That's very interesting - you mean a regular TV input card that rapidly tuned between 2 input channels coming over the one cable, right? I was thinking of doing something like this for a homebrew PVR. Can you tell me how fast could it swap between channels? (i.e. what fps did you get per channel?)
I hope you do not advocate murder in self defense. I hope that you never advocate war in any case, defensive or otherwise. If you hold those opinions as well, then... at least your position is logically consistent.
Yes, I hold those positions - because of what Jesus commanded Christians (paraphrasing): "Do good to them that do evil to you... turn the other cheek... that you may be the children of God, who is good to both the evil and the just".
However, if someone capable of choosing between good and evil chose evil, payment is required. Hence, a murderer deserves death, self-defense is justified, a gouged-out eye is worth the eye of the assilant. You cannot compare a judicial execution of a murderer with an innocent baby.
HOWEVER, Christians ARE REQUIRED to personally forgive evil, WITHOUT exacting punishment.
This is so we can be truly the children of God, who shed the Blood of His innocent son in atonement for the sins of the world and freely forgave those who believed Him... even though they were once murderers, liars, sexually immoral, or aborted a baby. Romans 10:13 says, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."
Judgement and punishment has been left to God in the era to come. Do not be fooled though - to ignore God's forgiveness, and pass over into His judgement is to doom your soul.
(If your life depended on stomping my toes really hard, I might say thanks but go fuck yourself, and be perfectly well supported by the law.)
What if, driving to a nightclub, you came across me lying injured on the road, and my life depended on you ferrying me to a hospital (an imposition, you'd agree)? You reckon you'd be within your lawful rights to say, "no, thanks", and drive on to your original destination, do you?
That's a completely different example, now isn't it. Both examples describe an imposition, but that is not the only determining factor. Will you concede that in my example (stomping on feet) you'd be fucked? If so, I'll concede that in your example, it might be morally and legally required to dial 911 at the nearest phone I could find, and report the accident.
You can keep your concession - right and wrong don't depend on people conceding debating points. Also, I asked "what if my life depended on you ferrying me to hospital" - not "would you call 911". Would YOU inconvenience yourself, get down in the ditch, have my blood ruin your clothes, your car leather, risk paying my medical fees... Would the person who won't let me tread his toes even if it saves my life do this? I think not.
Again, remember the Good Samaritan.
...it's intentionally offensive. You repeatedly swore and gave offense in your posts. But when I simply told you the truth - about how you would complain if you were being aborted this instant - you complained about "intentional offense" and the rules of argument. Subject yourself to your own rules before selectively applying them to others.
Some impositions are acceptable (morally, and legally too), and some aren't. Agreed? Yes. But you do not seem capable of the Golden rule - you are not willing to accept the same treatment (abortion) you advocate for others (babies).
Without much cause, you have accused me of selfishness and lying. To put it bluntly:
You are selfish - you admitted that a few posts ago: ("I feel pretty comfortable with my level of selfishness".)
You lie - worst of all - to yourself.
My intention is not to simply offend you (though that is inevitable, given how wrong your position is). It is to try to get you to listen to your conscience. Please PLEASE listen - there is no shame in admitting wrong and correcting oneself - we all go wrong sometimes. But eternal shame and danger await those who do not obey the small still voice of their conscience. Fear Him who casts into hell after death.
What about the cases in which both the mother and the child are very likely to die? If the mother had diabetes and her health is rapidly declining, and in the most likely outcome without an abortion, she would die and so would the baby, what do you advocate?
I advocate no abortion in this situation, as in any other situation - incest and rape included. I would rather risk the life of both mother and child to the greatest degree, than kill one to save the other.
If you think this is hard: that's how life is.
If you think this is unfair: it isn't. This example will make it clear: We both are in the midst of stormy seas in a leaky boat. You the choice of either pushing me overboard to lighten the load (and you would possibly live), or both of us drowning (almost a surety). Would you kill me so that you could live? If you see truly, you will understand this is the same issue we are speaking about.
