That "Minding your Microsoft Manners" thing might be a little over the top - but compare it to that favourite analogy, the car industry. Would BMW be happy for their partners (dealers) to show up to a meeting in a Mercedes? Would you think maybe, just maybe, talking up the newest Chev to a Ford manager is a good plan? This is basic stuff - if you're working with a company to sell their stuff, you talk up their stuff not the competition?
OTOH, if you were being sarcastic, then as you were.
Indeed - the biggest state (certainly at the time, and I think still) is NSW with more than 1.2M students across primary, secondary and TAFE (Technical and Further Education - sort of a mix of upper secondary, trade and university-level students). In about 2001 the education department created a single hosted environment for all students so that everyone had access to online chats (i.e. classes with guests, Q&A etc), web hosting for things like assignments, restricted web browsing, email etc; with the plan that everyone would have a base level of access.
And you know what? It wasn't too bad (for the time and level of technology we had - lots of weird constraints came up over the course of the project, some solvable, some not). It has been much improved, since.
I came up with a system for signatures on email documents that are used in emergency services. I thought it was trivial. I offered to provide the public key server for the system. I wrote up the step by step procedure to do it. "Copy the message into the clipboard. Use WinPT to sign the clipboard. Enter a passphrase. Paste the signed message back into the editor. Hit 'send'". We aren't doing it because "it's too hard". And guess what? I've come to agree that it is simply too hard for most people to do something even that simple, because it has to do with computers and "computers is hard".
So you're comparing "type email, click send" with "type email, select all, exclude the signature block, cut the message (not copy - or they'll dupe the content), open a new application, click a button, enter the passphrase, switch back to the message, paste in the signed text, click send" and you don't understand why a user might think it's "too hard"?
OK, OK, that's fine. Here's a suggestion. Make it easy for the user and they'll be more likely to do it.
Write an extension to $MUA that puts an extra button in the toolbar for "Sign and Send" (or replace/extend the existing button). Hook Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Enter (or whatever keys $MUA uses to send email). When the message is about to be sent, pop the passphrase dialog up and let the user enter their password (have three buttons: Sign and Send, Send Unsafely and Don't Send).
Yes, you'll have to do more work. You might even have to fire up Visual Studio to do it rather than hacking in vi. But the chances of success will be greatly improved if the user doesn't have half a dozen manual steps to go through. (Thinking about it briefly, you should be smart about the dialog only showing up when messages go to a particular address, or set of addresses, which would also greatly improve usability).
There's a few potential problems with that comment.
1. People are, as a general rule, stupid. Yes, I include myself - you can't know everything about everything, no matter how much you try. It therefore stands to reason that if you know lots about one topic, you might not know lots about others. (If you know everything about everything, and are GOOD at everything, you're lying or you're the most intelligent and capable person on the planet by several orders of magnitude).
2. 90% of the population won't give a crap about learning it, 90% of the remainder won't be good at it and 90% of what's left won't remember it in a true emergency. (Yes, I agree 90% of statistics are made up, I'm illuminating the problem not giving data). The other 0.1% will avoid the accident. Are you willing to believe you're 1 in 1000 every time you drive - and if you are, are you also lucky enough never to meet any of the other 999?
3. Modern ABS handles it OK, but older systems can't handle the driver reducing brake pressure and either stop working (lockup) or continue working even if the tyres would grip. Both of THOSE scenarios cause longer stopping distances and potentially less steering control than ABS alone.
Interesting to note, I've been told by numerous driving instructors and amateur racers (I used to be a poor amateur and don't know any pros) - they are often no better at stopping than simply stomping on the ABS in an emergency.
Let the ABS do its job. Learn how to handle having ABS, please. Learn to threshold brake by all means. And understand that when the idiot in the ute pulls out 15m (45ft) in front of you while you're driving along at 35mph (55kph) - there's a damn good chance you'll forget everything and slam your foot on the brake. When you do, be glad you have ABS.
I rather suspect that per-processor licensing for Office, under a SPLA, is based on offering the Office suite from a Windows 2008 Remote Desktop Server. So either the user will establish an RDP session with the native client, or they use RD Web Access (which is the same thing under the hood, with the additional annoyance of being Windows only).
God I hate when I see this... but citation needed. Show us the sources - the person you replied to showed theirs. Alternatively: quit with the trolling.
I'm with you on this one - well, partially at least. The problem is that the spec doesn't really plan for a site saying "We don't want to tell you that we do lots of stuff that may or may not be parseable in this header, so here's some text plus a URL for the browser to not show". Microsoft should definitely have assumed the worst case scenario for PII use, not the best case.
