How will NASA have the resources to fake another moon landing if they have to lay off set designers, I mean, engineers, and up the resolution to 1920x1080?
My Visor went from "a way to read webpages anywhere" to "remote control with crappy range" to "not worth buying batteries for".
The iPaq went pretty much directly to "not worth buying batteries for".
I always tend to think PDAs are lacking like one or two more features to be really useful. If a device could do a few things *well*, like cell phone, mp3 player and voice recorder, and have decent battery life, and a viable way for me to carry it around without looking like an idiot, that would be golden.
And I have a really high expectation of *doing things well*. I want standard data formats, file transfer compatibility with multiple operating systems, jacks for headphones/microphones, multiple bitrate en/decoding, expandable storage, and most importantly *no clunky software*. I think the iPod succeeds because it passes most of these basic requirements.
Obviously PDAs as general purpose devices aren't going to meet all of those requirements. But there is an opportunity to target devices to specific users.
College students, for instance, would love the device I've described. Doctors, perhaps, might not. Instead, they might want something to replace a pocket calendar. Features such as e-book reading, good calendaring, e-mail reading, and perhaps a profession-specific application, would fit together into something like a tablet form factor. While a college student would feel like an idiot carrying one of those around, a doctor wouldn't.
Housewives might want a device that sticks to the fridge and takes grocery lists, remembers frequently-requested items, scans barcodes at the grocery store to compare prices, and, I don't know, comes with a transfer program that creates nice comma-delimited files and includes a few spreadsheet templates for budgeting or integrates with Quicken or something.
All of these pretty much require specific hardware, but the software could be somewhat standardized. Being able to integrate with other software and devices the person already has is the real key. Of course nobody has ever really done this well. MS products integrate only with MS products, and have frustrating limitations. Palm makes you go through a labyrinthine program to get anything transferred at all, and also likes to create their own "standards". From there, it gets worse.
Why is interoperability such a problem? It never hurts to break compatibility with a competitor's product. There's no market for software upgrades. There's no incentive to keep supplying updates for free. People won't keep buying new hardware devices and throwing them away. The companies capable of creating and enforcing standards, OS makers, are too busy chasing profits farther up the application stack. If you could manage to get a few companies to agree to cooperate, it wouldn't be enough momentum to last more than a couple of years, before they're all bankrupt or the largest one has decided to cannibalize the others.
The only times multi-vendor data standards have *ever* really worked has been in OSS, where the users themselves are motivated to maintain compatibility, and are blessed with the ability to do so effectively. So, do PDAs need Open Source? I don't know, perhaps. They need something.
Let me guess...you're a convicted felon aren't you?
That's rude.
Not only that, but democracy is based upon individuals, not governments. An institution that is structured like a democracy but which is comprised of governments would never be a democracy or even democracy-like.
Correct. Such an arrangement is called a "republic". It's a particularly useful form of recursion that has the appearance of democracy, but isn't.
The US is a republic. In fact, so are all of the countries that we like to hold up as "democracies", such as Great Britain, Israel, and Germany. So really there isn't much argument to be made over which system is more "democratic". None of them are.
The UN is a forum for international diplomacy. It is NOT a world government.
The US is a trade federation. It is NOT a national government.
The WTO is a trade federation. It is NOT a world government.
The state courts are a forum for dispute resolution. They are NOT a government.
ad nauseaum...
Educated people don't even know the difference between most of these statements. The masses see "group of people wielding power" and they think "government" and bow down.
the license does not allow you to use code you wrote with the free version in the paid versions.
Sure it does. It just doesn't allow you to distribute that code. You can sit down, write all the programs you'd like with the free version, test it out yourself, then switch to the commercial version when it's time to release.
Not only can't many of these farmers survive without their livestock, they probably can't be replaced. At best, they'll be replaced with the genetic freaks that are common in commercial agriculture in the industrialized world. At worst, most of the farmers will go out of business and be forced into cities and factories, to be replaced by a large agribusiness concern.
