I actually agree with the general sentiment here, but for the record:
1) a intricate diorama of two (white, male) 19th century scientists arguing about who got the credit for inventing saccharine,
Weren't most of the American (meaning from the US) scientist in the 19th century white males? Although it certainly doesn't reflect today's demographics, this sounds like an accurate representation of history.
2) control panel for a nuclear reactor, and some of the flash-ash images from Hiroshima,
Well, this sounds pretty uninformative, although it does reflect two prevalent uses for discoveries in nuclear physics.
3) blamed the invention of birth control pills for the decline of the American family,
Much as I would not discourage anyone from use of birth control pills (assuming it is medically safe), I am (sadly) not convinced that this is inaccurate. However, I also haven't seen any research that actually supports this view, so its inclusion in the exhibit sounds dubious.
4) the ONLY use for nylon they could come up with was... nylon stockings.
To be fair, after DuPont introduced nylon at the 1939 world's fair, nylon stockings have been one of the most successful and prevalent products based on nylon. Of course, there is an awful lot of other great nylon stuff.
CO2 contributes more to the recent increase in greenhouse warming than any other gas. CO2 persists in the atmosphere longer and longer as concentrations continue to rise.
Other chemicals such as methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons also contribute to the global greenhouse effect. A number of additional chemicals related to urban pollution, such as low-level (tropospheric) ozone and black soot, can have a strong regional and perhaps global warming effect. Sulfate aerosols may have a cooling effect.
Source? Footnotes? Criticisms? To me, this is a textbook case of what's wrong with the way climate change is argued. Of course, if you believe there's a consensus among all honest researchers and that anything else is "corporate sponsorship-motivated" -- yup, this is exactly what you'd want to see.
I certainly agree that making strongly worded unsupported statements in order to convey a point about nebulously defined issues or groups of people is aggravating.
So, just out of curiosity, exactly which parts of this quotation is discredited by the research you presumably intended to cite?
Well, according to all the making-of stuff on the Abyss DVD, they really submerged a rat in the stuff and filmed it breathing. So unless they were flat-out lying, it's real.
Did the making-of stuff on the Abyss DVD also report on how much brain damage the rat suffered due to this experiment?
The sad part is you probably actually believe this. And you got enough Slashbots to mod you "informative".
Nicaragua was a communist puppet state. Nicaragua's "head of state" was a brutal communist dictator. And contrary to little slashdot kiddie beliefs, communism is not just an epithet.
So, are you saying that you agree with the poster's assertion of facts? If so, one might conclude that you think the US should be allowed to commit any crime, regardless of international law, as long as the primary victim of the crime is a communist state, because communists are bad, and they deserve it.
I cannot defend communism as a form of government; it was conceived by people who had absolutely no experience in governing, and does not account either for the needs of the governed or the effects of government. Communist government seems to lead almost almost inevitably to despotism in government and misery among the governed.
However, the fact that a foreign leader is mean and despotic is not an excuse for violating international law. The US has an obligation to be a role model for other nations, but frequently we have appeared to be simply a role model for petulent children. This lack of ethical compass in our government has perpetuated, accelerated, and validated the moral decay which pervades our country.
But consider this situation now. MS has hired the IBM patent guru, the guy who drove IBM's Intellectual Property licensing from zero to $2 billion a year in a short time. Obviously, MS intends to patent everything they can.
In 2003, largely in the absence of Marshall Phelps, IBM was granted 3,415 patents. The others of the top 10 patent leaders were: Canon, Hitachi, Matsushita, HP, Micron, Intel, Philips, Samsung, and Sony.
IBM's piece of that was 18.8% of the patents granted to all of these companies in 2003. They do indeed patent "everything they can", and are very agressive about encouraging patent applications from all employees. Their commitment to developing their IP portfolio will not diminish in the absence of Marshall Phelps.
In short, Microsoft has a LONG way to go before it becomes as dominant in patents as it is in software.
In this situation, I don't see how Samba can be made compatible with Longhorn without infringing IP or patent laws. If you reimplement a patented technology, you are infringing the patent, even if you have never seen it.
