Gosh, I don't believe that someone will actually read this after all that has been said in this thread. But since I have the feeling that the essence is missing in all the (mostly valid) criticism of parent and since I've got rather strong feelings about this I feel the urge to add to the picture:
It's true that most armies don't embrace the concept of democracy or freedom (and there is no doubt that this wouldn't work in the long run). But there's a diference in having obeying troops and people who depend on their government to make a living. If you haven't guessed already, I'm criticising "professional armies" like the one the US currently maintains. Compared to a "draft" the majority of such armies usually consists of people of lower income. People who see some kind of perspective in joining the army. Furthermore it's a sad truth that such people usually haven't enjoyed a high level of education in gerneral, which makes it more likely that they won't question immoral orders. I'm not saying that poor people are dumb, but I think it's more likely that an army consisting of people who rely on the army for carreer plans are more likely to follow illogical orders or make up their own (Lynndie England anyone?).
Afterall there's a reason why the US did get rid of a general draft after 73 and there's also a reason why they try not to expose coffins to the media today. In respect to other decisions the ultimate goal is to keep the general public out of warfare, because that's what made the Vietnam war fail in the end. Since the cold war is over for quite some time I believe that it might be time for compulsory military service again, because it's just ugly to seperate remote wars and general society that much with an added flavor of patriotism. Disclaimer: Before anyone thinks I'm criticising any particular war - I just believe that there's a lack of balance in the US governments decisions to go to war in the last 2 decades.
It's true that it's just a convention, but that doesn't make it right. It obviously doesn't scale very well, because it is limited to the characters of the alphabet. To add some confusion MS changed their labeling scheme somewhere between 98 and 2000 IIRC. But what I consider most critical is the ongoing incapability to label devices according to ids. Just imagine you have 3 USB sticks you plug in from time to time and have a backup script being triggered to copy the new files into folders being individually related to the sticks. Since it all depends on the sequence in which the sticks are plugged it is impossible to tell whether D: is stick A or B or something else. And even if they get this solved I really wonder what will happen if you connect the 25th removable hd...
It's not like Unix and Linux are perfect out of the box, but compared to Win it's so forseeing to have a real hierarchy.
Did you search for "First Last" (with the double quotes around it)? If the combination of your first and last name is that uncommon you should be pretty easy to find.
I guess Joe User will not decide on his own, because most people still get theirs preinstalled with their new computer. But if he/she is going to decide it will be Home Basic as long as it doesn't come with less basic features than XP Home (I'm talking about networking, ability to run any XP program and printer support for example).
But how many versions turn up in the help pages on distinct sections? If you use the advanced search feature of the knowledge base you can't choose between different versions to narrow your search. So they are either planning to diversify at the beginning (can't believe that there will be specific versions without the Media Player again) or they are just considering how to reorganize their help pages (taking into account that there is a really low probability that someone is using a version of Windows without Media Player). Afterall the non-existance of Windows versions without Media Player reflects the lack of support rather well right now.
So does that mean that there will be 8 different versions? Or just 8 different help sections on the help page? I must admit that my mind somehow automatically checked when I read this if we are already at the beginning of April...
But as the article about the DVIMAGIC device points out, this will very likely be added to the key revocation list and it will not even affect any "legitimate" uses, because afaik Spatz only produces the DVIMAGIC and the key was officially obtained by them, so it's not like the key is stolen from some big TV producer.
Reminds me of ICQ - afaik they have never used their own service to contact their members. Nevertheless I'm recieving something like this every week since '97: "ICQ is going to charge a monthly fee if this message isn't going to be forwarded to at least 10 people on your contact list". While it is a widely known fact that ICQ is still free and that no company would ever put such decisions on customer feedback like this some people still seem to buy this kind of crap (otherwise I wouldn't recieve it).
Maybe I wasn't using the best example in the world in this case, but it doesn't take more than a strawman in this case to prove grandparent wrong. If you don't like the torch think about the beetle or rocket science or a good portion of sub-sonic flight aerodynamics.
Coming to think about the reactions on/. I'm starting to wonder if Germany has learned the most from WWII.
So who are you going to blame? It's not like the Nazis had fingerprints on their ID-cards. Maybe SA used them to identify people, but that doesn't make the concept of identifying people evil itself. In my country (Germany - gasp!) we never had problems with ID cards since '45. The card is only needed whenever you have to prove your identity - things which are done by energy bills or drivers licenses in most countries which don't have this kind of concept. Having a piece of paper issued by your state to verify your identity isn't a bad idea at all. I usually keep it in my wallet just in case, but it's not mandatory. The worst thing that could happen is that the police suspects that I've been involved in a crime and puts me in prison to identify me (not different to most countries). However, if they don't manage to do this within 12 hours they have to set me free (which isn't a problem anyways, because I usually carry my ID with me as I already mentioned). Being forced to sell a kidney to obtain those new shiny IDs with heaps of biometric data is a different story though.
