Why doesn't someone make keyboards from antibacterial plastic? They're already using it for a lot of other things in hospitals, and it's even being used for children's toys now. When it was first introduced, the claim was made that bacteria would not develop resistance to it, though I'm a bit skeptical as historically it has seemed that bacteria can adapt to almost any conditions.
Anyhow, if they sold keyboards made of that, I suspect that a lot of people would want them, not just hospitals.
This current government may be pricey, but the quality reeks.
What makes you say that? The people with lots of money seem to be getting what they want. When things aren't going their way, they just buy a few congressmen, and the problem gets solved.
The fact that you don't have enough money to buy a Congressman is irrelevant.
Anyhow, you should be thankful that you don't get as much government as you pay for. That would indeed be scary!
The US is a constitutional republic, which is in a sense a restricted form of democracy. You wouldn't want a direct democracy in a country the size of the US. As Benjamin Franklin observed, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have
for lunch."
Apple's own DRM method [...]
No one is required to use it.
No one was required to use the patent for CDs either. They could instead make record players, casette decks, 8-tracks, or anything else.
Perhaps next you'll tell us why it is only right for the Congress to force
I never said that it was right for Congress to be involved. I only explained why they are. Congress does a lot of things they shouldn't, and in many cases things they don't even have constitutional authority to do.
The US government tried but ended up reaching a basically worthless consent decree. The EU seems to be standing up to Microsoft, though. They've demanded open file formats, with a huge penalty per day that Microsoft refuses to comply. Microsoft is trying to negotiate a deal where the format doesn't have to be truly open (e.g., can't be used in free software), but the EU doesn't seem willing to allow that.
On the other hand, Microsoft is willing to license their audio and video codecs and DRM to consumer electronics manufacturers and publishers, apparently on a non-discriminatory basis, which is much different than Apple.
I wouldn't trust either company any further than I could throw them, though.
Considering that previous standards (Firewire/USB, Betamax/VHS) have been decided by the market,
They were decided by the market, but there were multiple competitors making each of those choices, because the standards were available for licensing to anyone at relatively reasonable prices. To a first approximation, the Apple iTunes DRM "standard" is available for licensing to noone. Certainly it's not available to just any company that wants to publish music in the Apple format, nor to just any company that wants to build compatible players.
If the Apple iTunes DRM scheme was available for licensing on a nondiscriminatory basic, Congress probably wouldn't even consider getting involved.
could it be that Apple isn't big enough to keep the government out of its industry
It's not the size of Apple that's invited this attention from Congress, it's their behavior. When Sony and Philips invented the Compact Disc, if they had been unwilling to license the patents to anyone else for manufacture of either discs or players, they would have attracted attention in the same manner. They were smart enough not to do that.
Their justification might suck, hard, but it's still internally consistent - the risks (or lack thereof) of going to Hubble are irrelevant if you're determined to follow the recommendation that post-Columbia missions be rescueable and are unable to provide a second shuttle on 2 or 3 day notice.
Nope, NASA's statements and justifications are definitely NOT "internally consistent". NASA administration is on record with statements that:
A Hubble servicing mission is too risky [despite having done no formal risk analysis]
They aren't necessarily going to follow all recommendations of the committee report
They didn't consider the possibility of sending up a servicing shuttle, checking it while it's in an orbit where they could still reach the ISS, then continuing to Hubble only once they'd checked it,
It is my (possibly mistaken) understanding that the shuttle is not capable of such a mission profile. It has to be launched into an orbit that can reach the Hubble if that is the destination; it can't be launched into a lower orbit and then ascend that far.
Not really. Post-Challenger (19 years ago) when it was found that they'd invented their claimed numbers for shuttle probability of failure out of thin air, they said that they wouldn't do that sort of thing any more, and would rely on engineering analysis. No engineering analysis of the risks of servicing the Hubble has been done; they simply declared a priori that it was "too dangerous".
I suspect that they could get enough astronauts to volunteer for a Hubble servicing mission even knowing that the couldn't get to ISS if the shuttle was damaged. So obviously the real reason isn't that they aren't willing to risk lives, it's that they're not willing to risk expensive hardware. Seems completely bass-ackwards to me.
If the first shuttle has a design flaw, what's to say the second one isn't afflicted by the same problem?
