Yes, there is one section that you can travel on without paying tolls. One of the Pike's directors has been saying that every time a car uses that exit, the Pike loses money. They're pushing to get tolls put on that exit (apparently there used to be tolls there some years ago).
The westernmost stretch of I-90 is "zero-cent toll." When we drive from Albany to my mother-in-law's, we get a ticket a few miles past the NY/MA border, and then hand the ticket to a real person when we get off.
The RIGHT way to do this would be to scrap all of the "zero-toll" booths and build one "everyone stops" booth midway through the state. Or to charge tolls (even small ones) for the western stretch.
When I'm elected supreme dictator of Massachusetts, I'll disband the Turnpike Authority and use gas taxes to fund the roads.
When I am granted supreme godlike power and rulership of the world, remind me to 'elect' you as supreme dictator of MA.
I didn't say that I agreeed with it. Just that that's how the argument goes. I was answering a question of "who would do the jobs that Mexicans do now?"
Most of the jobs that Mexicans do (farming, housekeeping, simliar low-class jobs) are jobs also done by my peer group. We hate them, and move on--but if we couldn't move on, we'd probably unionize, stay where we are, and raise prices for everyone.
The benefits, of course, is that the number of copies printed matches exactly the number of copies purchased.
That's a very, VERY big advantage to a publisher. It means that there's no tax-penalty for large print runs, and thus the incentive to roll out "crappy book of the month" goes away.
Unfortunately...
The downside is that many people use hands-on browsing to find books they want, which won't be possible when the books are in digital format.
That's not the big downside; bookstores could just select a few and print them themselves, if the system works.
The problem is that it's inefficient. Book runs benefit from economy of scale, and "one book runs" may be good for out of print material like Public Domain stuff, but it's not nice as the primary book sale method.
Beat the inefficiency, and I (and all the publishers in the world) would love it. Imagine--instant corrections, no returns... it'd be great!
Word may be pretty, but LaTeX can do all the same stuff. Really.
LaTeX can let me open up (or convert) my extant word document and start typing, using keyboard shortcuts or toolbars to denote what exceptions I want, and spit out word counts on demand?
LaTeX can track changes, spell check, and autocorrect common typoes that I make?
LaTeX can handle god damn'd em dashes!?
If so, please e-mail me a good link. If not, please don't say that it can.
If you want pretty, use Quark or Publisher or Acrobat's product (name?). If you want to write, use Word.
Courts should be, and are, swayed by logical opinions and arguments. That's why our legal system is a combative one.
An expression of demand for works in the public domain should be considered by the court, ESSPECIALLY if it's shown that they're kept in print/made avaliable despite no copyright.
The argument for extended copyrights is basically "can't keep them in print if not copywritten," which means that they're largely unavaliable to casual consumers.
The fact that most people are irresponsible, and generally assholes when constrained only by their own moral princples shouldn't be terribly suprising.
It isn't... but most of the time, people ARE restrained by more than just abstract morals.
Although there's a certain moral argument to an individual's right to privacy, there's also a statistical argument that people simply act irresponsibly when given anonymnity.
What's your take on anonymnity in the internent? Is a good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing not worth talking about?
Re:Linux needs this at the filesystem level ... NO
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Undelete In Linux
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Getting the inserted table [spreadsheet] from Word back into Excel was next to impossible.
Hardly.
Step 1: Select table in Word Step 2: Copy table to clipboard Step 3: Open new Excel Spreadsheet Step 4: Paste table back into Excel Sept 5: Give original user license to beat the clueless person who messed up his/her spreadsheet.
DO NOT put an "Objective" section at the top of your resume, they're all bullshit, never relevant and only limiting, and when you hand someone your resume, your objective is simple - TO GET A JOB FROM THEM.
Put an Objective on there--but make it relevant to your career search. Do you want a long-term job that will last you to retirement? Do your plans only focus on the short-term now? Do you want a part-time job to support you while you go to school?
I'd recommend a general objective, instead of customization per company. Use the cover letter for that--to display your interest in and knowledge of the company. Your resume should be static, so it feels honest and trustworthy, and they don't think that they're lying.
(So call Apple or MS or Be or whomever "the greatest" in the cover letter, not the resume...)
Oh, and keeping it consice sounds good to. One page is a good limit for a physical resume; if there's extraneous stuff (education breakdown, career breakdown, hobbies) that are relevant but not essential, pt them on the back or leave them out.
Since they change the look and feel with every release, and move important functions around so that you have to search for them.
The changes aren't that bad unless you're tweaking. Right-click still brings up the same menu, all the windows keys still work, and everything still has the same names it did in 2000.
I wouldn't have touched XP yet, except that an artist friend of mine just upgraded from a hand-me-down machine to a new one. That was his first comment, why did they change everything? He's thinking about returning it and spending a little more on an Apple.
An apple would be good if he's doing Photoshop or graphics.
