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This is merely a artists rendition of what a Sony PDA might look like. Looks like the artist basically changed the hue of a palm image in Photoshop and drew on a few Sony-esqe things like the memory stick and the VAIO logo. I wouldn't be surprised if neither the stick nor the camera were ever said by Sony to be on their PDA or not.
modern day geek.

.. the much needed middle finger?
modern day geek.

So Microsoft bundles their browser with their system. And while I don't particularly care for the fact that the browser and system are integrated, it was a smart move by Microsoft nonetheless. Why pay $49 for Netscape when IE comes free? Cry "monopoly" all you want, but it did give Netscape some serious competition...competition is what this is all about, right? They offered their browser for free and even opened up the source, yet IE still prevailed.

Netscape and IE both were (and still are) available for free. IE had the upper hand of "already being there" due to it's bundling with the OS .. thereby eliminating the need for Netscape's presence on the computer.

The line gets drawn where Microsoft blatantly began using it's stronghold as a monopoly in order to devalue Netscape's product. (as seen in the e-mails brought up in the trial, I don't remember specifics, but it's something along the lines "We have to leverage windows in order to get rid of the need for Netscape")

Also, if you read through the findings of fact you can see that MS also had many instances of leveraging their unique standpoint of having the OS on the huge majority of home PCs in order to scheme their way into buying out companies and infiltrating markets as well as devaluing software which wouldn't be or couldn't be taken over by them (Java is a prime example.)

Hope this sheds some light on things.

modern day geek.

But Kolasky [a Microsoftie] had a different view. He said the appeals court decision noted that what the Justice Department had deemed a violation "actually benefited consumers by giving them a better software product."

I love it when Microsoft refers to their actions as benefitting consumers because of the creation of "better software products." The whole point of this case is to determine if the entire computer software industry has been held back from innovation due to the wall put up by Microsoft's APIs. What we don't know can't hurt us.. I suppose (another larger example being the burning of the library of Alexandria.. we'll never truly know how far we'd be now if it hadn't happened)

What Mr. Kolasky needs to think about is what kind of software he'd be running if Microsoft had played fair.. my guess is that it would be "better software products" that are a hell of a lot better than what we've gotten.
modern day geek.

This story got me to VNC and it has made a big difference to my working. Cannot recommend it enough.

Workspot is good for people to tryout/use Linux ...but for people who already have Linux ...VNC is THE thing to run.

I run VNC on my home DSL connected Linux PC. To take care of dynamic IP addresses on my DSL connection i use the superb DNS service from DHS, these guys are great!

Now, where ever i am, using VNC-SSH-DHS combo i can easily and securely reach my home Linux desktop with it's GB's of space and all the sw/code/tools that i have installed.

btw, a great SSH client for Windows without any crypto restrictions is TTSSH.

i have reached Nirvana (atleast for some time :)

Plus now their mouse driver doesn't work with fifo's like /dev/gpmdata (gpm -R) or /dev/jam_ps2:0 (jam imps2) which really pisses me off, because now I'm forced to use only their drivers for mice, which are limited. I have more mice supported in the imwheel version gpm of gpm (with support for wheels/sticks) than their internal drivers, and I can update the jam or gpm programs more often than we see a release of XFree86 come out.

I'm generally disappointed in both the video support from NVidia not being there, the mouse driver being too picky about FIFOs, and the dependancy on random libs that are not included with XFree86 4.0, nor mentioned in the docs. Lucky me I knew what to do to get it working.

write me if you need or can help with mice FIFO vs. XGrabButton methods for IMWheel and gpm or jam. -=<Long Island Man>=-

Plus now their mouse driver doesn't work with fifo's like /dev/gpmdata (gpm -R) or /dev/jam_ps2:0 (jam imps2) which really pisses me off, because now I'm forced to use only their drivers for mice, which are limited. I have more mice supported in the imwheel version gpm of gpm (with support for wheels/sticks) than their internal drivers, and I can update the jam or gpm programs more often than we see a release of XFree86 come out.

