Do you want me to see this as "The Playstation Three" or "The Sony Blu-Ray Player"? Pick one and make a solid product.
Sony's been rather clear that their long-term strategy, since, at least, the PS2 was on the drawing board, with the "gaming console" was to move toward an integrated entertainment media platform. Whether you agree with it or not, it seems rather unlikely that their going to suddenly change direction between now and the release of the PS3 and have much effect on what the PS3 ends up being.
Linus and RMS are both kinds of "leaders" in the open source movement, at the same time, the movement isn't a top-down organization, but, well, a diverse movement, so its not all that much something that is "led" by "leaders". A better word -- as someone else suggested in the thread for Linus -- for both might be "icons", as there role in the movement, from my perspective, is largely one of inspiration rather than direction.
It is not explicit, and its rather dubious that it exists at all
Wrong. The powers of the Presidency have been explicitly confirmed by holdings of the Supreme Court since the Blockade Cases during the Civil War.
Doubly irrelevant. We're talking about the specific powers Bush claims, not vague general "powers of the Presidency", and we're talking about explicit in the text of the Constitution, not "explicitly confirmed by holdings of the Supreme Court".
No one is arguing that there are not powers of the Presidency.
but the mere designation of the executive as executive is not an explicit grant of any particular power. Similarly, the designation of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the US military is not a grant of power, rather, it is a limitation on the explicit Article I, Sec. 8 power of Congress to govern the military, specifically, it prevents the Congress from devising a command structure which puts someone else at the pinnacle of the military chain of command
This is laughably false. All of the powers listed in the first three Articles of the Constitution are specific grants of power.
Once again with the tautologies. Yes, all the powers listed in the first three Articles are grants of power. But the things above are not powers, they are designations. And, more importantly, even if they were powers, they don't explicitly grant the powers Bush claims.
Those grants of power are further enhanced by the Necessary and Proper clause.
The Necessary and Propery Clause applies to Congress, and only applies to give it power necessary and proper to the more specific powers granted to Congress in Article I. Given the various powers to govern the military, it actually works against the claims of Presidential powers Bush makes, not for them.
It is from that specific grant of authority to the President, as chief of the Executive branch, and as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, and the explicit authorization in Article II granting the President power to repel invasions or suppress insurrections WITHOUT grant of Congress, that gives the Presidency broad War Powers. Congress only has the power to authorize and fund the creation of an Army and Navy, but was explicitly excluded by the Framers from making command decisions.
And was explicitly given the power to make regulatory, rather than command, decisions -- to set policy which constrains command decisions.
That power, and the power to decide what is the most prudent course of conduct in war, is the province of the President alone.
False. The President does not gain totalitarian powers to do without constraint whatever he believes is "prudent" with any of the resources of the United States by waving around the excuse "conduct in war". Your affection for dictatorship is clearly strong, your understanding of the Constitutional order of the US government is much weaker.
Isn't Michael Dell a big Republican contributor? Is it likely that banning Lenovo will improve Dell's ability to win government contracts that are required to go to competitive bid?
The recent Supreme Court decision has (almost) put an end to injunctions.
I think that overstates the case; the recent Supreme Court decision set a higher bar for preliminary injunctions in patent infringement cases, but a bar that is far from impossible for a company actively producing and selling a product based on a patent to meet (though harder for someone whose business model is based on simply licensing patents to meet.)
But, anyhow, it's questionable how relevant that decision is; this is not a patent infringement case, its "over patents" only in that patents that Microsoft allegedly based on Symantec trade secrets are one of the bases for the suit.
It is not explicit, and its rather dubious that it exists at all.
the Executive is a co-equal branch of government, with the inherent powers of Chief Executive and Commander in Chief
Saying the Executive has the inherent power of Chief Executive is obvious empty circularity; the executive branch has, of course, all of the powers assigned to the executive by the Constitution, but the mere designation of the executive as executive is not an explicit grant of any particular power. Similarly, the designation of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the US military is not a grant of power, rather, it is a limitation on the explicit Article I, Sec. 8 power of Congress to govern the military, specifically, it prevents the Congress from devising a command structure which puts someone else at the pinnacle of the military chain of command.
A whole army of lawyers from the WH chief counsel, to NSA chief counsel, to FBI chief counsel, to the ranking members of Congress reviewed these programs and found them legal.
