The telcos were having terrible trouble getting thier DSL stuff in. A more cynical person would say they did not want some other company running services over thier copper.
I moved apartments a few years ago. I wanted the DSL to move with me. It should not have been a big deal, nor required any change other than moving wires within my building. The telco, on the other hand, thought differently. It took them months to tell me that they could not get the circuit hooked up. They would tell me it was in the queue, or techs were working on it, or all sorts of other BS. In the end I think there was a bug in thier database, and since they never formally disconected the 'previous' service, they could not connect the 'new' service. In the end I just cancelled the service and found went to another provider. They made me wait a month to fully disconect, but i got it done. The sad thing is that if the techs were just honest and admitted that they computers were screwed up, we would have saved 3 months and i would have let them keep me as a customer.
There are two types of out there physics. The type that can be proven to not be true by observation, and those that can't be proven to not be true by observation. Which is a little different from being shown to be close enough to reality. The former go away and the later continue to provide us many hours of speculative enjoyment. The common feature of all of these is that they solve some theoretical problem. Fortunately solving some theoretical problem is not enough and the theories tend to languish until some pratical means of verification can be developed.
It was only a hundred years ago that Planck looked the black body radiation problem and the ultraviolet catastrophe and sent of a postcard claiming that fatal flaw was the assumption that energy was continuous. He threw out that faulty assumption, did up the math, and heralded in a world of devine dice, half dead cats, and apparently solid objects moving through apparently solid walls. In essence, rubbish.
The process of identifying assumption (the hard part) and challenging those assumption is what has brought the western world out of morass partially created by a boorish devotion to greek philosophy and political control by the Church.
It is certainly cool that can fit a CPU in a pen, but it seems to be complex. I mean five separate components for a simple computer. Most of us can barely keep up with a stylus for the PDA or power-supply for our portable. We now need to keep up with three pens to have a functional computer. Will not fly. Most of us could barely make it out of the house with all the parts.
There needs to be a single pen for the Cu/Display/Keyboard combo, and then optional pens for peripherals. This would also alleviate security issues of nearby keyboard loggers.
They have working on two fronts. The legal front and the handwaving PR front. I have always though the legal front was the only one anyone should be concerned with, as it is the only thing that could result in a ruling that might hurt Linux. It is also becoming clearer that SCO has a very weak legal case, which means that there is probably little to worry about.
OTOH, many articles, like the present, concentrate on the PR front. This is where SCO makes claims, such as we 0wn Linux simply because we wish we did and we want out wishes reality, and then back this unique view of reality with threats, websites, and sound bytes. It is sad because we are not in 2000 and the dotcom boom is over.
So yes, the ATT letter does seem to make the case against IBM moot, which is why they changed their case against IBM. OTOH, nothing short of bankruptcy and fraud lawsuits will change their opinion that SCO deserves money from anyone who run Linux because Linux just stole everything from Unix. It's too bad that argument did not work for Apple. I suppose we would not have to deal with monstrous MS plague. Or perhaps we should be glad that the argument did work for IBM, otherwise we would still be paying $5000 for a basic Intel machine. Of course that might mean the Mac, and even solaris and alpha machines, would be extremely competitive.
Ford did not try to take on any personality. He acted the exact same way as Zaphod. Therefore we can assume that the way he acted were the way these aliens acted. Any relation to human culture, as the fiction disclaimers go, were coincidental.
H2G2, like so many BBC shows, is about the use of language and the human experience. While it is possible that you may believe certain people are not part of the human experience, others might disagree. If, for instance, they decide to deliver the lines as a rythm, that will not affect the story.
The only danger to this story is that fx will be overdone. Let's hope it is closer to MIB than MIIB. Will Smith rulez.
The web is evolving very rapidly. Remember we did not have a good version of mosaic until about 10 years ago. In that time the web has become something very different.
Yahoo was very good when it started. The directories led the user through an unknown terrain to useful information. To this day it still does. The searches are credible. In fact, until the recent self destruction of the Shopping portal, it was one of the best on the web. There are still few competitors.
The attributes you attribute of Google were largely developed by Alta Vista. Alta Vista fell to the same things that threatening Google: ads and search manipulations. For altavista the advertisers stacked the meta words. For google, the advertisers are stacking the meta links. The first few results in google are often pages that link to advertised results in other search engines.
