Because you don't HAVE TO rely on them. You can always create your own repos, add other users repos, etc, etc. They just provide a very good channel for managing to the two together so that you can rely on an already existing infrastructure even if you are an independent dev. Everyone doesn't have to go out write up a crappy version of Installer software..
Furthermore, its linux, you can always grab the source and compile it yourself, or grab a binary. You are not forced to go through those channels to obtain an application; but they are they if you like (and are smart).
Better analogy, think itunes app store, except you can create your own 'store' that people can access in exactly the same way as they access everything else. All they have to do is add your 'store' to the list of approved stores.
The point here is that distro's do some of the approval for you, and can instill in you some confidence that the stuff is safe.
The reason it works for Linux so well is that most all of the software is free as in beer; so all of the software fits well into the architecture. On a PC most software costs something; and the companies involved like MS are in a position where it is their job to make a profit. They have little to gain by providing you with an easy way to install trusted free software, where do they make money by testing free software is safe? Apple almost gets there with their recommended picks and such from their website; they just need to create a decent application to deal with it; (please for the love of god not itunes....)
how is this any different from now? you apply for a job and you give them your drivers license number and your SS#. They could go look it up through the same channels.
I'm sick of people making the arguement that it lets them track everything in the world and that everyone would get access to everything on it.
Think about it for more than a second. Your SS# is usually tied somewhere to your health insurance; do you think that allows anyone working at your health insurance company to check out your passport status or your SS benefits (bad example that answer is 0 always...) ?
It's an ID that authenticates that YOU are YOU. It will do a hell of a lot of a better job than a SS# which you have no way of proving its your or not if it gets compromised stolen lost etc.
What they choose to connect with it is a seperate issue; just be sure to raise hell if they try to connect confidential information together that they cant.
This also doesn't mean that it would supplant your drivers license for everyday use; most likely it would start by replacing the horridly insecure usage of the Social Security number; especially since its highly likely that social security will fail any year now.
I fail to see any point which lets you make a logical jump from merchant swiping your id to see your old enough to buy beer to the merchant also seeing that you've been arrested 6 times for disorderly conduct.
Directly addressing your points: what do you buy now that requires your SS#? next to nothing? Why would that change? Seems to me this would replace your SSN not your Driver's License. You don't have to be a citizen to buy things here. Even if you did 'buy stuff' and have it checked; how does this information become the governments? They already check your ID when you fly anyways. You are making a huge jump that automagically a. it will always get logged to the government where and when your id is checked, and B. that without a warrant they will even be able to query such information. The only purchases you even mention are transportation based where your ID is already checked, whats the difference? make it such that all they can do is check that its valid and can't log that it was checked or where it was checked...
Your bit on crimes makes no sense at all. What does that have to do with anything? It doesn't matter how many crimes are given to you because thats unrelated and independent from this ID. All this does is make the background checks done by your company and police officers potentially more accurate and collaborated. It doesn't change when they may occur. You take a new job, they run a background check. What's changed here?
its rather simple, don't allow stuff to get stored that shouldn't be. don't allow people to access information they have no need for.
What freedom is being reduced? Can you name one?
There is nothing wrong with the card in itself, its the implementation and usage that you should be concerned and vigilante about. Until then, just keep staring at your SSN card.
1. Explicitly prohibited by the licensing agreements of the tickets 2. Explicitly prohibited by the terms of the sellers (both the distributing retailer and the originating party) and (granted this is not a truly legitimate reason as its speculative, but more of a motivation) 3. Because 99 times out of 100 scalping is not done through a legitimate business, with no papertrail (i.e. cash only) and all proceeds becoming unreported income, thus escaping the clutches of uncle sam and taxes.
I for one agree in one sense, that their needs to be competition to make TicketMaster imparticular stop price gouging. I think it is beyond egregious that while the ticket may cost "$78" it actually costs ~100$ to buy after they add in a 15$ convenience change (convenience for what?), sales tax, and then another charge to get your ticket printed (charge ranges from a couple dollars for online printing, to several dozen for express shipping), with no option being free. Oh and no refunds, I love that one too (although allowing refunds to large extent would likely only further encourage scalping... can't sell it for crazy markup? return it and have no risk at all)
To me this screams of two things. One, misrepresentation of costs. If you can't physically acquire the ticket for less than FULL_COST = (COST + CONVENIENCE_CHARGE + OTHER_FEES) than they shouldn't be allowed to ever quote a price for that ticket at less than FULL_COST. (For what it's worth I think cable and telco industries should be held to this same standard, and not be allowed to remove various 'this isn't a tax/government fee but we present it separately as though it is one' costs as well as cost for the minimum needed equipment to receive the service (i.e. if you have to rent at least one cable box per month from them to receive anything they should have to put that price, at least of the cheapest box, right into the advertised monthly rate)
Two, and the real problem I have with scalping from a more ethical standpoint, is that it is not done in a true market. People are using dubious means to acquire tickets ( a limited consumable resource ) to an event, and then trying to turn around and sell it again at a vast markup providing no service or benefit to the customer. All that it does is raise costs to end users and decrease availability. IANAL but if this were done in the stock market it would sound a lot like pump and dump, or in banking being a loan shark. If they want to distribute tickets, form a legitimate business and secure a contract to distribute tickets.
Or in other words give them rights to snoop where they have no right to be snooping. When the person breaks the law, punish them suitably for it. end of story. Being a group who desires to overthrow the government is legal. Deal with it. You do remember how this country was founded right?
They seem ridiculous because they are. They admit how faulty our system is to need such things. There is no way to abuse something for good. If you abuse the law you are doing something ethically wrong. Because by so doing, you lay groundwork for others to circumvent vent it. If the law is wrong, change it.
