I run Linux at home and Windows at work, and seem to spend an increasingly large portion of my time on either platform in Firefox. Firefox works better on Windows than Linux. Embedded media that's automatic on Windows gives me a "plug-in needed" notification and a link to a page with nothing useful on it on Linux. I haven't had to do it for a while, but last I remember helper application selection was done in a way that made absolutely no sense on Linux.
Lots of programs have quirky GUI layout and proportion issues on Linux but not on Windows... I think a lot of that has to do with font rendering, which is largely out of the programs' control. But to some degree it's harder in X because there's a better chance that the DPI will be set to what it actually is instead of fixed to one of two allowed artificial values.
Windows GUIs are getting harder to make, though, because the programming style suggested by current VS versions and languages (as compared to old-school VB) is getting more and more complicated, and forcing more stuff into programmers' minds at once instead of less. Not to mention that you have to worry about more imperative concerns now while laying out forms, which really ought to be a declarative process (and mostly is in old VB... more accurately, you don't have to worry about your code being executed in design mode unless you really want it to). I should note that I don't have tons of GUI programming experience, these are just impressions formed from working with a few VB5 projects and a few VS projects at work.
Odd; I always thought most people would rather have a PDF than a Word doc, unless they were collaborating with you. Certainly, if you're submitting a final, formatted document you'd want to use a format that specifies the rendered output exactly (PDF, Postscript, whatever Microsoft's new-ish one is) instead of one like ODF, Office formats, and TeX input files, which don't.
Yeah, it's a little better than the old days. It sure would be nice, though, if when technology improved we actually got to enjoy the benefits. Otherwise we might as well use the old stuff, which is simpler, cheaper, and easier to hack on.
That it can be worked around by the user doesn't change the fact that it's a programming error. The programmers made an assumption that the user running the program would have write access to the directory containing the binary. That hasn't been a safe assumption on Windows for years.
In fact, the workaround you suggest is hardly complete; where is a non-admin user going to move the binary? Somewhere within his home directory. Other non-admins likely won't even have read access.
Who picked up the phone? You did. You made the decision that keeping your client, your private business interest, is more important than maintaining the public good of safe roads. I'm not any more inclined to let you off the hook because of your client "emergency" than some teenager getting a call about some stupid teenage drama crap. You're still bound by responsibility to other users of the road to pay attention.
Business folk need to get the fuck over themselves. When you're on the road you have a responsibility to everyone on it. Your job doesn't change that, no matter how important you think you are.
Ha, well in that case it's even easier. Surely it wouldn't be hard to find a bunch of players willing to cancel WoW subscriptions until a blatant programming error is fixed!
I'm not all that familiar with any of this software specifically since I'm not a gamer, but earlier today I thought the same thing you did about Punk Buster: it could be a daemon running as root, a setuid binary (I'm sure Windows has an equivalent but I don't know what it's called), or a kernel module without requiring other programs to run as admin. So I looked it up and it sounds from their Wikipedia page like they've already done it.
If you don't like it quit WoW or your other silly games. If anyone asks, explain why. If you can convince others to quit WoW, write the company and tell them why you're doing it. Yes, they might think they need these programs to keep the game balanced. But if you're concerned about your computer's security you should make that decision as hard for them as possible, to the point that some companies will stop requiring root access.
But if you're too much of a sheep I have no sympathy.
Or, alternately, you could keep a separate OS install for games that require root. WoW supposedly will even run in Wine, so you might not even have to fork over for another Windows license. Your other drives/partitions, of course, would then be available to any program able to mount them, so doing this is pretty stupid unless you encrypt or physically remove them. Sound too complicated? Get a new hobby! It's their job as smart programmers to make anti-cheat software in a way that doesn't compromise your security.
If you haven't caught the thieves by the time the tornado hits, sorry to say, you don't have much chance of doing so. Doubly so if you haven't even noticed and fixed the damage yet. I don't think punishment scheme is a major problem here. They're doing things that it's hard to catch them doing. Unless you have actual people on the ground ready to arrest them when they come you won't likely get them. I suppose people could try to set traps, but that's not appropriate for public areas, and even on private property behind locked gates I don't think many people would be willing to face the liability risk of setting traps.
