You don`t have to be RMS to reject Microsoft`s "me too" technologies cloned by their clowns.
Perhaps not, but why reject them completely out of hand? I like to see competition in the technology space, it keeps everyone sharp and allows the best ideas to rise to the top. Also, different companies and projects are good at different things. Some do new product development really well, exploring interesting concepts, but botch the implementation or don't get the details quite right while others are good at refining and perfecting a concept (open source is especially good at this), which someone else originated, but are not as good at coming up with novel or new ideas.
IMHO, the open source community has been particularly hard on.NET and Mono because of the connections between Novell, Microsoft, and Miguel. If you are concerned about patents then, as RMS has said many times before, even writing all of the code or using GPL only code is not a defense; if the patent holder wants to show up and file suit then he can. In other words, software patents are a problem no matter whether you use.NET or Mono or not; open source and even open standards (which generally include the "reasonable licensing terms" clauses for patents) will not protect you from that threat. That being said the CLI and.NET really have contributed novel new implementations, even if the concepts have been floating around academia for a while now. So can we please stop condemning all that Microsoft touches without at least acknowledging when something they had a hand in was done well?
It doesn't have to be an "all or nothing" thing either. There are many free/open source programs available on the Windows platform as well, its just that most users aren't as much aware of them because free/open source projects do not generally have the marketing and advertising budget of Microsoft or other big vendors. In fact, about the only Microsoft product that I use besides the OS itself is Visual Studio; which I really wish that Microsoft would offer in a usable basic single-developer version for free (and yes I do know about the express editions, but no addon support is a deal breaker).
I wonder if I can get the bazillion dollar contract to rewrite their system... No, wait, my name isn't "Boeing" or "Lockheed" or Ken Murtha.
Obviously you jest, but it does raise the question: why was this job/service NOT put out for bids? For example in the airline industry American Airlines has such an efficient aircraft maintenance division that other companies, including some of their competitors, pay them to maintain their planes too. If FedEx has such a wonderful scan processing operation then why not offer to do scan processing for external entities on a contract basis? The airline industry is much maligned by the media and the public, but the brutal long-term competition in a business with high costs and razor thin margins has bred some really cost efficient companies with creative money-making strategies (FedEx no doubt shares some of these same qualities due to the similar cutthroat environment in the package delivery business).
Does this whole thing remind anyone else of Spy vs Spy? From TFA: "But companies, like people, strive and dream and in this case both dream, at least sometimes, of destroying the other. Only they can't -- or won't -- do it in the end, because it is against the interests of either company to do so."
That said, it's apparently also really freaking hard for many women to show the same level of respect for men's similarly simple expectations.
Amen. Why must women always make getting sex like trekking through a 100+ hour RPG, pushing all of their buttons in the right sequence and completing all of the side quests (with speech challenges!), from the standpoint of the guy? They complain about how we don't respect their expectation of the ultimate romantic encounter every time there is intimacy. No wonder some men, generally those with WAY more money than time, opt for the high-end call girl instead; its an efficient allocation of scarce time and effort on their part and girl doesn't complain that they are getting a bit fat around the middle and don't spend enough time with them.
If mainframes offer a superior value proposition then why is there not more hosted mainframe type services where companies pay for mainframe time and services to run the software of their choice? If the software environment is virtualized, which is increasingly the case with languages such as Java and C#, then why does the hardware platform matter so much? Perhaps I am missing something?
It has been a while since I took the operating systems course in my undergraduate CS curriculum, but I seem to recall that there is a balance to be struck between too many and too few processes with regard to other related attributes such as security and stability. In some cases, notably in Sun Solaris, an attempt was made to capture more of the benefits of process isolation without the attendant overhead of full processes by introducing so called "lightweight processes" which provide more isolation benefits than threads but are not as resource heavy as full processes. I would venture a guess that this Microsoft Research project will reach the same or similar conclusions of early web server developers (CGI, for example); namely that more is not always better when it comes to separate threads and processes.
Worse yet, Eugene teaches the most popular patent bar review course in the US. Ignorance begets ignorance.
So you might say that Mr.Quinn has a direct stake in the matter of software patents irrespective of the arguments themselves. If software cannot be patented then it harms the ongoing financial interest of Mr.Quinn, who earns his living teaching patent law and arguing patent cases, because there would be fewer patent cases to argue and fewer students interested in learning patent law.
