we have to show web sites that forcing registration for marketing / tracking purposes leads to a reg database full of crap.
I thought there was a new law proposed in the US that would criminalize entering false information when signing up for a service (or anyhing else where you're required register for)
Most laptops have *slow* 2.5" disks (4200rpm), while most desktops have fast(er) 3.5" disks (7200 - 10000 rpm).
Seek times for 2.5" disks are only a bit higher than for 3.5" (12-15ms vs 8-10ms), but transfere rate is much slower (10-20MB/s (30MB/s burst) vs 30-60 MB/s (80-100MB/s burst)).
This *has* been one of the most important drive forces behind the american economy the past 50 years. BUT the latest trend has been to move money "upwards" in the american society, ordinary people (the ones that make out most of the 300M market) have less money to spend. The portion of society that gets richer aren't "consumers", so in effect the total home-market shrinks. Unless this trend is reversed, the american economy will crash.
Remember, failing home-market was what caused the economic crash in Japan 5-6 years ago.
Sounds like your joking, but you are right in my view. I run two desktop systems, a Linux and a Windows PC. They are different OSs for different things Me too, but I use the Linux systems to play media files...
Well, it's possible to use PC video cards with PPC, but you get no picture before the drivers kick inn (and for video cards, you often have to send a signal to the BIOS to start them). For some (older) cards, x86 video bios commands can be sendt from a program running on the PPC.
But, it's a lot more work than most people are prepared to do. I've wasted 100 hours of my life getting a PCI S3 (x86) vid card running on a IBM PPC. Not something I would do again...
Nvidia and ATI don't want you to use their PC cards on PPC, they charge more for the PPC spesific cards (or used to, haven't checked lately).
Freevo might also be a good idea. If uses mplayer and xine to play virtually any (non-drm) media file you could think of.
I use it for all my media needs, but I haven't tried with DVD images (yet).
King set some ridiculous terms for continuing his "experiment". He demanded that atleast 75% of the total number of downloads where paid for (and at $1 each). There is just no way that could work...
Baen discovered that (less known) authors sold more (of their other books) if they gave away a novel. More people got to read something the author had produced, and those who liked were more likly to buy another book by that author than before they knew who she/he was. King isn't unknown to most, so this wouldn't apply to him at all.
King set out to "prove" that downloaders where filthy thieves, and make a buck on those few who weren't. But when in all likelyhood less than 75% of the internet "population" have a means to pay for online content (no credit card), and a significant portion of the people downloading the first chapter might even not like it, the 75% demand was just ridiculous.
So he didn' provide anyhing for free... it had more in common with extortion than a free gift.
Fourth: Try selecting an URL and middle clicking in a browser window (not on a link though). Works only on X.
Do you have any idea how frustrating this is when you: 1) Use the middle button as a scroll wheel as well 2) Open links in new tabs with middle button
Any sufficiently used mouse will press the middle button atleast 10% of the times you try to scroll... And middle clicking on a small link can be very frustrating when you miss 3 times and have to reload the original page each time because you get a "cannot connect to host blablabal" or a google search for blablabla every time you accedently click the middle button... (and yes, it happens even when I'm not drunk)
Now, what the heck is wrong with me having the rights to that work, at least for a limited amount of time? Am I not allowed to control my work? Or do you think that, because what I've created isn't "physical", I'm not allowed to "own" it?
As other people have correctly stated earlier, you don't own the work, but the copyright. That should have been a clear desiccation, but since copyrights are essentially perpetual, it isn't. So instead of arguing semantics, I'll try to show what *is* wrong with the system.
If we go back to the owning part for a bit, as long as you don't show your work to someone, you can control how and when it is used, but as soon as you let others see/ copy it (sell it) you would loose all control over it unless you made a deal / contract with everyone you showed it to. The copyright laws are supposed to be such a deal. Before copyrights, creators usually could only profit from the first sale of a work (many famous music compositions were made on commission). Copyright laws made it possible for creators to profit from a work for a longer period of the works lifetime.
