>>>no, no, no, no, no, no. did i count that correctly ?:) I do have some 3+ computers (some are a bit outdated, so not really counted in, and one laptop my gf has from her job), a couple of tvs, although one broke a few months ago and i haven't bothered to take it in for repairs. and yes, i am running linux for rest of the machines... >>>
There's a DVD in your computer. The screens are DVI or VGA standard which are licensed from ISO and IEEE respectively. The TVs use NTSC which is also a licensed spec.
Has your life somehow been diminished by having to pay an extra 50 cents on these licenses? Not really. On the contrary it's been enhanced, due to the standardization. It avoids confusion. How annoying would it be if, when you buy a screen, you gotta sort through the Atari, Commodore, Apple, and IBM screens (all using different specs) just so you can find one compatible with your Linux PC.
>>>If it's only for the "benefit of human beings," wouldn't more benefit result from free (i.e. no-cost) licensing?
Yes but then the IEEE, ISO, and MPEG groups would have nobody willing to do the job to create and write these specifications. Hence the need to charge to cover their costs, so they can pay engineers/technicians' salaries.
Even non-profit organizations like Red Cross have to charge money (via clothing sales, bake drives, and so on) in order to pay their staff. IEEE, ISO, MPEG are no different.
I think I make a better parent than most women in my neighborhood, even though I'm "just a male". For one thing I don't sit my kid in front of a TV, and then leave for hours on end like I see many mothers do. I sit and watch the TV with my kid, because I know my kid will only be a kid for ~13 years, and that's not a long time. I think I can spare 13+ years.
Plus I think they need that human-human interaction, especially when they say something like, "Why's that guy stealing on the tv?" and you explain that stealing is wrong and he'll eventually be punished for it. If you weren't there, the kid might think it's okay to steal.
>>>there's less harm resulting when a minority engages in it than when somebody in the majority does.
Tell that to some husband who has been abused by his wife, or a white guy who applies at a black-run or Arab-run company and gets turned down (in favor of the second black or Arab candidate), because he won't fit into the "culture". Reverse racism or prejudice is just as wrong as female or colored-prejudice.
Insurance companies, like Comcast, bribe the politicians. Every time the suggestion of adding a second cable company comes our county (for more competition), Comcast throws a bunch of money at the politicians' reelection funds to make it disappear. I suspect insurance companies do the same at the state level in order to squash anti-discrimination laws being applied to them.
Well the OP is right that age has little do with maturity. My dad just celebrated his birthday and even though he's 80, he still acts like the spoiled brat he was as a kid. (Wants everything his way, wants his wife to clean-up after him, throws a temper tantrum at least once a week, and so.)
As for the article -
If this was my kid I wouldn't care if she was suspended. I'd use it as an excuse to send her to private school, or a neighboring public school, pay the required tuition these schools demand, and then stop paying my School Tax to the assholes in my local district for that 1-2 years until she graduates. Just the same way I stopped paying Comcast when they increased my rates from $30 to $65, or stopped giving money to Microsoft since I switched to Linux.
>>>I don't pay for air and I don't buy bottled water, I'm not going to pay for codecs.
So does this mean you have no VHSes or or miniDVs or CDs or DVDs in your house? No MPEG2 or 4 televisions/cable boxes/dishes? No V.92 or DSL or DOCSIS modems? They all use codecs and/or licensed formats.
I'm all for the concept of liberated software, but there is such a thing as being borderline conspiracist (like Alex Jones of infowars.org), and making a big deal over nothing. The IEEE, ISO, and MPEG groups do license the codecs they develop, but only for the benefit of human beings (so there's a single standardized format), not to get rich.
We use MPEG2 everywhere without problems (including our ATSC television) - we can certainly do the same with H.264/MPEG4. In fact it's the same standard used in European TV and they seem to be making-out okay.
These two codecs are more akin to V.34 or V.92 modem standards - licensed by their respective committees but essentially liberated (free).
