"We live in a Meritocracy, folks. Or at least something that aspires to be."
No you are wrong here. What makes one persons life have more merit than another person? Or one persons job more important than another? What is the scale on which we measure merit?
What we live in is a class system. Class is defined by age, education, job, sex, race, clothes, wealth and upbringing. A class system is not something to aspire to. It's an ugly thing. And a dangerous thing when the seperation between the "upper" and "lower" classes becomes too defined.
The differences in income levels between the rich and the poor in America has been increasing.
I don't think I would ever want to use it. If I was going to register a URL for an open source product I would register the.org.
But I still think that they should get it.
If they don't I hope they just set up their own root server and start giving domains out anyways to anyone with an open source product and a static IP.
All they would need to do is pursuade debian to add their gnu root server to the default bind. There are a lot of sys admins who would add.gnu who might not care about some of the other dns root servers out there.
After a ten thousand or so places were registerred then the snow ball effect kicks in.
"Soon we shall be free from ICANN dominated web! HOORAY! "as pokey the penguin would say.
I grew up in a third world nation, Zambia. And after college I would like to return and teach computer science while supporting myself programming over the internet.
So I am always interesting in articles about how computers and the internet are doing in poorer countries.
Zambia is a different situation than South America because the population is less dense. And because Zambia has more poverty. So needless to say AOL probably isn't going to be planning to come to Zambia anytime soon.
However this is still a very exciting time for me because of all the hopefull things happening in the Zambian internet scene right now.
but i too hold tremendous hope for internet to raise the quality of life for the ordinary (not rich like you and i) men and women in zambia.
it's true that we need medicical care etc also but raised incomes from using the internet are a means to that end.
it is true also that your local John 3:16 could probably use a hand once in a while too. but don't call a person arogant for wanting to help in the way that he knows best.
it's not arrogance to think that what you are doing can benifit humanity. it's hope. and we could all do with a little more hope.
>(I assume you can only access other users who are logged into the same system?)
i'm confused what you mean by this? with jabber you can talk to people who use jabber or irc, icq, aim, msn, yahoo etc. or if you want you can run a jabber server on a linux computer for your lan. to the icq user you appear to be just another icq user. after you have initially added the icq user to your roster he appears to be another jabber user. (basically anyways... in some cases odd things happen. for example jabber and icq support offline storage but aol instant messenger does not.)
actually it would not be difficult to implement the jabber protocol in the client. and you are right that this would make it easier in some ways. lessen the duty of sysadmins and the need to buy computers to use as a server. however there are many some good reasons why this was not done yet. (some one will probably do in sooner or later in the next couple years just for the heck of it)
1) the jabber server allows for offline storage. not just of instant messanges but also of file transfers and images etc.
2) the jabber server simplifys things for end users. no need to install new modules for any new instant messanging protocol because your isp will do it for you. (not everyone is a hacker.)
3) it simplifies things for programmers. because they only need to know one protocol. (and one that actually makes sense as opposed to aol & icq etc). if you want a client that includes every possible protocol then install everbuddy. making a jabber client is really really easy. i made a crude one for testing purposes in shell script using netcat.
4) the jabber server provides a level of privacy because no one ever needs to know your ip address. So when you go onto irc through a jabber server you are not automatically going to start recieving port scans.
5) the jabber server holds user data. this is probably more usefull for me because i have switched clients a couple times but i have definitely appreciated it more than i imagined i would.
6) this is a minor point maybe but it makes the naming scheme much easier because isp's can give you the same jabber id as your email address. a "the client is the server" system becomes very complicated with dinamically allocated ip addresses.
hope this explains some of the jabber philosophy better.
People say this all the time and I really don't understand it.
True linux is missing a lot of applications that some other operating systems have and so a lot of cloning goes on. To me this is all good and well.
On the other hand there are a ton of really cool new progects that people tool around with just for fun. They aren't nesecarilly very large or very fit for mass consumption but their still new and very cool.
stuff like freeweb. that's very new and creative. I can't explain here but they have a page at sourceforge.org
jabber. sure you could say it's just another instant messenger but then you'd be a crack head. can you use your icq program to run a mud? to talk on irc? for collaboritive document creation in real time? to download rsh? it's a freaking excelent protocol that also does instant messanging really.
berlin is cool. but we've had graphical user interphases since the 80's at least so it's not that new.
stuff with beowulf clusters is new.
the dude who made a video with a linux laptop and one of those gameboy camera's did something new.
there is some cool new stuff going on at the kernel level that doesn't get talked about too much. the guy who made a module so he could mount windows/any file systems over net. the folks who made a webserver right inside the kernel for extra speed.
eros is cool and new and open source.
hurd is old but only now getting finished and it's open source.
the guy who got his computer to boot up in a tenth of a second by putting linux on his bios did something new.