Sabotage implies that the purpose is inflicting damage, with the direct material gain incidental (if it even occurs). The same is true of vandalism and (in a different way) terrorism. With copper theft the purpose is usually direct personal gain, with damage incidental. Big difference in intent, which matters to the law.
It's not like plain old theft is legal. Why do we need to label it anything else?
Did the ISP really give you 10mbps? Can the ISP even guarantee you that?
They can't, and so they're limiting users so they can guarantee a reasonable level of service to everyone without raising prices.
Before you cry about what they advertise and sell to you, try reading the terms and the fine print, not just the big stupid number. They're almost certainly not selling you a constant 10mbps pipe.
Before you say you're being victimized by your low-usage neighbors, imagine a truly fair Internet billing scheme: in addition to a low general periodic charge people are charged per bit, probably with some bits more expensive based on time of day. Maybe we come up with a pie-in-the-sky way to request low-latency packets and charge more for them, too. This way you as a heavy P2P user would probably pay less per-bit by using the cheapest times possible, but your overall bill would still be a lot higher because you use the network more. Currently Grandma down the block (assuming her computer isn't in a botnet) is subsidizing your torrents.
Now, I think a "fair" scheme like this would have some negative effects: the clamp-down on people and companies doing innovative things and contributing a lot to the Internet community is the biggest one. Another is that people that get viruses or otherwise wind up downloading a lot could wind up with enormous bills, and the effort spent disputing and explaining them would be unjustifiable, considering that the subsidizers aren't the ones threatening to leave. So I don't exactly recommend anyone implement this idea.
I might suggest to heavy P2P users that if they want to leave their computers on all day generating Internet traffic that they ditch their crummy consumer-level ISP. They're basically using commercial levels of traffic, so if they want commercial-grade service guarantees they should choose their ISP accordingly. More expensive? Absolutely. You get what you pay for.
Ha, I love how you put personal ambition on a pedestal like that.
If people don't think about bigger issues than themselves, study them and write about them, how will we ever understand these things? That doesn't mean that pop stars know anything about what they spout off on; they're usually naive and under-informed at best. But you can be sure that if your ambition is entirely personal you'll end up working for someone else -- someone that probably has put some thought into the effect their work has on their community at least (to be successful in business you have to have at least some ability to think this way if you're going to sell anything to anyone), and has done plenty of work to make their mark.
Actions and words have consequences. But people are often willing to forgive.
I don't think copyright is much of a protection for your reputation once you release something. If you've already published a book you're embarrassed by, unless you can track down and buy back all the copies there will still be copies around, and copyright can't stop people from writing about what you wrote.
I think most people around here, if they believe in copyright at all (I do), believe its purpose should be to encourage the publication of works that benefit society. There are major conflicts between the type of copyright system that would further this goal and one that would guarantee author control. Pure self-interest would dictate that most of us would side with wider society.
A few authors (or their estates) vigorously try to use copyright law to control their works, or even discussion of them. I'd guess you'd find a lot more sympathy for them in the general population than at Slashdot.
Web sites and their owners can't jail anyone directly. But this ruling provides a way to turn TOS violations into criminal offenses, given nothing else but a police department willing to charge you and a jury willing to convict. Do something unpopular but otherwise legal and you could be targeted.
I'm sure Lori Drew could be charged and convicted with something related to what she actually did wrong. Maybe not -- and if not, then she ought to go free...
There are plenty of loopholes that authorities could use to arrest anyone they want. They all stink. This is one of them.
You know, I dislike Flash in general because I think it's bad for the Web, and I never use a portable device to access the Internet. So I'm hardly a supporter of their decision to use YouTube. That said, if they were thinking about/. (or any other big site that might link them) at all, I'd bet all they thought is that they didn't want tons of people trying to download video off of their server at once, even on what's probably a pretty low-traffic Saturday. It's probably very easy to post video on YouTube (I've never done it so I don't know); is there a video hosting site that uses normal streaming video formats that's as easy to use for both the creator and viewer?
