yet there is no default switching app coming with windows.
Is there one available somewhere?
X didn't even support easy thing as hardware window transparency or shadows as of recently when it came with X.org 6.8
Maybe. Never felt the lack of such eye candy myself, being a pretty wabi-sabi GUI kind of guy; I need window transparency like I need a third nipple. But I sure missed multiple workspaces when forced to work on a Windows or Mac box. (It's been ages since I used a Mac so I don't know if multiple workspaces are there under OS/X?)
You kidding? Xerox's primary benefit is the fact that their company name is used as synonymous for "copy." Brand recognition is never a bad thing.
Xerox very much wants you to respect their trademark, even running an ad in Writer's Digest to encourage TM-correctness among writers.
but if I want to call it "Linux" for simplicity's sake, I have every freedom to do so, and there's nothing he can do about it without making himself out to be a hypocrite.
There's lots he can do; he can correct you, he can write letters, etcetera, none of which impinge on your freedom.
Yes, indeed, we believe you have a free speech right to call the operating system by any name you wish. We ask that people call it GNU/Linux as a matter of doing justice to the GNU project, to promote the values of freedom that GNU stands for, and to inform others that those values of freedom brought the system into existence.
Even entertaining the idea of forcing code to be opened is disgusting. Should we then ban secrets?
I think his comparision to food labeling is spot on. Maybe mandatory source disclosure could help improve the shockingly poor quality of software, in the same way the Pure Food and Drug Act helped make the nation's food supply safer. (Which is not to say the Pure Food and Drug Act was an ideal law...it helped lay the foundations of drug prohibition.)
It is entirely appropriate to ban certain secrets in commercial products. If the candy you're selling is extra-sweet because it contains lead, yes, you should be banned from keeping that a secret.
(Yes, some of the more radical libertarian capitalists beleive that there should be no mandatory food ingredient labeling, that it should be left to the market. The problem is that full knowledge is a necessary precondition for markets to function effectively.)
A computer is a tool, its technical merits are of prime importance and the only one that really matters.
Let's say I have for you a wonderful writing tool, the best pen ever created. Anything you write with it will be beautiful and legible and the ink will never fade from paper (but instantly wash out of clothing) and it will cause no hand or wrist strain.
The only catch is that if you use it, you agree to let me have an unlimited licence to use whatever you write with it.
Should you judge my pen by its technical merits only, or do you think some other consideratons should take precedence?
Ultimately the software industry is being eaten inside out by this sort of "let it all be free!"
No, only the COTS software industry is in danger of being "eaten". (And since 90+% of what comes out of that industry is crap...) There will always be a need for skilled developers to write the software that runs the telephone system, your bank, NASA's ground systems, etcetera. More of that may turn to being integration of free/open source software components, sure, but that means less time wasted on re-inventing the wheel and more of getting cool stuff done.
Except when it comes to trademarks and commerical use of names.
Call that Canon copier a "Xerox machine" and the fine folks at both Canon and Xerox will insist you get it right. No different here - though "GNU" isn't, IIRC, a trademark, "Linux" is.
I would say its more important that My resume created in OO renders exactly that same in word.
Why are you sending resumes in Word format instead of PDF or RTF?
I have never had my resume available in Word format - and it's never caused me any problem.
If they want it for printing or viewing, send a PDF; if a recruiter needs to massage it to their own format, they get the RTF or HTML version that they can import. (Send an RTF and most people won't even understand that it's not "Microsoft Word format".)
This not only avoids promoting the use of software and proprietary data formats from a criminal corporation notorious for poor quality, it has the very real practical advantages of reducing version incompatibilities ("Office XP? Sorry, I only have Office 97...") and the risk of spreading viruses.
It's the right thing to do, and the tasty way to do it.
And we're just going to "trust" that those scholars didn't pepper the "interpretation" any?
Sure that happened to some degree. Much less so than with the Bible, since written Chinese is a living language (the spoken language changes, but written Chinese of 2500 years ago is closer to that of today than for phonetic written languages), the work is a order of magnitude or two shorter, and the nature of the work and the culture in which it is embedded is fundamentally different.
The Tao Te Ching is not a book of religious or political law - it's a bunch of poems from a semi-mythical hippie anarchist.
Unlike the Bible, there are many translations that are on equal footing, and Le Guin explains in notes where they have differences, and has a bibliography of translations you can check out for yourself. You don't have to just "trust" here interpretation, you are explictly invited to check out others.
Still I've run out of Asimov/Clarke/Niven books to read (the authors being dead doesn't help!) so might give her a try provided it's real science fiction not 'dungeons and dragons with a bit of cheesy magic'
Definitely "real" SF and fantasy. A Wizard of EarthSea predates D & D, after all.