For me the problem didn't have anything to do with drivers. They all worked fine.
For me the problem was that Microsoft lied to the hardware makers, told them 512 MB wouldn't run Aero but would still be sufficient to run Vista, and my brother ended-up with a 512 MB machine that ran slower than his old XP machine on only 128 megabytes, and suffered severe hard drive thrashing.
Depending on your viewpoint, the software was either vastly bloated because it needed 1024 to run properly (in contrast the Mac OS released that same year ran great on only 256 MB) - or else the software was fine but MS was guilty of lying about the hardware specs.
And yes the UAC was annoying: "Do I have permission to install Opera Browser?" "Yes." "Sorry you lack sufficient privileges. Installation failed at 90%." Grrr.
If we were at war with China, the solution would be simple. Instead of shipping across the Pacific, we'd simply ship across the Atlantic, and buy stuff from Europe, Africa, and India. It might cost a little more to buy from those areas, but the goods will still fit our needs.
And China would be hurt from the sudden lack of income from the US and the EU. It would probably throw them into an economic depression.
And THIS is why, if I am ever in a position to hire people, I will insist upon a background check. I don't want kooks such as yourself inside the building.
Yeah except that wouldn't work either because many companies, in order to avoid IRS troubles, simply refuse to hire any programmers who have their own private companies. Put another way:
- If I'm a dentist I can have my old private business/practice, and yet still get work as an employee with some company.
- As an engineer, I can do the same - have my own engineering business and yet still be employed with a company.
- As a programmer, current Congressional law forbids that.
I find that computer interfere with learning, rather than help, and it isn't worht he expense of spending ~$500 per kid for a machine that will have to be replaced every 4-5 years. That's about $15000 tosses away during the kid's career, times ~300 graduates per year per school.
No wonder our national debt is so ridiculously high. We spend money like we have no sense, and soon it will bankrupt us, just like anybody else who can't stop swiping the credit card.
>>>But why should the student be able to retire on the punitive damages he gets?
The purpose of punitive damages is to cause financial "pain" to the company. Otherwise if the fines were only $1000, then companies might decide, like Ford did in the 1970s that its cheaper to just pay-off people that die in exploding Pintos, than to fix the problem.
Punitive damages tilt the accounting balance in favor of the company doing the right thing, rather than the wrong thing. And even though this school is not a "company" per se, the concept is still the same ---- punish this school so severely that others schools will think twice before they commit wrongdoing. .
>>>the surveillance officer made a judgment error can happen and should be forgivable or constitute a minor punishment.
It isn't minor. Even in the European Union it rises to the level of a Constitutional law that was violated by a government employee. It is a major crime, not a minor one.
>>>I had always hoped that naive, alarmist authorities were only a high school thing. Then bam, 9/11, and here we are.
In nearly every place and every time period, "leader" and "asshole" as synonyms. That's why the concept of Constitutions & Bills of Rights were invented - to keep the assholes/leaders from causing too much damage by limiting their powers to only a few, select areas.
>>>>There's laws to prevent law enforcement officers from doing that. There's no such restriction on private individuals. If the school saw him making a drug deal through the camera, they could freely take the evidence to the police, and the police could use it. >>>
Bzzzz. The school teachers and administrators are employees of the State government and virtually every member state in the Union forbids a state government employee from entering (or peering) into a private home to snoop around...... unless a warrant is first obtained from an impartial judge. So any evidence found would immediately be thrown-out in a court of law.
Anyway this happened in the member state of Pennsylvania, so here's the relevant constitutional law: - Security From Searches and Seizures - Section 8. - The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and no warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things shall issue without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation subscribed by the affiant.
>>>When a drawn cartoon child has more rights than some humans, you know something is wrong.
I've never understood countries that make drawings illegal. So what if a picture shows some boy boffing a girl? There's no victims, therefore no rights violated, therefore no crime.
