IF some peice of OSS code were released under a GPL license, MS just wouldn't use it; they'd implement something from scratch that worked similarly.
As a practical matter, the standards compliance would be better with BSD code (most likely.. here you're weighing the odds that the OSS implementation is more standards compliant than what MS could come up with. historically these are good odds)
Let me make something extremely clear:
The GPL doesn't prevent microsoft from doing _anything_. Re-read that. Keep re-reading it until you agree. If MS wants the functionality that a peice of GPL code requires, they'll clean room it from scratch, end of story. The notion that there's some peice of GPL code out there that does something SO cool that nobody else can duplicate it without wholesale inclusion of the source code is complete nonsense. OSS people have been doing wholesale duplication of Microsoft stuff for ever, with NO access to the code. Why do you suppose Microsoft "needs" GPL code at all ? Also, you erroneously suppose that the availability of existing source code could make/break a shipping feature from MS. The end result of the product development cycle at MS is so much more than a bit of code. Regardless of where the code comes from - MS internal, BSD, GPL, whatever - the actual writing lines of code peice is NOT the majority time sink in that functional or feature area of the product. For this code to ship, many people needed to agree months ago that what it did was important enough to be worth doing, and once a decision like that has been made, it WILL get done, regardless of wether some existing code can be re-appropriated, or wether something needs to be written completely from scratch to do it.
Furthermore, i challenge _anyone_ to find _any_ example of a place where MS used open source or public domain code to "extend their monopoly"
How you can extend a monopoly by wielding something that EVERYONE has ? It has been the proprietary peices that have done the monopoly extension. The leveraged OSS code by and large goes towards standards compliance with existing systems. (eg: ftp.exe on a Windows machine is mostly bsd code. FTP is something of an afterthought in ever windows implementation)
So basically, i'd just like to say that this whole converation about the GPL somehow constraining Microsoft is a completely ridiculous GPL-fanboy wet dream. It has no basis in reality whatsoever.
its re-entrant in-kernel, meaning multiple different procs in the kernel can be doing things with your network simultaneously
we're talking kernel concurrency here. Something windows has and linux didn't(doesn't?). (which is why MS was able to concoct the netcraft benchmarks where Windows spanked Linux with multi-proc and multi-network interface scenarios. Somebody at MS knew one of the technological advantages the windows kernel has/had.
actually my understanding is that the BSD tcp/ip stack wasn't (and isn't?) highly multi-threaded, whereas windows's stack is. That's a re-write that seems worth doing, don't you think ?
the change in kerberos was spec-legal, and was used to support functionality NT needed. That every unix implementatino ever was broken isn't microsoft's problem.
you sort of flew off the deep end with the life better for everybody bit. my point there was that it is a fact of life that there are lots and lots of machines running MS software. so wehter you're a direct user or someone that is just affected by MS based DDoS attacks, if the stuff MS ships is better, you benefit. It has nothing to do with choice or one religion or any other nonsense.. where did you even come up with that ?
People that write software under the BSD license don't care who uses it for what. They enjoyed writing something; they may think it's pretty good; and by extension, they may think lots of people can benefit from it.
Consider this - if you beleive MS writes shitty software, wouldn'y you want them using as much BSD code as possible ? wouldn't that help standards compliance ? Wouldn't that help make MS's products less bad ? Wouldn't that inturn make life better for everyone ?
or is your argument basically "screw companies"?
The BSD license is about writing good software. The GPL license is about anti-corporatism.
i dont know about you but it seems like i've always got more extra "coolant" that my body is urging me to get rid of.. and this laptop is running to hot... and it's already sitting in my lap..
if some sort of interface were made to allow for human releif and laptop cooling... the problem could be solved.
(and there may be a spin-off use for this.. interface)
If there's a debate at all, it's not worth wasting your time thinking about it.
This is why people like the BSD license.
