With signal processing. Dolby and innumerable others have been doing it for decades.
There are two schools of thought on audio reproduction:
1) We want to reproduce the experience (concert, studio performance, etc) as faithfully as possible. Therefore we will streamline the singal path, get the cleanest headphones we can find (or speakers). To someone of this school of thought, accuracy is better and distortion is bad. To this person, an MP3 can never sound better than a CD, because "better" means more accurate.
2) The other school wants to warm up, process, or otherwise muck with the sound, to make the original signal sound more pleasing to the ear. This is why you'll find a lot of "processing modes" in low and mid-grade consumer amps, soundcards like this, and people still buying tube amps. To these people, something sounding "better" does not mean more accurate... it means "I like this more".
Personally, I find that my tastes make them the same. I don't like the "enhanced" sound I get from the processing effects in most recievers. To each his own, though. Enjoy.
Perhaps it's just me, but the company name "Sparkle" doesn't exactly inspire confidence in a PSU. It's sort of like naming a boat company "Leaky!" or an airline "Fireball Express!".
I don't think a spell-checking mechanism would help. Usually a spell checker will suggest a similar word to the given text, but will not always choose the intended word. The spelling on Slashdot is so bad that no spell checker would guess the right word the majority of the time. It takes the comprehension skill of the human brain, and only the human brain, to decipher a typical Slashdot post. Introducing a spell checker would cause the posts to be falsely correct. They'd contain correct spelling, but entirely the wrong words. Every post would read like a Mad Lib:
BGH is bed. Network determines it. You didn't weed to be a karma to predicate *BGH's fastidiousness....
and so on.
It could be entertianing for a while, but would get old quickly.
But we are actually still coming out of the last ice age, so we may just be egotistical to think that we have an effect on the planet's climate.
Argeed that correlation does not imply causation, but I don't think it's egotistical to think that we can have an impact on the global climate at all. We do - all the time. Imagine you're on Easter Island and you start noticing that there are fewer and fewer trees. Is it egotistical to think that maybe the fact that you're cutting them down might be causing the deforestation?
We know the mechanism by which global warming occurs, and we know that that mechanism is happening in small portions, multiplied by billions, all over the globe. A small effect, multipled by billions, can be really big. What's egotistical about that?
The question is not whether the mechanism by which global warming happens can occur; it can and is. The question is whether or not those effects appear as noise when we measure the global climate, or to what degree they might be involved in the percieved temperature shifts. We're not going to know that until it's too late.
So yes, the majority of the warming could indeed be due to a natural cycle. But given that we can and do affect the global climate, and we know that the planet is warming, and that warming is BAD, why wouldn't we do what's in our power to at least elimate our contribution to the problem?
ID/creationism does require a base assumption in a higher power. Beyond that, the rest is science based. Find that hard to believe? Probably because you've never bothered to look into the science of it - ie www.creationscience.com
I think what bothers scientists about creationism is that it requires the notion of a "miracle". If you start using miracles to explain things, you've left the realm of science and entered religion. Science is concerned with HOW things happen, and though "God did it" might be a correct explanation to some event, it is inherently unprovable and unscientific, therefore it has no place in a science course.
It is important to leave religion out of science for these reasons. You can explain an earthquake by saying "God did it", but does that help save lives by helping to predict said earthquakes? No. Tectonic plate theory does. So why does God give us earthquakes anyway? Do you want your child's 8th grade science teacher explaining that one to him? I didn't think so.
Ultimately religious folks need to understand that science is not about debasing religion. It's about understanding the physical world through physical means. If you want to believe in the supernatural, that's what religions are for. Send your kid to school to learn about science, and to sunday school to learn about God. Why is that so hard for people to understand these days?
The only time when I can see this being useful to the Government is if I'm doing something wrong. You know, harassing my ex, threatening the President, and that junk.
So, in your view, privacy is unimportant unless you have something to hide? In that same vein, if you want privacy, are you automatically a criminal?
