Your average desktop PC is more than powerful enough for most things that most people do with it: Internet communications, writing documents, working with databases, shop floor software, and the like. As long as the operating system is reasonably smart about scheduling, the guys writing these common types of applications don't really have to know anything about multithreading, locking, message passing, and all that jazz. Similarly, your average mobile device has more than enough juice to dial another phone, write a quick e-mail, or capture a digital photo.
For background tasks, may be. However, anyone involved in writing a GUI application should be familiar with multitasking. In fact, it has pretty much been required for Windows applications for a long time as that is how Win32 works - you assign one thread/process to handle you GUI, and do the work with others in order to keep from locking up the GUI if the programmer did their job right. In fact, a lot of GUI frameworks work this way.
Unfortunately, not everyone follows the documentation on the frameworks, or does a poor job of it so there are still lock ups on the GUI. (When was the last time you had a GUI app's interface stop responding to you?)
Any how...my point is that multi-threading, multi-processing is very important even for the desktop.
So what about the "Kind of Blue" session I mentioned? Would you deny that there is something about an improvised performance that makes it different from a note-by-note composition?
I do this quite a bit even on my own. This is one of the reasons I really like MIDI - it allows me to capture it. So does recording via tape or other means. If you do it as part of a performance, great.
Where would the NY Philharmonic be without the money to attract the great musicians it has?
Same as it now. Just like there were in Mozart's day, and even long before him.
Would you say that they all have to have day jobs and practice after work?
It is rare the musician that does not. Just like it is rare that a book author can devote 100% of their time to writing books.
First of all, it is quite tangible.
Obviously you are not familiar with the definition of tangible then. With respect to what we are talking about - namely Copyright - it is intangible. Copyright by definition only deals with intangible things. (Tangible things are covered by patents, btw.)
Something that is tangible has a physical presence - thus a CD, DVD, Book, and computer are tangible, while a story, poem, idea, music, etc. are not; a story may be tangible in the form of a book, much like music may be tangible in the form of a written score or on a CD, however, they are still defined as being intangible in and of themselves with respect to Copyright. (IANAL, but you can easily find this out for yourself too.)
I guess my problem with your position is that you seem to believe that only the strong should survive. And by that I mean that only those who can stop others from taking what is theirs should benefit from their work.
Then you read me wrong. One of the things I love most about Open Source is its share-and-share alike approach to software. I would rather that life be like described here. However, there are those two would rather the strong survive and the weak perish.
My POV is basically that we all have skills, talents, and gifts and are each uniquely qualified for different work, etc. So do what you enjoy and do it to the best of your ability. If everyone really did that, then (a) a lot more people would be employed, and (b) of things that don't get done would. However, you can't force people to do that, nor is the world an ideal place.
I am strongly opposed to this definition of science. Calling philosophy science is like calling a one-legged cripple an athlete. Ancien Greeks didn't care if they were right or wrong, they only cared about winning the debate. There was no real scientific method until we started to independently duplicate experients to prove their reproductability, test borderline cases to extent the validity of the underlying theory.
However, that philosophical argument methodology (e.g. the Socratic Method employed by Soctrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others) is still the basis of scientific thinking today - along with their mathematics, and numerous other things. In fact we would not have the modern scientific method without their work.
The modern scientific method is still very much related to the Socratic Method. Slightly different way of going about it, but it is still the same basic thing. Instead of winning the debate, you have to win by showing that under what is currently known the data supports your thesis and is the most likely outcome. Just like the Socratic Method, a single false statement will make the entire thing false. Just like the Socratic Method, it is refined through questioning.
Yes - the Socratic Method was more philosophical in many respects - but it still accomplished the same fundamental task through the very same fundamental method. So, they are very rightly called the first scientists in that manner.
While Aristotle and Descartes paved the way, you'll be hard pressed to find good examples before Newton's Law and that experiment done in France to measure the weight of air. Yes, you could argue that Kopernicus and Galileo were kind of appyling those rules. But without a community to duplicate your findings, there is no science.
There's a reason why I mentioned Leonardo Da Vinci. We're still trying to understand what he had.
FYI - he is also the first to have a working computer (among other things), not the GUI like we had today, but something on the order of the electronics computer we had during WWI/WWII era in interface. I don't know the computation power it had, but it was man-powered.
Even if you didn't want to admit any before him, for whatever reason, (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, etc.) I would have to say that Da Vinci was a scientist at least, if not of greater, caliber than Newton.
To play the Devil's advocate (no pun intended), why is it that these religious leaders have so much power? Isn't their power and influence a direct result of people believing that these leaders speak for God? If people didn't have so much faith, these leaders would have little or no influence.
It occurred - at least for Christianity - by corrupt individuals working their way up the organization - with respect to Christianity, this meant that someone who did not truly believe in Christianity rose up to a position that allowed them to say something like "do as I say or I'll send you to Hell", which frightened the people who did not know how to remove him. At first it probably resulted in a rebuke, until the corrupt person put someone corrupt under them, and then let them have their way - thus acting as a buffer between the corrupt and the upper tiers. Eventually, it got wide spread as the people got higher.
That's just my guess though - you could probably research it in the Vatican archives though, and perhaps find out how the corruption got in by tracing the people that were corrupt, and tracing how the power was used. Obviously,you'd have to use more than the Vatican archives to do so.
I believe he is referring to the 17th and 18th century European pre Darwinian 'scientific' approach (there were of course no scientists then, the name didn't exist), which was to catalog and classify, but not to investigate how or why things were the way they were.
Oh right, now I remember: its the Office XML format from Office -2000- that opens in IE or something first. The format from -2003- opens in Office directly, even though they both have the same extension.
Actually, Office 2000 still used a binary format. It wasn't until Office 2003 that Microsoft introduced an XML format into their Office software.
