I'd never understod this hate-your-ex-thing? The person where part of your life for some time but you have decided to hate it and want to erase it from it?
There's nothing quite like the crushing anguish of being used, deceived, betrayed, lied to, and cheated on by someone you are in love with and trust implicitly.
You can't easily 'cherish' the once happy memories because they are all tainted by your exes deceipt.
Imagine your father or uncle died, and you have all these memories of going to the beach together. When you recall these memories or see those photos its bittersweet; they are happy memories, but they remind you he's passed away, and that's a painful memory. This isn't like that.
This is something else entirely, its like finding out that he was a pedophile and took you to the beach because he liked to take pictures of you in a bathing suit. Suddenly those 'good memories' are repulsive and make you sick to the stomach. Seeing those 'happy memory' pictures just reminds you of the betrayal.
All the hugs... all the times he smiled at you, they are tainted forever.
Better never get a partner then at all if you are going to hate the person once it doesn't work longer.
No, better to risk it. You don't KNOW its going to end. And you don't KNOW that its going to end in lies. Lots of people break up amicably after all.
The key, unsurprisingly, is honesty. If both people are honest about their feelings throughout the relationship and it ultimately ends, it may still be very painful and disappointing for one or both people, but the entire history isn't tainted by betrayal. There is a very decent chance that once you get over it you can recall the good times fondly, and even be friends.
Uh... Xbox360 had a 1 year head start, and they are neck and neck *today*, at less than a year after the Wii launched.
That's like putting a toddler against an adult in the 100 yard dash, but giving the toddler a 20 second headstart. Sure at 25 seconds they're 'neck and neck'. But that's a pretty meaningless thing to say. At 26 the adult's left the toddler far behind, and at 30 the race is over and the toddlers still crossing the halfway mark.
The Wii is selling overall more than twice as fast as the Xbox and PS3 *combined*.
The 'PS3 flounders' is relative to the Wii, but everything flounders relative to the Wii (except the DS).
The PS3 relative to the xbox 360 is actually doing 'ok'. Its well behind it, but the 360 had a big head start. The PS3 is outselling the 360 right now by a respectable margin (although the recent 360 price in NA cut has (proabably temporarily) spiked sales to around 85% of what the PS3 is averaging.
It will be a long time yet, if ever, before the PS3 overtakes the 360; however that's pretty much what you expect when you pit two nearly equal challengers but give one a year long head start. Point is, the PS3 is proving to be a 'nearly equal challenger' to the 360. By some standards that makes it a flop -- like if you compare it to the Wii (which is a rampant unmitigated success), or if you compare it to the total dominance the PS2 enjoyed 'last generation', but frankly, the worst you can say about the PS3 is that its doing about as well as the 360.
Real hard core gamers make up their own game systems and game worlds.
Only slightly less hard core people rape, pillage, and convert their vast piles of source materials from a diverse set of game systems and versions thereof. The good ones can do most of it on the fly.
That's half the point of p&p rpgs and why their translations to the computer have been relatively weak and unsatisfying, at best capturing the numbers game of equipment design and basic combat.
Seriously if your problem with D&D is that a setting is 'missing' or 'wrong', the problem is you.
Seeing as Mercury, Allstate, or Geico are all private insurance companies, I'm not sure I follow your argument. All you are saying is that insuring research can't be done by a small entity. We agree on that.
There are lots of large entities perfectly capable of handling the job.
Consider that we have many corporations that are larger than many governments -- if those governments are large enough to manage basic research in their respective countries -- and they ARE, then the corporations are large enough too.
Truth is, Alienware doesn't put anything in their systems that you can't buy and install yourself for half the price.
Not entirely true. At one point in time at least, they were one of the very few places to get a really performance oriented gamer friendly laptop.
The offerings from HP, Toshiba, IBM, etc at the time simple weren't in the same league and/or the options were extemely limited, and you usually had to compromise more. Building it yourself was pretty much not an option (and still isn't).
But as for their desktop line, yeah, it was nothing you couldn't build yourself for less. I don't disagree with you there. But that's true of every brand-name PC-builder.
Alienware isn't for computer enthusiasts,
Right. Computer enthusiasts build their own.
it's for spoiled kids that think they know something about computers because they can recite technical specifications off of a website.
Say what? No. Its for *gaming enthusiasts* who want to buy computers that are going to be good for playing games, without having to become a 'computer enthusiast' to do it.
Not everyone who wants silky smooth responsiveness in state of the art games wants to know how to swap a CPU, install an aftermarket heatsink, set memory timings, or choose a power-supply. They just want to play. Alienware satisfied that niche quite nicely.
First, I fully support federal funding of science, so I am on your side.
But you lose your argument to a libertarian as soon as you equate it to an insurance scheme - at which point the obvious question is why can't a private sector company operate fundamental research exactly like an insurance firm?
And, in fact, why not let insurance firms insure private research programs to mitigate the risk of a complete loss, in the same way individual farmers invest in crop insurance...
Now, for my part, I am NOT a libertarian, and think they are in general dead wrong. I agree with them in that I think the existing system of government is massively flawed, but I don't think the private sector is a better solution, and in many cases I think its *worse*.
I think we need to FIX government, not eliminate it.
So did TFA. I'm just reframing it. All questions are framed. And the way I've framed it reflects the reality of what is going on.
