It's hardly limited to 20 somethings, I am about twice that age and have data only, never in my life paid for tv. I would consider it if they would turn off the ads, but as long as they want me to pay them to deliver my eyeballs to their advertisers it isnt even tempting.
And what if you are a parent of young children who has no interest whatsoever in watching grown men run up and down a field fighting over a ball like little children?
Back in the day Yahoo provided a useful index of a ton of sites, with human review and higher quality than most similar sites. That was useful.
But a 'web portal' is something exists only to serve advertisers. Typically some nice but completely computer illiterate sod didnt notice a checkbox and it got set as their homepage within a few hours of turning the computer on, if it wasnt set that way by the OEM to begin with. Ever since, it has been "the first page on the internet" for these victims^wfolks and as a result they visit it frequently, and most often start 'surfing' by clicking a link from the 'portal'.
It ought to be very difficult to gather evidence of copyright infringement that is occuring non-commercially, in a private space like your own home, absolutely. It is similarly difficult to gather evidence for any number of other civil offenses that happen every day. This is normal and as long as we respect personal privacy that wont be changing. Civil law isnt supposed to control everyone at all times, only to offer judgement and compensation in cases where the harm is large enough and public enough to justify the expense of suit and to allow necessary evidence to be gathered without police powers.
"Nuclear peace" or as it was called a few decades back, MAD, works fairly well. It's sort of an extension of the old dictum that a well-armed people are a polite people. The problem is that nuclear weapons are so powerful and indiscriminate in effect that it only needs to fail once to have catastrophic effects planet-wide. This makes it very dangerous.
However the rest of the world is hardly going to give up on their nukes when the US wont. And the US pays lip-service to disarmament and the NPL but goes no further toward any real disarmament; it demonizes Iran, one of the few countries with nuclear technology that is actually a signatory to, and in compliance with, the NPL, while treating Israel, Pakistan, and India who declined to sign and went ahead and produced their own nuclear weapons instead, much better. This policy obviously makes some sense in terms of domestic politics, and that's why it's not likely to change anytime soon, but it's making the world a much more dangerous place.
The problem here isnt resources. It's will. There is no political will to change the situation in the political classes inside the worlds most heavily armed nation, and therefore everyone else, inside that nation and outside, is left to pray that MAD continues to be 100% effective. 99.9% just isnt good enough in this case.
TSG (and I was way ahead of the curve calling them that a few years ago, when they were dragging the SCO name through the mud) is the zombified shell of what was once the Linux company Caldera Systems. Several years ago they purchased most of the assets of the company which was known for years before that as SCO - the Santa Cruz Operation hence SCO.
This purchase was technically structured as a merger with a holding company involved, to produce a 'new' business called "The SCO Group", which then went berserk, forgetting its own history entirely, and attempted to create a new business model by claiming to own Linux and shaking down companies using Linux for 'license fees' supposedly owed. They wound up suing IBM and eventually losing hard, then filing bankruptcy.
Since the original threats and claims were made, through the resulting court battles and judgements, many legions of articles have been posted on this subject. Most readers are well aware of who TSG is, although certainly taking the time to add a link to an overview of some sort would have been a good move. But, that would require an editor actually editting. If you think that will happen you are definitely new here. We get short blurbs that still manage to be wrong most of the time and we like it! If you want to more accurate and in-depth information about this story try http://www.groklaw.net/
It's total nonsense in the summary actually. The vast majority of working musicians rely on payments for live performances for their profit and always have. Recording royalties have never been a significant profit source for any but a tiny minority of working musicians. The music companies pick out a tenth of a percent of musicians, often the ones with the least talent but the most willingness to do as told, and make 'stars' of them. Even those 'stars' often make little or no profit off their recordings however - even they often lose money on their recordings (on paper, using record company accounting, at least - the record company makes money off it but the artist rarely does.) It's hard to imagine how the summary could possibly be more wrong.
