"such as this band suddenly disappearing off the face of the planet and everybody forgetting about them. Not likely, but possible"
Actually, it's by far the most likely option. Contract or no contract, most bands are lucky to get even one big hit, and beyond that is virtually unheard of... what's that you say? I can name tons of bands with multiple big hits? Well sure, but for every band you can namer that does, there are probably several thousand that could be named which never even had one. It's like winning the lottery, the odds are abysmal for any individual, but given a large enough number of participants SOMEBODY will do it.
Win2k only comes in "Pro", and I'm pretty sure "Server" (I could be making this one up, but I seem to recall seeing it somewhere at one point...). When it was first released, they were planning to also make a "Home" version to be released a little bit later, but due to a few high profile compatibility issues and some reviews to the effect that it was too complicated an OS for most people to use, the idea was scrapped.
Also, keep in mind that right around that time they came out with Windows ME, and it in a lot of ways it was treated (inappropriately) as the "Home" flavor of Win2k.
Personally, I'm glad they didn't release a "Home" version, because "Home" always sucks.
I work in a grocery store that carries, along with several other brands, Starbucks coffee. I assure you that many, though not all, of their blends bear the FairTrade logo. They may lie about some things, but this is not one of them.
For the record, I strongly dislike Starbucks, and always recommend other, better, FairTrade organic blends to those who ask.
That's ridiculous. If you have a legal right to a file in another country, and posession of it in this country is not otherwise illegal (e.g., it's not kiddie porn or something), there's no sane reason you can't copy it across the (virtual, and therefore nonexistant) border. And yet, such is the case. Sadly, there is no requirement that the law be sane, reasonable, fair, moral, or free from overt corruption.
Your rights have all been sold to the highest bidder, and so long as you keep playing their games, you'll never get them back. Welcome to America.
Something is just wrong with the UK's Home Office. Today I read that they will now classify panty theifs as sex offenders, receiving the same long-term classification on the sex offenders' registry as child abusers, rapists, and child pornographers.
That's because stealing panties is a classic sign of a real sex offender getting up the courage to do something more serious. Unless I'm mistaken, and the purpose of this is to go after girls who steal from Victoria's Secret... but somehow I think not.
Sure, unless the banana plantation is also a front for a poaching outfit, one that will happily give out free bananas to a gorilla in need...
Don't forget, the GPL is (intentionally) written in a very unbalanced way. It wouldn't even be too inaccurate to call it "viral". If something touches GPL, it must either become GPL, or be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch. There is no "undo" button, nor is there a way to go backwards. True, there are some potential workarounds (GPL stubs calling on closed source apps with all the functionality), but they just amount to putting a wall between your proprietary stuff and the GPL, something that is already allowed and not really that big a deal.
Yet most of them suck at it, which is why those few blogs that demonstrate themselves to be credible and well-written are the only ones most people seem to care about in the first place. Strangely enough, most these blogs tend to be written by, you guessed it, trained journalists.
Newspapers are dying because nobody wants to actually get their news on paper, and this makes their huge capital investments in printing presses, delivery apparatus (not to mention the labor costs), and the large centralized real estate necessary to make all of this work not just irrelevant, but an expensive liability.
I think the key phrase was user-interface. Most free software does need a lot of fixing up in the UI department, and most commercial software needs a lot of improvement in the functionality department.
So, what they're saying is something like: "Our old business model of raping and pillaging artists and selling their work at hyper-inflated prices to a consumer public that has very few other choices, most fairly difficult to do, if they want music, is failing miserably. So we've started finding new ways to sell the same media in ways that the consumer public, once again, has very few other choices with, most fairly difficult to do, which lets our old business model live for a few more years while the public again finds a way to circumvent paying us through the nose for the labors of others. Somehow we think this means that we should pay our indentured serv... ah, that is to say the artists - you know, the guys who we keep claiming are the ones hurt by piracy, even though nearly all musicians who make a lot of money do so primarily with live performance, a format which is inherently unpiratable and has seen absolutely no loss of profitability - deserve to be paid less for their hard work. We justify this with the fact that Chewbacca is a 7' Wookie, and Endor is populated with Ewoks, and that doesn't make any sense. Seriously."
