Perhaps you should consider how the "unemployment rate" is calculated, and be aware that different countries calculate it differently.
I'll agree with you about the proportion of male children in China being a significant negative factor, and raise you that it will decrease social stability over the next few decades. China is still improving as a place to live.
A declining population is not a negative sign, not as long as a civilization is above the long term carrying capacity of it's area. How it gets dealt with is a significant problem. (But do note that the birthrate of US born citizens is below replacement, also.)
Death spiral? My, you do take a temporary decline seriously. I'll worry when the population gets below the permanent carrying capacity, and not until them. OTOH, because of their negative attitudes towards foreign immigrants, Japan is experiencing a much steeper decline in population than the rest of the urbanized world. (Is this a purely urban phenomena, or is it based around industrial pollution, as some studies appear to show? It seems "civilization"-wide, concentrated in technical and urbanized areas, but I haven't seen any conclusive studies. At any rate, I'm not worried. We've got a long way to go before we reach a sane population level, and a declining birth-rate seems the most humane possible way to achieve it.
Remember that more than 95% or our productivity is the result of invested and shared intellectual property of our common ancestors world-wide. Don't be too quick to believe that you have some special right to much more than the average salary, or to claim that someone else should be left to starve. Now it's possible that you DO earn about what is reasonable, many people do. But many, also, take advantage of unfair laws to unfairly monopolize knowledge and resources developed by our common ancestors.
Human nature being such as it is I will grant the need for a stratified rewards system, but I really doubt that the wealthiest should be rewarded at a rate higher then 1000 times the rate of the poorest. I would consider a rate in the range of 100-200 to be much more reasonable. Welfare? What is the subsidies given to corporations but welfare for the rich and powerful? If you want to, I believe that you could make a good case that no government should be trusted with the right of preventing others from issuing competing curriencies. It would be difficult to find a less honest banker.
I evaluate them based on the stuff of theirs that I've used.
If I buy a computer with their name on it, they get the credit and the blame for how the hardware performs.
If I'm recommending whether the company should buy from one place or another, I'll consider recommendations from various sources, buy I weigh my own experiences more heavily.
If they sell me crap, then I will consider them to be vendors of crap.
I used to consider HP the most solid company around, based largely on an old HP RPN calculator. That thing was SOLID. Since then I haven't happened to purchase a computer with their name on it, but the calculator was the basis on which I bought my first HP printer (after an Epson gave me much grief). That worked out pretty well, and now I'm on my third HP printer...and they've been getting progressively worse.
At this point I will go out of my way to avoid buying HP. They sell crap and they don't support it. OTOH, I haven't selected the next company to begin buying from. I don't need to choose yet, so possibly I'll wait until Apple completes the line of products for Intel, and then see if they all play well with Linux. I've always liked Apple hardware (except for their mouse), so that's a possibility, albeit a slightly expensive one. (This also depends on the EULAs that one must agree to...I'd need to have Apple software installed for repairs under warranty. I don't mind many EULAs excessively, as long as I'm not actually using the software. I.e., I don't mind agreeing not to copy their stuff illegally, e.g., if I don't intend to even look at it. Any of this "And the heart of your eldest son, the right to carry off your daughter, and the right to steal the beer from your refridgerator" stuff that's common in some of the more oppressive licenses, however, would clearly make them an unsuitable choice.... And I've got to be able to READ the EULAs *before* I buy. [I'm known for annoying doctors by sitting there and reading the release forms they ask me to sign, and then trying to decide whether or not I fee sick enough to agree to this.])
Coercion should be disallowed as the basis for a contract. I know that technically is is suppose to *BE* disallowed, but the "justice" system of this country is such that I would not blame someone who felt that direct action was their only recourse. If I were on the jury they would need to convince me that their action was appropriately directed. Unless they engaged in "cruel and unusual punishment" I wouldn't opject to anything they, as individuals, decided to provide? enforce? as justice. Individuals don't have a lot of options along those lines, and there's no reason that a corporate president or CEO shouldn't be held liable to individual justice when he so blatanly ignores common justice.
HP? Were we talking about HP? So far as I know, they merely sell crap and don't support it. For that they don't deserve more than a bad mouthing and a boycott. Of course, I've never installed any of their software. Who knows what their EULAs are like.
Actually, I believe that Europe has many large social advantages over the US. And the adjectives that you use reflect your subjective evaluations rather than objective facts.
From various objective standards the US is in decline relative to not only Europe, but also Japan and China. China is a less desireable place to live, but they are changing in a positive direction, while the US is changing in a negative direction. Will the qualities meet? Will China become superior? This is partially determined by choices that we and our governmental entities make NOW.
We are discussing one such choice here. This one appears to be one that will make the US a less desireable country to live in, though possibly not "to rule over". I.e., the benefit to the citizenry is not equivalent to the benefit to the government. They are frequently opposites.
Maybe you just charge both plates negative before you push them close to each other...with a dielectric between that will set after awhile. Since tubes on both plates would have the same charge, they would squirm to avoid each other. Possibly oscillate which plate was charged more negatively, so that the tubes would stand away from the plate they were attached to.