Perhaps you are referring to Windows 2000 instead? Unless Office remapped the XML file extension, Windows would have to open the XML document first before it could decide to open it with Microsoft Office - be it Word, Excel, or Powerpoint. That's just the nature of how Windows handles file extensions. As I said in this post - it may be the Microsoft updated something in Windows to give the appearance it was opening directly into Office wrt to the ".xml" formatted office files or they were abusing their monopoly position to do otherwise.
wonder if they updated or if it was always like this, but on both my XP and Vista machines, clicking on an Office 2003 XML opens in Word directly. The icon is even different (even if the extensions are exactly the same), meaning the shell itself knows before you even try to open it.
Now that, I don't know if it was always that way, but it was for me.
I'm guessing they updated something as when I first had Office 2003 - under Win2k mind you - I did try using the new format and it was that way. So far as I am aware, WinXP did the same at that time. However, supposing they did update something, unless the update was to get Windows Explorer to utilize Internet Explorer for that without having to display the Internet Explorer window - that just goes to show how much Microsoft is abusing their monopoly.
Merely by word ordering. The earlier it is in the sentence, the greater the emphasis is. Important details can be pointed out this way.
in English you can also use a few extra linking words and occasional changes of word variant
True. However, you have to add words to do that. In Old English and likely in Middle English you wouldn't have had to add any words, you could have simply rearranged the sentence, much like Greek. You can do that with most other languages as their articles (e.g. 'a', 'the', etc.) change based on the use of word they are describing (e.g. direct vs. indirect object, etc.). English now completely lacks that ability as those words have been worked out of the language.
Further more, a lot of English teachers are not teaching how to do what you just said. They are not teaching proper uses of punctuation that can achieve it too. As a result, those methods are getting lost among the populace and dropping out from the language.
In other words it is simply a different technique, not a different capability.
Actually, those techniques were there before too. So we've lost some of the techniques available to us. Our tool belt is smaller. It would be like telling a carpenter that he has to craft a bed frame by and limiting him to a few small chisels, a hammer, and a screw driver - when before, he had chisels of all different sizes to chose from depending on what he wanted to do. The result - the bed frame will either take a lot longer or not look as fancy. The ability to make magnificent work is diminished.
So allowing for all this methods why do you think the ability to add emphasis simply by mixing up words is an advantageous technique in a language?
It is a great advantage for written works such as novels, poems, etc. Sure, ALL caps works great for subtly showing that someone is screaming. Typically, however, font styles cannot show what is important information or what is not - which punctuation via commas can - nor can it as easily emphasis when something is more important than otherwise. Sure, the use of bold and italics and help differentiate something, but then you're limited to only a few degrees of importance, whilst word or phrase ordering can give you unlimited degrees of importance.
There are proper ways in English to write sentences that are pages long and perfectly grammatically correct. (Not saying that that is recommended - most English readers today would get lost after the first few clauses.) Most of that methodology is getting lost by in adequate teaching of the English language.
Also - per some of your examples: you changed tenses and other aspects of the wordage. Whereas my point was that it use to be able to be done without doing so.
Another important point, by using more advanced grammar one would likely be more inclined to think and reflect on it. Conversely, the grammar we use today is typically so straight forward with everything in order with respect to what its related to in the sentence that we don't have to think about it. Thus laziness in the language, and a loss of information in the written word as information becomes less clear than it was before.
Also, you say you couldn't get a good rip from the cd you bought? What kind of computer person are you? I don't even have to do anything but click "OK" and iTunes rips any cd I put in my drive at the highest possible quality. Even if you claim that there are pops or whatever because of a scratched cd, if I break a glass I've bought, does that mean I can go back to the store and demand a new one for free? And you expect me to believe that some random torrent you pick is going to offer a better quality rip anyway? Your claims are dubious to say the least.
I haven't used iTunes, and I've tried ripping those particular CDs on several difference systems - under both Linux and Windows. There are certain methodologies to creating audio CDs that cause a distortion in the track when ripped. (I'm not going to go into the details as I am not very familiar with them, though I have friends that are more so.) So, it is more likely the CD itself causing a problem with the rip.
But you are confusing a composer with a recording artist.
A composer is someone who writes in any manner, though typically they write music.
A recording artist is simply someone who records their performance of a musical work. Often, they also sell that performance to others - either directly (e.g. indie artists) or indirectly (e.g. record labels). They will also often do concerts, etc. too. Ultimately, they are no different from the musician that goes around to bars and performs.
True, recording artists are not necessarily composers, though they often do at least a couple songs of their own at some point in their career.
Honestly - this is just like starting any other kind of business. You will have to put in hours - often unpaid - while getting the business started, take out loans, and pay others to help out. In the long run you will make money, but not without serious work and likely debt in one form or another... Why should "artists" be expected to be treated any different? Just because it is hard to get going doesn't mean they should be entitled to special privileges.
Special privileges? To what are you referring? If a person starts a business, creates a product and puts it on the shelf, I cannot just walk in and take it if I don't feel like paying for it.
Have you ever started a business? If so, then you'd already be familiar with what I am talking about. If not, here's a lesson:
When starting a business you have to be able to get to the point where you have a product that you can put on the shelf - you have to build your business up enough to be able to make it to a point of sales for your product or service. If what you are trying to do gets out to your competition before you get there, they may very well try to do the same thing on their own and you may, as a result, get excluded from the market - unable to even get to the point of having a product or service to sell.
Example: Transmeta. They operated as a stealth, black-box company for a few years (1995 to 2001) to keep Intel, AMD, Sun, and others from learning what they were doing so that they would have a chance at being a viable market competitor for what they were trying to do. It was not a matter of who knew what - Intel and AMD certainly already had some of the knowledge to do what Transmeta did, and enough knowledge they could have competed - it was a matter of making sure they had enough head start to get into the market.