Ah, that definition of PC... yes, I agree wholeheartedly. As a literature guy, I view that definition of PC as equivalent to corp-speak or legalese; unnecessary rubbish intended to stifle communication as a way of sneaking past all of our hard won societal lessons on greed and personal agendas.
Moving away from the language definition (which is the only one neocons want you to think about, BTW), there is also a more reasonable (though somewhat more vague) version which, while related, isn't focused on obfuscation. Specifically, the underlying concept that all voices deserve to be heard, all views respected in their own right (respect != belief or acceptance), and that consideration needs to be made with regards to fixing the problems caused by prejudice. Part of this is that we try to avoid needlessly insulting others, but if it just ends there it's not really what I would call politically correct.
Actually, we just don't give a shit about Chappaquiddick. We've found that it has had absolutely no impact on his ability to be, quite possibly, the most influential Democratic Senator of our time.
But hey, if your personal feeling is that it's more important to have a Senator with a perfect driving record than one who's proven himself to be an incredibly effective politician and who has successfully represented your state for 44 years, then I suppose it's your right to vote for whomever you'd like to... in your own state, thank you.
When your state mandates ODF and starts making headway into having civil rights on par with South Africa and Japan (sadly, that's the best I can do... it's never a good sign when two of the most racist nations on Earth are trouncing you on civil rights issues), then feel free to make fun of my state's government and elected officials (ok, ok, I'll concede that Romney is an asshat, but at least he had the good sense to decline a re-election bid rather than let his political career get demolished in another election), but until then you can keep your Chappaquiddick BS to yourself.
Talk.Origins is a site specifically created to debunk creationist pseudo-science. It is also dedicated to debunking creationist "debunkings" of evolution. It does not give creationism "equal time", it doesn't even really allow creationists to respond; the only time it gives them is the time it takes to explain their claims so that it can move on to thoroughly discrediting them.
The fact that this is done in a reasoned tone is not a sign of "political correctness" (side note: even if it were, so what? political correctness isn't a four letter word, whatever the neocons might say), but rather a sign that Talk.Origins isn't aimed at 12 year olds.
Yeah, and what's with the dearth of pirates? I'll give them some small credit with the new knights being fairly cool, but they've discontinued all the classics except for those damned trains nobody likes.
Good thing my kids will inherit all my old LEGO bricks (happy yet, you soul-killing trademark Nazis?), and won't have to subsist entirely on the few new ones that are worthy.
Actually, no. I suppose that if he wishes to live in China, then his money might a little bit longer, but in Japan, North America, Europe, or any of the rapidly developing former 3rd world countries, $1.3m is far, far less than you'd think. Unless he's got some decent assets aside from that, a net worth of $1.3m plus or minus the limited possessions that most college students own (maybe some clothes, a computer, and if they're lucky a rust bucket car) is going to run out pretty quickly in the absence of other income.
No, it wouldn't. Believe it or not though, it's entirely possible to express the full range of human emotion without using profanity or coming across as having a stick up your ass.
And yes, I do know how software works, I've even dabbled in writing some. Funny thing is, I've never worked as a professional coder (nor would I ever, it would drive me completely insane), and yet I've still never inserted "fuck" into a comment because I think it would look bad (especially if somebody else were to read my code).
Just out of curiosity, since you're such a badass software working expert... how exactly would it hurt the software if all the coders quoted the Bible and wore suits and ties? Unless you are of the belief that in order to be a good programmer one must eschew Church and refuse to wear anything more formal than a pair of socks under your Birkenstocks, I don't see how it would make a difference either way. Do ties interfere with using APIs or something?
He most certainly did have LOTR in mind all along... because he wrote the trilogy before he wrote the Hobbit. That's what "prequel" means.
Here in chronology obsessed America it may not make sense to read books in an order other than "what happened first in time", but that is, in fact, a large tradition in literature. LOTR begs certain questions about what came before it, The Hobbit answers those questions. If you haven't read LOTR, then you don't know the questions, and the answers just spoil the plot.
