The two systems I'm most familiar with as being bad examples are England and Canada... With those that are able to going to private doctors either inside the country (England) or across the border (Canada).
Of course, the humorous thing about Canada is that while those who can come to the US for health care, the inverse is true for prescription medicine -- my mother orders all of her long term meds from Canada because it's 1/4 the cost.
I've heard pretty good things about some of the other socialized health care systems -- Switzerland's in particular. But the Swiss also pay far more in taxes than most countries. They have the social programs to show for it though.
The final difference between the US and European countries are that the US generally has the best medicine available in the world, period. And we also have the most stringent prescription drug authorization policies in the world. Neither of which comes cheap, and it's a large part of why socialized medicine won't work particularly well here.
As for the HMOs -- I've had half a dozen different plans in the past few years, both HMOs, PPOs, POS, and pretty much anything else in the TLA soup. My wife is on an HMO right now. The key with all of them is to educate yourself and push to get proper treatment. Because when push comes to shove the patient has more rights than the provider does, and the state oversight boards get very ugly indeed when a provider appears to be denying necessary care to an individual.
that many Americans currently pay at or near 50% of their salaries to the government: federal taxes, state taxes, local municipality taxes, special assessments and property taxes, sales taxes, smog fees, auto registration and license fees
The 50% is questionable.
Most of the additional taxes you mentioned are - shock - tax deductible. I own a home, so I pay property taxes. I also own a car, so I pay ad valorem/licensing fees. And come tax time, I itemize and deduct both of them from my federal and state taxes.
No, you can't deduct sales tax, or several others, so that does add to your overall tax burdon. But it isn't 50% unless you're in one of the highest brackets already, or live in certain areas where you have to pay local income taxes as well (I'd seriously reconsider working in such an area, but telling people to just move isn't a realistic answer). Pre-tax deductions like 401k's and medical savings plans are a wonderful way to decrease your tax burdon and increase your realized income.
Other than that, yeah... a federal healthcare system would probably be a disaster. Most (not all, but most) countries that have tried have created fairly dismal failures -- the plan covers the bare minimums, costs a boatload, and those who can afford better healthcare do so -- even if they have to go to another country and pay full price. As with many things, the free market does a better median job than the government does.
Social Security has nothing to do with medical care.
Medicare/Medicaid do, but they're a separate program (although funded in part by that 15% - it's actually something like 11% FICA and 4% Medicare/Medicaid). Medicare is not a health plan you'd want to be on. Those who are on it generally wish they could get/afford better. Fact of the matter is, everyone else pays for Medicare/Medicaid through health insurance or hospital/doctor's bills as well as the percentage the gov't takes -- because what MC pays back to the hospitals for procedures never actually covers the cost of those procedures. So other bills are inflated to make up the slack.
MC has no prescription benefits either -- need a medication? Well, unless you have some supplemental insurance or order the drugs from outside the US (Canada is very popular), you pay full price. A prescription that may cost you $5 on a health plan could cost over $100 w/o insurance.
MC makes HMOs look liberal in their policies as well, not to mention the appeal mechanisms.
Oh, and please re-read what I said initially -- it's 15% total, not 30%. If you are employed by a company then 7.5% of your wages are taken up by FICA/Medicare. The employer matches that 7.5%, totally 15%. If you are self-employed then it's 15% flat (although the 2nd 7.5% is tax deductible).
No, I was referring specifically to the percentage that goes to Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. It's roughly 7.5% that you see, matched by another 7.5% from your employer (or, if self-employed, 15% total). Either way it's 15% that you can pretty well bet on never seeing again.
Federal, state, and local taxes are above and beyond that. But generally you'll at least see something out of that. It's pretty well guaranteed you'll never see money from the social security ponzi fund if you're under 40.
Technically, no, because you don't have to have a social security number.
If you're a US Citizen you do, ever since 1987 I believe.
The SSN is a national ID system. Period. Anyone believing differently is fooling themselves. You have to present it to work (because of that 15% that goes *poof* out of your paycheck), you file it with your taxes, you have to give it for most bank accounts, for mortgage loans, heck, for most financial data (auto loans, credit cards, etc). Most medical plans use your SSN as your ID (or the SSN of the primary cardholder, followed by -# for others).
Don't think living in an apartment means your SSN isn't on file. Most likely the apartment complex wanted to run a credit check on you to lower their risk of a bad rentor. That involved getting your SSN because your SSN is the most reliable way of uniquely identifying you in the credit bureau systems -- I know, I wrote algorithms to try and do matches without the SSN. They weren't nearly as accurate (I think the best we got to was 3 false positives out of 11 million).
Anyone who's had their SSN stolen and used for identity theft can tell you just how much of a nightmare that creates. And this is largely because the SSN has evolved into a national ID without it ever having been designed as one. You can't just reel off a 9 digit number and use it as a SSN (there are check digits), but if I know your SSN then I can pass it off as my own without any additional checks.
