Because what happens when the "cloud" shuts down? What happens when your internet goes down and you can't even access what should be local files? What happens when the "cloud" has a major security breach and all of the files that normally wouldn't ever leave your company are now able to be downloaded to crackers everywhere?
I agree. Frankly, I don't trust anyone to host my confidential files, especially when I find that they're stored in another country. No thanks.
It could cost $5,- per game and people would still make big profits. Illegal copying drives the price up, however.
Ha, I notice you got modded "Funny" which is appropriate in this context. This is about support costs, not sales prices, and there are very, very few companies that will provide support for unauthorized copies of their software. Do you work for the BSA, by any chance? That's the kind of out-there comment I would expect from them.
But okay, just to roll with it: do you honestly believe that the majority of software outfits would dramatically lower their prices if (ahem!) "piracy" dropped to zero? Of course they wouldn't. It's whatever the market will bear, baby. Matter of fact, they'd probably claim increased losses due to piracy and increase their prices even further. Yeah, there's dishonestly and sleaziness on both sides of this particular issue. Now, I will agree, a certain percentage of those who acquire software products illegally might have purchased said products if they were not readily available for free. But that number is nowhere near 100%, which is one of several fundamental flaws in the arguments put forth by the RIAA, MPAA, BSA and the like.
So you think driving is a right? There's nothing in the constitution that you have the right to drive. The state grants you a privilege to drive - as long as the car meets safety requirements, you have proper insurance, valid license, etc. In PA, it's constitutional for a game warden to search your car without a warrant - in case you have been poaching...
Furthermore, do you understand that the Constitution is not about limiting our rights, that is, those of We the People (to whom ALL rights are granted by default except those explicitly denied) but enumerating those of the State? The Founders weren't concerned about what we might do, because this is supposed to be a government of the People, by the People and for the People. The government, as they envisioned and enshrined in the Constitution, was to have very little to say about what the citizens of this country could or could not do. They were much more concerned about what government would do to us, if not severely restricted. The fact that the Federal Government has chosen to ignore both the letter and the spirit of the United States Constitution on so many levels is not cause for celebration. And it's people like you who excuse their bad behavior with comments like "well, it's a privilege, not a right" who have completely missed the point and are, in fact, a good part of the problem we're facing with overarching government.
He pulled off the road (I'm not clear whether it was the shoulder or a parking lot or what, but my understanding is it was done safely) and went to sleep.
I was probably just lucky that I went back to where I came from, which was a large manufacturing plant parking lot full of cars from the night shift. I wasn't out in the open where a cop cruising by would be likely to notice me. This was sometime back in 1981 or 1982, before government(s) became so extreme in the way they're handling the issue, before the rise of M.A.D.D.
Not only that, you now have to be careful even when you do the right thing.
My dad knows a guy who left a bar, got a couple of blocks away (as you did), and realized that he was not in any condition to drive. He pulled off the road (I'm not clear whether it was the shoulder or a parking lot or what, but my understanding is it was done safely) and went to sleep.
Wakes up some hours later to a cop knocking on his window, and he's arrested for DUI, get this, because the keys were in the ignition. Apparently if he'd dropped them out the window he'd have been fine.
Effectively he was severely punished for NOT driving home drunk, and on a technicality at that. How messed up is that.
Seriously messed up, and my understanding (as a non-lawyer) is that, because he was technically still in control of the vehicle, he is still subject to a Driving while Under the Influence even if he wasn't driving and was sound asleep at the time. Sure sounds like the State has its priorities badly off, but the reason they get away with it is because they've successfully vilified the "drunk driver" to the public to the point where it no longer matters if you are or not. You've been accused, which makes you one of "them", a baby-killing monster, and thus not deserving of the legal protections and presumption of innocence afforded to "us normal, law-abidin', God-fearin'" people. Christ, and I thought witch hunts were out of vogue: I guess the mindset that made those popular at one time is still with us.