Gee, I hope they have a good reason to use "fuck" in the kernel... Not that I'm one of those profanity fascist Tipper Gore types, but that just seems so, unprofessional.
Not that it would really make me think any less of Linux or anything, but it just doesn't look good. Kind of like getting a stack of singles from the bank and finding them to all be crumpled up and not all facing the same way, it makes you nervous, makes you wonder what else they might have been unprofessional about.
Congratulations, you're an American. It is a well known American literary meme to use the automobile as a symbol for freedom. Culturally, we are fixated on them, and they are so deeply ingrained that to many Americans, the idea of NOT having a car and relying instead on mass transit is actually unnatural.
In India, trains have a very similar meaning; in England, it is boats.
Roads and cars are all well and good for short distance travel, but it's pretty much impossible to argue that we haven't overdone it in this country. It's very wasteful.
I would imagine that it takes them about as long to be useful for all those things as it took the industrialized nations. Possibly less.
As it currently stands, there are already people who have used and know computers, just very few of them, and their job opportunities are limited by their general lack. Once these start coming into use, the population segment that is most tech savvy (many children, some adults, pretty much anyone who is already familiar with computers) will start developing its own infrastructure and spreading usage to others.
I realize that sounds awfully optimistic, but that's essentially what happened here. It's a lot less unlikely than it sounds.
The point is that whether it has ever been successfully prosecuted or not is unimportant. Technically, you can be sued for infringing patents even if you never distribute the infringing item(s).
From Wikipedia: "In United States law, an infringement may occur where the defendant has made, used, sold, offered to sell, or imported an infringing invention or its equivalent." Making and/or using an infringing product is infringement. It may be unlikely that you will ever be sued for it (since it is so unlikely that any relevant patent holders would ever find out), but you COULD be.
I'm sure that there is some case of this happening. Look into patents on esoteric manufacturing equipment, or on early "instant" communication devices (Wikipedia's article on patent infringement specifically mentions Morse and the telegraph). I'm sure that somewhere is a case where a patent was infringed upon by somebody who had no intention of ever selling it, but just wanted to make their own.
Slashdot Mirror
"such as this band suddenly disappearing off the face of the planet and everybody forgetting about them. Not likely, but possible"
Actually, it's by far the most likely option. Contract or no contract, most bands are lucky to get even one big hit, and beyond that is virtually unheard of... what's that you say? I can name tons of bands with multiple big hits? Well sure, but for every band you can namer that does, there are probably several thousand that could be named which never even had one. It's like winning the lottery, the odds are abysmal for any individual, but given a large enough number of participants SOMEBODY will do it.
Win2k only comes in "Pro", and I'm pretty sure "Server" (I could be making this one up, but I seem to recall seeing it somewhere at one point...). When it was first released, they were planning to also make a "Home" version to be released a little bit later, but due to a few high profile compatibility issues and some reviews to the effect that it was too complicated an OS for most people to use, the idea was scrapped.
Also, keep in mind that right around that time they came out with Windows ME, and it in a lot of ways it was treated (inappropriately) as the "Home" flavor of Win2k.
Personally, I'm glad they didn't release a "Home" version, because "Home" always sucks.
I work in a grocery store that carries, along with several other brands, Starbucks coffee. I assure you that many, though not all, of their blends bear the FairTrade logo. They may lie about some things, but this is not one of them.
For the record, I strongly dislike Starbucks, and always recommend other, better, FairTrade organic blends to those who ask.
Your rights have all been sold to the highest bidder, and so long as you keep playing their games, you'll never get them back. Welcome to America.
Good choice. It's the gaming equivalent of an H2SO4 enema.
Vermouth all by itself, yuck!
That's because stealing panties is a classic sign of a real sex offender getting up the courage to do something more serious. Unless I'm mistaken, and the purpose of this is to go after girls who steal from Victoria's Secret... but somehow I think not.
RTFA, the only people saying anything about nuclear weapons are posters here.
Sure, unless the banana plantation is also a front for a poaching outfit, one that will happily give out free bananas to a gorilla in need...
