Urban Legend or just Apocryphal, the story goes Bill Gates was playing $3-$6 Texas Hold'em at
the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas in the early 90's.
...
"If the richest man in the world doesn't have the guts to come over and play me, I'm certainly not going to give him my autograph".
Bill Gates certainly wasn't the richest man in the world back then. This is a good sounding story, nothing more.
Please be aware that I REALLY DISLIKE Mr. Gates and his companies dirty tactics as much as I dislike U.S. foreign policy. Which is to say about as much as is possible. This story is just a story.
Assigns and volume names worked together in ways that simbolic links just can't.
If a program is looking for volume Room222: you could with an assign point it at dh0:room111 or
df0:room333. This blows symbolic links right out of the water, because the volume names were symbolics, not a part of the filesystem. Assigns allowed you to do the same as windows links and Unix symlinks, AND MORE.
Funny thing is, if you create a _different_ version of a software, chances are you encur some extra cost in the process. So by rights, a version without Media player would be more costly.
Sorry, but this is utter nonsense. I can in any install I have ever done comment out the bit that includes something and then push the produce CD button and, presto, in minutes a new version of the product.
Given MS attempts to tie all its bits into their OS, it may take them a bit to disentangle it, but, once done, it never has to be done again. Amortise this action over all units sold and the increase in costs is 0.
Microsoft tries to keep 100% back compatibility; well, for what whatever that is worth to end users. Yet, it does indeed remain their major constraint on improvement. Please, flamers, note that I wrote "tries to keep".
If you want disproof of this, look at the various specs for RTF. Every 18 months or so,
they introduce an incompatability, which slowly
forces people to upgrade to newer versions of their office software, and breaks for a while other vendor's access to MS Office files.
Backwards compatability isn't their major concern. Market control is.
When backward compatability interferes with
market control, it goes....
By my calculations, assuming air ionizes about 10,000 Volts / centimeter, a 50MV line should be at least 5,000 cm (or 50 meters) from any ground. 50 meters on either side of a line is a lot of property for an electical company to buy, and with a surge in the line I'd bet the distance would need to be even more.
I suspect you are not taking into effect that
the field drops with the square of the distance.
Roughly, there should be nothing closer than
about 7 metres. I've probably made a 100
erroneous assumptions, but, 7 metres (23 feet) sounds about right....
One of the problems is MS's ever-changing document formats, while WordPerfect's not changed their document format for years, MS's seems to change with ever release.
I got bit by this a while back. We had an old
word file from backup that we needed and Office XP corrupted it beyond use. We finally found an old paper copy from the archives, and re-entered
it into Office XP, so a recent copy could be kept.
Presuming that Microsoft will not break their own compatability is a fallacy.
At the same time, GPS won't tell the cops the context. It won't tell them that a hostile man with a gun was in the car behind you. It won't tell them that your wife is having a baby. It won't tell them that your spedometer's busted.
I'm not really sure where I stand there. Like I said, due process plays a huge part in this. For example, if tickets are automatically doled out for speeding, do you have a strong method for appeal? Does it only go off if you're going ridiculously fast? Does it only happen in certain areas such as school crossings? I think there's middle ground, especially when the cost of that freedom is the saving of human life.
The real problem is when technology fails and falsely acuses you of a crime you did not commit.
If the sensor that detects your speed has a momentary glitch (say the clock slows down for a short while), it may determine that you were
doing twice or more than the speed limit for
a few seconds. We know that cars can't accelerate that fast, and can't slow down
that fast. But the machine might not care
and sent an all-points bulletin.
And if it wrongly detects you were doing 150 MPH in a school district and a child was killed in a
hit and run at about the same time and near
that location, you can bet the police will want
your butt pretty bad - you just murdered a child!
You can also imagine that they will take extraordinary measures to make certain you won't
get away - given your preference for speed, who would blame them?
Given the exceptional nature of patents--extending a government enforced monopoly on ideas and entire markets for decades--one should perhaps even demand that the person defending a patent should provide "clear and convincing evidence" that the patent is valid.
The problem becomes a big player hounding a small player (a holder with a valid patent) into non-existence through litigation,
with each challenge forcing the holder to prove
its case time and again.
As this is already a problem, your suggestion will
only exacerbate an existing problem.
Improving the quality of the patents, reducing the
costs of a valid challenge to a bad patent, and reducing the time of a patent will improve things
without adding more to the lawyers pockets,
which accomplishes nothing in the long term
(aside from improved lawyer employment statistics).
