The UCS, which has it's own agenda and pushes it at every opportunity, is upset because someone on the opposite side wants their view heard as well? To bad.
Hear hear. I'm sick and tired of hearing what scientists think about global warming: it's about time that we heard from the oil companies.
But it isn't his place or right to "interpret" the law. He's trying to circumvent checks and balances if you feel that he is using the statement to put his own interpretation on the law.
Well - to be fair, there's a certain level of interpretation that is implicit in the job of enforcement. If you can't understand the law, you can't enforce it.
But I'm quibbling on a minor point. I'd say that "trying to circumvent checks and balances" is pretty much exactly what he's doing, yes.
There is actually a special court which was set up some time ago to do something very similar, but with wiretaps instead of mail. Essentially, it was a fast-track for emergency wiretap requests. It was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and FISA rules contain a proviso that in the case of extreme need, federal agents can proceed with a wiretap without authorization, as long as they file their request within 72 hours of the tap.
However, FISA is an act of Congress, and not a signing statement. Two very different things.
He used his signing statement to contradict what actual document he was signing said. Makes you wonder how much of the stuff he signs is actually being read by him.
Don't be suckered. If it seems that he's completely contradicting both the intent and the letter of the law in his signing statement, without coming out and saying so directly, that was exactly the intention. In doing so the executive is giving notice that he's going to interpret the law however he sees fit, without going through the messy process of a veto.
All three of the earlier movies were shot in the 80s. How well do you think this character is going to translate into a movie made today?
The originals were all done in the pulp-action adventure style that was popularized fifty and sixty years ago - I doubt that it'll somehow be less attractive now than it was when the genre was only thirty years old.
Also, all three may have been shot in the eighties, but they took place in the forties, so it's not like we're going to see an Indiana Jones trying to come to terms with teh Intarwebs.
On the other hand, twenty-some odd years later... hey, an Indiana Jones that took place in the sixties might have real potential.
This is a discussion about a license, the GPL, not EULAs. If you wish to discuss EULAs, please find another forum.
Don't be dense.
An End User License Agreement is a license that the End User most Agree to before using the software.
The GNU Public License is a license that a recipient of the software must Agree to if they intend to distribute or modify the software.
The difference is that the former is limited to End Users, and there is rarely an option to redistribute or modify the software. But they are both certainly licenses, and acceptance of the terms of a license constitutes agreement.
Side note, and unrelated to this discussion: has anyone noticed that the same people who defend the GPL's validity as a legally binding agreement tend to deny the validity of EULAs? I mean, there are some practical reasons why it's unreasonable to assume that someone is going to wade through 10 pages of legalese in order to install a security patch, but otherwise...
There are many instances in the law where intent does matter very much, especially in regard to contracts. If it can be shown that Novell and Microsoft colluded to violate the terms of the GPL, you can bet it would be worse for them than if they had been found to be "accidentally" in violation. Plausible deniability is nice to have.
Related to intent is understanding - the concept of the "meeting of the minds," which is central to contract law. This excerpt is taken from a site about health care, but it's still applicable. Emphasis mine:
The parties to a contract must reach a meeting of the minds--that is, both parties must have the same understanding of the agreement and of their respective obligations and rights under the contract.
This concept has a number of implications. Meeting of the minds requires that both parties have good faith. Good faith on the part of a party means that the party does not have the intention of deceiving or taking unfair advantage of the other party. Without good faith, the parties do not truly have the same understanding of the agreement and so a meeting of the minds has not been reached. Therefore, if it can be shown that either party was not acting in good faith, the contract can be declared invalid and rescinded (cancelled).
Sometimes there is no meeting of the minds because important information is missing or incorrect, meaning that through no fault of his own one of the parties does not have an accurate understanding of the terms of the agreement...
And of course, in criminal law, the intent to commit a crime is hugely important. Google "mens rea" sometime... or, wait, I'll do it for you. Of course, any case coming out of this would likely be civil rather than criminal, but you get the picture.
Ah, for the mod points to slap you down for spreading otherwise amusing post into three volumes, thus ensuring that you dodged the dreaded "Read more..." link...
I wonder how he'd have reacted if the Zune had, counter to everyone's expectations, been wildly successful?