Don't forget, the GPL is (intentionally) written in a very unbalanced way. It wouldn't even be too inaccurate to call it "viral". If something touches GPL, it must either become GPL, or be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch. There is no "undo" button, nor is there a way to go backwards. True, there are some potential workarounds (GPL stubs calling on closed source apps with all the functionality), but they just amount to putting a wall between your proprietary stuff and the GPL, something that is already allowed and not really that big a deal.
Yet most of them suck at it, which is why those few blogs that demonstrate themselves to be credible and well-written are the only ones most people seem to care about in the first place. Strangely enough, most these blogs tend to be written by, you guessed it, trained journalists.
Newspapers are dying because nobody wants to actually get their news on paper, and this makes their huge capital investments in printing presses, delivery apparatus (not to mention the labor costs), and the large centralized real estate necessary to make all of this work not just irrelevant, but an expensive liability.
I think the key phrase was user-interface. Most free software does need a lot of fixing up in the UI department, and most commercial software needs a lot of improvement in the functionality department.
So, what they're saying is something like: "Our old business model of raping and pillaging artists and selling their work at hyper-inflated prices to a consumer public that has very few other choices, most fairly difficult to do, if they want music, is failing miserably. So we've started finding new ways to sell the same media in ways that the consumer public, once again, has very few other choices with, most fairly difficult to do, which lets our old business model live for a few more years while the public again finds a way to circumvent paying us through the nose for the labors of others. Somehow we think this means that we should pay our indentured serv... ah, that is to say the artists - you know, the guys who we keep claiming are the ones hurt by piracy, even though nearly all musicians who make a lot of money do so primarily with live performance, a format which is inherently unpiratable and has seen absolutely no loss of profitability - deserve to be paid less for their hard work. We justify this with the fact that Chewbacca is a 7' Wookie, and Endor is populated with Ewoks, and that doesn't make any sense. Seriously."
Ah, that definition of PC... yes, I agree wholeheartedly. As a literature guy, I view that definition of PC as equivalent to corp-speak or legalese; unnecessary rubbish intended to stifle communication as a way of sneaking past all of our hard won societal lessons on greed and personal agendas.
Moving away from the language definition (which is the only one neocons want you to think about, BTW), there is also a more reasonable (though somewhat more vague) version which, while related, isn't focused on obfuscation. Specifically, the underlying concept that all voices deserve to be heard, all views respected in their own right (respect != belief or acceptance), and that consideration needs to be made with regards to fixing the problems caused by prejudice. Part of this is that we try to avoid needlessly insulting others, but if it just ends there it's not really what I would call politically correct.
Actually, we just don't give a shit about Chappaquiddick. We've found that it has had absolutely no impact on his ability to be, quite possibly, the most influential Democratic Senator of our time.
But hey, if your personal feeling is that it's more important to have a Senator with a perfect driving record than one who's proven himself to be an incredibly effective politician and who has successfully represented your state for 44 years, then I suppose it's your right to vote for whomever you'd like to... in your own state, thank you.
When your state mandates ODF and starts making headway into having civil rights on par with South Africa and Japan (sadly, that's the best I can do... it's never a good sign when two of the most racist nations on Earth are trouncing you on civil rights issues), then feel free to make fun of my state's government and elected officials (ok, ok, I'll concede that Romney is an asshat, but at least he had the good sense to decline a re-election bid rather than let his political career get demolished in another election), but until then you can keep your Chappaquiddick BS to yourself.
Talk.Origins is a site specifically created to debunk creationist pseudo-science. It is also dedicated to debunking creationist "debunkings" of evolution. It does not give creationism "equal time", it doesn't even really allow creationists to respond; the only time it gives them is the time it takes to explain their claims so that it can move on to thoroughly discrediting them.
The fact that this is done in a reasoned tone is not a sign of "political correctness" (side note: even if it were, so what? political correctness isn't a four letter word, whatever the neocons might say), but rather a sign that Talk.Origins isn't aimed at 12 year olds.
Oh congrats, you're a fucking coward.
You know what's lamer than "attending" an online diploma mill with an iffy (at best) academic record?* Not having the balls to attach your name to it.