How is it any more possible for a witness to see the driver doing her makeup than for the police man to do so himself? Frankly I'm surprised they don't put a cop on foot at traffic lights in cities, walk around take down the plates of hundreds of drivers using cell phones w/o headsets and have them all pulled over several blocks away...
too bad this is going to be found unconstitutional. but thanks for letting us know you are a bunch of authoritarian red necks. Just in case we needed more proof that North Carolina is much cooler than South Carolina. and 20 bucks says this was proposed by some republicans, since everyone seems to focus on calling the democrats the socialists. You know whats a million times worse than what you allege to be socialism? Fascism and Authoritarianism. Our constitution gives us not only the right, but the responsibility to revolt and throw a revolution if the government falls out of touch. That's the whole point of democracy. f-ing asshats
that its 'old' doesn't make it "well established". it means you are content with being ripped off and being jacked up for them to earn interest. just because they are ripping you off doesn't make it right.
key difference is that in those scenarios you are billed for the service provided. They don't bill you 1000 extra and say you'll have use the remainder of the funds on us as well. its like a credit card bill but in reverse... imagine that.
not a patron, a drunken patron. i dont know, but i would hope that is the only reason he is able to sue them (along with and in addition to the drunken patron himself).
not that strange. if you leave a bar and drive home drunk and hit someone the bar is usually sued..
let the case speak for itself, whether its actually valid or not i dont know, and I'd agree with you if he didn't contact support, but if he did I have no sympathy for them. Companies seem to love to not resolve problems these days. Took me 4 months to get a refund from AT&T for a cable bill they charged me for a month that was over a full month after I had cancelled service and turned in my equipment.
I mentioned this in another reply, just becuase they are good at it doesnt mean they didn't make an error. I'm not saying they made one and that I believe him, all i'm saying is that their reputation doesn't matter. what matters is whether they made an error or not. Thats the part the court determines (and that's the part where it seems the judicial system seems to be lost at times in)
i dont get why it matters to you, if he didn't attempt to contact them he's going to end up losing the case and probably have to pay their lawyers attourneys fees which is far more of a punishment than having the case "thrown out"... that's whats needed, I'm not going to speculate about issues we don't even know about, theres plenty to speculate about with the parts we do know
If this goes to trial and I were a lawyer for Microsoft, I would just produce a list of the number of users who were able to successfully download the product in question within a 48 hour window. There is a really good chance that number is >1. If what the article says is true and the plaintiff is whining about the entire download system as a whole, I'd just produce a list of the number of successful downloads in that same 48 hour period that frames the time the plaintiff is charging he had a problem in.
While i don't think the first paragraph point you talk about is that part being contested there is a MAJOR problem with your logic. You are generating a list in the wrong direction. Whether it works for 1 person or 1 million people is irrelevant in the validity of his claim. If it's not working with any consistency for anyone there is a problem. All that list does is exclude people from the class.
If I were his lawyer (and also was contesting that issue (which I'm not on both counts) ) I'd draw up a list of the number of users who over a period of 48 hours have been UNABLE to download the content (or whatever is deemed to be a 'reasonable amount of time'). If that list has at least 1 member in it, which he suggests he might be in, then MS is liable for something and has a problem they need to rectify. Whether the list is big enough that they settle it individually, or a class is formed is up to people who know that stuff... but thats the only list that really matters.
Whether you provided service or not is not an issue of character or credibility, its not an issue of opinion, its an issue of fact. The service is either provided or it isn't, and each transaction's fulfillment has no impact on one another. If my someone charges you for service and doesn't provide it to you, YOU are the one entitled to recourse, those who have been provided it are not. The fact that no one else had a problem doesn't make it OK for them to rip off you (or someone else), and doesn't prove or disapprove that you did/didn't have a problem.
I think it's utterly attrocious that they get to make a fake currency, force people to buy it in absurd bundled quantities basically force you to waste money. The only legal tender in this country is USD last time I checked. Forcing me to buy your funny money seems pretty much by definition an anticompetitive and fraudulent practice done solely on the premise of making a profit on unused points and forcing us to buy something we wouldn't with our "leftover" otherwise unusable cash, or to give them a few more dollars so as to have enough to make a similar non desired purcahse..
all of which are tactics of a horrible business model. If you seriously depend upon these profits that are created by forcing your clients to either waste money or buy something they don't want then you have a horrible business and should reconsider your product. Frankly I would consider you uninvestable, you aren't creating profit from value.
At least on the wii, 100 points is 1 dollar and you can buy them at the 100 point interval.. MS seeks to confuse people by selling at bizzarre rates that don't align with anything they sell. most (not all) items are sold for multiples of 400; while points are acquired in multiples of 500. and of course there is no reverse transaction and they can terminate the system whenever they want.
The lawsuit from the article doesnt appear to be about the failed downloads per see... but the whole 'hassle' of having content transferred seems to be a bit of BS as well. Tie the content to the user ID and dont let user ID's be signed in from more than one place at a time.. not that complicated. If you can't handle this then you shouldn't be in the business of selling DLC.
Have you ever tried working with others using a revision control system? unless you can magically get everyone to always adhere to an agreement on the spacing people are going to smack you everytime they go to do a code review and have to deal with all of the white space changes nested within every commit you make.
That aside I also hit indent region, but my indent region is going to insert whatever ive told it to. If i said to use tabs it will, if i said to use spaces it will. Secondly I dont always like indent region when it starts getting something wrong or when I'm working in someone elses code who has their own indentation scheme which defferred from my editors, and i'm not in the mood to reset my whole editor for every couple of files.
If you are starting from a clean code base with an enforced standard, this can work. But the problem is that in my admittedly still brief career, that seems to be as frequent as the base 'ideal' environment from newtonian mechanics... that is to say it almost never happens. I eagerly await when it does however.
Until you are working on a piece of code with a friend who wants to be able to view the code with an indent/tab size of 8 and you are just dandy with 2,3, or 4. Now everytime you each commit you will waste some time redoing each others 'spaces' indentation levels or have to remember so send everything through a formatter first...
OR you could just use tabs for indentation and then as long as you use a decent editor that can understand (emacs, visual studio, eclipse, etc) magically you can adjust the display and not the actual characters themselves. And avoid needless whitespace changes in version control.
Yes this dives into space/tabs debate which I have no intention of dragging into here, but I'm making a point that it is NOT simple or trivial or efficient to just keep re-expanding your indentation everywhere you go.
For the life of me I'm trying to grasp what the heck the difference between tab size and indent size... what does it mean for them not to be equal? I'm trying to grasp how the tab size of your code within visual studio has any relationship to its runtime behavior in usage with other products. if you are trying to print a tab as in the character '\t' isnt it just going to get printed however the reciever chooses to interpret the tab character?
And if the other "program" is processing the code itself for you, maybe its time to get that programs creators to creep ahead into the future and embrace the reality that tabs could be of a configurable width..
surely i'm missing something about the difference between the two. Even when I'm using no-tabs and spaces only I don't understand why they would be different
Did you even read the article? You missed the whole point entirely!
