Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Stargate, Firefly, or Andromeda
Personally, I'd like to see someone use the force to move a giant ring on the fifth space station (other four blew up) to cause really cool, Amiga Video Toaster generated graphics to show a wormhole which leads to various strange new worlds where people go to find green women that the captain can sleep with (even if it is against the prime directive) and to illegally (only according to those alliance jerks, so it's really okay) trade cows robbed from trains to raise money to convince new worlds to join the commonwealth and stop the forces of the void lead by Darth Vader.
LEDs wear out as well, and they're much more complicated than lamps, so they'll probably be even more expensive. They almost definitely won't have the same vivid colors as anything else because the LED spectrum for each color has always been considerably narrower than incandescent bulbs can produce.
So we're looking at something that will probably last longer (but not forever), cost much more, and look much worse.
No thanks. To be honest, CRT is still the most vivid, longest lasting, highest contrast, and least expensive. The only thing that any of the other things have going for them is size.
Of course...things change. Sometimes old technologies overcome their limitations.
Seems like CRT has a lot fewer things to overcome, though.
But they don't make any claims as to its security. Microsoft's software exceeds what it claims to do.
Read the EULA. It claims to be able to do nothing. You're using it with the hope that it exceeds the claims, but that's *your* expectation, not Microsoft's promise. Making an insecure product that you aren't claiming is secure isn't against the law.
Suing Microsoft for insecurity is like suing Kool-Aid because their drink doesn't taste like Mountain Dew.
Of course, IMHO the reason we're in this mess is Microsoft's usage of their monopoly, which is actionable. I doubt we'd be in this mess if someone had done something about it because the attack vectors of IE and Office would probably be gone from the OS when the company was split.
So that's what we should be hoping for. I'd rather not have new laws that make incompetence a crime. After all, nobody's perfect. We'd all end up guilty, and I don't want that kind of power in the hands of our leaders.
Forget about whose to blame. Lets talk about law. Myspace isn't breaking it.
What gives the government the right to tell Myspace that their service must not be anonymous when most of the rest of the internet gets to be?
If we're going to have a change, it needs to be a change that everybody agrees to make - a change to the system itself; to how we connect to the internet. I don't think that's going to happen, though. The anonymous protection is sort of a double-edged sword: while it keeps predators safe, it also keeps the young anonymous unless they reveal themselves.
Which is very much what I'd like to continue. I was quite angry when the DMV forced my 18 year old sister to put a big, red "UNDER 21" sign on the bottom of her car tag. Leave anonymity alone. Taking it away does more harm than good.
The big deal is that it only affect music CDRs. Not all CDRs.
The only reason I can think to use music CDRs is if you're using a standalone CD recorder which will only take music CDRs (this is a common, though artificial limitation).
The RIAA has not yet gone after those who dare produce music (independent bands, labels, social networking, etc.) without being under their auspices.
Except in the purchase of blank music CDs, of course, which cost more because you're going to presumably put music on them owned by the RIAA. And they have sent take-down notices to bands who've got their own MP3s up on the web.
You might also say that the mandatory DRM in ipods hurts bands who want their music shared by keeping it from being shared by the uninitiated.
Also FPGA have a rather specialized use, as for majority of applications such flexibility is not really needed....for general computing.
I don't think you quite understand the meaning of "specialized." More general is sort of the opposite of more specialized. FPGAs are less specialized than pretty much everything else.
I imagine they'll end up seeing a lot of neat uses when they're cheap and small enough to replace MCUs - which are currently what people use when they want to do generic processing of various things from various locations.
Who determines what constitutes a controversy and what doesn't? A law like this concentrates a fantastic amount of power in the hands of government to dub one issue "controversial"
So the problem is that the metric isn't well defined. Getting rid of the bill does, of course, solve this problem, but it remains that the majority voice isn't heard.
How about we make it simple? Petition enough people and you get to talk.
Why isn't there a real pastafarian controversy? Because not enough people are serious about it. Why is there a creationist one? Because enough people are. We can deal with the "who decides" issue more formally if lots of little minorities are drowning out the majority and nothing is getting done. That time isn't now.
