Ahh, thank you.

I may just not know how to get it to do it, but it seems to be missing vector based graphics. While this isn't a big deal most of the time, when you are trying to do logos or other graphics which you want to be able to scale up and down, rasters suck.

That said, I still love Gimp. I don't do anywhere near enough graphics work to justify buying Photoshop, and Gimp can usually get anything I want done.

And trying to figure out why autocad runs so slow in a mac VM.

Does it? I have a few users who run ESRI's ArcGIS in a Windows session in Parallels and it actually runs pretty well. Given that it's pretty much AutoCAD with spatial data and metadata attached (even to the point of relying on OpenGL) Iwould have expected that the performance would have been similar.

Of course, this still goes back to the question I have, "you are buying a Mac, to run Windows, why?" It's the same hardware, and you're still dealing with the Windows OS for your primary applications, what is the extra layer of complexity getting you? For a little less, I'll get you a Dell and even put an apple sticker on it to make you feel special.

I just spent four f***ing days reinstalling Windows XP because Vista figured Autocad was either already installed, couldn't be installed, or shouldn't be installed.

It took you four days to fail to clean up a borked program in the MSI cache, and then re-install the OS? What the hell where you doing?

And if it was bundled MS would end up being sued by Faronics for abusing their monopoly position, the EU would sanction MS until they removed it, and everyone would complain about how evil MS is for trying to take over another sector of the computer business.

Of the two options, I like the unbundled, doesn't bloat my OS further, option.

It's a shame that so many people in the US think that "free speech" means "I can say anything I want".

Yes, that is exactly what it means. There are no a priori restriction on speech. You want to say something go ahead and say it, you will never be prosecuted for the content of your speech. However, as with all freedoms there are responsibilities which come along with it. You are responsible for the results of your speech. If your speech defames or otherwise causes harm to another you will be held civilly, and possibly criminally, responsible for the effects of your speech. At that point, the content of the speech may come into question, such as, whether or not its true or obvious satire. But, it is not the speech itself which is being prosecuted, but the results of that speech.

Take the ever popular shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. There is no restriction on doing so. In fact, if there is a fire, we'd all probably want someone to shout "fire!" However, if there is not a fire and the point of shouting, "fire" is to incite a panic or riot, you will be charged with incitement to riot and will not be able to hide behind the protection of the First Amendment. Yes, shouting "fire" is protected speech, but you did so with the intention of causing a panic or riot and that incitement is not protected.

If you're going in for bypass surgery do you want the General Practitioner or the Cardiologist to be the one with the scalpel?

We are a very highly specialized society for a reason, specialists usually know the tiny little intricacies of their chosen field, while the general folks will know just enough to be dangerous. It is occasionally useful to have some generalized knowledge, as it can help one get outside the box, and to bring different ideas together; but, you are still going to need a specialist to tell you how to do that crazy idea, or to tell you that, "no, that's just a dumb idea."

While I do realize that partisan politics is probably the reason, they have got to know that this will get used against them. Maybe those seats are so safe that as long as they are not caught eating aborted fetuses, they will get reelected; but can partisan politics really be that important by comparison?

The problem, though, is A) defining "rights", and B) delineating what scope of this protection we the citizens should expect/want. Obviously B is dependent on A. Sadly I haven't seen anyone actually give a coherent example of what a "right" is, or where the hell they come from, and most of what would fall under the B column is generally inchoate party dogma, and second hand mouth noise (all people subscribing to a proper-noun political ideology are generally guilty of this).

I agree that defining what are rights and where they come from is a problem, I would even go so far as to say that it really is intractable. Most arguments for any rights eventually breakdown to either a direct appeal to authority or an appeal to consensus, which is the inbreed cousin of an appeal to authority. Even in my own attempts to define my own position, I fall back to the Natural Rights theory, which ultimately rests on an appeal to consensus (or appeal to authority "endowed by his creator" and all that). It assumes that there are certain rights that we can all agree that we all have.

Consider the "right to life" for a moment. Why should anyone have a "right to life"? And just to make the example more concrete, let us restrict the "right to life" to mean that a person should be able to expect that a random stranger won't just stop in and kill him. Really try to defend this right without falling back on any sort of appeal to authority. I personally can see one avenue which I think can avoid it, but I'm not completely sure of it.

In the end, this is why public (and hopefully civil) discourse and trying to reach a consensus is helpful in defining rights. Because our rights are defined by the consensus, even if that is a really horrible way of doing it; it is what we have been doing in the US since its inception, and I don't think there is really any other way. On the other hand, we have to be careful not to simply go with a majority rules system. Pure democracies sound great, until the majority figures out that they can screw a minority. The end result of this is always bad and usually ends in bloodshed.

I find it rather depressing that I'm so happy about agreeing with people of almost opposite politics these days. It seems our public discourse has turned into: "I, as a x, completely disagree with you because YOU ARE NOT an x!", where "x" is whatever political dogma you self-identify with.

