Most applications (productivity) seem well thought out and designed.
????
Itunes - 2/5 - A slow bloated shop application, that makes it near impossible to actually efficiently getting a variety of items onto your smart device. Even dragging and dropping takes forever, because iTunes can't properly do in the background, what should be done in the background.
Photos - 1/5 - The most worthless application available. Can't show original images, but only downscaled crap. You basically have to buy another application from the appstore, to view images on your smart device, but then you can no longer actually get the images onto it in an ordinary fashion as Itunes automatically make your images small and crappy when putting them on the device. Of course, it is all "in the best interest of the user".
Videos - 2.5/5 - Videos are listed in a single long structure. No hierarchy at all (at least not that I have been able to find). The player itself is pretty buggy with the tap to access the controls sometimes stopping to work, and some problems with skipping. And the skipping controls generally suck pretty bad. That it gets 2.5 is because if you actually get a compatible file onto your device and don't want to skip around much, it is actually usable. And one good feature is that it remembers your position in the video (and even backsteps a few seconds when turning off/on). Of course, making a file compatible is an art in itself.
Music - 3.5/5 - Actually usable as long as you design playlists on your computer. I have a few minor complaints, but nothing worth mentioning. I don't see what is especially great about it however. It feels like a relatively average application.
Weather - 2/5 - Can't even remember the last update. Not a problem for those having a phone device with constant internet connection, but it sucks for the ipod touch users. Same with a couple of the other applications that come with the device.
App Store - 2/5 - Are they actually trying to sell anything? Browsing the App store is painful with the crappy work it does of sorting applications. The iTunes Store isn't any better. Unless you know exactly what you are looking for, you shouldn't bother. And it is even worse if you don't live in a huge country, because Apple in all their wisdom (none) made the reviews country specific.
Safari - 3.5/5 - As with the Music application, Safari is actually working ok. I have issues with the behavior of the zoom and as usual, no control options at all, but otherwise it works fairly well.
I am a non-fanboy who impulse bought my ipod touch when my previous mp3 player broke. I needed something quickly, as I travel by bus daily, which is unbearable without a player. And with Apple having a pretty good reputation, I simply went with it. But I do feel like I bought into the rat race with the user unfriendly control freakiness.
The "drop dead date" for running out of address space keeps getting pushed out....
These are the archive.org history for the potaroo.net automated IPv4 exhaustion counter. The two dates are "Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion" and "Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion".
Given the nature of the Internet, and how long the defendant was known to be sharing, it's perfectly reasonable to allege that the works were shared with over 100 people each.
Insightful my ass. Given the nature of the Internet, unless something else can be proven, the only reasonable assumption is that he uploaded as much as he downloaded. That is the fundamental principle of P2P.
Yup. In fact, copyright in itself is self defeating as any increase in actual information produced is offset by the loss of actual copies of said information due to higher copying costs.
To be fair, that is not 100% true. If the extra information produced is of higher quality it can still be worth it. But that is pretty much the only situation where copyright can be motivated. However, in that case, I don't really see any evidence for copyright beyond 5 years, as quality information should have no problem earning back its money in that amount of time. And allowing non-quality information to profit from copyright laws is inefficient.
Why should the commercial copyright part be owned by private people in the first place? The right to be recognized as the creator is one thing. There shouldn't even be a time limit on that one. But the money part? Why is authorship treated so differently from any other type of work?
In that case, they should either work for a salary for a book investment company or run their own company (which again needs investment of some kind). That is how business usually works. Not being able to collect a steady salary is something any upstart entrepreneur without backing has to deal with. There is nothing special about authors there.
They put in a lot of work up front and their rewards come in over years, sometimes decades
You will find very few cases were you don't have have an 80-20 distribution with the 80% being in the first 5 years. Small enough percentage that we shouldn't worry about that, just like we don't worry about the companies who go under because they fail to make a profit in the first five years.
What, if your partner invests all their hours and money into long-term stocks, you don't get the earnings back from that because they died?
What if your partner dies after having spent all their money into their startup company? Shit happens. That is why we have social safety nets.
The problem I see there is one of risk/reward. If someone is required to expose themselves to a great degree of financial risk, then the rewards should also be there.
And this is the real difference between capitalism, socialism and communism. Economy is a positive-sum gambling game.