Might work. Sounds easy. I'm no materials scientist or production engineer, but if that or some close approximation would work then it should be dead easy to make the plates. How expensive would depend on how long it took the dielectric to set. (OTOH, you could just charge them up and leave them alone (after, perhaps, a bit of initial oscillation). They wouldn't need to stay attached to anything, as they wouldn't try to squirm to attach to each other until the plates were oppositely charged. So let the dielectric set for 12 hours before using.
Re:The patent was filed in 1995
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But it doesn't predate gofer. It doesn't predate the hosts file being automated.
There may be a patent here somewhere, but anything that isn't covered by prior art it going to be minuscle. The problem is, it's going to cost a bundle to prove that. Justice!
King Id's Minstrel: "The golden rule means whoever has the gold makes the rules."
There are indeed many possibilities here. No one, including probably even those within MS, can be certain what MS will decide, or why any particular press release was issued.
The speculation that they may be being honest is, however, a bit strained. It does not fit with the facts that I know (e.g, that other programs can save to pdf without any problems, and that only MS needs to do it as an add-on). Additionally I don't see any facts lending support to it's statements that aren't themselves uncheckable statements appearing to come from MS.
Given the above, I don't think they are telling the truth. This is different from claiming I know where or why they are lying...I don't claim either of those. I'm also willing to consider that they MIGHT be telling the truth for a change. I just don't think it likely.
1) I notice the source is listed as MS 2) A day or two ago many were listing a substantially different version of this same story. That time it was nailed to a press release where MS was speculating to itself in public. 3) Is there any evidence that Adobe is even involved in this? I hate to think of them as "good guys" in even a relative sense, but I suspect that they may have had no input into this at all. That this is purely MS managing the news so that when they don't include "save to pdf" they've got a sympathetic public.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
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Perhaps you've heard of a company called Diebold that will be counting those votes?
I'm don't think that violence usually solves anything, but this might be a good test case. If anyone who worked for them did so at risk of having his face plastered all over his neighborhood as a scum, people might be more reluctant to work for them. Truth seems preferable to fiction, but I don't see any way dependant on mass media coverage for truth to gain any leverage here. ("Your dad does WHAT!?!?")
I wouldn't mind if the all quit to become the guy that plays the piano in a whorehouse. That would be much more reputable. They could even take a step up and become telemarketers.
Or possibly accurate? I have to admit to being underwhelmed by Mr. Crichton. He seems to be totally unconcerned with truth in the pursuit of ??? At one point I thought it was either artistic or commercial success, but currently a political agenda appears more likely. (Of course, there's no reason it couldn't be some combination of the suspects.) However, the common element is a disregard of the truth.
That said, Andromeda Strain was an exciting movie, and I enjoyed it. I *never* thought it would be used as a scientific policy theme any more than I thought the same of "Forbidden Planet" or "War of the Worlds". They meet the same standard of scientific accuracy. I suspect that of the three "Forbidden Planet" is dramatically the best, "War of the Worlds" had the best press coverage, and "Andromeda Strain" had the best special effects. None of those qualify any of them to set science policy.
If the story only implied that IBM wasn't shipping Linux on their laptops, let me say it straight out: IBM wasn't shipping Linux on their laptops.
There was a brief time when IBM did ship Linux, but it was brief. And IBM never ensured that Linux would work with all the hardware on the laptop. When I bought an A25 from them I bought it with Linux installed by them... and the builtin modem wasn't supported. I needed to buy a separate PCI card modem. (They were very up front about this.)
Not a bad choice, pricey, but nice. It remains to be seen, however, how well the new CPU system supports things... and how well Linux fits into whatever portables they craft. (Actually, I suppose some people may have seen this, but I haven't. I don't tend to buy new systems at the bleeding edge.)
Not all package managers work that way. Red Hat, e.g., was never able to upgrade their systems via rpm. Perhaps they are now able to, but back before Fedora they couldn't. (I always assumed that the fact that they sold new copies instead of upgrades had something to do with their lack of innovation in this area...but that was definitley an assumption.)
This morning I was upgrading my debian Etch, and got a rather scarey message concerning xwindow-xorg. It didn't cause any problems on my system, but apparently on some systems it destroys the Xorg part without replacing it. ("So be sure you check, and replace it if you need to.") That was the first time I've seen quite such a scarey message during an upgrade, and I wasn't even moving off of Etch.
I'm not sure this is relevant, but given how similar Ubuntu and Debian still are, it could well be.
If that were terrorism, then we would be hearing about it from the people who perpetrated it. We hear about it from the government. Who is the terrorist?
It would be fair to call it an act of war. If the people accused of perpetrating it are the actual perpetrators, then that would be a fair statement. HOWEVER, it is the US Government that has turned it into an act of terrorism. One must, therefore, suspect who the primary beneficiaries of such a decision are.
It will. It already is. E.g., I still keep a MSWind95 machine around to run an old copy of Passport Designs Encore. I'd love to switch that machine to Linux, but I can't. Rosegarden and NoteEdit aren't even approximately good enough (or weren't the last time I checked a few months ago).
