as an American, I can say I'd be pretty peeved if I had a bagful of cash and suddenly the government tried to tell me my cash wasn't money anymore.
This is not a sudden process. Notices are displayed in banks, newspapers, etc for months before and after any such change, which happens infrequently (a handful of times that I can remember in my 30 years of life).
I'd even say that would be a violation of due process, since the government would be depriving me of property.
How so? You're given plenty of warning, and even when the deadline passes and it ceases to be legal tender, you can still exchange it at a bank. I believe that the Bank of England is actually obliged to accept *any* coin or note that has *ever* been issued as legal tender in England and exchange it for current legal tender. That may or may not include ancient tender (such as Roman coins), but that's generally not an issue with such items...
But y'all don't have the benefit of a (written) constitution.
I fail to see why one is needed in this situation.
And you need to realise that people visiting tourist attractions take photos. Hell, I've seen some tourists taking photos of the strangest things - photographing a station you're passing through is *nothing*.
It's all very well to be vigilant, etc, but not if that comes at the cost of pissing off and/or worrying/frightening every single tourist that you see with a camera.
Christ people; if you jump at the slightest thing, then the terrorists have already won.
That sounds like a mechanical/manual version of one of these. You've been able to buy things like that here in the UK for at least 20 years. Same idea - switch that on and it heats up, make a sandwhich, put it in, close the toaster and it cuts and crimps it while it cooks it. I recommend buttering the *outside* of the bread, it makes it brown nicely.
That's exactly what I was going to say - I have one of those sandwhich toasters myself, and judging from the abstract, this is prior art. What's more, you've been able to buy sandwhich toasters of this sort in the UK for as long as I can remember - at least 15 years, and I don't remember them being anything new or unusual then.
A lot of businesses make their money by hiring developers and selling software. This is a business model many of us would like to see die.
Reminds me of a sig I've seen here; "Information wants to be free. Mortgage wants to be paid."
Why do you want to see pay-for software die out? Why should the creation of software be any different to the creation of any other work? Or do you believe that *all* works (music, books, etc) should be free, with the creators supported either by other jobs or - for the lucky few - rich sponsors?
As others have said, if you choose to use a well-known, "popular" language or technology, and half way through the project one of your developers falls sick, you can easily replace them. If you choose to use something obscure, you probably won't be able to.
My company is currently having massive amounts of trouble hiring good-quality contractors to work on a particular project because we have a relatively unusual requirement - they *must* be security cleared. The few that we've seen haven't been up to scratch technically. Subsitute "be security cleared" for "know new language no-one's heard of" and you'd have the same problem...
The peple that advocate sueing everybody for everything is the lawyers
Really? Lawyers advocating legal measures? That's as strange as geeks advocating technical measures, HR/"people people" advocating discussion and negogiation, etc.
People tend to advocate courses of action that
a) they are familiar and comfortable with b) will make them money
But don't forget, behind almost every sleazy, greedy lawyer is a sleazy, greedy client...
in the UK I'd (unscientifically) say that title belongs to MSN
That holds from my admittedly somewhat limited experience too. A year or two ago, almost everyone I knew who used IM used ICQ; now the vast majority use MSN instead. I know very few people who use anything else.
Unless, of course, you make your dummy warheads the exact same size and density, etc, as the real thing (otherwise they won't have the same flight characteristics.)
Which raises the question, can you alter the flight characteristics of a real warhead enough to fool the missile defence system, while still keeping it effective?
What it does require, other than publishing the software with terms that do not prohibit use of the information gleaned in GPL-ed software, is freedom from patents.
Well, that really depends on the intention of the Commission. There are many licences other than the GPL, so I could see a compromise in which the GPL is technically excluded (due to some term of the licence) but the majority of other open source licences are ok. (I'm not saying necessarily that I'd approve, but that's irrelevant, I'm not the Commission)
Also, technically, freedom from patents is not required - what is required is that a royalty-free licence be granted to use/implement/etc anything that is patented, as long as the implementation is covered by a recognised open source licence (or something similar). Again, that might hamstring the GPL, but would leave a lot (most?) OS licences clear, something that the Commission might go for.
