Money isn't the root of all evil, it's just a tool like your computer. The root of all evil is the heart of the person who would abuse that tool for destructive ends. You wouldn't complain if #1 were "computer", or "hammer", or "flashlight" would you? Read Ayn Rand.
the INDUCE Act couldn't "overturn the 9th Circuit's ruling"
Uh, last time I checked, statutes trumped common law in their jurisdiction. Moreover, new Federal law (INDUCE) would trump rulings on the old Federal law (found in 17 U.S.C.) made in a Federal Appeals court (MGM v Grokster).
As you rightly pointed out, the worst the Supreme Court can do is declare a law unconstitutional; however, even they have to wait for an actual "case or controversy". They can also overturn themselves, e.g. Brown v Board of Education overturning Plessy v Ferguson.
Now begins speculation. As far as INDUCE goes, it could be viewed as an end-run around Betamax, since the Betamax decision only applies to current doctrines of secondary infringement (obviously). The new 'inductive' doctrine would be a peer to the vicarious and contributory doctrines, and may or may not be subject to Betamax, since the Supreme Court didn't have induction in mind when they made the ruling.
is windows tcpip more featureful and flexible than windows?
I think I can answer that with an unqualified "no".
show me the most secure windows, I'll show you 10 more oses more secure than that.
Windows Unplugged(tm). For extra security, Windows in a Concrete Box at the Bottom of the Ocean(tm). This exciting new OS, to be released after Longhorn, is in the process of getting its A1 security rating.
Before I begin my rant, I want to say something. If your question was about technology, then just ask about the technology. No need to couch it in ingratiating, sycophantic language and implied conspiracy theories. I thought it was a great question on its own merits.
An interesting story on LISNews.com this morning about savvy U.S. students photocopying textbooks in Mexico then returning them for refunds got me thinking about data havens.
Some people leave the country to infringe copyright, then break the spirit of a return policy to create gains. The fact that the copying may or may not break any local laws doesn't mean it's ethical. Does anyone else think this whole self-congratulatory information-anarchy thing has gone a little too far? Buy the fucking books. They're for your education, which is the one thing above all else that I think everyone here respects. The people from whom you are learning should be rewarded for their hard work. And I think that $100 financed over 10 years at 5% works out to something like $1.50 a month. That's noise compared to your cell phone bill, and it's a hell of a lot more important.
The preceding isn't meant as a flame at the submitter. For that, I'll call out that s/he labelled them "savvy", which in context I take to mean 'clever and to be admired'. For the record, the original article calls the trend "alarming".
There's already few places on the web where you can exploit countries having different copyright durations and eligibility. On the flip side, there's restrictions such as broadcast blackouts and country-wide firewalls.
Yeah, and I wonder why they would ever do such a thing. I mean, it's not like they feel their livelihood threatened, or anything. [/sarcasm]
But just as the rich can use of international tax loopholes and in light of the recent file-sharing victory, are there any projects out there, beyond the P2P networks, to distribute possibly-protected information by any means necessary?
Great, smear the rich with ad hominem attacks for the sake of playing to the crowd, then follow it up by implying P2P networks are simply for the purpose of copyright infringement, and asking if there are any other tools you can use to break the law. If you really want to get busted as some sort of civil libertarian protester, that's fine, but you're not going to do anybody any good from the safety of your computer chair. Get out there and be arrested. (In case anyone is keeping score, I feel generally the same way, but getting arrested isn't the best use of my time. For that, I started law school. I'll be spending the next three years of my life gearing up for this fight.)
For example, your company may already outsource labor, but what about an off-site backup in case of an FBI raid?
Now why would the FBI have any reason to raid your company? Because you're doing something illegal maybe? If you're worried about FBI raids, you have bigger problems than off-site backups.
Mark the whole submission [-1, Does More Damage Than Good]. If you really want to do something, then do it. Take law classes, sign up for volunteer work, protest, write letters, get out there and make a difference. The EFF is looking for referral lawyers, for heaven's sake. They need all the help they can get.
