Communism is not a violation of human rights. In fact, if people were innately good then communism would work better than capitalism. Capitalism is only a more successful system because it takes into account the reality that people are naturally greedy, lazy, and cruel.
Do not confuse the actions of some so called communist dictators that have violated human rights with communism itself.
I'm with the R's on this one. I believe in punishments that make people thing twice about breaking the law. The individual and the person at each level of command above him (up to and including the president), all have one finger or toe amputated per piece of mail opened.
Somehow, I have this odd feeling that the chain of command would manage to successfully prevent frivilous mail opening with a penalty like that if said penalty is enforced.
"Even those are cupfuls in the bucket. Most of the government's spending is on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare and they grow faster than the rest of the budget. Bread and circuses are expensive these days."
Without doubt. These programs are terrible. I don't know of any disabled individual collecting or trying to collect social security who didn't have to be out of work for at least five years (no matter how many specialists piled up telling SS judges that they couldn't work) before being granted social security. The problem is that this is effectively an insurance policy and those who have paid their dues are entitled to its benefits. Those who hate SS put pressure on social security that causes a bias against legitimate claimants that takes years to overcome. The same is true of Medicaid and Medicare.
It is actually the same people who go on about how ineffective government run programs like these are that cause them to operate so poorly. If you don't like medicaid you vote for additional red tape and clauses that reduce the 'frivolous' payouts of medicaid. The real result is that doctors can't prescribe the medications they feel work best, and this assures medicaid is a pretty horrible standard of health care. The same is true of procedures. Those who are afraid of excess spending are the ones that create a mountain of paperwork and oversight before the program will pay for a procedure. Again, this call should be in the hands of the doctor who orders the procedure. If you need a hint about providing good health care look at the same practices you desire in private health care. Why can't you choose your own well qualified health care provider? Because someone doesn't feel these medical programs should exist and so cuts their budget to the bone by regulating physicians.
I hate that I have to pay for someone else's care when what I pay could be put into a program to give me a better quality of care. But the biggest reason I hate it is that the programs have been cut to the point where they don't benefit me with quality care.
The biggest dead end in our budget is defense. We do not need the most powerful and advanced military in the world. The cost of providing all inclusive health care with blanket coverage rivaling or surpassing that of the best PPO's is far less than we could cut from our military budget if we stopped feeling the need to dominate the global playing field and settled for dominating our own soil.
Actually I recall voting them in and encouraging others to do the same as a choice of the lesser evil. That choice was made with a firm belief that they would toss this dictator out of office and try him for high treason in a time of war. The first thing Dean did was announce (and don't get me started on the fact that I elected person x to make decisions, not Howard Dean) that he knows that is what everyone wants but that it isn't what they are going to do. Not in 24hrs or 24 months.
How about withdrawal from Iraq? Nope, not happening either. Instead of "we can win this war" he says that we are responsible. The result is the same. Iraq built their infrastructure the first time, and Iraq can do it again. No matter what we do we aren't exactly going to have good will from the Iraqi's. If you want to impose American ideals on the Iraqi's whether they like it or not then declare Iraq a US territory. No matter how poor the reasons we did conquer that piece of dirt and Americans died for it. Otherwise our ideals dictate that the Iraqi people have the right to govern themselves, and that includes the right to fight civil wars and let themselves be subjected to fundamentalist religious leaders. It is especially hypocritical when we ourselves are under the thumb of a fundamentalist religious leader.
Hell, even if they began bring the troops home as fast as transports can bring them and they executed Bush for treason I wouldn't be happy. I want all the erosion of personal freedoms (including those that have transferred power to business and corporate interests where they conflict with the rights of individuals) that have occurred in the past decade to end.
That is how biased individuals choose to reinterpret it. Any competent individual can read that paragraph (conviented quoted by the GP) and see that after saying no unreasonable searches the founders clearly define reasonable searches as those with probable cause. They also clearly spell out that warrants are required. Now, if there is probable cause for a warrant then you can search now and get the warrant later but sooner or later you still have to be able to justify that search to a judge and present your probable cause.
"Have the gestapo been buy to arrest you yet? No? Then your comment is obviously dead wrong."
Have the department of homeland security been by to arrest ANYONE yet? Yes? Then your logic is obviously dead wrong.
Believe it or not, everyone who posts on slashdot does not have to be posting from a prison cell before there is a problem. The 'gestapo been buy to arrest you yet' measure is also WAY the hell beyond where I draw the line. The right of the lowest citizen to privacy when he phone sexes his wife or even talks to her in a mushy tone he would never let outsiders hear while she travels abroad on work trumps the latest installment of Christians versus Muslims the crusades have returned.
The bill of rights, the right to privacy, the limitations of government powers, the Constitution requirement for warrants in searches (which would include searching my communications), and the right to stockpile and bear arms should the law be twisted to allow the creation of a mad religious regime to come into power are what this country is about. Without those things we would be better off reverting to English subjects than subjecting ourselves to own corrupt government and hypocrisy.
