MCA (mustang club of america) used to have an insurance program sort of like this.
You agree to drive your mustang only X miles per year, and they give you a drastically reduced insurance rate.
They mostly much trust you on how many miles you drive. You do have to show that your mustang is not a daily driver. You do this by supplying documentation that you have another vehicle, insurance, title, etc., which is your daily driver.
I don't see that offer at MCA's website, though. Maybe they stopped doing it?
There's no way I'm going to be driving my supercharged rear-wheel-drive solid axle mustang to work every day. In the snow.
But, in summer--drop that top and feel that boost!
You sue the major distros, sourceforge, freshmeat, and distrowatch.
Sue them for facilitating patent infringement. Or whatever else you can come up with. It's a civil suit; the complaint doesn't have to be plausible or even get to court to be effective.
Once you've strangled the kernel and basic OS to near death, you start attacking the OSS programs that serves the function of whatever app you're trying to market.
These operations are typically run on donations or a shoestring budget. Usually an individual developer or small team of developers and users contribute the resources required to make the software available. That sort of target is not too hard to beat into submission with a big sack of money.
Code factories are the most idiotic idea I've heard today.
Does anybody seriously believe that blackboxing programmers will increase effeciency?
We already have systems that blindly do exactly what they're told to do. They're called computers.
We need programmers to get them to do what we want them to do. As of yet, there is no DWIM instruction for people or machines.
For programmers to be effective, they have to have some involvement in the planing process. They have to make decisions and understand why they're doing what they're doing.
As a "programer", I design electrical drawings, hunt for parts, line up electricians, manage installations, test and troubleshoot builds (that's build as in tools, cables, wires, & pipes, not./configure && make), etc, etc, etc.
I've seen programmers around here who "just do the software".
Thing was so insecure that I was playing with it in the airport on a business trip one day and I realized all I had to do was to push the pin inwards and it immediately came off.
I was waiting for a plane, and saw a laptop someone left in the waiting area in their seat. After about 2 minutes, security was standing around talking on their radios. If he hadn't come back from the crapper before the bomb squad got there, that laptop would have been gone--cable or not!
Guards gave him a nice lecture on airport security!
This was when it first started and the gentleman in the green uniform with the automatic rifle was stationed at every checkpoint. Fortunately, they didn't call him!
You've got your googly eyed star children waiting for the wise alien people to come down and bestow blessings on us. You know--the folks that have built their utopian society, and will now bless us with the fruits of their labor--just for being good ol' terran humans. Wish fulfillment.
Then, you've got the aliens who busted ass to get where they are. Why should they give away their wonders for free? We'd screw it up anyway. You can't bestow wisdom, maturity or utopia on a person or people. They have to find it themselves.
If a people care at all about a less technically developed or economically robust society, they'll stay the hell away.
Look what happens whenever such a meeting occurs between two different groups of humans right here.
Quit waiting for the aliens.
Get busy building spaceships. X-prize just gets the ball rolling.
So, what if we're alone? Doesn't change anything.
Somebody has to be first. Somebody has to do the work. Why not us?
Keep reading your science fiction books. If you like what you read, go out and build it!
I would be very surprised if the engineer saw all of that money.
Hell, I'd be surprised if he saw any of it.
Most incentive programs like the one described have caps. Also, in most cases, if someone (HR) decides that the work you did was in your normal job scope, you get no bonus.
When I was a kid in school, they explained patents to me this way:
If you invent something really cool, you should have a shot at making money off of it.
But--everybody else wants to use your really cool invention, too.
In the interests of fairness to you and to everybody else, the patent was created.
First, you have to tell everybody how to do what you did. You have to provide prints, drawings, an explanation of how it works, and demonstrate a working model of the invention.
Then you get your chance to make money--for a while.
After that, your invention becomes something that everyone else can build on and improve.--In fact, as soon as you submit the patent, everybody else can build on and improve your invention. They just can't actually use your invention until you get your chance to make your bucks.
This provides some incentive for inventors to invent. And some incentive for inventors to share their inventions.
This was only the explanation that was given to children. Maybe the real intent of patent law is to enable unscrupulous entities (corporate and individual) to keep the maximum amount of dollars and control for themselves.
Don't we have an organization whose job it is to tell us what the writers of those laws intended?
Properly built open source kernels like Linux will always be lighter than precompiled binaries. Simply because you can throw out what you don't need.
Properly customized, the same is true for the GNU OS. Take a look at/var/log/packages or at whatever package manager you use. ps -A Do you really need all that stuff running all the time? Do you even know what most of it is for?
In the early days, bloaty eye candy and eight zillion libraries and daemons were not readily available for the GNU OS.
Now, there are plenty of easy-to-build apps and features that serve no purpose other than you might need them.
And people install them. Sometimes they install all of them--and every library and daemon, too--rather than trying to figure out which ones they actually need.
Why waste the time and effort to understand the system. Just install everything and be done with it. Why build a modular kernel? Just compile it all in and be done with it. You've got plenty of CPU cycles, HDD space, and memory. It'll work.
Unless you're at absolute zero, you're emitting photons.
