> It's hardly unfortunate that it makes it difficult for governments to track down dissenters, etc.
Um... While it's obvious you didn't RTFA, you could at least thought about the point being made by the quote in TFS. From TFA:
"...but it turns out anonymity really encourages bad behavior."
Who, even outside their right mind, would think that the best part of anonymity is the bad behavior and the unfortunate part is the fact that people can't track you down?
Not a lawyer and all that, but her health could mean:
1) She was unable to receive / respond to the summons in a reasonable time frame. If this was proven the default judgment could be revoked and the case be taken to court. 2) She may have been incapable of using a computer at the time of the alleged infringement. This, of course, only matters if #1 is established (i.e. the case goes back to court) 3) If the lawyer is a freaking ninja and #1 is established, he may be able to counter sue the RIAA for malicious litigation and emotional damages if he can prove that they knew the kid was sick as would likely miss the court date.
#3 is a long shot, but it would be oh so excellent; The damages would break $1M easily, and the pie would be even better.
Beyond the legal reasons, though, her health matters because it makes a good story. The RIAA may be asshole shakedown artists, but it's kinda hard to feel sorry for some frat boy or other generic college kid. On top of that, those kid usually settle since they figure it's for the best, and daily $2000 settlements are boring news. Court cases are interesting, and those with sympathetic defendants are even more so. These stories are actually quite great because they show just how malicious the RIAA really is, and they sell ads. Win-win.
They are public domain in so far as the originals are long out of copyright. Any magazine you had dated prior to about 1920 (I forget the exact year) has fallen into the public domain and you'd be free to post articles. However, derivative works, namely the scans/data in this case, are probably recent enough to still be under copyright. Yes, they would probably be considered to be insufficiently distinct to be true "derivative works" with a separate copyright, but proving that would require a costly legal battle.
Sure, but it is something to note in the "disadvantages" column. As in how many birds killed per kW per year. If you look at it like that, then I'd say it's by a wide margin more devastating than pretty much any power source.
(Here's to hoping Obama does better than Bush with nuclear!)
>> most anti racism laws undermine Free Speech. > A big part of anti-racism laws is to prevent offensive speech as it relates to race, right?
Right, but another big part is preventing discriminatory actions, like not hiring someone because of their race. Also, hate crime legislation (where the punishment is escalated if the victim's race plays a prominent factor). I can't see either of these as being protected speech. Thus, the 'most'.
(Incidentally, I would personally say that very few anti racism laws actually undermine free speech. Especially since it only takes a couple laws to cover all speech related racism, and lots more to cover all the other cases.)
I would suggest you review the information in the paper you linked regarding HV DC distribution. They show it to be significantly (for the values that pass for sig. in this case) more efficient than conventional AC power distribution, and help simplify the PSU design. In addition, I do believe that use of higher voltages would, for computer PSUs, at least, allow for more efficient DC-DC designs, a fact not accounted for in the paper. (Unless I messed something, they only considered the removal of the PFC component of the PSU.)
HV DC is a rather clear winner. The only reason AC is better than DC in this environment is because it's at an inherently higher voltage. Obviously 48V DC is going to have significantly higher ohmic losses because it's going to have to carry twice the current to deliver the same power, while still needing to going trough a DC-DC anyway. I frankly can't imagine why 48V was seriously proposed.
As an aside, I do believe that, for a given voltage and power (rms values for AC) DC has exactly the same ohmic losses as AC. (Less, if you count the skin effect.) The only reason AC won the "War of Currents" is because it could be distributed at high voltages and stopped down at its destination. (FWIW, I think that DC would have lower losses than AC in the ultra high voltage transmission lines, as corona discharge actually dominates losses at that point, and is largely a function of peak voltage, though I've not done any research specific to this topic.)
A fun suggestion, but if a university does own the rights to your work, they could very simply disallow your contributions to be released under a given license (BSD in this case). You can't circumvent someone's ownership of something by transferring it to someone else. What you're suggesting here is the IP analogue of stealing something and claiming it's okay because you gave it to your friend (or the public; IP Robin Hood!).
