I heard that Boeing was looking into using the material used for Theft Resistant Packaging for aircraft Black Boxes. But the FAA rejected them as being to hard to open.
What if the GPL were changed requiring any distributor to give ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS to the user?
Could a user legally force a developer who released software under a prior GPL version, with the future version clause included, to pay such a sum?
From Wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
If the terms of the contract are uncertain or incomplete, the parties cannot have reached an agreement in the eyes of the law.[19] An agreement to agree does not constitute a contract, and an inability to agree on key issues, which may include such things as price or safety, may cause the entire contract to fail. However, a court will attempt to give effect to commercial contracts where possible, by construing a reasonable construction of the contract.[20]
Courts may also look to external standards, which are either mentioned explicitly in the contract[21] or implied by common practice in a certain field.[22] In addition, the court may also imply a term; if price is excluded, the court may imply a reasonable price, with the exception of land, and second-hand goods, which are unique.
If there are uncertain or incomplete clauses in the contract, and all options in resolving its true meaning have failed, it may be possible to sever and void just those affected clauses if the contract includes a severability clause. The test of whether a clause is severable is an objective test - whether a reasonable person would see the contract standing even without the clauses.
By allowing major modification against the will of one of the parties, is the GPL "Incomplete"? Would this standard would allow a distributor to not be bound by clauses in a contract that were not even existant at the time of the contracts inception?
With the GPL's 'viral' nature, wouldn't it be a huge liability for anyone to agree to such an open ended contract?
Could arguing this case damage Open Source, by showing a possible danger of contributing anything under the GPL?
Not saying the GPL should change however it wants, however, allowing one party to an agreement to unilaterally change the terms after the fact is a bad idea. Unless you want your rent to triple, and still be bound to your lease, and you lease extended to 99 years, payable in advance.
L. Ron Hubbard was mostly likely insane, I'm not a psychologist, but I have spent much time helping mentally ill people recover, I think he was Schitzophrenic. Paranoid delusions, delusions of power, fear of psych meds... Why would he hate Psychatry so very much, unless he had contact with them? One disturbing thing I've seen is that Scientology activly recruits from mental hospitals!
Schitzophrenia has two sides, sometimes you feel terrible, like the entire world hates you; sometimes you feel like a god, immortal and wonderful. and when you are in each state, you can't even conceive the other one. I've seen people off their meds go from laughing giddy, to believing that they have never been happy in the space of 15 seconds.
If you take your meds, you lose the Highs, but also the Lows. because you lose the Highs, and are having paranoid delusions, it's common to think that the medications are bad, and the doctors are trying to poison you. (a belief of L. Ron's) Because of the auditory hallucinations, you may think your body is occupied by multiple entities (a belief of L. Ron's), and come up with a bizzarre world-view that attempts to explain the world that you are perceiving (Scientology or TimeCube)
One possible trait of Schitzophrenia is a difficulty producing 'normal' emotional responses, aka 'Flat Affect'. people with this symptom may appear emotionless, and disinterested (like the VT shooter, as he was decribed before the shootings). My personal thought is that someone with this symptom, if they are very smart, may be forced to 'fake' emotions in order to interact with others. this self-training from a young age could make someone a VERY good actor, as they have essentially acted their entire life. I suspect that Tom Cruise and possibly John Travola may be in this situation. Unfortunetly as they aged they may have started showing other signs of Schizophreneia, were urged to take medication, rebelled, and then joined a cult that supported their decision... Think about Tom on Oprah and a 'giddy high'. I think Tom Cruise is intelligent, and a great actor, but without meds he may get progressivly less sane.
No matter how smart you are, with a mental disorder warping your perceptions and emotions, eventually something bad may occur by doing something that seems entirely appropriate at the time. If your 'Angel' is telling you that someone is trying to kill you, and your angel is never wrong, shouldn't you attack them in self defense first? If your uncle has lung cancer, and you can 'see' where it is, shouldn't you take a kitchen knife and cut it out? A good friend of mine came to these conclusions, fortunetly nothing seriously wrong happened, and he's now on medications instead of prison for attempted murder, or worse. (like the VT shootings, where my conclusion is the guy went insane, and detached from society... without support of others he rereated into paranoid delusions that ended in a pre-emptive attack, which in his mind was fully justified)
Unfortunetly, it's difficult to seperate 'Mental Illness', from 'Religion'. So some mentally ill states have gained some protections under the law; I've read that in the Soviet Union, when they were being critisized for imprisioning to many people for disagreeing with the Party, they redefined mental illness so that disagreeing with the Party could result in your being declared mentally ill, and being locked up in a hospital; because any 'sane' person agrees with the Party. As much as the idea amuses me, I don't think voting republican should be grounds for be declared legally insane.
