More to the point, though, as long as something provides a public interface and uses only public interfaces, it is entirely the right of the author to decide how to license it, and if the author decides to license it under the GPL but provide a linking exception to allow closed source drivers to call it, that is the author's right. Sure it is. But "GPL with linking exception" is not compatible with the GPL when going "downstream" with a derived work. If software package A is released under the GPL, and software package B is a derived work of software package B, it *must* be released under the GPL. It cannot be released under the "GPL with linking exception."
Linus himself said that he felt binary-only drivers should be allowed, so he took advantage of the right to provide a linking exception, and yet now he wants to deny it to others? No he hasn't, and no he didn't. Go ahead and read the COPYING file in the root of the kernel source tree. There's a note at the top that clarifies that that "user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls" aren't considered a derived work of the kernel and therefore aren't required to be covered by the GPL. It says nothing about modules.
What Linus himself *has* said in the past was that he considers binary modules ok *if* those modules weren't developed specifically for Linux. Take nvidia as an example: they have a binary driver core (possibly developed for Windows, possibly developed just as a generic driver core) which has an open-source shim to adapt it to the Linux kernel's specific interfaces. NDISWrapper could be thought of similarly, as an open-source shim to adapt Windows drivers to Linux's specific interfaces. However, this doesn't mean that NDISWrapper itself can be licensed under the GPL (of course, it can be licensed under "GPL with linking exception"), which is not compatible with Linux's GPLONLY symbols.
Heck, it wouldn't even be wrong in my book if it directly exported GPLONLY symbols as-is. Sorry, but your book isn't relevant here. (I assume by "it" you mean NDISWrapper.) You don't own the copyright on the kernel, so you don't get to decide. While this stuff may not be tested in court, seems like the copyright holders are in the right here.
The purpose of the GPL was supposed to be that non-open source can't directly call into GPLed code to avoid compatibility problems if the open source code changed. No, the purpose of the GPL is to allow anyone to freely modify and redistribute source code, but to require that the source code remain open. The GPL is about idealism (with a bit of pragmatism mixed in); it has nothing to do with "compatibility problems."
It's not a workaround to dodge the GPL. Oh, I agree, it's not. NDISWrapper is a great (temporary!) tool to fill a void until manufacturers get their act together or people have the time and motivation to reverse-engineer the relevant chipsets. Can it be licensed under the GPL? No, it can't. It does things anathema to the GPL's purpose (linking to code with an incompatible license). Can it be licensed under the "GPL with linking exception"? Sure. Is "GPL with linking exception" compatible with the Linux kernel's license for a derived work? No, it's not.
You're at the mercy of the copyright holders and the courts as to whether or not you're allowed to use NDISWrapper with Linux (and you are, it just can't use GPLONLY symbols!). Deal with it, or find some supported hardware or a different OS.
Remember, every time the GPL is used to impede progress, proprietary software wins. You're implying that there's some sort of competition going on here. Your personal agenda for open source might be to rule the world, but that's not everyone's. And some people who do share your agenda would like to "win" without cutting corners and compromising on their ideals. Is that naive? Maybe. But just because you don't understand other people's motivations, it doesn't make them wrong.
How about breaking things that work because that thing that "works" violates the license under which the kernel is released? Torvalds has taken the stance that some binary modules are ok under certain circumstances, but that certain exported symbols should be available only to GPLed modules. It's been a while since I've read about this, but I believe the rationale was that those symbols are more "internal" and would make the module more of a derived work and thus subject to the GPL. Is it an exact science? No. But the copyright holders get to make the rules to some extent.
If you don't like it, use another wireless chipset. Built-in wireless chipset that you can't change? Sorry, but that's not the kernel's problem. If you don't want to respect the software license, don't use the software. Same goes for Linux as for "pirated" copies of Windows.
Because parents are not adequately supported to make child rearing a costless decision, child rearing absolutely has a cost factor considered. Sure. If you choose to have a child, you are choosing to do something that has a cost. If the non-monetary benefits of this choice do not outweigh the cost (in your opinion as an individual), then you shouldn't have a child.
