Ah yes, because every problem can be solved faster by throwing more people at it! Why, if only we could convince 9 women to team up, they could have a baby in just 1 month!
No shit. It never ceases to amaze me when I'm on the Tube on the way in to work and I can hear other people's music over the top of mine. Sure, I don't have mine particularly loud, but come on - don't these people realise the damage they must be doing to their hearing?
In most other industries, the patent system means that if I invent a nice mouse trap I can get royalties from the guy with the mouse trap factory a.k.a. the producer.
Or you can invent your own type of mousetrap, different to/better than that one in some way, and convince people to buy yours rather than theirs.
That's not possible with software patents as it is the concept of e.g. "storing user preferences in a database and retrieving them on subsequent visits" that is patented, not the actual implementation. They don't patent the implementation because they don't need to, that's covered by copyright.
Patenting software is essentially an attempt to extend copyright to cover all other implementations that would otherwise be non-infringing. That's why it's wrong.
It's an important difference - 404 means that they are transparently proxying your connections
And inspecting the packet contents looking for HTTP 404 error code returns, and either modifying the returned HTML to insert their own ads or else (and much, much simpler and more practicable) discarding the rest of the data stream and substituting their own.
Hijacking DNS errors is wrong; hijacking HTTP 404 returns would be Evil.
On-topic enought to tell here: My computer won't even boot with an iPod attached. Might be just the shuffle, but I think having my old mini connected is a no-no, too. Won't even go past the BIOS screen, it hangs before the pseudo memory check at POST.
I get exactly that behaviour on my machine with my iPod Mini connected (but not every time) - if it's connected the machine hangs during POST. If I disconnect it, POST continues.
Yes, they do (it's one of the things I particularly dislike about iTunes), but just running as SYSTEM doesn't mean it runs in kernel space - in the same way as running as root doesn't make it part of the kernel on Linux.
Good, they'd be doing me a favour - I clearly wouldn't be a good personality fit. Yes, I drink - I'm 34 years old, and I can do what I damn well please in my spare time, thank you very much. As long as it doesn't impair my ability to work or bring the company into disrepute, it's none of their business what I do.
Quicktime doesn't annoy me as I never (ever) use it. I find it annoying that iTunes installs it whether I want it or not, and the systray task it installs is annoying until I kill it, but apart from that it doesn't bother me.
The things I mention may well be a geek thing as far as annoyance goes, but I am both a geek (a programmer) and an Apple customer (I actually own an iPod, and am considering one of the new iPod Nanos). Hardly a big spender it's true, but still a customer.
Claiming that the word "theory" degrades evolution's status
The only thing I can think you mean here is when the creationists point out that "evolution is just a theory", neglecting to mention that in science theory means something rather different to what it means in everyday language.
teaching religious beliefs alongside science would somehow destroy our poor children's brains
Personally I'm perfectly happy to see religious beliefs taught in school, in the appropriate lessons. That means teaching creationism in religious education lessons, preferably along with other religious creation stories. Teaching it in science classes is wrong however, as it most definitely is not science.
Until the politicians change the Daylight Saving Time rules on you, and you need to have your reporting system updated. Or, a year after deployment, a serious bug is found in the code.
In both of those cases though the system is not working fine - in the first because it no longer satisfies the requirements, and in the second because it never was in the first place, it just appeared to be.
I'm not arguing against patching when it is appropriate to do so, and would never argue against redundancy in critical systems - that's madness.
Programmer: The kind of person that looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
Damn right I look both ways before crossing a one-way street! I've been nearly mown down by enough cyclists and even motor vehicles going the wrong way not to!
That's because at 5 years old, he probably hasn't hurt himself any worse than bumping his head or falling over and grazing his knee, and nor has he seen anyone else do so. He has little or no concept of pain or danger. But he can certainly understand how upset he'd feel if he lost the toy, and if it's a cuddly toy or similar possibly project feelings of fear of being lost on to it too.
only 3.2G of memory could be recognized by any process (not entirely MS's fault)
Not entirely MS's fault? Exactly the same problem exists with 32bit Linux distros.
If you have to run on Windows, Vista x64 is the "good" version.
I've been having a pretty good experience with (32bit) Windows Server 2008 actually, with all the optional "make it like Vista" stuff installed. I don't do video editing though, or have any need for more than the 2GB of RAM I currently have.
1) an auto-start AppleMobileDeviceService service 2) an auto-start iPodService service 3) an auto-start iTunesHelper application 4) Bonjour as an auto-start service 5) MobileMe
Additionally, it defaults to installing the AppleUpdate service, which - when it finds updates - defaults to installing Safari alongside the updates.