Blockbuster pays on the order of 10 times as much for a copy of a video that they can rent as compared to the copy that you can pick up at Target
Depends.
For movies that didn't make it "big" you can often rent the movie before you can buy it widely -- the studios make VHS copies available at "rental pricing" that is around $80-90 per tape. Takes awhile to recoup the cost, but since you can't get it otherwise, they'll probably make the money back on it (note -- you can actually buy these as a consumer, but you have to find a distributor who will sell to the public and you have to be willing to pay the $80-90 for a single movie).
For big releases, and all DVDs, the movie industry has discovered that they're better off pricing the tapes at prices that consumers would be willing to buy a copy instead of just renting it. Blockbuster and other rental companies simply buy the same movie you can at Target, Best Buy, etc., stick it in their own box, and rent it. They (probably) pay around $5-15 per tape/DVD, which is recouped in 1-3 rentals.
DVD never got into the chasm between rental and "priced-to-own" dates, and isn't likely to. There have been a few industry movements to change this, but they've failed pretty spectacularly so far.
Except for the few million people that already do through subscriptions or rack purchases of "Official US Playstation Magazine", "Xbox Nation", "Electronic Gaming Monthly", "GameNow", or "Computer Gaming World".
At least nobody will be willing to accept that they are impartial.
Anyone that accepts that any game rag is impartial is fooling themself.
Very much agreed on the Best Dad EVER! bit -- although I have to wonder what his wife thought of the whole thing:)
Oh, and there is a tree associated with it. The rear left corner (if looking at it from the front) appears to be resting against a pine tree. It's not 100% clear though, and I hope he knows that pine trees only live about 30-40 years before coming down one way or another (well, that particular kind of pine does -- grew up with them and have a ton in my yard).
My, what a sweeping generalization you make. For a so-called moderate, this sounds like the generic Republican attitude I hear echoed time and time again
It was a derogatory comment to expose just how self-serving the parent poster's comments were.
Perhaps capitalism itself propagates a lower class? (i like capitalism, btw)
Of course it does. Every economic system except for egalitarianism does, and that particular economic system breaks down once you get beyond the small tribe level.
The nice thing about capitalism, as compared to most other economic systems, is that in a proper social and political environment it allows you to change economic levels if you work at it (either up or down). The biggest thing it does, however, is drag the status quo up -- sure, there's a huge gap between the poor and the rich, and yes, that gap may indeed be growing wider year by year. But look at the poor of the US as compared to the poor of a 3rd world country. Even the bottom 5% have creature comforts that only the rich have in the 3rd world country. Even the poorest in the US don't have it as bad off as those do in the 3rd world country, and the percentages are so wildly different as to be absurd.
Is it perfect? Of course not. Are there big issues? Hell yes. I particularly don't like the way that things are going right now. But it's still better than anything else we've tried so far in the history of humanity, and I'd rather see it adjusted slowly than chucked.
To wrap up, to villify the poor is stupid and groundless
Agreed. It was a far right reaction to the far left crap in the prior post.
That sitution, while distant from today, does have some minor parralels in 21st century life and is still very real in the 3rd world...
Well, I don't believe either the OP or myself were talking about the 3rd world. Other countries are an entirely different ballgame -- and the problems are so endemic I don't know an easy solution. It's not just feeding them money, or refusing to feed them money, or anything simple. There are economic, political, and social issues all feeding off one another and causing vicious cycles.
Are there issues with the current US politoeconomic system? Sure. There always are. But it's still the best system found to date, and incremental adjustments will continue to improve it.
Assuming, of course, the politicians and fat cats don't ruin things first...
Tom doesn't have a product yet. Neither do Subversion or OpenCM. And BitKeeper has been out for, what, 5+ years?
Who's efficient again? Next time, make sure there's an actual release-quality project available before even attempting to make this argument. Subversion is the closest of the bunch, and even then it'll probably be 1-2 years before they are as polished as CVS or BitKeeper.
Sometimes one or a few really good developers working for next to nothing are better than a companyful of developer seats.
Sometimes? Sure. But those developers still have to eat. Assuming that Tom manages to keep up his current level of funding, he'll make all of $20k this year. Wow. Isn't that awfully close to the poverty line for a family of four? Tell us again why he should be doing this for free?
I like the OS movement, I use Unix daily, I use open source products, libraries, and tools daily and deeply appreciate the work and time that goes into them. But whenever someone such as yourself spouts off utter economic bullshit about OS being so much better than commercial (whether totally closed or partially closed), it just proves yet again how little of a fucking clue a lot of people on/. have about the real world.
Well, let's not forget the left wing version of all of this:
Poor - 'Can we have immunity from our own stupid decisions and lack of self motivation so that we can continue to live off the fruits of other people'?
I happen to agree, by and large, with the first two allegations you make. The rest is no more than left wing baiting in my opinion. And before you whine that I'm a right wing asshole, you're wrong. I'm about as moderate as it gets. Rhetoric too far to either side disgusts me with the lack of intelligence it exhibits.
but on windows use something that is designed for windows and not ported as an afterthought
Why? This is text for godssake. This isn't a word processor.
