This kind of tinfoil speculation gets modded up to 5?! The article SAYS they were given in discovery. And WHY would IBM give them forged emails that would make them look guilty?
Oh yeah, it is annoying at the DMV.
DMV "Do you require perscription lenses" Me "Yes" DMV "Do you have them in now" ME "No, well actually I wear mine at night..."
Well, you just answered the question wrong. The answer is "No". You can see fine without having them in. My wife just got the corrective lenses restriction taken off her license, and she just had to take their vision test to prove it.
My wife is doing Paragon CRT, and it's been great for her. Basically there have been almost no bad points and plenty of good ones. If you can wear contacts already, go for it.
Bad * If she had a short night of sleep and only got to wear them for 4 or 5 hours, then her vision sometimes gets a little worse by the evening from not being corrected long enough.
* They are hard contacts. Those can be uncomfortable for some people, but they don't bother my wife. If you've worn contacts before, it probably won't be a problem. For myself, I don't even think I could do soft lenses because I just can't stand sticking my finger in my eye to put them in.
----------- Good * You don't have to deal with contacts during the day and all the hassles that come with that--being blind if you lose one, dust bothering them, rewetting drops, etc.
* Very short [concious] wearing time. They are hard lenses, so they are not as comfortable as soft lenses, but you put them in before bed, are out within a half hour or so, and take them out when you get up--you wouldn't have to be aware of them for more than an hour of awake time at the most. That also solves the problem of dry eyes with contacts because your eyelids are closed while you sleep.
* No risks of eye damage from Lasik or RK. If you don't like it, your eyes will go back to normal in a few days with no leftover effects.
* Cheaper than Lasik. I think Lasik is still running almost $1000 per eye. Costs are going down on Lasik, of course, but costs on this will be going down too. When my wife started doing this about a year ago, it was around $1200 I think, which included everything. Everything included: multiple visits during the first few weeks to see how they were doing, making a new set with adjusted prescription to get the correction amount right, and an extra set of lenses of the final prescription to keep as backup in case of loss.
I underwent ortho-k 25 years ago in order to pass a flight physical for the USAF.
Allow me to translate: "I went through something that may be slightly related to the current topic decades ago when the technology was in the stone age and you had to wear them 24/7 and it was painful, so this thing they've got now must be terrible."
He does point out something very interesting about Dan Ravicher from his bio. It seems that Ravicher has practically no experience but inflates his resume significantly to look better. Here was a very interesting discrepancy the author pointed out:
Ravicher's online bio also claims that he "practiced law" at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, one of the country's most prestigious law firms. Actually, he spent eight weeks at Skadden as a summer intern while he was still attending law school.
Depending on how vaguely INDUCE is termed & interpreted, (I have no idea about this.) SBC's current business practices could be considered illegal under the INDUCE act, and they may be required to change or face consequences. Dunno.
I know that's a lovely pipe dream we would love to have--$BUSINESS/$POLITICIAN would be guilty under this act, and then that'll show 'em! The reality part is that we don't get the opportunity to do equal enforcement of crap laws like this. Even though Senator Hatch's VCR at home would become illegal, the feds are not going to take anyone seriously if they report him for having it. Overly broad laws like this are what enables a corporate state. Technically everyone is guilty, but the laws are only enforced against those without the political power.
Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, suggested that the Senate wait for the courts to figure out which file-swapping networks are legal.
How can some be legal and some be not legal? This is kind of the basis of this whole bill. There are some nebulous factors that apparently indicate that one network "induces infringement", while another one doesn't.
Even beyond that, he suggests that they wait for them to decide which ones are illegal. To do what? Pass a law to make them MORE illegal?
Even if they get some networks shut down that "induce infringement", the traffic will just move to other networks. And if they then change their conditions so that they shut down the rest of them, it will just move to some other distribution method--anonymous networks, newsgroups, whatever. This is just the world's biggest game of Whack-a-mole that they have no chance of winning.
Did you notice this quote from Hatch? "If you help us, we just might get it right," he said. great. That shows a lot of intelligence on his part. He's proposing legislation that he knows is wrong and saying it's other people's responsibility to make suggestions to correct it before it gets passed.
Quoting you, "Windows XP is only free if your time is worth nothing." That's what I feel about Linux. You are forgetting the rather steep learning curve and what I would call the diverging path analogy. For those of us who know how to use Windows already, there is no learning curve to say on Windows, but there is a long and steep curve to learning Linux. That is where I feel my time is too valuable. I lead a fairly busy life with stuff going on most evenings so I don't have lots of time for a few weeks to spend learning a new way to do things.
