ok, lets see, MY mac can not be turned into a mindless DDOS machine or a virus forwarder, so if some one really feels the need to hackinto my machine to see my files, what ever, I update my vulnrabilities so I am not afraid of that.
So why would it make sense for them to spend a lot of money marketing a machine at a point when only geeks can use it, and the most typical home user operating system (upwards of 95% of the market) doesn't exist yet?
...then why would they even bother with an early-entry 64-bit system if they're not trying to get past the "eMachines suck" perspective.
They must be waiting for the 64 bit XP to come out before they hype it!
In fact, I bet MS insists on it. Let's say I make a system, and I saturation bomb TV with ads for my 64-bit system. Consumers ask, 'what can I run on it to take advantage of the capability?' I respond with 'Windows, eventually,' at which point consumers say 'OK, I'll buy it eventually, if I remember.' Right, that works. Otherwise, I can respond 'You can run linux on it! 64-bit happy!' and MS gets super-pissed and screws me next time my OEM contract is up.
So there's your problem. If I hype my chip, I have to hype Linux or something like that. Or I can wait for MS to catch up and hype it then, which makes more sense for my company.
It is precisely when leaders of a project refuse to adopt features wanted by many developers and users that a fork is most urgently needed. In this case, forking is more than ever, a response to market forces.
If it's a healthy fork, yes. But often it's just because the guys couldn't stand each other, or because the leaders aren't listening, like you say. First off, your example is already not healthy, and you're talking about a basically dead project. At that point, a fork is a last-ditch effort to save the project, so we're already out of the realm of a "healthy" fork here.
Ultimately, a fork doesn't necessarily occur because developers "respond to market forces," simply because the bulk of Open Source software isn't subject to any financial considerations at all. The "market" is simply the goodwill they get from developers, and that may not be enough to overcome petty antagonism. Put it this way - if they had a real boss, that boss could tell them to get over it and work together. Or, you can quit but you're not taking the team with you.
Doesn't reinventing the wheel in many closed source products signify a far worse case of talent dilution?.
Of course. But since Open Source is working at a disadvantage in many other areas (including financial resources and support of an entire paid organization), projects can't afford the luxury of splitting those relative few projects that get to commercial quality (and I say that as a staunch Open Source advocate). And even this ignores the "dilution of third party support" angle, which may be the most crushing. Open Source on non-windows platforms gets little enough support anyway.
I'm not saying forks never make sense. But they have to happen at the right time, in the right way. First, it's better to fork once the project is pretty stable, meaning those hurdles that are common to the project in general will only be tackled once. Second, it has to be beneficial in that there need to be two clearly defined but fairly divergent sets of needs of the project itself. Then, forking makes sense to meet the needs of everyone without releasing a compromise project that's good for nothing.
All I'm saying is, too often forking is either unnecessary from the standpoint of the project or is only done to save it from death, and the project stalls. Ideally, we'd never be forced with that situation in the first place. Good forking is symbiotic, with a lot of sharing, no antagonism, and at least two well-defined but different markets for the software.
So what if the two leaders hate each other. That just leaves room for a third leader to step in and combine the other two projects. All that matters is that someone is interested enough to continue the work.
Right, that's the stock answer, but the reality is that putting together a team to continue development along the prior path is difficult. A theoretical one-man development team would not be able to realistically pull this off.
So when businesses balk at using open-source because of fork potential, telling them that some mystery guy could always come along and carry on the software they use isn't compelling.
Ultimately, the more ways you fraction a community working toward a given goal, the more wheel-reinventing you get, and the less overall progress is made. To a degree, having the same general problem answered in different and interesting ways can be healthy, but when you have a large group of people who depend on the development of a particular piece of software, and development of that software basically dies because two factions of the team can't get along, that's not good. While you and I can theoretically step in and maintain the old project, the chances that we will be able to make progress like the original, united team is remote.
That's why, if I were recommending software for serious business use, I would use software that is stable and established enough that 1) it either won't fork or could easily survive one, or 2) that we can maintain in house.
Forking is extremely healthy -- look, for example, at the Apache project.
