That's true, but the scale of the damage Bush has caused is beyond "jackass" - more like criminal. I understand that people voted for values rather than Bush, but how can they trust him? Sure he might make noises about fiscal responsibility and values, but his actions have been ineffective and ridiculous posturing on almost every activity but dragging the US into war.
Also, his image of a "just folks" honorable man still seems to play well with the religious right. To believe that Bush is a good man is to ignore reality.
Not to flame, but the mess in Israel is as much the fault of Britain as it is the US. The establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine done when the area was under British administration, the initial immigrants and militants were British, the police forces that allowed Israeli terrorists to operate in Palestine were British, and so on.
The US has made the situation much worse by supporting Israel since the late 40s, but the UK cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for the mess by simply walking away. At this point the only thing I can think of that might be effective would be if the entire West were to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel, and the US and UK as the "parents" of Israel would be essential partners in making that happen.
Point taken, I am still shocked myself that Bush could win a second term after it was obvious that he had lied to the American public to start a war so damaging to our interest.
I guess every nation is irrational in different ways. I understand the dynamics that created Bush, they don't make me proud - but I do understand them. I just don't understand what keeps the British royal family not only supported financially, but popular as well.
I was being facetious about the French Revolution, but not about my dislike of the royals. It is one of those things I've never understood about the British - how they can accept that the degenerate and inbred descendants of bandits and raiders are somehow magically better than everyone else.
That is not always an option in the real world, but a reputable vendor should be willing to put the code in escrow through a third party. An added benefit to escrow is that it requires the contract to specify dates and what happens when they are not met.
The downside is that contract negotiations can drag on forever, and adding in an additional company can make it take even longer.
That is not a barrier erected by state, but by all member states of the WTO. Europeans may scream about the DMCA being an American idiocy, but their states are committed by treaty to enact laws that cover the exact same ground.
It wouldn't work in the US - the threat of massive debt incurred would not deter lawsuit speculation on the part of potential plaintiffs with nothing to lose. That is why you have to not only get rid of the "lottery" system for payoffs, but make quality legal aid available to all parties - the key to both of those aims is standardization of damages and legal fees. Recovery of legal fees should be possible, but as an absolute requirement all it does it keep people with a valid complaint from suing.
This has nothing to do with labour cost differentials. The cartridges are all coming out of the same production facility. This is being done 100% due to the difference in Euro-Dollar value.
The point is that multinationals want the good points of globalization - cheap plentiful labor without the possibility of unions, but want to avoid the bad points - currency differentials creating price breaks for consumers who "break market" and import for themselves. Whether or not these specific cartridges are being produced with cheap global labor is beside the point.
Copyright infringement is only a civil matter if not done for commercial gain. Copyright violation for profit, which these gents are being charged with, are a criminal matter. My guess is that they are charged with conspiracy rather than the actual crime so that the damages are based on potential rather than real numbers. Greater shock and awe when they can point to a million jillion dollar bust.
A barrier to trade can only be enacted by a state, this is just a multi-national corporation using superior mobility.
This also a beautiful illustration of why multinationals are the real winners in globalization, they can use labor cost differentials to make a killing and legally backed technological guards to enforce market separation for consumers.
Simple "loser pays" as a solution would be worse than the current system. Proper tort reform has two part - reduce the incentive for frivolous lawsuits on the part of individuals by raising the standard for punitive damages, and reduce the incentive for lawyers to encourage frivolous lawsuits by standardizing fee schedules.
That would give an individual the same ability to get good legal representation as a corporation - and retain "loser pays" for punitive damages in a counter-suit if the case is frivolous.
Tort reform is still around as an idea, but has been hijacked (like much of the conservative agenda) by the neo-cons and made part of their anti-human, pro-giant-business ideology.
Genuine efforts for tort reform want to not only remove the incentive for frivolous lawsuits by raising the standards for punitive damages, but make sure that private individuals have the same clout as a entity with deep pockets when negotiating fees.
The standard arguments in favor of P2P systems tend to talk about rare uses such as distribution of fringe materials by the copyright holders themselves. Those may be uses, but they are not significant uses in the real world.
P2P software as a class has significant non-infringing use. Some P2P networks (kazaa, suprnova) are mostly used to facilitate copyright violation, but that is the use to which those network operators put the software.
The fair use points of Betamax are not relevant to P2P. Finding of time shifting being fair use allowed a claim of substantial non-infringement. Establishment of fair use was only needed in Betamax to allow a claim non-infringing use, P2P software already has non-infringement.
There is something of an incentive here though, spammers seeking to elevate their pagerank will focus on sites that give them the best return. When large ISPs shut down open relays the spammers went after small ISPs, because of the increased attention from spammers the small ISPs shut down their open relays.
