Just about everybody else in the user interface design field disagrees with your asessment of the first Macs. The first Mac was quite usable, and a quantum leap beyond anything else commercially available at the time.
Note that Apple paid Xerox parc for the right to use the results of the Alto project research.
Note also that I owned and used an original Mac (128kB RAM, one 400kB internal floppy drive, 64kB ROM) as my only machine for over a year (until I upgraded it to 512kB RAM and added an external floppy drive). While these additions made it *more* usable, it was quite usable without them - in fact I was paid to write software on it and for it that was used by researchers to process large data sets (single runs often took several days). So I am not just speaking from hearsay, but personal experience both as a user and programmer of the original Mac.
I would be very interested to see an example of a real-world application where unpredictable user inputs can demonstrably render static type-checking useless, or where static type-checking makes a real-world application significantly harder to write. Because I sure can't think of one.
Static type checking is still useful for those portions of the program that are, well, static. Any part of the program that deals only with data that is known at compile time, can benefit from static type checking. For example, if your menus are not dynamic (their content does not change) then that portion of your code can benefit from static type checking, etc.
But by far the more difficult bit is dealing with data that isn't known at compile time. Let's take the same example. What if I have a menu item that lists the names of recently opened files with their full path - say in a File menu. However, the menu drawing code I use assumes that all menu items are less than a certain number of characters. There is absolutely no way that I as a programmer can know at compile time whether the type of that file path will be stringLessThan64Characters, or whatever the limit is. I must do a run time check of the data, and respond accordingly. The benefits of compile time type checking are lost for this portion of the code, because it is interactive. The nature of the data that my algorithms will be dealing with cannot be known at compile time because it is determined by user input.
This issue is multiplied in the sequences of user mouse and keyboard actions in, for example, a graphics program. The user can cut/paste/drag/drop/copy-drag etc. At each juncture, my code must check the nature of the data to assure that it can be handled by my algorithms. Static type checking here becomes of little utility. I end up with much of my data being of type "Untyped" and so, it must be type checked repeatedly at run time.
Note that this need to do run time type checking is unavoidable not only in practice but in principle. There is simply no way to know what the type of the data generated by a complex series of user actions will be. Remember that type in this sense is strict, and includes such things as data size and dimensions, not just the underlying primitive type of which it is made. It is not enough to know that I'm getting a slew of bytes, I must know that they are well formed wrt my application's algorithms, and that they are of the right range of size.
Now add to this multiple user interactions across the network, and realize that by far your most important task with regard to type checking is not the ivory tower theoretical exercise of type inference, but the very real world task of checking each and every piece of data that the users throw at your code, and the results of combinations of such user inputs that you may not have originally predicted ("Oh, it never occurred to me that the user would select that menu item, click this radio button, type in such -and-such and then click this other unrelated button").
The more interactive a piece of software is, the more choices the user has, the greater the use of network connectivity, the more the need for run time type checking. Since I'm doing all of these run time type checks, not because I want to, but because I have to I might as well use a language that is designed on the basis of run time type checking. I simply define the necessary constrained types I need, and throw an execption/condition when one of my functions/methods is called with the wrong type, as determined at run time.
The future belongs to interactive software, and interactive software demands run time type checking. It follows that the future belongs to languages that are dynamically typed.
This is really a performance issue, not a type safety issue. If type safety is particularly important, then type checks can be done at run time. However, doing these type checks at run time has a run time performance cost. Doing these same checks at compile time means that compiled code will run that much faster since no type checks are being performed at run time.
Certain types of programs really benefit from compile time type checking - specifically, those where inputs are known at compile time, or are known to be of certain types, or are known to be safe (i.e., inputs are not coming at your program across the wire from a potentiall hostile source - think any web app that takes free form input from users).
It could be argued that in the modern GUI/networked era, many apps are going to be doing lots of run time checking anyway because they are exposed to data inputs from potentially hostile users on a WAN - i.e., the internet, and they are at the mercy of user GUI inputs (bizarre mouse clicks and drags, bogus text or numeric field entries, etc.). That being the case, being able to do type inference and compile time type checks doesn't buy one much in terms of saftey or performance for any such app, since you'll be doing lots of run time type checks on user input data anyway.
IMHO, the idea of compile time type inference and type checking is born of a model of computing that is becoming obsolete. It was how most computation was done just a few decades ago - the programmer controlled the input closely, and so could guarantee inputs of certain types in certain ranges, etc. We have now moved into an era where the most interesting inputs are essentially unknowable at compile time - these are user inputs, whether GUI, keyboard, or network in origin. Just as importantly, user choice destroys the notion of a fixed algorithm executing in a predicable fasion. We simply can't know what direction our programs will take once we allow the user sufficient choice in shaping the programs execution. This being the case, and increasingly so as we go forward, I think that compile time type checking is a backward looking paradigm for programming languages.
