As a matter of corporate policy on a high level, Microsoft obviously benefits from and feeds into the upgrade treadmill. I don't think it's hard to believe that there's a quid pro quo with the hardware manufacturers on this; at the very least it's an obvious symbiosis. Microsoft craps out a new OS every few years with vastly increased system requirements (at least in order to run well), and in return the hardware manufacturers continue to bundle Windows. (There's more to the relationship, obviously, such as Microsoft's pricing structure for OEM licenses, but I think the hardware/software upgrade path is a part.)
However, I don't think most of Microsoft's programmers necessarily go into work every day saying to themselves "today, I'm going to build the shittiest, most resource-hogging chunk of code I can, so help me God." I suspect they probably just code for whatever their higher-ups tell them the target platform is going to be. If you're an overworked programmer, and if management makes it obvious that they care more about shoveling in the features than in optimizing code for performance and footprint, you're not going to optimize.
I think that's Windows in a nutshell. Somewhere along the line, some suit decides what the target platform is going to be; at the beginning of the development cycle it's probably pretty top-of-the-line kit. Everything is targeted towards this, and the end result is massive increases in bloat. Optimization is hard and unless you emphasize it and reward it, it's not just going to happen all by itself.
On the OSS side, you see a lot of optimization happen because many developers are working with limited resources and aren't in a position (or have the desire) to go out and buy a faster computer to make some chunk of code run faster. If you write an OSS application that requires your users to go out and buy a new system in order to use it, you've just alienated a lot of potential users -- or, hopefully, created a demand for someone to optimize the code and get it running on existing, slower hardware.
In short, I don't think Windows' footprint and mediocre (or negative) performance gains is due to bad coding as much as it's a direct result of institutional culture. It's a good example of what can happen to any product or project if performance isn't a key consideration, and particularly if it takes a back seat to featuritis.
The US Government is entirely competent when they want to be.
Care to share an example? Because I sure can't see one. At best, some government agencies are less incompetent than others, and in some cases they're effectively the best thing going in their field, but usually that's only when they're the only ones allowed to do the job. (E.g., you could say that the U.S. does a decent job in its role of killing people and breaking things, but then again they're the only military around who receives that much money; who's to say what they'd be able to do if they were less incompetent? Same with most of the intelligence agencies.)
What you're saying seems like an unprovable conspiracy theory. 'When the government does something stupid, it's because they want it to appear that way.' It's like talking about dinosaurs to a creationist and having them tell you that God just put the fossils there in the rock to test the true believers, duh; or that electricity is just a facade created by the lightbulb fairies to conceal themselves. Unprovable, unnecessarily complex solutions are stupid and rarely correct.
I think there's a simpler solution here: the government is just barely competent enough to get the absolute bare minimum done -- basically, keeping the country from descending into anarchy -- on a daily basis. (And that's "the government" as a whole, including all the people who support it: the civil service by itself couldn't pour piss from a boot if the instructions were on the heel without a half-dozen contractors there to explain it.)
Yep, I've had several and they've all worked fine. Never lived on the West Coast, though. But I had a Radioshack alarm clock, with an external antenna, that seemed perfectly happy even in central Maine. Maybe the internal antennas on the clocks you're buying aren't very good? Or perhaps there's something generating interference on 660kHz (I think that's the frequency it uses) in your area.
They already do; many TV stations (mostly PBS stations, although I don't know if they've kept it up) transmitted a timecode signal in their vertical blanking interval. With a properly-designed receiver, you could pick it up and get decently-accurate time out of it. At the very least it was enough to set your VCR, which was basically its purpose.
Unfortunately most of the VCR manufacturers never implemented it.
It's even harder to believe that people can't see that a codec not installed by default on the major desktop OSes shouldn't be picked as the new web default. Because the public really wants to install more codecs, right? Don't be dense. The public doesn't have any HTML5 browsers either, because they don't exist yet. So the fact that they don't have Ogg codecs should't be an impediment either.
They had an opportunity here to eliminate the plugin morass (which is a disgusting hack anyway, and leads inevitably to incompatibility and proprietary formats) in favor of a format that each browser could implement. Get an HTML5 browser, and you'd have Ogg support already. It would be completely transparent to the user. All they'd know is that sites using Ogg "just worked," while sites sticking with proprietary codecs required a plugin.
For it to affect global weather or atmospheric patterns it wouldn't matter whether the electricty produced was a large fraction of the energy consumed by humans, what would matter is whether it's a significant amount of the total energy in the atmospheric system. That's a far larger quantity than what humans actually use. I strongly suspect that you could run our entire civilization on atmospheric energy and not even be in the same order of magnitude as the total wind energy in the atmosphere at any particular time.
