The IRS is certainly an expense, partly because the tax code is extremely complex and partly because the US government is designed with efficiency as a top priority. However, getting rid of taxes and printing money doesn't actually work - it's been tried more than once. Google "hyperinflation" for some examples.
The crux of it is that if the government prints whatever money they need, they end up "needing" trillions of dollars. Even voting on spending on stop it; 51% of people will vote for "free" health care, "free" college education, "free" housing, "free" cell phones, "free" solar companies, etc. If the people don't have to pay for these things fairly directly through taxes, they vote to spend like a drunken Ted Kennedy on amateur night at the strip club.
So the government prints a shit-ton of dollars to pay for all this stuff. The actual value of the dollar, aka prices, is set by supply and demand. Printing more dollars reduces the value of the existing dollars. (The value of each dollar is separate from the government declaring that the official money is called the dollar, aka fiat.) So the value of the dollar falls when the government prints a bunch. The next month, the government needs to pay their bills again. Remember now the value if each dollar is less, so they have to print more in order to pay their bills. Printing more reduces the value of the dollar again, so the next month they have to print even more. In about a year, the dollar becomes basically worthless. At that point people stop using the official currency and switch to another country's currency.
Since the US became a super-power through WWII, several countries with local currency that was hyperinflated by their government printing it switched to the US dollar, specfically because the US dollar is stable. The number printed isn't decided by the government, but by an independent board tasked with keeping the value properly "stable". (Properly stable here means slight inflation because slight inflation reduces unemployment).
Those are some interesting thoughts. I have some specific knowledge about one thing you mentioned, and some thoughts on the others.
> they could recoup the costs by paying actors a normal wage
There are many, many films with actors paid "a normal wage" (thousands of dollars). They are called "independent films". How many have you watched? How many have you bought? Yeah, me neither. Once in a while, those make tens of thousands in revenue, because approximately nobody buys them. On average, they lose money. On the other hand, people bought $787 million in tickets for Star Wars IV.
if you think you'd like movies made on a budget under a million dollars, I encourage you to go watch some and support that sector. You can find some on Youtube, your choice of zero $ cost (ads) or ad-free with Youtube Red or whatever it's called. The fact is, the vast majority of people don't watch those. They want block buster films that cost $300 million to make.
Personally, I like mid-budget comedies (Hollywood low budget) like Mall Cop. That cost $30 million to make and grossed $143 million. However, many, many more people went to see Star Wars VII, which cost $200 million to make. If the majority of people wanted to watch something cheap like Mall Cop, I'm sure Hollywood would sell us what we want to buy, but the fact is the vast majority of us prefer Star Wars VII, and all those fantastic sets, special effects, etc cost $200 million, plus the marketing budget to get enough people pumped up about to sell enough tickets to cover that $200 million.
What each of us -could- do to reduce the cost of good movies would be to actively seek out good films rather than going to see whatever we see commercials for, or the movie that's advertised on the our McDonald's cups. Marketing is a major expense for movies, and they spend that money because IT WORKS - we buy tickets for movies that are hyped, rather than spending 10 minutes checking the internet to find good movies.
> I'm sure if they are struggling to make a profit from a film because of a few illegitimate copies
It's not "a few copies", it's millions of people skipping out on paying the $2 to stream it. For some types of movies, the -majority- of people don't pay, but instead watch illegal copies. Revenue in this niche has fallen very significantly and I know of several production companies that have gone out of business in the last few years. I happen to have access to payment databases for some companies involved in film production and distribution, so I've seen this with my own eyes.
> getting rid of all the IP lawyers who only serve to line their own pockets, and generally cut some of the incredible cruft that is associated with Hollywood.
Obviously they've messed some things up with how they try to handle piracy and all. More on that in a moment. This basically goes back to the above point - when the -majority- of your customers have stopped paying you and instead take your product illegally, or any significant percentage have, obviously you're going to respond, and you'll keep trying things to make that stop. Hollywood hasn't necessarily done a GOOD job of this because of the inertia related to having so many different companies involved in each film. For a studio to take on a different business model, they'd also need to reimagine how their contracts with the actor's union (SAG), the special effects houses, the promoters, the theaters, distributors, etc. It's hard to get everyone to change how business is done all once, so we've ended up with some failed approaches. They need some new approaches, such as the deals they've been making with Netflx, and the $200 million in bills racked up by a major production is real money that they actually have to pay, so they'd be bankrupt in a year or two if they ignored piracy and let everyone watch without paying.
