The grandparent poster is COMPLETELY 100% ABSOLUTELY wrong. The constitution does not grant us rights. It grants rights to the government, and enumerates a few rights that we already had.
The parent has this right. Please mod him up. I'm even giving up the mod points I already spent elsewhere in this article to stress this.
That document seems to apply only to people (businesses, individuals) who made payments to the state based on sales tax they were supposed to collect on behalf of the state. In other words, they are not end consumers, they are business people. The document is for cases where they paid sales tax revenue to the state that they didn't collect, or that needed to be refunded based on the sale condition (i.e. lemon car, or the person who bought the items was a dealer themselves, and didn't have to pay tax).
None of the qualifying conditions are for individuals who live out of state.
>>> Several years ago, the city of Miami decided to raise taxes on parking so it could extort money from those workers who commuted from Broward county and otherwise were not paying for services in Miami-Dade. Someone sued the city for taxation without representation, since he lived in Broward and so could not participate in Miami-Dade elections. I believe the state supreme court agreed with him, and the city had to make other plans to get the revenue for the sports venue they were planning.
If that happened, that sounds pretty stupid. When I go on vacation to Miami, should I be allowed to refuse sales taxes on the souvenir crap I buy, because I didn't live there to vote on the tax rate?
Perhaps you meant that they were trying to add a surcharge on private parking facilities? I don't see that as illegal, either; surcharges are often allowed on specific services. Maybe Florida's laws are more restrictive.
>>> Where were the anti-Bush liberals when Clinton continued to bomb Serbia?
Working with a Croatian who was in the military and knows first hand what Serbia did, and noting that the US did not lose a single life in Serbia, I have to say that I'm very happy with Clinton's actions there.
Good points! (Much better than those of the other two replies.)
Though, I do see issues with being a "bug reporter" or "tester" without being a programmer. I think there is a culture of "do it yourself" among open-source developers, which would make people pointing out bugs, but then not helping fix them, be seen as lesser people. That would drive off such semi- or non-technical people quite quickly.
In this case, the grandparent poster wrote, referring to Firefox:
"I don't think it's any more reliable or dependable than any other development paradigm. The difference is that instead of paying somebody for unreliable and undependable software, I can get it for free from open source."
to which my parent poster replied:
"Another difference is that you can, if you wish, actually help make it stable!"
In this case, the parent poster's argument is not only wasted, but sounds like pure marketing spin, if the grandparent poster is not a programmer. To make it sound better, the parent poster should have said:
"Another difference is that, because anyone can work on the code, the bugs will be fixed faster. There is no management or marketing demand on the coders' time to prevent them from fixing the bugs."
(Of course, then the immediate response is, "but open source programmers often won't work on bugs that don't affect them, and they have financial demands from their real job that can prevent them from working on bugs.")
Sadly, IBM's announcement that Lotus will include ODF read ability is the biggest boost I've seen. This means that, eventually (after my company upgrades), everyone here will be able to read ODF files. I had to give up on openoffice.org writer early last year because I was sending out garbled.docs.
(Sadly, because I'm not a Lotus fan. I usually cheer when we move tools out of Lotus.)
>>> Another difference is that you can, if you wish, actually help make it stable!
I could also, if I wished, go back to school for a CS degree then get myself hired at Microsoft.
Given that I am not a programmer, this "benefit" of open source is virtually meaningless, and just sounds like marketing PR.
I like open source software, and the ideas behind it, but advocating this particular benefit of open source software should be dropped, or left strictly to avenues where only software developers will see it.
>>> by and large there is no objective measure of whether a mutation is beneficial, neutral, or positive. It all depends on a lot of other factors and how it plays out.
Such as whether stunted growth is positive or negative. On a plain where you have to reach up to get your food, it is bad. On a small island where you are competing over a limited food supply, you eat less and live longer.
I disagree. It's all in the advertising. Of course, bundles will need to be less than the components, but that is true now.
You can buy each season of Sex and the City, for example, on DVD for like $25. Or, you can buy the complete series on DVD at Target for $120.
