That's a vaild point. However, it would also be trivial to mobile browsers default to adding ".mobi" to the end of any "naked" domain name a user types in - so eg you type in "ibm" and it automatically assumes that you mean "ibm.mobi".
Apart from that, yeah, having "m" and "o" together isn't the best of ideas, and is "mob" really that harder to understand than "mobi" that it's worth the extra character? Couldn't they have used ".wap"? (Yes, it would make it appear that it's tied to a particular tech, but it's easier to type, shorter, and associated with mobiles already...)
Why isn't it figured in to the force of gravity on Earth?
Because it's (more or less) exactly balanced by the centripetal acceleration of the earth's orbital motion. That doesn't change the fact that there is an attractive force of gravity acting so as to pull the Earth and the Sun together; it may not feel like it, but I wasn't talking about how it feels.
If it makes you feel better, pretend I said "over the course of the bungee jump the differences in the force due to gravity acting on the jumper are vanishingly small and can be ignored" rather than "gravity is constant". The point that I was trying to make, and that you appear to be willfully ignoring, is that no matter how it may *feel* to you, there is still a force acting on you so as to pull you towards the earth's surface. If it were not the case, you wouldn't be accelerating towards it.
Perhaps I misunderstood the comment, but it seemed to me (and at least one other person) that he thought that when you step off that platform, gravity goes away, which is most certainly not the case.
(Oh, and I never said a word about the value of g, and am fully aware of local variations due to altitude, local ground density, centripetal acceleration due to the Earth's rotation, etc...)
Given that I'm IBM and have a team of lawyers who I would be paying regardless, and that SCO's next targets would most likely be the very companies that so thoughtfully provide me (for free!) with most of the software that I'm basing my hardware, support and professional services sales around, I'd crush them before they got any funny ideas about taking out the aforementioned companies and cutting my current strategy off at the knees.
It's called "enlightened self interest"; the right thing is also the best thing for yourself, no matter how many others it may also help. Any advantage gained in paying off SCO now would likely be lost in the future, especially as it's extremely unlikely that SCO would be paid off so cheaply.
IBM are probably the largest company in the world right now that is actively supporting Linux. If they settle, that leaves the way clear for SCO to take on smaller companies. It may not create a precedent (except perhaps in the minds of their intended victims), but they'll have already defeated their single most dangerous opponent.
Or, IBM can push the case to the bitter end and prove in court that the claims are groundless, and end it once and for all.
If you were IBM, and had long term strategies based around Linux, which would you do?
Don't let your knowledge of gravity get in the way of knowledge of relativity just to post some semantic crap.
It's not semantic crap though. The GP seemed to be saying that while you fall, you are in zero gravity, which is not the case. This is due to the context in which the comment was made, the OP saying that gravity is constant the whole time.
Had he said something like "well, that's true, but it *feels* like it isn't" we wouldn't be having this pointless discussion. Some of us are physics nerds at heart, though, and just can't let this sort of thing pass unremarked upon...
Re:We don't need any steenkin' new paradigms...
on
GUIs Get a Makeover
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· Score: 1
It's been observed since the day Windows 95 was introduced that it is stupid to turn off your computer from a button labelled "Start."
While I do agree with you, out of interest where would you put the off button? You don't want it somewhere that's easy to hit by accident, so hiding it behind an extra click seems to me to be a good idea. Of course, make it too hard to find, and people won't be able to find it...
The start menu also isn't the only way to access the shut down command; alt-f4 on the desktop, the Shutdown menu of Task Manager (unless you're on a domain), ctrl-alt-delete (if you are on a domain) all work too, although they're a lot less obvious.
The point is somewhat moot though, as pretty much every PC sold for the last 5 years or so can be safely switched off by hitting the power button on the case.
An AC has already said it, but I think it bears repeating by someone a little more visible - the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, and nothing more. There's no guarantee that they're not also my enemy, and fully prepared tp and capable of fighting on two fronts.