Scientology, However, is not just using the law as a Shield, they are using it as a Weapon, and abusing the process. This is entirely wrong, and needs to be stopped. Like false rape accusations damage the chances of real justice for real victims; if Scientology keeps abusing their position as a 'religion' it will harm other genuine religions.
UAC is pretty much essential to meet the mutual goals of:
a) run old software designed for prior windows versions.
and
b) be secure.
You might want to allow, for example, an online game to delete files IF those files belong to the game, and only to the game, like obselete maps, sound files, etc. But you don't want someone to exploit a bug in the game online to hose your system; like the bug I found in Counterstrike (old version, long fixed) where putting "%D%D%D%D%D%D%D" as your playername would crash it out (classic printf issue).
You could possibly run an app in a VM 'sandbox', but that idea breaks down as soon as you try to cut-n-paste from one app to another, or two apps want to write files in the same directory... what should it do then, prompt for Cancel/Allow for each breach of the sandbox? or have the user define complex sets of which applications are allowed to talk to each other? I did that for a Linux setup, I made seperate accounts for each service, one for the Fax receiving, one for Apache, one for each instance of the DVR simulator, one for DistCC, one for web browsing... and configured them for exactly, and only what access each needed; the Fax could put files into a directory to be served by Apache, but could not touch the templates and other pages, and nothing Apache did could touch the Fax archive and configuration, each simulated DVR had its own IP address, and couldn't see the others except via network packets. It was terribly complex, and done as a learning experiance. because everything worked perfectly when run as one user, or if p[ermissions were opened up, but it took months of spare time to get all the permissions exactly right as seperate users.
Unless you can be absolutly sure that EVERY action a program may take is approved, it needs to be controlled. As apps get fixed up, and Vista gets service packs or whatever to improve support for specific apps, the issue will fade, but never be completely gone, because sometimes, it'll save the users ass.
1. The USA is the world's most progressive nation, in the sense that it is the first and best democracy, the country in which the rule of law is most clearly supreme, and generally the most virtuous. Therefore it has a moral right, or even an obligation, to lead others towards the light (at least, those of them who survive the trip).
2. The USA is the world's most powerful nation, armed with weapons that could easily destroy any other nation utterly within less than a day. It can also launch bombs, missiles, or just thousands of heavily-armed soldiers, anywhere in the world. It even lays claim to military supremacy in space. Therefore, as the world's biggest gorilla, what it says goes; and it uses this dominance to further its own interests (including those of US corporations and citizens).
It's simple really, 1. is Democrats, and 2. is Republicans.
I recently helped someone install a home printer from HP, the SMALLEST "driver" installation option was 400 MEGABYTES, it defaulted to over 800 megs!
That's just insane.
Now multiply that by all the different revisions and patches of the HP drivers, and consider testing each Windows/Application patch against it (on every language, for every version).
You could deforest the planet with test pages before you hit every code path.
Not a new idea, U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. for example, did not sell robots, only leased them.
A printer may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A printer must print the jobs given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A printer must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Considering that a friend of my got expelled from middle school for a 'weapons violation' for having the combination of a typical rubber band, and a paperclip...
If a million monkeys could eventually happen to write Hamlet, a million typical users could eventually crack important network security....redacted document files retaining undo information, poor password choices, nigerian scams...
the more difficult a security system is to use, the greater the chance it won't be used.
employees will write client information and passwords on paper, allow others to use use their accounts, or hit 'yes' to every prompt.
All you need is two Vista machines, and you have an IPv6 network.
So there must be at least a dozen IPv6 networks in the world...
Retail Vista has already outsold Windows XP (N)
all kidding aside, Vista does have some improvements, but it's the first of the new generation. Like 3.0, 95, and ME... it'll be better when it's updated to 3.1(1), 98 (se), or XP(sp2) level.
