I do not think censorship is OK. I just disagree with you. I do not think that Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity not getting many network interviews is an example of censorship. They are getting their message out there (as is amply demonstrated by their historical standings on the NYTimes bestseller list) and there are plenty of lefty wingnuts that have an equally hard time getting exposure through the major media outlets.
Respond to my actual arguments, please. Misrepresenting my arguments is really bad form.
I said: "he is sold as a 'common man' looking out for his fellows in middle America"
In truth, I think O'Reilly is conservative in the healthy majority of his opinions. You can't fault a guy for this as everyone has their own personal political slant. And his show is an opinion show, so a requirement for a lack of bias would be unreasonable. But what irks me is that he sells himself as moderate, which is clearly not the case.
I guess in my perfect world, a person who has a political show dedicated to the presentation of opinions would be upfront about his own political beliefs. Anything less is being disingenuous.
5) Bernard Goldberg, banned from network interviews while promoting NYT bestseller.
6) Ann Coulter, banned from network interviews while promoting NYT bestseller.
7) Sean Hannity, banned from network interviews while promoting NYT bestseller.
Maybe these are absent because:
1) Ann Coulter is a crazy M____f____. She thinks Joe McCarthy was a hero. She thinks the left and all associated with them are evil. Basically, her entire career is built on hate. Can you really not see why a major TV network would refrain from giving her airtime?
2) Sean Hannity, while occasionally reasonable, released a book called "Deliver Us From Evil." It was written about the left. Again, we have Left==Evil. Again, we have a person whose career seems founded in hate. Maybe you haven't noticed, but networks don't generally give a lot of time to extremist voices. Or would you prefer to hear from Neo-Nazi's, the Michigan Militia and co. during the nightly news?
3) Bernard Goldberg's book was a scathing account of his time at CBS. He basically tore CBS a new one (with varying success, depending on your perspective). Now why wouldn't CBS want to share his voice with America?... Maybe because he tore them a new one!!! Or, alternatively, why was Eric Alterman (author of "What Liberal Media") also "banned" from network interviews? Or how about Joe Conason? He wrote a liberal bestseller, yet I never saw his exclusive interview with Baba Wawa. Maybe its because these folks weren't banned from network interviews, its just that the establishent didn't feel these were voices worth hearing. Personally, I don't think most of these guys are worth listening to, either. They spout hate and spun facts to make their points. Journalism should have a higher standard and I support networks "ban" on writers with these tactics. Too bad Moore is independently famous, as his fame seems to be the reason networks still give him a voice ocasionally.
You can try to spin these authors lack of airtime any way you want but a few facts are undeniable. One is that networks will do anything--ANYTHING!!!!--to get ratings. Why did the "left-biased media" cover the Clinton scandal so thoroughly? Because it was a ratings goldmine.
Another fact is that just because an book is a NYTimes bestseller, doesn't mean that they will be popular with America as a whole. The books you listed sold overwhelmingly to very conservative audiences. America, while it certainly has very conservative and liberal people in it, is overwhelmingly moderate. This is why Bill O'Reilly sells so well: he is sold as a "common man" looking out for his fellows in middle America. Ultra-Conservative messages and ideas do not play well with middle America just as ultra-Liberal message do not. Networks understand this and program accordingly.
However, many (most?) programmers have a different definition of code library that goes something like: any code I have ever written. Or maybe: any code I come into contact with (ie. cvs co MyCompaniesMainCodeTree). This is unfortunately probably the most common definition of "code library."
I agree with you that it shouldn't be done, but as long as people don't go around blatently copying old code they don't own into new products, I guess I just don't care. At least not for the projects I'm involved with.
Who said anything about cut and paste? It's more likely that the code library is just that, a library -- include files, functions calls and all that. You may have a point with regards to trust, but I don't see any distinction between using a personal library and a library from a third party.
This is true. However, it has been my experience that those who are re-using code they don't own try to hide that fact as best they can. Therefore, they probably won't take a full library and release it into production with their current application. Rather, they would try to obfuscate the fact that the code was "stolen"/illegal by burying it in their own libraries and code.
And this is where things start getting tricky. A good programmer with full knowledge of the "stolen" code would probably be able to do this well and have no negative effects. A mediocre programmer who doesn't fully understand the code might use a code snippet out of context in such a way as to introduce bugs.
The quality of the copied code is also at issue. If it was a well designed object oriented library (highly decoupled classes, etc), you would likely be able to quite easily pull a few classes out of that library and use them quickly with a low probability of introducing bugs. If, however, the code was five monsterous c functions, this might not be so easy.
When all is said and done, I'll trust those programmers who think about every problem and try to apply the most appropriate solution. They should be able to discuss and explain their solutions and why they fit the problem in the best/most cost effective way. After that, I trust them to do their job. In a team environment, quick copy and pastes or wholesale uses of improperly obtained libraries probably wouldn't fly anyway. At least not in my team...
Seriously, though, would you really trust a person who completely relied on copy/pasting legacy code into current projects? Do you know where that person got the code to begin with? Did he write it? Does he even understand the code?
While just about everyone I know keeps a personal code library containing *some* proprietary code, most don't actively use it. Those who are unscrupulous enough to copy/paste the code into current projects are not people you want around in the long term. I mean, did they even think about the best solution to the problem before doing that copy/paste?
Most people I know use their library as a reference for future development. This allows them to take the best features/ideas of their historical library and integrate those ideas in new and better ways into their current projects. And I don't see a problem with this behavior. Any person with a decent memory would remember their best ideas and features, anyway, so the illegality of this behavior is questionable.
It only *seems* like consensus because of unfair modding. When all of the time-share salesmen out there get off work, all of those "They're just doing their jobs!" will get modded up and we'll have a real discussion on our hands.
