"The Internet" is the NAME of a single computer network. There are other networks with names, like Fidonet, Bitnet, Arpanet, etc, but most of them are not around anymore. Saying that it is no more a proper noun than car, refrigerator, or restaurant is simply wrong.
Fido is still active, believe it or not.
That the The Internet happens to be a name in definite form does not make it any less of a name, just like The Netherlands is still the name of a country, and The Rocky Mountains is still the name of a mountain chain. (Note that "a rocky mountain" is something entirely different - just like "an internet.")
As another example, I once had a dog named Quadruped.
It's a classic example of American thinking, use your power to prevent the competition from horning in on your resources, human or natural.
And therein lies the nature of the problem. It seems that somewhere along the way we stopped being citizens and became merely resources for corporations.
Abrasive cutting disks are hard to defend against. I once tried one of the thin and brittle brown Dremel cutting disks against a U lock to see what it would do. I only made a small notch since it wasn't my intent to destroy the lock, but it did indeed cut pretty easily. Just not nearly as fast as the larger tool that you used, and of course, the little brittle discs break a lot.
I also once used an abrasive blade in a circular saw to cut up the metal part of an old couch in order to put the pieces in a dumpster. It sliced through the spring steel wires with amazingly little effort. Though like you mentioned, it would be hard to be inconspicuous doing this.
So this really wasn't any sort of punishment for the recording industry. More like a lesson that they could do whatever the hell they want and "repay" their debt to society with worthless crap.
Nah. This whole "dump whatever's collecting mold in the warehouse" thing is just the recording industry execs exercising their right to free speech. It expresses their view that laws and ethics are meant only for for poor people; that consumers are just money cows who's only purpose in life is to be milked; and that it is corporations who hold most of the real power, not laws, not courts, not elected officials, and especially not citizens other than the corporate elite.
He drew a comparison only with Firefox. And since he didn't mention the size of the Mozilla suite or how it compares, the information I posted is quite clearly NOT in the parent post.
Whether anyone cares is up to them. I cared enough to check the size for comparison. Someone else might care too.
That's right. Ideas can lie dormant for years, then suddenly spring to life when you get inspired by some newly discovered (or newly created) use for it, or by discovering that there actually is a potential demand for something you had previously written off as being a bit too wacky.
In fact, I gather than in quite a few jurisdictions, such contractual terms are likely to be unenforceable anyway.
Probably so. I've read that in California, laws against slave labor have that effect. But unfortunately, I work in the very same county as the court that made this decision.
You may be joking, but it's not far fetched. Because of a contract that I had to sign in order to get my current job (such are required for just about any technical job), I have put off any further development of my prior ideas, and leave all new ones dormant except for those that are actually within the function of my job, and trivial hobby stuff. Perhaps in some better future time, when either I am no longer dependent on an employer, or if someday the citizenry can gain some kind of legal protection against this kind of robbery and oppression, I'll be free to create again.
It just takes a little time. I just tried it and got this:
Results 1-1 of about 1 containing "Newsbot Biased"
1. MS admits Newsbot Biased Towards MSNBC Slashdot - Aug. 01 JasdonLe writes 'According to this article at the Washington Post, Microsoft's recently unleashed news aggregator site, Newsbot will choose to display MSNBC articles over other articles on the same topic. '
• Not satisfied with your results? Help us improve.
Nearly identical to the same search on Google News. I despise MS, but fair is fair.
Testing your own work is a huge no-no, as you are much more likely to let small things slide than an independent tester is.
Yes. And also because you can make the same mental mistakes when testing that you did when developing.
I once worked with a dyslexic drafer. He generally did very good work, except that his drawings often had spelling errors. When he looked at his own drawings, the errors were not obvious to him like they were to everyone else. Most people don't have such a pronounced systematic tendency to make some particular error. But we all occasionally make mistakes in which we were just thinking about something wrong. And those mistakes are invisible to us because we're still thinking the same wrong way when we review it. So having work checked by someone other than the one who created it is a good practice for just about any endeavor, not just software.
It's good. But only for a while. They really nead to add at least one more "Y" to avoid the Y10K bug. If you think finding programmers to fix 40 year old code was a problem, just imagine trying to find someone to fix 8000 year old code.
I once disassembled a horribly gunked up keyboard and ran it through the dishwasher. I put the keys in a mesh bag to keep them from getting tossed around. After drying and reassembly, it worked fine.
"If you receive CD's which are not appropriate or useful for you collection, or which are duplicative, you may wish to use those CD's for fund-rasing purposes, such as through library sales or auctions. However, if you do so, any funds raised must be used in a manner that complies with the settlement agreement as noted above."
That is interesting. Any chance you could fill us in on what kind of uses the agreement would or would not allow?
People buying new machines for that purpose is unlikely, but installing Linux at some point down the road is very common. I wouldn't be at all surprized if most of the Linux boxes out there started out that way. Also consider that many computers that run Linux are set up to dual boot with Windows, or run a VM. It would make much more sense to buy a machine with bundled Windows for such a set up than to buy a Linux or no-os box and buy Windows separately (assuming you care at all about having a fully legal setup).
