"an individual gene is not a fundamental aspect of nature"
"Fundamental aspect" has nothing to do with it. Look, patents are supposed to regulate *inventions,* human-manufactured artifical creations.
"There are extensive and legimitate differences between a patent on a gene and a patent on an element."
However, unless one is talking about a gene that has been modified, genes are no more inventions than elements are. Both are from nature and are discovered, not made.
. . . like an angry serpent baring its fangs, a horrific vision leapt out at him from the screen. More irritated than frightened, he clicked again. The intrusion vanished, leaving no trace behind.
"Stupid pop-up ads," our hero muttered . . .
There's a silly story here somewhere. . . .
Re:Unlikely that Virginia Hey ("Zhaan") will retur
on
Farscape Video Game
·
· Score: 1
"Having to keep her head shaved was preventing her from getting other roles. (Don't ask me about wigs, I'm just the messenger.)"
Maybe the would-be hirers didn't want to spring for a wig when they could get an actress that had hair.
"Religion also has an interesting way of making people act in not so wise or logical fashion. You may have heard the story of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, etc."
It also didn't help that the folks behind the Crusades and Inquisition didn't quite understand some of the basics of the religion (Christianity) they claimed to profess. Probably a similar thing can be said for the Muslims within al Qaida.
"I brought up the topic of Liability for software bugs with my Dad (he's a VP at one of the big banks). He replied that the current software companies would be 'shot in the street'. Now, I was confused until he explained: 'Shot in the Street' simply means that the public and government would turn on them so hard legally that they would be driven out of business."
Ha ha. The trouble with what you are saying is that from the context, it is clear that "shot in the street" is hyperbole.
In contrast, the ad copy "Unbreakable. Can't break it. Can't break in" has a very straightforward meaning, and that's about all the meaning it has.
"If I write a novel, I can simply lock it in a safe, denying you of your Fair Use 'Right' to copy it. I'm under no obligation to make it easy for you to copy."
Bad analogy. If I own a copy of your novel, and you put *my* copy in your safe, you are abridging my property rights to the physical copy.
The thing is that the GNOME-ers working on GUP (GNOME Usability Project) know that several things aren't quite right, or even close to right, in the current GNOME interface. The goal of GUP is to make things right for GNOME 2.
The distinction between viruses and worms is pretty much academic, at least to the victims of such things. Most of the so-called Microsoft-targeted "viruses" are really worms.
However, only programs that really need root privileges (with the exception of svgalib programs) have to be run as root on Linux, or Unices in general. Config info routinely goes in dotfiles in the user's home directory.
I've noticed that on WinXP, though, some programs still act as if the machine is single-user, so they write config info to directories like C:\Program Files\Some App\Settings, which are only accessible with admin access. Even Adobe Photoshop's online help item menu doesn't work except as administrator (though the workaround is trivial). This is the sort of thing that encourages Joe User to run with admin privileges.
C++ does not necessarily imply OOP programming. One might simply use it for features like function overloading, or to use it to make a more useful array class (which would use C++ OOP features without making the number-crunching code necessarily OOP).
Re:Most of the tagged people will be innocent.
on
The Eyes Have It
·
· Score: 1
"10 million passengers. 10 bombers. . . .
Result: 1,000,000 innocent people incorrectly tagged as 'liars'. 8 bombers correctly tagged as 'liars'."
It could be even worse. If those 10 bombers are good liars, fewer than eight, maybe none, will get caught, especially if they are used to lying.
However, if one sets off a metal detector, neither the security personnel nor the other people at the airport necessarily assume one is carrying a weapon. After all, it's a *metal* detector, not a weapon detector, and most everyone knows it. A so-called lie detector ostensibly tests for lying, though, and so security personnel and others at the airport may assume that setting it off means that one is lying, even if one isn't.
How low-level can these languages get? From what I've understood, one of the reasons C is used as a *systems* programming language is because it can work close to the bare metal, which one would need if one was writing the code for an operating system. Complaining about people using C for apps is one thing, but complaining about people using C for the low-level layers of a system is quite another.
The only rational solution, as is the case with other "banning the tool vs. banning the act" problems, is to ban the act of dissemminating virii or worms maliciously.
Those who believe that software (in the US at least) is constitutionally protected speech may want to think twice if they believe virus writers should be prosecuted.
The thing is that most virus writers disseminate the viruses that they create, which would make them culpable by your standards.
However, if say a university student was doing research on security by putting together a dummy network that was not connected to the outside world or any other campus networks and infecting that with a virus, prosecuting such a student for virus writing would be a miscarriage of justice, since it is clear that the virus was deliberately kept from doing real damage.
Copyright infringment is wrong because 1) it has the potential to short-circuit the way software writers get compensated for their efforts and 2) it is a breach of trust. Calling it stealing, though, is misleading for two reasons:
Stealing in "meatspace" (the regular ol' material world) involves depriving someone else of the use of some property; if I steal a widget from John Doe, John Doe can no longer use or enjoy that widget. Software piracy, in contrast, does not deprive anyone of the use of a copy of a piece of software, but rather creates an additional copy.