Right now the majority's view isn't being heard because of the voice of a single minority view (corporate interest).
Not really a good comparison since your house is private and websites are essentially open to all comers.
It's more like checking the locks on the backside of a Walmart. Suspicious, but not illegal, and not nearly as unethical.
Heck, you may actually have a legitimate reason to be back there - such as offloading goods from a truck.
The same can be said for security vulnerabilities in websites. You can easily stumble across them when you're not even looking in places that you're supposed to be.
That severely limits the market, doesn't it? It seems like about the only thing you'd be looking at is for mp3 players or embedded devices - and then only for ones that are using codecs developed for x86 or whatever they're making this for.
I mean, what other Linux companies require mpeg4 for anything at all?
needs to be doing stuff for me, a Californian. I want her to get us off of using Oil, not
I don't think you represent the majority. Clearly, the majority of people in California elect leaders because they're entertaining. Why else elect the governator?
I imagine she's got an bill in the works to put giraffes in the air (possibly nsfw, but no explicit imagery), and another one (in conjunction with the governor) to officially change the pronunciation of California to "Cal-ee-phone-ee-ah."
Not that my state is much better...some of us Floridians have difficulty even voting right.
I don't know about the rest of them, but my job description doesn't actually include hand-holding someone through computer use.
I just do that because I want my coworkers to get their jobs done well, so I do it, and I don't mind - especially if they learn something (I've got a teacher inclination). My ability with computers stems from the fact that I try to learn as much as I can about everything that I can. That's part of it.
The reason I get upset is the implicit lack of respect. Knowing how to use a computer is like learning how to drive: it's an expected part of society. You don't ask your mechanic how to drive, but people are regularly asking IT people how to use their computers. Asking the mechanic to do something like that would be disrespectful - he's not responsible for your ability to drive. It doesn't take a tradesman with a vast knowledge in his field to do it. Most five year olds can grasp basic computer operation.
If you work in a job where people didn't treat what you do with respect, how would you feel about them? It takes more patience than many people have, and they can't keep their frustrations to themselves.
Of course, if your actual job is teaching people how to use computers I could understand that you might feel differently about it, but I don't think that condition applies to most IT people.
Most jobs are to do one of these things: 1) Make computers do something they haven't done before. 2) Make computers do something that they used to do but don't do anymore. 3) Figure out the cause of condition #2.
Only a very small number of IT professionals are actually responsible for showing the users how to use their own computers, but this comes up a lot in the other jobs, and makes some of us a little testy.
will also prohibit FCC to enforce mandatory interoperability and adherence to standards
No it won't. Their position as enforcers will remain. It'll just keep them from using that position to making their own laws, which isn't the same thing at all. They'll still be the ones to find you and get you arrested if you start broadcasting your own pirate radio station.
I think this generally makes sense. The FCC is supposed to be just an enforcer, aren't they?
I'm not sure that I wouldn't prefer the FCC to be the ones making the rules, though, since the alternative is that Congress makes 'em, but it might be for the best. What process do you have to overturn FCC mandates? How can you guarantee that you know about all the rules that they've made up?
Congress has a well-known process in place already to deal with both these questions.
Another thought there is that a radiator actually gets pretty hot.
Like most simple plastics, legos are probably thermoplastics. Thermoplastics require high temperature and pressure to work (i.e. you need a vaccuum pump mixed with an oven to use 'em). Note that in general you can *melt* them at low pressure, but if you want your plastics to not be full of bubbles, you need high pressure as well.
That's hard to handle. You need special equipment if you want it to survive under those conditions, which adds a lot to the price.
The materials it uses have to be semi-liquid. That's a pretty strict requirement.
Finding a material that can be as hard as legos but that can become liquid at low temperature and pressure is expensive (and it'll melt if you leave it out in a hot car). (BTW, I'm speaking from experience here; I've got a tub of the stuff and did at test to find this out).