So-called "heirloom" breeds, animals well-suited for small farms because of their survival instincts and ability to reproduce, are quickly becoming a thing of the past. And it's more than just economics that is the cause.
The developed world is waging agricultural warfare on the developing world. One of the first targets in Iraq (accidentally of course) was a seed bank, containing thousands of species of irreplacabale genetic material, the lifeblood of agricultural progress and a threat to the manufactured livestock of agribusiness and rising biotech companies. Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me if the "bird flu" crisis were as manufactured as the reasons for the Iraq war.
Of course, it's not that these unique agricultural products can't be re-discovered, with the help of big genetics corporations of course. But those corporations certainly won't recover a genetic trait or a unique species without a licensing agreement, and yearly fees. Thus, the small farm is destroyed, by hook or by crook, and its operators forced either into urban life or having their profits perpetually taxed away by agribusiness.
You make it sound like they can't make laws which restrict some people
They can't. That's the whole point of equal protection. You can outlaw acts, but not people.
Of course, it's not surprising that you think otherwise, since this is yet another of the many protections against tyranny that have been completely gutted and ignored in the US.
Can a child molester live near a school?
Child molestors have committed crimes. If their punishment for said crime restricts where they can live, then such restriction is acceptable.
Can a blind person drive a car?
Blind people, however, are entitled to equal protection. Being blind is not a crime. This means you can't make a law that discriminates against them. You can, perhaps, create a realistic, non-discriminatory test that tests for the ability to drive. (By non-discriminatory I mean the test can't just consist of "Are you blind?", but must actually test driving ability) Perhaps some blind people would pass it. Perhaps, with assistive devices, blind people can be great drivers. Of course, if you just prohibit blind people from driving instead, under your own ignorant assumptions, then we'll never know, and you would have violated their right to equal protection.
Can a blogger who is not a member of the press and has never been to a school for journalism call himself a journalist?
I can call myself a pink elephant if I'd like. That happens to be protected speech. Ironically, that is protected by exactly the same Constitutional Amendment that protects "the press". It's here. Notice how journalists aren't mentioned anywhere, only speech and press?
William Randolph Hearst never went to school for journalism and he sure as hell was a journalist. You act like "the press" is some sort of club or something. The goddamn Bill of Rights wasn't written to protect clubs. It was written to protect rights. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of the press. The press is not a group of people but a method of printing, of communicating. Before computers, a common method of communication was via a printing press. I am pressing the keys on my keyboard right now, trying to get this concept through to you.
My pressing on keys is protected by the First Amendment regardless of whether I'm a goddamn journalist.
Interesting indeed. And, look, our AC friend has responded to your insight with more mindless dribble, failing to comprehend (or read even?) the passage in question. Probably he is one of these dipshits who nowadays have convinced themselves that the words in the Constitution have no real meaning. This AC in particular seems to be influenced by the growth of nationalist bullshit in the US (and around the world) beginning in and throughout the 20th century.
So, of course, he's convinced himself that only citizens are worthy of the rights and protections of the Constitution. No doubt he picked up these views in connection with some sort of US military organization, since many of those organizations have adopted and like to spread the Oriental-Jewish view of conscription as a rite of passage into citizenship.
Overall, it would serve to elevate the position of software developers to a more professional status, and the salaries would go along with it.
All of the current "professions" have extensive legal protections in place that elevate their salaries and protect their jobs. The marketplace doesn't keep them employed.
Law firms can't be bigger than a certain size; there are barriers to practicing in multiple jurisdictions. Every business has to have an accountant. (Accountants, btw, with the least stringent protections, were the first of the "professions" to be outsourced) Doctors have health insurance and workers compensation, and possibly soon national healthcare. Engineers have liability, safety, and environmental laws that keep them employed. They all have hefty educational requirements, which keeps the "professional" teachers employed.
What will computing professionals have? And will it be better or worse than nothing at all, or alternatives such as unions?
It's less like "the bricklayer" and more like "the NASA engineer" being sued because the space shuttle explodes. Oh, the space shuttle that costs $99 and is operated by retards.
