"The 'terrorism era' isn't something new - see Barbary Pirates."
The Barbary pirates were entirely motivated by profit, so they weren't terrorists any more than the European pirates, privateers, and slavers were terrorists, unless one uses such a wide definition of terrorism that anyone who has ever used violence or the threat thereof for any reason would be included.
"We are talking about folks that buy their PC from Worst Buy or Wally World and no less about it than their toaster oven. They just can't afford to go out and spend an extra $75-100 on an all in one to be Linux compatible-they simply don't have it."
One of the oldest principles of commerce is caveat emptor: let the buyer beware. People who have tight budgets but still spend several hundred dollars without doing some basic research on what they're buying are likely to end up being shafted, especially with computers, because a great many of the companies who sell them to ordinary consumers are counting on the fact that they can unload any old piece of rubbish on the unwary (usually with an overpriced insurance policy thrown in for good measure).
"Besides,it can't really be that much harder than those damned Wifi drivers.I've looked at those Broadcoms up close and there isn't really any hardware at all,other than a wire and a microchip-everything is being done in Windows."
There's a world of difference between a complex piece of machinery like a printer / scanner combo and serial I/O device such as a network card or modem. The people who write and maintain Linux printer and scanner drivers already support thousands of devices, and they'd have quickly added cheap combo printer / scanners if it was as easy as you seem to think, just as they'd have added open source support for the latest graphics cards if doing so was simply a matter of writing a wrapper around WINE.
"Plus,as cheap as HP and Lexmarks are,I sincerely doubt they've bothered to really change anything other than the look in years"
I've already said that there is a _major_ difference between low-end "winprinters" and better quality stand-alone devices from the same manufacturers, i.e. the fact that they have no on-board memory or intelligence. This means that there is no real page description language for the printer, no on-board fonts, and the scanner doesn't use any of the established interfaces for communicating with the host computer -- everything that more traditionally designed printers and scanners do for themselves is supplied by Windows, hence the fact that using them puts such a high load on the host computer's CPU. Add in the fact that unlike most stand-alone printers, the manufacturers have a deliberate policy of not publishing any details of either the printer interfaces themselves or the Windows APIs that they depend on for their operation, and you have a similar situation to the one that makes it extremely difficult to write open source drivers for many modern graphics cards.
"I bet if I went and picked up 5 of the sub-$100 printers right now and checked the Api's,I bet they are all called for the same parts over and over"
And I bet that I could pick up 5 computer monitors from companies that make TVs and find that none of them had inputs for an antenna, on-board tuners, speakers with their own amplifier, or any of the other things that come as standard with televisions. The fact that two devices from the same company have some common parts doesn't mean that they therefore have an identical set of interfaces or capabilities, hence the fact that a common set of core components being used in a wide variety of mobile phones hasn't produced a situation where manufacturer-supplied software for synchronising a Windows CE phone with a PC address book "just works" with those running Symbian.
"The single mothers and families that are making minimum wage will always see it as easier to pay me $50-75 a couple of times a year to de-hose their box than to pay $200+ to replace a printer/scanner/fax that already does what they need it to."
That's their choice, just as it was the printer manufacturer's choice to make a device with no on-board intelligence, only support one OS, and refuse to disclose details of their hardware interfaces to anyone outside the company. You charge for your services, so it is IMO a bit unrealistic to expect those who don't to spend large amounts of time (and possibly money o
"Like it or not, there just aren't that many Linux users out there compared to Windows users"
And equally importantly, most of those that exist have demonstrated a notable reluctance to pay for software. Although piracy is rampant on Windows (I'm not implying that Linux users pirate software here!), its huge market share means that there are still more than enough people out there who will pay to make commercial software a viable proposition; and the Mac, which probably has similar numbers to Linux worldwide (although it's arguably growing faster on the desktop), tends to be owned by a more affluent sector that buys more software than it pirates (shareware is actually profitable on Macs, whereas Windows shareware rarely if ever makes any significant amounts of money despite its massively greater market share).
"In many cases, it just doesn't make sense to target Linux for commercial software."
One should I think add that this is true for _consumer_ desktop-oriented stuff. The fact that server-side software on Linux can make money is amply demonstrated by vendors such as Oracle and IBM, who have been offering pricey closed source Linux RDBMS packages for some years. An additional factor here is of course the ease of porting server-side solutions that already existed for UNIX, whereas porting a native Windows or Mac desktop program to Linux is much more difficult unless it was written with portability in mind (e.g. targeting Wine or GNUStep rather than the Win32 API or Cocoa). The problem here of course is the fact that doing this tends to result in software which uses a lowest common denominator approach that can't use certain features of the host OS, and therefore either compares poorly with non-portable competitors, or ends up with developers having to write their own versions of things that the lower common denominator lacks, thus increasing both development and maintenance costs.
It should also be noted that there are some commercial GUI packages for Linux which do sell well into certain niches, e.g. high-end animation software aimed at the movie industry, which has a rare combination of Linux and a willingness to pay large sums of money for "desktop" software that runs on it ("desktop" is in quotes because a significant selling point for these packages is their ability to use render farms as a way of producing movie-definition sequences more quickly).
"Which is why I'm hoping that they will come up with an ndiswrapper for printers. In the same way that it is easier to fake the Windows API the wireless drivers hook to than all the funky firmware hacks the wireless companies use (I'm looking at you,Broadcom!) it should be a whole lot easier to fake the Windows API that those funky printers drivers call than to cook up a driver for all those cheap printers."