Different people have differing needs. Live with it. There will always be someone who can't change for perfectly legitimate reasons. The trick is to cut down their numbers. Each new niche that Linux is "good enough" in removes a potential monopoly.
P.S.: The only way Linux could be "good enough" would be if Wine or Win4Lin got good enough. Encore can't export it's files in any public format without much loss of information. A work around that's in place is to incrementally print out the files, and then scan them in on a Mac, and have a scan-file reader that works with MakeMusic Finale scan them into Finale. Then you've only lost the text...generally. And for this kind of file that's relatively easy to add. So now I have the files "locked into" Finale. Midi export loses the notations, and frequently even the quantization ("is this speed note a quarter note, or a half note? or possibly an eighth note?"). (I really need to check on what an "Enigma transportable file" is. That may be a portable export format that Finale can generate.)
I wanted to escape Visual Basic even before I decided that I needed to escape from MS.
VB is fine for developing a project quickly. Possibly even for a large one, though I only used it on projects that I built and maintained on my own. And here I should add the disclaimer that though I'm saying VB, I actually mean the VB dialect that was used with MSAccess97/2000. (That's two incompatible dialects. They will NOT work together in harmony despite the ads proclaiming that they would. They will, however, appear to work together for about a month...then I couldn't open the project in Access97. (Solution: duplicate databases synchronized via an ASCII deltas file.)
Despite much frustration, VB was actually very quick to develop in, largely because of the screen painters used for entry and report forms. However, occasionally a routine would break, and the only solution I ever developed was to dump the routine into an ascii file, delete the code, recreate the code by copying in from the dumped copy. (I finally decided that MS was storing the code and the "binary" in the same file, and that occasionally something would invisibly corrupt the binary. This may not be correct, but it was consistent with everything that happened.) The problem was that the corruption could occur in routines that hadn't been edited in months...or, if it happened on a client site, in years. (Those I fixed by sending them a new copy, so the error is speculative.)
The final straw was when I caught VB making arithmetic mistakes in an accounting module I was writing. Not rounding errors, but full fledged mistakes, on the order of 3 instead of 7. It also wasn't consistent with the mistake. After that I started making VERY strenuous attempts to avoid VB. Strenuous that I introduced Linux into the company back in the days of RedHat 5.0. (I actually started at 4.2, but it took me awhile to get good enough to let anyone else know.) Now I don't use MS products at all for any purpose.
Still....if he insists on Basic, have you checked into Gambas? I don't know it's quality, but it is trying to be Visual Basic for Linux. (Yeah, you just want to avoid VB, and I congratulate your instincts. But I've read the MSWind2000 EULA, so I never want to deal with MS ever again.)
The period of heavy use of slave labor did not come until later. I said "at the time democracy was established", meaning in the decades around the time of Solon. Yes, they did use slaves (one of his reforms was the prohibition of enslaving Athenians), but it was at that time a minor part of their economy. You are probably thinking of the time near the age of Pericles, when slave labor was, indeed, a large part of the economy.
In Athens at the time democracy was first established, the income range of the citizens, from top to bottom, was about a factor of 50. Increased population may mean that some larger degree of spread is optimal at the moment (though the Athenians typically already thought the spread was too large...unless they were at the top). The income wasn't distributed evenly, of course, and the "class boundaries" were rather informal. There was no official hierarchy. The wealthiest were called the "thousand bushel men", i.e., they earned over 1000 bushels of wheat a year. (As someone said "enough to be poor in some countries".)
So I can see justifying a range of, say, 1000 from top to bottom, where the wealthiest individual could earn no more than 1000 times what the poorest earned. ("Earned" should probably be in quotes in that sentence. I don't really have any clear idea *what* it means, but I really doubt that anyone outside of the basic trades earns money today in any traditional sense. And, of course, fiat money, such as paper money and credit cards, aren't wealth, they're accounting tools. [It's the tools that are wealth. And the food, the roads, the techniques, etc. And that's without distinguishing between wealth and illth.])
P.S.: That "1000" is just a WAG. A "gosh number". 50 is probably too small a delta factor, and we clearly have too large a delta factor. OTOH, that 50 was only for the citizens, and didn't include women, slaves, or foreigners (though at that time there weren't *many* slaves or foreigners in Athens). 100 might work. That allows 100 "classes" of citizens whose "wages after taxes" are 1% apart. If you have a hierarchy of 100 levels, and each rung (except the bottom) supervises 5 members of the "lower class" you've got an unreasonably large organization, and I see no reason why there should be an "everyone has to fit into the same pyramid" approach. Still, people tend to equate income with status.
Note that with status levels close together a democratic society is more *natural*. With them far apart, an authoritarian structure is more *natural*. (Status differences tend to translate into different people tending to have differences in relative power. Larger status differences tend to mean larger differences ON THE AVERAGE in relative power.)
The "Successful Experiment" was hype in so far as getting a Space Elevator built. It doesn't prove much, and it wasn't intended to. It was largely a PR exercise.
The FUD is basically saying "we don't know how to do it now, so it can't be done".
Both are silly, but the hype at least serves some legitimate purpose.
I find it rather pathetic. Also evidence of a bad histroy class.
