So as you attack "fundamentalists" for "ignor higher-level representations," you make a completely wrong generalization about Intelligent Design.
Creates a postulate that I am wrong about statement that Intelligent Design people (and fundamentalists, in general) have a problem with higher-order reasoning.
I don't know any ID people who are attempting to "shut down."
Responds by using the fallacy of "I do not see it; therefore, it cannot be true." This is a double-negative logic. In the same vein of, "Your honor, I can show you one hundred people who did not see me steal that watch!"
Sounds like you have an extremely simplistic understanding of ID to me, if you can call that an "understanding."
Now, we're taking the extreme interpretation from our previously absurd response. Intelligent Design is well documented because it makes statements of truth about our universe without being verifiable in fact. If Intelligent Design's contributors had any real sense, they would recognize that it is possible to construct a testable theory. What I.D. is really attempting to claim is that there is a level of entropy such that there cannot be the expectation of a coherent ecological system developing. What science is about is finding and testing such a value. What I.D. is about is pushing what people easily recognize is a poorly cloaked religious agenda.
Or maybe you are a fundamentalist who attacks other fundamentalists for their simplistic reasoning, using simplistic reasoning. Then this would make more sense.
Finally, we retaliate by the scarecrow fallacy, "You sound like a bad person; thus, you must be a bad person." Your whole response has been negative and circular; hence, no understanding of higher-order, self-referential logic. You, sir, are an idiot.
The issue about Islamic fundamentalism (and fundamentalism in general) is that it promotes simple responses to simple stimuli. Hypocrisy is simply beyond most of these people to comprehend. Worse, fundamentalists actively seek to ignore higher-level representations. Intelligent Design is about the appearance of adopting scientific thought while actively attempting to shut it down. Islamic militants consistently praise Islam as a religion of peace while threatening others, often taking out their wrath on people who do not have anything to do with the situation. Why? No higher-order reasoning.
Sadly, I have been hoping for RIM to fail. The reason why is know that people do not change things until a massive, irrational event occurs in a system before people will attempt to fix it.
The judges have been ruling correctly. Regardless of whether or not the Patent Office should not granted the patents or it plans to over turn the patents is and should be irrelevant. The patents HAVE been granted and the courts are obligated to protect them. It's like making up rules for a game and then in the middle deciding which rules are and are not going to be enforced. At best it makes the game an irritation, at worse it makes it unplayable. The Patent Office has got this idea that it can "do over" anything it wants so it grants over 90% of the crap that flows through. The courts are obligated to protect the crap, as per law; otherwise, the courts would BE the Patent Office, if they decided what was and was not a real patent.
..the judge will ignore the patent office. The judge's ruling so far has been intelligent. The patents were granted and until officially rejected they are empowered by law. If we are lucky, the judge will rule against Blackberry, it will have close. Only then will corporate America and its subjects realize that (most, if not all) software patents are NOT in their best interest.
I do not like the idea of Blackberry losing on behalf of those individuals who will be harmed, but America has always needed a dramatic failure of the system before it is corrected. Having the patents that tanked a company declared invalid would clearly demonstrate the idiocy of our system that allowed them to be granted in the first place.
In accounting, all anticipated activities that lower a business' accounts (returns, markdowns, losses, etc) should be run contra to the account via allowance method and the account valued at net, not gross. Meaning, if rebates are a significant amount of normal markdowns on sales then the average amount for a period is to be estimated and removed from the sales even if they actual amount will not be known for a month or two.
This is a basic concept in how NOT to put stuff on the books; however, WorldCom showed us that you can simply add an adjusting entry at the end of the period to make the revenue any value you want and people will look the other direction if the company is appears to be making money (which is perverse if you think about it for a second..). No, companies should not be doing rebates to make the numbers look better, and any company doing so could find themselves in hot water real fast if feds find out about it.
