Ooooo, perfect opportunity for my story! My roommate decided to install Linux. This made Windows uphappy. So he moved everything over to that partition and tried to reinstall Windows. He therefore had the opportunity to install both within 24 hours of each other. The Windows install is easy because it makes too many assumptions. For instance, it assumes you want one partition (duh, we all knew that). Then it assumes you have a standard VGA video card, no sound card, and don't want to dual-boot. Practically, it makes sense to say that Linux should not assume all these things, since it's usually not installed on its own, but idealistically it should be equal with Windows. My friend was astounded that it didn't even bother to ask about his video card, so he went to the control panel, clicked on display, and then it had a kernel error and crashed! With nothing installed at all. It crashed. What kind of an installation is that?
Yes, it's probably wrong to complain about him giving his money away, but he has been under flack for a while for being REALLY slow about it. Up until really recently, he was put to shame even in raw numbers by all the other billionaires--he was not very good at giving away money. He really has kicked things into gear in the past year. Maybe he's getting tired, maybe it's because he's worth twice as much now as he was a year ago. It's not entirely unreasonable to say that he might be doing it because of the trial or because he's tired of people saying he doesn't give away enough money (that's always been enough to goad him in the past). Just saying that while it's good that he gives money away, as modern billionaires go he's taking his sweet time.
I don't know too much about USB or firewire. Are such devices for the iMac compatible with PCs?
Re:The new ENDER'S GAME OF LIFE from Parker Bros.!
on
Ender's Shadow
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· Score: 2
Formic acid is the stuff that ants use to find their paths. If you draw your name in formic acid on the sidewalk you can have your name written in ants pretty soon!
That's not technically the trickle-down effect. For that to be a "proper" trickle-down effect, the entire economy would have improved to the extent that tax revenues did not go down. Somehow I doubt that happened.
Well, if the Japaneses are actually dumping (selling below cost or building up a gigantic surplus and then releasing it all at once), we should stop them. That is illegal and stopping it is not an abuse of the system (real dumping is when WalMart moves in and sells below cost to drive out. I don't think the Japanese steel mills are actually engaged in "dumping", though, and it is wrong to stop them.
I don't doubt that taxes play an important part in your purchasing decisions, but again I must say, "What if there were no taxes?" Would you have moved? Taxes may be lower in the second county because it is run more efficiently. In that case, it's good that you moved; society is better off now. If taxes are lower because the second county leeches off the services of the first, that is bad. It may be good for you that you moved, but it is bad for society that you moved.
Taxes are lower for online transactions just because there is no tax, not because it is an economically (different from "financially") disirable way of doing things; if prices were the same, people would not be inherently better off because you buy things online.
How does that tax encourage purchases, by the way? (not that I think that's an example of a "good tax" anyway)
Not to nit-pick, but if less consuming were going on, more saving would have been going on. More savings means more investement. We then hit a recession during the early 90s, which might have been prevented if there had been less "consuming going on". Not that I think this guy had any idea about that. Maybe he really didn't know what he was talking about.
There isn't a great deal of difference between "not cross-platform" and "proprietary" when the company that makes the platform makes the API. Of course, someone could write a wrapper, but they better have a good lawyer. It's much like saying, "No, Glide isn't proprietary; it's just not cross-chipset." No one would say this. You can write a game with Glide, but it's still proprietary.
As far as being able to write a driver for Direct3D, you would get in some serious trouble writing a Direct3D driver for Linux (if such a thing were possible). I'm not sure you're even allowed to call something Direct3D without MS's permission, much like you can't call something OpenGL compliant without passing SGI's tests (why Mesa isn't called OpenGL).
In short, being tied to the product of the company that created it makes Direct3D proprietary, much like Glide is proprietary to 3dfx.
Forcing people to telecommute isn't as stupid as you make it sound. Highways to suburbs are very expensive. If we were to actually pay for the cost of driving through a gasoline tax, the gasoline tax would have to be $6! (I read this doing research for work; can't remember the source, though)
Of course, forcing someone to telecommute would be rediculous, but raising the price of gasoline would have a similar effect and would be akin to the helmet thing. Both are examples of people not taking the full economic consequences of their actions (medical bills and cleaning brain off the highway in one case, pot hole repair and the Gulf War in the other). If you raised the cost of gasoline to $7 per gallon, you can bet that more people would telecommute and cities would become a lot more crowded. Urban sprawl is subsidized quite heavily here in the US; it's not just our "love of big open spaces", as many people who don't know better say.
