I'm used to petrol prices in the uk - about 90p per litre right now, which works out about $6.50 per US gallon.
Most of that is tax.
The American car market is very different to the rest of the world - the scenic (and as large I was meaning the largest within its range as there is more than one model) is a very comfortably sized family car - most family cars here have very good fuel economy.
The cars with poor economy are not the large family cars, its SUVs, some sports cars and luxury cars with over sized engines. SUVs are unnecessary in the UK in almost all areas - especially cities, the other cars are expensive. If you want to pay so much for your car then you can pay for the fuel to run it - and the tax on that fuel.
No one is forcing people to drive such cars - and a pay as you spend system of tax is far fairer than a pay as you earn.
As for me? Well the last car I had was an older, larger car. A volvo S80, still does far better to the gallon than most US cars.
Fuel taxes very fairly penalise cars with poor fuel economy.
American cars are notoriously bad for that.
I was driving a large Renault scenic this weekend (I hire a car every weekend as I live in the UK but work in the Netherlands) diesel and it was averaging 46 to the gallon, I'm not exactly an economical driver, I do 90 on the motorway when its clear and prefer to accelerate fast rather than steadily and I still got that economy. (ok thats a uk gallon, the us gallon is a little smaller but not by that much)
So if you want to pay less in fuel and in fuel tax then get a more economical car - I've driven a yaris that managed about 60 to the gallon. If you can afford to drive a big expensive oversized hulk of metal then you can afford to pay more tax through your fuel
(and personally I count myself in the middle, I like big executive cars, I'm 6'2 and small cars don't fit me too well, but I dislike SUVs, oversized and unnecessary in the UK - except something like a land rover defender - if you are driving one of those then you probably need it - I used to when I lived in the middle of the new forest - other cars can't exactly drag trees out of the road when they fall in high winds)
Please feel free to ignore/flame/applaud the following comments as you see fit - IANAL and I don't have a copy of the GPL in front of me, this is from memory from essays I have read.
One of the main tests for a derivative work is would it be possible with zero or only minor modifications to substitute the GPL component for another component (which may or may not exist) which could do the same task.
In the case of system calls my understanding is that its almost always true, unless the script is so tied tot he particular application that it is more of an extension of that application than a script in its own right.
Linking gets a little more complicated due to the difference between the LGPL and the GPL but in short you can link dynamically to LGPL code and still pick your own license. If you link statically to either or link at all to GPL code then you are in derivative work land (I'm pretty certain about the LGPL part and I'll admit I'm uncertain about the ramifications of dynamically linking to a GPL library)
I hope that this post has at the very least raised some useful questions, even if it has failed to answer any despite a valiant attempt
Patents wouldn't exclude an open source release. Patents they want to enforce would preclude using the GPL or BSD licenses for example, but it would certainly be possible for them to release their driver open source with a license they are happy with that protects patents they own.
Its the licensed code, as you mentioned, that causes the problem.
They would need permission and an agreement on license type from every single company or organisation they have licensed code from
I'll give you a certain way to tell a hacking tool apart from a security tool, after you show me the same for a power tool and a potential murder weapon.
For those state side who are not familiar with The Sun, its equivalent over there is probably the national equirer or other super market tabloids.
Calling The Sun a rag would be an insult to dish clothes the world over!
Re:People are too easy to distract
on
Is Email 'Bankrupt'?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I guess that's just English upbringing, if you interrupt someone you apologise, I suspect in many case its become empty phrases
"Sorry, one second", "excuse me one moment", "sorry about that" - but the social niceties still make a difference I think
Re:People are too easy to distract
on
Is Email 'Bankrupt'?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I go somewhere in between.
I apologise to who I am talking to, look who is calling, if its someone that's important I'll answer and ask them to call back or offer to call them back.
If its an unknown or withheld it goes straight to the voice mail - same for any numbers I recognise as probably not being important enough right at that moment and either wait for them to leave (or text) a message or call them back myself later - then I'll usually put my phone onto silent and go back to the conversation, again with an apology
Leaving a phone ringing is equally annoying - its how someone deals with it when they answer it that makes the real difference
There is a fairly simple, non sexist reason why there are less women in IT, science and engineering in general and it comes down to hormones.
