"give someone a run for their money - to compete very strongly against someone who is expected to win a competition"
Before, VMWare had support for 64-bit VM on 32-bit Host (on 64-bit hardware). Hence, VMWare was the presumptive winner. Now, Virtualbox supports 64-bit VM on 32-bit Host (on 64-bit hardware). Hence, Virtualbox is poised to strongly compete against VMWare when they weren't before. Since Virtualbox is available today, I'd say it's actually competing against VMWare today. The race, though, has obviously just begun and VMWare is years ahead.
Sort of. I'd argue that the "American Dream" is about busting your ass on something potentially risky but with a massive payoff. Busting your ass over a known risk is merely working hard and investing in lottery tickets. But, if you bust your ass on something because you believe in it (of course, assuming you're not imagining it), the only real limits should be flukishly bad luck and your willingness to work hard for the end goal. The "American Dream", then, is about the optimism in the belief that the only obstacle to success in one's life is one's willingess to pursue one's dreams. Of course, once you start with a rigged system, then hard work well likely just be idiocy. Perhaps that's the enduring reason why governmental intervention and societal-based progression is so frowned upon.
Me. If you don't want a kid to access naughty things on the internet, don't allow them access to the internet. No amount of filtering, even whitelisting, will shield all children from all things considered provacative and unacceptable by parents.
The real issue is a lack of responsibility. Kinergarteners and grade schoolers shouldn't be on the internet, period (that doesn't mean the teacher can't make a presentation showing them web pages). Middle-schoolers shouldn't be left on computers to be babysat and taught by them any more than they should be babysat and taught by TV; teachers should be there to guide students and to punish those looking up inappropriate/indecent things. And once you get to high-school, the only real issue is whether a student is being a disturbance to his education or the education or others; at that age, the issue should be about respect others and understanding that living in society one should try to be sensitive to the possible over-sensitivities of others; but, that doesn't mean there should be a whole clusterfuck over students trying to find reputable information about sex (yea, those sorts of places do exist online even if they're greatly outnumbered by rumor/social and porn sites), even if it does piss some parents off.
Trying to reduce the whole discuss down to whether to filter or not avoids the real issues. That's not surprising because it's much easier to push a binary position when it comes to voting and being elected from a local all the way up to a national level. But, it's a disservice to students to treat kindergarteners like high school seniors. And, it's a disservice to society to unleash such seniors upon the world.
The same happened with the supercar project, a joint venture with the big three US auto makers in the US to create an affordable 80mpg car. And, in part, it's a result of the Bush Administration that the project failed.
Ironically, the supercar project likely would have saved the big three US auto makers. Instead, they went for the short-term, big-sale of gas-guzzling SUVs. Such very much seems to be the hallmark of the reign of Bush, in companies who are big enough to easily make quick cash but who don't care or don't think well enough about long-term viability; or perhaps it's true of all companies, but the bigger a company is, the less nimble it is to change and the ability to exploit every new cash flow for the short term it's profitable.
Perhaps if the Americans weren't so self-centered, all of the above would be a non-issue: businesses could fail, even those directly or indirectly employing millions, and people would gladly accept taxes going up to support those millions under welfare until new companies formed to fill the glut of cheap labor. Realistically, of course, regulation is considered a more acceptable form of stability even if it's not necessarily as efficient*. Unfortunately, regulation is pretty worthless if it's not followed (enforcement hopefully helps with that). And that just leads to the worst of both worlds.
But, then, nearly 50% of the voting public is for dismantling regulation and leaving the unemployed to starve. I think it all goes back to Americans being so self-centered. Maybe the rest of the world will learn from this and enforce sanctions against the US to force them to change. Certainly, attempts to enlighten the population haven't been working.
*It might lead to more efficient outcomes, due to externalities, but that whole discussion is really besides the point.
There's no scientific theory that would explain that our "spirit" still live after our death.
Science is based on the indirectly or directly observable. Hence, science doesn't cover spirits. Of course, this very fact does highlight why believe in spirits based on religion is nonsensical, as for the information to be valid spirits would have to be observable (and then your argument would apply). At the same time, it is well known under science that there might well exist unobservable things (everything outside the observable universe, the exact position and velocity of a particle, etc). In short, the best answer to things like spirits (and supernatural things) in general is "I can't know". But, in specific cases where belief is based upon something observable, feel free to throw science around.
Try loading a 100 page document under abiword. AFAIK, abiword starts becoming pretty unresponsive after ~20 pages. While 100 page documents might not be commonly used, it's pretty ridiculous for a word processor to choke. That's the main reason I tend to avoid abiword. So, any other suggestions on lightweight, full-featured word processing free software?
I always thought that Dance Dance Revolution was grueling, inhumane, and generally evil, but I never imagined they had connections to the Stasi. Now it all makes sense!
they are able to get the severity 40% of the time right, with no false negatives (that not a single severe one has been classified as a low priority one).
If hypothetically, 40% of vulnerabilities are critical, then guessing critical 100% of the time would lead to a 40% success rate and no false negatives. This, btw, is the entire reason the rainbow colored terror warning level used by the US after 9/11 was so lucidrous. If one doesn't know the actual threat but the risk from guessing too low is termination, one will *always* overguess. That's not a good thing. That just creates an environment of hyperfear.
People bash Microsoft for many reasons. It doesn't help that Microsoft's work to monopolize the market place means that the many people who work in IT are left to deal with exploits in Microsoft products regularly. In short, the amount of complaining over a company is mostly proportional to having day-to-day experience with products from that company; this is because 90% of everything is crap, so almost everyone has to deal with crap. The fact that Microsoft doesn't manage to fit in the 10% only hightens the point that the free market doesn't do a good job at choosing "the best" product.
