Well I suppose a rationale that was TCO analysis would say that net savings is the benefit itself. Though you pay a bit more up front, you save money over the machine's lifetime, the machine has a longer lifetime, and the worker is more productive during that lifetime -- to restate my previous points in reverse order. I don't think you can say, "Owning brand X makes more profits!" so simply. There are reasons for higher revenues (higher productivity) and reasons for lower expenditures (less downtime, fewer required upgrades). Both contribute to the bottom line (profits).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that lower TCO == higher TNBO. They are inverse ways of looking at the exact same thing.
That would be a very good idea. I have (or at least had) the source for the Encheferizer at one point. In fact, a wizard ported it to LPC for Darkwind. We call it the "Viking Curse" there.
Anyway, if it were a client-side plug-in, who could complain? Nobody would be distributing alterned versions of corporate sites. No harm, no foul! It could add a menu with the supported dialects, or something.
The selling point of a Mac is TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). When you buy a Mac you get...
A simpler UI. You spend less time learning to use it, because it's consistent and intuitive. Time saved == money saved.
Longer lifetime. There are still lots of people using 1992-era Macs, with MacOS. How many use Intel boxes of similar age with DOS or Windows? More time used == money saved.
Macs have fewer fatal crashes. I have yet to need a MacOS reinstall, and I've never needed to replace burned-out hardware. Yet this happens in the PC world all-too-frequently. Less downtime == money saved.
Etc...
The bean-counters may balk at buying Macs, but it pays off in the long run.
One thing I've never understood was why the '030 ran at higher clock speeds than the '040! I'd love to get my old Centris up to 50 MHz instead of only 25. With a larger hard drive it could still be a usable Linux box, with a speed bump like that it would make me a very happy guy.
I've read of a hack to get the '040 up to 40 MHz. If I get to the point of feeling comfortable soldering my mobo I'll give it a shot.
Symbols (+ -) appear when you mouse over the buttons.
And this is very bad UI design. The user should not have to interact with the interface in order to figure out how to interact with the interface! It should be obvious just by looking at it from the start.
The same thing could be said of the Dock. If you get too much stuff in it and the icons are small, you need to "scrub" it to see what they are. BAD! Apple should get rid of the Dock and go back to having three separate tried-and-true features (Apple menu, Application menu, Control Strip) that perform their functions well. Throwing them all together is a disastrous idea.
And give us back a real desktop. The Windows desktop isn't a real desktop, and I don't want something that works like that.
The same way I wouldn't trust an unlicensed/unfit driver on the road, I don't trust ANYONE with a gun that doesn't have a license.
Exactly. Which is why I would promote the idea of gun own licensure. If you want to buy a gun, show your license. If you don't have one, too bad. Go get the training first. If you're caught using a gun without a license, you 1) pay a fine, 2) have the gun taken, 3) go to jail. Just like not having a driving license.
Automobiles kill more people every year than guns, but no one lobbies to have cars done away with.
As much as you may hate MS, they have at least delivered three new OSs in that timeframe (95, NT, and 2000), while Apple has merely layered OS versions onto MacOS without a significant upgrade.
Man, 5 whole years without a "significant" upgrade. Sorta reminiscent of the '80-'95 period - 15 years of DOS without a significant upgrade while Apple showed us some truly revolutionary stuff.
In the last 5 years we got Win95, WinNT4 (a slightly improved "industrial strength" version), Win98 (a new layered version of 95), and Win2k (merging 95 and NT back together). Really, one big step with refinements.
It also depends on what you consider significant, I suppose. Some of the user features rolled out in OS 8 and 9 were pretty nifty. And don't forget that virtually the entire OS was rewritten for a different hardware during this period, with essentially no impact to end users! That's pretty remarkable in itself.
Apple made the step to a friendly UI 10 years earlier than MS did. (Apple did a better job, IMO.) Apple is making the step to a "modern" core 5 years later than MS did. (And Apple is doing a better job here, too, IMO.)
Yeah, I'm an Apple enthusiast, and don't have a lot of love for MS. (I'll give them credit when its due, but I don't think Gates is the godsend so many have claimed him to be.) It just seems that people bashing Apple for being behind MS the last 5 years seem to forget the 11 years before that.
tradeoff : speed or integrity?
on
Why Not MySQL?
