May I be the first to do so regardless of whether anything is legitimised; that would make it even worse IMO--as I don't download non-free (as in freedom) music or software
So? Isn't that how it is for most taxes? I don't have any children, yet I have to pay for schools. I don't go to parks, yet I have to help pay for them. There are thousands of highways I shall never use but am forced to pay for.
So, if downloading music were legitimized in exchange for a tax on something, I don't see how this would be any different from any other tax.
What are the chances of someone being able to even hit the cockpit, let alone the pilot's eyes with a commercial laser pointer from 300m+(ballpark figure, but they'd have to stay hidden) against a moving plane?
Take a coin, flip it 100 times, and record the sequence of heads and tails. What were the chances of getting that sequence? 1 in 2^100. Yet...you got it!
You are implicitly assuming that they hit the cockpit of the first plane they tried, on the first attempt, and hit it at exactly the time they wished. Of course that would be ridiculously hard to do.
However, since failures won't be detectable, they could have been trying this for a year with each plane that flew by, and finally managed to hit one.
this is nothing but a bunch of people freaking out about isolated incidents
Well, that's a relief. When a blinded pilot crashes on top of me, it will be quite comforting to know that it was an isolated incident, so I needn't worry about it happening too often.
Citibank is giving away iPod Minis if you open a checking account and keep it for a year, and pay two bills online a month from it. (Go to their main page and click the picture of the iPod if you want the details).
Note that this is no psuedo-pyramid scheme. You do not have to sign anyone else up. Reading the fine print, and adding up the fees, and taking into account the opportunity cost of having money in a lousy bank account instead of some good investment, it still looks to me like it only costs about $120-$150 to get a $250 iPod Mini.
As far as the psuedo-pyramid free iPod schemes go, they checked them out on The Screen Savers. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht both tried it, as did Alex's girlfriend. They all received their iPods. Kevin and Alex might have been recognized and treated specially, but there was nothing special about Alex's girlfriend, so it seemed that it really did work.
You would think Microsoft wouldn't let people mirror their software - after all, they always tell people that you can't trust software on mirrors. Huge security risk, you know
This seems to me like a really bad way for them to do that. If you play for a day with accelerated XP, when things revert back to normal, it could make the game seem slow to many people. The last thing you want to do in an MMORPG is call attention to the grind that many games become.
If they want to give XP to make up for the downtime, do it in a lump sum.
Also, what about the people who won't be playing during the accelerated XP time? Some of them are going to feel left out on the making good.
There's a lot of scary things here, but to me what is most scary is that American copyright owners can mobilize foreign police to do their bidding
Generally, those "American copyright owners" are also the German copyright owners, and the French copyright owners, and the Japanese copyright owners, and the Russian copyright owners. About the only place they aren't the copyright owners is Gilligan's Island.
Perhaps an NYT ad would do the trick - let people know that there's a cheap alternative to Office, with builtin PDF support for instance
It's not really the same as the Firefox situation. Firefox is simply a better browser than IE, in almost all ways. Basically, the only reasonably acceptable reason for not using Firefox over IE is that you haven't heard of Firefox. Thus, the NYT ad makes sense.
OpenOffice, on the other hand, while getting very good, is still not as good as Microsoft Office in many ways. If you are on a platform that can run either, and you aren't picking based on philosophy (e.g., you simply hate Microsoft, or insist on open source software) or price, then MS Office is still the better choice.
So, any money that could be spent on an ad would be better spent on development and documentation, to try to close the gap with MS Office.
DLP is nothing close to light weight and small footprint when compared to LCD and Plasma
DLP sets and LCD sets of the same screen size have pretty much the same footprint. A 50" LCD set does NOT have a 50" LCD panel. It has a very small LCD panel, which is projected.
Two words - avoid BitTorrent. HUGE investigations are going on to bust bittorrent users
Wrong. There are no investigations going on to bust bittorrent users. There are investigations going on to bust people doing illegal file sharing, and some of them happen to be using bittorrent.
