Excellent plan, then we just move to wherever they are living since the storage obviously won't be in their back yards!
I find this view really odd, you know the "not in my back yard view". People are perfectly comfortable living in a place with continual toxic waste emissions. Car exhaust, toxins in everyday objects (paints, walls, toys, you name it), but the moment the word "nuclear" comes into play, all of a sudden images of toxic waste man comes to mind and superstition overrides reality. The fact of the matter is, as far as overall envriomental damage, nuclear is FAR clearer than how we typically power our cars and cities. It is a solvable problem and quite frankly people just need to realize it's less dangerous to live near a nuclear reactor or permant nuclear waste facility than it is to live near a coal powerplant or coal mining facility.
How about ones that are qualified to properly dispose of nuclear waste. Presumably, leading engineers and scientists. You know, the ones that could potentially design a place to put the waste into, where by the local envrioment takes as small of an impact as possible. I don't think politicians and random interest groups typically qualify for this task.
1. The genetic cure for bubble boy disease caused diabetes 2. Your suggestion isn't the best way to use this information. I can see the grant proposals already:
Isolate the sequence, create a vector and apply the vector to some bacteria. Multiply bacteria. Then the hard part, the person who figures this out wins the million dollar prize. Isolate the resulting homologous protein(s) that the sequence creates. Once isolated, you can study how it/they interact with HIV. Not an easy task to be sure.
All of this will be done in unison with studying the effect of this gene sequence on people who have it. How HIV interacts with their cells should help with the process of isolating the homologous proteins you're looking for.
Not even remotely an easy task, to be sure, but in theory it should work.
1. Packages are bad, and hence package management. Look up OS X style bundles how it should work. Packages are no longer necissary.
2. Not easier or even as remotely easy as OS X. By the way, your example with German is irrelevent if you use OS X style bundles, since the application will work in German, English, or whatever language the Developer decided to create the App in automagically for the user based of their Language prefs.
3. OS X does it correctly. No application can install without logging in as root (which is disabled by default) anything within the OS folder. Linux should do this.
4. The GUI model for Linux is heavily dependant on the programmers experience with using Windows. THere are other ways to manage the user experience. This is more of a critique of how much effort goes into Linux GUI programming. It's clear that very little in the way of origional thought goes into it.
5. It's really goes into the nature of the configuration. THis is typically noticed on a laptop that moves from location to location and one has to switch profiles.
6. Linux is better than Windows in this regard (for the most part, it can be a pain sometimes), but Windows is really a poor example of how to deal with errors. Really poor.
7. Dev tools work, that's not the complaint. It's that dev tools don't discourage putting anything in/../lib, which they should discourage. Also, adapting some ideas from MS and/or Apple on drag and drop GUI creation would be nice. I've heard good things about Visual Basic in this regard, though I've never used it and probabally never will.
8. I think you're missing the nature of the complaint. THough you got part of it correct. It's a question of innovation, linux lacks some in very need areas. If Linux programmers want to sock it to the man, they need to beat the man at his own game. Not just copy, but create. Do something that isn't being done, do it well, make people notice. It really goes into the nature of why copying isn't good, not because it always makes bad products, because it doesn't, but because it puts one in a methodolgy and mindset whereby moving to a creation based model is nearly impossible because they lack the skills to do so.
9. Most people use Works at least once a month or so, if I remember the study correctly. They use solitare much more than that. They use a web browser much more than that. My thing, for a CLEAR majority of uses outside of an office, open source word processors will do. I personally think even something as simple as ABIWord is good enough, all you have to do is save "Word" files as rich text and give the file.doc extension and noone will ever notice. I've been doing that for years when I send people who use Word files. THe filters for receiving DOC files are created, yes Open Office isn't so good, but how it works is a matter of public record, anyone can use that info to add DOC filters to pretty much anything. The lack of MS office really is an excuse.
Here's how I see things. Open Source programmers are capable of revolutionizing the industry. Perl, Python, Apache are very good examples of tools that were created in the public via open source software that do a task in a new and better way, without overtly relying on previous innovation. In other words, the developers aren't copying, but creating. In terms of technical features Linux isn't that far behind (and in some very important respects is ahead of) OS X or Windows, but users don't care about that. They want their computer to do something useful, with little thought, little experience, and little research. Linux is far better than it was even three years ago. Far better. But if Linux wants to actually be a part of the big boys in user space, the programmers need to get off their collective assess and look at innovative ideas for the user that aren't just feature bloat, but make using the computer a more positive experience. Quit copying and start creating. A change of ideas and mentality is need for Linux before it really gets up to bat.
