Another good one being that probably most of your users will have the "platform" to run your application.
I think you'll find that one's a mirage. From what I've seen the difference between Excel versions is quite drastic. Functions, methods and entire classes appear and disappear, seemingly at random. So developing applications that are portable across Excel versions is very difficult. So unless all your users have the same version of Excel, it ain't gonna be that easy.
If you would take a 1m wire and cut it into short pieces and solder them together with a different conductor, then the overall resistivity will be less than when you had a single piece of wire???
No, other way round. A 2m piece of this wire would have less than double the resistance of a 1m piece. To clarify your example: say the 1m piece of wire has resistance R. Then you cut it into ten smaller pieces. Each of these pieces will have resistance greater than R/10. Stick them back together with some other conductor, and the total will be greater than 10*R/10, i.e. greater than R.
Well, I remember when I started using internet, I wandered over to FBI web server and found there a web page simmilar to this. It was something like 1998... and yes, it did mention Bin Ladin in top ten most wanted people. I expect that a report delivered to White House having this name in, should ring a bell no matter what the rest of the report says.
But again, the point is: where is the evidence that anything was missed? There seems to be this belief that since this report existed, and since the attacks on Sept 11 were not prevented, something was missed. In the context of this report alone, I think that's a big logical leap to make. As it happens, the complete text of that memo is available here, and the last paragraph states:
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.
So the government certainly wasn't doing nothing, and while the idea that they should have been doing more appears obvious now, at the time it wasn't so clear.
Re:Not possible to take all threats seriously
on
Saving Lives with Design
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That they missed it -- and ignored the bin Laden threat completely during most of 2001 -- is not excusable.
Got anything to back that up? There doesn't seem to be anything particularly new in the first page of the memo. It's not like hijacking planes hasn't been terrorist modus operandi for decades, and the memo did not seem to mention the possibility of crashing planes into buildings. What were the specifically mentioned threats that were ignored? What recommendations were not followed? It's all very well saying the document is an example of poor graphic design, but I think any suggestion that "something was missed" needs to be backed up with something more concrete.
Linus has released a kernel with Git so yes, the conversion is done. As far as bug free and finished, well if you know anything about software you know neither of those are true for 99.99% of all software. And why do think anyone other than Linus has to use Git? Most developers using BK can continue to do so if they want, either by buying or being granted a commercial license. Those developers who don't use BK, or don't want to continue to use BK can choose Git, any alternative they like, or nothing at all.
Right, which just reinforces my point that it was not a bad decision to adopt BK. Aside from the 3 years of improved efficiency, Linus and other learnt a lot from BK.
It's taken him about 8 days to come up with Git and release the first kernel version with it. Do you really think that's more than the amount of time he's saved with BK? And none of this stuff you've come up with has anything to do with whether BK was a good choice in the first place.
I haven't seen either of those yet, but I have seen it used in X-Men (the "1.5" edition), and it was bad there. As I said, if it's done on scene boundaries it can be done well, but you're not going to be able to do that to provide sanitized versions (as the post I replied to was saying). You'd have to basically duplicate each scene you were sanitizing in it's entirety, so you might as well just do two versions.
You slightly misunderstood what Linus was meaning. He wasn't complaining that Tridge didn't do something *novel*, he was complaining Tridge didn't do something *useful*, and even that would be ok, except that the consequences of Tridge's actions have negatively impacted a lot of people. In the RWT post where Linus made that comment, he does on to say that had Tridge produced something that replicated BK's functionality he would have been perfectly happy about the whole thing.
Linus took the risk of using BitKeeper and got burned. It was his decision and it is his fault. He may be stubborn and not want to own up to having made a mistake (none of us like to do that), but it was a mistake.
How exactly did Linus get burned? How was it a mistake? Linux is in a far better state now than it would have been had Linus not adopted BK.
Except that none of the data was held hostage and Linus (and others) still got three good years of improved productivity and a better understanding of what they need in such a system. So how was Linus wrong again?
Seamless branching is anything but. It's essentially the same as the layer change. So if it's done well, between scenes, it's barely noticable, but you're not going to be able to use it in the middle of scenes with most players if you want to avoid a jarring pause. If the players had read ahead buffers it could be done, but AFAIK few to none do.
So in other words I can create "SkipPlay" which skips all the trailers and crap for me, and it would be fully legal?
My understanding (and I haven't read the bill) is that it makes it legal to skip pieces of a copyrighted work, i.e. produce a re-edited version on the fly. Currently this is (arguably) illegal under copyright law, because it's effectively producing a derivative work without the copyright owner's permission. But that's not what is protecting the trailers and anti-piracy messages. They're unskippable because that capability is in the DVD spec, and presumably enforced by the contracts between the DVD patent and trademark holders and the DVD player manufacturers. AFAIK, this new law won't have any effect on that contract clause.