On a tangent to your point, open-source players are now allowed under DMCA. In the US, you still need a patent license ($2.50).
DMCA instructs the Library of Congress to make rules about the details of fair-use circumvention. Here's the latest set of rule changes : http://copyright.gov/fedreg/20...
Under current rules, there are substantial uses allowed as fair use, mostly in an educational context. Because a DVD player/ripper is "capable of substantial non-infringing use", it's legal.
Ps your studio propaganda about Redbox is WAY outdated, and it wasn't even true back in 2008-2009 when the studios were saying that.
In fact, Redbox reports that 50% of their rental revenue goes to the studios. Most often through a revenue- sharing deal like the one they have with Warner Brothers: http://deadline.com/2015/03/wa...
Back in 2008, and today for Disney, Redbox stocks (buys) enough DVDs and Bluray discs to meet demand. If a lot of people rent Disney movies from Redbox, then Redbox buys a bunch of Disney disks to keep their machines stocked. If fewer people rent a particular movie, Redbox might put one copy in half of their machines. (Ever had to drive to a different Redbox location to find the movie you wanted? This is why. Only the most popular releases are in every machine.) If few people want to rent a movie, Redbox doesn't stock it at all, so they buy zero copies.
In short, the more people want to rent a movie, the more copies Redbox needs, so they buy more - which means more money for the studios.
We'll go ahead and ignore the huge gaps in logic in the first part your post, because you're right we'll never come to understand one another on that. Instead, let's focus on the last bit.
You're right that a preview / ad is basically part of the cost for a free or low cost stream. It's basically the same as charging another 50 cents or whatever. So we can consolidate the two options "cheap" and "even cheaper, with an ad". $1 with an ad and $2 without are basically the same thing.
Basically, you're saying you want it super-convenient; for $1, not $4 to stream it, and you're not willing to watch/ignore a preview/ad in order to get that price. You WOULD be willing to pay $1, but not the $4 (or $3 + ad) it actually costs.
So in other words "I rip it off, take it illegally, because it would cost $4 for my family to watch it otherwise". The term for that is "petty thief ".
He should have simply removed the markings from any documents containing classified information. Then he could say "they weren't marked classified when I sent them."
What's that, intentionally altering the markings for illicit purposes is another, separate felony?
The word "theatres" in the post above should of course be "studios".
Anyway, when I (and a bunch of other people) toss them $2 to rent or stream Mall Cop, they make money from it and they make Mall Cop 2, which I then enjoy. If I like the movies that a studio makes, wtf would I want to get rid of them?
> Torrents Time is trying to make sure Hollywood can't wake up.
This is the attitude I don't understand.
If you don't like big-budget Hollywood movies and prefer independent films, that's cool. You can watch plenty of independent films online and offline. I take a similar tack with software - I don't care for how Microsoft treats their customers, so I don't use their software. I've been using open source for decades.
What makes no sense is "I love $200 million cinema spectaculars so much, I'll steal them to make it more difficult to fund the next one."
Yeah, studios who spend a billion dollars making sure three movies try pretty hard to recoup the cost, mostly from the one that turns out to be popular, and that includes all the typical "big business" stuff that goes on when hundreds of millions of dollars are involved. It seems to me that if you like Star Wars and you want to see the next sequel (and have the studio spend $x00 million to make it), the LAST thing you'd want to do is damage the studio that makes them. You'd BUY the DVD , or at least toss in $2 to stream it, if you wanted more movies like that, I'd think.
Personally, I don't care for the big-budget films like Star Wars, so I don't stream, rent, or buy them (and I certainly don't steal them). I rent the low-budget comedies I like for $2 at Redbox, which encourages theatres to make another movie like it, which I'll also rent. I'm not trying to destroy the people who produce the stuff I like.