Sweet, thank you; however, I still think that it being tied into iTunes would give Apple appropriate leverage in this mess. It would cause consumers to ask what is going on and investigate more, something the RIAA labels have no desire to see.
Anyone reading this working in Apple? Here's a very strong suggestion: What I would like to see is every song on iTunes that comes from a distributor under the RIAA umbrella marked on the site as "RIAA Affiliated" or some such. I know that iTunes has music from people that are outside of this whole mess and would wish to only buy from them. In fact, I have stopped buying music from iTunes for the moment because I cannot garentee that my money does not go back to this Evil Cartel(tm).
Apple want more money out of me? I need to know the money is going to the artists. Apple just needs to let the cartel price itself out of existance by creating their own label and let the long end of the tail do it's magic.
The guy is right that countries are not allowed, but that it does not say explicitly that citizens are not allowed either; thus, he does have the ability to be a registering authority. The catch, of course, is that in order to be a registering authority one must have the ability to back up property disputes with force. It is the nature of people to take what they can get unless there is reasonable assurance that authority will intervene with physical force (i.e. jail, removal of property, fines, etc). In general, only governmental authority has such strength. The truth of the matter is that the moon will go up for sale at some point.
Property rights are not some abnormal thing, but a mechanism for ensuring peace between people so we all recognize who has control (to some degree) of the area so they can be left alone. When humanity ventures out to the moon, they will homestead/commercialize the territory in accordance with ensuring the peace. If property rights are not recognized, it will mean that anyone is allowed to destroy anyone else's structures for their purposes; therefore, the real question is: Do you honestly think anyone is going to pay attention to Hope's records at this point? I would venture to say that most people would say, "No."
Yes and no. You answered your own question by recognizing the raid will work with largest capacity as the smallest disc. So, you will waste space on the other drives. Question: How much does it cost to pay someone to reconstruct a raid that has multiple drives go bad? Raids are created to solve the business issue of lowering the cost of down time. Losing a few gigs of space (what? A few bucks??) to saving an employee a few hours worth of work (what? $100/hr given all benefits and costs to company??) is a very fair trade. This goes for throwing drives out early as well. You never pay money to have space or equipment or computers, you pay money so your company can make money.
Just a comment about MTBF. It's often not understood, and it is one of my little pet peaves with tech producers because they don't try to correct it. MTBF is a rating for reliability to achieve lasting the warrenty period.
You have a drive that is rated 500,000 hours MTBF. Suppose you bought a drive and let it run at rated duty. Driver are normally rated to run 100% of the time, but many other devices will have duty period. Further, you run the drive until its warrenty is up. You then throw this perfectly working drive out the window and replace it. If you keep the up this pattern, then approximately once per 500,000 hours on average you should have a drive fail before the warrenty period is up. This is why it is important to not only look at the MTBF but also its warrenty period.
As a side note: In theory, you should be throwing drives out on a periodic basic. One way around this is to not buy all the same drive type and manufacturer. By having a pool of drive types, you distribute, thus minimize, risk of drive failures. Additionally, you may want to have a standard period of time for drive replacement so as to shedule your down time, as opposed to it all being unexpected.
The U.S. operations on English Law, which means that considering tradition is a natural aspect of consideration in legal issues. A side effect of this system is that if you say something long enough it becomes true. You are correct, and it is something that many us in the U.S. have tried to repeat, "Copying a work is not theft or illegal, it is a contractual violation;" however, saying "contractual violation" is not as neat (i.e. does not sell as many page views) as saying "illegal." Worse than the media's indifference is the RIAA and MPAA deliberate efforts to associate copying with theft. It has been a brilliant P.R. move to coin the term "piracy."
Only in America can you "steal" something by making your own copy and can a business "loose" money by not having their product bought. I am impressed that no resturant copy has sued another resturant for "copying their business" and their customers for not buying enough of their products.
Because America runs on traditional law, it takes a few generations for the new kids to put sanity into change. America (the fighter's of freedom and liberation, who only actually did so by the late 1960's) will have to wait for my generation to get into office to handle technology.