Certainly, it worked well for Apache, but I don't know if that's the kind of fork he's talking about - that's more like a "development version" kind of fork. And, as you say, there's a good kind of flow between the two projects, where one is clearly the "Main Version" so there's no diluting of third-party support, etc.
Not so fun would be the "antagonistic" kind of fork. Here, there can be no flow between the two projects, practically. Additionally, the leaders of the two projects may rather kill the project entirely than adopt features from each other. It also may not be clear which is the "Main Version," diluting third-party support, and if it's a roughly equal split, the future direction of either fork may not resemble the previous project that much. It also may dilute the talent pool, since the manpower is split.
All in all, I think it depends what kind of fork takes place, and under what terms. However, I like all of you would have liked to have seen this nebulous "article" alluded to. Hey Taco, how about not posting stories where some asshat claims to have an unposted, mystery "article."
However, my friends are quite adaptable...now we ALL like anchovies and hot peppers on our pizzas...
Time to step it up. I've completely desensitized my taste buds. Hence, I now eat habaneros on my pizza and the hottest chicken wings known to man, and I love it! Now let's see the mooching bastards try THAT.
I used to use hollowed out books in college for safe storage from the idiot friends my roommate had, same as the trick of the first 4 bottles of beer in the fridge were filled with piss, the pattern of real beer versus piss was changed weekly by the beer owner. It kept the mooch friends out of the beer, although was a bit wierd to have bottles of piss in the fridge as far as I was concerned.
If I was your roommate, I'd start rotating your bottles of beer. Or did you also unobtrusively mark them?
My strategy with mooching roommates was simply to make sure I kept stuff in the fridge that I liked and others couldn't stand. Exceptionally spicy food works wonders there.
It's the same trick as the fake rock holding your house key.
As for hiding valuables in the house, the best "safe" is something that thieves not only don't want, but actively avoid. Like an empty box of my wife's tampons.
If each universe is unique to the observer, does that mean we have as many universes as their are quantum particles? How do those universes stay so closely collaborated that we can all observe the same initial condition to start from?
Depends how metaphysically you mean that. I say not. There is one universe, but an effectivelty infinite number of ways to observe it. Are two different observations of the same universes tantamount to having different universes? I dunno. This ties in directly to the old Eastern proverb of "If a tree falls in a forest...".
What constitutes an "observer"?
I'll change the question somewhat. An observer is you. You (presumably) don't perturb the system. But any *observation* regarding the system that gives you information by definition must have interacted with the system, and vice versa. This gives the possibility that the system changed in significant ways during the time you made the measurements. Thus, it's observations, not observers, that matters. A subtle distinction.
Classic example is if I'm determining the position of an electron. How would I do that? Presumably with a series of photons, which I would aim at the general area where the electron might be. When one bounced back, I could calculate where the electron was. But there's a problem - depending on the wavelength of light I use, the measurement is imprecise, and there is a standard error of half a wavelength. So, with visible light, I can only get to within, say, a few hundred nanometers. Not good.
What do I do to fix the problem? Go with light of a shorter wavelength. Say x-rays. Now, we're down to the Angstrom level. Lots more accurate.
Now Heisenberg comes in to play. So let's say I've determined the position of the electron with near infinite accuracy using a short wavelength and thus extremely high energy photon. Since I determined the position of the electron by bouncing this electron off of it, what happened to the electron? Well, I sure blasted the hell out of it with those x-rays. So I effectively know nothing about its momentum.
So, to more accurately measure position, I have to do something to the system which ultimately makes measuring momentum impossible. There are a number of variable pairs like this - Energy and time, for instance. Basically, variable pairs like this have units that multiply into Energy*time. (momentum is distance, momentum is Energy*time/distance).
