So you're willing to admit that Race technology its put into cars, but unwilling to admit that Space (or for that matter, Wartime) technologies get put into everything.
Apparently, you need to go back to the 40s. If you will remember, World War II was the advent of a lot of technologies. It's doubtful we'd have weather tracking RADAR systems if it wasn't for the advent of Brittish scientists playing with radio waves. It's likely we wouldn't have satellite communications if it weren't for the German's V2. And while you may argue that all of the things that got spun off from the different space agencies may have been invented anyways, it's likely they wouldn't have been advented nearly as quickly, and wouldn't have gotten any government money to do it.
NASA has given back to the Americans plenty of things we all take for granted, but it seems there is a larger and larger group of Slashdot readers who are revisionist historians and want to forget that WWII is what caused the Cold War, and thus, what caused technologies to explode into what they've become today. America is the country we are today because of War, and because of the spoils that war has brought to us. Hell, it can be argued that its the reason that Innovation has slowed down so much here in America; we haven't had a real need to. Our government no longer feels the need to compete with any other world governments.
Let's stop being ignorant and realize that Space technologies have been relatively safe (in comparison to every other industry, ever), that they've generated billions of dollars in jobs, technologies, and pathways for science. And no, I won't list them here (these are all things you should have learned in high school, and a simple google will catch you up to speed). There's simply too much that NASA and the US Military has been involved in coming together for us to simply turn our heads on militaristic and aerospace innovation.
Oh, and if it weren't for NASA's supersonic experiments, cars probably wouldn't be as fast as they are now either; Carbon Fiber, high heat resistant materials, metal alloys, aerodynamic profiles, and more, came from strenous testing and retesting at the hands of engineers using technology adapted from NASA.
You'd better bet if the government needed some awesome software to defeat cyberterrorists or something, there'd be a boom in the market;).
Symphony is a definite step away from the traditional, and it looks great, besides the fact the widgets have the same FisherPrice problem Windows XP has, or look very blunt and square in the case of buttons/desktop icons. And, undoubtedly, it's still chained to the ancient X archetecture, and while this may be considered a good thing for application compatibility, there is suffecient evidence that X is slow and a pain in the neck (though, I really don't want to start this war, again).
GNOME still looks quite a bit like Windows, even if they are borrowing heavily from Mac OS. And then there is the problem that Nautilus is not exactly the best file manager to ever make it out of the gates.
The Desktop Linux world is still heavily saturated by junk. Applications that are half assed and half finished. Applications that are so loaded with features you have to start making up names for them, and not a second out of the day to stop and document what the feature does. And the problem is, most distributions make a habit of including all of them, instead of being highly selective and only picking the best of breed. This has changed a lot over the years, but it's still choice over quality and polish.
First of all, let's go back to the term "license". A license is simply a legal document giving official permission to do something. That means if you have a license to use my software, I am giving permission for you to use it, as long as you follow the rules laid out in our license agreement (be it GPL, BSD, what have you).
Also, there is some question as to whether or not the GPL is a contract or not.
No, there isn't. In fact, it says it right in the name; GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. A license is like a contract in that both the creator and the reciever have to agree to it. A license is like a contract in that if the licensee breaks their end of the license, they null out any rights given to them by that license. But a license is not a contract in that no one developer can pull the rights from someone using it unless they can prove they have somehow broken the license agreement. Thus, nobody can rescend the use of the license. This is true with both the GPL and the BSD license.
There is the possibility that someone could "take back" the license. As there is no apparent consideration (e.g. you didn't pay for the license, did you?), a court might say, OK, he took it back.
Once again, you prove you know nothing of how a license works. You can't take just "take back" the license at your pleasing; once the user has downloaded the software, he has entered into the license as it is worded at the time of his download. That means that he is free to do whatever he wants to that program/code as long as he stays within the terms of that license. If you update that license at a later date, he then has the choice to download the software again and update the license, or continue using it at the current generation (though with most software, it would simply become outdated and obsolete very quickly). As the license did not include compensation in it's agreement, that person doesn't have to "pay" for anything, simply clicking the link enters him into that license agreement, and at any moment later he breaks that agreement, he has nulled the agreement, and thus, loses any rights granted to him underneath that agreement. No court will just say "okay he took it back"; the court would rule that the License was breeched, that the licensee must immediately stop doing whatever he is doing to breech that license and come into compliance, and there is definitely a possibility at this point in time that damages are paid out.
The ambiguity, as you put it, was put to rest in simple licensing laws sometime in the 1800's, around the same time as copyrighting and patenting. Only recently with all the changes to copyright laws are these new licenses even being developed, which is mainly why it becomes so important for us in the computer/coding world to know a little bit of law, and where they can/can't import code from. And while the GPL does leave some things to be wanted, they're trying to fix things with this current generation, to make it even easier to use, and more free to those who want their software to be free. The BSD/MIT licenses all remove a very important aspect that the GPL includes, and that is the fact that no commercial use of your code can be done without that commercial code coming into compliance with the GPL. That means no company can take your code, change the words in it, and ship it in their closed-source product. And if you spent years of your life maintaining code, I'm sure you'd want that peace of mind as well.
Whoever modded you up should really be ashamed of themselves that they don't know licensing better. Of course, people will pick at my wordings and such, but the general point of what I was expressing will remain the same.
How about a little proof other than a file name and an IP address? But then of course, the only way they could (reasonably) do this, is to download a copy of the song from that person. But then, doesn't that mean they're committing the same crime as they are charging the person with? Is it legal to steal something back if it was stolen from you to begin with? (of course, this is a bad example; copyright infringment isn't theft, and it certainly isn't tangible, along with a civil action, not a criminal one.. yet).
But seriously, the RIAA typically railroads people simply by saying they did it, showig some IP traffic, and settling. Too many people are unwilling to fight the charges because they feel it is futile to fight the charges, or out of guilt.
Personally, it won't stop me. Even if they do catch me, paying for the lawsuit is most likely going to cost less than if I had purchased the media itself, and even if I had purchased it, it wouldn't be as useful to me as downloaded media as I would have to rip it anyways, and then it'd end up on my shelf for the rest of its life. *shrug*
It's got a lot of ram though, that might be the difference.
That's the entire difference. Most modern operating systems (and I'll exclude OS X here) don't rely heavily on the processor to do work, and thus, aren't optimised for one platform, and just use the processor as they see fit. As most DEs don't do work that's that processor intense, it's not a problem (although, I will have to admit that there is currently a bug/feature/something wrong with Nautilus that causes older computers to have a heart attack when viewing media folders; either something is wrong with the VFS not caching thumbnails, or Nautilus is improperly threaded to deal with the issue).