Would you choose to face Eternity with blood on your hands?
The life of the baby depends on an imposition into the life of the mother. Doh! OF COURSE the baby's life depends on an imposition into the life of the mother. That's a given. The difference in our opinions is on DEALING with the imposition (a.k.a. how to/or how not to live upto your responsibilities).
(If your life depended on stomping my toes really hard, I might say thanks but go fuck yourself, and be perfectly well supported by the law.) Your selfishness knows no end, does it? What if, driving to a nightclub, you came across me lying injured on the road, and my life depended on you ferrying me to a hospital (an imposition, you'd agree)? You reckon you'd be within your lawful rights to say, "no, thanks", and drive on to your original destination, do you?
There are two problems with your position: 1. Check your state laws, you might be surprised 2. More importantly, there are the laws of God we will all be judged by one day.
Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan. I hope your conscience is not seared beyond all hope of recovery.
And your comment about cutting your own arm off is a nonsequitor. I find your rhetoric lacking. That was meant to illustrate that mother and child are two SEPARATE entities. Surely, you get it? If mum wants to chop her arm off - that's her arm. She does not have the right to chop off baby's arm.
And if my mom didn't feel like doing it, then who the fuck am I to insist that she carry me to term?
A human being.
You know, I think your "who am I to insist" phrases are just bluster and empty words. You don't have the capability of doing what you say.
If, this instant, you found yourself back in a womb, a sharp instrument snaking up your neck, your brains being sucked out... you'd want it stopped. I reckon you'd cry.
My posts, or the page I linked to, did not discuss D&X figures at all, which are really besides the point. If you do some wrong just once or a million times - it's still wrong in all cases. I'd like your conscience to recognize the horror of just one D&X. While it is right for us to improve health, abortions should never be done because they involve taking the life of another human being.
My point is, yes, the procedure occurs, but one should understand when, why, etc
Pregnancy is hard, and painful, and potentially dangerous for the mother. But a baby is human too and it's life deserves protection. In case the mother is in danger, the situation must be approached with the dictum first do no harm.
Death comes to us all eventually - do we really want to pass over with blood on our hands?
Note too, that abortions are a direct violation of both the Hippocratic oath, and it's recent reformulation (the "do no harm" site has links to both oaths). So up until recently, most people did recognize abortion as wrong, before we delegated away our conscience to conveniently-out-of-sight medical backrooms. In the past few centuries, we abolished slavery, established better judicial systems, established the rule of the people - why should it take illustrations of a D&X procedure to prod our conscience about the injustice of abortions? Keep in mind, an fetus is a human life separate from the mother - not just some organ that can be electively removed.
Also, you had said:
this procedure is used in a tiny minority of cases (and if regulations are followed, ONLY when the woman's health is at risk, or if the fetus is not viable),
The page you linked to though, suggests your point about regulations is incorrect:
Why Are D&X Procedures Performed?... 2nd Trimester: D&Xs are very rarely performed in the late second trimester... for a variety of reasons, including: She is not ready to have a baby for whatever reason... (emphasis mine)
no problem with killing it if the mother would like. It's her genitals that have to explode bloodily.
You know, pregnancy is hard, and painful, and potentially dangerous for the mother. But you make it sound like something from a bad Aliens sequel.
It's time you faced up to your own selfishness and the fact that you too were born in the same manner. If someone wants to cut their own arm off - you might even say: that's their decision. But if another person's life at stake, (for example, the baby's ) - that life deserves protection. In case the mother is in danger, it is a difficult situation which can only be approached keeping this phrase in mind - "first do no harm".
...the fetus is partially removed from the womb, feet first. The surgeon inserts a sharp object into the back of the fetus' head, removes it, and inserts a vacuum tube through which the brains are extracted...
But I'm still pro-choice. I would advocate against unplugging certain types of AI. I consider myself a humanist. Oh, and I'm anti-death penalty.
