Multi-desktops don't do a thing for me. What is the use of a graphical application running in a window I can't see? Multi-desktops with a useable preview window might be worthwhile, but the way it's done in KDE/Gnome right now is worthless.
Like many organizational UI things, it depends on the person. However, I can explain how I use multiple desktops to try and give you an idea. Each of my desktops has a theme. Desktop 4 is always my communcations. I keep an email client and my instant messenger there. If I need to send or read email or instant messages it's always "Alt-4" to bring them up. My other three desktops each get a project. For my job I've typically got 2 or 3 tasks I supposed to be working on. At the moment desktop 3 watching a long-running test. Several windows are watching logs files, another is where I run various commands to tweak the test. Desktop 2 has a bunch of diffs where I'm working on a large code merge waiting for me. Desktop 1 is free; when someone wanders in and I need to quick do some research it goes there.
In essence I'm using desktops instead of minimizing windows. Switching to a given desktop essentially hides everything unrelated to the task at hand and reveals everything I need. I find it quite convient.
Gor multi-taskers who often have multiple windows associated with a single task it can be a great way to organize things. I do agree, it's non-intuitive and unnecessary complex for many users; thus I don't recommend it for everyone.
Why should I not be allowed to say, "I'm going to kill you at 5PM tomorrow"? Why? because it's not protected speech.
I, for one, am all for that being protected speech. I certainly hope anyone planning on killing, injuring, or otherwise harming is polite enough to give me 24 hours notice. Ideally they'll say it in a recording I can provide to police. It's the criminals who commit crimes without announcing it in advance that worry me a bit more.
The game has some similarities to Monopoly and Risk but is really a completly different kind of game. Most people to like Risk seem to really enjoy settlers.
That's a good way to put it. The recent German board game invasion has brought lots of games that serious gamers can play with non-gamers. (Gamer: n. One who enjoys table-top games including board games, war games, card games, and role-playing games, as a primary hobby.) Several friends who really have no idea what I see in something like Twilight Imperium will enjoy Settlers of Catan.
That said, I eventually grew tired of Catan. A game that does similarlly well with non-gamers and gamers alike is
Carcassonne, a tile placing game about building and controlling roads, fields, and cities.
When anti-abortion groups post this information on doctors who perform abortions, it is considered a threat. Why is this any different?
Context is important. A list of doctors who perform abortions labelled something "Hit List," where those doctors who have been murdered have had their names and pictures crossed off and given labels like "Job done" does strongly suggest a threat. (This is from memory, the actual incident was a while ago.) Even then, I not pleased with such things being taken down. I for one am happy when potential criminals advertise their plans. It makes it easier for police to monitor them.
A simple list, void of any suggestions on insinuations on what to do with the list would be simple fact reporting; taking it down would clearly be violating freedom of speech. You could even suggest taking legal actions ("Go protest these guys' houses." or "Make sure their neighbors know who lives next to them.") would be all well and good.
I don't know the context of the delegate list. If the list suggested committing crimes against them, yes, the FBI should investigate (not necessarily take the pages down, just investigate).
Re:If you don't like reality, skip this post.
on
Gmail Adds Features
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Ok. I blame the american school systems for people who think businesses are there to give them everything for free.
The author didn't say he expected everything to be free. He asked if GMail will starting charging for some features, a reasonable enough question. You're just looking to be offended.
Do you really see Google sustaining itself on banner ads and advertising partners alone?
Given that
96% of Google's revenue if from advertising, I do fully expect advertising to remain their primary focus and income source. Google will obviously seek other ways to make money (they already do by selling / licensing their search tech), but I expect their core services (including GMail) to remain free. Free cool stuff gives them mindshare and hits. Mindshare and hits translate into advertising revenue. Google would never have succeeded with a short-term mind set that was willing to irritate customers for a quick buck. If they start, the next Google will see the weakness and pop up.
...a very common thing these days which was the reason I could not get my Grandmother to switch to gmail (she's one of those people that forwards every joke email she gets onto you thinking you'll read it).
If you're concerned with the usage-restrictions in a EULA, take the time to find out.
That's bullshit. When I head over to my local bookstore, I don't first log into the publishers web site to see if I'll be able to sell the book to a used book shop. When I go buy a CD, I don't check to see if I can make a tape copy, or if I can sell it to a used cd shop.
The software industry has managed to convince the world that they get to have magical new rules unlike those anywhere else in the world. This little trick is based on some downright flaky court rulings and an ignorant public. It does not need to be this way, and it should not need to be this way.