Google has had problems for a while. I do not see them fixing these problems. I suspect that someone else will come up with a search engine not susceptible to the problems of google, perhaps a hybrid of Yahoo and Google. Things move very fast. In 10 years we are on our third or fourth search engine
I think there are other significant differences having to do with the target audience of the Journal. First, many get the journal because it is a perceived requirement for business of an actual requirement for school. Therefore, they have a captive audience. The online subscription can fulfill that requirement at a significant discount, even off the student rate.
Second, I think it is a branding thing. Like any newspaper, the Journal has to deliver a demographic. One way of delivering that demographic is keeping the perceived value as high as possible. Anything "free" connected to the journal would tarnish it's value. It is not like the NYT in which any potential reader is potential customer for at least one advertiser. If a there were a competitor and the competitor offerred free service, the Journal would merely use that freeness as means to discredit the publication.
Finally, as other have mentioned, the Journal may be closer to a professional journal than a newspaper, and many professional journals have been charging for online content since the days of the BBS.
In any case, I can easily forsee the day when there won't be any "free" news sites that do not require registration. Except the Onion [theonion.com]. There will always be the Onion. (Knock on Wood...).
I gave up on regular visits to the onions months ago. They started implementing the animation ads that would take foreever to load, would restart everytime you went back to the home page, and occasionally crash by browser. If a website needs registration or some paid content to keep silly ads off the home page, then I am for it.
I don't see this as the beginning of the end. I see this as just another step in the process of the country, and really the world. At a top level we have seen the greed, the redistribution of wealth, the insensitivity of the decadent elite to those who have nothing, many time before.
The individual has power, but it can only be express as a group effort, and will only be expressed if there are brave people. We pay for the privilege to watch movie, but also much watch commercials. We give away the public airspace, yet can ask for little in return. We feel that is it such a privilege to shop at some stores that we allow ourselves to be humiliated by a search on exiting the store. We pay our farmers billions out of the public coffers to grow food, and then pay for the food again at the market, but cannot ask the processors the food to keep the shit out of it. In some ways these are the same as paying for the privilege to sit in the back of the bus or for the privilege to eat the salt the we could produce for nothing.
All we are seeing now is a state of affairs in which the people are cowardly. The cowardice is generated by the government, who has systematically redefined bravery as the number of people a person can kill or intimidate, rather than what the person can produce through a revolution of thought or status. For example, our founding fathers were brave because they, as mere colonials hicks, challenged the British elite and claimed equal status, and equal stuff. Today, revisionist historians want us to honor them merely as great warriors.
The choice is the same as always. We can take the stuff they give us, in the form they want to give it to us, or we can refrain and say our self respect is worth more than 3 beans. Most of us are not slaves. A slave has a choice to work or to die. Most of us, for the time being, have other choices. Certainly in the realm of entertainment, there is always the choice to refrain, or, if one is desperate enough, to take.
In the olden days we didna need no stinkin lawya. When a man crossed us we challanged him to duel. Problem one, the rich mothas would hire profesionas. We coudna hire no one, so we would send our best out, and pray he didna die, which he usualy did. When we were real angy, we just plant a bomb at the rich mothas house.
The problem with all car alarms now, and the reason why I feel compelled to destroy a car every time I hear one go off, is that they are designed stupidly. The design goal, like MS windows, are apparently convenience at the expense of true risk management.
For instance, remote door opening systems are less secure than keys. I regularly hear people complain that someone with a electronic code thingy broke into their car and stole stuff. However, because the code also disabled the alarm, there was no alarm, and the car was left defenseless. The point of the alarm in this case is to protect the stuff in the car, and it is clearly a failed model. Clearly these alarms are just to make the owners feel better.
The alarms used in the old days on cars like the BMW was to have the alarm sound if the key was not placed in the ignition. This protected the car. It was invulnerable to electronic attacks. Stuff in the car could get stolen, but stuff could get stolen anyway. That is why it is best not leave stuff in your car. Which you have to do when you are out and about. But then why do people leave their door alarms on when they are at home. Obviously because they have no regards for anyone but themselves.
Of course keyless entry systems might save the $100 to replace the glass. So, I suppose if you want to make it easy for people to take stuff, such things are benificial.