How many people actually un-DRM their music libraries? Some don't know how, some are just lazy, maybe some people have weird reasons (thinking that it feels sneaky and wrong, or deeming it aesthetically unpleasing -- that might be where I'd fall). Anyway, anyone that wouldn't un-DRM their library to buy a player they liked more than an iPod, or to install an OS that wouldn't run iTunes, has been affected by this lock-in. Reduced choice (which in the long run means higher prices or an inferior product at some point, even if Apple's players are well-liked at the moment), or the inconvenience of converting your library, 80-minute CD at a time, is the cost of lock-in. It's the cost of lock-in that gives them their power over consumers and their power over consumers that gives them power over the labels. That is the mechanism you described in GGP post, the personal monopolies that they hold over each iTunes and iPod user. It's not a conventional monopoly, perhaps, but it's what you described first. You can't laud how they wield their monopoly power with one hand and deny it exists with the other.
I have a strong, unwavering, irrational hat(red) for Apple? Hardly. I have a perfectly rational distaste for lock-in. I also treat claims of corporate do-gooding with a proper amount of skepticism: a lot. Apple, like all companies, acts in its self interest. Sometimes that interest aligns with ours. Perhaps lower prices on compressed, DRM-laden music files. Yippie. Other times their interest is opposed. Perhaps, oh, what was this article about again? Apple adding DRM in a way that sucks for customers?
Apple was, like I said, shrewd with iTunes and the iPod. They had a good strategy, it worked, they earned a big piece of the market. And they might have done so largely by doing right by their customers in some respects. But, at this article proves, they aren't in it for the customers, they're in it for their profits. That doesn't make them evil, just worthy of skepticism like every other company, person, and idea. Instead of applying that skepticism you've decided that Apple is good and that big record companies are evil; you root for one and against the other. I believe neither entity is good or evil, have no loyalty to either, and root for my own interests.
I buy my music on physical CDs, perhaps the last non-DRM, open-standard format that will ever gain near-ubiquity for legal music distribution. I don't claim this is the only way, or even the best way to buy music given my values and needs. And I don't claim my values and needs apply to everyone; I don't have a cell phone or portable music player (unless you count a harmonica), and many people go so far as to personally identify with their devices, which I think is just fucking weird. Anyway, my claim is that I owe damn little to Apple in the field of music, and that they didn't do anything on my behalf, rhetoric aside.
Sure, life is inherently dangerous (deadly, even!). But danger doesn't only come from tyrants and thugs. It often comes from people that just aren't being thoughtful. And damage doesn't only come from sabotage, but more typically as a byproduct of useful work.
The roads are a great example. What do people do on roads? They operate machines heavy enough to easily crush a person, at speeds at which a person cannot withstand impact unprotected. Any driver inherently externalizes the risks of his own mistakes onto other drivers and, disproportionately, onto pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and people in smaller cars, but we live with it because we generally find driving useful. Same goes for many other activities personal and commercial.
If the justification is that we find it useful, however, there's a balance of utility and risk. We don't allow industry to dump anywhere without limit, because we don't think having slightly cheaper consumer goods is worth the groundwater pollution. We don't allow people to drive drunk (or in dense cities while talking on cell phones) because the convenience they gain isn't worth what everyone else loses. The problem with your way of thinking is that it forgets about the commons. Not just the physical common resources, important as they are, but a common level of safety that allows people to rationally assess and take risks for the benefit of themselves and others (if this sounds like a market, it should be no surprise; a healthy market is a common good, and can produce some nasty shocks if it's disregarded).
Yeah, and Dvorak was created specifically with that in mind, based on which letters tend to follow eachother in words. Lots of very common short English words use only left-handed letters in Qwerty, and very few do in Dvorak. This is because in Qwerty the E, A, R, S and T are all on the left hand. In Dvorak the vowels are all on the left and the most common consonants on the right, which tends to produce more alternation.
Also, not all same-hand repeats require the same effort. Moving from the outside to the inside of the keyboard is easier than the other way around; that staying on the home row is easier that not; that the top row is easier to get at than the bottom; that the hardest sequence to type uses the same finger twice in a row. No keyboard layout can eliminate all difficult movements for all words. Dvorak has much easier movements in common words that Qwerty does, though.