Stars form when a knot of gas and dust collapses under its own gravity.
No... Stars form however they damn well please. Our current models suggest it is done under their own gravity, but our models are not reality. They are our understanding of reality and are modified or thrown out when we find our understanding is wrong. The universe is always right.
P.S. Sorry, it's one of my pet pieves when someone says "that not how physics works!"
A big problem with listen to any debate is the understand that while people who are talking are equal, their knowledge is not necessarily equal. For any subject you can find, you can easily find ten people arguing on one side and ten on another. In the end, it comes down to two possibilities: Global warming is happening, global warming is not happening.
Unfortunately, America has lost responsibility in the press. It used to be about finding and reporting facts. Now it is about finding both sides to argue so as to make more money printing the same things over and over. In the end, whether or not global warming is happening or not, it makes sense that if there are things we suspect that are screwing the Earth up, we should take care of it. Americans are used to suing when you do something stupid and want to get out of it. There is no one to sue or a way to get a new Earth.
It may create uncertainty in companies that have never thought about this issue, but it certainly isn't anything new for those that are aware of I.P. issues. I was a programmer for my last company. The issue was simple: you don't copy code from outside unless you can document without a doubt where it was comming from. Even then, it was usually better to observe the idea and clean room develop the library. Unfortunately, most code is crap and following basic coding practices is beyond many programmers. So, it was usually better to create it in-house, anyways.
At first I was going to harp that posting a series game problem on the front page of/. would be inappropriate due to the severe impact the flaw can have on the game, but I have reconsidered. Moderators, I have decided that this is wonderful news. So wonderful, in fact, that you should create a whole new sections for where to imbalance game economies (after all, it's just a game, right!), download pirated software (make sure it's laced with trojans, too!), kiddie porn (no ugly kids, Michael Jackson a moderator!), and the best ways to stalk without being caught (and hide the body without leaving evidence!). After all, this is news for nerds. They never said anything about responsible nerds.
Is everything shooting along while power generation creeps?
Work out the chemistry on it. The simple truth is that unless there is a fundamental change in energy density of chemical reactions, there just isn't a lot more to ask of chemical storage. That's why there is the shift towards "power generation." This is really just a fancy term for changing from where there is a chemo-eletrical differential (i.e. positive/negative sides) to actively causing a chemical reaction that provides electricity; however, there are two problems with this approach. First, it is usually easier to ask the device to use less power. Second, power generation at a minimum produces heat, sometimes violently and excessively. Batteries are nice because they are generally quite safe, reliable, and (most importantly) currently mass-produced.
On a side note, super atoms seem to be a possibility on "rewriting" our understanding on chemical reactions.
Because people are already familiar with associating the hardware with an application. This is the same reason why we call them "floppy disks" when they have long since lost their floppy-ness (for those who never saw 5.25" floppies, must less 12" floppies..)
They used GPL code. Anything they modified, I presume, is re-released. The fact that they call external code that you cannot have access to is your problem.
If you give people a free hammer to use any way they wish, you cannot be justified when they make a building that you are not allowed to enter. GPL gives people the freedom to use it as the people see fit as long as they do not try keep the source code to themselves. Apple has not.
What you are really mad about is that you want anything the GPL code to which it is linked to be free as well. If this is what your idea of GPL means, then I can understand why Gates calls GPL viral. Your idea is viral and Apple's proprietary code is not yours to have. KDE's team was naive to expect they would get a free lunch in return for handing out free lunches. The GPL's purpose is to keep the code free, not its use.