They could sell the entire series on one or two Blue-Ray for $100, make the same profit, and increase sales due to the lower cost. Or, they could sell it for $120 (obsoleting the old DVD set), and make $20 more per unit. I don't think the folks buying it would know or care how many CDs are in the box. They just want to own the series.
Because they realize that they cannot stop pirating. Why would you even suggest they could? The RIAA cannot stop pirating, and it has a lot more money than a little software developer.
The company representative even says this. He doesn't care so much that search results link to warez and crack sites, when you search for the terms "warez" and "cracks" along with the company name.
He's concerned that legitimate customers, who just want to find the website, are being encouraged to search for warez and cracks, when they didn't type anything at all to suggest they wanted that stuff.
There is a big difference here. The fact that the company representative acknowledges warez, and isn't trying to squash it RIAA-style, makes me better respect his desired to keep legitimate customers from being steered toward piracy by Google's suggestions.
>>> And out of curiosity I just want to know if anybody on earth can actually sit down and watch a regular DVD right next to a HD or Blue-ray and be able to tell the difference, because I sure as hell can't.
As I've posted on here before, I don't think this is the killer app for Blue-ray or HD-DVD.
The killer app is getting the entire season of Lost, or Sex and the City, or Seinfeld, etc., on a single disc, instead of the current need for 8-10 DVDs per season.
This will save the publishers money. Fewer discs = less direct cost, smaller simpler packaging, better shelf space utilization, cheaper shipping. And you will notice the difference when you can fit the entire run of Seinfeld in the space on your shelf that you used to fit one season.
Whichever format signs a deal with more of Disney, General Electric, and CBS/Viacom (or the independent TV producers) is going to win this war.
Maybe these are just new to me, but two features I've found and use are how Google interprets searches and provides links to their own database, or directly to the deep-linked page I'm looking for.
For example, search for "U2 Joshua Tree Discography" and the top hit is for Google's own music CD database, giving me exactly what I wanted in a clean, efficient, fast-loading manner. (I know, this keeps me on their site, seeing their ads longer, but I'm still happy.)
The second feature is package tracking. Just type in the package number (for example: "736805130363") into the box and search. There is only one link - directly to the FedEx tracking page for the package. Given that I have a Google search box in my browser, this saves typing "fedex.com", waiting for it to load, then finding their own tracker search box.
There were no instructions for editing fstab, or getting write access to fstab from a text editor - neither command line nor graphical.
I did find one method (on a different web page) to concatenate text onto the end of a file via the command line, but I couldn't insert tabs using this method, and fstab (from when I opened it read only to view) clearly used tab delimiters.
Again, just a link from the end of that page to a new page that describes how to update fstab would have worked. On that page, they could and should describe multiple methods, both command line and graphical.
>>> With CLI you just tell "type "xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx", then type "yyy yyyy yyyyyyyy" and you are all set". Hell, the user could cut & paste the commands right from the instructions! Compare that to writing istructions for a GUI: "Open Nautilusm (places ==> Home Folder).
I don't consider that a bad thing. That's a good thing, because it means that explanation of how to do things using the GUI is more complete. Also, most of those options have more descriptive names.
Option 1: CLI "execute this on a command line: grewt teg1 -f gli -c -m 3 -p/etc/log/grewt.log"
Option 2: GUI 1. Launch the WQIE configuration manager (File: Utilities: WQUI Manager). 2. Select "Options: Settings". Make sure the log file location says "/etc/log/grewt.log". Click OK to return to the main screen. 3. Click "Execute GREWT". A dialog appears. 4. Select "Create new driver model" and press Next. 5. In the box labeled 'Foundation' enter "gli" for Glibe. 6. In the box labeled 'Markings' enter "3" for the number of interations to run.
See? In the first option, the writer of the instructions is "giving the user a fish". In the second option, the writer is also helping to "teach the user to fish". The second instructions are infinitely better than the first. (Yes, the CLI instructions could be expanded to include an explanation of all the options, but as you point out this would make it less "easy".)
