Not everything has to be a conspiracy. Aircraft do crash.
I'm glad somebody is being reasonable here.
Yes, but when there's someone on them who has information that could expose a lot of fraud by powerful people, you have to entertain the possibility that it wasn't merely coincidence that this particular person died.
Airplanes crash, people have heart attacks, and good samaritans really do pick up hitchhiking transvetite prostitutes out of the goodness of their hearts. Doesn't mean that the version of the story you're told is how it really happened.
Does anyone really think this was an accident?</tinfoil-hat>
But seriously, if anyone knew "too much," this guy could qualify.
Re:Decent but I wouldn't have nominated it for a H
on
Zoe's Tale
·
· Score: 1
With that said, how it got a Hugo nomination I have no idea. It must have been a bad year for Sci Fi. Then again overall most of the Hugo nominations for 08 weren't as good as novels in previous years.
You know, when I was a kid, a novelist had to walk twenty miles in the snow to win a Hugo Award. You kids with your rock and roll hootchie koos. We read space opera and liked it!
What I wonder about though is what happens if you lose your dongle? It would seem you've basically bricked your hackintosh until you can get another one. Leave it in a hotel room on a multi-stop business trip and you're f*cked. I'd think the true price for many of us is a dongle for everyday use and then a back-up dongle for emergencies.
What if Florida or Ohio decided to pass a law saying that the name of the official major party nominees had to be submitted 180 days before the election?
A reasonable advance notice to give time to prepare and print ballots is cool, but if Texas was forced to remove the major party candidates from the ballot, it would be like saying that any state, at a whim, could determine a national nomination deadline by setting a ballot deadline.
IANAL, but I think Obama and McCain could raise a pretty valid constitutional challenge to it that might end up creating a national guideline for ballot deadlines, imposing yet another federal regulation.
Think about the fact that 10 Megabits per second is 3.3 terabytes a month. That's 10 megabits of usage, 24/7. Youtube FLV files are encoded at a bitrate of around 260 kilobits, so with overhead and upstream responding, figure 300 kilobits per second. So you could be watching two YouTube videos simultaneously every second of the day, 7 days a week, and use about 192 gigabytes, still having 58 gigabytes left to download 10 DVDs, all your e-mail (including spam), and read Slashdot.
So, that's two 24/7 Youtube streams, 10 DVDs, all your e-mail, and regular casual surfing. How will you ever live?
As for MMOGs, the software takes care of much of the animation. You're just trading data with the server, so that's not even as much as one YouTube stream. No worries.
So if you're working for Company 'A' and in your off time at home you have a personal software project that you end up selling to Company 'B,' Company 'A' should be able to discipline you? I think not. If this was coded on official paid time, then I would whole agree with you, but there is no way to actually know. Therefore, the USAF couldn't legally touch him even if they wanted to.
Read TFA:
Although Davenport did his development on a personal system at home, he began to bring beta versions of his code in for testing...
He did testing on his employer's equipment. Company A isn't going to try to claim ownership to something you develop on your own time and on your own equipment, using skills they refused to help you acquire. But when you start using their equipment on their premises to test and troubleshoot your invention, you trigger the clauses in their employment contracts that give them at minimum an interest in your software if not outright ownership.
Considering that this software was meant to solve a problem he encountered in his job, was used in his job, was tested in his job, and was distributed by him to his co-workers, they have a hell of a leg to stand on that he crossed the line between private time and work time in the development of this software. And that leaves out the fact that as a soldier, he technically doesn't have private time.
Now, he sued them under DMCA. Rather than claim ownership of the software, the government claimed immunity. This was not because they couldn't, but because the immunity defense looks to be an easier way to get the case dismissed. But if the immunity defense is eventually knocked down by a higher court and the case goes to trial, you can bet your ass the Air Force would raise their right of ownership or partial ownership as a defense. Like a lawyer in the RIAA trials said... you can't infringe your own copyright. So I'd totally expect that to be a fallback position for them.