False, many of the briefed members of Congress expressed their belief that the program outlined to them was either contrary to the statute law, or even outside of the Constitutional power of the government.
But you, in your apparently superior wisdom, based on a few stories in the media by journalists untrained in law, have deemed them illegal.
No, actually, I, based on the administration's own statements, and a review of the applicable law, have deemed them to be illegal. I don't rely on journalists except in reporting the claims of the administration, certainly I don't rely on their knowledge of the law. Now, certainly, there is much that has been reported based on anonymous sources but not confirmed by the administration that would make the programs even more serious violations of the law than the facts the administration has admitted, but that's another story.
Now, of course, you may content to accept that lawyers working on behalf of the President and serving at his pleasure have said that what they are doing is legal, and to take that on faith without thinking for yourself. Personally, I find this attitude childish and subservient, and not appropriate for a citizen of a nation that prides itself on government of, by, and for the people.
Microsoft needs to give up on the backwards compatible bloatware concept
Backwards compatibility is a major selling point of MS operating systems.
If the next Windows wasn't backward compatible and didn't let them run all their old apps (or all the existing software designed for previous PCs, even if the particular user doesn't have it), people would be more inclined to consider Mac OS.
When I moved across town, SBC told me in advance it would be no problem to move my DSL; they then proceeded to cut off my service at the old address two weeks earlier than we had agreed, when I called them, they said that if they restored it, they wouldn't be able to cut-over on the day I wanted it activated. They also told me that I'd have to install their new co-branded Yahoo! software when I got set up at the new location. I grumbled, and said "okay, fine" and suffered with dialup for a while.
When I moved, the DSL was not live. After a couple weeks of back-and-forth with them with different excuses at the problem, they said that the new address was too far from the central office and DSL wasn't available at that location, no way, no how, and we don't know who told you it was.
Within a month, I had DSL from a local ISP on SBC's lines, without any co-branded bloat cluttering up my system. And happy paid the upgrade for higher than base speed service.
I really don't understand SBC at all.
Unless you look at it from the "unless you meet these requirements, you will not be happy with your out-of-the-box experience." perspective.
I've yet to happy with my "out-of-the-box experience" with any version of windows (and I've used most of them since 3.0). But none of that's been the fault of the hardware.
From Cingular's TOS for their plans Laptop Connect Unlimited ...Furthermore, unlimited plans... cannot be used for any applications that tether the device... to laptops... for any purpose.
Since, as noted in the earlier thread, the NSA appears to be just tapping the internet backbones directly, it doesn't really matter if your "last mile" is wired, cellular, or some bizarre system using carrier pigeons.
But it's probably fair to complain about Google actually suggesting these search terms.
Google Suggest is a brand name for a search engine running against a database of collected popular combinations of search terms. It is no more an set of actual suggestions from Google as the term "suggestion" is used in casual conversation than Microsoft Office is an actual "office", or Microsoft Sam and Mary are actual little people living inside your computer that talk to you, or than Mozilla Firefox is a flambeed mammal.
ROFL! OR - Congress had been briefed, and it is a good basis for arguing that no wrongdoing occurred.
Well, no, its not.
Because Congress being briefed isn't a fact which renders legal any of the acts in violation of either FISA or other statutes for which the administration has acknowledged the elements of the crimes defined in law.
The Administration is asserting, essentially, an implicit immunity from the law which is not found in the text of the Constitution. Whether the Congress was briefed or not has no bearing on that, so that Congress was briefed, even if it were true that Congress had been fully and accurately briefed, is no basis at all for arguing that no wrongdoing occurred.
Its not a matter of who did wrong, its a matter of where all the good targets are.
Afghanistan had little to blow up to make a show of "doing something", and little to geopolitical or economic to gain from victory aside from, you know, actually dealing with al-Qaeda. So after making a show of going after al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the "war on terror" became about Iraq.
Similarly, this company went after Google because the pirate sites might be the real wrongdoers against whom they could make an airtight case, but there are no "good targets" (i.e., deep pocket defendants) there. Suing them doesn't get you much of anything but a moral victory. Even getting Google to settle to make you stop annoying them and avoiding the risk of an adverse ruling at trial is worth a lot more.
and so that 640K joke today, while funny, is rooted in the x86 architecture hanging on about two decades and many CPU generations longer than IBM or anyone else ever expected it would.