Furthermore, we don't care WHAT network is providing the service for the phone; it has no relevance at all this conversation (even if you did think that jailbreaking and unlocking were the same thing). Apple will always be against jailbreaking, PERIOD.
The jailbreak accomplishes more than allowing you to go to your own Carrier; as is clearly demonstrated by this whole topic; it allows you to things you fundamentally CAN'T do without being jail broken.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here; but it sounds to me like without the jailbreak the only place for getting Apps, be it for the iPhone or the iPod touch would be the 'apple store'. This jailbreak allows you to go to a different SOURCE that apple doesnt control.
Apple's interest in preventing jailbreak is because they have and always have tried to maintain a vertical monopoly on their platform. If you don't buy things from their app store they will claim they lose an immeasureable amount of money becuase it decreases liquidity of the marketspace, reduces traffic (ad revenue), reduces sales (directly), etc etc. Or in otherwords, it creates competition and creates an actual open market.
I think this is an incredibly great idea in terms of concept. its time we started managing back and not accepting everything... but collectively counter them..
obv there are large reasons why yours is funny and not valueable. They have no way of knowing whether or not the file is there much less whether they agreed to it. Further if they were able to read it you'd probably have a seperate case on your hands against them for 'hacking/snooping' on your computer.
Now if you could find a way to get them to actually do something to sign it that would be brilliant.. perhaps a call in to their techline / conveniant use of their automated responses. this would be quite interesting if there was someway in which you could get them to actually 'accept' it.
problem is getting them to 'do' that. when I install the program the license etc pops up and asks me. While not realistic, i have the opportunity to decline the license and not install. At which point you would try to return the software; likely be told they don't accept returned opened software, and if my understanding is correct you would have to contact the producer to receive a refund.. which is quite obsurd.
While his article makes some interesting discussion, and some nice points, the most important piece of his 'persuasion' is in the experimental evidence he is seeking to provide. That evidence comes from a study conducted through the Navy and he describes how in their study Dvorak did not display the 'benefit' let alone a significant one.
However there is an enourmous flaw that I can't ignore, the complete lack of validity to this study. Having spent time studying it (see next paragraph) that 'study' is basically a text book example of how NOT to perform experimental research. It violated just about every single method of control that it encountered and was extremely biased. So much so that it was later used as a case study of how not to conduct research in one of my classes.
I say this all because I am familiar with the topic. When I was in college (graduated in '06) I took two courses of note: Human Factors in Design, and Research Methods and Statistics. The professor who teaches them both, had (and usually has) many students cross-enrolled and allows the semester project to be combined if appropriate subject matter is used. I combined my projects and the focus area was Dvorak and alternative layouts over QWERTY.
What I uncovered in background in a nutshell was as I said above. A seriously flawed study. Inadequate rest was given to the subjects, no control over ordering, while it can't be blind to subject the ordering the subjects were using should have been blind to the proctors. The assumed acceptable time for training on DVORAK was an extremely lowball guess. Furthermore there was a study the Navy 'funded' that showed the results the other way which they abandoned (as well as other studies from other branches). The entire study couldn't have been much more biased.
Furthermore if you are familiar with QWERTY, the very DESIGN of it was to slow you down. QWERTY was designed to prevent typewriters from jamming. Jams were caused by people typing too rapidly; QWERTY was enough of a hinderence to prevent it. By the time computers rolled around, there were so many typewriters and people trained and invested in the QWERTY layout that people simply didn't want to switch. Additionally companies likely didn't (and don't) want to replace their entire office at once; or to have to spend time and effort re-training.
We can see this kind of legacy hinderence throughout the market place; where despite a better product being around, the adoption of prior less ideal but acceptable product is so widespread that it can be disadvantageous to switch.
I'm not even going to waste my time talking about the details of the ergonomics. The only point I will make there is one that even DVORAK still had room for improvement on. That is balance of finger use. On a QWERTY keyboard there is an extreme overuse of the pinky and ring fingers compared to the middle, index, and sadly the most dexterous of all the thumb; (especially as compared to their relative strengths)
The problem is that while for a machine pushing each key is equally difficult; and thus jams are matter of angles; it is not so for a human. Pushing certain keys is more difficult than others.
I apologize that much of this has been said prolly, but I couldn't avoid commenting on a horrible post. Take a 13 year old article now, and make that article about a then 19 year old experiment. Clearly in the past 32 years or so we haven't had any advances in the standards for conducting valid research. Let alone advances in our very understanding of the underlying factors (many of which didn't have names when this study was conducted).
Scarier question, he's 17, did he have a drivers license or permit?
Would he expect his car to be fine after colliding first into oncoming traffic? Or even just from plowing into a building, such that no one is hurt and he drives away as if nothing happened? Or would he blame Need For Speed, despite their prominent warning that began at least with Underground.
The fact that the title was Halo 3 isn't really pertinent. The problem is : They took his copy of X away and so he killed them. X could have been Halo3, it could have been his cell phone, gun, permission to go out, car keys, teddy bear, security blanket, computer, etc.
He's 17... soon he will be a voting 18 year old adult.
Apparently you hadn't noticed, this whole conversation is primarily applicable to salaried workers, not hourly employees. That extends well beyond just Software Developers and Managers.
I don't think that's a state thing either; I'm not 100% sure but are there any states that doesn't require overtime pay beyond 40 hours for non-exempt employees?
We don't have that and our office is already deserted in december. You throw in a software release and the 'critical' time leading up to it where no one is supposed to be taking vacation, and it seems to end up the same way.
for school, job, and anytime politicians open their mouths: Warning: repeated exposure to stupidity may cause you to lose your mind, lose intelligence, or to believe utterly incorrect things as true.
Doesn't he have better things to deal with right now then useless labels that are both unproven, completely meaningless and without merit. Go figure out your state's budget problem. Go solve a real problem.
you know what else should come with a warning? politicians: warning I might be speaking from my ass because thats where i keep my wallet which was lined by the company whose interests im currently taking above your own.
Or in this case the angry idiotic soccer moms who are too busy spending money to raise their kids. Funny thing, the kids who play the most video games are generally not in nearly enough physical shape to cause problems... and they are usually too busy playing the games to go be violent.
