If you think it is only cheap stuff at wal-mart you may want to start checking your labels again.
There are many high dollar products crappily made in China and sold at whatever your favorite retail outlet happens to be.
I don't find wal-mart to be particularly worse than the vast majority of stores in terms of amount of crappy Chinese goods. The others, for whatever reason, make people feel good for paying more for the same crap they could have gotten for 20% less (and a different brand stuck on said products coming off the same assembly line with the same materials).
To find non-crap you not only have to be lucky enough to have a store locally that sales such items but also know enough about whatever you are purchasing to know what is and isn't crap.
In the end people purchasing crappy products made in china at a high price contribute more than people purchasing cheaply made items at a cheap price. The profit margin there is HUGE even when you take into account the extra money spent on advertisement to get people to hate the less expensive place to purchase it.
And, to note, one can very much find some quality items made in China - I have some cookware and cutlery that is quite good (and yes, I have several good kitchen knives - a few Henckel "s" grades and a Shun - but it is really hard to beat a Chinese high carbon steel cleaver and the hammered carbon steel woks are great).
I don't see anything wrong with the system that we had in place up until sometime in the late 90's to early 00's. The banks could, and would, refuse a huge portion of the loans they give out now. The people who felt they deserved said 350k house, two hummers, and a summer house because they went to college (an English and Art major) complained until they got said loans through congress (I refuse to capitalize that word for the foreseeable future). Turns out the bank was correct - they couldn't pay them and should have been turned down.
In the end the market is "adjusting" and it is screwing those who made unsound financial decision - the vast majority of them being *obvious* (unfortunately it is getting a few who should have been OK as their equity is negative - though they can still make the payments and they purchased at a price they felt was fair at the time). However they had been lead to believe that a house that they should be purchasing in their 40's and living in until they die is a "starter home" and they will move up from there. Then, being amongst the elite (Heaven forbid they actually have a degree that *is* amongst the so called elite - you just graduated college you aren't going to make what a 20+ year person is going to make) they should start with more than a starter home. Turns out, not so much and forcing legislation through doesn't change reality of what one can afford.
Even in our current halfway borked housing market it eventually works out to be supply and demand. There was no reason to to change it before and, even now, there is no reason to do so as it is just moving back to what it was before. If you give people the freedom to make bad decisions some will - if you give them that right and then teach them wrongly (say, for instance, they can do anything they want and get anything they want in an effort to boost self esteem) then you get our current reality. But then, it ends up being self correcting anyway.
Around 50% of the people will live in exactly average and below housing. If we teach them that only above that is success - it isn't. ~68% will live within one standard deviation of the mean - to pretend otherwise is just wrong. We need to make sure that Brick Layers raising a family in decent housing are a success - they 100% absolutely are just as much as a MD PhD (in fact, I would say they are even a greater success if the remain a family and the Md PhD is never home).
One can foster self esteem without pretending all can be the MD PhD - saying we can all be top.5% instead of the +/- one standard deviation makes those that are in the 68% be failures. Promoting self esteem means we never discourage someone from pushing their limits whilst making sure that *anyone* that reaches theirs is praised. Competitive sport coaches should *never* tell a student they can't win - however there are still winners and losers and for the losers said "self esteem" building is making them strive for that next level.
It depends - by their classic definitions they are synonyms. There was not a negative connotation in either one. In modern times cults carry a negative connotation there are generally two schools of though.
First is some modern organized religions use the term to mean "non-mainstream" and/or "unorthodox". In this case it would mostly be the number of people who follow that religion. In this case a "cult" may or may not be negative. This is fairly rare but you will see - especially in some more orthodox religion that try and maintain "tradition".
The second, and the one you mean, is where Cults are religions that are negative. There are borderline cases, however they generally have a few things that are true about them (but don't have to follow all of them but will need several of them). The main thing that classifies them as "cults" is that they are secretive and normally exclusive. They may, and generally do, maintain some level of appearance of inclusiveness but they do not practice it. Many times they have an individual that drives and controls them. Even worse is when they tend to be financially motivated. There are more differences, however one can easily find them with google if they were not just asking a rhetorical question meant as a jab at people who are religious.
The thing that is confusing you is that all cults are religions, however not all religions are cults. As such there is no difference between a religion and a cult as a cult *is* a religion.
Think of it this way - what is the difference between a computer and a PC? Nothing - obviously a PC is a computer but a computer isn't necessarily a PC.
One of the more memorable videos I have ever seen involved Greenpeace and the Sea Shepard (or at least a ship they used to scuttle whalers - too long ago to remember the exact name of the ship).
They were "protesting" the US military testing a type of sea launched rocket from a submarine and the US had cordoned off a fairly large section of sea (this was also being protested - apparently as US citizens they had a right to inspect any and all weapons being produced).
So, into the Sea Shepard to do some good ol' ramming of some Navy vessels. However, as it turns out many of those vessels are armored against multi-ton projectiles moving at 2000+fps so the "sinking Navy vessels" part ended up with a loud ringing sound and most of the Shepard's crew falling down from the sudden stop. Further, it turns out that war vessels often have armament to defend their selves and ramming them generally constitutes their use. Fortunately for the Shepard they Navy vessel could fit their guns to pump water.
The two most amusing parts were the sailors waving at the ship as they sprayed them with water and watching the later rage of the Greenpeace people about how they were only trying to stop people from dying - why did the Navy not let them ram things? Of course, this wasn't an *official* act (I guess their board didn't vote on it directly), it was just payed for by them and manned by them
This was back in the early 80's - so yes they have known involvement with the thing for ages. Greenpeace has always supported and been involved with the radical eco-terrorist groups. For the most part they do things like publically say "Tree spiking is horrid" and then turn around and tell how to do it, where to do it, buy the spikes, and send people to put them in - for myself I go with what their actions are. For others they obviously are more worried about that they say the right things.
With the new environmental theme, apparently they are now terribly worried that we destroy the planet and thus ourselves. Or that we start littering space.
Even better it appears that they are so worried about our continued survival that if we are going to destroy ourselves they will teach us a big lesson by, er, destroying us.
I like a movie theme that can be summed up by "If you kill yourself I'll kill you before you succeed!".
In college I lifted weight 3 days a week, played Judo for 3 days, and rested for one. I weighed about 220, my height is 6', and I had a 38-39" pants size. Like the OP my BMO was terrible - it says I need to weigh under 180. Were I to weigh that I would have to loose significant muscle mass (even now) and would look like I was starving. I'm not sure I could even get down to a 36" - like other parts of my skeletal structure (I wear a 8-3/4 hat size) my hips/waist are quite large - and thus my weight at my height.
Now a number of years later and many hours sitting on my bum doing nothing I weight around 300 or so (pretty much same caloric intake, a little over a decade later, and little exercise) - I wear a 40-41.
As of now I am most definitely obese - no question about it however my waist size didn't change that much. So no, simple waist size vs your height is also pretty much worthless. Most of my weight increased in my stomach.
"As someone whose first programming language was Ada, and who knows of several universities around the same time who chose Ada as a teaching language, I can say with certainty that you are completely wrong."
I would say you are *both* wrong - though neither completely wrong (you both have points).
For many people languages like PERL that just sorta "do the right thing" are quite beneficial. It allows them to quit focusing on details such as type or even declaring a variable. A lot of beginners are this way - most fairly simple algorithms are easier to implement on weakly typed languages because many of the finer details just happen. These people are called programmers - they just want to get the job done and to hell with everything else.
However, hopefully at some point in your career you advance past that stage and become a "software engineer". For those of us doing that enforced coding rules are *really* nice. They catch all sorts of errors and, because the system follows easy, strict, and generally orthogonal rules it is both quite powerful and not prone to many errors in the final product. For a pure software engineer this is a Good Thing.
For most of us we are somewhere in between (I find myself strongly on the Software Engineering side and tend to agree more with you). Few are truly just a programmer (code monkey) or are purely a Software Engineer that doesn't worry much about implementation.
Ada, and other languages out there, are much stronger towards the "software engineer" aspect of our industry. Another language I fell in love with (and have yet to ever use professionally) is Eiffel. Like ADA it has some great concepts that I carried over to other languages.
I also tend to agree that these are good languages to teach in because the promote (and some say enforce) good programming standards. If you can do that then you have the foundation to scale back from them as needed and will do MUCH better in the medium to long term. However, I do agree with the parent's assertion that most people have more initial trouble with strict programming standards.
