Did you sign your Windows licensing agreement? I doubt it.
A EULA is not a contract.
Mutual consideration and acceptance are required for a contract, a signature is generally not. Signatures of both parties on a written document of the contract terms is a common and particularly desirable form of evidence of both what the actual terms of the contract are and that those terms were, in fact, agreed to and accepted by both parties, but it is not a requirement to have a valid contract in most cases (there are certain cases where there is a requirement that a contract be supported by a signed, written document to be valid, such as certain real estate transactions, but these are exceptions to the normal rule, under which contracts which are neither signed nor even reduced to writing are valid and enforceable.)
There are issues with the validity of EULAs (and, IIRC, court decisions on their validity and enforceability are mixed), but the one you raise isn't really one of them.
My XP installation is quite old. So old in fact I was a minor when I clicked the "I agree" on the EULA. The EULA is a contract, which cannot be legally entered into by a minor in the good ol US of A, voiding the contract.
This premise is incorrect. In general, contracts with minors are not void, they are voidable by the minor. The precise details may vary by jurisdiction, but, IIRC, generally for the minor to exercise this power, they must do so prior to or within a very specific window after majority.
Of course, voiding the contract also means that the minor loses any rights they hand under the contract.
They're already scanning the tweets for urls to turn them into clickable hyperlinks.
They're doing that in the web front-end, not in the backend engine. The API bypasses the web front-end to access the back-end engine. Doing the scanning and replacement in the back-end would slow down the basic system (since it would have to be done as everything moves through the system, rather than just for those tweets that are viewed through the web front end). Its a lot cheaper for Twitter to require that people using the API (and thus developing apps that bypass the twitter's own web front end) do that work for them, since that puts the load on whatever machine the custom apps are running on rather than on Twitter's servers.
Corporate R&D is a different kind, where they don't usually want to publish the results.
Companies in the research business generally want to publish (there is a prestige issue for the company, and also their employees in research want to have publication credits, they want to attract talent from academia, etc., etc., etc.)
There are clearly some things which they want to keep confidential (e.g., research which has a high probability of having value patented applications for which the company hasn't yet applied for patents), but that's not everything. Lots of companies publish lots of research.
I would never get on an unpiloted aircraft, maintenance would be ignored whenever possible.
The incentives for the for-profit company operating an aircraft to maintain (or to skip maintenance on) it aren't much affected by whether or not they have a pilot on it, all other things (paid cargo, passengers, service crew, for instance) being equal between the two scenarios.
Of course, those incentives are such that maintenance is frequently ignored whenever the operator thinks they can get away with it even with piloted aircraft.
Eventually, commercial planes will be unpiloted - pilots are expensive.
Eventually, commercial planes will be unpassengered -- tickets are expensive, and getting more expensive (including various fees and non-financial costs such as time and hassle associated with security) faster than pilots are.
The problem with that figure is that it has to be based on some set cost per gallon of gas.
The underlying assumption (miles per year and $/gallon) are both printed on the label.
That means that, periodically, those figures are going to change.
They are going to be consistent for all vehicles in the same class and the same model year, so in the most common cases of comparisons, the variations won't matter. Its true that they are situations where the variations need to be accounted for.
Then years from now, when I consider buying a new car, it makes it more difficult for me to compare my current car to cars on the market because the 2 figures are based on 2 different cost-per-gallon figures.
Its fairly trivial one-time calculation to convert your existing cars rating (presuming you got a car from a model year after the EPA adopted the current methodology) to correct it to the gas price used on labels for the current model year (just multiply the total estimated cost from your cars rating by the the new labels stated cost per gallon and divide by your labels cost per gallon; you've then got a number you can use when comparing against any car from the current model year.)
Of course, if you want to know the actual cost savings, you'll need to correct for the actual mileage you tend to drive each year, rather than the standard mileage estimate (you probably also want to adjust the gas cost estimate by the usual ratio of gas cost in your market as compared to the national average.)
Getting to these actual cost numbers starting with a gallons per mile figure, of course, is no easy task, either.
