As mentioned here, I don't really object to WMF in particular; the parent post had it as an example (complete with their own assertions as to its outdated status), and I reused it making my point on that account.
I don't really object to WMF so much in particular, and was using it as an example strictly at the parent's suggestion; consider it a placeholder for any nonstandardized format included by reference, in the context of the refutation of an argument that only "(l)users" will make use of functionality that embeds such content (and thus, by extension, that having a standard which includes nonstandardized specifications by reference is somehow acceptable).
What concerns me much more significantly is Microsoft's internally-developed XML-based vector graphics standard, which ISO refused to accept when it was submitted individually. Slipping a format which ISO refused when it was submitted standalone in through the back door by making it a subset of a much larger (and more politically charged) standard strikes me as exceedingly bad behavior for any vendor to get away with.
People only lock things when they've got somthing to hide.
Maybe if people were rational, and had the same internal cost/benefit values attached to the convenience of leaving their homes unsecured and the risk of loss, that might be the case. Thing is, people evaluate that differently; I know people who have quite nice toys and leave their doors habitually unlocked, and people who don't have all that much that's valuable but are extremely cautious about home security. In practice, the correlation you describe just isn't there.
(Consider: Folks who have the financial security to live in a neighborhood they're comfortable with may decide to leave their doors unlocked because they feel safe, even if they have more to lose; people who are less well-to-do typically live in neighborhoods with higher crime rates, and may keep their doors locked not because of risk of financial loss but concern about attacks on their person. There's more than just one factor in play).
I have an account with Grand Central -- and as I see it, this move means I don't need to worry about that going away as they try to find a working business model. Woot! (Integration with Google Talk or such would be nifty, too -- though I really want to be able to forward my number to any arbitrary SIP address; supposedly, that was on the roadmap).
So, there are two arguments I see people use to say OOXML is not open:
Neither of those things concerns me much; I'm a lot more concerned about failure to reuse preexisting standards. Forcing anyone who wants to build a full implementation of OOXML to implement Microsoft's own vector graphics language rather than using one of the many available SVG libraries is unnecessary and excessive. Same thing goes for MathML, XLink, etc. OOXML reinvents the wheel frequently, down to having their own date formatting quirks and names for colors (for which there are also ISO-standardized versions). To be sure, OOXML may still technically be "open" -- but if it's unnecessarily complex for anyone to implement without access to Microsoft's legacy codebase (from which the funky restrictions were cribbed), what's the difference?
Any "standard" which is so clearly developed with ease of implementation by a single vendor in mind has a rather obvious scent of unilaterality to it.
Second, some people are concerned that OOXML allows documents that use proprietary image formats or other elements? I ask you, what moron (l)user in this day and age is going to use a WMF file instead of jpg, bmp, gif, or png when creating a word document?
Is Microsoft's clipart library no longer largely WMF? Even if that's the case, modern OOXML implementations will need to implement these ancient, antiquated formats to be able to read documents which were imported into OOXML from Word 95 (or other versions which *did* use WMF as the primary format for imported documents) -- meaning that backwards compatibility will remain much of the headache it was even before documents were converted into a "standardized format". The right way to convert things is normalization, damnit -- if, rather than simply forcing all implementors of the new format to support all the quirks of the old, the conversion process always normalized out the old quirks (ideally into modern, standards-centric formats for which preexisting implementations are available under a variety of licenses), the standard would be much smaller, more manageable and simpler to implement. As an additional benefit, we wouldn't see things like buffer overflows in the parser code for Microsoft's more obscure, obsolete formats causing security holes (as has happened in recent memory).
Part of the point of having a standard is that anyone should be able to implement it. If the standard incorporates by reference other specifications which are not open standards, then the standard can only be implemented in full by those who have licensed said specifications. Is this not an obvious problem on its face? You say that those creating such documents are "(l)users" -- but most office workers just want to Get The Job Done, and don't care (and shouldn't need to care) what format their clip art library is in.
There's a certain romanticism in the whole "one small step" idea, but we've already proven we can walk around on alien surfaces. Let's not risk more lives and waste more money just to prove it again.
