what benefits an israeli company benefits israeli economy, which benefits israel's terrorist regime. Jani is completely right to boycott a terrorist regime. it's a very rational decision when no government seems to care about israeli terrorism.
Okay.....and I suppose you believe the internets is a series of tubes.
Actually I have cried many times over games: Temple of Elemental Evil, Pool of Radiance, MOO3, and countless others have made me cry a river for the money I just wasted on those coasters.
Okay, with each processor having dual cores - then dual chips on the board - then each video card having dual GPUs (Gigabyte). It is only a matter of time before we can support 2 of these dual GPU boards. Drop in the greatly over-hyped PhyisX card and the box is likely to simply melt down. However, before that happens it will be the fastest PC ever tested by gaming magazines - declared on the front cover in the big block letters they love to use.
That will be a glorious month - until a faster system comes out the next month.
What I'm calling Search 2.0 are actually third generation search technologies. To explain the generations:
* First-generation search ranked sites based on page content - examples are early yahoo.com and Alta Vista.
* Second-generation relies on link analysis for ranking - so they take the structure of the Web into account. Examples are Google and Overture.
* Third-generation search technologies are designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive.
Examples: Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty, Wink, Lexxe
Okay, I have a few questions about this brave new world...
Given collectives like MySpace, Friendster, and the like - I really do not hold much faith in the very idea of collective intelligence. Instead, I think collectives actually devolved into the realm of ignorance, fear, and sheep
In the future only the colors brown and red will be allowed.
Why is the future always stupidly named by those whose products will not live to see it?
Hopefully the future of search will mapped out by throwing out all of the Flash, Shockwave, and other crap in favor of a clean interface and better relevancy. I would trade all of the "rich user experience" for something that gave me clean navigation, relevancy, and throwing out crappy link-sites.
I object to this in the same way as I object a bit to homeschooling - sure the kid will learn stuff, but they won't learn to be around other people their own age, how to work with others, or how to be a member of society in general.
What a blindingly stupid statement to make - it is quite obvious that you are the product of a public or private education.
According to the US government, which obviously only covers US households, in 2000 1.7% of the K-12 students (1.1 million kids) in America where listed as homeschooled. Of these students, just around 20% also attended public/private school for part of the day. ~65% of the students listed as home-schooled, were homeschooled in multi-student/multi-family environments. As a group they also score above average for their grade level on all three standardized tests (again USGov stats only). They have a statistically higher average of college degrees and lower rate of incarceration (these last two statistics came from a home-school site so expect them to point out the best and ignore the worst).
Personally I came up through the public education system, but I was lucky enough to have a rural school where at least some of the teachers cared. We also make enough in our current household to move to a good school district; however, given where we lived previously it would have been far better to homeschool our children rather than subject them to the crap that passed as public city schooling.
I have a few Win98 SE computers running around the house doing tasks that they preform just fine. There simply has not been any reason to upgrade them. Most of these are old Compaq laptops. Most of them I keep in my guest rooms. They have various IM programs, Firefox, and other sundry tools. They have access to my DSL and my main HP laser, but they are on a different network from my main computers/file shares. After a guest leaves I simply re-ghost the machine.
When these machines die I will probably replace them with a bunch of Win2K laptops for the same purpose.
There is no reason that I cannot do the same thing with a Knoppix Live CD. But much of my family only knows Windows and I keep the environment as close to their knowledge as possible. However, for other people I agree with OP - most people with Win98 boxes will simply buy another off-the-shelf Windows box to replace it when it dies.
Result in a nutshell: If I own a DVD, I cannot pay someone to make a copy of that movie for me sans parts I might find offensive. It's not censorship, because *I'm the one asking him to do it for me*. But in yet another defeat for personal freedom (and another win for the moneyed interests), the courts have found that this is a violation of copyright law.