The current generation isn't any worse. The environment it's coping with is, in many cases, worse, but that's NOT their fault.
Perhaps you need to see a movie from the 1950's called "Blackboard Jungle" to give you some perspective. Or think a bit about "Romeo and Juliette", which is basically about a couple of gangs of teens nearly starting a civil war.
It's also true that rebellion is a part of what being a teen is about. It's evolved to help separate the kids from their parents, and turn them into independent individuals. Doesn't work very well in today's society, but evolution is blind. If today's society were to hold in one shape for a few thousand years, we'd be evolving to fit into it. But I don't think 10 thousand would be long enough. Could be, of course, because it's a stocastic process.
O, yes. Elder's blaming the teens for acting like teens is also a part of this process. You, too, are acting out a role for which you've evolved in an environment that doesn't really suit you.
I did see it on TV. Occasionally. It was schlock. Funny doesn't keep it from being schlock.
Schlock is liked by a lot of people. It's not to be despised. But it's certainly nothing that anyone with ANYTHING better to do should shape their life around. And it's only art at the very lowest level. When you look back at schlock, you think "Yeah, that was fun.", but it doesn't change you, inspire you, challenge you, or improve you in any way.
I haven't bought a CD in years... except to burn software onto. I have a collection from before I started my boycott, and I occasionally listen to something that I used to like. It's ok. Not good.
A large part of being a part of the market for music CDs is being in the *habit* of listening to new ones. If you lose the habit, you stop wanting new CDs. So the RIAA is in a really tough position. If they implement effective controls on copying, they cut their audience, and if they don't their audience cuts them out.
The MPAA is a slightly different animal, but not much. I no longer go to see movies, and I don't miss them. My wife subscribes to NetFlix, and I don't even bother to watch them. Even though they're already paid for. It's not time pressure, either. I just lost the habit. I used to watch lots of TV, and now I don't.
Is it because they are purveying crap? Possibly. But they always were, you know. If I look at the old movies I liked, or listen to the old music, well, Sturgeon's law...only squared. There is actually some good stuff there, but slightly less than 1%. If you want "very good" it becomes much less than 1%. It's mostly a matter of habit.
Perhaps the original StarWars was as good as I remember. The second time I saw it, it still seemed pretty good, even though it was years later, the screen was an ordinary screen, and the print was pretty scratchy. The sequels? I saw the first one. It was ok, but nothing special. I've heard about several of the others...apparently there are several unexpected plot twists. It takes more than plot twists to make a movie worth seeing. In fact, plot twists aren't even necessary. The basic plot can be totally predictable and the movie can still be great (think "West Side Story" or "Camelot").
The thing is, you can set out to make a great movie, but you can't reliably get there. You can set out to make a splashy special effects movie, and you can reliably achieve it. You've got to be willing to make a bunch of schlock to make an occasional masterpiece. Some Directors are. Occasionally a producer is. A business office is never willing to do that.
If the MPAA rules, there will never be any more great movies. Don't criticize them because they produce crap, criticize them for fouling the well.
That said, lots of people like schlock. It can be watched mindlessly and without significant emotional involvement. "I Love Lucy" was one of the most successful radio shows ever produced, and almost all of it is schlock. There were occasional gems, but mainly it was schlock.
It would be nice if this suit were to bankrupt the MPAA. I don't expect it. But if every participant in both the MPAA and the RIAA caught a disgusting disease and dies slowly of the period of three years...I wouldn't weep one tear. Though I would feel a bit sorry for the janitors.
I'm told he has. Supposedly there is a quote from Mettalica embedded in the web page. Since I don't listen to the band, I wouldn't recognize it, and since everyone is so *on* about the poor site design, I'm not going to bother to look anyway. But the report is that he *has* learned to plagerize. Now he just needs to improve in who he plagerizes *from*. (Ideally he would learn to plagerize from several sources at the same time, and thus be a researcher.)
It doesn't suffice to make one computer literate, but one requirement is to know SOME assembler. Preferably a simple one. Mix would suffice. So would the code for the JVM, though MIX would be better, as it was designed as a pedagogical device.
And "know" here doesn't mean either becoming fluent in it OR memorizing the instructions. It means learning, at least schematically, how the hardware can translate the instructions in the assembler into actions to be taken. If should probably go as far as learning how a half-adder differs from an adder, and how one can build one from switches. This should take about 1.5 months. From that one can sweep rapidly up to C, where one should pause for most of the rest of the semester. The next semester could cover Pascal, Java, virtual machines, and XPM (basic graphics). Since this is a literacy class the object is not that the student become skilled at any one of these languages/approaches/methods, but rather that they understand what is going on. Note that I'm picking approaches for "easily approachable" and "breadth of coverage". This is a survey class, not in depth study. I can easily envision other such classes, but anything I would consider good would START with a thorough grounding in basic assembler and hardware. (Also note that I didn't include Basic. I considered it in the area of virtual machines...and strongly rejected it. It may be appropriate in a class for studying a language in depth, but not for a survey course.)
Learning to operate computer programs is not computer literacy. Not even at a basic level. Literacy implies understanding.
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Perhaps you should consider how the "unemployment rate" is calculated, and be aware that different countries calculate it differently.