Not the persons own hormones, but in fact the hormones that were present in the womb during that person's gestation. Testosterone assists the development of the spatial acuity and mathematical centres of the brain, oestrogen assists the development of the language centres of the brain. (and and there seems to be some evidence that testosterone increases the length of the ring finger, and oestrogen the length of the index finger)
Testosterone is present in the gestation of 95% of male babies, but only about 10% of female babies.
This cuts down the amount of candidates that have a natural inclination for these subjects that are female - however if you take a sample of women that were found to be in this 10% (it was done with 100 of them for a study release in the early 90's that was obviously started in the 70's) then the proportion of them in science and engineering fields is much much closer to proportions of men that work in those fields.
It comes down to the fact that people do what they are good at, and IT is incredibly competitive - at least it is if you want to get above a basic salary.
Uk schools don't exactly teach a well rounded view of the crusades either.
They mention when they occurred and when they happened, that's about it.
How about mentioning the fact that a load of knights got on a ship and decided to go and invade another country and basically try and convert them by the sword, but that we got our asses kicked twice, mainly because we couldn't grasp the skirmish style light cavalry tactics and the amazing accuracy and power of the thumb draw short bow that their horsemen were equipped with (ie out knights often in full plate/chain would get an arrow right through the gaps in the visor)
Oh and the children's crusades, there's a good idea. We lost the first two rounds, so lets round up a load of kids, put them in armour on a boat and ship them down there. Obviously in their innocence god will protect them and the righteous will be victorious!!
Oh and just for the record, I'm English with a family lineage that is traced for several generations in most directions, white, from a Christian family but Pagan by choice and a casual student of ancient and medieval history.
Thats the thing, gaming doesn't suck, in some ways its actually better - I can get higher frame rates in certain games on the same hardware under cadega.
This is because winex is translation not emulation and the open GL/linux API/kernal calls that the directX/windows API/kernel calls are translated to are often more efficient (especially when there was not 64bit version of windows and you had recompiled your kernel, X and openGL to optimise for your new athlon 64)
The effort required to do this though is such that you are unlikely to do it as a means to an end.
I guess it comes down to where it was being filmed and what your local laws are.
As I understand it for the uk, where I am, then you can film or photograph what you like in any place as long as those that are in the picture would not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. So you cant snap someone sunbathing in their enclosed back garden, but you can if they are on their front lawn when there front garden lacks any wall, fence or buses and its a public street.
Its obviously a fairly subjective definition however.
As far as I know it may be against certain school rules that you cannot film here, but I certainly don't think its against any laws.
I'm a linux user and admin. By most peoples standards (ie in the developement department of a bank in which I work I'm a linux/unix expert).
My home laptop (which is my main computer) is dual boot XP/ubuntu.
What do I boot to 95% of the time?
XP.
Simply because its less hassel.
I've used wineX, cadega, etc. I've built it from cvs, submitted bugs and the occasional patch to it, I've contacted game devs and worked with them to get new games to run under it (and had screen shots from my PC posted on developement group walls after they were impressed about it running under linux)
I only have 1 game even installed under windows, morrowind, and I know for a fact I could get it running under linux.
Why don't I?
Time.
It would take me an hour or two of messing around to get it working under linux.
It would also take me that time or more to get my wireless networking working how I like it under linux (ie knowing the WPA key for several different areas and using whichever is available at the time).
I'm a very busy person and I just feel no need to do it, when its already working without the hassel on my windows partition. I'm not fond of windows, but cygwin covers me for most things I need to do, if its really desparate I'll boot to linux, but thats a pretty rare occurance.
My home file server runs linux, my firewall runs linux, my personal IMAP server runs linux - I dont have an issue setting these up.
But when someone like me tends to use windows as a desktop it points to the fact that there still needs to be moreease of use put into linux on the desktop.