Let's say the government wants to put a chip in your car that tracks your movements ("to fight terrrorism"), Do you have anything to hide then? Perhaps you're going to terrorist school... shouldn't the cops know about that? Why not place the chip directly in your arm just to be safe? Why not, then have everyone get permission from the government to move around the country? If they have nothing to hide, why should it be trouble to ask for permission? Why should people protest the actions of the government if they love their country? Perhaps they are criminals too.
The invasion of privacy is something we must always fight, because it's a slippery slope, and we will never get back what we once had. The loss of privacy means the death of democracy.
Cattle will never go extinct as long as they produce the tasty meat we so love and crave, and as long as people are allowed to own cattle and exploit them.
Wow. That's quite a screwed up way of looking at it. The animal that pre-dated the doestication of the cow was the Aurochs. That animal is extinct by the hand of Man. Now, all we have are the decendants of those animals that we specifically bred for their meat quality and milk quality. We have not preserved the animal in its original state, we have changed it significantly to suit us.
Ownership does not necessarily promote conservation, it promotes change; just as the free market promotes change. Conservation and the free market are sometimes at odds, due to this fundamentally different view. That's why the Sierra club and the Republican party find themselves at odds a great deal of the time.
Nuclear (fission) is a fossil fuel too. As far as I know, there's only a few hundred year's worth of Uranium to mine, and then we're in exactly the same position again.
fossil fuel
n : fuel consisting of the remains of organisms preserved in
rocks in the earth's crust with high carbon and hydrogen
content
Uranium isn't a fossil fuel. As it is mined, it is an ore.
You're correct that someday we will run out of Uranium as well, but hopefully by that time we'll have a few working fusion plants, and can build on that technology to serve our energy needs.
Unfortunately in current US law, the mere circumvention of a "copy protection" mechanism by the end user is illegal, whether your doing so violates ordinary copyright or not. There are exceptions made for libraries and research institutions, but not for ordinary end users.
This "well thought out" piece of legislation is called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Out of curiosity, how long had it been since you rented the movie that resulted in this particular late fee? You said it had been a while- was it maybe long enough for Blockbuster to think that they had already lost you as a customer?
I owed a one or two day late fee. I think it was about $5. After incurring the penalty, I had not rented movies at BB for about a month, but I did intend to rent there again. I knew I owed them a few dollars, but given the customary practice of paying late fees upon the next rental, I was surprised that they would send a collection agency after me for that, without even calling me first.
So yes, I'm sure that the fine print of the contract somewhere stated "no matter how small the late fee, we will refer you to a collection agency for said monies if we don't get it in a month", but I was still expecting the customary treatment. This clause eluded my attention.
So yes, I paid them, and no, I won't go there again. I prefer the aforementioned customary practice, which I can get from other vendors.
You should have been told when you rented that there are penalties for returning late. Blockbuster is not being "greedy" by expecting you to conform to contract terms.
If you returned the movie on time, their charge is fraudulent (like Wired's). If you were late, suck it up and pay, or let them tarnish your credit.
You are not legally entitled to screw corporations just because they want to screw you.
There was a long standing precedent in the business that established that late fees for movies that had been returned were not collected until the next rental. This precedent had been in place for years, all over the country. Blockbuster decided to deviate from this practice without calling special attention to it, just so they could get a few more cents here and there in "time value of money". This may not be against the law, but I would call it unethical, or at the least, extremely poor customer service.
They lost my business over this issue too. Yes I know they changed this policy eventually, but I'm still not giving them my business again.
I may not be legally entitled to screw corporations that have poor customer service, but I don't have to patronize them either, and I am certainly within my rights to suggest that others shouldn't patronize them either.
Since most hardware manufacturers do not make drivers for Linux, don't you think it's a bit unreasonable for Linux to make drivers for every hardware combination imaginable? Is it that unreasonable to ask the user to buy hardware where Linux drivers exist? I don't think so.
