Until you get incompetent judges who don't enforce said legislation (and/or incompetent politicos who write exceptions into the legislation that render it meaningless). Take the recent murder of a police officer in Laval, Quebec. Link #1. The killer has been prohibited from owning firearms since 1999, and has been convicted in the past for threatening & harassing police officers. Link #2. So you've got a guy banned from owning firearms, who has a history of making threats against police officers. Hunting season comes along; the guy asks the courts for permission to acquire a hunting rifle.
If you've read the links, you know what ended up happening. Even if you haven't, I'm sure you can guess.
So you'll pardon me if I'm a little skeptical of the worth of gun-control legislation, although my opinion that Canada has a spectacularly incompetent criminal justice system no doubt colours my views.
GP is correct. The two 120VAC lines are 180 degrees out of phase. If they were in phase, there'd be zero voltage differential between them, therefore no current would flow.
To make a pressure analogy, you can't just take two air lines pressurized to 30 PSI, connect them together, and get 60 PSI. You'll still have just 30 PSI. You need one line at +30 PSI to atmosphere, and the other at -30 PSI to atmosphere, to get 60 PSI between them.
"Management thinks because things are running, I have no issues, but I'm falling apart from all I have to do to keep things running. I need to offset the load so I can do more of the 'bigger picture' things to help guide this company out of the IS dark ages. (We have no CTO or CIO; Management is made up of engineers from different disciplines)"
I see three things here that tell me you're not communicating very well with management, and possibly that the way you're selling your message is influencing management's decisions to go against you. I realize this is a Slashdot, um, whine, and not a professional presentation, but if your attitude here is carrying through to your talks with management, you may be half the problem.
1. You say management thinks you have no issues because everything's running, but you're falling apart keeping things running. You clearly have not explained what it is you are doing well enough to management for them to understand just how busy you are. Keep daily log books. Get somebody to follow you around for a short time and show them just what it is you're doing if you have to. Be prepared to answer the inevitable, "Why do you have to do that?" questions. You'll probably also have to explain why it's taking you so much more time to keep on top of things than it took the "hobbyist" before you.
2. Don't use phrases like "guide us out of the dark ages". You're setting yourself up as an "enlightened leader" compared to your "primitive cavemen" bosses with this kind of talk. You win nobody over to your arguments this way.
3. As an engineer myself, I'd take issue with the dismissive tone you take to management being made up of engineers rather than having a CTO or CIO. Especially if there are some computer-savvy electrical engineers in that group, who may know just enough about IS to be able to question you on some of the things you want to do (though this might somewhat conflict with my first point). Tailor your message to your audience; the argument that works with a CIO because he understands the theory behind some computer security policy you want to implement may not work with the engineer who wants to know how that policy will affect how he does his job. If these engineers have brought this company to its now modest size, I would hope they're not completely clueless managers who just happen to have friends in high places. Chances are they're doing something right, which may well include a decision not to bog themselves down with an overly restrictive IS group, and you should acknowledge that.
All that said, maybe you're right that your bosses don't have a good grasp of IS and are operating on some bad assumptions, and that it will catch up with them eventually. If they really won't listen to your professional opinions on the matter, you may have to move on.
"Where is the line between an application being server-based (and thus not "distrubted") and being client based? With the GPLv2, that line is all on one side. GPLv3 wants to debate that topic and possibly move that line."
Is this line something that the FSF has the power to move, though? Consider: "distribution" in the GPL has effectively the same meaning as "distribution" in copyright law, which is a big reason the GPL has the teeth that it does. When I give you, or you acquire from me, whether by CD, FTP, HTTP, an installable/runnable copy of a GPL program, there's no question that that action is governed by copyright law, and thus the GPL. It's distribution.
Is a webserver running a program and exposing its interface to users through a web page "distribution" of that program? The FSF might, with GPLv3, say "Yes". I can easily see some developer/corporation out there saying, "No", and taking it to court to find out. I don't think it's clear-cut one way or the other.
I think the stronger argument would be stay away from distribution, and focus on the fact that, whether "distributed" or not, the modified code is a derived work. Making derived works, whether they are distributed or not, is governed by copyright law. Write into GPLv3 that making a derived work based on the GPL code, and offering it as a web service, requires the modified code to be made available to the users of that web service. Now you've got something much more solidly based in copyright law, much less likely to even be tested in court.