"I won't lie: we're very disappointed. We'd been hoping to play a mediocre second fiddle to Apple on this one. We'd even put all kinds of half-baked functionality into the Zune to limit the obviously great potential of the wifi capabilities. And yet, we've gone and eclipsed the iPod. Heads are going to roll, I'll tell you that much."
I have to say, I've had the opposite experience. Many times in the past I've felt like Verizon was screwing me simply for the enjoyment of it. While I've had tons of problems with Comcast in the past, calling their tech support has always resulted at the very least in a "we're lowering your bill this month by X," result, where X = whatever service isn't working right.
If I have to choose between two incompetent bureaucracies, I'm going to choose the one that doesn't punish me for it.
Doh! Slashdot done ate my lovely explanation of acts_as_taggable.
In short: "acts_as" calls inform the Rails application that a model should inherit additional functionality from a plugin. The "acts_as_taggable" plugin bolts on the ability to assign arbitrary tags to an object - think Flickr, del.icio.us, or even Slashdot these days. Technically, I believe that acts_as_x uses mixins to work their magic: a mixin is Ruby's version of a Java "interface," basically a way to inherit functionality from multiple sources without the need for multiple inheritance.
Re:a glossary
on
Rails Recipes
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· Score: 4, Informative
My pleasure.
acts_as_taggable
Acts as Versioned - see above, but allows you to have multi-versioned objects, instead of tags.
DRYing up your code - slang. DRY stands for "Don't Repeat Yourself." DRYing up your code, therefore, is making sure that you haven't duplicated code unnecessarily.
routing methods - methods that govern how a Rails application will choose a controller and method based on a URL. The "default route" in most Rails applications is "controller/method/id", meaning if I were to submit a GET request for "http://railsthingy.net/photos/view/101", the application would attempt to call the "view" method from the "photos" controller, with an argument "id=101".
low-flash-coding - this... um. Well. You got me, dude.
a glossary
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Rails Recipes
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· Score: 4, Informative
To address your specific areas of confusion:
"How to use models in migrations" - Rails uses the "Model-View-Controller" structure for application architecture. It also offers scripts which automate the creation of new models: basically, you type "script/generate model modelname", and it drops in files for model code, unit tests, et cetera. Rails also offers a method for making updates to your application's database schema called "migrations." Every time you generate a new model, it will also create a dummy "migration" into which you can enter the code necessary to update your database, regardless of the specific type of database you're running (Informix, MySQL, Oracle, Postgres...).
"Integration testing as a DSL" - In Rails parlance, an "integration test" is a test which spans multiple models, controllers, and views. DSL, or "Domain Specific Langage," is a buzzword which basically means "a language specifically tailored to a certain task." It refers to the phenomenon some that Rails code, especially the integration test code, doesn't really scream "I am a Ruby program" to you - the method calls have evolved to the point where they look like a whole new language perfectly suited for a specific task. (That's the claim, anyhoo.)
"Great YAML tricks for use in fixtures - YAML stands for "YAML Ain't Markup Language." It's a very simple way of representing data structures in text. Rails uses YAML for unit test fixtures: that is, your testing database can be populated with information from YAML files. Interestingly, the test fixtures can have Ruby code embedded directly in the YAML, enabling you to do stuff like iterate over hundreds of similar items. The embedded Ruby code is what makes the "great YAML tricks" possible.
A big chunk of the time is doing policy updates, custom startup scripts, that kind of thing. I clocked it using highly advanced "one-mississippi, two-mississippi" technique this morning: after sign in, it took 95 seconds for desktop to appear. Shockingly, it was responsive not too long after that: I guess the upgrade to a core duo based machine was worth it.
I'm not likely to stop those morning trips to the caf, however. That's where they keep the Starbucks, which is tolerable. The coffee in this building is awful.
I work for a large Fortune 500 company which does IT consulting. My work-issue laptop comes with a lot of baggage, including anti-virus, anti-spyware, automatic backup & disaster recovery, a special system update program, et cetera, et cetera.
