At the end the people in the chat rooms with me were twice as mad as they were when it started. I think it was a miserable failure if it was for PR benefit.
They don't care if your mad. You're in the group that the band think is thieves.
If it was done for PR what will happen is that a few out of context quotes will be used and this will be hyped "metallica listens to fans on the issue of mp3 and piracy", we've seen it before. SOP
I really hope that the band comes to their senses because I like their music especially the older stuff and if I have to boycot them it will really annoy me, not like my current boycot of DVDs.
Good question I hope this is one that is used. I know this is redundant but if enough of us say it maybe whoever looks through the top moderations will choose this one.
Two part question. I've been a metallica fan for years. I've heard band members say in interviews that the band got it's start by people trading bootleg copies of songs because the radio wouldn't play them. Do you feel that it is right to be angry with fans that are doing the same?
Don't you feel that there are valid reasons to download mp3s of your band. Two examples here. If I had downloaded some of the songs on Load before buying the cd I would have realised that Load was not my type of cd. This would have saved me money and you many curses. I also own almost all of your albums, however many of them are on tape. Should I have to go out and buy the cd when I already own the song? Tapes are designed to wear out, digital copies can last forever.
I was going to go to one of your concerts on july 3, my first Metallica concert. I won't be attending unless you can convince me what your doing is right or you drop the stupid law suites.
If the method that you used to encrypt the message were know would it be easier to attack? It this cryptography by obscurity? The reason that I ask is that it's quite easy to encrypt something with a relativly simple algorithm if no one has a chance of finding out what the algorithm is.
For example if the shapes in the picture above the text were a key to the letters needed to find the message. That would only be secure if no one else could find out how you encrypted your message.
I own most of Metallica's albums(I may be wanting to sell them soon) but many of these especially the older ones are tapes. Should I be forced to go and buy that album again on CD just because I want it in a medium that doesn't degrade?
I also agree the people serving those mp3's are breaking the law. Most of the people who are downloading the mp3s are as well, unless like me they own the song in one format or another. Legality and morality are not the same. I will not abide by a law that conflicts with my idea of right and wrong. I realise though, that this could cause me to be punished under the law.
I was planning to go to a metallica concert this july. I'm glad that I hadn't already bought tickets. Any band that got it's start from people trading bootleg tapes, should not condem those same people after they become sucessfull. Sounds to me like metallica is biting the hand that feeds them.
I posted this to the katz article but it applies here even more. Part of the problem is that we've all been socialized to accept that intellectual property belongs to one individual or organization. Even the founding fathers of the United States only promoted copyrights to give more of an incentive for people to create origanal works. Before copyrights all information was free. People got paid for the work that they did not the ideas that they came up with. A musician was paid for a performance. A playwrite for writing a play. These people didn't own these ideas they made their money off of the use of commonly held ideas. Copyrights and patents in my opinion only slow inovation. A company that had to create something new to stay on top instead of hiding behind their patents would create many more products. Cost would also be lower. What if we completely eliminated patents and copyrights. Society as we know it would not collapse. Musicians would be paid by radio and websites wich would make their money from advertisements. Writers would create a work and people would buy it. Lets admit that for books we all like to have the feel of a book in our hands and no one could copy whole books more cheaply then publishers could mass produce them. Publishers would be forced to sell books, cds, and videos at prices low enough that pirating wouldn't make any sence. I for one do not believe that just because someone came up with an idea first that it should be theirs forever. If the patent system and copyright system in this country were sane I wouldn't have a problem. But, no song writer, movie maker, or book writer deserves to exlusivly own copyrighted works to the detriment of the society for more years then they'll be alive. I don't expect to see any more important copyrights expire in my lifetime. What changed my views was when I was showing my nephew the books on project guetenburg and he asked how it could possibly be legal for people to place whole texts on the internet. I mean who should be able to keep anyone from viewing classics like Poe, Verne, or Doyle. Yet he could not understand how any book could be free. That bothered me. I realise what we are talking about at the moment are mp3s. Anyone can hear the same music for free on the radio. Does that keep people from buying the cds? You can copy songs from the radio and with good enough equipment and a good signal get very close to cd quality. Does that keep people from buying cds? I like to see what I'm buying before I pay for it. With a book I can sit at the bookstore and read it *before* I buy it. Hell I can check it out from the library and read the whole thing. Does that keep me from owning the book? No, I own several hundreds of books. If I want to buy a pair of shoes I get to try them on first. I can test drive a car before I buy it. Why is it wrong to want to download and listen to these songs before I buy them. Software, music and movies are the only things you *have* to buy on faith why is that? Go ahead and read back the propoganda that our society has filled your head with. Ideas are free. Deal with it. Information wants to be free. Man I used to think that was a korny line but the more I see information being shut away and reserved for the people that can afford it the more I believe that information not only wants to be free it must be free.
