Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lay in a valley far, far away in the mountains the most contented kingdom the world has ever known. It was called Happy Valley, and it was ruled over by a wise old king called Otto. And all his subjects flourished and were happy, and there were no discontents or grumblers, because wise King Otto had had them all put to death, along with the trade union leaders, many years before. And all the happy folk of Happy Valley sang and danced all day long, and anyone who was for any reason miserable or unhappy or who had any difficult personal problem was prosecuted under the Happiness Act.
business buys desktop solutions because they can be easier used by the blind. I don't want to be cynical, it is important to improve accesibility, but... Who cares about it. It might be a surplus for some.
For companies that employ a significant number of people, yes these issues really matter. A great deal of time and money is, rightly, spent on ensuring buildings and the tools within them are accessible to people with widely differing abilities. I'm sorry that it doesn't matter wherever it is that you work.
Atheism is a religion, since it is built upon the BELIEF that there is no God.
Sure. I don't believe that there are any gods, I don't believe that there are any leprechauns, I don't believe that there's an elephant in my dining room and I don't believe that I have a twin brother called James. All based on lack of any sign of the entities in question. Are those all religions?
I also did say that selfishness beyond the survival instinct is a form of worship.
My cat can be selfish way beyond any apparent dictates of survival e.g. when it comes to getting some attention, or the best spot in the sun. Of course, we can rationalise how that derives from survival instincts but the same goes for humans.
If you want to say that humans are distinct from other animals in that they appear to have a greater ability for complex language enabling them to grasp abstract concepts and have "world viwes" or a "life philosophy" then I'd agree. I doubt that my cat can even conceive of a god. However, I think your attempts to pin everyone into a religion are hopeless.
Seriously though, let's say I say a prayer every morning. This allows me to not go crazy and start killing people. Why shouldn't I say the prayer? Is it because there's no "proof" of God/etc?
If you're "seriously" in danger of going crazy and killing people if you stop praying then I would definitely encourge you to keep praying. I'd feel a lot better though if you'd also see a psychologist. Same goes if you need to drink pigs blood by the light of the full moon. If you need some ritual to avoid going into a killing frenzy then you need help. I doubt that relying on the ritual is always going to be enough.
As with all sea changes in communications comes (especially early on) a high noise to signal ratio.
No, the noise increases over time. But in this case I think you're talking about the signal, not the noise. Just as with letters or phone or cell phones or email, bloggers sending their thoughts and feelings and opinions to whoever cares is a primary use of the medium. Blogger is using the medium precisely to send this message. Reader, in general, is reading the medium to receive this sort of message. Okay, some people have just picked the wrong blog but that doesn't make it 'noise' in general any more than normal griping over the telephone is in general noise - you talking to your friends is the signal, just as with the phone.
If anything is noise it's spam and telemarketing and pop-up ads - stuff that the listener isn't there for. And the general trend is for it to increase over time, not to be highest with a new medium. Legilsation may slow down or reverse that to a degree, but that's the normal trend.
If all retail sellers of authentic copies of Microsoft software are obligated by their reseller contract to say that, then the customer won't have any choice.
The question is what the reseller actually does, not what he's contractually obligated to do.
However, if the retailer really does require agreement to a set of terms then I agree that those terms potentially form a contract between him and the customer. Of course, privity of contract prevents anyone else from suing or being sued over that contract.
Example: I buy a copy of Dungeon Siege, and am asked to agree to the terms of an EULA. I give the game to my nephew as a birthday present. My nephew isn't too familiar with computers, but asks a friend of his to install it on my sister's (his mother's) computer. My sister's neighbour is occasionally allowed to use the computer. He decides to take the opportunity to reverse engineer the game, something purportedly forbidden by the EULA. Question: who is bound by the putative contract?
Then we have consumer protection laws (not all contracts are valid), agency law (just because I install software at work doesn't mean I have the authority to bind the company to an audit of its computer systems - do you think if I got some mid level employee at Microsoft to sign to an agreement that I can wander around Bill Gates's office and poke around in his desk contents that it'll be binding on Bill or on Microsoft?), the effects of minority on enforceability of contracts...
Conspicuous sticker on the box: "The sale of this product is restricted by an End User License Agreement, published at the URL http://www.microsoft.example/eula/06620 , which you may view on this store's Internet terminal." Now are the lawyers happy?
Unlikely to be.
Customer walks into shop "I'd like a copy of Windows XP please"
Shopkeeper: "Certainly sir, that'll be $150"
Customer gives him the money, shopkeeper gives him the box. The EULA formed no part of the contract.
