Looks like that tax cut *really* helped, then! The myth of supply-side economics rears it's ugly head yet again... and this time to the tune of a 500 billion dollar deficit...
Suddenly I'm reminded of the HHGTTG radio play where Ford Prefect is trying to explain the birth of the universe to Arthur (paraphrased, since I don't have the script on hand):
Ford: You see, it's like this fork here...
Zaphod: Hey, that's my fork!
Ford: Okay, it's like this fork... no, no wait, it's, well, imagine taking a bathtub. Okay, so you have this bathtub, yeah? But it's conical! So now you take it and you fill it up with this really fine sand, see? Right, so now you make a hole in the bottom, and all the sand starts rushing out, yeah?! And it's spinning and whirling...
Yes, I back up all my CDs, as I'm quite accident prone, and I also tend to abuse my CDs. Moreover, recently we had a CD disc changer in our car jam up, which resulted in two unrecoverable discs... had I backed them up before the jam, I could have replaced them (alas, I did not). This also has the added benefit that I don't have to tote my CDs around everywhere, since I an access them from work via the Internet and at home via a multimedia PC. Thus, risk of damage is significantly reduced. Moreover, if someone breaks into our car and steals our CDs, I can simply burn new copies.
Another example: One of my co-workers plans to chip his Playstation in order to back up his games, as one of his children proceeded to turn one of them into a coaster. Just because *you've* been lucky enough to avoid this mishap, doesn't mean everyone else is.
Not to mention the extra time in the test/debug cycle that this additional complexity incurs... after all, another degree of freedom (presumably) means a whole new degree of inputs to test.
Err, no, NeXT did it first...
on
The Power of X
·
· Score: 1
... with DPS. Of course, the fact that the Quartz guys incorporated this technology isn't a surprise, given that much of OSX inherits from the NeXT legacy. Incidentally, similar work was also done by Sun in the form of the NeWS (which is considered by some to be a superior technology).
This was in order to force hardware manufacturers to release the source code.
Not at all. This is to prevent people from running old modules against a new kernel version, where symbol names and other internals may have changed, thus resulting in potential crashses, instabilities, etc. As I understand it, you can turn this off by disabling kernel module versioning, but the module itself may refuse to load if it detects the wrong kernel version.
Fortunately, there's a really easy way around this that nVidia and other folks use. nVidia distributes their drivers as a binary driver, along with some source which acts as a thin layer between the binary code and the kernel itself. This layer is then compiled for the specific kernel version, while the binary driver portion remains the same. This is, incidentally, how I install the driver (since they have no modules for my specific kernel version).
Most hardware is useless in a few years anyway,
Holy crap, HIBT? This is the dumbest thing I've read in a *long* time. Hardware is *far* from useless, even long after it's been "obsoleted". It's only the silly gamerz that require the latest and greatest... most people get by with fairly modest equipment. Heck, my firewall ran on a 486 DX/100... that is, until the power supply died. *sigh*
"don't hold on to the reference" is equivalent to saying "free it."
Not quite, because in C, you can lose a pointer to allocated memory and end up screwed. In Java, the only way to "leak memory" is to deliberately hold onto a reference in some fashion.
anywho, these hash tables are kept around forever, so all objects need to be "freed" from the hash table.
Deliberately holding onto an object until you're done with it does not a "memory leak" make. A memory leak is when you allocate memory, then lose the pointer for some reason, thus making the memory completely unrecoverable until program termination. In Java, this is impossible. IOW, the only way for Java to "leak memory" in the fashion you describe is by deliberately doing it. So, no, Java does not "leak memory", despite your claims. OTOH, it doesn't read programmer minds, either, so if you really *really* want to shoot yourself in the foot, there's only so much the language and JVM can do for you.
you are actually incorrect about circular references with respect to garbage collection
Ah, my mistake. I couldn't remember if they'd dealt with this properly and didn't bother to research it.:)
you imply that the problems in C are "scaling" problems.