If you want a good Linux workstation, you should buy your hardware with Linux in mind. That's the way it always has been, and always will be, because as long as users buy random hardware first, and then expect Linux support, hardware vendors will have no incentive to support Linux. Linux support has to be a part of the hardware purchase decision.
It's not immoral... just like switching teams mid-season in the major leagues isn't immoral either. You're not killing anyone, but you're not batting for the home team anymore.
Why do people in Europe and US deserve the jobs more than people in India?
They don't. However, the US ought to try to keep desirable US jobs in the US. India should do the same for their jobs.
How do these reactions to off-shoring fit into our new global economy?
So there are no restrictions on free trade anywhere in the world? Please.
I'm not saying that offshoring needs to be legally restricted... I will say, however, that companies need to take the long view of what they're really doing, and determine if it will really benefit their stockholders long term.
Try the new Seagate Barracuda (sp?). After I swapped out my cooling systems for a sane noise level, I could hear my hard drives. After swapping out the hard drives for the new Seagates, I hear virtually nothing.
Man is both a part of nature, and not a part. We have developed beyond the confines of nature.
I woudn't put it that way exactly. We are a part of nature. The only difference is that we've been fruitful and become the dominant species on the planet. Since we are the dominant species, and also have consiousness, we have the capability to make decisions that will directly impact the course of life on the earth. To deny that the human race can't impact the environment is completely silly. We can, will, and do, impact the environment with everything we do. Even a bear (or a human) taking a crap in the woods impacts the environment. As the dominant species, and with the level of technology at our disposal, we can multiply our effect on the environment by an order of magnitude.
Wielding this power gives us a choice: We can choose to keep the planet nice, or we can choose to turn it into a giant garbage dump. If we choose the latter, we may ultimately destroy ourselves. Either way, life on earth will continue... but it may take millions of years after the human race is extinct to reach the level of biodiversity that we have today. We are a part of the planet's future, whether we crap it up or not.
>What about platforms where Sun does not provide a JVM?
Not to be antagonistic, but what exactly are the platforms for which no JVM is available? Undoubtedly such platforms exist, but are they widely used? It might help to understand the scope of the problem.
This is urban legend, but a very applicable story, so posting it anyway:)
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."
In the end, defining God recursively makes about as much sense as having one God which just happened to be there, which makes about as much sense as the world coming into being on its own (none at all on all counts). We are a paradox. I hereby call for everyone to vanish immediately, because whether or not there is a God, we cannot exist.
Well structured and well written code is obviously more important than having comments. Allow me to give an example. I once ran across a single method that was 10 pages long! The variable names were all completely unhelpful, and the code itself barely worked. It was clearly written by someone that didn't know how to program. It had some comments, but I still couldn't understand what was going on. No amount of commenting would be able to help something so awful.
Contrast that with well structured code, wherein the methods are relatively small, the methods and variables are well named, and you can have a usable, maintainable program with no comments at all. Comments are nice for the sections where what's happening isn't obvious, but if you need to sit down and comment every line of code you write in order for someone else to understand it, you're writing some very bad code.
Wow, you really don't get much out of your IDEs, do you?
I'd follow up that question with another one... you haven't ever used vi and gcc to produce a C program either, have you?
An IDE provides a UI over the compiler, debugger, and source control system, and an integrated editor with a few wizards. That's pretty much it. If all that sucks, then the IDE sucks.... how could it not?
Personally I an IDE all the time, and I find it quite useful, but I don't pretend that it's anything more than a nice UI over other components.
JBuilder is terrible because you didn't like the UI? I can understand if you didn't "like" it because of the UI, or in your case a few specific things in the UI, but to rate it as terrible is an overstatement.
All an IDE is, effectively, is a UI, so perhaps it is appropriate to say that if the the UI is crap, the IDE is also crap.
Unlike patents on physical inventions, this is not unlikely...