Here is my analogy of the diverging paths. Picture computer use as being a path in the woods that only goes a few feet before it splits in two. One path represents using Windows; the other represents using Linux. Forward progression on either path in this example represents complexity of tasks being done. Now for the examples frequently thrown out here of people who just write their emails and browse the web, that may be just a couple steps down either path. Picking one or the other path, or even switching from one path to the other is easy. It would take just a few seconds to walk across from one path to the other. The computing tasks are similar enough on either platform to easily make the switch.
For detailed users, though, they have progressed half a mile down one of those paths. They have spent years using one OS, knowing how to set it up how they want it, learning where every option is that they want to set, using specific unusual programs that are unavailable or at least very different substitutes on a different OS. In the analogy, it would take them hours of wandering through the woods to get to the other path, and when they got there, it would be very unfamiliar, they wouldn't know the terrain or which way to go on it, etc. because they didn't get a chance to gradually work their way to this point, knowing the steps taken along the way. Back to the computer: finding the detailed options they are used to using takes a lot of time. They don't know how to use the development programs that they had become really proficient with before, so they feel less productive, having to spend so much time learning a different way of doing things.
That's the situation of a couple of friends of mine. They've been Windows programmers for years. They looked at Knoppix, and were having some difficulty doing a few things that they could do really easily on Windows and were faced with the idea of learning a different set of development tools, so it didn't seem worth it.
Don't try to answer this with the idea that it's worth it because they would avoid viruses. These people don't get viruses because they know how to secure their machine.
I'm still trying to figure out how the moderating on that comment went. I was looking for a comment like that or else I was going to. I would think buying a new computer to install an old version of Windows you already own would be much more common than a pirated version of Windows. Most people I know wouldn't even have any idea where to find a pirated version of it.
Anyway, the modding on that comment showed: 50% Insightful 30% Overrated 20% Redundant for a total score of 0. Unless the percentages are not accurate, it looks like this had to get 10 mod points to achieve a 20, 30, and 50%.
It would probably go something like this: Headline: "Linux lifted ELF, states SCO." Joe Reader: "More elves? Geez don't they ever get tired of these Lord of the Rings stories?"
I went to the link about "the reaction has prompted a response from the Sony Online chain of command." and it has been deleted. Did anyone get a copy of this, or do you think it would have been cached?
You've got to remember the way of thinking that is promoted at MS. They already promote the idea within their company that open source programmers are a bunch of leeching hippies or whatever, that would love to get their hands on some "good" code to improve their stuff. They would think that Windows is the best (most desireable) code, so the only reason they haven't taken Windows code yet is that it hasn't been easily available to them.
For some documentation the signature has to be a readable version of the full name - very difficult if you've spent a life-time doing a scrawl.
I call total BS on this one. That would not be the person's signature then. A person's signature should always look very similar to other places that signature has been used. If the handwriting is required to be "improved" to a different readability standard in some places, then it looks different in different places and ceases to be a unique mark of that person.
Yes, Microsoft has created an initiative whose sole purpose is to hopefully inject proprietary code into an OSS project somewhere down the line in order to sue them.
And people wonder why Slashdot is considered a poor source of fringe journalism.
Well, they already are funding a company suing people for Linux use because they assumed code was already copied into Linux. As its turning out that there isn't proprietary code there, this is the next step.
On the plus side I could always tell who got my information from the DMV based on the spelling of my name. If you always slightly misspell your name with all companies and government agencies you can see who the biggest privacy violators are.
My roommate in college had a system like that when he would give his information to some company. He would just use a different middle initial for each one. He kept a list of who got what initial and then when the junk started to show up, he could call the people and have proof that they had sold him out.
I don't think illegible signatures are ever a problem. Actually, some professionals intentionally make their signatures basically some kind of unintelligible scrawling mark that doesn't resemble a name at all--Sometimes you can make out the first letter. That is for the purpose of making it very difficult to forge. People can try to make their letters look like someone else's letters, but if you are used to making this unique kind of scrawl that is unlike writing other people use, it should be pretty easy to identify your practiced mark verses someone trying to imitate it.
Yup, they're just putting out bait, hoping that some of the code will be used by someone in the OSS community and then they can pound them for "hybrid source" in the media and in court.
I haven't seen the terms under which people are allowed to view the code, but I'm sure it's not really Open Source(TM). It's probably more like, "Here, take a look at our code. Share it with your friends. Pass it around. But remember it's still closed proprietary code that no one can copy."
Bzzzt. Wrong. Users have no idea what they want.
The average developer knows zero about good ui design. The average user knows less than that. -- Karma: -2147483648 (Mostly affected by integer overflow)
Really? I would have thought that Karma was based on your total disrespect of those who need to use the software and are telling what they need to be able to do their job effectively with it.
I have another funny example of that. I was looking for a good Win32 program on sourceforge for ripping and encoding from CDs. Sidenote: I tried CDex, since it seemed rated very highly. It always would just bluescreen when trying to install.