Things like this are worth worrying about if there's some rational reason to, backed up by data; to bring it up now, when there are really only a handful of wind turbines worldwide and far, far worse alternatives if we simply do nothing and continue to burn fossil fuels, seems like it could easily lead to mindless scaremongering. All it takes is for one "scientist" to mention something like this in public and some right-wing nutbag will be talking about how the commie-pinko-homosexual wind turbines are STEALING YOUR WIND and KILLING YOUR CHILDREN. And then they'll go and cash a nice big check from the coal lobby.
However, students should still be required to memorize their multiplication tables. One shouldn't need a calculator to figure out that 7 x 8 =72^^56
Why?
Why should we bother spending a year (in my childhood, it was basically the whole of the third grade) drilling multiplication tables into childrens' heads, when in all likelihood they'll spend their entire lives not twelve inches away from a device that can do it a million times faster than they'll ever hope to? I'd rather spend the same time teaching them some real mathematical concepts, or about the difference between correlation and causation, than teaching them how to do something that's essentially a party trick.
things like this make me wonder if ill ever be able to make enough money to move out of this country...and then i wonder where the hell is worth moving to these days? where *arent* rights being eroded in a disgusting fashion?
Well, in terms of direction of movement, you could argue that China is probably one of the few countries that's actually headed in a generally positive direction; unfortunately while freedom may be increasing, its absolute value is still a lot less than in other places. However, if it keeps going in the direction it currently is, and the U.S. and Europe keep going in the direction they are, in a few generations it'll be the Chinese tut-tutting about human rights and the surveillance state on the other side of the world.
"A lot of new users get bitchslapped because they deserve it."
And that sums up, in one efficient sentence, why Linux will not be easily adopted by the masses anytime soon. Users who don't know anything about computers probably shouldn't be relying on volunteer-supported forums for their sole source of technical support, either. If you go to a place where people only help you out of the kindness of their hearts, and ask ridiculously dumb questions, of course you're going to get useless responses. Those forums are run by, and essentially for, people who are interested in computers generally and Linux in particular. If you don't find computers interesting, don't want to do anything on your own, and basically need inch-by-inch hand-holding, it's going to be frustrating for all concerned.
I think it's setting clueless users up for failure if you give them a computer for which volunteer forums are the sole/primary source of support. Those people need paid callcenter drones to deal with their mindless questions and general incivility and lack of interest in self-help.
And that is why the Linux machines at WalMart come with free phone support.
"What computer did I download it with? Well, it was this one, over here. Yes, the one that says 'two-eight-six' on the front. And all six of those monitors over there, I was definitely downloading with those. And that dot-matrix printer in the corner...that's my MP3 printer."
Would it be possible file a class action lawsuit against congress for passing unconstitutional laws (derliction of duties, public endagerment, etc)?
Generally speaking, no. You can only sue the (Federal) government when it decides to allow you to sue it, and the exceptions are defined pretty narrowly. While maybe you could argue that doing something blatantly unconstitutional is tortuous, it'd be an uphill battle. (Cf. "Federal Tort Claims Act")
Pretty much the sole remedies afforded to you by the Constitution if you don't like what the Government does (aside from a violent insurrection, which isn't really given to you; you always have it as an option, albeit a suicidal one) are bitching and moaning to your elected representatives, and voting.
I think there are two main reasons, and Firethorn (above) describes one of them well -- namely, that people just don't want to trust the market when it comes to eating versus starving, and happily pay for supply security -- the other is geopolitical. Even more than oil or manufactured goods, when you start importing your food you export your ability to bargain aggressively with the countries that you depend on to eat.
A country (and perhaps more importantly, a government) can survive with its supply of petroleum shut off for a short time, although the results may not be fun. Natural gas in areas where it's widely used for heating are worse, but again tolerable for a while, although it may result in people torching their furniture. Food, though... cut off a country's food long enough to empty out what's left in the distribution pipeline (which is very short for some staples, compared to manufactured goods with a long shelf life) and things can get very ugly. In the average house I suspect you'd run out of things to eat long before you'd run out of things to burn to keep from freezing.
We've seen the panic Russia caused when it toyed with the idea of using its natural gas supplies to Europe for political ends -- imagine if a country was as dependent on a single source for food as many are for gas: they'd hardly be able to call themselves independent. Introduce a few 'unfortunate delays' into the shipments, and in a few weeks the government would more than likely be toppled. People like to eat.
And that's the elephant in the room when it comes to agricultural subsidies. We may have a very interconnected world, but when you get right down to our most bas(e|ic) natures, countries tend to shy away from making themselves so clearly subservient to other nations.
You realize it's insane and pointless to boycott an individual store, let alone an entire chain, based on one employee's actions, right? Say "I'm not buying item X today because employee Y ignored me repeatedly" on your way out, at least; you're not making any noticeable difference in sales by your one-man boycott, so unless you tell the store about it, they don't know that they're losing business because some jerk is too busy to work. That's a representative example, in my opinion. Their stores might as well be staffed by zombies and the other customers aren't much better. No, thanks.
