See the Crunchly Saga from the Jargon Lexicon, particularly the section starting here. (The comics appeared in the dead-tree Hacker's Dictionary 2nd edition version as well.)
Vista hasn't really been in consumer use enough to know what kind of problems people will hit in the real world. Surely this is a bit premature?
O'Reilly usually has several books that come out. The "Missing Manual" series tells you the stuff that the manufacturer ought to have put in a user manual (if they could afford to hire tech writers as competent, independent, and forthright as Pogue... who's been playing with the beta builds and probably an advance copy of the final build). There's also the "Annoyances" series, which tell why the product is Broken As Designed, and to what extent the problems can be worked around. And then there's the Nutshell series, which are a vital reference for any serious geek.
The Missing Manual is targeted for an audience of users slightly above the complete novice, but below the heavy power user. A geek will want to find a library with a copy to glance through, but probably not add them to their home collection. (The exception being the first time you move from Windows to OS X, or vice versa, or if you're supporting a large number of such switchers.) The Annoyances are worth more serious study. Nutshell books are for buying as a reference; only the most twisted of hard-core geeks will want to introduce themselves to a subject that way, but any geek will find them a handy reference.
Re:I would say that she has a health problem
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SCO Vs. Groklaw
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· Score: 1
I would say that failing to exist would indeed be a serious health problem that you should probably take time out to treat.
Theological digression
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SCO Vs. Groklaw
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I thought the devil had many names. Why is he using the same one more than once this time?
No imagination. The many names have all been given to him by mankind. Creativity is a manifestation of Creation, and therefore remains the province of God. The Devil lost any ability to create when he fell. All he can do now is mimic, steal and corrupt.
Just because an attorney speaks to someone else about a case does not automatically give the right for the opposition to subpoena that person for that information.
But it might get you enough of a legal leg to stand on that the judge won't instantly throw the motion out while laughing hysterically, and (more important) won't be admissible later as evidence of vexatious litigation.
In the US, anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time... but that doesn't mean your case will last nineteen seconds in front of a judge, nor that you won't be liable for your opponent's legal costs and punitive damages for filing such a dumb lawsuit in the first place. Right now, SCO's tactics appear consistent with stalling for time to maximize the revenue corporate officers may obtain by unloading overpriced stock, while trying to avoid incurring any liabilities that will reach beyond corporate bankruptcy. The motion is consistent with such.
I also think the motion is pathetic. Assume that SCO's claim has some basis, that PJ in fact stands for Plenum Judicia, and that the postings made by PJ represent part of IBM's legal analysis. That means, even with IBM telling them at least part of what they think about the case, and pointing out what mistakes SCO's legal team is making, SCO still hasn't put together a coherent case. Alternatively, maybe they just hope PJ is a real and humble paralegal unconnected to IBM, and will be more help putting together a plan of attack than SCO's current legal team.
I really don't understand why the heck they even let someone write a software player, how big of a market slice can that be?
I believe you forget the studios' objective; they want a more pirate-resistant successor to the current standard DVD. Ergo, they must be able to displace the current DVD market. A sizable minority of college students use a Windows PC with DVD drive (and perhaps tuner card) in lieu of a TV and DVD player to conserve space in cramped dorm rooms. While there is a trend away from desktops to increased laptop usage, USB tuners and large LCD external monitors are common enough and easily available, almost all current laptops come with drives that read DVDs (at least), and (looking ahead again) LCD projectors are getting cheaper and correspondingly more common. Due to the disposable income levels, the college and immediately post-college crowd is THE target demographic to hook, and while a gaming console is a luxury, a computer is considered just short of a necessity.
The software player market is not one they can yet afford to ignore.
Does that mean I'm "getting" NY? No, they'll make up their $7 loss with a raise in the Income, Gas, Sales, Luxury, etc. etc. tax, or a decrease in subsidies for farmers, or lowering of state employee raises or whatever.
And if you get audited by the NY Board of Revenue (or whatever they call their state-level IRS), you'll have to pay the NY sales tax, plus penalties for tax evasion.
