'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday'
While I tend to agree with the statement, the idea that a court can somehow "rule" on whether or not something is true seems a bit strange. What happens next Friday? Will they rule that the value of Pi is precisely 3.14 and not a penny more? Physical reality doesn't care about court rulings. Courts rule on matters of human law, not physical law.
I don't think the problem is limited to gene sequencing. For instance, here in Oregon the insurance companies are required to provide coverage for certain types of smoking cessation treatment. However, you'd have to be an idiot to take them up on their offer, because as soon as you do, they know you are a smoker and will certainly jack your rates through the stratosphere. I wouldn't be surprised if the insurance companies actually backed that law.
I'm not too clear on the manufacturing details here. But the material itself sounds a lot like the original Polaroid film (not the photographic kind, the polarizing kind), which is a type of plastic polymer, impregnated with iodine, which has been stretched in one dimension to align the polymer molecules along that dimension. The iodine atoms are able to conduct electrons between themselves, effectively forming "wires" which absorb radiation polarized along the direction of the molecules. I wonder if a block (as opposed to a sheet) of such a material would also conduct heat along one dimension. Things which conduct current also conduct heat well.
I suppose the devil is in the details, and the real accomplishment here is not the alignment of the molecules, but the ability to do so throughout a block of material instead of just a thin sheet. But what if you just made a bunch of sheets and stacked them up to make a block?
Plastic degrades over time, especially in a smoker's environment....
Yes, we definitely need to consider this when creating new technology or using it in new ways...
Commander Riker: Data, we need to reverse the polarity of the deflector dish to push away the incoming antimatter nanoparticles, which threaten the ship with destruction!
Data: But Commander, that has never been tried before, and we do not know what will happen when the reverse-polarity charge conduits come in contact with Ensign Tenneson's tobacco smoke in Engineering Compartment 15-D.
Commander Riker: You have a point Mr. Data. Abandon ship! Everyone to the life boats!
The bill is hopelessly vague about what "salt" is. If it just applies to "table salt" (sodium chloride), restaurants would simply switch to salt substitutes like potassium chloride.
Yeah, that would go over really well. "Hey guys, the government banned salt, so we're replacing it with this stuff called KCl. What? You say that's the stuff they use in lethal injections? Shhh! Don't worry about it!"
The problem is not with the game, it is putting a loaded gun within reach of a toddler.
I didn't say the problem was the game. However, the mother was obviously unable to recognize that her toddler was holding an actual weapon, because she was used to seeing her holding a game controller which looks a lot like an actual weapon. This is a problem associated with toy guns in general, not video games. Realistic toy guns create two problems: one, the above. Two, the kid learns that guns don't actually kill people.
If you were four, then you were 33% older than a three year old.
A 3 year old knows the difference between a real gun, and a lightweight plastic controller.
Uh, correction, a three year old knows no such damn thing.
Sounds dubious to me that someone who has spent years with guns doesn't know that you don't point it at yourself.
Being alive for three years counts as "spending years with guns?" Are you actually, seriously, trying to claim that a three year old is mentally capable of understanding why she should not aim a deadly weapon at herself? Do you LIVE on this planet?
This is what bugs me. It's possible the mother noticed, but thought the kid had picked up the wii controller (assuming she wasn't terribly familiar with firearms, it's at least possible).
Maybe if they hadn't been letting a 3 year old play a game which involves a fake firearm it would have been a no-brainer when she saw the kid holding a weapon. Who the hell lets a toddler play a gun game?
If you are working on one function that is in file3.c that has to interact with functions in file7.c and file3.c, why not be able to display them all as if they are in the same file
If file3.c and file7.c are typically edited in concert, this is a sign that their functionality might better belong in a single file. If file3.c simply USES file7.c, then there is normally no reason to look at the code inside file7.c. You are trying to use a code editing tool to solve something which is fundamentally a design issue. Obviously, separate functionality should exist in separate files. But if file3 and file7 are almost always edited at the same time, their functionality is clearly not "separate."
If you find yourself jumping schizophrenically between source files to accomplish everyday tasks, you should not think "What tool can make this less painful?", you should think "What is wrong with the organization of this code and how can I correct it?"
Electricity, in as much as it is a flow of electric charges which can be put to use, is definitely produced. Before, no charges flowed. After, they do. Voila, something has been "produced."
Other than the use of explosives, the two techniques don't really have much in common. In the thermopower technology, the explosion serves to "throw" electrons toward one end of a chamber, generating a current. The movement of the electrons is the objective. In an EMP, the objective is the controlled obliteration of the conductor itself, in order to "squeeze" the magnetic field into an extremely tight packet, ultimately causing the magnetic flux to become unconstrained, generating a large EM pulse. Thermopower is charge-carrier based, whereas EMP is EM-field based.
