I did read the article, and it didn't say. Neither did the article pointing out that the RIAA was suing a 12-year-old. I'd suggest you read the article as well, and pay attention to what's NOT there, as well as what is.
I'm sure there will be plenty of threads here along the lines of: "$29.99 for all you can download... come on.... an "honor roll" student thought that a legit deal?"
Honestly, I don't think they really gave it too much thought. I mean, I doubt most non-geek types who do use peer-to-peer file sharing systems give the whole subject more than a passing thought. Though as others have mentioned, I'd be interested to know exactly what kind of volume of music the RIAA claims this 12-year-old girl shared to garner herself one of 200-some-odd lawsuits, supposedly aimed at "top" file-sharers.
Was he really trying to kill someone by this? Clearly they didn't think of the consequences when they did what they did.
Hence, my point about their complete lack of reasoning ability. If they can't differentiate between reality and a game, they have bigger problems than having played GTA. I own GTA3, but you don't see me taking a sniper rifle, finding a high place, and shooting people, do you? I played Doom and Quake and Wolf3D and so forth, but I never gave a single thought to actually doing anything resembling what happened in those games. If someone does, far as I'm concerned, they have serious problems, and should see a medical professional, not whine about how "the game made me do it!"
Well, I can see playing, wrestling around, and _accidentally_ injuring someone - breaking a bone or whatever. It's a completely different matter when you have a GUN in your hand, and are SHOOTING at passing vehicles, and when someone gets hurt, saying "but I didn't mean to!" - gee, what did you _think_ would happen when you started shooting at moving vehicles? They don't drive themselves. Therefore, someone's inside, and if that bullet hits them, it will maim or kill them. So these kids lack reasoning skills as well as decent parents and self-control...
Yet it's not because they can't control them, it's a matter of choice. The parents are doing what they want to do, the kids are doing what they want to do, and neither is paying much mind to the other. Saying they "can't" is just another way of choosing not to take a more active role in their kids' lives. The "continuous oversight" to which you refer isn't much of one - parents who are physically present, but not actually paying attention to their kids, aren't being effective parents.
The sad part is people who want kids but can't have their own have to go through the wringer HARD CORE to adopt a kid. Some family friends ended up going to China to adopt 2 wonderful little girls - in part because the US adoption system is so royally screwed. However, if you have the working parts, as you said, you can have as many as you want, and nobody can stop you. It's really sad when people who WANT kids, and will love them, and take care of them, and look out for them, but couldn't otherwise, have to work so hard, and a whole lot of people who don't really give a rat's ass don't.
While I think people should have the right to own guns if they choose, I think they should also take responsibility for what's done with them. I've hunted, and when I was young I took a hunters' safety course. My parents always taught my the proper way to handle firearms (always assume the gun is LOADED, and NEVER EVER point the gun at anything you don't damn well mean to shoot).
But what is such a suit going to do for any of the things you mentioned? Nothing. Not a damn thing. It's just going to, if the people bringing the suit win, get them lots of money, probably make Take2/Rockstar (good game developers by the way) cut back their game development, or go out of business, and make the ambulance-chasing attorney well-known in litigious circles, getting him more clients than he knows what to do with. That's all. It's obvious, as others have mentioned, they're not interested in going after who's actually responsible (the parents, for not bothering to parent their kids), but instead to go after whoever has lots of money, so they can get a nice fat wad out of the deal.
I believe teenagers are more impressionable than adults, and we should be careful about their level of violence ingested.
Yes, and whose responsibility should that be? Maybe... um... could it be... THE PARENTS' JOB? They bring the little brats^Wdarling angels into the world, yet we can't expect them to actually know what the kids are doing? Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
No doubt. And I doubt the parents of these kids knew where they were, or what they were doing. Problem kids + parents that don't know (or apparently care) what their kids are doing = disaster. Plain and simple. You wouldn't think this would be a hard puzzle to put together.
