The ISO may only have defined a C++ standard in 1998, but there were many users a decade earlier. The first C++ compiler I used was cfront, and it compiled C++ to C. I found it more of an improvement over C than I find the current C++ compilers. (Due to work considerations I spent a decade with MSAccess & it's version of VisualBasic...which wasn't even standard MSVisualBasic. Yuck!!!) When I came back to C it was via Ruby & Python. C++ was virtually unintelligible. (Not really, but I *REALLY* despise templates! Give me Ada generics any time as an alternative. If Ada had decent string handling, I'd never have looked at C again.)
To me Google go looks like an interesting language. I'm not clear how one should convert uint64's into a ubyte[], but outside of that I think I'm sold...at least enough to give it a test. It's lacking in libraries at the moment, but if it becomes at all popular that should diminish quickly.
FWIW, I've currently been using D as the best language for performance, etc., but D doesn't handle multiple-processors gracefully. They've got a library, and they're planning to improve it, but it's an "add-on", not a built-in. To me this is an important feature, and I don't currently know any language that handles it well. (Yeah, I've looked at Erlang. I've also timed simple programs. I think I'd do better with Python. In Erlang if you can directly apply the language built-ins, you get good performance. Otherwise not. And the built-in database doesn't appear to do what I want. And other parts of the program chain were just too slow.)
Of course, this is all based on their assertion that Google go really *IS* in the same speed ball-park as C. D is, so it's not impossible. But many languages that make that claim aren't. (I guess it depends on what you're doing.)
Objective-C appears to have it's points, but all the texts on it I've been able to find are very heavy into Apple specific libraries, and so useless.
(Yeah, there's some old stuff from the 1980's -- but it's atrociously written. Google go is already ahead of Objective-C on the documentation front. It's not good, but it's better.)
The apparent intention is that this be handled via the multiple return values, with one of them able to be allocated to carry any desired error code.
I'm not at all certain that this is a better approach, but I'm certainly not sure that it isn't. Handling this will be a bother, but so are try-catch-finally blocks. I don't see any real down-side. I think it's just a different approach, and possibly a better one. It's not clearly inferior.
I think the real reason is that every time you add a layer of indirection, you slow things down. They are trying for a fast language.
I haven't decided whether it would suit my needs, but it's certainly quite interesting. I haven't yet subscribed to their mailing list, but the link to do so is still open in a window. And I'm still reading through a manual.
I find this language extremely interesting, largely because of it's focus around multi-processor systems, but also because of it's focus on speed. I'm having a bit of trouble with their language, and can't decide just how difficult it would be to do precisely what I need...but it's *very* interesting.
Of course, now that it's been announced, the question is what will happen to it. If it's just going to lie there and estivate, then I'd be better off picking something else. If it's going to have lots of unfocused development, I'd also be better off avoiding it. If somebody steps up and becomes BFDL or equivalent, then it could really go places.
It did, if I read it right, also include a threat to damage his mother's political career (if she won). I suppose this could be seen as the first step of either extortion or blackmail.
I agree. This doesn't appear to be a case that should be winnable, but I'm a bit less certain than you are. I can see grounds for the judge to know the defendant's identity. I don't really see any grounds for sharing it with the attacker? prosecutor?, I'm not really quite sure what the appropriate term is. Attacker seems closer than prosecutor, since on suit has been filed.
Some of them were, indeed, silly. Some were unfairly stigmatized because they didn't predict what it was desired that they predict. The only way to tell the difference is to look at the rest of their predictions. (Some of the ones who didn't predict a disaster appear to be political hack, some were silly, and some were serious, but missed the problem...again, the only way to tell is to look at the rest of their predictions.)
At some point, though, if it's worth while we will be able to synthesize any particular fraction of petroleum that we desire. We might even be able to do that now, if we through enough resources into the effort.
I doubt, however, that this will ever be a practical way to acquire fuel. I think beamed electric power would come first. For plastics or antibiotics, though, it might well be reasonable.
The oil sands and shales exist, and are more voluminous than the expectable oil wells. That's true. What you're leaving out is that it's a lot more expensive to extract that oil, and it requires a kind of plant that is a lot different. So anyone who builds such a plant now will quickly go broke, because the folk with oil wells can undercut their prices whenever they feel like it. It only become profitable to build those plants when gas DEPENDABLY sells for over $5/gallon. (This is old info. They may have figured more efficient ways to build the plants. And there's been a lot of inflation. I can't figure how the tradeoffs change because of that, but the simple answer appears to be "not yet".)