There is a ton of fairly experimental new stuff going on every day really. it's tipically a pain to compile but it's out there if you look.
"Even if/when the office suites under Unix catch up with MS/Office and offer full compatibility, people will still remember that "arrogant Unix asshole" who told them that Unix couldn't read their Word docs."
He never said he couldn't read the.doc he said he could read even the stuff they had deleted.
and anyways it really is obnoctous to send.doc attachments to email. the established standard for email is text not.doc.
if it's a company sending you.doc attachments then it's just a matter of user feedback to tell them that something else is better. customers can get away with that.
It definately looks to me like BeOS screwed him over.
They said that they were developing a desktop OS and then after he had spent months working on a program that was likely to be used on a desktop OS but not on an internet appliance they say that they've switched their goals on him.
So he has basically wasted those months.
Sure Be can and has to do what ever they must to be profitable. I wouldn't hold it against them if they decided that they weren't making any money with the desktop and discontinued it. That's their decision.
Unless they had publically said that they were developing a desktop OS and I had spent months working on a desktop app. Then I might hold it against them.
All the replies to his email shared the same message. "No one was forcing you." This isn't a good answer. That's the same thing as saying, "No one told you to trust us."
I'm not going to say that BeOS was wrong to do what they did. OTher developers feel they are going to benifit from the change of focus, no doubt. I will say that he has the right to be be pissed and that BeOS should recognize and respect his right to be pissed.
This also illustrates the problem of developing software for an operating system that is controlled by a single company. It may be ok for a few years. But don't plan on it for the long term. Operatings system companies go broke, get bought, change focus, become competitors with their independent application writers. When that happens there is always someone who gets screwed.
This is why Linux is the operating sytem of the future even though it sucks at graphics and sound.
I understand that the author is trying to explain that the problem is not either license but simply the fact that the lisences are incompatible. (although red hat, kde, troll tech, etc would say they are compatible.) This is interesting because until today I had only heard that it wasn't not "free" enough.
however i wish the author had gone into specifics about why they were incompatible and what things that the troll tech guys changed to the qpl after he thought that it was going to work.
also it would have been interesting to hear what the "one big mistake" that he personally felt responsible for.
then i think i could really evaulate the issues better to see if red hat etc were really violating the gpl.
there's no particular reason why icann is in charge of this whole dns thing... i don't think it would hurt to compete with them.
there was recently a discusion at kuro5hin.org about this. and folks were saying that all it would take would be some hardware and to change the defaults setting that you download bind with.
sure it would take a while before all or even most people would update to include the new dns servers. but that's ok. not everyone has AOL keywords either...
icann is good enough... it manages pretty decent considerring how fast the net is changing. but it could be better with a little competition...
actually malbero was spun off a couple years ago. it was bad karma for the food side of things to be associated with smoking.
as an interesting side note. originally the pilsbury doe boy was going to be used instead of the "malburo man." but then they decided they found out that it would be better if he endorsed cake mixes instead.
and the rest, as they say, is history.
Re:The real purpose of DeCSS
on
DeCSS Update
·
· Score: 2
i see the REAL reason as somewhat different then you do.
sure maybe some people will use dvd for copying dvd's perhaps. there are other ways to do it though and i have seen stuff that ripped from dvd and i'm almost certain the person who ripped it didn't use DeCSS. so my extensive sample of one or two ripped movies shows that DeCSS does not have a monopoly on piracy programs.
what the mpaa is upset about is far deeper. DeCSS allows you to build your own DVD player. sure slashdot is excited about the DVD player for linux but what a lot of people don't think about is that DeCSS allows you to build your own DVD player for windows too or mac or even a hardware DVD player. and you don't need to sign anything about not building a "record" button into your DVD. that's the key.
the next time you go rent a movie from BlockBuster take a minute or two to look around. Take a picture even. because in 10 years from now BlockBust will have gone bust.
why? because technology has already made them irrelevant. what we see today is struggles of a multi million dollar industry trying to hold back time.