In my opinion, having command-line options like that encourage developers to be sloppy and simple in their instructions, hurting the ability for somewhat-technical non-developers (the kind of early adopters many developers look for) to pick up on the material.
Ahh, the Ubuntu Wiki page specifically calls out stuff for Kubuntu. I didn't expect that. Since I prefer KDE and went with the lesser-used *ubuntu version, I expect the support to be more limited. And I thought that KDE and Gnome used different MP3 players. (Why wouldn't they? Everything else is different.)
If they're not insultingly stupid, and are cleverly written (not hard to do -- spring for the writers), I watch. Some I watch every time I see them (Caveman FedEx commercial anybody?).
We stop for every Geico commercial - even scroll back to the beginning. My wife gets a kick out of its accent.
Otherwise I watch a new ad usually once, if I happen to see a split-second of it when skipping and it looks interesting. (Note: Person standing on white soundstage talking is not interesting, even if they are holding/standing next to the product for sale.)
Installing a new hard drive required editing fstab, after configuring it at the command line. Even the guide on the Ubuntu wiki (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InstallingANewHardDrive), which did a great job walking me through the manual configuration, didn't tell me how to edit fstab, or even get write access to fstab from a text editor. ("kdesu" was the answer, eventually.)
Sharing a folder required editing SMB.conf and rebooting several times. The options from the right-click sharing menu didn't seem to match up well with the instructions I found on the internet (which used a completely different configuration method), so editing the.conf was easiest. Perhaps I didn't need to reboot - I could have killed and restarted certain processes - but I had no idea what those might be and just restarting was easier.
I still don't know how to get the players associated with MP3s and MPEGs to play them. I assume I'm missing a codec, but the names of the graphical interfaces to the players aren't the same (I think) as the name of the underlying player engine, and I've found no indication of what packages to install to get the codecs I need. When I do, it will again be the console.
I just rebuilt my home server (file server, not regular use machine) as Kubuntu 6.06 beta 2 from Xandros 2.0.
Xandros 2.0 had bugs that made its use difficult, but they did a great job of creating Windows-like right-click menus, etc., to automate some tasks. Installing Kubuntu from the live CD was easy (all hardware correctly detected), but then almost everything else was very difficult:
1. Installed Kubuntu on an old 20 GB drive. No problems.
2. Install 80 GB drive to be used as file store. Discover fdisk because Windows has a program of the same name. Fumble around on web pages until I find the handy Ubuntu Wiki entry for installing a new drive, and copy it exactly, funny cryptic command-line inputs and all. Edit the appropriate.conf, after fumbling around to figure out how to use a graphical text editor on a root-owned file when my only way to get to root is via "sudo". ("kdesu" was the answer, eventually, and just ignore all the errors that get dumped to the command window.)
3. Fumble around on websites until I determine what packages to install to have Samba. Fumble around on more websites until I determine how to make the folder for the file store drive read/write shareable to all computers on our home network, with a password. Edit smb.conf.
4. Update to latest beta of Kubuntu. Very easy.
5. Try to get MP3s and MPEGs to play on the machine. (Yes, it's a server, but I'd like to see if this is better than Xandros, on which my sound quit two months after install and never worked again.) I'm still working on this. I need codecs for whatever audio/video players launch automatically when you click on MP3s and MPEGs in Kubuntu. I can't figure out what names are just graphical front-ends for what command-line programs, and how to get the codecs anyway. (I assume an appropriate "apt-get + 50k options" will do it, but I don't know what to type and haven't had luck yet on web searches.)
BTW, use your "conviction-and-monopoly-imposed limitations" argument while you still can, for in Nov 2007, the Microsoft/DOJ settlement teminates, at which point those limitations are lifted.
Slashdot Mirror
...as long as the dump trucks don't run on said batteries...
The grandparent poster is COMPLETELY 100% ABSOLUTELY wrong. The constitution does not grant us rights. It grants rights to the government, and enumerates a few rights that we already had.
The parent has this right. Please mod him up. I'm even giving up the mod points I already spent elsewhere in this article to stress this.
You managed to ignore the part about "I work with a Croat who knows what atrocities Serbia committed and were capable of."