See Peter Wegner's home page for some related ideas on new ways of thinking about what it is that a program really does in the modern interactive GUI/network era.
But they *don't* market it as PPC emulation that runs linux-ppc, etc. They *do* market it specifically as a "way to run Mac OS X on inexpensive PC hardware." This is a specific inducement to violate Apple's Mac OS X EULA. If Apple's EULA is valid, then CherryOS is clearly inducing users to violate their licence agreements. That would make it a slam dunk for Apple Legal to shut them down.
That would be a usable argument had the makers of CherryOS not already based their entire marketing pitch on the ability to run MacOS. They've already made 90% of Apple Legal's arguement for them: "Your honor, the makers of CherryOS *know* that there is no other market for their product than to induce users to violate Apple's MacOS X EULA - they've consistently sold their product *solely* as a means to run Mac OS X on PC hardware. They are therefore knowingly inducing others to violate the Mac OS X licence agreement."
If the Mac OS X EULA is valid, and I suspect it is, then CherryOS is toast, in much the same way that Napster was toast - the only real use of the product is an inducement for others to violate the law.
And, even more importantly, the findings of fact in the DOJ v. MS case, which have been upheld by the SCOTUS, and are therfore law, ruled that MS has a monopoly in the PC OS market, where "PC" is specifically stated to mean personal computer of any sort, not just IBM compatible.
Since MS has this monopoly, and since Apple has a what, 3% market share, it's pretty much impossible for Apple to have a monopoly on a PC OS. Since Apple doesn't have a monopoly, they are not subject to any Anti-trust restrictions, unlike MS.
AltiVec is not just the registers, but also the AltiVec execution unit (beyond those that already exist to operate on scalar data) which operates on the data in those vector registers in parallel, so that, for example, one can get up to 16 operations in a single clock cycle. AltiVec is both the vector registers (128 bit) and the vector execution unit. Then there are the AltiVec instructions which a programmer uses or a compiler emits.
We're likely to see significant improvement of AltVec use when Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) ships next year, since XCode, the Apple IDE interface to their version of gcc, will do autovectorization of ordinary c/c++/objective-c code.
You haven't read many software licences lately. Many are defined as the right to use, and are hence services, not products. You don't own the software, you just purchase the right to run it under certain circumstances, on certain hardware. So "illegal copying" of software can, and often is, theft of services.
Not if is is sold as a service or right to use. If the license says you are buying the right to use the software, and not the software itself, then that software is not owned by you in the same way as you own your toaster.
Are you just too young to remember the idiotic refrain "America: Love it or Leave it!" repeated by jingoistic supporters of the ill conceived (and ill fated) US involvement in Vietnam? Because you've managed to reinvent it, albeit in a considerably less catchy phraseology.
There are not "lots of societies on this planet to choose from." One needs the wherewithal to relocate to some hypothetical other society, and that society's approval of one's immigration.
So, no the argument that there exists some sort of implied social contract is just an attempt to make the lack of any real choice look like consent. Most of us obey the law because we were born into the society in which we live, subject to mostly preexisting laws. We have neither the means not the legal right to relocate to some hypothetical other society.
Arguing that individuals have some responsibility because we live in a representative republic would ring more true if we didn't also live in a country where Presidential elections can be stolen by recourse to a corrupt Supreme Court - two of the justices, Thomas and Scalia, who voted for Bush had substantial interests in the outcome of the case, and so, under federal law, should have recused themselves.
Except that Bush created the current situation by breaking off talks with NK. Before Bush did that, NK had inspections and cameras 24-7-365 monitoring their nuclear facilites and no nuclear weapons. Now they have nuclear weapons.
Bush's idiocy in NK is that he let them go from a regional threat to a Pacific threat - they now have the ability to lauch nukes against the west coast. Makes you feel good to live in California, Oregon or Washington.
Dubya's screw up was in terminating talks with the North Koreans because they violated terms of the existing agreement.
Everybody else in the world understands that North Korea violating an agreement means "I want to re-negotiate the terms of this agreement." The Bush administration, under the tutelage of that complete moron Wolfowitz, decided that "toughness" would yield better results. Talks ceased. The only result is that N. Korea (in their minds) were forced to up the ante.