And this goes back to the situation with the US. The US has a hyperinflated ego as a superpower. Microsoft has a hyperinflated ego as a software company. People enjoy watching those with a hyperinflated ego suffer when they act less to humble themselves and more to carry on with their ego. I don't think Microsoft over predicting its own vulnerabilities is paramount to humbling themselves, for I have the strong belief that they will use those predictions to justify their ego-intended actions. Only when Microsoft starts signs of moderation in their actions consistently will I believe such a program is part of the solution.
Games NEEDED realism, or atleast, better graphics. Comparing the boss fights from Mega Man 1-6 to MegaMan 7 and 8? Or From 1-6 to X, Z, and ZX? Bigger screen real estate, better sprites,...
Um, you should really compare 1-6 to X to Z. Better graphics almost invariably mean bigger sprites. Bigger sprites almost invariable means *smaller* screen real estate. With the Zero games, this is especially obvious, as the GBA screen is smaller than either the NES, SNES, or Playstation screens.
The end result is having boss fights in Zero that are often two screens across. On the one hand, that ups the challenge factor. On the other, it just makes the game much more frustrating, as you can't watch the boss nearly as readily to counter attacks. There's also a high tendency to make the top and bottom of the screen still a ceiling and floor. Even more generally, having your sprite occupy a significant percentage of screen real estate makes the game world seem even less expansive.
As much as I welcome better graphics, there's something to be said for having an expansive world. That's the real element that I see in Mega Man 9 and more "8-bit" graphics. This is where having HD resolutions could really be useful. Unfortunately, I believe too many are fixated on HD resolutions for 3D graphics. Perhaps the XBox 360's download service will leave room for those with more thoughtfulness.
Friendly OpenOffice user bends over backwards to get people to use OpenOffice.
Asshole MS Office user pragmatically looking for a free MS Office clone uses the friendly OpenOffice user to his advantage.
New, asshole OpenOffice user doesn't want to lift a finger for anyone.
The collection of asshole OpenOffice users quickly outnumbers the friendly OpenOffice users.
In short, the asshole, pragmatic users will inherently dominate the community of OpenOffice users no matter how much you espouse a belief in a friendly attitude to spur adoption. In fact, trying to put the face of "friendly OpenOffice user" as the spokesman of the OpenOffice community only enhances the negative effect when another asshole MS Office user tries to go with OpenOffice; statistically they're almost certain to run into another asshole.
What's the answer? Pragmatically, it's to start charging for OpenOffice. People will fake niceness for money, and money allows for scaling to demand. Look no further than Sun selling StarOffice. Or, we can pray that RMS somehow converts people into being enlightened idealists instead of short-sighted pragmatists.
Me? Personally, I'm not obsessed with wide-scale OpenOffice adoption precisely because I don't think adopting most or all the assholes who use MS Office is a good thing.
PS - By no means does this mean that most MS Office users are assholes. It's that the assholes are the people who jump ship first and are the ones who are most demanding on the resources of the friendly OpenOffice users. Even being a very small precentage of MS Office users, in raw numbers their shift to using OpenOffice makes them the dominate force.
PSS - I don't think the GP was being an asshole. I'm just trying to refute your logic.
The rise of "Wintel" to its monopoly state is the victory of long term backward compatability. Their competition tried to do things the way you suggest, and the end result is that their competition is gone.
Hence my comment about the free market. Btw, the long-term goal of backwards compatability has turned into the shot-term goal of not breaking things at nearly all costs. The only way to maintain long-term backwards compatability *and* maintain security is for a *long-term* project to isolate insecure apps in a backwards-compatabile fashion.
I don't suggest "forgiving" Microsoft because I don't think that they have anything to appologize for. Its their OS and the market speaks.
Notice I didn't speak about "forgiving" Microsoft but about "justifying" Microsoft's actions. The free market isn't the be-all, end-all justification for actions. If it were, contract killings would be justifiable (as an example).
Yes, let Microsoft take its OS and do what it wants. And the market will speak. I'm just commenting how Microsoft is dooming itself.
The issue is that its users want to run application that do things which might break securuty, and this goes to the clear advantages of backward compatability that its users want.
Last I checked, the NT line was supposedly a secure OS. Ie, the OS itself was in control and applications are always subordinate to the OS. What that means is, the OS is always in a position to maintain backward compatability when it comes to applications in a secure fashion.
The vista method is to allow programs to break security, but only after prompting the user beforehand.
And that's the problem. The Vista method is to turn NT into Windows 9x. The *proper* solution is a combination of virtual machines, specific simulators for needed hardware functions, etc. Of course, the proper solution is exceptionally costly, time prohibitive, and likely very CPU intensive in some edge cases. So, Microsoft went with the easy-out approach because backwards compatability was more important than security.
Breaking insecure apps or creating a framework to make insecure apps secure might not have great for Microsoft's short-term balance sheet. Doing the right thing in the face of adversity is pretty much the definition of character, and I don't think anyone reasonably believes Microsoft was overflowing with that trait. One could try to blame the free market for this (not that I'm saying you are), and perhaps that's partially true. But, I don't think that justifies trying to defend Microsoft's actions.
Microsoft does not control, review, revise, endorse or distribute the third party projects on this site. Microsoft is hosting the CodePlex site solely as a web storage site as a service to the developer community.
I'd imagine that stance would change pretty quickly the second someone tries to post an Windows XP.iso on CodePlex.
In other words, developers can -gasp- choose the license they want. And they do, including MS. Also, it has nothing to do with the OSI since MS explicitly mentions it's 'open source' and not 'Open Source'(which seems to be hijacked by the OSI as a trademark?). open source != free(as in freedom) software.