today making a dvd cost a movie company 1-2 dollars. as a consumer you can rent a movie for $2 over night and $3 for 5 days. but it would not be impossible for a company to sell a DVD for $5 and make $3 profit on each sale. as it is they sell the movie to BlockBuster for $140 and let them rent it out until someone steals it or destroys it.
or someone could offer an entire library of downloadable movies from off the net for $3-5 apiece. someone could do it TODAY. the technology is there already. at school i could download 2 gigs in 2-3 hours. a larger DVD could take all night. but instead of DVD format I would much prefer a more compressed format. at school it was easy to download anime television shows while you waited. my classmate had over 70 gigs of downloaded anime' that he burned to cd. i remember him mentioning that one night he downloaded 10 gigs of it. crude yes. but finding movies on the net will be maid automatic. servers will be decent. and there will be a small charge for each download.
at home i do not download movies because of my slow modem. but fiber optics are coming. within the next year or two for me. within 10 years for rest of the united states. it only makes sense. fiber is cheaper than copper and cheaper to maintain. believe it--fiber will change everything.
what we are discussing basically is the technology to copy data almost instantly at almost no cost with absolute accuracy to any place in the globe. it's perfectly obvious why this should scare anyone who sells data.
certainly it's not legal to copy some data for certain purposes. but some countries (germany, russia and china for example) have a legal system that the movie industry doesn't like. and people break laws all the time. a more thorough way to stop copying is to not allow the technology to exist. i don't believe there are any DVD players on the market with a record button. so it's pretty clear that they had suceeded so far. until DeCSS came along.
image a million unemployed high school students who used to work for BlockBuster. image CEO's crying pitifully and calling for their mothers. technology does this/will do this. you can fight it. you can invest millions of dollars to fight against it. you can slow it down. but you can't ever stop it. time and technology march hand in hand forward and onward, unceasing.
http://hotgrits.org http://slashdot.com http://slashdork.org http://smashdot.org http://crashdot.org http://splashdot.org//not set up yet... http://trashdot.org http://slapdash.org http://slashnot.org http://slashrot.org//not set up yet... http://slashpot.org http://slashbot.org
(all of them run on BSD or Linux btw. Linux is just slightly more common than BSD)
how come everyone is saying that this isn't a problem and moderating up other folks who say that this isn't a problem?
this is a HUGE freaking problem. 60% of ALL the email systems in sweden were taken down. 30% of the email in england. All the canadian government email was taken down.
look at that. millions of people without email for a prolonged period of time and tell me there isn't a problem here.
And it isn't over yet. Everyone is looking for email with "ILOVEYOU.txt" on it but they aren't looking for the email with "warn I love you virus" as the subject. For the next couple months that's what were going to see. Except it won't be a warning. It will be the virus with a different name. Seriously. Now there are thousand of people out there who know they can disable a the email system in a school or a town or a company just by changing the subject line of the email and sending it to someone in there.
Think about a new ILOVEYOU virus every week for the next three months. Still think there isn't a problem?
but the real problem is far deeper and longer lasting. I remember when I first was introduced to email when i came to america in 96. The first question I'm asking myself is, "can't people hack our computer?" See back then I didn't know the difference between a hacker, a cracker, a hax0r, script kiddie, a virus writer, or anything. All i knew was that it didn't sound good.
The general public still doesn't fully trust computers and they trust the network even less. There are a couple people at my college whose parents didn't let them have the internet in their house.
There are many more who don't use instant messaging still because of fear of hax0rs.
Or i could rant about all the helpfull aunts out there who send people forwards with hoax email virus warnings. It's not the aunt's fault. It's the fault of negligent computer companies who allow for real email viruses. It's harder to make an email program that will allow an virus to propagate than it is to make a secure email client so they can't even claim they did it out of laziness.
It's stupid stuff like this that puts a barrier infront of people that might otherwise benifit from technolodgy.
Some of the commenters are blaming it on the outlook users. That's not very smart in my opinion. Why should the users be afraid to open attachments? Why should they be afraid to look at email. We aren't talking about email from friends as was the case with this virus. I'm talking about email from complete strangers.
I am on a couple of mailing lists and I get email from over a hundred strangers every day. But do i worry about it? NO! I just open it right up and look at it. That's because my email client will only read text and pictures. No executables. No viruses. No trojans. I can just open it up like there was nothing to it. AND THAT'S THE WAY IT SHOULD BE!!:(
most personal computers don't even ship with tape drives even so far as i have noticed.
and then there was the guy at a bbs i frequent. the system admin at their college just said, "farg it." and deleted all the unread messages on their sytem after the school got the virus.
the admin is stupid and deserves to suffer.
but the people who go to the college sufferred instead.
i'd probably be poor interested if i had a lot of (especially financial) interest in linux's wide spread adoption by the masses.