But if he just wants Windows to work the old way, he can finally make it work however he wants. XP, without installing anything, lets you use the new or old start menu, the new or old GUI theme, and you can customize the start menu.
The changes in XP are up there, but they're hardly "change for change's sake." I was considering using a differnet shell, but I haven't found one that works in Win32 as well (usablity-wise) as XP's Explorer
I loaded the Windows version of the GIMP to give him a chance to get away from Photoshop. I'm trying to convince him that it is worth his time to learn GIMP rather than Photoshop which will continue to cost him money that he doesn't have. Unfortunately, I'm not experience enough with any of these tools to be able to say that the GIMP has all the features that he will want from Photoshop, or to help him learn it.
GIMP does not have everything Photoshop does, nor is it an easy transition. I get to play with Photoshop & a few other Acrobat programs at work (comes from being the only geek in the office) and there's a world of difference between GIMP and photoshop.
If he doesn't have the cash for a full version of Photoshop, he might want to look at the dumbed-down version. It's rather crippled, but it might be closer to what he needs than GIMP. (Then again, it might not--I don't know what he needs, and I haven't played around with the dumbed-down version.)
As for Photoshop costing money... it's perpetual licensing, so he can stop upgrading at just about any time.
In what way? You can't prove a link between patents and innovation. In fact, based on history, I could argue that patents have a chilling effect on innovation.
Patents give innovation a reward in and of itself. Without patents, the reward for innovation is only in the competitive edge that the innovation itself gives--which may only be useful for a very short time, until an invention is copied.
Patents are more than just rewarding inventors, too--they're a record of invention. When someone is granted a patent, they have a few years to profit from it--and then EVERYONE has access to how their invention works.
Patents give corporations that have a high-turnaround and no espionage cover a reason to bother spending money to innovate. If not for a legal guarantee of a patentable idea's uniqueness (and thus profitability) corporations would likely not have research departments--and those that did would be smaller, and as focused on stealing the other guy's ideas as real innovation.
Real innovation comes about through the free exchange of ideas, not through cross-licensing of patents from major corporations.
The so-called "free exchange of ideas" often leads to mob mentalities that are hard to shake up but easy to abuse. A few exceptions and caveats allow open dialgue of important matters to be more than just social functions. One of these is a check against stealing someone else's work, and patents do that.
Higher fees are not a solution. They just raise the stakes, so companies will try even harder to win patents.
No. Higher fees, by themselves, do not raise the stakes--they simply raise the cost.
If I increase the price of a front-row seat for a concert, I don't make the seat any better--I just make it harder to get that seat.
Higher fees mean that companies need to work harder for the same effect--and low-yield nuciance patents will drop off a bit. (Maybe not a lot, but a bit; plus the added patent office $ will help improve the quality of each patent application review.)
Likewise, or contrastingly, the "little guy" who comes up with a legitimate invention is even less likely to be able to win a patent for it. These "reforms" will serve only to line the bureaucrats' pockets with the blood of the independent inventor.
When was the last time an "independant inventor" all by himself won out anyway?
In any case, most patents are applied for and used by businesses who have cash. The solutiuon for the independant inventor is a "private citizen" rate, not to set up the system assuming that everyone's poor.
(Perpetually deferred fees sound like a good model: if I come up with something new, I can patent it, and I only have to pay the fee if I actually make money out of it.)
Why does everyone try to compare desktop managers with Windows? Isn't the whole point of installing Linux to get away from Microsoft?
If you're installing Linux to get away from MS, then you're used to Windows, and having a system that works that way is a Good Thing.
If you don't want Linux to work like Windows at all, then you're not installing it to get away from MS--you're installing it to be geeky / because you like Linux.
For example I don't think we could effectively seal off the borders and they would come into the country to try and get food. Even if we could seal the borders and starve them to death who would take care of all the work migrants do now?
Robots, or the poor.
The whole reason that we care at all about Mexican immigrants is because we have some unemployed folk at all in the US. The thought train goes "seal the borders, reduce the job-swiping, and we'll have fewer unemployed Americans."
I don't think it's a perfect trade, but I think it would be an improvement.
That's 2,000 people less per KM^2, and Tokyo is a very livable area.
Er, come again?
Tokyo is one of the most crowded cities in the world. Name an American city that has "coffin hotels" were businessmen stay because they don't want to drive the six hours home every night.
The limiting factor isn't living space; drive fifty miles in just about any direction from just about any point in the US and you're in the middle of nowhere. The limiting factor is a sufficient biomass to support humanity.
The ratio they taught back in HS was that each step on the food chain requires ten times the biomass below and can support one tenth the mass above. So me, a 200-lbs human on the top of the food chain, needs 2,000 lbs of animal (and 20,000 lbs of plant) to support me. It's probably off, but it's a better number than the "Texas City" spiel you just gave.
(It'd probably be better to rattle off something like a *country*'s popuation, and not a city.)