Too late, I know. Read the court documents before you go nuts. From the affidavit, UCI is a web hosting company / bandwidth & IP reseller. The IP addresses weren't 'theirs' either, they were already allocated to UCI customers, who are smaller resellers and community ISPs. This means that they can't just 're-IP' everything. It also means they are locked into a long-term relationship with NAC. NAC allegedly used this lock-in to alter the terms of their upstream contract unilaterally, charge outrageous rates ($18,000/month for electricity, etc), and generally be fucktards. According to the affidavit, at least.
UCI is trying to protect their customers. There is nothing in the affidavit to suggest that they don't understand networking, or that they are incompetent.
Not so fast there yourself. The interstate commerce clause has been used to restrict activities within a state. Recall Wickard v Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942). Filburn, an Ohio farmer, exceeded production of his wheat quota and was assessed a "marketing penalty" on the excess under an amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. Filburn went to court, and the penalty was blocked. The Supreme Court reversed the lower Court's decision. Here is the relevant analysis from the SCOTUS ruling (second-to-last of section II, emphasis mine):
It is well established by decisions of this Court that the power to regulate commerce includes the power to regulate the prices at which commodities in that commerce are dealt in and practices affecting such prices. One of the primary purposes of the Act in question was to increase the market price of wheat and to that end to limit the volume thereof that could affect the market. It can hardly be denied that a factor of such volume and variability as home-consumed wheat would have a substantial influence on price and market conditions. This may arise because being in marketable condition such wheat overhangs the market and if induced by rising prices tends to flow into the market and check price increases.
But if we assume that it is never marketed, it supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Home-grown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce. The stimulation of commerce is a use of the regulatory function quite as definitely as prohibitions or restrictions thereon. This record leaves us in no doubt that Congress [317 U.S. 111, 129] may properly have considered that wheat consumed on the farm where grown if wholly outside the scheme of regulation would have a substantial effect in defeating and obstructing its purpose to stimulate trade therein at increased prices.
Their economic argument (further expounded in section III) is that when he threshed the wheat, he made it "overhang the market", i.e. made it available for sale, increasing interstate supply. That he then consumed it himself thereby deprived other states from its supply, affecting prices on the interstate market. "Believe it, or not!"
I suppose I shouldn't be suprised that no one has actually posted the FCC's mandate yet. Well, here it is:
For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges, for the purpose of the national defense, for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communications, and for the purpose of securing a more effective execution of this policy by centralizing authority heretofore granted by law to several agencies and by granting additional authority with respect to interstate and foreign commerce in wire and radio communication, there is created a commission to be known as the ''Federal Communications Commission'', which shall be constituted as hereinafter provided, and which shall execute and enforce the provisions of this chapter
47 USC 151
In combination with great laser range-finding and possibly optical range finding (something like us humans do), even acustical systems, a machine has just as good of a chance to pilot a car as it can an aircraft or anything else.
As a licensed pilot, I call bullshit. There's more to piloting an aircraft than actuating controls to get you from point A to B. There's a hell of a lot of decision-making that requires context (for just one example, see here for the idea, and here for why it doesn't work), not to mention the many and various regulations and procedures, or the ever-changing charts that are published every 8 weeks.
You might have a chance at getting a machine to pilot a plane if you limit yourself strictly to [go from A to B with no emergencies, no mechanical problems, perfect software, perfect navigational instrumentation and avionics, perfect weather, and nothing in the air between A and B (not limited to skydivers, lost pilots, and unscheduled Presidential flights)]. Oh, and to even get into the airspace of most decent sized airports you have to be in two-way radio contact, which means you have to understand (and possibly refuse) ATC commands. I won't even get into IFR...
Re:Maybe I'm missing something here, but...
on
NYT on Spam Cops
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· Score: 1
Start a small business, struggle in obscurity for a few years, then read about "fast! cheap!" email marketing online. After you've done this, I want to hear the rest of this argument.
