Uh, they were only allowing MP3 files to be transferred on their service. It's not like they could also be used for backing up data files.
The example I'd like to use is my old single I have on the shelf (six inch vinyl record, now hopelessly scratched but still playable, if I still had a record player) of "Too Drunk to Fuck" by the Dead Kennedy's. Not their best work, but I was 16 when I bought it (for juvinile "its got profanity, cool!" reasons), and it introduced me to a great punk band whose other albums I have owned (and seen get destroyed at parties, etc.). Somehow through all that, this one single survives through today.
So I downloaded the mp3 off of the internet, and can now listen to music which I've legally already bought and paid for, but for which the equipment I had is now no longer in service, and the format so dated that the only equipment I can now buy costs a small fortune.
Napster had many legitamate uses... and it is a dangerous precedent that something is banned simply because it can be abused and some people choose to do so. Apply the same level of justice to other products and you ban VCRs (which the Copyright Cartels tried to do), kitchen knives, and automobiles, to name just three commonly "abused" devices.
I should note that all of the music on my hard drive is legal. I own a copy, in one format or another, of every single mp3 I've downloaded, and every single ogg file I've ripped myself.
So, which is the more extremist position to take? The idea that music and other information should flow freely, as it arguably did for the 3 million years humanity was around prior to the British inventing copyright as a means of censoring the then emergent printing press (with great success, I might add), or the idea that copy control policing technology should be built into every digital device in America, from your computer to a baby's rattle (as proposed by "Disney" Hollings and promoted by the Copyright Cartels) to prevent the possibility that someone, somewhere, might violate someone's government granted, monopoly entitlement?
I think you need to examine just who you are calling "extremist" and how your defining the word. "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
Is this guy joking? I blck-holed doubleclick, so I can't tell
He's not joking.
I say no to doubleclick cookies from time to time when browsing slashdot, so slashdot is definitely using them.
Add this to the growing list of Slashdot Editorial Hypocracy, along with their promoting the latest Star Wars tripe right next to articles detailing the concerted attack on our first amendment rights by the very same Copyright Cartels, etc. etc.
Slashdot may be where many of us come to get their news, but it has in large part become part of the problem, and certainly it has become a part of the corporate establishment that is becoming ever more oppressive.
wow for a 2000 year old religion that must be a really long time, good thing your using that as your example of how perfect they are.
I think you need a remedial reading course.
I was discussing how f*cked up both Christianity and Islam are, not how "perfect" either one is. Both are an afront to humanity, as is any religion that elevates its belief system above the value of human life, be they Satanists, Christians, Muslems, Jews, or Hale Bopp Comet Worshippers.
As an aside, right now, Christianity appears to have benefited from having gone through a reformation, something Islam is severely lacking (with said lack rather apparent in their incredibly self destructive behavior, such as flying large planes into the symbols of the worlds most powerful country and being the wrath of the same down upon them, sending suicide missions into Israel likely to send the Israelis into fits of madness, etc. These are not the acts of a sane culture, but rather one bent upon its own destruction).
Christianity isn't much better (cf. Nazi Germany 60 years ago, Yugoslavia more recently, etc.). My point remains... the Arab and Islamic cultures better get their philisophical shit together and learn how to respect and live peacably with other cultures very quickly or they are likely to find themselves on the wrong end of the Extinction Stick.
The only solution is to have a public infrastructure, and have private companies compete using this public infrastructure.
That is exactly right.
I recently tried to acquire Sprint DSL (8 Mbit down, 1 Mbit up) in my home... I wanted to start running some Free Sites (freenet nodes) in my home and play around with some other server stuff that is difficult to do on my cable modem with its ever changing IP address (and I was greedy for more bandwidth).
I've had DSL in my home before (but it was expensive and slow in comparison), so it shouldn't be a problem.
It was.
I do not have a landline phone, having developed a sufficient hatred of our local Telco Monopoly (Ameritech) over the years that I will now only use a cellular service (currently AT&T, but I can change to whatever service I like whenever I like, in contrast to our local monopoly). This wasn't a problem the last time I had DSL installed, but apparently that has changed as the local Telco chokehold on the local loop has tightened.
The bottom line, if I don't buy phone service from the local telco monopoly, I cannot get Sprint DSL service. Period.
Quoting the correspondence I had with Sprint on the matter (for anyone else who is interested):
SPRINT: I'm sorry I've been trying all day to get someone to tell me why another DSL provider was able to give you service w/o a phone number, but they said we have to have a phone number to service a location. Is there any way you could get a basic phone line just to have a phone number established to have the service installed?
ME: No, I can't and won't do that. (I already have copper pairs going to my unit, having had DSL here previously.) My dislike for Ameritech is sufficient to avoid doing that, even if it means sticking with a cable modem. These services typicall charge installation fees, require people to take time off work to wait around for them (and then often don't show up when they are scheduled to do so), are expensive, difficult to work with, and then sell your contact information to telemarketers as a final slap in the face. I won't do business with them, period.
SPRINT: I'm sorry that I was misinformed and told you we'd be able to set up service the way you said your previous provider did. I hope in the future if you ever get a phone line at home you would still consider us for home DSL service. Again I apologize for the miscommunication.
As you can see, despite having the copper already in my unit and having had a DSL service previously (despite never having had a landline telephone in that Unit, ever), it is apparently no longer possible to get DSL service (at least through Sprint) without buying telephone service from the local telco monopoly.
Sprint is losing $160/month on me alone because of either the local telco monopoly or their own incredible denseness, and I'm missing out on a DSL service I would like to have had. I doubt very seriously I am alone... almost everyone I know has dumped Ameritech in favor of one cellular phone service or another, which means all those technically savvy people... a prime market for Sprint's DSL service if there ever was one... are disqualified from ever being able to buy their product.
It is past time for the government to break the local telco monopolies and nationalize the last mile of copper (local loop) exactly as you describe. Anything else is going to lead to a communications oligarchy that will stall the telco and broadband industry and likley stagnate the technology indefinitely.