I mean, there has to be *someone* out there to defend slimy sales tactics, right?;)
I understand that not everyone likes the iTunes interface and that for *some* people, it isn't the most intuitive. Every human is different and each views their experiences through a filter of their own subjectivity. Therefor, not everyone will like iTunes.
However, rather than assume the praise of the iTunes interface originates from a "fawning, sycophantic praise for anything apple generates," couldn't one just as easily surmise that the praise originates from the effectiveness of the design? For many people, the interface is *very* easy to use and the way iTunes organizes music is *very* intuitive. I think the overwhelmingly positive reviews are a testiment to this ease of use.
So maybe you could detail your troubles with the way iTunes organizes your library. or add something concrete and constructive to this conversation rather than blindly lashing at anything Apple.
constructive criticism: good
pointless complaints about a companies users: irrelevent
Yes, it is quite resonable to monitor kids at school. In fact, I would hope that my kids were supervised the majority of the time while at school (depending on their age, of course). Teachers should know what the kids are doing and prevent kids from doing inappropriate things. The thing is, supervising kids takes a lot of work, just like being a good parent. The two jobs are actually very similar, at least in the amount of attention and care that should be given to the kids. And in the case of a teacher, they are being paid to not only teach the children, but to appropriately supervise them.
All of this is a far cry from using electronic spy tools to secretly monitor the children's activities. What kind of message does it send to the kids? "Be good! Because if you don't, we are always watching. No matter where you go, we are watching!" Is that really the lesson we want to teach the children? Be good, not for the sake of being a good person, but for the sake of not getting caught.
And that is the difference between appropriate supervision and eletronic surveillance. With the former, the goal is to teach the children, mold them by example and through good leadership, and let the keep their individuality and allow them to experiment within appropriate bounds. With the latter, its simply trying to keep kids away from things which *could* be bad for them.
In short, if a school thinks it needs to install this kind of electronic monitoring system, I think it is indicative of a lack of appropriate supervision and/or quality teachers.
My kids' teacher should know what my child is doing (approximately) without resorting to spying.
There is no such thing as the "fact of evolution". You should really check your sources on that one. It's called a theory for a reason.
How this got modded insightful is beyond me.
Evolution happens. That is a fact. It is a scientifically observable fact.
The mechanisms of how things evolve is a theory.
You can read all about this here. One more time: evolution has been observed many, many times and is now accepted as fact by the scientific community. However, many scientists still disagree about how evolution happens, and we only have a theory to describe this mechanism.
What really irritates my about this post is how bloody confident the poster is that his parent was wrong. How can a person be so sure and so clueless at the same time?
It seems that this discovery is an improvement to the current method of extracting energy from ethanol. In most current applications, ethanol is burned to harness its energy. In the application described in the article, the ethanol is converted to hydrogen which is then turned into electricity.
So it seems the breakthrough here is probably a more efficient way of extracting energy from ethanol. That's gotta be a good thing.
Actually, all fuels take more energy to produce than they contain -- thanks to the same Second Law of Thermodynamics that Uncle Cecil seems to misunderstand at the end of the linked article. (Don't get me wrong, I like Cecil, but I think he made a little mistake.) Anything that produced more energy than was put into it would violate the Second Law.
Of course you are correct on this point.
However (you knew that was coming, right?), the point Cecil was probably trying to make was that the amount of energy we can harness effectively from the burning of ethanol is less than the amount of energy that went into making it. Add to that the waste in the process of creating ethanol (that process can't be 100% efficient, right?) and there is definitely a net loss. Because we can't harness all of the energy created from the burning of ethanol (light for instance), and the fact that the process which creates it is not perfect, it ends up costing more energy to produce than you get from burning it.
And I am fully aware that this is just a limitation in the current method of creating and burning ethanol. This procedure could be improved over time.
We had a "contest" similar to this topic at work a few years back. One of my co-workers started telling us about his worst job and it escalated into a group bitch-fest about the bad jobs we'd had in our younger days.
As we were telling our "war stories," one co-worker (a guy who grew up in a Southeast Asian country) sat quietly listening. When the last person had ended his tale of a nasty landscaping job he'd had as a teen, our co-worker jumped in. "Well, when I was fourteen, I was walking through a swamp carrying a rifle over my head..."
Needless to say, our stories paled in comparison to his remarkable (and sometimes painful) stories of his childhood. The moral I took away from the situation was that there is always someone out there who has it far worse than you.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to whine about our jobs, but its always good to keep a little perspective.
There are some things more important then "winning". In fact, there's a lot of things more important then winning.
Yep.
Off the top of my head, I'd list the finding the truth and fairness in the court system as both being much more important than winning.
The current system was set up in order to provide fairness in determining the truth in the courtroom. If the current system is no longer the best way to expose the truth fairly, we should change the system. Scummy lawyers aren't the problem, it's the fact that the system tolerates--even encourages--the scummy lawyers that is the real issue.
What were the circumstances regarding the refusal of prior art as evidence in the Eolas vs. Microsoft case? Was there a reason that the prior art wasn't admitted, or are all prior art claims rejected by courts out of hand?
I guess my question is: if the patent office doesn't check for prior art and the courts don't allow prior art as evidence, who the heck can check for and invalidate patents covering widely used technologies which existed before the patent was issued? Does the open source community need to start patenting every feature of their applications to prevent a company from later claiming the feature as their own via the patent office?
I knew the patent system was screwed up, but this makes the patent system seem utterly worthless and geared toward corruption. Sick.