They were invented by the French, therefore they are French units. And they are no more standardised than are the foot, pound and quart.
The strange thing is, I am always surprised at the position Americans take on these issues.
The SI units are more standardized because they
are uniformly recognized by most of the world. U.S.
or more commonly Imperial measures were mostly from the British Empire. Alas, there were literally
thousands of different measures, all with hideously
complicated conversions betwixt each.
SI swept aside the complications with some simple
suggestions:
Temperature: Choose 0 as the freezing point of water and 100 as the boiling point - voila (sic), a fixed
scale with meaningful weather connections (at 0, expect snow).
Mass is directly related to the atomic number of a given element (with Avogadro's number thrown in).
Liquid measure:
1 gram of water == 1 cubic centimetre == 1 milliliter
1000 milliliters of water == 1 liter of water == 1 kilogram
Try doing those kinds of translations with Imperial
measures. Please note: a U.S. gallon != an Imperial gallon (USG = 3.78l, ImperialG = 4.5l - the fluid ounce size differs *SIGH*).
The world uses SI. Even if the French abandoned
'their' units, the rest of us wouldn't. SI is MORE standard than American equivalents BECAUSE everyone is using them (including higher learning
in the U.S.).
It's probably just that this company infuriates me. I can't remember being so angry at a company. It has become really hard to maintain objectivity when dealing with these bozos.
I can.
It was Microsoft when they were found to be guilty of being a Monopoly and then getting off
scot-free.
The real reason for the Microsoft 'investment' in
SCO is to soften people towards MS. There is a new company in town to hate.
That's my conspiracy story, and I am sticking to it.
An inconsistant GUI forces the user to think "To close this window, I need to find the X. It was on the right last time, but that's a Circle. Oh, there it is on the left. Click."
I was recently thrown on Windows XP for the
first time. I was surprised at the idiosyncratic
differences between it and previous versions of windows.
Linux isn't the only one to suffer from CHI issues, although consistency WITHIN a framework is still a critical issue on Linux.
I think it clear by now that SCO believes that
Linux IS THEIRS. I think all here know
this not to be true.
How could SCO hold this opinion? I think by
believing that the portions of the source that
is in their source tree (by whatever means) and
in anyway similar in the Linux tree means that
their copyrights give them rights. Either the
GPL is meaningless (because of the supposed copyright violations) or that the GPL protects them wherever the copyright violations don't.
Now, a question. Is this true? Does GPL protect
them where their own (supposed) copyright doesn't?
I guess to the point, the GPL doesn't replace or
interfere with a person's copyright, does it?
If it doesn't, and I believe it doesn't, does this not mean that if SCO believes it can ignore the GPL, they MUST get copyrights from each and every individual author? And if they don't, aren't they guilty of the very same copyright violations they accuse others of doing?
I think it is a matter of atomicity. How small a change can be covered under copyright? The source to Linux is a joint collaboration of thousands of authors, with the potential for any
single source file to be authored by dozens or more authors. How does copyright handle collections from multiple authors?
Another question of atomicity: Is the GPL an all-or-nothing license? Or will it support the supposed SCO idea, where what is theirs is theirs
and what is not theirs is theirs by the GPL? Or, as I hope, if you violate the GPL anywhere, it no longer provides you with rights at all, and the nightmare situation (for SCO) where you must get each author's copyright permission separately.
If this is the case, where the GPL either covers you or it doesn't, with atomicity at the very largest level, then can we get a cease and desist order against SCO about saying that Linux is anything but the community's property?
And further, that unless they comply with the GPL, and so be covered under the rights granted therein, or get each copyright holder's permission to use their changes, that they cease-and-desist shipping any parts of Linux that they have not received copyright permissions to ship.
I was going to ask the FSF, or someone who might understand the GPL better than I, about how the GPL works legally with the above in mind. However, this issue is bigger than just the GPL, because if the GPL isn't upheld, then EACH author's copyrights are being violated, which is an issue for the larger community.
If the above is true, who can we get to slap these cease-and-desist orders on SCO?
What is worse, under Reagan, the rich grew by 3%, while the middle class shrunk by 20%. All hail voodoo economics.
"... The reason the wealthiest Americans saw their share of total income rise is that they gained income at a faster pace than did the middle class and the poor. But Reaganomics did create a rising tide that lifted nearly all boats." [link].
Under Reagan, every income group saw their income grow. Stop distoring the facts and spreading misinformation please.