Of course requirements change over time. When the current solution doesn't quite fit the new requirements, you get / write a module / plugin or patch to handle it. Unless you were short-sighted enough to make your business dependent on proprietary software that you're not allowed to adapt to your needs. If so, then yeah you have to start over with a new solution. Hopefully the second time you choose a modular open source solution so that you aren't in the same jam 12 months later.
> open source over proprietary >... > Choose software because it works and solves a problem for you, not just because it is open source.
Proprietary software can get Diced, and there's a good chance that'll eventually happen to the one you choose.
At my last job, the first major project I was assigned to was replacing some proprietary software with open source for one of our critical systems. The proprietary system was originally chosen because it looked liked it worked (in vendor demos) and it seemed like it would solve most of the problems it needed to solve. Once it was actually used in production, they found that it mostly worked, and kinda solved a lot of problems, but created new problems. The vendor wasn't too enthusiastic about fixing things and certainly wouldn't add needed features because they were (once again) moving on to their "next generation platform". After a few years, our needs changed a bit, new requirements came up, and the old proprietary system really wasn't working well at all.
We downloaded the most recent version of an open source solution, called Moodle, and took a few minutes to set it up. Rather than watching the vendor's sales people demo it, we could actually try it out, and try loading our actual data into it. It actually worked with our real data, and could be integrated into our other systems. An idiosyncrasy or two was handled by adjusting the appropriate line of code and submitting the fix/improvement back to the FOSS project. After it went live in production, departments asked "can it do this? It would be great if it could do that.". For each feature, it it didn't already have the feature, I took a few hours to write a little plugin implementing the requested feature. A few years later, I'm even more confident FOSS was the right choice - it's basically impossible to have a major roadblock with the software because in the worst case we could just add a little plugin to have it do whatever we want.
In the very worst case, the project -could- completely change direction, and the organization using it could just keep using the version that already works well for them, applying any commits they want from the new version.
The best that can be said about any proprietary software you're thinking about adopting is that it looks like it will handle your needs, for the moment. Open source will continue to handle whatever needs come up, given that you form a relationship with either the sponsors of the project or any programmer of your choosing to handle the plugins and patches that you want to have as the need arises.
For that reason, open source is objectively better and more reliable on the "solves problems" and "it works" metrics, because it'll continue to work next year - it won't be dropped when the vendor is sold to Dice.
Of course, as you said, there is such a thing as bad proprietary software and bad open source software, and you want to avoid choosing bad software. Given to pieces of software that appear to be roughly equally good _at_the_moment_, the open source is better because the risk of insurmountable problems down the road and vendor lock in is essentially removed.
The discussion is what makes Slashdot what it is, and the moderation is a major reason Slashdot's discussion is special. Don't muck it up. Some very minor adjustments might be okay, but it most certainly shouldn't be completely revamped.
It might be worth considering something along those lines 6-12 months from now, after frequently requested items are done and the community has some trust of the new ownership.
My original post was for EITHER candidate winning all. The odds against EITHER candidate winning all is 2^5 (the probability that throws 2-6 match throw #1). The odds against CLINTON winning all six are 2^6.
No, not really. As I said, I don't care if you'd rather think that anything you imagine must be true, because you thought of it. I shared a anecdote that I found interesting - I have no reason to prove it to you.
I'm going to get back to work complying with the regulations now, and you can go back to guessing what they might be.
You didn't read a thousand pages of regulations in a few minutes. I'm pretty darn sure I remember quite clearly being surprised that it said so clearly, "discrimination... is not discrimination". Think what you will, though. If you ever have to decipher the regulations you'll find it; until then you can imagine your own facts and believe your own imagination.
> The reason one uses iPhone is that you use the Apple stack of services. The reason one uses Android is that one uses the Google stack of services.
The first part of that may be true in many cases. You buy an Apple device to watch Apple's approved videos on Apple's video player. Steve Jobs said âoewe do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.â Steve Jobs isn't wrong about his own company's position - if you don't want Apple dictating your moral choices (and all other choices), you should buy Android.
