The amendment is not created in a vacuum. No other amendment in the Bill of Rights includes a phrase explaining the reason for the amendment. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that, gee, maybe these words written in the supreme law of the country mean something? This isn't the Declaration of Independence where people were trying to convince others of something, this is a legal document.
Try this: "Pornography, being necessary for the sexual health of the nation, the right of the people keep and hold DVD players, shall not be infringed." When you consider that no other right includes a reason for its existance, I think a fair argument can be made that the right to have a DVD player exists mainly for pornography and having one for other reasons could be restricted to some extent.
I do think that the amendment provides some protection to gun owners but I don't think it's as all encompassing. I think gun laws as they are now are close to where they should be and that guns should be relatively unrestricted. That said, I think the way the amendment is written is less than clear and anyone who feels that you can ignore half the amendment is lying to themselves for their own gain.
While the response is a bit... over the top, the sentiment is understandable. MySQL is not closing off its source. It's just choosing not to distribute the source code for one version of its product in one way. It doesn't violate the GPL in any way and if you still really want the source you can get it from their repository.
Zonk's title isn't even remotely related to the reality of the situation. If I could mod him down, I sure would.
Why would you contact the Red Cross if you wanted to talk to a soldier? Going through anything except government channels is silly. The ICRC has a lot of important things to do, none of which include providing a second way for family members to contact soldiers who aren't captured.
You can criticize the American Red Cross or even the lack of support your family got from the ICRC 50 years ago but ICRC and the people that work with them deserve every single one of the three Nobel Peace Prizes they received for putting themselves in danger and working in some of the absolute worst conditions and situations possible. The Red Cross not only does amazing work but in some cases they're the only one's legally allowed to do that work.
Based on our current (broken) patent system, pretty much any standard will be "patent encumbered." The best you can realistically hope for is that the holder of the patents agrees to not enforce them. That did not happen in the case of JPEG 2000 but it SEEMS (I don't have the details but let's just work on that assumption for now) Microsoft has agreed to do so. The agreement not to enforce is similar to the agreement for the 100-some patents held by Linux supporting companies who will only enforce the patents should any company, say Microsoft, enforce their patents against Linux. This is the way the current system works. You don't want "patent encumbered" standards? Change the fucking broken patent system. Any new standard you come out with will violate a patent of some sort considering the ease at which patents. If you want a standard that isn't anywhere near a patent, then use standards that are 16 years or older. That's your choice with the current system.
For OOXML I wouldn't go to the point of worthless but it certainly isn't very good. So don't use it and encourage others to not use it. It's one of two standards and if OOXML doesn't work and isn't open enough, use ODF.
The comment about cancer and AIDS wasn't meant to be taken literally. I just wanted to note how stupid the double standard is on Slashdot. If IBM said they'd offer a new image format as a standard and would agree not to enforce the patents on it, Slashdotters would celebrate their support of standards. In this case, Microsoft is castigated for doing the exact same thing. Blame Microsoft for DRM in their software blame them for abusive business practices or whatever else they do wrong. Don't blame them for doing what you would want and expect any other company to do.
So they sued over FAT which wasn't a standard and they pushed OOXML as a standard even though many people don't feel its very good?
I fail to see how they've lost any "trust" when it comes to submitting standards for which they provide patents to. Isn't it better to have the largest OS manufacturer submit their standards so others can use them instead of Microsoft hiding them?
Wait... I forgot. This is Microsoft. Microsoft = evil. Microsoft could cure fucking cancer and people on Slashdot would complain that they didn't cure AIDS.
The piece from Fox was stupid as hell. It was ill informed and hideously overblown. At the same time, it bothers me that you're so quick to blame the victim.
Have you considered using a 'computer' that isn't so easily compromised by 'computer hackers'.
That's as ridiculous as asking a burglary victim why they didn't put in a deadbolt. Whether they made the safest choice doesn't matter, whoever compromised their "computer" broke the law.
Because you are using MS Bisto
Same point as above. Just because its easy to get into the house doesn't make it any less illegal. (Oh and calling it MS Bisto... that's real good, you worked hard on that one didn't you?)
If people phish your password and use it to access an account of yours, they are breaking the law. If they trick you into giving them access to your PC, they are breaking the law. If they make death threats against you, they are breaking the law. I don't see why punks like this should get a free pass just because they're computer geeks.