·
· Score: 1
Basically, the issue comes down to this question. Which is more "critical" in your application? The article itself and several other posters have hinted at what I'm about to say.
For basic data retrieval (ie, lots of select queries but few updates), mySQL is fine. What updates are done are probably done by only a few people, who know what they're doing, and can restore a backup if something goes catastrophically wrong. I work with this kind of stuff all the time. Someone's got mostly-static data (we get updates a couple times a year) that should go on a web page. For this, mySQL works perfectly.
For regular updates of non-critical data, mySQL is still fine. An example here is Slashdot itself. I doubt anybody would cry too much if TrollMastah's latest lyrical attempt was lost. People insert and update just as often as they select, but if something hangs halfway through, there simply isn't much being lost. This data doesn't have much intrinsic value.
For banking or other financial transactions, or important scientific research, you may very well want something more robust, like Oracle. No one wants to potentially lose tons of cash, or weeks of labor/study/analysis. If the data's truly critical, you can't afford to play around with it! You wouldn't trust a fly-by-night courier service to take those documents across town, even if they did it for free, would you? Neither should you trust an RDBMS that handles your data that way. You simply can't afford a misstep. A mistake like that might be able to cover the cost of the RDBMS itself. What's peace of mind worth to you?
Makes perfect sense. Sounds alot like PICS actually. I actually rate with SafeSurf.
The problem I see with doing rating this way in meatspace is this: how does the movie theater (or whoever) know what rating level the kid may see? With a web browser surfing cyberspace, the parent sets the levels that may be viewed, and it's automatically regulated. How do you do that IRL? Tattoo the kid's forehead "cannot view sexual content more explicit than innuendo"?
In the ideal world, the parent would accompany the kid to the movies. In the real world, the kid is going to have lots of time not under the direct supervision of the parents. That's the whole reason for ratings in the first place. You can't always monitor what your kids surf. You can't always take off from work when the kids go to the movies after school.
This, I'm pretty sure, is the rationale for the current age-based rating scheme. Parents feelings for what a kid of a certain age may see follows a standard distribution. Stuff that most parents feel a sub-13-yo should not view gets rated PG-13. Etc. It's easy to check someone's age. And if I feel my 10-yo is as mature as a typical 13-yo, I'll OK him to see a PG-13 flick.
Personally, I think we should come up with a GeekCode-like PICS rating system for the web. How nerdy is your site? Do you provide Unix man pages or sendmail docs online? Are you Rob Malda or Illiad? High score for you! I actually have seen a PICS scheme for something other than "nastiness" - VWP rated "Canadianness" I think.
You should go talk to the judge presiding over this case. What you're saying makes so much sense the judge would have to be a moron not to agree. Wish I'd said it as eloquently in my reply.
You're right, in a sense. The 2nd Amendment doesn't make sense any more because it's not strong enough.
An armed militia (populace) is necessary to keep gov't from becoming tyrannous. Can you imagine what would have happened the American Revolution if George III had forbidden Americans to own guns? That's right, it wouldn't have happened. Today, owning a couple shotguns is not enough to keep gov't in check. Technology has far outstripped that. But at least we can still defend ourselves against the criminal element.
Yes, the gov't has full-time paid servicemen to defend citizens from foreign threats. But who defends citizens from internal threats? That's right, the gun owners.
You have a very flawed perception of Christianity.
Yes, we are flawed. Do you deny that? If you do, look around, it's plainly evident in society. Fortunately, Jesus gives me hope that I can rise above that. I'm forgiven, and I find immeasurable peace and joy in that.
Turning the other cheek and loving your neighbor are things that happen because of Jesus. If it weren't for him, I'd probably be content to be selfish, because I'd be without hope of anything better. I'm not scared of God, though I fear (in the biblical sense) Him. He is holy and awesome, and worthy of love and honor.