It really depends on the APIs that are being used, and how close the Wine versions are to Microsoft's originals. A lot of these printers "slot in" to the Windows GDI directly for both printing and scanning instead of attaching a full driver to the underlying device abstraction layer. This makes the drivers both smaller and simpler than many of the more traditional ones, but it also means that even a slight deviation on Wine's part from the way the Windows GDI will cause problems. Note also that in contrast to most "intelligent" printers, manufacturers tend not to publish details of the control mechanisms and languages / protocols that they use, so tracking down and fixing the source of any problems can be extremely difficult.
"I personally could have converted probably 100 or more of our customers if I could have found a way to get those sub $100 Lexmark and HP all in ones to work reliably under Linux."
Most "all in one" Lexmark boxes will print under Linux because there's an old Lexmark driver they specifically wrote for Linux that still seems to work with most of their modern low-end offerings (e.g. the 1200 series). Unfortunately, scanning with them is a different story altogether (unlike most stand-alone scanners, they're not TWAIN-compatible), so it's currently only a partial solution. Googling "lexmark winprinter Linux" will produce a collection of links to sites with "howtos" and downloadable components.
NB: people who don't want to be tied to Windows should avoid buying peripherals with system requirements that only list various versions of Windows. Few specifically advertise Linux compatibility, but those that list both Windows and Mac OS X (these are growing rapidly due to the surge in Mac popularity) will usually work under Linux with few if any problems. Whatever one thinks of Apple, the fact that each new version of OS X uses more standard UNIX mechanisms for interfacing with peripherals that previous ones did is resulting in a notably increased range of options for everyone whose OS also uses those mechanisms.
""Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen""
First, you reply to this with:
"It's not really a matter of what you beleive; the facts are on record"
And then you say:
"They didn't spend a ludicrous sum on the pens that replaced the pencils. They spent zero dollars. Nothing. Pens suited for space were developed and given to them completely for free."
The two statements contradict one another.
"I don't know if they considered grease pencils, but off the top of my head they don't write very finely"
There are grease pencils that write as finely as other pencils -- it depends on what they're made of. They also have a notable advantage of being usable on a much wider variety of surfaces than either pens or pencils, and many are made of substances that leave a permanent mark. Another type of marker that's readily available and extremely cheap is the capillary marker, which as the name suggests works by capillary action, and does not therefore rely on gravity. As with modern grease pencils (many of which do not require sharpening), they're available in a variety of thicknesses, the finest of which are comparable to other types of pens.
"1. They are more pointed than pens, and thus more likely to puncture things that shouldn't be punctured. "
Unless you use grease pencils, which work under water and in space.
"2. They create dust, which is a no-no on space missions. Wood pencils (obviously) from sharpening. Mechanical pencils are prone to have their leads break off, and float about. More to the point, the operating mechanism of both kinds of pencil is to rub off graphite dust onto paper. Some of this dust may be released by smudging. "
None of which apply to grease pencils.
"Remember that graphite, and thus graphite dust, is conductive."
Grease pencils have no graphite in them.
Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen, but like the military, they have a notable habit of spending ludicrous sums on items that are identical to ones that can be bought much more cheaply (i.e. same manufacturer, same parts, but the military version is painted green and costs 25 times as much).
"Liquid that hot mixed with the styrofoam/paper cup and plastic lid made for a disaster waiting to happen. The coffee cup and its lid quite literally began to melt and disintegrate under the heat."
Polystyrene melts at 240C, which is well over twice the boiling point of water at sea level, so your claim is an excellent example of the phenomenon of rectal vocalisation.
"Hopefully the Linux Driver project will do something about those damn Lexmark "all in one" printers that always seem to keep me from switching the poor folks off of Windows"
The problem is that ultra-cheap ink jet printer / scanner / copiers have little in the way of on-board intelligence, so the "driver" actually supplies a lot of their functionality, hence the fact that you can't use the the copy function when they aren't plugged into a running Windows PC. Writing control software for these types of devices is a lot more involved than writing standard printer / scanner drivers, so it's hardly surprising that they only work with platforms that their manufacturers bother to support.
"Unfortunately, the scars of WW1 - which, by the way, killed over 4 million and wounded nearly 8 million in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire - combined with Hitler's unique demagogy, set Germany on a path for war."
It was actually the Treaty of Versailles combined with a world economic recession that laid the groundwork for Hitler's rise to power and the subsequent militarisation of Germany. They had to pay vast sums in reparations to the French, were castrated militarily, and then ruined by the effects of the Great Depression, which led to massive unemployment, hyper-inflation, and general misery. Hitler may have been initially unpopular and gained power through a combination of violence and subterfuge, but his success in restoring the country's economy together with a willingness to break every condition of the humiliating Treaty Of Versailles ended up making him very popular.
NB: it's notable that the US opposed the Treaty Of Versailles from the beginning, and instituted the Marshall Plan after WWII to ensure that the conditions which Hitler exploited would not occur in that country again.
"Agnostics seem to want to believe in something, but not sure???"
Agnosticism is the only "ism" that takes a purely empirical stance, i.e. that the existence or non-existence of gods (defined as conscious beings capable of creating universes) cannot be falsified at our current level of knowledge, so those who claim that gods exist or do not exist are basing their opinions on beliefs, not demonstrable truths.
Huxley, (who is most famous for his spirited and witty defences of Darwin's work) was the originator of the terms "agnostic" and "agnosticism". He described it thus:
"Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable."
"I'm sure there were many reasons we went to war. They all point to money and power."
Nearly every way in history started because somebody wanted more wealth wealth and power. Ideology, religion, and other factors are what those with the desire for said wealth and power use to justify going to war to those who must sacrifice themselves or members of their families to gain more wealth and power for their leaders.
"Keep in mind two things: the intelligence coming out of the end of the Clinton administration indicated that Saddam had WMDs - Clinton himself has said so - and furthermore, Saddam was trying to make it seem like he still had WMDs because he feared the threat of war from Iran."