How the heck was parent modded insightful? Fallout 3 is not so much a game to "beat" as it is a world to be experienced. If you are trying to "win the game" then you are missing the point of RPGs in general and Fallout3 in particular. Wouldn't you be happier with Madden 2009 or one of the inumerable other fixed-path console games? Besides, the alien crash site is not an essential part of the main storyline and in the base game it is nothing more than a map location which adds flavor to the game world and provides the "alien blaster" of previous Fallout fame (although less useful this time around due to extremely limited ammunition, durability, and repair options making it more of a curiosity than a useful general purpose weapon).
If you are going to do that then why not use the Combat Shotgun instead? About the only weapon that does more damage from a point blank range headshot is the plasma rifle. A single point-blank blast from a well-repaired combat shotgun is usually enough to blow the head off most Super Mutants.
It was powerful in terms of damage, but the limited range made it in effect "not as good" in the late game, where more super mutants and Enclave patrols are encountered, and getting close to those sorts of enemies was disadvantageous. The best general purpose weapon in Fallout 2 was probably the Red Ryder Limited Edition BB Gun (another joke since the regular BB gun was arguably the worst rifle in the game), which also had a very high critical hit chance, although the M72 Gauss Rifle was also quite good.
I keep thinking to myself how awesome the game would have been if it was built on an FPS engine like the one used in Call of Duty 5
So why not just play Call of Duty 5 and leave us Fallout fans our Fallout experience? Seriously, there are any number of "me too" FPS games out there to satisfy the mouse-twitchers and "gaming keyboard" masses; Fallout, on the other hand, is something unique and special in the history of computer gaming. The point of Fallout is to become immersed in the rich game world of post-apocalyptic alternate earth and enjoy the ironic gallows humor of the optimistic retro-future (epitomized in the sci-fi serials of the 1950s), in ruins by the time of the Fallout games, contrasted with the bitter realities of survival in a bombed out wasteland. If the game were to depend too heavily on FPS type skills then it would detract from the immersive RPG experience whereby the player "becomes" the character in the game world. Fallout is an RPG; if that is not what you are looking for then play something else and leave us RPG gamers our own niche. I almost wish that Fallout 3 had NOT been released on console so that the true Fallout fans would be spared the indignity of hearing the complaints of the unwashed console FPS masses who play War Game 200X and Madden Football 200X and then complain when they don't "get" Fallout and ask why it couldn't be more like any of the other forgettable console games which come and go each year.
Because of me, my school forced everyone to clear their calculators memory of programs before writing diplomas.
Did you write the "memory cleared" program? It occurs to just about every student who can program their calculator at some point, when a school which enforces such a policy, to write a program which emulates the "on screen" look of a memory clear operation, but which in fact does nothing.
I remember in high school we had some exchange students from Germany who specifically wanted to get their US drivers license at age 16 because at that time it was possible to transfer an existing US license into a German one when they returned home, even though they would technically still be too young to get a first time German license. In effect it allowed them to get around the age restriction law by a couple years.
but frankly that makes for an incredibly sucky web experience
It is actually not so bad all things considered. Most of us tend to visit the same groups of sites most of the time so once the whitelist script permissions are dialed in one very rarely needs to touch NoScript again and even then the interface with FireFox is easy to use with the notification and task bars available for right click permission tweaking. Other plugins can also be combined with NoScript for even more fine grained control. For example I like to use Adblock Plus, NoScript, and Flashblock in combination so that I can eliminate ads, get per-domain scripting permissions, and case by case loading of flash objects. The addon framework in FireFox is really second to none; no other browser has more customizable addons or does them better than FireFox.
Honest opinion NYCL, what are her chances of getting the damages reduced to zero? Are they greater than zero? It is probably true to say that statutory damages of 1+ million for 24 songs strikes most reasonable people as ridiculously unfair. However, are not statutory damages as a general principle a sometimes useful concept in the law? For example, in cases where it is difficult to prove exactly how much loss a prevailing party has experienced? Perhaps the court will come up with some sort of reasonableness test for statutory damage awards in these cases. Is there a reason why it couldn't be $0.99 per song (the iTunes price) plus perhaps some modest fine (say not more than $500)?
Enough to put the average driver into a ditch on the roadside unless the engine is governed and the dynamic stability and traction control system is engaged. Before these sorts of systems were available, putting this much horsepower into the hands of a inexperienced or non-race trained driver was often a deadly combination.
It wouldn't surprise me if Bugatti make a big move into a (obviously lower) luxury market very soon, cashing in on the recognition they've earned.