Not to insult *your* intelligence, but modern Windows OSes *do* work. I work for a web development/hosting division within a large multinational, and almost *all* of our problems relate to networking and third party software issues; it's very rare indeed that we have a machine go down because of an OS problem, and that's true for the Linux, Solaris and Windows machines.
But Eclipse is free, JBuilder foundation is free, and (as a Java programmer doing server-side stuff, gamer and all-round computer freak) I already have a PC perfectly capable of running both (at the same time, should I desire). Syntactic sugar is nice, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient.
That said, I certainly do intend to have a look at Ruby myself when I get the time to do so (project crunch time at the moment, and lots going on at home too...)
No. An object does not have to reach escape velocity to escape a planet's gravitational pull. Escape velocity is the speed with which a ballistic (unpowered) object has to be launched from the surface of the planet in order to escape its gravitational field. You calculate it by setting the initial kinetic energy (given by (mv^2)/2, a half the mass times the square of the veloicty) equal to the gravitational potential energy (given by GM/r^2, where G is the gravitational constant, M the mass of the planet, and r^2 the square of the radius of the planet).
That gives a figure for the escape velocity of
v = sqrt(2GM/m(r*r))
However, for a rocket (or other powered device) to escape a planet's gravitational pull, as the GP said, all it has to do is provide enough vertical thrust to provide a positive acceleration. That acceleration does not have to accelerate it to the escape velocity - in fact, you could adjust it to compensate for the falling gravitational pull and so maintain a constant velocity of whatever you want, and (if you have sufficient power/fuel) you'll still escape.
That doesn't work for a black hole because all of that is based on Newtonian mechanics, which do not apply in the large gravitational fields close to the event horizon. There, you must use General Relativity, which is counter to our everyday common sense view of the world (precisely because on our scales, it's irrelevant). I don't know enough about GR to demonstrate why this is, however.
Yes, the ISPs could theoretically monitor net usage (which I can imagine would have the privacy people up in arms) and take action against anything that starts to look like it could be a problem.
However, the post I replied to said that MS should make their OS secure. You can't have an OS with zero exploitable holes, as there's nothing you can do to prevent there being one sat at the machine's keyboard.
Well, they have the recourse of returning the insult, which would seem to keep the response at an appropriate level. Personally, I think that the only thing that violence is an appropriate response to is violence or the threat of impending violence. Hitting someone because they called you an idiot seems a little over the top to me; YMMV, of course.
Incidentally, the poster is right - beating someone up doesn't generally make them respect you. Fear, hate, resent, perhaps, but not usually respect.
for those who think that Win systems are zombied more frequently simply because there are more of them
Any OS can be zombied if it allows users to
a) install software b) run software c) run software that communicates on the network
It happens to Windows more frequently because
a) it's less secure (that's getting better) b) there are more users, and hence more users who don't know better than to run untrusted code c) due to a) and b) there are more people writing malware for it d) users of other OSes, on the whole, are less likely to fall for trojans and social engineering (as it requires effort and reasonably advanced knowledge of computers to even be using an other OS)
How do you propose to prevent me from installing a trojan that covertly turns my PC into a spam zombie?
In other words, how do you intend to stop me from installing something (a porn dialer, screensaver, shareware app, or whatever) that, as well as its legitimate function, makes my PC part of a botnet, without preventing me from installing software at all?
Because I deposited your cash in the bank, and the bank has 2-3 days before that cash is available to me.
You want to get yourself a better bank. Here in the UK, if I pay cash into my account, I can walk over to the nearest ATM and draw it right back out again if I want to. Cheques generally take 3-5 days to clear, but cash is instantaneous.
By the same token, it took us thousands of years to get to the point where we had aircraft, and less than 70 more to get to the Moon.
The rate of technological progress is accelerating; that's part of the reason why patents are being filed faster than before. I'm not saying that they're all valid (far from it), just that more stuff is being patented because there's more stuff to patent - it's not all due to abuses.
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as an American, I can say I'd be pretty peeved if I had a bagful of cash and suddenly the government tried to tell me my cash wasn't money anymore.
This is not a sudden process. Notices are displayed in banks, newspapers, etc for months before and after any such change, which happens infrequently (a handful of times that I can remember in my 30 years of life).
I'd even say that would be a violation of due process, since the government would be depriving me of property.
