Cutting our military spending substantially will do a hell of a lot more than just about anything. No comments on whether such a thing would be wise or feasible, as I don't know.
The drones have to get information somehow to (and from) their controllers, or else we'd never get images back or be able to control them. Presumably someone snooped the communications (radio) and figured out how to compromise it. Scary stuff.
Not only that, but the precedent for confiscating property (and charging the property as an accessory to the crime, not the _person_) is well established for things like money. It's easy to destroy someone's life without technically violating _their_ rights. Sadly, your property doesn't have rights, and oh look now people who meet [some shadiness criteria set by fearful politicians] can no longer live within X yards of a Y, which happen to be everywhere, so have fun living under a bridge.
Its a little farfetched, but not as farfetched as I'd like.
Rather than merely Stop Posting (or paying for a domain), and instead actually putting the effort to remove one's creations is something which is both strange and uncommon on the internet. I never used anything he wrote (that I know of?), but am immensely curious as to what would cause a person to do this. It's VERY different from retiring an old machine or deciding that you don't care about a domain anymore enough to actually update its DNS (or pay for it, perhaps).
They may not be able to compel you to give up the keys. However, the penalties (fines, hassle of court, perhaps jail time for obstruction of justice) are something that you will need to decide are worth risking.
They're covered unless their now-disconnected customers say, "well, if I can't get the internet from you, why am I paying you?", and cancel their service.
Funding them would be less of a problem, too, if we didn't spend orders of magnitude more money on sending our military all over the world. I realize they do a lot of good, too, but the cost of it is mind-boggling.
It'd be interesting to see how many people sacrificed a lot to start a new business (but were unsuccessful), or the number whose families sent them to school, only to have them not be "successful". I think the former's a lot larger number, of course -- many small businesses fail.
If your idea is so simple that someone else can copy it and improve it in two weeks, why should you have the armed might of the state preventing them from doing so?
Some (many? Most?) inventions are so simple that it's easy to implement in hindsight, but not necessarily something that someone would think to DO. Or, that's the idea behind why an inventor should get some protection.
I'm not talking about 1-click, I'm talking about something like "if I attach a FOO to that BAR, it makes the FOO 80% more efficient", or "this is how we can take wood and fabric and make something that flies", or "here's how we can move a chain to different sprockets on a bicycle". Most of those seem (in hindsight) to be relatively simple, but at some point for each of them, no one had thought to do it.
In seriousness, generally there isn't much you can do in an earthquake. Try to find something that has a relatively strong structure above you, such as a strong desk or a doorjamb. The idea is that if your house buckles and falls, it will help divert some of the energy away from you.
From what I've read, they've been working on a lot of things "original". Not in terms of base mechanics, but in terms of how comparatively deep your character's personal storyline is. They had (last I heard, which was a while ago) plans for campaigns which were effectively custom tailored to your character (class, etc).
Some things are similar across MMOs. Kill boars, collect nerf herder scruffs, etc. Do dungeons/missions/raids/battlegrounds/whatever for $REWARD (xp, gold, credits, honor points). The difference is in how they execute a coherent world vision. At the superficial level, EVE and WOW are very similar, but anyone who's played them can tell you that the two are radically different. I expect the same for SW:TOR. Some things will be the same, because it's an MMO, and therefore wants to reward subscribers with persistent and steadily increasing shinies. The things most of us nerds are excited about is that it's about being a jedi or a bounty hunter, rather than a paladin or a warlock or space pod pirate.
Before Vista, I used to. Now, I just search for things, because I use it so rarely. More importantly, the twenty or so things I use "most" (or even remotely often) are on my quick launch bar, so I don't even have to access the menu.
Re:Any studies to back up the "small code" thesis
on
OCaml For the Masses
·
· Score: 1
There are some interesting code metrics, such as Cohesion and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity , which reward code which is terse and un-complex. Presumably the research backing these metrics would have already done much of what you're looking for, but I could be wrong.
Sure you can. You frequently do things like apply a function to all the elements in a list. You may not affect the originals, often, but you still Do Something/with/ every element. So you're technically correct but it was somewhat disingenuous.
Re:haskell for the masses? sure, but only...
on
OCaml For the Masses
·
· Score: 1
Try looking more at how Emacs in built, rather than the keyboard conventions that it adopted.:-) The lisp code for a large portion of it is readable (er, "readable"?), for things like which menus are shown, how to color text, etc. The functional aspect of it is really flexible for things like adding color schemes or changing behavior.
I have a few programs (Eclipse, Chrome) pinned to Windows 7's taskbar, and then about 20 items on my Quick Launch toolbar for things I use Fairly Often and don't want to hunt for (Winamp, Gimp, command prompt, projects folder, etc). For other programs which I open less often, it's very handy to type in the beginning of the name, and then click:
Where does one go to read about these for free? Everyone's said "blah blah I can find it for free", but no one's (that I've seen so far) linked a coherent set of info explaining what's safe and what isn't, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Cutting our military spending substantially will do a hell of a lot more than just about anything. No comments on whether such a thing would be wise or feasible, as I don't know.
