"No translation would suffice: Stone felt that only by reading the original text for himself could he arrive at the insight he desired.
Precisely the point. The exercise is also teaching me a tremendous amount about written language in general and thus English, so the exercise is even currently relevant. My age isn't quite so advanced as Stone's, so I feel a bit free to take the slow road and examine the development of the Greek alphabet from the Phoenician along the way.
I find this particular bit from the interview you link to rather pertinent to the current topic:
Isn't that pretty far from home base, from current concerns and difficulties?
Not really. All our basic problems are there in miniature.
When we stop reading the great old papers we lose our history. When we lose our history we lose a measure of our understanding as well. You can't properly understand where you are unless you understand how you came to be there.
People don't read those great old papers anymore in the same way they don't read Euripides or Shakespeare anymore. They're difficult.
Harlequin romance novels express the same ideas in much easier to read language.
I didn't first learn my Special Relativity from Einstein's original paper. I learned it from Bertrand Russell's The ABCs of Relativity, but you can be sure that I later went back and read a translation of the original paper as well (and even poked at the original a bit), as I've also read Bohr, Bohm, Feynman and Weinberg.
I've read The Blind Watchmaker and The Beak of the Finch. I've also read Darwin and Huxley.
I've read modern histories of the Roman Empire. I've also read Gibbon.
I've read C for Dummies. I've also read Kernighan & Ritchie.
No, it wasn't always easy. I didn't expect it to be easy, or even desirable for it to be easy, because I expected to learn.
Date is easier to read than Codd, but Codd is only hard until you understand the relational algebra. If you wish to be an expert in the field of databases understanding the relational algebra isn't really optional, no matter what your salary is.
I'm learing to read classical Greek so that I may read Euripides. I've read most of Shakespeare and I'm working on the rest. I've never read a Harliquin romance novel. Elizabeth Peters mysteries are pretty nifty though, if you're willing to read some good works on Egyptology to get the most out of them.
Your milage may vary, but I'll take the harder road and be better informed for it. You may settle for being a kind of craftsman/tradesman, I'm trying for scientist/artist and it puzzles me that most people in the computer field are functionally innumerate and desire that state of ignorance.
I find the current trend to insist that people (and they are people, you have to remember that) under the age of majority remain children at least until crossing that arbitrary border is a bit bizarre.
As a parent I always considered it my duty to raise them to be adults. Have ever told your kid, "Act your age"? If so, didn't you mean "Act more mature"?
Well, then you have to teach them maturity, not childhood. Responsibility and self control, not outside control of their every movement. With maturity comes things you might not like. If your kids are past the age of puberty they are sexually mature, whether you are comfortable with that idea or not. They are going to act like they are sexually mature. They are also begining to think of themselves as themselves and not as your children. Help them to do so in a mature and reponsible manner.
Then you'll have to get out of the way. They'll make mistakes. Sometimes bad ones. Be there for them instead of flying off the handle. Don't think that if you just locked them up tighter the mistakes wouldn't have been made. They'll just be delayed until they're out there on their own without you to support them.
Isn't it a better idea to teach them how to deal with these issues in a mature fashion rather than try to deny that these things exist?
Then you're going to wonder why they go to college and go completely off the frickin' wall drinking, screwing and otherwise acting like children out of control.
Well, it's because you raised them to do that. You set them up for it.
The issue isn't so much how to control your kids, but how to control yourself to raise your kids as adults, not kids. Ultimately they are going to control themselves no matter what you do.
Think about it.
KFG
Re:Don't forget to go to your public library
on
The Scar
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I've read books about objectivism. I'm afraid I tend not to agree with it. Not that Ayn Rand ever really admited that anyone but her even understood it.
That alone tends to send up my red flags and move the needle of the bullshit meter at least a lot closer to the red zone.
Now please don't get me wrong. I'm anything but an anticapitalist and not against property rights, per se, but my ideas of such are rather more Thoreauian (who, counter to popular opinion, was a practicing capitalist and clearly would have thought a federal welfare system was a daft idea).