All you say is true. However, in my understanding the point of security is to help quantify and deal with risk. For instance, code available to a determined few is not the same as code available to everyone.
That said I believe you are correct in the assesment that this technology provides little to no security benifit. The problem is that this is exactly the kind of product that will make the PHB feel better. In that sense, it may become an important product in the.net world. After all, what benifit does.net provide other making the PHB feel secure in thier jobs.
I think the story misses the issue. The primary purpose of these so-called schools are not to educate, but to abuse the corporate welfare system. These firms convince students, often desperately trying to find a better life for themselves, to submit applications for government backed loans, helpfully prepared by the firm's staff, often without any understanding by the student of the risks actually involved. Of course, there is little risk to the firm. Many students will find the firm lied to them, and they are stuck with a large loans that they can never repay, leaving them in an even more desperate situation with government collection agents that makes the IRS look like a the newspaper boy. Eventually, the loans get paid by the government, which of course is funded by hard working middle class Americans.
These firms are run by people that have already made thier money, at significant taxpayer expense, and are now looking for another path to mooch of the corporate welfare system. The actual closing of the schools is insignificant, as the damage is already done.
It will probably be no cheaper for the home to make a specific product at home than to purchase a replacement. Even if the cost of the machine is not prohibitive, there will be other issues that will make the process expensive. Current technology clearly indicate what some of these may be.
First, the machine. For consumer use, it will have to be $500. Like current printers, this will probably involve some loss at the initial sale, to be recouped with the purchase of consumables. The raw consumable will not be that hard to get. Most anyone can get 25 pounds of plastic pellets for reasonable costs, though that cost may double with shipping. The machine manufacturers, however, will likely package those in such a way that will raise the cost by 1000%, and threaten lawsuits to anyone who would "refill" the dispenser. For perspective, this may mean that producing a 0.25 pound plastic widget might cost 5-10 dollars in material.
Second, as you say, are the patent and copyright issues. It may not be so easy to download the design for the bowl. Laws will be passed to include DRM in this fantastic machine that will require all designs to be signed by a vendor that accepts responsibility for their authenticity. It might not be possible to use these machines to build your own designs, as is the case in some current music software. One would assume that the royalties, as in the current music fiasco, would make the product cost more than the store bought version. One assumes that the corporate interests now have enough warning so they will immediately purchase all needed congress people.
Like the inkjet printer, that costs us $.25 a page, it will be more an issue of convenience than costs. I predict that this will be small industrial process first. One in which certain commercial interests fight other commercial interests in court to gain the right to produce small replacement parts. Due to the size and complexity of such a machine, I doubt many homes would think it useful. I am also sure that in 10 years I will be proved wrong, and called an old fart.
Re:Play nice with Piers Anthony
on
Singularity Sky
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· Score: 1
The thing is, one has to judge a book by what it meant to do. Anthony has fun with the language. This playfulness makes the books very enjoyable. And, as you say, this means people will read. Reading any book that uses proper grammar and even modestly advanced literary structures will put you light years ahead of the alliterate masses. Most people are lucky if they read a fishing or automobile or fashion magazine.
That said, I am supposing that reviewer is just post-adolescent. It is very common to have a sense of embarrassment over one childish pursuits when one begins to feel 'grow-up'. This embarrassment turns to nostalgia in about 10 years. In any case, a good reader can waste only so much time with Anthony, as any of his novels can be polished off in an evening.
Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad
on
FBI Anti-Piracy Seal
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· Score: 1
That's fair. Then let's say that they should be using these resources to hire better screeners to interview agents so they do not end up with embarrassing occasional agent that is a thief, child molester, or spouse abusers, or murderer, or plain traitor.
It seems to me that insuring an agency of the highest moral values ranks much higher than producing meaningless logos.
I agree. If abusing the DVD standards to force us to watch certain section of the programming, including the FBI warning, commercials, and cheesy grade school quality animation, has not prevented us from violating copyright, how stupid must our government agencies be to think a logo will do the trick.
This really reminds more of feudalism and the kind of society that exists in some third world country, especially in the Americas. We have been sliding down this slope for a while. Fortified castles in the form of gated and guarded communities. People driving around in military and pseudo-military vehicles. People fear being in certain neighborhoods because, even though the roads are theoretically public, the police are owned by those with money.
