Maybe. Or maybe it'll be the highly specialized guy who hired on last week because seniority hath its priviliges and it's much more fun writing new code then fixing the old stuff.
Yup, that's why your bank throws away all three zillion lines of COBOL every year -- because there's a greater risk in maintenance than in new code.
I wish I could put my hands on an article I read a couple years back on the code in the Space Shuttle. They go at that code base with an attitude that makes the average paranoid look happy-go-lucky. In fact, they approach software engineering kind of like other engineers do -- as if lives depended on it. It's old, it's slow, and it works. (Oh, wait, here it is.) That's how code is maintained.
Wait a minute. "Clouding the issue with abortion arguments"?
If the abortion issue were simply with regard to the mother, then yes, an embryo in a lab would be irrelevant, since no mothers would be harmed. However, the abortion issue is not about the mother's health nearly so much as the embryo's, and since they're the ones being "harvested", I'd say that they are very much relevant.
As for funding issues, well, both sides are cutting things rather fine. Yes, your sources agree that the previous administration supported stem cell research, but then again, "support" isn't the issue raised now, but rather "funding", and none of your three sources mentioned one thin dime changing hands during the Clinton administration. I see NIH plans, I see Clinton speeches, and yes, I see Congressional opposition, but I don't see actual funds. Even Edwards is quoted as saying that their plan, "closely resembles the framework that the Clinton administration devised in its final two years but never put into effect" (emphasis mine).
Wow. Look, I know English isn't everybody's first language, but do you type with your feet? After "soonds luke some thong", "spim" starts to sound like Shakespeare.
Hmmm...well, yes, Mac's used NuBus (which came from TI, BTW,) and MCA was certainly a Blue standard, but EISA was an open standard, and was based on the ISA. (I'll leave deciphering "ISA" as an exercise for the reader.)
Except for that swerve into MCA, IBM PC hardware was generally pretty open. The hard part was the BIOS firmware.
In fact, this was a lesson that IBM learned from Apple -- make the hardware open, so that other companies manufacture peripheral cards for you, but keep the firmware closed so as to defeat system cloners. It worked well for the Apple ][, and it did OK with the PC too, until Phoenix knocked off the BIOS and Compaq got to work.
Keeping somebody in jail is treating him like a criminal. Letting him roam the streets, with specific "no-fly" zones, is treating him pretty well, really.
Remember, this is proposed as an alternative to incarceration. You know the old joke that begins, "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?" Well, our GPS-enabled man is a criminal, and we're just haggling over the price.
As it stands now, many such cases are handled with house arrest, which is far more restrictive, requiring the prisoner to be within something like thirty feet of the base unit.
And after all, anybody who doesn't like to be tracked by GPS could always opt to be tracked by the prison guards instead.
I remember an article years ago about the cleaning of Whitehall. People had speculated for years as to why a dark grey building was named "Whitehall". When they steam-cleaned several hundred years worth of coal and wood smoke, they suddenly realized that it was, in fact, white. Who knew?
I think your final figure is a little off, like say 3 orders of magnitude. Your probably don't need a 1.3 megawatt power station just to run your toys.
Could be worse. I was strolling through the Sears where I work recently and noticed a sign proclaiming that a JVC home theatre system was "one gigawatt". I spent some time dreaming about watching Earthquake with that sound system...
but isn't it "octopuses" or "octopi"? "Octopodes" is new to me, at any rate.
Good ol' dictionary.com does list "octopods", but that seems like a generic term for any eight-legged creature, not incorrect for an octopus but not specific either.
(Mostly OT anecdote: When my older sister first called to announce her engagement to a quadriplegic, my mother, startled, turned to the rest of us and announced, "Nancy's going to marry a quadraped!"
(We speculated furiously until she hung up and explained-- a dog, perhaps? Horse? Wombat?)
Well, it wouldn't be an issue except that OSS people have raised the point themselves, with maxims like, "With many eyes, all bugs are shallow." If "many" turns out to be ~100, that's not so impressive.
Of course, the number of people who have examined the code isn't equivalent to the number of people who have contributed to the code, but the latter isn't wholly irrelevant either.
Noting in passing that some cars have unibody construction (in fact, maybe most) and quite a few eschew the slushbox and use gears for the transmission, just like Grandpa.
Sure, kid. Things was different back then, slower. Punch a card, feed it in to the reader, and the next day you got back a printout saying, "Sorry, you have died"... and we liked it that way.