Re:I'll help the FBI out with catching them.
on
NYT on Spam Cops
·
· Score: 1
You have to look at the other side of the equation. What happens when someone starts a small business selling widgets, and wants cheap advertising? They outsource their marketing, i.e. go to a spammer. That's a no-brainer for any small business owner, especially with the low rates that some of these guys are charging. Now you want to arrest the guy selling the widgets, and not the guy dumping email in your inbox? What's wrong with this picture?
If I'm going to be terrorized by someone, I'd rather it be by actual terrorists than by my own government. If they're going to take down my country, they're going to have to do it one building at a time, dammit, and I'll be casting votes based on it. I'm going to law school in Chicago in the fall, my rep is Danny Davis from the IL 7th. He voted against the PATRIOT Act, one of 66 NAY votes. Maybe you should check up on your rep and see how they're doing.
Because identity 'theft' is not theft. A more appropriate phrase would be 'fraudulent impersonation'. The problem is, that takes too long to say, it isn't sexy, and 'theft' is the buzzword of the hour. Much like music 'piracy' isn't really piracy, but rather 'infringement'.
You use random data as your key (which is basically all you'll get with a QC photon stream), then one-time pad for encryption. Not just practically, but theoretically unbreakable. Both parties use the key to encrypt their messages, which are then sent over non-secure channels (i.e., the Internet).
Crypto thinking in the past has been that if your cryptosystem is strong enough, you can tolerate key exchange over insecure channels. What many people don't realize is that with perfectly secure key exchange, you get unbreakable crypto for free.
You might then reasonably ask, why not just exchange the messages securely, instead of just the key? The answer is that we can't predict the polarizations of the entangled photons before they're measured. What we can do is guarantee a correlation between the polarizations after they are measured, and we can guarantee that third party observation is detectable. So what we get is perfectly secure transmission of data, but it's only random data. We're just lucky that random data happens to be ideal for encryption via one-time pad.
Actually, the data interchanged with QC is normally a one-time pad, not the actual message. If an observer interferes with the transmission, it is detectable on both ends. Sender and receiver both know not to use that bit, with no further synchronization necessary. The actual message is sent over normal comm channels (Internet) after being XORed with the one-time pad, but if it's intercepted now, it's impossible to break.
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the
owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
So unless you fall under one of the listed exemptions in sections 107 thru 122 (107 is Fair Use and 108 is for libraries), you can't reproduce or distribute any copyrighted work.
It sounds like you're using induction to do the power transfer. Calculate from first principles, most likely the Biot-Savart law directly, since your normal solenoid inductancecalculation makes assumptions that aren't valid in your case. You will have to prepare and evaluate some integrals based on your off-axis geometry.
This kind of proposal about scrapping the current directory structure has been discussed ad nauseum on the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard mailing lists. Here is the Standard Rebuttal against scrapping/bin and/usr/bin:
With each app in its own directory, your $PATH becomes a mile long, and too difficult to maintain.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Some have suggested the use of symbolic links in/bin and/usr/bin, but then you run into this Standard Counterargument:
Different application packages can have identically-named binaries. Upgraded packages
always have the same binary names.
The best combination seems to be symbolic links to the most recently-installed apps, but overriding your $PATH in ~/.bash_profile for legacy versions.
The Standard Rebuttal against scrapping/lib:
Apps which depend on other apps for libraries won't know where to look. This is especially true if each installed version of a required app is stored in its own numbered directory.
Another argument involves the use of 32-bit vs 64-bit libraries. Best practice seems to be making copies of the most recently installed libs in/lib and/usr/lib, and using environment variables ($LD_LIBRARY_PATH, e.g.) to run older apps.
Rebuttals for getting rid of/usr (i.e., having a One (Partition) Size Fits All approach):
#1: Some boxes have read-only disks for security (CD-ROM firewalls come to mind). Now you can't install new applications.