So what this means is that there isn't a "real soon" limit on oil, but it may soon be doubling it's price again. (And how long will "soon" take? That depends on when "peak oil" is for the current system.)
Unhh.... because they *DID* want to make him look bad?
If it had surfaced in January or February, NOBODY would have blamed Obama. Because they waited a lot of people thought he had something to do with it.
Mind you, I'm not predicting that he won't do something similar, or claiming that he isn't right now doing something similar that we haven't heard about. But this particular case should be blamed totally on Bush. Read the dates.
I have, actually, done business with IBM directly twice. Neither, I'll admit, was for any large figure of money. Once I bought a laptop and once I bought a program. With the program I was quite dissatisfied, but it wasn't offered as anything more than a subset compiler, so I didn't feel cheated, merely disappointed. With the laptop...well, it DID come with Linux installed, but the modem was a WinModem and didn't work. This was typical for the year. (It may *still* be typical, but people don't use modems much anymore...they use ethernet connections or wireless.) Again I didn't feel cheated.
With MS I have avoided dealing with them directly. Those I've known who have are quite unhappy with them. This includes the IP department that I worked in before retiring.
So. You've reported a much more extensive contact with IBM than I have to experience, and I'm not denying that you had the experiences that you claim, but *I* don't know the validity, so I need to weigh them lighltly, and combine them with lots of other independent reports before I decide to accept them.
As for MS being direct about it licensing requirements... that claim reduces your credibility considerably. I suspect that you've never read the EULA and that you don't know what your licensing requirements actually are. Are you certain you've kept track of all of the "proof of purchase" seals, together with the individual tracking numbers so that you can link the particular license against the particular CD? Most places I'm aware of that attempt to follow those requirements find them not only quite burdensome, but also contradictory. (I'm not sure that it's actually required that the individual proof-of-purchase seal be linked to the particular CD, but we couldn't determine for certain that it wasn't.) I've been quite glad to not be involved in that, and after watching the efforts I became firmly resolved (independent of the EULA) to have nothing to do with MS software. And the EULA would have been enough by itself. (It's changes in the EULA that have caused me to stop recommending Apple equipment to novices.)
I am willing to accept that you have had bad experiences with IBM, but calling me a troll for doubting it is not only a cheap shot, it also means that I consider your entire reportage less trustworthy.
When I looked, Lulu appeared to be a quite bad option for printing off a single copy of a book. Kinko's has some possibilities, but they don't do as good a job of binding...and for a book one would ideally like to take the text file and have it formatted in a way that would allow double-sided printing on paper that would be cut and bound to be around half a page / page. That requires a lot of finicky page organization. I don't think Open Office handles it. Scribus may (I would expect it to), but it isn't something I would expect to be installed on a MSWind machine, and I don't think Kinko's has anything else.
Then there's the matter of binding. Books shouldn't be spiral bound (or whatever they call that plastic ring thing either). Pages glued to a spine works well...when it's done well. I think they call that padding, but I'm not certain. We used to have a guy at the office who would to it for the old line-printer printouts. The tape he used for the backing wasn't all that attractive, but the basic binding worked well. I don't have the clamps and padding compound, etc. (or the skill) to do a decent job of it myself, but it OUGHT to be possible for any small business to do it.
But what I'd want to do was provide them with a file, possibly in pdf format, and have them print it out and bind it.
I'm still in the process of checking Scribus. When I started composing this letter I tried to import a text file into a document set up as I desire the printout to be set up. So far the file is still being imported. (Either that, or the program is hung. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt.)
There are lots of kinds of "documentation". One kind is reports from many different people. This is what I would be expecting. Not anything that would count as convincing proof, but something that I could count as "better than third-had gossip".
Among the people I've known, IBM recently is considered an ethical company. At one time it wasn't. MS is not considered an ethical company. Were I doing business with IBM, I would not expect the company (as opposed to an indivicual saleman) to intentionally mislead me. With MS I would.