Err, no, *you* implied that *Java's* problems are related to scaling to larger projects (you said "as the size of the project grows, java has as many problems as other programming languages."). And in my experience, the case has been the opposite... while C and Java both scale quite nicely, Java alleviates some of the pains that C creates (eg, having to manage header files).
by itself, it isn't slow, as many benchmarks will attest, but when you have lots of objects to garbage collect, the real-time guarantee is lost,
This is certainly true. However, "the correct tool for the job" rule applies here... I'd never consider Java for a real-time application. And for non-real-time apps, this issue typically isn't that important.
this is the *exact* same purposes of a header file
Err, not quite. First, the situation you describe strikes me as fairly unique (I know I haven't encountered it, and I've written a fair bit of Java). Second, in C/C++ header files are required because they describe an interface for a module. In C, they export symbol names and in C++, they provide whole class definitions. And, AFAIK, in both of those languages, they are required whenever *any* module wishes to export an interface. OTOH, in Java, the.java (and.class) file serves both as the code as well as the interface definition. This means that, for the vast majority of cases, you don't need any kind of secondary interface definition at all (as opposed to C/C++, where you need one *every time*).
Engineers need to go through very rigerous tests to certify their expertise before they are allow to design and build a bridge. Why should programming be different?
Absolutely agreed. But once those engineers are trained, we don't force them to use slide rules and abacuses instead of high-end graphing calculators. You give them tools which make their jobs easier, and make it harder for them to make mistakes.
In the same way, a programming language is a tool, and that tool should exist to make the programmer's job easier. So, if the language allows me to avoid dealing with memory management issues, great! If the compiler does a lot of work double checking what I've done in order to prevent me from doing something really stupid, fantastic! Does that mean that the barrier of entry into the field is a little lower? Sure, but at least the really skilled guys can get their jobs done a little quicker, and with fewer errors.
but java might if you leave it lying around in some persistent collection.
Huh? What are these mysterious "persistent collections" you speak of? Yeah, if you hold a reference to a collection and leave an object in it, it won't get garbage collected. Duh. Don't hold onto the reference. And if you actually manage to create circular references, well, that's your own fault... the JVM can only do so much.
sure, you might not have header files, instead you have interfaces which allow different classes to depend on each other.
I'm not sure what your point is, here (especially the reference to interfaces). In C/C++, you need a source file as well as a header file, and need to track both. The advantage of Java is that the two concepts are merged, so you don't have these nasty dependencies to deal with.
java does alleviate the problem of pointers, but it has plenty of other problems it introduces.
Such as?
the stuff you mention isn't "crap," it's just that java masquerades most of those things
a) yes, it is "crap". ie, it's a bunch of crap that, in C or C++, the programmer has to manage (e.g., memory and header files). How, exactly, does java "masquerade" these things?
as the size of the project grows, java has as many problems as other programming languages.
Bullshit. At the company I'm working at, we're creeping up over the half million line mark, with half of that in java and half of that in C, and I can say unequivocally that C is a *much* larger pain in the ass to manage, build, and maintain. But, since you seem so sure of yourself, please, explain to me these mysterious scaling problems that Java has.
Yup, I know. The truth is, not only is this image fairly old, but it has appeared on multiple occasions (APOD cycles through old shots when there's nothing new and interesting to present). Why on earth it's made it's way to Slashdot *now* is anyone's guess...
Honestly... you can pick one up for just over a hundred bucks (even cheaper used), plus a flash cart for about the same or less, and you can develop software for a decent, popular console. It's definitely a more old-school style platform (has a nice, traditional sprite-based VDP) and in order to do anything really fancy, you pretty much have to write some code in ARM assembly (which is, BTW, a joy... the ARM has a *really* nice ISA).
As for documentation, the GBA is only rivaled by the Dreamcast in terms of how well documented it is and how large the homebrew development community is. And much like the DC, you can use the standard GNU toolchain for development. And, of course, you can still run regular ol' games on it, so it doesn't *have* to be just a development platform.