You remember that whole toothpaste fiasco from China? They EXECUTED the official responsible for letting that slip by. Not fined, jailed, or sentenced to community service for not 'catching' pad product being exported - they ended his life. You know how much press that got in the US? Dick. Why? Because people and politicians don't WANT to recognize what we are supporting by doing business over there (not to mention the MILLIONS of factory jobs we've shipped off - GFG - wonder who THAT makes rich, aye?) Actually, I think executing that guy was probably the only redeeming thing they've done over there in a while. We could do well to import a little more of that kind of "strict liability," instead of just the tons of plastic crap. There's quite a few people on this side of the pond I'd like to see with a rope around their neck for their incompetence.
I'm no fan of the PRC, but every time I hear about some embezzling official taking the quick way down from an office-tower window, my heart warms just a little bit.
People who abuse the trust of others, whether in the public sector or in private industry, should be punished personally. And if their malfeasance causes the deaths of others, their life should be forfeit. It's pitiful that here in the U.S., the average bureaucratic scumbag has so little a concept of anything approaching honor that they can't realize when it's time to just do the right thing and usher themselves into the afterlife.
Get over yourself. All this complaining about cell phones on planes is just so much "look at me." The person next to you talking on the cell phone is no more annoying than the person next to you talking to someone else on the plane, and a hell of a lot less annoying than the person next to you talking to you.
I disagree. And so, apparently, do a lot of other people. There's something inherently jarring about only hearing one side of a conversation. Two people talking is easy to tune out, but one person talking into a cellphone isn't. My theory is that typically, when you only 'hear' one side of a conversation, it's because the conversation is being directed at you, thus, when you are around someone talking on a cellphone, part of your brain fixates on the conversation that would otherwise just move on. At least that's how it seems to me. If I'm sitting somewhere and there are two people talking, and one person on a cellphone, an equal distance away, I'll almost always be able to tell you what the person on the cellphone was talking about afterwards. (Maybe people on cellphones just talk much louder, too.)
It's so obnoxious on trains that Amtrak has taken to providing 'quiet cars' on some of their more heavily-traveled (N.E. Corridor) routes. They're quite nice; I always ride in them when they're available. Quiet conversations are OK, but cellphones aren't. And for once, they actually enforce the rule (I suspect because that's where the conductors tend to sit when they're not busy, and they don't want to listen to people on cellphones any more than they have to).
Is it really worth pouring more money into this idiotville if every bit of scientific progress they make is practically public knowledge soon after? Just shut the stupid place down!
Some would argue that the purpose of scientific progress is the advancement of the human race. Not just advancement of those members of the human race who happen to live within the borders of the U.S. of A. That may well be the case, but that doesn't account for why U.S. taxpayers should be footing the bill. I'm all for putting the results out in public and letting anybody who wants to use them (because, frankly, it would be difficult and counter-productive to try and restrict them just to U.S. citizens), but I don't think it's in any way improper for a country to take care of its own citizens first. In fact, that's pretty much what I want my government to do. Other people (should) have their own governments to look out for them.
I did a brief check. Pickup on demand on the USPS site seems to be at a fixed rate $14.25 for one type of mass mailing, per pickup site, regardless of the number of pieces. If others are similar, Netflix paying them fifteen bucks is a lot less than what such a pickup would probably entail. There's probably some caveat in there somewhere that makes you lose your bulk/presort rate if you have them pick it up. If it's not in the rules for the pickup maybe it's in the rules for presorted rates.
It may well be that for $15 they could get all their mail picked up, but only if they were willing to pay the full FCM rate on it.
A quick look at the USPS site would seem to confirm this. Take a look here. In particular, at Step 5 in the bulk-mailing process:
5. Entering Your Mail The minimum requirement is to enter your mail at the business mail entry unit (BMEU) or Post Office where you hold a mailing permit. You can receive additional discounts by transporting your mail closer to where it will be delivered. So right now Netflix is probably getting a big discount by taking their outgoing mail to some very large central facility near each distribution center (it wouldn't surprise me if they choose the locations of their DC's to be near to big USPS facilities). If they had the USPS come pick it up, they'd lose that discount.
They released a 1.2.2 a week later, citing bug fixes, perhaps you should try it? Why would he ever want to do that if he's using Rockbox, which has more features? Seems like a downgrade to me.
I say this as a person who doesn't use Rockbox (I use iTunes, not out of love for it but because I think it's the best music-library-management program on OS X), but kind of wishes he could.
The iPod/iTunes combo to me is a prime example of a product that, while successful, could be so much more if it weren't for the loads of artificial restrictions placed upon it because of legal fears. (Bidirectional synchronization -- rebuild your library from your iPod, remote access of your music library over the Internet from anywhere; those are just the two most obvious cripplings that come to mind.)
I like projects like Rockbox because they really seem to be taking the gloves off, and in theory I think they have the potential to show people what technology is capable of, were it not held back by the lawyers and the hand-in-the-till politicians.