I might be off-topic on this, but I keep wondering: Did it take "ID Books" to keep up a system discrimating the black population? Or was it all about foreign workers? I've got to call my relatives in South Africa if you don't enlighten me...
PS: As an added bonus I used my ID recently to go to Poland, Spain and the UK - if it wasn't for non-EU countries like the US, SA or Australia I wouldn't even consider paying for a regular passport...
We're talking about two different things here: The olympic fire seems to be a concept the ancient greeks already had, albeit not being situated in Olympia, but in Athens. The idea of a fire was reintroduced at the summer games in 1928, which were held in Amsterdam.
But the ancient greeks never lit a torch on mount olympus to bring it to the site of the games like it has been done ever since '36. Afterall the distance between the classic site and the mountain is too short to be of much symbolic use anyways...
That's a typhic black-white reasoning scheme at it's best. Just because ID-cards were introduced in the Third Reich (and have been used for doing a lot of bad things) doesn't mean that they are evil by definition.
By that kind of logic we should get rid of the olympic torch right away, because it was introduced in 1936 in Berlin (look it up if you are in doubt).
The articel doesn't mention Apple or OSX, but those "Mactel" computers aren't part of the Viiv campaign (couldn't find any better word for it, sorry), so there is no formal reason to allow this on new macs. On the other hand you already mentioned that Skype isn't up to date feature-wise, so there are different problems to worry about right now (like lack of performance in the latest version, not being able to use a webcam and so on)
On a more general scale I really doubt that there's any benefit in talking to 9 people at the same time over a phone-like device. Might work if you say over whenever you are done and if you start your statement with your name. Furthermore it might help to use an ALOHAnet like approach to avoid collisions. I know I'm a little sarcastic regarding this point, but IMO 10 people on a conference call are just too much to handle in most situations.
Taking the timespan into account the term about is more than correct (at least if you look at the new testament, which was mostly written by certain people between 35 and 70 a.c.)
Not much of an arguer, huh? Before trying to think I should give you a hint about normal work in front of a computer - most of these jobs involve a mouse and a keyboard -so there's nothing special about being a "Database manager". There might be someone in your work field affected by CTS, but that doesn't automatically mean that it can be pinned down to the use of a mouse. Just because you can find someone saying that s/he has it because of mouse usage doesn't mean that it's the ultimate truth. I know of studies saying that the mouse is the major culprit of CTS, but the definition of carpal tunnel says that you stress certain muscles beyond repair, which is hard to believe if you just take mouse usage into account.
...boring! I mean it's not a topic at all among the vast majority of Christians around the world. There's just a small minority opposed to Darwin in the US, so people who are basically in the same camp feel the urge to show some sympathy for someone who had a good idea. I usually don't troll at all and I don't intend this to be a troll, but I'm quite tired of defending an acknowledged idea against a small minority which believes that a book written 2000 years ago (roughly) has to be interpreted word by word. To me (as a believing protestant) that's just like the Pepsi vs. Coke campaign. Sorry for being so direct...
I might be mistaken, but IMO the original purpose of our patent system is to make innovation public. Since nobody in his right mind would do this for free there's a reward in the form of a monopoly for a limited period of time.
But if you (as a fictive company) prefer to keep your success private you can stick to trade secrets...
It's not about those who are paying, but those who have the idea (at least that's how it was intended).
Carpal tunnel syndrome is usually associated with heavy use of the keyboard. It might be possible to archive the same syndrome with a mouse, but I don't know of any company looking for hardcore gamers right now (it's not like I wouldn't appreciate it).
So in my opinion this is just marketing bs, because I can't think of any work related field involving the use of a mouse for 8 hours a day...
That's funny, I never heard of the word redress before and it's not what I meant, because redress is more like a compensation for something done to you (no contract involved beforehand)
Regress as a word exists in English, but it's not used like I thought (I'm a non native speaker obviously). All I wanted to say is that the contract might not cover the case that SCO's claims are not right, so there wouldn't be any ground for demanding money back in this scenario. I'm sorry for causing any deep thoughts late at night and I'm open for any suggestions for an appropriate term.