So we went from close inspection of their nuclear facilities, to none, from dialog to no dialog, from potential for nuclear weapons, to actual nuclear weapons paired with ICBMs that can reach the continental US. Way to go George! Now you see why Kerry was hammering Bush over this issue in the Debate last week.
Bush thinks that acting tough solves all problems. The reality is, it only works with certain countries, in certain situations. Bush has proved pretty much conclusively that it doesn't work with North Korea. As previous posters have commented, the reason is simple: North Korea has too much leverage over its neighbors in the region. And now, thanks to the moron Dubya, North Korea has leverage over the west coast of the US. In case it isn't completely obvious yet, we need a new president if only to save us from the very real possibility that Dubya's diplomatic retardation will bring on a regional nuclear catastrophe that might very well include the west coast of the US.
If a hacker compromises Amazon and gets your credit card number, by law, you are liable for only $50.00, no matter how high the fraudulent charges are. In all probability, Amazon would cover even that small amount. You would get a new credit card, and buy books online again.
If a hacker compromises a Diebold voting machine that you cast your vote on, YOU LOSE YOUR VOTE. Irretrievably. No recount. No court case. The election has simply been stolen.
Combine that with the fact that Amazon are way better than Diebold at securing their systems, and you'd see why your parent considered secure electronic voting such a pipe dream given current implementors, their political ties, and their "contributions" (i.e., bribes) to those in decision making positions.
Add to that the increase in cultural diversity that immigrants bring ( I believe something the Yanks are sorely missing, by the way )
By your use of the word "Yanks" I must assume that you are from the UK or some other Commonwealth or former Commonwealth nation. I think that you'll find that the non-Anglo population of the United States is far, far larger than that of the UK, or any other Commonwealth nation with the obvious exceptions of those former colonies whose populations have always been majority non-Anglo. Realize, for example, that most projections show that by 2050 the majority of the US population will be non-white.
Anyone who could fault the US for lack of cultural diversity that comes from immigrant populations is woefully lacking in any significant knowlege of US history (hint: everyone here except the Native Americans is a descendent of immigrants), and current ethnic diversity (have you ever been to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Kansas City, Detroit, San Francisco or Los Angeles? hint: all of these cities have huge non-white populations, most representing numerous ethnicities).
My travel in the UK makes it clear to me that the UK, for example, has far less ethnic and cultural diversity than most of these cities above, even in a major urban center like London.
Obviously someone who hasn't read the Bill of Rights.
Despite the fact that "the majority rules," minority rights are protected. Specifically, the federal government may pass no law that has the effect of establishing a particular religion. So, although elected officials may believe in, for example christianity, those officials may not pass laws that have the effect of using the power of the government to promulgate christianity.
This is why, for example, school prayer is still illegal. A law mandating, or even allowing it, would have the effect of establishing a particular religion, (i.e., that of the majority in that school, which is usually some christian denomination).
So, although congress-people, senators, and the president and VP are allowed to "take sides" on many things, they are expressly forbidden to take sides on the issue of "what is the correct religion" to the extent of passing a law. They may "take sides" on this issue in their private lives, but not as law makers.
If I want mp3's, I rip them from my own CD's and trade with friends (since we paid for the CD, we can make copies and give them out for free to anyone we want, regardless of what the RIAA says).
No, really, you can't - not legally. You are allowed to format shift (for example, you may rip mp3s from the CD so you can listen to this music on your mp3 player). You are not allowed to make unlimited copies and redistribute them. This is precisely what is prohibited by copyright law.
Yahoo plans to beef up its IM service with more-interactive music features that enable people to listen to one another's playlists, according to sources familiar with the initiative.
So how is this different than if I share my songs?
Because Yahoo has made a deal with music publishers who own the rights to these songs to allow them to do what they are doing. You, on the other hand, have made no such deal with music publishers. You are simply violating copyright law by making unauthorized copies of music, the reproduction rights of which you do not own, and giving these unauthorized copies away to friends.
No, actually we don't. We're not unrealistic. We recognize the need, as Eisenhower put it, to "create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions," because "we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense."
The fact that we must, now, for reasons of national security, set aside the Constitution's ban on Standing Armies, does not excuse those who would use these circumstances to feed without cease at the public trough while providing little or no added security to the American People.
Nor does it excuse those who misuse the trust granted to them by Congress, in order to prosecute a war for the purposes of private vendetta and corporate profit (Bush's vendetta against the man who threatened his father's life, Haliburtion's profits arranged for by its former head, now Vice President, Dick Cheney).