I don't understand. What is the advantage of PostgreSQL verses MySQL
There are a number of advantages of PostgreSQL versus (not "verses") MySQL: the robust query-rewrite rule engine, better SQL-standard compliance in many areas, support for CTEs with the WITH... and WITH...RECURSIVE constructs, etc., native geometric types, better support for user-defined types and operators (which 9.0 exclusion constraints will make a bigger advantage), the mature GIS add-on, etc.
There are also some advantages to MySQL over PostgreSQL; installation and administration, I think, are still simpler for MySQL (though the last several version of PostgreSQL have closed that gap a lot), and there are probably more introductory resources and prepackaged solutions that target MySQL for lots of common use cases.
or a seperate HTTP server?
Uh, what? The advantage of PostgreSQL vs. an HTTP server? That's like asking what the advantage of a Ferrari is vs. a banana plantation. They aren't alternatives to each other.
For example, Celko discourages the use of auto-increment columns (serial type in Postgres, auto-increment primary key in MySQL), in favor of manually incrementing your sequence using MAX(pkey_column) or similar, which strikes me as absurd and non-scalable.
Actually, while ISTR that Celko notes that using non-standard autoincrementing columns is non-portable and that you have to use other ways of doing so if you want code that is usable across different SQL backends, I'm pretty sure that he actually spends quite some time railing against the entire idea of using autoincremented counters, particularly in their common use as automagical keys which are then exposed to the end-user, and advocates, instead, constructing safe exposed identifiers with features like check digits in such use cases.
I don't think there is any case in which Celko argues that an autoincrementing counter column is the right solution to a problem; the non-portability of the common features for these is, for him, one more stroke against using them, but not the main problem.
A lot of (perhaps even the majority) of grood movies are based on books. Also there is s a growing trend of making pretty decent movies based on comics.
Comics/graphic novels are probably the easiest things to convert: they source material is essentially ready-made storyboards for the movie.
C and C++ are languages, not platforms, and GP referred to platforms. Java is both the name of a language, and the name of a platform for which the Java language is the primary (but far from only) language.
$/year is best unit, everyone understands that. unfortunately that's not constant across users.
Its worthy of note that the EPA rating label -- right in the center, no less -- has estimated fuel costs in $/year, using common assumptions within each class of vehicle -- and the assumptions for fuel cost/gallon and miles driven are stated on the label, too.
The argument is that using a measurement that actually tells people what they think mpg is telling them, you remove a lot of error from the system.
If the argument is that the current EPA label is flawed because the only information it provides is an MPG rating when people need a consumption rating in readily understood terms to properly evaluate purchase decisions, it is flawed -- not because consumption ratings aren't desirable, but because the measure in the dead center of the current EPA fuel economy label is a consumption measure, it terms most people understand quite readily: estimated fuel cost in dollars per year.
A study that shows most people can't easily infer consumption savings from MPG doesn't indicate any flaw in the status quo, because it doesn't address people's ability to make decisions with the information actually available to them in the status quo.
There are always proposals to replace MPG with gallons per hundred miles or something of that sort, since the latter would show the even decline.
You know what else shows the "even decline" -- and uses units that are more familiar to people and more directly state the personal impact? Stating the estimated fuel cost in dollars/year using consistent assumptions across a class of vehicles.
Which, incidentally, the current EPA fuel economy label already does. So the complaint that we need a prominent consumption measure instead of a mileage rating is misguided -- not because we don't need to have a consumption measure on the fuel economy label, but because that's what is already dead center on the label.
Change the EPA's guidline to "your cars must get at least X miles-per-gallon" or "your cars must get no more than X gallons-per-mile" Watch how quickly the new number gets onto your local dealers' showroom floors.
You do realize that the current EPA fuel economy sticker already has a consumption measure -- in terms most people understand more readily than gallons-per-mile -- dead center, right?
It called "Estimated fuel cost per year", and the units are dollars.
During and after Katrina everyone attacked Bush, often very personal attacks for the Federal and even state responses to that event.
True, and for good reason.
Yet here we are nearly two months after this started and there has been very little vitriolic attacking on the current President.