I am, and always have been, a programmer and end user. I don't pay as much attention to their business-to-business interactions. Still, from what I have heard, they act ethically. Not benevolently, but ethically. This means that they don't attempt to trick people into agreements that they don't understand, that they attempt to offer fair value for cost, etc.
If this isn't true, then I would like to see documented cases.
I could not make the same statements about MS and keep a straight face. And there was a time when I couldn't say the same about IBM.
You are correct. The assertion should be copyright infringement. And the consensus seems to be "Not proven".
Perhaps it is copyright infringement, and the evidence appears suggestive. But suggestive is all that it is. So far.
(OTOH, I'm basing my judgment on summaries provided by other readers. I'm not involved, even in making accusations, so that's fair. But it *does* mean you shouldn't take the judgments too seriously. Even so, the accusation should clearly have been copyright infringement.)
We aren't "over IBM". They are still one of the dominant forces in the industry. But IBM *did* actually reform. It took them decades, but they did. So far MS has shown no indication of even wanting to (outside of PR moves).
You are believing "facts" quoted by Gates that you can't check. (I'll believe that he hired people for $2 / hr. I won't believe that that was *his* recompense...though he *might* have been living on his family.)
Still, his "open letter" wasn't as bad as his business practices at the same time...though that got a lot less publicity.
Companies that trusted MS tended to go out of business even then. MS was still small, though, so many of them just had trade secrets stolen, and their going out of business was delayed until MS became a more significant competitor. Also: Gates didn't invent dumpster diving, but he practiced it.
Still, there was a period when I though MS would be a less abusive company to deal with than IBM. And for around five-seven years it was true. This was probably because IBM wasn't allowed to compete by a consent decree, so IBM basically ignored the personal computer.
Many of the effect under discussion are non-linear, and that can cause changes RAPIDLY.
Yes, if we had a decent government, then there's no way that China could compete. We don't. And the ratio of $ to Yuan is manipulated by the Chinese government. So your figuring of the relative economies is quite distorted. (True, China still comes out far behind, but less that half as far as you are figuring.)
Additionally, I know that the EU was "designed" to compete against the US. I'm not sure it will compete successfully, as it is already manifesting many of the same weaknesses that the US is manifesting. Japan has it's problems, but they are DIFFERENT problems, and possibly less important ones. Taiwan is too small to compete effectively. I didn't consider any country in South America, I didn't consider any country in Africa or the Middle East. Some of them have an outside potential. So may some of the parts of Asia which are no longer part of the USSR. Those, however, are all further in the future. Probably further even than India. But it's difficult to be certain. And intensive commitment to education, and a few technological breakthroughs could put ANY country in the lead.
Just for example, suppose that some country invented controllable assemblers (the nano-tech kind). It wouldn't need much in the way of population, infrastructure, or economy to rapidly become top-dog country economically. It could produce ANYTHING cheaper, faster, and of better quality than any of its competitors could hope to match. And this, of course, includes weapons as well as other merchandise. But for this to happen, robots will need to have been made feasible, if not economic. So this country would also have a robot army essentially unlimited in size.
Now I'll grant that this particular scenario is unlikely, but this KIND of scenario has happened multiple times throughout history. It's a variation on this scenario that brought Britain to world power status. (The industrial revolution.) Also check out the stirrup. Or the Hittites and iron. There are probably others, but those are the ones that stand out in my memory. (The atom bomb doesn't count, as the US had already established itself as "top dog" before that was discovered. That just created the idea of "international superpower". [And, of course, Godzilla.])
Why do you assume you know what the intentions are?
What we believe we know about this treaty is that it places a lot of responsibility on the ISPs, and that lots of it is written with quite vaguely defined terms, that have many definitions which are defensible. We also know that it removes due process by coercing ISPs into cutting off customers in accusation, with no appeal possible, and no evidence required.
If you are defending that... well, I wouldn't accuse anyone I saw killing you. And I wouldn't identify them if asked. I feel a bit more strongly, but that's as strongly as I care to put it.
You won't get a viable third party without changing the electoral system. Even Teddy Roosevelt didn't manage it. And note that the current two parties were created around the time of the civil war when the then totally dominant party split into two halves. There was probably more difference between the two halves then than there is now.
The Governor of California stated on "This Week" that "there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats". Refreshingly honest, for a politician.
He's a Republican who's trying to portray himself as liberal (without acting that way). This is one of his attempts to convince Democrats to vote for him.