To give a personal anecdote - I had one of my professors remark after hearing me rant about PERL doing what it thought I wanted to do instead of telling me that the statement didn't make much sense "You are becoming a software engineer". Thinking back to when I was a freshman PERL's behavior would have been welcomed as it would have mostly "fixed" my mistakes, as a senior or grad student it was irritating because it was hard to control.
If it is bad blocks, corrupt file table, or other non-hardware related problem use the available software. Most of it works fairly well and copy the stuff to a new drive.
If it is a mechanical failure freeze the thing - just read the comments here at +3 and there are a few good descriptions. I'm willing to bet some of the data restoration places have some nice dedicated things that the drive plugs into and are continually cooled (I also bet to something colder than just your freezer, but I wouldn't know for sure). However a condom or baloon wrapped around the thing (to help with condensation - I'll have to try an above mentioned rice in a bag thing too) and the night in the freezer works many times.
For full electrical/mechanical failures you will have to have a clean room so that is pretty much out (or, if you have the knowledge and ability to make one you will not be asking your question). You can do anything from replace the individual electronic failure to removing the platters and placing them on a custom made spindle that reads the drives. It would depend on how extensive the damage and how easy that part is to replace.
If you have actual media failure, such as a nice set of coasters I use where a sudden power drop/surge/drop/surge that somehow made it through the UPS in our data room (and mind this is the data room at a national lab so it wasn't some little crappy piece of hardware you get at Best Buy) that caused the read/write heads to touch the platter while it happily tried to park them (and then spin up while the heads were parked) you have to sacrifice a goat, your first born, and whatever else you can think. I had a lot of dangerous to breath dust that previously held my data and four nice platters that are now conversation pieces.
Basically if the drive works use software, if it doesn't try freezing it, if that fails pay someone else.
Further I would add that only trust (and then only halfway - it would depend on the encryption used and how likely you are being hacked) if you have an encrypted pathway from the source computer to the destination.
Anything sent as plain text in between can be read and there is nothing you can do about it. It isn't private either by law or by reality. Even if it is by law you only get the satisfaction of the person responsible gets legally penalized. However in most cases that will just be a fine and you have to live with the consequences.
Further unless you control both machines there is also no privacy. Sysadmins at google can very much read your gmail account if they want too. At least in the US these are *not* considered private (regardless of the little disclaimer people put at the bottom - you can't compose a contract on me without negotiation and both side benefiting from it). Nor is your ISP or work e-mail servers private while they are on their systems.
You can only trust the company you work for to keep things (mostly) private that affects the company. Even then it only takes one sys admin to see it, forward it to someone else in the company, and then it get into the wild from there. Sure the people involved may get fired but once it is out there nothing you can do.
And, lastly, *all* systems that are connected in some way are hackable. They may be so hard to hack that it isn't worth it or it may very well be that everything is up to date and there is no known way, yet there is still that very first hack and you are toast. Of course, if you are, personally, a high priority target (say you are one of the current US presidential candidates) then you really ought to take a MUCH higher degree of security measures than I would.
You can't, and shouldn't, live your life in fear because it *may* happen - just be reasonable. If you *really* don't want anyone to know that you like dressing up in S&M clothes and having dwarfs beat you while you have sex with a horse I highly suggest you keep said pictures off of anything that may be hacked. There is nothing on any of my computers that others do not know I do (mostly video games and archery) though I would rather my login/password to some online games not be public.
For the majority things we would rather others not see - don't use public terminal for *any* of that and keep things encrypted to people you trust. That can simply be the password for your online game to pictures of you and your sexual partner. Make sure you control any system that stuff will sit on unencrypted and make sure said systems stay fairly up-to-date on security stuff. There is *no* way to secure those systems yet the vast majority of things we do it really doesn't matter if people track it.
Not that I particularly agree with the ban but it isn't anything new. As said the issue is only with lasers strong enough to reasonably blind people. Even as someone who regularly shoots firearms I fear said lasers more than a firearm - the laser is "on" or "off" and the "on" state lasts until the laser looses power. It is *immediately* dangerous through the whole process and is deceptively so (after all it is only a small dot). For various reasons people do not give it the necessary respect, if they did then I wouldn't mind so much.
The Red Cross has been trying to ban the blinding ones as weapons since the early 90's (and they explicitly state terrorist use even back then). A simple google search turned up a few articles on the front page, I'm sure there are better, yet since the first page results are good enough:
So, yea, not really anything new and is pretty much in line with international law. I don't know if Australia is a signatory to the law, however as we know from the US detractors that is irrelevant as it is an "international law".
Can't say as I agree with it (even as used as a weapon - better to be blinded than the alternatives) and I would really like one of the things that could pop a balloon, but for most of what the posters here who want to enforce this it *should* be a triumph of international law and the logical progression of said law. If you want your country to follow "international law" then kiss these thing good buy as you cant have them since the early 90's, Bush's term and the current so called "War on Terror" have nothing to do with said laws. We can't simply pick and choose which laws we observe (as is rightly said by Bush detractor's - it is pretty much all or nothing).
Well, given what they post: " 57 percent reported that they weren't comfortable their activities [were being] tracked for advertising purposes...72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs"
Ok, so the consumer wants add targeted to their behavior without tracking it?. Therein is one of the problems - the vast majority of users don't really know what they want - or I guess a better description is that they want something that can not be.
You can not want add at all (that would be my choice) but that isn't going to happen. Unfortunately these things cost money and you either have subscriptions or adds to pay for it. Since I hate subscriptions more than I hate add guess which one I am stuck with. As such we have adds - no real way around it, a few may be wealthy enough to just pay for it but I bet few want to limit themselves to sites that are such (or are totally donation based given how well donations work).
That leaves us with adds. We have three choices.
First and easiest is blanket adds - that is there is no tracking whatsoever. That means me (a conservative in nearly all the sense of the word) will get adds for sexual aides and places for me and my wife (hahaha - I'm a geek also) to swap partners even though everything shows we are not interested. I can't complain because I don't like being tracked - if I;m not tracked I can't get targeted adds.
Second is the track my behavior but do not link it to me individually - well, I have some nice ocean front property in Arizona real cheap for sale too, only a few million and I will transfer my title through E-mail. If they would actually do that then it would be the best case, however I expect to have that e-mail transfer of ocean front property in Arizona first.
This leaves the last option - total removal of any privacy you thought you may have on the internet. This is pretty much how it works now, never ever send anything over the wire that you would never want others to read. Even if there is no issue technologically the stuff isn't legally confidential. So, send some nice trade secrets over E-mail to an unsecured computer and said server (or any of the hops in between) feel like reading it? Oh well, should have encrypted the thing and thought about it beforehand. Same thing goes for browsing history - it can not technically be private as it may very well go over places you have no control over whatsoever (and may not even be in your a country your laws have *any* jurisdiction over).
Such is life on the internet - it was created as a decentralized organization wherein everything is public. Given that don't be terribly surprised when things are, well, public. Further when you agree to things that even further erode your privacy don't be surprised when then do so (say accepting tracking cookies and such). A users ignorance is no excuse especially when the place in question wasn't trying to mislead.
PC games are trying to compete where the consoles win throughly and that is going to be a loosing war. You don't fight a war where your strength is at it's lowest.
As you say the consoles win in many areas and will continue to do so for A LONG time. The companies have a huge amount of control over them and software just works. Graphics wise it is nearly impossible to keep up with them in a general purpose computer - mine also has to run applications that are VERY much not games, and run them well, for me to even begin to think of purchasing said PC. It is first and foremost a work machine, a gaming secondly. You are 100% correct in that analysis.
All that being said the PC has some real strengths. At one time this is why people played a PC, but they aren't as safe (from a companies return point of view) as console games and, while they can have great profits they can also have great losses.
One is cost in development - SDK's are fairly easy to obtain and many are even fairly open. You don't *have* to pay a fortune to MS, Sony, or Nintendo to get your stuff out there and this should allow a greater amount of innovation. To some extent DirectX has hurt this because many feel they have to pay Microsoft and if doing that they might as well go all 360 - however there are other nice 3D packages out there.
Another is expandability (though being able to ship poor products and patch later is one of the things that really hurt PC games) - Neverwinter Nights, Half-Life, and a few other RPG's are a *great* example of this. Unfortunately too many companies see this as being a competitor instead of an asset as they would prefer to sell their game engine for a few tens of thousands to a single company instead of to a few tens of thousands gamers (though as the above games showed - lots of money in the latter case).
And, while the last big win listed not really the last one over all, we have interface. FOr many styles of games a keyboard/mouse offers an unparalleled gaming experience - RPG's come to mind. To a lesser extent FPS are so also, but that probably ends to be overshadowed by the whole "control the hardware" thing from a developers standpoint.