> Even if I use school resources to create the item (I'm paying for those services)
While I do agree with you, this point here is problematic. While you are paying for the resources, you are (almost certainly) paying for educationally licensed versions of those resources. In short, if you were to commercialize something that they could prove you created using such resources, you could be sued for breach of contract.
Further, you also neglect to consider private contributions to universities. These usually represent rather significant portions of the budget, and can exceed a billion dollars in the case of particularly prestigious schools. As a result, no school can be considered to be funded entirely by the students, meaning that the school's resources are not entirely payed for by students anyway.
That being said, unless you are being paid to be there, they almost certainly have no claim to any IP created by a student, regardless of whether it's on the student's or the "university's time" (as the latter is being paid for by the student). The only possible argument to the contrary is that the university views the potential IP produced by the a student as additional compensation for their educational services.
There are interesting questions here though, namely what exactly a student pays for as part of their education. Intriguingly, I would have to say that a student has more claim to work they do for class than that they do otherwise, as the former is obviously part of the services they are paying for. Any university assistance on the latter, however, could very well be regarded as additional, unrelated services (e.g. consulting a professor, using software, etc).
As a final note: I am unaware of any school even attempting to assert ownership of IP created by liberal arts students, such as creative writings or art portfolios, etc. There may well be some definitive precedent within that area.
> Because fraud is illegal. Con games in order to deprive someone of something are illegal.
Fraud, like everything else, isn't _inherently_ illegal; what makes it illegal is the damage it does to it's victim. If you cannot prove damage, then there's no crime. (This is why 'humorous' fraud, like on those hidden camera shows is legal). When an officer of the court tricks you into doing something, whether it's giving up your location, confessing (Prisoner's Dilemma), or the like, there is no inherit damage. The 'fraud' does absolutely nothing but get you to give up information. If that _information_ is damaging, that's an entirely separate issue, as it would be just as damaging had it be obtained in any other way.
Now, that's just criminal fraud. It is interesting to note that civil fraud is basically defined as lying. As is common with civil law, the definition is considerably more vague because it's not meant to be as black and white as criminal law (due to the way the courts work). So it is certainly the case the tricks like these are cases of civil fraud. However, successful cases against law enforcement are few and far between.
> If you can't get them playing within the rules, let them go.
But what rules are they violating? Tricks aren't criminal; civilians can do them if they want and frequently do. And while they may violate the civil statue, that's so vague there's no real line to draw. Sure, maybe telling someone that someone confessed is pretty obviously a lie, but what about a plain clothes police officer? If they anticipate what bank a robber will hit next, are they obligated to post a warning that the cops are there?
In this case (of the story), is this breaking the 'rules'? What if Valve were legitimately going to give this guy a job? Sure, they're expecting him to get sent to prison, but that doesn't mean the offer is necessarily fake. What if Valve was feeling vigilante and decided to hire the guy, then report him to the FBI the next week? Hell, what if they hired him _without_ intending to turn him over, but the FBI discovered him on their own? Or maybe a disgruntled employee reported him?
All those situations end up in the same place: the guy's arrested by the FBI. Which cases should be illegal? Why does it even matter? That's why police can use tricks to get people. There's nothing to say what's good and what's bad except a jury in a civil suit. And because we, as a society, prefer not to let criminals roam freely, such cases usually fail.
Well, the way it usually goes is that technical internships pay (I've not seen any that don't), and non-technical ones don't (some will give minimum wage). So I don't think "if they pay" is nearly and relevant as "if they hire you".
That being said, they're almost always ballpark $12/hr these days. Some will go as low as $10, and one company I knew used to pay $17+, but they since dropped to $12-ish as well. Either way, the pay's better than anything else, so don't worry about it; these things are mostly about resume building anyway.
One thing I will stress though (enough for it's own paragraph!) is to make sure the one you choose will have use for you. I've seen far too many interns twiddling their thumbs because they're poorly managed, and nobody wants to just sit there and kill time for a couple months. So make sure that the work is interesting and a priority (as much as one can expect for and intern) for the company. That's worth more than a couple extra bucks and hour.
> Really? To the rest of the world (or at least western Europe), even 'left wing' American newspapers appear hilariously conservative.
