Other than Ohio (which specifically passed a law late last year to allow detention 'without reason'), police cannot generally just hold you incommunicado for an indefinite period of time. Sure, the military's doing it, but the military does a lot of things that are insane violations of the letter and spirit of the law. The average donut-munching, sleeping-in-his-squadcar city cop would never get away with half the crap the military does.
If "detained" in this manner, I'd give out the bare minimum info, then encourage them to arrest me if they aren't going to allow me to leave. Wrongful arrest lawsuits are quite lucrative these days, after all.
Seems to work fine for me. I think that was one of the points of the article, that the faster laptop drives of the modern era mean that using one is no longer the kiss of death performance-wise that it once was.
They develop culture the same way sites like slashdot develop their own unique cultures... they build commitment by hiring committed individuals.
As a telecommuter working for an organization composed largely of telecommuters, I can safely say it's not for everyone. But at the same time... disgusting, Office Space-esque cubicle culture... that's not for everyone either.
I live a thousand miles away from any of my co-workers. I've never met anyone in my company. We communicate by phone, by email, by IM... and it just works. Sure, we don't have a company softball team that way, but we also don't have all the bullshit office politics I've heard some people who work outside the home talk about.
I know people who've done the telecommuting thing and hated it, and couldn't wait to get out of it. For me though, I'm never going to work outside the home again if I can help it.
You must've been off-planet, because every financial analyst report I've read in the past few months says that Macs are selling way better than expected.
Depends what you mean by "hitmen". Military personnel are professional killers, so to the extent there's a difference between them and hitmen, it's a subtle one.
The way I see it, we can split this up into two issues:
1) Closed standard and platform specific might make sense right now, but things change. Why lock yourself in when you don't have to? I mean, we don't even know for sure that the app in question is targetted at desktop users, so your percentages might be totally meaningless, but 5-10 years from now, will Windows still be so far above its competitors? Will Microsoft even support VB anymore? Will they maybe screw with the licensing and make it much harder to profitably sell a commercial VB app? In any kind of open standard, you've got options. Even if you don't think you'll need to port it to a second platform, with an open standard language, you could do so with a lot less effort. If your language vendor starts getting unreasonable, you can always look elsewhere. Unless you're using VB.
2) Speed and upkeep are real concerns and they're ones that are going to effect the end user directly. Any sort of graphics intensive application is going to run like sheer hell on VB when compared to a capably programmed C++ app. Or lets say it's not graphics intensive, and VB is plenty powerful enough. How easy is it to find really good VB programmers? I mean, there are plenty of people who stick it on their resume after they get their associate's degree from the community college, but are they up to the rigors of commercial software development? You've got a good enough team now, but what if this company expands?
I'm not trying to suggest C++ is the be-all, end-all language for applications, either. If VB is working, Smalltalk would work at least as well, and in all likelihood be much less of a headache to maintain. Oh yeah, and you get all the advantages listed in 1).
Without knowing what the nature of the app is, it's really hard to make a serious case for or against VB.
Some good things to point out though:
VB is not an open standard,
VB is platform specific
VB is generally quite time consuming to maintain for large apps
VB is much slower than C++ for certain CPU intensive apps.
Possibly: The people expected to maintain the code are less well-versed in VB
If this is a small-enough, simple-enough, Windows-centric enough application, there's probably no good reason to do a total rewrite in a different language.
If, on the other hand, this app might have a customer base on a non-Windows platform, and if the program is likely to dramatically increase in size in the future, it might be worthwhile to think about changing it to a different language.
They can say whatever they want, I just think they do themselves a disservice by making these long-winded rants against other open source licenses. Half the time they sound like they're issuing fatwas instead of simply giving opinions.
Then when they've got something important to rail against, like DRM, a lot of people are conditioned to think "oh, it's just the FSF making a big stink about nothing".
Indeed, there are plenty of examples of the FSF kind of "crossing the line" in the name of preaching the uniquely moral nature of the GPL, including but not limited to their screeds about the inferiority of various other open source and free software licenses (like MIT, APSL2, and BSD), but if there's one thing the FSF has every reason to be concerned with, it's DRM.
I have a feeling that they won't be defending anyone's "right" to (post death threats, oppose the war, blaspheme, defame democracy, aid the terrorists) online. Hypocritical or not, that's actually a good thing. They ought to be going after those who censor political speech on a large scale.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why TFA is talking about how little immaturity there is today. It all got evolved out of us.
Err... wait.
they tax you, and they taxed the purchase of the computer, and the keyboard and mouse, and the headset.
I'd say we're well past double taxation into septuple or more taxation.
That's also grossly extralegal.
Other than Ohio (which specifically passed a law late last year to allow detention 'without reason'), police cannot generally just hold you incommunicado for an indefinite period of time. Sure, the military's doing it, but the military does a lot of things that are insane violations of the letter and spirit of the law. The average donut-munching, sleeping-in-his-squadcar city cop would never get away with half the crap the military does.
If "detained" in this manner, I'd give out the bare minimum info, then encourage them to arrest me if they aren't going to allow me to leave. Wrongful arrest lawsuits are quite lucrative these days, after all.
