I think cross subsidies like this keep our less populated areas from being entirely without the comforts of the modern world.
Nobody is forced to live in a less populated area. It's their choice, and as with most choices, it comes with upsides and downsides. One of the downsides is that telecom is expensive.
If people in rural areas want me to pay a USF tax so they can have cheap telecom service, I think it only fair that they help solve some of my problems. I propose that for every $1,000 of USF funds that a rural area receives, it also has to accept one street gang member and two lawyers. Welcome to life in the big city!
The FCC ruled on this in June 2004. Here's the link to the FCC's Public Notice. Tennents in "hotels, conference and convention centers, airports, and colleges and universities" have the right to run their own WiFi equipment, and the landlord has no say in the matter.
It's unfortunate that the state of California doesn't think much of the right to contract.
Contract Law 101: A contract provision that violates public policy is invalid and unenforcable.
Under California law, non-compete agreements can be considered an unlawful restraint of trade. It all depends on the specifics. Generally speaking, people have a right to make a living in their chosen profession. Employers cannot prevent employees from ever working for any competitor. A non-compete can prevent some employees from working for some competitors for some period of time. The court will look at the length and breadth of the exclusion, as well as the position of the employee.
In this case, a six month exclusion for a senior executive sounds reasonable, and I suspect a California judge would uphold the non-compete.
OK, so they guy invented OOP and thought of laptops long before anybody else. Cool. Give him extra mod points or something. But what has he done for HP in the time he's been there? What products has he improved? What marketable new ideas has he come up with?
When a program wants to read or overwrite a file that is open by another program, windows locks the file preventing this.
Just to be 100% technically accurate... Windows itself holds executables open while they're running; the handling of data files is entirely up to applications. An app can allow other processes to open the file for reading, for writing, or not at all. Don't blame the OS if an app asks for exclusive access to the file.
So tell NVIDIA and ATI to 'fix' their drivers, since they don't fit into your reboot logic.
You're right. Changing display drivers also requires a reboot. My mistake.
I can change Nvidia drivers at will with no reboot in Linux, and that's impossible in Windows.
Can you do it without shutting down X, and all running X applications? Is that really so different than than a reboot?
what is a boot disk driver?
It's the driver that controls the disk device containing the Windows system directory. This driver can't be unloaded because the filesystem mounted on top of it can't be unloaded (since at least one executable process will be running from it, smss.exe if nothing else).
Is it something that you'd use if you, say, hot swapped your boot drive from IDE to SATA?
That's a highly unlikely scenario. More likely is that you just want to install a newer version of the same driver.
The delay after +++ was patented by Hayes. After the "Hayes AT standard" was firmly established in the market, Hayes started suing other modem manufacturers for patent infringement. Many decided to remove the delay requirement rather than pay royalties. There are a lot of modems that will hang up if they receive "+++ATH0\r" in a continuous stream.
Wrong! Installing drivers is not a major cause of reboots on Windows. The only time you absolutely need to reboot is if you update the boot disk driver. There is no different than Linux. Any properly written Windows driver can be installed or updated without a reboot -- if the driver writer didn't do their job, blame them, not the OS.
The real cause of most reboots are attempts to replace active user-mode executables (EXE or DLL). Executable files cannot be replaced while they're running. This makes it practically impossible to update system DLL's without a reboot, since they're going to running in some process all the time.
Why should MS be forced to allow source-form redistrubution of derived works from their IP?
Because they're a convicted monopolist and antitrust violator. They broke the law, and now they're being punished. It's supposed to hurt. Perhaps the EU should offer MSFT a choice: They can open up their protocols, or Gates and Balmer can spend some time in jail. That's what happens to other convicted criminals.
As is often the case, the press is completely misreporting the issue. The EU never demanded that Microsoft release their own source code. What MSFT is required to do is license their network protocols and provide sufficient documentation to licensees so they can create their own implementations. A similar condition was part of the US antitrust case.
The license that MSFT offered is (1) expensive, and (2) specifically prevents licensees from releasing the source code to their own implementations. The EU is mostly upset about the cost, and is therefore completely missing the point. The only effective remedy would be to require that MSFT publish the protocol specs and allow anybody (e.g. the SAMBA team) to implement them.
Some would say that such a compulsory license amounts to the EU stealing MSFT's intellectual property. Bullshit! Do you believe that making them pay a fine is stealing their money? You can oppose the whole concept of antitrust regulation on Libertarian grounds, but that battle was fought and lost, the argument is over, and antitrust is settled law. The EU has the right to set antitrust rules and punish the violators.
but that seems like a rather stupid attitude to me
People laid off immediately after a merger may get a better severence package than people who stick around for a while and get canned later. It can make financial sense to get out early if you expect that you'll be dumped eventually.
Slashdot Mirror
I think cross subsidies like this keep our less populated areas from being entirely without the comforts of the modern world.
Nobody is forced to live in a less populated area. It's their choice, and as with most choices, it comes with upsides and downsides. One of the downsides is that telecom is expensive.