And those atrocities were committed long before the US got involved.
That document seems to apply only to people (businesses, individuals) who made payments to the state based on sales tax they were supposed to collect on behalf of the state. In other words, they are not end consumers, they are business people. The document is for cases where they paid sales tax revenue to the state that they didn't collect, or that needed to be refunded based on the sale condition (i.e. lemon car, or the person who bought the items was a dealer themselves, and didn't have to pay tax).
None of the qualifying conditions are for individuals who live out of state.
>>> Several years ago, the city of Miami decided to raise taxes on parking so it could extort money from those workers who commuted from Broward county and otherwise were not paying for services in Miami-Dade. Someone sued the city for taxation without representation, since he lived in Broward and so could not participate in Miami-Dade elections. I believe the state supreme court agreed with him, and the city had to make other plans to get the revenue for the sports venue they were planning.
If that happened, that sounds pretty stupid. When I go on vacation to Miami, should I be allowed to refuse sales taxes on the souvenir crap I buy, because I didn't live there to vote on the tax rate?
Perhaps you meant that they were trying to add a surcharge on private parking facilities? I don't see that as illegal, either; surcharges are often allowed on specific services. Maybe Florida's laws are more restrictive.
>>> Where were the anti-Bush liberals when Clinton continued to bomb Serbia?
Working with a Croatian who was in the military and knows first hand what Serbia did, and noting that the US did not lose a single life in Serbia, I have to say that I'm very happy with Clinton's actions there.
Good points! (Much better than those of the other two replies.)
Though, I do see issues with being a "bug reporter" or "tester" without being a programmer. I think there is a culture of "do it yourself" among open-source developers, which would make people pointing out bugs, but then not helping fix them, be seen as lesser people. That would drive off such semi- or non-technical people quite quickly.
In this case, the grandparent poster wrote, referring to Firefox:
"I don't think it's any more reliable or dependable than any other development paradigm. The difference is that instead of paying somebody for unreliable and undependable software, I can get it for free from open source."
to which my parent poster replied:
"Another difference is that you can, if you wish, actually help make it stable!"
In this case, the parent poster's argument is not only wasted, but sounds like pure marketing spin, if the grandparent poster is not a programmer. To make it sound better, the parent poster should have said:
"Another difference is that, because anyone can work on the code, the bugs will be fixed faster. There is no management or marketing demand on the coders' time to prevent them from fixing the bugs."
(Of course, then the immediate response is, "but open source programmers often won't work on bugs that don't affect them, and they have financial demands from their real job that can prevent them from working on bugs.")
>> Joe programmer who is also a user can make contributions to open source software and everyone benefits, not just joe programmer.
Right. So use that argument on Joe programmer. It's wasted on Sam user.
>>> name 1 company with a 10 year plan
National Instruments has a 100-year plan. But there is a breakdown at the 10-year level, too, if that makes you happier.
Perhaps this is one reason for the company's perpetual 40-ish+ PE ratio; people buy the stock for the long term.
Sadly, IBM's announcement that Lotus will include ODF read ability is the biggest boost I've seen. This means that, eventually (after my company upgrades), everyone here will be able to read ODF files. I had to give up on openoffice.org writer early last year because I was sending out garbled .docs.
(Sadly, because I'm not a Lotus fan. I usually cheer when we move tools out of Lotus.)
>>> Another difference is that you can, if you wish, actually help make it stable!
I could also, if I wished, go back to school for a CS degree then get myself hired at Microsoft.
Given that I am not a programmer, this "benefit" of open source is virtually meaningless, and just sounds like marketing PR.
I like open source software, and the ideas behind it, but advocating this particular benefit of open source software should be dropped, or left strictly to avenues where only software developers will see it.
>>> by and large there is no objective measure of whether a mutation is beneficial, neutral, or positive. It all depends on a lot of other factors and how it plays out.
Such as whether stunted growth is positive or negative. On a plain where you have to reach up to get your food, it is bad. On a small island where you are competing over a limited food supply, you eat less and live longer.