The message of Christ has done more to influence the world for good than anything else ever has. Look at how Jesus treated women. Truly a departure from what existed at the time. Read the book of Philemon. Before you say it advocates slavery, remember that life was cheap. A slave owner would just as soon kill a slave and buy another one, yet Philemon is told to treat Onesimus as a brother. Radical. Christian churches have a long history of rescuing orphans, starting in Roman times when it was customary to expose unwanted babies to the elements for them to die. Throughout its 2000 year history the message of Christ has been raising the standard of human rights. No other person can claim to have done as much. Again, read _What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?_, especially if you think that would have been a great thing.
And to head off the obvious reply, yes, many horrible crimes have been committed in the name of Jesus too. Which just goes to prove my point that we're all sinners in need of redemption. Jesus never taught hatred, he taught love.
Have to agree here. When I saw the first PPCs I thought it was a step backwards. My 25MHz '040 ran faster than they did. It gave me a really bad impression of System 7.5 anyway. (I heard those old machines would run faster with an upgrade to OS 8.) Those PPC 601's would probably make pretty decent Linux boxen though.
Anyway, that Centris is still in service. My sister is using it. (Though she did ask me last week if she could 'upgrade' it to Windows 98. *sigh*)
Do you know of some legitimate technical problems with the iBooks? Everyone I've heard thinks they are really great machines. I've thought about getting one simply because I can't afford a PowerBook.
OTOH if you just don't like the rounded shape and color scheme, oh well...
Sorry to disillusion you, but basically our species is a bunch of petty, arrogant, selfish, greedy, lustful, cruel, and sinful individuals. You and Gene Roddenberry may think that eventually we'll lift ourselves up out of the mud, but it's not going to happen.
The truth is that the message of Jesus Christ has done more to improve the world than anything else in history. Read Kennedy's book, _What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?_
From a pure political science standpoint, the US is a representative democracy with some elements of socialism (i.e. welfare).
Actually, the US is a representative democratic republic. The Constitution did not create a democracy, but a republic. I'll admit it has mutated into what you describe, "elements of socialism" and all, but that's not what the Founders intended.
First, sorry about starting a new thread. I wanted to reply to several other posters at once.
DonkPunch said, "[...] However, the Second Amendment is one of those freedoms and the ACLU chooses to ignore or "interpret" it in a such a way that it becomes meaningless. Therefore, painting the ACLU as the Grand Defenders of the Bill of Rights omits a pretty important detail.
"[...] The high rate of imprisonment in this country continues under a Democratic administration, yet the implication is that it's the fault of Republicans."
I completely agree with you here. I tend to lean quite conservative. In fact, I think the Republicans give in to the Democrats too much, so I'm looking into the Constitution Party as an alternative. I see them as doing a better job of protecting Constitutional freedoms than the ACLU. killbill said, "I would love to join the ACLU, but not until they stop their bigoted prejudices against people of faith. If a validictorian senior wanted to quote Nietzce in her speech, the ACLU would be defending her to the death. If she wants to quote the New Testament, they would have her for dinner. I believe she should have the right to quote either." That's exactly what I mean. The framers of the Constitution were Christians, but they knew that the natural rights of mankind were universal. I have more trust that God-fearing men would have the moral fiber to protect the rights of their fellow man than men who don't acknowledge God.
TraceProgram wrote, "It goes along with what Stallman is saying about morals as well. They are defined by the society in which they are constructed (whoa I think that was circular logic there)." And that's exactly the problem. RMS may have said he doesn't believe in relativism, but any time you let society define its own morals that's exactly what you have. There must be an objective entity to set the moral/ethical standard, or you have relativism.
Let me add that I agree with RMS's basic idea of free software (I think the RIAA is wrong and needs to adapt to the times, down with UCITA, etc...), but I strongly disagree with his basic philosophy.
Also, angelo said, "The bill of rights guarantees that all are equal under law (despite its wording) and the ACLU tries to force the distinction on people." Yeah, what's up with that? The ACLU uses terms like "Afro-American" or "Hispanic-American". If anything, that's just more divisive! Hyphenation makes adjectives into part of the noun. It makes our differences into barriers rather than just adding flavoring to life. He continues, "[The second amendment] guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, but a "civil" right is the right not to get shot. The constitutional right would be the right to shoot back. Which is more important, and which is more feasable to guarantee?" Amen, brother. I want the right to defend myself. I will not give that up to someone else.
There were some more very good posts, too, but I don't have time.