#2: You have one 100GB partition and you get a power spike. Now you have to wait for the fsck to finish before you can troubleshoot the damage.
#3: You're in a diskless environment with centralized, NFS-mounted applications. With no/usr, you have no suitable mount point.
#3 is especially common in large enterprise and government environments. If you've ever talked to someone who admins 1,000 desktops for their department, you'll know what I mean.
On the mailing lists, the use of/package (or/pkg) also has been discussed ad nauseum. Keep in mind that the filesystem hierarchy is designed so that non-local (commercial) packages don't step all over each other when installing. Local (enterprise) software installation can happen wherever the hell you want it to, as long as it doesn't have to play nice with COTS software.
Executive summary: you can run whatever directory structure you want -- I won't stop you. Just expect to hear lots of complaints from your developers and sysadmins. The reason things are the way they are is partially due to industry inertia, but mostly due to the fact that they just work better that way. If you don't like it, go contribute.
You are reading a definition that is the result of the taxonomists having won and in the process completely missing the fact that there was ever a legitimate dispute. Argumentum ad misericordiam.
The point I was making is that the whole idea of rigid taxonomy is a Victorian invention. The idea of fixed immutable categories that are determined by rigid application of science is very much a late 19th century view. Non sequitur.
The reason we have names for things is so that we can distinguish them from other things. This is the principle behind language in general, and taxonomies in specific. Fruits and vegetables are different, and the extent of their difference is determined by the shifting language we use to describe them, the moons and stars, and everything else in our perception of the world. If the current definition of fruit says that a tomato is a fruit, then it is.
When it comes to the definition of 'planet' there is no real scientific basis for the taxonomy.
Terms such as "fruit", "vegetable", and "planet" are classifications based on an arbitrary set of observable properties. Just because the chosen observables can be scientifically measured doesn't mean that the choice of observables is at all rigorous. You're assuming that there is a scientific basis for choosing these observables (forming a basis), so this last claim is Audiatur et altera pars. Farmers choose to differentiate between fruit and vegetable based on skin thickness and perishability. Good for them. Taxonomists choose based on what part of the lifeform carries the reproductive seeds. Good for them too. Until we have a comprehensive, rigorous set of criteria under which to make these types of classification, we're not going to make any progress in this debate.
The original post was published by the State of California Board of Accountancy, who were probably making the announcement by rule of public policy. I don't think he can tell them to cease & desist. I also don't think he's got a chance in hell against Google. They should grind his ass into little tiny ass-flakes and scatter them to the wind.
If your employer is forcing you not to work for six months, you have every right to demand six months' severance pay. Let them smoke on that for awhile. And "knowledge obtained" is pretty vague. If it's proprietary, then I can see why they'd be concerned. If I learned how to hem a skirt while surfing at this job, then went to work for a seamstress, they don't own that.
I agree with the bulk of what you said, but I do have a few small points.
I do believe that some jobs require more skill than others, and that different skills are valued differently by society. If society puts a lawyer's skills at $300 an hour and a garbageman's at $20, that's probably capitalism at work, not necessarily some right-winged conspiracy. If everyone's skills were equally valued, we'd have something like communism. Not that I'm arguing for or against communism, but it's not what we have in the US at the moment.
I don't quite agree that politicians make laws difficult to comprehend on purpose, but I don't have any first-hand knowledge either way. I don't agree at all that plain-English laws would help the situation. COBOL is written in plain English, or at least they tried to design it that way. Does that mean any Joe off the street can write COBOL? Of course not. I wouldn't pretend to be able to defend myself in court, even if the laws were plain-English, because that's a skill that is acquired, through years of effort costing tens of thousands of dollars, by someone who has an aptitude for it. I know a lot of programmers who may think they could do a good job, but who would probably freeze under just the public speaking pressure alone. I'm for giving credit where it's due.
As for ranting, I just got tired of programmers bashing lawyers, the same as I get tired of anyone who overplays some worthless stereotype to smear someone. I needed to vent.