This has always been true to some extent in the US. It has always been the case that some people were considered better. It has always been the case that if you did not have the proper skin color or proper style or proper accessories, you were subject to police harassment. The scary thing now is that we are reaching a point in which a very few people, those with money and power, are exempted from government abuse. The rest of us are not. The police can no longer look at you and decide if you are protected. The officer must now know your name.
Which is to say, these laws are no ones fault but our own. We are really a democracy. All of us who live in the US are responsible for our country's actions and decisions. We all must willing make the sacrifices necessary to bear or change the policies. We are in fact not a dictorship in which we can be forced to comply, no matter how much our president has stacked the appellate courts in that direction.
In my opinion, this has never looked good for the RIAA. First, they helped create laws that would impose very large fines for relatively minor offenses. Then they make deals with alleged copyright violators to settle at a fraction of the fine.
One has to ask two questions. First, if they are willing to settle for such a small amount, why are the fines so high to begin with. Wouldn't it be more efficient to set fines at a appropriate level in the first place? It is very arguable that such high fines were created to allow extortion.
Second, why do they want to settle so badly? It seems like they would want some percentage of the cases to go to court to establish that these people actually violated copyright. As it stands, it would be very reasonable to assert that they are randomly choosing people, and then extorting money from them.
So, with the current tactics, extortion and fear seems to be their game. It is like those old shows where a gang would go into a business and demand protection money. There are legal ways to extort this kind of money, the MPAA and BSA does it. The RIAA does not seem to care about the law.
I really don't understand why the RIAA does not get an independent arbitrator to look at each case, assign a dollar value to the damages, and then send a letter to the alleged violators. Further legal proceedings might occur if the money is not paid, but at least then we would have some confidence that the RIAA is not just harassing innocent people.
Re:C AND C++ ARE THE WORST LANGUAGES EVER DEVELOPE
on
Practical C++
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· Score: 1
I always hear that, and I always laugh. I have programmed in languages I do not even care to admit. Each has a philosophy, and each has it pitfalls.
My favorite are always those that are created to be used by competent, professional, responsible programmers. A language should not assume an incompetent lazy program and then impose a bunch or rules meant only to protect the incompetent at the expense of readability and flexibility.
A language should have feature, often optional, that helps the programmer use good practices to minimize mistakes. C prizes power over crutches. It is extremely possible to write very good code in C, if you know what you are doing. If you do not know how to code, then use VB. C will cause you nothing but grief.
C++ is the same problem. The classes are powerful but if you don't know what you a doing you can have destructors executing in the wrong order, which can lead to memory problems that may never be found.
Some languages, particularly those pushed by MS, assume coders who have no understanding of proper technique. Put a widget on the screen, add some code, write to a database. Creating proper modules, making sure dependancies are minimized, doing things back and forth in the same order, those are all skills that can no longer be afforded. If they could, we would not hear nearly so much complaining about C and C++.
In general you are correct. My standard book is Practical C++ by Terribile, which was published in the mid 90's. It is readable and served me while Stroustrup was working on his editions. But C+ evolved quickly an Stroustrup published the Special Edition of the C++ Programing Language in 2000(although the 1997 edition seems nearly as complete), which is what I was now use. If a programmer is patient enough to get through the text, this is the book I would suggest. It is precise and complete. I would be concerned with any book prior published to this.
On another note, the STL is a complex language of it's own. I do not believe it can be covered as a section of chapter in a book. Expect to buy a separate book, also published in past few years.
Many have been willing to accept that SCO might have a case against IBM. IBM is a big company and probably didn't get to be a big company by treating the smaller partners nicely. A big company tends to get that way by treating smaller partners as horrible as possible. For instance, many big companies will pay 5% 10 net 30 invoices in 60-90 days and still take the discount. Given this fact, many would have been fine with IBM having to pay several million dollars to SCO, in effect giving SCO money to elegantly cease operations or retool.
But SCO got greedy and began to make allegations that had little to do with the lawsuit. SCO made the mistake of linking the lawsuit to Linux, something which they had little reason or need to do. SCO made some bad deals, and instead of admitting this and let bygones go bye, they started on this ludicrous whale hunt.