In capitalism, you let people gamble with their lives, and if they lose, you just let them rot in hell, while if they win you let them keep everything. In socialism, you let people gamble, and if they lose you soften the blow, perhaps preventing them from gambling again, but making sure that they are able to continue living a productive life as a worker. However, if you win, you don't get all of the reward. Instead you get some reward, enough to satisfy most people, for showing initiative, but it is limited to living a comfortable life, instead of living in excess. In communism you don't let people gamble and hence don't get any positive-sum rewards.
Of course, I haven't seen any real socialism movement in any western country for the last 30 years. If anyone disagrees, show me a single country where the wealth distribution deviation is less or equal to what it was 30 years ago.
I understand the concept (enchanted equipment grants bonuses to specific skills, etc), but most of that post wasn't even in English...
General terms:
PvE - Player vs Environment (i.e. Player vs computer controlled opponents). PvP - Player vs Player. PvP server - A server where players are free to attack other players at almost any time. Griefing - The act of causing grief to a player. For example, repeatedly killing said player using stronger characters. Ganking - Killing someone in an uneven/unfair fight.
Running dungeons - The action of defeating more difficult computer monsters together with a group of people in a closed of environment. Raids - Similar to dungeon, but with a larger amount of people involved. Boss - Powerful computer controlled character that deals large amounts of damage, has high amounts of health and generally is more difficult to defeat than other computer controlled characters.
Class - Distinct character type with a specific set of skills. DPS - Damage per Second. Also used to refer to the act of dealing out such damage. Melee - Close combat, the opposite of ranged combat. Tank - A character that is designed to recieve huge amounts of damage without dying and with skills to attract the enemy's attention.
Dailies - Missions/Quests that can be repeated on a daily basis for rewards.
World of Warcraft specific:
Icecrown - An outdoor area in the game World of Warcraft. Bear gear - Equipment that specifically support the Druid class, bear form skill. Usually involves equipment that raise health and provide good defenses. Tree gear - Equipment that specifically support the Druid class, tree form skill. Involves equipment that allows the Druid to better heal other players using his skills. Cat gear -.... Druid class, cat form skill. Involves equipment that allows the Druid to better deal damage. Moonkin gear -.... moonkin form skill. Equpipment that improves ranged magical combat skills. AV - Alterac Valley. One of the areas in World of Warcraft that is specifically designed for PvP combat. Arena - Small scale competitive PvP combat, usually involving organized teams.
Why not ogg theora as default? With handbrake's support a free and open video codec could finally come to the fore.
If they are removing avi as inferior and problematic even though there is lots of hardware support. Why would you think that they would include an output codec that don't have hardware support, is used by pretty much no one and produces inferior quality compared to h264?
but unless you're torrenting, what does your top speed really matter?
If you are torrenting, you care even less about speed. That is because if you use torrents, your internet speed is measured by the formula MIN(upload, download) while business/government interests that don't like citizens to communicate with each other use the formula MAX(upload,download).
Basically, someone using torrents is more interested in the balance between upload and download, while what is being pushed by massmedia is huge download with little to no upload capacity.
That assumes that software is fundamentally without value
Copies of software are fundamentally without value. That is why we have copyright laws in the first place.
Dev loses $20. That is $20 that he doesn't have to spend on latte's. Keep piling up these "Net loss to economy = $0"'s and Dev will be out of a job. Eventually, the whole industry is no longer viable. Where are the jobs going to come from now?
Most development moves towards a service based way of receiving payment (which is already the case). There is less development of generic applications, but as we don't need 200 clones of every software application, the damage is minimal. If a specific type of software doesn't exist, but there is a real demand for it, someone will find a way to make money on it.
Negative $459 million. Assuming that 10% of the pirated stuff is use by people who would choose to go without if they couldn't pirate and use value equals the price. And that doesn't include the lower prices that competition from piracy always seem to bring, which increases the number of potential users among those who don't pirate.
Of course, I have made bullshit assumptions, but so did the article/story title, and my assumptions aren't really that far fetched. I could even be underestimating by a fair bit.
If you really want to talk about losses, I have spent quite a few hours making up for the deficiencies of the Iphone/Itouch lock down. Enough time that I am seriously regretting trying out an Apple product, even this once. Anyone who claims that Apple products are user friendly, seriously have no idea what they are talking about. When you have to spend hours working around the crippled photo application that Apple provides, or dealing with the sensitive video format (with the Itunes application having only the most basic converter that only works with very few actual files), or dealing with the crappy Itunes syncing interface (which is crappy because everything is built around the store). Or for that matter, not getting an application ported to the platform because it doesn't allow for Java.
