"What does Microsoft care about changing the license? Do you not realize that first and foremost, Microsoft is likely to just terminate the project?"
And from the perspective of an OSS dev company, how would that be a bad thing? MS just paid you a boatload of money and disbanded your company. You take that boatload of money and make a new company doing exactly what it did before, except now you're better funded.
Unless something in the principals' contracts prohibited them from doing that, in which case they were pretty stupid to agree to those terms in the first place. The only way it makes sense to agree to such terms if the objective is to take the money, move to Belize and sit on the beach for the rest of your life having drinks in coconuts with umbrelllas in them.
"an inability to express one's full feeling on a subject."
Only too true. When I cuss about (or at) something, it's because expressing my full feeling on that subject would typically involve the indiscriminate use of violence. I think I'll stick to swearing.
Y'know, it's pretty easy to bash slashdot and I've been guilty of it myself from time to time. But, even with the trolls and vitriol that gets spewed here, compared to most sites, especially with sites that have issued a million plus accounts, Slashdot reads like de Tocqueville in comparison.
"A right is something granted to you by some entity."
I'm going to split hairs right back with you, as this is not the case in the US system. Your claim is contrary to the understanding of rights as understood to the framers of the US Constitution. They held that individuals held rights and that the government should not interfere with them. This is abundantly clear in the language of the Bill of Rights. It all uses language like "shall not be infringed", "shall not be violated". Nowhere does it say "People are granted the right to".
The US government doesn't have a right to launch nukes, or a right to do anything, because a government doesn't have rights, only people do. They may have the authority do things, and the mandate of the people to act, but rights? No. Only people have rights.
If you believe that rights are granted to you by some temporal authority, that's perfectly fine, but recognize it as a belief. I'll concede such a belief has merit, as the reality around us seems to (d)evolve to that, but I (as do many others) believe otherwise.
And further, if you had some ultra-new bitchin' LCD screen with 1 microsecond refresh rate and ran through the changes at the limit of the screen, it would take 6.023e+1404 / 1e6 seconds which is about 1.9e+1385 million years, quite a bit longer than the age of the universe, and more than enough time for every star currently burning in the universe to cool to a black cinder a degree or two above absolute zero.
A doctor, eh? It looks as though you performed a senseofhumorectomy on yourself, hoss. I think it's plainly obvious the GP was a lampoon of an anti-science fundamentalist. I mean seriously... against heliocentrism? Even the most hidebound reactionary Bible literalists conceded that one 200 years ago.
"The ??AA's Holy Grail would be a technology that allowed people to pay money to experience their products and walk away with a good feeling about it (to encourage future sales), but at the same time render them unable to remember the specifics (to encourage paing money for the same thing again)."
So that explains modern pop music. It's all so clear now.
I always felt that a slide rule's relatively low precision was part of what made them attractive for work in the physical sciences. Rarely did you have measuring apparatus accurate to more than two to three significant figures and dealing with a slide rule was a nice check on producing answers like "We produced 1.2085736 liters of CO2 from the reaction."
"The real question here is: Can we get them to stream images from the back yard patio where Jessica Alba is sunbathing nude???"
I probably shouldn't do this, but since you're so interested, here's a picture of Ms. Alba, catching some rays on a light blue blanket in her back yard, taken at 50 centimeters resolution.
"And woe be the guy who isn't back in the office again at 8 AM sharp after working on a project until 1:00 am the day before. I've been threatened with losing pay and even possible termination for just that very thing."
If they fired you, it would probably be the best thing they could do for you. I had a job like that once, and because I dared to leave at 5pm one day for a doctor's appointment, they fired me the next day even though I came in to work at 4:30am. Yes. Twelve and a half hours wasn't enough.
My next job had no overtime, better pay, tuition reimbursement, better health plan, and flex time so I could schedule college classes (I hadn't finished my degree at the time). Seeing how a company could be GOOD, I vowed to myself that I would never work in the bad conditions I came from again. Sure, I've had crunch overtime, and even had to work weird hours for a bit when I was doing a little work for the Mars Rover team, but I've only had one other shitty job since then when a reorganization made me (a Unix software engineer) into an NT sys admin andwebmaster (pronounced "glorified typist"). Even then, I worked damn little overtime (restart, reboot, reinstall wasn't an arduous job).
