Why do people care so much about little images trying to sell things?
I guess for the same reason I don't like pamphlets on my car windscreen, or the mountains of leaflets in my mailbox. For the same reason I detest the super-bright advertising screens facing the roundabout that blind drivers. For similar reasons it annoys me that television advertisements are frequently twice as loud as the program I am watching. As well as reasons why I hate being asked to give money to beggars, charities, muggers on top of my extraordinary tax bills.
Or could it be a long-standing aversion to unnecessary bandwidth from an age where bytes used to be expensive? Or a repulsion to moving images much like animated cursors used to be?
Hardly. Over the ten-thousand generations of which you speak how many of those had the ability to inter-racially marry and produce off-spring? How many of those went through an extremely rapid sea-change of moral thought through commercialisation and profiteering media companies with global reach?
I think the next 3 generations will see the greatest changes known to man.
Making music--good music--takes time and resources. Time that you can't really make money on, and instruments and (nowadays) computer equipment that is not free.
I find this an extremely offensive argument for branding individuals as criminals for downloading music.
First, I have a day job. With this day job I bought Cakewalk Sonar (GBP 299) and a Roland Fantom G8 (GBP 2600). Now with my weekends and weeknights I can record and produce music.
Meanwhile the recording industry is pushing music on people for free through the radio, much like a drug dealer would push the first "hit" for free. Then when people demand to hear that song again (like a druggie wants another hit) the industry demands payment. That's social manipulation.
If artists want money for something they love let them do what the great majority in society is expected to do - get a day job. If you truly love your art you will find time and resources to produce it.
As far as I know, the company I work for has always paid claims, provided they followed the above guidelines.
To be fair, I believe this to be true. However for any policy there exists at least 2-3 hours' worth of reading/interpreting and it is completely unreasonable for any individual to have read through 4 or 5 separate such contracts in their search for the most appropriate insurance provider.
Of course this problem isn't limited to the insurance industry but I see it as a major failing of the law. A firm can employ a lawyer (or many) full time whose sole job it is to write a long complicated contract. An individual who is not well versed in law, nor has the time to be reading days' worth of material, and has no ability to negotiate the contents of that contract, is entirely at a loss in any dispute with such a firm.
What makes the insurance industry particularly culpable in this situation is that they can regard the policy as void should they decide the layperson failed to obey all aspects of the contract. This action takes place after an established payment pattern has been put in place.
In my opinion it should be illegal to present a contract that cannot be fully understood by a layperson in 10-15 minutes unless both parties have contributed an approximately equal effort in designing that contract together.
Electronics are going to be even more of a pain... to service.
I was under the assumption that with today's 7 layer PCBs and bewildering array of surface mount components (and not just the resisters, the ICs too) that the days of servicing electronics was long gone.
My Canon G7 died slightly over a year after purchase in that it simply wouldn't power up any more. The cost of servicing exceeded the value of the camera.
"You are not permitted to win" is not a fair rule, especially when it's a hidden rule.
After all, if the computer is keeping a count of when conditions are favourable, the casino could quickly expel any winners even if they are not counting cards.
Thus there is no more element of chance in the game. The casino will accept all bets that lose, and eject any winners.
Sounds like the insurance industry to me (who never deny an insurance application, but always investigate the application when you make a claim).
So instead what winds up happening is the men and women voting for the law don't understand the law themselves.
The laws themselves are irrelevant, all that matters is how the laws are interpreted.
Visit Australia sometime. Over there the governing party regularly makes the tax office collect taxation on proposed taxes that subsequently are rejected in parliament. The money illegally collected from individuals is then paid in lump sum to whatever powerful lobby group is in bed with the government at the time (recently that would be the alcohol industry, in times past that was the petroleum industry amongst others).
Everyone I know who visits the USA these days tells me what a pain in the ass it is to travel here now. I'm sure everyone on the IOC knows all about that.
It's not the entry procedures that are troublesome, actually. I flew into Los Angeles last week and they were pretty good at getting everyone in queues and cleared (although each individual took around 3-4 minutes to process).
What is apparent at US airports, however, is that staff throughout appear to be the cheapest. This results in inefficiencies as it is obvious staff just aren't thinking.
I'm still annoyed with having staples put in my passport and the staples ripped out tearing my passport pages on exit from the USA. Even with a modern chipped passport! What was the point of all that tech upgrades if they're still going to rip holes in your passport?
