For every $1 spent to put a fiber in the ground, (Score:1) a company has to spend $20 to attach it to all the equipment, configure it and turn it on.
Sorry, but my bogosity meter is banging against the peg on this one. Anybody have any real figures on this?
That's a reasonable number.
When you're burying the fibers it costs you a bunch to dig a trench. That's because the trench goes around the whole continental USA, plus a few cross-paths. Every major city has to end up with two trenches connecting it to two other cities (so if the fiber going one way gets cut the signals can be rerouted to go around and come in the other way).
It costs you a LOT to dig that trench. If you put the minimum two fibers you need in it, when you need more you'd have to DIG ANOTHER TRENCH. So you put in a BUNCH of fibers. You don't want to dig another trench for a century or so.
The extra individual fibers cost next to nothing compared to the trench, even after you include the cost of the splices. The total cost is still enormous. But once you divide the cost of the trench among all those fibers the cost PER PAIR OF FIBERS is small - approaching the cost of the fiber itself.
But now you go to light them up. This means a box at every city or town along the way where you want to hook up, plus maybe several repeaters in access boxes EVERY MILE along the fiber (the spacing and cost varying according to the type of fiber and what type of signal is going through it - but it's not cheap). For packet switching you need maybe a million bux worth of box in each town for each fiber pair you light up (though lighting extra fibers can be done for maybe a quarter of that by adding cards to existing boxes.) For phone calls and raw pipes, maybe an eighth of that (though that just lights and protection-switches the fibers and hooks them to the local signals with a few fat pipes). And a rule of thumb is that the rack space for the box costs more than the box.
20-to-1? Might be low.
Of course the repeaters and boxes both get better roughly by Moore's law. So if you can hold off lighting a fiber for 18 months, it costs you half as much. So of COURSE you don't buy boxes and repeaters until you're ready to light the fibers.
So the analysts looked at all the dark fibers, forget about all the non-installed boxes, and started prattling about a "bandwidth glut" - as if nobody would buy another box for 20 years.
Meanwhile the tellcos had bought enough boxes to light their first fibers (plus a couple spares). So there was a dip in box purchases while they switched to finding customers to use the bandwidth on the first lit fibers. (One set of fibers has a LOT of capacity, so purchases are lumpy.) And the tellcos got into a price war to get those customers - with the little guys getting squeezed out by the old former monopolies with their buckets of cash.
So the investors paniced. And investment in "telecom" dried up. And without investment the squeezing proved fatal for the new little guys. And without the little guys nipping at their heels the big guys started taking their time (though they're still installing and still filling up their current boxes - plus the ones they got for near-free from the dying little guys). And without investment nobody bought more of ANYTHING, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and crashing the stock of anything tarred with the name "telecom".
But even with the big guys dragging their feet the boxes ARE getting filled up, just like the article says. Some time soon the surviving companies will need to buy more. And the surviving suppliers will have less competition and ZERO inventory (having long since switched to build-to-order as a belt-tightening measure, and also sold off all their pre-made stuff at fire-sale prices).
After all - do YOU have broadband yet? On slashdot, probaby yes. But don't you know somebody who doesn't, but wants it and can't yet get it?
They're STILL doing the INITIAL buildout - and the "broadband" pipes are still tiny compared to what people WOULD buy if it were available and the price were right. Only a couple percent of the country has broadband. A LOT more people want it, and will get it as soon as it's available. (As of a couple months ago the tellcos expected to install as much DSL this year alone as had been installed since it was invented.)
Seems to me the article is right on. The current "telecom crash" is at least partly due to a panic reaction by investors, and the result will be a bandwidth crunch as the boxes fill up and there is a sudden need to buy more - creating a seller's market for the surviving suppliers.
Somebody may have said it already, but I really think that "Ungrounded Lightning" is a cooler name anyway.
I think I agree with you.
But it's not intended as a characterization of my posting style. Rather, it's a reference to something the president said when a company I was at first got netnews installed.
He wouldn't interfere with posting as a matter of principle. But the startup was already viewed as possibly flakey. So he'd appreciate it if we tried not to be "lightning rods" by making posts that might enhance the bad aspects of our reputation and interfere with the search for funding.
So I created a handle account (which was NOT "Ungrounded Lightning Rod") for posting to the more controversial groups.
There is no liability from not helping. If you *do* help, don't mess up, cause you're liable. This is standard law. Good Samaritan laws shield helpers from this liability. Period.
Wish it were so - and usually it is. But some states have been passing so-called "good samaritan" laws that both shield those who act AND create an obligation TO act.
A real pity. One of the big differences between US law and English has been that in the US you have no obligation to be a hero or a spy, risking your own life in the process.
