According to BayStar's Web site, Burst.com is part of its portfolio. It's unclear what the VC's position is, but Burst is the company, reduced to one or two people, that's suing Microsoft for a tidy packet. It's one of the private antitrust suits that Microsoft has yet to settle.
Burst claims Microsoft, which it collaborated with for two years, ripped off a media transmission technology it designed to send video and audio files electronically and stuck it in Media Player 9.K/i>
Burst has no other business outside its suit and evidently is the model BayStar wants SCO to emulate.
Either that, or have found that the Burst suit is a useful way to funnel enough money into BayStar from Microsoft under-the-table to pay for whatever stunt they are planning to pull with SCO. But that would be one a them tinfoil-hat theories...
There for awhile, SCO was a pretty darn good engine for anti-Linux FUD. And it's pretty clear that was the specific intent of all of Darl's motormouth behavior. But that strategy has by now completely played itself out.
Now, the absolute WORST thing that could happen in that regard is for any of the court cases to wrap themselves up. If your goal is anti-Linux FUD, a wrap up of any of the suits would appear as a Linux stamp of approval and send it off running.
So the question is, after attempting every stalling tactic in the book, what effect would a change in ownership of the IP at the center of the court cases have on the cases themselves? And is Baystar in a position to facilitate just such a change of ownership?
IP devaulation is a consequence of increased information flow. Period.
Unsurprisingly, those who are dependent on the value of IP are shriveling up.
The classic example is the music distribution industry-- it's whole existence is dependent on maintaining a narrow content pipeline to the marketplace over which they can exert control. Poof-- the internet made that go away and now they are careening to Earth at terminal velocity without a parachute, grasping at the air in a futile attempt to slow their descent. So what's the last thing that goes through their mind as they hit the ground?
I think size is a far more serious problem than speed-- just because I can put multi-gigabytes in my PC doesn't mean I want to waste them loading bloatware. In fact, I probably wouldn't NEED the multi-gigabytes if it wasn't for code bloat. Of course, Gates loves such things because the machine retailers love them-- easier to sell more memory to someone who needs it because they just tried to upgrade to XP or something.
So which compilers space-optimize by rolling loops instead of unrolling them?
JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?
At some point quite possibly, ALL of them. The whole concept of what a "TV SET" is, is subject to change-- and could become a mental construct rather than a physical one.
For a more down-to-earth example, a "TV SET" could be an assemblage of user-selected and configured software components that are put together as the user sees fit-- just like one is allowed to assemble their own collection of component audio/video equipment today as they see fit, the future equivalents of these could very well provide for capabilities completely unforseen by the designers of the system.
Valenti is a dinosaur who can only barely sense that his extinction is at hand-- due in fact, to his very inability to understand what is happening to him...
The real problem with Valenti is that he is assuming the validity of an outmoded paradigm-- that everyone will be satisfied all doing the *same* thing with distributed content, and that a few big corporations or industry groups get to decide what that thing is.
Linux, FSF and the GNU however, was originally motivated by the desire to specifically wrest such centralized control over technology, and especially now that it is getting more complex to the point that the one-size-fits-all mentality is showing itself to be more and more antiquated. Linux's very nature UNDERSCOREs what's wrong with the Valenti assumption-- and IMHO, unfortunately for them, despite congressional attempts to prop thing up, Valenti and his crew are losing their grip on things and are scrambling to patch the holes in the dike.
Kerio Personal Firewall 2.1.5 (I like it better than the new one)
Proxomitron Naoko 4.5 (June version) (an absolute must)
MKS Toolkit
Stuffit Expander
Putty
Ethereal
Adobe Acrobat
Force ASPI
K-Lite mega codec pack + Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative codecs
PTFB (Push The Freakin' Button)
Hey--, here's an interesting thought-- why is it do you suppose, that they haven't started sticking advertising in bathrooms-- or maybe they have and I just haven't encountered any as of yet.