Android, like Linux, is more flexible - you (and an OEM) can set it up how you want it. With Apple's mobile products, it's simpler - they only do it "the right way". Of course Apple's decides which way is "right".
Apple's approach is SIMPLER. Android's is more FLEXIBLE. It's not about choosing between Apple's way, it's often about choosing between Apple's way and your own way.
No, it's not ADA and it's not an easy-to-read guide like the link you mentioned. It's deep in the actual Department of Education regulations themselves. There are probably a thousand pages, so I don't have an hour or two to try to find that bit now. The wording is interesting to me because it says "discrimination... is not discrimination ".
To paraphrase the part abbreviated by ellipses since I don't have it memorized, it's something like: Discrimination in admissions or program assignment which is deemed disadvantageous to gender or racial classes which are not historically under-represented classes is not discrimination.
> cozy with YouTube and are using whatever influence they have there to issue DMCA
Any takedowns would either be under the DMCA process OR Youtube could choose what they host. The DMCA process leaves no room for Youtube to make a judgement; they just follow the process, they aren't the judge and jury. Once they receive a DMCA notice, they have to do the temporary takedown*. Here's the process mandated by DMCA: Complainant notifies hoster (Youtube), providing specific information. Hoster notifies publisher (person who posted the video). Hoster temporarily takes down the material. Publisher may counter-notify hoster. On receipt on counter-notice, hoster puts the material back online. Complainant may sue in federal court. Upon initiating federal proceeding, complainant notifies hoster. Hoster takes it back down if a federal suit is in process.
The counter-notice step isn't as well known as it could be. It means that if anyone files a DMCA notice against something you posted, you can simply reply saying "no, it's not infringing" and the material goes right back up.
* If Youtube chooses -not- to follow the DMCA process, THEY become liable to whichever side wins. They sometimes do that in clear cases of fair use, if the person posting the video waives their right to sue Youtube for helping them. Here's an article about that: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/...
** Wondering how someone who posted a video could sue Youtube for helping them? Imagine you post something which actually DOES infringe the copyright of some popular movie. The movie studio immediately notifies Youtube, so under DMCA Youtube should take it down immediately. Suppose they don't. It stays up for a year. Then the movie studio sues you for infringement, and wins a judgement against you for $2,000 per day. Youtube's "help" just cost you $720,000.
There's no chance this registration will go through. The "hearing" to prevent this registration will consist of walking into the room and chuckling.
Although the text of the statutory law says you can't trademark words that are "merely descriptive" of the product, USPTO regularly denies applications that are at all descriptive. Really they want to see evocative, not descriptive. So Ford can trademark Mustang because it doesn't describe the car at all, it merely evokes the general idea of fast and wild.
Both of my trademark applications were denied for being descriptive and neither were NEARLY as generic as "parents react".
You said you'd like see trademarks using common words banned. They pretty much already are, if using the word in the normal way. You have a car Ford Edge only because the word Edge doesn't have anything to do with cars. Also note that trademark for cars called Edge ONLY applies to cars. You can sell or trademark the Edge taco or Edge jeans without infringing Ford's trademark.
The Apple business model for mobile is that to use their software, you must use their hardware, you can only buy media from them and use their media player (iTunes), etc. Google's is, and continues to be, that you can use their OS with any hardware, buy media from any source, and play it with any app. So pretty much the opposite of Apple.
Google plans to have higher quality on their reference design / flagship, the Nexus line. That's cool. Not really related to Apple at all. I suppose Apple doesn't make cheapie crap for the lowest-budget market, such as an $89 tablet, but that's nothing unique to Apple. Heck, even the companies that DO make low-end stuff often don't brand it as theirs, they use a different marque.
Slashdot Mirror
The IRS is certainly an expense, partly because the tax code is extremely complex and partly because the US government is designed with efficiency as a top priority. However, getting rid of taxes and printing money doesn't actually work - it's been tried more than once. Google "hyperinflation" for some examples.
