and as anyone with a Windows desktop can quite happily run RIA apps in their browser...
...you can install the server and gradually transition to Linux desktops as the Windows PCs come up for replacement (i.e. when the Registry's ashtrays get full and its cheaper to put in a new PC than rebuild Windows).
Sheesh guys, a bit of marketing hoopla, please!
Its not like any industry ever switched to Linux because they were tempted by the wealth of wonderful applications software (kinda the point of this whole thread - and a lot of the good OSS stuff runs on Windows too). Its the zero-cost licensing and the stability that does it...
There's the potential for this to change with the (relatively) recent arrival a number of good RIA solutions, but these are essentially platform neutral and so aren't likely to help Linux adoption.
Why not?
To use RIAs you need a good, reliable web server platform plus a lightweight and economical "thin client" OS with standards-compliant browsers and low per-user licensing fees.
The GPL is quite explicit: running the program is not restricted
Well, as we all good/.ers know, the GPL is not an EULA, but sadly, some GPL software still presents it as a click-through, making it look like one. This could be even worse with the more legalistic and impenetrable looking GPLv3.
Perhaps, strategically, it would be better if the GPL came in two documents - a (minimal) "EULA" which just dealt with what you could do *without* committing to the full GPL and a "full GPL" describing your rights and responsibilities if you did. That might help dispel the "using GPL software means you have to give away all your work" FUD.
It's the Daily Mail, FFS. They're as gullible as they are deranged.
Yes, but unless these iPhone Nanos are:
Being smuggled in by illegal immigrants
Being used by convicted pedophiles to exchange indecent images
Being given away by "Loony Left" councils (at taxpayers expense) to young offenders as a reward for not stealing any cars this week
Programmed to automatically censor the lyrics of "Baa Baa Black Sheep".
Not programmed to automatically censor the lyrics of Eminem tracks
Responsible for the huge rise in knife crime (or rather the apparent rise in knife crime now that any scuffle outside a pub anywhere in the land in which something shiny is wielded now counts as front page national news)
...then I can't for the life of me work out why the Daily Mail would be bothered to make it up, so it might even be true!
So why does the firefox GUI make a site with a self-signed certificate appear (to the non-technical user) less secure than a plain HTTP site?
Because once it has accepted the certificate or let you set an exception, Firefox is going to tell you that you have a secure connection, and Mozilla corp quite rightly want to well and truly cover their ass before doing that.
Now, if you're using an unencrypted site they already warned you - the first time you filled in an online form - that the bogeyman might get you, so they're covered. If its an encrypted site with a "proper" CA signed certificate, but it turns out that the CA have signed a certificate for FORMER VICE PRESIDENT UHAZBIN PWNED OF NIGERIA, the Wells Frago Bank or www_amazon_com.tv (after scrupulously verifying that someone had written that name on a post-it stuck to a $10 bill) you can go and sue the CA instead, so that's OK, too.
(PS: I didn't say you can go and sue the CA and win...)
TFA seems to imply that Firefox won't let you connect to a HTTPS server using a self-signed certificate. Not so.
Having just successfully connected to a self-signed HTTPS server using Firefox 3, I really can't see how it differs from (say) Safari or Internet Explorer.
All of these browsers pop up a warning dialogue that might scare off an uninformed user.
All of these browsers also allow you to connect anyway. Look at TFA, you can see the "add an exception" link in the screen shot from Firefox? Click that, and firefox will bug you no more.
So what is the argument? Is the Firefox dialogue box somehow scarier than the equivalent scary warnings in Safari and IE? Is it the little icon of the Customs guy making users worry that if they click on "add an excecption" they'll hear the snap of the rubber glove?
What exactly are AT&T/Apple trying to accomplish here?
Quite simple:
1. AT&T (like other mobile operators) would like you to pay extra for the privilege of using your phone as a modem. This has nothing to do with Apple or iPhone: e.g. the same thing applies to my Windows Mobile smartphone on T-Mobile (UK).
2. Apple needs to play nicely with AT&T and its other mobile operators and can't be seen encouraging people to breach the terms & conditions.