*Shrug* PC's died as a gaming platform when they decided to take on consoles on their own turf instead of doing what they do best. Games like Half-Life, Neverwinter Nights, and quite a few others would *never* have done what they did on consoles. Unfortunately game companies
For myself gaming has been on the down slide since around the late 90's, I'm a puzzle/RPG fan with a side interest in strategy games. Consoles do bad there, though a few CRPG's do stand out (Final Fantasy VII for instance) and some of the tactics games have done well. While my genre has never been one of the large multi-tens of millions profit centers we are fairly dedicated and have nowhere to go as there has been VERY few games released that are decent (not a MMO fan - I'm not going to pay a monthly fee for other user to create crappy content).
I still expect games to slowly move back into that sector as they mature (just as other entertainment forms matured back into story/fun driven modes) but unfortunately I will most likely be in my 40's or even 50's by the time this occurs though I still expect to be gaming then. I find it sad that the current pinnacle of those games occurred in the late 90's early 00's as those games weren't really that good compared to what is possible - just that gaming companies abandoned them as it had better margins to produce flashy graphics (though I also admit I like those graphics and have a few games just because of them). Flashy graphics are reaching their limits and hopefully within the next 20 years will shift back towards fun gaming - which the PC is very well suited for several genres.
While Mila is quite attractive, I'm not quite ~25 anymore - in fact I'm quite a bit older than that. As such she kinda looks like a kid (though a very nice looking one). As far as legality goes, yep very much past that point and I can't say I would complain of one was interested in me (haha, yea right).
However I find Alex to be quite nice. She is even a fuzz older than me so she has that whole "older woman" thing going and is still on the quite attractive side. She isn't enough older that it is strange (only a couple of years) and she has a fairly decent body *and* I like her humor so I wouldn't complain.
As for their voice, well no question - even when not in character I prefer Mila. But then neither are really my favorite voice in the world so I guess that isn't so much of a variable in the whole equation.
Of course since in reality I will never have said choice it is all academic anyway - there are quite a few super models I would rather have regardless their age so those two are still low on the whole "I want" totem pole:)
To put it simply: people who were betting on a company tanking usually can't sue because the company didn't do so. It should be obvious why this isn't so, though I suppose the lawyers in question figure that the chance of a great payout (or settlement) is worth the risk. I'm generally not in favor of most tort reform, but in cases like this I would *love* to see the lawyers disbarred for grossly wasting a companies time/money along with being liable for the costs. The US'es justice system *used* to be about a human applying laws but has slowly shifted to if something is *technically* correct or not. There are many borderline cases that should make it to court and is where being a human should allow one to make a choice, but in this case does *anyone* think it is actually worth doing?
I can very much see if you were a long term investor suing a company did something intentionally to create a market where those selling short made a lot of money. Yet, I can't see how suing a company for trying to stay, well, a company would work out. Were they in some form of bankruptcy then I could see it, but they aren't. If this somehow retained them being a company yet increased their shareholder value then I could see the lawsuit (even if I do not agree with it). Yet this is not just like, but is exactly, suing a company because it didn't do as badly as you expected.
As such good luck with that lawsuit. Well, not true - I hope the people bringing on the lawsuit felt what it was like for your investors to "sell short" and loose everything their greedy little minds thought they could get. I hope the lawyers pushing it are disbarred for grossly bad legal advice. I hope Yahoo can recoup their legal costs from said investors/lawyers for such a crappy lawsuit that should never have seen the light of day. Sadly while I hope so, I don't expect it.
True - I wouldn't want any manager who did that. It's kinda like watching someone have a spouse cheat on them that they had originally met while the other was married to someone else - well that person cheated on their former spouse did you really think you were that special that it could *never* happen to you?
However, this seems to be more the case of the guy leaving and Microsoft doing an early release so it wouldn't appear as if their project leader was jumping ship on an unfinished product. In fact, from reading through much of the stuff about it (both from the links in the article and others given in this thread) that was a large part of why this individual left Microsoft in the first place.
If true - that he left because of integrity issues in MS wanting him to push out Vista when not ready - then he would most likely be someone I would *like* as a manager. The summary article isn't very clear on it, but from everything said this VERY much seems to be the case.
"Linux is just the kernel, right? GNU/Linux would be an operating system."
The real answer is "depends". In todays loose use of the phrase "Operating System" you would be correct. However, from a fairly strict definition that is entirely incorrect - Linux is the OS and the GNU stuff is applications bundled with the OS. If the GNU stuff *was* the OS it wouldn't run under Hurd (well, assuming that OS worked outside of a beta) or under windows (which most of the GNU tools can be compiled to run there - see Cygwin). That is if you can have GNU/Hurd, GNU/Linux, and GNU/Windows then GNU is *not* part of the OS but a layer on top of it. We don't have Linux/Hurd or BeOS/Windows and to most technical people there is a clear reason why.
Classically the Operating system is the low level stuff - the kernel, device drives, file systems, etc. The shell, user commands, and other stuff were simply applications that translated the OS into something we humans could use. We can easily see that in Dos 5.0 - the OS was fairly bare bones, things like Windows were applications that ran on top of dos.
We still see that in Linux - CSH, BASH, KSH, KDE, GNOME, etc are applications *not* the OS. They are simply our interface to tell the OS what to do. You can choose which one you want and this makes up a great deal of what a distro is. Just that in a fairly loose language we call that "linux" - but being able to use RedHat doesn't mean you will know the ins and outs of Ubunto. You may very well understand the OS (the kernel and it's associated driver infrastructure) but that means little to with what most users will ever goof with - even the vast majority of sys admins.
I know better than to confuse the two, and yet I know I also use the current meaning of the word "OS" as you do. For someone developing an OS it is VERY wrong, though it is what the general populace uses.
You are basically applying Occam's Razor to this problem - make the fewest assumption possible.
For this to be an invasion of the US it has to be some strange insidious plot that has us slowly removing their infrastructure in a manner that gives them time to repair it. This makes little sense at all - especially since it only knocked a few of the peons sites off the web (and they would be the ones we would *want* on the net in such a case) and we are quite capable of killing it entirely in one swoop.
Further, said incompetents are somehow creating an invasion force of a size comparable to Iraq Invasion force that took several months and calling up many National Guard units in the process (while we have a presence in Iraq, they are not an invasion force and - yes - there is a HUGE difference) yet no one anywhere has made note of it. Either that or we plan on nuking them (back to the whole "over 100,000 people deployed for war and no one on the planet has noticed" them for conventional bombing). But then, why bother cutting the lines? The moment one goes off every major player in the world will know it and it will destroy those lines in the process.
Invasion of Iran by the US is stupid, at least from simply having 5 cables cut. I'll buy the govt wants to invade them and would *love* an excuse. I would buy that they have things as ready as they can. But this as a prelude? Nope, our generals are MUCH better than this. If this is truly unusual then we would have to look elsewhere.
If we want a conspiracy theory then there are a few that make sense. The hard line Islamics could be trying their best to cut Iran off from the rest of the world, they haven't been that successful in the past on similar type things. It took how many years to finally bring the WTC down? I also find the US botching a new wiretap device plausible. I am sure we are trying our best to wire tap them (and if we aren't then people need fired) and a new device may very well cause something along these lines. I wouldn't even buy we are doing this to provoke them - again MUCH more effective way to do it and *any* country on the face of this planet has generals that can do a better job of it.
However, as another poster modded at least +3 (my threshhold for viewing posts) there are roughly 50 a year in those areas so 5 in such a period of time isn't *that* far out. This is quite within the realm of bad luck, in fact it isn't even *that* bad a luck from what they linked. This is the simplest explanation and takes the fewest assumption. It doesn't *prove* anything (heck maybe person A is responsible for the troop buildup and person B for the cable cutting), but is very much the most likely. It would be my choice, followed by a botched listening device, followed by some jihadist group.
Mine did too - twice. However Nintendo did "warranty" work on them for a fairly long time (I would assume they do not do it now). I put Warranty in quotes because each time the unit was well outside of their warranty period. Apparently it was common enough that if you called their support line you mostly told them it was doing that and they asked no questions and simply had it repaired. I know it took me longer to get where their local service station was than to convince them to do the repair work.
My last one still works just fine, though I have later Nintendo handhelds that can play my old GB games and never use it, though I *do* fire it up from time to time for the heck of it.
"How is it possible that people still don't get how the GPL works, and still think they can treat it like a contract or something?"
To begin with IANAL so take this with a grain of salt - but it is acting like a contract (in fact, according to the WIKI and several other sources it *is* a contract). In this case if both me and you enter into a valid contract (or license) then you can't universally revoke the contract, I don't even think you can do that if the contract explicitly states it.
