So would it be legal, in Spain, for an organization to buy 1 million blank DVDs and make copies of movies and books onto those DVDs, so long as they gave the DVDs away?
What does it infringe on? If your statement is true, can you explain or provide links?
My rendering of the song isn't the same as any copyrighted performance. So it can't be violating the copyrights of the recordings. Does it violate the copyright of the sheet music? If so, that seems strange: Running a program doesn't infringe on the copyright of the source code. Following the instructions for building something doesn't infringe on the copyright of the instructions. Does reading a book or a poem infringe on the copyright of the book? What if I read it aloud? One could argue that my reading of the book is a verbatim copy, but that wouldn't apply to a song.
You can disable autorun without disabling autoplay, which is what asks the user what to do. And you can adjust the contents of the autoplay window so that the option to run programs on the disk isn't there.
Of course there still hasn't been a study that showed any effects in humans.
Of course there isn't! It causes cancer in rats as well damages the endocrine system. Why the heck would you feed it to humans intentionally? "Dr. Smith, it killed the rats. Do you think we are ready for human studies now?"
All we do in humans is correlation studies and things like this one. And those all show that it probably does to us what it does to the rats. That's good enough for me.
the study didn't address the fact that the half life of BPA is about a day.
The half-life argument sounds like the dosage fallacy. Sometimes a manufacturer says "but there's only 1 zilligram of chemical XYZ in there!" But that dosage has no meaning without context. 1 zilligram of the right material can cause cancer or death.
I have to hope that the Slashdot summary is not how they worded it to individuals. I read the summary and thought "duh, in the first example the car gets double the gas mileage. In the second example, it was not quite double - 66 would be double. So the first one was a bigger improvement." But then I knew something had to be wrong with the obvious intuitive thinking, so I spent 5 minutes on paper making sure I canceled my units right.
And the obvious answer was it!
Looking at the article...
proved that consumers thought fuel consumption was cut at an even rate as mileage increased.
It is! Doubling the gas mileage saves half the gas! I'm don't see the logic hole! What am I missing?
So in 80+ years of research the best they can come up with is "There may be an issue with Bisphenol-A"
Why is that not enough? Do you want them to force feed the stuff to a bunch of people for 30 years and compare them to the general population? Unfortunately, that is just about the only way to know for sure. Will you volunteer to be one of the people in that study? And when it is done, promise not to sue them for turning you into an obese breast-cancer infected human with no reproductive system left.
BPA is a leeches into your body at low levels over your entire lifetime. It is really hard to tell what that does. It's easy to give someone a 500% overdose and say "look, it killed them!" but how do you definitely determine what it does when nearly everyone is ingesting it, and over a very long period of time? These are called lifelong studies, and the variables are darned tough to control. The fact that there is any correlation at all is enough to say "stop putting this into your body now." Especially since the stuff that leeches BPA is just a cheaper way to manufacture the bottles. Pretty soon, nobody will remember those old stinky smelly bottles that gave your food & water a plastic taste. And we will never kno how much better off we are. I'm fine with that.
The fact that you can taste the plastic container in the food
This has always baffled me. As a kid I remember the plasticy taste from our plastic drink cups. It was especially noticeable if it was a closed container. You don't need a scientist to tell you it is leeching into the water when you can taste it. I don't understand why that didn't make people think "wait... it tastes like plastic... doesn't that mean that there is plastic leeching in the water? Is this possibly bad for me?"
I'm sorry this was modded funny, because that is absolutely the actual reason. I am not geeky enough to memorize all the interviews and quips Steve Jobs has made, but he has basically said this is the cause.
Apple wants the iPhone to look like a magical device that just works - no obvious buttons, switches, speakers, seams, etc. Apple's reputation is built on this. If Steve could convince everyone that changing the speaker volume is a bad idea, and that he could pick the right volume level for everyone - he would do it, just to eliminate another physical complication from the device.
Or, if there was a common API like Flash that could compile for this platform. Then if Apple rejected your app, you know your effort is not wasted because it would run on another device.
It no longer makes sense to have WiFi-only apps now that AT&T has metered data usage. AT&T should actually *want* you to use videoconferencing and tethering, because they will make more money off of it.
Still, in my line of work we sit on gates for hours waiting for someone we don't know is actually at his computer to undock his ship. I guess you could call that grinding as well;-)
IRL, I used to fly hang gliders. The problem was the "hang waiting" where you sat on a cliff and stared at the sky for hours, waiting for the wind to turn. It was much like playing Eve: sitting at a gate waiting, like you say. The first few times it was exciting - a real battle, real money at stake. Then... time to go to bed. It's 3am and I just wasted my evening for nothing.