The point is it eliminates a physical item you had to carry with you everywhere. Because a man with a purse is socially frowned upon, I am forced to stick everything in my pockets. One less thing to cram in my pants, you say? I'll take one.
So according to you if you built cars, you'd own the cars and would grant Ford (or whatever company) a license to sell them to customers? How about a license for people to eat a burger you slapped together while working in fast food?
Are you seriously comparing the construction of a physical object with the creation of an intellectual work? The car is a singular, non-duplicable item. A piece of software is not. Forcing contract developers to continually re-implement the most basic shit is a waste of time and money for everybody. If you want full ownership of every line of code that goes into a product I create, then you can have it, but be aware that it will take me three times as long and I'm going to increase my price because this is not the way software development is supposed to work.
So... wait. All those contracts that people post on RentACoder stating "the work is for hire, all rights transfer to the buyer, blah blah" is just a bunch of bullshit? Because if so, RentACoder just got a lot more appealing to me.
Seeing as that sexual offenses and inhumane treatment of animals are illegal, and the examples you cite are not illegal, I'm not really very worried. Once the things you mention become CRIMES, then I'll start worrying.
If the animals were abused, under the definition of "abuse" propounded by this law (I assume it specifically defines abuse), then why not? This is why I buy my meat from local farmers, and I'm completely aware of how it's raised and slaughtered. Meat's way more expensive this way, but I don't eat that much meat in the first place, and I figure if I can buy some humane treatment for the animals, why not.
The same thing I do for any other unreasonable demands. The customer can't have what they want, because the application would not be approved. It's not in my hands.
Your user number is low enough for you to have been here when/. blew up about Microsoft using internal APIs that no one else knew about. IIRC such actions got them in a little bit of legal trouble.
That was a lot of beers in the past. Perhaps you could refresh my memory and we can actually have a conversation about it. I vaguely remember something of it, but I was using Linux and as such, didn't really care about Microsoft's monopolist practices since I had already escaped them.
But since it is apple we are perfectly happy with letting apple tell us what we can and can't do with our own hardware.
First of all, Apple has nowhere near a monopoly position on the smart phone market, despite what marketing hype might imply. That makes their situation quite different than Microsoft's.
Second, we are talking about applications which are sold through an online store which is owned, managed, and hosted by Apple. It's not unreasonable, to me, to expect that Apple might want a fairly tight degree of control over that, since the impression given by the store and the apps themselves reflects directly on Apple. I've spoken to iPhone users who don't even understand that the applications aren't made by Apple.
Third, Apple isn't telling you what you can do with your hardware. You can develop, install, and run anything you want on your phone. I do not see how phone ownership automatically grants you the right to access any application you want to through Apple's storefront. Your argument is based on the principle of ownership and so surely you must respect Apple's ownership over their own storefront.
Bet you are a BIG FSF / GPL support though.
I am. I have a couple of Mac Minis which I bought mostly because they were extremely small and could fit in the corner of a small desk. I run Linux on them. I don't own an iPhone. Full disclosure...
If people use undocumented APIs it just means that Apple is also failing on the API front. Private API bad! Private API bad!! Well sure, but let's look at why people need to use it - it's because we aren't offering a published API that does what they want to do.
Back to the example I gave from my own company, it was our complaints (and probably those of other developers) that got the API we were using opened up for official use. I wasn't on that project, but from what I heard, we had official access to those frameworks within a couple of months. Before trying to go through the back door, you can try asking.
Do you have brain damage? You want to stand in the way of somebody with title of "Production Director" who has free reign to do what he pleases, and you think there will not be SERIOUS consequences to it? All technical stupidities aside, this guy sounds like a superior, and if you get in his way, you're basically insubordinate, uncooperative, and probably going to get fired. Don't be a dumbshit. Try to convince the powers that be to change the situation of their OWN accord, or find another job, because that's what you'll be doing anyway if you continue down this road.
Just because you don't like DRM doesn't mean you can use broken logic to argue against it. You cannot blame DRM creators for malware because it doesn't make sense. It would be like blaming and then sentencing the woman for being raped (as she was wearing an attractive outfit).
Uh, no. The logic isn't broken, and it's not at all like your example (which I don't comprehend whatsoever). What it's like is Prohibition, which as we all know, was pretty much single-handedly responsible for the creation of the American Mafia.
*Apple has NEVER permitted the use of private frameworks in iPhone apps. * They allow such things in their own apps but if Microsoft did such a thing/. would be melting down from the nerd rage
Wow, a vendor using their own code? Shocking! What the hell are you smoking?
Slashdot Mirror
'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday'
While I tend to agree with the statement, the idea that a court can somehow "rule" on whether or not something is true seems a bit strange. What happens next Friday? Will they rule that the value of Pi is precisely 3.14 and not a penny more? Physical reality doesn't care about court rulings. Courts rule on matters of human law, not physical law.