In particular, you had no obligation to inform the authorities of possible crimes you witness, thus exposing yourself to retaliation by the crooks. You were safe from government reprisals as long as you didn't actively participate in the crime and don't lie when directly asked about what you witnessed. Now the government social engineers are trying to erode this, turning the population into their serfs and unpaid spies.
Fortunately, even in those states where such laws have been passed there is no effective way to enforce them.
... if some terrorist group has a website, and they put information about themselves and their activities on that website, then that's a bona fide use for web browsing. Checking news sites in other countries is exteremly usefull as well.
In an emergancy, I would want the government ( I'm Canadian btw) to have priority checking updates on CNN over me checking updates on/.
And if the government DOES flag their packets for priority handling, the web sites can identify whether they're feeding a government op or the general public.
Just what you need: Your spy has footwear with treads that leave "SPY!" in the sand with every step.
How long until "terrorist groups" start hacking their servers, to substitute bogus information when the government surfs in and to track the IP addresses that originate government priority packets.
The opportunities for information-warfare conutermeasures are astounding.
The "old crows" will fly again!
Nope: You've just given the bad guy your key.
on
Optical Cryptography
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· Score: 3, Informative
You could also image doing this with regular any noise and random observations. Like solar observations, for instance or other space observations. Could even be based on traffic to specific web sites....
The trick to all noise-masking techniques is for YOU and YOUR PARTNER to have the same set of noise and NOBODY ELSE to have it.
Use a well-known public noise source and a link to that source becomes the key which decrypts all your traffic.
In summary, the code can and show be written so that most of it documents itself.
Please excuse me for taking that line out of context. But it is important.
Regardless of the clarity of the code or lack therof, you need the comments - or another expression of the code's intent - to verify that it is doing what was intended.
"Self-documenting code" cannot be tested. This is because testing cannot determine if a program works, only that what it does matches what another document says it should do. The best automobile engine control program won't balance your checkbook, and vice-versa.
Once the comments (or other documents) are written, readable code is better than unreadable code. But if the only description of what the code should do is the code itself, the only thing you can test is the compiler.
That's nonsense. VNC does not allow you to "setup a Windows box and have 50 Linux desktops connect to it"--VNC doesn't magically transform a single user Windows machine into a multiuser machine.
It doesn't have to turn it into a TIME-SHARING multiuser machine to turn it into a multiuser machine. One user at a time is QUITE enough to put a big scare into Microsoft.
You see, they want you to buy a license for EVERY desktop on your site. If you're trying to convert a company from Windows to Something Else, you'll have a period - possibly forever - where there are still a few Windows-only apps that your people need to run occasionally. A small number of servers that can be remote-accessed from NON-Windows machines can server a large number of occasional users.
So Microsoft modifies the ELUA so you have to have a Windows license for, and be running Windows on, every machine where you access the Windows server.
...you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product.
Notice that last part, where they prohibit running the windows user interface remotely on a machine that is NOT licensed for windows. What they want to prevent is using workstation licenses to set up a "windows server", which could let you run windows programs from a non-windows machine.
This is to keep people from buying a small number of windows licenses and putting a few machines running VNC or the like in the server room, to run those few windows applications that the company hasn't been weaned from yet.
Again they're monopolizing - this time by trying to block migration paths from windows to non-windows shops.
The census has driven data processing technology before. In fact, it STARTED it.
As the population expanded, it was taking longer and longer to compute the results. By about 1890 it was taking almost ten years to complete, and the extrapolation was that the next one would take MORE than ten years.
So an employee of the Census began designing mechanical sorting and tabulating equipment. He came up with a cardboard card which could be punched with holes representing information, the placed in a "press" where the holes were read electromechanically.
The first sorting machines involved a human putting each card in the press by hand, causing the lid of the appropriate box to pop open, then throwing the card into the box and closing the lid. (After sorting the cards in each box would be counted.) But with time automatic machines were designed to feed, sort, and count the cards.
The census put out a contract to have cards made, and the bids that came in were very high. So the inventor went across the street to the Mint and obtained the retired cutting equipment for the previous generation of paper money - which became the dimension of the tabulation cards.
Eventually the inventor hired on with a business equipment company, designing sorting and tabulating equipment for the Census which found applications elsewhere. A multi-hole encoding for alphabetic information that cards be alphabetized in two passes through a simple machine.
The inventer was Herman Hollerith, and of course the code was named after him. The company was eventually named International Business Machines, later shortened to IBM. The card was the "tabulation" card, later shortened to "tab" card, but it was commonly known as a "Hollereth card" or "IBM card".
We can't even put ONE house on the aforementioned 7 acres. They won't even budge 1 bit.
So sue them under the 5th amendment "Takings" clause of the Constitution.
- You have their assessment - and the standard for assessed valuation vs. sale price, and comparable values from sale prices of houses in the area that have sold recently that would be similar to what yours would be if you could build it.