I'll agree with you about the proportion of male children in China being a significant negative factor, and raise you that it will decrease social stability over the next few decades. China is still improving as a place to live.
A declining population is not a negative sign, not as long as a civilization is above the long term carrying capacity of it's area. How it gets dealt with is a significant problem. (But do note that the birthrate of US born citizens is below replacement, also.)
Death spiral? My, you do take a temporary decline seriously. I'll worry when the population gets below the permanent carrying capacity, and not until them. OTOH, because of their negative attitudes towards foreign immigrants, Japan is experiencing a much steeper decline in population than the rest of the urbanized world. (Is this a purely urban phenomena, or is it based around industrial pollution, as some studies appear to show? It seems "civilization"-wide, concentrated in technical and urbanized areas, but I haven't seen any conclusive studies. At any rate, I'm not worried. We've got a long way to go before we reach a sane population level, and a declining birth-rate seems the most humane possible way to achieve it.
Remember that more than 95% or our productivity is the result of invested and shared intellectual property of our common ancestors world-wide. Don't be too quick to believe that you have some special right to much more than the average salary, or to claim that someone else should be left to starve. Now it's possible that you DO earn about what is reasonable, many people do. But many, also, take advantage of unfair laws to unfairly monopolize knowledge and resources developed by our common ancestors.
Human nature being such as it is I will grant the need for a stratified rewards system, but I really doubt that the wealthiest should be rewarded at a rate higher then 1000 times the rate of the poorest. I would consider a rate in the range of 100-200 to be much more reasonable. Welfare? What is the subsidies given to corporations but welfare for the rich and powerful? If you want to, I believe that you could make a good case that no government should be trusted with the right of preventing others from issuing competing curriencies. It would be difficult to find a less honest banker.
I evaluate them based on the stuff of theirs that I've used.
... And I've got to be able to READ the EULAs *before* I buy. [I'm known for annoying doctors by sitting there and reading the release forms they ask me to sign, and then trying to decide whether or not I fee sick enough to agree to this.])
If I buy a computer with their name on it, they get the credit and the blame for how the hardware performs.
If I'm recommending whether the company should buy from one place or another, I'll consider recommendations from various sources, buy I weigh my own experiences more heavily.
If they sell me crap, then I will consider them to be vendors of crap.
I used to consider HP the most solid company around, based largely on an old HP RPN calculator. That thing was SOLID. Since then I haven't happened to purchase a computer with their name on it, but the calculator was the basis on which I bought my first HP printer (after an Epson gave me much grief). That worked out pretty well, and now I'm on my third HP printer...and they've been getting progressively worse.
At this point I will go out of my way to avoid buying HP. They sell crap and they don't support it. OTOH, I haven't selected the next company to begin buying from. I don't need to choose yet, so possibly I'll wait until Apple completes the line of products for Intel, and then see if they all play well with Linux. I've always liked Apple hardware (except for their mouse), so that's a possibility, albeit a slightly expensive one. (This also depends on the EULAs that one must agree to...I'd need to have Apple software installed for repairs under warranty. I don't mind many EULAs excessively, as long as I'm not actually using the software. I.e., I don't mind agreeing not to copy their stuff illegally, e.g., if I don't intend to even look at it. Any of this "And the heart of your eldest son, the right to carry off your daughter, and the right to steal the beer from your refridgerator" stuff that's common in some of the more oppressive licenses, however, would clearly make them an unsuitable choice.
Coercion should be disallowed as the basis for a contract. I know that technically is is suppose to *BE* disallowed, but the "justice" system of this country is such that I would not blame someone who felt that direct action was their only recourse. If I were on the jury they would need to convince me that their action was appropriately directed. Unless they engaged in "cruel and unusual punishment" I wouldn't opject to anything they, as individuals, decided to provide? enforce? as justice. Individuals don't have a lot of options along those lines, and there's no reason that a corporate president or CEO shouldn't be held liable to individual justice when he so blatanly ignores common justice.
HP? Were we talking about HP? So far as I know, they merely sell crap and don't support it. For that they don't deserve more than a bad mouthing and a boycott. Of course, I've never installed any of their software. Who knows what their EULAs are like.
Actually, I believe that Europe has many large social advantages over the US. And the adjectives that you use reflect your subjective evaluations rather than objective facts.
From various objective standards the US is in decline relative to not only Europe, but also Japan and China. China is a less desireable place to live, but they are changing in a positive direction, while the US is changing in a negative direction. Will the qualities meet? Will China become superior? This is partially determined by choices that we and our governmental entities make NOW.
We are discussing one such choice here. This one appears to be one that will make the US a less desireable country to live in, though possibly not "to rule over". I.e., the benefit to the citizenry is not equivalent to the benefit to the government. They are frequently opposites.
Maybe you just charge both plates negative before you push them close to each other...with a dielectric between that will set after awhile. Since tubes on both plates would have the same charge, they would squirm to avoid each other. Possibly oscillate which plate was charged more negatively, so that the tubes would stand away from the plate they were attached to.