I think that's an unrealistic result. All international patent agreements allow countries to ignore patents in national emergencies (which South Africa and Brazil have done regarding AIDS drugs). Additionally, as another replier said, the patents just don't last that much longer even if they are valid. On top of that, there's nothing preventing a farmer for getting any number of older crops that yield nearly as well.
I tend to think the patent system should be scrapped but I don't think we're at immediate risk of starving to death because of it.
Bloated software like... Firefox? I love Firefox and almost never use IE but right now Firefox is using almost 53MB of memory and I just opened it. That's almost exactly the same as IE at about 54MB.
Firefox may be better but I think it's a stretch to say that its not bloated in resource usage.
And its a shame because there are positive things happening at Microsoft and there are negative things just like there are positive and negative things in the Linux world and so forth. Open-source developers, like a scientist, need to put aside egos and see what works and what doesn't, no matter who came up with it.
Actually it was there before Vista. Windows Media Player 11 came with the first version of the userspace driver framework. I think its used for media players that sync with WMP.
My understanding was that Microsoft recommended companies move to userspace not that it was required. To be fair though, I know very little about WDDM so they might have different requirements.
When I read the headline, the first thing I couldn't help but think was if the roles were reversed there would be hundreds of people saying "Good to hear you got something Linux had for a year already." Good ideas are good ideas. Why can't people just be happy when their ideas are recognized as good by others?
Look at Windows. You realistically have somewhere in the area of 5-10 programs running simultaneously. Most of those programs take very little CPU and memory but in certain cases you will notice it. For example, the entire audio stack is service, so is UPnP, wired networking, wireless network discovery, indexing, etc.. Those things run most of the time and don't take a huge amount of resources but they do some which can lead to situations where they'll decrease system responsiveness. This isn't a standard Slashdot criticism of Windows, just an acknowledgement of the fact that usually LOTS of things are running when it seems like none are.
As an aside, I would think that a true micro-kernel based OS would work the best using multi-core. Putting every possible function in a different process would seem to be a better use of a multi-core architecture than to have larger kernels.
How long? Very... Console developers make money on license fees from each game sold. If you no longer needed to go through the console maker, they would lose their cash cow.
Ask a person on the street which one of these is a better: An Intel Core 2 Duo e6800 or an Intel Core 2 Duo t5600? Now no one will ask that question but if people come in to Best Buy and want a computer how in the world would they know the difference? I can't even tell you which one is better and probably 90% of the people on Slashdot would be the same way. I assume the e6800 but since there is a t7600 maybe the t series is always better?
Most people don't even know where the number levels begin or end. t7600 could be near the beginning of the numbering series or it could be at the end. The only reason I know its at the top end is because I visit pricewatch.com and they have CPUs in order by number.
If two computers had an Athlon package 1 but one was from the 2007 model year and another in the 2008 a consumer at least would have a chance at evaluating the difference (or lack of difference) in price between the computers. Sure some people will probably buy a new computer after 4 years just like some people buy a new car after 4 years. But I think on the whole agreeing on simplified naming standards in the industry is good for tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy consumers.
This reminds me of an idea for processor model naming I heard somewhere. Why can't processor companies do what car companies do and release processor models once annually? Have only a few base models (Athlon for desktops, Turion for notebooks and Opteron for server) and make sure those names almost never change. Maybe even have a few "package" levels similar to how you can get a car with extra features but in this case have higher processor speeds, memory bandwidth, etc. that people who really care can look at. Then you can buy a computer with a 2007 Athlon with package 2. You still can't compare it very well with an intel chip but at least you have some clue as to what came out this year versus last year. In processor technology, you also have the advantage that what comes out this year is in almost all cases better overall than what came out last year.
You are right that most of those issues still do exist. I know Rails was having serious issues dealing with the lack of Unicode and I THINK they came up with a workaround to make it easier to work with non-ASCII characters. I haven't used it much to know whether its a good workaround but it would be nice if it were in the language. I have heard a little about the issues with Japan and Unicode but that article was informative.
I would totally agree the docs are really bad in some areas. The OpenSSL docs miss about half of the classes and methods you can use. You basically have to go into the code and work it out yourself.