Now I'll agree that the URL is valid - but it's completely useless because no browser on earth actually shows that info. The engineer who decided the compact policy reference should be JUST the URL because the other parts of the spec aren't perfect deliberately chose to obfuscate Google's information use, just as much as Microsoft chose not to show the P3P URL to users (except when it's buried in the UI - I haven't seen it ever work).
Let's also not forget that Google chose not to make the XML version available to the browser for evaluation - so there's a second deliberate avoidance of any machine-readable information. And the fact that it's twice avoided is the red flag to me.
I've thought about the same thing in Australia - right down to being the "Common Sense" party. Problem is, common sense isn't common at all, and it's far too easy for the ignorant and stupid to come up with ridiculous (but great-SOUNDING) arguments against any position.
More recently I've been wondering if the approach shouldn't be more "crowd-sourced". Allow people to rock up to an office, get an anonymized digital certificate/smart-card (e.g. on a USB key) and use that anonymous certificate as a "one-vote" mechanism on legislation. Mark that person as "having" a digital cert - Bob Dole of X, DL NSW111222333 has a certificate, checkbox ticked or not ticked. So your average person rocks up to the office with a driver's license or equivalent, you're marked as having "a" digital certificate, with no identifying info on the certificate itself (hello OzCitizen$RND), no recorded correlation between you and your certificate (other than it's unique) and you get a lucky dip of 20 identical keys in a tub (to make the anonymization more obvious to the recipient). Then, you can vote (and change your vote) without being identifiable as a person.
Yes, there are problems... including the potential for lost/duplicate keys, non-citizens voting etc; but it would give the politicians the chance to actually KNOW what people are saying about the legislation. Couple it with a party that tries to be impartial, represent logic over impassioned pleas, and puts both sides (multiple sides) forward for consideration, and I truly wonder if it might get off the ground.
I believe you'll find that argument against software patents is threefold - firstly, that they have a far broader reach than most patents, secondly, they are obvious to practitioners of the art, and thirdly, the lifetime of software patent is often significantly shorter than items in the physical world.
I'll touch first on the obviousness - I think it's likely that patent examiners are not software developers. Nor are they likely to be mechanical engineers, or experts in other fields. For some reason though, software is a black art - lots of people seem to intuitively understand mechanical devices, yet those same people look at computers and cry "too hard". As a result, patents that really are obvious to a programmer can be approved - it's on a computer therefore it must be new and complex.
For the other two points; consider, for example, a patent on a new 6 cycle engine - which happens to be perfect for large, low RPM equipment because it produces far more torque for some reason. The creator works in the... oh, I dunno... let's say the mining industry. The patent application is written by a lawyer who considers the application of the engine to mining, construction etc - but in the end for whatever reason it can't be adapted to ships.
Now someone comes along and builds on (or around) that patent for a revised 6-cycle engine for ships. No (minor?) infringement. New patent. Technology progresses. The patent applies for, I think, 17 years? But creating a new type of engine probably takes 5-10. So the patent is between 1.7x and 3x the development cycle.
The equivalent patent in the software world not only applies to all software in all fields of endeavour, they all seem to be incredibly broad compared to physical object patents, and I contend that they effectively last far longer. The software patents I've seen boil down to "software does a common task in any number of ways" - and because the patent system doesn't require a working model, it's a case of "think of a way it can be done and it's patented". So now because I've needed to solve a problem, and I have a patent on all the ways I can think of to solve the problem, no-one else can write software that solves the problem. Also, that 17 year life of the patent is anywhere from 8x to 17x the life-cycle of software (versioning estimated at 1-2 years). With software you can often easily produce a new major version in a year - you can create something completely new, on the back of last year's efforts, in as little as a few months.
I guess the equivalent in the engine example would be the ability to patent "a device, with any number of combustion chambers, powered by a fuel composed of an element or compound, or collection of compounds, with zero or more extra components, where the fuel is burned". And yet I don't recall seeing patents like that.
Don't get me started on companies patenting gene sequences - unless they're claiming to have created the gene sequence from scratch (i.e. stringing individual bases together), they didn't create anything. They may have FOUND it, but last I checked finding != creating.
Last time I checked, 140+56 was only 196. So if you actually do as described, you'd be looking at both answers above $200 and calculating further.
How did I do it? The "hard" way.