You seem to have a informed opinions on several issues... how then would you reconcile your views with this?
At this stage this baby is kicking, moving its arms and has likely urinated.
... plunges a scissors into the neck at the base of the skull. This injures or severs the spinal cord and results in instant decerebrate rigidity, that is, a spastic arching of the back
... We might note the happening at times, of what is called an "oops" delivery. This is when he has delivered all of the child except the head and is preparing to kill him, when the mother gives one big push and the head pops out. Now he has a living child in his arms, and he says, "Oops."
plunges a scissors into the neck at the base of the skull. This injures or severs the spinal cord and results in instant decerebrate rigidity, that is, a spastic arching of the back
...
We might note the happening at times, of what is called an "oops" delivery. This is when he has delivered all of the child except the head and is preparing to kill him, when the mother gives one big push and the head pops out. Now he has a living child in his arms, and he says, "Oops." -------------
It shows is how lax the US patent office is in granting patents for something so trivial.:)
I've been thinking of this for some while. The problem with Apple's method is that while you can detect free-fall using sensors, it does not take care of rides on boats or airplanes, where force may exceed 1 G momentarily. Aircraft turbulence can cause enough "false positive" events to exhaust the gas canister.
A better heuristic is the appliance determining whether enough of its surface area is in contact with another entity (say, using a touch or pressure sensitive skin on the appliance). If it is in contact, it won't inflate, even if acceleration > 1 G. If it senses not enough contact, it inflates.
So, your laptop would allow you to say, bang it to it's destruction (as long as it felt your contact). However, if you threw or otherwise let go of it, it would inflate the airbag.
I am an Indian citizen working abroad (not the US currently). Back in '99, I worked in Altanta, USA. A director in my company, an American citizen, had worked in India on a work permit. If I recall correctly, his Indian stint was as a software consultant with Cap Gemini, and his place of work was city of Pune in Maharashtra state in India.
This website also answers positively to the question: "Do I need a work permit to work in India?".
So it seems to be possible to work in India. However, for most people, I imagine it would be extremely difficult, given the demand and supply situation.
The "dual modem" mention in the article header made me think for a moment this product allowed multiple users to share a composite link. (See my earlier post on this topic). Rather this product allows 2 users to share *one* link.
A composite link to two *different* ISP could be implemented quite simply by say, using a proxy server to multiplex outbound HTTP requests among multiple interfaces (each interface corresponding to one phone connection).
This approach is more coarse-grained and inefficient than TCP/IP-level channel bonding. However, it would still be useful for places out in the boondocks where you can get two telephone lines, but no broadband. Also, its efficiency could be improved by using HTTP functionality that allows specific byte-ranges to be downloaded for a particular resource.
I remember some Apple fans praising Apple for, more or less, "inventing USB 2.0".
They weren't happy either when I mentioned Intel invented it.
However, Apple does a better job at integrating technology and, periodically, pushes the envelope much further than the PC companies. The interconnects on the G5 are amazing.
A Mini-ITX Linux system that used the functionality provided by this driver, had a 3-second BIOS bootup time using Linuxbios, plus a PCI TV tuner card with hardware MPEG-2 encoding, would be a pretty impressive media center.
"LinuxWorld: Linux on desktop soon - Torvalds ... Linux may be primarily server-bound now, but it soon will be much easier to use on the desktop, and even in handhelds, says its inventor.
Speaking before the largest Linux gathering ever, Linus Torvalds predicted future versions of Linux will compete on both high-end systems and smaller devices - and become a major player on desktop computers.
"It means that in a few years we'll be the biggest OS on the whole planet, and I like that,"
I agree with your points about pirated software. However, one sticking point is that programs have too much power - programs run with the effective permissions of the logged-on user and loss of control of your own system is not a good thing. In practical terms, the real problem is most Windows program "run as root".
