I've known several people who have died in plane crashes ( one of whom ended his life against the World Trade Center). I've never known anybody killed by an asteroid. Neither have you, or your parents, or *their* parents.
This statistic is derived because relatively few people die in plane crashes, whereas *IF* an asteroid hits a great many people will die.
Technically, mathmatically, the statement is correct, but really has nothing to do with whether or not *you* will die by being hit with an asteroid.
It's this same misunderstanding that leads people to believe there were no old people 200 years ago, because the *average* age was low. Whereas a quick study of the death age of America's founding fathers would put the lie to that idea.
The low *average* age is heavily weighted because so many people died before they were two. ..days old. The so called "Life Expectency" has absolutely *nothing* to do with how old any particualar person might be at their time of death.
So don't bother spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for asteroids. *You* are far more likely to die by having a plane fall on you.
really serves to show how out of touch with OSS he really is.
Naturally MS, and MS's employees, would be most aware of the OSS software specifically designed to make the switch easy for Windows users. This is also the software that the MS oriented computer press focuses on, and the software that new Linux users are most likely to come in contact with.
Just because the innovation is below your radar doesn't mean it's not there. Linux is now the OS of choice for those doing innovative work, particularly in the academic setting, most because it's the most viable OS for *doing* just such work. It's free, you have the source, and the right to dick with it all you want.
If he wants an example of something the OSS model has already produced he could start with the World Wide Frickin' Web.
it seems unlikely I'd use it. Not necessarily because it was MS, although that would be part of it ( as someone who ran an all Windows shop for years they've damned well *earned* my distaste).
No, it would be because they did it on the Apple model. Take an open source core and heavily wrap it in a propriatary shell.
Odds are I wouldn't like the shell either, and would be just as constrained from changing it as I am in changing Windows now ( where I have to hack the executable binary just to change the label on the "start" button).
I've already rejected a pure Linux company's offering for similar reasons. That would be Lycoris. Why should I accept MS's?
The translation is easy enough. After years of denying that "the network was the computer" MS got caught flatfooted by the internet. They cater to the business now, but have not really come to terms with it.
Least of all the fact that its very existence renders their bread and butter, the shrink wrapped software product, obsolete.
That clear it up for you?
I guess this post is now both off topic and redundant. Go figure.
The American companies had to work in American courts. Claims and injunctions were a daily ritual.
European companies got to test the validity of their work arounds in *European* courts, which is also where the Wright Bros. would have to file.
Makes a big difference, especially in a time when war was a nearly a foregone conclusion, let alone after the war started, at which time all bets were off and all courts and civil law were entirely irrelevant.
KFG
Re:"They shouldn�t be forced "
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 1
"When Microsoft extended Java in its implementation, Sun sued and won, because the extensions were found to have violated the licence."
That is what I said. They tried to weasel the terms.
"The result was that Microsoft could either remove its extensions or cease to produce a Java implementation."
This is not correct. The court ruled that MS could either remove the offending modifications or it had to remove Windows 98, IE Explorer and Visual J from the market.
One of the factors you are neglecting is that MS didn't simply license the *right* to include Java, they had undertaken a contractual *obligation* to include Java. Just as they have been under contractual obligation to include such things as default browser links to AOL or Disney's website.
MS and Sun then reached a private agreement by which MS could relieve itself from the obligation to provide Java with its products by paying Sun 20 million dollars.
"The injunction requiring Microsoft to distribute Sun's version of Java is the result of an antitrust suit filed against Microsoft by Sun. It's based on the notion that Microsoft's antitrust violations adversely affected the viability of Java, and that unless corrective action is taken (i.e. unless Microsoft is forced to bundle Sun Java with Windows), Java will cease to be a viable competitor to Microsoft's.NET platform."
Here you are correct, but you would be incorrect if you believe that MS's behaviour while under contract with Sun to bundle Java with Windows has no relevance to the anti-trust case.