And, btw, my quick estimate says she is making about $160k/year on royalties alone - that is more than most of us make at a full time job, from *residuals* - this is money just coming in without her writing anything new or performing anywhere. She is doing VERY well and many, many talented musicians are out there working much harder for less money.
Never watched Opras sofa and dont give a crap what you saw there.
He's an actor, I liked some of his movies, and whether he is a loon or not isnt going to affect my appreciation of his acting, either for good or ill.
And I have seen him rant on a morning news show some time ago about psychiatry. He's not entirely wrong. Psychiatry amounts to little more than a state-supported cult, armed with police powers to enforce compliance. He is not wrong in what he is saying, but the irony is heavy, since his own cult is so similar in practice and subject to most of the same criticisms. He focuses mostly on worthless prescriptions (a problem scientology doesnt have, since they arent allowed to prescribe) but that is just a surface symptom.
Rather than listen to a scientologist who is compromised by his own cult trying to attack psychiatry, I would recommend the more robust criticism that has come from competent psychologists, starting with the link above.
For everything else, release a.tar.gz with the compiled binaries and make file with install instructions, a README and INSTALL files.
That's really all that needs to be done. I dont understand why people insist on inventing the wheel over and over again... and making it more complicated in the process.
I agree that there are a few useful things they do, and that they could and should re-arrange their business model based around that. But they havent done that and they wont do that as long as they think the money is better spent buying legislators and legislation to continue their monopolies.
"Art wouldnt exist if it wasnt commercial" is just plain wrong. If there was a magic button that forever divided art from commerce, art, music, literature would all go on.
That said what I am talking about would do nothing anywhere near as drastic as that magic button. Musicians earn the vast majority of their money from live performances. Recordings function for them as advertising and always have, and few musicians make much money on their recordings. It's the record companies that make that money - and they take vastly more than the services that they render and are actually needed today could possibly command in a free market.
And, again, "spreading the costs" is still NOT the constitutional purpose. You may see that as "consistent" with the constitutional purpose, and I might even agree to some extent, particularly if "consistent" is taken to mean "not necessarily incompatible" but that doesnt mean that this is the constitutional purpose, at best it is a concern that might not interfere with the constitutional purpose. Eyes on the ball not all its possible paths.
The reason the music industry thrived under those circumstances was that copies were inexact and difficult to make.
That's only part of why they thrived, but yes. Copying was difficult and expensive so there was a fundamental need for their services, and they were able to make great profits by serving that need.
The march of technology however has changed that, just as it has changed so many other fields over time. Copying is no longer difficult or expensive, so there is no need for the record companies services in that fundamental sense. They could adapt by finding ways to fulfill genuine needs and desires of customers that they could still provide for, but they refuse to focus on that and instead keep trying to invoke the force of law backed by our tax money to FORCE us to continue paying for services we no longer need. That is fundamentally unjust.
If the binaries were not copyrighted, a business would buy one copy (not necessarily from Microsoft) and distribute it to everybody.
They could, sure, so like the record companies, Microsoft would need to find something to do that customers actually need instead of just relying on legally enforced rent payments. Other software companies do this all the time, why shouldnt they?
Keep in mind in accord with a couple other posts in this thread they would have the option to disclose and copyright the source code to office if they want to continue to claim copyright on the binaries. As long as they are genuine reproducible machine transforms of copyrighted source code they would still be covered, you just wouldnt be able to copyright a binary qua binary. So they could continue basically undisturbed if they are willing to publish the actual texts they are claiming copyright on. Only if they refuse to do that would it then become legal for third parties to copy and patch and provide support directly to customers for these binaries. It seems only fair.
Copyright law has its flaws, and has been taken to harmful extremes, but the base principle of spreading the author's costs and profits over everybody who wants a copy works pretty well in practice. In doing that, it does serve its Constitutional purpose in the US.