I'm perfectly happy to make contracts. I sign employment agreements, cell phone contracts, auto-loan contracts, service contracts, and more. In those situations it's done honestly; we agree roughly on the terms, I'm presented with and sign the contract, we then exchange goods, services, and/or money.
And if you don't agree with the terms (quite reasonable in the case of spyware etc.) don't accept the EULA and send back the software for a refund; that is: don't use the software
Hahahahahahaha. Sure. Take it back; I'm sure they'll happily give you a refund. Right. And since we're in fantasy-land anyway they'll reimburse you for the time you wasted buying a product you only learned you couldn't use when you got home.
It is the software maker's perogative to offer their software on whatever conditions they want, and it is your perogative to NOT USE THEIR SOFTWARE (and instead consider giving your money to a competing product).
Sure. I was at Best Buy recently. There were music CDs, the offer appeared to be about $18 for a music CD, o strings attached. There were some magazines, the offer was often something like $3.95 for a magazine, no strings attached. I actually bought a new clock-radio; the posted offer was $29.95, no strings attached. I headed over to check out pricing for Doom III. The posted offer was $54.99. There was no sign warning me of additional limitations. There certainly wasn't any contract present that I could review. Yet, for some magical reason, I'm supposed to treat Doom III different. It'll complete bullshit. If software publishers want contracts with customers, they can afford to be up-front and honest about it.
but where is the financial incentive for programmers?
The answer is complex and multi-part...
First, not all programmers require financial incentive. Where is the
financial incentive for, say, musicians? Someone who starts a band for the
money is a fool. Some Free software will be written just because the person
loves doing it. Some will be written because the author wants the product for
themselves.
Second, huge numbers of programmers write software that is strictly used by
their direct employer. Making GM's payroll reporting code open source won't
change a thing; it's specific to GM. Since it's not distributed outside of the
company, it doesn't even need to leave the company. Similarlly, lots of
software is custom written by third parties for a single purpose; the same
behavior will apply.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I have faith in the market.
Programmers will want money and have the ability to write software. Businesses
have money and want software. Something will be worked out. Some might use the Street Performer
Protocol. For some packages a large company, or a consortium of companies
might simply hire someone to write or maintain software (if a fraction of the
companies that purchase Microsoft Office were to pay a fraction of what they
pay for Microsoft Office, they could easily hire a team to work on and extend
OpenOffice). For some products (games come to mind), the software may be open
source, and the data (images, levels, audio) would be what you pay for.
Companys will likely spring up to offer paid support for open source products;
companies actually hiring developers who work on the product will have an edge
in providing high quality support.
If everyone had to go Open Source tomorrow the industry would have a serious
shakeup. And in the end it may very well be a small industry. But by no means
would it be the end of programming as a job.
I work in a small medical device company writing java, and I could not imagine them using my software for free -- I need to eat too.
I find it unlikely that Joe Random Hacker will write them software for free (lacking the hardware or the desire). So they'll still need to pay someone to write it. Open source effectively ignores copyright; but you're not getting paid based on copyright. You're getting paid to work for them and general software they need. They're not really getting paid for copyright either (although I'm sure they copyright your work), they're getting paid for the device they sell, and they need to provide software with it. Realistically, what would change if your software was Open Source and widely available tomorrow? I suspect very little. I doubt your company would just ask random external people to write updates for their software. If your competitors start using your software on their devices, they might take their competitor's code and try to reuse good bits; but that will still require a skilled programmer to review, consider appropriateness, and integrate it. They're going to pay someone to worry about it.
Similarlly, IBM resells a bunch of Open Source software like Apache; they maintain their own teams to polish, refine, and extend that software to satisfy their customers. IBM seems to be doing okay.
I also find it amusing that those shouting that Christians are bigoted and trying to censor what they can see, are trying to censor the Christians (IANAC).
Telling someone that they're wrong and that they should shut their incorrect pie-holes isn't censorship, it's free speech. Now, if the government was asking for $7 to $10 from each person to spend on efforts to silence these Christians, well, yeah, that would be censorship. In the meantime, just as it's this group's right to argue for censoring the internet, it's other people's rights to tell the world that this group is a bunch of ninnies and you should ignore them.
Makes you think twice about if your claim is valid or not doesn't it?
And if your claim is valid, it makes you think twice about how much you trust the court system. Courts are human systems; human systems aren't perfect. Occasionally the wrong guy is going to lose. A niave Loser Pays system will destroy that occasional wrong guy and provides incentive for individuals to simply accept harm done to them.