The shuttle has historically had a catastrophic failure rate of less than 2%. It is unlikely that the recent changes have made the shuttle any less reliable. Thus if there is a problem with one, it is still reasonable to send a second one after it.
However, if they're willing to have a second shuttle on standby, their excuse for not doing a Hubble servicing mission (too dangerous, can't go to ISS) is complete bullshit. But everyone has known that ever since it was revealed that they made that decision without bothering to actually do a risk analysis.
Doesn't this suggest that the MAPS approach might be the wrong one to take?
Not particularly, unless you have a better proposal. In the war against spam, there's bound to be some collateral damage from time to time. Anyone that comes up with an effective spam-fighting measure that doesn't will be able to make a fortune.
Have you ever tried swatting a fly with a shotgun?
No, but what the spammers are doing to the email system is swatting a fly with hundreds of thousands of strategic nuclear weapons. By comparison, fighting spam by swatting a fly with a shotgun is a very reasonable approach.
I am kind of surprised you point to DC-X as a prooven
DC-X was fully operational and met all of its objectives, until it was destroyed due to human error.
That's not to say that everything needed for the full scale Delta Clipper was proven, but it was much closer than that stupid X-33 design for which they couldn't even make fuel tanks.
Sure, we could do those things, but what do you think the likelyhood of any of them actually happening are?
IMHO that 4bn would be spent a hell of alot better than the 2 for a reservicing mission.
That would be great, except that nobody's offered to give them 4B to do it.
IMHO the 40B they're going to spend on the remaining life of the shuttle and ISS would be better spent as 4B for a couple of Hubble service missions to keep it going until the replacement is ready (since these things take a long time), 4B for the Hubble replacement, and 32B for the next generation spacecraft and space stations, instead of wasting it on ISS.
And if NASA would be willing to work with existing, proven designs such as the DC-X, rather than wacky things that prove to be impossible, such as the X34 lifting body bullshit, maybe that $32B might actually accomplish something useful instead of being frittered away on non-functional crap.
We need some more "Failure is not an option" mentality
NASA management completely misunderstands what "failure is not an option" means, and interprets it as "we shouldn't do anything that might be dangerous". That's why they're not getting anything accomplished. You can bet that the Mercury astronauts weren't told that their spacecraft were perfectly safe, but that's what NASA seems to want to claim of the Shuttle, hence the asinine decision to abandon Hubble, without even doing an actual risk analysis. They just arbitrarily decided that it seemed dangerous.
Personally, even though I'm concerned about their possible military plans, I'm hoping that the Chinese will demonstrate how a proper space program works, since NASA is no longer capable of doing so.
Why is having shuttle go to station such a horrible horrible thing?
It wouldn't be, if ISS was actually useful for something. Right now, the Shuttle is only useful for assembly ISS and ferrying things to and from it, and ISS is only useful as a place for the Shuttle to go. It's not clear that either will be any more useful in the future.
I think a better option than repair would be putting together the spares on the ground, including a PERFECT mirror as opposed to the flawed one that got launched, and launch Hubble II.
I agree that this would be good, although I doubt very much that it can be done by cobbling together leftovers. Last I saw, the estimated cost of such a thing was around $4B, vs. under $2B to fix the one we've got.
The components exist.
Some do. Some don't.
What would be really nice would be if we could get it out to Geosync to give it a chance for longer more stable exposuers.
I don't think we currently have a launcher that can get 11.1 metric tons into geosync. Plus there'd be no possibility at all of servicing with the Shuttle, so it would require a lot of new engineering to redesign it to not require periodic service missions.
I'm in favor of designing a Hubble replacement, but I don't think we should abandon the current one until the new one is operational.
I'm in *favor* of having a manned space program, but the Space Shuttle is a f$%^ing useless waste of money, now that it's only going to be used to get to the ISS, which is also a huge waste of money. It would be better to cancel both and spend the money on doing the next generation of space vehicles and stations properly, rather than having Congress and the administration whittle away at them until nothing useful remains.
Anyone remember what STS, as in "mission STS-nnn" stands for? It was supposed to be a Space Transportation System. The shuttle was originally intended to be one component of the system, but due to budget cutbacks the rest of the system didn't get built.
Similarly, due to budget cutbacks, the ISS can't be staffed enough to do any worthwhile research. Although they're still planning to expand it (which will be completed by about the time it has reached the end of its working life), they never built the crew escape vehicle, so they still can't have more than three astronauts/cosmonauts there unless the space shuttle is nearby.