This does not refute the parent's assertion about the evidence of a threat to the US not being there. Saddam used WMDs in the Iran / Iraq war, and domestically on Kurds, and in both cases, the WMD technology and its delivery systems were little better than those used in the trenches of WW1. As was the case in 1916, these sorts of weapons are localised threats, not international ones, and certainly not intercontinental ones, and as the Sarin attack on the Tokyo metro amply demonstrated, organised terrorist groups who wanted to use such things could easily obtain the equipment, knowledge, and people to make them without Saddam's help.
"But, Jobs has come back to Apple & done precisely what he'd said he'd do - move on to the next big thing. He's even dropped "Computers" from the name of the company."
Jobs removed "Computer" from the name after they won a case against Apple Corp. Prior to that, they had an arrangement with Apple Corp to (a) stay out of the music business, and (b) re-name the company to Apple Computer to avoid confusion with Apple Corp (there were probably other conditions as well, but I can't be bothered to check). Apple Computer was originally simply called "Apple", so this is actually a case of them restoring the name that the company had before the older Apple vs. Apple saga forced them to change it.
"I'd argue that this matters a lot less than some people claim."
I would agree. My claim was that it gave them _a_ tactical advantage, not a _major_ tactical advantage.
"Even the towed 37mm and 50mm German AT guns ended up known as the "door knocker": they couldn't actually penetrate a T34's front armour (and as you correctly note, even less so against a KV-1), but did an outstanding job of giving away the gun's position."
The improved Pzkpfw III with extra armour and the 50mm KwK 38 and KwK 39 50mm guns (not the same as the towed 50mm, which was a lower velocity weapon) was however a formidable opponent for the early T-34 variants when using PzGR.40 rigid composite projectiles. KV-1 was a different matter, but that's due to the fact that there wasn't much on a 1941 land battlefield capable of reliably stopping a KV-1 anyway.
"before 1941 the soviet tanks were outdated and were easily dispatched by the germans"
This quite simply isn't true. The Soviets fielded several tanks that were more than a match for anything Germany had during operation Barabarossa, e.g the KV-1 heavy and its predecessors, the SMK, and T-100 (both of which had twin turrets that make them look like tracked battleships). There were 639 KV-1s in service when Germany invaded, and there's an authenticated German account of a single KV-1 that held up their entire tank army for over a day day on a road near Ostrov. It destroyed 7 German tanks, an anti-tank battery, an 88mm AA gun and all its crew, 4 half-tracks, and 12 trucks before being knocked out by an 88mm the next morning -- the 88 AA gun and 105mm howitzers were the only thing the Germans had that were capable of destroying a KV-1 at that time. Most of the accounts of outdated tanks refer to the American Christie light tank, which the Russians had bought in large numbers during the late 1920s: it was extremely fast, and had the ability to remove its tracks and run on wheels alone when on roads, laudable attributes for a reconnaissance vehicle (which was the Christie's intended role), but not what one wants in slugging matches against German medium tanks.
"The russians started developing a better tank (T-34) after this time"
Development work on the T-34 began in 1936. Prototypes were completed in 1939, with production runs of of the first variant occurring in September of 1940.
"The russians started developing a better tank (T-34) after this time"
It was actually the German tanks that were inferior in terms of armour and weaponry. The Germans did however enjoy two tactical advantages: their optics were better, which gave them more accurate long-range gunnery, and every tank had a radio set, while only 1 out of every 5 Russian tanks were equipped with them. The latter feature was particularly important because it allowed German forces to coordinate their tanks and other forces in combined arms scenarios much more effectively than the Russians (at least at the beginning).
"the americans sent Sherman tanks as support"
Most of the American tanks supplied to the Russians were Grants, not Shermans, and they were actually the British "Lee" variant, which had a diesel engine and a few other mods. The Russian nick-name for them was "coffin for seven brothers" due to the fact that the armour rivets became large, hot metal projectiles that ricocheted around its inside when it was hit by even modest projectiles (as with Russian tanks, Shermans had welded armour which didn't suffer from this problem). This combined with a side-mounted main armament that meant one side was "blind", dreadful off-road performance, and a high silhouette that made it an easy target led to it being detested by its crews, who regarded being sent to fight in it as essentially a death sentence. Britain also supplied the Russians with Churchill, Matilda, and Valentine tanks: the Chruchill and Matilda were very heavily armoured, but they were slow (especially off-road), had weak 40mm guns, and weren't designed for Russian winter conditions. The Valentine however was extremely popular due to its extremely low profile and excellent cross-country performance.
NB: most of the lease-lend tanks sent to Russia started to arrive in late 1942 / early 1943, which meant that they weren't a significant factor in the Battle Of Kursk, which used mostly Russian equipment, but did help them to replenish their ranks afterwards (both sides lost a lot of gear in that epic battle). It wasn't tanks however that the Russians appreciated most, but M3 half-tracks and Studebaker trucks, both of which were highly praised by their drivers, and were extremely valuable in providing logistical support to the growing Red Army and its lengthening supply lines as it began to push the Germans westwards.
"Surprisingly, the book i got this from was printed in 1980, and in that time our country was still under soviet reign, so you (or i) cannot even claim this information has an anti-soviet bias."
A lack of bias does not however indicate that something is well researched or correct. One should never trust a single source for any information, historic or current.
"if this doesn't broaden our "factors for life", and therefore statistical probability of life in any place of extreme conditions (obviously then, in more places in this Universe), then your statistical analysis fails."