Might work. Sounds easy. I'm no materials scientist or production engineer, but if that or some close approximation would work then it should be dead easy to make the plates. How expensive would depend on how long it took the dielectric to set. (OTOH, you could just charge them up and leave them alone (after, perhaps, a bit of initial oscillation). They wouldn't need to stay attached to anything, as they wouldn't try to squirm to attach to each other until the plates were oppositely charged. So let the dielectric set for 12 hours before using.
But it doesn't predate gofer. It doesn't predate the hosts file being automated.
There may be a patent here somewhere, but anything that isn't covered by prior art it going to be minuscle. The problem is, it's going to cost a bundle to prove that. Justice!
King Id's Minstrel: "The golden rule means whoever has the gold makes the rules."
There are indeed many possibilities here. No one, including probably even those within MS, can be certain what MS will decide, or why any particular press release was issued.
The speculation that they may be being honest is, however, a bit strained. It does not fit with the facts that I know (e.g, that other programs can save to pdf without any problems, and that only MS needs to do it as an add-on). Additionally I don't see any facts lending support to it's statements that aren't themselves uncheckable statements appearing to come from MS.
Given the above, I don't think they are telling the truth. This is different from claiming I know where or why they are lying...I don't claim either of those. I'm also willing to consider that they MIGHT be telling the truth for a change. I just don't think it likely.
1) I notice the source is listed as MS
2) A day or two ago many were listing a substantially different version of this same story. That time it was nailed to a press release where MS was speculating to itself in public.
3) Is there any evidence that Adobe is even involved in this? I hate to think of them as "good guys" in even a relative sense, but I suspect that they may have had no input into this at all. That this is purely MS managing the news so that when they don't include "save to pdf" they've got a sympathetic public.
Perhaps you've heard of a company called Diebold that will be counting those votes?
I'm don't think that violence usually solves anything, but this might be a good test case. If anyone who worked for them did so at risk of having his face plastered all over his neighborhood as a scum, people might be more reluctant to work for them. Truth seems preferable to fiction, but I don't see any way dependant on mass media coverage for truth to gain any leverage here. ("Your dad does WHAT!?!?")
I wouldn't mind if the all quit to become the guy that plays the piano in a whorehouse. That would be much more reputable. They could even take a step up and become telemarketers.
Or possibly accurate? I have to admit to being underwhelmed by Mr. Crichton. He seems to be totally unconcerned with truth in the pursuit of ??? At one point I thought it was either artistic or commercial success, but currently a political agenda appears more likely. (Of course, there's no reason it couldn't be some combination of the suspects.) However, the common element is a disregard of the truth.
That said, Andromeda Strain was an exciting movie, and I enjoyed it. I *never* thought it would be used as a scientific policy theme any more than I thought the same of "Forbidden Planet" or "War of the Worlds". They meet the same standard of scientific accuracy. I suspect that of the three "Forbidden Planet" is dramatically the best, "War of the Worlds" had the best press coverage, and "Andromeda Strain" had the best special effects. None of those qualify any of them to set science policy.
If the story only implied that IBM wasn't shipping Linux on their laptops, let me say it straight out:
... and the builtin modem wasn't supported. I needed to buy a separate PCI card modem. (They were very up front about this.)
IBM wasn't shipping Linux on their laptops.
There was a brief time when IBM did ship Linux, but it was brief. And IBM never ensured that Linux would work with all the hardware on the laptop. When I bought an A25 from them I bought it with Linux installed by them
Not a bad choice, pricey, but nice. It remains to be seen, however, how well the new CPU system supports things... and how well Linux fits into whatever portables they craft. (Actually, I suppose some people may have seen this, but I haven't. I don't tend to buy new systems at the bleeding edge.)
Not all package managers work that way. Red Hat, e.g., was never able to upgrade their systems via rpm. Perhaps they are now able to, but back before Fedora they couldn't. (I always assumed that the fact that they sold new copies instead of upgrades had something to do with their lack of innovation in this area...but that was definitley an assumption.)
I'm not sure what it's about either...but...
This morning I was upgrading my debian Etch, and got a rather scarey message concerning xwindow-xorg. It didn't cause any problems on my system, but apparently on some systems it destroys the Xorg part without replacing it. ("So be sure you check, and replace it if you need to.") That was the first time I've seen quite such a scarey message during an upgrade, and I wasn't even moving off of Etch.
I'm not sure this is relevant, but given how similar Ubuntu and Debian still are, it could well be.
If that were terrorism, then we would be hearing about it from the people who perpetrated it. We hear about it from the government. Who is the terrorist?
It would be fair to call it an act of war. If the people accused of perpetrating it are the actual perpetrators, then that would be a fair statement. HOWEVER, it is the US Government that has turned it into an act of terrorism. One must, therefore, suspect who the primary beneficiaries of such a decision are.
It will. It already is. E.g., I still keep a MSWind95 machine around to run an old copy of Passport Designs Encore. I'd love to switch that machine to Linux, but I can't. Rosegarden and NoteEdit aren't even approximately good enough (or weren't the last time I checked a few months ago).
Different people have differing needs. Live with it. There will always be someone who can't change for perfectly legitimate reasons. The trick is to cut down their numbers. Each new niche that Linux is "good enough" in removes a potential monopoly.