- You also have comparable values for swampland with restrictions from the same area.
So sue the agency that is blocking you for the difference.
This has been EXTREMELY successful in the recent past, thanks to some supreme court decisions relating to a situation in California. (A church camp burned down. The zoning board blocked permits to rebuild for years while considering whether to allow rebuilding at all. The church sued for the reduction of the value to the property (value of property where you can build a camp - value of property where you can't build a camp). The Supreme Court agreed with them, establishing the doctrine of "partial taking".
So look up that case, find a good lawyer who understands it (or the one who DID it), and start a suit.
One of three things will happen:
- They do an about-face and grant you your permits. (You'll have your land value back, less fees for the lawyer to send a letter and maybe start the suit.)
- You win. (You'll have your land value back, less the lawyer's fees for running the suit - and you may be able to collect that, too.)
- You lose and lose on appeal. (You're out the cost of the case. But you have the satisfaction of dragging the bureaucrats through the courts for a while. B-) )
(And while you're at it, think about a civil rights suit: "Denial of Civil Rights under Color of Law.")
(... he cried aloud, the day before he went missing.)
And in case you're wondering, this is a reference to a subplot in the "Illuminatus" trilogy.
Back in the early '70s I was working on word processing software (when manufacturers of a word processor also had to build a machine the size of a desk to put the software in). I was also reading _Illuminatus_ and that subplot had me sorely tempted to add a bug to the software such that it would occasionally inject "fnord" into the text being entered or edited, causing this to appear in major newspapers nationwide.
Fortunately I was able to resist the temptation. B-)
There are recordings from bugs in the compound (built into the cartons of milk given to the Davidians) which prove that the fires were deliberately set by the Davidians themselves.
The FBI spoksmen claimed that the bugs caught the phrase "The fire has started." or "The fires have started." Given that Koresh had been teaching for quite some time (before the siege) that satanic forces in control of the government would burn them out, such a sentence is hardly proof that they started the fires themselves.
If you have other evidence please post it, with a pointer or link to somewhere that it appears in the public record.
ISTR that the one incendiary-type gas canister found on the premises was fired hours before the fire broke out
That was the claim. But several used incindeary canisters were entered in evidence at the trial afterward, collected from one of the start-points of the fire and misidentified as silencers by the FBI.
many of the dead were found shot to death (including Koresh himself).
Which says nothing about who shot them. Especially given that infrared footage seems to show two snipers firing into the building from the rear during the fire, when people were trying to escape.
While you won't have any trouble showing that the tactics of the government were ridiculous (if they wanted Koresh they could have arrested him when he went into town, alone), there is nothing to support the case that the tear gas caused the fires.
Acutally there's quite a bit, including soem work by Faliure Analysis Associates, infrared footage from an overflight, etc.
But given that the FBI had the site plowed under, destroying most of the evidence, we'll never know for sure, will we?
I mean, tear gas is bad and not used often, but after a few hours, you're all back to normal.
[] Once you're downwind of twenty-plus canisters, things start getting iffy. [] Numerous women reported early periods after the April 2001 Quebec City protests...
Not to mention that tear gas scars the breathing passages, leading to lifelong lung problems and asthma, and disolves in the body fat, re-emerging throughout life to make you sick whenever you lose weight. Long-term irritants promote cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune reactions (such as arthritis, Grave's syndrome, Lupus,...).
Tear gas in enclosed spaces where people can't escape before they drown in their own mucus is deadly. That's why it's forbidden in warfare for trying to get people out of caves and tunnels.
Tear gas tends to kill small children, both because they're more susceptable for several reasons and because masks, if available, won't fit well enough to keep it out.
Tear gas plus fire equals cyanide gas.
Aerosol teargas projectors leave the air filled with finely divided dust particles, which burn well enough (ala dust explosions) to superheat a large volume of air (rendering the area lethal) and ignite flammable materials at multiple points within it. The solvent used is also flammable, making its use near sources of ignition such as pilot lights or lanterns even more problematic. Tear gas projectiles use a flare to vaporize and disperse the solid form. Using the first (fuel) followed by the second (igniter) creates a firebomb.
If the tanks carrying the injectors have already knocked down the stairs (trapping people upstairs), collapsed the tunnels (trapping them in the underground "safe room"), collapsed walls (trapping them even on the first floor), and opened the building to the wind (to blow up the fire) you end up with a lot of drowned children, poisoned adults, and incinerated bodies. Whether done deliberately or accidentally, such a site becomes a death camp, but much more efficient than any in World War II.
Paul Shames instituted a class action suit against Pac Bell and SBC Internet (along with "DOES 1 through 100, which I take to be the instalation subcontractors) and won it. Payoff was (essentially) a $50 credit on the bill or a check for $20 if service had since been canceled if the installer didn't arrive in the 4-hour window.