What stockpile we do have will probably move quickly. It's very unclear just what percent the U.S.'s "stockpiled" food store is -is it a fraction of the daily, weekly, monthly or annual need? Hard to tell. I imagine the military would get by for a time, but your typical city person, being at the far end of the longer chains, will have a hard time getting their hands on supplies.
You're apparantly lacking understanding of what "matter of national security" means.
Assuming that there was a massive crop failure, the federal government--and the military--would take steps to feed the American public, up to and including invading some other country, if necessary.
We no doubt have a food surplus that could last us--and only us--at least one year. It wouldn't be GOOD, and it very well might not be CHEAP, but it would be food.
As I understand it, the grain stockpile is a government (military) reserve, just like the oil stockpile. You'll never see it in the industry unless you're selling to it, but that doesn't mean that it's not there.
That the GPL is copyrighted by the FSF makes no difference
Yes, it does. If it wasn't, the FSF would have no standing to sue someone who includes it in a program and doesn't follow the rules. They do.
This is possible because the respective organisations - Time Warner, Sun Microsystems, etc - who own the copyright have determined that they do not want their options limited to those of the GPL.
When they use the GPL, they must follow all terms of the GPL. Whole-program sticky openness with source code and everything. Mozilla couldn't say "Gecko is GPL'd but the rest of it isn't" in a single download file.
The FSF cannot sue someone over a GPL "violation" when they are not the copyright owner. And a GPL "violation" cannot be performed by the copyright owner in respect to code they themselves have the rights to.
Yes, they can. The GPL is a rather unique work which the FSF has a vested interested in controlling. If you "sorta" release part of your program under the GPL, they can indeed take you to court for infringing on the GPL.
Being the copyright holder means that the FSF has a stronger, case, but they still have standing if the infringing GPL'd program has no upstream derivation.
I'm hardly a zealot, otherwise I'd hardly point out that the GPL merely provides default options!
Ok, you're not a zealot. You're just even more of a not-lawyer than I am.
The GPL directly and intentionaly elminates the "default option" of any software company that uses it. This is because the FSF thinks that the industry's "default option" of a copyright-restricted license is bad.
The GPL removes no rights from the copyright holder of a program. It is incapable of doing so. It is an agreement between a copyright holder and a licensee, and its power only exists in that agreement - it would be unenforcable if the copyright holder some how ceased to be the copyright holder on agreeing to it.
The GPL is a contract. Every contract has four necessary components, one of which is consideration on both sides. In the GPL's case, the consideration is that the licensor (the inital copyright holder or the FSF) agrees to let someone use their IP in exchange for the licensee (anyone using the GPL) agreeing to abide by the terms of the GPL.
If someone were to attempt to abuse the GPL--let's say that Microsoft says they release IE under the GPL but don't provide source code outside of their NDA'd shared-source program--the FSF would take them to court, and I'd hazzard a guess that copyright infringmenet might be part of it. Or, it might just be break of contract.
You may actually want to read it. It's distributed with every GPL'd program, and the terms and conditions are fairly plain and easily read.
I have read it--and I don't think that "plain and easily read" is a fair description of it. It's as obtuse and vauge as some EULAs, and leaves the important questions out of it.
Take a look at the last three paragraphs of section 2:
(parahrased) "This applies to the program as a whole, unless the programs has reasonably independant parts, but even independant parts are the same whole when they're distributed that way."
"This doesn't take away your rights, but to control how you make derivitive works based on our program."
"Oh, and just bundling a program on the same disk doesn't make it the same program."
I think that last line was addeed because the first paragraph was confusing, and they didn't want to spend the time to re-word it.
Hmm... a simple "individual programs shall contain all files that are used by a single program and not used by other programs or direct user input" would do the trick.
You should read the Navy's comments in the stories...he did know where he was and what the date was (time is easy, so I assume he knew that). Also, he did have a makeshift mast from what he could scrounge together.
Well, cool.:) Then he's definitly not lazy, just unsuccessful.
Unless I'm missing something, it seems a bit unfair to dismiss this man's plight so succinctly as you have done.
Of course it is. But this is/., where everything is unfair.;)
you're on a sailboat with no mast, no motor, and a dead radio. There are no ships in your vicinity for 3.5 months (yes, this is easily possible). Are you going to row back to shore? I don't think so.
No mast, no motor, no radio?
Break out the emerency navigation supplies (IIRC everyone's still required to carry traditional navigation supplies) and see about rowing back to shore. If there's still sail material, rig a sail using whatever wood and lashing material can be found. Try and get the radio working with the fifteen minutes of spare time per day.
As for burning the boat... I'd try the ol' sunight and a mirror trick first. Then again, that might not be practical...
It's funny that the U.S. is so vociferous about protecting Taiwan when the Taiwanese are already helping China out. Once Taiwan is folded back in to China, all those fancy weapons and huge investments in Taiwanese industry will benefit their biggest enemy.
Actually, I think we're getting rather good at ranking China with "powerful countries that were but aren't now our enemies."
Besides, there's probably some secret government plan to bomb the shit out of Taiwan if it becomes Chineese and China becomes hostile.