I disagree. It's all in the advertising. Of course, bundles will need to be less than the components, but that is true now.
You can buy each season of Sex and the City, for example, on DVD for like $25. Or, you can buy the complete series on DVD at Target for $120.
They could sell the entire series on one or two Blue-Ray for $100, make the same profit, and increase sales due to the lower cost. Or, they could sell it for $120 (obsoleting the old DVD set), and make $20 more per unit. I don't think the folks buying it would know or care how many CDs are in the box. They just want to own the series.
The page didn't give away where I worked, so I wasn't worried.
Because they realize that they cannot stop pirating. Why would you even suggest they could? The RIAA cannot stop pirating, and it has a lot more money than a little software developer.
The company representative even says this. He doesn't care so much that search results link to warez and crack sites, when you search for the terms "warez" and "cracks" along with the company name.
He's concerned that legitimate customers, who just want to find the website, are being encouraged to search for warez and cracks, when they didn't type anything at all to suggest they wanted that stuff.
There is a big difference here. The fact that the company representative acknowledges warez, and isn't trying to squash it RIAA-style, makes me better respect his desired to keep legitimate customers from being steered toward piracy by Google's suggestions.
>>> And out of curiosity I just want to know if anybody on earth can actually sit down and watch a regular DVD right next to a HD or Blue-ray and be able to tell the difference, because I sure as hell can't.
As I've posted on here before, I don't think this is the killer app for Blue-ray or HD-DVD.
The killer app is getting the entire season of Lost, or Sex and the City, or Seinfeld, etc., on a single disc, instead of the current need for 8-10 DVDs per season.
This will save the publishers money. Fewer discs = less direct cost, smaller simpler packaging, better shelf space utilization, cheaper shipping. And you will notice the difference when you can fit the entire run of Seinfeld in the space on your shelf that you used to fit one season.
Whichever format signs a deal with more of Disney, General Electric, and CBS/Viacom (or the independent TV producers) is going to win this war.
Maybe these are just new to me, but two features I've found and use are how Google interprets searches and provides links to their own database, or directly to the deep-linked page I'm looking for.
For example, search for "U2 Joshua Tree Discography" and the top hit is for Google's own music CD database, giving me exactly what I wanted in a clean, efficient, fast-loading manner. (I know, this keeps me on their site, seeing their ads longer, but I'm still happy.)
The second feature is package tracking. Just type in the package number (for example: "736805130363") into the box and search. There is only one link - directly to the FedEx tracking page for the package. Given that I have a Google search box in my browser, this saves typing "fedex.com", waiting for it to load, then finding their own tracker search box.
Your reply doesn't address the text you quoted.
/etc/log/grewt.log"
There were no instructions for editing fstab, or getting write access to fstab from a text editor - neither command line nor graphical.
I did find one method (on a different web page) to concatenate text onto the end of a file via the command line, but I couldn't insert tabs using this method, and fstab (from when I opened it read only to view) clearly used tab delimiters.
Again, just a link from the end of that page to a new page that describes how to update fstab would have worked. On that page, they could and should describe multiple methods, both command line and graphical.
>>> With CLI you just tell "type "xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx", then type "yyy yyyy yyyyyyyy" and you are all set". Hell, the user could cut & paste the commands right from the instructions! Compare that to writing istructions for a GUI: "Open Nautilusm (places ==> Home Folder).
I don't consider that a bad thing. That's a good thing, because it means that explanation of how to do things using the GUI is more complete. Also, most of those options have more descriptive names.
Option 1: CLI
"execute this on a command line: grewt teg1 -f gli -c -m 3 -p
Option 2: GUI
1. Launch the WQIE configuration manager (File: Utilities: WQUI Manager).
2. Select "Options: Settings". Make sure the log file location says "/etc/log/grewt.log". Click OK to return to the main screen.
3. Click "Execute GREWT". A dialog appears.
4. Select "Create new driver model" and press Next.
5. In the box labeled 'Foundation' enter "gli" for Glibe.
6. In the box labeled 'Markings' enter "3" for the number of interations to run.
See? In the first option, the writer of the instructions is "giving the user a fish". In the second option, the writer is also helping to "teach the user to fish". The second instructions are infinitely better than the first. (Yes, the CLI instructions could be expanded to include an explanation of all the options, but as you point out this would make it less "easy".)