The real issue with statistics is that people who use them generally do not understand them. I get irritated with people all the time when people "prove" some statement. Statistics shows that a sample of the populace has some correlation within some bound that is likely to be true some percentage of the time. So, the real question is: what was the bound and what percentage of the time was the randomness within that bound. If PI's bound exists outside of the statistical error of the bounds of the other tests then one could say that PI is less random; however, it sounds like they indeed found a few tests where PI "beat" the other tests. In other words, the bound PI was within the statistical error of the other tests, but the computed mean was occasionally better. But, occasionally better is to be expected some percentage of the time. If it is with in that number of times, it is as you say, a meaningless conclusion. Statatics within the bounds of error are completely equal. Probability is math, but it is also just very probable that it is used wrong.
It just does not fit with today's works. Think about it: it's just one page versus the millions of documents that created today. It wasn't even explicitly copywrited. How can anyone treat any intellectual good as serious or usable if its not owned by a corporation? Hell, it has even had its admendments admended! It wasn't correct when it was written, how can we expect to use it today?
I respectfully disagree it is not first-come. After all, if I find out about your company first before you are ready to advertise, there is no central authority to stop me. The whole point of internet is to know that I got to the place that I intented to get; otherwise, it is man in the middle issues.
As for trust for peers is really trust for who has the larges set of associates. Just look at all the work google has to constantly go through to attempt to prevent people from uping thier page ranking.
I short: Unless you can find technical details that support the idea, I do not recognize how this system can stop flooding and spoofing.
First of all, there is more to domain names than just registering a name. You obviously believe in first come first serve, but the American economy is not a free economy. It has command elements to protect against fraudulent acts, malicious content, and trademark disputes. Secondly, a decentralized system only works on the merits of the people wanting it to work. Just look at Kazaa and the music war there. Most of the music is poisoned. Do we really want domain name wars when one hot-headed tech gets pissed at another group and decides to flood the DNS with garbage? Have you ever looked at the number of newsgroups that exist solely because some yucko wanted to have alt.vampire.bite.flonk.flonk.flonk? A decentralized system can easily accept additions, but they are often difficult to remove entities.
Originally, DNS was purely handled by your HOST file. The number of DNS entries is a non-trivial amount. It was centralized to help us out. After all, it is amazing that people do not charge for such a necessary service. Do not confuse in theory and in practice. In theory, the system is a good design. In practice, we have not put the political pressure to lawmakers to force DNS host to operate solely to RFCs. That is to where anger needs to be vented.
I used to believe in Sony. I actually didn't buy their products much because they were so much more expensive; however, if you wanted something that would last for 10 years, Sony was often the way to go, especially in audio/video equipment.
Something sorta' happened with their computers. I think they realized that marketing won over with their computers because they became more haphazard. While the equipment was generally pretty good, it was utterly proprietary and had a simple support policy--"Oh, you want to upgrade your equipment to do new things? Sure! Here's a new computer you can buy!" I bought a Sony Clie NX80; although, I knew their generally policy. I figured at least some of their software, if it had bugs, would be fixed. The most annoying thing is that the thing is designed to be upgraded, thanks to flash memory, but they wouldn't even fix the web browser that has some severe flaws. The Clie has a CF slot which can take bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc, but Sony refuses to do anything for it (and this was long before they discontinued the line). In fact, the movie transfer program was so buggy you generally had to convert the movie to a format that the program would be willing to tolerate before you can convert it. And, half the time the converter would just drop sound at some point. When I heard that the PSP was going to use the Clie format for video, I knew people were going to be in trouble. Sure enough, complaints abound.
I used to play Star Wars: Galaxies. If you know anything about that fiasco of a game, they give a whole new definition to "quality control." Just read the forums and you'll see their attitude is "we'll fix it if we feel like its something bother to fix." Half the time the "fix" introduces ten more bugs than what was fixed. And, I am not talking about minor graphic bugs. I'm talking about whole broken professions, personal buildings (with stuff inside) going poof, creatures you are attacking disappearing, and the mobs stop dropping any loot. The very basics of the game mechanics are not reliable and their policies have encouraged griefing and malicious play.