3. Presumably, someone at Apple OK'd this software without checking the AT&T T&Cs. Someone else spotted the error and took it down.
Maybe Apple had to take the extra time to get it right.
What, you mean, like, actually realize that any sort of hasty patch to a production system carries a risk of downtime or data loss which has to be weighed up against the risk posed by a security vulnerability?
Nah - never attribute to rationality that which can be satisfactorally explained by incompetence.
we've tried to ban them in courtrooms and civic buildings as well as on public buses. I keep wondering why someone talking on a cell-phone bothers us so much?
Its nothing to do with the cell phone. Many people simply enjoy the sound of their own voice so much that, as soon as they get into a conversation they lose all awareness of their surroundings, including any regard for people trying to (a) serve them or tell them something important (b) get some coffee from the jug they've been standing in front of holding an empty cup and nattering for 10 minutes, (c) walk through the narrow doorway that they've chosen for their debating chamber or (d) who just want to hear themselves think. If I ever tried to work as a waiter I'd probably last about 30 minutes before getting fired for asking a table full of valued clients if they could JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR 30 SECONDS WHILE THEY ORDERED! (unless its that US restaurant chain who's USP is being rude to customers).
Now, when people do this face-to-face this is all part of the rich tapestry of human nature and we all tolerate it as part of the normal rules of civilization. However, when people start doing it with Scary New Technology that changes the rules, and people who weren't even aware of the tolerance they exhibited towards flesh-and-blood ratchetjaw artists feel entitled to whinge.
Basically, then, this HANG-UP act is really the GETOFFMYLAWN act - but because it concerns Scary New Technology nobody questions whether lawmakers should be wasting their valuable time addressing the petty peeves of Grumpy Old Persons.
Banning them in courtrooms is slightly more understandable but pointless since judges and magistrates (I presume) already have the power to sling out anybody who disrupts proceedings,
In the UK, some train companies purport to have "quiet" carriages with no phones allowed. That would be fine if there was choice involved, i.e. the trains weren't routinely so overcrowded that you grab the first seat you can find and are thankful. It would also be more understandable if they turned off the fricking tannoy in the "quiet" carriages or (as happens in more train-oriented countries in Europe) restricted themselves to announcing the name of the next station without turning it into a 2 minute monologue (no, really, I was planning to leave my belongings on the train and then fall down the gap between the train and the platform...)
In Europe everyone speaks English and almost nobody uses localised versions of products
Maybe you can put up with that curly red line under "localised" but this English speaker still likes to use localised versions of products (even though the Oxford English Dictionary drank the kool aid on "-ize" some time ago - traitors!)
In the UK we still pay way over the odds allegedly because some body had to do a s/color/colour/ on the help file.
If 'it doesn't support Linux' then why does the BIOS have a table exclusively for Linux, who designed it and why does it write to a badly written table
Does Foxconn even write the BIOS?
Does Foxconn perhaps take a standard BIOS and patch it to work with their boards?
Did Foxconn once support Linux? Do they plan to in the future?
Does Windows have buggy ACPI that forces BIOS writers to include OS-specific kludges (see: every web page using CSS)?
Could a bit of dead code from who knows when have got left in the BIOS and not found because they don't test against Linux?
Ans: fscked if I know, but they all sound pretty plausible so it would be a jolly good idea to find out and (say) ask a couple of kernel devs to check your findings before accusing the poor schmuck on helldesk of being in league with the devil.
If they just "didnt care" about linux, why do they have an entry speciffic for it that breaks it?
Somewhen in 2003:
PHB: "Hey Bob, have you finished that BIOS yet - we need it by close-of-play today"
Bob: "Nah - its fine on Windows but it still keeps randomly hanging on Red Hat Linux 7 - and 'cos Linux reports itself as Windows I'm having to kludge around it "
PHB: "Fuck Linux - the CEO has announced we're dropping linux support anyway"
Bob: "Hang on - let me comment out the broken linux code"
PHB: "No time - who gives a fuck if it crashes on Linux"
2008:
Bob: "Fuck me -Foxconn have bought that BIOS I worked on years ago, and that crufty Linux ACPI kludge is still in the codebase..."