Heh, no offense taken. Core Rules 1 and 2 were both full of compromises and had their weak points. That sort of compromise are why lots of money was invested in the goofy movie in CR1, why the interface is custom (and thus harder to use). I'm proud of lots of CR2, but there are big parts I wish could have been different, but it wasn't an option given the demands of TSR/WotC, the budget, and the release schedule. Still, for first job out of college, it rocked hard. (How many job interviews feature your future boss asking if you're willing to run a D&D game at the office? At one point Jim Ward played in a game I ran there.)
Similar compromises caused the 3e product (the Master Tools) to never really appear in a finished version. It's telling that eventually the E-Tools / Master Tools were taken from the original developer and handed to the open source group responsible for PCGen.
This seems as good a place to mention it as any... because I was working on the Core Rules 2.0, I got to visit TSR just as they were closing up and moving to Washington / Wizards of the Coast.
I wrote up a bit about my visit to TSR, which might be interesting. It's still a draft (I'm hoping the co-worker mentioned in the story will give it a once-over), but it's reasonably polished at this point.
...check out the old 'Core Rules' CD. Came with a...mediocre character generator
Hey, I helped write that character generator! It wasn't medio... um... well, actually I guess you're right.
Still, the manuals in RTF were cool. Core Rules 2.0 (which is what I actually worked on) came with the manuals in RTF, Windows Help, and sweet, sweet HTML. Absolutely no DRM or anything similar; you could copy them onto your hard disk and do what you wanted with them. If you got the expansion, you even got all of the Complete Handbooks for all the main races and classes. That did rock hard. On the down side, it was only for the 2nd edition rehash books (the black bordered 2nd edition). As far as I know, there was no similar product for 3rd or 3.5 ed.
Open source shouldn't content itself with stealing good ideas, that's Microsoft's job.
First, and perhaps most importantly, if Evolution doesn't look very similar to Outlook, many Outlook users will look at it and immediately dismiss it as low quality. Even if the interface easy to use for new users while being powerful and efficient for power users, many users fear any change. By borrowing Outlook's look, Evolution can attract more users.
Second, as you say, Outlook's interface is a "good idea." Sure, it can be improved, but it's not a bad place to start. If you're going to replace it, it darn well needs to better, not just different (see point the first). Start with something good, then incrementally improve. Wholesale overhauls are almost always a bad idea; it's hard to tell if you've really improved anything until you've spend large numbers of hours working on it.
So I'm not worrying about it too much right now. Give it some time to get comfortable (despite the version number, in the grand scheme of things Evolution is relatively new) before it gets bold.
Everyone who was on that list was notified via postal mail that they were on it, and were also told how to appeal the entry. It's so simple even a hanging chad could figure it out.
Incorrect. Some counties did. Some didn't. Some
details.
Etta Rosado, spokeswoman for the Volusia County Department of
Elections, said the county essentially accepted the file at face value, did
nothing to confirm the accuracy of it and doesn't inform citizens ahead of time
that they have been dropped from the voter rolls.
In those counties that did, a surprising number of entries were found to be incorrect (same article):
Of the 3,258 names on the original list, therefore, the county concluded that more than 15 percent were in error.
15% false positives? In that county alone 245 were assumed guilty until they took active steps to prove their innocence. I find that abhorent. The right to vote is one of our most important rights, people should not be expected to jump through hoops to be allowed to do so.
You're just angry your horse lost the race. Boo hoo.
The situation is more complex than Democrats versus Republicans. Gore
wasn't my candidate; I voted third party and was fully prepared for either a
Bush or Gore victory. I'm not angry Bush won. I'm angry at what was at best a
dangerously sloppy felon purge. I think every American should hold our elections process to a high standard. This is why I'm also against receiptless electronic voting machines (which as far as I know is a non-partisian issue).
You don't talk about how the race was called early for Gore while voting was still open in the conservative panhandle, causing thousands of conservative voters to give up and go home.
I see a large difference between a media report on an election and a
government body telling someone that they cannot vote. True, those reports can
influence the election, but it hardly seems the same level of seriousness.
How about the effort to throw out valid overseas votes by military
personnel?
Indeed, that's a terrible thing. But attempts to block votes by one side in
no ways justifies attempts to block votes by the other.
Why is [Tim] a hero?... Because he chose not to capitalize commercially on the Web?