(I started learning Dvorak a couple months ago at a pretty low intensity; I'm still learning, am still faster in Qwerty, and still tend to use Qwerty unless I'm actually going to be typing full sentences of English text. Dvorak's advantages seem to diminish somewhat in programming, where there are lots of weird abbreviations and not as many vowels, and where I'm often typing VIM commands or shell control characters that I seem to have internalized more as "do this with my hands" than "type these letters".)
It happens to be their customers' best interest if their customers always stay their customers. Those customers are now stuck with Apple. Apple doesn't have to compete on price for their continued business in the lucrative device market. The money you save on each song you buy is instead paid to Apple in a big sum every couple years when your iPod kicks the bucket/goes out of style.
The beneficiary of Apple's DRM is Apple. Yeah, they've been fairly shrewd through this thing, but from a consumer's perspective they've just become another monopoly power to deal with.
I recall getting doing just about all of the work for my DSP classes in Octave, but some functions are different. I don't remember about my image processing class; most of it was in C++ anyway. To get the DSP and image stuff you'll have to look on octave-forge.
I also recall, in my DSP class, having the best-looking graphs in the class. I can hardly believe it's impossible to get decent-looking graphs out of Matlab, but nobody in my classes knew how.
Standby is one thing; It's not surprising that you can get lots of standby time, although I make no claim of knowledge about just how much. The OP talked about being present on IM, however, and you can't be present, by any reasonable definition of the word, while in standby. GP explains why this is. IM is stupid like that, although some (maybe most even? I don't know) XMPP systems will accept messages for you while you're not connected and deliver them when you next sign on.
That's not to say standby isn't useful. Why do you want to be present on IM if you're not actually there? You might as well use email at that point. Being within several seconds of a full-featured desktop after sitting in a glovebox for a week would be quite nice.
Slashdot Mirror
I run Linux at home and Windows at work, and seem to spend an increasingly large portion of my time on either platform in Firefox. Firefox works better on Windows than Linux. Embedded media that's automatic on Windows gives me a "plug-in needed" notification and a link to a page with nothing useful on it on Linux. I haven't had to do it for a while, but last I remember helper application selection was done in a way that made absolutely no sense on Linux.
Lots of programs have quirky GUI layout and proportion issues on Linux but not on Windows... I think a lot of that has to do with font rendering, which is largely out of the programs' control. But to some degree it's harder in X because there's a better chance that the DPI will be set to what it actually is instead of fixed to one of two allowed artificial values.
Windows GUIs are getting harder to make, though, because the programming style suggested by current VS versions and languages (as compared to old-school VB) is getting more and more complicated, and forcing more stuff into programmers' minds at once instead of less. Not to mention that you have to worry about more imperative concerns now while laying out forms, which really ought to be a declarative process (and mostly is in old VB... more accurately, you don't have to worry about your code being executed in design mode unless you really want it to). I should note that I don't have tons of GUI programming experience, these are just impressions formed from working with a few VB5 projects and a few VS projects at work.
Ha, more like...
Me: Is your toilet running?
Joe: Why, yes!
Me: Better hire an actual plumber to fix it.
Odd; I always thought most people would rather have a PDF than a Word doc, unless they were collaborating with you. Certainly, if you're submitting a final, formatted document you'd want to use a format that specifies the rendered output exactly (PDF, Postscript, whatever Microsoft's new-ish one is) instead of one like ODF, Office formats, and TeX input files, which don't.
Yeah, it's a little better than the old days. It sure would be nice, though, if when technology improved we actually got to enjoy the benefits. Otherwise we might as well use the old stuff, which is simpler, cheaper, and easier to hack on.
That it can be worked around by the user doesn't change the fact that it's a programming error. The programmers made an assumption that the user running the program would have write access to the directory containing the binary. That hasn't been a safe assumption on Windows for years.
In fact, the workaround you suggest is hardly complete; where is a non-admin user going to move the binary? Somewhere within his home directory. Other non-admins likely won't even have read access.
