The only holdup on Duke Nukem Forever is the manual. And Harlan Ellison will get around to that just as soon as he finishes The Last Dangerous Visions.
The "kidnap and try" situation, which is established by no statute, is actually dependent on the fact that US courts are not claiming jurisdiction over what happens in foreign countries.
The court ruling in question is that US judges are in the business of evaluating and applying US law, not foreign law. Accordingly, a judge cannot free a defendant on the grounds that the circumstances by which he was brought before a US court violated the laws of, say, France. That's a matter of French law, and thus beyond the jurisdiction of a US court. Similarly, since a US court doesn't have jurisdiction in France, the court doesn't have the power to punish crimes that happen in France. Again, that's a matter for French courts.
So, a US court cannot punish a marshal or free a defendant over what happened in a foreign country, precisely because a US court does not have jurisdiction over what happens in foreign countries.
Comcast's advantages are pretty irrelevant, since they're specifically talking about "areas not currently serviced by broadband," "where other broadband providers can't afford to build infrastructure." When the choices are 33.6K dialup (these sort of remote areas are going to be on phone equipment that can't handle 56k), satellite, or power line, power line actually has a chance.
Thing is, there already was a level-less Star Wars MMO, with a player-oriented economy, player-built cities with actual politics, etc. And it didn't do very well.
Now, you can argue that pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies wasn't a good enough implementation . . . but it's a bit much to expect Lucas would try it again.
Clearly be wrong? Here's the actual US law on the issue:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided . . . that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner[.]"
There accordingly seems to be no violation of copyright law if I buy a copy of OS X and authorize Psystar to adapt it as necessary to run on a Psystar-built machine . . . which ordering a Psystar machine with OS X pre-installed pretty clearly does.
The best argument Apple has to counter is that I cannot buy a copy of OS X, I can only license it, and the action violates the EULA contract. This argument may be invalid on a combination of factors. First is the argument that OS X is actually sold, not licensed, given the mode by which it's purchased, lack of "consideration" for agreeing to the license, etc. Second is that it's a public policy violation, as copyright law was intended to allow such adaptations, a EULA provision that exists for no reason except to prevent such adaptations is improper. Third is that the EULA is an antitrust violation.
The cumulative effect is that no, Psystar is not clearly wrong.
Amazing, isn't it? It's like there was actual evidence dating from before Bush's inauguration that could lead one to honestly conclude that Iraq and Al Qaeda were, if not bosom buddies, at least allies of convenience.
Re:Nice to see what's missing
on
Google, Circa 2001
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
After all, the arguments for Solaris's survival are cogent and persuasive. A handful of features, an installed base, a matter of trust, superior solidity, people actually switching back.
All, indeed, the same cogent and persuasive arguments presented in 1998 for why SCO's Unix versions weren't going anywhere anytime soon. And look at SCO today!
This was the biggest mistake the various parties made in backing Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. HD-DVD actually delivered (not just promised) dual-format "Twin" discs that gave both HD-DVD in the HD player and could be played in an ordinary DVD player. Which means you could switch entirely to selling HD-DVD discs (one SKU, one distribution channel, cost savings on a per-unit basis because you'd be buying the HD discs in DVD volumes), and people with only DVD players would buy them. Which would then have them build up a library of HD titles in their homes. When they next bought a TV, it would probably be HD, and when they next bought a DVD player (say, since they want to put the old DVD player on the old TV now in the other room), they'd be tempted to buy an HD-DVD to take advantage of the content they already had. And then they'd start upgrading their old titles to HD, and . . .
There has to be a First Foundation project that was behind developing, for example, the mentalic shield. Such a clandestine project, aimed at beings with mentalic powers, would have been organized to protect itself from mentalic discovery and subversion, including cell-type structures and compartmentalization. And a central fear would be of members of the project being subverted.
So, when Mayor Branno goes out with the mentalic shield to crush the Second Foundation, and comes back convinced she negotiated a commercial treaty and that the Second Foundation never existed, it's almost certain some segment of the project is alerted and flees into hiding. The galaxy is huge, full of places to hide. The project-conspiracy has all sorts of bits of tech that involves menatlics; the mental static device, the mentalic shield, the psychometer, the encephalograph, and even old bits like the visi-sonor. They have proof that mentalics are still active, and that it can defeat the current version of the mentalic shield, and thus ample reason to develop ever-more-refined versions of those devices, and new ones working from the same physical principles. Which they then can hook up to major power sources, instead of depending on the energy capacity of biological cells. The advantage is theirs over both the Second Foundation and Gaia.