On the other hand, if you've been weaned on a diet of nothing but Asimov/Clarke/Niven, you might find her stuff to be a sudden shock to your system. It's more literary, thoughtful, feminist, anarchist, Taoist SF. The "science" in her "science fiction" is more anthropology than physics.
"unconstitutional is a form of illegal" hehe nice. Couldn't take it back so you equivocate huh?
I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but what the hell:
There is nothing at all equivocable about my statement. Let me lay it out for you as simply as I can:
The Constitution is a law.
"Unconstitutional" means "in violation of the Constitution".
By our first premise, that which is in violation of the Constitution is in violation of a law.
That which is in violation of a law is "illegal".
Therefore, that which is in violation of the Constitution is illegal.
Therefor that which is unconstitutional is illegal. Or, "unconstitutional" is a form of, or is a subset of, "illegal".
Now, I'm going to ask you a question (yes, i'm a sadist I know).
I notice you never answered mine...apparently you do belive that if Congress established a state religion and the courts did not object, this would be constitutional, Amendment I notwithstanding?
What about separate but equal? It was constitutional, then it wasn't.
No, "separate but equal" (as it was practiced) was a violation of Amendment XIV. After the passage of that Amendment it was never constitutional, the illiteracy of some courts not withstanding.
The constitution NEVER changed, but was interpreted two different ways, and both times the decisions were LAW.
Courts do not make law. I'm very sorry that you do not seem to understand this basic point.
Yes, the Constitution was interpreted two different ways at two different times. This happens to most laws are some point, but laws don't change when judges fail to comprehend them.
Regardless of your reverence for the constitution, it is only a guiding document, not a hard and fast set of rules
Reverence? No, I just belive that if the state expects us to follow the law it ought to set a better example.
But your assertation about the nature of the Constitution as a mere "guiding document" is simply not correct. The Constitution of the United State is the supreme law of the land, and the source of all legal power for the federal government. Any government action outside of its scope - and there is plenty - is force, not law, whether those actions are approved by courts or not. Some of those illegal actions may be good, some of them may be bad - just like violations of lesser laws.
That answers that. Anyone who tries to make a concrete "interpretation" of that is bound to be a little fruity.
By "interpretation" I mean a English version prepared by someone not a translator, but working from several different translations. Le Guin is not expert in the Chinese language; she consulted several scholarly translations and prepared from them an English text.
Tehanu, the 20 yr later followup to Earthsea, was an incredible disappointment.
I too was disappointed the first time I read it. I went back to it later, though, and realized it was more a problem of my exepections versus a deficiency of the work itself - Tehanu is a very different story, and if you go in expecting more of the same as the original trilogy, it won't sit well. I like it now - it also helps that it's no longer the last EarthSea book.
(Actually my copy is now in the hands of an ex-girlfriend - unless she's thrown it out or burned it. I really shouldn't lend books to women I date...)
I must wonder, why did she sell the rights if she didn't get a guarantee on the story?
As she says, "my contract gave me the standard status of `consultant'--which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film." I think she was misled by assurances or representations made outside the contract - legal, perhaps, but hardly ethical.
Precedent does not effect whether something is or is not illegal. Yes, as a matter of current practice in our legal system, judges consult (and are in generally foolishly bound by) precedent in their decisions, but laws are nothing but words on pieces of paper. Laws are created by the legislature, not the judiciary. C'mon, this is middle-school stuff.
So what? That doesn't make it ILLEGAL. It makes it UNCONSTITUTIONAL, which isn't the same thing.
As the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, unconstitutional is a form of illegal.
Judges decide what is constitutional as well.
This is the error in which you persist. De facto, yes, if the judge says it's constitutional, the executive will enforce it, but that doesn't change the constitutional or unconstitutional nature of the law.
I ask you a third time: if Congress passes and the courts ok a law establishing a state religion, is it or is it not Constitutional? Of course it's not, it's a violation of Amendment I, the illiteracy of the court doesn't change that.
Now explain to me how something can be absolute and open to interpretation at the same time.
The Constitution is, in some parts, absolute.
Certainly there are vague areas - what exactly are the bounds of regulating interstate commerce, for example - but there are also clear absolute elements ("shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", "supreme law of the land").
The actions of the state are based on (often illiterate, biased, and ideologically motivated) interpretation of judges, but that doesn't change the nature of the document - any more than a bad call by a baseball umpire changes what actions are or are not legal in that game.