What makes them so sacred that the ad agencies fear to tread? Seems like they have a captive audience for a few minutes that ISN'T being bombarded with pitches (kinda nice, actually), but I don't reall see what's holding them back...
Then again, maybe they're afraid that stuff'll get peed or dumped on (and they're probably right about that)...
And I expect one of MSFT's next moves will be to help make sure that newbie purchasers of "home" Linux boxes (such as the ones targeted to appear here) have bad experiences. Probably not too hard when such newbies are buying budget boxes from Walmart and won't be hooked into security-patch central, etc...
If MS can influence such "entry level" Linux experiences to go awry, that could be far better FUD and anti-Linux PR than anything coming out of the SCO/IBM/Baystar/RBC stunts...
Don't be surprised if you start seeing some REALLY SHODDY Linux configurations showing up at budget retail outlets...
I agree about the Archos-- and in fact I think the BEST feature of it is the fact I can get source code to player software that's better than what the factory built here..
And sure, most of you are saying, "I don't want to see the source code, I just want it to work", but that is because you don't realize what the EFFECT of having code available to the public means that all kinds of folks are tweaking and getting it to do things the designers never thought of. The latest hack for RockBox is to ADD talking directories and other talking features, which the original never had, and a crude video playback on the LCD (not that you'll use it, but someone did it because they could)-- there's an entire episode of Futurama you can playback on the darn thing, though it's a recipe for eyestrain on the dinky on/off pixel display-- but the fact that someone could have hacked it because they have access to source means that it's not a static product that the manufacturer will intentionally obsolete in the next version so you'll toss it and by their new one...
Sure, the Archos isn't a super capable platform that you can crunch 3D graphics on (though there is a simple 3D program on it now:-), but THINK of the power we would have as consumers if we were to DEMAND the manufacturers make their electronic toys open-source so legions of users could add their own enhancements rather than remain the bleating sheep of their marketing schemes...
In fact, someone WOULD have hacked OGG on the Archos by now, except the decoder is canned in a chip such that the CPU hasn't the right kind of access &/or horsepower to do it...
And I myself, don't particulary want to tweak the source code, but it is comforting to know that it's available and means the device will have a life of its own despite the manufacturer's inevitable desire to obsolete it.
Maybe you like these manufacturers dictating what you can do with the hardware-- what you can play on what, etc.., and as long as you roll over for them, that's what you're always gonna get. But if products that have that little extra capability for end users to hack and customize them become popular enough, the manufacturers will ultimately PLAN for it and make sure the hardware is flexible enough so you can really do what you want with it.
Suppose next year, it's no longer Ogg, or MP3, or WMA, but someone comes out with a new algorithm that is better quality, or smaller size, or whatever, and COULD run on the box you have but the manufacturer won't give you the code to do it instead preferring to sell you a new one? Do you really WANT a future where all products, hardware or software are by subscription and you have to buy a new whatever-it-is every year when the one you have is too out-of-date and the manufacturer refuses to support it anymore?
Don't hold your breath waiting for Ogg players until someone starts making chips for it, such as this one for Mp3. It may be that not that many of the player manufacturers actually make the chips that do the encoding/decoding, they just buy what's available off-the-shelf and good luck finding Ogg ones, even if they wanted to build such a box.
In the meantime, it's probably a good idea to stick with open-sourceable players such as those that can run RockBox... 20G storage with recording for about $200-- and some have hacked in 60G drives plus more memory for cache which significantly reduces battery life.
Which is worse?
A. Giving extraordinary powers to a government whose motives are unknown
B. Having your parent/sibling/child/friend killed in a bomb explosion on a bus
Seeing as how A has been known to produce certain infamous regimes that have been known to do far worse than B for entire masses of their population, I'd say A is definately worse.
Oh, and, A producing mass quantities of B is usually combined with:
C. A majority population oblivious, complacent or in denial, about their governments intended use of said extraordinary powers.
Which is worse?