So now SCO has no support except from a few gamblers. A case that at one point might have had some hope is irreparable damaged by their silly PR campaign. As I have said many time before, the only relevent SCO actions are those they have backed up with formal documents. Everything else is merely a distraction.
This certainly is more funny than insightful. For instance, I seem to recall a judgement against SCO in Germany, which would prevent any action within Germany, and SCO would run the risk of having the judgement generalized in any Internation Court. Anyway, one does not piss off the Germans.
Furthermore, if the MS/SCO link is real, then SCO will not piss off Ashcroft. He is, after all, the man who saved the MS monopoly by effectively dropping all charges. Even though the action was bought and paid for through contributions, the price was such a bargain.
I will admit that google and lindows would provide a certain cliche synergy.
Slashdot Mirror
I moved apartments a few years ago. I wanted the DSL to move with me. It should not have been a big deal, nor required any change other than moving wires within my building. The telco, on the other hand, thought differently. It took them months to tell me that they could not get the circuit hooked up. They would tell me it was in the queue, or techs were working on it, or all sorts of other BS. In the end I think there was a bug in thier database, and since they never formally disconected the 'previous' service, they could not connect the 'new' service. In the end I just cancelled the service and found went to another provider. They made me wait a month to fully disconect, but i got it done. The sad thing is that if the techs were just honest and admitted that they computers were screwed up, we would have saved 3 months and i would have let them keep me as a customer.
It was only a hundred years ago that Planck looked the black body radiation problem and the ultraviolet catastrophe and sent of a postcard claiming that fatal flaw was the assumption that energy was continuous. He threw out that faulty assumption, did up the math, and heralded in a world of devine dice, half dead cats, and apparently solid objects moving through apparently solid walls. In essence, rubbish.
The process of identifying assumption (the hard part) and challenging those assumption is what has brought the western world out of morass partially created by a boorish devotion to greek philosophy and political control by the Church.
There needs to be a single pen for the Cu/Display/Keyboard combo, and then optional pens for peripherals. This would also alleviate security issues of nearby keyboard loggers.
If anyone invented FUD, it was IBM invented FUD. The old ad was no one ever lost thier job for buying IBM. MS stole FUD, like most everything else.
OTOH, many articles, like the present, concentrate on the PR front. This is where SCO makes claims, such as we 0wn Linux simply because we wish we did and we want out wishes reality, and then back this unique view of reality with threats, websites, and sound bytes. It is sad because we are not in 2000 and the dotcom boom is over.
So yes, the ATT letter does seem to make the case against IBM moot, which is why they changed their case against IBM. OTOH, nothing short of bankruptcy and fraud lawsuits will change their opinion that SCO deserves money from anyone who run Linux because Linux just stole everything from Unix. It's too bad that argument did not work for Apple. I suppose we would not have to deal with monstrous MS plague. Or perhaps we should be glad that the argument did work for IBM, otherwise we would still be paying $5000 for a basic Intel machine. Of course that might mean the Mac, and even solaris and alpha machines, would be extremely competitive.
Yahoo was very good when it started. The directories led the user through an unknown terrain to useful information. To this day it still does. The searches are credible. In fact, until the recent self destruction of the Shopping portal, it was one of the best on the web. There are still few competitors.
The attributes you attribute of Google were largely developed by Alta Vista. Alta Vista fell to the same things that threatening Google: ads and search manipulations. For altavista the advertisers stacked the meta words. For google, the advertisers are stacking the meta links. The first few results in google are often pages that link to advertised results in other search engines.
Google has had problems for a while. I do not see them fixing these problems. I suspect that someone else will come up with a search engine not susceptible to the problems of google, perhaps a hybrid of Yahoo and Google. Things move very fast. In 10 years we are on our third or fourth search engine
Second, I think it is a branding thing. Like any newspaper, the Journal has to deliver a demographic. One way of delivering that demographic is keeping the perceived value as high as possible. Anything "free" connected to the journal would tarnish it's value. It is not like the NYT in which any potential reader is potential customer for at least one advertiser. If a there were a competitor and the competitor offerred free service, the Journal would merely use that freeness as means to discredit the publication.
Finally, as other have mentioned, the Journal may be closer to a professional journal than a newspaper, and many professional journals have been charging for online content since the days of the BBS.
