There are more laws today, because governments have a tendency to pass laws at a faster rate than they repeal them. However, the vast majority of recent legislation deals with criminal rather than civil law. I am not aware of, and a twenty minute skim through the HMSO website doesn't show, any substantial changes in the scope of civil torts. If you wish to make a case for the government encouraging civil lawsuits, please provide evidence.
I disagree in part. I think it is partly a cultural thing - whenever something goes wrong, someone must be to blame, and they should be sued. I'm disturbed by the way that culture has been spreading to the UK over the past few years.
Look on the bright side: at least you can cross when there are no cars around. I daily cycle through a set of traffic lights whose detector doesn't detect cyclists unless they wave at it a couple of metres before the stop line. Even then it doesn't always detect me, so I'm sitting at a red light. And before you suggest jumping it, there are buildings on the left preventing me from seeing whether a car is about to go through the green.
There are quite a few TLDs already, because of all the country ones. Thing is, is you want to advertise your site on radio/TV/billboards, you don't want people to struggle to remember the TLD.
I worked it out, on the basis that Wait List Service was the only sequence of three words beginning with capitalised WLS in the article/description/whatever-you-call-it.
I don't know what you consider to be using Linux effectively, but for a while I switched to using it by default at home: I found a desktop in a skip, so I installed RH on it, spent a weekend moving ethernet cards around in order to set it up as a firewall and router, and set up a KVM switch to share IO with my Windows box. Initially I'd boot up Windows when I needed it, but it got that I preferred to just go into Linux because the router was always on.
Config utilities are hardly the only innovation of OS X. A more realistic objection to them releasing said utils is that they're likely to be written using Cocoa (I think - or is Carbon the more recent one?), so it might take a bit of work to get them working with other widgets.
I'm not sure in what way that's a reply to my question. I was looking at "impart information and ideas through any media" and pointing out that "media" is vague. Your reply is "All speech is protected", but my question is "What is speech?" - and I note it's a question the U.S. Courts have been discussing a bit recently.
However, since you raise influencing actions, I suppose I could extend the question to also ask "When is speech action?" You're quite right to say that "I was influenced by Fred" isn't a defence, but if Fred intended to influence you, is he not guilty with you? Or are e.g. mafia dons immune from prosecution because others carry out the dirty work? Shouldn't conspiracy to commit an offence be an offence?
I presume that he's deliberately refrained from looking at the Swing code. I have looked at quite a bit of it, and it seems to be the worst implemented part of the standard libraries. Far better if GNU write their own.
Why does one have to chose the platform java with the language java?
I think you mean that the other way round - there's nothing in principle stopping you from writing a Java-to-C++ source-to-source compiler. (Note: I don't know enough about how C++ handles method dispatch to comment on how easy it would be).
I think it basically comes down to design intentions. The Oak project was intended to provide WORA with a sandbox model to reassure people that it was safe to run applets. The CLR, OTOH, was designed to allow people who already knew any VS language to write for.NET. I don't know quite what that means in terms of sandboxing, but I haven't noticed MS release an applet-style plugin.
As far as getting C/C++ to run on a JVM is concerned, I think someone with enough dedication and compiler skills could probably write a compiler which got most of it to run. Most pointer idioms can be rewritten, autogenerated mixins can simulate MI. Variant fields in structs could be tricky, although I think they could be hacked up. The question, though, is why people would want to run C++ on a JVM. Surely the reason for using C++ is obsession with speed or a desire to do really low-level stuff? If you're obsessed with speed, you should take to heart the mantra "Don't optimise. (For experts) Don't optimise yet", and if you want low-level stuff then you don't want a VM in your way.
If you think unsafe constructs are nice "for performance reasons", then use C#. The Java philosophy isn't to sacrifice everything at the altar of performance.
Incidentally, I'm intrigued by your comments about compilers in 1954. Could you provide more details?
How does one interpret said article, though? I'm fairly sure it's not intended to give me the right to use "I'm a performance artist, and I'm communicating the idea that murder shocks society" as a defence against murder.
As near as I can tell most (all?) morals are based on an appeal to authority.