The opensource community judges companies on the *direction* they are going. A closed source proprietary shop adding an opensource branch is moving TOWARDS the FOSS 'ideal' -- so they get praised. An open source shop adding a proprietary branch is moving AWAY from that ideal -- so they get criticized.
And they aren't being criticized for doing an end-run around the GPL. They are just being generally criticized for moving away from FOSS software. (A few wacko's aside.)
The entire criticism is that the community continually cites the text of the GPL as their standard, yet a sizable, or at least vocal, fraction of that community launches into histrionics when a company follows the text of the GPL without following "the spirit of the GPL."
1) There are more diverse groups that use the GPL than one can count. While its true, there are some that think all GPL code should be freely available to everyone, that is not, and never has been the reality. And nobody (important) doesn't understand that.
(That said, since anyone who acquires GPL code may freely redistribute it, charging a lot for GPL code and making a big to-do about it is just asking to have people band together and buy a copy and then excercise their right to redistribute it.)
2) There is a separate category of 'obeying the letter of the GPL' and, yes, people are offended when people use 'convenants' or 'drm' to make an end run around your LICENSE, effectively denying you the very rights it gave you.
ie Sure YOU have the right to the code, and if you modify it or give it away as is your RIGHT, we won't come after you... but we'll sue the asses off anyone you give it to!
Or... sure, YOU have the right to modify the code, here you go! have at it! But you load that modified code we sold you on the device we sold you and we'll make sure you go to jail for violating the DMCA!
That sort of stuff IS contemptible, and worthy of criticism.
False analogy; nothing is "broken". You are left with the same system you always had before the decision to close it off. Wasn't the whole idea of open source meant to protect against this, i.e. if the project dies, the code can still be maintained?
You're reading far too much into it. Its simply the matter that the FOSS community thinks software should be 'X'. When a company moves toward that ideal, it gets praised. When it moves away from that ideal it gets criticised. This isn't complicated.
But here we see the real reasoning behind your argument; attaching a morality to code. If only I had so little problems as to search for what is morally right in such remote unconsequential places.
Not really. The FOSS community judges a company based on the direction its moving, not on where it 'is'.
Because the companies cited in the article have or are striving to have the same business model -- a community branch and an enterprise branch but are criticized solely from where they start from.
That's a double standard in the same way that praising a doctor that restores function to the upper half of a completely paralysed man and critising the bastard that goes around breaking peoples lower spines to create half paralyzed men is a double standard.
After all both are trying to give people the same level of function; how dare we assess their merit based soley from where they start from?
There is nothing inconsistent about praising people for opening up a little bit, while condemning those that close down a little bit. We praise ANY move towards openness, and condemn ANY move away from it. How is that a double standard.
Allow me to illustrate using the oft neglected fruit analagy:
I gleefully watch my strawberry plants grow little fruit that ripen into perfect sweet strawberries, but watch me complain when my delicious strawberries start rotting and become ever less their original strawberry goodness.
Why oh why do I praise the things as they become ripe, but criticise them as they rot! I am such a hypocrit. Hmm.
Gee, I wonder why Microsoft wouldn't offer a corporate (volume license) edition of Media Center.
Right. Because corporations don't use Media.
They aren't in the market for computers that can play video. Or be controlled with a remote control at presentations, because they only present spreadsheets and pie charts. No stock broker monitors the news channels. Hell, even the companies that MAKE music videos, commercials, movies, television shows, etc...they just use computers to work on spreadsheets and pie charts 24x7... well 24x7 minus the time they are Blue-Screened waiting for IT to show up.
I think it's clear that the biggest threat to our existence as a species is our own selves, if we can't solve that problem how does going off into space help?
It helps on two levels:
1) We're assured surviving an asteroid hit, or other planet-busting catastrophe (whether natural or man-made).
2) An expansion into space may not SOLVE humanity's tendency to fight, but it might buy us enough time that we might solve them before some wacko destroys the planet taking us ALL out in one fell sweep. IE by expanding into space, even if some wacko does pull the trigger its not game over for humanity.
I'm sure pointing out to the judge that you don't have a DL will be a point in your favor.
No. It makes no difference.
This is why rental car companies require you to sign waivers authorizing them to bill you if they receive any automated tickets if you rent in areas where they have these systems. Because, the rental car companies, ie the -corporation- itself, which not only doesn't have a drivers license, but is utterly incapable of driving a vehicle were being held responsible for paying the tickets.
And they were unable to effectively nominate the driver even though they knew who it was -- because the driver rented it six months ago while on vacation from a foreign country.
by arguing with someone who obviously does not agree with you, in a 2-day old thread that no one is reading anymore?
Yeah, but what I can't figure out is WHY you don't agree. That's what kept me interested.
That's exactly what the state is worried about. If he does find a bug and is acquitted, suddenly every DUI conviction using data provided this device has to be thrown out. The state doesn't really care about releasing the source code, it cares about maintaining the convictions.
If they were convicted by evidence from defective equipment, it SHOULD be thrown out. That is a founding principle of our system of justice. We as a society prefer that the guilty walk rather than imprison the innocent; or at least we as a society used to think that... and I still do... but I don't think I speak for society anymore.:(
That said, even I don't think a found bug should be an automatic acquittal. After all it could be reading lower than it should have been! But yeah, if they find a bug that caused it to read double the actual amount under various circumstances then I would have no qualms about throwing out any DUI convictions it caused.
