My theory is this: people pirated Doom III, realized it was complete and utter shit, and simply didn't buy it. That's what a certain person I know did...
That certain person is smarter than I was. I bought the game (and a shiny new video card to play it on) and played through a few levels before I decided I didn't want to go blind trying to play a game that is rendered entirely in shades from Dark Grey to Black. Since then, the game has lived on my stack of "unfun games" where it belongs.
Actually, I usually read the news rather than watching it. It's faster for me.
But I know about many many companies that have pension problems. GM is currently in a lot of trouble. United Airlines manged their pension fund so cleverly that they bankrupted the entire company. They are not alone--lots of big, old US companies are in the same boat.
I had rambled on about this in the first version of my post, then decided it wasn't related to the topic at hand and cut most of it out. Still, a properly managed pension can outlive it's parent--the oil company my mother worked for no longer exists but the pension does.
For anyone who cares, a short summary of the problem:
A 401(k) or IRA places the risk of investing on the employee, a pension plan transfers (some of) the risk to the employer. If your 401(k)/IRA does poorly, you have to make up the shortfall. If your pension doesn't earn a high enough return your employer does so. At least in theory--read some news articles and you will see that it isn't always so.
A traditional pension plan can be self-funding when it's investments are highly profitable. That is, the plan must make some defined amount of money to cover it's obligations. The bulk of this money is supposed to come from investing money already in the plan, but the company has to make up any shortfall from it's own income. When the plan's investments are doing well, often the parent company doesn't contribute at all.
If a company is doing poorly exactly when the economy is slow and interest rates are down, the combination can lead to a severe cash shortage. If your company is big enough, then your success tracks the overall economy no matter how well-run the business is. Risky investments tend to compound the problem. A pension plan buying lots of stock in the company that owns the plan is a recipe for disaster. Both of these problems are widespread in the US right now. Hence the large numbers of Chapter 11's from big names.
In the proud tradition of 'Me too!' posts, my mother fits that mold as well. She is/was a geophysicist and wrote code nearly every working day for 30 years, except for a short break in 73 after the birth of her second child (me). She programmed first in FORTRAN then in C/C++ starting in the mid-80s.
Now, she is a professional landlord who manages her own properties doing all the repairs, etc with my father helping.
I don't know many other people my age whose parents wrote software, though when I was growing up I didn't realize how cool and rare that was. As an adult, I have a much greater appreciation for that. Ever read the story of Mel, a Real Hacker? I emailed it to mom once and the next day I had a free verse reply about another Real Hacker(TM) she had known waiting in my inbox. That's the kind of cool I'm talking about here.
Now for the point, which addresses the OP's question.
When I told her I had gotten a developer job she told me it would be the most fun thing I could ever do for about 30 years, but after that I would need to find something else to do after that. This wasn't advice she made up for me--it was advice she was given by a gentleman who was a mentor to her when she started. That fellow had started just after the war, when computers were new and rare. He said that after a few decades you begin to notice that you are repeating the past. She didn't understand that until around 1990 or so. After all, computers were advancing so fast that surely new things were being done every day. But then she realized that while the hardware was changing the people writing it didn't. The underlying problems of software development hadn't changed at all. New ideas about development processes, communication, peer review, etc. were all things that she had heard before in new packaging.
A few years after that she cashed out and started buying property.
But back then things were different: She had a pension plan that she had been paying into over the years. For those of you who don't know, a pension plan is much, much nicer than a 401(k). So much so that it is nearly impossible to get one any more if you don't work for the government. When you hear a talking head say that some "young" company has an advantage over an "old" company, they mean that the old company has pension obligations and the young one doesn't--this is why no one gets a pension any more.
But it means that today's programmers don't get to retire and start a new career quite so easily. So perhaps the OP and I will find ourselves on the forefront of a new generation that codes for life.
"Isn't 99 cents too much to pay for music that appeals to just a few people?"
Why should I care how few or many people the music I pay for appeals to? It either has 99 cents of appeal for me or it does not. I am sure a lot of people like whatever the Currently Over-Hyped Boy Band is, but I wouldn't pay 99 cents for one of their songs and I don't.
But I'd pay 99 cents to have some songs of which I'm sure fans of the C.O.H.B.B. have never heard.
Tiered pricing makes sense when there is scarcity--it is a kind of rationing. If more people want houses in Boston than there are houses, then the prices of houses in Boston rises until enough people decide to live in Natick and take the train. (Or someone builds new houses.) Perfect for a limited resource.