Apple is idiot friendly, but that is it. That means that even people without brains can use it without problem for doing a few common tasks. But if you actually have more brain capacity than that, and can think of stuff that falls outside of those few tasks, Apple only gets in the way with their control-freak ideal.
Except that if you read between the lines, this is all a subtle stab at the 2 year estimate. "A couple of years ago" we were slated to run out of addresses by 2010. Now they're estimating 2 more years.
It has? This is where the internet wayback machine is so nice
2007-01-25: Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 24-Jul-2011 2008-01-29: Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 02-Jun-2011 Now: Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 30-Sep-2011
As these are automated momentary estimations, they are fluctuating all the time, depending on current allocation rates which seems to depend on time of year. Generally, the numbers are the best during the winter with exhaustion dates being somewhat further away, around the midlde or end of 2011, while summer estimations move towards the earlier 2011 or even 2010. I don't see any evidence about your assertion that the exhaustion estimation date has been getting much further away.
Raising taxes becomes theft beyond a point, there's no point in claiming otherwise. And if stealing by the state becomes necessary, we will also need a new Iron Curtain, because all the productive members of society will just rush for the exit once you press them. And that is forced labor and also pure irony.
Yeah. Those 50s and 60s must have been hell on earth in the US. 90% top margin taxes. What were they thinking.
95% taxes - The State lets you have only 5% of your income. If you really advocate that kind of wealth redistribution, be honest and call it Socialism, because it is.
95% top margin taxes. Not 95% taxes. A very important difference. The top bracket is there specifically to keep the winners of society from consuming all the profits they could make by being capital owners, and instead force them to invest it back into the ventures that they have created/improved, and into all the workers who helped those ventures succeed. This allows for longer term prosperity. And most important, the top margin should be set high enough that pure economical gain still remains a stronger motivator, but low enough that the rich don't bleed society dry.
And if you want to call that Socialism, go ahead. I don't mind. But it really isn't. It is just a sanity check that keeps the wealth distribution in check, lessening credit bubbles, and generally creating a better working market.
Unfortunately, the terrorists are indeed doing spectactularly well
Indeed. But just who are conducting terrorism. Remember, terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. Now, ask yourself, who are doing the coercion? It is an excellent idea really. Don't actually create the terror yourself. Some lunatic is bound to do it anyway. Just systematically exploit the terror acts as they occur instead. It is by far the most effective kind of terrorism available at the moment.
This is a selection problem. Applicants to your company are not a randomly selected sample. Those who are applying to your company are mostly those who hasn't managed to get employed by someone else. And such a sample therefore says little about the programmer population as a whole.
However of those, at least around D.C., only the drunk driver has a specific set of laws that may well ruin their life,
That is because the percentage of fatal accidents that involves drugs is high enough to raise anyones eyebrow. 25 years ago 60% of all fatalities in car accidents were related to drunken driving. Now we are down to a bit over one third. And considering that most people don't drive drunk most of the time, those numbers are incredibly telling.
Your grandmother or soccer-mom simply don't stand a chance against the drunk fuckers when it comes to endangering lifes.
Of course I can't. As IsoHunt happens to be a mainstream channel that indexes other mainstream channels such as the pirate bay and Mininova. So if it is available on Isohunt, it is probably directly available on another mainstream site. Atleast, that is if you define mainstream as what people actually use. Of course, there are lots of people who wishes that torrent sites weren't mainstream. But wishing doesn't make it true.
Oh, and I actually did have my completely legal collection of video go lectures deleted from Mininova during the great delete. And I wasn't distributing it from anywhere else, so I happens to be a recent victim of the MAFIAA tactics.
You posted only once, I don't see why you should get credit in perpetuity for work you performed once
Because while people in general don't despise people who share, they do despise people who lie. And claiming credit for something you haven't created is simply lying.
Of course, you can always simply say that someone else wrote it, without naming who. That way you won't be looked down upon. However, linking to the original, if you know where it is, is proper manner in that it makes it easier for anyone who wants to find the source, to do so. Information sharing is about making things easier and better for everyone. Intentionally obfuscating the source is bad behavior.