Who picked up the phone? You did. You made the decision that keeping your client, your private business interest, is more important than maintaining the public good of safe roads. I'm not any more inclined to let you off the hook because of your client "emergency" than some teenager getting a call about some stupid teenage drama crap. You're still bound by responsibility to other users of the road to pay attention.
Business folk need to get the fuck over themselves. When you're on the road you have a responsibility to everyone on it. Your job doesn't change that, no matter how important you think you are.
Ha, well in that case it's even easier. Surely it wouldn't be hard to find a bunch of players willing to cancel WoW subscriptions until a blatant programming error is fixed!
I'm not all that familiar with any of this software specifically since I'm not a gamer, but earlier today I thought the same thing you did about Punk Buster: it could be a daemon running as root, a setuid binary (I'm sure Windows has an equivalent but I don't know what it's called), or a kernel module without requiring other programs to run as admin. So I looked it up and it sounds from their Wikipedia page like they've already done it.
If you don't like it quit WoW or your other silly games. If anyone asks, explain why. If you can convince others to quit WoW, write the company and tell them why you're doing it. Yes, they might think they need these programs to keep the game balanced. But if you're concerned about your computer's security you should make that decision as hard for them as possible, to the point that some companies will stop requiring root access.
But if you're too much of a sheep I have no sympathy.
Or, alternately, you could keep a separate OS install for games that require root. WoW supposedly will even run in Wine, so you might not even have to fork over for another Windows license. Your other drives/partitions, of course, would then be available to any program able to mount them, so doing this is pretty stupid unless you encrypt or physically remove them. Sound too complicated? Get a new hobby! It's their job as smart programmers to make anti-cheat software in a way that doesn't compromise your security.
That's not a gripe with the format, that's a gripe with your MP3 player.
If you haven't caught the thieves by the time the tornado hits, sorry to say, you don't have much chance of doing so. Doubly so if you haven't even noticed and fixed the damage yet. I don't think punishment scheme is a major problem here. They're doing things that it's hard to catch them doing. Unless you have actual people on the ground ready to arrest them when they come you won't likely get them. I suppose people could try to set traps, but that's not appropriate for public areas, and even on private property behind locked gates I don't think many people would be willing to face the liability risk of setting traps.
Sabotage implies that the purpose is inflicting damage, with the direct material gain incidental (if it even occurs). The same is true of vandalism and (in a different way) terrorism. With copper theft the purpose is usually direct personal gain, with damage incidental. Big difference in intent, which matters to the law.
It's not like plain old theft is legal. Why do we need to label it anything else?
Did the ISP really give you 10mbps? Can the ISP even guarantee you that?
They can't, and so they're limiting users so they can guarantee a reasonable level of service to everyone without raising prices.
Before you cry about what they advertise and sell to you, try reading the terms and the fine print, not just the big stupid number. They're almost certainly not selling you a constant 10mbps pipe.
Before you say you're being victimized by your low-usage neighbors, imagine a truly fair Internet billing scheme: in addition to a low general periodic charge people are charged per bit, probably with some bits more expensive based on time of day. Maybe we come up with a pie-in-the-sky way to request low-latency packets and charge more for them, too. This way you as a heavy P2P user would probably pay less per-bit by using the cheapest times possible, but your overall bill would still be a lot higher because you use the network more. Currently Grandma down the block (assuming her computer isn't in a botnet) is subsidizing your torrents.
Now, I think a "fair" scheme like this would have some negative effects: the clamp-down on people and companies doing innovative things and contributing a lot to the Internet community is the biggest one. Another is that people that get viruses or otherwise wind up downloading a lot could wind up with enormous bills, and the effort spent disputing and explaining them would be unjustifiable, considering that the subsidizers aren't the ones threatening to leave. So I don't exactly recommend anyone implement this idea.
I might suggest to heavy P2P users that if they want to leave their computers on all day generating Internet traffic that they ditch their crummy consumer-level ISP. They're basically using commercial levels of traffic, so if they want commercial-grade service guarantees they should choose their ISP accordingly. More expensive? Absolutely. You get what you pay for.
Ha, I love how you put personal ambition on a pedestal like that.
