ontinuing with stimulus bills will only result in more malinvestment and poor utilization of resources, guaranteeing another recession 5 years down the line (assuming the current stimulus gets us out of this one, which it won't). Continuing with government-sponsored monopolies and behemoth corporations (which would neither flourish nor survive in a true free-market economy) is going to cause much more suffering and poverty than if we were to take our licks, let those who failed (incl. risky banks and individuals who bought more house than they could afford) suffer for it, and let the rest of us get on with our lives without nationalizing their failures.
Ever heard of the New Deal? It, not World War II, brought us out of the Great Depression. Not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying that reality and ideology never really quite mesh.
The United States of America is a representative democracy, where the people select representatives that will run the country on their behalf.
Or an oligarchy. Or both. YMMV.
This is in contrast with a direct democracy, like the Swiss cantons or Greek city states, where the people meet regularly and conduct the business of government through direct voting.
It's a hybrid, actually. When you have a ballot issue, like the Propositions and such that seek a voter referendum on a particular issue of (usually) local importance, you have a direct democracy. This is the exception rather than the rule, so the prevailing form of government is representative democracy, with a little smattering of direct democracy thrown in for good measure.
It is also a republic, as the President is elected rather than inheriting the title.
I could insert a W joke here, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader;)
Am I the only one who likes the brown color scheme?
Yes.
I find that it's easy on the eyes without being outright drab, but maybe that's just me.
Look up drab in the dictionary, and you'll find a screenshot of an Ubuntu desktop running the Human theme.;)
Seriously, I love Ubuntu. My license plate says "UBUNTU". (Really). But the brown color scheme sucks. The only brown color scheme I've ever liked at all is the one from the original and GTK2 versions of the 'Gorilla' theme from Ximian Gnome. The one from the Ubuntu Human theme is putrid.
One of the first things I do when I install a new Ubuntu system is to change the default theme to 'Clearlooks', which is the same GTK2 engine, but has a nice blue eggshell color scheme, vaguely reminiscent of Windows XP, but not as blatant as the eXPerience theme.
Agreed. That's the answer to "Will Obama give stimulus to open source?" rather than the question posed by the headline.
As far as whether Obama should or not, I don't personally think it's the job of governments to support open source software financially. The way I see it, OSS is recession-proof. It will get developed whether there is money or not. Most OSS developers are willing to work now to earn rewards later.
You're right to a certain extent. Still, the vast majority of these EULAs have yet to be fully tested in court. You never know what a judge will rule and you never know what a jury may decide. (In some states, contract cases can, at the request of the plaintiff, be decided by jury.)
If you do not accept the EULA, and then subsequently load the software then you are left with a legally obtained and distributed copy that was produced with the authorization of the copyright holder and your fair use rights.
That's a very, very good point. In many cases, its entirely possible to install software without accepting the EULA, as long as the EULA was not agreed to at the point of sale. It's a lot more work, but possible. I like the way you think.
When are you "global climate fraud" people going to stop looking through ideology-tinted glasses and actually look at this the current climate crisis we are in with an open, objective, scientific mind? Are you really going to wait until 80% of Florida, the entire West Coast of California and New York City are under water?
There are actual photographs taken from outer space in different years that show that the polar ice caps are melting. They found a new land mass that they never new existed due to the polar ice caps melting. You can't possibly sit here and tell people with a straight face that the polar ice caps are not melting. The empirical evidence is as plain as the nose on your face and you don't need a degree in geology or climatology to see it.
This is an easier hurdle than proving that consideration changed hands, when it didn't. It's the main reason EULA's aren't contracts
Yes. Others in the thread focused on my understanding of consent, but I should have also added this very salient point: If you didn't click the 'I agree' button until after you paid for the software, then there is no consideration. The consideration happened as part of a different agreement, possibly with a third party. This was more true when most retail software purchases were made at brick-and-mortar stores.
These days, however, people are typically downloading software they buy from the Web and are agreeing to the EULAs at the point of purchase (at least with the more legally saavy vendors anwyay). If you agree at that point, then there is definite consideration there.
Iris-n is being a bit pedantic here. A watt (W) is 1 joule/second. Using terms like watt-hours per day doesn't make much sense to him or her. What iris-n fails to realize is that, at least in the U.S., we tend to measure electricity usage by the kilowatt-hours (kW/h). Since we're dealing with a much smaller scale with Spirit's solar panels, W/h seems a sensible measurement.