In this case, there's no guarantee that being associated with Lime Wire and other, similar services won't damage the case of those of us who fall somewhere between the two extremes (of the RIAA's "lock it all up forever" stance, and the "free it all now!" stance of some)
I'm not the OP, but the way I see it there are (at least) the following camps:
1) the RIAA/MPAA/etc, who are fiercely defending their (members') legal rights with respect to copyright and pushing for ever greater technical and legal measures 2) the fiercely anti-copyright lot, who genuinely believe that copyright should be abolished completely and that intellectual property is an oxymoronic and dangerous concept 3) the rest of us, who fall somewhere in between one of these two extremes
Personally, I believe in copyright, but not to the extremes that the first group are taking it. However, I don't believe that abolishing it is the way to go either. I imagine that this is the sort of thing that the OP was trying (and failing) to say...
I know you're joking (and I do get it), but I imagine it's "real fire" as in "proper, honest-to-God fire call the fire brigade NOW!", rather than "Meh, I guess it's a fire, technically; chuck a glass of water on it will you?", like the time I set fire to some toast (long story, but a pint glass of water later and all was well)
The impact throws him several feet in the air and his body hits a wall. This is pretty realistic
Newton's laws would seem to disagree with you - the force on The Jackal from the bullets is necessarily equal and opposite to the force on the gunman from the weapon. If the force was enough to throw him about like that, the shooter should at least have been staggering back from the recoil, if not going over himself.
Whenever I bring this up I always have someone come back with "But XP is better for games." I've never seen this. To this day I play all my PC games on 2k with absolutely no problems or notable performance degradation.
A great many older games won't run on 2K - one that immediately springs to mind is Dungeon Keeper 2, which crashed the OS every single time it played an end-of-level cutscene. I also had an OpenGL screensaver (recommended by MS!) that reliably crashed the OS.
Just because you haven't seen something doesn't mean it isn't true.
He's not kidding, he's trolling you, and in the most pathetically predictable way possible, too - insult your intelligence then wish you and your loved ones harm.
People but a machine and jump through hoops getting Windows to work
Where by "jump through hoops" you mean (in my limited experience) click the button to activate online, or make a short phone call.
I'm not defending WPA, and it has been a pain once or twice for me too, but jumping through hoops is hardly an accurate description. About the only time you might have a problem is if you swap hardware around a lot, and the average end user maybe has extra RAM fitted at most; more than that, the only upgrade is a whole new machine.
an entire computer being disabled because it got sent back to a manufacturer for repair, and they replaced something XP uses to identify the machine.
At which point said manufacturer could either fix my computer or face me in small claims court. They have no excuse whatsoever, as 1) they clearly cannot have tested the machine, and 2) XP activation has been known about for years, and to screw up in this way displays a quite staggering level of incompetence on their part.
There are plenty of reasons to bitch about XP's activation, but someone else screwing your machine over because of their own incompetence isn't one of them.
I can't speak for the US, but here in the UK most toys now do come with batteries, while previously they didn't. The change is apparently due to improvements in the shelf life of batteries; before, the batteries would be half-way to useless by the time someone bought the toy and started using it, so there was little point. Battery tech has improved to the point where batteries now have shelf lives measured in years, and it's common for electronic gadgets and toys to include batteries.
For starters, money spent on licenses doesn't stay in the EU; it goes back to the US. If it stayed locally, as it often does with smaller EU software shops, then it gets spent on salaries, growing the business etc and gets invested back into the local economy.
Most of it goes back to the US, yes. However, don't forget that MS does employ people in Europe, so some of that money will stay here in salaries. Also software (and the hardware to run it on) is taxable (at least in the UK), so some of the money goes to the government, too.
it could have been more productively spent on hiring people to expand the business and do new things
Chances are, it'll be spent by the training company to expand their business, and for them to do new things.
I'm just playing devil's advocate, to an extent - I don't buy MS's claims either. However, I'm not entirely convinced that things are quite as you describe them either. I agree with the overall point though, that the EU would be better off buying EU-produced software. That's not entirely practical right now, though...
Not to be an arse, but how do you know that's how he says it? I've known religious people who argue rationally for their faith, and why people might consider following it, and I've certainly known people who argue for OSS in the same manner as the worst, most zealous evangelical minister you could ever meet.
There certainly is nothing wrong with pointing out to people that alternatives exist that may serve their needs just as well, while being less susceptible to whatever it was that broke things this time. However, I know from experience that that's not how everyone presents it - just read slashdot at a low-ish threshold, and you'll see examples what I'm talking about.
however this is civil, so they basically don't have to prove anything
Yes they do - they have to prove to a jury "on the balance of probability". In the end, it still comes down to the evidence and the skill of each party's representatives; the bar is just that little bit lower for the plaintiff. It's definitely not the case that you just drag someone to court and take all their money, as you seem to be implying.