You know, that would've been an extremely high-end workstation just a couple of years ago.
That's as may be, but it pretty much matches the specs of the decidedly mid-end gaming machine I put together 2.5 years ago. I've not tried Vista on it, but Server 2008 with all the "make it look and work like Vista" stuff installed runs perfectly.
Sow what back? The post says that the ring was vapourised; while that won't have done the finger it was on any good, if it was fast enough it might not have been too badly damaged.
we like to imagine black holes as object that suck everything in, but that's only true of black holes that have star-level masses
Not really; the issue is that black holes have been depicted in popular culture as these massive engines of destruction, relentlessly sucking in anything that comes too close.
Which is true. However, what's often neglected is that "too close" varies according to the mass of the hole. If the Earth were to suddenly collapse into a black hole, then our satellites would not instantly be sucked to their doom (neglecting any effects due to the sudden contraction of the Earth itself, of course). They'd sit there happily experiencing exactly the same gravitational force as they always have. The acceleration due to gravity at 6400km from the centre of the hole would still be 9.8ms^-2.
Black holes have exactly the same gravitational field as a "normal" body with that much matter; the difference is that as they are super dense they are super small, and so the r^2 term in the gravitational equation can become very much smaller. Halve the distance, quadruple the force. The acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface is 9.8ms^-2; that's 6400km from the centre. If the Earth became a black hole and you were 800km away from the centre, the acceleration would be 7840ms^-2.
So the issue isn't so much that a tiny black hole has a weak gravitational field; near the event horizon it's just as strong as the field for a supermassive hole. The difference is that the event horizon is very, very much smaller.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes, because every problem can be solved faster by throwing more people at it! Why, if only we could convince 9 women to team up, they could have a baby in just 1 month!
Turn down the volume.
No shit. It never ceases to amaze me when I'm on the Tube on the way in to work and I can hear other people's music over the top of mine. Sure, I don't have mine particularly loud, but come on - don't these people realise the damage they must be doing to their hearing?
In most other industries, the patent system means that if I invent a nice mouse trap I can get royalties from the guy with the mouse trap factory a.k.a. the producer.
Or you can invent your own type of mousetrap, different to/better than that one in some way, and convince people to buy yours rather than theirs.
That's not possible with software patents as it is the concept of e.g. "storing user preferences in a database and retrieving them on subsequent visits" that is patented, not the actual implementation. They don't patent the implementation because they don't need to, that's covered by copyright.
Patenting software is essentially an attempt to extend copyright to cover all other implementations that would otherwise be non-infringing. That's why it's wrong.
It's an important difference - 404 means that they are transparently proxying your connections
And inspecting the packet contents looking for HTTP 404 error code returns, and either modifying the returned HTML to insert their own ads or else (and much, much simpler and more practicable) discarding the rest of the data stream and substituting their own.
Hijacking DNS errors is wrong; hijacking HTTP 404 returns would be Evil.
Yes it matters, because competition spurs progress. Just look at how IE stagnated until Firefox started to take market share.
A life without entertainment isn't worth living.
On-topic enought to tell here: My computer won't even boot with an iPod attached. Might be just the shuffle, but I think having my old mini connected is a no-no, too. Won't even go past the BIOS screen, it hangs before the pseudo memory check at POST.
I get exactly that behaviour on my machine with my iPod Mini connected (but not every time) - if it's connected the machine hangs during POST. If I disconnect it, POST continues.
Exactly - it's the driver that runs in the kernel, not the various (annoying) helper apps and services.
Yes, they do (it's one of the things I particularly dislike about iTunes), but just running as SYSTEM doesn't mean it runs in kernel space - in the same way as running as root doesn't make it part of the kernel on Linux.
So, it's MS's fault that an app released today crashes their year-old OS? Oh, they should have tested it, right?
Good, they'd be doing me a favour - I clearly wouldn't be a good personality fit. Yes, I drink - I'm 34 years old, and I can do what I damn well please in my spare time, thank you very much. As long as it doesn't impair my ability to work or bring the company into disrepute, it's none of their business what I do.
Quicktime doesn't annoy me as I never (ever) use it. I find it annoying that iTunes installs it whether I want it or not, and the systray task it installs is annoying until I kill it, but apart from that it doesn't bother me.
The things I mention may well be a geek thing as far as annoyance goes, but I am both a geek (a programmer) and an Apple customer (I actually own an iPod, and am considering one of the new iPod Nanos). Hardly a big spender it's true, but still a customer.