I don't think the problem is limited to gene sequencing. For instance, here in Oregon the insurance companies are required to provide coverage for certain types of smoking cessation treatment. However, you'd have to be an idiot to take them up on their offer, because as soon as you do, they know you are a smoker and will certainly jack your rates through the stratosphere. I wouldn't be surprised if the insurance companies actually backed that law.
I'm not too clear on the manufacturing details here. But the material itself sounds a lot like the original Polaroid film (not the photographic kind, the polarizing kind), which is a type of plastic polymer, impregnated with iodine, which has been stretched in one dimension to align the polymer molecules along that dimension. The iodine atoms are able to conduct electrons between themselves, effectively forming "wires" which absorb radiation polarized along the direction of the molecules. I wonder if a block (as opposed to a sheet) of such a material would also conduct heat along one dimension. Things which conduct current also conduct heat well.
I suppose the devil is in the details, and the real accomplishment here is not the alignment of the molecules, but the ability to do so throughout a block of material instead of just a thin sheet. But what if you just made a bunch of sheets and stacked them up to make a block?
Plastic degrades over time, especially in a smoker's environment....
Yes, we definitely need to consider this when creating new technology or using it in new ways...
Commander Riker: Data, we need to reverse the polarity of the deflector dish to push away the incoming antimatter nanoparticles, which threaten the ship with destruction!
Data: But Commander, that has never been tried before, and we do not know what will happen when the reverse-polarity charge conduits come in contact with Ensign Tenneson's tobacco smoke in Engineering Compartment 15-D.
Commander Riker: You have a point Mr. Data. Abandon ship! Everyone to the life boats!
Years later I used the power LED of a device (woohoo, we had green too by then) for a debug data link.
And your data link was 230 megabits per second?
The bill is hopelessly vague about what "salt" is. If it just applies to "table salt" (sodium chloride), restaurants would simply switch to salt substitutes like potassium chloride.
Yeah, that would go over really well. "Hey guys, the government banned salt, so we're replacing it with this stuff called KCl. What? You say that's the stuff they use in lethal injections? Shhh! Don't worry about it!"
The problem is not with the game, it is putting a loaded gun within reach of a toddler.
I didn't say the problem was the game. However, the mother was obviously unable to recognize that her toddler was holding an actual weapon, because she was used to seeing her holding a game controller which looks a lot like an actual weapon. This is a problem associated with toy guns in general, not video games. Realistic toy guns create two problems: one, the above. Two, the kid learns that guns don't actually kill people.
If you were four, then you were 33% older than a three year old.
A 3 year old knows the difference between a real gun, and a lightweight plastic controller.
Uh, correction, a three year old knows no such damn thing.
Sounds dubious to me that someone who has spent years with guns doesn't know that you don't point it at yourself.
Being alive for three years counts as "spending years with guns?" Are you actually, seriously, trying to claim that a three year old is mentally capable of understanding why she should not aim a deadly weapon at herself? Do you LIVE on this planet?
This is what bugs me. It's possible the mother noticed, but thought the kid had picked up the wii controller (assuming she wasn't terribly familiar with firearms, it's at least possible).
Maybe if they hadn't been letting a 3 year old play a game which involves a fake firearm it would have been a no-brainer when she saw the kid holding a weapon. Who the hell lets a toddler play a gun game?
If you are working on one function that is in file3.c that has to interact with functions in file7.c and file3.c, why not be able to display them all as if they are in the same file
If file3.c and file7.c are typically edited in concert, this is a sign that their functionality might better belong in a single file. If file3.c simply USES file7.c, then there is normally no reason to look at the code inside file7.c. You are trying to use a code editing tool to solve something which is fundamentally a design issue. Obviously, separate functionality should exist in separate files. But if file3 and file7 are almost always edited at the same time, their functionality is clearly not "separate."
If you find yourself jumping schizophrenically between source files to accomplish everyday tasks, you should not think "What tool can make this less painful?", you should think "What is wrong with the organization of this code and how can I correct it?"
Electricity, in as much as it is a flow of electric charges which can be put to use, is definitely produced. Before, no charges flowed. After, they do. Voila, something has been "produced."
Other than the use of explosives, the two techniques don't really have much in common. In the thermopower technology, the explosion serves to "throw" electrons toward one end of a chamber, generating a current. The movement of the electrons is the objective. In an EMP, the objective is the controlled obliteration of the conductor itself, in order to "squeeze" the magnetic field into an extremely tight packet, ultimately causing the magnetic flux to become unconstrained, generating a large EM pulse. Thermopower is charge-carrier based, whereas EMP is EM-field based.
The point is it eliminates a physical item you had to carry with you everywhere. Because a man with a purse is socially frowned upon, I am forced to stick everything in my pockets. One less thing to cram in my pants, you say? I'll take one.