Great. Developers can choose the license they want. And MS can choose to only host open source licensed software. If MS doesn't require any conditions on licensing, then MS can't promise "open source" projects by any definition. Hell, I might just start using CodePlex as a binary mirror.
Microsoft has a history of going up to companies, offering them lots of cash, dragging on negotiations, and then using their closeness to a company to create a good-enough clone while simutaneous breaking off negotiations. Even if one were to assume that Microsoft had good intentions, Yahoo would still be in the same mess because Microsoft is a convicted monopoly and clearly it's very questionable for Microsoft to use its Windows monopoly to buy a stake in the search/ad market when it has failed so badly so far trying to fairly compete.
Besides, such massive acquisitions don't generally happen overnight. So, I'd hardly call Yahoo's actions "dragging their feet". I would agree, though, that Microsoft did become embarrassed. It's rather used to being able to just throw ungodly sums of money at another company and to see the other company bend over backwards to obtain it. Finally, a company was wise enough to realize that even with all the money Microsoft was offering, the actual risk was very possibly much too great to simply jump at the offer without some actual consideration. Perhaps Yahoo was wrong. But, if there's one thing the subprime mortgage fiasco has shown, it's that if you merely jump at the dollar value being shown without considering the actual risk involved, you can be massively burned.
Willfully helping someone to violate a contract is often illegal. And that is where the fact that the functionality sold that people use to violate the contract doesn't have any secondary legal functionality, making the intention clear.
So, I'll sign a contract with a friend where he's required to, through purely legal efforts, try to acquire majority shares in Microsoft. And when Microsoft repeatedly--again, through legal means--prevents this, I'll sue Microsoft for tortious interference. I don't know if it actually is tortious interference or not, but it sounds like it.
Btw, it's funny in a way. There is a secondary legal functionality. It's called running MMOGlider on a personal WoW server. Oh, that's right: Blizzard has used a contract (EULA) and threats of lawsuits to prevent the creation of a competing WoW server. I guess MDY should sue them over that for tortious interference.
We here a lot of political grandstanding about how the American worker is the most creative and productive on the planet, but I mean you know that statement's worth is debatable, but I know something for absolutely certain, American CEO's and stockholder's are the most short-sighted and unimaginative on the planet.
The statement about American workers only leads me to think, it doesn't matter how many Boxers you have when the country is run by Napoleans.
I'll start off this by saying, I'm talking out of my ass, but here goes...
You're trying to tell me that for the past 20 years nobody has written any specs down?
Most probably, yes. The problem is, the amount of specs are primarily for (a) publically known interfaces and (b) the small group of people who bothered to document everything else. Since (a) rarely covered enough to get the job done, even for MS app developers, a lot of the private interfaces have become de facto public. Overall, that means, even if some specs were written, they'd be out-of-date due to the influences of coders over time.
That when they coded Office 2003 they had to reverse engineer Office XP?
Most of Office 2003 is Office XP. Most of the people who worked on Office 2003 worked on Office XP, though probably on a different component or at a lower job level. Like most big projects, even with specs, very few people who work on the code actually know how the whole thing works. The only big issues is knowing enough about the code to extend it to your new needs. And then you have a few people who do an overview and fix bigger things when you don't know enough to do it yourself.
You're telling me that Microsoft Press's "Writing Solid Code" and the 50ish other MS-Office and programming related books are bunk?
More like, "Writing Solid Code" and the others you mentioned were only written *after* Office and Windows turned into massive spaghetti code. They're writings from past experience, not a guide to what MS did up until this point. Of course, at this point, MS's culture is so ingrained to "detailed specs aren't needed" that all the pushing towards better code writing still leaves lots of gaping holes.
You mean to tell me that over the course of FIVE YEARS, they couldn't pull together a written description of their data formats, and that Office 2007 is the biggest, ugliest hack on the planet?
They probably could, if they were interested. But as far as MS is concerned, releasing a spec on their data formats is pretty low priority. I mean, MS employees want to work on their latest project, not dig through tons of old code and partial specs to stitch together a complete document just to allow other companies an "edge". As was pointed out in the arstechnica article, there are those at MS who feel like cooperating with the legal punishment is really just doing the government a favor. The situation is not unlike a student who doesn't do his homework, but passes his tests, who fidgets and generally drags out doing his homework in in-school detention.
As for Office 2007, I'd imagine that large parts of it are big, ugly hacks. At the same time, the Linux kernel could be called a big, ugly hack too, as the Linux kernel itself tends to be the "spec" for what Linux is many times. The same could be said for a lot of open source projects. Truthfully, I'd imagine many wouldn't mind Office 2007's source being handed over as the "spec"--not all, though, considering how much effort it'd take to try to understand decade old code MS itself would have a hard time understanding. I don't think MS wants to do that, though. But seeing that five years have passed without them releasing sufficient documentation, it doesn't seem likely that the Judge will force sufficient documentation by whatever means possible any time soon, anyways, so I don't think MS is in any hurry to find any specs anyways.
It's kind of sad that you don't understand what is wrong with everything you just said, from the insane "$2 to make, $1 billion to sell" comparison...
It's called reductio ad absurdum.
... to the failure to take on any part of GPs point.
The point raised was "to be an adult you can only enjoy what you pay for". I considered pointing out the absurdity of that as well, as there's tons of stuff no one can reasonably pay for (sunlight, language, land rights, culture, etc) in a moral way (especially the land rights, as there doesn't seem to be any universal consistency when it comes to land claims and land abandonment, and odds are pretty good that the land you're on was owned by someone at some time in the past who never agreed to pass on ownership to whoever sold the land to you). But, I instead chose to mock the attempt to the condescending "child" and "adult" talk.