On the other hand, a desktop CNC machine is around $1200 off ebay, and it looks like decent CAD-CAM software is around $500 (I could be wrong here, but it's not going to be hugely expensive).
It's cheaper, and you aren't actually limited to things that can be squeezed out of a tube - you're limited to anything that can be cut, which is significantly more materials. You can even handle metal.
You have a couple of vague terms in your last message that I hope you could clarify: Define NormalSpeak. New speech codec that only works on English? Define "legal doings." Lawyer guano? Define "boil this down." Are you talking about putting legal doings in a bubbling pot of water? Define "us mortals." Presumably, it means that Cokie Roberts is immortal. Based upon past assumptions, this means that once Cokie Roberts boils down the lawyer guano, it's safe for everone else to use. Do you make bowls out of them or something? Or do you eat it to become immortal yourself?
To be serious, I know what you probably mean. The point is, though, that the language of the law will always be with us. It helps let one say exactly what they mean without room for interpretation, or to fit all interpretations that they want it to fit.
All you need to do is burn the images (DVDs) when you get the laptop, and Sony positively nags you repeatedly to do it. Also, if you leave the recovery partition in place you can do it again later.
This may be true for Sony, but it isn't for HP. You can burn one copy of the restore discs, and only one. If they break or you lose them you are then entirely without restore discs.
FYI, I was in band in High School and college, and am still active as an alumnus of Kappa Kappa Psi, the "band fraternity" (featured in the movie Drumline, btw).
Conducting, however, is a lot harder than it looks, especially during rehearsal.
For conductors of student groups, they also have to keep the members of the ensemble engaged through tasteful storytelling while not...
This is almost always only true for band directors - people who have received training as teachers. Teaching!=Conducting. I'd go so far as saying that their very different things. In fact, conducting to teach is different from any other kind. It's must less subtle and requires much less talent on the conducting side of things. This is also true (but usually to a lesser extent) of drum majoring because you can't see subtle hand movements when you're 50 yards away from the drum major, as often happens in marching bands.
Student conductors/drum majors hardly ever have to deal with entertaining the troops or with mistakes (unless you've got a wierd band director that goes in for that kind of thing). The few times that there are student "leaders" are in larger groups where the students are more professional - i.e. student orchestras, universities, etc. They *may* get to deal with interpretations of the music that they want to change, but that's not nearly the same thing. It doesn't mean compiling a huge list of things they want differently. Besides, a good orchestra will respond to a conductor so that he doesn't have to talk to get his point across.
Ask any marching band student turned drum major. Being a good musician does not mean you'll be a good conductor...
Of course, most of the people who actually end up doing this generally have a talent for it. Of all of the Drum Majors I've known well (off the top of my head, I've known 15 very well - watched them practice,hung out, etc.), only one of them couldn't do almost as well by listening to the tape *once* or five minutes looking over the music as they could after doing five or ten performances.
Of those drum majors, only three of them could almost as well with their primary instruments (two were trumpet players, and one was a percussionist). I can only conclude, then, that being a drum major and keeping track of the entire score is significantly easier than playing instruments and keeping track of a single note at a time for people who have the knack of it.
It should be noted, in fact, that at a professional level, musicians are generally so good that they don't need a conductor much (in the exceptionally good quality sound stages we've got today), and the conductor is so good that he needs very little preparation for any specific piece. Of course, the conductors are generally so good that having them adds that extra little bit of cohesion that makes a good performance into a great one.
Being that good is really hard - not because they've got a lot to keep track of, but because they can always get it right the first time.
I think that security is harder because virtually no one gets it right the first time...or the second...or the third...
I don't think that "able to survive without support" is a sufficient definition for living organism. Then you're left with the difficult task of what "support" means in such a way that covers clearly alive organisms.
By what I perceive as your definition, all of the parasites living within one's body aren't alive because they're relying on another organism for support in exactly the same way that the fetus does. That doesn't make sense.
Further, if you're definition of support is sufficiently broad, you could say that children aren't alive since they depend on parents for support.
