Wow. It really does sound like a trap. MS Dev Studio calls home to get the source code. I'm willing to bet that MS will also *log* the IP and the Dev Studio's activation/registration information. I wouldn't be surprised if this feature is enabled by default, or will pop up a license notice that the developer will just click through without reading. Most anyone who works with any MSDN programming product is probably going to find themselves tainted.
EULAs are bad enough, but this is obnoxious to the point that it could be legally challenged, especially if debugging a small chunk of code is enough for you to be considered "tainted" in regards to the entire.net code base. It will be interesting to see if MS records what code you looked at (or if they don't, then why didn't they?)
Q. How does the debugging experience really work? Will the source code remain resident on the machine?
Visual Studio will request source from a Microsoft (MSDN) server as needed when a developer steps into.NET Framework library code during in a debugging session.
Q. What if a company does not want to allow the.NET Framework source code or other library source code, to be viewed by its developers?
Viewing or debugging into the Microsoft library source code is an action that will require an explicit acceptance of the license, regardless of the mechanism by which developers view the code (whether in a developer tool like Visual Studio, or as a separate archive download). Companies that do not wish to view the source code should instruct their employees to not accept this license.
If the cameras pick up a lot of people breaking a particular law, but the cops do not enforce that law (they only arrest or ticket a small percentage of the people,) then couldn't you get those convictions overturned on the grounds of selective enforcement?
And imagine the civil lawsuits against the city when the cameras show a crime, but the police fail to respond for any reason or if they're late in arriving.
And then there's the lawsuits about what constitutes a crime. Do the cameras ignore jaywalking? If so, then jaywalking laws fall under selective enforcement. Or can you sue the city when the cameras reveal an intersection with a high number of jaywalkers, but the city doesn't do anything about it and someone gets hurt?
Location, location, location. It would be interesting to have a few of these cameras watching the politicians. It would also be amusing to see how many civil rights protests occur because of biased camera placement that leads to biased crime statistics.
Data can cut both ways. It should be amusing to see what the ACLU, Democrats, Libertarians, and demagogues do with such knowledge.
I suddenly have the urge to hire a bunch of poor starving theater majors to act suspiciously for the cameras. I wonder how it will take for such street performances to be outlawed, and then how long will it take to get those 'Stop Confusing the Cameras' laws overturned.
Seriously, if you're going to spend untold hours looking at the rear of your character, then why not make it female? Or do you like staring at a male tush for hours on end?
Plus, if you're going to spend more time with your character than with your wife or girlfriend, why not make it female? A female avatar will either remind you about how the real thing is better, or it will soon become the only woman in your life. It's a win-win decision.
Normally I consider a Neuromancer type cyberspace to be completely useless way to locate and process data. Functionality > cool factor.
However, combining it with Google Earth to enable "avatars being able to walk around on actual streets and enter real buildings to check out what's inside and socialize with other avatars" might almost vaguely be a good idea. It's one thing to shop online with a traditional web interface, but it's quite another 'enter' a store and talk in real time with other customers or store personnel. It changes online shopping from a 'research item, browse for lowest price, and buy online' task into a First Person Shopping experience. I find it disturbingly appealing for some reason.
Combining a generic, omnipresent (i.e. non-Microsoft) video/3D conferencing network would be useful. Instant messaging is great but it's still just text. Video conferencing isn't ubiquitous enough to be useful. (The unwashed IM masses do not use it.) Upgrading instant messaging or chatrooms to a 'First Person Person' experience might take group communication and organization to a new level. Imagine what you could do with political meetings or neighborhood meetings.
I'm not saying that actual face to face human interaction should be tossed out. A 'First Person' 3D avatar Google Earth could make it easier to attend tedious or 'mandatory' social organizing events such as neighborhood meetings to get petitions signed for new stop signs. Instead of having to rush home after work and fight traffic to make a 7pm neighborhood meeting (which discourages you from participating,) you can just login and participate. Sure you lose some of the social interaction (quality,) but you make up for it with quantity (more people can make it.)
