PDF is fully documented and has been for over a decade. It uses PostScript as its basis, then embeds the fonts and graphics into the file and tacks on data for a scripting engine. You don't even have to pay Adobe for the documentation. The specs are available for free on their web site. Certain versions of PDF are even ISO standard, although Adobe does have extensions to those since they keep updating the format faster than the extensions are put through ISO committees.
All of this assumes, of course, that Word comes with Windows. It doesn't. Anyone who has a white-box PC built from retail parts needs to spend from $100 to $300 on Windows depending on version and whether or not they want MS to support it. Then they need to spend $125 or so for the word processor again just to open the document, or around $100 for Office Home and Student, or $260 or so for Office Professional.
That is, unless they pay for Corel's or Lotus's (IBM's) less expensive word processors, use OpenOffice just like the Linux folks, or pirate Word. Any of these options are less than ideal if you want perfect compatibility with both Word documents and the law. You could say you'll use Microsoft's Word Viewer, but nearly every time I've ever tried that it's been less than perfect itself.
Are you sure? I've always considered Notepad the wrong editor for just about anything. Even Microsoft's DOS edit.com was a better editor as far as I'm concerned.
I'm more of a vi/vim/cream (in a pinch elvis or vile), geany, or Kate person. Eclipse or Emacs aren't bad and I'm not here to start an editor flame fest. I just prefer modal commands to a lot of meta keys. I understand others prefer the opposite. Graphical is okay most of the time, but having something that's curses based or even line based to fall back when editing on a server is nice.
Whichever editor and language you prefer, though, I just hope you never end up having to edit Python across the wire with your termcap messed up.
OTOH, although I'm not fond of a few of the particular decisions Guido made, Python's a very useful language. On the bright side, making the indentation style part of the language spec saves a lot of paint on the bike sheds.
The odds of a lottery and whether the beneficiaries of the lottery funds ever see a dime of it are two very different matters. I thought I pointed out which I was talking about earlier. Some state lotteries pay a pittance to what they say they support. That's misrepresentation, because some people don't mind the long odds if it's "for the schools". Except that the bulk of that money is a jobs bill to run the lottery offices, and the rest may get appropriated away to other state expenses.
I didn't actually argue from ad hominem about the cigarettes. I made a point then threw in the attack besides. It wasn't necessary for the point. It was a gratuitous attack. I actually meant it in jest, but reading back over it I realize I utterly failed to get that tone through in writing. Sorry about that.
When discussing laws and crimes, I tend to think the language of the laws and crimes matters. Politicians and lawyers have their own jargon, and it helps to know some of it even if you're a regular Joe since the laws pertain to everyone in their jurisdiction. The vocabulary of that jargon often names well-defined concepts confusingly similar to but not synonymous with a looser general usage of basically the same words. I was maybe too harsh harping on that. Sorry again. However, you're the one who brought definitions into the discussion. I thought it'd be helpful to point out that your source was not a single, final authoritative source. My particular wording was less than helpful, but you were pretty aggressive in your statements, too.
So, when we are both being more detached and civil, we agree a little more but still not completely. It's funny how that tends to happen when discussions get heated, isn't it? I have no hard feelings over it. Maybe we'll go back and forth again on some topic, but with a little less friction.
If you are a homeowner and the burglar is just as likely to be armed as not, what's your incentive not to be armed? What's more, if you're dealing with burglars who know the homeowner may be armed and they're still willing to commit the intrusion, they're probably expecting a violent confrontation once in a while but doing it anyway. That makes them even more dangerous to themselves and the occupants of the home.
The big difference here is that the rightful occupants of the home have the right to be there and to defend themselves vigorously if necessary. If the burglar goes from breaking in to steal to breaking in to rob, then he is perpetrating the initial violent act.
