A couple days ago they supposedly negotiated all the details of this with each other and the judge:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-980631.html
"Both Sun and Microsoft submitted written proposals Monday, suggesting exactly which of Microsoft's software titles would have to carry or support Java, in what timeframe the order would be carried out and other details."
Apparently all we really know yet is the time frame, not yet the specifics of how it will be installed.
Doing something different just to be different is not innovation. Doing something different because it's better is innovation.
Maybe, but in my opinion people who just like to try different stuff (because it might be better, or because it interests them to try it, or just because...) tend to be the types who eventually come up with something better. While people who don't want to try anything because they worry they might be "reinventing the wheel" or that "maybe it won't be better" or whatever....probably are unlikely to ever create something useful.
Usually the best ideas are not arrived at directly, but after exploring many different ideas along the way. Most of those ideas are probably not better than what they replace, but they might be a stepping stone to a really great idea.
(sorry to go further off topic, but I just hate to see creativity squelched:) )
Re:Minor correction to your definition of species
on
Finding Every Species
·
· Score: 1
True, but with animals, you can at least state that certain animals are NOT the same species. For instance, a lion and an elephant cannot interbreed, therefore they are different species. With stuff like bacteria that simply clone themselves and occasionally mutate, you don't even have that.
As for those animalas who can physically interbreed but are geographically isolated, the determination of species becomes pretty blurry and subjective.
For those that can interbreed but are *not* geographically isolated, and actually do occasionally interbreed in the wild (such as the coyote and wolf) -- but are still considered different species -- well its all just a fuzzy mess and I'd just give up.
(glad my english teacher probably won't see that run-on sentence)
There are also many cases where the strict definition, the physical ability to interbreed, can be fuzzy. For instance a West Coast Bullfrog can interbreed with a Midwest Bullfrog, and a Midwest Bullfrog can interbreed with a East Coast Bullfrog....but a East Coast Bullfrog can't interbreed with a West Coast Bullfrog. (this is a made up example, but this sort of thing is common) Sometimes two individuals can interbreed, but the offspring will be slightly defective yet still fertile. Or most offspring die but a few make it. Where exactly do you draw the line?
A real world example of fuzziness is the red wolf (Canis rufus). It is debatable whether it is simply a cross of a grey wolf and a coyote, or a separate species. Grey wolves and coyotes can interbreed (although they are considered different species), and occasionally do so in the wild. Red wolves can interbreed with coyotes and grey wolves. (and of course, domestic dogs can interbreed with wolves, and are now considered a subspecies of the grey wolf)
With all this fuzziness, this project seems futile to me, even if somewhat noble.
Remember that the first browsers didn't have a drop-down list on the back/forward buttons. It took those amazing innovators in Redmond to come up with that. Was the back button "broke"? I guess not. But being able to jump back several pages at once is very useful. Some people don't use it....fine. I do -- all the time. Thank you for fixing something that wasn't broke, Microsoft (and thank you netscape/mozilla/every other browser for copying that feature).
I would definitely prefer some sort of tree to be available in the drop-down. If it confuses those who don't get it, make it a preference for advanced users (but I doubt those who don't understand it use the drop-down anyway). But I am regularly frustrated by the lack of an easy way to navigate to a page I was just at, because the back button (with or without the drop-down) is linear, while my history is a tree.
BTW, the one reason I still use IE is that it's "open in new window" offers a kludgy workaround....since it allows "branching" of the history from that point. Mozilla based browsers all do the particularly useless action of simply opening a new browser with the default page and no history. (ok, its not useless, but it is the exact same thing as what you get if you just click on the mozilla icon)
Personally I think cloning isn't the best way to deal with infertility...assuming you've got a couple, there are two sets of DNA, why not combine them rather than just select one?
Regardless, cloning's potential has more to do with our taking the random chance out of human reproduction, and actively seleting the genetics of our offspring.
Otherwise, look at what will happen. Darwinian natural selection no longer works on humans, since we don't let it work (if someone is born with bad vision, we give them glasses rather than letting them be killed by a mastodon they didn't see coming, etc....). Our species is going to gradually slide backwards and degenerate, because we are unwilling to accept the low survival rate that natural selection requires to just maintain the species. Things like cloning (and other ways of picking and choosing the exact genes of our offspring) are necessary if you want to avoid degeneration of our gene pool....or, we should let nature do its thing and when a child is born with medical problems, let it die rather than fixing the symptoms and letting it pass those defective genes on.