I think one must realize that property in the sense that you own the chair you whittled yourself is something rather different than real property. An insect may recognize the former, but not that latter, although they recognize the looser concept of territory or "personal space."
Real "property" rights are simply an extension into the capitalist realm of fuedal/tribalistic territorialism of the kind that Rand despised. I've always found this a bit ironic. Had capitalism not evolved out of such fuedal societies it isn't entirely clear that it ever would have developed a concept of real property at all. It isn't inate to the philosophy, and one might even argue that it's somewhat counter to it.
People didn't buy land. They took it. By force, and defended it by force. Then they could claim the right to "sell" that which they had stolen from the public domain. All real property comes from such a background.
So, you want to claim ownership to an asteroid? Well buddy, you better get your ass out there and build a castle. Then when someone else comes along you tell them to shove off or pay the toll.
If they're sitting there and you can't march the knights out of the castle to defend "your" land, well, guess what, you never owned it in the first place. Where there is no prexisting local legal jurisdiction it's back to might makes right.
Or in the more colorful vernacular, Shit or get off the pot.
If you yourself think we're going to develop property "rights" to space through some local process you're just as daft. We're going to fight and kill for them, just as we always have. And when we "discover" the "people" who already "own" a bit of space we might well expect them to take exception to that and fight back.
Quite frankly I'm already rooting for them, because we've got no fucking right.
Just another thought - these reviews all seem to have to rush themselves, and rarely have time to evaluate long term issues or strengths that arise after a bit of persistant use
This problem is endemic to the review trade.
Part of the problem is in the hands of the reader. Who's going to read a review of 6 month old software? In commercial software most readers have read at least half a dozen reviews before the product is even released. Before any reviewer can sit down and take the time to really wring out and understand the final product the reader's attnetion is already on the next crop of products being shoved down his wallet.
We want to know about Fedora. It's new. That's why it's called New(s). Everybody who wants to hear what I think about Red Hat 5.2 raise your hand.
Ok, yeah, you, way in the back with the Lorentz Transformation T-Shirt, we'll get together in the bar and talk. The rest of you can now wander off to the "Alpha shading yo' Mama in Enterprise Goddam Java" seminar.
No readers, no advertising. No advertising, no one to pay the reviewer. No pay for the reviewer, no reviewer.
Nevermind the fact that, for the most part, the software publishers don't want these sorts of reviews being done anyway. It really tends to be bad for business except for a handful of really exceptional products, which are rather past their "sell by" date by the time such a review comes out. Once a product, or even just a particular version of a product, hits the bargain bin selling it is of no further interest to the publisher. There's no profit margin left in it. It's a commodity left to the commodity people to move if they wish. They need people to buy the "latest and greatest".
In Linux you have the further problem that the target can just simply move too fast. Already with this very article people are already yelling at the review "You don't know what you're talking about. That was fixed yesterday." Bit of a quandry not having a time machine so that one can write a review of next week's state this week to post next week when it will be current.
So, I'll tell you what, I'll be perfectly happy setting up a test box and spending the next couple months wringing Fedora's little neck until it screams and then writing up a proper analysis that runs a couple dozen pages of pure text instead of a couple pages of mostly layout design, but:
a)Who's going to really care enough to read it by then b)Whose going to feed me and pay my cable bill in the meantime?
Cause I can tell you one thing right off, it sure as hell ain't going to be Red Hat, through advertising or any other means.
I'm no frog expert, but I think that possibly if it can't jump out of the pot, the frog will stay in it?
Exactly. So, if one is interested in cooking a frog in a sneaky manner one can turn up the heat until he becomes uncomfortable enough to try to escape.
It is only at that point that one must be sure that he is secure in the pot. If one turns the heat up slowly enough it gives you plenty of time arrange for a lid.
Or legislation, as the case may be.
Whether you can get a frog to pay attention to legislation is another issue for another day.
The amazing advances in batteries that were supposed to revolutionize everything have been a constant prediction since the early 70's at least.
