My college was thinking about making everyone get a lab top.
They had a bunch of classes where people were giving lab tops this year to test out the possabilities for lab tops in education. Only non technical majors were involved with the tests.
Most people were not in favour because of the price. (the school was sugesting that people buy there own or lease for $500 a semester.)
Also I think it's annoying to sit next to someone with a noisy keyboard. And I already have a computer.
But overall I'm in favour. Because if everyone owns a lab top then every day is lan party day. And that would be pretty dang cool if you ask me.
I grew up in Africa and have been in the US for 3 years...
I think that the main cause of the problems you are describing is not that it is impossible to learn how to drive at 20 it's just that no real mechanism exists to do so.
When I arrived in America even simple things like crossing a street were tricky. In Zambia where I lived streets were rare and cars were rarer. (of course in the Zambian cities it's different.) It takes a while to learn to judge speed in cars if you normally travel at walking speed. A lot of things are harder then they seem.
I don't have a car and I don't know how to drive really but I got my drivers license by taking the test 4 times in 2 weeks. I have driven one time since that day about a year ago...
American kids normally learn from their parents at ages 14 to 17. International students normally learn from their friends in a couple months.
Friends don't want to bore you to death with details... They want to make assumptions about your knowledge. And people in their twenties aren't famouse for being safety consious. One's friends may not have had a lot of driving experience themselves.
This doesn't mean that it's not possible for one to learn how to drive at age twenty.
In Zambia I have Missionairies complaining about the driving of young Americans who came over. Driving conditions in America and in Zambia are much different so the Americans were destroying vehicles by driving too fast. The missionairies felt that the Zambians who had never had any driving experience before they came to work for them were much better drivers.
This makes sense to me because in teaching the Zambians how to drive the missionairies had no false assumptions about what the Zambians knew. The Zambians did not feel they needed to impress anyone by driving recklessly as your international students may. The teachers were experienced drivers. There was no presure to be able to handle Dallas traffic right away or pass the drivers test in two weeks.
So yes international students learning to drive may be worse as a group than other new drivers. But it's not because they can't learn it. It's because the teaching mechanism is flawed.
At age 20 the average american has been learning to drive for 5 years. You have to allow for an equally long time before you should start saying that internation students can *never* be taught how to drive.
My old school currently uses CyberPatrol and I was looking for an open source replacement that would let me set up a caching proxy as well. I found: http://www.activeguardian.com/
I don't know how good it is, from reading over the buliten board it sounded like it has a way to go. Aparently they openned sourced it after their programmer went to work for a customer.
If you wanted to make an open source filter this one seems like a good place to start though.
I'm probably going to try setting it up at the school I mentioned over the summer.
I get the following error messages when I tried to compile it.:(
Micros~1.cpp:31: too few arguments to function `void billg_rules(char, stock &, stock &)' Micros~1.cpp:44: at this point in file Micros~1.cpp: In function `void parse_input(char, stock &, stock &)': Micros~1.cpp:80: implicit declaration of function `int billg_rules(...)' make: *** [Micro~1] Error 1
Unix is not just an operating system. If it was just a kernel then maybe it could die. Or if it was just made by one company then it would die.
Really anyone can make a Unix with in a year.
Unix is a set of command line applications. Is everyone going to suddenly realise that grep and wc were kind of silly and should be gotten rid of?
Unix is organised filesystems. People are going to decide that placing libraries at random is better?
Unix is standards. More than just the posix standard there are tons of standards. Even if they change they'll still be Unix a heart.
Unix is a philosophy. A pretty good one. Pipes are good. Shell scripts are good. And small programs are less buggy.
Maybe someday people will say, "I only want to deal with the files in my/home dir. I want a graphical user interface. I don't want to type anything anymore" But still inside the wrappings it will be Unix.
There are a couple things that need to be finished up...
OpenGL. Games. Glide. KDE2. Gnome2/Nautilus Enlightenment2. Alsa gets included in the kernel. Xfree86. Mozilla. Better drivers... Plug and play kernel Abiword, Ksomething word, Gnome something word. etc.