That would probably be because the USA is considerably more conservative than the rest of the world (well, primarily Europe). As a result, what passes for 'liberal' here is likely merely 'not as conservative' there.
But what's your point? The article is not about idealogical bias so much as it is about political bias. Related, yes, but free from the notion that centrism is the same as unbiased. What TFA is saying is that their stories tended to be biased in favor of Democrats. In the states, that is akin to saying "liberal bias", which they use instead because it flows better.
> Some other classic boners are leaving out a "bool" type (C and Python)...
I've never understood why this bothers people. For the two languages you give:
C: In C, everything is a number. This is because everything is a number at the level of the processor, and C is all 'low-level' like that. If the processor is only going to check whether something is zero or not, why enforce that a given number is _precisely_ one or zero? There is some confusion by people who don't understand this who will type (x==TRUE), but that's why TRUE is defined as !FALSE (not 1) by clever people, and simply not defined most of the time.
Python: FWIW, Python does have a bool type, it's just that it doesn't really matter (as with a typedef in C). The thing is that without strong types, and the auto-bound, semi-singleton True and False, people never bother typing 'bool' unless they want the true value of an object (i.e. 'bool(obj)').
I think that the Python bit underscores my point: boolean types just don't matter. Python's got it, and you don't even know! Computers only test if something is zero. If it is, it's false, and if it's not, it's true. C exposes this behavior explicitly, while Python sort-of does it in it's rather complex OO way.
> - the first case is trying to make the best of what you have and building on that
To add to this, never ever simply "reuse" code; if you just copy and paste you'll end up with a horribly designed hack job worth of TDWTF. Instead, take what you have and massage it into place.
In this particular case, it sounds like your design no longer hashes well with the requirements. My suggestion is to start rewriting/reworking isolated portions of the code base and create a temporary compatibility layer (if necessary) to interface with the old code. Continue doing this until the entire application is converted over to the new design.
> Banks are required to make a certain percentage of their loans in depressed areas, and are required to > prove that they are not discriminatory in lending. This does not equate to the massive spate of 125% > LTV loans, no proof of income loans, and blindly purchasing portfolios of loans.
While that is the true letter of the law, that doesn't mean that's not the consequence of the law. By requiring banks do a certain percentage of their business in depressed areas, you are essentially requiring they make a 'depressed' loan for every so-many 'normal' loans. Depending on the required percentage and the number of 'depressed' loans available, a bank could very well be forced into either not granting qualified 'normal' loans or granting unqualified 'depressed' loans. A bank would likely expect to to make more money on the 'normal' loans so they dip into the not-totally-qualified 'depressed' loans.
This problem is typical of requiring a certain percentage of something is something. An absolutely classic example is affirmative action, and a less common one is use of domestic products.
I should point out, though, that I do agree that much of the problems arose from granting 'normal' loans to people that weren't qualified. However, that doesn't mean that the mentioned law couldn't have played a part.
> On the other hand, with McCain, he's wanting to start taxing heath benefits on employees rather > than let them pay those premiums pre-tax. That BLOWS.
While that is true, it's only half the story. The other half is that he's going to offer a tax credit to help you to pay for your own health care.
When it comes down to it, the major problem with health care as it stands is that there's a huge incentive for companies to provide it for you since that way it's cost will never be taxed. However, this means that health care basically isn't on the free market for the individual since the providers really only care about company contracts. McCain's plan is something of a step in the right direction as far as actually forcing some competition for individuals.
For what it's worth though, the whole health insurance thing is a red herring and the real issue revolves around the massive price discrepancy for health care (e.g. doctor's visits) between insured and uninsured patients. From what I've seen, one can expect something like blood work to cost about 2-3 times as much without the 'insured' discount, and a hospital stay will frequently cost more than 5x. If this problem was taken care of then "health insurance" would actually be about insuring against accidents rather than 'insuring' that routine operations don't break the bank. Too bad we don't have a politician that knows/cares. (IIRC, Romney was actually talking about this, but he's long gone.)
> A defect in the crystal structure results in the failure of every component that the defect is present in.
