"Information wants to be free" for much the same reason that "gas wants to fill all available volume" or "liquid wants to flow downhill". It is an anthropomorphic way of describing how it acts when there is nothing to stop it. As for information, the ease with which information can be copied and spread means that once even one copy of it has been compromised, there is no known way to guarantee that you are able to obtain all copies of it, thereby recapturing it. Therefore, once freed, it will stay free, and there really isn't anything you can do about it. And so, "it wants to be free". From a hacker standpoint this is good because once a hacker has managed to "free" some piece of information, there is an almost 100% guarantee that it remains free and so the work was not wasted and cannot be un-done.
I think you overestimate the degree to which people care about picture quality. What people ask for when buying VHS players today is players that can _turn down_ picture quality in return for longer play times. People will be happy to record HD shows at lower resolution if that means that they can still use DVD or that they will get more stuff on a single BluRay disc.
There's nothing about Java that forces you to implement it in C. While I'm not too familiar with Python and Ruby, I'd hazard a guess that this is true for them also.
First off, it's "viruses". In "Grammatically Correct", Anne Stilman has the following to say about plural formation: "Latin words ending in -us change to -i. For some - not all - it is acceptable to add -es instead. In cases where both forms are legitimate, the Latin plural is preferred in more formal writing." In which case, the plural of virus is viri (not virii) and possibly also viruses.
Any theory that is unfalsifiable is also unscientific, regardless of whether or not the theory is true. That is just how science is defined. A theory can be unscientific without being scientifically false. What science has to say about an unscientific theory is simply that science has no particular opinion about that theory. It might be true; it might be false; science doesn't care either way. (Well, except if the theory in question is incompatible with a different theory that _is_ scientific and accepted.) More on this here
In other words, as soon as you finish eating Pringles, you've committed a crime. The solution is simple; leave some Pringles in there. This is apparantly Pringles' intention too, taking the user interface into consideration. Or are my hands just especially... big-boned?:-)
I think it goes too far when they feel it's OK to arrest Joe Public for walking by the front of my house while it's unlocked though. Actually, he's being arrested for being in possession of a hand with which he could, conceivable, open your unlocked door:-)
In a free market, putting ads in an online game will reduce the price or increase the production cost relative to the price you're already paying. While this might serve to reduce the price to zero, other tradeoffs are possible and probably also desirable in many cases.
Who would put a billboard next to a demon-guarded ravine? An undertaker? Customers are no good to you when they're mangled and decapitated. The undertaker begs to differ:-)
Creating something that is, in isolation, imperfect isn't necessarily a mistake. If god wanted to, say, make a food animal for humans to live off of, it might be made unecessarily fond of humans so that you can just walk over, pick it up and put it on the fire. The creature is clearly flawed, but it might be perfect for its purpose. In the same way, god might have some secret purpose for us that prompted it to give us imperfect eyes. Perhaps their imperfection is just perfect for some other, more important purpose. We wouldn't be able to tell.
It is unreasonable to expect of a scottish development team that they realize exactly how perverted US morality is. I doubt anyone there even raised an eyebrow at the content and dropped it mostly because it wasn't a particularly good minigame.
If you are using CC in stead of paying a lawyer, your are stealing money from the lawyer. You wouldn't steal a car would you? Or a purse? CC is theft. (this goes on my CV if I ever go insane enough to apply for a job at RIAA:-)
There is no doubt that cookies can be used for things that are Good. The problem, however, is that it is difficult to tell the Good cookies from the Bad cookies, and allowing one Bad cookie too many is more damaging than losing out on a Good one. So they get turned off.
The best part, I think, was when they took one of the US citizens they held illegally and demanded that he renounce his US citizenship in order to secure his release. If I were a US citizen, that would terrify me, but since I'm not, it really cracks me up:-)
No, the court based its decision on a situation in which the software was desired by the user. While you may not want adware on your machine, others might and the court is saying it is within their right to make that choise.
Well it _could_ be a planned outrage from the BBC. It is not uncommon for publicly funded institutions to pick highly popular services to sacrifice when called upon to cut costs. If done properly, this will generate a massive public outrage against whoever it was that tried to slash the budgets (typically a politician) and so the institution may end up getting its budget back.
Actually, it is saying that if you invite a Kelloggs salesman into your home to try and pitch you some cornflakes, it should not be illegal for you to also invite a salesman for a competing product at the same time.
While I am sure this approach is effective, there is also the question of how draconian we want our laws to be. I personally prefer not to live in a tyranny.
The thing about XML is that Microsoft seems to have developed the notion (well, they know it's BS but that's not going to stop them pushing it on others) that if a format is in XML, then it's open by definition. This is clearly wrong since you can make just as unreadable a mess out of XML as you can out of a binary format. What we are likely to get with Microsoft's "open" XML formats is really just a new unreadable format. We can consider ourselves lucky if MS doesn't manage to completely screw up the XML standard in the process.
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"Information wants to be free" for much the same reason that "gas wants to fill all available volume" or "liquid wants to flow downhill". It is an anthropomorphic way of describing how it acts when there is nothing to stop it. As for information, the ease with which information can be copied and spread means that once even one copy of it has been compromised, there is no known way to guarantee that you are able to obtain all copies of it, thereby recapturing it. Therefore, once freed, it will stay free, and there really isn't anything you can do about it. And so, "it wants to be free".