Going back to the cat, it's effectively a system that exists in one of two valid states, which can be easily perturbed. Doing anything to the system that tells you its state can also change its state. But Schrodinger wasn't talking about HUP, really, although the two concepts are inexorably linked. If he were, he would have said something like, if you determine 100% whether it's dead, you can no longer know whether it's a Tabby or a Persian any longer. What he was actually elucidating is the following: a state that is a superposition (ie, weighted average essentially) of all valid states is, in quantum, also a valid state, and is the only thing that can be assumed in an unperturbed system. Hence, "alive and dead" is a valid state, because "alive" and "dead" are. See more Here regarding superposition.
Actually, that last statement is a tad off but I'm not writing a textbook. If anyone wants to call me on it, please do so I can put more people with physics abilities on my friends list.;)
Not really. Considering it in the superposition of states context from which the analogy derived, the particle (cat) does have a wavefunction, which must integrate to 1 over all space. That wavefunction/state can be a superposition of two well-defined states/functions, which in the cat context means it's dead and alive.
To be more accurate, LifeState(Cat)=A*"alive"+(1-A)*"dead", where A is a real number between 0 and 1, and "alive" and "dead" are two valid, real-valued states/values, each of which derives from an operator "LifeState" and two respective "wavefunctions" that square-integrate to 1 over all space and together make up the composite wavefunction "Cat." So the cat's half-alive, half-dead.
"You can't just request the whole damned OS source code."
Linux, yes. Everything IBM does, including but not limited to unix etc, no.
Also, as far as linux goes, that was IBM's response in the article - it's OpenSource, go get it. SCO, however, wants *every* version, not limited to distribution, but including, I presume, CVS commits. And that's just retarded. No way that's reasonable - hell, I wonder if they even have every nightly CVS for every project they've ever done, because that's what SCO wants.
I would imagine source code is esentially a trade secret. A competitor has asked IBM to hand over their trade secrets, because they may have copied theirs. Doesn't seem right to me. If SCO cannot provide some other proof that copying has occurred - for instance, evidence from an IBM employee - then I don't think they should be allowed to see IBMs trade secrets.
Reminiscent of SearchKing v Google, and they didn't get the PageRank code. There are standards with regard to whether you need that specific info to prove your case, which is obviously weighed against how damaging that info would be.
Clearly, SCO isn't even close. You can't just request the whole damned OS source code. That's retarded.
There's nothing wrong with SCO's request.
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SCOrched Earth
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· Score: 5, Funny
Look, all SCO wants is the AIX and DYNIX source code. Oh, also linux. And I forgot Unix. That's right, and they want every version. What's that? Every nightly CVS update too? OK. Also, they would like IBM to print the source for each of these out, and highlight with a yellow pen the parts they stole. Also, if they'd just circle those parts with a red pen, and write the words "We stole this," that'd be greeeeeaaat.
And they should just, ah, hand that in with the TPS reports.
1) SCO likes copyright. The Constitution likes copyright. FSF hates copyright. IBM likes FSF. Therefore, as SCO is suing IBM, SCO wins because FSF is unconstitutional.
2) Chewbacca is *not* from Endor. Therefore, you must not acquit. Or, well, find liable or whatever since this is a civil trial.
3) Four legs good, two legs better. Soooouuuueeeee!
Friggin' Nuts. I believe a kid with an 8th grade education would laugh at that open letter. If I get this straight, SCO's argument is that, since the FSF busts SCO's balls by putting out a better product for free, FSF should lose their privelege of using the copyright system? Like you say, I look forward to seeing all Sierra Club members walking to work under the automobile clause of the SCO decision.
Man, I really hope they try this shit in front of a judge.
Perhaps. But the US did had more to do with UK terrorism than Iraq had to do with bombing the twin towers.
I'm calling this one. Let's see it. Also, for what it's worth, I never claimed Iraw had a damned thing to do with the twin towers. I think you have your countries and wars confused.
The problem with Irish politics, of which you are entirely ignorant,
I'm ignorant of it because I don't give a damn. I didn't bring it up either, I'm simply responding. It was a rather irrelevant red-herring response to my original post.
The minority (though a rather large minority) want to become a part of Ireland. Due largely to religious differences between the two, and the fact that the Irish can hold grudges for centuries, we can't just wave a magic wand and make it all right.