The crux of it is that if the government prints whatever money they need, they end up "needing" trillions of dollars. Even voting on spending on stop it; 51% of people will vote for "free" health care, "free" college education, "free" housing, "free" cell phones, "free" solar companies, etc. If the people don't have to pay for these things fairly directly through taxes, they vote to spend like a drunken Ted Kennedy on amateur night at the strip club.
So the government prints a shit-ton of dollars to pay for all this stuff. The actual value of the dollar, aka prices, is set by supply and demand. Printing more dollars reduces the value of the existing dollars. (The value of each dollar is separate from the government declaring that the official money is called the dollar, aka fiat.) So the value of the dollar falls when the government prints a bunch. The next month, the government needs to pay their bills again. Remember now the value if each dollar is less, so they have to print more in order to pay their bills. Printing more reduces the value of the dollar again, so the next month they have to print even more. In about a year, the dollar becomes basically worthless. At that point people stop using the official currency and switch to another country's currency.
Since the US became a super-power through WWII, several countries with local currency that was hyperinflated by their government printing it switched to the US dollar, specfically because the US dollar is stable. The number printed isn't decided by the government, but by an independent board tasked with keeping the value properly "stable". (Properly stable here means slight inflation because slight inflation reduces unemployment).
Those are some interesting thoughts. I have some specific knowledge about one thing you mentioned, and some thoughts on the others.
> they could recoup the costs by paying actors a normal wage
There are many, many films with actors paid "a normal wage" (thousands of dollars). They are called "independent films". How many have you watched? How many have you bought? Yeah, me neither. Once in a while, those make tens of thousands in revenue, because approximately nobody buys them. On average, they lose money. On the other hand, people bought $787 million in tickets for Star Wars IV.
if you think you'd like movies made on a budget under a million dollars, I encourage you to go watch some and support that sector. You can find some on Youtube, your choice of zero $ cost (ads) or ad-free with Youtube Red or whatever it's called. The fact is, the vast majority of people don't watch those. They want block buster films that cost $300 million to make.
Personally, I like mid-budget comedies (Hollywood low budget) like Mall Cop. That cost $30 million to make and grossed $143 million. However, many, many more people went to see Star Wars VII, which cost $200 million to make. If the majority of people wanted to watch something cheap like Mall Cop, I'm sure Hollywood would sell us what we want to buy, but the fact is the vast majority of us prefer Star Wars VII, and all those fantastic sets, special effects, etc cost $200 million, plus the marketing budget to get enough people pumped up about to sell enough tickets to cover that $200 million.
What each of us -could- do to reduce the cost of good movies would be to actively seek out good films rather than going to see whatever we see commercials for, or the movie that's advertised on the our McDonald's cups. Marketing is a major expense for movies, and they spend that money because IT WORKS - we buy tickets for movies that are hyped, rather than spending 10 minutes checking the internet to find good movies.
> I'm sure if they are struggling to make a profit from a film because of a few illegitimate copies
It's not "a few copies", it's millions of people skipping out on paying the $2 to stream it. For some types of movies, the -majority- of people don't pay, but instead watch illegal copies. Revenue in this niche has fallen very significantly and I know of several production companies that have gone out of business in the last few years. I happen to have access to payment databases for some companies involved in film production and distribution, so I've seen this with my own eyes.
> getting rid of all the IP lawyers who only serve to line their own pockets, and generally cut some of the incredible cruft that is associated with Hollywood.
Obviously they've messed some things up with how they try to handle piracy and all. More on that in a moment. This basically goes back to the above point - when the -majority- of your customers have stopped paying you and instead take your product illegally, or any significant percentage have, obviously you're going to respond, and you'll keep trying things to make that stop. Hollywood hasn't necessarily done a GOOD job of this because of the inertia related to having so many different companies involved in each film. For a studio to take on a different business model, they'd also need to reimagine how their contracts with the actor's union (SAG), the special effects houses, the promoters, the theaters, distributors, etc. It's hard to get everyone to change how business is done all once, so we've ended up with some failed approaches. They need some new approaches, such as the deals they've been making with Netflx, and the $200 million in bills racked up by a major production is real money that they actually have to pay, so they'd be bankrupt in a year or two if they ignored piracy and let everyone watch without paying.