(believe me it is linux he is bashing. he uses the word open source because he is ignorant but he meant to bash linux not pearl, apache, sendmail, or BSD)
the thing that i was talking about is that slashdot normally prints only good/thought provoking articles about open source. like the "mindcraft" thing and the "linux myths" page. this guy on the other hand is really ignorant.
the slashdot article is no doubt going to cause several hundred flames in this fellows mail box. probably he deserves it. i don't know. the whole jihad thing scares me.
in a business i'd imagine that a totally incorect bashing of a company would result in that company sending a polite well considerred letter to the editor. with linux it's a little different.
i kind of like the idea of just pitying or laughing at his poor misguided soul. but once you start adding money to the equation it's good to write letters to the editor too.
This article was on Linuxtoday.com yesterday. There were 29 comments when I read it.
The overall opinion was that it wasn't worth reading. A ton of people posted that they didn't read it after the first paragraph and the rest posted that they read it but wished they hadn't because the guy was so dumb.
aparently he's the same fellow who didn't apply the security patches in the hack the box contest between windows and linux. (it was too complicated to download them from redhat.com if you will remember.)
"And so what if somebody is making a buck or two off the domain name? VA Linux Systems paid a bunch of money for linux.com. I guess that it was OK, though, because they guy who sold it took care to make sure that it went to the "right people"."
VA linux bought linux.com. They didn't squat on it or even sell it. I don't know the situation but yes in buying it they probably made some squatter rich. But that doesn't mean they agree with squating.
"Everybody wants to make buck. But I swear, you'd think that Slashdot was a breeding ground for socialism if you gave many of the comments you read much credence. Maybe the real deal is that everybody should be allowed to make a buck after I make a buck."
Money is not wrong it's just a matter of how you come by your money. Squatters don't make any contribution back to scociety. Squating doesn't require any inteligence, craft or creativity. Squatters are taking something that is supposed to be free and charging for it. That's theft in my book. Squatting is not a noble profession.
"Maybe the default answer ought to be, "Talk to your lawyer, 'cause if you take the advice you find here, you'll be in BIG trouble!"
I have found that you believe everything you hear, it means you are stupid.
after my university (of about 8000 students) sent me an email about someone's car lights being on i filterred them to their own special email box.
i don't read their paper spam either so not a lot changed...
Re:eBooks == vaporware
on
RMS On eBooks
·
· Score: 1
I actually think it would be pretty cool. Maybe not replace books necesarilly but certainly electronic books will be around.
right now I can download a couple hundred page book in about 30 seconds. that's faster than actually going to the bookstore or library. that's much faster than orderring it online.
normally what I do is "lynx -dump book.html > book.txt" and read it in a terminal. graphics are not worth it when you want to read text only for a couple hours.
the problem is the monitor. it's too large so I can't read in bed.
I've thought about scrounging up a cheap used labtop just so that reading huge text files would be more comfortable. Also then I could take it to breakfast and read over coffee. A laptop isn't the perfect solution. It's too expensive. I don't need most of the features. The keyboard would get in the way. A special purpose reader is better.
I think that would be ideal. Someone tells me that there is a good book I should read and gives me the URL. I go there, pay a dollar through the micro payment dealy. Thirty seconds later I'd be reading it in my armchair with a blanket and some hot chocolate.
Re:how good is the human eye?
on
Carmack Speaks
·
· Score: 3
actually with video games it does make a difference.
with a tv we can handle low refresh rates because the exposure time is longer and so the pictures are a little bit blury where there is motion. The eye interprets the blur as motion.
with a video game you don't have any blur and so you need a higher refresh rate to get the same feeling of motion.
Slashdot Mirror
"We live in a Meritocracy, folks. Or at least something that aspires to be."
No you are wrong here. What makes one persons life have more merit than another person? Or one persons job more important than another? What is the scale on which we measure merit?
What we live in is a class system. Class is defined by age, education, job, sex, race, clothes, wealth and upbringing. A class system is not something to aspire to. It's an ugly thing. And a dangerous thing when the seperation between the "upper" and "lower" classes becomes too defined.
The differences in income levels between the rich and the poor in America has been increasing.