I'm a peaceful Norwegian with two (many years ago) convictions for possession of small amounts (1-2 joints) of marihuana.
Unless you have a pharmacy and/or medical degree you're an idiot. And if you go around sticking your fingers into power points with a medical and/or electrical engineering degree you're equally as stupid.
All your claimed examples introduced taxes rather than convicting anybody of a crime.
Ah.. well I don't plan to test that myself.
As anyone who has tried to contest a parking fine in Victoria, Australia will know, there's no way to fight it.
I was physically in the UK when someone else got a parking fine in my car in Australia. I contested saying it was physically impossible for me to have been driving at the time but that wasn't permissible. The person driving the car wanted to claim responsibility but that wasn't permissible either. Nope, you pay or you go to court, and I wouldn't have rated my chances at beating a court conviction.
The bigger concern is that they can introduce such things without any legislation passing and have it effectively stick over multiple years
My concern is that they tax individuals, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, on each drink. Then when they decide the tax is illegal guess who they refund.. the person that paid the tax? NO! They refund the alcohol industry.
Makes me think the alcohol industry might be strong arming the government into making up the tax so they can sell these drinks at a higher price which everyone grumbles about and accepts and then profits from!
Which goes to prove Australia is anything but "just". The concept of a "fair go" is nowhere to be found. If Australia stood behind the "fair go" they would hunt down every individual that bought an alcopop and refund them that $1 or so.
Or better yet they'd just not collect un-ratified taxes while threatening businesses with fines and retrospective taxes if/when legislation actually gets passed.
There are times one wishes they could edit their post because they got their grammar or example wrong. You're right, the line should have read: To think that I was a native of a country (UK) being harassed by immigrants (Africans) about immigrants (British) harassing natives (Aboriginals)!
maybe they were black or aboriginal, making you automatically a racist for disagreeing with them.
I found it interesting being in the UK and having British Blacks come up to me and harassing me for the way Australians treated Aboriginals. To think that I was a native of a country (UK) being harassed by immigrants (Africans) about harassing immigrants (Aboriginals)! Made me laugh; I guess some races just strive to prove genetic deficiency when political correctness prevents people from theorising it.
As an Australian citizen I have to say I am ashamed of Australia's level of corruption at all levels of government (and the lower the level the higher the corruption) from local to state to federal. With a justice system for which truth is no defence against an allegation and unions that have no interest in actually doing their job.
Is Internet Filtering about protecting Australians or giving authorities more reason to prosecute and more agencies kickbacks for "essential services"?
Here in Australia you don't even need to break a present law to have committed a crime. The Australian Tax Office (or Federal Government) can, at any time, pass legislation that applies retrospectively. For anyone with a short memory consider the repealed alcopop tax in 2009, the luxury car tax that was levied prematurely, the petrol taxes levied by Keating without budget approval in the senate, etc etc.
People get excited about Australia but it is just the weather and landscapes that are worth raving about. The regulatory system has nothing fair or just about it.
Do programmers deserve their own holiday ahead of other professions?
No.
Do musicians deserve special copyright protection in spite of the fact almost all programmers have day jobs working for corporations writing software they are told to write when they could be at home writing fun personal projects?
Many lawyers that I know continue to cut and paste the boilerplate language or modify the boilerplate language keeping in tact whatever drafting convention was used originally.
As someone who signs contracts (as every adult does) I feel obligated to read and understand every line that I am committing to. But I often get harassed by agents who don't want to wait while I absorb the contract. Even worse when I challenge any particular clause; very few agents/businesses can handle their own legal documentation and greatly fear repercussions should the contract change in any way.
All I'm saying is that I don't honestly believe most lawyers actually understand their own contracts.
If you purchased the 32 bit version of Vista, you can go on the Microsoft website and order the 64 bit version for a little more than the cost of shipping.
Unless you bought a laptop with an OEM version in which case the only way you get 64-bit is to pay full price for it (and no, the upgrade version only upgrades a non-OEM existing copy).
I am a white American living in Japan. I've been here about 10 years. People say racist things to me all the time. No, they don't mean any offense (usually), but that doesn't mean that I don't get offended. But I didn't used to.
Last year I visited Tokyo and got assaulted by a group of black adult men in Rappongi. For saying anything? No. Just for being white.
