Actually, I don't think the Open Source Movement has much contribute to the fight against DRM. Let's not forget that Open Source is just a way of writing software. The Free Software Movement however really fought against DRM, for example the Free Software Foundation launched the campaign DefectiveByDesign.org.
I don't think DRM is the solution to multiplayer cheating (I use the term 'multiplayer cheating' to distinguish between legitimate cheating against bots and cheating while playing against other players). Like all the copy restrictions show us, any DRM restriction can and will be cracked sooner or later.
There is another way to stop multiplayer cheating: Don't give the client information. Why are you able to code a wallhack? Because your computer knows where the enemy behind the walls is. DRM doesn't work, so we have to assume that everything your computer knows, you might know, too. But if your computer doesn't have the information about players behind a wall, if only the server has this kind of information, then there is no way for you to code a wallhack.
Why should your computer have the information who is behind the wall? There are two reasons why that is so: If the server has to calculate everything what you do, that a) costs much calculating effort b) takes much time (you have to send the information what's on your screen over the internet, instead of just to your monitor)
With Moore's help (and his law) we may be able to solve a), however I don't have a fix for b). Do you have?
Yes, however the German government doesn't plan to contribute through hiring people to improve Wikipedia, but to write about what they care about, renewable resources. From what I have heard, the government does not donate money to help pay the servers, they just use Wikipedia to spread their information.
It is better than what Microsoft did, because they improve Wikipedia (at least that's what I expect, being neutral and respect WP:NPOV) It is not the best they could have done, because it doesn't help to pay the costs. There are enough contributors; what Wikipedia needs from organizations / governments / companies is money for the servers.
Very simple
on
Pimp Your XP
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
1. Go to this homepage, choose a mirror and download image.
2. Burn image on CD
3. Insert CD, follow instructions
4. ???
5. Profit!
No it is not. Just because you got some copyrighted stuff from someone who doesn't care about copyright, you are not allowed to disobey copyright yourself. So if you live in such a country as Sweden like the pirate bay does, you can use those images. In the U.S. and most European countries you are not allowed to.
The question is: will it help? In Germany they also have a big controversy about violence in computer games (they call it "killergames" / de: "Killerspiele"). But the politicians don't ask them self if banning a computer game stops the users from using it. If the children can't buy it at the store, they'll just download it from the bittorent or edonkey network. And if they don't have an internet connection, they copy it from their friends. Children are not stupid.
Another question is: is this appropriate? I can truly understand that the politicians don't want to promote violence in games, but it's one thing to not like something and a complete other thing to ban/censor something.
Their strategy is not to win those cases in front of court. They just want to scare you by suing innocent people. They want you to think "if that innocent guy got sued, maybe I am next". It's a bit like terrorism.
Parent is right. Any form of eVoting must be free software so that everyone can study it (or learn how to study it first). Besides, Microsoft is a way too big company that has its own political interests.
Wikipedia says on the Planet Express Ship: "The ship is capable of travel faster than the current speed of light, after the speed of light was increased to allow faster travel" [...]
"allowing the ship to go faster than the speed of light"
Schools should use free software. They should educate their students about their digital freedom. They should expand their Microsoft-only view. Why do you think no non-geeks care about digital freedom in our time? They don't know what freedom of software is like, because no one educated them.
I'm the Administrator of my school's homepage and I use the software MediaWiki also used by Wikipedia. Of course, it's designed mainly for community projects such as Wikipedia and Wikia-Wikis but it works equally well with few editors. And you have the big advantage of being able to open up your homepage, making it editable by others (in my case, the teachers and perhaps even students).
What I don't like about Joomla and all those WYSIWYG-Editors is, that the homepage is not standardized. Every editor has his own way of formatting and making headlines and so you get many pieces instead of _one_ homepage. With MediaWiki you just enter == Headline ==
and every headline looks the same.
IMHO, MediaWiki is a great choice, particularly if you have more than one editor.
Microsoft's new algorithms correctly guessed the gender of a Web surfer 80% of the time, and his or her age 60% of the time.
A bit strange in my opinion. "Guessing the gender correctly" has already 50% even if you don't have any data about the user. So there is not much improvement here.
But the age... if you really guess the age thats more difficult. If we say we have everyone in the Internet up to the age of 100, you have a 1% change of guessing the age - much less than 50%.
So even if you improve only up to 60%; getting from 1% to 60% is much more than from 50% to 80%.
Perhaps they mean "guessing the age with a tolerance of 10 years"
Slashdot Mirror
He applauds the Open Source Movement
Actually, I don't think the Open Source Movement has much contribute to the fight against DRM. Let's not forget that Open Source is just a way of writing software. The Free Software Movement however really fought against DRM, for example the Free Software Foundation launched the campaign DefectiveByDesign.org.
I don't think DRM is the solution to multiplayer cheating (I use the term 'multiplayer cheating' to distinguish between legitimate cheating against bots and cheating while playing against other players). Like all the copy restrictions show us, any DRM restriction can and will be cracked sooner or later.
