They could do one better than this if they incorporated a RW sector on the disc. Once the copy is made, the change is written to the disc, disallowing another copy unless it is purchased.
The initial copy wouldn't be logged, and subsequent copies might not be logged other than the purchase of a 1-time copy license, using the RW sector on the disc.
That way the claim can't be made that they are invading your privacy. And its an effective day to enforce DRM.
Course, something like that can probably be broken, much like De-CSS broke DVD protection.
So did those smarty scientists figure out a distinction for planets, then? Is Pluto a real planet or not?
I can't believe I missed this! Heh, I figured news that the criteria for what makes a body a planet is set would have been duped twice by now.
Just curious, why do you imply that Microsoft is trying to make cross-platform disappear w/Avalon and the so called.Net Framework 2.0?
I mean, ASP.Net/VB.Net/C#.Net already isn't cross-platform (unless you count Mono, which I don't).
Does Avalon prevent you from running WAMP (Windows/Apache/MySql/PHP) instead of IIS/ASP.Net?
Anyhow, its obvious the reason this buy was found was because XMLHttpRequest is getting more usage due to AJAX being the latest web-devel buzzword. This hole would have stayed in the dark for much longer if not for the AJAX fad.
Although this comes up at a interesting time... My Web-Devel dept. is planning for upgrading of our portals, and have been considering using AJAX on IIS/.Net (its a windows shop). Perhaps I can campaign for LAMP instead;-)
Actually, what I have found surprising lately is the number of casual acquaintences that I know (several college-age co-workers and such) that use firefox without me prompting them to! Crazy. Even totally non-techie students seem to be riding the firefox wave lately. Perhaps this isn't so surprising in that demographic, but I've also come across a good many non-tech oriented people age 40+ that have also switched to firefox.
The growth has perhaps slowed, but that its maybe good for firefox for now as it gives the dev team more time to fix some things and incorporate new features before they have so broad a user base that any changes (or lack thereof) are critisized much like the problem IE faces. I think there are many legitimate complaints about IE, but to be fair some of them are exacerbated by the sheer size of the user-base.
I'm just waiting for fellow slashbots to proclaim (in jest or otherwise) that firefox is dead. Especially on BSD;-)
I actually am going through the same issue right now with a company I am a partial investor in. It so happens I earned my share of stock by writing the backend database and client programs (desktop and web apps). Naturally, some of the code really doesn't have a thing to do with the company itself, however some of the code is by its nature tainted by the IP of the company.
Basically I wrote up a 3 or 4 page document that stated to the effect that:
Prior Art - Code I wrote prior to the formation of the company will remain my property. Such code must be denoted as such in the collective "codebase" in order to distinguish that code from code that is "tainted" with the company IP. The company will be provided a no-cost lifetime transferrable license to use the binary code and modify the source provided it is not distributed outside the company or is used in any way which may decrease the value to the original author (i.e. myself. Standard copyright takes over from here).
New Code - Code that is non-specific to the company and/or is not tainted by company IP, but has been developed for the company's codebase, will be subject to the same terms as the Prior Art definition, with the exception that the license terms, specifically recompense to the author, will be negotiated on a per-project basis. (In other words, the code I wrote before the company was officially formed is free to use, new stuff probably is, but not in all cases).
In my case, the company's internal software development is an ongoing project, so I had to specify some provisions for code auditing to help ensure that code that falls under either of these 2 categories can be verified to contain no company IP or backdoors or whatever in order to satisfy the other shareholders, but thats no big deal to me.
I took the document to a corporate lawyer and he said its all good. The terms are clear and because I am not offically employed by the company, there is no preexisting company policy or signed employment contracts that would supercede this agreement. Note that in many cases the fine print in the employment contract you sign with your employer reserves all rights of the product of your labor to the company, no room for negotiation. The exception is when you are an independant contractor in which case you typically have a little bargaining power.