The economy doesn't chug along just fine, the entire social security disaster is because when it was created, it was assumed that people just "have children" and that that was constant. No, the reason Social Security is currently a disaster is because there was a huge -- unusual -- surge in births after WWII (hence the term "baby boomers"). Since then, the birth rate has lowered significantly. As the children of the boomers reach retirement age, there won't be sufficient funds in the SS system. This has zero to do with the fact that some people don't have children, and everything to do with the fact that there was an unusual boom in births in the 50s and 60s.
And please, the creators of the SS program believed that population growth would be a constant? I seriously doubt that. Historical data at the time would have put that notion to bed in seconds.
The economy depends on growth, which is growth in population * growth in production. That's an unsustainable model. We'll run out of room and natural resources on the Earth eventually.
If you think that it goes along fine, look into the issues that Japan and most of Europe are facing. Europe is facing an anti-immigrant backlash because the only way to prop up their economies was to import LOTS of new workers, since their country isn't doing it. France went through MASSIVE efforts to get child birth rates up, and is now (along with the US) among the only developed nations with a greater than 2.1 child:woman ratios necessary for population maintenance. For the third time: nowhere am I saying that things will be "just fine" if everyone stops having children. Obviously the economy cannot function without people, and if the birth rate drops too far below the death rate, we're in trouble.
However, globally, I just don't buy that we're in trouble. This claims that the (worldwide, 2006 est.) birth rate was a little more than 2x the death rate. That sounds pretty healthy to me, though it just reinforces my above point that we're rapidly overpopulating the planet. Interestingly, a breakdown by country shows (not surprisingly) that the countries with the highest birth rates tend to be less-developed (often third-world). It's hard to compare birth and death rates using that presentation, though you can look at the population growth numbers, which show that almost every country on the list has a positive population growth (again with the less-developed countries toward the top, in general).
One could make the argument that the population growth rate isn't sufficient to grow the economy at current rates (though you'd have to provide some evidence of that to be credible), but I'd question whether or not that's necessarily a bad thing. Rapid economic growth is far from the be-all end-all of a measure of the health of a civilisation.
I never said anything about *everyone* not reproducing; certainly the result of that would be as you describe. My original statement is still correct: some people do not reproduce, and the economy has a built-in assumption that this is the case, and it keeps chugging along just fine like that. Perhaps I should have chosen "many" or "most" instead of "some" to describe the group of people who do have children, though.
(As an aside, I'm curious as to the difference in numbers of child-rearing vs. childless adults in the general population. A quick google didn't turn up anything.)
Cost. In my case, the flights directly between SFO and BWI or IAD often cost significantly more (20-35%) than a flight that stops in DEN or ORD. SJC is another option for my originating airport, but the selection of nonstop flights is even worse.
To be fair, my job has made me into a one-airline person, since I've become addicted to racking up miles and frequent-flyer perks. I'll often spend an extra $40 or so to fly on my preferred airline, and this might make me ignore some cheaper non-stop flights on other airlines.
If all you're saving is paper (in any form: cash, bonds, stocks, etc) then all you're saving are claims on the future production of people who are children now. But why exactly should they owe you anything, one could ask? Even if you're saving something like gold, you'll want to be trading it to people for the things they produce. I'm not claiming that they owe me anything. They're going to be (fairly) compensated -- in real time -- for the goods and services they produce. If these future adults don't exist for whatever reason, I imagine my retirement is going to be the least of my problems.
But with longer lifespans and rising productivity (as well as rising population), the net flow of goods and services is distinctly from newer generations to older ones. Possibly true, but I wouldn't be so sure about "distinctly." With longer lifespans, people work longer. If the normal "work life" of someone with a 75-year life expectancy is 22 to 65, then the normal work life of someone with a 100-year life expectancy might be 22 to 90 or 22 to 85. With a life-expectancy increase, the time that a person is able to care for themselves (i.e., work for a living) should increase at least somewhat proportionally.
A continually rising population also puts more pressure on those who work to produce enough to support the growing pool of children who are too young to work. This pushes the flow of goods/services from old to young.
I'm not sure which overwhelms the other -- does this really push the flow increasingly toward old as you suggest, or increasingly toward young? I don't know, but I'm not convinced it's the former.