On the other hand, what if he finds a bug? I'd let this guy off the hook in exchange for improving the software so that it works better in the future. And if he can't find a bug, he still gets convicted.
Really this seems like a win-win for everyone involved.
Then that's the law. Obey it, or face the penalties. I'm sure murderers thing laws against murder are unjust.
What exactly is your point? That only people in contradiction with laws may find them unjust? Well, that's absurd, and irrelevant as well as I am not a red light runner; and yet I STILL think automated enforcement is unjust.
Driving is a privledge, not a Right.
Your arguments are becoming increasingly irrational. This isn't about driving, so this is completely irrelevant. One doesn't even have to have a valid drivers license to be penalized by this law. All I have to do is OWN one that other people drive.
Don't like it? Change the law.
Well DUH! So here I am explaining why I think its a bad law, why I think its an unjust law, to bring more people around to my point of view. This is how laws get changed in a democracy.
So what's the problem? You don't want to 'rat' on your friend or family? Then pay the price for protecting the guilty.
1) If I receive a ticket months from now, I don't know which of several drivers it might have been. If its a nearby common intersection, I wouldn't even know if it was or was not me. If I am vacationing in Thailand, how am I supposed to know which of my kids was driving that day?
2) And even if I do know who it is I should not have to report them to avoid a default conviction. That is not justice.
Then hire that same lawyer to get yourself out of the red light ticket.
On what grounds exactly? The law clearly says that the owner of the vehicle shall be ticketed, regardless of whether the owner even committed the violation. There is no room to manoever; their is no threshold that you commited the crime beyond a resonable doubt -- it *doesn't matter* if you weren't the driver and can't remember who was driving because you were on a month long trip to Thailand when it happened.
Its an unjust law. But because the only penalty is a 'fine', its been ruled 'not unconstitutional', and falls under the same category as parking violations, where they ticket the 'car'.
They had me until they suggested encouraging students to use social netorking sites. The day my child gets a myspace assignment is going to be a bad day for the school. Not because I think myspace is "dangerous", but because I think its total fucking brain rot.
The following FHWA study concluded that the red-light cameras result in a 1-40% (the majority declined close to 30%...
Sorry for the double response, but this occurred to me after the fact. I'm curious to know what effect the FINE had on the impact of camera enforcement.
in other words:
Would doubling the fine make the camera's twice as effecitve? Would halving make the camera's half as effective? What if the camera's merely sent out warning notices instead of actual fines? Would be they be completely inneffective?
Somehow, I think that dramatic improvements could be made with mere warnings, especially if they regularly manned the cameras as well and pulled over drivers on the spot. (e.g. where an officer links up to the camera beyond the intersection and tickets drivers in person, using the camera to identify them, and as evidence against them.)
I suspect most of the advantages of the cameras would be realized, and the system would would be much more just, as during enforcement the actual drivers would be ticketed directly, on the spot. Would knowing the camera was there and might be manned be nearly the same deterrent? I think quite possibly it would.
This officer also told me that these cameras are the safest way to enforce red lights. It's exceptionally hard for an officer to catch these people, because the officer 1) has to be able to see the light, 2) has to be in the front rank of cars, and 3) often as not would have to run the light themselves, which would be more dangerous than just letting the guy go. You can put an officer at each corner of the intersection, but that's manpower intensive
Or you can equip the intersection with a camera, but have it manned by a single officer who uses it to identify who to pull over, and as evidence against them. This dodges all 3 issues:
1) The police office does not have to see the light. The camera provides the evidence. 2) The police officer does not have to be in the front rank of cars. He can be stationed anywhere. 3) The police officer does not have to run the light himself. He can even be safely stationed out of sight, past the intersection.
4) It is not manpower intensive. It can be done by a single officer.
And as a bonus, when the camera is not being manned it can used to send out notices to people who ran the light. Sort of a hey, did you know you ran this light, and had it been manned you would have been charged.
Point is I don't have anything against camera assisted enforcement, I have a problem with automatic camera enforcement that targets the owner of a vehicle, where you are only even notified of a violation you may not even know has happened months after it happened, where you are responsible even if you weren't driving. (responsible for either paying the ticket or nominating someone else to pay the ticket.)
Add in the fact that SUV bumpers sit at the height of the head of the occupant of a car and you have a recipe for disaster involving serious and quite often fatal head injuries
Interesting that the design of a certain type of vehicle with a bumper height right at head level is contributing to fatalities yet nowhere do you suggest that perhaps these vehicles are a big part of the problem, that perhaps SUVs ought to be required to ride lower, at least when on road, and/or at highway speeds.
Seems a no brainer to me.
Police officers swear by the reduction in accidents and the crash statistics are clear that red-light cameras save lives and reduce the costs of accidents.
I don't deny the effectiveness. However the cameras, by targeting owners not drivers, are fundamentally unjust. Just think of all the lives and injuries that could be saved if we banned guns and sports. Just because it would reduce injuries, doesn't mean its a good idea.
You want some just solutions:
Build an overpass or a round-about (T-Bone's don't occur if there is NO RIGHT ANGLE INTERSECTION). Have an arm come down like at railway crossings. Enforce it in person so that an officer pulls over offending vehicles and tickets the DRIVER. The officer is free to use a red-light camera to identify drivers, and to use as evidence.