I disagree that this is the basic principle. The Constitution says nothing about spreading costs or profits let alone guaranteeing profits (which is what this has evolved into.) The idea behind copyright was a bargain between private interest and the public domain. Copyright was granted only after a work was published, and the idea was a temporary monopoly to the author was supposed to encourage the author to publicly publish work that might otherwise not be published or might be published only in-house and treated as a trade secret, so that it would actually be available to enter the public domain later.
The way it is being practiced today is a farce. Companies can play it both ways, treat works as trade secrets, refrain from publishing them, ensure they will NEVER enter public domain - yet they can still claim copyright on those works as well. This is no bargain between public and private interests - it is the utter sacrifice of public interests in return for nothing whatsoever.
When, let's say, Windows 3.1 legally enters the public domain (still many decades away because of legal changes) what exactly is going to become available? Opaque binaries that only ran on long-since forgotten hardware? Nothing of use to anyone by that time.
Without a human-readable publication there shouldnt be a copyright to enforce.
I could quibble a bit but yes I think we have the same idea. If you have published code and you can demonstrate that exact binary produced from that source code then there should be some control. But if the binary doesnt match the code you published? Or you havent published any code to test? Then it shouldnt apply at all.
Copyright and trade secret protections were meant to be either or. You have to choose one. Claiming a copyright on unpublished source code and then applying it to opaque binaries no one has any way to verify just shouldnt be allowed.
Under the law at the time, these âoemusical compositionsâ â" the music and lyrics â" were subject to copyright, but the particular âoesound recordingsâ embodying the musical compositions were not; federal copyright did not cover sound recordings until 1972. So, for example, the musical composition âoeQue Sera, Seraâ written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans was copyrighted, but not Doris Dayâ(TM)s particular sound recording of that composition.
This old rule made more sense if you ask me. And notice that, despite copyright covering only 'the work' itself rather than particular instantiations of it, the music industry was still able to grow huge and make tons of money under the old law.
The software equivalent would be to hold source code copyrightable, but not binaries. And this would make even more sense.
They basically arrived stillborn anyway. I have one, they are wonderful machines, but you really have to handroll your own OS to get them working properly. A properly functioning netbook is a beautiful thing - they are tough and robust and just work. But the OS that shipped was just absurdly bad. It was a pain for me to get this thing working right - and for most of the market that meant they were just worthless.
It 'also might be interpreted' as such but only by someone who simply refuses to check sources. The fact of the matter is the words had that meaning at the time and some of the debates around the wording are even preserved so you can see for yourself exactly how it was understood. Regulated didnt acquire the secondary meaning of 'under strict but indirect government control' until later. The original meaning of 'in good order, well prepared' is still found as well, in phrases like a well-regulated machine or in the practice of regulating shotgun bores, but it has been eclipsed in usage. So the only way that argument can be made is out of ignorance or willful deception.
Under the militia acts from that date, the militia was understood to be 'all military aged males' in a given area. Trained and organised groups raised from the militia were specifically distinguished as 'select militia.'
Yes, indeed, we need to dumb linux down to the point where it is useless to us, in order to convince people that dont like it and want something entirely different... wait, why?
It's a good choice for a lot of cases. Trying to pretend you have an 'issue' with this rather than simply trying to smear me because I dared to comment on Steam negatively is just... silly.
The fact is that malware is prevalent on windows systems by design. I dont tell anyone to buy windows. I dont tell anyone they can run it without having a clue and then an antivirus will keep them safe. Microsoft and other companies do that. And I dont even work for any of those companies. I'm just the guy that cleans it up after it gets borked to put bread on the table. You got a problem with that it's your problem.
Yeah, it's kind of funny really, on win8 I can either search and try to figure out what series of magic spots to rub and click in exactly the right order to get where I am going, or I can just remember the command and win+r right to it. In a way it's kind of cool, I should really be doing that anyway, but I think by the goals the 'designers' set for themselves it's epic fail. And every 'normal user' type I have spoken to that has it... hates it.
