I for one want to see if the same "+5 informative", "+5 insightful" inflamed comments about how a similar thing happening in Venezuela was a proof of a totalitarian government will be repeated on this thread, by the same set of people.
That makes no sense. One day, he is venting against Youtube, calling it "cockroach in the kitchen" and telling everybody knows it is a safe harbor for copyright infringement; and now, he is suggesting that people should be using Google Video (that is, Youtube sister site). IMHO, he should get the Dvorak trolling award for every now and then stirring up the hornets nest for whatever reason he does it. Lame.
And how is that different from Google Docs? TFA even mentions that it is getting a "Crowded office", with all these wannabe "online" office applications. This is nothing but a press release, a slashvertisement for a product that did not even proved its worth yet.
Not really. My cable TV provider (that is not a MPAA member, but certainly buy a lot of content from them) would love such technology in order to serve digital Video on Demand faster, less compressed and to more people at the same time. As other people observed, such a fiber would be next to useless to current home user technology (other components would become the bottleneck), but to content provider, it would be miraculous.
Just think about it:
"If you think you have been affected, fill this form with your name, phone number and availability and we will gladly contact you with more information about... "
After MPAA got Bram Cohen and the UTorrent guy on their pockets, it was a matter of time until they tried to pull such stunts. My bet is that they will try to close a "hole" in the protocol, the impossibility to create a truly private swarm, one where only authorized peers could connect, regardless of the desire of the peers themselves to share the information about the other peers (DHT style). That's the wet dream of people selling content, they could sell access to their content using the bittorrent protocol and nobody would be able to join the swarm without paying.
But there is nothing there people should be afraid., as everybody knows, real innovation on the P2P scene occurs when the interested parts (the filesharers, not necessarily illegal ones) are the real force behind the development, as PEX (protocol encryption) came to prove, now that the cat is out of the sack, there is not a lot of things that Mr. Cohen can do.
This seems to be the very same malady that afflicts bloggers: the illusion of being popular and influential. People seem to forget that the Internet, vast as it seems to be, is only "used" by 18.9% of people, and even it still seems to be a lot, most of the use limits to email and an the occasional news site. Most people don't even know what a blog (or a webcomic) is, and even the ones who do, they don't care about those particular ones, except for a couple of dozen of fans.
It is the absolute numbers that seem to throw people into this illusion. Back in the days, if you wrote a college newspaper and got, let's say, 300 readers a week, that would be unquestionably an assessment of the quality (or, at least, the popularity) of the publication, and probably would get you a sweet job in the local newspaper. If you had a band, and managed to attract 300 loyal followers, that would be an amazing thing. But on the internet, that's a drop in the bucket, I got that much visits in an outdated blog only through google searches that happened to display my blog in the first page.
So, in short, leave the spotlight for the real notables, and go back to improve your own act in order to one day, with lucky, to deserve to be really famous like the "big boys".
It's an AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB OEM RAM, 120GB SATA Hard drive, and an Nvidia FX 5200 video card (I think)
That's not even close to the very machine whose browser I'm using right now, and that I use every single day when I come back home. I'm running every kubuntu version since edgy on this machine, each one making it faster and smoother to use, I'm currently on Feisty because the Gutsy driver for my wireless card is acting a little funky, but I tested it and it runs even better and faster. (Summary of the info below: Pentium Celeron 850 MHz, 256MB RAM, 4GB HD No tricks involved, vanilla ubuntu as it comes, with KDE and everything, even mplayer plays movies smootly.
what the company did to make IE ubiquitous among Internet users
Not only IE, but MSN Messenger too. Before Microsoft tied MSN Messenger to Windows XP, as the infamous Windows Messenger, ICQ ruled the IM world, and Yahoo Messenger was gaining a lot of traction. Months later, and every newcomer was using MSN, because "that is what comes with the computer", and everybody else had to get an account too, in order to stay in touch. Have in mind that I only know Latin America and Europe, so that may differs in other parts of the world, but at least in Brasil and Portugal, "MSN" is a valid substitute for "Computer Instant Messaging", the same for "give me your MSN".
Actually, we could mimic the success of Will it blend and create its counterpart, Will it melt (tm), displaying different pieces of machinery running a webserver while being slashdotted. Guaranteed laughter for all family!
You know. The same thing happens to me, but instead of with Linux distributions, it happens with cars, televisions and other goods.
If someone has far away job and for some strange reason needs to own a personal vehicle, which car do they choose? I've driven cars for years and I still can't name all the available models. I doubt ANYONE can.