I've seen two of the "unaired" episodes (recorded from SciFi UK), and I enjoyed them immensely. Definitely a series worth buying on DVD when it's released.
Well, it's Microsoft now, and it wasn't Microsoft then. Microsoft's management obviously thinks they should not be subject to the same rules as everyone else, otherwise they'd say "gee, we were all on about the whole 'openness' thing before... it'd be awfully hypocritical of us to go all closed now that it's us." But when has Microsoft ever not fallen in the "hypocritical" category, anyway?
Think about who's running the government right now. Consider how the previous case against Microsoft pissed away to nothing after the current administration took over. You really think they give a rat's pink, fuzzy ass about having the DOJ go after Microsoft? They'd probably rather give them an award, for cripes' sake.
you can rely on it to screw up in some new way every time you turn your back. I think that's the kind of reliability Bill was talking about, don't you?
Re:Dear Comrade McBride....
on
SCO Roundup
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· Score: 1
Personally, I've known a few Mormons. While they can be nice enough people, they're generally (IMHO) of a collusive and suspicious nature, often not wholly trusting or liking anyone who's not a member of the Mormon Church, and widely implementing the "good ol' boy" system that so many people love to hate. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that "devout Mormon" is anything to brag about, at least not outside of Mormon country.
You're saying it flips the CPU into little-endian mode when its timeslice comes up, and uses that so it doesn't have to handle endianness on its own?/me laughs till he's sobbing... that's amazing. Not to mention really pretty lame... but hey.
Funny, weren't the SCO execs saying not long ago that OS X and the free *BSD flavors also violater their intellectual property? I seem to remember something about it.
Funnily enough, it's getting used for that purpose - and it does a fine job of it. OS X is using OpenLDAP for its Open Directory service, Sun's iPlanet Directory Server is used for that, and Novell's eDirectory service is LDAP-based also. Debian itself includes libpam-ldap and libnss-ldap, to allow you to integrate user information and authentication with an LDAP directory.
Open Directory is just another name for LDAP. I've used Linux boxes with an LDAP directory server, and it's quite nice. And yes, when using apps built against PAM (what _isn't_ anymore?), and pam_ldap, you can set your directory server's policy so that only admins (or nobody, if you want) can directly see the password hashes, only authenticate against them. This is hardly new territory Apple is forging into here.
And I don't know if the person who started this thread will see this, but OS X is still using old-school DES password hashing. Not even MD5 hashes, like Linux and FreeBSD support (and have for awhile now!), or Blowfish hashes like OpenBSD does, just plain old DES.
Let me give you a clue. The Jet DB engine, which Access was based on until just recently, sucked. Badly. Its performance was terrible, and it was flaky. Now it's been replaced with a scaled-down MS SQL Server component. I haven't used it to see if this is an improvement over the old Jet engine - but I'd bet dollars to donuts that it is.
Having dealt with both Windows PCs and Macintosh systems in a support capacity, I think it's safe to say you're delusional. Be it hardware failure, legitimate software failure, or software problems caused by users with too much time on their hands (i.e., nothing better to do, screw with it till it breaks), Windows PCs may be a little ahead, but not by that much.
Seriously, if you think "Hey, if we just go all Mac, we won't _need_ support people!" you're deluding yourself.
Having worked in a public school district, I'd say the answer to that is a big, fat "no". Admittedly, Windows tends to eat itself every so often, especially if people are adding and removing software, so it'll probably need a reinstall slightly sooner.
However, with all the voodoo that a Mac entails - magic types, blessing bits, PRAM/XPRAM, and all that, it's hardly uncommon for someone to end up with a Mac that's in perfect working order, other than it just doesn't want to boot, and the user doesn't have a clue what to do. People play around in the System Folder, adding unnecessary extensions, and end up with it in an unbootable state. The OS crashes inexplicably one too many times, and the filesystem starts acting weird, so you have to have third-party repair tools handy.