To say that they also have the right under fair use to provide any sort of mp3 service to other owners of the CD is stretching it.
How so? As another poster has said, uploading your own copy of the song would be a pointless waste of bandwidth. It's just data. They know I have a copy and therefore can legally listen to it. What does it matter if I listen to my copy or their copy, as long as I legally own a copy? The two copies are indistinguishable...it's just data!
If you want to listen to it elsewhere, you carry it with you. If you want to sell it, you go right ahead. If you step on it, you are not entitled to a free replacement copy, anymore than you'd get a book replaced if you dropped it in the bathtub.
Right. And if I wanted to photocopy my book and store that in a vault somewhere just in case my house burned down, I could do that. I have a license to the info in that book, do I not? I paid for it. The fact that most people do not "back up" hard copy isn't an issue. You can back up digital data (if I had a book-on-CD, I could back that up in case the CD broke, right?), and that's why the music industry is screaming. They are thinking of all the replacement sales they'll lose because we no longer need physical media.
Technology is outgrowing conventional media. The world/industry needs to learn to cope with that. We live in the Information Age -- it's the information that's important, not how you access it.
Re:We all gotta deal with this in our own way
on
Fighting UCITA
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· Score: 1
My father [...] was stunned to discover that his computer started dialing his modem to register the software.
This is precisely why I will never buy a machine with a built-in or software modem. OFF switch, mmmmm.
It's not the best solution, but it's better than nothing.
The forced break up of Microsoft would be a bad thing for the computing industry as a whole [because] Microsoft practically single-handedly turned the PC [industry around, and] breaking the company up will harm the average user, since a high level of integration means a greater ease of use.
This is patently untrue. Apple and Amiga pioneered better UIs than Windows did. The only reason M$ came out on top is because they rode the IBM wave in the early 80's. If IBM had backed Apple's vision rather than seeing them as a competitor, we'd all be using Macs right now instead.
Still, I agree that break-up is not the best idea. I'm not saying it's bad, though. Creating an OS monopoly and a business app monopoly is no different than keeping the existing OS-and-business-app monopoly! If the DOJ really wants to encourage competition the best solution (IMO) would be forcing M$ to publish their file format standards and complete system documentation for the next 10 years. This would have two effects:
Anybody could make "Office compatible" spreadsheets, word processors, etc. There would be real choice between office productivity suites.
Anybody could write apps to run optimally in Windows, because M$ could not take advantage of hidden OS calls to be more efficient. You could even develop a Windows-compatible OS to offer a real choice in this arena as well.
This is what hinders real competition. What do you think?
Only with the current rules for.us domains. Businesses could be allowed to use companyname.com.us. Japan and the UK do this and it works fine. Non-profits and other entities could still be required to classify under the most local subdomain they can, if that's the way the US wants its domain run.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I suppose a rationale that was TCO analysis would say that net savings is the benefit itself. Though you pay a bit more up front, you save money over the machine's lifetime, the machine has a longer lifetime, and the worker is more productive during that lifetime -- to restate my previous points in reverse order. I don't think you can say, "Owning brand X makes more profits!" so simply. There are reasons for higher revenues (higher productivity) and reasons for lower expenditures (less downtime, fewer required upgrades). Both contribute to the bottom line (profits).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that lower TCO == higher TNBO. They are inverse ways of looking at the exact same thing.
That would be a very good idea. I have (or at least had) the source for the Encheferizer at one point. In fact, a wizard ported it to LPC for Darkwind. We call it the "Viking Curse" there.
Anyway, if it were a client-side plug-in, who could complain? Nobody would be distributing alterned versions of corporate sites. No harm, no foul! It could add a menu with the supported dialects, or something.
o/~ Plug it in, plug it in! o/~
The selling point of a Mac is TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). When you buy a Mac you get...
The bean-counters may balk at buying Macs, but it pays off in the long run.
One thing I've never understood was why the '030 ran at higher clock speeds than the '040! I'd love to get my old Centris up to 50 MHz instead of only 25. With a larger hard drive it could still be a usable Linux box, with a speed bump like that it would make me a very happy guy.
I've read of a hack to get the '040 up to 40 MHz. If I get to the point of feeling comfortable soldering my mobo I'll give it a shot.