Just my opinion, but anyone who looks closely at the way evolution and natural selection works will realize it works very badly when the survival rate is as high as it is for (1st world) humans. And I'm talking about "maintainance" evolution, such as keeping our immunities strong, not just evolving "new features".
I have a hard time believing someone would go to that much effort and not take credit for it. Who would have funded a project like that, just to keep it a secret? It may be controversial (to the extreme), but its a huge milestone and my bet is whoever would bother doing such a thing is going to want to claim the place in history books.
I'll have to assume you really are being serious...
A project like that, to do it right, is massive. One person might be able to do the coding themselves, if someone is paying them so they don't have to have a day job. Then someone else will have to convince an awful lot of people to switch over to using it, or it's not very useful.
Anyway, who says that just because someone sees a problem means that they are also claiming to have the time and skills to solve the problem?
It's very clear to me that the problem he is pointing out is solvable, but it needs momentum behind it, and therefore it needs a lot of people to recognize that there IS a problem. I believe the people with the knee-jerk "shut up and fix it yourself" attitudes are standing in the way of a lot of linux's problems being addressed.
Stepping out on your front porch isn't a significant help to getting half way around the globe
So what do you do, climb out the window?
Walk out the front door. The porch is not needed. If your intention is to get somewhere across the country, you'd be better off spending your money on buying a car than making a fancy front porch.
The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials.
The Secret Service's original purpose was to catch conterfeiters. That's why they are part of the Treasury dept (although this will change with Bush's re-org)
I _hate_ #1. When I want a new window, I want a new window, not a copy of what's already in front of my face.
Isn't that what the mozilla icon on your desktop is for?
Anyway, I'm not insisting that this is the behavior everyone wants. I happen to rely on it, it is very useful to the way I like to browse, and the functionality simply isn't there.
These are some tools I am making to make it easier to post formatted text to a discussion board. On IE, you can select text, and then hit, say , the "bold" button and it will surround the text with bold tags. On mozilla, it just doesn't work, as mozilla does not provide javascript access to the selected text of a text area. (I have "fallback" behavior, which sucks comparitively)
Honestly, I don't know if the way IE allows you to do this is "standard" or not. But what I know is that when this is rolled out (a couple million people will be using this)....anyone using Mozilla based browsers are going to be majorly bummed.
1) A "File->New->Window" that is actually useful. In IE, it goes to the current page, and forks your history (so you can hit the back button, etc). In Mozilla it just opens the default page with no history. Lame.
2) View source opens notepad. True, mozilla considers their source viewer a feature. Well most of the time its not what I want, I want to be able to edit, save (without it downloading the damn thing again!), and whatever.
These two things (and oh yeah, the google toolbar:) ) keep me in IE 90% of the time.
I always bring a backpack to the theatre with muchies and drinks. I can't imagine them ever searching a backpack for food. And you can fit a lot of stuff in there.
That's different. He's talking about using a flywheel to store energy, which is not particularly mainstream. In a car all it does is keep the crankshaft spinning more smoothly. Its like the difference between a battery and a capacitor.
Well I don't think I misread it. I just questioned the basic premise that "if you have to ask" as indicating anything whatsoever. I stand by my argument, whether I am labeled a troll or not. (ok, maybe my use of the word "moronic" was harsh, and for that I apologize)
Regardless of the particulars of this situation, there will always gray areas in whether or not legal help is need (i.e. there are always situtations that are on the borderline between "yes I need a lawyer" and "no I shouldn't bother with it"), and that being the case, it is a fallacy to assign meaning to whether or not feel the need to ask. (and if you *didn't* assign meaning to the need to ask......please explain what else the title of your post could have meant) It is a classic case of the "rounding fallacy".
(this is a common fallacy that shows up in other places. For instance preventing "deadlock" at a 4 way stop intersection....people say "if both cars get there at the same time, the person on the right should go first". This is just as ambiguous, however, since there is always a gray area between what is "the same time" and not.)