As for the cliche about "Christians have shed more blood in God's name than ANY other religeon, ever," I would like to see a number --
As would I. Islam ran rampant across two of the largest continents in the world (Africa and Asia) and large portions of a third (Europe). Christianity has killed many, many people, but so too has Islam. Which is the greater offendor? I'd be curious to know, but I suspect the point doesn't really matter a whole lot. What is of more relevant concern is who is killing today in the name of religion, and Christians, as much as I despise their belief systems, haven't been engaged in mass killing since World War II, 60 years ago.
especially compared to belief systems like Communism or Naziism.
Contrary to popular myth being propogated by the Catholic church and other Christian groups, the Nazi's were not athiests at all. In point of fact, Hitler was a devout Catholic (which helps explain the Church's rather despicable collaboration in much of the holocaust), and the Nazi mysticism promulgated by their propoganda was a mixture of Christian and earlier European myths (including some real absurdities like Germans being descended from the original inhabitants of an asteroid that wiped out Atlantis... go figure).
The only legitimate example of "athiestic" regimes engaged in mass murder is communism, though it appears little if any killing was done in the name of religous intolerance (though plenty of discrimination was). Far more was done in the name of 'national security' and petty politics, but even so, the communists simply haven't been around long enough to have committed anywhere near the number of atrocities as Christianity and Islam have.
You are absolutely right about the reformation movements, which Islam needs to go through rather soon, before they destroy themselves with their religious intolerance and, quite frankly, madness.
Maybe we need to clone some of the thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment and have them draft something for us (that would probably make their cloning illegal).
I like your dose of irony, but beyond that, why ban cloning? Cloning is simply a new reproductive method, nothing more. One that is currently fraught with risk, quite probably unacceptable risks at this point in time, much as test-tube reproduction was 40 years ago. Making it illegal, and banning other bioengineering techniques that could be used to create non-human species as smart as ourselves, completely skirts the underlying issue which needs to be clarified: namely the rights of all beings, not merely those who happen to be defined as human, based on some reasonable metric (such as perhaps intelligence, or some broader definition of sapience that factors in degrees of self-awareness and thought, not an easy task I grant you).
Such a regime would require:
1) a definition of sapience, probably one that (a) recognizes sapience and intelligence as a spectrum, and not a binary, condition, (b) uses the human norm as a starting reference, (c) explicitly states that any member of a species with average intelligence comparable to that of a human being or greater, enjoys full 'sapient rights' (what we now call human rights) even if their intelligence is significantly below the norm (e.g. retarded people have, and should have, all the rights of a normal person, even if the average chawowow can outthink them on a good day, but chawowows should not necessarily be considered equal to human), and (d) any unusually intelligent member of a species not normally expected to have human level intelligence or greater would enjoy full sapient rights if their unusually high intelligence is found to be such that, were they they norm, the species would be considered sapient.
2) The definition of species that enjoy full sapient rights (vs. those that do not, i.e. what we typically consider 'animals' or 'dumb machines') must be inclusive of any being demonstrating said level of sapients, regardless of whether they are human or nonhuman, bioengineered or naturally occuring, mineral (machine, crystaline, whatever), animal, or vegitable, or other.
We need a recognition of sapient rights that transcends humanity, not merely to deal with the inevitable results that bioengineering, and quite likley software engineering, is likely to create in the next century, but also to cover contingencies such as meeting alien life in our exploration of space, etc.
It is important, as life evolves and more intelligences arise (artificial or otherwise), that we have a foundation for interacting with that life in an ethical and kindly manner. Banning technologies and cowering behind our outdated religious myths does nothing to prepare us for these eventuality, and indeed increases the liklihood greatly that, if and when we meet intelligences that are other than ourselves, we will react in exactly the wrong way, with prejudice and ethno- or speciecentrism ('intelligent computers have no soul' claim theologens, for example, or 'we created the creature, we are its god, it can never be our equal', both of which are appallingly unethical and quite probably false assumptions to be making, but appear to be our default stance on such things).
Thanks loads, GOP. When are the Dems gonna find a real leader to get us out of this mess?
Never, since the two parties are equally to blame for the current mess, and neither has stood up for adhering to the constitution in the face of their own pet causes, much less in the face of their corporate sponsors' bottom lines.
This one IS appropriate for the YRO section. You should have the right to buy any computer, with or without copy protection in hardware. Of course, this is not a right that's very well protected by the Constitution.
It is a right very well protected by the constitution. Any powers not explicitly granted the federal government by the constitution are reserved for the states, for municipalities, or for the people (10th amendment).
The Federal government has been granted no explicit authority by the constitution to regulate the sale or construction of computers.
The problem is that the government hasn't been abiding by the constitution for at least 70 years now, so we really can't expect it to start now.
Instead, for the sake of expediency over constitutional law, the courts routinely misuse the so-called commerce clause to extend the federal government's powers into all kinds of areas it is constitutionally barred from, but are nevertheless popular with the people to regulate anyway (War on Drugs, Child Pornography, etc.). By diluting the power of the constitution with these causes, irrespective of their legitemacy, we are now in a situation where real social and political pressures are coming to bear on our way of government (the Copyright Cartels' attacks on our most basic freedoms, the War on Terrorism and many of the unconstitutional methods being used to wage it domestically, not to mention the recent election debacle), and we no longer have a strong constitutional foundation to fall back on.
We sold it cheap in the name of "the children" to wage our War on Drugs, our War On Pedophiles, now our War on Terrorism and, comming soon to a computer near you, Our War On Copyright Violators.
The future is no longer terribly bright. Indeed, by selling out our most fundamental values for a perceived short term societal gain (who wouldn't want child pornographers jailed?) we've now insured that the future is a dark, bleak, ugly place... one with virtually no rights and few liberties, and one we are now going to be very hard pressed to change.
A very tragic end to a visionary who lost patience with a visionless west (whose space programs have more or less languished since the 80's) and wanted to build a working gun to proove his ideas irrespective of the consiquences.