To the point, I have a Pentium Pro machine at home that I have loaded with 256 megs of EDO. The desktop is every bit as responsive and quick on it, as it is my Pentium II 450 here at work with 256MB of SDRAM, (of course, except for the media bug *shakes fist at GNOME developers*), but feels absolutely sluggish compared to my Pentium 4 (2.8) in my kitchen at home with 2GBs of DDR (of course, these are just my desktop machines, all running GNOME).
As for the browser, Konq is excellent, and as testimate Apple uses much of the code in WebCore (horray gpl). But it also shows how adamant KDE developers are to do things their own way, and not make consessions to anyone, so there are always drawbacks to every situation (open source would benefit a lot if the desktop environments ratified Firefox as their official browser, simply because it would simplify the amount of knowledge a user has to have to use Linux. Not that there's anything wrong with Konq; it's great, it's just severely outnumbered).
It's the little things about attitude and situational awareness that really keeps the Linux community at a constant holy war with itself, and IMO it's the reason they don't innovate and simply copy their role models (see GNOME and OS X, KDE and Windows). While I love choice, the problem is that someone has to choose, and the uninformed is as clueless as most people would be going to shop for a car (even though this is a bad analogy; cars at least have a standard interface, and the largest choice is based on the look, power and features, verses how easy it is to use).
It's only fair to compare KDE 4 to Windows Vista when they come out.
Wait.. what? In that case what is it only fair to compare GNOME to? Let me try my best to explain something to you; in the computer world, the only thing a version number tells you, is how new the product is (now pay attention to this part) in relation to itself. That's right. KDE 4 means that it's the 4th iteration of KDE. Thus, if you want fair comparisons, you have to go to features.
Now, since a feature set hasn't been frozen for KDE 4 yet, any comparison is simply "speculation", and thus, it's completely and totally fair to compare KDE 4 to KDE 16 to Aqua circa OS X 10(.0). Of course, these comparisons don't mean jack, because you can only speculate on what's going into it, whereas on the other side of the equation, you have a list of what's there, and what isn't.
As for the current generation of desktops, comparisons are completely valid there too (imagine that)! Simply take a list of features that both desktops have, and look at both of them, noting what's the same, and what's different. This is what we call "comparison". Thus, if I want to compare or contrast KDE to the look and feel of Windows 95, that's perfectly valid. My conclusions based on that comparison may or may not be correct, and you may or may not like them, but the point remains that the comparison is completely and totally valid.
The Open Source world needs to be apt to be compared if they refuse to innovate. The reason why so many Apple products are awe inspiring is simply because there is nothing available yet to compare them to, and that's what drives a lot of appeal and dislike of Apple; people have to build their conclusions as they see it, as they use it for the first time, instead of drawing the knowledge from what functionality already exists. (Of course, I'm simply using Apple as an example here, there are a lot of companies out there that are perfect drop in replacements for them, but they're the easiest to think about, and Slashdot readers can probably relate better to a computer company than a speed boat company).
Now, lastly, the points that you make about KDE can be made about practically any modern desktop environment, that's right, every single point you made (well, perhaps not the Windows Explorer one, but then again..) can be used to describe practically any DE existant right now. I can't tell you the last time I installed a DE that didn't come with a desktop, file manager, instant messaging, mail, address book, calendar etc. But I can tell you the features which exist within those applications, and I can tell which ones are exclusive to which DE/Application.
Please, comments in praise are great, but you really need to give reason why that praise belongs there, and draw valid conclusions with your arguments, or else you're just talking out of your ass like 98% of slashdotters.
Your problem is a non-starter. If you have trouble reading a website, you should not change the font settings of the operating system, you should change the size of the screen, or use the zoom function in your browser. But far be it from me to tell you how to use your computer.
Secondly, AJAX uses Javascript and CSS extensively, thus, changing the size of the input font is not as difficult as you think. You can write your own stylesheet to resize all websites for you, or you can ask the developers to code it into their stylesheet and have a special setting for people who have a hard time seeing, are color blind, are completely blind, etc. CSS was invented to solve this problem on webpages ages ago; it's up to us to make sure companies implement the standards. We don't ask for it, we don't get it. Simple, right?
Surely you've realized that some people don't like the GTK toolkit?
I'm one of them when it comes to coding for it, but I really like the look of it, and use GNOME on my own desktop (I just deal with the painful slowness of it). But there exists a large community of people who like the Qt toolkit, but don't like Qt apps and KDE because they tend to over-inflate every feature they have available to the point that it makes Windows look featureless.
The fact is, there really isn't a catch all solution for what people want, and that's why KDE, GNOME, XFCE, etc. exist in the first place. It would be nice if the community could get together, iron out some standards on how some future version of GNOME and Qts APIs would drive the same engine, look the same, and feel the same to the user, thus letting them have the ultimate choice of what they want to program with, but people will even find problems with this approach, and the people from both sides are so locked in this Holy Desktop War that I'd personally be willing to bet Israel and Palestine will work out their differences first.
To be honest, I think you are trolling if you can't realize what all the space program has brought us in the way of inventions. Dried ice cream and tang are just the tip of an iceburg...
If you really care to, here are a few links (of course, if you wanted to just learn about it, you could have googled it and hit the first few sites that cropped up instead of writing a, rather wordy, response.
You're one of a very small amount of people, though. Most people bow away when they realize how much work and training it actually is to go to space, and then once you get there (unless you are a millionarre hitching a ride on a Soyuz), you have a purpose of being there in space, and you must execute it to the best of your ability, most of the time wearing a suit that gives you the mobility and dexterity of a 3-year old.
Sure, I'd love to fly to space too, but I could never go through the training that's required, I could never keep calm moving at 20 Mach, I could never sleep thinking that at any moment a meteorite could pierce the hull of the ship I'm in and rob me of my life, and I probably couldn't do the mission I was sent to do in the first place being such a nervous wreck.
They are also privileged because they go through a lot of hard work and rigorous training. Astronauts are almost always Air Force pilots, or have trained multiple years in a military branch simply to attain the discipline nessicary to do their work in space. It's not all just a ride in the park. And to be honest, I think it takes a hell of a lot of courage to even step on an airplane to fly over long spans at exceedingly high speeds, or a submarine under hundreds of tonnes of water, but to step into space with radiation, lack of pressure, the cold, and the unknown, these things would scare me a hundred times worse. I honestly think I'd lack the courage of jumping on top of a million gallons of rocket fuel and hoping that it doesn't all explode at once.
However, evidence shows that as the Federal Government has gotten involved with local education, the quality of that education has declined. More involvement, poorer education. We had good public schools in this country long before the US Department of Education came into the picture.
Once again, you have failed to see the point that the government doesn't exist to service you, but society. While the overall quality of education has gone down (causing some private schools to start popping up, which I believe you should be happy about anyways), the number of people educated has skyrocketed from 20% of the population, to virtually 100%. If things remained the way you wanted to leave them, I'm pretty certain Americans of non-European decent, and women, would not be in school at all. If you will recall, public schools were unified by the government, insuring that every man (be them black, white, male or female), gets the same opportunity to get education under the law. This has in no way stopped the private sector, and in fact, should support it, as more educated people means more teachers, means more exposure to education in general.