These would be fun to watch if they had decent announcers. They are just saying "Team A is doing a lot of damage to Team B's (insert ship name)" and stuff like that. Even someone who has never played the game could look at the screen and tell you that. I wouldn't listen to a baseball announcer who just said "It's the 3rd inning, and the guy in the middle is throwing a ball at someone holding a bat. Look! He hit it! Now the scoreboard shows Team A scored."
Instead, they need to be informed of the loadouts ahead of time so they can say "Team A is using speed tanking to prevent missile damage by the (insert ship type here). This loadout is weak against smart bombs but works great against Team B's choice of long range missile damage."
I haven't played in years, and it is hard to make the action of a bunch of icons interesting without someone giving relevant background. It's too bad: the game is so highly tactical it really would add a lot of value to have people who know what they are talking about.
So many people equate Flash with video and silly animations. That is unfortunate because Flash is more than video, and a lot more than the HTML DOM. It is a rich programming environment - it has 2D, 3D, audio, camera support, fonts, animation, and 1000 other things I don't know. Does HTML5 really have all that? Is it already ubiquitous? If so, I'm both impressed and surprised.
I worked at a company who developed a business application using Flash. The first version of the app was AJAX, but it was horrible to maintain and very limiting. So they moved to Flash using Flex. It was a real application. I can't even imagine trying to write a fully-blown app like that in Javascript. I know Google essentially does that with GMail, but they have had to develop a lot of custom tools to make that possible.
Everything you describe seems to apply to Windows, Linux, and just about every other operating system there is. If you look at most games, they have to do serious optimization to handle older video cards, including separate code paths. It sucks, but it isn't Android only. I am confused though as to why there are phones running these older versions. Why is that?
Windows is totally fragmented. It's terrible. Why do people develop for it? Every machine has a different amount of memory, hard drive, resolution, aspect ratio, 3D capabilities. Some have mice, some have trackballs, some have joysticks. Plus, there's all these different versions: XP, Vista, Windows 7. For gamers it is worse: DirectX 9, DirectX 10, OpenGL. Even their flagship product has a mess of versions:.NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 are all found in the wild. Browser versions, service packs...
Why does anyone program for this OS? Because it is fragmented. Fragmentation is a **benefit** - because if it weren't fragmented, the alternative is that each of these computers would have a different operating system. I'd rather have one approximately-the-same, cohesive API across different hardware, than have each device run a different OS. What they are calling "fragmentation" in the Android OS is called choice and diversity on other OSs. This is a good thing, and be happy with it.
The submitter's issue isn't unique. Google provides essentially zero support for the services they offer. Google has found an absolutely *amazing* market. They provide services, and make money on them, but have no obligation to provide support since the person receiving the service isn't actually paying for it. Advertising acts like a magical middleman. There's no obligation to continue the service, no liability for bugs, and they may not even know the customer's identity. It's fantastic for Google. And as long as what Google does mostly works, it's darned good for the end user too.
I'm assume you do your job well in the abuse department. But the reality is that the submitter had no notification, and no recourse. They don't pay for Google groups so Google doesn't have to support them. I have had issues with Google reader for a long while. I posted the issues, with vast technical detail, done all the steps required in the FAQ, and my problem persists. I've posted it on the Google reader help forum, along with other people who periodically post the same thing, and nobody ever replies except to say "yeah, me too!"
This is just a function of Google's business model. Yahoo is the same way, and so are lots of other free services. It is possible that we are moving to an economy where 99.9% of what you need will be free, but if you want support - go to some super-expensive company that provides it. The future will be interesting...
The article argues against C just as hard as it argues against C++. The author seems to want a fully managed environment with a much more capable set of class libraries. Those are valid limitations of C and C++. Java and C# would seem like perfect a fit for him.
Slashdot Mirror
So would it be legal, in Spain, for an organization to buy 1 million blank DVDs and make copies of movies and books onto those DVDs, so long as they gave the DVDs away?
What does it infringe on? If your statement is true, can you explain or provide links?
