It is staggering how much of our annual budget that we spend on the military, even in so called peace time. It is even scarier how much of this budget is used for spying and profiling American citizens.
Yeah, I voted for GWB because he said some of the right things. He said it was wrong that the Federal Government, in a time of peace, was taking in as much of the GDP as it did in WWII. He also thought the Federal Government was too invasive and should be scaled back. How clever of him to have justified it all with endless warfare in a few short years.
Give me supported hardware and drivers!... I'm tired of reverse engineered hardware support. It should not be this way anymore.
Yes, things should not be the way they are but binary drivers are not a good deal. "Reverse engineered hardware support" is often better than the driver provided by the device maker. How can that be? Easy, the maker can only afford so many hours of programming for any device but free drivers will be brought up to spec eventually. More importantly, free drivers never go away. The equipment will be "supported" by the free software community until the hardware is no longer considered useful and beyond. A binary driver may or may not work with newer kernels. Sooner or later, you will want to more on and the device will be as useless as if you installed service pack 2. The apparently obvious solution is to release free drivers and let users decide when the device is no longer valuable. For one reason or another, this does not often happen.
so you are saying that you will use materials that are copyrighted and yet distributed illegally?
No, silly. I'm saying that I don't need to listen to music or use software published by pigs. There's more than enough nice people to reward. I don't use music sharing networks because it's impossible to tell the two apart.
Not my life. I'm not handing control of my computers over to anyone for entertainment. I'm also not going to be buying any dissapearing files or renting music from pigopolists.
Given that people can download and upload any file free of charge, etc, it needs to be done, otherwise files get swapped around etc.
Electronic networks are the real fact of life. The phonograph and it's industry are obsolete. Those who cling to the old model will be outsold by those who move on. There's more ways to make money than selling physical coppies of crap hyped on ancient, and equally obsolete, broadcast networks.
People with bad attitudes make bad product. The alternative publishers are already just as good or better than the pigopolists. The difference is going to become more obvious.
when all the content produces who want to use DRM, get their DRM, you will have a clear choice: these are products with DRM these are without, and you can chose to buy what you want.
Which publishers considering DRM have not already published this way? The choice is already clear.
The question is will you go out of your way to get an illegally cracked version of the originally DRMed file?
What about the alternate sources of media did you not understand?
The general response is also already clear. People return DRM'd music and music sales continue to plummet. Microsoft and Sony have irreversibly damaged their own and everyone in the industry's reputations with schemes that don't work. People are not buying it.
He can bitch about it, but at the end it is the music industry's decision.
Bullshit, it's my decision. When the "music industry" makes something I don't want, I don't buy it. It's easy enough to get good quality music from artists and publishers who are not pigs. See Magnatune and Internet Archive Live Music.
Microsoft, Apple and others who make hardware that sucks will see similar results. OK, Apple sucks less but it's not good enough to only be a small pain in the ass. My next music player will have random playlists, ogg playback and standard data exchange so that free software can write to it. Here that? It's the sound my wallet makes when I keep it in my pocket.
DRM is stupid. Treating your customers like criminals is bad business. It won't work and no one's going to buy it.
Materials: foam house insulation, masonite (preferably the kind with white plastic used for bathroom walls) and liquid nails.
Cost of materials is 20 to 40 dollars depending on what and how much you buy.
Instructions: Rough cut desired shapes. Sandwich foam with two sheets of masonite and let dry. Cut and sand desired shape. Round edges and foam hiding trim are bonus features. The result will weigh a pound or two and have great stiffness and insulation properties.
You could simply buy a nice, old laptop that -=SHOCK=- works on your lap, such as the one I'm using right now. A 233MHz PII with 128 MB RAM and Debian Sarge is more than most people need for the usual browsing. They are small and don't burn the skin off your legs and lap. Just check the specs to make sure the video is at least 1024x768 16 bpp and you are good to go. Mine has 196 MB of ram and gets a little slow running Juk, but it's a great machine. Mepis, Sarge or Etch should set up in about 40 minutes. For less than $200, you won't lose much if things don't work out.
