I tend to agree. If the term does not have widespread currency, which could mean that it is used in dictionaries and in common usage, used by professionals in the practice of their profession (a medical, engineering, scientific, political, or economics related term or something that professionals of a particular field could be called to define in their testimony), or defined explicitly by law then it should be regarded as a meaningless statement and stricken from the record of the court and not considered. The RIAA does not have the right to make up words and terms as they go, especially when it is clear that their goal in selecting a term to define an activity is to stigmatize or present a biased view of the activity in question (alleged use of filesharing software for copyright infringement). Can you get a case thrown out if the opposition uses meaningless statements (a variation of the Chewbacca defense albeit a bit more subtle in this case) in their arguments?
That is interesting. How do they prevent two different courts of similar precedence from reaching polar opposite judgements on substantially similar cases? Wouldn't this type of no-precedent system serve to increase the arbitrariness of the law and if so then how can that be a good thing? How about the EU and equal protection under law? Doesn't the EU have some basic standardized rules concerning laws and legal matters as a condition of membership? Thanks for answering.
If you want another example of how pernicious these taxes can be and how difficult it is to eradicate them, even when the taxes have long outlived their original stated purpose, then look no further than the Federal Telephone Excise Tax. It was originally enacted to help fund the Spanish American War, but it persisted for over one hundred (100) years after hostilities were ended. That is why citizens groups form to argue so vehemently against new taxes, even ones which might have some merit, because of the notoriously difficult and onerous process required to get rid of a tax once it is enacted and the government has become accustomed to the revenue stream.
I am always dismayed, not surprised mind you but dismayed, at the willingness of my fellow American citizens to willingly surrender ever greater powers of control and surveillance even without any clear idea of what is presumably gained by giving up those rights and powers. There are already too many laws, and too much government power, and too much government control and yet people want to give up even more of their independence to the government. The problem is exacerbated, IMHO, by the busy body nature of the religious right, liberal tax and spend left, and generally older people who want the government to run their lives for them and for their neighbor (regardless of what their neighbor wants).
but where does that stuff come from? And how did it get there?
IANAA (I am not an astrophysicist) but I seem to remember, from the astronomy course which I took for fun in college, that stars formed out of hydrogen present after the big bang (the hydrogen formed soon after everything cooled down enough to allow protons and electrons to bind together again) which formed stars due to minute temperature variations throughout the universe (apparently if the temperature were entirely uniform then nothing interesting, including ultimately Humans, would ever have formed out of the large soup of hydrogen that was left over).
Now, depending upon the initial mass of a star and its final disposition (white dwarf, brown dwarf, neutron star, supernova, black hole) which depends upon that mass, the star creates ever heavier elements as the fusion of hydrogen into helium progresses into the fusion of Helium into Lithium and Lithium into Boron and so on all the way up to Iron (which is the heaviest element that can be produced by fusion). The elements that are heavier than Iron are produced in the massive pressure and forces generated by novas and super novas. Obviously this process has happened over and over again as matter and stars coalesced by gravitational attraction into the galaxies that we see today (lots of handwaving here, again IANAA).
Now, to answer your question, since dust is probably mostly carbon type stuff and compounds (which form pretty often in giant red stars) then over time as stars form and explode and form and explode and form and turn into black holes there will ultimately be some black holes surrounded by stray gases and dust from its own nova or surrounding novas or nearby stars over large periods of time. Lots of handwaving here, but does this answer your question?
At least part of the reason that we are not feeling it is because many of those dollars are not circulating within the borders of the United States. If you want to purchase oil on the international market, a commodity which is increasingly in demand worldwide, then you need US dollars to purchase it since OPEC nations (and many other producers as well) take payment for their oil only in US dollars. The petro-dollars and the status of the US dollar as a worldwide reserve currency insulate Americans from some of the ill effects of our poor national spending habits, but only up to a point and only for so long. There are other factors as well, currency manipulation on the part of the Chinese and others to prop up their export markets comes to mind, but the petro-dollars play a big part in buffering the inflation that might otherwise be felt here in America if all of those overseas dollars started washing up on our shores again.
So ICANN has the authority to insist that registrars get out of the domain speculation business. They don't have to ask the registrars; they can simply order it.
This is too easy for the registrars to get around. The unscrupulous registrars could develop their own secret network of shell companies, shills, and spammers to register hits from searches on the registrar's site and then split the profits when the registrar buys the domain back from their network of proxies to sell back to the customer. It would be difficult to prove that the proxies who are buying up the domains are directly connected to the registrar.
The problem is that these "registrars" as you say are not vetted properly by ICANN and so blatant violation of the rules goes on behind the scenes without their being any direct consequences for the "registrars". The whole system set up by ICANN was just begging to be taken advantage of, but then again it was probably set up by nice people who don't generally think like the con artists and shady businessmen do (the ones who believe that rules are made to be broken and only honest people pay taxes).
