My harddrive light never went off in Vista, it was always blinking.
My x60 did exactly the same thing, until I turned off the damn search indexing service. Apparently the programmers at Microsoft are too incompetant to realize that laptop users might actually want decent battery life, and maybe don't want their hard drive to be spun up all the damn time!
Then again, since we both have Thinkpads and people with other brands don't notice the problem, it could also be a weird interaction between Vista's search indexer and some of the Think* software. (I still think MS's programmers are incompetent regardless, though!)
Unless both I'm misunderstanding the idea and the SchedulesDirect people are really stupid, once critical mass is reached all the initial people will be switched to the cheaper plan too. Besides, there's no such thing as "signing up" to some kind of subscription; at the moment everything is non-recurring: you pay for 90 days now, then in 90 days you (and they) will re-evaluate what they can afford to charge.
Hey, they could be relevant in 2007 if somebody ported them to PDAs (and the low graphics resolution and point-and-click interface would work well on them, too!).
You'd think that, but it gets a bit less clear when you consider things like the 3D workstation market and the semi-embedded market.
Like I said, you're using a very non-standard definition of "mainstream." Mainstream, for computers, means basically "stuff you can buy at places like Best Buy or Fry's." Now do you get it?
IIRC, the old DOS graphical adventure Trek games (25th Anniversary Game, Judgement Rites) were relatively good. And who knows; maybe some of the newer adventure ones were too, like A Final Unity. But that's not surprising, since (being adventure games) they were heavily based on the story.
The same applies to Sparc, ARM, Power-and-siblings, and a half-dozen others that I can't be bothered to name. Not all of these are out of mainstream production...
I hate to break it to you, but you're using a very non-standard definition of "mainstream."
It makes me wonder what the value of having so many standards is
Are there not 16500 different "things" that exist in the whole of human endeavor that could be standardized? If so, then each could be so without creating conflicting standards.
That doesn't make sense. If stealing were in fact a zero-sum game, then it would be morally neutral. Why should the owner retain his claim to ownership if no-one loses out over all? Why should society care either way?
Sorry, I was trying to be concise and overshot the mark. The point I was trying to make was that in the absence of economic loss or gain, the moral implications (i.e., the idea that the owner had an inherent right to the object because he's the one who worked to get it in the first place) prevail.
Oh, and stealing is not unequivocably wrong. If someone has to steal food to live (say in a war zone), it would be absurd to say they were wrong.
No, they're still wrong; they're just wrong with extenuating circumstances.
And thus you validate his argument: cars, unlike aircraft, are never in the air (unless you're Evel Knievel), and cars, unlike operations, can always be stopped without killing anyone (unless they're en route to the hospital, but then the police can take them instead).
(a measurement of airflow in the usual sense would not, as far as I can see, be useful as baseline)
How else is the machine going to tell if the suspect is actually blowing into it (as opposed to just putting it in his mouth and breathing through his nose), then?
The theft is the theft of the right to distribute...
Right, except that "rights" (or rather in this case, permissions issued by the government) aren't physical objects and can't be stolen. Thus, misappropriation of distribution rights is instead called "copyright infringment."
Besides, they are fundamentally different things, you know: in one case, the owner is physically deprived of a particular physical instance of a thing. In the other, the copyright holder (note: the word "owner" is inappropriate here) is not deprived of anything at all, but the perpetrator overcomes a prohibition. While "stealing" is empirically and unequivocably wrong -- since the thief gains exactly as much as the rightful owner loses it's a zero-sum game, and thus the owner should retain his claim to ownership -- the ethics of "copyright infringment" are up for debate. In a sense, the copyright holder loses nothing while the infringer gains: a net benefit and a boon for society. However, as a society we've chosen to discourage it on the theory that giving the copyright holder exclusive distribution privilages encourages the creation of new works (a dubious assumption given the excessive duration of copyright; this logic made much more sense when an artist couldn't expect to fund an entire estate on the residuals).
