If you want to go far in politics, you've got to bet on one side or the other. I suppose he thinks that in 30 years time, the US will be a cleric-ridden theocracy, and then he'll be at the top of the tree.
Given the way things are going, this might be a better way to bet your career at that age, than siding with the left wing.
If you're selling copies, you've got a good incentive to not give anyone else the key. If your DRM is really unbreakable and there's no law that forces you to give up that key, you can keep your monopoly on selling copies forever.
A DRM system that turned itself off on a set date could be circumvented by just changing the date on your computer to some time in the future. It would therefore be useless for its intended purpose.
Apple are charging enough for their product that they don't need to do deals on the side with crapware manufacturers who want their stuff included on their machines. And Apple's product is of sufficient quality that they don't have to pad it out with "1000 dollars worth of software free" in order to make it look attractive in the adverts.
So (for example) did nobody have any right to say that Sony should not include a rootkit in the software on their CDs? Does nobody have the right to say that Microsoft Windows should be better quality? If some software destroyed your hard disk, would you just say "it's a blessing that I could have chosen not to install it"?
Of course it's easy when you're familiar with what you're doing. You only need comments when you (or someone else) goes back to look at the code later - perhaps years later - to fix a bug. Then the bug fixer needs to get up to speed with what the code is doing. So the most useful comments would be those put in by someone who was unfamiliar with the code and was trying to understand what it did, because this is just the information that the future bug fixer would need.
The company I work for has a "standard" that says "every method you write must have a comment".
So our code has hundreds of methods called things like getFoo() and setFoo() with comments like "this returns the value of foo" or " this sets the value of foo".
By the time you've written all these useless comments, you're too tired to write a single useful comment that explains how the code works.
In any case, code is always obvious when you've writing it. So it's hard to know what comment would be needed to make it clear to someone who wasn't familiar with it. Maybe comments should always be written by someone other than the author of the code?
Aristotle would have wanted Greek, and Jesus would have wanted Aramaic. So no, ISO-8859-1 was not good enough for them. Nor is it much use for the majority of people in the world today.
As for Shakespeare, he couldn't even spell his own name, so he didn't care.
On the other hand, NASA scientists really need to promote the idea of finding life on Mars, no matter how unlikely it really is. Their projects cost vast amounts of money, and each time this starts to run short there is an announcement that they are about to find signs of life.
Actually, the evolution of the eye is one of the examples that Darwin uses to illustrate his theory in his original book. Have a look at chapter 6 of "The Origin of Species".
I'm very willing indeed to pay $9.99 for a brand-new Rolls-Royce, and I know a lot of other people who are equally willing to do the same. But when we went to the local dealer, we were laughed at.
How come the Rolls-Royce dealers are not cooperating with your economic theory?
By the way, if you're willing to sell your bridge for less that the cost of the parts and labour, I know several people who will happily take it off your hands.
Actually, bashing other people's beliefs and calling them names is about par for the course in the average University department.
And the people promoting this intelligent design crap are not putting it forward as just their opinion. They are trying to pass it off as though it were a respectable scientific theory. They deserve to be called names.
No, he's not made a conscious effort to make a mistake.
If you're unfamiliar with the way Bantu languages work, you're going to need to understand them in terms of something more familiar, such as your own language. Someone has told the journalist that, starting with the word "swahili", you can make words like mswahili, waswahili, kiswahili and so on. So ki- looks to him like it's the prefix that means "language". It's a perfectly reasonable proposition given the amount of knowledge that he's got of the subject.
So then I'll have to stop leaving saliva samples everywhere I commit a crime? Shit. And I'd only just got used to the idea of wearing gloves because of this new-fangled fingerprinting stuff.
What's more, Skype is not competitive with the deals you can get for international calls here in the UK.
I looked into Skype because we make a lot of calls to Thailand (to people who don't have broadband - it's not common there). It's about 3 or 4 times more expensive than the rate we've paying at the moment.
I would guess that the Skype phenomenon is a purely US one - are long-distance calls very expensive there?
If the BBC want HDTV, they're likely to be disappointed.
They've just had a big promotional push for the existing Freeview boxes, which won't support HDTV: if they try to get people to throw those away and buy another one, they're likely to lose what little support they still have for the license fee.
Their only other hope would be for HDTV via cable or satellite. But in both cases, they have ended up utterly reliant on their commercial rivals for their distribution. Even if Sky start their own HDTV service, they've got every reason to cut the BBC out of it.