In the late 70's I was involved in the design of electric cars. We're all driving them now, right?
Throughout the 90's I was involved in the design and development of electric cars on a smaller scale (of the cars themselves. The work was actually more extensive).
End result was a complete lack of revolution.
I canna change the laws of physics Cap'n.
Over the years batteries have gotten a bit better due primarily to better manufacturing methods of existing technologies, not to any real breakthrough.
Some day we just might have to deal with the fact that batteries are WYSIWYG. I'd love to have a simple wind up toy that could fly me to China in an hour, but, as my mother used to say, wishing won't make it so and just because we wish for a "technology" ( applied science ) does not imply that such a technology ever will, or even can, exist.
It's called set theory. If John and Jim are both New Yorkers than identifying them as John or Jim identifies them as a New Yorker.
Great, so now some ignorant businessman has come up with another word for one that already exists as the formal definition. We'll add it to the other lot that the database people have made up. They form a set.
Creating a logically ordered stucture of such related data creates a database, which is why you might choose to store said data in a DBMS.
Now, you might choose to store your database on a RAID ( which might have to keep its own database of where the data is physically stored), but that's an entirely seperate issue from what the data means.
Indeed, but this is the inherent problem when you're in the bloody rope business, isn't it?
Ya think maybe it's time to change product lines or something? The ability to do so freely is one of the benefits of the capitalist system, free adaptation to the changing economic and trade enviroment.
When pet rocks are hot you sell 'em pet rocks. When people suddenly realize that rocks are free you sell 'em "Designer" clothing.
When a corporation mentally locks itself to a single product or business model it simply defines its own extinction (assuming free trade).
It's "Adapt or die," not "Extort and bludgeon your customers until they'd rather be dead than do business with you or die."
I think this is the part that they "don't get." They're too busy thinking "My God, we're going to die!"
Well, don't sell us the rope. Sell us something we can't hang your business model with instead.
At the very least sell us rocks packaged entertainingly at a low enough cost that we'd rather buy them from you than pick them up off the ground.
You are not a real idiot. You have asked a deep question. Pity those around you choose to cover their own ignorance by being arrogant.
Me, I like to display my ignorance, so here I go:
The computer is just a big abacus really, a physical model of the data. When you shake up an abacus it still has just as many beads on it, only their state has changed, and the now random ordering of the beads can still be read as representing a number. What has been lost is meaning.
Is "2" data? (bearing in mind that we're talking about the logical number here and not the numeral that serves as its physical model)
No. It's just a number. Unless the number relates to a logical model (the number of quarts of milk in my refridgerator) it isn't data.
So the state of your all shook up (uh uh huh, uh uh huh, yeah, yeah)abacus is still a physical reprentation of a number, but it isn't data.
When we run code we keep just as many "beads on our abacus," only their state changes, but data is the physical state and what they mean in the logical model. So if we lose meaning we have lost data or if we lose the proper state to reflect that meaning we have lost data.
So to "destroy" data means to dispose of the physical model and/or its meaning in the logical model.
When we change the state of a computer we certainly don't change the total amount of data, but we certainly change its state and that state's relationship to the logical model.
Take Linux in a Nutshell off your shelf (a physical representation of data) and burn it. Have you not destroyed data? Now fill the same space on the shelf with a gardening book.
You are now still in possession of the same amount of data as you had before, but both its state and meaning have changed. You aren't going to be able to use that book to look up a vi command because the gardening book doesn't contain that meaning.
On the other hand, Microsoft, for some reason, has taken it upon themselves to repeatedly point out that Linux gurus are better trained, harder to find, and thus make much more money than MCSEs.
Why they seem quite so bent on informing world plus dog that MCSEs are undertrained and a dime a dozen is beyond me, but if I were you I'd take their career advice and keep reading that copy of Linux in a Nutshell.
Performance and data security are often at odds. So much so and so often that I think we can nearly take it as a given that increasing one decreases the other. It is the nature of the beast.
One must ask one's self, "How fast do I want my corrupted data delivered?"