What I am attempting to say, is that there is NOT any 'proof' as to what this was, at least not yet. And to simply accept the explination that it was a meteor without the evidence to support it, is not acceptable in any scientific attempt at explaining what happened here. In time, it may be 'proven' to be a meteorite. But that time is not now. It is merely 'speculation' that is a meteorite. Lots of things that fall from space can have a 'high degree of iron', some of them are manmade.
I forgot to address this in my previous reply. You have a point. However, conversely, the 'cold meteorite' isn't enough to discredit the meteorite theory. I don't see enough inconsistencies or mysteries that warrant sending Mulder and Scully in.
The cold meteorite reference only proves that the energy to boil the water didn't come from the cold interior of the meteorite. Well, duh. =)
A lot of energy is still released by the impact (it takes energy to move all that dirt around for a start.) Is it possible that the water boiled away due to the energy released at impact? What about Boyle's law? Could the water have been heated as the ground was compressed by the strike, and/or the boiling point lowered by decompression as the explosion pushed the ground and air away?
Also, the Wired quote says that meteors are hot on the outside and cold on the inside: "And even if the meteor didn't break apart, it would have about 3 millimeters of hot fusion crust on the surface being rapidly cooled down by 100kgs of cold stone."
Is it incorrect to believe that the 3mm of hot fusion crust was being cooled by the cold interior _and_ by any surrounding water?
I'm not a scientist, but there is a lot of energy involved in meteor impacts, and that energy has to go somewhere. Unless a credible source can account for the energy, your argument is still dubious.
You need to quote your source(s), because your information doesn't match the article and thus severely undermines your argument.
5) No meteorite has been shown to exist physically (a 3-inch fragment that simply contains the element iron is not proof) 6) No peer reveiw has been done on the results or fragment claimed by the ONE man from the peruvian govt. In short, coming to a conclusion of "It was a meteorite" is simply not able to be substantiated by the available evidence.
From the article:
"Peruvian scientists seemed to unanimously agree that it was a meteorite that had struck their territory"
"Preliminary analysis by Macedo's institute revealed no metal fragments, indicating a rare rock meteorite"
"The samples she reviewed had smooth, eroded edges, Macedo added. "As the rock enters the atmosphere, it gets smoothed out," she said."
"The samples also had a significant amount of magnetic material "characteristic of meteorites," she said."
"José Machare, a geoscience adviser at INGEMMET, said x-ray tests conducted on the samples earlier today further confirmed the object's celestial origins."
In order to prevent it from being used on crowds, a bunch of people will need to tie or handcuff themselves together. When the beam hits the crowd, the bound together crowd will most likely cause damage to themselves. (The pain overrides rational thought and people hurt themselves when trying to get away.)
Since the beam _will_ cause real harm to a "bonded" crowd, any government or police force with a modicum of conscience (or fear of lawsuits) will be unable to use the beam.
Heh, "Live" is starting to remind me of when MS added ".Net" to every product they had. It got to the point that no one knew what ".Net" was or what it was good for.
How many companies have a well known brand names that covers multiple fields or product areas? Kraft is known for certain food products. Ford is known for cars. I'm pretty sure that most executives would never try to extend the Kraft brand name to include cars, and ditto for Ford and food products. If 'Live' stands for everything, then it also stands for nothing specific. What's next, Live Office? Live Media Player? Live Active Directory Server? =P
I understand that making something easy to use makes it more likely to be used. But unless MS force feeds it to you when you boot or install Vista and XP, why would people choose Live over the more established brand names such as MySpace and YouTube?
MS would need a big marketing push to gain mind share, and I don't think an optional web install will do it.
To answer my own question: you can tag the article with 'misleadingheadline'. Type in 'misleading' and you will get a dropdown list of 'misleading*' tags. Although I'm curious as the difference between 'misleadingheadline' and 'misleadingtitle'. Can we tag a tag as redundant? =)
Content ratings and recommendations is described in which embodiments provide that a viewer can create a rating system that other viewers can then subscribe to which forms a group, or subculture, that collaborates to identify and rate television programs, movies, and other programming choices for the viewers of the group. This adaptive and flexible approach enables individual viewers to discover like-minded subcultures, benefit from a rating system that represents similar viewing choices, and optionally, participate in identifying media content and rating the viewing choices.