The sovereignty issues are a bit unnerving, but one of the things TFA also states is that he brought in beta copies for testing. He had government employees testing his software on government equipment on government time. While he was possibly due some recognition for going above and beyond the call of duty, if you did that at most any tech company, they'd have a reasonable claim to owning that software or owning an interest in it.
And since he did it within in the military, he's lucky he's not facing a court martial for selling the software to Blueport and pulling this crap.
I really dislike the decision, because it hinges on stuff that pisses me off. But the guy who wrote the software pisses me off too.
The part that bugs me is where Toder (defense lawyer) says that the plaintiff can't introduce evidence of the investigators downloading files from the defendant. According to TFA:
Those downloads, Toder said, cannot be considered unauthorized downloads because the RIAA authorized them.
I don't think that's going to stand up. Undercover cops buy drugs and the state doesn't have to prosecute them for buying them. Why couldn't investigators "illegally" download copyrighted material and still have it considered infringing on the part of the defendant, but not be prosecuted?
Not defending the RIAA, but just pointing out something that seems illogical to me.
The first questioner from the audience wanted to know what it would take for Microsoft not to claim patent infringement violations in open source code.
I'd like to know what it would take for Microsoft to actually back up those claims with proof in a public forum. But that's probably a question for Steve Ballmer, since he's the one who seems to flog the patent FUD.
OTOH, I have contracted at Microsoft (once as a dev doing an intranet site for a testing lab, once being the editor in charge of a couple of sections of the MSW homepage), and it's an interesting culture there. It's not the Death Star with Ballmer walking around, periodically strangling people with his mind just to show who's boss.
In a company that big you can't escape the control freaks and evidence of The Peter Principle, but you also have people there like my manager on the intranet site contract, who was the best manager I've had in the 23 years since I started having managers. For all the greed and arrogance people here like to claim go into Microsoft products, there are a lot of people who are there because they love what they do and Microsoft gives them the opportunity to get paid well for doing it. I met some awesome people at Microsoft, people I really respect.
I switched to Mac to avoid Vista. I use NeoOffice instead of MS Office. But I can say that despite some of the aura of badness Microsoft gives off as a company, there are people there who are truly dedicated to the company being a good citizen, putting out good products, and getting along with others. The people who give Ramji a hard time really haven't given him a chance.
So the mainstream media apparently did cover it. But since you don't like Obama, you'd prefer they flog it to death like they were owned by Rupert Murdoch or something, repeating and repeating it until the horse they're beating is not only dead, but pulped to mush... and then repeat it some more. Because if everyone isn't as pissed about Obama as you are, it's a conspiracy.
How come you aren't pissed that $23 grand of the over 400,000 John McCain reported on his 2006 tax return came from cashing Social Security checks. The man makes $400k, his wife makes millions (and files separately). He needs that money like I need a third foot and he is in no way required to take the money. But since it's there for the taking, he takes it. The system's going to go bankrupt, I'll probably never see a penny of what I paid in, but the Republican candidate for President talks about fixing Social Security while cashing Social Security checks for more money than someone making minimum wage grosses.
But yet somehow the mainstream media will ignore this because the Olympics are patriotic or something.
[sarcastic]Yeah, because Reuters is not at all associated with the mainstream media.[/sarcastic]
The only thing that would make a difference is if mainstream media, including NBC, threatened to boycott coverage of the Olympics, not just bitch and moan about Chinese censorship. The Chinese government would hop to right quick if their biggest PR stunt since the rise of Communism was going to get no coverage in the foreign media.
But it's not the "patriotic" element that will keep print and broadcast media chugging along. It's the money many press/media outlets have already invested in getting over there and positioning their people to get the best coverage. NBC Sports would continue Olympic coverage even if Chinese soldiers were making a public show of bludgeoning dissidents to death in the street. NBC News and Brian Williams would express shock and outrage, but you'd have someone from GE holding a gun to Bob Costas' head if necessary to keep him from walking off the air in disgust.
And if Costas did walk off, you'd have some wannabe ready and willing to fill in for him, thinking this was his/her big break.
The Olympics are a HUGE revenue source for a lot of people, and as we've seen quite often, economics will trump ethics 9 times in 10.