Finally, it does not excuse those who would frame this election as being principally about national security, when there are many other issues to consider, but which the incumbent does not want to be considered publicly, because consideration of these issues would reflect very poorly on his tenure in office. Consideration of these other, very important issues would show that under his leadership we lost jobs, when we had gained millions under the previous administration; that we have the greatest deficit in world history when we had a surplus under the previous administration.
Bush is an incompetent in every sphere, and he is trying to use the very military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about, to hide his incompetence by wrapping himself in the flag and trying to cast this election as a matter of national security, when it is really a referendum on how poorly he has run the economy, the country, and foreign policy.
The right to bear arms must be understood in the context of the Constitution's prohibition of any Standing Army (a prohibition long ignored by the Supreme Court for reasons of "National Security," a phrase the Supreme Court uses when they want to ignore the Constitution).
With no standing army, the states (and Federal government) had to rely on citizen armies in time or war. The founders provided for the right to bear arms largely because privately owned firearms were the armories of the states. In other words, the state governments did not have the money to purchase thousands of firearms needed for a citizen army, and it would have been pointless with no standing army to use them.
Rather, it was considered prudent to allow citizens to own firearms (indeed, many jurisdictions *required* citizens to own a working firearm, and to assemble with the militia and drill with that weapon on a regular basis).
In the modern era with a standing army numbering in the hundreds of thousands to millions (depending on circumstances), with said standing army armed with weapons that no citizen militia could possibly hope to match, the right to bear arms is quite simply, obsolete.
Our right to bear arms will never protect us from a repressive military government, since we've already chosen to ignore the Constitution's ban against any Standing Army. The only protection we have against the full might of the US Armed Forces is the fact that these Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends and neighbors, and would not wish to harm us. We certainly are not protected from the full might of the US Armed Forces by the fact that each of us can go out and buy as many long guns and as much rifle ammo as we want. No citizenry armed with small arms alone could ever hope to stand up to the full might of the US military.
Anyone who believes that the right to keep and bear arms could possibly protect us from our own military is living in a Rambo fantasy world. In reality, citizens armed only with rifles would be more than decimated by a professional, fully trained Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, equiped with a full complement of hi tech weaponry and the awesome logistical support the the US Armed Forces go into battle with today.
The right to keep and bear arms is obsolete. It serves today only to endanger our citizenry, as the hugely disproportionate rate of gun deaths in the US when compared with the rest of the world attests.
Because we know that immediately after 9/11, Rumsfeld was looking for any way possible to blame Iraq and invade Iraq, even when he was told directly by Antiterrorism expert Richard Clarke, that Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Bottom line: The Bush administration was looking for any excuse to invade Iraq since before they took office. This is why they ignored Al Qaeda, even though they were told, (again, since before they took office), that the most significant threat to US interests in the world was Al Qaeda not Iraq. Bush chose to focus on the irrelevant Iraq, simply because he grew up in the Texas oil business and Iraq has lots of oil. Didn't hurt that Cheny used to head Haliburton, an oil service company, which stood to profit handsomely from a US invasion. Finally, W wanted to show the world that he could take down the man who had threatened his daddy. Pathetic, but more importantly, really stupid. Stupid as in 3000 dead in a terrorist attack because Bush was focused on the WRONG THREAT even though the anti terrorism expert who served under three previous administrations, including his father's, warned him to focus on Al Qaeda NOT IRAQ.
Bush administration spin, which you have apparently swallowed whole:
In less than four years, Bush has already toppled two dictatorships, empowering the liberated people to form peaceful democracies.
Reality:
Afghanistan: Situation rapidly reverting to pre-war political condition, with most of the country in the control of brutal warlords.
Iraq: Full scale popular uprising, fomented by Al Qaeda, who had zero presence in Iraq until the US invaded, on the pretext of WMDs which don't exist. One thousand US dead with no end in sight. No workable exit strategy because we have spurned the help of allies who could have been useful in establishing a working civilian government in Iraq (France and Germany anyone?) The US is carrying the overwhelming majority of the financial burden (200 billion and counting) with no help in sight. The massive international good will toward the US after the 9/11 attacks has been completely squandered by Bush's treatment of genuine allies as annoying obstacles to be spurned, instead of friends to be trusted and consulted, (most of the world now hates us when they sympathized with us only 3 years ago).
If your principal news sources weren't the White House and press organs that parrot Bush Administration spin you might know some of this.
Slashdot Mirror
Just about everybody else in the user interface design field disagrees with your asessment of the first Macs. The first Mac was quite usable, and a quantum leap beyond anything else commercially available at the time.