If that ever changed, our economy would be in big trouble, because our monetary system is based on the assumption that that's the way the flow works. Well, we can't prepare for every eventuality. In my view, you can prepare yourself for the future as best as you can, but if conditions change drastically, you either hope you can rely on your family and close friends, or you're in for some very hard times.
Maybe you are. Do you usually take direct flights? I rarely do; most of my cross-country (US) flights are routed through Denver or Chicago. Those are prime opportunities for lost baggage, especially when the connecting flight is under an hour from landing. Though, to be fair, I haven't checked a bag in over 2.5 years (I started taking these routes 3.5 years ago), so maybe that's not the issue. I stopped checking bags primarily due to saving time (the entire process takes 1-1.5 hours less if I don't check bags), and secondarily because I've lost luggage on international flights on two occasions.
Aside from that, being "self contained" when I fly reduces my stress level and at least makes me feel like there are fewer things that can go wrong.
Why is everyone here caring so much about how much boarding time takes? The only people who should care are the airlines -- shorter boarding times means shorter plane turn-around times means planes in the air longer than on the ground means more money.
As for passengers, the boarding time (or rather, any time that could be saved by more efficient boarding) is completely dominated by other time-wasters. Without checking bags, this is what my typical air trip looks like:
Arrive at airport
Use self-check-in to get boarding pass, no checked bags. (If I'd remember to check in online, I could skip this step.)
Go through security.
Wait at the gate.
Board the plane.
Wait for plane to take off.
For me, this entire process takes 45-60 minutes. If I check bags, this would roughly increase to 60-90 minutes, since I'd want to get to the airport earlier, as I have *no idea* how long the line will be to check my bags.
And think about when I arrive at my destination. The shortest I've *ever* had to wait to pick up checked baggage was 15 minutes. The longest was 50. And then there was the time I waited over an hour only to find out my luggage had been lost. (This is timed from my arrival at baggage claim, not from plane landing.) Why subject myself to that? Checking no bags, my 5-hour flight expands out to about 6-6.25 hours from when I arrive at the first airport to when I leave the second. Checking bags, the total time is anywhere between 6.5 and 7.75 hours.
If my policy of not checking bags increases boarding time from 20 to 30 minutes (in my case, it doesn't, because I'm not one of those obnoxious people who spends 60 seconds attempting to get his things into the overhead bin), but decreases my total travel time over an hour an a half, doesn't that seem like a reasonable compromise? And if you have to check bags for whatever reason, does an extra 10 minutes during boarding really matter all that much?
Put another way, what are the typical annoying time stretches that most people think about when contemplating air travel? Aside from the flight itself, I figure people would rate waiting at the security checkpoint, waiting to pick up bags after landing, and waiting at the gate as much more annoying than the boarding process.
I'm really not seeing how either group (childless or child-rearing) "owes" the other at all. In the end, everyone makes their own choices. If they choose to take advantage (or not take advantage) of the services ("free" or otherwise) offered to them, that is again their choice.
Claiming that the childless owe parents for the future economic activity is ridiculous; the parents have (hopefully) chosen to have children knowing full well what that will cost. Yet the parent believes that the benefits (mostly intangible?) will outweigh the costs.
My (inexperienced) view is that that whether or not to have children is a largely emotional decision, not an economic one. Ignoring "accidental" pregnancies, most people seem to choose to have children because they want to (for whatever emotional reason), not because they feel like having a child will be good for their wallet or to "give back" to society in the form of their child's future economic potential. By the same token, it doesn't seem like non-parents decide not to have children mainly because they're turned off by the cost.
To put it another way: the economy and governmental support system has a built-in assumption that some people will choose to have children, and some will choose not to. The system works just fine consisting of both of these types.
I'm in my mid-20s. My plan is to make, save, and invest enough such that I won't have to rely on the (potentially nonexistent) handouts of a future nanny-state to support me when I'm too old (or too disinterested) to work for a living. No thanks; I recognise that, when all is said and done, I can really only depend on myself. Take responsibility for your own life and affairs.
