America was founded on this principle. This is why we were given the right to bear arms, not to protect us from robbers, but to protect us from the powers that sometimes becomes too corrupt to merely fix...sometimes you need to abolish them
If I remember right (and I'm not a US citizen so my memory of the facts is somewhat hazy) the US Constitution allows for the bearing of arms purposely to let the citizens oppose the government, but it does so specifically within the context of a well-organized militia.
Now, I don't know about you, but to me that says "Store the assault rifles at the gun club where you train." and not "Keep a small arsenal under the bed, just in case." (If you think that one person on their own is going to bring down any government anywhere in the world, you suffer from a very strange delusion. At the very least, you need some minions.)
Whatever the merits of that story, the main credit card companies are going to be focussed on stamping this sort of thing out. The last thing they want is for consumers to lose confidence in their payment system, as that would make them go to some other mechanism that doesn't give them their cut. Their globally optimal strategy is probably to splat these bad-egg processors back into the stone age.
This was at the start of the period when Sun believed that all the world was Java. What is not clear is whether this was a cunning plan to persuade everyone to buy much bigger hardware, or just one of those bizarre fits of corporate Group-Think that happens from time to time when someone slips magic mushrooms into the boardroom's supply of coffee beans...
I think Concorde was scrapped not for the accident, but mainly because of fears that terrorists will use it as a giant APFSDS round to penetrate hardened targets.
I disagree. It was clear when the crash happened in 2000 that Concorde had problems. When compounded with the fact that it was just not making money and sucked environmentally, the writing was just on the wall in the post 9/11 air-travel industry. Given that, I think there's still potential room in the industry for supersonic air-travel if someone can get the details right. (As usual, the devil really is in the details.)
Your method sucks at the office, when you need to schedule a meeting of about 10 people at a time when everybody is free
Bah, that's a real troll just there. In my experience, finding a time when all of 10 people are really free for a meeting is impossible in the first place (to say nothing of the complexity of organizing a meeting across multiple timezones distributed evenly around the world, which is the usual case for my meetings, alas.) The best way to deal with this is to just book things to be convenient for yourself (if not for you, who should it be convenient for?) and accept apologies from those people who can't make it. And make sure someone takes good minutes, of course; reading the minutes lets those who missed the meeting get up to speed.
As much as I hate Microsoft, I hate people who think they can use patents to cash in on something after the fact. Rambus did this in its ambush of memory makers. Eolas did this to Microsoft. Intertrust is doing this now to MS.
[Emphasis mine]
BZZZT! Wrong.
I know the Eolas people, and I know that their case is much more like the case with the Guatemalan guy. They came up with a really neat idea, got a patent, showed it to MS who said they weren't interested and then proceeded to rip them off by using the technology anyway. That's just a low scum thing to do, whatever you think about software patents.
But this is slashdot so don't expect the facts to be thick on the ground in this discussion...
The key thing about wireless is that it doesn't require anything like the investment in infrastructure that cable-bound telecoms do. Fewer streets dug up means it's both quicker and cheaper to set up; no reason for it to not spread like wildfire...
There's no problem for anyone with offering cheaper prices for people who buy larger quantities of your own product (as long as you're allowing anyone who buys in those quantities to get those prices, of course). But that's nothing to do with the case reported. Offering cheaper prices to people who buy larger quantities of a competing product is wrong.
That sometimes happens (e.g. the page on Dubya at the time of the last US election). When it does, the page gets locked for a while so people can cool off and focus instead on conveying facts and balanced opinions.
If there was a viable business model in this space, hosting companies would be selling this as a service. They already have the right infrastructure.
The problem is the software vendors. They usually (well, at least at the high-end; we're not talking consumer stuff here) want to know the names of all their users (not just customers, but the names of the people within the customers' organizations who will be using it). This, combined with the fact that applications have to be tuned carefully to take advantage of the hardware available, means that it is very difficult for hosting companies (the term you are looking for is Application Service Provider, BTW) to get all the bits and pieces together to make a viable large-scale business case.
In practice, there are a lot of other problems too (e.g. customer-to-ASP networking is a known serious issue for serious stuff) and there's room for a lot of work building this sort of thing into something truly viable.
If it wasn't for patents, we woudl all still be living in caves and making fire by rubbing two sticks together.
No.
The first patent was awarded in Italy in (I think) the Renaissance. Something to do with cranes for port cargo handling IIRC. Obviously by that point, the vast majority of people had moved on to dwelling in houses (or at least huts) and stick-rubbing was not the only way to make fire.
Not really. At times in the past I've been behind a firewall that put over 100k people effectively on the same IP address (or a small pool of IP addrs). Thankfully that time is past now, but if you think that an IP addr identifies a unique machine, you're sorely wrong. The right answer is to go by session (identified by cookies, which web proxies usually handle right) and not commit any temporary files (like CAPTCHAs) to disk at all.