Superior Court of San Diego County CA, Case No. GIC 751342.
That should give you a measure of what to ask for as a bill credit: $50 per extra halfday.
I'd send them a nice letter offering to waive any claim against them for your losses due to their delays, in return for a $50 bill credit for every extra halfday that they cost you due to install screwups, provided the credit appears on one of your next two bills, and referring to the case number as an example of what might happen if they don't agree.
Though the case doesn't refer to you in particular (and the claim opportunity has timed out anyhow), they might give you the credit rather than risking you might be mad enough to start another class action covering your area and time window, and thus cost them a lot more.
I'm curious, how do you argue that something is or isn't a derivative work? Especially software?
I'm curious whether they might consider the linked object to be a "compilation" in the literary sense - i.e. a collection of separate works published together without significant modification to each, such as an anthology.
As much as I like the GPL I really hope that the writer of the License isn't the one who gets to define "derivative work" (ie, maybe microsoft someday would like to make their license cover any computer yours networks with, or something silly).
Rule of thumb: When one side writes the contract, the courts construe the words as much in favor of the other side as possible. It's up to the author of the contract terms to make them clear, understandable, and legal.
This isn't as dangerous as it sounds because if the license is invalidated, users are granted no additional rights over a traditionally copyrighted work. So, code wouldn't be in danger of "escaping" in the meantime
Not really. But it might not be all that bad.
What might happen is that the linking restrictions could be stricken on the doctrine that the linked object isn't a derivative work, but the rest of the license left standing - including the grant of rights on already-released code.
The result would effectively make the existing GPL act about like the LGPL. You could use your rights under the GPL to modify/fix/extend the GPLed module, then use the interpretation that the linked object is not a derivative work to distribute proprietary works statically linked with it. You'd have to distribute source to the modified version of the library routine, which would still be under the (weakened) GPL. But you wouldn't infect the code that calls it with the GPL and could keep that source closed.
Later versions of modules written by single authors could be released under a "hardened" GPL. So could later versions of modules where all the authors could agree, or where the rights had all been assigned to an organization like the FSF. (And the existing version could also be re-relased that way, too, to give future maintainers the ability to release their versions under hardened terms.) But that wouldn't put the already-released versions back in the bottle. And the mix of licenses might cause other problems, such as code branching with some authors making divergent changes that they DON'T want under the hardened license terms.
At least that's how it looks to me. But IANAL. (Or I might be confused about the terms of the GPL and LGPL.)
IMHO this might actually improve things. It would make more of the codebase usable by proprietary applications, and would result in applications that are easier to write equivalents for - because they're essentially glue between open-source library modules.
But that's just my opinion. Some people who released the base modules under GPL no doubt disagree with me. It's THEIR code and thus THEIR right to licence it as they please.
4. When the ILEC goes to install a new DSL line for one of their OWN customers, and there aren't enough good pair in the cable, their installers have been known to just steal the pair from a working line. Amazingly enough, it's usually a CLEC's line.
So the CLEC gets a trouble call. And has to debug it. And when they figure out the line's gone dead, they report it to the ILEC, which sends a lineman out to fix it. And there are STILL no spare high-quality pair in the cable. So the ILEC lineman steals ANOTHER in-use pair to replace the first stolen one. (Guess whether it's from the ILEC or a CLEC.)
But why would they want to give up a monopoly on selling 30-mile connections at 20 cents/minute for an opportunity to sell 2000-mile connections at 6 cents/minute?
Because at the time the big price war on long distance hadn't started yet. Most of the profit was in the long distance service - which they were locked out of - and they were stuck with the low-profit local infrastructure monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
For every $1 spent to put a fiber in the ground, (Score:1) a company has to spend $20 to attach it to all the equipment, configure it and turn it on.
Sorry, but my bogosity meter is banging against the peg on this one. Anybody have any real figures on this?
That's a reasonable number.
When you're burying the fibers it costs you a bunch to dig a trench. That's because the trench goes around the whole continental USA, plus a few cross-paths. Every major city has to end up with two trenches connecting it to two other cities (so if the fiber going one way gets cut the signals can be rerouted to go around and come in the other way).
It costs you a LOT to dig that trench. If you put the minimum two fibers you need in it, when you need more you'd have to DIG ANOTHER TRENCH. So you put in a BUNCH of fibers. You don't want to dig another trench for a century or so.
The extra individual fibers cost next to nothing compared to the trench, even after you include the cost of the splices. The total cost is still enormous. But once you divide the cost of the trench among all those fibers the cost PER PAIR OF FIBERS is small - approaching the cost of the fiber itself.