Car analogies should be banned, they're always flawed in some way...
A closer analogy would be that on 20 occasions, I saw you drive past going at what appeared to me to be faster than the speed limit. I measured your speed on 8 of those occasions, and you were indeed speeding. Therefore, it seems likely to me that on the other 12 occasions you were also speeding.
Of course, even that isn't really the same, as speeding is a criminal matter, while copyright infringment is civil, and the level of proof required is different...
It's true that this is the way of things at many companies, but that doesn't make it right or mean that people should be expected to just put up or shut up. If everyone did that then things would never improve for anyone.
If something is wrong, it should be fixed, not ignored. Whining here won't fix it, but asking for advice might be the first step in the right direction.
Well, I can't find the text you quote, but I did install Beta 2 and it most certainly did not nuke my XP install. I suspect (but can't prove, obviously) that the text refers to "upgrading" your XP install - ie installing Vista over the top of it. What they're saying is that if you do that, you can't then uninstall/roll back and return to your previous install, which is fair enough.
This is their way of getting people to nuke their current XP installs, then having to buy the final version of Vista by July 1st.
Thereby pissing them off, pushing at least some of them to alternatives such as Linux or OS X? MS may be evil and arrogant, but they're not stupid. (And before you argue that most people won't be able to make the switch, only those who are able to would be installing the RC in the first place, public or not...)
The GPL's validity as a license has nothing to do with copyright law
How so? Without copyright law, the GPL would have no teeth, as when you violate the GPL, it's copyright law that you'll be sued under. (As when you violate the GPL, you no longer have permission to distribute the offending code, and so are infringing copyright)
This is the first time I have ever seen a printed GPL included with a product.
If I recall correctly, I got a printed copy of the GPL with each of my Netgear products (2 wireless APs), along with an URL from which to download the relevant source. I can't vouch for the source though, as I never bothered.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a vaild point. However, it would also be trivial to mobile browsers default to adding ".mobi" to the end of any "naked" domain name a user types in - so eg you type in "ibm" and it automatically assumes that you mean "ibm.mobi".
Apart from that, yeah, having "m" and "o" together isn't the best of ideas, and is "mob" really that harder to understand than "mobi" that it's worth the extra character? Couldn't they have used ".wap"? (Yes, it would make it appear that it's tied to a particular tech, but it's easier to type, shorter, and associated with mobiles already...)
Why isn't it figured in to the force of gravity on Earth?
Because it's (more or less) exactly balanced by the centripetal acceleration of the earth's orbital motion. That doesn't change the fact that there is an attractive force of gravity acting so as to pull the Earth and the Sun together; it may not feel like it, but I wasn't talking about how it feels.
If it makes you feel better, pretend I said "over the course of the bungee jump the differences in the force due to gravity acting on the jumper are vanishingly small and can be ignored" rather than "gravity is constant". The point that I was trying to make, and that you appear to be willfully ignoring, is that no matter how it may *feel* to you, there is still a force acting on you so as to pull you towards the earth's surface. If it were not the case, you wouldn't be accelerating towards it.
Perhaps I misunderstood the comment, but it seemed to me (and at least one other person) that he thought that when you step off that platform, gravity goes away, which is most certainly not the case.
(Oh, and I never said a word about the value of g, and am fully aware of local variations due to altitude, local ground density, centripetal acceleration due to the Earth's rotation, etc...)
Given that I'm IBM and have a team of lawyers who I would be paying regardless, and that SCO's next targets would most likely be the very companies that so thoughtfully provide me (for free!) with most of the software that I'm basing my hardware, support and professional services sales around, I'd crush them before they got any funny ideas about taking out the aforementioned companies and cutting my current strategy off at the knees.
It's called "enlightened self interest"; the right thing is also the best thing for yourself, no matter how many others it may also help. Any advantage gained in paying off SCO now would likely be lost in the future, especially as it's extremely unlikely that SCO would be paid off so cheaply.
IBM are probably the largest company in the world right now that is actively supporting Linux. If they settle, that leaves the way clear for SCO to take on smaller companies. It may not create a precedent (except perhaps in the minds of their intended victims), but they'll have already defeated their single most dangerous opponent.