This is only a defeat for personal freedom if you do not understand what is personal freedom - or only the most basic understanding of true personal freedom. This gets back to the whole fist/nose basis for personal freedom that is commonly used. You own the physical DVD - thus you can burn it, urinate on it, or give it away. However, you do not own the content on that disk. Thus you must respect the personal freedoms of the person that owns that content on your disk.
The problem with most people discussing personal freedoms is that they gloss over the fact that other people have personal freedoms as well. Sometimes you are the fist and sometimes you are the nose.
Copyright does NOT exist to "preserve the artistic vision of the author" PERIOD.
If anything, it is meant to do anything but.
You cannot get much farther from the truth on that statement alone. Copyright was created to grant a set of rights on content creators. Since copyright is not considered a natural law - you can sign away your copyrights (like those involved in the process or making a movie often do to distributors, or music - also see "work for hire") unlike say slavery.
The copyright holder has the right of reproduction, derivation, distribution, public preformance, and public display. Copyright controls who can do what with something that they control (i.e. own the rights to). Now, you can wrap your belief in artisic vision, creator control, or a warm blanket - it does not matter why you choose to exercise those rights.
Of course there are other rights mixed in here as well. These cover parodies, fair use, and the passing of copyrights. However, those are not really germane to the thrust of your statement. The fact is that copyright does exist to preserve the "artistic vision of the author" is that is the reason the copyright holder uses to exercise their rights. In fact you do not even have to give a reason - the copyright holder just simply say no because they are granted those rights.
In the case of CleanFlix, they were clearly operating against the copyright holders because they we never granted the rights to change the protected work. The courts also rules that this was beyond "fair use" as it relates to copyright. It will be interesting to see if they can also go after the individuals that purchased bootleg DVDs from CleanFlix.
It isn't just Mormons either (though I'm sure that's a big chunk of their business). My mother is a Jr. High teacher, so if she wants to show a movie to her kids, it can't have all the naughty bits. So if a movie isn't quite appropriate, she just goes to CleanFlix so that she can still show it. She teaches American history, so she shows them a clean version of Glory. I've never seen the clean version though, it's probably pretty short:)
Whew, for a second there I thought you said teacher - as in to teach; not sitter - as in "I watch these kids for some time while their parents do something else". Thankfully, you can edit the statement that your mother does not in fact teach, but in fact is little more than an overpaid sitter.
Glory is a short movie about a small aspect of a long-running bloody war that still shapes American politics. Sure, I would not be willing to show it to my children (5,3,2); but I would not have any problems showing it in full to those in Jr. High (13/14). History should not be white-washed or censored - it should be looked at from all aspects so that we may learn. I know there is something somewhere about history and failing to learn from it - but at least we now know where they are being taught.
Google, as a publicly traded company only has one real obligation: ROI to stockholders
Actually, that is not quite true. A stockholder (assuming common stock here) hold stock (also called shares) in ownership (or equity position) of the company. Further, they have a claim on the profits of the company. However, nothing under either Common or Preferred Stock obligates a company to any ROI for a stock holder.
To represent the vast number of stock holders (since individual actions by thousands would tear a company apart - stock holders elect a Board of Directors to oversee their interests. Typically for common it is 1 share = 1 vote, but different classifications of stock issued by the company can change that (see Google). There is an obligation here because stock holders can sue their elected members of the Board if they can prove they knowingly harmed the stock-holders. Likewise stockholders can sue the company if they can prove the company knowingly harmed them - equal to any other stakeholder of a company.
However, no company is obligated to any ROI for any stockholder.
Quicken would back me up on this, but about 3 years ago I was a 24 games/year purchaser. I would say that 5 of those games would be bought used from EB, but the rest were new in box. In most cases my purchases were a bit scattered, but centered around FPSs and Tactical Wargames. My occasional jaunts into RPG or RTS territory tended to be the highlights (NWN, Rise of Nations).
That was before I got into City of Heroes - it was my first non-text MMO (since I did a ton of MUDding back at Purdue). Since then (and again Quicken would back me to the hilt there) I have purchased very few other games. Those games I have purchased do tend to be a best of breed: GalCiv2 and SSGs series. Overall, I would have to say that my spending on games has gone down. But then with COH always on tap - I do have less time for pickup games that I might have had just a few years ago.