Note that Apple paid Xerox parc for the right to use the results of the Alto project research.
Note also that I owned and used an original Mac (128kB RAM, one 400kB internal floppy drive, 64kB ROM) as my only machine for over a year (until I upgraded it to 512kB RAM and added an external floppy drive). While these additions made it *more* usable, it was quite usable without them - in fact I was paid to write software on it and for it that was used by researchers to process large data sets (single runs often took several days). So I am not just speaking from hearsay, but personal experience both as a user and programmer of the original Mac.
Make no mistake about it:
A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.
Do not fall into this trap.
Vote for Nader only if you want four more years of Bush.
I would be very interested to see an example of a real-world application where unpredictable user inputs can demonstrably render static type-checking useless, or where static type-checking makes a real-world application significantly harder to write. Because I sure can't think of one.
Static type checking is still useful for those portions of the program that are, well, static. Any part of the program that deals only with data that is known at compile time, can benefit from static type checking. For example, if your menus are not dynamic (their content does not change) then that portion of your code can benefit from static type checking, etc.
But by far the more difficult bit is dealing with data that isn't known at compile time. Let's take the same example. What if I have a menu item that lists the names of recently opened files with their full path - say in a File menu. However, the menu drawing code I use assumes that all menu items are less than a certain number of characters. There is absolutely no way that I as a programmer can know at compile time whether the type of that file path will be stringLessThan64Characters, or whatever the limit is. I must do a run time check of the data, and respond accordingly. The benefits of compile time type checking are lost for this portion of the code, because it is interactive. The nature of the data that my algorithms will be dealing with cannot be known at compile time because it is determined by user input.
This issue is multiplied in the sequences of user mouse and keyboard actions in, for example, a graphics program. The user can cut/paste/drag/drop/copy-drag etc. At each juncture, my code must check the nature of the data to assure that it can be handled by my algorithms. Static type checking here becomes of little utility. I end up with much of my data being of type "Untyped" and so, it must be type checked repeatedly at run time.
Note that this need to do run time type checking is unavoidable not only in practice but in principle. There is simply no way to know what the type of the data generated by a complex series of user actions will be. Remember that type in this sense is strict, and includes such things as data size and dimensions, not just the underlying primitive type of which it is made. It is not enough to know that I'm getting a slew of bytes, I must know that they are well formed wrt my application's algorithms, and that they are of the right range of size.
Now add to this multiple user interactions across the network, and realize that by far your most important task with regard to type checking is not the ivory tower theoretical exercise of type inference, but the very real world task of checking each and every piece of data that the users throw at your code, and the results of combinations of such user inputs that you may not have originally predicted ("Oh, it never occurred to me that the user would select that menu item, click this radio button, type in such -and-such and then click this other unrelated button").
The more interactive a piece of software is, the more choices the user has, the greater the use of network connectivity, the more the need for run time type checking. Since I'm doing all of these run time type checks, not because I want to, but because I have to I might as well use a language that is designed on the basis of run time type checking. I simply define the necessary constrained types I need, and throw an execption/condition when one of my functions/methods is called with the wrong type, as determined at run time.
The future belongs to interactive software, and interactive software demands run time type checking. It follows that the future belongs to languages that are dynamically typed.
This is really a performance issue, not a type safety issue. If type safety is particularly important, then type checks can be done at run time. However, doing these type checks at run time has a run time performance cost. Doing these same checks at compile time means that compiled code will run that much faster since no type checks are being performed at run time.
Certain types of programs really benefit from compile time type checking - specifically, those where inputs are known at compile time, or are known to be of certain types, or are known to be safe (i.e., inputs are not coming at your program across the wire from a potentiall hostile source - think any web app that takes free form input from users).
It could be argued that in the modern GUI/networked era, many apps are going to be doing lots of run time checking anyway because they are exposed to data inputs from potentially hostile users on a WAN - i.e., the internet, and they are at the mercy of user GUI inputs (bizarre mouse clicks and drags, bogus text or numeric field entries, etc.). That being the case, being able to do type inference and compile time type checks doesn't buy one much in terms of saftey or performance for any such app, since you'll be doing lots of run time type checks on user input data anyway.
IMHO, the idea of compile time type inference and type checking is born of a model of computing that is becoming obsolete. It was how most computation was done just a few decades ago - the programmer controlled the input closely, and so could guarantee inputs of certain types in certain ranges, etc. We have now moved into an era where the most interesting inputs are essentially unknowable at compile time - these are user inputs, whether GUI, keyboard, or network in origin. Just as importantly, user choice destroys the notion of a fixed algorithm executing in a predicable fasion. We simply can't know what direction our programs will take once we allow the user sufficient choice in shaping the programs execution. This being the case, and increasingly so as we go forward, I think that compile time type checking is a backward looking paradigm for programming languages.