Back on topic of the FAA, if there was no FAA, there would be more competition in the market in aircraft design, and one of the problems with unchecked competition is saftey of not only the public, but of the paying customers. So while you are thinking of your company and what it may cost you to build, buy, and use a 747, your government is thinking on how they can make sure that same 747 doesn't become the next Building Buster ala 9/11. And somehow you still manage to forget that the government helps fund the ASME, which in turn, generated the "codes" to follow, which nobody has to under law. It is law that keeps man moral, not will. That's why standards are important, it's why equality must be assured, and it's why the FAA should keep on existing. Else, we'd better live in bomb shelters, boil our water, and pray to $DEITY our food is safe.
Lastly, by refusing to leave your home, you are complacent in your government, and you are not holding up your end of the bargain that democracy is. The government cares about your opinion just as it cares
about mine, and in the end of things, society as a whole is up to judge us as correct and incorrect. And if you're really worried about the Feds, just hop on the nearest 747 and land yourself in a country where the Feds won't dare touch you; any African country or most of South America will do. And I'm sure they won't really give a damn if you lived on your own island out in the south pacific.
What I think you, and others, fail to realize is why the net, amongst other things, was invented in the first place.
DARPA created the net. Note the D in DARPA stands for "defense", as in, to keep you safe from foreign invaders. The network kept military installations in contact with each other quickly, when someone realized this technology would work just as well in the private sector, keeping people together.
So let's start to think of what other things can be attributed to Defense budgets.
Computers were first used in governments to crack codes from other goverments, arguably dating as far back as Caesar's ciphers (though, you need to think of a computer in the human sense, for this). Mechanical computers aided the government, and eventually the private sector got ahold of the idea.
Human transport! People needed ways to get to people to conquer lands. So engineers figured out how to build extremely effecient bridges, people figured out how to make things float. Of course, these things were invented by private citizens, but were capitalized by, you guessed it, the military.
Firearms, the original concept was invented as a toy, was quickly modified by a government to produce weapons, which were then turned and used again by the government to create designs for even more powerful weapons, which lead us to space flight. But of course, the private sector really had a jump here, the Chinese tried to fire a man into space thousands of years ago. Sadly, I don't think they ever got anywhere...
Face the world around you and realize that governments invent things to control people. Uncontrolled people are less productive than controlled people. Though we might have figured out something as complex as space flight entirely in the private sector, it would probably have taken another thousand years, if even that. People would run around killing people because they wouldn't give them their latest and newest inventions and as soon as someone actually had the time to do something on their own, they too would meet their demise either at the hands of their inventions, or other inventors. People aren't naturally civilized; we are brutes by nature. Just look at New Orleans if you need any example of that. Even when well laid plans were in place, they failed and people took law into their own hands and became what we Americans are so against.
So, please realize that government is a delicate balance, and that the things you and I take for granted are almost assuredly invented because a government needed it. Most of us wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for government, and I'm sorry your middle/high school didn't teach you that lesson.
Government involvement == government hindrance. The (US Federal) government is incapable of 'providing a little budget' for something without attaching all sorts of strings to the money. The fact that the FAA is 'granting' flight time to vehicles is not the government supporting anything. It's the government interfering less than normal.
I take it you believe heavily against the government, and that's fine by me, but you've done nothing to strip my point from validity.
The government is more than capable of handing money over to anyone it wants, and in fact, you probably wouldn't have made it through elementry, middle, high school or college if they hadn't have (of course you'll say the government never gave you a grant, but what you fail to realize is that they gave your institution a grant, and thus, helped pay your astronomical schooling fees). Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule, but if you are one of them, you are exceptionally wealthy or exceptionally poor and never went to school at all.
The fact that the FAA monitors flight is something they've also done for you. If it weren't for them, all kinds of machines that should never see air travel would be up there fluttering around, and coming down on people like you on a whim. In order to prevent "the sky is falling" catastrophies from making the nightly news every day, the government instituted a way of tracking, monitoring, and guiding the aircraft over your head so that you don't even think about it when a Boeing 747 comes barreling over your head in a large city. If you think that the government "interfering" by trying to keep your life well and protected is a shame, then perhaps you are in the wrong country. That same government keeps a house over your head with building codes, keeps the food you eat safe with regulations and guidelines, and tries to prevent you from being ill with hospitals, and the CDC. But of course, you don't think of any of this during your ordinary day, and don't realize just how much you need that government supporting you to maintain the quality of life you have now. If you don't mind it, though, you can find a nice little island somewhere and live off coconuts for the rest of your days.
why do people always refer to spaceship one when space shuttle articles come up.
Good question. My only answer is that Space Ship One has reinvigorated people thinking about spaceflight, even if SSO is a farcry from the STS.
just our whole governmental process is screwy. How is it that George Bush promises no tax increases in light of the recent meteorological disasters. How is this fucking possible? Would I have a problem with a slight tax increase to cover shortfall and to finance the rebuilding of an american city? No. Would I have a problem with the slightly increased cost of what we learn of protecting our coastal cities because this is a country built on the economic might of its coastal urban centers, especially because I live in one? No. Who are these people in our country that favor these reduced tax rates; it's like the governmental equivalent of anorexia. How is this possible, Mr. Bush? Regardless of whether there are billions of dollars wasted on other things, and I assume they are, they've already been allocated. Where is this cash coming from? And who the fuck cares about Mars when we can't get back to ORBIT.
Many people will have disagreements about this paragraph. I've already heard hundreds of sentements like "Why would you build a city under sea level anyways", "Why should my tax dollars go somewhere that isn't helping me", etc. Some people simply don't realize what their dollar is actually doing for them, and some people don't really realize the value of a dollar. Only a few people exist that actually don't have a clue of either side of this issue, and to all our lamenting I think one of them is in the White House as we speak.
As for the point about space; by setting a goal to go to Mars, you encompass the goal of getting into space. A plan already exists as a back up plan to the shuttle; Soyuz capsules will be bought from Russia, and, when they are ready, SDLVs will replace the ailing Space Shuttle as our main route to space. Not only will we see space flight get cheaper per pound, we will see a greater number of people getting into space, as it is almost trivial to launch 50 people into space once you remove the cargo limitations from that launch vehicle.
