As to question 2: No, probably not. Since you are buying both the OS and the computer from Apple, and the EULA covers both items, the legal remedy would be for you to return the entire computer to Apple for a refund on the whole purchase price.
Perhaps it is, but people have to make a choice to install Firefox, where IE is the default browser for 95% of the computing populace. Most of the non-computer savvy people I know click the Big E on their desktop, and wait for the MSN page to load, and promptly hit whatever bookmark they wanted once the page loads: they don't actually use the MSN portal for anything.
I'd figure a good chunk of the people who run Firefox change their 'home' bookmark almost immediately. I did, but granted that was right back to Google's personalized homepage...
While all the 9/11 terrorists were "radical Muslims", not all terrorists in general are.
Timothy McVeigh was not a "radical Muslim". Plus, as has been pointed out repeatedly, once you start profiling, the terrorists will just start to pick people that don't "fit" the profile.
Profiling also potentially violates the rights of people who may fit the profile but not be involved. Just because most people who commit violent crimes are black males doesn't mean we start jailing all black male men in the US. People are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the law in the US: that, tied with the ideal that race should not be a factor in deciding "guilt" or "innocence" makes the whole idea of "profiling" repugnant to many who still believe in the ideals this country was supposed to be founded on.
Profiling simply doesn't work, and can't work in a society that claims to be "free."
They can run wires, pipes, and other items through your property without your consent, by law
Um, actually, no they can't. They can run wires, pipes, etc. through a utility right-of-way if it crosses your property (which is usually provided for in your deed), but for any other use they have to get your permission and compensate you accordingly.
Their "public utility" status does not give them any rights of trespass otherwise.
There's lots you can do on a US$699 laptop that you can't do on OLPC.
You discount games. I call bullsh*t on that one, and here's why. While Second Life, World of Warcraft, or any of the large number of that style of game might not seem to be "important", it is.
The whole idea of making sure that poor people can afford a computer is so you don't create a two-tier society of "techno-haves" and "techno-have-nots". You say, "well, get gaming kit" but in reality, a $100 "it runs no games" computer and a $200 "games computer" and a $100 media player starts putting you in the range of a low-end laptop. How is that a benefit?
You can buy a laptop at any Best Buy or CompUSA store in North America for $699 that is capable of playing a good chunk of the games on the market. I have one (a Gateway model) and WoW (as an example) runs acceptably well, Second Life is tolerable, and other 2-3 year old games (like Microsoft Train Simulator and the last Myst game) run very well. Similarly, $300 desktop PCs also have enough horsepower to run all but the most hardcore games.
The realities of things are simple. It costs a certain amount of money to make a computer, and a lot of those costs are fixed. While I commend the OLPC inititive (and it has exciting implications for dirt-poor nations), the sad reality of the situation is it would still cost $200 today to buy a Commodore 64 with a usable disk system (assuming parts are still available) because the cost of the raw materials, assembly, and distribution are fixed.
There are providers of Usenet feeds that have made the whole process point-and-click. One of them (they're a real "easy news" provider!), you literally open up a web browser and go to their URL, log in, and start downloading. They even are nice enough to UnRAR the files for you and automatically reassemble PARs (PAR is designed to fix the 'missing hunk' problem using techniques similar to RAID 5), so you get a nice AVI file, mp3, iso, or whatever you are trying to get.
And, as TFA pointed out, that's exactly what GUPA is doing as well. One-click to download one of 18 ST:Voyager episodes.
Second Life's recent fiascos involving security are one thing.
However, the biggest "you've gotta be kidding" aspect is how poorly Linden Labs tests, QAs, and deploys upgrades. Two weeks ago, the entire grid was down for close to 24 hours, and was flaky for days after a failed update. While I haven't been on SL very long, I'm lead to believe that this is not uncommon.
Sun is right, however, that it has the potential to be a stunning platform for communications. On the flip side, Linden Labs is the single biggest hindrance to allowing it to prosper that way. If LL were to open up the "grid" to allow third-party servers, we might have the next Internet. However, with the poor service provided by LL (only made worse by the fact that it isn't cheap, either) is what is keeping SL from being the next big thing.
The vast majority of "pirate radio stations" are not interfering with licensed stations legitimately serving a particular market. In fact, a 10 watt transmitter like most of Dunifer's does not simply have the power to overpower a 100kW Class C FM station. In most of Los Angeles, where the only available slot was 104.7 MHz, it was not uncommon for a 50 watt station I was affiliated with to have problems with a station 50 miles away "interfering" on the same frequency. Were we causing "problems" for that station and their listeners? Hell, no.