To push that out in to some type of general statement might be difficult, but if you were the type of person that used to spend money on 15 games/year ($40 per) = $600. Then you replace that with a game that is constantly calling you back to the grind - not something you can just pick up and go with. There is a general pull to the games that those that spend a bunch of time on, pull those of us that are more casual about playing. Otherwise we get left behind.
Overall this will be a benefit to the very large players that can gather in a strong enough base to keep the constant MMO money rolling in. I also do not think this will hurt the really small players since they only expected a small and really tight group of purchasers anyway. However, I believe this will gut the middle companies that produced a few really great titles amid a storm of garbage.
This might not be that bad of a situation, but it will make companies very shy about introducing really off-the-wall titles that may or may not catch with the public. Say like the growth of Fallout.
Yes this guy was committing theft and should be charged. But why on earth didn't they have their connection locked down? Print the password on the back of a receipt and that way genuine customers can use the connection and the leaches stay outside the network. That said if there are no signs or warnings that the wireless connection was for paying customers only then they could have a problem charging him. A canny lawyer could claim he thought the connection was a free resource, but I'm unfamiliar with US law on this.
Theft?!? Do you even know what you are saying. Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft is a wiki link describing theft. Exactly what property has this person taken wrongfully? The airwaves used are given for public use for a certain classification of devices - thus you do not need any type of licence to put a wireless access point up (although the device itself must conform to certain laws).
Now trespassing may be a bit more interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespassing. The article was quite clear that he came back on the premises after he was told that he no longer had premission to be there. I am making the assumption that the parking lot was the property of the leasee (Brewed Adventures) and not that he was sitting in public parking.
It does not matter if he is a Level One Sex Offender - the only real crime here is that he may be guilty of Trespassing (depending on where he was parked after he was told he was no longer welcome). Now, in this day and age of the American system that might not be the only thing he is charged with or harassed about. Sad really.
Is it just me or does it seem like a lot of people are jumping ship now? Has Microsoft finally spread themselves too thin? Have they become so huge now that they don't even know what to do with themselves under the multiple multiple layers of complexity?
Personally I see it more as Ray Ozzie putting people into position that will be loyal to him when he ascends the throne. He will want key people in the company to owe their positions to him. If you want to see what he thinks are key position then watch which of the non-Ray people leave the company.
I personally think that Steve is (and always meant to be) little more than a temporary sop to transition the company from Bill to Ray - it is obvious that Steve does not have the technical chops or cachet. However, Ray has the chops and the cachet to make a top-rate head for Microsoft.
Pope Palpatine will advocate not studying conception...since it is an act of God. Great. Guess my girlfriend won't be putting out.
Take heart. That does not happen until you upgrade her to Wife 1.0. Think of it like upgrading from Linux to Vista. At first everything was open and accessible - then along comes the upgrade and you find all sorts of restrictive DRM in the core.
I mean, seriously... how much does it really cost to "keep a roof over 2 people and keep them fed" in a normal "middle class" neighborhood? One could live quite comfortably for under $2000 a month, which is just over $11 an hour. I wouldn't say someone making over $11/hr is part of the "privileged few".
To over-use the phrase - "spoken like someone that has not yet moved out of their parent's basement." When you do, and discover how much rent/mortgage + utilities cost in the real world, you can come back and fix your silly statement.
...can someone explain why Apple selling music that only works on their devices (unless of course you consider those crappy Motorola ROKR and SLVR phones) is bad, but Sony selling games that only play on the PlayStation or Microsoft selling software that only runs on Windows is OK. Seriously. Why is what Apple is doing any different in the eyes of the Norwegian government?
Sony is not selling games that only play on the Playstation. Sony is selling a development kit for the Playstation hardware. If I wanted to develop my own game for the Playstation then I could just buy the SDK and have at it. This is very much unlike Apple.
