That's true. Microsoft can't possibly afford to absorb the costs of the MP3 licensing, they're on such a shoe-string budget as it is. I mean, they'd like to offer alternates to their own proprietary format; they really would. They just can't afford it at this time.
So by that logic, your post should be DRMed, since I can't be sure you thought of it first. All of your emails should be DRMed, and you definitely shouldn't be able to forward anything you receive. And your boss shouldn't be able to read that document you sent him, you may have plagiarized a phrase somewhere unconciously. Are you a poet, author, advertiser, etc.? Well, don't try to email me your work - how do I know it's really yours?
To cut through the sarcasm, the problem was that the default setting is to assume whatever you are putting on your computer you don't have the right to share. This is completely out of whack with how the rest of the computer works, and in fact how the majority of the world works. If my musician friend gives me a tape he says he's been working on for a while, should I not listen to it without a notarized affidavit from every musician in the world to indicate that it doesn't sound at all like what they've ever worked on?
What it comes down to is that the program should have warned him it was putting it into an unsharable format. Of course, if it always did that no one would use it - so by being the default it provides the illusion that that's the only way things can be recorded.
During installation, I require that you provide your admin password.
While it's small, don't underestimate this. My experiences with Windows have been through jobs, and it seemed like everything I needed to run required me to have Admin access WITHOUT PROMPTING*. On a home computer it's easy to see someone running something and giving it the Admin password, but they would have to have thought it was reasonable to do so - and have the password. (An excellent reason to set up each family member with their own login, BTW.) On a well set up lab or work environment each machine could have a different, unknown admin password that would stop this.
I don't say this is impossible, but the fact is that a) Mac email programs generally ask before executing code, and b) all installers (even those that are javascripted to automatically download when entering a page) that require admin passwords have to ask for them. It's not impossible for someone to just blindly enter it, but hopefully it would make some of them think 'Why?'
*This may have been negligence or incompetence from either the software we used or my various support staffs, but there it is. The point I think was bad wasn't that I had admin rights by default, but that installers could take advantage of that without my even knowing they were running.
That's cool - sounds like we are on the same side. I wouldn't say it was completely off-topic, as I was going for a parallel in American history the point of which was that corporate maneuvering has coerced public opinion into accepting bad laws BEFORE the digital age. While not related to the digital nature of the discussion, it is related to the possible corporate propaganda and behind-the-scenes shenanigans that may occur. (Although, the power Hearst had over his media empire to do this does strike further parallels with current media consolidation.)
In other words, it sounds like we agree that it isn't the way an ideal America should work, even if my example is a little off the beaten path for Slashdot.
The one where the Declaration of Independence can still be read because it was written on hemp, or the one which outlawed hemp in 1937 because of lobbing efforts by Dupont and others that associated it with marijuana, when really they wanted to remove competition to their synthetic fibers? It is currently illegal to grow hemp because it can't be easily distinguished from marijuana during raids. William Randolph Hearst, newspaper owner and friend of the DuPonts, slanted the news in his papers (yellow journalsim) To quote Jack Herer, "in the 1920s and 1930s, Hearst's newspaper chain led to the deliberate..yellow journalism campaign to have marijuana outlawed. From 1916 to 1937, as an example, the story of a car accident in which a marijuana cigarette was found would dominate the headlines for weeks, while alcohol related car accidents (which outnumber hemp-related accidents by 1,000 to 1) made only back pages." (Source) {The "Drug War" part. This page correlates information I've found from other sources.}
Or more modern with the bills to fight P2P networks, if you want a digital equivalent. However, that's a recent example and the hemp one shows that this isn't a new phenomenon.
You agree not to modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works based on the Service, in any manner, and you shall not exploit the Service in any unauthorized way whatsoever, including but not limited to, by trespass or burdening network capacity.
But that's only derivatives.
The only mention close to this topic in the Terms of Sale is this:
All sales on the iTunes Music Store are governed by California law, without giving effect to its conflict of law provisions.
So there isn't anything specific about reselling it. However, if sold in the DRM version there's no guarantee the purchaser can unlock it, unless the seller shares his buying info and authorizes the other computer. Apple can probably enforce that - they are no obligation to authorize anyone other than the original purchaser. If he transfers it to CD or mp3 to sell/ship, then he probably would place himself in danger of prosecution as an unauthorized distributor of copyrighted work. {e.g. I probably can't take a CD, make a tape, and then sell that tape even if I then destroy the CD. - the physical equivalent of what he might try if the mp4 can't be transfered.)