This the Howard Schmidt who left being chief security officer for Microsoft to join the Bush administration. This is the Bush administration that let Microsoft off with a slap on the wrist in their antitrust suit. This was the antitrust suit that attempted to hold Microsoft responsible for their policy of destroying or buying-out competitors rather than improving their own products.
Surprise, surprise. Bill has seen the light. He's a reformed whore. No longer will Microsoft be peddling crapware and relying on anticompetitive agreements, marketing bullshit and sabatoging competing programs to win the day.
No, no. They'll be relying on a much more respectable form of mischief. Government regulation.
The Microsoft that told the US courts to fuck off, and is busy telling the EU the same, is now buying out their latest (last?) competitor. Only this one has guns.
Well, here's what I have to say to Microsoft, and to Howard Schmidt: die. You created this market. You lowered the bar. You made software a race to sell the most features for the least cost with no regard for security or functionality. You evolved a competitor that can't be bought out.
Now, OSS is beating you at your own slimy game. And guess what? OSS will win. Frivilous lawsuits or not. Free Software will win. Software patents or not. DRM or not. Liability laws or not. The market will win, and users will win. You have nowhere to go but down. OSS has nowhere to go but up. Innovation and choice will beat out marketing and manipulation.
If you read the CD-i spec, you'll see that it's basically just a generic "autoplay" type of disc. In fact, it may not even be that generic. Apparently, the CD-i machine either runs the OS-9 realtime operating system (made by these guys) or it's loaded from the disc itself.
So, to make your own discs, you need to add a software program (or maybe even an entire OS) along with the content.
Biological warfare is beginning to get interesting. For years, the best we could do against insect pests was to kill off the weakest ones, leaving the most capable to reproduce and multiply. We were just hastening evolution, and making our enemies stronger.
As a result, we now have resistent insects, resistent bacteria, and we're beginning to see new outbreaks of viruses that we thought we had eradicated.
We were trying to fight a faceless, undying mob by overpowering them with brute strength. Now, we're learning better. Instead of brute strength, we've begun to exploit our only advantage: intelligence. We're finding ways to use our enemies against themselves. Instead of multiplying in strength, we will help the insects to multiply themselves into oblivion.
Let's just hope we don't hasten the evolution of mammalian maternal traits in the insects in the process.
Not everything has to do with foreign trade, you know. There is an *economic* definition of dumping that is "selling a product for less than it cost to produce".
Dumping laws are protectionist and rob consumers of value.
And I assume you think antitrust laws rob us of value as well? If a large player can give products away for free until all its competitors are out of business, that would be good for consumers?
Such a system can be put together using commodity hardware and open source software. It would be more customizable, longer-lived, and more affordable than anything from the "big name" solutions providers. With a little integration, it could be quite low-maintenance as well.
I've offered to do it for several years now for a few clients. Yet, none of them are large enough to pay "Xerox" prices or to justify the up-front costs by ordering more than a couple of systems. Also, it's difficult to find clients that truly recognize the benefits of a paperless office.
I'm amazed such a system doesn't exist already in an off-the-shelf form that can be customized. But, I've looked and such a thing doesn't exist.
No, it's been that way for a while. The FreeDOS boxes have always (as long as I remember) been more expensive than an equivalent box with XP.
I don't know what kind of deal they have with Microsoft to make that happen, but I suspect it is more than just the AOL and McAfee add-ons that they can bundle with XP.
has taken a rash beating in the passed (past? Could a Slashdot grammar Nazi clarify?)
The correct usage is 'past'. 'Past' is the noun, adjective, and adverb form. 'Passed' is used only as a verb. This may help. Or it may not. It's really something that just has to be memorized.
It's a wiki, for christ's sake. You don't need a PhD to contribute.
If you want, add your understanding as an "alternative theory". After a while, somebody who knows may just remove the other one or relegate it to a "historical theory" or something.