Lastly, people fear change, which is why the government tends to be very short-sighted with its goals. Setting short term goals of even 10 years (which might seem long term to most of us, but this is a government; governmental long terms are hundreds of years) is hard for congress because the next politician will simply come in and undo what the last one did. Now that the Republicans have railroaded our government, we will see a lot more focusing of budgets, lots more spending, and probably, lots more taxes. There are good things and bad things about every situation, and limiting yourself to the short-sightedness of one political party or spectrum really can make you miss the triumphs of another. I'm personally a Socialist, but I do have to commend the Republicans, first of all for attaining the position they are in, and second of all, for not being frugal in a time of need. My biggest fear, though, is that no internal investigations will happen as to why these things have taken place in the first place, but I don't think the Democrats will let this one go.
Absolutely. Flood that money into the private market and let it take their chances with space exploration.
Bad idea. I don't want to be picking up would be space explorers off my lawn each and every morning. Better to put money into ventures you know have some kind of chance than to just flood the market with money. This is why so many.coms failed; they had little or no ideas, but a ton of cash to blow on hardware.
The point is Government is bad at science.
Sore point really. Government can be an aid or a hindrance to science as society guides it to be. It just so happens we wouldn't have rocket science or even jet science if it wasn't for a government's overinflated military spendings and need for the next latest and greatest weapons. Things you take for granted are almost all rooted back to some government spending. Remember ARPANET?
What we need is less government involvement
No, what we need is less governmental hindrance, and from what I've seen, the goverment is apt to do just that right now. Step out of the way of anyone who wants to go into space, and even provide a little room in the budget for them. The FAA has been more than pleased to grant several air-worthy and space-worthy some flight time recently. This is the American government at work for science.
Lastly, I want to add my own point. Space flight in this country is generally overlooked by people. Most people equate the saftey of spaceflight to the saftey of air travel, which is a gross misunderstanding. While we were singing the praises of the Apollo-era astronauts, the Space Shuttle Astronauts are generally not even given a single block of airtime on television, or a mention in the evening news. Most people don't even realize that there are people in space this very minute, and think it's a generally safe place to be. This needs to stop. Space flight is exceedingly dangerous, it's industrious, hard work, and the people who have the courage and training to hop on top of a million gallons of high explosives need to be seen as national heros for what they are doing. The work they are doing right now in space is almost entirely peace-oriented, even if the science could easily be turned to make weapons. These are the kinds of things we need to look at as a society if we ever want to colonize space. Sadly I don't think any of the things mentioned above will happen in my lifetime.
The problem isn't overinflated budgets, it's poor management of those budgets. People who design soemthing turn around and say "hey look, we need more money to keep going, this is going to be more expensive"; make them quantify why it will be more expensive, come up with a list of alternatives, and make these people work for the money they're getting.
If Scaled Composite was handed a check for 250 Billion they'd wet themselves, hire a ton of new engineers, and start on their way to becoming NASA. But forcing them to work with a small budget makes each and every bolt a considered cost, and a lot more streamlined.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Scaled Composites can do better than NASA, but it will take some self control when it comes to spending, designing and testing. But I would be greatly disappointed if they were handed a huge check for a quarter trillion dollars.
The thing is, even if Scaled Composites had 250 billion in one large lump sum, it wouldn't get them very far at first. You see, the Space Shuttle was nickled and dimed into existance, as was pretty much all of the space program (except maybe Apollo, those budgets were kinda wild).
In fact, if we go back to why the Space Shuttle concept was even dreamed up, it was to cut costs, so that the program wouldn't have to keep nickel and diming their way into space. Of course, it didn't save them as much as they had hoped, and more recently has scaled up quite a bit in expense maintaining old flight hardware, but nevertheless the reasoning is all there.
I mean we can all look at what we've spent to date in any industry, find flaws of where the money was put, credit them to bad engineering, cutting corners, whatever you like, but the point remains the money is spent and you should be working towards moving your industry in a forward direction and not spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to do next.
This is why I'm supporting the SDLV so much. We have flight hardware that works, and has worked many times. The flaws have been hammered out by catastrophies that happened with the Shuttle hardware that can now be retired to a museum. Even if this will set us back a few years, and it will make us look like the Soviets had it right all along, we will still be moving forward into further reaches in space, and we'll be able to go back to the moon (something the shuttle would have never allowed us to have done).
Sometimes it's good to have disasters like these; it makes you look at yourself and realize that man is mortal and that the hardware you're flying on is only as good as its weakest link. It makes you grow out of complacency and mundane attitudes about flying into space. And it opens up people's checkbooks to help mend the ailing space agency. The only really sad part is the loss of human lives to make people realize that this needed to have been done years and years ago.
Everything in life is a trade off. Here, we trade off Quality for Convenience and Price. WifiVoIP (Wifyvoip! try saying that 10x fast) will probably be the lowest cost alternative, available practically everywhere, but also with medium grade quality. Meanwhile Cellular is a bit more expensive and a bit higher quality. That's pretty much all you've got wireless (satellite phones I've demoed ages ago had worse quality than yesterday's cells, so I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to go this route), so you immediately drop to the inconvenience (and high quality) of being tied to your desk all day long.
Personally, I'm all for the lowest price here, and as VoIP goes wireless, so will I. I already hate signing contracts to use my phone, and I also don't like the severe gouging that cell companies try to slam you with when it goes to the "no-contract" phone service. And on top of all of this, they want you to buy a new phone or get a new chip every time, which is ridiculous as it's just a piece of flash ram...
Different strokes for different folks is the lesson learned here.
Wrong alley way dude. This guy said nothing about giving away his code, and in fact, was quite contrary to that idea. He wants to get a contract written up so that he can keep his IP (the source code, scripts relating and I would guess design documents). Therefore I'd say his company doesn't mind what he does with that code outside of the company (short of exploiting it intentionally, I'm sure).
Anyways, the real answer to his question is "get a lawyer", as redundant an answer as that is. This is standard contract law, and is really a no brainer. Any competent lawyer could have the contract hammered out in less than a week (as it'd mostly be inserting your name, the company's name, and a few clauses here and there, and then running off the copies). Bill the lawyer's fee to the company for developing the contract, and tada, you're done, and it shouldn't cost you a penny.
-Phone fields that auto-formats to (###) ###-#### or whatever the user needs for his region.
-ability to print multiple contacts per page(I'm talking about 10 per page in 4 columns, not 1 or 2 per page)
1) Sure, why not. But then again, you might want to make this a regional setting (adaptable if you are overseas, etc).
2) Why not? It'd be neat to have a stylesheet layout engine for contacts so you could print business cards and carry them around in your wallet, as well as having them electronically in your PDA, etc. I don't really see any reason this couldn't be done (and frankly, hasn't been done).
Um, I kinda get the novelty of your site being all squeezed together for mobile viewing and all, but could you at least have a second stylesheet so that those of us with full screen browsers can actually read it? I hit the page and in three seconds was turned off from ever trying to get any real information from it.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're willing to admit that Race technology its put into cars, but unwilling to admit that Space (or for that matter, Wartime) technologies get put into everything.
;).