This is why OpenBSD forks code when others play stupid license tricks. If anyone has to think about what a license might mean, then they're not busy fixing bugs. Pseudo-Clever-Licensing keeps lawyers happy and programmers unproductive.
anybody not factoring lifecycle costs into a car purchase is a dummy. But there are more variables than just the brand of automaker.
I've owned 2 BMWs, an Audi, a VW, a Ford Bronco II, a Toyota Celica, and a 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass.
The most reliable of all those cars ?
The 1970 Oldsmobile. It did nothing. There was nothing to go wrong. Well, nothing until i blew up the 27 year old engine. Threw a rod through the block. Paid some guys $900 to do a motor swap. Reliability went to shit after that.. but once it was running it ran great (4bbl carb in the 13 year newer motor)
The Ford Bronco was the worst i think. It was a hodgebodge of hacked up stuff by the time I got it.
The Celica was rock solid but I let a friend borrow it and she reduced the clutch to literally nothing.. stranding her on an onramp. Probably not the cars fault, but it's a knock against its perceived reliability. I was able to drive the thing no problem (and very hard, i might add) so i dont know how she managed to put the car in an undrivable state in just a matter of hours.
I did the clutch replacement myself on that car. I am never again owning a transverse engined FWD japanese car. Working on them is pure bullshit.
I think your position that vehicle TCO should trump looks or other factors is silly. It's up to each person to decide whats important to them.
For instance, i'll likely never own a future toyota or honda product because with the exception of the MR2, Supra, S2000, and NSX, they make FWD economy appliance cars that are at best uninspiring to drive and at worst unsafe (inadequate brakes, woeful suspensions, inadequate acceleration on automatic 4 cylinder models, etc). The models i've excepted are rarities in their model range (and have higher maintenance costs than run of the mill honda/toyota vehicles)
If you were to make TCO the only factor in a car purchase, you'd ride the bus. Owning and insuring a car is an expensive proposition regardless of what you buy. And the car's you're talking about are nothing more than appliance transportation. When i get in a car, the drive is the point, not the destination. Driving in an uninspiring car is torture for me, so when i lived in seattle i'd often take the bus even though we had 3 cars. When you factor in the joy of driving, or unfortuneately, the desire for worldly status, it becomes clear why people buy BMWs - they are subjectively and objectively more fun to drive than Camrys.
There are other concerns - i.e. honda and toyota do not offer station wagons at all, much less station wagons with manual gearboxes. VW does, so now we have a VW. Yes, it will probably end up being more expensive than a honda accord. It also fits the requirements; an accord does not.
BTW - my Audi and BMWs are from the 1980s. My first BMW as a 1980 528 5 speed. I bought it with 220,000 miles on the original drivetrain, and drove it _Very_ hard and sold it with 240k miles on it. The second bmw is an 88 model with 111k miles on it (i bought it with 98k). I drive it extremely hard (it has a 6900 rpm redline that i am very familiar with).
The Audi is an 88 model that i just bought with 192k miles on it (now has 196k)
German engines are notoriously bulletproof and well made. The 88 BMW uses a detuned race engine of which less than 5000 examples exist in North America. Yeah, that one is expensive to maintain an work on, but it's also more motor than anything you can get from honda, even today (except for the NSX motor). And its 15 years old (and a 25 year old design).
I just saw minority report a few weeks ago. I very quickly thought to myself "when some government tries this mandatory retina scanning shit, humanity is done"
thanks EU.
I'm wondering when some government is going to require every citizen to wear a mark. maybe the same government will link the mark to being able to participate in monetary transactions.
There are legitimate ways for people to get windows code that are outside of GSP or Shared source.
Think about this - the code that was leaked is older than the shared source program. Was shared source the very first time any institution ever got windows code ?
No.
I thought the answer on where this code came from was publicly known, and even discussed here ?