TFA mentions that some of the smaller registrars are logging searches put through their sites and engaging in the snatching racket directly through third party shell companies which are owned by or connected to the registrar. The registrar is trying to get a higher fee by having their shill sell the domain back to you for a higher price than the initial registration would otherwise have cost. Depending upon how automated the scam is the domain could be snapped up within minutes or even seconds of the search using the 5 day catch and release policy of ICANN (they need to charge a nominal and non-refundable fee for the catch and release service, $1 would be fine, to help prevent abuses by spammers and squatters).
Perhaps that is not entirely a bad thing. The advanced plugins, particularly the ad and script blockers that we all enjoy, might begin to attract the attention of advertisers with increased countermeasures and other arms race style responses if Firefox were to become even numbers with Internet Explorer. Let those who are in the know enjoy the fruits of a better user experience, but too many users could be a bad thing...evidence Internet Explorer.
The wünderengine, developed by the Ford Motor Company, went for three days under the simulated conditions of a 65,000-feet flight
This must be why the average fuel economy of American cars continues to suck so much dirt, all of the engineers are working on high altitude aircraft engines for use in the upcoming (any day now) FLYING version of the Ford Taurus...yeah.
That is why we have seen the proliferation of services, both online and brick and mortar, that sell prepared legal documents for common matters in local and regional jurisdictions for cut rate prices (i.e. divorce, living trust, power of attorney, incorporation, etc...). You are quite correct that many minor legal matters do not require a constitutional scholar to prepare the documents and pay the court filing fee, but there are still times when attorneys are needed and we you really do need one then you will be glad that they exist.
It would still be useful to locate those people so that their servers can be taken offline and then set up again on an isolated subnet. That way the command and control structure as well as the messaging protocol can be probed and analyzed safely without the server being able to signal the botnet to retaliate (it will try of course by the signals will not be going anywhere on the isolated subnet).
the average American seems pretty low on the tech literacy totem. At least from my interactions with Americans on trips there and on visitors here.
The result of a decades long decline in the quantity (and sometimes the quality) of the mathematics, science, and technology education in the primary and secondary school systems of the United States combined with a simultaneous and increasing trend towards outsourcing science and engineering related jobs (a one two punch really). There are still gifted students of course, who succeed in spite of the broken and backwards public education system, but they tend to go into business or law (America produces a lot of lawyers and lawsuits, about 4% of GDP last I heard) instead of science or engineering related careers. How far we have fallen from the heady days of the Apollo program and the space race, where science and engineering were respected and encouraged...hell of a shame.
Seriously the database layer is being commoditized
It has been commoditized for some time now, the concept of database was simply too valuable and generic to remain a franchise. Oracle especially and Microsoft more recently have realized this and are now offering their basic packages free of charge. The remaining franchises are in high end clustering and other advanced large scale data performance enhancements which only come into play in very large data centers with large and complex databases. The vast majority of everyday database applications are now well served by the free versions.
My only question, was Google required to disclose these changes, or are they just doing the right thing (again)?
As per the GPL, one is only required to disclose changes (and provide source) if the program is distributed. If you modify the program and decide that you do not want to distribute, but use it only for your own personal or internal company use then that is allowed. You could even operate a website off of your modified version and generate profits without being forced to release the code to your modifications. However, the modified program can never be sold or even given away to any external party without triggering the requirement to distribute the source code to all modifications along with it to anyone who asks.
I also wish these two databases interoperated more.
This can be a sticky issue in software design (i.e. how much support for external systems to include directly in the system). However, it has been my experience that it is better, from a design perspective, to create a standard interface for communications, or use one that has already been defined (W3C Web Services come to mind, but other types are possible) whereby adapters can be built to mediate and facilitate communications between pairs of systems. The use of the adapter pattern creates services which are decoupled from their clients allowing both to vary independently behind their respective interfaces and isolating any changes in the specific adapter(s). This is desirable from a design standpoint, even if it costs some performance (performance alone is almost never a good reason to violate abstraction), because it increases cohesion between components while at the same time reducing and minimizing coupling.
If Credit Card companies really cared about identity theft, then why do they mail out millions of unsolicited, pre-approved credit card offers every year?