Once you factor in inflation, my statement is true. The dollar amounts did rise. But not in pace with inflation. The rich did indeed get richer, the poor poorer.
> The eventual fallout? The attacks on the WTC, and more U.S. military adventurism. Sad.
Oh, come on. You can trace everything back further and further until it is absurd. We armed Iraq because we were against Iran, because Iran held our citizens hostages, because... blah blah. The reason for the attacks on WTC was because some radical suicide bombers decided to commit a terrorist act. You can say it's because of our actions involved in Iraq. I tend to believe it has more to do with our support for Israel. The fact is, international events are way too complicated to say that "the cause of 9/11" is a specific act or acts committed by Bush Sr. or the CIA. It's a lot more complicated than that.
More often then not, it is actually simpler. Bush Sr. assisted in the arming of Iraq. He was connected to Saddam in ways no other president can say. Three days before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Iraq asked the U.S. if this was okay, and were told that this didn't impact U.S. interests. Iraq attacked. Days later, the U.S. reacted as if they didn't know this was going to happen, and demanded that Iraq retreat unconditionally. Iraq said they would if there was to be an investigation of Kuwaiti angle drilling.
The U.S. responded that there would be no conditions for withdrawl. Hence the war.
Bush Sr. did this to a supposed friend. He needed only say yes, we will investigate, and no war was needed. Iraq, after all, was our friend.
What is worse is that Saddam held a non-muslim government that was (originally) friendly to the U.S. The U.S. has eliminated their government, which will almost guaranteed be replaced by a muslim government likely hostile toward the U.S. behaviour in Isreal.
Thanks, Bushes. Anything else you would like to mangle while in your single terms of office?
Your grasp of international events and U.S. involvement in them is shockingly incomplete.
It's not incomplete, it's just not as biased as yours.
I see. And because I point out the foolishness of a Presidents actions, I am biased. How do you see this as yourself NOT being biased? Do you think your pointing out that Clinton was a liar is news? Or is your pointing out just an apologist attack against a non-Republican?
I do see the big picture. And it doesn't stop with one action, but two hundred years of continued horrible behaviour upon the shoulders of successive U.S. governments and their foreign policies, policies that dictate to other nations what they WILL and WILL NOT do. I would suggest Howard Zinn's 'A Peoples History of United States' for depth.
It is this attitude of do-what-we-tell-you-or-else that has spawned the Al Queda response, not a single action. They've decided to stop the U.S. from continuing their meddling. They are wrong that they will have a lasting effect. The U.S. will fail, but, due to their own internal silliness, rather than from without.
I would have taken this discussion offline if I knew how *SIGH*.
I think the problem most people have with Clinton is that he was kind of a joke and a blatant liar.
Clinton lied about having an affair. Bush Jr.
lied about why he was going to war with Iraq.
Guess which one I ACTUALLY care about?
Nixon might have been impeached, but he improved relations with China.
Nixon was clearly criminal. This is okay? Because
he warmed relations with a foreign power?
Reagan is criticized, but he fixed the economy that Carter left him and won the cold war.
The Russians stopped playing the Cold War game
because the could no longer afford to play.
This wasn't Reagan's doing. He happened to be
asleep in the White House at the time nothing more. And in hindsight, it is a stretch to say that
Reagan was meaningfully in control of the White
House - does any one remember the Iran-Contra
affair? Either Reagan was criminal, or, he had no
meaningful control over his White House. Choose
the alternative....
What is worse, under Reagan, the rich grew by
3%, while the middle class shrunk by 20%.
All hail voodoo economics. You could even blame
Black Monday on him, but, that suggests a level of
competence that is hard to attribute to the man.
Bush Sr. led one of the most unified coalitions to kick Iraq out of Kuwait.
It always surprises me that people are oblivious
to the fact that Bush Sr. was in control of the
CIA when they were ferreting weapons Saddams
way. He is as much responsible for the creation
of this monster as he was supposed to be for ridding us of him.
Worse, had Bush said that the U.S. would
examine the slant drilling that Kuwait was acused
of doing, and was Saddam's stated reason for
the invasion, Saddam said he would withdraw. This happened in the late '70's, and Saddam DID withdraw. There was no need for the war in
the first place.
The eventual fallout? The attacks on the WTC,
and more U.S. military adventurism. Sad.
Your grasp of international events and U.S.
involvement in them is shockingly incomplete.
BTW, if anybody has information on when/how/by whom this was legislated (the food labels), I'd love to read more about it
Alas, I don't have any information about food labels
law. I do know of other law that has similar
features.