As an elite, I do board first (after first class, that is), but I'm quick. I usually carry two bags: the one I carry in front of me gets quickly hoisted up to the bin, and then I'm in the seat and out of the way. My backpack then gets slid off and stowed under the seat. If I'm wearing a jacket, I take it off while sitting down, carefully avoiding the people around me. The time I spend blocking the aisle is typically under 5 seconds.
If I could be assured of having overhead bin space, I'd board last. I always pick an aisle seat, so boarding first means I have to deal with people banging into me as they pass by, inner-seat passengers needing me to get up so they can get to their seat, and, of course, just the annoyance of being packed into the plane 25 minutes longer than I really have to be.
I've flown enough to streamline this procedure; repeated observation shows that the people who fly infrequently are the ones who cause the most slowdowns during boarding. On four-class aircraft, first and business are usually seated and out of the way (with some exceptions) before economy starts boarding. The 'economy plus' passengers (if the plane has it) usually know what they're doing, though there are more of them which slows things down, and some infrequent flyers who lucked out with an upgrade can cause delays. Economy is, and likely always will be, a mess, unless gate crews develop -- and enforce! -- better procedures for boarding.
I imagine airlines don't enforce the carry-on rules because it doesn't really benefit them to do so. They'll gate-check obvious offenders, but for the rest they'll let it go, because dealing with checking a lot of baggage at the gate would slow down gate operations. The longer planes spend on the ground, the less the airlines make.
I fly a decent amount (50-60k miles per year, maybe 7-8 trips), and I almost always travel with a backpack (not that large; I keep my laptop, electronics, and a change of clothes in it), and a smallish duffel-like bag (possibly pushing the limits of the carry-on size regulations, but I've never been asked to check it) with the rest of my clothes and anything else I need. The bag goes in the overhead, and my backpack goes under the seat. I've had enough problems in the past with having to wait 30-45 minutes after my flight to get my luggage, not to mention the couple times when my luggage has been lost, to want to ever check any bags.
If airlines would do something to streamline the baggage handling process, and (most importantly) make it more reliable, I'd consider checking bags again. As it is, I haven't checked a bag in a couple years now, and just that greatly reduces the amount of stress and hassle I experience when I fly.
The Gecko engine, by contrast, ships inside the application bundle of an individual application and has very limited potential for use by any other application since developers can't assume that the Gecko engine is installed on a user's system, much less assume its location. Just because it isn't now, doesn't mean it couldn't be in the future. I find it a bit ridiculous to require that an app author include an "unbreak my application" preference in their properties file...
No, that's not really true. In the case of Firefox the application, yes, the Firefox developers can set this plist key to enable the behavior they want. However, any other application that embeds Gecko (Firefox's rendering engine) cannot take advantage of this optimisation without *also* knowing about this "hack" and adding the key in *their* plist.
The reason WebKit does it programmatically is so apps using WebKit to embed a browser control can benefit without having to add the plist key. One might say that this gives WekKit an "unfair" advantage over Gecko. Let's compare apples to apples here: Firefox to Safari, and Gecko to WebKit. Because WebKit takes care of this programmatically, Safari doesn't need this special plist key set.
Sure... once you point me to the public repository that contains the source code to IE's engine. You know, the code that contains these "unpublished" APIs? Unfortunately the situation in the case of WebKit is pretty much the same. In the publicly-available source code, a WebKit user can set a particular preferences key and value to tell WebKit to enable these performance optimisations. The actual undocumented Apple API that's triggered by these preference keys is used in code that's closed-source, and is provided in binary blobs along with WebKit (TFA and links provided there say all this, if you're interested).
In fact, even if this was a great comment by now the chances of it reaching +5 Insightful are pretty slim. Oh, the irony. Let's add that one to the long list of "things to put in your post to guarantee getting modded up."
I agree with the blog author's interpretation, not Slashdot's, but still... the blog author's opinion of Apple's intentions and whether or not they're "crippling" other apps isn't the be-all end-all of opinions. If Slashdot's editors have formed a different, harsher (more sensational) opinion, it's perfectly within their right to do so.
And anyone who considers Slashdot real journalism is sorely deluded (yep, there's *my* opinion).