I'm pretty psyched about the longer growing season, personally
Seems to work fine for me. I think that was one of the points of the article, that the faster laptop drives of the modern era mean that using one is no longer the kiss of death performance-wise that it once was.
They develop culture the same way sites like slashdot develop their own unique cultures... they build commitment by hiring committed individuals.
As a telecommuter working for an organization composed largely of telecommuters, I can safely say it's not for everyone. But at the same time... disgusting, Office Space-esque cubicle culture... that's not for everyone either.
I live a thousand miles away from any of my co-workers. I've never met anyone in my company. We communicate by phone, by email, by IM... and it just works. Sure, we don't have a company softball team that way, but we also don't have all the bullshit office politics I've heard some people who work outside the home talk about.
I know people who've done the telecommuting thing and hated it, and couldn't wait to get out of it. For me though, I'm never going to work outside the home again if I can help it.
That's really just the difference between a salaried employee and an independent contractor.
There's a difference, albeit a subtle one in the modern era, between badmouthing a religion and badmouthing a political movement.
That said, wikipedia really shouldn't be about taking cheap shots at any group/movement.
OK: The American Jewish Committee accused the Moonies of anti-semitism
Not OK: The Moonies are Anti-Semitic
You must've been off-planet, because every financial analyst report I've read in the past few months says that Macs are selling way better than expected.
You'd think they'd have figured out he's not to be taken seriously when he proposed a decade ago that Microsoft be nationalized for national security.
Depends what you mean by "hitmen". Military personnel are professional killers, so to the extent there's a difference between them and hitmen, it's a subtle one.
I think we ought to push for requiring the numbers 666 to be etched onto every RFID tag that's going to be injected into a human being.
I use Charter 3 Mbps service and I always get at, or real close to that amount.
They hold Congressional hearings about Jerry Springer.
The way I see it, we can split this up into two issues:
1) Closed standard and platform specific might make sense right now, but things change. Why lock yourself in when you don't have to? I mean, we don't even know for sure that the app in question is targetted at desktop users, so your percentages might be totally meaningless, but 5-10 years from now, will Windows still be so far above its competitors? Will Microsoft even support VB anymore? Will they maybe screw with the licensing and make it much harder to profitably sell a commercial VB app? In any kind of open standard, you've got options. Even if you don't think you'll need to port it to a second platform, with an open standard language, you could do so with a lot less effort. If your language vendor starts getting unreasonable, you can always look elsewhere. Unless you're using VB.
2) Speed and upkeep are real concerns and they're ones that are going to effect the end user directly. Any sort of graphics intensive application is going to run like sheer hell on VB when compared to a capably programmed C++ app. Or lets say it's not graphics intensive, and VB is plenty powerful enough. How easy is it to find really good VB programmers? I mean, there are plenty of people who stick it on their resume after they get their associate's degree from the community college, but are they up to the rigors of commercial software development? You've got a good enough team now, but what if this company expands?
I'm not trying to suggest C++ is the be-all, end-all language for applications, either. If VB is working, Smalltalk would work at least as well, and in all likelihood be much less of a headache to maintain. Oh yeah, and you get all the advantages listed in 1).
Without knowing what the nature of the app is, it's really hard to make a serious case for or against VB.
Some good things to point out though:
VB is not an open standard,
VB is platform specific
VB is generally quite time consuming to maintain for large apps
VB is much slower than C++ for certain CPU intensive apps.
Possibly: The people expected to maintain the code are less well-versed in VB
If this is a small-enough, simple-enough, Windows-centric enough application, there's probably no good reason to do a total rewrite in a different language.
If, on the other hand, this app might have a customer base on a non-Windows platform, and if the program is likely to dramatically increase in size in the future, it might be worthwhile to think about changing it to a different language.
people talk about Jerry Springer too, but do they generally listen to him?
They can say whatever they want, I just think they do themselves a disservice by making these long-winded rants against other open source licenses. Half the time they sound like they're issuing fatwas instead of simply giving opinions.
Then when they've got something important to rail against, like DRM, a lot of people are conditioned to think "oh, it's just the FSF making a big stink about nothing".
Indeed, there are plenty of examples of the FSF kind of "crossing the line" in the name of preaching the uniquely moral nature of the GPL, including but not limited to their screeds about the inferiority of various other open source and free software licenses (like MIT, APSL2, and BSD), but if there's one thing the FSF has every reason to be concerned with, it's DRM.
Obligatory Jokes:
People who live in glass elevators shouldn't throw Macs
The glass elevator was originally designed as a way to get around the glass ceiling
The elevator had a kernel panic because someone forgot to run the optimize program
Thank God it was running OSX, so it just froze a single elevator instead of crashing the whole store.
Indeed, I was just hearing from some American veterans how trustworthy the government's data protection is.
True, but they've also got $16 billion in short term liabilities.
I have a feeling that they won't be defending anyone's "right" to (post death threats, oppose the war, blaspheme, defame democracy, aid the terrorists) online. Hypocritical or not, that's actually a good thing. They ought to be going after those who censor political speech on a large scale.
Depends on the circle you're in. Opposing the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is the same as being a "neo-nazi" to some people.
Not all of the $48 billion in current assets are liquid though... unless they want to send me an Xbox 360 as part of my compensation package