The microsoft statement above, to the best of my knowledge, is correct. (iow what i know doesn't disagree with that statement) If the specific details to back this up aren't widely known, I won't disclose them. IOW, they know how the code got out, and its none of the things you mention. Mostly the distinction is that people have an overbroad interpretation of who the shared source program covers.
you dont think there were any WMD's in iraq at any time ?
You should ask those gassed kurds about it.
Oh wait, they're DEAD.
(it might be correct to point out that the US probably sold them some of this stuff; shame on us if thats the case. shame again on us if we dont clean up the mess when we discover the folly of our ways)
that the basic argument is that you feel that because no WMD's were found, when the pretense given for going to war was that they existed.. that the pretense of the war was fabricated to justify going to war.
IOW, nobody likes being lied to, and nobody likes going to war in general, but especially if they were drug into it under false pretenses.
thats perfectly understandable... i think i'd feel the same way.
the difference is that i fundamentally trust the bush administration (as much as i trust any politician, which is a derived class of "Person", which i also do not trust, but "Politician" has a special "do not trust" modifier;)
that said, i was really surprised that no significnat WMD parts have been found. I mean, 10+ years of evidence points to existance of such.. evidence presented by both parties, multiple administrations, even non-US interests. Everyone thought he had them.
So, in effect, what that means is that if WMD are never found (and assuming that means they didn't exist), then i was wrong, despite all the indicators that wmd should have been found..
isn't is possible that bush/powell are just as surprised as anybody else ?
in which case, the objection based on them being intentionally misleading doesn't really fly ?
I donno. I like to assume that people are wrong more often than they're lying. Call me gullible. I see a few possibilities.
1) there are/were WMDs but none were found (cant be mad at bush for this) 2) there are/were NO wmds but everyone thought there was (cant be mad at bush for this, either) 3) there were NOT wmds, despite all the research to the contrary, and somehow bush and only bush knew this, and managed to convince the american people, the UN, The UK, and pretty much everyone, that there were. (ok, you can be mad about that)
weighing the liklihood of all options, i'd say its between #1 and #2.
remember, Bush wasn't the first person to say there was a WMD problem in iraq. Clinton actually said something similar, and had plans to go do something about it but they never materialized. That lends further credibility to #1.
a) scientific truth is an oxymoron. the scientific process, as you know, requires axioms as its foundation, and upon those hypotheses are formulated, based on observations of phenomena
theroies are developed that seem to adequately explain the observations given the axioms all have pre-agreed to.
whats the point of this ?
Science is always our "best guess". That doesn't mean it's right.
On issues that matter, there will always be political involvement, even on the part of the scientists.
so science really boils down to a guess that seems reasonable, based on what some people came up with, based on their understanding of other things. people with biases of their own (including the bias that the scientific method, and scientific research is in itself infallable and absolute.. science is the new "magic" for most people)
Look at it this way - nobody does research into global warming unless they have a viewpoint about it one way or another. They either want to "prove" that its a problem, or "prove" that it isn't. The fact that there's any debate about it at all should be enough to convince you that there's no such concept as "scientific truth", at least as far as humans can discern, and it all boils down to arguments for or against something.. the argument presented either convinces you that its more likely than not "correct" or "incorrect"..
theoretical math is the only absolute in the universe. thats why its theoretical. anything else is religion. at least religious people aren't afraid to call themselves such. the hypocrites are the "scientific elite" that think they're above the religious types:) everybody beleives in something they cant prove. in the case of science, it's that their assumptions and axioms are the right ones:)
(time and time again we've seen that science is an iterative process of discovering why the old assumptinos were wrong)
Q: Mr. President, where are the weapons of mass destruction you said were in Iraq?