Actually, speeding in the US isn't a crime. It's violation of the traffic code.
It is illegal, but it is not a crime.
More to the point owing someone money that you don't pay them is not a crime. It is not stealing. It is a violation of the civil code. They can sue you and use the force of the courts to force payment.
This is what a simple copyright violation is. A simple copyright violation would be copying a CD or Book you took out of the library, borrowed from a friend or. ..downloaded from the internet.
Unfortunately, sharing items protected by copyright en masse, as making them available on the internet invariably does, moves the issue from simple violation into the distribution of knockoffs field, which is a crime. One people go to jail for. Not even having anything to do with the internet.
I agree though that jail is not normally any sort of solution for nontheft/nonviolent crimes, especially where no deliberate fraud or profit is involved ( such as selling copies of CDs as originals). It often costs far more than the crime itself cost, if nothing else.
The only really legitimate reason for incarceration is the protection of real people and real property. There are other ways to "punish" without putting a further finanical load on society and without sending people to "criminal training school" in a manner certain to breed resentment against society, as opposed to, hopefully, breeding social conciousness.
Slashdot Mirror
"No translation would suffice: Stone felt that only by reading the original text for himself could he arrive at the insight he desired.
Precisely the point. The exercise is also teaching me a tremendous amount about written language in general and thus English, so the exercise is even currently relevant. My age isn't quite so advanced as Stone's, so I feel a bit free to take the slow road and examine the development of the Greek alphabet from the Phoenician along the way.
I find this particular bit from the interview you link to rather pertinent to the current topic:
Isn't that pretty far from home base, from current concerns and difficulties?
Not really. All our basic problems are there in miniature.
When we stop reading the great old papers we lose our history. When we lose our history we lose a measure of our understanding as well. You can't properly understand where you are unless you understand how you came to be there.
KFG
People don't read those great old papers anymore in the same way they don't read Euripides or Shakespeare anymore. They're difficult.
Harlequin romance novels express the same ideas in much easier to read language.
I didn't first learn my Special Relativity from Einstein's original paper. I learned it from Bertrand Russell's The ABCs of Relativity, but you can be sure that I later went back and read a translation of the original paper as well (and even poked at the original a bit), as I've also read Bohr, Bohm, Feynman and Weinberg.
I've read The Blind Watchmaker and The Beak of the Finch. I've also read Darwin and Huxley.
I've read modern histories of the Roman Empire. I've also read Gibbon.
I've read C for Dummies. I've also read Kernighan & Ritchie.
No, it wasn't always easy. I didn't expect it to be easy, or even desirable for it to be easy, because I expected to learn.
Date is easier to read than Codd, but Codd is only hard until you understand the relational algebra. If you wish to be an expert in the field of databases understanding the relational algebra isn't really optional, no matter what your salary is.
I'm learing to read classical Greek so that I may read Euripides. I've read most of Shakespeare and I'm working on the rest. I've never read a Harliquin romance novel. Elizabeth Peters mysteries are pretty nifty though, if you're willing to read some good works on Egyptology to get the most out of them.
Your milage may vary, but I'll take the harder road and be better informed for it. You may settle for being a kind of craftsman/tradesman, I'm trying for scientist/artist and it puzzles me that most people in the computer field are functionally innumerate and desire that state of ignorance.
Are we not geeks?
No, I guess most of us are Devo.
I think that's a bit sad.
KFG
That might even work, if your badge says that you're an idiot with a fat wallet and a Porsche. . . and you can prove it.
KFG
I find the current trend to insist that people (and they are people, you have to remember that) under the age of majority remain children at least until crossing that arbitrary border is a bit bizarre.
As a parent I always considered it my duty to raise them to be adults. Have ever told your kid, "Act your age"? If so, didn't you mean "Act more mature"?
Well, then you have to teach them maturity, not childhood. Responsibility and self control, not outside control of their every movement. With maturity comes things you might not like. If your kids are past the age of puberty they are sexually mature, whether you are comfortable with that idea or not. They are going to act like they are sexually mature. They are also begining to think of themselves as themselves and not as your children. Help them to do so in a mature and reponsible manner.