I admit, I'm a vi head. I've spent the time and effort involved in learning vi's nuances and find it to be extremely powerful. Whenever I have to use a Windows editor for anything more than the basics it's extremely annoying.
Before I started using Unix and vi my favored editor was qedit in DOS. Nice editor for the time, albeit seriously memory limited. And I still have the install disks around somewhere... I think.
The real question is, why should I use one editor on one OS, one editor on another, and a third editor on yet another? All this leads to is below optimal efficiency and experience on all three platforms. Hell of a lot better to decide on one editor that's available nearly universally and stick with it. Which is why I use vim. And install vim on any computer I own. Sure, if I wind up on someone else's Windows box I'll be stuck with Notepad, but I doubt I'll be doing extensive editing there, so it's doable. And on any Unix box I login to I'll have vi available, which is just a subset of vim.
It may not have been a troll, but it was even less thought out than a lot of trolls I've seen here.
No. There is no certification for Dolby Digital. All you have to do is match the spec, which is pretty broad.
The only actual certification process out there is THX, and it's not as great as one might think. THX has bastardized itself into so many sub-varients that you can get crappy little computer speakers that are "THX certified" and still sound like junk. The THX certification process for speakers as a whole has been suspect for a long time now. THX certification for pre-amps, amps, and receivers is another matter, and some of the additional processing it requires (such as reduction of high frequencies) is very valuable (although often available even w/o the THX logo now -- getting that logo is expensive).
But in this case, they're talking about a $500,000 fine.
The law reads "up to 5 years in prison and/or $500,000 fine" -- per violation.
And, again, you miss the point. The point is not to be convicted -- it's to go to court and have the DMCA overturned as a violation of constitutional rights. But you can't do that unless you violate the law in the first place, preferably as an act of civil disobediance.
The fine doesn't just happen you know -- Mr. Perens would still have to go to court and be found guilty by a jury of his peers.
Oh, and if you're fined and can't/won't pay the money? Contempt of court -- welcome to jail. (This is not debtor's prison -- a judge would not keep someone in jail indefinitely if they were unable to pay the fine. Instead some portion of your paycheck would get seized by the government to pay off the fine over time. But you'd still land in jail for a few days for contempt if you refused to pay and were able, or possibly if you made no attempt to come to terms with the government)
If he gets arrested and then jailed nothing would have been accomplished
Uh... I think you miss the point.
He intends to be arrested. And jailed. And to fight the law in court, which is the only place it's ever going to be overturned.
If he doesn't get charged with a violation of the DMCA then nothing will have been accomplished -- failure to enforce a law does not invalidate the law (there are caveats, but a singlular failure does not do so).
I don't think he's looking for a loophole. I suspect he's planning to violate it in the most flagerant manner possible to ensure that he's charged with violation.
The tricky bit is to violate the DMCA and only the DMCA. You really don't want to violate the DMCA and half a dozen other laws -- even if you get the DMCA ruled unconstitutional you'll probably be celebrating in jail.
There was thought given into using Lisp intitally, but I guess the powers that be decided it should have to create a new and totally confusing language
Well, better a new and totally confusing one than an old and totally confusing one.
Wow. Thank you for posting this. I just snagged a half dozen booklets that will make life much easier (particularly zap embeds, zap event handlers, back to first, and view cookies).
Actually, Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 have both cleared the solar system... well, depending on what you define as the solar system.
Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Neptune and passed beyond the (at the time) furthest orbiting planet on June 13, 1983 (see this page). It hasn't passed the heliopause yet (distance where the solar wind ceases), at least not that anyone can determine.
Pioneer 10 is not the probe furthest from the sun, however. Apparantly that honor goes to Voyager 1, which is moving faster and exceeded Pioneer 10's heliocentric distance on Feb 17, 1998, but it's still well over 7 billion miles away. (see http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/p ioneer/PNhome.html).
One interesting thing I found while looking for this is that only Pioneer 10 is moving in the opposite direction from our solar system (relative to the galactic core). Voyager 1 & 2, as well as Pioneer 11 are moving "in front of" us, while Pioneer 10 is moving the opposite direction. This could result in some really useful information about the edges of the solar system -- except that apparantly Pioneer 10's power system is going to run out of juice in a few years (solar powered I guess - the W/m^2 will probably be too low to power the probe at that point).
And no, we're not getting pictures of Neptune or Pluto. You determine these things at time of launch -- we've been doing astronomical calculations for a few hundred years and know where the planets are going to be far ahead of time. Pioneer 10 wasn't scheduled to make a flyby of anything but Jupiter because the orbits were wrong.
And yes, it is still sending back data. As is Pioneer 6, which is still orbiting the sun at about 74 million miles (inside the Earth's orbit). But, like I said, apparantly that's not going to be much longer for Pioneer 10. Shame... but one heck of a legacy to its designers. And just think - in a couple million years we'll be able to pick it up in the vicinity of Aldebaran.
