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Microsoft has not 'done away' with the command line

Well, no, they havn't gotten rid of it completely, but come on. They've done everything they could to act like it doesn't exist. They've not only stopped developement on it as an interface, but they've also diked out many useful features. Not that Dos was ever all they great--I've come to think of it as a Bourne shell with Down's Syndrome. But Microsoft has pushed the "one size fits all" mentality for interface design--how configureable is the Windows UI? Not at all. And While Dos may still be around, they've pretty much made it next to useless.

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In the commercial software world, succeeding by technical merit doesn't work, because the whole thing's based on marketing and business. But the open source world is a meritocracy--hyperbole and boasting mean nothing if you can't back it up with good code. That is why Microsoft's FUD attacks have been so useless--we only care about the quality of the code, not the hype that may surround it.

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Sure, but what about when they will get pissed about Gnutella and FreeNet? The whole money argument is invalid, since the people that wrote them aren't making a penny off their work. And even if they get sued, they have no power to remove it from the net :)

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Your jumbling different ideas here. Copyright is "awarded at conception", but one doesn't copyright an "idea" or a "thought", one patents it. Your comment is irrelevant to the preceding debate.

One doesn't even patent a thought or idea, rather one patents an implementation of said thought or idea. Important distinction.

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That's easy: Helixcode + Eazel. The average Gnome desktop is nothing in comparison to what they're doing. Helix will include all sorts of really neat programs, like Abiword, which is veyr much like Word; Gnumeric, which is much like Excel and even compatible with it; dia, a nice diagramer that could be used like Visio; and of course Evolution, the Outlook killer. check it out here.

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Driver's License = You don't own the vehicle.

Bullshit. You own the car, the license just means they give you permission to drive on public roads. They can't stop you from driving on your own property.

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I'm curious, where did they buy (or steal) Word from?

Oh, and you forget the most important non-innovations:

• Dos
• Windows
• the NT kernel
• IE
• Active Directory

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Forget LookOut, use Evolution. Same interface, smart design. Instead of Excel, use Gnumeric. Instead of Word use Abiword. For every Office app, there's a pretty decent clone. Not as feature-bloated, but then I consider that a good thing. And what's better, it's a different app but you don't even have to relearn. Overall, I've been pretty happy with open source clones of popular programs.

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NT (aka Win2000) is built upon a completely different kernel than Win9x, so they would be considered seperate operating systems. The only real difference between Win98 full and Win98 upgrade is a little bit of code and about $90, so they couldn't be considered seperate.

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You're on really, really strong drugs if you think Linux and BSD in their present form are ready for the wide market.

"In their present form" would be the keyword here. Just because Linux/BSD isn't ready for average desktop users now (and I agree with you on that point) doesn't make a difference later on. Linux/BSD is in the same place PCs were in the mid-eighties and the Internet was in the early nineties; pretty much the only people using them were the ones who knew what they were doing. But that all changed, didn't it?

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Umm.... yeah.

Mozilla is open source. It's free and always will be.

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An unfortunate disadvantage of a smaller supported hardware list :( however, if you use nothing very very well support stuff, you're life will be much easier. Tulips aren't too easy, try a 3Com or Via-Rhine, those work good for me. As for sound, the soundblasters are all good, especially the SoundBlaster Live!, which has open source drivers from Creative themselves. 3DFX is your best bet for videos cards... my point is, your life would be much simpler if you had made sure you had well-supported hardware.

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Actually, I can't think of a single successful 'innovation' of theirs that they came up with on their own... DOS was bought for $50K; Windows was more or less copied from a Macintosh; Internet Explorer was bought from Spyglass; the NT kernel was a Vax/VMS varient. And as for the smaller features in Windows 2000, Active Directory is a complete ripoff of NDS; it does mount points, which was all but stolen from UNIX; it uses Kerberos as an authentication protocol, which was an open standard they hijacked; it does symlinks, which was another UNIX feature... the list goes on and on.

If someone could point out a major innovation they actually engineered themselves, I'd be glad to hear it.

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I doubt Windows Media Player is any better. It doesn't have to spawn--it's everywhere to start :)

Of course, I go with Mpeg if I have the choice--but you can't beat rm's for their size/quality ratio.

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If you want to have a problem with something, have a problem with the shitty .ASF format, where they have sacrificed every semblence of quality video for a small file format.