Hello? There is no way you can be sure of that even before it was trampled since we are not talking about Free systems anyway. In the real world you make your money on what people use. People use windows and mac. They get em hosed. They need them fixed, they usually have a ton of data and no backup. Even with good backups they want to avoid the lengthy restore process if at all possible and they are a lot more concerned about that than taking the absolutely sure route in most cases. If they arent they can get a format and restore instead. Very very few takers on that.
And, gee, guess what? If the system isnt too badly hosed to get the appropriate tools working (NOT scanners much simpler things) then yes, you can find and remove just about infestation manually a lot quicker than you can reformat the hard drive (let alone trying to backup any data.)
Well, maybe not you specifically, but someone that actually knows what he is talking about on this subject can.
I dont think you understand the words you are using.
Authoritarian != Authoritative
It is authoritarian, but sound, advice, in the sense that it falls into the category of things that people just dont naturally tend to do without some older and wiser person initially forcing it. Kind of like potty training.
I will be more than happy to write out the design specifications once the money is in escrow or a job offer has been accepted. Until then, quit expecting me to do your homework for you.
Why would I want to use an interface designed for a 3 year old? Hmm? Come on.
Yes I use the command line and the function keys and I can fly around the thing when I have to. Doesnt change the fact it's just about the worst interface imaginable, and confuzzles the regular users to no end, resulting in them constantly calling me to figure out how to do the simplest of things. I am not saying previous windows interfaces were all that great, but in general people had gotten to the point of being accustomed to them at least. Breaking things for the sake of breaking things does not a good product make.
The US has a very violent culture, and has a lot of deaths by firearm and otherwise as a result. Large areas of the country DO have the laws you want and those areas are generally the most dangerous ones. The density of firearm ownership is higher in rural areas which also coincidentally have far less crime. Other countries have higher rates of firearm ownership than the US yet far less crime. One example is Sweden. Why does Sweden have fewer shootings despite having more weapons per capita? The same reason they have fewer stabbings, and fewer bludgeonings. It's a less violent culture.
A 'well regulated militia' means a general population which is armed and practiced with their arms. The founders intention was to prevent us from ever entrusting our safety to a standing army, which they considered would be a grave mistake, and their alternative to provide defense was to ensure that the populace in general would remain armed and ready to resist.
Slashdot Mirror
The relatives of somewhere around 3000 murdered Pakistanis would like a word with you about verb tenses.
It's hardly limited to 20 somethings, I am about twice that age and have data only, never in my life paid for tv. I would consider it if they would turn off the ads, but as long as they want me to pay them to deliver my eyeballs to their advertisers it isnt even tempting.
And what if you are a parent of young children who has no interest whatsoever in watching grown men run up and down a field fighting over a ball like little children?
Back in the day Yahoo provided a useful index of a ton of sites, with human review and higher quality than most similar sites. That was useful.
But a 'web portal' is something exists only to serve advertisers. Typically some nice but completely computer illiterate sod didnt notice a checkbox and it got set as their homepage within a few hours of turning the computer on, if it wasnt set that way by the OEM to begin with. Ever since, it has been "the first page on the internet" for these victims^wfolks and as a result they visit it frequently, and most often start 'surfing' by clicking a link from the 'portal'.
It ought to be very difficult to gather evidence of copyright infringement that is occuring non-commercially, in a private space like your own home, absolutely. It is similarly difficult to gather evidence for any number of other civil offenses that happen every day. This is normal and as long as we respect personal privacy that wont be changing. Civil law isnt supposed to control everyone at all times, only to offer judgement and compensation in cases where the harm is large enough and public enough to justify the expense of suit and to allow necessary evidence to be gathered without police powers.
"Nuclear peace" or as it was called a few decades back, MAD, works fairly well. It's sort of an extension of the old dictum that a well-armed people are a polite people. The problem is that nuclear weapons are so powerful and indiscriminate in effect that it only needs to fail once to have catastrophic effects planet-wide. This makes it very dangerous.