The Bugatti brand has historically been known for exclusive and mostly very high performance automobiles in relatively the same market as other boutique Italian manufacturers such as Ferrari and Lamborghini or the British Aston Martin. The halo effect is well known in mass market brands, but Bugatti and other boutiques like it are NOT mass market brands and cannot be made into mass market brands without losing their boutique pedigree and exclusivity. I would be surprised if Volkswagen attempted to mass market the Bugatti name by producing luxury cars which compete for an entirely different market than supercars. The Mercedes "S-Class" buyer or perhaps the Rolls Royce or Bentley in the really high end is not looking for a supercar, but rather a smooth ride with the most luxurious features and the highest possible quality construction. They generally want a large sedan-like car, not a formula-one racer with leather seats.
Do the Universities themselves see any profit from these churned editions? I suppose that some professors might if they were among the authors. On the other hand either the University or the professor(s) could be receiving a kickback from the textbook companies. If there are kickbacks or other corrupt practices going on then there ought to be a federal investigation and prosecutions to punish the guilty. We don't allow US companies to engage in corrupt practices over seas (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act so why should we allow them to get away with it here at home? It would probably be better for everyone involved if, at least on primary subjects, the universities collectively maintained and published peer reviewed textbooks in mostly settled areas like mathematics, chemistry, physics, etc; especially for undergraduate level courses.
I am no so certain that Thomas is being stupid by continuing to fight. There are some really good Constitutional points to be argued, particularly with regard to damages, and since she seems willing to go forward then I say lets see how far this goes. Her case, sympathetic or not, has already generated lots of publicity and is seen by many, at least within the technology industry, to be an important part of a larger debate on copyright going forward. If this case is going to be the showdown of the century with the copyright cartels then I say lets have it now; before the RIAA and their Justice Department cronies can get DMCA 2.0 and secret copyright treaties pushed through a distracted Congress without any substantial public debate.
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Shame on you, Apple. Have you gotten so big that you've forgotten what it was like to be under Microsoft's thumb?
Companies don't have shame, they have profit margins and investors. Really, what do you expect would happen?
You don`t have to be RMS to reject Microsoft`s "me too" technologies cloned by their clowns.
Perhaps not, but why reject them completely out of hand? I like to see competition in the technology space, it keeps everyone sharp and allows the best ideas to rise to the top. Also, different companies and projects are good at different things. Some do new product development really well, exploring interesting concepts, but botch the implementation or don't get the details quite right while others are good at refining and perfecting a concept (open source is especially good at this), which someone else originated, but are not as good at coming up with novel or new ideas.
IMHO, the open source community has been particularly hard on .NET and Mono because of the connections between Novell, Microsoft, and Miguel. If you are concerned about patents then, as RMS has said many times before, even writing all of the code or using GPL only code is not a defense; if the patent holder wants to show up and file suit then he can. In other words, software patents are a problem no matter whether you use .NET or Mono or not; open source and even open standards (which generally include the "reasonable licensing terms" clauses for patents) will not protect you from that threat. That being said the CLI and .NET really have contributed novel new implementations, even if the concepts have been floating around academia for a while now. So can we please stop condemning all that Microsoft touches without at least acknowledging when something they had a hand in was done well?
It doesn't have to be an "all or nothing" thing either. There are many free/open source programs available on the Windows platform as well, its just that most users aren't as much aware of them because free/open source projects do not generally have the marketing and advertising budget of Microsoft or other big vendors. In fact, about the only Microsoft product that I use besides the OS itself is Visual Studio; which I really wish that Microsoft would offer in a usable basic single-developer version for free (and yes I do know about the express editions, but no addon support is a deal breaker).
I wonder if I can get the bazillion dollar contract to rewrite their system... No, wait, my name isn't "Boeing" or "Lockheed" or Ken Murtha.
Obviously you jest, but it does raise the question: why was this job/service NOT put out for bids? For example in the airline industry American Airlines has such an efficient aircraft maintenance division that other companies, including some of their competitors, pay them to maintain their planes too. If FedEx has such a wonderful scan processing operation then why not offer to do scan processing for external entities on a contract basis? The airline industry is much maligned by the media and the public, but the brutal long-term competition in a business with high costs and razor thin margins has bred some really cost efficient companies with creative money-making strategies (FedEx no doubt shares some of these same qualities due to the similar cutthroat environment in the package delivery business).