If people don't think about bigger issues than themselves, study them and write about them, how will we ever understand these things? That doesn't mean that pop stars know anything about what they spout off on; they're usually naive and under-informed at best. But you can be sure that if your ambition is entirely personal you'll end up working for someone else -- someone that probably has put some thought into the effect their work has on their community at least (to be successful in business you have to have at least some ability to think this way if you're going to sell anything to anyone), and has done plenty of work to make their mark.
Actions and words have consequences. But people are often willing to forgive.
I don't think copyright is much of a protection for your reputation once you release something. If you've already published a book you're embarrassed by, unless you can track down and buy back all the copies there will still be copies around, and copyright can't stop people from writing about what you wrote.
I think most people around here, if they believe in copyright at all (I do), believe its purpose should be to encourage the publication of works that benefit society. There are major conflicts between the type of copyright system that would further this goal and one that would guarantee author control. Pure self-interest would dictate that most of us would side with wider society.
A few authors (or their estates) vigorously try to use copyright law to control their works, or even discussion of them. I'd guess you'd find a lot more sympathy for them in the general population than at Slashdot.
Web sites and their owners can't jail anyone directly. But this ruling provides a way to turn TOS violations into criminal offenses, given nothing else but a police department willing to charge you and a jury willing to convict. Do something unpopular but otherwise legal and you could be targeted.
I'm sure Lori Drew could be charged and convicted with something related to what she actually did wrong. Maybe not -- and if not, then she ought to go free...
There are plenty of loopholes that authorities could use to arrest anyone they want. They all stink. This is one of them.
You know, I dislike Flash in general because I think it's bad for the Web, and I never use a portable device to access the Internet. So I'm hardly a supporter of their decision to use YouTube. That said, if they were thinking about /. (or any other big site that might link them) at all, I'd bet all they thought is that they didn't want tons of people trying to download video off of their server at once, even on what's probably a pretty low-traffic Saturday. It's probably very easy to post video on YouTube (I've never done it so I don't know); is there a video hosting site that uses normal streaming video formats that's as easy to use for both the creator and viewer?
How many people actually un-DRM their music libraries? Some don't know how, some are just lazy, maybe some people have weird reasons (thinking that it feels sneaky and wrong, or deeming it aesthetically unpleasing -- that might be where I'd fall). Anyway, anyone that wouldn't un-DRM their library to buy a player they liked more than an iPod, or to install an OS that wouldn't run iTunes, has been affected by this lock-in. Reduced choice (which in the long run means higher prices or an inferior product at some point, even if Apple's players are well-liked at the moment), or the inconvenience of converting your library, 80-minute CD at a time, is the cost of lock-in. It's the cost of lock-in that gives them their power over consumers and their power over consumers that gives them power over the labels. That is the mechanism you described in GGP post, the personal monopolies that they hold over each iTunes and iPod user. It's not a conventional monopoly, perhaps, but it's what you described first. You can't laud how they wield their monopoly power with one hand and deny it exists with the other.
I have a strong, unwavering, irrational hat(red) for Apple? Hardly. I have a perfectly rational distaste for lock-in. I also treat claims of corporate do-gooding with a proper amount of skepticism: a lot. Apple, like all companies, acts in its self interest. Sometimes that interest aligns with ours. Perhaps lower prices on compressed, DRM-laden music files. Yippie. Other times their interest is opposed. Perhaps, oh, what was this article about again? Apple adding DRM in a way that sucks for customers?
Apple was, like I said, shrewd with iTunes and the iPod. They had a good strategy, it worked, they earned a big piece of the market. And they might have done so largely by doing right by their customers in some respects. But, at this article proves, they aren't in it for the customers, they're in it for their profits. That doesn't make them evil, just worthy of skepticism like every other company, person, and idea. Instead of applying that skepticism you've decided that Apple is good and that big record companies are evil; you root for one and against the other. I believe neither entity is good or evil, have no loyalty to either, and root for my own interests.
I buy my music on physical CDs, perhaps the last non-DRM, open-standard format that will ever gain near-ubiquity for legal music distribution. I don't claim this is the only way, or even the best way to buy music given my values and needs. And I don't claim my values and needs apply to everyone; I don't have a cell phone or portable music player (unless you count a harmonica), and many people go so far as to personally identify with their devices, which I think is just fucking weird. Anyway, my claim is that I owe damn little to Apple in the field of music, and that they didn't do anything on my behalf, rhetoric aside.
