Surely we are already at that stage with software patents, i.e. any non-trivial program is almost certain to be infringing some software patents, and yet people still write software.
Of course, if you were daft enough to provide source code for your software, evil patent lawyers might be able to see which patents you are infringing, but what sort of idealistic fool would do that?
Good point. So we need a new term. We have "friendly fire" for when US planes blow up Canadians (afghanistan) or british troops (gulf war part one), "collateral damage" for mossad/cia/ira blowing up people near their intended targets (and frequently missing) but not a succinct term for blowing up the wrong target e.g. Nigerian embassy shooting, iran airliner shot down by the Vincennes during gulf war part one, chinese embassy during serbian war, the pediatrician who was hounded by vigilantes when UK tabloid newspapers campaigned against pedaphiles, the british pensioner all over the news today who has been held in jail in south africa for over two weeks because the FBI puts random passport numbers on its most wanted list and then can't be bothered to interview the captured people for weeks to see if they are the right guy or not. I suppose "cock-up" or fubar might be appropriate, but it needs a specific funky new term! Distinct from accidents or reckless behaviour, e.g. the US plane that downed a cable car gondola killing many people in Italy.
As slight counter-examples Nintendo, Sega, Sony ran that scheme and it works for them. Whereas anyone can develop for Windows but the software sells an order of magnitude less (I think by the time the PC had racked up its first million seller, Nintendo had had 70 titles break that mark). Cybiko and Symbian try to make things really easy for developers, but they still have difficulty fighting the appeal of a huge user-base.
OTOH some people actually reverse engineered the NES (using an oscilloscope and disassembler) and wrote working games on it, but then they still had to show their game to Nintendo to get permission to continue developing.
Sold 550000 units at $50 each = $27.5m. 15 months work for me, people: me, 1 assistant coder for a month or two, a years worth of art, a month for the musician, a few people months for the testers and producer. That comes to (just) less than four people equivalent. Let's say I made $50000 for that (I was younger then, as you can see by the low budget). That comes to 0.18% of total gross sales so you're doing well!
Of course on my less successful projects I got a much better deal proportionately:-)
A lot of people don't like anything that gets radio play,
What with my yodelling CDs, Ivan Rebroff albums (over 65 years old and still touring!) and Ziesjoemsongs (even Dutch people can't understand them:-) and C64 remix tracks I must be so elite that I've come out the other side:-)
I thought they did give the Taliban money after they took power (specific sums of money were quoted in the papers before the war, no doubt intended for useful activities rather than making war). Bin Laden is "well-known" as being a CIA creation, but I don't have references for that.
Remember when West Germany supported Libya
That one I'll need to look up. My instincts would have been that the Italians and French would have been more involved with Libya than the Germans, but I am completely unfamiliar with the story. I know Libya is no friend of the UK (the IRA sourced Semtex from Libya) but more recently Gadaffi denounced the bombings of US embassies in Africa (he wants to be seen as an African leader; blowing up lots of black guys would not suit this aim).
As for the contras I remember there being protests at the time, so whatever the pros and cons of the argument it shouldn't be called revisionist.
It may be an american ideal that we dont negotiate with terrorists
Nah, you just fund them (IRA*, Osama bin Laden, Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Contras) and train them (as before minus IRA). *=privately.
Of course the French actually are terrorists (google for "rainbow warrior 1985") but then so is the USA (google for "cia car bomb women children" for examples). [West] Germany has behaved itself since WW2, and that's what the US is complaining about!
and live in Van Gogh themed houses, or it that a result of NTSC->PAL conversion? I.e. Does Jerry Springer/etc. look yellow in the US or only when it gets converted to PAL?
There was a crash bug in one of the versions of the C64 rom... something to do with line extensions (which lines were 40 chars and which were the second half of a virtual 80 char line) and pressing the delete key when you were on a certain line boundary. I think that was fixed in later versions of the ROM though (they also changed the colour put in colour RAM when the clear screen character was printed). And don't forget Microsoft wrote some of the base code (which Commodore altered).
And the school's pride and joy was its Quiz Bowl team
Well, one of my old schools
http://www.yatsen.school.fj/ seems quite proud of its maths team. It was OK there, though when I was there the class size was 50. And I was rubbish at learning Chinese.
I got stick from my classmates for being different from them in virtually every way (... no good at sport).
Um, there are people in the UK that are good at sport? It's not even compulsory! (Religion is though). Next thing you'll be claiming there exist schools in London that have grass playing fields that haven't been sold off as supermarket car-parks or that British athletes can train in the UK instead of having to travel to Australia:-)
Many people I know would not class smokers as cool. Wayne and Waynetta Slob are not everyone's role models. Some people I admire happen to smoke, but that is not why I admire them.
(With selective memory) I can't remember nerds other than myself having a particularly hard time at my last high school. The year before me the highest scoring student was also the captain of the first fifteen (rugby team) and hence head-boy and popular. And the prettiest girl in the school asked me out (and paid for my ticket I think) to the school prom, but some people thought this might have been for a bet:-)
Strangely enough, I had more problems in my first year at university.
I used to think it was crazy that deleting a few text files would have a progress bar and take more than ten seconds during a movie (while the crooked authorities were after the hero, naturally).