The thing I never did really get cleared up was a hypothetical question I had -- What if I did the same work (no pay, stock only remember), but there was no documented quid pro quo stating this bunch of code is property of XYZ company in exchange for X percentage of stock? It would make sense the code I've written that does not contain company IP would legally default to being my property under copyright law, but what about the code that contains company IP? I suppose it would probably be illegal to distribute the code in any way, but would I technically have to let the company use the code?
One of the other investors thinks the code would automatically become property of the company (because it contains company IP), but I don't necessarily agree. Any desktop lawyers wanna take a stab?
yeah, I can't explain it myself... I guess its just from familiarity. I'm actually on the desktop machine as I write this and I can certainly notice a slowdown in WPM, as well as it just not 'feeling right'.
Because I got it almost 2 years ago at a VERRRY significant discount. FWIW, it came with a 80 Gig HD, the other 240GB is from HD's from my previous machine.
I must be the exception... I have a newish 3.0Ghz Athlon / 512MB / 360GB desktop that I almost never use at all, in favor of my 2 year old 1.4Ghz / 512MB / 60G Centrino laptop.
But then, I prefer to pound out code at my local coffeeshop instead of at home. Surprisingly, there seems to be less distraction at the coffeeshop than at home;-) But even when at home, I prefer the laptop. The only reasons I can think for the preference is that
CRT monitors hurt my eyes and I can't afford a desktop LCD monitor and,
I like my laptop's keyboard better than any desktop keyboard I can find... it just has the right kind of tactile response.
The desktop machine has been relegated to long-term file storage since it has a crappy Intel graphics chipset and is no good for games.
I find that kwallet works well for this in KDE, but its a feature sorely lacking in WinXP, though I am not sure I trust XP to store my passwords;-)
I just use the same 4 passwords for everything, but trying to figure out which one of the four a certain one is can be a problem, since in some cases you only get 3 login attempts...
It does strike a person that way, but if you think about it, its not hollow at all. Free email services are free most of the time because of advertising revenue. It wouldn't be free otherwise. Its a dual profit center because you can make advertising dollars off the free accounts and subscriber dollars for those who want the "full features". Trouble is, they make more off of advertising revenue than they do subscriber accounts. Because of that, the free accounts are their moneymaker, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to give people what they want, BECAUSE ITS FREE. If another free site offers those features, the user jumps ship and the email provider loses ad revenue.
On the other hand, when a study's conclusion just "happens" to support the scientist's political ideology -- especially when it's unpopular -- it logically follows that the study is more likely to be flawed (or rather, engineered to provide the desired conclusion).
Isn't it just as likely that the scientist's political ideology is simply the impetus for following the particular field of study? The logical conclusion is that ideology may be the impetus for the study, but that is not indicative of the accuracy -- nor that in fact the study is 'engineered' to to produce an arbitrary conclusion.
Of course real life experience tells us increased skepticism is justified, but I tend to disagree with your assertion that this paper should me evaluated more rigourously than usual. Every single scientific paper should be evaluated under the same stringent rigors, otherwise you're quickly getting away from real scientific research and/or validation at all. So long as the study was conducted scientifically (which can be verified), you can't refute empirical evidence, only the conclusions made based off that evidence.
I was going to say the same thing. I have been running WD's for quite a long time. My current devel machine still has a 60GB IDE I picked up 6 years ago and not a problem since. Also have a 40GB I transplanted to my brother's computer that's been alive and kicking for longer than that!
Both of those drives have been put through hell, both in terms of the tasks set upon them, and also physically, since the 40 GB was in my old machine that I always kept on the floor with the side panel off (it got HOT). Cat pissed inside there one day. Corroded the modem all to hell but the drive (while pissed on) still hasn't had problems. The cat, however, didn't fare so well;-)
Pretty nice. The clean drag 'n drop and edit stuff is good. One thing I would have liked to have seen is a 'generic' RSS box instead of one specifically for/.
Ah yes, all quite understandable, and I assure you I can empathize. My current collection (all my CD's ripped to ~256 LAME MP3, some oggs, etc) weighs in at an insane ~107GB. Since obviously there is no portable that holds that much, I've taken the simplistic approach and got a cheap portable that will hold 2 - 3 CD's worth. I just drag-n-drop from my laptop and mix things up. Works pretty well for the most part, plus ONE AA battery lasts ~30 hours in my portable... which is pretty nice!