Also, dealing with Apple's service can be a nightmare, especially with their AppleCare parts ordering, and the billing, especially when they screw up your billing, and start claiming that you owe them money for parts that you shipped back to them. Or when you order, and the order for the part gets lost - with an online ordering system. Always fun. (The place I worked for was AppleCare certified, so they dealt directly with Apple for parts - on more than a few occasions, we wished there was someone else to deal with that headache.) I hope they finally fixed the AppleCare online ordering, because it was really bad.
The fact is, Mac, PC, Linux box, whatever - a computer is a complicated device. A lot can, and does, go wrong - especially when most of the people using them can turn them on, run a few apps, and that's about the extent of their skills. Whether it's an actual failure, or just someone screwing around with things till they finally broke something, things will get screwed up, and techs will be needed to make them work again. If you really think "Ooh, if we just buy Apple, this will never be a problem again!" you're just deluding yourself.
Clam shell iBooks. These have 800*600 screens making them pretty horrible to use under X. Maybe its just because I'm use to my 19" Sony though.
Ridiculous. Hell, I ran Debian on an iBook (one of the blue ones with the 366 MHz G3 and Rage M3 video), and though the display was a bit cramped, it could play DivX AVIs and such just fine, Moz ran well, and it was a totally decent laptop. Even ran Mac-on-Linux quite nicely. I just had to make use of virtual desktops in wmaker. That's not exactly old hardware.
You can never dumb it down enough. And no two users use the same (ALWAYS vague) terms to refer to what they're talking about. How is the tech supposed to determine, based on a reference to the color and size of the casing of a device, just _which_ device they're referring to?
What do you people think the point of language is, anyway? It's so we can UNDERSTAND one another. If everyone's just going to use different words anyway, communication becomes inherently difficult. That's why we have nouns, and specific terminology in general - so we don't have to say "the thing by the thing in the place with the really big thing next to it".
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I did read the article, and it didn't say. Neither did the article pointing out that the RIAA was suing a 12-year-old. I'd suggest you read the article as well, and pay attention to what's NOT there, as well as what is.
I'm sure there will be plenty of threads here along the lines of: "$29.99 for all you can download... come on.... an "honor roll" student thought that a legit deal?"
Honestly, I don't think they really gave it too much thought. I mean, I doubt most non-geek types who do use peer-to-peer file sharing systems give the whole subject more than a passing thought. Though as others have mentioned, I'd be interested to know exactly what kind of volume of music the RIAA claims this 12-year-old girl shared to garner herself one of 200-some-odd lawsuits, supposedly aimed at "top" file-sharers.
Was he really trying to kill someone by this? Clearly they didn't think of the consequences when they did what they did.
Hence, my point about their complete lack of reasoning ability. If they can't differentiate between reality and a game, they have bigger problems than having played GTA. I own GTA3, but you don't see me taking a sniper rifle, finding a high place, and shooting people, do you? I played Doom and Quake and Wolf3D and so forth, but I never gave a single thought to actually doing anything resembling what happened in those games. If someone does, far as I'm concerned, they have serious problems, and should see a medical professional, not whine about how "the game made me do it!"
Well, I can see playing, wrestling around, and _accidentally_ injuring someone - breaking a bone or whatever. It's a completely different matter when you have a GUN in your hand, and are SHOOTING at passing vehicles, and when someone gets hurt, saying "but I didn't mean to!" - gee, what did you _think_ would happen when you started shooting at moving vehicles? They don't drive themselves. Therefore, someone's inside, and if that bullet hits them, it will maim or kill them. So these kids lack reasoning skills as well as decent parents and self-control...
Yet it's not because they can't control them, it's a matter of choice. The parents are doing what they want to do, the kids are doing what they want to do, and neither is paying much mind to the other. Saying they "can't" is just another way of choosing not to take a more active role in their kids' lives. The "continuous oversight" to which you refer isn't much of one - parents who are physically present, but not actually paying attention to their kids, aren't being effective parents.