The 640K thing was a well established joke in the late 1980s, when the PC architecture hadn't hung on for even a single decade, so I wouldn't say its dependent on that, so much as "enhanced by" it.
In my experience, Windows upgrades tend to blow up so badly that its worth the extra cost to by a preloaded machine and reinstall applications and copy user files.
Which is one of the things I hate about Windows.
The requirements aren't, I suspect, as much for the "Operating System", per se, as for all the bundled applications and gizmos and usage-tracking spyware (okay, that last may be an unfair dig) and other assorted bloat and cruft that comes bundled with it.
Plus, I can hand the camera to a passerby and ask them to take my and my wife's picture in front of a beautiful fountain without having to give them a 20 minute lesson on how to take the picture.
While I agree with most of what you say (P&S definitely still has its place), if you've got a DSLR with an auto-everything mode, you set it on that, and tell them "push halfway down, it'll adjust, then finish pressing down"; its not that much harder than a P&S.
Or, heck, most of the places I've been vacationing in the last few years, it seems, you could pick the 1 in 4 passerby that are carrying an SLR case, and ask them.
What makes you think that Pelosi is telling the truth about what she heard in the briefings?
Well, given the choice between the people that I know have been lying about the program (as their story has evolved through many mutually contradictory iterations), and those that I have less particular reason to disbelieve on the matter, I tend to more strongly suspect the former of lying. But it doesn't, really, matter, because whether or not Pelosi was briefed is not, in fact, relevant to whether or not it was unconstitutional, or to whether it violated the applicable criminal statutes, and therefore has no bearing on whether it was wrongdoing.
If we assume the Congress was briefed, its a good basis for arguing that the "regular" authorities had been informed of the wrongdoing, and done nothing, justifying going over their heads to the public.
Republicans will Lie and spin, Democrats will Lie and spin.
Sure, which is why the administrations claim that the members of Congress were fully briefed isn't proof that, in fact, members of Congress were fully briefed.
It's also one reason why whistleblowers with direct knowledging informing the public about official misconduct are important.
After a certain pixel count, there's not much point in going much further in consumer devices. You're just adding data, but not improving the viewable image. Why have an image that is higher res than a monitor or your eyeball's ability to process data? Where is that cut-off?
Well, monitors don't matter much, since the images taken by consumer cameras are often used for other media -- notably print -- that require much higher resolution than on-screen viewing. 8 megapixel resolution, IIRC from the various FAQs I've seen, is considered about the minimum resolution for images if you want to make them available as digital stock photography; Probably something in the 12-14 megapixel range is about as much as you need for most uses, unless you are going to be (e.g.) doing large blow-up prints of parts of the image.
A definite bug? Why is it a bug? It seems that the feature is doing exactly what it is designed to do: presenting search terms that, based on the universe of Google's experience (i.e., what other people are searching for), you may want to use.
It's not filtering _results_ it's filtering suggested search terms.
The "suggested search terms" are a set of search results, using the search terms you've already entered against a database of popular searches. So, yes, its about filtering search results.
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Linus and RMS are both kinds of "leaders" in the open source movement, at the same time, the movement isn't a top-down organization, but, well, a diverse movement, so its not all that much something that is "led" by "leaders". A better word -- as someone else suggested in the thread for Linus -- for both might be "icons", as there role in the movement, from my perspective, is largely one of inspiration rather than direction.
Isn't Michael Dell a big Republican contributor? Is it likely that banning Lenovo will improve Dell's ability to win government contracts that are required to go to competitive bid?
It is not explicit, and its rather dubious that it exists at all.
Saying the Executive has the inherent power of Chief Executive is obvious empty circularity; the executive branch has, of course, all of the powers assigned to the executive by the Constitution, but the mere designation of the executive as executive is not an explicit grant of any particular power. Similarly, the designation of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the US military is not a grant of power, rather, it is a limitation on the explicit Article I, Sec. 8 power of Congress to govern the military, specifically, it prevents the Congress from devising a command structure which puts someone else at the pinnacle of the military chain of command.
False, many of the briefed members of Congress expressed their belief that the program outlined to them was either contrary to the statute law, or even outside of the Constitutional power of the government.