I can hear the difference between OGG/MP3 and a CD. That's easy. Unless I rip them at a high enough bit rate, but then they become too large for my portable device.
< SNIP >
Just curious, how large is too large? I usually do a n MP3 / 256kbps / LAME rip on my cds, and the resultant average track runs something like 6 to 8 MB as opposed to say 2 - 4 MB for MP3 / 160 kbps / LAME (which I feel is the low end of the tolerable range of encoding). I only have a little 256MB portable player, but thats still 32 - 48 tracks of near-cd quality. I can't tell the difference between CD quality and a 256kbps rip, but perhaps my audio equipment isn't hi-fi enough;-)
Interesting stuff. D'ya suppose there is a way to degauss these a RFID tag sorta like what happens if you run your credit card through a strong magnetic field? That would be pretty interesting, espectially if you could target this effect to a tag with a certain resonance range or perhaps even dependant on what data (OR, XOR, AND, NOT gates, etc) it contains. But I don't know enough about RF science to know whether this could be done or not without throwing some heavy duty microwave-oven type radiation around;-)
... People in rich countries, even poor people in relative terms, are well fed (heck obesity is frequently associated with poverty in rich countries) and adequatelly clothed, so frankly cut the bullshit man.
< SNIP >
Perhaps you should also 'cut the bullshit', as you so adequately put it.
IMO, Human standard of living is 3 healthy meals a day, adequate clothing, shelter, access to healthcare and medicines (without going hopelessly, irreversably in debt), and not working 24 hours a day.
Those are a few things that I can think of off the top of my head.
Just an FYI, obesity is associated with poverty in rich countries because poor people can't afford HEALTHY food. A MacDonalds hamburger costs a buck, or can be had for free if you or someone you know works for Mc'D's. If you had no choice but to starve or eat tripe, you'd be fat too.
And of course, poor people can't afford Bally's memberships. If you don't live in the relative safety of the 'burbs or out in the country, its not all that easy to exercise adequately. Nor do you always have the energy to after you've gotten home from your 3rd different job worked that day.
AIDS is a preventable disease and people in every single country die from it every day. Thats just one example.
Judging by your attitude, it may serve you well to donate one full day a week to helping those less fortunate. I do.
I predict within the same time-period that American programmers are supposedly to die out will be about the same time the Indians decide they are sick of the fucking Americans changing their minds about this or that piece of the project in mid-development;-)
Well, I used RedHat from 5.0 thru 8.something
I've used Suse 7.0 thru 9.0 Pro and Mandrake 7 thru 9.
SuSE, hands down. RedHat consistantly went down the crapper with each new version (more functionality, but more spurious errors. Gnome never did work worth a crap for me on RedHat). Mandrake is okay but same issues RedHat had, only to a much lesser degree. SuSE was great from the first time I used it, and has gotten consistently 'better' with each new release. It works without a lot of messing around -- which I don't mind, I just don't have time for it these days. SuSE is a great distro for those who don't need their hand held, but don't have all day to hack together configs and the like.
Re:Punishments go up, never down (Score:5, Interesting)
by CoolToddHunter (605159) on Thursday May 27, @11:24AM (#9267752)
I'd say a better solution is to start telling people the having their shiny electronic gizmos (very) occasionally stolen is not the biggest concern facing mankind. By all means we should pursue and punish those involved, but at some point the marginal cost of lowering the crime rate outweighs the cost incurred by the crimes.
You (apparently) have never been robbed. It's not the "shiny electronic gizmos" that go missing, it's the feeling of security. I don't care about that stuff, but it bothers me that I feel uncomfortable when someone I don't know rings my doorbell at night now.