In the good old days, such works might have had an expected lifetime of several hundred years, yet the original US copyright laws granted the creator a monopoly on distribution for only 12(14?) years. The economical "half life"* of a work would be perhaps 5-20 years. That meant that the 14 years gave the creator the rights to profit from the work while it had reasonable profit potential.
Now, the lifetime of a work is way shorter than when the original laws where passed (How many have bought a New Kids on the Block album the past 3 years?), but the protection is much longer. Why? The 14 years would certainly still be enough to let the creator profit from most of the potential sales from her work. Most of the works produced 14 years ago must have realized 99% of their profit potential by now, why is it still protected? It sure isn't to ensure that the creators can profit from their creations! And it sure as hell doesn't serve the public (who is the other party to the copyright deal).
So who does it serve? What would happen if copyrighted works where released into the public domain after 14 years? Someone would loose profit, but not the original creator (or entities holding the rights to those works). Those works have realized their profit potential (ok, there are exceptions, but compared to the number of works, I would say that they represent less than 1%). The ones who'd loose profit, are *new* creators, that would have to compete against with older works that people could get for *free*. The record and movie companies would loose revenue on their new offerings, because they'd have to compete with things in the public domain! And that is NOT what the copyright laws are supposed to fix!
So the copyright laws as they exist today solve another problem than they were meant to solve when they where originally made, and that is what makes them flawed. While the concept might still be viable (and necessary), the current implementation is flawed, and must be redone (not adjusted). The real danger here, is the concept that the creators own the work, and thus should be able to control every aspect of it's use and distribution. This mindset will prevent people from seeing what is wrong with the system.
A microkernel is not something that rests between a "real kernel" and the hardware. It's not much like a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) at all.
It's a kernel that has a limited set of base functions (usually thread/process scheduling and communication). Other services (device drivers and even filesystem) are run as seperate processes, and the kernel provides a means for such prosesses to communicate.
When running ZoneAlarm and some net apps, it used 75+MB of (real)RAM and a couple of hundred megs of the page file, and between 5% and 50% of the CPU. I had about 100-200 custom rules for external adresses, and it monitored local adresses. I usually have from 50-100 connections to this computer (local + internet adresses).
Your cpu might be idle most of the time, but mine is not. Since rebooting last (50 something hours ago), Kerio has used 4 sec cpu time. With ZoneAlarm it would have been hours...
I can now use my computer without a 10 sec lag each time I start a program...
So unless you 1) don't actually use your comupter or 2) have a more computer power than you ever will need
NEVER ever install ZoneAlarm!
It corrupts downloads, uses a *lot* of system resources and shuts down connectins at random (IMAP is a real pain with ZoneAlarm).
Use Kerio instead. It's free, and just as easy to set up.
The meaning of a word when used by it self, and as part of a *common* expression isn't always the same.
"Flawed by design" *doesn't* mean that someone fucked up on purpose, it means that the with the chosen design the problem cannot be fixed (you have to redesign and rebuild. It's not small holes that can be patched, it's a crumbling foundation and missing walls....)
Try to devide it by 100. We pay less than 10 cent a minute for calls to the US, and that's with the former goverment-owned monopoly. With other operators it's 7-8 cents.
Some Universities "allow" (= don't do anything about) filesharing within the university network, because some form of social relationship exists between all the students.
We should start research remote assassination of corrupt politicans. A system where the politican gets two warnings before termination would be preferable, but it is no requirement.
Isn't protecting your own property with deadly force considered self defence in (some parts of) the US?
I've done this with some friends just last week.
It looks quite scary, espesially when the physics buffs start putting the liquid nitrogen in their mouth.
To do this right you need to use more than 30 sec if you do it by hand like we did.
Use 2 eggs, and 0.6L of cream and mix in a bowl.
Chop one 100g dark chocolate bar and mix with the rest.
Add 0.1 L Irish Cream.
Whip it all together while someone pours a small stream of liquid nitrogen into the bowl.
Don't do it to fast (30 sec will give you large frozen lumps...).