Part of the problem is that we've all been socialized to accept that intellectual property belongs to one individual or organization. Even the founding fathers of the United States only promoted copyrights to give more of an incentive for people to create origanal works.
Before copyrights all information was free. People got paid for the work that they did not the ideas that they came up with. A musician was paid for a performance. A playwrite for writing a play. These people didn't own these ideas they made their money off of the use of commonly held ideas. Copyrights and patents in my opinion only slow inovation. A company that had to create something new to stay on top instead of hiding behind their patents would create many more products. Cost would also be lower.
What if we completely eliminated patents and copyrights. Society as we know it would not collapse. Musicians would be paid by radio and websites wich would make their money from advertisements. Writers would create a work and people would buy it. Lets admit that for books we all like to have the feel of a book in our hands and no one could copy whole books more cheaply then publishers could mass produce them. Publishers would be forced to sell books, cds, and videos at prices low enough that pirating wouldn't make any sence.
I for one do not believe that just because someone came up with an idea first that it should be theirs forever. If the patent system and copyright system in this country were sane I wouldn't have a problem. But, no song writer, movie maker, or book writer deserves to exlusivly own copyrighted works to the detriment of the society for more years then they'll be alive. I don't expect to see any more important copyrights expire in my lifetime.
What changed my views was when I was showing my nephew the books on project guetenburg and he asked how it could possibly be legal for people to place whole texts on the internet. I mean who should be able to keep anyone from viewing classics like Poe, Verne, or Doyle. Yet he could not understand how any book could be free. That bothered me.
I realise what we are talking about at the moment are mp3s. Anyone can hear the same music for free on the radio. Does that keep people from buying the cds? You can copy songs from the radio and with good enough equipment and a good signal get very close to cd quality. Does that keep people from buying cds? I like to see what I'm buying before I pay for it. With a book I can sit at the bookstore and read it *before* I buy it. Hell I can check it out from the library and read the whole thing. Does that keep me from owning the book? No, I own several hundreds of books. If I want to buy a pair of shoes I get to try them on first. I can test drive a car before I buy it. Why is it wrong to want to download and listen to these songs before I buy them. Software, music and movies are the only things you *have* to buy on faith why is that?
Go ahead and read back the propoganda that our society has filled your head with. Ideas are free. Deal with it.
Information wants to be free.
Man I used to think that was a korny line but the more I see information being shut away and reserved for the people that can afford it the more I believe that information not only wants to be free it must be free.
Thanks for the comments I did read the stories on wired. I was making a point. The point being their are many better articles that need to be posted. Save this for one of the slashdot shorts. Wired sucks but at least they don't publish this type of crap.
Oh BTW I logged in before I flamed. If you want to flame me LTFO(Log The Fuck On).
Last time I submitted a story a couple of weeks ago their was over 300 stories in the submission queue. That's about the normal. I'm sure that many of those are duplicates but I'm also sure that their are better articles then this one to put here.
Of course they are trying to get the worse possible punishment. The worse the punishment the easier it will be to get it overturned on apeal. If they just had a few restrictions imposed they might not get that overturned but if they can go to a judge and say "hey by breaking us up your going to significantly change the compatability and usability of 90% of desktop computers." Then the judge can overturn the decision as extreme and a possible detriment to consumers.
Will they include PIM software for your computer or do you have to find your own and mess with it?
It seems reasonable to me to suppose that there will be some of both, which is exactly what I want.
If you look at the pictures on the website you'll notice that it has a pim button along with an mp3 button. I think that one could make the assumption that some type of PIM software will be included.
I don't know how many of you had trouble running dual boot machines because of that limit, but it gave me fits on at least one computer. It was the first machines I tried to install linux on. I thought that the limitation was stupid then and I still think that it's stupid. Glad to see it changed.
What really happened is that USAF trashed these plans because of much more promising UFO technology, that they aquired from the aliens in return for allowing them to do a few anal probes. Sounds like a good trade to me I just wish that they had stated it publicly. What the hell do I care if Bubba Joe Billy Bob John Boy Robinson, gets an anal probe as long as I get to ride or better yet fly one of those UFO's.;)
I have to go I see some men in a black sedan pulling up.... later.
Let's keep it cival. Every programming language has a purpose. A good programmer knows when to use and when not to use a language. VB is fine if you want a program that will only be ran under windows and doesn't need the speed or portability of C/C++. To say that VB is more powerfull then C++ is truly a load of shit. VB is usefull for some small projects or interfaces but that is all.