Apparently, you need to go back to the 40s. If you will remember, World War II was the advent of a lot of technologies. It's doubtful we'd have weather tracking RADAR systems if it wasn't for the advent of Brittish scientists playing with radio waves. It's likely we wouldn't have satellite communications if it weren't for the German's V2. And while you may argue that all of the things that got spun off from the different space agencies may have been invented anyways, it's likely they wouldn't have been advented nearly as quickly, and wouldn't have gotten any government money to do it.
NASA has given back to the Americans plenty of things we all take for granted, but it seems there is a larger and larger group of Slashdot readers who are revisionist historians and want to forget that WWII is what caused the Cold War, and thus, what caused technologies to explode into what they've become today. America is the country we are today because of War, and because of the spoils that war has brought to us. Hell, it can be argued that its the reason that Innovation has slowed down so much here in America; we haven't had a real need to. Our government no longer feels the need to compete with any other world governments.
Let's stop being ignorant and realize that Space technologies have been relatively safe (in comparison to every other industry, ever), that they've generated billions of dollars in jobs, technologies, and pathways for science. And no, I won't list them here (these are all things you should have learned in high school, and a simple google will catch you up to speed). There's simply too much that NASA and the US Military has been involved in coming together for us to simply turn our heads on militaristic and aerospace innovation.
Oh, and if it weren't for NASA's supersonic experiments, cars probably wouldn't be as fast as they are now either; Carbon Fiber, high heat resistant materials, metal alloys, aerodynamic profiles, and more, came from strenous testing and retesting at the hands of engineers using technology adapted from NASA.
You'd better bet if the government needed some awesome software to defeat cyberterrorists or something, there'd be a boom in the market
Symphony is a definite step away from the traditional, and it looks great, besides the fact the widgets have the same FisherPrice problem Windows XP has, or look very blunt and square in the case of buttons/desktop icons. And, undoubtedly, it's still chained to the ancient X archetecture, and while this may be considered a good thing for application compatibility, there is suffecient evidence that X is slow and a pain in the neck (though, I really don't want to start this war, again).
GNOME still looks quite a bit like Windows, even if they are borrowing heavily from Mac OS. And then there is the problem that Nautilus is not exactly the best file manager to ever make it out of the gates.
The Desktop Linux world is still heavily saturated by junk. Applications that are half assed and half finished. Applications that are so loaded with features you have to start making up names for them, and not a second out of the day to stop and document what the feature does. And the problem is, most distributions make a habit of including all of them, instead of being highly selective and only picking the best of breed. This has changed a lot over the years, but it's still choice over quality and polish.
You fellow slashdotter, are sorely misinformed.
First of all, let's go back to the term "license". A license is simply a legal document giving official permission to do something. That means if you have a license to use my software, I am giving permission for you to use it, as long as you follow the rules laid out in our license agreement (be it GPL, BSD, what have you).
Also, there is some question as to whether or not the GPL is a contract or not.
No, there isn't. In fact, it says it right in the name; GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. A license is like a contract in that both the creator and the reciever have to agree to it. A license is like a contract in that if the licensee breaks their end of the license, they null out any rights given to them by that license. But a license is not a contract in that no one developer can pull the rights from someone using it unless they can prove they have somehow broken the license agreement. Thus, nobody can rescend the use of the license. This is true with both the GPL and the BSD license.
There is the possibility that someone could "take back" the license. As there is no apparent consideration (e.g. you didn't pay for the license, did you?), a court might say, OK, he took it back.
Once again, you prove you know nothing of how a license works. You can't take just "take back" the license at your pleasing; once the user has downloaded the software, he has entered into the license as it is worded at the time of his download. That means that he is free to do whatever he wants to that program/code as long as he stays within the terms of that license. If you update that license at a later date, he then has the choice to download the software again and update the license, or continue using it at the current generation (though with most software, it would simply become outdated and obsolete very quickly). As the license did not include compensation in it's agreement, that person doesn't have to "pay" for anything, simply clicking the link enters him into that license agreement, and at any moment later he breaks that agreement, he has nulled the agreement, and thus, loses any rights granted to him underneath that agreement. No court will just say "okay he took it back"; the court would rule that the License was breeched, that the licensee must immediately stop doing whatever he is doing to breech that license and come into compliance, and there is definitely a possibility at this point in time that damages are paid out.
The ambiguity, as you put it, was put to rest in simple licensing laws sometime in the 1800's, around the same time as copyrighting and patenting. Only recently with all the changes to copyright laws are these new licenses even being developed, which is mainly why it becomes so important for us in the computer/coding world to know a little bit of law, and where they can/can't import code from. And while the GPL does leave some things to be wanted, they're trying to fix things with this current generation, to make it even easier to use, and more free to those who want their software to be free. The BSD/MIT licenses all remove a very important aspect that the GPL includes, and that is the fact that no commercial use of your code can be done without that commercial code coming into compliance with the GPL. That means no company can take your code, change the words in it, and ship it in their closed-source product. And if you spent years of your life maintaining code, I'm sure you'd want that peace of mind as well.
Whoever modded you up should really be ashamed of themselves that they don't know licensing better. Of course, people will pick at my wordings and such, but the general point of what I was expressing will remain the same.
How about a little proof other than a file name and an IP address? But then of course, the only way they could (reasonably) do this, is to download a copy of the song from that person. But then, doesn't that mean they're committing the same crime as they are charging the person with? Is it legal to steal something back if it was stolen from you to begin with? (of course, this is a bad example; copyright infringment isn't theft, and it certainly isn't tangible, along with a civil action, not a criminal one.. yet).
But seriously, the RIAA typically railroads people simply by saying they did it, showig some IP traffic, and settling. Too many people are unwilling to fight the charges because they feel it is futile to fight the charges, or out of guilt.
Personally, it won't stop me. Even if they do catch me, paying for the lawsuit is most likely going to cost less than if I had purchased the media itself, and even if I had purchased it, it wouldn't be as useful to me as downloaded media as I would have to rip it anyways, and then it'd end up on my shelf for the rest of its life. *shrug*
..trapped on a desert island things? In that case I'd bring: a power boat, lots of gasoline and enough food and water to survive the trip home.
GOTTI - Google OuterTerrestrial Terraforming Industry
Are they helping NASA search for ET, ala SETI?
It's got a lot of ram though, that might be the difference.
That's the entire difference. Most modern operating systems (and I'll exclude OS X here) don't rely heavily on the processor to do work, and thus, aren't optimised for one platform, and just use the processor as they see fit. As most DEs don't do work that's that processor intense, it's not a problem (although, I will have to admit that there is currently a bug/feature/something wrong with Nautilus that causes older computers to have a heart attack when viewing media folders; either something is wrong with the VFS not caching thumbnails, or Nautilus is improperly threaded to deal with the issue).