Spare us all from tiny minds who don't care if a particular group is being mistreated as they feel they aren't personally subject to that abuse ("can't happen to me... I'm a good person!") and, hell, don't care for those people anyway. For example: I don't happen to smoke. I never have, actually, and my doctor says I'm probably allergic to something in cigarette smoke. However, I've always been dead-set against this vendetta, nay, crusade that state and local governments have on against smokers. Punitive taxation, limiting where smokers can smoke, all manner of social engineering that a. the government has no business doing and b. while applied to a behavior of which I do not personally approve, I recognize that, if this abuse of authority is tolerated, I might very well find myself the target next time.
Let's face facts: no matter how you live your life, no matter what good or bad behaviors you exhibit, somebody, somewhere, will find one or more of them offensive. And, if that person happens to be in a position of power, may very well feel justified in trying to ban or punish you for that behavior just because they can. The problem gets worse when the State finds a way to make money from that punishment.
Truly not the principles upon which this country was founded. Too bad more people aren't aware of the consequences of such thinking.
This is also one reason why you need a qualified lawyer who specializes in DUIs and drug arrests as well as attempting to educate yourself as much as possible
Best advice I've read lately.
I've only been drunk and driven a car once in my life. That was thirty years ago, and I've not done it since (I'd gone out drinking with some of the people I was working with, back when I was a freelance software developer) and had way too many beers. Actually, we split at least three pitchers (memory is kinda fuzzy after that.) The other people in the restaurant were taking bets as to which of us could actually stand... when I got up and walked to the bathroom to take a leak, I got a cheer from the other patrons when I made it back to the table under my own power. Yeah, I was fucked up.
I had about a twenty mile drive home, but I got one, maybe two blocks before I realized that "this just isn't going to work", turned around, went back to the plant parking lot and slept it off.
So, in the ensuing decades I think I've been pretty damn responsible when it comes to drinking and driving. However, under the current system of using flawed measurement technology with little or no legal recourse, I could still be accused and convicted of drunken driving even if I never had a drop.
I also agree with you about MADD. They've gone completely around the bend, off the deep end, into a bizarre, and completely untenable Prohibitionist position.
So you are saying they have gone mad?
I wish they were just nuts, then we could have them all committed to an appropriate psychiatric institution, and not let out until they promise to stay on their meds and keep their grubby little mitts off our Constitution.
Unfortunately, they're not necessarily insane, they're just powerful and evil.
I don't go to bars to drink, I go to bars to socialize and chase women -- it gets lonely living by yourself. But if you're in a bar, you drink.
Happily, you can hardly throw a beer bottle in this town without hitting a tavern, so driving to a tavern here is insane. Well, driving home from a tavern -- lots of Saturday mornings I walk to the bar to retrieve my car.
Well, now, since you put it that way, go for it. Just be sure to hit the condom machine in the bathroom first.
Believe it or not, not all hospitals are certified to extract blood for BAC testing and not all employees are certified to handle it during extraction or after it. You could end up with an employee that is either incompetent for the task or malicious in the application of duties, all of which could cause the results to be just as tainted.
So you can be screwed either way. Well, you're always playing the odds, but you're still probably better off with the blood test, I'd say. If nothing else, if they do preserve a sample that you can have tested by your own lab, the kind of tempering or contamination you're describing might be detectable. With a Breathalyzer, there is no evidence to be preserved.
He's not saying it's right, he's saying that the doctrine does not include impotent threats followed by inaction.
I know he wasn't, I just meant that in the case of soldiers in battle, there are consequences to failure to prosecute. In this case, what would have been the consequences of the soldiers doing nothing, or packing up and leaving... or simply not being there in the first place? Like I said, this was not a battle, and those students were not an enemy.
So far as threats go, what business did soldiers (even if "only" Guard troops) have being ordered to handle what was really a police matter? I've never had that question really answered.
This doesn't have anything to do with driving. It has to do with being convicted, and going to jail, without being able to mount a defense.
It also has to do with the State using highly suspect technology in order to file that DUI in the first place. The Breathalyzer should never, ever have been accepted by the government for that purpose: too many lives have been destroyed by defective, poorly-maintained, badly-designed and improperly used equipment. The same thing applies to police radar, but the difference there is that a speeding ticket is nowhere near as devastating as a drunk-while-under-the-influence.