I'm not convinced. You can't patent "a graphical user interface which presents applications in their own 'window'" because *everyone* does those (and even if they didn't, MS doesn't have prior art). So in theory, if you binned copyright laws then you could steal MS's code for that since it's not patentable
The problem is that is just one aspect of Microsoft software, and there is no effective way to just copy the unpatentable parts or unpatented parts.
It seems to me that MS has as much to lose as ith *nix people. If there is no copyright on software then the only way to prevent piracy from becomming legal is the click through agreements, and they seems sort of shakey to me, legally
No, this would not make copying Microsoft software legal, because most Microsoft software is covered by patents, and Microsoft is big enough to make sure that everything significant they do incorporates patented stuff.
It is the smaller companies that would be totally screwed by this, and the free software developers.
You mean I can run a native version of OpenOffice.org on my Mac without dealing with X11? Where do I get it?
Well, if you are willing to pay, and don't mind having to put up with software that is way better than OpenOffice, you can get Microsoft Office 2004.:-)
Bad idea for stupid parents who are going to be outwitted by their kids just turning off the phones?
Uhm...the parent can simply make their child's driving privileges contingent upon the child keeping the phone on (and with them in the car) while driving.
2 passwords, none of them are words, easy to remember. anyone else have a few standard passwords?
Yes, I have a few. One for my accounts on machines I basically have sole control of (and never use anywhere else), one that is used for things where I don't care too much if other people find it out, and a couple in between. I also have one really good password (equivalent to about 110 random bits) that is used only to protect my personal GPG secret key.
However, note that this is not really all that good a way to do things. The problem is that if you use standard password X with unrelated services S1 and S2, then if your password to S1 is compromised, S2 also falls. Also, I occassionaly forget which standard password goes with which site, so might first try to login to S1 using standard password Y. So, if S1 is compromised, they might get more than one of my passwords! Oops.
What is really needed is something that generates good random passwords on demand, that you can use whenever some site or place asks you to register. This needs to be easy to use, and it then needs to store the password, encrypted, locally. There then needs to be something that makes it very easy to retrieve said local encrypted passwords when needed. This too needs to be easy to use (which includes only asking you to provide your master password once per session), AND it needs to be safe against malware, AND it needs to work with most or all websites and with most email clients.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be built into the OS, actually, so that every application that might want to deal with passwords can count on it being there, and make use of it.
On Windows, the problem will be all the malware out there. You need the system to protect this thing so that even on a compromised system, you don't lose all your passwords.
On Linux, the problem will be getting anyone to agree on how to do it. I'm sure the Gnome people and the KDE people will have different ideas of how it should work, and they will be mutually incompatible.
Encrypted data doesn't compress because it is ALREADY compressed during the encryption process
Even if you don't compress during the encryption process, encrypted data doesn't compress, so I'd say that the poor compressibility of encrypted data is not because of the decompression during the encryption process.
Ooooohhhhh, it causes problems for people NOT running OSX and Safari. Okay, well good luck with that...
Safari on OS X is subject to the problem. In fact, on my Powerbook, I had no trouble seeing it with Safari, with Firefox, and with IE in VPC. I did have to be careful to pick the right link on the demo page.
Personally, having used multi-button moused laptops for a long time, and now having the PowerBook with an interface designed for a single button mouse, I have come to the (surprise) conclusion that a single button mouse is superior on a laptop
Normally, the best number of buttons is a matter of personal preference, but since we are talking about laptops, you are in fact wrong.:-) That is because, unlike on the desktop, using a third-party mouse on a laptop can be a pain. Thus, the right thing to do would have been to include two buttons in the hardware, and make the software default to treating them as one button.
Then, those that want two buttons could simply go to the preferences and change the setting.
Apple could have even made the cap on the buttons removable, and provided both a single cap that spans both buttons and separate caps for those who want to use two buttons.
I know that there is ctrl-click instead of a second button, but there are two problems with that. First, if you are trying to do a drag with the second button, it is hard to do one-handed, because you have to use two fingers for ctrl-click, and a third to drag. Second, there is only one ctrl key on the Powerbook keyboard, making ctrl-click hard to do with the right hand. Try playing World of Warcraft on a Powerbook sometime, and you'll quickly appreciate how much nicer a second button would be.:-)
The better safe than sorry reason. Paying a premium for a laptop isn't a problem. Paying a premium for an unknown item is not a good choice. I guess that is what I get for working in risk management
Uhm...Apple is the #10 personal computer maker in the world. Lenovo is #9. I'd hardly call them unkown.