Users are lazy, until its actually easier to run linux in 99% of cases then its not going to happen. (and I don't mean better, I'd argue in general linux would be better for almost all things I do, but it isn't easier)
Actually I think that defense should hold, atleast as far as the act of posting the video goes (as long as it carried suitable warnings of graphic content and all that stuff)
I also think it should be used as evidence is prosecution of the crime in the video but thats a completely different matter to the act of posting it (or filming it)
I hope it would - when I'm looking at the spec of a screen I'd actually like to know if its 6bit or 8bit - otherwise how can I realistically compare them?
Even a "millions of colours*...
* Millions of colours are displayed using 6bit per colour and dithering"
would be perfectly acceptable
Implying 24 bit colour when its not is false advertising
Obviously it doesn't count if they can hide it, or not notice it
Re:Piracy is marker of immature market
on
Piracy Economics
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Microsoft do give away some of their products.
The developer studio and SQL server express editions. Slightly cut down, and I doubt that most people that would buy the full edition would opt for the express edition but its a perfect example the only realistic way to cut piracy, offer a free "good enough" alternative.
In those times when I have to code something on windows (a situation I try to avoid) its now easier for me to get one of the express editions than it is to get a pirate copy. And I can use the express editions in the office.
In this case its mainly self serving by microsoft, they want people using their developement environments, so they gain by offering a free version to those that would probably never buy a full version anyway. But did you really think any company is going to do something for purely altruistic reasons?
Slashdot Mirror
I just hope Goodmail tags the headers so that they have processed it.
If I pick up any mail they have touched I can see that head and give them a +3 spam score.
Who other than spammers are going to pay for this to go through?
I'm used to petrol prices in the uk - about 90p per litre right now, which works out about $6.50 per US gallon.
Most of that is tax.
The American car market is very different to the rest of the world - the scenic (and as large I was meaning the largest within its range as there is more than one model) is a very comfortably sized family car - most family cars here have very good fuel economy.
The cars with poor economy are not the large family cars, its SUVs, some sports cars and luxury cars with over sized engines. SUVs are unnecessary in the UK in almost all areas - especially cities, the other cars are expensive. If you want to pay so much for your car then you can pay for the fuel to run it - and the tax on that fuel.
No one is forcing people to drive such cars - and a pay as you spend system of tax is far fairer than a pay as you earn.
As for me? Well the last car I had was an older, larger car. A volvo S80, still does far better to the gallon than most US cars.
Fuel taxes very fairly penalise cars with poor fuel economy.
American cars are notoriously bad for that.
I was driving a large Renault scenic this weekend (I hire a car every weekend as I live in the UK but work in the Netherlands) diesel and it was averaging 46 to the gallon, I'm not exactly an economical driver, I do 90 on the motorway when its clear and prefer to accelerate fast rather than steadily and I still got that economy. (ok thats a uk gallon, the us gallon is a little smaller but not by that much)
So if you want to pay less in fuel and in fuel tax then get a more economical car - I've driven a yaris that managed about 60 to the gallon. If you can afford to drive a big expensive oversized hulk of metal then you can afford to pay more tax through your fuel
(and personally I count myself in the middle, I like big executive cars, I'm 6'2 and small cars don't fit me too well, but I dislike SUVs, oversized and unnecessary in the UK - except something like a land rover defender - if you are driving one of those then you probably need it - I used to when I lived in the middle of the new forest - other cars can't exactly drag trees out of the road when they fall in high winds)
I think this comes under derivative works
Please feel free to ignore/flame/applaud the following comments as you see fit - IANAL and I don't have a copy of the GPL in front of me, this is from memory from essays I have read.
One of the main tests for a derivative work is would it be possible with zero or only minor modifications to substitute the GPL component for another component (which may or may not exist) which could do the same task.
In the case of system calls my understanding is that its almost always true, unless the script is so tied tot he particular application that it is more of an extension of that application than a script in its own right.