As for the malware thing, in order for a laptop to get on the network, it had to prove it was up-to-date each time, and had to prove it was running university-approved, up-to-date anti-malware (provided free by the institute). This worked marginally well with only a few outbreaks.
Oh please, Mr. Spirit, provide us with a link to such a dissaster. I can't believe it.
Art students had little to no trouble, as they all bought macs.:)
How the heck does that work? What does your little system think of Debian, which is more secure and less trouble that either of the above? What do visitors do? Who's software makes the check? If it's M$, aren't you afraid they will be up to their usual anti-competitive tricks?
up-to-date anti-malware (provided free by the institute).
You might check to see if you are not paying for this "service" through tech fees. Few anti-virus writers give their product away. The Microsoft shills and reps at my University are socking it to students at $150/year and calling it "free".
This worked marginally well with only a few outbreaks.
I'd consider that a failure, but others have lower expectations. If it is only a marginal success, why recommend it to others?
The downside? Tech support, and lots of it. Students got confused, broke stuff, or generally got mad when things didn't work on the first try.
Now that, I can believe. Everyone pays for Bill Gate's failures everyday. Why not just use software that works?
The fact that the president of the school has mandated this without any sort of investigation into the ramifications is a sign that you should polish up your resume and start looking for a new job. Unresearched, unfunded mandates from the higher-ups are a sign that you're working in IT hell.
Hmmm, that looks good but it's wrong on every level in this case. I don't know about you, but I like a leader who does not micromanage. Planning is good, but the kind of things you ask for don't exist outside of free software and even there choice is provided. I was more bothered that specific brand names were provided than I was about lack of planning to fill the "specs" someone came up with. Choice is key in academic settings.
Providing applications to students is something non free software has long failed to consider. LSU recently introduced an "environment of abundance" model where some applications were paid for with student fees. Most Microsoft users hated it because it mostly provides them with a chance to pay for the software that came with their laptop to begin with. Other applications required keys and were as clumsy as non free software always is. It does provide a sort of monoculture in anti-virus, but the campus networks remain polluted with all sorts of Microsoft born ills anyway. Local mirrors of free software are also being funded, but most of them were already there and the Microsoft "server" dishing out the applications does not do a very good job of categorizing free software applications by purpose.
For the most part, you don't know what answers the institution has already come up with. It would have been nice for links to such stuff, but it looks like the asker did not wish the institution to be identified. One thing is for sure, no funding further funding is required if the students are forced to pay for everything as the questioner implied.
"Quit Now" is not going to help anyone here. The only suspicious thing is the, "Dude, you're buying a Dell" note. If the specs the IT staff came up with is it has to M$ du jour, it might be time to look around. Reasonable hardware specs include processor speed equivalents and memory.
When it comes to actual teaching, reasonable assignments do not specify what tool only what has to be accomplished. The only time it's reasonable for a professor to specify a specific application is when the application is provided in the lab the class is taught in.
Q: what does a president have to do these days to get impeached when breaking an enshrined value in the constitution, and a law isn't enough?
Get a blowjob from an intern.
That's the AP / CNN / Sunday morning cartoon version of that story and it's a great example of how emasculated the US media really is. Endless front pages were dedicated to minor but salacious details of the scandal while the disturbing details were swept under the rug. The actual story was relegated to political rags and highbrow gossip magazines read by fewer than 0.1% of the population. Do you even remember who Paula Jones is? Did you know that Clinton systematically harassed her for more than a year, simply because she refused to have sex with him? The details are far uglier than Clinton's crooked member. Don't you find it ironic that a story of abuse like that would be buried by a supporter of "women's rights" like Hillary Clinton? What's not surprising is how easily big company owned media can be silenced by the US Federal Government. There are only three or four hands to tie and the vast majority of the US population remains clueless.
The lesson to learn is the power of the government to quash embarrassing news and that it's not related to party affiliation.
The whole perception modification thing has problems, despite massive effort, because people have memories. They can run all the adverts of happy teachers they want, people remember them suing public school systems because teachers coppied a text editor. Attempts to kiss up to "open source" developers simmilarly fail over when they turn aroung and pull an SCO. Their current business model requires exclusion of the, "what's your's is ours and what's ours is ours," kind. By this point, the only reason any one in tech has any empathy for M$ can only be explained in terms of hostage snydrome.