A truly powerfull programming language is one that can be used for almost any type of programming. Given the number of programs both windows and linux that use C/C++ I would say that C++ is the clear winner.
I don't particularly like java but that's only because it has speed problems. It definatly beats almost all other languages that are as usefull in portability hence it's wide spread use.
I've heard this plenty of times. "A true hard core programmer only writes code in assembly language." It's been awhile since I've heard that but not that many years ago, that's was what many programmers would say.
The reason many people here hate VB so much is that anything coded in VB can't be ported to any other platform. Also most people that use VB come from a DOS/Windows background. These people were useing GW-basic(the god of spegetti code) then QuickBasic(Easy to teach in schools) and finally Visual Basic. Many of the people on slashdot come from a unix background and learned to program in C.
I went to a highschool that thought that programming == QuickBasic. I had to learn C, assembly language, and pascal on my own. I've not regreted learning Basic programming it's good for teaching logic and made learning real programming languages easier. I'm glad that I moved away from the basic programming languages. No self respecting computer science department teaches Visual Basic, we leave that to the CIS students.
Really I know the reason that the palm organizers are so popular is that they do what they are supposed to really well. That's great if all you want is the buisiness market.
I'm a student I want a pda with a decent size color screen. I want to be able to play games, read ebooks, surf the web, play mp3's, and use the palm to store quick notes and information. I want a pda that can replace 15 pounds of the 30 pounds of books and paper that I carry around at school. It should be able to replace my graphing calculator. I want voice recognition and voice recording so that I don't have to take as many notes. I want some type of wireless connection with my computer and other PDAs. I want a PDA that I can spend countless hours programming useless games for. I want a PDA that runs linux. I would really like to have more then 64 megs of storage. I wouldn't mind having an ethernet port.
I almost bought a WinCE device. I would have if they had been reliable and the screen had been a little bigger and brighter. I think that these companies are missing a golden opertunity. They could replace handheld games, ebooks, organizers, and textbooks with these if they would do what is needed. I hope that the palm device will at some point in the not to distant future do some of these things, since I have little hope that microsoft will ever understand the true market for devices of this type.
I think that in this case it very much depends on what the palm company wants to be. Do they want to continue to create an extremely simple device that targets a small audience by doing only what is necessary and doing it well or do they want to expand on their success and create a truly usefull device one that will apeal to a large number of people. If done right I think that a good PDA could replace a laptop for most uses.
Somewhat offtopic has anyone heard anymore about last years advances in speech recognition. I remember reading that some computer scientists had very good results with a new algorithm that they said could recognize human speech better then humans even over noise.
You know, there should be a contest. I'd love to stick in a mischievious backdoor and see if people could find it in thousands/millions of lines of code.
I would bet that it would be relativly easy to put a backdoor in almost any large project. If the project in question were coded in the right language it wouldn't matter that the code was open source or not. Can you imagine looking for a backdoor in a huge c project with no comments and little documentation. Or worse yet an assembly language program. A few lines of code in thousands of lines makes it like looking for a needle in a haystack. The trick would be to put it in a program that has little hack value but is used often. A program that most people would not be interested in programming. Who knows there may already be a few around.
Open source makes this kind of thing less likely but not impossible. It would be even easier to include an intentional buffer overflow or an intentional hole in the security that would look like it was supposed to be there.
BTW did anyone think that the MSNBC article was a little gloating or was that my guilty conscience.
Yes, I have, at least the sid=moderation, but most haven't if it isn't discussed where other people are reading it does no good. Thanks for the links though. Didn't mean to sound rude if I came off this way.
Slashdot is a great diversion form me but even in just the last 8 months or so things seem to have gotten worse. I really don't mind some of the stuff that gets posted. If it's funny or informative even if it's offtopic.
I don't know if you really submitted a "Ask Slashdot: What's Wrong with Slashdot?", but I submitted an ask slashdot can we save slashdot from the trolls. They took two days before declining it, so they were extremely slow or they actually considered posting it before declinging it. I also sent an email, to Rob, expressing my thoughts on slashdot's moderation system and some possible fixes. I didn't even get a responce, not even a polite letter saying sorry we don't take users suggestions.
Personally I think that slashdot has some issues that should be discussed in the open with the users. I'm getting tired of not being able to express an opinion because of the number of trolls and ACs that post to a story. I also agree that they need to do something about the sensational summeries.
---- moderators moderate the post above up this is something that we as users should discuss ----
Very true but the government *can* make it illegal, at least for US citizens, to provide erotic content without some form of age verification.