I'm not so sure that physical inventions are that much different from software. If you take something as complex as say, a TV... yes, it is unlikely that someone would independently come up with that. The TV, however, is not patented. Curving the glass in a certian way to better represent the image, however, might be. That curvature of the glass may or may not be obvious, but it certainly isn't unreasonable that someone else might think of the same thing.
Physical patents, like software patents, are sometimes earth shattering, but usually are not.
That's not to say that the patent system doesn't need reform (it does) but I don't think the reform should only apply to software patents, but to all patents.
Man, if there is one thing I learned from my hobby of swordfighting, it's that nothing, but nothing, can get a pint of your best friend's blood out of a white talbard. Nothing, that is, except fire. The same fire you burn all the other incriminating evidence in.
somebody help... Should this be modded +1 funny, +2 scary, or +5 Hannibal Lechter?
but is there a form of open source license that prohibits forking?
Prohibiting forking is against the spirit of the GPL. Part of the beauty of open source is that you CAN fork a project to give it your unique features... but you have to allow access to your changes to GPL code to the original author, so they can incoroporate them if they like them. Sometimes what begins as a fork overtakes the original project. This is what makes open source projects greater than the individual that started them. I for one, would not contribute to an "open source" project that prohibited forking. The owner/maintainer could just stop development and the project would be dead, nullifying your contributions.
Those who currenetly use grid power for the road are short changing society, because they are not paying for road maintence
No. The people using the electrical grid to power their vehicles are doing a large amount of social good. The more electric vehicle drivers there are, the more demand for them there is, the more research goes in to them, and eventually we aren't dependant on middle east oil.
Which is worse:
1) The eventual demise of western society due to oil dependance and the drying up of the arabian oil fields
-or-
2) Congress has to adjust its tax policy because gas tax revenues are no longer coming in in the same proportions, as they do EVERY YEAR.
Here's what I don't get... It's congress' job to adjust the tax policies when necessary. I don't see why that's so hard on them, having to work a couple of hours.
Slashdot Mirror
With signal processing. Dolby and innumerable others have been doing it for decades.
There are two schools of thought on audio reproduction:
1) We want to reproduce the experience (concert, studio performance, etc) as faithfully as possible. Therefore we will streamline the singal path, get the cleanest headphones we can find (or speakers). To someone of this school of thought, accuracy is better and distortion is bad. To this person, an MP3 can never sound better than a CD, because "better" means more accurate.
2) The other school wants to warm up, process, or otherwise muck with the sound, to make the original signal sound more pleasing to the ear. This is why you'll find a lot of "processing modes" in low and mid-grade consumer amps, soundcards like this, and people still buying tube amps. To these people, something sounding "better" does not mean more accurate... it means "I like this more".
Personally, I find that my tastes make them the same. I don't like the "enhanced" sound I get from the processing effects in most recievers. To each his own, though. Enjoy.
Perhaps it's just me, but the company name "Sparkle" doesn't exactly inspire confidence in a PSU. It's sort of like naming a boat company "Leaky!" or an airline "Fireball Express!".
I don't think a spell-checking mechanism would help. Usually a spell checker will suggest a similar word to the given text, but will not always choose the intended word. The spelling on Slashdot is so bad that no spell checker would guess the right word the majority of the time. It takes the comprehension skill of the human brain, and only the human brain, to decipher a typical Slashdot post. Introducing a spell checker would cause the posts to be falsely correct. They'd contain correct spelling, but entirely the wrong words. Every post would read like a Mad Lib:
BGH is bed. Network determines it. You didn't weed to be a karma to predicate *BGH's fastidiousness....
and so on.
It could be entertianing for a while, but would get old quickly.
But we are actually still coming out of the last ice age, so we may just be egotistical to think that we have an effect on the planet's climate.
Argeed that correlation does not imply causation, but I don't think it's egotistical to think that we can have an impact on the global climate at all. We do - all the time. Imagine you're on Easter Island and you start noticing that there are fewer and fewer trees. Is it egotistical to think that maybe the fact that you're cutting them down might be causing the deforestation?