Chances are that your connectivity provider's terms that you agreed to prohibit running a server over the link anyway. And that justifies selectively disabling what file extensions can be served from a network-attached device that's designed to work as a server...how, exactly?
If WD cared about keeping your ISP happy, they never would have included any remote-access features in the first place. But they obviously did, but then they blocked it from serving certain types of files. That's not for the ISPs' benefit, clearly. It's for the media companies'.
Besides which, the whole "you can't run a server" rule is barely enforced. It's there, as far as I can tell, to keep idiots from calling the tech support desks asking why GoToMyPC doesn't work right -- it's an easy way to end the conversation and get the clueless people to give up. If ISPs really wanted to enforce that, they could quite easily block incoming connections much more effectively than they do. But they don't bother, and are mostly content to just tell you that servers are prohibited, but let people who know what they're doing access their computers remotely anyway.
The code requirement for license to operate on radio bands that are considered long distance is mandatory by the treaties that setup a global radiospace for ham radio.
The code-free tech license is in bands that are for all intents (near Canada/mexico border would be the exception) are US only. I'm sorry but that's just wrong. It might have been true at some point but it's certainly not true now. Most of the European countries have dropped Morse completely -- the US was one of the last holdouts. (Probably not the last, but definitely up there.) And the Morse requirements for commercial/marine radiotelephone operators licenses are gone too. There's no international pressure to learn it anymore -- most of the impetus to retain Morse in the U.S. was coming from the ARRL, basically from old Hams who wanted the exclusivity it provided.
My local library actually has to state in its code of conduct that they will eject people who have offensive body odor, the problem got that bad.
PATRONS SHALL NOT:
Consume food or beverages, smoke or use tobacco or tobacco products inside library buildings.
Use obscene, abusive, threatening or insulting language or engage in obscene acts.
...
Be present in the building without shirt or shoes. Patrons must wear a covering of their upper bodies and shoes or other footwear while in the library building.
Have offensive personal hygiene in a library building. Patrons' bodily hygiene, including offensive body odor and the presence of bodily wastes on clothing and skin, shall not be objectionable so as to constitute a nuisance to other patrons or staff.
Bathe or wash clothing in library restrooms.
Sleep.
(I think it's interesting that pants are apparently not required...)
While I agree that it's silly to rail against 'corporations' as if they're our evil alien overlords or something, an external force impressed upon us, I do understand the frustration.
Laws that give corporations more power and rights than individuals are classist and undemocratic; they divide the population into two camps: those who can afford to have corporations act in their name (and the advanced education to learn the intricacies of using a corporation this way), and thus enjoy the special rights that corporations have, and everyone else, who gets shafted.
All it does is create a veil of legitimacy over a very ugly, but basically universal, situation: the rich and powerful finding new and different ways to screw the less-rich and less-powerful. While I don't think you can do anything to stop that completely, you don't have to legally enshrine it quite to the extent that we've done.
I'd argue that the Founders probably didn't mean 95-120 years as the "limited time" they had in mind when they wrote that. In fact, I think it's pretty clear that they meant for copyright terms to be considerably less than the life of the author. Today, copyright terms seem to start with the assumption that it should be for the entire life of the author, and then for a few more generations, apparently so their kin can avoid gainful employment thanks to granddad's novel/song/whatever.
Pity we don't have a Supreme Court with a backbone.
A while ago (late 90s, maybe?) I remember seeing some places, mainly in airports, that were pay-by-the-minute "laptop lounges." Little air-conditioned, soundproofed booths with power and internet connections that you could go into, sit down, and relax in.
At the time I remember looking at the prices and thinking that they were ridiculously overpriced, definitely aimed towards the "I'm spending somebody else's venture capital" set. But the concept was pretty good.
I happened to walk through the front lobby of an old (probably 1960s era construction) college dorm fairly recently, and I noticed that it had been built with what were at the time pretty standard "phone booths." All the phones in them had been torn out, but they had kept the booths themselves and they looked like they got some use by people just as a place to go and have an extended cellphone conversation without bothering your roommate. I thought that was a pretty good idea.
Not only that, but you can (totally for free) put together a thin-client/backend solution with Linux that would cost you a fortune in Citrix and Windows license fees to operate. You can even use Windows machines as the client if you want, although you need to install X11. It's easy to forget that an average Linux system contains a lot of technology that you pay through the nose for if you want "The Microsoft Way" version.
People who are unfamiliar are generally appalled at how much it costs to do a Citrix setup. I think their licensing structure is actually one of the things that has really held back thin clients and centralized computing: they charge so much for the seat licenses that it kills most projects right there, before they're even seriously considered.