Personally I think it's a little scary to give money to open source. I wouldn't mind investing in a startup that sells open source. Perhaps even a risky start up. I think companies should give money to open source because they get advertising and good will in return.
Open Source is sort of a means to an end. The goals are for everyone to have access to software, to create software that doesn't suck technically, and to put the user in charge of his software so that when something breaks he can fix it. The goal of giving to charity is generally to help people. For me the fewer steps inbetween the giving and the benifits to humanity the happier I am as a giver. Open source doesn't really need money in the sence that other people, noteably poor and hungry people need money.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of giving source code back to the community. If you do that then you still have your source code. Plus you could feel really good about the fact that thousands of people are using your source... and it's advertising for you too. If you can't write code you could write docs or something... Or if you have the time to help kids learn about computers then do that.
What I want to do is go back to Zambia and start teaching Computer Science at the university. Or maybe get a lot of high school students involved. Have a huge project to translate the man pages into Bemba. There are so many exciting things to do. Of course I would do it with Linux because that's what I like and because nobody wants Zambia to have to rely on MicroSoft for software needs. But the reason I would do this is not because of Open Source but because of Zambia...
If I was seriously going to give money to the Open Source community I would invest in a startup. Or give money to something like Linux for South East Asia. Or buy a bunch of lab computers for a high school.
What you say is well thought out and fairly moderate. But as someone who has posted over 300 comments on LNO [my nick is the same there as here so you can look it up] I think you are too hard on us.
LNO is about getting fast answers that will put you on your feet with Linux. Actually fast answers were not so importent as answers I could understand. A lot of people have had extensive computer experience like you but some of us are new at this... It's nice to be able to learn linux at your own pace once you have X and sound set up.
To really get a fair judgement on the newbies at LNO you need to compare where people are at for over a period of half a year. Seriously I think I've learned tons since last October.
These days if someone installs Linux I think that by default that means that they are curious about computers. Someday hopefully it will change. To be a viable operating system for the masses we will need newbies who don't ever want to learn what "compile" means. (Also there is no reason not to want the masses to use Linux. Benifiting humanity is a part of the idea behind "Free" software. And for those of us less altruistic there is going to be money involved as well.)
And finally if you still aren't convinced go to the programming section in linuxnewbie.org. Right now a quarter of the questions are, "Hey this Linux stuff is really cool! How do I start programming for it?" It's not the most specific question in the world so I'd agree with your Subject line."The newbie community doesn't know what to ask" But I'd disagree that they weren't curious. To me newbies seem desperately curious and that's exciting.
It wasn't flame bate. actually maybe yes it was a little. but mostly I thought it was funny. At least that's the spirit I wrote it in.
no you are not funny. you are flamebait. you are lame. and lastly but not least you look ugly
Let's take a look at your stupid post and see why you got moderated down if you don't believe me.
The problems is that Laws don't even make sense. In America you can copy stuff for personall uses but you can't make software to copy stuff??? I have said before that Americans are on CRACK.
[sarcasm mode on]First off thanks for the slur on Americans. I'm sure we all appreciated that.[sarcasm mode off] While I agree with you that the laws are insane this doesn't mean we abandom them. It means we fix them.
The other thing I have noticed si that laws are not even consistent in one country to the next?
[sarcasm again]You are so smart it's amazing.
The Germans are allowed to copy movies for personal uses if they rent a movie. I have said beofre that Germans smoke to much weed. They even have to pay TAXes so they can copy movies that they rent??? What is this some kind of pirate movie tax?
Thanks for another ethnic slur. That was really uncalled for. Yes it's true that Germans are allowed to rent movies and copy them. They are allowed to make their own rules up. That's part of being a soveriegn nation. And also I would like to say hats off to the good people of Germany who host the LiViD websites.
It's a good thing the DVD consitorium is trying to sort these Germans out. I'm surprised that America even lets them run their country the silly things they do.
Ok that was just stupid. America and American corporations have far too much influence in other peoples affairs. Nuff said.
In Holland the do all kinds of drugs but I haven't heard about their stances on DVD.