A. Giving extraordinary powers to a government whose motives are unknown
B. Having your parent/sibling/child/friend killed in a bomb explosion on a bus
Seeing as how A has been known to produce certain infamous regimes that have been known to do far worse than B for entire masses of their population, I'd say A is definately worse.
Hell of a lot of work for not-particularly-funny
on
Usenet Audio
·
· Score: 1
Someone's got too much time on their hands...
On the other hand, the idea of kiting streaming media through the usenet servers is some food for
thought... 1 second MP3s? That's probably the
biggest clue that it's a joke...
The day anti-social, non-approachable nerds like you (this is not a troll but an accurate description of the mindset) stop controlling the direction of the Linux desktop community is the day it finally starts gaining real momentum outside of its current niche position.
Seems to me there's two different issues here.
1. Must every "choice" necessarily be made acceptable to the least-common-denominator ("NORMAL people" in your speak)? What is the matter with having an "expert" choice and a "novice" choice among other things? You would apparently force experts to have to use novice tools just like you are claiming the "nerds" are attempting to force novices to use expert tools. An example one-size-fits-all solution would be to reduce all tools to one-- the hammer. Makes a lousy screwdriver, but hey, you only have to learn to use one tool, and hey, NORMAL people mostly don't need to use screws anyway, nails work just fine!
2. Whether or not Linux "gains momentum" outside of its "current niche" is irrelevant to having choice-- so what if Linux never does that-- would the fact that something could never become mainstream be an argument against having it as a choice? Frankly, I don't care if Linux gains such momentum or not, I'm not in the business of selling it or anything that depends on it-- let the novices use the Mac or Windows, why should I care?
I've always figured that novices often don't stay novices forever-- they eventually grow up and learn how to type and realize they've got ten fingers and not just one, and figure they should be able to use them. And may even find parts of their brain they never learned how to use...
The only thing that has stymied me on Google is the periodic need to include a period as a critical portion of the search term-- doesn't matter how you quote it as far as I can tell, the period symbol gets edited out. Now and then, it's a crucial filter on the search term...
*shrugs* But then, I guess I'm being old-fashioned and discriminatory when I say certain words have meanings and it's not a good idea to change those meanings on a whim rather than focusing on the REAL issue at hand...
The problem is, there are some words which are ill-defined. Marriage is not one of them, but it is based on two that are: "man" and "woman," and they are particularly ill-defined in a legal sense where it applies to marriage. Specifically, see this
Without taking a political position, let me just point out that the English word marriage already has a definition: "The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife". Any attempt to redefine that word based on political correctness smacks of "whims and prejudices" to me.
The point is not whether or not there is an existing definition, but that the existing definition is prejudicial in that it doesn't apply equally to everyone.
In fact, the above definition of marriage is inherently prejudicially exclusive in that it presumes that every human individual is either a "man" or a "woman." The prejudice is in the erroneous assumption that gender is a binary state which is clearly false. The definitions that are sorely in need of reexamination are far more rudimentary than "marriage"-- that of "man" and "woman."
How then, does the term "marriage" apply to an individual who is completely hermaphroditic, such as in a dizygotic chimera?
How about an individual who is only partially intersexed, such as an genetic XXY individual, pseudohermaphrodite or someone with an endocrine or hormonal disorder? What about someone who is transgendered via a medical procedure? And what if such a procedure wasn't voluntary, such as when newborn males with small penises are thought to be females, surgically "corrected" and grow up believing they are females only to find out later (perhaps at puberty, or even later) they are otherwise male? Who gets to decide what gender these people are and on what basis?
Does marriage simply not apply to some of these individuals? What do you do if one of these persons ends up inadvertently married to the "same" gender but who had honestly believed they were different genders when they got married and found out later that perhaps they are not? How "male" does one have to be to be considered "male" enough to marry as a male? 51%?... 80%?.... 95%?.... What does it mean to have such a fundamental social institution that simply doesn't apply to certain people?