Sure, life is inherently dangerous (deadly, even!). But danger doesn't only come from tyrants and thugs. It often comes from people that just aren't being thoughtful. And damage doesn't only come from sabotage, but more typically as a byproduct of useful work.
The roads are a great example. What do people do on roads? They operate machines heavy enough to easily crush a person, at speeds at which a person cannot withstand impact unprotected. Any driver inherently externalizes the risks of his own mistakes onto other drivers and, disproportionately, onto pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and people in smaller cars, but we live with it because we generally find driving useful. Same goes for many other activities personal and commercial.
If the justification is that we find it useful, however, there's a balance of utility and risk. We don't allow industry to dump anywhere without limit, because we don't think having slightly cheaper consumer goods is worth the groundwater pollution. We don't allow people to drive drunk (or in dense cities while talking on cell phones) because the convenience they gain isn't worth what everyone else loses. The problem with your way of thinking is that it forgets about the commons. Not just the physical common resources, important as they are, but a common level of safety that allows people to rationally assess and take risks for the benefit of themselves and others (if this sounds like a market, it should be no surprise; a healthy market is a common good, and can produce some nasty shocks if it's disregarded).
I don't know much about this sort of thing, but I bet it's relatively cheap to book in cold-weather cities in the winter.
As a side benefit, it annoys Californians. Win all around.
Yeah, and Dvorak was created specifically with that in mind, based on which letters tend to follow eachother in words. Lots of very common short English words use only left-handed letters in Qwerty, and very few do in Dvorak. This is because in Qwerty the E, A, R, S and T are all on the left hand. In Dvorak the vowels are all on the left and the most common consonants on the right, which tends to produce more alternation.
Also, not all same-hand repeats require the same effort. Moving from the outside to the inside of the keyboard is easier than the other way around; that staying on the home row is easier that not; that the top row is easier to get at than the bottom; that the hardest sequence to type uses the same finger twice in a row. No keyboard layout can eliminate all difficult movements for all words. Dvorak has much easier movements in common words that Qwerty does, though.
(I started learning Dvorak a couple months ago at a pretty low intensity; I'm still learning, am still faster in Qwerty, and still tend to use Qwerty unless I'm actually going to be typing full sentences of English text. Dvorak's advantages seem to diminish somewhat in programming, where there are lots of weird abbreviations and not as many vowels, and where I'm often typing VIM commands or shell control characters that I seem to have internalized more as "do this with my hands" than "type these letters".)
It happens to be their customers' best interest if their customers always stay their customers. Those customers are now stuck with Apple. Apple doesn't have to compete on price for their continued business in the lucrative device market. The money you save on each song you buy is instead paid to Apple in a big sum every couple years when your iPod kicks the bucket/goes out of style.
The beneficiary of Apple's DRM is Apple. Yeah, they've been fairly shrewd through this thing, but from a consumer's perspective they've just become another monopoly power to deal with.
I recall getting doing just about all of the work for my DSP classes in Octave, but some functions are different. I don't remember about my image processing class; most of it was in C++ anyway. To get the DSP and image stuff you'll have to look on octave-forge.
I also recall, in my DSP class, having the best-looking graphs in the class. I can hardly believe it's impossible to get decent-looking graphs out of Matlab, but nobody in my classes knew how.
How about "intheyear2000"?
Similarly, when someone says something anachronistic there's no better response than, "Welcome to the nineties, like, where have you been?"
Standby is one thing; It's not surprising that you can get lots of standby time, although I make no claim of knowledge about just how much. The OP talked about being present on IM, however, and you can't be present, by any reasonable definition of the word, while in standby. GP explains why this is. IM is stupid like that, although some (maybe most even? I don't know) XMPP systems will accept messages for you while you're not connected and deliver them when you next sign on.
That's not to say standby isn't useful. Why do you want to be present on IM if you're not actually there? You might as well use email at that point. Being within several seconds of a full-featured desktop after sitting in a glovebox for a week would be quite nice.