In the real world, actually, there have been very frequent, very vitriolic attacks on the current President, and a widespread labelling in the media of the spill as his Katrina, beginning very shortly after the spill began.
The Justice Department could have been turned on to BP and people could be in jail right now, but nothing was done.
Actually, the Justice Departmen has been turned on BP. Unfortunately -- from your apparent perspective -- the US Constitution doesn't allow the federal government to arbitrarily detain people for potential crimes. You have to investigate and have evidence first.
The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain.
That's usually the case with boycotts. But the middle men choose to do business with BP, and the pressure can encourage them to either (1) disassociate from BP, or (2) put pressure themselves to BP to take action that would get the boycott to end. So I'm not sure I see the problem here.
Quite true, in this culture of litigation, you never admit fault to anything, because doing so only increases the punitive damages a jury could award.
Admitting fault is unlikely to increase the maximum available punitive damage award; it may increase the probability of a finding of liability. OTOH, concealing fault -- particularly if doing so increases the harms resulting from the act at the basis of the claim of liability -- can both increase the amount of compensatory damages, and make punitive damages more likely (punitive damages often not being available for simply negligent conduct, but being available for knowing misconduct producing the same kind of harms, such as is evidenced by active concealment.)
At this point does BP actually think they can buy their way out of this with good PR?
Since they are the target of civil and criminal probes that will no doubt be in progress (investigation plus litigation) beyond at least the next presidential election and quite possibly the one after that -- and since the President appoints the Attorney-General, other top Justice Department officials, and ultimately sets law enforcement policy -- there is very little reason to doubt that both PR (to mitigate the degree to which public anger is directed at them, limiting any politicians ability to intervene in their favor) and political activity would be a key part of any effort to contain the direct damage.
Will it eliminate the damage that it will do, especially in the short term? No. But in terms of strategy for mitigating the potential long-term damage, its a pretty obvious near term step.
I wonder if they shoot for the huge numbers in case the court decides to award lesser damages.
No, they shoot for the huge numbers because you always, in filing a civil suit, ask for the maximum damage award that the facts you are prepared to allege would support. Its as simple as number of acts of infringement times damage limit in copyright law per act of infringement.
The flaw in your logic is conflating the ideas of civil and criminal court. If someone steals my wallet and gets caught, odds are that they'll never pay me back.
Many states criminal laws allow criminal courts to order restitution in compensation for damages in crimes.
If I sue the same guy in civil court, that is for compensation, not punishment - thus I can't just ask for 1000000% of what was in my wallet as punishment.
Not in that specific amount, and perhaps not in that specific case, but its fairly common for laws creating civil liability to create, particularly for willful offenses when the that is not a requirement of the basic tort, provisions for punitive damages. This serves two purpose -- as the name suggests, it serves to punish the deliberate wrongdoer, but it also serves to create an incentive to bring the case in the first place.
I haven't heard anyone sensible ask for a civil suit against BP. What we want is criminal charges brought against the corporation's leaders.
I dunno about your personal definition of "sensible", but I've heard calls for the US government launching civil suits against BP for both compensatory (for all the costs associated with the cleanup, for starters) and punitive damages, criminal suits against BP, and criminal suits against particular BP officers.
Slashdot Mirror
Mutual consideration and acceptance are required for a contract, a signature is generally not. Signatures of both parties on a written document of the contract terms is a common and particularly desirable form of evidence of both what the actual terms of the contract are and that those terms were, in fact, agreed to and accepted by both parties, but it is not a requirement to have a valid contract in most cases (there are certain cases where there is a requirement that a contract be supported by a signed, written document to be valid, such as certain real estate transactions, but these are exceptions to the normal rule, under which contracts which are neither signed nor even reduced to writing are valid and enforceable.)
There are issues with the validity of EULAs (and, IIRC, court decisions on their validity and enforceability are mixed), but the one you raise isn't really one of them.
This premise is incorrect. In general, contracts with minors are not void, they are voidable by the minor. The precise details may vary by jurisdiction, but, IIRC, generally for the minor to exercise this power, they must do so prior to or within a very specific window after majority.