First, that's a blatantly insulting ethnicist statement, and shows that the problem doesn't lie 100% with the irish. And as you point out I am ignorant of the politics, but I *bet* that there are contigious regions of Irish catholics, probably those most near Ireland, in favor of splitting with the UK. Not my business or my problem, but you'd be wise to let them.
Yep, they've done absolutely nothing. Not one bit. Well, except create the second (soon to be the) largest single market in the world,
That doesn't have a damned thing to do with the price of diamonds in Sierra Leone. I'm talking about solving world problems outside your borders. Saying you made an economically united Europe to further your own economic goals really doesn't count.
Nothing like the EU has ever been set up in the whole of human history.
Wow, that's some delusion of grandeur there. The international economy still runs on dollars. Pisses you off, doesn't it?
No European country has gone out and blown up a lot of stuff in recent history, this is true. But is that really a good thing? Is the only way to mark history is to wage war?
It's not about waging war, it's about ending genocide and furthering stability and self-determinism. Put it this way - what the hell has Europe done in the last 50 years for someone not in Europe? When has any European nation sent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of its own to risk their lives for the freedom of people they've never met?
I can't think of a single time. Ever. The US has done it a number of times in the last 75 years. We don't always make the right decisions - I'd be the first to admit that - but when no one else is willing to help out, that will happen.
Europe is big on using its mouth to decry atrocities, but loathe to actually do anything to fix them. And there's a whole lot of problems out there that need fixing, and we don't have the resources to do it right now. You could start in western Africa. Put up or shut up.
That might sound straight to you, but from over here it seems that you only worry about these problems _after_ someone's shat on your doorstep, so to speak.
First, when I last checked, Somailia and Bosnia are damned far from anything resembling our doorstep or national interests. Second, when something does come to our doorstep, you can be sure we will take care of it, as that's called self-preservation. The French aside, most nations do have an instinct of self-preservation.
Take terrorism. In England people were murdered for decades by IRA terrorists funded in no small part by Americans.
Some Irish-Americans, perhaps, acting as private citizens. That's like blaming Germany because Muslims living in Germany contributed heavily to Al-Queda. That doesn't fly.
Suddenly the Twin Towers are attacked and terrorism is the new world evil and the IRA funding via NorAid is stopped.
Don't know what you're going after there - NorAid seems to be a private organization. The idea that the US gov is supporting them in any way is laughable. Presumably, the British are big boys and can take care of themselves. However, if they need help taking care of the Irish in a fair way, we'll help. However, the disinterested skeptic might conclude that Britain's tactics against the Irish strongly resemble Israel's against the Palestinians, and as long as that's the case, the US won't get involved as Britain certainly isn't the clear-cut "good guy" there.
Personally, I'd recommend allowing NI a referendum on joining Ireland, as that would solve the whole problem.
Ultimately, no country in Europe has done a damned thing outside its borders in 50 years, save sending a thousand troops or so to play soldier in UN-sanctioned excercises in pointlessness. Even in those conflicts, it's the US doing the real work while European armies police Red Cross shelters. European armies have been allowed to decay into make-work for older, under-skilled citizens, with the exception of the British army which has been somewhat well-maintained.
If Europe wants a say in the world, it can get up off its collective ass and do something. Until it does, it has no right to complain that it is not consulted on decisions that are made and enforced at the expense of US money and lives.
That's not hypocrisy. That's exercising prerogative.
We in Europe are getting quite uppity with the US, especially their foreign policy and breaking our new toy would not be looked on kindly.
Every time the US goes isolationist it's Europe who begs the US out of it. If Europe is unwilling to participate in the "dirty" parts of solving the world's messes, then they have little room to complain when the US does it in a way they don't like.
Don't like the way the US solves problems? Solve them yourselves. I personally would welcome it, fewer US deaths, less terrorism targeted at the US, lower taxes, etc.
But somehow I don't think Europe wants to take on that burden. Those who solve the problems get to make the rules, and until Europe actually decides to get involved in anything, that's the US.
btw, I won't comment on your economics, as it seems to have been amply addressed already.