Python, for instance, would not be likely to obtain such a ruling because MS has not exhibited overt *illegal* behaviour toward Python, and the whole anti-trust thing is just an extension of the original contractual dispute.
Cooking is like coding. The idea isn't to cut and paste code, the idea is to understand what you're doing.
Cooking has the equivilent of algorighms. Learn these instead of recipies. Certain spices mix well with certain foods and certain other spices. Conversely they can go badly as well. Certain techniques apply to certain foods, but not to others. Etc.
When you get these ideas down you can just go to the pantry, or even the dumpster, and whip up a masterpiece out of whatever happens to be there.
If you *really* want to learn to cook get theory and technique books, not recipe books.
Start out with James Beard's "Theory and Practice of Good Cooking" and go on from there. It starts out with a recipe for "boiling water" and works up from there.
Seldon was a lawyer who patented the automobile. He didn't build one, he never even so much as understood them, but he understood that sooner or later someone was going invent the thing, and if *he* already held the patent the actual inventor would either owe him a mint or simply be forced out of business.
So he filed a patent on the *idea,* and got it.
The fight between him and Henry Ford is one of the great sagas of intellectual property dispute in any nation. The patent was eventually broken, but not until after many, many years of courtroom fighting had passed, and millions of dollars such fighting takes to wage had passed from the hands of innovators into the hands of lawyers.
The Wright Bros. invented flight. Then they made sure that America became the absolute *last* in aero technology through patent fights. By the time we entered WWI, hardly more than a decade after that first flight at Kitty Hawk, America had to license aero technology from Europe in order to be competitive in the military aeronautics.
The Europeans either outright ignored the Wright Bros. patents, or found work arounds they could claim didn't violate them.
As such it isn't necessary to construct a good alternative. One of the great legal and socio-political minds of the ages has done that for us already.
His name? Thomas Jefferson. The founding father of American intellectual property.
"Intellectual Property" does not exist. You can't find it, or make it, or put it in a safe and guard it with a pointy stick like you can "real" property.
It's an abstract concept *created* by the laws of man. Created *specifically* so that it didn't simply rot and die in its creator's jealous little head. Created, primarily, for the good of *society.*
Jefferson did a damned fine job of creating it, and we've been pissing in the pool for generations now.
No, we don't need a revolution. We merely need to step back to that time just after the revolution had been won.
If it takes a revolution to do that, well, I guess that second ammendment thingy makes sense after all.
we get doofey assed shit like "pi is three." ( Ok, so they're not exactly high school graduates either).
There's a certain sense in lawyers serving in the body that creates law. Lawyers understand law, the philosophy, the coherence, the limitations, etc..
Of course, they're also a closed trade guild.
Not every theory is perfect.
KFG
"They shouldn�t be forced "
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This is correct. Fortunately, that isn't what's happening. What's happening is that MS is being forced to honor terms of a *contract* that no one forced them to enter into.
They signed a contract, they tried to weasel the terms and got bitch slapped, so they tried to "nullify" the contract. ..
and got bitch slapped.
If they didn't *want* Java as a default part of the Windows world all they had to do was refrain from signing the contract, that *they* took the initiative in pursuing, guarunteeing it would be.
In fact, I've spent some time trying to unlock the secrets of ancient Egypt. I've found things called "books" and "artifacts" most useful to me in this pursuit. Even cooperation with these things called " other people" has come in handy.
This just looks like another boring "find the gem and place it on the alter" game that I grew tired of 15 years ago.
The older gamer has already done this shit to death, thank you very much. I'm going to go read now.
Poppy cock. I've never met a geek worth his salt that wasn't quite at home with the pots and pan, *particularly* the wok.
There is some truth to the matter that when they are *working* and *single* they're more inclined to think than cook, but when involved in a relationship they aren't just cooking for *themselves.* So in that respect along their might be some truth to it.
I find that your "but" is far closer to the truth than the article is.
I'm the chef in my house, and I've earned that right and responsibility by merit. My stir-fryed random alone would make the Iron Chef blush in shame.
over the difference between science and engineering. This time I decided to just take the easy way out, for once.