Starting any business is really no different. Yes, the ideas are there. But there is also free information exchange - and some of those exchanges are necessary. (I am currently working on a business plan and am not sure how to get around one of those information exchanges without giving away what I am doing.)
The primary flaw in your argument is that you don't see what's in a person's mind as their property.
That plugin is for Office 2003 and XP to use OOXML natively, correct. It works quite well, it IS available publicly
I noted that that was the last I had checked. When my work first deployed it, I searched for it and was unable to find it. I believe MS distributed it to certain their enterprise customers before making it publicly available. In searching for it again for that post, I discovered that it had since become publically available. This was more just a note than anything else.
And the Office 2003 using XML is for a totally different format, which was also available in a previous version of office (though with less features), which is literally the Office 2003 format but in XML instead of binary, and is a totally different deal than the docx format from 2007, and existed years before Office 2007 came out. It is, for example, the format that is often used to generate Office documents through XSLT. It was used a "long" time ago, and I personally still use that format since it is simpler to generate document with for internal, short term purposes compared to docx, since it doesn't require the additional operation of putting the files together and zipping (which isn't a big deal, but its nice to be able to simply invoke an XSLT processor with no additional steps).
Yes, I am aware of that. I was primarily noting the difference in extension. Office 2003 used a ".xml" extension, which Windows would then run through Internet Explorer to determine what program to use to open it - thus it was very annoying to double click on the Office 2003 XML Word Document, see Windows open IE, and then open Word 2003. (Probably one reason why the format didn't take off.) It did, however, amaze me that the Office 2003 XML format was larger for a blank document than previous Microsoft Office formats. (It was something like 19KB in XML versus 7kb in binary.) However, it was also a good format in terms of using it for version control system (e.g. CVS, SVN) as it was pure text that is easily managed and diff'd.
I'm still convinced that it's possible to make a VM that appaears to software running within as real hardware.
You mean like the Bochs Pentium Emulator? Because - that is pretty much what they do. They emulate the entire computer, processor included. There was one branch that used a Linux module to use real hardware to speed things up (x86 only), but it otherwise fully emulates the computer including all instructions of the emulated processor and the system timer.
They've done a great job with it. However, it is slower than VMware, Virtual PC, and others though the guest OS is still usable. To do so, it also eats up near 100% of your real CPU and delivers a fraction of the speed of the real CPU, typically 10% though I think they may be doing better than that now on faster processors. (Really good guest OS performances starts with a minimum 1Ghz CPU.) It can also run on non-x86 platforms.
So, try it out. It's great for doing OS development and testing OS's. But don't rely on it for high performance apps or newer games. (Older DOS games would do fine under it.)
thats an Office 2003 doc XML (not quite the same thing). You'd have had to unzip the docx first if it was actually one, and then would have a crap ton of files and stuff... which I beleive is similar-ish to the "competition".
Not necessarily. There is a plug-in for Office 2003 - provided by Microsoft to certain organizations[1] - that allows Office 2003 to produce OOXML natively through the normal methods - i.e. more natively supported than PDF and ODF.
Also, I believe Office 2003 uses a normal ".xml" extension[2] for its version of OOXML, while OOXML from Office 2007 uses the normal Office extensions with an appended "x" or "m" (the "m" is if you have macros embedded) - e.g. ".docx" and ".docm".
[1] Last I knew it was not available publically, however, a Google search turned it up (3rd result).
[2] Search for "OFFICE" and you'll find a number of "OFFICE11" paths.
Why do people download torrents? To back up a dvd or cd they own?
To get stuff that is there. I use torrents to get Linux ISOs because that is how they are distributed. (Try to get a Slackware or Gentoo DVD. You can only get them through a torrent.) Believe it or not, there is a lot more on torrents than music or movies. So please stop using that kind of analogy.
And yes - my MP3 downloading was to backup what I already had on CD or Tape, especially when my own MP3 rip was a bad quality and I couldn't get something better. (I've had a few tracks that just don't like to rip without a few pops in them no matter how many times I try.)
Where does the money from the cds and dvds if there is no way to charge enough to even cover the cost of production?
Oddly enough - there are a lot of indie artists (I've had a few friends that do this) that don't have a problem. They burn the CDs on their computers, and it only costs them a few cents to make the CD. Their biggest costs is getting the original DAT and a CD version to start with, but they have managed to cover that without having to worry about people making copies.
...I do often give my services - writing code, technical support, etc. - to others for free. I have a lot of written code that I have licensed under the GPL. (Not all of it pubically available yet for various reasons, but it will be - and I have a lot more to come.)
I assume you mean you help your parents set up their wireless network and help your friend with a new website for the band. I imagine that if some stranger came calling and said, I would like to enjoy the fruits of your labor but refuse to offer any payment, you would say no. I give copies of my music to people I know, but why is it so difficult to imagine me asking strangers for something in return? I am not asking for much, just a token of their appreciation for making something that makes their life better in some small way. The people who would do what they could to take from me without asking don't deserve what I have to offer. And just because you intellectualize the nature of the transaction and claim that there is some difference between creating a recording with one's hands and making a basket with one's hands you must not ignore the nature of the impact on the maker of the item.
Actually, I probably do more stuff for strangers than friends - usually friends of friends. I am also one of those guys that when I am looking for something in a store and see someone trying to find something to offer to help them out, and even give them guidance on what they want - especially if the sales rep is doing a really bad job or leaving out critical information. So yeah - friend or stranger a like, I do offer services for free.
...regardless of whether copyright exists or not - I'd still be willing to do what I do - both for a living and as hobby.
no, I don't mean that people wouldn't produce art if they couldn't get paid for it. What I mean is that people couldn't make the art as well if they had to spend most of their energy on making a living. I know that the Picasso analogy is a weak one, but the point is sound. There is no way you can tell me that someone working a full-time job can simply come home at night and summon the same kind of focus and energy on their art as they could if it was all they were doing. It is downright disingenuous to claim that rehearsing with the band once a week after work is the same thing as rehearsing 4 or 5 days a week in peak condition. That's why we have grants and fellowships, and why those 17th century poets always turned out to be members of the aristocracy or just plain wealthy.