Car drivers need to stick to a model that works, is easy, is well known, and comes as an option to be sold at every auto shop and used car fair, even if it is along side the models from the brand that particular auto shop represents.
I cannot imagine a reasoning more beaten up and less relevant than this one. While it is true that people prefers pre-packaged goods, too much choice was never a problem in the other markets. There is a multitude of car brands, TV brands, beer brands, all of them differing in a way or another but every of them catering to their target audience. And we do not see people fighting to get this or that car (beer, TV set) brand to dominate the market because of an eventual technical superiority, better taste, features, etc.
That is because what is the best alternative for one may not be the best for other, because people taste differs, because people need differs. The only difference from that to computer Operational Systems is that the collaborative culture brought by the microcomputer "revolution" make people expect a level of interoperability and interchangeability between these different branded machine that they don't expect in other ones, like cars, for instance.
And to blame the lack of interoperability we have nobody else than certain proprietary software companies (there are many of them for me to enumerate by name, but you know the ones I'm talking about), that could agree on standards that would thrive interoperability (imagine what would the industry be if they didn't agreed on ASCII, for instance), but instead put their short time gains over it and helps to push the whole industry back a couple of decades.
To summarize: too much choice happens everywhere, and it is a good thing, inclusive in computing, as long as there are interoperability among the choices. Linux (the kernel) and its most of its userland is open source, open specs so, the lack of interoperability can't be blamed on them.
Windows 7 would be a new operating system based on the proven Windows NT kernel, but with
First thing they shouldn't do, if they don't want end up with another Vista, is to promise features before they are implemented, tested and integrated. It is a lose lose situation, just like it was when they were marketing Longhorn.
His relationship with powerful lobbyists makes him (or any other Democrat congressman) no better than the ones in the other side. They are all puppets, hold in the hands of the same puppeteer. Naive are the ones that thing that party allegiance is guarantee of anything at all.
The politic system is rotten, third party can't win (even if they had more support, there are so many hurdles for an independent candidate to overcome), majors parties are in fact one, people are cattle and vote based on frivolous fads and superstitions instead of on important issues and past actions.
The "manifest destiny" ended up being a self defeating prophecy, U.S. people got so used to the idea that U.S. fate is to lead the world that forgot to care about their own house and get a decent leadership for themselves.
The sad state of Slashdot editorial line nowadays
on
GCC 4.2.1 Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Some key contributors are grumbling over this change and have privately discussed a fork to stay as GPL v2. The last time GCC forked (EGCS), the FSF conceded defeat. How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?"
(emphasis mine)
The use of weasel words, speculation of "private discussions" (how would one in the public know the content of a private discussion without being a part of it himself?) and the use of the textbook definition of straw man by bringing up the unrelated fact that one fork have been successful in the past and implying that, because of that, one "revolt" is imminent, is nothing by an ill flamebait, in order to generate controversy and the unavoidable licensing flamewar that it will certainly ensue.
This is sad because Slashdot used to be a place where, when a new version of software were posted, the discussion were directed to the changelog and the new features, fixed bugs, and this particular article didn't even mentioned that. It was a cheap shot at GPLv3, a license that seems to have lots of people that dislikes it, people that aren't even affected by it in the first place. GPL doesn't cover use, only distribution.
Sad, sad, sad, this used to be a cool blog with real "news for nerds" but lately it seems more interested in generating polemic and the page views that accompany it.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing in my post shows any support (or lack of) for any of the mentioned licenses, nor discusses the their merit (or lack of). So keep me out of the flamewar.
I don't know in the U.S., but at least in Brazil, the consumer rights legislation (mandated by federal legislation, enforced by state legislation, portuguese speaking people can take a peek here) says that:
Art. 11 - Havendo mais de uma etiqueta com preços diferentes, em um mesmo produto, prevalecerá aquela que contiver o menor preço.
That translate (roughly) as
Art. 11 - Existing more than one label with different prices in the same product, the one with the lesser price prevails.
That means that, even if mislabeled, the indicated price is smaller than the real one, the consumer has the right to ask for the labeled price. I think it is common courtesy to let it slip and pay the full price, but at least in Brasil, if you don't you are in the right side of the law.
I think it is meant as a "tongue in cheek", as the federal appeals panel struck down a similar government policy by arguing that "if President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts".
Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of "get lost" to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.
Slashdot Mirror
As if RIAA and MPAA weren't enough, now this NOAA: Who's come next, AAA?
Same as the old boss.
Well, they could try to block the bill, but as they are shadows and the other senators are not, they can't,
Ha ha!
Oblig. Millhouse quote: "Not only am I not learning, I'm forgetting stuff I used to know"
The Simpsons did it first!