So if the big blogs use the attribute then spammers will go after the slow to upgrade folks, in self defense most of them will upgrade eventually.
Really even for a custom designed visitor book or blog it is not that hard to add the attribute to every hyperlink in user comments. Most such programs already do mangling and vetting of submitted html.
Absolutely a nuke in the hands of terrorists would be a disaster, you are correct that MAD only works if all the players fear the consequences. Even an anachronism like NK recognizes that their fate would be sealed within a day if they ever dared to use a nuke.
That doesn't change the fact that terrorists have access to the materials for suicide bombs, the desire to use them, and the means to deploy them. The only players in the nuclear club are restrained by consequences. Not to mention that the logistical problems terrorists would have with a nuke are probably just as great as the difficulty in them getting one.
All things considered I feel more threatened by suicide bombers than nuclear weapons. Not just physical danger, but their ability to effect change in their targets.
I didn't mention the.de registrar specifically because I don't know anything about them. I mentioned the.biz and.info registrars because they seem to be fairly small and of unknown ethics. It's up to the alternates to prove they can do a better job than Verisign.
TLD management is so essential to the basic working of the Internet that we need to be cautious to not rip out an evil and competent provider and replace them with an incompetent provider.
I'm going to assume that the bid process certifies the competence of the new provider, but there will still be disruptions - the gain within a specified time frame will need to be greater than the total cost of the disruption. There need to be provisions for what to do regarding failure on the part of the registrar and there needs to be a way to prevent the registrar from holding the tld hostage.
Been quite some time since I had to deal with verisign, but they were an aggravating company in many ways. I'm not sure that the.biz or.info people are any better though, about the only time I see those tlds it is at a scam redirect site.
For some reason the entire registrar business has taken on a seedy air, the reek of small time evil:). Verisign did much to contribute to that, but they at least know what they are doing from a technical point of view - some new company will likely be just as bad as Verisign and disrupt things as well.
I'm not saying never change anything, but if you are going to change things do it very carefully and make sure it will be an actual improvement - theory and wishing don't make it so.
That's some pretty flawed logic there, just because Nukes haven't been used as often makes them less dangerous?
Logic has very little to do with most human activity.
Nukes are less dangerous because we lack the will to use them. Any use of a strategic nuke would be a major event that could lead to a war that kills billions. That is the reason that small yield battlefield nukes drew such negative attention, anything that reduces their scale to the point that nukes become useable in war makes them more dangerous.
MAD may be insane, but it works. For other illogical, but workable, systems see currency, fashion, morality, parenting, religion, politics, and the Internet.
Weapons for small scale violence can be much more dangerous than "ultimate weapons". Nukes may cause angst and give kids nightmares, but far more people have been killed by small arms and improvised explosions than by nukes.
I'd much rather live with the threat of nukes over my head than live in a police state cause some asshole wants to commit suicide and murder me at the same time.
Google and crew will deal with the revenue trolls. It's fraud, it's detectable and fairly obvious.
The people running these frauds are like spammers in 1996, abusing a technology newly available to the public - as google implements fixes the fraud-rings will develop new techniques and become as subtle as they have to be to avoid detection. Since they are criminals with an infinity of throw away identities they will be able to "probe" google's system to determine the fraud avoidance tolerances.
One scenario, fraud-rings approach legitimate content sites (a mod site, fansite, open source project, whatever) and offer to "enhance" their adsense revenue for a split of what they add. The fraud-ring rents time on zombie nets to add 15% (ramped up according to a schedule developed to avoid triggering fraud detection) in extra clicks from hijacked clients with no discernible pattern, the fraud-ring and the content provider split the extra money and google never twigs. The fact that the legitimate content site was probably already driving traffic makes them the perfect camouflage.
The second check of the value of instance for the purpose of assignment of workspace to instance misses the fact that new itself can be called multiple times. One of the points of singleton is that multiple instances of the class are undesirable or possibly dangerous. A second check of the value of instance without a mutex only ensures that the correct pointer is returned.
AtomicSingleton::Instance() { if (!instance) { mutex_lock(); if (!instance) { instance = new AtomicSingleton; } mutex_unlock(); } return instance; }
What the hell are you talking about? It doesn't matter if threads are created before a singleton. Could you be any more random?
The race condition is in the following code.
if (!instance) { AtomicSingleton* workspace = new AtomicSingleton;
Now imagine the following:
in thread 1:
if (!instance) # true
# thread stops running in thread 2:
if (!instance) # true
See the problem, both threads can now continue on to the new. If Instance has not been called at least once before multiple threads are running then two singleton objects can be created.
>> The argument about the meaning of encapsulation has
become completely
meaningless, we disagree about the meaning and spirt of it and I'll leave it at that.