And this is very bad UI design. The user should not have to interact with the interface in order to figure out how to interact with the interface! It should be obvious just by looking at it from the start.
The same thing could be said of the Dock. If you get too much stuff in it and the icons are small, you need to "scrub" it to see what they are. BAD! Apple should get rid of the Dock and go back to having three separate tried-and-true features (Apple menu, Application menu, Control Strip) that perform their functions well. Throwing them all together is a disastrous idea.
And give us back a real desktop. The Windows desktop isn't a real desktop, and I don't want something that works like that.
Exactly. Which is why I would promote the idea of gun own licensure. If you want to buy a gun, show your license. If you don't have one, too bad. Go get the training first. If you're caught using a gun without a license, you 1) pay a fine, 2) have the gun taken, 3) go to jail. Just like not having a driving license.
Automobiles kill more people every year than guns, but no one lobbies to have cars done away with.
Man, 5 whole years without a "significant" upgrade. Sorta reminiscent of the '80-'95 period - 15 years of DOS without a significant upgrade while Apple showed us some truly revolutionary stuff.
In the last 5 years we got Win95, WinNT4 (a slightly improved "industrial strength" version), Win98 (a new layered version of 95), and Win2k (merging 95 and NT back together). Really, one big step with refinements.
It also depends on what you consider significant, I suppose. Some of the user features rolled out in OS 8 and 9 were pretty nifty. And don't forget that virtually the entire OS was rewritten for a different hardware during this period, with essentially no impact to end users! That's pretty remarkable in itself.
Apple made the step to a friendly UI 10 years earlier than MS did. (Apple did a better job, IMO.) Apple is making the step to a "modern" core 5 years later than MS did. (And Apple is doing a better job here, too, IMO.)
Yeah, I'm an Apple enthusiast, and don't have a lot of love for MS. (I'll give them credit when its due, but I don't think Gates is the godsend so many have claimed him to be.) It just seems that people bashing Apple for being behind MS the last 5 years seem to forget the 11 years before that.
Basically, the issue comes down to this question. Which is more "critical" in your application? The article itself and several other posters have hinted at what I'm about to say.
For basic data retrieval (ie, lots of select queries but few updates), mySQL is fine. What updates are done are probably done by only a few people, who know what they're doing, and can restore a backup if something goes catastrophically wrong. I work with this kind of stuff all the time. Someone's got mostly-static data (we get updates a couple times a year) that should go on a web page. For this, mySQL works perfectly.
For regular updates of non-critical data, mySQL is still fine. An example here is Slashdot itself. I doubt anybody would cry too much if TrollMastah's latest lyrical attempt was lost. People insert and update just as often as they select, but if something hangs halfway through, there simply isn't much being lost. This data doesn't have much intrinsic value.
For banking or other financial transactions, or important scientific research, you may very well want something more robust, like Oracle. No one wants to potentially lose tons of cash, or weeks of labor/study/analysis. If the data's truly critical, you can't afford to play around with it! You wouldn't trust a fly-by-night courier service to take those documents across town, even if they did it for free, would you? Neither should you trust an RDBMS that handles your data that way. You simply can't afford a misstep. A mistake like that might be able to cover the cost of the RDBMS itself. What's peace of mind worth to you?
Makes perfect sense. Sounds alot like PICS actually. I actually rate with SafeSurf.
The problem I see with doing rating this way in meatspace is this: how does the movie theater (or whoever) know what rating level the kid may see? With a web browser surfing cyberspace, the parent sets the levels that may be viewed, and it's automatically regulated. How do you do that IRL? Tattoo the kid's forehead "cannot view sexual content more explicit than innuendo"?
In the ideal world, the parent would accompany the kid to the movies. In the real world, the kid is going to have lots of time not under the direct supervision of the parents. That's the whole reason for ratings in the first place. You can't always monitor what your kids surf. You can't always take off from work when the kids go to the movies after school.
This, I'm pretty sure, is the rationale for the current age-based rating scheme. Parents feelings for what a kid of a certain age may see follows a standard distribution. Stuff that most parents feel a sub-13-yo should not view gets rated PG-13. Etc. It's easy to check someone's age. And if I feel my 10-yo is as mature as a typical 13-yo, I'll OK him to see a PG-13 flick.