Few months back Sony got rated as the worst of the big name companies for support, and it appears they are quickly added quality to that list. I, for one, refuse to buy Sony. Before, I could at least count on that it worked, so I didn't really need support. Now that the products do not work..
Slashdot Mirror
Creates a postulate that I am wrong about statement that Intelligent Design people (and fundamentalists, in general) have a problem with higher-order reasoning.
Responds by using the fallacy of "I do not see it; therefore, it cannot be true." This is a double-negative logic. In the same vein of, "Your honor, I can show you one hundred people who did not see me steal that watch!"
Now, we're taking the extreme interpretation from our previously absurd response. Intelligent Design is well documented because it makes statements of truth about our universe without being verifiable in fact. If Intelligent Design's contributors had any real sense, they would recognize that it is possible to construct a testable theory. What I.D. is really attempting to claim is that there is a level of entropy such that there cannot be the expectation of a coherent ecological system developing. What science is about is finding and testing such a value. What I.D. is about is pushing what people easily recognize is a poorly cloaked religious agenda.
Finally, we retaliate by the scarecrow fallacy, "You sound like a bad person; thus, you must be a bad person." Your whole response has been negative and circular; hence, no understanding of higher-order, self-referential logic. You, sir, are an idiot.
The issue about Islamic fundamentalism (and fundamentalism in general) is that it promotes simple responses to simple stimuli. Hypocrisy is simply beyond most of these people to comprehend. Worse, fundamentalists actively seek to ignore higher-level representations. Intelligent Design is about the appearance of adopting scientific thought while actively attempting to shut it down. Islamic militants consistently praise Islam as a religion of peace while threatening others, often taking out their wrath on people who do not have anything to do with the situation. Why? No higher-order reasoning.
Sadly, I have been hoping for RIM to fail. The reason why is know that people do not change things until a massive, irrational event occurs in a system before people will attempt to fix it.
The judges have been ruling correctly. Regardless of whether or not the Patent Office should not granted the patents or it plans to over turn the patents is and should be irrelevant. The patents HAVE been granted and the courts are obligated to protect them. It's like making up rules for a game and then in the middle deciding which rules are and are not going to be enforced. At best it makes the game an irritation, at worse it makes it unplayable. The Patent Office has got this idea that it can "do over" anything it wants so it grants over 90% of the crap that flows through. The courts are obligated to protect the crap, as per law; otherwise, the courts would BE the Patent Office, if they decided what was and was not a real patent.
..the judge will ignore the patent office. The judge's ruling so far has been intelligent. The patents were granted and until officially rejected they are empowered by law. If we are lucky, the judge will rule against Blackberry, it will have close. Only then will corporate America and its subjects realize that (most, if not all) software patents are NOT in their best interest.
I do not like the idea of Blackberry losing on behalf of those individuals who will be harmed, but America has always needed a dramatic failure of the system before it is corrected. Having the patents that tanked a company declared invalid would clearly demonstrate the idiocy of our system that allowed them to be granted in the first place.
In accounting, all anticipated activities that lower a business' accounts (returns, markdowns, losses, etc) should be run contra to the account via allowance method and the account valued at net, not gross. Meaning, if rebates are a significant amount of normal markdowns on sales then the average amount for a period is to be estimated and removed from the sales even if they actual amount will not be known for a month or two.
This is a basic concept in how NOT to put stuff on the books; however, WorldCom showed us that you can simply add an adjusting entry at the end of the period to make the revenue any value you want and people will look the other direction if the company is appears to be making money (which is perverse if you think about it for a second..). No, companies should not be doing rebates to make the numbers look better, and any company doing so could find themselves in hot water real fast if feds find out about it.
Sweet, thank you; however, I still think that it being tied into iTunes would give Apple appropriate leverage in this mess. It would cause consumers to ask what is going on and investigate more, something the RIAA labels have no desire to see.