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Carnivore.
Carni who?
Carnivore.
I don't know any Carnivore.
That's OK, I've been operational for a while now and I know all about you. Chomp.
Sorry, big publishers and the federal government will make what you want impossible. That's why your 802.11 power is so low you can't see further than your neighbor's house, if you can see that far. It's why The FCC says two "broadband" providers in any town is enough competition for anyone and the public servitude is off limits. The things you fear, a lack of privacy, media lock-in, the inability to publish, are all goals of those who own the network and make the rules.
Somewhere along the line, a lot of people in these discussions got convinced that having access to good material was actually a right and not something that absolutely required the creator to let them have it,
That's not a bad outlook. I will not ask Time Warner for permission to sing happy birthday, the same way I would have to ask you before using your car. The Hill sisters would be outraged if I did have to ask. That's because the song is not property and it never will be. I'll always be able to share it with my friends, no matter how loud you act or how stupid you make laws. Free speech is a natural right which trumps the created rights of copyright. Good content will propagate with our without your pimping and will always be free despite your efforts. Indeed, good content will do better without the help of concentrated media and will flourish when the radio empires of the 1920s finally die.
Quote a little more next time. While he might be confused by the publishing industry, Congress is not. Here's your definition:
"Copyright owner, with respect to any one of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, refers to the owner of that particular right.
They own the copy right, not the work. The right is the exclusive ability to duplicate the work. A right is never property, even when it's artificially created by the state and may be traded for real property. People get confused about that, which lends to the disgusting coporate welfare known as perpetual copyright. If you can own a song, like a bag of marbles the ownership should never end. Your government is not yet so asinine as to say a song can be owned.
Indeed, Congress does not even believe in "Intellectual Property". While the terms occurs some nine times in the definitions and scope you cited mostly referencing a 2002 law which is named that way. There is no definition and, hopefully, never will be.
You don't have to use Korean IMEs and the pleasure that is 'Asianux' (think Lindows in its early days, and then try to imagine what must have been like 6 months before that).
As a Zaurus owner, I've used Hamcom software. It was OK in English, how bad could it be native?
Disclosure: I love Linux (for servers) and wouldn't choose anything else. But I sure have seen my share of "glitches"!
I love free software as a desktop and have seen fewer glitches there than under Windoze. I get better than sixty day uptimes running testing/unstable, unheard of in the Windoze world. Sure, every now and then something barfs but it never takes the system down and rarely even bothers X. The same server grade networking continues to churn and never has problems. I use free software on desktops, laptops and PDAs. With less tweaking than Windoze, it works better every time.
enormous discounts to keep them on windows. at our university, microsoft charges us about 10% of list price. a year or two ago, every employee at our university was given free upgrade to the latest version of windows
As the Softies are quick to point out, purchase costs are small parts of TCO. All the free beer in the world won't make up for time wasted on daily anti-virus runs, difficult place keeping due to short run times and an inadequate GUI. Even with co-operation of other M$ partners, the environment is hardly "abundant" and the complexities of non-free licensing take their toll. Microsoft, as much as they try, can not be all things to all people so everyone has half a dozen "third party" applications that have to be acquired, licensed and installed. Those installs, even when they don't disable other required programs, are notorious for their complexity and fragility. Just when you think you have what you need, the upgrade train or a worm comes along and wipes it all out. All of the above sucks life in a way that free software never will and the difference in costs and hassle will only grow as free software continues to improve. So, free beer is no longer good enough.
The only thing Microsoft has going for it is an aging, irrational fan base. They created that base with gifts and propaganda, but no propaganda will make up for their performance short falls. The free software model has proved itself again and again. The word is getting out.
Most places don't have that, thanks to the FCC engineered duopoly and that's very bad for the US economy. The local Bell wants that much for dial up and won't give you DSL for less. The local cable company want's it's fifty bucks a month, just like the phone company gets when you add the price of a land line. "Broadband" will remain expensive and I predict some people will quit using it and the US will fall further behind the rest of the world, at great cost of US businesses.