Ahh, but that might not be right either. Here's the full explanation from straightdope.com:
ANOTHER BITE FROM THE APPLE
Back to Barry Popik. Having gotten Big Apple squared away, Barry turned his attention to Chicago's nickname, the Windy City. The average mope believes Chicago was so dubbed because it's windy, meteorologically speaking. The more sophisticated set (including, till recently, your columnist) thinks the term originated in a comment by Charles Dana, editor of the New York Sun in the 1890s. Annoyed by the vocal (and ultimately successful) efforts of Chicago civic leaders to land the world's fair celebrating Columbus's discovery of America, Dana urged his readers to ignore "the nonsensical claims of that windy city"--windy meaning excessively talkative.
But that may not be the true explanation either. Scouring the magazines and newspapers of the day, Popik found that the nickname commonly used for Chicago switched from the Garden City to the Windy City in 1886, several years before Dana's comment. The earliest citation was from the Louisville Courier-Journal in early January, 1886, when it was used in reference to the wind off Lake Michigan. In other words, the average mope was right all along! However, when Popik attempted to notify former Chicagoan but soon-to-be New Yorker Hillary Rodham Clinton of his findings, she blew him off with a form letter--and this from a woman facing a campaign for the Senate. Come on, Hill, quit worrying about the Puerto Ricans and pay attention here. You want to lose the etymologist vote?
Full article here. There's also info on the origins of the "Big Apple." Neat.
And why should poor people be buying books? I mean they can just go to the library, right?
And why should poor people be buying toys for their kids? Send them outside to play, or let them go to a park!
This mentality is so shortsighted. These things that you consider a luxury for a "poor" person are actually great ways to encourage your kids to learn and enjoy learning. By buying your kids books, educational toys, even a computer you are encouraging them to enjoy learning and setting an example for them, showing them that education is important and should take precendence to other items in a budget.
Those are very positive lessons.
And of course there are other ways to do this, and over-extravagence even when buying positive items is sending the wrong message. But I for one think it is important to show kids early on that an investment in education is a very important thing.
I think a reasonably priced computer is a very good way to encourage learning at home and priorities in making wise purchases. Involve your kids in the purchase and tell them why you think its important.
BTW, I'm not defending the PC mentioned in the original story. I don't have an opinion either way on these things. But in general, a computer can be a good investment, if properly approached.
Taft
Re:VS sucks
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
How in the blue heck do regions make refactoring unnecessary? Do you know what refactoring is??
Let's say I have a class in package A and I want to move it to package B (in dotNet parlance, packages are namespaces). In dotNet, I'd have to personally touch every piece of code accessing that class and redo the import statements (dotNet: using statements) to reflect the change. Same goes for method name changes, public member changes, method signatures (parameter order, adding parameters, etc.), etc.
Also, the good refactoring IDEs provide a lot of extras like generation of getters/setters (dotNet: properties) (also referred to as encapsulation), extracting interfaces and/or superclasses, replace inheritance with delegation, replace constructor with factory method, make method static, etc., etc., etc.
Note that most of the above refactorings not only change the class in question, but also all accessing classes and methods. This sometimes means you can make a significant change to a heavily used method or class and do NO WORK to the rest of you classes.
In short, refactoring is REALLY powerful and very, very useful. If you are saying otherwise, you probably haven't used it. Also, it should be noted that several companies are making refactoring plug-ins for Visual Studio. Obviously SOME people don't think that Visual Studio's features render refactoring "unnecessary" or a "waste of time." Myself included. (I'm a Java junky programming in a dotNet environment.)
The poster wan't talking about Eigenradio specifically. Rather, as he said, music that was actually composed by a human.
Not that I'm saying you would like ambient music composed by a human any more than you liked Eigenradio. But it is different.
FWIW, I didn't like ambient music (or avant garde music, depending on who you ask) the first time I heard it. I bought a few CDs, hated it, and put it down for a few months. But then I started to listen to other groups that include elements of ambient music. Bands like Gastr Del Sol, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Sigur Ros (hell, even Radiohead and Wilco to some degree) have all pushed the boundaries of what has been considered music. They all employ unique sounds and noises to create something different than what your used to listening to. And they are all far more accessible than purely ambient music.
These bands also brought to a point where I could "get" ambient music. Now I can listen to a Jim O'Rourke or Fenno'berg album and actually enjoy it.
Not that I'm recommending everyone should try this. I like it, but that doesn't make it better than your music.
Hey, I'm as opposed to the two party system as anyone, but this is not the way to fix it.
And this has nothing to do with me preferring Democrats to Republicans. Look at it this way: if the Presidency of the US had a recall provision, what are the chances a rich Democrat could buy enough signitures on a petition to recall Bush? I'd put the chances at well over 50%.
Think about it. Sure, Bush has a relatively high approval rating, but there are A LOT of people out there who hate him. I mean, a huge percentage of registered Democrats loathe him. So all it would take is a wealthy Democrat who is willing to shell out cash for a swarm of people to collect the signitures. It wouldn't be that hard as long as you are willing to spend a LOT of money.
But the problem is that ANY leader in a society that is allowed to express dissent will be hated/disliked by a certain percentage of the population. The question is, should a minority of the population be able to invalidate an elected officials stance in office? After all, a majority elected the official in the first place, right? Let's pretend the official got 60% of the vote. Can the other 40% say, "No fair, we want a recall" the day after the election happens? The losers of an election are ALWAYS in the minority, because it takes a MAJORITY of the vote to win the election in the first place.
I see a complete free-for-all in situations like this. How long is it until the Democrats organize a petition signing campaign after Arnie gets elected? Should an elected official be given a chance at the full term he/she was elected to? Can the minority (of a certain size) force a new election anytime they disagree with the current leader?
The way I see it, its about majority rule and protecting minority rights. Period. The minority shouldn't rule and the majority shouldn't violate the rights of the minority. Right now, the majority's candidate is in office. Let him perform.