However the rest of the world is hardly going to give up on their nukes when the US wont. And the US pays lip-service to disarmament and the NPL but goes no further toward any real disarmament; it demonizes Iran, one of the few countries with nuclear technology that is actually a signatory to, and in compliance with, the NPL, while treating Israel, Pakistan, and India who declined to sign and went ahead and produced their own nuclear weapons instead, much better. This policy obviously makes some sense in terms of domestic politics, and that's why it's not likely to change anytime soon, but it's making the world a much more dangerous place.
The problem here isnt resources. It's will. There is no political will to change the situation in the political classes inside the worlds most heavily armed nation, and therefore everyone else, inside that nation and outside, is left to pray that MAD continues to be 100% effective. 99.9% just isnt good enough in this case.
TSG (and I was way ahead of the curve calling them that a few years ago, when they were dragging the SCO name through the mud) is the zombified shell of what was once the Linux company Caldera Systems. Several years ago they purchased most of the assets of the company which was known for years before that as SCO - the Santa Cruz Operation hence SCO.
This purchase was technically structured as a merger with a holding company involved, to produce a 'new' business called "The SCO Group", which then went berserk, forgetting its own history entirely, and attempted to create a new business model by claiming to own Linux and shaking down companies using Linux for 'license fees' supposedly owed. They wound up suing IBM and eventually losing hard, then filing bankruptcy.
Since the original threats and claims were made, through the resulting court battles and judgements, many legions of articles have been posted on this subject. Most readers are well aware of who TSG is, although certainly taking the time to add a link to an overview of some sort would have been a good move. But, that would require an editor actually editting. If you think that will happen you are definitely new here. We get short blurbs that still manage to be wrong most of the time and we like it! If you want to more accurate and in-depth information about this story try http://www.groklaw.net/
It's total nonsense in the summary actually. The vast majority of working musicians rely on payments for live performances for their profit and always have. Recording royalties have never been a significant profit source for any but a tiny minority of working musicians. The music companies pick out a tenth of a percent of musicians, often the ones with the least talent but the most willingness to do as told, and make 'stars' of them. Even those 'stars' often make little or no profit off their recordings however - even they often lose money on their recordings (on paper, using record company accounting, at least - the record company makes money off it but the artist rarely does.) It's hard to imagine how the summary could possibly be more wrong.
And, btw, my quick estimate says she is making about $160k/year on royalties alone - that is more than most of us make at a full time job, from *residuals* - this is money just coming in without her writing anything new or performing anywhere. She is doing VERY well and many, many talented musicians are out there working much harder for less money.
Never watched Opras sofa and dont give a crap what you saw there.
He's an actor, I liked some of his movies, and whether he is a loon or not isnt going to affect my appreciation of his acting, either for good or ill.
And I have seen him rant on a morning news show some time ago about psychiatry. He's not entirely wrong. Psychiatry amounts to little more than a state-supported cult, armed with police powers to enforce compliance. He is not wrong in what he is saying, but the irony is heavy, since his own cult is so similar in practice and subject to most of the same criticisms. He focuses mostly on worthless prescriptions (a problem scientology doesnt have, since they arent allowed to prescribe) but that is just a surface symptom.
Rather than listen to a scientologist who is compromised by his own cult trying to attack psychiatry, I would recommend the more robust criticism that has come from competent psychologists, starting with the link above.
That's really all that needs to be done. I dont understand why people insist on inventing the wheel over and over again... and making it more complicated in the process.
I agree that there are a few useful things they do, and that they could and should re-arrange their business model based around that. But they havent done that and they wont do that as long as they think the money is better spent buying legislators and legislation to continue their monopolies.
"Art wouldnt exist if it wasnt commercial" is just plain wrong. If there was a magic button that forever divided art from commerce, art, music, literature would all go on.