Longhorn is currently vaporware. It is not yet a problem. Interaction with it is currently a non-issue. In the longer term, Samba may become unable to interact with new versions of Windows. Big deal. Companies will be aware that if they buy software from Microsoft that can't interoperate, they are locking themselves in to a single vendor.
Feel free to reassure me. Please.
Microsoft's fight to retain it's current level of dominance has become an uphill battle. GNU/Linux and BSD now present a level of functionality and reliability that Microsoft simply can not match at the current price of its software products.
For example, the base distribution of Debian GNU/Linux, available for the price of the media, provides functionality that would cost literally thousands of dollars on Microsoft's current operating systems.
Really, this is probably the most painful (to Microsoft) part of the EU punishment. The issue is largely related to bundling and exclusive arrangements. BSD or GNU/Linux distributions can and do bundle quantities of high-quality free software. This makes Microsoft cringe, because not only are they are being punished for bundling their own software, but because they cannot legally bundle much of the same free software due to licensing restrictions.
IANAL, but understand enough about law to know when you have to qualify arguments with "pretty close," you would be better off not showing up in court to try and prove your point.
Well, Blake (or is it Darl?), I think what this guy really means by "pretty close" is "spot on". Among the literate, this is known as litotes.
Hey, mellow out, dude. Listen to some Village People. Have a sense of humour. Oh, and try not being so angry.
For the record, I believe that women do find the ability to help them (whether by helping with their cars, or other means) sexy. Really. Of course, I can provide no data to support this assertion other than my personal experience. Perhaps you have had the opposite experience, being unappreciated for your effort, but if so, I think that is an unfortunate exception, not the rule.
Oh, well, yeah, guilty as charged. Though I though it was rather apparent that my "hate to nitpick" comment (along with the rest of the post) was rather tongue in cheek.
Of course not; women aren't as lazy as what you go on to describe: ...but I _don't_ want to fix my own car, TV, washing machine, etc. If you're the kind of person who'd ask for that: I don't want to fix _yours_ either. (And since the topic does mention OSS, I'll do the horribly non-slashdot thing and say: I don't want to fix your code either.)
Err... personal attack. First mark of a quality troll.
The whole closed economy idea where you do everything by yourself went out of fashion a century ago. In fact, debatably it was slowly going out of fashion already around the year 8000 BC. People were already divided into people who can plough the fields, people who can build a fortress, people who know how to operate the water supply, people who can make or fix a bronze spear, people who can fight, etc.
Actually, the so-called "early Bronze age" in Europe began ~3000-2500 BC, so your "people who can make or fix a bronze spear" is an anachronism by more than 5 thousand years. If we're going to completely ignore the course of history, we replace that with "the people who can make or fix a fuel injector." That would sound more impressive, don't you think?
Why? Because it's more efficient that way. So you might as well grow out of being the alpha caveman, and finally get on with living in the 21'st century. The idea nowadays is: specialization. Live with it.
Err... this guy was talking about automobiles. My recollection is that cavemen did not have automobiles. Oh, wait, sorry... forgot about the previous point, we've decided that we had fuel injectors 10,000 years ago.
You're going to do... what? Spend 20+ hours a month tweaking and fumbling on that stupid car engine (actually even more for some people), to avoid paying 50$ to a qualified mechanic? Unless you're paid less than 2.5$ per hour, does it even count as saving anything? Either way, I don't know about you, but my time is more valuable than that.
Okay, hate to nitpick, but in the US, the convention is to write the monetary symbol immediately before the number. (Except for cents, of course.) So, fifty dollars is written $50. Oh, I should also mention that the fractional dollar amounts are, by convention, always written with two decimal places, so two dollars and fifty cents is written $2.50.
Also, most repairs one can do without a lot of extra equipment don't take very long. I can change an air filter, for example, in less than 5 minutes, change spark plugs in less than an hour... and I really don't know much about cars. Not to say that it wouldn't take you 20 or more hours to do these things, but most people I know really are much faster than that.
The whole thing is often just a sad exercise in trying to look macho. In which case, you can step outside the whole "Real Men (TM) fix their own car" stupidity for a change. In fact, step outside the whole idea that you have to prove your manhood/mad skillz/whatever to anyone.