Then you'll have to get out of the way. They'll make mistakes. Sometimes bad ones. Be there for them instead of flying off the handle. Don't think that if you just locked them up tighter the mistakes wouldn't have been made. They'll just be delayed until they're out there on their own without you to support them.
Isn't it a better idea to teach them how to deal with these issues in a mature fashion rather than try to deny that these things exist?
Then you're going to wonder why they go to college and go completely off the frickin' wall drinking, screwing and otherwise acting like children out of control.
Well, it's because you raised them to do that. You set them up for it.
The issue isn't so much how to control your kids, but how to control yourself to raise your kids as adults, not kids. Ultimately they are going to control themselves no matter what you do.
Think about it.
KFG
Support library levies.
I make a point of always returning my books late.
KFG
But what if it runs into stairs?
Ah, the most fearsome killing machine in the universe, foiled by a staircase.
Well, at least this robot can thank its lucky stars it isn't made by gluing tennis ball halves all over the outside of an upsidedown dustbin.
KFG
I've read books about objectivism. I'm afraid I tend not to agree with it. Not that Ayn Rand ever really admited that anyone but her even understood it.
That alone tends to send up my red flags and move the needle of the bullshit meter at least a lot closer to the red zone.
Now please don't get me wrong. I'm anything but an anticapitalist and not against property rights, per se, but my ideas of such are rather more Thoreauian (who, counter to popular opinion, was a practicing capitalist and clearly would have thought a federal welfare system was a daft idea).
I think one must realize that property in the sense that you own the chair you whittled yourself is something rather different than real property. An insect may recognize the former, but not that latter, although they recognize the looser concept of territory or "personal space."
Real "property" rights are simply an extension into the capitalist realm of fuedal/tribalistic territorialism of the kind that Rand despised. I've always found this a bit ironic. Had capitalism not evolved out of such fuedal societies it isn't entirely clear that it ever would have developed a concept of real property at all. It isn't inate to the philosophy, and one might even argue that it's somewhat counter to it.
People didn't buy land. They took it. By force, and defended it by force. Then they could claim the right to "sell" that which they had stolen from the public domain. All real property comes from such a background.
So, you want to claim ownership to an asteroid? Well buddy, you better get your ass out there and build a castle. Then when someone else comes along you tell them to shove off or pay the toll.
If they're sitting there and you can't march the knights out of the castle to defend "your" land, well, guess what, you never owned it in the first place. Where there is no prexisting local legal jurisdiction it's back to might makes right.
Or in the more colorful vernacular, Shit or get off the pot.
If you yourself think we're going to develop property "rights" to space through some local process you're just as daft. We're going to fight and kill for them, just as we always have. And when we "discover" the "people" who already "own" a bit of space we might well expect them to take exception to that and fight back.
Quite frankly I'm already rooting for them, because we've got no fucking right.
KFG
Then Howard Hughes really got his money's worth out of that million dollar bra.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036241/
KFG
Just another thought - these reviews all seem to have to rush themselves, and rarely have time to evaluate long term issues or strengths that arise after a bit of persistant use
This problem is endemic to the review trade.
Part of the problem is in the hands of the reader. Who's going to read a review of 6 month old software? In commercial software most readers have read at least half a dozen reviews before the product is even released. Before any reviewer can sit down and take the time to really wring out and understand the final product the reader's attnetion is already on the next crop of products being shoved down his wallet.
We want to know about Fedora. It's new. That's why it's called New(s). Everybody who wants to hear what I think about Red Hat 5.2 raise your hand.
Ok, yeah, you, way in the back with the Lorentz Transformation T-Shirt, we'll get together in the bar and talk. The rest of you can now wander off to the "Alpha shading yo' Mama in Enterprise Goddam Java" seminar.
No readers, no advertising. No advertising, no one to pay the reviewer. No pay for the reviewer, no reviewer.
