Unfortunately, you transfer the liability to the hardware manufaturers, the courts, and the government.
And this is a very strong point against all this ludicrosity. The US court system is hugely overstressed and congested at the moment, mainly due to the existence of hundreds of short-sighted, moralistic, corporate-sponsored laws. Yes, let's add a whole new set to the mess, shall we? It's a perfect excuse to increase the size of the judiciary, and its support arm the police forces.
How many of you don't think you're living in a police state?
It consists of inter-linked goods, stocks, bonds, labor, and currency markets. In these markets two types of agents interact: Live: People acting as buyers, sellers, regulators, and intermediaries.
Well, they seem to be either slashdotted or not responding, but either way... I bet they don't take black market factors into account. Look at the War on Some Drugs -- $65 billion dollars per year, and that's only in the US domestic market.
Factor that in, and then see what happens when you eliminate the spending on the war, and the prices come a-tumbling down!
Funny, isn't it, that the biggest buyer of ad time during the SB was a beer company. Then along comes the American Legacy Foundation telling us about the evils of tobacco (another drug), and last of all the White House Office of Drug Control Policy telling us to "just say no". Yeah, that works for sex as well.
Of course, it's not a drug if the government's making tax money off it, is it?
Let's not limit ourselves to how much we can pollute our atmosphere with byproducts from our own planet, let's bring in an almost unlimited supply from offworld!
The key CD is now scratched which hangs the authenticator forced a quite ungraceful reboot and corrupted my hard drive.
how is a programmer expected to deal with the CD being scratched?
Gracefully. You don't blow away half the user's hard drive if you can't read data from somewhere else. You notify them that there's a problem reading the CD, and terminate without further modification. Bad analogy.
The last time I used Word a drive filled during a save operation and left me with just a mutilated copy of the original file.
Again, a very unexpected and unnatural scenario. How well do cars function when they run out of fuel?
Again, bad analogy. Cars function very well when they run out of fuel -- they just don't go anywhere. They don't mutilate the passengers or start filling the fuel tank with weird green goo.
But how well would your refrigerator react if you treated it shoddily such as by leaving it outdoors intermuitently or diconnecting and reconnecting the power several times a day?
A damn sight better than your Windoze installation, that's for sure. So do cars, for that matter.
You want to see graceful and robust? Go look at some embedded systems one day. I mean, really look at them. Things that run elevators, washing machines, cardiac monitors, and so forth. They don't crap out because someone wibbled them in a way the programmer wasn't expecting.
Plan for every eventuality, even the ones that can never occur.
Right. Because Congress, in their infinite wisdom (*cough*) knows exactly what would benefit science and the people most.
D'you think perhaps that with a little pressure and interest from the public (that's you, by the way), Congress might actually start paying NASA enough to *do* some cool things, instead of just dreaming about it?
When I buy blank media, I'm not just paying for the media itself -- I'm also paying a "piracy tax" on top of it, because a percentage of the media is used for piracy, and this is how the RIAA (and MPAA) try to make sure they don't miss out on any of that loverly money.
So, given that I've bought my blank media, I've paid my piracy tax -- isn't this an implicit license to copy the material? After all, I've paid for the rights to do so...
However, most juries are entirely ignorant of even the possibility of nullification. Prosecutors certainly don't want them to know, and many judges don't either. Witness the efforts of some people to have jury nullification used against that most unconstitutional set of laws created by the War on Some Drugs.
Attempted nullifications of unconstitutional laws has been attempted in the past. These attempts have resulted in charges of contempt of court aimed at jurors. You can now officially be removed from the juryeven if you are deliberating if you practice or attempt to incite jury nullification!
So sorry, but that avenue to freedom has been closed as well. Me? I'm only in this country for the money. When the visa runs out, I'm out of here.
Vital link if you're interested in jury nullification:
It's no surprise there, really. NASA send probes to locations likely to be able to harbour life (at least as we know it, Jim).
You'd be less likely to read this at the end of a spiel about a probe to Mercury, or to the comets, though there is some speculation that cometary debris impacting the Earth in the early stages of its life may have provided the necessary organic chemicals to form carbon-based life.
The OS is all the stuff that companies like Sun or Apple add to make a computer usable.
That's a pretty wrong-headed a take on the situation. By this definition, X-Windows + KDE/GNOME is an OS. Take it to the logical extreme -- later down the track, when X and your choice of desktop manager has become commonplace, calling them an OS would be "anachronistic" once more. At that point, I suppose XMMS, Netscape, or the Gimp become an OS.
What is an OS other than a set of components designed to provide a standard set of interfaces to, and services based on, the underlying hardware? It's certainly not a set of integrated graphics libraries.
Sewing machines are just the start. Soon we'll see Game Boy interfaces to sheet metal cutters, lathes, drop forges and welding robots. You'll be able to buy blueprint cartridges for the latest model Ford, plug 'em in, and watch it all whirl.
It seems reasonably straightforward to me why the Chinese would attempt such a feat.
While European-based countries (this includes the USSR as well as America) place high value on human life, at least in their political rhetoric, the Chinese approach has long been more one of "glorious death in the service of China is, well, glorious!". And China does have one heck of a lot of people.
It's their only option for getting into space at present. They have to start somewhere, and may as well go now if they have the hardware.
What they don't want to have happen is for the International Space Station to be completed, heralding a new era of western-dominated space habitation, without any option to compete or defend themselves it.
I work in tech support. The number of staggeringly dumb questions we get is enough to make the most serene and placid human want to flail about with a large, blunt object.
One of the ways we manage our constant frustration is to make fun of the situation. It's either that, or go postal. What would Steve prefer?
However, it's important to mention that we never, *never* make fun of people to their faces, or behind their backs to their co-workers. It all stays well within the group.