The State sees the things as an easy way out, and is willing to tolerate a certain number of false positives (more properly termed "collateral damage" because people can be badly hurt by a false accusation.) I don't drink and drive, but I would refuse a breathalyzer test: if the cop wants to take me to a local hospital and have them give me a blood test (with a sufficient quantity of blood drawn and stored such that my defense attorney could have the test reperformed if necessary) at the State's expense, well, that would be okay. But they don't want that: they want a simple go/no-go test that effectively convicts you, and it's very hard to argue with the results in court. That's because a machine is generally considered more trustworthy and more reliable than any human being. The fact that it may or may not be even remotely accurate is much less relevant to the legal system that it should be.
There was a case a few years ago, where a man accused of a DUI got the court to force the manufacturer of the Breathalyzer unit in question to turn over the embedded controller's source code for independent review. It was apparently so badly written that not only did the man get off, but all the cases where that model was used had to be readjudicated or otherwise reviewed. Ohio, I think, but I'm too tired to look it up. I hope that outfit lost every government contract it had, and they should probably have been made to pay the legal costs of all the people their gadget fucked over.
I've been a software developer for thirty years, and I'll be damned if I'm going to allow the legal system to use someone else's drain-bamaged firmware to convict me of something I did not do. Hell, I hate the fact that cars are so totally dependent upon embedded systems nowadays: makes me more nervous the more lines of code they add.
In PA, it's constitutional for a game warden to search your car without a warrant - in case you have been poaching..
No, it's considered legal under that State's laws, and is in fact probably unConstitutional. The problem is, the only way that law would ever be struck down on Constitutional grounds is if someone gets pissed off enough to take it to court. Most Constitutional violations in modern government (and there are many, that document is the Supreme Law of our Land but it has less and less force of law every day) remain indefinitely because nobody is willing or able to challenge them. Law enforcement searching your property and effects without a warrant just because you might be committing a crime is gong to raise legal issues no matter why he is doing it. There are reasons for why the Founders set up our government the way they did, those haven't changed (and are, if anything, more relevant today) and permitting gross violations of the Constitution, even for "good" reasons is, in the long run, very, very harmful.
And if I'm not driving, is it any fucking business of yours?
I like to drink. I like to drive. It's really stupid to combine the two, so I do my driving early (to the beer store!) and get it out of the way, and when I get home, it's then that I fire up the grill and have a drink.
I oppose drunk driving. I oppose MADD. My two positions are consistent. Are yours?
I was going to reply to the GP but you said it pretty well. I think some people need a roomful of noisy, drunken strangers screaming at sports on a big-screen TV to enjoy a few drinks. Never really understood that, myself.
I also agree with you about MADD. They've gone completely around the bend, off the deep end, into a bizarre, and completely untenable Prohibitionist position.
Well, you've certainly made a quality argument there. Nobody is arguing that drunk driving is a good thing, but the fact is, the GP is right. MADD has been taken over by assholes.
Deciding to live over 35 miles from your workplace is a pretty fucking stupid decision to have made.
That's a pretty fucking arrogant position to take. It's not like jobs fall off of trees, not in the U.S., not in the twenty-first century. Sometimes people have to do what they have to do, especially if they have a family depending upon them. If you happen to live a half a block from work and don't even need to own a car, you know what? I'm happy for you. But, if you should happen to lose that job, and maybe have a number of financial obligations you have to meet, well, I'll bet you'll get a fucking car and start commuting faster than I can say, "you're a dick."
Ja, maybe you are right. Not to be surly, but we outside of the US sort of take for granted that all US cops are gung-ho people who "do whatever it takes", and cook up their own solutions and conspiracies to solve everything.
{sigh} much as I always enjoyed Clint Eastwood in his role as Dirty Harry, it always bothers me when people outside the U.S. treat those films as documentaries.
It's worth pointing out that in those days, there were no non-lethal weapons that were very effective. A rifle and a bayonet deter only by credible threat of use, and when that doesn't work, the operator either loses the field or uses the weapons.
I agree. So, given that this was not a legitimate military operation against a declared enemy, and was really an unnecessary, if not outright illegal, use of military force against the civilian population... what were the real consequences of the operators losing the field? This was not a battle to be won.
but the confrontations had been pretty violent for several days leading up to the shooting.