Er, no, they wouldn't. ID owns the copyright to Doom III, they can do whatever they like with it.
Not if they release it under the GPL. Doing so is an act, and the FSF (who owns copyright to the GPL) can take them to court if they violate it. They might not, but they COULD (and I wager that they probably would.) And if the FSF doesn't do it, the first person accused of priating this hypotetical "Doom III with GPL" would raise the GPL as their defense, and very possibly get a summary judgement.
It doesn't really force anything. It provides a default option which the majority can use. If you can think of a better way of rewarding a copyright holder than to contribute your code to the community in return for use of their code, then you can always make a direct deal with the copyright holder.
Statements like that fail to define "community." You mean the "GPL-using community." And for most GPL'd projects, there's more than just one upstream copyright holder you'd have to contact--and it's highly unlikely that the FSF could agree to a GPL circumvention, no matter how much money you gave them.
The GPL license is optional.
hmm...
This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.
Well, I'll be darned. You're right--the GPL is optional. Simple use isn't enough to be a licensee of it.
But that doesn't change the fact that it is more restrictve than the BSD license.
People seem to be determined to make up the most absurd, obnoxious, interpretations of the GPL. The reality is that the GPL is merely a license. It doesn't transfer copyright. It can only be enforced by those who agree to it, one of whom is the copyright holder. It contains nothing about exclusivity - which is why, for instance, Mozilla can be dual licensed. It's an option. Take it or leave it, but for Brian's sake stop whining about it.
The GPL is a sticky copyleft license with compulsory re-licenseing. So are the ASPL and the OGL, although they have exceptions so the parent companies (Apple and Hasbro) can make money. Although the FSF complains about less-sticky copylefts, Apple and Hasbro (& the bazillion other copyleft licenses with sticky terms) are just pushing their own corporate agenda, just as the FSF pushes theirs.
The BSD license, on the other hand, doesn't have an agenda aside from not getting suied. This means that, barring some semantics about what "free" means, it can be said to be "more free" than the GPL.
Why does the GPL attract such zealots who attack anyone who points out flaws in the GPL?
(for the record, I still think that the GPL should include a real working definion of what is a "program."--something that a judge can understand without getting a CS degree.)
It might make [me] irresonsible but it allows me to critique my society without my employer firing me for my political views
Hey, a good argument for anonymous political speech! Woot!
But I think you should really have a reason to be anoymous, more than just avoiding social repercussions. Business consequences, yeah (what if I want to speak out against the United Way?) but not social ones (if I want to say Albany sucks, I want someone to be able to stop me in the street and tell me why I'm wrong.)
You talk about the American Revolution but that is an example of all things I mentioned (in a non digital form) but then it goes above and beyond. This is the first form of revolution, protest. Protest should be first, not violence.
Those who protest are committing a form of violence. Not a real serious one, in a lot of cases not legally violent, but it "violent" in the "disruptive of normal life" kind of way.
It might just be me, but the idea of "anonymous protest" just kind of defeats the point, I think--and cheapens the worth of a protest.
I have the right to anonymous free speech. In many cases it is needed to prevent violent reprisials against the protesters.
What, exactly, makes you think that you have a right to avoid reprisal for your speech? If you say that my wife is a tramp, I have the right to call you on that, either by resorting to your level (I could call you a MS Troll or something) or taking you to court (for slander.)
You have the right to privacy, sure. You have the right to free speech, sure... but the supposed right to anonymous free speech just encourages irresponsible behavior.
Protest is a disruption that will cause change when there is no effective way to punish and stop it.
Protesting in a political action.
Yes, Protesting is a political action. But protesting doesn't need to be invulnerable to retribution to be effective; the American Revolution can be thought of as a method of protest. There was a very effective method of stopping it that the British were in the course of pursuing, but the Americans managed to make the cost of the war so strenuous that the British reached a point where it made sense to admit defeat.
Protest, I say again, should be a weapon of last resort. Those opposed to the WTO should be given an easily accessable forum to voice their greivances--one where anyone even mildly intersted can find them out.
(And, yes, I realize that a 5-second google search turns up 158,000 reponses for "WTO is bad".)
If the protesters would police themselves and remove the idiots that cause the trouble before they had a chance to act, the police would have a much more difficult job arresting people. Then the protester would not look like violent thugs on the 6:00 News.
Remember: That was why the Hoover FBI infiltrated the various 60s social movements; to get them to be extreme so they would look bad.
Also, doing some research and planing would help. (Don't have all the leaders in one place so they can be all ID'd and arrested at once. Also, learn map reading skills)
I think having an organization with a lawyer on hand, and some AV recording equipment, would be a sufficient check on police brutality.
Contacting the police ahead of time and letting them know that you will be protesting is probably a good idea too. Do it far enough in advance, and if you run into legal snags ("There was a riot at your last rally, so we're going to assume that one will happen again and not let you rally") you can come up with some alternative method of protest.