288 / 40 = $7.2/hr, 29 * 7.2 = 140 + 63 + change so it had to be more than 203, ah fuck it it's nearly 4 in the morning where's the damn calculator to check?
Insightful grants karma. Funny doesn't. So marking insightful rewards the writer.
I'd be inclined to suggest it is insightful, too; I can easily imagine a crowd of soccer mums getting upset about a racist game. If you were careful to avoid actually naming it, I reckon the movement to ban it would make an awful lot of headway.
Oops - it's not a new rebate, it's removal of eligibility for part of the Family Tax Benefit - which is paid to a subset of families with children. So - have children, get reduction in taxes to compensate for a small part of the cost of raising them; but if you don't have them vaccinated, the government will keep that portion to pay for the expected extra costs of those children who are not vaccinated. Yes, it's aggregation of cost and risk - a form of insurance, if you will.
If you truly are objecting to the vaccinations or for other reasons must not have them (religion counts, as do allergies), there is a process whereby you can still get the FTB repaid - your doctor signs a form and Medicare tells the ATO you can have the cash.
I think this is a pretty good system - true conscientious objectors, including people with religious objections, don't have their rights trodden on (I'm pro-vaccination, having seen what polio did to my father), people on the fence might be swayed to vaccinate which improves herd resistance, no-one loses unless they're just too lazy to do anything. Heck, we're so nice about it that we'll even let the whackjobs (IMO) pretend they're conscientious objectors!
I don't know if you're trolling, but I'll answer what I can anyway.
You get taxed on your income; and a separate 1% (for most people with a salary) or 2.5% (REALLY high income earners - >180K pa, I think, or >300K for couples/families?) levy for "Medicare" - federally funded health care that pretty much covers anything medically required - so for example it wont pay for cosmetic breast implants, it will pay for reductions if doctors determine that oversized mammaries are causing back or neck problems.
If you wish, you can get private health insurance. This not only allows you more freedoms in terms of choosing doctors, bypassing waiting lists in the public system by using private facilities, certain plans (even cheap ones) mean you can avoid the extra Medicare levy. There are, of course, about 32987132 plans available with incomprehensible coverage terms, exclusions, waiting periods etc; usually completely incomparable. USA ex-pats generally feel completely comfortable with this.
Unsurprisingly, given the public system is, by and large, pretty darn good (IMNSHO), employers in Australia do not need, or tend, to provide private health insurance as seems to be common in the US.
The taxation is the same, near as I can tell, for everyone; this new rebate is recognition that in general, immunized children will be less likely to require medical attention and thus there's an overall saving within the system. You can represent that as more resources being available - or as in this case - as a direct financial return to those providing the cost reduction. I see nothing in this that changes any rights to treatment (and it is, effectively, a right) by the public health system. Sometimes it's overloaded, and if it's not life threatening you can wait... well ages. I've waited 8 hours for something that was, in the end, extremely important - but less so than a child with a 40C fever. But you WILL be seen and treated, and in the public system it is, 100%, completely and unequivocally free (i.e. pre-paid by taxes).
As for completely opting out? Nope. You WILL pay the 1% or 2.5% levy (unless you are below the lower cut off - which does NOT mean you don't get the health care!) - but you can certainly choose to go private and never use the public services - but those public services are the same ones that help car crash victims, people recovered from drowning in rivers and at the beach etc - all those cases are automatically public health (as a citizen, completely free/pre-paid, as a tourist, you'll get a bill).
So given what amounts to complete cover for anything within the country, with the exception of elective surgery, for 1% of gross salary ($1000 per $100K!) - that's a bargain.
It's only recently that VirtualBox has been hanging guest threads on my workstation/laptop. Version 3 was fine, the 4.0 tree was fine, but the last two releases have been, quite frankly, liquid crap in comparison.
Sorry, that makes no sense to me. Are you sure you phrased it correctly? You're opposed to someone trying to make money by offering a service? Why must one course be free because another series of presentations is free? Why shouldn't the user be able to decide (for example, reading reviews, trials, word-of-mouth etc)?
I really hope the Mob get some of these lawsuits - but any organised crime group will do. Or a biker gang. Maybe take away WiFi from a prison and put the word out to the detainees (esp. those about to be let out) that it's this law firm's fault. Let them sort it out with the lawyers - I bet it wouldn't take long.
Definitely. From the "whole-problem optimisation" of selecting individual blocks of characters and composing the whole, to the implementation of a scalable distributed algorithm, to the various approaches to processing and validating the text, to the selection of the final comparison blocks. Though I don't know why I'm supposedly only "virtually" impressed.