My rendering of the song isn't the same as any copyrighted performance. So it can't be violating the copyrights of the recordings. Does it violate the copyright of the sheet music? If so, that seems strange: Running a program doesn't infringe on the copyright of the source code. Following the instructions for building something doesn't infringe on the copyright of the instructions. Does reading a book or a poem infringe on the copyright of the book? What if I read it aloud? One could argue that my reading of the book is a verbatim copy, but that wouldn't apply to a song.
I don't get it.
You can disable autorun without disabling autoplay, which is what asks the user what to do. And you can adjust the contents of the autoplay window so that the option to run programs on the disk isn't there.
Of course there still hasn't been a study that showed any effects in humans.
Of course there isn't! It causes cancer in rats as well damages the endocrine system. Why the heck would you feed it to humans intentionally? "Dr. Smith, it killed the rats. Do you think we are ready for human studies now?"
All we do in humans is correlation studies and things like this one. And those all show that it probably does to us what it does to the rats. That's good enough for me.
the study didn't address the fact that the half life of BPA is about a day.
The half-life argument sounds like the dosage fallacy. Sometimes a manufacturer says "but there's only 1 zilligram of chemical XYZ in there!" But that dosage has no meaning without context. 1 zilligram of the right material can cause cancer or death.
I have to hope that the Slashdot summary is not how they worded it to individuals. I read the summary and thought "duh, in the first example the car gets double the gas mileage. In the second example, it was not quite double - 66 would be double. So the first one was a bigger improvement." But then I knew something had to be wrong with the obvious intuitive thinking, so I spent 5 minutes on paper making sure I canceled my units right.
And the obvious answer was it!
Looking at the article...
proved that consumers thought fuel consumption was cut at an even rate as mileage increased.
It is! Doubling the gas mileage saves half the gas! I'm don't see the logic hole! What am I missing?
So in 80+ years of research the best they can come up with is "There may be an issue with Bisphenol-A"
Why is that not enough? Do you want them to force feed the stuff to a bunch of people for 30 years and compare them to the general population? Unfortunately, that is just about the only way to know for sure. Will you volunteer to be one of the people in that study? And when it is done, promise not to sue them for turning you into an obese breast-cancer infected human with no reproductive system left.
BPA is a leeches into your body at low levels over your entire lifetime. It is really hard to tell what that does. It's easy to give someone a 500% overdose and say "look, it killed them!" but how do you definitely determine what it does when nearly everyone is ingesting it, and over a very long period of time? These are called lifelong studies, and the variables are darned tough to control. The fact that there is any correlation at all is enough to say "stop putting this into your body now." Especially since the stuff that leeches BPA is just a cheaper way to manufacture the bottles. Pretty soon, nobody will remember those old stinky smelly bottles that gave your food & water a plastic taste. And we will never kno how much better off we are. I'm fine with that.
If something were really, really bad for you, the evidence would be overwhelming.
What makes you think that?
The fact that you can taste the plastic container in the food
This has always baffled me. As a kid I remember the plasticy taste from our plastic drink cups. It was especially noticeable if it was a closed container. You don't need a scientist to tell you it is leeching into the water when you can taste it. I don't understand why that didn't make people think "wait... it tastes like plastic... doesn't that mean that there is plastic leeching in the water? Is this possibly bad for me?"
It seems like if you want one of those things, you wind-up with them all.
I had to look up Chief Henry Schmit to determine if that was also from a video game or not.
Then AT&T should have incentive to set the limits at just that right point. Not to disable the feature entirely.
I'm sorry this was modded funny, because that is absolutely the actual reason. I am not geeky enough to memorize all the interviews and quips Steve Jobs has made, but he has basically said this is the cause.
Apple wants the iPhone to look like a magical device that just works - no obvious buttons, switches, speakers, seams, etc. Apple's reputation is built on this. If Steve could convince everyone that changing the speaker volume is a bad idea, and that he could pick the right volume level for everyone - he would do it, just to eliminate another physical complication from the device.
Or, if there was a common API like Flash that could compile for this platform. Then if Apple rejected your app, you know your effort is not wasted because it would run on another device.
It would add a seam in the phone - a hole - an imperfection. Just like a replaceable battery.
It no longer makes sense to have WiFi-only apps now that AT&T has metered data usage. AT&T should actually *want* you to use videoconferencing and tethering, because they will make more money off of it.
Still, in my line of work we sit on gates for hours waiting for someone we don't know is actually at his computer to undock his ship. I guess you could call that grinding as well ;-)
IRL, I used to fly hang gliders. The problem was the "hang waiting" where you sat on a cliff and stared at the sky for hours, waiting for the wind to turn. It was much like playing Eve: sitting at a gate waiting, like you say. The first few times it was exciting - a real battle, real money at stake. Then... time to go to bed. It's 3am and I just wasted my evening for nothing.