I basically have a second career at the moment whilst learning to play the organ at my church. I am paying the organist for lessons, and am spending nearly 2 hours a day, 6 days a week in practice. How
I, too, speak only English. But I'm under no illusions about it being "better".
Well, while English is my native language, I am also at least trained in several other languages (Attic Greek, French, primarily - though some Spanish, and a tidbit of Japanese). I would say that English is probably the worse language of any - it lacks so much that other languages have, mostly because the grammar to support that kind of stuff got dropped. I find Middle English to be better than Modern English for just that reason, and Old English is pretty fun too.
One example, from Greek - most languages have support for being able to mix up the words in a sentence and come out with the exact same basic meaning whilst allowing the speaker to put more emphasis on certain items. From my Greek Book (Alpha to Omega by Anne Groton - I have an older edition than that one) is:
The dog chased the cat
Greek allows you to write it, keeping the same exact meaning, as "the dog the cat chased", "the cat the dog chased", "chased the cat the dog", "chased the dog the cat", "the cat chased the dog". Now looking at the English of that, most of it makes no sense, and one variation has a completely different meaning.
Some of this we can help by using what grammar we do have, however, as English teachers are also not teaching all the grammar any more, it also results in more confusion, especially for native speakers. (It's funny when non-native speakers know the language better than native speakers, which at least with the U.S. English variant is typically the case.)
On the other hand, languages like Chinese and Japanese don't have plurals - plurals are expressed as a number plus the "singular" form - e.g. instead of saying "there are three trees", a Japanese speaker would say "there is three tree" - however, they are still a lot more expressive in other ways - e.g. Japanese is a very poetic language.
Government subsidized housing ends at $42k/yr salary, and is the only way to get a decent rent (e.g.
Single income families have been there for nearly two decades or more. Any one there less than that basically needs multiple incomes. (And yes, I would count gov't retirement income as a second income for this purpose.)
Most families that have not been there for two decades there are likely dual-income in some form, or in military housing (or military subsidized housing).
It's not that I didn't have a bad starting salary - $50k/year - but it was unaffordable to live there. So we moved out of the area, kept our same salary, and have been able to live quite comfortably elsewhere.
Buying a house was impossible for us - a 10% down payment, which is really what is recommended for getting a good mortgage - you could get by with 5% but it's better to have 10%, is nearly a year's salary.
[1] By house I mean any kind of house - even a 2 bedroom ranch house. Mansions start around $750K to $1M.
[2] At least those were the numbers when I last looked for housing in Northern VA (Fairfax County) back in June/July of 2005.
So are you saying that all artists should be amateurs? That they should be permanently relegated to the garage or the coffee shop? If I make a better mousetrap I can get paid for it, but if I write a song I should be forced to give it away for free? How do you suggest explaining to the next great master that her work will be enjoyed by all but she can expect nothing but praise and perhaps a little charity?
No. I am not. I never said they should not get paid. Only that they should not necessarily get paid for copies - especially copies that other people do. To take your example of writing a song:
The writer would usually write a piece for a band or artist. They should pay the writer for his effort to do so.
The band gets paid for their production of the piece - by selling CDs, DVDs, giving concerts, etc.
Neither the band nor the writer should necessarily get paid for other artists doing their version (whether identical or modified) of the piece. (If they do, great. If not, oh well.)
It is quite hypocritical for people who, without blinking an eye, peddle their commodified talents to the highest bidder, (that's right hired geeks, I'm talking to you), to demand that others give the fruit of their labor away for free. What you are saying is that if you produce something proprietary, i.e., something only useful to the person who pays you, e.g., a custom database, you should get whatever you can, but if you produce something that anyone can use, e.g., a work of art, you should be forced to give it away.
That said, I do often give my services - writing code, technical support, etc. - to others for free. I have a lot of written code that I have licensed under the GPL. (Not all of it pubically available yet for various reasons, but it will be - and I have a lot more to come.)
Additionally, I have several plans of software where the software will be in support of a business - a business selling services for the software - and the software will be licensed under GPL or another OSI approved license.
I am also a musician, and no - I don't get paid for when I do performances either.
But you would also irreparably harm the system of incentive that drives everyday artists to produce better and better work. No, money is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the prospect of being able to live a decent life while focusing completely on their work.
I very much doubt that - regardless of whether copyright exists or not - I'd still be willing to do what I do - both for a living and as hobby. I am also working on a novel, the first in a series and which I also plan to give away on the Internet for free. Would still do it if copyright didn't exist too!
Would Picasso have been able to do what he did if he also had to sling burgers or write code all day?
This is a favorite of people like you - pick out someone really famous and then ask that kind of question.
Funny thing though - Picaso did have to do something like that. Not necessarily "sling burgers", but he had side jobs to support his work. In fact, most of the great musicians, playwrites, and others did too. Some of them happened to be lucky enough to be supported by royalty, but most barely made it along.
I suspect these will be limited to servers demanding immense I/O with a large amount of data.
I could see some uses for them, especially in environments where things will get bounced around quite a bit. For example, airplanes, military vehicles, off-road vehicles, etc. could all benefit.
Hmmm....I wonder how good it would be for submersibles, perhaps they could push new depths since they wouldn't have worry about the air pressure within the hard drive enclosures.
The question you should be asking is "why didn't I care about that when I bought Windows XP ?"
Because (take your pick):
You didn't know about it
You didn't think about the end-of-life of the activation service
You didn't have a choice
You didn't care
You thought higher of Microsoft than you should have
Big business is under the "You didn't care" as they get versions that basically don't require the activation, or manage their own activation servers; and in either event they usually are only a few years behind the latest rev.