IIRC, Windows 2000 had an option to run a program as a different user. It would be handy to extend this limitation to effectively build a "GUI chroot jail". For example, the user should be able to set a system policy that said: "If this executable came in via email, and I want to run it, then run it in a 800x600 screen window with a hatched window border pattern, with max. CPU utilization = 10%, no network access, disk access = virtual C:\ with 500 MB free, read-only winnt\ directory and virtual registry."
I bought VC++.NET Standard a few months ago and read the license. From what I recall, a developer can redistribute anything they create with no conditions. The only conditions were for "redistributable binaries" that have been created by MS (for eg: MSVCRT.DLL). For redistributing MS's binaries, the developer is required to include a EULA requiring the users of *his* software to only run MS's "redistributable binaries" on a licensed MS platform.
I'm a newbie to VC++ but I think C++ code that uses MFC requires MSVCRT.DLL. So if you code with MFC, its possibly illegal to let users run your software under WINE in Linux.
Its possible that earlier versions of MS VC didn't have this restriction.
I have been thinking of building something similar for a few months. GPS not only gives you your position, but also synchronized atomic time. Hence a dense-enough network of cars with these units could accurately "map" the city's road in realtime. Data in a large Ad-Hoc network could "jump lanes" to the cars that require it - ahead, behind, even to the opposing lanes of traffic (which are more likely to carry routing information regarding your intended destination). Besides trip routing information, a lot of other information can be derived from having many such units: for example, which parking lots have space available (based on parking lot "circling" behavior before being parked), popular gas stations, restaurants, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
That's very interesting - you mean a regular TV input card that rapidly tuned between 2 input channels coming over the one cable, right? I was thinking of doing something like this for a homebrew PVR. Can you tell me how fast could it swap between channels? (i.e. what fps did you get per channel?)
I hope you do not advocate murder in self defense. I hope that you never advocate war in any case, defensive or otherwise.
... turn the other cheek ... that you may be the children of God, who is good to both the evil and the just".
If you hold those opinions as well, then... at least your position is logically consistent.
Yes, I hold those positions - because of what Jesus commanded Christians (paraphrasing): "Do good to them that do evil to you
However, if someone capable of choosing between good and evil chose evil, payment is required. Hence, a murderer deserves death, self-defense is justified, a gouged-out eye is worth the eye of the assilant. You cannot compare a judicial execution of a murderer with an innocent baby.
HOWEVER, Christians ARE REQUIRED to personally forgive evil, WITHOUT exacting punishment.
This is so we can be truly the children of God, who shed the Blood of His innocent son in atonement for the sins of the world and freely forgave those who believed Him... even though they were once murderers, liars, sexually immoral, or aborted a baby. Romans 10:13 says, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."
Judgement and punishment has been left to God in the era to come. Do not be fooled though - to ignore God's forgiveness, and pass over into His judgement is to doom your soul.
That's a completely different example, now isn't it. Both examples describe an imposition, but that is not the only determining factor. Will you concede that in my example (stomping on feet) you'd be fucked? If so, I'll concede that in your example, it might be morally and legally required to dial 911 at the nearest phone I could find, and report the accident.
You can keep your concession - right and wrong don't depend on people conceding debating points. Also, I asked "what if my life depended on you ferrying me to hospital" - not "would you call 911". Would YOU inconvenience yourself, get down in the ditch, have my blood ruin your clothes, your car leather, risk paying my medical fees... Would the person who won't let me tread his toes even if it saves my life do this? I think not.
Again, remember the Good Samaritan.
You repeatedly swore and gave offense in your posts. But when I simply told you the truth - about how you would complain if you were being aborted this instant - you complained about "intentional offense" and the rules of argument. Subject yourself to your own rules before selectively applying them to others.
Some impositions are acceptable (morally, and legally too), and some aren't. Agreed?
Yes. But you do not seem capable of the Golden rule - you are not willing to accept the same treatment (abortion) you advocate for others (babies).
Without much cause, you have accused me of selfishness and lying.