To my knowledge, you just get fined for not wearing a helmet or seatbelt. I don't think they throw you in jail. It's therefore essentially the same as a tax on people who don't wear helmets or seatbelts.
You didn't mention the wife, though. Would she have escaped with only minor injuries if she hadn't had a helmet on? Just because it cost a lot doesn't mean that it wouldn't have cost more if they hadn't been wearing helmets.
Re:Not all fun and games for free software
on
UCITA is passed
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· Score: 2
As I said, depending on what the law says, that might not matter. If they make using a reverse engineered clone legal, it won't matter if everyone in Australia is hacking on Samba. It'd be illegal to use it in the US.
Not all fun and games for free software
on
UCITA is passed
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· Score: 4
Hmmm, I think I used that subject last time. Oh, well.
Just wanted to point out again that this will make reverse engineering illegal. So long as we live in a world not entirely defined by RFCs, that's going to be a problem. And depending on what the actual laws say, it might not even help if it's reverse engineered outside of the country.
And what ever happened to "they moved this to another bill because it's so stupid no one would vote for it"? I'm sad now.
Oooooooooooh, ok. So that really is your name. I figured maybe the cousin of the author submitted it to Slashdot or something, but no, it was just a coincidence! How devious.
Where else do they have beignets besides New Orleans? Quebec? I don't get out much, though living in Jackson, MS, I get to NO quite often.
That could be interpreted wrong. I meant to say something like finding a way to use Microsoft.com's own Exchange server as a relay for SPAM or something.
So maybe we need something like Open Directory but just for kids, or rather only pertaining to limited sensibilities. A list of sites that are good instead of rules for sites that are bad. Sure, it would still limit the horizons of kids, but something open and dynamic like that would certainly be more fulfilling than just slashdot and freshmeat (no offense CmdrTaco and Scoop!)
Don't get me wrong, I loved Star Wars, but I saw The Red Violin two weeks ago because I remembered all these people on Slashdot saying how great it was. They were right! So not everyone here is a Neanderthal:)
There are 2 protocols, TOC and OSCAR. There have been for a really long time. GAIM and TiK et al use TOC, the published protocl. The Windows AIM client and now MSN Messenger use OSCAR, the unpublished protocl. Microsoft reverse-engineered that one. They've both been around for a while. And you'll notice that GAIM hasn't stopped working because they haven't had to mess with TOC.
There are, as I understand it, two protocols. TOC and OSCAR. TOC is the one they've released. OSCAR is the one the Windows AIM client uses. Microsoft reverse-engineered OSCAR instead of using TOC. I'm not sure what the difference is, though.
Of course, that's not exactly the right way to look at it. The CEO of the United Way got a multi-million dollar salary a while ago (maybe still does). That seems absurd, right? Millions of dollars to the CEO of a charity? Well, he was good and could have been making lots more than that somewhere else. Sure, they could have gotten someone who would work for $30,000 a year, but they wouldn't have been a very good CEO.
Now, I doubt anyone thinks our Representatives and Senators are particularly good at what they do; it really does take a certain sleaze to go into the business. But think of what they would all be earning if they weren't in Congress. True, many of them are independently wealthy but the point of the salaries is that if some brilliant person (with just enough sleaze!) crawls his way out of the gutter and starts looking for a job, he'll consider being a Congressperson. The salary is much lower than what he might be earning otherwise (thus the perks or love of country has something to do with the motivation), but it is enough to be somewhat enticing. It may not be right, but that is a somewhat valid justification. $130k is nowhere near what most of these people would be earning if they weren't in Congress.
I'm still not sure myself if I'd rather have a moron with his heart in the right place or a genius in it for the money running my country. Who's going to hurt you more?