Actually, if you RTFA (I know, I know...), it references a landmark case during the Nixon administration that ruled that prior restraint cannot be applied in these matters, even in cases where so-called "national security" is at stake.
"Most people here" probably aren't prominent outspoken developers with a vested interest in maintaining the proprietary stronghold on desktop computing. I know several people who either do work or have worked for Microsoft, and sure, they're good people, and most of them aren't anti-OSS. Most MS employees may be similar, but I'd still expect that the kinds of people at MS who make the news here would be hostile toward open source.
No, of course they aren't, but IMO it *is* reasonable to expect that a prominent (I guess he is?) employee of a company that makes huge amounts of money off a proprietary software offering and is actively against open source would be... wait for it... against open source.
It's insane and there's simply no way to win with people like you because you're certain that YOU KNOW BEST. Try turning it around a bit, though. It's not just the childless 16-24 year old you mention who thinks he knows best. Just as often, the seasoned 45 year old parent will believe the same. The younger person's opinion is likely based on recent personal experience on the receiving end, mixed with some amount of idealism, not really understanding what goes into being a parent. The parent's opinion is colored by years of parenting, and they probably don't really remember what it was like or how it feels to be a child. Who's right? Probably neither of them, but there's no way to say.
IOW: what you're saying about "people like you" can apply equally well to you yourself. I'm a product of parents who did a lot of right, but also some wrong, too. No one is infallible, and sometimes your parents really aren't sure what's best for you, and unfortunately often err on the side of being too restrictive in those cases.
As someone who is not a parent, and isn't sure he wants to be one, I've had a bit of time to reflect on that, and I feel like the relatively small amount of wrong is fresher to me than the right (which is odd, considering that time tends to smooth over rough spots). I mean to say that my future thoughts of parenting are more, "if I'm a parent, I want to make sure I don't do X, because I hated that 15 years ago," rather than, "I thought it was really responsible of my parents to take an interest in X so I didn't do Y, so I'll want to emulate that." I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but it seems somewhat interesting, at least to me.
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What Linus himself *has* said in the past was that he considers binary modules ok *if* those modules weren't developed specifically for Linux. Take nvidia as an example: they have a binary driver core (possibly developed for Windows, possibly developed just as a generic driver core) which has an open-source shim to adapt it to the Linux kernel's specific interfaces. NDISWrapper could be thought of similarly, as an open-source shim to adapt Windows drivers to Linux's specific interfaces. However, this doesn't mean that NDISWrapper itself can be licensed under the GPL (of course, it can be licensed under "GPL with linking exception"), which is not compatible with Linux's GPLONLY symbols. Heck, it wouldn't even be wrong in my book if it directly exported GPLONLY symbols as-is. Sorry, but your book isn't relevant here. (I assume by "it" you mean NDISWrapper.) You don't own the copyright on the kernel, so you don't get to decide. While this stuff may not be tested in court, seems like the copyright holders are in the right here. The purpose of the GPL was supposed to be that non-open source can't directly call into GPLed code to avoid compatibility problems if the open source code changed. No, the purpose of the GPL is to allow anyone to freely modify and redistribute source code, but to require that the source code remain open. The GPL is about idealism (with a bit of pragmatism mixed in); it has nothing to do with "compatibility problems." It's not a workaround to dodge the GPL. Oh, I agree, it's not. NDISWrapper is a great (temporary!) tool to fill a void until manufacturers get their act together or people have the time and motivation to reverse-engineer the relevant chipsets. Can it be licensed under the GPL? No, it can't. It does things anathema to the GPL's purpose (linking to code with an incompatible license). Can it be licensed under the "GPL with linking exception"? Sure. Is "GPL with linking exception" compatible with the Linux kernel's license for a derived work? No, it's not.
You're at the mercy of the copyright holders and the courts as to whether or not you're allowed to use NDISWrapper with Linux (and you are, it just can't use GPLONLY symbols!). Deal with it, or find some supported hardware or a different OS. Remember, every time the GPL is used to impede progress, proprietary software wins. You're implying that there's some sort of competition going on here. Your personal agenda for open source might be to rule the world, but that's not everyone's. And some people who do share your agenda would like to "win" without cutting corners and compromising on their ideals. Is that naive? Maybe. But just because you don't understand other people's motivations, it doesn't make them wrong.