While very neat, if we did tap geothermal resources nationwide to get up to supplying 25% of our electrical needs within a few decades, we'd still be behind Iceland. According to Wikipedia, Iceland generates 26.5 of its electricity from geothermal power. Strange to think that a place called Iceland has so much available heat for power generation.
Going a bit astray, has anyone seen the episode of Science Channel's "Eco-Tech" featuring the rooftop windmills designed by Aerotecture? Pretty cool.
If they could have tried to match the color a little bit, it might not be so bad. But with the day-glo Lego colors, it looks like grafitti or vandalism rather than repair.
The whole point of trolling is to get a rise out of people. If you ignore the troll, they lose interest and go find some place where people will argue with them like they want.
When you realize you're in a pointless and prolonged exchange with a time waster, bully, etc., get off the ride. "Thanks for your feedback. I'll keep it in mind as I plan future improvements."
In job hunting, I'm seeing more Open Source skills being requested in the mixes, but they are part of a mix, and they definitely tend to be in heavier demand on the front-end web dev side than on the back-end dev side.
A Windows install without all the needless bells and whistles runs nicely. Who'd have thunk it. Well, many consumers thunk it, but Microsoft's marketing demagogues didn't.
IMO, Vista is Microsoft's version of New Coke or the Arch Deluxe (if any of you are old enough to remember them). Although the same could have been said about Windows ME.
Maybe Windows is like Star Trek movies... only every other release is good.
Let's get real. Currently "official" congressional communications are limited to the house.gov site. If you read not TFA but the letter it cites, it discusses some *possible* ground rules to follow in approving additional sites as venues for hosting or disseminating "official" congressional content.
Some of these ground rules are
that the site should be pre-screened to ensure it's not going to be running ads alongside the content that will harm or impugn the dignity of the congress.
that links to the content on the site should contain an exit notice so that surfers know they're leaving an official government site and going to an external site.
The content must be properly identified as official congressional content and meet existing rules and regulations regarding official content.
The hyperbole by the obviously conservative-leaning original poster and the TFA is ridiculous and is just a prime example of alarmist propaganda, trying to blow this WAY out of proportion.
It's simply a proposal for ground rules as the committee examines extending the ability of members of congress to post "official" content outside of existing official channels. Rather than being a "clamp down", it's actually broadening the number of venues members of congress can use for posting "official" congressional communications, but tries to ensure that there will be some level of decorum and good taste.
"Expect to see 'core clusters' and 'core clouds' to handle problems that 'won't see any improvement'. These will be abstractions of cores into behaving like one fast core."
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but when there's someone on them who has information that could expose a lot of fraud by powerful people, you have to entertain the possibility that it wasn't merely coincidence that this particular person died.
Airplanes crash, people have heart attacks, and good samaritans really do pick up hitchhiking transvetite prostitutes out of the goodness of their hearts. Doesn't mean that the version of the story you're told is how it really happened.
Does anyone really think this was an accident?</tinfoil-hat>
But seriously, if anyone knew "too much," this guy could qualify.
With that said, how it got a Hugo nomination I have no idea. It must have been a bad year for Sci Fi. Then again overall most of the Hugo nominations for 08 weren't as good as novels in previous years.
You know, when I was a kid, a novelist had to walk twenty miles in the snow to win a Hugo Award. You kids with your rock and roll hootchie koos. We read space opera and liked it!
What I wonder about though is what happens if you lose your dongle? It would seem you've basically bricked your hackintosh until you can get another one. Leave it in a hotel room on a multi-stop business trip and you're f*cked. I'd think the true price for many of us is a dongle for everyday use and then a back-up dongle for emergencies.
What if Florida or Ohio decided to pass a law saying that the name of the official major party nominees had to be submitted 180 days before the election?
A reasonable advance notice to give time to prepare and print ballots is cool, but if Texas was forced to remove the major party candidates from the ballot, it would be like saying that any state, at a whim, could determine a national nomination deadline by setting a ballot deadline.