I'm far more concerned with the meatheads who walk around thinking they are invincible because they spend all their time in a gym, and that because they can bench a whole lot it means that a. only they matter. and b. that they have the right to threaten you with violence to get what they want. Where is their warning? And why not slap one one on beer / guns / cars / horns / etc.
Again I'm not asking the gov't to have do a damn thing about it... my point is these kids aren't violent because of video games. They are violent because they are tired of getting walked all over their entire lives. And perhaps that 'violence' is the only possible way they know how to make it stop.
But I digress. Congressman whatever your f'ing name is do the state you represent a favor and get back to doing something that actually CONCERNS them at a more significant level than video games. What's next? distract them from your current failures by championing some legislation to get rid of some of your obscure uninforced / uninforcible blue laws?
That's a meaningless and effectively incorrect point. Seeing as the schools are not going to run hackintosh's and OS X is really only sold with hardware (aside from upgrades) the hardware cost and OS cost is inseperable just the way they like it. That way whenever we complain there hardwear costs are bloated they can BS about how they are charging us for the OS itself.
OS X is just as expensive as windows; and thats not the point of this article.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. I did a co-op during college involving real-time OS, highly parallel processing, etc; primarily on embedded systems. (boards w/ lots of 500-800mhz powerPC chips and ram) Still rather than try to communicate it or take my word for it, take a look at this except from wikipedia...
"Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of modern computers and microprocessors that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory for reading and/or writing independently of the central processing unit. Many hardware systems use DMA including disk drive controllers, graphics cards, network cards, sound cards and GPUs. DMA is also used for intra-chip data transfer in multi-core processors, especially in multiprocessor system-on-chips, where its processing element is equipped with a local memory (often called scratchpad memory) and DMA is used for transferring data between the local memory and the main memory. Computers that have DMA channels can transfer data to and from devices with much less CPU overhead than computers without a DMA channel. Similarly a processing element inside a multi-core processor can transfer data to and from its local memory without occupying its processor time, overlapping computation and data transfer.
Without DMA, using programmed input/output (PIO) mode for communication with peripheral devices, or load/store instructions in the case of multicore chips, the CPU is typically fully occupied for the entire duration of the read or write operation, and is thus unavailable to perform other work. With DMA, the CPU would initiate the transfer, do other operations while the transfer is in progress, and receive an interrupt from the DMA controller once the operation has been done. This is especially useful in real-time computing applications where not stalling behind concurrent operations is critical. Another and related application area is various forms of stream processing where it is essential to have data processing and transfer in parallel, in order to achieve sufficient throughput."
One of the first learning activities I did was to compare the speed of computing a matrix multiplication in parallel (for an 1000x1000 matrix of floats and then ints). Comparing: programmatically on one node to: 4 nodes using sockets (PIO), to DMA on 4 nodes. DMA is significantly faster than PIO because it avoided context/thread switches and more importantly interupts. This results in minimizing misses on the L1 cache. There was zero file IO at all, in fact there wasn't even a hard drive attached to those boards.
You make in interesting point; but PIO/DMA has implications FAR beyond just Parallel ATA devices.
I would mod up if i could. but that's exactly the point... in a nutshell every EULA or TOS these days reads as "you have no rights whatsoever in any circumstance, we aren't liable for anything... blah blah blah (detailing numerous ways in which they aren't liable which may or MAY NOT be valid)." and then finally "except where prohibited by law, blah blah defer to federal,state,municipal rights"
the problem is that they have thus basically wasted time and just misled the consumer, when all it really could have said is that you are afforded no rights other than those guarenteed by law... and god forbid list a couple or where you can expect to find them. Its a riot.
its been said, and it seems fitting to say it again. Someone, somewhere is funding your free lunch. Just because you don't pay for it; or don't know how its being 'paid' for doesnt mean it isnt. Gmail is a business venture that makes money, much like facebook and myspace and name your free blogsite.
sometimes you just dont pay for something with money.
FWIW that was an amazing issue; aside from the aforementioned hideous cover
they can make the simple argument that they pay for it in their payments to AOL for whatever other services are provided. Your argument of 'if they don't pay for it they don't have recource' is utter garbage. I'm not going to waste anyone's time pointing out how flawed that logic is.
the fact that it is really crappy hosting, and is overrun by AOL ad's (which probably fund most of it)
also it strikes me as immaterial whatever aol or anyone puts into their shrinkwrap TOS because those are always trumped by your rights.
Why do you waste our time talking about 4 9's? It's irrelavant to the conversation. No one is arguing anywhere at any shape or form that they are to be guarenteed FREE hosting. You miss the entire point of this because you are so dissallusioned by some obvious angst and hostility in regards to actual real estate.
The REAL point isn't that they losing the hosting; its that they are doing so with ZERO notice and with no ability to retrieve anything. As long as I have to give a 'apartment leasing office' notice that I am leaving of more than 60 days when I am month to month (because I'm planning on leaving); its beyond reasonable nay negligent of someone to not tell you they are pulling the plug.
hell my employer has to give me notice before termination and they pay me.
whether you pay directly $0 or $100 you have the same fundamental rights; such as notice.
This also gets to my other irritant of late. Ever notice how every advertisement has a disclaimer saying that every single one of their 'major features' and 'competitive advantages' and even price are subject to change, be discontinued, etc at any point without any notice? Anyone else think its absolutely absurd they are allowed to write such blather when it is obviously utter BS?
here's an example, if you buy an xbox360 and M$ cancels xbox live tomorrow, do you really think they arent going to be littered with lawsuits regarding misleading/false/fraudulent advertising and promises of features. None of these companies can guarentee anything anymore but except us to guarentee everything and be held responsible for everything.. consumer rights have been shot in the head repeatedly if you ask me.
and for the other side of the coin; I'd say most of the 'real estate' investors are just as much if not more parasitic. and it doesnt look the east coast is suffering too much. And frankly if no one had abandoned the building in the first place it wouldnt be a problem now would it? But rather than blame the group that started the problem you blame those that took shelter in unused rotting buildings.
and furthermore to alleviate your idiocy; if no one is actually looking at the webpages of these people from AOL... they aren't using any bandwidth at all. And storage isn't exactly expensive either; 1TB drives are about 120 bucks.