I seem to remember that the porn industry is almost the only industry making money online. This law would just make them move to a server that's in a country with less restrictive laws. The internet no longer belongs to the US. When are law makers going to realize that they can't legislate the world or morality.
The government invented fud only when they do it it's called propaganda and they could teach Bill Gates a thing or two. They want people to focus on the very small group of individuals that are into child pornography. Then they want the american people to make the mental connection that all porn on the internet is child pornography. Don't get me wrong I'm not a big fan of the porn industry or their very creative java script programmers. I want porn protected because if they can outlaw it they can outlaw others forms of expression on the internet.
Parents need to take charge of what their children are doing. It's not the governments right or responciblity, in most cases, to raise children. A parent should know if their child is hanging around with gang members. A parent should see the signs of drug use. A parent should know what their child is doing on the computer. Would anyone give a 12 year old a new car and say have fun? Would anyone let a child go somewhere in a bad neighborhood without at least teaching them how to survive? No, and the internet can be much more dangerous then a new car or a bad neighborhood. If a person is unfit to be a parent the children should be raised by a fit foster parent or the state.
Many of us grew up dialing in to bbs's and doing other less legal things on the computer as we were growing up. Our parents were clueless. Now most of us are old enough to have children. We know the dangers we know what can happen if children are left unsupervised it's our responcibility to educate our children and the people in our family with children who don't know what it's like to grow up in a digital world.
Enough of being serious here's my top ten list of things more dangerous then leaving a child alone with a computer and an internet connection.
10. Giving the child a chemistry set and instructions on how to make TNT.
9. Tying the child to the top of the car so that the child can get more fresh air.
8. A hammer and a china set. (need I say more?)
7. Teaching the child how to fly the families crop duster.
6. Leaving the child alone with Al Gore.
5. Leaving the child alone with Bill Clinton.
4. Letting the child go to a public school.
3. Giving the child both a knife and the movie scream for the childs birthday.
2. Allowing the child to train the pet Siberian Huskie.(I don't think that's spelled right.)
1. Giving the child a loaded handgun.
Disclaimer. (Don't get me wrong I believe that everyone should have the right to own firearms. But, children should never have access to a gun and any household with a gun should train children from an early age about gun safety.)
Up until now large scale dos attacks have been directed at random targets. With the exception of the one that targeted the RIAA recently. I think that targeted dos attacks against people that support this type of thing would be very effective in gettiing our peoples opinion expressed. Instead of one person using a distributed dos attack we could all get together and do it intentionally. That wouldn't be illegal all we have to do is set up a program that reloads the targets website continously. We would also need a large number of people willing to participate. This would be similiar to an intentional and legal slashdot effect. The electronic equivilent to a sit in or demonstration. Posted anonymously for obvious reasons.
The one thing that I was concerned about was explained in the article. If you are going to use these posts to slashdot in a book then the book should be avaliable in electronic form. Since the article says that it will be I have no problem.
BTW these posts were submited to this site to be published. Why would anyone here make a distinction between electronic publication and book publication. Most of the people on slashdot have spent a great deal of time trying to validate electonic information.
(des?-ti-nêy) - n. 1.
diety of all things "html", 2. internet addict, 3. lover of late '80's heavy metal music, 4. see also - "des", "mr. *ucking php"...
No you see I'm deity. I have the name copyrighted and you have not paid me to use it. I will have my lawer call your lawer. Hopefully we can settle this out of court. Until then I'm going to seek a preliminary injuction agianst you and/. asking that you remove all reference to my copyrighted name from your files. Besides you mispelled it and I think that that was done on purpose to demean my good name.
deity (d-t) n., pl. deities.
A god or goddess.
The essential nature or condition of being a god; divinity. Deity. God. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ [Middle English deite, from Old French from Late Latin deits, divine nature, from Latin deus, god; see deiw- in Indo-European Roots.]
I love all the old metallica stuff but most of their new shit sucks. Metallica got it's start as an underground band and word got spread about them by people that copied tapes and gave them away. That's a quote from an MTV special on metallica the quote is also by Lars Ulrich. They got their start from people trading bootleg songs.
I'm hoping this is a moved urged by RIAA lawers. I still like a few of metallica's new songs, not many but a few. I hope that they drop the lawsuite because If they don't I'll quit buying their new albums completely and I won't feel guilty about pirating the one or two good songs that show up on a 2 cd album. This from a band that said that they would not change their music to become popular because they believed in what they did.
I'm going to send several emails explaining my position on this lawsuite, I hope everyone else does as well.
I might expect this from some pop band but not metallica.
The title says it all. They weren't defending themselves when they sued B&N. They were using a patent to bully competition. I still refuse to shop at Amazon until they give up the stupid patents that they already have.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't care if your mad. You're in the group that the band think is thieves.