Nah, you're right: obsolete/faulty code hanging around in a codebase because the test regime doesn't touch it? Completely implausible - yessiree, its much more likely that Foxconn has colluded with MS in a plan which doesn't make sense since the very minor setback to Linux is dwarfed by the potential damage if they were found out.
The problem is that manufacturers feel free to only support Windows and rely on WHQL certification as sufficient for standards compliance - but that's a natural consequence of the existing MS monoculture, no additional conspiracy required.
...the author of TFA has gone overboard, assumed conspiracy before eliminating cock-up and started firing off accusations of collusion between Foxconn and Microsoft to the FTC and flaming the (probably powerless) guy on the help desk. Even if true, powder needs to be kept dry and ducks arranged in a line before such serious allegations are made.
Now, if it can be shown as a matter of fact that the board does not comply with ACPI standards (which TFA seems to have established) then it should not be sold as ACPI compliant and Foxconn should take responsibility for the mislabeling. Full stop. WHQL certification is probably just an empirical test of ACPI functionality under a single operating system, which doesn't trump a demonstrable breach of ACPI protocol. Foxconn are not obliged to support Linux - but a customer should be entitled to make their own judgement about a products suitability based upon the standards it claims to support.
That much could and should have been put to Foxconn firmly but politely without engaging flame mode. Accusations of sabotage and collusion with M$ is just supplying them with ready-made straw men to rebut.
As for conspiracy, "Least hypothesis" is that some past version of the BIOS was, at one point, intended to support Linux (perhaps badly, relying on OS-specific kludges), but they forgot to remove the code. If you're going to accuse them of deliberately sabotaging Linux users you need to get some independent confirmation that the code in question is malicious and not simply buggy.
Remember - there is no need for collusion with MS. The MS monoculture means that there's no particular incentive to carefully adhere to standards or test on non-MS systems. Especially when (as anybody who's tried to get a web page to work on both IE and Mozilla knows) supporting MS often requires, er, "enhancements" to the way the standard is implemented...
There is some claim that business law requires them to do this
It wouldn't surprise me if somewhere in the anals (sic) of business law - especially those bits of it hastily written pos-Enron - there is some clause which could be interpreted that way if you thought like, well, a lawyer. All it takes is for one lawyer, accountant or auditor in a company to have a brainfart and put that interpretation in writing, and the company is stuck with it, unless some PHB fancies sticking his neck out and going against legal advice.
OTOH, it makes sure all those antisocial consumers like me who have an iPod but have never signed up to iTunes have to mend their ways...
documentation linked above and at 46:00 they clearly state that they had bubbles, but no neutrons above background radiation "at the exact moment of time the flashes appeared"
Mod grandparent down! Oh, fsck, it was me - darn.
Seriously - thanks for the link, I'd remembered that the (presentation of) the experiment glossed over an important point but "misremembered" exactly what the problem was.
The issue which got glossed over was whether they had detected any excess neutrons at all.
Basically:
excess neutrons correlated with the flashes = bingo!
excess neutrons not correlated with the flashes = something interesting may be happening but probably not fusion. Perhaps they were wafting over from the lab next door where the guy was mucking around with palladium electrodes...:-)
no excess neutrons at all = another failure to reproduce: not hopeful, but inconclusive in itself.
However, I'm inclined to blame the presentation rather than the scientists - "at the exact moment of time the flashes appeared" without any qualification about tolerances or confidence is a bit woolly.
Perhaps you may be able to say you need them in Fortran 77 and before, but certainly not in later versions.
Sadly, they named the proposed new version "Fortran 8X" but forgot that X was pre-defined as floating point: consequently, a rounding error prevented them from converging on a standard. By the time Fortran 90 came out, everybody was too busy worrying about Object Oriented Programming to ask grandad what he did in the GOTO wars.
see how long it takes you to understand the flow of control. Good luck.