You're right, a lot of the technical articles are either 1) based on outdated theories, or 2) up-to-date, but ridiculously complex. But, guess what? Most educational materials are the same way! Schools still teach Newton even though he's been proven wrong for a hundred years.
If intelligent people always insist on appealing to arbitrary authority to back up their assertions, we wouldn't get anywhere. Read this if you don't believe me.
I don't think that's actually the case except in situations where justices have an *ongoing* conflict of interest. For instance, if they have stock in Microsoft or something, then they might recuse themselves. If they worked for Microsoft a long time ago, I don't think they would.
It certainly isn't true that justices recuse themselves when they might have strong feelings on, for instance, "the rights of corporations". That's what they're there for: to express their strongly held beliefs as to how the law should be interpreted under the Constitution. They aren't judges. They are mindful of precedent and take the facts of the case into account, yet most of them have a certain slant that they're going to take regardless, and they don't recuse themselves because of this. The SC must deal with difficult questions, oftentimes unanswered before, and if they don't have some guiding principles to go by then there isn't much point in them being there at all.
Ha! That's because Cingular is just Southwestern Bell, the single worst company on the face of the Earth. Obviously their naming scheme worked on you...
Slashdot Mirror
How will NASA have the resources to fake another moon landing if they have to lay off set designers, I mean, engineers, and up the resolution to 1920x1080?
My Visor went from "a way to read webpages anywhere" to "remote control with crappy range" to "not worth buying batteries for".
The iPaq went pretty much directly to "not worth buying batteries for".
I always tend to think PDAs are lacking like one or two more features to be really useful. If a device could do a few things *well*, like cell phone, mp3 player and voice recorder, and have decent battery life, and a viable way for me to carry it around without looking like an idiot, that would be golden.
And I have a really high expectation of *doing things well*. I want standard data formats, file transfer compatibility with multiple operating systems, jacks for headphones/microphones, multiple bitrate en/decoding, expandable storage, and most importantly *no clunky software*. I think the iPod succeeds because it passes most of these basic requirements.
Obviously PDAs as general purpose devices aren't going to meet all of those requirements. But there is an opportunity to target devices to specific users.
College students, for instance, would love the device I've described. Doctors, perhaps, might not. Instead, they might want something to replace a pocket calendar. Features such as e-book reading, good calendaring, e-mail reading, and perhaps a profession-specific application, would fit together into something like a tablet form factor. While a college student would feel like an idiot carrying one of those around, a doctor wouldn't.
Housewives might want a device that sticks to the fridge and takes grocery lists, remembers frequently-requested items, scans barcodes at the grocery store to compare prices, and, I don't know, comes with a transfer program that creates nice comma-delimited files and includes a few spreadsheet templates for budgeting or integrates with Quicken or something.
All of these pretty much require specific hardware, but the software could be somewhat standardized. Being able to integrate with other software and devices the person already has is the real key. Of course nobody has ever really done this well. MS products integrate only with MS products, and have frustrating limitations. Palm makes you go through a labyrinthine program to get anything transferred at all, and also likes to create their own "standards". From there, it gets worse.
Why is interoperability such a problem? It never hurts to break compatibility with a competitor's product. There's no market for software upgrades. There's no incentive to keep supplying updates for free. People won't keep buying new hardware devices and throwing them away. The companies capable of creating and enforcing standards, OS makers, are too busy chasing profits farther up the application stack. If you could manage to get a few companies to agree to cooperate, it wouldn't be enough momentum to last more than a couple of years, before they're all bankrupt or the largest one has decided to cannibalize the others.
The only times multi-vendor data standards have *ever* really worked has been in OSS, where the users themselves are motivated to maintain compatibility, and are blessed with the ability to do so effectively. So, do PDAs need Open Source? I don't know, perhaps. They need something.
While SkyBuilt has 140 patent claims on its energy system, most of its individual component parts are widely available.
Isn't this sickening? They piece together crap that anybody can buy, cram it in a shipping container, and claim 140 patents on it.
I'm in the process of building an "energy system" that uses off-the-shelf components as well. Hope I don't infringe on any of their brilliant ideas.