I'm still idealistic though:) so I'm hoping the changes that need to happen do happen, whether it be from Matz or the other ruby implementations being made.
Amazon uses it at unspun.amazon.com. It's not the main site but they are using it.
I also disagree with your statement that Rails is the only reason there is a productivity boost. I've never found a language that feels as natural as Ruby. The standard library seems to anticipate most productivity bottlenecks that you find in other languages and deals with them in an elegant way. Ruby also is incredibly easy to read and understand even if you've never looked at a program before. It's not totally self-documenting but sometimes it feels like it is.
Now I don't know if that productivity boost is worth the scalability issues, whatever they may be but there's more that makes people productive as hell on Ruby than just Rails.
I'm curious as to your description of Matz (at least I assume that's who you're talking about). I'm pretty new to Ruby but am very interested it's success. Why do you refer to him as a xenophobic Japanese guy and what harsh lesson did you learn?
I'm not asking to get into an argument or anything just curious as to the history of the language and to understand how and why things happen in its development?
According to the UK Microsoft Support site the number is 0870 60 10 100*. Hope that helps!
The fact that it's OEM wouldn't make a difference as far as I know. Microsoft's servers keep a copy of the unique CD key and a hash based on your systems hardware. If you need to reinstall windows and it needs to be activated again that will be fine IF the hash is similar enough to the original one on Microsoft's server. If its not similar enough (I think somewhere around 4 major components have to change for it to fail), you can't use that CD Key again to activate automatically. You have to call support and explain the issue and they'll give you an activation code that can be entered manually so it will re-activate.
Yes its a headache but that's the policy they have.
Try (800) MICROSOFT. I think that's a main number not a support number but if you get to an operator just explain that you are having activation problems and they will help you or transfer you to someone who can.
I missed that you said it was an OEM version but I'm still pretty confident that Microsoft Support could provide you with the activation code or tell you who to contact to get one. In the end, the activation code should be free (according to Microsoft's own policies).
And I do want to emphasize that I agree it's annoying that they do this when it justs make it harder to use their products.
Slashdot Mirror
The amendment is not created in a vacuum. No other amendment in the Bill of Rights includes a phrase explaining the reason for the amendment. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that, gee, maybe these words written in the supreme law of the country mean something? This isn't the Declaration of Independence where people were trying to convince others of something, this is a legal document.
Try this: "Pornography, being necessary for the sexual health of the nation, the right of the people keep and hold DVD players, shall not be infringed." When you consider that no other right includes a reason for its existance, I think a fair argument can be made that the right to have a DVD player exists mainly for pornography and having one for other reasons could be restricted to some extent.
I do think that the amendment provides some protection to gun owners but I don't think it's as all encompassing. I think gun laws as they are now are close to where they should be and that guns should be relatively unrestricted. That said, I think the way the amendment is written is less than clear and anyone who feels that you can ignore half the amendment is lying to themselves for their own gain.
No matter whether you like Microsoft or not, they're not the Klan.
While the response is a bit... over the top, the sentiment is understandable. MySQL is not closing off its source. It's just choosing not to distribute the source code for one version of its product in one way. It doesn't violate the GPL in any way and if you still really want the source you can get it from their repository.
Zonk's title isn't even remotely related to the reality of the situation. If I could mod him down, I sure would.
Why would you contact the Red Cross if you wanted to talk to a soldier? Going through anything except government channels is silly. The ICRC has a lot of important things to do, none of which include providing a second way for family members to contact soldiers who aren't captured.
You can criticize the American Red Cross or even the lack of support your family got from the ICRC 50 years ago but ICRC and the people that work with them deserve every single one of the three Nobel Peace Prizes they received for putting themselves in danger and working in some of the absolute worst conditions and situations possible. The Red Cross not only does amazing work but in some cases they're the only one's legally allowed to do that work.
You're right, why in the world would we want to use a computer to increase safety? The human brain works faster than any computer doesn't it?
Name calling huh? Impressive.
Based on our current (broken) patent system, pretty much any standard will be "patent encumbered." The best you can realistically hope for is that the holder of the patents agrees to not enforce them. That did not happen in the case of JPEG 2000 but it SEEMS (I don't have the details but let's just work on that assumption for now) Microsoft has agreed to do so. The agreement not to enforce is similar to the agreement for the 100-some patents held by Linux supporting companies who will only enforce the patents should any company, say Microsoft, enforce their patents against Linux. This is the way the current system works. You don't want "patent encumbered" standards? Change the fucking broken patent system. Any new standard you come out with will violate a patent of some sort considering the ease at which patents. If you want a standard that isn't anywhere near a patent, then use standards that are 16 years or older. That's your choice with the current system.