The question is, does the author of that use any other languages, and does he/she use GOTO in those?
The "Pascal" versions of the FORTRAN 77 code in my late-80s copy of Numerical Recipes aren't very Pascal-like, but they don't use no stinkin' gotos!
There was a TV programme on this guy a couple of years ago
NB: The following is more about the quality of the TV show than any attempt to wish away the apparent irreproducability of Taleyarkhan's results so that we can all have Mr Fusions for Xmas.
If I believed in Taleyarkhan, that TV program certainly wouldn't have changed my mind. The scientist conducting the experiment appeared to be an outspoken critic of Taleyarkhan and we (the audience) had to accept his word that differences in equipment c.f. Taleyarkhan's experiment were inconsequential. As far as I remember, the originally stated purpose of the experiment was to check if the neutrons detected were in sync with the flashes from the bubbles (something not shown in T's results). We were told at the end that the experiment had failed, but with little explanation as to how (no flashes? no neutrons? not in sync? the first two of those would not have been "as was to be demonstrated").
As for Taleyarkhan attending the experiment, why would he do that? If he'd participated in any way, it would have destroyed the independence of the test.
...which was a pity, because in an earlier show they gave the same treatment to a test of the "memory of water" theory beloved of homeopathic medicine: in that case the experiment was presented beautifully, from the careful setting up of independent, blind tests through to analysis of the results for statistical significance. One of the best science documentaries I've seen.
The "desktop fusion" show was not up to the same standard.
Guidelines and standards[1] are not rules. Rules are much harder to write because they have to anticipate every possible eventuality. The purpose of guidelines is to make people think good and hard before breaking them[2].
Never did understand the fuss about GOTO... you need them everywhere in machine code, FORTRAN and (original) BASIC because that's the way the language works. Its perfectly logical to use them for exception handling in C or Pascal (and it was childish of "standard" Pascal to implement them in a deliberately perverse[3] way) and if you are using a language with decent structures and exception handling, the need just doesn't arise.
[1] that's "standards" in the sense implied here rather than the W3C sense. God! I almost said ISO there, have to break that habit...!
[2] Actually, I think the original Pratchett quote I've pinched was talking about rules but lets not be too subversive...
[3] In "standard" Pascal you had to use numerical labels which had to be declared in advance...
I know its more fashionable to delegate your professional judgment and standards to some committee-spawned set of arbitrary and simplistic rules, but the only sensible answer to a question like this is "it depends".
You consider the quote, the context you are quoting it in and the inferences you are drawing from it, and make a judgment as to whether "correcting" it would amount to misrepresentation.
In the case of "how babbey formed? how girl get pragnent?" the implication that the writer may be young, communicating in a second language or just have limited literacy skills (none of which would make me assume they were an idiot, by the way) might be highly relevant to (say) a discussion on the role of social networking in sex education. For one thing (based purely on that quote) can you really be sure whether Kavya was asking "can I get pregnant from kissing a boy" or struggling to frame "What happens after the sperm reaches the ovum?"
On the other hand, if the writer has simply made a typo or misplaced an apostrophe, it is probably sensible to fix it to prevent the argument being grammar-Godwinned.
If you're transcribing speech, then doing a bit of "cleaning up" seems, um, reasonable to me, er, because because hesitations and repeat, er, repetitions that you ign.., er, hardly notice when er, listening to someone speak might have undue prominence when, um, written down.
Without the clause in the EULA that you will only run the OS on a genuine MAC, there is nothing here
This firm is promoting and selling computers with a (possibly modified) copy of Leopard pre-installed on the hard drive. That's rather different from John Doe buying a copy of Leopard and installing it on his own PC or wanting to sell on his license. I doubt whether the rights of end users will come into it.
I'm surprised that Apple don't just badge retail Leopard discs as "upgrade - for computers with Mac OS only" (which is effectively what you're getting) - if the enforceability of that got overturned then it would be interesting times indeed...
But its Apple who, unlike Microsoft do not have a near monopoly on PC operating systems giving them power to stifle competition, force broken standards through the ISO or bully manufacturers into using their operating system so it's OK.