Can we simply ignore the issue because it's only a minority population of individuals with indeterminate or intermediate gender? How large would such a population have to be to be taken into consideration regarding "marriage?" How do you determine if someone is a member of such a population-- what means are to be used for determining intermediacy and how intermediate do you have to be to be considered one of such a group?
What if the only "intermediacy" you have is that you find yourself attracted to the same sex? Apparently, even that is too much intermediacy for "marriage" to apply, at least in some quarters-- suggesting that the required percentages of "maleness" or "femaleness" required for marriage are quite high.
And finally, does love have anything at all to do with marriage given the kind of constraints some people would apparently apply?
IMHO-- How better could we undermine the institution of marriage then to withhold it from certain classes of persons? How could we make it more irrelevant to society at large than to pass a constitutional amendment proclaiming it an exclusive club? Watch what you wish for...
Those who yearn for a black and white world can try to ignore these difficult issues, but even the passing of a constitutional amendment isn't going to make them disappear...
Re:Heisenbugs...
on
Debugging
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Heisenbugs are almost always caused by buffer overflows. They can often be prevented (at least in Fortran 77/90/95/03) by enabling array-bounds checking at compile time; but before I knew about this, I had a hell of a time tracking them down.
Fortran?-- who is this guy? Last time I worked in Fortran it was on cards... Sigh... I had a crush on the keypunch operator...
Actually, Heisenbugs are often caused by invalid pointers in C-- pointers pointing to memory that has been freed or relocated, pointers pointing to 0 due to an unchecked malloc failure, etc.. Enabling bounds checking can help find these, but not always...
Great idea, but it's written in Java? That tears it-- I was gonna download it before I read this one. From what I've seen, Java has the resource-hog-bloatware bug worse than Micro$oft...
Slashdot Mirror
According to BayStar's Web site, Burst.com is part of its portfolio. It's unclear what the VC's position is, but Burst is the company, reduced to one or two people, that's suing Microsoft for a tidy packet. It's one of the private antitrust suits that Microsoft has yet to settle.
Burst claims Microsoft, which it collaborated with for two years, ripped off a media transmission technology it designed to send video and audio files electronically and stuck it in Media Player 9.K/i>
Burst has no other business outside its suit and evidently is the model BayStar wants SCO to emulate.
Either that, or have found that the Burst suit is a useful way to funnel enough money into BayStar from Microsoft under-the-table to pay for whatever stunt they are planning to pull with SCO. But that would be one a them tinfoil-hat theories...
There for awhile, SCO was a pretty darn good engine for anti-Linux FUD. And it's pretty clear that was the specific intent of all of Darl's motormouth behavior. But that strategy has by now completely played itself out.
Now, the absolute WORST thing that could happen in that regard is for any of the court cases to wrap themselves up. If your goal is anti-Linux FUD, a wrap up of any of the suits would appear as a Linux stamp of approval and send it off running.
So the question is, after attempting every stalling tactic in the book, what effect would a change in ownership of the IP at the center of the court cases have on the cases themselves? And is Baystar in a position to facilitate just such a change of ownership?
Guess we'll know pretty soon...
IP devaulation is a consequence of increased information flow. Period.
Unsurprisingly, those who are dependent on the value of IP are shriveling up.
The classic example is the music distribution industry-- it's whole existence is dependent on maintaining a narrow content pipeline to the marketplace over which they can exert control. Poof-- the internet made that go away and now they are careening to Earth at terminal velocity without a parachute, grasping at the air in a futile attempt to slow their descent. So what's the last thing that goes through their mind as they hit the ground?
Kiss it goodbye!
Such as Donald Knuth, Kenneth Iverson or Charles Moore...
I think size is a far more serious problem than speed-- just because I can put multi-gigabytes in my PC doesn't mean I want to waste them loading bloatware. In fact, I probably wouldn't NEED the multi-gigabytes if it wasn't for code bloat. Of course, Gates loves such things because the machine retailers love them-- easier to sell more memory to someone who needs it because they just tried to upgrade to XP or something.