Maybe its a callous point of view, but I'd say that the only thing you really lost was a FALSE sense of security. Ignorance is bliss, and all that. And if you feel uncomfortable when someone rings your doorbell, do the sensible thing (what you should have done in the first place to avoid being robbed) and excercise your 2nd amendment rights, assuming you're a fellow American. Defend yourself. Who else do you trust to defend you anyway? A baseball bat is usually all the crime deterrant you need;-)
personally I use VMWare to accomplish this, but I realize thats not the best solution for most folks. It also requires a good deal of RAM in order to keep the host OS and VM happy;-)
Slashdot Mirror
They could do one better than this if they incorporated a RW sector on the disc. Once the copy is made, the change is written to the disc, disallowing another copy unless it is purchased.
The initial copy wouldn't be logged, and subsequent copies might not be logged other than the purchase of a 1-time copy license, using the RW sector on the disc.
That way the claim can't be made that they are invading your privacy. And its an effective day to enforce DRM.
Course, something like that can probably be broken, much like De-CSS broke DVD protection.
So did those smarty scientists figure out a distinction for planets, then? Is Pluto a real planet or not? I can't believe I missed this! Heh, I figured news that the criteria for what makes a body a planet is set would have been duped twice by now.
Just curious, why do you imply that Microsoft is trying to make cross-platform disappear w/Avalon and the so called .Net Framework 2.0?
;-)
I mean, ASP.Net/VB.Net/C#.Net already isn't cross-platform (unless you count Mono, which I don't). Does Avalon prevent you from running WAMP (Windows/Apache/MySql/PHP) instead of IIS/ASP.Net?
Anyhow, its obvious the reason this buy was found was because XMLHttpRequest is getting more usage due to AJAX being the latest web-devel buzzword. This hole would have stayed in the dark for much longer if not for the AJAX fad.
Although this comes up at a interesting time... My Web-Devel dept. is planning for upgrading of our portals, and have been considering using AJAX on IIS/.Net (its a windows shop). Perhaps I can campaign for LAMP instead
I guess I am maybe a little surprised by this.
;-)
Actually, what I have found surprising lately is the number of casual acquaintences that I know (several college-age co-workers and such) that use firefox without me prompting them to! Crazy. Even totally non-techie students seem to be riding the firefox wave lately. Perhaps this isn't so surprising in that demographic, but I've also come across a good many non-tech oriented people age 40+ that have also switched to firefox.
The growth has perhaps slowed, but that its maybe good for firefox for now as it gives the dev team more time to fix some things and incorporate new features before they have so broad a user base that any changes (or lack thereof) are critisized much like the problem IE faces. I think there are many legitimate complaints about IE, but to be fair some of them are exacerbated by the sheer size of the user-base.
I'm just waiting for fellow slashbots to proclaim (in jest or otherwise) that firefox is dead. Especially on BSD
I actually am going through the same issue right now with a company I am a partial investor in. It so happens I earned my share of stock by writing the backend database and client programs (desktop and web apps). Naturally, some of the code really doesn't have a thing to do with the company itself, however some of the code is by its nature tainted by the IP of the company.
Basically I wrote up a 3 or 4 page document that stated to the effect that:
In my case, the company's internal software development is an ongoing project, so I had to specify some provisions for code auditing to help ensure that code that falls under either of these 2 categories can be verified to contain no company IP or backdoors or whatever in order to satisfy the other shareholders, but thats no big deal to me.
I took the document to a corporate lawyer and he said its all good. The terms are clear and because I am not offically employed by the company, there is no preexisting company policy or signed employment contracts that would supercede this agreement. Note that in many cases the fine print in the employment contract you sign with your employer reserves all rights of the product of your labor to the company, no room for negotiation. The exception is when you are an independant contractor in which case you typically have a little bargaining power.
The thing I never did really get cleared up was a hypothetical question I had -- What if I did the same work (no pay, stock only remember), but there was no documented quid pro quo stating this bunch of code is property of XYZ company in exchange for X percentage of stock? It would make sense the code I've written that does not contain company IP would legally default to being my property under copyright law, but what about the code that contains company IP? I suppose it would probably be illegal to distribute the code in any way, but would I technically have to let the company use the code?