CompUSA cut costs by closing stores; would it have been better for the employees on Circuit City if that happened?
There are/were simply to many of these same generic 'Box' stores around. CompUSA, Circuit City, Best Buy, overlapping with Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, and competing with Fry's, Target, Wal*Mart, Fred Meyer, Radio Shack... They utterly destroyed the small local computer shops with their over-expansion. With on-line sales now destroying the Box stores, there are just too many stores, and except for when something like the Wii launches, they are under customered.
I'm just waiting for Best Buy to fail utterly, I'd hate for them to be the sole survivor.
I did some calculations a while back, reguarding him much energy it would take to reshape to moon into a cube. Assuming that atomic detonations could be used for the bulk of the work, followed by solar powered robot bulldozers, it could be done with about 20% of the uranium that is dissolved in earth seawater.
I loaded the image into Gimp, centered it, and did a reverse polar-rectangular conversion. When I superimposed a sine wave, it was a fairly good match.
It may only appear straight because it's the distance from the center of a curved surface, so that the curve of the wave, and the curve of the surface cancel out.
The Unibomber and Oklahoma City bombers were US Citizens, the 9/11 attackers had real, not forged documents, the vast majority of illegal immigrants are probably nice folks... since when does lack of proper ID portend terror?
If someone is planning a complex plot to attack the US, they probably won't let it fail because a key member has a badly forged ID card.
Slashdot Mirror
I heard that Boeing was looking into using the material used for Theft Resistant Packaging for aircraft Black Boxes. But the FAA rejected them as being to hard to open.
What if the GPL were changed requiring any distributor to give ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS to the user?
Could a user legally force a developer who released software under a prior GPL version, with the future version clause included, to pay such a sum?
From Wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
If the terms of the contract are uncertain or incomplete, the parties cannot have reached an agreement in the eyes of the law.[19] An agreement to agree does not constitute a contract, and an inability to agree on key issues, which may include such things as price or safety, may cause the entire contract to fail. However, a court will attempt to give effect to commercial contracts where possible, by construing a reasonable construction of the contract.[20]
Courts may also look to external standards, which are either mentioned explicitly in the contract[21] or implied by common practice in a certain field.[22] In addition, the court may also imply a term; if price is excluded, the court may imply a reasonable price, with the exception of land, and second-hand goods, which are unique.
If there are uncertain or incomplete clauses in the contract, and all options in resolving its true meaning have failed, it may be possible to sever and void just those affected clauses if the contract includes a severability clause. The test of whether a clause is severable is an objective test - whether a reasonable person would see the contract standing even without the clauses.
By allowing major modification against the will of one of the parties, is the GPL "Incomplete"? Would this standard would allow a distributor to not be bound by clauses in a contract that were not even existant at the time of the contracts inception?
With the GPL's 'viral' nature, wouldn't it be a huge liability for anyone to agree to such an open ended contract?
Could arguing this case damage Open Source, by showing a possible danger of contributing anything under the GPL?
Not saying the GPL should change however it wants, however, allowing one party to an agreement to unilaterally change the terms after the fact is a bad idea. Unless you want your rent to triple, and still be bound to your lease, and you lease extended to 99 years, payable in advance.
If you have a history of fraud, you shouldn't work in a bank.
If you have a history of drug abuse, you shouldn't work in a pharmacy.
If you have a history of child abuse, you shouldn't work in a daycare.
Disclosures of criminal history to an employer should be limited to relevant items only.
the phrase "liberal media" refers to the sub-group of the media that is liberal, not a statement that all media is liberal.
If Lara Croft ever finds a lump.
Battlestar Galactic, being partly commentary on the War in Iraq, will end when that war does.
I'm looking forward to season 12.
Or maybe EJO's character is getting killed off in the 13th episode of the 4th season; so as far as he knows, the show ends then.
Look at the horribly bad promotions for BlueBeat here:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/83391
Same guy posts more than a half dozen times under different names to say positive things about BlueBeat.
Pump and Dump scam, most likely.
L. Ron Hubbard was mostly likely insane, I'm not a psychologist, but I have spent much time helping mentally ill people recover, I think he was Schitzophrenic. Paranoid delusions, delusions of power, fear of psych meds... Why would he hate Psychatry so very much, unless he had contact with them? One disturbing thing I've seen is that Scientology activly recruits from mental hospitals!