So which compilers space-optimize by rolling loops instead of unrolling them?
JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?
At some point quite possibly, ALL of them. The whole concept of what a "TV SET" is, is subject to change-- and could become a mental construct rather than a physical one.
For a more down-to-earth example, a "TV SET" could be an assemblage of user-selected and configured software components that are put together as the user sees fit-- just like one is allowed to assemble their own collection of component audio/video equipment today as they see fit, the future equivalents of these could very well provide for capabilities completely unforseen by the designers of the system.
Valenti is a dinosaur who can only barely sense that his extinction is at hand-- due in fact, to his very inability to understand what is happening to him...
The real problem with Valenti is that he is assuming the validity of an outmoded paradigm-- that everyone will be satisfied all doing the *same* thing with distributed content, and that a few big corporations or industry groups get to decide what that thing is.
Linux, FSF and the GNU however, was originally motivated by the desire to specifically wrest such centralized control over technology, and especially now that it is getting more complex to the point that the one-size-fits-all mentality is showing itself to be more and more antiquated. Linux's very nature UNDERSCOREs what's wrong with the Valenti assumption-- and IMHO, unfortunately for them, despite congressional attempts to prop thing up, Valenti and his crew are losing their grip on things and are scrambling to patch the holes in the dike.
I'll then add the following:
Kerio Personal Firewall 2.1.5 (I like it better than the new one)
Proxomitron Naoko 4.5 (June version) (an absolute must)
MKS Toolkit
Stuffit Expander
Putty
Ethereal
Adobe Acrobat
Force ASPI
K-Lite mega codec pack + Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative codecs
PTFB (Push The Freakin' Button)
-- Kaz
Hey--, here's an interesting thought-- why is it do you suppose, that they haven't started sticking advertising in bathrooms-- or maybe they have and I just haven't encountered any as of yet.
What makes them so sacred that the ad agencies fear to tread? Seems like they have a captive audience for a few minutes that ISN'T being bombarded with pitches (kinda nice, actually), but I don't reall see what's holding them back...
Then again, maybe they're afraid that stuff'll get peed or dumped on (and they're probably right about that)...
And I expect one of MSFT's next moves will be to help make sure that newbie purchasers of "home" Linux boxes (such as the ones targeted to appear here) have bad experiences. Probably not too hard when such newbies are buying budget boxes from Walmart and won't be hooked into security-patch central, etc...
If MS can influence such "entry level" Linux experiences to go awry, that could be far better FUD and anti-Linux PR than anything coming out of the SCO/IBM/Baystar/RBC stunts...
Don't be surprised if you start seeing some REALLY SHODDY Linux configurations showing up at budget retail outlets...
I agree about the Archos-- and in fact I think the BEST feature of it is the fact I can get source code to player software that's better than what the factory built here..
And sure, most of you are saying, "I don't want to see the source code, I just want it to work", but that is because you don't realize what the EFFECT of having code available to the public means that all kinds of folks are tweaking and getting it to do things the designers never thought of. The latest hack for RockBox is to ADD talking directories and other talking features, which the original never had, and a crude video playback on the LCD (not that you'll use it, but someone did it because they could)-- there's an entire episode of Futurama you can playback on the darn thing, though it's a recipe for eyestrain on the dinky on/off pixel display-- but the fact that someone could have hacked it because they have access to source means that it's not a static product that the manufacturer will intentionally obsolete in the next version so you'll toss it and by their new one...
Sure, the Archos isn't a super capable platform that you can crunch 3D graphics on (though there is a simple 3D program on it now :-), but THINK of the power we would have as consumers if we were to DEMAND the manufacturers make their electronic toys open-source so legions of users could add their own enhancements rather than remain the bleating sheep of their marketing schemes...
In fact, someone WOULD have hacked OGG on the Archos by now, except the decoder is canned in a chip such that the CPU hasn't the right kind of access &/or horsepower to do it...
And I myself, don't particulary want to tweak the source code, but it is comforting to know that it's available and means the device will have a life of its own despite the manufacturer's inevitable desire to obsolete it.