The sad part is people who want kids but can't have their own have to go through the wringer HARD CORE to adopt a kid. Some family friends ended up going to China to adopt 2 wonderful little girls - in part because the US adoption system is so royally screwed. However, if you have the working parts, as you said, you can have as many as you want, and nobody can stop you. It's really sad when people who WANT kids, and will love them, and take care of them, and look out for them, but couldn't otherwise, have to work so hard, and a whole lot of people who don't really give a rat's ass don't.
While I think people should have the right to own guns if they choose, I think they should also take responsibility for what's done with them. I've hunted, and when I was young I took a hunters' safety course. My parents always taught my the proper way to handle firearms (always assume the gun is LOADED, and NEVER EVER point the gun at anything you don't damn well mean to shoot).
But what is such a suit going to do for any of the things you mentioned? Nothing. Not a damn thing. It's just going to, if the people bringing the suit win, get them lots of money, probably make Take2/Rockstar (good game developers by the way) cut back their game development, or go out of business, and make the ambulance-chasing attorney well-known in litigious circles, getting him more clients than he knows what to do with. That's all. It's obvious, as others have mentioned, they're not interested in going after who's actually responsible (the parents, for not bothering to parent their kids), but instead to go after whoever has lots of money, so they can get a nice fat wad out of the deal.
I believe teenagers are more impressionable than adults, and we should be careful about their level of violence ingested.
Yes, and whose responsibility should that be? Maybe... um... could it be... THE PARENTS' JOB? They bring the little brats^Wdarling angels into the world, yet we can't expect them to actually know what the kids are doing? Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
No doubt. And I doubt the parents of these kids knew where they were, or what they were doing. Problem kids + parents that don't know (or apparently care) what their kids are doing = disaster. Plain and simple. You wouldn't think this would be a hard puzzle to put together.
More like "What's yours is mine, what's mine is mine, and what's mine ain't yours."
I've seen two of the "unaired" episodes (recorded from SciFi UK), and I enjoyed them immensely. Definitely a series worth buying on DVD when it's released.
Well, it's Microsoft now, and it wasn't Microsoft then. Microsoft's management obviously thinks they should not be subject to the same rules as everyone else, otherwise they'd say "gee, we were all on about the whole 'openness' thing before... it'd be awfully hypocritical of us to go all closed now that it's us." But when has Microsoft ever not fallen in the "hypocritical" category, anyway?
Think about who's running the government right now. Consider how the previous case against Microsoft pissed away to nothing after the current administration took over. You really think they give a rat's pink, fuzzy ass about having the DOJ go after Microsoft? They'd probably rather give them an award, for cripes' sake.
Of course it's reliable...
you can rely on it to screw up in some new way every time you turn your back. I think that's the kind of reliability Bill was talking about, don't you?
Personally, I've known a few Mormons. While they can be nice enough people, they're generally (IMHO) of a collusive and suspicious nature, often not wholly trusting or liking anyone who's not a member of the Mormon Church, and widely implementing the "good ol' boy" system that so many people love to hate. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that "devout Mormon" is anything to brag about, at least not outside of Mormon country.
You're saying it flips the CPU into little-endian mode when its timeslice comes up, and uses that so it doesn't have to handle endianness on its own? /me laughs till he's sobbing... that's amazing. Not to mention really pretty lame... but hey.
Funny, weren't the SCO execs saying not long ago that OS X and the free *BSD flavors also violater their intellectual property? I seem to remember something about it.
Funnily enough, it's getting used for that purpose - and it does a fine job of it. OS X is using OpenLDAP for its Open Directory service, Sun's iPlanet Directory Server is used for that, and Novell's eDirectory service is LDAP-based also. Debian itself includes libpam-ldap and libnss-ldap, to allow you to integrate user information and authentication with an LDAP directory.
And the problem here is...?