But now you go to light them up. This means a box at every city or town along the way where you want to hook up, plus maybe several repeaters in access boxes EVERY MILE along the fiber (the spacing and cost varying according to the type of fiber and what type of signal is going through it - but it's not cheap). For packet switching you need maybe a million bux worth of box in each town for each fiber pair you light up (though lighting extra fibers can be done for maybe a quarter of that by adding cards to existing boxes.) For phone calls and raw pipes, maybe an eighth of that (though that just lights and protection-switches the fibers and hooks them to the local signals with a few fat pipes). And a rule of thumb is that the rack space for the box costs more than the box.
20-to-1? Might be low.
Of course the repeaters and boxes both get better roughly by Moore's law. So if you can hold off lighting a fiber for 18 months, it costs you half as much. So of COURSE you don't buy boxes and repeaters until you're ready to light the fibers.
So the analysts looked at all the dark fibers, forget about all the non-installed boxes, and started prattling about a "bandwidth glut" - as if nobody would buy another box for 20 years.
Meanwhile the tellcos had bought enough boxes to light their first fibers (plus a couple spares). So there was a dip in box purchases while they switched to finding customers to use the bandwidth on the first lit fibers. (One set of fibers has a LOT of capacity, so purchases are lumpy.) And the tellcos got into a price war to get those customers - with the little guys getting squeezed out by the old former monopolies with their buckets of cash.
So the investors paniced. And investment in "telecom" dried up. And without investment the squeezing proved fatal for the new little guys. And without the little guys nipping at their heels the big guys started taking their time (though they're still installing and still filling up their current boxes - plus the ones they got for near-free from the dying little guys). And without investment nobody bought more of ANYTHING, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and crashing the stock of anything tarred with the name "telecom".
But even with the big guys dragging their feet the boxes ARE getting filled up, just like the article says. Some time soon the surviving companies will need to buy more. And the surviving suppliers will have less competition and ZERO inventory (having long since switched to build-to-order as a belt-tightening measure, and also sold off all their pre-made stuff at fire-sale prices).
After all - do YOU have broadband yet? On slashdot, probaby yes. But don't you know somebody who doesn't, but wants it and can't yet get it?
They're STILL doing the INITIAL buildout - and the "broadband" pipes are still tiny compared to what people WOULD buy if it were available and the price were right. Only a couple percent of the country has broadband. A LOT more people want it, and will get it as soon as it's available. (As of a couple months ago the tellcos expected to install as much DSL this year alone as had been installed since it was invented.)
Seems to me the article is right on. The current "telecom crash" is at least partly due to a panic reaction by investors, and the result will be a bandwidth crunch as the boxes fill up and there is a sudden need to buy more - creating a seller's market for the surviving suppliers.
Go home, take a nice fridge magnet... that pizza place magnet will do.. set the magnet on the strip, rub a few times... Voila
Some states use an extra-high coercivity stripe material that won't be degaussed by a 'fridge magnet.
Go to Radio Shack or a museum's tech-toy counter and get one of those supermagnets. Or just scratch until most of the stripe is worn off.
Somebody may have said it already, but I really think that "Ungrounded Lightning" is a cooler name anyway.
I think I agree with you.
But it's not intended as a characterization of my posting style. Rather, it's a reference to something the president said when a company I was at first got netnews installed.
He wouldn't interfere with posting as a matter of principle. But the startup was already viewed as possibly flakey. So he'd appreciate it if we tried not to be "lightning rods" by making posts that might enhance the bad aspects of our reputation and interfere with the search for funding.
So I created a handle account (which was NOT "Ungrounded Lightning Rod") for posting to the more controversial groups.
... special measures (such as the firing of the incompetent) cannot be taken even when government bureaucrats are used in a tactical environment.
But in such a tactical environment can you fire AT the incompetent?
There is no liability from not helping. If you *do* help, don't mess up, cause you're liable. This is standard law. Good Samaritan laws shield helpers from this liability. Period.
Wish it were so - and usually it is. But some states have been passing so-called "good samaritan" laws that both shield those who act AND create an obligation TO act.
A real pity. One of the big differences between US law and English has been that in the US you have no obligation to be a hero or a spy, risking your own life in the process.
In particular, you had no obligation to inform the authorities of possible crimes you witness, thus exposing yourself to retaliation by the crooks. You were safe from government reprisals as long as you didn't actively participate in the crime and don't lie when directly asked about what you witnessed. Now the government social engineers are trying to erode this, turning the population into their serfs and unpaid spies.
Fortunately, even in those states where such laws have been passed there is no effective way to enforce them.
Microsoft OSes mark all packets as URGent so that they commandeer higher priority. This qualifies as innovation.
So they effectively identify their packets as coming from Microsoft IP stacks?
Oh, Goodie!
Any bets on how long until there's software that takes advantage of that to give differential service to Microsoft clients?
(Not counting any that Microsoft has already deployed, of course.)
Like maybe a patch for Apache?