What? will the files just magically fly onto a person's hard drive in the right place?
You're saying your "packages" shouldn't be "managed"?
I'm saying packages shouldn't exist. Period.
There are not any other techniques for software installation.
Tell that to the millions of Mac OS X users. They will laugh at you as they merely drag Applications to the Applications folder.
What you're used to is just a really broken form of package management where any "package" is allowed to overwrite any library with its own (possibly vendor mangled or outdated version of a) library and do whatever it takes to get itself working. Screw any other things on the system. And no package is aware of any other package. And there's no liability for what package broke the system.
THere's this concept called "Bundles" where all shared libraries, language packs, and binaries for multiple architectures are stored in a single folder that appears to be a single application. Let me give you an example of what this allows. THe one time I installed Real Media player on OS X, Safari was running, I dragged it to/Applications and without restarting Safari and without Running Real Media, Safari was immediately aware of the Real plugin, loaded it, and used it. Welcome to no package managment.
I disagree, to put it simply. I see the following problems with Linux.
1. It has a need for package management. To me, this is a fundamental flaw with the design of the operating system. There are other techniques and ideas to handle how software is installed.
2. It requires user input for installing a simple desktop system. It should as simple as boot from CD, click install, walk away cause it will reboot and ask you to create an account when done. This operation should, by default both install and overwrite a previous install without losing/breaking a single application install. This install should also automagically install applications a user would normally expect his/her computer to come with.
3. The formal seperation of System and applications is not very good, see OS X for an example of how to do this properly.
4. It emulates Windows UI design and does it poorly. Configuration requires more knowledge than a traditional user has.
5. For "simple things, like Windows, it treats the User like a moron and does a poor job at it. It shouldn't be "easy" if and only if you find the proper wizard to do it and click the buttons in the right order, it should just work.
6. Any and all error codes should be written colloquial english. They should only notify the user if the User has a good reson to know the error happened.
7. Developing tools for Linux need more work and should encourage developers not use package management as a way to install applications.
8. Linux developers should focus on creating tools, not emulating tools already created. The cooperation of professional graphics artists and UI designers would be extremely helpful. Make whitepapers of the UI before designing the application. You'd be surprised how much it will improve the outcome.
8. Most people don't use Office at home, stop using that as an excuse. On top of this, the ability to read and write office documents, especially ones that newer version of Office can't even read has already been solved.
I'm assuming he's using MS Windows. I'm also assuming he hasn't heard of Picasa. I guess he also hasn't heard of Aperture, by Apple. Personally, I'm more of an iPhoto kinda of guy, since my personal foto lib is about 3K (I like to take pictures), it does a good enough job.
Now, one thing I do remember about Dvorak is that he's almost as bad of a MS Apologist as Paul Thurrott, so in his mind, decent PC freeware and Apple solutions are probabally out of the question for him. Shame, he's mising out.
My understanding is that CAD software has a lot of processor specific opitizations. There lies one of the biggest problems with porting. A move to x86 will certainly help with porting.
It sounds like the EU is going through the same problems the the US did when it tried a confederate system. When we figured out it wasn't going so well, we moved to a federal system. This is just another example.
Having a single copyright authority for Europe sounds like a good idea. Smaller countries need to realize that under unified economic policy, they will benifit from the wealth of the larger states more than they will suffer from less power.
The creation and playing of music won't suffer because you don't have your own licensing board, it will suffer if the fees associated with said process are so high that the common man can't afford them.
As a copyright holder, I can say "Your legal right to use this software exists only so long as your left ring finger is jammed into your belly button", and well, that's the price of the license. Don't like? Don't use the software!
That is incorrect. Copyright holders have no ability enforce an unaccept contract. If I don't accept the license, the default is NOT that I can not use the software. That is incorrect, the default is docterine of first sale. I own it, I can do what I want with it. There is NOTHING magical about software that suddenly it gets added protections that books do not.
What you are suggesting is that it is perfectly legal to sell someone a product THEN inside the product have a contract that determines the use of that product. That's nonsense. I own it, I can do what I want with it, including sell it.
I hate to break it to you, they have the copyright to the show. They have full license to distribute the show in any way they see fit. They see fit in distributing the show as a garbled mess over Bittorrent. If you don't like their distributation method, that's YOUR problem. Find another way to watch their show.