Are you so thick headed you cannot comprehend the greater purpose behind the humble red light camera
The stated greater purpose, is to prevent red light running, to increase safety. And it may well even succeed at that.
I also know how they work. A picture is taken, while the right is red, of your vehicle outside the intersection, then a 2nd picture is taken, while the right is red, of your vehicle inside the intersection, proving that the vehcle entered the intersection while the light was red. (And thus not catching people who entered on a green/yellow and who had to wait until the light changed before exitting.
I have no dispute with the methodology used to identify which vehicles run red lights. The issue I have with red light cameras is that they are 'unjust' and that trumps everything including 'effective'.
I expect you would respond with all the fringe situations in which you think you have no choice but to run a red light
You would be wrong, I agree that if you ran a red with a valid reason (of which there are few but they do exist), the court may well drop the issue.
or suck it up and pay because you broke a law for the common good of society
The issue I have is that what happens if I didn't break the law, if it wasn't me driving? Why exactly should I have to pay for that?! Why am I guilty by default - unless I find someone else to pin the crime on. And if I can't remember who drove the vehicle that day several months ago, whether it was me or someone else, I'm automatically guilty.
That is not just.
I am ALL for red light enforcement, and I would be HAPPY to see red light camera's used in tandem with an officer to pull over the offending vehicle and ticket the DRIVER, right there on the spot.
Its also worth mentioning that I am far more opposed to speed enforcement than red light enforcement by automated camera. Perhaps because speed enforcement feels more like entrapment; society and traffic flow treat speed limits more as control parameters than actual limits; and the flow of traffic inevitably both drops below and surges past them, making us all criminals.
Now what would you say if your 'helmetless' sister died from preventable head injuries suffered because some moron ran a red light and legged it, never to be found? Morbid, yes, but it's all just revenue until it's too late right.
What if my 'helmetless' sister died from chest injuries (say a rib puncture to the lung) that could have been prevented had she only been wearing a kevlar vest? Kevlar vests for all cyclists? But what if she was crossing the interection on foot? - pedestrians to start wearing helmets and kevlar too?
Maybe if the red-light runner had been PULLED the fuck over two intersections back or even two days back for driving poorly the driver would have gotten a wake up call and my sister would have been saved. Instead he's just going to get a bill for $150 bucks a couple months after the fact, which his dad will end up paying because its actually his truck, and he has 3 kids all of which borrow it.
What would I do? Clearly, if I want to save lives, I would ban cars. Its the only way to be sure.
Now obviously that's an unreasonable step. So how about things like in-person traffic enforcement. Improving the design of dangerous intersections "traffic shaping", pedestrian overpasses, etc. And like I said, give the officer a red light camera to help him do enforcement. I'm not against cameras. I'm against default-responsibility arriving in the mail for a violation you might not even have committed a few months ago.
Even those photos that showed the front of the car were hardly a clear picture of the driver. But regardless, we agree that there usually isn't a clear picture of the driver.
Have you ever tried a sworn affidavit saying you were NOT the driver?
Around here, if you don't 'nominate the driver' (their words), you pay the fine. Period. They don't actually need the driver, and in the absence of a nominated driver, the owner is responsible. If you give them the driver, they'll go after the driver, but otherwise its your problem.
And if you give them the driver, the driver is fucked, because now they have a witness (you) offering positive identification. Around here, that means they put 'points' on their license. If they just have the owner, they don't give the owner points, because their is no positive identification of the driver. So, if you rat out your family, the penalty actually goes up... fine + points for them vs just fine for you.
You should know who was driving your car on the given day and time. If not, think of the ticket as a penalty for being dumb.
I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to know who was driving one of the family cars 3 months ago at a given time of day. And even if I do know I shouldn't have to nominate them to avoid being fined for a crime I didn't commit.
Look at it this way- if a gun registered in your name was used to kill someone, don't you think the cops would arrest you? They have evidence you were involved. If you can prove you sold the gun to someone else, they'll let you go and arrest that person instead.
Interesting example. However, no, they won't automatically arrest you. They WILL come and question you, and they'll likely even bring a warrant because they have reasonable cause to believe you were involved, it being your gun and all. But ultimately unless they have reason to actually beleive it was you, beyond it being your gun they won't arrest and charge you -- and even if they did, your defense lawyer would tear the case in half if all they had was a bullet match to your gun. To be put in the position of choosing between a conviction and identifying the real killer yourself represents a serious miscarriage of justice; police interrogation techniques 'as seen on TV' notwithstanding.
Now, in the case of murder, its true in some cases that if you do know who committed the murder and won't speak, you can be charged with accessory to murder, but that's an entirely separate issue. And in that case they have to prove you deliberately lied to them... merely not knowing who used the gun is NOT accessory to murder.
With red light running, thankfully, its not so serious a crime, because they can pretty much automatically convict you on the basis of a photo of your vehicle, unless you nominate the real driver. But its still a miscarriage of justice.
Slashdot Mirror
Hint: 'due diligence' isn't posing the question to the 'slashdot community'.
I'd never understod this hate-your-ex-thing? The person where part of your life for some time but you have decided to hate it and want to erase it from it?