Scientific evidence shows that neither liberals nor conservatives actually switch off the logic centers of the brain and work solely using the emotional centers of the brain when anything related to politics is being considered or if a political party is mentioned.
Apparently, both the left and the right and all adherents of a two party system make their political decisions with an IQ of 3. It is especially sad is that some of those IQ 3 decision makers are extremely intelligent when they get away from politics.
The rest of us only emit a sad sigh as these idiots put one corrupt and power mongering parasite after the next into office. We helplessly watch as you decide which rights and freedoms we must give up this week by picking an (R) or a (D). Both your R's and D's seek to strengthen the power of their level of government rather than keeping the government to the absolute minimum required for society to function. Both cater to corporate special interests rather than the interests of the people. I hope against hope in my little heart of hearts that one day political parties will be abolished, and congress will spend an entire year doing nothing but repealing existing laws that run contrary to the interests of the common man rather than tacking on new ones.
If you'd like to really run with it, you might even hope that candidates will be chosen according to merit and intellect rather than popularity and purchased academic honors. It seems the children of extremely wealthy old school money always come away with a masters from an ivy league school. They must all be brilliant eh?
You honestly believe that the Earth is the only place in the Universe that ANY form of matter can be found in a liquid state?
Wow, the odds that one of the three fundamental states of matter exists on only one of the trillions of rocks in the universe are so poor it actually boggles the mind to contemplate how poor they are. I mean, there are a lot of forms of matter and they turn liquid at different temps. Each of those rocks floating around out there houses lots of different forms of matter and each contains a different temperature range. Each of the trillions of rocks has what, a few thousand potential liquids and if even one, anywhere, has even a drop of liquid then you are wrong. It doesn't have to be life bringing liquid, after all the methane lakes they are talking about here couldn't support any form of life that we know of.
"electricity is about a third the speed of light and is now one of the big bottlenecks in high performance computing"
Under practical circumstances perhaps but according to physics that is false. Individual electrons move much slower than the speed of light, but changes in the electrical state that take place on one end of the wire are transferred to the other end of the wire at the speed of light.
Using light would let chips run at the speed of light! Or is that the speed of electricity? They both run at the same speed. What is the real benefit to using optical chips? Three dimensional optical storage I can see. Long distance cabling runs I can see. Transfers across tiny traces on a chip... not so clear to me. Especially considering the size increase that could be expected by moving to optics. Is it the same lack of attenuation seen in optical fiber at work on a small scale and making a noticeable difference when the effect is considered across billions or trillions of pulses? Will there be fewer heat problems when scaling the chips to higher speeds?
Or is this really just hype and they are really referring to optical equipment that will be used to route signals that are already on optical fiber runs without converting the signal to electricity and back?
"GPL is contract. Patents are law. Law stronger than contracts."
A patent agreement is a contract as well. The GPL is contract regarding copyright (law), a patent agreement is a contract regarding patents (law). Both are the law and strength is not an issue.
"I live in country does not recognize software patents. I write GPL software (is good). Maybe it infringes on US patents. I do not worry. Is not my fault if you cannot use."
That is fine, the GPL grants you permission to distribute ONLY if you both have the authority to grant those rights to those you distribute to AND you do grant those rights. If you do not have that authority then you yourself do not have permission to distribute under the GPL.
You operate in a country without software patents, in the juristiction where you are producing that software you have the right to fulfill the terms of the GPL by granting those you distribute to all the same rights you have under the GPL. Including the right to redistribute.
I operate in a country WITH software patents, in the jurisdiction where I am producing software I do not have the right to fulfill the terms of the GPL by granting those I distribute to all the same rights I have under the GPL (if someone else owns the patent). Including the right to redistribute.
Novell does not have the authority to pass on the rights their contract with Microsoft grants them and Novell operates in a country that DOES have software patent laws. Therefore Novell can't give me GPL'd software that includes functions covered by a Microsoft patent, because they can't grant me the right to redistribute and therefore lose their own rights under the GPL.
That is quite reasonable, although novell is creating the code in this case and not microsoft. Microsoft has the authority to give permission implicitly as you suggest but the agreement Novell has does not grant them permission to do so.
Under the terms of the GPL if there if you have any reason to believe you do not have the authority to release under the terms of the GPL then your right to redistribute under the GPL is revoked. It seems to me that you aren't 'passing the same rights granted under this license' if you know that those you distribute to will be in violation of patents that impede them from having those rights.
The linux kernel does NOT use the standard GPL. Everyone knows this at this point so stop trolling by trying to claim foul on kernel modules everytime this discussion comes up.
If external libraries are allowed it is because they can be considered seperate works under the provisions of the GPL. The GP is reversing the situation anyway, the controversy comes in when a non-GPL application links a GPL Library, not a GPL application linking a non-GPL library. Libraries are by definition independent of the applications that link to them. You can't violate the GPL at runtime because the GPL does not cover usage, you can only violate the GPL when you distribute. So it doesn't matter if the code intermixes in memory. If it did then you could never write a GPL'd windows app since they all intermix with microsoft libs at some point.