Which means that the "authorities" can hardly claim that the student's behavior was a surprise. There was plenty of warning, plenty of time to think of a better solution. The situation escalated because a. somebody in power fucked up or b. somebody in power wanted it to look like somebody fucked up. Either way, it should never have been allowed to happen.
"There are plenty of people still using Windows 98."
I seriously doubt this un cited statistic. Unless you live ina very poor town where people dont even have p4s. I personally havent seen more than a few windows 98 machines in years, and i fix alot of computers. I just dont believe it.
What "statistic"? I quoted no statistic. When did "plenty" become a statistic? I've probably fixed more computers that you have, given that I was among the first group of technicians sent to Boca Raton in 1981. You can simply ignore the point I'm trying to make and focus on what "plenty" means if you want, but that doesn't move the discussion forward.
You may need to learn the quirks of your new automobile though. You need to think more basic about what "learnign to use a computer" really means. These people probably do know how to use computers.
Nope. The term "know how to use computers" encompasses a lot of territory, and I can see you're still thinking like knowledgeable user, not a person that made the (to them!) significant effort to get that computer to do what they want. Going from Windows 98 to Windows XP to Window 7 very much is like learning an entirely new way to drive, to millions of people. They don't want to, don't understand why they should have to, but in the modern world realize that they have no choice and still don't understand why.
It's just the way it is. You can say to yourself, "well, it's an illogical and irrational fear" but you know what? It's still very real, and it's a factor when trying help someone move on the to "next big thing." I will also bet that you're no different in some other area of life, where someone else could look at you and say, "I don't know why by n3r0.m4dski11z won't do 'x'. It's such an irrational fear."
The younger generation will have less trouble than the previous one, simply because they were raised on computer systems and have no intrinsic anxiety concerning them. I've probably spent more time than you working with older individuals who grew up in the pre-personal-computer-revolution days. Like it or not, there are still (ahem!) "plenty" of people in that age group around, and many of them will never look at a major OS upgrade as anything but a pain in the ass.
It makes sense, from their perspective, to try to kill cassette. Or 1/4" reel-to-reel. Or CD-R. Or DVD-R. Or recordable Blu-Ray.
It only makes "sense" (and I use the term loosely) if you're a sociopath who cares for nothing but his own benefit, and doesn't understand when you damage the fabric of society, when you successfully retard progress for your own perceived benefit, that you yourself have also been damaged. This is the exact opposite what is generally called "enlightened capitalism." I can only assume that you are either a. largely ignorant of this subject or are b. one of the more polite RIAA trolls that pop up here now and then.
In any event, you're not going to convince anyone who has been following the content industry and its shenanigans for the better part of thirty years that there's nothing to worry about, or that the actions of these companies are at all reasonable.
Given that I live in the United States, I do lay most of the responsibility for what these bastards have already accomplished at the feet of our government officials (especially at the Federal level.) Much of their behavior with regards to the entertainment companies, their pressure groups, and copyright law has been criminal at best, treasonous at worst. Those are facts, matters of public record, and you would be wise not to completely ignore them.
Historically they were (one of) the first to provide free dial-up. Hence the name. Then they extended to DSL with aggressive pricing
I've always been extremely happy with Free in the past. Their services and pricing are the best. Now I have to deal with Time Warner here, and I wish I was back on Free.
Time-Warner... glugh! Some companies shouldn't be allowed to enter certain markets, that's for sure. Matter of fact, certain companies shouldn't be allowed to exist in the first place.
Miniaturized relays are interesting, but an inverter which operates at 0.0005 Ghz is less interesting. Somehow I don't think we'll be seeing this replace electronics anytime soon. (well, except in lithium battery microcontrollers:-) ). Although it would be interesting technology for a steampunk novel.
Of course, even if the thing does run at high speeds for an acceptable lifetime, there are a lot of other components in a computer system that would also have to have increased thermal tolerance. It's not just the CPU you have to worry about.
Slashdot Mirror
Because what happens when the "cloud" shuts down? What happens when your internet goes down and you can't even access what should be local files? What happens when the "cloud" has a major security breach and all of the files that normally wouldn't ever leave your company are now able to be downloaded to crackers everywhere?