Or, IBM can push the case to the bitter end and prove in court that the claims are groundless, and end it once and for all.
If you were IBM, and had long term strategies based around Linux, which would you do?
Don't let your knowledge of gravity get in the way of knowledge of relativity just to post some semantic crap.
It's not semantic crap though. The GP seemed to be saying that while you fall, you are in zero gravity, which is not the case. This is due to the context in which the comment was made, the OP saying that gravity is constant the whole time.
Had he said something like "well, that's true, but it *feels* like it isn't" we wouldn't be having this pointless discussion. Some of us are physics nerds at heart, though, and just can't let this sort of thing pass unremarked upon...
It's been observed since the day Windows 95 was introduced that it is stupid to turn off your computer from a button labelled "Start."
While I do agree with you, out of interest where would you put the off button? You don't want it somewhere that's easy to hit by accident, so hiding it behind an extra click seems to me to be a good idea. Of course, make it too hard to find, and people won't be able to find it...
The start menu also isn't the only way to access the shut down command; alt-f4 on the desktop, the Shutdown menu of Task Manager (unless you're on a domain), ctrl-alt-delete (if you are on a domain) all work too, although they're a lot less obvious.
The point is somewhat moot though, as pretty much every PC sold for the last 5 years or so can be safely switched off by hitting the power button on the case.
Here in the UK, it's pronounced "fortay" (and written forté)
"the enemy of my enemy is my firend" aside
An AC has already said it, but I think it bears repeating by someone a little more visible - the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, and nothing more. There's no guarantee that they're not also my enemy, and fully prepared tp and capable of fighting on two fronts.
In this case, there's no guarantee that being associated with Lime Wire and other, similar services won't damage the case of those of us who fall somewhere between the two extremes (of the RIAA's "lock it all up forever" stance, and the "free it all now!" stance of some)
I'm not the OP, but the way I see it there are (at least) the following camps:
1) the RIAA/MPAA/etc, who are fiercely defending their (members') legal rights with respect to copyright and pushing for ever greater technical and legal measures
2) the fiercely anti-copyright lot, who genuinely believe that copyright should be abolished completely and that intellectual property is an oxymoronic and dangerous concept
3) the rest of us, who fall somewhere in between one of these two extremes
Personally, I believe in copyright, but not to the extremes that the first group are taking it. However, I don't believe that abolishing it is the way to go either. I imagine that this is the sort of thing that the OP was trying (and failing) to say...
I know you're joking (and I do get it), but I imagine it's "real fire" as in "proper, honest-to-God fire call the fire brigade NOW!", rather than "Meh, I guess it's a fire, technically; chuck a glass of water on it will you?", like the time I set fire to some toast (long story, but a pint glass of water later and all was well)
The impact throws him several feet in the air and his body hits a wall. This is pretty realistic
Newton's laws would seem to disagree with you - the force on The Jackal from the bullets is necessarily equal and opposite to the force on the gunman from the weapon. If the force was enough to throw him about like that, the shooter should at least have been staggering back from the recoil, if not going over himself.
A very cool scene in a very cool film
That's one of the few scenes I've seen so far that has almost literally had me on the edge of my seat from start to end; a wonderful piece of cinema.
Whenever I bring this up I always have someone come back with "But XP is better for games." I've never seen this. To this day I play all my PC games on 2k with absolutely no problems or notable performance degradation.
A great many older games won't run on 2K - one that immediately springs to mind is Dungeon Keeper 2, which crashed the OS every single time it played an end-of-level cutscene. I also had an OpenGL screensaver (recommended by MS!) that reliably crashed the OS.
Just because you haven't seen something doesn't mean it isn't true.
He's not kidding, he's trolling you, and in the most pathetically predictable way possible, too - insult your intelligence then wish you and your loved ones harm.
People but a machine and jump through hoops getting Windows to work
Where by "jump through hoops" you mean (in my limited experience) click the button to activate online, or make a short phone call.
I'm not defending WPA, and it has been a pain once or twice for me too, but jumping through hoops is hardly an accurate description. About the only time you might have a problem is if you swap hardware around a lot, and the average end user maybe has extra RAM fitted at most; more than that, the only upgrade is a whole new machine.
an entire computer being disabled because it got sent back to a manufacturer for repair, and they replaced something XP uses to identify the machine.