Of course, voiding the contract also means that the minor loses any rights they hand under the contract.
They're doing that in the web front-end, not in the backend engine. The API bypasses the web front-end to access the back-end engine. Doing the scanning and replacement in the back-end would slow down the basic system (since it would have to be done as everything moves through the system, rather than just for those tweets that are viewed through the web front end). Its a lot cheaper for Twitter to require that people using the API (and thus developing apps that bypass the twitter's own web front end) do that work for them, since that puts the load on whatever machine the custom apps are running on rather than on Twitter's servers.
Companies in the research business generally want to publish (there is a prestige issue for the company, and also their employees in research want to have publication credits, they want to attract talent from academia, etc., etc., etc.)
There are clearly some things which they want to keep confidential (e.g., research which has a high probability of having value patented applications for which the company hasn't yet applied for patents), but that's not everything. Lots of companies publish lots of research.
The incentives for the for-profit company operating an aircraft to maintain (or to skip maintenance on) it aren't much affected by whether or not they have a pilot on it, all other things (paid cargo, passengers, service crew, for instance) being equal between the two scenarios.
Of course, those incentives are such that maintenance is frequently ignored whenever the operator thinks they can get away with it even with piloted aircraft.
Eventually, commercial planes will be unpassengered -- tickets are expensive, and getting more expensive (including various fees and non-financial costs such as time and hassle associated with security) faster than pilots are.
The underlying assumption (miles per year and $/gallon) are both printed on the label.
They are going to be consistent for all vehicles in the same class and the same model year, so in the most common cases of comparisons, the variations won't matter. Its true that they are situations where the variations need to be accounted for.
Its fairly trivial one-time calculation to convert your existing cars rating (presuming you got a car from a model year after the EPA adopted the current methodology) to correct it to the gas price used on labels for the current model year (just multiply the total estimated cost from your cars rating by the the new labels stated cost per gallon and divide by your labels cost per gallon; you've then got a number you can use when comparing against any car from the current model year.)
Of course, if you want to know the actual cost savings, you'll need to correct for the actual mileage you tend to drive each year, rather than the standard mileage estimate (you probably also want to adjust the gas cost estimate by the usual ratio of gas cost in your market as compared to the national average.)
Getting to these actual cost numbers starting with a gallons per mile figure, of course, is no easy task, either.
There are a number of advantages of PostgreSQL versus (not "verses") MySQL: the robust query-rewrite rule engine, better SQL-standard compliance in many areas, support for CTEs with the WITH... and WITH...RECURSIVE constructs, etc., native geometric types, better support for user-defined types and operators (which 9.0 exclusion constraints will make a bigger advantage), the mature GIS add-on, etc.
There are also some advantages to MySQL over PostgreSQL; installation and administration, I think, are still simpler for MySQL (though the last several version of PostgreSQL have closed that gap a lot), and there are probably more introductory resources and prepackaged solutions that target MySQL for lots of common use cases.
Uh, what? The advantage of PostgreSQL vs. an HTTP server? That's like asking what the advantage of a Ferrari is vs. a banana plantation. They aren't alternatives to each other.
Huh. And most databases don't run any operating system, much less such a wide variety. But, really, is that a feature people look for in a DBMS?
Actually, while ISTR that Celko notes that using non-standard autoincrementing columns is non-portable and that you have to use other ways of doing so if you want code that is usable across different SQL backends, I'm pretty sure that he actually spends quite some time railing against the entire idea of using autoincremented counters, particularly in their common use as automagical keys which are then exposed to the end-user, and advocates, instead, constructing safe exposed identifiers with features like check digits in such use cases.
I don't think there is any case in which Celko argues that an autoincrementing counter column is the right solution to a problem; the non-portability of the common features for these is, for him, one more stroke against using them, but not the main problem.
Comics/graphic novels are probably the easiest things to convert: they source material is essentially ready-made storyboards for the movie.
Python is one of many languages with an implementation that runs on the Java platform.
C and C++ are languages, not platforms, and GP referred to platforms. Java is both the name of a language, and the name of a platform for which the Java language is the primary (but far from only) language.