You are perfectly free to make something for $2 and sell it for $1 billion. Don't be surprised when no-one buys it, and it still wouldn't be moral for anybody to copy it.
I assumed that'd be the reaction, actually. The problem with reductio ad absurdum is that it assumes the audience isn't willing to tolerate the absurd. So, I'll just spell it out: there is no morality behind copyright. While it'd certainly be nice that (a) people who worked hard on something were compensated and (b) people who benefited from others work were to adequately compensate its creator, neither (a) nor (b) are covered under copyright law.
There are many artists who have worked diligently to create masterpieces yet never seen enough money to cover even the bare supplies of their final creation. And while many people have used copyright to acquire compensation for their creations, there are many more people who have created whole cultures who can't begin to claim a copyright or any other monopoly that would effectively guaranteed they would be compensated for their work. Copyright itself doesn't require that the price set on a work have any relationship to its cost of production, that a work continue to be made available at any price, nor that people who wish to adequately compensate an artist for a work can actually do so in some way (look no further than the inability to buy most arcade game roms*, band contracts with the RIAA, and my absurd example with the fingerpainted cow).
Perhaps if copyright were less of a blank check for copyright holders to withhold their work from people and more of an attempt balance to actually promote the arts and sciences, copyright holder's wishes be damned, I'd feel there was some actual moral backing behind copyright. But, as it stands, copyright is just an absurd law with all sorts of negative consequences. Even if I were to acknowledge that copyright law is necessary for the time being, which I don't, there's enough negative moral consequences to retract the ability to gloss over it all and claim there's one morally acceptable interpretation.
*I guess it might be technically possible to buy out the company owning the copyrights on said arcade games. But, then having to spending several millions dollars to acquire a few hundred games seem pretty absurd to me, although less absurd than my fingerpainted cow.
Yes, I suppose TPB is a convenient place for children and the morally immature to violate copyright law. Some of us, however, are adults, and have grasped that if something costs money then either you pay for it or you do without.
Most games cost more than the $9.95 you paid. Perhaps you're referencing the price? If so, I've got a $1 billion finger painting of a cow to sell you that costs me less than $2 to make. I hope that the price doesn't disgust you. At least I know you'll never pirate my finger painting. Thanks, adult.
Free speech is an ideal because it is about political speech and the right of dissent and freedom from government censorship. Free speech is not a right for minors to be lewd.
Let's see... Republicans have a strong base in what? The Christian Right. What do they believe in? People, in general, not being lewd in public or otherwise. Hmm.. It'd seem that the mere fact that the Replubicans have made lewdness a political issue would mean that all lewdness is political. Now, was the intent of the original author a call to pointing out the absurdity of the censorship of lewdness in the public sphere? Got me. But, it'd seem pretty clear "free speech is not a right for minors to be lewd" doesn't universally hold.
What does that mean? Well, for one, it means a government-funded Principal shouldn't be going around disciplining potentially political speech, especially when it's not on the Principal's watch. Does the Principal have grounds to start a libel lawsuit or to sue MySpace to take down the page? Possibly. But, that's for the courts to invariably decide. The only time suspension should be involved when actual disruption occurs in school. And for that, the people causing the actual disruption should be disciplined.
A Democrat is a liberal who was mugged. A Republican is a conservative who was mugged. The latter are ideals based upon a simplisitic interpretation of the world. The former are pragmatic political structures used to enforce general ideals over a populace which might not be fully willing to the cause. While those ideals still might lead the way on when and how to act, pragmatism is what drives the actual laws and actions that effect the world.
In short, I don't think the GP's interpretation was naive. It was a pretty good interpretation if one presumes that being liberal/conservative is very different from wanting to join and alter government to exert control. The real change that tends to happens from a negative experience is people turn towards more pragmatic and less idealistic solutions. That's where the real lose of naivity occurs.
Seriously? Why is it that these people always point to their site? wouldn't you figure that, with a bit of injection, they could put the damn thing in the database? It's never made any sense to me. Anyone have any insights?
Inject a database to gain access
Insert barebones code to bootstrap from an updateable external source
Patch the database so no one else can remotely take over your newly pwned database
In short, it's because the people who do this want to make money and insure that they can update the malicious code as needbe without worrying that someone else will come along and tie down the system with their own crap. Now, if said people knew when the site was going to be cleaned and had all the necessary code already created for that circumstance, I'm sure they'd do a one-time injection without any external references. But, if so few coders in the legit market can manage it and almost all need the ability to patch code months or years in the future, I'm pretty sure most black market scammers are going to be in the same boat.
And like the other poster pointed out, the point isn't to draw attention. That just increases the odds of decreasing the money making period. Not to mention that questionable headlines might make people shy away from the site under realization that it's hacked.
You do realize that what the GPL says is completely different, right? You don't have to agree to the GPL to use GPL software: the person who gave you the software does. Regardless of whether EULAs are valid, the GPL doesn't try to push itself on the users. It does push itself on redistributors, but then that's the only legal way to grant redistribution without revoking the copyright on the software completely. In short, the GPL notice is an advertisement. It's not an attempt to force a contract.
What a crock of bullshit. An atheists doesn't hypothesis about the non-existence of something, that is just an ignorant statement offered up by religious people trying to elevate their non-scientific methods of establishing religion to a credible level instead of the dogma and circular logic it really is.
Yea, well, I'm an agnostic. And I'm the offering up that "ignorant statement". Now, feel free to call me religious (as I've already called you such), but it doesn't really work to try to ad hominem me on something for which you would also qualify. Btw, here's a classic example of a non-existence hypothesis: the lack of ether in space. But, I guess atheists weren't actually on top of that.