Schitzophrenia has two sides, sometimes you feel terrible, like the entire world hates you; sometimes you feel like a god, immortal and wonderful. and when you are in each state, you can't even conceive the other one. I've seen people off their meds go from laughing giddy, to believing that they have never been happy in the space of 15 seconds.
If you take your meds, you lose the Highs, but also the Lows. because you lose the Highs, and are having paranoid delusions, it's common to think that the medications are bad, and the doctors are trying to poison you. (a belief of L. Ron's) Because of the auditory hallucinations, you may think your body is occupied by multiple entities (a belief of L. Ron's), and come up with a bizzarre world-view that attempts to explain the world that you are perceiving (Scientology or TimeCube)
One possible trait of Schitzophrenia is a difficulty producing 'normal' emotional responses, aka 'Flat Affect'. people with this symptom may appear emotionless, and disinterested (like the VT shooter, as he was decribed before the shootings). My personal thought is that someone with this symptom, if they are very smart, may be forced to 'fake' emotions in order to interact with others. this self-training from a young age could make someone a VERY good actor, as they have essentially acted their entire life. I suspect that Tom Cruise and possibly John Travola may be in this situation. Unfortunetly as they aged they may have started showing other signs of Schizophreneia, were urged to take medication, rebelled, and then joined a cult that supported their decision... Think about Tom on Oprah and a 'giddy high'. I think Tom Cruise is intelligent, and a great actor, but without meds he may get progressivly less sane.
No matter how smart you are, with a mental disorder warping your perceptions and emotions, eventually something bad may occur by doing something that seems entirely appropriate at the time. If your 'Angel' is telling you that someone is trying to kill you, and your angel is never wrong, shouldn't you attack them in self defense first? If your uncle has lung cancer, and you can 'see' where it is, shouldn't you take a kitchen knife and cut it out? A good friend of mine came to these conclusions, fortunetly nothing seriously wrong happened, and he's now on medications instead of prison for attempted murder, or worse. (like the VT shootings, where my conclusion is the guy went insane, and detached from society... without support of others he rereated into paranoid delusions that ended in a pre-emptive attack, which in his mind was fully justified)
Unfortunetly, it's difficult to seperate 'Mental Illness', from 'Religion'. So some mentally ill states have gained some protections under the law; I've read that in the Soviet Union, when they were being critisized for imprisioning to many people for disagreeing with the Party, they redefined mental illness so that disagreeing with the Party could result in your being declared mentally ill, and being locked up in a hospital; because any 'sane' person agrees with the Party. As much as the idea amuses me, I don't think voting republican should be grounds for be declared legally insane.
Scientology, However, is not just using the law as a Shield, they are using it as a Weapon, and abusing the process. This is entirely wrong, and needs to be stopped. Like false rape accusations damage the chances of real justice for real victims; if Scientology keeps abusing their position as a 'religion' it will harm other genuine religions.
UAC is pretty much essential to meet the mutual goals of:
a) run old software designed for prior windows versions.
and
b) be secure.
You might want to allow, for example, an online game to delete files IF those files belong to the game, and only to the game, like obselete maps, sound files, etc. But you don't want someone to exploit a bug in the game online to hose your system; like the bug I found in Counterstrike (old version, long fixed) where putting "%D%D%D%D%D%D%D" as your playername would crash it out (classic printf issue).
You could possibly run an app in a VM 'sandbox', but that idea breaks down as soon as you try to cut-n-paste from one app to another, or two apps want to write files in the same directory... what should it do then, prompt for Cancel/Allow for each breach of the sandbox? or have the user define complex sets of which applications are allowed to talk to each other? I did that for a Linux setup, I made seperate accounts for each service, one for the Fax receiving, one for Apache, one for each instance of the DVR simulator, one for DistCC, one for web browsing... and configured them for exactly, and only what access each needed; the Fax could put files into a directory to be served by Apache, but could not touch the templates and other pages, and nothing Apache did could touch the Fax archive and configuration, each simulated DVR had its own IP address, and couldn't see the others except via network packets. It was terribly complex, and done as a learning experiance. because everything worked perfectly when run as one user, or if p[ermissions were opened up, but it took months of spare time to get all the permissions exactly right as seperate users.