Except there's Daneel's new transducer lobes. And Daneel can easily figure out all of the above, and so will be expecting cells of opposition. The question then becomes, can the conspiracy to defend the First Foundation defeat the mastermind of millennia?
Well, nspr is in their source tree. Whether it's used for anything more than the taken-from-Mozilla code (Mozilla interface to Java Plugin APIs, npapi, nss, and hunspell), I don't know.
Re:Hey everyone they're GREEN!
on
The Google Navy
·
· Score: 1
International waters?
International waters are not free of the jurisdiction of governments; they are free of the exclusive jurisdiction of any one government, which is very different.
Either you're on a flagged vessel, or you're not. If you're flagged, you're subject to the laws of the country where you're registered. If you're flagless, you are subject to arbitrary boarding by any country that decides to do so. (And if you change flags according to convenience, you're legally flagless.)
Re:Firefox Damage Control Is More Than Enough
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Okay, I've investigated further.
Above, I was depending on Google's own statement that "Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and others do not support ActiveX. Instead, these browsers make use of the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI)."
Looking around, further, the activex shim is explicitly described as "A shim for running some Active-X controls in Chromium."
Poking around in the source tarball in the activex_shim directory, it looks like they're working on a general support-ActiveX-through-NPAPI plugin; both Firefox and Opera are mentioned in the README. This NPAPI plugin is presumably not yet able to support all ActiveX controls.
Re:Firefox Damage Control Is More Than Enough
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 1
I missed that. Thanks!
Re:Firefox Damage Control Is More Than Enough
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Chrome has out of the box some basic features that are really useful and ought to be default in others . . . such as spell check enabled by default
You know what the cute part is? Chrome uses Firefox's spellchecker code.
I haven't figured out yet whether it uses FF's or IE's plug ins for this
Almost certainly Firefox's; Chrome directly uses the Mozilla NSAPI code, and it doesn't do ActiveX.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome
on
Google Chrome, Day 2
·
· Score: 1
Apparently it has no Mozilla code at all
Actually, it does have Mozilla code:
hunspell (spellchecker) Mozilla interface to Java Plugin APIs npapi (Netscape Plugin API) nspr (the Netscape portable runtime) nss (Network Security Services)
And, of course, the awesomebar is painful to look at. Someday I'm going to get banned from slashdot because people will get tired of me bitching about that "feature" on every Firefox story.
(e.g., it can't be mostly neutrinos or other very light particles)
Well, there are efforts to spackle together a theory that combines MOND and neutrinos as an alternative to WIMPs. It's comparatively unsuccessful at the moment, but one can never be quite sure what's going to come flying out of left field.
Assuming the reasonable (if not proven) ideas that life on Earth began before the Late Heavy Bombardment, and that the Late Heavy Bombardment happened, there should have been lots of bacteria-infested ejecta from the Earth spreading throughout the solar system. Enough that some landing on Titan is perhaps not probable, but is much more likely than "essentially impossible". (One hundred miles per hour average speed, and you get from Earth to Titan in a mere 1,000 years; the distance, at least, is not a problem.)
Thing is, life on Titan doesn't need to evolve on Titan . . . it just needs to survive the journey to Titan from where it evolved. Endospores are quite durable.
AMD's problem is AMD got its x86 know-how from Intel's own documentation, so AMD is Intel's bitch forever,
That was true until, you know, more than a decade ago. Then AMD bought a little company called NexGen, which had developed its own black-box x86, and put the NexGen team to work developing its further x86 processors. Every AMD x86 processor from the K6 on has been a descendant of the NexGen "RISC86" line, not the old based-on-Intel line (the K5 and earlier).
Slashdot Mirror
The only holdup on Duke Nukem Forever is the manual. And Harlan Ellison will get around to that just as soon as he finishes The Last Dangerous Visions.