Gratuitus ethnic slurs without any point. And then you wonder why you are moderated down. Also it is interesting that you are so obsessed about drugs. People could almost suspect you of taking too many hits yourself.
They shold also be allowed to charge extra if they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. And the money is going to starving artists like James Bond.
[HINT]James Bond isn't real. It may be hard to believe but it's true. This DVD scandal isn't helping out any starving actors or starving DVD player manufactures (It cuts down the compitition for some but not any _starving_ ones). It's (arguably) isn't even helping out the movie studios. The only people it's really helping is the people who own the standard. Buy windows2000. It is most stable than Solaris anyways.
Yes we can view movies with Windows but the point is that we want to see them with Linux. I have been subscribed to the LiViD mailing list since November and I can honestly say that these guys are not about copying movies. They are very committed to making a DVD player for Linux. I wish them the best of luck.
So yes you deserve to moderated even further down to -1 for being a not even slightly interesting troll.
It wasn't flame bate. actually maybe yes it was a little. but mostly I thought it was funny. At least that's the spirit I wrote it in.
Also I didn't write it just for pure giggles. These are the same arguments that other people have been saying. Only they do sound pretty dumb when you express them with multiple spelling mistakes.
Lighten up. Moderate it back up to 1. You know you want to.
Yoo, slahsdotee's and going on on and on. about Laws. Laws don't matter. if you want the regions codes to be taken off you just have to go to here.
The problems is that Laws don't even make sense. In America you can copy stuff for personall uses but you can't make software to copy stuff??? I have said before that Americans are on CRACK.
The other thing I have noticed si that laws are not even consistent in one country to the next? The Germans are allowed to copy movies for personal uses if they rent a movie. I have said beofre that Germans smoke to much weed. They even have to pay TAXes so they can copy movies that they rent??? What is this some kind of pirate movie tax? It's a good thing the DVD consitorium is trying to sort these Germans out. I'm surprised that America even lets them run their country the silly things they do.
In Holland the do all kinds of drugs but I haven't heard about their stances on DVD.
The point is.... These DVD guys are doing su a favor. People who make Laws are on crack. DVD should decide how to make the copying and selling rules.
They shold also be allowed to charge extra if they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. And the money is going to starving artists like James Bond. Don't you guys like James Bond. He was crying last time when I talked o him on the phone. "These Linux programmers want to watch movies and won't buy windows" That is what he siad. And I started to cry as well.
Have a heart. Buy windows2000. It is most stable than Solaris anyways. And plus then you will have "erp"
Obviously, the best quote from that article was the AOL on Linux one. I personally liked it.
However, I didn't see that as the main reason for writing the article. The MAIN thing he was trying to say is that HE had been attacked for saying that linux was hard for newbies. Newbies having a hard time setting up their machine and people being attacked for writing negative articles are two different things.
My experience as a Linux Newbie (from last October) is that it's a lot of fun. There are people out there who are willing to help you. I didn't have one person tell me to RTFM. Sure it wasn't easy at all and some stuff is fairly hard to get set up. Some applications are less intuitive than in windows. In fact, my opinion is that Linux won't be ready for the AOL newbie until 2003.
offtopic: It could really be neat trying to set up one of those computers than the user can use out of the box. When you buy a Distro CD your software is not really optomised. If you controlled the hardware you could make much more specific assumptions about the user. You could tweak the kernel to be super slim and fast. Set up X and sound etc. All the user would need to do is plug it in and answer a few questions about time zone and usernames and so on.
The articles that people flamed him for weren't that bad. He just said that Linux was going to be pretty complicated if you weren't very good with computers. I think it's true right now. You'd be surprised the number of people who don't know how to tell if they are using Gnome or KDE. Give it a year or two.
Maybe 900 comments per Slashdot article will be trolls. But most of us are decent folk.
It's good to be fair. But you assume that DeCSS actually makes copying easier. Some people would disagree with you. I don't know if it does or not. But certainly it's not the only way.
Sure, this must be scary for them. No one really knows what the internet will be like in 10 years. But they won't starve... Actors will still get payed. Movies will maybe be cheaper but markets will be larger. I don't ever watching a pirated movie while in the United States (Although I watched one or two in Kenya) Why? Not because it's hard to copy a movie but because copying movies is lame.