If it was done for PR what will happen is that a few out of context quotes will be used and this will be hyped "metallica listens to fans on the issue of mp3 and piracy", we've seen it before. SOP
I really hope that the band comes to their senses because I like their music especially the older stuff and if I have to boycot them it will really annoy me, not like my current boycot of DVDs.
Good question I hope this is one that is used. I know this is redundant but if enough of us say it maybe whoever looks through the top moderations will choose this one.
The thing that I noticed is that while they were willing to type out a url they didn't want to risk a hyperlink.
Two part question.
I've been a metallica fan for years. I've heard band members say in interviews that the band got it's start by people trading bootleg copies of songs because the radio wouldn't play them. Do you feel that it is right to be angry with fans that are doing the same?
Don't you feel that there are valid reasons to download mp3s of your band. Two examples here. If I had downloaded some of the songs on Load before buying the cd I would have realised that Load was not my type of cd. This would have saved me money and you many curses. I also own almost all of your albums, however many of them are on tape. Should I have to go out and buy the cd when I already own the song? Tapes are designed to wear out, digital copies can last forever.
I was going to go to one of your concerts on july 3, my first Metallica concert. I won't be attending unless you can convince me what your doing is right or you drop the stupid law suites.
If the method that you used to encrypt the message were know would it be easier to attack? It this cryptography by obscurity? The reason that I ask is that it's quite easy to encrypt something with a relativly simple algorithm if no one has a chance of finding out what the algorithm is.
For example if the shapes in the picture above the text were a key to the letters needed to find the message. That would only be secure if no one else could find out how you encrypted your message.
Still it's a nice challange thanks.
I own most of Metallica's albums(I may be wanting to sell them soon) but many of these especially the older ones are tapes. Should I be forced to go and buy that album again on CD just because I want it in a medium that doesn't degrade?
I also agree the people serving those mp3's are breaking the law. Most of the people who are downloading the mp3s are as well, unless like me they own the song in one format or another. Legality and morality are not the same. I will not abide by a law that conflicts with my idea of right and wrong. I realise though, that this could cause me to be punished under the law.
I was planning to go to a metallica concert this july. I'm glad that I hadn't already bought tickets. Any band that got it's start from people trading bootleg tapes, should not condem those same people after they become sucessfull. Sounds to me like metallica is biting the hand that feeds them.
I posted this to the katz article but it applies here even more. Part of the problem is that we've all been socialized to accept that intellectual property belongs to one individual or organization. Even the founding fathers of the United States only promoted copyrights to give more of an incentive for people to create origanal works. Before copyrights all information was free. People got paid for the work that they did not the ideas that they came up with. A musician was paid for a performance. A playwrite for writing a play. These people didn't own these ideas they made their money off of the use of commonly held ideas. Copyrights and patents in my opinion only slow inovation. A company that had to create something new to stay on top instead of hiding behind their patents would create many more products. Cost would also be lower. What if we completely eliminated patents and copyrights. Society as we know it would not collapse. Musicians would be paid by radio and websites wich would make their money from advertisements. Writers would create a work and people would buy it. Lets admit that for books we all like to have the feel of a book in our hands and no one could copy whole books more cheaply then publishers could mass produce them. Publishers would be forced to sell books, cds, and videos at prices low enough that pirating wouldn't make any sence. I for one do not believe that just because someone came up with an idea first that it should be theirs forever. If the patent system and copyright system in this country were sane I wouldn't have a problem. But, no song writer, movie maker, or book writer deserves to exlusivly own copyrighted works to the detriment of the society for more years then they'll be alive. I don't expect to see any more important copyrights expire in my lifetime. What changed my views was when I was showing my nephew the books on project guetenburg and he asked how it could possibly be legal for people to place whole texts on the internet. I mean who should be able to keep anyone from viewing classics like Poe, Verne, or Doyle. Yet he could not understand how any book could be free. That bothered me. I realise what we are talking about at the moment are mp3s. Anyone can hear the same music for free on the radio. Does that keep people from buying the cds? You can copy songs from the radio and with good enough equipment and a good signal get very close to cd quality. Does that keep people from buying cds? I like to see what I'm buying before I pay for it. With a book I can sit at the bookstore and read it *before* I buy it. Hell I can check it out from the library and read the whole thing. Does that keep me from owning the book? No, I own several hundreds of books. If I want to buy a pair of shoes I get to try them on first. I can test drive a car before I buy it. Why is it wrong to want to download and listen to these songs before I buy them. Software, music and movies are the only things you *have* to buy on faith why is that? Go ahead and read back the propoganda that our society has filled your head with. Ideas are free. Deal with it. Information wants to be free. Man I used to think that was a korny line but the more I see information being shut away and reserved for the people that can afford it the more I believe that information not only wants to be free it must be free.