Well, assuming you're right, then EULAs are completely baseless. ie, the only right a copyright holder has is to limit my right to copy... they have no other rights, otherwise. IOW, the only way to limit the right to run software is to limit the right to copy. However, if they can't limit this right (as you describe), then EULAs are unenforceable, as there is no other basis for the license (AFAICT). This still means that, assuming the GPL is not an EULA (in the traditional sense), the user still has the right to run the software (which contradicts the original poster's contention).
Please. Don't kid yourself. Milton is right... what he describes is the essence of pure capitalism. The problem is, your average "capitalist" doesn't like to be honest with themselves, and thus can't admit this fact. The truth is, a) the system we have now is not pure capitalism, and it probably never has been. b) with Dubya in charge, the US is shifting more toward pure capitalism (ie, far less government intervention into the private sector). After all, if the US had a pure capitalist economy, there'd be nothing stopping an oil company from drilling into the pristine Alaskan permafrost. And guess what, if people don't like this, then, yes, they are being anti-capitalist!
The problem is, thanks to the Red Scare of the 50's, people don't realize that there's nothing *wrong* with this! ie, disliking pure capitalism does not make you a dirty communist. The fact is, pure capitalism is entirely amoral. And due to the short-sightedness of man, it can be highly destructive... after all, a timber company would much rather clear-cut a forest, rather than harvest it sustainably, because it produces far more short-term profit. Of course, in 100 years the forest will be gone, but humans don't think that far ahead. So, it's up to the government to temper the acts of the private sector, in order to minimize this destructive behaviour and help defend the public good. Some may call this "socialism", but I just call it "good sense".
Gah, don't use the word "evil". You sound like Dubya. Corporations are amoral. ie, they aren't out to deliberately do the *wrong* thing... from a corps perspective, there is no right and wrong, other than "this action generates profit" and "this action doesn't generate profit" (well, at least in the world of ideal capitalism this is the case).
Without this, what gives you any right to use the software? If the GPL doesn't, then we have a problem, because although we can all trade and modify the source code for our gpl'd programs as much as we like, we can't actually run them.
Umm, no. Okay, the way I understand it, the only reason EULAs might hold any water is because of copyright law. The theory is that, in order to run a piece of software, you must *copy* that software in some fashion (at minimum, the instructions must be read (and thus copied) by the CPU, in order to execute them). IOW, an EULA is not a license to actually *run* the software, but rather a license to *copy* the software, such that you may run it.
Now, the GPL explicitely gives you the right to copy the software. Therefore, the GPL implicitely gives you the right to run the software, as well. So, no, the GPL is not an EULA (in that it's not a license which grants limited right to copy for the purposes of executing the software). It's much more broad than that... it's a general license to copy and distribute.
The old 'they're giving it away to everyone but saying I can't use it' argument.
What is this argument? I've never heard of it. My take on the issue is that my IP is my IP. Period. I own the copyright on my work, therefore I control who can and cannot make copies of that work. So, if I choose to give everyone but person A a free license to copy and distribute my work, that's my prerogative, because, well, it's *my* work, and I can place it under any license I want.
Now, it could be the case that anti-trust laws start to apply (ie, dumping, etc). But that doesn't change the legality of the license itself.
Relatively rich societies like the US can afford to be more wasteful than relatively poor ones like Canada.
Fair enough. But I'm tired of people claiming that privatized health care is magically better, more effective, more efficient, and better for the tax payer. It's not. It's wasteful, inefficient, expensive, and discriminatory.
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to listen to a few poor people who are fscked by HMOs on a regular basis because they can't afford to pay for their own health insurance. I'm sure they just *love* the US system.
So while we may spend twice as much on private health care, we don't pay nearly as much taxes, so it more or less evens out. It's also more efficient.
Muahahahahahaha! You're kidding, right? Okay, first, read this, then read this. Oh, and maybe read this. Then, tell me again how the US system is somehow more efficient. Hell, compared to Canada, the US spends 3 times as much, per capita, on health care. And almost a quarter of that is on administrative costs alone! And, continuing the comparison with Canada, if you look at this, you'll see that, on average, an American citizen bears a greater tax burden than a Canadian.