That's not entirely true. The last time I checked, which has admittedly been some time, the defect rate was usually on the order of a part per billion or so. Excellent, certainly, but far from perfect considering that still means billions of billions of... defects in each wafer. The key is that small, isolated defects are tolerable, so you only need to junk parts with high concentrations or an unlucky distribution. This is why the exact same processor die can have different speed limits.
Another thing worth pointing out is that having a controlled rate of SiO2 defects in the silicon crystal was actually found to be beneficial. Again, though, I don't know if that still hold for, say, =65nm processes.
The point being that without knowing the how "extremely high" the purity needs to be it is impossible to say definitively whether existing tech is good enough. However, if I were designing this I would certainly try to make it work!
While it's worth trying, I would be somewhat surprised if you would be able to see any particularly modern scopes as people into amateur electronics rarely buy new equipment. Still though, some of the people there might have experience and opinions they can share, but the same holds true with slashdot.
As someone who has worked with a wide variety of scopes (and, to a lesser extent, logic analyzers) I feel largely 'meh' about the UI differences. They all have their quirks and pluses and generally similar features. In recent years I've (personally) leaned more toward Tektronix, but that's mostly because their hardware seems to fit my needs the best and they're pretty cheap (on ebay, see above;).
By-the-by, if anyone could point me in the direction of a modern scope with 10+ bits of resolution it'd be greatly appreciated. My old Nicolet is starting to look a little dated;).
Um... You are aware that moving and copying are very different things? "Moving" is essentially the definition of stealing, i.e. I move something out of your possession into mine. Copying is, however, not stealing because you still have the original (and therefore the only person 'harmed' is the copyright holder).
Remember, just because it's digital doesn't mean it can't be stolen.
Not only that, but the company would then likely have to prove to the stockholders how they though opening themselves to such a lawsuit was supposed to increase the company's worth. Since that would likely be impossible, they'd get sued into the ground again. Finally, lots of customers will just ship for fear that their data would be exposed and the company would promptly go out of business.
> If not, then why not store your encrypted data on a huge partition of random data. To get it you > need both the key and the location of the data. The latter you can simply refuse to disclose.
That's (mostly) a no-go. Denying the police access to evidence (when the court says they are entitled to it) is always going to get you in trouble for hindering an investigation. Of course, this is only if they can prove you have some encrypted data, but are unable to determine where it's hidden. This is rather unlikely, so the hiding is either going to be useless or prevent them from asking for the key in the first place.
> Suppose some incriminating evidence exists but it is hidden in a secret location. > Can you be forced to disclose that location?
I believe the answer is 'yes', but I could be wrong (as destroying evidence is illegal). The thing is that they have to be able to prove the evidence exists and that you know where it is. That's not trivial. You can't charge a murder suspect for not answering "Where's the body" since you have no basis on which to claim he knows (he's innocent until proven guilty).
Indeed; that was the first thing I checked upon reading this story.
I'm sorry, but I'd rather have a 6 month wait and a 64-bit version than concurrent releases. Linux has been running on AMD64 for what now? Three or four years? And now that Vista runs on 64-bit as well there's even less excuse for this. Hell, they're even got a version for the Sparc.
I don't mean to belittle the fact this story. It is pretty cool that Adobe seems to at least recognize linux as a worthwhile platform*, it's just that support is still rather lackluster.
(*While I would think that this would have to do with the increasingly common use of linux on embedded devices, the fact that there's no ARM version seems to contradict this. However, I suspect there's a (secret) version somewhere since I'm seen embedded linux devices that play flash.)
Oh come on, we've got enough for another 2 or 3 years. Who knows what could happen in that time! Global Warming disasters, World War III, you name it! A couple minor setbacks like those, and we could stretch IP4 for another century! They obviously just know something we don't...
Actually, democracy is quite the opposite. In a true democracy all things are decided by the majority, leaving the minority out in the cold. In the US we have a representative democracy. Here, the representatives (should) have the same overall ideas and opinions as the majority, but aren't so beholden to the masses that they have to ignore the little man.
Here's a little food for thought: If ensuring the little man has an equal voice is the only way to ensure they receive fair treatment, how did slavery ever get abolished?
Slashdot Mirror
> It's hardly unfortunate that it makes it difficult for governments to track down dissenters, etc.