Maybe you like these manufacturers dictating what you can do with the hardware-- what you can play on what, etc.., and as long as you roll over for them, that's what you're always gonna get. But if products that have that little extra capability for end users to hack and customize them become popular enough, the manufacturers will ultimately PLAN for it and make sure the hardware is flexible enough so you can really do what you want with it.
Suppose next year, it's no longer Ogg, or MP3, or WMA, but someone comes out with a new algorithm that is better quality, or smaller size, or whatever, and COULD run on the box you have but the manufacturer won't give you the code to do it instead preferring to sell you a new one? Do you really WANT a future where all products, hardware or software are by subscription and you have to buy a new whatever-it-is every year when the one you have is too out-of-date and the manufacturer refuses to support it anymore?
Don't hold your breath waiting for Ogg players until someone starts making chips for it, such as this one for Mp3. It may be that not that many of the player manufacturers actually make the chips that do the encoding/decoding, they just buy what's available off-the-shelf and good luck finding Ogg ones, even if they wanted to build such a box.
In the meantime, it's probably a good idea to stick with open-sourceable players such as those that can run RockBox... 20G storage with recording for about $200-- and some have hacked in 60G drives plus more memory for cache which significantly reduces battery life.
I wonder how long it will be before you can emulate the emulator that is emulating the XBox, via WINE.
It would be quite funny to see the XBox games running on a Linux box, faster even than with Windows.
Yeah, that would mean you can run Linux on your XBox and run the emulator under Wine on that and have it run faster than the vanilla XBox---- :-)
Which is worse?
A. Giving extraordinary powers to a government whose motives are unknown
B. Having your parent/sibling/child/friend killed in a bomb explosion on a bus
Seeing as how A has been known to produce certain infamous regimes that have been known to do far worse than B for entire masses of their population, I'd say A is definately worse.
Oh, and, A producing mass quantities of B is usually combined with:
C. A majority population oblivious, complacent or in denial, about their governments intended use of said extraordinary powers.
Which is worse?
A. Giving extraordinary powers to a government whose motives are unknown
B. Having your parent/sibling/child/friend killed in a bomb explosion on a bus
Seeing as how A has been known to produce certain infamous regimes that have been known to do far worse than B for entire masses of their population, I'd say A is definately worse.
Someone's got too much time on their hands... On the other hand, the idea of kiting streaming media through the usenet servers is some food for thought... 1 second MP3s? That's probably the biggest clue that it's a joke...
The day anti-social, non-approachable nerds like you (this is not a troll but an accurate description of the mindset) stop controlling the direction of the Linux desktop community is the day it finally starts gaining real momentum outside of its current niche position.
Seems to me there's two different issues here.
1. Must every "choice" necessarily be made acceptable to the least-common-denominator ("NORMAL people" in your speak)? What is the matter with having an "expert" choice and a "novice" choice among other things? You would apparently force experts to have to use novice tools just like you are claiming the "nerds" are attempting to force novices to use expert tools. An example one-size-fits-all solution would be to reduce all tools to one-- the hammer. Makes a lousy screwdriver, but hey, you only have to learn to use one tool, and hey, NORMAL people mostly don't need to use screws anyway, nails work just fine!
2. Whether or not Linux "gains momentum" outside of its "current niche" is irrelevant to having choice-- so what if Linux never does that-- would the fact that something could never become mainstream be an argument against having it as a choice? Frankly, I don't care if Linux gains such momentum or not, I'm not in the business of selling it or anything that depends on it-- let the novices use the Mac or Windows, why should I care?
I've always figured that novices often don't stay novices forever-- they eventually grow up and learn how to type and realize they've got ten fingers and not just one, and figure they should be able to use them. And may even find parts of their brain they never learned how to use...
The only thing that has stymied me on Google is the periodic need to include a period as a critical portion of the search term-- doesn't matter how you quote it as far as I can tell, the period symbol gets edited out. Now and then, it's a crucial filter on the search term...