They have no authority to take away our right to copy movies where it is legal. I should be able to watch DVD's with Linux if I freaking want to.
I hear what you are saying. Other people who have replied have disagreed and I'm not in a position to say if you are right or wrong.
The thing is that copying is not necesarilly illegal even in America. Americans are allowed to make copies of "The Matrix" if they want. It's distributing them and viewing them that make it illegal.
In Germany, people are allowed to copy rented movies and watch them later (with familly and friends only.) Germans pay a special tax for this right and DVD is trying to take their rights away.
Personally I think it's fairly stupid to have the DMCA in America. The copyright law before says that you are allowed to make copies for personal use but then the DMCA says that you are not allowed to figure out how to copy stuff if it's copy protected.
Personally, I'd like the Law to decide who can copy what and not some stupid corporation.
I like this quote from the article: ------------------------- Adding Linux to portable computers was a challenge in the OS? early days because of missing device drivers and incompatible hardware.
But the picture is changing. Compaq Computer Corp. and Linux publishers such as Red Hat Inc. of Durham, N.C., distribute tips on running Linux on notebook computers. ----------------------
Everyone aparantly was sitting around wonderring how to get Linux to run on various hardware and Red Hat until Red Hat "Gave them a few tips" on how it was done. he heh. Speaking of device drivers my ethernet card driver was programmed by Donald Becker who works at Nasa and also does cool things with Beowulf clusters.
from the.doc : -------------------- 1.2.2 Software The laptop shall support the operating systems: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT, SunSoft Solaris TM version 2.7 or later, and other Unix or Linux variants . ---------------------
Sorry, it looks like Apple just isn't cool enough... it's a pity really.
At my College we have my own Linux distribution also.
It's called Mi Linux. It's heavilly based on Debian Gnu/Linux. But it has some shell scripts that I wrote myself.
There are some people that use other types of Linux and I try not to frown them too much. After all Linux is about choices and configuration. And plus if people like the suffering that is anything except Mi Linux that's fine with me.
Mi Linux is becoming more popular among some of the people that I hang out with. They are typically windows users who are impressed by mi (currently 22 days) Linux uptimes. Also it comes with many open source tools like gcc and xemacs which just make sence.
I think it would be cool to cooperate with other Universities to develope a university version of Linux. However, it would be handy if we could both agree that debian is probably the best place to start from.
Many of the CS teachers have writeable files in their home directories on the Solaris boxes so security is not a problem at my school. But a lot of other things are probably similar.
Everyone says that "wireless internet devices" are the Next Great Thing and it would be nice if that happenned.
He says that broadband is coming. And it's probably true. Eventually.
Also we'll can expect to see the same lack of standards that we currently have with cellular phones. How usefull is the "hand held internet device" if you can only use it with a single service provider?
An open protocal would really help here.
(Of course this isn't going to end the PC era... More people than ever are going to want PC's serving out web pages from their home when cable and DSL connections become commonplace.)
Although it Slashdot likes to say that there are security hazard with windows it's really an exageration.
I read an article about Unix permisions helping stop viruses but with Windows we have something far more powerfull.
Microsoft format is graphical where Linux does not have a graphical user interface [GUI]. This makes hacking a W2k more secure becuase things are not stored in plain text. Instead MicroSoft stores things in fancy graphical text. This makes it harder for hackers to read.
Linux should really work on making a [GUI] then they will be ready for "prime time." They will even be able to have advertisements on TV if they had a GUI. Also Linux would be able to handle "real time" applications. And do many other marvelous things like "enterprize readiness" and "intuitive network applications" and "erp" that Windows does.
Slashdot Mirror
My college was thinking about making everyone get a lab top.
They had a bunch of classes where people were giving lab tops this year to test out the possabilities for lab tops in education. Only non technical majors were involved with the tests.
Most people were not in favour because of the price. (the school was sugesting that people buy there own or lease for $500 a semester.)
Also I think it's annoying to sit next to someone with a noisy keyboard. And I already have a computer.
But overall I'm in favour. Because if everyone owns a lab top then every day is lan party day. And that would be pretty dang cool if you ask me.
:)
hey... back off about the amiga there buddie.
I grew up in Africa and have been in the US for 3 years...
I think that the main cause of the problems you are describing is not that it is impossible to learn how to drive at 20 it's just that no real mechanism exists to do so.
When I arrived in America even simple things like crossing a street were tricky. In Zambia where I lived streets were rare and cars were rarer. (of course in the Zambian cities it's different.) It takes a while to learn to judge speed in cars if you normally travel at walking speed. A lot of things are harder then they seem.
I don't have a car and I don't know how to drive really but I got my drivers license by taking the test 4 times in 2 weeks. I have driven one time since that day about a year ago...
American kids normally learn from their parents at ages 14 to 17. International students normally learn from their friends in a couple months.
Friends don't want to bore you to death with details... They want to make assumptions about your knowledge. And people in their twenties aren't famouse for being safety consious. One's friends may not have had a lot of driving experience themselves.
This doesn't mean that it's not possible for one to learn how to drive at age twenty.
In Zambia I have Missionairies complaining about the driving of young Americans who came over. Driving conditions in America and in Zambia are much different so the Americans were destroying vehicles by driving too fast. The missionairies felt that the Zambians who had never had any driving experience before they came to work for them were much better drivers.
This makes sense to me because in teaching the Zambians how to drive the missionairies had no false assumptions about what the Zambians knew. The Zambians did not feel they needed to impress anyone by driving recklessly as your international students may. The teachers were experienced drivers. There was no presure to be able to handle Dallas traffic right away or pass the drivers test in two weeks.
So yes international students learning to drive may be worse as a group than other new drivers. But it's not because they can't learn it. It's because the teaching mechanism is flawed.
At age 20 the average american has been learning to drive for 5 years. You have to allow for an equally long time before you should start saying that internation students can *never* be taught how to drive.
I love it... :)
The patent link was great.
Keep up the good work.
Maybe the RIAA FAQ got the quotes from the salon article and not the other way around.
Perhaps this is the impression that the author of the FAQ meant to give by posting a link to the salon article.
I don't know how good it is, from reading over the buliten board it sounded like it has a way to go. Aparently they openned sourced it after their programmer went to work for a customer.
If you wanted to make an open source filter this one seems like a good place to start though.
I'm probably going to try setting it up at the school I mentioned over the summer.
ahh...
but the key is you haven't been up for 23 hours.
I'll probably agree with you after I get some sleep dang it.
Micros~1.cpp:31: too few arguments to function `void billg_rules(char, stock &, stock &)'
Micros~1.cpp:44: at this point in file
Micros~1.cpp: In function `void parse_input(char, stock &, stock &)':
Micros~1.cpp:80: implicit declaration of function `int billg_rules(...)'
make: *** [Micro~1] Error 1
Is anyone else having the same trouble?
And for those of you who didn't make it in time I have a mirror up at http://www.jk.com/micros~1.tar.gz
here is a poll about jobs
and here is another.
and here is a totally unrelated polls about your root password
Unix is not just an operating system. If it was just a kernel then maybe it could die. Or if it was just made by one company then it would die.
/home dir. I want a graphical user interface. I don't want to type anything anymore" But still inside the wrappings it will be Unix.
Really anyone can make a Unix with in a year.
Unix is a set of command line applications.
Is everyone going to suddenly realise that grep and wc were kind of silly and should be gotten rid of?
Unix is organised filesystems.
People are going to decide that placing libraries at random is better?
Unix is standards.
More than just the posix standard there are tons of standards. Even if they change they'll still be Unix a heart.
Unix is a philosophy.
A pretty good one. Pipes are good. Shell scripts are good. And small programs are less buggy.
Maybe someday people will say, "I only want to deal with the files in my
>These frighten me.
it's luddite comments like this one that make me not read slashdot anymore.
If it hadn't been for these marvelous love beepers I wouldn't have met my last three wives.
There are a couple things that need to be finished up...