This reminds me of a discussion I had once in college. A fellow student felt his programming classes should fulfill his language credit requirements. I asked him to translate the constitution into Pascal. He tried to weasel it by making it a bunch of writeln's, but gave up when I pointed out that the constitution was still in English, he had merely written a way of putting it on a computer screen.
The point I was going for is that at its heart a computer program is a set of instructions, not ideas or stories. Comparing them to recipes would be more coherent than comparing them to literature. Their functionally equivalent to the designs included with your build-yourself projects. You supply the material, apply their instructions (i.e. algorithms), and end up with a result of some sort.
The problem with software patents isn't that they exist, but that a) they are being granted to previously known concepts and b) they are overly generalized. How many different Swifter-type products are there? Or door locks or VCRs? They each have their own patents, but work in different ways. But if you even mention 'One-Click' on you're web site Amazon will be breathing down your neck, regardless of how you implemented it.
I can tell a lot of readers have lived in/near big cities most of their lives. A.22 is a small caliber rifle, and lots of people have them. To give them the (marginal) benefit of the doubt, it was the probably older kid's and meant for hunting. These were a couple of bored kids tired of shooting squirrels or stop signs and decided to shoot at moving targets, and are now (hopefully) horrified by what happened. (That's giving them the benefit of the doubt obviously - they may only care that they got caught, not that they hurt anyone.) The mere fact that they had a rifle doesn't mean anything; the fact that they seemed to think shooting at vehicles with people in them was ok does mean something.
GTA is a smoke screen, and probably came from leading questions from the prosecutor hoping to get a name for himself or to shift blame - there is no point in GTA where you randomly shoot at trucks. You shoot at people, so if they were emulating the game then they knew full well that people could die.
The sad part is that the 'juvy' distinction should be lifted for homicides. These murdering kids will be out at 19 each, and aren't going to be able to do anything besides turn to crime.
Not really. If someone breaks into my house from some obsession to put a fresh box of baking soda in my fridge he has still broken into my house. It might be argued that the 'repair' variant would be equivalent to coming into my house through an open door to lock it, but that's not exactly correct - he didn't connect to everyone's computers himself. It's more like he created an army of self replicating androids to walk up and down the streets checking everyone's doors. The end goal may have been noble, but all those androids in the road prevented things like ambulances and firetrucks getting through.
Yeah, that went pretty far, but once I started the house analogy I didn't have many options.
It's not complex. If the light isn't how you want it, you flip the switch the other way from where it is. The point I was going for is that when you reach for a wall switch in a new room you expect it within a certain height range, up/down, and generally within a certain distance of a doorway. You can reach for it without looking, find it, and flip it to the opposite of what it is without thinking too much unless you can't find it. When you walk into a dark room you turn on a light with barely a thought, unless you don't find a switch or the light doesn't come on. If it is a normal switch positioned sideways and you didn't expect it, or even if it's low, high, or oddly shaped, you don't have muscle/brain pathways rememberence for it and you'd have to think about it.
but consistency is not the same as familiarity
But consistancy leads to familiarity. It's hard to get familiar with something that acts differently every time you use it.
If you don't do 'Stage 2', or don't do it well, you end up with technology that sits on a shelf. Mr. Garrison's invention may get 4,000 mpg but I'd rather walk then have to drive with something shoved up my ass.
Passing your 'Stage 1' only means it works. If it works, and I'm not in charge of fixing it, it really doesn't matter how, or even how long it took to make. Especially if I can't use it. If it doesn't work, then you don't really have anything to discuss, do you?
The Pet Rock was just a Rock - it was the box that sold it.
The argument that Linux needs some kind of standardization on this front flies in the face of the history of the software business and has no real grounding in reason.
Not really. Early versions of Microsoft Word ported to the Mac were essentially direct ports, depending on control and Function keys rather than Menus and Command key standards (-S save, -F find, -V paste, etc.). They sold very poorly and allowed the competition to get quite a bit ahead. (I know that's flimsy on details, but I can't remember where I read it and I don't have good terms for a google search. I'm willing to admit it may have been WordPerfect or something else entirely, but there was a major application that was ported without following Apple's GUI guidelines and was flatly rejected.)
In other words, if there is no standard then in order to compete with existing products you must either copy how they function or hope that your marketing can convince people that it is so great that the learning curve to relearn simple things like cut, paste, save, etc. is worth the end result. If someone came along with a clock that was never wrong but could only run counter-clockwise, it would probably not do very well. I can't remember which car maker, but someone was designed an new electric car that uses sticks instead of steering wheel or pedals - it may be very good, but too different to sell.
As for your other examples, they prove my point. Every Word upgrade that move things is met with resistance - the only way they 'succeed' is that the file layouts change, so if you work with others who have upgraded you must also. Adobe is a specialist provider for graphics areas - if you needed it, you learned it. It took longer than would have been necessary if they'd followed a Windows standard, though I daresay it is likely that they early interfaces matched their Mac versions where the print/graphics industry started. They may have been aiming at professionals moving from the one platform to the other, so it would have been more beneficial to emulate their other product than to conform to the Windows standards, which probably weren't that well defined at the time anyway.
In my search I found an interesting discussion here, which mentions the problem includes an example with simple OK/Cancel dialogue boxes - the tendency to get creative and use symbols, which only serve to confuse people if you rearrange things as well.
But in my experience, users will choose a window manager that suits them and then stay with that.
Really? Do you mean with Linux users? In my experience, users who aren't computer professionals will learn as much of whatever system is put in front of them as they need to do their job, and nothing more. The same with any tool - how many people have phones in their office capable of all kinds of neat things, but never actually set them up? How many people fully use anything? Watches, PDAs, cell phones - all have features most people ignore. Hell, how many people who aren't in technology-based industries bother cross-programming their TV/VCR remotes? Most remotes are capable of managing either in a matter of minutes with their included charts. But most people would rather just have multiple remotes around than even consider doing it.
but (unfortunately) the users have been taught to rely a lot more in the OS/Desktop than it should be, instead on the applications that implement the functionality.
The human interface is far more important that the implementation behind it, and this is universal across all technology. Think of cars. If the steering wheel, radio, pedals, etc. are all in accessible places, how many people really care how they work the car? Or the phone - how many different keypads are there? Have you ever seen a light switch on a wall that went left-right and not up-down? There are a number of 'better' keyboard layouts - has anyone not included QWERTY and survived?
The human brain functions on pattern recognition. A consistant interface allows the brain to function at a 'higher' level. Let me explain - you don't think about how to walk, chew, or scratch an itch, right? You just think "I want to go there" or "Mmmm" or, usually, nothing - I sometimes don't even really I have an itch as the brain as already recognized that it should be scratched and done so before the message reached my conciousness. A consistant GUI allows a user to think "Close this window." An inconsistant GUI forces the user to think "To close this window, I need to find the X. It was on the right last time, but that's a Circle. Oh, there it is on the left. Click."
Having to think about every single action is very frustrating, whether it's a new GUI, a new video game, or even a new VCR or Microwave. And this is exactly what people have to deal with in switching to Linux - learning a new set of patterns, which requires think about them at the beginning. It's been my experience that average people barely understand the computers they currently use - they were taught 'Click here, then here, then here'. It's virtually impossible to teach them a new interface if they never knew why they were clicking in the old one.
Is it right to destroy/exploit another planet, like we destroy/exploit our own? Even if we are only displacing so archeon bacteria thingies, do we have the right to do that?
What are these 'rights' that keep coming up? Do we have a 'right' to eliminate syphilis, or anthrax, or the common cold? How would it be different? These aren't dolphins or seals or minks we're talking about. With population growth at its current rate, are we bound to either have another plaque or go 'Logan's Run' to control things, just so we don't disturb some precious archeon bacteria?
I do agree with your other points, that finding life would have a serious impact on our uniqueness. The problem is it would only affect those that already question it; I foresee more battles to keep any such notions out of schools where children might learn them. I also agree that we should be careful in how we colonize, though by the time we can colonize with any chance of success I think we will likely have much better behaviors - the road we're on just wouldn't support it. I'm just not overly concerned about supplanting native single-celled life, if the only other choice is no colonization at all.
If there was life on Mars before but died out, it's mostly useful to know only in the sense that it might provide further insights to how life originated here, and gives a heck of a boost to the concept that there might be life elsewhere in the Universe.
If there is any life past the, let us say for the sake of arguement, ameoba stage*, then it is only of effective consequence if it is somehow threatening. Yes, it will be important to keep an area 'untainted' to research how it developed and survives, but I don't think we'd need a Prime Directive or anything. I would not agree with leaving whole tracts of the planet alone on the off chance microbes* or whatever may someday evolve to be Martians. I imagine at least one hoped-for scenario would be that a human breathable atmosphere is possible, and that would probably use plants/trees. This would require a whole ecosystem that would by definition replace whatever is already there if it can't adapt.
If there is any well developed life that we haven't seen yet that hasn't objected to our probes/robots, then either it's in an inconceivable form or, if intelligent, it will deal with us when it wants to. I think we've been able to get readings of the crust to know if there is underground life, but I may be mistaken. So either it's in a form we don't recognize, or it's hiding very well.
*[I apologize for mixing ameoba's and microbes like this. It's been a while since Biology so I don't know what is currently regarded as the smallest possible unit of life, but hopefully my point will survive any mistakes.]
Science fiction has apparently driven us to obsession over whether or not Mars had life. While it may be interesting in a historical sense, can't we just move on for now? While the search for water is important, as it could influence the ease of colonization, can't we wait until we're there until we look for life?
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to know. And if it's just a matter of looking at data we're getting anyway I'm not against it. It just seems sometimes that it sounds obsessive, especially once the press gets ahold of the stories. It would seem more useful to analyze weather currents, mineral deposits, and other such issues to find good places to land/build, and if there are any local metal deposits and the like.
It's a question of degree, and is directly related to 'suspension of disbelief' - originally a consideration of live theatre. What it encompasses is the degree to which a person is able to accept things that are false and stay focused inside the story and not their reality. For example, can an audience accept that Act 2 takes place 8 hours after Act 1, even though only 10 minutes have passed, or that the scene on stage is at night though it is clearly daytime.* Science Fiction that takes excesses tend to run directly into this problem square on.
This is visible to some extent in all films, not just Science Fiction. For example, I recently saw The Count of Monte Cristo. In it, a prisoner is taught to become a master fencer by another elderly prisoner, while digging a tunnel and being malnourished. And he taught him on stone so well that fighting on a sandy beach presented no problem whatsoever. Clearly not very likely, but acceptable enough as a plot point in a rented movie since the overall story of escape and vengeance was more interesting.
From my point of view, I'm more critical of science fiction because I like science. I can accept minor bs-physics (for example, almost no space movie that I've seen has bothered with the fact that planets move - somehow Mars is always on the way to Earth) if there is an interesting story that doesn't harp on it.
I never could understand why Solo et. al. weren't bothered by a moon floating without a planet, unless they just assumed it was Alderon's. And in Star Trek II I always wondered why the sensors didn't notice a missing planet, but the story and execution made up for that oddity.
The same criticisms of SciFi are probably true of historically themed films to historians, but this is not commented upon nearly as often.
*[I learned in a Theatre History class that there once was a movement and law in France that the plots of all plays were to be in real time to the performance. Strange, but not quite as drastic as killing slaves for real blood near the end of the Roman Empire.]
McDonalds offered way less, so they went to court. She only wanted medical. It was the jury after being presented with evidence of prior poor settlements and knowledge that the coffee could burn people that went punitive with the amount.
I don't blame McDonald's completely - if they are known to settle, people would just start dumping coffee or other things on themselves. And the women involved only wanted medical and related bills, so I don't blame her. It's the ability of the jury to go nuts with the punitive that made this case such a shining example, yet they are almost never mentioned.
Two points:
The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages. This amount
was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at
fault in the spill. The jury also awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in
punitive damages, which equals about two days of McDonalds' coffee
sales. ...
The trial court subsequently reduced the punitive award to $480,000.
It's an amazing piece of Stream of Conciousness. If you didn't make it to Chapter 3, he/she/they (not clear on that part) attempt to criticize writing styles. Or even better, complaining about other writers being "just a boring son of a bitch" or "You fill up your review with unsuccessful attempts at humor".
How did this make the front page? And what's "incisive" about it? The definition is "Penetrating, clear, and sharp". I didn't read far enough to judge if it was penetrating, but it was neither clear nor sharp.
Slashdot Mirror
Pay no attention to the web site behind the proxy server!
That's true. Microsoft can't possibly afford to absorb the costs of the MP3 licensing, they're on such a shoe-string budget as it is. I mean, they'd like to offer alternates to their own proprietary format; they really would. They just can't afford it at this time.
</SARCASM>
So by that logic, your post should be DRMed, since I can't be sure you thought of it first. All of your emails should be DRMed, and you definitely shouldn't be able to forward anything you receive. And your boss shouldn't be able to read that document you sent him, you may have plagiarized a phrase somewhere unconciously. Are you a poet, author, advertiser, etc.? Well, don't try to email me your work - how do I know it's really yours?
To cut through the sarcasm, the problem was that the default setting is to assume whatever you are putting on your computer you don't have the right to share. This is completely out of whack with how the rest of the computer works, and in fact how the majority of the world works. If my musician friend gives me a tape he says he's been working on for a while, should I not listen to it without a notarized affidavit from every musician in the world to indicate that it doesn't sound at all like what they've ever worked on?
What it comes down to is that the program should have warned him it was putting it into an unsharable format. Of course, if it always did that no one would use it - so by being the default it provides the illusion that that's the only way things can be recorded.
During installation, I require that you provide your admin password.
While it's small, don't underestimate this. My experiences with Windows have been through jobs, and it seemed like everything I needed to run required me to have Admin access WITHOUT PROMPTING*. On a home computer it's easy to see someone running something and giving it the Admin password, but they would have to have thought it was reasonable to do so - and have the password. (An excellent reason to set up each family member with their own login, BTW.) On a well set up lab or work environment each machine could have a different, unknown admin password that would stop this.
I don't say this is impossible, but the fact is that a) Mac email programs generally ask before executing code, and b) all installers (even those that are javascripted to automatically download when entering a page) that require admin passwords have to ask for them. It's not impossible for someone to just blindly enter it, but hopefully it would make some of them think 'Why?'
*This may have been negligence or incompetence from either the software we used or my various support staffs, but there it is. The point I think was bad wasn't that I had admin rights by default, but that installers could take advantage of that without my even knowing they were running.
That's cool - sounds like we are on the same side. I wouldn't say it was completely off-topic, as I was going for a parallel in American history the point of which was that corporate maneuvering has coerced public opinion into accepting bad laws BEFORE the digital age. While not related to the digital nature of the discussion, it is related to the possible corporate propaganda and behind-the-scenes shenanigans that may occur. (Although, the power Hearst had over his media empire to do this does strike further parallels with current media consolidation.)
In other words, it sounds like we agree that it isn't the way an ideal America should work, even if my example is a little off the beaten path for Slashdot.
The one where the Declaration of Independence can still be read because it was written on hemp, or the one which outlawed hemp in 1937 because of lobbing efforts by Dupont and others that associated it with marijuana, when really they wanted to remove competition to their synthetic fibers? It is currently illegal to grow hemp because it can't be easily distinguished from marijuana during raids. William Randolph Hearst, newspaper owner and friend of the DuPonts, slanted the news in his papers (yellow journalsim) To quote Jack Herer, "in the 1920s and 1930s, Hearst's newspaper chain led to the deliberate..yellow journalism campaign to have marijuana outlawed. From 1916 to 1937, as an example, the story of a car accident in which a marijuana cigarette was found would dominate the headlines for weeks, while alcohol related car accidents (which outnumber hemp-related accidents by 1,000 to 1) made only back pages." (Source) {The "Drug War" part. This page correlates information I've found from other sources.}
Or more modern with the bills to fight P2P networks, if you want a digital equivalent. However, that's a recent example and the hemp one shows that this isn't a new phenomenon.
The only thing close from Terms of Service:
You agree not to modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works based on the Service, in any manner, and you shall not exploit the Service in any unauthorized way whatsoever, including but not limited to, by trespass or burdening network capacity.
But that's only derivatives. The only mention close to this topic in the Terms of Sale is this:
All sales on the iTunes Music Store are governed by California law, without giving effect to its conflict of law provisions.
So there isn't anything specific about reselling it. However, if sold in the DRM version there's no guarantee the purchaser can unlock it, unless the seller shares his buying info and authorizes the other computer. Apple can probably enforce that - they are no obligation to authorize anyone other than the original purchaser. If he transfers it to CD or mp3 to sell/ship, then he probably would place himself in danger of prosecution as an unauthorized distributor of copyrighted work. {e.g. I probably can't take a CD, make a tape, and then sell that tape even if I then destroy the CD. - the physical equivalent of what he might try if the mp4 can't be transfered.)
Unfortunately, it's the one you have that awful Spock-goatee in.
Is there a click through license when you are born? And does a C-section circumvent it?
This reminds me of a discussion I had once in college. A fellow student felt his programming classes should fulfill his language credit requirements. I asked him to translate the constitution into Pascal. He tried to weasel it by making it a bunch of writeln's, but gave up when I pointed out that the constitution was still in English, he had merely written a way of putting it on a computer screen.
The point I was going for is that at its heart a computer program is a set of instructions, not ideas or stories. Comparing them to recipes would be more coherent than comparing them to literature. Their functionally equivalent to the designs included with your build-yourself projects. You supply the material, apply their instructions (i.e. algorithms), and end up with a result of some sort.
The problem with software patents isn't that they exist, but that a) they are being granted to previously known concepts and b) they are overly generalized. How many different Swifter-type products are there? Or door locks or VCRs? They each have their own patents, but work in different ways. But if you even mention 'One-Click' on you're web site Amazon will be breathing down your neck, regardless of how you implemented it.
I can tell a lot of readers have lived in/near big cities most of their lives. A .22 is a small caliber rifle, and lots of people have them. To give them the (marginal) benefit of the doubt, it was the probably older kid's and meant for hunting. These were a couple of bored kids tired of shooting squirrels or stop signs and decided to shoot at moving targets, and are now (hopefully) horrified by what happened. (That's giving them the benefit of the doubt obviously - they may only care that they got caught, not that they hurt anyone.) The mere fact that they had a rifle doesn't mean anything; the fact that they seemed to think shooting at vehicles with people in them was ok does mean something.
GTA is a smoke screen, and probably came from leading questions from the prosecutor hoping to get a name for himself or to shift blame - there is no point in GTA where you randomly shoot at trucks. You shoot at people, so if they were emulating the game then they knew full well that people could die.
The sad part is that the 'juvy' distinction should be lifted for homicides. These murdering kids will be out at 19 each, and aren't going to be able to do anything besides turn to crime.
Not really. If someone breaks into my house from some obsession to put a fresh box of baking soda in my fridge he has still broken into my house. It might be argued that the 'repair' variant would be equivalent to coming into my house through an open door to lock it, but that's not exactly correct - he didn't connect to everyone's computers himself. It's more like he created an army of self replicating androids to walk up and down the streets checking everyone's doors. The end goal may have been noble, but all those androids in the road prevented things like ambulances and firetrucks getting through.
Yeah, that went pretty far, but once I started the house analogy I didn't have many options.
It's not complex. If the light isn't how you want it, you flip the switch the other way from where it is. The point I was going for is that when you reach for a wall switch in a new room you expect it within a certain height range, up/down, and generally within a certain distance of a doorway. You can reach for it without looking, find it, and flip it to the opposite of what it is without thinking too much unless you can't find it. When you walk into a dark room you turn on a light with barely a thought, unless you don't find a switch or the light doesn't come on. If it is a normal switch positioned sideways and you didn't expect it, or even if it's low, high, or oddly shaped, you don't have muscle/brain pathways rememberence for it and you'd have to think about it.
but consistency is not the same as familiarity
But consistancy leads to familiarity. It's hard to get familiar with something that acts differently every time you use it.
If you don't do 'Stage 2', or don't do it well, you end up with technology that sits on a shelf. Mr. Garrison's invention may get 4,000 mpg but I'd rather walk then have to drive with something shoved up my ass.
Passing your 'Stage 1' only means it works. If it works, and I'm not in charge of fixing it, it really doesn't matter how, or even how long it took to make. Especially if I can't use it. If it doesn't work, then you don't really have anything to discuss, do you?
The Pet Rock was just a Rock - it was the box that sold it.
The argument that Linux needs some kind of standardization on this front flies in the face of the history of the software business and has no real grounding in reason.
Not really. Early versions of Microsoft Word ported to the Mac were essentially direct ports, depending on control and Function keys rather than Menus and Command key standards (-S save, -F find, -V paste, etc.). They sold very poorly and allowed the competition to get quite a bit ahead. (I know that's flimsy on details, but I can't remember where I read it and I don't have good terms for a google search. I'm willing to admit it may have been WordPerfect or something else entirely, but there was a major application that was ported without following Apple's GUI guidelines and was flatly rejected.)