It helps to be excellent (not merely good) at what you do, though. In the last 17 years, I've only spent about 16 weeks jobless, only 6 of which were without another job lined up at the end of them. Most of that in 2001, which was a lot of us.
But anyone who uses the word "monetize" (in any of its conjugations) in a non-ironic manner should never be allowed anywhere near the channels between artist and audience. Go sell chewing gum or razor blades instead.
I don't get the love affair with the metric system for everything. For scientific and engineering computation, sure, it's great, and you can take the metric system from me when you pry my meter stick from my cold (293K at room temperature) dead (BP: 0 mmHg) hands.
For a lot of every day stuff, working in a system that only has the prime factors 2 and 5 between its units can be a real pain. A lot of the traditional units of measure have 3 in the prime factorization of their conversion factors and that makes many things easier to think about. I occasionally do woodworking projects and (for me anyway) it's a lot simpler to work in traditional units, largely because you can divide quickly. Example: I have a one yard board I want to hang five hooks on, evenly spaced. Where do the hooks go? Reflexively, in English units, I can say six inches apart. In metric, I have a one meter board I want to hang five hooks on, evenly spaced. Where do the hooks go? I had to think about it for a second or two before I arrived at ~167 mm. And I'm better than most at doing arithmetic in my head.
Slashdot Mirror
I expect emacs users won't notice a difference.
"What does Microsoft care about changing the license? Do you not realize that first and foremost, Microsoft is likely to just terminate the project?"
And from the perspective of an OSS dev company, how would that be a bad thing? MS just paid you a boatload of money and disbanded your company. You take that boatload of money and make a new company doing exactly what it did before, except now you're better funded.
Unless something in the principals' contracts prohibited them from doing that, in which case they were pretty stupid to agree to those terms in the first place. The only way it makes sense to agree to such terms if the objective is to take the money, move to Belize and sit on the beach for the rest of your life having drinks in coconuts with umbrelllas in them.
"an inability to express one's full feeling on a subject."
Only too true. When I cuss about (or at) something, it's because expressing my full feeling on that subject would typically involve the indiscriminate use of violence. I think I'll stick to swearing.
Y'know, it's pretty easy to bash slashdot and I've been guilty of it myself from time to time. But, even with the trolls and vitriol that gets spewed here, compared to most sites, especially with sites that have issued a million plus accounts, Slashdot reads like de Tocqueville in comparison.
Wait, contempt of Congress is a CRIME?! Oh, hell, I'm in deep shit, 'cause I have nothing BUT contempt for those asshats. ;-)
Here it comes: You're new here, aren't you? :-)
I thought the Hulk's alter ego was Bruce Bana.
"A right is something granted to you by some entity."
I'm going to split hairs right back with you, as this is not the case in the US system. Your claim is contrary to the understanding of rights as understood to the framers of the US Constitution. They held that individuals held rights and that the government should not interfere with them. This is abundantly clear in the language of the Bill of Rights. It all uses language like "shall not be infringed", "shall not be violated". Nowhere does it say "People are granted the right to".
The US government doesn't have a right to launch nukes, or a right to do anything, because a government doesn't have rights, only people do. They may have the authority do things, and the mandate of the people to act, but rights? No. Only people have rights.
If you believe that rights are granted to you by some temporal authority, that's perfectly fine, but recognize it as a belief. I'll concede such a belief has merit, as the reality around us seems to (d)evolve to that, but I (as do many others) believe otherwise.
You must work at my office...
'Extra points for those, who find "Stallman's Airship"'
It's far to the east and a little south of Cory Doctorow's balloon.
And further, if you had some ultra-new bitchin' LCD screen with 1 microsecond refresh rate and ran through the changes at the limit of the screen, it would take 6.023e+1404 / 1e6 seconds which is about 1.9e+1385 million years, quite a bit longer than the age of the universe, and more than enough time for every star currently burning in the universe to cool to a black cinder a degree or two above absolute zero.