A group of people willingly subscribe to a group that recommends TV shows they would be interested in and blocks those deemed inappropriate/off-topic/irrelevant. It's like Slashdot for TV.
Is there any chance that Slashdot moderators can apply 'Troll' and 'Deliberately Misleading Flamebait' to article titles and summaries?
Cop as King Solomon (or Cop as Judge, Jury and Executioner.) The cop was called to resolve a seemingly minor issue, an issue that that could quickly be resolved on the scene. If you want the cop to be an on the spot King Solomon, he needs the tools, training, and information to do so. He first needs to resolve that the customer wasn't shoplifting, hence the package check and running a background check on the driver and car. (Logically, there's no point in the cop checking out the store employees first.) Once the shoplifting is ruled out, the cop can then proceed to read the riot act to the store employees (or even arrest them.) It's much more likely that the cop will warn the store employees than arrest them, because arresting would be a serious waste of time and effort (there's real crime to deal with.) Ideally, everyone agrees that a mistake was made[1], apologies are made and everyone goes on with their business. Later, if you want to bring a civil suit against the store, the cop would be more than willing to testify as to the facts.
It's a trade off. If you want the on the scene cop to quickly resolve the matter, you cooperate with him. Which means that all sides bend the rules to get the issue settled quickly. As soon as one party gets technical and formal, then the cop has no choice but invoke the full formality of the legal system, which means paperwork, arrests, lawyers, being booked, etc..
I'm not saying that the customer brought it on himself. I'm saying that the customer had a choice in how to get his problem resolved. By disallowing an on the scene resolution by the cop, the customer now has to deal with burden of going through the full legal process. Either way will get justice done, however, one way is a lot cheaper and easier than the other.
And yes, I'm also aware that it's a good idea to stand up for your basic rights once in a while just to keep everyone honest and to keep our liberties from soundlessly shrinking into nothingness. I'm also aware that most people can resolve most situations like adults without having to lawyer up. It's your choice as to which method is more appropriate.
[1] Well, in today's legal climate, I doubt that a store would apologize because doing so would be admitting to being wrong, which doesn't help if a civil suit is brought. Pretty sad commentary on society when you can't give an honest apology anymore. However, the store might give you free swag in lieu of an apology.
Or you could just find the nearest cashier and have them remove the exploding ink/inventory control tag that the original cashier accidentally left on. Personally, I have no desire to find a pair of wire/bolt cutters to remove them myself and risk damaging my recent purchase.
By exempting churches from taxes the government gets to chose what is and isn't a religion.
Change 'government' to 'majority' and you'll see the problem. A Protestant dominated congress would probably have created some nasty tax rates on Catholic, Jewish, Mormons, etc. faiths. And how do you decide how much to tax each faith? By size? Size entails that each faith keep accurate rolls of their members. Instant blacklist. To avoid a large faith breaking itself up into a zillion little flocks/groups to avoid reporting requirements, you would need to set a minimum yearly fee. A _large_ minimum fee that a majority religion could afford to pay , but that the little faiths couldn't afford. And I would speculate that the majority faith's fee money would just find its way back into their coffers. Which brings up the question of how are those tax dollars spent? The majority religion is a majority in Congress which means the non-majority faiths' money would be misspent.
Given how irrational and intense people can be concerning their religion and the non-believers, worst case, it would be like crossing the KKK with the IRS with McCarthyism.
I'm not quite sure how you made that connection... do you suppose that any "religion" the government deems annoying enough to suppress would be taxed into oblivion?
Yes. Look at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/02/121620 9 Increased royalty fees threaten to drive web based radio out of business. If you look at US history, there have been periods where I could easily see Congress as being more than happy to tax unpopular religions into oblivion. More importantly, a faith isn't going to give up just because they can't pay the fees. If they can't pay the fees, then they're breaking the law. Presto! They are now criminals because of their faith.