"It will take some time, but an Open Source alternative could be derived"
I wish you were right, but I just don't see how. I don't believe the intersection of AutoCAD power users (primarily engineers and architects) and Open Source coders capable of writing an AutoCAD-like application (top-notch developers) is anywhere near large enough to take this on. There is virtually no "home user" base for AutoCAD, and developers who aren't also power users are going to have little appreciation for the kinds of things that an AutoCAD replacement would have to do. This isn't something you can hack together in a few months and start getting those engineers & architects switching to. It's got to be top-notch, polished, have all the needed features right away, and near-flawless cross-compatibility before any of the pros will even give it a look. And if you don't have the pros, you don't have anybody.
As an engineer who does some AutoCAD work, I have to say I really think Autodesk's domination in the CAD field is even more than Microsoft's in either operating systems or office suites.
You did not say "IT" in your post. You said "if you know what you're doing, there's no reason to stick with Windows on your desktop." That's the blanket statement I take exception to, and with good reason. We can get into semantic quibbles over whether the "IT" was implied or not from the article/thread/post, but I've no interest in that. I just wanted to get a different perspective out there.
If we can't use those tools, we go out of business. Plain and simple.
Moderators, please consider such things before moderating blanket statements like the parent up to +5. There are a lot of workstations out there that aren't just Word/Excel/Access/Outlook/IE boxes. When you start using dedicated software packages like the stuff I've described above, you're using Windows, and you don't have a choice (PI being a partial exception, you can get the server for Unix but many client tools are Windows-only). Does that suck? Yeah, kinda. But that's the reality, and wishing it were different doesn't change it.
like having an icon appear on the desktop for your USB stick
Ironically, Mandriva modified that feature in 2006, replacing it with a "Devices" icon that you have to double-click to see all of your mounted & unmounted devices. A USB stick appears in there now instead of directly on the desktop, which I'd call a step back in usability as you get no immediately visible feedback you've done anything if you don't have that window open when you plug the stick in.
It also curiously makes a distinction between my USB stick and my SD card reader -- the USB stick gets "Unmount" on its context menu, while the card reader gets "Safely remove". Not exactly sure what happened there to make those mismatch.
I think the trouble with replicating AutoCAD is that the "tinkerer" userbase for such an application is very small, and the normal userbase doesn't intersect with programmers.
Think about it: most OSS programs either have a general appeal for a broad audience (internet programs, multimedia programs, desktops, office suites, etc.) or a specific appeal to the computer-technical audience (networking utilities, system administration, groupware, databases, etc.) AutoCAD doesn't fit into either category. It's not something a lot of casual users will play around with, nor is it something that a lot of programmers will have much use for either. The primary users of AutoCAD are design professionals: engineers, architects, etc, who don't need to know a thing about programming to use it, and in large part wouldn't have the time or expertise to begin to develop a replacement. Finally, if you can't win those primary users over with the replacement, the project simply dies.
I'm not saying it's a good thing that AutoCAD rules the roost; it's sitting in an Office-like position in its field, no question, and has been playing the changing-file-format game for a few years now. I just don't see a replacement on the horizon any time soon, if ever.
It was Quicken 2000, and I didn't see any point to trying to work around it. Intuit clearly didn't want me using that version of Quicken any more, so I obliged them. I even went a step further and deduced they didn't want me as a customer any more. So far I've been faithful to their wishes in that regard.
I love Quickens ability to download my transactions from my financial institutions automatically
I did too -- until Intuit disabled my version's online features to force an upgrade.
That was the day I moved to Gnucash and never looked back. I may not have my online features, but I'll be damned if I'll let some app vendor remotely shut off some functionality on me again for no good reason (and before anyone pipes in that Intuit may have had security reasons -- no, they didn't. I packet-traced what was going on at the time when I was figuring it out. Even when I downloaded my transactions from my bank's website directly and tried to import it to Quicken after disconnecting from my bank, Quicken would "phone home" to Intuit before processing it.)
On top of that, look at how many different network-related icons are in the Control Panel: you've got Network Center, Network Connections, Network Map, Peer to Peer, Saved Networks, and Wireless Network Setup Wizard. Come on! Networking seems to be the worst, but there are more examples of what look like unnecessary and confusing duplication: Speech and Speech Recognition; Display and Auxiliary Displays; Add and Remove Programs and Programs; Secure Startup and Security Center.