At which point said manufacturer could either fix my computer or face me in small claims court. They have no excuse whatsoever, as 1) they clearly cannot have tested the machine, and 2) XP activation has been known about for years, and to screw up in this way displays a quite staggering level of incompetence on their part.
There are plenty of reasons to bitch about XP's activation, but someone else screwing your machine over because of their own incompetence isn't one of them.
I can't speak for the US, but here in the UK most toys now do come with batteries, while previously they didn't. The change is apparently due to improvements in the shelf life of batteries; before, the batteries would be half-way to useless by the time someone bought the toy and started using it, so there was little point. Battery tech has improved to the point where batteries now have shelf lives measured in years, and it's common for electronic gadgets and toys to include batteries.
For starters, money spent on licenses doesn't stay in the EU; it goes back to the US. If it stayed locally, as it often does with smaller EU software shops, then it gets spent on salaries, growing the business etc and gets invested back into the local economy.
Most of it goes back to the US, yes. However, don't forget that MS does employ people in Europe, so some of that money will stay here in salaries. Also software (and the hardware to run it on) is taxable (at least in the UK), so some of the money goes to the government, too.
it could have been more productively spent on hiring people to expand the business and do new things
Chances are, it'll be spent by the training company to expand their business, and for them to do new things.
I'm just playing devil's advocate, to an extent - I don't buy MS's claims either. However, I'm not entirely convinced that things are quite as you describe them either. I agree with the overall point though, that the EU would be better off buying EU-produced software. That's not entirely practical right now, though...
Not to be an arse, but how do you know that's how he says it? I've known religious people who argue rationally for their faith, and why people might consider following it, and I've certainly known people who argue for OSS in the same manner as the worst, most zealous evangelical minister you could ever meet.
There certainly is nothing wrong with pointing out to people that alternatives exist that may serve their needs just as well, while being less susceptible to whatever it was that broke things this time. However, I know from experience that that's not how everyone presents it - just read slashdot at a low-ish threshold, and you'll see examples what I'm talking about.
however this is civil, so they basically don't have to prove anything
Yes they do - they have to prove to a jury "on the balance of probability". In the end, it still comes down to the evidence and the skill of each party's representatives; the bar is just that little bit lower for the plaintiff. It's definitely not the case that you just drag someone to court and take all their money, as you seem to be implying.
Car analogies should be banned, they're always flawed in some way...
A closer analogy would be that on 20 occasions, I saw you drive past going at what appeared to me to be faster than the speed limit. I measured your speed on 8 of those occasions, and you were indeed speeding. Therefore, it seems likely to me that on the other 12 occasions you were also speeding.
Of course, even that isn't really the same, as speeding is a criminal matter, while copyright infringment is civil, and the level of proof required is different...
It's true that this is the way of things at many companies, but that doesn't make it right or mean that people should be expected to just put up or shut up. If everyone did that then things would never improve for anyone.
If something is wrong, it should be fixed, not ignored. Whining here won't fix it, but asking for advice might be the first step in the right direction.
Well, I can't find the text you quote, but I did install Beta 2 and it most certainly did not nuke my XP install. I suspect (but can't prove, obviously) that the text refers to "upgrading" your XP install - ie installing Vista over the top of it. What they're saying is that if you do that, you can't then uninstall/roll back and return to your previous install, which is fair enough.
This is their way of getting people to nuke their current XP installs, then having to buy the final version of Vista by July 1st.
Thereby pissing them off, pushing at least some of them to alternatives such as Linux or OS X? MS may be evil and arrogant, but they're not stupid. (And before you argue that most people won't be able to make the switch, only those who are able to would be installing the RC in the first place, public or not...)
The GPL's validity as a license has nothing to do with copyright law
How so? Without copyright law, the GPL would have no teeth, as when you violate the GPL, it's copyright law that you'll be sued under. (As when you violate the GPL, you no longer have permission to distribute the offending code, and so are infringing copyright)
This is the first time I have ever seen a printed GPL included with a product.
If I recall correctly, I got a printed copy of the GPL with each of my Netgear products (2 wireless APs), along with an URL from which to download the relevant source. I can't vouch for the source though, as I never bothered.