Neither. Instead, Jesus would ask how someone could spend hundreds of dollars on a new dvd player when there are people in the local community who still get their food from garbage bins. And, since you already bought a new HD/Blue-Ray player, he would hint that the local orphanage, battered woman's shelter, and/or local children's hospital could really use your old dvd player.
The point being made is that rich individuals and corporations are setting up a minimal presence in a foreign tax country (tax haven) in order to avoid paying taxes in the countries where they actually live or work. This is "bad" because by not paying local taxes, they're not supporting their local government and social programs. If you live in the [insert your country here] and use the Netherlands as a tax haven, then you're not paying your fair share for your country's universal health care, or 911 services, or military that keeps your democracy free, or whatever.
If you're going to benefit from your local country's laws and services, is it really too much to ask that you pay your fair share? If local taxes are too burdensome or wasteful, then work to improve them instead of hiding from the problem(s). We all complain that money influences politics. If people are allowed to hide money overseas, then they have no motivation to reform existing local laws. If they were forced to resolve the issues locally, they would be subject to local laws and publicity, thus making it difficult to corrupt the reformed laws. By hiding money overseas, there is little legal or public oversight to prevent abuse (such as laundering drug money.)
Thus tax havens create at least two problems: local services, laws, and legal protections are not being paid for, and local laws, morals, mores, and publicity are being evaded. The latter is probably the greater of the two sins.
A third problem that the Pope appears to be concerned about is that local taxes pay for social programs. You know, homeless shelters, health care for the poor, etc.. By turning to a tax haven, you are implicitly turning your back on your fellow man. Do you really think that anyone using a foreign tax shelter is actually using the money they saved back to build up their local community? Granted, the Catholic Church shouldn't be throwing stones, but a Christian who hides tax money isn't much of a Christian. Belittle the Pope all you want, but he is probably the only individual who has the ability to bring worldwide attention to global morality. You don't have to like the guy shining the light on the cockroaches, but do be glad that someone is doing it. (But we do keep a mirror handy to throw some of that light back.)
Both do their job (CVS since years). SVN does some trivial things better than CVS.
SVN doesn't do the job because there's no built-in merge tracking, which leads to serious merge bugs.
Repeated merges (bi-directional merges) between branches generates false positives (the lack of merge tracking causes SVN to re-merge previously merged code.) The lack of true renames, means that you can lose changes during a merge if renamed files are modified on both branches. The svnmerge.py script only works at one directory level, which makes merging a single file deep in the project annoying. Since a checkin and a merge checkin are identical, there's no way to enforce merge tracking standards via hooks. All of these merge weaknesses require extra training and/or merge meisters, which is really clumsy in a large organization.
SVN is useful if you only use short lived branches (which will minimize the problems listed above.) I would not use it for large organizations due to training issues, nor for branches that require lots of inter-branch merging.
Hopefully, the merge tracking being implemented for SVN 1.5 will make SVN a real/complete scource code control system.
What's the range on this thing? If it's something excessive, then we might have to move outdoor events, such as political rallies and presidential inaugurations, indoors. Given how important eye contact is, I don't think the people nor the political candidates would take to mirrored sunglasses too well.
What features of Vista allow the creation of Vista only software? DirectX 10 for games is one. But what can cause Vista lock-in for application software?
Meh, the easiest way to kill this is to point out that people can track public officials. How many legislators, bureaucrats, officers, etc. really want the public to track where they go? One little subpoena or a leak that lists high profile people who consistently drove their car to or at least near a known house of ill repute would make for a fun news story. Or where they go for lunch, and how long they're out of the office. Roaches dislike sunshine.
And don't forget the stalking lawsuits. As soon as an insider uses their access to stalk and hurt someone, there's going to be a big lawsuit.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. It really does sound like a trap. MS Dev Studio calls home to get the source code. I'm willing to bet that MS will also *log* the IP and the Dev Studio's activation/registration information. I wouldn't be surprised if this feature is enabled by default, or will pop up a license notice that the developer will just click through without reading. Most anyone who works with any MSDN programming product is probably going to find themselves tainted.