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Yes, there is one section that you can travel on without paying tolls. One of the Pike's directors has been saying that every time a car uses that exit, the Pike loses money. They're pushing to get tolls put on that exit (apparently there used to be tolls there some years ago).
The westernmost stretch of I-90 is "zero-cent toll." When we drive from Albany to my mother-in-law's, we get a ticket a few miles past the NY/MA border, and then hand the ticket to a real person when we get off.
The RIGHT way to do this would be to scrap all of the "zero-toll" booths and build one "everyone stops" booth midway through the state. Or to charge tolls (even small ones) for the western stretch.
When I'm elected supreme dictator of Massachusetts, I'll disband the Turnpike Authority and use gas taxes to fund the roads.
When I am granted supreme godlike power and rulership of the world, remind me to 'elect' you as supreme dictator of MA.
I didn't say that I agreeed with it. Just that that's how the argument goes. I was answering a question of "who would do the jobs that Mexicans do now?"
Most of the jobs that Mexicans do (farming, housekeeping, simliar low-class jobs) are jobs also done by my peer group. We hate them, and move on--but if we couldn't move on, we'd probably unionize, stay where we are, and raise prices for everyone.
Sweet!
Print-on-demand is a great thing, and if it becomes economical, I'll love it.
The benefits, of course, is that the number of copies printed matches exactly the number of copies purchased.
That's a very, VERY big advantage to a publisher. It means that there's no tax-penalty for large print runs, and thus the incentive to roll out "crappy book of the month" goes away.
Unfortunately...
The downside is that many people use hands-on browsing to find books they want, which won't be possible when the books are in digital format.
That's not the big downside; bookstores could just select a few and print them themselves, if the system works.
The problem is that it's inefficient. Book runs benefit from economy of scale, and "one book runs" may be good for out of print material like Public Domain stuff, but it's not nice as the primary book sale method.
Beat the inefficiency, and I (and all the publishers in the world) would love it. Imagine--instant corrections, no returns... it'd be great!
Word may be pretty, but LaTeX can do all the same stuff. Really.
LaTeX can let me open up (or convert) my extant word document and start typing, using keyboard shortcuts or toolbars to denote what exceptions I want, and spit out word counts on demand?
LaTeX can track changes, spell check, and autocorrect common typoes that I make?
LaTeX can handle god damn'd em dashes!?
If so, please e-mail me a good link. If not, please don't say that it can.
If you want pretty, use Quark or Publisher or Acrobat's product (name?). If you want to write, use Word.
Courts should be, and are, swayed by logical opinions and arguments. That's why our legal system is a combative one.
/made avaliable despite no copyright.
An expression of demand for works in the public domain should be considered by the court, ESSPECIALLY if it's shown that they're kept in print
The argument for extended copyrights is basically "can't keep them in print if not copywritten," which means that they're largely unavaliable to casual consumers.
The fact that most people are irresponsible, and generally assholes when constrained only by their own moral princples shouldn't be terribly suprising.
It isn't... but most of the time, people ARE restrained by more than just abstract morals.
Although there's a certain moral argument to an individual's right to privacy, there's also a statistical argument that people simply act irresponsibly when given anonymnity.
What's your take on anonymnity in the internent? Is a good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing not worth talking about?
Getting the inserted table [spreadsheet] from Word back into Excel was next to impossible.
Hardly.
Step 1: Select table in Word
Step 2: Copy table to clipboard
Step 3: Open new Excel Spreadsheet
Step 4: Paste table back into Excel
Sept 5: Give original user license to beat the clueless person who messed up his/her spreadsheet.
DO NOT put an "Objective" section at the top of your resume, they're all bullshit, never relevant and only limiting, and when you hand someone your resume, your objective is simple - TO GET A JOB FROM THEM.
Put an Objective on there--but make it relevant to your career search. Do you want a long-term job that will last you to retirement? Do your plans only focus on the short-term now? Do you want a part-time job to support you while you go to school?
I'd recommend a general objective, instead of customization per company. Use the cover letter for that--to display your interest in and knowledge of the company. Your resume should be static, so it feels honest and trustworthy, and they don't think that they're lying.
(So call Apple or MS or Be or whomever "the greatest" in the cover letter, not the resume...)
Oh, and keeping it consice sounds good to. One page is a good limit for a physical resume; if there's extraneous stuff (education breakdown, career breakdown, hobbies) that are relevant but not essential, pt them on the back or leave them out.
Since they change the look and feel with every release, and move important functions around so that you have to search for them.
The changes aren't that bad unless you're tweaking. Right-click still brings up the same menu, all the windows keys still work, and everything still has the same names it did in 2000.
I wouldn't have touched XP yet, except that an artist friend of mine just upgraded from a hand-me-down machine to a new one. That was his first comment, why did they change everything? He's thinking about returning it and spending a little more on an Apple.
An apple would be good if he's doing Photoshop or graphics.
But if he just wants Windows to work the old way, he can finally make it work however he wants. XP, without installing anything, lets you use the new or old start menu, the new or old GUI theme, and you can customize the start menu.
