There is nothing wrong with making a derivitive work... or illegal for that matter, as long as you either:
1) Get permission from the original copyright holders (the path usually done by dead tree book makers)
2) Require the purchase of the original product in order to "modify" the binaries to put in the new original items (the route usually done with computer software)
Sure, you can find court cases that suggest otherwise, but the point here is that it doesn't matter. Also, it would be much harder to prove either economic damage (not really necessary with copyright, but it helps in a jury trial), and more importantly, that the modification contain any copyrighted material by the original vendor (if they do, then it might cause some problems).
Otherwise it becomes an EULA case, which is on ground much shakier than the GPL, and has never really been tested legally anyway. I doubt that the vendors of GTA are going to want to be the "test case" for something like that.... leave these kind of challenges to a company like Microsoft who has something to prove.
Have you considered going to your school's CS (or better, MIS if they have one, because odds are slim most of your B-school students will go on to manage or interact with teams of CS graduates) department, and finding a professor teaching a software engineering class who is willing to integrate some/all weeks of his syllabus with your class? Most root cause issues with software development/deployment projects arise not between the direct interaction between the development lead (your students in this case) and his programmers (hopefully some MIS/CS students), but rather from pressures (economic, business, or political) originating from outside the team.
Man, I love this idea. This would be a fantastic concept that would be beneficial to both types of students... especially if you "teamed" them up with a manager and engineering lead having to work together.
Coming from the two different viewpoints they offer competing visions, and different expectations. It would also be a part of the curriculum, as they are going to be graded differently on the performance of the two groups of people. And with the management "trainees" it would be a good exercise for learning how to make a good requirements definition document that could be understood by an engineer... not normally something taught in universities, together with when and how requirments can be changed, and what the consequences of doing that are going to have on completing the project... all management skills that both managers as well as engineers should be aware of. It would be better for a manager to screw up in school than learn this for the first time on a $1 Million project (rather small and typical for a first time manager). There are other things too, like when to pull back and takes hands off a project, when to throw parties, utilizing team assetts, helping discouraged team members (true leadership skills here), and how to simply remove somebody when they aren't working out (that is not always an option... even in the "real world").
These are all skills I wish I had learned when I was in school... but instead had to learn through the school of hard knocks... often with incredibly lousy managers to boot.
I think computer _*COULD*_ be used as a good interactive teaching tool by teachers if they could get their act together.
For example, rather than using chalk and eraser they could use a computer to plot graphs during lectures, "blowing up" details of the graph and giving demonstrations of content.
In short, a true multi-media teaching tool that can grab the attention of the students and show material in a way that earlier methods of teaching could not have done well.
The problem with this is that it takes an incredibly large amount of time on the part of an instructor to put something like this together, and there really isn't a way to do it effectively. Power point presentations only go so far and are an inferior tool to what could be done.
In short, most classrooms should only have a single computer per classroom... and that only under control of the teacher (which includes classroom accounting software and other student information files required by the teacher).
For students learning about computer science, that may be a different story, but that should be the exception rather than the rule.
Why would DNA be any different from fingerprinting evidence, or any other biometric information (x-rays of bones/teeth, handprints, etc.)?
Keeping the records of convicted felons is one thing, but for people who are merely suspects?
In the past, this sort of information was haphazardly kept track of, and merely moving to another state was a good way to avoid having this information follow you around (under most circumstances). Now that is no longer an option.
I also don't see police give up this information except by major political actions, and even then it might just move this type of information gathering to go underground like most wiretapping has become (used to track people, but not formally presented as evidence when used "illegally").
The problem was that SAE claimed ownership of the software as a derivitive work (even though they didn't write it).
Also, and this is the killer part here, SAE tried to distribute the software in violation of the terms of the GPL, including not redistributing the source code, claiming to own the software under a propritary license arrangement, and violating section 7 of the GPL, which dumps the GPL license altogether and prohibits distribution of the software under any means what so ever.
In essense, this really is a test of section 7 of the GPL, and by doing what SAE did on their website, they violated this portion of the GPL and hence it turned into a simple unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material subject to normal copyright penalties.
The rest is muddled into arguments over actual ownership of the copyright, but that was quite clear in this case, and even if it turned out that SAE would "own" the software via derivitive works theory, they still wouldn't be able to distribute the software, and were in willful violation of the copyright laws. Had this been the case, the GPL would have been a much bigger factor, but instead the court ruled that software can't be considered a derivitive work based only on figures and standards from another document.
Too bad this only applies in the state of Michigan, as this sort of ruling does have national significance. It is legal precedence, however, and can be used to bolster an argument in other courts in the USA for similar cases.
Back in the 1950's there was a group of "pirate radio" enthusiasts that did indeed broadcast from Mexico to the USA... usually with commercial radio frequencies and massive (10,000 watt) antennas. "Wolfman" Jack was one of the famous DJ's of the period. At the time Mexico didn't care, and if it screwed up gringo commerce, they didn't care. The money was going to Mexico.
Times have changed, and particularly with NAFTA, as well as other international treaties, together with a growing middle-class in Mexico proper requiring the need for a more regulated radio frequency infrastructure, this "wild west" atmosphere is largely a thing of the past. The big thing you want to be careful about when doing radio broadcasts from Mexico is that you don't want to step on the toes of the Mexican Federal Government.
It is still more relaxed in Mexico than the USA, but you are correct that violating international radio frequency allotments and having an unlicensed transmitter can still cause some problems. And the FCC does have total juristiction once you cross the international border into the USA. If you are using it as a paging device only (your device doesn't transmit anything) you might be able to get away with the "illegal transmitter" in Tiajuana... as long as you understand Mexican frequency allocation and whose toes not to step on. In short a ham operator who would know better than to waste their time and money on something that they could get them in jail when they have other means to get the same job done.
I concurr with your conculsion... don't do it even if you are the nephew of the governor of Baja California.
All of these things are interesting in science precisely because the items listed are above and beyond simple measurement error.
In many cases, this is very similar to the effects and problems raised with people trying to interpret measurements in the solar system (notably Mercury's orbital patterns) with pure Newtonian physics, as well as other behavior that doesn't make sense following pure Newtonian mechanics. That is where Einstein came in and showed substantial new ways to look at everything with his new theory.
The same could be said when Quark theory was first proposed, where it helped to explain a whole host of reasons for a collection of sub-atomic particles, and what else to look for (or to note that all elementary particles had been found).
In Chemistry, the creation of the Periodic table by Mendeelev was of similar importance.
The discovery of the prion (self-replicating protien without any RNA or DNA what-so-ever... Mad Cow Disease, etc.) was another amazing discovery that explained some interesting diseases not previously considered or explained.
The discovery of electro-magnitism was also quite profound, and back in the 18th Century there were many scientists who thought the whole thing was a bunch of BS. Some of the early experiments were as difficult to reproduce as cold fusion, because the experimenters forgot to take the magnetic field of the Earth into account during the experiments (causing negative results... debunking electro-magnitism). That you are reading this post proves that Electricity can produce magnetic effects and the other way around as well.
In short, a solution to explain any of these ideas is worthy of a Nobel prize... if you can wrap your brain around the concept and come up with a good testable theory... preferably something that predicts behavior not even previously considered or observed. (The periodic table was particularly successful in this respect.)
For most scientists, this is precisely why they get into science in the first place: To explore nature and our universe in such as way that you know something about how it works better than anybody else, and can share that knowledge with others on the leading edge of that branch of knowledge.