The delivery of custom applications is one area where Linux can do very well, and I think it's a growth market. You just need to get over the "we want COTS everything" kneejerk response from management (which is usually a terrible idea; all it does is minimize upfront costs but incur huge maintenance expenses -- at which point said management has usually jumped ship and swum away). You can write and deploy your system in one place and then trivially deliver it to the clients via remote X11 or web services. And with no licenses to pay for, you can spend your money on actually making the software support your business processes better: you pay for improvement, not just a continual stream of tithes to the software lords.
In the scheme of things, Linux is still very new. Windows survives because it's a direct descendant of DOS and CP/M and has ridiculous amounts of inertia (much of it ironically supplied by IBM, who now are probably really wishing they hadn't). It was in a unique position during a period when PC's really exploded onto the scene in business and in the home, and it rode on the coattails of that revolution. If you brought Windows out today as a new product and there was some other market leader, you'd get laughed out of a room for mentioning it. It's a mediocre pile and everyone -- even its supporters -- basically acknowledge this. (Microsoft's slogan really ought to be "It's good enough, shut up and deal.") Its success is probably not repeatable and certainly not sustainable in the very long term, and I think Microsoft realizes this, which is why they're constantly trying to diversify away from Windows and Office.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is probably true.
As a matter of corporate policy on a high level, Microsoft obviously benefits from and feeds into the upgrade treadmill. I don't think it's hard to believe that there's a quid pro quo with the hardware manufacturers on this; at the very least it's an obvious symbiosis. Microsoft craps out a new OS every few years with vastly increased system requirements (at least in order to run well), and in return the hardware manufacturers continue to bundle Windows. (There's more to the relationship, obviously, such as Microsoft's pricing structure for OEM licenses, but I think the hardware/software upgrade path is a part.)
However, I don't think most of Microsoft's programmers necessarily go into work every day saying to themselves "today, I'm going to build the shittiest, most resource-hogging chunk of code I can, so help me God." I suspect they probably just code for whatever their higher-ups tell them the target platform is going to be. If you're an overworked programmer, and if management makes it obvious that they care more about shoveling in the features than in optimizing code for performance and footprint, you're not going to optimize.
I think that's Windows in a nutshell. Somewhere along the line, some suit decides what the target platform is going to be; at the beginning of the development cycle it's probably pretty top-of-the-line kit. Everything is targeted towards this, and the end result is massive increases in bloat. Optimization is hard and unless you emphasize it and reward it, it's not just going to happen all by itself.
On the OSS side, you see a lot of optimization happen because many developers are working with limited resources and aren't in a position (or have the desire) to go out and buy a faster computer to make some chunk of code run faster. If you write an OSS application that requires your users to go out and buy a new system in order to use it, you've just alienated a lot of potential users -- or, hopefully, created a demand for someone to optimize the code and get it running on existing, slower hardware.
In short, I don't think Windows' footprint and mediocre (or negative) performance gains is due to bad coding as much as it's a direct result of institutional culture. It's a good example of what can happen to any product or project if performance isn't a key consideration, and particularly if it takes a back seat to featuritis.
The US Government is entirely competent when they want to be.
Care to share an example? Because I sure can't see one. At best, some government agencies are less incompetent than others, and in some cases they're effectively the best thing going in their field, but usually that's only when they're the only ones allowed to do the job. (E.g., you could say that the U.S. does a decent job in its role of killing people and breaking things, but then again they're the only military around who receives that much money; who's to say what they'd be able to do if they were less incompetent? Same with most of the intelligence agencies.)
What you're saying seems like an unprovable conspiracy theory. 'When the government does something stupid, it's because they want it to appear that way.' It's like talking about dinosaurs to a creationist and having them tell you that God just put the fossils there in the rock to test the true believers, duh; or that electricity is just a facade created by the lightbulb fairies to conceal themselves. Unprovable, unnecessarily complex solutions are stupid and rarely correct.
I think there's a simpler solution here: the government is just barely competent enough to get the absolute bare minimum done -- basically, keeping the country from descending into anarchy -- on a daily basis. (And that's "the government" as a whole, including all the people who support it: the civil service by itself couldn't pour piss from a boot if the instructions were on the heel without a half-dozen contractors there to explain it.)
I think you give them way too much credit.
Yep, I've had several and they've all worked fine. Never lived on the West Coast, though. But I had a Radioshack alarm clock, with an external antenna, that seemed perfectly happy even in central Maine. Maybe the internal antennas on the clocks you're buying aren't very good? Or perhaps there's something generating interference on 660kHz (I think that's the frequency it uses) in your area.
They already do; many TV stations (mostly PBS stations, although I don't know if they've kept it up) transmitted a timecode signal in their vertical blanking interval. With a properly-designed receiver, you could pick it up and get decently-accurate time out of it. At the very least it was enough to set your VCR, which was basically its purpose.
Unfortunately most of the VCR manufacturers never implemented it.