I found CD-DA X-Tractor. It's a good program generally, and has a good options screen for configuring stuff, but there is a total failure in their basic UI. When you put in a CD, it starts with all the checkboxes filled in for all the songs on the CD. I was totally bothered that there was no toggle box at the top for checking or unchecking all the boxes. I had been using the program for quite a while when I looked through all of the menus and found (under Edit I think?) an option for unselect all. Why is that hidden in a menu instead of on the main screen?
I think I just noticed one of the disjoints between the config editing crowd and the GUI config crowd. The idea that editing config files is much easier and even regular people should be able to do it, is not actually finding the problem. Here's the issue. I'm using Coolapp(TM). I want to change some setting in Coolapp, so I check the menus IN THE PROGRAM for some options screen to change stuff. If there was an option that said "configuration file", that would make sense, and I would click on it, see a text editor open with that file and change what I want. THAT would be easier for normal people to deal with instead of being told to "Edit the config file.", and they are somehow supposed to know that it's/etc/some/confusing/path/Coolapp/3.01/settings.txt
That is what has always pushed me toward GUI config tools. I don't know the file tree and installation paths in Linux well enough yet to find where these config files are supposed to be. When I'm using an app, I expect it to provide some help in configuring that app. Why is that such a seemingly difficult thing for programmers to do?
Slashdot Mirror
This kind of tinfoil speculation gets modded up to 5?! The article SAYS they were given in discovery. And WHY would IBM give them forged emails that would make them look guilty?
My wife is doing Paragon CRT, and it's been great for her. Basically there have been almost no bad points and plenty of good ones. If you can wear contacts already, go for it.
Bad
* If she had a short night of sleep and only got to wear them for 4 or 5 hours, then her vision sometimes gets a little worse by the evening from not being corrected long enough.
* They are hard contacts. Those can be uncomfortable for some people, but they don't bother my wife. If you've worn contacts before, it probably won't be a problem. For myself, I don't even think I could do soft lenses because I just can't stand sticking my finger in my eye to put them in.
-----------
Good
* You don't have to deal with contacts during the day and all the hassles that come with that--being blind if you lose one, dust bothering them, rewetting drops, etc.
* Very short [concious] wearing time. They are hard lenses, so they are not as comfortable as soft lenses, but you put them in before bed, are out within a half hour or so, and take them out when you get up--you wouldn't have to be aware of them for more than an hour of awake time at the most. That also solves the problem of dry eyes with contacts because your eyelids are closed while you sleep.
* No risks of eye damage from Lasik or RK. If you don't like it, your eyes will go back to normal in a few days with no leftover effects.
* Cheaper than Lasik. I think Lasik is still running almost $1000 per eye. Costs are going down on Lasik, of course, but costs on this will be going down too. When my wife started doing this about a year ago, it was around $1200 I think, which included everything. Everything included: multiple visits during the first few weeks to see how they were doing, making a new set with adjusted prescription to get the correction amount right, and an extra set of lenses of the final prescription to keep as backup in case of loss.
"I went through something that may be slightly related to the current topic decades ago when the technology was in the stone age and you had to wear them 24/7 and it was painful, so this thing they've got now must be terrible."
Even beyond that, he suggests that they wait for them to decide which ones are illegal. To do what? Pass a law to make them MORE illegal?
Even if they get some networks shut down that "induce infringement", the traffic will just move to other networks. And if they then change their conditions so that they shut down the rest of them, it will just move to some other distribution method--anonymous networks, newsgroups, whatever. This is just the world's biggest game of Whack-a-mole that they have no chance of winning.
Did you notice this quote from Hatch? "If you help us, we just might get it right," he said. great. That shows a lot of intelligence on his part. He's proposing legislation that he knows is wrong and saying it's other people's responsibility to make suggestions to correct it before it gets passed.
Quoting you, "Windows XP is only free if your time is worth nothing."
That's what I feel about Linux. You are forgetting the rather steep learning curve and what I would call the diverging path analogy. For those of us who know how to use Windows already, there is no learning curve to say on Windows, but there is a long and steep curve to learning Linux. That is where I feel my time is too valuable. I lead a fairly busy life with stuff going on most evenings so I don't have lots of time for a few weeks to spend learning a new way to do things.
Here is my analogy of the diverging paths. Picture computer use as being a path in the woods that only goes a few feet before it splits in two. One path represents using Windows; the other represents using Linux. Forward progression on either path in this example represents complexity of tasks being done. Now for the examples frequently thrown out here of people who just write their emails and browse the web, that may be just a couple steps down either path. Picking one or the other path, or even switching from one path to the other is easy. It would take just a few seconds to walk across from one path to the other. The computing tasks are similar enough on either platform to easily make the switch.