I agree. Frankly, I don't trust anyone to host my confidential files, especially when I find that they're stored in another country. No thanks.
It could cost $5,- per game and people would still make big profits. Illegal copying drives the price up, however.
Ha, I notice you got modded "Funny" which is appropriate in this context. This is about support costs, not sales prices, and there are very, very few companies that will provide support for unauthorized copies of their software. Do you work for the BSA, by any chance? That's the kind of out-there comment I would expect from them.
But okay, just to roll with it: do you honestly believe that the majority of software outfits would dramatically lower their prices if (ahem!) "piracy" dropped to zero? Of course they wouldn't. It's whatever the market will bear, baby. Matter of fact, they'd probably claim increased losses due to piracy and increase their prices even further. Yeah, there's dishonestly and sleaziness on both sides of this particular issue. Now, I will agree, a certain percentage of those who acquire software products illegally might have purchased said products if they were not readily available for free. But that number is nowhere near 100%, which is one of several fundamental flaws in the arguments put forth by the RIAA, MPAA, BSA and the like.
Fortunately, in this economy homes are falling off of trees even more than usual.
I'd give you a +5 Funny, but it's the sick "way too much truth in it" kind of funny.
So you think driving is a right? There's nothing in the constitution that you have the right to drive. The state grants you a privilege to drive - as long as the car meets safety requirements, you have proper insurance, valid license, etc. In PA, it's constitutional for a game warden to search your car without a warrant - in case you have been poaching...
Furthermore, do you understand that the Constitution is not about limiting our rights, that is, those of We the People (to whom ALL rights are granted by default except those explicitly denied) but enumerating those of the State? The Founders weren't concerned about what we might do, because this is supposed to be a government of the People, by the People and for the People. The government, as they envisioned and enshrined in the Constitution, was to have very little to say about what the citizens of this country could or could not do. They were much more concerned about what government would do to us, if not severely restricted. The fact that the Federal Government has chosen to ignore both the letter and the spirit of the United States Constitution on so many levels is not cause for celebration. And it's people like you who excuse their bad behavior with comments like "well, it's a privilege, not a right" who have completely missed the point and are, in fact, a good part of the problem we're facing with overarching government.
He pulled off the road (I'm not clear whether it was the shoulder or a parking lot or what, but my understanding is it was done safely) and went to sleep.
I was probably just lucky that I went back to where I came from, which was a large manufacturing plant parking lot full of cars from the night shift. I wasn't out in the open where a cop cruising by would be likely to notice me. This was sometime back in 1981 or 1982, before government(s) became so extreme in the way they're handling the issue, before the rise of M.A.D.D.
Not only that, you now have to be careful even when you do the right thing.
My dad knows a guy who left a bar, got a couple of blocks away (as you did), and realized that he was not in any condition to drive. He pulled off the road (I'm not clear whether it was the shoulder or a parking lot or what, but my understanding is it was done safely) and went to sleep.
Wakes up some hours later to a cop knocking on his window, and he's arrested for DUI, get this, because the keys were in the ignition. Apparently if he'd dropped them out the window he'd have been fine.
Effectively he was severely punished for NOT driving home drunk, and on a technicality at that. How messed up is that.
Seriously messed up, and my understanding (as a non-lawyer) is that, because he was technically still in control of the vehicle, he is still subject to a Driving while Under the Influence even if he wasn't driving and was sound asleep at the time. Sure sounds like the State has its priorities badly off, but the reason they get away with it is because they've successfully vilified the "drunk driver" to the public to the point where it no longer matters if you are or not. You've been accused, which makes you one of "them", a baby-killing monster, and thus not deserving of the legal protections and presumption of innocence afforded to "us normal, law-abidin', God-fearin'" people. Christ, and I thought witch hunts were out of vogue: I guess the mindset that made those popular at one time is still with us.
... I'm a good person!") and, hell, don't care for those people anyway. For example: I don't happen to smoke. I never have, actually, and my doctor says I'm probably allergic to something in cigarette smoke. However, I've always been dead-set against this vendetta, nay, crusade that state and local governments have on against smokers. Punitive taxation, limiting where smokers can smoke, all manner of social engineering that a. the government has no business doing and b. while applied to a behavior of which I do not personally approve, I recognize that, if this abuse of authority is tolerated, I might very well find myself the target next time.