Feynman is basically correct in that assertion. Although Los Alamos and Schenectady were both somewhat exceptions to that rule. Feynman was a junior member of the team and was most involved with the engineering aspects, the true scientific aspects being handled by men such as Bethe and Oppy.
Surely You're Joking actually shows a number of instances where real science was at question.
(As an aside I live just a couple blocks from GE's Manhatten Project site and in a box somewhere I've got an A1 security clearance badge. It's just button, like any kid could whack out if he wanted to. I use it as a reminder of how times have changed)
But. ..if they had foreknowledge of a major problem upcoming with the automotive *infrastructure* that would effect all car owners, even non Ford car owners, it might have been a nice gesture to say something about it. Publicly.
There's really no better work than Richard Feyman's "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman".
It might be hard to comprehend from our vantage point but, for the most part, people building the bomb really didn't *have* any emotional or philosophical issues. They had one of histories grandest scientific head rushes.
Think about. Hell, until they had actually built and used the thing to them it was just bomb, but bigger. We were making lots and LOTS of bombs at the time.
*Afterward* is a different story, after the work and the head rush were over and everyone could sit back and reflect on what God, and they, had wraught.
Richard actually went into a deep depression for a while and didn't want to do physics anymore. There were a lot like him.
But at the time they were doing it it was pretty much a grand adventure.
Slashdot Mirror
where I've typed "statistics" I meant to type "probability".
So shoot me.
KFG
statistics comes in handy.
.days old. The so called "Life Expectency" has absolutely *nothing* to do with how old any particualar person might be at their time of death.
I've known several people who have died in plane crashes ( one of whom ended his life against the World Trade Center). I've never known anybody killed by an asteroid. Neither have you, or your parents, or *their* parents.
This statistic is derived because relatively few people die in plane crashes, whereas *IF* an asteroid hits a great many people will die.
Technically, mathmatically, the statement is correct, but really has nothing to do with whether or not *you* will die by being hit with an asteroid.
It's this same misunderstanding that leads people to believe there were no old people 200 years ago, because the *average* age was low. Whereas a quick study of the death age of America's founding fathers would put the lie to that idea.
The low *average* age is heavily weighted because so many people died before they were two. .
So don't bother spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for asteroids. *You* are far more likely to die by having a plane fall on you.
KFG
spunky little bag of adolescent testosterone today, aren't we?
KFG
Which you can't. BASIC was an academic teaching language developed at Dartmouth College.
Bill just wrote a propriatary interpreter.
KFG
really serves to show how out of touch with OSS he really is.
Naturally MS, and MS's employees, would be most aware of the OSS software specifically designed to make the switch easy for Windows users. This is also the software that the MS oriented computer press focuses on, and the software that new Linux users are most likely to come in contact with.
Just because the innovation is below your radar doesn't mean it's not there. Linux is now the OS of choice for those doing innovative work, particularly in the academic setting, most because it's the most viable OS for *doing* just such work. It's free, you have the source, and the right to dick with it all you want.
If he wants an example of something the OSS model has already produced he could start with the World Wide Frickin' Web.
KFG
watching Rainbow Brite, didn't you? Come on, you're among (cough) friends. You can admit it.
KFG
it seems unlikely I'd use it. Not necessarily because it was MS, although that would be part of it ( as someone who ran an all Windows shop for years they've damned well *earned* my distaste).
No, it would be because they did it on the Apple model. Take an open source core and heavily wrap it in a propriatary shell.
Odds are I wouldn't like the shell either, and would be just as constrained from changing it as I am in changing Windows now ( where I have to hack the executable binary just to change the label on the "start" button).
I've already rejected a pure Linux company's offering for similar reasons. That would be Lycoris. Why should I accept MS's?
KFG
Cool.
The translation is easy enough. After years of denying that "the network was the computer" MS got caught flatfooted by the internet. They cater to the business now, but have not really come to terms with it.
Least of all the fact that its very existence renders their bread and butter, the shrink wrapped software product, obsolete.