People say that the space program is worthwhile for the technologies developed and spun off, but the Space Shuttle hasn't been doing that for years now. It's the space equivalent of a beat-up '57 pickup truck. At least it's useful if it can service something that does produce worthwhile results, like the Hubble. But if it can't do that any longer, what's the point?
C'mon, if we're going to build a space vehicle, let's build something that can actually go somewhere. And if we're going to build a space station, let's build something big enough to be useful (ideally rotating), with escape vehicles designed from the outset, rather than being an afterthought that gets cancelled.
I'm fairly happy with Bush's space plan, but let's do away with the ridiculous crap we're wasting money on now. I don't see any point to more shuttle missions if they're not going to service the Hubble.
And as far as the supposed risk goes, I doubt that NASA would have any trouble whatsoever getting enough of their astronauts to volunteer for a Hubble servicing mission, even if it is believed to be somewhat more risky than a mission to ISS. Note that NASA has not even done the risk analysis for a Hubble mission; they just decided a priori that it's dangerous!
It's bad, but code that blindly uses the result of malloc() without checking it at all is much worse, and code like that can be found all over the place.
I used to say that spammers should be put to death, meaning it as hyperbole. But then I considered how many person-seconds are wasted by a single spam campaign, and reconsidered. One spam campaign can waste several human lifetimes. So the death penalty actually seems justifiable, at least as much as it is for other capital crimes.
The statement that I signed which said that I would notify Apple Legal if at any time I believed I was an Apple Employee did not say anything whatsoever about my status as a contractor, or the termination of that status, or that the terms of the statement would terminate on any particular date or as a result of any change of status.
What "most reasonable people would have seen" has very little bearing on the legal interpretation of documents one has signed.
If I had failed to satisfy my obligation, Apple would potentially have had grounds to sue me. I don't believe that they would have done so, but I also believe that honoring my obligation was the correct thing to do.
When I started a contract job at Apple Computer in the late 1980s, they made me sign a statement that I was not an Apple employee, was not elgible for the benefits Apple provided to employees, and that if any time I believed that I was an Apple employee, I was to deliver written notification to Apple's legal department. The purpose of this statement was presumably to avoid the exact situation HP appears to be in.
Later Apple did hire me as an employee. At that point since I believed that I was an employee, pursuant to the previously signed statement I wrote a notice and tried to deliver it to Apple's legal department. They seemed completely flummoxed as to why I was notifying them that I was an employee.
It's been quite a while since I read articles about it. I think it was covered in the mid-1980s in the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, but I'm not certain.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand. The GPL requires that when you distribute object code, you make the source code available. What is the "source code" for a font?
Anyhow, if they sold keyboards made of that, I suspect that a lot of people would want them, not just hospitals.
The fact that you don't have enough money to buy a Congressman is irrelevant.
Anyhow, you should be thankful that you don't get as much government as you pay for. That would indeed be scary!
The US is a constitutional republic, which is in a sense a restricted form of democracy. You wouldn't want a direct democracy in a country the size of the US. As Benjamin Franklin observed, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."
On the other hand, Microsoft is willing to license their audio and video codecs and DRM to consumer electronics manufacturers and publishers, apparently on a non-discriminatory basis, which is much different than Apple.
I wouldn't trust either company any further than I could throw them, though.
As Winston Churchill said in 1947, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.
If the Apple iTunes DRM scheme was available for licensing on a nondiscriminatory basic, Congress probably wouldn't even consider getting involved.
It's not the size of Apple that's invited this attention from Congress, it's their behavior. When Sony and Philips invented the Compact Disc, if they had been unwilling to license the patents to anyone else for manufacture of either discs or players, they would have attracted attention in the same manner. They were smart enough not to do that.- A Hubble servicing mission is too risky [despite having done no formal risk analysis]
- They aren't necessarily going to follow all recommendations of the committee report
It is my (possibly mistaken) understanding that the shuttle is not capable of such a mission profile. It has to be launched into an orbit that can reach the Hubble if that is the destination; it can't be launched into a lower orbit and then ascend that far.I suspect that they could get enough astronauts to volunteer for a Hubble servicing mission even knowing that the couldn't get to ISS if the shuttle was damaged. So obviously the real reason isn't that they aren't willing to risk lives, it's that they're not willing to risk expensive hardware. Seems completely bass-ackwards to me.