One, a lot of people don't have the money to begin with. For you, it may be a case of the government taking away your money to use in a less efficient way for a purpose which you either don't care about or could do more efficiently. For others, the government's use of that tax money is the only way they'll ever see those services (no matter how poorly the services are implemented or how wasteful they are).
Now, we could debate on wether those people who are reliant on those tax dollars are just lazy slobs living off of the productive members of society. Or we could debate about wether or not affluent people who weren't taxed would act in society's interest and fund the under-priviledged. But those are different subjects. My point is that your statement is not universally true.
Which leads me to the second point: YOU may be able to spend your tax money in a more efficient manner than the government can, but this is also not universally true. I hear this argument again and again, but the problem is that the argument is coming from intelligent, self-motivated, secure people. Of course a person in that position could manage his money/pay for his services more efficiently than a beurocracy. But now, lets look at the case of a person with less capabilities, less motivation, and less of a future. Do you expect me to believe that every person in America would act intelligently if given our tax dollars rather than government services? Hardly.
The fact of the matter is that a significant amount of people in this country NEED government services to one extent or another. Without those government services, they don't have the skills, money or motivation to make the right decisions and act in a way that ensures a decent and stable future. Again, we could argue about wether we should care about people who can't care for themselves for one reason or another, but thats a different topic.
However, your view is quite understandable to me. I, too, feel I could manage my money far better than the government. However, I am willing to sacrifice some of my wealth (which is not considerable, I might add) so that others are able to live decent and honorable lives. My route to less taxation is through quality education (for everybody), reducing corruption and waste in government agencies, and reducing the power of the corporate dollar on governmental policies.
We obviously have different views on how to solve the same problem. Are you, by chance, a libertarian?
IANAL, but this guy is. Did you even read the material linked to from the original story??
From the previously mentioned lawyer's analysis:
If SCO wanted to have any infringement removed from Linux, they could help do that. But, SCO is refusing despite direct requests from many parties including RedHat, IBM and Novell. They just insist upon a purely illegal activity and little else.
It is important to note that disclosing the so-called areas of infringement would not lessen their claims against IBM for contract violations nor violations of trade secret. Those claims against IBM stand on their own without the withholding of key information. The same is true should SCO want to charge RedHat or any other party with copyright infringement. Fixing Linux now does not eliminate any claims or charges that rights have been infringed in the past.
The only "case" that releasing the infringing code would damage is SCO's threatened lawsuits against Linux customers. It would not hurt their case against IBM (the only suit they've actually filed to date).
So would it hurt their case against Linux customers?? Nope. Because they have no case against the majority of Linux cutomers, private or corporate.
Again, from the analysis:
The threat to Linux customers is totally without a legal foundation. And, SCO has deliberately misrepresented those laws in order to extort money from Linux customers. There is no question of that. That is a fools move. It is a fools move because it imposes upon SCO significant legal liability for harm caused to the Linux market.
The RedHat law suit refers directly to this problem in its discussion about the tortuous and willful interference with business relationships between RedHat and its customers. SCO (and without any reasonable legal basis) contacted Redhat (and IBM) customers and threatened legal action if they did not pay money. It does not matter what the money is ostensibly for. Linux customers do not need a copy of Unix from SCO to run their computers. In fact, the statement from SCO clearly suggests that Linux would continue to be used. The only benefit to the customer would be not being sued by SCO. Well. For money, anyone can make that offer. And, if you have a legal basis for filing a law suit, that would be business. But, if the legal basis is missing, it becomes extortion.
The point is that by persuing Linux customers SCO has opened the door to litigation against itself. Those acts are widely viewed as illegal if no basis for a lawsuit exists. And most people outside of SCO believe potential suits against Linux customers to be baseless (like suing the NYTimes for releasing a chapter of Harry Potter--they made the IP public, but that doesn't implicate NYTimes readers in the crime). The infringing code never comes into play in the case of SCO vs. Linux customers.
And the case infringing code does effect--the SCO vs. IBM case for IP violations--wouldn't be damaged by exposing the infringing code. That case is about the release of trade secrets and intellectual property into the public domain, an issue that can be proven independant of corrections made to Linux code after the infringing code is divulged.
This article is useless to most cellphone users. Why? Because quality of service in one area gives little indication of the quality of service in another.
As an example, I've personally had two carriers which I've used in three locales. The carriers were Cellular-One (now defunct, or absorbed by another carrier) and SprintPCS (my current carrier). The locales were Chicago, lower Michigan and the Upper Penninsula of Michigan.
Sprint has great service in the Chicago area (and it has gotten consistently better over the last few years). It has spotty service in lower Michigan (in the Ann Arbor area I had many dropped calls and lots of static). And SprintPCS service is non-existant in the U.P.
Cellular One (at the time), had great service in the U.P. (in fact, it was the only carrier that had near complete coverage). A little static, but dropped calls were few and far between unless you were on the highway. Lower Michigan had Cellular One service about equivilent to Sprint's. And Chicago service wasn't great (lots of dropped calls in some areas, esp. in buildings).
This leads me to ask the following questions:
1. How was this survey conducted? Was it nationwide? Is there a breakdown available by region? 2. If not, is this survey really worth anything? If the quality of SprintPCS service is high as a national average relative to your local area, you wouldn't know from this survey. 3. Customer support and network uptime are as (more?) important to me as signal strength. (I'd rather have a little static all the time, than network outages. And I'd better be able to get competent support, or I won't even bother with a company.) Is there a survey rating these aspects of a carrier?
I find this survey to be of little use. I'm much more interested in my locale, how carriers in my area compare, and wether or not they are backed by a company that knows how to treat customers. Publish those results please!
Not in all cases. Giving a hand gun to a minor with no supervision is not a good idea. You'd likely be prosecuted for neglegence.