That clear it up for you?
I guess this post is now both off topic and redundant. Go figure.
KFG
The American companies had to work in American courts. Claims and injunctions were a daily ritual.
European companies got to test the validity of their work arounds in *European* courts, which is also where the Wright Bros. would have to file.
Makes a big difference, especially in a time when war was a nearly a foregone conclusion, let alone after the war started, at which time all bets were off and all courts and civil law were entirely irrelevant.
KFG
"When Microsoft extended Java in its implementation, Sun sued and won, because the extensions were found to have violated the licence."
.NET platform."
That is what I said. They tried to weasel the terms.
"The result was that Microsoft could either remove its extensions or cease to produce a Java implementation."
This is not correct. The court ruled that MS could either remove the offending modifications or it had to remove Windows 98, IE Explorer and Visual J from the market.
One of the factors you are neglecting is that MS didn't simply license the *right* to include Java, they had undertaken a contractual *obligation* to include Java. Just as they have been under contractual obligation to include such things as default browser links to AOL or Disney's website.
MS and Sun then reached a private agreement by which MS could relieve itself from the obligation to provide Java with its products by paying Sun 20 million dollars.
"The injunction requiring Microsoft to distribute Sun's version of Java is the result of an antitrust suit filed against Microsoft by Sun. It's based on the notion that Microsoft's antitrust violations adversely affected the viability of Java, and that unless corrective action is taken (i.e. unless Microsoft is forced to bundle Sun Java with Windows), Java will cease to be a viable competitor to Microsoft's
Here you are correct, but you would be incorrect if you believe that MS's behaviour while under contract with Sun to bundle Java with Windows has no relevance to the anti-trust case.
Python, for instance, would not be likely to obtain such a ruling because MS has not exhibited overt *illegal* behaviour toward Python, and the whole anti-trust thing is just an extension of the original contractual dispute.
KFG
For the most part I don't use recipes. I cook.
Cooking is like coding. The idea isn't to cut and paste code, the idea is to understand what you're doing.
Cooking has the equivilent of algorighms. Learn these instead of recipies. Certain spices mix well with certain foods and certain other spices. Conversely they can go badly as well. Certain techniques apply to certain foods, but not to others. Etc.
When you get these ideas down you can just go to the pantry, or even the dumpster, and whip up a masterpiece out of whatever happens to be there.
If you *really* want to learn to cook get theory and technique books, not recipe books.
Start out with James Beard's "Theory and Practice of Good Cooking" and go on from there. It starts out with a recipe for "boiling water" and works up from there.
KFG
Seldon was a lawyer who patented the automobile. He didn't build one, he never even so much as understood them, but he understood that sooner or later someone was going invent the thing, and if *he* already held the patent the actual inventor would either owe him a mint or simply be forced out of business.
So he filed a patent on the *idea,* and got it.
The fight between him and Henry Ford is one of the great sagas of intellectual property dispute in any nation. The patent was eventually broken, but not until after many, many years of courtroom fighting had passed, and millions of dollars such fighting takes to wage had passed from the hands of innovators into the hands of lawyers.
The Wright Bros. invented flight. Then they made sure that America became the absolute *last* in aero technology through patent fights. By the time we entered WWI, hardly more than a decade after that first flight at Kitty Hawk, America had to license aero technology from Europe in order to be competitive in the military aeronautics.
The Europeans either outright ignored the Wright Bros. patents, or found work arounds they could claim didn't violate them.
KFG
And won. At least in America.
As such it isn't necessary to construct a good alternative. One of the great legal and socio-political minds of the ages has done that for us already.
His name? Thomas Jefferson. The founding father of American intellectual property.
"Intellectual Property" does not exist. You can't find it, or make it, or put it in a safe and guard it with a pointy stick like you can "real" property.
It's an abstract concept *created* by the laws of man. Created *specifically* so that it didn't simply rot and die in its creator's jealous little head. Created, primarily, for the good of *society.*
Jefferson did a damned fine job of creating it, and we've been pissing in the pool for generations now.