We know the mechanism by which global warming occurs, and we know that that mechanism is happening in small portions, multiplied by billions, all over the globe. A small effect, multipled by billions, can be really big. What's egotistical about that?
The question is not whether the mechanism by which global warming happens can occur; it can and is. The question is whether or not those effects appear as noise when we measure the global climate, or to what degree they might be involved in the percieved temperature shifts. We're not going to know that until it's too late.
So yes, the majority of the warming could indeed be due to a natural cycle. But given that we can and do affect the global climate, and we know that the planet is warming, and that warming is BAD, why wouldn't we do what's in our power to at least elimate our contribution to the problem?
ID/creationism does require a base assumption in a higher power. Beyond that, the rest is science based. Find that hard to believe? Probably because you've never bothered to look into the science of it - ie www.creationscience.com
I think what bothers scientists about creationism is that it requires the notion of a "miracle". If you start using miracles to explain things, you've left the realm of science and entered religion. Science is concerned with HOW things happen, and though "God did it" might be a correct explanation to some event, it is inherently unprovable and unscientific, therefore it has no place in a science course.
It is important to leave religion out of science for these reasons. You can explain an earthquake by saying "God did it", but does that help save lives by helping to predict said earthquakes? No. Tectonic plate theory does. So why does God give us earthquakes anyway? Do you want your child's 8th grade science teacher explaining that one to him? I didn't think so.
Ultimately religious folks need to understand that science is not about debasing religion. It's about understanding the physical world through physical means. If you want to believe in the supernatural, that's what religions are for. Send your kid to school to learn about science, and to sunday school to learn about God. Why is that so hard for people to understand these days?
The only time when I can see this being useful to the Government is if I'm doing something wrong. You know, harassing my ex, threatening the President, and that junk.
So, in your view, privacy is unimportant unless you have something to hide? In that same vein, if you want privacy, are you automatically a criminal?
Let's say the government wants to put a chip in your car that tracks your movements ("to fight terrrorism"), Do you have anything to hide then? Perhaps you're going to terrorist school... shouldn't the cops know about that? Why not place the chip directly in your arm just to be safe? Why not, then have everyone get permission from the government to move around the country? If they have nothing to hide, why should it be trouble to ask for permission? Why should people protest the actions of the government if they love their country? Perhaps they are criminals too.
The invasion of privacy is something we must always fight, because it's a slippery slope, and we will never get back what we once had. The loss of privacy means the death of democracy.
Cattle will never go extinct as long as they produce the tasty meat we so love and crave, and as long as people are allowed to own cattle and exploit them.
Wow. That's quite a screwed up way of looking at it. The animal that pre-dated the doestication of the cow was the Aurochs. That animal is extinct by the hand of Man. Now, all we have are the decendants of those animals that we specifically bred for their meat quality and milk quality. We have not preserved the animal in its original state, we have changed it significantly to suit us.
Ownership does not necessarily promote conservation, it promotes change; just as the free market promotes change. Conservation and the free market are sometimes at odds, due to this fundamentally different view. That's why the Sierra club and the Republican party find themselves at odds a great deal of the time.
Uranium isn't a fossil fuel. As it is mined, it is an ore.
You're correct that someday we will run out of Uranium as well, but hopefully by that time we'll have a few working fusion plants, and can build on that technology to serve our energy needs.
Is this really a violation?
Unfortunately in current US law, the mere circumvention of a "copy protection" mechanism by the end user is illegal, whether your doing so violates ordinary copyright or not. There are exceptions made for libraries and research institutions, but not for ordinary end users.
This "well thought out" piece of legislation is called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Ogg may be #1 in quality, but I seriously doubt they're #2 in popularity...
Here's my estimate of the popularity of these formats. AAC is quite high based solely on the number of songs sold by iTunes.