From a hacker standpoint this is good because once a hacker has managed to "free" some piece of information, there is an almost 100% guarantee that it remains free and so the work was not wasted and cannot be un-done.
Or perhaps the patent examiners have simply found greener pastures at IT companies looking to build their defensive patent portfolios :-)
I think you overestimate the degree to which people care about picture quality. What people ask for when buying VHS players today is players that can _turn down_ picture quality in return for longer play times. People will be happy to record HD shows at lower resolution if that means that they can still use DVD or that they will get more stuff on a single BluRay disc.
Dictionaries don't form a legal basis. In legal terms, piracy is something that happens in rather wet places.
Intercal stands as a shining example of how you can create a programming language that is much much less productive than C :-)
There's nothing about Java that forces you to implement it in C. While I'm not too familiar with Python and Ruby, I'd hazard a guess that this is true for them also.
First off, it's "viruses".
In "Grammatically Correct", Anne Stilman has the following to say about plural formation:
"Latin words ending in -us change to -i. For some - not all - it is acceptable to add -es instead. In cases where both forms are legitimate, the Latin plural is preferred in more formal writing."
In which case, the plural of virus is viri (not virii) and possibly also viruses.
Any theory that is unfalsifiable is also unscientific, regardless of whether or not the theory is true. That is just how science is defined.
A theory can be unscientific without being scientifically false. What science has to say about an unscientific theory is simply that science has no particular opinion about that theory. It might be true; it might be false; science doesn't care either way. (Well, except if the theory in question is incompatible with a different theory that _is_ scientific and accepted.)
More on this here
In other words, as soon as you finish eating Pringles, you've committed a crime. ... big-boned? :-)
The solution is simple; leave some Pringles in there. This is apparantly Pringles' intention too, taking the user interface into consideration.
Or are my hands just especially
I think it goes too far when they feel it's OK to arrest Joe Public for walking by the front of my house while it's unlocked though. :-)
Actually, he's being arrested for being in possession of a hand with which he could, conceivable, open your unlocked door
Aren't there plugs for other EA games on the Burnout 3 load screens?
In a free market, putting ads in an online game will reduce the price or increase the production cost relative to the price you're already paying. While this might serve to reduce the price to zero, other tradeoffs are possible and probably also desirable in many cases.
Who would put a billboard next to a demon-guarded ravine? :-)
An undertaker?
Customers are no good to you when they're mangled and decapitated.
The undertaker begs to differ
Creating something that is, in isolation, imperfect isn't necessarily a mistake. If god wanted to, say, make a food animal for humans to live off of, it might be made unecessarily fond of humans so that you can just walk over, pick it up and put it on the fire. The creature is clearly flawed, but it might be perfect for its purpose.
In the same way, god might have some secret purpose for us that prompted it to give us imperfect eyes. Perhaps their imperfection is just perfect for some other, more important purpose. We wouldn't be able to tell.
It is unreasonable to expect of a scottish development team that they realize exactly how perverted US morality is. I doubt anyone there even raised an eyebrow at the content and dropped it mostly because it wasn't a particularly good minigame.
If you are using CC in stead of paying a lawyer, your are stealing money from the lawyer. You wouldn't steal a car would you? Or a purse? CC is theft. :-)
(this goes on my CV if I ever go insane enough to apply for a job at RIAA
There is no doubt that cookies can be used for things that are Good. The problem, however, is that it is difficult to tell the Good cookies from the Bad cookies, and allowing one Bad cookie too many is more damaging than losing out on a Good one. So they get turned off.
The best part, I think, was when they took one of the US citizens they held illegally and demanded that he renounce his US citizenship in order to secure his release. :-)
If I were a US citizen, that would terrify me, but since I'm not, it really cracks me up
Chances are your government understands it perfectly well. It's the voters that donÃ't.
No, the court based its decision on a situation in which the software was desired by the user. While you may not want adware on your machine, others might and the court is saying it is within their right to make that choise.
Well it _could_ be a planned outrage from the BBC. It is not uncommon for publicly funded institutions to pick highly popular services to sacrifice when called upon to cut costs. If done properly, this will generate a massive public outrage against whoever it was that tried to slash the budgets (typically a politician) and so the institution may end up getting its budget back.
Actually, it is saying that if you invite a Kelloggs salesman into your home to try and pitch you some cornflakes, it should not be illegal for you to also invite a salesman for a competing product at the same time.
While I am sure this approach is effective, there is also the question of how draconian we want our laws to be. I personally prefer not to live in a tyranny.
How do you memorize a number that deep ...
First you read http://pseudonumerology.com/
Then you make a story
The thing about XML is that Microsoft seems to have developed the notion (well, they know it's BS but that's not going to stop them pushing it on others) that if a format is in XML, then it's open by definition. This is clearly wrong since you can make just as unreadable a mess out of XML as you can out of a binary format.
What we are likely to get with Microsoft's "open" XML formats is really just a new unreadable format. We can consider ourselves lucky if MS doesn't manage to completely screw up the XML standard in the process.