See Peter Wegner's home page for some related ideas on new ways of thinking about what it is that a program really does in the modern interactive GUI/network era.
But they *don't* market it as PPC emulation that runs linux-ppc, etc. They *do* market it specifically as a "way to run Mac OS X on inexpensive PC hardware." This is a specific inducement to violate Apple's Mac OS X EULA. If Apple's EULA is valid, then CherryOS is clearly inducing users to violate their licence agreements. That would make it a slam dunk for Apple Legal to shut them down.
Mac OS X doesn't support ADB peripheral devices.
That would be a usable argument had the makers of CherryOS not already based their entire marketing pitch on the ability to run MacOS. They've already made 90% of Apple Legal's arguement for them: "Your honor, the makers of CherryOS *know* that there is no other market for their product than to induce users to violate Apple's MacOS X EULA - they've consistently sold their product *solely* as a means to run Mac OS X on PC hardware. They are therefore knowingly inducing others to violate the Mac OS X licence agreement."
If the Mac OS X EULA is valid, and I suspect it is, then CherryOS is toast, in much the same way that Napster was toast - the only real use of the product is an inducement for others to violate the law.
And, even more importantly, the findings of fact in the DOJ v. MS case, which have been upheld by the SCOTUS, and are therfore law, ruled that MS has a monopoly in the PC OS market, where "PC" is specifically stated to mean personal computer of any sort, not just IBM compatible.
Since MS has this monopoly, and since Apple has a what, 3% market share, it's pretty much impossible for Apple to have a monopoly on a PC OS. Since Apple doesn't have a monopoly, they are not subject to any Anti-trust restrictions, unlike MS.
Your comment would be witty, except for the fact that Steve Jobs and Apple Computer paid Xerox for the right to use the GUI of the Xerox Alto.
Inducement to violate a license agreement?
Sorry, that should be AltiVec execution units plural, not execution unit.
AltiVec is not just the registers, but also the AltiVec execution unit (beyond those that already exist to operate on scalar data) which operates on the data in those vector registers in parallel, so that, for example, one can get up to 16 operations in a single clock cycle. AltiVec is both the vector registers (128 bit) and the vector execution unit. Then there are the AltiVec instructions which a programmer uses or a compiler emits.
We're likely to see significant improvement of AltVec use when Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) ships next year, since XCode, the Apple IDE interface to their version of gcc, will do autovectorization of ordinary c/c++/objective-c code.
You haven't read many software licences lately. Many are defined as the right to use, and are hence services, not products. You don't own the software, you just purchase the right to run it under certain circumstances, on certain hardware. So "illegal copying" of software can, and often is, theft of services.
Not if is is sold as a service or right to use. If the license says you are buying the right to use the software, and not the software itself, then that software is not owned by you in the same way as you own your toaster.
Are you just too young to remember the idiotic refrain "America: Love it or Leave it!" repeated by jingoistic supporters of the ill conceived (and ill fated) US involvement in Vietnam? Because you've managed to reinvent it, albeit in a considerably less catchy phraseology.
There are not "lots of societies on this planet to choose from." One needs the wherewithal to relocate to some hypothetical other society, and that society's approval of one's immigration.
So, no the argument that there exists some sort of implied social contract is just an attempt to make the lack of any real choice look like consent. Most of us obey the law because we were born into the society in which we live, subject to mostly preexisting laws. We have neither the means not the legal right to relocate to some hypothetical other society.
Arguing that individuals have some responsibility because we live in a representative republic would ring more true if we didn't also live in a country where Presidential elections can be stolen by recourse to a corrupt Supreme Court - two of the justices, Thomas and Scalia, who voted for Bush had substantial interests in the outcome of the case, and so, under federal law, should have recused themselves.
Except that Bush created the current situation by breaking off talks with NK. Before Bush did that, NK had inspections and cameras 24-7-365 monitoring their nuclear facilites and no nuclear weapons. Now they have nuclear weapons.
Bush's idiocy in NK is that he let them go from a regional threat to a Pacific threat - they now have the ability to lauch nukes against the west coast. Makes you feel good to live in California, Oregon or Washington.
Dubya's screw up was in terminating talks with the North Koreans because they violated terms of the existing agreement.