Not a single SR-71 blackbird has been shot down. It flies too high up, and too quickly.
Well, certainly true for when it was flying. Modern missiles may be another issue entirely. But, yes, there are several stories floating around of SR-71 pilots flying around MiG's knowing full well that the MiG couldn't touch them.
With the extreme performance of the F22, wouldn't it be easier to dodge missiles? And harder for the opposition to lock and fire their missiles, because of the stealth?
In theory, yes... particularly the lock bit. In reality? Well, the Air Force will be testing that shortly, as the article mentions.
But assume that your missiles are rendered useless, either due to lack of target lock or acrobatics. So you're going to engage me with air-to-air cannon fire? When I'm more manueverable, faster, and harder to see (in both a radar and eye-to-eye sense)? It's a pretty safe guess that the F-22 will be capable of Mach 3 or greater -- since it can supercruise at Mach 1.6 without full power, much less afterburners. This is back up to where the SR-71 was... with a smaller radar and IR profile and missiles.
Although I'm sure a good bit of it is hype, I'd still hate to be going up against a Raptor without some radically new designs in radar and weaponry.
I for one don't care for fly-by-wire. Perhaps I'm old fashioned
Well, sure... except that for modern fighter aircraft that's simply not viable. What the original poster was trying to say was that the F-22 is not inherently stable in flight (the AE's out there will now point out how minutely incorrect that statement is). If the flight control software goes wacky, you will be unable to fly the plane -- even if it was good ol hydralics and pneumatics.
The F-22, like a lot of newer jets, has totally integrated flight systems. The ailerons do not work seperately from other control surfaces, particularly the directed thrust system. A human trying to control all of this at once would be overwhelmed, and have considerably lower flight capabilities than a fly-by-wire system.
Another poster pointed out the pilot intenionally doing bad things to the aircraft - shifting all the fuel to one side, opening the weapon bay doors on that side, etc. which threw the jet into cartwheels at 45k feet. Once the pilot released the controls the jet self-stabilized. That's pretty damn impressive. Ok, sure, with fly-by-wire you're pretty well hosed if it doesn't do this because you don't have a "real" concept of what the plane is doing and reacting.
Fly-by-wire is becoming standard on large commercial jets too. I suspect it'll be a long time before it's common place on your small, private plane though -- especially since I can't imagine a single engine prop ever being designed to be "inherently unstable" in the air:)
One of the most impressive things I've seen a Raptor do so far (on Discovery Wings, of course, heh) is fly backwards... jet is flying straight and level, pilot pulls the throttle all the way up and the jet actually goes into a "controlled stall" and moves backwards (or so it appears visually) for a short distance. Hell if I know if it's useful in combat -- but nifty to the layperson.
As usual, an open source drone has spouted business advice that has no relationship to the real world.
They can't give it away for free. It has value. There are investors who paid hard cash for the development of the code and while they now know that they're not going to get it all back, they'd like to recoup some of their costs at least.
Frankly, I suspect they could get more for it in the private market. If anything, they're doing the OS movement a favor by offering it at a discount.
Want public companies to give away their old source? You realize that doing so would result in them being sued by shareholders, right? The principal officers of a company have a legal obligation to the shareholders to maximize stock value. Giving away IP which has value (and if you think it doesn't, then why do you want to look at it in the first place? The mere fact that you have an interest in doing so and building on it indicates that there is indeed value associated with it, regardless of its age) is contrary to that legal requirement and would result in the board being ousted, fined, and jailed.
Private companies are another matter. If they have investors (as NaN did), then the investors would probably like some of their money back. If they don't, well, then they're free to do whatever. I do admire how id Software does business - and frankly, they're very shrewd about it. Open sourcing their old engines not only helps the OSS community, but it also pretty much kills the old engine dead commercially. Yes, you can still license it (for only $10k too, compared to $1M+ previously), but the odds of your client being hacked and cheaters ruining the game is way higher. And the original game becomes pretty much unplayable online except amongst friends - again, cheaters have a free hand with the client once it's open sourced.
I like open source software, and it has its place, but it's not the be-all and end-all of software development, no matter what RMS and his cronies may believe. And whenever I see people spouting bogus information that goes against basic business fundamentals it just shows again and again why open source and Linux in particular continue to have problems becoming mainstream.
Look at the US prior to the 1950s (when AC started becoming popular) and compare it to now. Where did people live? Mostly the NE, Southern California coast, Midwest, and NW. Everywhere else was too goddamn hot during the summer to be liveable.
Move to the SE or desert SW in the middle of August and say that AC isn't a necessity. There's a reason that these areas were underpopulated until recently.
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The two systems I'm most familiar with as being bad examples are England and Canada... With those that are able to going to private doctors either inside the country (England) or across the border (Canada).
Of course, the humorous thing about Canada is that while those who can come to the US for health care, the inverse is true for prescription medicine -- my mother orders all of her long term meds from Canada because it's 1/4 the cost.