It's sad, really, that we have lost the ability to hold rational discussions and to agree to disagree on issues. Very little in this world is black and white, and while we do need to create bright line distinctions in law, and will likely not agree on where those lines should be, we should at least be able to agree that we need to have rational discussions about them. But then, we have become a nation more concerned with who is winning "American Idol" than who is representing us in the legislature. In a way, we are victims of the success of our government's design. It has been setup in such a way that it does a pretty good job of protecting our rights, and not trampling them too much, that we have become apathetic about it. The only way to get us excited about the political process is to turn it into a circus. Long winded, carefully thought out positions are seen as boring, and so we ignore these in favor of the loud and obnoxious. So that, ultimately, the discussion is driven by the loudest and most entertaining.

I doubt that there would be a legal problem with slapping a GPS tracking device on a car which the driver has already used to break the law, in view of the police. At the very least, I think this would be covered under probable cause. In an actual court, I think the argument would be covered by the judge's derisive laughter.

Of course, there is that whole getting a GPS device attached to a car doing 100 mph problem, but that is more of an engineering problem.

I'm going to hope I'm not getting trolled here...
I consider myself libertarian, and I agree that the role of government includes criminal law and policing. Of course, you and I might disagree on what policing means, but that is an entirely different argument. Generally speaking, I think the easiest description of the role of government is "securing the rights of the people". However, like many quick throw-away phrases this really misses the depth and nuance that a real discussion of the role of government should have. It's intended as a starting point and as a way to help establish the basis of my beliefs with others. If you start digging into it, and I think this is common among libertarians, you will find a set of beliefs which go back to the Natural Rights theory of morality and a belief that civil rights come from those Natural Rights (Life, Liberty, and Property).

I have yet to figure out why non-libertarians seem to insist on equating libertarianism with anarchism, I guess it's just the stupidity of the anti-libertarian dogma. The two are not the same, though they do share many tenets and many people who are anarchists but don't want to be called out as such will claim to be libertarian.

Just to use the examples you cited:
To deter murder. - Without a government to imprison a murderer, people will take the law into their own hands by killing people they suspect of murder. Whether they are actually guilty or not. A process with soon escalates to feud. Libertarian utopia = everyone else's hell.

Absolutely this is the role of government. Part of the reason that written laws and formalized systems of criminal punishment were created was the fallout from blood feuds. A person has a right to life, if that is violated by another the violator should be punished. Without a formal system of government and criminal law, this would quickly turn into a mess (Hatfields and McCoys, anyone?). That said, if a person really wants to kill themselves in a way which does not harm others, well, it's their body. I agree that they may have mental issues which need resolving, and perhaps we should try to convince (not force) them to change their mind. This includes the use of drugs (be it nicotine, alcohol, or heroin) all of them are dumb, but it's your body to destroy if you want to.

As a less obvious example, you want the government to have no role in firearm control. So there's absolutely nothing to stop your neighbours giving guns to their children to play with as they feel like.

Quick question, what is stopping my neighbor from doing that now? "The Law" is not stopping it, it can't. If my neighbor was to get a sudden itch to hand my child a firearm, and neither I nor an adult with some sense was there to stop him, the laws of physics aren't going to suddenly stop the transfer because we have a law against it. You could try "The Police" as your answer; however, there are not enough resources to have a police officer standing over every child 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Quite simply, if my neighbor wanted to hand my child a firearm to play with, and I wasn't around to stop it, nothing would stop it. And this is where you and I will likely begin to digress in our view of the police. The police do not exists to stop crimes. They can't, there are simply not enough of them and probably never will be. The role of the police is to investigate crimes after they happen, arrest the person whom the evidence points to as the guilty party, and bring them to the justice system to be tried.

How are you going to feel when the kids next door are playing cowboys and indians with real guns? You may not care about them, but what about when the stray bullets come on your side of the fence?

Again, what's stopping this now? It's not the government, it's their parents. The government has a pretty poor track record of stopping this behavior. Take a look at places like Oakland or Los Angeles where the gangs have gotten out of hand. The government and all the laws you hold up as panacea are not stopping the problem. There has been a massive breakdown in parenting and simply teaching children to respect life. Now, The solution is likely to involve the government and a huge amount of social work and pressure, but just making gang activity illegal isn't going to stop it, it hasn't yet.

All this said, I'm ok with drunk driving and no texting while driving laws. People are creating a direct danger to the rights of others through through their own choices. I'd even go along with restrictions on billboards on the sides of highways, they are designed to distract drivers, which creates a direct danger to others. Seat belt laws and motorcycle helmet laws, not so much.

Thank you, I was beginning to think I was the only one here who had ever tried to pull data out of SharePoint. While I'll agree with many of the posters in this thread that SharePoint can be as much trouble as a help, the idea that it is some vendor lock-in fortress is just stupid.
Hell, you can drag and drop your files out of a document library using Windows Explorer, this is hard? Or, for single items, left-click the down arrow, click Send To, click Download a copy, fuck this is hard! BTW, this even works in FireFox, though you do have to disable NoScript, which I guess can be hard if you have a room temperature IQ.

Oh ya, and as someone else has already pointed out, you could always dig into the SDK and write programs against it to move data in and out.

But yes, SharePoint is a fortress which eats your data, pollutes the environment, and kicks puppy dogs.



Come on guys, MS's software has enough problems, without us making shit up.