> Maybe you should read TC++PL or the standard, where it's clearly defined. I really don't care what you want to believe: the word has a concrete meaning, and whereas you can ramble on using it to mean any random thing that pops into your mind, you're still wrong. There's nothing more to it than that: if you use a term in regards to C++ in a way contrarian to the standard, you are wrong.
The C++ standard has absolutely nothing to say about the meaning of encapsulation and very little to say about OOP. Stroustrup has very little to say about encapsulation, aside from defending the 'friend' mechanism in D&E. I did find a few words about exactly what encapsulation means in non-standards sources. Plauger: "encapsulation: localizing a design decision so that a change of design results in changes within a small and easily identified region of source text" - C++STL. Stutter: "Here encapsulation is used in the sense of bringing together in one place, rather than hiding behind a shell." - MEC++. Stan Lipman clearly identifies encapsulation with information hiding in every instance in his Primer.
I was being polite in my disagreement with you, but you have been exceptionally rude. My statement that "we disagree about the meaning and I will leave it at that" was an attempt to slow down your hostility, because honestly the argument doesn't mean that much to me.
If you would take the time to read the book from which pimpl comes, you would realize that the two reasons I lsited are in fact the reasons it was created.
pimpl is one of those things which is perpetually rediscovered by every student of C++ (with a few minor variations), even the name is a convention that is often used by independent discoverers. As far as books go Sutter covered it, Meyers covered it, Lakios covered it, and I'm sure half a dozen faqs have covered it. Different books recommend the technique for different reasons.
There is a race condition you ignore that can only be avoided by assuming that AtomicSingleton::Instance is called at least once before any additional threads are created. That is the "non-sequitur" I made about library initialization.
The argument about the meaning of encapsulation has become completely meaningless, we disagree about the meaning and spirt of it and I'll leave it at that.
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Also, his image of a "just folks" honorable man still seems to play well with the religious right. To believe that Bush is a good man is to ignore reality.
Yep, considered the notion and discarded it.
It is not just my opinion, Bush lied to the nation and the world.
The US has made the situation much worse by supporting Israel since the late 40s, but the UK cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for the mess by simply walking away. At this point the only thing I can think of that might be effective would be if the entire West were to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel, and the US and UK as the "parents" of Israel would be essential partners in making that happen.
I guess every nation is irrational in different ways. I understand the dynamics that created Bush, they don't make me proud - but I do understand them. I just don't understand what keeps the British royal family not only supported financially, but popular as well.
I was being facetious about the French Revolution, but not about my dislike of the royals. It is one of those things I've never understood about the British - how they can accept that the degenerate and inbred descendants of bandits and raiders are somehow magically better than everyone else.
The downside is that contract negotiations can drag on forever, and adding in an additional company can make it take even longer.
That is not a barrier erected by state, but by all member states of the WTO. Europeans may scream about the DMCA being an American idiocy, but their states are committed by treaty to enact laws that cover the exact same ground.
It wouldn't work in the US - the threat of massive debt incurred would not deter lawsuit speculation on the part of potential plaintiffs with nothing to lose. That is why you have to not only get rid of the "lottery" system for payoffs, but make quality legal aid available to all parties - the key to both of those aims is standardization of damages and legal fees. Recovery of legal fees should be possible, but as an absolute requirement all it does it keep people with a valid complaint from suing.
The point is that multinationals want the good points of globalization - cheap plentiful labor without the possibility of unions, but want to avoid the bad points - currency differentials creating price breaks for consumers who "break market" and import for themselves. Whether or not these specific cartridges are being produced with cheap global labor is beside the point.
Copyright infringement is only a civil matter if not done for commercial gain. Copyright violation for profit, which these gents are being charged with, are a criminal matter. My guess is that they are charged with conspiracy rather than the actual crime so that the damages are based on potential rather than real numbers. Greater shock and awe when they can point to a million jillion dollar bust.
This also a beautiful illustration of why multinationals are the real winners in globalization, they can use labor cost differentials to make a killing and legally backed technological guards to enforce market separation for consumers.
That would give an individual the same ability to get good legal representation as a corporation - and retain "loser pays" for punitive damages in a counter-suit if the case is frivolous.
Genuine efforts for tort reform want to not only remove the incentive for frivolous lawsuits by raising the standards for punitive damages, but make sure that private individuals have the same clout as a entity with deep pockets when negotiating fees.
P2P software as a class has significant non-infringing use. Some P2P networks (kazaa, suprnova) are mostly used to facilitate copyright violation, but that is the use to which those network operators put the software.
The fair use points of Betamax are not relevant to P2P. Finding of time shifting being fair use allowed a claim of substantial non-infringement. Establishment of fair use was only needed in Betamax to allow a claim non-infringing use, P2P software already has non-infringement.
So if the big blogs use the attribute then spammers will go after the slow to upgrade folks, in self defense most of them will upgrade eventually.