Well, it's hard to know, only the original poster could say for sure. But here is my guess: Tim could have made the web proprietary and closed off. The result might have made Tim wealthy, but almost certainly would have dramatically limited the impact of the wed. We'd be in a world where Tim was significantly better off, but humanity as a whole was only marginally better off. Because it was free and open, Tim is marginally better off (he still got fame), but humanity as a whole is notably better off. Or something like that.
To be fair, I'm not sure I'd define it as heroism, but "hero" means different things to different people. Given that one definition is "a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities
(source), it's a reasonable enough use of the word. I expect the poster admires Tim's achievements and noble qualities.
I understand that many people DO feel that way, but nobody has ever really explained WHY heroism is a necessary consequence of altriusm.
Some people would view altruism as a noble quality and a notable achievement. These people might admire that quality and achievement, and thus view someone engaging in that altruism as a hero.
How is the measure of your altriusm the measure of your heroism?
...
Why is someone who makes a profit necessarily evil?
False assumptions.
Reread the article; the poster never suggested that.
1. Every person on that list had months to appeal their entry on the list
Wait, I did hear something about that... let me see if I can find the article...
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine month."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
I know I certainly don't make a habit of requesting voter blacklists to see if I'm still allowed to vote. I just kindof assume that what with my not being a felon and all, that I'm still allowed. Perhaps I'm just naive.
2. The names improperly on the list were of a demographic more
likely to vote for Bush.
According to many surveys I just made up, they all would have voted for
Dukakis. Odd, huh? The reality is that we won't know how they would have
voted. And it's irrelevant anyway; any illegal disenfranchisment should be
abhorrant to every American.
3. Many districts just ignored the list because of the improper
inclusions on it, allowing felons to vote who shouldn't have
Given the choice between letting felons vote and denying the vote to legit
voters, I'd let the felons vote any day. Good for the districts who chose to
do so. (Better yet, good for the vast freaking majority of the country that
just lets released felons vote. Blocking the felon vote is a waste of time.)
From what I've seen so far, the propaganda here in Europe has mostly circled around the fact that the earliest recordings of Elvis are due to turn 50 soon and they are apparently still bringing in cash for the record companies.
Indeed. And I know for a fact that if the copyrights on Elvis recordings expire, that Elvis will stop recording new songs. Can you image it?
Or maybe the companies should accept the fact that 50 years of income is quite a good run, and maybe they should start looking for new Elvis level talent?
First it was anything but $0.99/track is not cheap enough. Then $0.99 is not enough,.. Now people are not even willing to spend a whole quarter for a song?
Quick, alert the media to your shocking discovery! When sampling a large number of people, they will place differing values on the same product or service! Those who don't value the product or service at all will even refuse to pay anything! What is the world coming to!
If they're on the same box as me, you just blacklisted 399 other domains that shouldn't have been blacklisted.
You're not blacklisting; you're marking as "more likely spam". In practice the damage will be minimal. First, legit email from the other 399 domains will in general be non-spam-like. The positive hit on the IP address won't be enough to push them over the edge. The penalties for being found in the SURBL at the moment are all relatively small, all less than 1 (5 points are needed in the default configuration to mark a message as spam). The only exception is data from the Spam Cop database, which is fairly small and more carefully vetted. If they broaden from hostnames to IPs, you might have to tweak the scores down, but that's it. Second, what's the realistic chance of your getting email containing a URL linking to that IP? There are millions of web sites. The Big Important Web Sites aren't on the sort of massive shared server you describe. The chances that you'll get an email mentioning one of those smaller sites is pretty small. There is a risk, but it's small enought that I won't lose any sleep over it.
I suppose this will driver spam-advertizers to obviscate their URLs in the spam mails. Eg use javaScript to build the URL so the real URL can't be detected...
Which is fine. There are two defenses, both of which work now:
1. Javascript in a message is a big spam flag; legit mail almost never uses it. SpamAssassin and most other hybrid systems assign mail a score, more points means more likely to be spam. HTML typically adds a small penalty, javascript adds a bit penalty. Bayesian systems that see the Javascript will quickly learn to penalize any javascript tags. 2. The filter can filter based on what the user sees, not the raw feed. SpamAssassin already does this to catch people using HTML to try and break up words.
the code theft was just bullshit reasoning, they didn't have the thing ready back then.
A friend of mine who works in the industry was sent to Valve to evaluate the Source engine (the HL2 engine). His company was considering licensing it for their own games. He visited in fall of 2003, just a few months before the original release date. His assessment: the game was nowhere near ready, there were many, many months of work ahead of them. He knew that a delay was going to announced and agreed that the code theft was just a handy smokescreen.