How so? You're given plenty of warning, and even when the deadline passes and it ceases to be legal tender, you can still exchange it at a bank. I believe that the Bank of England is actually obliged to accept *any* coin or note that has *ever* been issued as legal tender in England and exchange it for current legal tender. That may or may not include ancient tender (such as Roman coins), but that's generally not an issue with such items...
But y'all don't have the benefit of a (written) constitution.
I fail to see why one is needed in this situation.
Back when paper money was first used in Britain, passing conterfeit money was a felony.
Of course, passing counterfeit money *is* still illegal in Britain...
That's from American McGee's Alice, isn't it?
And you need to realise that people visiting tourist attractions take photos. Hell, I've seen some tourists taking photos of the strangest things - photographing a station you're passing through is *nothing*.
It's all very well to be vigilant, etc, but not if that comes at the cost of pissing off and/or worrying/frightening every single tourist that you see with a camera.
Christ people; if you jump at the slightest thing, then the terrorists have already won.
That sounds like a mechanical/manual version of one of these. You've been able to buy things like that here in the UK for at least 20 years. Same idea - switch that on and it heats up, make a sandwhich, put it in, close the toaster and it cuts and crimps it while it cooks it. I recommend buttering the *outside* of the bread, it makes it brown nicely.
That's exactly what I was going to say - I have one of those sandwhich toasters myself, and judging from the abstract, this is prior art. What's more, you've been able to buy sandwhich toasters of this sort in the UK for as long as I can remember - at least 15 years, and I don't remember them being anything new or unusual then.
A lot of businesses make their money by hiring developers and selling software. This is a business model many of us would like to see die.
Reminds me of a sig I've seen here; "Information wants to be free. Mortgage wants to be paid."
Why do you want to see pay-for software die out? Why should the creation of software be any different to the creation of any other work? Or do you believe that *all* works (music, books, etc) should be free, with the creators supported either by other jobs or - for the lucky few - rich sponsors?
As others have said, if you choose to use a well-known, "popular" language or technology, and half way through the project one of your developers falls sick, you can easily replace them. If you choose to use something obscure, you probably won't be able to.
My company is currently having massive amounts of trouble hiring good-quality contractors to work on a particular project because we have a relatively unusual requirement - they *must* be security cleared. The few that we've seen haven't been up to scratch technically. Subsitute "be security cleared" for "know new language no-one's heard of" and you'd have the same problem...
The peple that advocate sueing everybody for everything is the lawyers
Really? Lawyers advocating legal measures? That's as strange as geeks advocating technical measures, HR/"people people" advocating discussion and negogiation, etc.
People tend to advocate courses of action that
a) they are familiar and comfortable with
b) will make them money
But don't forget, behind almost every sleazy, greedy lawyer is a sleazy, greedy client...
in the UK I'd (unscientifically) say that title belongs to MSN
That holds from my admittedly somewhat limited experience too. A year or two ago, almost everyone I knew who used IM used ICQ; now the vast majority use MSN instead. I know very few people who use anything else.
Unless, of course, you make your dummy warheads the exact same size and density, etc, as the real thing (otherwise they won't have the same flight characteristics.)
Which raises the question, can you alter the flight characteristics of a real warhead enough to fool the missile defence system, while still keeping it effective?
What it does require, other than publishing the software with terms that do not prohibit use of the information gleaned in GPL-ed software, is freedom from patents.
Well, that really depends on the intention of the Commission. There are many licences other than the GPL, so I could see a compromise in which the GPL is technically excluded (due to some term of the licence) but the majority of other open source licences are ok. (I'm not saying necessarily that I'd approve, but that's irrelevant, I'm not the Commission)
Also, technically, freedom from patents is not required - what is required is that a royalty-free licence be granted to use/implement/etc anything that is patented, as long as the implementation is covered by a recognised open source licence (or something similar). Again, that might hamstring the GPL, but would leave a lot (most?) OS licences clear, something that the Commission might go for.
Not to insult *your* intelligence, but modern Windows OSes *do* work. I work for a web development/hosting division within a large multinational, and almost *all* of our problems relate to networking and third party software issues; it's very rare indeed that we have a machine go down because of an OS problem, and that's true for the Linux, Solaris and Windows machines.