Anyone reading this working in Apple? Here's a very strong suggestion: What I would like to see is every song on iTunes that comes from a distributor under the RIAA umbrella marked on the site as "RIAA Affiliated" or some such. I know that iTunes has music from people that are outside of this whole mess and would wish to only buy from them. In fact, I have stopped buying music from iTunes for the moment because I cannot garentee that my money does not go back to this Evil Cartel(tm).
Apple want more money out of me? I need to know the money is going to the artists. Apple just needs to let the cartel
price itself out of existance by creating their own label and let the long end of the tail do it's magic.
The guy is right that countries are not allowed, but that it does not say explicitly that citizens are not allowed either; thus, he does have the ability to be a registering authority. The catch, of course, is that in order to be a registering authority one must have the ability to back up property disputes with force. It is the nature of people to take what they can get unless there is reasonable assurance that authority will intervene with physical force (i.e. jail, removal of property, fines, etc). In general, only governmental authority has such strength. The truth of the matter is that the moon will go up for sale at some point.
Property rights are not some abnormal thing, but a mechanism for ensuring peace between people so we all recognize who has control (to some degree) of the area so they can be left alone. When humanity ventures out to the moon, they will homestead/commercialize the territory in accordance with ensuring the peace. If property rights are not recognized, it will mean that anyone is allowed to destroy anyone else's structures for their purposes; therefore, the real question is: Do you honestly think anyone is going to pay attention to Hope's records at this point? I would venture to say that most people would say, "No."
Yes and no. You answered your own question by recognizing the raid will work with largest capacity as the smallest disc. So, you will waste space on the other drives. Question: How much does it cost to pay someone to reconstruct a raid that has multiple drives go bad? Raids are created to solve the business issue of lowering the cost of down time. Losing a few gigs of space (what? A few bucks??) to saving an employee a few hours worth of work (what? $100/hr given all benefits and costs to company??) is a very fair trade. This goes for throwing drives out early as well. You never pay money to have space or equipment or computers, you pay money so your company can make money.
Just a comment about MTBF. It's often not understood, and it is one of my little pet peaves with tech producers because they don't try to correct it. MTBF is a rating for reliability to achieve lasting the warrenty period.
You have a drive that is rated 500,000 hours MTBF. Suppose you bought a drive and let it run at rated duty. Driver are normally rated to run 100% of the time, but many other devices will have duty period. Further, you run the drive until its warrenty is up. You then throw this perfectly working drive out the window and replace it. If you keep the up this pattern, then approximately once per 500,000 hours on average you should have a drive fail before the warrenty period is up. This is why it is important to not only look at the MTBF but also its warrenty period.
As a side note: In theory, you should be throwing drives out on a periodic basic. One way around this is to not buy all the same drive type and manufacturer. By having a pool of drive types, you distribute, thus minimize, risk of drive failures. Additionally, you may want to have a standard period of time for drive replacement so as to shedule your down time, as opposed to it all being unexpected.
The U.S. operations on English Law, which means that considering tradition is a natural aspect of consideration in legal issues. A side effect of this system is that if you say something long enough it becomes true. You are correct, and it is something that many us in the U.S. have tried to repeat, "Copying a work is not theft or illegal, it is a contractual violation;" however, saying "contractual violation" is not as neat (i.e. does not sell as many page views) as saying "illegal." Worse than the media's indifference is the RIAA and MPAA deliberate efforts to associate copying with theft. It has been a brilliant P.R. move to coin the term "piracy."
Only in America can you "steal" something by making your own copy and can a business "loose" money by not having their product bought. I am impressed that no resturant copy has sued another resturant for "copying their business" and their customers for not buying enough of their products.
Because America runs on traditional law, it takes a few generations for the new kids to put sanity into change. America (the fighter's of freedom and liberation, who only actually did so by the late 1960's) will have to wait for my generation to get into office to handle technology.
No... Stars form however they damn well please. Our current models suggest it is done under their own gravity, but our models are not reality. They are our understanding of reality and are modified or thrown out when we find our understanding is wrong. The universe is always right.