Piss off with your cultural/ethical relativism. Your arguments have been advanced for years and been proven wrong time and time again.
What exactly do you mean by "wrong"?
When was the last time you heard about a woman being stoned to death in a non-Islamic country?
Well, I've heard of plenty of women who've been beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered in non-Islamic countries.
Moreover, I've only heard of women being stoned in extremely fundamentalist Islamic countries, which, in case you didn't realize it, isn't all of them.
Examine the rhetoric in their ideas. The people cited talk about how seeing a woman's hair or wrist would cause men to become "crazy with lust"... what the fuck planet are they from?
Remember the reactions when Janet Jackson flashed her nipple on live television? How people screamed about protecting the children, etc, etc? So, tell me again how Western society is so much more advanced?
Basically, don't be a fucking hypocrite... all countries have their ideas of decency. Most of them focus around what women can and can't expose in public. The fact that we draw the line at the nipple and not the ankle is purely arbitrary.
That whole idea is ludicrous.. Ironically, these same assholes who claim to want to protect women are the ones who rape, subjugate, and dominate the women of their culture.
Really. That's universally true? Huh... 'cuz I've met and known of many Islamic women here in Canada who wear full hijab, and they don't seem to mind it. And they aren't getting raped and dominated, AFAIK. Maybe you should do a little research before painting the entirety of Islamic culture with the same brush. And you call me a dumbass.
The reason they need these fucked up regulations is because they are a society of mysoginistic fucks. Maybe if they re-evalauated their own view on women, they would be able to handle seeing a girls hair.
So, why is it again that we need to hide women's nipples?
The girl at my school that wore the full hijab was hot as hell, and I went crazy with lust just seeing her face. Looks like their strategy just doesn't work.
Hey, and now that you mention it, all those chicks that wear clothing? They're still hot as hell, too! So, why not just have them walk around naked!
Hey, BTW, was that girl in your school raped and dominated by her male counterparts?
But saying that the western qualms against showing showing breasts is just as opressive forcing women to cover head to toe, and never leave the house un-escorted is totally ludicrous. It's like saying that I can't get mad at the guy driving 50 mph over the speed limit when I am driving 5 mph over it.
Focus on the article, please. It discusses various Islamic countries refusing to air Olympic coverage because they feel the women are exposing themselves. This is no different than US media refusing to air Janet Jackson's areola.
Oh, and by the way, not all those countries listed are as fundamentalist as you describe, and to assume so is incredibly narrow-minded.
Heh, no problem, it happens.:) Sorry for the bitchy response... I couldn't tell if you were just innocently misreading the post, or, in true Slashdot tradition, being deliberately thick.:)
Apologies, I never meant to imply that the US was somehow the source for these ideas (clearly, that ain't the case). My point is that their beliefs are only different from ours in degree.
And, yet again, you failed to read the first sentence of my post again, you friggin' tool. Let me highlight my point for you:
"THE Greek organizers of this summer's topless Olympics, which began in Athens yesterday..."
My point, you blind twit, is that you are applying your own set of values to Islamic culture. If it were the case that all Olympians couldn't wear clothing above their waste, for whatever reason, the events wouldn't be broadcast in the Western world (particularly the United States) due to the fear of being exposed to images of naked breasts. Yet, for some reason, that is okay... however, what these Islamic countries are doing is only an extrapolation of the beliefs of people in the Western world (rather than just breasts, they feel the entire female body is enticing to males, and thus men need to be protected from it).
Of course, you may not agree with this (and I feel the hysteria about breasts in the Western world is more than a little silly), however, judging an entire culture based solely on your own values is silly and narrow minded.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like that tax cut *really* helped, then! The myth of supply-side economics rears it's ugly head yet again... and this time to the tune of a 500 billion dollar deficit...