Slashdot Mirror
The Turtle Moves...!
and as anyone with a Windows desktop can quite happily run RIA apps in their browser...
...you can install the server and gradually transition to Linux desktops as the Windows PCs come up for replacement (i.e. when the Registry's ashtrays get full and its cheaper to put in a new PC than rebuild Windows).
Sheesh guys, a bit of marketing hoopla, please! Its not like any industry ever switched to Linux because they were tempted by the wealth of wonderful applications software (kinda the point of this whole thread - and a lot of the good OSS stuff runs on Windows too). Its the zero-cost licensing and the stability that does it...
There's the potential for this to change with the (relatively) recent arrival a number of good RIA solutions, but these are essentially platform neutral and so aren't likely to help Linux adoption.
Why not?
To use RIAs you need a good, reliable web server platform plus a lightweight and economical "thin client" OS with standards-compliant browsers and low per-user licensing fees.
Does an obvious candidate spring to mind?
The GPL is quite explicit: running the program is not restricted
Well, as we all good /.ers know, the GPL is not an EULA, but sadly, some GPL software still presents it as a click-through, making it look like one. This could be even worse with the more legalistic and impenetrable looking GPLv3.
Perhaps, strategically, it would be better if the GPL came in two documents - a (minimal) "EULA" which just dealt with what you could do *without* committing to the full GPL and a "full GPL" describing your rights and responsibilities if you did. That might help dispel the "using GPL software means you have to give away all your work" FUD.
It's the Daily Mail, FFS. They're as gullible as they are deranged.
Yes, but unless these iPhone Nanos are:
...then I can't for the life of me work out why the Daily Mail would be bothered to make it up, so it might even be true!
So why does the firefox GUI make a site with a self-signed certificate appear (to the non-technical user) less secure than a plain HTTP site?
Because once it has accepted the certificate or let you set an exception, Firefox is going to tell you that you have a secure connection, and Mozilla corp quite rightly want to well and truly cover their ass before doing that.
Now, if you're using an unencrypted site they already warned you - the first time you filled in an online form - that the bogeyman might get you, so they're covered. If its an encrypted site with a "proper" CA signed certificate, but it turns out that the CA have signed a certificate for FORMER VICE PRESIDENT UHAZBIN PWNED OF NIGERIA, the Wells Frago Bank or www_amazon_com.tv (after scrupulously verifying that someone had written that name on a post-it stuck to a $10 bill) you can go and sue the CA instead, so that's OK, too.
(PS: I didn't say you can go and sue the CA and win...)
TFA seems to imply that Firefox won't let you connect to a HTTPS server using a self-signed certificate. Not so.
Having just successfully connected to a self-signed HTTPS server using Firefox 3, I really can't see how it differs from (say) Safari or Internet Explorer.
All of these browsers pop up a warning dialogue that might scare off an uninformed user.
All of these browsers also allow you to connect anyway. Look at TFA, you can see the "add an exception" link in the screen shot from Firefox? Click that, and firefox will bug you no more.
So what is the argument? Is the Firefox dialogue box somehow scarier than the equivalent scary warnings in Safari and IE? Is it the little icon of the Customs guy making users worry that if they click on "add an excecption" they'll hear the snap of the rubber glove?
Give me my android phone. I'll wait as long as it takes.
...and your network will still expect you to pay extra to use it as a modem.
What exactly are AT&T/Apple trying to accomplish here?
Quite simple:
1. AT&T (like other mobile operators) would like you to pay extra for the privilege of using your phone as a modem. This has nothing to do with Apple or iPhone: e.g. the same thing applies to my Windows Mobile smartphone on T-Mobile (UK).
2. Apple needs to play nicely with AT&T and its other mobile operators and can't be seen encouraging people to breach the terms & conditions.
3. Presumably, someone at Apple OK'd this software without checking the AT&T T&Cs. Someone else spotted the error and took it down.
Nothing to see, move along.