IAmNotALawyer, and I have not specifically read the NY sales tax laws. I don't know of anyone in NY who's been bitten by this; I do know someone who lived in CT who was. (He has since moved to Florida.) Many states write their tax code as a "sales or use tax". This means, if you live in Foo county in the State of BAR with a tax rate of X%, and go buy something in Baz county in the state of QUX that only collects Y% tax (with X>Y) for use back in Foo county, you owe the remaining X-Y percent and are supposed to declare it on your state Income tax. In the case of buying things over the Internet, the collected Y usually is "0%", because of previous rulings.
Or, in short: the internet seller has at present no legal obligation to collect sales tax... but this is not because the buyer has no legal obligation to pay sales taxes on such purchases.
Confusion over this (along with basic greed) has led to massive consumer evasion of sales taxes, which in turn has cut state sales tax revenues. As I understand it, the scheme is to simplify the complex mosaic of sales tax regulations to something trivial enough to quickly computer code, getting around one of the main reasons the SCOTUS struck down the requirement on sellers in the first place.
Literally, physically, something that looks like those devices could not possibly be an explosive device of any serious power, nothing that poses any danger to any structure or even any human who wasn't essentially holding them in his hands.
I wouldn't go quite that far. It looks like a motivated lunatic might be able to pack on the rough order of a quart of C-4 into the one I saw on E-bay; that would get you something on the very vague ballpark of ten kilograms TNT yield -- or about ten millitons. Not enough to do more than cause a (slightly more justified) panic, evacuate the associated buildings, and probably force some pretty expensive repairs. And, yeah, with all of the moon-units they had scattered about the country, terrorists might have been lucky to kill half a dozen people with shrapnel, and maybe give minor injuries to five times that. But if you set one off in the middle of the road, I doubt anyone in Boston would notice the extra pothole.
Yes, Boston, your mayor has had his sense of humor surgically removed. I hope whoever buys the ones appearing on E-bay mail ship them to him.
But you see, here in The Land Of The Free (TM)*, the majority of the population see boobies and even sucks on nipples frequently for the first few months of their lives. Then they aren't allowed to see them again for 18 years.
Wrong; that's the minority. Sometime before hitting eighteen, the majority usually get their own personal set to play with — but the Religious Reich frown on it, and yet never forgive them if they ever try to suck on anyone else's boobies ever again.
Continuing it once started is MUCH easier than putting it down and picking it up the next day, since the latter involves "reloading" the mental "task state" - bringing all the information back into short-term memory.
In other words, the architecture of the human brain wetware, and its paging and sleep(1) calls, makes this a better solution. And you thought paging to disk in Windows was bad.... =)
Actually, while the Middle English root of disgruntle was negative, Meriam-Webster's gives the positive meaning that a hacker would sensibly expect. Evidently, the back-construction dates back to 1926 and now predominates. "Curiouser and curiouser."
Definitely pure PR hype: they're proposing a software solution.
The first law of security: UNRESTRICTED PHYSICAL ACCESS CAN OVERCOME ANY OTHER SECURITY. Encryption measures are the last to go, but even they can be surmounted. Password management does remove the threat from the stupidest employees, but not those who are angry, motivated, competent, and screwed by management.
I'll also note that I would appear to fit a large chunk of the proposed profile.
Disgruntled: not with the job, but with a lot of the rest of my life. However, my co-workers are supportive of my problems, and highly encouraging when I try to deal with them.
Paranoid: I'm in charge of security for the department; damn right I'm paranoid. And because I'm a "smart" paranoid, and take precautions for contingency scenarios in advance, everyone who has come to me with a disaster (thus far) has been provided a better solution than they thought possible, usually in less time than they expected.
Generally show up late: try "almost invariably". I inevitably work late, too. The only time I've been in at 8:00 AM, I was going home after a very long night. I also work some weekends, and even make housecalls (reserving the right to put in milage). No-one says one durn thing.