This would be a really easy one to fix with just a bit of legislation really. The consumer credit contract should be like applying for any other major loan, consumer signature required for contract to be valid or the contract is void and all claims arising out of it are also void (i.e. the credit issuer or backer shoulders all of the responsibility for loaning out money to a phantom that they couldn't verify). This would place all of the risk for verifying identity and preventing theft on the credit card issuers. Some people might complain that this would make credit harder to get for "deserving borrowers" but really the last kind of credit that those marginal borrowers need is yet another unsecured, high rate, short term borrowing instrument (i.e. the credit card). So what if credit is a bit more expensive because we actually implement security and sound verification practices? The easy credit binges are what brought us the housing bust, the subprime mortgage meltdowns, the dotcom crash and a host of other financial disasters. Do you help an alcoholic with a hangover by giving him another drink? Do we have to give pre-approved credit card offers in the mail to everyone who is breathing and has a pulse? Who needs it?
Ubuntu goes out of its way to get out of your way... Vista goes out of its way to be Vista and enforce the Vista way.
This really speaks to the core values and differences between the closed source and open source philosophies as outlined by Richard Stallman (yes, Richard Stallman is different from most of the rest of us and some people just cannot get past the beard and the long hair, but he has some worthwhile things to say if you can get past the charisma issue, -4 reaction adjustment at least if we were playing D&D) among others. The closed source philosophy is really about their way of doings, the experience that they want you to have, and their control of every aspect of that experience whereas the open source philosophy is all about freedom to choose your own experience, the experience that you want to have, and your choice about every aspect of that experience. If you want to take the defaults that is alright OR if you think that something that is not available and should be then you can take the source code and make it happen...it is all good AND other people cannot subsequently take that away from you (the GPL requirement of sharing changes and additions).
If "Documents and Settings" was hardcoded in an application and now doesn't exist that screws the pooch
Yes, but it is not good practice to hard code constants like that in your programs, particularly system directory paths. If you need to get the path to the location of the profile of the user then it should be queried from the environment variables (even in XP or 2000 the user could have changed this in the registry) or, if you are using.NET then there are libraries that query system paths for you. Microsoft takes a lot of heat unfairly because certain developers continue to ignore best practices in their programming. If you don't have absolute and full control over a system resource (i.e. you own it and it is a private part of your own code that will never change...this is rare) then do not make assumptions by hard coding stuff, it will invariably come back to bite you.
With regard to security and permissions, as long as the program catches the exceptions, logs them or reports them to the user, and fails gracefully then there really isn't a problem. This should be the expected behavior when a security problem arises and the user will have to take action to grant the necessary permissions (perhaps prompted by Vista to Cancel or Allow...yeah I know about the jokes). This may be inconvenient for an uninformed user, but ignorance of security has become too expensive theses days to ignore.
Microsoft makes mistakes, yes, but just as often, if not more often, the fault lies with the third party software vendors and their poor programming practices than it does with Microsoft itself.
There's a mighty struggle going on to re-define taking music without the author's permission as ethical
That was the norm for thousands of years of recorded history. The notion of copyright is a much more recent (i.e. modern times only) idea. The redefinition was the introduction of copyright, not the desire of some people to return to the previous system.
The situation in Brazil is somewhat unique in the world (and perhaps not the best example) because Brazil has among the highest (sometimes the highest, it fluctuates year to year) income inequalities on earth. There are multi million dollar mansions covering the hills around Rio, complete with walls, barbed wire, and armed guards with crime ridden and poverty stricken shanty towns visible through the distant haze from these mountaintop redoubts of the elite. Now, if you were living in a crap filled and crime ridden slum day after day with street gangs, violence, the highest murder rate on the planet and innumerable other hardships are you going to care about copyright? Certainly not, you would go to the local Internet cafe (when you had some cash to spend) and download music for copying and listening OR you might buy it on the street for a couple of Reals from a vendor's stall. You talk about the moral high ground, but would you want to pursue these people, who cannot afford your first world prices, for their last pennies simply for trying to get some entertainment that may serve to distract them, if only temporarily, from the miseries of their everyday lives?
If you are looking to bring up the copyright debate then the Brazilian context is perhaps not the best because it brings with it a lot of other baggage.
the MPAA paid him peanuts, probably knew full well he was going to break the law to get them the information they wanted but let him go ahead with it anyway having insulated themselves as much as possible from any actions he sees fit to take upon himself.
Is it possible to "insulate" legally against the consequences of actions taken by people under your employ? If the MPAA knew, or should have known, that illegal means would be used to obtain the information then they should still be held liable for the consequences of actions taken on their behalf. You can try and be as oblique and indirect as you want to when hiring the hitman, but that doesn't "insulate" one from the consequences.
The concept has been around much longer than that movie which happens to mention it, so it does not necessarily follow that one is referring to the movie A Few Good Men...as you said the debate over the role of soldiers and their ability to question orders has been around for a long time now, but back to your other point.
Disclaimer: IANAL
I believe the US military states somewhere that soldiers are obligated to refuse to carry out clearly immoral orders and explain the situation at their resulting court martial.