OpenGL.
Games.
Glide.
KDE2.
Gnome2/Nautilus
Enlightenment2.
Alsa gets included in the kernel.
Xfree86.
Mozilla.
Better drivers...
Plug and play kernel
Abiword, Ksomething word, Gnome something word. etc.
I forget the rest.
Personally I think it's a little scary to give money to open source. I wouldn't mind investing in a startup that sells open source. Perhaps even a risky start up. I think companies should give money to open source because they get advertising and good will in return.
Open Source is sort of a means to an end. The goals are for everyone to have access to software, to create software that doesn't suck technically, and to put the user in charge of his software so that when something breaks he can fix it. The goal of giving to charity is generally to help people. For me the fewer steps inbetween the giving and the benifits to humanity the happier I am as a giver. Open source doesn't really need money in the sence that other people, noteably poor and hungry people need money.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of giving source code back to the community. If you do that then you still have your source code. Plus you could feel really good about the fact that thousands of people are using your source... and it's advertising for you too. If you can't write code you could write docs or something... Or if you have the time to help kids learn about computers then do that.
What I want to do is go back to Zambia and start teaching Computer Science at the university. Or maybe get a lot of high school students involved. Have a huge project to translate the man pages into Bemba. There are so many exciting things to do. Of course I would do it with Linux because that's what I like and because nobody wants Zambia to have to rely on MicroSoft for software needs. But the reason I would do this is not because of Open Source but because of Zambia...
If I was seriously going to give money to the Open Source community I would invest in a startup. Or give money to something like Linux for South East Asia. Or buy a bunch of lab computers for a high school.
What you say is well thought out and fairly moderate. But as someone who has posted over 300 comments on LNO [my nick is the same there as here so you can look it up] I think you are too hard on us.
LNO is about getting fast answers that will put you on your feet with Linux. Actually fast answers were not so importent as answers I could understand. A lot of people have had extensive computer experience like you but some of us are new at this... It's nice to be able to learn linux at your own pace once you have X and sound set up.
To really get a fair judgement on the newbies at LNO you need to compare where people are at for over a period of half a year. Seriously I think I've learned tons since last October.
These days if someone installs Linux I think that by default that means that they are curious about computers. Someday hopefully it will change. To be a viable operating system for the masses we will need newbies who don't ever want to learn what "compile" means. (Also there is no reason not to want the masses to use Linux. Benifiting humanity is a part of the idea behind "Free" software. And for those of us less altruistic there is going to be money involved as well.)
And finally if you still aren't convinced go to the programming section in linuxnewbie.org. Right now a quarter of the questions are, "Hey this Linux stuff is really cool! How do I start programming for it?" It's not the most specific question in the world so I'd agree with your Subject line."The newbie community doesn't know what to ask" But I'd disagree that they weren't curious. To me newbies seem desperately curious and that's exciting.
Newbies are the future.
no you are not funny. you are flamebait. you are lame. and lastly but not least you look ugly
Let's take a look at your stupid post and see why you got moderated down if you don't believe me.
The problems is that Laws don't even make sense. In America you can copy stuff for personall uses but you can't make software to copy stuff??? I have said before that Americans are on CRACK.
[sarcasm mode on]First off thanks for the slur on Americans. I'm sure we all appreciated that.[sarcasm mode off] While I agree with you that the laws are insane this doesn't mean we abandom them. It means we fix them.
The other thing I have noticed si that laws are not even consistent in one country to the next?
[sarcasm again]You are so smart it's amazing.
The Germans are allowed to copy movies for personal uses if they rent a movie. I have said beofre that Germans smoke to much weed. They even have to pay TAXes so they can copy movies that they rent??? What is this some kind of pirate movie tax?
Thanks for another ethnic slur. That was really uncalled for. Yes it's true that Germans are allowed to rent movies and copy them. They are allowed to make their own rules up. That's part of being a soveriegn nation. And also I would like to say hats off to the good people of Germany who host the LiViD websites.
It's a good thing the DVD consitorium is trying to sort these Germans out. I'm surprised that America even lets them run their country the silly things they do.