Does this whole thing remind anyone else of Spy vs Spy? From TFA: "But companies, like people, strive and dream and in this case both dream, at least sometimes, of destroying the other. Only they can't -- or won't -- do it in the end, because it is against the interests of either company to do so."
That said, it's apparently also really freaking hard for many women to show the same level of respect for men's similarly simple expectations.
Amen. Why must women always make getting sex like trekking through a 100+ hour RPG, pushing all of their buttons in the right sequence and completing all of the side quests (with speech challenges!), from the standpoint of the guy? They complain about how we don't respect their expectation of the ultimate romantic encounter every time there is intimacy. No wonder some men, generally those with WAY more money than time, opt for the high-end call girl instead; its an efficient allocation of scarce time and effort on their part and girl doesn't complain that they are getting a bit fat around the middle and don't spend enough time with them.
If mainframes offer a superior value proposition then why is there not more hosted mainframe type services where companies pay for mainframe time and services to run the software of their choice? If the software environment is virtualized, which is increasingly the case with languages such as Java and C#, then why does the hardware platform matter so much? Perhaps I am missing something?
It has been a while since I took the operating systems course in my undergraduate CS curriculum, but I seem to recall that there is a balance to be struck between too many and too few processes with regard to other related attributes such as security and stability. In some cases, notably in Sun Solaris, an attempt was made to capture more of the benefits of process isolation without the attendant overhead of full processes by introducing so called "lightweight processes" which provide more isolation benefits than threads but are not as resource heavy as full processes. I would venture a guess that this Microsoft Research project will reach the same or similar conclusions of early web server developers (CGI, for example); namely that more is not always better when it comes to separate threads and processes.
Worse yet, Eugene teaches the most popular patent bar review course in the US. Ignorance begets ignorance.
So you might say that Mr.Quinn has a direct stake in the matter of software patents irrespective of the arguments themselves. If software cannot be patented then it harms the ongoing financial interest of Mr.Quinn, who earns his living teaching patent law and arguing patent cases, because there would be fewer patent cases to argue and fewer students interested in learning patent law.
Its obvious you have an axe to grind, but thats no excuse to ignore factual information and logical arguments.
You must be new here...
How the heck was parent modded insightful? Fallout 3 is not so much a game to "beat" as it is a world to be experienced. If you are trying to "win the game" then you are missing the point of RPGs in general and Fallout3 in particular. Wouldn't you be happier with Madden 2009 or one of the inumerable other fixed-path console games? Besides, the alien crash site is not an essential part of the main storyline and in the base game it is nothing more than a map location which adds flavor to the game world and provides the "alien blaster" of previous Fallout fame (although less useful this time around due to extremely limited ammunition, durability, and repair options making it more of a curiosity than a useful general purpose weapon).
If you are going to do that then why not use the Combat Shotgun instead? About the only weapon that does more damage from a point blank range headshot is the plasma rifle. A single point-blank blast from a well-repaired combat shotgun is usually enough to blow the head off most Super Mutants.
It was powerful in terms of damage, but the limited range made it in effect "not as good" in the late game, where more super mutants and Enclave patrols are encountered, and getting close to those sorts of enemies was disadvantageous. The best general purpose weapon in Fallout 2 was probably the Red Ryder Limited Edition BB Gun (another joke since the regular BB gun was arguably the worst rifle in the game), which also had a very high critical hit chance, although the M72 Gauss Rifle was also quite good.
I keep thinking to myself how awesome the game would have been if it was built on an FPS engine like the one used in Call of Duty 5
So why not just play Call of Duty 5 and leave us Fallout fans our Fallout experience? Seriously, there are any number of "me too" FPS games out there to satisfy the mouse-twitchers and "gaming keyboard" masses; Fallout, on the other hand, is something unique and special in the history of computer gaming. The point of Fallout is to become immersed in the rich game world of post-apocalyptic alternate earth and enjoy the ironic gallows humor of the optimistic retro-future (epitomized in the sci-fi serials of the 1950s), in ruins by the time of the Fallout games, contrasted with the bitter realities of survival in a bombed out wasteland. If the game were to depend too heavily on FPS type skills then it would detract from the immersive RPG experience whereby the player "becomes" the character in the game world. Fallout is an RPG; if that is not what you are looking for then play something else and leave us RPG gamers our own niche. I almost wish that Fallout 3 had NOT been released on console so that the true Fallout fans would be spared the indignity of hearing the complaints of the unwashed console FPS masses who play War Game 200X and Madden Football 200X and then complain when they don't "get" Fallout and ask why it couldn't be more like any of the other forgettable console games which come and go each year.