Pointing out that a sample of 1 is meaningless in a statistical sense isn't a statistical analysis, but the negation of attempts to pretend that predictions can be made based on that sample of 1. That things exist in extreme conditions on Earth merely proves that once life has started, 3.5 billion years is enough for it to adapt to a wide range of habitats, but it provides no useful information whatsoever on the conditions that are necessary for life to begin, and until we know what those conditions are, we cannot make any meaningful predictions about the likelihood of finding it elsewhere.
"We can certainly determine, with more accuracy with every new planet found, whether or not these same conditions are prevalent elsewhere, at which point these probabilities will become more accurate."
The conditions that living things can survive under today says nothing whatsoever about the conditions that are necessary for life to begin. Until we actually _know_ how life both began and became established here, we cannot make any useful predictions whatsoever about whether it exists on other worlds.
"In fact, new extremophiles are constantly being found living in environments we previously thought to be impossible, or at least very unlikely."
This proves nothing more than the fact that we were wrong.
"Life just seems to be the norm in this Universe, or at least it seems that way."
The second statement doesn't logically follow from the first one. We already knew there was life on Earth, so finding some more of it living on Earth in places that we hadn't thought it could survive in proves nothing beyond that fact that we have a notable habit of extrapolating extremely limited sets of data into general cases that are later shown to be wrong. One excellent example is the assumption that a statistical sample of one planet with life on it can be used to make general statements about life on others despite the fact that we don't actually know what the parameters for life are, or how it started here.
"Realizing the relatively young age of the planet we happen to live on (a child in history of the Universe), the Drake Equation should see Ne going up every time we find life living in places that are extreme"
More general assumptions based on a statistical sample of 1.
"At our current rate, we will soon be able to use probability alone to suggest intelligent life elsewhere, IMO."
Based of course on our statistical sample of 1 planet, which, as any statistician knows, is more than enough to make all sorts of general statements about trillions of other planets.
That's more or less in line with the European Commission's opinion (i.e. a non-binding guideline that member states should, but don't have to follow). They reckoned that not providing the facility to unlock phones after a period that allows the provider to get a reasonable return on their equipment subsidy was contrary to EC competition laws, so all member states should enact some form of legislation to require it. The example period they gave was six months, but most states that followed the guidelines (many haven't done so yet) seem to reckon that this was a minimum period rather than a maximum one, so the year required by Dutch law seems to be fairly common, although as others have observed, some countries went further, and prohibited any form of locking whatsoever.
"Well, that's pretty much what European law says: if you buy a phone, you can choose your own carrier; and if you sell phones, they have to accept any SIM, not just your favourite carrier's."
That's not what it says at all. European competition laws allow phones to be sold "locked down" to a particular carrier or service, but _an opinion_ by the Commission (opinions are guidelines that should, but don't have to be followed by member states) says that the service provider should supply a means of unlocking after six months has elapsed.
"European law also forbids region-locking of DVD players"
Again, wrong. European law requires all players sold in the EC to be Region-2 enabled so that they can play media sold in Europe (the entirety of which is region 2). The EC is only concerned about open borders within the EC itself, not the world in general, and Region 2 provides that.
"You might be suprised to know this, but in europe all these exclusive deals and crippled phones are NOT legal and don't happen."
As a European, I'm surprised by your assertion that it's illegal, because several operators in a variety of European countries offer crippled phones under exclusive deals, so it does in fact happen. This is because there is no EC directive that makes such tying illegal unless there is a monopoly involved (an EC-wide monopoly, not a monopoly in one or two countries).
Clue stick: there are many laws in various European countries that are specific to those countries. In this case, it is a matter of German law, hence the fact that a German district court was used rather than the European courts. Given the fact that both operators are competitors in several European countries besides Germany, it's highly likely that the European courts would have been used as a "one stop" solution if, as you claim, such activities were actually illegal in Europe itself.
The only actual Europe-wide law that would be of any consequence to exclusive deals between an operator and a phone maker are the ones governing open trade borders. Under these, consumers in a European country where exclusive deals and locked-down products are allowed can freely buy from other European countries where such practices are prohibited (e.g. Belgium or France), and any warranties must be honoured in the country where the consumer lives (unless of course the manufacturer has no authorised service centres in that country). In the case of the iPhone, this means that while Apple can freely enter into tying agreements in countries that permit them, they can't take any action that prevents residents of those countries from buying unlocked versions from EC member states which prohibit it, although they can of course simply refuse to sell iPhones in any country that doesn't allow such exclusive deals.
"I think on further reflection Apples had floppy drives too"
The original Apple-II didn't have integral floppies -- as with the C64, they were an optional add-on. Interestingly, the original IBM PC was offered as a minimum configuration (in the US, but not elsewhere) with only 16K of RAM and no floppies; all original PCs shipped with a cassette port and BASIC in ROM, and both the BASIC and cassette routines were present in the later PC/AT ROMs despite the fact that it didn't have any hardware for interfacing with cassette recorders.
"My TRS-80 had small tape drive and a 16MB memory extension pack that suplimented they 4MB onboard RAM"
I think you'll find that they were 16KB and 4KB. The 8 bit CPU in a TRS-80 was only capable of addressing 64KB directly, although memory paging techniques in some machines allowed them to use rather more. The upper limits were still usually fractions of a MB though.
"I think most of the PCs - Amiga, Comm 64, even Apple ][ - had tape drives back then"
All Amigas (including the budget A500) shipped with a floppy drive. Note though that the original Amiga (the 1000) was a much more advanced (and expensive!) machine than the likes of the C-64 and TRS-80, and the much cheaper A500 wasn't launched until 1987.
Slashdot Mirror
"The 'terrorism era' isn't something new - see Barbary Pirates."