What scientist wouldn't want to have some aspect of their work to be as memorable as the equation E=mc^2?
BTW, if you think these are all easily refuted... do so. I dare you. That is also an aspect of science, but I warn you that all 13 points in this article have already been hammered by their respective fields and some very bright people have not been able to come up with good explainations. The effects are very real as basically described, and it would be easier to come up with a good theory than to prove that the data behind these problems are purely manufactured and done by disreputable scientist trying to pull a hoax (it has been done, but the scientist doing so usually get caught... more sooner than later too).
Some of these I will admit are more bleeding science than others.
Pioneer acceleration and dark matter have substantial hard data to back up the problem... and is reproducable.
The placebo effect has not happened just once... it happens all of the time in clinical trials and does cause some problems with trying to filter out if a medicine works or not.
Cold Fusion is something that is definitely weird. I don't buy that it will ever be something to power my car, but it is an interesting physical phenemona that is not easily explained away. I've seen the hard data for Cold Fusion (from several researchers) and it is a real effect.
Homeopathy seems like an interesting thing to investigate, but all that report said was that there are some interesting things occuring that may indicate some more invesitigation.
I will agree though that the WOW signal and the Viking methane experiment are merely interesting footnotes. The Viking experiment, however, can be repr
The problem I see with 3D movies is that it is the last refuge of failing studios/producers/artists.
It is almost like Godwin's Law, where once a director or producer decides to make a 3D movie, his/her days are numbered and is at the end of their career. Look who is advocating this kind of idea, and it tends to reinforce this concept. (George Lucas is really at the end of his creative lifespan of movie making, with the Star Wars movies going downhill rapidly in quality.)
I am serious here too. 3D technology has been around since the 1950's, and in reality hasn't been able to get much better since then. There have been a few modest advances, but if you looked at 3D movies that were made back in the 1950's and 1960's, they are really not too much better than what is currently being produced. Indeed, many of the filming techniques "pioneered" in those 1950's 3D movies are still in use, such as:
Extreme closeups - small items tend to be exagerated in 3D movies. Looking at just an eye or nose can have a dramatic influence on an audience.
Quick zoom in/out - Visually your perspective of something as 3D has more impact when that object "zooms in" toward you. When it is moving in the same plane visually you tend to flatten out the sceen in your mind, which loses the 3D effect.
Hoards of critters/robots/asteroids/dust flying at you - This is related to the zoom in/out effect, but compounded when there is a whole bunch of stuff coming at you at once.
One serious problem with 3D movies is that tend to over emphasis these techniques (and others) and use them over and over again, even if it does nothing to advance the story. Why go 3D when it doesn't have any real effect on the audience? This is also perhaps why putting a movie not made 3D would not have the same effect as something filmed specifically for a 3D movie, because the actual acting techniques (good or ill) are quite a bit different.
3D movies also are used to cover up bad dialog, acting, or directing. In other words, the technology of going 3D is emphasised over the fact that the movie might be worth going to for other reasons... or perhaps the only reason to go see the movie is because of the "cool" technology of seeing something in 3D.
I will admit that with digital projectors it will be possible to improve on the cumbersome problems associated with filming in 3D. In addition, since the scenes are already done as a 3D environment, it would be cool to see some of Pixar's movies rendered as steroscopic 3D movies. In the case of these movies (as Pixar has already proven), the story is already good where the technology is merely another way to experience the story telling, not a means unto itself.
Otherwise, all of this talk about "new 3D technology" is utter bulls**t, and wading very deep in it as well. Steroscopic prints date back to the 1870's (not 1970's), and some 3D perspective work even predates photography. This is not something new. BTW, if you havn't seen one of those old stero viewers, find an antique store and check one out (if you can find one). A really cool hack on what appears to be a very mundane technology.
Now if you could make a true holographic projection (aka like Princess Leia in SW:ANH) without special glasses (or even with) and the ability to walk around the characters in a fashion like a Star Trek holodeck, that would be an awsome technology advance. And something to brag about. There are some virtual reality environments that come close to that and is cool technology. What George Lucas is talking about is more of the 1950's 3D garbage merely repackaged through marketing to make you think it is something "new".
While a port may be useful, in practice you always tend to lose quite a bit, as there are always features in one version of a language/compiler that are different from the original. Certainly doing a port isn't going to take advantage of unique services/API architechtures/language features of the new environment, and just for that reason a port will always be inferior to simply rewriting the application in the new environment.
The _only_ porting tool I ever saw that did a good move from one environment to another was VB.net to C# (and back again). Of course, these really are different implementations of the same idea, and VB.net was so perverted from its BASIC origins that conversion between the two is very trivial. Like Ook! Ook! to Feck! Feck! to Brainf***.
In the USA "crown copyrights" don't apply as they simply don't exist. If it is a public document then it lacks a copyright. That may not be true for some state government records, but for U.S. Federal publications they are all in the "public domain", including patent records. The trick is simply to get access to the records in the first place.
That said, it would be futile to try and do a commentary on all patents in the USA, as the USPTO is willing to give you a patent for just about anything that can be written down... far more than should legitimately be given out. It is this volume that would make any community effort to annotize patants to be useless except on the most controvercial patents.
Thus, the GPL does *not* require you to provide the source code for three years, rather it only requires that you provide a written offer to do so. I'm not clear on whether or not someone who got the offer would have any legal recourse against you if you chose not to honor it.
While that may be technically true, I wouldn't try to stand on that in court. Mitigating circumstances would include if the company that distrubited the GPL'd software went bankrupt, the owner died, or some other unfortunate situation where it was impossible to provide the source code. Simply being unwilling to provide it would not IMHO be a good defnese, and a part of the GPL that I would not want to test in court.
All in all, it is much easier and cheaper to simply include the source code in the distribution of the GPL'd software with the binaries. Although not required by the GPL, it would also be a good idea to include any non-standard compilers used to make the binaries as well.
They don't, but in the case of a BSD license it is much harder to enforce, and there is no requirement with the BSD license to "give back" to the community in the form of source code. The attribution requirement for a BSD license is also harder to enforce, as it can be in very fine print on an obscure reference manual that is mainly a paperweight.
As far as people who violate other copyrighted works, you will see many withing the "GPL using community" also be willing to enforce the Microsoft EULA, even with all of its obscure terms. The point there is that many within the Free Software movmement choose to keep the terms of the MS EULA by simply not buying software with that license, or even obtaining a copy by any means.
In the case of the GPL there have been a number of very visible software packages that have been copied and distributed for profit, but have violated the terms of the GPL. One case I know about is SCO Linux, who got some interesting mail from the FSF due to their distribution of GNU programs without source code. BTW, this was before the whole fiasco of the Linux licenses, and when SCO was at least pretending to be a part of the Free Software community.
People (mainly folks with MBAs) who have GPL'd software tend to think of it in the same terms as "freeware" or "shareware", not as something with specific copyright provisions in a license. Since they got it for free, they think that the software can be changed and manipulated for free and that they don't have to give anything back. When suddenly they have to distribute their source code, these businesses are shocked that this "submarine" clause is taking away their precious IP, without realizing that was exactly the intention of the GPL.
The most blatant abuse of the BSD license was with the internet protocol stack in MS-Windows (and some command-line internet apps) that were copied almost verbatium from FreeBSD Unix. When they were caught all they did was put the attribution in some obscure about box, and that was all that could be done (yes, the attribution is there in Windows... if you know what you are looking at). Most other non-GPL open source licenses lack the teeth of the GPL in terms of forcing 3rd parties to disclose updates to what software they are running.