Medium and Small businesses probably fell into any of the above.
Home users pretty much all fall under the "You didn't have a choice"
If they win, and they will, the Copyright Age will be seen as nothing more than a very small period of time sandwiched between the two huge Copyrightless Ages: the one that existed before, and the one that is starting right now.
First, read my other comment in this topic as I address some points there, but don't want to repost the entire thing here, and this is especially relevant to your statement quoted above.
If you want a simple example, here's the historical one. Since the beginning of recorded history up until the first half of the Modern Age, the copying was considered by EVERYONE, from writers to actors, from musicians to singers, from inventors to manufacturers, as an obvious right. Libraries, for instance, existed for thousands of years, and beyond allowing you to take a book and read it, they all had full teams of scribes who would copy any work a customer wanted, or, if he so wished, would allow him to do the copy himself. Everyone interested in any intellectual production did this, and everyone felt it was the natural way of things.
Quite true. And the big examples are stage writers such as William Shakespeare. They were paid to write a script for a specific production - they often "borrowed" from each other quite a bit, and sometimes even took whole manuscripts, changed a few things, put their name on it, and sold it off as their own work - even if all they did was change locations of scenes and character names, or nothing at all other than the title.
The big premise here is the "work and get paid; don't work - don't get paid". Unfortunately, it is everyone's natural inclination to try to figure out how to "don't work and still get paid", which is why a lot of people really like copyright and patents, and why they'll fight tooth and nail to make terms longer and more in their favor, as opposed to letting it degenerate into what it was before we had copyright.
I still stand by my other post though, as even if we got everyone to agree that copying anything was okay - just like before we had copyright - I think you'd still find the majority saying "but you have to ensure that the author still gets credit" for all copies of their work. This is much easier to do today worldwide than it was 400 years ago; it was also much easier with the printing press than it was before the printing press for smaller regions (e.g. localities, countries, etc.).
And, as I pointed out in my other post - this is essentially what Open Source Licenses basically seek out to do. No matter how they differ in details of distribution, modification, etc - they all require attribution to the original author remains intact.
don't see any evidence that people inherently understand and want to respect copyrights. To a certain extent, copyright law is generally out of step with what most people feel is right, i.e. most people feel they have the right, or at least should have the right, to copy their music and share it with their friends. This has only become an issue when technology gave people the power to share their music with millions of online friends. Copyright laws have only been tolerated in the past because the routine petty infringements were ignored.
I think there is something getting lost here - and that is who gets credit for the copy. And this, in my opinion, is really the only strength to copyright - it gives the author credit for a time period.
I do think it is our natural inclination to copy stuff as we see fit. This is what has happened for centuries/millenia. What we lack perspective of today, is that in a lot of the copying would also take credit away from the author and give it to the copier, and this I think we would also agree that we would (or at least most would) find to be naturally inclined as wrong.
So, what we really need is a system by which we are free to copy, but not necessarily free to take credit away from the original author. By the way, this is also the basis behind pretty much all Open Source Licenses - even the most liberal licenses (e.g. the BSD & ISC licenses). Now if we could only get copyright law to extend that to all other fields that pertain to copyright, then I think our natural inclinations of copyright and copyright law would match near seamlessly.
In fact, if we were able to do that - then we could probably even extend copyright terms to be indefinite and people would naturally want to respect it 100%. However, even if we could do that, I'm not sure it would be wise to do so.
We talk about shutting down any unnecessary services and closing ports down by default in operating systems and firewalls. Why wouldn't one want to do the same with Web browsing? Lock down (or lock out) anything that can cause harm to corporate systems, and then open up things only as required. Not only does it improve productivity, it also improves security at the same time...
And then you can also kill productivity by (a) not allowing people to communicate in the ways their job requires, or (b) not allowing people to do their job without massive overhead (e.g. need access to site X, but it's blocked so then you have to go through the bureaucracy of the organization to get it unblocked, if only for your username - enough people have to do that and you suddenly have massive overhead killing your organization.)
You have a trade-off you have to consider - convenience versus security. You have to find the right balance for your organization, but as an employee you must also be very careful and balance yourself too.
For example, I use my personal e-mail for mailing lists. I do this to keep my work e-mail to only work traffic, even if I am subscribed mailing list related to work I use my personal e-mail for it. As a result, my work e-mail address is really only spread to clients and people that really need to know it, and I get the communication links for personal use as well. However, I also have to be very careful of what I put into those e-mails, which would also be required even if I had used my work e-mail. So, in essence, my personal e-mail is a security barrier that benefits me and helps keep me productive at work. I can also then make sure that personal e-mail (e.g. e-mailing my wife about dinner, etc.) goes through my personal e-mail.
As an employee, I have to be very careful about both addresses, and need to make sure sensitive stuff from work doesn't go out into my personal e-mail. That should be a given, and if that is broken work should have 100% reason to let me go as an option for corrective action.
"When we're out there competing with Red Hat, [our salespeople] are saying, 'Our Linux is recommended by Microsoft,' and customers that already have a Windows investment say it seems to make sense to pick the Linux that works with Windows."'"
So they're basically taking advantage of dumb customers that don't know much, if anything, about Linux as basically all Linux distros use the same software (e.g. Samba) - however, they vary in their packaging and support software & tools - to achieve that interoperability. It has nothing to do with being "blessed" by Microsoft - which is really just a death sentence - kind of like the one Hitler had in mind for Japan, and Italy, and the one he did try to carry out on Russia:
Make some "allies" and sign some "treaties"
Let your "allies" help you carry out your "war" on the "enemy"
Wipe out most everyone together with your "allies"
Turn on your "allies" one by one without telling the others
Wipe out your "allies" last when they are least suspecting it
Funny - Hitler had and Microsoft has the same basic plans. Just substitute "competitors" for "enemies" and "partners" for "allies".