That said what I am talking about would do nothing anywhere near as drastic as that magic button. Musicians earn the vast majority of their money from live performances. Recordings function for them as advertising and always have, and few musicians make much money on their recordings. It's the record companies that make that money - and they take vastly more than the services that they render and are actually needed today could possibly command in a free market.
And, again, "spreading the costs" is still NOT the constitutional purpose. You may see that as "consistent" with the constitutional purpose, and I might even agree to some extent, particularly if "consistent" is taken to mean "not necessarily incompatible" but that doesnt mean that this is the constitutional purpose, at best it is a concern that might not interfere with the constitutional purpose. Eyes on the ball not all its possible paths.
That's only part of why they thrived, but yes. Copying was difficult and expensive so there was a fundamental need for their services, and they were able to make great profits by serving that need.
The march of technology however has changed that, just as it has changed so many other fields over time. Copying is no longer difficult or expensive, so there is no need for the record companies services in that fundamental sense. They could adapt by finding ways to fulfill genuine needs and desires of customers that they could still provide for, but they refuse to focus on that and instead keep trying to invoke the force of law backed by our tax money to FORCE us to continue paying for services we no longer need. That is fundamentally unjust.
They could, sure, so like the record companies, Microsoft would need to find something to do that customers actually need instead of just relying on legally enforced rent payments. Other software companies do this all the time, why shouldnt they?
Keep in mind in accord with a couple other posts in this thread they would have the option to disclose and copyright the source code to office if they want to continue to claim copyright on the binaries. As long as they are genuine reproducible machine transforms of copyrighted source code they would still be covered, you just wouldnt be able to copyright a binary qua binary. So they could continue basically undisturbed if they are willing to publish the actual texts they are claiming copyright on. Only if they refuse to do that would it then become legal for third parties to copy and patch and provide support directly to customers for these binaries. It seems only fair.
I disagree that this is the basic principle. The Constitution says nothing about spreading costs or profits let alone guaranteeing profits (which is what this has evolved into.) The idea behind copyright was a bargain between private interest and the public domain. Copyright was granted only after a work was published, and the idea was a temporary monopoly to the author was supposed to encourage the author to publicly publish work that might otherwise not be published or might be published only in-house and treated as a trade secret, so that it would actually be available to enter the public domain later.
The way it is being practiced today is a farce. Companies can play it both ways, treat works as trade secrets, refrain from publishing them, ensure they will NEVER enter public domain - yet they can still claim copyright on those works as well. This is no bargain between public and private interests - it is the utter sacrifice of public interests in return for nothing whatsoever.
When, let's say, Windows 3.1 legally enters the public domain (still many decades away because of legal changes) what exactly is going to become available? Opaque binaries that only ran on long-since forgotten hardware? Nothing of use to anyone by that time.
Without a human-readable publication there shouldnt be a copyright to enforce.
I could quibble a bit but yes I think we have the same idea. If you have published code and you can demonstrate that exact binary produced from that source code then there should be some control. But if the binary doesnt match the code you published? Or you havent published any code to test? Then it shouldnt apply at all.
Copyright and trade secret protections were meant to be either or. You have to choose one. Claiming a copyright on unpublished source code and then applying it to opaque binaries no one has any way to verify just shouldnt be allowed.
This old rule made more sense if you ask me. And notice that, despite copyright covering only 'the work' itself rather than particular instantiations of it, the music industry was still able to grow huge and make tons of money under the old law.
The software equivalent would be to hold source code copyrightable, but not binaries. And this would make even more sense.
They basically arrived stillborn anyway. I have one, they are wonderful machines, but you really have to handroll your own OS to get them working properly. A properly functioning netbook is a beautiful thing - they are tough and robust and just work. But the OS that shipped was just absurdly bad. It was a pain for me to get this thing working right - and for most of the market that meant they were just worthless.