On a tangent to your point, open-source players are now allowed under DMCA. In the US, you still need a patent license ($2.50).
DMCA instructs the Library of Congress to make rules about the details of fair-use circumvention. Here's the latest set of rule changes :
http://copyright.gov/fedreg/20...
Under current rules, there are substantial uses allowed as fair use, mostly in an educational context. Because a DVD player/ripper is "capable of substantial non-infringing use", it's legal.
Ps your studio propaganda about Redbox is WAY outdated, and it wasn't even true back in 2008-2009 when the studios were saying that.
In fact, Redbox reports that 50% of their rental revenue goes to the studios. Most often through a revenue- sharing deal like the one they have with Warner Brothers:
http://deadline.com/2015/03/wa...
Back in 2008, and today for Disney, Redbox stocks (buys) enough DVDs and Bluray discs to meet demand. If a lot of people rent Disney movies from Redbox, then Redbox buys a bunch of Disney disks to keep their machines stocked. If fewer people rent a particular movie, Redbox might put one copy in half of their machines. (Ever had to drive to a different Redbox location to find the movie you wanted? This is why. Only the most popular releases are in every machine.) If few people want to rent a movie, Redbox doesn't stock it at all, so they buy zero copies.
In short, the more people want to rent a movie, the more copies Redbox needs, so they buy more - which means more money for the studios.
We'll go ahead and ignore the huge gaps in logic in the first part your post, because you're right we'll never come to understand one another on that. Instead, let's focus on the last bit.
You're right that a preview / ad is basically part of the cost for a free or low cost stream. It's basically the same as charging another 50 cents or whatever. So we can consolidate the two options "cheap" and "even cheaper, with an ad". $1 with an ad and $2 without are basically the same thing.
Basically, you're saying you want it super-convenient; for $1, not $4 to stream it, and you're not willing to watch/ignore a preview/ad in order to get that price. You WOULD be willing to pay $1, but not the $4 (or $3 + ad) it actually costs.
So in other words "I rip it off, take it illegally, because it would cost $4 for my family to watch it otherwise". The term for that is "petty thief ".
He should have simply removed the markings from any documents containing classified information. Then he could say "they weren't marked classified when I sent them."
What's that, intentionally altering the markings for illicit purposes is another, separate felony?
The word "theatres" in the post above should of course be "studios".
Anyway, when I (and a bunch of other people) toss them $2 to rent or stream Mall Cop, they make money from it and they make Mall Cop 2, which I then enjoy. If I like the movies that a studio makes, wtf would I want to get rid of them?
> Torrents Time is trying to make sure Hollywood can't wake up.
This is the attitude I don't understand.
If you don't like big-budget Hollywood movies and prefer independent films, that's cool. You can watch plenty of independent films online and offline. I take a similar tack with software - I don't care for how Microsoft treats their customers, so I don't use their software. I've been using open source for decades.
What makes no sense is "I love $200 million cinema spectaculars so much, I'll steal them to make it more difficult to fund the next one."
Yeah, studios who spend a billion dollars making sure three movies try pretty hard to recoup the cost, mostly from the one that turns out to be popular, and that includes all the typical "big business" stuff that goes on when hundreds of millions of dollars are involved. It seems to me that if you like Star Wars and you want to see the next sequel (and have the studio spend $x00 million to make it), the LAST thing you'd want to do is damage the studio that makes them. You'd BUY the DVD , or at least toss in $2 to stream it, if you wanted more movies like that, I'd think.
Personally, I don't care for the big-budget films like Star Wars, so I don't stream, rent, or buy them (and I certainly don't steal them). I rent the low-budget comedies I like for $2 at Redbox, which encourages theatres to make another movie like it, which I'll also rent. I'm not trying to destroy the people who produce the stuff I like.
Yes, -Wall is good way to find code smells.
For obfuscated code, I suggest -Larry -Wall.
Of course requirements change over time. When the current solution doesn't quite fit the new requirements, you get / write a module / plugin or patch to handle it. Unless you were short-sighted enough to make your business dependent on proprietary software that you're not allowed to adapt to your needs. If so, then yeah you have to start over with a new solution. Hopefully the second time you choose a modular open source solution so that you aren't in the same jam 12 months later.