The changes in XP are up there, but they're hardly "change for change's sake." I was considering using a differnet shell, but I haven't found one that works in Win32 as well (usablity-wise) as XP's Explorer
I loaded the Windows version of the GIMP to give him a chance to get away from Photoshop. I'm trying to convince him that it is worth his time to learn GIMP rather than Photoshop which will continue to cost him money that he doesn't have. Unfortunately, I'm not experience enough with any of these tools to be able to say that the GIMP has all the features that he will want from Photoshop, or to help him learn it.
GIMP does not have everything Photoshop does, nor is it an easy transition. I get to play with Photoshop & a few other Acrobat programs at work (comes from being the only geek in the office) and there's a world of difference between GIMP and photoshop.
If he doesn't have the cash for a full version of Photoshop, he might want to look at the dumbed-down version. It's rather crippled, but it might be closer to what he needs than GIMP. (Then again, it might not--I don't know what he needs, and I haven't played around with the dumbed-down version.)
As for Photoshop costing money... it's perpetual licensing, so he can stop upgrading at just about any time.
In what way? You can't prove a link between patents and innovation. In fact, based on history, I could argue that patents have a chilling effect on innovation.
Patents give innovation a reward in and of itself. Without patents, the reward for innovation is only in the competitive edge that the innovation itself gives--which may only be useful for a very short time, until an invention is copied.
Patents are more than just rewarding inventors, too--they're a record of invention. When someone is granted a patent, they have a few years to profit from it--and then EVERYONE has access to how their invention works.
Patents give corporations that have a high-turnaround and no espionage cover a reason to bother spending money to innovate. If not for a legal guarantee of a patentable idea's uniqueness (and thus profitability) corporations would likely not have research departments--and those that did would be smaller, and as focused on stealing the other guy's ideas as real innovation.
Real innovation comes about through the free exchange of ideas, not through cross-licensing of patents from major corporations.
The so-called "free exchange of ideas" often leads to mob mentalities that are hard to shake up but easy to abuse. A few exceptions and caveats allow open dialgue of important matters to be more than just social functions. One of these is a check against stealing someone else's work, and patents do that.
Higher fees are not a solution. They just raise the stakes, so companies will try even harder to win patents.
No. Higher fees, by themselves, do not raise the stakes--they simply raise the cost.
If I increase the price of a front-row seat for a concert, I don't make the seat any better--I just make it harder to get that seat.
Higher fees mean that companies need to work harder for the same effect--and low-yield nuciance patents will drop off a bit. (Maybe not a lot, but a bit; plus the added patent office $ will help improve the quality of each patent application review.)
Likewise, or contrastingly, the "little guy" who comes up with a legitimate invention is even less likely to be able to win a patent for it. These "reforms" will serve only to line the bureaucrats' pockets with the blood of the independent inventor.
When was the last time an "independant inventor" all by himself won out anyway?
In any case, most patents are applied for and used by businesses who have cash. The solutiuon for the independant inventor is a "private citizen" rate, not to set up the system assuming that everyone's poor.
(Perpetually deferred fees sound like a good model: if I come up with something new, I can patent it, and I only have to pay the fee if I actually make money out of it.)
Why does everyone try to compare desktop managers with Windows? Isn't the whole point of installing Linux to get away from Microsoft?
If you're installing Linux to get away from MS, then you're used to Windows, and having a system that works that way is a Good Thing.
If you don't want Linux to work like Windows at all, then you're not installing it to get away from MS--you're installing it to be geeky / because you like Linux.
For example I don't think we could effectively seal off the borders and they would come into the country to try and get food. Even if we could seal the borders and starve them to death who would take care of all the work migrants do now?
Robots, or the poor.
The whole reason that we care at all about Mexican immigrants is because we have some unemployed folk at all in the US. The thought train goes "seal the borders, reduce the job-swiping, and we'll have fewer unemployed Americans."
I don't think it's a perfect trade, but I think it would be an improvement.
That's 2,000 people less per KM^2, and Tokyo is a very livable area.
Er, come again?
Tokyo is one of the most crowded cities in the world. Name an American city that has "coffin hotels" were businessmen stay because they don't want to drive the six hours home every night.
The limiting factor isn't living space; drive fifty miles in just about any direction from just about any point in the US and you're in the middle of nowhere. The limiting factor is a sufficient biomass to support humanity.
The ratio they taught back in HS was that each step on the food chain requires ten times the biomass below and can support one tenth the mass above. So me, a 200-lbs human on the top of the food chain, needs 2,000 lbs of animal (and 20,000 lbs of plant) to support me. It's probably off, but it's a better number than the "Texas City" spiel you just gave.
(It'd probably be better to rattle off something like a *country*'s popuation, and not a city.)