So the short answer to your question is: no. But it will legalize the production of alternate edits of movies (like "The Phantom Edit" version of The Phantom Menace), if they're done in the same way that ClearPlay uses: an edit or cut list distributed separately from the movie.
There is a difference though: Nestlé pulled a bait-and-switch with no obvious motive other than to force people to buy more milk. They stopped the free product at the right time to maximize profit (if your statement is accurate). BitMover, however, only withdrew their free product when they felt someone was taking advantage of the availability of the free product in a way that could (potentially) damage their business, and only after negotiations with that party were unsuccessful. I don't see anything morally, ethically, or legally wrong with this part of BM's actions.
Ok so Larry decided to fuck his good friend linux in order to stop tridge from doing something tridge wanted to do in his own time. Even though what tridge did was perfectly legal and moral, even though what tridge did was not going to result in a product that would compete with bitkeeper.
Larry decided the financial risk to his company wasn't worth continuing to provide a free version. Whether Tridge's tool was able compete directly isn't the point from Larry's point of view, he believed it would make it easier for others to compete. From Linus' point of view it was the point: if Tridge had been writing a replacement, that would have been fine. But he wasn't writing a replacement, he was just engeering a situation where BK would become unusable.
IF you enjoyed php programming in your spare time and larry asked you to stop or else he would punish linus would you stop? Does that sound rational to you?
You're analogy is bad on two counts: first, in this case Tridge's activies impact Larry directly, second, you seem to have missed the main point: that if continuing work on tool makes the tool unnecessary then the reason to continue must be other than the tool itself. Does it sound rational to you to continue to work on something when the very act will make the work pointless? Clearly Tridge's motives were political, not technical.
What right does larry have to ask anybody to stop what they are doing anyway? Who made him fucking god.
Larry has every right to ask whatever he wants. Whoever he asks has every right to ignore him. Larry has every right to take whatever (legal) actions he wants in response. Neither Tridge nor Larry nor Linus have acted improperly in this situation. Linus probably shouldn't have responded to that troll on RWT in that way, but that's Linus. Maybe Larry could have found a way to allow Linus to continue using BitKeeper, I don't know, I wasn't in those discussions. Tridge could have directed his efforts into something more constructive, like helping Arch or Subversion. So they all could have acted better, but none of them were required to.
And look where that pragmatism got him. Now his friend no longer allows linus to continue using the shiny new toy. Tridge comes off looking great and gains more respect while linus is made to look like a fool being spanked by his friend.
Perhaps so, if you subscribe to the shallow view that seems common here. OTOH, Linus got plenty out of it: 3 years of use of a tool with no free software equal (and many developers get to continue to use it), a wakeup call for the community that has at least provided a lot of publicity for the open source alternatives, and probably significantly boosted the activity on those tools, and at what cost? A one-off migration of data into whatever he decides to use next, and a lot of people (willfully?) misunderstanding and misrepresenting the situation.
Incidentally, you sound very angry about all this. Why is that?
If Linus kept using Bitkeeper then he would have to pay for it and anyone else at the OSDL who wanted to work on the kernel would also have to pay to use Bitkeeper. These seem like pretty compelling reasons for Linus to drop Bitkeeper.
Actually I think McVoy went further than that. He's refusing even commercial licenses to OSDL and OSDL employees. I imagine the rationale is that since OSDL basically said it wasn't their problem, Larry believes that they might turn a blind eye to violations of the commercial license.
As far as I can tell, Tridge wasn't intent on breaking any deal between Linus and McVoy.
It seems pretty evident that that is exactly what he was intent on doing. He continued to develop his tool knowing that BitMover would withdraw the free version of BK, even though that eventuality would make the tool useless.
BitMover believes that Tridge's tool would have provided a "way in" for anyone looking to duplicate BK functionality. That's what BitMover wants to avoid.
The idea that Linus is on the side of a complete and utter asshole whiling publicly berating the author of both samba and rsync is offensive to me.
That's because you're basing your position on reputations and not on the specifics of the situation. It's not about "is reverse engineering evil" or "did Tridge violate some law or license". It's about the consequences of Tridge's actions. The four parties involved (Larry/BitMover, Linus, Tridge, and ODSL) sat down and discussed the situation, so everyone was informed. It came down to this:
Tridge was writing a tool that could extract data from a BK reposititory, but it's not a BK replacement.
Larry was unwilling to continue the free version of BK if Tridge continues his project.
Without a free version of BK Tridge's tool is useless - it has no purpose.