Everybody else in the world understands that North Korea violating an agreement means "I want to re-negotiate the terms of this agreement." The Bush administration, under the tutelage of that complete moron Wolfowitz, decided that "toughness" would yield better results. Talks ceased. The only result is that N. Korea (in their minds) were forced to up the ante.
So we went from close inspection of their nuclear facilities, to none, from dialog to no dialog, from potential for nuclear weapons, to actual nuclear weapons paired with ICBMs that can reach the continental US. Way to go George! Now you see why Kerry was hammering Bush over this issue in the Debate last week.
Bush thinks that acting tough solves all problems. The reality is, it only works with certain countries, in certain situations. Bush has proved pretty much conclusively that it doesn't work with North Korea. As previous posters have commented, the reason is simple: North Korea has too much leverage over its neighbors in the region. And now, thanks to the moron Dubya, North Korea has leverage over the west coast of the US. In case it isn't completely obvious yet, we need a new president if only to save us from the very real possibility that Dubya's diplomatic retardation will bring on a regional nuclear catastrophe that might very well include the west coast of the US.
If a hacker compromises Amazon and gets your credit card number, by law, you are liable for only $50.00, no matter how high the fraudulent charges are. In all probability, Amazon would cover even that small amount. You would get a new credit card, and buy books online again.
If a hacker compromises a Diebold voting machine that you cast your vote on, YOU LOSE YOUR VOTE. Irretrievably. No recount. No court case. The election has simply been stolen.
Combine that with the fact that Amazon are way better than Diebold at securing their systems, and you'd see why your parent considered secure electronic voting such a pipe dream given current implementors, their political ties, and their "contributions" (i.e., bribes) to those in decision making positions.
Add to that the increase in cultural diversity that immigrants bring ( I believe something the Yanks are sorely missing, by the way )
By your use of the word "Yanks" I must assume that you are from the UK or some other Commonwealth or former Commonwealth nation. I think that you'll find that the non-Anglo population of the United States is far, far larger than that of the UK, or any other Commonwealth nation with the obvious exceptions of those former colonies whose populations have always been majority non-Anglo. Realize, for example, that most projections show that by 2050 the majority of the US population will be non-white.
Anyone who could fault the US for lack of cultural diversity that comes from immigrant populations is woefully lacking in any significant knowlege of US history (hint: everyone here except the Native Americans is a descendent of immigrants), and current ethnic diversity (have you ever been to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Kansas City, Detroit, San Francisco or Los Angeles? hint: all of these cities have huge non-white populations, most representing numerous ethnicities).
My travel in the UK makes it clear to me that the UK, for example, has far less ethnic and cultural diversity than most of these cities above, even in a major urban center like London.
Obviously someone who hasn't read the Bill of Rights.
Despite the fact that "the majority rules," minority rights are protected. Specifically, the federal government may pass no law that has the effect of establishing a particular religion. So, although elected officials may believe in, for example christianity, those officials may not pass laws that have the effect of using the power of the government to promulgate christianity.
This is why, for example, school prayer is still illegal. A law mandating, or even allowing it, would have the effect of establishing a particular religion, (i.e., that of the majority in that school, which is usually some christian denomination).
So, although congress-people, senators, and the president and VP are allowed to "take sides" on many things, they are expressly forbidden to take sides on the issue of "what is the correct religion" to the extent of passing a law. They may "take sides" on this issue in their private lives, but not as law makers.
If I want mp3's, I rip them from my own CD's and trade with friends (since we paid for the CD, we can make copies and give them out for free to anyone we want, regardless of what the RIAA says).
No, really, you can't - not legally. You are allowed to format shift (for example, you may rip mp3s from the CD so you can listen to this music on your mp3 player). You are not allowed to make unlimited copies and redistribute them. This is precisely what is prohibited by copyright law.
Yahoo plans to beef up its IM service with more-interactive music features that enable people to listen to one another's playlists, according to sources familiar with the initiative.
So how is this different than if I share my songs?
Because Yahoo has made a deal with music publishers who own the rights to these songs to allow them to do what they are doing. You, on the other hand, have made no such deal with music publishers. You are simply violating copyright law by making unauthorized copies of music, the reproduction rights of which you do not own, and giving these unauthorized copies away to friends.
No, actually we don't. We're not unrealistic. We recognize the need, as Eisenhower put it, to "create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions," because "we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense."
The fact that we must, now, for reasons of national security, set aside the Constitution's ban on Standing Armies, does not excuse those who would use these circumstances to feed without cease at the public trough while providing little or no added security to the American People.