I cannot just buy a FairPlay SDK.
Just because I know Slashdot loves automotive analogies. Imagine that when Japanese cars began first appearing that GM (the largest car company at that time) put in a gadget that only GM-approved gas (music files) would run in GM-approved cars (iPods). Now they could licence this gadget to Ford and Chrysler (like Motorola's ROKR/SLVR) to give them some cover. Sure the Japanese companies could create a device that allows US-gas to run in their cars (convert to MP3), but it is an extra step and extra cost they and their consumers must bear. This will greatly limit their market penetration not based upon worth or value - but more based upon abuse of their near monopoly (Microsoft).
In fact, the car companies are trying something very much like this by claiming their error codes as copyrightable under the DMCA. Thus if your GM car breaks you will only be able to get it fixed at a GM dealer or company that purchases a GM-licence, assuming they sell any at all (FairPlay).
This is a perfectly valid argument for 2006, but what about 2008? When HDTV hits critical mass, the choices of pre-recorded medial are either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Period. If Blu-Ray becomes VHS and HD-DVD becomes Beta (we'll see) then the PS3 is going to have a very nice selling point over the competition, especially if the price of stand-alone Blu-Ray players hovers around $200 or more.
HDTV has been just on the horizon of hitting "critical mass" for years - and this is no different. 2008 will no more be the "Magical Year" for HDTV than it will be for Linux on the Desktop.
Before the flames kick in, you can not honestly tell me one can develop, test, and deploy with Eclipse any quicker than with Visual Studio 2005!
I WISH it was there, but it is not. I have no joy in paying more Microsoft Taxes, but time is money and I can build a great PPC application in c# in a fraction of time it would take me to do it in Java.
It's the tools, not the platform, that make great software!
Actually yes I can develop a program (beyond the simplisitic "Hello World" and its ilk) faster in Eclipse/Java than VS2005/C#. I work in both arenas on a daily basis and while I would tap VS2005 as having a very edge is functionality its not enough to offset a few of C# (and.NETs) more glaring problems.
I do agree whole-heartedly that it is the tools that really help lift a language and while VS2005 is (in my opinion) currently superior to Eclipse - the third-party tools of Java are far superior to those offered for C#. Thus I can develop faster in Java than I can in C#.
Not for beginners?!? Doubtful
on
SQL Cookbook
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I am not sure how anyone can resolve the following found in the review - emphasis mine.
The book is not for beginners and makes no efforts to teach any SQL. It concentrates purely on building on the base level of SQL knowledge that most programmers have. If you know the basics: Create, Read, Update and Delete (an unfortunate, yet memorable acronym) but rarely go beyond that, this book is for you. I know that I fall into this target market.
Recipe one in chapter one, titled "Retrieving all Rows and Columns from a Table" has the problem statement "You have a table and want to see all of the data in it." Nice and clear. Then comes the solution. Naturally, for this problem statement we end up with a SELECT that looks like this:
select * from emp
How can a book not be for beginners when the first recipe teaches the most basic SQL command possible? I have this book and it is a very good book, but like most technical books it kills a great deal of trees needlessly to pad its count. You can probably rip more than 100 pages out of the book that is mindless beginner crap and self-flogging and actually have a very good technical reference for mid-level SQL people.
Just like the Europeans who squawked about the thieving Americans in the 1800s - so to do the American squawk about the Chinese. The Chinese will not come around until they actually have something worth protecting.
It is amazing that when you have your own oar in the water how quickly you become a player.
Personally I think that we are still 2-3 generations away from China being viewed as an adult at the big table. However, barring any really radical changes it is coming.
The difference between a 'blogger' and a 'journalist' is the same difference between letting some dude with a kitchen knife circumcise your child on a kitchen table and letting a surgeon do it in an operating theatre of a decent hospital. Big difference, and if you can't see it blame your ignorance.