Anyway, the point is that "theft" and "copyright infringment" are two very different things. This is a fact, and an issue of legal definition. Regardless of your opinion or moral position, it's not negotiable. Period. (Am I making myself clear?) To conflate them only indicates to me that you either don't understand the issue, or are trying to use inflammatory language to make an (entirely worthless) appeal to emotion instead of arguing rationally. Neither is helpful, so please quit using the wrong word!
Damn, dude, read your history! The answer to all those questions either has been, or even still is, "yes" in the case of Christians, Jews, and Muslims too! Haven't you ever heard of Sharia law? The medieval Roman Catholic church (tithes, the Inquisition, bibles written only in Latin so the vulger people couldn't read them for themselves, etc.)? I mean, seriously -- you've got to be some kind of illiterate moron not to understand that all the major Western religions have been just as fucked up as Scientology since Day One.
Besides, who knows -- maybe in a thousand years or so, after a few schisms and reformations Scientology could be in the position Christianity is in today (which would be a very scary thought, except that Christianity is equally scary!). After all, if you make a fair comparison -- i.e., +50 years in from the founding -- Christianity was still considered to be a whacko nutjob cult too, persecuted by the people in charge at the time (i.e. pagan Romans and Jews).
By distributing a work that they has no right to distribute Oxford has stolen the work...
No, Oxford has copyright-infringed the work. "Stealing" and "copyright infringment" still aren't the same thing, even though the "good guys" are on the opposite side than usual this time. We've gotta be consistent, you know -- it's only fair.
I don't rule out the possibility that some useful standard can be made out of OOXML.
I do! Why? Because we've already got a standard that does the same thing. Creating a superfluous one that conflicts with it would automatically not be useful, regardless of any other merits.
No provision is made for inserting your own data and having it preserved by apps that work on the format (one thing that MS _did_ get right in OOXML)
You do realize that the only reason Microsoft allowed that was so it could embrace and extend (and that the reason OpenDocument didn't was to prevent embracing and extending), right? Having to somewhat compromise the standard to prevent it from being abused is unfortunate, but also unfortunately necessary.
It could very well be that no vendor until now has been this large and influential, or pushed this hard. Remember, Microsoft is a huge company, and OOXML is pretty much a life-or-death thing for it. I can't think of any other example where any single company had both the influence and desparation that Microsoft has.
Slashdot Mirror
My x60 did exactly the same thing, until I turned off the damn search indexing service. Apparently the programmers at Microsoft are too incompetant to realize that laptop users might actually want decent battery life, and maybe don't want their hard drive to be spun up all the damn time!
Then again, since we both have Thinkpads and people with other brands don't notice the problem, it could also be a weird interaction between Vista's search indexer and some of the Think* software. (I still think MS's programmers are incompetent regardless, though!)
Since the software didn't work, why don't you just return it?
Unless both I'm misunderstanding the idea and the SchedulesDirect people are really stupid, once critical mass is reached all the initial people will be switched to the cheaper plan too. Besides, there's no such thing as "signing up" to some kind of subscription; at the moment everything is non-recurring: you pay for 90 days now, then in 90 days you (and they) will re-evaluate what they can afford to charge.
Sure, just like how requiring drivers' licenses is "punishing people for not being competent drivers."
Sounds interesting. Do you remember the name of the book?
Hence why we need the ACLU and EFF instead of just the GAO in the first place!
Hey, they could be relevant in 2007 if somebody ported them to PDAs (and the low graphics resolution and point-and-click interface would work well on them, too!).
Like I said, you're using a very non-standard definition of "mainstream." Mainstream, for computers, means basically "stuff you can buy at places like Best Buy or Fry's." Now do you get it?
Let alone, how similar was Super Mario Bros. 2 to Super Mario Bros. 3?!
IIRC, the old DOS graphical adventure Trek games (25th Anniversary Game, Judgement Rites) were relatively good. And who knows; maybe some of the newer adventure ones were too, like A Final Unity. But that's not surprising, since (being adventure games) they were heavily based on the story.
Just out of curiosity, what Chia technology is GaTech leading in?