LOTR is the worst movie example to pick. The studios told WELL IN ADVANCE that there would be multiple versions. Those that were fooled, I guess, weren't following LOTR or the movie release.
That's right. Surprisingly, there are some of us who liked the movies but didn't see the need to explore every press release about the movies. Some of us have lives and jobs. I didn't know about the extended until the normal came out the first time, but I didn't get burned despite this.
Is anyone thinking that it would just be cheaper to go to block buster every time you want to watch a moive, instead of buying DVDs? This way you won't have to buy the extended version, the super extended version and the director's ultra extended version as each comes out. As if that wasn't enough, they obsolete each format within seven or so years? Bah. I'm going back to renting!
Well, this I think goes into the "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" category. Early on, probably everyone got bit on this. I know tons of people who owned the non-extended version of LOTR:FOTR. Not me, simply because I procrastinated so much on buying it that they announced the extended edition before I got around to buying the non-extended.
That said, I know few people who actually bought the non-extended version of LOTR:TTT. Everyone I know who really, really couldn't wait to see it again *rented* the non-extended version, then bought the extended when it came out.
By this point, no one should be getting burned on the "infinite editions" crap. If it's a movie likely to have interesting Collector's Edition features, or if it's a series likely to come out in boxed set, for God's sake, wait to buy it, or at worst rent it once in the meantime.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha! I just haX0red your b0x! Now just let me format your main partiti
...you wouldn't mind sharing your IP address?
...then why would they even bother with an early-entry 64-bit system if they're not trying to get past the "eMachines suck" perspective.
In fact, I bet MS insists on it. Let's say I make a system, and I saturation bomb TV with ads for my 64-bit system. Consumers ask, 'what can I run on it to take advantage of the capability?' I respond with 'Windows, eventually,' at which point consumers say 'OK, I'll buy it eventually, if I remember.' Right, that works. Otherwise, I can respond 'You can run linux on it! 64-bit happy!' and MS gets super-pissed and screws me next time my OEM contract is up.
So there's your problem. If I hype my chip, I have to hype Linux or something like that. Or I can wait for MS to catch up and hype it then, which makes more sense for my company.
If it's a healthy fork, yes. But often it's just because the guys couldn't stand each other, or because the leaders aren't listening, like you say. First off, your example is already not healthy, and you're talking about a basically dead project. At that point, a fork is a last-ditch effort to save the project, so we're already out of the realm of a "healthy" fork here.
Ultimately, a fork doesn't necessarily occur because developers "respond to market forces," simply because the bulk of Open Source software isn't subject to any financial considerations at all. The "market" is simply the goodwill they get from developers, and that may not be enough to overcome petty antagonism. Put it this way - if they had a real boss, that boss could tell them to get over it and work together. Or, you can quit but you're not taking the team with you.
Doesn't reinventing the wheel in many closed source products signify a far worse case of talent dilution?.
Of course. But since Open Source is working at a disadvantage in many other areas (including financial resources and support of an entire paid organization), projects can't afford the luxury of splitting those relative few projects that get to commercial quality (and I say that as a staunch Open Source advocate). And even this ignores the "dilution of third party support" angle, which may be the most crushing. Open Source on non-windows platforms gets little enough support anyway.
I'm not saying forks never make sense. But they have to happen at the right time, in the right way. First, it's better to fork once the project is pretty stable, meaning those hurdles that are common to the project in general will only be tackled once. Second, it has to be beneficial in that there need to be two clearly defined but fairly divergent sets of needs of the project itself. Then, forking makes sense to meet the needs of everyone without releasing a compromise project that's good for nothing.
All I'm saying is, too often forking is either unnecessary from the standpoint of the project or is only done to save it from death, and the project stalls. Ideally, we'd never be forced with that situation in the first place. Good forking is symbiotic, with a lot of sharing, no antagonism, and at least two well-defined but different markets for the software.
No, the first time around they used "abort" and "fail."
Right, that's the stock answer, but the reality is that putting together a team to continue development along the prior path is difficult. A theoretical one-man development team would not be able to realistically pull this off.