One side can not enforce a contract or license, nor once agreed too can they simply revoke it at will. You will note that even though most EULA's contain a clause allowing them to change it at will they always re-ask you to accept when they change them - they very well know that part of the EULA is unenforceable just as this type of change can not be enforced. Otherwise after signing it they could, unilaterally, change the contract to where they owned everything you do for the rest of your life and be perfectly legal.
There is nothing inherent in the GPL in this because there is no need for it - it is basic part of a contract and any contractor should know this otherwise you will frequently get the people who hire you try and jerk you around.
"So the question is (or rather my question, since I'm sure actual legal scholars have already debated it to death) if it turns out that someone up the chain did not have the right to distribute under GPL, does that propagate down the chain to all those who unknowingly redistributed software for which the authority to actually do so was never transferred to them by someone who had it?"
Of course - that's not really a hard question. You can't give away something you don't own. If it were otherwise I could tell you that I gave you an acre in the middle of Central Part in New York and then you could do whatever you wanted with impunity. Nor can you keep something that you don't own, even if you purchased/acquired it in good faith. If you purchase stolen goods they go back to the original owner (your gripe of being out money goes to whomever you purchased said item from, the original owner shouldn't loose their property because someone stole it). Same here.
Since I'm not a lawyer I don't know what would happen with respect to liability to the people on down the chain, after all they were acting in good faith and intellectual property isn't quite the same thing as physical property. For the most part the US justice system doesn't punish people acting in good faith so I doubt that you are automatically liable. However, were you to be doing this type of stuff to get around copyright law then you will most likely be smashed. There are also cases where they may get a judgment from you and it is your responsibility to sue the next person back, them sue the next back, and recurse all the way back to the original person who was actually liable - I don't know if this would be the case.
Though I'm sure a lawyer could tell you immediately which way this works and debate on that ended many years ago, I just do not know. There have been too many times I've seen this occur so there *has* to be enough case law out there that there is little question, I just never saw what the final outcome of the court cases where - just that they were occurring.
"I'm the 4th Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution! I guarantee your right to be free from searches without a court-issued warrant."
No, it doesn't. Lets see what it actually says while not walking down the street: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It garuntees two things - the right against unreasonable searches and warrants can not be over broad and need probable cause.
So, for instance, if a police officer catches you dealing drugs (which is illegal) it is perfectly reasonable to search you and current premises for more drugs - there is no need to wait upon a warrant (of which your fourth amendment walking down the street apparently doesn't realize). Of course, they may find other drugs, contact lists, firearms, and all sorts of nice things and it wouldn't violate it. Depending on other instances it may be quite reasonable to search your phone, at the very least in the investigation from there on out it *will* be searched.
However, if while driving down the street some random person says "Look - bm_Luethke is dealing drugs!!!" they can't simply pop into my house and search over everything - that fails, at the least, the "Oath" part.
There are MANY MANY cases where there is no need for a warrant- I'm reminded of an episode of Cops I watched recently where they got a call from a neighbor that heard cries for help and came to investigate. Courts have generally held that under such circumstances the police do not need a warrant for simply entry (and once there anything in plain open site is fair game) - the cries for help constitutes a "reasonable search". The people stood in the window and told them not to enter that they had to have a warrant, the police informed them otherwise, eventually busted the door down, and found pretty much nothing. The people involved had taken "legal" advice from the same place your fourth amendment did while walking down the street - in this case it was "reasonable" because in a hostage situation they would have done the same thing. The initial witnessed cries for help superseded the latter "leave me alone" stuff - had they found anything illegal they would have been prosecuted for it (it was obvious the people were stoned, but they had at least enough sense to hide the stuff out of plain view though they were obviously afraid it would be found - and if it wasn't in plain view then they had to have a warrant).
In short, it doesn't provide what you seem to think it does. It never did and probably never will and has nothing to do with DoJ or the NSA (or the BATF or CIA if you are a right winger ranting about the 90's, though at least the courts did find in favor of the Ruby Ridge/Waco people - but then those people's rights were A-Ok to shit on and *actually* publicly kill most of them).
"But the more important point I want to make is that you make it sound dirty that a megacorp might derive some use from a free software project without contributing very much back to it."
I normally do not respond to AC's, but in this case I will.
I never said it was "dirty", for many in the OSS crowd such a thing is and you reading into my statement something that isn't there. I'm generally on ESR's side in the whole thing (in fact, I would tend to go more than he does). I also prefer a BSD style license for much the same reason - I hope anything I have ever done is distributed to as many people and had enriched their lives as much as possible. If someone else wants to market it, then fine have at it.
However, many in the OSS crowd also seem to think because IBM is doing a lot with the them that they are somehow fellow Believers - they aren't. They are making money and Linux makes a WHOLE heap of sense - they can very well have some people sit back and simply vett changes, that doesn't mean they aren't making their own also. I did not intend to mean (and don't think it would normally be read that way either) that they had no payed Linux Developers - in fact I personally know several of them.
The OSS community tends to feel betrayed when IBM doesn't do something "pure" when IBM has *never* been a purist there. They are company that is making a sound financial decision, I even expect that some of the higher up managers even get a nice warm fuzzy feeling in doing the right thing also (I know I would - always a win when you get to do both a sound financial decision *and* do something good for the community). Open sourcing OS/2 is done under the same premise and it makes a terrible financial decision to do so given the ties it's source has.
Yes, but then again they weren't trying to be clear of *Microsoft's* IP - and that is whole different story. At least, as far as I know Sun wasn't - they were trying to be clear of a somewhat OSS friendly (or at least OSS dependent) community/company. Microsoft is not going to handle anything that might maybe possibly in some way infringe upon their IP being out in the wild in a OSS project from an actual company that they can litigate against. Heck they funded an obviously sinking company with obviously no case whatsoever in an attempt to just discredit OSS, this would be a slam dunk compared to that.
IBM is big enough to fight it, no doubt, but they aren't going to make anywhere close to enough for it to be worth it from a business point of view. As much as I see IBM as a traditional corporation that only really sees OSS as a way to save money (why not have competent volunteers develop everything and only pay a few to vett the changes to make sure they are what you want?) I'll even bet they wish they could justify it - after all a "win" would probably boost shareholder confidence and most large companies generally like to stick it to their competition.
Then, of course, it may not be simply a case of "might maybe possibly in some way infringe upon their IP" and in fact totally 100% infringe upon it. In which case IBM isn't *ever* going to find it in their best interest do release it.
I, and the vast majority of people that read Slashdot, don't really know either (someone from IBM who worked on the project would need to weigh in). In any case if it were to make them money then they would do it. Given their past history I would guess if they felt they could get away with it they would (said "Good Will" has made them quite a bit of money). In fact I would also say the way they said "no" was an attempt at saying they wish they could - after all unless they wanted to send another message the easiest way to say "no" was to ignore it.
"Why should some hiker feel special because he hikes instead of playing video games?"
Simple - because in this instance they aren't as good as you, can't handle it, and seek to turn your advantage into a disadvantage. It happens all the time - that why some things are "real" sports and others are "not real" - in almost every single case "not real" sports are one that the individual can not compete in. This extends to many things other than sports - never let many artists know that you think code can be an art form because you will be quickly told "yours doesn't count".
You want to see anything that isn't "real" just make it such that whatever that person has in spades isn't what it takes to win. I practiced Judo for about 4 years - it is one thing that is highly skill over brawn (especially for ones that are *really* good at submissions and chokes). It is amusing to watch a 220+ pound football player (in college so quite athletic) get choked out by a 98 pound female declare Judo a non-sport that only losers would play:)
note: that's not to say everyone does that, the vast majority of people accept it and continue on and some worked to get where they needed to be to compete (the latter being the competitive people who were secure in themselves). Only those that are insecure in themselves have that need to win or ridicule anyone who beats them and this is true in pretty much *anything*.
"regardless of whatever romanticized ideal of the independent bookseller you cling to."
DING DING DING - we have a winner here.
The really sad thing is that you can *never* compete with this. The Norman Rockwell vision of something is stronger than anything you can ever do, show, or say short of if you could make people live in that time period again and suddenly remember all the crap. Small independent booksellers were great if you wanted to socialize, horrid if you actually wanted something they didn't stock (and they tended to only stock what they were interested in).
You can not reason someone out of an idea that they didn't use reason to come up with.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think it is only cheap stuff at wal-mart you may want to start checking your labels again.
There are many high dollar products crappily made in China and sold at whatever your favorite retail outlet happens to be.