Slashdot Mirror
Money isn't the root of all evil, it's just a tool like your computer. The root of all evil is the heart of the person who would abuse that tool for destructive ends. You wouldn't complain if #1 were "computer", or "hammer", or "flashlight" would you? Read Ayn Rand.
Uh, last time I checked, statutes trumped common law in their jurisdiction. Moreover, new Federal law (INDUCE) would trump rulings on the old Federal law (found in 17 U.S.C.) made in a Federal Appeals court (MGM v Grokster).
As you rightly pointed out, the worst the Supreme Court can do is declare a law unconstitutional; however, even they have to wait for an actual "case or controversy". They can also overturn themselves, e.g. Brown v Board of Education overturning Plessy v Ferguson.
Now begins speculation. As far as INDUCE goes, it could be viewed as an end-run around Betamax, since the Betamax decision only applies to current doctrines of secondary infringement (obviously). The new 'inductive' doctrine would be a peer to the vicarious and contributory doctrines, and may or may not be subject to Betamax, since the Supreme Court didn't have induction in mind when they made the ruling.
I think I can answer that with an unqualified "no".
show me the most secure windows, I'll show you 10 more oses more secure than that.
Windows Unplugged(tm). For extra security, Windows in a Concrete Box at the Bottom of the Ocean(tm). This exciting new OS, to be released after Longhorn, is in the process of getting its A1 security rating.
An interesting story on LISNews.com this morning about savvy U.S. students photocopying textbooks in Mexico then returning them for refunds got me thinking about data havens.
Some people leave the country to infringe copyright, then break the spirit of a return policy to create gains. The fact that the copying may or may not break any local laws doesn't mean it's ethical. Does anyone else think this whole self-congratulatory information-anarchy thing has gone a little too far? Buy the fucking books. They're for your education, which is the one thing above all else that I think everyone here respects. The people from whom you are learning should be rewarded for their hard work. And I think that $100 financed over 10 years at 5% works out to something like $1.50 a month. That's noise compared to your cell phone bill, and it's a hell of a lot more important.
The preceding isn't meant as a flame at the submitter. For that, I'll call out that s/he labelled them "savvy", which in context I take to mean 'clever and to be admired'. For the record, the original article calls the trend "alarming".
There's already few places on the web where you can exploit countries having different copyright durations and eligibility. On the flip side, there's restrictions such as broadcast blackouts and country-wide firewalls.
Yeah, and I wonder why they would ever do such a thing. I mean, it's not like they feel their livelihood threatened, or anything. [/sarcasm]
But just as the rich can use of international tax loopholes and in light of the recent file-sharing victory, are there any projects out there, beyond the P2P networks, to distribute possibly-protected information by any means necessary?
Great, smear the rich with ad hominem attacks for the sake of playing to the crowd, then follow it up by implying P2P networks are simply for the purpose of copyright infringement, and asking if there are any other tools you can use to break the law. If you really want to get busted as some sort of civil libertarian protester, that's fine, but you're not going to do anybody any good from the safety of your computer chair. Get out there and be arrested. (In case anyone is keeping score, I feel generally the same way, but getting arrested isn't the best use of my time. For that, I started law school. I'll be spending the next three years of my life gearing up for this fight.)
For example, your company may already outsource labor, but what about an off-site backup in case of an FBI raid?
Now why would the FBI have any reason to raid your company? Because you're doing something illegal maybe? If you're worried about FBI raids, you have bigger problems than off-site backups.
Mark the whole submission [-1, Does More Damage Than Good]. If you really want to do something, then do it. Take law classes, sign up for volunteer work, protest, write letters, get out there and make a difference. The EFF is looking for referral lawyers, for heaven's sake. They need all the help they can get.
-- Dave
UCI is trying to protect their customers. There is nothing in the affidavit to suggest that they don't understand networking, or that they are incompetent.
Their economic argument (further expounded in section III) is that when he threshed the wheat, he made it "overhang the market", i.e. made it available for sale, increasing interstate supply. That he then consumed it himself thereby deprived other states from its supply, affecting prices on the interstate market. "Believe it, or not!"