In other words, if there is no standard then in order to compete with existing products you must either copy how they function or hope that your marketing can convince people that it is so great that the learning curve to relearn simple things like cut, paste, save, etc. is worth the end result. If someone came along with a clock that was never wrong but could only run counter-clockwise, it would probably not do very well. I can't remember which car maker, but someone was designed an new electric car that uses sticks instead of steering wheel or pedals - it may be very good, but too different to sell.
As for your other examples, they prove my point. Every Word upgrade that move things is met with resistance - the only way they 'succeed' is that the file layouts change, so if you work with others who have upgraded you must also. Adobe is a specialist provider for graphics areas - if you needed it, you learned it. It took longer than would have been necessary if they'd followed a Windows standard, though I daresay it is likely that they early interfaces matched their Mac versions where the print/graphics industry started. They may have been aiming at professionals moving from the one platform to the other, so it would have been more beneficial to emulate their other product than to conform to the Windows standards, which probably weren't that well defined at the time anyway.
In my search I found an interesting discussion here, which mentions the problem includes an example with simple OK/Cancel dialogue boxes - the tendency to get creative and use symbols, which only serve to confuse people if you rearrange things as well.
But in my experience, users will choose a window manager that suits them and then stay with that.
Really? Do you mean with Linux users? In my experience, users who aren't computer professionals will learn as much of whatever system is put in front of them as they need to do their job, and nothing more. The same with any tool - how many people have phones in their office capable of all kinds of neat things, but never actually set them up? How many people fully use anything? Watches, PDAs, cell phones - all have features most people ignore. Hell, how many people who aren't in technology-based industries bother cross-programming their TV/VCR remotes? Most remotes are capable of managing either in a matter of minutes with their included charts. But most people would rather just have multiple remotes around than even consider doing it.
but (unfortunately) the users have been taught to rely a lot more in the OS/Desktop than it should be, instead on the applications that implement the functionality.
The human interface is far more important that the implementation behind it, and this is universal across all technology. Think of cars. If the steering wheel, radio, pedals, etc. are all in accessible places, how many people really care how they work the car? Or the phone - how many different keypads are there? Have you ever seen a light switch on a wall that went left-right and not up-down? There are a number of 'better' keyboard layouts - has anyone not included QWERTY and survived?
The human brain functions on pattern recognition. A consistant interface allows the brain to function at a 'higher' level. Let me explain - you don't think about how to walk, chew, or scratch an itch, right? You just think "I want to go there" or "Mmmm" or, usually, nothing - I sometimes don't even really I have an itch as the brain as already recognized that it should be scratched and done so before the message reached my conciousness. A consistant GUI allows a user to think "Close this window." An inconsistant GUI forces the user to think "To close this window, I need to find the X. It was on the right last time, but that's a Circle. Oh, there it is on the left. Click."
Having to think about every single action is very frustrating, whether it's a new GUI, a new video game, or even a new VCR or Microwave. And this is exactly what people have to deal with in switching to Linux - learning a new set of patterns, which requires think about them at the beginning. It's been my experience that average people barely understand the computers they currently use - they were taught 'Click here, then here, then here'. It's virtually impossible to teach them a new interface if they never knew why they were clicking in the old one.
Is it right to destroy/exploit another planet, like we destroy/exploit our own? Even if we are only displacing so archeon bacteria thingies, do we have the right to do that?
What are these 'rights' that keep coming up? Do we have a 'right' to eliminate syphilis, or anthrax, or the common cold? How would it be different? These aren't dolphins or seals or minks we're talking about. With population growth at its current rate, are we bound to either have another plaque or go 'Logan's Run' to control things, just so we don't disturb some precious archeon bacteria?
I do agree with your other points, that finding life would have a serious impact on our uniqueness. The problem is it would only affect those that already question it; I foresee more battles to keep any such notions out of schools where children might learn them. I also agree that we should be careful in how we colonize, though by the time we can colonize with any chance of success I think we will likely have much better behaviors - the road we're on just wouldn't support it. I'm just not overly concerned about supplanting native single-celled life, if the only other choice is no colonization at all.
If there was life on Mars before but died out, it's mostly useful to know only in the sense that it might provide further insights to how life originated here, and gives a heck of a boost to the concept that there might be life elsewhere in the Universe.