If people in rural areas want me to pay a USF tax so they can have cheap telecom service, I think it only fair that they help solve some of my problems. I propose that for every $1,000 of USF funds that a rural area receives, it also has to accept one street gang member and two lawyers. Welcome to life in the big city!
This has been discussed in Slashdot before.
All I'm saying is that the state should not tell me what is and what isn't a valid contract.
OK, but then don't ask the state to enforce your contract (e.g by going to court). You can't have it both ways.
It's unfortunate that the state of California doesn't think much of the right to contract.
Contract Law 101: A contract provision that violates public policy is invalid and unenforcable.
Under California law, non-compete agreements can be considered an unlawful restraint of trade. It all depends on the specifics. Generally speaking, people have a right to make a living in their chosen profession. Employers cannot prevent employees from ever working for any competitor. A non-compete can prevent some employees from working for some competitors for some period of time. The court will look at the length and breadth of the exclusion, as well as the position of the employee.
In this case, a six month exclusion for a senior executive sounds reasonable, and I suspect a California judge would uphold the non-compete.
He invented the window.
Well, in that case, FUCK HIM! He's responsible for the ruin of computing. I prefer the command line. :-)
OK, so they guy invented OOP and thought of laptops long before anybody else. Cool. Give him extra mod points or something. But what has he done for HP in the time he's been there? What products has he improved? What marketable new ideas has he come up with?
When a program wants to read or overwrite a file that is open by another program, windows locks the file preventing this.
Just to be 100% technically accurate... Windows itself holds executables open while they're running; the handling of data files is entirely up to applications. An app can allow other processes to open the file for reading, for writing, or not at all. Don't blame the OS if an app asks for exclusive access to the file.
So tell NVIDIA and ATI to 'fix' their drivers, since they don't fit into your reboot logic.
You're right. Changing display drivers also requires a reboot. My mistake.
I can change Nvidia drivers at will with no reboot in Linux, and that's impossible in Windows.
Can you do it without shutting down X, and all running X applications? Is that really so different than than a reboot?
what is a boot disk driver?
It's the driver that controls the disk device containing the Windows system directory. This driver can't be unloaded because the filesystem mounted on top of it can't be unloaded (since at least one executable process will be running from it, smss.exe if nothing else).
Is it something that you'd use if you, say, hot swapped your boot drive from IDE to SATA?
That's a highly unlikely scenario. More likely is that you just want to install a newer version of the same driver.
The delay after +++ was patented by Hayes. After the "Hayes AT standard" was firmly established in the market, Hayes started suing other modem manufacturers for patent infringement. Many decided to remove the delay requirement rather than pay royalties. There are a lot of modems that will hang up if they receive "+++ATH0\r" in a continuous stream.
nmmdd is the Netmeeting Mirror Display Driver.
Wrong! Installing drivers is not a major cause of reboots on Windows. The only time you absolutely need to reboot is if you update the boot disk driver. There is no different than Linux. Any properly written Windows driver can be installed or updated without a reboot -- if the driver writer didn't do their job, blame them, not the OS.
The real cause of most reboots are attempts to replace active user-mode executables (EXE or DLL). Executable files cannot be replaced while they're running. This makes it practically impossible to update system DLL's without a reboot, since they're going to running in some process all the time.
Why should MS be forced to allow source-form redistrubution of derived works from their IP?
Because they're a convicted monopolist and antitrust violator. They broke the law, and now they're being punished. It's supposed to hurt. Perhaps the EU should offer MSFT a choice: They can open up their protocols, or Gates and Balmer can spend some time in jail. That's what happens to other convicted criminals.
As is often the case, the press is completely misreporting the issue. The EU never demanded that Microsoft release their own source code. What MSFT is required to do is license their network protocols and provide sufficient documentation to licensees so they can create their own implementations. A similar condition was part of the US antitrust case.
The license that MSFT offered is (1) expensive, and (2) specifically prevents licensees from releasing the source code to their own implementations. The EU is mostly upset about the cost, and is therefore completely missing the point. The only effective remedy would be to require that MSFT publish the protocol specs and allow anybody (e.g. the SAMBA team) to implement them.
Some would say that such a compulsory license amounts to the EU stealing MSFT's intellectual property. Bullshit! Do you believe that making them pay a fine is stealing their money? You can oppose the whole concept of antitrust regulation on Libertarian grounds, but that battle was fought and lost, the argument is over, and antitrust is settled law. The EU has the right to set antitrust rules and punish the violators.
For an interesting exercise think about how you would rewrite "High Noon" as a Star Trek episode.
Already been done (sort of). See Outland.
And I'm sorry, what does a person with a BA in Medieval history have to do with being the CEO of a tech company?
It prepared her well for raping and pillaging the peasants (e.g. employees).
but that seems like a rather stupid attitude to me
People laid off immediately after a merger may get a better severence package than people who stick around for a while and get canned later. It can make financial sense to get out early if you expect that you'll be dumped eventually.
Wrong! 64-bit Linux requires 64-bit drivers, just like Windows.