They haven't committed any other crime than driving under the influence
Driving is not about being able to handle ordinary daily things. It is about being able to handle the unexpected. And alcohol prevents people from being able to handle situations that a normal driver would be able to handle. Btw, the same holds true for driving while tired or having a mobile phone conversation while driving.
The accident numbers and seriousness of the accidents goes way up when you are doing any of the above things. Drugs being the worst by far. So society has decided that simply driving while under influence of drugs is a a serious crime, equivalent to gambling with someone else's life. And it is punished accordingly.
Of course, in this article, they are talking about publishing people simply charged with driving under influence. And that is wrong as it goes against due process of the law.
Google's algorithm puts trust in domains that other people link to.
Exactly. And that is the flaw in the algorithm. You can't trust the whole site just because some of the pages are well linked to. Links to a certain page, only indicate that the specific pages are interesting and/or relevant, and only concerning the subject linked about.
This flaw has become more and more noticeable with Google over the years. You often notice pages from more popular sites popping up, even though they have nothing relevant or new to add about a specific search query.
hinged on providing a retirement fund for composers.
Which of course is pure bullshit as composers should pension save like all other workers. Not to mention, that the amount of artists that could potentially live on sales of old material are so few (and have had so high incomes previously in life) that it simply doesn't matter.
And what does System.IO.DriveInfo have to do with the Common Language Interface? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The grandparent was completely correct in his assertion regarding that.
Yes, its almost 50% -- if you are, e.g., relating it to the nearest 25%. (Rounding it to the nearest 25% it would be just plain 50%, not "almost 50%".)
Bad choice of numbers. Using the numbers in the article, it is only 57.5% on the way between 25 and 50. Calling that almost is a redefinition of the word almost. Of course, if you instead use the interval 0 to 50, you can bring that up to 79% which could be called almost. But then you have to question the sanity of anyone using a percentage scale consisting of only three values (0,50,100).
But maybe we are just working our way towards the newspeak percentage scale with only two values.
Slashdot Mirror
Most applications (productivity) seem well thought out and designed.
????
Itunes - 2/5 - A slow bloated shop application, that makes it near impossible to actually efficiently getting a variety of items onto your smart device. Even dragging and dropping takes forever, because iTunes can't properly do in the background, what should be done in the background.
Photos - 1/5 - The most worthless application available. Can't show original images, but only downscaled crap. You basically have to buy another application from the appstore, to view images on your smart device, but then you can no longer actually get the images onto it in an ordinary fashion as Itunes automatically make your images small and crappy when putting them on the device. Of course, it is all "in the best interest of the user".
Videos - 2.5/5 - Videos are listed in a single long structure. No hierarchy at all (at least not that I have been able to find). The player itself is pretty buggy with the tap to access the controls sometimes stopping to work, and some problems with skipping. And the skipping controls generally suck pretty bad. That it gets 2.5 is because if you actually get a compatible file onto your device and don't want to skip around much, it is actually usable. And one good feature is that it remembers your position in the video (and even backsteps a few seconds when turning off/on). Of course, making a file compatible is an art in itself.
Music - 3.5/5 - Actually usable as long as you design playlists on your computer. I have a few minor complaints, but nothing worth mentioning. I don't see what is especially great about it however. It feels like a relatively average application.
Weather - 2/5 - Can't even remember the last update. Not a problem for those having a phone device with constant internet connection, but it sucks for the ipod touch users. Same with a couple of the other applications that come with the device.
App Store - 2/5 - Are they actually trying to sell anything? Browsing the App store is painful with the crappy work it does of sorting applications. The iTunes Store isn't any better. Unless you know exactly what you are looking for, you shouldn't bother. And it is even worse if you don't live in a huge country, because Apple in all their wisdom (none) made the reviews country specific.
Safari - 3.5/5 - As with the Music application, Safari is actually working ok. I have issues with the behavior of the zoom and as usual, no control options at all, but otherwise it works fairly well.
I am a non-fanboy who impulse bought my ipod touch when my previous mp3 player broke. I needed something quickly, as I travel by bus daily, which is unbearable without a player. And with Apple having a pretty good reputation, I simply went with it. But I do feel like I bought into the rat race with the user unfriendly control freakiness.
The "drop dead date" for running out of address space keeps getting pushed out....
These are the archive.org history for the potaroo.net automated IPv4 exhaustion counter. The two dates are "Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion" and "Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion".