A homeowner shouldn't attack an intruder who is clearly non-violent. However, someone who has broken into your home in the dark while you're there is starting out in a pretty confrontational manner. Being sure what's really going on in a dark room when the adrenaline is running is really difficult. When the situation isn't clear, the benefit of the doubt falls with the victim's right to defend within his own shelter. Too much hesitation can be deadly if you are actually under violent attack. Believing oneself to be in danger is what really matters. Shots in the back or bludgeoning someone to death with a chair isn't defense, but there are lots of situations that aren't so clear.
Having a weapon in the house and using it to defend the house is not a criminal act and is not taking violence to someone else. Breaking into someone's occupied home with a weapon is a premeditated crime in which the perpetrator brought a weapon in order to commit the act. The two are very different circumstances. One is defensive and the other is offensive. If you can't understand the difference, then either you're stupid or you're intentionally allowing yourself to be mislead.
Thanks for dependably parroting my position to me as if you're explaining something. I have been saying all along that you can answer force with force. If you kill someone just for breaking the glass and grabbing some cash, that's murder.
No, I don't just keep slipping it in there. Many home intrusions do involve the intruder being armed, at least with a pry bar or hammer. I also keep saying "if". One might believe you'd read that and think I don't believe all burglars are armed robbers, and you'd be right. Some are, though. You have a right to defend against the worst of them and not just the least criminal criminals.
Breaking in unarmed and breaking in armed are two different things, with two different premeditations behind them. Even if the motive is just to take your things, there's a serious consideration about what someone's willing to do when they break in armed. Unfortunately, you can't really be sure whether they are armed or whether they are there for things or to do you physical harm until after the situation is over.
You might say that the robber having a weapon doesn't mean he'll use it with deadly force, but I can say the same about the homeowner or renter. Having the weapon gives you the option to inflict damage with it or just brandish it. If it's small, you may even be able to conceal it to help defuse the situation. (There are no laws about concealing a weapon within your own home.) Not having a weapon means you can't use one, though, and deadly force can be dealt without weapons at greater difficulty anyway. You'd just better hope that if you're counting on talking the situation down or fighting someone hand-to-hand that the intruder isn't armed.
why? Because "some crazy fucker" is the only type of person who would defend himself and his family?
I'll tell you what, Doc. A person committing a home invasion robbery is not likely to have premeditated damaging your door or window to enter your private dwelling with a weapon in order to make you scrambled eggs for breakfast. If they break into an occupied home with a weapon, they are planning to be violent if necessary even if they claim otherwise.
I'm really sorry you think tobacco companies saying their drug is not addictive while knowing it was and being forced by the government to put only a minimal and incomplete description of medial problems smoking can cause on their product packaging is telling people exactly what they are getting. Did you mother smoke during her pregnancy with you or something?
Lotteries all the time state a jackpot winnings total, then tell you you must leave the money in an annuity under their control to get that amount if you win. If you want the money upon winning, they take half or so before they even take the taxes out. They advertise how much they're going to help the schools or roads or whatever, but a huge amount of the money goes to run the lottery itself and you're lucky if your state doesn't appropriate part of the funds for some other expense. Yeah, the odds of winning are stated clearly in the fine print, but what the lottery actually supports probably isn't.
Also, would you pleas learn that a dictionary of everyday terms bears little semblance to the definitions you'd find in the criminal codes of your state or in a legal dictionary?
"Stealing by fraud" is a crime in some places. What you're talking about is robbery, not theft. A plain theft would be sneaking around and taking it without force.
I'm so glad you put your karma on the line there. How's mine? "Excellent"!
BTW, I didn't say all liberals followed that or that all members of your beloved Democrat or Social Democrat or Green or Socialist or People's or Worker's or whatever party were "ultimate liberal" politicians.