I for one want to see if the same "+5 informative", "+5 insightful" inflamed comments about how a similar thing happening in Venezuela was a proof of a totalitarian government will be repeated on this thread, by the same set of people.
That makes no sense. One day, he is venting against Youtube, calling it "cockroach in the kitchen" and telling everybody knows it is a safe harbor for copyright infringement; and now, he is suggesting that people should be using Google Video (that is, Youtube sister site). IMHO, he should get the Dvorak trolling award for every now and then stirring up the hornets nest for whatever reason he does it. Lame.
And how is that different from Google Docs? TFA even mentions that it is getting a "Crowded office", with all these wannabe "online" office applications. This is nothing but a press release, a slashvertisement for a product that did not even proved its worth yet.
Nothing to see here, move along people.
More at CNN.
Not really. My cable TV provider (that is not a MPAA member, but certainly buy a lot of content from them) would love such technology in order to serve digital Video on Demand faster, less compressed and to more people at the same time. As other people observed, such a fiber would be next to useless to current home user technology (other components would become the bottleneck), but to content provider, it would be miraculous.
Just think about it: "If you think you have been affected, fill this form with your name, phone number and availability and we will gladly contact you with more information about ... "
After MPAA got Bram Cohen and the UTorrent guy on their pockets, it was a matter of time until they tried to pull such stunts. My bet is that they will try to close a "hole" in the protocol, the impossibility to create a truly private swarm, one where only authorized peers could connect, regardless of the desire of the peers themselves to share the information about the other peers (DHT style). That's the wet dream of people selling content, they could sell access to their content using the bittorrent protocol and nobody would be able to join the swarm without paying.
But there is nothing there people should be afraid., as everybody knows, real innovation on the P2P scene occurs when the interested parts (the filesharers, not necessarily illegal ones) are the real force behind the development, as PEX (protocol encryption) came to prove, now that the cat is out of the sack, there is not a lot of things that Mr. Cohen can do.
This seems to be the very same malady that afflicts bloggers: the illusion of being popular and influential. People seem to forget that the Internet, vast as it seems to be, is only "used" by 18.9% of people, and even it still seems to be a lot, most of the use limits to email and an the occasional news site. Most people don't even know what a blog (or a webcomic) is, and even the ones who do, they don't care about those particular ones, except for a couple of dozen of fans.
It is the absolute numbers that seem to throw people into this illusion. Back in the days, if you wrote a college newspaper and got, let's say, 300 readers a week, that would be unquestionably an assessment of the quality (or, at least, the popularity) of the publication, and probably would get you a sweet job in the local newspaper. If you had a band, and managed to attract 300 loyal followers, that would be an amazing thing. But on the internet, that's a drop in the bucket, I got that much visits in an outdated blog only through google searches that happened to display my blog in the first page.
So, in short, leave the spotlight for the real notables, and go back to improve your own act in order to one day, with lucky, to deserve to be really famous like the "big boys".
It's an AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB OEM RAM, 120GB SATA Hard drive, and an Nvidia FX 5200 video card (I think)
/proc/meminfo /proc/cpuinfo
/dev/hda1 3.8G 2.3G 1.3G 64% / /var/run /var/lock /proc/bus/usb /dev /dev/shm /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-386/volatile
That's not even close to the very machine whose browser I'm using right now, and that I use every single day when I come back home. I'm running every kubuntu version since edgy on this machine, each one making it faster and smoother to use, I'm currently on Feisty because the Gutsy driver for my wireless card is acting a little funky, but I tested it and it runs even better and faster. (Summary of the info below: Pentium Celeron 850 MHz, 256MB RAM, 4GB HD No tricks involved, vanilla ubuntu as it comes, with KDE and everything, even mplayer plays movies smootly.
fernando@OldMachine:~$ uname -r
2.6.20-16-386
fernando@OldMachine:~$ cat
MemTotal: 256248 kB
MemFree: 3316 kB
Buffers: 980 kB
Cached: 109088 kB
SwapCached: 17396 kB
Active: 195300 kB
Inactive: 35624 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 256248 kB
LowFree: 3316 kB
SwapTotal: 240932 kB
SwapFree: 125312 kB
Dirty: 1016 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 120640 kB
Mapped: 68164 kB
Slab: 14852 kB
SReclaimable: 4464 kB
SUnreclaim: 10388 kB
PageTables: 2956 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 369056 kB
Committed_AS: 618316 kB
VmallocTotal: 770040 kB
VmallocUsed: 3672 kB
VmallocChunk: 766132 kB
fernando@OldMachine:~$ cat
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel / cpu family : 6 / model : 8 / model name : Celeron (Coppermine)
stepping : 10 / cpu MHz : 851.568 / cache size : 128 KB / fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no / f00f_bug : no / coma_bug : no / fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes / cpuid level : 2 / wp : yes / flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse
bogomips : 1704.74 / clflush size : 32 /
fernando@OldMachine:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
varrun 126M 104K 126M 1%
varlock 126M 0 126M 0%
procbususb 126M 112K 126M 1%
udev 126M 112K 126M 1%
devshm 126M 0 126M 0%
lrm 126M 34M 92M 27%
(Damn lameness filter, let it pass, don't block my post, take some rest. I wish I was smart to make a haiku, in Soviet Russia, posts block you.)