No, we don't need a revolution. We merely need to step back to that time just after the revolution had been won.
If it takes a revolution to do that, well, I guess that second ammendment thingy makes sense after all.
KFG
we get doofey assed shit like "pi is three." ( Ok, so they're not exactly high school graduates either).
There's a certain sense in lawyers serving in the body that creates law. Lawyers understand law, the philosophy, the coherence, the limitations, etc..
Of course, they're also a closed trade guild.
Not every theory is perfect.
KFG
This is correct. Fortunately, that isn't what's happening. What's happening is that MS is being forced to honor terms of a *contract* that no one forced them to enter into.
.
They signed a contract, they tried to weasel the terms and got bitch slapped, so they tried to "nullify" the contract. .
and got bitch slapped.
If they didn't *want* Java as a default part of the Windows world all they had to do was refrain from signing the contract, that *they* took the initiative in pursuing, guarunteeing it would be.
It's a pretty simple issue really.
KFG
This has got me thinking. When I'm through with my book I have hankering to fire up AOE, meet some ancient Egyptians. . . and KILL them!
KFG
In fact, I've spent some time trying to unlock the secrets of ancient Egypt. I've found things called "books" and "artifacts" most useful to me in this pursuit. Even cooperation with these things called " other people" has come in handy.
This just looks like another boring "find the gem and place it on the alter" game that I grew tired of 15 years ago.
The older gamer has already done this shit to death, thank you very much. I'm going to go read now.
KFG
You mean that crap I get from my family and coworkers, unwanted, for free?
KFG
1.Brain Dead
2."My finger slipped. Yeah, that's the ticket!"
3.?????
4.Profit!
KFG
Poppy cock. I've never met a geek worth his salt that wasn't quite at home with the pots and pan, *particularly* the wok.
There is some truth to the matter that when they are *working* and *single* they're more inclined to think than cook, but when involved in a relationship they aren't just cooking for *themselves.* So in that respect along their might be some truth to it.
I find that your "but" is far closer to the truth than the article is.
I'm the chef in my house, and I've earned that right and responsibility by merit. My stir-fryed random alone would make the Iron Chef blush in shame.
And I'm damned proud of it.
KFG
that this, in and of itself, is indicative of a severe insecurity in your own self identity?
Interesting.
KFG
over the difference between science and engineering. This time I decided to just take the easy way out, for once.
Feynman is basically correct in that assertion. Although Los Alamos and Schenectady were both somewhat exceptions to that rule. Feynman was a junior member of the team and was most involved with the engineering aspects, the true scientific aspects being handled by men such as Bethe and Oppy.
Surely You're Joking actually shows a number of instances where real science was at question.
(As an aside I live just a couple blocks from GE's Manhatten Project site and in a box somewhere I've got an A1 security clearance badge. It's just button, like any kid could whack out if he wanted to. I use it as a reminder of how times have changed)
KFG
But. . .if they had foreknowledge of a major problem upcoming with the automotive *infrastructure* that would effect all car owners, even non Ford car owners, it might have been a nice gesture to say something about it. Publicly.
KFG
Although the same logic could be applied to the Tellitubbies and McDonald's "Milk"shakes.
The essential fact of the matter is that Slammer *wasn't* a bomb. A fact that may have escaped your attention.
KFG
There's really no better work than Richard Feyman's "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman".
It might be hard to comprehend from our vantage point but, for the most part, people building the bomb really didn't *have* any emotional or philosophical issues. They had one of histories grandest scientific head rushes.
Think about. Hell, until they had actually built and used the thing to them it was just bomb, but bigger. We were making lots and LOTS of bombs at the time.
*Afterward* is a different story, after the work and the head rush were over and everyone could sit back and reflect on what God, and they, had wraught.
Richard actually went into a deep depression for a while and didn't want to do physics anymore. There were a lot like him.
But at the time they were doing it it was pretty much a grand adventure.
KFG