Spare us all from tiny minds who don't care if a particular group is being mistreated as they feel they aren't personally subject to that abuse ("can't happen to me
Let's face facts: no matter how you live your life, no matter what good or bad behaviors you exhibit, somebody, somewhere, will find one or more of them offensive. And, if that person happens to be in a position of power, may very well feel justified in trying to ban or punish you for that behavior just because they can. The problem gets worse when the State finds a way to make money from that punishment.
Truly not the principles upon which this country was founded. Too bad more people aren't aware of the consequences of such thinking.
This is also one reason why you need a qualified lawyer who specializes in DUIs and drug arrests as well as attempting to educate yourself as much as possible
Best advice I've read lately.
... when I got up and walked to the bathroom to take a leak, I got a cheer from the other patrons when I made it back to the table under my own power. Yeah, I was fucked up.
I've only been drunk and driven a car once in my life. That was thirty years ago, and I've not done it since (I'd gone out drinking with some of the people I was working with, back when I was a freelance software developer) and had way too many beers. Actually, we split at least three pitchers (memory is kinda fuzzy after that.) The other people in the restaurant were taking bets as to which of us could actually stand
I had about a twenty mile drive home, but I got one, maybe two blocks before I realized that "this just isn't going to work", turned around, went back to the plant parking lot and slept it off.
So, in the ensuing decades I think I've been pretty damn responsible when it comes to drinking and driving. However, under the current system of using flawed measurement technology with little or no legal recourse, I could still be accused and convicted of drunken driving even if I never had a drop.
Yeah, that bothers me. It should bother everyone.
I also agree with you about MADD. They've gone completely around the bend, off the deep end, into a bizarre, and completely untenable Prohibitionist position.
So you are saying they have gone mad?
I wish they were just nuts, then we could have them all committed to an appropriate psychiatric institution, and not let out until they promise to stay on their meds and keep their grubby little mitts off our Constitution.
Unfortunately, they're not necessarily insane, they're just powerful and evil.
I don't go to bars to drink, I go to bars to socialize and chase women -- it gets lonely living by yourself. But if you're in a bar, you drink.
Happily, you can hardly throw a beer bottle in this town without hitting a tavern, so driving to a tavern here is insane. Well, driving home from a tavern -- lots of Saturday mornings I walk to the bar to retrieve my car.
Well, now, since you put it that way, go for it. Just be sure to hit the condom machine in the bathroom first.
Believe it or not, not all hospitals are certified to extract blood for BAC testing and not all employees are certified to handle it during extraction or after it. You could end up with an employee that is either incompetent for the task or malicious in the application of duties, all of which could cause the results to be just as tainted.
So you can be screwed either way. Well, you're always playing the odds, but you're still probably better off with the blood test, I'd say. If nothing else, if they do preserve a sample that you can have tested by your own lab, the kind of tempering or contamination you're describing might be detectable. With a Breathalyzer, there is no evidence to be preserved.
He's not saying it's right, he's saying that the doctrine does not include impotent threats followed by inaction.
I know he wasn't, I just meant that in the case of soldiers in battle, there are consequences to failure to prosecute. In this case, what would have been the consequences of the soldiers doing nothing, or packing up and leaving ... or simply not being there in the first place? Like I said, this was not a battle, and those students were not an enemy.
So far as threats go, what business did soldiers (even if "only" Guard troops) have being ordered to handle what was really a police matter? I've never had that question really answered.
This doesn't have anything to do with driving. It has to do with being convicted, and going to jail, without being able to mount a defense.
It also has to do with the State using highly suspect technology in order to file that DUI in the first place. The Breathalyzer should never, ever have been accepted by the government for that purpose: too many lives have been destroyed by defective, poorly-maintained, badly-designed and improperly used equipment. The same thing applies to police radar, but the difference there is that a speeding ticket is nowhere near as devastating as a drunk-while-under-the-influence.