EULAs are bad enough, but this is obnoxious to the point that it could be legally challenged, especially if debugging a small chunk of code is enough for you to be considered "tainted" in regards to the entire .net code base. It will be interesting to see if MS records what code you looked at (or if they don't, then why didn't they?)
Q. How does the debugging experience really work? Will the source code remain resident on the machine? Visual Studio will request source from a Microsoft (MSDN) server as needed when a developer steps into .NET Framework library code during in a debugging session.
Q. What if a company does not want to allow the .NET Framework source code or other library source code, to be viewed by its developers?
Viewing or debugging into the Microsoft library source code is an action that will require an explicit acceptance of the license, regardless of the mechanism by which developers view the code (whether in a developer tool like Visual Studio, or as a separate archive download). Companies that do not wish to view the source code should instruct their employees to not accept this license.
If the cameras pick up a lot of people breaking a particular law, but the cops do not enforce that law (they only arrest or ticket a small percentage of the people,) then couldn't you get those convictions overturned on the grounds of selective enforcement?
And imagine the civil lawsuits against the city when the cameras show a crime, but the police fail to respond for any reason or if they're late in arriving.
And then there's the lawsuits about what constitutes a crime. Do the cameras ignore jaywalking? If so, then jaywalking laws fall under selective enforcement. Or can you sue the city when the cameras reveal an intersection with a high number of jaywalkers, but the city doesn't do anything about it and someone gets hurt?
Location, location, location. It would be interesting to have a few of these cameras watching the politicians. It would also be amusing to see how many civil rights protests occur because of biased camera placement that leads to biased crime statistics.
Data can cut both ways. It should be amusing to see what the ACLU, Democrats, Libertarians, and demagogues do with such knowledge.
I suddenly have the urge to hire a bunch of poor starving theater majors to act suspiciously for the cameras. I wonder how it will take for such street performances to be outlawed, and then how long will it take to get those 'Stop Confusing the Cameras' laws overturned.
Seriously, if you're going to spend untold hours looking at the rear of your character, then why not make it female? Or do you like staring at a male tush for hours on end?
Plus, if you're going to spend more time with your character than with your wife or girlfriend, why not make it female? A female avatar will either remind you about how the real thing is better, or it will soon become the only woman in your life. It's a win-win decision.
Normally I consider a Neuromancer type cyberspace to be completely useless way to locate and process data. Functionality > cool factor.
However, combining it with Google Earth to enable "avatars being able to walk around on actual streets and enter real buildings to check out what's inside and socialize with other avatars" might almost vaguely be a good idea. It's one thing to shop online with a traditional web interface, but it's quite another 'enter' a store and talk in real time with other customers or store personnel. It changes online shopping from a 'research item, browse for lowest price, and buy online' task into a First Person Shopping experience. I find it disturbingly appealing for some reason.
Combining a generic, omnipresent (i.e. non-Microsoft) video/3D conferencing network would be useful. Instant messaging is great but it's still just text. Video conferencing isn't ubiquitous enough to be useful. (The unwashed IM masses do not use it.) Upgrading instant messaging or chatrooms to a 'First Person Person' experience might take group communication and organization to a new level. Imagine what you could do with political meetings or neighborhood meetings.
I'm not saying that actual face to face human interaction should be tossed out. A 'First Person' 3D avatar Google Earth could make it easier to attend tedious or 'mandatory' social organizing events such as neighborhood meetings to get petitions signed for new stop signs. Instead of having to rush home after work and fight traffic to make a 7pm neighborhood meeting (which discourages you from participating,) you can just login and participate. Sure you lose some of the social interaction (quality,) but you make up for it with quantity (more people can make it.)
What I am attempting to say, is that there is NOT any 'proof' as to what this was, at least not yet. And to simply accept the explination that it was a meteor without the evidence to support it, is not acceptable in any scientific attempt at explaining what happened here. In time, it may be 'proven' to be a meteorite. But that time is not now. It is merely 'speculation' that is a meteorite. Lots of things that fall from space can have a 'high degree of iron', some of them are manmade.