They had an opportunity here to eliminate the plugin morass (which is a disgusting hack anyway, and leads inevitably to incompatibility and proprietary formats) in favor of a format that each browser could implement. Get an HTML5 browser, and you'd have Ogg support already. It would be completely transparent to the user. All they'd know is that sites using Ogg "just worked," while sites sticking with proprietary codecs required a plugin.
For it to affect global weather or atmospheric patterns it wouldn't matter whether the electricty produced was a large fraction of the energy consumed by humans, what would matter is whether it's a significant amount of the total energy in the atmospheric system. That's a far larger quantity than what humans actually use. I strongly suspect that you could run our entire civilization on atmospheric energy and not even be in the same order of magnitude as the total wind energy in the atmosphere at any particular time.
Things like this are worth worrying about if there's some rational reason to, backed up by data; to bring it up now, when there are really only a handful of wind turbines worldwide and far, far worse alternatives if we simply do nothing and continue to burn fossil fuels, seems like it could easily lead to mindless scaremongering. All it takes is for one "scientist" to mention something like this in public and some right-wing nutbag will be talking about how the commie-pinko-homosexual wind turbines are STEALING YOUR WIND and KILLING YOUR CHILDREN. And then they'll go and cash a nice big check from the coal lobby.
However, students should still be required to memorize their multiplication tables. One shouldn't need a calculator to figure out that 7 x 8 =72^^56
Why?
Why should we bother spending a year (in my childhood, it was basically the whole of the third grade) drilling multiplication tables into childrens' heads, when in all likelihood they'll spend their entire lives not twelve inches away from a device that can do it a million times faster than they'll ever hope to? I'd rather spend the same time teaching them some real mathematical concepts, or about the difference between correlation and causation, than teaching them how to do something that's essentially a party trick.
things like this make me wonder if ill ever be able to make enough money to move out of this country...and then i wonder where the hell is worth moving to these days? where *arent* rights being eroded in a disgusting fashion?
Well, in terms of direction of movement, you could argue that China is probably one of the few countries that's actually headed in a generally positive direction; unfortunately while freedom may be increasing, its absolute value is still a lot less than in other places. However, if it keeps going in the direction it currently is, and the U.S. and Europe keep going in the direction they are, in a few generations it'll be the Chinese tut-tutting about human rights and the surveillance state on the other side of the world.
And that sums up, in one efficient sentence, why Linux will not be easily adopted by the masses anytime soon. Users who don't know anything about computers probably shouldn't be relying on volunteer-supported forums for their sole source of technical support, either. If you go to a place where people only help you out of the kindness of their hearts, and ask ridiculously dumb questions, of course you're going to get useless responses. Those forums are run by, and essentially for, people who are interested in computers generally and Linux in particular. If you don't find computers interesting, don't want to do anything on your own, and basically need inch-by-inch hand-holding, it's going to be frustrating for all concerned.
I think it's setting clueless users up for failure if you give them a computer for which volunteer forums are the sole/primary source of support. Those people need paid callcenter drones to deal with their mindless questions and general incivility and lack of interest in self-help.
And that is why the Linux machines at WalMart come with free phone support.
"What computer did I download it with? Well, it was this one, over here. Yes, the one that says 'two-eight-six' on the front. And all six of those monitors over there, I was definitely downloading with those. And that dot-matrix printer in the corner...that's my MP3 printer."
Would it be possible file a class action lawsuit against congress for passing unconstitutional laws (derliction of duties, public endagerment, etc)?
Generally speaking, no. You can only sue the (Federal) government when it decides to allow you to sue it, and the exceptions are defined pretty narrowly. While maybe you could argue that doing something blatantly unconstitutional is tortuous, it'd be an uphill battle. (Cf. "Federal Tort Claims Act")
Pretty much the sole remedies afforded to you by the Constitution if you don't like what the Government does (aside from a violent insurrection, which isn't really given to you; you always have it as an option, albeit a suicidal one) are bitching and moaning to your elected representatives, and voting.
I think there are two main reasons, and Firethorn (above) describes one of them well -- namely, that people just don't want to trust the market when it comes to eating versus starving, and happily pay for supply security -- the other is geopolitical. Even more than oil or manufactured goods, when you start importing your food you export your ability to bargain aggressively with the countries that you depend on to eat.
... cut off a country's food long enough to empty out what's left in the distribution pipeline (which is very short for some staples, compared to manufactured goods with a long shelf life) and things can get very ugly. In the average house I suspect you'd run out of things to eat long before you'd run out of things to burn to keep from freezing.
A country (and perhaps more importantly, a government) can survive with its supply of petroleum shut off for a short time, although the results may not be fun. Natural gas in areas where it's widely used for heating are worse, but again tolerable for a while, although it may result in people torching their furniture. Food, though
We've seen the panic Russia caused when it toyed with the idea of using its natural gas supplies to Europe for political ends -- imagine if a country was as dependent on a single source for food as many are for gas: they'd hardly be able to call themselves independent. Introduce a few 'unfortunate delays' into the shipments, and in a few weeks the government would more than likely be toppled. People like to eat.