"If MS/Novell create a better samba derived from the samba team's GPL code, they *must* provide access to the source code."
Yup, unfortunately that code will implement functions that are patent encumbered. This means nobody without a patent agreement with Microsoft will be able to use them. Or be able to implement the functionality in that way.
At best it would require one group reading the code and documenting previous undocumented apis and functionality and another reading that documentation and implementing completely unique functionality without ever having been tainted by patented solutions.
Novell does not need the GPL to use Samba. They do need the GPL to distribute Samba however.
Unfortunately, Novell is only in violation of the GPL if they try to distribute patent encumbered software under the GPL. If samba is patent encumbered now then nobody has the right to distribute it under the GPL, even the samba team themselves! If novell adds something patented to samba and attempts to distribute under the GPL THEN they will be in violation of the license. But they haven't done that yet, there is just a concern that they will.
People do need to remember that the agreement itself doesn't magically make legitimate distribution by Novell illegitimate. It only means that Microsoft won't go after them or their customers if they violate the GPL by including contributions covered under MS patents. That doesn't mean they will ever actually do so.
I'm not sure if both are rated for charging but there are also 4 pin and 5 pin mini-usb connectors. Some phones/cameras have one or the other and some have neither.
"HTML doesn't allow you to specify how anything will be displayed"
That is why HTML had tags like, ,,, and because the tags had no relation to how anything is supposed to be displayed? Tables are also by definition a way of controlling how a number of elements are DISPLAYED. Display independence came from the universal applicability to different DISPLAY media and ability to ignore unsupported tags and still be able to render the rest of the marked up document. For instance, an tag has no purpose but to command a display to render it, but a text browser can safely render the rest of the document while ignoring the tag.
Like it or not, HTML stopped having the purpose you think after 1.0. And web pages not simply marked up text anymore either. A proper web page uses HTML strictly for markup, but that is only because a second language called CSS is intended to control the layout and display of web document.
"Sure, they technically can get different screen reading software in hopes that it'll parse that web page more effectively, but that's expensive, time-consuming and painful in terms of retraining. "
Sure, they technically can get a different web browsing software in hopes that it'll parse the web page more effectively, but that's expensive, time-consuming and painful in terms of retraining.
Lets stop talking around it, problem sites are designed for IE only and IE is only an option for people running the windows operating system (a commercial product). A government sponsored website that requires IE to render would mean requiring viewers to purchase one particular commercial product and therefore be a government granted monopoly to the company that produces that product. The constitution does not allow this, and I promise you that law exists for a reason that is at least as sound as accessibility for the blind.
Your tone suggests that you somehow think I implied that the needs of the blind are somehow less than those of others. My implication is that the blind do not have a GREATER need to access those resources than those who are not blind. Of course we have accessbility for the blind for a reason.
"Once the browser passed, the W3C would license the CSS patent/trademark at a nominal price."
A nominal price would leave a teen developing a browser in his basement out in the cold. It is easy in the commercial world to remember that things need to be workable for those who can't afford a $5 filing fee, let alone a $5,000-$50,000 'nominal' fee.
Personally I think a better answer would a GPL'd reference implementation to accompany the standard. The reference implementation should be as much the standard as the written. No browser should ever display content in a way that even slightly differs from the reference. Browsers should compete on features that surround pages, not on the visual rendering of content.
"That's not a myth. If it follows standards, then it should work. Period."
How do you define work? Do you define it to mean that the browser will render the element in a way that doesn't violate the standard? Or do you define it to mean that the browser the client is using will render it in a way that not only is standards compliant but also matches the behavior of the browser I tested the design on?
There are no shortage of behaviors that the standards do not clarify despite the fact that a workable implementation requires them to be defined. I personally believe that new web standards should be accompanied by a gpl reference implementation to show developers not only the description of behavior but allow them to see the appropriate behavior visually.
For the moment lets pretend that it is actually reasonable to expect everyone to go back two standards releases to a standard that has been obsolete for over a decade. That still ignores the fact that the standards are ambiguous. Unfortunately the standards leave some aspects of display up to the programmer, either by ignoring critical aspects or because those designing the standards didn't forsee them. This means that a fully supported element can display one way in browser x, and another way in browser y. When you talk about nesting elements this ambiguity becomes even more pronounced.
"It is NOT proper HTML if it won't degrade to a 3.2 compliant page when necessary."
The browser only ignores a tag if it doesn't know how to render it, a browser does not ignore a tag if it renders it in a way that differs from the rendering of the browser the designer tests with. Aside from that, HTML is an outdated language that shouldn't be used for new pages and even text based browsers support HTML 4.0.
True. I mentioned Opera because that is the browser of the day. It would have been better to mention users of another operating system. For instance, Linux users do not have the ability to use the most popular browser without purchasing the operating system of a particular vendor. A government website designing for that browser would effectively be creating a government granted monopoly and the constitution bars that.