Nor does it excuse those who misuse the trust granted to them by Congress, in order to prosecute a war for the purposes of private vendetta and corporate profit (Bush's vendetta against the man who threatened his father's life, Haliburtion's profits arranged for by its former head, now Vice President, Dick Cheney).
Finally, it does not excuse those who would frame this election as being principally about national security, when there are many other issues to consider, but which the incumbent does not want to be considered publicly, because consideration of these issues would reflect very poorly on his tenure in office. Consideration of these other, very important issues would show that under his leadership we lost jobs, when we had gained millions under the previous administration; that we have the greatest deficit in world history when we had a surplus under the previous administration.
Bush is an incompetent in every sphere, and he is trying to use the very military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about, to hide his incompetence by wrapping himself in the flag and trying to cast this election as a matter of national security, when it is really a referendum on how poorly he has run the economy, the country, and foreign policy.
The right to bear arms must be understood in the context of the Constitution's prohibition of any Standing Army (a prohibition long ignored by the Supreme Court for reasons of "National Security," a phrase the Supreme Court uses when they want to ignore the Constitution).
With no standing army, the states (and Federal government) had to rely on citizen armies in time or war. The founders provided for the right to bear arms largely because privately owned firearms were the armories of the states. In other words, the state governments did not have the money to purchase thousands of firearms needed for a citizen army, and it would have been pointless with no standing army to use them.
Rather, it was considered prudent to allow citizens to own firearms (indeed, many jurisdictions *required* citizens to own a working firearm, and to assemble with the militia and drill with that weapon on a regular basis).
In the modern era with a standing army numbering in the hundreds of thousands to millions (depending on circumstances), with said standing army armed with weapons that no citizen militia could possibly hope to match, the right to bear arms is quite simply, obsolete.
Our right to bear arms will never protect us from a repressive military government, since we've already chosen to ignore the Constitution's ban against any Standing Army. The only protection we have against the full might of the US Armed Forces is the fact that these Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends and neighbors, and would not wish to harm us. We certainly are not protected from the full might of the US Armed Forces by the fact that each of us can go out and buy as many long guns and as much rifle ammo as we want. No citizenry armed with small arms alone could ever hope to stand up to the full might of the US military.
Anyone who believes that the right to keep and bear arms could possibly protect us from our own military is living in a Rambo fantasy world. In reality, citizens armed only with rifles would be more than decimated by a professional, fully trained Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, equiped with a full complement of hi tech weaponry and the awesome logistical support the the US Armed Forces go into battle with today.
The right to keep and bear arms is obsolete. It serves today only to endanger our citizenry, as the hugely disproportionate rate of gun deaths in the US when compared with the rest of the world attests.
Because we know that immediately after 9/11, Rumsfeld was looking for any way possible to blame Iraq and invade Iraq, even when he was told directly by Antiterrorism expert Richard Clarke, that Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Bottom line: The Bush administration was looking for any excuse to invade Iraq since before they took office. This is why they ignored Al Qaeda, even though they were told, (again, since before they took office), that the most significant threat to US interests in the world was Al Qaeda not Iraq. Bush chose to focus on the irrelevant Iraq, simply because he grew up in the Texas oil business and Iraq has lots of oil. Didn't hurt that Cheny used to head Haliburton, an oil service company, which stood to profit handsomely from a US invasion. Finally, W wanted to show the world that he could take down the man who had threatened his daddy. Pathetic, but more importantly, really stupid. Stupid as in 3000 dead in a terrorist attack because Bush was focused on the WRONG THREAT even though the anti terrorism expert who served under three previous administrations, including his father's, warned him to focus on Al Qaeda NOT IRAQ.
Bush administration spin, which you have apparently swallowed whole:
In less than four years, Bush has already toppled two dictatorships, empowering the liberated people to form peaceful democracies.
Reality:
Afghanistan: Situation rapidly reverting to pre-war political condition, with most of the country in the control of brutal warlords.
Iraq: Full scale popular uprising, fomented by Al Qaeda, who had zero presence in Iraq until the US invaded, on the pretext of WMDs which don't exist. One thousand US dead with no end in sight. No workable exit strategy because we have spurned the help of allies who could have been useful in establishing a working civilian government in Iraq (France and Germany anyone?) The US is carrying the overwhelming majority of the financial burden (200 billion and counting) with no help in sight. The massive international good will toward the US after the 9/11 attacks has been completely squandered by Bush's treatment of genuine allies as annoying obstacles to be spurned, instead of friends to be trusted and consulted, (most of the world now hates us when they sympathized with us only 3 years ago).
If your principal news sources weren't the White House and press organs that parrot Bush Administration spin you might know some of this.