Claiming that the word "theory" degrades evolution's status
The only thing I can think you mean here is when the creationists point out that "evolution is just a theory", neglecting to mention that in science theory means something rather different to what it means in everyday language.
teaching religious beliefs alongside science would somehow destroy our poor children's brains
Personally I'm perfectly happy to see religious beliefs taught in school, in the appropriate lessons. That means teaching creationism in religious education lessons, preferably along with other religious creation stories. Teaching it in science classes is wrong however, as it most definitely is not science.
Until the politicians change the Daylight Saving Time rules on you, and you need to have your reporting system updated. Or, a year after deployment, a serious bug is found in the code.
In both of those cases though the system is not working fine - in the first because it no longer satisfies the requirements, and in the second because it never was in the first place, it just appeared to be.
I'm not arguing against patching when it is appropriate to do so, and would never argue against redundancy in critical systems - that's madness.
Programmer: The kind of person that looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
Damn right I look both ways before crossing a one-way street! I've been nearly mown down by enough cyclists and even motor vehicles going the wrong way not to!
That's because at 5 years old, he probably hasn't hurt himself any worse than bumping his head or falling over and grazing his knee, and nor has he seen anyone else do so. He has little or no concept of pain or danger. But he can certainly understand how upset he'd feel if he lost the toy, and if it's a cuddly toy or similar possibly project feelings of fear of being lost on to it too.
Reagan ate breakfast each morning. Therefore breakfast prevents nuclear war.
Not breakfast, coffee! I know I'm always much less likely to attempt to bring about fiery Armageddon after my morning coffee than before!
only 3.2G of memory could be recognized by any process (not entirely MS's fault)
Not entirely MS's fault? Exactly the same problem exists with 32bit Linux distros.
If you have to run on Windows, Vista x64 is the "good" version.
I've been having a pretty good experience with (32bit) Windows Server 2008 actually, with all the optional "make it like Vista" stuff installed. I don't do video editing though, or have any need for more than the 2GB of RAM I currently have.
iTunes is loaded with DRM
On Windows at least, it also installs:
1) an auto-start AppleMobileDeviceService service
2) an auto-start iPodService service
3) an auto-start iTunesHelper application
4) Bonjour as an auto-start service
5) MobileMe
Additionally, it defaults to installing the AppleUpdate service, which - when it finds updates - defaults to installing Safari alongside the updates.
Just to listen to music?
You know, that would've been an extremely high-end workstation just a couple of years ago.
That's as may be, but it pretty much matches the specs of the decidedly mid-end gaming machine I put together 2.5 years ago. I've not tried Vista on it, but Server 2008 with all the "make it look and work like Vista" stuff installed runs perfectly.
Sow what back? The post says that the ring was vapourised; while that won't have done the finger it was on any good, if it was fast enough it might not have been too badly damaged.
I'm sorry, but just because I'm *permitted* to do something doesn't mean that I would or should.
Hand someone a right (or rather, neglect to disallow them some power) and you most certainly can still blame them for exercising it.
we like to imagine black holes as object that suck everything in, but that's only true of black holes that have star-level masses
Not really; the issue is that black holes have been depicted in popular culture as these massive engines of destruction, relentlessly sucking in anything that comes too close.
Which is true. However, what's often neglected is that "too close" varies according to the mass of the hole. If the Earth were to suddenly collapse into a black hole, then our satellites would not instantly be sucked to their doom (neglecting any effects due to the sudden contraction of the Earth itself, of course). They'd sit there happily experiencing exactly the same gravitational force as they always have. The acceleration due to gravity at 6400km from the centre of the hole would still be 9.8ms^-2.
Black holes have exactly the same gravitational field as a "normal" body with that much matter; the difference is that as they are super dense they are super small, and so the r^2 term in the gravitational equation can become very much smaller. Halve the distance, quadruple the force. The acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface is 9.8ms^-2; that's 6400km from the centre. If the Earth became a black hole and you were 800km away from the centre, the acceleration would be 7840ms^-2.
So the issue isn't so much that a tiny black hole has a weak gravitational field; near the event horizon it's just as strong as the field for a supermassive hole. The difference is that the event horizon is very, very much smaller.
Vista runs on the NT kernel, which is roughly 15 years old.
Microsoft didn't so much replace the Win95 kernel as stop developing that OS line.
Is it really that big of a deal? Don't open a tab that's going to lock up your browser.
And how exactly do you know ahead of time what page is going to lock your browser up?