For OOXML I wouldn't go to the point of worthless but it certainly isn't very good. So don't use it and encourage others to not use it. It's one of two standards and if OOXML doesn't work and isn't open enough, use ODF.
The comment about cancer and AIDS wasn't meant to be taken literally. I just wanted to note how stupid the double standard is on Slashdot. If IBM said they'd offer a new image format as a standard and would agree not to enforce the patents on it, Slashdotters would celebrate their support of standards. In this case, Microsoft is castigated for doing the exact same thing. Blame Microsoft for DRM in their software blame them for abusive business practices or whatever else they do wrong. Don't blame them for doing what you would want and expect any other company to do.
So they sued over FAT which wasn't a standard and they pushed OOXML as a standard even though many people don't feel its very good?
I fail to see how they've lost any "trust" when it comes to submitting standards for which they provide patents to. Isn't it better to have the largest OS manufacturer submit their standards so others can use them instead of Microsoft hiding them?
Wait... I forgot. This is Microsoft. Microsoft = evil. Microsoft could cure fucking cancer and people on Slashdot would complain that they didn't cure AIDS.
The piece from Fox was stupid as hell. It was ill informed and hideously overblown. At the same time, it bothers me that you're so quick to blame the victim.
That's as ridiculous as asking a burglary victim why they didn't put in a deadbolt. Whether they made the safest choice doesn't matter, whoever compromised their "computer" broke the law.
Same point as above. Just because its easy to get into the house doesn't make it any less illegal. (Oh and calling it MS Bisto... that's real good, you worked hard on that one didn't you?)
If people phish your password and use it to access an account of yours, they are breaking the law. If they trick you into giving them access to your PC, they are breaking the law. If they make death threats against you, they are breaking the law. I don't see why punks like this should get a free pass just because they're computer geeks.
I think that's an unrealistic result. All international patent agreements allow countries to ignore patents in national emergencies (which South Africa and Brazil have done regarding AIDS drugs). Additionally, as another replier said, the patents just don't last that much longer even if they are valid. On top of that, there's nothing preventing a farmer for getting any number of older crops that yield nearly as well.
I tend to think the patent system should be scrapped but I don't think we're at immediate risk of starving to death because of it.
Bloated software like... Firefox? I love Firefox and almost never use IE but right now Firefox is using almost 53MB of memory and I just opened it. That's almost exactly the same as IE at about 54MB.
Firefox may be better but I think it's a stretch to say that its not bloated in resource usage.
And its a shame because there are positive things happening at Microsoft and there are negative things just like there are positive and negative things in the Linux world and so forth. Open-source developers, like a scientist, need to put aside egos and see what works and what doesn't, no matter who came up with it.
Actually it was there before Vista. Windows Media Player 11 came with the first version of the userspace driver framework. I think its used for media players that sync with WMP.
My understanding was that Microsoft recommended companies move to userspace not that it was required. To be fair though, I know very little about WDDM so they might have different requirements.
When I read the headline, the first thing I couldn't help but think was if the roles were reversed there would be hundreds of people saying "Good to hear you got something Linux had for a year already." Good ideas are good ideas. Why can't people just be happy when their ideas are recognized as good by others?
Look at Windows. You realistically have somewhere in the area of 5-10 programs running simultaneously. Most of those programs take very little CPU and memory but in certain cases you will notice it. For example, the entire audio stack is service, so is UPnP, wired networking, wireless network discovery, indexing, etc.. Those things run most of the time and don't take a huge amount of resources but they do some which can lead to situations where they'll decrease system responsiveness. This isn't a standard Slashdot criticism of Windows, just an acknowledgement of the fact that usually LOTS of things are running when it seems like none are.
As an aside, I would think that a true micro-kernel based OS would work the best using multi-core. Putting every possible function in a different process would seem to be a better use of a multi-core architecture than to have larger kernels.
How long? Very... Console developers make money on license fees from each game sold. If you no longer needed to go through the console maker, they would lose their cash cow.