"Actions like this scream for the congressional oversight which has been sorely lacking over the last 6 years."
Perhaps. I am wary of congress. Although this particular executive certainly needs to be put in his place it is congress that seems to have assumed powers that upset the balance. Congress is not supposed to be more powerful than the executive or the judicial.
For instance, in the illegal wiretapping, I have often heard the claim that congress authorized it all. Congress says they didn't intend to do so. The last time I checked the requirement for a warrant in search and seizure is a constitutional one. That means it doesn't matter how many laws congress passes or orders the executive issues! The constitution is the highest law in the land and no branch of the federal government (or combination thereof) should be permitted to act as if it has the authority to issue orders that violate it. If congress grants permission to do that something that is unconstitutional then that permission is null and void from the start and the president should stand trial for treason.
Interesting. I am curious, with the flood of technicians and the scarceness of jobs; do you actually have to choose among entry level applicants?
My most recent experience came from the other side, hunting for employment. My most recent verifiable experience was a couple years for a small company in rural Illinois. The company was based in a town of about 20,000 people, and this was the county seat. The area is also financially depressed, so in terms of commerce the town is even smaller than what you would typically see in a town that size.
Professionally this meant that there were almost no large businesses. Almost nothing was owned by a corporate entity, and no large scale networks were needed. The definition of a large business in that community would be the local Walmart (not walmart corporate, the local Super Center), small would be two to five employees and medium would be anything in between.
Then I moved to Miami. Suddenly I was unemployable. Companies like the one I worked for in IL don't even seem to exist. You have corporate IT and then you have little repair shops that perform repairs in the shop. Independent IT guys who are between jobs seems to be the only option for smaller business here. If you try to get a corporate position they all want Cisco, even if they don't need a Cisco guy they want a Cisco certification.
When I broke down and decided I would have to start over at entry level I found that everyone wanted interview after interview. Some places would string you along for three or even four interviews. Do these hiring employers really have so little to do? I also found that there were no shortage of applicants that were coming in with decades of experience.
After six months I had just about depleted my funds from saving and unemployment. I broke down and took a job as a technology sales guy at an Office Depot. There I found another gentleman in the same boat I was, an older gentleman with no computer experience but a general nack for mechanical and electronic tasks of all sorts, and a former used car salesman. Strange but small business owners and managers frequent Office Depot to buy computers and periphials. Especially when they don't have a 'computer guy' to do it for them. This let me build up a customerbase until I left the depot altogether.
I still get a little chuckle everytime I walk in and see two or three workstations, a $1200 server running a windows server operating system for file and print sharing, and Cisco networking stuff. A business like this may have very little money or may make boatloads. Either way on the next upgrade I am going to replace that $3000 setup with one of equal or greater reliability that costs $1000 and more importantly has a substantially lower TCO.
Sorry but any web developer can tell you that the 'if it follows standards it should work' myth has been dead for a long time.
A 'good' webpage can be written in xhtml and include every scrap of CSS defined in the 2.0 standard. Unfortunately, the standards in question (including the older CSS specs) are ambiguous in some places and even if they weren't there is no browser that fully implements them. You can write a 100% standard and validated webpage that doesn't rendered properly (read according to standard) in any modern browser.
This is further complicated because the implementations are not just incomplete, but no two browsers implement the same parts. And if the browsers all implement a function, the ambiguity of the standard comes into play and you will often seen something rendered differently in each to a small or large degree. Depending on how critical the visual element in question is to your design, an unexpected difference in behavior can make a page unworkable or at least broken.
The result is that a web developer who is doing everything right (the site in question is obviously not, but I am not defending them, just setting the record straight) must do what he always has. He must test the page in an assortment of browsers and then work out the kinks for them. He must then hope that the resolution to those kinks will result in an implementation that will generally work in the browsers he has not tested.
Such is life. Even among those who do design according to standards and validate properly, there are those who only actually test and resolve issues in one browser. They know this will make most of the market work and following standards means that nobody can claim broken functionality is their fault.
Of course, accessibility standards for any government type site (city, county, state, federal, etc) should be required to work in all modern browsers. After all, I suspect that the blind do not constitute 0.6% of the browser market but those sites are required to be accessible to them. Are the blind somehow better than Opera users?
"If he doesn't care if pages work in someone else choice of browser why would anyone care if they work in his?"
Because Opera has support for features and technologies that rival any browser on the market (meaning it is as easy to support as any other browser) and 6 out of every thousand web users are using Opera. Considering that there are roughly 1,086,250,903 Internet users (per http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm) that means Opera's 0.6% of the browser market is about 6.5 million people. Using percentages immediately favors the biggest players and belittles the mid-sized and smaller players when you are referencing a sample the size of the browser market. When you are talking about nine zeros, reducing your figures to two zeros doesn't magically make for a clearer picture, it only serves to mask reality.