With respect to organic life, you could say something about "if it has metabolic processes and it has it's own DNA, then it's an organism unto itself," but that means that Siamese twins are one organism, which also doesn't seem right...
Now they can do all the stem cell research they want with no ethical problems.
Unless you count that pesky hippocratic oath. Drawing amniotic fluid from the mother essentially amounts to stabbing her with an incredibly long needle. Then there's the chance you might hit the baby...
So I'm reading this as 100% chance of harm to the mother this way, and a great deal smaller chance of hitting the infant in exchange for the extremely uncertain possibility of helping people in the future.
Sounds like an ethical quandry for a lot more people than the first case does even if it isn't as large of one for those who consider abortion to be murder.
Linux fails at them completely (I don't know if you've played around with linux media players but they're crap for the most part...
Off the top of my head, mplayer can play these video formats: mov (quicktime), wmv, mpg, mpeg4 (in avi), all the original avi codecs these audio formats: flac, mp3, mp4, wav, wma
For video drivers it can use X11, SVGALib (i.e. no dependance upon X), aalib, GGI, OpenGL, and probably a lot of others I'm forgetting.
For audio drivers it can use ALSA, Jack, and a lot more that I don't consider important.:)
The only thing that even comes close to this is vlc, and it runs on both Linux and Windows. It can't do quite as much, though.
The interface has a slider bar, play button, fast forward, rewind, stop, and other buttons you'd find on a DVD player.
This is far and away more advanced than anything available in Windows. It is also the most popular media player for Linux, so I don't know why you haven't tried it - or if you have, why you'd label it "crap."
Your other points are quite valid, though.
The only areas that I know that linux is superior is in free media players, free programming systems, and audio stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Stargate, Firefly, or Andromeda
Personally, I'd like to see someone use the force to move a giant ring on the fifth space station (other four blew up) to cause really cool, Amiga Video Toaster generated graphics to show a wormhole which leads to various strange new worlds where people go to find green women that the captain can sleep with (even if it is against the prime directive) and to illegally (only according to those alliance jerks, so it's really okay) trade cows robbed from trains to raise money to convince new worlds to join the commonwealth and stop the forces of the void lead by Darth Vader.
Isn't that a step in the wrong direction?
LEDs wear out as well, and they're much more complicated than lamps, so they'll probably be even more expensive.
They almost definitely won't have the same vivid colors as anything else because the LED spectrum for each color has always been considerably narrower than incandescent bulbs can produce.
So we're looking at something that will probably last longer (but not forever), cost much more, and look much worse.
No thanks. To be honest, CRT is still the most vivid, longest lasting, highest contrast, and least expensive. The only thing that any of the other things have going for them is size.
Of course...things change. Sometimes old technologies overcome their limitations.
Seems like CRT has a lot fewer things to overcome, though.
But they don't make any claims as to its security. Microsoft's software exceeds what it claims to do.
Read the EULA. It claims to be able to do nothing. You're using it with the hope that it exceeds the claims, but that's *your* expectation, not Microsoft's promise. Making an insecure product that you aren't claiming is secure isn't against the law.
Suing Microsoft for insecurity is like suing Kool-Aid because their drink doesn't taste like Mountain Dew.
Of course, IMHO the reason we're in this mess is Microsoft's usage of their monopoly, which is actionable. I doubt we'd be in this mess if someone had done something about it because the attack vectors of IE and Office would probably be gone from the OS when the company was split.
So that's what we should be hoping for. I'd rather not have new laws that make incompetence a crime. After all, nobody's perfect. We'd all end up guilty, and I don't want that kind of power in the hands of our leaders.
Just get a Palm..
Then its pretty useful for the things that might occupy the most of your time.
It's also *much* more fun to program when you need to do it yourself. It's also easier to get it to talk to other devices.
And get other options.
I think they actually play their MP3s on the machine that goes "ping,", so Microsoft's example is just crazy.
Forget about whose to blame. Lets talk about law. Myspace isn't breaking it.