For detailed users, though, they have progressed half a mile down one of those paths. They have spent years using one OS, knowing how to set it up how they want it, learning where every option is that they want to set, using specific unusual programs that are unavailable or at least very different substitutes on a different OS. In the analogy, it would take them hours of wandering through the woods to get to the other path, and when they got there, it would be very unfamiliar, they wouldn't know the terrain or which way to go on it, etc. because they didn't get a chance to gradually work their way to this point, knowing the steps taken along the way. Back to the computer: finding the detailed options they are used to using takes a lot of time. They don't know how to use the development programs that they had become really proficient with before, so they feel less productive, having to spend so much time learning a different way of doing things.
That's the situation of a couple of friends of mine. They've been Windows programmers for years. They looked at Knoppix, and were having some difficulty doing a few things that they could do really easily on Windows and were faced with the idea of learning a different set of development tools, so it didn't seem worth it.
Don't try to answer this with the idea that it's worth it because they would avoid viruses. These people don't get viruses because they know how to secure their machine.
I'm still trying to figure out how the moderating on that comment went. I was looking for a comment like that or else I was going to. I would think buying a new computer to install an old version of Windows you already own would be much more common than a pirated version of Windows. Most people I know wouldn't even have any idea where to find a pirated version of it.
Anyway, the modding on that comment showed:
50% Insightful
30% Overrated
20% Redundant
for a total score of 0.
Unless the percentages are not accurate, it looks like this had to get 10 mod points to achieve a 20, 30, and 50%.
Hmm, Karma War Hammer of +3 Clue-inflicting damage. No saving throw baby! C'mon!
It would probably go something like this:
Headline: "Linux lifted ELF, states SCO."
Joe Reader: "More elves? Geez don't they ever get tired of these Lord of the Rings stories?"
I went to the link about "the reaction has prompted a response from the Sony Online chain of command." and it has been deleted. Did anyone get a copy of this, or do you think it would have been cached?
You've got to remember the way of thinking that is promoted at MS. They already promote the idea within their company that open source programmers are a bunch of leeching hippies or whatever, that would love to get their hands on some "good" code to improve their stuff. They would think that Windows is the best (most desireable) code, so the only reason they haven't taken Windows code yet is that it hasn't been easily available to them.
I don't think illegible signatures are ever a problem. Actually, some professionals intentionally make their signatures basically some kind of unintelligible scrawling mark that doesn't resemble a name at all--Sometimes you can make out the first letter. That is for the purpose of making it very difficult to forge. People can try to make their letters look like someone else's letters, but if you are used to making this unique kind of scrawl that is unlike writing other people use, it should be pretty easy to identify your practiced mark verses someone trying to imitate it.
Yup, they're just putting out bait, hoping that some of the code will be used by someone in the OSS community and then they can pound them for "hybrid source" in the media and in court.
I haven't seen the terms under which people are allowed to view the code, but I'm sure it's not really Open Source(TM). It's probably more like, "Here, take a look at our code. Share it with your friends. Pass it around. But remember it's still closed proprietary code that no one can copy."
" Hah. It took you almost a whole day to come up with that?"
No, I just don't sit on the refresh button on Slashdot all weekend.
I have another funny example of that. I was looking for a good Win32 program on sourceforge for ripping and encoding from CDs. Sidenote: I tried CDex, since it seemed rated very highly. It always would just bluescreen when trying to install.
I found CD-DA X-Tractor. It's a good program generally, and has a good options screen for configuring stuff, but there is a total failure in their basic UI. When you put in a CD, it starts with all the checkboxes filled in for all the songs on the CD. I was totally bothered that there was no toggle box at the top for checking or unchecking all the boxes. I had been using the program for quite a while when I looked through all of the menus and found (under Edit I think?) an option for unselect all. Why is that hidden in a menu instead of on the main screen?
I think I just noticed one of the disjoints between the config editing crowd and the GUI config crowd. The idea that editing config files is much easier and even regular people should be able to do it, is not actually finding the problem. Here's the issue. I'm using Coolapp(TM). I want to change some setting in Coolapp, so I check the menus IN THE PROGRAM for some options screen to change stuff. If there was an option that said "configuration file", that would make sense, and I would click on it, see a text editor open with that file and change what I want. THAT would be easier for normal people to deal with instead of being told to "Edit the config file.", and they are somehow supposed to know that it's /etc/some/confusing/path/Coolapp/3.01/settings.txt
That is what has always pushed me toward GUI config tools. I don't know the file tree and installation paths in Linux well enough yet to find where these config files are supposed to be. When I'm using an app, I expect it to provide some help in configuring that app. Why is that such a seemingly difficult thing for programmers to do?