People involved in high-risk ventures of this sort do so completely voluntarily. When an individual is willing to risk their life for an accomplishment -- be it scaling a mountain or conducting research in a hazardous environment -- what right do the rest of us have to tell them that this is morally wrong? The money side is certainly significant -- if the expected return on investment is better for unmanned programs, then by all means those unmanned programs should be pursued. In the event that a manned program has a superior return, on the other hand, that should be followed instead: Loss of life (for its value as human life, as opposed to the monetary risk of losing the mission) is the concern of those individuals deciding to take part, not that of society as a whole.
You may be right that unmanned exploration makes more sense -- but I don't find the human-life risk factor compelling.
Why the hell would I work extra unpaid hours (salary, not hourly) unless there was a real, tangible benefit?
Getting control of your company's technical direction isn't benefit enough for you? There's a great deal of satisfaction -- not just with one's job, but with one's life as a whole -- in knowing that you make a difference.
I'm senior tech staff at a startup. I may not spend as much time at home as I'd like, and the pay is often well below what I could make elsewhere -- but even if the stock doesn't pay off I'll be satisfied. I have the respect of my coworkers (managerial as well as technical) and a number of contacts which may pay off in the future -- but more importantly, I have a job (at a company whose product is nontrivially revolutionary within its field) where I make much more of a difference than any 9-to-5 cog. Will I do another high-risk, high-benefit startup after this one? Probably not -- this one was grandfathered in to my marriage, and the Wifely One would undoubtably object if I were to try for another -- but almost five years in, I don't regret it one bit.
you still agree to abide by the license before you *use* it.
No, you aren't generally obligated (except by occasional install-time technical measures, and those almost exclusively on Windows) to agree to abide by Open Source licenses before you can use the covered software, for values of "use" not regulated by copyright law.
Telling other people to check their facts does not in fact make your "facts" automatically correct.
An expensive home is the best first investment, because even if the housing market tanks if you can still pay your mortgage (your income isn't strictly dependent on the housing market) you still have some place to sleep.
An inexpensive home gives you that advantage as well, and doesn't have you paying interest on the (much larger) initial balance as long -- and putting the money that would have gone into interest on a larger house into an investment account is quite certainly a win. For individuals who don't have the dicipline to do that, I'll grant that the expensive home can have some merit -- but it's still risky.
As discussed before, homes are not always particularly liquid -- and an economic climate in which they're not particularly liquid (without accepting a particularly bad deal which could well be a loss) correlate strongly with those where a typical homeowner is liable to be unable to make their mortgage; further, buying as much home as one can leaves uncomfortably little margin for error.
Moving one quintile doesn't mean jack, especially if you move between any of the middle three quintiles you will still be squarely in the middle class. In fact you can move from the second to the fourth and still have very little wealth.
I'm not motivated by the promise that if I work hard enough I'll somehow end up making $500K/yr, and while my CEO (an ER doc) has tried to promise millions if I stick with his startup all the way through, that promised reward doesn't jive with my reality enough to click. I'm motivated by the promise that if I work hard I'll pay my house off in under 10 years, be able to comfortably send the wife back to college, maintain a standard of living comparable to what my parents did, and provide well for our kids (when we get around to adopting some).
Moving from $20K/yr to... upward of that... has been rewarding (though not as much as I would have expected -- the house and the spouse are surprisingly effective money sinks); moving upward still, while only a small amount in the scheme of things, should continue to be rewarding. I'm not counting on a Horatio Alger story, though it would be nice if my stock in the aforementioned startup ends up worth something; rather, I just want a reasonably good life. Three quintiles may not mean jack, but it's good enough to serve as motivation (and a realistically fulfillable goal) for someone who spent some time at the bottom -- and that's the point, right?
Ever heard the phrase, "Where you start out in life is a good indication of where you'll finish?" Class mobility and the "American Dream" are largely hoaxes perpetrated by the rich on the middle and lower classes (kind of like the lottery, only you have to work much harder and invest much more, and the odds are much lower.) Sure some people were born dirt poor, and end up with money to burn, and some people are born with the silver spoon in their mouths and die on the streets, but the very vast majority of people will remain in the class they're born into for the rest of their lives. This is not a coincidence. (Read that last sentence again if you have to.) Another old gem is "It takes money to make money." and the poor don't have it.