It seems to me that we have the perfect vehicle at our fingertips for ensuring that the education system is kept up-to-date. Imagine, Open Source Education. All manner of texts, lessons, examples, exercises, tests, exams, etc. on all manner of topics, constantly updated by those that use them and those that care.
I'm certain that there are sufficient people in the world keen to see that our children are properly educated that something like the/. effect could be used to great advantage with a minimal exertion of individual time.
Is it really a stellar disc? Or is it just some kind of cosmic cymbal? I don't want to bang the drum on this too much, but it's easy to get snared when harping on such matters.
Slashdot Mirror
How many of you don't think you're living in a police state?
Funny, isn't it, that the biggest buyer of ad time during the SB was a beer company. Then along comes the American Legacy Foundation telling us about the evils of tobacco (another drug), and last of all the White House Office of Drug Control Policy telling us to "just say no". Yeah, that works for sex as well.
Of course, it's not a drug if the government's making tax money off it, is it?
Note that the contact person is called "Yellow Is Luxuriant".
Now, *that's* a name!
Oh, yeah, that's a *great* idea.
Let's not limit ourselves to how much we can pollute our atmosphere with byproducts from our own planet, let's bring in an almost unlimited supply from offworld!
How fucking stupid could you be?
Gracefully. You don't blow away half the user's hard drive if you can't read data from somewhere else. You notify them that there's a problem reading the CD, and terminate without further modification. Bad analogy.
Again, bad analogy. Cars function very well when they run out of fuel -- they just don't go anywhere. They don't mutilate the passengers or start filling the fuel tank with weird green goo. A damn sight better than your Windoze installation, that's for sure. So do cars, for that matter.You want to see graceful and robust? Go look at some embedded systems one day. I mean, really look at them. Things that run elevators, washing machines, cardiac monitors, and so forth. They don't crap out because someone wibbled them in a way the programmer wasn't expecting.
Plan for every eventuality, even the ones that can never occur.
Right. Because Congress, in their infinite wisdom (*cough*) knows exactly what would benefit science and the people most.
D'you think perhaps that with a little pressure and interest from the public (that's you, by the way), Congress might actually start paying NASA enough to *do* some cool things, instead of just dreaming about it?
When I buy blank media, I'm not just paying for the media itself -- I'm also paying a "piracy tax" on top of it, because a percentage of the media is used for piracy, and this is how the RIAA (and MPAA) try to make sure they don't miss out on any of that loverly money.
So, given that I've bought my blank media, I've paid my piracy tax -- isn't this an implicit license to copy the material? After all, I've paid for the rights to do so...
However, most juries are entirely ignorant of even the possibility of nullification. Prosecutors certainly don't want them to know, and many judges don't either. Witness the efforts of some people to have jury nullification used against that most unconstitutional set of laws created by the War on Some Drugs.
Attempted nullifications of unconstitutional laws has been attempted in the past. These attempts have resulted in charges of contempt of court aimed at jurors. You can now officially be removed from the jury even if you are deliberating if you practice or attempt to incite jury nullification!
So sorry, but that avenue to freedom has been closed as well. Me? I'm only in this country for the money. When the visa runs out, I'm out of here.
Vital link if you're interested in jury nullification:
It's no surprise there, really. NASA send probes to locations likely to be able to harbour life (at least as we know it, Jim).
You'd be less likely to read this at the end of a spiel about a probe to Mercury, or to the comets, though there is some speculation that cometary debris impacting the Earth in the early stages of its life may have provided the necessary organic chemicals to form carbon-based life.
That's a pretty wrong-headed a take on the situation. By this definition, X-Windows + KDE/GNOME is an OS. Take it to the logical extreme -- later down the track, when X and your choice of desktop manager has become commonplace, calling them an OS would be "anachronistic" once more. At that point, I suppose XMMS, Netscape, or the Gimp become an OS.
What is an OS other than a set of components designed to provide a standard set of interfaces to, and services based on, the underlying hardware? It's certainly not a set of integrated graphics libraries.
Sewing machines are just the start. Soon we'll see Game Boy interfaces to sheet metal cutters, lathes, drop forges and welding robots. You'll be able to buy blueprint cartridges for the latest model Ford, plug 'em in, and watch it all whirl.
It seems reasonably straightforward to me why the Chinese would attempt such a feat.
While European-based countries (this includes the USSR as well as America) place high value on human life, at least in their political rhetoric, the Chinese approach has long been more one of "glorious death in the service of China is, well, glorious!". And China does have one heck of a lot of people.
It's their only option for getting into space at present. They have to start somewhere, and may as well go now if they have the hardware.
What they don't want to have happen is for the International Space Station to be completed, heralding a new era of western-dominated space habitation, without any option to compete or defend themselves it.
I work in tech support. The number of staggeringly dumb questions we get is enough to make the most serene and placid human want to flail about with a large, blunt object.
One of the ways we manage our constant frustration is to make fun of the situation. It's either that, or go postal. What would Steve prefer?
However, it's important to mention that we never, *never* make fun of people to their faces, or behind their backs to their co-workers. It all stays well within the group.
It seems to me that we have the perfect vehicle at our fingertips for ensuring that the education system is kept up-to-date. Imagine, Open Source Education. All manner of texts, lessons, examples, exercises, tests, exams, etc. on all manner of topics, constantly updated by those that use them and those that care.
/. effect could be used to great advantage with a minimal exertion of individual time.
I'm certain that there are sufficient people in the world keen to see that our children are properly educated that something like the
Is it really a stellar disc? Or is it just some kind of cosmic cymbal? I don't want to bang the drum on this too much, but it's easy to get snared when harping on such matters.