Part of the problem is that we've all been socialized to accept that intellectual property belongs to one individual or organization. Even the founding fathers of the United States only promoted copyrights to give more of an incentive for people to create origanal works.
Before copyrights all information was free. People got paid for the work that they did not the ideas that they came up with. A musician was paid for a performance. A playwrite for writing a play. These people didn't own these ideas they made their money off of the use of commonly held ideas. Copyrights and patents in my opinion only slow inovation. A company that had to create something new to stay on top instead of hiding behind their patents would create many more products. Cost would also be lower.
What if we completely eliminated patents and copyrights. Society as we know it would not collapse. Musicians would be paid by radio and websites wich would make their money from advertisements. Writers would create a work and people would buy it. Lets admit that for books we all like to have the feel of a book in our hands and no one could copy whole books more cheaply then publishers could mass produce them. Publishers would be forced to sell books, cds, and videos at prices low enough that pirating wouldn't make any sence.
I for one do not believe that just because someone came up with an idea first that it should be theirs forever. If the patent system and copyright system in this country were sane I wouldn't have a problem. But, no song writer, movie maker, or book writer deserves to exlusivly own copyrighted works to the detriment of the society for more years then they'll be alive.
I don't expect to see any more important copyrights expire in my lifetime.
What changed my views was when I was showing my nephew the books on project guetenburg and he asked how it could possibly be legal for people to place whole texts on the internet. I mean who should be able to keep anyone from viewing classics like Poe, Verne, or Doyle. Yet he could not understand how any book could be free. That bothered me.
I realise what we are talking about at the moment are mp3s. Anyone can hear the same music for free on the radio. Does that keep people from buying the cds? You can copy songs from the radio and with good enough equipment and a good signal get very close to cd quality. Does that keep people from buying cds? I like to see what I'm buying before I pay for it. With a book I can sit at the bookstore and read it *before* I buy it. Hell I can check it out from the library and read the whole thing. Does that keep me from owning the book? No, I own several hundreds of books. If I want to buy a pair of shoes I get to try them on first. I can test drive a car before I buy it. Why is it wrong to want to download and listen to these songs before I buy them. Software, music and movies are the only things you *have* to buy on faith why is that?
Go ahead and read back the propoganda that our society has filled your head with. Ideas are free. Deal with it.
Information wants to be free.
Man I used to think that was a korny line but the more I see information being shut away and reserved for the people that can afford it the more I believe that information not only wants to be free it must be free.
Thanks for the comments I did read the stories on wired. I was making a point. The point being their are many better articles that need to be posted. Save this for one of the slashdot shorts.
Wired sucks but at least they don't publish this type of crap.
Oh BTW I logged in before I flamed. If you want to flame me LTFO(Log The Fuck On).
Last time I submitted a story a couple of weeks ago their was over 300 stories in the submission queue. That's about the normal. I'm sure that many of those are duplicates but I'm also sure that their are better articles then this one to put here.
Of course they are trying to get the worse possible punishment. The worse the punishment the easier it will be to get it overturned on apeal. If they just had a few restrictions imposed they might not get that overturned but if they can go to a judge and say "hey by breaking us up your going to significantly change the compatability and usability of 90% of desktop computers." Then the judge can overturn the decision as extreme and a possible detriment to consumers.
It seems reasonable to me to suppose that there will be some of both, which is exactly what I want.
If you look at the pictures on the website you'll notice that it has a pim button along with an mp3 button. I think that one could make the assumption that some type of PIM software will be included.
I don't know how many of you had trouble running dual boot machines because of that limit, but it gave me fits on at least one computer. It was the first machines I tried to install linux on. I thought that the limitation was stupid then and I still think that it's stupid. Glad to see it changed.
What really happened is that USAF trashed these plans because of much more promising UFO technology, that they aquired from the aliens in return for allowing them to do a few anal probes. Sounds like a good trade to me I just wish that they had stated it publicly. What the hell do I care if Bubba Joe Billy Bob John Boy Robinson, gets an anal probe as long as I get to ride or better yet fly one of those UFO's. ;)
I have to go I see some men in a black sedan pulling up.... later.
Let's keep it cival. Every programming language has a purpose. A good programmer knows when to use and when not to use a language. VB is fine if you want a program that will only be ran under windows and doesn't need the speed or portability of C/C++. To say that VB is more powerfull then C++ is truly a load of shit. VB is usefull for some small projects or interfaces but that is all.