P.S.: The only way Linux could be "good enough" would be if Wine or Win4Lin got good enough. Encore can't export it's files in any public format without much loss of information. A work around that's in place is to incrementally print out the files, and then scan them in on a Mac, and have a scan-file reader that works with MakeMusic Finale scan them into Finale. Then you've only lost the text...generally. And for this kind of file that's relatively easy to add. So now I have the files "locked into" Finale. Midi export loses the notations, and frequently even the quantization ("is this speed note a quarter note, or a half note? or possibly an eighth note?"). (I really need to check on what an "Enigma transportable file" is. That may be a portable export format that Finale can generate.)
I wanted to escape Visual Basic even before I decided that I needed to escape from MS.
VB is fine for developing a project quickly. Possibly even for a large one, though I only used it on projects that I built and maintained on my own. And here I should add the disclaimer that though I'm saying VB, I actually mean the VB dialect that was used with MSAccess97/2000. (That's two incompatible dialects. They will NOT work together in harmony despite the ads proclaiming that they would. They will, however, appear to work together for about a month...then I couldn't open the project in Access97. (Solution: duplicate databases synchronized via an ASCII deltas file.)
Despite much frustration, VB was actually very quick to develop in, largely because of the screen painters used for entry and report forms. However, occasionally a routine would break, and the only solution I ever developed was to dump the routine into an ascii file, delete the code, recreate the code by copying in from the dumped copy. (I finally decided that MS was storing the code and the "binary" in the same file, and that occasionally something would invisibly corrupt the binary. This may not be correct, but it was consistent with everything that happened.) The problem was that the corruption could occur in routines that hadn't been edited in months...or, if it happened on a client site, in years. (Those I fixed by sending them a new copy, so the error is speculative.)
The final straw was when I caught VB making arithmetic mistakes in an accounting module I was writing. Not rounding errors, but full fledged mistakes, on the order of 3 instead of 7. It also wasn't consistent with the mistake. After that I started making VERY strenuous attempts to avoid VB. Strenuous that I introduced Linux into the company back in the days of RedHat 5.0. (I actually started at 4.2, but it took me awhile to get good enough to let anyone else know.) Now I don't use MS products at all for any purpose.
Still....if he insists on Basic, have you checked into Gambas? I don't know it's quality, but it is trying to be Visual Basic for Linux. (Yeah, you just want to avoid VB, and I congratulate your instincts. But I've read the MSWind2000 EULA, so I never want to deal with MS ever again.)
The period of heavy use of slave labor did not come until later. I said "at the time democracy was established", meaning in the decades around the time of Solon. Yes, they did use slaves (one of his reforms was the prohibition of enslaving Athenians), but it was at that time a minor part of their economy. You are probably thinking of the time near the age of Pericles, when slave labor was, indeed, a large part of the economy.
In Athens at the time democracy was first established, the income range of the citizens, from top to bottom, was about a factor of 50. Increased population may mean that some larger degree of spread is optimal at the moment (though the Athenians typically already thought the spread was too large...unless they were at the top). The income wasn't distributed evenly, of course, and the "class boundaries" were rather informal. There was no official hierarchy. The wealthiest were called the "thousand bushel men", i.e., they earned over 1000 bushels of wheat a year. (As someone said "enough to be poor in some countries".)
So I can see justifying a range of, say, 1000 from top to bottom, where the wealthiest individual could earn no more than 1000 times what the poorest earned. ("Earned" should probably be in quotes in that sentence. I don't really have any clear idea *what* it means, but I really doubt that anyone outside of the basic trades earns money today in any traditional sense. And, of course, fiat money, such as paper money and credit cards, aren't wealth, they're accounting tools. [It's the tools that are wealth. And the food, the roads, the techniques, etc. And that's without distinguishing between wealth and illth.])
P.S.: That "1000" is just a WAG. A "gosh number". 50 is probably too small a delta factor, and we clearly have too large a delta factor. OTOH, that 50 was only for the citizens, and didn't include women, slaves, or foreigners (though at that time there weren't *many* slaves or foreigners in Athens). 100 might work. That allows 100 "classes" of citizens whose "wages after taxes" are 1% apart. If you have a hierarchy of 100 levels, and each rung (except the bottom) supervises 5 members of the "lower class" you've got an unreasonably large organization, and I see no reason why there should be an "everyone has to fit into the same pyramid" approach. Still, people tend to equate income with status.
Note that with status levels close together a democratic society is more *natural*. With them far apart, an authoritarian structure is more *natural*. (Status differences tend to translate into different people tending to have differences in relative power. Larger status differences tend to mean larger differences ON THE AVERAGE in relative power.)
The "Successful Experiment" was hype in so far as getting a Space Elevator built. It doesn't prove much, and it wasn't intended to. It was largely a PR exercise.
The FUD is basically saying "we don't know how to do it now, so it can't be done".
Both are silly, but the hype at least serves some legitimate purpose.
I find it rather pathetic. Also evidence of a bad histroy class.
The current generation isn't any worse. The environment it's coping with is, in many cases, worse, but that's NOT their fault.