To the point, I have a Pentium Pro machine at home that I have loaded with 256 megs of EDO. The desktop is every bit as responsive and quick on it, as it is my Pentium II 450 here at work with 256MB of SDRAM, (of course, except for the media bug *shakes fist at GNOME developers*), but feels absolutely sluggish compared to my Pentium 4 (2.8) in my kitchen at home with 2GBs of DDR (of course, these are just my desktop machines, all running GNOME).
As for the browser, Konq is excellent, and as testimate Apple uses much of the code in WebCore (horray gpl). But it also shows how adamant KDE developers are to do things their own way, and not make consessions to anyone, so there are always drawbacks to every situation (open source would benefit a lot if the desktop environments ratified Firefox as their official browser, simply because it would simplify the amount of knowledge a user has to have to use Linux. Not that there's anything wrong with Konq; it's great, it's just severely outnumbered).
It's the little things about attitude and situational awareness that really keeps the Linux community at a constant holy war with itself, and IMO it's the reason they don't innovate and simply copy their role models (see GNOME and OS X, KDE and Windows). While I love choice, the problem is that someone has to choose, and the uninformed is as clueless as most people would be going to shop for a car (even though this is a bad analogy; cars at least have a standard interface, and the largest choice is based on the look, power and features, verses how easy it is to use).
It's only fair to compare KDE 4 to Windows Vista when they come out.
Wait.. what? In that case what is it only fair to compare GNOME to? Let me try my best to explain something to you; in the computer world, the only thing a version number tells you, is how new the product is (now pay attention to this part) in relation to itself. That's right. KDE 4 means that it's the 4th iteration of KDE. Thus, if you want fair comparisons, you have to go to features.
Now, since a feature set hasn't been frozen for KDE 4 yet, any comparison is simply "speculation", and thus, it's completely and totally fair to compare KDE 4 to KDE 16 to Aqua circa OS X 10(.0). Of course, these comparisons don't mean jack, because you can only speculate on what's going into it, whereas on the other side of the equation, you have a list of what's there, and what isn't.
As for the current generation of desktops, comparisons are completely valid there too (imagine that)! Simply take a list of features that both desktops have, and look at both of them, noting what's the same, and what's different. This is what we call "comparison". Thus, if I want to compare or contrast KDE to the look and feel of Windows 95, that's perfectly valid. My conclusions based on that comparison may or may not be correct, and you may or may not like them, but the point remains that the comparison is completely and totally valid.
The Open Source world needs to be apt to be compared if they refuse to innovate. The reason why so many Apple products are awe inspiring is simply because there is nothing available yet to compare them to, and that's what drives a lot of appeal and dislike of Apple; people have to build their conclusions as they see it, as they use it for the first time, instead of drawing the knowledge from what functionality already exists. (Of course, I'm simply using Apple as an example here, there are a lot of companies out there that are perfect drop in replacements for them, but they're the easiest to think about, and Slashdot readers can probably relate better to a computer company than a speed boat company).
Now, lastly, the points that you make about KDE can be made about practically any modern desktop environment, that's right, every single point you made (well, perhaps not the Windows Explorer one, but then again..) can be used to describe practically any DE existant right now. I can't tell you the last time I installed a DE that didn't come with a desktop, file manager, instant messaging, mail, address book, calendar etc. But I can tell you the features which exist within those applications, and I can tell which ones are exclusive to which DE/Application.
Please, comments in praise are great, but you really need to give reason why that praise belongs there, and draw valid conclusions with your arguments, or else you're just talking out of your ass like 98% of slashdotters.
Your problem is a non-starter. If you have trouble reading a website, you should not change the font settings of the operating system, you should change the size of the screen, or use the zoom function in your browser. But far be it from me to tell you how to use your computer.
Secondly, AJAX uses Javascript and CSS extensively, thus, changing the size of the input font is not as difficult as you think. You can write your own stylesheet to resize all websites for you, or you can ask the developers to code it into their stylesheet and have a special setting for people who have a hard time seeing, are color blind, are completely blind, etc. CSS was invented to solve this problem on webpages ages ago; it's up to us to make sure companies implement the standards. We don't ask for it, we don't get it. Simple, right?
Surely you've realized that some people don't like the GTK toolkit?
I'm one of them when it comes to coding for it, but I really like the look of it, and use GNOME on my own desktop (I just deal with the painful slowness of it). But there exists a large community of people who like the Qt toolkit, but don't like Qt apps and KDE because they tend to over-inflate every feature they have available to the point that it makes Windows look featureless.
The fact is, there really isn't a catch all solution for what people want, and that's why KDE, GNOME, XFCE, etc. exist in the first place. It would be nice if the community could get together, iron out some standards on how some future version of GNOME and Qts APIs would drive the same engine, look the same, and feel the same to the user, thus letting them have the ultimate choice of what they want to program with, but people will even find problems with this approach, and the people from both sides are so locked in this Holy Desktop War that I'd personally be willing to bet Israel and Palestine will work out their differences first.
To be honest, I think you are trolling if you can't realize what all the space program has brought us in the way of inventions. Dried ice cream and tang are just the tip of an iceburg...
If you really care to, here are a few links (of course, if you wanted to just learn about it, you could have googled it and hit the first few sites that cropped up instead of writing a, rather wordy, response.
I'll leave you a link that's easy to understand. Just the Beginning of Space Innovation
You're one of a very small amount of people, though. Most people bow away when they realize how much work and training it actually is to go to space, and then once you get there (unless you are a millionarre hitching a ride on a Soyuz), you have a purpose of being there in space, and you must execute it to the best of your ability, most of the time wearing a suit that gives you the mobility and dexterity of a 3-year old.
Sure, I'd love to fly to space too, but I could never go through the training that's required, I could never keep calm moving at 20 Mach, I could never sleep thinking that at any moment a meteorite could pierce the hull of the ship I'm in and rob me of my life, and I probably couldn't do the mission I was sent to do in the first place being such a nervous wreck.
They are also privileged because they go through a lot of hard work and rigorous training. Astronauts are almost always Air Force pilots, or have trained multiple years in a military branch simply to attain the discipline nessicary to do their work in space. It's not all just a ride in the park. And to be honest, I think it takes a hell of a lot of courage to even step on an airplane to fly over long spans at exceedingly high speeds, or a submarine under hundreds of tonnes of water, but to step into space with radiation, lack of pressure, the cold, and the unknown, these things would scare me a hundred times worse. I honestly think I'd lack the courage of jumping on top of a million gallons of rocket fuel and hoping that it doesn't all explode at once.
However, evidence shows that as the Federal Government has gotten involved with local education, the quality of that education has declined. More involvement, poorer education. We had good public schools in this country long before the US Department of Education came into the picture.