Which is precisely why this course of action is so rarely pursued in the modern military. It is basically a career ender either way the verdict comes out. Either you are found to be guilty of ignoring orders OR you will very likely never be promoted again if you are an officer (not sure about enlisted). There is probably a clause somewhere that says that if you are found not guilty under the "immoral orders" defense then it must not be taken into further considerations in performance evaluations or promotion reviews, but people are human and a "bad mark" on your record, like not following orders (even when you prevail at the court martial), is something that many other people in the military just cannot get past when making evaluations. It is a bit like trying to un-ring the bell as it were.
Obviously the stresses of combat could interfere in practice, but that's the principle.
I am not sure, but I would suspect that any sort of combat situation (i.e. we were under fire when these orders were issued) would present a substantial obstacle to the "immoral orders" defense. If you are being shot at then just about any order issued under the circumstances should be followed immediately, regardless of moral compunctions, because your life and the lives of your fellow soldiers were in immediate danger when the order was issued by your superior(s).
But on some level you almost have to question what you hear because you are being told what they think you need to know to get the job done. And that is not necessarily the truth.
When the proverbial shit hits the fan that doesn't matter. In a combat situation soldiers follow orders or people die, its that simple. It may be inevitable that people will die in such a situation, but when your life depends upon your fellow soldier pulling that trigger when ordered then you will be glad that he, like you, follows orders. It is not the place of soldiers to disobey orders and especially not when your unit is taking fire. Soldiers do not debate, they do not question, they obey because your life and the lives of your fellow soldiers depend upon it. If you cannot handle the possibility that you may be ordered to kill then you should not volunteer for military service.
It seems rather fashionable to knock the Space Shuttle - it's expensive, it was overhyped, putting the thing on the side of the tank is a design mistake, and the tiles are a maintenance nightmare. It's easy to knock the Shuttle and demand a retreat to older style systems
Yes, and the older systems have much to recommend themselves over the shuttle as the European Space Agency, the Russians, and the now the Chinese have demonstrated.
But the more and more I think about it, the more I think, junking the shuttle and the approach of the orbital space plane is a huge mistake.
The space plane idea was considered by various people and agencies long before the space shuttle, or indeed any other space vehicles, first flew and was discarded for very good reasons, not the least of which was the fact that launching from the surface of the earth straight to orbit in one stage, with all or most of the fuel and thus the mass being in that one stage, is very difficult (if not impossible given the limitations of technology) and inefficient in any case. It was also known from an early stage (pun intended) that multiple-stage-to-orbit vehicles made the most sense in spite of the fact that most of the vehicle was not going to be reusable. The primary concerns in space flight are cost, performance, reliability, and safety (not necessarily in that order depending upon what the priorities are of the funding entity). If reusability does not somehow enhance or contribute to those goals then it is very arguably irrelevant.
The Soyuz, the Apollo and the nascent Orion are essentially ballistic nosecones with people stuffed in it.
Granted, but that does not mean that a larger vehicle, with more habitable space, cannot be launched by rocket. The Skylab was launched with a left over Saturn V booster if you recall.
The soyuz, on the other hand, has a habital volume of just 7 cubic meters. Astronauts in these capsules basically sit in their chairs, but in the shuttle they can get up, move around, and do things
That is true, but for most of the last 30 years the Soyuz platform has been used as a taxi service to ferry cosmonauts and later astronauts to and from space stations where they can get up, move around, and do things (which is of dubious value nowadays anyway but that is a whole other argument...manned vs unmanned space flight).
The space shuttle is practically a space station in its own right.
Which has to be launched all the way from the ground each time it is used. The ISS is both larger (or will be when it is completed) and permenantly parked in orbit with periodic and more economical booster rockets required to keep the station from falling back too far from atmospheric drag. If you want to have a sustained human presence in orbit (the shuttle was designed to fly regularly if you recall...even though it hasn't lived up to expectations in that department) then it is cheaper and better to do it with a space station instead of the shuttle.
The space shuttle has a cargo bay, and, thanks to the Canadians, has a really cool mechanical arm.
I suppose that even the Canadians have their occaisonal days in the sun, but like the man said, "what have they done for us lately?" But seriously, how is the cargo bay different from a heavy lift rocket? The rocket technology has gotten to the point where a payload can be parked in a close parallel orbit or even automatically docked with the station both regularly and reliably.
Have we forgotten that the European Space Agency has flown a science station in the space shuttle cargo bay already?
Yes, the much hyped ESA module. Have you noticed that they don't fly with it much anymore? Why do you suppose that they have largely abandoned the sealed lab in the cargo bay concept? Does the Shuttle not alreay offer enough enclosed space? After all, you yourself have told us how cavernous and spacious it is compared to the Soyuz.