It doesn't even have that. Typically I've noticed ASF's to be a little more than twice the size of a comparable rm file, with suckier quality. ASF just blows in general.

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Because it doesn't matter whether you're using it legally or not; these people aren't considering for a second that some people might be using it legitamately. I don't have a problem with going after poeple who post the songs, but the people searching for them may very well have the CD. I use it all the time to save myself the trouble of ripping the tracks, and to find uber-scarce or unavailable songs.

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Rurouni Kenshin TV and OVA's - Samurai story revolving around a retired samurai The TV series is 70+ episodes and has several story arcs. The OVA's (movie releases) are much more serious

95 to be exact. And about the OVA--is that what an OVA is, a movie? If so, what's Ishinshishi e no requiem, then?

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he quality of the dub, I'm unsure about.

How could you possibly replace Kenshin's voice? Really? They'd probably chicken out and give him a generic hero voice(ala Kakkaroto in DBZ), which would completely ruin it. You'd never find an english actor that sounded like Suzukaze Mayo.

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Yeah, although it's funny to see how many times the HECTO fansub uses the F word :)

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Well, that all depends on which shows you watch. I have a friend who speaks Japanese, and is also a major Rurouni Kenshin fan. He tells me his Japanese language teacher keeps getting pissed off at him for using colloquiolisms from the 1800s :) Can you imagine the looks you would get by saying things like de gozaru or oro? in modern-day Japan?

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I've found myself seriously addicted to the episodes of RK. Definately have to get ahold of the OVAs when they're available here. Or, if I can't wait, get them on VHS from eBay. You can get just about the entire series+OVA+movie from eBay.

I have a friend who's going to Japan next month, and he's planning on buying every Rurouni Kenshin video he can get his hands on :)

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Some people have actually compiled a list of all these annoying little traits.

Check out the Laws of Anime. Had me in stitches when I read through it :)

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Okay, you haven't heard of this for sure. But this is without question the best Anime show I've seen to date. RK takes place in Meiji 11 (1878), eleven years after the fall of the dynasty. The Samuri have pretty much scattered into uselessness, except for a small number of them. Himura Kenshin was a legendary samuri, the Hitokiri Battousi during the Bakumatsa (revolution). He has since sworn never to kill again and replaced his sword with a sakaba, a sword with the blade turned backwards.

The show picks up as he is travelling through Tokyo and is confronted by Kamiya Kaoru, a 17 year old master of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu (a discipline designed to protect, not kill) whose parents have died a while back. Kenshin ends up moving in with Kaoru, and through the course of the next few episodes make a couple of other close friends--Yahiko, who becomes Kaoru's pupil; and Sano, just an all-around badass.

What makes this show so cool is definately the swordfighting--if you think DBZ fighting is neat, wait till you see samuri fighting faster than the eye can track with bladed weapons so sharp that when they cut through something, it sits there for a moment before falling apart.

I don't think theres any DVDs yet. There is one that will be released soon, but the bulk of the episodes can easily be had from Ebay. But you won't notice. I've seen most of the episodes in rm format downloaded from irc, and it's still tremendously cool. The neatest thing about it is that while it has really awesome fight scenes, the show doesn't focus on them. It actually focusses more on the relationship between Kenshin and Kaoru. And it doesn't take itself too seriously, either. In fact, it makes fun of Anime a lot by closely following the laws of anime. Be sure to check out this website for more info on the series.

Oh, and try not to watch the dubbed version. I havn't heard it yet, but there's no way you could replace Kenshin's voice properly. And if they went to some generic hero voice you'd completely miss out on the majority of Kenshin's charm.

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The problem with dubbing is, they almost always pick the worst possible voices to replace them with. And theres also major editing involved. You don't get the full experience with the subs, either, but they're better than dubbing.

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But if that were true, then the point would be that the artists aren't being harmed at all... which I don't really agree with. I think there is a devaluation of some sort when you can get the same thing for nothing. But even if there isn't, my point is the artists are being harmed in some way. Not nearly as bad as outright theft, but certainly more than nothing.

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Crimes are by definition wrong

They are wrong according to the law. Whether they are actually ethically or morally wrong is another matter, and I think that was his point. For instance, it's currently illegal for me to watch my DVD movies I have bought and payed for on my Linux box. Is it wrong? Not at all.

