That's not what he's saying. He's just skeptical on the policy of granting a *monopoly* on that thing. A temporary monopoly probably *should* be created to generate incentive. However, total patent and copyright lengths are totally
out of wack. What *possible* incentive could be conferred by copyrights which last 70 years **after the creator's death**?
The incentive is that a creator may then provide for herself as well as for her descendants. This is a large incentive for many people. Me, I think it's a crock; people should learn to stand on their own two feet, regardless of who their parents were. Most people do.
There's really no reason I can think of that the top level domains have to be managed by those who handle it so poorly. This is a great oppportunity for an open-source style community effort. That is after all how come the root servers are spread all over the place.
The name service uses a nice flexible protocol. It would be a cinch to add a new server to one's hints file, or to switch completely to using a separate group of top-level servers.
Top-level name servers of the new system would probably need some serious connectivity, but we could spread that out easily enough.
I'm already looking at doing this for the MetaLAN, a virtual network of home users' internal networks using FreeS/WAN - we're going to set up our own DNS system to use the.meta TLD for all of our internal IP space. I'd be interested in helping with setting up a similar alternate community-based DNS system. Anyone know of people already doing this? If not, want to start one? I do.
The trouble with that sort of regulation is that it tends towards groupthink. I could name a web site where self-regulation, or self-moderation if you will, gives incentives for people to post opinions which are similar to those held by the groupthink gestalt, and disincentives to post contrary opinions.
Luckily, the userbase on, er, that site is large enough that there are usually two competing flows of groupthink, or sometimes three. This doesn't change the fact that when the mob rules, the nail that sticks up gets hammered. Too bad for those of us who like variety and innovation in debate.
Well no, but when UCITA comes through, we figure that most open-source projects will move here. Remember it's Linux that seeks world domination, not MS. They already have it.
I'm pretty clear on the difference. What I said was that useability shortens learning curves. This means that it decreases the amount of effort required to attain a particular level of fluency with the program. Can you explain how if it's more useable, it doesn't get easier to learn?
I think you're under the impression that the only way to make something useable is to make it stupid-friendly. That's not actually how it's done.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "productivity", and I suspect it means "getting things done quickly". I'm positive that most lusers don't care about getting something done in 4.2 seconds, because most of them aren't even sure you can get it done at all. Let's keep our eyes on the ball here, which is that making people comfortable with Linux will draw more of them to use it and that this is a very good thing.
Nobody is suggesting that you have to code in Word; it's the wrong tool for the job. I'm just suggesting that people aren't forced to use vi or emacs when they're just starting out - let them use gedit for text editing and abiword for documents. What's wrong with that?
My point regarding support is that a Linux system can be set up to be much more stable than a Win98 one by someone who knows how. Heck, doing remote admin could be a service that people sign up for like housecleaning. SSH does wonderful things. I agree with your assertion that current linux distros are not a turnkey solution for the novice user, but only given the state of current distributions. They'll improve over time, or something else will and they'll fall into disuse.
I should have specified that I was suggesting that Win9x does lots of stuff behind your back, whether you want it to or not. I really don't, but yet there it is...
I wasn't talking about any particular software, so I don't see where you get your third point. My point was simply that there's always an area where even the most godlike user needs a dialog to walk him or her through, and that beats the pants off of having to hack csh script on a package you don't know. All this stuff about nails and screwdrivers is confusing me, but I think you can rest assured that we agree that there's always a learning curve. I suggest we make the curve start low and end high instead of starting mid-high and ending in assembler.
Well, for one thing if many end-users used it, there would be more software published for it (like games, for one example, and dev tools like IDE's for another).
For another thing, there would be more unbound money hanging around to be used by Linux programmers / Linux-friendly companies, which would improve the quality of the code by virtue of the fact that fewer good developers would need day jobs.
Oh, and then there's the thing that if it's easy enough for my mom to use (I don't know what your mom can do), then those people can use an OS that doesn't do strange things behind their backs, and so they can have good computing experience without needing as much support, which means computer literate people can go about doing more interesting and creative things.
Another thing, and the last thing I'll talk about, is the fact that good human factors design (I'm talking about useability here, not happy dancing stuff, or eye candy) makes applications more useable for all humans, including hard-core coders. It shortens learning curves by allowing us to see and fiddle with just as many features as we want to at any time. We aren't all experts in every area of computing, or at least nobody that I know is, even those people whom I would consider computing gods. A little useability goes a long way there. Don't tell me you don't need that stuff unless you toggle in boot code on the front panel every time you boot!