So when businesses balk at using open-source because of fork potential, telling them that some mystery guy could always come along and carry on the software they use isn't compelling.
Ultimately, the more ways you fraction a community working toward a given goal, the more wheel-reinventing you get, and the less overall progress is made. To a degree, having the same general problem answered in different and interesting ways can be healthy, but when you have a large group of people who depend on the development of a particular piece of software, and development of that software basically dies because two factions of the team can't get along, that's not good. While you and I can theoretically step in and maintain the old project, the chances that we will be able to make progress like the original, united team is remote.
That's why, if I were recommending software for serious business use, I would use software that is stable and established enough that 1) it either won't fork or could easily survive one, or 2) that we can maintain in house.
Certainly, it worked well for Apache, but I don't know if that's the kind of fork he's talking about - that's more like a "development version" kind of fork. And, as you say, there's a good kind of flow between the two projects, where one is clearly the "Main Version" so there's no diluting of third-party support, etc.
Not so fun would be the "antagonistic" kind of fork. Here, there can be no flow between the two projects, practically. Additionally, the leaders of the two projects may rather kill the project entirely than adopt features from each other. It also may not be clear which is the "Main Version," diluting third-party support, and if it's a roughly equal split, the future direction of either fork may not resemble the previous project that much. It also may dilute the talent pool, since the manpower is split.
All in all, I think it depends what kind of fork takes place, and under what terms. However, I like all of you would have liked to have seen this nebulous "article" alluded to. Hey Taco, how about not posting stories where some asshat claims to have an unposted, mystery "article."
Time to step it up. I've completely desensitized my taste buds. Hence, I now eat habaneros on my pizza and the hottest chicken wings known to man, and I love it! Now let's see the mooching bastards try THAT.
If I was your roommate, I'd start rotating your bottles of beer. Or did you also unobtrusively mark them?
My strategy with mooching roommates was simply to make sure I kept stuff in the fridge that I liked and others couldn't stand. Exceptionally spicy food works wonders there.
It's the same trick as the fake rock holding your house key.
As for hiding valuables in the house, the best "safe" is something that thieves not only don't want, but actively avoid. Like an empty box of my wife's tampons.
Depends how metaphysically you mean that. I say not. There is one universe, but an effectivelty infinite number of ways to observe it. Are two different observations of the same universes tantamount to having different universes? I dunno. This ties in directly to the old Eastern proverb of "If a tree falls in a forest...".
What constitutes an "observer"?
I'll change the question somewhat. An observer is you. You (presumably) don't perturb the system. But any *observation* regarding the system that gives you information by definition must have interacted with the system, and vice versa. This gives the possibility that the system changed in significant ways during the time you made the measurements. Thus, it's observations, not observers, that matters. A subtle distinction.
Classic example is if I'm determining the position of an electron. How would I do that? Presumably with a series of photons, which I would aim at the general area where the electron might be. When one bounced back, I could calculate where the electron was. But there's a problem - depending on the wavelength of light I use, the measurement is imprecise, and there is a standard error of half a wavelength. So, with visible light, I can only get to within, say, a few hundred nanometers. Not good.
What do I do to fix the problem? Go with light of a shorter wavelength. Say x-rays. Now, we're down to the Angstrom level. Lots more accurate.
Now Heisenberg comes in to play. So let's say I've determined the position of the electron with near infinite accuracy using a short wavelength and thus extremely high energy photon. Since I determined the position of the electron by bouncing this electron off of it, what happened to the electron? Well, I sure blasted the hell out of it with those x-rays. So I effectively know nothing about its momentum.
So, to more accurately measure position, I have to do something to the system which ultimately makes measuring momentum impossible. There are a number of variable pairs like this - Energy and time, for instance. Basically, variable pairs like this have units that multiply into Energy*time. (momentum is distance, momentum is Energy*time/distance).