But with something like ITMS, there is no scarcity. Every purchase results in a download, every download produces a new copy of the work in question.
IMHO, The is not Greed but Vanity--I think Mr. Jobs is being too kind. Look at the quote--99 cents isn't the problem, it is that the record companies want smaller name artists to get less. This stresses the importance of having a record company promoting you. What frightens these people most is for someone to write, record and sell music without their "help."
> americans are still breeding like bunnies, compared to other western countries' population
Not quite true. About 32% of population growth in the United States is due to the rate of immigration--if people were not moving into the US from the rest of the world then we would be in the same boat as Japan or Italy. By 2050, it is expected that 86 percent of population growth will be due to immigration.
Current fertility in the US is about 2.1 births per woman. A level of about 2.2 is required to sustain a constant population. However, that is currently offset by an increasing life expectancy. Because we are living longer it is going to take a while for the gross population number to begin to drop. The situation is the same in Japan, their population isn't shrinking YET, but unless someone discovers how to grant eternal life it will.
Take into account both immigration and increased life span and we not only are not "breeding like bunnies", we aren't even replacing ourselves.
Of major "ethnic groups" in the US, Non-hispanic whites are reproducing the least, with non-hispanic blacks next and hispanic people of any race reproducing the fastest. This is at least partly due to the odd way the US government has of deciding who is and isn't hispanic.
At a basic level, this is why every few years we offer amnesty to illegal aliens in order to get them into the system. Our economic and tax system was based on the notion that population would grow forever, so sending people back out of the country when they are living here successfully becomes counter-productive.
BTW, if you care to actually know what you are talking about rather than just spouting crap, try searching "http://www.google.com/unclesam" for US population data. Other countries will collect this data too, but I don't know an easy way to search for data collected by the government of China. I await enlightenment.
Movie theatres aren't concerned about radio waves. They are concerned about noise. They can forbid you from talking, allowing your phone to ring, etc. without regulating the radio spectrum.
So yes, movie theatres can ban the use of cell phones, at least when that use involves sounds other patrons can hear or lights other patrons can see.
No, actually I am correct. I never disputed that storage "makers" use the SI meanings of these terms because they inflate the sizes, nor that filesystems and operating systems report using the units that are most natural and useful for computer users.
In fact, I mentioned that using powers of two is done because of the way computers work--binary computers are easier to design, program and use than base ten computers.
On a personal note, I think that labeling computer disks using base 10 units is deceptive, intended to convince the customer they are getting more than they actually are. It is also deceptive in that these prefixes attached to non-SI units like bit or byte do not have standard meanings, so common usage should guide the understanding of such terms. I really do understand the emotion in this thread. (re: You are full of it.) The discussion was about networking equipment however, not disk drives.
No, Gigabit is 1 (US) billion bits per second. It is not 1024 * 1024 * 1024 bits per second.
Likewise the 2.4 GHz devices in your home (microwave, 802.11 networking, cordless phones, etc) all use radio waves in the 2.4 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 cycle/s range.
Computer storage is the oddball here. 1 Megabyte is 1024 * 1024 bytes not because mega == 1024^2 but because it's easier to design computers with powers of two in mind.
Communication equipment on the other hand uses the standard meaning of the terms.
Actually, since the macro evaluates *p++ twice between sequence points, it *IS* against the standard. The program is not required to compile or behave in any particular fashion.
IOW, the program
int main(int a, char *b[]) { int i = 0; i = i++ + i++; return i; }
has no defined meaning according to the C standard. A conforming compiler may refuse to compile it, and if compiled main may return any value, or even crash with a runtime error.
In real life, two and one will be common return values.
I am not a lawyer. I am not a paralegal. I do not offer legal advice to anyone, ever. As someone who uses Linux and BSD every day, I do have an interest in this case, and in the history of UNIX.
Remember, copyright law has changed since UNIX was written. Be careful not to make incorrect assumptions based on what the law says today. I have one question: are the BSD header files subject to copyright ? I really tought that these files were declared as "no copyrightables" in 1973
Not quite. IIRC they were not "declared 'no copyrightables'" in 1973 but in 1993 the court found that 32V may have entered the public domain due to AT&T's not following copyright rules in effect between 1978 and 1986.
Please read this document, esp. the section titled "1. Copyright Infringement". http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/930303. ruling.txt Please note that this is a ruling denying an injunction that would have prevented distribution of BSD, not a dismissal of the entire case. So it's not as strong as we might like.
There is a lot of information about the BSD case on the web, start here . Of course, the settlement itself is sealed, so it's hard to say exactly what it contains. However, such a settlement would restrict USL, BSDI and the Regents of the University of California, not the Linux developers or IBM.