When the ice starts to get thick enough, stop pouring nitrogen and put the lid back on the nitrogen container. You can play some more with it *after* you have eaten your ice-cream.
This would be a great idea for a bussines, set up a stall near a beach and sell on-the-fly real ice-cream to tourists. $5 a cup, the show is for free!
The exponensial fee was introduced to circumvent the neverending extentions on copyright, but are of course not practical in the simple way described.
I proposed another idea a few months back, one where copyright was divided in to classes:
The first one covering short lived works (Britney etc.) with a 3-5 year limit, extendable once. Fair usees such as private copies and backups illigal under the DMCA/EUCD. After the protection expires, noncommersial (or perhaps commersial as well) distribution of the work is allowed. DMCA no longer applies to any copies of the work.
The other one would have a 20+10 limit (or 20+20), but *all* fair use rights are restored to pre DMCA status. Limited pirvate (friends/family) copies allowed. Good for "non hit" material.
This makes sure that the mediaheads get their mega profit the first 3-5 years from The Next Big Fad(tm), but we don't get totally screwd in the process. We would be able to make copies of our DVDs before they die a silent death at age 15, without doing something illegal.
How's that for another complicated copyright scheme?
Slashdot Mirror
we have to show web sites that forcing registration for marketing / tracking purposes leads to a reg database full of crap.
I thought there was a new law proposed in the US that would criminalize entering false information when signing up for a service (or anyhing else where you're required register for)
- Ost
I use Num Lock for that...
Disk I/O tends to be a bit slower on laptops.
Most laptops have *slow* 2.5" disks (4200rpm), while most desktops have fast(er) 3.5" disks (7200 - 10000 rpm).
Seek times for 2.5" disks are only a bit higher than for 3.5" (12-15ms vs 8-10ms), but transfere rate is much slower (10-20MB/s (30MB/s burst) vs 30-60 MB/s (80-100MB/s burst)).
This *has* been one of the most important drive forces behind the american economy the past 50 years .
BUT the latest trend has been to move money "upwards" in the american society, ordinary people (the ones that make out most of the 300M market) have less money to spend. The portion of society that gets richer aren't "consumers", so in effect the total home-market shrinks. Unless this trend is reversed, the american economy will crash.
Remember, failing home-market was what caused the economic crash in Japan 5-6 years ago.
- Ost
Sounds like your joking, but you are right in my view. I run two desktop systems, a Linux and a Windows PC. They are different OSs for different things
Me too, but I use the Linux systems to play media files...
Well, it's possible to use PC video cards with PPC, but you get no picture before the drivers kick inn (and for video cards, you often have to send a signal to the BIOS to start them). For some (older) cards, x86 video bios commands can be sendt from a program running on the PPC.
But, it's a lot more work than most people are prepared to do. I've wasted 100 hours of my life getting a PCI S3 (x86) vid card running on a IBM PPC. Not something I would do again...
Nvidia and ATI don't want you to use their PC cards on PPC, they charge more for the PPC spesific cards (or used to, haven't checked lately).
The BIOS on the video card is x86 spesific.
They release other versions of the cards for PPC.
- Ost
Freevo might also be a good idea. If uses mplayer and xine to play virtually any (non-drm) media file you could think of.
I use it for all my media needs, but I haven't tried with DVD images (yet).
I'll try that later today, and post the result.
- Ost
King set some ridiculous terms for continuing his "experiment". He demanded that atleast 75% of the total number of downloads where paid for (and at $1 each). There is just no way that could work...
Baen discovered that (less known) authors sold more (of their other books) if they gave away a novel. More people got to read something the author had produced, and those who liked were more likly to buy another book by that author than before they knew who she/he was. King isn't unknown to most, so this wouldn't apply to him at all.
King set out to "prove" that downloaders where filthy thieves, and make a buck on those few who weren't. But when in all likelyhood less than 75% of the internet "population" have a means to pay for online content (no credit card), and a significant portion of the people downloading the first chapter might even not like it, the 75% demand was just ridiculous.