I pity anyone trying to help Grandma out with all that.
I just installed the new Windows Update on my Win2000 laptop -- like the WinXP version, it now insists that Automatic Updates be on, which is bad enough (I used to kill the service to get it out of memory), but if you actually use AU to do your updating, and you get an update that requires a reboot -- AU will "helpfully" pop up with a focus-stealing window asking you if you want to reboot now, with the default answer being "yes"!
That is an unforgivable sin in UI design.
Discovered another Windows flaw later that day, on an unrelated note -- if you have no taskbar (I was using a desktop-lockdown application that removes it completely), you have no way of accessing the "safely remove" applet to remove a USB device. It's nowhere in Control Panel, nowhere in Explorer.
No, YOU don't understand -- all we Windows2000 users want is for Microsoft to actually stick to their damn word about how long Windows2000 is supposed to be in, their words, "Mainstream Support":
I think you're approaching this from the wrong viewpoint. The ideal target seems to be, in my mind anyway, small businesses. The ones that don't have dedicated IT staff to handle security, nor the resources to pursue lengthy legal options. If you're the owner of a small business of maybe half a dozen employees and do your invoicing and accounting on a PC and your files get locked out behind this thing, you've suddenly got a very compelling reason to fork over a mere $200 to unlock those files and get on with running your business. You don't have the time or money to pursue legal options, you don't have the expertise to try and recover the files yourself, and may not have a recent enough backup. The firm I work for is about 20 people, and the thought of this virus getting loose on our network, which consists of a lot of laptops as we do a lot of on-site work, is a very chilling one. We don't have dedicated IT guys and we would not be able to wait for legal options to play out. We'd pretty well have to fork it over and hope the authorities could do something about it down the road. $200 is less than a day's billing and infinitely less than what our project files are worth to us.
Effectively it's the electronic version of a protection racket. Set up a fall guy and have some money-laundering back-end to it and you're all set.
Your point about CPU usage brings my Firefox complaint to mind: I've noticed on my Mandrake box that when Firefox's little icon in the top-right is spinning (looking up DNS, page loading, etc), it's really hard on X. I typically see 25-30% CPU usage just for that. Any way to shut it off? (Strangely, the identical icon when animating on a tab in the tab bar doesn't cause the same CPU usage.)
Or winning a hockey playoff series in sudden-death overtime. I did 2 1/2 seasons with a fantasy-draft Montreal Canadiens roster in NHL 2002, the dynasty mode. First season, I finished in the middle of the conference, but was on a roll going into the playoffs, and honestly figured I'd just roll over the opposition and win the Stanley Cup. Instead I lost in the first round to a Buffalo team that included Jagr & Fedorov -- they were just too fast for my defence to handle.
OK, so I retool for season two, but again wind up in the middle of the pack and now face Philadelphia in the first round. Fell behind 2 games to 1 in a best-of-five, and was trailing the fourth game with less than two minutes left. Figured I was all done. Got down to just over a minute left and I'm attacking furiously to try & tie the score but the goalie -- Jose Theodore of all people -- isn't giving up a thing. I get the puck back at the blue line and just throw it on net, and it floats its way through about four bodies and in! Tie score, crowd goes wild! Game goes to OT. I got the winner a few minutes in on a real sweet play with Lehtinen racing in on the right wing, hitting the brakes, then centering for a streaking Arnott who rips home the one-timer. Off to game 5! That game also wound up tied and off to overtime, though no dramatic tying goal this time. Early in the extra frame, there's a faceoff in my zone that I lose cleanly. Puck comes right to Naslund in front and it should be all over. Thibault makes a sprawling save that bails me out and I take the rebound right back up the ice. Arnott puts a move on the defender, gets a bit of space, then picks top corner on Theodore to win the series! Those last two games were just awesome (self-evident since I still remember all those details) -- I didn't care if I won the next series or not after that.
I did eventually win it in a 7-game showdown with a Lindros-led Chicago, in which the home team won the first six games before I finally won on the road in the finale. I'd customized the game to play Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" at the awarding of the Stanley Cup, which just capped the whole thing off perfectly. Plus I had Koivu as my captain, and this was the year he was battling cancer. Seeing the virtual Koivu hoist the Cup was pretty sweet in its own right. A very satisfying gaming experience.