Personally, I think we should come up with a GeekCode-like PICS rating system for the web. How nerdy is your site? Do you provide Unix man pages or sendmail docs online? Are you Rob Malda or Illiad? High score for you! I actually have seen a PICS scheme for something other than "nastiness" - VWP rated "Canadianness" I think.
You should go talk to the judge presiding over this case. What you're saying makes so much sense the judge would have to be a moron not to agree. Wish I'd said it as eloquently in my reply.
Specifically, Puget Sound? Too bad Redmond is behind Lynnwood. Oh well, nothing valuable in Lynnwood anyway. Let 'er rip!
You're right, in a sense. The 2nd Amendment doesn't make sense any more because it's not strong enough.
An armed militia (populace) is necessary to keep gov't from becoming tyrannous. Can you imagine what would have happened the American Revolution if George III had forbidden Americans to own guns? That's right, it wouldn't have happened. Today, owning a couple shotguns is not enough to keep gov't in check. Technology has far outstripped that. But at least we can still defend ourselves against the criminal element.
Yes, the gov't has full-time paid servicemen to defend citizens from foreign threats. But who defends citizens from internal threats? That's right, the gun owners.
This got me to thinking...what if we did live in a democracy (even a representative one)?
I think it would amount to barely contained anarchy. Man am I glad I live in a republic!
You have a very flawed perception of Christianity.
Yes, we are flawed. Do you deny that? If you do, look around, it's plainly evident in society. Fortunately, Jesus gives me hope that I can rise above that. I'm forgiven, and I find immeasurable peace and joy in that.
Turning the other cheek and loving your neighbor are things that happen because of Jesus. If it weren't for him, I'd probably be content to be selfish, because I'd be without hope of anything better. I'm not scared of God, though I fear (in the biblical sense) Him. He is holy and awesome, and worthy of love and honor.
The message of Christ has done more to influence the world for good than anything else ever has. Look at how Jesus treated women. Truly a departure from what existed at the time. Read the book of Philemon. Before you say it advocates slavery, remember that life was cheap. A slave owner would just as soon kill a slave and buy another one, yet Philemon is told to treat Onesimus as a brother. Radical. Christian churches have a long history of rescuing orphans, starting in Roman times when it was customary to expose unwanted babies to the elements for them to die. Throughout its 2000 year history the message of Christ has been raising the standard of human rights. No other person can claim to have done as much. Again, read _What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?_, especially if you think that would have been a great thing.
And to head off the obvious reply, yes, many horrible crimes have been committed in the name of Jesus too. Which just goes to prove my point that we're all sinners in need of redemption. Jesus never taught hatred, he taught love.
Have to agree here. When I saw the first PPCs I thought it was a step backwards. My 25MHz '040 ran faster than they did. It gave me a really bad impression of System 7.5 anyway. (I heard those old machines would run faster with an upgrade to OS 8.) Those PPC 601's would probably make pretty decent Linux boxen though.
Anyway, that Centris is still in service. My sister is using it. (Though she did ask me last week if she could 'upgrade' it to Windows 98. *sigh*)
Awww, pull the other one!
Do you have a link for this? If it's true, I'd love to see it.
Do you know of some legitimate technical problems with the iBooks? Everyone I've heard thinks they are really great machines. I've thought about getting one simply because I can't afford a PowerBook.
OTOH if you just don't like the rounded shape and color scheme, oh well...
Sorry to disillusion you, but basically our species is a bunch of petty, arrogant, selfish, greedy, lustful, cruel, and sinful individuals. You and Gene Roddenberry may think that eventually we'll lift ourselves up out of the mud, but it's not going to happen.
The truth is that the message of Jesus Christ has done more to improve the world than anything else in history. Read Kennedy's book, _What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?_
Actually, the US is a representative democratic republic. The Constitution did not create a democracy, but a republic. I'll admit it has mutated into what you describe, "elements of socialism" and all, but that's not what the Founders intended.
First, sorry about starting a new thread. I wanted to reply to several other posters at once.