Let me guess...you're a convicted felon aren't you?
That's rude.
Not only that, but democracy is based upon individuals, not governments. An institution that is structured like a democracy but which is comprised of governments would never be a democracy or even democracy-like.
Correct. Such an arrangement is called a "republic". It's a particularly useful form of recursion that has the appearance of democracy, but isn't.
The US is a republic. In fact, so are all of the countries that we like to hold up as "democracies", such as Great Britain, Israel, and Germany. So really there isn't much argument to be made over which system is more "democratic". None of them are.
The UN is a forum for international diplomacy. It is NOT a world government.
The US is a trade federation. It is NOT a national government.
The WTO is a trade federation. It is NOT a world government.
The state courts are a forum for dispute resolution. They are NOT a government.
ad nauseaum...
Educated people don't even know the difference between most of these statements. The masses see "group of people wielding power" and they think "government" and bow down.
the license does not allow you to use code you wrote with the free version in the paid versions.
Sure it does. It just doesn't allow you to distribute that code. You can sit down, write all the programs you'd like with the free version, test it out yourself, then switch to the commercial version when it's time to release.
Iraq's national seed bank, established in the 1970s, is feared lost, although samples of Iraqi varieties are held in trust at an agricultural institute in Syria.
in June 2004, US Coalition Provisional Administrator, Paul Bremer III, imposed a list of 100 laws on Iraq which insure that the US dictates every feature of Iraq economic life according to Washington free market wishes. This includes governing of an Iraqi central bank, an essential aspect of national sovereignty. It includes rules on Iraqi trade unions. And most significantly, it mandates the future rules of Iraqi agriculture production to conform to the wishes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Chemical and other US-tied agri-business giants that are aggressively pushing for control of world food production through Gentically-Modified (GM) seeds and plants.
Less visible than the butchery of Fallujah are the country's subsistence farmers who are losing the rights to use saved seed and their right to produce their local food
Not only can't many of these farmers survive without their livestock, they probably can't be replaced. At best, they'll be replaced with the genetic freaks that are common in commercial agriculture in the industrialized world. At worst, most of the farmers will go out of business and be forced into cities and factories, to be replaced by a large agribusiness concern.
So-called "heirloom" breeds, animals well-suited for small farms because of their survival instincts and ability to reproduce, are quickly becoming a thing of the past. And it's more than just economics that is the cause.
The developed world is waging agricultural warfare on the developing world. One of the first targets in Iraq (accidentally of course) was a seed bank, containing thousands of species of irreplacabale genetic material, the lifeblood of agricultural progress and a threat to the manufactured livestock of agribusiness and rising biotech companies. Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me if the "bird flu" crisis were as manufactured as the reasons for the Iraq war.
Of course, it's not that these unique agricultural products can't be re-discovered, with the help of big genetics corporations of course. But those corporations certainly won't recover a genetic trait or a unique species without a licensing agreement, and yearly fees. Thus, the small farm is destroyed, by hook or by crook, and its operators forced either into urban life or having their profits perpetually taxed away by agribusiness.
This guy is typical.
The lesson to be learned here is: if you automate your job, keep it under wraps. Sure as hell keep control of it.
Because jackasses like this would love to fire you or cut your salary for making your job easier.
And where is that power explicitly enumerated?
You make it sound like they can't make laws which restrict some people
They can't. That's the whole point of equal protection. You can outlaw acts, but not people.
Of course, it's not surprising that you think otherwise, since this is yet another of the many protections against tyranny that have been completely gutted and ignored in the US.
Can a child molester live near a school?
Child molestors have committed crimes. If their punishment for said crime restricts where they can live, then such restriction is acceptable.
Can a blind person drive a car?