There's nothing quite like the crushing anguish of being used, deceived, betrayed, lied to, and cheated on by someone you are in love with and trust implicitly.
You can't easily 'cherish' the once happy memories because they are all tainted by your exes deceipt.
Imagine your father or uncle died, and you have all these memories of going to the beach together. When you recall these memories or see those photos its bittersweet; they are happy memories, but they remind you he's passed away, and that's a painful memory. This isn't like that.
This is something else entirely, its like finding out that he was a pedophile and took you to the beach because he liked to take pictures of you in a bathing suit. Suddenly those 'good memories' are repulsive and make you sick to the stomach. Seeing those 'happy memory' pictures just reminds you of the betrayal.
All the hugs... all the times he smiled at you, they are tainted forever.
Better never get a partner then at all if you are going to hate the person once it doesn't work longer.
No, better to risk it. You don't KNOW its going to end. And you don't KNOW that its going to end in lies. Lots of people break up amicably after all.
The key, unsurprisingly, is honesty. If both people are honest about their feelings throughout the relationship and it ultimately ends, it may still be very painful and disappointing for one or both people, but the entire history isn't tainted by betrayal. There is a very decent chance that once you get over it you can recall the good times fondly, and even be friends.
Uh... Xbox360 had a 1 year head start, and they are neck and neck *today*, at less than a year after the Wii launched.
That's like putting a toddler against an adult in the 100 yard dash, but giving the toddler a 20 second headstart. Sure at 25 seconds they're 'neck and neck'. But that's a pretty meaningless thing to say. At 26 the adult's left the toddler far behind, and at 30 the race is over and the toddlers still crossing the halfway mark.
The Wii is selling overall more than twice as fast as the Xbox and PS3 *combined*.
The 'PS3 flounders' is relative to the Wii, but everything flounders relative to the Wii (except the DS).
The PS3 relative to the xbox 360 is actually doing 'ok'. Its well behind it, but the 360 had a big head start. The PS3 is outselling the 360 right now by a respectable margin (although the recent 360 price in NA cut has (proabably temporarily) spiked sales to around 85% of what the PS3 is averaging.
It will be a long time yet, if ever, before the PS3 overtakes the 360; however that's pretty much what you expect when you pit two nearly equal challengers but give one a year long head start. Point is, the PS3 is proving to be a 'nearly equal challenger' to the 360. By some standards that makes it a flop -- like if you compare it to the Wii (which is a rampant unmitigated success), or if you compare it to the total dominance the PS2 enjoyed 'last generation', but frankly, the worst you can say about the PS3 is that its doing about as well as the 360.
Or just use a VM and elect not to commit changes when you shut it down. Then generating coupons is as easy as rebooting the VM.
VirtualPC 2007... a tool to violate the DMCA.
they will get the hard core gamers to come back.
Real hard core gamers make up their own game systems and game worlds.
Only slightly less hard core people rape, pillage, and convert their vast piles of source materials from a diverse set of game systems and versions thereof. The good ones can do most of it on the fly.
That's half the point of p&p rpgs and why their translations to the computer have been relatively weak and unsatisfying, at best capturing the numbers game of equipment design and basic combat.
Seriously if your problem with D&D is that a setting is 'missing' or 'wrong', the problem is you.
Seeing as Mercury, Allstate, or Geico are all private insurance companies, I'm not sure I follow your argument. All you are saying is that insuring research can't be done by a small entity. We agree on that.
There are lots of large entities perfectly capable of handling the job.
Consider that we have many corporations that are larger than many governments -- if those governments are large enough to manage basic research in their respective countries -- and they ARE, then the corporations are large enough too.
Truth is, Alienware doesn't put anything in their systems that you can't buy and install yourself for half the price.
Not entirely true. At one point in time at least, they were one of the very few places to get a really performance oriented gamer friendly laptop.
The offerings from HP, Toshiba, IBM, etc at the time simple weren't in the same league and/or the options were extemely limited, and you usually had to compromise more. Building it yourself was pretty much not an option (and still isn't).
But as for their desktop line, yeah, it was nothing you couldn't build yourself for less. I don't disagree with you there. But that's true of every brand-name PC-builder.
Alienware isn't for computer enthusiasts,
Right. Computer enthusiasts build their own.
it's for spoiled kids that think they know something about computers because they can recite technical specifications off of a website.
Say what? No. Its for *gaming enthusiasts* who want to buy computers that are going to be good for playing games, without having to become a 'computer enthusiast' to do it.
Not everyone who wants silky smooth responsiveness in state of the art games wants to know how to swap a CPU, install an aftermarket heatsink, set memory timings, or choose a power-supply. They just want to play. Alienware satisfied that niche quite nicely.
First, I fully support federal funding of science, so I am on your side.
But you lose your argument to a libertarian as soon as you equate it to an insurance scheme - at which point the obvious question is why can't a private sector company operate fundamental research exactly like an insurance firm?
And, in fact, why not let insurance firms insure private research programs to mitigate the risk of a complete loss, in the same way individual farmers invest in crop insurance...
Now, for my part, I am NOT a libertarian, and think they are in general dead wrong. I agree with them in that I think the existing system of government is massively flawed, but I don't think the private sector is a better solution, and in many cases I think its *worse*.
I think we need to FIX government, not eliminate it.