You've been suckling at the electronic tit long enough as it is...
Being the most gullibile company ever incorporated.
Either that, or they got a fantastic bargain basement deal offered in exchange for some free press as a SCO "customer" who actually paid up..
The real question here is, how much did they actually pay?
*shrugs* But then, I guess I'm being old-fashioned and discriminatory when I say certain words have meanings and it's not a good idea to change those meanings on a whim rather than focusing on the REAL issue at hand...
The problem is, there are some words which are ill-defined. Marriage is not one of them, but it is based on two that are: "man" and "woman," and they are particularly ill-defined in a legal sense where it applies to marriage. Specifically, see this
Without taking a political position, let me just point out that the English word marriage already has a definition: "The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife". Any attempt to redefine that word based on political correctness smacks of "whims and prejudices" to me.
The point is not whether or not there is an existing definition, but that the existing definition is prejudicial in that it doesn't apply equally to everyone.
In fact, the above definition of marriage is inherently prejudicially exclusive in that it presumes that every human individual is either a "man" or a "woman." The prejudice is in the erroneous assumption that gender is a binary state which is clearly false. The definitions that are sorely in need of reexamination are far more rudimentary than "marriage"-- that of "man" and "woman."
How then, does the term "marriage" apply to an individual who is completely hermaphroditic, such as in a dizygotic chimera? How about an individual who is only partially intersexed, such as an genetic XXY individual, pseudohermaphrodite or someone with an endocrine or hormonal disorder? What about someone who is transgendered via a medical procedure? And what if such a procedure wasn't voluntary, such as when newborn males with small penises are thought to be females, surgically "corrected" and grow up believing they are females only to find out later (perhaps at puberty, or even later) they are otherwise male? Who gets to decide what gender these people are and on what basis?
Does marriage simply not apply to some of these individuals? What do you do if one of these persons ends up inadvertently married to the "same" gender but who had honestly believed they were different genders when they got married and found out later that perhaps they are not? How "male" does one have to be to be considered "male" enough to marry as a male? 51%?... 80%?.... 95%?.... What does it mean to have such a fundamental social institution that simply doesn't apply to certain people?
Can we simply ignore the issue because it's only a minority population of individuals with indeterminate or intermediate gender? How large would such a population have to be to be taken into consideration regarding "marriage?" How do you determine if someone is a member of such a population-- what means are to be used for determining intermediacy and how intermediate do you have to be to be considered one of such a group? What if the only "intermediacy" you have is that you find yourself attracted to the same sex? Apparently, even that is too much intermediacy for "marriage" to apply, at least in some quarters-- suggesting that the required percentages of "maleness" or "femaleness" required for marriage are quite high.
And finally, does love have anything at all to do with marriage given the kind of constraints some people would apparently apply?
IMHO-- How better could we undermine the institution of marriage then to withhold it from certain classes of persons? How could we make it more irrelevant to society at large than to pass a constitutional amendment proclaiming it an exclusive club? Watch what you wish for...
Those who yearn for a black and white world can try to ignore these difficult issues, but even the passing of a constitutional amendment isn't going to make them disappear...
Heisenbugs are almost always caused by buffer overflows. They can often be prevented (at least in Fortran 77/90/95/03) by enabling array-bounds checking at compile time; but before I knew about this, I had a hell of a time tracking them down.
Fortran?-- who is this guy? Last time I worked in Fortran it was on cards... Sigh... I had a crush on the keypunch operator...
Actually, Heisenbugs are often caused by invalid pointers in C-- pointers pointing to memory that has been freed or relocated, pointers pointing to 0 due to an unchecked malloc failure, etc.. Enabling bounds checking can help find these, but not always...
Great idea, but it's written in Java? That tears it-- I was gonna download it before I read this one. From what I've seen, Java has the resource-hog-bloatware bug worse than Micro$oft...
Then setup streaming webcams in some interesting places...