The only people who win in this situation are Holywood and the telco monopolies. People will continue sucking up movies and "consuming" other content through their choiceless and "pay per view" entertainment channels. As Holywood jacks up their rates more people will drop their cable modem costs. There's great entertainment at the Internet Archive and Magnatune, but it's not enough yet to replace the cable for most people. The losers will be anyone who wants to eliminate paper and the US post from their lives. Combined with M$ mal and spyware, dial up is unusable for business forms even the most efficient web forms LAMP can provide. The cost of business as usual is staggering.
if only 10% of all people click on that link and sign up, well....that's still a metric shit-ton of people....and with language like that I'm surely being conservative.
Did you ever consider the fact that paying people to use your search engine is pathetic, and that's newsworthy? The only proof is to look at the promise. We can be sure Bill has pulled the usual retail price inflation to get the price up to one million dollars, but the idea is still the same.
One million fake prize dollars:
50,000 free one month subscriptions to MSN! Half the winners will use an AOL CD from the mail by mistake.
50,000 free dissapearing WMAs from the New Napster!
10 Works for sure players.
Bill's own ipod, just kidding.
100 coppies of M$ Word, give away version on five cents worth of CD.
10 coupons for Vista with new Dell Purchase, void where prohibited by actual cost to Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I voted for GWB because he said some of the right things. He said it was wrong that the Federal Government, in a time of peace, was taking in as much of the GDP as it did in WWII. He also thought the Federal Government was too invasive and should be scaled back. How clever of him to have justified it all with endless warfare in a few short years.
Yes, things should not be the way they are but binary drivers are not a good deal. "Reverse engineered hardware support" is often better than the driver provided by the device maker. How can that be? Easy, the maker can only afford so many hours of programming for any device but free drivers will be brought up to spec eventually. More importantly, free drivers never go away. The equipment will be "supported" by the free software community until the hardware is no longer considered useful and beyond. A binary driver may or may not work with newer kernels. Sooner or later, you will want to more on and the device will be as useless as if you installed service pack 2. The apparently obvious solution is to release free drivers and let users decide when the device is no longer valuable. For one reason or another, this does not often happen.
No, silly. I'm saying that I don't need to listen to music or use software published by pigs. There's more than enough nice people to reward. I don't use music sharing networks because it's impossible to tell the two apart.
Not my life. I'm not handing control of my computers over to anyone for entertainment. I'm also not going to be buying any dissapearing files or renting music from pigopolists.
Given that people can download and upload any file free of charge, etc, it needs to be done, otherwise files get swapped around etc.
Electronic networks are the real fact of life. The phonograph and it's industry are obsolete. Those who cling to the old model will be outsold by those who move on. There's more ways to make money than selling physical coppies of crap hyped on ancient, and equally obsolete, broadcast networks.
The less money going to pigopolist, the more money there will be for content creators. Witness Magnatune and recording friendly bands on the internet archive. More money will make more content and everyone will win.
People with bad attitudes make bad product. The alternative publishers are already just as good or better than the pigopolists. The difference is going to become more obvious.
Which publishers considering DRM have not already published this way? The choice is already clear.
The question is will you go out of your way to get an illegally cracked version of the originally DRMed file?
What about the alternate sources of media did you not understand?
The general response is also already clear. People return DRM'd music and music sales continue to plummet. Microsoft and Sony have irreversibly damaged their own and everyone in the industry's reputations with schemes that don't work. People are not buying it.
Bullshit, it's my decision. When the "music industry" makes something I don't want, I don't buy it. It's easy enough to get good quality music from artists and publishers who are not pigs. See Magnatune and Internet Archive Live Music.
Microsoft, Apple and others who make hardware that sucks will see similar results. OK, Apple sucks less but it's not good enough to only be a small pain in the ass. My next music player will have random playlists, ogg playback and standard data exchange so that free software can write to it. Here that? It's the sound my wallet makes when I keep it in my pocket.
DRM is stupid. Treating your customers like criminals is bad business. It won't work and no one's going to buy it.
Materials: foam house insulation, masonite (preferably the kind with white plastic used for bathroom walls) and liquid nails.
Cost of materials is 20 to 40 dollars depending on what and how much you buy.