Okay, the shopkeeper MIGHT say "I can't sell it to you sir, but I can license it on these terms..." but it's rather unlikely to happen if only because the shopkeeper won't get many sales.
Now if it's purchased straight from Mirosoft's website with a clickthrough to agree to terms in order to buy it then sure, we have a valid contract. That's a totally different situation to most sales at present though.
Does the US control the "World Wide Web" though? I don't think anybody does... similar to how nobody really controls HTTP. DNS is centralized, it needs some control... comparing it to "The Web" is comparing apples to oranges.
Agreed. However, perhaps that does help draw attention to the relatively sensible issue of 'DNS needs some control, so what is the best structure to provide that control' and away from 'we built it so we have the RIGHT to control it', which some people seem to be focusing on while giving the impression of much frothing of mouths.
And what if the testing involved 1000 people of varing ages, weights, sex who were given measured amounts to drink and subjected to varying levels of activity (excercise) and the machine returned results within 0.001% of blood tests every time for ever test on every person?
Then who gives s shit about the software running on it.
Because without understanding how the machine functions, there's no way for the defense to be able to establish why this one particular person who's being prosecuted might give a false result when those other thousand people didn't. The defense have the right to challenge the evidence.
The thing is that both have been done already in order to get the device approved, and the one aspect that's going to drift over time (test results) gets recalibrated on a regular basis.
The defense has to be able to challenge the evidence. Just like they can get their own expert to challenge the techniques used for finger print matching, or any other aspect of the evidence. To say that the court must accept the claims of some past expert and not permit the defense to have access to the information necessary to challenge the findings of that expert is totally incompatible with our system of justice.
You've misunderstood the problem. Eventually the leader must be called out again.
I don't see how he's misunderstood it. Here's what the original post said:
The king will call the prisoners in any order he pleases, and he can call and recall each prisoner as many times as he wants, as many times in a row as he wants. The only rule the king has to obey is that eventually he has to call every prisoner in an arbitrary number of times. So maybe he will call the first prisoner in a million times before ever calling in the second prisoner twice, we just don't know. But eventually we may be certain that each prisoner will be called in ten times, or twenty times, or any number you choose.
Based on this, the king can call any nominated leader/counter the maximum number of times right from the begining, or at any time prior to all prisoners having been called.
How would someone be discriminated against based on Genetic Material?
Sadly it happens all the time. Where I work we won't even consider job applications by tomato plants despite the fact that the only differences between them and human employees arise from their genetics.
You know there is a difference between "lawful" and "right", "unlawful" and "wrong" don't you? The judgeS were wrong.
The judges either applied the law correctly or else they did not. It is possible that the law could do with being amended but that does not mean that a judge correctly applying the law as it stands is "wrong". That's just gibberish.
Judges, not judge. Judges of the State Supreme Court.
Okay, so you're saying that the Supreme Court of Delaware was wrong on a point of law with regard to the State of Delaware. Are you going to cite any precedents at all to support that or are you just claiming to out-expert them?
You could have provided support to customers without issuing press releases saying that you're partnering with SCO. Especially as you say it isn't about SCO.
Your comments about bringing open source applications to closed source environments sound like you've missed the point to a scary degree. People aren't aghast that you're supporting a closed source platform like Windows or AIX. It's that you're partnering with a bunch of crooks and scam artists who are targeting a lot of people who had previously seen you as a company they could do business with.
Nothing in your comment explains why you're representing yourselves to the public as being in cahoots with SCO. You could have supported the platform without doing that.
At least he's passionate about his job. That's more than you can say about a lot of executives. What's wrong with wanting to crush the competition? That's what capitalism's all about.
True. I believe a whole chapter of The Wealth of Nations was devoted to the importance of chair throwing.
However, most public schools do, and they teach a theory as if it were a law (such as the laws of thermodynamics or the laws of gravity)
I'm going to sounds shockingly ignorant now, but what is the important difference here? Surely nobody would claim that the laws of thermodynamics are in any sense "proven" beyond the lack of experimental results that contradict them.
Slashdot Mirror
How come this posting gets moderated up to 5 but my posting on the same subject gets modded as 'Off Topic'?
:p
Because the moderators like me best
Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lay in a valley far, far away in the mountains the most contented kingdom the world has ever known. It was called Happy Valley, and it was ruled over by a wise old king called Otto. And all his subjects flourished and were happy, and there were no discontents or grumblers, because wise King Otto had had them all put to death, along with the trade union leaders, many years before. And all the happy folk of Happy Valley sang and danced all day long, and anyone who was for any reason miserable or unhappy or who had any difficult personal problem was prosecuted under the Happiness Act.