And the general feeling is that USL asked for the seal because they had their ass handed to them, not because the wanted to spare the Regents a public humiliation.
FWIW, I don't think that you were all that obtuse either.
However, the practice of the "eternal 1/2 off sale" varies from state to state in the US. In MA, for example you cannot claim that a price is a discount or percent off, etc unless you can show that someone purchased the same item at the higher price. It is not enough to simply offer an item for a higher initial price--someone has to actually buy one.
This doesn't fix the "sale/for sale" issue, but it does prevent sleazy "1/2 price sale!" ads on the radio for the same store every weekend for 10 years.
Always fun to have people quote their parents, but my mother is a geophysicist and worked in oil exploration, so I'm going to use her as an expert.
Years ago when I was in high school she told me that oil had nothing to do with fossils. I was suprised, since in school they always called oil, coal and natural gas "fossil fuel."
When I expressed my disbelief, she explained a bit:
There is too much of it. Putting the carbon from the world's petro-chemical supply into living things would require so many tons of living things that it's implausable.
It doesn't show up where fossils would. As an example, to find oil you don't look for places where it would collect by compaction, but places where it would be trapped when moving up toward the surface from below. Salt domes are good places to drill, because the oil collects from underneath and can't escape.
Natural gas and heaver hydrocarbons are known to exist on other bodies in the solar system. Sadly, evidence for space dinos is lacking. It appears that hydrocarbons are just some of the stuff with which the universe was made.
So at least one person with education and 30 years of experience in the field thinks that (oil) == (dead stuff) is bunk.
Yes, the C64 had a kernel. It was even called by that name.
Useless note: You could disable either the KERNEL ROM or the BASIC ROM if you weren't using them and wanted some more program space. You couldn't do both at once however, or the machine would lock up.
Yes, the context did rather obscure that you were refering to two seperate groups.
I had heard a lot of noise about Congress "investigating" deaths and injuries that occured during clinical trials a few years ago, but I wasn't aware that anyting had come of it.
What I recall was mostly a demand that trials be as safe as possible, which kinda boils down to business as usual.
Noone runs trials where they expect to kill they people they treat, after all. It's expensive to conduct these trials, and if there are too many problems you don't get approved and can't earn your money back.
OTOH, I hadn't heard anything in the last few years. As you said, the issue is less pressing for me. Have things gotten worse, or did our brave leaders lose interest and move on the the next shiny object they found?
BTW, I agree that many of the sports regulations are pointless. But then I think the best way to enjoy sports is to play, not watch.
> This doesn't make me feel better about possible congressional roadblocks to its development, oddly enough.
You were aware that the Congress of the United States and the International Olympic Committee Medical Congress are two different things, right?
The congress mentioned in this article is composed of doctors that make medical policy for the olympics. They have nothing to do with development of treatments for Cystic Fibrosis.
If I may say so, it seems a lot of people here missed that--I don't mean to pick on you, but I don't want the discussion here to degrade into "congress is picking on me!".
The US congress does boneheaded stuff all the time, but this isn't them.
They don't pass laws or do anything else that is going to ever affect your personal life. All they do write rules about drugs and medical practice for the IOC.
The Anti-Doping rules are their doing, and they make changes to them all the time.
Ft Sill is Oklahoma like Edwards AFB is California.
What makes a good spot for a base doesn't make for a great place to live--the requirements are different. [NB. Port cities are a special case. That's why I chose an AFB for the CA comparison.]
OK is also quite varied in geography and culture. Lawton is a military town, and has the same (lack of) interesting features that other such towns have. While I freely admit that the western half of the state is a desolate place, semi-arid climates do appeal to some people.
The eastern portion of the state has rolling hills covered with black jack oak, maple, elm and walnut. Every square inch of bare dirt quickly grows something (though often not what you want) leaving the entire place green during the spring and early summer. In the north central portion of the state you can find some of the only remaining tallgrass prairie.
There are many lakes, rivers and streams in the state. In fact, Oklahoma has more miles of shoreline than any other state in the union, and it's all fresh water. Keystone is turning into a mud puddle but Grand Lake is simply beautiful.
Because of it's mid-continent location, OK has a climate with distinct seasons. In the spring, there are dramatic and beautiful storms which appear and vanish quite suddenly. Summer is hot and often dry, but not as oppressive as it is further south. As a kid, it's a great excuse to go swimming every single day. Winter is cold and wet, but not as long or dark as in the north east. It's nice to have six inches of new snow to play in, but it's also nice not to have to deal with that same snow three months later. The same storms that bring rain in the spring bring ice storms in the winter, coating everything in sight with a layer of crystal clear ice that refracts the sunlight with dazzling brilliance. Fall brings cool weather and colors dotted with green to the forest.