The "kidnap and try" situation, which is established by no statute, is actually dependent on the fact that US courts are not claiming jurisdiction over what happens in foreign countries.
The court ruling in question is that US judges are in the business of evaluating and applying US law, not foreign law. Accordingly, a judge cannot free a defendant on the grounds that the circumstances by which he was brought before a US court violated the laws of, say, France. That's a matter of French law, and thus beyond the jurisdiction of a US court. Similarly, since a US court doesn't have jurisdiction in France, the court doesn't have the power to punish crimes that happen in France. Again, that's a matter for French courts.
So, a US court cannot punish a marshal or free a defendant over what happened in a foreign country, precisely because a US court does not have jurisdiction over what happens in foreign countries.
Comcast's advantages are pretty irrelevant, since they're specifically talking about "areas not currently serviced by broadband," "where other broadband providers can't afford to build infrastructure." When the choices are 33.6K dialup (these sort of remote areas are going to be on phone equipment that can't handle 56k), satellite, or power line, power line actually has a chance.
No, wait, Scott Bakula!
No! Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course!
Oh, oh, how about a CGI Doctor provided by Lucasfilm!
Thing is, there already was a level-less Star Wars MMO, with a player-oriented economy, player-built cities with actual politics, etc. And it didn't do very well.
Now, you can argue that pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies wasn't a good enough implementation . . . but it's a bit much to expect Lucas would try it again.
Clearly be wrong? Here's the actual US law on the issue:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided . . . that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner[.]"
There accordingly seems to be no violation of copyright law if I buy a copy of OS X and authorize Psystar to adapt it as necessary to run on a Psystar-built machine . . . which ordering a Psystar machine with OS X pre-installed pretty clearly does.
The best argument Apple has to counter is that I cannot buy a copy of OS X, I can only license it, and the action violates the EULA contract. This argument may be invalid on a combination of factors. First is the argument that OS X is actually sold, not licensed, given the mode by which it's purchased, lack of "consideration" for agreeing to the license, etc. Second is that it's a public policy violation, as copyright law was intended to allow such adaptations, a EULA provision that exists for no reason except to prevent such adaptations is improper. Third is that the EULA is an antitrust violation.
The cumulative effect is that no, Psystar is not clearly wrong.
Amazing, isn't it? It's like there was actual evidence dating from before Bush's inauguration that could lead one to honestly conclude that Iraq and Al Qaeda were, if not bosom buddies, at least allies of convenience.
Try al qaeda iraq.
After all, the arguments for Solaris's survival are cogent and persuasive. A handful of features, an installed base, a matter of trust, superior solidity, people actually switching back.
All, indeed, the same cogent and persuasive arguments presented in 1998 for why SCO's Unix versions weren't going anywhere anytime soon. And look at SCO today!
Yeah, chicken-egg.
This was the biggest mistake the various parties made in backing Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. HD-DVD actually delivered (not just promised) dual-format "Twin" discs that gave both HD-DVD in the HD player and could be played in an ordinary DVD player. Which means you could switch entirely to selling HD-DVD discs (one SKU, one distribution channel, cost savings on a per-unit basis because you'd be buying the HD discs in DVD volumes), and people with only DVD players would buy them. Which would then have them build up a library of HD titles in their homes. When they next bought a TV, it would probably be HD, and when they next bought a DVD player (say, since they want to put the old DVD player on the old TV now in the other room), they'd be tempted to buy an HD-DVD to take advantage of the content they already had. And then they'd start upgrading their old titles to HD, and . . .
Think back to the end of Foundation's Edge.
There has to be a First Foundation project that was behind developing, for example, the mentalic shield. Such a clandestine project, aimed at beings with mentalic powers, would have been organized to protect itself from mentalic discovery and subversion, including cell-type structures and compartmentalization. And a central fear would be of members of the project being subverted.
So, when Mayor Branno goes out with the mentalic shield to crush the Second Foundation, and comes back convinced she negotiated a commercial treaty and that the Second Foundation never existed, it's almost certain some segment of the project is alerted and flees into hiding. The galaxy is huge, full of places to hide. The project-conspiracy has all sorts of bits of tech that involves menatlics; the mental static device, the mentalic shield, the psychometer, the encephalograph, and even old bits like the visi-sonor. They have proof that mentalics are still active, and that it can defeat the current version of the mentalic shield, and thus ample reason to develop ever-more-refined versions of those devices, and new ones working from the same physical principles. Which they then can hook up to major power sources, instead of depending on the energy capacity of biological cells. The advantage is theirs over both the Second Foundation and Gaia.