2006-08-23 : 2011-03-30 , 2012-07-14
2007-01-25 : 2011-07-24, 2012-07-19
2007-08-27 : 2011-06-10, 2012-03-19
2008-01-29 : 2011-06-02, 2012-08-05
2008-07-30 : 2011-02-01, 2011-12-25
2010-01-25 : 2011-09-09, 2012-09-01
I can't seem to find this so called "pushing out" that you are talking about.
Given the nature of the Internet, and how long the defendant was known to be sharing, it's perfectly reasonable to allege that the works were shared with over 100 people each.
Insightful my ass. Given the nature of the Internet, unless something else can be proven, the only reasonable assumption is that he uploaded as much as he downloaded. That is the fundamental principle of P2P.
Yup. In fact, copyright in itself is self defeating as any increase in actual information produced is offset by the loss of actual copies of said information due to higher copying costs.
To be fair, that is not 100% true. If the extra information produced is of higher quality it can still be worth it. But that is pretty much the only situation where copyright can be motivated. However, in that case, I don't really see any evidence for copyright beyond 5 years, as quality information should have no problem earning back its money in that amount of time. And allowing non-quality information to profit from copyright laws is inefficient.
Why should the commercial copyright part be owned by private people in the first place? The right to be recognized as the creator is one thing. There shouldn't even be a time limit on that one. But the money part? Why is authorship treated so differently from any other type of work?
An author is more like a long-term investor.
In that case, they should either work for a salary for a book investment company or run their own company (which again needs investment of some kind). That is how business usually works. Not being able to collect a steady salary is something any upstart entrepreneur without backing has to deal with. There is nothing special about authors there.
They put in a lot of work up front and their rewards come in over years, sometimes decades
You will find very few cases were you don't have have an 80-20 distribution with the 80% being in the first 5 years. Small enough percentage that we shouldn't worry about that, just like we don't worry about the companies who go under because they fail to make a profit in the first five years.
What, if your partner invests all their hours and money into long-term stocks, you don't get the earnings back from that because they died?
What if your partner dies after having spent all their money into their startup company? Shit happens. That is why we have social safety nets.
The problem I see there is one of risk/reward. If someone is required to expose themselves to a great degree of financial risk, then the rewards should also be there.
And this is the real difference between capitalism, socialism and communism. Economy is a positive-sum gambling game.
In capitalism, you let people gamble with their lives, and if they lose, you just let them rot in hell, while if they win you let them keep everything. In socialism, you let people gamble, and if they lose you soften the blow, perhaps preventing them from gambling again, but making sure that they are able to continue living a productive life as a worker. However, if you win, you don't get all of the reward. Instead you get some reward, enough to satisfy most people, for showing initiative, but it is limited to living a comfortable life, instead of living in excess. In communism you don't let people gamble and hence don't get any positive-sum rewards.
Of course, I haven't seen any real socialism movement in any western country for the last 30 years. If anyone disagrees, show me a single country where the wealth distribution deviation is less or equal to what it was 30 years ago.
I understand the concept (enchanted equipment grants bonuses to specific skills, etc), but most of that post wasn't even in English...
General terms:
PvE - Player vs Environment (i.e. Player vs computer controlled opponents).
PvP - Player vs Player.
PvP server - A server where players are free to attack other players at almost any time.
Griefing - The act of causing grief to a player. For example, repeatedly killing said player using stronger characters.
Ganking - Killing someone in an uneven/unfair fight.
Running dungeons - The action of defeating more difficult computer monsters together with a group of people in a closed of environment.
Raids - Similar to dungeon, but with a larger amount of people involved.
Boss - Powerful computer controlled character that deals large amounts of damage, has high amounts of health and generally is more difficult to defeat than other computer controlled characters.
Class - Distinct character type with a specific set of skills.
DPS - Damage per Second. Also used to refer to the act of dealing out such damage.
Melee - Close combat, the opposite of ranged combat.
Tank - A character that is designed to recieve huge amounts of damage without dying and with skills to attract the enemy's attention.
Dailies - Missions/Quests that can be repeated on a daily basis for rewards.
World of Warcraft specific:
Icecrown - An outdoor area in the game World of Warcraft. .... Druid class, cat form skill. Involves equipment that allows the Druid to better deal damage. .... moonkin form skill. Equpipment that improves ranged magical combat skills.
Bear gear - Equipment that specifically support the Druid class, bear form skill. Usually involves equipment that raise health and provide good defenses.