A truly powerfull programming language is one that can be used for almost any type of programming. Given the number of programs both windows and linux that use C/C++ I would say that C++ is the clear winner.
I don't particularly like java but that's only because it has speed problems. It definatly beats almost all other languages that are as usefull in portability hence it's wide spread use.
I've heard this plenty of times. "A true hard core programmer only writes code in assembly language." It's been awhile since I've heard that but not that many years ago, that's was what many programmers would say.
The reason many people here hate VB so much is that anything coded in VB can't be ported to any other platform. Also most people that use VB come from a DOS/Windows background. These people were useing GW-basic(the god of spegetti code) then QuickBasic(Easy to teach in schools) and finally Visual Basic. Many of the people on slashdot come from a unix background and learned to program in C.
I went to a highschool that thought that programming == QuickBasic. I had to learn C, assembly language, and pascal on my own. I've not regreted learning Basic programming it's good for teaching logic and made learning real programming languages easier. I'm glad that I moved away from the basic programming languages. No self respecting computer science department teaches Visual Basic, we leave that to the CIS students.
Just my opinion I could be wrong.
No offense Mythos Traecer.
Really I know the reason that the palm organizers are so popular is that they do what they are supposed to really well. That's great if all you want is the buisiness market.
I'm a student I want a pda with a decent size color screen. I want to be able to play games, read ebooks, surf the web, play mp3's, and use the palm to store quick notes and information. I want a pda that can replace 15 pounds of the 30 pounds of books and paper that I carry around at school. It should be able to replace my graphing calculator. I want voice recognition and voice recording so that I don't have to take as many notes. I want some type of wireless connection with my computer and other PDAs. I want a PDA that I can spend countless hours programming useless games for. I want a PDA that runs linux. I would really like to have more then 64 megs of storage. I wouldn't mind having an ethernet port.
I almost bought a WinCE device. I would have if they had been reliable and the screen had been a little bigger and brighter. I think that these companies are missing a golden opertunity. They could replace handheld games, ebooks, organizers, and textbooks with these if they would do what is needed. I hope that the palm device will at some point in the not to distant future do some of these things, since I have little hope that microsoft will ever understand the true market for devices of this type.
I think that in this case it very much depends on what the palm company wants to be. Do they want to continue to create an extremely simple device that targets a small audience by doing only what is necessary and doing it well or do they want to expand on their success and create a truly usefull device one that will apeal to a large number of people. If done right I think that a good PDA could replace a laptop for most uses.
Somewhat offtopic has anyone heard anymore about last years advances in speech recognition. I remember reading that some computer scientists had very good results with a new algorithm that they said could recognize human speech better then humans even over noise.
I would bet that it would be relativly easy to put a backdoor in almost any large project. If the project in question were coded in the right language it wouldn't matter that the code was open source or not. Can you imagine looking for a backdoor in a huge c project with no comments and little documentation. Or worse yet an assembly language program. A few lines of code in thousands of lines makes it like looking for a needle in a haystack. The trick would be to put it in a program that has little hack value but is used often. A program that most people would not be interested in programming. Who knows there may already be a few around.
Open source makes this kind of thing less likely but not impossible. It would be even easier to include an intentional buffer overflow or an intentional hole in the security that would look like it was supposed to be there.
BTW did anyone think that the MSNBC article was a little gloating or was that my guilty conscience.
Yes, I have, at least the sid=moderation, but most haven't if it isn't discussed where other people are reading it does no good. Thanks for the links though. Didn't mean to sound rude if I came off this way.
Slashdot is a great diversion form me but even in just the last 8 months or so things seem to have gotten worse. I really don't mind some of the stuff that gets posted. If it's funny or informative even if it's offtopic.
Take it easy unitron. Later.
I don't know if you really submitted a "Ask Slashdot: What's Wrong with Slashdot?", but I submitted an ask slashdot can we save slashdot from the trolls. They took two days before declining it, so they were extremely slow or they actually considered posting it before declinging it. I also sent an email, to Rob, expressing my thoughts on slashdot's moderation system and some possible fixes. I didn't even get a responce, not even a polite letter saying sorry we don't take users suggestions.
Personally I think that slashdot has some issues that should be discussed in the open with the users. I'm getting tired of not being able to express an opinion because of the number of trolls and ACs that post to a story. I also agree that they need to do something about the sensational summeries.
---- moderators moderate the post above up this is something that we as users should discuss ----
3. it's impossible to ban erotica.
Very true but the government *can* make it illegal, at least for US citizens, to provide erotic content without some form of age verification.
I seem to remember that the porn industry is almost the only industry making money online. This law would just make them move to a server that's in a country with less restrictive laws. The internet no longer belongs to the US. When are law makers going to realize that they can't legislate the world or morality.