I don't think I would ever want to use it. If I was going to register a URL for an open source product I would register the .org.
.gnu who might not care about some of the other dns root servers out there.
But I still think that they should get it.
If they don't I hope they just set up their own root server and start giving domains out anyways to anyone with an open source product and a static IP.
All they would need to do is pursuade debian to add their gnu root server to the default bind. There are a lot of sys admins who would add
After a ten thousand or so places were registerred then the snow ball effect kicks in.
"Soon we shall be free from ICANN dominated web! HOORAY! "as pokey the penguin would say.
>(A work around, since MS Internet Printing doesn't allow you to use ipp://...)
instead of "ipp://" you should try "ipp:\\"
that's how they did it in the article anyways.
rofl at my own joke.
So I am always interesting in articles about how computers and the internet are doing in poorer countries.
Zambia is a different situation than South America because the population is less dense. And because Zambia has more poverty. So needless to say AOL probably isn't going to be planning to come to Zambia anytime soon.
However this is still a very exciting time for me because of all the hopefull things happening in the Zambian internet scene right now.
For a real picture of the state of technolodgy in a third world country. There is an interesting interview with the three Zambian ISP's at : http://zambia.co.zm/infotelli gence/isp_interview.html
i grew up in zambia far from the suburbs.
but i too hold tremendous hope for internet to raise the quality of life for the ordinary (not rich like you and i) men and women in zambia.
it's true that we need medicical care etc also but raised incomes from using the internet are a means to that end.
it is true also that your local John 3:16 could probably use a hand once in a while too. but don't call a person arogant for wanting to help in the way that he knows best.
it's not arrogance to think that what you are doing can benifit humanity. it's hope. and we could all do with a little more hope.
i think you should have looked up what TUX was...
basically it's a webserver that works in kernel space.
this is something that you can do in linux and not in windows so it is almost a windows vs linux thing.
i agree with you that it would be interesting to compare apache vs TUX.
>(I assume you can only access other users who are logged into the same system?)
i'm confused what you mean by this? with jabber you can talk to people who use jabber or irc, icq, aim, msn, yahoo etc. or if you want you can run a jabber server on a linux computer for your lan. to the icq user you appear to be just another icq user. after you have initially added the icq user to your roster he appears to be another jabber user. (basically anyways... in some cases odd things happen. for example jabber and icq support offline storage but aol instant messenger does not.)
actually it would not be difficult to implement the jabber protocol in the client. and you are right that this would make it easier in some ways. lessen the duty of sysadmins and the need to buy computers to use as a server.
however there are many some good reasons why this was not done yet. (some one will probably do in sooner or later in the next couple years just for the heck of it)
1) the jabber server allows for offline storage. not just of instant messanges but also of file transfers and images etc.
2) the jabber server simplifys things for end users. no need to install new modules for any new instant messanging protocol because your isp will do it for you. (not everyone is a hacker.)
3) it simplifies things for programmers. because they only need to know one protocol. (and one that actually makes sense as opposed to aol & icq etc). if you want a client that includes every possible protocol then install everbuddy. making a jabber client is really really easy. i made a crude one for testing purposes in shell script using netcat.
4) the jabber server provides a level of privacy because no one ever needs to know your ip address. So when you go onto irc through a jabber server you are not automatically going to start recieving port scans.
5) the jabber server holds user data. this is probably more usefull for me because i have switched clients a couple times but i have definitely appreciated it more than i imagined i would.
6) this is a minor point maybe but it makes the naming scheme much easier because isp's can give you the same jabber id as your email address. a "the client is the server" system becomes very complicated with dinamically allocated ip addresses.
hope this explains some of the jabber philosophy better.
error27@email.com
People say this all the time and I really don't understand it.
True linux is missing a lot of applications that some other operating systems have and so a lot of cloning goes on. To me this is all good and well.
On the other hand there are a ton of really cool new progects that people tool around with just for fun. They aren't nesecarilly very large or very fit for mass consumption but their still new and very cool.
stuff like freeweb. that's very new and creative. I can't explain here but they have a page at sourceforge.org
jabber. sure you could say it's just another instant messenger but then you'd be a crack head. can you use your icq program to run a mud? to talk on irc? for collaboritive document creation in real time? to download rsh? it's a freaking excelent protocol that also does instant messanging really.
berlin is cool. but we've had graphical user interphases since the 80's at least so it's not that new.
stuff with beowulf clusters is new.
the dude who made a video with a linux laptop and one of those gameboy camera's did something new.
there is some cool new stuff going on at the kernel level that doesn't get talked about too much. the guy who made a module so he could mount windows/any file systems over net. the folks who made a webserver right inside the kernel for extra speed.
eros is cool and new and open source.
hurd is old but only now getting finished and it's open source.
the guy who got his computer to boot up in a tenth of a second by putting linux on his bios did something new.