I don't find wal-mart to be particularly worse than the vast majority of stores in terms of amount of crappy Chinese goods. The others, for whatever reason, make people feel good for paying more for the same crap they could have gotten for 20% less (and a different brand stuck on said products coming off the same assembly line with the same materials).
To find non-crap you not only have to be lucky enough to have a store locally that sales such items but also know enough about whatever you are purchasing to know what is and isn't crap.
In the end people purchasing crappy products made in china at a high price contribute more than people purchasing cheaply made items at a cheap price. The profit margin there is HUGE even when you take into account the extra money spent on advertisement to get people to hate the less expensive place to purchase it.
And, to note, one can very much find some quality items made in China - I have some cookware and cutlery that is quite good (and yes, I have several good kitchen knives - a few Henckel "s" grades and a Shun - but it is really hard to beat a Chinese high carbon steel cleaver and the hammered carbon steel woks are great).
I don't see anything wrong with the system that we had in place up until sometime in the late 90's to early 00's. The banks could, and would, refuse a huge portion of the loans they give out now. The people who felt they deserved said 350k house, two hummers, and a summer house because they went to college (an English and Art major) complained until they got said loans through congress (I refuse to capitalize that word for the foreseeable future). Turns out the bank was correct - they couldn't pay them and should have been turned down.
.5% instead of the +/- one standard deviation makes those that are in the 68% be failures. Promoting self esteem means we never discourage someone from pushing their limits whilst making sure that *anyone* that reaches theirs is praised. Competitive sport coaches should *never* tell a student they can't win - however there are still winners and losers and for the losers said "self esteem" building is making them strive for that next level.
In the end the market is "adjusting" and it is screwing those who made unsound financial decision - the vast majority of them being *obvious* (unfortunately it is getting a few who should have been OK as their equity is negative - though they can still make the payments and they purchased at a price they felt was fair at the time). However they had been lead to believe that a house that they should be purchasing in their 40's and living in until they die is a "starter home" and they will move up from there. Then, being amongst the elite (Heaven forbid they actually have a degree that *is* amongst the so called elite - you just graduated college you aren't going to make what a 20+ year person is going to make) they should start with more than a starter home. Turns out, not so much and forcing legislation through doesn't change reality of what one can afford.
Even in our current halfway borked housing market it eventually works out to be supply and demand. There was no reason to to change it before and, even now, there is no reason to do so as it is just moving back to what it was before. If you give people the freedom to make bad decisions some will - if you give them that right and then teach them wrongly (say, for instance, they can do anything they want and get anything they want in an effort to boost self esteem) then you get our current reality. But then, it ends up being self correcting anyway.
Around 50% of the people will live in exactly average and below housing. If we teach them that only above that is success - it isn't. ~68% will live within one standard deviation of the mean - to pretend otherwise is just wrong. We need to make sure that Brick Layers raising a family in decent housing are a success - they 100% absolutely are just as much as a MD PhD (in fact, I would say they are even a greater success if the remain a family and the Md PhD is never home).
One can foster self esteem without pretending all can be the MD PhD - saying we can all be top
It depends - by their classic definitions they are synonyms. There was not a negative connotation in either one. In modern times cults carry a negative connotation there are generally two schools of though.
First is some modern organized religions use the term to mean "non-mainstream" and/or "unorthodox". In this case it would mostly be the number of people who follow that religion. In this case a "cult" may or may not be negative. This is fairly rare but you will see - especially in some more orthodox religion that try and maintain "tradition".
The second, and the one you mean, is where Cults are religions that are negative. There are borderline cases, however they generally have a few things that are true about them (but don't have to follow all of them but will need several of them). The main thing that classifies them as "cults" is that they are secretive and normally exclusive. They may, and generally do, maintain some level of appearance of inclusiveness but they do not practice it. Many times they have an individual that drives and controls them. Even worse is when they tend to be financially motivated. There are more differences, however one can easily find them with google if they were not just asking a rhetorical question meant as a jab at people who are religious.
The thing that is confusing you is that all cults are religions, however not all religions are cults. As such there is no difference between a religion and a cult as a cult *is* a religion.
Think of it this way - what is the difference between a computer and a PC? Nothing - obviously a PC is a computer but a computer isn't necessarily a PC.
One of the more memorable videos I have ever seen involved Greenpeace and the Sea Shepard (or at least a ship they used to scuttle whalers - too long ago to remember the exact name of the ship).
They were "protesting" the US military testing a type of sea launched rocket from a submarine and the US had cordoned off a fairly large section of sea (this was also being protested - apparently as US citizens they had a right to inspect any and all weapons being produced).
So, into the Sea Shepard to do some good ol' ramming of some Navy vessels. However, as it turns out many of those vessels are armored against multi-ton projectiles moving at 2000+fps so the "sinking Navy vessels" part ended up with a loud ringing sound and most of the Shepard's crew falling down from the sudden stop. Further, it turns out that war vessels often have armament to defend their selves and ramming them generally constitutes their use. Fortunately for the Shepard they Navy vessel could fit their guns to pump water.
The two most amusing parts were the sailors waving at the ship as they sprayed them with water and watching the later rage of the Greenpeace people about how they were only trying to stop people from dying - why did the Navy not let them ram things? Of course, this wasn't an *official* act (I guess their board didn't vote on it directly), it was just payed for by them and manned by them
This was back in the early 80's - so yes they have known involvement with the thing for ages. Greenpeace has always supported and been involved with the radical eco-terrorist groups. For the most part they do things like publically say "Tree spiking is horrid" and then turn around and tell how to do it, where to do it, buy the spikes, and send people to put them in - for myself I go with what their actions are. For others they obviously are more worried about that they say the right things.
With the new environmental theme, apparently they are now terribly worried that we destroy the planet and thus ourselves. Or that we start littering space.
Even better it appears that they are so worried about our continued survival that if we are going to destroy ourselves they will teach us a big lesson by, er, destroying us.
I like a movie theme that can be summed up by "If you kill yourself I'll kill you before you succeed!".
In college I lifted weight 3 days a week, played Judo for 3 days, and rested for one. I weighed about 220, my height is 6', and I had a 38-39" pants size. Like the OP my BMO was terrible - it says I need to weigh under 180. Were I to weigh that I would have to loose significant muscle mass (even now) and would look like I was starving. I'm not sure I could even get down to a 36" - like other parts of my skeletal structure (I wear a 8-3/4 hat size) my hips/waist are quite large - and thus my weight at my height.
Now a number of years later and many hours sitting on my bum doing nothing I weight around 300 or so (pretty much same caloric intake, a little over a decade later, and little exercise) - I wear a 40-41.
As of now I am most definitely obese - no question about it however my waist size didn't change that much. So no, simple waist size vs your height is also pretty much worthless. Most of my weight increased in my stomach.
"As someone whose first programming language was Ada, and who knows of several universities around the same time who chose Ada as a teaching language, I can say with certainty that you are completely wrong."
I would say you are *both* wrong - though neither completely wrong (you both have points).
For many people languages like PERL that just sorta "do the right thing" are quite beneficial. It allows them to quit focusing on details such as type or even declaring a variable. A lot of beginners are this way - most fairly simple algorithms are easier to implement on weakly typed languages because many of the finer details just happen. These people are called programmers - they just want to get the job done and to hell with everything else.
However, hopefully at some point in your career you advance past that stage and become a "software engineer". For those of us doing that enforced coding rules are *really* nice. They catch all sorts of errors and, because the system follows easy, strict, and generally orthogonal rules it is both quite powerful and not prone to many errors in the final product. For a pure software engineer this is a Good Thing.
For most of us we are somewhere in between (I find myself strongly on the Software Engineering side and tend to agree more with you). Few are truly just a programmer (code monkey) or are purely a Software Engineer that doesn't worry much about implementation.
Ada, and other languages out there, are much stronger towards the "software engineer" aspect of our industry. Another language I fell in love with (and have yet to ever use professionally) is Eiffel. Like ADA it has some great concepts that I carried over to other languages.
I also tend to agree that these are good languages to teach in because the promote (and some say enforce) good programming standards. If you can do that then you have the foundation to scale back from them as needed and will do MUCH better in the medium to long term. However, I do agree with the parent's assertion that most people have more initial trouble with strict programming standards.
To give a personal anecdote - I had one of my professors remark after hearing me rant about PERL doing what it thought I wanted to do instead of telling me that the statement didn't make much sense "You are becoming a software engineer". Thinking back to when I was a freshman PERL's behavior would have been welcomed as it would have mostly "fixed" my mistakes, as a senior or grad student it was irritating because it was hard to control.