In Ontario, Canada, we have a set of business safety regulations that are written in a curious way. The
Occupational Health and Safety Act
specifies that safety is the business of a joint
employer/employee committee (Joint Health and Safety Committee - JHSC). This committee MUST
safeguard all employees, and are personally responsible (to the tune of $25000/ infraction)
if they know of a safety problem and fail to correct it.
The committee's findings have the force of law, and
if the decisions of the committee are ignored, the
Ministry of Labour can be contact, who will examine
the decision, and fine the company $250000 per
infraction. Further, a trained member of the JHSC,
either employer or employee, can call a halt to work,
and even an evacuation, if they have found a condition that endangers employees.
Without getting into some of the protections placed into the law, the idea is to both empower the people of the business (both employee and employer) with tools to bring about safety improvements, and to place responsibilities such that every person in a company is responsible for safety. All while not imposing safety regulations that may make no sense,
or could actually themselves be unsafe.
And finally, no-one can say, 'Well, we followed regulations!', because if they knew about a safety
issue and did nothing to correct it, they already have violated the regulations!
This approach would be a good one to apply to other areas of law, especially things like Accounting, where not knowing if there is a problem isn't a shield from prosecution, as, you are REQUIRED by law to know, and if you don't, you have already been derelict in your duties and are exposed to the full brunt of legal recourse, including criminal charges.
I would have sent this directly to the orig poster, but, I couldn't find a way to do this
Considering the fact that the US spends half of it's national budget on the military (and thus more than the next 16 nations combinied), it would be difficult.
Ah, there's the rub. To continue they need money. And with the U.S. Government military spending
reaching new peaks, all it takes is those who
own the debt to say, ''no more money'' to end
the dominance. And that day is approaching,
and with GWBush, sooner every day.
Mathematics, whether you like it or not, is really a beautiful and elegant subject that very few truly understand.
Worse, there are those who believe that if there is
difference between the mathematical model and
experimental data, the experiment is wrong.
Now, there are cases where an experiment is
flawed, or, in the case of measuring things like
the mass of the neutrino, the value is so small,
experiments have grand difficulty getting any
accuracy, but, overall, REALITY is real, not
someones mathematics. Mathematics is a
model, a contrived one at that. No real surprise
that there are elegant things to be found.
I have this argument with a physicist friend of mine
about once a year. He always presumes the
math is right. He is usually proven wrong
months later by yet another discovery.
Every democracy has been established through war. Tyrants don't value the lives of their people enough to willingly give up power to avoid killing them. Tyrants didn't avoid killing people while in power, so why should they avoid killing them when losing power?
India and Canada are two countries that were established as independent without bloodshed.
Both to this day are democracies.
When American colonists had enough of British sanctions, we overthrew them. Iraqis who failed to overthrow Saddam have only Saddam and their own cowardice to blame for their poverty.
And if Britain hadn't been involved in a very expensive war with France, they would have come and kicked American ass across the continent.
I would suggest reading 'A People's History of United States', by Howard Zinn for a less naive
view of U.S. history.
but success on the second count was in the hands of the Iraqi people, who proved themselves too cowardly for the task. A sabateur or suicide bomber should have taken out Saddam long ago.
And sir, why didn't you do it, if it was SO easy.
Americans didn't elect George W. Bush, the Supreme Court did, by a vote of 5 to 4. While in
power, Mr. Bush has significantly restricted constitutional rights, has ignored corporate malfeasance (being tainted himself), and has
decided that pre-emptive war against anyone he
considers a threat to be okay.
In short, George W. Bush is acting like a tyrant. His attacking Iraq on razor thin excuses about
their threat to U.S. security shows his belligerence.
Can you imagine trying to take him out, with all the personal security surrounding him?
Until you are actually under a truly oppressive regime, perhaps you should hold your comments, or get off your ass and take out the tyrant yourself.
Until you are willing yourself to take out Saddam or the next tyrant to come along, your words ring with hollow emptiness.
Ironically, the reason most companies will opt for closed source solutions is because they have large companies behind them: Microsoft, Sun, IBM. Although this gives the illusion of having someone to hold responsible, the EULA usually contains a clause relinquishing the vendor of any real responsibility or culpability.
Aha! Has anyone taken these proprietary software companies to task for their making 'solid' software and then denying their 'solid' software in a EULA that says, 'We won't be responsible for anything!'?