IANAL, but I think Obama and McCain could raise a pretty valid constitutional challenge to it that might end up creating a national guideline for ballot deadlines, imposing yet another federal regulation.
This is not the comment you're looking for.
Move along.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Think about the fact that 10 Megabits per second is 3.3 terabytes a month. That's 10 megabits of usage, 24/7. Youtube FLV files are encoded at a bitrate of around 260 kilobits, so with overhead and upstream responding, figure 300 kilobits per second. So you could be watching two YouTube videos simultaneously every second of the day, 7 days a week, and use about 192 gigabytes, still having 58 gigabytes left to download 10 DVDs, all your e-mail (including spam), and read Slashdot.
So, that's two 24/7 Youtube streams, 10 DVDs, all your e-mail, and regular casual surfing. How will you ever live?
As for MMOGs, the software takes care of much of the animation. You're just trading data with the server, so that's not even as much as one YouTube stream. No worries.
Just remember this moment when you're running over a field of skulls from a hunter-killer UAV controlled by SkyNet.
Read TFA:
He did testing on his employer's equipment. Company A isn't going to try to claim ownership to something you develop on your own time and on your own equipment, using skills they refused to help you acquire. But when you start using their equipment on their premises to test and troubleshoot your invention, you trigger the clauses in their employment contracts that give them at minimum an interest in your software if not outright ownership.
Considering that this software was meant to solve a problem he encountered in his job, was used in his job, was tested in his job, and was distributed by him to his co-workers, they have a hell of a leg to stand on that he crossed the line between private time and work time in the development of this software. And that leaves out the fact that as a soldier, he technically doesn't have private time.
Now, he sued them under DMCA. Rather than claim ownership of the software, the government claimed immunity. This was not because they couldn't, but because the immunity defense looks to be an easier way to get the case dismissed. But if the immunity defense is eventually knocked down by a higher court and the case goes to trial, you can bet your ass the Air Force would raise their right of ownership or partial ownership as a defense. Like a lawyer in the RIAA trials said... you can't infringe your own copyright. So I'd totally expect that to be a fallback position for them.
The sovereignty issues are a bit unnerving, but one of the things TFA also states is that he brought in beta copies for testing. He had government employees testing his software on government equipment on government time. While he was possibly due some recognition for going above and beyond the call of duty, if you did that at most any tech company, they'd have a reasonable claim to owning that software or owning an interest in it.
And since he did it within in the military, he's lucky he's not facing a court martial for selling the software to Blueport and pulling this crap.
I really dislike the decision, because it hinges on stuff that pisses me off. But the guy who wrote the software pisses me off too.
I don't think that's going to stand up. Undercover cops buy drugs and the state doesn't have to prosecute them for buying them. Why couldn't investigators "illegally" download copyrighted material and still have it considered infringing on the part of the defendant, but not be prosecuted?
Not defending the RIAA, but just pointing out something that seems illogical to me.
Almost a year to the day ago, Slashdot ran a story on license plate scanning.
I'd like to know what it would take for Microsoft to actually back up those claims with proof in a public forum. But that's probably a question for Steve Ballmer, since he's the one who seems to flog the patent FUD.
OTOH, I have contracted at Microsoft (once as a dev doing an intranet site for a testing lab, once being the editor in charge of a couple of sections of the MSW homepage), and it's an interesting culture there. It's not the Death Star with Ballmer walking around, periodically strangling people with his mind just to show who's boss.
In a company that big you can't escape the control freaks and evidence of The Peter Principle, but you also have people there like my manager on the intranet site contract, who was the best manager I've had in the 23 years since I started having managers. For all the greed and arrogance people here like to claim go into Microsoft products, there are a lot of people who are there because they love what they do and Microsoft gives them the opportunity to get paid well for doing it. I met some awesome people at Microsoft, people I really respect.
I switched to Mac to avoid Vista. I use NeoOffice instead of MS Office. But I can say that despite some of the aura of badness Microsoft gives off as a company, there are people there who are truly dedicated to the company being a good citizen, putting out good products, and getting along with others. The people who give Ramji a hard time really haven't given him a chance.