I'm generally disappointed in both the video support from NVidia not being there, the mouse driver being too picky about FIFOs, and the dependancy on random libs that are not included with XFree86 4.0, nor mentioned in the docs. Lucky me I knew what to do to get it working.

write me if you need or can help with mice FIFO vs. XGrabButton methods for IMWheel and gpm or jam. -=<Long Island Man>=-

You might think grinding your way through Calculus and Algebra and graph theory is pointless, but believe me when I say it will make you a better programmer.

- Steve van Egmond, b.math 1997
http://bang.dhs.org/

The file is on my computer. It's a school computer, but I'm under my rights to host a server so long as it's not warez or mp3s.
I think the real question is, how will your school's staff react when Mattel sends them a "take it down or else" letter?
--

I feel much better now.. can i have some cheese?

All those Apache servers are probably really running NT according to that logic

Heh, well my apache server is running on windows98! none of that NT crap for me!

http://delmoi.dhs.org

grab 0.48 at http://derf.dhs.org/~derf/gnutella/

I've made the program available here: http://zonedefense.dhs.org/gnutuilla_dl. html

If these are the same people that think it's normal to have their computer crash twice a day, yes. They have been brainwashed.

Hrm... we arn't talking about win3.1, or MacOS here. Windows9x last a lot longer then 12 hours. right now Mine's been up for two days, (you can check it by going to http://delmoi.dhs.org if you don't belive me). Most of the people I know who run NT/2k have to reboot once a month. Of course, you can still say that win32 crashes twice daily, and people who know better will still think you're an idiot.

My book (http://delmoi.dhs.org/re) May be published online only, if I ever get it done (first two chapters done). Not that this really has anything to do with the discussion, but I thought I'd post anyway :P

This isn't to say that I wouldn't publish offline, but...

I getting real tired of hearing people say "it's just naked people fucking, why should we need to filter that?" And "let kids see sex, it's not unhealthy." I spent about ten miutes gathering a few pictures that you might not want your kids to see. Disturbing pictures that might very well cause emotional trauma. If I could find these pictures in ten minutes, you can imagine that much, much worse things exist on the net.

Note: these are very disturbing pictures, you DON'T want to see them. Do yourself a favor and skip the link.

http://www.ryans.dhs.org/sick.html

Ryan

The great power that is the slashdot dumbass. Able to change reality with a single false assumption... assumptions that propagate like viruses acrost the sea of idiocy!

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Offtopic maybe but it isn't really even that. The only moderation this deserves is +1 funny.

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Yeh, I know. when I said "Functional visual cortex" I ment the one he was born with. And when I said "He needs more connectors in his brain" I ment connectors to the hardware, not aditional nurons in his mind...

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

it was done in the 1970s

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Unfortunately you have to somehow dupe millions of people into putting these things inside their bodies which would be difficult.

Not really, All they'll have to do is start mass genetically engineering people to start genetically engineering people to produce these electro/chemical 'eyes' while there still in the womb. They could then connect them to the brain in order to get them to record. The hard part then would be convincing people to take them out... Oh god, maybe they've started already!

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No doubt, the governments wouldn't stop until there were twice as many of these optical/electronic 'eyes' then there are people on earth! Those bastards!

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I think its more like a CCD camera. Nothing terribly new, it just fits all on one chip and it's cheap as heck.

If you think that, ether you or the people at kuro5hin.org are dumbasses. Next time, at least read the story before jumping to conclusions.

Ask yourself, why would a device that's 'more like a CCD camera' require a CCD camera or other video source to operate? geez.

What this thing does is mimic the human visual cortex in hardware, it can be used to track and recognize up to 8 objects in real time...

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This guy already has a functional Visual Cortex, what would be the point of replacing it? What this guy needs is better/ more connectors in his brain, not a new one.

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Heck, with my vision, I could tear my eyeballs out and simply use these, at a fraction of the cost of new glasses.

Hrm... I don't know, but for some reason that just dosn't sound like a good idea to me...

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oh yeah there is: A much better one Read it carefully :)

Here is a pic of the TT fonts in netscape (very crisp!), and the gears openGL demo.

-- Thrakkerzog

WTF are you talking about? since when does the Linux kernel have anything to do with X-windows drivers?

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I'm sure matrox won't be far behind.