Open Directory is just another name for LDAP. I've used Linux boxes with an LDAP directory server, and it's quite nice. And yes, when using apps built against PAM (what _isn't_ anymore?), and pam_ldap, you can set your directory server's policy so that only admins (or nobody, if you want) can directly see the password hashes, only authenticate against them. This is hardly new territory Apple is forging into here.
And I don't know if the person who started this thread will see this, but OS X is still using old-school DES password hashing. Not even MD5 hashes, like Linux and FreeBSD support (and have for awhile now!), or Blowfish hashes like OpenBSD does, just plain old DES.
Let me give you a clue. The Jet DB engine, which Access was based on until just recently, sucked. Badly. Its performance was terrible, and it was flaky. Now it's been replaced with a scaled-down MS SQL Server component. I haven't used it to see if this is an improvement over the old Jet engine - but I'd bet dollars to donuts that it is.
Having dealt with both Windows PCs and Macintosh systems in a support capacity, I think it's safe to say you're delusional. Be it hardware failure, legitimate software failure, or software problems caused by users with too much time on their hands (i.e., nothing better to do, screw with it till it breaks), Windows PCs may be a little ahead, but not by that much.
Seriously, if you think "Hey, if we just go all Mac, we won't _need_ support people!" you're deluding yourself.
Yes, and my point is that Apple's own OS can't deal well with their 800x600 display, yet X running on Linux handled it just fine.
Having worked in a public school district, I'd say the answer to that is a big, fat "no". Admittedly, Windows tends to eat itself every so often, especially if people are adding and removing software, so it'll probably need a reinstall slightly sooner.
However, with all the voodoo that a Mac entails - magic types, blessing bits, PRAM/XPRAM, and all that, it's hardly uncommon for someone to end up with a Mac that's in perfect working order, other than it just doesn't want to boot, and the user doesn't have a clue what to do. People play around in the System Folder, adding unnecessary extensions, and end up with it in an unbootable state. The OS crashes inexplicably one too many times, and the filesystem starts acting weird, so you have to have third-party repair tools handy.
Also, dealing with Apple's service can be a nightmare, especially with their AppleCare parts ordering, and the billing, especially when they screw up your billing, and start claiming that you owe them money for parts that you shipped back to them. Or when you order, and the order for the part gets lost - with an online ordering system. Always fun. (The place I worked for was AppleCare certified, so they dealt directly with Apple for parts - on more than a few occasions, we wished there was someone else to deal with that headache.) I hope they finally fixed the AppleCare online ordering, because it was really bad.
The fact is, Mac, PC, Linux box, whatever - a computer is a complicated device. A lot can, and does, go wrong - especially when most of the people using them can turn them on, run a few apps, and that's about the extent of their skills. Whether it's an actual failure, or just someone screwing around with things till they finally broke something, things will get screwed up, and techs will be needed to make them work again. If you really think "Ooh, if we just buy Apple, this will never be a problem again!" you're just deluding yourself.
Clam shell iBooks. These have 800*600 screens making them pretty horrible to use under X. Maybe its just because I'm use to my 19" Sony though.
Ridiculous. Hell, I ran Debian on an iBook (one of the blue ones with the 366 MHz G3 and Rage M3 video), and though the display was a bit cramped, it could play DivX AVIs and such just fine, Moz ran well, and it was a totally decent laptop. Even ran Mac-on-Linux quite nicely. I just had to make use of virtual desktops in wmaker. That's not exactly old hardware.
You can never dumb it down enough. And no two users use the same (ALWAYS vague) terms to refer to what they're talking about. How is the tech supposed to determine, based on a reference to the color and size of the casing of a device, just _which_ device they're referring to?
What do you people think the point of language is, anyway? It's so we can UNDERSTAND one another. If everyone's just going to use different words anyway, communication becomes inherently difficult. That's why we have nouns, and specific terminology in general - so we don't have to say "the thing by the thing in the place with the really big thing next to it".