Assuming that you're a healthy human, the canonical temperature of your body would be 310 Kelvins. (I know most people actually do not sit at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but that's the number that's used). The blackbody radiation you're emitting would peak at a wavelength of 93548.39 angstroms.
How do I share pictures on Mercora? You share pictures on Mercora right from your local directory on your computer. You "tell" the Mercora client about which pictures you want to share and with whom (people on your friends list, etc.) and those pictures can then be viewed by those people when you are both online on the Internet. People who have the permission to view your pictures will also have the ability to download those pictures.
Hmmm...look--somene is sharing Harry_Potter_the_Everlasting_MoneyMill.jpg.
If so, then it's perfectly appropriate to call for censorship--and enforce it by boycott. Don't, for a minute, though, imagine that the fact that "the people have spoken" (via boycott) justifies anything. There is such a thing as the "tyranny of democracy". The Federalist #10
However, if Linux Today presents itself as a linux-oriented news source (which it seems to do), then it would be absolutely inappropriate to censor based on politically incorrect content.
Why would I want to read news from a source that only tells me what the majority of readers would like to hear? I think I'd prefer to hear everything and decide for myself what's crap and what's good.
At work I use Windows XP. At home I use I use slackware-current. My wife uses Windows 2000, and dreams of owning a Mac. Though it seems some people would have you believe differently, I tell you that you don't have to join the cult to use the GNU operating system.
Slashdot Mirror
MCA (mustang club of america) used to have an insurance program sort of like this.
You agree to drive your mustang only X miles per year, and they give you a drastically reduced insurance rate.
They mostly much trust you on how many miles you drive. You do have to show that your mustang is not a daily driver. You do this by supplying documentation that you have another vehicle, insurance, title, etc., which is your daily driver.
I don't see that offer at MCA's website, though. Maybe they stopped doing it?
There's no way I'm going to be driving my supercharged rear-wheel-drive solid axle mustang to work every day. In the snow.
But, in summer--drop that top and feel that boost!
Cory Doctorow's 0wnz0red
You sue the major distros, sourceforge, freshmeat, and distrowatch.
Sue them for facilitating patent infringement. Or whatever else you can come up with. It's a civil suit; the complaint doesn't have to be plausible or even get to court to be effective.
Once you've strangled the kernel and basic OS to near death, you start attacking the OSS programs that serves the function of whatever app you're trying to market.
These operations are typically run on donations or a shoestring budget. Usually an individual developer or small team of developers and users contribute the resources required to make the software available. That sort of target is not too hard to beat into submission with a big sack of money.
And Goliath has a very, very big sack of money.
David needs to find a sling and stone.
Quickly.
Does anybody seriously believe that blackboxing programmers will increase effeciency?
We already have systems that blindly do exactly what they're told to do. They're called computers.
We need programmers to get them to do what we want them to do. As of yet, there is no DWIM instruction for people or machines.
For programmers to be effective, they have to have some involvement in the planing process. They have to make decisions and understand why they're doing what they're doing.
As a "programer", I design electrical drawings, hunt for parts, line up electricians, manage installations, test and troubleshoot builds (that's build as in tools, cables, wires, & pipes, not ./configure && make), etc, etc, etc.
I've seen programmers around here who "just do the software".
But I don't see them for long.
I was waiting for a plane, and saw a laptop someone left in the waiting area in their seat. After about 2 minutes, security was standing around talking on their radios. If he hadn't come back from the crapper before the bomb squad got there, that laptop would have been gone--cable or not!
Guards gave him a nice lecture on airport security!
This was when it first started and the gentleman in the green uniform with the automatic rifle was stationed at every checkpoint. Fortunately, they didn't call him!
I've never had a problem with IBEW or UAW. Treat them with respect; they'll treat you with respect.
If that's not good enough for you, then call State Farm.
Around here, you can tell the new engineers because they always cable up their laptops. After a month or so, they quit using the cables.
Never heard of one getting stolen off the shop floor.
By using the Drake equation.
It's just propogation of independent probabilities, but it does describe a model from which we can work.
Note that the fraction of stars that have planets is considered independently from the number of life-suitable planets orbiting said stars.
You don't have to have all the data at once to improve the accuracy of your guess.
Granted, in astronomy in general, a precision of 3 orders of magnitude often considered pretty good. But that's the best we can do right now.
And, now, we may be able to ajdust fp
Anyhow, the Drake equation:
N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L
N Present number of extraterrestrial races capable of interstellar communication
R* Mean rate of star formation, averaged over the lifetime of the Galaxy
fp Fraction of stars that have planets
ne Average number of planets in a planetary system suitable for life
fl Fraction of suitable planets on which life actually develops
fi Fraction of life-bearing planets on which intelligent life develops
fc Fraction of intelligence-bearing planets on which the capacity for interstellar communication develops
L Average lifetime of a technological civilization
You've got your googly eyed star children waiting for the wise alien people to come down and bestow blessings on us. You know--the folks that have built their utopian society, and will now bless us with the fruits of their labor--just for being good ol' terran humans. Wish fulfillment.