I hate to break it to you, but you're using a very non-standard definition of "mainstream."
Or down, it they happen to need Deltas instead of Alphas.
Are there not 16500 different "things" that exist in the whole of human endeavor that could be standardized? If so, then each could be so without creating conflicting standards.
Sorry, I was trying to be concise and overshot the mark. The point I was trying to make was that in the absence of economic loss or gain, the moral implications (i.e., the idea that the owner had an inherent right to the object because he's the one who worked to get it in the first place) prevail.
No, they're still wrong; they're just wrong with extenuating circumstances.
And thus you validate his argument: cars, unlike aircraft, are never in the air (unless you're Evel Knievel), and cars, unlike operations, can always be stopped without killing anyone (unless they're en route to the hospital, but then the police can take them instead).
How else is the machine going to tell if the suspect is actually blowing into it (as opposed to just putting it in his mouth and breathing through his nose), then?
Right, except that "rights" (or rather in this case, permissions issued by the government) aren't physical objects and can't be stolen. Thus, misappropriation of distribution rights is instead called "copyright infringment."
Besides, they are fundamentally different things, you know: in one case, the owner is physically deprived of a particular physical instance of a thing. In the other, the copyright holder (note: the word "owner" is inappropriate here) is not deprived of anything at all, but the perpetrator overcomes a prohibition. While "stealing" is empirically and unequivocably wrong -- since the thief gains exactly as much as the rightful owner loses it's a zero-sum game, and thus the owner should retain his claim to ownership -- the ethics of "copyright infringment" are up for debate. In a sense, the copyright holder loses nothing while the infringer gains: a net benefit and a boon for society. However, as a society we've chosen to discourage it on the theory that giving the copyright holder exclusive distribution privilages encourages the creation of new works (a dubious assumption given the excessive duration of copyright; this logic made much more sense when an artist couldn't expect to fund an entire estate on the residuals).
Anyway, the point is that "theft" and "copyright infringment" are two very different things. This is a fact, and an issue of legal definition. Regardless of your opinion or moral position, it's not negotiable. Period. (Am I making myself clear?) To conflate them only indicates to me that you either don't understand the issue, or are trying to use inflammatory language to make an (entirely worthless) appeal to emotion instead of arguing rationally. Neither is helpful, so please quit using the wrong word!
No shit, Sherlock! What else would they be?
rAmen!
Damn, dude, read your history! The answer to all those questions either has been, or even still is, "yes" in the case of Christians, Jews, and Muslims too! Haven't you ever heard of Sharia law? The medieval Roman Catholic church (tithes, the Inquisition, bibles written only in Latin so the vulger people couldn't read them for themselves, etc.)? I mean, seriously -- you've got to be some kind of illiterate moron not to understand that all the major Western religions have been just as fucked up as Scientology since Day One.
Besides, who knows -- maybe in a thousand years or so, after a few schisms and reformations Scientology could be in the position Christianity is in today (which would be a very scary thought, except that Christianity is equally scary!). After all, if you make a fair comparison -- i.e., +50 years in from the founding -- Christianity was still considered to be a whacko nutjob cult too, persecuted by the people in charge at the time (i.e. pagan Romans and Jews).
No, Oxford has copyright-infringed the work. "Stealing" and "copyright infringment" still aren't the same thing, even though the "good guys" are on the opposite side than usual this time. We've gotta be consistent, you know -- it's only fair.
I do! Why? Because we've already got a standard that does the same thing. Creating a superfluous one that conflicts with it would automatically not be useful, regardless of any other merits.
You do realize that the only reason Microsoft allowed that was so it could embrace and extend (and that the reason OpenDocument didn't was to prevent embracing and extending), right? Having to somewhat compromise the standard to prevent it from being abused is unfortunate, but also unfortunately necessary.
It could very well be that no vendor until now has been this large and influential, or pushed this hard. Remember, Microsoft is a huge company, and OOXML is pretty much a life-or-death thing for it. I can't think of any other example where any single company had both the influence and desparation that Microsoft has.
Oh yeah?