So according to you if you built cars, you'd own the cars and would grant Ford (or whatever company) a license to sell them to customers? How about a license for people to eat a burger you slapped together while working in fast food?
Are you seriously comparing the construction of a physical object with the creation of an intellectual work? The car is a singular, non-duplicable item. A piece of software is not. Forcing contract developers to continually re-implement the most basic shit is a waste of time and money for everybody. If you want full ownership of every line of code that goes into a product I create, then you can have it, but be aware that it will take me three times as long and I'm going to increase my price because this is not the way software development is supposed to work.
So... wait. All those contracts that people post on RentACoder stating "the work is for hire, all rights transfer to the buyer, blah blah" is just a bunch of bullshit? Because if so, RentACoder just got a lot more appealing to me.
Seeing as that sexual offenses and inhumane treatment of animals are illegal, and the examples you cite are not illegal, I'm not really very worried. Once the things you mention become CRIMES, then I'll start worrying.
If the animals were abused, under the definition of "abuse" propounded by this law (I assume it specifically defines abuse), then why not? This is why I buy my meat from local farmers, and I'm completely aware of how it's raised and slaughtered. Meat's way more expensive this way, but I don't eat that much meat in the first place, and I figure if I can buy some humane treatment for the animals, why not.
"Waaaah, I don't like that people can do better than me by doing more work and having more skills than I do, waaaah"
According to this logic, open source is pointless, because we can all just reverse-engineer other people's shit to learn how they do it.
The same thing I do for any other unreasonable demands. The customer can't have what they want, because the application would not be approved. It's not in my hands.
Your user number is low enough for you to have been here when /. blew up about Microsoft using internal APIs that no one else knew about. IIRC such actions got them in a little bit of legal trouble.
That was a lot of beers in the past. Perhaps you could refresh my memory and we can actually have a conversation about it. I vaguely remember something of it, but I was using Linux and as such, didn't really care about Microsoft's monopolist practices since I had already escaped them.
But since it is apple we are perfectly happy with letting apple tell us what we can and can't do with our own hardware.
First of all, Apple has nowhere near a monopoly position on the smart phone market, despite what marketing hype might imply. That makes their situation quite different than Microsoft's.
Second, we are talking about applications which are sold through an online store which is owned, managed, and hosted by Apple. It's not unreasonable, to me, to expect that Apple might want a fairly tight degree of control over that, since the impression given by the store and the apps themselves reflects directly on Apple. I've spoken to iPhone users who don't even understand that the applications aren't made by Apple.
Third, Apple isn't telling you what you can do with your hardware. You can develop, install, and run anything you want on your phone. I do not see how phone ownership automatically grants you the right to access any application you want to through Apple's storefront. Your argument is based on the principle of ownership and so surely you must respect Apple's ownership over their own storefront.
Bet you are a BIG FSF / GPL support though.
I am. I have a couple of Mac Minis which I bought mostly because they were extremely small and could fit in the corner of a small desk. I run Linux on them. I don't own an iPhone. Full disclosure...
If people use undocumented APIs it just means that Apple is also failing on the API front. Private API bad! Private API bad!! Well sure, but let's look at why people need to use it - it's because we aren't offering a published API that does what they want to do.
Back to the example I gave from my own company, it was our complaints (and probably those of other developers) that got the API we were using opened up for official use. I wasn't on that project, but from what I heard, we had official access to those frameworks within a couple of months. Before trying to go through the back door, you can try asking.
Do you have brain damage? You want to stand in the way of somebody with title of "Production Director" who has free reign to do what he pleases, and you think there will not be SERIOUS consequences to it? All technical stupidities aside, this guy sounds like a superior, and if you get in his way, you're basically insubordinate, uncooperative, and probably going to get fired. Don't be a dumbshit. Try to convince the powers that be to change the situation of their OWN accord, or find another job, because that's what you'll be doing anyway if you continue down this road.
Just because you don't like DRM doesn't mean you can use broken logic to argue against it. You cannot blame DRM creators for malware because it doesn't make sense. It would be like blaming and then sentencing the woman for being raped (as she was wearing an attractive outfit).
Uh, no. The logic isn't broken, and it's not at all like your example (which I don't comprehend whatsoever). What it's like is Prohibition, which as we all know, was pretty much single-handedly responsible for the creation of the American Mafia.
You don't want to compete with people who put in more effort into coding their apps than you?
No, what I want is to not have to be an expert in reverse engineering in order to compete with other developers.
*Apple has NEVER permitted the use of private frameworks in iPhone apps. * They allow such things in their own apps but if Microsoft did such a thing /. would be melting down from the nerd rage
Wow, a vendor using their own code? Shocking! What the hell are you smoking?