DonkPunch said, "[...] However, the Second Amendment is one of those freedoms and the ACLU chooses to ignore or "interpret" it in a such a way that it becomes meaningless. Therefore, painting the ACLU as the Grand Defenders of the Bill of Rights omits a pretty important detail.
"[...] The high rate of imprisonment in this country continues under a Democratic administration, yet the implication is that it's the fault of Republicans."
I completely agree with you here. I tend to lean quite conservative. In fact, I think the Republicans give in to the Democrats too much, so I'm looking into the Constitution Party as an alternative. I see them as doing a better job of protecting Constitutional freedoms than the ACLU. killbill said, "I would love to join the ACLU, but not until they stop their bigoted prejudices against people of faith. If a validictorian senior wanted to quote Nietzce in her speech, the ACLU would be defending her to the death. If she wants to quote the New Testament, they would have her for dinner. I believe she should have the right to quote either." That's exactly what I mean. The framers of the Constitution were Christians, but they knew that the natural rights of mankind were universal. I have more trust that God-fearing men would have the moral fiber to protect the rights of their fellow man than men who don't acknowledge God.
TraceProgram wrote, "It goes along with what Stallman is saying about morals as well. They are defined by the society in which they are constructed (whoa I think that was circular logic there)." And that's exactly the problem. RMS may have said he doesn't believe in relativism, but any time you let society define its own morals that's exactly what you have. There must be an objective entity to set the moral/ethical standard, or you have relativism.
Let me add that I agree with RMS's basic idea of free software (I think the RIAA is wrong and needs to adapt to the times, down with UCITA, etc...), but I strongly disagree with his basic philosophy.
Also, angelo said, "The bill of rights guarantees that all are equal under law (despite its wording) and the ACLU tries to force the distinction on people." Yeah, what's up with that? The ACLU uses terms like "Afro-American" or "Hispanic-American". If anything, that's just more divisive! Hyphenation makes adjectives into part of the noun. It makes our differences into barriers rather than just adding flavoring to life. He continues, "[The second amendment] guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, but a "civil" right is the right not to get shot. The constitutional right would be the right to shoot back. Which is more important, and which is more feasable to guarantee?" Amen, brother. I want the right to defend myself. I will not give that up to someone else.
There were some more very good posts, too, but I don't have time.
Jinx put Max in space. Jinx can get Max back. Jinx put Max in space. Jinx can get Max back! Yeah, that was a fun show.
How so? As another poster has said, uploading your own copy of the song would be a pointless waste of bandwidth. It's just data. They know I have a copy and therefore can legally listen to it. What does it matter if I listen to my copy or their copy, as long as I legally own a copy? The two copies are indistinguishable...it's just data!
Right. And if I wanted to photocopy my book and store that in a vault somewhere just in case my house burned down, I could do that. I have a license to the info in that book, do I not? I paid for it. The fact that most people do not "back up" hard copy isn't an issue. You can back up digital data (if I had a book-on-CD, I could back that up in case the CD broke, right?), and that's why the music industry is screaming. They are thinking of all the replacement sales they'll lose because we no longer need physical media.
Technology is outgrowing conventional media. The world/industry needs to learn to cope with that. We live in the Information Age -- it's the information that's important, not how you access it.
This is precisely why I will never buy a machine with a built-in or software modem. OFF switch, mmmmm.
It's not the best solution, but it's better than nothing.
This is patently untrue. Apple and Amiga pioneered better UIs than Windows did. The only reason M$ came out on top is because they rode the IBM wave in the early 80's. If IBM had backed Apple's vision rather than seeing them as a competitor, we'd all be using Macs right now instead.
Still, I agree that break-up is not the best idea. I'm not saying it's bad, though. Creating an OS monopoly and a business app monopoly is no different than keeping the existing OS-and-business-app monopoly! If the DOJ really wants to encourage competition the best solution (IMO) would be forcing M$ to publish their file format standards and complete system documentation for the next 10 years. This would have two effects:
This is what hinders real competition. What do you think?
Only with the current rules for .us domains. Businesses could be allowed to use companyname.com.us. Japan and the UK do this and it works fine. Non-profits and other entities could still be required to classify under the most local subdomain they can, if that's the way the US wants its domain run.