I don't have any clue about US law (TM), but I assume that the contract someone is subscribing to in order to use certain technological archievements is constructed in a manner which basically says that 'we (the company holding the patents) won't sue you if you use this kind of technology'. Just like SCO's antidot license.
So there won't be any regress.
That's why I put the word usually in my post. Btw: I've seen various bull fights live recently, having spend two months in Spain last year. Don't get me wrong, I'm always for the bull, but the way I see it it's a unique exception to the rule and there's nothing justifying the same exception for a popular TV show. And if you prefer more comon reason: Many of us have had the "pleasure" to use a magnifier against animals in the garden at bright sunlight when we were kids. But no one with a sane mind would suggest using giant magnifiers against cows, even though it might be entertaining. The bull fights in Spain are a differnt issue, but in general it's not a good justification to do anything just because it has been done before...
depends on how you define "worse". There is no doubt that such a software will prevent a lot of harm. On the other hand there's no antivirus solution on the market which doesn't fail in some scenarios. Just to give a simple example: NTFS features the ability to save several files under the same name (aka alternate data streams). Some products just scan the main stream, so every virus hiding in an alternate is safe. Microsoft is more than aware about such problems compared to other vendors, because they naturally know more than their competitors about the OS. Nevertheless I'm quite sure that there will be some bug allowing a virus to spread on Vista without being hindered by some product MS might provide for security. So if that would happen the vast majority of Vista users would be screwed, because they wouldn't spend money on a product which comes with Vista anyways. Afterall every MS product or patch concerning security was a joke. Just think about their spyware removal tool or NX-protection, which haven't archieved anything. It's not like I'm trusting other vendors much more, but I believe that diversity is the only key to preventing problems like sasser and alike...
...because it was assumed that there was some practical use to it. But if you do the same because you are interested if some Star Wars plot is "realistic" you are just doing it for entertainment, because there's no real life use to it (not taking the 0.00001% probability into account, that you get lost in some arctic region and manage to kill a deer right before you are close to freezing).
Personally I don't care much about bees, but they are cold blooded anyways and they are way too small to fit anything inside it after all...
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh, I don't believe that someone will actually read this after all that has been said in this thread. But since I have the feeling that the essence is missing in all the (mostly valid) criticism of parent and since I've got rather strong feelings about this I feel the urge to add to the picture:
It's true that most armies don't embrace the concept of democracy or freedom (and there is no doubt that this wouldn't work in the long run). But there's a diference in having obeying troops and people who depend on their government to make a living. If you haven't guessed already, I'm criticising "professional armies" like the one the US currently maintains. Compared to a "draft" the majority of such armies usually consists of people of lower income. People who see some kind of perspective in joining the army. Furthermore it's a sad truth that such people usually haven't enjoyed a high level of education in gerneral, which makes it more likely that they won't question immoral orders. I'm not saying that poor people are dumb, but I think it's more likely that an army consisting of people who rely on the army for carreer plans are more likely to follow illogical orders or make up their own (Lynndie England anyone?).
Afterall there's a reason why the US did get rid of a general draft after 73 and there's also a reason why they try not to expose coffins to the media today. In respect to other decisions the ultimate goal is to keep the general public out of warfare, because that's what made the Vietnam war fail in the end. Since the cold war is over for quite some time I believe that it might be time for compulsory military service again, because it's just ugly to seperate remote wars and general society that much with an added flavor of patriotism. Disclaimer: Before anyone thinks I'm criticising any particular war - I just believe that there's a lack of balance in the US governments decisions to go to war in the last 2 decades.
It's true that it's just a convention, but that doesn't make it right. It obviously doesn't scale very well, because it is limited to the characters of the alphabet. To add some confusion MS changed their labeling scheme somewhere between 98 and 2000 IIRC. But what I consider most critical is the ongoing incapability to label devices according to ids. Just imagine you have 3 USB sticks you plug in from time to time and have a backup script being triggered to copy the new files into folders being individually related to the sticks. Since it all depends on the sequence in which the sticks are plugged it is impossible to tell whether D: is stick A or B or something else. And even if they get this solved I really wonder what will happen if you connect the 25th removable hd...
It's not like Unix and Linux are perfect out of the box, but compared to Win it's so forseeing to have a real hierarchy.
Did you search for "First Last" (with the double quotes around it)? If the combination of your first and last name is that uncommon you should be pretty easy to find.
I guess Joe User will not decide on his own, because most people still get theirs preinstalled with their new computer. But if he/she is going to decide it will be Home Basic as long as it doesn't come with less basic features than XP Home (I'm talking about networking, ability to run any XP program and printer support for example).