So the mainstream media apparently did cover it. But since you don't like Obama, you'd prefer they flog it to death like they were owned by Rupert Murdoch or something, repeating and repeating it until the horse they're beating is not only dead, but pulped to mush... and then repeat it some more. Because if everyone isn't as pissed about Obama as you are, it's a conspiracy.
How come you aren't pissed that $23 grand of the over 400,000 John McCain reported on his 2006 tax return came from cashing Social Security checks. The man makes $400k, his wife makes millions (and files separately). He needs that money like I need a third foot and he is in no way required to take the money. But since it's there for the taking, he takes it. The system's going to go bankrupt, I'll probably never see a penny of what I paid in, but the Republican candidate for President talks about fixing Social Security while cashing Social Security checks for more money than someone making minimum wage grosses.
Doesn't that disgust you at all?
[sarcastic]Yeah, because Reuters is not at all associated with the mainstream media.[/sarcastic]
The only thing that would make a difference is if mainstream media, including NBC, threatened to boycott coverage of the Olympics, not just bitch and moan about Chinese censorship. The Chinese government would hop to right quick if their biggest PR stunt since the rise of Communism was going to get no coverage in the foreign media.
But it's not the "patriotic" element that will keep print and broadcast media chugging along. It's the money many press/media outlets have already invested in getting over there and positioning their people to get the best coverage. NBC Sports would continue Olympic coverage even if Chinese soldiers were making a public show of bludgeoning dissidents to death in the street. NBC News and Brian Williams would express shock and outrage, but you'd have someone from GE holding a gun to Bob Costas' head if necessary to keep him from walking off the air in disgust.
And if Costas did walk off, you'd have some wannabe ready and willing to fill in for him, thinking this was his/her big break.
The Olympics are a HUGE revenue source for a lot of people, and as we've seen quite often, economics will trump ethics 9 times in 10.
- Greg
While very neat, if we did tap geothermal resources nationwide to get up to supplying 25% of our electrical needs within a few decades, we'd still be behind Iceland. According to Wikipedia, Iceland generates 26.5 of its electricity from geothermal power. Strange to think that a place called Iceland has so much available heat for power generation.
Going a bit astray, has anyone seen the episode of Science Channel's "Eco-Tech" featuring the rooftop windmills designed by Aerotecture? Pretty cool.
If they could have tried to match the color a little bit, it might not be so bad. But with the day-glo Lego colors, it looks like grafitti or vandalism rather than repair.
The whole point of trolling is to get a rise out of people. If you ignore the troll, they lose interest and go find some place where people will argue with them like they want.
When you realize you're in a pointless and prolonged exchange with a time waster, bully, etc., get off the ride. "Thanks for your feedback. I'll keep it in mind as I plan future improvements."
- Greg
In job hunting, I'm seeing more Open Source skills being requested in the mixes, but they are part of a mix, and they definitely tend to be in heavier demand on the front-end web dev side than on the back-end dev side.
A Windows install without all the needless bells and whistles runs nicely. Who'd have thunk it. Well, many consumers thunk it, but Microsoft's marketing demagogues didn't.
IMO, Vista is Microsoft's version of New Coke or the Arch Deluxe (if any of you are old enough to remember them). Although the same could have been said about Windows ME.
Maybe Windows is like Star Trek movies... only every other release is good.
Not surprising, really, if you remember Once More, with Feeling .
- Greg
I'll counter with Grey's law: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
Some of these ground rules are
The hyperbole by the obviously conservative-leaning original poster and the TFA is ridiculous and is just a prime example of alarmist propaganda, trying to blow this WAY out of proportion.
It's simply a proposal for ground rules as the committee examines extending the ability of members of congress to post "official" content outside of existing official channels. Rather than being a "clamp down", it's actually broadening the number of venues members of congress can use for posting "official" congressional communications, but tries to ensure that there will be some level of decorum and good taste.
"Expect to see 'core clusters' and 'core clouds' to handle problems that 'won't see any improvement'. These will be abstractions of cores into behaving like one fast core."
Now that would be cool, but how would you do it?