The third season was a joke as the computer teams let a couple of high-profile free agents loose that I picked up on waivers which tipped the balance way too far in my favour. I think I only lost 2 games out of 20 before deciding that was enough. I couldn't even get through one season of NHL 2004 due to the horrible HTML interface.
By contrast, my Dell Latitude laptop computer, a tangible, physical device, the outgrowth of many years of research & developement in microchip and printed-circuit technologies, churned out by some mass-producing factory has, four, count 'em, four patent numbers listed on the bottom. Sure, there's probably a bunch more inside, but when a piece of software that lets you read a document has 30+ patent numbers and the computer that runs it has 4, something's a little bit off...
Apparently throwing the word "emergency" in there all over the place makes it patent-worthy in the eyes of USPTO. Seriously, there's no functional difference between this statement:
maintaining a plurality of records in an emergency data store, each record comprising emergency data and having type of emergency information associated therewith that classifies the record as corresponding to at least one type of emergency;
And this one:
maintaining a plurality of records in a data store, each record comprising data and having type of information associated therewith that classifies the record as corresponding to at least one type of event;
I chose the word "event" but you could probably substitute any number of words there. Either way, removing all the extra "emergency"s exposes this thing as a very transparent attempt, as you said, to patent a database with a user interface. (Is "emergency" even defined in the patent claim?)
1) If I own the copyright on a work, I can forbid others from using the it.
Only where "use" is defined as reproduction, public display, redistribution, etc, namely the exclusive rights of the copyright holder as spelled out in copyright law. The moment you sell a tangible copy of your work to another, you lose the right to tell that other person he can't use it in its normal sense (i.e. viewing the photo, reading the book, watching the movie, listening to the music, installing & using the software) any longer. That usage is outside the scope of and/or specifically exempted from copyright law. You even lose the right to tell that guy whether he can resell or dispose of that work in any fashion he pleases.
If you can manage to only license the copy of your work to the other guy and not actually transfer ownership of it, you can lock him down further through the license agreement. You need to get him to agree to that license before the copy and money change hands, though.
Commercial proprietary software sits in a grey area where the copyright holder claims it's only licensed, not sold, but the end-user claims it's sold, not licensed, due to the form of the transaction (exchange of $$ for tangible copy without extra terms at time of purchase equals a sale in any reasonable person's mind).
Their PR was so bad that it became somewhat controversial among certain circles of Trek fans. There's a very long thread at TrekBBS about it (check the "Trek Today News Items" forum) that chronicles a lot of what went wrong. TrekUnited made a lot of cryptic and secretive statements during the campaign, along the lines of, "We're in meetings with Paramount, but we can't say who or about what", and last week it was revealed that Paramount had told them, "Thanks but no thanks" back in the middle of March yet TU didn't inform its members of that and continued soliciting donations up until the present. There was a twisted relationship between TU head Tim B. and some toy company that he used to be associated with, and some incidents in that history, that didn't help matters, not to mention Tim B.'s criminal record that he explained in a confessional-like posting at the TU forums that didn't help their image. Add the perception that TU supporters really trashed its detractors on the TrekBBS and Startrek.com boards -- TrekBBS eventually banned all discussion of TU from its forums to end the flamewars -- and you've got enough to call it "controversial".
In the end, it was a bunch of well-intentioned individuals who were in way, way over their heads and it showed.
Actually, the budget passed; it's the budget implementation bill that hasn't. I believe the former is something like "here is the government's plan, does Parliament approve of it?" while the latter is all the nitty-gritty details including all the line-by-line spending breakdowns. An article in the local paper today stated that the implentation bills are so complex that they take a long time to wind through the system, and that the 2004 budget implementation act is still in the Senate.
Slashdot Mirror
Shameless karma-whoring, coming right up:
Emergency Boot CD. Has a Windows password-reset tool on it. Run it, shows you the list of accounts, pick one, reset its password to anything you want.
So, anyone care to start a pool on how soon the US requests my extradition for posting that?
If you've read the links, you know what ended up happening. Even if you haven't, I'm sure you can guess.
So you'll pardon me if I'm a little skeptical of the worth of gun-control legislation, although my opinion that Canada has a spectacularly incompetent criminal justice system no doubt colours my views.
GP is correct. The two 120VAC lines are 180 degrees out of phase. If they were in phase, there'd be zero voltage differential between them, therefore no current would flow.