One of the other investors thinks the code would automatically become property of the company (because it contains company IP), but I don't necessarily agree. Any desktop lawyers wanna take a stab?
yeah, I can't explain it myself... I guess its just from familiarity. I'm actually on the desktop machine as I write this and I can certainly notice a slowdown in WPM, as well as it just not 'feeling right'.
;-)
OTOH, its a stock Dell keyboard
Because I got it almost 2 years ago at a VERRRY significant discount. FWIW, it came with a 80 Gig HD, the other 240GB is from HD's from my previous machine.
But then, I prefer to pound out code at my local coffeeshop instead of at home. Surprisingly, there seems to be less distraction at the coffeeshop than at home
The desktop machine has been relegated to long-term file storage since it has a crappy Intel graphics chipset and is no good for games.
I find that kwallet works well for this in KDE, but its a feature sorely lacking in WinXP, though I am not sure I trust XP to store my passwords ;-)
I just use the same 4 passwords for everything, but trying to figure out which one of the four a certain one is can be a problem, since in some cases you only get 3 login attempts...
sounds good enough for me ;-)
It does strike a person that way, but if you think about it, its not hollow at all. Free email services are free most of the time because of advertising revenue. It wouldn't be free otherwise. Its a dual profit center because you can make advertising dollars off the free accounts and subscriber dollars for those who want the "full features". Trouble is, they make more off of advertising revenue than they do subscriber accounts. Because of that, the free accounts are their moneymaker, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to give people what they want, BECAUSE ITS FREE. If another free site offers those features, the user jumps ship and the email provider loses ad revenue.
There is nothing wrong with expecting the best!
this marks the end!
On the other hand, when a study's conclusion just "happens" to support the scientist's political ideology -- especially when it's unpopular -- it logically follows that the study is more likely to be flawed (or rather, engineered to provide the desired conclusion).
Isn't it just as likely that the scientist's political ideology is simply the impetus for following the particular field of study? The logical conclusion is that ideology may be the impetus for the study, but that is not indicative of the accuracy -- nor that in fact the study is 'engineered' to to produce an arbitrary conclusion.
Of course real life experience tells us increased skepticism is justified, but I tend to disagree with your assertion that this paper should me evaluated more rigourously than usual. Every single scientific paper should be evaluated under the same stringent rigors, otherwise you're quickly getting away from real scientific research and/or validation at all. So long as the study was conducted scientifically (which can be verified), you can't refute empirical evidence, only the conclusions made based off that evidence.
I was going to say the same thing. I have been running WD's for quite a long time. My current devel machine still has a 60GB IDE I picked up 6 years ago and not a problem since. Also have a 40GB I transplanted to my brother's computer that's been alive and kicking for longer than that!
;-)
Both of those drives have been put through hell, both in terms of the tasks set upon them, and also physically, since the 40 GB was in my old machine that I always kept on the floor with the side panel off (it got HOT). Cat pissed inside there one day. Corroded the modem all to hell but the drive (while pissed on) still hasn't had problems. The cat, however, didn't fare so well
Pretty nice. The clean drag 'n drop and edit stuff is good. One thing I would have liked to have seen is a 'generic' RSS box instead of one specifically for /.
Maybe they'll get around to that.
3 Words:
Tycho and Gabe
Ah yes, all quite understandable, and I assure you I can empathize. My current collection (all my CD's ripped to ~256 LAME MP3, some oggs, etc) weighs in at an insane ~107GB. Since obviously there is no portable that holds that much, I've taken the simplistic approach and got a cheap portable that will hold 2 - 3 CD's worth. I just drag-n-drop from my laptop and mix things up. Works pretty well for the most part, plus ONE AA battery lasts ~30 hours in my portable... which is pretty nice!
I can hear the difference between OGG/MP3 and a CD. That's easy. Unless I rip them at a high enough bit rate, but then they become too large for my portable device.