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That "Minding your Microsoft Manners" thing might be a little over the top - but compare it to that favourite analogy, the car industry. Would BMW be happy for their partners (dealers) to show up to a meeting in a Mercedes? Would you think maybe, just maybe, talking up the newest Chev to a Ford manager is a good plan? This is basic stuff - if you're working with a company to sell their stuff, you talk up their stuff not the competition?
OTOH, if you were being sarcastic, then as you were.
Indeed - the biggest state (certainly at the time, and I think still) is NSW with more than 1.2M students across primary, secondary and TAFE (Technical and Further Education - sort of a mix of upper secondary, trade and university-level students). In about 2001 the education department created a single hosted environment for all students so that everyone had access to online chats (i.e. classes with guests, Q&A etc), web hosting for things like assignments, restricted web browsing, email etc; with the plan that everyone would have a base level of access.
And you know what? It wasn't too bad (for the time and level of technology we had - lots of weird constraints came up over the course of the project, some solvable, some not). It has been much improved, since.
I came up with a system for signatures on email documents that are used in emergency services. I thought it was trivial. I offered to provide the public key server for the system. I wrote up the step by step procedure to do it. "Copy the message into the clipboard. Use WinPT to sign the clipboard. Enter a passphrase. Paste the signed message back into the editor. Hit 'send'". We aren't doing it because "it's too hard". And guess what? I've come to agree that it is simply too hard for most people to do something even that simple, because it has to do with computers and "computers is hard".
So you're comparing "type email, click send" with "type email, select all, exclude the signature block, cut the message (not copy - or they'll dupe the content), open a new application, click a button, enter the passphrase, switch back to the message, paste in the signed text, click send" and you don't understand why a user might think it's "too hard"?
OK, OK, that's fine. Here's a suggestion. Make it easy for the user and they'll be more likely to do it.
Write an extension to $MUA that puts an extra button in the toolbar for "Sign and Send" (or replace/extend the existing button). Hook Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Enter (or whatever keys $MUA uses to send email). When the message is about to be sent, pop the passphrase dialog up and let the user enter their password (have three buttons: Sign and Send, Send Unsafely and Don't Send).
Yes, you'll have to do more work. You might even have to fire up Visual Studio to do it rather than hacking in vi. But the chances of success will be greatly improved if the user doesn't have half a dozen manual steps to go through. (Thinking about it briefly, you should be smart about the dialog only showing up when messages go to a particular address, or set of addresses, which would also greatly improve usability).
There's a few potential problems with that comment.
Interesting to note, I've been told by numerous driving instructors and amateur racers (I used to be a poor amateur and don't know any pros) - they are often no better at stopping than simply stomping on the ABS in an emergency.
Let the ABS do its job. Learn how to handle having ABS, please. Learn to threshold brake by all means. And understand that when the idiot in the ute pulls out 15m (45ft) in front of you while you're driving along at 35mph (55kph) - there's a damn good chance you'll forget everything and slam your foot on the brake. When you do, be glad you have ABS.
Jeez, you cunthammer ... anything in with a donut.
I rather suspect that per-processor licensing for Office, under a SPLA, is based on offering the Office suite from a Windows 2008 Remote Desktop Server. So either the user will establish an RDP session with the native client, or they use RD Web Access (which is the same thing under the hood, with the additional annoyance of being Windows only).
God I hate when I see this ... but citation needed. Show us the sources - the person you replied to showed theirs. Alternatively: quit with the trolling.
From what I recall, SPLA is not concurrent usage, it's "per account per month".
I'm with you on this one - well, partially at least. The problem is that the spec doesn't really plan for a site saying "We don't want to tell you that we do lots of stuff that may or may not be parseable in this header, so here's some text plus a URL for the browser to not show". Microsoft should definitely have assumed the worst case scenario for PII use, not the best case.
Now I'll agree that the URL is valid - but it's completely useless because no browser on earth actually shows that info. The engineer who decided the compact policy reference should be JUST the URL because the other parts of the spec aren't perfect deliberately chose to obfuscate Google's information use, just as much as Microsoft chose not to show the P3P URL to users (except when it's buried in the UI - I haven't seen it ever work).
Let's also not forget that Google chose not to make the XML version available to the browser for evaluation - so there's a second deliberate avoidance of any machine-readable information. And the fact that it's twice avoided is the red flag to me.
It helps to understand what MCSE stands for: Move Computer Shit Everywhere.
We need a new one for MCITP since MCSE is pretty much dead - Must Consult Independent Thinking Person? Nah someone will do better than that.