I challenge anyone to cite an innovation from M$
What about the File Allocation Table file system?
Because of me, my school forced everyone to clear their calculators memory of programs before writing diplomas.
Did you write the "memory cleared" program? It occurs to just about every student who can program their calculator at some point, when a school which enforces such a policy, to write a program which emulates the "on screen" look of a memory clear operation, but which in fact does nothing.
Joke's on that Hummer -- it'll be shattered by the massive hydrogen explosion.
Not if it has the optional up-armor kit to defend against those pesky IEDs.
I remember in high school we had some exchange students from Germany who specifically wanted to get their US drivers license at age 16 because at that time it was possible to transfer an existing US license into a German one when they returned home, even though they would technically still be too young to get a first time German license. In effect it allowed them to get around the age restriction law by a couple years.
but frankly that makes for an incredibly sucky web experience
It is actually not so bad all things considered. Most of us tend to visit the same groups of sites most of the time so once the whitelist script permissions are dialed in one very rarely needs to touch NoScript again and even then the interface with FireFox is easy to use with the notification and task bars available for right click permission tweaking. Other plugins can also be combined with NoScript for even more fine grained control. For example I like to use Adblock Plus, NoScript, and Flashblock in combination so that I can eliminate ads, get per-domain scripting permissions, and case by case loading of flash objects. The addon framework in FireFox is really second to none; no other browser has more customizable addons or does them better than FireFox.
Honest opinion NYCL, what are her chances of getting the damages reduced to zero? Are they greater than zero? It is probably true to say that statutory damages of 1+ million for 24 songs strikes most reasonable people as ridiculously unfair. However, are not statutory damages as a general principle a sometimes useful concept in the law? For example, in cases where it is difficult to prove exactly how much loss a prevailing party has experienced? Perhaps the court will come up with some sort of reasonableness test for statutory damage awards in these cases. Is there a reason why it couldn't be $0.99 per song (the iTunes price) plus perhaps some modest fine (say not more than $500)?
1000 horsepower is a lot of power.
Enough to put the average driver into a ditch on the roadside unless the engine is governed and the dynamic stability and traction control system is engaged. Before these sorts of systems were available, putting this much horsepower into the hands of a inexperienced or non-race trained driver was often a deadly combination.
It wouldn't surprise me if Bugatti make a big move into a (obviously lower) luxury market very soon, cashing in on the recognition they've earned.
The Bugatti brand has historically been known for exclusive and mostly very high performance automobiles in relatively the same market as other boutique Italian manufacturers such as Ferrari and Lamborghini or the British Aston Martin. The halo effect is well known in mass market brands, but Bugatti and other boutiques like it are NOT mass market brands and cannot be made into mass market brands without losing their boutique pedigree and exclusivity. I would be surprised if Volkswagen attempted to mass market the Bugatti name by producing luxury cars which compete for an entirely different market than supercars. The Mercedes "S-Class" buyer or perhaps the Rolls Royce or Bentley in the really high end is not looking for a supercar, but rather a smooth ride with the most luxurious features and the highest possible quality construction. They generally want a large sedan-like car, not a formula-one racer with leather seats.
Do the Universities themselves see any profit from these churned editions? I suppose that some professors might if they were among the authors. On the other hand either the University or the professor(s) could be receiving a kickback from the textbook companies. If there are kickbacks or other corrupt practices going on then there ought to be a federal investigation and prosecutions to punish the guilty. We don't allow US companies to engage in corrupt practices over seas (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act so why should we allow them to get away with it here at home? It would probably be better for everyone involved if, at least on primary subjects, the universities collectively maintained and published peer reviewed textbooks in mostly settled areas like mathematics, chemistry, physics, etc; especially for undergraduate level courses.
I am no so certain that Thomas is being stupid by continuing to fight. There are some really good Constitutional points to be argued, particularly with regard to damages, and since she seems willing to go forward then I say lets see how far this goes. Her case, sympathetic or not, has already generated lots of publicity and is seen by many, at least within the technology industry, to be an important part of a larger debate on copyright going forward. If this case is going to be the showdown of the century with the copyright cartels then I say lets have it now; before the RIAA and their Justice Department cronies can get DMCA 2.0 and secret copyright treaties pushed through a distracted Congress without any substantial public debate.
I assure you that it is the later and not the former.