At the state level it seems to me that Republicans are more anxious to transfer wealth from the poorer people to the richer people than are the Democrats. They both usually lean that way, but some Democrats occasionally lean the other way. (Somehow they seem to tend to be weeded out by the party leadership, but some districts keep supporting them.) It's been decades since I've seen a Republican politician, even at the state level, with those tendencies.
To give you some background against which to judge my statements: Note that I refrained from talking about justice or fairness. I don't think there is any objective measurement for that. I'm generally in favor of progressive taxes, with a linear scale, but different sorts of taxes would call for different fine structures. My general favorite is of the form: y = mx + b for income taxes b would be so adjusted that those making the income level deemed to be the poverty line would pay nothing. x would be the income. Arguments about the value of m and b are the crux where I don't see any fair value. (After all, the official poverty level is, itself, subject to adjustment.) Note that there are NO exceptions, NO deductions, and NO age limit.. If you want to encourage something, that would need to be handled with a separate law.
I can't quite see how this should be applied to sales tax. Currently for sales tax, the equation is pretty much followed, and the value of b is zero. I haven't decided whether this is reasonable or not, and if not, what to do about it.
1) The Democrats are slighly MORE in the pocket of the media than the Republicans. And the Republicans are slightly more in the pocket of the Arms-makers.
2) Some legislation analogous to the DMCA is required by the WIPO treaty, but the DMCA goes *far* beyond the minimum requirements. Quite far.
Well, we don't yet have an Imperator, but I'm sure hoping we skip the "Marius and Sulla" civil war.
Yeah, I feel we're headed for a dictatorship under one guise or another. It would be nice if it could be postponed for 5 or 6 decades, but I don't see it being stopped. Hopefully, by the time it happens someone else will be the top dog. And hopefully they won't be *quite* as dominant. Japan and India seem reasonable possibilities. China is more plausible, but historically, they haven't cared much about what happens outside their borders. (Japan, too, but Japan's borders were pretty thoroughly smashed during the last 60 years, so that may not apply any more.)
Another interesting possibility is Germany, or rather the EU. Unfortunately, they seem to be beset by the same disease that's crippling the US, though to a lesser extent.
Which way it goes may well depend on which technologies become significant how quickly. Japan, e.g., is all set to put the push behind robots. (And computers, but EVERYONEs doing computers these days.) India isn't ready, so it would have to hold off for awhile to give them a reasonable chance...and whether it does or not is under the control of China. China could bring the US down whenever it felt like it, just by calling in it's debt. But China isn't that fond of either Japan *OR* India. So perhaps they'll decide to become top dog, despite their cultural reluctance to become involved with foreign countries. That might result in a "top dog" country that decided to be King Log rather than King Stork. (ref.: Aesop's Fables). That *could* be the best possible outcome for the world...but as a US citizen I hope it gets postponed for quite awhile.
I really see government becoming more centralized in the period ahead, because many of the inherent problems with a centralized government are solved by current computer technology. In the US, at least, and apparently elsewhere, governments are ignoring the clearly writting laws and constitutions with vague justifications that don't make any sense, just because they can. Without computerized central records, they couldn't effectively do it anyway, so the laws prohibiting them from doing it didn't matter. Now it's cheap enough that even low ranking people can implement forbidden systems, and their bosses at first just accept them, and then defend them, despite their being clearly illegal. And when they come up to court, it's often possible for them to find a pliable judge who can be influenced by "requests" from (usually) the executive arm.
It's like the military saying "It's better to plead for forgiveness than to ask for permission."
While I'll agree that Theo is abrasive, it was, for me, a very useful comment. Because of it I checked my system AND found out how to patch the revealed weakness. And if Theo hadn't managed to get Slashdot's attention, I'd probably never have heard of the problem.
He may be unpleasant, but he's a VERY useful person to have around, even if you aren't running a BSD. (Which I'm not. I can't even remember for certain which BSD Theo is associated with. It doesn't matter to *me*, as a Linux user. What matters is that Theo made a criticism that Slashdot picked up, and which various people came up with reasons for and solutions as to how to handle.)