Ok that was just stupid. America and American corporations have far too much influence in other peoples affairs. Nuff said.
In Holland the do all kinds of drugs but I haven't heard about their stances on DVD.
Gratuitus ethnic slurs without any point. And then you wonder why you are moderated down. Also it is interesting that you are so obsessed about drugs. People could almost suspect you of taking too many hits yourself.
They shold also be allowed to charge extra if they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. And the money is going to starving artists like James Bond.
[HINT]James Bond isn't real. It may be hard to believe but it's true. This DVD scandal isn't helping out any starving actors or starving DVD player manufactures (It cuts down the compitition for some but not any _starving_ ones). It's (arguably) isn't even helping out the movie studios. The only people it's really helping is the people who own the standard. Buy windows2000. It is most stable than Solaris anyways.
Yes we can view movies with Windows but the point is that we want to see them with Linux. I have been subscribed to the LiViD mailing list since November and I can honestly say that these guys are not about copying movies. They are very committed to making a DVD player for Linux. I wish them the best of luck.
So yes you deserve to moderated even further down to -1 for being a not even slightly interesting troll.
It wasn't flame bate. actually maybe yes it was a little. but mostly I thought it was funny. At least that's the spirit I wrote it in.
Also I didn't write it just for pure giggles. These are the same arguments that other people have been saying. Only they do sound pretty dumb when you express them with multiple spelling mistakes.
Lighten up. Moderate it back up to 1. You know you want to.
The problems is that Laws don't even make sense. In America you can copy stuff for personall uses but you can't make software to copy stuff??? I have said before that Americans are on CRACK.
The other thing I have noticed si that laws are not even consistent in one country to the next? The Germans are allowed to copy movies for personal uses if they rent a movie. I have said beofre that Germans smoke to much weed. They even have to pay TAXes so they can copy movies that they rent??? What is this some kind of pirate movie tax? It's a good thing the DVD consitorium is trying to sort these Germans out. I'm surprised that America even lets them run their country the silly things they do.
In Holland the do all kinds of drugs but I haven't heard about their stances on DVD.
The point is.... These DVD guys are doing su a favor. People who make Laws are on crack. DVD should decide how to make the copying and selling rules.
They shold also be allowed to charge extra if they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. And the money is going to starving artists like James Bond. Don't you guys like James Bond. He was crying last time when I talked o him on the phone. "These Linux programmers want to watch movies and won't buy windows" That is what he siad. And I started to cry as well.
Have a heart. Buy windows2000. It is most stable than Solaris anyways. And plus then you will have "erp"
However, I didn't see that as the main reason for writing the article. The MAIN thing he was trying to say is that HE had been attacked for saying that linux was hard for newbies. Newbies having a hard time setting up their machine and people being attacked for writing negative articles are two different things.
My experience as a Linux Newbie (from last October) is that it's a lot of fun. There are people out there who are willing to help you. I didn't have one person tell me to RTFM. Sure it wasn't easy at all and some stuff is fairly hard to get set up. Some applications are less intuitive than in windows. In fact, my opinion is that Linux won't be ready for the AOL newbie until 2003.
offtopic: It could really be neat trying to set up one of those computers than the user can use out of the box. When you buy a Distro CD your software is not really optomised. If you controlled the hardware you could make much more specific assumptions about the user. You could tweak the kernel to be super slim and fast. Set up X and sound etc. All the user would need to do is plug it in and answer a few questions about time zone and usernames and so on.
The articles that people flamed him for weren't that bad. He just said that Linux was going to be pretty complicated if you weren't very good with computers. I think it's true right now. You'd be surprised the number of people who don't know how to tell if they are using Gnome or KDE. Give it a year or two.
Maybe 900 comments per Slashdot article will be trolls. But most of us are decent folk.
It's good to be fair. But you assume that DeCSS actually makes copying easier. Some people would disagree with you. I don't know if it does or not. But certainly it's not the only way.
Sure, this must be scary for them. No one really knows what the internet will be like in 10 years. But they won't starve... Actors will still get payed. Movies will maybe be cheaper but markets will be larger. I don't ever watching a pirated movie while in the United States (Although I watched one or two in Kenya) Why? Not because it's hard to copy a movie but because copying movies is lame.