But if you give that minor a pair of scissors or a car and they commit a crime, the neglegence claim melts away. A parent/gaurdian/adult can't be responsible for every illegal action which could be committed by a minor in their care. Especially not when the parent has few warning that the crime could be committed or it would be impossible to predict that crime being committed.
Their are many uses for a toothpick. I'm sure one of the possible uses is stabbing a person in the jugular. If I give a kid a toothpick and he stabs a friend in the neck, killing him, would I be responsible? No, because I have no way of predicting such an action. (Unless, of course, the kid I give a toothpick to is a violent psychotic. But not in normal circumstances.)
So if I lend my car to a friend and he gets drunk and kills a pedestrian with it, do I get a manslaughter/DUI charge brought against me?? Hell no!
Sure, the police might contact me in order to figure out what happened, or my involvement in the incident. But if I lend an object to a friend, and that friend commits a crime with the object, the only way I am liable is if I knew or suspected that the friend was going to use that object to commit a crime. In certain situations, neglegence might also come into play (like if I gave a loaded hand gun to a baby, who then kills my neighbor).
Slashdot Mirror
I do not think censorship is OK. I just disagree with you. I do not think that Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity not getting many network interviews is an example of censorship. They are getting their message out there (as is amply demonstrated by their historical standings on the NYTimes bestseller list) and there are plenty of lefty wingnuts that have an equally hard time getting exposure through the major media outlets.
Respond to my actual arguments, please. Misrepresenting my arguments is really bad form.
Taft
In truth, I think O'Reilly is conservative in the healthy majority of his opinions. You can't fault a guy for this as everyone has their own personal political slant. And his show is an opinion show, so a requirement for a lack of bias would be unreasonable. But what irks me is that he sells himself as moderate, which is clearly not the case.
I guess in my perfect world, a person who has a political show dedicated to the presentation of opinions would be upfront about his own political beliefs. Anything less is being disingenuous.
Taft
Maybe these are absent because:
1) Ann Coulter is a crazy M____f____. She thinks Joe McCarthy was a hero. She thinks the left and all associated with them are evil. Basically, her entire career is built on hate. Can you really not see why a major TV network would refrain from giving her airtime? ... Maybe because he tore them a new one!!! Or, alternatively, why was Eric Alterman (author of "What Liberal Media") also "banned" from network interviews? Or how about Joe Conason? He wrote a liberal bestseller, yet I never saw his exclusive interview with Baba Wawa. Maybe its because these folks weren't banned from network interviews, its just that the establishent didn't feel these were voices worth hearing. Personally, I don't think most of these guys are worth listening to, either. They spout hate and spun facts to make their points. Journalism should have a higher standard and I support networks "ban" on writers with these tactics. Too bad Moore is independently famous, as his fame seems to be the reason networks still give him a voice ocasionally.
2) Sean Hannity, while occasionally reasonable, released a book called "Deliver Us From Evil." It was written about the left. Again, we have Left==Evil. Again, we have a person whose career seems founded in hate. Maybe you haven't noticed, but networks don't generally give a lot of time to extremist voices. Or would you prefer to hear from Neo-Nazi's, the Michigan Militia and co. during the nightly news?
3) Bernard Goldberg's book was a scathing account of his time at CBS. He basically tore CBS a new one (with varying success, depending on your perspective). Now why wouldn't CBS want to share his voice with America?
You can try to spin these authors lack of airtime any way you want but a few facts are undeniable. One is that networks will do anything--ANYTHING!!!!--to get ratings. Why did the "left-biased media" cover the Clinton scandal so thoroughly? Because it was a ratings goldmine.
Another fact is that just because an book is a NYTimes bestseller, doesn't mean that they will be popular with America as a whole. The books you listed sold overwhelmingly to very conservative audiences. America, while it certainly has very conservative and liberal people in it, is overwhelmingly moderate. This is why Bill O'Reilly sells so well: he is sold as a "common man" looking out for his fellows in middle America. Ultra-Conservative messages and ideas do not play well with middle America just as ultra-Liberal message do not. Networks understand this and program accordingly.
Taft
However, many (most?) programmers have a different definition of code library that goes something like: any code I have ever written. Or maybe: any code I come into contact with (ie. cvs co MyCompaniesMainCodeTree). This is unfortunately probably the most common definition of "code library."
I agree with you that it shouldn't be done, but as long as people don't go around blatently copying old code they don't own into new products, I guess I just don't care. At least not for the projects I'm involved with.
Taft
This is true. However, it has been my experience that those who are re-using code they don't own try to hide that fact as best they can. Therefore, they probably won't take a full library and release it into production with their current application. Rather, they would try to obfuscate the fact that the code was "stolen"/illegal by burying it in their own libraries and code.
And this is where things start getting tricky. A good programmer with full knowledge of the "stolen" code would probably be able to do this well and have no negative effects. A mediocre programmer who doesn't fully understand the code might use a code snippet out of context in such a way as to introduce bugs.
The quality of the copied code is also at issue. If it was a well designed object oriented library (highly decoupled classes, etc), you would likely be able to quite easily pull a few classes out of that library and use them quickly with a low probability of introducing bugs. If, however, the code was five monsterous c functions, this might not be so easy.
When all is said and done, I'll trust those programmers who think about every problem and try to apply the most appropriate solution. They should be able to discuss and explain their solutions and why they fit the problem in the best/most cost effective way. After that, I trust them to do their job. In a team environment, quick copy and pastes or wholesale uses of improperly obtained libraries probably wouldn't fly anyway. At least not in my team...
Taft
Seriously, though, would you really trust a person who completely relied on copy/pasting legacy code into current projects? Do you know where that person got the code to begin with? Did he write it? Does he even understand the code?