"The courts did not decide that slavery was illegal" Never said they did. YOU said that
You are confused. Perhaps you are getting threads mixed up. I did not even mention slavery. You introduced slavery into the thread with your (incorrect) assertion that slavery was made illegal by the courts.
Please, we can all read the whole thread here - if you can't even remember what arguments you made, how are we supposed to take anything you say seriously? (Maybe we shouldn't, and this is some sort of elaborate troll...)
Yes, you should be more familiar. Ursula Le Guin is one of the greatest living authors of science fiction and fantasy, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. Her novels include The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, and the EarthSea series. She is also the author of a wonderful interpretation of the Tao Te Ching.
If it can prevent crimes/terrorism, or at give the authorities a clue on who did sent what, i dont have a problem about getting my picture take.. Its already on dozens of other surveillance videos, and I havent seen people complaining about that..
Is that sarcasm that I'm missing, a troll, or simple ignorance?
No, cameras don't significantly prevent crimes. Giving the state the ability to track citizen's communications is a bad idea, sure to be abused. And if you haven't seen people complaining about the growing surveillance culture, you need to open your eyes.
Slavery was legal, then it was illegal. The Constitution didn't decide that, the court did.
Uh, no. The courts did not decide that slavery was illegal. The Constitution was modified to make slavery illegal - Amendment XIII: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States..."
I'm sorry, but you really need to educate yourself not only about the mechanism of constitutional government but about the history of the United States. (I'm assuming you live here.)
There are NO absolutes....The Constitution is a guiding document, not dogma.
There are plenty of absolutes in the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and so on. Perhaps the most important one states that the Constitution is not a guiding document but "the supreme Law of the Land".
The fact that federal and state governments routinely ignore the supreme law of the land doesn't mean that their actions are legal, any more than the fact that we all drive 65mph in a 55mph zone makes that legal.
I repeat my eariler example: if Congress passed a law making Fundamentalist Zoroastrianism the state religion and the Supremes okayed it, it would still be a violation of Amendment I. Do you claim otherwise?
Anyone that doesn't use dynamic allocation should basically be shot, if their program ever takes user input
Not necessarily. If your input it supposed to be, say, a 16 digit credit card number, probably more efficient to have a char[17] bufffer - and either do length checking or truncate to that length - than to have to keep malloc()ing.
I know my experience of unions has been that of a student, constantly facing the service groups I depend on (elementary school teachers, high school teachers, university professors, TAs, university support staff etc.) going on strike. So far, in my life, unions have been nothing but a disruption, stopping me from doing the things I need to do and causing undue stress
People don't strike for the fun of it, or to cause you stress. Striking is a lot more stressful on them than on you. They strike because they're getting a raw deal and have exhausted other options.
You should lay the blame at the feet of those putting the screws to the workers until they have no recourse but to strike,.
I see the two specific items linked to are buffer overflow exploits. Anyone learning to program in C needs to have good buffer dicipline beaten into their heads.
It's like wiping your butt after crapping - mandatory basic hygine. If you can always remember to wipe your butt, you can always remembers to watch your buffer lengths.
Just disagreeing with them and insisting they are illegal isn't enough, you have to get the Supreme Court to agree with you.
No, a law is unconstitutional (and therefore illegal) in and of itself, not because the Black Riders say yea or nea. If Congress passed a law making Fundamentalist Zoroastrianism the state religion and the Supremes okayed it, it would still be a violation of Amendment I. Bad calls by umpires don't change the rules or the facts of the game.
As to what this means ethically, it means you are breaking the law
Under any rational system of ethics, institutionalised societal norms - i.e., laws - have no bearing on what is or is not ethical. Congress doesn't determine what is right and what is wrong, it determines only who the state will point guns at.
Slashdot Mirror
Not so much. Read the next page at the site you linked.
Is there one available somewhere?
Maybe. Never felt the lack of such eye candy myself, being a pretty wabi-sabi GUI kind of guy; I need window transparency like I need a third nipple. But I sure missed multiple workspaces when forced to work on a Windows or Mac box. (It's been ages since I used a Mac so I don't know if multiple workspaces are there under OS/X?)
Xerox very much wants you to respect their trademark, even running an ad in Writer's Digest to encourage TM-correctness among writers.
There's lots he can do; he can correct you, he can write letters, etcetera, none of which impinge on your freedom.
The FSF explictly aknowledges your right to be wrong :-) on the issue:
I think his comparision to food labeling is spot on. Maybe mandatory source disclosure could help improve the shockingly poor quality of software, in the same way the Pure Food and Drug Act helped make the nation's food supply safer. (Which is not to say the Pure Food and Drug Act was an ideal law...it helped lay the foundations of drug prohibition.)
It is entirely appropriate to ban certain secrets in commercial products. If the candy you're selling is extra-sweet because it contains lead, yes, you should be banned from keeping that a secret.
(Yes, some of the more radical libertarian capitalists beleive that there should be no mandatory food ingredient labeling, that it should be left to the market. The problem is that full knowledge is a necessary precondition for markets to function effectively.)
Why don't you put the GIMP on a separate workspace? (Or does Windows still lack that simple feature?)
No, only the COTS software industry is in danger of being "eaten". (And since 90+% of what comes out of that industry is crap...) There will always be a need for skilled developers to write the software that runs the telephone system, your bank, NASA's ground systems, etcetera. More of that may turn to being integration of free/open source software components, sure, but that means less time wasted on re-inventing the wheel and more of getting cool stuff done.
Except when it comes to trademarks and commerical use of names.
Call that Canon copier a "Xerox machine" and the fine folks at both Canon and Xerox will insist you get it right. No different here - though "GNU" isn't, IIRC, a trademark, "Linux" is.
No. The odds of a city-busting size rock hitting Earth are so close to 100% we're talking a miracle if it never happens again. Last one fortunately hit an uninhabited area of Sibera.
The question is when and where, not if.
Why are you sending resumes in Word format instead of PDF or RTF?
I have never had my resume available in Word format - and it's never caused me any problem.
If they want it for printing or viewing, send a PDF; if a recruiter needs to massage it to their own format, they get the RTF or HTML version that they can import. (Send an RTF and most people won't even understand that it's not "Microsoft Word format".)
This not only avoids promoting the use of software and proprietary data formats from a criminal corporation notorious for poor quality, it has the very real practical advantages of reducing version incompatibilities ("Office XP? Sorry, I only have Office 97...") and the risk of spreading viruses.
It's the right thing to do, and the tasty way to do it.
Sure that happened to some degree. Much less so than with the Bible, since written Chinese is a living language (the spoken language changes, but written Chinese of 2500 years ago is closer to that of today than for phonetic written languages), the work is a order of magnitude or two shorter, and the nature of the work and the culture in which it is embedded is fundamentally different.
The Tao Te Ching is not a book of religious or political law - it's a bunch of poems from a semi-mythical hippie anarchist.
Unlike the Bible, there are many translations that are on equal footing, and Le Guin explains in notes where they have differences, and has a bibliography of translations you can check out for yourself. You don't have to just "trust" here interpretation, you are explictly invited to check out others.
You can see some exceprt from her version here
Definitely "real" SF and fantasy. A Wizard of EarthSea predates D & D, after all.
On the other hand, if you've been weaned on a diet of nothing but Asimov/Clarke/Niven, you might find her stuff to be a sudden shock to your system. It's more literary, thoughtful, feminist, anarchist, Taoist SF. The "science" in her "science fiction" is more anthropology than physics.
I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but what the hell:
There is nothing at all equivocable about my statement. Let me lay it out for you as simply as I can:
I notice you never answered mine...apparently you do belive that if Congress established a state religion and the courts did not object, this would be constitutional, Amendment I notwithstanding?
No, "separate but equal" (as it was practiced) was a violation of Amendment XIV. After the passage of that Amendment it was never constitutional, the illiteracy of some courts not withstanding.
Courts do not make law. I'm very sorry that you do not seem to understand this basic point.
Yes, the Constitution was interpreted two different ways at two different times. This happens to most laws are some point, but laws don't change when judges fail to comprehend them.
Reverence? No, I just belive that if the state expects us to follow the law it ought to set a better example.
But your assertation about the nature of the Constitution as a mere "guiding document" is simply not correct. The Constitution of the United State is the supreme law of the land, and the source of all legal power for the federal government. Any government action outside of its scope - and there is plenty - is force, not law, whether those actions are approved by courts or not. Some of those illegal actions may be good, some of them may be bad - just like violations of lesser laws.
And as for your ad homium attacks - grow up, bud.
By "interpretation" I mean a English version prepared by someone not a translator, but working from several different translations. Le Guin is not expert in the Chinese language; she consulted several scholarly translations and prepared from them an English text.
It's not unusual, Stephen Mitchell just did this with Gilgamesh
I too was disappointed the first time I read it. I went back to it later, though, and realized it was more a problem of my exepections versus a deficiency of the work itself - Tehanu is a very different story, and if you go in expecting more of the same as the original trilogy, it won't sit well. I like it now - it also helps that it's no longer the last EarthSea book.