A: Saddam was an evil man who tortured his citizens
I beleive the president has said "we haven't found them yet, we're still looking"
Yet people keep asking "where are they ?"
and the answer is still "we haven't found them yet, please stop fucking pestering us"
and then the question changes: "well, gosh, if you cant find any, wasn't invading iraq wrong ? wasn't it all a sham ?"
and then the answer changes (because the question did) to "saddam needed to go and you and i both know it, so stop playing political games"
Reporters are complete assholes. Reporters get "noticed" by being assholes. If you don't ask the question that stumps or challenges the speaker, you're a nobody. It doesn't matter if your question means anything or not; the current political arena makes it unacceptable for the president to say "shut up with your trolling bullshit, already, if you're so goddamned smart why don't you come up here and tell us your error free grand plan"
thats exactly what i'd answer; maybe thats one reason im not a successful politician:)
Please tell me, so i can never, ever, visit there, as the place is rife with assholes.
Guess what - whatever they installed on your car is easy to disable. I suggest you do so.
What kind of car is it ? I'd go to the local car parts store, get the Chilton's manual for that vehicle/vehicle family, and study the wiring diagrams for the following subsystems:
if the device keeps the car from starting, its doing it one of two ways: - interrupting fuel - interrupting spark you can manually bypass the ECU -> fuel pump signal (and make the fuel pumps run anytime there is power). At that point, the ECU just sends spark signals to the ignitor (or coil packs, if you have those) at the appropriate time. Unless there's a modified ECU, i'd guess that if they were doing spark / FP relay interference, that this box sat between the ignitino cylinder and the "start" input on the ECU. Obviously you can bypass that.
If they're super thorough and they've actually got a modified ECU, just find the factory unmodified ECU for your vehicle, and swap them:) junkyard would be a good bet..
wintech doesn't claim to produce a competing product to what microsoft makes, and wintech doesn't have a website that claims their product is a replacement for windows, and wintech doesn't create a product made to look and work as much like windows as possible.
Thats the difference
Look at it this way. is lindows the victim of an unfortuneate naming coincidence ?
No. They're a linux distribution who's only reason for existance is to try and be as much like windows as possible, but not windows. And their name reflects exactly that purpose.
I'm sure you'll agree that i cant stard Fjord Motor Company, a car maker.
They want no microsoft dependancy, and they want to punish a successful american company. the EU HATES that it is 2nd place and is looking for world legitimacy any way they can get it. That means thumbing the nose at the US at any possible opportunity.
because if you dont than no-name companies with no technololgy but super vague patents will sue you over totally obvious ideas with plenty of prior art.
And win, because our patent system and judges are both ridiculous.
its unclear. MS's thinking is to take the worst-case approach - that they might be legally obligated to open code they'd rather not because of a wackjob interpretation of GPL and code pollution.
Therefore, MS's policy is that no microsoft developer is allowed to look at the code of any open source project, for any reason, without working with legal first.
the idea that tech work is the darling of ths US economy and that people in IT are head and shoudlers above the rest of the universe is really disgusting.
guess what. People that work with/on computers only do so because computers aren't good enough to run themselves, program themselves, or solve all of our problems. people that focus on personal job security in the IT field are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
As long as there are UNIX administrators employed anywhere in the world, IT and software have failed. Computers should run themselves, not have people that think their college CS degree qualifies them only to be a machine babysitter complaining about how they're getting replaced by cheaper staff. (what happens when somebody finally gets the software right, and computers manage themselves ? will you bemoan the loss of college-degree management/programming jobs in india, that are now being replaced with software ?)
Slashdot Mirror
the most appealing thing for all of you about this headline is "forced", "stripped", and "MS" in the same sentence.
:)
take your rape fantasies elsewhere please
this is ridiculous.
IF some peice of OSS code were released under a GPL license, MS just wouldn't use it; they'd implement something from scratch that worked similarly.