There is no need to believe something exists if there is no evidence that it exists. The only reason religion exists at all is because people are unwilling to admit they are ignorant and don't know everything, such as where did we come from, how did that tree get there, how is it possible something like the human body could come about by random changes. True, science does the same thing, but science at attempts to truly explain something rather than just offer 'Oh.. I don't know. It must be because god wanted it that way. Now stopping asking such question.'
If there's no evidence, there's no reason to believe *anything*. Btw, unless you resort to sophistry, science doesn't do the same thing. Some scientists might attempt to argue that science can answer everything, but they're religious fanatics. Science is about the scientific method and a few axioms (universiality, consistency through time, etc). Sure, those axioms could be wrong. But science isn't about being right. It's about creating a reproduceable model coupled with the progressive knowledge obtained from such. Without sophistry or some cosmological change, science should hold.
Also, there are things for which science explicitly says, "I don't know." Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle is an easy example.
Religion provides fairy tale answers to those insecurities. Nothing more. They provide no true moral compass, since it appears all religious tomes are vague and subject to interpretation by whatever person needs to twist it to their current purpose, including the pope. Those all mighty deities have a terrible communication plan. Even the 10 commandments are vague and have been twisted and changed throughout history to suit whoever has an agenda.
Well, yippie. And? If it's vogue to be atheist, does that mean I should spent time ranting about how twisted the morality of atheists are? Or do I not get to because there's no "Book of Atheists"?
Religion also provides a means for a central group to force a larger group to behave according to what they think is right. 'Don't have sex with your sister because you will go to hell' is easier to explain than 'Don't have sex with your sister because the risk of genetic mutation is greater'. 'Don't have butt sex because it's evil' is easier to explain than 'Ummm...that's an outie. Bad things will happen to it if you use it that way too many times and it increases the chance for transmitting diseases'. 'Don't steal because you will rot in hell' rather than 'If we all steal we fall into a state of anarchy and progress is forever halted'.
Government also provides a means for a central group to force a larger group to behave according to what they think is right. So are guns. So are knives. So is a little flesh on flesh violence. Were you trying to make a little rant about why religion, as we know it, likely was created? Or were you trying to in general condemn control by a minority? Or control of others in general? It sounds like a general rant about the ills of reality and how rational thought isn't some universal law that controls things.
It's time for atheists to stop being polite and to
Slashdot Mirror
"give someone a run for their money - to compete very strongly against someone who is expected to win a competition"
Before, VMWare had support for 64-bit VM on 32-bit Host (on 64-bit hardware). Hence, VMWare was the presumptive winner. Now, Virtualbox supports 64-bit VM on 32-bit Host (on 64-bit hardware). Hence, Virtualbox is poised to strongly compete against VMWare when they weren't before. Since Virtualbox is available today, I'd say it's actually competing against VMWare today. The race, though, has obviously just begun and VMWare is years ahead.
Sort of. I'd argue that the "American Dream" is about busting your ass on something potentially risky but with a massive payoff. Busting your ass over a known risk is merely working hard and investing in lottery tickets. But, if you bust your ass on something because you believe in it (of course, assuming you're not imagining it), the only real limits should be flukishly bad luck and your willingness to work hard for the end goal. The "American Dream", then, is about the optimism in the belief that the only obstacle to success in one's life is one's willingess to pursue one's dreams. Of course, once you start with a rigged system, then hard work well likely just be idiocy. Perhaps that's the enduring reason why governmental intervention and societal-based progression is so frowned upon.
Me. If you don't want a kid to access naughty things on the internet, don't allow them access to the internet. No amount of filtering, even whitelisting, will shield all children from all things considered provacative and unacceptable by parents.
The real issue is a lack of responsibility. Kinergarteners and grade schoolers shouldn't be on the internet, period (that doesn't mean the teacher can't make a presentation showing them web pages). Middle-schoolers shouldn't be left on computers to be babysat and taught by them any more than they should be babysat and taught by TV; teachers should be there to guide students and to punish those looking up inappropriate/indecent things. And once you get to high-school, the only real issue is whether a student is being a disturbance to his education or the education or others; at that age, the issue should be about respect others and understanding that living in society one should try to be sensitive to the possible over-sensitivities of others; but, that doesn't mean there should be a whole clusterfuck over students trying to find reputable information about sex (yea, those sorts of places do exist online even if they're greatly outnumbered by rumor/social and porn sites), even if it does piss some parents off.
Trying to reduce the whole discuss down to whether to filter or not avoids the real issues. That's not surprising because it's much easier to push a binary position when it comes to voting and being elected from a local all the way up to a national level. But, it's a disservice to students to treat kindergarteners like high school seniors. And, it's a disservice to society to unleash such seniors upon the world.
The same happened with the supercar project, a joint venture with the big three US auto makers in the US to create an affordable 80mpg car. And, in part, it's a result of the Bush Administration that the project failed.
Ironically, the supercar project likely would have saved the big three US auto makers. Instead, they went for the short-term, big-sale of gas-guzzling SUVs. Such very much seems to be the hallmark of the reign of Bush, in companies who are big enough to easily make quick cash but who don't care or don't think well enough about long-term viability; or perhaps it's true of all companies, but the bigger a company is, the less nimble it is to change and the ability to exploit every new cash flow for the short term it's profitable.
Perhaps if the Americans weren't so self-centered, all of the above would be a non-issue: businesses could fail, even those directly or indirectly employing millions, and people would gladly accept taxes going up to support those millions under welfare until new companies formed to fill the glut of cheap labor. Realistically, of course, regulation is considered a more acceptable form of stability even if it's not necessarily as efficient*. Unfortunately, regulation is pretty worthless if it's not followed (enforcement hopefully helps with that). And that just leads to the worst of both worlds.