To make a pressure analogy, you can't just take two air lines pressurized to 30 PSI, connect them together, and get 60 PSI. You'll still have just 30 PSI. You need one line at +30 PSI to atmosphere, and the other at -30 PSI to atmosphere, to get 60 PSI between them.
I see three things here that tell me you're not communicating very well with management, and possibly that the way you're selling your message is influencing management's decisions to go against you. I realize this is a Slashdot, um, whine, and not a professional presentation, but if your attitude here is carrying through to your talks with management, you may be half the problem.
1. You say management thinks you have no issues because everything's running, but you're falling apart keeping things running. You clearly have not explained what it is you are doing well enough to management for them to understand just how busy you are. Keep daily log books. Get somebody to follow you around for a short time and show them just what it is you're doing if you have to. Be prepared to answer the inevitable, "Why do you have to do that?" questions. You'll probably also have to explain why it's taking you so much more time to keep on top of things than it took the "hobbyist" before you.
2. Don't use phrases like "guide us out of the dark ages". You're setting yourself up as an "enlightened leader" compared to your "primitive cavemen" bosses with this kind of talk. You win nobody over to your arguments this way.
3. As an engineer myself, I'd take issue with the dismissive tone you take to management being made up of engineers rather than having a CTO or CIO. Especially if there are some computer-savvy electrical engineers in that group, who may know just enough about IS to be able to question you on some of the things you want to do (though this might somewhat conflict with my first point). Tailor your message to your audience; the argument that works with a CIO because he understands the theory behind some computer security policy you want to implement may not work with the engineer who wants to know how that policy will affect how he does his job. If these engineers have brought this company to its now modest size, I would hope they're not completely clueless managers who just happen to have friends in high places. Chances are they're doing something right, which may well include a decision not to bog themselves down with an overly restrictive IS group, and you should acknowledge that.
All that said, maybe you're right that your bosses don't have a good grasp of IS and are operating on some bad assumptions, and that it will catch up with them eventually. If they really won't listen to your professional opinions on the matter, you may have to move on.
"Where is the line between an application being server-based (and thus not "distrubted") and being client based? With the GPLv2, that line is all on one side. GPLv3 wants to debate that topic and possibly move that line."
Is this line something that the FSF has the power to move, though? Consider: "distribution" in the GPL has effectively the same meaning as "distribution" in copyright law, which is a big reason the GPL has the teeth that it does. When I give you, or you acquire from me, whether by CD, FTP, HTTP, an installable/runnable copy of a GPL program, there's no question that that action is governed by copyright law, and thus the GPL. It's distribution.
Is a webserver running a program and exposing its interface to users through a web page "distribution" of that program? The FSF might, with GPLv3, say "Yes". I can easily see some developer/corporation out there saying, "No", and taking it to court to find out. I don't think it's clear-cut one way or the other.
I think the stronger argument would be stay away from distribution, and focus on the fact that, whether "distributed" or not, the modified code is a derived work. Making derived works, whether they are distributed or not, is governed by copyright law. Write into GPLv3 that making a derived work based on the GPL code, and offering it as a web service, requires the modified code to be made available to the users of that web service. Now you've got something much more solidly based in copyright law, much less likely to even be tested in court.
"It will take some time, but an Open Source alternative could be derived"
I wish you were right, but I just don't see how. I don't believe the intersection of AutoCAD power users (primarily engineers and architects) and Open Source coders capable of writing an AutoCAD-like application (top-notch developers) is anywhere near large enough to take this on. There is virtually no "home user" base for AutoCAD, and developers who aren't also power users are going to have little appreciation for the kinds of things that an AutoCAD replacement would have to do. This isn't something you can hack together in a few months and start getting those engineers & architects switching to. It's got to be top-notch, polished, have all the needed features right away, and near-flawless cross-compatibility before any of the pros will even give it a look. And if you don't have the pros, you don't have anybody.
As an engineer who does some AutoCAD work, I have to say I really think Autodesk's domination in the CAD field is even more than Microsoft's in either operating systems or office suites.
You did not say "IT" in your post. You said "if you know what you're doing, there's no reason to stick with Windows on your desktop." That's the blanket statement I take exception to, and with good reason. We can get into semantic quibbles over whether the "IT" was implied or not from the article/thread/post, but I've no interest in that. I just wanted to get a different perspective out there.
No reason? I'll give you a few that apply in my office:
Rockwell Software
Wonderware
GE Fanuc
PI
AutoCAD
SolidWorks
If we can't use those tools, we go out of business. Plain and simple.