If you love the change of the seasons, Oklahoma is a great place to live.
The people are friendly. That can be disconcerting if you are used to having strangers pretend that you don't exist, but it's nice to be able to have a decent, civil conversation with someone you've just met.
Oklahoma is also a good place to study. Cheap living for students, and there is no better place in the world to study geophysics, meteorology or veterinary medicine. If you want to study electrical engineering, you shouldn't pass up a chance at MIT of course, but for some fields it's the place to be.
Now for the reasons NOT to live there.
That lovely green part of the state is hell if you have allergies. More plants means more pollen. What is a minor problem in Sunnyvale, CA becomes debilitating in Tulsa, OK. Living somewhere you can't breathe is no fun at all.
The economy in Oklahoma has been in a steady decline since the 1970s, with a brief improvement around '83 or so. The population is shrinking in the small towns, which are full of empty buildings and homes. Most young people who go into professional fields wind up leaving the state for the east or west coast, taking much of the vitality and fun out of the area.
There might be other reasons, but this is why I left for Boston. A few years later, I wound up in Silicon Valley, and I have no plans to return to OK anytime soon--even with the slump there are more tech jobs here.
Oh, and by-the-way: Tornados aren't as dangerous as you think--they don't cover much area (unlike a hurricane) and your can see them coming (unlike an earthquake). Actually, they are quite interesting to watch if you get the chance, esp. if they touch down on a lake. If you tell a bunch of okies that a tornado is comming, chances are that they'll all go outside and look for it rather than hiding under the dining room table.
I believe that your information is out of date. Fortran 90 is no longer required for engineers at OK State, though this is a recent change.
My sister in law started the ME program there this year, and told me that the fortran requirement had been removed. Her husband just graduated from the same program, and was required to take F90.
Actually, both the fed and most states collect such information.
Look at www.google.com/unclesam and you can find lots of information.
And motorcyclecar accidents are overwhelmingly the fault of the automobile driver. When motorcycle accidents are the rider's fault, they usually don't involve another vehicle.
NOTE: I am a motorcyclist, and I support helmet laws. Why? For the same reason I support seatbelt laws, gun licenses, driver licenses, etc. People who are injured become a drain on public resources. Therefore the public has a vested intrest in taking reasonable measures in limiting such injuries. Also, motorcycle usage on public right-of-ways (roads or not) make use of a limited public resource. Reasonable regulation of such usage is a legitimate role of the government.
It's the defintion of 'reasonable' in both cases that causes the most disagreement, in case you were wondering.
Alcohol, drugs and excessive speed are killers on a motorcycle, but you usually run off the road, fall over or collide with a stationary object instead of a car.
I am a motorcyclist, and I *NEVER* ride without a helmet, jacket, motorcycle boots, gloves and long pants. The helmet has a halo, and my bike and gear is bright colors instead of black and I have retro-reflective bits plastered everywhere. All so that I am more visible to other drivers.
It's just not worth the risk otherwise.
Try to remember: Shiny Side Up.
Now those links: MA -- "Automobile drivers-not motorcyclists-are responsible for more than two-thirds of car-motorcycle crashes" http://www.state.ma.us/rmv/motorcycle/ti ps.htm.Mil -- Lots, they gather a lot of information, and members of the armed services must take a saftey class in order to ride. Here's a sample. --"More than half of the motorcycle mishaps were caused by the other driver failing to yield to the cyclist, and like the fatal mishap, turned in front of the motorcycle rider" http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/se2/torch/ back/200 1/0101/yirgrnd.htm http://www.per.hqusareur.army. mil/services/safety/ NewSafety/motorcycle/_PRIVATE/motorcycle_survival_ skills.htm
IN -"John Bodeker, coordinator of the Indiana Department of Education's Motorcycle Operator Safety Education Program, said that in most accidents involving a car and a motorcycle, the car driver is at fault because he or she either did not see the motorcycle or misjudged its speed." http://ideanet.doe.state.in.us/reed/newsr /99April/ motorsafety.htm
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly!
Nitpick:
TFA says the 11 students are at Oklahoma State University (OSU), not that Other University to the south (OU).
[ Yes, I am an alumni of OSU. ]
That certain person is smarter than I was. I bought the game (and a shiny new video card to play it on) and played through a few levels before I decided I didn't want to go blind trying to play a game that is rendered entirely in shades from Dark Grey to Black. Since then, the game has lived on my stack of "unfun games" where it belongs.
Actually, I usually read the news rather than watching it. It's faster for me.
But I know about many many companies that have pension problems. GM is currently in a lot of trouble. United Airlines manged their pension fund so cleverly that they bankrupted the entire company. They are not alone--lots of big, old US companies are in the same boat.
I had rambled on about this in the first version of my post, then decided it wasn't related to the topic at hand and cut most of it out. Still, a properly managed pension can outlive it's parent--the oil company my mother worked for no longer exists but the pension does.
For anyone who cares, a short summary of the problem:
A 401(k) or IRA places the risk of investing on the employee, a pension plan transfers (some of) the risk to the employer. If your 401(k)/IRA does poorly, you have to make up the shortfall. If your pension doesn't earn a high enough return your employer does so. At least in theory--read some news articles and you will see that it isn't always so.
A traditional pension plan can be self-funding when it's investments are highly profitable. That is, the plan must make some defined amount of money to cover it's obligations. The bulk of this money is supposed to come from investing money already in the plan, but the company has to make up any shortfall from it's own income. When the plan's investments are doing well, often the parent company doesn't contribute at all.
If a company is doing poorly exactly when the economy is slow and interest rates are down, the combination can lead to a severe cash shortage. If your company is big enough, then your success tracks the overall economy no matter how well-run the business is. Risky investments tend to compound the problem. A pension plan buying lots of stock in the company that owns the plan is a recipe for disaster. Both of these problems are widespread in the US right now. Hence the large numbers of Chapter 11's from big names.
In the proud tradition of 'Me too!' posts, my mother fits that mold as well. She is/was a geophysicist and wrote code nearly every working day for 30 years, except for a short break in 73 after the birth of her second child (me). She programmed first in FORTRAN then in C/C++ starting in the mid-80s.
Now, she is a professional landlord who manages her own properties doing all the repairs, etc with my father helping.
I don't know many other people my age whose parents wrote software, though when I was growing up I didn't realize how cool and rare that was. As an adult, I have a much greater appreciation for that. Ever read the story of Mel, a Real Hacker? I emailed it to mom once and the next day I had a free verse reply about another Real Hacker(TM) she had known waiting in my inbox. That's the kind of cool I'm talking about here.
Now for the point, which addresses the OP's question.
When I told her I had gotten a developer job she told me it would be the most fun thing I could ever do for about 30 years, but after that I would need to find something else to do after that. This wasn't advice she made up for me--it was advice she was given by a gentleman who was a mentor to her when she started. That fellow had started just after the war, when computers were new and rare. He said that after a few decades you begin to notice that you are repeating the past. She didn't understand that until around 1990 or so. After all, computers were advancing so fast that surely new things were being done every day. But then she realized that while the hardware was changing the people writing it didn't. The underlying problems of software development hadn't changed at all. New ideas about development processes, communication, peer review, etc. were all things that she had heard before in new packaging.
A few years after that she cashed out and started buying property.
But back then things were different: She had a pension plan that she had been paying into over the years. For those of you who don't know, a pension plan is much, much nicer than a 401(k). So much so that it is nearly impossible to get one any more if you don't work for the government. When you hear a talking head say that some "young" company has an advantage over an "old" company, they mean that the old company has pension obligations and the young one doesn't--this is why no one gets a pension any more.
But it means that today's programmers don't get to retire and start a new career quite so easily. So perhaps the OP and I will find ourselves on the forefront of a new generation that codes for life.
"Isn't 99 cents too much to pay for music that appeals to just a few people?"
Why should I care how few or many people the music I pay for appeals to? It either has 99 cents of appeal for me or it does not. I am sure a lot of people like whatever the Currently Over-Hyped Boy Band is, but I wouldn't pay 99 cents for one of their songs and I don't.
But I'd pay 99 cents to have some songs of which I'm sure fans of the C.O.H.B.B. have never heard.
Tiered pricing makes sense when there is scarcity--it is a kind of rationing. If more people want houses in Boston than there are houses, then the prices of houses in Boston rises until enough people decide to live in Natick and take the train. (Or someone builds new houses.) Perfect for a limited resource.
But with something like ITMS, there is no scarcity. Every purchase results in a download, every download produces a new copy of the work in question.