Perhaps you need to see a movie from the 1950's called "Blackboard Jungle" to give you some perspective. Or think a bit about "Romeo and Juliette", which is basically about a couple of gangs of teens nearly starting a civil war.
It's also true that rebellion is a part of what being a teen is about. It's evolved to help separate the kids from their parents, and turn them into independent individuals. Doesn't work very well in today's society, but evolution is blind. If today's society were to hold in one shape for a few thousand years, we'd be evolving to fit into it. But I don't think 10 thousand would be long enough. Could be, of course, because it's a stocastic process.
O, yes. Elder's blaming the teens for acting like teens is also a part of this process. You, too, are acting out a role for which you've evolved in an environment that doesn't really suit you.
I did see it on TV. Occasionally. It was schlock. Funny doesn't keep it from being schlock.
Schlock is liked by a lot of people. It's not to be despised. But it's certainly nothing that anyone with ANYTHING better to do should shape their life around. And it's only art at the very lowest level. When you look back at schlock, you think "Yeah, that was fun.", but it doesn't change you, inspire you, challenge you, or improve you in any way.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I *DON'T* want to see movies. I'm boycotting the MPAA as well as the RIAA. It's just that I no longer even WANT to see them.
Because they're different groups of people?
... except to burn software onto. I have a collection from before I started my boycott, and I occasionally listen to something that I used to like. It's ok. Not good.
I haven't bought a CD in years
A large part of being a part of the market for music CDs is being in the *habit* of listening to new ones. If you lose the habit, you stop wanting new CDs. So the RIAA is in a really tough position. If they implement effective controls on copying, they cut their audience, and if they don't their audience cuts them out.
The MPAA is a slightly different animal, but not much. I no longer go to see movies, and I don't miss them. My wife subscribes to NetFlix, and I don't even bother to watch them. Even though they're already paid for. It's not time pressure, either. I just lost the habit. I used to watch lots of TV, and now I don't.
Is it because they are purveying crap? Possibly. But they always were, you know. If I look at the old movies I liked, or listen to the old music, well, Sturgeon's law...only squared. There is actually some good stuff there, but slightly less than 1%. If you want "very good" it becomes much less than 1%. It's mostly a matter of habit.
Perhaps the original StarWars was as good as I remember. The second time I saw it, it still seemed pretty good, even though it was years later, the screen was an ordinary screen, and the print was pretty scratchy. The sequels? I saw the first one. It was ok, but nothing special. I've heard about several of the others...apparently there are several unexpected plot twists. It takes more than plot twists to make a movie worth seeing. In fact, plot twists aren't even necessary. The basic plot can be totally predictable and the movie can still be great (think "West Side Story" or "Camelot").
The thing is, you can set out to make a great movie, but you can't reliably get there. You can set out to make a splashy special effects movie, and you can reliably achieve it. You've got to be willing to make a bunch of schlock to make an occasional masterpiece. Some Directors are. Occasionally a producer is. A business office is never willing to do that.
If the MPAA rules, there will never be any more great movies. Don't criticize them because they produce crap, criticize them for fouling the well.
That said, lots of people like schlock. It can be watched mindlessly and without significant emotional involvement. "I Love Lucy" was one of the most successful radio shows ever produced, and almost all of it is schlock. There were occasional gems, but mainly it was schlock.
It would be nice if this suit were to bankrupt the MPAA. I don't expect it. But if every participant in both the MPAA and the RIAA caught a disgusting disease and dies slowly of the period of three years...I wouldn't weep one tear. Though I would feel a bit sorry for the janitors.
I'm told he has. Supposedly there is a quote from Mettalica embedded in the web page. Since I don't listen to the band, I wouldn't recognize it, and since everyone is so *on* about the poor site design, I'm not going to bother to look anyway. But the report is that he *has* learned to plagerize. Now he just needs to improve in who he plagerizes *from*. (Ideally he would learn to plagerize from several sources at the same time, and thus be a researcher.)
It doesn't suffice to make one computer literate, but one requirement is to know SOME assembler. Preferably a simple one. Mix would suffice. So would the code for the JVM, though MIX would be better, as it was designed as a pedagogical device.
And "know" here doesn't mean either becoming fluent in it OR memorizing the instructions. It means learning, at least schematically, how the hardware can translate the instructions in the assembler into actions to be taken. If should probably go as far as learning how a half-adder differs from an adder, and how one can build one from switches. This should take about 1.5 months. From that one can sweep rapidly up to C, where one should pause for most of the rest of the semester. The next semester could cover Pascal, Java, virtual machines, and XPM (basic graphics). Since this is a literacy class the object is not that the student become skilled at any one of these languages/approaches/methods, but rather that they understand what is going on. Note that I'm picking approaches for "easily approachable" and "breadth of coverage". This is a survey class, not in depth study. I can easily envision other such classes, but anything I would consider good would START with a thorough grounding in basic assembler and hardware. (Also note that I didn't include Basic. I considered it in the area of virtual machines...and strongly rejected it. It may be appropriate in a class for studying a language in depth, but not for a survey course.)
Learning to operate computer programs is not computer literacy. Not even at a basic level. Literacy implies understanding.