Tree gear - Equipment that specifically support the Druid class, tree form skill. Involves equipment that allows the Druid to better heal other players using his skills.
Cat gear -
Moonkin gear -
AV - Alterac Valley. One of the areas in World of Warcraft that is specifically designed for PvP combat.
Arena - Small scale competitive PvP combat, usually involving organized teams.
Why not ogg theora as default? With handbrake's support a free and open video codec could finally come to the fore.
If they are removing avi as inferior and problematic even though there is lots of hardware support. Why would you think that they would include an output codec that don't have hardware support, is used by pretty much no one and produces inferior quality compared to h264?
No it doesn't. Majority means the highest percentage
Actually, no. That would be a plurality. A majority is a subset of a group that is more than half the group.
but unless you're torrenting, what does your top speed really matter?
If you are torrenting, you care even less about speed. That is because if you use torrents, your internet speed is measured by the formula MIN(upload, download) while business/government interests that don't like citizens to communicate with each other use the formula MAX(upload,download).
Basically, someone using torrents is more interested in the balance between upload and download, while what is being pushed by massmedia is huge download with little to no upload capacity.
That assumes that software is fundamentally without value
Copies of software are fundamentally without value. That is why we have copyright laws in the first place.
Dev loses $20. That is $20 that he doesn't have to spend on latte's. Keep piling up these "Net loss to economy = $0"'s and Dev will be out of a job. Eventually, the whole industry is no longer viable. Where are the jobs going to come from now?
Most development moves towards a service based way of receiving payment (which is already the case). There is less development of generic applications, but as we don't need 200 clones of every software application, the damage is minimal. If a specific type of software doesn't exist, but there is a real demand for it, someone will find a way to make money on it.
Negative $459 million. Assuming that 10% of the pirated stuff is use by people who would choose to go without if they couldn't pirate and use value equals the price. And that doesn't include the lower prices that competition from piracy always seem to bring, which increases the number of potential users among those who don't pirate.
Of course, I have made bullshit assumptions, but so did the article/story title, and my assumptions aren't really that far fetched. I could even be underestimating by a fair bit.
If you really want to talk about losses, I have spent quite a few hours making up for the deficiencies of the Iphone/Itouch lock down. Enough time that I am seriously regretting trying out an Apple product, even this once. Anyone who claims that Apple products are user friendly, seriously have no idea what they are talking about. When you have to spend hours working around the crippled photo application that Apple provides, or dealing with the sensitive video format (with the Itunes application having only the most basic converter that only works with very few actual files), or dealing with the crappy Itunes syncing interface (which is crappy because everything is built around the store). Or for that matter, not getting an application ported to the platform because it doesn't allow for Java.
Apple is idiot friendly, but that is it. That means that even people without brains can use it without problem for doing a few common tasks. But if you actually have more brain capacity than that, and can think of stuff that falls outside of those few tasks, Apple only gets in the way with their control-freak ideal.
Except that if you read between the lines, this is all a subtle stab at the 2 year estimate. "A couple of years ago" we were slated to run out of addresses by 2010. Now they're estimating 2 more years.
It has? This is where the internet wayback machine is so nice
2007-01-25: Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 24-Jul-2011
2008-01-29: Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 02-Jun-2011
Now: Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 30-Sep-2011
As these are automated momentary estimations, they are fluctuating all the time, depending on current allocation rates which seems to depend on time of year. Generally, the numbers are the best during the winter with exhaustion dates being somewhat further away, around the midlde or end of 2011, while summer estimations move towards the earlier 2011 or even 2010. I don't see any evidence about your assertion that the exhaustion estimation date has been getting much further away.
Raising taxes becomes theft beyond a point, there's no point in claiming otherwise. And if stealing by the state becomes necessary, we will also need a new Iron Curtain, because all the productive members of society will just rush for the exit once you press them. And that is forced labor and also pure irony.
Yeah. Those 50s and 60s must have been hell on earth in the US. 90% top margin taxes. What were they thinking.
95% taxes - The State lets you have only 5% of your income. If you really advocate that kind of wealth redistribution, be honest and call it Socialism, because it is.
95% top margin taxes. Not 95% taxes. A very important difference. The top bracket is there specifically to keep the winners of society from consuming all the profits they could make by being capital owners, and instead force them to invest it back into the ventures that they have created/improved, and into all the workers who helped those ventures succeed. This allows for longer term prosperity. And most important, the top margin should be set high enough that pure economical gain still remains a stronger motivator, but low enough that the rich don't bleed society dry.