Once again, you have failed to see the point that the government doesn't exist to service you, but society. While the overall quality of education has gone down (causing some private schools to start popping up, which I believe you should be happy about anyways), the number of people educated has skyrocketed from 20% of the population, to virtually 100%. If things remained the way you wanted to leave them, I'm pretty certain Americans of non-European decent, and women, would not be in school at all. If you will recall, public schools were unified by the government, insuring that every man (be them black, white, male or female), gets the same opportunity to get education under the law. This has in no way stopped the private sector, and in fact, should support it, as more educated people means more teachers, means more exposure to education in general.
Back on topic of the FAA, if there was no FAA, there would be more competition in the market in aircraft design, and one of the problems with unchecked competition is saftey of not only the public, but of the paying customers. So while you are thinking of your company and what it may cost you to build, buy, and use a 747, your government is thinking on how they can make sure that same 747 doesn't become the next Building Buster ala 9/11. And somehow you still manage to forget that the government helps fund the ASME, which in turn, generated the "codes" to follow, which nobody has to under law. It is law that keeps man moral, not will. That's why standards are important, it's why equality must be assured, and it's why the FAA should keep on existing. Else, we'd better live in bomb shelters, boil our water, and pray to $DEITY our food is safe.
Lastly, by refusing to leave your home, you are complacent in your government, and you are not holding up your end of the bargain that democracy is. The government cares about your opinion just as it cares about mine, and in the end of things, society as a whole is up to judge us as correct and incorrect. And if you're really worried about the Feds, just hop on the nearest 747 and land yourself in a country where the Feds won't dare touch you; any African country or most of South America will do. And I'm sure they won't really give a damn if you lived on your own island out in the south pacific.
Modded Insightful.. only on slashdot.
What I think you, and others, fail to realize is why the net, amongst other things, was invented in the first place.
DARPA created the net. Note the D in DARPA stands for "defense", as in, to keep you safe from foreign invaders. The network kept military installations in contact with each other quickly, when someone realized this technology would work just as well in the private sector, keeping people together.
So let's start to think of what other things can be attributed to Defense budgets.
Computers were first used in governments to crack codes from other goverments, arguably dating as far back as Caesar's ciphers (though, you need to think of a computer in the human sense, for this). Mechanical computers aided the government, and eventually the private sector got ahold of the idea.
Human transport! People needed ways to get to people to conquer lands. So engineers figured out how to build extremely effecient bridges, people figured out how to make things float. Of course, these things were invented by private citizens, but were capitalized by, you guessed it, the military.
Firearms, the original concept was invented as a toy, was quickly modified by a government to produce weapons, which were then turned and used again by the government to create designs for even more powerful weapons, which lead us to space flight. But of course, the private sector really had a jump here, the Chinese tried to fire a man into space thousands of years ago. Sadly, I don't think they ever got anywhere...
Face the world around you and realize that governments invent things to control people. Uncontrolled people are less productive than controlled people. Though we might have figured out something as complex as space flight entirely in the private sector, it would probably have taken another thousand years, if even that. People would run around killing people because they wouldn't give them their latest and newest inventions and as soon as someone actually had the time to do something on their own, they too would meet their demise either at the hands of their inventions, or other inventors. People aren't naturally civilized; we are brutes by nature. Just look at New Orleans if you need any example of that. Even when well laid plans were in place, they failed and people took law into their own hands and became what we Americans are so against.
So, please realize that government is a delicate balance, and that the things you and I take for granted are almost assuredly invented because a government needed it. Most of us wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for government, and I'm sorry your middle/high school didn't teach you that lesson.
Government involvement == government hindrance. The (US Federal) government is incapable of 'providing a little budget' for something without attaching all sorts of strings to the money. The fact that the FAA is 'granting' flight time to vehicles is not the government supporting anything. It's the government interfering less than normal.
I take it you believe heavily against the government, and that's fine by me, but you've done nothing to strip my point from validity.
The government is more than capable of handing money over to anyone it wants, and in fact, you probably wouldn't have made it through elementry, middle, high school or college if they hadn't have (of course you'll say the government never gave you a grant, but what you fail to realize is that they gave your institution a grant, and thus, helped pay your astronomical schooling fees). Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule, but if you are one of them, you are exceptionally wealthy or exceptionally poor and never went to school at all.
The fact that the FAA monitors flight is something they've also done for you. If it weren't for them, all kinds of machines that should never see air travel would be up there fluttering around, and coming down on people like you on a whim. In order to prevent "the sky is falling" catastrophies from making the nightly news every day, the government instituted a way of tracking, monitoring, and guiding the aircraft over your head so that you don't even think about it when a Boeing 747 comes barreling over your head in a large city. If you think that the government "interfering" by trying to keep your life well and protected is a shame, then perhaps you are in the wrong country. That same government keeps a house over your head with building codes, keeps the food you eat safe with regulations and guidelines, and tries to prevent you from being ill with hospitals, and the CDC. But of course, you don't think of any of this during your ordinary day, and don't realize just how much you need that government supporting you to maintain the quality of life you have now. If you don't mind it, though, you can find a nice little island somewhere and live off coconuts for the rest of your days.
why do people always refer to spaceship one when space shuttle articles come up.
Good question. My only answer is that Space Ship One has reinvigorated people thinking about spaceflight, even if SSO is a farcry from the STS.
just our whole governmental process is screwy. How is it that George Bush promises no tax increases in light of the recent meteorological disasters. How is this fucking possible? Would I have a problem with a slight tax increase to cover shortfall and to finance the rebuilding of an american city? No. Would I have a problem with the slightly increased cost of what we learn of protecting our coastal cities because this is a country built on the economic might of its coastal urban centers, especially because I live in one? No. Who are these people in our country that favor these reduced tax rates; it's like the governmental equivalent of anorexia. How is this possible, Mr. Bush? Regardless of whether there are billions of dollars wasted on other things, and I assume they are, they've already been allocated. Where is this cash coming from? And who the fuck cares about Mars when we can't get back to ORBIT.
Many people will have disagreements about this paragraph. I've already heard hundreds of sentements like "Why would you build a city under sea level anyways", "Why should my tax dollars go somewhere that isn't helping me", etc. Some people simply don't realize what their dollar is actually doing for them, and some people don't really realize the value of a dollar. Only a few people exist that actually don't have a clue of either side of this issue, and to all our lamenting I think one of them is in the White House as we speak.
As for the point about space; by setting a goal to go to Mars, you encompass the goal of getting into space. A plan already exists as a back up plan to the shuttle; Soyuz capsules will be bought from Russia, and, when they are ready, SDLVs will replace the ailing Space Shuttle as our main route to space. Not only will we see space flight get cheaper per pound, we will see a greater number of people getting into space, as it is almost trivial to launch 50 people into space once you remove the cargo limitations from that launch vehicle.