> open source over proprietary ...
>
> Choose software because it works and solves a problem for you, not just because it is open source.
Proprietary software can get Diced, and there's a good chance that'll eventually happen to the one you choose.
At my last job, the first major project I was assigned to was replacing some proprietary software with open source for one of our critical systems. The proprietary system was originally chosen because it looked liked it worked (in vendor demos) and it seemed like it would solve most of the problems it needed to solve. Once it was actually used in production, they found that it mostly worked, and kinda solved a lot of problems, but created new problems. The vendor wasn't too enthusiastic about fixing things and certainly wouldn't add needed features because they were (once again) moving on to their "next generation platform". After a few years, our needs changed a bit, new requirements came up, and the old proprietary system really wasn't working well at all.
We downloaded the most recent version of an open source solution, called Moodle, and took a few minutes to set it up. Rather than watching the vendor's sales people demo it, we could actually try it out, and try loading our actual data into it. It actually worked with our real data, and could be integrated into our other systems. An idiosyncrasy or two was handled by adjusting the appropriate line of code and submitting the fix/improvement back to the FOSS project. After it went live in production, departments asked "can it do this? It would be great if it could do that.". For each feature, it it didn't already have the feature, I took a few hours to write a little plugin implementing the requested feature. A few years later, I'm even more confident FOSS was the right choice - it's basically impossible to have a major roadblock with the software because in the worst case we could just add a little plugin to have it do whatever we want.
In the very worst case, the project -could- completely change direction, and the organization using it could just keep using the version that already works well for them, applying any commits they want from the new version.
The best that can be said about any proprietary software you're thinking about adopting is that it looks like it will handle your needs, for the moment. Open source will continue to handle whatever needs come up, given that you form a relationship with either the sponsors of the project or any programmer of your choosing to handle the plugins and patches that you want to have as the need arises.
For that reason, open source is objectively better and more reliable on the "solves problems" and "it works" metrics, because it'll continue to work next year - it won't be dropped when the vendor is sold to Dice.
Of course, as you said, there is such a thing as bad proprietary software and bad open source software, and you want to avoid choosing bad software. Given to pieces of software that appear to be roughly equally good _at_the_moment_, the open source is better because the risk of insurmountable problems down the road and vendor lock in is essentially removed.
The discussion is what makes Slashdot what it is, and the moderation is a major reason Slashdot's discussion is special. Don't muck it up. Some very minor adjustments might be okay, but it most certainly shouldn't be completely revamped.
Having said that, this comment is interesting.
http://ask.slashdot.org/commen...
It might be worth considering something along those lines 6-12 months from now, after frequently requested items are done and the community has some trust of the new ownership.
My original post was for EITHER candidate winning all.
The odds against EITHER candidate winning all is 2^5 (the probability that throws 2-6 match throw #1).
The odds against CLINTON winning all six are 2^6.
The odds against EITHER candidate winning all is 2^5 (the probability that throws 2-6 match throw #1).
The odds against CLINTON winning all six are 2^6.
If the coins and flips were fair, the odds against either candidate winning all flips is 97%.
Given that Clinton did win all six flips, the odds that the flips were fair is ... hmm?
No, not really. As I said, I don't care if you'd rather think that anything you imagine must be true, because you thought of it. I shared a anecdote that I found interesting - I have no reason to prove it to you.
I'm going to get back to work complying with the regulations now, and you can go back to guessing what they might be.
You didn't read a thousand pages of regulations in a few minutes. I'm pretty darn sure I remember quite clearly being surprised that it said so clearly, "discrimination ... is not discrimination". Think what you will, though. If you ever have to decipher the regulations you'll find it; until then you can imagine your own facts and believe your own imagination.
It's probably somewhere in Subtitle B if you want to go hunting:
http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/te...
I missed a couple of words in my concluding sentence. It should be:
It's not about choosing between Apple's way vs Google's way, it's often about choosing between Apple's way vs your own way.
This post written on a Macbook Pro.