The only way something like this works is if there is an neutral agency that one can report this to. Even then it probabaly won't. It's in the financial institutions best interest to keep all security problems secret. That is today, even with them not being responsibile, in a day where they are resonsible, they'll act just the tabacoo companies did/do "There is no security problem, Mr. Senator. No, there is no problem with identity theft, not at all, we have it under control.". The cheapest short term solution is the best one to a company, these guys pretend to think long term, but they don't. Don't assume they will.
If that doesn't clear it up, using google, I found this definition helpful, especially as it relates to a website:
the study of the broadest range of categories of existence, which also asks questions about the existence of particular kinds of objects, such as numbers or moral facts.
I'm sure Cnet is on to something here, but for the life of me, I don't know what it could be. Will both of the people who understand how this is useful explain it to the rest of it.
Seems like a pragmatic idea until you realize that you're not being paid for work done in your own time for a company you've signed a contract for. I personally like to avoid not getting paid for work. I personally avoid working more than 40 hours a week. I personally avoid bringing my work home, even if my work in enjoyable.
A modified version of this seems appropriate. Write the code under contract, the company gets a specified license to modify and distribute the software based off their needs (maybe the GPL is perfect, maybe the BSD is perfect, depends on what this guy does), the write keeps the copyright. Simple, effective, could only take a couple lines in the contract.
After he has an understanding of his goals, he should promply call a lawyer, who can help him with the wording. This should be pretty cheap and take little to no time. Sounds like his boss is a good guy, so extermely specific contract negotiations are not necissary.
Watergate is exactly the kind of thing anonymous sources are for. Not who is married to who, or what the administration thinks of this or that. It is my view that a clear majority of anonymous sources are used ONLY because the journalist wants to maintain a relationship with those in power and those in power don't want to fess up. The cycle needs to be broken.
If the some newspaper wants me to take anonymous sources seriously, they better start using them in a way that reflects why they are kept anonymous.
"Just run GTK installer and then Gimp installer. How could it be easier?"
On Windows: A single download that has a one file that clearly says install that one merely has to double click. Hopefully, you don't have to click "Next" unnecissarily 15 times before it finally installs.
On OS X: A single download that you simple drag into the applications directory that has no reliance on X-Windows.
Creating an interface that doesn't require the detailed knowledge of how to use a multi-button mouse is a GOOD THING. It is one of the finer details of Mac OS, always has been. It forces application developers to make easier to use and understand applications rather than going for flashy looking stuff that might be quicker to use, but has a much higher learning curve. That being said, this five button mouse on my iBook works fine. Middle click opens in new tabs, right click pulls up contextual menus and I have the additional buttons set for Expose.
Now on to his other critiques.
Compatible control keys
I don't use VPC, so this has never been an issue for me.
Save button on toolbar: Irrelevent. Toolbars a for very often needed options. Things the app was designed to do. In pretty much every single app I've used on OS X it won't let you close a window unless you tell it to save or not to save.
Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs. I'm not sure what version of OS X he's using but it does that in a better way than he suggests. The user isn't left wondering "where did my file go". Things that are useable by that app are bold and things that are not useable by that app are dimmer and you can't even click on them
Sort folders to top of directory listings This assumes that the person is always first and foremost looking for a nested directory. You CAN set on either a universal basis or a folder by folder basis and ordering sort you want.
More context sensitive help As long as things like clippy are discouraged, that's not so bad. Though, I've always found how Windows tries to hold my hand very annoying and frustrating. Window's devopers aren't very good at guessing what people want to do and it shows.
Oh, and bring back the big mega robot, that is combined by 5 smaller ones, the green one that is all the construction machines that form a big robot.
There were six in that set. They were called constructicons. I still own mine (along with a lot of other nastologic toys and comics from the eighties, including transformers comics 1-18).
That sound was my inner geek expoding and needing to go to a coffee shop.
"Pentecostal Christianity was started in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, and now claims about 450 million members worldwide (150 million in Africa). The Assemblies of God have about 35 million members, and they started in 1914, also in Topeka."
This totally ignores the evolutionary nature of the rise of the Pentecost, Holiness, and Revivalist movments. The foundational roots lie in early to mid-19th century evangelical protestant christianity. There was nothing magical about the azusa street revival, the cultural foundations had been layed for many years.