Please read through this before flaming away, and I'm not here trying to advocate that the MEAA is doing the right thing, but there is a point of view that has not been expressed yet here on/.
The point of a professional associations, wheither it is something like the American Medical Association (for doctors), the American Bar Association (for lawyers), or the Screen Actors Guild, is that you want to restrict exactly who is going to be a "member" of the club. Basically, this is a hold-over from the medieval trade guilds, where they viewed people practicing their "craft", if done in a free-for-all fashion could kill their entire industry. (BTW, I'm mainly familiar with these American institutions, but there are many others like this throughout the world).
One way that these organizations help to improve their "craft" or "profession" is to try and restrict membership in the form of formal certificates... often issued through a government and where possible even enforced and backed up by laws that make it illegal to practice that craft without possessing that certificate.
The purpose of this is to make a small pool of hopefully talented people where there will be enough work available to keep everybody comfortable, and raise wages for the members of the organization. Some sports player associations in the USA have done an incredibly good job at raising the salaries of its members, notably the Major League Baseball Players Association and the National Basketball Players Association.
In the case here, the MEAA is merely trying to cull out the riff raff and try to keep its members from getting involved in projects that would from their perspective lower the value of the rest of its members.
A comment was made on another message board that this would in effect keep unemployed actors from getting jobs. This is precisely what the intent is here, where they are trying to drive out in this case actors with low skill. By following the Creative Commons license it doesn't seem likely that actors participating in these projects will ever make substantial amounts of money. Indeed, the attempt here is that actors who are so desparate that they want to participate in films like this should not be in the profession anyway (from the viewpoint of the MEAA). By restricting its members they will (hopefully) be improving the income for its remaining members.
The danger in a situation like this for any guild-like organization is that non-members and ex-members may totally ignore the guild and either form a rival organization that permits the activity being banned (in this case a group that would be willing to work under the Creative Commons license), or that the guild would be so dilluted in power due to small membership that it would be ineffective. This BTW is the problem with a guild-like organization for computer programmers (there are a few but fortunately/unfortunately they are all rather small).
If you think projects for actors involved with something like a project with the Creative Commons license (or other open source equivalent) could make some money, it would have to be from this financial aspect that you would have to encourage the MEAA.
Unfortunately, from experience with the open source movement I don't see this as a positive experience to compare what computer programmers are getting paid via open source programming projects vs. closed source programming projects. This isn't to say that humanity and mankind in general aren't better off for having open source projects, but from the perspective of a professional guild I can see that it is incompatable with the ideas of the open source community.
The problem right now is that all three branches of the U.S. Government now effectively ignore that provision of the constitution. Sad as that may be.
There is still "lip service" to the idea of ex post facto laws, but with taxation that is retroactive, and rectroactive enforcement of anti-terrorism laws, you can point out that the constitution in this regard is a meaningless scrap of paper.
Part of the Eldridge vs. Ascroft case was being argued exactly on these grounds, that there were many copyrighted works (like "Steamboat Willy" by Disney) that would be in public domain right now if it weren't for this retroactive enforcement of copyright laws. The dissenting opinions on the case mentioned this exactly as the basis for denying copyright extensions... as well as the issue of having effectively a permanent copyright, which is specifically denied in the text of the constutition.
That the majority of SCOTUS didn't agree with this concept shows how little they seem to actually read the document they proport to defend.
What kills me is that a service that used to cost the price of a couple of 1st class stamps on an evelope (going by snail mail) has gone up in price to about $100, simply because the IRS doesn't want to fill up landfills with paper (a noble goal in itself).
I would like at least the ability as a private citizen to send in the **data** for free electronically (except for transmission costs), even if I havn't had the luxury of an accountant.
If somebody wants to "simplify" the process and make it easier to file these taxes in a manner friendlier than a 1040 form, be my guest. That is what the commercial filing packages should be offering... not just the basic service of getting the data to the IRS.
In this regard an OSS solution would be better. And yes, I do want this to be free as in beer, as this is also something that is __REQUIRED BY LAW_, not just a trivial exercize to make some more money on Wall Street.
I don't like having the government tell me I need to support a private company or organization (especially when I can't get into that racket myself if I wanted). You shouldn't have to pay anybody to interact with the government, lawyers, accountants, or agents of any kind. If you want some extra help, that is one thing, but if you choose to go it alone you should be allowed to, and not penalized for doing so.
BTW, I am self-consistant with this, as I think manditory insurance is stupid as a principle of law, as are other silly things like privately owned companies that issue parking tickets (on public streets) or private prisons. There are some things the government should be doing.
I had an acountant, and got screwed anyway... by a mistake that the accountant made rather than what I did figuring it out on my own.
I nearly ended up in jail, except for the fact that I got the bill paid just in time (with penalties).
In short, you are screwed by the IRS no matter what you do, but at least with an accountant you can have somebody hold your hand and say "I'm sorry that you are screwed".
The fact that individual income taxes for people making less than $100,000/year are so complicated that the average person can't figure it out just shows how stupid the whole tax situation has become.
I just went through one of the "free" tax filing services on the 'net, and by doing it myself I got $1500 more back on my refund than what that %)*&@#!)(%&@ website said I was entitled to get. I didn't want to waste another 3-6 hours on-line trying to go through all of the stupid questions again.
Instead, this year I filed with a local accountant for $25 that took the numbers I came up with and sent them in with his own clients. And that included the state filing as well.
Basically, if you don't know how to program computers (or don't have that level of intelligence), you can go ahead and pray that the computer program won't screw up your tax return. Just about all/. readers should be capable of filing a 1040 form, especially a 1040 EZ if you are eligible and don't have kids.
The trick is trying to find some place that would let you enter the numbers straight from the standard tax forms and hand it off to the IRS rather than sending it to some poor schmuck in pen and paper and hoping that they can read your writing, or that the OCR program doesn't screw up what you put down on paper (the IRS is one of the leading OCR research organizations in the world).
I don't want to belabor this point too much more, but the reason universities choose to dump Pascal had a lot more to do with the availability of compilers, together with a major marketing push by OS vendors (Microsoft among them) to make C the primary development environment.
Unix was built on C, and has become the dominant operating system (in all of its various flavors). If you work in Unix, programming in C is a very natural fit, and most other programming languages fall way short in a Unix environment. The Win32 API is also largely built on C, although consideration for other programming environments was at least attempted. Add in VMS (major portions also done in C), most of the Mac OS flavors, and you got 99% of all operating systems, including even embedded OS environments. In a chicken and egg situation, the environments all use C and were written in it, so it is encouraged to continue down that path. In other words, C is used because it is an OS language, not necessarily the other way around. If a major operating system were written in BASIC, things would be quite a bit different.
In addition, and I won't argue this point, developing a C compiler is much easier than developing a Pascal compiler. If you are going to be teaching a compiler theory class, it would be useful to teach how to develop a real compiler by using the C programming language as opposed to something like Lisp, COBOL, or even Pascal. As a result, there have been many good C compilers that have been written. And to further add to this, as C is a simpler compiler it can be bootstrapped easier in the initial development cycle of the operating system environment with fewer headaches at the beginning
Still, is it a good programming language simply because it is easy to write the compiler itself in the first place?