And that's the elephant in the room when it comes to agricultural subsidies. We may have a very interconnected world, but when you get right down to our most bas(e|ic) natures, countries tend to shy away from making themselves so clearly subservient to other nations.
I'm no fan of the PRC, but every time I hear about some embezzling official taking the quick way down from an office-tower window, my heart warms just a little bit.
People who abuse the trust of others, whether in the public sector or in private industry, should be punished personally. And if their malfeasance causes the deaths of others, their life should be forfeit. It's pitiful that here in the U.S., the average bureaucratic scumbag has so little a concept of anything approaching honor that they can't realize when it's time to just do the right thing and usher themselves into the afterlife.
Get over yourself. All this complaining about cell phones on planes is just so much "look at me." The person next to you talking on the cell phone is no more annoying than the person next to you talking to someone else on the plane, and a hell of a lot less annoying than the person next to you talking to you.
I disagree. And so, apparently, do a lot of other people. There's something inherently jarring about only hearing one side of a conversation. Two people talking is easy to tune out, but one person talking into a cellphone isn't. My theory is that typically, when you only 'hear' one side of a conversation, it's because the conversation is being directed at you, thus, when you are around someone talking on a cellphone, part of your brain fixates on the conversation that would otherwise just move on. At least that's how it seems to me. If I'm sitting somewhere and there are two people talking, and one person on a cellphone, an equal distance away, I'll almost always be able to tell you what the person on the cellphone was talking about afterwards. (Maybe people on cellphones just talk much louder, too.)
It's so obnoxious on trains that Amtrak has taken to providing 'quiet cars' on some of their more heavily-traveled (N.E. Corridor) routes. They're quite nice; I always ride in them when they're available. Quiet conversations are OK, but cellphones aren't. And for once, they actually enforce the rule (I suspect because that's where the conductors tend to sit when they're not busy, and they don't want to listen to people on cellphones any more than they have to).
Some would argue that the purpose of scientific progress is the advancement of the human race. Not just advancement of those members of the human race who happen to live within the borders of the U.S. of A. That may well be the case, but that doesn't account for why U.S. taxpayers should be footing the bill. I'm all for putting the results out in public and letting anybody who wants to use them (because, frankly, it would be difficult and counter-productive to try and restrict them just to U.S. citizens), but I don't think it's in any way improper for a country to take care of its own citizens first. In fact, that's pretty much what I want my government to do. Other people (should) have their own governments to look out for them.
Pickup on demand on the USPS site seems to be at a fixed rate $14.25 for one type of mass mailing, per pickup site, regardless of the number of pieces.
If others are similar, Netflix paying them fifteen bucks is a lot less than what such a pickup would probably entail. There's probably some caveat in there somewhere that makes you lose your bulk/presort rate if you have them pick it up. If it's not in the rules for the pickup maybe it's in the rules for presorted rates.
It may well be that for $15 they could get all their mail picked up, but only if they were willing to pay the full FCM rate on it.
A quick look at the USPS site would seem to confirm this. Take a look here. In particular, at Step 5 in the bulk-mailing process: 5. Entering Your Mail
The minimum requirement is to enter your mail at the business mail entry unit (BMEU) or Post Office where you hold a mailing permit. You can receive additional discounts by transporting your mail closer to where it will be delivered. So right now Netflix is probably getting a big discount by taking their outgoing mail to some very large central facility near each distribution center (it wouldn't surprise me if they choose the locations of their DC's to be near to big USPS facilities). If they had the USPS come pick it up, they'd lose that discount.
I say this as a person who doesn't use Rockbox (I use iTunes, not out of love for it but because I think it's the best music-library-management program on OS X), but kind of wishes he could.
The iPod/iTunes combo to me is a prime example of a product that, while successful, could be so much more if it weren't for the loads of artificial restrictions placed upon it because of legal fears. (Bidirectional synchronization -- rebuild your library from your iPod, remote access of your music library over the Internet from anywhere; those are just the two most obvious cripplings that come to mind.)
I like projects like Rockbox because they really seem to be taking the gloves off, and in theory I think they have the potential to show people what technology is capable of, were it not held back by the lawyers and the hand-in-the-till politicians.
If WD cared about keeping your ISP happy, they never would have included any remote-access features in the first place. But they obviously did, but then they blocked it from serving certain types of files. That's not for the ISPs' benefit, clearly. It's for the media companies'.
Besides which, the whole "you can't run a server" rule is barely enforced. It's there, as far as I can tell, to keep idiots from calling the tech support desks asking why GoToMyPC doesn't work right -- it's an easy way to end the conversation and get the clueless people to give up. If ISPs really wanted to enforce that, they could quite easily block incoming connections much more effectively than they do. But they don't bother, and are mostly content to just tell you that servers are prohibited, but let people who know what they're doing access their computers remotely anyway.