I've heard pretty good things about some of the other socialized health care systems -- Switzerland's in particular. But the Swiss also pay far more in taxes than most countries. They have the social programs to show for it though.
The final difference between the US and European countries are that the US generally has the best medicine available in the world, period. And we also have the most stringent prescription drug authorization policies in the world. Neither of which comes cheap, and it's a large part of why socialized medicine won't work particularly well here.
As for the HMOs -- I've had half a dozen different plans in the past few years, both HMOs, PPOs, POS, and pretty much anything else in the TLA soup. My wife is on an HMO right now. The key with all of them is to educate yourself and push to get proper treatment. Because when push comes to shove the patient has more rights than the provider does, and the state oversight boards get very ugly indeed when a provider appears to be denying necessary care to an individual.
that many Americans currently pay at or near 50% of their salaries to the government: federal taxes, state taxes, local municipality taxes, special assessments and property taxes, sales taxes, smog fees, auto registration and license fees
The 50% is questionable.
Most of the additional taxes you mentioned are - shock - tax deductible. I own a home, so I pay property taxes. I also own a car, so I pay ad valorem/licensing fees. And come tax time, I itemize and deduct both of them from my federal and state taxes.
No, you can't deduct sales tax, or several others, so that does add to your overall tax burdon. But it isn't 50% unless you're in one of the highest brackets already, or live in certain areas where you have to pay local income taxes as well (I'd seriously reconsider working in such an area, but telling people to just move isn't a realistic answer). Pre-tax deductions like 401k's and medical savings plans are a wonderful way to decrease your tax burdon and increase your realized income.
Other than that, yeah... a federal healthcare system would probably be a disaster. Most (not all, but most) countries that have tried have created fairly dismal failures -- the plan covers the bare minimums, costs a boatload, and those who can afford better healthcare do so -- even if they have to go to another country and pay full price. As with many things, the free market does a better median job than the government does.
Social Security has nothing to do with medical care.
Medicare/Medicaid do, but they're a separate program (although funded in part by that 15% - it's actually something like 11% FICA and 4% Medicare/Medicaid). Medicare is not a health plan you'd want to be on. Those who are on it generally wish they could get/afford better. Fact of the matter is, everyone else pays for Medicare/Medicaid through health insurance or hospital/doctor's bills as well as the percentage the gov't takes -- because what MC pays back to the hospitals for procedures never actually covers the cost of those procedures. So other bills are inflated to make up the slack.
MC has no prescription benefits either -- need a medication? Well, unless you have some supplemental insurance or order the drugs from outside the US (Canada is very popular), you pay full price. A prescription that may cost you $5 on a health plan could cost over $100 w/o insurance.
MC makes HMOs look liberal in their policies as well, not to mention the appeal mechanisms.
Oh, and please re-read what I said initially -- it's 15% total, not 30%. If you are employed by a company then 7.5% of your wages are taken up by FICA/Medicare. The employer matches that 7.5%, totally 15%. If you are self-employed then it's 15% flat (although the 2nd 7.5% is tax deductible).
No, I was referring specifically to the percentage that goes to Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. It's roughly 7.5% that you see, matched by another 7.5% from your employer (or, if self-employed, 15% total). Either way it's 15% that you can pretty well bet on never seeing again.
Federal, state, and local taxes are above and beyond that. But generally you'll at least see something out of that. It's pretty well guaranteed you'll never see money from the social security ponzi fund if you're under 40.
Technically, no, because you don't have to have a social security number.
If you're a US Citizen you do, ever since 1987 I believe.
The SSN is a national ID system. Period. Anyone believing differently is fooling themselves. You have to present it to work (because of that 15% that goes *poof* out of your paycheck), you file it with your taxes, you have to give it for most bank accounts, for mortgage loans, heck, for most financial data (auto loans, credit cards, etc). Most medical plans use your SSN as your ID (or the SSN of the primary cardholder, followed by -# for others).
Don't think living in an apartment means your SSN isn't on file. Most likely the apartment complex wanted to run a credit check on you to lower their risk of a bad rentor. That involved getting your SSN because your SSN is the most reliable way of uniquely identifying you in the credit bureau systems -- I know, I wrote algorithms to try and do matches without the SSN. They weren't nearly as accurate (I think the best we got to was 3 false positives out of 11 million).
Anyone who's had their SSN stolen and used for identity theft can tell you just how much of a nightmare that creates. And this is largely because the SSN has evolved into a national ID without it ever having been designed as one. You can't just reel off a 9 digit number and use it as a SSN (there are check digits), but if I know your SSN then I can pass it off as my own without any additional checks.
Blockbuster pays on the order of 10 times as much for a copy of a video that they can rent as compared to the copy that you can pick up at Target
Depends.
For movies that didn't make it "big" you can often rent the movie before you can buy it widely -- the studios make VHS copies available at "rental pricing" that is around $80-90 per tape. Takes awhile to recoup the cost, but since you can't get it otherwise, they'll probably make the money back on it (note -- you can actually buy these as a consumer, but you have to find a distributor who will sell to the public and you have to be willing to pay the $80-90 for a single movie).