To put it bluntly:
You are selfish - you admitted that a few posts ago: ("I feel pretty comfortable with my level of selfishness".)
You lie - worst of all - to yourself.
My intention is not to simply offend you (though that is inevitable, given how wrong your position is). It is to try to get you to listen to your conscience. Please PLEASE listen - there is no shame in admitting wrong and correcting oneself - we all go wrong sometimes. But eternal shame and danger await those who do not obey the small still voice of their conscience. Fear Him who casts into hell after death.
What about the cases in which both the mother and the child are very likely to die? If the mother had diabetes and her health is rapidly declining, and in the most likely outcome without an abortion, she would die and so would the baby, what do you advocate?
I advocate no abortion in this situation, as in any other situation - incest and rape included. I would rather risk the life of both mother and child to the greatest degree, than kill one to save the other.
If you think this is hard: that's how life is.
If you think this is unfair: it isn't. This example will make it clear: We both are in the midst of stormy seas in a leaky boat. You the choice of either pushing me overboard to lighten the load (and you would possibly live), or both of us drowning (almost a surety). Would you kill me so that you could live? If you see truly, you will understand this is the same issue we are speaking about.
Would you choose to face Eternity with blood on your hands?
The life of the baby depends on an imposition into the life of the mother.
Doh! OF COURSE the baby's life depends on an imposition into the life of the mother. That's a given. The difference in our opinions is on DEALING with the imposition (a.k.a. how to/or how not to live upto your responsibilities).
(If your life depended on stomping my toes really hard, I might say thanks but go fuck yourself, and be perfectly well supported by the law.)
Your selfishness knows no end, does it? What if, driving to a nightclub, you came across me lying injured on the road, and my life depended on you ferrying me to a hospital (an imposition, you'd agree)? You reckon you'd be within your lawful rights to say, "no, thanks", and drive on to your original destination, do you?
There are two problems with your position:
1. Check your state laws, you might be surprised
2. More importantly, there are the laws of God we will all be judged by one day.
Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan. I hope your conscience is not seared beyond all hope of recovery.
And your comment about cutting your own arm off is a nonsequitor. I find your rhetoric lacking.
That was meant to illustrate that mother and child are two SEPARATE entities. Surely, you get it? If mum wants to chop her arm off - that's her arm. She does not have the right to chop off baby's arm.
And if my mom didn't feel like doing it, then who the fuck am I to insist that she carry me to term?
A human being.
You know, I think your "who am I to insist" phrases are just bluster and empty words. You don't have the capability of doing what you say.
If, this instant, you found yourself back in a womb, a sharp instrument snaking up your neck, your brains being sucked out... you'd want it stopped. I reckon you'd cry.
You'd cry like a baby.
My posts, or the page I linked to, did not discuss D&X figures at all, which are really besides the point. If you do some wrong just once or a million times - it's still wrong in all cases. I'd like your conscience to recognize the horror of just one D&X. While it is right for us to improve health, abortions should never be done because they involve taking the life of another human being.
... ... for a variety of reasons, including: She is not ready to have a baby for whatever reason ... (emphasis mine)
My point is, yes, the procedure occurs, but one should understand when, why, etc
Pregnancy is hard, and painful, and potentially dangerous for the mother. But a baby is human too and it's life deserves protection. In case the mother is in danger, the situation must be approached with the dictum first do no harm.
Death comes to us all eventually - do we really want to pass over with blood on our hands?
Note too, that abortions are a direct violation of both the Hippocratic oath, and it's recent reformulation (the "do no harm" site has links to both oaths). So up until recently, most people did recognize abortion as wrong, before we delegated away our conscience to conveniently-out-of-sight medical backrooms. In the past few centuries, we abolished slavery, established better judicial systems, established the rule of the people - why should it take illustrations of a D&X procedure to prod our conscience about the injustice of abortions? Keep in mind, an fetus is a human life separate from the mother - not just some organ that can be electively removed.