And if you want to call that Socialism, go ahead. I don't mind. But it really isn't. It is just a sanity check that keeps the wealth distribution in check, lessening credit bubbles, and generally creating a better working market.
Unfortunately, the terrorists are indeed doing spectactularly well
Indeed. But just who are conducting terrorism. Remember, terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. Now, ask yourself, who are doing the coercion? It is an excellent idea really. Don't actually create the terror yourself. Some lunatic is bound to do it anyway. Just systematically exploit the terror acts as they occur instead. It is by far the most effective kind of terrorism available at the moment.
for applicants to my company
This is a selection problem. Applicants to your company are not a randomly selected sample. Those who are applying to your company are mostly those who hasn't managed to get employed by someone else. And such a sample therefore says little about the programmer population as a whole.
However of those, at least around D.C., only the drunk driver has a specific set of laws that may well ruin their life,
That is because the percentage of fatal accidents that involves drugs is high enough to raise anyones eyebrow. 25 years ago 60% of all fatalities in car accidents were related to drunken driving. Now we are down to a bit over one third. And considering that most people don't drive drunk most of the time, those numbers are incredibly telling.
Your grandmother or soccer-mom simply don't stand a chance against the drunk fuckers when it comes to endangering lifes.
Of course I can't. As IsoHunt happens to be a mainstream channel that indexes other mainstream channels such as the pirate bay and Mininova. So if it is available on Isohunt, it is probably directly available on another mainstream site. Atleast, that is if you define mainstream as what people actually use. Of course, there are lots of people who wishes that torrent sites weren't mainstream. But wishing doesn't make it true.
Oh, and I actually did have my completely legal collection of video go lectures deleted from Mininova during the great delete. And I wasn't distributing it from anywhere else, so I happens to be a recent victim of the MAFIAA tactics.
Why?
You posted only once, I don't see why you should get credit in perpetuity for work you performed once
Because while people in general don't despise people who share, they do despise people who lie. And claiming credit for something you haven't created is simply lying.
Of course, you can always simply say that someone else wrote it, without naming who. That way you won't be looked down upon. However, linking to the original, if you know where it is, is proper manner in that it makes it easier for anyone who wants to find the source, to do so. Information sharing is about making things easier and better for everyone. Intentionally obfuscating the source is bad behavior.
They haven't committed any other crime than driving under the influence
Driving is not about being able to handle ordinary daily things. It is about being able to handle the unexpected. And alcohol prevents people from being able to handle situations that a normal driver would be able to handle. Btw, the same holds true for driving while tired or having a mobile phone conversation while driving.
The accident numbers and seriousness of the accidents goes way up when you are doing any of the above things. Drugs being the worst by far. So society has decided that simply driving while under influence of drugs is a a serious crime, equivalent to gambling with someone else's life. And it is punished accordingly.
Of course, in this article, they are talking about publishing people simply charged with driving under influence. And that is wrong as it goes against due process of the law.
Google's algorithm puts trust in domains that other people link to.
Exactly. And that is the flaw in the algorithm. You can't trust the whole site just because some of the pages are well linked to. Links to a certain page, only indicate that the specific pages are interesting and/or relevant, and only concerning the subject linked about.
This flaw has become more and more noticeable with Google over the years. You often notice pages from more popular sites popping up, even though they have nothing relevant or new to add about a specific search query.
hinged on providing a retirement fund for composers.
Which of course is pure bullshit as composers should pension save like all other workers. Not to mention, that the amount of artists that could potentially live on sales of old material are so few (and have had so high incomes previously in life) that it simply doesn't matter.
And what does System.IO.DriveInfo have to do with the Common Language Interface? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The grandparent was completely correct in his assertion regarding that.
Yes, its almost 50% -- if you are, e.g., relating it to the nearest 25%. (Rounding it to the nearest 25% it would be just plain 50%, not "almost 50%".)
Bad choice of numbers. Using the numbers in the article, it is only 57.5% on the way between 25 and 50. Calling that almost is a redefinition of the word almost. Of course, if you instead use the interval 0 to 50, you can bring that up to 79% which could be called almost. But then you have to question the sanity of anyone using a percentage scale consisting of only three values (0,50,100).
But maybe we are just working our way towards the newspeak percentage scale with only two values.