Fifty years isn't unreasonable, to my mind, and dating it from creation rather than the creator's death removes any incentive to murder the author.
Still, when I turn on the Cartoon Network it sure doesn't seem like progress in the cartooning arts is being held back by Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse. New characters are being created pretty frequently, and licensing arrangements found with older ones. I don't feel the lack of guest appearances by Pluto on Sealab 2021.
Give the creators their monopoly, if that's how it must be. But not for more then a couple of years. That's plenty of time to make money off the work if it's worthwhile. (Likely, it's not enough time to get rich, nor -should- it be. Everyone else makes a LIVING for doing a good job, not a killing.)
Forgive me if I suspect that we've found the real problem here.
First off, some people do, in fact, make a killing for doing a good job. You may not like it, but nobody in the NBA holds copyright on the jump shot, and certainly some of those young men make more money than Tom Clancy or Steven King ever dreamed.
Secondly, what gives you the idea that copyright holders regularly get rich? Talk to a freelance writer sometime, or Philip K. Dick's widow -- as I recall, malnutrition contributed to his death.
especially since it's firm fact, whereas the 60-90% figures are based on subjective measures
Well, "firm fact" in some sense, but the "M" rating itself isn't without its subjective aspects.
Titles rated M - Mature have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain mature sexual themes, more intense violence and/or strong language.
It's not like they're measured against an ISO standard curse word, or the platinum-irridium graphic violence bar in Paris.
I dunno. Is it too much to ask that those who enjoy the work pay for it? How is it that you're entitled to the pleasure just because a couple of years have gone by?
Remember, by and large we're not talking about the light bulb here. You can make a case that we need those. You don't need Jessica Simpson's latest now, nor will you in a couple of years. You just want it, and as cheaply as possible. I'm just asking what entitles you to coast on her work (such as it is.)
To advance science and the arts by providing incentives for creative people, yes. Why should their work belong to you?
Remember also that it's not at all like patents. Disney doesn't have papers on "a device to entertain children through the use of a small animated rodent with a high-pitched voice," they just have the rights to Mickey Mouse. You want to create a cartoon character? Go for it. Is it so unreasonable to ask that you, I don't know, create something?
No one deserves to profit their entire life for doing a good job once, no one deserves lifetime (BEYOND lifetime!) monopoly of an idea.
You're making this sound like a public utility or something. Is it so outrageous to pay Micky Spillane when you buy a copy of a Mike Hammer book? Will you starve without I The Jury? Will you be unable to write detective stories?
And yes, of course Spillane learned from the previous works of others, but he managed to do so without copyright violation. Can't you do the same?
Well, on those grounds MSSQL worms aren't an issue either, because believe me, SQLServer does not come with Windows either. Apparently shelling out good money hasn't stopped people from leaving the SA p/w blank.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. Most interpreted languages are pre-tokenized.
Maybe. Or maybe it'll be the highly specialized guy who hired on last week because seniority hath its priviliges and it's much more fun writing new code then fixing the old stuff.
I wish I could put my hands on an article I read a couple years back on the code in the Space Shuttle. They go at that code base with an attitude that makes the average paranoid look happy-go-lucky. In fact, they approach software engineering kind of like other engineers do -- as if lives depended on it. It's old, it's slow, and it works. (Oh, wait, here it is.) That's how code is maintained.
If the abortion issue were simply with regard to the mother, then yes, an embryo in a lab would be irrelevant, since no mothers would be harmed. However, the abortion issue is not about the mother's health nearly so much as the embryo's, and since they're the ones being "harvested", I'd say that they are very much relevant.
As for funding issues, well, both sides are cutting things rather fine. Yes, your sources agree that the previous administration supported stem cell research, but then again, "support" isn't the issue raised now, but rather "funding", and none of your three sources mentioned one thin dime changing hands during the Clinton administration. I see NIH plans, I see Clinton speeches, and yes, I see Congressional opposition, but I don't see actual funds. Even Edwards is quoted as saying that their plan, "closely resembles the framework that the Clinton administration devised in its final two years but never put into effect" (emphasis mine).
At least I'm willing to look retarded under my own name.
Wow. Look, I know English isn't everybody's first language, but do you type with your feet? After "soonds luke some thong", "spim" starts to sound like Shakespeare.
Except for that swerve into MCA, IBM PC hardware was generally pretty open. The hard part was the BIOS firmware.