You severely overstate your case. See the "income mobility" tab on this New York Times graphic. Only slightly over half of the families in the top fifth income bracket as of 1998 had been there since 1988; the remainder moved up from somewhere else -- and the percent who moved up from the bottom fifth was much larger than the percentage of lottery players who win. Indeed, while the rate of change in income level is slowing, 61% of all families moved up or down at least one quintile in the 1990s.
Also, "buy the most expensive house you can afford" is horrible advice -- at least for individuals with the discipline to invest on an ongoing basis. Certainly, there are places where the housing market has historically had outstanding returns -- but it's very much a gamble nonetheless. Why would you invest in something you're going to be paying interest on for the next three decades (and which you can lose entirely should you be unable to make payments at any point during that time, and which is not particularly liquid and which may well lose value) when you could invest in something which will be earning returns immediately (and for which you have a great deal more control over the amount of risk you choose to take)?
I own my home, but I don't delude myself about its value as an investment.
Seriously, what is it that USians have this thing for Mercedes and BMW. Those cars are usually driven by boring old business people and people of lower social class (e.g. whitetrash/trailer park types).
I tend to see Beamers in the parts of town with the doctors, CEOs and dot-com yuppies, newer Hondas and Toyotas driven by the middle class, huge gas-guzzling trucks driven by the idiot rednecks regardless of income (I'm in Texas, we have a lot of those), and Volvos (and older Volkswagons, Cadillacs or Hondas) in the parts with folks who aren't so well-to-do.
I'm obviously painting with a very broad brush here -- but as this should demonstrate, our local breakdowns are different from yours. (Also, BMW USA doesn't sell anything new I can comfortably afford while paying down my house quickly; they don't aim at the lower end of the market here at all).
You do realize that there's more than one model of child safety seat available, right? And that some of them don't require more than one seat of space?
I drive a Mazda 3 (hatchback, so it's surprisingly effective when hauling things from Costco or Ikea), and had two crated small dogs, myself, my wife and one child seated comfortably during a road trip to Oklahoma.
We ARE talking about a computer game, here. There is no *real* harm done to anyone if their account is terminated.
Not just any computer game, though -- a computer game where very large amounts of real-world money are exchanged. "Linden Dollars" are exchangeable for real ones; there are folks whose in-game activities constitute their entire income.
Hillary has more experience than Obama in terms of political office.
Obama was first elected to office in 1997. Hillary was first elected to office in 2000. Granted, Hillary has more time in the US Senate in particular -- but Obama has more years holding office in general.
More to the point, Hillary is much more explicitly willing to play the game in terms of fearmongering and pandering. Obama plays the game quite differently -- promoting things that make sense as good law as opposed to things that make sense as good electioneering material, and treating opposing viewpoints with respect and consideration. The country has become divided enough over the last few administrations, and I think it's high time for a bridgebuilder. Obama has vision in that regard -- read his 2004 DNC speech -- and I think he has potential to soothe some of our divisions in a way that Clinton (who for some reason is still hated by much of the Right) just isn't the person for.
Also, who doesn't want a constitutional law professor for President?
Based on a set of heavily Libertarian principals -- meaning that the federal government will keep its nose out of the business of the states and the people.
If you're that ignorant of how things work, you shouldn't vote.
If you're going to be that much of an ass about attacking someone every time they simplify a statement to make it easier for third parties to digest, you shouldn't be here.
Yes, Ron Paul has a lot of oddball ideas -- but if he's President, as opposed to Congress, that doesn't matter so much. As President, Ron Paul won't be responsible for making good laws; rather, he'll be responsible for vetoing bad ones. As such, I think he is magnificently equipt for the job.
cross-platform requirements - If this includes win32, yes, that's a weakness -- and one shared by not so many of its competitors these days (where "its competitors" are Mercurial, Bazaar-NG, and the like).
a centralized repository - bzr does this well, so long as you educate your users to use "checkout" instead of "get". (Coming from the primary centralized systems, that's the common command anyhow). Can't comment on git; haven't used it.