There is a ton of fairly experimental new stuff going on every day really. it's tipically a pain to compile but it's out there if you look.
"Even if/when the office suites under Unix catch up with MS/Office and offer full compatibility, people will still remember that "arrogant Unix asshole" who told them that Unix couldn't read their Word docs."
.doc he said he could read even the stuff they had deleted.
.doc attachments to email. the established standard for email is text not .doc.
.doc attachments then it's just a matter of user feedback to tell them that something else is better. customers can get away with that.
He never said he couldn't read the
and anyways it really is obnoctous to send
if it's a company sending you
It definately looks to me like BeOS screwed him over.
They said that they were developing a desktop OS and then after he had spent months working on a program that was likely to be used on a desktop OS but not on an internet appliance they say that they've switched their goals on him.
So he has basically wasted those months.
Sure Be can and has to do what ever they must to be profitable. I wouldn't hold it against them if they decided that they weren't making any money with the desktop and discontinued it. That's their decision.
Unless they had publically said that they were developing a desktop OS and I had spent months working on a desktop app. Then I might hold it against them.
All the replies to his email shared the same message. "No one was forcing you." This isn't a good answer. That's the same thing as saying, "No one told you to trust us."
I'm not going to say that BeOS was wrong to do what they did. OTher developers feel they are going to benifit from the change of focus, no doubt. I will say that he has the right to be be pissed and that BeOS should recognize and respect his right to be pissed.
This also illustrates the problem of developing software for an operating system that is controlled by a single company. It may be ok for a few years. But don't plan on it for the long term. Operatings system companies go broke, get bought, change focus, become competitors with their independent application writers. When that happens there is always someone who gets screwed.
This is why Linux is the operating sytem of the future even though it sucks at graphics and sound.
I understand that the author is trying to explain that the problem is not either license but simply the fact that the lisences are incompatible. (although red hat, kde, troll tech, etc would say they are compatible.) This is interesting because until today I had only heard that it wasn't not "free" enough.
however i wish the author had gone into specifics about why they were incompatible and what things that the troll tech guys changed to the qpl after he thought that it was going to work.
also it would have been interesting to hear what the "one big mistake" that he personally felt responsible for.
then i think i could really evaulate the issues better to see if red hat etc were really violating the gpl.
that's nice for you that you don't care about what licenses your software is under.
but it really doesn't make it irrelevent at all.
and actually the article isn't just saying that qt or kde license is wrong. it just says that you can't link gpl code to qpl and be legal.
really your comment misses the point.
there's no particular reason why icann is in charge of this whole dns thing... i don't think it would hurt to compete with them.
there was recently a discusion at kuro5hin.org about this. and folks were saying that all it would take would be some hardware and to change the defaults setting that you download bind with.
sure it would take a while before all or even most people would update to include the new dns servers. but that's ok. not everyone has AOL keywords either...
icann is good enough... it manages pretty decent considerring how fast the net is changing. but it could be better with a little competition...
actually malbero was spun off a couple years ago. it was bad karma for the food side of things to be associated with smoking.
as an interesting side note. originally the pilsbury doe boy was going to be used instead of the "malburo man." but then they decided they found out that it would be better if he endorsed cake mixes instead.
and the rest, as they say, is history.
i see the REAL reason as somewhat different then you do.
sure maybe some people will use dvd for copying dvd's perhaps. there are other ways to do it though and i have seen stuff that ripped from dvd and i'm almost certain the person who ripped it didn't use DeCSS. so my extensive sample of one or two ripped movies shows that DeCSS does not have a monopoly on piracy programs.
what the mpaa is upset about is far deeper. DeCSS allows you to build your own DVD player. sure slashdot is excited about the DVD player for linux but what a lot of people don't think about is that DeCSS allows you to build your own DVD player for windows too or mac or even a hardware DVD player. and you don't need to sign anything about not building a "record" button into your DVD. that's the key.
the next time you go rent a movie from BlockBuster take a minute or two to look around. Take a picture even. because in 10 years from now BlockBust will have gone bust.