So he didn' provide anyhing for free... it had more in common with extortion than a free gift.
- Ost
Do you have any idea how frustrating this is when you:
1) Use the middle button as a scroll wheel as well
2) Open links in new tabs with middle button
Any sufficiently used mouse will press the middle button atleast 10% of the times you try to scroll...
And middle clicking on a small link can be very frustrating when you miss 3 times and have to reload the original page each time because you get a "cannot connect to host blablabal" or a google search for blablabla every time you accedently click the middle button... (and yes, it happens even when I'm not drunk)
- Ost
And what was wrong with Angelina Jolie?
And in 1995? Noone will ever be hotter than she was back then...
- Ost
Now, what the heck is wrong with me having the rights to that work, at least for a limited amount of time? Am I not allowed to control my work? Or do you think that, because what I've created isn't "physical", I'm not allowed to "own" it?
As other people have correctly stated earlier, you don't own the work, but the copyright. That should have been a clear desiccation, but since copyrights are essentially perpetual, it isn't. So instead of arguing semantics, I'll try to show what *is* wrong with the system.
If we go back to the owning part for a bit, as long as you don't show your work to someone, you can control how and when it is used, but as soon as you let others see/ copy it (sell it) you would loose all control over it unless you made a deal / contract with everyone you showed it to. The copyright laws are supposed to be such a deal. Before copyrights, creators usually could only profit from the first sale of a work (many famous music compositions were made on commission). Copyright laws made it possible for creators to profit from a work for a longer period of the works lifetime.
In the good old days, such works might have had an expected lifetime of several hundred years, yet the original US copyright laws granted the creator a monopoly on distribution for only 12(14?) years.
The economical "half life"* of a work would be perhaps 5-20 years. That meant that the 14 years gave the creator the rights to profit from the work while it had reasonable profit potential.
Now, the lifetime of a work is way shorter than when the original laws where passed (How many have bought a New Kids on the Block album the past 3 years?), but the protection is much longer. Why? The 14 years would certainly still be enough to let the creator profit from most of the potential sales from her work. Most of the works produced 14 years ago must have realized 99% of their profit potential by now, why is it still protected? It sure isn't to ensure that the creators can profit from their creations! And it sure as hell doesn't serve the public (who is the other party to the copyright deal).
So who does it serve?
What would happen if copyrighted works where released into the public domain after 14 years?
Someone would loose profit, but not the original creator (or entities holding the rights to those works). Those works have realized their profit potential (ok, there are exceptions, but compared to the number of works, I would say that they represent less than 1%). The ones who'd loose profit, are *new* creators, that would have to compete against with older works that people could get for *free*. The record and movie companies would loose revenue on their new offerings, because they'd have to compete with things in the public domain! And that is NOT what the copyright laws are supposed to fix!
So the copyright laws as they exist today solve another problem than they were meant to solve when they where originally made, and that is what makes them flawed. While the concept might still be viable (and necessary), the current implementation is flawed, and must be redone (not adjusted). The real danger here, is the concept that the creators own the work, and thus should be able to control every aspect of it's use and distribution. This mindset will prevent people from seeing what is wrong with the system.
- Ost
A microkernel is not something that rests between a "real kernel" and the hardware. It's not much like a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) at all.
It's a kernel that has a limited set of base functions (usually thread/process scheduling and communication). Other services (device drivers and even filesystem) are run as seperate processes, and the kernel provides a means for such prosesses to communicate.
- Ost
But the extra content is DRM crippled... Trust?
Where?
- Ost
When running ZoneAlarm and some net apps, it used 75+MB of (real)RAM and a couple of hundred megs of the page file, and between 5% and 50% of the CPU. I had about 100-200 custom rules for external adresses, and it monitored local adresses. I usually have from 50-100 connections to this computer (local + internet adresses).
Your cpu might be idle most of the time, but mine is not. Since rebooting last (50 something hours ago), Kerio has used 4 sec cpu time. With ZoneAlarm it would have been hours...