What stockpile we do have will probably move quickly. It's very unclear just what percent the U.S.'s "stockpiled" food store is -is it a fraction of the daily, weekly, monthly or annual need? Hard to tell. I imagine the military would get by for a time, but your typical city person, being at the far end of the longer chains, will have a hard time getting their hands on supplies.
You're apparantly lacking understanding of what "matter of national security" means.
Assuming that there was a massive crop failure, the federal government--and the military--would take steps to feed the American public, up to and including invading some other country, if necessary.
We no doubt have a food surplus that could last us--and only us--at least one year. It wouldn't be GOOD, and it very well might not be CHEAP, but it would be food.
As I understand it, the grain stockpile is a government (military) reserve, just like the oil stockpile. You'll never see it in the industry unless you're selling to it, but that doesn't mean that it's not there.
That the GPL is copyrighted by the FSF makes no difference
Yes, it does. If it wasn't, the FSF would have no standing to sue someone who includes it in a program and doesn't follow the rules. They do.
This is possible because the respective organisations - Time Warner, Sun Microsystems, etc - who own the copyright have determined that they do not want their options limited to those of the GPL.
When they use the GPL, they must follow all terms of the GPL. Whole-program sticky openness with source code and everything. Mozilla couldn't say "Gecko is GPL'd but the rest of it isn't" in a single download file.
The FSF cannot sue someone over a GPL "violation" when they are not the copyright owner. And a GPL "violation" cannot be performed by the copyright owner in respect to code they themselves have the rights to.
Yes, they can. The GPL is a rather unique work which the FSF has a vested interested in controlling. If you "sorta" release part of your program under the GPL, they can indeed take you to court for infringing on the GPL.
Being the copyright holder means that the FSF has a stronger, case, but they still have standing if the infringing GPL'd program has no upstream derivation.
I'm hardly a zealot, otherwise I'd hardly point out that the GPL merely provides default options!
Ok, you're not a zealot. You're just even more of a not-lawyer than I am.
The GPL directly and intentionaly elminates the "default option" of any software company that uses it. This is because the FSF thinks that the industry's "default option" of a copyright-restricted license is bad.
The GPL removes no rights from the copyright holder of a program. It is incapable of doing so. It is an agreement between a copyright holder and a licensee, and its power only exists in that agreement - it would be unenforcable if the copyright holder some how ceased to be the copyright holder on agreeing to it.
The GPL is a contract. Every contract has four necessary components, one of which is consideration on both sides. In the GPL's case, the consideration is that the licensor (the inital copyright holder or the FSF) agrees to let someone use their IP in exchange for the licensee (anyone using the GPL) agreeing to abide by the terms of the GPL.
If someone were to attempt to abuse the GPL--let's say that Microsoft says they release IE under the GPL but don't provide source code outside of their NDA'd shared-source program--the FSF would take them to court, and I'd hazzard a guess that copyright infringmenet might be part of it. Or, it might just be break of contract.
You may actually want to read it. It's distributed with every GPL'd program, and the terms and conditions are fairly plain and easily read.
I have read it--and I don't think that "plain and easily read" is a fair description of it. It's as obtuse and vauge as some EULAs, and leaves the important questions out of it.
Take a look at the last three paragraphs of section 2:
(parahrased) "This applies to the program as a whole, unless the programs has reasonably independant parts, but even independant parts are the same whole when they're distributed that way."
"This doesn't take away your rights, but to control how you make derivitive works based on our program."
"Oh, and just bundling a program on the same disk doesn't make it the same program."
I think that last line was addeed because the first paragraph was confusing, and they didn't want to spend the time to re-word it.
Hmm... a simple "individual programs shall contain all files that are used by a single program and not used by other programs or direct user input" would do the trick.
You should read the Navy's comments in the stories...he did know where he was and what the date was (time is easy, so I assume he knew that). Also, he did have a makeshift mast from what he could scrounge together.
:) Then he's definitly not lazy, just unsuccessful.
/., where everything is unfair. ;)
Well, cool.
Unless I'm missing something, it seems a bit unfair to dismiss this man's plight so succinctly as you have done.
Of course it is. But this is
(Thanks for the correction, btw.)
you're on a sailboat with no mast, no motor, and a dead radio. There are no ships in your vicinity for 3.5 months (yes, this is easily possible). Are you going to row back to shore? I don't think so.
No mast, no motor, no radio?
Break out the emerency navigation supplies (IIRC everyone's still required to carry traditional navigation supplies) and see about rowing back to shore. If there's still sail material, rig a sail using whatever wood and lashing material can be found. Try and get the radio working with the fifteen minutes of spare time per day.
As for burning the boat... I'd try the ol' sunight and a mirror trick first. Then again, that might not be practical...
It's funny that the U.S. is so vociferous about protecting Taiwan when the Taiwanese are already helping China out. Once Taiwan is folded back in to China, all those fancy weapons and huge investments in Taiwanese industry will benefit their biggest enemy.
Actually, I think we're getting rather good at ranking China with "powerful countries that were but aren't now our enemies."
Besides, there's probably some secret government plan to bomb the shit out of Taiwan if it becomes Chineese and China becomes hostile.