1) MP3
2) AAC
3) WMA
4) Ogg?
5) Others
Out of curiosity, how long had it been since you rented the movie that resulted in this particular late fee? You said it had been a while- was it maybe long enough for Blockbuster to think that they had already lost you as a customer?
I owed a one or two day late fee. I think it was about $5. After incurring the penalty, I had not rented movies at BB for about a month, but I did intend to rent there again. I knew I owed them a few dollars, but given the customary practice of paying late fees upon the next rental, I was surprised that they would send a collection agency after me for that, without even calling me first.
So yes, I'm sure that the fine print of the contract somewhere stated "no matter how small the late fee, we will refer you to a collection agency for said monies if we don't get it in a month", but I was still expecting the customary treatment. This clause eluded my attention.
So yes, I paid them, and no, I won't go there again. I prefer the aforementioned customary practice, which I can get from other vendors.
You should have been told when you rented that there are penalties for returning late. Blockbuster is not being "greedy" by expecting you to conform to contract terms.
If you returned the movie on time, their charge is fraudulent (like Wired's). If you were late, suck it up and pay, or let them tarnish your credit.
You are not legally entitled to screw corporations just because they want to screw you.
There was a long standing precedent in the business that established that late fees for movies that had been returned were not collected until the next rental. This precedent had been in place for years, all over the country. Blockbuster decided to deviate from this practice without calling special attention to it, just so they could get a few more cents here and there in "time value of money". This may not be against the law, but I would call it unethical, or at the least, extremely poor customer service.
They lost my business over this issue too. Yes I know they changed this policy eventually, but I'm still not giving them my business again.
I may not be legally entitled to screw corporations that have poor customer service, but I don't have to patronize them either, and I am certainly within my rights to suggest that others shouldn't patronize them either.
Since most hardware manufacturers do not make drivers for Linux, don't you think it's a bit unreasonable for Linux to make drivers for every hardware combination imaginable? Is it that unreasonable to ask the user to buy hardware where Linux drivers exist? I don't think so.
If you want a good Linux workstation, you should buy your hardware with Linux in mind. That's the way it always has been, and always will be, because as long as users buy random hardware first, and then expect Linux support, hardware vendors will have no incentive to support Linux. Linux support has to be a part of the hardware purchase decision.
Is it really immoral to send jobs overseas?
It's not immoral... just like switching teams mid-season in the major leagues isn't immoral either. You're not killing anyone, but you're not batting for the home team anymore.
Why do people in Europe and US deserve the jobs more than people in India?
They don't. However, the US ought to try to keep desirable US jobs in the US. India should do the same for their jobs.
How do these reactions to off-shoring fit into our new global economy?
So there are no restrictions on free trade anywhere in the world? Please.
I'm not saying that offshoring needs to be legally restricted... I will say, however, that companies need to take the long view of what they're really doing, and determine if it will really benefit their stockholders long term.
Try the new Seagate Barracuda (sp?). After I swapped out my cooling systems for a sane noise level, I could hear my hard drives. After swapping out the hard drives for the new Seagates, I hear virtually nothing.
Man is both a part of nature, and not a part. We have developed beyond the confines of nature.
I woudn't put it that way exactly. We are a part of nature. The only difference is that we've been fruitful and become the dominant species on the planet. Since we are the dominant species, and also have consiousness, we have the capability to make decisions that will directly impact the course of life on the earth. To deny that the human race can't impact the environment is completely silly. We can, will, and do, impact the environment with everything we do. Even a bear (or a human) taking a crap in the woods impacts the environment. As the dominant species, and with the level of technology at our disposal, we can multiply our effect on the environment by an order of magnitude.
Wielding this power gives us a choice: We can choose to keep the planet nice, or we can choose to turn it into a giant garbage dump. If we choose the latter, we may ultimately destroy ourselves. Either way, life on earth will continue... but it may take millions of years after the human race is extinct to reach the level of biodiversity that we have today. We are a part of the planet's future, whether we crap it up or not.