Blind people, however, are entitled to equal protection. Being blind is not a crime. This means you can't make a law that discriminates against them. You can, perhaps, create a realistic, non-discriminatory test that tests for the ability to drive. (By non-discriminatory I mean the test can't just consist of "Are you blind?", but must actually test driving ability) Perhaps some blind people would pass it. Perhaps, with assistive devices, blind people can be great drivers. Of course, if you just prohibit blind people from driving instead, under your own ignorant assumptions, then we'll never know, and you would have violated their right to equal protection.
Can a blogger who is not a member of the press and has never been to a school for journalism call himself a journalist?
I can call myself a pink elephant if I'd like. That happens to be protected speech. Ironically, that is protected by exactly the same Constitutional Amendment that protects "the press". It's here. Notice how journalists aren't mentioned anywhere, only speech and press?
William Randolph Hearst never went to school for journalism and he sure as hell was a journalist. You act like "the press" is some sort of club or something. The goddamn Bill of Rights wasn't written to protect clubs. It was written to protect rights. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of the press. The press is not a group of people but a method of printing, of communicating. Before computers, a common method of communication was via a printing press. I am pressing the keys on my keyboard right now, trying to get this concept through to you.
My pressing on keys is protected by the First Amendment regardless of whether I'm a goddamn journalist.
Interesting indeed. And, look, our AC friend has responded to your insight with more mindless dribble, failing to comprehend (or read even?) the passage in question. Probably he is one of these dipshits who nowadays have convinced themselves that the words in the Constitution have no real meaning. This AC in particular seems to be influenced by the growth of nationalist bullshit in the US (and around the world) beginning in and throughout the 20th century.
So, of course, he's convinced himself that only citizens are worthy of the rights and protections of the Constitution. No doubt he picked up these views in connection with some sort of US military organization, since many of those organizations have adopted and like to spread the Oriental-Jewish view of conscription as a rite of passage into citizenship.
Overall, it would serve to elevate the position of software developers to a more professional status, and the salaries would go along with it.
All of the current "professions" have extensive legal protections in place that elevate their salaries and protect their jobs. The marketplace doesn't keep them employed.
Law firms can't be bigger than a certain size; there are barriers to practicing in multiple jurisdictions. Every business has to have an accountant. (Accountants, btw, with the least stringent protections, were the first of the "professions" to be outsourced) Doctors have health insurance and workers compensation, and possibly soon national healthcare. Engineers have liability, safety, and environmental laws that keep them employed. They all have hefty educational requirements, which keeps the "professional" teachers employed.
What will computing professionals have? And will it be better or worse than nothing at all, or alternatives such as unions?
It's less like "the bricklayer" and more like "the NASA engineer" being sued because the space shuttle explodes. Oh, the space shuttle that costs $99 and is operated by retards.
This the Howard Schmidt who left being chief security officer for Microsoft to join the Bush administration. This is the Bush administration that let Microsoft off with a slap on the wrist in their antitrust suit. This was the antitrust suit that attempted to hold Microsoft responsible for their policy of destroying or buying-out competitors rather than improving their own products.
Surprise, surprise. Bill has seen the light. He's a reformed whore. No longer will Microsoft be peddling crapware and relying on anticompetitive agreements, marketing bullshit and sabatoging competing programs to win the day.
No, no. They'll be relying on a much more respectable form of mischief. Government regulation.
The Microsoft that told the US courts to fuck off, and is busy telling the EU the same, is now buying out their latest (last?) competitor. Only this one has guns.
Well, here's what I have to say to Microsoft, and to Howard Schmidt: die. You created this market. You lowered the bar. You made software a race to sell the most features for the least cost with no regard for security or functionality. You evolved a competitor that can't be bought out.
Now, OSS is beating you at your own slimy game. And guess what? OSS will win. Frivilous lawsuits or not. Free Software will win. Software patents or not. DRM or not. Liability laws or not. The market will win, and users will win. You have nowhere to go but down. OSS has nowhere to go but up. Innovation and choice will beat out marketing and manipulation.
and the reason you won't find many tools to help you author them, is basically this:
every CD-BGM disc also needs to include a CD-i application to allow for playback on a CD-i player.