The State sees the things as an easy way out, and is willing to tolerate a certain number of false positives (more properly termed "collateral damage" because people can be badly hurt by a false accusation.) I don't drink and drive, but I would refuse a breathalyzer test: if the cop wants to take me to a local hospital and have them give me a blood test (with a sufficient quantity of blood drawn and stored such that my defense attorney could have the test reperformed if necessary) at the State's expense, well, that would be okay. But they don't want that: they want a simple go/no-go test that effectively convicts you, and it's very hard to argue with the results in court. That's because a machine is generally considered more trustworthy and more reliable than any human being. The fact that it may or may not be even remotely accurate is much less relevant to the legal system that it should be.
There was a case a few years ago, where a man accused of a DUI got the court to force the manufacturer of the Breathalyzer unit in question to turn over the embedded controller's source code for independent review. It was apparently so badly written that not only did the man get off, but all the cases where that model was used had to be readjudicated or otherwise reviewed. Ohio, I think, but I'm too tired to look it up. I hope that outfit lost every government contract it had, and they should probably have been made to pay the legal costs of all the people their gadget fucked over.
I've been a software developer for thirty years, and I'll be damned if I'm going to allow the legal system to use someone else's drain-bamaged firmware to convict me of something I did not do. Hell, I hate the fact that cars are so totally dependent upon embedded systems nowadays: makes me more nervous the more lines of code they add.
In PA, it's constitutional for a game warden to search your car without a warrant - in case you have been poaching..
No, it's considered legal under that State's laws, and is in fact probably unConstitutional. The problem is, the only way that law would ever be struck down on Constitutional grounds is if someone gets pissed off enough to take it to court. Most Constitutional violations in modern government (and there are many, that document is the Supreme Law of our Land but it has less and less force of law every day) remain indefinitely because nobody is willing or able to challenge them. Law enforcement searching your property and effects without a warrant just because you might be committing a crime is gong to raise legal issues no matter why he is doing it. There are reasons for why the Founders set up our government the way they did, those haven't changed (and are, if anything, more relevant today) and permitting gross violations of the Constitution, even for "good" reasons is, in the long run, very, very harmful.
Humans aren't absolutely perfect, and we let them drive.
So what? There are levels of imperfection, and at a certain point, the relative lack of perfection exceeds acceptable danger levels.
And if I'm not driving, is it any fucking business of yours?
I like to drink. I like to drive. It's really stupid to combine the two, so I do my driving early (to the beer store!) and get it out of the way, and when I get home, it's then that I fire up the grill and have a drink.
I oppose drunk driving. I oppose MADD. My two positions are consistent. Are yours?
I was going to reply to the GP but you said it pretty well. I think some people need a roomful of noisy, drunken strangers screaming at sports on a big-screen TV to enjoy a few drinks. Never really understood that, myself.
I also agree with you about MADD. They've gone completely around the bend, off the deep end, into a bizarre, and completely untenable Prohibitionist position.
Fuck you.
Well, you've certainly made a quality argument there. Nobody is arguing that drunk driving is a good thing, but the fact is, the GP is right. MADD has been taken over by assholes.
Deciding to live over 35 miles from your workplace is a pretty fucking stupid decision to have made.
That's a pretty fucking arrogant position to take. It's not like jobs fall off of trees, not in the U.S., not in the twenty-first century. Sometimes people have to do what they have to do, especially if they have a family depending upon them. If you happen to live a half a block from work and don't even need to own a car, you know what? I'm happy for you. But, if you should happen to lose that job, and maybe have a number of financial obligations you have to meet, well, I'll bet you'll get a fucking car and start commuting faster than I can say, "you're a dick."
Ja, maybe you are right. Not to be surly, but we outside of the US sort of take for granted that all US cops are gung-ho people who "do whatever it takes", and cook up their own solutions and conspiracies to solve everything.
{sigh} much as I always enjoyed Clint Eastwood in his role as Dirty Harry, it always bothers me when people outside the U.S. treat those films as documentaries.
Oh good! Now we have established your war of independance was a mistake, When can we expect all our back taxes on our tea then?
Well, I think perhaps you shouldn't hold your breath waiting. We're kinda short on cash right about now.
It's worth pointing out that in those days, there were no non-lethal weapons that were very effective. A rifle and a bayonet deter only by credible threat of use, and when that doesn't work, the operator either loses the field or uses the weapons.