Instructions: Rough cut desired shapes. Sandwich foam with two sheets of masonite and let dry. Cut and sand desired shape. Round edges and foam hiding trim are bonus features. The result will weigh a pound or two and have great stiffness and insulation properties.
Use: Put on legs and run computer.
Storage: beside couch.
It needs voice recognition and one line. "When you are ready for help again, say uncle."
As for the malware thing, in order for a laptop to get on the network, it had to prove it was up-to-date each time, and had to prove it was running university-approved, up-to-date anti-malware (provided free by the institute). This worked marginally well with only a few outbreaks.
Oh please, Mr. Spirit, provide us with a link to such a dissaster. I can't believe it.
Art students had little to no trouble, as they all bought macs. :)
How the heck does that work? What does your little system think of Debian, which is more secure and less trouble that either of the above? What do visitors do? Who's software makes the check? If it's M$, aren't you afraid they will be up to their usual anti-competitive tricks?
up-to-date anti-malware (provided free by the institute).
You might check to see if you are not paying for this "service" through tech fees. Few anti-virus writers give their product away. The Microsoft shills and reps at my University are socking it to students at $150/year and calling it "free".
This worked marginally well with only a few outbreaks.
I'd consider that a failure, but others have lower expectations. If it is only a marginal success, why recommend it to others?
The downside? Tech support, and lots of it. Students got confused, broke stuff, or generally got mad when things didn't work on the first try.
Now that, I can believe. Everyone pays for Bill Gate's failures everyday. Why not just use software that works?
Hmmm, that looks good but it's wrong on every level in this case. I don't know about you, but I like a leader who does not micromanage. Planning is good, but the kind of things you ask for don't exist outside of free software and even there choice is provided. I was more bothered that specific brand names were provided than I was about lack of planning to fill the "specs" someone came up with. Choice is key in academic settings.
Providing applications to students is something non free software has long failed to consider. LSU recently introduced an "environment of abundance" model where some applications were paid for with student fees. Most Microsoft users hated it because it mostly provides them with a chance to pay for the software that came with their laptop to begin with. Other applications required keys and were as clumsy as non free software always is. It does provide a sort of monoculture in anti-virus, but the campus networks remain polluted with all sorts of Microsoft born ills anyway. Local mirrors of free software are also being funded, but most of them were already there and the Microsoft "server" dishing out the applications does not do a very good job of categorizing free software applications by purpose.
For the most part, you don't know what answers the institution has already come up with. It would have been nice for links to such stuff, but it looks like the asker did not wish the institution to be identified. One thing is for sure, no funding further funding is required if the students are forced to pay for everything as the questioner implied.
"Quit Now" is not going to help anyone here. The only suspicious thing is the, "Dude, you're buying a Dell" note. If the specs the IT staff came up with is it has to M$ du jour, it might be time to look around. Reasonable hardware specs include processor speed equivalents and memory.
When it comes to actual teaching, reasonable assignments do not specify what tool only what has to be accomplished. The only time it's reasonable for a professor to specify a specific application is when the application is provided in the lab the class is taught in.
Get a blowjob from an intern.
That's the AP / CNN / Sunday morning cartoon version of that story and it's a great example of how emasculated the US media really is. Endless front pages were dedicated to minor but salacious details of the scandal while the disturbing details were swept under the rug. The actual story was relegated to political rags and highbrow gossip magazines read by fewer than 0.1% of the population. Do you even remember who Paula Jones is? Did you know that Clinton systematically harassed her for more than a year, simply because she refused to have sex with him? The details are far uglier than Clinton's crooked member. Don't you find it ironic that a story of abuse like that would be buried by a supporter of "women's rights" like Hillary Clinton? What's not surprising is how easily big company owned media can be silenced by the US Federal Government. There are only three or four hands to tie and the vast majority of the US population remains clueless.
The lesson to learn is the power of the government to quash embarrassing news and that it's not related to party affiliation.
Don't forget the PDA with wifi and a 1 GB MMC. Much less work required to program that one.
It's amazing how companies treat the people who produce their "secrets" as spies instead of producers who need to be kept happy.
Nothing new here.
Who's there?
Carnivore.
Carni who?
Carnivore.
I don't know any Carnivore.