Ahem... apparently you never heard that "every man ought to be a macho, macho man". This point doesn't lend verisimilitude to your first assertion that you are not a woman.
Do something better with your time. Read a book. Watch a movie. Or do a couple of hours overtime to pay for that car repair, and you'll still have a lot more time left than if you fixed everything yourself.
Watching a movie is "something better" than fixing your car? Let us return to the point about dollars per hour. How much value do you anticipate people would gain from watching a movie? Are you saying this is more than they gain from the experience of learning something of how an automobile works and fixing their cars?
I can almost hear some people's Pavlov reflex going "waah, but if I don't fix my own computer/car/whatever _and_ those of every single neighbour, t
This is exactly the same argument that was used (unsuccessfully) against using machines during the "Industrial Revolution", against the use of automated manufacturing equipment on automobile assembly lines during the 1980s, and most recently against the replacement of the White House staff and US President with life-like robots.
Reporting probably violates NDAs. In the case of IBM v. Worker, Worker loses.
Reporting hazardous working conditions does not violate NDAs of any sort. Furthermore, both IBM's policy and the law forbid retaliation for reporting this type of problem.
However, it is true that many people feel that they are powerless to do anything about problems they see in major corporations, US government (federal, state, and local) agencies, and the US military. In many cases, a culture of perceived helplessness may be fostered by management in order to prevent exposure of potentially expensive or embarrassing situations.
The tools are there for people to protect themselves. The problem is that many people are more afraid of the consequences of trying to fix a problem than they are of the problem itself. (Sometimes this fear is well founded, e.g., the experience of Frank Serpico).
Have you ever considered that the ability to live without fear for one's safety is (a) liberty?
Lack of fear for one's safety is extremely dangerous.
People fear they will face disapproval. People fear their family members and friends will die. People fear their own deaths. Each of these fears is a normal and healthy product of the reality that the world is not a "safe" place; without these fears, people would be reckless.
Without these fears people would feel there is no consequence to them for their most destructive actions.
Religious leaders have for centuries encouraged people to be "God-fearing", to raise their awareness of the consequences of their actions.
The job of the government is not to make people free from fear; that would simply encourage the kind of actions normal people are afraid of.
A suggestion that people ought to have the "liberty" to live without fear is, in effect, a call for anarchy.
I disagree. In an election year, with America as divided as ever, with all the political innuendo about corruption that's getting airtime lately, how can you release something like this and NOT make it political?
Err... I live in the United States, and I have noticed over the course of my lifetime that every year is an election year. It's just that the election of the US President happens every 4 years. Elections for other government positions generally occur at different, well-defined intervals (a notable exception to the "well-defined interval" rule being the state of California).
In light of this, how (in the United States of America) can one be said to do something in anything other than an election year? Every statement must therefore be considered political.
This is confusing. The problem is that the meaning of "End User" is ambiguous. I have edited to make this more clear:
Step 1: Review the SCO IP End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) to understand the terms and conditions and rights granted with the SCO IP License. Please click here to collect underpants
Step 2: ???, and purchase by credit card through our online store. Your underpants will be delivered electronically to the e-mail address specified in your order form.
Go to the south and ask them why they all like shotguns, drink beer, and have furniture on their lawns.
Are you implying this is a negative or inaccurate stereotype? There are darn few people in my area who don't fit this description.
In my experience, I have found people in the South not only willing, but eager to answer these questions. Furthermore, if you're not a jackass, you may find yourself shooting shotguns along side them, while you sit and drink beer on the furniture on their lawns.
Sun seems to be of the opinion, "If we ignore this GNU/Linux thing it will go away" and that's never going to happen.
No, you don't understand. Sun thinks that if it invests heavily in "enhancing their Unix IP license" in order to support the SCO PR/legal war against Linux, it can make this GNU/Linux thing go away.
We have an Ethanol plant in our town. It smells awful. When the wind changes a bit - usually when it's getting colder, around football season - it blows right across campus. Freshman used to think it smelled like baking bread. OT, I know. But I wouldn't wish Ethanol on anyone. It'll make you sick, and you don't even have to ingest any..
I take it you've never sniffed the air downwind of a petrolium refinery or an oil well....