But how many versions turn up in the help pages on distinct sections? If you use the advanced search feature of the knowledge base you can't choose between different versions to narrow your search. So they are either planning to diversify at the beginning (can't believe that there will be specific versions without the Media Player again) or they are just considering how to reorganize their help pages (taking into account that there is a really low probability that someone is using a version of Windows without Media Player). Afterall the non-existance of Windows versions without Media Player reflects the lack of support rather well right now.
But this would mean that everybody would just buy Starter/Basic and every serious (windows-run-)company would have the corporate premium.
What amuses me about this is that (in this scenario) only the pirates would possess copies of the Ultimate edition, because it's so l33t.
So does that mean that there will be 8 different versions? Or just 8 different help sections on the help page? I must admit that my mind somehow automatically checked when I read this if we are already at the beginning of April...
I wish I had mod points for parent.
But as the article about the DVIMAGIC device points out, this will very likely be added to the key revocation list and it will not even affect any "legitimate" uses, because afaik Spatz only produces the DVIMAGIC and the key was officially obtained by them, so it's not like the key is stolen from some big TV producer.
Reminds me of ICQ - afaik they have never used their own service to contact their members. Nevertheless I'm recieving something like this every week since '97: "ICQ is going to charge a monthly fee if this message isn't going to be forwarded to at least 10 people on your contact list". While it is a widely known fact that ICQ is still free and that no company would ever put such decisions on customer feedback like this some people still seem to buy this kind of crap (otherwise I wouldn't recieve it).
Nothing wrong about PGP. One can dream...
Maybe I wasn't using the best example in the world in this case, but it doesn't take more than a strawman in this case to prove grandparent wrong. If you don't like the torch think about the beetle or rocket science or a good portion of sub-sonic flight aerodynamics.
/. I'm starting to wonder if Germany has learned the most from WWII.
Coming to think about the reactions on
So who are you going to blame? It's not like the Nazis had fingerprints on their ID-cards. Maybe SA used them to identify people, but that doesn't make the concept of identifying people evil itself. In my country (Germany - gasp!) we never had problems with ID cards since '45. The card is only needed whenever you have to prove your identity - things which are done by energy bills or drivers licenses in most countries which don't have this kind of concept. Having a piece of paper issued by your state to verify your identity isn't a bad idea at all. I usually keep it in my wallet just in case, but it's not mandatory. The worst thing that could happen is that the police suspects that I've been involved in a crime and puts me in prison to identify me (not different to most countries). However, if they don't manage to do this within 12 hours they have to set me free (which isn't a problem anyways, because I usually carry my ID with me as I already mentioned).
Being forced to sell a kidney to obtain those new shiny IDs with heaps of biometric data is a different story though.
I might be off-topic on this, but I keep wondering: Did it take "ID Books" to keep up a system discrimating the black population? Or was it all about foreign workers? I've got to call my relatives in South Africa if you don't enlighten me...
PS: As an added bonus I used my ID recently to go to Poland, Spain and the UK - if it wasn't for non-EU countries like the US, SA or Australia I wouldn't even consider paying for a regular passport...
We're talking about two different things here: The olympic fire seems to be a concept the ancient greeks already had, albeit not being situated in Olympia, but in Athens. The idea of a fire was reintroduced at the summer games in 1928, which were held in Amsterdam.
But the ancient greeks never lit a torch on mount olympus to bring it to the site of the games like it has been done ever since '36. Afterall the distance between the classic site and the mountain is too short to be of much symbolic use anyways...
That's a typhic black-white reasoning scheme at it's best. Just because ID-cards were introduced in the Third Reich (and have been used for doing a lot of bad things) doesn't mean that they are evil by definition.
By that kind of logic we should get rid of the olympic torch right away, because it was introduced in 1936 in Berlin (look it up if you are in doubt).
The articel doesn't mention Apple or OSX, but those "Mactel" computers aren't part of the Viiv campaign (couldn't find any better word for it, sorry), so there is no formal reason to allow this on new macs.
On the other hand you already mentioned that Skype isn't up to date feature-wise, so there are different problems to worry about right now (like lack of performance in the latest version, not being able to use a webcam and so on)
On a more general scale I really doubt that there's any benefit in talking to 9 people at the same time over a phone-like device. Might work if you say over whenever you are done and if you start your statement with your name. Furthermore it might help to use an ALOHAnet like approach to avoid collisions. I know I'm a little sarcastic regarding this point, but IMO 10 people on a conference call are just too much to handle in most situations.