That is an example of framing the question
So did TFA. I'm just reframing it. All questions are framed. And the way I've framed it reflects the reality of what is going on.
The opensource community judges companies on the *direction* they are going. A closed source proprietary shop adding an opensource branch is moving TOWARDS the FOSS 'ideal' -- so they get praised. An open source shop adding a proprietary branch is moving AWAY from that ideal -- so they get criticized.
And they aren't being criticized for doing an end-run around the GPL. They are just being generally criticized for moving away from FOSS software. (A few wacko's aside.)
The entire criticism is that the community continually cites the text of the GPL as their standard, yet a sizable, or at least vocal, fraction of that community launches into histrionics when a company follows the text of the GPL without following "the spirit of the GPL."
1) There are more diverse groups that use the GPL than one can count. While its true, there are some that think all GPL code should be freely available to everyone, that is not, and never has been the reality. And nobody (important) doesn't understand that.
(That said, since anyone who acquires GPL code may freely redistribute it, charging a lot for GPL code and making a big to-do about it is just asking to have people band together and buy a copy and then excercise their right to redistribute it.)
2) There is a separate category of 'obeying the letter of the GPL' and, yes, people are offended when people use 'convenants' or 'drm' to make an end run around your LICENSE, effectively denying you the very rights it gave you.
ie Sure YOU have the right to the code, and if you modify it or give it away as is your RIGHT, we won't come after you... but we'll sue the asses off anyone you give it to!
Or... sure, YOU have the right to modify the code, here you go! have at it! But you load that modified code we sold you on the device we sold you and we'll make sure you go to jail for violating the DMCA!
That sort of stuff IS contemptible, and worthy of criticism.
False analogy; nothing is "broken". You are left with the same system you always had before the decision to close it off. Wasn't the whole idea of open source meant to protect against this, i.e. if the project dies, the code can still be maintained?
You're reading far too much into it. Its simply the matter that the FOSS community thinks software should be 'X'.
When a company moves toward that ideal, it gets praised. When it moves away from that ideal it gets criticised.
This isn't complicated.
But here we see the real reasoning behind your argument; attaching a morality to code. If only I had so little problems as to search for what is morally right in such remote unconsequential places.
Not really. The FOSS community judges a company based on the direction its moving, not on where it 'is'.
Because the companies cited in the article have or are striving to have the same business model -- a community branch and an enterprise branch but are criticized solely from where they start from.
That's a double standard in the same way that praising a doctor that restores function to the upper half of a completely paralysed man and critising the bastard that goes around breaking peoples lower spines to create half paralyzed men is a double standard.
After all both are trying to give people the same level of function; how dare we assess their merit based soley from where they start from?
A double standard is when you are inconsisent.
There is nothing inconsistent about praising people for opening up a little bit, while condemning those that close down a little bit. We praise ANY move towards openness, and condemn ANY move away from it. How is that a double standard.
Allow me to illustrate using the oft neglected fruit analagy:
I gleefully watch my strawberry plants grow little fruit that ripen into perfect sweet strawberries, but watch me complain when my delicious strawberries start rotting and become ever less their original strawberry goodness.
Why oh why do I praise the things as they become ripe, but criticise them as they rot! I am such a hypocrit. Hmm.
Gee, I wonder why Microsoft wouldn't offer a corporate (volume license) edition of Media Center.
... well 24x7 minus the time they are Blue-Screened waiting for IT to show up.
Right. Because corporations don't use Media.
They aren't in the market for computers that can play video. Or be controlled with a remote control at presentations, because they only present spreadsheets and pie charts. No stock broker monitors the news channels. Hell, even the companies that MAKE music videos, commercials, movies, television shows, etc...they just use computers to work on spreadsheets and pie charts 24x7
Unless of course they're on a Mac.
I think it's clear that the biggest threat to our existence as a species is our own selves, if we can't solve that problem how does going off into space help?
It helps on two levels:
1) We're assured surviving an asteroid hit, or other planet-busting catastrophe (whether natural or man-made).
2) An expansion into space may not SOLVE humanity's tendency to fight, but it might buy us enough time that we might solve them before some wacko destroys the planet taking us ALL out in one fell sweep. IE by expanding into space, even if some wacko does pull the trigger its not game over for humanity.
I'm sure pointing out to the judge that you don't have a DL will be a point in your favor.
No. It makes no difference.
This is why rental car companies require you to sign waivers authorizing them to bill you if they receive any automated tickets if you rent in areas where they have these systems. Because, the rental car companies, ie the -corporation- itself, which not only doesn't have a drivers license, but is utterly incapable of driving a vehicle were being held responsible for paying the tickets.
And they were unable to effectively nominate the driver even though they knew who it was -- because the driver rented it six months ago while on vacation from a foreign country.
by arguing with someone who obviously does not agree with you, in a 2-day old thread that no one is reading anymore?
Yeah, but what I can't figure out is WHY you don't agree. That's what kept me interested.
That's exactly what the state is worried about. If he does find a bug and is acquitted, suddenly every DUI conviction using data provided this device has to be thrown out. The state doesn't really care about releasing the source code, it cares about maintaining the convictions.
:(
If they were convicted by evidence from defective equipment, it SHOULD be thrown out. That is a founding principle of our system of justice. We as a society prefer that the guilty walk rather than imprison the innocent; or at least we as a society used to think that... and I still do... but I don't think I speak for society anymore.