Linking gets a little more complicated due to the difference between the LGPL and the GPL but in short you can link dynamically to LGPL code and still pick your own license. If you link statically to either or link at all to GPL code then you are in derivative work land (I'm pretty certain about the LGPL part and I'll admit I'm uncertain about the ramifications of dynamically linking to a GPL library)
I hope that this post has at the very least raised some useful questions, even if it has failed to answer any despite a valiant attempt
Patents wouldn't exclude an open source release. Patents they want to enforce would preclude using the GPL or BSD licenses for example, but it would certainly be possible for them to release their driver open source with a license they are happy with that protects patents they own.
Its the licensed code, as you mentioned, that causes the problem.
They would need permission and an agreement on license type from every single company or organisation they have licensed code from
I'll give you a certain way to tell a hacking tool apart from a security tool, after you show me the same for a power tool and a potential murder weapon.
You mean your windows admin user isn't called root?
For those state side who are not familiar with The Sun, its equivalent over there is probably the national equirer or other super market tabloids.
Calling The Sun a rag would be an insult to dish clothes the world over!
I guess that's just English upbringing, if you interrupt someone you apologise, I suspect in many case its become empty phrases
"Sorry, one second", "excuse me one moment", "sorry about that" - but the social niceties still make a difference I think
I go somewhere in between.
I apologise to who I am talking to, look who is calling, if its someone that's important I'll answer and ask them to call back or offer to call them back.
If its an unknown or withheld it goes straight to the voice mail - same for any numbers I recognise as probably not being important enough right at that moment and either wait for them to leave (or text) a message or call them back myself later - then I'll usually put my phone onto silent and go back to the conversation, again with an apology
Leaving a phone ringing is equally annoying - its how someone deals with it when they answer it that makes the real difference
There is a fairly simple, non sexist reason why there are less women in IT, science and engineering in general and it comes down to hormones.
Not the persons own hormones, but in fact the hormones that were present in the womb during that person's gestation. Testosterone assists the development of the spatial acuity and mathematical centres of the brain, oestrogen assists the development of the language centres of the brain. (and and there seems to be some evidence that testosterone increases the length of the ring finger, and oestrogen the length of the index finger)
Testosterone is present in the gestation of 95% of male babies, but only about 10% of female babies.
This cuts down the amount of candidates that have a natural inclination for these subjects that are female - however if you take a sample of women that were found to be in this 10% (it was done with 100 of them for a study release in the early 90's that was obviously started in the 70's) then the proportion of them in science and engineering fields is much much closer to proportions of men that work in those fields.
It comes down to the fact that people do what they are good at, and IT is incredibly competitive - at least it is if you want to get above a basic salary.
Thats it - the comments on /.
/.
Don't RTFA - and especially don't listen to comments that have RTFA they'll just mislead you into heresy
Even better throw your own comment in without RTFA (preferably without RTFS) and enjoy the replies!!
On a more serious note, the register, bbc (but never for tech news unless you want a good laugh) and
Uk schools don't exactly teach a well rounded view of the crusades either.
They mention when they occurred and when they happened, that's about it.
How about mentioning the fact that a load of knights got on a ship and decided to go and invade another country and basically try and convert them by the sword, but that we got our asses kicked twice, mainly because we couldn't grasp the skirmish style light cavalry tactics and the amazing accuracy and power of the thumb draw short bow that their horsemen were equipped with (ie out knights often in full plate/chain would get an arrow right through the gaps in the visor)
Oh and the children's crusades, there's a good idea. We lost the first two rounds, so lets round up a load of kids, put them in armour on a boat and ship them down there. Obviously in their innocence god will protect them and the righteous will be victorious!!
Oh and just for the record, I'm English with a family lineage that is traced for several generations in most directions, white, from a Christian family but Pagan by choice and a casual student of ancient and medieval history.
Thats the thing, gaming doesn't suck, in some ways its actually better - I can get higher frame rates in certain games on the same hardware under cadega.
This is because winex is translation not emulation and the open GL/linux API/kernal calls that the directX/windows API/kernel calls are translated to are often more efficient (especially when there was not 64bit version of windows and you had recompiled your kernel, X and openGL to optimise for your new athlon 64)
The effort required to do this though is such that you are unlikely to do it as a means to an end.