Suddenly I'm reminded of the HHGTTG radio play where Ford Prefect is trying to explain the birth of the universe to Arthur (paraphrased, since I don't have the script on hand):
Ford: You see, it's like this fork here...
Zaphod: Hey, that's my fork!
Ford: Okay, it's like this fork... no, no wait, it's, well, imagine taking a bathtub. Okay, so you have this bathtub, yeah? But it's conical! So now you take it and you fill it up with this really fine sand, see? Right, so now you make a hole in the bottom, and all the sand starts rushing out, yeah?! And it's spinning and whirling...
Arthur: And that's how the universe was formed?
Ford: No! But it sure is neat!
Yes, I back up all my CDs, as I'm quite accident prone, and I also tend to abuse my CDs. Moreover, recently we had a CD disc changer in our car jam up, which resulted in two unrecoverable discs... had I backed them up before the jam, I could have replaced them (alas, I did not). This also has the added benefit that I don't have to tote my CDs around everywhere, since I an access them from work via the Internet and at home via a multimedia PC. Thus, risk of damage is significantly reduced. Moreover, if someone breaks into our car and steals our CDs, I can simply burn new copies.
Another example: One of my co-workers plans to chip his Playstation in order to back up his games, as one of his children proceeded to turn one of them into a coaster. Just because *you've* been lucky enough to avoid this mishap, doesn't mean everyone else is.
So, in short, yes, people back up their media.
Not to mention the extra time in the test/debug cycle that this additional complexity incurs... after all, another degree of freedom (presumably) means a whole new degree of inputs to test.
... with DPS. Of course, the fact that the Quartz guys incorporated this technology isn't a surprise, given that much of OSX inherits from the NeXT legacy. Incidentally, similar work was also done by Sun in the form of the NeWS (which is considered by some to be a superior technology).
The former. Wait... HIBT??? ;)
This was in order to force hardware manufacturers to release the source code.
Not at all. This is to prevent people from running old modules against a new kernel version, where symbol names and other internals may have changed, thus resulting in potential crashses, instabilities, etc. As I understand it, you can turn this off by disabling kernel module versioning, but the module itself may refuse to load if it detects the wrong kernel version.
Fortunately, there's a really easy way around this that nVidia and other folks use. nVidia distributes their drivers as a binary driver, along with some source which acts as a thin layer between the binary code and the kernel itself. This layer is then compiled for the specific kernel version, while the binary driver portion remains the same. This is, incidentally, how I install the driver (since they have no modules for my specific kernel version).
Most hardware is useless in a few years anyway,
Holy crap, HIBT? This is the dumbest thing I've read in a *long* time. Hardware is *far* from useless, even long after it's been "obsoleted". It's only the silly gamerz that require the latest and greatest... most people get by with fairly modest equipment. Heck, my firewall ran on a 486 DX/100... that is, until the power supply died. *sigh*
"don't hold on to the reference" is equivalent to saying "free it."
:)
.java (and .class) file serves both as the code as well as the interface definition. This means that, for the vast majority of cases, you don't need any kind of secondary interface definition at all (as opposed to C/C++, where you need one *every time*).
Not quite, because in C, you can lose a pointer to allocated memory and end up screwed. In Java, the only way to "leak memory" is to deliberately hold onto a reference in some fashion.
anywho, these hash tables are kept around forever, so all objects need to be "freed" from the hash table.
Deliberately holding onto an object until you're done with it does not a "memory leak" make. A memory leak is when you allocate memory, then lose the pointer for some reason, thus making the memory completely unrecoverable until program termination. In Java, this is impossible. IOW, the only way for Java to "leak memory" in the fashion you describe is by deliberately doing it. So, no, Java does not "leak memory", despite your claims. OTOH, it doesn't read programmer minds, either, so if you really *really* want to shoot yourself in the foot, there's only so much the language and JVM can do for you.
you are actually incorrect about circular references with respect to garbage collection
Ah, my mistake. I couldn't remember if they'd dealt with this properly and didn't bother to research it.
you imply that the problems in C are "scaling" problems.