How about breaking things that work because that thing that "works" violates the license under which the kernel is released? Torvalds has taken the stance that some binary modules are ok under certain circumstances, but that certain exported symbols should be available only to GPLed modules. It's been a while since I've read about this, but I believe the rationale was that those symbols are more "internal" and would make the module more of a derived work and thus subject to the GPL. Is it an exact science? No. But the copyright holders get to make the rules to some extent.
If you don't like it, use another wireless chipset. Built-in wireless chipset that you can't change? Sorry, but that's not the kernel's problem. If you don't want to respect the software license, don't use the software. Same goes for Linux as for "pirated" copies of Windows.
And please, the creators of the SS program believed that population growth would be a constant? I seriously doubt that. Historical data at the time would have put that notion to bed in seconds. The economy depends on growth, which is growth in population * growth in production. That's an unsustainable model. We'll run out of room and natural resources on the Earth eventually. If you think that it goes along fine, look into the issues that Japan and most of Europe are facing. Europe is facing an anti-immigrant backlash because the only way to prop up their economies was to import LOTS of new workers, since their country isn't doing it. France went through MASSIVE efforts to get child birth rates up, and is now (along with the US) among the only developed nations with a greater than 2.1 child:woman ratios necessary for population maintenance. For the third time: nowhere am I saying that things will be "just fine" if everyone stops having children. Obviously the economy cannot function without people, and if the birth rate drops too far below the death rate, we're in trouble.
However, globally, I just don't buy that we're in trouble. This claims that the (worldwide, 2006 est.) birth rate was a little more than 2x the death rate. That sounds pretty healthy to me, though it just reinforces my above point that we're rapidly overpopulating the planet. Interestingly, a breakdown by country shows (not surprisingly) that the countries with the highest birth rates tend to be less-developed (often third-world). It's hard to compare birth and death rates using that presentation, though you can look at the population growth numbers, which show that almost every country on the list has a positive population growth (again with the less-developed countries toward the top, in general).
One could make the argument that the population growth rate isn't sufficient to grow the economy at current rates (though you'd have to provide some evidence of that to be credible), but I'd question whether or not that's necessarily a bad thing. Rapid economic growth is far from the be-all end-all of a measure of the health of a civilisation.
I never said anything about *everyone* not reproducing; certainly the result of that would be as you describe. My original statement is still correct: some people do not reproduce, and the economy has a built-in assumption that this is the case, and it keeps chugging along just fine like that. Perhaps I should have chosen "many" or "most" instead of "some" to describe the group of people who do have children, though.
(As an aside, I'm curious as to the difference in numbers of child-rearing vs. childless adults in the general population. A quick google didn't turn up anything.)
Cost. In my case, the flights directly between SFO and BWI or IAD often cost significantly more (20-35%) than a flight that stops in DEN or ORD. SJC is another option for my originating airport, but the selection of nonstop flights is even worse.
To be fair, my job has made me into a one-airline person, since I've become addicted to racking up miles and frequent-flyer perks. I'll often spend an extra $40 or so to fly on my preferred airline, and this might make me ignore some cheaper non-stop flights on other airlines.
A continually rising population also puts more pressure on those who work to produce enough to support the growing pool of children who are too young to work. This pushes the flow of goods/services from old to young.
I'm not sure which overwhelms the other -- does this really push the flow increasingly toward old as you suggest, or increasingly toward young? I don't know, but I'm not convinced it's the former. If that ever changed, our economy would be in big trouble, because our monetary system is based on the assumption that that's the way the flow works. Well, we can't prepare for every eventuality. In my view, you can prepare yourself for the future as best as you can, but if conditions change drastically, you either hope you can rely on your family and close friends, or you're in for some very hard times.
Maybe you are. Do you usually take direct flights? I rarely do; most of my cross-country (US) flights are routed through Denver or Chicago. Those are prime opportunities for lost baggage, especially when the connecting flight is under an hour from landing. Though, to be fair, I haven't checked a bag in over 2.5 years (I started taking these routes 3.5 years ago), so maybe that's not the issue. I stopped checking bags primarily due to saving time (the entire process takes 1-1.5 hours less if I don't check bags), and secondarily because I've lost luggage on international flights on two occasions.