I don't buy that "4 GB max in 32 bit machines" argument. In my first computer, the 8-bit CPU could only address 64 kilobytes of RAM (imagine that; it's practically nothing but it worked). In order to address extra RAM it used something called bank-switching, where it could set a BANK variable == 0,1,...,14,15 and thereby address a whole megabyte of RAM (contained in an external add-on module).
Obviously this was not as efficient as having continuous memory, but it worked great for memory intensive programs like GEOS (a Mac-like graphical OS), desktop publishing, spreadhseets, and so on.
I find it hard to believe that a modern 32-bit PC can Not do what an ancient 8-bit computer can do.
Exactly how aggressive are Windows Vista and Vista 6.1 (Seven)? If I was a billionaire with more money than sense, and filled my PC with 1000 gigabytes of RAM, would Windows 7 systematically copy over my whole hard drive to the RAM? (Talk about super-slow boot time.);-)
Also what's the minimum RAM that Seven's aggressive caching expects to see before it falls-over on itself? 1/2 GB? 1/4 GB? 1/8th GB (128 MB)? Just curious.
* * This message typed on a Commodore Amiga with 1/2 MB - for fun.
I don't think this is a big deal. You're working for the government, so naturally they want to make sure who you are (i.e. not a terrorist, or Russian spy, or other creep). I had to do this for an FAA temporary job (one year) and simply drove to the local police station, asked them to fingerprint me, took the inked paper, and mailed it off to the FAA.
I also had to fill-out a 7-year-history for a background check. Of course that means it's on permanent file with the U.S. government, but in exchange I got paid 110,000 dollars plus another $250,000 (so far) on the followup job with a private contractor.
My compliance opened-up new opportunities and is certainly better than living off Welfare or doing the Walmart shuffle. I have nothing to hide, so why does it matter if they have my fingerprints? I'm not planning to blow up anything, and even if I did, the fingerprints won't tell them anything they don't already know (see your SSI files sometime). I see no reason for concern.
>>>this trend of loving XP when Vista/Win7 came out has to stop.
But I've used Vista and it sucks. I haven't seen my computer run that slow since the days of Win95 (hard drive thrashing), so it's understandable why people wanted to cling to XP rather than downgrade to an inferior, slower OS.
Vista 6.1 (Win7) seems okay so far, and I'd happily upgrade to it if I could be certain it would work. .
>>>Why would a developer try to appeal to a very small sect minority.
No idea, but the fact remains my laptop is 256 MB and only expandable to 512 MB, according to HP. It won't go any bigger which is why I asked the question (and you failed to answer): "Will Win7 run on this?"
Knowing my luck I'll probably get caught downloading Windows 7. I've already been caught three times downloading movies (twice in 2008 and again in 2009) - I suspect the 4th time will result in ISP termination.
Are the free RC or RTM copies still available at microsoft.com? I'll give them a spin.
>>>When your brother was looking for a Start menu on Ubuntu, how the hell did he get anything done on Windows 7?
Beats me. I wondered the same thing, and gave him a look like, "You gotta be kidding me. The Ubuntu Start menu (or equivalent thereof) is right in front of you." But I just pointed and said, "Here."
As for the calculator I understand why he didn't find it. On Windows it's under Accessories and called "calculator", so easy to find for my brother. On Ubuntu it was buried under about 100 other programs and instead of "Calc" it's called "Kalc", so even for me it took awhile to find. It wasn't in alphabetical order.
And in further defense of my brother - he's a truck driver from the hippy generation (60s). He grew up with Beetles, analog dials, and mechanical tools, so he's not familiar with this new digital world like I am. Or you are.
Still he's able to get around Windows 98, XP, and 7 decently, so I don't know why Ubuntu Linux stumps him? (shrug)
Slashdot Mirror
>>>no, no, no, no, no, no. did i count that correctly ? :) I do have some 3+ computers (some are a bit outdated, so not really counted in, and one laptop my gf has from her job), a couple of tvs, although one broke a few months ago and i haven't bothered to take it in for repairs. and yes, i am running linux for rest of the machines...