However, if they're willing to have a second shuttle on standby, their excuse for not doing a Hubble servicing mission (too dangerous, can't go to ISS) is complete bullshit. But everyone has known that ever since it was revealed that they made that decision without bothering to actually do a risk analysis.
That's not to say that everything needed for the full scale Delta Clipper was proven, but it was much closer than that stupid X-33 design for which they couldn't even make fuel tanks.
IMHO the 40B they're going to spend on the remaining life of the shuttle and ISS would be better spent as 4B for a couple of Hubble service missions to keep it going until the replacement is ready (since these things take a long time), 4B for the Hubble replacement, and 32B for the next generation spacecraft and space stations, instead of wasting it on ISS.
And if NASA would be willing to work with existing, proven designs such as the DC-X, rather than wacky things that prove to be impossible, such as the X34 lifting body bullshit, maybe that $32B might actually accomplish something useful instead of being frittered away on non-functional crap.
NASA management completely misunderstands what "failure is not an option" means, and interprets it as "we shouldn't do anything that might be dangerous". That's why they're not getting anything accomplished. You can bet that the Mercury astronauts weren't told that their spacecraft were perfectly safe, but that's what NASA seems to want to claim of the Shuttle, hence the asinine decision to abandon Hubble, without even doing an actual risk analysis. They just arbitrarily decided that it seemed dangerous.Personally, even though I'm concerned about their possible military plans, I'm hoping that the Chinese will demonstrate how a proper space program works, since NASA is no longer capable of doing so.
I'm in favor of designing a Hubble replacement, but I don't think we should abandon the current one until the new one is operational.
Anyone remember what STS, as in "mission STS-nnn" stands for? It was supposed to be a Space Transportation System. The shuttle was originally intended to be one component of the system, but due to budget cutbacks the rest of the system didn't get built.
Similarly, due to budget cutbacks, the ISS can't be staffed enough to do any worthwhile research. Although they're still planning to expand it (which will be completed by about the time it has reached the end of its working life), they never built the crew escape vehicle, so they still can't have more than three astronauts/cosmonauts there unless the space shuttle is nearby.
People say that the space program is worthwhile for the technologies developed and spun off, but the Space Shuttle hasn't been doing that for years now. It's the space equivalent of a beat-up '57 pickup truck. At least it's useful if it can service something that does produce worthwhile results, like the Hubble. But if it can't do that any longer, what's the point?
C'mon, if we're going to build a space vehicle, let's build something that can actually go somewhere. And if we're going to build a space station, let's build something big enough to be useful (ideally rotating), with escape vehicles designed from the outset, rather than being an afterthought that gets cancelled.
I'm fairly happy with Bush's space plan, but let's do away with the ridiculous crap we're wasting money on now. I don't see any point to more shuttle missions if they're not going to service the Hubble.
And as far as the supposed risk goes, I doubt that NASA would have any trouble whatsoever getting enough of their astronauts to volunteer for a Hubble servicing mission, even if it is believed to be somewhat more risky than a mission to ISS. Note that NASA has not even done the risk analysis for a Hubble mission; they just decided a priori that it's dangerous!
Sigh.
to determine whether you're genetically predisposed to use Windows? I haven't had the test, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not.
I used to say that spammers should be put to death, meaning it as hyperbole. But then I considered how many person-seconds are wasted by a single spam campaign, and reconsidered. One spam campaign can waste several human lifetimes. So the death penalty actually seems justifiable, at least as much as it is for other capital crimes.
The IRS limit for temp employees is 18 months, not 5 years.
What "most reasonable people would have seen" has very little bearing on the legal interpretation of documents one has signed.
If I had failed to satisfy my obligation, Apple would potentially have had grounds to sue me. I don't believe that they would have done so, but I also believe that honoring my obligation was the correct thing to do.
Um, no. The employer's payroll tax is equal to the employee's FICA (social security withholding), not the income tax.
Neither does the IRS in the US. There are fairly strict rules about it.
Later Apple did hire me as an employee. At that point since I believed that I was an employee, pursuant to the previously signed statement I wrote a notice and tried to deliver it to Apple's legal department. They seemed completely flummoxed as to why I was notifying them that I was an employee.
It's been quite a while since I read articles about it. I think it was covered in the mid-1980s in the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, but I'm not certain.