, in mountainous regions, geological processes can result in major faulting and tilting of the originally horizontal limestone beds. In unusual cases, this can lead to very deep limestone beds ... and very deep caves.
I hate to shatter your illusions, but the chances of finding a new species in there are not great. You tend to get cave life if the conditions are mild (e.g. not too cold, not too much water flow) and if there is a steady input of digestible matter (e.g. vegetable matter or bat droppings) from the outside. This more likely to occur in a shallow cave than a deep one. In this case, the cave sump is very cold, and judging from the geometry, it probably takes major seasonal water flows; e.g. spring meltwater.
Hey, are you guys sure that God is still on your side? :-)
You can restore the balance by not feeding your dog.
If you piss him off enough, he won't care about your lawsuits.
And an ass whoopin.
Is that before, or after his "business acquaintances" broke your knees in response to your trashing the office?
The point my friend is that things could get very nasty.
But seriously, before you go over the top in plotting your revenge on your current boss, don't forget that he can do other things than sack you. He can withhold your last paycheck, your accrued holiday. He can track you down at your new job and spill the beans to your new boss. If you do something illegal, he can call in the police. Or much, much worse!
Saving Nemo.
Hanging Chad.
The purchasor has no legal obligation to verify that claims made by the vendor are true. The obligation is entirely on the vendor. And if the vendor makes untrue claims, a court may award damages, or even find the vendor guilty of fraud.
Caveat emptor is common sense, but it is not a legal principle.Caveat emptor says that if I buy second hand car, I would be wise to get an independent mechanic to check its condition. After all, everyone expects used care salesmen to be a bit shonky. But it I buy a brand new car, I shouldn't have to do this. I should be able to trust Ford / General Motors to design and build cars that are mechanically sound when they leave the showroom.
In this particular case, it is not clear to me whether the State of California or individual voting districts (?) purchased the machines. Either way, the purchaser was entitled to believe Diebold's assertions about the products' fitness for use at face value. Given that Diebold does not disclose its source-code, the purchasors have little choice wrt voting integrity issues.
... but I was referring to students paying other people to write their essays for them. I've even heard of students paying other people to sit their exams!
... "outsource" their essays? :-)
Alternatively, they could put the UNIX source under the GPL and assign copyright to FSF. Many other companies already have the right to ship products based on the UNIX source code, so slapping a GPL copyright on UNIX won't affect them. But for the others, Linux is probably a (technically) better place to start than SVR4. So GPLing UNIX (rather than puting it into the public domain) would tend to discourage the emergence of new SVR4 derivitives. That's probably a good thing.