Slashdot Mirror
Because you don't HAVE TO rely on them. You can always create your own repos, add other users repos, etc, etc. They just provide a very good channel for managing to the two together so that you can rely on an already existing infrastructure even if you are an independent dev. Everyone doesn't have to go out write up a crappy version of Installer software..
Furthermore, its linux, you can always grab the source and compile it yourself, or grab a binary. You are not forced to go through those channels to obtain an application; but they are they if you like (and are smart).
Better analogy, think itunes app store, except you can create your own 'store' that people can access in exactly the same way as they access everything else. All they have to do is add your 'store' to the list of approved stores.
The point here is that distro's do some of the approval for you, and can instill in you some confidence that the stuff is safe.
The reason it works for Linux so well is that most all of the software is free as in beer; so all of the software fits well into the architecture. On a PC most software costs something; and the companies involved like MS are in a position where it is their job to make a profit. They have little to gain by providing you with an easy way to install trusted free software, where do they make money by testing free software is safe? Apple almost gets there with their recommended picks and such from their website; they just need to create a decent application to deal with it; (please for the love of god not itunes....)
how is this any different from now? you apply for a job and you give them your drivers license number and your SS#. They could go look it up through the same channels.
I'm sick of people making the arguement that it lets them track everything in the world and that everyone would get access to everything on it.
Think about it for more than a second. Your SS# is usually tied somewhere to your health insurance; do you think that allows anyone working at your health insurance company to check out your passport status or your SS benefits (bad example that answer is 0 always...) ?
It's an ID that authenticates that YOU are YOU. It will do a hell of a lot of a better job than a SS# which you have no way of proving its your or not if it gets compromised stolen lost etc.
What they choose to connect with it is a seperate issue; just be sure to raise hell if they try to connect confidential information together that they cant.
This also doesn't mean that it would supplant your drivers license for everyday use; most likely it would start by replacing the horridly insecure usage of the Social Security number; especially since its highly likely that social security will fail any year now.
I fail to see any point which lets you make a logical jump from merchant swiping your id to see your old enough to buy beer to the merchant also seeing that you've been arrested 6 times for disorderly conduct.
Directly addressing your points:
what do you buy now that requires your SS#? next to nothing? Why would that change? Seems to me this would replace your SSN not your Driver's License. You don't have to be a citizen to buy things here.
Even if you did 'buy stuff' and have it checked; how does this information become the governments? They already check your ID when you fly anyways. You are making a huge jump that automagically a. it will always get logged to the government where and when your id is checked, and B. that without a warrant they will even be able to query such information. The only purchases you even mention are transportation based where your ID is already checked, whats the difference? make it such that all they can do is check that its valid and can't log that it was checked or where it was checked...
Your bit on crimes makes no sense at all. What does that have to do with anything? It doesn't matter how many crimes are given to you because thats unrelated and independent from this ID. All this does is make the background checks done by your company and police officers potentially more accurate and collaborated. It doesn't change when they may occur. You take a new job, they run a background check. What's changed here?
its rather simple, don't allow stuff to get stored that shouldn't be. don't allow people to access information they have no need for.
What freedom is being reduced? Can you name one?
There is nothing wrong with the card in itself, its the implementation and usage that you should be concerned and vigilante about. Until then, just keep staring at your SSN card.
1. Explicitly prohibited by the licensing agreements of the tickets
2. Explicitly prohibited by the terms of the sellers (both the distributing retailer and the originating party)
and (granted this is not a truly legitimate reason as its speculative, but more of a motivation)
3. Because 99 times out of 100 scalping is not done through a legitimate business, with no papertrail (i.e. cash only) and all proceeds becoming unreported income, thus escaping the clutches of uncle sam and taxes.
I for one agree in one sense, that their needs to be competition to make TicketMaster imparticular stop price gouging. I think it is beyond egregious that while the ticket may cost "$78" it actually costs ~100$ to buy after they add in a 15$ convenience change (convenience for what?), sales tax, and then another charge to get your ticket printed (charge ranges from a couple dollars for online printing, to several dozen for express shipping), with no option being free. Oh and no refunds, I love that one too (although allowing refunds to large extent would likely only further encourage scalping... can't sell it for crazy markup? return it and have no risk at all)
To me this screams of two things. One, misrepresentation of costs. If you can't physically acquire the ticket for less than FULL_COST = (COST + CONVENIENCE_CHARGE + OTHER_FEES) than they shouldn't be allowed to ever quote a price for that ticket at less than FULL_COST. (For what it's worth I think cable and telco industries should be held to this same standard, and not be allowed to remove various 'this isn't a tax/government fee but we present it separately as though it is one' costs as well as cost for the minimum needed equipment to receive the service (i.e. if you have to rent at least one cable box per month from them to receive anything they should have to put that price, at least of the cheapest box, right into the advertised monthly rate)
Two, and the real problem I have with scalping from a more ethical standpoint, is that it is not done in a true market. People are using dubious means to acquire tickets ( a limited consumable resource ) to an event, and then trying to turn around and sell it again at a vast markup providing no service or benefit to the customer. All that it does is raise costs to end users and decrease availability. IANAL but if this were done in the stock market it would sound a lot like pump and dump, or in banking being a loan shark. If they want to distribute tickets, form a legitimate business and secure a contract to distribute tickets.
Or in other words give them rights to snoop where they have no right to be snooping. When the person breaks the law, punish them suitably for it. end of story. Being a group who desires to overthrow the government is legal. Deal with it. You do remember how this country was founded right?
They seem ridiculous because they are. They admit how faulty our system is to need such things. There is no way to abuse something for good. If you abuse the law you are doing something ethically wrong. Because by so doing, you lay groundwork for others to circumvent vent it. If the law is wrong, change it.