Then, you've got the aliens who busted ass to get where they are. Why should they give away their wonders for free? We'd screw it up anyway. You can't bestow wisdom, maturity or utopia on a person or people. They have to find it themselves.
If a people care at all about a less technically developed or economically robust society, they'll stay the hell away.
Look what happens whenever such a meeting occurs between two different groups of humans right here.
Quit waiting for the aliens.
Get busy building spaceships. X-prize just gets the ball rolling.
So, what if we're alone? Doesn't change anything.
Somebody has to be first. Somebody has to do the work. Why not us?
Keep reading your science fiction books. If you like what you read, go out and build it!
Hell, I'd be surprised if he saw any of it.
Most incentive programs like the one described have caps. Also, in most cases, if someone (HR) decides that the work you did was in your normal job scope, you get no bonus.
That's what you're being paid for.
I got a toaster.
The law is not wrong.
The law is the law.
What about SpaceBison users?
Acceleration is a vector.
It can point in whatever direction you like.
Including the direction opposite velocity.
There is no such thing as deceleration.
Stuck on this lift for hours, perforce
This lift that cost a million bucks
There's no such thing as centrifugal force
L-5 Sucks.
But three lefts do!
You don't have to patent your idea. The most common example cited is usually the formual for "Coke" or the Colonel's 11 herbs & spices.
As far as life not being fair--I don't think that's the issue here. If the inventors don't want to share, (again), they don't have to.
But, if they expect the rest of society to give them something (a temporary monopoly, protected by force of law), then society want something back.
If you invent something really cool, you should have a shot at making money off of it.
But--everybody else wants to use your really cool invention, too.
In the interests of fairness to you and to everybody else, the patent was created.
First, you have to tell everybody how to do what you did. You have to provide prints, drawings, an explanation of how it works, and demonstrate a working model of the invention.
Then you get your chance to make money--for a while.
After that, your invention becomes something that everyone else can build on and improve.--In fact, as soon as you submit the patent, everybody else can build on and improve your invention. They just can't actually use your invention until you get your chance to make your bucks.
This provides some incentive for inventors to invent. And some incentive for inventors to share their inventions.
This was only the explanation that was given to children. Maybe the real intent of patent law is to enable unscrupulous entities (corporate and individual) to keep the maximum amount of dollars and control for themselves.
Don't we have an organization whose job it is to tell us what the writers of those laws intended?
Are they on vacation? Or have they been bought?
Not to be confused with Deja Thoris.
Tell me where to get dimmable FL bulbs to screw into my canlights and I'll buy a whole sack of them.
Otherwise, the wife will not be interested.
We spent about half a semester going from Maxwell's equations to the thin lens approximation.
In a mathematically contiguous manner--no hand waving arguments, all solid derivations and proofs.
With lab.
From electromagnetic theory through to everyday optics. It was fucking beautiful.
Well, I have to go now. I have a date. With my wife.
Nope. Still pegged.
Properly customized, the same is true for the GNU OS. Take a look at
In the early days, bloaty eye candy and eight zillion libraries and daemons were not readily available for the GNU OS.
Now, there are plenty of easy-to-build apps and features that serve no purpose other than you might need them.
And people install them. Sometimes they install all of them--and every library and daemon, too--rather than trying to figure out which ones they actually need.
Why waste the time and effort to understand the system. Just install everything and be done with it. Why build a modular kernel? Just compile it all in and be done with it. You've got plenty of CPU cycles, HDD space, and memory. It'll work.
Why does a dog?
Because he can.
Assuming that you're a healthy human, the canonical temperature of your body would be 310 Kelvins. (I know most people actually do not sit at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but that's the number that's used). The blackbody radiation you're emitting would peak at a wavelength of 93548.39 angstroms.
You share pictures on Mercora right from your local directory on your computer. You "tell" the Mercora client about which pictures you want to share and with whom (people on your friends list, etc.) and those pictures can then be viewed by those people when you are both online on the Internet. People who have the permission to view your pictures will also have the ability to download those pictures.
Hmmm...look--somene is sharing Harry_Potter_the_Everlasting_MoneyMill.jpg.
This should be interesting.
dwg standards here have all text in caps.
Documents have capitalized titles.
Users of PLC5 programs out here like their comments in caps.
What I found useless (from day 1), was Shift-Lock on a VT100.
I'm sure Mel, (the real programmer) or his bretheren found it useful. But I never did.
Don't, for a minute, though, imagine that the fact that "the people have spoken" (via boycott) justifies anything. There is such a thing as the "tyranny of democracy". The Federalist #10
However, if Linux Today presents itself as a linux-oriented news source (which it seems to do), then it would be absolutely inappropriate to censor based on politically incorrect content.
Why would I want to read news from a source that only tells me what the majority of readers would like to hear? I think I'd prefer to hear everything and decide for myself what's crap and what's good.
At work I use Windows XP. At home I use I use slackware-current. My wife uses Windows 2000, and dreams of owning a Mac. Though it seems some people would have you believe differently, I tell you that you don't have to join the cult to use the GNU operating system.
Instead of yap2pp
What makes you a lady can't acquire sperm samples on demand and in larger quantity than any given gentleman can produce on his own?