a different development model - There's no reason a distributed SCM can't be used effectively in centralized development models -- none. What you might need to do in that kind of case is set up an automated "patch queue manager" process which merges and tests changes on demand from those authorized to make them; software to do this is readily available. OTOH, it gives you the additional tools to manage workflows that a centralized SCM can't.
or simply want UI tools & IDE integration - Yeah, that's an issue with pretty much anything that isn't CVS or SVN (and I'm completely with Linus regarding svn's inadequacy; it's almost 1.5 and they still don't have merge tracking?!). That said, Trac is improving its support for foreign SCMs, so at least that part of the tools-and-integration piece should be a reasonably solved problem in not-so-very-long.
Git is very, very fast -- and for folks with extremely large trees and very little patience, that makes it nearly the only gig in town. (Yes, there are folks who use CVS for large trees; it wasn't designed for the case, and they're using the wrong tool for the job. Update time being O(n) on number of files makes things unpleasant -- never mind the locking or concurrency or history preservation issues). To be sure, it's not all things to all people -- but neither is anything else in the field. That doesn't mean folks who have worked on DSCMs don't get to pitch loogies at CVS and its descendants; it just means that folks looking for a SCM to use don't have a magic bullet available.
Bloody bother -- that's annoying in the extreme. (My employer, located in 1-party consent state, *does* play a notice informing callers to our tech support line that we may record their calls -- but we've been wanting to record outgoing calls from support staff as well to ensure [and maintain evidence of] the quality of their offered resolutions, and our staff has been resistant to any policies requiring them to read a scripted notice at the beginning of any outgoing calls).
That said -- the suit would need to be filed in the 2-party state, yes? In the context of an individual (rather than a business) residing in the single-party state, it strikes me that an out-of-state court's orders may be a touch difficult to enforce.
The link you provided appears to be broken, by the way. (Clearly not your fault, as the same link is posted in several other places discussing this case and its impact).
Just make sure your phone system says that the call may be recorded[...]
Most states require only one-party consent -- so anyone who's a legitimate party to the call (like you!) can unilaterally decide to record it. (For interstate calls, federal law has a bunch of requirements like a frequent beep for *telecommunications companies* which do call recording, but those still don't apply to individuals unless you work for a telco).
Now, in terms of being able to share that recording... you're probably safer with the recorded disclaimer. In most states you can at least make it, though, without asking for permission as long as you're a legitimate party to the call.
I think the only place where we disagree is regarding what is "nonfree".
I consider unreleased, custom code which is considered proprietary to the company owning it and not for redistribution to be nonfree. Likewise software which is offered via web services but not released to the public under Free terms, software which is incorporated into black-box embedded systems and not otherwise released, etc. "Shrink wrap for resale" is a very small subset.
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As mentioned here, I don't really object to WMF in particular; the parent post had it as an example (complete with their own assertions as to its outdated status), and I reused it making my point on that account.
I don't really object to WMF so much in particular, and was using it as an example strictly at the parent's suggestion; consider it a placeholder for any nonstandardized format included by reference, in the context of the refutation of an argument that only "(l)users" will make use of functionality that embeds such content (and thus, by extension, that having a standard which includes nonstandardized specifications by reference is somehow acceptable).
What concerns me much more significantly is Microsoft's internally-developed XML-based vector graphics standard, which ISO refused to accept when it was submitted individually. Slipping a format which ISO refused when it was submitted standalone in through the back door by making it a subset of a much larger (and more politically charged) standard strikes me as exceedingly bad behavior for any vendor to get away with.
(Consider: Folks who have the financial security to live in a neighborhood they're comfortable with may decide to leave their doors unlocked because they feel safe, even if they have more to lose; people who are less well-to-do typically live in neighborhoods with higher crime rates, and may keep their doors locked not because of risk of financial loss but concern about attacks on their person. There's more than just one factor in play).
I have an account with Grand Central -- and as I see it, this move means I don't need to worry about that going away as they try to find a working business model. Woot! (Integration with Google Talk or such would be nifty, too -- though I really want to be able to forward my number to any arbitrary SIP address; supposedly, that was on the roadmap).