In my opinion, having command-line options like that encourage developers to be sloppy and simple in their instructions, hurting the ability for somewhat-technical non-developers (the kind of early adopters many developers look for) to pick up on the material.
Ahh, the Ubuntu Wiki page specifically calls out stuff for Kubuntu. I didn't expect that. Since I prefer KDE and went with the lesser-used *ubuntu version, I expect the support to be more limited. And I thought that KDE and Gnome used different MP3 players. (Why wouldn't they? Everything else is different.)
If they're not insultingly stupid, and are cleverly written (not hard to do -- spring for the writers), I watch. Some I watch every time I see them (Caveman FedEx commercial anybody?).
We stop for every Geico commercial - even scroll back to the beginning. My wife gets a kick out of its accent.
Otherwise I watch a new ad usually once, if I happen to see a split-second of it when skipping and it looks interesting. (Note: Person standing on white soundstage talking is not interesting, even if they are holding/standing next to the product for sale.)
Kubuntu 6.06:
, which did a great job walking me through the manual configuration, didn't tell me how to edit fstab, or even get write access to fstab from a text editor. ("kdesu" was the answer, eventually.)
.conf was easiest. Perhaps I didn't need to reboot - I could have killed and restarted certain processes - but I had no idea what those might be and just restarting was easier.
Installing a new hard drive required editing fstab, after configuring it at the command line. Even the guide on the Ubuntu wiki (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InstallingANewHardDrive)
Sharing a folder required editing SMB.conf and rebooting several times. The options from the right-click sharing menu didn't seem to match up well with the instructions I found on the internet (which used a completely different configuration method), so editing the
I still don't know how to get the players associated with MP3s and MPEGs to play them. I assume I'm missing a codec, but the names of the graphical interfaces to the players aren't the same (I think) as the name of the underlying player engine, and I've found no indication of what packages to install to get the codecs I need. When I do, it will again be the console.
I just rebuilt my home server (file server, not regular use machine) as Kubuntu 6.06 beta 2 from Xandros 2.0.
.conf, after fumbling around to figure out how to use a graphical text editor on a root-owned file when my only way to get to root is via "sudo". ("kdesu" was the answer, eventually, and just ignore all the errors that get dumped to the command window.)
Xandros 2.0 had bugs that made its use difficult, but they did a great job of creating Windows-like right-click menus, etc., to automate some tasks. Installing Kubuntu from the live CD was easy (all hardware correctly detected), but then almost everything else was very difficult:
1. Installed Kubuntu on an old 20 GB drive. No problems.
2. Install 80 GB drive to be used as file store. Discover fdisk because Windows has a program of the same name. Fumble around on web pages until I find the handy Ubuntu Wiki entry for installing a new drive, and copy it exactly, funny cryptic command-line inputs and all. Edit the appropriate
3. Fumble around on websites until I determine what packages to install to have Samba. Fumble around on more websites until I determine how to make the folder for the file store drive read/write shareable to all computers on our home network, with a password. Edit smb.conf.
4. Update to latest beta of Kubuntu. Very easy.
5. Try to get MP3s and MPEGs to play on the machine. (Yes, it's a server, but I'd like to see if this is better than Xandros, on which my sound quit two months after install and never worked again.) I'm still working on this. I need codecs for whatever audio/video players launch automatically when you click on MP3s and MPEGs in Kubuntu. I can't figure out what names are just graphical front-ends for what command-line programs, and how to get the codecs anyway. (I assume an appropriate "apt-get + 50k options" will do it, but I don't know what to type and haven't had luck yet on web searches.)
BTW, use your "conviction-and-monopoly-imposed limitations" argument while you still can, for in Nov 2007, the Microsoft/DOJ settlement teminates, at which point those limitations are lifted.
Microsoft just got two more years today.
Because Darwin dares to deny the truth about His Noodly-ness.