Matrox dosn't make its own drivers, they just put out the specs.

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Is it simply standard to score anonymous coward as zero

Yes.
AC posts start at zero, registerd users posts start at 1, with the option to post at 2 if they have > 30 karma

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This is not a shlashdot interview. You don't need to ask questions. This story is just a link to an interview at http://www.linuxpower.org/display.php?id =168. Unfortunetly, the server is being slashdoted right now :(

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This is not a 'slashdot' interview. Just a link to a link on linuxpower.com. At least Thats what I got from reading the blurb. You might be asking a retorical question, but it's not going to get sent to the guy or anything.

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That the RIAA makes money everytime you buy a blank audio tape, or Music only CD. But they don't make money of hard drives.

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If you were to look at Nintendo's IP page, you would find that Emulation is illigal. Yet, this is completly false. Big companies seem to have 'interesting' ideas about what is and is not legal.

Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted.

There not coverd by the law, but that dosn't mean that they you arn't allowed to record onto them. All it means is that the RIAA dosn't make money for every hard disk. The law dosn't say what you can and can't do with your own equipment, all it says is that for every peice of recording media (analog or digital) that some of the money from the sale goes to the RIAA, beacuse it's posible to use it to pirate music. What the RIAA put on there web page is just a fanticy.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

I don't remember what they used for a ringer.

Hrm.. flashing lights?

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I invested in a state of the art 500 Mhz Pentium III last June. Now only 9 months later Intel and AMD are both preparing to ship 1 Ghz CPU's. I feel the overwelming urge to buy one. I dunno though, I think I'll hold out for the 1 Terrahertz chip coming out this fall.

- Shawdog
-- Why oh why ... didn't i take the blue pill --

Uh? how can there be a controversy if this is the first publisized information about it? Maybe if there's a huge comment thread, but...

This is just like the traditional media, hyping non-events in order to get people interested.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Back up your own pompous and gaseous ramblings with something concrete.

I'm pompous and gaseous now? If you'll recall, your first post was 1,123 words long, in 16 paragraphs. And you didn't state your thesis (if you even had one in that unorganized mess) wasn't until the 14th. Thesis, then support. There's more to writing then grammar and spelling. At least I didn't include a 'suggested reading' section containing books I happen to like at the monument (Cryptonomicon?).

Ok. If Ayn Rand is wrong, show me how. It's that simple

I doubt it. Most so called 'objectivists' I've met are about the same as fundamentalist christens. Any arguments I could throw your way would be rebuffed with thoughts only on how to destroy them, rather then on whether or not they are reasonable.

But I'll try anyway. Ayn Rand is wrong because she tries to use Boolean logic on floating point reality. Or, to put it less geekely, she tries to use pure logic on systems that don't necessarily have pure deterministic behavior. Of course, barring small quantum effects, everything is deterministic, but no applications of Newton's laws can tell you what the "best" thing is, or what the "right" thing is. Rand is forced to use things like Darwinian Evolution to make her points, but even her interpretation of that is bogus. Its not about the survival of the individual you see, it's about the survival of the species

Free market, it's that simple. Period. I create something, I sell it on my own, or, I go to a company to sell it for me. It's my choice. I sign on the dotted line. They have the right to wish to make money, as I do also.

This is where things start to get religious with you people, the irrational belief that the free market is infallible. Of course, you can consider yourself correct, because you have a bizarre definition of failure. Namely, "Something the free market can't do." The reason for this is the need to handle things in a Boolean manner.

Your non-specific example, you said you had a choice. But, in any choice, there are variables that affect the choice. If you were making, say, music, you could choose to take a huge loss (both financially, and possibly artistically) to the RIAA's monopoly, or try to sell Self Burned CD's out of your garage (and make almost nothing). Now, thanks to mp3's and the Internet in general, that isn't the case. A few years ago, however, it would have been largely impossible (unless you had the money to make your own Indy label)

In that case, you would be forced to go with the record companies, or not make the record. Now, The Randite would say that that wasn't really force, because the only real force is cohesive force, when the only choice is A or death. And all other cases are simply cases of 'providing better value'. The reason that you need to do this, is so that you can say ether something is "Force" or it isn't. Force needs to be a Boolean value, or your entire logical construct falls apart. Everything isn't black and white. It's a gradient.