Argue with colleagues: absolutely... and politely. My colleagues and I know that there is more than one way to look at a problem, and every problem has a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. We argue in hopes that we can work out the best way, or at least one where the downsides of the final option are clear and accepted. And if a supervisor wants to insist "do it my way" afterwards, I smile and say "sure, once you've put the instructions in writing." Five times out of seven (in six years), they've reconsidered at that point. Of the other two, one got a large chunk of his backside taken out by a feral auditor, the other changed his position after the disaster I predicted, happened... because he was then able to convince higher ups to cough up the needed funding.
Generally perform poorly: the one complete miss. I did get one written reprimand on file for insubordination (which I mostly deserved), but my work has been described as the best IT support any of the group have ever had, anywhere. I have happy users. On the other hand, poor performance can come about when three people's jobs get loaded onto one person. It's definitely a warning sign of trouble, but not necessarily with the employee.
More exact profiling keys should be: disgruntled with their job; regards co-workers with unprovoked paranoia, distrust, and hostility; failing to work the expected number of hours (or hostile to working with other people); unable to express a logical framework or to reconsider his position when arguing with colleagues; and, yes, can't meet reasonable performance expectations.
In the end, it's a question of moral character. The answer is simple: character should be both demonstrated and demanded. After that, so long as you're smart enough not to confuse "conformity" with "character", your internal threat will be minimal.
This 2 million isn't a fine - its a little bit of money so that Turner can accept responsibility and these public officials can save face instead of being decried for being thundering morons.
No, it's a little bit of money to make the city stop bothering the company and its executives, so Turner's company doesn't have to spend twenty times as much on lawyers; there's no admission of wrongdoing (IE, responsibility) involved. I'm depressed Turner's team didn't hold out to protect the guys who put these up as well as the executives, but I suppose you don't get to be head of a multi-billion dollar media supercorp with things like "principles".
A sociopath and criminal lunatic (and fictional character to boot). He's not a religious fanatic, which category seems to be of more plausible threat in the current conflict.
Also, as he noted: "I may be a criminal lunatic, but I'm an American criminal lunatic!" He's also usually funnier and less surreal than ATHF manage, and would doubtless be offended by the association.
Not quite; it's based on statistics. Of course, the short-hand models used by corporate executives oft omit error bars, nor is the model tested experimentally for validity. Corporate executives also don't usually understand the nature of statistical models — it's not a certain truth, but merely a better bet at it than alternatives — so demographics mainly gets interpreted through the executive's stereotypes. Thus, they assume that because a Thneed primarily appeals to the 25-40 year old male demographic, and that such a demographic is usually uncomfortable with pink, they should try to dye the Thneed blue... not realizing (until too late) that the demographic considered is mostly men sufficiently certain of their own masculinity to be comfortable in the kitchen, who primarily use their Thneed to make soup zestier, and that the blue dye tastes terrible.
trying to compare anything Scientology does to your regular Christian churches is simply insane.
Christian? Heck, Scientology makes Islam look almost friendly by comparison. And there's doubtless a really nice, offensive Jewish money joke in here somewhere; would some comedian of suitable ethnicity care to take a whack at it?
Most religions will teach the beliefs regardless of whether you cough up money.
Scientology not only insists on payment, they claim trade secret protection, so if you leave the church, you can't set up your own rival organization. I'd propose that Trade Secret law should be revised to deny such protection to religious organizations.
You want to be a church, it needs to be able to have a schism.
Because there aren't a dozen tested, proven ways that can easily make things a lot better in those areas. Admittedly, using all dozen candidates in CS on one project would be a certain disaster; but using any one would yield a better product. Instead, few places use any of them.
There may not be a best way, but there sure as hell are a lot of better ones.
Who cares that I can learn whatever software package they're using in a week or so?
Now, now; the subtle perversity of Cisco's IOS takes at least three weeks to master for someone with less than a decade's networking experience. If you only have the experience, all you can do in a week is pass the CCNP exam.
He isn't a nutjob. People IGNORE nutjobs. He's EFFECTIVE and that bothers us because it shows us how easily the legal system can be manipulated to punish unsubstantiated wrongs.