Compare that to Joseph Smith. He introduced a new history to the people. Not so evolutionary and very difficult to accept, for most. The fact that the LDS church has grown to the size it is today is quite remarkable. Don't compare the success of your faith to the forced evolution of evangical christianity (rise of higher criticism: Wellhausen, Noth, et al). It's not necissary. Both Islam (at least pre 9/11, I haven't seen updated numbers, being mostly a Christian historian) and LDS are seeing a good size jump in numbers and are both quite successful.
Having played extremely amazing console only games, I'm not sure I can relate. Pretty much everything by Nintendo pushes the limit of art and style. Even if the branding is 20 years old, the functions of the games themselves are not. Jade Empire (XBOX) and Eternal Darkness (gamecube) are both excellent reasons to buy either one of those consoles. While Windows might have a LOT of games, it certainly doesn't have a monolopy on the great and intelligent ones.
By the way, have your son check out "super monkey ball 2", it's addictive, you'll both like it.
Today, in the US, the insured are already paying for the health coverage of the uninsured. Today, with no socialized healthcare, it happens. How you ask? Increased medical cost so that hospitals can make a profit despite the fact that some people will never pay. That cost is transfered to the insured via higher insurance payments. It will cost the insured LESS to have a socialized healthcare, because the currently uninsured would be forced to pay via their taxes, without changing a single thing about how health is distributed, or changing a single thing about the cost of perscription drugs.
I'm going to take your surprise to point out something. Convservatives aren't evil. Myself, I'm a full blow euro-style socialist, I think gays should be able to marry, and pot should be sold right next to the vodka at your local "spirts" store.
Even saying that, they are many things conservatives are right about. In some areas, like this one, the general conservative idea that the public should be protected from the state is shown as not just being lip service. I think if many liberals (especially young ones) really look at themselves, they would realize that they are more "conservative" than they think.
As was shown with the xbox, the secret to entering a new hardware/software market is to create a machine that allows piracy, but discourages it. While there are valid reasons to allowing homebrew software on the PSP, and hacks like this shouldn't be illegal, research like this will lead to hacked games (on to very expensive memory sticks).
Genious on Sony's part. Get an installed base at any price, while paying lip service to piracy. Even at $250, the PSP will be a hit.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent plan, then we just move to wherever they are living since the storage obviously won't be in their back yards!
I find this view really odd, you know the "not in my back yard view". People are perfectly comfortable living in a place with continual toxic waste emissions. Car exhaust, toxins in everyday objects (paints, walls, toys, you name it), but the moment the word "nuclear" comes into play, all of a sudden images of toxic waste man comes to mind and superstition overrides reality. The fact of the matter is, as far as overall envriomental damage, nuclear is FAR clearer than how we typically power our cars and cities. It is a solvable problem and quite frankly people just need to realize it's less dangerous to live near a nuclear reactor or permant nuclear waste facility than it is to live near a coal powerplant or coal mining facility.
How about ones that are qualified to properly dispose of nuclear waste. Presumably, leading engineers and scientists. You know, the ones that could potentially design a place to put the waste into, where by the local envrioment takes as small of an impact as possible. I don't think politicians and random interest groups typically qualify for this task.
Two reasons:
1. The genetic cure for bubble boy disease caused diabetes
2. Your suggestion isn't the best way to use this information. I can see the grant proposals already:
Isolate the sequence, create a vector and apply the vector to some bacteria. Multiply bacteria. Then the hard part, the person who figures this out wins the million dollar prize. Isolate the resulting homologous protein(s) that the sequence creates. Once isolated, you can study how it/they interact with HIV. Not an easy task to be sure.
All of this will be done in unison with studying the effect of this gene sequence on people who have it. How HIV interacts with their cells should help with the process of isolating the homologous proteins you're looking for.
Not even remotely an easy task, to be sure, but in theory it should work.
1. Packages are bad, and hence package management. Look up OS X style bundles how it should work. Packages are no longer necissary.
/../lib, which they should discourage. Also, adapting some ideas from MS and/or Apple on drag and drop GUI creation would be nice. I've heard good things about Visual Basic in this regard, though I've never used it and probabally never will.
.doc extension and noone will ever notice. I've been doing that for years when I send people who use Word files. THe filters for receiving DOC files are created, yes Open Office isn't so good, but how it works is a matter of public record, anyone can use that info to add DOC filters to pretty much anything. The lack of MS office really is an excuse.