I forgot to address this in my previous reply. You have a point. However, conversely, the 'cold meteorite' isn't enough to discredit the meteorite theory. I don't see enough inconsistencies or mysteries that warrant sending Mulder and Scully in.
The cold meteorite reference only proves that the energy to boil the water didn't come from the cold interior of the meteorite. Well, duh. =)
A lot of energy is still released by the impact (it takes energy to move all that dirt around for a start.) Is it possible that the water boiled away due to the energy released at impact? What about Boyle's law? Could the water have been heated as the ground was compressed by the strike, and/or the boiling point lowered by decompression as the explosion pushed the ground and air away?
Also, the Wired quote says that meteors are hot on the outside and cold on the inside: "And even if the meteor didn't break apart, it would have about 3 millimeters of hot fusion crust on the surface being rapidly cooled down by 100kgs of cold stone."
Is it incorrect to believe that the 3mm of hot fusion crust was being cooled by the cold interior _and_ by any surrounding water?
I'm not a scientist, but there is a lot of energy involved in meteor impacts, and that energy has to go somewhere. Unless a credible source can account for the energy, your argument is still dubious.
You need to quote your source(s), because your information doesn't match the article and thus severely undermines your argument.
5) No meteorite has been shown to exist physically (a 3-inch fragment that simply contains the element iron is not proof)
6) No peer reveiw has been done on the results or fragment claimed by the ONE man from the peruvian govt.
In short, coming to a conclusion of "It was a meteorite" is simply not able to be substantiated by the available evidence.
From the article:
"Peruvian scientists seemed to unanimously agree that it was a meteorite that had struck their territory"
"Preliminary analysis by Macedo's institute revealed no metal fragments, indicating a rare rock meteorite"
"The samples she reviewed had smooth, eroded edges, Macedo added. "As the rock enters the atmosphere, it gets smoothed out," she said."
"The samples also had a significant amount of magnetic material "characteristic of meteorites," she said."
"José Machare, a geoscience adviser at INGEMMET, said x-ray tests conducted on the samples earlier today further confirmed the object's celestial origins."
In order to prevent it from being used on crowds, a bunch of people will need to tie or handcuff themselves together. When the beam hits the crowd, the bound together crowd will most likely cause damage to themselves. (The pain overrides rational thought and people hurt themselves when trying to get away.)
Since the beam _will_ cause real harm to a "bonded" crowd, any government or police force with a modicum of conscience (or fear of lawsuits) will be unable to use the beam.
He should have attached the devices to helium balloons and set them aloft.
Heh, "Live" is starting to remind me of when MS added ".Net" to every product they had. It got to the point that no one knew what ".Net" was or what it was good for.
How many companies have a well known brand names that covers multiple fields or product areas? Kraft is known for certain food products. Ford is known for cars. I'm pretty sure that most executives would never try to extend the Kraft brand name to include cars, and ditto for Ford and food products. If 'Live' stands for everything, then it also stands for nothing specific. What's next, Live Office? Live Media Player? Live Active Directory Server? =P
I understand that making something easy to use makes it more likely to be used. But unless MS force feeds it to you when you boot or install Vista and XP, why would people choose Live over the more established brand names such as MySpace and YouTube?
MS would need a big marketing push to gain mind share, and I don't think an optional web install will do it.
To answer my own question: you can tag the article with 'misleadingheadline'. Type in 'misleading' and you will get a dropdown list of 'misleading*' tags. Although I'm curious as the difference between 'misleadingheadline' and 'misleadingtitle'. Can we tag a tag as redundant? =)
Content ratings and recommendations is described in which embodiments provide that a viewer can create a rating system that other viewers can then subscribe to which forms a group, or subculture, that collaborates to identify and rate television programs, movies, and other programming choices for the viewers of the group. This adaptive and flexible approach enables individual viewers to discover like-minded subcultures, benefit from a rating system that represents similar viewing choices, and optionally, participate in identifying media content and rating the viewing choices.