Slashdot Mirror
The ISO may only have defined a C++ standard in 1998, but there were many users a decade earlier. The first C++ compiler I used was cfront, and it compiled C++ to C. I found it more of an improvement over C than I find the current C++ compilers. (Due to work considerations I spent a decade with MSAccess & it's version of VisualBasic...which wasn't even standard MSVisualBasic. Yuck!!!) When I came back to C it was via Ruby & Python. C++ was virtually unintelligible. (Not really, but I *REALLY* despise templates! Give me Ada generics any time as an alternative. If Ada had decent string handling, I'd never have looked at C again.)
To me Google go looks like an interesting language. I'm not clear how one should convert uint64's into a ubyte[], but outside of that I think I'm sold...at least enough to give it a test. It's lacking in libraries at the moment, but if it becomes at all popular that should diminish quickly.
FWIW, I've currently been using D as the best language for performance, etc., but D doesn't handle multiple-processors gracefully. They've got a library, and they're planning to improve it, but it's an "add-on", not a built-in. To me this is an important feature, and I don't currently know any language that handles it well. (Yeah, I've looked at Erlang. I've also timed simple programs. I think I'd do better with Python. In Erlang if you can directly apply the language built-ins, you get good performance. Otherwise not. And the built-in database doesn't appear to do what I want. And other parts of the program chain were just too slow.)
Of course, this is all based on their assertion that Google go really *IS* in the same speed ball-park as C. D is, so it's not impossible. But many languages that make that claim aren't. (I guess it depends on what you're doing.)
Objective-C appears to have it's points, but all the texts on it I've been able to find are very heavy into Apple specific libraries, and so useless.
(Yeah, there's some old stuff from the 1980's -- but it's atrociously written. Google go is already ahead of Objective-C on the documentation front. It's not good, but it's better.)
The apparent intention is that this be handled via the multiple return values, with one of them able to be allocated to carry any desired error code.
I'm not at all certain that this is a better approach, but I'm certainly not sure that it isn't. Handling this will be a bother, but so are try-catch-finally blocks. I don't see any real down-side. I think it's just a different approach, and possibly a better one. It's not clearly inferior.
I think the real reason is that every time you add a layer of indirection, you slow things down. They are trying for a fast language.
I haven't decided whether it would suit my needs, but it's certainly quite interesting. I haven't yet subscribed to their mailing list, but the link to do so is still open in a window. And I'm still reading through a manual.
I find this language extremely interesting, largely because of it's focus around multi-processor systems, but also because of it's focus on speed. I'm having a bit of trouble with their language, and can't decide just how difficult it would be to do precisely what I need...but it's *very* interesting.
Of course, now that it's been announced, the question is what will happen to it. If it's just going to lie there and estivate, then I'd be better off picking something else. If it's going to have lots of unfocused development, I'd also be better off avoiding it. If somebody steps up and becomes BFDL or equivalent, then it could really go places.
It did, if I read it right, also include a threat to damage his mother's political career (if she won). I suppose this could be seen as the first step of either extortion or blackmail.
I agree. This doesn't appear to be a case that should be winnable, but I'm a bit less certain than you are. I can see grounds for the judge to know the defendant's identity. I don't really see any grounds for sharing it with the attacker? prosecutor?, I'm not really quite sure what the appropriate term is. Attacker seems closer than prosecutor, since on suit has been filed.
Some of them were, indeed, silly. Some were unfairly stigmatized because they didn't predict what it was desired that they predict. The only way to tell the difference is to look at the rest of their predictions. (Some of the ones who didn't predict a disaster appear to be political hack, some were silly, and some were serious, but missed the problem...again, the only way to tell is to look at the rest of their predictions.)
At some point, though, if it's worth while we will be able to synthesize any particular fraction of petroleum that we desire. We might even be able to do that now, if we through enough resources into the effort.
I doubt, however, that this will ever be a practical way to acquire fuel. I think beamed electric power would come first. For plastics or antibiotics, though, it might well be reasonable.
You've got some sense, and a bunch of non-sense.
The oil sands and shales exist, and are more voluminous than the expectable oil wells. That's true. What you're leaving out is that it's a lot more expensive to extract that oil, and it requires a kind of plant that is a lot different. So anyone who builds such a plant now will quickly go broke, because the folk with oil wells can undercut their prices whenever they feel like it. It only become profitable to build those plants when gas DEPENDABLY sells for over $5/gallon. (This is old info. They may have figured more efficient ways to build the plants. And there's been a lot of inflation. I can't figure how the tradeoffs change because of that, but the simple answer appears to be "not yet".)