Mossad were fools to murder such a man... he could have completed the gun and they could have bombed it and obliterated it, all without murdering a relatively innocent scientist. I say relatively because, while he was no more of a criminal than Einstein or Oppenheimer, his judgement in putting his talents to work for a man such as Hussein, even as blinded by his own vision as he was, was certainly lacking IMHO. Israel's stasi-like response was of even poorer judgement.
His idea is correct, though... everything but people and delicate parts could be launched with this method for dollars, instead of thousands of dollars, a pound.
So, if the Justice Dept. hadn't settled, they could've gotten a restraining order on Microsoft's sales division? Jesus, people. Not everything in this country revolves around Microsoft.
No, but when one is discussing Microsoft's behavior, it is not at all unreasonable to point out that the Dept. of Justice's new willingness to let Microsoft off with a slap on the wrist and effectively snatch defeat from the jaws of victory to the benefit of of a convicted monopolist (with said conviction holding up on appeal), has obviously had a detrimental effect on deterring Microsoft from unethical behavior of this kind...which the suit was effectively doing for a number of years even prior to the initial judgement.
Microsoft's gloves really didn't come off until after it was clear they had successfully bought the current administration, and the DOJ, off and would effectively walk away scottfree, criminal conviction notwithstanding.
So, while the world does not revolve around Microsoft, this story, and this discussion, certainly do, and contrary to your implication, the comment you responded to was not at all out of line, or out in left field, in pointing out how the government's new unwillingness to enforce the law against a convicted monopolist has encouraged the sort of strong-arm tactics we have been reading about, and discussing, here.
While much of your post is insightful, I think you make some assumptions that are questionable, if not perhaps outright wrong.
This differs from the actual experience of seeing as we know it, and taking those concepts away would be tramatic. Most people would be unable to cope with this.
People have their preconceptions shattered every day. You are right, it can be a very traumatic experience, but people can and do cope with it, often so well that they become more than they were previously as a result. I think you are wrong to asert that most people would be unable to cope with it. I'm not even sure most people would choose not to cope with it and remain blind, given the choice.
Lastly, this is part of who the person is no matter how much it is disliked or how much of an inconvience it is.
Being cancer prone, or obese, or having a sexual dysfunction is also a part of what a person is. People change, sometimes for the worse, hopefully for the better.
Althoug I have no idea what it would be like to be blind, I can say with absolute certainty that if someone came along and offered to implant a Guizgovot(tm), that would offer me a new sense hitherto unknown to any life form on earth ("a gestalt sense of mean density of matter within two hundred miles, with acuity down to the molecular level accessible by different levels of concentration and focus, coupled or decoupled from the mean electromagnetic flux of the same" the advertisment might read) I would jump at the opportunity to enhance myself in such a way, even being relatively clueless as to how my mind would interpret such a sense, or what good it would do me. An opportunity to experience the world around me with a new and different sense, to sense it in a whole new way, would be a profoundly precious opportunity.
It might change an aspect of who I am, and certainly become a part of who I am, but it by no means would denigrate my identity or eradicate who I was. Neither would getting a prosthetic eye to replace a dysfunctional one, any more than a wheelchair, or a walker, denigrates the identity of or changes who a person with said disability is.
Deaf people who are objecting to devices that can cure deafness, which is by any reasonable definition a deficit or challenge, if not an outright disability, are simply luddite jackasses IMHO, and while deafness might be a blessing in some situations (a screeching el-train going by comes to mind as one) and sign language is something we all should probably learn anyway (I've often wished I could hold a conversation in sign language when hanging out in a loud bar, or, again, as a loud train goes by overhead), rejecting access to a new sense because you think it somehow denigrates others with the same disability is just plain Stupid.
Hey, I merely grouped him with the morons, I made no judgement based on his citizenship but on his decision to apparently treat the word "socialism" as a synonym for "dictatorship"
No worries (I agree). I was just using your post as a starting point for pointing out that his misconception is a common one (in the United States) because all of us Americans under 60 have been subjected to propoganda promoting exactly the myth he blurted out virtually every day of our lives. People here in the US, often very intelligent people, will use the terms communism, socialism, and authoritariansim (or dictatorship) interchangably. Not because they are ignorant... most will, if they think about it, make the distinction, but because we've all been subjected to rather forceful, ongoing indoctrination to equate them in our minds, so much so that despite knowing better it require conscious effort to remember not to write 'communist' or 'socialist' when you mean 'dictator.'
The power of suggestion, and in inability of even the smartest or strongest willed person to withstand ongoing conditioning over time, has to be one of the most unpleasant flaws in the human psyche we are confronted with.
passion = religion? freedom = religion?
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The Stallman Factor
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The most important aspect of Linux isn't the freedom, it's the goddamn functionality. You want religion, shave your head and join a cult. You want good software, install what works best.
You sir, are a part of the reason most western democracies are heading rapidly toward authoritarianism, and why our traditionally free markets are rapidly becoming stagnant oligarchies.
Concern with freedom, even evangalizing freedom, is not a religious stance, it is a political one. There is a difference, in case you slept through your grade school, high school, and college civics courses.
The politics of freedom can be very important. If certain political foundations for freedom do not exist, are not maintained, and are not fought for (in a metaphorical sense), then the necessary freedoms to write good code may likely go away. Good free code first, but only a little later good code period. Indeed, without a foundation in freedom, you are likely to see a situation in which the freedom necessary to conduct your business with any tools whatsoever is simply no longer there.
Don't believe me? Consider the history of MS DOS 6.2, which stagnated for years until the Microsoft monopoly began feeling pressure from outside and squelched superior competing products with their shoddy Windows product, a product which remained shoddy until 1998 and even now fails to live up to many of the technical standards hobbiest have managed to put together in several free operating systems.
That is one way to lose such freedom: an unassailable monopoly.
Another way is legislation, such as the DMCA, UCITA, and SSSCA. This again is a political, not religious, process that you'd better start caring about, or you may find your business legislated out of legitimacy.