If there is any life past the, let us say for the sake of arguement, ameoba stage*, then it is only of effective consequence if it is somehow threatening. Yes, it will be important to keep an area 'untainted' to research how it developed and survives, but I don't think we'd need a Prime Directive or anything. I would not agree with leaving whole tracts of the planet alone on the off chance microbes* or whatever may someday evolve to be Martians. I imagine at least one hoped-for scenario would be that a human breathable atmosphere is possible, and that would probably use plants/trees. This would require a whole ecosystem that would by definition replace whatever is already there if it can't adapt.
If there is any well developed life that we haven't seen yet that hasn't objected to our probes/robots, then either it's in an inconceivable form or, if intelligent, it will deal with us when it wants to. I think we've been able to get readings of the crust to know if there is underground life, but I may be mistaken. So either it's in a form we don't recognize, or it's hiding very well.
*[I apologize for mixing ameoba's and microbes like this. It's been a while since Biology so I don't know what is currently regarded as the smallest possible unit of life, but hopefully my point will survive any mistakes.]
Science fiction has apparently driven us to obsession over whether or not Mars had life. While it may be interesting in a historical sense, can't we just move on for now? While the search for water is important, as it could influence the ease of colonization, can't we wait until we're there until we look for life?
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to know. And if it's just a matter of looking at data we're getting anyway I'm not against it. It just seems sometimes that it sounds obsessive, especially once the press gets ahold of the stories. It would seem more useful to analyze weather currents, mineral deposits, and other such issues to find good places to land/build, and if there are any local metal deposits and the like.
".jpg"! In my day, our girlfriends were in ASCII and we liked it!
It's a question of degree, and is directly related to 'suspension of disbelief' - originally a consideration of live theatre. What it encompasses is the degree to which a person is able to accept things that are false and stay focused inside the story and not their reality. For example, can an audience accept that Act 2 takes place 8 hours after Act 1, even though only 10 minutes have passed, or that the scene on stage is at night though it is clearly daytime.* Science Fiction that takes excesses tend to run directly into this problem square on.
This is visible to some extent in all films, not just Science Fiction. For example, I recently saw The Count of Monte Cristo. In it, a prisoner is taught to become a master fencer by another elderly prisoner, while digging a tunnel and being malnourished. And he taught him on stone so well that fighting on a sandy beach presented no problem whatsoever. Clearly not very likely, but acceptable enough as a plot point in a rented movie since the overall story of escape and vengeance was more interesting.
From my point of view, I'm more critical of science fiction because I like science. I can accept minor bs-physics (for example, almost no space movie that I've seen has bothered with the fact that planets move - somehow Mars is always on the way to Earth) if there is an interesting story that doesn't harp on it.
I never could understand why Solo et. al. weren't bothered by a moon floating without a planet, unless they just assumed it was Alderon's. And in Star Trek II I always wondered why the sensors didn't notice a missing planet, but the story and execution made up for that oddity.
The same criticisms of SciFi are probably true of historically themed films to historians, but this is not commented upon nearly as often.
*[I learned in a Theatre History class that there once was a movement and law in France that the plots of all plays were to be in real time to the performance. Strange, but not quite as drastic as killing slaves for real blood near the end of the Roman Empire.]
Unless he wins based on his lies, in which case he can be a Republican politician...
McDonalds offered way less, so they went to court. She only wanted medical. It was the jury after being presented with evidence of prior poor settlements and knowledge that the coffee could burn people that went punitive with the amount.
I don't blame McDonald's completely - if they are known to settle, people would just start dumping coffee or other things on themselves. And the women involved only wanted medical and related bills, so I don't blame her. It's the ability of the jury to go nuts with the punitive that made this case such a shining example, yet they are almost never mentioned.
Two points:
The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages. This amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill. The jury also awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages, which equals about two days of McDonalds' coffee sales.
...
The trial court subsequently reduced the punitive award to $480,000.
It's an amazing piece of Stream of Conciousness. If you didn't make it to Chapter 3, he/she/they (not clear on that part) attempt to criticize writing styles. Or even better, complaining about other writers being "just a boring son of a bitch" or "You fill up your review with unsuccessful attempts at humor".
How did this make the front page? And what's "incisive" about it? The definition is "Penetrating, clear, and sharp". I didn't read far enough to judge if it was penetrating, but it was neither clear nor sharp.
I've heard something like this before... oh yeah:
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
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