Going back to the cat, it's effectively a system that exists in one of two valid states, which can be easily perturbed. Doing anything to the system that tells you its state can also change its state. But Schrodinger wasn't talking about HUP, really, although the two concepts are inexorably linked. If he were, he would have said something like, if you determine 100% whether it's dead, you can no longer know whether it's a Tabby or a Persian any longer. What he was actually elucidating is the following: a state that is a superposition (ie, weighted average essentially) of all valid states is, in quantum, also a valid state, and is the only thing that can be assumed in an unperturbed system. Hence, "alive and dead" is a valid state, because "alive" and "dead" are. See more Here regarding superposition.
Actually, that last statement is a tad off but I'm not writing a textbook. If anyone wants to call me on it, please do so I can put more people with physics abilities on my friends list. ;)
Not really. Considering it in the superposition of states context from which the analogy derived, the particle (cat) does have a wavefunction, which must integrate to 1 over all space. That wavefunction/state can be a superposition of two well-defined states/functions, which in the cat context means it's dead and alive.
To be more accurate, LifeState(Cat)=A*"alive"+(1-A)*"dead", where A is a real number between 0 and 1, and "alive" and "dead" are two valid, real-valued states/values, each of which derives from an operator "LifeState" and two respective "wavefunctions" that square-integrate to 1 over all space and together make up the composite wavefunction "Cat." So the cat's half-alive, half-dead.
Wow, that was fun.
Linux, yes. Everything IBM does, including but not limited to unix etc, no.
Also, as far as linux goes, that was IBM's response in the article - it's OpenSource, go get it. SCO, however, wants *every* version, not limited to distribution, but including, I presume, CVS commits. And that's just retarded. No way that's reasonable - hell, I wonder if they even have every nightly CVS for every project they've ever done, because that's what SCO wants.
IBM needs to send a donation with lots of zeros on it.
Reminiscent of SearchKing v Google, and they didn't get the PageRank code. There are standards with regard to whether you need that specific info to prove your case, which is obviously weighed against how damaging that info would be.
Clearly, SCO isn't even close. You can't just request the whole damned OS source code. That's retarded.
And they should just, ah, hand that in with the TPS reports.
What's unreasonable about that?
Friggin' Nuts. I believe a kid with an 8th grade education would laugh at that open letter. If I get this straight, SCO's argument is that, since the FSF busts SCO's balls by putting out a better product for free, FSF should lose their privelege of using the copyright system? Like you say, I look forward to seeing all Sierra Club members walking to work under the automobile clause of the SCO decision.
Man, I really hope they try this shit in front of a judge.
...that Gates is so insecure he decided to marry MS's dumbest employee. Microsoft Bob? You have to be kidding.
Or, did MS only release that shit because she was already knobbing the boss? So hard to tell.
You think that's a little loopy? Check out Kim's official policy on triplets.
Yeah, he's nuckin' futs.
I'm calling this one. Let's see it. Also, for what it's worth, I never claimed Iraw had a damned thing to do with the twin towers. I think you have your countries and wars confused.
The problem with Irish politics, of which you are entirely ignorant,
I'm ignorant of it because I don't give a damn. I didn't bring it up either, I'm simply responding. It was a rather irrelevant red-herring response to my original post.
The minority (though a rather large minority) want to become a part of Ireland. Due largely to religious differences between the two, and the fact that the Irish can hold grudges for centuries, we can't just wave a magic wand and make it all right.
First, that's a blatantly insulting ethnicist statement, and shows that the problem doesn't lie 100% with the irish. And as you point out I am ignorant of the politics, but I *bet* that there are contigious regions of Irish catholics, probably those most near Ireland, in favor of splitting with the UK. Not my business or my problem, but you'd be wise to let them.
Yep, they've done absolutely nothing. Not one bit. Well, except create the second (soon to be the) largest single market in the world,
That doesn't have a damned thing to do with the price of diamonds in Sierra Leone. I'm talking about solving world problems outside your borders. Saying you made an economically united Europe to further your own economic goals really doesn't count.
Nothing like the EU has ever been set up in the whole of human history.
Wow, that's some delusion of grandeur there. The international economy still runs on dollars. Pisses you off, doesn't it?