The main groups of ethical theories are authoritarian, intuitionist, egoist, utilitarian, and deontological. They appeal respectively to authority, intuition, personal gain, community good and, hmm, self-consistency I suppose (anyone else want to try summarising Kantian ethics in one word?).
There are two ways of interpreting that, and I think only one is correct. There's probably no country which hates France more than the UK hates France, but the UK probably hates the US more than the UK hates France.
You say that Britain doesn't need a constitution, but how does it know what powers the government has, and what procedures it must take to change the system? I'm thinking in particular about Tony Blair removing the House of Lords by himself. Where does it say he had the power to do so? If he can do that, can he remove the House of Commons? Throw the Royals out? The equivalent in America would require a constitutional convention and ratification by the states, so having a prime minister make arbritary changes like that seems frightening. Not that the House of Lords seemed like a good idea to begin with, but still...
The grandparent didn't actually say that Britain doesn't need a constitution. Also, the fact that it doesn't have a written one doesn't mean there isn't one - just that it is scattered across multiple documents and traditions.
As for Tony Blair removing the House of Lords by himself - if he could do so, he would have done long ago. As it is, he's negotiating with the other main parties to try to find a solution to the half-implemented "reforms" which he can get passed by both Houses of Parliament. Technically, he can get by without the approval of the House of Lords, using the Parliament Act of 1910, but to do so takes years of getting his bill passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords. (There is also a technical requirement for Royal Assent, although should the Queen fail to give assent to a bill passed by both Houses it would provoke a constitional crisis).
As to whether the House of Lords was "a good idea to begin with" - I can't comment on its origins, but I know I'm against the current government's efforts to "reform" it, which I see as gerrymandering.
I'm also curious - what is it about Apples which makes them "the biggest pieces of junk" your friend has ever seen?
I agree that they're expensive, although I'm not sure what you mean about a dismal software selection - what precisely do you want which you can't get? Once or twice, sure, I've had to use Fink to download the source for a project and build it, but in general I've been able to find everything I need. I don't play games much - is that what you're complaining about?
Anyway, to answer your question, the thing Apple get right is UI. OS X has the nicest UI of any OS I've used. Apples have also traditionally been used by newspapers because they had better DP software than Wintels.
That's what I thought, too, until I looked at a Tesco receipt. It says
Tesco Card Services Ltd. has handled this Transaction for you for a fee of 2.5% included In the cost of your shopping
So everyone pays for debit card usage, whether they use a debit card or not.
(If your point was that in the US the price of the goods includes a surchange for debit card fees, and there's an additional charge for cashback, then I apologise).
I use Fire as my IM client. If someone wants to go on my whitelist, they have to use a non-IM method to communicate that fact to me. Some people might not like that, but I'm quite happy with it.
Slashdot Mirror
You think people with American accents fit in in England?
Take a grape, cut it almost in half, place it on an old plate with the cut faces flat, and microwave.
I was wondering what the building was, because I don't recognise it as part of the "Cambridge University campus" (as if there were such a thing).
There are more laws today, because governments have a tendency to pass laws at a faster rate than they repeal them. However, the vast majority of recent legislation deals with criminal rather than civil law. I am not aware of, and a twenty minute skim through the HMSO website doesn't show, any substantial changes in the scope of civil torts. If you wish to make a case for the government encouraging civil lawsuits, please provide evidence.
I disagree in part. I think it is partly a cultural thing - whenever something goes wrong, someone must be to blame, and they should be sued. I'm disturbed by the way that culture has been spreading to the UK over the past few years.
If the web were truly democratic, people would have voted to outlaw popups by now.
If you go to Preferences | Comments you can give a +6 bonus to interesting and informative posts.
"The purpose of terrorism is to terrorise".
Look on the bright side: at least you can cross when there are no cars around. I daily cycle through a set of traffic lights whose detector doesn't detect cyclists unless they wave at it a couple of metres before the stop line. Even then it doesn't always detect me, so I'm sitting at a red light. And before you suggest jumping it, there are buildings on the left preventing me from seeing whether a car is about to go through the green.
There are quite a few TLDs already, because of all the country ones. Thing is, is you want to advertise your site on radio/TV/billboards, you don't want people to struggle to remember the TLD.