Really even for a custom designed visitor book or blog it is not that hard to add the attribute to every hyperlink in user comments. Most such programs already do mangling and vetting of submitted html.
That doesn't change the fact that terrorists have access to the materials for suicide bombs, the desire to use them, and the means to deploy them. The only players in the nuclear club are restrained by consequences. Not to mention that the logistical problems terrorists would have with a nuke are probably just as great as the difficulty in them getting one.
All things considered I feel more threatened by suicide bombers than nuclear weapons. Not just physical danger, but their ability to effect change in their targets.
TLD management is so essential to the basic working of the Internet that we need to be cautious to not rip out an evil and competent provider and replace them with an incompetent provider.
I'm going to assume that the bid process certifies the competence of the new provider, but there will still be disruptions - the gain within a specified time frame will need to be greater than the total cost of the disruption. There need to be provisions for what to do regarding failure on the part of the registrar and there needs to be a way to prevent the registrar from holding the tld hostage.
For some reason the entire registrar business has taken on a seedy air, the reek of small time evil :). Verisign did much to contribute to that, but they at least know what they are doing from a technical point of view - some new company will likely be just as bad as Verisign and disrupt things as well.
I'm not saying never change anything, but if you are going to change things do it very carefully and make sure it will be an actual improvement - theory and wishing don't make it so.
Logic has very little to do with most human activity.
Nukes are less dangerous because we lack the will to use them. Any use of a strategic nuke would be a major event that could lead to a war that kills billions. That is the reason that small yield battlefield nukes drew such negative attention, anything that reduces their scale to the point that nukes become useable in war makes them more dangerous.
MAD may be insane, but it works. For other illogical, but workable, systems see currency, fashion, morality, parenting, religion, politics, and the Internet.
I'd much rather live with the threat of nukes over my head than live in a police state cause some asshole wants to commit suicide and murder me at the same time.
The people running these frauds are like spammers in 1996, abusing a technology newly available to the public - as google implements fixes the fraud-rings will develop new techniques and become as subtle as they have to be to avoid detection. Since they are criminals with an infinity of throw away identities they will be able to "probe" google's system to determine the fraud avoidance tolerances.
One scenario, fraud-rings approach legitimate content sites (a mod site, fansite, open source project, whatever) and offer to "enhance" their adsense revenue for a split of what they add. The fraud-ring rents time on zombie nets to add 15% (ramped up according to a schedule developed to avoid triggering fraud detection) in extra clicks from hijacked clients with no discernible pattern, the fraud-ring and the content provider split the extra money and google never twigs. The fact that the legitimate content site was probably already driving traffic makes them the perfect camouflage.
The race condition is in the following code.
Now imagine the following:
in thread 1:
if (!instance) # true
# thread stops running
in thread 2:
if (!instance) # true
See the problem, both threads can now continue on to the new. If Instance has not been called at least once before multiple threads are running then two singleton objects can be created.
>> The argument about the meaning of encapsulation has become completely meaningless, we disagree about the meaning and spirt of it and I'll leave it at that.
> Maybe you should read TC++PL or the standard, where it's clearly defined. I really don't care what you want to believe: the word has a concrete meaning, and whereas you can ramble on using it to mean any random thing that pops into your mind, you're still wrong. There's nothing more to it than that: if you use a term in regards to C++ in a way contrarian to the standard, you are wrong.
The C++ standard has absolutely nothing to say about the meaning of encapsulation and very little to say about OOP. Stroustrup has very little to say about encapsulation, aside from defending the 'friend' mechanism in D&E. I did find a few words about exactly what encapsulation means in non-standards sources. Plauger: "encapsulation: localizing a design decision so that a change of design results in changes within a small and easily identified region of source text" - C++STL. Stutter: "Here encapsulation is used in the sense of bringing together in one place, rather than hiding behind a shell." - MEC++. Stan Lipman clearly identifies encapsulation with information hiding in every instance in his Primer.
I was being polite in my disagreement with you, but you have been exceptionally rude. My statement that "we disagree about the meaning and I will leave it at that" was an attempt to slow down your hostility, because honestly the argument doesn't mean that much to me.
pimpl is one of those things which is perpetually rediscovered by every student of C++ (with a few minor variations), even the name is a convention that is often used by independent discoverers. As far as books go Sutter covered it, Meyers covered it, Lakios covered it, and I'm sure half a dozen faqs have covered it. Different books recommend the technique for different reasons.
There is a race condition you ignore that can only be avoided by assuming that AtomicSingleton::Instance is called at least once before any additional threads are created. That is the "non-sequitur" I made about library initialization.
The argument about the meaning of encapsulation has become completely meaningless, we disagree about the meaning and spirt of it and I'll leave it at that.