why? because technology has already made them irrelevant. what we see today is struggles of a multi million dollar industry trying to hold back time.
today making a dvd cost a movie company 1-2 dollars. as a consumer you can rent a movie for $2 over night and $3 for 5 days. but it would not be impossible for a company to sell a DVD for $5 and make $3 profit on each sale. as it is they sell the movie to BlockBuster for $140 and let them rent it out until someone steals it or destroys it.
or someone could offer an entire library of downloadable movies from off the net for $3-5 apiece. someone could do it TODAY. the technology is there already. at school i could download 2 gigs in 2-3 hours. a larger DVD could take all night. but instead of DVD format I would much prefer a more compressed format. at school it was easy to download anime television shows while you waited. my classmate had over 70 gigs of downloaded anime' that he burned to cd. i remember him mentioning that one night he downloaded 10 gigs of it. crude yes. but finding movies on the net will be maid automatic. servers will be decent. and there will be a small charge for each download.
at home i do not download movies because of my slow modem. but fiber optics are coming. within the next year or two for me. within 10 years for rest of the united states. it only makes sense. fiber is cheaper than copper and cheaper to maintain. believe it--fiber will change everything.
what we are discussing basically is the technology to copy data almost instantly at almost no cost with absolute accuracy to any place in the globe. it's perfectly obvious why this should scare anyone who sells data.
certainly it's not legal to copy some data for certain purposes. but some countries (germany, russia and china for example) have a legal system that the movie industry doesn't like. and people break laws all the time. a more thorough way to stop copying is to not allow the technology to exist. i don't believe there are any DVD players on the market with a record button. so it's pretty clear that they had suceeded so far. until DeCSS came along.
image a million unemployed high school students who used to work for BlockBuster. image CEO's crying pitifully and calling for their mothers. technology does this/will do this. you can fight it. you can invest millions of dollars to fight against it. you can slow it down. but you can't ever stop it. time and technology march hand in hand forward and onward, unceasing.
http://hotgrits.org //not set up yet... //not set up yet...
http://slashdot.com
http://slashdork.org
http://smashdot.org
http://crashdot.org
http://splashdot.org
http://trashdot.org
http://slapdash.org
http://slashnot.org
http://slashrot.org
http://slashpot.org
http://slashbot.org
(all of them run on BSD or Linux btw. Linux is just slightly more common than BSD)
everyone is on crack!!!
how come everyone is saying that this isn't a problem and moderating up other folks who say that this isn't a problem?
this is a HUGE freaking problem. 60% of ALL the email systems in sweden were taken down. 30% of the email in england. All the canadian government email was taken down.
look at that. millions of people without email for a prolonged period of time and tell me there isn't a problem here.
And it isn't over yet. Everyone is looking for email with "ILOVEYOU.txt" on it but they aren't looking for the email with "warn I love you virus" as the subject. For the next couple months that's what were going to see. Except it won't be a warning. It will be the virus with a different name. Seriously. Now there are thousand of people out there who know they can disable a the email system in a school or a town or a company just by changing the subject line of the email and sending it to someone in there.
Think about a new ILOVEYOU virus every week for the next three months. Still think there isn't a problem?
but the real problem is far deeper and longer lasting. I remember when I first was introduced to email when i came to america in 96. The first question I'm asking myself is, "can't people hack our computer?" See back then I didn't know the difference between a hacker, a cracker, a hax0r, script kiddie, a virus writer, or anything. All i knew was that it didn't sound good.
The general public still doesn't fully trust computers and they trust the network even less. There are a couple people at my college whose parents didn't let them have the internet in their house.
There are many more who don't use instant messaging still because of fear of hax0rs.
Or i could rant about all the helpfull aunts out there who send people forwards with hoax email virus warnings. It's not the aunt's fault. It's the fault of negligent computer companies who allow for real email viruses. It's harder to make an email program that will allow an virus to propagate than it is to make a secure email client so they can't even claim they did it out of laziness.
It's stupid stuff like this that puts a barrier infront of people that might otherwise benifit from technolodgy.
Some of the commenters are blaming it on the outlook users. That's not very smart in my opinion. Why should the users be afraid to open attachments? Why should they be afraid to look at email. We aren't talking about email from friends as was the case with this virus. I'm talking about email from complete strangers.