Happy Valley
business buys desktop solutions because they can be easier used by the blind. I don't want to be cynical, it is important to improve accesibility, but... Who cares about it. It might be a surplus for some.
For companies that employ a significant number of people, yes these issues really matter. A great deal of time and money is, rightly, spent on ensuring buildings and the tools within them are accessible to people with widely differing abilities. I'm sorry that it doesn't matter wherever it is that you work.
Atheism is a religion, since it is built upon the BELIEF that there is no God.
Sure. I don't believe that there are any gods, I don't believe that there are any leprechauns, I don't believe that there's an elephant in my dining room and I don't believe that I have a twin brother called James. All based on lack of any sign of the entities in question. Are those all religions?
I also did say that selfishness beyond the survival instinct is a form of worship.
My cat can be selfish way beyond any apparent dictates of survival e.g. when it comes to getting some attention, or the best spot in the sun. Of course, we can rationalise how that derives from survival instincts but the same goes for humans.
If you want to say that humans are distinct from other animals in that they appear to have a greater ability for complex language enabling them to grasp abstract concepts and have "world viwes" or a "life philosophy" then I'd agree. I doubt that my cat can even conceive of a god. However, I think your attempts to pin everyone into a religion are hopeless.
Seriously though, let's say I say a prayer every morning. This allows me to not go crazy and start killing people. Why shouldn't I say the prayer? Is it because there's no "proof" of God/etc?
If you're "seriously" in danger of going crazy and killing people if you stop praying then I would definitely encourge you to keep praying. I'd feel a lot better though if you'd also see a psychologist. Same goes if you need to drink pigs blood by the light of the full moon. If you need some ritual to avoid going into a killing frenzy then you need help. I doubt that relying on the ritual is always going to be enough.
As with all sea changes in communications comes (especially early on) a high noise to signal ratio.
No, the noise increases over time. But in this case I think you're talking about the signal, not the noise. Just as with letters or phone or cell phones or email, bloggers sending their thoughts and feelings and opinions to whoever cares is a primary use of the medium. Blogger is using the medium precisely to send this message. Reader, in general, is reading the medium to receive this sort of message. Okay, some people have just picked the wrong blog but that doesn't make it 'noise' in general any more than normal griping over the telephone is in general noise - you talking to your friends is the signal, just as with the phone.
If anything is noise it's spam and telemarketing and pop-up ads - stuff that the listener isn't there for. And the general trend is for it to increase over time, not to be highest with a new medium. Legilsation may slow down or reverse that to a degree, but that's the normal trend.
If all retail sellers of authentic copies of Microsoft software are obligated by their reseller contract to say that, then the customer won't have any choice.
The question is what the reseller actually does, not what he's contractually obligated to do.
However, if the retailer really does require agreement to a set of terms then I agree that those terms potentially form a contract between him and the customer. Of course, privity of contract prevents anyone else from suing or being sued over that contract.
Example: I buy a copy of Dungeon Siege, and am asked to agree to the terms of an EULA. I give the game to my nephew as a birthday present. My nephew isn't too familiar with computers, but asks a friend of his to install it on my sister's (his mother's) computer. My sister's neighbour is occasionally allowed to use the computer. He decides to take the opportunity to reverse engineer the game, something purportedly forbidden by the EULA. Question: who is bound by the putative contract?
Then we have consumer protection laws (not all contracts are valid), agency law (just because I install software at work doesn't mean I have the authority to bind the company to an audit of its computer systems - do you think if I got some mid level employee at Microsoft to sign to an agreement that I can wander around Bill Gates's office and poke around in his desk contents that it'll be binding on Bill or on Microsoft?), the effects of minority on enforceability of contracts...
Conspicuous sticker on the box: "The sale of this product is restricted by an End User License Agreement, published at the URL http://www.microsoft.example/eula/06620 , which you may view on this store's Internet terminal." Now are the lawyers happy?
Unlikely to be.
Customer walks into shop "I'd like a copy of Windows XP please"
Shopkeeper: "Certainly sir, that'll be $150"
Customer gives him the money, shopkeeper gives him the box. The EULA formed no part of the contract.
Okay, the shopkeeper MIGHT say "I can't sell it to you sir, but I can license it on these terms..." but it's rather unlikely to happen if only because the shopkeeper won't get many sales.