Slashdot Mirror
I tend to agree. If the term does not have widespread currency, which could mean that it is used in dictionaries and in common usage, used by professionals in the practice of their profession (a medical, engineering, scientific, political, or economics related term or something that professionals of a particular field could be called to define in their testimony), or defined explicitly by law then it should be regarded as a meaningless statement and stricken from the record of the court and not considered. The RIAA does not have the right to make up words and terms as they go, especially when it is clear that their goal in selecting a term to define an activity is to stigmatize or present a biased view of the activity in question (alleged use of filesharing software for copyright infringement). Can you get a case thrown out if the opposition uses meaningless statements (a variation of the Chewbacca defense albeit a bit more subtle in this case) in their arguments?
That is interesting. How do they prevent two different courts of similar precedence from reaching polar opposite judgements on substantially similar cases? Wouldn't this type of no-precedent system serve to increase the arbitrariness of the law and if so then how can that be a good thing? How about the EU and equal protection under law? Doesn't the EU have some basic standardized rules concerning laws and legal matters as a condition of membership? Thanks for answering.
If you want another example of how pernicious these taxes can be and how difficult it is to eradicate them, even when the taxes have long outlived their original stated purpose, then look no further than the Federal Telephone Excise Tax. It was originally enacted to help fund the Spanish American War, but it persisted for over one hundred (100) years after hostilities were ended. That is why citizens groups form to argue so vehemently against new taxes, even ones which might have some merit, because of the notoriously difficult and onerous process required to get rid of a tax once it is enacted and the government has become accustomed to the revenue stream.
I am always dismayed, not surprised mind you but dismayed, at the willingness of my fellow American citizens to willingly surrender ever greater powers of control and surveillance even without any clear idea of what is presumably gained by giving up those rights and powers. There are already too many laws, and too much government power, and too much government control and yet people want to give up even more of their independence to the government. The problem is exacerbated, IMHO, by the busy body nature of the religious right, liberal tax and spend left, and generally older people who want the government to run their lives for them and for their neighbor (regardless of what their neighbor wants).
but where does that stuff come from? And how did it get there?
IANAA (I am not an astrophysicist) but I seem to remember, from the astronomy course which I took for fun in college, that stars formed out of hydrogen present after the big bang (the hydrogen formed soon after everything cooled down enough to allow protons and electrons to bind together again) which formed stars due to minute temperature variations throughout the universe (apparently if the temperature were entirely uniform then nothing interesting, including ultimately Humans, would ever have formed out of the large soup of hydrogen that was left over).
Now, depending upon the initial mass of a star and its final disposition (white dwarf, brown dwarf, neutron star, supernova, black hole) which depends upon that mass, the star creates ever heavier elements as the fusion of hydrogen into helium progresses into the fusion of Helium into Lithium and Lithium into Boron and so on all the way up to Iron (which is the heaviest element that can be produced by fusion). The elements that are heavier than Iron are produced in the massive pressure and forces generated by novas and super novas. Obviously this process has happened over and over again as matter and stars coalesced by gravitational attraction into the galaxies that we see today (lots of handwaving here, again IANAA).
Now, to answer your question, since dust is probably mostly carbon type stuff and compounds (which form pretty often in giant red stars) then over time as stars form and explode and form and explode and form and turn into black holes there will ultimately be some black holes surrounded by stray gases and dust from its own nova or surrounding novas or nearby stars over large periods of time. Lots of handwaving here, but does this answer your question?
At least part of the reason that we are not feeling it is because many of those dollars are not circulating within the borders of the United States. If you want to purchase oil on the international market, a commodity which is increasingly in demand worldwide, then you need US dollars to purchase it since OPEC nations (and many other producers as well) take payment for their oil only in US dollars. The petro-dollars and the status of the US dollar as a worldwide reserve currency insulate Americans from some of the ill effects of our poor national spending habits, but only up to a point and only for so long. There are other factors as well, currency manipulation on the part of the Chinese and others to prop up their export markets comes to mind, but the petro-dollars play a big part in buffering the inflation that might otherwise be felt here in America if all of those overseas dollars started washing up on our shores again.
Unfortunately, the bureaucracy has a way of expanding in order to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
So ICANN has the authority to insist that registrars get out of the domain speculation business. They don't have to ask the registrars; they can simply order it.
This is too easy for the registrars to get around. The unscrupulous registrars could develop their own secret network of shell companies, shills, and spammers to register hits from searches on the registrar's site and then split the profits when the registrar buys the domain back from their network of proxies to sell back to the customer. It would be difficult to prove that the proxies who are buying up the domains are directly connected to the registrar.
The problem is that these "registrars" as you say are not vetted properly by ICANN and so blatant violation of the rules goes on behind the scenes without their being any direct consequences for the "registrars". The whole system set up by ICANN was just begging to be taken advantage of, but then again it was probably set up by nice people who don't generally think like the con artists and shady businessmen do (the ones who believe that rules are made to be broken and only honest people pay taxes).