Any "standard" which is so clearly developed with ease of implementation by a single vendor in mind has a rather obvious scent of unilaterality to it.Is Microsoft's clipart library no longer largely WMF? Even if that's the case, modern OOXML implementations will need to implement these ancient, antiquated formats to be able to read documents which were imported into OOXML from Word 95 (or other versions which *did* use WMF as the primary format for imported documents) -- meaning that backwards compatibility will remain much of the headache it was even before documents were converted into a "standardized format". The right way to convert things is normalization, damnit -- if, rather than simply forcing all implementors of the new format to support all the quirks of the old, the conversion process always normalized out the old quirks (ideally into modern, standards-centric formats for which preexisting implementations are available under a variety of licenses), the standard would be much smaller, more manageable and simpler to implement. As an additional benefit, we wouldn't see things like buffer overflows in the parser code for Microsoft's more obscure, obsolete formats causing security holes (as has happened in recent memory).
Part of the point of having a standard is that anyone should be able to implement it. If the standard incorporates by reference other specifications which are not open standards, then the standard can only be implemented in full by those who have licensed said specifications. Is this not an obvious problem on its face? You say that those creating such documents are "(l)users" -- but most office workers just want to Get The Job Done, and don't care (and shouldn't need to care) what format their clip art library is in.
You may be right that unmanned exploration makes more sense -- but I don't find the human-life risk factor compelling.
I'm senior tech staff at a startup. I may not spend as much time at home as I'd like, and the pay is often well below what I could make elsewhere -- but even if the stock doesn't pay off I'll be satisfied. I have the respect of my coworkers (managerial as well as technical) and a number of contacts which may pay off in the future -- but more importantly, I have a job (at a company whose product is nontrivially revolutionary within its field) where I make much more of a difference than any 9-to-5 cog. Will I do another high-risk, high-benefit startup after this one? Probably not -- this one was grandfathered in to my marriage, and the Wifely One would undoubtably object if I were to try for another -- but almost five years in, I don't regret it one bit.
Telling other people to check their facts does not in fact make your "facts" automatically correct.
As discussed before, homes are not always particularly liquid -- and an economic climate in which they're not particularly liquid (without accepting a particularly bad deal which could well be a loss) correlate strongly with those where a typical homeowner is liable to be unable to make their mortgage; further, buying as much home as one can leaves uncomfortably little margin for error.I'm not motivated by the promise that if I work hard enough I'll somehow end up making $500K/yr, and while my CEO (an ER doc) has tried to promise millions if I stick with his startup all the way through, that promised reward doesn't jive with my reality enough to click. I'm motivated by the promise that if I work hard I'll pay my house off in under 10 years, be able to comfortably send the wife back to college, maintain a standard of living comparable to what my parents did, and provide well for our kids (when we get around to adopting some).
Moving from $20K/yr to... upward of that... has been rewarding (though not as much as I would have expected -- the house and the spouse are surprisingly effective money sinks); moving upward still, while only a small amount in the scheme of things, should continue to be rewarding. I'm not counting on a Horatio Alger story, though it would be nice if my stock in the aforementioned startup ends up worth something; rather, I just want a reasonably good life. Three quintiles may not mean jack, but it's good enough to serve as motivation (and a realistically fulfillable goal) for someone who spent some time at the bottom -- and that's the point, right?
Also, "buy the most expensive house you can afford" is horrible advice -- at least for individuals with the discipline to invest on an ongoing basis. Certainly, there are places where the housing market has historically had outstanding returns -- but it's very much a gamble nonetheless. Why would you invest in something you're going to be paying interest on for the next three decades (and which you can lose entirely should you be unable to make payments at any point during that time, and which is not particularly liquid and which may well lose value) when you could invest in something which will be earning returns immediately (and for which you have a great deal more control over the amount of risk you choose to take)?
I own my home, but I don't delude myself about its value as an investment.
I'm obviously painting with a very broad brush here -- but as this should demonstrate, our local breakdowns are different from yours. (Also, BMW USA doesn't sell anything new I can comfortably afford while paying down my house quickly; they don't aim at the lower end of the market here at all).
You do realize that there's more than one model of child safety seat available, right? And that some of them don't require more than one seat of space?