When did it began, and what is its point? And why is it on the front page?
Actually, we could mimic the success of Will it blend and create its counterpart, Will it melt (tm), displaying different pieces of machinery running a webserver while being slashdotted. Guaranteed laughter for all family!
You know. The same thing happens to me, but instead of with Linux distributions, it happens with cars, televisions and other goods.
If someone has far away job and for some strange reason needs to own a personal vehicle, which car do they choose? I've driven cars for years and I still can't name all the available models. I doubt ANYONE can.
Car drivers need to stick to a model that works, is easy, is well known, and comes as an option to be sold at every auto shop and used car fair, even if it is along side the models from the brand that particular auto shop represents.
I cannot imagine a reasoning more beaten up and less relevant than this one. While it is true that people prefers pre-packaged goods, too much choice was never a problem in the other markets. There is a multitude of car brands, TV brands, beer brands, all of them differing in a way or another but every of them catering to their target audience. And we do not see people fighting to get this or that car (beer, TV set) brand to dominate the market because of an eventual technical superiority, better taste, features, etc.
That is because what is the best alternative for one may not be the best for other, because people taste differs, because people need differs. The only difference from that to computer Operational Systems is that the collaborative culture brought by the microcomputer "revolution" make people expect a level of interoperability and interchangeability between these different branded machine that they don't expect in other ones, like cars, for instance.
And to blame the lack of interoperability we have nobody else than certain proprietary software companies (there are many of them for me to enumerate by name, but you know the ones I'm talking about), that could agree on standards that would thrive interoperability (imagine what would the industry be if they didn't agreed on ASCII, for instance), but instead put their short time gains over it and helps to push the whole industry back a couple of decades.
To summarize: too much choice happens everywhere, and it is a good thing, inclusive in computing, as long as there are interoperability among the choices. Linux (the kernel) and its most of its userland is open source, open specs so, the lack of interoperability can't be blamed on them.
His relationship with powerful lobbyists makes him (or any other Democrat congressman) no better than the ones in the other side. They are all puppets, hold in the hands of the same puppeteer. Naive are the ones that thing that party allegiance is guarantee of anything at all.
The politic system is rotten, third party can't win (even if they had more support, there are so many hurdles for an independent candidate to overcome), majors parties are in fact one, people are cattle and vote based on frivolous fads and superstitions instead of on important issues and past actions.
The "manifest destiny" ended up being a self defeating prophecy, U.S. people got so used to the idea that U.S. fate is to lead the world that forgot to care about their own house and get a decent leadership for themselves.
The use of weasel words, speculation of "private discussions" (how would one in the public know the content of a private discussion without being a part of it himself?) and the use of the textbook definition of straw man by bringing up the unrelated fact that one fork have been successful in the past and implying that, because of that, one "revolt" is imminent, is nothing by an ill flamebait, in order to generate controversy and the unavoidable licensing flamewar that it will certainly ensue.
This is sad because Slashdot used to be a place where, when a new version of software were posted, the discussion were directed to the changelog and the new features, fixed bugs, and this particular article didn't even mentioned that. It was a cheap shot at GPLv3, a license that seems to have lots of people that dislikes it, people that aren't even affected by it in the first place. GPL doesn't cover use, only distribution.
Sad, sad, sad, this used to be a cool blog with real "news for nerds" but lately it seems more interested in generating polemic and the page views that accompany it.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing in my post shows any support (or lack of) for any of the mentioned licenses, nor discusses the their merit (or lack of). So keep me out of the flamewar.
But will it run on Linux?
Thank you, thank you, I will be here all week, don't forget to tip the waitress.
That translate (roughly) as That means that, even if mislabeled, the indicated price is smaller than the real one, the consumer has the right to ask for the labeled price. I think it is common courtesy to let it slip and pay the full price, but at least in Brasil, if you don't you are in the right side of the law.