I think those are good reasons, and reason enough for me and hopefully a growing number of people to contribute to efforts to make useable, stable, open source computing a favourable alternative for everybody.
Firstly, I am sick and tired of people saying that "you can't curl up with an e-book". I am fed up with people saying "it strains your eyes", too. Want to know what strains my eyes? Reading ink on mashed trees in low light.
You just need the right hardware. I read gutenburg books on my Newton all the time - it's backlit, and the LCD is very stable and clear. Give me my even green backlit over that, please! And as for curling up with it, I can sit down with an entire library in the palm of my hand, and it will run without changing batteries, on full backlighting, for a week. I can lie in bed and read in the middle of the night without turning the light on, so not only can I curl up with my book, I can curl up with my sleeping sweetie too. The only arguments I have ever seen against e-books are "there aren't enough of them" and "it's just not the same". There aren't enough sanctioned e-books outside project gutenburg, and if one is particularly attatched to the feel of dried wood pulp then of course only that will do.
Well, you take your machine and build a simple input device for it - something that has a busfull of switches (8 in the case of a nice old CPU, or more otherwise) and one debouncer tied to a button. A little more hardware later, and you have a bit of hardware that can encode a word and put it, one word at a time, onto the bus. With this, you code drivers for an output device. I chose (once upon a time) an LCD panel which was easy to interface with.
Then, you use the same box and the output device and code up keyboard drivers so you don't need that damn box any more.
Then, get an EEPROM and save the results of your labour onto it so you can boot to this state later.
Then, you use the keyboard to code up drivers for a storage device, and you SAVE! YOUR! WORK! onto the storage medium and onto the EEPROM. Now, you can boot to the storage medium instead of just the EEPROM.
From there, you can work on an OS and a compiler and a better FS than the POS you probbaly had to hack together in the first place. Should take you a good while.. Then I guess you start on Tribes 3 (Let's face it, not everyone likes Quake). I never got to the storage medium part, I got bored after I got the EEPROM booting the system up.
*MY* objection to ShareSniffer is: What if I WANT to share my files...but not to ShareSniffer users? To be good netizens (not their purpose, I know) they should
really have invented their own protocol.
In that case, you set a password on the share, and give the password to those people who should be able to access the share.
It dawned on me when I bought a copy of Don Quixote in a bookstore in Madrid. It was the original, centuries-old text by Cervantes... but it was annotated by some Spanish academic. Guess what? Yes, (C) 19XX Some Spanish Publishing
Company.
I've often wondered about this trick; what happens if you take the book and tear out the new stuff (let's say it's all at the back). What you now hold is the original, unabridged and untainted work. What happens?
Does the copyright only cover the new material,
Does the copyright still cover the old material as well,
Does the copyright actually cover the graphical layout of the pages (ie, font used, margin size, etc) rather than the information contained, or
Does it not matter as the publisher will sue you into the ground regardless?
The answer has a number of interesting implications, which are obvious and thus left as an exercise to the reader.
This sounds awfully similar to what Apple already did really well (then killed) with the Newton 2x00 series. I have a Newton 2000, which can recognize even my horrible writing... and while it doesn't have actual paper, why would I need that? It also has about a two week in-use battery life (gotta love that 162 MHz StrongARM!), actually fits on a palm top and does cursive as well as printed recognition. You can find out more from all sorts of places, including Planet Newton or This Old Newt. There's an entire community out there who hopes daily that someone - anyone - will build something as good again. I hope IBM has done so... that is, if the screen part works separately from anything else, and has similar PDA-like characteristics.
You can always use the PGP Timestamping Service, which *does* prove you sent it at a particular time and that the contents existed in the original form.
What I don't understand is why BugTraq can't simply read the release and restate it in their own words. This isn't copyright violation, just as writing a book synopsis for a grade 7 report isn't. All the information can stay there, and MS can take the copyright and shove it. It's a copyright, not and NDA, and last I heard what was copyrighted was the particular instance of symbols used to express the information (ie, the words), not the information itself. If this is a problem for MS, can you imagine the problems for all the GPL'ed "work-alikes" which exist? No more gnumeric, abiword, XMMS, and boy oh boy is WINE ever in trouble!
Seriously, all it takes is a bit less effort than posting a regular bug report which they have to generate entirely themselves without any help. I don't see why this is an issue at all. If they're really concerned, they could even give a reference with the URL for the curious.