Open Source developers can innovate, too. And some of them are Not Nice People (TM).
... if some terrorist group has a website, and they put information about themselves and their activities on that website, then that's a bona fide use for web browsing. Checking news sites in other countries is exteremly usefull as well.
/.
In an emergancy, I would want the government ( I'm Canadian btw) to have priority checking updates on CNN over me checking updates on
And if the government DOES flag their packets for priority handling, the web sites can identify whether they're feeding a government op or the general public.
Just what you need: Your spy has footwear with treads that leave "SPY!" in the sand with every step.
How long until "terrorist groups" start hacking their servers, to substitute bogus information when the government surfs in and to track the IP addresses that originate government priority packets.
The opportunities for information-warfare conutermeasures are astounding.
The "old crows" will fly again!
You could also image doing this with regular any noise and random observations. Like solar observations, for instance or other space observations. Could even be based on traffic to specific web sites....
The trick to all noise-masking techniques is for YOU and YOUR PARTNER to have the same set of noise and NOBODY ELSE to have it.
Use a well-known public noise source and a link to that source becomes the key which decrypts all your traffic.
Oops!
In summary, the code can and show be written so that most of it documents itself.
Please excuse me for taking that line out of context. But it is important.
Regardless of the clarity of the code or lack therof, you need the comments - or another expression of the code's intent - to verify that it is doing what was intended.
"Self-documenting code" cannot be tested. This is because testing cannot determine if a program works, only that what it does matches what another document says it should do. The best automobile engine control program won't balance your checkbook, and vice-versa.
Once the comments (or other documents) are written, readable code is better than unreadable code. But if the only description of what the code should do is the code itself, the only thing you can test is the compiler.
That's nonsense. VNC does not allow you to "setup a Windows box and have 50 Linux desktops connect to it"--VNC doesn't magically transform a single user Windows machine into a multiuser machine.
It doesn't have to turn it into a TIME-SHARING multiuser machine to turn it into a multiuser machine. One user at a time is QUITE enough to put a big scare into Microsoft.
You see, they want you to buy a license for EVERY desktop on your site. If you're trying to convert a company from Windows to Something Else, you'll have a period - possibly forever - where there are still a few Windows-only apps that your people need to run occasionally. A small number of servers that can be remote-accessed from NON-Windows machines can server a large number of occasional users.
So Microsoft modifies the ELUA so you have to have a Windows license for, and be running Windows on, every machine where you access the Windows server.
See?
...you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product.
Notice that last part, where they prohibit running the windows user interface remotely on a machine that is NOT licensed for windows. What they want to prevent is using workstation licenses to set up a "windows server", which could let you run windows programs from a non-windows machine.
This is to keep people from buying a small number of windows licenses and putting a few machines running VNC or the like in the server room, to run those few windows applications that the company hasn't been weaned from yet.
Again they're monopolizing - this time by trying to block migration paths from windows to non-windows shops.
The census has driven data processing technology before. In fact, it STARTED it.
As the population expanded, it was taking longer and longer to compute the results. By about 1890 it was taking almost ten years to complete, and the extrapolation was that the next one would take MORE than ten years.
So an employee of the Census began designing mechanical sorting and tabulating equipment. He came up with a cardboard card which could be punched with holes representing information, the placed in a "press" where the holes were read electromechanically.
The first sorting machines involved a human putting each card in the press by hand, causing the lid of the appropriate box to pop open, then throwing the card into the box and closing the lid. (After sorting the cards in each box would be counted.) But with time automatic machines were designed to feed, sort, and count the cards.
The census put out a contract to have cards made, and the bids that came in were very high. So the inventor went across the street to the Mint and obtained the retired cutting equipment for the previous generation of paper money - which became the dimension of the tabulation cards.
Eventually the inventor hired on with a business equipment company, designing sorting and tabulating equipment for the Census which found applications elsewhere. A multi-hole encoding for alphabetic information that cards be alphabetized in two passes through a simple machine.
The inventer was Herman Hollerith, and of course the code was named after him. The company was eventually named International Business Machines, later shortened to IBM. The card was the "tabulation" card, later shortened to "tab" card, but it was commonly known as a "Hollereth card" or "IBM card".
We can't even put ONE house on the aforementioned 7 acres. They won't even budge 1 bit.
So sue them under the 5th amendment "Takings" clause of the Constitution.
- You have their assessment - and the standard for assessed valuation vs. sale price, and comparable values from sale prices of houses in the area that have sold recently that would be similar to what yours would be if you could build it.
- You also have comparable values for swampland with restrictions from the same area.
So sue the agency that is blocking you for the difference.