For big releases, and all DVDs, the movie industry has discovered that they're better off pricing the tapes at prices that consumers would be willing to buy a copy instead of just renting it. Blockbuster and other rental companies simply buy the same movie you can at Target, Best Buy, etc., stick it in their own box, and rent it. They (probably) pay around $5-15 per tape/DVD, which is recouped in 1-3 rentals.
DVD never got into the chasm between rental and "priced-to-own" dates, and isn't likely to. There have been a few industry movements to change this, but they've failed pretty spectacularly so far.
Nobody will accept Ziff Davis doing games.
Except for the few million people that already do through subscriptions or rack purchases of "Official US Playstation Magazine", "Xbox Nation", "Electronic Gaming Monthly", "GameNow", or "Computer Gaming World".
At least nobody will be willing to accept that they are impartial.
Anyone that accepts that any game rag is impartial is fooling themself.
Very much agreed on the Best Dad EVER! bit -- although I have to wonder what his wife thought of the whole thing :)
Oh, and there is a tree associated with it. The rear left corner (if looking at it from the front) appears to be resting against a pine tree. It's not 100% clear though, and I hope he knows that pine trees only live about 30-40 years before coming down one way or another (well, that particular kind of pine does -- grew up with them and have a ton in my yard).
My, what a sweeping generalization you make. For a so-called moderate, this sounds like the generic Republican attitude I hear echoed time and time again
It was a derogatory comment to expose just how self-serving the parent poster's comments were.
Perhaps capitalism itself propagates a lower class? (i like capitalism, btw)
Of course it does. Every economic system except for egalitarianism does, and that particular economic system breaks down once you get beyond the small tribe level.
The nice thing about capitalism, as compared to most other economic systems, is that in a proper social and political environment it allows you to change economic levels if you work at it (either up or down). The biggest thing it does, however, is drag the status quo up -- sure, there's a huge gap between the poor and the rich, and yes, that gap may indeed be growing wider year by year. But look at the poor of the US as compared to the poor of a 3rd world country. Even the bottom 5% have creature comforts that only the rich have in the 3rd world country. Even the poorest in the US don't have it as bad off as those do in the 3rd world country, and the percentages are so wildly different as to be absurd.
Is it perfect? Of course not. Are there big issues? Hell yes. I particularly don't like the way that things are going right now. But it's still better than anything else we've tried so far in the history of humanity, and I'd rather see it adjusted slowly than chucked.
To wrap up, to villify the poor is stupid and groundless
Agreed. It was a far right reaction to the far left crap in the prior post.
That sitution, while distant from today, does have some minor parralels in 21st century life and is still very real in the 3rd world...
Well, I don't believe either the OP or myself were talking about the 3rd world. Other countries are an entirely different ballgame -- and the problems are so endemic I don't know an easy solution. It's not just feeding them money, or refusing to feed them money, or anything simple. There are economic, political, and social issues all feeding off one another and causing vicious cycles.
Are there issues with the current US politoeconomic system? Sure. There always are. But it's still the best system found to date, and incremental adjustments will continue to improve it.
Assuming, of course, the politicians and fat cats don't ruin things first...
Tom doesn't have a product yet. Neither do Subversion or OpenCM. And BitKeeper has been out for, what, 5+ years?
/. have about the real world.
Who's efficient again? Next time, make sure there's an actual release-quality project available before even attempting to make this argument. Subversion is the closest of the bunch, and even then it'll probably be 1-2 years before they are as polished as CVS or BitKeeper.
Sometimes one or a few really good developers working for next to nothing are better than a companyful of developer seats.
Sometimes? Sure. But those developers still have to eat. Assuming that Tom manages to keep up his current level of funding, he'll make all of $20k this year. Wow. Isn't that awfully close to the poverty line for a family of four? Tell us again why he should be doing this for free?
I like the OS movement, I use Unix daily, I use open source products, libraries, and tools daily and deeply appreciate the work and time that goes into them. But whenever someone such as yourself spouts off utter economic bullshit about OS being so much better than commercial (whether totally closed or partially closed), it just proves yet again how little of a fucking clue a lot of people on
Well, let's not forget the left wing version of all of this:
Poor - 'Can we have immunity from our own stupid decisions and lack of self motivation so that we can continue to live off the fruits of other people'?
I happen to agree, by and large, with the first two allegations you make. The rest is no more than left wing baiting in my opinion. And before you whine that I'm a right wing asshole, you're wrong. I'm about as moderate as it gets. Rhetoric too far to either side disgusts me with the lack of intelligence it exhibits.
but on windows use something that is designed for windows and not ported as an afterthought
Why? This is text for godssake. This isn't a word processor.
I admit, I'm a vi head. I've spent the time and effort involved in learning vi's nuances and find it to be extremely powerful. Whenever I have to use a Windows editor for anything more than the basics it's extremely annoying.