Now if it's purchased straight from Mirosoft's website with a clickthrough to agree to terms in order to buy it then sure, we have a valid contract. That's a totally different situation to most sales at present though.
Does the US control the "World Wide Web" though? I don't think anybody does... similar to how nobody really controls HTTP. DNS is centralized, it needs some control... comparing it to "The Web" is comparing apples to oranges.
Agreed. However, perhaps that does help draw attention to the relatively sensible issue of 'DNS needs some control, so what is the best structure to provide that control' and away from 'we built it so we have the RIGHT to control it', which some people seem to be focusing on while giving the impression of much frothing of mouths.
No, I don't - but I thought it sounded good. :-)
*Grin* Thanks for the straight answer.
And who uses the Internet the most? It's the US, is it not?
Do you have any supporting stats? (I don't have any to contradict you; I'm genuinely curious as to whether there's any support for your claim).
in my book, you're one of the aforementioned nutcases.
Is this a kissing book?
And what if the testing involved 1000 people of varing ages, weights, sex who were given measured amounts to drink and subjected to varying levels of activity (excercise) and the machine returned results within 0.001% of blood tests every time for ever test on every person?
Then who gives s shit about the software running on it.
Because without understanding how the machine functions, there's no way for the defense to be able to establish why this one particular person who's being prosecuted might give a false result when those other thousand people didn't. The defense have the right to challenge the evidence.
The thing is that both have been done already in order to get the device approved, and the one aspect that's going to drift over time (test results) gets recalibrated on a regular basis.
The defense has to be able to challenge the evidence. Just like they can get their own expert to challenge the techniques used for finger print matching, or any other aspect of the evidence. To say that the court must accept the claims of some past expert and not permit the defense to have access to the information necessary to challenge the findings of that expert is totally incompatible with our system of justice.
I don't see how he's misunderstood it. Here's what the original post said:
Based on this, the king can call any nominated leader/counter the maximum number of times right from the begining, or at any time prior to all prisoners having been called.
How would someone be discriminated against based on Genetic Material?
Sadly it happens all the time. Where I work we won't even consider job applications by tomato plants despite the fact that the only differences between them and human employees arise from their genetics.
You know there is a difference between "lawful" and "right", "unlawful" and "wrong" don't you? The judgeS were wrong.
The judges either applied the law correctly or else they did not. It is possible that the law could do with being amended but that does not mean that a judge correctly applying the law as it stands is "wrong". That's just gibberish.
The judge was wrong
Judges, not judge. Judges of the State Supreme Court.
Okay, so you're saying that the Supreme Court of Delaware was wrong on a point of law with regard to the State of Delaware. Are you going to cite any precedents at all to support that or are you just claiming to out-expert them?
i dont think linus is to keen about the GPL, he never actively promotes it.
Yes, saying things like "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." is almost hostile.
Why is it that the people who seem to complain about this are the ones who also complain about there being nothing good to watch on TV?
Could you cite stats on that or at least give examples of, say, a dozen specific people?
TIA.
However, a sale does not constitute a contract.
Yes, it does.
Offer, acceptance, consideration. Contract.
I don't know where you got the idea that you need a contract for this.
Sounds as though he has at least soime minimal knowledge of common law. Where do you get your idea that normal sale of goods is non-contractual?
You could have provided support to customers without issuing press releases saying that you're partnering with SCO. Especially as you say it isn't about SCO.
Your comments about bringing open source applications to closed source environments sound like you've missed the point to a scary degree. People aren't aghast that you're supporting a closed source platform like Windows or AIX. It's that you're partnering with a bunch of crooks and scam artists who are targeting a lot of people who had previously seen you as a company they could do business with.
Nothing in your comment explains why you're representing yourselves to the public as being in cahoots with SCO. You could have supported the platform without doing that.
How is that flamebait? How many people could be provoked into a flamewar over string theory?
If you disagree with him then maybe you should consider making a reasoned reply.
At least he's passionate about his job. That's more than you can say about a lot of executives. What's wrong with wanting to crush the competition? That's what capitalism's all about.
True. I believe a whole chapter of The Wealth of Nations was devoted to the importance of chair throwing.
However, most public schools do, and they teach a theory as if it were a law (such as the laws of thermodynamics or the laws of gravity)
I'm going to sounds shockingly ignorant now, but what is the important difference here? Surely nobody would claim that the laws of thermodynamics are in any sense "proven" beyond the lack of experimental results that contradict them.