Um... While it's obvious you didn't RTFA, you could at least thought about the point being made by the quote in TFS. From TFA:
"...but it turns out anonymity really encourages bad behavior."
Who, even outside their right mind, would think that the best part of anonymity is the bad behavior and the unfortunate part is the fact that people can't track you down?
They already have resistive touch sensitivity!?!
Not a lawyer and all that, but her health could mean:
1) She was unable to receive / respond to the summons in a reasonable time frame. If this was proven the default judgment could be revoked and the case be taken to court.
2) She may have been incapable of using a computer at the time of the alleged infringement. This, of course, only matters if #1 is established (i.e. the case goes back to court)
3) If the lawyer is a freaking ninja and #1 is established, he may be able to counter sue the RIAA for malicious litigation and emotional damages if he can prove that they knew the kid was sick as would likely miss the court date.
#3 is a long shot, but it would be oh so excellent; The damages would break $1M easily, and the pie would be even better.
Beyond the legal reasons, though, her health matters because it makes a good story. The RIAA may be asshole shakedown artists, but it's kinda hard to feel sorry for some frat boy or other generic college kid. On top of that, those kid usually settle since they figure it's for the best, and daily $2000 settlements are boring news. Court cases are interesting, and those with sympathetic defendants are even more so. These stories are actually quite great because they show just how malicious the RIAA really is, and they sell ads. Win-win.
Yes and no.
They are public domain in so far as the originals are long out of copyright. Any magazine you had dated prior to about 1920 (I forget the exact year) has fallen into the public domain and you'd be free to post articles. However, derivative works, namely the scans/data in this case, are probably recent enough to still be under copyright. Yes, they would probably be considered to be insufficiently distinct to be true "derivative works" with a separate copyright, but proving that would require a costly legal battle.
Sure, but it is something to note in the "disadvantages" column. As in how many birds killed per kW per year. If you look at it like that, then I'd say it's by a wide margin more devastating than pretty much any power source.
(Here's to hoping Obama does better than Bush with nuclear!)
>> most anti racism laws undermine Free Speech.
> A big part of anti-racism laws is to prevent offensive speech as it relates to race, right?
Right, but another big part is preventing discriminatory actions, like not hiring someone because of their race. Also, hate crime legislation (where the punishment is escalated if the victim's race plays a prominent factor). I can't see either of these as being protected speech. Thus, the 'most'.
(Incidentally, I would personally say that very few anti racism laws actually undermine free speech. Especially since it only takes a couple laws to cover all speech related racism, and lots more to cover all the other cases.)
I would suggest you review the information in the paper you linked regarding HV DC distribution. They show it to be significantly (for the values that pass for sig. in this case) more efficient than conventional AC power distribution, and help simplify the PSU design. In addition, I do believe that use of higher voltages would, for computer PSUs, at least, allow for more efficient DC-DC designs, a fact not accounted for in the paper. (Unless I messed something, they only considered the removal of the PFC component of the PSU.)
HV DC is a rather clear winner. The only reason AC is better than DC in this environment is because it's at an inherently higher voltage. Obviously 48V DC is going to have significantly higher ohmic losses because it's going to have to carry twice the current to deliver the same power, while still needing to going trough a DC-DC anyway. I frankly can't imagine why 48V was seriously proposed.
As an aside, I do believe that, for a given voltage and power (rms values for AC) DC has exactly the same ohmic losses as AC. (Less, if you count the skin effect.) The only reason AC won the "War of Currents" is because it could be distributed at high voltages and stopped down at its destination. (FWIW, I think that DC would have lower losses than AC in the ultra high voltage transmission lines, as corona discharge actually dominates losses at that point, and is largely a function of peak voltage, though I've not done any research specific to this topic.)
A fun suggestion, but if a university does own the rights to your work, they could very simply disallow your contributions to be released under a given license (BSD in this case). You can't circumvent someone's ownership of something by transferring it to someone else. What you're suggesting here is the IP analogue of stealing something and claiming it's okay because you gave it to your friend (or the public; IP Robin Hood!).
> Even if I use school resources to create the item (I'm paying for those services)
While I do agree with you, this point here is problematic. While you are paying for the resources, you are (almost certainly) paying for educationally licensed versions of those resources. In short, if you were to commercialize something that they could prove you created using such resources, you could be sued for breach of contract.