Slashdot Mirror
If I remember right (and I'm not a US citizen so my memory of the facts is somewhat hazy) the US Constitution allows for the bearing of arms purposely to let the citizens oppose the government, but it does so specifically within the context of a well-organized militia.
Now, I don't know about you, but to me that says "Store the assault rifles at the gun club where you train." and not "Keep a small arsenal under the bed, just in case." (If you think that one person on their own is going to bring down any government anywhere in the world, you suffer from a very strange delusion. At the very least, you need some minions.)
You're in the wrong country for that sort of thing. Try moving to France...
I thought it was Visual SourceSafe that we wanted to do away with...
Whatever the merits of that story, the main credit card companies are going to be focussed on stamping this sort of thing out. The last thing they want is for consumers to lose confidence in their payment system, as that would make them go to some other mechanism that doesn't give them their cut. Their globally optimal strategy is probably to splat these bad-egg processors back into the stone age.
Do they specify what picture you should have on the mask, or does it have to be Frankenstein's Monster?
Please take this tinfoil hat. You obviously need it far more than I do.
Not really; that particular paragraph really merits an Insightful...
Dude! Where's my dictionary?
This was at the start of the period when Sun believed that all the world was Java. What is not clear is whether this was a cunning plan to persuade everyone to buy much bigger hardware, or just one of those bizarre fits of corporate Group-Think that happens from time to time when someone slips magic mushrooms into the boardroom's supply of coffee beans...
I disagree. It was clear when the crash happened in 2000 that Concorde had problems. When compounded with the fact that it was just not making money and sucked environmentally, the writing was just on the wall in the post 9/11 air-travel industry. Given that, I think there's still potential room in the industry for supersonic air-travel if someone can get the details right. (As usual, the devil really is in the details.)
Bah, that's a real troll just there. In my experience, finding a time when all of 10 people are really free for a meeting is impossible in the first place (to say nothing of the complexity of organizing a meeting across multiple timezones distributed evenly around the world, which is the usual case for my meetings, alas.) The best way to deal with this is to just book things to be convenient for yourself (if not for you, who should it be convenient for?) and accept apologies from those people who can't make it. And make sure someone takes good minutes, of course; reading the minutes lets those who missed the meeting get up to speed.
That's a really cool advertising stunt, getting in all the papers like that. It can't have cost you very much to hire all those nuts either. Good one!
of this story.
I wonder what E.T. Al thinks about that...
[Emphasis mine]
BZZZT! Wrong.
I know the Eolas people, and I know that their case is much more like the case with the Guatemalan guy. They came up with a really neat idea, got a patent, showed it to MS who said they weren't interested and then proceeded to rip them off by using the technology anyway. That's just a low scum thing to do, whatever you think about software patents.
But this is slashdot so don't expect the facts to be thick on the ground in this discussion...
Nice one editors...
If everything of any significant complexity was deliberately created, who created the creator?
If Linus had been using Visual SourceSafe, he'd have been committed to a lunatic asylum long ago. Yes, VSS is reputedly *that* bad!
The key thing about wireless is that it doesn't require anything like the investment in infrastructure that cable-bound telecoms do. Fewer streets dug up means it's both quicker and cheaper to set up; no reason for it to not spread like wildfire...
There's no problem for anyone with offering cheaper prices for people who buy larger quantities of your own product (as long as you're allowing anyone who buys in those quantities to get those prices, of course). But that's nothing to do with the case reported. Offering cheaper prices to people who buy larger quantities of a competing product is wrong.
That sometimes happens (e.g. the page on Dubya at the time of the last US election). When it does, the page gets locked for a while so people can cool off and focus instead on conveying facts and balanced opinions.
On the other hand, the little toe-rag was attempting to sell the answers and that does make it more serious in the eyes of the law.
The kid did wrong and is going to get slapped down for it. Hope the idiot learns from this; don't get caught!
In practice, there are a lot of other problems too (e.g. customer-to-ASP networking is a known serious issue for serious stuff) and there's room for a lot of work building this sort of thing into something truly viable.
No.
The first patent was awarded in Italy in (I think) the Renaissance. Something to do with cranes for port cargo handling IIRC. Obviously by that point, the vast majority of people had moved on to dwelling in houses (or at least huts) and stick-rubbing was not the only way to make fire.
Not really. At times in the past I've been behind a firewall that put over 100k people effectively on the same IP address (or a small pool of IP addrs). Thankfully that time is past now, but if you think that an IP addr identifies a unique machine, you're sorely wrong. The right answer is to go by session (identified by cookies, which web proxies usually handle right) and not commit any temporary files (like CAPTCHAs) to disk at all.