I worked it out, on the basis that Wait List Service was the only sequence of three words beginning with capitalised WLS in the article/description/whatever-you-call-it.
I don't know what you consider to be using Linux effectively, but for a while I switched to using it by default at home: I found a desktop in a skip, so I installed RH on it, spent a weekend moving ethernet cards around in order to set it up as a firewall and router, and set up a KVM switch to share IO with my Windows box. Initially I'd boot up Windows when I needed it, but it got that I preferred to just go into Linux because the router was always on.
Config utilities are hardly the only innovation of OS X. A more realistic objection to them releasing said utils is that they're likely to be written using Cocoa (I think - or is Carbon the more recent one?), so it might take a bit of work to get them working with other widgets.
However, since you raise influencing actions, I suppose I could extend the question to also ask "When is speech action?" You're quite right to say that "I was influenced by Fred" isn't a defence, but if Fred intended to influence you, is he not guilty with you? Or are e.g. mafia dons immune from prosecution because others carry out the dirty work? Shouldn't conspiracy to commit an offence be an offence?
SubEthaEdit and Terminal.
I presume that he's deliberately refrained from looking at the Swing code. I have looked at quite a bit of it, and it seems to be the worst implemented part of the standard libraries. Far better if GNU write their own.
I think it basically comes down to design intentions. The Oak project was intended to provide WORA with a sandbox model to reassure people that it was safe to run applets. The CLR, OTOH, was designed to allow people who already knew any VS language to write for .NET. I don't know quite what that means in terms of sandboxing, but I haven't noticed MS release an applet-style plugin.
As far as getting C/C++ to run on a JVM is concerned, I think someone with enough dedication and compiler skills could probably write a compiler which got most of it to run. Most pointer idioms can be rewritten, autogenerated mixins can simulate MI. Variant fields in structs could be tricky, although I think they could be hacked up. The question, though, is why people would want to run C++ on a JVM. Surely the reason for using C++ is obsession with speed or a desire to do really low-level stuff? If you're obsessed with speed, you should take to heart the mantra "Don't optimise. (For experts) Don't optimise yet", and if you want low-level stuff then you don't want a VM in your way.
If you think unsafe constructs are nice "for performance reasons", then use C#. The Java philosophy isn't to sacrifice everything at the altar of performance. Incidentally, I'm intrigued by your comments about compilers in 1954. Could you provide more details?
How does one interpret said article, though? I'm fairly sure it's not intended to give me the right to use "I'm a performance artist, and I'm communicating the idea that murder shocks society" as a defence against murder.
There are two ways of interpreting that, and I think only one is correct. There's probably no country which hates France more than the UK hates France, but the UK probably hates the US more than the UK hates France.
As for Tony Blair removing the House of Lords by himself - if he could do so, he would have done long ago. As it is, he's negotiating with the other main parties to try to find a solution to the half-implemented "reforms" which he can get passed by both Houses of Parliament. Technically, he can get by without the approval of the House of Lords, using the Parliament Act of 1910, but to do so takes years of getting his bill passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords. (There is also a technical requirement for Royal Assent, although should the Queen fail to give assent to a bill passed by both Houses it would provoke a constitional crisis).
As to whether the House of Lords was "a good idea to begin with" - I can't comment on its origins, but I know I'm against the current government's efforts to "reform" it, which I see as gerrymandering.
I agree that they're expensive, although I'm not sure what you mean about a dismal software selection - what precisely do you want which you can't get? Once or twice, sure, I've had to use Fink to download the source for a project and build it, but in general I've been able to find everything I need. I don't play games much - is that what you're complaining about?
Anyway, to answer your question, the thing Apple get right is UI. OS X has the nicest UI of any OS I've used. Apples have also traditionally been used by newspapers because they had better DP software than Wintels.
(If your point was that in the US the price of the goods includes a surchange for debit card fees, and there's an additional charge for cashback, then I apologise).
I use Fire as my IM client. If someone wants to go on my whitelist, they have to use a non-IM method to communicate that fact to me. Some people might not like that, but I'm quite happy with it.