It 'also might be interpreted' as such but only by someone who simply refuses to check sources. The fact of the matter is the words had that meaning at the time and some of the debates around the wording are even preserved so you can see for yourself exactly how it was understood. Regulated didnt acquire the secondary meaning of 'under strict but indirect government control' until later. The original meaning of 'in good order, well prepared' is still found as well, in phrases like a well-regulated machine or in the practice of regulating shotgun bores, but it has been eclipsed in usage. So the only way that argument can be made is out of ignorance or willful deception.
Under the militia acts from that date, the militia was understood to be 'all military aged males' in a given area. Trained and organised groups raised from the militia were specifically distinguished as 'select militia.'
Yes, indeed, we need to dumb linux down to the point where it is useless to us, in order to convince people that dont like it and want something entirely different... wait, why?
It's a good choice for a lot of cases. Trying to pretend you have an 'issue' with this rather than simply trying to smear me because I dared to comment on Steam negatively is just... silly.
The fact is that malware is prevalent on windows systems by design. I dont tell anyone to buy windows. I dont tell anyone they can run it without having a clue and then an antivirus will keep them safe. Microsoft and other companies do that. And I dont even work for any of those companies. I'm just the guy that cleans it up after it gets borked to put bread on the table. You got a problem with that it's your problem.
Yeah, it's kind of funny really, on win8 I can either search and try to figure out what series of magic spots to rub and click in exactly the right order to get where I am going, or I can just remember the command and win+r right to it. In a way it's kind of cool, I should really be doing that anyway, but I think by the goals the 'designers' set for themselves it's epic fail. And every 'normal user' type I have spoken to that has it... hates it.
Hello? There is no way you can be sure of that even before it was trampled since we are not talking about Free systems anyway. In the real world you make your money on what people use. People use windows and mac. They get em hosed. They need them fixed, they usually have a ton of data and no backup. Even with good backups they want to avoid the lengthy restore process if at all possible and they are a lot more concerned about that than taking the absolutely sure route in most cases. If they arent they can get a format and restore instead. Very very few takers on that.
And, gee, guess what? If the system isnt too badly hosed to get the appropriate tools working (NOT scanners much simpler things) then yes, you can find and remove just about infestation manually a lot quicker than you can reformat the hard drive (let alone trying to backup any data.)
Well, maybe not you specifically, but someone that actually knows what he is talking about on this subject can.
I dont think you understand the words you are using.
Authoritarian != Authoritative
It is authoritarian, but sound, advice, in the sense that it falls into the category of things that people just dont naturally tend to do without some older and wiser person initially forcing it. Kind of like potty training.
I will be more than happy to write out the design specifications once the money is in escrow or a job offer has been accepted. Until then, quit expecting me to do your homework for you.
Why would I want to use an interface designed for a 3 year old? Hmm? Come on.
Yes I use the command line and the function keys and I can fly around the thing when I have to. Doesnt change the fact it's just about the worst interface imaginable, and confuzzles the regular users to no end, resulting in them constantly calling me to figure out how to do the simplest of things. I am not saying previous windows interfaces were all that great, but in general people had gotten to the point of being accustomed to them at least. Breaking things for the sake of breaking things does not a good product make.
The metaphysical bank called - your check bounced.
If even a small percentage of the school staff had been carrying concealed weapons the death toll would have been lower. Most likely much lower.
The US has a very violent culture, and has a lot of deaths by firearm and otherwise as a result. Large areas of the country DO have the laws you want and those areas are generally the most dangerous ones. The density of firearm ownership is higher in rural areas which also coincidentally have far less crime. Other countries have higher rates of firearm ownership than the US yet far less crime. One example is Sweden. Why does Sweden have fewer shootings despite having more weapons per capita? The same reason they have fewer stabbings, and fewer bludgeonings. It's a less violent culture.
A 'well regulated militia' means a general population which is armed and practiced with their arms. The founders intention was to prevent us from ever entrusting our safety to a standing army, which they considered would be a grave mistake, and their alternative to provide defense was to ensure that the populace in general would remain armed and ready to resist.