In fact, this was a lesson that IBM learned from Apple -- make the hardware open, so that other companies manufacture peripheral cards for you, but keep the firmware closed so as to defeat system cloners. It worked well for the Apple ][, and it did OK with the PC too, until Phoenix knocked off the BIOS and Compaq got to work.
Keeping somebody in jail is treating him like a criminal. Letting him roam the streets, with specific "no-fly" zones, is treating him pretty well, really.
Remember, this is proposed as an alternative to incarceration. You know the old joke that begins, "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?" Well, our GPS-enabled man is a criminal, and we're just haggling over the price.
As it stands now, many such cases are handled with house arrest, which is far more restrictive, requiring the prisoner to be within something like thirty feet of the base unit.
And after all, anybody who doesn't like to be tracked by GPS could always opt to be tracked by the prison guards instead.
I remember an article years ago about the cleaning of Whitehall. People had speculated for years as to why a dark grey building was named "Whitehall". When they steam-cleaned several hundred years worth of coal and wood smoke, they suddenly realized that it was, in fact, white. Who knew?
Could be worse. I was strolling through the Sears where I work recently and noticed a sign proclaiming that a JVC home theatre system was "one gigawatt". I spent some time dreaming about watching Earthquake with that sound system...
Good ol' dictionary.com does list "octopods", but that seems like a generic term for any eight-legged creature, not incorrect for an octopus but not specific either.
(Mostly OT anecdote: When my older sister first called to announce her engagement to a quadriplegic, my mother, startled, turned to the rest of us and announced, "Nancy's going to marry a quadraped!"
(We speculated furiously until she hung up and explained-- a dog, perhaps? Horse? Wombat?)
Of course, the number of people who have examined the code isn't equivalent to the number of people who have contributed to the code, but the latter isn't wholly irrelevant either.
Yeah, it's a perfectly cromulent technique -- I used to do that back home to bulls-eye whomp rats in my T-16.
Well, in 1980 Apple sold 78,000 machines, never mind Commodore, Atari, Timex, and others. It was a pretty brisk market.
Noting in passing that some cars have unibody construction (in fact, maybe most) and quite a few eschew the slushbox and use gears for the transmission, just like Grandpa.
I'm thinking that even simple proof-reading is beyond their capabilities.
"Us, make a spelling mistake? That's unpossible!"
Sure, kid. Things was different back then, slower. Punch a card, feed it in to the reader, and the next day you got back a printout saying, "Sorry, you have died"... and we liked it that way.
Still, when I turn on the Cartoon Network it sure doesn't seem like progress in the cartooning arts is being held back by Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse. New characters are being created pretty frequently, and licensing arrangements found with older ones. I don't feel the lack of guest appearances by Pluto on Sealab 2021.
Forgive me if I suspect that we've found the real problem here.
First off, some people do, in fact, make a killing for doing a good job. You may not like it, but nobody in the NBA holds copyright on the jump shot, and certainly some of those young men make more money than Tom Clancy or Steven King ever dreamed.
Secondly, what gives you the idea that copyright holders regularly get rich? Talk to a freelance writer sometime, or Philip K. Dick's widow -- as I recall, malnutrition contributed to his death.
Well, "firm fact" in some sense, but the "M" rating itself isn't without its subjective aspects.
It's not like they're measured against an ISO standard curse word, or the platinum-irridium graphic violence bar in Paris.
Remember, by and large we're not talking about the light bulb here. You can make a case that we need those. You don't need Jessica Simpson's latest now, nor will you in a couple of years. You just want it, and as cheaply as possible. I'm just asking what entitles you to coast on her work (such as it is.)
Remember also that it's not at all like patents. Disney doesn't have papers on "a device to entertain children through the use of a small animated rodent with a high-pitched voice," they just have the rights to Mickey Mouse. You want to create a cartoon character? Go for it. Is it so unreasonable to ask that you, I don't know, create something?
You're making this sound like a public utility or something. Is it so outrageous to pay Micky Spillane when you buy a copy of a Mike Hammer book? Will you starve without I The Jury? Will you be unable to write detective stories?
And yes, of course Spillane learned from the previous works of others, but he managed to do so without copyright violation. Can't you do the same?
Well, on those grounds MSSQL worms aren't an issue either, because believe me, SQLServer does not come with Windows either. Apparently shelling out good money hasn't stopped people from leaving the SA p/w blank.
I recall reading somewhere that one could navigate to Alpha Centauri (or something equally outrageous) with 10-digit precision for PI.