I'll write you a real easy one:
If it is bad blocks, corrupt file table, or other non-hardware related problem use the available software. Most of it works fairly well and copy the stuff to a new drive.
If it is a mechanical failure freeze the thing - just read the comments here at +3 and there are a few good descriptions. I'm willing to bet some of the data restoration places have some nice dedicated things that the drive plugs into and are continually cooled (I also bet to something colder than just your freezer, but I wouldn't know for sure). However a condom or baloon wrapped around the thing (to help with condensation - I'll have to try an above mentioned rice in a bag thing too) and the night in the freezer works many times.
For full electrical/mechanical failures you will have to have a clean room so that is pretty much out (or, if you have the knowledge and ability to make one you will not be asking your question). You can do anything from replace the individual electronic failure to removing the platters and placing them on a custom made spindle that reads the drives. It would depend on how extensive the damage and how easy that part is to replace.
If you have actual media failure, such as a nice set of coasters I use where a sudden power drop/surge/drop/surge that somehow made it through the UPS in our data room (and mind this is the data room at a national lab so it wasn't some little crappy piece of hardware you get at Best Buy) that caused the read/write heads to touch the platter while it happily tried to park them (and then spin up while the heads were parked) you have to sacrifice a goat, your first born, and whatever else you can think. I had a lot of dangerous to breath dust that previously held my data and four nice platters that are now conversation pieces.
Basically if the drive works use software, if it doesn't try freezing it, if that fails pay someone else.
Further I would add that only trust (and then only halfway - it would depend on the encryption used and how likely you are being hacked) if you have an encrypted pathway from the source computer to the destination.
Anything sent as plain text in between can be read and there is nothing you can do about it. It isn't private either by law or by reality. Even if it is by law you only get the satisfaction of the person responsible gets legally penalized. However in most cases that will just be a fine and you have to live with the consequences.
Further unless you control both machines there is also no privacy. Sysadmins at google can very much read your gmail account if they want too. At least in the US these are *not* considered private (regardless of the little disclaimer people put at the bottom - you can't compose a contract on me without negotiation and both side benefiting from it). Nor is your ISP or work e-mail servers private while they are on their systems.
You can only trust the company you work for to keep things (mostly) private that affects the company. Even then it only takes one sys admin to see it, forward it to someone else in the company, and then it get into the wild from there. Sure the people involved may get fired but once it is out there nothing you can do.
And, lastly, *all* systems that are connected in some way are hackable. They may be so hard to hack that it isn't worth it or it may very well be that everything is up to date and there is no known way, yet there is still that very first hack and you are toast. Of course, if you are, personally, a high priority target (say you are one of the current US presidential candidates) then you really ought to take a MUCH higher degree of security measures than I would.
You can't, and shouldn't, live your life in fear because it *may* happen - just be reasonable. If you *really* don't want anyone to know that you like dressing up in S&M clothes and having dwarfs beat you while you have sex with a horse I highly suggest you keep said pictures off of anything that may be hacked. There is nothing on any of my computers that others do not know I do (mostly video games and archery) though I would rather my login/password to some online games not be public.
For the majority things we would rather others not see - don't use public terminal for *any* of that and keep things encrypted to people you trust. That can simply be the password for your online game to pictures of you and your sexual partner. Make sure you control any system that stuff will sit on unencrypted and make sure said systems stay fairly up-to-date on security stuff. There is *no* way to secure those systems yet the vast majority of things we do it really doesn't matter if people track it.
Not that I particularly agree with the ban but it isn't anything new. As said the issue is only with lasers strong enough to reasonably blind people. Even as someone who regularly shoots firearms I fear said lasers more than a firearm - the laser is "on" or "off" and the "on" state lasts until the laser looses power. It is *immediately* dangerous through the whole process and is deceptively so (after all it is only a small dot). For various reasons people do not give it the necessary respect, if they did then I wouldn't mind so much.
The Red Cross has been trying to ban the blinding ones as weapons since the early 90's (and they explicitly state terrorist use even back then). A simple google search turned up a few articles on the front page, I'm sure there are better, yet since the first page results are good enough:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14419521.100-ban-cruel-laser-weapons-says-red-cross.html
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/315/7120/1392
http://www.iht.com/articles/1995/12/18/edmol.t.php
and finally what they actually passed: http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/49de65e1b0a201a7c125641f002d57af?OpenDocument
So, yea, not really anything new and is pretty much in line with international law. I don't know if Australia is a signatory to the law, however as we know from the US detractors that is irrelevant as it is an "international law".
Can't say as I agree with it (even as used as a weapon - better to be blinded than the alternatives) and I would really like one of the things that could pop a balloon, but for most of what the posters here who want to enforce this it *should* be a triumph of international law and the logical progression of said law. If you want your country to follow "international law" then kiss these thing good buy as you cant have them since the early 90's, Bush's term and the current so called "War on Terror" have nothing to do with said laws. We can't simply pick and choose which laws we observe (as is rightly said by Bush detractor's - it is pretty much all or nothing).
Well, given what they post: " 57 percent reported that they weren't comfortable their activities [were being] tracked for advertising purposes...72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs"
Ok, so the consumer wants add targeted to their behavior without tracking it?. Therein is one of the problems - the vast majority of users don't really know what they want - or I guess a better description is that they want something that can not be.
You can not want add at all (that would be my choice) but that isn't going to happen. Unfortunately these things cost money and you either have subscriptions or adds to pay for it. Since I hate subscriptions more than I hate add guess which one I am stuck with. As such we have adds - no real way around it, a few may be wealthy enough to just pay for it but I bet few want to limit themselves to sites that are such (or are totally donation based given how well donations work).
That leaves us with adds. We have three choices.
First and easiest is blanket adds - that is there is no tracking whatsoever. That means me (a conservative in nearly all the sense of the word) will get adds for sexual aides and places for me and my wife (hahaha - I'm a geek also) to swap partners even though everything shows we are not interested. I can't complain because I don't like being tracked - if I;m not tracked I can't get targeted adds.
Second is the track my behavior but do not link it to me individually - well, I have some nice ocean front property in Arizona real cheap for sale too, only a few million and I will transfer my title through E-mail. If they would actually do that then it would be the best case, however I expect to have that e-mail transfer of ocean front property in Arizona first.
This leaves the last option - total removal of any privacy you thought you may have on the internet. This is pretty much how it works now, never ever send anything over the wire that you would never want others to read. Even if there is no issue technologically the stuff isn't legally confidential. So, send some nice trade secrets over E-mail to an unsecured computer and said server (or any of the hops in between) feel like reading it? Oh well, should have encrypted the thing and thought about it beforehand. Same thing goes for browsing history - it can not technically be private as it may very well go over places you have no control over whatsoever (and may not even be in your a country your laws have *any* jurisdiction over).
Such is life on the internet - it was created as a decentralized organization wherein everything is public. Given that don't be terribly surprised when things are, well, public. Further when you agree to things that even further erode your privacy don't be surprised when then do so (say accepting tracking cookies and such). A users ignorance is no excuse especially when the place in question wasn't trying to mislead.
PC games are trying to compete where the consoles win throughly and that is going to be a loosing war. You don't fight a war where your strength is at it's lowest.
As you say the consoles win in many areas and will continue to do so for A LONG time. The companies have a huge amount of control over them and software just works. Graphics wise it is nearly impossible to keep up with them in a general purpose computer - mine also has to run applications that are VERY much not games, and run them well, for me to even begin to think of purchasing said PC. It is first and foremost a work machine, a gaming secondly. You are 100% correct in that analysis.
All that being said the PC has some real strengths. At one time this is why people played a PC, but they aren't as safe (from a companies return point of view) as console games and, while they can have great profits they can also have great losses.
One is cost in development - SDK's are fairly easy to obtain and many are even fairly open. You don't *have* to pay a fortune to MS, Sony, or Nintendo to get your stuff out there and this should allow a greater amount of innovation. To some extent DirectX has hurt this because many feel they have to pay Microsoft and if doing that they might as well go all 360 - however there are other nice 3D packages out there.
Another is expandability (though being able to ship poor products and patch later is one of the things that really hurt PC games) - Neverwinter Nights, Half-Life, and a few other RPG's are a *great* example of this. Unfortunately too many companies see this as being a competitor instead of an asset as they would prefer to sell their game engine for a few tens of thousands to a single company instead of to a few tens of thousands gamers (though as the above games showed - lots of money in the latter case).