I know because in 1993-6, I was working for
MKS of MKS Toolkit fame and we compiled
the Toolkit on all 4 platforms. By 1996, we
were back to doing mostly x86, because of
platform support withdrawal. (although I
believe they were still making it on all 4
platforms when I left.)
Microsoft learned plenty about poor cross-platform
compatibility when they wrote OS/2, and didn't make
the same mistakes with Windows. Of course, they made others instead:-).
Slashdot Mirror
...
"If the richest man in the world doesn't have the guts to come over and play me, I'm certainly not going to give him my autograph".
Bill Gates certainly wasn't the richest man in the world back then. This is a good sounding story, nothing more.
Please be aware that I REALLY DISLIKE Mr. Gates and his companies dirty tactics as much as I dislike U.S. foreign policy. Which is to say about as much as is possible. This story is just a story.
Shannon Mann
There are no toilets in ST. They have transporter devices implanted in their intestines and bladder to eliminate the need.
Sheesh!
Shannon Mann
Assigns and volume names worked together in ways that simbolic links just can't.
If a program is looking for volume Room222: you could with an assign point it at dh0:room111 or df0:room333. This blows symbolic links right out of the water, because the volume names were symbolics, not a part of the filesystem. Assigns allowed you to do the same as windows links and Unix symlinks, AND MORE.
I miss that. I want Linux to have that.
Shannon MannSorry, but this is utter nonsense. I can in any install I have ever done comment out the bit that includes something and then push the produce CD button and, presto, in minutes a new version of the product.
Given MS attempts to tie all its bits into their OS, it may take them a bit to disentangle it, but, once done, it never has to be done again. Amortise this action over all units sold and the increase in costs is 0.
Shannon Mann
If you want disproof of this, look at the various specs for RTF. Every 18 months or so, they introduce an incompatability, which slowly forces people to upgrade to newer versions of their office software, and breaks for a while other vendor's access to MS Office files.
Backwards compatability isn't their major concern. Market control is.
When backward compatability interferes with market control, it goes....
Shannon Mann
I suspect you are not taking into effect that the field drops with the square of the distance. Roughly, there should be nothing closer than about 7 metres. I've probably made a 100 erroneous assumptions, but, 7 metres (23 feet) sounds about right....
Shannon Mann
I got bit by this a while back. We had an old word file from backup that we needed and Office XP corrupted it beyond use. We finally found an old paper copy from the archives, and re-entered it into Office XP, so a recent copy could be kept.
Presuming that Microsoft will not break their own compatability is a fallacy.
Shannon Mann
At the same time, GPS won't tell the cops the context. It won't tell them that a hostile man with a gun was in the car behind you. It won't tell them that your wife is having a baby. It won't tell them that your spedometer's busted.
I'm not really sure where I stand there. Like I said, due process plays a huge part in this. For example, if tickets are automatically doled out for speeding, do you have a strong method for appeal? Does it only go off if you're going ridiculously fast? Does it only happen in certain areas such as school crossings? I think there's middle ground, especially when the cost of that freedom is the saving of human life.
The real problem is when technology fails and falsely acuses you of a crime you did not commit. If the sensor that detects your speed has a momentary glitch (say the clock slows down for a short while), it may determine that you were doing twice or more than the speed limit for a few seconds. We know that cars can't accelerate that fast, and can't slow down that fast. But the machine might not care and sent an all-points bulletin.
And if it wrongly detects you were doing 150 MPH in a school district and a child was killed in a hit and run at about the same time and near that location, you can bet the police will want your butt pretty bad - you just murdered a child!
You can also imagine that they will take extraordinary measures to make certain you won't get away - given your preference for speed, who would blame them?
Shannon Mann
Given the exceptional nature of patents--extending a government enforced monopoly on ideas and entire markets for decades--one should perhaps even demand that the person defending a patent should provide "clear and convincing evidence" that the patent is valid.
The problem becomes a big player hounding a small player (a holder with a valid patent) into non-existence through litigation, with each challenge forcing the holder to prove its case time and again.
As this is already a problem, your suggestion will only exacerbate an existing problem.
Improving the quality of the patents, reducing the costs of a valid challenge to a bad patent, and reducing the time of a patent will improve things without adding more to the lawyers pockets, which accomplishes nothing in the long term (aside from improved lawyer employment statistics).
Shannon Mann
The strange thing is, I am always surprised at the position Americans take on these issues.