IANAL, but I will be one in 3 years.
So you're saying they can make ham 'n' shit?
As a licensed pilot, I call bullshit. There's more to piloting an aircraft than actuating controls to get you from point A to B. There's a hell of a lot of decision-making that requires context (for just one example, see here for the idea, and here for why it doesn't work), not to mention the many and various regulations and procedures, or the ever-changing charts that are published every 8 weeks.
You might have a chance at getting a machine to pilot a plane if you limit yourself strictly to [go from A to B with no emergencies, no mechanical problems, perfect software, perfect navigational instrumentation and avionics, perfect weather, and nothing in the air between A and B (not limited to skydivers, lost pilots, and unscheduled Presidential flights)]. Oh, and to even get into the airspace of most decent sized airports you have to be in two-way radio contact, which means you have to understand (and possibly refuse) ATC commands. I won't even get into IFR...
Start a small business, struggle in obscurity for a few years, then read about "fast! cheap!" email marketing online. After you've done this, I want to hear the rest of this argument.
You have to look at the other side of the equation. What happens when someone starts a small business selling widgets, and wants cheap advertising? They outsource their marketing, i.e. go to a spammer. That's a no-brainer for any small business owner, especially with the low rates that some of these guys are charging. Now you want to arrest the guy selling the widgets, and not the guy dumping email in your inbox? What's wrong with this picture?
If I'm going to be terrorized by someone, I'd rather it be by actual terrorists than by my own government. If they're going to take down my country, they're going to have to do it one building at a time, dammit, and I'll be casting votes based on it. I'm going to law school in Chicago in the fall, my rep is Danny Davis from the IL 7th. He voted against the PATRIOT Act, one of 66 NAY votes. Maybe you should check up on your rep and see how they're doing.
Because identity 'theft' is not theft. A more appropriate phrase would be 'fraudulent impersonation'. The problem is, that takes too long to say, it isn't sexy, and 'theft' is the buzzword of the hour. Much like music 'piracy' isn't really piracy, but rather 'infringement'.
Crypto thinking in the past has been that if your cryptosystem is strong enough, you can tolerate key exchange over insecure channels. What many people don't realize is that with perfectly secure key exchange, you get unbreakable crypto for free.
You might then reasonably ask, why not just exchange the messages securely, instead of just the key? The answer is that we can't predict the polarizations of the entangled photons before they're measured. What we can do is guarantee a correlation between the polarizations after they are measured, and we can guarantee that third party observation is detectable. So what we get is perfectly secure transmission of data, but it's only random data. We're just lucky that random data happens to be ideal for encryption via one-time pad.
Actually, the data interchanged with QC is normally a one-time pad, not the actual message. If an observer interferes with the transmission, it is detectable on both ends. Sender and receiver both know not to use that bit, with no further synchronization necessary. The actual message is sent over normal comm channels (Internet) after being XORed with the one-time pad, but if it's intercepted now, it's impossible to break.
17 USC 106:
So unless you fall under one of the listed exemptions in sections 107 thru 122 (107 is Fair Use and 108 is for libraries), you can't reproduce or distribute any copyrighted work.... of bad installation instructions and warnings is this. End of story.
It sounds like you're using induction to do the power transfer. Calculate from first principles, most likely the Biot-Savart law directly, since your normal solenoid inductance calculation makes assumptions that aren't valid in your case. You will have to prepare and evaluate some integrals based on your off-axis geometry.