And, while the last big win listed not really the last one over all, we have interface. FOr many styles of games a keyboard/mouse offers an unparalleled gaming experience - RPG's come to mind. To a lesser extent FPS are so also, but that probably ends to be overshadowed by the whole "control the hardware" thing from a developers standpoint.
*Shrug* PC's died as a gaming platform when they decided to take on consoles on their own turf instead of doing what they do best. Games like Half-Life, Neverwinter Nights, and quite a few others would *never* have done what they did on consoles. Unfortunately game companies
For myself gaming has been on the down slide since around the late 90's, I'm a puzzle/RPG fan with a side interest in strategy games. Consoles do bad there, though a few CRPG's do stand out (Final Fantasy VII for instance) and some of the tactics games have done well. While my genre has never been one of the large multi-tens of millions profit centers we are fairly dedicated and have nowhere to go as there has been VERY few games released that are decent (not a MMO fan - I'm not going to pay a monthly fee for other user to create crappy content).
I still expect games to slowly move back into that sector as they mature (just as other entertainment forms matured back into story/fun driven modes) but unfortunately I will most likely be in my 40's or even 50's by the time this occurs though I still expect to be gaming then. I find it sad that the current pinnacle of those games occurred in the late 90's early 00's as those games weren't really that good compared to what is possible - just that gaming companies abandoned them as it had better margins to produce flashy graphics (though I also admit I like those graphics and have a few games just because of them). Flashy graphics are reaching their limits and hopefully within the next 20 years will shift back towards fun gaming - which the PC is very well suited for several genres.
While Mila is quite attractive, I'm not quite ~25 anymore - in fact I'm quite a bit older than that. As such she kinda looks like a kid (though a very nice looking one). As far as legality goes, yep very much past that point and I can't say I would complain of one was interested in me (haha, yea right).
:)
However I find Alex to be quite nice. She is even a fuzz older than me so she has that whole "older woman" thing going and is still on the quite attractive side. She isn't enough older that it is strange (only a couple of years) and she has a fairly decent body *and* I like her humor so I wouldn't complain.
As for their voice, well no question - even when not in character I prefer Mila. But then neither are really my favorite voice in the world so I guess that isn't so much of a variable in the whole equation.
Of course since in reality I will never have said choice it is all academic anyway - there are quite a few super models I would rather have regardless their age so those two are still low on the whole "I want" totem pole
To put it simply: people who were betting on a company tanking usually can't sue because the company didn't do so. It should be obvious why this isn't so, though I suppose the lawyers in question figure that the chance of a great payout (or settlement) is worth the risk. I'm generally not in favor of most tort reform, but in cases like this I would *love* to see the lawyers disbarred for grossly wasting a companies time/money along with being liable for the costs. The US'es justice system *used* to be about a human applying laws but has slowly shifted to if something is *technically* correct or not. There are many borderline cases that should make it to court and is where being a human should allow one to make a choice, but in this case does *anyone* think it is actually worth doing?
I can very much see if you were a long term investor suing a company did something intentionally to create a market where those selling short made a lot of money. Yet, I can't see how suing a company for trying to stay, well, a company would work out. Were they in some form of bankruptcy then I could see it, but they aren't. If this somehow retained them being a company yet increased their shareholder value then I could see the lawsuit (even if I do not agree with it). Yet this is not just like, but is exactly, suing a company because it didn't do as badly as you expected.
As such good luck with that lawsuit. Well, not true - I hope the people bringing on the lawsuit felt what it was like for your investors to "sell short" and loose everything their greedy little minds thought they could get. I hope the lawyers pushing it are disbarred for grossly bad legal advice. I hope Yahoo can recoup their legal costs from said investors/lawyers for such a crappy lawsuit that should never have seen the light of day. Sadly while I hope so, I don't expect it.
True - I wouldn't want any manager who did that. It's kinda like watching someone have a spouse cheat on them that they had originally met while the other was married to someone else - well that person cheated on their former spouse did you really think you were that special that it could *never* happen to you?
However, this seems to be more the case of the guy leaving and Microsoft doing an early release so it wouldn't appear as if their project leader was jumping ship on an unfinished product. In fact, from reading through much of the stuff about it (both from the links in the article and others given in this thread) that was a large part of why this individual left Microsoft in the first place.
If true - that he left because of integrity issues in MS wanting him to push out Vista when not ready - then he would most likely be someone I would *like* as a manager. The summary article isn't very clear on it, but from everything said this VERY much seems to be the case.
"Linux is just the kernel, right? GNU/Linux would be an operating system."
The real answer is "depends". In todays loose use of the phrase "Operating System" you would be correct. However, from a fairly strict definition that is entirely incorrect - Linux is the OS and the GNU stuff is applications bundled with the OS. If the GNU stuff *was* the OS it wouldn't run under Hurd (well, assuming that OS worked outside of a beta) or under windows (which most of the GNU tools can be compiled to run there - see Cygwin). That is if you can have GNU/Hurd, GNU/Linux, and GNU/Windows then GNU is *not* part of the OS but a layer on top of it. We don't have Linux/Hurd or BeOS/Windows and to most technical people there is a clear reason why.
Classically the Operating system is the low level stuff - the kernel, device drives, file systems, etc. The shell, user commands, and other stuff were simply applications that translated the OS into something we humans could use. We can easily see that in Dos 5.0 - the OS was fairly bare bones, things like Windows were applications that ran on top of dos.
We still see that in Linux - CSH, BASH, KSH, KDE, GNOME, etc are applications *not* the OS. They are simply our interface to tell the OS what to do. You can choose which one you want and this makes up a great deal of what a distro is. Just that in a fairly loose language we call that "linux" - but being able to use RedHat doesn't mean you will know the ins and outs of Ubunto. You may very well understand the OS (the kernel and it's associated driver infrastructure) but that means little to with what most users will ever goof with - even the vast majority of sys admins.
I know better than to confuse the two, and yet I know I also use the current meaning of the word "OS" as you do. For someone developing an OS it is VERY wrong, though it is what the general populace uses.
You are basically applying Occam's Razor to this problem - make the fewest assumption possible.
For this to be an invasion of the US it has to be some strange insidious plot that has us slowly removing their infrastructure in a manner that gives them time to repair it. This makes little sense at all - especially since it only knocked a few of the peons sites off the web (and they would be the ones we would *want* on the net in such a case) and we are quite capable of killing it entirely in one swoop.
Further, said incompetents are somehow creating an invasion force of a size comparable to Iraq Invasion force that took several months and calling up many National Guard units in the process (while we have a presence in Iraq, they are not an invasion force and - yes - there is a HUGE difference) yet no one anywhere has made note of it. Either that or we plan on nuking them (back to the whole "over 100,000 people deployed for war and no one on the planet has noticed" them for conventional bombing). But then, why bother cutting the lines? The moment one goes off every major player in the world will know it and it will destroy those lines in the process.
Invasion of Iran by the US is stupid, at least from simply having 5 cables cut. I'll buy the govt wants to invade them and would *love* an excuse. I would buy that they have things as ready as they can. But this as a prelude? Nope, our generals are MUCH better than this. If this is truly unusual then we would have to look elsewhere.
If we want a conspiracy theory then there are a few that make sense. The hard line Islamics could be trying their best to cut Iran off from the rest of the world, they haven't been that successful in the past on similar type things. It took how many years to finally bring the WTC down? I also find the US botching a new wiretap device plausible. I am sure we are trying our best to wire tap them (and if we aren't then people need fired) and a new device may very well cause something along these lines. I wouldn't even buy we are doing this to provoke them - again MUCH more effective way to do it and *any* country on the face of this planet has generals that can do a better job of it.
However, as another poster modded at least +3 (my threshhold for viewing posts) there are roughly 50 a year in those areas so 5 in such a period of time isn't *that* far out. This is quite within the realm of bad luck, in fact it isn't even *that* bad a luck from what they linked. This is the simplest explanation and takes the fewest assumption. It doesn't *prove* anything (heck maybe person A is responsible for the troop buildup and person B for the cable cutting), but is very much the most likely. It would be my choice, followed by a botched listening device, followed by some jihadist group.
Mine did too - twice. However Nintendo did "warranty" work on them for a fairly long time (I would assume they do not do it now). I put Warranty in quotes because each time the unit was well outside of their warranty period. Apparently it was common enough that if you called their support line you mostly told them it was doing that and they asked no questions and simply had it repaired. I know it took me longer to get where their local service station was than to convince them to do the repair work.
My last one still works just fine, though I have later Nintendo handhelds that can play my old GB games and never use it, though I *do* fire it up from time to time for the heck of it.
"How is it possible that people still don't get how the GPL works, and still think they can treat it like a contract or something?"