How is it any more possible for a witness to see the driver doing her makeup than for the police man to do so himself? Frankly I'm surprised they don't put a cop on foot at traffic lights in cities, walk around take down the plates of hundreds of drivers using cell phones w/o headsets and have them all pulled over several blocks away...
except this law is saying its illegal to do legal things
too bad this is going to be found unconstitutional. but thanks for letting us know you are a bunch of authoritarian red necks. Just in case we needed more proof that North Carolina is much cooler than South Carolina.
and 20 bucks says this was proposed by some republicans, since everyone seems to focus on calling the democrats the socialists. You know whats a million times worse than what you allege to be socialism? Fascism and Authoritarianism. Our constitution gives us not only the right, but the responsibility to revolt and throw a revolution if the government falls out of touch. That's the whole point of democracy.
f-ing asshats
that its 'old' doesn't make it "well established". it means you are content with being ripped off and being jacked up for them to earn interest. just because they are ripping you off doesn't make it right.
key difference is that in those scenarios you are billed for the service provided. They don't bill you 1000 extra and say you'll have use the remainder of the funds on us as well. its like a credit card bill but in reverse... imagine that.
not a patron, a drunken patron. i dont know, but i would hope that is the only reason he is able to sue them (along with and in addition to the drunken patron himself).
not that strange. if you leave a bar and drive home drunk and hit someone the bar is usually sued..
let the case speak for itself, whether its actually valid or not i dont know, and I'd agree with you if he didn't contact support, but if he did I have no sympathy for them. Companies seem to love to not resolve problems these days. Took me 4 months to get a refund from AT&T for a cable bill they charged me for a month that was over a full month after I had cancelled service and turned in my equipment.
I mentioned this in another reply, just becuase they are good at it doesnt mean they didn't make an error. I'm not saying they made one and that I believe him, all i'm saying is that their reputation doesn't matter. what matters is whether they made an error or not. Thats the part the court determines (and that's the part where it seems the judicial system seems to be lost at times in)
i dont get why it matters to you, if he didn't attempt to contact them he's going to end up losing the case and probably have to pay their lawyers attourneys fees which is far more of a punishment than having the case "thrown out"... that's whats needed, I'm not going to speculate about issues we don't even know about, theres plenty to speculate about with the parts we do know
If this goes to trial and I were a lawyer for Microsoft, I would just produce a list of the number of users who were able to successfully download the product in question within a 48 hour window. There is a really good chance that number is >1. If what the article says is true and the plaintiff is whining about the entire download system as a whole, I'd just produce a list of the number of successful downloads in that same 48 hour period that frames the time the plaintiff is charging he had a problem in.
While i don't think the first paragraph point you talk about is that part being contested there is a MAJOR problem with your logic. You are generating a list in the wrong direction. Whether it works for 1 person or 1 million people is irrelevant in the validity of his claim. If it's not working with any consistency for anyone there is a problem. All that list does is exclude people from the class.
If I were his lawyer (and also was contesting that issue (which I'm not on both counts) ) I'd draw up a list of the number of users who over a period of 48 hours have been UNABLE to download the content (or whatever is deemed to be a 'reasonable amount of time'). If that list has at least 1 member in it, which he suggests he might be in, then MS is liable for something and has a problem they need to rectify. Whether the list is big enough that they settle it individually, or a class is formed is up to people who know that stuff... but thats the only list that really matters.
Whether you provided service or not is not an issue of character or credibility, its not an issue of opinion, its an issue of fact. The service is either provided or it isn't, and each transaction's fulfillment has no impact on one another. If my someone charges you for service and doesn't provide it to you, YOU are the one entitled to recourse, those who have been provided it are not. The fact that no one else had a problem doesn't make it OK for them to rip off you (or someone else), and doesn't prove or disapprove that you did/didn't have a problem.
I think it's utterly attrocious that they get to make a fake currency, force people to buy it in absurd bundled quantities basically force you to waste money. The only legal tender in this country is USD last time I checked. Forcing me to buy your funny money seems pretty much by definition an anticompetitive and fraudulent practice done solely on the premise of making a profit on unused points and forcing us to buy something we wouldn't with our "leftover" otherwise unusable cash, or to give them a few more dollars so as to have enough to make a similar non desired purcahse..
all of which are tactics of a horrible business model. If you seriously depend upon these profits that are created by forcing your clients to either waste money or buy something they don't want then you have a horrible business and should reconsider your product. Frankly I would consider you uninvestable, you aren't creating profit from value.
At least on the wii, 100 points is 1 dollar and you can buy them at the 100 point interval.. MS seeks to confuse people by selling at bizzarre rates that don't align with anything they sell. most (not all) items are sold for multiples of 400; while points are acquired in multiples of 500. and of course there is no reverse transaction and they can terminate the system whenever they want.
The lawsuit from the article doesnt appear to be about the failed downloads per see... but the whole 'hassle' of having content transferred seems to be a bit of BS as well. Tie the content to the user ID and dont let user ID's be signed in from more than one place at a time.. not that complicated. If you can't handle this then you shouldn't be in the business of selling DLC.
Have you ever tried working with others using a revision control system? unless you can magically get everyone to always adhere to an agreement on the spacing people are going to smack you everytime they go to do a code review and have to deal with all of the white space changes nested within every commit you make.
That aside I also hit indent region, but my indent region is going to insert whatever ive told it to. If i said to use tabs it will, if i said to use spaces it will. Secondly I dont always like indent region when it starts getting something wrong or when I'm working in someone elses code who has their own indentation scheme which defferred from my editors, and i'm not in the mood to reset my whole editor for every couple of files.
If you are starting from a clean code base with an enforced standard, this can work. But the problem is that in my admittedly still brief career, that seems to be as frequent as the base 'ideal' environment from newtonian mechanics... that is to say it almost never happens. I eagerly await when it does however.
Until you are working on a piece of code with a friend who wants to be able to view the code with an indent/tab size of 8 and you are just dandy with 2,3, or 4. Now everytime you each commit you will waste some time redoing each others 'spaces' indentation levels or have to remember so send everything through a formatter first...
OR you could just use tabs for indentation and then as long as you use a decent editor that can understand (emacs, visual studio, eclipse, etc) magically you can adjust the display and not the actual characters themselves. And avoid needless whitespace changes in version control.
Yes this dives into space/tabs debate which I have no intention of dragging into here, but I'm making a point that it is NOT simple or trivial or efficient to just keep re-expanding your indentation everywhere you go.
For the life of me I'm trying to grasp what the heck the difference between tab size and indent size... what does it mean for them not to be equal? I'm trying to grasp how the tab size of your code within visual studio has any relationship to its runtime behavior in usage with other products. if you are trying to print a tab as in the character '\t' isnt it just going to get printed however the reciever chooses to interpret the tab character?
And if the other "program" is processing the code itself for you, maybe its time to get that programs creators to creep ahead into the future and embrace the reality that tabs could be of a configurable width..
surely i'm missing something about the difference between the two. Even when I'm using no-tabs and spaces only I don't understand why they would be different
Did you even read the article? You missed the whole point entirely!
