I'm from Washington. The real one - the one with trees sticking out of it. I lived in Santa Barbara for one year - one very monotonous depressing year because it only rained in January. There's nothing like the way clear clean washed air makes colors vibrant and rich. There's nothing like waking up to rain, finding the sun at lunch, and getting home in drizzle. The Northwest is for people who LIKE weather. California is for people who desire skin cancer, wrinkles, and are content to see the world in flat washed out colors.
If you can't see a difference between allowing potentially unsafe driving conditions and having the government killing innocent people, you're a moron.
Well said. And I'm sure that any number of interviews with people who have lived under governments which perpetrated random death on their citizens (as the GP poster apparently condones), would agree that governments must be restrained from such practices.
If you were deciding about where to go to lunch and the choices were Subway and Quizno's, the universe split and you actually went to both but are only conscious of the path you're currently in.
IANAQP. One thing I wonder though, if we assume there are parallel universes, why do we think that our lives would be different? If these shadows from the laser actually come from shadow particles going through one of three holes interfering w/ "real" particles going through the other, it would seem that the shadow particles are flying out in all respects exactly like the "real" ones - just half a mm away. Couldn't these parallel universes be exactly like "ours", only shifted left, right, up, and down (forward and back too?)?
Like I said though, I'm no physicist. But I'd appreciate info or links to info (non-crackpot of course).
We probably agree more than dissagree (though I hope I don't sound TOO much like Nader!;-). I think in my first post I mentioned that unlike the car lawsuit, one against a software manufacturer would be much less certain. Clearly there are real differences between "real" products and software. On the other hand, I would bet money that sometime, somewhere, someone will press the issue. If nothing else, it will be quite interesting.
Indeed - your tweak to the analogy is quite correct. However:
nor is there a duty of care between the dealer and the pedestrian
There is a duty to third parties which requires the manufacturer to refrain from releasing known dangerous defects on the public. So, the thrid party pedestrian, injured because the manufacturer refused to fix a known dangerous condition of the vehicle, would have a case against the manufacturer. A reasonable auto manufacturer would be able to forsee that it's product could cause damage to someone who is and never was an owner of one of its products. It is sound public policy to hold manufacturers liable to third parties damaged by their products else much injustice could be done for want of a purchase receipt.
I think you're missing the point. Take the car analogy. This situation is more akin to a manufacturer releasing a car that has faulty brakes. That car is stolen, the brakes fail while the thief is driving off, and an innocent bystander is injured. The innocent bystander can sue the manufacturer for the product defect. It doesn't matter that the driver was not the legal owner - what matters is that the manufacturer was responsible for providing safe brakes and failed to. (please note, this is a simplified fact pattern/result - but you should get the point)
Let's say the thief has the car a few days, hears about a recall, but can't get the car fixed because he doesn't have a receipt for purchase (and for the sake of simplicity - let's say manufacturer provides the fix directly as opposed to a dealer). The manufacturer is then in even more trouble because the car came to the shop, they knew it was faulty, they refused to fix it, and as a result of their refusal to fix the car, the brakes fail and cause an accident to an innocent 3d party. 3d party sues.
This sort of fact scenario is much closer to what MS is saying than your analogy. In terms of car accidents, at least with the 2d scenario, 80% of plaintiff oriented product liability attorneys would get a woody and dollar signs in their eyes (just a guess - could be more).
Eventually, MS will face a suit where an innocent bystander is harmed because MS refused to fix a known dangerous product, and the unfixed versions cause some sort of disruption even for the innocent users. Obviously software and cars are different so I wouldn't gamble on the outcome, but it will be an interesting fight to watch.
Your post is true in all respects. And as someone who lives in an area where Comcast (blows!) has "an absolute monopoly on broadband connections", I can tell you that I'm certainly worried. There is no competition now so Comcast can do whatever it wants. Why should I feel comforted by the thought that in NY City or LA, people will have choice? Comcast is reaming me now at $55/month - you think they'll think twice if they could figure out how to double that?
20% would actually be good. Charges for my merchant account are 30 cents per transaction plus 2.19% of the total purchase price. So if I sell something for $1, the credit card processor gets 32.19 cents of it. But I'm small time - Apple can probably actually negotiate a better rate because they are so large.
Because comcast sucks in all ways possible. I used to have ATTBI too. The day the switch to comcast came, I started getting spam. W/ ATT, I got 2 or 3 per year. W/ comcast, I'm getting more than a dozen a day.
Typically, more than 99% of water is water, the remaining 1% or less being minerals, salts, or pollutants (note - this is a made up statstic, no researchers were disturbed in the making up of this number). However, I have heard of no reports of water being comprised of Kilngons, so it is probably safe to say that 0% of water is made up of Klingons.