Err, no, *you* implied that *Java's* problems are related to scaling to larger projects (you said "as the size of the project grows, java has as many problems as other programming languages."). And in my experience, the case has been the opposite... while C and Java both scale quite nicely, Java alleviates some of the pains that C creates (eg, having to manage header files).
by itself, it isn't slow, as many benchmarks will attest, but when you have lots of objects to garbage collect, the real-time guarantee is lost,
This is certainly true. However, "the correct tool for the job" rule applies here... I'd never consider Java for a real-time application. And for non-real-time apps, this issue typically isn't that important.
this is the *exact* same purposes of a header file
Err, not quite. First, the situation you describe strikes me as fairly unique (I know I haven't encountered it, and I've written a fair bit of Java). Second, in C/C++ header files are required because they describe an interface for a module. In C, they export symbol names and in C++, they provide whole class definitions. And, AFAIK, in both of those languages, they are required whenever *any* module wishes to export an interface. OTOH, in Java, the
Engineers need to go through very rigerous tests to certify their expertise before they are allow to design and build a bridge. Why should programming be different?
Absolutely agreed. But once those engineers are trained, we don't force them to use slide rules and abacuses instead of high-end graphing calculators. You give them tools which make their jobs easier, and make it harder for them to make mistakes.
In the same way, a programming language is a tool, and that tool should exist to make the programmer's job easier. So, if the language allows me to avoid dealing with memory management issues, great! If the compiler does a lot of work double checking what I've done in order to prevent me from doing something really stupid, fantastic! Does that mean that the barrier of entry into the field is a little lower? Sure, but at least the really skilled guys can get their jobs done a little quicker, and with fewer errors.
java can leak memory just like any other language
Yeah, but you have to work a *lot* harder at it.
but java might if you leave it lying around in some persistent collection.
Huh? What are these mysterious "persistent collections" you speak of? Yeah, if you hold a reference to a collection and leave an object in it, it won't get garbage collected. Duh. Don't hold onto the reference. And if you actually manage to create circular references, well, that's your own fault... the JVM can only do so much.
sure, you might not have header files, instead you have interfaces which allow different classes to depend on each other.
I'm not sure what your point is, here (especially the reference to interfaces). In C/C++, you need a source file as well as a header file, and need to track both. The advantage of Java is that the two concepts are merged, so you don't have these nasty dependencies to deal with.
java does alleviate the problem of pointers, but it has plenty of other problems it introduces.
Such as?
the stuff you mention isn't "crap," it's just that java masquerades most of those things
a) yes, it is "crap". ie, it's a bunch of crap that, in C or C++, the programmer has to manage (e.g., memory and header files). How, exactly, does java "masquerade" these things?
as the size of the project grows, java has as many problems as other programming languages.
Bullshit. At the company I'm working at, we're creeping up over the half million line mark, with half of that in java and half of that in C, and I can say unequivocally that C is a *much* larger pain in the ass to manage, build, and maintain. But, since you seem so sure of yourself, please, explain to me these mysterious scaling problems that Java has.
Yup, I know. The truth is, not only is this image fairly old, but it has appeared on multiple occasions (APOD cycles through old shots when there's nothing new and interesting to present). Why on earth it's made it's way to Slashdot *now* is anyone's guess...
Honestly... you can pick one up for just over a hundred bucks (even cheaper used), plus a flash cart for about the same or less, and you can develop software for a decent, popular console. It's definitely a more old-school style platform (has a nice, traditional sprite-based VDP) and in order to do anything really fancy, you pretty much have to write some code in ARM assembly (which is, BTW, a joy... the ARM has a *really* nice ISA).
As for documentation, the GBA is only rivaled by the Dreamcast in terms of how well documented it is and how large the homebrew development community is. And much like the DC, you can use the standard GNU toolchain for development. And, of course, you can still run regular ol' games on it, so it doesn't *have* to be just a development platform.
So, why would anyone bother with this thing?