As someone that grew up in a country with very few black people I have to say my education has been on the receiving end of much hostility and verbal/physical aggression in the UK and Japan. I'm starting to notice patterns. Multiculturalism is everywhere but have you ever heard a black comedian give a spiel that wasn't largely based on black/white differences or perceived oppression?
Japan is a very unique country; it's not easy in a global society to maintain a largely homogeneous ethnic group and you, along with anyone else that has studied Japan, knows that you won't suddenly become an accepted Japanese. Neither will any of your children even if you do marry that Japanese wife.
At least they are not randomly assaulting you. I never had anything to fear from Japanese people in Japan.
Essentially everyone who knows anything about modern version control considers CVS obsolete.
Clarification: everyone who thinks they know everything about modern version control considers CVS obsolete.
CVS still has advantages, in my opinion:
- simple underlying storage structure that any administrator can understand
- ability to simply administratively repair obscene or damaging check ins (investigate the cvs admin -o command, few other version control systems can do this)
- simple file numbering scheme
At the end of the day your needs may be more complex (regular branching, regular directory moves, etc) but in some commercial situations simplicity and ease of administration can be valuable points (and I think often outweighs the perceived benefits of SVN).
As for Git with it's advanced learning curve of at least a week, sometimes you have not just programmers contributing to a project but front-end designers, template producers, who have never seen a version control system in their life. Subjecting them to Git can be both cruel and potentially uneconomic - particularly if they are all on short term contracts.
There was actually another reason I preferred bzr -- it's written in Python. Git is written in C, Bash, and Perl, which means a lot steeper of a learning curve if I were to ever hack on it.
Personally I find C, Bash, and Perl much simpler to understand and deal with.
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Why do people care so much about little images trying to sell things?
I guess for the same reason I don't like pamphlets on my car windscreen, or the mountains of leaflets in my mailbox. For the same reason I detest the super-bright advertising screens facing the roundabout that blind drivers. For similar reasons it annoys me that television advertisements are frequently twice as loud as the program I am watching. As well as reasons why I hate being asked to give money to beggars, charities, muggers on top of my extraordinary tax bills.
Or could it be a long-standing aversion to unnecessary bandwidth from an age where bytes used to be expensive? Or a repulsion to moving images much like animated cursors used to be?
ten generations is trivial
Hardly. Over the ten-thousand generations of which you speak how many of those had the ability to inter-racially marry and produce off-spring? How many of those went through an extremely rapid sea-change of moral thought through commercialisation and profiteering media companies with global reach?
I think the next 3 generations will see the greatest changes known to man.
Making music--good music--takes time and resources. Time that you can't really make money on, and instruments and (nowadays) computer equipment that is not free.
I find this an extremely offensive argument for branding individuals as criminals for downloading music.
First, I have a day job. With this day job I bought Cakewalk Sonar (GBP 299) and a Roland Fantom G8 (GBP 2600). Now with my weekends and weeknights I can record and produce music.
Meanwhile the recording industry is pushing music on people for free through the radio, much like a drug dealer would push the first "hit" for free. Then when people demand to hear that song again (like a druggie wants another hit) the industry demands payment. That's social manipulation.
If artists want money for something they love let them do what the great majority in society is expected to do - get a day job. If you truly love your art you will find time and resources to produce it.
I'm Australian, the vast majority of drivers indicate their intentions well in advance
Could someone please make these British drivers indicate? Sometimes? Any time? No? sigh
As far as I know, the company I work for has always paid claims, provided they followed the above guidelines.
To be fair, I believe this to be true. However for any policy there exists at least 2-3 hours' worth of reading/interpreting and it is completely unreasonable for any individual to have read through 4 or 5 separate such contracts in their search for the most appropriate insurance provider.
Of course this problem isn't limited to the insurance industry but I see it as a major failing of the law. A firm can employ a lawyer (or many) full time whose sole job it is to write a long complicated contract. An individual who is not well versed in law, nor has the time to be reading days' worth of material, and has no ability to negotiate the contents of that contract, is entirely at a loss in any dispute with such a firm.
What makes the insurance industry particularly culpable in this situation is that they can regard the policy as void should they decide the layperson failed to obey all aspects of the contract. This action takes place after an established payment pattern has been put in place.