So what this means is that there isn't a "real soon" limit on oil, but it may soon be doubling it's price again. (And how long will "soon" take? That depends on when "peak oil" is for the current system.)
Unhh.... because they *DID* want to make him look bad?
If it had surfaced in January or February, NOBODY would have blamed Obama. Because they waited a lot of people thought he had something to do with it.
Mind you, I'm not predicting that he won't do something similar, or claiming that he isn't right now doing something similar that we haven't heard about. But this particular case should be blamed totally on Bush. Read the dates.
I have, actually, done business with IBM directly twice. Neither, I'll admit, was for any large figure of money. Once I bought a laptop and once I bought a program. With the program I was quite dissatisfied, but it wasn't offered as anything more than a subset compiler, so I didn't feel cheated, merely disappointed. With the laptop...well, it DID come with Linux installed, but the modem was a WinModem and didn't work. This was typical for the year. (It may *still* be typical, but people don't use modems much anymore...they use ethernet connections or wireless.) Again I didn't feel cheated.
With MS I have avoided dealing with them directly. Those I've known who have are quite unhappy with them. This includes the IP department that I worked in before retiring.
So. You've reported a much more extensive contact with IBM than I have to experience, and I'm not denying that you had the experiences that you claim, but *I* don't know the validity, so I need to weigh them lighltly, and combine them with lots of other independent reports before I decide to accept them.
As for MS being direct about it licensing requirements... that claim reduces your credibility considerably. I suspect that you've never read the EULA and that you don't know what your licensing requirements actually are. Are you certain you've kept track of all of the "proof of purchase" seals, together with the individual tracking numbers so that you can link the particular license against the particular CD? Most places I'm aware of that attempt to follow those requirements find them not only quite burdensome, but also contradictory. (I'm not sure that it's actually required that the individual proof-of-purchase seal be linked to the particular CD, but we couldn't determine for certain that it wasn't.) I've been quite glad to not be involved in that, and after watching the efforts I became firmly resolved (independent of the EULA) to have nothing to do with MS software. And the EULA would have been enough by itself. (It's changes in the EULA that have caused me to stop recommending Apple equipment to novices.)
I am willing to accept that you have had bad experiences with IBM, but calling me a troll for doubting it is not only a cheap shot, it also means that I consider your entire reportage less trustworthy.
When I looked, Lulu appeared to be a quite bad option for printing off a single copy of a book. Kinko's has some possibilities, but they don't do as good a job of binding...and for a book one would ideally like to take the text file and have it formatted in a way that would allow double-sided printing on paper that would be cut and bound to be around half a page / page. That requires a lot of finicky page organization. I don't think Open Office handles it. Scribus may (I would expect it to), but it isn't something I would expect to be installed on a MSWind machine, and I don't think Kinko's has anything else.
Then there's the matter of binding. Books shouldn't be spiral bound (or whatever they call that plastic ring thing either). Pages glued to a spine works well...when it's done well. I think they call that padding, but I'm not certain. We used to have a guy at the office who would to it for the old line-printer printouts. The tape he used for the backing wasn't all that attractive, but the basic binding worked well. I don't have the clamps and padding compound, etc. (or the skill) to do a decent job of it myself, but it OUGHT to be possible for any small business to do it.
But what I'd want to do was provide them with a file, possibly in pdf format, and have them print it out and bind it.
I'm still in the process of checking Scribus. When I started composing this letter I tried to import a text file into a document set up as I desire the printout to be set up. So far the file is still being imported. (Either that, or the program is hung. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt.)
There are lots of kinds of "documentation". One kind is reports from many different people. This is what I would be expecting. Not anything that would count as convincing proof, but something that I could count as "better than third-had gossip".
Among the people I've known, IBM recently is considered an ethical company. At one time it wasn't. MS is not considered an ethical company. Were I doing business with IBM, I would not expect the company (as opposed to an indivicual saleman) to intentionally mislead me. With MS I would.
And, while I'm asking this kind of question, does anyone know of a good place to get hard-copies of books from GutenPrint?