Nevermind the fact that, for the most part, the software publishers don't want these sorts of reviews being done anyway. It really tends to be bad for business except for a handful of really exceptional products, which are rather past their "sell by" date by the time such a review comes out. Once a product, or even just a particular version of a product, hits the bargain bin selling it is of no further interest to the publisher. There's no profit margin left in it. It's a commodity left to the commodity people to move if they wish. They need people to buy the "latest and greatest".
In Linux you have the further problem that the target can just simply move too fast. Already with this very article people are already yelling at the review "You don't know what you're talking about. That was fixed yesterday." Bit of a quandry not having a time machine so that one can write a review of next week's state this week to post next week when it will be current.
So, I'll tell you what, I'll be perfectly happy setting up a test box and spending the next couple months wringing Fedora's little neck until it screams and then writing up a proper analysis that runs a couple dozen pages of pure text instead of a couple pages of mostly layout design, but:
a)Who's going to really care enough to read it by then
b)Whose going to feed me and pay my cable bill in the meantime?
Cause I can tell you one thing right off, it sure as hell ain't going to be Red Hat, through advertising or any other means.
KFG
Yeah, by 2025 we'll all need something like this to carry as a spare for when the flying car breaks down.
KFG
I'm no frog expert, but I think that possibly if it can't jump out of the pot, the frog will stay in it?
Exactly. So, if one is interested in cooking a frog in a sneaky manner one can turn up the heat until he becomes uncomfortable enough to try to escape.
It is only at that point that one must be sure that he is secure in the pot. If one turns the heat up slowly enough it gives you plenty of time arrange for a lid.
Or legislation, as the case may be.
Whether you can get a frog to pay attention to legislation is another issue for another day.
KFG
The amazing advances in batteries that were supposed to revolutionize everything have been a constant prediction since the early 70's at least.
In the late 70's I was involved in the design of electric cars. We're all driving them now, right?
Throughout the 90's I was involved in the design and development of electric cars on a smaller scale (of the cars themselves. The work was actually more extensive).
End result was a complete lack of revolution.
I canna change the laws of physics Cap'n.
Over the years batteries have gotten a bit better due primarily to better manufacturing methods of existing technologies, not to any real breakthrough.
Some day we just might have to deal with the fact that batteries are WYSIWYG. I'd love to have a simple wind up toy that could fly me to China in an hour, but, as my mother used to say, wishing won't make it so and just because we wish for a "technology" ( applied science ) does not imply that such a technology ever will, or even can, exist.
KFG
Seriously thou, isn't having that much options on a cellphone make it slightly more confusing to use? Especially for those who drive and talk?
Nah. I've discovered that if you just pay full attention to your phone you can handle it all right.
Although everyone else on the road seems to get confused after that. What's with them anyway, don't they know how to drive?
KFG
We're talking about the RIAA here
Ummmm, no, we're not. They weren't even mentioned in passing.
KFG
Don't worry though, nobody is watching and tracking you as an individual. Truth be told, Big Brother just doesn't care about you.
Cool! Does that mean I can skip my next appointment with the probation officer?
KFG
It's called set theory. If John and Jim are both New Yorkers than identifying them as John or Jim identifies them as a New Yorker.
Great, so now some ignorant businessman has come up with another word for one that already exists as the formal definition. We'll add it to the other lot that the database people have made up. They form a set.
Creating a logically ordered stucture of such related data creates a database, which is why you might choose to store said data in a DBMS.
Now, you might choose to store your database on a RAID ( which might have to keep its own database of where the data is physically stored), but that's an entirely seperate issue from what the data means.
KFG
Read all the way to the end of the article. You'll note that there is a constraint, i.e, the lack of constraint on the frog.
What do you suppose happens if the frog cannot easily jump out of the pot at will?
KFG
Indeed, but this is the inherent problem when you're in the bloody rope business, isn't it?
Ya think maybe it's time to change product lines or something? The ability to do so freely is one of the benefits of the capitalist system, free adaptation to the changing economic and trade enviroment.
When pet rocks are hot you sell 'em pet rocks. When people suddenly realize that rocks are free you sell 'em "Designer" clothing.