There is no guarantee that someone who pirates a piece of software would have bought it legitimately. That means that one cannot say for certain whether a particular act of piracy is damaging to the revenue stream of a software vendor.
evilpaul13's example of "sonny" pirating 3d Studio Max is a good example of the analogy of piracy as "stealing" breaking down. "sonny" can rationalize his piracy with the following line of reasoning.
Hey, whether or not I pirate 3d Studio Max,
Discrete Software, the makers of 3d Studio Max, won't get any money from me (because I can't afford to buy it legally).
Discrete Software would not have lost any copies, since piracy makes a new copy rather than pull a preexisting copy out of one's possession, and can sell those copies to those who do have the money and still make money.
In short, whether or not I pirate, Discreet isn't hurt, and the only one who loses if I pirate the software is me, because I wouldn't get the benefit of the software.
Note that if "sonny" tried to use a similar line of reasoning to rationalize stealing a car from Joe's House of Cars, he'd fail because the car that he'd steal from Joe's would be one less car that Joe's could sell, so Joe's would be harmed by the theft.
Instead of resorting to bad analogies that fall apart under examination, those who oppose piracy should point out the real problem it makes: One act of piracy can potentially encourage others to commit piracy, and those others can encourage further others, etc., and if this acceptance of piracy becomes widespread enough among those who can pay for legal copies, then it will strain the revenue stream of those who provide software, music, movies, etc. and make it harder for them to get compensated for current works and produce new ones. That is the real problem, and it has nothing to do with stealing or whatnot. At its core, piracy is simply an economic short-circuit.
The way the press release was phrased, though, implied some sort of capitulation by Skylarov, which is probably how a/. editor concluded that Skylarov agreed to testify against Elcomsoft.
Funny thing, after posting the question, I fed "five weeks" and "Windows XP" to Google and found a Wired article that answered my question. Thanks anyway.:-)
"That the makers of the HD says that 30GB = 30,000,000,000 doesn't make it correct.... What the makers of the HD say is just a way of making the HD seem lager than it is."
First, the "proper meaning" of "giga" is questionable. In SI, which is where the "giga" prefix comes from, "giga" means 10^9. That "giga" means 2^30 to RAM manufacturers comes from using "kilo" to mean 1024 rather than 10^3, a fudging of the meaning of "kilo" in the first place. Hard drive manufacturers, although they have "giga" mean 10^9 in order to inflate their numbers, can argue that their "giga" is more correct then the RAM manufacturers' "giga".
Second, the fact remains that there are two different definitions, of "kilo", "mega", and "giga" floating about, however "proper" they are.
The trouble is that the old terms are used in two different ways, depending on whether one is talking about RAM or disk space. In short, the term "megabyte" is ambiguous in practice.
Slashdot Mirror
"an individual gene is not a fundamental aspect of nature"
"Fundamental aspect" has nothing to do with it. Look, patents are supposed to regulate *inventions,* human-manufactured artifical creations.
"There are extensive and legimitate differences between a patent on a gene and a patent on an element."
However, unless one is talking about a gene that has been modified, genes are no more inventions than elements are. Both are from nature and are discovered, not made.
"Having to keep her head shaved was preventing her from getting other roles. (Don't ask me about wigs, I'm just the messenger.)"
Maybe the would-be hirers didn't want to spring for a wig when they could get an actress that had hair.
"Religion also has an interesting way of making people act in not so wise or logical fashion. You may have heard the story of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, etc."
It also didn't help that the folks behind the Crusades and Inquisition didn't quite understand some of the basics of the religion (Christianity) they claimed to profess. Probably a similar thing can be said for the Muslims within al Qaida.
"I brought up the topic of Liability for software bugs with my Dad (he's a VP at one of the big banks). He replied that the current software companies would be 'shot in the street'. Now, I was confused until he explained: 'Shot in the Street' simply means that the public and government would turn on them so hard legally that they would be driven out of business."
Ha ha. The trouble with what you are saying is that from the context, it is clear that "shot in the street" is hyperbole.
In contrast, the ad copy "Unbreakable. Can't break it. Can't break in" has a very straightforward meaning, and that's about all the meaning it has.
> the latest version of windoz itself is subscription-based
Nope. Windows XP is licensed in perpetuity. Now it may not be activatable in a few years . . .
"If I write a novel, I can simply lock it in a safe, denying you of your Fair Use 'Right' to copy it. I'm under no obligation to make it easy for you to copy."
Bad analogy. If I own a copy of your novel, and you put *my* copy in your safe, you are abridging my property rights to the physical copy.
Somehow I can't see a Balrog chanting "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"
"someone PLEASE explain how h@x0r can be pronounced as hacker?"
Pronounce "x" as "kh". I believe that's been done. At the very least, in Greek, the letter "khi" (more commonly spelled "chi") looks like an "X".
The thing is that the GNOME-ers working on GUP (GNOME Usability Project) know that several things aren't quite right, or even close to right, in the current GNOME interface. The goal of GUP is to make things right for GNOME 2.