Furthermore, we don't care WHAT network is providing the service for the phone; it has no relevance at all this conversation (even if you did think that jailbreaking and unlocking were the same thing). Apple will always be against jailbreaking, PERIOD.
The jailbreak accomplishes more than allowing you to go to your own Carrier; as is clearly demonstrated by this whole topic; it allows you to things you fundamentally CAN'T do without being jail broken.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here; but it sounds to me like without the jailbreak the only place for getting Apps, be it for the iPhone or the iPod touch would be the 'apple store'. This jailbreak allows you to go to a different SOURCE that apple doesnt control.
Apple's interest in preventing jailbreak is because they have and always have tried to maintain a vertical monopoly on their platform. If you don't buy things from their app store they will claim they lose an immeasureable amount of money becuase it decreases liquidity of the marketspace, reduces traffic (ad revenue), reduces sales (directly), etc etc. Or in otherwords, it creates competition and creates an actual open market.
I think this is an incredibly great idea in terms of concept. its time we started managing back and not accepting everything... but collectively counter them..
obv there are large reasons why yours is funny and not valueable. They have no way of knowing whether or not the file is there much less whether they agreed to it. Further if they were able to read it you'd probably have a seperate case on your hands against them for 'hacking/snooping' on your computer.
Now if you could find a way to get them to actually do something to sign it that would be brilliant.. perhaps a call in to their techline / conveniant use of their automated responses. this would be quite interesting if there was someway in which you could get them to actually 'accept' it.
problem is getting them to 'do' that. when I install the program the license etc pops up and asks me. While not realistic, i have the opportunity to decline the license and not install. At which point you would try to return the software; likely be told they don't accept returned opened software, and if my understanding is correct you would have to contact the producer to receive a refund.. which is quite obsurd.
While his article makes some interesting discussion, and some nice points, the most important piece of his 'persuasion' is in the experimental evidence he is seeking to provide. That evidence comes from a study conducted through the Navy and he describes how in their study Dvorak did not display the 'benefit' let alone a significant one.
However there is an enourmous flaw that I can't ignore, the complete lack of validity to this study. Having spent time studying it (see next paragraph) that 'study' is basically a text book example of how NOT to perform experimental research. It violated just about every single method of control that it encountered and was extremely biased. So much so that it was later used as a case study of how not to conduct research in one of my classes.
I say this all because I am familiar with the topic. When I was in college (graduated in '06) I took two courses of note: Human Factors in Design, and Research Methods and Statistics. The professor who teaches them both, had (and usually has) many students cross-enrolled and allows the semester project to be combined if appropriate subject matter is used. I combined my projects and the focus area was Dvorak and alternative layouts over QWERTY.
What I uncovered in background in a nutshell was as I said above. A seriously flawed study. Inadequate rest was given to the subjects, no control over ordering, while it can't be blind to subject the ordering the subjects were using should have been blind to the proctors. The assumed acceptable time for training on DVORAK was an extremely lowball guess. Furthermore there was a study the Navy 'funded' that showed the results the other way which they abandoned (as well as other studies from other branches). The entire study couldn't have been much more biased.
Furthermore if you are familiar with QWERTY, the very DESIGN of it was to slow you down. QWERTY was designed to prevent typewriters from jamming. Jams were caused by people typing too rapidly; QWERTY was enough of a hinderence to prevent it. By the time computers rolled around, there were so many typewriters and people trained and invested in the QWERTY layout that people simply didn't want to switch. Additionally companies likely didn't (and don't) want to replace their entire office at once; or to have to spend time and effort re-training.
We can see this kind of legacy hinderence throughout the market place; where despite a better product being around, the adoption of prior less ideal but acceptable product is so widespread that it can be disadvantageous to switch.
I'm not even going to waste my time talking about the details of the ergonomics. The only point I will make there is one that even DVORAK still had room for improvement on. That is balance of finger use. On a QWERTY keyboard there is an extreme overuse of the pinky and ring fingers compared to the middle, index, and sadly the most dexterous of all the thumb; (especially as compared to their relative strengths)
The problem is that while for a machine pushing each key is equally difficult; and thus jams are matter of angles; it is not so for a human. Pushing certain keys is more difficult than others.
I apologize that much of this has been said prolly, but I couldn't avoid commenting on a horrible post. Take a 13 year old article now, and make that article about a then 19 year old experiment. Clearly in the past 32 years or so we haven't had any advances in the standards for conducting valid research. Let alone advances in our very understanding of the underlying factors (many of which didn't have names when this study was conducted).
FAIL :-)
Scarier question, he's 17, did he have a drivers license or permit?
Would he expect his car to be fine after colliding first into oncoming traffic? Or even just from plowing into a building, such that no one is hurt and he drives away as if nothing happened? Or would he blame Need For Speed, despite their prominent warning that began at least with Underground.
The fact that the title was Halo 3 isn't really pertinent. The problem is : They took his copy of X away and so he killed them. X could have been Halo3, it could have been his cell phone, gun, permission to go out, car keys, teddy bear, security blanket, computer, etc.
He's 17... soon he will be a voting 18 year old adult.
Apparently you hadn't noticed, this whole conversation is primarily applicable to salaried workers, not hourly employees. That extends well beyond just Software Developers and Managers.
I don't think that's a state thing either; I'm not 100% sure but are there any states that doesn't require overtime pay beyond 40 hours for non-exempt employees?
We don't have that and our office is already deserted in december. You throw in a software release and the 'critical' time leading up to it where no one is supposed to be taking vacation, and it seems to end up the same way.
for school, job, and anytime politicians open their mouths:
Warning: repeated exposure to stupidity may cause you to lose your mind, lose intelligence, or to believe utterly incorrect things as true.
Doesn't he have better things to deal with right now then useless labels that are both unproven, completely meaningless and without merit. Go figure out your state's budget problem. Go solve a real problem.
you know what else should come with a warning? politicians: warning I might be speaking from my ass because thats where i keep my wallet which was lined by the company whose interests im currently taking above your own.
Or in this case the angry idiotic soccer moms who are too busy spending money to raise their kids. Funny thing, the kids who play the most video games are generally not in nearly enough physical shape to cause problems... and they are usually too busy playing the games to go be violent.