Ask a person on the street which one of these is a better: An Intel Core 2 Duo e6800 or an Intel Core 2 Duo t5600? Now no one will ask that question but if people come in to Best Buy and want a computer how in the world would they know the difference? I can't even tell you which one is better and probably 90% of the people on Slashdot would be the same way. I assume the e6800 but since there is a t7600 maybe the t series is always better?
Most people don't even know where the number levels begin or end. t7600 could be near the beginning of the numbering series or it could be at the end. The only reason I know its at the top end is because I visit pricewatch.com and they have CPUs in order by number.
If two computers had an Athlon package 1 but one was from the 2007 model year and another in the 2008 a consumer at least would have a chance at evaluating the difference (or lack of difference) in price between the computers. Sure some people will probably buy a new computer after 4 years just like some people buy a new car after 4 years. But I think on the whole agreeing on simplified naming standards in the industry is good for tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy consumers.
This reminds me of an idea for processor model naming I heard somewhere. Why can't processor companies do what car companies do and release processor models once annually? Have only a few base models (Athlon for desktops, Turion for notebooks and Opteron for server) and make sure those names almost never change. Maybe even have a few "package" levels similar to how you can get a car with extra features but in this case have higher processor speeds, memory bandwidth, etc. that people who really care can look at. Then you can buy a computer with a 2007 Athlon with package 2. You still can't compare it very well with an intel chip but at least you have some clue as to what came out this year versus last year. In processor technology, you also have the advantage that what comes out this year is in almost all cases better overall than what came out last year.
In what way is spending bandwidth on too many people using the service for free not a problem?
You are right that most of those issues still do exist. I know Rails was having serious issues dealing with the lack of Unicode and I THINK they came up with a workaround to make it easier to work with non-ASCII characters. I haven't used it much to know whether its a good workaround but it would be nice if it were in the language. I have heard a little about the issues with Japan and Unicode but that article was informative.
:) so I'm hoping the changes that need to happen do happen, whether it be from Matz or the other ruby implementations being made.
I would totally agree the docs are really bad in some areas. The OpenSSL docs miss about half of the classes and methods you can use. You basically have to go into the code and work it out yourself.
I'm still idealistic though
Amazon uses it at unspun.amazon.com. It's not the main site but they are using it.
I also disagree with your statement that Rails is the only reason there is a productivity boost. I've never found a language that feels as natural as Ruby. The standard library seems to anticipate most productivity bottlenecks that you find in other languages and deals with them in an elegant way. Ruby also is incredibly easy to read and understand even if you've never looked at a program before. It's not totally self-documenting but sometimes it feels like it is.
Now I don't know if that productivity boost is worth the scalability issues, whatever they may be but there's more that makes people productive as hell on Ruby than just Rails.
I'm curious as to your description of Matz (at least I assume that's who you're talking about). I'm pretty new to Ruby but am very interested it's success. Why do you refer to him as a xenophobic Japanese guy and what harsh lesson did you learn?
I'm not asking to get into an argument or anything just curious as to the history of the language and to understand how and why things happen in its development?
According to the UK Microsoft Support site the number is 0870 60 10 100*. Hope that helps!
The fact that it's OEM wouldn't make a difference as far as I know. Microsoft's servers keep a copy of the unique CD key and a hash based on your systems hardware. If you need to reinstall windows and it needs to be activated again that will be fine IF the hash is similar enough to the original one on Microsoft's server. If its not similar enough (I think somewhere around 4 major components have to change for it to fail), you can't use that CD Key again to activate automatically. You have to call support and explain the issue and they'll give you an activation code that can be entered manually so it will re-activate.
Yes its a headache but that's the policy they have.
I was referring to their side note specifically.
I was referring to comment #19545833 by Lemming Mark, not the ORIGINAL poster.
Try (800) MICROSOFT. I think that's a main number not a support number but if you get to an operator just explain that you are having activation problems and they will help you or transfer you to someone who can.
How many times have you activated it anyways?
I missed that you said it was an OEM version but I'm still pretty confident that Microsoft Support could provide you with the activation code or tell you who to contact to get one. In the end, the activation code should be free (according to Microsoft's own policies).
And I do want to emphasize that I agree it's annoying that they do this when it justs make it harder to use their products.