The drones have to get information somehow to (and from) their controllers, or else we'd never get images back or be able to control them. Presumably someone snooped the communications (radio) and figured out how to compromise it. Scary stuff.
Not only that, but the precedent for confiscating property (and charging the property as an accessory to the crime, not the _person_) is well established for things like money. It's easy to destroy someone's life without technically violating _their_ rights. Sadly, your property doesn't have rights, and oh look now people who meet [some shadiness criteria set by fearful politicians] can no longer live within X yards of a Y, which happen to be everywhere, so have fun living under a bridge.
Its a little farfetched, but not as farfetched as I'd like.
Rather than merely Stop Posting (or paying for a domain), and instead actually putting the effort to remove one's creations is something which is both strange and uncommon on the internet. I never used anything he wrote (that I know of?), but am immensely curious as to what would cause a person to do this. It's VERY different from retiring an old machine or deciding that you don't care about a domain anymore enough to actually update its DNS (or pay for it, perhaps).
They may not be able to compel you to give up the keys. However, the penalties (fines, hassle of court, perhaps jail time for obstruction of justice) are something that you will need to decide are worth risking.
They're covered unless their now-disconnected customers say, "well, if I can't get the internet from you, why am I paying you?", and cancel their service.
Attached to the wall.
Effectively torrenting over sneakernet. Impressive.
* Note: Users must be running the Hurd to get Hurd Immunity.
It's easier to install in your house (or apartment) windows than something which requires you to climb up on your roof.
Funding them would be less of a problem, too, if we didn't spend orders of magnitude more money on sending our military all over the world. I realize they do a lot of good, too, but the cost of it is mind-boggling.
It'd be interesting to see how many people sacrificed a lot to start a new business (but were unsuccessful), or the number whose families sent them to school, only to have them not be "successful". I think the former's a lot larger number, of course -- many small businesses fail.
If your idea is so simple that someone else can copy it and improve it in two weeks, why should you have the armed might of the state preventing them from doing so?
Some (many? Most?) inventions are so simple that it's easy to implement in hindsight, but not necessarily something that someone would think to DO. Or, that's the idea behind why an inventor should get some protection.
I'm not talking about 1-click, I'm talking about something like "if I attach a FOO to that BAR, it makes the FOO 80% more efficient", or "this is how we can take wood and fabric and make something that flies", or "here's how we can move a chain to different sprockets on a bicycle". Most of those seem (in hindsight) to be relatively simple, but at some point for each of them, no one had thought to do it.
In seriousness, generally there isn't much you can do in an earthquake. Try to find something that has a relatively strong structure above you, such as a strong desk or a doorjamb. The idea is that if your house buckles and falls, it will help divert some of the energy away from you.
From what I've read, they've been working on a lot of things "original". Not in terms of base mechanics, but in terms of how comparatively deep your character's personal storyline is. They had (last I heard, which was a while ago) plans for campaigns which were effectively custom tailored to your character (class, etc).
Some things are similar across MMOs. Kill boars, collect nerf herder scruffs, etc. Do dungeons/missions/raids/battlegrounds/whatever for $REWARD (xp, gold, credits, honor points). The difference is in how they execute a coherent world vision. At the superficial level, EVE and WOW are very similar, but anyone who's played them can tell you that the two are radically different. I expect the same for SW:TOR. Some things will be the same, because it's an MMO, and therefore wants to reward subscribers with persistent and steadily increasing shinies. The things most of us nerds are excited about is that it's about being a jedi or a bounty hunter, rather than a paladin or a warlock or space pod pirate.
It's a trap! :-)
Before Vista, I used to. Now, I just search for things, because I use it so rarely. More importantly, the twenty or so things I use "most" (or even remotely often) are on my quick launch bar, so I don't even have to access the menu.
There are some interesting code metrics, such as Cohesion and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity , which reward code which is terse and un-complex. Presumably the research backing these metrics would have already done much of what you're looking for, but I could be wrong.
Sure you can. You frequently do things like apply a function to all the elements in a list. You may not affect the originals, often, but you still Do Something /with/ every element. So you're technically correct but it was somewhat disingenuous.
Try looking more at how Emacs in built, rather than the keyboard conventions that it adopted. :-) The lisp code for a large portion of it is readable (er, "readable"?), for things like which menus are shown, how to color text, etc. The functional aspect of it is really flexible for things like adding color schemes or changing behavior.
If I recall right, some of those may be NSFW, as he has some nudes (tasteful) in the gallery.
I have a few programs (Eclipse, Chrome) pinned to Windows 7's taskbar, and then about 20 items on my Quick Launch toolbar for things I use Fairly Often and don't want to hunt for (Winamp, Gimp, command prompt, projects folder, etc). For other programs which I open less often, it's very handy to type in the beginning of the name, and then click:
[win], n o
Click Notepad++ link
Still, that's the sort of link that would have been courteous and informative to have been included with the initial summary.
Where does one go to read about these for free? Everyone's said "blah blah I can find it for free", but no one's (that I've seen so far) linked a coherent set of info explaining what's safe and what isn't, etc.
Even better, document a time estimate for each major feature, and ask them to prioritize them.