Go to a registrar site
TFA mentions that some of the smaller registrars are logging searches put through their sites and engaging in the snatching racket directly through third party shell companies which are owned by or connected to the registrar. The registrar is trying to get a higher fee by having their shill sell the domain back to you for a higher price than the initial registration would otherwise have cost. Depending upon how automated the scam is the domain could be snapped up within minutes or even seconds of the search using the 5 day catch and release policy of ICANN (they need to charge a nominal and non-refundable fee for the catch and release service, $1 would be fine, to help prevent abuses by spammers and squatters).
Both
that's why FF isn't gaining any ground
Perhaps that is not entirely a bad thing. The advanced plugins, particularly the ad and script blockers that we all enjoy, might begin to attract the attention of advertisers with increased countermeasures and other arms race style responses if Firefox were to become even numbers with Internet Explorer. Let those who are in the know enjoy the fruits of a better user experience, but too many users could be a bad thing...evidence Internet Explorer.
The wünderengine, developed by the Ford Motor Company, went for three days under the simulated conditions of a 65,000-feet flight
This must be why the average fuel economy of American cars continues to suck so much dirt, all of the engineers are working on high altitude aircraft engines for use in the upcoming (any day now) FLYING version of the Ford Taurus...yeah.
That is why we have seen the proliferation of services, both online and brick and mortar, that sell prepared legal documents for common matters in local and regional jurisdictions for cut rate prices (i.e. divorce, living trust, power of attorney, incorporation, etc...). You are quite correct that many minor legal matters do not require a constitutional scholar to prepare the documents and pay the court filing fee, but there are still times when attorneys are needed and we you really do need one then you will be glad that they exist.
It would still be useful to locate those people so that their servers can be taken offline and then set up again on an isolated subnet. That way the command and control structure as well as the messaging protocol can be probed and analyzed safely without the server being able to signal the botnet to retaliate (it will try of course by the signals will not be going anywhere on the isolated subnet).
the average American seems pretty low on the tech literacy totem. At least from my interactions with Americans on trips there and on visitors here.
The result of a decades long decline in the quantity (and sometimes the quality) of the mathematics, science, and technology education in the primary and secondary school systems of the United States combined with a simultaneous and increasing trend towards outsourcing science and engineering related jobs (a one two punch really). There are still gifted students of course, who succeed in spite of the broken and backwards public education system, but they tend to go into business or law (America produces a lot of lawyers and lawsuits, about 4% of GDP last I heard) instead of science or engineering related careers. How far we have fallen from the heady days of the Apollo program and the space race, where science and engineering were respected and encouraged...hell of a shame.
Seriously the database layer is being commoditized
It has been commoditized for some time now, the concept of database was simply too valuable and generic to remain a franchise. Oracle especially and Microsoft more recently have realized this and are now offering their basic packages free of charge. The remaining franchises are in high end clustering and other advanced large scale data performance enhancements which only come into play in very large data centers with large and complex databases. The vast majority of everyday database applications are now well served by the free versions.
My only question, was Google required to disclose these changes, or are they just doing the right thing (again)?
As per the GPL, one is only required to disclose changes (and provide source) if the program is distributed. If you modify the program and decide that you do not want to distribute, but use it only for your own personal or internal company use then that is allowed. You could even operate a website off of your modified version and generate profits without being forced to release the code to your modifications. However, the modified program can never be sold or even given away to any external party without triggering the requirement to distribute the source code to all modifications along with it to anyone who asks.
I also wish these two databases interoperated more.
This can be a sticky issue in software design (i.e. how much support for external systems to include directly in the system). However, it has been my experience that it is better, from a design perspective, to create a standard interface for communications, or use one that has already been defined (W3C Web Services come to mind, but other types are possible) whereby adapters can be built to mediate and facilitate communications between pairs of systems. The use of the adapter pattern creates services which are decoupled from their clients allowing both to vary independently behind their respective interfaces and isolating any changes in the specific adapter(s). This is desirable from a design standpoint, even if it costs some performance (performance alone is almost never a good reason to violate abstraction), because it increases cohesion between components while at the same time reducing and minimizing coupling.
If Credit Card companies really cared about identity theft, then why do they mail out millions of unsolicited, pre-approved credit card offers every year?