What killed Delphi (or is killing Delphi) was that Borland didn't want to be seen as a major agressor in the compiler market against Microsoft, and instead decided to push up the price of their compilers to corporate developers rather than to more ordinary computer users, as was the case with the earlier Turbo Pascal series. Borland shows the marketing savvy of Wang and DEC in that regard. As for technical quality, I put Borland development environments as being way ahead of anything Microsoft ever developed. Switching the name of the company from Borland to Inprise and back to Borland didn't help either.
I will also agree that if you have experience in multiple programming languages that you will find that some languages tend to fit an application better than others. I do find, however, that there are a bunch of C-language biggots who write everything in that language simply because they have been brainwashed into thinking the language is the best thing that has ever been invented, and the final, ultimate programming language that can ever be used.
As far as relaxing Pascal syntax, some simple no-brainers include having functions not being required to return a result to a variable (more like how C does it anyway), built-in string manipulation with the languages including the + operator for strings, and OOP extensions that had to be hacked on just like C was turned into C++. There are several other concepts that have been added to Pascal over the years and moved beyond the original Wirth definitions due to having been used in a production environment rather than just in theory. It doesn't really destory the language either, and there is still a big difference between C and Pascal.
Most good programmers end up getting into a language they feel pretty comfortable with, and moving beyond that rut is sometimes quite difficult.
What is serious? Obviously you won't create an OS or Office suite in Pascal. But if you have average programmers to create or extend custom commercial applications, it's far more interesting than, say, Microsoft Visual BASIC. No wonder Borland Delphi came so much later and still got a sizeable chunk of the market. If your programmers are dumber, go COBOL; if smarter, go functional or OO.
As a hardcore Pascal programmer, I would be to differ even on the point that an OS could not be written in Pascal. It is mainly a desire to do so, and the base of developers willing to create the product in the first place. Same with an Office suite.
Mainly this is a prejudice revolving primarily over what language you've learned. I've seen language fanatics go heap praises of many other languages as well, but C and C++ get rave reviews mainly because of the widespread support from universities and the already huge established base of programmers.
I have yet to find a major algorithm or data structure that was written in C or C++ that couldn't be written in Pascal (given a good compiler that relaxes some of Wirth's silly requirements). This includes device drivers and low-level memory manipulation.
Basically, choose a good language that meets your needs and suits your programming style. The rest doesn't matter.
The only think I can imagine that dotNet offers to developers is the potential to be cross-platform compatable, but maintain a similar look & feel to applications developed on a Win32 platform. Java applets have a very different feel and a very different API layout.
Of course, with Wine and ReactOS, all of that cross-platform BS really goes out the window as well.
As a software manager, the consideration for moving to dotNet was hoping that you wouldn't be left in the dust when the Win32 API platform was totally abondoned by Microsoft. It is going to happen anyway, and the software tools developed by Microsoft are going to go the way of Visual C for MS-DOS. You can still technically buy them, but it won't do you a whole lot of good. And there will be many much better tools that are open source software.
I don't see Win32 as a general platform dying out for at least another 30-50 years, but it will turn substantially away from Microsoft, just as FreeDOS has done with the DOS development environment. The real trick will be to see if equipment manufacturers will continue to build IA-32 compatable CPUs 30 years from now. I think that is likely as well in some form.
NASA needs to get completely out of the LEO launching business entirely. They shouldn't even have a planning staff working on concept vehicles, but instead should be planning on what kind of spacecraft needs to be developed to land on the Moon or Mars. Or what a "shuttle" from LEO to L-5 would look like.
Manned spaceflight for private industry is admittedly just starting, and so far the only legitimate potential for sending somebody up right now is on a Falcon V, but I do hope there are some more entrants for the Bigelow prize.
Going up into at least LEO has been explored just about as much as you can do without having babies being born and full-fledged human settlement. Let's get the astronauts out there for exploring the next frontiers.
Military weapons not much different than baseball bats were the primary infantry weapon for many soldiers in ancient times. Put a couple of nails in the end and it will draw blood quite nicely. It will also cause considerably more damage than a gun, simply because you can keep reusing it over and over again.
It is also cheap to obtain and requires no permits or even waiting period to purchase, and the modification to turn it into a leathal weapon is also cheap and easy to do.
I'd like to see how martial arts allows someone to walk a straight line through a cube-farm and trivially kill/seriously injure a few dozen people.
One thing about martial arts training is that they teach a balanced lifestyle to go along with the physical training. In other words, people who are trained in martial arts are probably more mentally balanced than even a random person you grab off the street. Still, if you wanted to kill somebody quickly and didn't care if you got caught afterward, martial arts moves are just as easily done in a cube-farm as anything else, and you could kill a couple of people in a short period of time (especially your old boss who fired you, etc.)
It is also interesting to note that martial arts were developed in response to a disarmed citizenry. China outlawed the possession of any weapon (including most knives) by ordinary citizens (peasants is a better term), leaving most people unable to defend against themselves against even the most rudimentary assults by bullies. By necessity they had to develop unarmed combat techniques that ended up so useful that it was later adopted officially by the army, and the "masters" of the various forms became quite highly regarded as well.
Perhaps the worst injustice I heard about was in the Idaho State Penetentary, where an 18 year old kid (therefore, an adult under law) sent in a credit card application for "Micky Mouse" and a bunch of other totally silly stuff that you would normally think of as simply a parody, like $50,000,000/year salary and other rediculous stuff.
He got convicted for 20 years in jail for putting false and misleading information on a credit card application. Essentially he ruined his life over a simple prank.
At the same time, where I live somebody got 3 months in the county jail for automotive manslaughter (they killed somebody while driving their car... and disregarding other traffic laws in the process as well).
DUI convictions are even worse, and I can't believe that it is even possible for somebody to be convicted 4 or 5 times, and I've heard about 30 DUI convictions. At what point to the licenses get suspended? (Don't flame about what state laws say should happen...I'm talking about actual practice of judges and prosecutors here...especially when "prominent citizens" are involved.) I feel your pain regarding prisoner sentancing.
Could someone find some constructive use for guns? Preferably uses that don't start with the above.
Guns (and firearms in general) are simply a subset of armaments in general, like swords, cross bows, arrows, tanks, catapults, etc.
A good use of weapons are to scare the hell out of somebody so they won't mess with you, and that even includes police. With an armed (and trained on how to use those arms) citizenry, police or criminals can and should be more hesitant on invading people's homes just for the hell of it. A reasonable and intelligent citizen will almost always cooperate with a reasonable and intelligent police officer trying to enforce the law anyway, so the only real problem lies with idiots. In short, let me live my life and don't get in my face unless you can prove I'm doing something I shouldn't be be doing. And I promise I'll say out of other people's faces as well. Keep that list of things I shouldn't be doing as short as possible. (I know, this is a liberatarian philosophy, but it is also common sense as well.)
Too bad there are idiotic police officers on a power trip that don't understand that philosophy, or do-gooder legislators who can get enough of meddling in other people's lives. This applies to both "liberal" and "conservative" legislators.
I personally enjoy using a gun for target practice, and it is not to simply destroy property, but to practice reflexes and set challenges to try and become better at something than I was before. In short, a "sport", just like shooting baskets with a basketball or pounding out balls with a bat.
How is a gun any different than a baseball bat? They both can kill, and kill people very effectively. The main difference is just a matter of range to be effective. And with good training you don't even "need" weapons, as knowledge of martial arts can be almost as effective as having a gun, and easier to get through airport security screenings.