Slashdot Mirror
Communism is not a violation of human rights. In fact, if people were innately good then communism would work better than capitalism. Capitalism is only a more successful system because it takes into account the reality that people are naturally greedy, lazy, and cruel.
Do not confuse the actions of some so called communist dictators that have violated human rights with communism itself.
I'm with the R's on this one. I believe in punishments that make people thing twice about breaking the law. The individual and the person at each level of command above him (up to and including the president), all have one finger or toe amputated per piece of mail opened.
Somehow, I have this odd feeling that the chain of command would manage to successfully prevent frivilous mail opening with a penalty like that if said penalty is enforced.
"Even those are cupfuls in the bucket. Most of the government's spending is on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare and they grow faster than the rest of the budget. Bread and circuses are expensive these days."
Without doubt. These programs are terrible. I don't know of any disabled individual collecting or trying to collect social security who didn't have to be out of work for at least five years (no matter how many specialists piled up telling SS judges that they couldn't work) before being granted social security. The problem is that this is effectively an insurance policy and those who have paid their dues are entitled to its benefits. Those who hate SS put pressure on social security that causes a bias against legitimate claimants that takes years to overcome. The same is true of Medicaid and Medicare.
It is actually the same people who go on about how ineffective government run programs like these are that cause them to operate so poorly. If you don't like medicaid you vote for additional red tape and clauses that reduce the 'frivolous' payouts of medicaid. The real result is that doctors can't prescribe the medications they feel work best, and this assures medicaid is a pretty horrible standard of health care. The same is true of procedures. Those who are afraid of excess spending are the ones that create a mountain of paperwork and oversight before the program will pay for a procedure. Again, this call should be in the hands of the doctor who orders the procedure. If you need a hint about providing good health care look at the same practices you desire in private health care. Why can't you choose your own well qualified health care provider? Because someone doesn't feel these medical programs should exist and so cuts their budget to the bone by regulating physicians.
I hate that I have to pay for someone else's care when what I pay could be put into a program to give me a better quality of care. But the biggest reason I hate it is that the programs have been cut to the point where they don't benefit me with quality care.
The biggest dead end in our budget is defense. We do not need the most powerful and advanced military in the world. The cost of providing all inclusive health care with blanket coverage rivaling or surpassing that of the best PPO's is far less than we could cut from our military budget if we stopped feeling the need to dominate the global playing field and settled for dominating our own soil.
Actually I recall voting them in and encouraging others to do the same as a choice of the lesser evil. That choice was made with a firm belief that they would toss this dictator out of office and try him for high treason in a time of war. The first thing Dean did was announce (and don't get me started on the fact that I elected person x to make decisions, not Howard Dean) that he knows that is what everyone wants but that it isn't what they are going to do. Not in 24hrs or 24 months.
How about withdrawal from Iraq? Nope, not happening either. Instead of "we can win this war" he says that we are responsible. The result is the same. Iraq built their infrastructure the first time, and Iraq can do it again. No matter what we do we aren't exactly going to have good will from the Iraqi's. If you want to impose American ideals on the Iraqi's whether they like it or not then declare Iraq a US territory. No matter how poor the reasons we did conquer that piece of dirt and Americans died for it. Otherwise our ideals dictate that the Iraqi people have the right to govern themselves, and that includes the right to fight civil wars and let themselves be subjected to fundamentalist religious leaders. It is especially hypocritical when we ourselves are under the thumb of a fundamentalist religious leader.
Hell, even if they began bring the troops home as fast as transports can bring them and they executed Bush for treason I wouldn't be happy. I want all the erosion of personal freedoms (including those that have transferred power to business and corporate interests where they conflict with the rights of individuals) that have occurred in the past decade to end.
That is how biased individuals choose to reinterpret it. Any competent individual can read that paragraph (conviented quoted by the GP) and see that after saying no unreasonable searches the founders clearly define reasonable searches as those with probable cause. They also clearly spell out that warrants are required. Now, if there is probable cause for a warrant then you can search now and get the warrant later but sooner or later you still have to be able to justify that search to a judge and present your probable cause.
"Have the gestapo been buy to arrest you yet? No? Then your comment is obviously dead wrong."
Have the department of homeland security been by to arrest ANYONE yet? Yes? Then your logic is obviously dead wrong.
Believe it or not, everyone who posts on slashdot does not have to be posting from a prison cell before there is a problem. The 'gestapo been buy to arrest you yet' measure is also WAY the hell beyond where I draw the line. The right of the lowest citizen to privacy when he phone sexes his wife or even talks to her in a mushy tone he would never let outsiders hear while she travels abroad on work trumps the latest installment of Christians versus Muslims the crusades have returned.
The bill of rights, the right to privacy, the limitations of government powers, the Constitution requirement for warrants in searches (which would include searching my communications), and the right to stockpile and bear arms should the law be twisted to allow the creation of a mad religious regime to come into power are what this country is about. Without those things we would be better off reverting to English subjects than subjecting ourselves to own corrupt government and hypocrisy.