While just about everyone I know keeps a personal code library containing *some* proprietary code, most don't actively use it. Those who are unscrupulous enough to copy/paste the code into current projects are not people you want around in the long term. I mean, did they even think about the best solution to the problem before doing that copy/paste?
Most people I know use their library as a reference for future development. This allows them to take the best features/ideas of their historical library and integrate those ideas in new and better ways into their current projects. And I don't see a problem with this behavior. Any person with a decent memory would remember their best ideas and features, anyway, so the illegality of this behavior is questionable.
Taft
I mean, there has to be *someone* out there to defend slimy sales tactics, right? ;)
Taft
I understand that not everyone likes the iTunes interface and that for *some* people, it isn't the most intuitive. Every human is different and each views their experiences through a filter of their own subjectivity. Therefor, not everyone will like iTunes.
However, rather than assume the praise of the iTunes interface originates from a "fawning, sycophantic praise for anything apple generates," couldn't one just as easily surmise that the praise originates from the effectiveness of the design? For many people, the interface is *very* easy to use and the way iTunes organizes music is *very* intuitive. I think the overwhelmingly positive reviews are a testiment to this ease of use.
So maybe you could detail your troubles with the way iTunes organizes your library. or add something concrete and constructive to this conversation rather than blindly lashing at anything Apple.
constructive criticism: good
pointless complaints about a companies users: irrelevent
Taft
All of this is a far cry from using electronic spy tools to secretly monitor the children's activities. What kind of message does it send to the kids? "Be good! Because if you don't, we are always watching. No matter where you go, we are watching!" Is that really the lesson we want to teach the children? Be good, not for the sake of being a good person, but for the sake of not getting caught.
And that is the difference between appropriate supervision and eletronic surveillance. With the former, the goal is to teach the children, mold them by example and through good leadership, and let the keep their individuality and allow them to experiment within appropriate bounds. With the latter, its simply trying to keep kids away from things which *could* be bad for them.
In short, if a school thinks it needs to install this kind of electronic monitoring system, I think it is indicative of a lack of appropriate supervision and/or quality teachers.
My kids' teacher should know what my child is doing (approximately) without resorting to spying.
Taft
How this got modded insightful is beyond me.
Evolution happens. That is a fact. It is a scientifically observable fact.
The mechanisms of how things evolve is a theory.
You can read all about this here. One more time: evolution has been observed many, many times and is now accepted as fact by the scientific community. However, many scientists still disagree about how evolution happens, and we only have a theory to describe this mechanism.
What really irritates my about this post is how bloody confident the poster is that his parent was wrong. How can a person be so sure and so clueless at the same time?
Taft
It seems that this discovery is an improvement to the current method of extracting energy from ethanol. In most current applications, ethanol is burned to harness its energy. In the application described in the article, the ethanol is converted to hydrogen which is then turned into electricity.
So it seems the breakthrough here is probably a more efficient way of extracting energy from ethanol. That's gotta be a good thing.
Taft
Of course you are correct on this point.
However (you knew that was coming, right?), the point Cecil was probably trying to make was that the amount of energy we can harness effectively from the burning of ethanol is less than the amount of energy that went into making it. Add to that the waste in the process of creating ethanol (that process can't be 100% efficient, right?) and there is definitely a net loss. Because we can't harness all of the energy created from the burning of ethanol (light for instance), and the fact that the process which creates it is not perfect, it ends up costing more energy to produce than you get from burning it.
And I am fully aware that this is just a limitation in the current method of creating and burning ethanol. This procedure could be improved over time.
Taft
As we were telling our "war stories," one co-worker (a guy who grew up in a Southeast Asian country) sat quietly listening. When the last person had ended his tale of a nasty landscaping job he'd had as a teen, our co-worker jumped in. "Well, when I was fourteen, I was walking through a swamp carrying a rifle over my head..."
Needless to say, our stories paled in comparison to his remarkable (and sometimes painful) stories of his childhood. The moral I took away from the situation was that there is always someone out there who has it far worse than you.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to whine about our jobs, but its always good to keep a little perspective.
Taft
Yep.
Off the top of my head, I'd list the finding the truth and fairness in the court system as both being much more important than winning.
The current system was set up in order to provide fairness in determining the truth in the courtroom. If the current system is no longer the best way to expose the truth fairly, we should change the system. Scummy lawyers aren't the problem, it's the fact that the system tolerates--even encourages--the scummy lawyers that is the real issue.
Taft
I guess my question is: if the patent office doesn't check for prior art and the courts don't allow prior art as evidence, who the heck can check for and invalidate patents covering widely used technologies which existed before the patent was issued? Does the open source community need to start patenting every feature of their applications to prevent a company from later claiming the feature as their own via the patent office?
I knew the patent system was screwed up, but this makes the patent system seem utterly worthless and geared toward corruption. Sick.
Taft
ANOTHER BITE FROM THE APPLE
Back to Barry Popik. Having gotten Big Apple squared away, Barry turned his attention to Chicago's nickname, the Windy City. The average mope believes Chicago was so dubbed because it's windy, meteorologically speaking. The more sophisticated set (including, till recently, your columnist) thinks the term originated in a comment by Charles Dana, editor of the New York Sun in the 1890s. Annoyed by the vocal (and ultimately successful) efforts of Chicago civic leaders to land the world's fair celebrating Columbus's discovery of America, Dana urged his readers to ignore "the nonsensical claims of that windy city"--windy meaning excessively talkative.