If he was manipulating the legal system soley to make it look like the [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] mess that it is, that would be one thing. He bothers us because he's manipulating it to push his own execrable political agenda.
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See the Crunchly Saga from the Jargon Lexicon, particularly the section starting here. (The comics appeared in the dead-tree Hacker's Dictionary 2nd edition version as well.)
Vista hasn't really been in consumer use enough to know what kind of problems people will hit in the real world. Surely this is a bit premature?
O'Reilly usually has several books that come out. The "Missing Manual" series tells you the stuff that the manufacturer ought to have put in a user manual (if they could afford to hire tech writers as competent, independent, and forthright as Pogue... who's been playing with the beta builds and probably an advance copy of the final build). There's also the "Annoyances" series, which tell why the product is Broken As Designed, and to what extent the problems can be worked around. And then there's the Nutshell series, which are a vital reference for any serious geek.
The Missing Manual is targeted for an audience of users slightly above the complete novice, but below the heavy power user. A geek will want to find a library with a copy to glance through, but probably not add them to their home collection. (The exception being the first time you move from Windows to OS X, or vice versa, or if you're supporting a large number of such switchers.) The Annoyances are worth more serious study. Nutshell books are for buying as a reference; only the most twisted of hard-core geeks will want to introduce themselves to a subject that way, but any geek will find them a handy reference.
I would say that failing to exist would indeed be a serious health problem that you should probably take time out to treat.
I do hope she hasn't fallen prey to Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. That would be horrible; the case is already too surreally Adams-esqe already.
I thought the devil had many names. Why is he using the same one more than once this time?
No imagination. The many names have all been given to him by mankind. Creativity is a manifestation of Creation, and therefore remains the province of God. The Devil lost any ability to create when he fell. All he can do now is mimic, steal and corrupt.
Now, are we discussing Lucifer, or Bill Gates?
Just because an attorney speaks to someone else about a case does not automatically give the right for the opposition to subpoena that person for that information.
But it might get you enough of a legal leg to stand on that the judge won't instantly throw the motion out while laughing hysterically, and (more important) won't be admissible later as evidence of vexatious litigation.
In the US, anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time... but that doesn't mean your case will last nineteen seconds in front of a judge, nor that you won't be liable for your opponent's legal costs and punitive damages for filing such a dumb lawsuit in the first place. Right now, SCO's tactics appear consistent with stalling for time to maximize the revenue corporate officers may obtain by unloading overpriced stock, while trying to avoid incurring any liabilities that will reach beyond corporate bankruptcy. The motion is consistent with such.
I also think the motion is pathetic. Assume that SCO's claim has some basis, that PJ in fact stands for Plenum Judicia, and that the postings made by PJ represent part of IBM's legal analysis. That means, even with IBM telling them at least part of what they think about the case, and pointing out what mistakes SCO's legal team is making, SCO still hasn't put together a coherent case. Alternatively, maybe they just hope PJ is a real and humble paralegal unconnected to IBM, and will be more help putting together a plan of attack than SCO's current legal team.
Either way, SCO doesn't look too bright.
I really don't understand why the heck they even let someone write a software player, how big of a market slice can that be?
I believe you forget the studios' objective; they want a more pirate-resistant successor to the current standard DVD. Ergo, they must be able to displace the current DVD market. A sizable minority of college students use a Windows PC with DVD drive (and perhaps tuner card) in lieu of a TV and DVD player to conserve space in cramped dorm rooms. While there is a trend away from desktops to increased laptop usage, USB tuners and large LCD external monitors are common enough and easily available, almost all current laptops come with drives that read DVDs (at least), and (looking ahead again) LCD projectors are getting cheaper and correspondingly more common. Due to the disposable income levels, the college and immediately post-college crowd is THE target demographic to hook, and while a gaming console is a luxury, a computer is considered just short of a necessity.
The software player market is not one they can yet afford to ignore.