I didn't say the person was threatening to sue. My point was simply that there are gray areas of what is significant enough to seek legal advice, and to interpret any gray area as completely white or black is silly.
Did you even think about that? What moronic logic: "If you think maybe, then definitely"
In other words, if I think I might need a lawyer, then I definitely should get one. Then, the threshold for getting a lawyer has been pushed lower. Now, a situation where in the past, I wouldn't have even asked (say, someone stubbed their toe on my driveway), now it gets into the range of asking. So since I think I have to ask, I should definitely get a lawyer. Eventually, by your logic, a lawyer should be called in in every single situation.
Loosely Connected: Perhaps the most intelligent Jabber decision was to make it just like e-mail. There's no longer a global hostname, but rather a user@host naming scheme. If you're Internet savvy you can get your e-mail address and jabber address to be the same (exercise left to the reader, think about it).
Well, not if you want to keep your current email address and you don't happen to own the domain.
If they had been really smart, they could have figured out a way to have any email address be your Jabber id....all it has to be is unique (which email addresses are). There would have to be some sort of directory system or something. But Jabber people are smart, right? They can figure that out.
The benefits would be immense, in my opinion.
Expecting people to be "internet savvy" to the degree that Jabber folks seem to expect, is a huge weakness for Jabber, IMO.
This is exactly the same situation that exists with email. You need to find someone to run a mailserver for you - and for 99.9% of users it ends up being their ISP, or one of the free providers like Hotmail.
But ISP's don't provide a Jabber server. And why should you expect them to? Email is different, it was well entrenched long before the internet had mass appeal. Not so with Jabber.
And the free mail clients aren't really "email servers", as they don't support email clients (POP, etc). So its a pretty different situation. Jabber folks have a lot of work to do if they want Jabber to gain the acceptance level of email....assuming that "Jabber is just like email, so it will gain the same acceptance" is incredibly naive.
The fact that there are so many clients, none of which is polished, is jabber's biggest weakness.
All the jabber clients are shamed by trillian, in my opinion. As I said in another post, someone needs to make a Jabber plugin for Trillian 1.0, I think that would do a lot to get people in the real world using Jabber. (assuming that's what we want....it is, isn't it?)
Slashdot Mirror
A couple days ago they supposedly negotiated all the details of this with each other and the judge:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-980631.html
"Both Sun and Microsoft submitted written proposals Monday, suggesting exactly which of Microsoft's software titles would have to carry or support Java, in what timeframe the order would be carried out and other details."
Apparently all we really know yet is the time frame, not yet the specifics of how it will be installed.
Maybe, but in my opinion people who just like to try different stuff (because it might be better, or because it interests them to try it, or just because...) tend to be the types who eventually come up with something better. While people who don't want to try anything because they worry they might be "reinventing the wheel" or that "maybe it won't be better" or whatever....probably are unlikely to ever create something useful.
Usually the best ideas are not arrived at directly, but after exploring many different ideas along the way. Most of those ideas are probably not better than what they replace, but they might be a stepping stone to a really great idea.
(sorry to go further off topic, but I just hate to see creativity squelched
True, but with animals, you can at least state that certain animals are NOT the same species. For instance, a lion and an elephant cannot interbreed, therefore they are different species. With stuff like bacteria that simply clone themselves and occasionally mutate, you don't even have that.
As for those animalas who can physically interbreed but are geographically isolated, the determination of species becomes pretty blurry and subjective.
For those that can interbreed but are *not* geographically isolated, and actually do occasionally interbreed in the wild (such as the coyote and wolf) -- but are still considered different species -- well its all just a fuzzy mess and I'd just give up.
(glad my english teacher probably won't see that run-on sentence)
There are also many cases where the strict definition, the physical ability to interbreed, can be fuzzy. For instance a West Coast Bullfrog can interbreed with a Midwest Bullfrog, and a Midwest Bullfrog can interbreed with a East Coast Bullfrog....but a East Coast Bullfrog can't interbreed with a West Coast Bullfrog. (this is a made up example, but this sort of thing is common) Sometimes two individuals can interbreed, but the offspring will be slightly defective yet still fertile. Or most offspring die but a few make it. Where exactly do you draw the line?