I can now use my computer without a 10 sec lag each time I start a program...
So unless you
1) don't actually use your comupter
or
2) have a more computer power than you ever will need
Don't *ever* use ZoneAlarm
Just a friendly tip...
- Ost
NEVER ever install ZoneAlarm!
It corrupts downloads, uses a *lot* of system resources and shuts down connectins at random (IMAP is a real pain with ZoneAlarm).
Use Kerio instead. It's free, and just as easy to set up.
- Ost
Some free, Free and not so free applications:
Webbrowser Mozilla Firebird (Win / linux)
Email Eudora (win) Evolution (linux)
Office suite OpenOffice.org 1.1 (win / linux)
SSH client putty (win) openssh (linux)
Videoplayer VLC (win / linux) or BSPlayer (win) and Xine (linux)
Editor Textpad (windows) Kate (linux)
Chat Jabber PSI (win / linux)
Firewall Kerio (win)
Anti virus F-Secure (not free) (win)
- Ost
The meaning of a word when used by it self, and as part of a *common* expression isn't always the same.
"Flawed by design" *doesn't* mean that someone fucked up on purpose, it means that the with the chosen design the problem cannot be fixed (you have to redesign and rebuild. It's not small holes that can be patched, it's a crumbling foundation and missing walls....)
- Ost
Sure...
Try to devide it by 100.
We pay less than 10 cent a minute for calls to the US, and that's with the former goverment-owned monopoly. With other operators it's 7-8 cents.
- Ost
Some Universities "allow" (= don't do anything about) filesharing within the university network, because some form of social relationship exists between all the students.
- Ost
If you strike the (and anybody else), you got it right. Copying to friends and family is a fair use right in Eurpoe (but it will probably not last).
- Ost
We should start research remote assassination of corrupt politicans. A system where the politican gets two warnings before termination would be preferable, but it is no requirement.
Isn't protecting your own property with deadly force considered self defence in (some parts of) the US?
- Ost
I've done this with some friends just last week. It looks quite scary, espesially when the physics buffs start putting the liquid nitrogen in their mouth.
To do this right you need to use more than 30 sec if you do it by hand like we did.
Use 2 eggs, and 0.6L of cream and mix in a bowl.
Chop one 100g dark chocolate bar and mix with the rest.
Add 0.1 L Irish Cream.
Whip it all together while someone pours a small stream of liquid nitrogen into the bowl.
Don't do it to fast (30 sec will give you large frozen lumps...).
When the ice starts to get thick enough, stop pouring nitrogen and put the lid back on the nitrogen container. You can play some more with it *after* you have eaten your ice-cream.
This would be a great idea for a bussines, set up a stall near a beach and sell on-the-fly real ice-cream to tourists. $5 a cup, the show is for free!
- Ost
The exponensial fee was introduced to circumvent the neverending extentions on copyright, but are of course not practical in the simple way described.
I proposed another idea a few months back, one where copyright was divided in to classes:
The first one covering short lived works (Britney etc.) with a 3-5 year limit, extendable once. Fair usees such as private copies and backups illigal under the DMCA/EUCD. After the protection expires, noncommersial (or perhaps commersial as well) distribution of the work is allowed. DMCA no longer applies to any copies of the work.
The other one would have a 20+10 limit (or 20+20), but *all* fair use rights are restored to pre DMCA status. Limited pirvate (friends/family) copies allowed. Good for "non hit" material.
This makes sure that the mediaheads get their mega profit the first 3-5 years from The Next Big Fad(tm), but we don't get totally screwd in the process. We would be able to make copies of our DVDs before they die a silent death at age 15, without doing something illegal.
How's that for another complicated copyright scheme?
- Ost
That is why the fee should start earlyer (14 years was the old magic number, why not use it again) and increase exponensially...
If it starts at $100 for year 15, and doubles for every 5th every year after... the fee would be over $800 000 after 80 years.
Automatic renew process for *all* published works should run any company out of bussiness whit that system.
- Ost