They have no authority to take away our right to copy movies where it is legal. I should be able to watch DVD's with Linux if I freaking want to.
We hold the moral high ground here.
I hear what you are saying. Other people who have replied have disagreed and I'm not in a position to say if you are right or wrong.
The thing is that copying is not necesarilly illegal even in America. Americans are allowed to make copies of "The Matrix" if they want. It's distributing them and viewing them that make it illegal.
In Germany, people are allowed to copy rented movies and watch them later (with familly and friends only.) Germans pay a special tax for this right and DVD is trying to take their rights away.
Personally I think it's fairly stupid to have the DMCA in America. The copyright law before says that you are allowed to make copies for personal use but then the DMCA says that you are not allowed to figure out how to copy stuff if it's copy protected.
Personally, I'd like the Law to decide who can copy what and not some stupid corporation.
We do have the moral high ground on this issue.
You assume Konstant is speaking as a Microsoft user, but he's not. He works for Microsoft--with their word processor team, I believe.
"Your time will come. I hope for your sake that your own company survives the experience, because that's not a foregone conclusion."
heh heh...
I think Microsoft isn't going broke anytime soon.
I like this quote from the article:
.doc :
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Adding Linux to portable computers was a challenge in the OS? early days because of missing device drivers and incompatible hardware.
But the picture is changing. Compaq Computer Corp. and Linux publishers such as Red Hat Inc. of Durham, N.C., distribute tips on running Linux on notebook computers.
----------------------
Everyone aparantly was sitting around wonderring how to get Linux to run on various hardware and Red Hat until Red Hat "Gave them a few tips" on how it was done. he heh. Speaking of device drivers my ethernet card driver was programmed by Donald Becker who works at Nasa and also does cool things with Beowulf clusters.
from the
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1.2.2 Software
The laptop shall support the operating systems: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT, SunSoft Solaris TM version 2.7 or later, and other Unix or Linux variants .
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Sorry, it looks like Apple just isn't cool enough... it's a pity really.
At my College we have my own Linux distribution also.
It's called Mi Linux. It's heavilly based on Debian Gnu/Linux. But it has some shell scripts that I wrote myself.
There are some people that use other types of Linux and I try not to frown them too much. After all Linux is about choices and configuration. And plus if people like the suffering that is anything except Mi Linux that's fine with me.
Mi Linux is becoming more popular among some of the people that I hang out with. They are typically windows users who are impressed by mi (currently 22 days) Linux uptimes. Also it comes with many open source tools like gcc and xemacs which just make sence.
I think it would be cool to cooperate with other Universities to develope a university version of Linux. However, it would be handy if we could both agree that debian is probably the best place to start from.
Many of the CS teachers have writeable files in their home directories on the Solaris boxes so security is not a problem at my school. But a lot of other things are probably similar.
error27
Everyone says that "wireless internet devices" are the Next Great Thing and it would be nice if that happenned.
He says that broadband is coming. And it's probably true. Eventually.
Also we'll can expect to see the same lack of standards that we currently have with cellular phones. How usefull is the "hand held internet device" if you can only use it with a single service provider?
An open protocal would really help here.
(Of course this isn't going to end the PC era... More people than ever are going to want PC's serving out web pages from their home when cable and DSL connections become commonplace.)
Although it Slashdot likes to say that there are security hazard with windows it's really an exageration.
I read an article about Unix permisions helping stop viruses but with Windows we have something far more powerfull.
Microsoft format is graphical where Linux does not have a graphical user interface [GUI]. This makes hacking a W2k more secure becuase things are not stored in plain text. Instead MicroSoft stores things in fancy graphical text. This makes it harder for hackers to read.
Linux should really work on making a [GUI] then they will be ready for "prime time." They will even be able to have advertisements on TV if they had a GUI. Also Linux would be able to handle "real time" applications. And do many other marvelous things like "enterprize readiness" and "intuitive network applications" and "erp" that Windows does.
Just my 2 shillings.