Comment It's not the carpet (Score 1) 690
The driver was knocked out with chloroform and then the umbrella was jammed between the seat and the gas pedal...
The driver was knocked out with chloroform and then the umbrella was jammed between the seat and the gas pedal...
It was trying to protect you from the crap known as modern warfare 2 multiplayer.
ActionScript 3 is one dialect of ECMAScript as is Javascript and JScript. Nothing really to do with Java.
The big advantage of commercial software is that the sales revenue allows you to pay people to write it.
Yes, but there are also significant disadvantages. I'd say that there are about 5 major ways for a person to make software available to themself.
In the real world, all five variations tend to happen in an industry. Option (1) has the main disadvantages of duplicating work which is obviously more costly. Option (2) cuts down on duplicated work, but since an industry-wide vendor has a quasi-monopolistic position and all software is custom, there's a good bit of markup on what you can buy. Option (3) sounds great, especially if need no modification done or little modification and the code is available, as usually a boxed solution is a good deal cheaper than a custom one; however, option (3) in many ways is a special case of option (5)--ie, you're restricted mainly by what's already available and many times no company is producing software close enough to what you need and it's really non-trivial to shoehorn the available software to your needs ("if you build it, they will come" might hold true, but "if you want it, it will be build" doesn't generally hold true). Option (4) seems like an attractive offer, as it can cut down on a lot of costs and needless markup, but one company can effectively run the consortium for their ends, there can be a solid lack of direction which can eat through money, and (in the case of an open license) the software created can significantly reduce the barriers to entry for newcomers. Meanwhile, option (5) alone is usually wishful thinking, unless the software is already mostly made and you're willing to consider option (1) or (2) for improvement.
In short, the story is more complex than "commercial" or not.
Another advantage is that if you pay people to do something, you can hold them accountable for their work and hence increase productivity.
That highly depends. "Fly-by-night" contractors, vendors, etc don't necessarily suffer much from accountability. Once they have your money, they'll provide enough of a piece of software that at least some companies are unlikely to sue over substandard work because the actual return from a lawsuit is less than the costs. And while you can try to blacklist companies/individuals, it's quite possible they'll just move on to another industry while new "fly-by-night" companies/individuals take their place.
In short, accountability really only works if you presume that you can avoid paying them at all or that they have an expectation of multiple/continuous payment and you can deprive them of that. There's enough one-off scenarios, though, that a lot of accountability does not exist in many spheres of industry (or politics, for that matter).
In the end the fact remains: there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Just because you don't eat for free at the local soup kitchen doesn't mean you have to get your lunch from a fast food joint.
This is an obvious pump and dump scheme, unless they have somehow unlocked technology previously unseen and unknown by mankind, and have done so for the purpose of playing video games.
Yes, but at the top is some form of directory service. If you compromise the majority of those servers you can create a new network consensus, and direct everyone to route through tor1,tor2...torX.nsa.gov. Or some suitable set of apparently random international network of nodes set up for the purpose. The layers don't work if the entire onion is rotten.
I don't disagree with a single thing you said. I don't defend the actions of the RIAA or the ludicrous judgements that have been rendered. I would think that the burden of proof should be on the RIAA to demonstrate that files were successfully and illegally shared. The only evidence that is ever presented is (1) files were made available and (2) files were shared with an agent of the RIAA who was granted the rights to download [and share], which makes that exemplar invalid...
You are exactly right.
Exactly! There's a one-person shop who does a banking app for our local banks, but there is no way on earth I will use his app to connect to my bank. Who knows what he is doing to simulate a login. It's sad though that my own bank does not offer an app to check your account. So the demand is filled by some third party where it should have been filled by my bank instead. When you think about it, the banks are partly responsible for hacked accounts via this third party, since they do not offer an app themselves.
I am just a lowly user (abbreviation: LUser), so is the bottom line, I can read but not write?
OK with me. Let some clerk do the writing, the important thing is the reading.
Where I work, they apparently don't know how to just let me read, and not write, so I am under orders to not contact the database directly (in fear I will mistakenly issue the command: "FUCKUP all tables"), but I am allowed to use these toy programs that contact the database, then I can scrape their output.
Lovely.
Hehe... Back when I was in the Air Force, we had a squirrel shut down the entire base for 8 hours. S/he crawled into the main power station, and committed suicide across the breakers, blowing up a good chunk of the station and about 100' of main feeder line.
Today no doubt the press would have whipped up frenzy about a "possible terrorist attack" with artistic renderings of the squirrel in mufti....
hey, while you're spending money to do that, why not also spend the small chump change it would take to harden our grid against EMP and geomagnetic disturbances?
And this is why Ayn Rand was a useless bitch. Take your broken pop philosophy somewhere else, please; the adults are trying to make things better.
If you're going to toss around words like "useless bitch" you really need something more to back it up than "the adults are trying to make things better." You can start by explaining how a multi-trillion dollar government program is going to make things better. Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better? You can also elaborate on exactly how trying to make health care/insurance a government mandated "right" doesn't effectively enslave those who provide such services?
In short, if all you've got are insults, you need to take your socialist government loving self somewhere else. Real adults take care of themselves and don't look to the government for handouts. Understood?
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss
