My own view is "we don't need another law", if the ones we have don't cover the issue, what is going to make the next one work?
Maybe the fact that the new law is written to specifically cover the issue?
The problem is that the Constitution was not written with these things in mind. Remember, the Constitution was written at a time when slavery was legal and only men could vote. So we have these things called amendments.. specifically there's the 14th amendment, but that doesn't exactly clear things up. So we turn to the courts, as specified in the Constitution. Some people don't like this method because it turns out the courts generally don't agree with their interpretation.
The only reason we need laws to enforce these things is because some people wrongly feel that women, blacks, jews, gays, etc. are inferior and that it is correct to discriminate against them.
MS may be backing down in the face of a country that (in case you missed the last election) is rabidly against the gay rights movement.
In case YOU missed the last election, and the 6 months that have followed, the nation is not unanimous when it comes to gay rights. For instance, Connecticut, with a Republican governor, is about to pass a bill creating civil unions in that state. This bill came about purely as a result of legislative action. There were no courts involved. My state of New Jersey has created domestic partnerships. While these don't go as far as civil unions, it's still a step in the right direction, and far from "rabidly against the gay rights movement." We also recently had a governor declare that he was gay, and based on public polls, there was little negative backlash (there was backlash about the associated scandal, but that's another story).
Financial analyses of NASA have shown that under 10% of its budget is typically put towards expenses directly related to spaceflight, and the rest is research, bidding, bureaucracy, and government waste. That suggests that the cost for private industry to pull this off is $50 billion.
You've exhibited what I call the Fallacy of Privatization.
Private entities are no where near immune from research, bidding, bureaucracy, and waste.
Research: Can a moon base be constructed completely with off-the-shelf parts? How? If not, what parts will you use? Will you test any of this equipment before sending it to the Moon?
Bidding: Do you think a private entity will manufacture every single piece of the spacecraft and moon base? Unless they do that, there will be bidding or some other form of procurement involved.
Bureaucracy: Do you think that private entities don't have accountants, IT, secretaries, or janitors? Any entity undertaking such a project would have to be quite large, and would be burdened with some amount of bureaucracy.
Waste: There are numerous examples of private waste. Of course, this occurs on a case-by-case basis and there is no way to say how much waste will be introduced by a private entity. However, it is stupid to believe that there will be 'no waste'. All it takes is one birthday/holiday/etc. party in the office and you've introduced waste.
Perhaps you have a point in the general sense. However, web applications are not incapable of incrementally saving state.. they just don't do it to save bandwidth, generally. I guess it depends on what your app is and how you build it. Thinking more about my example, I think it actually uses activex or some other MS crap..
I don't think web apps are appropriate in cases where you have to enter large amounts of data. i.e., you should never be seriously inconvenienced by a power outage. Non-web apps aren't immune from this problem, either. For example, Word only saves every 10 minutes by default.
That doesn't make sense. Credit is determined on an individual basis only. You don't have a joint credit rating if you are married. If he was receiving bills in her name, they could only put negative marks on her credit report, not his. Something's not right in your story.
I blow away all my history, caches, etc before I shut down each and every time. I run a virus update and scan each evening while running my spyware catchers. I never give my real info on the net, I only ever give out my hotmail address except to a few friends
They already target ads to people based on location, which they guess from the IP address.
Note that Google isn't the only one doing this.. I usually get ads on Yahoo! for the NJ lottery.
Re:How about doing something actually useful ?
on
Next Generation X11
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· Score: 1
Also, sometimes after I disconnect my TV Windows likes to switch around my preferences so that any video that starts goes fullscreen on my main monitor instead of the TV, covering the player, desktop, and mouse pointer until I can figure out how to quit the video player with the keyboard
Windows isn't arbitrarily "switching around" your preferences. It's coping with the situation. What you've done is tell your Media Player that its default screen position is Monitor 2: 0,0. When you disconnect the TV (monitor 2), Windows can't put the Media Player there, or else you'd be here bitching that Windows is putting the Media Player on a non-existant monitor. Windows does the next best thing: it puts the Media Player at Monitor 1: 0,0.
Also, I don't know any Media Player that obscures the mouse pointer while the mouse is moving. Sounds like an inferior program or driver. From my experience, most programs are not written to work properly with multiple monitors. Furthermore, have you tried Alt+Enter to exit fullscreen mode? I don't know what app you're using, but alt+enter is the default "toggle fullscreen" keystroke. F11 is also used sometimes.
wont that help the people/authorities detect and circumvent jams
The problem isn't detecting traffic jams. They usually occur in the same places. The problem is that in most places, there is no way to circumvent the traffic jam. In the NYC metro area, most of the area highways are saturated during the peak-period, even without any anomalous events. If one road is diverted, where are the cars going to go? Local roads cannot handle the amount of traffic a highway can handle. Other highways are already saturated, so if people detour there, it ends up just slowing down that road as well.
1. Withholding the Win32 programming interface from competitors as long as possible prior to the launch of Windows 95 (i.e until Office95 was nearly completed) so that they could advertise that only Office had 32-bit apps. This is a classic example of using a monopoly in one field (Windows) to obtain a monopoly in another field (office productivity software). This is unequivocally illegal under U.S. antitrust law.
Odd. I seem to recall having to install something called Win32s to run 32-bit programs on Win 3.1. These programs were not MS Office.
It seems Yahoo serves their own graphics from the same server as their ads. Silly rabbit.
Silly to you, but smart to anyone with half a brain. If they serve up their content images from the same server as ad images, it discourages people from using the "Block Images from This Server" option.
A doctrine which establishes that someone has a right to the property or work of another is unworkable and immoral. It's just that simple.
Oh? If it's so simple, could you just show me in the Big Book of Morals?
Morals are whatever a society determines them to be, and they are not set in stone. If a society determines that it's moral to redistribute property, then it is. Saying something is immoral only makes sense if you have a common definition of what is moral. Such a thing does not exist.
That's part of the contract the landlord enters into by becoming a landlord in the first place.
Implied contract, perhaps. Language to the opposite effect could be in the contract between me and the landlord, but that doesn't make it legal.
In any case, it was meant as an example of how property owners' rights are not as absolute as you claim. My initial argument stands: Property owners are not gods. Yes, they enjoy broad powers over the land they own, but they are not the absolute authority on their land. That still belongs to the government, whether you like it or not.
While you are technically correct, if your "rules" are in violation of law, then you are in violation of law and can be held responsible for it. Furthermore, as a property owner, you give up the right to make some "rules" if you choose to be a landlord or otherwise use your land in a commercial application. i.e., my landlord cannot drop by at any time of the day simply because he owns the land. It's illegal (statewide). As a citizen, those are my "rules", and they better damn well be followed. Deal with it.
owners of private property have the right to do anything they want
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Property owners are not gods! They are required by law to do many things, and are prohibited by law from doing many things. Simply owning property does not mean you can completely control what goes on on that property. Yes, it does give you broad powers over the use of the property, but you do not instantly become a dictator because you own some arbitrarily defined piece of land. This is a very common misconception that property owners love to see spread around.
What exactly defines a third-party product, in the context of Linux? For example, if you want a different UI, you can use a different WM. If this WM isn't included with the distribution (or default config/install, or whatever arbitrary designation you want for argument's sake), isn't that the same as installing a third-party app on Windows?
I think there is this misconception that Windows users do not have choice because MS only provides certain options. That is true to some extent, but "third-party" tools do things with Windows that MS doesn't want to do.. so the choice is still there for Windows users, it's just not provided by Microsoft. I'm just not seeing that big a difference between the two platforms in this respect.
This argument doesn't make sense in the context of the current system. If it did, then why not eliminate gas tax, sales tax, property tax, FCC taxes, etc., etc. I pay for all of that with income that has already been taxed. The inheritance tax is no different.
A taxpayer should pay for what he/she receives from the governmemt, and nothing more.
Sure. Now could you please give us your proposal for a metric that will measure what a taxpayer receives from the government? Don't forget.. it has to be fair.
Yes, direct receipts from social benefit programs can be easily measured (and of course your idea would by design eliminate these programs).. but what if they run a business that benefits from subsidy or special tax breaks? How do you measure that benefit? What if they hold patents, or copyrights, that are protected by U.S. law? What about companies that provide services to the government and military? How do you measure the use of public facilities like sidewalks and parks? What about police/fire/garbage services? Do victims of crimes pay more taxes? People who create more trash? Etc, etc, etc.
IMO, it's not possible to fairly quantify what one recieves from the government.
Slashdot Mirror
My own view is "we don't need another law", if the ones we have don't cover the issue, what is going to make the next one work?
Maybe the fact that the new law is written to specifically cover the issue?
The problem is that the Constitution was not written with these things in mind. Remember, the Constitution was written at a time when slavery was legal and only men could vote. So we have these things called amendments.. specifically there's the 14th amendment, but that doesn't exactly clear things up. So we turn to the courts, as specified in the Constitution. Some people don't like this method because it turns out the courts generally don't agree with their interpretation.
The only reason we need laws to enforce these things is because some people wrongly feel that women, blacks, jews, gays, etc. are inferior and that it is correct to discriminate against them.
MS may be backing down in the face of a country that (in case you missed the last election) is rabidly against the gay rights movement.
In case YOU missed the last election, and the 6 months that have followed, the nation is not unanimous when it comes to gay rights. For instance, Connecticut, with a Republican governor, is about to pass a bill creating civil unions in that state. This bill came about purely as a result of legislative action. There were no courts involved. My state of New Jersey has created domestic partnerships. While these don't go as far as civil unions, it's still a step in the right direction, and far from "rabidly against the gay rights movement." We also recently had a governor declare that he was gay, and based on public polls, there was little negative backlash (there was backlash about the associated scandal, but that's another story).
Most Windows users don't know what it means to multitask. It's much harder to do when you don't have multiple desktops, virtual or otherwise.
Speaking as someone who has used a wide variety of systems with multiple desktops and/or monitors, I do believe you are talking out of your ass.
Financial analyses of NASA have shown that under 10% of its budget is typically put towards expenses directly related to spaceflight, and the rest is research, bidding, bureaucracy, and government waste. That suggests that the cost for private industry to pull this off is $50 billion.
You've exhibited what I call the Fallacy of Privatization.
Private entities are no where near immune from research, bidding, bureaucracy, and waste.
Research: Can a moon base be constructed completely with off-the-shelf parts? How? If not, what parts will you use? Will you test any of this equipment before sending it to the Moon?
Bidding: Do you think a private entity will manufacture every single piece of the spacecraft and moon base? Unless they do that, there will be bidding or some other form of procurement involved.
Bureaucracy: Do you think that private entities don't have accountants, IT, secretaries, or janitors? Any entity undertaking such a project would have to be quite large, and would be burdened with some amount of bureaucracy.
Waste: There are numerous examples of private waste. Of course, this occurs on a case-by-case basis and there is no way to say how much waste will be introduced by a private entity. However, it is stupid to believe that there will be 'no waste'. All it takes is one birthday/holiday/etc. party in the office and you've introduced waste.
Perhaps you have a point in the general sense. However, web applications are not incapable of incrementally saving state.. they just don't do it to save bandwidth, generally. I guess it depends on what your app is and how you build it. Thinking more about my example, I think it actually uses activex or some other MS crap..
I don't think web apps are appropriate in cases where you have to enter large amounts of data. i.e., you should never be seriously inconvenienced by a power outage. Non-web apps aren't immune from this problem, either. For example, Word only saves every 10 minutes by default.
Web applications work pretty well for ordering pizza. For anything more complicated, they suck.
Perhaps it is you that is out of your fucking mind?
We use a web application for time sheets, budgets, A/R A/P tracking, invoice generation, etc.
Sure, it has its little problems, like any app, but it's much better than the paper system we used to have.
Web application does not necessarily mean it has to be public.
Every company I know saves back to ACAD 2000 so as to have a stable base.
We don't. Our big (public) clients moved onto 2002 a while ago. If we submit anything in 2000, they'll just send it back to us.
We rollout 2006 in a month or so.
That doesn't make sense. Credit is determined on an individual basis only. You don't have a joint credit rating if you are married. If he was receiving bills in her name, they could only put negative marks on her credit report, not his. Something's not right in your story.
I mean, you either watch the movie or if you find it objectionable, don't.
What is the saying.. some people want to have their cake and eat it, too?
I don't sweat too much on privacy.
I blow away all my history, caches, etc before I shut down each and every time. I run a virus update and scan each evening while running my spyware catchers. I never give my real info on the net, I only ever give out my hotmail address except to a few friends
They already target ads to people based on location, which they guess from the IP address.
Note that Google isn't the only one doing this.. I usually get ads on Yahoo! for the NJ lottery.
Also, sometimes after I disconnect my TV Windows likes to switch around my preferences so that any video that starts goes fullscreen on my main monitor instead of the TV, covering the player, desktop, and mouse pointer until I can figure out how to quit the video player with the keyboard
Windows isn't arbitrarily "switching around" your preferences. It's coping with the situation. What you've done is tell your Media Player that its default screen position is Monitor 2: 0,0. When you disconnect the TV (monitor 2), Windows can't put the Media Player there, or else you'd be here bitching that Windows is putting the Media Player on a non-existant monitor. Windows does the next best thing: it puts the Media Player at Monitor 1: 0,0.
Also, I don't know any Media Player that obscures the mouse pointer while the mouse is moving. Sounds like an inferior program or driver. From my experience, most programs are not written to work properly with multiple monitors. Furthermore, have you tried Alt+Enter to exit fullscreen mode? I don't know what app you're using, but alt+enter is the default "toggle fullscreen" keystroke. F11 is also used sometimes.
wont that help the people/authorities detect and circumvent jams
The problem isn't detecting traffic jams. They usually occur in the same places. The problem is that in most places, there is no way to circumvent the traffic jam. In the NYC metro area, most of the area highways are saturated during the peak-period, even without any anomalous events. If one road is diverted, where are the cars going to go? Local roads cannot handle the amount of traffic a highway can handle. Other highways are already saturated, so if people detour there, it ends up just slowing down that road as well.
According to Ameritrade (my broker), special hardware is required to read the information
That's correct. The tape is unreadable with human eyes.
1. Withholding the Win32 programming interface from competitors as long as possible prior to the launch of Windows 95 (i.e until Office95 was nearly completed) so that they could advertise that only Office had 32-bit apps. This is a classic example of using a monopoly in one field (Windows) to obtain a monopoly in another field (office productivity software). This is unequivocally illegal under U.S. antitrust law.
Odd. I seem to recall having to install something called Win32s to run 32-bit programs on Win 3.1. These programs were not MS Office.
Worth a read, even for an article that is two months old.
The implication here is that articles older than two months are generally not worth reading?
It seems Yahoo serves their own graphics from the same server as their ads. Silly rabbit.
Silly to you, but smart to anyone with half a brain. If they serve up their content images from the same server as ad images, it discourages people from using the "Block Images from This Server" option.
A doctrine which establishes that someone has a right to the property or work of another is unworkable and immoral. It's just that simple.
Oh? If it's so simple, could you just show me in the Big Book of Morals?
Morals are whatever a society determines them to be, and they are not set in stone. If a society determines that it's moral to redistribute property, then it is. Saying something is immoral only makes sense if you have a common definition of what is moral. Such a thing does not exist.
That's part of the contract the landlord enters into by becoming a landlord in the first place.
Implied contract, perhaps. Language to the opposite effect could be in the contract between me and the landlord, but that doesn't make it legal.
In any case, it was meant as an example of how property owners' rights are not as absolute as you claim. My initial argument stands: Property owners are not gods. Yes, they enjoy broad powers over the land they own, but they are not the absolute authority on their land. That still belongs to the government, whether you like it or not.
While you are technically correct, if your "rules" are in violation of law, then you are in violation of law and can be held responsible for it. Furthermore, as a property owner, you give up the right to make some "rules" if you choose to be a landlord or otherwise use your land in a commercial application. i.e., my landlord cannot drop by at any time of the day simply because he owns the land. It's illegal (statewide). As a citizen, those are my "rules", and they better damn well be followed. Deal with it.
owners of private property have the right to do anything they want
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Property owners are not gods! They are required by law to do many things, and are prohibited by law from doing many things. Simply owning property does not mean you can completely control what goes on on that property. Yes, it does give you broad powers over the use of the property, but you do not instantly become a dictator because you own some arbitrarily defined piece of land. This is a very common misconception that property owners love to see spread around.
Not without.. third-party products.
What exactly defines a third-party product, in the context of Linux? For example, if you want a different UI, you can use a different WM. If this WM isn't included with the distribution (or default config/install, or whatever arbitrary designation you want for argument's sake), isn't that the same as installing a third-party app on Windows?
I think there is this misconception that Windows users do not have choice because MS only provides certain options. That is true to some extent, but "third-party" tools do things with Windows that MS doesn't want to do.. so the choice is still there for Windows users, it's just not provided by Microsoft. I'm just not seeing that big a difference between the two platforms in this respect.
Is there any problem with lumping it in the "Unix" category
Only if you're a pedant.
That money has already been taxed
This argument doesn't make sense in the context of the current system. If it did, then why not eliminate gas tax, sales tax, property tax, FCC taxes, etc., etc. I pay for all of that with income that has already been taxed. The inheritance tax is no different.
A taxpayer should pay for what he/she receives from the governmemt, and nothing more.
Sure. Now could you please give us your proposal for a metric that will measure what a taxpayer receives from the government? Don't forget.. it has to be fair.
Yes, direct receipts from social benefit programs can be easily measured (and of course your idea would by design eliminate these programs).. but what if they run a business that benefits from subsidy or special tax breaks? How do you measure that benefit? What if they hold patents, or copyrights, that are protected by U.S. law? What about companies that provide services to the government and military? How do you measure the use of public facilities like sidewalks and parks? What about police/fire/garbage services? Do victims of crimes pay more taxes? People who create more trash? Etc, etc, etc.
IMO, it's not possible to fairly quantify what one recieves from the government.