Slashdot Mirror
Ooooo, perfect opportunity for my story! My roommate decided to install Linux. This made Windows uphappy. So he moved everything over to that partition and tried to reinstall Windows. He therefore had the opportunity to install both within 24 hours of each other. The Windows install is easy because it makes too many assumptions. For instance, it assumes you want one partition (duh, we all knew that). Then it assumes you have a standard VGA video card, no sound card, and don't want to dual-boot. Practically, it makes sense to say that Linux should not assume all these things, since it's usually not installed on its own, but idealistically it should be equal with Windows. My friend was astounded that it didn't even bother to ask about his video card, so he went to the control panel, clicked on display, and then it had a kernel error and crashed! With nothing installed at all. It crashed. What kind of an installation is that?
Yes, it's probably wrong to complain about him giving his money away, but he has been under flack for a while for being REALLY slow about it. Up until really recently, he was put to shame even in raw numbers by all the other billionaires--he was not very good at giving away money. He really has kicked things into gear in the past year. Maybe he's getting tired, maybe it's because he's worth twice as much now as he was a year ago. It's not entirely unreasonable to say that he might be doing it because of the trial or because he's tired of people saying he doesn't give away enough money (that's always been enough to goad him in the past). Just saying that while it's good that he gives money away, as modern billionaires go he's taking his sweet time.
I don't know too much about USB or firewire. Are such devices for the iMac compatible with PCs?
Formic acid is the stuff that ants use to find their paths. If you draw your name in formic acid on the sidewalk you can have your name written in ants pretty soon!
There are currently firewire implementations that aren't in the main development kernel. They're not vapor and they're certainly being worked on.
That's not technically the trickle-down effect. For that to be a "proper" trickle-down effect, the entire economy would have improved to the extent that tax revenues did not go down. Somehow I doubt that happened.
Well, if the Japaneses are actually dumping (selling below cost or building up a gigantic surplus and then releasing it all at once), we should stop them. That is illegal and stopping it is not an abuse of the system (real dumping is when WalMart moves in and sells below cost to drive out. I don't think the Japanese steel mills are actually engaged in "dumping", though, and it is wrong to stop them.
I don't doubt that taxes play an important part in your purchasing decisions, but again I must say, "What if there were no taxes?" Would you have moved? Taxes may be lower in the second county because it is run more efficiently. In that case, it's good that you moved; society is better off now. If taxes are lower because the second county leeches off the services of the first, that is bad. It may be good for you that you moved, but it is bad for society that you moved.
Taxes are lower for online transactions just because there is no tax, not because it is an economically (different from "financially") disirable way of doing things; if prices were the same, people would not be inherently better off because you buy things online.
How does that tax encourage purchases, by the way? (not that I think that's an example of a "good tax" anyway)
Not to nit-pick, but if less consuming were going on, more saving would have been going on. More savings means more investement. We then hit a recession during the early 90s, which might have been prevented if there had been less "consuming going on". Not that I think this guy had any idea about that. Maybe he really didn't know what he was talking about.
There isn't a great deal of difference between "not cross-platform" and "proprietary" when the company that makes the platform makes the API. Of course, someone could write a wrapper, but they better have a good lawyer. It's much like saying, "No, Glide isn't proprietary; it's just not cross-chipset." No one would say this. You can write a game with Glide, but it's still proprietary.
As far as being able to write a driver for Direct3D, you would get in some serious trouble writing a Direct3D driver for Linux (if such a thing were possible). I'm not sure you're even allowed to call something Direct3D without MS's permission, much like you can't call something OpenGL compliant without passing SGI's tests (why Mesa isn't called OpenGL).
In short, being tied to the product of the company that created it makes Direct3D proprietary, much like Glide is proprietary to 3dfx.
Forcing people to telecommute isn't as stupid as you make it sound. Highways to suburbs are very expensive. If we were to actually pay for the cost of driving through a gasoline tax, the gasoline tax would have to be $6! (I read this doing research for work; can't remember the source, though)
Of course, forcing someone to telecommute would be rediculous, but raising the price of gasoline would have a similar effect and would be akin to the helmet thing. Both are examples of people not taking the full economic consequences of their actions (medical bills and cleaning brain off the highway in one case, pot hole repair and the Gulf War in the other). If you raised the cost of gasoline to $7 per gallon, you can bet that more people would telecommute and cities would become a lot more crowded. Urban sprawl is subsidized quite heavily here in the US; it's not just our "love of big open spaces", as many people who don't know better say.