Then consider software patents: the ultimate form of "I got my letter off to the patent office first, now no one can write anything remotely similiar. Nah Nah!" Another way your freedom to write code that works may quite possibly vanish.
There are other ways you can lose the ability to write code, or even have access to, code that works, indeed, the entire foundation of our free market economy can go away, and the only way to prevent that is through getting off your fat ass and having a little political insight and concern, and doing something to challenge and oppose such trends. Or perhaps you've so equated any passion for a particular political or philisophical with religious fanatacism that you are no longer emotionally capable of taking any kind of stance, for fear of looking like a balding Hari Krishna?
So, in summary, unless you want to lose the choice of using any free operating system at all, whether on technical, political, or aesthetic merits, and quite possibly lose the right to write, or even have access to, quality code of any kind, you'd better start caring a little bit more about politics and stop equating politics (and the few people who are passionate and involved enough to step up to the political plate and take a stance) with religious cults.
It is only correct if you call BSD's GNU/BSD when they use a majority of GNu tools. Stallman has said on numerous occasions that he ONLY wants it used on Linux.
BSD has its own separate set of tools. For example, you'll find BSD's version of 'ls' to have different (mostly less) options than the GNU equivelent. None of the core, required tools come from the GNU project AFAIK (though you can optionally add GNU tools like bash and the like from the/ports tree if you wish)
So, while the gcc compiler has given FreeBSD a boost, it (a) wasn't the only compiler FreeBSD had available (the same was not true of GNU/Linux), and (b) the GNU project did not contribute the majority of code included in the core operating system (as it did with Linux).
As another person noted, RMS is promoting the Free Software Foundation and the Freedoms it represents by asking people to use the GNU prefix, not himself. He isn't asking anyone to call it RMS/Linux or Stallmanix. It isn't about ego, it is about evangalizing freedom. Agree or disagree as you like, but stop mischaracterizing the guy.
RMS is Right, Linus is Wrong
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The Stallman Factor
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Before the flames fly, hear me out.
1) The author of the article is correct when he points out that the FSF and RMS are making a tactical error in trying to emphesize the GNU prefix to GNU/Linux (though I respect their wishes and use it as a show of respect for their contribution), in that it distracts discussion away from the freedom RMS is trying to promote with the distraction and misconception that RMS is out to stroke his ego.
But then again, does it? I'm not so sure, now that I write this. After all, we are discussing the FSF and the freedoms it represents... something we might not be doing (and either be unaware of, or taking for granted) otherwise.
2) RMS is right to place the value of freedom above that of short term 'shortcuts,' and Linus' aversion to idealogy notwithstanding, there have been some harsh reminders of the dangers in trusting one's data (such as the entire cananonical kernel source tree) to a proprietary application in a proprietary format. I personally saw several hundred hours of Blender work become worthless overnight when NaN ceased operations, and while that value might one day rise again from zero of NaN stages a comeback and somehow manages to resurrect their Blender product, it will never really be safe as long as it is beholden to a single product.
RMS has been accused of fanatacism for years for vocally warning everyone about the dangers of trusting their data to proprietary products and formats, and has stressed that the safety in storing ones data in an open format far outweights what inconvinience involved in using a less polished free alternative.
He is right. Our data is worth far more than the hardware upon which it resides, and the software used to access it.
Linus is wrong. If the folks at Bitkeeper, who I believe are as well meaning and kind as the folks at NaN were, find themselves in Chapter 11, or worse, projects which rely on that product have an unpleasant migration ahead, at best.
Subversion, CVS, arch, or other open repositories may not be as simple to use, but there exists absolutely no danger of their going away because of fiscal hard times or an unexpected economic downturn. Proprietary products do not offer this kind of insurance, and that makes trusing one's valuable data to them risky at best, often reckless, and sometimes downright suicidal (in a metaphorical sense).
3) RMS lacks tact and diplomacy. He is a talented coder and a valuable "Big Thinker," but he does make the classic mistake of equating one thing (e.g. his message of the 4 basic freedoms the GPL offers and the FSF stands for) with another (the IMHO legitimate desire to have the FSF's contribution to the GNU+Linux operating system, which is well over half the code of what arguably constitutes the core operating system).
Yes, if people are kind they will do him the favor of calling the entire system GNU/Linux in recognition of their contribution and as a favor to a man who has given us so very much, but Linus is absolutely right to eschew doctrine and idealogy as an end in themselves, and is perfectly within his rights to call the kernel Linux and not GNU/Linux. Those who bundle the various OS parts together (e.g. Debian GNU/Linux, Source Mage GNU/Linux, Gentoo GNU/Linux, Mandrake Linux, Red Hat Linux, Suse, etc.) have the right to call their product whatever they like.
Calling the system GNU/Linux rather than just Linux is a request we are all free to honor, or reject, as we see fit. Personally, with all that RMS has given us, I figure typing an extra 4 characters every time I type the name, or saying one syllable every time I speak it, is the very least I can do in return.
And in the end that is what it is all about, freedom. Freedom to agree, or freedom to disagree, and freedom to argue (quietly or loudly, depending on one's style) one's perspective in opposition to another's. Which is why I hold a number of mutually acrimonious, well known free software/open source personalities in high regard for their contributions to free software and, hence, to freedom, even when I disagree with some of them on some issues.
You might want to check out a satelite or HD tuner with a firewire modification. Run it through your computer via firewire, do any scaling necessary in software, and display using whatever display device you prefer (24" LCD, 50"-60" Plasma, projector).
Contrary to popular myth, DVDs viewed using a computer and the proper software scaling look better than anything consumer or even most prosumer products can deliver. Anyone telling you "it looks best on an old interlaced TV" simply hasn't done their research, or has limited their lines of inquiry to traditional, consumer media electronics (i.e. they haven't considered a PC with good scaling and filtering software).