I am, and always have been, a programmer and end user. I don't pay as much attention to their business-to-business interactions. Still, from what I have heard, they act ethically. Not benevolently, but ethically. This means that they don't attempt to trick people into agreements that they don't understand, that they attempt to offer fair value for cost, etc.
If this isn't true, then I would like to see documented cases.
I could not make the same statements about MS and keep a straight face. And there was a time when I couldn't say the same about IBM.
You are correct. The assertion should be copyright infringement. And the consensus seems to be "Not proven".
Perhaps it is copyright infringement, and the evidence appears suggestive. But suggestive is all that it is. So far.
(OTOH, I'm basing my judgment on summaries provided by other readers. I'm not involved, even in making accusations, so that's fair. But it *does* mean you shouldn't take the judgments too seriously. Even so, the accusation should clearly have been copyright infringement.)
We aren't "over IBM". They are still one of the dominant forces in the industry. But IBM *did* actually reform. It took them decades, but they did. So far MS has shown no indication of even wanting to (outside of PR moves).
You are believing "facts" quoted by Gates that you can't check. (I'll believe that he hired people for $2 / hr. I won't believe that that was *his* recompense...though he *might* have been living on his family.)
Still, his "open letter" wasn't as bad as his business practices at the same time...though that got a lot less publicity.
Companies that trusted MS tended to go out of business even then. MS was still small, though, so many of them just had trade secrets stolen, and their going out of business was delayed until MS became a more significant competitor. Also: Gates didn't invent dumpster diving, but he practiced it.
Still, there was a period when I though MS would be a less abusive company to deal with than IBM. And for around five-seven years it was true. This was probably because IBM wasn't allowed to compete by a consent decree, so IBM basically ignored the personal computer.
Many of the effect under discussion are non-linear, and that can cause changes RAPIDLY.
Yes, if we had a decent government, then there's no way that China could compete. We don't. And the ratio of $ to Yuan is manipulated by the Chinese government. So your figuring of the relative economies is quite distorted. (True, China still comes out far behind, but less that half as far as you are figuring.)
Additionally, I know that the EU was "designed" to compete against the US. I'm not sure it will compete successfully, as it is already manifesting many of the same weaknesses that the US is manifesting. Japan has it's problems, but they are DIFFERENT problems, and possibly less important ones. Taiwan is too small to compete effectively. I didn't consider any country in South America, I didn't consider any country in Africa or the Middle East. Some of them have an outside potential. So may some of the parts of Asia which are no longer part of the USSR. Those, however, are all further in the future. Probably further even than India. But it's difficult to be certain. And intensive commitment to education, and a few technological breakthroughs could put ANY country in the lead.
Just for example, suppose that some country invented controllable assemblers (the nano-tech kind). It wouldn't need much in the way of population, infrastructure, or economy to rapidly become top-dog country economically. It could produce ANYTHING cheaper, faster, and of better quality than any of its competitors could hope to match. And this, of course, includes weapons as well as other merchandise. But for this to happen, robots will need to have been made feasible, if not economic. So this country would also have a robot army essentially unlimited in size.
Now I'll grant that this particular scenario is unlikely, but this KIND of scenario has happened multiple times throughout history. It's a variation on this scenario that brought Britain to world power status. (The industrial revolution.) Also check out the stirrup. Or the Hittites and iron. There are probably others, but those are the ones that stand out in my memory. (The atom bomb doesn't count, as the US had already established itself as "top dog" before that was discovered. That just created the idea of "international superpower". [And, of course, Godzilla.])
Why do you assume you know what the intentions are?
What we believe we know about this treaty is that it places a lot of responsibility on the ISPs, and that lots of it is written with quite vaguely defined terms, that have many definitions which are defensible. We also know that it removes due process by coercing ISPs into cutting off customers in accusation, with no appeal possible, and no evidence required.
If you are defending that... well, I wouldn't accuse anyone I saw killing you. And I wouldn't identify them if asked. I feel a bit more strongly, but that's as strongly as I care to put it.
Odd, I look at that list and see him dragging his feet. 51 out of 531 isn't that impressive, and many of those that he kept are minor.
You won't get a viable third party without changing the electoral system. Even Teddy Roosevelt didn't manage it. And note that the current two parties were created around the time of the civil war when the then totally dominant party split into two halves. There was probably more difference between the two halves then than there is now.