I suppose that's why there's no mention of running costs in the article. Given the controversy over the price of ink, I would have expected to see some indication of the cost per print in a review. But they wouldn't want to upset their advertisers.
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That won't work: everyone knows you need real tin foil, like for hats.
Given the way things are going, this might be a better way to bet your career at that age, than siding with the left wing.
If you're selling copies, you've got a good incentive to not give anyone else the key. If your DRM is really unbreakable and there's no law that forces you to give up that key, you can keep your monopoly on selling copies forever.
A DRM system that turned itself off on a set date could be circumvented by just changing the date on your computer to some time in the future. It would therefore be useless for its intended purpose.
Just make a fake finger using the fingerprint of one of your colleagues: instructions here.
Apple are charging enough for their product that they don't need to do deals on the side with crapware manufacturers who want their stuff included on their machines. And Apple's product is of sufficient quality that they don't have to pad it out with "1000 dollars worth of software free" in order to make it look attractive in the adverts.
So (for example) did nobody have any right to say that Sony should not include a rootkit in the software on their CDs? Does nobody have the right to say that Microsoft Windows should be better quality? If some software destroyed your hard disk, would you just say "it's a blessing that I could have chosen not to install it"?
Of course it's easy when you're familiar with what you're doing. You only need comments when you (or someone else) goes back to look at the code later - perhaps years later - to fix a bug. Then the bug fixer needs to get up to speed with what the code is doing. So the most useful comments would be those put in by someone who was unfamiliar with the code and was trying to understand what it did, because this is just the information that the future bug fixer would need.
So our code has hundreds of methods called things like getFoo() and setFoo() with comments like "this returns the value of foo" or " this sets the value of foo".
By the time you've written all these useless comments, you're too tired to write a single useful comment that explains how the code works.
In any case, code is always obvious when you've writing it. So it's hard to know what comment would be needed to make it clear to someone who wasn't familiar with it. Maybe comments should always be written by someone other than the author of the code?
Well, *I* remember when we used to play "Jingle Bells" by sending a specially-crafted sequence of ctrl-Gs and other characters to an ASR33 teletype.
As for Shakespeare, he couldn't even spell his own name, so he didn't care.
On the other hand, NASA scientists really need to promote the idea of finding life on Mars, no matter how unlikely it really is. Their projects cost vast amounts of money, and each time this starts to run short there is an announcement that they are about to find signs of life.
My vote is for Chinese. No masculine/feminine/neuter, no irregular verbs, no plurals...
Actually, the evolution of the eye is one of the examples that Darwin uses to illustrate his theory in his original book. Have a look at chapter 6 of "The Origin of Species".
How come the Rolls-Royce dealers are not cooperating with your economic theory?
By the way, if you're willing to sell your bridge for less that the cost of the parts and labour, I know several people who will happily take it off your hands.
Since this is the official Microsoft version, I know which one I believe.
And the people promoting this intelligent design crap are not putting it forward as just their opinion. They are trying to pass it off as though it were a respectable scientific theory. They deserve to be called names.
If you're unfamiliar with the way Bantu languages work, you're going to need to understand them in terms of something more familiar, such as your own language. Someone has told the journalist that, starting with the word "swahili", you can make words like mswahili, waswahili, kiswahili and so on. So ki- looks to him like it's the prefix that means "language". It's a perfectly reasonable proposition given the amount of knowledge that he's got of the subject.
So then I'll have to stop leaving saliva samples everywhere I commit a crime? Shit. And I'd only just got used to the idea of wearing gloves because of this new-fangled fingerprinting stuff.
I looked into Skype because we make a lot of calls to Thailand (to people who don't have broadband - it's not common there). It's about 3 or 4 times more expensive than the rate we've paying at the moment.
I would guess that the Skype phenomenon is a purely US one - are long-distance calls very expensive there?
But does it say anything about having to provide HDTV? I bet that wasn't thought of when the licence was written.
Is that why all those starving people in Africa all live to be 180 years old?
They've just had a big promotional push for the existing Freeview boxes, which won't support HDTV: if they try to get people to throw those away and buy another one, they're likely to lose what little support they still have for the license fee.
Their only other hope would be for HDTV via cable or satellite. But in both cases, they have ended up utterly reliant on their commercial rivals for their distribution. Even if Sky start their own HDTV service, they've got every reason to cut the BBC out of it.
What the world needs is something that lets anyone talk to anyone else.
I suppose that's why there's no mention of running costs in the article. Given the controversy over the price of ink, I would have expected to see some indication of the cost per print in a review. But they wouldn't want to upset their advertisers.