If you read the CD-i spec, you'll see that it's basically just a generic "autoplay" type of disc. In fact, it may not even be that generic. Apparently, the CD-i machine either runs the OS-9 realtime operating system (made by these guys) or it's loaded from the disc itself.
So, to make your own discs, you need to add a software program (or maybe even an entire OS) along with the content.
Biological warfare is beginning to get interesting. For years, the best we could do against insect pests was to kill off the weakest ones, leaving the most capable to reproduce and multiply. We were just hastening evolution, and making our enemies stronger.
As a result, we now have resistent insects, resistent bacteria, and we're beginning to see new outbreaks of viruses that we thought we had eradicated.
We were trying to fight a faceless, undying mob by overpowering them with brute strength. Now, we're learning better. Instead of brute strength, we've begun to exploit our only advantage: intelligence. We're finding ways to use our enemies against themselves. Instead of multiplying in strength, we will help the insects to multiply themselves into oblivion.
Let's just hope we don't hasten the evolution of mammalian maternal traits in the insects in the process.
Dumping laws are aimed at foreign producers.
Not everything has to do with foreign trade, you know. There is an *economic* definition of dumping that is "selling a product for less than it cost to produce".
Dumping laws are protectionist and rob consumers of value.
And I assume you think antitrust laws rob us of value as well? If a large player can give products away for free until all its competitors are out of business, that would be good for consumers?
Such a system can be put together using commodity hardware and open source software. It would be more customizable, longer-lived, and more affordable than anything from the "big name" solutions providers. With a little integration, it could be quite low-maintenance as well.
I've offered to do it for several years now for a few clients. Yet, none of them are large enough to pay "Xerox" prices or to justify the up-front costs by ordering more than a couple of systems. Also, it's difficult to find clients that truly recognize the benefits of a paperless office.
I'm amazed such a system doesn't exist already in an off-the-shelf form that can be customized. But, I've looked and such a thing doesn't exist.
No, it's been that way for a while. The FreeDOS boxes have always (as long as I remember) been more expensive than an equivalent box with XP.
I don't know what kind of deal they have with Microsoft to make that happen, but I suspect it is more than just the AOL and McAfee add-ons that they can bundle with XP.
has taken a rash beating in the passed (past? Could a Slashdot grammar Nazi clarify?)
The correct usage is 'past'. 'Past' is the noun, adjective, and adverb form. 'Passed' is used only as a verb. This may help. Or it may not. It's really something that just has to be memorized.
It's a wiki, for christ's sake. You don't need a PhD to contribute.
If you want, add your understanding as an "alternative theory". After a while, somebody who knows may just remove the other one or relegate it to a "historical theory" or something.
You're right, a lot of the technical articles are either 1) based on outdated theories, or 2) up-to-date, but ridiculously complex. But, guess what? Most educational materials are the same way! Schools still teach Newton even though he's been proven wrong for a hundred years.
If intelligent people always insist on appealing to arbitrary authority to back up their assertions, we wouldn't get anywhere. Read this if you don't believe me.
I don't think that's actually the case except in situations where justices have an *ongoing* conflict of interest. For instance, if they have stock in Microsoft or something, then they might recuse themselves. If they worked for Microsoft a long time ago, I don't think they would.
It certainly isn't true that justices recuse themselves when they might have strong feelings on, for instance, "the rights of corporations". That's what they're there for: to express their strongly held beliefs as to how the law should be interpreted under the Constitution. They aren't judges. They are mindful of precedent and take the facts of the case into account, yet most of them have a certain slant that they're going to take regardless, and they don't recuse themselves because of this. The SC must deal with difficult questions, oftentimes unanswered before, and if they don't have some guiding principles to go by then there isn't much point in them being there at all.
Think for a moment. This isn't for "snipers". It's to pick out the one person in the crowd of protesters who's shooting at you.
The US military is in the process of completely redesigning itself as a civilian occupation force. Iraq is just training.
Ha! That's because Cingular is just Southwestern Bell, the single worst company on the face of the Earth. Obviously their naming scheme worked on you...