Aside from that, being "self contained" when I fly reduces my stress level and at least makes me feel like there are fewer things that can go wrong.
As for passengers, the boarding time (or rather, any time that could be saved by more efficient boarding) is completely dominated by other time-wasters. Without checking bags, this is what my typical air trip looks like:
- Arrive at airport
- Use self-check-in to get boarding pass, no checked bags. (If I'd remember to check in online, I could skip this step.)
- Go through security.
- Wait at the gate.
- Board the plane.
- Wait for plane to take off.
For me, this entire process takes 45-60 minutes. If I check bags, this would roughly increase to 60-90 minutes, since I'd want to get to the airport earlier, as I have *no idea* how long the line will be to check my bags.And think about when I arrive at my destination. The shortest I've *ever* had to wait to pick up checked baggage was 15 minutes. The longest was 50. And then there was the time I waited over an hour only to find out my luggage had been lost. (This is timed from my arrival at baggage claim, not from plane landing.) Why subject myself to that? Checking no bags, my 5-hour flight expands out to about 6-6.25 hours from when I arrive at the first airport to when I leave the second. Checking bags, the total time is anywhere between 6.5 and 7.75 hours.
If my policy of not checking bags increases boarding time from 20 to 30 minutes (in my case, it doesn't, because I'm not one of those obnoxious people who spends 60 seconds attempting to get his things into the overhead bin), but decreases my total travel time over an hour an a half, doesn't that seem like a reasonable compromise? And if you have to check bags for whatever reason, does an extra 10 minutes during boarding really matter all that much?
Put another way, what are the typical annoying time stretches that most people think about when contemplating air travel? Aside from the flight itself, I figure people would rate waiting at the security checkpoint, waiting to pick up bags after landing, and waiting at the gate as much more annoying than the boarding process.
I'm really not seeing how either group (childless or child-rearing) "owes" the other at all. In the end, everyone makes their own choices. If they choose to take advantage (or not take advantage) of the services ("free" or otherwise) offered to them, that is again their choice.
Claiming that the childless owe parents for the future economic activity is ridiculous; the parents have (hopefully) chosen to have children knowing full well what that will cost. Yet the parent believes that the benefits (mostly intangible?) will outweigh the costs.
My (inexperienced) view is that that whether or not to have children is a largely emotional decision, not an economic one. Ignoring "accidental" pregnancies, most people seem to choose to have children because they want to (for whatever emotional reason), not because they feel like having a child will be good for their wallet or to "give back" to society in the form of their child's future economic potential. By the same token, it doesn't seem like non-parents decide not to have children mainly because they're turned off by the cost.
To put it another way: the economy and governmental support system has a built-in assumption that some people will choose to have children, and some will choose not to. The system works just fine consisting of both of these types.
I'm in my mid-20s. My plan is to make, save, and invest enough such that I won't have to rely on the (potentially nonexistent) handouts of a future nanny-state to support me when I'm too old (or too disinterested) to work for a living. No thanks; I recognise that, when all is said and done, I can really only depend on myself. Take responsibility for your own life and affairs.
As an elite, I do board first (after first class, that is), but I'm quick. I usually carry two bags: the one I carry in front of me gets quickly hoisted up to the bin, and then I'm in the seat and out of the way. My backpack then gets slid off and stowed under the seat. If I'm wearing a jacket, I take it off while sitting down, carefully avoiding the people around me. The time I spend blocking the aisle is typically under 5 seconds.
If I could be assured of having overhead bin space, I'd board last. I always pick an aisle seat, so boarding first means I have to deal with people banging into me as they pass by, inner-seat passengers needing me to get up so they can get to their seat, and, of course, just the annoyance of being packed into the plane 25 minutes longer than I really have to be.