Almost without exception, pirates are choosing frequencies that are not used locally, and operating stations that never exceed much more than 50 watts (most of them are in the 5-10 watt range). I can count on one hand the pirates who have even the technical competance to keep a high-power transmitter on the air, let alone actually own one.
Your analogy is not even correct. It is more likely to say that people are in a big outdoor auditorium, where the speaker is using a professional PA system, and the pirate radio operator has collected a bunch of his friends on a lawn near the back and is talking to them at a normal speaking volume.
An even better question is this. The "popularity" of unlicensed FM is only increasing. Isn't this an interesting sign to the professional broadcasters that there is a market segment they are not appealing to? Why are they not serving this market segment? Could it be that as a near-monopoly, they can ignore market forces?
There should be a broadcast spectrum that belongs to everybody. There isn't. That needs to change.
She is self-employed (contractor). Assuming that such service is available (it effectively may not be.. yes, believe it or not, there are places in cities that don't have modern enough plant for a T1), paying $750/month would effectively mean that she would make about $700/month.
How is this choice? She has to choose between having a job and paying half her income for a "business class circuit", and starving?
When you say "Small diesels are not available in the US", are you referring to the Volkswagen turbodiesel New Beetle I have sitting in my driveway in Portland, OR? The one that burns 100% biodiesel?
People often "need" broadband. Some people, for example my ex-wife, have to have some kind of broadband access to do their work. In many areas of Portland (as I pointed out, but apparently reading comprehension wasn't your best subject) there is no DSL available. Most major cities have large pockets where DSL isn't availble (I know that many of the areas of Los Angeles and Phoenix also have this issue.
And I call "bullshit" on the statement that they are doing this to block spam. Blacklisting a single mail server does nothing to tide the flow of spam. If Comcast was really interested in blocking spam, they'd start cleaning their own damn house: a significant percentage of spams I see on my own mail servers come from Comcast netblocks, probably from virus-infected subscriber machines. Yet, have you ever tried to report an infected machine to Comcast? I'll give you a clue: I was actively getting flooded by three Comcast-hosted machines, and they did absolutely nothing, even though all of my upstream providers could definitavely tell me that the attack was coming from Comcast.
Communication is a basic human "right", that is what I believe the Founding Fathers indended when they wrote 1A. Comcast can't have it both ways: they enjoy monopoly protection in nearly every market they operate in (there is, fundamentally, no competition for the services they provide). If Comcast had real competition, this would be such a non-issue.. but until they do, this IS improper. Period.
"Experts" are just as prone to making mistakes as everybody else.
Many of the people who are pro-ID (intelligent design) have degrees, and a few of them even have some peer respect in their fields. That doesn't make them good choices as arbitrary editors of Wikipedia just because they have a piece of paper from a University. In many ways, a hypothetical Wikipedia article on ID in such an environment would be just as much full of errors, inaccuracies, and just plain B.S. as any current article on Wikipedia.
Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Wikipedia isn't the same thing as a peer-reviewed encyclopedia. Should it be? Maybe that's ultimately a question society needs to answer. As has been pointed out, even reasonably well done conventional encyclopedias make content mistakes. Encyclopedias are in general poor sources for exclusive knowledge on any subject. They are designed to be popular references and repositories of generalized human knowledge. I wouldn't expect the Wikipedia (or the Encyclopedia Britannica for that matter) article on nuclear power to teach me enough to build or operate a nuclear reactor. I would expect it to give a good general overview of the subject, and perhaps provide a starting point for further study if desired. Any errors in the material on Wikipedia would be apparent after any such deeper search. On the other hand, if all I want to do is read a quick capsule of knowledge so I can satisfy some shallow intellectual curiosity on the subject, even the worst article on Wikipedia on a topic should suffice.
If society is using Wikipedia to teach nuclear scientists how a reactor works, we're in much bigger trouble than we realize.
There are areas where, if you want any kind of broadband, you have no choice but Comcast. What are people supposed to do who live in, for example, areas of Portland (Oregon) where DSL does not reach? And before you say "wireless, dumbass".. remember that Verizon and Sprint (for EVDO) both have a ToS that is not agreeable to some people (it essentially says that you can only websurf, not run any "applications" or anything).
Comcast is a monopoly carrier that has government protection from competition (because, after all, there can effectively be only one cable provider in any given area). This kind of behavior is not acceptable.
So, no, people don't necessarily have the "right" to "switch providers".
Yes, because we all know that amateurs never develop anything important and all are a bunch of ignorant schmucks.