To my knowledge, you just get fined for not wearing a helmet or seatbelt. I don't think they throw you in jail. It's therefore essentially the same as a tax on people who don't wear helmets or seatbelts.
You didn't mention the wife, though. Would she have escaped with only minor injuries if she hadn't had a helmet on? Just because it cost a lot doesn't mean that it wouldn't have cost more if they hadn't been wearing helmets.
As I said, depending on what the law says, that might not matter. If they make using a reverse engineered clone legal, it won't matter if everyone in Australia is hacking on Samba. It'd be illegal to use it in the US.
Hmmm, I think I used that subject last time. Oh, well.
Just wanted to point out again that this will make reverse engineering illegal. So long as we live in a world not entirely defined by RFCs, that's going to be a problem. And depending on what the actual laws say, it might not even help if it's reverse engineered outside of the country.
And what ever happened to "they moved this to another bill because it's so stupid no one would vote for it"? I'm sad now.
Perhaps you failed to notice the part about making reverse engineering illegal. That part is definitely not god for free software.
Oooooooooooh, ok. So that really is your name. I figured maybe the cousin of the author submitted it to Slashdot or something, but no, it was just a coincidence! How devious.
Where else do they have beignets besides New Orleans? Quebec? I don't get out much, though living in Jackson, MS, I get to NO quite often.
Frank Herbert wrote the original series. Was he also called John? I'm very confused.
Oh, John Hebert. Now I'm confused. Is that a typo or is it just a coincidence?
So, what relation is John Herbert? Not the son/author-of-new book, it seems, unless he is John-Brian. Just curious.
That could be interpreted wrong. I meant to say something like finding a way to use Microsoft.com's own Exchange server as a relay for SPAM or something.
If you completely ignore the whole server thing. It's more like someone reverse engineering Microsoft's own Exchange server and using that as a relay.
So maybe we need something like Open Directory but just for kids, or rather only pertaining to limited sensibilities. A list of sites that are good instead of rules for sites that are bad. Sure, it would still limit the horizons of kids, but something open and dynamic like that would certainly be more fulfilling than just slashdot and freshmeat (no offense CmdrTaco and Scoop!)
Don't get me wrong, I loved Star Wars, but I saw The Red Violin two weeks ago because I remembered all these people on Slashdot saying how great it was. They were right! So not everyone here is a Neanderthal :)
Of course, how good is your net connection going to be? I'd hate to download a GB from Iraq.
There are 2 protocols, TOC and OSCAR. There have been for a really long time. GAIM and TiK et al use TOC, the published protocl. The Windows AIM client and now MSN Messenger use OSCAR, the unpublished protocl. Microsoft reverse-engineered that one. They've both been around for a while. And you'll notice that GAIM hasn't stopped working because they haven't had to mess with TOC.
There are, as I understand it, two protocols. TOC and OSCAR. TOC is the one they've released. OSCAR is the one the Windows AIM client uses. Microsoft reverse-engineered OSCAR instead of using TOC. I'm not sure what the difference is, though.
Of course, that's not exactly the right way to look at it. The CEO of the United Way got a multi-million dollar salary a while ago (maybe still does). That seems absurd, right? Millions of dollars to the CEO of a charity? Well, he was good and could have been making lots more than that somewhere else. Sure, they could have gotten someone who would work for $30,000 a year, but they wouldn't have been a very good CEO.
Now, I doubt anyone thinks our Representatives and Senators are particularly good at what they do; it really does take a certain sleaze to go into the business. But think of what they would all be earning if they weren't in Congress. True, many of them are independently wealthy but the point of the salaries is that if some brilliant person (with just enough sleaze!) crawls his way out of the gutter and starts looking for a job, he'll consider being a Congressperson. The salary is much lower than what he might be earning otherwise (thus the perks or love of country has something to do with the motivation), but it is enough to be somewhat enticing. It may not be right, but that is a somewhat valid justification. $130k is nowhere near what most of these people would be earning if they weren't in Congress.
I'm still not sure myself if I'd rather have a moron with his heart in the right place or a genius in it for the money running my country. Who's going to hurt you more?
That's what I thought, too, but if you look at the story on Slashdot, it was submitted by a GAIM author. I figure he would know best.