Also, you had said:
this procedure is used in a tiny minority of cases (and if regulations are followed, ONLY when the woman's health is at risk, or if the fetus is not viable),
The page you linked to though, suggests your point about regulations is incorrect:
Why Are D&X Procedures Performed?
2nd Trimester: D&Xs are very rarely performed in the late second trimester
no problem with killing it if the mother would like. It's her genitals that have to explode bloodily.
You know, pregnancy is hard, and painful, and potentially dangerous for the mother. But you make it sound like something from a bad Aliens sequel.
It's time you faced up to your own selfishness and the fact that you too were born in the same manner. If someone wants to cut their own arm off - you might even say: that's their decision. But if another person's life at stake, (for example, the baby's ) - that life deserves protection. In case the mother is in danger, it is a difficult situation which can only be approached keeping this phrase in mind - "first do no harm".
I looked at that site. It says the same things:
...the fetus is partially removed from the womb, feet first. The surgeon inserts a sharp object into the back of the fetus' head, removes it, and inserts a vacuum tube through which the brains are extracted...
But I'm still pro-choice. I would advocate against unplugging certain types of AI. I consider myself a humanist. Oh, and I'm anti-death penalty.
... how then would you reconcile your views with this?
...
You seem to have a informed opinions on several issues
At this stage this baby is kicking, moving its arms and has likely urinated.
...
plunges a scissors into the neck at the base of the skull. This injures or severs the spinal cord and results in instant decerebrate rigidity, that is, a spastic arching of the back
We might note the happening at times, of what is called an "oops" delivery. This is when he has delivered all of the child except the head and is preparing to kill him, when the mother gives one big push and the head pops out. Now he has a living child in his arms, and he says, "Oops."
Is this infant sentient enough?
Your principles aren't shared by a society which supports a vigorous actuarial industry.
Looks like his principles aren't shared by you either. And Shame on you for that.
mean a developing embryo should be given the same rights as me until someone can conclusively disprove the existence of the god,
...
You too were an embryo once, and utilized your right to live.
Here is one way that right can be taken away:
-------------
At this stage this baby is kicking, moving its arms and has likely urinated.
...
plunges a scissors into the neck at the base of the skull. This injures or severs the spinal cord and results in instant decerebrate rigidity, that is, a spastic arching of the back
We might note the happening at times, of what is called an "oops" delivery. This is when he has delivered all of the child except the head and is preparing to kill him, when the mother gives one big push and the head pops out. Now he has a living child in his arms, and he says, "Oops."
-------------
Would they believe that their PC uses Apple patents?
:)
The patent being... "Method and apparatus for detecting free fall"
It shows is how lax the US patent office is in granting patents for something so trivial.
I've been thinking of this for some while. The problem with Apple's method is that while you can detect free-fall using sensors, it does not take care of rides on boats or airplanes, where force may exceed 1 G momentarily. Aircraft turbulence can cause enough "false positive" events to exhaust the gas canister.
A better heuristic is the appliance determining whether enough of its surface area is in contact with another entity (say, using a touch or pressure sensitive skin on the appliance). If it is in contact, it won't inflate, even if acceleration > 1 G. If it senses not enough contact, it inflates.
So, your laptop would allow you to say, bang it to it's destruction (as long as it felt your contact). However, if you threw or otherwise let go of it, it would inflate the airbag.
"...this 12cm by 12cm board can support 5 IDE devices, 4 off of the PATA connectors, and 1 of the SATA connector."
Here's an idea: external HDD with software RAID?
Read the latest IDG server reports when it comes to *NIX marketshare and Q2 number of servers sold and get back with me.
Um, we don't have a subscription, Mr. Hidden Knowledge. Why don't you enlighten us?
It is possible to work in India on a work permit.
I am an Indian citizen working abroad (not the US currently). Back in '99, I worked in Altanta, USA. A director in my company, an American citizen, had worked in India on a work permit. If I recall correctly, his Indian stint was as a software consultant with Cap Gemini, and his place of work was city of Pune in Maharashtra state in India.