Not quite true,
Linux is a blanket term describing tons of operating systems that use the linux kernel
I know one person who specifically set out to run his own linux system without using anything from gnu.
Ok he rolled it himself, it took him ages, and there wasn't much on it, but it worked.
FYI it was done using mainly bsd software though I've no idea what compiler he was using.
I see a market for a new linux distro...
... tech support may not always be great, but it will have a sexy voice on the other side of the phone!
Playboy Linux...
I guess it comes down to where it was being filmed and what your local laws are.
As I understand it for the uk, where I am, then you can film or photograph what you like in any place as long as those that are in the picture would not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. So you cant snap someone sunbathing in their enclosed back garden, but you can if they are on their front lawn when there front garden lacks any wall, fence or buses and its a public street.
Its obviously a fairly subjective definition however.
As far as I know it may be against certain school rules that you cannot film here, but I certainly don't think its against any laws.
I'm a linux user and admin. By most peoples standards (ie in the developement department of a bank in which I work I'm a linux/unix expert).
My home laptop (which is my main computer) is dual boot XP/ubuntu.
What do I boot to 95% of the time?
XP.
Simply because its less hassel.
I've used wineX, cadega, etc. I've built it from cvs, submitted bugs and the occasional patch to it, I've contacted game devs and worked with them to get new games to run under it (and had screen shots from my PC posted on developement group walls after they were impressed about it running under linux)
I only have 1 game even installed under windows, morrowind, and I know for a fact I could get it running under linux.
Why don't I?
Time.
It would take me an hour or two of messing around to get it working under linux.
It would also take me that time or more to get my wireless networking working how I like it under linux (ie knowing the WPA key for several different areas and using whichever is available at the time).
I'm a very busy person and I just feel no need to do it, when its already working without the hassel on my windows partition. I'm not fond of windows, but cygwin covers me for most things I need to do, if its really desparate I'll boot to linux, but thats a pretty rare occurance.
My home file server runs linux, my firewall runs linux, my personal IMAP server runs linux - I dont have an issue setting these up.
But when someone like me tends to use windows as a desktop it points to the fact that there still needs to be moreease of use put into linux on the desktop.
Users are lazy, until its actually easier to run linux in 99% of cases then its not going to happen. (and I don't mean better, I'd argue in general linux would be better for almost all things I do, but it isn't easier)
Actually I think that defense should hold, atleast as far as the act of posting the video goes (as long as it carried suitable warnings of graphic content and all that stuff)
I also think it should be used as evidence is prosecution of the crime in the video but thats a completely different matter to the act of posting it (or filming it)
So two questions...
Did apple actually give one of these two numbers (they are notorious for giving specs in soft and fluffy terms unless you really really dig)?
Will that stand up in court as a defense if they did?
(and thanks for the info I didn't realise they'd quote 6 bits with dithering as that)
Would even, really, want to meet an angel?
*perch*
*steeples fingers*
I hope it would - when I'm looking at the spec of a screen I'd actually like to know if its 6bit or 8bit - otherwise how can I realistically compare them?
...
Even a "millions of colours*
* Millions of colours are displayed using 6bit per colour and dithering"
would be perfectly acceptable
Implying 24 bit colour when its not is false advertising
Altogether now:
We all hack in a robot submarine, a robot submarine, a robot submarine....
I think its just progress a letter
Don't B evil
to
Don't C evil
Obviously it doesn't count if they can hide it, or not notice it
Microsoft do give away some of their products.
The developer studio and SQL server express editions. Slightly cut down, and I doubt that most people that would buy the full edition would opt for the express edition but its a perfect example the only realistic way to cut piracy, offer a free "good enough" alternative.
In those times when I have to code something on windows (a situation I try to avoid) its now easier for me to get one of the express editions than it is to get a pirate copy. And I can use the express editions in the office.
In this case its mainly self serving by microsoft, they want people using their developement environments, so they gain by offering a free version to those that would probably never buy a full version anyway. But did you really think any company is going to do something for purely altruistic reasons?