Maybe it's on the original site - I don't know because I couldn't even log in. I would expect that Zophar's is just mirroring the binaries because it was fater than grabbing the source too and the idea was to quickly pull the load off the beleagured server. With any luck, the original server will be open again soon and people who want the source can go there.
Recently, I tried to purchase some cheap hardware and media from an on-line company in the USA. I live in Canada, quite close to the BC/Washington border. I wanted to ship the product to an address in the USA belonging to my friend, so that I could drive down and pick it up and bring it across the border myself. If it goes through in the mail, the Canadian customs folks will hang on to it about a month and bill me for duty on about three times the cost of the stuff. I kid you not - I was once billed $40 CDN in duty on a $99 purchase.
Everything goes fine, I confirm my order of about $700. The next day, I get this mailed to the spam-bucket account I use for online transactions:
We have been unable to process your order because your billing and
shipping information did not verify with the bank that issued the credit card
you used to place your order.
As stated on our website, shipping and billing information, if different, must
both be on file with the issuing financial institution.
Now this was a surprise to me because:
I had called my credit card company to ask them to put the address on the card in addition to mine
I had successfully shipped product to Tampa (also not my billing address) in the early summer.
Apparently new anti-fraud measures have since come into place. I can't make any more orders, unfortunately, and I'll have to do without the hardware I ordered until I get my friend to buy it for me on his card and I pay him back for it.
Meanwhile, it might be a good idea for those of you who have a problem with online credit card transactions bouncing who also ship physical product to addresses to check with the bank and implement these measures. If there's no way for a person to get your product to them, there is no reason for them to expose themselves to the risk of using the stolen number at your site.
I think you're misinterpreting the way that open source software can work. Here's a better way to do "open source music":
Open the source (ie, the sheet music) to everyone.
If you actually want me to *play* the music or *sing* the song for you, you have to pay me for it. If you want to hear a recording of me doing that, ditto. If you don't want to pay, do it yourself.
The reason software companies that sell open source software don't do this is that your C compiler will make the exact same thing as my C compiler and so there is no reason for you to buy the binaries from them. In the case of "my" music, the fact is that my voice and lute playing ability may be far better than yours so there is in fact a reason to buy my recordings.
Software companies have to find other ways to add value, like offering support and customization. Performing artists have it easier, because the simple fact that they themselves perform the art makes it have more value.
You forgot to mention that you're upgrading from Geek House 1.3 to Geek Neighbourhood beta 1 as soon as I move in up the hill.
Of course we haven't figured out if we'll use hopped-up 802.11 cards or simply lots and lots of weatherized cat-3 (with T1 cards) to bridge our networks together, but when we do... we get to load balance our DSL modems. Yeee-haw! Come to think of it, does anyone have a better suggestion on how to hook up two places about 300-500M apart? Cheaply?
See, someone at one point said of the Geek House, "Imagine if we had a Beowulf cluster of these...?"
If we had this kind of technology on D-Day in 1944, many Americans would be spending Memorial Day visiting grandpas instead of gravesites.
War technology does not save lives, that is not its purpose. Had the Allies had this tech during the war, many German children today would not be able to visit what grandfathers (and fathers, they were drafting kids near the end) they have today.
If both sides had this kind of technology (fair's fair), the war may have come out very differently considering that Germany had better precision engineering and for a time, air superiority even over British skies.
I suggest that US policy was coherent with that of other NATO members who didn't really seem to chomp at the bit to go to full-scale, we-regret-to-inform-you warfare against a foreign, er, land (can't really call it a nation). I know Canada sent Peacekeepers in and was not about to mobilize a more military force.
As for staying out, I think I agree with Kaa above where he suggests (though not directly) that there are times when one cannot turn a blind eye to the horrors perpetrated outside of North America. In accordance with the most basic and universal human morality, something must be done. This is the principle behind Peacekeeping efforts - you may not agree with the implementation, but I sure as hell hope you agree with the design.
Oh, and before someone asks me why I don't go fight, it's because it's not my job. We have specially trained people who are paid and honoured to go out and lay their lives on the line to support our wishes (represented by the Canadian government, which could be problematic). I'm glad we have them - I'm not a good warrior, and because of them I don't have to be. I can help better by doing things I am good at.
I know that, which is why I said, "send x out to infinity", by which I meant take the limit of these two equations as x->infinity. They "are" both infinity, but y is still larger than z because we have y > z for all x hence since z=x then y > x for all x. I'm not using standard arithmetic, which of course doesn't make sense.
To give an example from that link you provided:
So a polynomial like "x+2" would be considered larger than any constant (no matter how big that constant was).