Except there's Daneel's new transducer lobes. And Daneel can easily figure out all of the above, and so will be expecting cells of opposition. The question then becomes, can the conspiracy to defend the First Foundation defeat the mastermind of millennia?
Well, nspr is in their source tree. Whether it's used for anything more than the taken-from-Mozilla code (Mozilla interface to Java Plugin APIs, npapi, nss, and hunspell), I don't know.
It is easy to find a fork() for windows, or indeed posix threads, etc.
In fact, Chrome/Chromium actually uses the Pthreads for win32 library.
International waters?
International waters are not free of the jurisdiction of governments; they are free of the exclusive jurisdiction of any one government, which is very different.
Either you're on a flagged vessel, or you're not. If you're flagged, you're subject to the laws of the country where you're registered. If you're flagless, you are subject to arbitrary boarding by any country that decides to do so. (And if you change flags according to convenience, you're legally flagless.)
Okay, I've investigated further.
Above, I was depending on Google's own statement that "Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and others do not support ActiveX. Instead, these browsers make use of the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI)."
Looking around, further, the activex shim is explicitly described as "A shim for running some Active-X controls in Chromium."
Poking around in the source tarball in the activex_shim directory, it looks like they're working on a general support-ActiveX-through-NPAPI plugin; both Firefox and Opera are mentioned in the README. This NPAPI plugin is presumably not yet able to support all ActiveX controls.
I missed that. Thanks!
Chrome has out of the box some basic features that are really useful and ought to be default in others . . . such as spell check enabled by default
You know what the cute part is? Chrome uses Firefox's spellchecker code.
I haven't figured out yet whether it uses FF's or IE's plug ins for this
Almost certainly Firefox's; Chrome directly uses the Mozilla NSAPI code, and it doesn't do ActiveX.
Apparently it has no Mozilla code at all
Actually, it does have Mozilla code:
hunspell (spellchecker)
Mozilla interface to Java Plugin APIs
npapi (Netscape Plugin API)
nspr (the Netscape portable runtime)
nss (Network Security Services)
http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html
The current portions of the Chrome code that are under the MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL tri-license are:
hunspell (spellchecker)
Mozilla interface to Java Plugin APIs
npapi (Netscape Plugin API)
nspr (the Netscape portable runtime)
nss (Network Security Services)
http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html
And, of course, the awesomebar is painful to look at. Someday I'm going to get banned from slashdot because people will get tired of me bitching about that "feature" on every Firefox story.
Oldbar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227
(e.g., it can't be mostly neutrinos or other very light particles)
Well, there are efforts to spackle together a theory that combines MOND and neutrinos as an alternative to WIMPs. It's comparatively unsuccessful at the moment, but one can never be quite sure what's going to come flying out of left field.
Assuming the reasonable (if not proven) ideas that life on Earth began before the Late Heavy Bombardment, and that the Late Heavy Bombardment happened, there should have been lots of bacteria-infested ejecta from the Earth spreading throughout the solar system. Enough that some landing on Titan is perhaps not probable, but is much more likely than "essentially impossible". (One hundred miles per hour average speed, and you get from Earth to Titan in a mere 1,000 years; the distance, at least, is not a problem.)
Thing is, life on Titan doesn't need to evolve on Titan . . . it just needs to survive the journey to Titan from where it evolved. Endospores are quite durable.
Having browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace support restored would be nice, too. At least there's now an (experimental) add-on to fix it ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8511 )
AMD's problem is AMD got its x86 know-how from Intel's own documentation, so AMD is Intel's bitch forever,
That was true until, you know, more than a decade ago. Then AMD bought a little company called NexGen, which had developed its own black-box x86, and put the NexGen team to work developing its further x86 processors. Every AMD x86 processor from the K6 on has been a descendant of the NexGen "RISC86" line, not the old based-on-Intel line (the K5 and earlier).