Perhaps you were more interested in knowing what percentage of the Klingon body is comprised of water. The answer to that question is, sadly, more difficult to obtain.
We need the system like they have (I believe) in the UK where if you're sued by someone and you win, they have to pay your legal bills.
There are downsides to this as well. Let's say you are a file-sharer who fights. You then lose. In addition to the ten gazillion in fines, you will have to pay for the RIAA's legal team - a team not likely comprised of small-town lawyers, but rather, of the Armani Suit species at something like $300/hr times 10 attorneys.
In other words, requiring the loser to pay fees for both sides might actually discourage people who have a reasonable defense from pursuing it. Any trial is comprised of evidence, argument, and healthy dose of pure chance. Chance is, not always but not rarely, the major factor in any outcome.
Excellent points. There's another one, not security related though, that's important. I don't think voting ought to be as easy as taking a/. poll. It should require some minimal effort as this will weed out the people who don't really care, but might randomly click a web form. It isn't a huge burden to go to a polling place, or make a request for a mail in ballot, but it does require a tiny effort. People who can't handle the effort involved, aren't truly interested in voting, and really ought to refrain. Web voting would make it too easy for the apathetic.
A recent newspaper article talked about all the bad financial decisions people are making on cars; really long term loans (8-10 years), negative equity transactions, and so on. The car industry keeps this going because they need to keep plants running and cars selling to keep the whole machine turning, and consumers are dumb ass enough to keep paying massive lease or loan payments.
I've had a car payment in one form or another since 1992. But last year, instead of getting a new car, I fought the impulse. Now my car is paid off, runs great, and all I pay is insurance. I love it!
the right to travel freely is enjoyed by all citizens. As the primary purpose of driving is to travel from one point to another, it must therefore be a right.
First off, taking away a driving license does not infringe on one's right to travel freely. It obviously alters the modes of transportation one may use, but it does not take away the right. As an example, if I want to drive an 18 Wheeler down to CA, I will need to get a special license. Needing that license does not restrict my right to travel, it just prevents me from driving an 18 wheeler. I can still go by car, bus, train, plane, motorcycle, boat, bicycle, foot, skates. I can even go by 18 wheeler if I can hitch a ride - I'm just not allowed to drive the truck. Restricting modes of travel is not the same as restricting the right to travel.
I sure hope so. Digital billboards are a complete menace. I know of one about 120 miles from where I live. Whenever I drive by, I have to make a consious effort to not stare at the video on the sign, and instead, concentrate on the heavy traffic. I would love to see the sign taken down by some lawsuit because the truth is, it endangers me by distracting other drivers and for what it's worth, causes me to become a danger to other drivers because I am distracted. We are hard wired to notice movement and flashing lights - taking advantage of that is not always appropriate.
What would be really cool, is if the computer could understand things even if the syntax varried. So for example, one person might say, "burn the songs in the burn folder to a music CD", and another might say "burn a music cd from the songs in the burn folder"... and both commands would do the same thing. For those who like terseness, or want to do something more complicated than normal sentence could deal with easily, the current style could still be available.
Perhaps it's as simple as breaking commands down into subject, object, verb components. But I would think, for something like this to be really effective and fast, the computer would have to get closer to a system of understanding concepts, as opposed to slavishly following commands.
As far as usb mice are concerned... I don't own such a beast...
Me neither. I don't understand what is so special about a USB mouse when PS2 mice have been solidly functioning for ages. PS2 was a step up from the DIN connector because it is easier to plug in when you're reaching around a box blind, but the change from PS2 to USB seems like a useless one to me.
Thanks for the info. When I get around to trying SATA for myself, I'll keep in mind that it is possible to make it work well. It's much easier to spend a lot of time on google when you know that the answer exists.
However, I'm not sure how well Linux in general, and SuSE in particular works with Serial-ATA drives, especially when there's nothing but Serial-ATA available
,/i> I should mention, my speed issues aside, SuSE correctly found and identified the SATA drive without a hiccup.
I helped a friend put SuSE 9.0 pro on a computer he assembled from some old parts and a new Asus motherboard w/ SATA controller. He had one IDE drive in there and he bought a new SATA drive.
Both during installation and use, the computer would periodically go into molasses mode. The hourglass icon would turn in ultra slow motion. Open office sometimes took more than a minute to start up (AMD 2500+ system). When transfering files from the IDE to the SATA, transfers would periodically slow down to a crawl.
So I took out the SATA drive, put in a second IDE, and reinstalled the system, speed was normal and snappy. Except that at boot time, SuSE spends forever looking for the non-existent SATA drives. I looked through the BIOS hoping to turn off the SATA controller, but couldn't find the control. I only looked briefly though.