In my opinion it should be illegal to present a contract that cannot be fully understood by a layperson in 10-15 minutes unless both parties have contributed an approximately equal effort in designing that contract together.
if only I was an EE...
.. with a soldering iron and an oscilloscope..
Electronics are going to be even more of a pain ... to service.
I was under the assumption that with today's 7 layer PCBs and bewildering array of surface mount components (and not just the resisters, the ICs too) that the days of servicing electronics was long gone.
My Canon G7 died slightly over a year after purchase in that it simply wouldn't power up any more. The cost of servicing exceeded the value of the camera.
"You are not permitted to win" is not a fair rule, especially when it's a hidden rule.
After all, if the computer is keeping a count of when conditions are favourable, the casino could quickly expel any winners even if they are not counting cards.
Thus there is no more element of chance in the game. The casino will accept all bets that lose, and eject any winners.
Sounds like the insurance industry to me (who never deny an insurance application, but always investigate the application when you make a claim).
Can someone please justify why we should consider the CSIRO to be a patent troll?
Because they are Australian, and all Australian government organisations exist to hurt and legally injure real people.
So instead what winds up happening is the men and women voting for the law don't understand the law themselves.
The laws themselves are irrelevant, all that matters is how the laws are interpreted.
Visit Australia sometime. Over there the governing party regularly makes the tax office collect taxation on proposed taxes that subsequently are rejected in parliament. The money illegally collected from individuals is then paid in lump sum to whatever powerful lobby group is in bed with the government at the time (recently that would be the alcohol industry, in times past that was the petroleum industry amongst others).
Everyone I know who visits the USA these days tells me what a pain in the ass it is to travel here now. I'm sure everyone on the IOC knows all about that.
It's not the entry procedures that are troublesome, actually. I flew into Los Angeles last week and they were pretty good at getting everyone in queues and cleared (although each individual took around 3-4 minutes to process).
What is apparent at US airports, however, is that staff throughout appear to be the cheapest. This results in inefficiencies as it is obvious staff just aren't thinking.
I'm still annoyed with having staples put in my passport and the staples ripped out tearing my passport pages on exit from the USA. Even with a modern chipped passport! What was the point of all that tech upgrades if they're still going to rip holes in your passport?
I'm a peaceful Norwegian with two (many years ago) convictions for possession of small amounts (1-2 joints) of marihuana.
Unless you have a pharmacy and/or medical degree you're an idiot. And if you go around sticking your fingers into power points with a medical and/or electrical engineering degree you're equally as stupid.
...and write a policy that says, "Wogs, go home"?
Actually the only people to fear from any UK policy are Caucasians.
All your claimed examples introduced taxes rather than convicting anybody of a crime.
Ah.. well I don't plan to test that myself.
As anyone who has tried to contest a parking fine in Victoria, Australia will know, there's no way to fight it.
I was physically in the UK when someone else got a parking fine in my car in Australia. I contested saying it was physically impossible for me to have been driving at the time but that wasn't permissible. The person driving the car wanted to claim responsibility but that wasn't permissible either. Nope, you pay or you go to court, and I wouldn't have rated my chances at beating a court conviction.
The bigger concern is that they can introduce such things without any legislation passing and have it effectively stick over multiple years
My concern is that they tax individuals, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, on each drink. Then when they decide the tax is illegal guess who they refund.. the person that paid the tax? NO! They refund the alcohol industry.
Makes me think the alcohol industry might be strong arming the government into making up the tax so they can sell these drinks at a higher price which everyone grumbles about and accepts and then profits from!
Which goes to prove Australia is anything but "just". The concept of a "fair go" is nowhere to be found. If Australia stood behind the "fair go" they would hunt down every individual that bought an alcopop and refund them that $1 or so.
Or better yet they'd just not collect un-ratified taxes while threatening businesses with fines and retrospective taxes if/when legislation actually gets passed.
There are times one wishes they could edit their post because they got their grammar or example wrong. You're right, the line should have read: To think that I was a native of a country (UK) being harassed by immigrants (Africans) about immigrants (British) harassing natives (Aboriginals)!
maybe they were black or aboriginal, making you automatically a racist for disagreeing with them.