And yes, I have those certs (and others), so I'm ... qualified to poke fun at them.
I'd say Whoosh, but you'd probably miss that too. Heck the original joke should have cut you off at the knees.
Nine? I only get seven. Maybe you should have those gaping wounds seen to ...
I've thought about the same thing in Australia - right down to being the "Common Sense" party. Problem is, common sense isn't common at all, and it's far too easy for the ignorant and stupid to come up with ridiculous (but great-SOUNDING) arguments against any position.
More recently I've been wondering if the approach shouldn't be more "crowd-sourced". Allow people to rock up to an office, get an anonymized digital certificate/smart-card (e.g. on a USB key) and use that anonymous certificate as a "one-vote" mechanism on legislation. Mark that person as "having" a digital cert - Bob Dole of X, DL NSW111222333 has a certificate, checkbox ticked or not ticked. So your average person rocks up to the office with a driver's license or equivalent, you're marked as having "a" digital certificate, with no identifying info on the certificate itself (hello OzCitizen$RND), no recorded correlation between you and your certificate (other than it's unique) and you get a lucky dip of 20 identical keys in a tub (to make the anonymization more obvious to the recipient). Then, you can vote (and change your vote) without being identifiable as a person.
Yes, there are problems ... including the potential for lost/duplicate keys, non-citizens voting etc; but it would give the politicians the chance to actually KNOW what people are saying about the legislation. Couple it with a party that tries to be impartial, represent logic over impassioned pleas, and puts both sides (multiple sides) forward for consideration, and I truly wonder if it might get off the ground.
I believe you'll find that argument against software patents is threefold - firstly, that they have a far broader reach than most patents, secondly, they are obvious to practitioners of the art, and thirdly, the lifetime of software patent is often significantly shorter than items in the physical world.
I'll touch first on the obviousness - I think it's likely that patent examiners are not software developers. Nor are they likely to be mechanical engineers, or experts in other fields. For some reason though, software is a black art - lots of people seem to intuitively understand mechanical devices, yet those same people look at computers and cry "too hard". As a result, patents that really are obvious to a programmer can be approved - it's on a computer therefore it must be new and complex.
For the other two points; consider, for example, a patent on a new 6 cycle engine - which happens to be perfect for large, low RPM equipment because it produces far more torque for some reason. The creator works in the ... oh, I dunno ... let's say the mining industry. The patent application is written by a lawyer who considers the application of the engine to mining, construction etc - but in the end for whatever reason it can't be adapted to ships.
Now someone comes along and builds on (or around) that patent for a revised 6-cycle engine for ships. No (minor?) infringement. New patent. Technology progresses. The patent applies for, I think, 17 years? But creating a new type of engine probably takes 5-10. So the patent is between 1.7x and 3x the development cycle.
The equivalent patent in the software world not only applies to all software in all fields of endeavour, they all seem to be incredibly broad compared to physical object patents, and I contend that they effectively last far longer. The software patents I've seen boil down to "software does a common task in any number of ways" - and because the patent system doesn't require a working model, it's a case of "think of a way it can be done and it's patented". So now because I've needed to solve a problem, and I have a patent on all the ways I can think of to solve the problem, no-one else can write software that solves the problem. Also, that 17 year life of the patent is anywhere from 8x to 17x the life-cycle of software (versioning estimated at 1-2 years). With software you can often easily produce a new major version in a year - you can create something completely new, on the back of last year's efforts, in as little as a few months.
I guess the equivalent in the engine example would be the ability to patent "a device, with any number of combustion chambers, powered by a fuel composed of an element or compound, or collection of compounds, with zero or more extra components, where the fuel is burned". And yet I don't recall seeing patents like that.
Don't get me started on companies patenting gene sequences - unless they're claiming to have created the gene sequence from scratch (i.e. stringing individual bases together), they didn't create anything. They may have FOUND it, but last I checked finding != creating.
Last time I checked, 140+56 was only 196. So if you actually do as described, you'd be looking at both answers above $200 and calculating further.
How did I do it? The "hard" way.
288 / 40 = $7.2/hr, 29 * 7.2 = 140 + 63 + change so it had to be more than 203, ah fuck it it's nearly 4 in the morning where's the damn calculator to check?
Insightful grants karma. Funny doesn't. So marking insightful rewards the writer.
I'd be inclined to suggest it is insightful, too; I can easily imagine a crowd of soccer mums getting upset about a racist game. If you were careful to avoid actually naming it, I reckon the movement to ban it would make an awful lot of headway.