Moderators, please consider such things before moderating blanket statements like the parent up to +5. There are a lot of workstations out there that aren't just Word/Excel/Access/Outlook/IE boxes. When you start using dedicated software packages like the stuff I've described above, you're using Windows, and you don't have a choice (PI being a partial exception, you can get the server for Unix but many client tools are Windows-only). Does that suck? Yeah, kinda. But that's the reality, and wishing it were different doesn't change it.
Ironically, Mandriva modified that feature in 2006, replacing it with a "Devices" icon that you have to double-click to see all of your mounted & unmounted devices. A USB stick appears in there now instead of directly on the desktop, which I'd call a step back in usability as you get no immediately visible feedback you've done anything if you don't have that window open when you plug the stick in.
It also curiously makes a distinction between my USB stick and my SD card reader -- the USB stick gets "Unmount" on its context menu, while the card reader gets "Safely remove". Not exactly sure what happened there to make those mismatch.
I think the trouble with replicating AutoCAD is that the "tinkerer" userbase for such an application is very small, and the normal userbase doesn't intersect with programmers.
Think about it: most OSS programs either have a general appeal for a broad audience (internet programs, multimedia programs, desktops, office suites, etc.) or a specific appeal to the computer-technical audience (networking utilities, system administration, groupware, databases, etc.) AutoCAD doesn't fit into either category. It's not something a lot of casual users will play around with, nor is it something that a lot of programmers will have much use for either. The primary users of AutoCAD are design professionals: engineers, architects, etc, who don't need to know a thing about programming to use it, and in large part wouldn't have the time or expertise to begin to develop a replacement. Finally, if you can't win those primary users over with the replacement, the project simply dies.
I'm not saying it's a good thing that AutoCAD rules the roost; it's sitting in an Office-like position in its field, no question, and has been playing the changing-file-format game for a few years now. I just don't see a replacement on the horizon any time soon, if ever.
It was Quicken 2000, and I didn't see any point to trying to work around it. Intuit clearly didn't want me using that version of Quicken any more, so I obliged them. I even went a step further and deduced they didn't want me as a customer any more. So far I've been faithful to their wishes in that regard.
I did too -- until Intuit disabled my version's online features to force an upgrade.
That was the day I moved to Gnucash and never looked back. I may not have my online features, but I'll be damned if I'll let some app vendor remotely shut off some functionality on me again for no good reason (and before anyone pipes in that Intuit may have had security reasons -- no, they didn't. I packet-traced what was going on at the time when I was figuring it out. Even when I downloaded my transactions from my bank's website directly and tried to import it to Quicken after disconnecting from my bank, Quicken would "phone home" to Intuit before processing it.)
On top of that, look at how many different network-related icons are in the Control Panel: you've got Network Center, Network Connections, Network Map, Peer to Peer, Saved Networks, and Wireless Network Setup Wizard. Come on! Networking seems to be the worst, but there are more examples of what look like unnecessary and confusing duplication: Speech and Speech Recognition; Display and Auxiliary Displays; Add and Remove Programs and Programs; Secure Startup and Security Center.
I pity anyone trying to help Grandma out with all that.
That is an unforgivable sin in UI design.
Discovered another Windows flaw later that day, on an unrelated note -- if you have no taskbar (I was using a desktop-lockdown application that removes it completely), you have no way of accessing the "safely remove" applet to remove a USB device. It's nowhere in Control Panel, nowhere in Explorer.
Funny? Should be Insightful...
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifewin
Windows2000 - Mainstream Support Retired - June 30, 2005
Yet what has Microsoft given Windows2000 in the past year or so, compared to WindowsXP?
No Windows firewall.
No IE6 popup blocker.
No service pack akin to WinXP SP2 dedicated to security.
Microsoft has given the shaft to Windows2000, even while it's still in "Mainstream Support", and you say we're just "whining about old products"?
No, we're calling Microsoft liars when it comes to their so-called "support". And deservedly so.
Effectively it's the electronic version of a protection racket. Set up a fall guy and have some money-laundering back-end to it and you're all set.
Your point about CPU usage brings my Firefox complaint to mind: I've noticed on my Mandrake box that when Firefox's little icon in the top-right is spinning (looking up DNS, page loading, etc), it's really hard on X. I typically see 25-30% CPU usage just for that. Any way to shut it off? (Strangely, the identical icon when animating on a tab in the tab bar doesn't cause the same CPU usage.)