Hmmmm...couldn't they use electromagnetic effects to minimize weight? Now just hear me out: sit in front of a CRT that's dusty. Now, ground yourself out with a grounding strap or something. Next, pass your grounded hand just barely over the screen without touching it. What happens? The dust on the monitor will now stick to your hand!
Well, my understanding of a 'meeting of the minds' is a bit beyond consent. Granted, the only law class I've ever taken was an undergrad course on business law that seemed to concentrate mostly on contracts and liability, but my understanding is that a meeting of the minds is shown when it can be successfully proved that both parties fully understand what they are agreeing to.
Just because you 'consented' to an agreement does not mean that you fully understood the terms of the agreement -- IOW, not just consent but 'informed consent'. Signed contracts have been held null-and-void because one of the signing parties didn't fully understand what he was signing and that could be shown. One of the things that might show that you don't have a meeting of the minds is if you 'signed' away rights that you know that you can't sign away in that manner or that the contract's terms state that the parties are agreeing to something that is illegal. (Note that a contract that contains terms that are illegal can be held null-and-void for other reasons as well.)
You might disagree with my viewing it this way, but my business law professor, who is a lawyer, didn't seem to when I took that stance in a paper I wrote for the class.;)
I believe that ruling was on whether the act of clicking 'I agree' constitued consent. Click-wrap agreements are often unenfoceable because they contain terms that are either contrary to law or involve giving up rights that cannot be waived in that manner. IANAL
A contract doesn't need a signature, dumbass. It's just a convenient way to prove you agreed to the terms. An EULA does exactly the same thing.
Correct, it doesn't need a signature. However, some proof of a 'meeting of the minds' is required. A click-wrap agreement doesn't necessarily provide this.
1) Apple stopped using 5.25" FDDs well before the 1990s. Every Mac that came with a floppy drive from their inception in 1984 came with a 3.5" FDD.
2) You can always buy a third-party CRT if you want a CRT on your Mac, iMac excepted (obviously). Aside from that, having used expensive color-calibrated displays and printers and so forth with high-end color management, etc., I'll let you all in on a big secret: There's no such thing as true color matching. The laws of physics don't allow for it (light vs. pigment).
3) By the time most need to replace the battery in your notebook, it's usually time to get a new notebook.;)
4) Another big secret: It's perfectly possible to write clear, self-documenting code in Perl. It's only the fact that Perl programmers seem to refuse to do this that allows Python to exist;).
Some shops (mainly design studios, video studios, sound studios, etc., aside from the education market), use Macs almost exclusively and if you're going for a single-vendor solution to improve stability, supportability, etc., then that's why you'd want OS X on your server.
Personally, I think single-vendor solutions tend to trade a lack of flexibility, functionality and performance to get that stability, hence, I tend to favor 'best-of-breed' approaches, but to each his own.
Yep, although I'm not sure how many the YWCA sell for cash and how many they give to battered women. Someone a bit more familiar with the program can post here. Besides programs like that, you can also donate your used cell phones to a project that sends them overseas to soldiers so that they can communicate with their families back at home.
This article gives better reasons for those modems being on the network than previous stories. Doesn't seem so rogue now, does it?
It only seems rogue when they make ludicrous statements like he put "1,100 modems" on the network.
Anybody with half a brain can think about that statement as say 1) There's no way someone had that many modems and phone lines because would be wayyy too expensive and 2) if you were putting secret modems on the network to 'wreak havoc' (whatever that means), you certainly wouldn't need anything close to 100 of them, let alone 1,100 of them.
If I were confronted with a room full of people not my boss and asked to reveal admin passwords, I wouldn't even try to give them the wrong ones, I would be like "if you need those, you need to ask my boss, not me because I am not authorized to give them to you."
Actually, battered women's shelters and advocacy groups can help with this problem. They often actually buy victims throw-away cell phones for this purpose.
It is a class 3 felony to block caller ID in Michigan.
It's not likely to be upheld in this way, and is definitely not likely to stay this way if it does. The RIAA may be powerful politically in some ways, but the telemarketers and bill collectors have their own allies in the legislature as well.
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OMFG. If parent isn't flamebait, then I don't know what the fuck is.
Men tend to like colors at the blue end of the spectrum. Women like the red end of the spectrum.