As for timing issues, the GC will cause pauses at random times, but so will the OS' process scheduling and interrupt handling. Are you saying that GC incurred timing issues are somehow more problematic than OS incurred timing issues?
I'm not necessarily saying they are more problematic, just that they are another issue. I could see them being so, though only slightly so, as it is code you are providing with your system.
Also, while the article may be referring to C/C++, it would certainly extend beyond simply C/C++.
I've had this conversation before and had someone raise up that there are a number of issues - I thought it was on/., but I can't find it using Google. It might have been on a mailing list though. If I find it, I'll post it. I raised the timing issue because it is one I know of - and easily extrapolated.
Hopefully you'll get modded up for your post too as it is very complimentary to mine and shows just what can be done if you pay attention to your expenses and are careful.
I would say though, that buying a new car versus a used car could be done if you are careful. Don't buy a new car every 2, 3, 4, or 5 years - if you do buy one, then plan on keeping it until it is a junker (i.e. costing more in maintenance than it is worth). I had one used car and replaced it with a new car when it came time because I was tired of the maintenance with the used car - but I also new that overall it would cost about the same, the new car would save me some in the long run, but not a whole lot. I plan on only buying another new car in a few years - to replace my wife's car, not my car - and I plan on running both into the ground.
So whatever car you buy - buy wisely. Be careful of the used car to make sure you don't end up with lots of maintenance, but also realize that the costs of a new car (loans, etc.) will not save much over the life of the car comparatively; the big question being - is it worth the reduced maintenance to you?
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Unfortunately, not everyone follows the documentation on the frameworks, or does a poor job of it so there are still lock ups on the GUI. (When was the last time you had a GUI app's interface stop responding to you?)
Any how...my point is that multi-threading, multi-processing is very important even for the desktop.
Something that is tangible has a physical presence - thus a CD, DVD, Book, and computer are tangible, while a story, poem, idea, music, etc. are not; a story may be tangible in the form of a book, much like music may be tangible in the form of a written score or on a CD, however, they are still defined as being intangible in and of themselves with respect to Copyright. (IANAL, but you can easily find this out for yourself too.)
Then you read me wrong. One of the things I love most about Open Source is its share-and-share alike approach to software. I would rather that life be like described here. However, there are those two would rather the strong survive and the weak perish.
My POV is basically that we all have skills, talents, and gifts and are each uniquely qualified for different work, etc. So do what you enjoy and do it to the best of your ability. If everyone really did that, then (a) a lot more people would be employed, and (b) of things that don't get done would. However, you can't force people to do that, nor is the world an ideal place.
The modern scientific method is still very much related to the Socratic Method. Slightly different way of going about it, but it is still the same basic thing. Instead of winning the debate, you have to win by showing that under what is currently known the data supports your thesis and is the most likely outcome. Just like the Socratic Method, a single false statement will make the entire thing false. Just like the Socratic Method, it is refined through questioning.
Yes - the Socratic Method was more philosophical in many respects - but it still accomplished the same fundamental task through the very same fundamental method. So, they are very rightly called the first scientists in that manner. There's a reason why I mentioned Leonardo Da Vinci. We're still trying to understand what he had.
FYI - he is also the first to have a working computer (among other things), not the GUI like we had today, but something on the order of the electronics computer we had during WWI/WWII era in interface. I don't know the computation power it had, but it was man-powered.
Even if you didn't want to admit any before him, for whatever reason, (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, etc.) I would have to say that Da Vinci was a scientist at least, if not of greater, caliber than Newton.
That's just my guess though - you could probably research it in the Vatican archives though, and perhaps find out how the corruption got in by tracing the people that were corrupt, and tracing how the power was used. Obviously,you'd have to use more than the Vatican archives to do so.
The same on used and improved by Galileo, Copernicus, Francis Bacon, or even Da Vinci?
(Yes, some of them lived into the 1600's, and those that did were about 40 yrs old in 1600 at that - all were born before the 1600's, if not earlier.)
Perhaps you are referring to Windows 2000 instead? Unless Office remapped the XML file extension, Windows would have to open the XML document first before it could decide to open it with Microsoft Office - be it Word, Excel, or Powerpoint. That's just the nature of how Windows handles file extensions. As I said in this post - it may be the Microsoft updated something in Windows to give the appearance it was opening directly into Office wrt to the ".xml" formatted office files or they were abusing their monopoly position to do otherwise.
Further more, a lot of English teachers are not teaching how to do what you just said. They are not teaching proper uses of punctuation that can achieve it too. As a result, those methods are getting lost among the populace and dropping out from the language. Actually, those techniques were there before too. So we've lost some of the techniques available to us. Our tool belt is smaller. It would be like telling a carpenter that he has to craft a bed frame by and limiting him to a few small chisels, a hammer, and a screw driver - when before, he had chisels of all different sizes to chose from depending on what he wanted to do. The result - the bed frame will either take a lot longer or not look as fancy. The ability to make magnificent work is diminished. It is a great advantage for written works such as novels, poems, etc. Sure, ALL caps works great for subtly showing that someone is screaming. Typically, however, font styles cannot show what is important information or what is not - which punctuation via commas can - nor can it as easily emphasis when something is more important than otherwise. Sure, the use of bold and italics and help differentiate something, but then you're limited to only a few degrees of importance, whilst word or phrase ordering can give you unlimited degrees of importance.
There are proper ways in English to write sentences that are pages long and perfectly grammatically correct. (Not saying that that is recommended - most English readers today would get lost after the first few clauses.) Most of that methodology is getting lost by in adequate teaching of the English language.
Also - per some of your examples: you changed tenses and other aspects of the wordage. Whereas my point was that it use to be able to be done without doing so.
Another important point, by using more advanced grammar one would likely be more inclined to think and reflect on it. Conversely, the grammar we use today is typically so straight forward with everything in order with respect to what its related to in the sentence that we don't have to think about it. Thus laziness in the language, and a loss of information in the written word as information becomes less clear than it was before.