But that may not be the true explanation either. Scouring the magazines and newspapers of the day, Popik found that the nickname commonly used for Chicago switched from the Garden City to the Windy City in 1886, several years before Dana's comment. The earliest citation was from the Louisville Courier-Journal in early January, 1886, when it was used in reference to the wind off Lake Michigan. In other words, the average mope was right all along! However, when Popik attempted to notify former Chicagoan but soon-to-be New Yorker Hillary Rodham Clinton of his findings, she blew him off with a form letter--and this from a woman facing a campaign for the Senate. Come on, Hill, quit worrying about the Puerto Ricans and pay attention here. You want to lose the etymologist vote?
Full article here. There's also info on the origins of the "Big Apple." Neat.
Taft
And why should poor people be buying books? I mean they can just go to the library, right?
And why should poor people be buying toys for their kids? Send them outside to play, or let them go to a park!
This mentality is so shortsighted. These things that you consider a luxury for a "poor" person are actually great ways to encourage your kids to learn and enjoy learning. By buying your kids books, educational toys, even a computer you are encouraging them to enjoy learning and setting an example for them, showing them that education is important and should take precendence to other items in a budget.
Those are very positive lessons.
And of course there are other ways to do this, and over-extravagence even when buying positive items is sending the wrong message. But I for one think it is important to show kids early on that an investment in education is a very important thing.
I think a reasonably priced computer is a very good way to encourage learning at home and priorities in making wise purchases. Involve your kids in the purchase and tell them why you think its important.
BTW, I'm not defending the PC mentioned in the original story. I don't have an opinion either way on these things. But in general, a computer can be a good investment, if properly approached.
Taft
Let's say I have a class in package A and I want to move it to package B (in dotNet parlance, packages are namespaces). In dotNet, I'd have to personally touch every piece of code accessing that class and redo the import statements (dotNet: using statements) to reflect the change. Same goes for method name changes, public member changes, method signatures (parameter order, adding parameters, etc.), etc.
Also, the good refactoring IDEs provide a lot of extras like generation of getters/setters (dotNet: properties) (also referred to as encapsulation), extracting interfaces and/or superclasses, replace inheritance with delegation, replace constructor with factory method, make method static, etc., etc., etc.
Note that most of the above refactorings not only change the class in question, but also all accessing classes and methods. This sometimes means you can make a significant change to a heavily used method or class and do NO WORK to the rest of you classes.
If you are interested in the power of IDE refactoring, check out the IDEA refactoring page. Here is a screenshot of the refactoring menu.
In short, refactoring is REALLY powerful and very, very useful. If you are saying otherwise, you probably haven't used it. Also, it should be noted that several companies are making refactoring plug-ins for Visual Studio. Obviously SOME people don't think that Visual Studio's features render refactoring "unnecessary" or a "waste of time." Myself included. (I'm a Java junky programming in a dotNet environment.)
Taft
Not that I'm saying you would like ambient music composed by a human any more than you liked Eigenradio. But it is different.
FWIW, I didn't like ambient music (or avant garde music, depending on who you ask) the first time I heard it. I bought a few CDs, hated it, and put it down for a few months. But then I started to listen to other groups that include elements of ambient music. Bands like Gastr Del Sol, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Sigur Ros (hell, even Radiohead and Wilco to some degree) have all pushed the boundaries of what has been considered music. They all employ unique sounds and noises to create something different than what your used to listening to. And they are all far more accessible than purely ambient music.
These bands also brought to a point where I could "get" ambient music. Now I can listen to a Jim O'Rourke or Fenno'berg album and actually enjoy it.
Not that I'm recommending everyone should try this. I like it, but that doesn't make it better than your music.
Taft
And this has nothing to do with me preferring Democrats to Republicans. Look at it this way: if the Presidency of the US had a recall provision, what are the chances a rich Democrat could buy enough signitures on a petition to recall Bush? I'd put the chances at well over 50%.
Think about it. Sure, Bush has a relatively high approval rating, but there are A LOT of people out there who hate him. I mean, a huge percentage of registered Democrats loathe him. So all it would take is a wealthy Democrat who is willing to shell out cash for a swarm of people to collect the signitures. It wouldn't be that hard as long as you are willing to spend a LOT of money.
But the problem is that ANY leader in a society that is allowed to express dissent will be hated/disliked by a certain percentage of the population. The question is, should a minority of the population be able to invalidate an elected officials stance in office? After all, a majority elected the official in the first place, right? Let's pretend the official got 60% of the vote. Can the other 40% say, "No fair, we want a recall" the day after the election happens? The losers of an election are ALWAYS in the minority, because it takes a MAJORITY of the vote to win the election in the first place.
I see a complete free-for-all in situations like this. How long is it until the Democrats organize a petition signing campaign after Arnie gets elected? Should an elected official be given a chance at the full term he/she was elected to? Can the minority (of a certain size) force a new election anytime they disagree with the current leader?
The way I see it, its about majority rule and protecting minority rights. Period. The minority shouldn't rule and the majority shouldn't violate the rights of the minority. Right now, the majority's candidate is in office. Let him perform.
Taft
One, a lot of people don't have the money to begin with. For you, it may be a case of the government taking away your money to use in a less efficient way for a purpose which you either don't care about or could do more efficiently. For others, the government's use of that tax money is the only way they'll ever see those services (no matter how poorly the services are implemented or how wasteful they are).
Now, we could debate on wether those people who are reliant on those tax dollars are just lazy slobs living off of the productive members of society. Or we could debate about wether or not affluent people who weren't taxed would act in society's interest and fund the under-priviledged. But those are different subjects. My point is that your statement is not universally true.
Which leads me to the second point: YOU may be able to spend your tax money in a more efficient manner than the government can, but this is also not universally true. I hear this argument again and again, but the problem is that the argument is coming from intelligent, self-motivated, secure people. Of course a person in that position could manage his money/pay for his services more efficiently than a beurocracy. But now, lets look at the case of a person with less capabilities, less motivation, and less of a future. Do you expect me to believe that every person in America would act intelligently if given our tax dollars rather than government services? Hardly.