What gives the government the right to tell Myspace that their service must not be anonymous when most of the rest of the internet gets to be?
If we're going to have a change, it needs to be a change that everybody agrees to make - a change to the system itself; to how we connect to the internet. I don't think that's going to happen, though. The anonymous protection is sort of a double-edged sword: while it keeps predators safe, it also keeps the young anonymous unless they reveal themselves.
Which is very much what I'd like to continue. I was quite angry when the DMV forced my 18 year old sister to put a big, red "UNDER 21" sign on the bottom of her car tag. Leave anonymity alone. Taking it away does more harm than good.
Here you go.
The big deal is that it only affect music CDRs. Not all CDRs.
The only reason I can think to use music CDRs is if you're using a standalone CD recorder which will only take music CDRs (this is a common, though artificial limitation).
The RIAA has not yet gone after those who dare produce music (independent bands, labels, social networking, etc.) without being under their auspices.
Except in the purchase of blank music CDs, of course, which cost more because you're going to presumably put music on them owned by the RIAA. And they have sent take-down notices to bands who've got their own MP3s up on the web.
You might also say that the mandatory DRM in ipods hurts bands who want their music shared by keeping it from being shared by the uninitiated.
That's not exactly nothing, is it?
Also FPGA have a rather specialized use, as for majority of applications such flexibility is not really needed. ...for general computing.
I don't think you quite understand the meaning of "specialized." More general is sort of the opposite of more specialized. FPGAs are less specialized than pretty much everything else.
I imagine they'll end up seeing a lot of neat uses when they're cheap and small enough to replace MCUs - which are currently what people use when they want to do generic processing of various things from various locations.
Who determines what constitutes a controversy and what doesn't? A law like this concentrates a fantastic amount of power in the hands of government to dub one issue "controversial"
So the problem is that the metric isn't well defined. Getting rid of the bill does, of course, solve this problem, but it remains that the majority voice isn't heard.
How about we make it simple? Petition enough people and you get to talk.
Why isn't there a real pastafarian controversy? Because not enough people are serious about it. Why is there a creationist one? Because enough people are. We can deal with the "who decides" issue more formally if lots of little minorities are drowning out the majority and nothing is getting done. That time isn't now.
Right now the majority's view isn't being heard because of the voice of a single minority view (corporate interest).
Not really a good comparison since your house is private and websites are essentially open to all comers.
It's more like checking the locks on the backside of a Walmart. Suspicious, but not illegal, and not nearly as unethical.
Heck, you may actually have a legitimate reason to be back there - such as offloading goods from a truck.
The same can be said for security vulnerabilities in websites. You can easily stumble across them when you're not even looking in places that you're supposed to be.
That severely limits the market, doesn't it? It seems like about the only thing you'd be looking at is for mp3 players or embedded devices - and then only for ones that are using codecs developed for x86 or whatever they're making this for.
I mean, what other Linux companies require mpeg4 for anything at all?
needs to be doing stuff for me, a Californian. I want her to get us off of using Oil, not
I don't think you represent the majority. Clearly, the majority of people in California elect leaders because they're entertaining. Why else elect the governator?
I imagine she's got an bill in the works to put giraffes in the air (possibly nsfw, but no explicit imagery), and another one (in conjunction with the governor) to officially change the pronunciation of California to "Cal-ee-phone-ee-ah."
Not that my state is much better...some of us Floridians have difficulty even voting right.
So...maybe this is a joke? I like to think so.
I don't know about the rest of them, but my job description doesn't actually include hand-holding someone through computer use.
I just do that because I want my coworkers to get their jobs done well, so I do it, and I don't mind - especially if they learn something (I've got a teacher inclination). My ability with computers stems from the fact that I try to learn as much as I can about everything that I can. That's part of it.
The reason I get upset is the implicit lack of respect. Knowing how to use a computer is like learning how to drive: it's an expected part of society. You don't ask your mechanic how to drive, but people are regularly asking IT people how to use their computers. Asking the mechanic to do something like that would be disrespectful - he's not responsible for your ability to drive. It doesn't take a tradesman with a vast knowledge in his field to do it. Most five year olds can grasp basic computer operation.