>What about platforms where Sun does not provide a JVM?
Not to be antagonistic, but what exactly are the platforms for which no JVM is available? Undoubtedly such platforms exist, but are they widely used? It might help to understand the scope of the problem.
In the end, defining God recursively makes about as much sense as having one God which just happened to be there, which makes about as much sense as the world coming into being on its own (none at all on all counts). We are a paradox. I hereby call for everyone to vanish immediately, because whether or not there is a God, we cannot exist.
Well structured and well written code is obviously more important than having comments. Allow me to give an example. I once ran across a single method that was 10 pages long! The variable names were all completely unhelpful, and the code itself barely worked. It was clearly written by someone that didn't know how to program. It had some comments, but I still couldn't understand what was going on. No amount of commenting would be able to help something so awful.
Contrast that with well structured code, wherein the methods are relatively small, the methods and variables are well named, and you can have a usable, maintainable program with no comments at all. Comments are nice for the sections where what's happening isn't obvious, but if you need to sit down and comment every line of code you write in order for someone else to understand it, you're writing some very bad code.
Wow, you really don't get much out of your IDEs, do you?
I'd follow up that question with another one... you haven't ever used vi and gcc to produce a C program either, have you?
An IDE provides a UI over the compiler, debugger, and source control system, and an integrated editor with a few wizards. That's pretty much it. If all that sucks, then the IDE sucks.... how could it not?
Personally I an IDE all the time, and I find it quite useful, but I don't pretend that it's anything more than a nice UI over other components.
JBuilder is terrible because you didn't like the UI? I can understand if you didn't "like" it because of the UI, or in your case a few specific things in the UI, but to rate it as terrible is an overstatement.
All an IDE is, effectively, is a UI, so perhaps it is appropriate to say that if the the UI is crap, the IDE is also crap.
Unlike patents on physical inventions, this is not unlikely...
I'm not so sure that physical inventions are that much different from software. If you take something as complex as say, a TV... yes, it is unlikely that someone would independently come up with that. The TV, however, is not patented. Curving the glass in a certian way to better represent the image, however, might be. That curvature of the glass may or may not be obvious, but it certainly isn't unreasonable that someone else might think of the same thing.
Physical patents, like software patents, are sometimes earth shattering, but usually are not.
That's not to say that the patent system doesn't need reform (it does) but I don't think the reform should only apply to software patents, but to all patents.
Man, if there is one thing I learned from my hobby of swordfighting, it's that nothing, but nothing, can get a pint of your best friend's blood out of a white talbard. Nothing, that is, except fire. The same fire you burn all the other incriminating evidence in.
somebody help... Should this be modded +1 funny, +2 scary, or +5 Hannibal Lechter?
but is there a form of open source license that prohibits forking?
Prohibiting forking is against the spirit of the GPL. Part of the beauty of open source is that you CAN fork a project to give it your unique features... but you have to allow access to your changes to GPL code to the original author, so they can incoroporate them if they like them. Sometimes what begins as a fork overtakes the original project. This is what makes open source projects greater than the individual that started them. I for one, would not contribute to an "open source" project that prohibited forking. The owner/maintainer could just stop development and the project would be dead, nullifying your contributions.
Those who currenetly use grid power for the road are short changing society, because they are not paying for road maintence
No. The people using the electrical grid to power their vehicles are doing a large amount of social good. The more electric vehicle drivers there are, the more demand for them there is, the more research goes in to them, and eventually we aren't dependant on middle east oil.
Which is worse:
1) The eventual demise of western society due to oil dependance and the drying up of the arabian oil fields
-or-
2) Congress has to adjust its tax policy because gas tax revenues are no longer coming in in the same proportions, as they do EVERY YEAR.
Here's what I don't get... It's congress' job to adjust the tax policies when necessary. I don't see why that's so hard on them, having to work a couple of hours.