But somehow microsoft has implemented this feature in Windows 2000, so that removing a hundred byte file can actually take that long!
Slashdot Mirror
Um, possibly the correct message was:
> Please God, Work
I'm sorry, God is not currently logged in. Your request has been recorded.
god help us
god is not currently logged on.
Mmmm. Wil Wheaton.
Of course, if you were daft enough to provide source code for your software, evil patent lawyers might be able to see which patents you are infringing, but what sort of idealistic fool would do that?
Good point. So we need a new term. We have "friendly fire" for when US planes blow up Canadians (afghanistan) or british troops (gulf war part one), "collateral damage" for mossad/cia/ira blowing up people near their intended targets (and frequently missing) but not a succinct term for blowing up the wrong target e.g. Nigerian embassy shooting, iran airliner shot down by the Vincennes during gulf war part one, chinese embassy during serbian war, the pediatrician who was hounded by vigilantes when UK tabloid newspapers campaigned against pedaphiles, the british pensioner all over the news today who has been held in jail in south africa for over two weeks because the FBI puts random passport numbers on its most wanted list and then can't be bothered to interview the captured people for weeks to see if they are the right guy or not. I suppose "cock-up" or fubar might be appropriate, but it needs a specific funky new term! Distinct from accidents or reckless behaviour, e.g. the US plane that downed a cable car gondola killing many people in Italy.
Neither is Steeve Coogan.
Ah, here is the reference. Diplomat shot dead in Prague
It brings up a screen saying "user has 1 program running. Did you know that running too many programs can slow down your computer?"
If I was the president of the company that makes Viagra I'd be nervous.
OTOH some people actually reverse engineered the NES (using an oscilloscope and disassembler) and wrote working games on it, but then they still had to show their game to Nintendo to get permission to continue developing.
Sold 550000 units at $50 each = $27.5m. 15 months work for me, people: me, 1 assistant coder for a month or two, a years worth of art, a month for the musician, a few people months for the testers and producer. That comes to (just) less than four people equivalent. Let's say I made $50000 for that (I was younger then, as you can see by the low budget). That comes to 0.18% of total gross sales so you're doing well!
Of course on my less successful projects I got a much better deal proportionately :-)
is an example of one ($x million for signing with MSFT) Although you could say that was partly Microsoft trying to bury Borland.
What with my yodelling CDs, Ivan Rebroff albums (over 65 years old and still touring!) and Ziesjoemsongs (even Dutch people can't understand them :-) and C64 remix tracks I must be so elite that I've come out the other side :-)
Except that I listen to Kylie too...
I thought they did give the Taliban money after they took power (specific sums of money were quoted in the papers before the war, no doubt intended for useful activities rather than making war). Bin Laden is "well-known" as being a CIA creation, but I don't have references for that.
Remember when West Germany supported Libya
That one I'll need to look up. My instincts would have been that the Italians and French would have been more involved with Libya than the Germans, but I am completely unfamiliar with the story. I know Libya is no friend of the UK (the IRA sourced Semtex from Libya) but more recently Gadaffi denounced the bombings of US embassies in Africa (he wants to be seen as an African leader; blowing up lots of black guys would not suit this aim).
As for the contras I remember there being protests at the time, so whatever the pros and cons of the argument it shouldn't be called revisionist.
always pick the warning about pregnant women. They figure this makes it safe for them.
It depends on how fresh it is :-)
Nah, you just fund them (IRA*, Osama bin Laden, Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Contras) and train them (as before minus IRA). *=privately.
Of course the French actually are terrorists (google for "rainbow warrior 1985") but then so is the USA (google for "cia car bomb women children" for examples). [West] Germany has behaved itself since WW2, and that's what the US is complaining about!
and live in Van Gogh themed houses, or it that a result of NTSC->PAL conversion? I.e. Does Jerry Springer/etc. look yellow in the US or only when it gets converted to PAL?
I watch movies at the cinema, i.e. many months before they come out on DVD/Cable/etc.
There was a crash bug in one of the versions of the C64 rom... something to do with line extensions (which lines were 40 chars and which were the second half of a virtual 80 char line) and pressing the delete key when you were on a certain line boundary. I think that was fixed in later versions of the ROM though (they also changed the colour put in colour RAM when the clear screen character was printed). And don't forget Microsoft wrote some of the base code (which Commodore altered).
Well, one of my old schools http://www.yatsen.school.fj/ seems quite proud of its maths team. It was OK there, though when I was there the class size was 50. And I was rubbish at learning Chinese.
Um, there are people in the UK that are good at sport? It's not even compulsory! (Religion is though). Next thing you'll be claiming there exist schools in London that have grass playing fields that haven't been sold off as supermarket car-parks or that British athletes can train in the UK instead of having to travel to Australia :-)
(With selective memory) I can't remember nerds other than myself having a particularly hard time at my last high school. The year before me the highest scoring student was also the captain of the first fifteen (rugby team) and hence head-boy and popular. And the prettiest girl in the school asked me out (and paid for my ticket I think) to the school prom, but some people thought this might have been for a bet :-)
Strangely enough, I had more problems in my first year at university.
But somehow microsoft has implemented this feature in Windows 2000, so that removing a hundred byte file can actually take that long!
being the same as the speed of light...