(Actually my copy is now in the hands of an ex-girlfriend - unless she's thrown it out or burned it. I really shouldn't lend books to women I date...)
As she says, "my contract gave me the standard status of `consultant'--which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film." I think she was misled by assurances or representations made outside the contract - legal, perhaps, but hardly ethical.
Precedent does not effect whether something is or is not illegal. Yes, as a matter of current practice in our legal system, judges consult (and are in generally foolishly bound by) precedent in their decisions, but laws are nothing but words on pieces of paper. Laws are created by the legislature, not the judiciary. C'mon, this is middle-school stuff.
As the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, unconstitutional is a form of illegal.
This is the error in which you persist. De facto, yes, if the judge says it's constitutional, the executive will enforce it, but that doesn't change the constitutional or unconstitutional nature of the law.
I ask you a third time: if Congress passes and the courts ok a law establishing a state religion, is it or is it not Constitutional? Of course it's not, it's a violation of Amendment I, the illiteracy of the court doesn't change that.
The Constitution is, in some parts, absolute. Certainly there are vague areas - what exactly are the bounds of regulating interstate commerce, for example - but there are also clear absolute elements ("shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", "supreme law of the land").
The actions of the state are based on (often illiterate, biased, and ideologically motivated) interpretation of judges, but that doesn't change the nature of the document - any more than a bad call by a baseball umpire changes what actions are or are not legal in that game. "The courts did not decide that slavery was illegal" Never said they did. YOU said that
You are confused. Perhaps you are getting threads mixed up. I did not even mention slavery. You introduced slavery into the thread with your (incorrect) assertion that slavery was made illegal by the courts.
Please, we can all read the whole thread here - if you can't even remember what arguments you made, how are we supposed to take anything you say seriously? (Maybe we shouldn't, and this is some sort of elaborate troll...)
Yes, you should be more familiar. Ursula Le Guin is one of the greatest living authors of science fiction and fantasy, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. Her novels include The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, and the EarthSea series. She is also the author of a wonderful interpretation of the Tao Te Ching.
Is that sarcasm that I'm missing, a troll, or simple ignorance?
No, cameras don't significantly prevent crimes. Giving the state the ability to track citizen's communications is a bad idea, sure to be abused. And if you haven't seen people complaining about the growing surveillance culture, you need to open your eyes.
Uh, no. The courts did not decide that slavery was illegal. The Constitution was modified to make slavery illegal - Amendment XIII: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States..."
I'm sorry, but you really need to educate yourself not only about the mechanism of constitutional government but about the history of the United States. (I'm assuming you live here.)
There are plenty of absolutes in the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and so on. Perhaps the most important one states that the Constitution is not a guiding document but "the supreme Law of the Land".
The fact that federal and state governments routinely ignore the supreme law of the land doesn't mean that their actions are legal, any more than the fact that we all drive 65mph in a 55mph zone makes that legal.
I repeat my eariler example: if Congress passed a law making Fundamentalist Zoroastrianism the state religion and the Supremes okayed it, it would still be a violation of Amendment I. Do you claim otherwise?
Not necessarily. If your input it supposed to be, say, a 16 digit credit card number, probably more efficient to have a char[17] bufffer - and either do length checking or truncate to that length - than to have to keep malloc()ing.
Eh. Sometimes you need the efficiency, sometimes you want the simplicity, of close control.
"With great power comes great responsibility" - it's as true for hackers using unconstrained languages as it is for superheroes.
It's not. If that's what you're looking for, may I suggest looking into some sort of vocational school?
(Which isn't to say that a professor who's failing almost all of his/her students isn't doing something wrong.)
People don't strike for the fun of it, or to cause you stress. Striking is a lot more stressful on them than on you. They strike because they're getting a raw deal and have exhausted other options.
You should lay the blame at the feet of those putting the screws to the workers until they have no recourse but to strike,.
I see the two specific items linked to are buffer overflow exploits. Anyone learning to program in C needs to have good buffer dicipline beaten into their heads.
It's like wiping your butt after crapping - mandatory basic hygine. If you can always remember to wipe your butt, you can always remembers to watch your buffer lengths.
No, a law is unconstitutional (and therefore illegal) in and of itself, not because the Black Riders say yea or nea. If Congress passed a law making Fundamentalist Zoroastrianism the state religion and the Supremes okayed it, it would still be a violation of Amendment I. Bad calls by umpires don't change the rules or the facts of the game.
Under any rational system of ethics, institutionalised societal norms - i.e., laws - have no bearing on what is or is not ethical. Congress doesn't determine what is right and what is wrong, it determines only who the state will point guns at.