Except for the actress who developed spread-spectrum radio technology. Or the numerous backyard astronomers who have found new celestial objects. Or the college student from Finland who created an entire operating system.
And four years before that, it was only once if you had something of actual value to sell. Why the change? Because eBay is constantly flooded with new sellers who are ever willing to undercut the existing sellers - which brings buyers to eBay and keeps them coming back. So long as this supply of new sellers persists, eBay has no reason to change it's policies. (And there are no real policy changes they can make that will force people to buy anyhow.) eBay doesn't owe you a living Mr Grossberg.
I think that perhaps you misinterpreted Mr. Grossberg's complaint.
Almost without exception now, the first or second time an auction closes on eBay, the buyer flakes out. On moderate-value items (ones in the $50-$300 range) this seems to be a rampant problem on eBay, from what I'm hearing from friends who depend on eBay for their livelihood.
While I'm not an eBay seller so I can only measure my experiences as a buyer.. the last five auctions I've bid on I've lost.. only to get a "second chance offer" on a number of days later. This implies to me that there is a high rate of buyers who don't honor their bids when the deal closes. The real problem with "second chance" is usually by the time you get one, you've already bid on a similar item, and/or you've already purchased it from somebody else.
That is, in essence, eBay's problem and one that can be changed by policies and/or management changes. There are no consequences from flaking out from a confirmed bid, and that's hurting the small-timers on eBay in a very real way.
The only flaw (not really a flaw, but an unintended side effect) with this is that the user's.bashrc and the like will not be executed, since these are essentially shell scripts that generally need execute permission. But, other than that, it should work...
>i>Facebook links to eTrust from their privacy policy. Would it be effective if all of slashdot lodged complaints using the eTrust form?
No, because eTrust won't do shit. Their attitude is something like "well, if it's in the privacy policy that they can do something, and they did it, then it's a non-issue."
Slashdot Mirror
As to question 2: No, probably not. Since you are buying both the OS and the computer from Apple, and the EULA covers both items, the legal remedy would be for you to return the entire computer to Apple for a refund on the whole purchase price.
You might try asking on the Classic Computers mailing list: classiccmp.org. You might get people to loan you systems of interest.
For my money, you'd probably be in good if you got a Commodore 64 (for obvious reasons) and a machine like a IMSAI 8080. Perhaps an Apple 2.
In the grand scheme of things, the Tandy Color Computer 3 was largely irrelevant by the time it came to market...
... on an acoustic modem.
Yep, they sure got that right.
Perhaps it is, but people have to make a choice to install Firefox, where IE is the default browser for 95% of the computing populace. Most of the non-computer savvy people I know click the Big E on their desktop, and wait for the MSN page to load, and promptly hit whatever bookmark they wanted once the page loads: they don't actually use the MSN portal for anything.
I'd figure a good chunk of the people who run Firefox change their 'home' bookmark almost immediately. I did, but granted that was right back to Google's personalized homepage...
So, you can have it. :P
The whole reason T-Mobile lost me as a customer is they couldn't/wouldn't sell me a Treo.
So, I went to Verizon, who was happy to give me a Treo 650 about a year ago for $200.
While all the 9/11 terrorists were "radical Muslims", not all terrorists in general are.
Timothy McVeigh was not a "radical Muslim". Plus, as has been pointed out repeatedly, once you start profiling, the terrorists will just start to pick people that don't "fit" the profile.
Profiling also potentially violates the rights of people who may fit the profile but not be involved. Just because most people who commit violent crimes are black males doesn't mean we start jailing all black male men in the US. People are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the law in the US: that, tied with the ideal that race should not be a factor in deciding "guilt" or "innocence" makes the whole idea of "profiling" repugnant to many who still believe in the ideals this country was supposed to be founded on.
Profiling simply doesn't work, and can't work in a society that claims to be "free."
They can run wires, pipes, and other items through your property without your consent, by law
Um, actually, no they can't. They can run wires, pipes, etc. through a utility right-of-way if it crosses your property (which is usually provided for in your deed), but for any other use they have to get your permission and compensate you accordingly.
Their "public utility" status does not give them any rights of trespass otherwise.
Palm included.
The Treo's Mac support is pathetic and requires third-party software to be "useful" by any degree..
There's lots you can do on a US$699 laptop that you can't do on OLPC.
You discount games. I call bullsh*t on that one, and here's why. While Second Life, World of Warcraft, or any of the large number of that style of game might not seem to be "important", it is.