That said, even I don't think a found bug should be an automatic acquittal. After all it could be reading lower than it should have been! But yeah, if they find a bug that caused it to read double the actual amount under various circumstances then I would have no qualms about throwing out any DUI convictions it caused.
On the other hand, what if he finds a bug? I'd let this guy off the hook in exchange for improving the software so that it works better in the future. And if he can't find a bug, he still gets convicted.
Really this seems like a win-win for everyone involved.
Then that's the law. Obey it, or face the penalties.
I'm sure murderers thing laws against murder are unjust.
What exactly is your point? That only people in contradiction with laws may find them unjust? Well, that's absurd, and irrelevant as well as I am not a red light runner; and yet I STILL think automated enforcement is unjust.
Driving is a privledge, not a Right.
Your arguments are becoming increasingly irrational. This isn't about driving, so this is completely irrelevant. One doesn't even have to have a valid drivers license to be penalized by this law. All I have to do is OWN one that other people drive.
Don't like it? Change the law.
Well DUH! So here I am explaining why I think its a bad law, why I think its an unjust law, to bring more people around to my point of view. This is how laws get changed in a democracy.
So what's the problem? You don't want to 'rat' on your friend or family? Then pay the price for protecting the guilty.
1) If I receive a ticket months from now, I don't know which of several drivers it might have been. If its a nearby common intersection, I wouldn't even know if it was or was not me. If I am vacationing in Thailand, how am I supposed to know which of my kids was driving that day?
2) And even if I do know who it is I should not have to report them to avoid a default conviction. That is not justice.
Then hire that same lawyer to get yourself out of the red light ticket.
On what grounds exactly? The law clearly says that the owner of the vehicle shall be ticketed, regardless of whether the owner even committed the violation. There is no room to manoever; their is no threshold that you commited the crime beyond a resonable doubt -- it *doesn't matter* if you weren't the driver and can't remember who was driving because you were on a month long trip to Thailand when it happened.
Its an unjust law. But because the only penalty is a 'fine', its been ruled 'not unconstitutional', and falls under the same category as parking violations, where they ticket the 'car'.
They had me until they suggested encouraging students to use social netorking sites. The day my child gets a myspace assignment is going to be a bad day for the school. Not because I think myspace is "dangerous", but because I think its total fucking brain rot.
The following FHWA study concluded that the red-light cameras result in a 1-40% (the majority declined close to 30%...
Sorry for the double response, but this occurred to me after the fact. I'm curious to know what effect the FINE had on the impact of camera enforcement.
in other words:
Would doubling the fine make the camera's twice as effecitve? Would halving make the camera's half as effective? What if the camera's merely sent out warning notices instead of actual fines? Would be they be completely inneffective?
Somehow, I think that dramatic improvements could be made with mere warnings, especially if they regularly manned the cameras as well and pulled over drivers on the spot. (e.g. where an officer links up to the camera beyond the intersection and tickets drivers in person, using the camera to identify them, and as evidence against them.)
I suspect most of the advantages of the cameras would be realized, and the system would would be much more just, as during enforcement the actual drivers would be ticketed directly, on the spot. Would knowing the camera was there and might be manned be nearly the same deterrent? I think quite possibly it would.
I wonder if there is a study on that?
This officer also told me that these cameras are the safest way to enforce red lights. It's exceptionally hard for an officer to catch these people, because the officer 1) has to be able to see the light, 2) has to be in the front rank of cars, and 3) often as not would have to run the light themselves, which would be more dangerous than just letting the guy go. You can put an officer at each corner of the intersection, but that's manpower intensive
Or you can equip the intersection with a camera, but have it manned by a single officer who uses it to identify who to pull over, and as evidence against them. This dodges all 3 issues:
1) The police office does not have to see the light. The camera provides the evidence.
2) The police officer does not have to be in the front rank of cars. He can be stationed anywhere.
3) The police officer does not have to run the light himself. He can even be safely stationed out of sight, past the intersection.
4) It is not manpower intensive. It can be done by a single officer.
And as a bonus, when the camera is not being manned it can used to send out notices to people who ran the light. Sort of a hey, did you know you ran this light, and had it been manned you would have been charged.
Point is I don't have anything against camera assisted enforcement, I have a problem with automatic camera enforcement that targets the owner of a vehicle, where you are only even notified of a violation you may not even know has happened months after it happened, where you are responsible even if you weren't driving. (responsible for either paying the ticket or nominating someone else to pay the ticket.)
Add in the fact that SUV bumpers sit at the height of the head of the occupant of a car and you have a recipe for disaster involving serious and quite often fatal head injuries
Interesting that the design of a certain type of vehicle with a bumper height right at head level is contributing to fatalities yet nowhere do you suggest that perhaps these vehicles are a big part of the problem, that perhaps SUVs ought to be required to ride lower, at least when on road, and/or at highway speeds.
Seems a no brainer to me.
Police officers swear by the reduction in accidents and the crash statistics are clear that red-light cameras save lives and reduce the costs of accidents.
I don't deny the effectiveness. However the cameras, by targeting owners not drivers, are fundamentally unjust.
Just think of all the lives and injuries that could be saved if we banned guns and sports. Just because it would reduce injuries, doesn't mean its a good idea.