Further, you also neglect to consider private contributions to universities. These usually represent rather significant portions of the budget, and can exceed a billion dollars in the case of particularly prestigious schools. As a result, no school can be considered to be funded entirely by the students, meaning that the school's resources are not entirely payed for by students anyway.
That being said, unless you are being paid to be there, they almost certainly have no claim to any IP created by a student, regardless of whether it's on the student's or the "university's time" (as the latter is being paid for by the student). The only possible argument to the contrary is that the university views the potential IP produced by the a student as additional compensation for their educational services.
There are interesting questions here though, namely what exactly a student pays for as part of their education. Intriguingly, I would have to say that a student has more claim to work they do for class than that they do otherwise, as the former is obviously part of the services they are paying for. Any university assistance on the latter, however, could very well be regarded as additional, unrelated services (e.g. consulting a professor, using software, etc).
As a final note: I am unaware of any school even attempting to assert ownership of IP created by liberal arts students, such as creative writings or art portfolios, etc. There may well be some definitive precedent within that area.
> Because fraud is illegal. Con games in order to deprive someone of something are illegal.
Fraud, like everything else, isn't _inherently_ illegal; what makes it illegal is the damage it does to it's victim. If you cannot prove damage, then there's no crime. (This is why 'humorous' fraud, like on those hidden camera shows is legal). When an officer of the court tricks you into doing something, whether it's giving up your location, confessing (Prisoner's Dilemma), or the like, there is no inherit damage. The 'fraud' does absolutely nothing but get you to give up information. If that _information_ is damaging, that's an entirely separate issue, as it would be just as damaging had it be obtained in any other way.
Now, that's just criminal fraud. It is interesting to note that civil fraud is basically defined as lying. As is common with civil law, the definition is considerably more vague because it's not meant to be as black and white as criminal law (due to the way the courts work). So it is certainly the case the tricks like these are cases of civil fraud. However, successful cases against law enforcement are few and far between.
> If you can't get them playing within the rules, let them go.
But what rules are they violating? Tricks aren't criminal; civilians can do them if they want and frequently do. And while they may violate the civil statue, that's so vague there's no real line to draw. Sure, maybe telling someone that someone confessed is pretty obviously a lie, but what about a plain clothes police officer? If they anticipate what bank a robber will hit next, are they obligated to post a warning that the cops are there?
In this case (of the story), is this breaking the 'rules'? What if Valve were legitimately going to give this guy a job? Sure, they're expecting him to get sent to prison, but that doesn't mean the offer is necessarily fake. What if Valve was feeling vigilante and decided to hire the guy, then report him to the FBI the next week? Hell, what if they hired him _without_ intending to turn him over, but the FBI discovered him on their own? Or maybe a disgruntled employee reported him?
All those situations end up in the same place: the guy's arrested by the FBI. Which cases should be illegal? Why does it even matter? That's why police can use tricks to get people. There's nothing to say what's good and what's bad except a jury in a civil suit. And because we, as a society, prefer not to let criminals roam freely, such cases usually fail.
Well, the way it usually goes is that technical internships pay (I've not seen any that don't), and non-technical ones don't (some will give minimum wage). So I don't think "if they pay" is nearly and relevant as "if they hire you".
That being said, they're almost always ballpark $12/hr these days. Some will go as low as $10, and one company I knew used to pay $17+, but they since dropped to $12-ish as well. Either way, the pay's better than anything else, so don't worry about it; these things are mostly about resume building anyway.
One thing I will stress though (enough for it's own paragraph!) is to make sure the one you choose will have use for you. I've seen far too many interns twiddling their thumbs because they're poorly managed, and nobody wants to just sit there and kill time for a couple months. So make sure that the work is interesting and a priority (as much as one can expect for and intern) for the company. That's worth more than a couple extra bucks and hour.
> Really? To the rest of the world (or at least western Europe), even 'left wing' American newspapers appear hilariously conservative.
That would probably be because the USA is considerably more conservative than the rest of the world (well, primarily Europe). As a result, what passes for 'liberal' here is likely merely 'not as conservative' there.