The North Korean army is a joke. Oh, they have a lot of manpower, which is useful for keeping domestic peace (you won't see large unarmed civilian uprisings in North Korea), but that hardly says anything about how capable it would be in fighting any of its neighbors.
Japan is in the top five spenders for military budgets in the world... in absolute terms, not per capita. They also have three major military powers that they have to deal with as neighbors: China, Russia, and the USA (Alaska really isn't that far from Japan, nor is there much besides water between Hawaii and Japan). In trying to avoid getting overwhelmed economically, culturally, or militarily against these countries, North Korea is just a very small fry.
In short, if North Korea decided to make a move right now, it is likely that they would get squashed by several military powers simultaneously... with a very strange Sino-Japanese alliance putting it down along with a very powerful South Korean army in its own right. That is the main thing that is keeping North Korea from getting out of hand. I just don't see a North Korean invasion of Russia happening either, for much of the same reason.
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There is nothing wrong with making a derivitive work... or illegal for that matter, as long as you either:
1) Get permission from the original copyright holders (the path usually done by dead tree book makers)
2) Require the purchase of the original product in order to "modify" the binaries to put in the new original items (the route usually done with computer software)
Sure, you can find court cases that suggest otherwise, but the point here is that it doesn't matter. Also, it would be much harder to prove either economic damage (not really necessary with copyright, but it helps in a jury trial), and more importantly, that the modification contain any copyrighted material by the original vendor (if they do, then it might cause some problems).
Otherwise it becomes an EULA case, which is on ground much shakier than the GPL, and has never really been tested legally anyway. I doubt that the vendors of GTA are going to want to be the "test case" for something like that.... leave these kind of challenges to a company like Microsoft who has something to prove.
Man, I love this idea. This would be a fantastic concept that would be beneficial to both types of students... especially if you "teamed" them up with a manager and engineering lead having to work together.
Coming from the two different viewpoints they offer competing visions, and different expectations. It would also be a part of the curriculum, as they are going to be graded differently on the performance of the two groups of people. And with the management "trainees" it would be a good exercise for learning how to make a good requirements definition document that could be understood by an engineer... not normally something taught in universities, together with when and how requirments can be changed, and what the consequences of doing that are going to have on completing the project... all management skills that both managers as well as engineers should be aware of. It would be better for a manager to screw up in school than learn this for the first time on a $1 Million project (rather small and typical for a first time manager). There are other things too, like when to pull back and takes hands off a project, when to throw parties, utilizing team assetts, helping discouraged team members (true leadership skills here), and how to simply remove somebody when they aren't working out (that is not always an option... even in the "real world").
These are all skills I wish I had learned when I was in school... but instead had to learn through the school of hard knocks... often with incredibly lousy managers to boot.
I think computer _*COULD*_ be used as a good interactive teaching tool by teachers if they could get their act together.
For example, rather than using chalk and eraser they could use a computer to plot graphs during lectures, "blowing up" details of the graph and giving demonstrations of content.
In short, a true multi-media teaching tool that can grab the attention of the students and show material in a way that earlier methods of teaching could not have done well.
The problem with this is that it takes an incredibly large amount of time on the part of an instructor to put something like this together, and there really isn't a way to do it effectively. Power point presentations only go so far and are an inferior tool to what could be done.
In short, most classrooms should only have a single computer per classroom... and that only under control of the teacher (which includes classroom accounting software and other student information files required by the teacher).
For students learning about computer science, that may be a different story, but that should be the exception rather than the rule.
I agree here that DNA should not be singled out.
Why would DNA be any different from fingerprinting evidence, or any other biometric information (x-rays of bones/teeth, handprints, etc.)?
Keeping the records of convicted felons is one thing, but for people who are merely suspects?
In the past, this sort of information was haphazardly kept track of, and merely moving to another state was a good way to avoid having this information follow you around (under most circumstances). Now that is no longer an option.
I also don't see police give up this information except by major political actions, and even then it might just move this type of information gathering to go underground like most wiretapping has become (used to track people, but not formally presented as evidence when used "illegally").
The problem was that SAE claimed ownership of the software as a derivitive work (even though they didn't write it).
Also, and this is the killer part here, SAE tried to distribute the software in violation of the terms of the GPL, including not redistributing the source code, claiming to own the software under a propritary license arrangement, and violating section 7 of the GPL, which dumps the GPL license altogether and prohibits distribution of the software under any means what so ever.
In essense, this really is a test of section 7 of the GPL, and by doing what SAE did on their website, they violated this portion of the GPL and hence it turned into a simple unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material subject to normal copyright penalties.
The rest is muddled into arguments over actual ownership of the copyright, but that was quite clear in this case, and even if it turned out that SAE would "own" the software via derivitive works theory, they still wouldn't be able to distribute the software, and were in willful violation of the copyright laws. Had this been the case, the GPL would have been a much bigger factor, but instead the court ruled that software can't be considered a derivitive work based only on figures and standards from another document.
Too bad this only applies in the state of Michigan, as this sort of ruling does have national significance. It is legal precedence, however, and can be used to bolster an argument in other courts in the USA for similar cases.
Back in the 1950's there was a group of "pirate radio" enthusiasts that did indeed broadcast from Mexico to the USA... usually with commercial radio frequencies and massive (10,000 watt) antennas. "Wolfman" Jack was one of the famous DJ's of the period. At the time Mexico didn't care, and if it screwed up gringo commerce, they didn't care. The money was going to Mexico.
Times have changed, and particularly with NAFTA, as well as other international treaties, together with a growing middle-class in Mexico proper requiring the need for a more regulated radio frequency infrastructure, this "wild west" atmosphere is largely a thing of the past. The big thing you want to be careful about when doing radio broadcasts from Mexico is that you don't want to step on the toes of the Mexican Federal Government.
It is still more relaxed in Mexico than the USA, but you are correct that violating international radio frequency allotments and having an unlicensed transmitter can still cause some problems. And the FCC does have total juristiction once you cross the international border into the USA. If you are using it as a paging device only (your device doesn't transmit anything) you might be able to get away with the "illegal transmitter" in Tiajuana... as long as you understand Mexican frequency allocation and whose toes not to step on. In short a ham operator who would know better than to waste their time and money on something that they could get them in jail when they have other means to get the same job done.
I concurr with your conculsion... don't do it even if you are the nephew of the governor of Baja California.
I think you are missing the point here.
All of these things are interesting in science precisely because the items listed are above and beyond simple measurement error.
In many cases, this is very similar to the effects and problems raised with people trying to interpret measurements in the solar system (notably Mercury's orbital patterns) with pure Newtonian physics, as well as other behavior that doesn't make sense following pure Newtonian mechanics. That is where Einstein came in and showed substantial new ways to look at everything with his new theory.
The same could be said when Quark theory was first proposed, where it helped to explain a whole host of reasons for a collection of sub-atomic particles, and what else to look for (or to note that all elementary particles had been found).
In Chemistry, the creation of the Periodic table by Mendeelev was of similar importance.
The discovery of the prion (self-replicating protien without any RNA or DNA what-so-ever... Mad Cow Disease, etc.) was another amazing discovery that explained some interesting diseases not previously considered or explained.
The discovery of electro-magnitism was also quite profound, and back in the 18th Century there were many scientists who thought the whole thing was a bunch of BS. Some of the early experiments were as difficult to reproduce as cold fusion, because the experimenters forgot to take the magnetic field of the Earth into account during the experiments (causing negative results... debunking electro-magnitism). That you are reading this post proves that Electricity can produce magnetic effects and the other way around as well.