Before I started using Unix and vi my favored editor was qedit in DOS. Nice editor for the time, albeit seriously memory limited. And I still have the install disks around somewhere... I think.
The real question is, why should I use one editor on one OS, one editor on another, and a third editor on yet another? All this leads to is below optimal efficiency and experience on all three platforms. Hell of a lot better to decide on one editor that's available nearly universally and stick with it. Which is why I use vim. And install vim on any computer I own. Sure, if I wind up on someone else's Windows box I'll be stuck with Notepad, but I doubt I'll be doing extensive editing there, so it's doable. And on any Unix box I login to I'll have vi available, which is just a subset of vim.
It may not have been a troll, but it was even less thought out than a lot of trolls I've seen here.
No. There is no certification for Dolby Digital. All you have to do is match the spec, which is pretty broad.
The only actual certification process out there is THX, and it's not as great as one might think. THX has bastardized itself into so many sub-varients that you can get crappy little computer speakers that are "THX certified" and still sound like junk. The THX certification process for speakers as a whole has been suspect for a long time now. THX certification for pre-amps, amps, and receivers is another matter, and some of the additional processing it requires (such as reduction of high frequencies) is very valuable (although often available even w/o the THX logo now -- getting that logo is expensive).
But in this case, they're talking about a $500,000 fine.
The law reads "up to 5 years in prison and/or $500,000 fine" -- per violation.
And, again, you miss the point. The point is not to be convicted -- it's to go to court and have the DMCA overturned as a violation of constitutional rights. But you can't do that unless you violate the law in the first place, preferably as an act of civil disobediance.
The fine doesn't just happen you know -- Mr. Perens would still have to go to court and be found guilty by a jury of his peers.
Oh, and if you're fined and can't/won't pay the money? Contempt of court -- welcome to jail. (This is not debtor's prison -- a judge would not keep someone in jail indefinitely if they were unable to pay the fine. Instead some portion of your paycheck would get seized by the government to pay off the fine over time. But you'd still land in jail for a few days for contempt if you refused to pay and were able, or possibly if you made no attempt to come to terms with the government)
If he gets arrested and then jailed nothing would have been accomplished
Uh... I think you miss the point.
He intends to be arrested. And jailed. And to fight the law in court, which is the only place it's ever going to be overturned.
If he doesn't get charged with a violation of the DMCA then nothing will have been accomplished -- failure to enforce a law does not invalidate the law (there are caveats, but a singlular failure does not do so).
I don't think he's looking for a loophole. I suspect he's planning to violate it in the most flagerant manner possible to ensure that he's charged with violation.
The tricky bit is to violate the DMCA and only the DMCA. You really don't want to violate the DMCA and half a dozen other laws -- even if you get the DMCA ruled unconstitutional you'll probably be celebrating in jail.
There was thought given into using Lisp intitally, but I guess the powers that be decided it should have to create a new and totally confusing language
Well, better a new and totally confusing one than an old and totally confusing one.
Yes, I've coded lisp before. But I recovered.
Ah... thank you. One of the pages I looked at referenced the RTG power, but didn't bother saying what it was, what the power system onboard was, etc.
I thought it was nuclear, but didn't search enough to determine it positively, so I second guessed myself based on it running out of power shortly.
Wow. Thank you for posting this. I just snagged a half dozen booklets that will make life much easier (particularly zap embeds, zap event handlers, back to first, and view cookies).
Kudos to you and anyone who helped you.
Actually, Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 have both cleared the solar system... well, depending on what you define as the solar system.
p ioneer/PNhome.html).
Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Neptune and passed beyond the (at the time) furthest orbiting planet on June 13, 1983 (see this page). It hasn't passed the heliopause yet (distance where the solar wind ceases), at least not that anyone can determine.
Pioneer 10 is not the probe furthest from the sun, however. Apparantly that honor goes to Voyager 1, which is moving faster and exceeded Pioneer 10's heliocentric distance on Feb 17, 1998, but it's still well over 7 billion miles away. (see http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/
One interesting thing I found while looking for this is that only Pioneer 10 is moving in the opposite direction from our solar system (relative to the galactic core). Voyager 1 & 2, as well as Pioneer 11 are moving "in front of" us, while Pioneer 10 is moving the opposite direction. This could result in some really useful information about the edges of the solar system -- except that apparantly Pioneer 10's power system is going to run out of juice in a few years (solar powered I guess - the W/m^2 will probably be too low to power the probe at that point).
And no, we're not getting pictures of Neptune or Pluto. You determine these things at time of launch -- we've been doing astronomical calculations for a few hundred years and know where the planets are going to be far ahead of time. Pioneer 10 wasn't scheduled to make a flyby of anything but Jupiter because the orbits were wrong.
And yes, it is still sending back data. As is Pioneer 6, which is still orbiting the sun at about 74 million miles (inside the Earth's orbit). But, like I said, apparantly that's not going to be much longer for Pioneer 10. Shame... but one heck of a legacy to its designers. And just think - in a couple million years we'll be able to pick it up in the vicinity of Aldebaran.