This website also answers positively to the question: "Do I need a work permit to work in India?".
So it seems to be possible to work in India. However, for most people, I imagine it would be extremely difficult, given the demand and supply situation.
here's a good article on load balancing multiple routing tables.
0 1h.htm
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1824/sam0201h/02
Thanks Mr. Anonymous - looks interesting!
The "dual modem" mention in the article header made me think for a moment this product allowed multiple users to share a composite link. (See my earlier post on this topic). Rather this product allows 2 users to share *one* link.
A composite link to two *different* ISP could be implemented quite simply by say, using a proxy server to multiplex outbound HTTP requests among multiple interfaces (each interface corresponding to one phone connection).
This approach is more coarse-grained and inefficient than TCP/IP-level channel bonding. However, it would still be useful for places out in the boondocks where you can get two telephone lines, but no broadband. Also, its efficiency could be improved by using HTTP functionality that allows specific byte-ranges to be downloaded for a particular resource.
"He has no link because [...] SPECfp is a single cpu benchmark so dual cpu's has nothing to do with it."
Thanks AC!
"the same benchmark using IBM's new compiler and the dual G5 breaks 1500 without a sweat. "
1500? Interesting.
Link?
I remember some Apple fans praising Apple for, more or less, "inventing USB 2.0".
They weren't happy either when I mentioned Intel invented it.
However, Apple does a better job at integrating technology and, periodically, pushes the envelope much further than the PC companies. The interconnects on the G5 are amazing.
A Mini-ITX Linux system that used the functionality provided by this driver, had a 3-second BIOS bootup time using Linuxbios, plus a PCI TV tuner card with hardware MPEG-2 encoding, would be a pretty impressive media center.
"LinuxWorld: Linux on desktop soon - Torvalds ...
Linux may be primarily server-bound now, but it soon will be much easier to use on the desktop, and even in handhelds, says its inventor.
Speaking before the largest Linux gathering ever, Linus Torvalds predicted future versions of Linux will compete on both high-end systems and smaller devices - and become a major player on desktop computers.
"It means that in a few years we'll be the biggest OS on the whole planet, and I like that,"
I agree with your points about pirated software. However, one sticking point is that programs have too much power - programs run with the effective permissions of the logged-on user and loss of control of your own system is not a good thing. In practical terms, the real problem is most Windows program "run as root".
IIRC, Windows 2000 had an option to run a program as a different user. It would be handy to extend this limitation to effectively build a "GUI chroot jail". For example, the user should be able to set a system policy that said:
"If this executable came in via email, and I want to run it, then run it in a 800x600 screen window with a hatched window border pattern, with max. CPU utilization = 10%, no network access, disk access = virtual C:\ with 500 MB free, read-only winnt\ directory and virtual registry."
I bought VC++.NET Standard a few months ago and read the license. From what I recall, a developer can redistribute anything they create with no conditions. The only conditions were for "redistributable binaries" that have been created by MS (for eg: MSVCRT.DLL). For redistributing MS's binaries, the developer is required to include a EULA requiring the users of *his* software to only run MS's "redistributable binaries" on a licensed MS platform.
I'm a newbie to VC++ but I think C++ code that uses MFC requires MSVCRT.DLL. So if you code with MFC, its possibly illegal to let users run your software under WINE in Linux.
Its possible that earlier versions of MS VC didn't have this restriction.
I have been thinking of building something similar for a few months.
GPS not only gives you your position, but also synchronized atomic time. Hence a dense-enough network of cars with these units could accurately "map" the city's road in realtime. Data in a large Ad-Hoc network could "jump lanes" to the cars that require it - ahead, behind, even to the opposing lanes of traffic (which are more likely to carry routing information regarding your intended destination).
Besides trip routing information, a lot of other information can be derived from having many such units: for example, which parking lots have space available (based on parking lot "circling" behavior before being parked), popular gas stations, restaurants, etc.