The SI units are more standardized because they are uniformly recognized by most of the world. U.S. or more commonly Imperial measures were mostly from the British Empire. Alas, there were literally thousands of different measures, all with hideously complicated conversions betwixt each.
SI swept aside the complications with some simple suggestions:
Temperature: Choose 0 as the freezing point of water and 100 as the boiling point - voila (sic), a fixed scale with meaningful weather connections (at 0, expect snow).
Mass is directly related to the atomic number of a given element (with Avogadro's number thrown in).
Liquid measure:
1 gram of water == 1 cubic centimetre == 1 milliliter
1000 milliliters of water == 1 liter of water == 1 kilogram
Try doing those kinds of translations with Imperial measures. Please note: a U.S. gallon != an Imperial gallon (USG = 3.78l, ImperialG = 4.5l - the fluid ounce size differs *SIGH*).
The world uses SI. Even if the French abandoned 'their' units, the rest of us wouldn't. SI is MORE standard than American equivalents BECAUSE everyone is using them (including higher learning in the U.S.).
So, it has nothing to do with the three lawsuits by godaddy, netster and their ilk?
Actually, there is good legal sense to NOT stop doing something, because stopping can be seen as an admission of guilt.
Shannon Mann
I can.
It was Microsoft when they were found to be guilty of being a Monopoly and then getting off scot-free.
The real reason for the Microsoft 'investment' in SCO is to soften people towards MS. There is a new company in town to hate.
That's my conspiracy story, and I am sticking to it.
Shannon Mann
I was recently thrown on Windows XP for the first time. I was surprised at the idiosyncratic differences between it and previous versions of windows.
Linux isn't the only one to suffer from CHI issues, although consistency WITHIN a framework is still a critical issue on Linux.
Shannon Mann
I think it clear by now that SCO believes that Linux IS THEIRS. I think all here know this not to be true.
How could SCO hold this opinion? I think by believing that the portions of the source that is in their source tree (by whatever means) and in anyway similar in the Linux tree means that their copyrights give them rights. Either the GPL is meaningless (because of the supposed copyright violations) or that the GPL protects them wherever the copyright violations don't.
Now, a question. Is this true? Does GPL protect them where their own (supposed) copyright doesn't?
I guess to the point, the GPL doesn't replace or interfere with a person's copyright, does it? If it doesn't, and I believe it doesn't, does this not mean that if SCO believes it can ignore the GPL, they MUST get copyrights from each and every individual author? And if they don't, aren't they guilty of the very same copyright violations they accuse others of doing?
I think it is a matter of atomicity. How small a change can be covered under copyright? The source to Linux is a joint collaboration of thousands of authors, with the potential for any single source file to be authored by dozens or more authors. How does copyright handle collections from multiple authors?
Another question of atomicity: Is the GPL an all-or-nothing license? Or will it support the supposed SCO idea, where what is theirs is theirs and what is not theirs is theirs by the GPL? Or, as I hope, if you violate the GPL anywhere, it no longer provides you with rights at all, and the nightmare situation (for SCO) where you must get each author's copyright permission separately.
If this is the case, where the GPL either covers you or it doesn't, with atomicity at the very largest level, then can we get a cease and desist order against SCO about saying that Linux is anything but the community's property?
And further, that unless they comply with the GPL, and so be covered under the rights granted therein, or get each copyright holder's permission to use their changes, that they cease-and-desist shipping any parts of Linux that they have not received copyright permissions to ship.
I was going to ask the FSF, or someone who might understand the GPL better than I, about how the GPL works legally with the above in mind. However, this issue is bigger than just the GPL, because if the GPL isn't upheld, then EACH author's copyrights are being violated, which is an issue for the larger community.
If the above is true, who can we get to slap these cease-and-desist orders on SCO?
Tired of the SCO quagmire....
Shannon Mann
"... The reason the wealthiest Americans saw their share of total income rise is that they gained income at a faster pace than did the middle class and the poor. But Reaganomics did create a rising tide that lifted nearly all boats." [link].
Under Reagan, every income group saw their income grow. Stop distoring the facts and spreading misinformation please.
Once you factor in inflation, my statement is true. The dollar amounts did rise. But not in pace with inflation. The rich did indeed get richer, the poor poorer.
> The eventual fallout? The attacks on the WTC, and more U.S. military adventurism. Sad.