How bad is it? It's like this: I can start my computer, and within about a minute, I get a standard XP pro login screen. After entering my username and password, I immediately get up and walk away, down a flight of stairs, out the door, and about a hundred yards to our campus cafeteria, where I'll buy a coffee. By the time I get back, my coffee is cool enough to drink, and my laptop is usually in a useable state.
On the other hand, looking at "average" pieces of code can make me cry. The structure is appalling, and the programmers clearly didn't think deeply about correctness, algorithms, data structures, or maintainability. Most people don't actually read code; they just see Internet Explorer "freeze."
Now that is just ridiculous. I'm using IE7 to post this article, and have been using it since its release, and I can say
(Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any less annoying...)
XP, arguably the 600 pound gorilla of the "agile methodologies," was created by Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, and Ron Jeffries. It was a direct outgrowth of their work the "Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation (C3) System," and information about their brand new methodology was publicized on a little web site Cunningham had put together.
It just so happened that the "little web site" was the very first Wiki. One of the side effects here is that since each of the XP principles got its own page, it also got its VeryOwnNameInCamelCase. The weird capitalization of the rules is an artifact of agile methodologies' debt to the wiki format.
To take another example from Communism: it was always assumed by Marx that Communism would naturally arise from societies in which the poor had been continually disenfranchised. Lenin's contribution was essentially the notion that a Communist state could be created more or less out of whole cloth.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear hear. I'm sick and tired of hearing what scientists think about global warming: it's about time that we heard from the oil companies.
Well - to be fair, there's a certain level of interpretation that is implicit in the job of enforcement. If you can't understand the law, you can't enforce it.
But I'm quibbling on a minor point. I'd say that "trying to circumvent checks and balances" is pretty much exactly what he's doing, yes.
There is actually a special court which was set up some time ago to do something very similar, but with wiretaps instead of mail. Essentially, it was a fast-track for emergency wiretap requests. It was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and FISA rules contain a proviso that in the case of extreme need, federal agents can proceed with a wiretap without authorization, as long as they file their request within 72 hours of the tap.
However, FISA is an act of Congress, and not a signing statement. Two very different things.
Don't be suckered. If it seems that he's completely contradicting both the intent and the letter of the law in his signing statement, without coming out and saying so directly, that was exactly the intention. In doing so the executive is giving notice that he's going to interpret the law however he sees fit, without going through the messy process of a veto.
Doh.
My bad. I hear "Nazis" and for some reason I always think 1940s.
The originals were all done in the pulp-action adventure style that was popularized fifty and sixty years ago - I doubt that it'll somehow be less attractive now than it was when the genre was only thirty years old.
Also, all three may have been shot in the eighties, but they took place in the forties, so it's not like we're going to see an Indiana Jones trying to come to terms with teh Intarwebs.
On the other hand, twenty-some odd years later... hey, an Indiana Jones that took place in the sixties might have real potential.
Wanna see the actual numbers? Red Hat's report to investors is here.
Is it just me, or did they spend almost twice as much on marketing as they did in the same quarter, previous year?
I suspect that since very few people are running RHEL on their desktops, there's no real contradiction here.
Don't be dense.
An End User License Agreement is a license that the End User most Agree to before using the software.
The GNU Public License is a license that a recipient of the software must Agree to if they intend to distribute or modify the software.
The difference is that the former is limited to End Users, and there is rarely an option to redistribute or modify the software. But they are both certainly licenses, and acceptance of the terms of a license constitutes agreement.
Side note, and unrelated to this discussion: has anyone noticed that the same people who defend the GPL's validity as a legally binding agreement tend to deny the validity of EULAs? I mean, there are some practical reasons why it's unreasonable to assume that someone is going to wade through 10 pages of legalese in order to install a security patch, but otherwise...
You're wrong.
There are many instances in the law where intent does matter very much, especially in regard to contracts. If it can be shown that Novell and Microsoft colluded to violate the terms of the GPL, you can bet it would be worse for them than if they had been found to be "accidentally" in violation. Plausible deniability is nice to have.
Related to intent is understanding - the concept of the "meeting of the minds," which is central to contract law. This excerpt is taken from a site about health care, but it's still applicable. Emphasis mine:
And of course, in criminal law, the intent to commit a crime is hugely important. Google "mens rea" sometime... or, wait, I'll do it for you. Of course, any case coming out of this would likely be civil rather than criminal, but you get the picture.