And I'm saying, that (replace "contstant" with "y") if you take the limit as x->infinity *and* as y->infinity then both will be "infinity" but that for the whole journey there then x+2 will be greater than y. Hence:
lim 1-(1-r) = 0 r->0 BUT
1-0.999... != 0, see? No limit, no go. The limit allows one to "cut to the chase" as it were, but we can't do that implicitly. We could say, "When 0.999... becomes 1, then it is equal to 1, but for the entire way there, it is less than 1".
Look, I'm starting to get the feeling that we're not communicating properly here. I'm talking limits of functions, and I think you think I'm talking arithmetic. Is what I've said here strictly wrong? Explain how - maybe I'm actually making a mistake in my thinking (although it doesn't seem to manifest in my calculus!:) ).
Slashdot Mirror
There's really no reason I can think of that the top level domains have to be managed by those who handle it so poorly. This is a great oppportunity for an open-source style community effort. That is after all how come the root servers are spread all over the place.
The name service uses a nice flexible protocol. It would be a cinch to add a new server to one's hints file, or to switch completely to using a separate group of top-level servers.
Top-level name servers of the new system would probably need some serious connectivity, but we could spread that out easily enough.
I'm already looking at doing this for the MetaLAN, a virtual network of home users' internal networks using FreeS/WAN - we're going to set up our own DNS system to use the .meta TLD for all of our internal IP space. I'd be interested in helping with setting up a similar alternate community-based DNS system. Anyone know of people already doing this? If not, want to start one? I do.
Luckily, the userbase on, er, that site is large enough that there are usually two competing flows of groupthink, or sometimes three. This doesn't change the fact that when the mob rules, the nail that sticks up gets hammered. Too bad for those of us who like variety and innovation in debate.
Well no, but when UCITA comes through, we figure that most open-source projects will move here. Remember it's Linux that seeks world domination, not MS. They already have it.
I think you're under the impression that the only way to make something useable is to make it stupid-friendly. That's not actually how it's done.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "productivity", and I suspect it means "getting things done quickly". I'm positive that most lusers don't care about getting something done in 4.2 seconds, because most of them aren't even sure you can get it done at all. Let's keep our eyes on the ball here, which is that making people comfortable with Linux will draw more of them to use it and that this is a very good thing.
Nobody is suggesting that you have to code in Word; it's the wrong tool for the job. I'm just suggesting that people aren't forced to use vi or emacs when they're just starting out - let them use gedit for text editing and abiword for documents. What's wrong with that?
I should have specified that I was suggesting that Win9x does lots of stuff behind your back, whether you want it to or not. I really don't, but yet there it is...
I wasn't talking about any particular software, so I don't see where you get your third point. My point was simply that there's always an area where even the most godlike user needs a dialog to walk him or her through, and that beats the pants off of having to hack csh script on a package you don't know. All this stuff about nails and screwdrivers is confusing me, but I think you can rest assured that we agree that there's always a learning curve. I suggest we make the curve start low and end high instead of starting mid-high and ending in assembler.
For another thing, there would be more unbound money hanging around to be used by Linux programmers / Linux-friendly companies, which would improve the quality of the code by virtue of the fact that fewer good developers would need day jobs.
Oh, and then there's the thing that if it's easy enough for my mom to use (I don't know what your mom can do), then those people can use an OS that doesn't do strange things behind their backs, and so they can have good computing experience without needing as much support, which means computer literate people can go about doing more interesting and creative things.
Another thing, and the last thing I'll talk about, is the fact that good human factors design (I'm talking about useability here, not happy dancing stuff, or eye candy) makes applications more useable for all humans, including hard-core coders. It shortens learning curves by allowing us to see and fiddle with just as many features as we want to at any time. We aren't all experts in every area of computing, or at least nobody that I know is, even those people whom I would consider computing gods. A little useability goes a long way there. Don't tell me you don't need that stuff unless you toggle in boot code on the front panel every time you boot!
I think those are good reasons, and reason enough for me and hopefully a growing number of people to contribute to efforts to make useable, stable, open source computing a favourable alternative for everybody.
Firstly, I am sick and tired of people saying that "you can't curl up with an e-book". I am fed up with people saying "it strains your eyes", too. Want to know what strains my eyes? Reading ink on mashed trees in low light.