Does that mean I'm "getting" NY? No, they'll make up their $7 loss with a raise in the Income, Gas, Sales, Luxury, etc. etc. tax, or a decrease in subsidies for farmers, or lowering of state employee raises or whatever.
And if you get audited by the NY Board of Revenue (or whatever they call their state-level IRS), you'll have to pay the NY sales tax, plus penalties for tax evasion.
IAmNotALawyer, and I have not specifically read the NY sales tax laws. I don't know of anyone in NY who's been bitten by this; I do know someone who lived in CT who was. (He has since moved to Florida.) Many states write their tax code as a "sales or use tax". This means, if you live in Foo county in the State of BAR with a tax rate of X%, and go buy something in Baz county in the state of QUX that only collects Y% tax (with X>Y) for use back in Foo county, you owe the remaining X-Y percent and are supposed to declare it on your state Income tax. In the case of buying things over the Internet, the collected Y usually is "0%", because of previous rulings.
Or, in short: the internet seller has at present no legal obligation to collect sales tax... but this is not because the buyer has no legal obligation to pay sales taxes on such purchases.
Confusion over this (along with basic greed) has led to massive consumer evasion of sales taxes, which in turn has cut state sales tax revenues. As I understand it, the scheme is to simplify the complex mosaic of sales tax regulations to something trivial enough to quickly computer code, getting around one of the main reasons the SCOTUS struck down the requirement on sellers in the first place.
"the judge was a scientologist" Is that true? Cause that's kind of scary.
No basis given for claim, but the judge in question (Wallerstein) is apparently dead, so it can't be libel.
Literally, physically, something that looks like those devices could not possibly be an explosive device of any serious power, nothing that poses any danger to any structure or even any human who wasn't essentially holding them in his hands.
I wouldn't go quite that far. It looks like a motivated lunatic might be able to pack on the rough order of a quart of C-4 into the one I saw on E-bay; that would get you something on the very vague ballpark of ten kilograms TNT yield -- or about ten millitons. Not enough to do more than cause a (slightly more justified) panic, evacuate the associated buildings, and probably force some pretty expensive repairs. And, yeah, with all of the moon-units they had scattered about the country, terrorists might have been lucky to kill half a dozen people with shrapnel, and maybe give minor injuries to five times that. But if you set one off in the middle of the road, I doubt anyone in Boston would notice the extra pothole.
Yes, Boston, your mayor has had his sense of humor surgically removed. I hope whoever buys the ones appearing on E-bay mail ship them to him.
But you see, here in The Land Of The Free (TM)*, the majority of the population see boobies and even sucks on nipples frequently for the first few months of their lives. Then they aren't allowed to see them again for 18 years.
Wrong; that's the minority. Sometime before hitting eighteen, the majority usually get their own personal set to play with — but the Religious Reich frown on it, and yet never forgive them if they ever try to suck on anyone else's boobies ever again.
Quoth the Straight Dope's Cecil: "My idea: send up couples with small children. They're already used to the celibate life."
Hmmm....
Unless you take a couple of rubber/elastic bands with you, I guess. But try to explain THAT to your superiors...
Bungee ties. Or, more formally, a Payload Equipment Restraint System. Astronauts are used to the idea of retasking mission equipment. Now, explaining the unusual recreational reading material in your personal effects for that mission... that might be hard to explain.
Continuing it once started is MUCH easier than putting it down and picking it up the next day, since the latter involves "reloading" the mental "task state" - bringing all the information back into short-term memory.
In other words, the architecture of the human brain wetware, and its paging and sleep(1) calls, makes this a better solution. And you thought paging to disk in Windows was bad.... =)
Actually, while the Middle English root of disgruntle was negative, Meriam-Webster's gives the positive meaning that a hacker would sensibly expect. Evidently, the back-construction dates back to 1926 and now predominates. "Curiouser and curiouser."
Definitely pure PR hype: they're proposing a software solution.
The first law of security: UNRESTRICTED PHYSICAL ACCESS CAN OVERCOME ANY OTHER SECURITY. Encryption measures are the last to go, but even they can be surmounted. Password management does remove the threat from the stupidest employees, but not those who are angry, motivated, competent, and screwed by management.