No European country has gone out and blown up a lot of stuff in recent history, this is true. But is that really a good thing? Is the only way to mark history is to wage war?
It's not about waging war, it's about ending genocide and furthering stability and self-determinism. Put it this way - what the hell has Europe done in the last 50 years for someone not in Europe? When has any European nation sent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of its own to risk their lives for the freedom of people they've never met?
I can't think of a single time. Ever. The US has done it a number of times in the last 75 years. We don't always make the right decisions - I'd be the first to admit that - but when no one else is willing to help out, that will happen.
Europe is big on using its mouth to decry atrocities, but loathe to actually do anything to fix them. And there's a whole lot of problems out there that need fixing, and we don't have the resources to do it right now. You could start in western Africa. Put up or shut up.
First, when I last checked, Somailia and Bosnia are damned far from anything resembling our doorstep or national interests. Second, when something does come to our doorstep, you can be sure we will take care of it, as that's called self-preservation. The French aside, most nations do have an instinct of self-preservation.
Take terrorism. In England people were murdered for decades by IRA terrorists funded in no small part by Americans.
Some Irish-Americans, perhaps, acting as private citizens. That's like blaming Germany because Muslims living in Germany contributed heavily to Al-Queda. That doesn't fly.
Suddenly the Twin Towers are attacked and terrorism is the new world evil and the IRA funding via NorAid is stopped.
Don't know what you're going after there - NorAid seems to be a private organization. The idea that the US gov is supporting them in any way is laughable. Presumably, the British are big boys and can take care of themselves. However, if they need help taking care of the Irish in a fair way, we'll help. However, the disinterested skeptic might conclude that Britain's tactics against the Irish strongly resemble Israel's against the Palestinians, and as long as that's the case, the US won't get involved as Britain certainly isn't the clear-cut "good guy" there.
Personally, I'd recommend allowing NI a referendum on joining Ireland, as that would solve the whole problem.
Ultimately, no country in Europe has done a damned thing outside its borders in 50 years, save sending a thousand troops or so to play soldier in UN-sanctioned excercises in pointlessness. Even in those conflicts, it's the US doing the real work while European armies police Red Cross shelters. European armies have been allowed to decay into make-work for older, under-skilled citizens, with the exception of the British army which has been somewhat well-maintained.
If Europe wants a say in the world, it can get up off its collective ass and do something. Until it does, it has no right to complain that it is not consulted on decisions that are made and enforced at the expense of US money and lives.
That's not hypocrisy. That's exercising prerogative.
Every time the US goes isolationist it's Europe who begs the US out of it. If Europe is unwilling to participate in the "dirty" parts of solving the world's messes, then they have little room to complain when the US does it in a way they don't like.
Don't like the way the US solves problems? Solve them yourselves. I personally would welcome it, fewer US deaths, less terrorism targeted at the US, lower taxes, etc.
But somehow I don't think Europe wants to take on that burden. Those who solve the problems get to make the rules, and until Europe actually decides to get involved in anything, that's the US.
btw, I won't comment on your economics, as it seems to have been amply addressed already.
That's right. Surprisingly, there are some of us who liked the movies but didn't see the need to explore every press release about the movies. Some of us have lives and jobs. I didn't know about the extended until the normal came out the first time, but I didn't get burned despite this.
Not all of us are "hardcore" fans.
Well, this I think goes into the "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" category. Early on, probably everyone got bit on this. I know tons of people who owned the non-extended version of LOTR:FOTR. Not me, simply because I procrastinated so much on buying it that they announced the extended edition before I got around to buying the non-extended.
That said, I know few people who actually bought the non-extended version of LOTR:TTT. Everyone I know who really, really couldn't wait to see it again *rented* the non-extended version, then bought the extended when it came out.
By this point, no one should be getting burned on the "infinite editions" crap. If it's a movie likely to have interesting Collector's Edition features, or if it's a series likely to come out in boxed set, for God's sake, wait to buy it, or at worst rent it once in the meantime.
Yeah, that was great, wasn't it? Seriously, it was nice when Windows would crash - yet, not take down the whole damned box! Novel concept, I realize.