The Barbary pirates were entirely motivated by profit, so they weren't terrorists any more than the European pirates, privateers, and slavers were terrorists, unless one uses such a wide definition of terrorism that anyone who has ever used violence or the threat thereof for any reason would be included.
"We are talking about folks that buy their PC from Worst Buy or Wally World and no less about it than their toaster oven. They just can't afford to go out and spend an extra $75-100 on an all in one to be Linux compatible-they simply don't have it."
One of the oldest principles of commerce is caveat emptor: let the buyer beware. People who have tight budgets but still spend several hundred dollars without doing some basic research on what they're buying are likely to end up being shafted, especially with computers, because a great many of the companies who sell them to ordinary consumers are counting on the fact that they can unload any old piece of rubbish on the unwary (usually with an overpriced insurance policy thrown in for good measure).
"Besides,it can't really be that much harder than those damned Wifi drivers.I've looked at those Broadcoms up close and there isn't really any hardware at all,other than a wire and a microchip-everything is being done in Windows."
There's a world of difference between a complex piece of machinery like a printer / scanner combo and serial I/O device such as a network card or modem. The people who write and maintain Linux printer and scanner drivers already support thousands of devices, and they'd have quickly added cheap combo printer / scanners if it was as easy as you seem to think, just as they'd have added open source support for the latest graphics cards if doing so was simply a matter of writing a wrapper around WINE.
"Plus,as cheap as HP and Lexmarks are,I sincerely doubt they've bothered to really change anything other than the look in years"
I've already said that there is a _major_ difference between low-end "winprinters" and better quality stand-alone devices from the same manufacturers, i.e. the fact that they have no on-board memory or intelligence. This means that there is no real page description language for the printer, no on-board fonts, and the scanner doesn't use any of the established interfaces for communicating with the host computer -- everything that more traditionally designed printers and scanners do for themselves is supplied by Windows, hence the fact that using them puts such a high load on the host computer's CPU. Add in the fact that unlike most stand-alone printers, the manufacturers have a deliberate policy of not publishing any details of either the printer interfaces themselves or the Windows APIs that they depend on for their operation, and you have a similar situation to the one that makes it extremely difficult to write open source drivers for many modern graphics cards.
"I bet if I went and picked up 5 of the sub-$100 printers right now and checked the Api's,I bet they are all called for the same parts over and over"
And I bet that I could pick up 5 computer monitors from companies that make TVs and find that none of them had inputs for an antenna, on-board tuners, speakers with their own amplifier, or any of the other things that come as standard with televisions. The fact that two devices from the same company have some common parts doesn't mean that they therefore have an identical set of interfaces or capabilities, hence the fact that a common set of core components being used in a wide variety of mobile phones hasn't produced a situation where manufacturer-supplied software for synchronising a Windows CE phone with a PC address book "just works" with those running Symbian.
"The single mothers and families that are making minimum wage will always see it as easier to pay me $50-75 a couple of times a year to de-hose their box than to pay $200+ to replace a printer/scanner/fax that already does what they need it to."
That's their choice, just as it was the printer manufacturer's choice to make a device with no on-board intelligence, only support one OS, and refuse to disclose details of their hardware interfaces to anyone outside the company. You charge for your services, so it is IMO a bit unrealistic to expect those who don't to spend large amounts of time (and possibly money o
"Like it or not, there just aren't that many Linux users out there compared to Windows users"
And equally importantly, most of those that exist have demonstrated a notable reluctance to pay for software. Although piracy is rampant on Windows (I'm not implying that Linux users pirate software here!), its huge market share means that there are still more than enough people out there who will pay to make commercial software a viable proposition; and the Mac, which probably has similar numbers to Linux worldwide (although it's arguably growing faster on the desktop), tends to be owned by a more affluent sector that buys more software than it pirates (shareware is actually profitable on Macs, whereas Windows shareware rarely if ever makes any significant amounts of money despite its massively greater market share).
"In many cases, it just doesn't make sense to target Linux for commercial software."
One should I think add that this is true for _consumer_ desktop-oriented stuff. The fact that server-side software on Linux can make money is amply demonstrated by vendors such as Oracle and IBM, who have been offering pricey closed source Linux RDBMS packages for some years. An additional factor here is of course the ease of porting server-side solutions that already existed for UNIX, whereas porting a native Windows or Mac desktop program to Linux is much more difficult unless it was written with portability in mind (e.g. targeting Wine or GNUStep rather than the Win32 API or Cocoa). The problem here of course is the fact that doing this tends to result in software which uses a lowest common denominator approach that can't use certain features of the host OS, and therefore either compares poorly with non-portable competitors, or ends up with developers having to write their own versions of things that the lower common denominator lacks, thus increasing both development and maintenance costs.
It should also be noted that there are some commercial GUI packages for Linux which do sell well into certain niches, e.g. high-end animation software aimed at the movie industry, which has a rare combination of Linux and a willingness to pay large sums of money for "desktop" software that runs on it ("desktop" is in quotes because a significant selling point for these packages is their ability to use render farms as a way of producing movie-definition sequences more quickly).
"Which is why I'm hoping that they will come up with an ndiswrapper for printers. In the same way that it is easier to fake the Windows API the wireless drivers hook to than all the funky firmware hacks the wireless companies use (I'm looking at you,Broadcom!) it should be a whole lot easier to fake the Windows API that those funky printers drivers call than to cook up a driver for all those cheap printers."
It really depends on the APIs that are being used, and how close the Wine versions are to Microsoft's originals. A lot of these printers "slot in" to the Windows GDI directly for both printing and scanning instead of attaching a full driver to the underlying device abstraction layer. This makes the drivers both smaller and simpler than many of the more traditional ones, but it also means that even a slight deviation on Wine's part from the way the Windows GDI will cause problems. Note also that in contrast to most "intelligent" printers, manufacturers tend not to publish details of the control mechanisms and languages / protocols that they use, so tracking down and fixing the source of any problems can be extremely difficult.