A real world example of fuzziness is the red wolf (Canis rufus). It is debatable whether it is simply a cross of a grey wolf and a coyote, or a separate species. Grey wolves and coyotes can interbreed (although they are considered different species), and occasionally do so in the wild. Red wolves can interbreed with coyotes and grey wolves. (and of course, domestic dogs can interbreed with wolves, and are now considered a subspecies of the grey wolf)
With all this fuzziness, this project seems futile to me, even if somewhat noble.
Remember that the first browsers didn't have a drop-down list on the back/forward buttons. It took those amazing innovators in Redmond to come up with that. Was the back button "broke"? I guess not. But being able to jump back several pages at once is very useful. Some people don't use it....fine. I do -- all the time. Thank you for fixing something that wasn't broke, Microsoft (and thank you netscape/mozilla/every other browser for copying that feature).
I would definitely prefer some sort of tree to be available in the drop-down. If it confuses those who don't get it, make it a preference for advanced users (but I doubt those who don't understand it use the drop-down anyway). But I am regularly frustrated by the lack of an easy way to navigate to a page I was just at, because the back button (with or without the drop-down) is linear, while my history is a tree.
BTW, the one reason I still use IE is that it's "open in new window" offers a kludgy workaround....since it allows "branching" of the history from that point. Mozilla based browsers all do the particularly useless action of simply opening a new browser with the default page and no history. (ok, its not useless, but it is the exact same thing as what you get if you just click on the mozilla icon)
Hate to be a nitpicker, but wouldn't "for making an obscene clone fall" make more sense?
Personally I think cloning isn't the best way to deal with infertility...assuming you've got a couple, there are two sets of DNA, why not combine them rather than just select one?
Regardless, cloning's potential has more to do with our taking the random chance out of human reproduction, and actively seleting the genetics of our offspring.
Otherwise, look at what will happen. Darwinian natural selection no longer works on humans, since we don't let it work (if someone is born with bad vision, we give them glasses rather than letting them be killed by a mastodon they didn't see coming, etc....). Our species is going to gradually slide backwards and degenerate, because we are unwilling to accept the low survival rate that natural selection requires to just maintain the species. Things like cloning (and other ways of picking and choosing the exact genes of our offspring) are necessary if you want to avoid degeneration of our gene pool....or, we should let nature do its thing and when a child is born with medical problems, let it die rather than fixing the symptoms and letting it pass those defective genes on.
Just my opinion, but anyone who looks closely at the way evolution and natural selection works will realize it works very badly when the survival rate is as high as it is for (1st world) humans. And I'm talking about "maintainance" evolution, such as keeping our immunities strong, not just evolving "new features".
I have a hard time believing someone would go to that much effort and not take credit for it. Who would have funded a project like that, just to keep it a secret? It may be controversial (to the extreme), but its a huge milestone and my bet is whoever would bother doing such a thing is going to want to claim the place in history books.
I'll have to assume you really are being serious...
A project like that, to do it right, is massive. One person might be able to do the coding themselves, if someone is paying them so they don't have to have a day job. Then someone else will have to convince an awful lot of people to switch over to using it, or it's not very useful.
Anyway, who says that just because someone sees a problem means that they are also claiming to have the time and skills to solve the problem?
It's very clear to me that the problem he is pointing out is solvable, but it needs momentum behind it, and therefore it needs a lot of people to recognize that there IS a problem. I believe the people with the knee-jerk "shut up and fix it yourself" attitudes are standing in the way of a lot of linux's problems being addressed.
Walk out the front door. The porch is not needed. If your intention is to get somewhere across the country, you'd be better off spending your money on buying a car than making a fancy front porch.
The Secret Service's original purpose was to catch conterfeiters. That's why they are part of the Treasury dept (although this will change with Bush's re-org)
Isn't that what the mozilla icon on your desktop is for?
Anyway, I'm not insisting that this is the behavior everyone wants. I happen to rely on it, it is very useful to the way I like to browse, and the functionality simply isn't there.