The distinction between viruses and worms is pretty much academic, at least to the victims of such things. Most of the so-called Microsoft-targeted "viruses" are really worms.
However, only programs that really need root privileges (with the exception of svgalib programs) have to be run as root on Linux, or Unices in general. Config info routinely goes in dotfiles in the user's home directory.
I've noticed that on WinXP, though, some programs still act as if the machine is single-user, so they write config info to directories like C:\Program Files\Some App\Settings, which are only accessible with admin access. Even Adobe Photoshop's online help item menu doesn't work except as administrator (though the workaround is trivial). This is the sort of thing that encourages Joe User to run with admin privileges.
C++ does not necessarily imply OOP programming. One might simply use it for features like function overloading, or to use it to make a more useful array class (which would use C++ OOP features without making the number-crunching code necessarily OOP).
"10 million passengers. 10 bombers. . . .
Result: 1,000,000 innocent people incorrectly tagged as 'liars'. 8 bombers correctly tagged as 'liars'."
It could be even worse. If those 10 bombers are good liars, fewer than eight, maybe none, will get caught, especially if they are used to lying.
However, if one sets off a metal detector, neither the security personnel nor the other people at the airport necessarily assume one is carrying a weapon. After all, it's a *metal* detector, not a weapon detector, and most everyone knows it. A so-called lie detector ostensibly tests for lying, though, and so security personnel and others at the airport may assume that setting it off means that one is lying, even if one isn't.
How low-level can these languages get? From what I've understood, one of the reasons C is used as a *systems* programming language is because it can work close to the bare metal, which one would need if one was writing the code for an operating system. Complaining about people using C for apps is one thing, but complaining about people using C for the low-level layers of a system is quite another.
"BB suffers from a serious case of 'my way or no way' from the programmer."
Try fluxbox at fluxbox.sourceforge.net.
However, if say a university student was doing research on security by putting together a dummy network that was not connected to the outside world or any other campus networks and infecting that with a virus, prosecuting such a student for virus writing would be a miscarriage of justice, since it is clear that the virus was deliberately kept from doing real damage.
Copyright infringment is wrong because 1) it has the potential to short-circuit the way software writers get compensated for their efforts and 2) it is a breach of trust. Calling it stealing, though, is misleading for two reasons:
evilpaul13's example of "sonny" pirating 3d Studio Max is a good example of the analogy of piracy as "stealing" breaking down. "sonny" can rationalize his piracy with the following line of reasoning.
Note that if "sonny" tried to use a similar line of reasoning to rationalize stealing a car from Joe's House of Cars, he'd fail because the car that he'd steal from Joe's would be one less car that Joe's could sell, so Joe's would be harmed by the theft.
Instead of resorting to bad analogies that fall apart under examination, those who oppose piracy should point out the real problem it makes: One act of piracy can potentially encourage others to commit piracy, and those others can encourage further others, etc., and if this acceptance of piracy becomes widespread enough among those who can pay for legal copies, then it will strain the revenue stream of those who provide software, music, movies, etc. and make it harder for them to get compensated for current works and produce new ones. That is the real problem, and it has nothing to do with stealing or whatnot. At its core, piracy is simply an economic short-circuit.
The way the press release was phrased, though, implied some sort of capitulation by Skylarov, which is probably how a /. editor concluded that Skylarov agreed to testify against Elcomsoft.
Funny thing, after posting the question, I fed "five weeks" and "Windows XP" to Google and found a Wired article that answered my question. Thanks anyway. :-)
"That the makers of the HD says that 30GB = 30,000,000,000 doesn't make it correct. ... What the makers of the HD say is just a way of making the HD seem lager than it is."
First, the "proper meaning" of "giga" is questionable. In SI, which is where the "giga" prefix comes from, "giga" means 10^9. That "giga" means 2^30 to RAM manufacturers comes from using "kilo" to mean 1024 rather than 10^3, a fudging of the meaning of "kilo" in the first place. Hard drive manufacturers, although they have "giga" mean 10^9 in order to inflate their numbers, can argue that their "giga" is more correct then the RAM manufacturers' "giga".
Second, the fact remains that there are two different definitions, of "kilo", "mega", and "giga" floating about, however "proper" they are.
"The words "kilobyte", "megabyte", "gigabyte" and so on ALREADY HAVE EXPLICITLY DEFINED MEANINGS."
Wrong. Answer the following questions:
1) How many bytes are in a 3GB of RAM?
2) How many bytes are in a 30GB hard drive?
Answers:
1) 3GB = 3*(2^30) = 3,221,225,472 bytes
2) 30GB = 30*(10^9) = 30,000,000,000 bytes
Question: How "explicitly defined" is the meaning of GB now?
The trouble is that the old terms are used in two different ways, depending on whether one is talking about RAM or disk space. In short, the term "megabyte" is ambiguous in practice.
Well, let's see ... Apple said his machine was supported, so he assumed (Gasp!) that OS X would work on it. Not an unreasonable assumption.