The whole idea of making sure that poor people can afford a computer is so you don't create a two-tier society of "techno-haves" and "techno-have-nots". You say, "well, get gaming kit" but in reality, a $100 "it runs no games" computer and a $200 "games computer" and a $100 media player starts putting you in the range of a low-end laptop. How is that a benefit?
You can buy a laptop at any Best Buy or CompUSA store in North America for $699 that is capable of playing a good chunk of the games on the market. I have one (a Gateway model) and WoW (as an example) runs acceptably well, Second Life is tolerable, and other 2-3 year old games (like Microsoft Train Simulator and the last Myst game) run very well. Similarly, $300 desktop PCs also have enough horsepower to run all but the most hardcore games.
The realities of things are simple. It costs a certain amount of money to make a computer, and a lot of those costs are fixed. While I commend the OLPC inititive (and it has exciting implications for dirt-poor nations), the sad reality of the situation is it would still cost $200 today to buy a Commodore 64 with a usable disk system (assuming parts are still available) because the cost of the raw materials, assembly, and distribution are fixed.
Funny. Where's OS/2 offered for sale on that website? I couldn't find it.
Where have you been?
There are providers of Usenet feeds that have made the whole process point-and-click. One of them (they're a real "easy news" provider!), you literally open up a web browser and go to their URL, log in, and start downloading. They even are nice enough to UnRAR the files for you and automatically reassemble PARs (PAR is designed to fix the 'missing hunk' problem using techniques similar to RAID 5), so you get a nice AVI file, mp3, iso, or whatever you are trying to get.
And, as TFA pointed out, that's exactly what GUPA is doing as well. One-click to download one of 18 ST:Voyager episodes.
Second Life's recent fiascos involving security are one thing.
However, the biggest "you've gotta be kidding" aspect is how poorly Linden Labs tests, QAs, and deploys upgrades. Two weeks ago, the entire grid was down for close to 24 hours, and was flaky for days after a failed update. While I haven't been on SL very long, I'm lead to believe that this is not uncommon.
Sun is right, however, that it has the potential to be a stunning platform for communications. On the flip side, Linden Labs is the single biggest hindrance to allowing it to prosper that way. If LL were to open up the "grid" to allow third-party servers, we might have the next Internet. However, with the poor service provided by LL (only made worse by the fact that it isn't cheap, either) is what is keeping SL from being the next big thing.
The vast majority of "pirate radio stations" are not interfering with licensed stations legitimately serving a particular market. In fact, a 10 watt transmitter like most of Dunifer's does not simply have the power to overpower a 100kW Class C FM station. In most of Los Angeles, where the only available slot was 104.7 MHz, it was not uncommon for a 50 watt station I was affiliated with to have problems with a station 50 miles away "interfering" on the same frequency. Were we causing "problems" for that station and their listeners? Hell, no.
Almost without exception, pirates are choosing frequencies that are not used locally, and operating stations that never exceed much more than 50 watts (most of them are in the 5-10 watt range). I can count on one hand the pirates who have even the technical competance to keep a high-power transmitter on the air, let alone actually own one.
Your analogy is not even correct. It is more likely to say that people are in a big outdoor auditorium, where the speaker is using a professional PA system, and the pirate radio operator has collected a bunch of his friends on a lawn near the back and is talking to them at a normal speaking volume.
An even better question is this. The "popularity" of unlicensed FM is only increasing. Isn't this an interesting sign to the professional broadcasters that there is a market segment they are not appealing to? Why are they not serving this market segment? Could it be that as a near-monopoly, they can ignore market forces?
There should be a broadcast spectrum that belongs to everybody. There isn't. That needs to change.
I'm actually using exactly that system: ripping with MacTheRipper, and encoding with HandBrake.
I'm trying to use HandBrake to encode to mp4 so I can view movies from a file server. If I read properly, Instant HandBrake won't do what I want.
Handbrake: Great program, but every time I use it, the video comes out "jerky". Anybody else have that problem?
She is self-employed (contractor). Assuming that such service is available (it effectively may not be.. yes, believe it or not, there are places in cities that don't have modern enough plant for a T1), paying $750/month would effectively mean that she would make about $700/month.
How is this choice? She has to choose between having a job and paying half her income for a "business class circuit", and starving?
What kind of choice is that, asswipe?
When you say "Small diesels are not available in the US", are you referring to the Volkswagen turbodiesel New Beetle I have sitting in my driveway in Portland, OR? The one that burns 100% biodiesel?
You didn't even read my reply, apparently.