Tridge refuses to stop working on his tool.
To me this appears to be either very stubborn or malicious on Tridge's part (I suspect stubborn: it's a philosophical issue for Tridge). Given the choice between:
Stopping work on his tool and therefore Linus being able to continue to use BK, and
Continuing to work on the tool, knowing that it would result in a lot more work for Linus, and knowing that the tool would be useless anyway,
Tridge chose the later. Do you see why Linus might consider that to be irrational and personally annoying? Linus value pragmatism above philosophy in his software and Tridge's decision appears to be based on philosophy.
Despite Larry's personal flaws at least he made a good faith effort to resolve the situation, Tridge apparently didn't and neither did ODSL (all according to Linus, of course).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, long wires. That's why NASA are aiming for 1m. Higher current can be handled by bundles of long wires.
Right. The question is: would we have been worse off?
Linus has released a kernel with Git so yes, the conversion is done. As far as bug free and finished, well if you know anything about software you know neither of those are true for 99.99% of all software. And why do think anyone other than Linus has to use Git? Most developers using BK can continue to do so if they want, either by buying or being granted a commercial license. Those developers who don't use BK, or don't want to continue to use BK can choose Git, any alternative they like, or nothing at all.
Right, which just reinforces my point that it was not a bad decision to adopt BK. Aside from the 3 years of improved efficiency, Linus and other learnt a lot from BK.
It's taken him about 8 days to come up with Git and release the first kernel version with it. Do you really think that's more than the amount of time he's saved with BK? And none of this stuff you've come up with has anything to do with whether BK was a good choice in the first place.
I haven't seen either of those yet, but I have seen it used in X-Men (the "1.5" edition), and it was bad there. As I said, if it's done on scene boundaries it can be done well, but you're not going to be able to do that to provide sanitized versions (as the post I replied to was saying). You'd have to basically duplicate each scene you were sanitizing in it's entirety, so you might as well just do two versions.
You slightly misunderstood what Linus was meaning. He wasn't complaining that Tridge didn't do something *novel*, he was complaining Tridge didn't do something *useful*, and even that would be ok, except that the consequences of Tridge's actions have negatively impacted a lot of people. In the RWT post where Linus made that comment, he does on to say that had Tridge produced something that replicated BK's functionality he would have been perfectly happy about the whole thing.
Except that none of the data was held hostage and Linus (and others) still got three good years of improved productivity and a better understanding of what they need in such a system. So how was Linus wrong again?
Seamless branching is anything but. It's essentially the same as the layer change. So if it's done well, between scenes, it's barely noticable, but you're not going to be able to use it in the middle of scenes with most players if you want to avoid a jarring pause. If the players had read ahead buffers it could be done, but AFAIK few to none do.
So the short answer to your question is: no. But it will legalize the production of alternate edits of movies (like "The Phantom Edit" version of The Phantom Menace), if they're done in the same way that ClearPlay uses: an edit or cut list distributed separately from the movie.
Copyright law. The MPAA and studios sued ClearPlay for breach of copyright.
You seem to be saying we should be wary of Google purely because of what they might become. Isn't that a rather paranoid view?
There is a difference though: Nestlé pulled a bait-and-switch with no obvious motive other than to force people to buy more milk. They stopped the free product at the right time to maximize profit (if your statement is accurate). BitMover, however, only withdrew their free product when they felt someone was taking advantage of the availability of the free product in a way that could (potentially) damage their business, and only after negotiations with that party were unsuccessful. I don't see anything morally, ethically, or legally wrong with this part of BM's actions.
Incidentally, you sound very angry about all this. Why is that?
BitMover believes that Tridge's tool would have provided a "way in" for anyone looking to duplicate BK functionality. That's what BitMover wants to avoid.
- Tridge was writing a tool that could extract data from a BK reposititory, but it's not a BK replacement.
- Larry was unwilling to continue the free version of BK if Tridge continues his project.
- Without a free version of BK Tridge's tool is useless - it has no purpose.
- Tridge refuses to stop working on his tool.
To me this appears to be either very stubborn or malicious on Tridge's part (I suspect stubborn: it's a philosophical issue for Tridge). Given the choice between:- Stopping work on his tool and therefore Linus being able to continue to use BK, and
- Continuing to work on the tool, knowing that it would result in a lot more work for Linus, and knowing that the tool would be useless anyway,
Tridge chose the later. Do you see why Linus might consider that to be irrational and personally annoying? Linus value pragmatism above philosophy in his software and Tridge's decision appears to be based on philosophy.Despite Larry's personal flaws at least he made a good faith effort to resolve the situation, Tridge apparently didn't and neither did ODSL (all according to Linus, of course).