Granted, such machines cannot rightly be counted as Linux boxes, but neither can they rightly be counted as Windows boxes. And I suspec that the latter is exactly what most such statistics do. Not necessarily out of any kind of intentional misrepresentation, but more just from the difficulty of figuring out how many such machines there are. These don't show up in any analysis of sales data. Yet may well represent the most common case.
Not complete lack of support, but IE's PNG support is partly broken. Mostly in that it doesn't support alpha transparency, though all other major browsers do. And that's a real shame because it's a very nice feature. This alone would give PNG a clear advantage over GIF if it wasn't for the fact that the only major browser that doesn't support it happens to account for over 90% of the user base.
Seriously, if SCO were a person acting this way towards other people in public, by now it'd be better than even money they'd have been put in hospital.
SCO is a corporation. Therefore, it is actually a group of people acting that way in public.
We need an easy download and install kiosk Mozilla, preferably also with an OS lock-down tool to make the catalog PCs as maintainence-free as possible.
Now that's an excellent idea. It might do more for mozilla acceptance than any "switch" ad campaign.
Slashdot Mirror
Or "MAKE MONEY FAST!!!!!"
Abrasive cutting disks are hard to defend against. I once tried one of the thin and brittle brown Dremel cutting disks against a U lock to see what it would do. I only made a small notch since it wasn't my intent to destroy the lock, but it did indeed cut pretty easily. Just not nearly as fast as the larger tool that you used, and of course, the little brittle discs break a lot.
I also once used an abrasive blade in a circular saw to cut up the metal part of an old couch in order to put the pieces in a dumpster. It sliced through the spring steel wires with amazingly little effort. Though like you mentioned, it would be hard to be inconspicuous doing this.
Oh, that'll be just great. Chopping off fingers and plucking out eyeballs will be the new definition of "social engineering".
He drew a comparison only with Firefox. And since he didn't mention the size of the Mozilla suite or how it compares, the information I posted is quite clearly NOT in the parent post.
Whether anyone cares is up to them. I cared enough to check the size for comparison. Someone else might care too.
That's right. Ideas can lie dormant for years, then suddenly spring to life when you get inspired by some newly discovered (or newly created) use for it, or by discovering that there actually is a potential demand for something you had previously written off as being a bit too wacky.
You may be joking, but it's not far fetched. Because of a contract that I had to sign in order to get my current job (such are required for just about any technical job), I have put off any further development of my prior ideas, and leave all new ones dormant except for those that are actually within the function of my job, and trivial hobby stuff. Perhaps in some better future time, when either I am no longer dependent on an employer, or if someday the citizenry can gain some kind of legal protection against this kind of robbery and oppression, I'll be free to create again.
Doh!
I once worked with a dyslexic drafer. He generally did very good work, except that his drawings often had spelling errors. When he looked at his own drawings, the errors were not obvious to him like they were to everyone else. Most people don't have such a pronounced systematic tendency to make some particular error. But we all occasionally make mistakes in which we were just thinking about something wrong. And those mistakes are invisible to us because we're still thinking the same wrong way when we review it. So having work checked by someone other than the one who created it is a good practice for just about any endeavor, not just software.
It's good. But only for a while. They really nead to add at least one more "Y" to avoid the Y10K bug. If you think finding programmers to fix 40 year old code was a problem, just imagine trying to find someone to fix 8000 year old code.
I once disassembled a horribly gunked up keyboard and ran it through the dishwasher. I put the keys in a mesh bag to keep them from getting tossed around. After drying and reassembly, it worked fine.
People buying new machines for that purpose is unlikely, but installing Linux at some point down the road is very common. I wouldn't be at all surprized if most of the Linux boxes out there started out that way. Also consider that many computers that run Linux are set up to dual boot with Windows, or run a VM. It would make much more sense to buy a machine with bundled Windows for such a set up than to buy a Linux or no-os box and buy Windows separately (assuming you care at all about having a fully legal setup).
Granted, such machines cannot rightly be counted as Linux boxes, but neither can they rightly be counted as Windows boxes. And I suspec that the latter is exactly what most such statistics do. Not necessarily out of any kind of intentional misrepresentation, but more just from the difficulty of figuring out how many such machines there are. These don't show up in any analysis of sales data. Yet may well represent the most common case.
Not complete lack of support, but IE's PNG support is partly broken. Mostly in that it doesn't support alpha transparency, though all other major browsers do. And that's a real shame because it's a very nice feature. This alone would give PNG a clear advantage over GIF if it wasn't for the fact that the only major browser that doesn't support it happens to account for over 90% of the user base.
If you had a monopoly that extended into as many domains as Microsoft, everyone would want a piece of you too.
"Mere months away"? You're joking, right?
Mozilla is highly stable and easily superior to IE. It's that way for about two years now.