>>>
There's a DVD in your computer. The screens are DVI or VGA standard which are licensed from ISO and IEEE respectively. The TVs use NTSC which is also a licensed spec.
Has your life somehow been diminished by having to pay an extra 50 cents on these licenses? Not really. On the contrary it's been enhanced, due to the standardization. It avoids confusion. How annoying would it be if, when you buy a screen, you gotta sort through the Atari, Commodore, Apple, and IBM screens (all using different specs) just so you can find one compatible with your Linux PC.
>>>If it's only for the "benefit of human beings," wouldn't more benefit result from free (i.e. no-cost) licensing?
Yes but then the IEEE, ISO, and MPEG groups would have nobody willing to do the job to create and write these specifications. Hence the need to charge to cover their costs, so they can pay engineers/technicians' salaries.
Even non-profit organizations like Red Cross have to charge money (via clothing sales, bake drives, and so on) in order to pay their staff. IEEE, ISO, MPEG are no different.
I think I make a better parent than most women in my neighborhood, even though I'm "just a male". For one thing I don't sit my kid in front of a TV, and then leave for hours on end like I see many mothers do. I sit and watch the TV with my kid, because I know my kid will only be a kid for ~13 years, and that's not a long time. I think I can spare 13+ years.
Plus I think they need that human-human interaction, especially when they say something like, "Why's that guy stealing on the tv?" and you explain that stealing is wrong and he'll eventually be punished for it. If you weren't there, the kid might think it's okay to steal.
>>>there's less harm resulting when a minority engages in it than when somebody in the majority does.
Tell that to some husband who has been abused by his wife, or a white guy who applies at a black-run or Arab-run company and gets turned down (in favor of the second black or Arab candidate), because he won't fit into the "culture". Reverse racism or prejudice is just as wrong as female or colored-prejudice.
Insurance companies, like Comcast, bribe the politicians. Every time the suggestion of adding a second cable company comes our county (for more competition), Comcast throws a bunch of money at the politicians' reelection funds to make it disappear. I suspect insurance companies do the same at the state level in order to squash anti-discrimination laws being applied to them.
Well the OP is right that age has little do with maturity. My dad just celebrated his birthday and even though he's 80, he still acts like the spoiled brat he was as a kid. (Wants everything his way, wants his wife to clean-up after him, throws a temper tantrum at least once a week, and so.)
As for the article -
If this was my kid I wouldn't care if she was suspended. I'd use it as an excuse to send her to private school, or a neighboring public school, pay the required tuition these schools demand, and then stop paying my School Tax to the assholes in my local district for that 1-2 years until she graduates. Just the same way I stopped paying Comcast when they increased my rates from $30 to $65, or stopped giving money to Microsoft since I switched to Linux.
>>>I don't pay for air and I don't buy bottled water, I'm not going to pay for codecs.
So does this mean you have no VHSes or or miniDVs or CDs or DVDs in your house? No MPEG2 or 4 televisions/cable boxes/dishes? No V.92 or DSL or DOCSIS modems? They all use codecs and/or licensed formats.
I'm all for the concept of liberated software, but there is such a thing as being borderline conspiracist (like Alex Jones of infowars.org), and making a big deal over nothing. The IEEE, ISO, and MPEG groups do license the codecs they develop, but only for the benefit of human beings (so there's a single standardized format), not to get rich.
We use MPEG2 everywhere without problems (including our ATSC television) - we can certainly do the same with H.264/MPEG4. In fact it's the same standard used in European TV and they seem to be making-out okay.
These two codecs are more akin to V.34 or V.92 modem standards - licensed by their respective committees but essentially liberated (free).
For me the problem didn't have anything to do with drivers. They all worked fine.
For me the problem was that Microsoft lied to the hardware makers, told them 512 MB wouldn't run Aero but would still be sufficient to run Vista, and my brother ended-up with a 512 MB machine that ran slower than his old XP machine on only 128 megabytes, and suffered severe hard drive thrashing.