Well, assuming you're right, then EULAs are completely baseless. ie, the only right a copyright holder has is to limit my right to copy... they have no other rights, otherwise. IOW, the only way to limit the right to run software is to limit the right to copy. However, if they can't limit this right (as you describe), then EULAs are unenforceable, as there is no other basis for the license (AFAICT). This still means that, assuming the GPL is not an EULA (in the traditional sense), the user still has the right to run the software (which contradicts the original poster's contention).
Please. Don't kid yourself. Milton is right... what he describes is the essence of pure capitalism. The problem is, your average "capitalist" doesn't like to be honest with themselves, and thus can't admit this fact. The truth is, a) the system we have now is not pure capitalism, and it probably never has been. b) with Dubya in charge, the US is shifting more toward pure capitalism (ie, far less government intervention into the private sector). After all, if the US had a pure capitalist economy, there'd be nothing stopping an oil company from drilling into the pristine Alaskan permafrost. And guess what, if people don't like this, then, yes, they are being anti-capitalist!
The problem is, thanks to the Red Scare of the 50's, people don't realize that there's nothing *wrong* with this! ie, disliking pure capitalism does not make you a dirty communist. The fact is, pure capitalism is entirely amoral. And due to the short-sightedness of man, it can be highly destructive... after all, a timber company would much rather clear-cut a forest, rather than harvest it sustainably, because it produces far more short-term profit. Of course, in 100 years the forest will be gone, but humans don't think that far ahead. So, it's up to the government to temper the acts of the private sector, in order to minimize this destructive behaviour and help defend the public good. Some may call this "socialism", but I just call it "good sense".
so even though not all businesses are "evil"...
Gah, don't use the word "evil". You sound like Dubya. Corporations are amoral. ie, they aren't out to deliberately do the *wrong* thing... from a corps perspective, there is no right and wrong, other than "this action generates profit" and "this action doesn't generate profit" (well, at least in the world of ideal capitalism this is the case).
Without this, what gives you any right to use the software? If the GPL doesn't, then we have a problem, because although we can all trade and modify the source code for our gpl'd programs as much as we like, we can't actually run them.
Umm, no. Okay, the way I understand it, the only reason EULAs might hold any water is because of copyright law. The theory is that, in order to run a piece of software, you must *copy* that software in some fashion (at minimum, the instructions must be read (and thus copied) by the CPU, in order to execute them). IOW, an EULA is not a license to actually *run* the software, but rather a license to *copy* the software, such that you may run it.
Now, the GPL explicitely gives you the right to copy the software. Therefore, the GPL implicitely gives you the right to run the software, as well. So, no, the GPL is not an EULA (in that it's not a license which grants limited right to copy for the purposes of executing the software). It's much more broad than that... it's a general license to copy and distribute.
The old 'they're giving it away to everyone but saying I can't use it' argument.
What is this argument? I've never heard of it. My take on the issue is that my IP is my IP. Period. I own the copyright on my work, therefore I control who can and cannot make copies of that work. So, if I choose to give everyone but person A a free license to copy and distribute my work, that's my prerogative, because, well, it's *my* work, and I can place it under any license I want.
Now, it could be the case that anti-trust laws start to apply (ie, dumping, etc). But that doesn't change the legality of the license itself.
Relatively rich societies like the US can afford to be more wasteful than relatively poor ones like Canada.
Fair enough. But I'm tired of people claiming that privatized health care is magically better, more effective, more efficient, and better for the tax payer. It's not. It's wasteful, inefficient, expensive, and discriminatory.
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to listen to a few poor people who are fscked by HMOs on a regular basis because they can't afford to pay for their own health insurance. I'm sure they just *love* the US system.
So while we may spend twice as much on private health care, we don't pay nearly as much taxes, so it more or less evens out. It's also more efficient.