Ah, I see it now. "Journalists" are licensed by the state in the same way doctors are. That must be the point you are trying to make. Maybe it is all of the malpractice insurance that "Journalists" have to carry for when they get caught lying or even stretching or coloring the truth they can then "reimburse" all of the people harmed by their misdeeds.
You must be very proud to have your own ignorance waving so boldly before the masses.
Why would anyone slap you down? We all have our beliefs and frankly my policy is to repect others and I expect them to respect mine. I would no sooner dissuade you of your beliefs than I would my kids belief in Santa, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy.
Now before you get ruffled, I am not saying your beliefs are childish. To my kids Santa is not a childish belief either. He believes with all of his heart that Santa really does exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay.....and I suppose you believe the internets is a series of tubes.
Actually I have cried many times over games: Temple of Elemental Evil, Pool of Radiance, MOO3, and countless others have made me cry a river for the money I just wasted on those coasters.
Instead of the SCO icon we should lift the one used on Fark for these stories.
Okay, with each processor having dual cores - then dual chips on the board - then each video card having dual GPUs (Gigabyte). It is only a matter of time before we can support 2 of these dual GPU boards. Drop in the greatly over-hyped PhyisX card and the box is likely to simply melt down. However, before that happens it will be the fastest PC ever tested by gaming magazines - declared on the front cover in the big block letters they love to use.
That will be a glorious month - until a faster system comes out the next month.
Okay, I have a few questions about this brave new world...
According to the US government, which obviously only covers US households, in 2000 1.7% of the K-12 students (1.1 million kids) in America where listed as homeschooled. Of these students, just around 20% also attended public/private school for part of the day. ~65% of the students listed as home-schooled, were homeschooled in multi-student/multi-family environments. As a group they also score above average for their grade level on all three standardized tests (again USGov stats only). They have a statistically higher average of college degrees and lower rate of incarceration (these last two statistics came from a home-school site so expect them to point out the best and ignore the worst).
Personally I came up through the public education system, but I was lucky enough to have a rural school where at least some of the teachers cared. We also make enough in our current household to move to a good school district; however, given where we lived previously it would have been far better to homeschool our children rather than subject them to the crap that passed as public city schooling.
For $295 I have a few ex-girlfriends I would not mind sending on a small trip. They did say each mission was 5 yeas long correct.
I have a few Win98 SE computers running around the house doing tasks that they preform just fine. There simply has not been any reason to upgrade them. Most of these are old Compaq laptops. Most of them I keep in my guest rooms. They have various IM programs, Firefox, and other sundry tools. They have access to my DSL and my main HP laser, but they are on a different network from my main computers/file shares. After a guest leaves I simply re-ghost the machine.
When these machines die I will probably replace them with a bunch of Win2K laptops for the same purpose.
There is no reason that I cannot do the same thing with a Knoppix Live CD. But much of my family only knows Windows and I keep the environment as close to their knowledge as possible. However, for other people I agree with OP - most people with Win98 boxes will simply buy another off-the-shelf Windows box to replace it when it dies.
For releasing Battlecruise 3000 AD upon the world - they are reaping what they have sown.
This is only a defeat for personal freedom if you do not understand what is personal freedom - or only the most basic understanding of true personal freedom. This gets back to the whole fist/nose basis for personal freedom that is commonly used. You own the physical DVD - thus you can burn it, urinate on it, or give it away. However, you do not own the content on that disk. Thus you must respect the personal freedoms of the person that owns that content on your disk.
The problem with most people discussing personal freedoms is that they gloss over the fact that other people have personal freedoms as well. Sometimes you are the fist and sometimes you are the nose.
You cannot get much farther from the truth on that statement alone. Copyright was created to grant a set of rights on content creators. Since copyright is not considered a natural law - you can sign away your copyrights (like those involved in the process or making a movie often do to distributors, or music - also see "work for hire") unlike say slavery.
The copyright holder has the right of reproduction, derivation, distribution, public preformance, and public display. Copyright controls who can do what with something that they control (i.e. own the rights to). Now, you can wrap your belief in artisic vision, creator control, or a warm blanket - it does not matter why you choose to exercise those rights.