Rand holds that the government is the only entity that can apply cohesive force; I can hold a gun to your head and apply force just as easily. In fact, anyone can when they choose to operate outside of Rand's system. You can bitch and moan and call them "subhuman" all you want, but why should they care?

Altruism is a fairy tale

This is completely bogus. Altruism is an evolved trait. You can't stop Altruism anymore then you can sex. A group of altruistic people is more likely to survive then a non-altruistic one. Evolution is just as much about the group as it is about the individual. Evolution doesn't give a god damn about your contrived flat ideologies.

Supposedly Utopian theory extorts that everyone would be better off if we were all equal, shared everything,

What the hell is "Utopian theory"? Is it a straw man Ayn Rand cooked up in order to tare down? I've studied Western Civ, and I don't remember any "Utopian theory". But again, this is an example of Boolean thinking. Just because someone else is wrong doesn't mean you are right.

People are NOT equal. Some are smarter, faster, and stronger than you. It's that simple. Rules of nature and all that, survival of the fittest. If you are not strong, fast, or smart, you do not evolve.

People don't evolve. (Isolated) Groups do.

I shouldn't assume, but I will, that you meant reproduce. But you are incorrect. You don't need any of those traits (at least, you don't need to have those traits at a higher level then everyone else) In order to reproduce. All you have to do is survive and mate. If you can do that, you're evolutionarily successful. I honestly hope you're not a social Darwinist. (Though, it sounds like you are). That's about the most bogus meme in the history of human thought.

I WANT money, I WANT a new computer

And I care because....

. I don't agree with their business practices, they are bad ones. And if you perform bad business practices, and are unwilling to change with the times, you die off. Natural bloody evolution.

But, you see. The only thing that stopped the dinosaurs was an external intervention namely, an asteroid hitting the planet. Anyway, applying laws and rules from one branch of science to others is usually a recipe for bogosity, especially application to social science, such as sociology. But I'll humor you. The history of natural evolution has been greater and greater vicious ness. The species that survives is the one that can most effectively kill another. I hope you don't want the same kind of blind evolution in human social constructs. IE where the most vicious organizations "win". I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world warring between fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Christians, and scientologists.

yes. Next time you decide to call a person Pompous, and intellectually immature, maybe you should try and read, even comprehend what one is saying.

I did try, and I think I did get your main thesis. It would have been a lot better if you would have written more clearly.

NO. This bloody government did. THEY SIGNED IT INTO LAW

Right, and the media industry paid them to do it. If they were acting as employees of the media giants, then the industry is to blame. Oh, but wait, they bought the government on the "free market", so no wrong was done!

or media giants out to make a buck at the cost of other media giants? Let them fight it out for themselves

Look likes they want to do it at our expense instead. We can't put as much of a fight you know, its more profitable to screw us then the other companies. Of course there just "Providing better value" right? Sure...

evolution teaches us only the worthy survive.

And the 2nd law of thermodynamics teaches us that evolution can't happen, right? Oh, wait that's just A gross, and pointless generalization of something specific, relating to another field, and erroneous as well. I see.

Aside from evolution not directly having anything to do with societal constructs, your interpretation is wrong. Evolution doesn't say anything about "worthiness" or even "Survival". All it says if your capable of reproducing then you can pass on your genotypes. Everything dies, and lots of things are evolutionally successful. As for "worthiness" that's a human standard, not a natural one. [the DMCA] infringes on my right to create, and move freely,

If you're an American, why are you using the word "bloody"

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Ayn Rand is wrong. Fundamentally. If you can't appreciate that, then that's to bad.

Music corporations don't produce music; they merely buy it and sell it. And rape people on both sides of the equations. You pay $15 for a CD, and the artiest gets a quarter. It is severely fucked up, and, if you weren't in your "Ubercapitalist" mode of religious thinking. You would see that too.

Of course, the movie companies are in a different situation; as they produce there own art (witch costs huge amounts of money to produce). The situation isn't so clear-cut, but no one should ever be able to take away are constitutional rights just to be able to make more money.