The same point as all modern PC game copy protection: to delay access to cracked copies. While emulation has many valid uses, it's likely that most CD emulators are used to play illegal copies of games. Disallowing CD emulation makes it harder, increasing the window where it's easier to buy the game than to get a working illegal copy.
I still think it's scummy (It's not their business what I run on my PC. There are valid uses for such software.), but that's the reasoning. Given the complexity of getting a CD emulator installed and working, I don't think it's worth the work, but that's the state of the world.
I completely understand that this isn't a free speech issue.
The issue is one of Big Government. While I do err liberal, I'm
no hippy. Government should minimize its impact on us.
As for being unable to police your children all of the time,
that's really your problem, not mine. If you can't afford enough
time to monitor and educate your kids, perhaps you can't afford
to have children. By your own admission, you had access to
pornography as a child, yet somehow you managed to turn out
alright. Perhaps a combination of parental monitoring and a
focus on what is right and wrong? It seems to have worked for
me.
Ultimately your argument seems to be that you don't have time
to raise your children and protect them from images on
television. Instead of living without television (which many
families do), or restricting access to the television (with a
locked door if necessary), you'd prefer that we additional laws
and force everyone to pay to help you parent. That doesn't seem
like a reasonable option to me.
Its a great piece of work...it helps the gov't allow parents to restrict what the parents want the kids to watch without having to pass draconian laws censoring the general public.
My parents had a similar device. It was called fscking paying attention to what I was watching.
Thats the way technology should be...
Dictated by the government, no longer an option for individual consumers, and increasing the cost for everyone when only a small minority will use it? I'm not entirely convinced that's the way technology should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Like many organizational UI things, it depends on the person. However, I can explain how I use multiple desktops to try and give you an idea. Each of my desktops has a theme. Desktop 4 is always my communcations. I keep an email client and my instant messenger there. If I need to send or read email or instant messages it's always "Alt-4" to bring them up. My other three desktops each get a project. For my job I've typically got 2 or 3 tasks I supposed to be working on. At the moment desktop 3 watching a long-running test. Several windows are watching logs files, another is where I run various commands to tweak the test. Desktop 2 has a bunch of diffs where I'm working on a large code merge waiting for me. Desktop 1 is free; when someone wanders in and I need to quick do some research it goes there.
In essence I'm using desktops instead of minimizing windows. Switching to a given desktop essentially hides everything unrelated to the task at hand and reveals everything I need. I find it quite convient.
Gor multi-taskers who often have multiple windows associated with a single task it can be a great way to organize things. I do agree, it's non-intuitive and unnecessary complex for many users; thus I don't recommend it for everyone.
I, for one, am all for that being protected speech. I certainly hope anyone planning on killing, injuring, or otherwise harming is polite enough to give me 24 hours notice. Ideally they'll say it in a recording I can provide to police. It's the criminals who commit crimes without announcing it in advance that worry me a bit more.
That's a good way to put it. The recent German board game invasion has brought lots of games that serious gamers can play with non-gamers. (Gamer: n. One who enjoys table-top games including board games, war games, card games, and role-playing games, as a primary hobby.) Several friends who really have no idea what I see in something like Twilight Imperium will enjoy Settlers of Catan.
That said, I eventually grew tired of Catan. A game that does similarlly well with non-gamers and gamers alike is Carcassonne, a tile placing game about building and controlling roads, fields, and cities.
Context is important. A list of doctors who perform abortions labelled something "Hit List," where those doctors who have been murdered have had their names and pictures crossed off and given labels like "Job done" does strongly suggest a threat. (This is from memory, the actual incident was a while ago.) Even then, I not pleased with such things being taken down. I for one am happy when potential criminals advertise their plans. It makes it easier for police to monitor them.
A simple list, void of any suggestions on insinuations on what to do with the list would be simple fact reporting; taking it down would clearly be violating freedom of speech. You could even suggest taking legal actions ("Go protest these guys' houses." or "Make sure their neighbors know who lives next to them.") would be all well and good.
I don't know the context of the delegate list. If the list suggested committing crimes against them, yes, the FBI should investigate (not necessarily take the pages down, just investigate).
The author didn't say he expected everything to be free. He asked if GMail will starting charging for some features, a reasonable enough question. You're just looking to be offended.