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I am, but people keep using word definitions (stealing) to argue my point is mistaken. So, I respond in kind and post a more detailed explanation which makes their argument not work. I'm just trying to point out that this is clearly defined as Copyright infringement, not theft... but just because others can manage to call it theft they think they've won an argument.

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I posted the alternate definitions because I thought Cannonball's definition was too vague. And who said anything about making myself feel better? I'm arguing that this isn't theft, it's copyright infringement because it does not follow the exact definition of theft. The lawsuits against Napster are not theft, it's copyright infringement because that's the law it's classified under. In order for it to be theft, I have to deprive the original owner of that which I am stealing, which is not happening. The music is not being taken, it's being devalued by unauthorized copying. My point is, you're being too vague and simplistic by calling it theft, we have a clearly defined law which this falls under... so call it that.

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No, stealing is the taking away of someone else's property. Copying is devaluing someone elses property, which is wrong, but only a fraction as bad as stealing.

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theft \Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. 1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny. (emphasis mine) From dictionary.com

The scenario you described would actually be:

espionage (sp--näzh, -nj) n. The act or practice of spying or of using spies to obtain secret information, as about another government or a business competitor.

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Stealing? I think your reality check just bounced :)

Nobody's saying the artist shouldnt' be compensated for their work. And nobody's saying Napster is a perfect system; it's a great idea, but a bad implementation. But to call this "piracy" or "theft" is irresponsible. Theft is the act of depriving someone else of something in their posession. Look it up. But on Napster, or any other file sharing system, you're not taking away, you're copying. When you copy something in someone else's posession, you devalue the thing a little, and you wouldn't be a very nice person, but you're not taking anything away from anybody and therefore calling it stealing or piracy is an attempt to demonize a group of people far more than they deserve.

Therein lies the problem. The RIAA, and copyright holders, want to simplify the definition to something very bad so people will jump in to protect their "Intellectual Property." But it's just not that simple. Intellectual Property is a balancing act; you have to give the IP holders enough power over their works to make a reasonable profit, but since IP is a compromise of freedom, you have to make sure IP doesn't harm the poeple. That's what is happening now; the copyright holders are using IP as a club to beat us into submission. They've grown too powerful. And since the Internet has made IP impossible to hold without Thought Police, copyright law needs to be either seriously rethought or thrown out and rewritten.

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About a year ago, some kid broke into my car and stole a bunch of CD's. He was later caught in the act of doing it to someone else and was arrested. At the time I was fairly happy that he was being punished for his crime, but now, now I realize he wasn't stealing, he was just trying to share!

No, he was stealing. He was actually depriving you of a tangeble object (a CD). Online, you can only copy; you're getting the songs for nothing, but you're not taking anything away from the original owner. All that happens is that the CD is slightly devalued because there is one more copy in existance, but it is by it's very definition not theft. Why is there so much confusion over this?

Theft is the act of depriving someone else of something in their posession. Intellectual property, however, is artificialy restricted to promote creativity. Sharing of information, or music, is natural; copyright law is a compromise of freedom in order to ensure artists have a motivation to keep creating art. But copyright law is not a natural law.

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This is great. Q3Radient was one of the main reasons I have to dual boot Windows. Needless to say, I'm extatic if this thing works. Hmm... Windows' days are numbered :) I use Linux for about 99% of everything I do, and I'm working really hard to eliminate that last 1%. This just helped enormousely. Gotta love Loki :)

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POSIX compliance is only one of many things that make an OS UNIX-like... such as being even remotely recognizeably as a UNIX system. Sorry, but even though NT is a substantial improvement over Windows 9x/Me, it still suffers from the same sucky design.

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Source Code

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There will always be music piracy, no matter how much you fight it. So, the trick is to make it not worth the effort. If music was available on a per-song basis in mp3 format through micropayments, there would be significantly less motivation to pirate than there currently is.

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There is no such corporation as the RIAA.

Your right, the RIAA is not a corporation. The best description would probably be cartel. look it up.

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Guess what? It's defined as theft. Property laws are clear on that.

No, it is not defined as theft. It's defined as copyright violation, which isn't nearly as bad. In certain circumstances (and I believe this is one of them) copyright violation actually helps CD sales. It all comes down to how many people just leech off of it, and how many use it for sampling or other legitimate uses (I have no problems with ordering a CD online, and then downloading all the songs so I don't have to wait for shipping. The RIAA gets my money, I get my music--we're both happy).