This has been EXTREMELY successful in the recent past, thanks to some supreme court decisions relating to a situation in California. (A church camp burned down. The zoning board blocked permits to rebuild for years while considering whether to allow rebuilding at all. The church sued for the reduction of the value to the property (value of property where you can build a camp - value of property where you can't build a camp). The Supreme Court agreed with them, establishing the doctrine of "partial taking".
So look up that case, find a good lawyer who understands it (or the one who DID it), and start a suit.
One of three things will happen:
- They do an about-face and grant you your permits. (You'll have your land value back, less fees for the lawyer to send a letter and maybe start the suit.)
- You win. (You'll have your land value back, less the lawyer's fees for running the suit - and you may be able to collect that, too.)
- You lose and lose on appeal. (You're out the cost of the case. But you have the satisfaction of dragging the bureaucrats through the courts for a while. B-) )
(And while you're at it, think about a civil rights suit: "Denial of Civil Rights under Color of Law.")
My wife was expanding a lab with a preexisting "seven dwarves" naming scheme. So she invented some extra dwarves.
The two I remember were "sleazy" and "scuzzy".
(... he cried aloud, the day before he went missing.)
And in case you're wondering, this is a reference to a subplot in the "Illuminatus" trilogy.
Back in the early '70s I was working on word processing software (when manufacturers of a word processor also had to build a machine the size of a desk to put the software in). I was also reading _Illuminatus_ and that subplot had me sorely tempted to add a bug to the software such that it would occasionally inject "fnord" into the text being entered or edited, causing this to appear in major newspapers nationwide.
Fortunately I was able to resist the temptation. B-)
Makes you wonder if we're here to discover it happened because it happened.
It also makes you wonder if this kind of thing is common enough that it tends to take out intelligent races before they develop interstellar travel.
Or if it might make interstellar travel at sublight speeds sufficiently hazardous that there isn't much of it.
Or perhaps the cluster has made this region sufficiently dangerous that nobody has come here recently (like in the last few million years).
Any (or a combination) of these might help to explain why, as far as we can tell, no little green men have dropped in to visit.
There are recordings from bugs in the compound (built into the cartons of milk given to the Davidians) which prove that the fires were deliberately set by the Davidians themselves.
The FBI spoksmen claimed that the bugs caught the phrase "The fire has started." or "The fires have started." Given that Koresh had been teaching for quite some time (before the siege) that satanic forces in control of the government would burn them out, such a sentence is hardly proof that they started the fires themselves.
If you have other evidence please post it, with a pointer or link to somewhere that it appears in the public record.
ISTR that the one incendiary-type gas canister found on the premises was fired hours before the fire broke out
That was the claim. But several used incindeary canisters were entered in evidence at the trial afterward, collected from one of the start-points of the fire and misidentified as silencers by the FBI.
many of the dead were found shot to death (including Koresh himself).
Which says nothing about who shot them. Especially given that infrared footage seems to show two snipers firing into the building from the rear during the fire, when people were trying to escape.
While you won't have any trouble showing that the tactics of the government were ridiculous (if they wanted Koresh they could have arrested him when he went into town, alone), there is nothing to support the case that the tear gas caused the fires.
Acutally there's quite a bit, including soem work by Faliure Analysis Associates, infrared footage from an overflight, etc.
But given that the FBI had the site plowed under, destroying most of the evidence, we'll never know for sure, will we?
So how is this "non-hazardous"? Are they going to hand out safety harnesses to crowds before they get sprayed with slime?
"Liquid banana peel" - either this or another one - was invented in the late '60s (as a water-cannon additive) and rejected at that time.
Test subjects wearing helmets and knee/elbow pads were shown in promos, but even some of them were injured.
Imagine a crowd down, many with compound fractures, and the paramedics trying to fish them out and patch them up before they bleed to death.
Then imagine the paramedics too slippery to help - or to go help anyone else.
Then imagine the floor of the emergency room with slick spots from stuff transferred from patients.
Then imagine it during a city-wide riot, with burning and looting.
I mean, tear gas is bad and not used often, but after a few hours, you're all back to normal.
...
...).
[] Once you're downwind of twenty-plus canisters, things start getting iffy. [] Numerous women reported early periods after the April 2001 Quebec City protests
Not to mention that tear gas scars the breathing passages, leading to lifelong lung problems and asthma, and disolves in the body fat, re-emerging throughout life to make you sick whenever you lose weight. Long-term irritants promote cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune reactions (such as arthritis, Grave's syndrome, Lupus,
Tear gas in enclosed spaces where people can't escape before they drown in their own mucus is deadly. That's why it's forbidden in warfare for trying to get people out of caves and tunnels.
Tear gas tends to kill small children, both because they're more susceptable for several reasons and because masks, if available, won't fit well enough to keep it out.
Tear gas plus fire equals cyanide gas.