I haven't used iTunes, and I've tried ripping those particular CDs on several difference systems - under both Linux and Windows. There are certain methodologies to creating audio CDs that cause a distortion in the track when ripped. (I'm not going to go into the details as I am not very familiar with them, though I have friends that are more so.) So, it is more likely the CD itself causing a problem with the rip.
A composer is someone who writes in any manner, though typically they write music.
A recording artist is simply someone who records their performance of a musical work. Often, they also sell that performance to others - either directly (e.g. indie artists) or indirectly (e.g. record labels). They will also often do concerts, etc. too. Ultimately, they are no different from the musician that goes around to bars and performs.
True, recording artists are not necessarily composers, though they often do at least a couple songs of their own at some point in their career.
Have you ever started a business? If so, then you'd already be familiar with what I am talking about. If not, here's a lesson:
When starting a business you have to be able to get to the point where you have a product that you can put on the shelf - you have to build your business up enough to be able to make it to a point of sales for your product or service. If what you are trying to do gets out to your competition before you get there, they may very well try to do the same thing on their own and you may, as a result, get excluded from the market - unable to even get to the point of having a product or service to sell.
Example: Transmeta. They operated as a stealth, black-box company for a few years (1995 to 2001) to keep Intel, AMD, Sun, and others from learning what they were doing so that they would have a chance at being a viable market competitor for what they were trying to do. It was not a matter of who knew what - Intel and AMD certainly already had some of the knowledge to do what Transmeta did, and enough knowledge they could have competed - it was a matter of making sure they had enough head start to get into the market.
Starting any business is really no different. Yes, the ideas are there. But there is also free information exchange - and some of those exchanges are necessary. (I am currently working on a business plan and am not sure how to get around one of those information exchanges without giving away what I am doing.)
You're
They've done a great job with it. However, it is slower than VMware, Virtual PC, and others though the guest OS is still usable. To do so, it also eats up near 100% of your real CPU and delivers a fraction of the speed of the real CPU, typically 10% though I think they may be doing better than that now on faster processors. (Really good guest OS performances starts with a minimum 1Ghz CPU.) It can also run on non-x86 platforms.
So, try it out. It's great for doing OS development and testing OS's. But don't rely on it for high performance apps or newer games. (Older DOS games would do fine under it.)
Also, I believe Office 2003 uses a normal ".xml" extension[2] for its version of OOXML, while OOXML from Office 2007 uses the normal Office extensions with an appended "x" or "m" (the "m" is if you have macros embedded) - e.g. ".docx" and ".docm".
[1] Last I knew it was not available publically, however, a Google search turned it up (3rd result).
[2] Search for "OFFICE" and you'll find a number of "OFFICE11" paths.
To get stuff that is there. I use torrents to get Linux ISOs because that is how they are distributed. (Try to get a Slackware or Gentoo DVD. You can only get them through a torrent.) Believe it or not, there is a lot more on torrents than music or movies. So please stop using that kind of analogy.
And yes - my MP3 downloading was to backup what I already had on CD or Tape, especially when my own MP3 rip was a bad quality and I couldn't get something better. (I've had a few tracks that just don't like to rip without a few pops in them no matter how many times I try.)
Oddly enough - there are a lot of indie artists (I've had a few friends that do this) that don't have a problem. They burn the CDs on their computers, and it only costs them a few cents to make the CD. Their biggest costs is getting the original DAT and a CD version to start with, but they have managed to cover that without having to worry about people making copies.
Actually, I probably do more stuff for strangers than friends - usually friends of friends. I am also one of those guys that when I am looking for something in a store and see someone trying to find something to offer to help them out, and even give them guidance on what they want - especially if the sales rep is doing a really bad job or leaving out critical information. So yeah - friend or stranger a like, I do offer services for free.
I basically have a second career at the moment whilst learning to play the organ at my church. I am paying the organist for lessons, and am spending nearly 2 hours a day, 6 days a week in practice. How
One example, from Greek - most languages have support for being able to mix up the words in a sentence and come out with the exact same basic meaning whilst allowing the speaker to put more emphasis on certain items. From my Greek Book (Alpha to Omega by Anne Groton - I have an older edition than that one) is: Greek allows you to write it, keeping the same exact meaning, as "the dog the cat chased", "the cat the dog chased", "chased the cat the dog", "chased the dog the cat", "the cat chased the dog". Now looking at the English of that, most of it makes no sense, and one variation has a completely different meaning.
Some of this we can help by using what grammar we do have, however, as English teachers are also not teaching all the grammar any more, it also results in more confusion, especially for native speakers. (It's funny when non-native speakers know the language better than native speakers, which at least with the U.S. English variant is typically the case.)
On the other hand, languages like Chinese and Japanese don't have plurals - plurals are expressed as a number plus the "singular" form - e.g. instead of saying "there are three trees", a Japanese speaker would say "there is three tree" - however, they are still a lot more expressive in other ways - e.g. Japanese is a very poetic language.
Not to mention:
- Houses start at near $500k[1]
- Townhouses start near $300k
- Condos start near $200k
- Government subsidized housing ends at $42k/yr salary, and is the only way to get a decent rent (e.g.
- Single income families have been there for nearly two decades or more. Any one there less than that basically needs multiple incomes. (And yes, I would count gov't retirement income as a second income for this purpose.)
- Most families that have not been there for two decades there are likely dual-income in some form, or in military housing (or military subsidized housing).
It's not that I didn't have a bad starting salary - $50k/year - but it was unaffordable to live there. So we moved out of the area, kept our same salary, and have been able to live quite comfortably elsewhere.Buying a house was impossible for us - a 10% down payment, which is really what is recommended for getting a good mortgage - you could get by with 5% but it's better to have 10%, is nearly a year's salary.