P.S. Sorry, it's one of my pet pieves when someone says "that not how physics works!"
A big problem with listen to any debate is the understand that while people who are talking are equal, their knowledge is not necessarily equal. For any subject you can find, you can easily find ten people arguing on one side and ten on another. In the end, it comes down to two possibilities: Global warming is happening, global warming is not happening.
Unfortunately, America has lost responsibility in the press. It used to be about finding and reporting facts. Now it is about finding both sides to argue so as to make more money printing the same things over and over. In the end, whether or not global warming is happening or not, it makes sense that if there are things we suspect that are screwing the Earth up, we should take care of it. Americans are used to suing when you do something stupid and want to get out of it. There is no one to sue or a way to get a new Earth.
It may create uncertainty in companies that have never thought about this issue, but it certainly isn't anything new for those that are aware of I.P. issues. I was a programmer for my last company. The issue was simple: you don't copy code from outside unless you can document without a doubt where it was comming from. Even then, it was usually better to observe the idea and clean room develop the library. Unfortunately, most code is crap and following basic coding practices is beyond many programmers. So, it was usually better to create it in-house, anyways.
At first I was going to harp that posting a series game problem on the front page of /. would be inappropriate due to the severe impact the flaw can have on the game, but I have reconsidered. Moderators, I have decided that this is wonderful news. So wonderful, in fact, that you should create a whole new sections for where to imbalance game economies (after all, it's just a game, right!), download pirated software (make sure it's laced with trojans, too!), kiddie porn (no ugly kids, Michael Jackson a moderator!), and the best ways to stalk without being caught (and hide the body without leaving evidence!). After all, this is news for nerds. They never said anything about responsible nerds.
Work out the chemistry on it. The simple truth is that unless there is a fundamental change in energy density of chemical reactions, there just isn't a lot more to ask of chemical storage. That's why there is the shift towards "power generation." This is really just a fancy term for changing from where there is a chemo-eletrical differential (i.e. positive/negative sides) to actively causing a chemical reaction that provides electricity; however, there are two problems with this approach. First, it is usually easier to ask the device to use less power. Second, power generation at a minimum produces heat, sometimes violently and excessively. Batteries are nice because they are generally quite safe, reliable, and (most importantly) currently mass-produced.
On a side note, super atoms seem to be a possibility on "rewriting" our understanding on chemical reactions.
Because people are already familiar with associating the hardware with an application. This is the same reason why we call them "floppy disks" when they have long since lost their floppy-ness (for those who never saw 5.25" floppies, must less 12" floppies..)
They used GPL code. Anything they modified, I presume, is re-released. The fact that they call external code that you cannot have access to is your problem.
If you give people a free hammer to use any way they wish, you cannot be justified when they make a building that you are not allowed to enter. GPL gives people the freedom to use it as the people see fit as long as they do not try keep the source code to themselves. Apple has not.
What you are really mad about is that you want anything the GPL code to which it is linked to be free as well. If this is what your idea of GPL means, then I can understand why Gates calls GPL viral. Your idea is viral and Apple's proprietary code is not yours to have. KDE's team was naive to expect they would get a free lunch in return for handing out free lunches. The GPL's purpose is to keep the code free, not its use.
Make the tower look like a tree! Sheesh!
The real issue with statistics is that people who use them generally do not understand them. I get irritated with people all the time when people "prove" some statement. Statistics shows that a sample of the populace has some correlation within some bound that is likely to be true some percentage of the time. So, the real question is: what was the bound and what percentage of the time was the randomness within that bound. If PI's bound exists outside of the statistical error of the bounds of the other tests then one could say that PI is less random; however, it sounds like they indeed found a few tests where PI "beat" the other tests. In other words, the bound PI was within the statistical error of the other tests, but the computed mean was occasionally better. But, occasionally better is to be expected some percentage of the time. If it is with in that number of times, it is as you say, a meaningless conclusion. Statatics within the bounds of error are completely equal. Probability is math, but it is also just very probable that it is used wrong.
