But think of all the viruses that poor Word document needs to support

IIRC, it's also non-linear.

A 5,000lb car causes more than twice the wear of two 2,500lb cars.

Or it was an iTunes EULA and it took them an hour to click through 132 Next Page buttons...

Interesting.

I agree with everything you say, as far as justification for why it was a (Confederate) Federal Statute but nobody argued "states rights unless it crumbles under the weight of traveling state to state, then States Rights is really a synonym for Federal in some cases". We already had the "we respect property rights if you cross state borders", witness the Dredd Scott decision.

States Rights is still just as hollow of a phrase, used to justify whatever we feel like doing today.

Though this may be a bit Godwin's laws ish....

Remember that State's Rights were used as a justification for secession.

But, in the Confederate Constitution, it pretty much was a copy of the US Constitution.... three exceptions. 1) anything based on age was of course reclocked to start of Confederacy. 2) anything based on number of states was reset to number of Confederate states 3) you HAD to allow slavery. No choice.

So, the US Constitution allowed various slavery modes (not that this was good, but we're arguing something else), but the Confederacy didn't allow the state that right. "State's Rights" south had less rights for the state. States Rights is basically an excuse for "do what I want at any given time" rather than follow any actual ruleset. In this context the inconsistency above hypocrisy fits.

Another thing is residuals I dont think they get a backnd A show can go to syndication profitably after 100 episodes or so. The Simpsons have over 500 shows

think of this in context of: 1) the shit-ton of money FX paid for syndication, and no voice actor gets a penny, and 2) the shit-ton of money handed over for Seinfeld.

Shearer probably has more money than he needs, but his contract still may be "unfair" in that hes not getting a percentage where many other people are.

No message needed.

Doesn't anyone watch classic movies anymore? And they said that line TWICE.

Not so much with the lawyers. Imagine spending tens of thousands, possibly up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for your degree, and you can't get a job to pay it off. It's happening now.

Imagine a world where most of the day to day stuff is paperwork. Now you get that paperwork on the Internet. Your $500 document fee is now a $29 download.

A friend works for a volunteer agency that gives out legal advice. They have a waiting list for lawyers to give their services. Anything to get their name out, even free, since they can't get a job.

So now we have jobs that need accreditation going away thanks to the Internet. Im not sure what's safe anymore.

wow, thanks anonymous person... and I like Danny Kaye...

When I was a kid, i read a book called Stone Soup. It was about these guys that wanted to eat, had nothing but a pot. They put in some stones... called it stone soup.

Eventually people got curious, and added things.. the soup became real. Going from water and rocks, to where real ingredients went in, and the stones just fell away. A seed, but then dropped when something real came.

I always thought of Linus as a guy who managed the Stone Soup well. It wasn't specially good in .01 version. But he made people want to add to it. The GPL helped some. Linus chose that license, not as a "hey Im a zealot and you need to give me everything you write" but he thought "if people do cool things they need to let me see their cool things"

That, and FreeBSD had a few handicaps. The biggest one was the AT&T lawsuit. Linus himself once said he'd probably not have bothered with Linux if BSD was clean. The second, BSD had a slower model of improvement. You needed to have the commit bit to do anything constructive. Meanwhile Linus (later Cox) took code from pretty much anyone that made sense. Third, BSD5 had a radical new kernel design that added a lot of complication for threading with little gain. DragonFlyBSD was forked because of this.

So, IMHO, there were a few things... all of them dented (Free)BSD, and there really wasn't another competitor out there.

I already posted, so I can't mod... one of the coolest geek stories around.

Why didn't/couldn't you use GMT?

There was a counter in Windows that rolled over after 28 days I think (like the 787 bug, but 1000 ticks.second not 100).

Even Microsoft knew that no Windows box could stay up that long.

(And before you mod me as a troll, think about it and know that MS could have made a bigger counter, but didn't feel the need to)

Not because he'd achieve anything (the machine will lock him out anyway)

I remember when Nader ran. Subtract the fact that the one campaign promise, he reneged on, he'd be a horribly ineffective President. Besides no direct experience, Nader trashed both Dems and Republicans. Who controls power in Washington? Dems and Republicans. Nothing constructive done.

I know politics is messy. It's about humans fighting for things. OF COURSE it's messy. It's baked in. It reminds me of Fawlty Towers... "this business would be great except for the customers". It's part of it.. you can't have politics without mess. Want to ignore it? then you'll be screwed, bitching about it just as if you're bitching about the weather.

I really don't get the "oh he's got no experience in politics, he's PERFECT". if i go to a sushi restaurant, i don't say "oh, this guy has no preconceived notions of food or cleanliness...YAY lets see what interesting things he washes his hands with" Running a big organization, like the federal government, is a big management job. What has stalman done that shows he can manage things? gcc got out of control. emacs? big fight with Lucid emacs. Hurd? not shipping for real yet.