2. Not easier or even as remotely easy as OS X. By the way, your example with German is irrelevent if you use OS X style bundles, since the application will work in German, English, or whatever language the Developer decided to create the App in automagically for the user based of their Language prefs.
3. OS X does it correctly. No application can install without logging in as root (which is disabled by default) anything within the OS folder. Linux should do this.
4. The GUI model for Linux is heavily dependant on the programmers experience with using Windows. THere are other ways to manage the user experience. This is more of a critique of how much effort goes into Linux GUI programming. It's clear that very little in the way of origional thought goes into it.
5. It's really goes into the nature of the configuration. THis is typically noticed on a laptop that moves from location to location and one has to switch profiles.
6. Linux is better than Windows in this regard (for the most part, it can be a pain sometimes), but Windows is really a poor example of how to deal with errors. Really poor.
7. Dev tools work, that's not the complaint. It's that dev tools don't discourage putting anything in
8. I think you're missing the nature of the complaint. THough you got part of it correct. It's a question of innovation, linux lacks some in very need areas. If Linux programmers want to sock it to the man, they need to beat the man at his own game. Not just copy, but create. Do something that isn't being done, do it well, make people notice. It really goes into the nature of why copying isn't good, not because it always makes bad products, because it doesn't, but because it puts one in a methodolgy and mindset whereby moving to a creation based model is nearly impossible because they lack the skills to do so.
9. Most people use Works at least once a month or so, if I remember the study correctly. They use solitare much more than that. They use a web browser much more than that. My thing, for a CLEAR majority of uses outside of an office, open source word processors will do. I personally think even something as simple as ABIWord is good enough, all you have to do is save "Word" files as rich text and give the file
Here's how I see things. Open Source programmers are capable of revolutionizing the industry. Perl, Python, Apache are very good examples of tools that were created in the public via open source software that do a task in a new and better way, without overtly relying on previous innovation. In other words, the developers aren't copying, but creating. In terms of technical features Linux isn't that far behind (and in some very important respects is ahead of) OS X or Windows, but users don't care about that. They want their computer to do something useful, with little thought, little experience, and little research. Linux is far better than it was even three years ago. Far better. But if Linux wants to actually be a part of the big boys in user space, the programmers need to get off their collective assess and look at innovative ideas for the user that aren't just feature bloat, but make using the computer a more positive experience. Quit copying and start creating. A change of ideas and mentality is need for Linux before it really gets up to bat.
What? will the files just magically fly onto a person's hard drive in the right place?
/Applications and without restarting Safari and without Running Real Media, Safari was immediately aware of the Real plugin, loaded it, and used it. Welcome to no package managment.
You're saying your "packages" shouldn't be "managed"?
I'm saying packages shouldn't exist. Period.
There are not any other techniques for software installation.
Tell that to the millions of Mac OS X users. They will laugh at you as they merely drag Applications to the Applications folder.
What you're used to is just a really broken form of package management where any "package" is allowed to overwrite any library with its own (possibly vendor mangled or outdated version of a) library and do whatever it takes to get itself working. Screw any other things on the system. And no package is aware of any other package. And there's no liability for what package broke the system.
THere's this concept called "Bundles" where all shared libraries, language packs, and binaries for multiple architectures are stored in a single folder that appears to be a single application. Let me give you an example of what this allows. THe one time I installed Real Media player on OS X, Safari was running, I dragged it to
I disagree, to put it simply. I see the following problems with Linux.
1. It has a need for package management. To me, this is a fundamental flaw with the design of the operating system. There are other techniques and ideas to handle how software is installed.
2. It requires user input for installing a simple desktop system. It should as simple as boot from CD, click install, walk away cause it will reboot and ask you to create an account when done. This operation should, by default both install and overwrite a previous install without losing/breaking a single application install. This install should also automagically install applications a user would normally expect his/her computer to come with.
3. The formal seperation of System and applications is not very good, see OS X for an example of how to do this properly.
4. It emulates Windows UI design and does it poorly. Configuration requires more knowledge than a traditional user has.
5. For "simple things, like Windows, it treats the User like a moron and does a poor job at it. It shouldn't be "easy" if and only if you find the proper wizard to do it and click the buttons in the right order, it should just work.
6. Any and all error codes should be written colloquial english. They should only notify the user if the User has a good reson to know the error happened.
7. Developing tools for Linux need more work and should encourage developers not use package management as a way to install applications.
8. Linux developers should focus on creating tools, not emulating tools already created. The cooperation of professional graphics artists and UI designers would be extremely helpful. Make whitepapers of the UI before designing the application. You'd be surprised how much it will improve the outcome.
8. Most people don't use Office at home, stop using that as an excuse. On top of this, the ability to read and write office documents, especially ones that newer version of Office can't even read has already been solved.
I'm assuming he's using MS Windows. I'm also assuming he hasn't heard of Picasa. I guess he also hasn't heard of Aperture, by Apple. Personally, I'm more of an iPhoto kinda of guy, since my personal foto lib is about 3K (I like to take pictures), it does a good enough job.
Now, one thing I do remember about Dvorak is that he's almost as bad of a MS Apologist as Paul Thurrott, so in his mind, decent PC freeware and Apple solutions are probabally out of the question for him. Shame, he's mising out.
How many microns/nanogram does it get?
You didn't look far back. What appears to be the origional post is from 1998.
My understanding is that CAD software has a lot of processor specific opitizations. There lies one of the biggest problems with porting. A move to x86 will certainly help with porting.
It sounds like the EU is going through the same problems the the US did when it tried a confederate system. When we figured out it wasn't going so well, we moved to a federal system. This is just another example.
Having a single copyright authority for Europe sounds like a good idea. Smaller countries need to realize that under unified economic policy, they will benifit from the wealth of the larger states more than they will suffer from less power.
The creation and playing of music won't suffer because you don't have your own licensing board, it will suffer if the fees associated with said process are so high that the common man can't afford them.
As a copyright holder, I can say "Your legal right to use this software exists only so long as your left ring finger is jammed into your belly button", and well, that's the price of the license. Don't like? Don't use the software!
That is incorrect. Copyright holders have no ability enforce an unaccept contract. If I don't accept the license, the default is NOT that I can not use the software. That is incorrect, the default is docterine of first sale. I own it, I can do what I want with it. There is NOTHING magical about software that suddenly it gets added protections that books do not.
What you are suggesting is that it is perfectly legal to sell someone a product THEN inside the product have a contract that determines the use of that product. That's nonsense. I own it, I can do what I want with it, including sell it.
I hate to break it to you, they have the copyright to the show. They have full license to distribute the show in any way they see fit. They see fit in distributing the show as a garbled mess over Bittorrent. If you don't like their distributation method, that's YOUR problem. Find another way to watch their show.
The only way something like this works is if there is an neutral agency that one can report this to. Even then it probabaly won't. It's in the financial institutions best interest to keep all security problems secret. That is today, even with them not being responsibile, in a day where they are resonsible, they'll act just the tabacoo companies did/do "There is no security problem, Mr. Senator. No, there is no problem with identity theft, not at all, we have it under control.". The cheapest short term solution is the best one to a company, these guys pretend to think long term, but they don't. Don't assume they will.
If that doesn't clear it up, using google, I found this definition helpful, especially as it relates to a website:
the study of the broadest range of categories of existence, which also asks questions about the existence of particular kinds of objects, such as numbers or moral facts.
I'm sure Cnet is on to something here, but for the life of me, I don't know what it could be. Will both of the people who understand how this is useful explain it to the rest of it.
Seems like a pragmatic idea until you realize that you're not being paid for work done in your own time for a company you've signed a contract for. I personally like to avoid not getting paid for work. I personally avoid working more than 40 hours a week. I personally avoid bringing my work home, even if my work in enjoyable.
A modified version of this seems appropriate. Write the code under contract, the company gets a specified license to modify and distribute the software based off their needs (maybe the GPL is perfect, maybe the BSD is perfect, depends on what this guy does), the write keeps the copyright. Simple, effective, could only take a couple lines in the contract.
After he has an understanding of his goals, he should promply call a lawyer, who can help him with the wording. This should be pretty cheap and take little to no time. Sounds like his boss is a good guy, so extermely specific contract negotiations are not necissary.
"Ever heard of Watergate?"
Watergate is exactly the kind of thing anonymous sources are for. Not who is married to who, or what the administration thinks of this or that. It is my view that a clear majority of anonymous sources are used ONLY because the journalist wants to maintain a relationship with those in power and those in power don't want to fess up. The cycle needs to be broken.
If the some newspaper wants me to take anonymous sources seriously, they better start using them in a way that reflects why they are kept anonymous.
"Just run GTK installer and then Gimp installer. How could it be easier?"
On Windows: A single download that has a one file that clearly says install that one merely has to double click. Hopefully, you don't have to click "Next" unnecissarily 15 times before it finally installs.