In short, a solution to explain any of these ideas is worthy of a Nobel prize... if you can wrap your brain around the concept and come up with a good testable theory... preferably something that predicts behavior not even previously considered or observed. (The periodic table was particularly successful in this respect.)
For most scientists, this is precisely why they get into science in the first place: To explore nature and our universe in such as way that you know something about how it works better than anybody else, and can share that knowledge with others on the leading edge of that branch of knowledge.
What scientist wouldn't want to have some aspect of their work to be as memorable as the equation E=mc^2?
BTW, if you think these are all easily refuted... do so. I dare you. That is also an aspect of science, but I warn you that all 13 points in this article have already been hammered by their respective fields and some very bright people have not been able to come up with good explainations. The effects are very real as basically described, and it would be easier to come up with a good theory than to prove that the data behind these problems are purely manufactured and done by disreputable scientist trying to pull a hoax (it has been done, but the scientist doing so usually get caught... more sooner than later too).
Some of these I will admit are more bleeding science than others.
Pioneer acceleration and dark matter have substantial hard data to back up the problem... and is reproducable.
The placebo effect has not happened just once... it happens all of the time in clinical trials and does cause some problems with trying to filter out if a medicine works or not.
Cold Fusion is something that is definitely weird. I don't buy that it will ever be something to power my car, but it is an interesting physical phenemona that is not easily explained away. I've seen the hard data for Cold Fusion (from several researchers) and it is a real effect.
Homeopathy seems like an interesting thing to investigate, but all that report said was that there are some interesting things occuring that may indicate some more invesitigation.
I will agree though that the WOW signal and the Viking methane experiment are merely interesting footnotes. The Viking experiment, however, can be repr
It is almost like Godwin's Law, where once a director or producer decides to make a 3D movie, his/her days are numbered and is at the end of their career. Look who is advocating this kind of idea, and it tends to reinforce this concept. (George Lucas is really at the end of his creative lifespan of movie making, with the Star Wars movies going downhill rapidly in quality.)
I am serious here too. 3D technology has been around since the 1950's, and in reality hasn't been able to get much better since then. There have been a few modest advances, but if you looked at 3D movies that were made back in the 1950's and 1960's, they are really not too much better than what is currently being produced. Indeed, many of the filming techniques "pioneered" in those 1950's 3D movies are still in use, such as:
One serious problem with 3D movies is that tend to over emphasis these techniques (and others) and use them over and over again, even if it does nothing to advance the story. Why go 3D when it doesn't have any real effect on the audience? This is also perhaps why putting a movie not made 3D would not have the same effect as something filmed specifically for a 3D movie, because the actual acting techniques (good or ill) are quite a bit different.
3D movies also are used to cover up bad dialog, acting, or directing. In other words, the technology of going 3D is emphasised over the fact that the movie might be worth going to for other reasons... or perhaps the only reason to go see the movie is because of the "cool" technology of seeing something in 3D.
I will admit that with digital projectors it will be possible to improve on the cumbersome problems associated with filming in 3D. In addition, since the scenes are already done as a 3D environment, it would be cool to see some of Pixar's movies rendered as steroscopic 3D movies. In the case of these movies (as Pixar has already proven), the story is already good where the technology is merely another way to experience the story telling, not a means unto itself.
Otherwise, all of this talk about "new 3D technology" is utter bulls**t, and wading very deep in it as well. Steroscopic prints date back to the 1870's (not 1970's), and some 3D perspective work even predates photography. This is not something new. BTW, if you havn't seen one of those old stero viewers, find an antique store and check one out (if you can find one). A really cool hack on what appears to be a very mundane technology.
Now if you could make a true holographic projection (aka like Princess Leia in SW:ANH) without special glasses (or even with) and the ability to walk around the characters in a fashion like a Star Trek holodeck, that would be an awsome technology advance. And something to brag about. There are some virtual reality environments that come close to that and is cool technology. What George Lucas is talking about is more of the 1950's 3D garbage merely repackaged through marketing to make you think it is something "new".
While a port may be useful, in practice you always tend to lose quite a bit, as there are always features in one version of a language/compiler that are different from the original. Certainly doing a port isn't going to take advantage of unique services/API architechtures/language features of the new environment, and just for that reason a port will always be inferior to simply rewriting the application in the new environment.
The _only_ porting tool I ever saw that did a good move from one environment to another was VB.net to C# (and back again). Of course, these really are different implementations of the same idea, and VB.net was so perverted from its BASIC origins that conversion between the two is very trivial. Like Ook! Ook! to Feck! Feck! to Brainf***.
In the USA "crown copyrights" don't apply as they simply don't exist. If it is a public document then it lacks a copyright. That may not be true for some state government records, but for U.S. Federal publications they are all in the "public domain", including patent records. The trick is simply to get access to the records in the first place.
That said, it would be futile to try and do a commentary on all patents in the USA, as the USPTO is willing to give you a patent for just about anything that can be written down... far more than should legitimately be given out. It is this volume that would make any community effort to annotize patants to be useless except on the most controvercial patents.
While that may be technically true, I wouldn't try to stand on that in court. Mitigating circumstances would include if the company that distrubited the GPL'd software went bankrupt, the owner died, or some other unfortunate situation where it was impossible to provide the source code. Simply being unwilling to provide it would not IMHO be a good defnese, and a part of the GPL that I would not want to test in court.
All in all, it is much easier and cheaper to simply include the source code in the distribution of the GPL'd software with the binaries. Although not required by the GPL, it would also be a good idea to include any non-standard compilers used to make the binaries as well.
They don't, but in the case of a BSD license it is much harder to enforce, and there is no requirement with the BSD license to "give back" to the community in the form of source code. The attribution requirement for a BSD license is also harder to enforce, as it can be in very fine print on an obscure reference manual that is mainly a paperweight.
As far as people who violate other copyrighted works, you will see many withing the "GPL using community" also be willing to enforce the Microsoft EULA, even with all of its obscure terms. The point there is that many within the Free Software movmement choose to keep the terms of the MS EULA by simply not buying software with that license, or even obtaining a copy by any means.
In the case of the GPL there have been a number of very visible software packages that have been copied and distributed for profit, but have violated the terms of the GPL. One case I know about is SCO Linux, who got some interesting mail from the FSF due to their distribution of GNU programs without source code. BTW, this was before the whole fiasco of the Linux licenses, and when SCO was at least pretending to be a part of the Free Software community.
People (mainly folks with MBAs) who have GPL'd software tend to think of it in the same terms as "freeware" or "shareware", not as something with specific copyright provisions in a license. Since they got it for free, they think that the software can be changed and manipulated for free and that they don't have to give anything back. When suddenly they have to distribute their source code, these businesses are shocked that this "submarine" clause is taking away their precious IP, without realizing that was exactly the intention of the GPL.
The most blatant abuse of the BSD license was with the internet protocol stack in MS-Windows (and some command-line internet apps) that were copied almost verbatium from FreeBSD Unix. When they were caught all they did was put the attribution in some obscure about box, and that was all that could be done (yes, the attribution is there in Windows... if you know what you are looking at). Most other non-GPL open source licenses lack the teeth of the GPL in terms of forcing 3rd parties to disclose updates to what software they are running.
Please read through this before flaming away, and I'm not here trying to advocate that the MEAA is doing the right thing, but there is a point of view that has not been expressed yet here on /.