You just need the right hardware. I read gutenburg books on my Newton all the time - it's backlit, and the LCD is very stable and clear. Give me my even green backlit over that, please! And as for curling up with it, I can sit down with an entire library in the palm of my hand, and it will run without changing batteries, on full backlighting, for a week. I can lie in bed and read in the middle of the night without turning the light on, so not only can I curl up with my book, I can curl up with my sleeping sweetie too. The only arguments I have ever seen against e-books are "there aren't enough of them" and "it's just not the same". There aren't enough sanctioned e-books outside project gutenburg, and if one is particularly attatched to the feel of dried wood pulp then of course only that will do.
Well, you take your machine and build a simple input device for it - something that has a busfull of switches (8 in the case of a nice old CPU, or more otherwise) and one debouncer tied to a button. A little more hardware later, and you have a bit of hardware that can encode a word and put it, one word at a time, onto the bus. With this, you code drivers for an output device. I chose (once upon a time) an LCD panel which was easy to interface with.
Then, you use the same box and the output device and code up keyboard drivers so you don't need that damn box any more.
Then, get an EEPROM and save the results of your labour onto it so you can boot to this state later.
Then, you use the keyboard to code up drivers for a storage device, and you SAVE! YOUR! WORK! onto the storage medium and onto the EEPROM. Now, you can boot to the storage medium instead of just the EEPROM.
From there, you can work on an OS and a compiler and a better FS than the POS you probbaly had to hack together in the first place. Should take you a good while.. Then I guess you start on Tribes 3 (Let's face it, not everyone likes Quake). I never got to the storage medium part, I got bored after I got the EEPROM booting the system up.
*MY* objection to ShareSniffer is: What if I WANT to share my files...but not to ShareSniffer users? To be good netizens (not their purpose, I know) they should really have invented their own protocol.
In that case, you set a password on the share, and give the password to those people who should be able to access the share.
I've often wondered about this trick; what happens if you take the book and tear out the new stuff (let's say it's all at the back). What you now hold is the original, unabridged and untainted work. What happens?
- Does the copyright only cover the new material,
- Does the copyright still cover the old material as well,
- Does the copyright actually cover the graphical layout of the pages (ie, font used, margin size, etc) rather than the information contained, or
- Does it not matter as the publisher will sue you into the ground regardless?
The answer has a number of interesting implications, which are obvious and thus left as an exercise to the reader.This sounds awfully similar to what Apple already did really well (then killed) with the Newton 2x00 series. I have a Newton 2000, which can recognize even my horrible writing... and while it doesn't have actual paper, why would I need that? It also has about a two week in-use battery life (gotta love that 162 MHz StrongARM!), actually fits on a palm top and does cursive as well as printed recognition. You can find out more from all sorts of places, including Planet Newton or This Old Newt. There's an entire community out there who hopes daily that someone - anyone - will build something as good again. I hope IBM has done so... that is, if the screen part works separately from anything else, and has similar PDA-like characteristics.
Godwin's Law! This thread is now over.
You can always use the PGP Timestamping Service, which *does* prove you sent it at a particular time and that the contents existed in the original form.
What I don't understand is why BugTraq can't simply read the release and restate it in their own words. This isn't copyright violation, just as writing a book synopsis for a grade 7 report isn't. All the information can stay there, and MS can take the copyright and shove it. It's a copyright, not and NDA, and last I heard what was copyrighted was the particular instance of symbols used to express the information (ie, the words), not the information itself. If this is a problem for MS, can you imagine the problems for all the GPL'ed "work-alikes" which exist? No more gnumeric, abiword, XMMS, and boy oh boy is WINE ever in trouble!
Seriously, all it takes is a bit less effort than posting a regular bug report which they have to generate entirely themselves without any help. I don't see why this is an issue at all. If they're really concerned, they could even give a reference with the URL for the curious.
Maybe it's on the original site - I don't know because I couldn't even log in. I would expect that Zophar's is just mirroring the binaries because it was fater than grabbing the source too and the idea was to quickly pull the load off the beleagured server. With any luck, the original server will be open again soon and people who want the source can go there.
- README
- 1ST_READ.BIN
- dc_linux.elf
- IP.BIN
In other news, flagging sales of the Dreamcast were given a significant boost...Everything goes fine, I confirm my order of about $700. The next day, I get this mailed to the spam-bucket account I use for online transactions:
We have been unable to process your order because your billing and shipping information did not verify with the bank that issued the credit card you used to place your order.
As stated on our website, shipping and billing information, if different, must both be on file with the issuing financial institution.
Now this was a surprise to me because:
- I had called my credit card company to ask them to put the address on the card in addition to mine
- I had successfully shipped product to Tampa (also not my billing address) in the early summer.