Oh, come on. You can trace everything back further and further until it is absurd. We armed Iraq because we were against Iran, because Iran held our citizens hostages, because... blah blah. The reason for the attacks on WTC was because some radical suicide bombers decided to commit a terrorist act. You can say it's because of our actions involved in Iraq. I tend to believe it has more to do with our support for Israel. The fact is, international events are way too complicated to say that "the cause of 9/11" is a specific act or acts committed by Bush Sr. or the CIA. It's a lot more complicated than that.
More often then not, it is actually simpler. Bush Sr. assisted in the arming of Iraq. He was connected to Saddam in ways no other president can say. Three days before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Iraq asked the U.S. if this was okay, and were told that this didn't impact U.S. interests. Iraq attacked. Days later, the U.S. reacted as if they didn't know this was going to happen, and demanded that Iraq retreat unconditionally. Iraq said they would if there was to be an investigation of Kuwaiti angle drilling. The U.S. responded that there would be no conditions for withdrawl. Hence the war.
Bush Sr. did this to a supposed friend. He needed only say yes, we will investigate, and no war was needed. Iraq, after all, was our friend.
What is worse is that Saddam held a non-muslim government that was (originally) friendly to the U.S. The U.S. has eliminated their government, which will almost guaranteed be replaced by a muslim government likely hostile toward the U.S. behaviour in Isreal.
Thanks, Bushes. Anything else you would like to mangle while in your single terms of office?
Your grasp of international events and U.S. involvement in them is shockingly incomplete.
It's not incomplete, it's just not as biased as yours.
I see. And because I point out the foolishness of a Presidents actions, I am biased. How do you see this as yourself NOT being biased? Do you think your pointing out that Clinton was a liar is news? Or is your pointing out just an apologist attack against a non-Republican?
I do see the big picture. And it doesn't stop with one action, but two hundred years of continued horrible behaviour upon the shoulders of successive U.S. governments and their foreign policies, policies that dictate to other nations what they WILL and WILL NOT do. I would suggest Howard Zinn's 'A Peoples History of United States' for depth.
It is this attitude of do-what-we-tell-you-or-else that has spawned the Al Queda response, not a single action. They've decided to stop the U.S. from continuing their meddling. They are wrong that they will have a lasting effect. The U.S. will fail, but, due to their own internal silliness, rather than from without.
I would have taken this discussion offline if I knew how *SIGH*.
Shannon Mann
I think the problem most people have with Clinton is that he was kind of a joke and a blatant liar.
Clinton lied about having an affair. Bush Jr. lied about why he was going to war with Iraq. Guess which one I ACTUALLY care about?
Nixon might have been impeached, but he improved relations with China.
Nixon was clearly criminal. This is okay? Because he warmed relations with a foreign power?
Reagan is criticized, but he fixed the economy that Carter left him and won the cold war.
The Russians stopped playing the Cold War game because the could no longer afford to play. This wasn't Reagan's doing. He happened to be asleep in the White House at the time nothing more. And in hindsight, it is a stretch to say that Reagan was meaningfully in control of the White House - does any one remember the Iran-Contra affair? Either Reagan was criminal, or, he had no meaningful control over his White House. Choose the alternative....
What is worse, under Reagan, the rich grew by 3%, while the middle class shrunk by 20%. All hail voodoo economics. You could even blame Black Monday on him, but, that suggests a level of competence that is hard to attribute to the man.
Bush Sr. led one of the most unified coalitions to kick Iraq out of Kuwait.
It always surprises me that people are oblivious to the fact that Bush Sr. was in control of the CIA when they were ferreting weapons Saddams way. He is as much responsible for the creation of this monster as he was supposed to be for ridding us of him.
Worse, had Bush said that the U.S. would examine the slant drilling that Kuwait was acused of doing, and was Saddam's stated reason for the invasion, Saddam said he would withdraw. This happened in the late '70's, and Saddam DID withdraw. There was no need for the war in the first place.
The eventual fallout? The attacks on the WTC, and more U.S. military adventurism. Sad.
Your grasp of international events and U.S. involvement in them is shockingly incomplete.
Shannon Mann
Instead of being free market, laisez-faire capitalists
Laisez-faire capitalism isn't about government intervention producing a monopoly. Patents are.
Shannon Mann
Alas, I don't have any information about food labels law. I do know of other law that has similar features.
In Ontario, Canada, we have a set of business safety regulations that are written in a curious way. The Occupational Health and Safety Act specifies that safety is the business of a joint employer/employee committee (Joint Health and Safety Committee - JHSC). This committee MUST safeguard all employees, and are personally responsible (to the tune of $25000/ infraction) if they know of a safety problem and fail to correct it.