The point of a professional associations, wheither it is something like the American Medical Association (for doctors), the American Bar Association (for lawyers), or the Screen Actors Guild, is that you want to restrict exactly who is going to be a "member" of the club. Basically, this is a hold-over from the medieval trade guilds, where they viewed people practicing their "craft", if done in a free-for-all fashion could kill their entire industry. (BTW, I'm mainly familiar with these American institutions, but there are many others like this throughout the world).
One way that these organizations help to improve their "craft" or "profession" is to try and restrict membership in the form of formal certificates... often issued through a government and where possible even enforced and backed up by laws that make it illegal to practice that craft without possessing that certificate.
The purpose of this is to make a small pool of hopefully talented people where there will be enough work available to keep everybody comfortable, and raise wages for the members of the organization. Some sports player associations in the USA have done an incredibly good job at raising the salaries of its members, notably the Major League Baseball Players Association and the National Basketball Players Association.
In the case here, the MEAA is merely trying to cull out the riff raff and try to keep its members from getting involved in projects that would from their perspective lower the value of the rest of its members.
A comment was made on another message board that this would in effect keep unemployed actors from getting jobs. This is precisely what the intent is here, where they are trying to drive out in this case actors with low skill. By following the Creative Commons license it doesn't seem likely that actors participating in these projects will ever make substantial amounts of money. Indeed, the attempt here is that actors who are so desparate that they want to participate in films like this should not be in the profession anyway (from the viewpoint of the MEAA). By restricting its members they will (hopefully) be improving the income for its remaining members.
The danger in a situation like this for any guild-like organization is that non-members and ex-members may totally ignore the guild and either form a rival organization that permits the activity being banned (in this case a group that would be willing to work under the Creative Commons license), or that the guild would be so dilluted in power due to small membership that it would be ineffective. This BTW is the problem with a guild-like organization for computer programmers (there are a few but fortunately/unfortunately they are all rather small).
If you think projects for actors involved with something like a project with the Creative Commons license (or other open source equivalent) could make some money, it would have to be from this financial aspect that you would have to encourage the MEAA.
Unfortunately, from experience with the open source movement I don't see this as a positive experience to compare what computer programmers are getting paid via open source programming projects vs. closed source programming projects. This isn't to say that humanity and mankind in general aren't better off for having open source projects, but from the perspective of a professional guild I can see that it is incompatable with the ideas of the open source community.
The problem right now is that all three branches of the U.S. Government now effectively ignore that provision of the constitution. Sad as that may be.
There is still "lip service" to the idea of ex post facto laws, but with taxation that is retroactive, and rectroactive enforcement of anti-terrorism laws, you can point out that the constitution in this regard is a meaningless scrap of paper.
Part of the Eldridge vs. Ascroft case was being argued exactly on these grounds, that there were many copyrighted works (like "Steamboat Willy" by Disney) that would be in public domain right now if it weren't for this retroactive enforcement of copyright laws. The dissenting opinions on the case mentioned this exactly as the basis for denying copyright extensions... as well as the issue of having effectively a permanent copyright, which is specifically denied in the text of the constutition.
That the majority of SCOTUS didn't agree with this concept shows how little they seem to actually read the document they proport to defend.
What kills me is that a service that used to cost the price of a couple of 1st class stamps on an evelope (going by snail mail) has gone up in price to about $100, simply because the IRS doesn't want to fill up landfills with paper (a noble goal in itself).
I would like at least the ability as a private citizen to send in the **data** for free electronically (except for transmission costs), even if I havn't had the luxury of an accountant.
If somebody wants to "simplify" the process and make it easier to file these taxes in a manner friendlier than a 1040 form, be my guest. That is what the commercial filing packages should be offering... not just the basic service of getting the data to the IRS.
In this regard an OSS solution would be better. And yes, I do want this to be free as in beer, as this is also something that is __REQUIRED BY LAW_, not just a trivial exercize to make some more money on Wall Street.
I don't like having the government tell me I need to support a private company or organization (especially when I can't get into that racket myself if I wanted). You shouldn't have to pay anybody to interact with the government, lawyers, accountants, or agents of any kind. If you want some extra help, that is one thing, but if you choose to go it alone you should be allowed to, and not penalized for doing so.
BTW, I am self-consistant with this, as I think manditory insurance is stupid as a principle of law, as are other silly things like privately owned companies that issue parking tickets (on public streets) or private prisons. There are some things the government should be doing.
I had an acountant, and got screwed anyway... by a mistake that the accountant made rather than what I did figuring it out on my own.
/year are so complicated that the average person can't figure it out just shows how stupid the whole tax situation has become.
I nearly ended up in jail, except for the fact that I got the bill paid just in time (with penalties).
In short, you are screwed by the IRS no matter what you do, but at least with an accountant you can have somebody hold your hand and say "I'm sorry that you are screwed".
The fact that individual income taxes for people making less than $100,000
I just went through one of the "free" tax filing services on the 'net, and by doing it myself I got $1500 more back on my refund than what that %)*&@#!)(%&@ website said I was entitled to get. I didn't want to waste another 3-6 hours on-line trying to go through all of the stupid questions again.
/. readers should be capable of filing a 1040 form, especially a 1040 EZ if you are eligible and don't have kids.
Instead, this year I filed with a local accountant for $25 that took the numbers I came up with and sent them in with his own clients. And that included the state filing as well.
Basically, if you don't know how to program computers (or don't have that level of intelligence), you can go ahead and pray that the computer program won't screw up your tax return. Just about all
The trick is trying to find some place that would let you enter the numbers straight from the standard tax forms and hand it off to the IRS rather than sending it to some poor schmuck in pen and paper and hoping that they can read your writing, or that the OCR program doesn't screw up what you put down on paper (the IRS is one of the leading OCR research organizations in the world).
I don't want to belabor this point too much more, but the reason universities choose to dump Pascal had a lot more to do with the availability of compilers, together with a major marketing push by OS vendors (Microsoft among them) to make C the primary development environment.
Unix was built on C, and has become the dominant operating system (in all of its various flavors). If you work in Unix, programming in C is a very natural fit, and most other programming languages fall way short in a Unix environment. The Win32 API is also largely built on C, although consideration for other programming environments was at least attempted. Add in VMS (major portions also done in C), most of the Mac OS flavors, and you got 99% of all operating systems, including even embedded OS environments. In a chicken and egg situation, the environments all use C and were written in it, so it is encouraged to continue down that path. In other words, C is used because it is an OS language, not necessarily the other way around. If a major operating system were written in BASIC, things would be quite a bit different.
In addition, and I won't argue this point, developing a C compiler is much easier than developing a Pascal compiler. If you are going to be teaching a compiler theory class, it would be useful to teach how to develop a real compiler by using the C programming language as opposed to something like Lisp, COBOL, or even Pascal. As a result, there have been many good C compilers that have been written. And to further add to this, as C is a simpler compiler it can be bootstrapped easier in the initial development cycle of the operating system environment with fewer headaches at the beginning
Still, is it a good programming language simply because it is easy to write the compiler itself in the first place?
What killed Delphi (or is killing Delphi) was that Borland didn't want to be seen as a major agressor in the compiler market against Microsoft, and instead decided to push up the price of their compilers to corporate developers rather than to more ordinary computer users, as was the case with the earlier Turbo Pascal series. Borland shows the marketing savvy of Wang and DEC in that regard. As for technical quality, I put Borland development environments as being way ahead of anything Microsoft ever developed. Switching the name of the company from Borland to Inprise and back to Borland didn't help either.