"I personally could have converted probably 100 or more of our customers if I could have found a way to get those sub $100 Lexmark and HP all in ones to work reliably under Linux."
Most "all in one" Lexmark boxes will print under Linux because there's an old Lexmark driver they specifically wrote for Linux that still seems to work with most of their modern low-end offerings (e.g. the 1200 series). Unfortunately, scanning with them is a different story altogether (unlike most stand-alone scanners, they're not TWAIN-compatible), so it's currently only a partial solution. Googling "lexmark winprinter Linux" will produce a collection of links to sites with "howtos" and downloadable components.
NB: people who don't want to be tied to Windows should avoid buying peripherals with system requirements that only list various versions of Windows. Few specifically advertise Linux compatibility, but those that list both Windows and Mac OS X (these are growing rapidly due to the surge in Mac popularity) will usually work under Linux with few if any problems. Whatever one thinks of Apple, the fact that each new version of OS X uses more standard UNIX mechanisms for interfacing with peripherals that previous ones did is resulting in a notably increased range of options for everyone whose OS also uses those mechanisms.
""Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen""
First, you reply to this with:
"It's not really a matter of what you beleive; the facts are on record"
And then you say:
"They didn't spend a ludicrous sum on the pens that replaced the pencils. They spent zero dollars. Nothing. Pens suited for space were developed and given to them completely for free."
The two statements contradict one another.
"I don't know if they considered grease pencils, but off the top of my head they don't write very finely"
There are grease pencils that write as finely as other pencils -- it depends on what they're made of. They also have a notable advantage of being usable on a much wider variety of surfaces than either pens or pencils, and many are made of substances that leave a permanent mark. Another type of marker that's readily available and extremely cheap is the capillary marker, which as the name suggests works by capillary action, and does not therefore rely on gravity. As with modern grease pencils (many of which do not require sharpening), they're available in a variety of thicknesses, the finest of which are comparable to other types of pens.
"1. They are more pointed than pens, and thus more likely to puncture things that shouldn't be punctured. "
Unless you use grease pencils, which work under water and in space.
"2. They create dust, which is a no-no on space missions. Wood pencils (obviously) from sharpening. Mechanical pencils are prone to have their leads break off, and float about. More to the point, the operating mechanism of both kinds of pencil is to rub off graphite dust onto paper. Some of this dust may be released by smudging. "
None of which apply to grease pencils.
"Remember that graphite, and thus graphite dust, is conductive."
Grease pencils have no graphite in them.
Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen, but like the military, they have a notable habit of spending ludicrous sums on items that are identical to ones that can be bought much more cheaply (i.e. same manufacturer, same parts, but the military version is painted green and costs 25 times as much).
"Liquid that hot mixed with the styrofoam/paper cup and plastic lid made for a disaster waiting to happen. The coffee cup and its lid quite literally began to melt and disintegrate under the heat."
Polystyrene melts at 240C, which is well over twice the boiling point of water at sea level, so your claim is an excellent example of the phenomenon of rectal vocalisation.
"Hopefully the Linux Driver project will do something about those damn Lexmark "all in one" printers that always seem to keep me from switching the poor folks off of Windows"
The problem is that ultra-cheap ink jet printer / scanner / copiers have little in the way of on-board intelligence, so the "driver" actually supplies a lot of their functionality, hence the fact that you can't use the the copy function when they aren't plugged into a running Windows PC. Writing control software for these types of devices is a lot more involved than writing standard printer / scanner drivers, so it's hardly surprising that they only work with platforms that their manufacturers bother to support.
"Unfortunately, the scars of WW1 - which, by the way, killed over 4 million and wounded nearly 8 million in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire - combined with Hitler's unique demagogy, set Germany on a path for war."
It was actually the Treaty of Versailles combined with a world economic recession that laid the groundwork for Hitler's rise to power and the subsequent militarisation of Germany. They had to pay vast sums in reparations to the French, were castrated militarily, and then ruined by the effects of the Great Depression, which led to massive unemployment, hyper-inflation, and general misery. Hitler may have been initially unpopular and gained power through a combination of violence and subterfuge, but his success in restoring the country's economy together with a willingness to break every condition of the humiliating Treaty Of Versailles ended up making him very popular.
NB: it's notable that the US opposed the Treaty Of Versailles from the beginning, and instituted the Marshall Plan after WWII to ensure that the conditions which Hitler exploited would not occur in that country again.
"Agnostics seem to want to believe in something, but not sure???"
Agnosticism is the only "ism" that takes a purely empirical stance, i.e. that the existence or non-existence of gods (defined as conscious beings capable of creating universes) cannot be falsified at our current level of knowledge, so those who claim that gods exist or do not exist are basing their opinions on beliefs, not demonstrable truths.
Huxley, (who is most famous for his spirited and witty defences of Darwin's work) was the originator of the terms "agnostic" and "agnosticism". He described it thus:
"Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable."
"I'm sure there were many reasons we went to war. They all point to money and power."
Nearly every way in history started because somebody wanted more wealth wealth and power. Ideology, religion, and other factors are what those with the desire for said wealth and power use to justify going to war to those who must sacrifice themselves or members of their families to gain more wealth and power for their leaders.
"Keep in mind two things: the intelligence coming out of the end of the Clinton administration indicated that Saddam had WMDs - Clinton himself has said so - and furthermore, Saddam was trying to make it seem like he still had WMDs because he feared the threat of war from Iran."