Taking the timespan into account the term about is more than correct (at least if you look at the new testament, which was mostly written by certain people between 35 and 70 a.c.)
Interesting sig, btw.
very true, but to me it's just another reason for not paying any attention to the phenomenon. There's a saying "do not feed the trolls"....
Not much of an arguer, huh? Before trying to think I should give you a hint about normal work in front of a computer - most of these jobs involve a mouse and a keyboard -so there's nothing special about being a "Database manager".
There might be someone in your work field affected by CTS, but that doesn't automatically mean that it can be pinned down to the use of a mouse. Just because you can find someone saying that s/he has it because of mouse usage doesn't mean that it's the ultimate truth. I know of studies saying that the mouse is the major culprit of CTS, but the definition of carpal tunnel says that you stress certain muscles beyond repair, which is hard to believe if you just take mouse usage into account.
...boring! I mean it's not a topic at all among the vast majority of Christians around the world. There's just a small minority opposed to Darwin in the US, so people who are basically in the same camp feel the urge to show some sympathy for someone who had a good idea.
I usually don't troll at all and I don't intend this to be a troll, but I'm quite tired of defending an acknowledged idea against a small minority which believes that a book written 2000 years ago (roughly) has to be interpreted word by word. To me (as a believing protestant) that's just like the Pepsi vs. Coke campaign. Sorry for being so direct...
I might be mistaken, but IMO the original purpose of our patent system is to make innovation public. Since nobody in his right mind would do this for free there's a reward in the form of a monopoly for a limited period of time.
But if you (as a fictive company) prefer to keep your success private you can stick to trade secrets...
It's not about those who are paying, but those who have the idea (at least that's how it was intended).
Carpal tunnel syndrome is usually associated with heavy use of the keyboard. It might be possible to archive the same syndrome with a mouse, but I don't know of any company looking for hardcore gamers right now (it's not like I wouldn't appreciate it).
So in my opinion this is just marketing bs, because I can't think of any work related field involving the use of a mouse for 8 hours a day...
That's funny, I never heard of the word redress before and it's not what I meant, because redress is more like a compensation for something done to you (no contract involved beforehand)
Regress as a word exists in English, but it's not used like I thought (I'm a non native speaker obviously). All I wanted to say is that the contract might not cover the case that SCO's claims are not right, so there wouldn't be any ground for demanding money back in this scenario. I'm sorry for causing any deep thoughts late at night and I'm open for any suggestions for an appropriate term.
I don't have any clue about US law (TM), but I assume that the contract someone is subscribing to in order to use certain technological archievements is constructed in a manner which basically says that 'we (the company holding the patents) won't sue you if you use this kind of technology'. Just like SCO's antidot license.
So there won't be any regress.
That's why I put the word usually in my post. Btw: I've seen various bull fights live recently, having spend two months in Spain last year. Don't get me wrong, I'm always for the bull, but the way I see it it's a unique exception to the rule and there's nothing justifying the same exception for a popular TV show.
And if you prefer more comon reason: Many of us have had the "pleasure" to use a magnifier against animals in the garden at bright sunlight when we were kids. But no one with a sane mind would suggest using giant magnifiers against cows, even though it might be entertaining. The bull fights in Spain are a differnt issue, but in general it's not a good justification to do anything just because it has been done before...
depends on how you define "worse". There is no doubt that such a software will prevent a lot of harm. On the other hand there's no antivirus solution on the market which doesn't fail in some scenarios. Just to give a simple example: NTFS features the ability to save several files under the same name (aka alternate data streams). Some products just scan the main stream, so every virus hiding in an alternate is safe. Microsoft is more than aware about such problems compared to other vendors, because they naturally know more than their competitors about the OS. Nevertheless I'm quite sure that there will be some bug allowing a virus to spread on Vista without being hindered by some product MS might provide for security. So if that would happen the vast majority of Vista users would be screwed, because they wouldn't spend money on a product which comes with Vista anyways. Afterall every MS product or patch concerning security was a joke. Just think about their spyware removal tool or NX-protection, which haven't archieved anything. It's not like I'm trusting other vendors much more, but I believe that diversity is the only key to preventing problems like sasser and alike...
...because it was assumed that there was some practical use to it. But if you do the same because you are interested if some Star Wars plot is "realistic" you are just doing it for entertainment, because there's no real life use to it (not taking the 0.00001% probability into account, that you get lost in some arctic region and manage to kill a deer right before you are close to freezing).
Personally I don't care much about bees, but they are cold blooded anyways and they are way too small to fit anything inside it after all...