A group of people willingly subscribe to a group that recommends TV shows they would be interested in and blocks those deemed inappropriate/off-topic/irrelevant. It's like Slashdot for TV.
Is there any chance that Slashdot moderators can apply 'Troll' and 'Deliberately Misleading Flamebait' to article titles and summaries?
I'll play devil's advocate.
Cop as King Solomon (or Cop as Judge, Jury and Executioner.) The cop was called to resolve a seemingly minor issue, an issue that that could quickly be resolved on the scene. If you want the cop to be an on the spot King Solomon, he needs the tools, training, and information to do so. He first needs to resolve that the customer wasn't shoplifting, hence the package check and running a background check on the driver and car. (Logically, there's no point in the cop checking out the store employees first.) Once the shoplifting is ruled out, the cop can then proceed to read the riot act to the store employees (or even arrest them.) It's much more likely that the cop will warn the store employees than arrest them, because arresting would be a serious waste of time and effort (there's real crime to deal with.) Ideally, everyone agrees that a mistake was made[1], apologies are made and everyone goes on with their business. Later, if you want to bring a civil suit against the store, the cop would be more than willing to testify as to the facts.
It's a trade off. If you want the on the scene cop to quickly resolve the matter, you cooperate with him. Which means that all sides bend the rules to get the issue settled quickly. As soon as one party gets technical and formal, then the cop has no choice but invoke the full formality of the legal system, which means paperwork, arrests, lawyers, being booked, etc..
I'm not saying that the customer brought it on himself. I'm saying that the customer had a choice in how to get his problem resolved. By disallowing an on the scene resolution by the cop, the customer now has to deal with burden of going through the full legal process. Either way will get justice done, however, one way is a lot cheaper and easier than the other.
And yes, I'm also aware that it's a good idea to stand up for your basic rights once in a while just to keep everyone honest and to keep our liberties from soundlessly shrinking into nothingness. I'm also aware that most people can resolve most situations like adults without having to lawyer up. It's your choice as to which method is more appropriate.
[1] Well, in today's legal climate, I doubt that a store would apologize because doing so would be admitting to being wrong, which doesn't help if a civil suit is brought. Pretty sad commentary on society when you can't give an honest apology anymore. However, the store might give you free swag in lieu of an apology.
Or you could just find the nearest cashier and have them remove the exploding ink/inventory control tag that the original cashier accidentally left on. Personally, I have no desire to find a pair of wire/bolt cutters to remove them myself and risk damaging my recent purchase.
By exempting churches from taxes the government gets to chose what is and isn't a religion.
Change 'government' to 'majority' and you'll see the problem. A Protestant dominated congress would probably have created some nasty tax rates on Catholic, Jewish, Mormons, etc. faiths. And how do you decide how much to tax each faith? By size? Size entails that each faith keep accurate rolls of their members. Instant blacklist. To avoid a large faith breaking itself up into a zillion little flocks/groups to avoid reporting requirements, you would need to set a minimum yearly fee. A _large_ minimum fee that a majority religion could afford to pay , but that the little faiths couldn't afford. And I would speculate that the majority faith's fee money would just find its way back into their coffers. Which brings up the question of how are those tax dollars spent? The majority religion is a majority in Congress which means the non-majority faiths' money would be misspent.
Given how irrational and intense people can be concerning their religion and the non-believers, worst case, it would be like crossing the KKK with the IRS with McCarthyism.
I'm not quite sure how you made that connection... do you suppose that any "religion" the government deems annoying enough to suppress would be taxed into oblivion?
Yes. Look at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/02/121620 9 Increased royalty fees threaten to drive web based radio out of business. If you look at US history, there have been periods where I could easily see Congress as being more than happy to tax unpopular religions into oblivion. More importantly, a faith isn't going to give up just because they can't pay the fees. If they can't pay the fees, then they're breaking the law. Presto! They are now criminals because of their faith.
If you let government tax religion, then you run the risk of taxes being used to suppress religion, or to favor one religion over another.