Comes from social programming. We dress baby boys in blue and baby girls in pink. No big surprises there.
ontinuing with stimulus bills will only result in more malinvestment and poor utilization of resources, guaranteeing another recession 5 years down the line (assuming the current stimulus gets us out of this one, which it won't). Continuing with government-sponsored monopolies and behemoth corporations (which would neither flourish nor survive in a true free-market economy) is going to cause much more suffering and poverty than if we were to take our licks, let those who failed (incl. risky banks and individuals who bought more house than they could afford) suffer for it, and let the rest of us get on with our lives without nationalizing their failures.
Ever heard of the New Deal? It, not World War II, brought us out of the Great Depression. Not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying that reality and ideology never really quite mesh.
Some republics are run by oligarchies.
Hmmmm...
The United States of America is a representative democracy, where the people select representatives that will run the country on their behalf.
Or an oligarchy. Or both. YMMV.
This is in contrast with a direct democracy, like the Swiss cantons or Greek city states, where the people meet regularly and conduct the business of government through direct voting.
It's a hybrid, actually. When you have a ballot issue, like the Propositions and such that seek a voter referendum on a particular issue of (usually) local importance, you have a direct democracy. This is the exception rather than the rule, so the prevailing form of government is representative democracy, with a little smattering of direct democracy thrown in for good measure.
It is also a republic, as the President is elected rather than inheriting the title.
I could insert a W joke here, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader ;)
Am I the only one who likes the brown color scheme?
Yes.
I find that it's easy on the eyes without being outright drab, but maybe that's just me.
Look up drab in the dictionary, and you'll find a screenshot of an Ubuntu desktop running the Human theme. ;)
Seriously, I love Ubuntu. My license plate says "UBUNTU". (Really). But the brown color scheme sucks. The only brown color scheme I've ever liked at all is the one from the original and GTK2 versions of the 'Gorilla' theme from Ximian Gnome. The one from the Ubuntu Human theme is putrid.
One of the first things I do when I install a new Ubuntu system is to change the default theme to 'Clearlooks', which is the same GTK2 engine, but has a nice blue eggshell color scheme, vaguely reminiscent of Windows XP, but not as blatant as the eXPerience theme.
Agreed. That's the answer to "Will Obama give stimulus to open source?" rather than the question posed by the headline.
As far as whether Obama should or not, I don't personally think it's the job of governments to support open source software financially. The way I see it, OSS is recession-proof. It will get developed whether there is money or not. Most OSS developers are willing to work now to earn rewards later.
You're right to a certain extent. Still, the vast majority of these EULAs have yet to be fully tested in court. You never know what a judge will rule and you never know what a jury may decide. (In some states, contract cases can, at the request of the plaintiff, be decided by jury.)
If you do not accept the EULA, and then subsequently load the software then you are left with a legally obtained and distributed copy that was produced with the authorization of the copyright holder and your fair use rights.
That's a very, very good point. In many cases, its entirely possible to install software without accepting the EULA, as long as the EULA was not agreed to at the point of sale. It's a lot more work, but possible. I like the way you think.
When are you "global climate fraud" people going to stop looking through ideology-tinted glasses and actually look at this the current climate crisis we are in with an open, objective, scientific mind? Are you really going to wait until 80% of Florida, the entire West Coast of California and New York City are under water?
There are actual photographs taken from outer space in different years that show that the polar ice caps are melting. They found a new land mass that they never new existed due to the polar ice caps melting. You can't possibly sit here and tell people with a straight face that the polar ice caps are not melting. The empirical evidence is as plain as the nose on your face and you don't need a degree in geology or climatology to see it.
This is an easier hurdle than proving that consideration changed hands, when it didn't. It's the main reason EULA's aren't contracts
Yes. Others in the thread focused on my understanding of consent, but I should have also added this very salient point: If you didn't click the 'I agree' button until after you paid for the software, then there is no consideration. The consideration happened as part of a different agreement, possibly with a third party. This was more true when most retail software purchases were made at brick-and-mortar stores.
These days, however, people are typically downloading software they buy from the Web and are agreeing to the EULAs at the point of purchase (at least with the more legally saavy vendors anwyay). If you agree at that point, then there is definite consideration there.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at.
Iris-n is being a bit pedantic here. A watt (W) is 1 joule/second. Using terms like watt-hours per day doesn't make much sense to him or her. What iris-n fails to realize is that, at least in the U.S., we tend to measure electricity usage by the kilowatt-hours (kW/h). Since we're dealing with a much smaller scale with Spirit's solar panels, W/h seems a sensible measurement.