Begin Rant
Scientific evidence shows that neither liberals nor conservatives actually switch off the logic centers of the brain and work solely using the emotional centers of the brain when anything related to politics is being considered or if a political party is mentioned.
Apparently, both the left and the right and all adherents of a two party system make their political decisions with an IQ of 3. It is especially sad is that some of those IQ 3 decision makers are extremely intelligent when they get away from politics.
The rest of us only emit a sad sigh as these idiots put one corrupt and power mongering parasite after the next into office. We helplessly watch as you decide which rights and freedoms we must give up this week by picking an (R) or a (D). Both your R's and D's seek to strengthen the power of their level of government rather than keeping the government to the absolute minimum required for society to function. Both cater to corporate special interests rather than the interests of the people. I hope against hope in my little heart of hearts that one day political parties will be abolished, and congress will spend an entire year doing nothing but repealing existing laws that run contrary to the interests of the common man rather than tacking on new ones.
If you'd like to really run with it, you might even hope that candidates will be chosen according to merit and intellect rather than popularity and purchased academic honors. It seems the children of extremely wealthy old school money always come away with a masters from an ivy league school. They must all be brilliant eh?
End Rant
You honestly believe that the Earth is the only place in the Universe that ANY form of matter can be found in a liquid state?
Wow, the odds that one of the three fundamental states of matter exists on only one of the trillions of rocks in the universe are so poor it actually boggles the mind to contemplate how poor they are. I mean, there are a lot of forms of matter and they turn liquid at different temps. Each of those rocks floating around out there houses lots of different forms of matter and each contains a different temperature range. Each of the trillions of rocks has what, a few thousand potential liquids and if even one, anywhere, has even a drop of liquid then you are wrong. It doesn't have to be life bringing liquid, after all the methane lakes they are talking about here couldn't support any form of life that we know of.
"electricity is about a third the speed of light and is now one of the big bottlenecks in high performance computing"
Under practical circumstances perhaps but according to physics that is false. Individual electrons move much slower than the speed of light, but changes in the electrical state that take place on one end of the wire are transferred to the other end of the wire at the speed of light.
Using light would let chips run at the speed of light! Or is that the speed of electricity? They both run at the same speed. What is the real benefit to using optical chips? Three dimensional optical storage I can see. Long distance cabling runs I can see. Transfers across tiny traces on a chip... not so clear to me. Especially considering the size increase that could be expected by moving to optics. Is it the same lack of attenuation seen in optical fiber at work on a small scale and making a noticeable difference when the effect is considered across billions or trillions of pulses? Will there be fewer heat problems when scaling the chips to higher speeds?
Or is this really just hype and they are really referring to optical equipment that will be used to route signals that are already on optical fiber runs without converting the signal to electricity and back?
"GPL is contract. Patents are law. Law stronger than contracts."
A patent agreement is a contract as well. The GPL is contract regarding copyright (law), a patent agreement is a contract regarding patents (law). Both are the law and strength is not an issue.
"I live in country does not recognize software patents. I write GPL software (is good). Maybe it infringes on US patents. I do not worry. Is not my fault if you cannot use."
That is fine, the GPL grants you permission to distribute ONLY if you both have the authority to grant those rights to those you distribute to AND you do grant those rights. If you do not have that authority then you yourself do not have permission to distribute under the GPL.
You operate in a country without software patents, in the juristiction where you are producing that software you have the right to fulfill the terms of the GPL by granting those you distribute to all the same rights you have under the GPL. Including the right to redistribute.
I operate in a country WITH software patents, in the jurisdiction where I am producing software I do not have the right to fulfill the terms of the GPL by granting those I distribute to all the same rights I have under the GPL (if someone else owns the patent). Including the right to redistribute.
Novell does not have the authority to pass on the rights their contract with Microsoft grants them and Novell operates in a country that DOES have software patent laws. Therefore Novell can't give me GPL'd software that includes functions covered by a Microsoft patent, because they can't grant me the right to redistribute and therefore lose their own rights under the GPL.
That is quite reasonable, although novell is creating the code in this case and not microsoft. Microsoft has the authority to give permission implicitly as you suggest but the agreement Novell has does not grant them permission to do so.
Under the terms of the GPL if there if you have any reason to believe you do not have the authority to release under the terms of the GPL then your right to redistribute under the GPL is revoked. It seems to me that you aren't 'passing the same rights granted under this license' if you know that those you distribute to will be in violation of patents that impede them from having those rights.
The linux kernel does NOT use the standard GPL. Everyone knows this at this point so stop trolling by trying to claim foul on kernel modules everytime this discussion comes up.
If external libraries are allowed it is because they can be considered seperate works under the provisions of the GPL. The GP is reversing the situation anyway, the controversy comes in when a non-GPL application links a GPL Library, not a GPL application linking a non-GPL library. Libraries are by definition independent of the applications that link to them. You can't violate the GPL at runtime because the GPL does not cover usage, you can only violate the GPL when you distribute. So it doesn't matter if the code intermixes in memory. If it did then you could never write a GPL'd windows app since they all intermix with microsoft libs at some point.