Not worth the risk, IMO.
(b) Blue-Ray vs HD-DVD: what would Jesus watch?
Neither. Instead, Jesus would ask how someone could spend hundreds of dollars on a new dvd player when there are people in the local community who still get their food from garbage bins. And, since you already bought a new HD/Blue-Ray player, he would hint that the local orphanage, battered woman's shelter, and/or local children's hospital could really use your old dvd player.
The point being made is that rich individuals and corporations are setting up a minimal presence in a foreign tax country (tax haven) in order to avoid paying taxes in the countries where they actually live or work. This is "bad" because by not paying local taxes, they're not supporting their local government and social programs. If you live in the [insert your country here] and use the Netherlands as a tax haven, then you're not paying your fair share for your country's universal health care, or 911 services, or military that keeps your democracy free, or whatever.
If you're going to benefit from your local country's laws and services, is it really too much to ask that you pay your fair share? If local taxes are too burdensome or wasteful, then work to improve them instead of hiding from the problem(s). We all complain that money influences politics. If people are allowed to hide money overseas, then they have no motivation to reform existing local laws. If they were forced to resolve the issues locally, they would be subject to local laws and publicity, thus making it difficult to corrupt the reformed laws. By hiding money overseas, there is little legal or public oversight to prevent abuse (such as laundering drug money.)
Thus tax havens create at least two problems: local services, laws, and legal protections are not being paid for, and local laws, morals, mores, and publicity are being evaded. The latter is probably the greater of the two sins.
A third problem that the Pope appears to be concerned about is that local taxes pay for social programs. You know, homeless shelters, health care for the poor, etc.. By turning to a tax haven, you are implicitly turning your back on your fellow man. Do you really think that anyone using a foreign tax shelter is actually using the money they saved back to build up their local community? Granted, the Catholic Church shouldn't be throwing stones, but a Christian who hides tax money isn't much of a Christian. Belittle the Pope all you want, but he is probably the only individual who has the ability to bring worldwide attention to global morality. You don't have to like the guy shining the light on the cockroaches, but do be glad that someone is doing it. (But we do keep a mirror handy to throw some of that light back.)
The header links to a ad-laden, news light article. Here's a link to a better story with a tad more facts: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22304224-421, 00.html
Both do their job (CVS since years). SVN does some trivial things better than CVS.
SVN doesn't do the job because there's no built-in merge tracking, which leads to serious merge bugs.
Repeated merges (bi-directional merges) between branches generates false positives (the lack of merge tracking causes SVN to re-merge previously merged code.) The lack of true renames, means that you can lose changes during a merge if renamed files are modified on both branches. The svnmerge.py script only works at one directory level, which makes merging a single file deep in the project annoying. Since a checkin and a merge checkin are identical, there's no way to enforce merge tracking standards via hooks. All of these merge weaknesses require extra training and/or merge meisters, which is really clumsy in a large organization.
SVN is useful if you only use short lived branches (which will minimize the problems listed above.) I would not use it for large organizations due to training issues, nor for branches that require lots of inter-branch merging.
Hopefully, the merge tracking being implemented for SVN 1.5 will make SVN a real/complete scource code control system.
What's the range on this thing? If it's something excessive, then we might have to move outdoor events, such as political rallies and presidential inaugurations, indoors. Given how important eye contact is, I don't think the people nor the political candidates would take to mirrored sunglasses too well.
3 - new software will eventually require vista.
What features of Vista allow the creation of Vista only software? DirectX 10 for games is one. But what can cause Vista lock-in for application software?
Meh, the easiest way to kill this is to point out that people can track public officials. How many legislators, bureaucrats, officers, etc. really want the public to track where they go? One little subpoena or a leak that lists high profile people who consistently drove their car to or at least near a known house of ill repute would make for a fun news story. Or where they go for lunch, and how long they're out of the office. Roaches dislike sunshine.
And don't forget the stalking lawsuits. As soon as an insider uses their access to stalk and hurt someone, there's going to be a big lawsuit.