Of course there are other rights mixed in here as well. These cover parodies, fair use, and the passing of copyrights. However, those are not really germane to the thrust of your statement. The fact is that copyright does exist to preserve the "artistic vision of the author" is that is the reason the copyright holder uses to exercise their rights. In fact you do not even have to give a reason - the copyright holder just simply say no because they are granted those rights.
In the case of CleanFlix, they were clearly operating against the copyright holders because they we never granted the rights to change the protected work. The courts also rules that this was beyond "fair use" as it relates to copyright. It will be interesting to see if they can also go after the individuals that purchased bootleg DVDs from CleanFlix.
Whew, for a second there I thought you said teacher - as in to teach; not sitter - as in "I watch these kids for some time while their parents do something else". Thankfully, you can edit the statement that your mother does not in fact teach, but in fact is little more than an overpaid sitter.
Glory is a short movie about a small aspect of a long-running bloody war that still shapes American politics. Sure, I would not be willing to show it to my children (5,3,2); but I would not have any problems showing it in full to those in Jr. High (13/14). History should not be white-washed or censored - it should be looked at from all aspects so that we may learn. I know there is something somewhere about history and failing to learn from it - but at least we now know where they are being taught.
Actually, that is not quite true. A stockholder (assuming common stock here) hold stock (also called shares) in ownership (or equity position) of the company. Further, they have a claim on the profits of the company. However, nothing under either Common or Preferred Stock obligates a company to any ROI for a stock holder.
To represent the vast number of stock holders (since individual actions by thousands would tear a company apart - stock holders elect a Board of Directors to oversee their interests. Typically for common it is 1 share = 1 vote, but different classifications of stock issued by the company can change that (see Google). There is an obligation here because stock holders can sue their elected members of the Board if they can prove they knowingly harmed the stock-holders. Likewise stockholders can sue the company if they can prove the company knowingly harmed them - equal to any other stakeholder of a company.
However, no company is obligated to any ROI for any stockholder.
Quicken would back me up on this, but about 3 years ago I was a 24 games/year purchaser. I would say that 5 of those games would be bought used from EB, but the rest were new in box. In most cases my purchases were a bit scattered, but centered around FPSs and Tactical Wargames. My occasional jaunts into RPG or RTS territory tended to be the highlights (NWN, Rise of Nations).
That was before I got into City of Heroes - it was my first non-text MMO (since I did a ton of MUDding back at Purdue). Since then (and again Quicken would back me to the hilt there) I have purchased very few other games. Those games I have purchased do tend to be a best of breed: GalCiv2 and SSGs series. Overall, I would have to say that my spending on games has gone down. But then with COH always on tap - I do have less time for pickup games that I might have had just a few years ago.
To push that out in to some type of general statement might be difficult, but if you were the type of person that used to spend money on 15 games/year ($40 per) = $600. Then you replace that with a game that is constantly calling you back to the grind - not something you can just pick up and go with. There is a general pull to the games that those that spend a bunch of time on, pull those of us that are more casual about playing. Otherwise we get left behind.
Overall this will be a benefit to the very large players that can gather in a strong enough base to keep the constant MMO money rolling in. I also do not think this will hurt the really small players since they only expected a small and really tight group of purchasers anyway. However, I believe this will gut the middle companies that produced a few really great titles amid a storm of garbage.
This might not be that bad of a situation, but it will make companies very shy about introducing really off-the-wall titles that may or may not catch with the public. Say like the growth of Fallout.
Theft?!? Do you even know what you are saying. Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft is a wiki link describing theft. Exactly what property has this person taken wrongfully? The airwaves used are given for public use for a certain classification of devices - thus you do not need any type of licence to put a wireless access point up (although the device itself must conform to certain laws).
Now trespassing may be a bit more interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespassing. The article was quite clear that he came back on the premises after he was told that he no longer had premission to be there. I am making the assumption that the parking lot was the property of the leasee (Brewed Adventures) and not that he was sitting in public parking.