Er, no, they wouldn't. ID owns the copyright to Doom III, they can do whatever they like with it.
Not if they release it under the GPL. Doing so is an act, and the FSF (who owns copyright to the GPL) can take them to court if they violate it. They might not, but they COULD (and I wager that they probably would.) And if the FSF doesn't do it, the first person accused of priating this hypotetical "Doom III with GPL" would raise the GPL as their defense, and very possibly get a summary judgement.
It doesn't really force anything. It provides a default option which the majority can use. If you can think of a better way of rewarding a copyright holder than to contribute your code to the community in return for use of their code, then you can always make a direct deal with the copyright holder.
Statements like that fail to define "community." You mean the "GPL-using community." And for most GPL'd projects, there's more than just one upstream copyright holder you'd have to contact--and it's highly unlikely that the FSF could agree to a GPL circumvention, no matter how much money you gave them.
The GPL license is optional.
hmm...
This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.
Well, I'll be darned. You're right--the GPL is optional. Simple use isn't enough to be a licensee of it.
But that doesn't change the fact that it is more restrictve than the BSD license.
People seem to be determined to make up the most absurd, obnoxious, interpretations of the GPL. The reality is that the GPL is merely a license. It doesn't transfer copyright. It can only be enforced by those who agree to it, one of whom is the copyright holder. It contains nothing about exclusivity - which is why, for instance, Mozilla can be dual licensed. It's an option. Take it or leave it, but for Brian's sake stop whining about it.
The GPL is a sticky copyleft license with compulsory re-licenseing. So are the ASPL and the OGL, although they have exceptions so the parent companies (Apple and Hasbro) can make money. Although the FSF complains about less-sticky copylefts, Apple and Hasbro (& the bazillion other copyleft licenses with sticky terms) are just pushing their own corporate agenda, just as the FSF pushes theirs.
The BSD license, on the other hand, doesn't have an agenda aside from not getting suied. This means that, barring some semantics about what "free" means, it can be said to be "more free" than the GPL.
Why does the GPL attract such zealots who attack anyone who points out flaws in the GPL?
(for the record, I still think that the GPL should include a real working definion of what is a "program."--something that a judge can understand without getting a CS degree.)
It might make [me] irresonsible but it allows me to critique my society without my employer firing me for my political views
Hey, a good argument for anonymous political speech! Woot!
But I think you should really have a reason to be anoymous, more than just avoiding social repercussions. Business consequences, yeah (what if I want to speak out against the United Way?) but not social ones (if I want to say Albany sucks, I want someone to be able to stop me in the street and tell me why I'm wrong.)
You talk about the American Revolution but that is an example of all things I mentioned (in a non digital form) but then it goes above and beyond. This is the first form of revolution, protest. Protest should be first, not violence.
Those who protest are committing a form of violence. Not a real serious one, in a lot of cases not legally violent, but it "violent" in the "disruptive of normal life" kind of way.
It might just be me, but the idea of "anonymous protest" just kind of defeats the point, I think--and cheapens the worth of a protest.
I have the right to anonymous free speech. In many cases it is needed to prevent violent reprisials against the protesters.
What, exactly, makes you think that you have a right to avoid reprisal for your speech? If you say that my wife is a tramp, I have the right to call you on that, either by resorting to your level (I could call you a MS Troll or something) or taking you to court (for slander.)
You have the right to privacy, sure. You have the right to free speech, sure... but the supposed right to anonymous free speech just encourages irresponsible behavior.
Protest is a disruption that will cause change when there is no effective way to punish and stop it.
Protesting in a political action.
Yes, Protesting is a political action. But protesting doesn't need to be invulnerable to retribution to be effective; the American Revolution can be thought of as a method of protest. There was a very effective method of stopping it that the British were in the course of pursuing, but the Americans managed to make the cost of the war so strenuous that the British reached a point where it made sense to admit defeat.
Protest, I say again, should be a weapon of last resort. Those opposed to the WTO should be given an easily accessable forum to voice their greivances--one where anyone even mildly intersted can find them out.
(And, yes, I realize that a 5-second google search turns up 158,000 reponses for "WTO is bad".)
If the protesters would police themselves and remove the idiots that cause the trouble before they had a chance to act, the police would have a much more difficult job arresting people. Then the protester would not look like violent thugs on the 6:00 News.
Remember: That was why the Hoover FBI infiltrated the various 60s social movements; to get them to be extreme so they would look bad.
Also, doing some research and planing would help. (Don't have all the leaders in one place so they can be all ID'd and arrested at once. Also, learn map reading skills)
I think having an organization with a lawyer on hand, and some AV recording equipment, would be a sufficient check on police brutality.
Contacting the police ahead of time and letting them know that you will be protesting is probably a good idea too. Do it far enough in advance, and if you run into legal snags ("There was a riot at your last rally, so we're going to assume that one will happen again and not let you rally") you can come up with some alternative method of protest.