But, then, nearly 50% of the voting public is for dismantling regulation and leaving the unemployed to starve. I think it all goes back to Americans being so self-centered. Maybe the rest of the world will learn from this and enforce sanctions against the US to force them to change. Certainly, attempts to enlighten the population haven't been working.
*It might lead to more efficient outcomes, due to externalities, but that whole discussion is really besides the point.
Science is based on the indirectly or directly observable. Hence, science doesn't cover spirits. Of course, this very fact does highlight why believe in spirits based on religion is nonsensical, as for the information to be valid spirits would have to be observable (and then your argument would apply). At the same time, it is well known under science that there might well exist unobservable things (everything outside the observable universe, the exact position and velocity of a particle, etc). In short, the best answer to things like spirits (and supernatural things) in general is "I can't know". But, in specific cases where belief is based upon something observable, feel free to throw science around.
Try loading a 100 page document under abiword. AFAIK, abiword starts becoming pretty unresponsive after ~20 pages. While 100 page documents might not be commonly used, it's pretty ridiculous for a word processor to choke. That's the main reason I tend to avoid abiword. So, any other suggestions on lightweight, full-featured word processing free software?
I always thought that Dance Dance Revolution was grueling, inhumane, and generally evil, but I never imagined they had connections to the Stasi. Now it all makes sense!
If hypothetically, 40% of vulnerabilities are critical, then guessing critical 100% of the time would lead to a 40% success rate and no false negatives. This, btw, is the entire reason the rainbow colored terror warning level used by the US after 9/11 was so lucidrous. If one doesn't know the actual threat but the risk from guessing too low is termination, one will *always* overguess. That's not a good thing. That just creates an environment of hyperfear.
People bash Microsoft for many reasons. It doesn't help that Microsoft's work to monopolize the market place means that the many people who work in IT are left to deal with exploits in Microsoft products regularly. In short, the amount of complaining over a company is mostly proportional to having day-to-day experience with products from that company; this is because 90% of everything is crap, so almost everyone has to deal with crap. The fact that Microsoft doesn't manage to fit in the 10% only hightens the point that the free market doesn't do a good job at choosing "the best" product.
And this goes back to the situation with the US. The US has a hyperinflated ego as a superpower. Microsoft has a hyperinflated ego as a software company. People enjoy watching those with a hyperinflated ego suffer when they act less to humble themselves and more to carry on with their ego. I don't think Microsoft over predicting its own vulnerabilities is paramount to humbling themselves, for I have the strong belief that they will use those predictions to justify their ego-intended actions. Only when Microsoft starts signs of moderation in their actions consistently will I believe such a program is part of the solution.
Um, you should really compare 1-6 to X to Z. Better graphics almost invariably mean bigger sprites. Bigger sprites almost invariable means *smaller* screen real estate. With the Zero games, this is especially obvious, as the GBA screen is smaller than either the NES, SNES, or Playstation screens.
The end result is having boss fights in Zero that are often two screens across. On the one hand, that ups the challenge factor. On the other, it just makes the game much more frustrating, as you can't watch the boss nearly as readily to counter attacks. There's also a high tendency to make the top and bottom of the screen still a ceiling and floor. Even more generally, having your sprite occupy a significant percentage of screen real estate makes the game world seem even less expansive.
As much as I welcome better graphics, there's something to be said for having an expansive world. That's the real element that I see in Mega Man 9 and more "8-bit" graphics. This is where having HD resolutions could really be useful. Unfortunately, I believe too many are fixated on HD resolutions for 3D graphics. Perhaps the XBox 360's download service will leave room for those with more thoughtfulness.
The summary can't be the cake because the cake is a lie!
In short, the asshole, pragmatic users will inherently dominate the community of OpenOffice users no matter how much you espouse a belief in a friendly attitude to spur adoption. In fact, trying to put the face of "friendly OpenOffice user" as the spokesman of the OpenOffice community only enhances the negative effect when another asshole MS Office user tries to go with OpenOffice; statistically they're almost certain to run into another asshole.
What's the answer? Pragmatically, it's to start charging for OpenOffice. People will fake niceness for money, and money allows for scaling to demand. Look no further than Sun selling StarOffice. Or, we can pray that RMS somehow converts people into being enlightened idealists instead of short-sighted pragmatists.
Me? Personally, I'm not obsessed with wide-scale OpenOffice adoption precisely because I don't think adopting most or all the assholes who use MS Office is a good thing.
PS - By no means does this mean that most MS Office users are assholes. It's that the assholes are the people who jump ship first and are the ones who are most demanding on the resources of the friendly OpenOffice users. Even being a very small precentage of MS Office users, in raw numbers their shift to using OpenOffice makes them the dominate force.
PSS - I don't think the GP was being an asshole. I'm just trying to refute your logic.
Hence my comment about the free market. Btw, the long-term goal of backwards compatability has turned into the shot-term goal of not breaking things at nearly all costs. The only way to maintain long-term backwards compatability *and* maintain security is for a *long-term* project to isolate insecure apps in a backwards-compatabile fashion.
Notice I didn't speak about "forgiving" Microsoft but about "justifying" Microsoft's actions. The free market isn't the be-all, end-all justification for actions. If it were, contract killings would be justifiable (as an example).
Yes, let Microsoft take its OS and do what it wants. And the market will speak. I'm just commenting how Microsoft is dooming itself.
Last I checked, the NT line was supposedly a secure OS. Ie, the OS itself was in control and applications are always subordinate to the OS. What that means is, the OS is always in a position to maintain backward compatability when it comes to applications in a secure fashion.