[1] By house I mean any kind of house - even a 2 bedroom ranch house. Mansions start around $750K to $1M.
[2] At least those were the numbers when I last looked for housing in Northern VA (Fairfax County) back in June/July of 2005.
That said, I do often give my services - writing code, technical support, etc. - to others for free. I have a lot of written code that I have licensed under the GPL. (Not all of it pubically available yet for various reasons, but it will be - and I have a lot more to come.)
Additionally, I have several plans of software where the software will be in support of a business - a business selling services for the software - and the software will be licensed under GPL or another OSI approved license.
I am also a musician, and no - I don't get paid for when I do performances either. I very much doubt that - regardless of whether copyright exists or not - I'd still be willing to do what I do - both for a living and as hobby. I am also working on a novel, the first in a series and which I also plan to give away on the Internet for free. Would still do it if copyright didn't exist too! This is a favorite of people like you - pick out someone really famous and then ask that kind of question.
Funny thing though - Picaso did have to do something like that. Not necessarily "sling burgers", but he had side jobs to support his work. In fact, most of the great musicians, playwrites, and others did too. Some of them happened to be lucky enough to be supported by royalty, but most barely made it along.
Hmmm....I wonder how good it would be for submersibles, perhaps they could push new depths since they wouldn't have worry about the air pressure within the hard drive enclosures.
- You didn't know about it
- You didn't think about the end-of-life of the activation service
- You didn't have a choice
- You didn't care
- You thought higher of Microsoft than you should have
Big business is under the "You didn't care" as they get versions that basically don't require the activation, or manage their own activation servers; and in either event they usually are only a few years behind the latest rev.Medium and Small businesses probably fell into any of the above.
Home users pretty much all fall under the "You didn't have a choice"
Sorry to post to my own post, but I got the link wrong...do'h - I usually check that before submitting.
Any how, here's the correct link to my other post
The big premise here is the "work and get paid; don't work - don't get paid". Unfortunately, it is everyone's natural inclination to try to figure out how to "don't work and still get paid", which is why a lot of people really like copyright and patents, and why they'll fight tooth and nail to make terms longer and more in their favor, as opposed to letting it degenerate into what it was before we had copyright.
I still stand by my other post though, as even if we got everyone to agree that copying anything was okay - just like before we had copyright - I think you'd still find the majority saying "but you have to ensure that the author still gets credit " for all copies of their work. This is much easier to do today worldwide than it was 400 years ago; it was also much easier with the printing press than it was before the printing press for smaller regions (e.g. localities, countries, etc.).
And, as I pointed out in my other post - this is essentially what Open Source Licenses basically seek out to do. No matter how they differ in details of distribution, modification, etc - they all require attribution to the original author remains intact.
I do think it is our natural inclination to copy stuff as we see fit. This is what has happened for centuries/millenia. What we lack perspective of today, is that in a lot of the copying would also take credit away from the author and give it to the copier, and this I think we would also agree that we would (or at least most would) find to be naturally inclined as wrong.
So, what we really need is a system by which we are free to copy, but not necessarily free to take credit away from the original author. By the way, this is also the basis behind pretty much all Open Source Licenses - even the most liberal licenses (e.g. the BSD & ISC licenses). Now if we could only get copyright law to extend that to all other fields that pertain to copyright, then I think our natural inclinations of copyright and copyright law would match near seamlessly.
In fact, if we were able to do that - then we could probably even extend copyright terms to be indefinite and people would naturally want to respect it 100%. However, even if we could do that, I'm not sure it would be wise to do so.
You have a trade-off you have to consider - convenience versus security. You have to find the right balance for your organization, but as an employee you must also be very careful and balance yourself too.
For example, I use my personal e-mail for mailing lists. I do this to keep my work e-mail to only work traffic, even if I am subscribed mailing list related to work I use my personal e-mail for it. As a result, my work e-mail address is really only spread to clients and people that really need to know it, and I get the communication links for personal use as well. However, I also have to be very careful of what I put into those e-mails, which would also be required even if I had used my work e-mail. So, in essence, my personal e-mail is a security barrier that benefits me and helps keep me productive at work. I can also then make sure that personal e-mail (e.g. e-mailing my wife about dinner, etc.) goes through my personal e-mail.
As an employee, I have to be very careful about both addresses, and need to make sure sensitive stuff from work doesn't go out into my personal e-mail. That should be a given, and if that is broken work should have 100% reason to let me go as an option for corrective action.
- Make some "allies" and sign some "treaties"
- Let your "allies" help you carry out your "war" on the "enemy"
- Wipe out most everyone together with your "allies"
- Turn on your "allies" one by one without telling the others
- Wipe out your "allies" last when they are least suspecting it
Funny - Hitler had and Microsoft has the same basic plans. Just substitute "competitors" for "enemies" and "partners" for "allies".Also, while the article may be referring to C/C++, it would certainly extend beyond simply C/C++.
I've had this conversation before and had someone raise up that there are a number of issues - I thought it was on
Hopefully you'll get modded up for your post too as it is very complimentary to mine and shows just what can be done if you pay attention to your expenses and are careful.
I would say though, that buying a new car versus a used car could be done if you are careful. Don't buy a new car every 2, 3, 4, or 5 years - if you do buy one, then plan on keeping it until it is a junker (i.e. costing more in maintenance than it is worth). I had one used car and replaced it with a new car when it came time because I was tired of the maintenance with the used car - but I also new that overall it would cost about the same, the new car would save me some in the long run, but not a whole lot. I plan on only buying another new car in a few years - to replace my wife's car, not my car - and I plan on running both into the ground.
So whatever car you buy - buy wisely. Be careful of the used car to make sure you don't end up with lots of maintenance, but also realize that the costs of a new car (loans, etc.) will not save much over the life of the car comparatively; the big question being - is it worth the reduced maintenance to you?