It does not matter if he is a Level One Sex Offender - the only real crime here is that he may be guilty of Trespassing (depending on where he was parked after he was told he was no longer welcome). Now, in this day and age of the American system that might not be the only thing he is charged with or harassed about. Sad really.
Personally I see it more as Ray Ozzie putting people into position that will be loyal to him when he ascends the throne. He will want key people in the company to owe their positions to him. If you want to see what he thinks are key position then watch which of the non-Ray people leave the company.
I personally think that Steve is (and always meant to be) little more than a temporary sop to transition the company from Bill to Ray - it is obvious that Steve does not have the technical chops or cachet. However, Ray has the chops and the cachet to make a top-rate head for Microsoft.
Take heart. That does not happen until you upgrade her to Wife 1.0. Think of it like upgrading from Linux to Vista. At first everything was open and accessible - then along comes the upgrade and you find all sorts of restrictive DRM in the core.
To over-use the phrase - "spoken like someone that has not yet moved out of their parent's basement." When you do, and discover how much rent/mortgage + utilities cost in the real world, you can come back and fix your silly statement.
Sony is not selling games that only play on the Playstation. Sony is selling a development kit for the Playstation hardware. If I wanted to develop my own game for the Playstation then I could just buy the SDK and have at it. This is very much unlike Apple.
I cannot just buy a FairPlay SDK.
Just because I know Slashdot loves automotive analogies. Imagine that when Japanese cars began first appearing that GM (the largest car company at that time) put in a gadget that only GM-approved gas (music files) would run in GM-approved cars (iPods). Now they could licence this gadget to Ford and Chrysler (like Motorola's ROKR/SLVR) to give them some cover. Sure the Japanese companies could create a device that allows US-gas to run in their cars (convert to MP3), but it is an extra step and extra cost they and their consumers must bear. This will greatly limit their market penetration not based upon worth or value - but more based upon abuse of their near monopoly (Microsoft).
In fact, the car companies are trying something very much like this by claiming their error codes as copyrightable under the DMCA. Thus if your GM car breaks you will only be able to get it fixed at a GM dealer or company that purchases a GM-licence, assuming they sell any at all (FairPlay).
HDTV has been just on the horizon of hitting "critical mass" for years - and this is no different. 2008 will no more be the "Magical Year" for HDTV than it will be for Linux on the Desktop.
Actually yes I can develop a program (beyond the simplisitic "Hello World" and its ilk) faster in Eclipse/Java than VS2005/C#. I work in both arenas on a daily basis and while I would tap VS2005 as having a very edge is functionality its not enough to offset a few of C# (and .NETs) more glaring problems.
I do agree whole-heartedly that it is the tools that really help lift a language and while VS2005 is (in my opinion) currently superior to Eclipse - the third-party tools of Java are far superior to those offered for C#. Thus I can develop faster in Java than I can in C#.
I am not sure how anyone can resolve the following found in the review - emphasis mine.
How can a book not be for beginners when the first recipe teaches the most basic SQL command possible? I have this book and it is a very good book, but like most technical books it kills a great deal of trees needlessly to pad its count. You can probably rip more than 100 pages out of the book that is mindless beginner crap and self-flogging and actually have a very good technical reference for mid-level SQL people.
Just like the Europeans who squawked about the thieving Americans in the 1800s - so to do the American squawk about the Chinese. The Chinese will not come around until they actually have something worth protecting.
It is amazing that when you have your own oar in the water how quickly you become a player.
Personally I think that we are still 2-3 generations away from China being viewed as an adult at the big table. However, barring any really radical changes it is coming.
Why would anyone slap you down? We all have our beliefs and frankly my policy is to repect others and I expect them to respect mine. I would no sooner dissuade you of your beliefs than I would my kids belief in Santa, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy.
Now before you get ruffled, I am not saying your beliefs are childish. To my kids Santa is not a childish belief either. He believes with all of his heart that Santa really does exist.