I'd like to welcome the passengers who've joined us at Bedford to this East Midlands Trains service
OK, so that's spooky. Maybe the phenomenon is localized to this particular stretch of track....?
Maybe Apple had to take the extra time to get it right.
What, you mean, like, actually realize that any sort of hasty patch to a production system carries a risk of downtime or data loss which has to be weighed up against the risk posed by a security vulnerability?
Nah - never attribute to rationality that which can be satisfactorally explained by incompetence.
we've tried to ban them in courtrooms and civic buildings as well as on public buses. I keep wondering why someone talking on a cell-phone bothers us so much?
Its nothing to do with the cell phone. Many people simply enjoy the sound of their own voice so much that, as soon as they get into a conversation they lose all awareness of their surroundings, including any regard for people trying to (a) serve them or tell them something important (b) get some coffee from the jug they've been standing in front of holding an empty cup and nattering for 10 minutes, (c) walk through the narrow doorway that they've chosen for their debating chamber or (d) who just want to hear themselves think. If I ever tried to work as a waiter I'd probably last about 30 minutes before getting fired for asking a table full of valued clients if they could JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR 30 SECONDS WHILE THEY ORDERED! (unless its that US restaurant chain who's USP is being rude to customers).
Now, when people do this face-to-face this is all part of the rich tapestry of human nature and we all tolerate it as part of the normal rules of civilization. However, when people start doing it with Scary New Technology that changes the rules, and people who weren't even aware of the tolerance they exhibited towards flesh-and-blood ratchetjaw artists feel entitled to whinge.
Basically, then, this HANG-UP act is really the GETOFFMYLAWN act - but because it concerns Scary New Technology nobody questions whether lawmakers should be wasting their valuable time addressing the petty peeves of Grumpy Old Persons.
Banning them in courtrooms is slightly more understandable but pointless since judges and magistrates (I presume) already have the power to sling out anybody who disrupts proceedings,
In the UK, some train companies purport to have "quiet" carriages with no phones allowed. That would be fine if there was choice involved, i.e. the trains weren't routinely so overcrowded that you grab the first seat you can find and are thankful. It would also be more understandable if they turned off the fricking tannoy in the "quiet" carriages or (as happens in more train-oriented countries in Europe) restricted themselves to announcing the name of the next station without turning it into a 2 minute monologue (no, really, I was planning to leave my belongings on the train and then fall down the gap between the train and the platform...)
In Europe everyone speaks English and almost nobody uses localised versions of products
Maybe you can put up with that curly red line under "localised" but this English speaker still likes to use localised versions of products (even though the Oxford English Dictionary drank the kool aid on "-ize" some time ago - traitors!)
In the UK we still pay way over the odds allegedly because some body had to do a s/color/colour/ on the help file.
Well, there is certainly less air pollution...
Dunno. It depends how much of the Moon's negligible atmosphere consists of exhaust fumes from Apollo...
What's the Selenites' record on human rights like? I'm pretty sure they imprisoned Prof. Cavour and his crew without trial.
If 'it doesn't support Linux' then why does the BIOS have a table exclusively for Linux, who designed it and why does it write to a badly written table
Does Foxconn even write the BIOS?
Does Foxconn perhaps take a standard BIOS and patch it to work with their boards?
Did Foxconn once support Linux? Do they plan to in the future?
Does Windows have buggy ACPI that forces BIOS writers to include OS-specific kludges (see: every web page using CSS)?
Could a bit of dead code from who knows when have got left in the BIOS and not found because they don't test against Linux?
Ans: fscked if I know, but they all sound pretty plausible so it would be a jolly good idea to find out and (say) ask a couple of kernel devs to check your findings before accusing the poor schmuck on helldesk of being in league with the devil.
If they just "didnt care" about linux, why do they have an entry speciffic for it that breaks it?