Lastly, people fear change, which is why the government tends to be very short-sighted with its goals. Setting short term goals of even 10 years (which might seem long term to most of us, but this is a government; governmental long terms are hundreds of years) is hard for congress because the next politician will simply come in and undo what the last one did. Now that the Republicans have railroaded our government, we will see a lot more focusing of budgets, lots more spending, and probably, lots more taxes. There are good things and bad things about every situation, and limiting yourself to the short-sightedness of one political party or spectrum really can make you miss the triumphs of another. I'm personally a Socialist, but I do have to commend the Republicans, first of all for attaining the position they are in, and second of all, for not being frugal in a time of need. My biggest fear, though, is that no internal investigations will happen as to why these things have taken place in the first place, but I don't think the Democrats will let this one go.
Absolutely. Flood that money into the private market and let it take their chances with space exploration.
.coms failed; they had little or no ideas, but a ton of cash to blow on hardware.
Bad idea. I don't want to be picking up would be space explorers off my lawn each and every morning. Better to put money into ventures you know have some kind of chance than to just flood the market with money. This is why so many
The point is Government is bad at science.
Sore point really. Government can be an aid or a hindrance to science as society guides it to be. It just so happens we wouldn't have rocket science or even jet science if it wasn't for a government's overinflated military spendings and need for the next latest and greatest weapons. Things you take for granted are almost all rooted back to some government spending. Remember ARPANET?
What we need is less government involvement
No, what we need is less governmental hindrance, and from what I've seen, the goverment is apt to do just that right now. Step out of the way of anyone who wants to go into space, and even provide a little room in the budget for them. The FAA has been more than pleased to grant several air-worthy and space-worthy some flight time recently. This is the American government at work for science.
Lastly, I want to add my own point. Space flight in this country is generally overlooked by people. Most people equate the saftey of spaceflight to the saftey of air travel, which is a gross misunderstanding. While we were singing the praises of the Apollo-era astronauts, the Space Shuttle Astronauts are generally not even given a single block of airtime on television, or a mention in the evening news. Most people don't even realize that there are people in space this very minute, and think it's a generally safe place to be. This needs to stop. Space flight is exceedingly dangerous, it's industrious, hard work, and the people who have the courage and training to hop on top of a million gallons of high explosives need to be seen as national heros for what they are doing. The work they are doing right now in space is almost entirely peace-oriented, even if the science could easily be turned to make weapons. These are the kinds of things we need to look at as a society if we ever want to colonize space. Sadly I don't think any of the things mentioned above will happen in my lifetime.
The problem isn't overinflated budgets, it's poor management of those budgets. People who design soemthing turn around and say "hey look, we need more money to keep going, this is going to be more expensive"; make them quantify why it will be more expensive, come up with a list of alternatives, and make these people work for the money they're getting.
If Scaled Composite was handed a check for 250 Billion they'd wet themselves, hire a ton of new engineers, and start on their way to becoming NASA. But forcing them to work with a small budget makes each and every bolt a considered cost, and a lot more streamlined.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Scaled Composites can do better than NASA, but it will take some self control when it comes to spending, designing and testing. But I would be greatly disappointed if they were handed a huge check for a quarter trillion dollars.
The thing is, even if Scaled Composites had 250 billion in one large lump sum, it wouldn't get them very far at first. You see, the Space Shuttle was nickled and dimed into existance, as was pretty much all of the space program (except maybe Apollo, those budgets were kinda wild).
In fact, if we go back to why the Space Shuttle concept was even dreamed up, it was to cut costs, so that the program wouldn't have to keep nickel and diming their way into space. Of course, it didn't save them as much as they had hoped, and more recently has scaled up quite a bit in expense maintaining old flight hardware, but nevertheless the reasoning is all there.
I mean we can all look at what we've spent to date in any industry, find flaws of where the money was put, credit them to bad engineering, cutting corners, whatever you like, but the point remains the money is spent and you should be working towards moving your industry in a forward direction and not spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to do next.
This is why I'm supporting the SDLV so much. We have flight hardware that works, and has worked many times. The flaws have been hammered out by catastrophies that happened with the Shuttle hardware that can now be retired to a museum. Even if this will set us back a few years, and it will make us look like the Soviets had it right all along, we will still be moving forward into further reaches in space, and we'll be able to go back to the moon (something the shuttle would have never allowed us to have done).
Sometimes it's good to have disasters like these; it makes you look at yourself and realize that man is mortal and that the hardware you're flying on is only as good as its weakest link. It makes you grow out of complacency and mundane attitudes about flying into space. And it opens up people's checkbooks to help mend the ailing space agency. The only really sad part is the loss of human lives to make people realize that this needed to have been done years and years ago.
Everything in life is a trade off. Here, we trade off Quality for Convenience and Price. WifiVoIP (Wifyvoip! try saying that 10x fast) will probably be the lowest cost alternative, available practically everywhere, but also with medium grade quality. Meanwhile Cellular is a bit more expensive and a bit higher quality. That's pretty much all you've got wireless (satellite phones I've demoed ages ago had worse quality than yesterday's cells, so I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to go this route), so you immediately drop to the inconvenience (and high quality) of being tied to your desk all day long.
Personally, I'm all for the lowest price here, and as VoIP goes wireless, so will I. I already hate signing contracts to use my phone, and I also don't like the severe gouging that cell companies try to slam you with when it goes to the "no-contract" phone service. And on top of all of this, they want you to buy a new phone or get a new chip every time, which is ridiculous as it's just a piece of flash ram...
Different strokes for different folks is the lesson learned here.
Wrong alley way dude. This guy said nothing about giving away his code, and in fact, was quite contrary to that idea. He wants to get a contract written up so that he can keep his IP (the source code, scripts relating and I would guess design documents). Therefore I'd say his company doesn't mind what he does with that code outside of the company (short of exploiting it intentionally, I'm sure).
Anyways, the real answer to his question is "get a lawyer", as redundant an answer as that is. This is standard contract law, and is really a no brainer. Any competent lawyer could have the contract hammered out in less than a week (as it'd mostly be inserting your name, the company's name, and a few clauses here and there, and then running off the copies). Bill the lawyer's fee to the company for developing the contract, and tada, you're done, and it shouldn't cost you a penny.
-Phone fields that auto-formats to (###) ###-#### or whatever the user needs for his region.
-ability to print multiple contacts per page(I'm talking about 10 per page in 4 columns, not 1 or 2 per page)
1) Sure, why not. But then again, you might want to make this a regional setting (adaptable if you are overseas, etc).
2) Why not? It'd be neat to have a stylesheet layout engine for contacts so you could print business cards and carry them around in your wallet, as well as having them electronically in your PDA, etc. I don't really see any reason this couldn't be done (and frankly, hasn't been done).
Um, I kinda get the novelty of your site being all squeezed together for mobile viewing and all, but could you at least have a second stylesheet so that those of us with full screen browsers can actually read it? I hit the page and in three seconds was turned off from ever trying to get any real information from it.