I said it was the "ultimate liberal goal", which if you look at the most leftist politicians is pretty accurate.
give it to those who were loyal to you, or to yourself
get votes and money from the very rich for protecting them from the very poor
get votes from the very poor for protecting them from the very rich and giving them just a bit of that money, but mostly spending it through friends to "help" them through convoluted policy
keep the middle class from becoming rich, preferably pushing them towards the very poor side of the scale where they are easier to manipulate
talk about a mandate when you have the majority
talk about working together when you have the minority
make policies in the government that make it easier for your party to keep the office
If they are just stealing, they will leave when confronted with a weapon. If they respond with a weapon they brought with them, they are not thieves nor burglars but robbers and perhaps killers.
That's awfully funny that the Europeans and Asians who left some of the oldest civilizations on Earth to colonize both Canada and the United States are "neophytes to civilization".
Remember, it was Ferdinand and Isabella who murdered enough Moors and Jews to send Columbus west in the first place. It's a pity for all of those people they couldn't defend themselves.
Breaking in while armed shows they are willing to kill whether that was their ideal crime or not. If they just put a jacket over their hand and punch in a window, they will run or surrender when I pull out a baseball bat or shotgun. If they are under aim and make a sudden movement, I can assume they are reaching for a weapon, just like the police would in the same scenario if the police didn't take half an hour to get there after the report.
Bullshit. You don't have to prove your defense beyond any doubt. The prosecution must prove their case against you beyond a reasonable doubt. There's a reasonable doubt I committed the initial act of violence when an armed man breaks into my locked home in the dark with me present.
Trespass is walking on my lawn. Breaking into my house while armed at night is burglary and armed robbery. I have the right to expect he's willing to kill if he breaks into a locked dwelling at night with a weapon. Therefore I have the right to defend myself.
Well, not to death really. To unconsciousness, sure. And back to unconsciousness if he stirs. And if he happens to die while the police and ambulance arrive, oh well. He put his life in your hands when he showed violence toward you. Breaking into someone's locked dwelling is a violent act in itself, and if they come armed that's a threat against your life. The laws and courts where you're at may not agree, but it's better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.
Slashdot Mirror
PDF is fully documented and has been for over a decade. It uses PostScript as its basis, then embeds the fonts and graphics into the file and tacks on data for a scripting engine. You don't even have to pay Adobe for the documentation. The specs are available for free on their web site. Certain versions of PDF are even ISO standard, although Adobe does have extensions to those since they keep updating the format faster than the extensions are put through ISO committees.
GIYF, but I'll save you the trouble.
All of this assumes, of course, that Word comes with Windows. It doesn't. Anyone who has a white-box PC built from retail parts needs to spend from $100 to $300 on Windows depending on version and whether or not they want MS to support it. Then they need to spend $125 or so for the word processor again just to open the document, or around $100 for Office Home and Student, or $260 or so for Office Professional.
That is, unless they pay for Corel's or Lotus's (IBM's) less expensive word processors, use OpenOffice just like the Linux folks, or pirate Word. Any of these options are less than ideal if you want perfect compatibility with both Word documents and the law. You could say you'll use Microsoft's Word Viewer, but nearly every time I've ever tried that it's been less than perfect itself.
Are you sure? I've always considered Notepad the wrong editor for just about anything. Even Microsoft's DOS edit.com was a better editor as far as I'm concerned.
I'm more of a vi/vim/cream (in a pinch elvis or vile), geany, or Kate person. Eclipse or Emacs aren't bad and I'm not here to start an editor flame fest. I just prefer modal commands to a lot of meta keys. I understand others prefer the opposite. Graphical is okay most of the time, but having something that's curses based or even line based to fall back when editing on a server is nice.
Whichever editor and language you prefer, though, I just hope you never end up having to edit Python across the wire with your termcap messed up.
OTOH, although I'm not fond of a few of the particular decisions Guido made, Python's a very useful language. On the bright side, making the indentation style part of the language spec saves a lot of paint on the bike sheds.