I've flown enough to streamline this procedure; repeated observation shows that the people who fly infrequently are the ones who cause the most slowdowns during boarding. On four-class aircraft, first and business are usually seated and out of the way (with some exceptions) before economy starts boarding. The 'economy plus' passengers (if the plane has it) usually know what they're doing, though there are more of them which slows things down, and some infrequent flyers who lucked out with an upgrade can cause delays. Economy is, and likely always will be, a mess, unless gate crews develop -- and enforce! -- better procedures for boarding.
I imagine airlines don't enforce the carry-on rules because it doesn't really benefit them to do so. They'll gate-check obvious offenders, but for the rest they'll let it go, because dealing with checking a lot of baggage at the gate would slow down gate operations. The longer planes spend on the ground, the less the airlines make.
I fly a decent amount (50-60k miles per year, maybe 7-8 trips), and I almost always travel with a backpack (not that large; I keep my laptop, electronics, and a change of clothes in it), and a smallish duffel-like bag (possibly pushing the limits of the carry-on size regulations, but I've never been asked to check it) with the rest of my clothes and anything else I need. The bag goes in the overhead, and my backpack goes under the seat. I've had enough problems in the past with having to wait 30-45 minutes after my flight to get my luggage, not to mention the couple times when my luggage has been lost, to want to ever check any bags.
If airlines would do something to streamline the baggage handling process, and (most importantly) make it more reliable, I'd consider checking bags again. As it is, I haven't checked a bag in a couple years now, and just that greatly reduces the amount of stress and hassle I experience when I fly.
RTFA. Done yet? No? It's ok, I'll wait.
No, that's not really true. In the case of Firefox the application, yes, the Firefox developers can set this plist key to enable the behavior they want. However, any other application that embeds Gecko (Firefox's rendering engine) cannot take advantage of this optimisation without *also* knowing about this "hack" and adding the key in *their* plist.
The reason WebKit does it programmatically is so apps using WebKit to embed a browser control can benefit without having to add the plist key. One might say that this gives WekKit an "unfair" advantage over Gecko. Let's compare apples to apples here: Firefox to Safari, and Gecko to WebKit. Because WebKit takes care of this programmatically, Safari doesn't need this special plist key set.
I agree with the blog author's interpretation, not Slashdot's, but still... the blog author's opinion of Apple's intentions and whether or not they're "crippling" other apps isn't the be-all end-all of opinions. If Slashdot's editors have formed a different, harsher (more sensational) opinion, it's perfectly within their right to do so.
And anyone who considers Slashdot real journalism is sorely deluded (yep, there's *my* opinion).
Not all of it, no. Apple provides a couple binary blobs with their source code drops. (This is all in TFA, not that anyone reads it.)
Wow, sounds like someone put on his tin-foil hat too tightly this morning.
Actually, if you RTFA (I know, I know...), it references a landmark case during the Nixon administration that ruled that prior restraint cannot be applied in these matters, even in cases where so-called "national security" is at stake.
I stand corrected, then. I was led to believe by a post farther up that he did.
"Most people here" probably aren't prominent outspoken developers with a vested interest in maintaining the proprietary stronghold on desktop computing. I know several people who either do work or have worked for Microsoft, and sure, they're good people, and most of them aren't anti-OSS. Most MS employees may be similar, but I'd still expect that the kinds of people at MS who make the news here would be hostile toward open source.
No, of course they aren't, but IMO it *is* reasonable to expect that a prominent (I guess he is?) employee of a company that makes huge amounts of money off a proprietary software offering and is actively against open source would be... wait for it... against open source.
IOW: what you're saying about "people like you" can apply equally well to you yourself. I'm a product of parents who did a lot of right, but also some wrong, too. No one is infallible, and sometimes your parents really aren't sure what's best for you, and unfortunately often err on the side of being too restrictive in those cases.
As someone who is not a parent, and isn't sure he wants to be one, I've had a bit of time to reflect on that, and I feel like the relatively small amount of wrong is fresher to me than the right (which is odd, considering that time tends to smooth over rough spots). I mean to say that my future thoughts of parenting are more, "if I'm a parent, I want to make sure I don't do X, because I hated that 15 years ago," rather than, "I thought it was really responsible of my parents to take an interest in X so I didn't do Y, so I'll want to emulate that." I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but it seems somewhat interesting, at least to me.