Capitalism always turns into socialism does it? So all we have to do is wait and all of a sudden we'll have a healthcare free at the point of delivery, an end to poverty, equal pay for equal work, etc?
Or are you another moron confusing "Socialism" with "Dictatorship"?'
Well, he's not exactly a moron for doing so. He is but a symptom of how effective 60 years of propoganda equating socialism with communism, and communism with authoritarianism, has been in the United States. You are likely a victim of similar disinformation, perhaps equating americans with uneducated bozos, Germans with Nazis, or some other equally absurd notion that has been pounded into your head by your regional media since birth. We are all of us victims of such things, and learning to recognize and repair these blindspots is a challenge we all face, and will likely continue to face all our lives.
It is interesting that the argument that capitalism always leads to a form of authoritarianism is gaining some very significant credibility with the current trends WRT copyright trumping free speech[1], wholesale corporate buyouts of governments both within and outside of the USA, the formation of unelected, transnational authorities such as WIPO and the WTO that have been given the authority to repeal local laws (and have used it, for example to remove one of California's environmental laws).
Communism may or may not tend toward authoritariansim (there was an anarchistic form of communism that worked for a number of years in Spain, until it was absorbed and legislated out of existence by the capitalist authorities, with the support of the authoritarian communists of eastern Europe who saw their own arguments in favor of authoritarianism threatened)... I suspect it will as groups, be they businesses or collectives, in competition will ultimately have a winner and a loser, and the winner will then yield undo power over the loser... ergo, authoritarianism emerges once again.
So I think economic systems are orthogonal to authoritariansim vs. liberal democracy or republicanism, and they all likely tend to lead toward a small, privileged class excersizing inapprpriate authority over the rest of humanity.
The only real defense against an emergent authoritarianism has nothing to do with the economic system in place, so long as it is not a centerally managed one. It has everything to do with a strong constitution that places strict limits on government, a government that adheres to that constitution, a relatively open and uncorrupted fourth estate (journalism), and an educated populace who gives a damn.
Unfortunately, we only have a strong constitution that limits government. We do not have a government that obeys that constitution, nor do we have a relatively open and uncorrupted fourth estate (a handfull of companies controls virtually every media outlet in the western world, troublesome books are routinely privished[2], journalists routinely threatened and/or bought off to silence stories[2], and editorial revisions which routinely change the meaning within the story are but a few examples of how dysfunctional the fourth estate has become). What is more, we do not have an educated public, nor do we have a public which gives a damn.
[1]The First Amendment guaranteeing free speech must always trump copyright, just as any amendment modifies the original document and/or any preceeding amendments. But then, the courts have by and large stopped even paying lip service to the constitution, so this minor fact is unlikely to get in the way of upholding a flagrantly unconstitutional law... until perhaps the supreme court hears the case (and even then, unlike 20 years ago, we can not count on a fair or sane decision).
[2]c.f. Into the Buzzsaw - 18 Award Winning Journalists expose the myth of a free press (including several Peabody award winners, a Pulitzer Prize winners, and several other well known and widely respected journalists)
Not only that, but there are deinterlacers, interpolators, and various image enhancement/sharpening filters that (and, using transcode under GNU/Linux for example, or VirtualDub under Windoze) can take a less than perfect TV image regardless of source (for the clue challenged, this includes DVD) and improve the image in resolution, color quality, and just about every other measurable metric over the original source.
Any source correctly filtered in this manner can have its resolution upscaled to 1080p or, in my case, 1200p:-), not only without a loss in quality but with an actual gain in quality.
How is this possible? Hint: interpolation and some of the various other filters actually create information. The more intelligent filters make very good educated guesses as to what belongs in the missing space, so much so that your jaw will drop when you see the result.
The poster to which you replied (indeed both followup posts) may want to believe that a fuzzy TV looks better playing back a DVD or a recorded video source, but that is only true if one is using consumer playback products, rather than their PC, which can do so much more with the image. Those of us who have built their own, super-high-quality PVRs will never go back to watching painfully low-res, interlaced television.
Television Looks Like Shit, Hi-Res Monitors Don't
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Linux DVD Players Reviewed
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· Score: 5, Informative
... even with the same video signal. Whoever modded the parent post up as "insightful" has shit for brains.
In answer to the question posted: Why not just get an el cheapo dvd standalone unit for your TV. You get a remote and probably a bigger picture. Why would anyone watch DVDs on their computer, Gnu/Linux or Windows?
Television looks like shit. It is interlaced, with only 480 lines of resolution (NTSC) or 576 lines (PAL). This means that each stroke of the electronic pen only writes 240 lines (288 lines PAL) per stroke, with each stroke happening 60 times / second (50 times / second PAL). In short, the image is low res, flickery, and fuzzy.
Contrast that with a 1920x1200 24" LCD monitor, which can play DVDs in progressive, rather than interlaced mode (meaning each swipe of the electronic pen across the screen, 60 times each second, writes all 480 [PAL: 576] lines, rather than just have of them), and can do so at resolutions most consumer televisions simply cannot match, such as 720p.
Hell, you can take analog video signals, captured with either V4L(1|2) or firewire, encode and compress them into xvid format, and have a better picture than the TV was capable of displaying during the live broadcast. I know. I've done this with two episodes of Max Headroom, with astonishing results. Even my old 8-mm college videos (not hi-8 mind you, just 8-mm video tape) looks better after it has been digitized, deinterlaced, and displayed on a computer monitor than it does fresh from the master source displayed on the same monitor (but still interlaced), much less the low res television.
Then there are all kinds of scaling issues involved when trying to use consumer DVD players with high quality monitors or plasma screens, so much so that many videophiles build HTPCs (Home Theatre PCs) in order to fix the scaling artifacts and achieve better quality output than is possible even if spending tens of thousands of dollars on specialized scan converters and scaler hardware designed to do the very same thing.
The general purpose computer is the best A/V display device available to normal people today, and will remain so for the forseeable future, unless congress decides normal folks shouldn't be allowed to possess the power of a home computer and passes the Hollings Bill or some variant thereof, in which case it is time to emigrate.