And that's the problem. The Vista method is to turn NT into Windows 9x. The *proper* solution is a combination of virtual machines, specific simulators for needed hardware functions, etc. Of course, the proper solution is exceptionally costly, time prohibitive, and likely very CPU intensive in some edge cases. So, Microsoft went with the easy-out approach because backwards compatability was more important than security.
Breaking insecure apps or creating a framework to make insecure apps secure might not have great for Microsoft's short-term balance sheet. Doing the right thing in the face of adversity is pretty much the definition of character, and I don't think anyone reasonably believes Microsoft was overflowing with that trait. One could try to blame the free market for this (not that I'm saying you are), and perhaps that's partially true. But, I don't think that justifies trying to defend Microsoft's actions.
I'd imagine that stance would change pretty quickly the second someone tries to post an Windows XP .iso on CodePlex.
Great. Developers can choose the license they want. And MS can choose to only host open source licensed software. If MS doesn't require any conditions on licensing, then MS can't promise "open source" projects by any definition. Hell, I might just start using CodePlex as a binary mirror.
Microsoft has a history of going up to companies, offering them lots of cash, dragging on negotiations, and then using their closeness to a company to create a good-enough clone while simutaneous breaking off negotiations. Even if one were to assume that Microsoft had good intentions, Yahoo would still be in the same mess because Microsoft is a convicted monopoly and clearly it's very questionable for Microsoft to use its Windows monopoly to buy a stake in the search/ad market when it has failed so badly so far trying to fairly compete.
Besides, such massive acquisitions don't generally happen overnight. So, I'd hardly call Yahoo's actions "dragging their feet". I would agree, though, that Microsoft did become embarrassed. It's rather used to being able to just throw ungodly sums of money at another company and to see the other company bend over backwards to obtain it. Finally, a company was wise enough to realize that even with all the money Microsoft was offering, the actual risk was very possibly much too great to simply jump at the offer without some actual consideration. Perhaps Yahoo was wrong. But, if there's one thing the subprime mortgage fiasco has shown, it's that if you merely jump at the dollar value being shown without considering the actual risk involved, you can be massively burned.
So, I'll sign a contract with a friend where he's required to, through purely legal efforts, try to acquire majority shares in Microsoft. And when Microsoft repeatedly--again, through legal means--prevents this, I'll sue Microsoft for tortious interference. I don't know if it actually is tortious interference or not, but it sounds like it.
Btw, it's funny in a way. There is a secondary legal functionality. It's called running MMOGlider on a personal WoW server. Oh, that's right: Blizzard has used a contract (EULA) and threats of lawsuits to prevent the creation of a competing WoW server. I guess MDY should sue them over that for tortious interference.
The statement about American workers only leads me to think, it doesn't matter how many Boxers you have when the country is run by Napoleans.
I'll start off this by saying, I'm talking out of my ass, but here goes...
Most probably, yes. The problem is, the amount of specs are primarily for (a) publically known interfaces and (b) the small group of people who bothered to document everything else. Since (a) rarely covered enough to get the job done, even for MS app developers, a lot of the private interfaces have become de facto public. Overall, that means, even if some specs were written, they'd be out-of-date due to the influences of coders over time.
Most of Office 2003 is Office XP. Most of the people who worked on Office 2003 worked on Office XP, though probably on a different component or at a lower job level. Like most big projects, even with specs, very few people who work on the code actually know how the whole thing works. The only big issues is knowing enough about the code to extend it to your new needs. And then you have a few people who do an overview and fix bigger things when you don't know enough to do it yourself.
More like, "Writing Solid Code" and the others you mentioned were only written *after* Office and Windows turned into massive spaghetti code. They're writings from past experience, not a guide to what MS did up until this point. Of course, at this point, MS's culture is so ingrained to "detailed specs aren't needed" that all the pushing towards better code writing still leaves lots of gaping holes.
They probably could, if they were interested. But as far as MS is concerned, releasing a spec on their data formats is pretty low priority. I mean, MS employees want to work on their latest project, not dig through tons of old code and partial specs to stitch together a complete document just to allow other companies an "edge". As was pointed out in the arstechnica article, there are those at MS who feel like cooperating with the legal punishment is really just doing the government a favor. The situation is not unlike a student who doesn't do his homework, but passes his tests, who fidgets and generally drags out doing his homework in in-school detention.
As for Office 2007, I'd imagine that large parts of it are big, ugly hacks. At the same time, the Linux kernel could be called a big, ugly hack too, as the Linux kernel itself tends to be the "spec" for what Linux is many times. The same could be said for a lot of open source projects. Truthfully, I'd imagine many wouldn't mind Office 2007's source being handed over as the "spec"--not all, though, considering how much effort it'd take to try to understand decade old code MS itself would have a hard time understanding. I don't think MS wants to do that, though. But seeing that five years have passed without them releasing sufficient documentation, it doesn't seem likely that the Judge will force sufficient documentation by whatever means possible any time soon, anyways, so I don't think MS is in any hurry to find any specs anyways.
It's called reductio ad absurdum.
The point raised was "to be an adult you can only enjoy what you pay for". I considered pointing out the absurdity of that as well, as there's tons of stuff no one can reasonably pay for (sunlight, language, land rights, culture, etc) in a moral way (especially the land rights, as there doesn't seem to be any universal consistency when it comes to land claims and land abandonment, and odds are pretty good that the land you're on was owned by someone at some time in the past who never agreed to pass on ownership to whoever sold the land to you). But, I instead chose to mock the attempt to the condescending "child" and "adult" talk.