The answer lies in Biology, which I guess you never took.
Your sperm won't be good copies after about 4 decades. For example, the chance of having a baby with Down's Syndrome dramatically increase after the man hits 40.
Uhm...you didn't think this through all the way. Whatever techniques we are positing that prevent or repair the cellular damage of aging would probably also apply to sperm.
If im correct, Vmware and VPC doesnt require the host operating system to be actually ported to the virtual system, whereas Xen does. This might be fine for specific usage, but its next to useless for what I use vmware for - trying out new and interesting operating systems, configurations or such
I believe the majority of people who buy VMWare, though, are using it to isolate servers. E.g., if you have two departments or customers who both need a web server, and don't each need the full resources of a dedicated machine, but do need root access or otherwise need to run risky stuff, you stick them each on a separate VM.
I think in that environment, having to run a special Xen port of the OS won't bother people.
Slashdot Mirror
So? Isn't that how it is for most taxes? I don't have any children, yet I have to pay for schools. I don't go to parks, yet I have to help pay for them. There are thousands of highways I shall never use but am forced to pay for.
So, if downloading music were legitimized in exchange for a tax on something, I don't see how this would be any different from any other tax.
Take a coin, flip it 100 times, and record the sequence of heads and tails. What were the chances of getting that sequence? 1 in 2^100. Yet...you got it!
You are implicitly assuming that they hit the cockpit of the first plane they tried, on the first attempt, and hit it at exactly the time they wished. Of course that would be ridiculously hard to do.
However, since failures won't be detectable, they could have been trying this for a year with each plane that flew by, and finally managed to hit one.
Well, that's a relief. When a blinded pilot crashes on top of me, it will be quite comforting to know that it was an isolated incident, so I needn't worry about it happening too often.
I just took a quick look at what they list...and didn't see anything legit. Why would I want to even consider sending them money?
However, neither supports Perl. Has anyone seen a tool like this that works on Perl code?
Note that this is no psuedo-pyramid scheme. You do not have to sign anyone else up. Reading the fine print, and adding up the fees, and taking into account the opportunity cost of having money in a lousy bank account instead of some good investment, it still looks to me like it only costs about $120-$150 to get a $250 iPod Mini.
As far as the psuedo-pyramid free iPod schemes go, they checked them out on The Screen Savers. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht both tried it, as did Alex's girlfriend. They all received their iPods. Kevin and Alex might have been recognized and treated specially, but there was nothing special about Alex's girlfriend, so it seemed that it really did work.
The mirrored copy will still be signed.
This seems to me like a really bad way for them to do that. If you play for a day with accelerated XP, when things revert back to normal, it could make the game seem slow to many people. The last thing you want to do in an MMORPG is call attention to the grind that many games become.
If they want to give XP to make up for the downtime, do it in a lump sum.
Also, what about the people who won't be playing during the accelerated XP time? Some of them are going to feel left out on the making good.
Generally, those "American copyright owners" are also the German copyright owners, and the French copyright owners, and the Japanese copyright owners, and the Russian copyright owners. About the only place they aren't the copyright owners is Gilligan's Island.
It's not really the same as the Firefox situation. Firefox is simply a better browser than IE, in almost all ways. Basically, the only reasonably acceptable reason for not using Firefox over IE is that you haven't heard of Firefox. Thus, the NYT ad makes sense.
OpenOffice, on the other hand, while getting very good, is still not as good as Microsoft Office in many ways. If you are on a platform that can run either, and you aren't picking based on philosophy (e.g., you simply hate Microsoft, or insist on open source software) or price, then MS Office is still the better choice.
So, any money that could be spent on an ad would be better spent on development and documentation, to try to close the gap with MS Office.
DLP sets and LCD sets of the same screen size have pretty much the same footprint. A 50" LCD set does NOT have a 50" LCD panel. It has a very small LCD panel, which is projected.