Apparently new anti-fraud measures have since come into place. I can't make any more orders, unfortunately, and I'll have to do without the hardware I ordered until I get my friend to buy it for me on his card and I pay him back for it.Meanwhile, it might be a good idea for those of you who have a problem with online credit card transactions bouncing who also ship physical product to addresses to check with the bank and implement these measures. If there's no way for a person to get your product to them, there is no reason for them to expose themselves to the risk of using the stolen number at your site.
I think you're misinterpreting the way that open source software can work. Here's a better way to do "open source music":
Open the source (ie, the sheet music) to everyone.
If you actually want me to *play* the music or *sing* the song for you, you have to pay me for it. If you want to hear a recording of me doing that, ditto. If you don't want to pay, do it yourself.
The reason software companies that sell open source software don't do this is that your C compiler will make the exact same thing as my C compiler and so there is no reason for you to buy the binaries from them. In the case of "my" music, the fact is that my voice and lute playing ability may be far better than yours so there is in fact a reason to buy my recordings.
Software companies have to find other ways to add value, like offering support and customization. Performing artists have it easier, because the simple fact that they themselves perform the art makes it have more value.
You forgot to mention that you're upgrading from Geek House 1.3 to Geek Neighbourhood beta 1 as soon as I move in up the hill.
Of course we haven't figured out if we'll use hopped-up 802.11 cards or simply lots and lots of weatherized cat-3 (with T1 cards) to bridge our networks together, but when we do... we get to load balance our DSL modems. Yeee-haw! Come to think of it, does anyone have a better suggestion on how to hook up two places about 300-500M apart? Cheaply?
See, someone at one point said of the Geek House, "Imagine if we had a Beowulf cluster of these...?"
I did. When I hit "reply" there weren't any. Guess I should submit before browsing the rest of the headlines...
Microsoft isn't that stupid
/.
Now *that* is something I never thought I would read on
One word for you: Bob. If you still think MS can't be stupid, I have an OS to sell you...
As I read it, the spec sheet says,
PC Card RF module (e.g. 802.11b) Support via PC Card socket
Hence, there is a PCMCIA socket into which you can pop cards, including 802.11. This means you can probably use modems and such too.
If we had this kind of technology on D-Day in 1944, many Americans would be spending Memorial Day visiting grandpas instead of gravesites.
War technology does not save lives, that is not its purpose. Had the Allies had this tech during the war, many German children today would not be able to visit what grandfathers (and fathers, they were drafting kids near the end) they have today.
If both sides had this kind of technology (fair's fair), the war may have come out very differently considering that Germany had better precision engineering and for a time, air superiority even over British skies.
I suggest that US policy was coherent with that of other NATO members who didn't really seem to chomp at the bit to go to full-scale, we-regret-to-inform-you warfare against a foreign, er, land (can't really call it a nation). I know Canada sent Peacekeepers in and was not about to mobilize a more military force.
As for staying out, I think I agree with Kaa above where he suggests (though not directly) that there are times when one cannot turn a blind eye to the horrors perpetrated outside of North America. In accordance with the most basic and universal human morality, something must be done. This is the principle behind Peacekeeping efforts - you may not agree with the implementation, but I sure as hell hope you agree with the design.
Oh, and before someone asks me why I don't go fight, it's because it's not my job. We have specially trained people who are paid and honoured to go out and lay their lives on the line to support our wishes (represented by the Canadian government, which could be problematic). I'm glad we have them - I'm not a good warrior, and because of them I don't have to be. I can help better by doing things I am good at.
I know that, which is why I said, "send x out to infinity", by which I meant take the limit of these two equations as x->infinity. They "are" both infinity, but y is still larger than z because we have y > z for all x hence since z=x then y > x for all x. I'm not using standard arithmetic, which of course doesn't make sense.
To give an example from that link you provided: And I'm saying, that (replace "contstant" with "y") if you take the limit as x->infinity *and* as y->infinity then both will be "infinity" but that for the whole journey there then x+2 will be greater than y. Hence:
lim 1-(1-r) = 0
r->0
BUT
1-0.999... != 0, see? No limit, no go. The limit allows one to "cut to the chase" as it were, but we can't do that implicitly. We could say, "When 0.999... becomes 1, then it is equal to 1, but for the entire way there, it is less than 1".
Look, I'm starting to get the feeling that we're not communicating properly here. I'm talking limits of functions, and I think you think I'm talking arithmetic. Is what I've said here strictly wrong? Explain how - maybe I'm actually making a mistake in my thinking (although it doesn't seem to manifest in my calculus!