Yeah, well... +1 for being supported by the facts, but -20 for twisted grammatical construction.
"The hardware also allows for improved threading, which will improve even further the crowd AI."
Giving my balls a pain, to read that is.
Ah, for the mod points to slap you down for spreading otherwise amusing post into three volumes, thus ensuring that you dodged the dreaded "Read more..." link...
A. THAT'S A DIRTY LIE!
B. That guy should seriously lay off the cheetos.
I wonder how he'd have reacted if the Zune had, counter to everyone's expectations, been wildly successful?
"I won't lie: we're very disappointed. We'd been hoping to play a mediocre second fiddle to Apple on this one. We'd even put all kinds of half-baked functionality into the Zune to limit the obviously great potential of the wifi capabilities. And yet, we've gone and eclipsed the iPod. Heads are going to roll, I'll tell you that much."
I have to say, I've had the opposite experience. Many times in the past I've felt like Verizon was screwing me simply for the enjoyment of it. While I've had tons of problems with Comcast in the past, calling their tech support has always resulted at the very least in a "we're lowering your bill this month by X," result, where X = whatever service isn't working right.
If I have to choose between two incompetent bureaucracies, I'm going to choose the one that doesn't punish me for it.
Oh! Okay.
:)
I guess I should feel reassured that it never occurred to me to use the flash that way.
Doh! Slashdot done ate my lovely explanation of acts_as_taggable.
In short: "acts_as" calls inform the Rails application that a model should inherit additional functionality from a plugin. The "acts_as_taggable" plugin bolts on the ability to assign arbitrary tags to an object - think Flickr, del.icio.us, or even Slashdot these days. Technically, I believe that acts_as_x uses mixins to work their magic: a mixin is Ruby's version of a Java "interface," basically a way to inherit functionality from multiple sources without the need for multiple inheritance.
Hope this helps.
A big chunk of the time is doing policy updates, custom startup scripts, that kind of thing. I clocked it using highly advanced "one-mississippi, two-mississippi" technique this morning: after sign in, it took 95 seconds for desktop to appear. Shockingly, it was responsive not too long after that: I guess the upgrade to a core duo based machine was worth it.
I'm not likely to stop those morning trips to the caf, however. That's where they keep the Starbucks, which is tolerable. The coffee in this building is awful.
Why not? It's completely unusable for that period of time anyway.
(More seriously: I usually do a ctrl-alt-del, K to lock the machine in my absence.)
Also, and just to be clear: I work for the company full time. Any consulting that I do is on their behalf.
Around 30 seconds?
I work for a large Fortune 500 company which does IT consulting. My work-issue laptop comes with a lot of baggage, including anti-virus, anti-spyware, automatic backup & disaster recovery, a special system update program, et cetera, et cetera.
How bad is it? It's like this: I can start my computer, and within about a minute, I get a standard XP pro login screen. After entering my username and password, I immediately get up and walk away, down a flight of stairs, out the door, and about a hundred yards to our campus cafeteria, where I'll buy a coffee. By the time I get back, my coffee is cool enough to drink, and my laptop is usually in a useable state.
Now that is just ridiculous. I'm using IE7 to post this article, and have been using it since its release, and I can say
There Is Historical Precedent For This.
(Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any less annoying...)
XP, arguably the 600 pound gorilla of the "agile methodologies," was created by Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, and Ron Jeffries. It was a direct outgrowth of their work the "Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation (C3) System," and information about their brand new methodology was publicized on a little web site Cunningham had put together.
It just so happened that the "little web site" was the very first Wiki. One of the side effects here is that since each of the XP principles got its own page, it also got its VeryOwnNameInCamelCase. The weird capitalization of the rules is an artifact of agile methodologies' debt to the wiki format.
Or something. I think.
To take another example from Communism: it was always assumed by Marx that Communism would naturally arise from societies in which the poor had been continually disenfranchised. Lenin's contribution was essentially the notion that a Communist state could be created more or less out of whole cloth.
Possibly true, but Human Behavior is pretty cool, in a trippy, vaguely menacing way.