As a practical matter, the standards compliance would be better with BSD code (most likely.. here you're weighing the odds that the OSS implementation is more standards compliant than what MS could come up with. historically these are good odds)
Let me make something extremely clear:
The GPL doesn't prevent microsoft from doing _anything_. Re-read that. Keep re-reading it until you agree. If MS wants the functionality that a peice of GPL code requires, they'll clean room it from scratch, end of story. The notion that there's some peice of GPL code out there that does something SO cool that nobody else can duplicate it without wholesale inclusion of the source code is complete nonsense. OSS people have been doing wholesale duplication of Microsoft stuff for ever, with NO access to the code. Why do you suppose Microsoft "needs" GPL code at all ? Also, you erroneously suppose that the availability of existing source code could make/break a shipping feature from MS. The end result of the product development cycle at MS is so much more than a bit of code. Regardless of where the code comes from - MS internal, BSD, GPL, whatever - the actual writing lines of code peice is NOT the majority time sink in that functional or feature area of the product. For this code to ship, many people needed to agree months ago that what it did was important enough to be worth doing, and once a decision like that has been made, it WILL get done, regardless of wether some existing code can be re-appropriated, or wether something needs to be written completely from scratch to do it.
Furthermore, i challenge _anyone_ to find _any_ example of a place where MS used open source or public domain code to "extend their monopoly"
How you can extend a monopoly by wielding something that EVERYONE has ? It has been the proprietary peices that have done the monopoly extension. The leveraged OSS code by and large goes towards standards compliance with existing systems. (eg: ftp.exe on a Windows machine is mostly bsd code. FTP is something of an afterthought in ever windows implementation)
So basically, i'd just like to say that this whole converation about the GPL somehow constraining Microsoft is a completely ridiculous GPL-fanboy wet dream. It has no basis in reality whatsoever.
its re-entrant in-kernel, meaning multiple different procs in the kernel can be doing things with your network simultaneously
we're talking kernel concurrency here. Something windows has and linux didn't(doesn't?). (which is why MS was able to concoct the netcraft benchmarks where Windows spanked Linux with multi-proc and multi-network interface scenarios. Somebody at MS knew one of the technological advantages the windows kernel has/had.
actually my understanding is that the BSD tcp/ip stack wasn't (and isn't?) highly multi-threaded, whereas windows's stack is. That's a re-write that seems worth doing, don't you think ?
the change in kerberos was spec-legal, and was used to support functionality NT needed. That every unix implementatino ever was broken isn't microsoft's problem.
you sort of flew off the deep end with the life better for everybody bit. my point there was that it is a fact of life that there are lots and lots of machines running MS software. so wehter you're a direct user or someone that is just affected by MS based DDoS attacks, if the stuff MS ships is better, you benefit. It has nothing to do with choice or one religion or any other nonsense.. where did you even come up with that ?
People that write software under the BSD license don't care who uses it for what. They enjoyed writing something; they may think it's pretty good; and by extension, they may think lots of people can benefit from it.
Consider this - if you beleive MS writes shitty software, wouldn'y you want them using as much BSD code as possible ? wouldn't that help standards compliance ? Wouldn't that help make MS's products less bad ? Wouldn't that inturn make life better for everyone ?
or is your argument basically "screw companies"?
The BSD license is about writing good software. The GPL license is about anti-corporatism.
I mean.. lets say it didn't _have_ to be water..
.. interface)
i dont know about you but it seems like i've always got more extra "coolant" that my body is urging me to get rid of.. and this laptop is running to hot... and it's already sitting in my lap..
if some sort of interface were made to allow for human releif and laptop cooling... the problem could be solved.
(and there may be a spin-off use for this
If there's a debate at all, it's not worth wasting your time thinking about it.
This is why people like the BSD license.
This is why OpenBSD forks code when others play stupid license tricks. If anyone has to think about what a license might mean, then they're not busy fixing bugs. Pseudo-Clever-Licensing keeps lawyers happy and programmers unproductive.
anybody not factoring lifecycle costs into a car purchase is a dummy. But there are more variables than just the brand of automaker.
I've owned 2 BMWs, an Audi, a VW, a Ford Bronco II, a Toyota Celica, and a 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass.