;-)
< SNIP >
Just curious, how large is too large? I usually do a n MP3 / 256kbps / LAME rip on my cds, and the resultant average track runs something like 6 to 8 MB as opposed to say 2 - 4 MB for MP3 / 160 kbps / LAME (which I feel is the low end of the tolerable range of encoding). I only have a little 256MB portable player, but thats still 32 - 48 tracks of near-cd quality. I can't tell the difference between CD quality and a 256kbps rip, but perhaps my audio equipment isn't hi-fi enough
Interesting stuff. D'ya suppose there is a way to degauss these a RFID tag sorta like what happens if you run your credit card through a strong magnetic field? That would be pretty interesting, espectially if you could target this effect to a tag with a certain resonance range or perhaps even dependant on what data (OR, XOR, AND, NOT gates, etc) it contains. But I don't know enough about RF science to know whether this could be done or not without throwing some heavy duty microwave-oven type radiation around ;-)
...
People in rich countries, even poor people in relative terms, are well fed (heck obesity is frequently associated with poverty in rich countries) and adequatelly clothed, so frankly cut the bullshit man.
< SNIP >
Perhaps you should also 'cut the bullshit', as you so adequately put it.
IMO, Human standard of living is 3 healthy meals a day, adequate clothing, shelter, access to healthcare and medicines (without going hopelessly, irreversably in debt), and not working 24 hours a day.
Those are a few things that I can think of off the top of my head.
Just an FYI, obesity is associated with poverty in rich countries because poor people can't afford HEALTHY food. A MacDonalds hamburger costs a buck, or can be had for free if you or someone you know works for Mc'D's. If you had no choice but to starve or eat tripe, you'd be fat too.
And of course, poor people can't afford Bally's memberships. If you don't live in the relative safety of the 'burbs or out in the country, its not all that easy to exercise adequately. Nor do you always have the energy to after you've gotten home from your 3rd different job worked that day.
AIDS is a preventable disease and people in every single country die from it every day. Thats just one example.
Judging by your attitude, it may serve you well to donate one full day a week to helping those less fortunate. I do.
I predict within the same time-period that American programmers are supposedly to die out will be about the same time the Indians decide they are sick of the fucking Americans changing their minds about this or that piece of the project in mid-development ;-)
Well, I used RedHat from 5.0 thru 8.something I've used Suse 7.0 thru 9.0 Pro and Mandrake 7 thru 9.
SuSE, hands down. RedHat consistantly went down the crapper with each new version (more functionality, but more spurious errors. Gnome never did work worth a crap for me on RedHat). Mandrake is okay but same issues RedHat had, only to a much lesser degree. SuSE was great from the first time I used it, and has gotten consistently 'better' with each new release. It works without a lot of messing around -- which I don't mind, I just don't have time for it these days. SuSE is a great distro for those who don't need their hand held, but don't have all day to hack together configs and the like.
I've always pronounced it "Sooze", as in like what the RIAA does to unwary teenagers ;-)
Re:Punishments go up, never down (Score:5, Interesting) by CoolToddHunter (605159) on Thursday May 27, @11:24AM (#9267752) I'd say a better solution is to start telling people the having their shiny electronic gizmos (very) occasionally stolen is not the biggest concern facing mankind. By all means we should pursue and punish those involved, but at some point the marginal cost of lowering the crime rate outweighs the cost incurred by the crimes. You (apparently) have never been robbed. It's not the "shiny electronic gizmos" that go missing, it's the feeling of security. I don't care about that stuff, but it bothers me that I feel uncomfortable when someone I don't know rings my doorbell at night now. ;-)
Maybe its a callous point of view, but I'd say that the only thing you really lost was a FALSE sense of security. Ignorance is bliss, and all that. And if you feel uncomfortable when someone rings your doorbell, do the sensible thing (what you should have done in the first place to avoid being robbed) and excercise your 2nd amendment rights, assuming you're a fellow American. Defend yourself. Who else do you trust to defend you anyway? A baseball bat is usually all the crime deterrant you need
personally I use VMWare to accomplish this, but I realize thats not the best solution for most folks. It also requires a good deal of RAM in order to keep the host OS and VM happy ;-)