Given that 96% of Google's revenue if from advertising, I do fully expect advertising to remain their primary focus and income source. Google will obviously seek other ways to make money (they already do by selling / licensing their search tech), but I expect their core services (including GMail) to remain free. Free cool stuff gives them mindshare and hits. Mindshare and hits translate into advertising revenue. Google would never have succeeded with a short-term mind set that was willing to irritate customers for a quick buck. If they start, the next Google will see the weakness and pop up.
You realize that this is a feature, right?
That's bullshit. When I head over to my local bookstore, I don't first log into the publishers web site to see if I'll be able to sell the book to a used book shop. When I go buy a CD, I don't check to see if I can make a tape copy, or if I can sell it to a used cd shop.
The software industry has managed to convince the world that they get to have magical new rules unlike those anywhere else in the world. This little trick is based on some downright flaky court rulings and an ignorant public. It does not need to be this way, and it should not need to be this way.
I'm perfectly happy to make contracts. I sign employment agreements, cell phone contracts, auto-loan contracts, service contracts, and more. In those situations it's done honestly; we agree roughly on the terms, I'm presented with and sign the contract, we then exchange goods, services, and/or money.
Hahahahahahaha. Sure. Take it back; I'm sure they'll happily give you a refund. Right. And since we're in fantasy-land anyway they'll reimburse you for the time you wasted buying a product you only learned you couldn't use when you got home.
Sure. I was at Best Buy recently. There were music CDs, the offer appeared to be about $18 for a music CD, o strings attached. There were some magazines, the offer was often something like $3.95 for a magazine, no strings attached. I actually bought a new clock-radio; the posted offer was $29.95, no strings attached. I headed over to check out pricing for Doom III. The posted offer was $54.99. There was no sign warning me of additional limitations. There certainly wasn't any contract present that I could review. Yet, for some magical reason, I'm supposed to treat Doom III different. It'll complete bullshit. If software publishers want contracts with customers, they can afford to be up-front and honest about it.
The answer is complex and multi-part...
First, not all programmers require financial incentive. Where is the financial incentive for, say, musicians? Someone who starts a band for the money is a fool. Some Free software will be written just because the person loves doing it. Some will be written because the author wants the product for themselves.
Second, huge numbers of programmers write software that is strictly used by their direct employer. Making GM's payroll reporting code open source won't change a thing; it's specific to GM. Since it's not distributed outside of the company, it doesn't even need to leave the company. Similarlly, lots of software is custom written by third parties for a single purpose; the same behavior will apply.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I have faith in the market. Programmers will want money and have the ability to write software. Businesses have money and want software. Something will be worked out. Some might use the Street Performer Protocol. For some packages a large company, or a consortium of companies might simply hire someone to write or maintain software (if a fraction of the companies that purchase Microsoft Office were to pay a fraction of what they pay for Microsoft Office, they could easily hire a team to work on and extend OpenOffice). For some products (games come to mind), the software may be open source, and the data (images, levels, audio) would be what you pay for. Companys will likely spring up to offer paid support for open source products; companies actually hiring developers who work on the product will have an edge in providing high quality support.
If everyone had to go Open Source tomorrow the industry would have a serious shakeup. And in the end it may very well be a small industry. But by no means would it be the end of programming as a job.
I find it unlikely that Joe Random Hacker will write them software for free (lacking the hardware or the desire). So they'll still need to pay someone to write it. Open source effectively ignores copyright; but you're not getting paid based on copyright. You're getting paid to work for them and general software they need. They're not really getting paid for copyright either (although I'm sure they copyright your work), they're getting paid for the device they sell, and they need to provide software with it. Realistically, what would change if your software was Open Source and widely available tomorrow? I suspect very little. I doubt your company would just ask random external people to write updates for their software. If your competitors start using your software on their devices, they might take their competitor's code and try to reuse good bits; but that will still require a skilled programmer to review, consider appropriateness, and integrate it. They're going to pay someone to worry about it.
Similarlly, IBM resells a bunch of Open Source software like Apache; they maintain their own teams to polish, refine, and extend that software to satisfy their customers. IBM seems to be doing okay.
Telling someone that they're wrong and that they should shut their incorrect pie-holes isn't censorship, it's free speech. Now, if the government was asking for $7 to $10 from each person to spend on efforts to silence these Christians, well, yeah, that would be censorship. In the meantime, just as it's this group's right to argue for censoring the internet, it's other people's rights to tell the world that this group is a bunch of ninnies and you should ignore them.