There is another way to stop multiplayer cheating: Don't give the client information. Why are you able to code a wallhack? Because your computer knows where the enemy behind the walls is. DRM doesn't work, so we have to assume that everything your computer knows, you might know, too. But if your computer doesn't have the information about players behind a wall, if only the server has this kind of information, then there is no way for you to code a wallhack.
Why should your computer have the information who is behind the wall? There are two reasons why that is so: If the server has to calculate everything what you do, that
a) costs much calculating effort
b) takes much time (you have to send the information what's on your screen over the internet, instead of just to your monitor)
With Moore's help (and his law) we may be able to solve a), however I don't have a fix for b). Do you have?
It is Defective by Design. Don't buy this stuff
Yes, however the German government doesn't plan to contribute through hiring people to improve Wikipedia, but to write about what they care about, renewable resources. From what I have heard, the government does not donate money to help pay the servers, they just use Wikipedia to spread their information.
It is better than what Microsoft did, because they improve Wikipedia (at least that's what I expect, being neutral and respect WP:NPOV)
It is not the best they could have done, because it doesn't help to pay the costs. There are enough contributors; what Wikipedia needs from organizations / governments / companies is money for the servers.
1. Go to this homepage, choose a mirror and download image.
2. Burn image on CD
3. Insert CD, follow instructions
4. ???
5. Profit!
On the other side, the pirate bay in Sweden is still legal... do one need to understand that kind of logic?
No it is not. Just because you got some copyrighted stuff from someone who doesn't care about copyright, you are not allowed to disobey copyright yourself. So if you live in such a country as Sweden like the pirate bay does, you can use those images. In the U.S. and most European countries you are not allowed to.
Image files with 100MB? Seriously? That seems quite large, even for packing some images in one archive.
The question is: will it help? In Germany they also have a big controversy about violence in computer games (they call it "killergames" / de: "Killerspiele"). But the politicians don't ask them self if banning a computer game stops the users from using it. If the children can't buy it at the store, they'll just download it from the bittorent or edonkey network. And if they don't have an internet connection, they copy it from their friends. Children are not stupid.
Another question is: is this appropriate? I can truly understand that the politicians don't want to promote violence in games, but it's one thing to not like something and a complete other thing to ban/censor something.
Their strategy is not to win those cases in front of court. They just want to scare you by suing innocent people. They want you to think "if that innocent guy got sued, maybe I am next". It's a bit like terrorism.
Parent is right. Any form of eVoting must be free software so that everyone can study it (or learn how to study it first). Besides, Microsoft is a way too big company that has its own political interests.
I guess that's what America has to learn. "Go West" doesn't work anymore.
Duck and Cover: Watch on youtube / Download at archive.org (avi/mpg/mp4) / Wikipedia article
Nowadays we can laugh about it but consider that people might laugh in 30 years about what we think now.
Read what you link.
Wikipedia says on the Planet Express Ship: "The ship is capable of travel faster than the current speed of light, after the speed of light was increased to allow faster travel"
[...]
"allowing the ship to go faster than the speed of light"
I liked Elephants Dream very much. BTW: You can download it here as Avi or Quicktime.
Schools should use free software. They should educate their students about their digital freedom. They should expand their Microsoft-only view.
Why do you think no non-geeks care about digital freedom in our time? They don't know what freedom of software is like, because no one educated them.
I'm the Administrator of my school's homepage and I use the software MediaWiki also used by Wikipedia. Of course, it's designed mainly for community projects such as Wikipedia and Wikia-Wikis but it works equally well with few editors. And you have the big advantage of being able to open up your homepage, making it editable by others (in my case, the teachers and perhaps even students).
What I don't like about Joomla and all those WYSIWYG-Editors is, that the homepage is not standardized. Every editor has his own way of formatting and making headlines and so you get many pieces instead of _one_ homepage. With MediaWiki you just enter
== Headline ==
and every headline looks the same.
IMHO, MediaWiki is a great choice, particularly if you have more than one editor.
I'd take the Wiktionary article (though I agree that it's not really a protection)
They hope that if the files are just large enough, no one will try to download them :)
.torrent?
In the case the server goes down: Anyone got a
Microsoft's new algorithms correctly guessed the gender of a Web surfer 80% of the time, and his or her age 60% of the time.
A bit strange in my opinion. "Guessing the gender correctly" has already 50% even if you don't have any data about the user. So there is not much improvement here.
But the age... if you really guess the age thats more difficult. If we say we have everyone in the Internet up to the age of 100, you have a 1% change of guessing the age - much less than 50%.
So even if you improve only up to 60%; getting from 1% to 60% is much more than from 50% to 80%.
Perhaps they mean "guessing the age with a tolerance of 10 years"
The more fingers you have, the farther you can count.
in all major formats including Flash, QuickTime, RealMedia and Window Media
What about Ogg (+Vorbis/Theora)?
Flash and Windows Media are just as bad as RealMedia. No improvement this far, in my opinion.
I'd rather buy the movie than view it in camcorder quality (or not watch it at all).
I don't want to be a quibbler, but it's actually Amarok instead of amaroK. It was renamed in June 2006. Source
I think they, too, have frog genes in their DNA. Just like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park!
Beware of the frog!