The Governor of California stated on "This Week" that "there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats". Refreshingly honest, for a politician.
He's a Republican who's trying to portray himself as liberal (without acting that way). This is one of his attempts to convince Democrats to vote for him.
At the state level it seems to me that Republicans are more anxious to transfer wealth from the poorer people to the richer people than are the Democrats. They both usually lean that way, but some Democrats occasionally lean the other way. (Somehow they seem to tend to be weeded out by the party leadership, but some districts keep supporting them.) It's been decades since I've seen a Republican politician, even at the state level, with those tendencies.
To give you some background against which to judge my statements:
Note that I refrained from talking about justice or fairness. I don't think there is any objective measurement for that. I'm generally in favor of progressive taxes, with a linear scale, but different sorts of taxes would call for different fine structures. My general favorite is of the form:
y = mx + b
for income taxes b would be so adjusted that those making the income level deemed to be the poverty line would pay nothing. x would be the income. Arguments about the value of m and b are the crux where I don't see any fair value. (After all, the official poverty level is, itself, subject to adjustment.) Note that there are NO exceptions, NO deductions, and NO age limit.. If you want to encourage something, that would need to be handled with a separate law.
I can't quite see how this should be applied to sales tax. Currently for sales tax, the equation is pretty much followed, and the value of b is zero. I haven't decided whether this is reasonable or not, and if not, what to do about it.
1) The Democrats are slighly MORE in the pocket of the media than the Republicans. And the Republicans are slightly more in the pocket of the Arms-makers.
2) Some legislation analogous to the DMCA is required by the WIPO treaty, but the DMCA goes *far* beyond the minimum requirements. Quite far.
Well, we don't yet have an Imperator, but I'm sure hoping we skip the "Marius and Sulla" civil war.
Yeah, I feel we're headed for a dictatorship under one guise or another. It would be nice if it could be postponed for 5 or 6 decades, but I don't see it being stopped. Hopefully, by the time it happens someone else will be the top dog. And hopefully they won't be *quite* as dominant. Japan and India seem reasonable possibilities. China is more plausible, but historically, they haven't cared much about what happens outside their borders. (Japan, too, but Japan's borders were pretty thoroughly smashed during the last 60 years, so that may not apply any more.)
Another interesting possibility is Germany, or rather the EU. Unfortunately, they seem to be beset by the same disease that's crippling the US, though to a lesser extent.
Which way it goes may well depend on which technologies become significant how quickly. Japan, e.g., is all set to put the push behind robots. (And computers, but EVERYONEs doing computers these days.) India isn't ready, so it would have to hold off for awhile to give them a reasonable chance...and whether it does or not is under the control of China. China could bring the US down whenever it felt like it, just by calling in it's debt. But China isn't that fond of either Japan *OR* India. So perhaps they'll decide to become top dog, despite their cultural reluctance to become involved with foreign countries. That might result in a "top dog" country that decided to be King Log rather than King Stork. (ref.: Aesop's Fables). That *could* be the best possible outcome for the world...but as a US citizen I hope it gets postponed for quite awhile.
I really see government becoming more centralized in the period ahead, because many of the inherent problems with a centralized government are solved by current computer technology. In the US, at least, and apparently elsewhere, governments are ignoring the clearly writting laws and constitutions with vague justifications that don't make any sense, just because they can. Without computerized central records, they couldn't effectively do it anyway, so the laws prohibiting them from doing it didn't matter. Now it's cheap enough that even low ranking people can implement forbidden systems, and their bosses at first just accept them, and then defend them, despite their being clearly illegal. And when they come up to court, it's often possible for them to find a pliable judge who can be influenced by "requests" from (usually) the executive arm.
It's like the military saying "It's better to plead for forgiveness than to ask for permission."
While I'll agree that Theo is abrasive, it was, for me, a very useful comment.
Because of it I checked my system AND found out how to patch the revealed weakness. And if Theo hadn't managed to get Slashdot's attention, I'd probably never have heard of the problem.
He may be unpleasant, but he's a VERY useful person to have around, even if you aren't running a BSD. (Which I'm not. I can't even remember for certain which BSD Theo is associated with. It doesn't matter to *me*, as a Linux user. What matters is that Theo made a criticism that Slashdot picked up, and which various people came up with reasons for and solutions as to how to handle.)