But what's your point? The article is not about idealogical bias so much as it is about political bias. Related, yes, but free from the notion that centrism is the same as unbiased. What TFA is saying is that their stories tended to be biased in favor of Democrats. In the states, that is akin to saying "liberal bias", which they use instead because it flows better.
> Some other classic boners are leaving out a "bool" type (C and Python)...
I've never understood why this bothers people.
For the two languages you give:
C: In C, everything is a number. This is because everything is a number at the level of the processor, and C is all 'low-level' like that. If the processor is only going to check whether something is zero or not, why enforce that a given number is _precisely_ one or zero? There is some confusion by people who don't understand this who will type (x==TRUE), but that's why TRUE is defined as !FALSE (not 1) by clever people, and simply not defined most of the time.
Python: FWIW, Python does have a bool type, it's just that it doesn't really matter (as with a typedef in C). The thing is that without strong types, and the auto-bound, semi-singleton True and False, people never bother typing 'bool' unless they want the true value of an object (i.e. 'bool(obj)').
I think that the Python bit underscores my point: boolean types just don't matter. Python's got it, and you don't even know! Computers only test if something is zero. If it is, it's false, and if it's not, it's true. C exposes this behavior explicitly, while Python sort-of does it in it's rather complex OO way.
> - the first case is trying to make the best of what you have and building on that
To add to this, never ever simply "reuse" code; if you just copy and paste you'll end up with a horribly designed hack job worth of TDWTF. Instead, take what you have and massage it into place.
In this particular case, it sounds like your design no longer hashes well with the requirements. My suggestion is to start rewriting/reworking isolated portions of the code base and create a temporary compatibility layer (if necessary) to interface with the old code. Continue doing this until the entire application is converted over to the new design.
> Banks are required to make a certain percentage of their loans in depressed areas, and are required to
> prove that they are not discriminatory in lending. This does not equate to the massive spate of 125%
> LTV loans, no proof of income loans, and blindly purchasing portfolios of loans.
While that is the true letter of the law, that doesn't mean that's not the consequence of the law. By requiring banks do a certain percentage of their business in depressed areas, you are essentially requiring they make a 'depressed' loan for every so-many 'normal' loans. Depending on the required percentage and the number of 'depressed' loans available, a bank could very well be forced into either not granting qualified 'normal' loans or granting unqualified 'depressed' loans. A bank would likely expect to to make more money on the 'normal' loans so they dip into the not-totally-qualified 'depressed' loans.
This problem is typical of requiring a certain percentage of something is something. An absolutely classic example is affirmative action, and a less common one is use of domestic products.
I should point out, though, that I do agree that much of the problems arose from granting 'normal' loans to people that weren't qualified. However, that doesn't mean that the mentioned law couldn't have played a part.
> On the other hand, with McCain, he's wanting to start taxing heath benefits on employees rather
> than let them pay those premiums pre-tax. That BLOWS.
While that is true, it's only half the story. The other half is that he's going to offer a tax credit to help you to pay for your own health care.
When it comes down to it, the major problem with health care as it stands is that there's a huge incentive for companies to provide it for you since that way it's cost will never be taxed. However, this means that health care basically isn't on the free market for the individual since the providers really only care about company contracts. McCain's plan is something of a step in the right direction as far as actually forcing some competition for individuals.
For what it's worth though, the whole health insurance thing is a red herring and the real issue revolves around the massive price discrepancy for health care (e.g. doctor's visits) between insured and uninsured patients. From what I've seen, one can expect something like blood work to cost about 2-3 times as much without the 'insured' discount, and a hospital stay will frequently cost more than 5x. If this problem was taken care of then "health insurance" would actually be about insuring against accidents rather than 'insuring' that routine operations don't break the bank. Too bad we don't have a politician that knows/cares. (IIRC, Romney was actually talking about this, but he's long gone.)
> A defect in the crystal structure results in the failure of every component that the defect is present in.
That's not entirely true. The last time I checked, which has admittedly been some time, the defect rate was usually on the order of a part per billion or so. Excellent, certainly, but far from perfect considering that still means billions of billions of ... defects in each wafer. The key is that small, isolated defects are tolerable, so you only need to junk parts with high concentrations or an unlucky distribution. This is why the exact same processor die can have different speed limits.