Why would a professional in a third world country want an uncommon TLD that is just part of an *English* word? There are lots of other domain names possible, no-one at all is forced to use.pro
The problem is that the entire marketplace for domain names is unfree at several levels. ICANN enjoys an effective stranglehold on who is and is not allowed to join the domain name cartel and "compete." So while there are other names available, no one is free to start up a competing.professional TLD, for example, or any number of other intuitive toplevel TLDs that would enable sufficient competition for the.pro TLD to be priced at fair market value.
The other TLDs (including some country-specific ones like.uk and.ca) have competing registrars that keep the price of a domain name in check. Those that don't (many counry specific ones like.tv) tend to be priced higher than a market of competing registrars would result in..pro has no competing registrar, so it does enjoy something of a monopoly, or at least an oligarchical postion, in that ICANN severely restricts who can offer competing TLDs and has disallowed competing registars for.pro.
This does not a free market make, and until there is a truly free market (which would probably require the dismantling of ICANN to achieve) it is a fallacy, and a mistake, to assume that market forces will even be able to function in an unfettered fashion, with anything approaching the results one would normally expect and require from a market (lower prices and better quality, in short service of the public good).
I'm not excatly sure how legal something like this is and what rights MS has to prosecute if the school simply ignores them and only notes PCs runnning windows?
Since it is a contract, it may not be that illegal (though it may be unenforcable).
On the other hand, it is identical behavior to that which they engaged in with OEMs in the past, that led to an investigation, lawsuit, and Consent Decree which Microsoft subsequently ignored with impunity. That might play a role in making said contracts unenforcable, and perhaps illegal outright.
The DOJ, in bending so far over backwards to throw the case and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory have sent a very powerful, and very clear, message to Microsoft: Thank you for your campaign contribution, you are now excused from these pesky antitrust laws.
Is it any wonder Microsoft believes they are above the law, despite being a convicted monopolist? Not at all, given the current, reprehensible behavior of the US Department of Justice.
This is only to be an issue for casual copying. A commercial pirate organisation isn't going to stopped by needing to get a few legit copies...
Commercial pirate orginazations aren't going to be stopped by any of the proposals presented, even the most draconian ones. The thing the Media Cartels claim to be worried about is casual sharing via the internet, which serialization in the same manner that software has been doing for over a decade does reduce very dramatically.
For commercial piracy a whole slew of laws already exist, and no amount of crippling of consumer hardware or software is going to do anything to improve that problem. Indeed, the copy of Lord of the Rings that has been circulating was clearly an inside job, probably copied from an Academy screening tape, sold to a commercial copyright violator in Asia somehwere, pressed onto DVD, and later converted by one of the purchasers into DivX for distribution on the net. At no point in that entire stream was any copy protection in place, so things like the SSSCA (or whatever we're calling it today) would have done absolutely nothing to prevent it. This is a social problem, primarily within the ranks of the film industry itself, and is addressable by enforcing existing laws and regulations.
Even the most draconian society in the world, one which would make the former Eastern Block seem like a liberal democracy in comparison, will not be able to stop this entirely. What is truly appalling is that the Media Cartels are willing to give it a try anyone, our consitution, our freedoms, our very society be damned in the process if need be. And even if they get what they want, the problem will still exist, regardless of how many lives the cartels destroy with their newfound legislative weapons.
When Microsoft has billions going into research and a dominant desktop position, how can one expect an open AV standard to become prevelent, especailly when one considers the effort that goes into creating good codecs.
There are already good codecs out there, and more on the horizon. Nuppal or xvid come to mind as two excellent codecs (I'm encoding all of my Max Headroom episodes into xvid, and using this methodology under GNU/Linux I end up with quality video that exceeds the quality of the program on the television as I was watching the broadcast, easilly burnable onto a data DVD to boot.
Absolutely phenominal, and the xvid (a variant of opendivx if I'm not mistaken) can be scaled down as much as needed for web pages (at a cost in quality and/or resolution).
So, if you want a good, open audio/video codec write a Netscape/IE/Mozilla plugin that supports xvid video with oggvorbis encoded audio. The tools to make the video are already free and exist on virtually every platform... if you want a web browser capable plugin, write it and free yourself from the Microsoft monopoly. Then you at least have a comfortable codec you can use until the Asbolutely Free with No Ifs, Ands, or Buts Ogg Tarkin codec is released.
I guarantee you many (perhaps most) web page authors who are doing this sort of thing as a hobby (most websites) and want video would take a free(dom) codec over a non-free one given the choice, similiar capabilities, and the opportunity, and there is no reason for us to be beholden to Microsoft, Apple, or anyone else with all the free tools and implimentations available on just about every platform at this point in the game.
It might be more natural within the context of M-theory, if you buy M-theory -- but even within that theory it's hardly the only scenario that exists.
Fair enough. My knowledge of physics is limited to college courses through quantum physics, and reading such layperson gems as "The Elegant Universe." I cannot follow the deeper math of M-Theory or the various scenerios people draw off it... I based the comment WRT elegance off of reviews of the theory I read in the article linked to by/., and a few others, which of course is a logical fallacy in itself (appealing to 'authority' such as it is).
It is being reported that this theory fits the data better... if that report is wrong or exaggerated then so too are of course the conclusions based upon it. Nevertheless I think my point stands... rejecting the theory simply because it paints a more palletable picture may be something we as skeptics instinctively want to do, but IMHO that is as much a mistake as accepting a theory for the same reason. It will either fall or stand on its own merits.
To be honest I don't find either theory more palatable than the other, as long term sustainability of life through the cycles this theory proposes is probably as impossible as it would be through a cyclical big-bang/big-crunch universe (let alone the various other big bang, non-cyclical scenerios)... from what I gather both entire branes are subjected to big-bang levels of energy throughout during each 'boot' sequence (when they touch), so for an immortal wannabe like myself both theories are equally unworkable.:-)
Which is why I'm still looking for the escape hatch to the universe altogether, thus far with no luck...