It just does not fit with today's works. Think about it: it's just one page versus the millions of documents that created today. It wasn't even explicitly copywrited. How can anyone treat any intellectual good as serious or usable if its not owned by a corporation? Hell, it has even had its admendments admended! It wasn't correct when it was written, how can we expect to use it today?
Hmm.. I think I like this idea. Stallman was always a little to scruffy for me, not to metion a guy..
I respectfully disagree it is not first-come. After all, if I find out about your company first before you are ready to advertise, there is no central authority to stop me. The whole point of internet is to know that I got to the place that I intented to get; otherwise, it is man in the middle issues.
As for trust for peers is really trust for who has the larges set of associates. Just look at all the work google has to constantly go through to attempt to prevent people from uping thier page ranking.
I short: Unless you can find technical details that support the idea, I do not recognize how this system can stop flooding and spoofing.
First of all, there is more to domain names than just registering a name. You obviously believe in first come first serve, but the American economy is not a free economy. It has command elements to protect against fraudulent acts, malicious content, and trademark disputes. Secondly, a decentralized system only works on the merits of the people wanting it to work. Just look at Kazaa and the music war there. Most of the music is poisoned. Do we really want domain name wars when one hot-headed tech gets pissed at another group and decides to flood the DNS with garbage? Have you ever looked at the number of newsgroups that exist solely because some yucko wanted to have alt.vampire.bite.flonk.flonk.flonk? A decentralized system can easily accept additions, but they are often difficult to remove entities.
Originally, DNS was purely handled by your HOST file. The number of DNS entries is a non-trivial amount. It was centralized to help us out. After all, it is amazing that people do not charge for such a necessary service. Do not confuse in theory and in practice. In theory, the system is a good design. In practice, we have not put the political pressure to lawmakers to force DNS host to operate solely to RFCs. That is to where anger needs to be vented.
I used to believe in Sony. I actually didn't buy their products much because they were so much more expensive; however, if you wanted something that would last for 10 years, Sony was often the way to go, especially in audio/video equipment.
Something sorta' happened with their computers. I think they realized that marketing won over with their computers because they became more haphazard. While the equipment was generally pretty good, it was utterly proprietary and had a simple support policy--"Oh, you want to upgrade your equipment to do new things? Sure! Here's a new computer you can buy!" I bought a Sony Clie NX80; although, I knew their generally policy. I figured at least some of their software, if it had bugs, would be fixed. The most annoying thing is that the thing is designed to be upgraded, thanks to flash memory, but they wouldn't even fix the web browser that has some severe flaws. The Clie has a CF slot which can take bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc, but Sony refuses to do anything for it (and this was long before they discontinued the line). In fact, the movie transfer program was so buggy you generally had to convert the movie to a format that the program would be willing to tolerate before you can convert it. And, half the time the converter would just drop sound at some point. When I heard that the PSP was going to use the Clie format for video, I knew people were going to be in trouble. Sure enough, complaints abound.
I used to play Star Wars: Galaxies. If you know anything about that fiasco of a game, they give a whole new definition to "quality control." Just read the forums and you'll see their attitude is "we'll fix it if we feel like its something bother to fix." Half the time the "fix" introduces ten more bugs than what was fixed. And, I am not talking about minor graphic bugs. I'm talking about whole broken professions, personal buildings (with stuff inside) going poof, creatures you are attacking disappearing, and the mobs stop dropping any loot. The very basics of the game mechanics are not reliable and their policies have encouraged griefing and malicious play.
Few months back Sony got rated as the worst of the big name companies for support, and it appears they are quickly added quality to that list. I, for one, refuse to buy Sony. Before, I could at least count on that it worked, so I didn't really need support. Now that the products do not work..