I am on a couple of mailing lists and I get email from over a hundred strangers every day. But do i worry about it? NO! I just open it right up and look at it. That's because my email client will only read text and pictures. No executables. No viruses. No trojans. I can just open it up like there was nothing to it. AND THAT'S THE WAY IT SHOULD BE!!:(
heh. pity not everyone keeps backups.
most personal computers don't even ship with tape drives even so far as i have noticed.
and then there was the guy at a bbs i frequent. the system admin at their college just said, "farg it." and deleted all the unread messages on their sytem after the school got the virus.
the admin is stupid and deserves to suffer.
but the people who go to the college sufferred instead.
yeah. you could be right.
i'd probably be poor interested if i had a lot of (especially financial) interest in linux's wide spread adoption by the masses.
(believe me it is linux he is bashing. he uses the word open source because he is ignorant but he meant to bash linux not pearl, apache, sendmail, or BSD)
the thing that i was talking about is that slashdot normally prints only good/thought provoking articles about open source. like the "mindcraft" thing and the "linux myths" page. this guy on the other hand is really ignorant.
the slashdot article is no doubt going to cause several hundred flames in this fellows mail box. probably he deserves it. i don't know. the whole jihad thing scares me.
in a business i'd imagine that a totally incorect bashing of a company would result in that company sending a polite well considerred letter to the editor. with linux it's a little different.
i kind of like the idea of just pitying or laughing at his poor misguided soul. but once you start adding money to the equation it's good to write letters to the editor too.
This article was on Linuxtoday.com yesterday. There were 29 comments when I read it.
The overall opinion was that it wasn't worth reading. A ton of people posted that they didn't read it after the first paragraph and the rest posted that they read it but wished they hadn't because the guy was so dumb.
aparently he's the same fellow who didn't apply the security patches in the hack the box contest between windows and linux. (it was too complicated to download them from redhat.com if you will remember.)
I say the people at linuxtoday are right.
this article is such obvious flame bait.
everyone knows zdnet sucks.
move along. nothing to see here.
People are saying it because it's right.
1) UNIX is a trade mark of the Open Group.
2) Domain squating is an ugly thing.
"And so what if somebody is making a buck or two off the domain name? VA Linux Systems paid a bunch of money for linux.com. I guess that it was OK, though, because they guy who sold it took care to make sure that it went to the "right people"."
VA linux bought linux.com. They didn't squat on it or even sell it. I don't know the situation but yes in buying it they probably made some squatter rich. But that doesn't mean they agree with squating.
"Everybody wants to make buck. But I swear, you'd think that Slashdot was a breeding ground for socialism if you gave many of the comments you read much credence. Maybe the real deal is that everybody should be allowed to make a buck after I make a buck."
Money is not wrong it's just a matter of how you come by your money. Squatters don't make any contribution back to scociety. Squating doesn't require any inteligence, craft or creativity. Squatters are taking something that is supposed to be free and charging for it. That's theft in my book. Squatting is not a noble profession.
"Maybe the default answer ought to be, "Talk to your lawyer, 'cause if you take the advice you find here, you'll be in BIG trouble!"
I have found that you believe everything you hear, it means you are stupid.
heh.
after my university (of about 8000 students) sent me an email about someone's car lights being on i filterred them to their own special email box.
i don't read their paper spam either so not a lot changed...
I actually think it would be pretty cool. Maybe not replace books necesarilly but certainly electronic books will be around.
right now I can download a couple hundred page book in about 30 seconds. that's faster than actually going to the bookstore or library. that's much faster than orderring it online.
normally what I do is "lynx -dump book.html > book.txt" and read it in a terminal. graphics are not worth it when you want to read text only for a couple hours.
the problem is the monitor. it's too large so I can't read in bed.
I've thought about scrounging up a cheap used labtop just so that reading huge text files would be more comfortable. Also then I could take it to breakfast and read over coffee. A laptop isn't the perfect solution. It's too expensive. I don't need most of the features. The keyboard would get in the way. A special purpose reader is better.
I think that would be ideal. Someone tells me that there is a good book I should read and gives me the URL. I go there, pay a dollar through the micro payment dealy. Thirty seconds later I'd be reading it in my armchair with a blanket and some hot chocolate.
actually with video games it does make a difference.
with a tv we can handle low refresh rates because the exposure time is longer and so the pictures are a little bit blury where there is motion. The eye interprets the blur as motion.
with a video game you don't have any blur and so you need a higher refresh rate to get the same feeling of motion.
kevin mcmaster needs to set his email client up to wrap at 72 characters.
:)
His email was annoying on so many levels.