I will also agree that if you have experience in multiple programming languages that you will find that some languages tend to fit an application better than others. I do find, however, that there are a bunch of C-language biggots who write everything in that language simply because they have been brainwashed into thinking the language is the best thing that has ever been invented, and the final, ultimate programming language that can ever be used.
As far as relaxing Pascal syntax, some simple no-brainers include having functions not being required to return a result to a variable (more like how C does it anyway), built-in string manipulation with the languages including the + operator for strings, and OOP extensions that had to be hacked on just like C was turned into C++. There are several other concepts that have been added to Pascal over the years and moved beyond the original Wirth definitions due to having been used in a production environment rather than just in theory. It doesn't really destory the language either, and there is still a big difference between C and Pascal.
Most good programmers end up getting into a language they feel pretty comfortable with, and moving beyond that rut is sometimes quite difficult.
As a hardcore Pascal programmer, I would be to differ even on the point that an OS could not be written in Pascal. It is mainly a desire to do so, and the base of developers willing to create the product in the first place. Same with an Office suite.
Mainly this is a prejudice revolving primarily over what language you've learned. I've seen language fanatics go heap praises of many other languages as well, but C and C++ get rave reviews mainly because of the widespread support from universities and the already huge established base of programmers.
I have yet to find a major algorithm or data structure that was written in C or C++ that couldn't be written in Pascal (given a good compiler that relaxes some of Wirth's silly requirements). This includes device drivers and low-level memory manipulation.
Basically, choose a good language that meets your needs and suits your programming style. The rest doesn't matter.
The only think I can imagine that dotNet offers to developers is the potential to be cross-platform compatable, but maintain a similar look & feel to applications developed on a Win32 platform. Java applets have a very different feel and a very different API layout.
Of course, with Wine and ReactOS, all of that cross-platform BS really goes out the window as well.
As a software manager, the consideration for moving to dotNet was hoping that you wouldn't be left in the dust when the Win32 API platform was totally abondoned by Microsoft. It is going to happen anyway, and the software tools developed by Microsoft are going to go the way of Visual C for MS-DOS. You can still technically buy them, but it won't do you a whole lot of good. And there will be many much better tools that are open source software.
I don't see Win32 as a general platform dying out for at least another 30-50 years, but it will turn substantially away from Microsoft, just as FreeDOS has done with the DOS development environment. The real trick will be to see if equipment manufacturers will continue to build IA-32 compatable CPUs 30 years from now. I think that is likely as well in some form.
Here! Here!
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
NASA needs to get completely out of the LEO launching business entirely. They shouldn't even have a planning staff working on concept vehicles, but instead should be planning on what kind of spacecraft needs to be developed to land on the Moon or Mars. Or what a "shuttle" from LEO to L-5 would look like.
Manned spaceflight for private industry is admittedly just starting, and so far the only legitimate potential for sending somebody up right now is on a Falcon V, but I do hope there are some more entrants for the Bigelow prize.
Going up into at least LEO has been explored just about as much as you can do without having babies being born and full-fledged human settlement. Let's get the astronauts out there for exploring the next frontiers.
Military weapons not much different than baseball bats were the primary infantry weapon for many soldiers in ancient times. Put a couple of nails in the end and it will draw blood quite nicely. It will also cause considerably more damage than a gun, simply because you can keep reusing it over and over again.
It is also cheap to obtain and requires no permits or even waiting period to purchase, and the modification to turn it into a leathal weapon is also cheap and easy to do.
One thing about martial arts training is that they teach a balanced lifestyle to go along with the physical training. In other words, people who are trained in martial arts are probably more mentally balanced than even a random person you grab off the street. Still, if you wanted to kill somebody quickly and didn't care if you got caught afterward, martial arts moves are just as easily done in a cube-farm as anything else, and you could kill a couple of people in a short period of time (especially your old boss who fired you, etc.)
It is also interesting to note that martial arts were developed in response to a disarmed citizenry. China outlawed the possession of any weapon (including most knives) by ordinary citizens (peasants is a better term), leaving most people unable to defend against themselves against even the most rudimentary assults by bullies. By necessity they had to develop unarmed combat techniques that ended up so useful that it was later adopted officially by the army, and the "masters" of the various forms became quite highly regarded as well.
Perhaps the worst injustice I heard about was in the Idaho State Penetentary, where an 18 year old kid (therefore, an adult under law) sent in a credit card application for "Micky Mouse" and a bunch of other totally silly stuff that you would normally think of as simply a parody, like $50,000,000/year salary and other rediculous stuff.
He got convicted for 20 years in jail for putting false and misleading information on a credit card application. Essentially he ruined his life over a simple prank.
At the same time, where I live somebody got 3 months in the county jail for automotive manslaughter (they killed somebody while driving their car... and disregarding other traffic laws in the process as well).
DUI convictions are even worse, and I can't believe that it is even possible for somebody to be convicted 4 or 5 times, and I've heard about 30 DUI convictions. At what point to the licenses get suspended? (Don't flame about what state laws say should happen...I'm talking about actual practice of judges and prosecutors here...especially when "prominent citizens" are involved.) I feel your pain regarding prisoner sentancing.
Guns (and firearms in general) are simply a subset of armaments in general, like swords, cross bows, arrows, tanks, catapults, etc.
A good use of weapons are to scare the hell out of somebody so they won't mess with you, and that even includes police. With an armed (and trained on how to use those arms) citizenry, police or criminals can and should be more hesitant on invading people's homes just for the hell of it. A reasonable and intelligent citizen will almost always cooperate with a reasonable and intelligent police officer trying to enforce the law anyway, so the only real problem lies with idiots. In short, let me live my life and don't get in my face unless you can prove I'm doing something I shouldn't be be doing. And I promise I'll say out of other people's faces as well. Keep that list of things I shouldn't be doing as short as possible. (I know, this is a liberatarian philosophy, but it is also common sense as well.)
Too bad there are idiotic police officers on a power trip that don't understand that philosophy, or do-gooder legislators who can get enough of meddling in other people's lives. This applies to both "liberal" and "conservative" legislators.
I personally enjoy using a gun for target practice, and it is not to simply destroy property, but to practice reflexes and set challenges to try and become better at something than I was before. In short, a "sport", just like shooting baskets with a basketball or pounding out balls with a bat.
How is a gun any different than a baseball bat? They both can kill, and kill people very effectively. The main difference is just a matter of range to be effective. And with good training you don't even "need" weapons, as knowledge of martial arts can be almost as effective as having a gun, and easier to get through airport security screenings.
The North Korean army is a joke. Oh, they have a lot of manpower, which is useful for keeping domestic peace (you won't see large unarmed civilian uprisings in North Korea), but that hardly says anything about how capable it would be in fighting any of its neighbors.
Japan is in the top five spenders for military budgets in the world... in absolute terms, not per capita. They also have three major military powers that they have to deal with as neighbors: China, Russia, and the USA (Alaska really isn't that far from Japan, nor is there much besides water between Hawaii and Japan). In trying to avoid getting overwhelmed economically, culturally, or militarily against these countries, North Korea is just a very small fry.
In short, if North Korea decided to make a move right now, it is likely that they would get squashed by several military powers simultaneously... with a very strange Sino-Japanese alliance putting it down along with a very powerful South Korean army in its own right. That is the main thing that is keeping North Korea from getting out of hand. I just don't see a North Korean invasion of Russia happening either, for much of the same reason.