If you work in a job where people didn't treat what you do with respect, how would you feel about them? It takes more patience than many people have, and they can't keep their frustrations to themselves.
Of course, if your actual job is teaching people how to use computers I could understand that you might feel differently about it, but I don't think that condition applies to most IT people.
Most jobs are to do one of these things:
1) Make computers do something they haven't done before.
2) Make computers do something that they used to do but don't do anymore.
3) Figure out the cause of condition #2.
Only a very small number of IT professionals are actually responsible for showing the users how to use their own computers, but this comes up a lot in the other jobs, and makes some of us a little testy.
will also prohibit FCC to enforce mandatory interoperability and adherence to standards
No it won't. Their position as enforcers will remain.
It'll just keep them from using that position to making their own laws, which isn't the same thing at all. They'll still be the ones to find you and get you arrested if you start broadcasting your own pirate radio station.
I think this generally makes sense. The FCC is supposed to be just an enforcer, aren't they?
I'm not sure that I wouldn't prefer the FCC to be the ones making the rules, though, since the alternative is that Congress makes 'em, but it might be for the best. What process do you have to overturn FCC mandates? How can you guarantee that you know about all the rules that they've made up?
Congress has a well-known process in place already to deal with both these questions.
That's great, but I'd prefer an AdrianBar Boe-Bot kit. You know, those things have the strength of five gorillas.
Another thought there is that a radiator actually gets pretty hot.
Like most simple plastics, legos are probably thermoplastics. Thermoplastics require high temperature and pressure to work (i.e. you need a vaccuum pump mixed with an oven to use 'em). Note that in general you can *melt* them at low pressure, but if you want your plastics to not be full of bubbles, you need high pressure as well.
That's hard to handle. You need special equipment if you want it to survive under those conditions, which adds a lot to the price.
The materials it uses have to be semi-liquid. That's a pretty strict requirement.
Finding a material that can be as hard as legos but that can become liquid at low temperature and pressure is expensive (and it'll melt if you leave it out in a hot car). (BTW, I'm speaking from experience here; I've got a tub of the stuff and did at test to find this out).
On the other hand, a desktop CNC machine is around $1200 off ebay, and it looks like decent CAD-CAM software is around $500 (I could be wrong here, but it's not going to be hugely expensive).
It's cheaper, and you aren't actually limited to things that can be squeezed out of a tube - you're limited to anything that can be cut, which is significantly more materials. You can even handle metal.
You have a couple of vague terms in your last message that I hope you could clarify:
Define NormalSpeak. New speech codec that only works on English?
Define "legal doings." Lawyer guano?
Define "boil this down." Are you talking about putting legal doings in a bubbling pot of water?
Define "us mortals." Presumably, it means that Cokie Roberts is immortal. Based upon past assumptions, this means that once Cokie Roberts boils down the lawyer guano, it's safe for everone else to use. Do you make bowls out of them or something? Or do you eat it to become immortal yourself?
To be serious, I know what you probably mean. The point is, though, that the language of the law will always be with us. It helps let one say exactly what they mean without room for interpretation, or to fit all interpretations that they want it to fit.
All you need to do is burn the images (DVDs) when you get the laptop, and Sony positively nags you repeatedly to do it. Also, if you leave the recovery partition in place you can do it again later.
This may be true for Sony, but it isn't for HP. You can burn one copy of the restore discs, and only one. If they break or you lose them you are then entirely without restore discs.
FYI, I was in band in High School and college, and am still active as an alumnus of Kappa Kappa Psi, the "band fraternity" (featured in the movie Drumline, btw).
...
Conducting, however, is a lot harder than it looks, especially during rehearsal.
For conductors of student groups, they also have to keep the members of the ensemble engaged through tasteful storytelling while not
This is almost always only true for band directors - people who have received training as teachers. Teaching!=Conducting. I'd go so far as saying that their very different things. In fact, conducting to teach is different from any other kind. It's must less subtle and requires much less talent on the conducting side of things. This is also true (but usually to a lesser extent) of drum majoring because you can't see subtle hand movements when you're 50 yards away from the drum major, as often happens in marching bands.