The most reliable of all those cars ?
The 1970 Oldsmobile. It did nothing. There was nothing to go wrong. Well, nothing until i blew up the 27 year old engine. Threw a rod through the block. Paid some guys $900 to do a motor swap. Reliability went to shit after that.. but once it was running it ran great (4bbl carb in the 13 year newer motor)
The Ford Bronco was the worst i think. It was a hodgebodge of hacked up stuff by the time I got it.
The Celica was rock solid but I let a friend borrow it and she reduced the clutch to literally nothing.. stranding her on an onramp. Probably not the cars fault, but it's a knock against its perceived reliability. I was able to drive the thing no problem (and very hard, i might add) so i dont know how she managed to put the car in an undrivable state in just a matter of hours.
I did the clutch replacement myself on that car. I am never again owning a transverse engined FWD japanese car. Working on them is pure bullshit.
I think your position that vehicle TCO should trump looks or other factors is silly. It's up to each person to decide whats important to them.
For instance, i'll likely never own a future toyota or honda product because with the exception of the MR2, Supra, S2000, and NSX, they make FWD economy appliance cars that are at best uninspiring to drive and at worst unsafe (inadequate brakes, woeful suspensions, inadequate acceleration on automatic 4 cylinder models, etc). The models i've excepted are rarities in their model range (and have higher maintenance costs than run of the mill honda/toyota vehicles)
If you were to make TCO the only factor in a car purchase, you'd ride the bus. Owning and insuring a car is an expensive proposition regardless of what you buy. And the car's you're talking about are nothing more than appliance transportation. When i get in a car, the drive is the point, not the destination. Driving in an uninspiring car is torture for me, so when i lived in seattle i'd often take the bus even though we had 3 cars. When you factor in the joy of driving, or unfortuneately, the desire for worldly status, it becomes clear why people buy BMWs - they are subjectively and objectively more fun to drive than Camrys.
There are other concerns - i.e. honda and toyota do not offer station wagons at all, much less station wagons with manual gearboxes. VW does, so now we have a VW. Yes, it will probably end up being more expensive than a honda accord. It also fits the requirements; an accord does not.
BTW - my Audi and BMWs are from the 1980s.
My first BMW as a 1980 528 5 speed. I bought it with 220,000 miles on the original drivetrain, and drove it _Very_ hard and sold it with 240k miles on it. The second bmw is an 88 model with 111k miles on it (i bought it with 98k). I drive it extremely hard (it has a 6900 rpm redline that i am very familiar with).
The Audi is an 88 model that i just bought with 192k miles on it (now has 196k)
German engines are notoriously bulletproof and well made. The 88 BMW uses a detuned race engine of which less than 5000 examples exist in North America. Yeah, that one is expensive to maintain an work on, but it's also more motor than anything you can get from honda, even today (except for the NSX motor). And its 15 years old (and a 25 year old design).
the EU already has the one-currency thing going. :)
sounds like a good reason to not fly.
I just saw minority report a few weeks ago. I very quickly thought to myself "when some government tries this mandatory retina scanning shit, humanity is done"
thanks EU.
I'm wondering when some government is going to require every citizen to wear a mark. maybe the same government will link the mark to being able to participate in monetary transactions.
I'll be moving to a desert, thanks.
There are legitimate ways for people to get windows code that are outside of GSP or Shared source.
Think about this - the code that was leaked is older than the shared source program. Was shared source the very first time any institution ever got windows code ?
No.
I thought the answer on where this code came from was publicly known, and even discussed here ?
The microsoft statement above, to the best of my knowledge, is correct. (iow what i know doesn't disagree with that statement) If the specific details to back this up aren't widely known, I won't disclose them. IOW, they know how the code got out, and its none of the things you mention. Mostly the distinction is that people have an overbroad interpretation of who the shared source program covers.
you dont think there were any WMD's in iraq at any time ?