I watched a few more... they got better as they went along.
These would be fun to watch if they had decent announcers. They are just saying "Team A is doing a lot of damage to Team B's (insert ship name)" and stuff like that. Even someone who has never played the game could look at the screen and tell you that. I wouldn't listen to a baseball announcer who just said "It's the 3rd inning, and the guy in the middle is throwing a ball at someone holding a bat. Look! He hit it! Now the scoreboard shows Team A scored."
Instead, they need to be informed of the loadouts ahead of time so they can say "Team A is using speed tanking to prevent missile damage by the (insert ship type here). This loadout is weak against smart bombs but works great against Team B's choice of long range missile damage."
I haven't played in years, and it is hard to make the action of a bunch of icons interesting without someone giving relevant background. It's too bad: the game is so highly tactical it really would add a lot of value to have people who know what they are talking about.
So many people equate Flash with video and silly animations. That is unfortunate because Flash is more than video, and a lot more than the HTML DOM. It is a rich programming environment - it has 2D, 3D, audio, camera support, fonts, animation, and 1000 other things I don't know. Does HTML5 really have all that? Is it already ubiquitous? If so, I'm both impressed and surprised.
I worked at a company who developed a business application using Flash. The first version of the app was AJAX, but it was horrible to maintain and very limiting. So they moved to Flash using Flex. It was a real application. I can't even imagine trying to write a fully-blown app like that in Javascript. I know Google essentially does that with GMail, but they have had to develop a lot of custom tools to make that possible.
Would everyone here be complaining so hard if the authors of sued everyone who downloaded it?
Everything you describe seems to apply to Windows, Linux, and just about every other operating system there is. If you look at most games, they have to do serious optimization to handle older video cards, including separate code paths. It sucks, but it isn't Android only. I am confused though as to why there are phones running these older versions. Why is that?
Windows is totally fragmented. It's terrible. Why do people develop for it? Every machine has a different amount of memory, hard drive, resolution, aspect ratio, 3D capabilities. Some have mice, some have trackballs, some have joysticks. Plus, there's all these different versions: XP, Vista, Windows 7. For gamers it is worse: DirectX 9, DirectX 10, OpenGL. Even their flagship product has a mess of versions: .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 are all found in the wild. Browser versions, service packs...
Why does anyone program for this OS? Because it is fragmented. Fragmentation is a **benefit** - because if it weren't fragmented, the alternative is that each of these computers would have a different operating system. I'd rather have one approximately-the-same, cohesive API across different hardware, than have each device run a different OS. What they are calling "fragmentation" in the Android OS is called choice and diversity on other OSs. This is a good thing, and be happy with it.
The submitter's issue isn't unique. Google provides essentially zero support for the services they offer. Google has found an absolutely *amazing* market. They provide services, and make money on them, but have no obligation to provide support since the person receiving the service isn't actually paying for it. Advertising acts like a magical middleman. There's no obligation to continue the service, no liability for bugs, and they may not even know the customer's identity. It's fantastic for Google. And as long as what Google does mostly works, it's darned good for the end user too.
I'm assume you do your job well in the abuse department. But the reality is that the submitter had no notification, and no recourse. They don't pay for Google groups so Google doesn't have to support them. I have had issues with Google reader for a long while. I posted the issues, with vast technical detail, done all the steps required in the FAQ, and my problem persists. I've posted it on the Google reader help forum, along with other people who periodically post the same thing, and nobody ever replies except to say "yeah, me too!"
This is just a function of Google's business model. Yahoo is the same way, and so are lots of other free services. It is possible that we are moving to an economy where 99.9% of what you need will be free, but if you want support - go to some super-expensive company that provides it. The future will be interesting...
The new operator is what sold me on C++, a long time ago.
#define DESIRED_ELEMENTS 50
int * arrayOfInts = (int *)malloc(DESIRED_ELEMENTS * sizeof(int));
int * arrayOfInts = new int[DESIRED_ELEMENTS];
The second one is a lot less error prone. Even the macro variations in C are still not as clean.
The article argues against C just as hard as it argues against C++. The author seems to want a fully managed environment with a much more capable set of class libraries. Those are valid limitations of C and C++. Java and C# would seem like perfect a fit for him.