The committee's findings have the force of law, and if the decisions of the committee are ignored, the Ministry of Labour can be contact, who will examine the decision, and fine the company $250000 per infraction. Further, a trained member of the JHSC, either employer or employee, can call a halt to work, and even an evacuation, if they have found a condition that endangers employees.
Without getting into some of the protections placed into the law, the idea is to both empower the people of the business (both employee and employer) with tools to bring about safety improvements, and to place responsibilities such that every person in a company is responsible for safety. All while not imposing safety regulations that may make no sense, or could actually themselves be unsafe.
And finally, no-one can say, 'Well, we followed regulations!', because if they knew about a safety issue and did nothing to correct it, they already have violated the regulations!
This approach would be a good one to apply to other areas of law, especially things like Accounting, where not knowing if there is a problem isn't a shield from prosecution, as, you are REQUIRED by law to know, and if you don't, you have already been derelict in your duties and are exposed to the full brunt of legal recourse, including criminal charges.
I would have sent this directly to the orig poster, but, I couldn't find a way to do this
Shannon Mann
Ah, there's the rub. To continue they need money. And with the U.S. Government military spending reaching new peaks, all it takes is those who own the debt to say, ''no more money'' to end the dominance. And that day is approaching, and with GWBush, sooner every day.
And then, may the killing come to an end....
Shannon Mann
Worse, there are those who believe that if there is difference between the mathematical model and experimental data, the experiment is wrong.
Now, there are cases where an experiment is flawed, or, in the case of measuring things like the mass of the neutrino, the value is so small, experiments have grand difficulty getting any accuracy, but, overall, REALITY is real, not someones mathematics. Mathematics is a model, a contrived one at that. No real surprise that there are elegant things to be found.
I have this argument with a physicist friend of mine about once a year. He always presumes the math is right. He is usually proven wrong months later by yet another discovery.
Sigh.
Shannon Mann.
India and Canada are two countries that were established as independent without bloodshed. Both to this day are democracies.
When American colonists had enough of British sanctions, we overthrew them. Iraqis who failed to overthrow Saddam have only Saddam and their own cowardice to blame for their poverty.
And if Britain hadn't been involved in a very expensive war with France, they would have come and kicked American ass across the continent. I would suggest reading 'A People's History of United States', by Howard Zinn for a less naive view of U.S. history.
but success on the second count was in the hands of the Iraqi people, who proved themselves too cowardly for the task. A sabateur or suicide bomber should have taken out Saddam long ago.
And sir, why didn't you do it, if it was SO easy.
Americans didn't elect George W. Bush, the Supreme Court did, by a vote of 5 to 4. While in power, Mr. Bush has significantly restricted constitutional rights, has ignored corporate malfeasance (being tainted himself), and has decided that pre-emptive war against anyone he considers a threat to be okay.
In short, George W. Bush is acting like a tyrant. His attacking Iraq on razor thin excuses about their threat to U.S. security shows his belligerence. Can you imagine trying to take him out, with all the personal security surrounding him?
Until you are actually under a truly oppressive regime, perhaps you should hold your comments, or get off your ass and take out the tyrant yourself. Until you are willing yourself to take out Saddam or the next tyrant to come along, your words ring with hollow emptiness.
A very sad Canadian.
Ironically, the reason most companies will opt for closed source solutions is because they have large companies behind them: Microsoft, Sun, IBM. Although this gives the illusion of having someone to hold responsible, the EULA usually contains a clause relinquishing the vendor of any real responsibility or culpability.
Aha! Has anyone taken these proprietary software companies to task for their making 'solid' software and then denying their 'solid' software in a EULA that says, 'We won't be responsible for anything!'?
> And it's been 30 years since then... and we're already 30% of the way back!
This isn't funny. Its sad.
Shannon Mann
I know because in 1993-6, I was working for MKS of MKS Toolkit fame and we compiled the Toolkit on all 4 platforms. By 1996, we were back to doing mostly x86, because of platform support withdrawal. (although I believe they were still making it on all 4 platforms when I left.)
Microsoft learned plenty about poor cross-platform compatibility when they wrote OS/2, and didn't make the same mistakes with Windows. Of course, they made others instead :-).
Mary Stewart, best narritive writing I've read:
The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment - this is the story of Camelot as told through Merlins eyes.
Wayland Drew:
The Erthring Cycle - a trilogy about the recovery of earth after catastrophic global collapse.
I prefer a series that is well-written in a consistent style.