When will you Americans stand up to USPTO and the related legislation?
Never! We know our system is corrupt, but it's OUR system, so don't try to confuse us with your superiour European "logic" or "reason". And if you try to force us to improve our broken system, we'll make it worse, just to spite you.
So really, what everyone here is saying, is that it's OK to crack proprietary code ("code must be free"), steal copyrighted works ("music must be free") and get away with it.
No. The Norwegian legal system is saying that that Jon Johansen's actions were legal. If you disagree with their conclusions (and want to do something other than whine about the attitudes of Slashdotters like yourself), you should explain your reasoning to the legislative body of the Norwegian government and the Motion Picture Association of America (which prompted this legal action.)
Then I note that UNIX limits passwords to 8 bytes. A measly 64 bits.
Actually, neither any commercial Unix that I know of nor Linux limits your password length to 8 bytes. However, some Unix implementation currently only support 8-byte usernames.
Oddly enough, to me the word "playmate" conjurs the image of something matching this:
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
Playmate \Play"mate`\, n.
A companion in diversions; a playfellow.
Obviously, the only effective solution to this problem is to simply outlaw use of the word "playmate" in the context of people who are not wearing clothes.
This is, after all, what Playboy wants, with the stipulation that Playboy Enterprises is the only entity authorized by the US government to use the word "playmate" to describe a person who might not be fully clothed.
How long before shareholders demand that their companies outsource their CEO and other executives?
You're thinking small.
Mrs. Fiorina says, "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."
She is implicitly recommending that we outsource the Congress and President of the United States of America. Is this treason? Perhaps. Most of us are aware of what happened last time the legislative and executive branches of the States' government were located overseas.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually agree with the general sentiment here, but for the record:
... nylon stockings.
1) a intricate diorama of two (white, male) 19th century scientists arguing about who got the credit for inventing saccharine,
Weren't most of the American (meaning from the US) scientist in the 19th century white males? Although it certainly doesn't reflect today's demographics, this sounds like an accurate representation of history.
2) control panel for a nuclear reactor, and some of the flash-ash images from Hiroshima,
Well, this sounds pretty uninformative, although it does reflect two prevalent uses for discoveries in nuclear physics.
3) blamed the invention of birth control pills for the decline of the American family,
Much as I would not discourage anyone from use of birth control pills (assuming it is medically safe), I am (sadly) not convinced that this is inaccurate. However, I also haven't seen any research that actually supports this view, so its inclusion in the exhibit sounds dubious.
4) the ONLY use for nylon they could come up with was
To be fair, after DuPont introduced nylon at the 1939 world's fair, nylon stockings have been one of the most successful and prevalent products based on nylon. Of course, there is an awful lot of other great nylon stuff.
Sample quote:
CO2 contributes more to the recent increase in greenhouse warming than any other gas. CO2 persists in the atmosphere longer and longer as concentrations continue to rise.
Other chemicals such as methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons also contribute to the global greenhouse effect. A number of additional chemicals related to urban pollution, such as low-level (tropospheric) ozone and black soot, can have a strong regional and perhaps global warming effect. Sulfate aerosols may have a cooling effect.
Source? Footnotes? Criticisms? To me, this is a textbook case of what's wrong with the way climate change is argued. Of course, if you believe there's a consensus among all honest researchers and that anything else is "corporate sponsorship-motivated" -- yup, this is exactly what you'd want to see.
I certainly agree that making strongly worded unsupported statements in order to convey a point about nebulously defined issues or groups of people is aggravating.
So, just out of curiosity, exactly which parts of this quotation is discredited by the research you presumably intended to cite?
Well, according to all the making-of stuff on the Abyss DVD, they really submerged a rat in the stuff and filmed it breathing. So unless they were flat-out lying, it's real.
Did the making-of stuff on the Abyss DVD also report on how much brain damage the rat suffered due to this experiment?
The sad part is you probably actually believe this. And you got enough Slashbots to mod you "informative".
Nicaragua was a communist puppet state. Nicaragua's "head of state" was a brutal communist dictator. And contrary to little slashdot kiddie beliefs, communism is not just an epithet.