"If MS/Novell create a better samba derived from the samba team's GPL code, they *must* provide access to the source code."
Yup, unfortunately that code will implement functions that are patent encumbered. This means nobody without a patent agreement with Microsoft will be able to use them. Or be able to implement the functionality in that way.
At best it would require one group reading the code and documenting previous undocumented apis and functionality and another reading that documentation and implementing completely unique functionality without ever having been tainted by patented solutions.
Novell does not need the GPL to use Samba. They do need the GPL to distribute Samba however.
Unfortunately, Novell is only in violation of the GPL if they try to distribute patent encumbered software under the GPL. If samba is patent encumbered now then nobody has the right to distribute it under the GPL, even the samba team themselves! If novell adds something patented to samba and attempts to distribute under the GPL THEN they will be in violation of the license. But they haven't done that yet, there is just a concern that they will.
People do need to remember that the agreement itself doesn't magically make legitimate distribution by Novell illegitimate. It only means that Microsoft won't go after them or their customers if they violate the GPL by including contributions covered under MS patents. That doesn't mean they will ever actually do so.
I'm not sure if both are rated for charging but there are also 4 pin and 5 pin mini-usb connectors. Some phones/cameras have one or the other and some have neither.
"HTML doesn't allow you to specify how anything will be displayed"
,
That is why HTML had tags like
,,, and because the tags had no relation to how anything is supposed to be displayed? Tables are also by definition a way of controlling how a number of elements are DISPLAYED. Display independence came from the universal applicability to different DISPLAY media and ability to ignore unsupported tags and still be able to render the rest of the marked up document. For instance, an tag has no purpose but to command a display to render it, but a text browser can safely render the rest of the document while ignoring the tag.
Like it or not, HTML stopped having the purpose you think after 1.0. And web pages not simply marked up text anymore either. A proper web page uses HTML strictly for markup, but that is only because a second language called CSS is intended to control the layout and display of web document.
"Sure, they technically can get different screen reading software in hopes that it'll parse that web page more effectively, but that's expensive, time-consuming and painful in terms of retraining. "
Sure, they technically can get a different web browsing software in hopes that it'll parse the web page more effectively, but that's expensive, time-consuming and painful in terms of retraining.
Lets stop talking around it, problem sites are designed for IE only and IE is only an option for people running the windows operating system (a commercial product). A government sponsored website that requires IE to render would mean requiring viewers to purchase one particular commercial product and therefore be a government granted monopoly to the company that produces that product. The constitution does not allow this, and I promise you that law exists for a reason that is at least as sound as accessibility for the blind.
Your tone suggests that you somehow think I implied that the needs of the blind are somehow less than those of others. My implication is that the blind do not have a GREATER need to access those resources than those who are not blind. Of course we have accessbility for the blind for a reason.
"Once the browser passed, the W3C would license the CSS patent/trademark at a nominal price."
A nominal price would leave a teen developing a browser in his basement out in the cold. It is easy in the commercial world to remember that things need to be workable for those who can't afford a $5 filing fee, let alone a $5,000-$50,000 'nominal' fee.
Personally I think a better answer would a GPL'd reference implementation to accompany the standard. The reference implementation should be as much the standard as the written. No browser should ever display content in a way that even slightly differs from the reference. Browsers should compete on features that surround pages, not on the visual rendering of content.
"That's not a myth. If it follows standards, then it should work. Period."
How do you define work? Do you define it to mean that the browser will render the element in a way that doesn't violate the standard? Or do you define it to mean that the browser the client is using will render it in a way that not only is standards compliant but also matches the behavior of the browser I tested the design on?
There are no shortage of behaviors that the standards do not clarify despite the fact that a workable implementation requires them to be defined. I personally believe that new web standards should be accompanied by a gpl reference implementation to show developers not only the description of behavior but allow them to see the appropriate behavior visually.
For the moment lets pretend that it is actually reasonable to expect everyone to go back two standards releases to a standard that has been obsolete for over a decade. That still ignores the fact that the standards are ambiguous. Unfortunately the standards leave some aspects of display up to the programmer, either by ignoring critical aspects or because those designing the standards didn't forsee them. This means that a fully supported element can display one way in browser x, and another way in browser y. When you talk about nesting elements this ambiguity becomes even more pronounced.
"It is NOT proper HTML if it won't degrade to a 3.2 compliant page when necessary."
The browser only ignores a tag if it doesn't know how to render it, a browser does not ignore a tag if it renders it in a way that differs from the rendering of the browser the designer tests with. Aside from that, HTML is an outdated language that shouldn't be used for new pages and even text based browsers support HTML 4.0.
True. I mentioned Opera because that is the browser of the day. It would have been better to mention users of another operating system. For instance, Linux users do not have the ability to use the most popular browser without purchasing the operating system of a particular vendor. A government website designing for that browser would effectively be creating a government granted monopoly and the constitution bars that.