The fact of the matter is that a significant amount of people in this country NEED government services to one extent or another. Without those government services, they don't have the skills, money or motivation to make the right decisions and act in a way that ensures a decent and stable future. Again, we could argue about wether we should care about people who can't care for themselves for one reason or another, but thats a different topic.
However, your view is quite understandable to me. I, too, feel I could manage my money far better than the government. However, I am willing to sacrifice some of my wealth (which is not considerable, I might add) so that others are able to live decent and honorable lives. My route to less taxation is through quality education (for everybody), reducing corruption and waste in government agencies, and reducing the power of the corporate dollar on governmental policies.
We obviously have different views on how to solve the same problem. Are you, by chance, a libertarian?
Taft
From the previously mentioned lawyer's analysis:
If SCO wanted to have any infringement removed from Linux, they could help do that. But, SCO is refusing despite direct requests from many parties including RedHat, IBM and Novell. They just insist upon a purely illegal activity and little else. It is important to note that disclosing the so-called areas of infringement would not lessen their claims against IBM for contract violations nor violations of trade secret. Those claims against IBM stand on their own without the withholding of key information. The same is true should SCO want to charge RedHat or any other party with copyright infringement. Fixing Linux now does not eliminate any claims or charges that rights have been infringed in the past.
The only "case" that releasing the infringing code would damage is SCO's threatened lawsuits against Linux customers. It would not hurt their case against IBM (the only suit they've actually filed to date).
So would it hurt their case against Linux customers?? Nope. Because they have no case against the majority of Linux cutomers, private or corporate.
Again, from the analysis:
The threat to Linux customers is totally without a legal foundation. And, SCO has deliberately misrepresented those laws in order to extort money from Linux customers. There is no question of that. That is a fools move. It is a fools move because it imposes upon SCO significant legal liability for harm caused to the Linux market. The RedHat law suit refers directly to this problem in its discussion about the tortuous and willful interference with business relationships between RedHat and its customers. SCO (and without any reasonable legal basis) contacted Redhat (and IBM) customers and threatened legal action if they did not pay money. It does not matter what the money is ostensibly for. Linux customers do not need a copy of Unix from SCO to run their computers. In fact, the statement from SCO clearly suggests that Linux would continue to be used. The only benefit to the customer would be not being sued by SCO. Well. For money, anyone can make that offer. And, if you have a legal basis for filing a law suit, that would be business. But, if the legal basis is missing, it becomes extortion.
The point is that by persuing Linux customers SCO has opened the door to litigation against itself. Those acts are widely viewed as illegal if no basis for a lawsuit exists. And most people outside of SCO believe potential suits against Linux customers to be baseless (like suing the NYTimes for releasing a chapter of Harry Potter--they made the IP public, but that doesn't implicate NYTimes readers in the crime). The infringing code never comes into play in the case of SCO vs. Linux customers.
And the case infringing code does effect--the SCO vs. IBM case for IP violations--wouldn't be damaged by exposing the infringing code. That case is about the release of trade secrets and intellectual property into the public domain, an issue that can be proven independant of corrections made to Linux code after the infringing code is divulged.
Please read before you post.
Taft
As an example, I've personally had two carriers which I've used in three locales. The carriers were Cellular-One (now defunct, or absorbed by another carrier) and SprintPCS (my current carrier). The locales were Chicago, lower Michigan and the Upper Penninsula of Michigan.
Sprint has great service in the Chicago area (and it has gotten consistently better over the last few years). It has spotty service in lower Michigan (in the Ann Arbor area I had many dropped calls and lots of static). And SprintPCS service is non-existant in the U.P.
Cellular One (at the time), had great service in the U.P. (in fact, it was the only carrier that had near complete coverage). A little static, but dropped calls were few and far between unless you were on the highway. Lower Michigan had Cellular One service about equivilent to Sprint's. And Chicago service wasn't great (lots of dropped calls in some areas, esp. in buildings).
This leads me to ask the following questions:
1. How was this survey conducted? Was it nationwide? Is there a breakdown available by region?
2. If not, is this survey really worth anything? If the quality of SprintPCS service is high as a national average relative to your local area, you wouldn't know from this survey.
3. Customer support and network uptime are as (more?) important to me as signal strength. (I'd rather have a little static all the time, than network outages. And I'd better be able to get competent support, or I won't even bother with a company.) Is there a survey rating these aspects of a carrier?
I find this survey to be of little use. I'm much more interested in my locale, how carriers in my area compare, and wether or not they are backed by a company that knows how to treat customers. Publish those results please!
Taft
But if you give that minor a pair of scissors or a car and they commit a crime, the neglegence claim melts away. A parent/gaurdian/adult can't be responsible for every illegal action which could be committed by a minor in their care. Especially not when the parent has few warning that the crime could be committed or it would be impossible to predict that crime being committed.
Their are many uses for a toothpick. I'm sure one of the possible uses is stabbing a person in the jugular. If I give a kid a toothpick and he stabs a friend in the neck, killing him, would I be responsible? No, because I have no way of predicting such an action. (Unless, of course, the kid I give a toothpick to is a violent psychotic. But not in normal circumstances.)
Taft
So if I lend my car to a friend and he gets drunk and kills a pedestrian with it, do I get a manslaughter/DUI charge brought against me?? Hell no!
Sure, the police might contact me in order to figure out what happened, or my involvement in the incident. But if I lend an object to a friend, and that friend commits a crime with the object, the only way I am liable is if I knew or suspected that the friend was going to use that object to commit a crime. In certain situations, neglegence might also come into play (like if I gave a loaded hand gun to a baby, who then kills my neighbor).
Taft