I agree. So, given that this was not a legitimate military operation against a declared enemy, and was really an unnecessary, if not outright illegal, use of military force against the civilian population ... what were the real consequences of the operators losing the field? This was not a battle to be won.
but the confrontations had been pretty violent for several days leading up to the shooting.
Which means that the "authorities" can hardly claim that the student's behavior was a surprise. There was plenty of warning, plenty of time to think of a better solution. The situation escalated because a. somebody in power fucked up or b. somebody in power wanted it to look like somebody fucked up. Either way, it should never have been allowed to happen.
"There are plenty of people still using Windows 98." I seriously doubt this un cited statistic. Unless you live ina very poor town where people dont even have p4s. I personally havent seen more than a few windows 98 machines in years, and i fix alot of computers. I just dont believe it.
What "statistic"? I quoted no statistic. When did "plenty" become a statistic? I've probably fixed more computers that you have, given that I was among the first group of technicians sent to Boca Raton in 1981. You can simply ignore the point I'm trying to make and focus on what "plenty" means if you want, but that doesn't move the discussion forward.
You may need to learn the quirks of your new automobile though. You need to think more basic about what "learnign to use a computer" really means. These people probably do know how to use computers.
Nope. The term "know how to use computers" encompasses a lot of territory, and I can see you're still thinking like knowledgeable user, not a person that made the (to them!) significant effort to get that computer to do what they want. Going from Windows 98 to Windows XP to Window 7 very much is like learning an entirely new way to drive, to millions of people. They don't want to, don't understand why they should have to, but in the modern world realize that they have no choice and still don't understand why.
It's just the way it is. You can say to yourself, "well, it's an illogical and irrational fear" but you know what? It's still very real, and it's a factor when trying help someone move on the to "next big thing." I will also bet that you're no different in some other area of life, where someone else could look at you and say, "I don't know why by n3r0.m4dski11z won't do 'x'. It's such an irrational fear."
The younger generation will have less trouble than the previous one, simply because they were raised on computer systems and have no intrinsic anxiety concerning them. I've probably spent more time than you working with older individuals who grew up in the pre-personal-computer-revolution days. Like it or not, there are still (ahem!) "plenty" of people in that age group around, and many of them will never look at a major OS upgrade as anything but a pain in the ass.
It makes sense, from their perspective, to try to kill cassette. Or 1/4" reel-to-reel. Or CD-R. Or DVD-R. Or recordable Blu-Ray.
It only makes "sense" (and I use the term loosely) if you're a sociopath who cares for nothing but his own benefit, and doesn't understand when you damage the fabric of society, when you successfully retard progress for your own perceived benefit, that you yourself have also been damaged. This is the exact opposite what is generally called "enlightened capitalism." I can only assume that you are either a. largely ignorant of this subject or are b. one of the more polite RIAA trolls that pop up here now and then.
In any event, you're not going to convince anyone who has been following the content industry and its shenanigans for the better part of thirty years that there's nothing to worry about, or that the actions of these companies are at all reasonable.
Given that I live in the United States, I do lay most of the responsibility for what these bastards have already accomplished at the feet of our government officials (especially at the Federal level.) Much of their behavior with regards to the entertainment companies, their pressure groups, and copyright law has been criminal at best, treasonous at worst. Those are facts, matters of public record, and you would be wise not to completely ignore them.
Historically they were (one of) the first to provide free dial-up. Hence the name. Then they extended to DSL with aggressive pricing I've always been extremely happy with Free in the past. Their services and pricing are the best. Now I have to deal with Time Warner here, and I wish I was back on Free.
Time-Warner ... glugh! Some companies shouldn't be allowed to enter certain markets, that's for sure. Matter of fact, certain companies shouldn't be allowed to exist in the first place.
Miniaturized relays are interesting, but an inverter which operates at 0.0005 Ghz is less interesting. Somehow I don't think we'll be seeing this replace electronics anytime soon. (well, except in lithium battery microcontrollers :-) ). Although it would be interesting technology for a steampunk novel.
Of course, even if the thing does run at high speeds for an acceptable lifetime, there are a lot of other components in a computer system that would also have to have increased thermal tolerance. It's not just the CPU you have to worry about.