This would be a really easy one to fix with just a bit of legislation really. The consumer credit contract should be like applying for any other major loan, consumer signature required for contract to be valid or the contract is void and all claims arising out of it are also void (i.e. the credit issuer or backer shoulders all of the responsibility for loaning out money to a phantom that they couldn't verify). This would place all of the risk for verifying identity and preventing theft on the credit card issuers. Some people might complain that this would make credit harder to get for "deserving borrowers" but really the last kind of credit that those marginal borrowers need is yet another unsecured, high rate, short term borrowing instrument (i.e. the credit card). So what if credit is a bit more expensive because we actually implement security and sound verification practices? The easy credit binges are what brought us the housing bust, the subprime mortgage meltdowns, the dotcom crash and a host of other financial disasters. Do you help an alcoholic with a hangover by giving him another drink? Do we have to give pre-approved credit card offers in the mail to everyone who is breathing and has a pulse? Who needs it?
Ubuntu goes out of its way to get out of your way... Vista goes out of its way to be Vista and enforce the Vista way.
This really speaks to the core values and differences between the closed source and open source philosophies as outlined by Richard Stallman (yes, Richard Stallman is different from most of the rest of us and some people just cannot get past the beard and the long hair, but he has some worthwhile things to say if you can get past the charisma issue, -4 reaction adjustment at least if we were playing D&D) among others. The closed source philosophy is really about their way of doings, the experience that they want you to have, and their control of every aspect of that experience whereas the open source philosophy is all about freedom to choose your own experience, the experience that you want to have, and your choice about every aspect of that experience. If you want to take the defaults that is alright OR if you think that something that is not available and should be then you can take the source code and make it happen...it is all good AND other people cannot subsequently take that away from you (the GPL requirement of sharing changes and additions).
If "Documents and Settings" was hardcoded in an application and now doesn't exist that screws the pooch
.NET then there are libraries that query system paths for you. Microsoft takes a lot of heat unfairly because certain developers continue to ignore best practices in their programming. If you don't have absolute and full control over a system resource (i.e. you own it and it is a private part of your own code that will never change...this is rare) then do not make assumptions by hard coding stuff, it will invariably come back to bite you.
Yes, but it is not good practice to hard code constants like that in your programs, particularly system directory paths. If you need to get the path to the location of the profile of the user then it should be queried from the environment variables (even in XP or 2000 the user could have changed this in the registry) or, if you are using
With regard to security and permissions, as long as the program catches the exceptions, logs them or reports them to the user, and fails gracefully then there really isn't a problem. This should be the expected behavior when a security problem arises and the user will have to take action to grant the necessary permissions (perhaps prompted by Vista to Cancel or Allow...yeah I know about the jokes). This may be inconvenient for an uninformed user, but ignorance of security has become too expensive theses days to ignore.
Microsoft makes mistakes, yes, but just as often, if not more often, the fault lies with the third party software vendors and their poor programming practices than it does with Microsoft itself.
There's a mighty struggle going on to re-define taking music without the author's permission as ethical
That was the norm for thousands of years of recorded history. The notion of copyright is a much more recent (i.e. modern times only) idea. The redefinition was the introduction of copyright, not the desire of some people to return to the previous system.
The situation in Brazil is somewhat unique in the world (and perhaps not the best example) because Brazil has among the highest (sometimes the highest, it fluctuates year to year) income inequalities on earth. There are multi million dollar mansions covering the hills around Rio, complete with walls, barbed wire, and armed guards with crime ridden and poverty stricken shanty towns visible through the distant haze from these mountaintop redoubts of the elite. Now, if you were living in a crap filled and crime ridden slum day after day with street gangs, violence, the highest murder rate on the planet and innumerable other hardships are you going to care about copyright? Certainly not, you would go to the local Internet cafe (when you had some cash to spend) and download music for copying and listening OR you might buy it on the street for a couple of Reals from a vendor's stall. You talk about the moral high ground, but would you want to pursue these people, who cannot afford your first world prices, for their last pennies simply for trying to get some entertainment that may serve to distract them, if only temporarily, from the miseries of their everyday lives?
If you are looking to bring up the copyright debate then the Brazilian context is perhaps not the best because it brings with it a lot of other baggage.
the MPAA paid him peanuts, probably knew full well he was going to break the law to get them the information they wanted but let him go ahead with it anyway having insulated themselves as much as possible from any actions he sees fit to take upon himself.
Is it possible to "insulate" legally against the consequences of actions taken by people under your employ? If the MPAA knew, or should have known, that illegal means would be used to obtain the information then they should still be held liable for the consequences of actions taken on their behalf. You can try and be as oblique and indirect as you want to when hiring the hitman, but that doesn't "insulate" one from the consequences.
The concept has been around much longer than that movie which happens to mention it, so it does not necessarily follow that one is referring to the movie A Few Good Men...as you said the debate over the role of soldiers and their ability to question orders has been around for a long time now, but back to your other point.
Disclaimer: IANAL
I believe the US military states somewhere that soldiers are obligated to refuse to carry out clearly immoral orders and explain the situation at their resulting court martial.