And if your claim is valid, it makes you think twice about how much you trust the court system. Courts are human systems; human systems aren't perfect. Occasionally the wrong guy is going to lose. A niave Loser Pays system will destroy that occasional wrong guy and provides incentive for individuals to simply accept harm done to them.
Heh, no offense taken. Core Rules 1 and 2 were both full of compromises and had their weak points. That sort of compromise are why lots of money was invested in the goofy movie in CR1, why the interface is custom (and thus harder to use). I'm proud of lots of CR2, but there are big parts I wish could have been different, but it wasn't an option given the demands of TSR/WotC, the budget, and the release schedule. Still, for first job out of college, it rocked hard. (How many job interviews feature your future boss asking if you're willing to run a D&D game at the office? At one point Jim Ward played in a game I ran there.)
Similar compromises caused the 3e product (the Master Tools) to never really appear in a finished version. It's telling that eventually the E-Tools / Master Tools were taken from the original developer and handed to the open source group responsible for PCGen.
This seems as good a place to mention it as any... because I was working on the Core Rules 2.0, I got to visit TSR just as they were closing up and moving to Washington / Wizards of the Coast. I wrote up a bit about my visit to TSR, which might be interesting. It's still a draft (I'm hoping the co-worker mentioned in the story will give it a once-over), but it's reasonably polished at this point.
Hey, I helped write that character generator! It wasn't medio... um... well, actually I guess you're right.
Still, the manuals in RTF were cool. Core Rules 2.0 (which is what I actually worked on) came with the manuals in RTF, Windows Help, and sweet, sweet HTML. Absolutely no DRM or anything similar; you could copy them onto your hard disk and do what you wanted with them. If you got the expansion, you even got all of the Complete Handbooks for all the main races and classes. That did rock hard. On the down side, it was only for the 2nd edition rehash books (the black bordered 2nd edition). As far as I know, there was no similar product for 3rd or 3.5 ed.
First, and perhaps most importantly, if Evolution doesn't look very similar to Outlook, many Outlook users will look at it and immediately dismiss it as low quality. Even if the interface easy to use for new users while being powerful and efficient for power users, many users fear any change. By borrowing Outlook's look, Evolution can attract more users.
Second, as you say, Outlook's interface is a "good idea." Sure, it can be improved, but it's not a bad place to start. If you're going to replace it, it darn well needs to better, not just different (see point the first). Start with something good, then incrementally improve. Wholesale overhauls are almost always a bad idea; it's hard to tell if you've really improved anything until you've spend large numbers of hours working on it.
So I'm not worrying about it too much right now. Give it some time to get comfortable (despite the version number, in the grand scheme of things Evolution is relatively new) before it gets bold.
Incorrect. Some counties did. Some didn't. Some details.
In those counties that did, a surprising number of entries were found to be incorrect (same article):
15% false positives? In that county alone 245 were assumed guilty until they took active steps to prove their innocence. I find that abhorent. The right to vote is one of our most important rights, people should not be expected to jump through hoops to be allowed to do so.
Sure, how about Kelvin King and Sandylynn Williams?
The situation is more complex than Democrats versus Republicans. Gore wasn't my candidate; I voted third party and was fully prepared for either a Bush or Gore victory. I'm not angry Bush won. I'm angry at what was at best a dangerously sloppy felon purge. I think every American should hold our elections process to a high standard. This is why I'm also against receiptless electronic voting machines (which as far as I know is a non-partisian issue).
I see a large difference between a media report on an election and a government body telling someone that they cannot vote. True, those reports can influence the election, but it hardly seems the same level of seriousness.
Indeed, that's a terrible thing. But attempts to block votes by one side in no ways justifies attempts to block votes by the other.
Well, it's hard to know, only the original poster could say for sure. But here is my guess: Tim could have made the web proprietary and closed off. The result might have made Tim wealthy, but almost certainly would have dramatically limited the impact of the wed. We'd be in a world where Tim was significantly better off, but humanity as a whole was only marginally better off. Because it was free and open, Tim is marginally better off (he still got fame), but humanity as a whole is notably better off. Or something like that.
To be fair, I'm not sure I'd define it as heroism, but "hero" means different things to different people. Given that one definition is "a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities (source), it's a reasonable enough use of the word. I expect the poster admires Tim's achievements and noble qualities.
Some people would view altruism as a noble quality and a notable achievement. These people might admire that quality and achievement, and thus view someone engaging in that altruism as a hero.