"Actions like this scream for the congressional oversight which has been sorely lacking over the last 6 years."
Perhaps. I am wary of congress. Although this particular executive certainly needs to be put in his place it is congress that seems to have assumed powers that upset the balance. Congress is not supposed to be more powerful than the executive or the judicial.
For instance, in the illegal wiretapping, I have often heard the claim that congress authorized it all. Congress says they didn't intend to do so. The last time I checked the requirement for a warrant in search and seizure is a constitutional one. That means it doesn't matter how many laws congress passes or orders the executive issues! The constitution is the highest law in the land and no branch of the federal government (or combination thereof) should be permitted to act as if it has the authority to issue orders that violate it. If congress grants permission to do that something that is unconstitutional then that permission is null and void from the start and the president should stand trial for treason.
Interesting. I am curious, with the flood of technicians and the scarceness of jobs; do you actually have to choose among entry level applicants?
My most recent experience came from the other side, hunting for employment. My most recent verifiable experience was a couple years for a small company in rural Illinois. The company was based in a town of about 20,000 people, and this was the county seat. The area is also financially depressed, so in terms of commerce the town is even smaller than what you would typically see in a town that size.
Professionally this meant that there were almost no large businesses. Almost nothing was owned by a corporate entity, and no large scale networks were needed. The definition of a large business in that community would be the local Walmart (not walmart corporate, the local Super Center), small would be two to five employees and medium would be anything in between.
Then I moved to Miami. Suddenly I was unemployable. Companies like the one I worked for in IL don't even seem to exist. You have corporate IT and then you have little repair shops that perform repairs in the shop. Independent IT guys who are between jobs seems to be the only option for smaller business here. If you try to get a corporate position they all want Cisco, even if they don't need a Cisco guy they want a Cisco certification.
When I broke down and decided I would have to start over at entry level I found that everyone wanted interview after interview. Some places would string you along for three or even four interviews. Do these hiring employers really have so little to do? I also found that there were no shortage of applicants that were coming in with decades of experience.
After six months I had just about depleted my funds from saving and unemployment. I broke down and took a job as a technology sales guy at an Office Depot. There I found another gentleman in the same boat I was, an older gentleman with no computer experience but a general nack for mechanical and electronic tasks of all sorts, and a former used car salesman. Strange but small business owners and managers frequent Office Depot to buy computers and periphials. Especially when they don't have a 'computer guy' to do it for them. This let me build up a customerbase until I left the depot altogether.
I still get a little chuckle everytime I walk in and see two or three workstations, a $1200 server running a windows server operating system for file and print sharing, and Cisco networking stuff. A business like this may have very little money or may make boatloads. Either way on the next upgrade I am going to replace that $3000 setup with one of equal or greater reliability that costs $1000 and more importantly has a substantially lower TCO.
Sorry but any web developer can tell you that the 'if it follows standards it should work' myth has been dead for a long time.
A 'good' webpage can be written in xhtml and include every scrap of CSS defined in the 2.0 standard. Unfortunately, the standards in question (including the older CSS specs) are ambiguous in some places and even if they weren't there is no browser that fully implements them. You can write a 100% standard and validated webpage that doesn't rendered properly (read according to standard) in any modern browser.
This is further complicated because the implementations are not just incomplete, but no two browsers implement the same parts. And if the browsers all implement a function, the ambiguity of the standard comes into play and you will often seen something rendered differently in each to a small or large degree. Depending on how critical the visual element in question is to your design, an unexpected difference in behavior can make a page unworkable or at least broken.
The result is that a web developer who is doing everything right (the site in question is obviously not, but I am not defending them, just setting the record straight) must do what he always has. He must test the page in an assortment of browsers and then work out the kinks for them. He must then hope that the resolution to those kinks will result in an implementation that will generally work in the browsers he has not tested.
Such is life. Even among those who do design according to standards and validate properly, there are those who only actually test and resolve issues in one browser. They know this will make most of the market work and following standards means that nobody can claim broken functionality is their fault.
Of course, accessibility standards for any government type site (city, county, state, federal, etc) should be required to work in all modern browsers. After all, I suspect that the blind do not constitute 0.6% of the browser market but those sites are required to be accessible to them. Are the blind somehow better than Opera users?
"If he doesn't care if pages work in someone else choice of browser why would anyone care if they work in his?"
Because Opera has support for features and technologies that rival any browser on the market (meaning it is as easy to support as any other browser) and 6 out of every thousand web users are using Opera. Considering that there are roughly 1,086,250,903 Internet users (per http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm) that means Opera's 0.6% of the browser market is about 6.5 million people. Using percentages immediately favors the biggest players and belittles the mid-sized and smaller players when you are referencing a sample the size of the browser market. When you are talking about nine zeros, reducing your figures to two zeros doesn't magically make for a clearer picture, it only serves to mask reality.