This kind of proposal about scrapping the current directory structure has been discussed ad nauseum on the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard mailing lists. Here is the Standard Rebuttal against scrapping /bin and /usr/bin:
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Some have suggested the use of symbolic links inThe Standard Rebuttal against scrapping /lib:
Another argument involves the use of 32-bit vs 64-bit libraries. Best practice seems to be making copies of the most recently installed libs inRebuttals for getting rid of /usr (i.e., having a One (Partition) Size Fits All approach):
#3 is especially common in large enterprise and government environments. If you've ever talked to someone who admins 1,000 desktops for their department, you'll know what I mean.On the mailing lists, the use of /package (or /pkg) also has been discussed ad nauseum. Keep in mind that the filesystem hierarchy is designed so that non-local (commercial) packages don't step all over each other when installing. Local (enterprise) software installation can happen wherever the hell you want it to, as long as it doesn't have to play nice with COTS software.
Executive summary: you can run whatever directory structure you want -- I won't stop you. Just expect to hear lots of complaints from your developers and sysadmins. The reason things are the way they are is partially due to industry inertia, but mostly due to the fact that they just work better that way. If you don't like it, go contribute.
This protocol is RFC 3514 compliant.
Try reading a dictionary that was written in 1800 or earlier.
Argumentum ad antiquitatem.
You are reading a definition that is the result of the taxonomists having won and in the process completely missing the fact that there was ever a legitimate dispute.
Argumentum ad misericordiam.
The point I was making is that the whole idea of rigid taxonomy is a Victorian invention. The idea of fixed immutable categories that are determined by rigid application of science is very much a late 19th century view.
Non sequitur.
The reason we have names for things is so that we can distinguish them from other things. This is the principle behind language in general, and taxonomies in specific. Fruits and vegetables are different, and the extent of their difference is determined by the shifting language we use to describe them, the moons and stars, and everything else in our perception of the world. If the current definition of fruit says that a tomato is a fruit, then it is.
When it comes to the definition of 'planet' there is no real scientific basis for the taxonomy.
Terms such as "fruit", "vegetable", and "planet" are classifications based on an arbitrary set of observable properties. Just because the chosen observables can be scientifically measured doesn't mean that the choice of observables is at all rigorous. You're assuming that there is a scientific basis for choosing these observables (forming a basis), so this last claim is Audiatur et altera pars. Farmers choose to differentiate between fruit and vegetable based on skin thickness and perishability. Good for them. Taxonomists choose based on what part of the lifeform carries the reproductive seeds. Good for them too. Until we have a comprehensive, rigorous set of criteria under which to make these types of classification, we're not going to make any progress in this debate.
The original post was published by the State of California Board of Accountancy, who were probably making the announcement by rule of public policy. I don't think he can tell them to cease & desist. I also don't think he's got a chance in hell against Google. They should grind his ass into little tiny ass-flakes and scatter them to the wind.
If your employer is forcing you not to work for six months, you have every right to demand six months' severance pay. Let them smoke on that for awhile. And "knowledge obtained" is pretty vague. If it's proprietary, then I can see why they'd be concerned. If I learned how to hem a skirt while surfing at this job, then went to work for a seamstress, they don't own that.
I especially like their availability: "usually dispatched within 24 hours."
I do believe that some jobs require more skill than others, and that different skills are valued differently by society. If society puts a lawyer's skills at $300 an hour and a garbageman's at $20, that's probably capitalism at work, not necessarily some right-winged conspiracy. If everyone's skills were equally valued, we'd have something like communism. Not that I'm arguing for or against communism, but it's not what we have in the US at the moment.
I don't quite agree that politicians make laws difficult to comprehend on purpose, but I don't have any first-hand knowledge either way. I don't agree at all that plain-English laws would help the situation. COBOL is written in plain English, or at least they tried to design it that way. Does that mean any Joe off the street can write COBOL? Of course not. I wouldn't pretend to be able to defend myself in court, even if the laws were plain-English, because that's a skill that is acquired, through years of effort costing tens of thousands of dollars, by someone who has an aptitude for it. I know a lot of programmers who may think they could do a good job, but who would probably freeze under just the public speaking pressure alone. I'm for giving credit where it's due.
As for ranting, I just got tired of programmers bashing lawyers, the same as I get tired of anyone who overplays some worthless stereotype to smear someone. I needed to vent.