The code-free tech license is in bands that are for all intents (near Canada/mexico border would be the exception) are US only. I'm sorry but that's just wrong. It might have been true at some point but it's certainly not true now. Most of the European countries have dropped Morse completely -- the US was one of the last holdouts. (Probably not the last, but definitely up there.) And the Morse requirements for commercial/marine radiotelephone operators licenses are gone too. There's no international pressure to learn it anymore -- most of the impetus to retain Morse in the U.S. was coming from the ARRL, basically from old Hams who wanted the exclusivity it provided.
- Consume food or beverages, smoke or use tobacco or tobacco products inside library buildings.
- Use obscene, abusive, threatening or insulting language or engage in obscene acts.
- ...
- Be present in the building without shirt or shoes. Patrons must wear a covering of their upper bodies and shoes or other footwear while in the library building.
- Have offensive personal hygiene in a library building. Patrons' bodily hygiene, including offensive body odor and the presence of bodily wastes on clothing and skin, shall not be objectionable so as to constitute a nuisance to other patrons or staff.
- Bathe or wash clothing in library restrooms.
- Sleep.
(I think it's interesting that pants are apparently not required...)While I agree that it's silly to rail against 'corporations' as if they're our evil alien overlords or something, an external force impressed upon us, I do understand the frustration.
Laws that give corporations more power and rights than individuals are classist and undemocratic; they divide the population into two camps: those who can afford to have corporations act in their name (and the advanced education to learn the intricacies of using a corporation this way), and thus enjoy the special rights that corporations have, and everyone else, who gets shafted.
All it does is create a veil of legitimacy over a very ugly, but basically universal, situation: the rich and powerful finding new and different ways to screw the less-rich and less-powerful. While I don't think you can do anything to stop that completely, you don't have to legally enshrine it quite to the extent that we've done.
I'd argue that the Founders probably didn't mean 95-120 years as the "limited time" they had in mind when they wrote that. In fact, I think it's pretty clear that they meant for copyright terms to be considerably less than the life of the author. Today, copyright terms seem to start with the assumption that it should be for the entire life of the author, and then for a few more generations, apparently so their kin can avoid gainful employment thanks to granddad's novel/song/whatever.
Pity we don't have a Supreme Court with a backbone.
A while ago (late 90s, maybe?) I remember seeing some places, mainly in airports, that were pay-by-the-minute "laptop lounges." Little air-conditioned, soundproofed booths with power and internet connections that you could go into, sit down, and relax in.
At the time I remember looking at the prices and thinking that they were ridiculously overpriced, definitely aimed towards the "I'm spending somebody else's venture capital" set. But the concept was pretty good.
I happened to walk through the front lobby of an old (probably 1960s era construction) college dorm fairly recently, and I noticed that it had been built with what were at the time pretty standard "phone booths." All the phones in them had been torn out, but they had kept the booths themselves and they looked like they got some use by people just as a place to go and have an extended cellphone conversation without bothering your roommate. I thought that was a pretty good idea.
Not only that, but you can (totally for free) put together a thin-client/backend solution with Linux that would cost you a fortune in Citrix and Windows license fees to operate. You can even use Windows machines as the client if you want, although you need to install X11. It's easy to forget that an average Linux system contains a lot of technology that you pay through the nose for if you want "The Microsoft Way" version.
People who are unfamiliar are generally appalled at how much it costs to do a Citrix setup. I think their licensing structure is actually one of the things that has really held back thin clients and centralized computing: they charge so much for the seat licenses that it kills most projects right there, before they're even seriously considered.
The delivery of custom applications is one area where Linux can do very well, and I think it's a growth market. You just need to get over the "we want COTS everything" kneejerk response from management (which is usually a terrible idea; all it does is minimize upfront costs but incur huge maintenance expenses -- at which point said management has usually jumped ship and swum away). You can write and deploy your system in one place and then trivially deliver it to the clients via remote X11 or web services. And with no licenses to pay for, you can spend your money on actually making the software support your business processes better: you pay for improvement, not just a continual stream of tithes to the software lords.
In the scheme of things, Linux is still very new. Windows survives because it's a direct descendant of DOS and CP/M and has ridiculous amounts of inertia (much of it ironically supplied by IBM, who now are probably really wishing they hadn't). It was in a unique position during a period when PC's really exploded onto the scene in business and in the home, and it rode on the coattails of that revolution. If you brought Windows out today as a new product and there was some other market leader, you'd get laughed out of a room for mentioning it. It's a mediocre pile and everyone -- even its supporters -- basically acknowledge this. (Microsoft's slogan really ought to be "It's good enough, shut up and deal.") Its success is probably not repeatable and certainly not sustainable in the very long term, and I think Microsoft realizes this, which is why they're constantly trying to diversify away from Windows and Office.