Its worthy of note that the EPA rating label -- right in the center, no less -- has estimated fuel costs in $/year, using common assumptions within each class of vehicle -- and the assumptions for fuel cost/gallon and miles driven are stated on the label, too.
If the argument is that the current EPA label is flawed because the only information it provides is an MPG rating when people need a consumption rating in readily understood terms to properly evaluate purchase decisions, it is flawed -- not because consumption ratings aren't desirable, but because the measure in the dead center of the current EPA fuel economy label is a consumption measure, it terms most people understand quite readily: estimated fuel cost in dollars per year.
A study that shows most people can't easily infer consumption savings from MPG doesn't indicate any flaw in the status quo, because it doesn't address people's ability to make decisions with the information actually available to them in the status quo.
You know what else shows the "even decline" -- and uses units that are more familiar to people and more directly state the personal impact? Stating the estimated fuel cost in dollars/year using consistent assumptions across a class of vehicles.
Which, incidentally, the current EPA fuel economy label already does. So the complaint that we need a prominent consumption measure instead of a mileage rating is misguided -- not because we don't need to have a consumption measure on the fuel economy label, but because that's what is already dead center on the label.
You do realize that the current EPA fuel economy sticker already has a consumption measure -- in terms most people understand more readily than gallons-per-mile -- dead center, right?
It called "Estimated fuel cost per year", and the units are dollars.
Strange, that I know one person who did that with the first generation Prius, and several more who did that around 2008-2009.
Not everyone who had a perceived need for an SUV at one point in time will continue to find an SUV the appropriate choice in the future.
True, and for good reason.
In the real world, actually, there have been very frequent, very vitriolic attacks on the current President, and a widespread labelling in the media of the spill as his Katrina, beginning very shortly after the spill began.
Actually, the Justice Departmen has been turned on BP. Unfortunately -- from your apparent perspective -- the US Constitution doesn't allow the federal government to arbitrarily detain people for potential crimes. You have to investigate and have evidence first.
That's usually the case with boycotts. But the middle men choose to do business with BP, and the pressure can encourage them to either (1) disassociate from BP, or (2) put pressure themselves to BP to take action that would get the boycott to end. So I'm not sure I see the problem here.
Admitting fault is unlikely to increase the maximum available punitive damage award; it may increase the probability of a finding of liability. OTOH, concealing fault -- particularly if doing so increases the harms resulting from the act at the basis of the claim of liability -- can both increase the amount of compensatory damages, and make punitive damages more likely (punitive damages often not being available for simply negligent conduct, but being available for knowing misconduct producing the same kind of harms, such as is evidenced by active concealment.)
Since they are the target of civil and criminal probes that will no doubt be in progress (investigation plus litigation) beyond at least the next presidential election and quite possibly the one after that -- and since the President appoints the Attorney-General, other top Justice Department officials, and ultimately sets law enforcement policy -- there is very little reason to doubt that both PR (to mitigate the degree to which public anger is directed at them, limiting any politicians ability to intervene in their favor) and political activity would be a key part of any effort to contain the direct damage.
Will it eliminate the damage that it will do, especially in the short term? No. But in terms of strategy for mitigating the potential long-term damage, its a pretty obvious near term step.
No, they shoot for the huge numbers because you always, in filing a civil suit, ask for the maximum damage award that the facts you are prepared to allege would support. Its as simple as number of acts of infringement times damage limit in copyright law per act of infringement.
Many states criminal laws allow criminal courts to order restitution in compensation for damages in crimes.
Not in that specific amount, and perhaps not in that specific case, but its fairly common for laws creating civil liability to create, particularly for willful offenses when the that is not a requirement of the basic tort, provisions for punitive damages. This serves two purpose -- as the name suggests, it serves to punish the deliberate wrongdoer, but it also serves to create an incentive to bring the case in the first place.
I dunno about your personal definition of "sensible", but I've heard calls for the US government launching civil suits against BP for both compensatory (for all the costs associated with the cleanup, for starters) and punitive damages, criminal suits against BP, and criminal suits against particular BP officers.
What is not sensible about any of that?