I gave up on regular visits to the onions months ago. They started implementing the animation ads that would take foreever to load, would restart everytime you went back to the home page, and occasionally crash by browser. If a website needs registration or some paid content to keep silly ads off the home page, then I am for it.
The individual has power, but it can only be express as a group effort, and will only be expressed if there are brave people. We pay for the privilege to watch movie, but also much watch commercials. We give away the public airspace, yet can ask for little in return. We feel that is it such a privilege to shop at some stores that we allow ourselves to be humiliated by a search on exiting the store. We pay our farmers billions out of the public coffers to grow food, and then pay for the food again at the market, but cannot ask the processors the food to keep the shit out of it. In some ways these are the same as paying for the privilege to sit in the back of the bus or for the privilege to eat the salt the we could produce for nothing.
All we are seeing now is a state of affairs in which the people are cowardly. The cowardice is generated by the government, who has systematically redefined bravery as the number of people a person can kill or intimidate, rather than what the person can produce through a revolution of thought or status. For example, our founding fathers were brave because they, as mere colonials hicks, challenged the British elite and claimed equal status, and equal stuff. Today, revisionist historians want us to honor them merely as great warriors.
The choice is the same as always. We can take the stuff they give us, in the form they want to give it to us, or we can refrain and say our self respect is worth more than 3 beans. Most of us are not slaves. A slave has a choice to work or to die. Most of us, for the time being, have other choices. Certainly in the realm of entertainment, there is always the choice to refrain, or, if one is desperate enough, to take.
In the olden days we didna need no stinkin lawya. When a man crossed us we challanged him to duel. Problem one, the rich mothas would hire profesionas. We coudna hire no one, so we would send our best out, and pray he didna die, which he usualy did. When we were real angy, we just plant a bomb at the rich mothas house.
For instance, remote door opening systems are less secure than keys. I regularly hear people complain that someone with a electronic code thingy broke into their car and stole stuff. However, because the code also disabled the alarm, there was no alarm, and the car was left defenseless. The point of the alarm in this case is to protect the stuff in the car, and it is clearly a failed model. Clearly these alarms are just to make the owners feel better.
The alarms used in the old days on cars like the BMW was to have the alarm sound if the key was not placed in the ignition. This protected the car. It was invulnerable to electronic attacks. Stuff in the car could get stolen, but stuff could get stolen anyway. That is why it is best not leave stuff in your car. Which you have to do when you are out and about. But then why do people leave their door alarms on when they are at home. Obviously because they have no regards for anyone but themselves.
Of course keyless entry systems might save the $100 to replace the glass. So, I suppose if you want to make it easy for people to take stuff, such things are benificial.
That said I believe you are correct in the assesment that this technology provides little to no security benifit. The problem is that this is exactly the kind of product that will make the PHB feel better. In that sense, it may become an important product in the .net world. After all, what benifit does .net provide other making the PHB feel secure in thier jobs.
These firms are run by people that have already made thier money, at significant taxpayer expense, and are now looking for another path to mooch of the corporate welfare system. The actual closing of the schools is insignificant, as the damage is already done.
First, the machine. For consumer use, it will have to be $500. Like current printers, this will probably involve some loss at the initial sale, to be recouped with the purchase of consumables. The raw consumable will not be that hard to get. Most anyone can get 25 pounds of plastic pellets for reasonable costs, though that cost may double with shipping. The machine manufacturers, however, will likely package those in such a way that will raise the cost by 1000%, and threaten lawsuits to anyone who would "refill" the dispenser. For perspective, this may mean that producing a 0.25 pound plastic widget might cost 5-10 dollars in material.
Second, as you say, are the patent and copyright issues. It may not be so easy to download the design for the bowl. Laws will be passed to include DRM in this fantastic machine that will require all designs to be signed by a vendor that accepts responsibility for their authenticity. It might not be possible to use these machines to build your own designs, as is the case in some current music software. One would assume that the royalties, as in the current music fiasco, would make the product cost more than the store bought version. One assumes that the corporate interests now have enough warning so they will immediately purchase all needed congress people.