The government invented fud only when they do it it's called propaganda and they could teach Bill Gates a thing or two. They want people to focus on the very small group of individuals that are into child pornography. Then they want the american people to make the mental connection that all porn on the internet is child pornography. Don't get me wrong I'm not a big fan of the porn industry or their very creative java script programmers. I want porn protected because if they can outlaw it they can outlaw others forms of expression on the internet.
Parents need to take charge of what their children are doing. It's not the governments right or responciblity, in most cases, to raise children. A parent should know if their child is hanging around with gang members. A parent should see the signs of drug use. A parent should know what their child is doing on the computer. Would anyone give a 12 year old a new car and say have fun? Would anyone let a child go somewhere in a bad neighborhood without at least teaching them how to survive? No, and the internet can be much more dangerous then a new car or a bad neighborhood. If a person is unfit to be a parent the children should be raised by a fit foster parent or the state.
Many of us grew up dialing in to bbs's and doing other less legal things on the computer as we were growing up. Our parents were clueless. Now most of us are old enough to have children. We know the dangers we know what can happen if children are left unsupervised it's our responcibility to educate our children and the people in our family with children who don't know what it's like to grow up in a digital world.
Enough of being serious here's my top ten list of things more dangerous then leaving a child alone with a computer and an internet connection.
10. Giving the child a chemistry set and instructions on how to make TNT.
9. Tying the child to the top of the car so that the child can get more fresh air.
8. A hammer and a china set. (need I say more?)
7. Teaching the child how to fly the families crop duster.
6. Leaving the child alone with Al Gore.
5. Leaving the child alone with Bill Clinton.
4. Letting the child go to a public school.
3. Giving the child both a knife and the movie scream for the childs birthday.
2. Allowing the child to train the pet Siberian Huskie.(I don't think that's spelled right.)
1. Giving the child a loaded handgun.
Disclaimer.
(Don't get me wrong I believe that everyone should have the right to own firearms. But, children should never have access to a gun and any household with a gun should train children from an early age about gun safety.)
Up until now large scale dos attacks have been directed at random targets. With the exception of the one that targeted the RIAA recently. I think that targeted dos attacks against people that support this type of thing would be very effective in gettiing our peoples opinion expressed. Instead of one person using a distributed dos attack we could all get together and do it intentionally. That wouldn't be illegal all we have to do is set up a program that reloads the targets website continously. We would also need a large number of people willing to participate. This would be similiar to an intentional and legal slashdot effect. The electronic equivilent to a sit in or demonstration. Posted anonymously for obvious reasons.
The one thing that I was concerned about was explained in the article. If you are going to use these posts to slashdot in a book then the book should be avaliable in electronic form. Since the article says that it will be I have no problem.
BTW these posts were submited to this site to be published. Why would anyone here make a distinction between electronic publication and book publication. Most of the people on slashdot have spent a great deal of time trying to validate electonic information.
No you see I'm deity. I have the name copyrighted and you have not paid me to use it. I will have my lawer call your lawer. Hopefully we can settle this out of court. Until then I'm going to seek a preliminary injuction agianst you and /. asking that you remove all reference to my copyrighted name from your files. Besides you mispelled it and I think that that was done on purpose to demean my good name.
deity (d-t)
n., pl. deities.
A god or goddess.
The essential nature or condition of being a god; divinity. Deity. God.- ------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
[Middle English deite, from Old French from Late Latin deits, divine nature, from Latin deus, god; see deiw- in Indo-European Roots.]
I love all the old metallica stuff but most of their new shit sucks. Metallica got it's start as an underground band and word got spread about them by people that copied tapes and gave them away. That's a quote from an MTV special on metallica the quote is also by Lars Ulrich. They got their start from people trading bootleg songs.
I'm hoping this is a moved urged by RIAA lawers. I still like a few of metallica's new songs, not many but a few. I hope that they drop the lawsuite because If they don't I'll quit buying their new albums completely and I won't feel guilty about pirating the one or two good songs that show up on a 2 cd album. This from a band that said that they would not change their music to become popular because they believed in what they did.
I'm going to send several emails explaining my position on this lawsuite, I hope everyone else does as well.
I might expect this from some pop band but not metallica.
Your right. I should have said walked on the moon.
.....
I went to a public school you'll have to forgive me.
|deity|: to himself
Damn programmers have to be so precise.
Uhhh wait, I program to. Hmmmmm.... What's *my* problem.
The title says it all. They weren't defending themselves when they sued B&N. They were using a patent to bully competition. I still refuse to shop at Amazon until they give up the stupid patents that they already have.