> The reason one uses iPhone is that you use the Apple stack of services. The reason one uses Android is that one uses the Google stack of services.
The first part of that may be true in many cases. You buy an Apple device to watch Apple's approved videos on Apple's video player. Steve Jobs said âoewe do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.â Steve Jobs isn't wrong about his own company's position - if you don't want Apple dictating your moral choices (and all other choices), you should buy Android.
Android, like Linux, is more flexible - you (and an OEM) can set it up how you want it. With Apple's mobile products, it's simpler - they only do it "the right way". Of course Apple's decides which way is "right".
Apple's approach is SIMPLER. Android's is more FLEXIBLE. It's not about choosing between Apple's way, it's often about choosing between Apple's way and your own way.
No, it's not ADA and it's not an easy-to-read guide like the link you mentioned. It's deep in the actual Department of Education regulations themselves. There are probably a thousand pages, so I don't have an hour or two to try to find that bit now. The wording is interesting to me because it says "discrimination ... is not discrimination ".
To paraphrase the part abbreviated by ellipses since I don't have it memorized, it's something like:
Discrimination in admissions or program assignment which is deemed disadvantageous to gender or racial classes which are not historically under-represented classes is not discrimination.
> cozy with YouTube and are using whatever influence they have there to issue DMCA
Any takedowns would either be under the DMCA process OR Youtube could choose what they host. The DMCA process leaves no room for Youtube to make a judgement; they just follow the process, they aren't the judge and jury. Once they receive a DMCA notice, they have to do the temporary takedown*. Here's the process mandated by DMCA:
Complainant notifies hoster (Youtube), providing specific information.
Hoster notifies publisher (person who posted the video).
Hoster temporarily takes down the material.
Publisher may counter-notify hoster.
On receipt on counter-notice, hoster puts the material back online.
Complainant may sue in federal court.
Upon initiating federal proceeding, complainant notifies hoster.
Hoster takes it back down if a federal suit is in process.
The counter-notice step isn't as well known as it could be. It means that if anyone files a DMCA notice against something you posted, you can simply reply saying "no, it's not infringing" and the material goes right back up.
* If Youtube chooses -not- to follow the DMCA process, THEY become liable to whichever side wins. They sometimes do that in clear cases of fair use, if the person posting the video waives their right to sue Youtube for helping them. Here's an article about that:
http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/...
** Wondering how someone who posted a video could sue Youtube for helping them? Imagine you post something which actually DOES infringe the copyright of some popular movie. The movie studio immediately notifies Youtube, so under DMCA Youtube should take it down immediately. Suppose they don't. It stays up for a year. Then the movie studio sues you for infringement, and wins a judgement against you for $2,000 per day. Youtube's "help" just cost you $720,000.
There's no chance this registration will go through. The "hearing" to prevent this registration will consist of walking into the room and chuckling.
Although the text of the statutory law says you can't trademark words that are "merely descriptive" of the product, USPTO regularly denies applications that are at all descriptive. Really they want to see evocative, not descriptive. So Ford can trademark Mustang because it doesn't describe the car at all, it merely evokes the general idea of fast and wild.
Both of my trademark applications were denied for being descriptive and neither were NEARLY as generic as "parents react".
You said you'd like see trademarks using common words banned. They pretty much already are, if using the word in the normal way. You have a car Ford Edge only because the word Edge doesn't have anything to do with cars. Also note that trademark for cars called Edge ONLY applies to cars. You can sell or trademark the Edge taco or Edge jeans without infringing Ford's trademark.
The Apple business model for mobile is that to use their software, you must use their hardware, you can only buy media from them and use their media player (iTunes), etc. Google's is, and continues to be, that you can use their OS with any hardware, buy media from any source, and play it with any app. So pretty much the opposite of Apple.
Google plans to have higher quality on their reference design / flagship, the Nexus line. That's cool. Not really related to Apple at all. I suppose Apple doesn't make cheapie crap for the lowest-budget market, such as an $89 tablet, but that's nothing unique to Apple. Heck, even the companies that DO make low-end stuff often don't brand it as theirs, they use a different marque.
You are of course correct - ED.