Hmmmm...couldn't they use electromagnetic effects to minimize weight? Now just hear me out: sit in front of a CRT that's dusty. Now, ground yourself out with a grounding strap or something. Next, pass your grounded hand just barely over the screen without touching it. What happens? The dust on the monitor will now stick to your hand!
Anyway, whatchya think?
Well, my understanding of a 'meeting of the minds' is a bit beyond consent. Granted, the only law class I've ever taken was an undergrad course on business law that seemed to concentrate mostly on contracts and liability, but my understanding is that a meeting of the minds is shown when it can be successfully proved that both parties fully understand what they are agreeing to.
Just because you 'consented' to an agreement does not mean that you fully understood the terms of the agreement -- IOW, not just consent but 'informed consent'. Signed contracts have been held null-and-void because one of the signing parties didn't fully understand what he was signing and that could be shown. One of the things that might show that you don't have a meeting of the minds is if you 'signed' away rights that you know that you can't sign away in that manner or that the contract's terms state that the parties are agreeing to something that is illegal. (Note that a contract that contains terms that are illegal can be held null-and-void for other reasons as well.)
You might disagree with my viewing it this way, but my business law professor, who is a lawyer, didn't seem to when I took that stance in a paper I wrote for the class. ;)
I believe that ruling was on whether the act of clicking 'I agree' constitued consent. Click-wrap agreements are often unenfoceable because they contain terms that are either contrary to law or involve giving up rights that cannot be waived in that manner. IANAL
A contract doesn't need a signature, dumbass. It's just a convenient way to prove you agreed to the terms. An EULA does exactly the same thing.
Correct, it doesn't need a signature. However, some proof of a 'meeting of the minds' is required. A click-wrap agreement doesn't necessarily provide this.
Not to pick nits too much here, but
1) Apple stopped using 5.25" FDDs well before the 1990s. Every Mac that came with a floppy drive from their inception in 1984 came with a 3.5" FDD.
2) You can always buy a third-party CRT if you want a CRT on your Mac, iMac excepted (obviously). Aside from that, having used expensive color-calibrated displays and printers and so forth with high-end color management, etc., I'll let you all in on a big secret: There's no such thing as true color matching. The laws of physics don't allow for it (light vs. pigment).
3) By the time most need to replace the battery in your notebook, it's usually time to get a new notebook. ;)
4) Another big secret: It's perfectly possible to write clear, self-documenting code in Perl. It's only the fact that Perl programmers seem to refuse to do this that allows Python to exist ;).
Some shops (mainly design studios, video studios, sound studios, etc., aside from the education market), use Macs almost exclusively and if you're going for a single-vendor solution to improve stability, supportability, etc., then that's why you'd want OS X on your server.
Personally, I think single-vendor solutions tend to trade a lack of flexibility, functionality and performance to get that stability, hence, I tend to favor 'best-of-breed' approaches, but to each his own.
Yep, although I'm not sure how many the YWCA sell for cash and how many they give to battered women. Someone a bit more familiar with the program can post here. Besides programs like that, you can also donate your used cell phones to a project that sends them overseas to soldiers so that they can communicate with their families back at home.
This article gives better reasons for those modems being on the network than previous stories. Doesn't seem so rogue now, does it?
It only seems rogue when they make ludicrous statements like he put "1,100 modems" on the network.
Anybody with half a brain can think about that statement as say 1) There's no way someone had that many modems and phone lines because would be wayyy too expensive and 2) if you were putting secret modems on the network to 'wreak havoc' (whatever that means), you certainly wouldn't need anything close to 100 of them, let alone 1,100 of them.
If I were confronted with a room full of people not my boss and asked to reveal admin passwords, I wouldn't even try to give them the wrong ones, I would be like "if you need those, you need to ask my boss, not me because I am not authorized to give them to you."
Does that help?
Why, yes, yes it does. The Gramer Knotzees [cq] won't be bother me any moore [cq]!
Actually, battered women's shelters and advocacy groups can help with this problem. They often actually buy victims throw-away cell phones for this purpose.
I didn't know about this loophole. I'm guessing the telcos aren't necessarily going out of their way to tell you about it, either.
It is a class 3 felony to block caller ID in Michigan.
It's not likely to be upheld in this way, and is definitely not likely to stay this way if it does. The RIAA may be powerful politically in some ways, but the telemarketers and bill collectors have their own allies in the legislature as well.
Erm, that was rather half the joke, so whoooooosh.
No. The BMT doesn't have bacon. (BMT==Biggest, Meatiest, Tastiest)