Oops - it's not a new rebate, it's removal of eligibility for part of the Family Tax Benefit - which is paid to a subset of families with children. So - have children, get reduction in taxes to compensate for a small part of the cost of raising them; but if you don't have them vaccinated, the government will keep that portion to pay for the expected extra costs of those children who are not vaccinated. Yes, it's aggregation of cost and risk - a form of insurance, if you will.
If you truly are objecting to the vaccinations or for other reasons must not have them (religion counts, as do allergies), there is a process whereby you can still get the FTB repaid - your doctor signs a form and Medicare tells the ATO you can have the cash.
I think this is a pretty good system - true conscientious objectors, including people with religious objections, don't have their rights trodden on (I'm pro-vaccination, having seen what polio did to my father), people on the fence might be swayed to vaccinate which improves herd resistance, no-one loses unless they're just too lazy to do anything. Heck, we're so nice about it that we'll even let the whackjobs (IMO) pretend they're conscientious objectors!
I don't know if you're trolling, but I'll answer what I can anyway.
You get taxed on your income; and a separate 1% (for most people with a salary) or 2.5% (REALLY high income earners - >180K pa, I think, or >300K for couples/families?) levy for "Medicare" - federally funded health care that pretty much covers anything medically required - so for example it wont pay for cosmetic breast implants, it will pay for reductions if doctors determine that oversized mammaries are causing back or neck problems.
If you wish, you can get private health insurance. This not only allows you more freedoms in terms of choosing doctors, bypassing waiting lists in the public system by using private facilities, certain plans (even cheap ones) mean you can avoid the extra Medicare levy. There are, of course, about 32987132 plans available with incomprehensible coverage terms, exclusions, waiting periods etc; usually completely incomparable. USA ex-pats generally feel completely comfortable with this.
Unsurprisingly, given the public system is, by and large, pretty darn good (IMNSHO), employers in Australia do not need, or tend, to provide private health insurance as seems to be common in the US.
The taxation is the same, near as I can tell, for everyone; this new rebate is recognition that in general, immunized children will be less likely to require medical attention and thus there's an overall saving within the system. You can represent that as more resources being available - or as in this case - as a direct financial return to those providing the cost reduction. I see nothing in this that changes any rights to treatment (and it is, effectively, a right) by the public health system. Sometimes it's overloaded, and if it's not life threatening you can wait ... well ages. I've waited 8 hours for something that was, in the end, extremely important - but less so than a child with a 40C fever. But you WILL be seen and treated, and in the public system it is, 100%, completely and unequivocally free (i.e. pre-paid by taxes).
As for completely opting out? Nope. You WILL pay the 1% or 2.5% levy (unless you are below the lower cut off - which does NOT mean you don't get the health care!) - but you can certainly choose to go private and never use the public services - but those public services are the same ones that help car crash victims, people recovered from drowning in rivers and at the beach etc - all those cases are automatically public health (as a citizen, completely free/pre-paid, as a tourist, you'll get a bill).
So given what amounts to complete cover for anything within the country, with the exception of elective surgery, for 1% of gross salary ($1000 per $100K!) - that's a bargain.
It's only recently that VirtualBox has been hanging guest threads on my workstation/laptop. Version 3 was fine, the 4.0 tree was fine, but the last two releases have been, quite frankly, liquid crap in comparison.
By some chance do you write documents which are intended to pass for manuals, for electronic products sourced from China?
Think further back - the iconic E-Type, which "some say" is the most beautiful car of all time? Yep, 4 speed manual.
Sorry, that makes no sense to me. Are you sure you phrased it correctly? You're opposed to someone trying to make money by offering a service? Why must one course be free because another series of presentations is free? Why shouldn't the user be able to decide (for example, reading reviews, trials, word-of-mouth etc)?
Only one (some?) of many that would apply.
(Come on Slashdot, I'm logged in, and I still can't post twice in 5 minutes?)
I really hope the Mob get some of these lawsuits - but any organised crime group will do. Or a biker gang. Maybe take away WiFi from a prison and put the word out to the detainees (esp. those about to be let out) that it's this law firm's fault. Let them sort it out with the lawyers - I bet it wouldn't take long.
Definitely. From the "whole-problem optimisation" of selecting individual blocks of characters and composing the whole, to the implementation of a scalable distributed algorithm, to the various approaches to processing and validating the text, to the selection of the final comparison blocks. Though I don't know why I'm supposedly only "virtually" impressed.