I'm no hardware guru, or linux guru for that matter, but a stock install on a new Asus w/ all the bells and wistles (A7?????-deluxe or something like that) was pretty lame in terms of SATA. No idea if this is hardware or software problem - switching to dual IDEs cured all the problems so that's where I quit troubleshooting.
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Dang - why does tax evasion have to be so hard!
If you're near the border - why not live in Washington (no income tax) and shop in Oregon (no sales tax). Too much of a drive for me though.
I'm from Washington. The real one - the one with trees sticking out of it. I lived in Santa Barbara for one year - one very monotonous depressing year because it only rained in January. There's nothing like the way clear clean washed air makes colors vibrant and rich. There's nothing like waking up to rain, finding the sun at lunch, and getting home in drizzle. The Northwest is for people who LIKE weather. California is for people who desire skin cancer, wrinkles, and are content to see the world in flat washed out colors.
Well said. And I'm sure that any number of interviews with people who have lived under governments which perpetrated random death on their citizens (as the GP poster apparently condones), would agree that governments must be restrained from such practices.
IANAQP. One thing I wonder though, if we assume there are parallel universes, why do we think that our lives would be different? If these shadows from the laser actually come from shadow particles going through one of three holes interfering w/ "real" particles going through the other, it would seem that the shadow particles are flying out in all respects exactly like the "real" ones - just half a mm away. Couldn't these parallel universes be exactly like "ours", only shifted left, right, up, and down (forward and back too?)?
Like I said though, I'm no physicist. But I'd appreciate info or links to info (non-crackpot of course).
We probably agree more than dissagree (though I hope I don't sound TOO much like Nader! ;-). I think in my first post I mentioned that unlike the car lawsuit, one against a software manufacturer would be much less certain. Clearly there are real differences between "real" products and software. On the other hand, I would bet money that sometime, somewhere, someone will press the issue. If nothing else, it will be quite interesting.
There is a duty to third parties which requires the manufacturer to refrain from releasing known dangerous defects on the public. So, the thrid party pedestrian, injured because the manufacturer refused to fix a known dangerous condition of the vehicle, would have a case against the manufacturer. A reasonable auto manufacturer would be able to forsee that it's product could cause damage to someone who is and never was an owner of one of its products. It is sound public policy to hold manufacturers liable to third parties damaged by their products else much injustice could be done for want of a purchase receipt.
I think you're missing the point. Take the car analogy. This situation is more akin to a manufacturer releasing a car that has faulty brakes. That car is stolen, the brakes fail while the thief is driving off, and an innocent bystander is injured. The innocent bystander can sue the manufacturer for the product defect. It doesn't matter that the driver was not the legal owner - what matters is that the manufacturer was responsible for providing safe brakes and failed to. (please note, this is a simplified fact pattern/result - but you should get the point)
Let's say the thief has the car a few days, hears about a recall, but can't get the car fixed because he doesn't have a receipt for purchase (and for the sake of simplicity - let's say manufacturer provides the fix directly as opposed to a dealer). The manufacturer is then in even more trouble because the car came to the shop, they knew it was faulty, they refused to fix it, and as a result of their refusal to fix the car, the brakes fail and cause an accident to an innocent 3d party. 3d party sues.
This sort of fact scenario is much closer to what MS is saying than your analogy. In terms of car accidents, at least with the 2d scenario, 80% of plaintiff oriented product liability attorneys would get a woody and dollar signs in their eyes (just a guess - could be more).
Eventually, MS will face a suit where an innocent bystander is harmed because MS refused to fix a known dangerous product, and the unfixed versions cause some sort of disruption even for the innocent users. Obviously software and cars are different so I wouldn't gamble on the outcome, but it will be an interesting fight to watch.
Your post is true in all respects. And as someone who lives in an area where Comcast (blows!) has "an absolute monopoly on broadband connections", I can tell you that I'm certainly worried. There is no competition now so Comcast can do whatever it wants. Why should I feel comforted by the thought that in NY City or LA, people will have choice? Comcast is reaming me now at $55/month - you think they'll think twice if they could figure out how to double that?
20% would actually be good. Charges for my merchant account are 30 cents per transaction plus 2.19% of the total purchase price. So if I sell something for $1, the credit card processor gets 32.19 cents of it. But I'm small time - Apple can probably actually negotiate a better rate because they are so large.
Dang it! I already posted, but you deserve a +5 hilarious!
Problem is, they let these guys vote too.
Because comcast sucks in all ways possible. I used to have ATTBI too. The day the switch to comcast came, I started getting spam. W/ ATT, I got 2 or 3 per year. W/ comcast, I'm getting more than a dozen a day.