I'll also note that I would appear to fit a large chunk of the proposed profile.
More exact profiling keys should be: disgruntled with their job; regards co-workers with unprovoked paranoia, distrust, and hostility; failing to work the expected number of hours (or hostile to working with other people); unable to express a logical framework or to reconsider his position when arguing with colleagues; and, yes, can't meet reasonable performance expectations.
In the end, it's a question of moral character. The answer is simple: character should be both demonstrated and demanded. After that, so long as you're smart enough not to confuse "conformity" with "character", your internal threat will be minimal.
This 2 million isn't a fine - its a little bit of money so that Turner can accept responsibility and these public officials can save face instead of being decried for being thundering morons.
No, it's a little bit of money to make the city stop bothering the company and its executives, so Turner's company doesn't have to spend twenty times as much on lawyers; there's no admission of wrongdoing (IE, responsibility) involved. I'm depressed Turner's team didn't hold out to protect the guys who put these up as well as the executives, but I suppose you don't get to be head of a multi-billion dollar media supercorp with things like "principles".
Uhh, the Joker?
A sociopath and criminal lunatic (and fictional character to boot). He's not a religious fanatic, which category seems to be of more plausible threat in the current conflict.
Also, as he noted: "I may be a criminal lunatic, but I'm an American criminal lunatic!" He's also usually funnier and less surreal than ATHF manage, and would doubtless be offended by the association.
It is based solely on stereotypes.
Not quite; it's based on statistics. Of course, the short-hand models used by corporate executives oft omit error bars, nor is the model tested experimentally for validity. Corporate executives also don't usually understand the nature of statistical models — it's not a certain truth, but merely a better bet at it than alternatives — so demographics mainly gets interpreted through the executive's stereotypes. Thus, they assume that because a Thneed primarily appeals to the 25-40 year old male demographic, and that such a demographic is usually uncomfortable with pink, they should try to dye the Thneed blue... not realizing (until too late) that the demographic considered is mostly men sufficiently certain of their own masculinity to be comfortable in the kitchen, who primarily use their Thneed to make soup zestier, and that the blue dye tastes terrible.
trying to compare anything Scientology does to your regular Christian churches is simply insane.
Christian? Heck, Scientology makes Islam look almost friendly by comparison. And there's doubtless a really nice, offensive Jewish money joke in here somewhere; would some comedian of suitable ethnicity care to take a whack at it?
Most religions will teach the beliefs regardless of whether you cough up money.
Scientology not only insists on payment, they claim trade secret protection, so if you leave the church, you can't set up your own rival organization. I'd propose that Trade Secret law should be revised to deny such protection to religious organizations.
You want to be a church, it needs to be able to have a schism.
Every Christain Church that I've ever been dragged too preached titheing to the church and passed collection plates around.
Catholics still pass the collection plate (or basket), but don't push so much on the tithing; I've seen it more from the Protestant faiths.
Why doesn't anyone complain...
Because there aren't a dozen tested, proven ways that can easily make things a lot better in those areas. Admittedly, using all dozen candidates in CS on one project would be a certain disaster; but using any one would yield a better product. Instead, few places use any of them.
There may not be a best way, but there sure as hell are a lot of better ones.
While I agree: there is the usability/interface design aspect, which isn't all that math based yet. Too many ties to CogSci.
Who cares that I can learn whatever software package they're using in a week or so?
Now, now; the subtle perversity of Cisco's IOS takes at least three weeks to master for someone with less than a decade's networking experience. If you only have the experience, all you can do in a week is pass the CCNP exam.
He isn't a nutjob. People IGNORE nutjobs. He's EFFECTIVE and that bothers us because it shows us how easily the legal system can be manipulated to punish unsubstantiated wrongs.
If he was manipulating the legal system soley to make it look like the [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] mess that it is, that would be one thing. He bothers us because he's manipulating it to push his own execrable political agenda.