You should ask those gassed kurds about it.
Oh wait, they're DEAD.
(it might be correct to point out that the US probably sold them some of this stuff; shame on us if thats the case. shame again on us if we dont clean up the mess when we discover the folly of our ways)
that the basic argument is that you feel that because no WMD's were found, when the pretense given for going to war was that they existed.. that the pretense of the war was fabricated to justify going to war.
;)
IOW, nobody likes being lied to, and nobody likes going to war in general, but especially if they were drug into it under false pretenses.
thats perfectly understandable... i think i'd feel the same way.
the difference is that i fundamentally trust the bush administration (as much as i trust any politician, which is a derived class of "Person", which i also do not trust, but "Politician" has a special "do not trust" modifier
that said, i was really surprised that no significnat WMD parts have been found. I mean, 10+ years of evidence points to existance of such.. evidence presented by both parties, multiple administrations, even non-US interests. Everyone thought he had them.
So, in effect, what that means is that if WMD are never found (and assuming that means they didn't exist), then i was wrong, despite all the indicators that wmd should have been found..
isn't is possible that bush/powell are just as surprised as anybody else ?
in which case, the objection based on them being intentionally misleading doesn't really fly ?
I donno. I like to assume that people are wrong more often than they're lying. Call me gullible. I see a few possibilities.
1) there are/were WMDs but none were found
(cant be mad at bush for this)
2) there are/were NO wmds but everyone thought there was (cant be mad at bush for this, either)
3) there were NOT wmds, despite all the research to the contrary, and somehow bush and only bush knew this, and managed to convince the american people, the UN, The UK, and pretty much everyone, that there were.
(ok, you can be mad about that)
weighing the liklihood of all options, i'd say its between #1 and #2.
remember, Bush wasn't the first person to say there was a WMD problem in iraq. Clinton actually said something similar, and had plans to go do something about it but they never materialized. That lends further credibility to #1.
"biased towards scientific truth"
:) everybody beleives in something they cant prove. in the case of science, it's that their assumptions and axioms are the right ones :)
a) scientific truth is an oxymoron. the scientific process, as you know, requires axioms as its foundation, and upon those hypotheses are formulated, based on observations of phenomena
theroies are developed that seem to adequately explain the observations given the axioms all have pre-agreed to.
whats the point of this ?
Science is always our "best guess". That doesn't mean it's right.
On issues that matter, there will always be political involvement, even on the part of the scientists.
so science really boils down to a guess that seems reasonable, based on what some people came up with, based on their understanding of other things. people with biases of their own (including the bias that the scientific method, and scientific research is in itself infallable and absolute.. science is the new "magic" for most people)
Look at it this way - nobody does research into global warming unless they have a viewpoint about it one way or another. They either want to "prove" that its a problem, or "prove" that it isn't. The fact that there's any debate about it at all should be enough to convince you that there's no such concept as "scientific truth", at least as far as humans can discern, and it all boils down to arguments for or against something.. the argument presented either convinces you that its more likely than not "correct" or "incorrect"..
theoretical math is the only absolute in the universe. thats why its theoretical. anything else is religion. at least religious people aren't afraid to call themselves such. the hypocrites are the "scientific elite" that think they're above the religious types
(time and time again we've seen that science is an iterative process of discovering why the old assumptinos were wrong)
Q: Mr. President, where are the weapons of mass destruction you said were in Iraq?
A: Saddam was an evil man who tortured his citizens
I beleive the president has said "we haven't found them yet, we're still looking"
Yet people keep asking "where are they ?"
and the answer is still "we haven't found them yet, please stop fucking pestering us"
and then the question changes: "well, gosh, if you cant find any, wasn't invading iraq wrong ? wasn't it all a sham ?"
and then the answer changes (because the question did) to "saddam needed to go and you and i both know it, so stop playing political games"
Reporters are complete assholes. Reporters get "noticed" by being assholes. If you don't ask the question that stumps or challenges the speaker, you're a nobody. It doesn't matter if your question means anything or not; the current political arena makes it unacceptable for the president to say "shut up with your trolling bullshit, already, if you're so goddamned smart why don't you come up here and tell us your error free grand plan"
thats exactly what i'd answer; maybe thats one reason im not a successful politician :)
where do you live ? russia ?