This explains the rudiments of string theory.
Since there appears to be trademark confusion, maybe Best Buy can sue Direct Buy.
Can both sides lose somehow?
It just occurred to me that 10 years in grade is long enough. Shouldn't you be CaptTaco by now? ;-)
A doctor, eh? It looks as though you performed a senseofhumorectomy on yourself, hoss. I think it's plainly obvious the GP was a lampoon of an anti-science fundamentalist. I mean seriously... against heliocentrism? Even the most hidebound reactionary Bible literalists conceded that one 200 years ago.
"The ??AA's Holy Grail would be a technology that allowed people to pay money to experience their products and walk away with a good feeling about it (to encourage future sales), but at the same time render them unable to remember the specifics (to encourage paing money for the same thing again)."
So that explains modern pop music. It's all so clear now.
I sure hope you've got some room for a newb like me around here.
Maybe someone dropped a logic bomb through the trap door.
I always felt that a slide rule's relatively low precision was part of what made them attractive for work in the physical sciences. Rarely did you have measuring apparatus accurate to more than two to three significant figures and dealing with a slide rule was a nice check on producing answers like "We produced 1.2085736 liters of CO2 from the reaction."
"The other kicker, for me at least, is the lack of a TrackPoint."
Whereas I use a TrackPoint for a half hour and start to wonder where I left my wrist brace. Different strokes for different folks. :-)
"The real question here is: Can we get them to stream images from the back yard patio where Jessica Alba is sunbathing nude???"
I probably shouldn't do this, but since you're so interested, here's a picture of Ms. Alba, catching some rays on a light blue blanket in her back yard, taken at 50 centimeters resolution.
"And woe be the guy who isn't back in the office again at 8 AM sharp after working on a project until 1:00 am the day before. I've been threatened with losing pay and even possible termination for just that very thing."
If they fired you, it would probably be the best thing they could do for you. I had a job like that once, and because I dared to leave at 5pm one day for a doctor's appointment, they fired me the next day even though I came in to work at 4:30am. Yes. Twelve and a half hours wasn't enough.
My next job had no overtime, better pay, tuition reimbursement, better health plan, and flex time so I could schedule college classes (I hadn't finished my degree at the time). Seeing how a company could be GOOD, I vowed to myself that I would never work in the bad conditions I came from again. Sure, I've had crunch overtime, and even had to work weird hours for a bit when I was doing a little work for the Mars Rover team, but I've only had one other shitty job since then when a reorganization made me (a Unix software engineer) into an NT sys admin andwebmaster (pronounced "glorified typist"). Even then, I worked damn little overtime (restart, reboot, reinstall wasn't an arduous job).
It helps to be excellent (not merely good) at what you do, though. In the last 17 years, I've only spent about 16 weeks jobless, only 6 of which were without another job lined up at the end of them. Most of that in 2001, which was a lot of us.
But anyone who uses the word "monetize" (in any of its conjugations) in a non-ironic manner should never be allowed anywhere near the channels between artist and audience. Go sell chewing gum or razor blades instead.
Two, or three if their combined weight is less than 100 pounds.
I don't get the love affair with the metric system for everything. For scientific and engineering computation, sure, it's great, and you can take the metric system from me when you pry my meter stick from my cold (293K at room temperature) dead (BP: 0 mmHg) hands.
For a lot of every day stuff, working in a system that only has the prime factors 2 and 5 between its units can be a real pain. A lot of the traditional units of measure have 3 in the prime factorization of their conversion factors and that makes many things easier to think about. I occasionally do woodworking projects and (for me anyway) it's a lot simpler to work in traditional units, largely because you can divide quickly. Example: I have a one yard board I want to hang five hooks on, evenly spaced. Where do the hooks go? Reflexively, in English units, I can say six inches apart. In metric, I have a one meter board I want to hang five hooks on, evenly spaced. Where do the hooks go? I had to think about it for a second or two before I arrived at ~167 mm. And I'm better than most at doing arithmetic in my head.