Additionally, your post embodies the major (though not always true) criticisms of Jon Katz's articles: Verbosely pointless. What was your thesis? "This is bad, but not really that bad. It's complicated". I Think you stated it in the second to last paragraph, but I'm not really sure... Of course, this is the kind pompous, and intellectually immature stuff I would expect from a follower of the church of Ayn Rand.

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I can't believe the big deal made about such a lossy compression like mp3. It really sounds like crap

Scientific testing has proved otherwise

you can get "modest" playability out of an mp3 if you decompress it and play it back as a wav file

This proves you don't know what you're talking about. Decompressing to a .wav file and decompressing to the soundcards waveform buffer produce the exact same waveform, unless you have some kind of fucked up sound card (or slow-ass computer. Are you using DirectSound with winamp on a slow computer?)

When I first got my computer hooked up to this nice stereo I bought for my dorm, I could really, really tell the difference between MP3 and CD sound. But it turned out that the audio coming off the CD player was a lot higher in volume then the mp3s. I adjusted the levels, and it turned out the two sounded almost exactly the same. Also, a 196kbit/sec MP3 is, for most cases, indistinguishable from a real sample.

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So, what your saying, basicaly, is that it's OK for the government to make bad, unconstitutional laws, beacuse you can always just break them?

That is about the most braindead thing I've ever heard.

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What you have to relize here, is that this isn't a US law. Its a state law. And states have no power to do any kind of diplomacy with other nations. The US government should have no interest in protecting this law overseas, so it shouldn't matter.

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Palm's use motorola dragonball 68k's, (are they 68k's?) not z80's. The z80 was the 8bit chip used in early nintendo and atari units. Palms are a lot more powerfull then that.

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Slashdot bitches about ads on cell phones. Slashdot posts ads on website. interesting.

Advertising is becoming ubiquitous, and really, it kind of sucks. I guess that's what happens when everything becomes a 'service'. No one would ever have thought of hardwiring advertisements into a PC, (well, people have, but they were never wide spread). But the monument something ceases to be a 'thing' and becomes a 'service' it gets plastered with advertisements.

Of course, dicking around with a cell phone is a good way to end up in jail, so good luck trying to disable this (unless they provide an option). I can see it now, DMCA style restrictions on "circumventing and advertising scheme". I wouldn't be to surprised, the way things are going now, and the way hardware companies are perfectly willing to stomp all over your rights if it means more money.

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Did anyone else follow the teapot Link on the page? It was pretty interesting reading, and anyone who's done any 3d modeling will probably get a kick out of it... Unfortunately, almost all of the external links (from the teapot page) were dead :(

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This sounds like something that was done just to prove it could be done, so people could say "You know, they ported OpenGL to the palm pilot".

But, surely as the palm grows in hardware and display, it could become useful. I'd bet a high-end palm probably has more CPU power then the 486 you played doom on, or at least more then the 386 you played wolf-3d on. I'd really like to see someone port (or develop) some games now. Perhaps the GPL'd quake engine? (How fast is the software rendering there using?)

Heh, imagine being able to say, "You know, they ported GL quake to the palm pilot"...

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Certanly, you don't think this was an issue of trademark infringment, Unless you think BN has a right to decided who gets to call themsleves a bookstore and who dosn't. They might have had a case if amazon tried to call themslevs "The Barns and Noble of the web" or somthing like that. But that's not what they did.



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Wow, I figured Anything from apple would be bad, but the review sounds like somthing straght out of AFA propaganda/FUD "Parents should be aware that children who go exploring there are only a couple of clicks away from some serious porn. " wow...

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What about the time Barnes & Noble sued to try to stop Amazon from calling itself "the world's largest bookstore" because they didn't have a brick-and-mortar presence (like, ahem, Barnes & Noble) and hence shouldn't be able to call themselves a "bookstore"? And I'm pretty sure there have been other little squabbles that slip my mind at present.

Huh? I don't think you can sue someone just beacuse you dissagree with there use of a word. That dosn't make any sense. If you say "I'm cool" does that mean I can sue you if I think you're an idiot? hrm... maybe that would a good thing :P

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