IMHO, The is not Greed but Vanity--I think Mr. Jobs is being too kind. Look at the quote--99 cents isn't the problem, it is that the record companies want smaller name artists to get less. This stresses the importance of having a record company promoting you. What frightens these people most is for someone to write, record and sell music without their "help."
> americans are still breeding like bunnies, compared to other western countries' population
Not quite true. About 32% of population growth in the United States is due to the rate of immigration--if people were not moving into the US from the rest of the world then we would be in the same boat as Japan or Italy. By 2050, it is expected that 86 percent of population growth will be due to immigration.
Current fertility in the US is about 2.1 births per woman. A level of about 2.2 is required to sustain a constant population. However, that is currently offset by an increasing life expectancy. Because we are living longer it is going to take a while for the gross population number to begin to drop. The situation is the same in Japan, their population isn't shrinking YET, but unless someone discovers how to grant eternal life it will.
Take into account both immigration and increased life span and we not only are not "breeding like bunnies", we aren't even replacing ourselves.
Of major "ethnic groups" in the US, Non-hispanic whites are reproducing the least, with non-hispanic blacks next and hispanic people of any race reproducing the fastest. This is at least partly due to the odd way the US government has of deciding who is and isn't hispanic.
At a basic level, this is why every few years we offer amnesty to illegal aliens in order to get them into the system. Our economic and tax system was based on the notion that population would grow forever, so sending people back out of the country when they are living here successfully becomes counter-productive.
BTW, if you care to actually know what you are talking about rather than just spouting crap, try searching "http://www.google.com/unclesam" for US population data. Other countries will collect this data too, but I don't know an easy way to search for data collected by the government of China. I await enlightenment.
So yes, movie theatres can ban the use of cell phones, at least when that use involves sounds other patrons can hear or lights other patrons can see.
So what's the max DEX bonus?
Yes, I am that much of a geek.
Here's a link explaining the "What's a billion?" thing better than I did.
No, actually I am correct. I never disputed that storage "makers" use the SI meanings of these terms because they inflate the sizes, nor that filesystems and operating systems report using the units that are most natural and useful for computer users.
In fact, I mentioned that using powers of two is done because of the way computers work--binary computers are easier to design, program and use than base ten computers.
On a personal note, I think that labeling computer disks using base 10 units is deceptive, intended to convince the customer they are getting more than they actually are. It is also deceptive in that these prefixes attached to non-SI units like bit or byte do not have standard meanings, so common usage should guide the understanding of such terms. I really do understand the emotion in this thread. (re: You are full of it.) The discussion was about networking equipment however, not disk drives.
The (US) thing is because for the longest time the brits insisted that billion == million million, and trillion == million million million.
In the US, billion == thousand million and trillion == thousand thousand million.
They kind of had a point, since the whole bi == 2, tri == 3 thing makes sense, but by now even the BBC isn't trying to convert the world anymore.
Likewise the 2.4 GHz devices in your home (microwave, 802.11 networking, cordless phones, etc) all use radio waves in the 2.4 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 cycle/s range.
Computer storage is the oddball here. 1 Megabyte is 1024 * 1024 bytes not because mega == 1024^2 but because it's easier to design computers with powers of two in mind.
Communication equipment on the other hand uses the standard meaning of the terms.
Actually, since the macro evaluates *p++ twice between sequence points, it *IS* against the standard. The program is not required to compile or behave in any particular fashion.
IOW, the program
int main(int a, char *b[]) { int i = 0; i = i++ + i++; return i; }
has no defined meaning according to the C standard. A conforming compiler may refuse to compile it, and if compiled main may return any value, or even crash with a runtime error.
In real life, two and one will be common return values.
#include
.
. ruling.txt
I am not a lawyer. I am not a paralegal. I do not offer legal advice to anyone, ever.
As someone who uses Linux and BSD every day, I do have an interest in this case, and in the history of UNIX.
Remember, copyright law has changed since UNIX was written. Be careful not to make incorrect assumptions based on what the law says today
I have one question: are the BSD header files subject to copyright ? I really tought that these files were declared as "no copyrightables" in 1973
Not quite. IIRC they were not "declared 'no copyrightables'" in 1973 but in 1993 the court found that 32V may have entered the public domain due to AT&T's not following copyright rules in effect between 1978 and 1986.
Please read this document, esp. the section titled "1. Copyright Infringement".
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/930303
Please note that this is a ruling denying an injunction that would have prevented distribution of BSD, not a dismissal of the entire case. So it's not as strong as we might like.
There is a lot of information about the BSD case on the web, start here . Of course, the settlement itself is sealed, so it's hard to say exactly what it contains. However, such a settlement would restrict USL, BSDI and the Regents of the University of California, not the Linux developers or IBM.