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You would think so. Unfortunately, this whole DeCSS thing pretty much proves that they're more interested in picking on the small-time consumers who aren't even doing anything wrong than the actual pirates.

But as far as lending DVDs is concerned, I say go ahead. There's nothing morally wrong with it any way you look at it, and even though the MPAA might want this to be illegal, doesn't mean it should be. In the ideal world, all copyrighted material should be treated like books. And even if they do pass some inane law making lending illegal, how will they ever find out? They won't. They won't ever find out, you're not doing anything wrong, so I say knock yourself out.

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You don't have to buy all the latest hardware to enjoy games. Hell, I haven't upgraded my machine for a year and it can still handle most everything without being too slow. All in all, I'd rather be gaming on a PC because:

• They always work, no matter how many times you get a new machine
• Any game such as Quake or UT that requires fast reflexes and accuracy will be totally useless without a mouse and keyboard
• A few minor upgrades will usually be cheaper than buying a whole new machine when the latest greatest console comes out and
• When you do upgrade, you do not have to buy all your favorite games all over again to enjoy the new system.
• Most times the PC version of a game is cheaper
• You don't get any truly immersive and complex games like Half-Life on a console.
• The resolution of a television sucks
• Depending on the game, you can download additions such as third-party maps and mods or make your own. A console game is static without any hope of a modding community like Quake or Half-Life have.
• Carpal tunnel notwithstanding, playing a game with a mouse and keyboard is a lot less stressful on the hands than with those controllers consoles always come with.
• You don't have to wait two or three years to improve the performance of your games.
• Consoles are normally years behind the latest PC games (Quake1&2, Tomb Raider, for instance)

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The problem with that is Real Media is pretty much the only decent video codec playable under Linux. I've always wondered about that... if MPEG is an open standard, why the hell isn't there better support for it? I haven't even been able to find a decent MPEG player for Linux anywhere.

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No, the whole anticircumvention clause in the DMCA is completely invalid here, since there was no access control whatsoever. And their trade secret claims are also pretty much bunk, since they distributed it to anyone and everyone, and once it got posted to the net, it's over. So all they seem to have left is claim of copyright over the material--which is shaky, too since they don't even own Kerberos, it's an open IETF standard released under the BSD license. So even if they're legally right, we're doing the right thing, no doubt.

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Well, it's way to early to criticize the interface. This is basically just a hacked-together, "good enough to make it work" interface; they will be spending much more time on it in the future.

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If you read any of the documentation, then you clearly know that they make it quite obvious that this is not ready for release, or even serious testing. The README not only states that it's pre-alpha, but incredibly hard to compile. They cast no illusions about it's state of readiness, so what's your beef? Perhaps they are trying to concentrate more on the overall structure of the application first, before they add in email functionality. If you read the parts about bonobo, you'd know this sort of design is still experimental. And since designing things with bonobo would take precedence, considering its cool application design implications, maybe they think that's more important than releasing yet another email client.

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If they make it original, you complain that it's too different.
If they make it real similar you complain it's not different enough.

As long as you get the job done with a minimum of swearing, it has fulfilled its purpose. The real difference is in the backend, which, ironically, was not coded by monkeys. You will not have to worry about having your critical system files overwritten by viewing an attachment, or even viewing an email. You will not have to worry about the safety of your personal stored information, and, most importantly, you will not have to worry about Evolution being forced unwillingly on a whole userbase of people.

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I know I feel quite certain they've been watching us like hawks for some time, just waiting for an opportunity like this.

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I think this "roiling mass of bile and ignorance" you speak of is actually attributable to the trolls in the discussion forums, not Slashdot authors themselves. I don't ever recall seeing a headline reading "Those f*ckers need to die! Kill them all!!!"

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The story can be found here.

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Firstly, it would be completely impossible to contact every poster that was put into that book, due to sheer numbers and AC's. Secondly, Slashdot, while the comments are owned by the poster, is a public forum. If you're not familiar with the concept of a public forum, it means that anybody can reproduce readers' comments from here if they so desire. In fact, you could even reproduce Katz's articles. And Katz isn't making a penny from it, so what's your problem?

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"Slashdot" does nothing to the posts. We moderate the comments.

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