Student conductors/drum majors hardly ever have to deal with entertaining the troops or with mistakes (unless you've got a wierd band director that goes in for that kind of thing). The few times that there are student "leaders" are in larger groups where the students are more professional - i.e. student orchestras, universities, etc. They *may* get to deal with interpretations of the music that they want to change, but that's not nearly the same thing. It doesn't mean compiling a huge list of things they want differently. Besides, a good orchestra will respond to a conductor so that he doesn't have to talk to get his point across.
Ask any marching band student turned drum major. Being a good musician does not mean you'll be a good conductor...
Of course, most of the people who actually end up doing this generally have a talent for it. Of all of the Drum Majors I've known well (off the top of my head, I've known 15 very well - watched them practice,hung out, etc.), only one of them couldn't do almost as well by listening to the tape *once* or five minutes looking over the music as they could after doing five or ten performances.
Of those drum majors, only three of them could almost as well with their primary instruments (two were trumpet players, and one was a percussionist). I can only conclude, then, that being a drum major and keeping track of the entire score is significantly easier than playing instruments and keeping track of a single note at a time for people who have the knack of it.
It should be noted, in fact, that at a professional level, musicians are generally so good that they don't need a conductor much (in the exceptionally good quality sound stages we've got today), and the conductor is so good that he needs very little preparation for any specific piece. Of course, the conductors are generally so good that having them adds that extra little bit of cohesion that makes a good performance into a great one.
Being that good is really hard - not because they've got a lot to keep track of, but because they can always get it right the first time.
I think that security is harder because virtually no one gets it right the first time...or the second...or the third...
I don't think that "able to survive without support" is a sufficient definition for living organism. Then you're left with the difficult task of what "support" means in such a way that covers clearly alive organisms.
By what I perceive as your definition, all of the parasites living within one's body aren't alive because they're relying on another organism for support in exactly the same way that the fetus does. That doesn't make sense.
Further, if you're definition of support is sufficiently broad, you could say that children aren't alive since they depend on parents for support.
With respect to organic life, you could say something about "if it has metabolic processes and it has it's own DNA, then it's an organism unto itself," but that means that Siamese twins are one organism, which also doesn't seem right...
Now they can do all the stem cell research they want with no ethical problems.
Unless you count that pesky hippocratic oath. Drawing amniotic fluid from the mother essentially amounts to stabbing her with an incredibly long needle. Then there's the chance you might hit the baby...
So I'm reading this as 100% chance of harm to the mother this way, and a great deal smaller chance of hitting the infant in exchange for the extremely uncertain possibility of helping people in the future.
Sounds like an ethical quandry for a lot more people than the first case does even if it isn't as large of one for those who consider abortion to be murder.
Linux fails at them completely (I don't know if you've played around with linux media players but they're crap for the most part...
:)
Off the top of my head, mplayer can play
these video formats: mov (quicktime), wmv, mpg, mpeg4 (in avi), all the original avi codecs
these audio formats: flac, mp3, mp4, wav, wma
For video drivers it can use X11, SVGALib (i.e. no dependance upon X), aalib, GGI, OpenGL, and probably a lot of others I'm forgetting.
For audio drivers it can use ALSA, Jack, and a lot more that I don't consider important.
The only thing that even comes close to this is vlc, and it runs on both Linux and Windows. It can't do quite as much, though.
The interface has a slider bar, play button, fast forward, rewind, stop, and other buttons you'd find on a DVD player.
This is far and away more advanced than anything available in Windows. It is also the most popular media player for Linux, so I don't know why you haven't tried it - or if you have, why you'd label it "crap."
Your other points are quite valid, though.
The only areas that I know that linux is superior is in free media players, free programming systems, and audio stuff.
Attempts are being made to correct the problem.
We need to fix this for the children (TM).