This does not refute the parent's assertion about the evidence of a threat to the US not being there. Saddam used WMDs in the Iran / Iraq war, and domestically on Kurds, and in both cases, the WMD technology and its delivery systems were little better than those used in the trenches of WW1. As was the case in 1916, these sorts of weapons are localised threats, not international ones, and certainly not intercontinental ones, and as the Sarin attack on the Tokyo metro amply demonstrated, organised terrorist groups who wanted to use such things could easily obtain the equipment, knowledge, and people to make them without Saddam's help.
"But, Jobs has come back to Apple & done precisely what he'd said he'd do - move on to the next big thing. He's even dropped "Computers" from the name of the company."
Jobs removed "Computer" from the name after they won a case against Apple Corp. Prior to that, they had an arrangement with Apple Corp to (a) stay out of the music business, and (b) re-name the company to Apple Computer to avoid confusion with Apple Corp (there were probably other conditions as well, but I can't be bothered to check). Apple Computer was originally simply called "Apple", so this is actually a case of them restoring the name that the company had before the older Apple vs. Apple saga forced them to change it.
"how do you chop off his head when it's firmly inserted up his own ass?"
It happens automatically when they chop off his arse prior to putting it on a plate that can be handed to him.
"I'd argue that this matters a lot less than some people claim."
I would agree. My claim was that it gave them _a_ tactical advantage, not a _major_ tactical advantage.
"Even the towed 37mm and 50mm German AT guns ended up known as the "door knocker": they couldn't actually penetrate a T34's front armour (and as you correctly note, even less so against a KV-1), but did an outstanding job of giving away the gun's position."
The improved Pzkpfw III with extra armour and the 50mm KwK 38 and KwK 39 50mm guns (not the same as the towed 50mm, which was a lower velocity weapon) was however a formidable opponent for the early T-34 variants when using PzGR.40 rigid composite projectiles. KV-1 was a different matter, but that's due to the fact that there wasn't much on a 1941 land battlefield capable of reliably stopping a KV-1 anyway.
"before 1941 the soviet tanks were outdated and were easily dispatched by the germans"
This quite simply isn't true. The Soviets fielded several tanks that were more than a match for anything Germany had during operation Barabarossa, e.g the KV-1 heavy and its predecessors, the SMK, and T-100 (both of which had twin turrets that make them look like tracked battleships). There were 639 KV-1s in service when Germany invaded, and there's an authenticated German account of a single KV-1 that held up their entire tank army for over a day day on a road near Ostrov. It destroyed 7 German tanks, an anti-tank battery, an 88mm AA gun and all its crew, 4 half-tracks, and 12 trucks before being knocked out by an 88mm the next morning -- the 88 AA gun and 105mm howitzers were the only thing the Germans had that were capable of destroying a KV-1 at that time. Most of the accounts of outdated tanks refer to the American Christie light tank, which the Russians had bought in large numbers during the late 1920s: it was extremely fast, and had the ability to remove its tracks and run on wheels alone when on roads, laudable attributes for a reconnaissance vehicle (which was the Christie's intended role), but not what one wants in slugging matches against German medium tanks.
"The russians started developing a better tank (T-34) after this time"
Development work on the T-34 began in 1936. Prototypes were completed in 1939, with production runs of of the first variant occurring in September of 1940.
"The russians started developing a better tank (T-34) after this time"
It was actually the German tanks that were inferior in terms of armour and weaponry. The Germans did however enjoy two tactical advantages: their optics were better, which gave them more accurate long-range gunnery, and every tank had a radio set, while only 1 out of every 5 Russian tanks were equipped with them. The latter feature was particularly important because it allowed German forces to coordinate their tanks and other forces in combined arms scenarios much more effectively than the Russians (at least at the beginning).
"the americans sent Sherman tanks as support"
Most of the American tanks supplied to the Russians were Grants, not Shermans, and they were actually the British "Lee" variant, which had a diesel engine and a few other mods. The Russian nick-name for them was "coffin for seven brothers" due to the fact that the armour rivets became large, hot metal projectiles that ricocheted around its inside when it was hit by even modest projectiles (as with Russian tanks, Shermans had welded armour which didn't suffer from this problem). This combined with a side-mounted main armament that meant one side was "blind", dreadful off-road performance, and a high silhouette that made it an easy target led to it being detested by its crews, who regarded being sent to fight in it as essentially a death sentence. Britain also supplied the Russians with Churchill, Matilda, and Valentine tanks: the Chruchill and Matilda were very heavily armoured, but they were slow (especially off-road), had weak 40mm guns, and weren't designed for Russian winter conditions. The Valentine however was extremely popular due to its extremely low profile and excellent cross-country performance.
NB: most of the lease-lend tanks sent to Russia started to arrive in late 1942 / early 1943, which meant that they weren't a significant factor in the Battle Of Kursk, which used mostly Russian equipment, but did help them to replenish their ranks afterwards (both sides lost a lot of gear in that epic battle). It wasn't tanks however that the Russians appreciated most, but M3 half-tracks and Studebaker trucks, both of which were highly praised by their drivers, and were extremely valuable in providing logistical support to the growing Red Army and its lengthening supply lines as it began to push the Germans westwards.
"Surprisingly, the book i got this from was printed in 1980, and in that time our country was still under soviet reign, so you (or i) cannot even claim this information has an anti-soviet bias."
A lack of bias does not however indicate that something is well researched or correct. One should never trust a single source for any information, historic or current.
"if this doesn't broaden our "factors for life", and therefore statistical probability of life in any place of extreme conditions (obviously then, in more places in this Universe), then your statistical analysis fails."