And the general feeling is that USL asked for the seal because they had their ass handed to them, not because the wanted to spare the Regents a public humiliation.
<grin>
Does this help clear things up?
FWIW, I don't think that you were all that obtuse either.
However, the practice of the "eternal 1/2 off sale" varies from state to state in the US. In MA, for example you cannot claim that a price is a discount or percent off, etc unless you can show that someone purchased the same item at the higher price. It is not enough to simply offer an item for a higher initial price--someone has to actually buy one.
This doesn't fix the "sale/for sale" issue, but it does prevent sleazy "1/2 price sale!" ads on the radio for the same store every weekend for 10 years.
Years ago when I was in high school she told me that oil had nothing to do with fossils. I was suprised, since in school they always called oil, coal and natural gas "fossil fuel."
When I expressed my disbelief, she explained a bit:
There is too much of it. Putting the carbon from the world's petro-chemical supply into living things would require so many tons of living things that it's implausable.
It doesn't show up where fossils would. As an example, to find oil you don't look for places where it would collect by compaction, but places where it would be trapped when moving up toward the surface from below. Salt domes are good places to drill, because the oil collects from underneath and can't escape.
Natural gas and heaver hydrocarbons are known to exist on other bodies in the solar system. Sadly, evidence for space dinos is lacking. It appears that hydrocarbons are just some of the stuff with which the universe was made.
So at least one person with education and 30 years of experience in the field thinks that (oil) == (dead stuff) is bunk.
Yes, the C64 had a kernel. It was even called by that name.
Useless note: You could disable either the KERNEL ROM or the BASIC ROM if you weren't using them and wanted some more program space. You couldn't do both at once however, or the machine would lock up.
Yes, the context did rather obscure that you were refering to two seperate groups.
I had heard a lot of noise about Congress "investigating" deaths and injuries that occured during clinical trials a few years ago, but I wasn't aware that anyting had come of it.
What I recall was mostly a demand that trials be as safe as possible, which kinda boils down to business as usual.
Noone runs trials where they expect to kill they people they treat, after all. It's expensive to conduct these trials, and if there are too many problems you don't get approved and can't earn your money back.
OTOH, I hadn't heard anything in the last few years. As you said, the issue is less pressing for me. Have things gotten worse, or did our brave leaders lose interest and move on the the next shiny object they found?
BTW, I agree that many of the sports regulations are pointless. But then I think the best way to enjoy sports is to play, not watch.
epmos
> This doesn't make me feel better about possible congressional roadblocks to its development, oddly enough.
You were aware that the Congress of the United States and the International Olympic Committee Medical Congress are two different things, right?
The congress mentioned in this article is composed of doctors that make medical policy for the olympics. They have nothing to do with development of treatments for Cystic Fibrosis.
If I may say so, it seems a lot of people here missed that--I don't mean to pick on you, but I don't want the discussion here to degrade into "congress is picking on me!".
The US congress does boneheaded stuff all the time, but this isn't them.
Uh, people....
.
That's the IOC Medical Congress, not the Congress of the United States.
Go here to learn more.
They don't pass laws or do anything else that is going to ever affect your personal life. All they do write rules about drugs and medical practice for the IOC
The Anti-Doping rules are their doing, and they make changes to them all the time.
Ft Sill is Oklahoma like Edwards AFB is California.
What makes a good spot for a base doesn't make for a great place to live--the requirements are different. [NB. Port cities are a special case. That's why I chose an AFB for the CA comparison.]
OK is also quite varied in geography and culture. Lawton is a military town, and has the same (lack of) interesting features that other such towns have. While I freely admit that the western half of the state is a desolate place, semi-arid climates do appeal to some people.
The eastern portion of the state has rolling hills covered with black jack oak, maple, elm and walnut. Every square inch of bare dirt quickly grows something (though often not what you want) leaving the entire place green during the spring and early summer. In the north central portion of the state you can find some of the only remaining tallgrass prairie.
There are many lakes, rivers and streams in the state. In fact, Oklahoma has more miles of shoreline than any other state in the union, and it's all fresh water. Keystone is turning into a mud puddle but Grand Lake is simply beautiful.