To begin with IANAL so take this with a grain of salt - but it is acting like a contract (in fact, according to the WIKI and several other sources it *is* a contract). In this case if both me and you enter into a valid contract (or license) then you can't universally revoke the contract, I don't even think you can do that if the contract explicitly states it.
One side can not enforce a contract or license, nor once agreed too can they simply revoke it at will. You will note that even though most EULA's contain a clause allowing them to change it at will they always re-ask you to accept when they change them - they very well know that part of the EULA is unenforceable just as this type of change can not be enforced. Otherwise after signing it they could, unilaterally, change the contract to where they owned everything you do for the rest of your life and be perfectly legal.
There is nothing inherent in the GPL in this because there is no need for it - it is basic part of a contract and any contractor should know this otherwise you will frequently get the people who hire you try and jerk you around.
"So the question is (or rather my question, since I'm sure actual legal scholars have already debated it to death) if it turns out that someone up the chain did not have the right to distribute under GPL, does that propagate down the chain to all those who unknowingly redistributed software for which the authority to actually do so was never transferred to them by someone who had it?"
Of course - that's not really a hard question. You can't give away something you don't own. If it were otherwise I could tell you that I gave you an acre in the middle of Central Part in New York and then you could do whatever you wanted with impunity. Nor can you keep something that you don't own, even if you purchased/acquired it in good faith. If you purchase stolen goods they go back to the original owner (your gripe of being out money goes to whomever you purchased said item from, the original owner shouldn't loose their property because someone stole it). Same here.
Since I'm not a lawyer I don't know what would happen with respect to liability to the people on down the chain, after all they were acting in good faith and intellectual property isn't quite the same thing as physical property. For the most part the US justice system doesn't punish people acting in good faith so I doubt that you are automatically liable. However, were you to be doing this type of stuff to get around copyright law then you will most likely be smashed. There are also cases where they may get a judgment from you and it is your responsibility to sue the next person back, them sue the next back, and recurse all the way back to the original person who was actually liable - I don't know if this would be the case.
Though I'm sure a lawyer could tell you immediately which way this works and debate on that ended many years ago, I just do not know. There have been too many times I've seen this occur so there *has* to be enough case law out there that there is little question, I just never saw what the final outcome of the court cases where - just that they were occurring.
"I'm the 4th Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution! I guarantee your right to be free from searches without a court-issued warrant."
No, it doesn't. Lets see what it actually says while not walking down the street: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It garuntees two things - the right against unreasonable searches and warrants can not be over broad and need probable cause.
So, for instance, if a police officer catches you dealing drugs (which is illegal) it is perfectly reasonable to search you and current premises for more drugs - there is no need to wait upon a warrant (of which your fourth amendment walking down the street apparently doesn't realize). Of course, they may find other drugs, contact lists, firearms, and all sorts of nice things and it wouldn't violate it. Depending on other instances it may be quite reasonable to search your phone, at the very least in the investigation from there on out it *will* be searched.
However, if while driving down the street some random person says "Look - bm_Luethke is dealing drugs!!!" they can't simply pop into my house and search over everything - that fails, at the least, the "Oath" part.
There are MANY MANY cases where there is no need for a warrant- I'm reminded of an episode of Cops I watched recently where they got a call from a neighbor that heard cries for help and came to investigate. Courts have generally held that under such circumstances the police do not need a warrant for simply entry (and once there anything in plain open site is fair game) - the cries for help constitutes a "reasonable search". The people stood in the window and told them not to enter that they had to have a warrant, the police informed them otherwise, eventually busted the door down, and found pretty much nothing. The people involved had taken "legal" advice from the same place your fourth amendment did while walking down the street - in this case it was "reasonable" because in a hostage situation they would have done the same thing. The initial witnessed cries for help superseded the latter "leave me alone" stuff - had they found anything illegal they would have been prosecuted for it (it was obvious the people were stoned, but they had at least enough sense to hide the stuff out of plain view though they were obviously afraid it would be found - and if it wasn't in plain view then they had to have a warrant).
In short, it doesn't provide what you seem to think it does. It never did and probably never will and has nothing to do with DoJ or the NSA (or the BATF or CIA if you are a right winger ranting about the 90's, though at least the courts did find in favor of the Ruby Ridge/Waco people - but then those people's rights were A-Ok to shit on and *actually* publicly kill most of them).
"But the more important point I want to make is that you make it sound dirty that a megacorp might derive some use from a free software project without contributing very much back to it."
I normally do not respond to AC's, but in this case I will.
I never said it was "dirty", for many in the OSS crowd such a thing is and you reading into my statement something that isn't there. I'm generally on ESR's side in the whole thing (in fact, I would tend to go more than he does). I also prefer a BSD style license for much the same reason - I hope anything I have ever done is distributed to as many people and had enriched their lives as much as possible. If someone else wants to market it, then fine have at it.
However, many in the OSS crowd also seem to think because IBM is doing a lot with the them that they are somehow fellow Believers - they aren't. They are making money and Linux makes a WHOLE heap of sense - they can very well have some people sit back and simply vett changes, that doesn't mean they aren't making their own also. I did not intend to mean (and don't think it would normally be read that way either) that they had no payed Linux Developers - in fact I personally know several of them.
The OSS community tends to feel betrayed when IBM doesn't do something "pure" when IBM has *never* been a purist there. They are company that is making a sound financial decision, I even expect that some of the higher up managers even get a nice warm fuzzy feeling in doing the right thing also (I know I would - always a win when you get to do both a sound financial decision *and* do something good for the community). Open sourcing OS/2 is done under the same premise and it makes a terrible financial decision to do so given the ties it's source has.
Yes, but then again they weren't trying to be clear of *Microsoft's* IP - and that is whole different story. At least, as far as I know Sun wasn't - they were trying to be clear of a somewhat OSS friendly (or at least OSS dependent) community/company. Microsoft is not going to handle anything that might maybe possibly in some way infringe upon their IP being out in the wild in a OSS project from an actual company that they can litigate against. Heck they funded an obviously sinking company with obviously no case whatsoever in an attempt to just discredit OSS, this would be a slam dunk compared to that.
IBM is big enough to fight it, no doubt, but they aren't going to make anywhere close to enough for it to be worth it from a business point of view. As much as I see IBM as a traditional corporation that only really sees OSS as a way to save money (why not have competent volunteers develop everything and only pay a few to vett the changes to make sure they are what you want?) I'll even bet they wish they could justify it - after all a "win" would probably boost shareholder confidence and most large companies generally like to stick it to their competition.
Then, of course, it may not be simply a case of "might maybe possibly in some way infringe upon their IP" and in fact totally 100% infringe upon it. In which case IBM isn't *ever* going to find it in their best interest do release it.
I, and the vast majority of people that read Slashdot, don't really know either (someone from IBM who worked on the project would need to weigh in). In any case if it were to make them money then they would do it. Given their past history I would guess if they felt they could get away with it they would (said "Good Will" has made them quite a bit of money). In fact I would also say the way they said "no" was an attempt at saying they wish they could - after all unless they wanted to send another message the easiest way to say "no" was to ignore it.
"Why should some hiker feel special because he hikes instead of playing video games?"
:)
Simple - because in this instance they aren't as good as you, can't handle it, and seek to turn your advantage into a disadvantage. It happens all the time - that why some things are "real" sports and others are "not real" - in almost every single case "not real" sports are one that the individual can not compete in. This extends to many things other than sports - never let many artists know that you think code can be an art form because you will be quickly told "yours doesn't count".
You want to see anything that isn't "real" just make it such that whatever that person has in spades isn't what it takes to win. I practiced Judo for about 4 years - it is one thing that is highly skill over brawn (especially for ones that are *really* good at submissions and chokes). It is amusing to watch a 220+ pound football player (in college so quite athletic) get choked out by a 98 pound female declare Judo a non-sport that only losers would play
note: that's not to say everyone does that, the vast majority of people accept it and continue on and some worked to get where they needed to be to compete (the latter being the competitive people who were secure in themselves). Only those that are insecure in themselves have that need to win or ridicule anyone who beats them and this is true in pretty much *anything*.
"regardless of whatever romanticized ideal of the independent bookseller you cling to."
DING DING DING - we have a winner here.
The really sad thing is that you can *never* compete with this. The Norman Rockwell vision of something is stronger than anything you can ever do, show, or say short of if you could make people live in that time period again and suddenly remember all the crap. Small independent booksellers were great if you wanted to socialize, horrid if you actually wanted something they didn't stock (and they tended to only stock what they were interested in).
You can not reason someone out of an idea that they didn't use reason to come up with.