Depending on your viewpoint, the software was either vastly bloated because it needed 1024 to run properly (in contrast the Mac OS released that same year ran great on only 256 MB) - or else the software was fine but MS was guilty of lying about the hardware specs.
And yes the UAC was annoying:
"Do I have permission to install Opera Browser?"
"Yes." "Sorry you lack sufficient privileges. Installation failed at 90%."
Grrr.
>>>if it turns out the terrorists are Chinese, it would shift the direction of momentum for such groups as Homeland Security
On no. Here comes the Nightwatch. Better be careful what posters you hang, else you'll be arrested by them.
If we were at war with China, the solution would be simple. Instead of shipping across the Pacific, we'd simply ship across the Atlantic, and buy stuff from Europe, Africa, and India. It might cost a little more to buy from those areas, but the goods will still fit our needs.
And China would be hurt from the sudden lack of income from the US and the EU. It would probably throw them into an economic depression.
And THIS is why, if I am ever in a position to hire people, I will insist upon a background check. I don't want kooks such as yourself inside the building.
Yeah except that wouldn't work either because many companies, in order to avoid IRS troubles, simply refuse to hire any programmers who have their own private companies. Put another way:
- If I'm a dentist I can have my old private business/practice, and yet still get work as an employee with some company.
- As an engineer, I can do the same - have my own engineering business and yet still be employed with a company.
- As a programmer, current Congressional law forbids that.
No, no, no.
I find that computer interfere with learning, rather than help, and it isn't worht he expense of spending ~$500 per kid for a machine that will have to be replaced every 4-5 years. That's about $15000 tosses away during the kid's career, times ~300 graduates per year per school.
No wonder our national debt is so ridiculously high. We spend money like we have no sense, and soon it will bankrupt us, just like anybody else who can't stop swiping the credit card.
>>>But why should the student be able to retire on the punitive damages he gets?
The purpose of punitive damages is to cause financial "pain" to the company. Otherwise if the fines were only $1000, then companies might decide, like Ford did in the 1970s that its cheaper to just pay-off people that die in exploding Pintos, than to fix the problem.
Punitive damages tilt the accounting balance in favor of the company doing the right thing, rather than the wrong thing. And even though this school is not a "company" per se, the concept is still the same ---- punish this school so severely that others schools will think twice before they commit wrongdoing.
.
>>>the surveillance officer made a judgment error can happen and should be forgivable or constitute a minor punishment.
It isn't minor. Even in the European Union it rises to the level of a Constitutional law that was violated by a government employee. It is a major crime, not a minor one.
>>>I had always hoped that naive, alarmist authorities were only a high school thing. Then bam, 9/11, and here we are.
In nearly every place and every time period, "leader" and "asshole" as synonyms. That's why the concept of Constitutions & Bills of Rights were invented - to keep the assholes/leaders from causing too much damage by limiting their powers to only a few, select areas.
>>>>There's laws to prevent law enforcement officers from doing that. There's no such restriction on private individuals. If the school saw him making a drug deal through the camera, they could freely take the evidence to the police, and the police could use it.
>>>
Bzzzz. The school teachers and administrators are employees of the State government and virtually every member state in the Union forbids a state government employee from entering (or peering) into a private home to snoop around...... unless a warrant is first obtained from an impartial judge. So any evidence found would immediately be thrown-out in a court of law.
Anyway this happened in the member state of Pennsylvania, so here's the relevant constitutional law:
- Security From Searches and Seizures
- Section 8.
- The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and no warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things shall issue without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation subscribed by the affiant.
>>>When a drawn cartoon child has more rights than some humans, you know something is wrong.
I've never understood countries that make drawings illegal. So what if a picture shows some boy boffing a girl? There's no victims, therefore no rights violated, therefore no crime.