Somewhen in 2003:
PHB: "Hey Bob, have you finished that BIOS yet - we need it by close-of-play today"
Bob: "Nah - its fine on Windows but it still keeps randomly hanging on Red Hat Linux 7 - and 'cos Linux reports itself as Windows I'm having to kludge around it "
PHB: "Fuck Linux - the CEO has announced we're dropping linux support anyway"
Bob: "Hang on - let me comment out the broken linux code"
PHB: "No time - who gives a fuck if it crashes on Linux"
2008:
Bob: "Fuck me -Foxconn have bought that BIOS I worked on years ago, and that crufty Linux ACPI kludge is still in the codebase..."
Nah, you're right: obsolete/faulty code hanging around in a codebase because the test regime doesn't touch it? Completely implausible - yessiree, its much more likely that Foxconn has colluded with MS in a plan which doesn't make sense since the very minor setback to Linux is dwarfed by the potential damage if they were found out.
The problem is that manufacturers feel free to only support Windows and rely on WHQL certification as sufficient for standards compliance - but that's a natural consequence of the existing MS monoculture, no additional conspiracy required.
...the author of TFA has gone overboard, assumed conspiracy before eliminating cock-up and started firing off accusations of collusion between Foxconn and Microsoft to the FTC and flaming the (probably powerless) guy on the help desk. Even if true, powder needs to be kept dry and ducks arranged in a line before such serious allegations are made.
Now, if it can be shown as a matter of fact that the board does not comply with ACPI standards (which TFA seems to have established) then it should not be sold as ACPI compliant and Foxconn should take responsibility for the mislabeling. Full stop. WHQL certification is probably just an empirical test of ACPI functionality under a single operating system, which doesn't trump a demonstrable breach of ACPI protocol. Foxconn are not obliged to support Linux - but a customer should be entitled to make their own judgement about a products suitability based upon the standards it claims to support.
That much could and should have been put to Foxconn firmly but politely without engaging flame mode. Accusations of sabotage and collusion with M$ is just supplying them with ready-made straw men to rebut.
As for conspiracy, "Least hypothesis" is that some past version of the BIOS was, at one point, intended to support Linux (perhaps badly, relying on OS-specific kludges), but they forgot to remove the code. If you're going to accuse them of deliberately sabotaging Linux users you need to get some independent confirmation that the code in question is malicious and not simply buggy.
Remember - there is no need for collusion with MS. The MS monoculture means that there's no particular incentive to carefully adhere to standards or test on non-MS systems. Especially when (as anybody who's tried to get a web page to work on both IE and Mozilla knows) supporting MS often requires, er, "enhancements" to the way the standard is implemented...
There is some claim that business law requires them to do this
It wouldn't surprise me if somewhere in the anals (sic) of business law - especially those bits of it hastily written pos-Enron - there is some clause which could be interpreted that way if you thought like, well, a lawyer. All it takes is for one lawyer, accountant or auditor in a company to have a brainfart and put that interpretation in writing, and the company is stuck with it, unless some PHB fancies sticking his neck out and going against legal advice.
OTOH, it makes sure all those antisocial consumers like me who have an iPod but have never signed up to iTunes have to mend their ways...
documentation linked above and at 46:00 they clearly state that they had bubbles, but no neutrons above background radiation "at the exact moment of time the flashes appeared"
Mod grandparent down! Oh, fsck, it was me - darn.
Seriously - thanks for the link, I'd remembered that the (presentation of) the experiment glossed over an important point but "misremembered" exactly what the problem was.
The issue which got glossed over was whether they had detected any excess neutrons at all.
Basically:
However, I'm inclined to blame the presentation rather than the scientists - "at the exact moment of time the flashes appeared" without any qualification about tolerances or confidence is a bit woolly.
Perhaps you may be able to say you need them in Fortran 77 and before, but certainly not in later versions.
Sadly, they named the proposed new version "Fortran 8X" but forgot that X was pre-defined as floating point: consequently, a rounding error prevented them from converging on a standard. By the time Fortran 90 came out, everybody was too busy worrying about Object Oriented Programming to ask grandad what he did in the GOTO wars.
see how long it takes you to understand the flow of control. Good luck.
The question is, does the author of that use any other languages, and does he/she use GOTO in those?