Muahahahahahaha! You're kidding, right? Okay, first, read this, then read this. Oh, and maybe read this. Then, tell me again how the US system is somehow more efficient. Hell, compared to Canada, the US spends 3 times as much, per capita, on health care. And almost a quarter of that is on administrative costs alone! And, continuing the comparison with Canada, if you look at this, you'll see that, on average, an American citizen bears a greater tax burden than a Canadian.
So, tell me again, how is the US system better?
Piss off with your cultural/ethical relativism. Your arguments have been advanced for years and been proven wrong time and time again.
What exactly do you mean by "wrong"?
When was the last time you heard about a woman being stoned to death in a non-Islamic country?
Well, I've heard of plenty of women who've been beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered in non-Islamic countries.
Moreover, I've only heard of women being stoned in extremely fundamentalist Islamic countries, which, in case you didn't realize it, isn't all of them.
Examine the rhetoric in their ideas. The people cited talk about how seeing a woman's hair or wrist would cause men to become "crazy with lust"... what the fuck planet are they from?
Remember the reactions when Janet Jackson flashed her nipple on live television? How people screamed about protecting the children, etc, etc? So, tell me again how Western society is so much more advanced?
Basically, don't be a fucking hypocrite... all countries have their ideas of decency. Most of them focus around what women can and can't expose in public. The fact that we draw the line at the nipple and not the ankle is purely arbitrary.
That whole idea is ludicrous.. Ironically, these same assholes who claim to want to protect women are the ones who rape, subjugate, and dominate the women of their culture.
Really. That's universally true? Huh... 'cuz I've met and known of many Islamic women here in Canada who wear full hijab, and they don't seem to mind it. And they aren't getting raped and dominated, AFAIK. Maybe you should do a little research before painting the entirety of Islamic culture with the same brush. And you call me a dumbass.
The reason they need these fucked up regulations is because they are a society of mysoginistic fucks. Maybe if they re-evalauated their own view on women, they would be able to handle seeing a girls hair.
So, why is it again that we need to hide women's nipples?
The girl at my school that wore the full hijab was hot as hell, and I went crazy with lust just seeing her face. Looks like their strategy just doesn't work.
Hey, and now that you mention it, all those chicks that wear clothing? They're still hot as hell, too! So, why not just have them walk around naked!
Hey, BTW, was that girl in your school raped and dominated by her male counterparts?
And how does this make them backwards? And what makes you so superior?
But saying that the western qualms against showing showing breasts is just as opressive forcing women to cover head to toe, and never leave the house un-escorted is totally ludicrous. It's like saying that I can't get mad at the guy driving 50 mph over the speed limit when I am driving 5 mph over it.
Focus on the article, please. It discusses various Islamic countries refusing to air Olympic coverage because they feel the women are exposing themselves. This is no different than US media refusing to air Janet Jackson's areola.
Oh, and by the way, not all those countries listed are as fundamentalist as you describe, and to assume so is incredibly narrow-minded.
Heh, no problem, it happens. :) Sorry for the bitchy response... I couldn't tell if you were just innocently misreading the post, or, in true Slashdot tradition, being deliberately thick. :)
Apologies, I never meant to imply that the US was somehow the source for these ideas (clearly, that ain't the case). My point is that their beliefs are only different from ours in degree.
And, yet again, you failed to read the first sentence of my post again, you friggin' tool. Let me highlight my point for you:
"THE Greek organizers of this summer's topless Olympics, which began in Athens yesterday..."
My point, you blind twit, is that you are applying your own set of values to Islamic culture. If it were the case that all Olympians couldn't wear clothing above their waste, for whatever reason, the events wouldn't be broadcast in the Western world (particularly the United States) due to the fear of being exposed to images of naked breasts. Yet, for some reason, that is okay... however, what these Islamic countries are doing is only an extrapolation of the beliefs of people in the Western world (rather than just breasts, they feel the entire female body is enticing to males, and thus men need to be protected from it).
Of course, you may not agree with this (and I feel the hysteria about breasts in the Western world is more than a little silly), however, judging an entire culture based solely on your own values is silly and narrow minded.
There, is that clear enough for you?