The odds of a lottery and whether the beneficiaries of the lottery funds ever see a dime of it are two very different matters. I thought I pointed out which I was talking about earlier. Some state lotteries pay a pittance to what they say they support. That's misrepresentation, because some people don't mind the long odds if it's "for the schools". Except that the bulk of that money is a jobs bill to run the lottery offices, and the rest may get appropriated away to other state expenses.
I didn't actually argue from ad hominem about the cigarettes. I made a point then threw in the attack besides. It wasn't necessary for the point. It was a gratuitous attack. I actually meant it in jest, but reading back over it I realize I utterly failed to get that tone through in writing. Sorry about that.
When discussing laws and crimes, I tend to think the language of the laws and crimes matters. Politicians and lawyers have their own jargon, and it helps to know some of it even if you're a regular Joe since the laws pertain to everyone in their jurisdiction. The vocabulary of that jargon often names well-defined concepts confusingly similar to but not synonymous with a looser general usage of basically the same words. I was maybe too harsh harping on that. Sorry again. However, you're the one who brought definitions into the discussion. I thought it'd be helpful to point out that your source was not a single, final authoritative source. My particular wording was less than helpful, but you were pretty aggressive in your statements, too.
So, when we are both being more detached and civil, we agree a little more but still not completely. It's funny how that tends to happen when discussions get heated, isn't it? I have no hard feelings over it. Maybe we'll go back and forth again on some topic, but with a little less friction.
If you are a homeowner and the burglar is just as likely to be armed as not, what's your incentive not to be armed? What's more, if you're dealing with burglars who know the homeowner may be armed and they're still willing to commit the intrusion, they're probably expecting a violent confrontation once in a while but doing it anyway. That makes them even more dangerous to themselves and the occupants of the home.
The big difference here is that the rightful occupants of the home have the right to be there and to defend themselves vigorously if necessary. If the burglar goes from breaking in to steal to breaking in to rob, then he is perpetrating the initial violent act.
A homeowner shouldn't attack an intruder who is clearly non-violent. However, someone who has broken into your home in the dark while you're there is starting out in a pretty confrontational manner. Being sure what's really going on in a dark room when the adrenaline is running is really difficult. When the situation isn't clear, the benefit of the doubt falls with the victim's right to defend within his own shelter. Too much hesitation can be deadly if you are actually under violent attack. Believing oneself to be in danger is what really matters. Shots in the back or bludgeoning someone to death with a chair isn't defense, but there are lots of situations that aren't so clear.
Having a weapon in the house and using it to defend the house is not a criminal act and is not taking violence to someone else. Breaking into someone's occupied home with a weapon is a premeditated crime in which the perpetrator brought a weapon in order to commit the act. The two are very different circumstances. One is defensive and the other is offensive. If you can't understand the difference, then either you're stupid or you're intentionally allowing yourself to be mislead.
Thanks for dependably parroting my position to me as if you're explaining something. I have been saying all along that you can answer force with force. If you kill someone just for breaking the glass and grabbing some cash, that's murder.
No, I don't just keep slipping it in there. Many home intrusions do involve the intruder being armed, at least with a pry bar or hammer. I also keep saying "if". One might believe you'd read that and think I don't believe all burglars are armed robbers, and you'd be right. Some are, though. You have a right to defend against the worst of them and not just the least criminal criminals.
Breaking in unarmed and breaking in armed are two different things, with two different premeditations behind them. Even if the motive is just to take your things, there's a serious consideration about what someone's willing to do when they break in armed. Unfortunately, you can't really be sure whether they are armed or whether they are there for things or to do you physical harm until after the situation is over.
You might say that the robber having a weapon doesn't mean he'll use it with deadly force, but I can say the same about the homeowner or renter. Having the weapon gives you the option to inflict damage with it or just brandish it. If it's small, you may even be able to conceal it to help defuse the situation. (There are no laws about concealing a weapon within your own home.) Not having a weapon means you can't use one, though, and deadly force can be dealt without weapons at greater difficulty anyway. You'd just better hope that if you're counting on talking the situation down or fighting someone hand-to-hand that the intruder isn't armed.
why? Because "some crazy fucker" is the only type of person who would defend himself and his family?