I don't buy that "4 GB max in 32 bit machines" argument. In my first computer, the 8-bit CPU could only address 64 kilobytes of RAM (imagine that; it's practically nothing but it worked). In order to address extra RAM it used something called bank-switching, where it could set a BANK variable == 0,1,...,14,15 and thereby address a whole megabyte of RAM (contained in an external add-on module).
Obviously this was not as efficient as having continuous memory, but it worked great for memory intensive programs like GEOS (a Mac-like graphical OS), desktop publishing, spreadhseets, and so on.
I find it hard to believe that a modern 32-bit PC can Not do what an ancient 8-bit computer can do.
Dumb Question (perhaps):
Exactly how aggressive are Windows Vista and Vista 6.1 (Seven)? If I was a billionaire with more money than sense, and filled my PC with 1000 gigabytes of RAM, would Windows 7 systematically copy over my whole hard drive to the RAM? (Talk about super-slow boot time.) ;-)
Also what's the minimum RAM that Seven's aggressive caching expects to see before it falls-over on itself? 1/2 GB? 1/4 GB? 1/8th GB (128 MB)? Just curious.
*
* This message typed on a Commodore Amiga with 1/2 MB - for fun.
I don't think this is a big deal. You're working for the government, so naturally they want to make sure who you are (i.e. not a terrorist, or Russian spy, or other creep). I had to do this for an FAA temporary job (one year) and simply drove to the local police station, asked them to fingerprint me, took the inked paper, and mailed it off to the FAA.
I also had to fill-out a 7-year-history for a background check. Of course that means it's on permanent file with the U.S. government, but in exchange I got paid 110,000 dollars plus another $250,000 (so far) on the followup job with a private contractor.
My compliance opened-up new opportunities and is certainly better than living off Welfare or doing the Walmart shuffle. I have nothing to hide, so why does it matter if they have my fingerprints? I'm not planning to blow up anything, and even if I did, the fingerprints won't tell them anything they don't already know (see your SSI files sometime). I see no reason for concern.
>>>this trend of loving XP when Vista/Win7 came out has to stop.
But I've used Vista and it sucks. I haven't seen my computer run that slow since the days of Win95 (hard drive thrashing), so it's understandable why people wanted to cling to XP rather than downgrade to an inferior, slower OS.
Vista 6.1 (Win7) seems okay so far, and I'd happily upgrade to it if I could be certain it would work.
.
>>>Why would a developer try to appeal to a very small sect minority.
No idea, but the fact remains my laptop is 256 MB and only expandable to 512 MB, according to HP. It won't go any bigger which is why I asked the question (and you failed to answer): "Will Win7 run on this?"
Knowing my luck I'll probably get caught downloading Windows 7. I've already been caught three times downloading movies (twice in 2008 and again in 2009) - I suspect the 4th time will result in ISP termination.
Are the free RC or RTM copies still available at microsoft.com? I'll give them a spin.
>>>When your brother was looking for a Start menu on Ubuntu, how the hell did he get anything done on Windows 7?
Beats me. I wondered the same thing, and gave him a look like, "You gotta be kidding me. The Ubuntu Start menu (or equivalent thereof) is right in front of you." But I just pointed and said, "Here."
As for the calculator I understand why he didn't find it. On Windows it's under Accessories and called "calculator", so easy to find for my brother. On Ubuntu it was buried under about 100 other programs and instead of "Calc" it's called "Kalc", so even for me it took awhile to find. It wasn't in alphabetical order.
And in further defense of my brother - he's a truck driver from the hippy generation (60s). He grew up with Beetles, analog dials, and mechanical tools, so he's not familiar with this new digital world like I am. Or you are.
Still he's able to get around Windows 98, XP, and 7 decently, so I don't know why Ubuntu Linux stumps him? (shrug)
P.S. For comparison this prototype car is 3 hp and 50 cc. My Honda is 70hp and the VW Lupo is 60hp - at approximately 1000 cc each.