Typically, more than 99% of water is water, the remaining 1% or less being minerals, salts, or pollutants (note - this is a made up statstic, no researchers were disturbed in the making up of this number). However, I have heard of no reports of water being comprised of Kilngons, so it is probably safe to say that 0% of water is made up of Klingons.
Perhaps you were more interested in knowing what percentage of the Klingon body is comprised of water. The answer to that question is, sadly, more difficult to obtain.
There are downsides to this as well. Let's say you are a file-sharer who fights. You then lose. In addition to the ten gazillion in fines, you will have to pay for the RIAA's legal team - a team not likely comprised of small-town lawyers, but rather, of the Armani Suit species at something like $300/hr times 10 attorneys.
In other words, requiring the loser to pay fees for both sides might actually discourage people who have a reasonable defense from pursuing it. Any trial is comprised of evidence, argument, and healthy dose of pure chance. Chance is, not always but not rarely, the major factor in any outcome.
Excellent points. There's another one, not security related though, that's important. I don't think voting ought to be as easy as taking a /. poll. It should require some minimal effort as this will weed out the people who don't really care, but might randomly click a web form. It isn't a huge burden to go to a polling place, or make a request for a mail in ballot, but it does require a tiny effort. People who can't handle the effort involved, aren't truly interested in voting, and really ought to refrain. Web voting would make it too easy for the apathetic.
I've had a car payment in one form or another since 1992. But last year, instead of getting a new car, I fought the impulse. Now my car is paid off, runs great, and all I pay is insurance. I love it!
- the right to travel freely is enjoyed by all citizens. As the primary purpose of driving is to travel from one point to another, it must therefore be a right.
First off, taking away a driving license does not infringe on one's right to travel freely. It obviously alters the modes of transportation one may use, but it does not take away the right. As an example, if I want to drive an 18 Wheeler down to CA, I will need to get a special license. Needing that license does not restrict my right to travel, it just prevents me from driving an 18 wheeler. I can still go by car, bus, train, plane, motorcycle, boat, bicycle, foot, skates. I can even go by 18 wheeler if I can hitch a ride - I'm just not allowed to drive the truck. Restricting modes of travel is not the same as restricting the right to travel.I sure hope so. Digital billboards are a complete menace. I know of one about 120 miles from where I live. Whenever I drive by, I have to make a consious effort to not stare at the video on the sign, and instead, concentrate on the heavy traffic. I would love to see the sign taken down by some lawsuit because the truth is, it endangers me by distracting other drivers and for what it's worth, causes me to become a danger to other drivers because I am distracted. We are hard wired to notice movement and flashing lights - taking advantage of that is not always appropriate.
What would be really cool, is if the computer could understand things even if the syntax varried. So for example, one person might say, "burn the songs in the burn folder to a music CD", and another might say "burn a music cd from the songs in the burn folder"
Perhaps it's as simple as breaking commands down into subject, object, verb components. But I would think, for something like this to be really effective and fast, the computer would have to get closer to a system of understanding concepts, as opposed to slavishly following commands.
Oh yeah, and spelling shouldn't be critical.
Me neither. I don't understand what is so special about a USB mouse when PS2 mice have been solidly functioning for ages. PS2 was a step up from the DIN connector because it is easier to plug in when you're reaching around a box blind, but the change from PS2 to USB seems like a useless one to me.
Thanks for the info. When I get around to trying SATA for myself, I'll keep in mind that it is possible to make it work well. It's much easier to spend a lot of time on google when you know that the answer exists.
- However, I'm not sure how well Linux in general, and SuSE in particular works with Serial-ATA drives, especially when there's nothing but Serial-ATA available
,/i>I should mention, my speed issues aside, SuSE correctly found and identified the SATA drive without a hiccup.
I helped a friend put SuSE 9.0 pro on a computer he assembled from some old parts and a new Asus motherboard w/ SATA controller. He had one IDE drive in there and he bought a new SATA drive.
Both during installation and use, the computer would periodically go into molasses mode. The hourglass icon would turn in ultra slow motion. Open office sometimes took more than a minute to start up (AMD 2500+ system). When transfering files from the IDE to the SATA, transfers would periodically slow down to a crawl.
So I took out the SATA drive, put in a second IDE, and reinstalled the system, speed was normal and snappy. Except that at boot time, SuSE spends forever looking for the non-existent SATA drives. I looked through the BIOS hoping to turn off the SATA controller, but couldn't find the control. I only looked briefly though.
I'm no hardware guru, or linux guru for that matter, but a stock install on a new Asus w/ all the bells and wistles (A7?????-deluxe or something like that) was pretty lame in terms of SATA. No idea if this is hardware or software problem - switching to dual IDEs cured all the problems so that's where I quit troubleshooting.
I don't know whether to mod you funny (testicle comment) or insightful (statistics comment). We need a "Funny but True" option!