:)
Please tell me, so i can never, ever, visit there, as the place is rife with assholes.
Guess what - whatever they installed on your car is easy to disable. I suggest you do so.
What kind of car is it ? I'd go to the local car parts store, get the Chilton's manual for that vehicle/vehicle family, and study the wiring diagrams for the following subsystems:
ignition key switch
fuel pump circuit
ECU inputs/outputs
coil input lines
if the device keeps the car from starting, its doing it one of two ways:
- interrupting fuel
- interrupting spark
you can manually bypass the ECU -> fuel pump signal (and make the fuel pumps run anytime there is power). At that point, the ECU just sends spark signals to the ignitor (or coil packs, if you have those) at the appropriate time. Unless there's a modified ECU, i'd guess that if they were doing spark / FP relay interference, that this box sat between the ignitino cylinder and the "start" input on the ECU. Obviously you can bypass that.
If they're super thorough and they've actually got a modified ECU, just find the factory unmodified ECU for your vehicle, and swap them
junkyard would be a good bet..
the only issue ESR raised is the same one he (unintionally) raises everytime that he opens his mouth or his text editor:
people should ignore him completely
wintech doesn't claim to produce a competing product to what microsoft makes, and wintech doesn't have a website that claims their product is a replacement for windows, and wintech doesn't create a product made to look and work as much like windows as possible.
Thats the difference
Look at it this way. is lindows the victim of an unfortuneate naming coincidence ?
No. They're a linux distribution who's only reason for existance is to try and be as much like windows as possible, but not windows. And their name reflects exactly that purpose.
I'm sure you'll agree that i cant stard Fjord Motor Company, a car maker.
whats arrogant about wanting to compromise ?
The EU does not represent "absolute right". The EU has its motivations for doing what it does, don't confuse those with "law", "good", or "right".
The problem is precisely as you describe though - the EU has made up their mind. They want to punish MS and will come up with any reason to do so.
bullshit.
the EU is not impartial at all.
They want no microsoft dependancy, and they want to punish a successful american company. the EU HATES that it is 2nd place and is looking for world legitimacy any way they can get it. That means thumbing the nose at the US at any possible opportunity.
because if you dont than no-name companies with no technololgy but super vague patents will sue you over totally obvious ideas with plenty of prior art.
And win, because our patent system and judges are both ridiculous.
What do you know about who reviews the windows code ?
Also, what assumptions are you making about the number of people, and their qualifications, that are reviewing OSS code ?
sure, a determination that employees are not allowed to make without involvement of MS lawyers
:)
only one of us is speculating. check out my user info
its unclear. MS's thinking is to take the worst-case approach - that they might be legally obligated to open code they'd rather not because of a wackjob interpretation of GPL and code pollution.
Therefore, MS's policy is that no microsoft developer is allowed to look at the code of any open source project, for any reason, without working with legal first.
It's a serious deal.
the idea that tech work is the darling of ths US economy and that people in IT are head and shoudlers above the rest of the universe is really disgusting.
guess what. People that work with/on computers only do so because computers aren't good enough to run themselves, program themselves, or solve all of our problems. people that focus on personal job security in the IT field are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
As long as there are UNIX administrators employed anywhere in the world, IT and software have failed. Computers should run themselves, not have people that think their college CS degree qualifies them only to be a machine babysitter complaining about how they're getting replaced by cheaper staff. (what happens when somebody finally gets the software right, and computers manage themselves ? will you bemoan the loss of college-degree management/programming jobs in india, that are now being replaced with software ?)