Unless you can be absolutly sure that EVERY action a program may take is approved, it needs to be controlled. As apps get fixed up, and Vista gets service packs or whatever to improve support for specific apps, the issue will fade, but never be completely gone, because sometimes, it'll save the users ass.
Sometimes you can make a program more secure by using a newer compiler, or different compiler options.
What annoyed me is that installing Half-Life 2, Episode 1 erased my favorite server list in CounterStrike.
a lot more work than resetting a default browser, from a product that's been out for a long time.
1. The USA is the world's most progressive nation, in the sense that it is the first and best democracy, the country in which the rule of law is most clearly supreme, and generally the most virtuous. Therefore it has a moral right, or even an obligation, to lead others towards the light (at least, those of them who survive the trip).
2. The USA is the world's most powerful nation, armed with weapons that could easily destroy any other nation utterly within less than a day. It can also launch bombs, missiles, or just thousands of heavily-armed soldiers, anywhere in the world. It even lays claim to military supremacy in space. Therefore, as the world's biggest gorilla, what it says goes; and it uses this dominance to further its own interests (including those of US corporations and citizens).
It's simple really, 1. is Democrats, and 2. is Republicans.
I recently helped someone install a home printer from HP, the SMALLEST "driver" installation option was 400 MEGABYTES, it defaulted to over 800 megs!
That's just insane.
Now multiply that by all the different revisions and patches of the HP drivers, and consider testing each Windows/Application patch against it (on every language, for every version).
You could deforest the planet with test pages before you hit every code path.
Unfortunetly, 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.com is already taken as a domain name.
Goatse always made me laugh, and inspired me to create this. http://freeduiconsultations.com/kirbyse.gif (no visable anus)
Not a new idea, U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. for example, did not sell robots, only leased them.
A printer may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A printer must print the jobs given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A printer must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Considering that a friend of my got expelled from middle school for a 'weapons violation' for having the combination of a typical rubber band, and a paperclip...
Could the Robot open fire on a Karate expert?
Ownedbiwan Kenobi?
If a million monkeys could eventually happen to write Hamlet, a million typical users could eventually crack important network security. ...redacted document files retaining undo information, poor password choices, nigerian scams...
the more difficult a security system is to use, the greater the chance it won't be used.
employees will write client information and passwords on paper, allow others to use use their accounts, or hit 'yes' to every prompt.
All you need is two Vista machines, and you have an IPv6 network.
So there must be at least a dozen IPv6 networks in the world...
Retail Vista has already outsold Windows XP (N)
all kidding aside, Vista does have some improvements, but it's the first of the new generation. Like 3.0, 95, and ME... it'll be better when it's updated to 3.1(1), 98 (se), or XP(sp2) level.
Third times the charm.
CompUSA cut costs by closing stores; would it have been better for the employees on Circuit City if that happened?
There are/were simply to many of these same generic 'Box' stores around. CompUSA, Circuit City, Best Buy, overlapping with Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, and competing with Fry's, Target, Wal*Mart, Fred Meyer, Radio Shack... They utterly destroyed the small local computer shops with their over-expansion. With on-line sales now destroying the Box stores, there are just too many stores, and except for when something like the Wii launches, they are under customered.
I'm just waiting for Best Buy to fail utterly, I'd hate for them to be the sole survivor.
I did some calculations a while back, reguarding him much energy it would take to reshape to moon into a cube. Assuming that atomic detonations could be used for the bulk of the work, followed by solar powered robot bulldozers, it could be done with about 20% of the uranium that is dissolved in earth seawater.
I loaded the image into Gimp, centered it, and did a reverse polar-rectangular conversion. When I superimposed a sine wave, it was a fairly good match.
It may only appear straight because it's the distance from the center of a curved surface, so that the curve of the wave, and the curve of the surface cancel out.
This will help security how?
The Unibomber and Oklahoma City bombers were US Citizens, the 9/11 attackers had real, not forged documents, the vast majority of illegal immigrants are probably nice folks... since when does lack of proper ID portend terror?
If someone is planning a complex plot to attack the US, they probably won't let it fail because a key member has a badly forged ID card.
When I was working retail, all a customer had to do was show an out-of-state ID, and their purchase would be sales tax exempt.
I would assume this wouldn't apply to the newer Hotel/Rental car taxes tho.