False assumptions. Reread the article; the poster never suggested that.
Wait, I did hear something about that... let me see if I can find the article...
I know I certainly don't make a habit of requesting voter blacklists to see if I'm still allowed to vote. I just kindof assume that what with my not being a felon and all, that I'm still allowed. Perhaps I'm just naive.
According to many surveys I just made up, they all would have voted for Dukakis. Odd, huh? The reality is that we won't know how they would have voted. And it's irrelevant anyway; any illegal disenfranchisment should be abhorrant to every American.
Given the choice between letting felons vote and denying the vote to legit voters, I'd let the felons vote any day. Good for the districts who chose to do so. (Better yet, good for the vast freaking majority of the country that just lets released felons vote. Blocking the felon vote is a waste of time.)
Indeed. And I know for a fact that if the copyrights on Elvis recordings expire, that Elvis will stop recording new songs. Can you image it?
Or maybe the companies should accept the fact that 50 years of income is quite a good run, and maybe they should start looking for new Elvis level talent?
Quick, alert the media to your shocking discovery! When sampling a large number of people, they will place differing values on the same product or service! Those who don't value the product or service at all will even refuse to pay anything! What is the world coming to!
You're not blacklisting; you're marking as "more likely spam". In practice the damage will be minimal. First, legit email from the other 399 domains will in general be non-spam-like. The positive hit on the IP address won't be enough to push them over the edge. The penalties for being found in the SURBL at the moment are all relatively small, all less than 1 (5 points are needed in the default configuration to mark a message as spam). The only exception is data from the Spam Cop database, which is fairly small and more carefully vetted. If they broaden from hostnames to IPs, you might have to tweak the scores down, but that's it. Second, what's the realistic chance of your getting email containing a URL linking to that IP? There are millions of web sites. The Big Important Web Sites aren't on the sort of massive shared server you describe. The chances that you'll get an email mentioning one of those smaller sites is pretty small. There is a risk, but it's small enought that I won't lose any sleep over it.
Which is fine. There are two defenses, both of which work now: 1. Javascript in a message is a big spam flag; legit mail almost never uses it. SpamAssassin and most other hybrid systems assign mail a score, more points means more likely to be spam. HTML typically adds a small penalty, javascript adds a bit penalty. Bayesian systems that see the Javascript will quickly learn to penalize any javascript tags. 2. The filter can filter based on what the user sees, not the raw feed. SpamAssassin already does this to catch people using HTML to try and break up words.
All in all, this isn't worrying to me at all.
A friend of mine who works in the industry was sent to Valve to evaluate the Source engine (the HL2 engine). His company was considering licensing it for their own games. He visited in fall of 2003, just a few months before the original release date. His assessment: the game was nowhere near ready, there were many, many months of work ahead of them. He knew that a delay was going to announced and agreed that the code theft was just a handy smokescreen.
The same point as all modern PC game copy protection: to delay access to cracked copies. While emulation has many valid uses, it's likely that most CD emulators are used to play illegal copies of games. Disallowing CD emulation makes it harder, increasing the window where it's easier to buy the game than to get a working illegal copy.
I still think it's scummy (It's not their business what I run on my PC. There are valid uses for such software.), but that's the reasoning. Given the complexity of getting a CD emulator installed and working, I don't think it's worth the work, but that's the state of the world.
You're going to ignore their relative political records, their plans for the future of our nation, and vote solely to irritate a third party?
If I make shamelessly anti-Kerry movie, will that help balance things out so you can go back to voting based on your assessment of the candidates?
I completely understand that this isn't a free speech issue. The issue is one of Big Government. While I do err liberal, I'm no hippy. Government should minimize its impact on us.
As for being unable to police your children all of the time, that's really your problem, not mine. If you can't afford enough time to monitor and educate your kids, perhaps you can't afford to have children. By your own admission, you had access to pornography as a child, yet somehow you managed to turn out alright. Perhaps a combination of parental monitoring and a focus on what is right and wrong? It seems to have worked for me.
Ultimately your argument seems to be that you don't have time to raise your children and protect them from images on television. Instead of living without television (which many families do), or restricting access to the television (with a locked door if necessary), you'd prefer that we additional laws and force everyone to pay to help you parent. That doesn't seem like a reasonable option to me.
My parents had a similar device. It was called fscking paying attention to what I was watching.
Dictated by the government, no longer an option for individual consumers, and increasing the cost for everyone when only a small minority will use it? I'm not entirely convinced that's the way technology should be.