Aerosol teargas projectors leave the air filled with finely divided dust particles, which burn well enough (ala dust explosions) to superheat a large volume of air (rendering the area lethal) and ignite flammable materials at multiple points within it. The solvent used is also flammable, making its use near sources of ignition such as pilot lights or lanterns even more problematic. Tear gas projectiles use a flare to vaporize and disperse the solid form. Using the first (fuel) followed by the second (igniter) creates a firebomb.
If the tanks carrying the injectors have already knocked down the stairs (trapping people upstairs), collapsed the tunnels (trapping them in the underground "safe room"), collapsed walls (trapping them even on the first floor), and opened the building to the wind (to blow up the fire) you end up with a lot of drowned children, poisoned adults, and incinerated bodies. Whether done deliberately or accidentally, such a site becomes a death camp, but much more efficient than any in World War II.
Which is apparently what happened at Waco.
Paul Shames instituted a class action suit against Pac Bell and SBC Internet (along with "DOES 1 through 100, which I take to be the instalation subcontractors) and won it. Payoff was (essentially) a $50 credit on the bill or a check for $20 if service had since been canceled if the installer didn't arrive in the 4-hour window.
Superior Court of San Diego County CA, Case No. GIC 751342.
That should give you a measure of what to ask for as a bill credit: $50 per extra halfday.
I'd send them a nice letter offering to waive any claim against them for your losses due to their delays, in return for a $50 bill credit for every extra halfday that they cost you due to install screwups, provided the credit appears on one of your next two bills, and referring to the case number as an example of what might happen if they don't agree.
Though the case doesn't refer to you in particular (and the claim opportunity has timed out anyhow), they might give you the credit rather than risking you might be mad enough to start another class action covering your area and time window, and thus cost them a lot more.
I'm curious, how do you argue that something is or isn't a derivative work? Especially software?
I'm curious whether they might consider the linked object to be a "compilation" in the literary sense - i.e. a collection of separate works published together without significant modification to each, such as an anthology.
As much as I like the GPL I really hope that the writer of the License isn't the one who gets to define "derivative work" (ie, maybe microsoft someday would like to make their license cover any computer yours networks with, or something silly).
Rule of thumb: When one side writes the contract, the courts construe the words as much in favor of the other side as possible. It's up to the author of the contract terms to make them clear, understandable, and legal.
... sometimes you have to go to court.
"Spirit" doesn't enter into it.
This isn't as dangerous as it sounds because if the license is invalidated, users are granted no additional rights over a traditionally copyrighted work. So, code wouldn't be in danger of "escaping" in the meantime
Not really. But it might not be all that bad.
What might happen is that the linking restrictions could be stricken on the doctrine that the linked object isn't a derivative work, but the rest of the license left standing - including the grant of rights on already-released code.
The result would effectively make the existing GPL act about like the LGPL. You could use your rights under the GPL to modify/fix/extend the GPLed module, then use the interpretation that the linked object is not a derivative work to distribute proprietary works statically linked with it. You'd have to distribute source to the modified version of the library routine, which would still be under the (weakened) GPL. But you wouldn't infect the code that calls it with the GPL and could keep that source closed.
Later versions of modules written by single authors could be released under a "hardened" GPL. So could later versions of modules where all the authors could agree, or where the rights had all been assigned to an organization like the FSF. (And the existing version could also be re-relased that way, too, to give future maintainers the ability to release their versions under hardened terms.) But that wouldn't put the already-released versions back in the bottle. And the mix of licenses might cause other problems, such as code branching with some authors making divergent changes that they DON'T want under the hardened license terms.
At least that's how it looks to me. But IANAL. (Or I might be confused about the terms of the GPL and LGPL.)
IMHO this might actually improve things. It would make more of the codebase usable by proprietary applications, and would result in applications that are easier to write equivalents for - because they're essentially glue between open-source library modules.
But that's just my opinion. Some people who released the base modules under GPL no doubt disagree with me. It's THEIR code and thus THEIR right to licence it as they please.
4. When the ILEC goes to install a new DSL line for one of their OWN customers, and there aren't enough good pair in the cable, their installers have been known to just steal the pair from a working line. Amazingly enough, it's usually a CLEC's line.
So the CLEC gets a trouble call. And has to debug it. And when they figure out the line's gone dead, they report it to the ILEC, which sends a lineman out to fix it. And there are STILL no spare high-quality pair in the cable. So the ILEC lineman steals ANOTHER in-use pair to replace the first stolen one. (Guess whether it's from the ILEC or a CLEC.)
Loop forever.
But why would they want to give up a monopoly on selling 30-mile connections at 20 cents/minute for an opportunity to sell 2000-mile connections at 6 cents/minute?
Because at the time the big price war on long distance hadn't started yet. Most of the profit was in the long distance service - which they were locked out of - and they were stuck with the low-profit local infrastructure monopoly.
So it seemed like a good trade at the time.