So, are you saying that you agree with the poster's assertion of facts? If so, one might conclude that you think the US should be allowed to commit any crime, regardless of international law, as long as the primary victim of the crime is a communist state, because communists are bad, and they deserve it.
I cannot defend communism as a form of government; it was conceived by people who had absolutely no experience in governing, and does not account either for the needs of the governed or the effects of government. Communist government seems to lead almost almost inevitably to despotism in government and misery among the governed.
However, the fact that a foreign leader is mean and despotic is not an excuse for violating international law. The US has an obligation to be a role model for other nations, but frequently we have appeared to be simply a role model for petulent children. This lack of ethical compass in our government has perpetuated, accelerated, and validated the moral decay which pervades our country.
But consider this situation now. MS has hired the IBM patent guru, the guy who drove IBM's Intellectual Property licensing from zero to $2 billion a year in a short time. Obviously, MS intends to patent everything they can.
In 2003, largely in the absence of Marshall Phelps, IBM was granted 3,415 patents. The others of the top 10 patent leaders were: Canon, Hitachi, Matsushita, HP, Micron, Intel, Philips, Samsung, and Sony.
IBM's piece of that was 18.8% of the patents granted to all of these companies in 2003. They do indeed patent "everything they can", and are very agressive about encouraging patent applications from all employees. Their commitment to developing their IP portfolio will not diminish in the absence of Marshall Phelps.
In short, Microsoft has a LONG way to go before it becomes as dominant in patents as it is in software.
In this situation, I don't see how Samba can be made compatible with Longhorn without infringing IP or patent laws. If you reimplement a patented technology, you are infringing the patent, even if you have never seen it.
Longhorn is currently vaporware. It is not yet a problem. Interaction with it is currently a non-issue. In the longer term, Samba may become unable to interact with new versions of Windows. Big deal. Companies will be aware that if they buy software from Microsoft that can't interoperate, they are locking themselves in to a single vendor.
Feel free to reassure me. Please.
Microsoft's fight to retain it's current level of dominance has become an uphill battle. GNU/Linux and BSD now present a level of functionality and reliability that Microsoft simply can not match at the current price of its software products.
For example, the base distribution of Debian GNU/Linux, available for the price of the media, provides functionality that would cost literally thousands of dollars on Microsoft's current operating systems.
Really, this is probably the most painful (to Microsoft) part of the EU punishment. The issue is largely related to bundling and exclusive arrangements. BSD or GNU/Linux distributions can and do bundle quantities of high-quality free software. This makes Microsoft cringe, because not only are they are being punished for bundling their own software, but because they cannot legally bundle much of the same free software due to licensing restrictions.
This is WAY off-topic, but:
So your god is blatantly sexist rather than a mysogenist!
Err.... All available evidence indicates that it's not his _God_ who's sexist.
IANAL, but understand enough about law to know when you have to qualify arguments with "pretty close," you would be better off not showing up in court to try and prove your point.
Well, Blake (or is it Darl?), I think what this guy really means by "pretty close" is "spot on". Among the literate, this is known as litotes.
Hey, mellow out, dude. Listen to some Village People. Have a sense of humour. Oh, and try not being so angry.
For the record, I believe that women do find the ability to help them (whether by helping with their cars, or other means) sexy. Really. Of course, I can provide no data to support this assertion other than my personal experience. Perhaps you have had the opposite experience, being unappreciated for your effort, but if so, I think that is an unfortunate exception, not the rule.
Wrong! You love to nitpick.
Oh, well, yeah, guilty as charged. Though I though it was rather apparent that my "hate to nitpick" comment (along with the rest of the post) was rather tongue in cheek.
Okay, a troll like this deserves a reply.
...but I _don't_ want to fix my own car, TV, washing machine, etc. If you're the kind of person who'd ask for that: I don't want to fix _yours_ either. (And since the topic does mention OSS, I'll do the horribly non-slashdot thing and say: I don't want to fix your code either.)
I'm not a woman either,
Of course not; women aren't as lazy as what you go on to describe:
Err... personal attack. First mark of a quality troll.