On OS X: A single download that you simple drag into the applications directory that has no reliance on X-Windows.
Creating an interface that doesn't require the detailed knowledge of how to use a multi-button mouse is a GOOD THING. It is one of the finer details of Mac OS, always has been. It forces application developers to make easier to use and understand applications rather than going for flashy looking stuff that might be quicker to use, but has a much higher learning curve. That being said, this five button mouse on my iBook works fine. Middle click opens in new tabs, right click pulls up contextual menus and I have the additional buttons set for Expose.
Now on to his other critiques.
Compatible control keys
I don't use VPC, so this has never been an issue for me.
Save button on toolbar: Irrelevent. Toolbars a for very often needed options. Things the app was designed to do. In pretty much every single app I've used on OS X it won't let you close a window unless you tell it to save or not to save.
Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs. I'm not sure what version of OS X he's using but it does that in a better way than he suggests. The user isn't left wondering "where did my file go". Things that are useable by that app are bold and things that are not useable by that app are dimmer and you can't even click on them
Sort folders to top of directory listings This assumes that the person is always first and foremost looking for a nested directory. You CAN set on either a universal basis or a folder by folder basis and ordering sort you want.
More context sensitive help As long as things like clippy are discouraged, that's not so bad. Though, I've always found how Windows tries to hold my hand very annoying and frustrating. Window's devopers aren't very good at guessing what people want to do and it shows.
Oh, and bring back the big mega robot, that is combined by 5 smaller ones, the green one that is all the construction machines that form a big robot.
There were six in that set. They were called constructicons. I still own mine (along with a lot of other nastologic toys and comics from the eighties, including transformers comics 1-18).
That sound was my inner geek expoding and needing to go to a coffee shop.
"Pentecostal Christianity was started in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, and now claims about 450 million members worldwide (150 million in Africa). The Assemblies of God have about 35 million members, and they started in 1914, also in Topeka."
This totally ignores the evolutionary nature of the rise of the Pentecost, Holiness, and Revivalist movments. The foundational roots lie in early to mid-19th century evangelical protestant christianity. There was nothing magical about the azusa street revival, the cultural foundations had been layed for many years.
Compare that to Joseph Smith. He introduced a new history to the people. Not so evolutionary and very difficult to accept, for most. The fact that the LDS church has grown to the size it is today is quite remarkable. Don't compare the success of your faith to the forced evolution of evangical christianity (rise of higher criticism: Wellhausen, Noth, et al). It's not necissary. Both Islam (at least pre 9/11, I haven't seen updated numbers, being mostly a Christian historian) and LDS are seeing a good size jump in numbers and are both quite successful.
Having played extremely amazing console only games, I'm not sure I can relate. Pretty much everything by Nintendo pushes the limit of art and style. Even if the branding is 20 years old, the functions of the games themselves are not. Jade Empire (XBOX) and Eternal Darkness (gamecube) are both excellent reasons to buy either one of those consoles. While Windows might have a LOT of games, it certainly doesn't have a monolopy on the great and intelligent ones.
By the way, have your son check out "super monkey ball 2", it's addictive, you'll both like it.
Today, in the US, the insured are already paying for the health coverage of the uninsured. Today, with no socialized healthcare, it happens. How you ask? Increased medical cost so that hospitals can make a profit despite the fact that some people will never pay. That cost is transfered to the insured via higher insurance payments. It will cost the insured LESS to have a socialized healthcare, because the currently uninsured would be forced to pay via their taxes, without changing a single thing about how health is distributed, or changing a single thing about the cost of perscription drugs.
I'm going to take your surprise to point out something. Convservatives aren't evil. Myself, I'm a full blow euro-style socialist, I think gays should be able to marry, and pot should be sold right next to the vodka at your local "spirts" store.
Even saying that, they are many things conservatives are right about. In some areas, like this one, the general conservative idea that the public should be protected from the state is shown as not just being lip service. I think if many liberals (especially young ones) really look at themselves, they would realize that they are more "conservative" than they think.
As was shown with the xbox, the secret to entering a new hardware/software market is to create a machine that allows piracy, but discourages it. While there are valid reasons to allowing homebrew software on the PSP, and hacks like this shouldn't be illegal, research like this will lead to hacked games (on to very expensive memory sticks).
Genious on Sony's part. Get an installed base at any price, while paying lip service to piracy. Even at $250, the PSP will be a hit.