I found it interesting being in the UK and having British Blacks come up to me and harassing me for the way Australians treated Aboriginals. To think that I was a native of a country (UK) being harassed by immigrants (Africans) about harassing immigrants (Aboriginals)! Made me laugh; I guess some races just strive to prove genetic deficiency when political correctness prevents people from theorising it.
As an Australian citizen I have to say I am ashamed of Australia's level of corruption at all levels of government (and the lower the level the higher the corruption) from local to state to federal. With a justice system for which truth is no defence against an allegation and unions that have no interest in actually doing their job.
Is Internet Filtering about protecting Australians or giving authorities more reason to prosecute and more agencies kickbacks for "essential services"?
Here in Australia you don't even need to break a present law to have committed a crime. The Australian Tax Office (or Federal Government) can, at any time, pass legislation that applies retrospectively. For anyone with a short memory consider the repealed alcopop tax in 2009, the luxury car tax that was levied prematurely, the petrol taxes levied by Keating without budget approval in the senate, etc etc.
People get excited about Australia but it is just the weather and landscapes that are worth raving about. The regulatory system has nothing fair or just about it.
Do programmers deserve their own holiday ahead of other professions?
No.
Do musicians deserve special copyright protection in spite of the fact almost all programmers have day jobs working for corporations writing software they are told to write when they could be at home writing fun personal projects?
Many lawyers that I know continue to cut and paste the boilerplate language or modify the boilerplate language keeping in tact whatever drafting convention was used originally.
As someone who signs contracts (as every adult does) I feel obligated to read and understand every line that I am committing to. But I often get harassed by agents who don't want to wait while I absorb the contract. Even worse when I challenge any particular clause; very few agents/businesses can handle their own legal documentation and greatly fear repercussions should the contract change in any way.
All I'm saying is that I don't honestly believe most lawyers actually understand their own contracts.
SVN administration tools are far superior to the CVS ones.
Pray tell, how are the SVN administration tools far superior, if not somewhat inferior, to the CVS ones?
I mean come on, CVS doesn't even have atomic commits or changesets!
Agreed. Every file is an individual unit with no relation to any other (with the exception perhaps of shared tags).
If you purchased the 32 bit version of Vista, you can go on the Microsoft website and order the 64 bit version for a little more than the cost of shipping.
Unless you bought a laptop with an OEM version in which case the only way you get 64-bit is to pay full price for it (and no, the upgrade version only upgrades a non-OEM existing copy).
I am a white American living in Japan. I've been here about 10 years. People say racist things to me all the time. No, they don't mean any offense (usually), but that doesn't mean that I don't get offended. But I didn't used to.
Last year I visited Tokyo and got assaulted by a group of black adult men in Rappongi. For saying anything? No. Just for being white.
As someone that grew up in a country with very few black people I have to say my education has been on the receiving end of much hostility and verbal/physical aggression in the UK and Japan. I'm starting to notice patterns. Multiculturalism is everywhere but have you ever heard a black comedian give a spiel that wasn't largely based on black/white differences or perceived oppression?
Japan is a very unique country; it's not easy in a global society to maintain a largely homogeneous ethnic group and you, along with anyone else that has studied Japan, knows that you won't suddenly become an accepted Japanese. Neither will any of your children even if you do marry that Japanese wife.
At least they are not randomly assaulting you. I never had anything to fear from Japanese people in Japan.
Essentially everyone who knows anything about modern version control considers CVS obsolete.
Clarification: everyone who thinks they know everything about modern version control considers CVS obsolete.
CVS still has advantages, in my opinion:
- simple underlying storage structure that any administrator can understand
- ability to simply administratively repair obscene or damaging check ins (investigate the cvs admin -o command, few other version control systems can do this)
- simple file numbering scheme
At the end of the day your needs may be more complex (regular branching, regular directory moves, etc) but in some commercial situations simplicity and ease of administration can be valuable points (and I think often outweighs the perceived benefits of SVN).
As for Git with it's advanced learning curve of at least a week, sometimes you have not just programmers contributing to a project but front-end designers, template producers, who have never seen a version control system in their life. Subjecting them to Git can be both cruel and potentially uneconomic - particularly if they are all on short term contracts.
There was actually another reason I preferred bzr -- it's written in Python. Git is written in C, Bash, and Perl, which means a lot steeper of a learning curve if I were to ever hack on it.
Personally I find C, Bash, and Perl much simpler to understand and deal with.