Take a look at this page
These are some tools I am making to make it easier to post formatted text to a discussion board. On IE, you can select text, and then hit, say , the "bold" button and it will surround the text with bold tags. On mozilla, it just doesn't work, as mozilla does not provide javascript access to the selected text of a text area. (I have "fallback" behavior, which sucks comparitively)
Honestly, I don't know if the way IE allows you to do this is "standard" or not. But what I know is that when this is rolled out (a couple million people will be using this)....anyone using Mozilla based browsers are going to be majorly bummed.
1) A "File->New->Window" that is actually useful. In IE, it goes to the current page, and forks your history (so you can hit the back button, etc). In Mozilla it just opens the default page with no history. Lame.
:) ) keep me in IE 90% of the time.
2) View source opens notepad. True, mozilla considers their source viewer a feature. Well most of the time its not what I want, I want to be able to edit, save (without it downloading the damn thing again!), and whatever.
These two things (and oh yeah, the google toolbar
I always bring a backpack to the theatre with muchies and drinks. I can't imagine them ever searching a backpack for food. And you can fit a lot of stuff in there.
That's different. He's talking about using a flywheel to store energy, which is not particularly mainstream. In a car all it does is keep the crankshaft spinning more smoothly. Its like the difference between a battery and a capacitor.
Well I don't think I misread it. I just questioned the basic premise that "if you have to ask" as indicating anything whatsoever. I stand by my argument, whether I am labeled a troll or not. (ok, maybe my use of the word "moronic" was harsh, and for that I apologize)
Regardless of the particulars of this situation, there will always gray areas in whether or not legal help is need (i.e. there are always situtations that are on the borderline between "yes I need a lawyer" and "no I shouldn't bother with it"), and that being the case, it is a fallacy to assign meaning to whether or not feel the need to ask. (and if you *didn't* assign meaning to the need to ask......please explain what else the title of your post could have meant) It is a classic case of the "rounding fallacy".
(this is a common fallacy that shows up in other places. For instance preventing "deadlock" at a 4 way stop intersection....people say "if both cars get there at the same time, the person on the right should go first". This is just as ambiguous, however, since there is always a gray area between what is "the same time" and not.)
I didn't say the person was threatening to sue. My point was simply that there are gray areas of what is significant enough to seek legal advice, and to interpret any gray area as completely white or black is silly.
Did you even think about that? What moronic logic: "If you think maybe, then definitely"
In other words, if I think I might need a lawyer, then I definitely should get one. Then, the threshold for getting a lawyer has been pushed lower. Now, a situation where in the past, I wouldn't have even asked (say, someone stubbed their toe on my driveway), now it gets into the range of asking. So since I think I have to ask, I should definitely get a lawyer. Eventually, by your logic, a lawyer should be called in in every single situation.
It's their own fault for coming up with such a dorky name. "GNU's not Unix!.....get it? We're so freakin clever we came up with a recursive name."
Well, congratulations on your cleverness. But it's not a friendly name. No one likes to use it. The Linux name is entrenched, so get over it.
It's western in culture. (and apparently it's new zealand, which is relatively small both in size and population)
Any reasonable directory would verify email addresses.
Well, not if you want to keep your current email address and you don't happen to own the domain.
If they had been really smart, they could have figured out a way to have any email address be your Jabber id....all it has to be is unique (which email addresses are). There would have to be some sort of directory system or something. But Jabber people are smart, right? They can figure that out.
The benefits would be immense, in my opinion.
Expecting people to be "internet savvy" to the degree that Jabber folks seem to expect, is a huge weakness for Jabber, IMO.
But ISP's don't provide a Jabber server. And why should you expect them to? Email is different, it was well entrenched long before the internet had mass appeal. Not so with Jabber.
And the free mail clients aren't really "email servers", as they don't support email clients (POP, etc). So its a pretty different situation. Jabber folks have a lot of work to do if they want Jabber to gain the acceptance level of email....assuming that "Jabber is just like email, so it will gain the same acceptance" is incredibly naive.
The fact that there are so many clients, none of which is polished, is jabber's biggest weakness.
All the jabber clients are shamed by trillian, in my opinion. As I said in another post, someone needs to make a Jabber plugin for Trillian 1.0, I think that would do a lot to get people in the real world using Jabber. (assuming that's what we want....it is, isn't it?)