The whole closed economy idea where you do everything by yourself went out of fashion a century ago. In fact, debatably it was slowly going out of fashion already around the year 8000 BC. People were already divided into people who can plough the fields, people who can build a fortress, people who know how to operate the water supply, people who can make or fix a bronze spear, people who can fight, etc.
Actually, the so-called "early Bronze age" in Europe began ~3000-2500 BC, so your "people who can make or fix a bronze spear" is an anachronism by more than 5 thousand years. If we're going to completely ignore the course of history, we replace that with "the people who can make or fix a fuel injector." That would sound more impressive, don't you think?
Why? Because it's more efficient that way. So you might as well grow out of being the alpha caveman, and finally get on with living in the 21'st century. The idea nowadays is: specialization. Live with it.
Err... this guy was talking about automobiles. My recollection is that cavemen did not have automobiles. Oh, wait, sorry... forgot about the previous point, we've decided that we had fuel injectors 10,000 years ago.
You're going to do... what? Spend 20+ hours a month tweaking and fumbling on that stupid car engine (actually even more for some people), to avoid paying 50$ to a qualified mechanic? Unless you're paid less than 2.5$ per hour, does it even count as saving anything? Either way, I don't know about you, but my time is more valuable than that.
Okay, hate to nitpick, but in the US, the convention is to write the monetary symbol immediately before the number. (Except for cents, of course.) So, fifty dollars is written $50. Oh, I should also mention that the fractional dollar amounts are, by convention, always written with two decimal places, so two dollars and fifty cents is written $2.50.
Also, most repairs one can do without a lot of extra equipment don't take very long. I can change an air filter, for example, in less than 5 minutes, change spark plugs in less than an hour... and I really don't know much about cars. Not to say that it wouldn't take you 20 or more hours to do these things, but most people I know really are much faster than that.
The whole thing is often just a sad exercise in trying to look macho. In which case, you can step outside the whole "Real Men (TM) fix their own car" stupidity for a change. In fact, step outside the whole idea that you have to prove your manhood/mad skillz/whatever to anyone.
Ahem... apparently you never heard that "every man ought to be a macho, macho man". This point doesn't lend verisimilitude to your first assertion that you are not a woman.
Do something better with your time. Read a book. Watch a movie. Or do a couple of hours overtime to pay for that car repair, and you'll still have a lot more time left than if you fixed everything yourself.
Watching a movie is "something better" than fixing your car? Let us return to the point about dollars per hour. How much value do you anticipate people would gain from watching a movie? Are you saying this is more than they gain from the experience of learning something of how an automobile works and fixing their cars?
I can almost hear some people's Pavlov reflex going "waah, but if I don't fix my own computer/car/whatever _and_ those of every single neighbour, t
I sympathize with your point but....
This is exactly the same argument that was used (unsuccessfully) against using machines during the "Industrial Revolution", against the use of automated manufacturing equipment on automobile assembly lines during the 1980s, and most recently against the replacement of the White House staff and US President with life-like robots.
Reporting probably violates NDAs. In the case of IBM v. Worker, Worker loses.
Reporting hazardous working conditions does not violate NDAs of any sort. Furthermore, both IBM's policy and the law forbid retaliation for reporting this type of problem.
However, it is true that many people feel that they are powerless to do anything about problems they see in major corporations, US government (federal, state, and local) agencies, and the US military. In many cases, a culture of perceived helplessness may be fostered by management in order to prevent exposure of potentially expensive or embarrassing situations.
The tools are there for people to protect themselves. The problem is that many people are more afraid of the consequences of trying to fix a problem than they are of the problem itself. (Sometimes this fear is well founded, e.g., the experience of Frank Serpico).
> (You can even double check me: I can't remember a single instance in the Bible where God's command wasn't questioned...)
"Be fruitful and multiply" seemed to go by without much backtalk.
Apparently, you haven't done much Bible reading. The story of Onan (Revised Standard Version) appears pretty early on; it is in Genesis 38.
For King James Version enthusiasts, here's your preferred text.
Have you ever considered that the ability to live without fear for one's safety is (a) liberty?
Lack of fear for one's safety is extremely dangerous.