Would it matter? Viewers are still going to either hit fast-forward or just get up and go do something else while the ads play.
OK, so I retool for season two, but again wind up in the middle of the pack and now face Philadelphia in the first round. Fell behind 2 games to 1 in a best-of-five, and was trailing the fourth game with less than two minutes left. Figured I was all done. Got down to just over a minute left and I'm attacking furiously to try & tie the score but the goalie -- Jose Theodore of all people -- isn't giving up a thing. I get the puck back at the blue line and just throw it on net, and it floats its way through about four bodies and in! Tie score, crowd goes wild! Game goes to OT. I got the winner a few minutes in on a real sweet play with Lehtinen racing in on the right wing, hitting the brakes, then centering for a streaking Arnott who rips home the one-timer. Off to game 5! That game also wound up tied and off to overtime, though no dramatic tying goal this time. Early in the extra frame, there's a faceoff in my zone that I lose cleanly. Puck comes right to Naslund in front and it should be all over. Thibault makes a sprawling save that bails me out and I take the rebound right back up the ice. Arnott puts a move on the defender, gets a bit of space, then picks top corner on Theodore to win the series! Those last two games were just awesome (self-evident since I still remember all those details) -- I didn't care if I won the next series or not after that.
I did eventually win it in a 7-game showdown with a Lindros-led Chicago, in which the home team won the first six games before I finally won on the road in the finale. I'd customized the game to play Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" at the awarding of the Stanley Cup, which just capped the whole thing off perfectly. Plus I had Koivu as my captain, and this was the year he was battling cancer. Seeing the virtual Koivu hoist the Cup was pretty sweet in its own right. A very satisfying gaming experience.
The third season was a joke as the computer teams let a couple of high-profile free agents loose that I picked up on waivers which tipped the balance way too far in my favour. I think I only lost 2 games out of 20 before deciding that was enough. I couldn't even get through one season of NHL 2004 due to the horrible HTML interface.
By contrast, my Dell Latitude laptop computer, a tangible, physical device, the outgrowth of many years of research & developement in microchip and printed-circuit technologies, churned out by some mass-producing factory has, four, count 'em, four patent numbers listed on the bottom. Sure, there's probably a bunch more inside, but when a piece of software that lets you read a document has 30+ patent numbers and the computer that runs it has 4, something's a little bit off...
maintaining a plurality of records in an emergency data store, each record comprising emergency data and having type of emergency information associated therewith that classifies the record as corresponding to at least one type of emergency;
And this one:
maintaining a plurality of records in a data store, each record comprising data and having type of information associated therewith that classifies the record as corresponding to at least one type of event;
I chose the word "event" but you could probably substitute any number of words there. Either way, removing all the extra "emergency"s exposes this thing as a very transparent attempt, as you said, to patent a database with a user interface. (Is "emergency" even defined in the patent claim?)
And the USPTO bought it.
Sheesh.
Only where "use" is defined as reproduction, public display, redistribution, etc, namely the exclusive rights of the copyright holder as spelled out in copyright law. The moment you sell a tangible copy of your work to another, you lose the right to tell that other person he can't use it in its normal sense (i.e. viewing the photo, reading the book, watching the movie, listening to the music, installing & using the software) any longer. That usage is outside the scope of and/or specifically exempted from copyright law. You even lose the right to tell that guy whether he can resell or dispose of that work in any fashion he pleases.
If you can manage to only license the copy of your work to the other guy and not actually transfer ownership of it, you can lock him down further through the license agreement. You need to get him to agree to that license before the copy and money change hands, though.
Commercial proprietary software sits in a grey area where the copyright holder claims it's only licensed, not sold, but the end-user claims it's sold, not licensed, due to the form of the transaction (exchange of $$ for tangible copy without extra terms at time of purchase equals a sale in any reasonable person's mind).
In the end, it was a bunch of well-intentioned individuals who were in way, way over their heads and it showed.
Actually, the budget passed; it's the budget implementation bill that hasn't. I believe the former is something like "here is the government's plan, does Parliament approve of it?" while the latter is all the nitty-gritty details including all the line-by-line spending breakdowns. An article in the local paper today stated that the implentation bills are so complex that they take a long time to wind through the system, and that the 2004 budget implementation act is still in the Senate.