Not a single SR-71 blackbird has been shot down. It flies too high up, and too quickly.
Well, certainly true for when it was flying. Modern missiles may be another issue entirely. But, yes, there are several stories floating around of SR-71 pilots flying around MiG's knowing full well that the MiG couldn't touch them.
With the extreme performance of the F22, wouldn't it be easier to dodge missiles? And harder for the opposition to lock and fire their missiles, because of the stealth?
In theory, yes... particularly the lock bit. In reality? Well, the Air Force will be testing that shortly, as the article mentions.
But assume that your missiles are rendered useless, either due to lack of target lock or acrobatics. So you're going to engage me with air-to-air cannon fire? When I'm more manueverable, faster, and harder to see (in both a radar and eye-to-eye sense)? It's a pretty safe guess that the F-22 will be capable of Mach 3 or greater -- since it can supercruise at Mach 1.6 without full power, much less afterburners. This is back up to where the SR-71 was... with a smaller radar and IR profile and missiles.
Although I'm sure a good bit of it is hype, I'd still hate to be going up against a Raptor without some radically new designs in radar and weaponry.
or they'd have to go into a ballistic attitude, 'sitting on the jets', and use the vectored thrust to move backwards as well as staying aloft.
:)
Exactly what the pilot was doing - nose was at about an 80 degree angle.
Of course, for the difference in price, I'll take the cub anyday
Well sure, but just think of the fun you could have buzzing everyone else in Cubs
I for one don't care for fly-by-wire. Perhaps I'm old fashioned
:)
Well, sure... except that for modern fighter aircraft that's simply not viable. What the original poster was trying to say was that the F-22 is not inherently stable in flight (the AE's out there will now point out how minutely incorrect that statement is). If the flight control software goes wacky, you will be unable to fly the plane -- even if it was good ol hydralics and pneumatics.
The F-22, like a lot of newer jets, has totally integrated flight systems. The ailerons do not work seperately from other control surfaces, particularly the directed thrust system. A human trying to control all of this at once would be overwhelmed, and have considerably lower flight capabilities than a fly-by-wire system.
Another poster pointed out the pilot intenionally doing bad things to the aircraft - shifting all the fuel to one side, opening the weapon bay doors on that side, etc. which threw the jet into cartwheels at 45k feet. Once the pilot released the controls the jet self-stabilized. That's pretty damn impressive. Ok, sure, with fly-by-wire you're pretty well hosed if it doesn't do this because you don't have a "real" concept of what the plane is doing and reacting.
Fly-by-wire is becoming standard on large commercial jets too. I suspect it'll be a long time before it's common place on your small, private plane though -- especially since I can't imagine a single engine prop ever being designed to be "inherently unstable" in the air
One of the most impressive things I've seen a Raptor do so far (on Discovery Wings, of course, heh) is fly backwards... jet is flying straight and level, pilot pulls the throttle all the way up and the jet actually goes into a "controlled stall" and moves backwards (or so it appears visually) for a short distance. Hell if I know if it's useful in combat -- but nifty to the layperson.
As usual, an open source drone has spouted business advice that has no relationship to the real world.
They can't give it away for free. It has value. There are investors who paid hard cash for the development of the code and while they now know that they're not going to get it all back, they'd like to recoup some of their costs at least.
Frankly, I suspect they could get more for it in the private market. If anything, they're doing the OS movement a favor by offering it at a discount.
Want public companies to give away their old source? You realize that doing so would result in them being sued by shareholders, right? The principal officers of a company have a legal obligation to the shareholders to maximize stock value. Giving away IP which has value (and if you think it doesn't, then why do you want to look at it in the first place? The mere fact that you have an interest in doing so and building on it indicates that there is indeed value associated with it, regardless of its age) is contrary to that legal requirement and would result in the board being ousted, fined, and jailed.
Private companies are another matter. If they have investors (as NaN did), then the investors would probably like some of their money back. If they don't, well, then they're free to do whatever. I do admire how id Software does business - and frankly, they're very shrewd about it. Open sourcing their old engines not only helps the OSS community, but it also pretty much kills the old engine dead commercially. Yes, you can still license it (for only $10k too, compared to $1M+ previously), but the odds of your client being hacked and cheaters ruining the game is way higher. And the original game becomes pretty much unplayable online except amongst friends - again, cheaters have a free hand with the client once it's open sourced.
I like open source software, and it has its place, but it's not the be-all and end-all of software development, no matter what RMS and his cronies may believe. And whenever I see people spouting bogus information that goes against basic business fundamentals it just shows again and again why open source and Linux in particular continue to have problems becoming mainstream.
Look at the US prior to the 1950s (when AC started becoming popular) and compare it to now. Where did people live? Mostly the NE, Southern California coast, Midwest, and NW. Everywhere else was too goddamn hot during the summer to be liveable.
Move to the SE or desert SW in the middle of August and say that AC isn't a necessity. There's a reason that these areas were underpopulated until recently.