The "Pascal" versions of the FORTRAN 77 code in my late-80s copy of Numerical Recipes aren't very Pascal-like, but they don't use no stinkin' gotos!
There was a TV programme on this guy a couple of years ago
NB: The following is more about the quality of the TV show than any attempt to wish away the apparent irreproducability of Taleyarkhan's results so that we can all have Mr Fusions for Xmas.
If I believed in Taleyarkhan, that TV program certainly wouldn't have changed my mind. The scientist conducting the experiment appeared to be an outspoken critic of Taleyarkhan and we (the audience) had to accept his word that differences in equipment c.f. Taleyarkhan's experiment were inconsequential. As far as I remember, the originally stated purpose of the experiment was to check if the neutrons detected were in sync with the flashes from the bubbles (something not shown in T's results). We were told at the end that the experiment had failed, but with little explanation as to how (no flashes? no neutrons? not in sync? the first two of those would not have been "as was to be demonstrated").
As for Taleyarkhan attending the experiment, why would he do that? If he'd participated in any way, it would have destroyed the independence of the test.
...which was a pity, because in an earlier show they gave the same treatment to a test of the "memory of water" theory beloved of homeopathic medicine: in that case the experiment was presented beautifully, from the careful setting up of independent, blind tests through to analysis of the results for statistical significance. One of the best science documentaries I've seen.
The "desktop fusion" show was not up to the same standard.
Guidelines and standards[1] are not rules. Rules are much harder to write because they have to anticipate every possible eventuality. The purpose of guidelines is to make people think good and hard before breaking them[2].
Never did understand the fuss about GOTO... you need them everywhere in machine code, FORTRAN and (original) BASIC because that's the way the language works. Its perfectly logical to use them for exception handling in C or Pascal (and it was childish of "standard" Pascal to implement them in a deliberately perverse[3] way) and if you are using a language with decent structures and exception handling, the need just doesn't arise.
[1] that's "standards" in the sense implied here rather than the W3C sense. God! I almost said ISO there, have to break that habit...!
[2] Actually, I think the original Pratchett quote I've pinched was talking about rules but lets not be too subversive...
[3] In "standard" Pascal you had to use numerical labels which had to be declared in advance...
I know its more fashionable to delegate your professional judgment and standards to some committee-spawned set of arbitrary and simplistic rules, but the only sensible answer to a question like this is "it depends".
You consider the quote, the context you are quoting it in and the inferences you are drawing from it, and make a judgment as to whether "correcting" it would amount to misrepresentation.
In the case of "how babbey formed? how girl get pragnent?" the implication that the writer may be young, communicating in a second language or just have limited literacy skills (none of which would make me assume they were an idiot, by the way) might be highly relevant to (say) a discussion on the role of social networking in sex education. For one thing (based purely on that quote) can you really be sure whether Kavya was asking "can I get pregnant from kissing a boy" or struggling to frame "What happens after the sperm reaches the ovum?"
On the other hand, if the writer has simply made a typo or misplaced an apostrophe, it is probably sensible to fix it to prevent the argument being grammar-Godwinned.
If you're transcribing speech, then doing a bit of "cleaning up" seems, um, reasonable to me, er, because because hesitations and repeat, er, repetitions that you ign.., er, hardly notice when er, listening to someone speak might have undue prominence when, um, written down.
Without the clause in the EULA that you will only run the OS on a genuine MAC, there is nothing here
This firm is promoting and selling computers with a (possibly modified) copy of Leopard pre-installed on the hard drive. That's rather different from John Doe buying a copy of Leopard and installing it on his own PC or wanting to sell on his license. I doubt whether the rights of end users will come into it.
I'm surprised that Apple don't just badge retail Leopard discs as "upgrade - for computers with Mac OS only" (which is effectively what you're getting) - if the enforceability of that got overturned then it would be interesting times indeed...
But it's Apple, so it's OK.
Hang on, let me fix that for you:
But its Apple who, unlike Microsoft do not have a near monopoly on PC operating systems giving them power to stifle competition, force broken standards through the ISO or bully manufacturers into using their operating system so it's OK.