That's OK, I've been operational for a while now and I know all about you. Chomp.
Sorry, big publishers and the federal government will make what you want impossible. That's why your 802.11 power is so low you can't see further than your neighbor's house, if you can see that far. It's why The FCC says two "broadband" providers in any town is enough competition for anyone and the public servitude is off limits. The things you fear, a lack of privacy, media lock-in, the inability to publish, are all goals of those who own the network and make the rules.
This is, of course, more reason to build.
That's not a bad outlook. I will not ask Time Warner for permission to sing happy birthday, the same way I would have to ask you before using your car. The Hill sisters would be outraged if I did have to ask. That's because the song is not property and it never will be. I'll always be able to share it with my friends, no matter how loud you act or how stupid you make laws. Free speech is a natural right which trumps the created rights of copyright. Good content will propagate with our without your pimping and will always be free despite your efforts. Indeed, good content will do better without the help of concentrated media and will flourish when the radio empires of the 1920s finally die.
They own the copy right, not the work. The right is the exclusive ability to duplicate the work. A right is never property, even when it's artificially created by the state and may be traded for real property. People get confused about that, which lends to the disgusting coporate welfare known as perpetual copyright. If you can own a song, like a bag of marbles the ownership should never end. Your government is not yet so asinine as to say a song can be owned.
Indeed, Congress does not even believe in "Intellectual Property". While the terms occurs some nine times in the definitions and scope you cited mostly referencing a 2002 law which is named that way. There is no definition and, hopefully, never will be.
As a Zaurus owner, I've used Hamcom software. It was OK in English, how bad could it be native?
I love free software as a desktop and have seen fewer glitches there than under Windoze. I get better than sixty day uptimes running testing/unstable, unheard of in the Windoze world. Sure, every now and then something barfs but it never takes the system down and rarely even bothers X. The same server grade networking continues to churn and never has problems. I use free software on desktops, laptops and PDAs. With less tweaking than Windoze, it works better every time.
As the Softies are quick to point out, purchase costs are small parts of TCO. All the free beer in the world won't make up for time wasted on daily anti-virus runs, difficult place keeping due to short run times and an inadequate GUI. Even with co-operation of other M$ partners, the environment is hardly "abundant" and the complexities of non-free licensing take their toll. Microsoft, as much as they try, can not be all things to all people so everyone has half a dozen "third party" applications that have to be acquired, licensed and installed. Those installs, even when they don't disable other required programs, are notorious for their complexity and fragility. Just when you think you have what you need, the upgrade train or a worm comes along and wipes it all out. All of the above sucks life in a way that free software never will and the difference in costs and hassle will only grow as free software continues to improve. So, free beer is no longer good enough.
The only thing Microsoft has going for it is an aging, irrational fan base. They created that base with gifts and propaganda, but no propaganda will make up for their performance short falls. The free software model has proved itself again and again. The word is getting out.
Most places don't have that, thanks to the FCC engineered duopoly and that's very bad for the US economy. The local Bell wants that much for dial up and won't give you DSL for less. The local cable company want's it's fifty bucks a month, just like the phone company gets when you add the price of a land line. "Broadband" will remain expensive and I predict some people will quit using it and the US will fall further behind the rest of the world, at great cost of US businesses.
The only people who win in this situation are Holywood and the telco monopolies. People will continue sucking up movies and "consuming" other content through their choiceless and "pay per view" entertainment channels. As Holywood jacks up their rates more people will drop their cable modem costs. There's great entertainment at the Internet Archive and Magnatune, but it's not enough yet to replace the cable for most people. The losers will be anyone who wants to eliminate paper and the US post from their lives. Combined with M$ mal and spyware, dial up is unusable for business forms even the most efficient web forms LAMP can provide. The cost of business as usual is staggering.
if only 10% of all people click on that link and sign up, well....that's still a metric shit-ton of people....and with language like that I'm surely being conservative.
Did you ever consider the fact that paying people to use your search engine is pathetic, and that's newsworthy? The only proof is to look at the promise. We can be sure Bill has pulled the usual retail price inflation to get the price up to one million dollars, but the idea is still the same.
One million fake prize dollars:
My favorite advert prizes are more adverts.