Pointing out that a sample of 1 is meaningless in a statistical sense isn't a statistical analysis, but the negation of attempts to pretend that predictions can be made based on that sample of 1. That things exist in extreme conditions on Earth merely proves that once life has started, 3.5 billion years is enough for it to adapt to a wide range of habitats, but it provides no useful information whatsoever on the conditions that are necessary for life to begin, and until we know what those conditions are, we cannot make any meaningful predictions about the likelihood of finding it elsewhere.
"We can certainly determine, with more accuracy with every new planet found, whether or not these same conditions are prevalent elsewhere, at which point these probabilities will become more accurate."
The conditions that living things can survive under today says nothing whatsoever about the conditions that are necessary for life to begin. Until we actually _know_ how life both began and became established here, we cannot make any useful predictions whatsoever about whether it exists on other worlds.
"6 billion people are happy to read the Internet on them every day"
Because every human on the planet is literate, and has access to a computer with an Internet connection.
"Everyone on Earth speaks English, and so does everyone on the other planets."
And they all have West Coast American accents.
"In fact, new extremophiles are constantly being found living in environments we previously thought to be impossible, or at least very unlikely."
This proves nothing more than the fact that we were wrong.
"Life just seems to be the norm in this Universe, or at least it seems that way."
The second statement doesn't logically follow from the first one. We already knew there was life on Earth, so finding some more of it living on Earth in places that we hadn't thought it could survive in proves nothing beyond that fact that we have a notable habit of extrapolating extremely limited sets of data into general cases that are later shown to be wrong. One excellent example is the assumption that a statistical sample of one planet with life on it can be used to make general statements about life on others despite the fact that we don't actually know what the parameters for life are, or how it started here.
"Realizing the relatively young age of the planet we happen to live on (a child in history of the Universe), the Drake Equation should see Ne going up every time we find life living in places that are extreme"
More general assumptions based on a statistical sample of 1.
"At our current rate, we will soon be able to use probability alone to suggest intelligent life elsewhere, IMO."
Based of course on our statistical sample of 1 planet, which, as any statistician knows, is more than enough to make all sorts of general statements about trillions of other planets.
That's more or less in line with the European Commission's opinion (i.e. a non-binding guideline that member states should, but don't have to follow). They reckoned that not providing the facility to unlock phones after a period that allows the provider to get a reasonable return on their equipment subsidy was contrary to EC competition laws, so all member states should enact some form of legislation to require it. The example period they gave was six months, but most states that followed the guidelines (many haven't done so yet) seem to reckon that this was a minimum period rather than a maximum one, so the year required by Dutch law seems to be fairly common, although as others have observed, some countries went further, and prohibited any form of locking whatsoever.
"Well, that's pretty much what European law says: if you buy a phone, you can choose your own carrier; and if you sell phones, they have to accept any SIM, not just your favourite carrier's."
That's not what it says at all. European competition laws allow phones to be sold "locked down" to a particular carrier or service, but _an opinion_ by the Commission (opinions are guidelines that should, but don't have to be followed by member states) says that the service provider should supply a means of unlocking after six months has elapsed.
"European law also forbids region-locking of DVD players"
Again, wrong. European law requires all players sold in the EC to be Region-2 enabled so that they can play media sold in Europe (the entirety of which is region 2). The EC is only concerned about open borders within the EC itself, not the world in general, and Region 2 provides that.
"You might be suprised to know this, but in europe all these exclusive deals and crippled phones are NOT legal and don't happen."
As a European, I'm surprised by your assertion that it's illegal, because several operators in a variety of European countries offer crippled phones under exclusive deals, so it does in fact happen. This is because there is no EC directive that makes such tying illegal unless there is a monopoly involved (an EC-wide monopoly, not a monopoly in one or two countries).
Clue stick: there are many laws in various European countries that are specific to those countries. In this case, it is a matter of German law, hence the fact that a German district court was used rather than the European courts. Given the fact that both operators are competitors in several European countries besides Germany, it's highly likely that the European courts would have been used as a "one stop" solution if, as you claim, such activities were actually illegal in Europe itself.
The only actual Europe-wide law that would be of any consequence to exclusive deals between an operator and a phone maker are the ones governing open trade borders. Under these, consumers in a European country where exclusive deals and locked-down products are allowed can freely buy from other European countries where such practices are prohibited (e.g. Belgium or France), and any warranties must be honoured in the country where the consumer lives (unless of course the manufacturer has no authorised service centres in that country). In the case of the iPhone, this means that while Apple can freely enter into tying agreements in countries that permit them, they can't take any action that prevents residents of those countries from buying unlocked versions from EC member states which prohibit it, although they can of course simply refuse to sell iPhones in any country that doesn't allow such exclusive deals.
"I think on further reflection Apples had floppy drives too"
The original Apple-II didn't have integral floppies -- as with the C64, they were an optional add-on. Interestingly, the original IBM PC was offered as a minimum configuration (in the US, but not elsewhere) with only 16K of RAM and no floppies; all original PCs shipped with a cassette port and BASIC in ROM, and both the BASIC and cassette routines were present in the later PC/AT ROMs despite the fact that it didn't have any hardware for interfacing with cassette recorders.
"My TRS-80 had small tape drive and a 16MB memory extension pack that suplimented they 4MB onboard RAM"
I think you'll find that they were 16KB and 4KB. The 8 bit CPU in a TRS-80 was only capable of addressing 64KB directly, although memory paging techniques in some machines allowed them to use rather more. The upper limits were still usually fractions of a MB though.
"I think most of the PCs - Amiga, Comm 64, even Apple ][ - had tape drives back then"
All Amigas (including the budget A500) shipped with a floppy drive. Note though that the original Amiga (the 1000) was a much more advanced (and expensive!) machine than the likes of the C-64 and TRS-80, and the much cheaper A500 wasn't launched until 1987.