I assumed that'd be the reaction, actually. The problem with reductio ad absurdum is that it assumes the audience isn't willing to tolerate the absurd. So, I'll just spell it out: there is no morality behind copyright. While it'd certainly be nice that (a) people who worked hard on something were compensated and (b) people who benefited from others work were to adequately compensate its creator, neither (a) nor (b) are covered under copyright law.
There are many artists who have worked diligently to create masterpieces yet never seen enough money to cover even the bare supplies of their final creation. And while many people have used copyright to acquire compensation for their creations, there are many more people who have created whole cultures who can't begin to claim a copyright or any other monopoly that would effectively guaranteed they would be compensated for their work. Copyright itself doesn't require that the price set on a work have any relationship to its cost of production, that a work continue to be made available at any price, nor that people who wish to adequately compensate an artist for a work can actually do so in some way (look no further than the inability to buy most arcade game roms*, band contracts with the RIAA, and my absurd example with the fingerpainted cow).
Perhaps if copyright were less of a blank check for copyright holders to withhold their work from people and more of an attempt balance to actually promote the arts and sciences, copyright holder's wishes be damned, I'd feel there was some actual moral backing behind copyright. But, as it stands, copyright is just an absurd law with all sorts of negative consequences. Even if I were to acknowledge that copyright law is necessary for the time being, which I don't, there's enough negative moral consequences to retract the ability to gloss over it all and claim there's one morally acceptable interpretation.
*I guess it might be technically possible to buy out the company owning the copyrights on said arcade games. But, then having to spending several millions dollars to acquire a few hundred games seem pretty absurd to me, although less absurd than my fingerpainted cow.
Most games cost more than the $9.95 you paid. Perhaps you're referencing the price? If so, I've got a $1 billion finger painting of a cow to sell you that costs me less than $2 to make. I hope that the price doesn't disgust you. At least I know you'll never pirate my finger painting. Thanks, adult.
Let's see... Republicans have a strong base in what? The Christian Right. What do they believe in? People, in general, not being lewd in public or otherwise. Hmm.. It'd seem that the mere fact that the Replubicans have made lewdness a political issue would mean that all lewdness is political. Now, was the intent of the original author a call to pointing out the absurdity of the censorship of lewdness in the public sphere? Got me. But, it'd seem pretty clear "free speech is not a right for minors to be lewd" doesn't universally hold.
What does that mean? Well, for one, it means a government-funded Principal shouldn't be going around disciplining potentially political speech, especially when it's not on the Principal's watch. Does the Principal have grounds to start a libel lawsuit or to sue MySpace to take down the page? Possibly. But, that's for the courts to invariably decide. The only time suspension should be involved when actual disruption occurs in school. And for that, the people causing the actual disruption should be disciplined.
A Democrat is a liberal who was mugged. A Republican is a conservative who was mugged. The latter are ideals based upon a simplisitic interpretation of the world. The former are pragmatic political structures used to enforce general ideals over a populace which might not be fully willing to the cause. While those ideals still might lead the way on when and how to act, pragmatism is what drives the actual laws and actions that effect the world.
In short, I don't think the GP's interpretation was naive. It was a pretty good interpretation if one presumes that being liberal/conservative is very different from wanting to join and alter government to exert control. The real change that tends to happens from a negative experience is people turn towards more pragmatic and less idealistic solutions. That's where the real lose of naivity occurs.
In short, it's because the people who do this want to make money and insure that they can update the malicious code as needbe without worrying that someone else will come along and tie down the system with their own crap. Now, if said people knew when the site was going to be cleaned and had all the necessary code already created for that circumstance, I'm sure they'd do a one-time injection without any external references. But, if so few coders in the legit market can manage it and almost all need the ability to patch code months or years in the future, I'm pretty sure most black market scammers are going to be in the same boat.
And like the other poster pointed out, the point isn't to draw attention. That just increases the odds of decreasing the money making period. Not to mention that questionable headlines might make people shy away from the site under realization that it's hacked.
You do realize that what the GPL says is completely different, right? You don't have to agree to the GPL to use GPL software: the person who gave you the software does. Regardless of whether EULAs are valid, the GPL doesn't try to push itself on the users. It does push itself on redistributors, but then that's the only legal way to grant redistribution without revoking the copyright on the software completely. In short, the GPL notice is an advertisement. It's not an attempt to force a contract.
Yea, well, I'm an agnostic. And I'm the offering up that "ignorant statement". Now, feel free to call me religious (as I've already called you such), but it doesn't really work to try to ad hominem me on something for which you would also qualify. Btw, here's a classic example of a non-existence hypothesis: the lack of ether in space. But, I guess atheists weren't actually on top of that.
If there's no evidence, there's no reason to believe *anything*. Btw, unless you resort to sophistry, science doesn't do the same thing. Some scientists might attempt to argue that science can answer everything, but they're religious fanatics. Science is about the scientific method and a few axioms (universiality, consistency through time, etc). Sure, those axioms could be wrong. But science isn't about being right. It's about creating a reproduceable model coupled with the progressive knowledge obtained from such. Without sophistry or some cosmological change, science should hold.
Also, there are things for which science explicitly says, "I don't know." Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle is an easy example.
Well, yippie. And? If it's vogue to be atheist, does that mean I should spent time ranting about how twisted the morality of atheists are? Or do I not get to because there's no "Book of Atheists"?
Government also provides a means for a central group to force a larger group to behave according to what they think is right. So are guns. So are knives. So is a little flesh on flesh violence. Were you trying to make a little rant about why religion, as we know it, likely was created? Or were you trying to in general condemn control by a minority? Or control of others in general? It sounds like a general rant about the ills of reality and how rational thought isn't some universal law that controls things.