No need for a 'modern Java IDE'
But Eclipse is free, JBuilder foundation is free, and (as a Java programmer doing server-side stuff, gamer and all-round computer freak) I already have a PC perfectly capable of running both (at the same time, should I desire). Syntactic sugar is nice, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient.
That said, I certainly do intend to have a look at Ruby myself when I get the time to do so (project crunch time at the moment, and lots going on at home too...)
Well, this one and this one at least claim to be 2000W, and I've definitely used 2kW electric heaters running off a normal ring mains socket.
Of course, here in the UK, mains voltage is 230V, so with a normal maximum of 13A we could go up to about 2760W.
Is Macromedia a publicly-traded company? Does that answer your question as to Macromedia's loyalty?
No. An object does not have to reach escape velocity to escape a planet's gravitational pull. Escape velocity is the speed with which a ballistic (unpowered) object has to be launched from the surface of the planet in order to escape its gravitational field. You calculate it by setting the initial kinetic energy (given by (mv^2)/2, a half the mass times the square of the veloicty) equal to the gravitational potential energy (given by GM/r^2, where G is the gravitational constant, M the mass of the planet, and r^2 the square of the radius of the planet).
That gives a figure for the escape velocity of
v = sqrt(2GM/m(r*r))
However, for a rocket (or other powered device) to escape a planet's gravitational pull, as the GP said, all it has to do is provide enough vertical thrust to provide a positive acceleration. That acceleration does not have to accelerate it to the escape velocity - in fact, you could adjust it to compensate for the falling gravitational pull and so maintain a constant velocity of whatever you want, and (if you have sufficient power/fuel) you'll still escape.
That doesn't work for a black hole because all of that is based on Newtonian mechanics, which do not apply in the large gravitational fields close to the event horizon. There, you must use General Relativity, which is counter to our everyday common sense view of the world (precisely because on our scales, it's irrelevant). I don't know enough about GR to demonstrate why this is, however.
Yes, the ISPs could theoretically monitor net usage (which I can imagine would have the privacy people up in arms) and take action against anything that starts to look like it could be a problem.
However, the post I replied to said that MS should make their OS secure. You can't have an OS with zero exploitable holes, as there's nothing you can do to prevent there being one sat at the machine's keyboard.
I like the idea of two directories being physically different places and you can drag files from 'here' to 'there'.
You mean like you can do with a single window and a dir tree to one side? (Genuine question, I've not used Nautilus at all in years)
Well, they have the recourse of returning the insult, which would seem to keep the response at an appropriate level. Personally, I think that the only thing that violence is an appropriate response to is violence or the threat of impending violence. Hitting someone because they called you an idiot seems a little over the top to me; YMMV, of course.
Incidentally, the poster is right - beating someone up doesn't generally make them respect you. Fear, hate, resent, perhaps, but not usually respect.
I couldn't even think of putting Java and it's massive standard library onto a compactflash card.
You'll be wanting to take a look at the micro edition, then.
for those who think that Win systems are zombied more frequently simply because there are more of them
Any OS can be zombied if it allows users to
a) install software
b) run software
c) run software that communicates on the network
It happens to Windows more frequently because
a) it's less secure (that's getting better)
b) there are more users, and hence more users who don't know better than to run untrusted code
c) due to a) and b) there are more people writing malware for it
d) users of other OSes, on the whole, are less likely to fall for trojans and social engineering (as it requires effort and reasonably advanced knowledge of computers to even be using an other OS)
How do you propose to prevent me from installing a trojan that covertly turns my PC into a spam zombie?
In other words, how do you intend to stop me from installing something (a porn dialer, screensaver, shareware app, or whatever) that, as well as its legitimate function, makes my PC part of a botnet, without preventing me from installing software at all?
Because I deposited your cash in the bank, and the bank has 2-3 days before that cash is available to me.
You want to get yourself a better bank. Here in the UK, if I pay cash into my account, I can walk over to the nearest ATM and draw it right back out again if I want to. Cheques generally take 3-5 days to clear, but cash is instantaneous.
By the same token, it took us thousands of years to get to the point where we had aircraft, and less than 70 more to get to the Moon.
The rate of technological progress is accelerating; that's part of the reason why patents are being filed faster than before. I'm not saying that they're all valid (far from it), just that more stuff is being patented because there's more stuff to patent - it's not all due to abuses.