Another thing worth pointing out is that having a controlled rate of SiO2 defects in the silicon crystal was actually found to be beneficial. Again, though, I don't know if that still hold for, say, =65nm processes.
The point being that without knowing the how "extremely high" the purity needs to be it is impossible to say definitively whether existing tech is good enough. However, if I were designing this I would certainly try to make it work!
While it's worth trying, I would be somewhat surprised if you would be able to see any particularly modern scopes as people into amateur electronics rarely buy new equipment. Still though, some of the people there might have experience and opinions they can share, but the same holds true with slashdot.
As someone who has worked with a wide variety of scopes (and, to a lesser extent, logic analyzers) I feel largely 'meh' about the UI differences. They all have their quirks and pluses and generally similar features. In recent years I've (personally) leaned more toward Tektronix, but that's mostly because their hardware seems to fit my needs the best and they're pretty cheap (on ebay, see above ;).
By-the-by, if anyone could point me in the direction of a modern scope with 10+ bits of resolution it'd be greatly appreciated. My old Nicolet is starting to look a little dated ;).
> stealing rather than moving/copying
Um... You are aware that moving and copying are very different things? "Moving" is essentially the definition of stealing, i.e. I move something out of your possession into mine. Copying is, however, not stealing because you still have the original (and therefore the only person 'harmed' is the copyright holder).
Remember, just because it's digital doesn't mean it can't be stolen.
I think the point is that the theft counted as part of the offense. In other words, rather than being viewed as assault, it was viewed as a mugging.
Not only that, but the company would then likely have to prove to the stockholders how they though opening themselves to such a lawsuit was supposed to increase the company's worth. Since that would likely be impossible, they'd get sued into the ground again. Finally, lots of customers will just ship for fear that their data would be exposed and the company would promptly go out of business.
> If not, then why not store your encrypted data on a huge partition of random data. To get it you
> need both the key and the location of the data. The latter you can simply refuse to disclose.
That's (mostly) a no-go. Denying the police access to evidence (when the court says they are entitled to it) is always going to get you in trouble for hindering an investigation. Of course, this is only if they can prove you have some encrypted data, but are unable to determine where it's hidden. This is rather unlikely, so the hiding is either going to be useless or prevent them from asking for the key in the first place.
> Suppose some incriminating evidence exists but it is hidden in a secret location.
> Can you be forced to disclose that location?
I believe the answer is 'yes', but I could be wrong (as destroying evidence is illegal). The thing is that they have to be able to prove the evidence exists and that you know where it is. That's not trivial. You can't charge a murder suspect for not answering "Where's the body" since you have no basis on which to claim he knows (he's innocent until proven guilty).
Indeed; that was the first thing I checked upon reading this story.
I'm sorry, but I'd rather have a 6 month wait and a 64-bit version than concurrent releases. Linux has been running on AMD64 for what now? Three or four years? And now that Vista runs on 64-bit as well there's even less excuse for this. Hell, they're even got a version for the Sparc.
I don't mean to belittle the fact this story. It is pretty cool that Adobe seems to at least recognize linux as a worthwhile platform*, it's just that support is still rather lackluster.
(*While I would think that this would have to do with the increasingly common use of linux on embedded devices, the fact that there's no ARM version seems to contradict this. However, I suspect there's a (secret) version somewhere since I'm seen embedded linux devices that play flash.)
Oh come on, we've got enough for another 2 or 3 years. Who knows what could happen in that time! Global Warming disasters, World War III, you name it! A couple minor setbacks like those, and we could stretch IP4 for another century! They obviously just know something we don't...
Actually, democracy is quite the opposite. In a true democracy all things are decided by the majority, leaving the minority out in the cold. In the US we have a representative democracy. Here, the representatives (should) have the same overall ideas and opinions as the majority, but aren't so beholden to the masses that they have to ignore the little man.
Here's a little food for thought: If ensuring the little man has an equal voice is the only way to ensure they receive fair treatment, how did slavery ever get abolished?
Society is a surprisingly stable system ;).