Which is precisely why this course of action is so rarely pursued in the modern military. It is basically a career ender either way the verdict comes out. Either you are found to be guilty of ignoring orders OR you will very likely never be promoted again if you are an officer (not sure about enlisted). There is probably a clause somewhere that says that if you are found not guilty under the "immoral orders" defense then it must not be taken into further considerations in performance evaluations or promotion reviews, but people are human and a "bad mark" on your record, like not following orders (even when you prevail at the court martial), is something that many other people in the military just cannot get past when making evaluations. It is a bit like trying to un-ring the bell as it were.
Obviously the stresses of combat could interfere in practice, but that's the principle.
I am not sure, but I would suspect that any sort of combat situation (i.e. we were under fire when these orders were issued) would present a substantial obstacle to the "immoral orders" defense. If you are being shot at then just about any order issued under the circumstances should be followed immediately, regardless of moral compunctions, because your life and the lives of your fellow soldiers were in immediate danger when the order was issued by your superior(s).
But on some level you almost have to question what you hear because you are being told what they think you need to know to get the job done. And that is not necessarily the truth.
When the proverbial shit hits the fan that doesn't matter. In a combat situation soldiers follow orders or people die, its that simple. It may be inevitable that people will die in such a situation, but when your life depends upon your fellow soldier pulling that trigger when ordered then you will be glad that he, like you, follows orders. It is not the place of soldiers to disobey orders and especially not when your unit is taking fire. Soldiers do not debate, they do not question, they obey because your life and the lives of your fellow soldiers depend upon it. If you cannot handle the possibility that you may be ordered to kill then you should not volunteer for military service.
It seems rather fashionable to knock the Space Shuttle - it's expensive, it was overhyped, putting the thing on the side of the tank is a design mistake, and the tiles are a maintenance nightmare. It's easy to knock the Shuttle and demand a retreat to older style systems
Yes, and the older systems have much to recommend themselves over the shuttle as the European Space Agency, the Russians, and the now the Chinese have demonstrated.
But the more and more I think about it, the more I think, junking the shuttle and the approach of the orbital space plane is a huge mistake.
The space plane idea was considered by various people and agencies long before the space shuttle, or indeed any other space vehicles, first flew and was discarded for very good reasons, not the least of which was the fact that launching from the surface of the earth straight to orbit in one stage, with all or most of the fuel and thus the mass being in that one stage, is very difficult (if not impossible given the limitations of technology) and inefficient in any case. It was also known from an early stage (pun intended) that multiple-stage-to-orbit vehicles made the most sense in spite of the fact that most of the vehicle was not going to be reusable. The primary concerns in space flight are cost, performance, reliability, and safety (not necessarily in that order depending upon what the priorities are of the funding entity). If reusability does not somehow enhance or contribute to those goals then it is very arguably irrelevant.
The Soyuz, the Apollo and the nascent Orion are essentially ballistic nosecones with people stuffed in it.
Granted, but that does not mean that a larger vehicle, with more habitable space, cannot be launched by rocket. The Skylab was launched with a left over Saturn V booster if you recall.
The soyuz, on the other hand, has a habital volume of just 7 cubic meters. Astronauts in these capsules basically sit in their chairs, but in the shuttle they can get up, move around, and do things
That is true, but for most of the last 30 years the Soyuz platform has been used as a taxi service to ferry cosmonauts and later astronauts to and from space stations where they can get up, move around, and do things (which is of dubious value nowadays anyway but that is a whole other argument...manned vs unmanned space flight).
The space shuttle is practically a space station in its own right.
Which has to be launched all the way from the ground each time it is used. The ISS is both larger (or will be when it is completed) and permenantly parked in orbit with periodic and more economical booster rockets required to keep the station from falling back too far from atmospheric drag. If you want to have a sustained human presence in orbit (the shuttle was designed to fly regularly if you recall...even though it hasn't lived up to expectations in that department) then it is cheaper and better to do it with a space station instead of the shuttle.
The space shuttle has a cargo bay, and, thanks to the Canadians, has a really cool mechanical arm.
I suppose that even the Canadians have their occaisonal days in the sun, but like the man said, "what have they done for us lately?" But seriously, how is the cargo bay different from a heavy lift rocket? The rocket technology has gotten to the point where a payload can be parked in a close parallel orbit or even automatically docked with the station both regularly and reliably.
Have we forgotten that the European Space Agency has flown a science station in the space shuttle cargo bay already?
Yes, the much hyped ESA module. Have you noticed that they don't fly with it much anymore? Why do you suppose that they have largely abandoned the sealed lab in the cargo bay concept? Does the Shuttle not alreay offer enough enclosed space? After all, you yourself have told us how cavernous and spacious it is compared to the Soyuz.