People fear they will face disapproval. People fear their family members and friends will die. People fear their own deaths. Each of these fears is a normal and healthy product of the reality that the world is not a "safe" place; without these fears, people would be reckless.
Without these fears people would feel there is no consequence to them for their most destructive actions.
Religious leaders have for centuries encouraged people to be "God-fearing", to raise their awareness of the consequences of their actions.
The job of the government is not to make people free from fear; that would simply encourage the kind of actions normal people are afraid of.
A suggestion that people ought to have the "liberty" to live without fear is, in effect, a call for anarchy.
I disagree. In an election year, with America as divided as ever, with all the political innuendo about corruption that's getting airtime lately, how can you release something like this and NOT make it political?
Err... I live in the United States, and I have noticed over the course of my lifetime that every year is an election year. It's just that the election of the US President happens every 4 years. Elections for other government positions generally occur at different, well-defined intervals (a notable exception to the "well-defined interval" rule being the state of California).
In light of this, how (in the United States of America) can one be said to do something in anything other than an election year? Every statement must therefore be considered political.
This is confusing. The problem is that the meaning of "End User" is ambiguous. I have edited to make this more clear:
Step 1:
Review the SCO IP End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) to understand the terms and conditions and rights granted with the SCO IP License. Please click here to collect underpants
Step 2:
???, and purchase by credit card through our online store. Your underpants will be delivered electronically to the e-mail address specified in your order form.
Step 3:
Profit!
Go to the south and ask them why they all like shotguns, drink beer, and have furniture on their lawns.
Are you implying this is a negative or inaccurate stereotype? There are darn few people in my area who don't fit this description.
In my experience, I have found people in the South not only willing, but eager to answer these questions. Furthermore, if you're not a jackass, you may find yourself shooting shotguns along side them, while you sit and drink beer on the furniture on their lawns.
Sun seems to be of the opinion, "If we ignore this GNU/Linux thing it will go away" and that's never going to happen.
No, you don't understand. Sun thinks that if it invests heavily in "enhancing their Unix IP license" in order to support the SCO PR/legal war against Linux, it can make this GNU/Linux thing go away.
We have an Ethanol plant in our town. It smells awful. When the wind changes a bit - usually when it's getting colder, around football season - it blows right across campus. Freshman used to think it smelled like baking bread. OT, I know. But I wouldn't wish Ethanol on anyone. It'll make you sick, and you don't even have to ingest any..
I take it you've never sniffed the air downwind of a petrolium refinery or an oil well....
When will you Americans stand up to USPTO and the related legislation?
Never! We know our system is corrupt, but it's OUR system, so don't try to confuse us with your superiour European "logic" or "reason". And if you try to force us to improve our broken system, we'll make it worse, just to spite you.
So really, what everyone here is saying, is that it's OK to crack proprietary code ("code must be free"), steal copyrighted works ("music must be free") and get away with it.
No. The Norwegian legal system is saying that that Jon Johansen's actions were legal. If you disagree with their conclusions (and want to do something other than whine about the attitudes of Slashdotters like yourself), you should explain your reasoning to the legislative body of the Norwegian government and the Motion Picture Association of America (which prompted this legal action.)
Then I note that UNIX limits passwords to 8 bytes. A measly 64 bits.
Actually, neither any commercial Unix that I know of nor Linux limits your password length to 8 bytes. However, some Unix implementation currently only support 8-byte usernames.
Oddly enough, to me the word "playmate" conjurs the image of something matching this:
:
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Playmate \Play"mate`\, n.
A companion in diversions; a playfellow.
Obviously, the only effective solution to this problem is to simply outlaw use of the word "playmate" in the context of people who are not wearing clothes.
This is, after all, what Playboy wants, with the stipulation that Playboy Enterprises is the only entity authorized by the US government to use the word "playmate" to describe a person who might not be fully clothed.
How long before shareholders demand that their companies outsource their CEO and other executives?
You're thinking small.
Mrs. Fiorina says, "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."
She is implicitly recommending that we outsource the Congress and President of the United States of America. Is this treason? Perhaps. Most of us are aware of what happened last time the legislative and executive branches of the States' government were located overseas.
In related news, I plan to barter my goat for a roll of tinfoil and a new mattress in which to store my money.