Wrong. There are no investigations going on to bust bittorrent users. There are investigations going on to bust people doing illegal file sharing, and some of them happen to be using bittorrent.
The problem is that is just one aspect of Microsoft software, and there is no effective way to just copy the unpatentable parts or unpatented parts.
No, this would not make copying Microsoft software legal, because most Microsoft software is covered by patents, and Microsoft is big enough to make sure that everything significant they do incorporates patented stuff.
It is the smaller companies that would be totally screwed by this, and the free software developers.
Well, if you are willing to pay, and don't mind having to put up with software that is way better than OpenOffice, you can get Microsoft Office 2004. :-)
Uhm...the parent can simply make their child's driving privileges contingent upon the child keeping the phone on (and with them in the car) while driving.
Yes, I have a few. One for my accounts on machines I basically have sole control of (and never use anywhere else), one that is used for things where I don't care too much if other people find it out, and a couple in between. I also have one really good password (equivalent to about 110 random bits) that is used only to protect my personal GPG secret key.
However, note that this is not really all that good a way to do things. The problem is that if you use standard password X with unrelated services S1 and S2, then if your password to S1 is compromised, S2 also falls. Also, I occassionaly forget which standard password goes with which site, so might first try to login to S1 using standard password Y. So, if S1 is compromised, they might get more than one of my passwords! Oops.
What is really needed is something that generates good random passwords on demand, that you can use whenever some site or place asks you to register. This needs to be easy to use, and it then needs to store the password, encrypted, locally. There then needs to be something that makes it very easy to retrieve said local encrypted passwords when needed. This too needs to be easy to use (which includes only asking you to provide your master password once per session), AND it needs to be safe against malware, AND it needs to work with most or all websites and with most email clients.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be built into the OS, actually, so that every application that might want to deal with passwords can count on it being there, and make use of it.
On Windows, the problem will be all the malware out there. You need the system to protect this thing so that even on a compromised system, you don't lose all your passwords.
On Linux, the problem will be getting anyone to agree on how to do it. I'm sure the Gnome people and the KDE people will have different ideas of how it should work, and they will be mutually incompatible.
Even if you don't compress during the encryption process, encrypted data doesn't compress, so I'd say that the poor compressibility of encrypted data is not because of the decompression during the encryption process.
It is a pop-up from Secunia saying that the bug works, as opposed to the Citibank popup that is normally there.
Safari on OS X is subject to the problem. In fact, on my Powerbook, I had no trouble seeing it with Safari, with Firefox, and with IE in VPC. I did have to be careful to pick the right link on the demo page.
Try the other link.
Normally, the best number of buttons is a matter of personal preference, but since we are talking about laptops, you are in fact wrong. :-) That is because, unlike on the desktop, using a third-party mouse on a laptop can be a pain. Thus, the right thing to do would have been to include two buttons in the hardware, and make the software default to treating them as one button.
Then, those that want two buttons could simply go to the preferences and change the setting.
Apple could have even made the cap on the buttons removable, and provided both a single cap that spans both buttons and separate caps for those who want to use two buttons.
I know that there is ctrl-click instead of a second button, but there are two problems with that. First, if you are trying to do a drag with the second button, it is hard to do one-handed, because you have to use two fingers for ctrl-click, and a third to drag. Second, there is only one ctrl key on the Powerbook keyboard, making ctrl-click hard to do with the right hand. Try playing World of Warcraft on a Powerbook sometime, and you'll quickly appreciate how much nicer a second button would be. :-)
Uhm...Apple is the #10 personal computer maker in the world. Lenovo is #9. I'd hardly call them unkown.
Your sperm won't be good copies after about 4 decades. For example, the chance of having a baby with Down's Syndrome dramatically increase after the man hits 40.
Uhm...you didn't think this through all the way. Whatever techniques we are positing that prevent or repair the cellular damage of aging would probably also apply to sperm.
I believe the majority of people who buy VMWare, though, are using it to isolate servers. E.g., if you have two departments or customers who both need a web server, and don't each need the full resources of a dedicated machine, but do need root access or otherwise need to run risky stuff, you stick them each on a separate VM.
I think in that environment, having to run a special Xen port of the OS won't bother people.