I drive a Mazda 3 (hatchback, so it's surprisingly effective when hauling things from Costco or Ikea), and had two crated small dogs, myself, my wife and one child seated comfortably during a road trip to Oklahoma.
Good cat carriers can be belted in, and aren't likely to come loose or open in an accident.
More to the point, Hillary is much more explicitly willing to play the game in terms of fearmongering and pandering. Obama plays the game quite differently -- promoting things that make sense as good law as opposed to things that make sense as good electioneering material, and treating opposing viewpoints with respect and consideration. The country has become divided enough over the last few administrations, and I think it's high time for a bridgebuilder. Obama has vision in that regard -- read his 2004 DNC speech -- and I think he has potential to soothe some of our divisions in a way that Clinton (who for some reason is still hated by much of the Right) just isn't the person for.
Also, who doesn't want a constitutional law professor for President?
Why Hillary as opposed to Obama?
Yes, Ron Paul has a lot of oddball ideas -- but if he's President, as opposed to Congress, that doesn't matter so much. As President, Ron Paul won't be responsible for making good laws; rather, he'll be responsible for vetoing bad ones. As such, I think he is magnificently equipt for the job.
Yes, you could use svk... but why, when its competition is easier to use or faster and more space-efficient and has useful things like dumb server support?
cross-platform requirements - If this includes win32, yes, that's a weakness -- and one shared by not so many of its competitors these days (where "its competitors" are Mercurial, Bazaar-NG, and the like).
a centralized repository - bzr does this well, so long as you educate your users to use "checkout" instead of "get". (Coming from the primary centralized systems, that's the common command anyhow). Can't comment on git; haven't used it.
a different development model - There's no reason a distributed SCM can't be used effectively in centralized development models -- none. What you might need to do in that kind of case is set up an automated "patch queue manager" process which merges and tests changes on demand from those authorized to make them; software to do this is readily available. OTOH, it gives you the additional tools to manage workflows that a centralized SCM can't.
or simply want UI tools & IDE integration - Yeah, that's an issue with pretty much anything that isn't CVS or SVN (and I'm completely with Linus regarding svn's inadequacy; it's almost 1.5 and they still don't have merge tracking?!). That said, Trac is improving its support for foreign SCMs, so at least that part of the tools-and-integration piece should be a reasonably solved problem in not-so-very-long.
Git is very, very fast -- and for folks with extremely large trees and very little patience, that makes it nearly the only gig in town. (Yes, there are folks who use CVS for large trees; it wasn't designed for the case, and they're using the wrong tool for the job. Update time being O(n) on number of files makes things unpleasant -- never mind the locking or concurrency or history preservation issues). To be sure, it's not all things to all people -- but neither is anything else in the field. That doesn't mean folks who have worked on DSCMs don't get to pitch loogies at CVS and its descendants; it just means that folks looking for a SCM to use don't have a magic bullet available.
Bloody bother -- that's annoying in the extreme. (My employer, located in 1-party consent state, *does* play a notice informing callers to our tech support line that we may record their calls -- but we've been wanting to record outgoing calls from support staff as well to ensure [and maintain evidence of] the quality of their offered resolutions, and our staff has been resistant to any policies requiring them to read a scripted notice at the beginning of any outgoing calls).
That said -- the suit would need to be filed in the 2-party state, yes? In the context of an individual (rather than a business) residing in the single-party state, it strikes me that an out-of-state court's orders may be a touch difficult to enforce.
The link you provided appears to be broken, by the way. (Clearly not your fault, as the same link is posted in several other places discussing this case and its impact).
Now, in terms of being able to share that recording... you're probably safer with the recorded disclaimer. In most states you can at least make it, though, without asking for permission as long as you're a legitimate party to the call.
Billing uses ANI, not CID info -- so no.
I think the only place where we disagree is regarding what is "nonfree".
I consider unreleased, custom code which is considered proprietary to the company owning it and not for redistribution to be nonfree. Likewise software which is offered via web services but not released to the public under Free terms, software which is incorporated into black-box embedded systems and not otherwise released, etc. "Shrink wrap for resale" is a very small subset.