I have a 1600SW I use under Linux at work, and I still haven't figured out any way to hook it up that works at full resolution with Linux and doesn't involve absurdly overpriced graphics cards. Sigh.
You can use an NVidia or radeon card (make sure you get one with the DVI serial chipset that can handle 1600x1024 resolution), and attach the DVI out to an external dongle SGI sells separately.
This works, and if you've already got the monitor its viable, but the dongle is a little finicky, and you may get some 3/2 scaler artifacts when in text mode, or watching mplayer fullscreen (the artifacts go away in normal graphics mode, and if you move the mplayer display over a few pixels), but it does work FWIW.
Nowhere near as nice as the Samsung, or the Apple 22"/23" displays, but nothing to sneeze at either.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, they were only allowing MP3 files to be transferred on their service. It's not like they could also be used for backing up data files.
... and it is a dangerous precedent that something is banned simply because it can be abused and some people choose to do so. Apply the same level of justice to other products and you ban VCRs (which the Copyright Cartels tried to do), kitchen knives, and automobiles, to name just three commonly "abused" devices.
The example I'd like to use is my old single I have on the shelf (six inch vinyl record, now hopelessly scratched but still playable, if I still had a record player) of "Too Drunk to Fuck" by the Dead Kennedy's. Not their best work, but I was 16 when I bought it (for juvinile "its got profanity, cool!" reasons), and it introduced me to a great punk band whose other albums I have owned (and seen get destroyed at parties, etc.). Somehow through all that, this one single survives through today.
So I downloaded the mp3 off of the internet, and can now listen to music which I've legally already bought and paid for, but for which the equipment I had is now no longer in service, and the format so dated that the only equipment I can now buy costs a small fortune.
Napster had many legitamate uses
I should note that all of the music on my hard drive is legal. I own a copy, in one format or another, of every single mp3 I've downloaded, and every single ogg file I've ripped myself.
So, which is the more extremist position to take? The idea that music and other information should flow freely, as it arguably did for the 3 million years humanity was around prior to the British inventing copyright as a means of censoring the then emergent printing press (with great success, I might add), or the idea that copy control policing technology should be built into every digital device in America, from your computer to a baby's rattle (as proposed by "Disney" Hollings and promoted by the Copyright Cartels) to prevent the possibility that someone, somewhere, might violate someone's government granted, monopoly entitlement?
I think you need to examine just who you are calling "extremist" and how your defining the word. "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
Is this guy joking? I blck-holed doubleclick, so I can't tell
He's not joking.
I say no to doubleclick cookies from time to time when browsing slashdot, so slashdot is definitely using them.
Add this to the growing list of Slashdot Editorial Hypocracy, along with their promoting the latest Star Wars tripe right next to articles detailing the concerted attack on our first amendment rights by the very same Copyright Cartels, etc. etc.
Slashdot may be where many of us come to get their news, but it has in large part become part of the problem, and certainly it has become a part of the corporate establishment that is becoming ever more oppressive.
60 years ago?
... the Arab and Islamic cultures better get their philisophical shit together and learn how to respect and live peacably with other cultures very quickly or they are likely to find themselves on the wrong end of the Extinction Stick.
wow for a 2000 year old religion that must be a really long time, good thing your using that as your example of how perfect they are.
I think you need a remedial reading course.
I was discussing how f*cked up both Christianity and Islam are, not how "perfect" either one is. Both are an afront to humanity, as is any religion that elevates its belief system above the value of human life, be they Satanists, Christians, Muslems, Jews, or Hale Bopp Comet Worshippers.
As an aside, right now, Christianity appears to have benefited from having gone through a reformation, something Islam is severely lacking (with said lack rather apparent in their incredibly self destructive behavior, such as flying large planes into the symbols of the worlds most powerful country and being the wrath of the same down upon them, sending suicide missions into Israel likely to send the Israelis into fits of madness, etc. These are not the acts of a sane culture, but rather one bent upon its own destruction).
Christianity isn't much better (cf. Nazi Germany 60 years ago, Yugoslavia more recently, etc.). My point remains
The only solution is to have a public infrastructure, and have private companies compete using this public infrastructure.
... I wanted to start running some Free Sites (freenet nodes) in my home and play around with some other server stuff that is difficult to do on my cable modem with its ever changing IP address (and I was greedy for more bandwidth).
... almost everyone I know has dumped Ameritech in favor of one cellular phone service or another, which means all those technically savvy people ... a prime market for Sprint's DSL service if there ever was one ... are disqualified from ever being able to buy their product.
That is exactly right.
I recently tried to acquire Sprint DSL (8 Mbit down, 1 Mbit up) in my home
I've had DSL in my home before (but it was expensive and slow in comparison), so it shouldn't be a problem.
It was.
I do not have a landline phone, having developed a sufficient hatred of our local Telco Monopoly (Ameritech) over the years that I will now only use a cellular service (currently AT&T, but I can change to whatever service I like whenever I like, in contrast to our local monopoly). This wasn't a problem the last time I had DSL installed, but apparently that has changed as the local Telco chokehold on the local loop has tightened.
The bottom line, if I don't buy phone service from the local telco monopoly, I cannot get Sprint DSL service. Period.
Quoting the correspondence I had with Sprint on the matter (for anyone else who is interested):
SPRINT:
I'm sorry I've been trying all day to get someone to tell me why another DSL provider was able to give you service w/o a phone number, but they said we have to have a phone number to service a location. Is there any way you could get a basic phone line just to have a phone number established to have the service installed?
ME:
No, I can't and won't do that. (I already have copper pairs going to my unit, having had DSL here previously.) My dislike for Ameritech is sufficient to avoid doing that, even if it means sticking with a cable modem. These services typicall charge installation fees, require people to take time off work to wait around for them (and then often don't show up when they are scheduled to do so), are expensive, difficult to work with, and then sell your contact information to telemarketers as a final slap in the face. I won't do business with them, period.