You want some just solutions:
Build an overpass or a round-about (T-Bone's don't occur if there is NO RIGHT ANGLE INTERSECTION).
Have an arm come down like at railway crossings.
Enforce it in person so that an officer pulls over offending vehicles and tickets the DRIVER. The officer is free to use a red-light camera to identify drivers, and to use as evidence.
Are you so thick headed you cannot comprehend the greater purpose behind the humble red light camera
The stated greater purpose, is to prevent red light running, to increase safety. And it may well even succeed at that.
I also know how they work. A picture is taken, while the right is red, of your vehicle outside the intersection, then a 2nd picture is taken, while the right is red, of your vehicle inside the intersection, proving that the vehcle entered the intersection while the light was red. (And thus not catching people who entered on a green/yellow and who had to wait until the light changed before exitting.
I have no dispute with the methodology used to identify which vehicles run red lights. The issue I have with red light cameras is that they are 'unjust' and that trumps everything including 'effective'.
I expect you would respond with all the fringe situations in which you think you have no choice but to run a red light
You would be wrong, I agree that if you ran a red with a valid reason (of which there are few but they do exist), the court may well drop the issue.
or suck it up and pay because you broke a law for the common good of society
The issue I have is that what happens if I didn't break the law, if it wasn't me driving? Why exactly should I have to pay for that?! Why am I guilty by default - unless I find someone else to pin the crime on. And if I can't remember who drove the vehicle that day several months ago, whether it was me or someone else, I'm automatically guilty.
That is not just.
I am ALL for red light enforcement, and I would be HAPPY to see red light camera's used in tandem with an officer to pull over the offending vehicle and ticket the DRIVER, right there on the spot.
Its also worth mentioning that I am far more opposed to speed enforcement than red light enforcement by automated camera. Perhaps because speed enforcement feels more like entrapment; society and traffic flow treat speed limits more as control parameters than actual limits; and the flow of traffic inevitably both drops below and surges past them, making us all criminals.
Now what would you say if your 'helmetless' sister died from preventable head injuries suffered because some moron ran a red light and legged it, never to be found? Morbid, yes, but it's all just revenue until it's too late right.
What if my 'helmetless' sister died from chest injuries (say a rib puncture to the lung) that could have been prevented had she only been wearing a kevlar vest? Kevlar vests for all cyclists? But what if she was crossing the interection on foot? - pedestrians to start wearing helmets and kevlar too?
Maybe if the red-light runner had been PULLED the fuck over two intersections back or even two days back for driving poorly the driver would have gotten a wake up call and my sister would have been saved. Instead he's just going to get a bill for $150 bucks a couple months after the fact, which his dad will end up paying because its actually his truck, and he has 3 kids all of which borrow it.
What would I do? Clearly, if I want to save lives, I would ban cars. Its the only way to be sure.
Now obviously that's an unreasonable step. So how about things like in-person traffic enforcement. Improving the design of dangerous intersections "traffic shaping", pedestrian overpasses, etc. And like I said, give the officer a red light camera to help him do enforcement. I'm not against cameras. I'm against default-responsibility arriving in the mail for a violation you might not even have committed a few months ago.
Those don't look like the backs of cars to me.
Even those photos that showed the front of the car were hardly a clear picture of the driver. But regardless, we agree that there usually isn't a clear picture of the driver.
Have you ever tried a sworn affidavit saying you were NOT the driver?
Around here, if you don't 'nominate the driver' (their words), you pay the fine. Period. They don't actually need the driver, and in the absence of a nominated driver, the owner is responsible. If you give them the driver, they'll go after the driver, but otherwise its your problem.
And if you give them the driver, the driver is fucked, because now they have a witness (you) offering positive identification. Around here, that means they put 'points' on their license. If they just have the owner, they don't give the owner points, because their is no positive identification of the driver. So, if you rat out your family, the penalty actually goes up... fine + points for them vs just fine for you.
You should know who was driving your car on the given day and time. If not, think of the ticket as a penalty for being dumb.
I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to know who was driving one of the family cars 3 months ago at a given time of day. And even if I do know I shouldn't have to nominate them to avoid being fined for a crime I didn't commit.
Look at it this way- if a gun registered in your name was used to kill someone, don't you think the cops would arrest you? They have evidence you were involved. If you can prove you sold the gun to someone else, they'll let you go and arrest that person instead.
Interesting example. However, no, they won't automatically arrest you. They WILL come and question you, and they'll likely even bring a warrant because they have reasonable cause to believe you were involved, it being your gun and all. But ultimately unless they have reason to actually beleive it was you, beyond it being your gun they won't arrest and charge you -- and even if they did, your defense lawyer would tear the case in half if all they had was a bullet match to your gun. To be put in the position of choosing between a conviction and identifying the real killer yourself represents a serious miscarriage of justice; police interrogation techniques 'as seen on TV' notwithstanding.
Now, in the case of murder, its true in some cases that if you do know who committed the murder and won't speak, you can be charged with accessory to murder, but that's an entirely separate issue. And in that case they have to prove you deliberately lied to them... merely not knowing who used the gun is NOT accessory to murder.
With red light running, thankfully, its not so serious a crime, because they can pretty much automatically convict you on the basis of a photo of your vehicle, unless you nominate the real driver. But its still a miscarriage of justice.