I'll tell you what, Doc. A person committing a home invasion robbery is not likely to have premeditated damaging your door or window to enter your private dwelling with a weapon in order to make you scrambled eggs for breakfast. If they break into an occupied home with a weapon, they are planning to be violent if necessary even if they claim otherwise.
I suggest the keyword "Sophos" to mark advertisements for snake oil sold as computer expertise disguised as interesting article submissions.
fraud is basically theft through deceit.
I'm really sorry you think tobacco companies saying their drug is not addictive while knowing it was and being forced by the government to put only a minimal and incomplete description of medial problems smoking can cause on their product packaging is telling people exactly what they are getting. Did you mother smoke during her pregnancy with you or something?
Lotteries all the time state a jackpot winnings total, then tell you you must leave the money in an annuity under their control to get that amount if you win. If you want the money upon winning, they take half or so before they even take the taxes out. They advertise how much they're going to help the schools or roads or whatever, but a huge amount of the money goes to run the lottery itself and you're lucky if your state doesn't appropriate part of the funds for some other expense. Yeah, the odds of winning are stated clearly in the fine print, but what the lottery actually supports probably isn't.
Also, would you pleas learn that a dictionary of everyday terms bears little semblance to the definitions you'd find in the criminal codes of your state or in a legal dictionary?
"Stealing by fraud" is a crime in some places. What you're talking about is robbery, not theft. A plain theft would be sneaking around and taking it without force.
Who's the pedant now?
I'm so glad you put your karma on the line there. How's mine? "Excellent"!
BTW, I didn't say all liberals followed that or that all members of your beloved Democrat or Social Democrat or Green or Socialist or People's or Worker's or whatever party were "ultimate liberal" politicians.
I said it was the "ultimate liberal goal", which if you look at the most leftist politicians is pretty accurate.
Are you by any chance Todd Davis or Robert Maynard, Jr.?
He's just expressing the ultimate liberal goal:
Stealing from the poor is profitable. State lotteries, tobacco companies, and televangelists do it all the time.
It's really sad that you don't have the right to be in on the first floor of your house at night.
If they are just stealing, they will leave when confronted with a weapon. If they respond with a weapon they brought with them, they are not thieves nor burglars but robbers and perhaps killers.
If "pushing down a piece of wood" gets someone into your home, perhaps you should spend a little on home improvement.
That's awfully funny that the Europeans and Asians who left some of the oldest civilizations on Earth to colonize both Canada and the United States are "neophytes to civilization".
Remember, it was Ferdinand and Isabella who murdered enough Moors and Jews to send Columbus west in the first place. It's a pity for all of those people they couldn't defend themselves.
Breaking in while armed shows they are willing to kill whether that was their ideal crime or not. If they just put a jacket over their hand and punch in a window, they will run or surrender when I pull out a baseball bat or shotgun. If they are under aim and make a sudden movement, I can assume they are reaching for a weapon, just like the police would in the same scenario if the police didn't take half an hour to get there after the report.
Bullshit. You don't have to prove your defense beyond any doubt. The prosecution must prove their case against you beyond a reasonable doubt. There's a reasonable doubt I committed the initial act of violence when an armed man breaks into my locked home in the dark with me present.
Trespass is walking on my lawn. Breaking into my house while armed at night is burglary and armed robbery. I have the right to expect he's willing to kill if he breaks into a locked dwelling at night with a weapon. Therefore I have the right to defend myself.
Well, not to death really. To unconsciousness, sure. And back to unconsciousness if he stirs. And if he happens to die while the police and ambulance arrive, oh well. He put his life in your hands when he showed violence toward you. Breaking into someone's locked dwelling is a violent act in itself, and if they come armed that's a threat against your life. The laws and courts where you're at may not agree, but it's better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.