*Nothing personal against the GP or any other UoP grads, just saying...
Yeah, and what's with the dearth of pirates? I'll give them some small credit with the new knights being fairly cool, but they've discontinued all the classics except for those damned trains nobody likes.
Good thing my kids will inherit all my old LEGO bricks (happy yet, you soul-killing trademark Nazis?), and won't have to subsist entirely on the few new ones that are worthy.
Actually, no. I suppose that if he wishes to live in China, then his money might a little bit longer, but in Japan, North America, Europe, or any of the rapidly developing former 3rd world countries, $1.3m is far, far less than you'd think. Unless he's got some decent assets aside from that, a net worth of $1.3m plus or minus the limited possessions that most college students own (maybe some clothes, a computer, and if they're lucky a rust bucket car) is going to run out pretty quickly in the absence of other income.
No, it wouldn't. Believe it or not though, it's entirely possible to express the full range of human emotion without using profanity or coming across as having a stick up your ass.
And yes, I do know how software works, I've even dabbled in writing some. Funny thing is, I've never worked as a professional coder (nor would I ever, it would drive me completely insane), and yet I've still never inserted "fuck" into a comment because I think it would look bad (especially if somebody else were to read my code).
Just out of curiosity, since you're such a badass software working expert... how exactly would it hurt the software if all the coders quoted the Bible and wore suits and ties? Unless you are of the belief that in order to be a good programmer one must eschew Church and refuse to wear anything more formal than a pair of socks under your Birkenstocks, I don't see how it would make a difference either way. Do ties interfere with using APIs or something?
He most certainly did have LOTR in mind all along... because he wrote the trilogy before he wrote the Hobbit. That's what "prequel" means.
Here in chronology obsessed America it may not make sense to read books in an order other than "what happened first in time", but that is, in fact, a large tradition in literature. LOTR begs certain questions about what came before it, The Hobbit answers those questions. If you haven't read LOTR, then you don't know the questions, and the answers just spoil the plot.
Gee, I hope they have a good reason to use "fuck" in the kernel... Not that I'm one of those profanity fascist Tipper Gore types, but that just seems so, unprofessional.
Not that it would really make me think any less of Linux or anything, but it just doesn't look good. Kind of like getting a stack of singles from the bank and finding them to all be crumpled up and not all facing the same way, it makes you nervous, makes you wonder what else they might have been unprofessional about.
I think you're confusing Vin Diesel in XXX with one of these guys.
Congratulations, you're an American. It is a well known American literary meme to use the automobile as a symbol for freedom. Culturally, we are fixated on them, and they are so deeply ingrained that to many Americans, the idea of NOT having a car and relying instead on mass transit is actually unnatural.
In India, trains have a very similar meaning; in England, it is boats.
Roads and cars are all well and good for short distance travel, but it's pretty much impossible to argue that we haven't overdone it in this country. It's very wasteful.
I would imagine that it takes them about as long to be useful for all those things as it took the industrialized nations. Possibly less.
As it currently stands, there are already people who have used and know computers, just very few of them, and their job opportunities are limited by their general lack. Once these start coming into use, the population segment that is most tech savvy (many children, some adults, pretty much anyone who is already familiar with computers) will start developing its own infrastructure and spreading usage to others.
I realize that sounds awfully optimistic, but that's essentially what happened here. It's a lot less unlikely than it sounds.
The point is that whether it has ever been successfully prosecuted or not is unimportant. Technically, you can be sued for infringing patents even if you never distribute the infringing item(s).
From Wikipedia: "In United States law, an infringement may occur where the defendant has made, used, sold, offered to sell, or imported an infringing invention or its equivalent." Making and/or using an infringing product is infringement. It may be unlikely that you will ever be sued for it (since it is so unlikely that any relevant patent holders would ever find out), but you COULD be.
I'm sure that there is some case of this happening. Look into patents on esoteric manufacturing equipment, or on early "instant" communication devices (Wikipedia's article on patent infringement specifically mentions Morse and the telegraph). I'm sure that somewhere is a case where a patent was infringed upon by somebody who had no intention of ever selling it, but just wanted to make their own.