People often "need" broadband. Some people, for example my ex-wife, have to have some kind of broadband access to do their work. In many areas of Portland (as I pointed out, but apparently reading comprehension wasn't your best subject) there is no DSL available. Most major cities have large pockets where DSL isn't availble (I know that many of the areas of Los Angeles and Phoenix also have this issue.
And I call "bullshit" on the statement that they are doing this to block spam. Blacklisting a single mail server does nothing to tide the flow of spam. If Comcast was really interested in blocking spam, they'd start cleaning their own damn house: a significant percentage of spams I see on my own mail servers come from Comcast netblocks, probably from virus-infected subscriber machines. Yet, have you ever tried to report an infected machine to Comcast? I'll give you a clue: I was actively getting flooded by three Comcast-hosted machines, and they did absolutely nothing, even though all of my upstream providers could definitavely tell me that the attack was coming from Comcast.
Communication is a basic human "right", that is what I believe the Founding Fathers indended when they wrote 1A. Comcast can't have it both ways: they enjoy monopoly protection in nearly every market they operate in (there is, fundamentally, no competition for the services they provide). If Comcast had real competition, this would be such a non-issue.. but until they do, this IS improper. Period.
"Experts" are just as prone to making mistakes as everybody else.
Many of the people who are pro-ID (intelligent design) have degrees, and a few of them even have some peer respect in their fields. That doesn't make them good choices as arbitrary editors of Wikipedia just because they have a piece of paper from a University. In many ways, a hypothetical Wikipedia article on ID in such an environment would be just as much full of errors, inaccuracies, and just plain B.S. as any current article on Wikipedia.
Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Wikipedia isn't the same thing as a peer-reviewed encyclopedia. Should it be? Maybe that's ultimately a question society needs to answer. As has been pointed out, even reasonably well done conventional encyclopedias make content mistakes. Encyclopedias are in general poor sources for exclusive knowledge on any subject. They are designed to be popular references and repositories of generalized human knowledge. I wouldn't expect the Wikipedia (or the Encyclopedia Britannica for that matter) article on nuclear power to teach me enough to build or operate a nuclear reactor. I would expect it to give a good general overview of the subject, and perhaps provide a starting point for further study if desired. Any errors in the material on Wikipedia would be apparent after any such deeper search. On the other hand, if all I want to do is read a quick capsule of knowledge so I can satisfy some shallow intellectual curiosity on the subject, even the worst article on Wikipedia on a topic should suffice.
If society is using Wikipedia to teach nuclear scientists how a reactor works, we're in much bigger trouble than we realize.
There are areas where, if you want any kind of broadband, you have no choice but Comcast. What are people supposed to do who live in, for example, areas of Portland (Oregon) where DSL does not reach? And before you say "wireless, dumbass".. remember that Verizon and Sprint (for EVDO) both have a ToS that is not agreeable to some people (it essentially says that you can only websurf, not run any "applications" or anything).
Comcast is a monopoly carrier that has government protection from competition (because, after all, there can effectively be only one cable provider in any given area). This kind of behavior is not acceptable.
So, no, people don't necessarily have the "right" to "switch providers".
Yes, because we all know that amateurs never develop anything important and all are a bunch of ignorant schmucks.
Except for the actress who developed spread-spectrum radio technology. Or the numerous backyard astronomers who have found new celestial objects. Or the college student from Finland who created an entire operating system.
I think that perhaps you misinterpreted Mr. Grossberg's complaint.
Almost without exception now, the first or second time an auction closes on eBay, the buyer flakes out. On moderate-value items (ones in the $50-$300 range) this seems to be a rampant problem on eBay, from what I'm hearing from friends who depend on eBay for their livelihood.
While I'm not an eBay seller so I can only measure my experiences as a buyer.. the last five auctions I've bid on I've lost.. only to get a "second chance offer" on a number of days later. This implies to me that there is a high rate of buyers who don't honor their bids when the deal closes. The real problem with "second chance" is usually by the time you get one, you've already bid on a similar item, and/or you've already purchased it from somebody else.
That is, in essence, eBay's problem and one that can be changed by policies and/or management changes. There are no consequences from flaking out from a confirmed bid, and that's hurting the small-timers on eBay in a very real way.
The only flaw (not really a flaw, but an unintended side effect) with this is that the user's .bashrc and the like will not be executed, since these are essentially shell scripts that generally need execute permission. But, other than that, it should work...
>i>Facebook links to eTrust from their privacy policy. Would it be effective if all of slashdot lodged complaints using the eTrust form?
No, because eTrust won't do shit. Their attitude is something like "well, if it's in the privacy policy that they can do something, and they did it, then it's a non-issue."