I'm far more concerned with the meatheads who walk around thinking they are invincible because they spend all their time in a gym, and that because they can bench a whole lot it means that a. only they matter. and b. that they have the right to threaten you with violence to get what they want. Where is their warning? And why not slap one one on beer / guns / cars / horns / etc.
Again I'm not asking the gov't to have do a damn thing about it... my point is these kids aren't violent because of video games. They are violent because they are tired of getting walked all over their entire lives. And perhaps that 'violence' is the only possible way they know how to make it stop.
But I digress. Congressman whatever your f'ing name is do the state you represent a favor and get back to doing something that actually CONCERNS them at a more significant level than video games. What's next? distract them from your current failures by championing some legislation to get rid of some of your obscure uninforced / uninforcible blue laws?
That's a meaningless and effectively incorrect point. Seeing as the schools are not going to run hackintosh's and OS X is really only sold with hardware (aside from upgrades) the hardware cost and OS cost is inseperable just the way they like it. That way whenever we complain there hardwear costs are bloated they can BS about how they are charging us for the OS itself.
OS X is just as expensive as windows; and thats not the point of this article.
An excellent reference can be found at Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_memory_access
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. I did a co-op during college involving real-time OS, highly parallel processing, etc; primarily on embedded systems. (boards w/ lots of 500-800mhz powerPC chips and ram) Still rather than try to communicate it or take my word for it, take a look at this except from wikipedia...
"Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of modern computers and microprocessors that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory for reading and/or writing independently of the central processing unit. Many hardware systems use DMA including disk drive controllers, graphics cards, network cards, sound cards and GPUs. DMA is also used for intra-chip data transfer in multi-core processors, especially in multiprocessor system-on-chips, where its processing element is equipped with a local memory (often called scratchpad memory) and DMA is used for transferring data between the local memory and the main memory. Computers that have DMA channels can transfer data to and from devices with much less CPU overhead than computers without a DMA channel. Similarly a processing element inside a multi-core processor can transfer data to and from its local memory without occupying its processor time, overlapping computation and data transfer.
Without DMA, using programmed input/output (PIO) mode for communication with peripheral devices, or load/store instructions in the case of multicore chips, the CPU is typically fully occupied for the entire duration of the read or write operation, and is thus unavailable to perform other work. With DMA, the CPU would initiate the transfer, do other operations while the transfer is in progress, and receive an interrupt from the DMA controller once the operation has been done. This is especially useful in real-time computing applications where not stalling behind concurrent operations is critical. Another and related application area is various forms of stream processing where it is essential to have data processing and transfer in parallel, in order to achieve sufficient throughput."
One of the first learning activities I did was to compare the speed of computing a matrix multiplication in parallel (for an 1000x1000 matrix of floats and then ints). Comparing: programmatically on one node to: 4 nodes using sockets (PIO), to DMA on 4 nodes. DMA is significantly faster than PIO because it avoided context/thread switches and more importantly interupts. This results in minimizing misses on the L1 cache. There was zero file IO at all, in fact there wasn't even a hard drive attached to those boards.
You make in interesting point; but PIO/DMA has implications FAR beyond just Parallel ATA devices.
I would mod up if i could. but that's exactly the point... in a nutshell every EULA or TOS these days reads as "you have no rights whatsoever in any circumstance, we aren't liable for anything... blah blah blah (detailing numerous ways in which they aren't liable which may or MAY NOT be valid)." and then finally "except where prohibited by law, blah blah defer to federal,state,municipal rights"
the problem is that they have thus basically wasted time and just misled the consumer, when all it really could have said is that you are afforded no rights other than those guarenteed by law... and god forbid list a couple or where you can expect to find them. Its a riot.
and theres also no law that you wont get sued for being a dick :-) heck too many people in this country will sue you even if you arent one.
its been said, and it seems fitting to say it again. Someone, somewhere is funding your free lunch. Just because you don't pay for it; or don't know how its being 'paid' for doesnt mean it isnt. Gmail is a business venture that makes money, much like facebook and myspace and name your free blogsite.
sometimes you just dont pay for something with money.
FWIW that was an amazing issue; aside from the aforementioned hideous cover
they can make the simple argument that they pay for it in their payments to AOL for whatever other services are provided. Your argument of 'if they don't pay for it they don't have recource' is utter garbage. I'm not going to waste anyone's time pointing out how flawed that logic is.
the fact that it is really crappy hosting, and is overrun by AOL ad's (which probably fund most of it)
also it strikes me as immaterial whatever aol or anyone puts into their shrinkwrap TOS because those are always trumped by your rights.
Why do you waste our time talking about 4 9's? It's irrelavant to the conversation. No one is arguing anywhere at any shape or form that they are to be guarenteed FREE hosting. You miss the entire point of this because you are so dissallusioned by some obvious angst and hostility in regards to actual real estate.
The REAL point isn't that they losing the hosting; its that they are doing so with ZERO notice and with no ability to retrieve anything. As long as I have to give a 'apartment leasing office' notice that I am leaving of more than 60 days when I am month to month (because I'm planning on leaving); its beyond reasonable nay negligent of someone to not tell you they are pulling the plug.
hell my employer has to give me notice before termination and they pay me.
whether you pay directly $0 or $100 you have the same fundamental rights; such as notice.
This also gets to my other irritant of late. Ever notice how every advertisement has a disclaimer saying that every single one of their 'major features' and 'competitive advantages' and even price are subject to change, be discontinued, etc at any point without any notice? Anyone else think its absolutely absurd they are allowed to write such blather when it is obviously utter BS?
here's an example, if you buy an xbox360 and M$ cancels xbox live tomorrow, do you really think they arent going to be littered with lawsuits regarding misleading/false/fraudulent advertising and promises of features. None of these companies can guarentee anything anymore but except us to guarentee everything and be held responsible for everything.. consumer rights have been shot in the head repeatedly if you ask me.
and for the other side of the coin; I'd say most of the 'real estate' investors are just as much if not more parasitic. and it doesnt look the east coast is suffering too much. And frankly if no one had abandoned the building in the first place it wouldnt be a problem now would it? But rather than blame the group that started the problem you blame those that took shelter in unused rotting buildings.
and furthermore to alleviate your idiocy; if no one is actually looking at the webpages of these people from AOL... they aren't using any bandwidth at all. And storage isn't exactly expensive either; 1TB drives are about 120 bucks.