Because of it's mid-continent location, OK has a climate with distinct seasons. In the spring, there are dramatic and beautiful storms which appear and vanish quite suddenly. Summer is hot and often dry, but not as oppressive as it is further south. As a kid, it's a great excuse to go swimming every single day. Winter is cold and wet, but not as long or dark as in the north east. It's nice to have six inches of new snow to play in, but it's also nice not to have to deal with that same snow three months later. The same storms that bring rain in the spring bring ice storms in the winter, coating everything in sight with a layer of crystal clear ice that refracts the sunlight with dazzling brilliance. Fall brings cool weather and colors dotted with green to the forest.
If you love the change of the seasons, Oklahoma is a great place to live.
The people are friendly. That can be disconcerting if you are used to having strangers pretend that you don't exist, but it's nice to be able to have a decent, civil conversation with someone you've just met.
Oklahoma is also a good place to study. Cheap living for students, and there is no better place in the world to study geophysics, meteorology or veterinary medicine. If you want to study electrical engineering, you shouldn't pass up a chance at MIT of course, but for some fields it's the place to be.
Now for the reasons NOT to live there.
That lovely green part of the state is hell if you have allergies. More plants means more pollen. What is a minor problem in Sunnyvale, CA becomes debilitating in Tulsa, OK. Living somewhere you can't breathe is no fun at all.
The economy in Oklahoma has been in a steady decline since the 1970s, with a brief improvement around '83 or so. The population is shrinking in the small towns, which are full of empty buildings and homes. Most young people who go into professional fields wind up leaving the state for the east or west coast, taking much of the vitality and fun out of the area.
There might be other reasons, but this is why I left for Boston. A few years later, I wound up in Silicon Valley, and I have no plans to return to OK anytime soon--even with the slump there are more tech jobs here.
Oh, and by-the-way: Tornados aren't as dangerous as you think--they don't cover much area (unlike a hurricane) and your can see them coming (unlike an earthquake). Actually, they are quite interesting to watch if you get the chance, esp. if they touch down on a lake. If you tell a bunch of okies that a tornado is comming, chances are that they'll all go outside and look for it rather than hiding under the dining room table.
I believe that your information is out of date. Fortran 90 is no longer required for engineers at OK State, though this is a recent change.
My sister in law started the ME program there this year, and told me that the fortran requirement had been removed. Her husband just graduated from the same program, and was required to take F90.
Actually, both the fed and most states collect such information.
i ps.htm .Mil -- Lots, they gather a lot of information, and members of the armed services must take a saftey class in order to ride. Here's a sample. --"More than half of the motorcycle mishaps were caused by the other driver failing to yield to the cyclist, and like the fatal mishap, turned in front of the motorcycle rider"/ back/200 1/0101/yirgrnd.htm. mil/services/safety/ NewSafety/motorcycle/_PRIVATE/motorcycle_survival_ skills.htm
r /99April/ motorsafety.htm
Look at www.google.com/unclesam and you can find lots of information.
And motorcyclecar accidents are overwhelmingly the fault of the automobile driver. When motorcycle accidents are the rider's fault, they usually don't involve another vehicle.
NOTE: I am a motorcyclist, and I support helmet laws. Why? For the same reason I support seatbelt laws, gun licenses, driver licenses, etc. People who are injured become a drain on public resources. Therefore the public has a vested intrest in taking reasonable measures in limiting such injuries. Also, motorcycle usage on public right-of-ways (roads or not) make use of a limited public resource. Reasonable regulation of such usage is a legitimate role of the government.
It's the defintion of 'reasonable' in both cases that causes the most disagreement, in case you were wondering.
Alcohol, drugs and excessive speed are killers on a motorcycle, but you usually run off the road, fall over or collide with a stationary object instead of a car.
I am a motorcyclist, and I *NEVER* ride without a helmet, jacket, motorcycle boots, gloves and long pants. The helmet has a halo, and my bike and gear is bright colors instead of black and I have retro-reflective bits plastered everywhere. All so that I am more visible to other drivers.
It's just not worth the risk otherwise.
Try to remember: Shiny Side Up.
Now those links:
MA -- "Automobile drivers-not motorcyclists-are responsible for more than two-thirds of car-motorcycle crashes"
http://www.state.ma.us/rmv/motorcycle/t
http://www.aetc.randolph.af.mil/se2/torch
http://www.per.hqusareur.army
IN -"John Bodeker, coordinator of the Indiana Department of Education's Motorcycle Operator Safety Education Program, said that in most accidents involving a car and a motorcycle, the car driver is at fault because he or she either did not see the motorcycle or misjudged its speed."
http://ideanet.doe.state.in.us/reed/news
The UCITA fixes that problem, "Self Help" is now legal.
Dont' you love the new name? I vote that we all call theft of physical property "Self Help" from now on. That would be equally stupid.