No, actually, I, based on the administration's own statements, and a review of the applicable law, have deemed them to be illegal. I don't rely on journalists except in reporting the claims of the administration, certainly I don't rely on their knowledge of the law. Now, certainly, there is much that has been reported based on anonymous sources but not confirmed by the administration that would make the programs even more serious violations of the law than the facts the administration has admitted, but that's another story.
Now, of course, you may content to accept that lawyers working on behalf of the President and serving at his pleasure have said that what they are doing is legal, and to take that on faith without thinking for yourself. Personally, I find this attitude childish and subservient, and not appropriate for a citizen of a nation that prides itself on government of, by, and for the people.
But, if it was determined by what was legal, wouldn't it be called "legality"?
When I moved across town, SBC told me in advance it would be no problem to move my DSL; they then proceeded to cut off my service at the old address two weeks earlier than we had agreed, when I called them, they said that if they restored it, they wouldn't be able to cut-over on the day I wanted it activated. They also told me that I'd have to install their new co-branded Yahoo! software when I got set up at the new location. I grumbled, and said "okay, fine" and suffered with dialup for a while. When I moved, the DSL was not live. After a couple weeks of back-and-forth with them with different excuses at the problem, they said that the new address was too far from the central office and DSL wasn't available at that location, no way, no how, and we don't know who told you it was. Within a month, I had DSL from a local ISP on SBC's lines, without any co-branded bloat cluttering up my system. And happy paid the upgrade for higher than base speed service. I really don't understand SBC at all.
Since, as noted in the earlier thread, the NSA appears to be just tapping the internet backbones directly, it doesn't really matter if your "last mile" is wired, cellular, or some bizarre system using carrier pigeons.
Google Suggest is a brand name for a search engine running against a database of collected popular combinations of search terms. It is no more an set of actual suggestions from Google as the term "suggestion" is used in casual conversation than Microsoft Office is an actual "office", or Microsoft Sam and Mary are actual little people living inside your computer that talk to you, or than Mozilla Firefox is a flambeed mammal.
Its not a matter of who did wrong, its a matter of where all the good targets are.
Afghanistan had little to blow up to make a show of "doing something", and little to geopolitical or economic to gain from victory aside from, you know, actually dealing with al-Qaeda. So after making a show of going after al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the "war on terror" became about Iraq.
Similarly, this company went after Google because the pirate sites might be the real wrongdoers against whom they could make an airtight case, but there are no "good targets" (i.e., deep pocket defendants) there. Suing them doesn't get you much of anything but a moral victory. Even getting Google to settle to make you stop annoying them and avoiding the risk of an adverse ruling at trial is worth a lot more.
Unfortunately, the US Constitution appears not to have been Y2K compliant.
The requirements aren't, I suspect, as much for the "Operating System", per se, as for all the bundled applications and gizmos and usage-tracking spyware (okay, that last may be an unfair dig) and other assorted bloat and cruft that comes bundled with it.
While I agree with most of what you say (P&S definitely still has its place), if you've got a DSLR with an auto-everything mode, you set it on that, and tell them "push halfway down, it'll adjust, then finish pressing down"; its not that much harder than a P&S.
Or, heck, most of the places I've been vacationing in the last few years, it seems, you could pick the 1 in 4 passerby that are carrying an SLR case, and ask them.
Well, given the choice between the people that I know have been lying about the program (as their story has evolved through many mutually contradictory iterations), and those that I have less particular reason to disbelieve on the matter, I tend to more strongly suspect the former of lying. But it doesn't, really, matter, because whether or not Pelosi was briefed is not, in fact, relevant to whether or not it was unconstitutional, or to whether it violated the applicable criminal statutes, and therefore has no bearing on whether it was wrongdoing.
If we assume the Congress was briefed, its a good basis for arguing that the "regular" authorities had been informed of the wrongdoing, and done nothing, justifying going over their heads to the public.
Sure, which is why the administrations claim that the members of Congress were fully briefed isn't proof that, in fact, members of Congress were fully briefed.
It's also one reason why whistleblowers with direct knowledging informing the public about official misconduct are important.
A definite bug? Why is it a bug? It seems that the feature is doing exactly what it is designed to do: presenting search terms that, based on the universe of Google's experience (i.e., what other people are searching for), you may want to use.