Like the inkjet printer, that costs us $.25 a page, it will be more an issue of convenience than costs. I predict that this will be small industrial process first. One in which certain commercial interests fight other commercial interests in court to gain the right to produce small replacement parts. Due to the size and complexity of such a machine, I doubt many homes would think it useful. I am also sure that in 10 years I will be proved wrong, and called an old fart.
That said, I am supposing that reviewer is just post-adolescent. It is very common to have a sense of embarrassment over one childish pursuits when one begins to feel 'grow-up'. This embarrassment turns to nostalgia in about 10 years. In any case, a good reader can waste only so much time with Anthony, as any of his novels can be polished off in an evening.
more like sexual harassment panda
It seems to me that insuring an agency of the highest moral values ranks much higher than producing meaningless logos.
I agree. If abusing the DVD standards to force us to watch certain section of the programming, including the FBI warning, commercials, and cheesy grade school quality animation, has not prevented us from violating copyright, how stupid must our government agencies be to think a logo will do the trick.
This has always been true to some extent in the US. It has always been the case that some people were considered better. It has always been the case that if you did not have the proper skin color or proper style or proper accessories, you were subject to police harassment. The scary thing now is that we are reaching a point in which a very few people, those with money and power, are exempted from government abuse. The rest of us are not. The police can no longer look at you and decide if you are protected. The officer must now know your name.
Which is to say, these laws are no ones fault but our own. We are really a democracy. All of us who live in the US are responsible for our country's actions and decisions. We all must willing make the sacrifices necessary to bear or change the policies. We are in fact not a dictorship in which we can be forced to comply, no matter how much our president has stacked the appellate courts in that direction.
One has to ask two questions. First, if they are willing to settle for such a small amount, why are the fines so high to begin with. Wouldn't it be more efficient to set fines at a appropriate level in the first place? It is very arguable that such high fines were created to allow extortion.
Second, why do they want to settle so badly? It seems like they would want some percentage of the cases to go to court to establish that these people actually violated copyright. As it stands, it would be very reasonable to assert that they are randomly choosing people, and then extorting money from them.
So, with the current tactics, extortion and fear seems to be their game. It is like those old shows where a gang would go into a business and demand protection money. There are legal ways to extort this kind of money, the MPAA and BSA does it. The RIAA does not seem to care about the law.
I really don't understand why the RIAA does not get an independent arbitrator to look at each case, assign a dollar value to the damages, and then send a letter to the alleged violators. Further legal proceedings might occur if the money is not paid, but at least then we would have some confidence that the RIAA is not just harassing innocent people.
My favorite are always those that are created to be used by competent, professional, responsible programmers. A language should not assume an incompetent lazy program and then impose a bunch or rules meant only to protect the incompetent at the expense of readability and flexibility.
A language should have feature, often optional, that helps the programmer use good practices to minimize mistakes. C prizes power over crutches. It is extremely possible to write very good code in C, if you know what you are doing. If you do not know how to code, then use VB. C will cause you nothing but grief.
C++ is the same problem. The classes are powerful but if you don't know what you a doing you can have destructors executing in the wrong order, which can lead to memory problems that may never be found.
Some languages, particularly those pushed by MS, assume coders who have no understanding of proper technique. Put a widget on the screen, add some code, write to a database. Creating proper modules, making sure dependancies are minimized, doing things back and forth in the same order, those are all skills that can no longer be afforded. If they could, we would not hear nearly so much complaining about C and C++.
On another note, the STL is a complex language of it's own. I do not believe it can be covered as a section of chapter in a book. Expect to buy a separate book, also published in past few years.
But SCO got greedy and began to make allegations that had little to do with the lawsuit. SCO made the mistake of linking the lawsuit to Linux, something which they had little reason or need to do. SCO made some bad deals, and instead of admitting this and let bygones go bye, they started on this ludicrous whale hunt.
So now SCO has no support except from a few gamblers. A case that at one point might have had some hope is irreparable damaged by their silly PR campaign. As I have said many time before, the only relevent SCO actions are those they have backed up with formal documents. Everything else is merely a distraction.
Furthermore, if the MS/SCO link is real, then SCO will not piss off Ashcroft. He is, after all, the man who saved the MS monopoly by effectively dropping all charges. Even though the action was bought and paid for through contributions, the price was such a bargain.
I will admit that google and lindows would provide a certain cliche synergy.