When a corporation mentally locks itself to a single product or business model it simply defines its own extinction (assuming free trade).
It's "Adapt or die," not "Extort and bludgeon your customers until they'd rather be dead than do business with you or die."
I think this is the part that they "don't get." They're too busy thinking "My God, we're going to die!"
Well, don't sell us the rope. Sell us something we can't hang your business model with instead.
At the very least sell us rocks packaged entertainingly at a low enough cost that we'd rather buy them from you than pick them up off the ground.
Maybe we won't even use them to stone you.
KFG
You are not a real idiot. You have asked a deep question. Pity those around you choose to cover their own ignorance by being arrogant.
Me, I like to display my ignorance, so here I go:
The computer is just a big abacus really, a physical model of the data. When you shake up an abacus it still has just as many beads on it, only their state has changed, and the now random ordering of the beads can still be read as representing a number. What has been lost is meaning.
Is "2" data? (bearing in mind that we're talking about the logical number here and not the numeral that serves as its physical model)
No. It's just a number. Unless the number relates to a logical model (the number of quarts of milk in my refridgerator) it isn't data.
So the state of your all shook up (uh uh huh, uh uh huh, yeah, yeah)abacus is still a physical reprentation of a number, but it isn't data.
When we run code we keep just as many "beads on our abacus," only their state changes, but data is the physical state and what they mean in the logical model. So if we lose meaning we have lost data or if we lose the proper state to reflect that meaning we have lost data.
So to "destroy" data means to dispose of the physical model and/or its meaning in the logical model.
When we change the state of a computer we certainly don't change the total amount of data, but we certainly change its state and that state's relationship to the logical model.
Take Linux in a Nutshell off your shelf (a physical representation of data) and burn it. Have you not destroyed data? Now fill the same space on the shelf with a gardening book.
You are now still in possession of the same amount of data as you had before, but both its state and meaning have changed. You aren't going to be able to use that book to look up a vi command because the gardening book doesn't contain that meaning.
You destroyed that data.
KFG
So what you're trying to say is that Windows is really just a very elaborate Nigerian 419 scam, is that it?
KFG
Don't be silly. 1.3 Billion of that R&D money was spent on DRM projects.
How can you possibly say they aren't serious about security?
KFG
On the other hand, Microsoft, for some reason, has taken it upon themselves to repeatedly point out that Linux gurus are better trained, harder to find, and thus make much more money than MCSEs.
Why they seem quite so bent on informing world plus dog that MCSEs are undertrained and a dime a dozen is beyond me, but if I were you I'd take their career advice and keep reading that copy of Linux in a Nutshell.
KFG
And this is why Windows has a lower TCO.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
KFG
Performance and data security are often at odds. So much so and so often that I think we can nearly take it as a given that increasing one decreases the other. It is the nature of the beast.
One must ask one's self, "How fast do I want my corrupted data delivered?"
KFG
Actually, speeding in the US isn't a crime. It's violation of the traffic code.
.downloaded from the internet.
It is illegal, but it is not a crime.
More to the point owing someone money that you don't pay them is not a crime. It is not stealing. It is a violation of the civil code. They can sue you and use the force of the courts to force payment.
This is what a simple copyright violation is. A simple copyright violation would be copying a CD or Book you took out of the library, borrowed from a friend or. .
Unfortunately, sharing items protected by copyright en masse, as making them available on the internet invariably does, moves the issue from simple violation into the distribution of knockoffs field, which is a crime. One people go to jail for. Not even having anything to do with the internet.
I agree though that jail is not normally any sort of solution for nontheft/nonviolent crimes, especially where no deliberate fraud or profit is involved ( such as selling copies of CDs as originals). It often costs far more than the crime itself cost, if nothing else.
The only really legitimate reason for incarceration is the protection of real people and real property. There are other ways to "punish" without putting a further finanical load on society and without sending people to "criminal training school" in a manner certain to breed resentment against society, as opposed to, hopefully, breeding social conciousness.
KFG