SPRINT:
I'm sorry that I was misinformed and told you we'd be able to set up service the way you said your previous provider did. I hope in the future if you ever get a phone line at home you would still consider us for home DSL service. Again I apologize for the miscommunication.
As you can see, despite having the copper already in my unit and having had a DSL service previously (despite never having had a landline telephone in that Unit, ever), it is apparently no longer possible to get DSL service (at least through Sprint) without buying telephone service from the local telco monopoly.
Sprint is losing $160/month on me alone because of either the local telco monopoly or their own incredible denseness, and I'm missing out on a DSL service I would like to have had. I doubt very seriously I am alone
It is past time for the government to break the local telco monopolies and nationalize the last mile of copper (local loop) exactly as you describe. Anything else is going to lead to a communications oligarchy that will stall the telco and broadband industry and likley stagnate the technology indefinitely.
As for the cliche about "Christians have shed more blood in God's name than ANY other religeon, ever," I would like to see a number --
... go figure).
As would I. Islam ran rampant across two of the largest continents in the world (Africa and Asia) and large portions of a third (Europe). Christianity has killed many, many people, but so too has Islam. Which is the greater offendor? I'd be curious to know, but I suspect the point doesn't really matter a whole lot. What is of more relevant concern is who is killing today in the name of religion, and Christians, as much as I despise their belief systems, haven't been engaged in mass killing since World War II, 60 years ago.
especially compared to belief systems like Communism or Naziism.
Contrary to popular myth being propogated by the Catholic church and other Christian groups, the Nazi's were not athiests at all. In point of fact, Hitler was a devout Catholic (which helps explain the Church's rather despicable collaboration in much of the holocaust), and the Nazi mysticism promulgated by their propoganda was a mixture of Christian and earlier European myths (including some real absurdities like Germans being descended from the original inhabitants of an asteroid that wiped out Atlantis
The only legitimate example of "athiestic" regimes engaged in mass murder is communism, though it appears little if any killing was done in the name of religous intolerance (though plenty of discrimination was). Far more was done in the name of 'national security' and petty politics, but even so, the communists simply haven't been around long enough to have committed anywhere near the number of atrocities as Christianity and Islam have.
You are absolutely right about the reformation movements, which Islam needs to go through rather soon, before they destroy themselves with their religious intolerance and, quite frankly, madness.
Maybe we need to clone some of the thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment and have them draft something for us (that would probably make their cloning illegal).
I like your dose of irony, but beyond that, why ban cloning? Cloning is simply a new reproductive method, nothing more. One that is currently fraught with risk, quite probably unacceptable risks at this point in time, much as test-tube reproduction was 40 years ago. Making it illegal, and banning other bioengineering techniques that could be used to create non-human species as smart as ourselves, completely skirts the underlying issue which needs to be clarified: namely the rights of all beings, not merely those who happen to be defined as human, based on some reasonable metric (such as perhaps intelligence, or some broader definition of sapience that factors in degrees of self-awareness and thought, not an easy task I grant you).
Such a regime would require:
1) a definition of sapience, probably one that (a) recognizes sapience and intelligence as a spectrum, and not a binary, condition, (b) uses the human norm as a starting reference, (c) explicitly states that any member of a species with average intelligence comparable to that of a human being or greater, enjoys full 'sapient rights' (what we now call human rights) even if their intelligence is significantly below the norm (e.g. retarded people have, and should have, all the rights of a normal person, even if the average chawowow can outthink them on a good day, but chawowows should not necessarily be considered equal to human), and (d) any unusually intelligent member of a species not normally expected to have human level intelligence or greater would enjoy full sapient rights if their unusually high intelligence is found to be such that, were they they norm, the species would be considered sapient.
2) The definition of species that enjoy full sapient rights (vs. those that do not, i.e. what we typically consider 'animals' or 'dumb machines') must be inclusive of any being demonstrating said level of sapients, regardless of whether they are human or nonhuman, bioengineered or naturally occuring, mineral (machine, crystaline, whatever), animal, or vegitable, or other.
We need a recognition of sapient rights that transcends humanity, not merely to deal with the inevitable results that bioengineering, and quite likley software engineering, is likely to create in the next century, but also to cover contingencies such as meeting alien life in our exploration of space, etc.
It is important, as life evolves and more intelligences arise (artificial or otherwise), that we have a foundation for interacting with that life in an ethical and kindly manner. Banning technologies and cowering behind our outdated religious myths does nothing to prepare us for these eventuality, and indeed increases the liklihood greatly that, if and when we meet intelligences that are other than ourselves, we will react in exactly the wrong way, with prejudice and ethno- or speciecentrism ('intelligent computers have no soul' claim theologens, for example, or 'we created the creature, we are its god, it can never be our equal', both of which are appallingly unethical and quite probably false assumptions to be making, but appear to be our default stance on such things).
Thanks loads, GOP. When are the Dems gonna find a real leader to get us out of this mess?
Never, since the two parties are equally to blame for the current mess, and neither has stood up for adhering to the constitution in the face of their own pet causes, much less in the face of their corporate sponsors' bottom lines.
This one IS appropriate for the YRO section. You should have the right to buy any computer, with or without copy protection in hardware. Of course, this is not a right that's very well protected by the Constitution.
... one with virtually no rights and few liberties, and one we are now going to be very hard pressed to change.
It is a right very well protected by the constitution. Any powers not explicitly granted the federal government by the constitution are reserved for the states, for municipalities, or for the people (10th amendment).
The Federal government has been granted no explicit authority by the constitution to regulate the sale or construction of computers.
The problem is that the government hasn't been abiding by the constitution for at least 70 years now, so we really can't expect it to start now.
Instead, for the sake of expediency over constitutional law, the courts routinely misuse the so-called commerce clause to extend the federal government's powers into all kinds of areas it is constitutionally barred from, but are nevertheless popular with the people to regulate anyway (War on Drugs, Child Pornography, etc.). By diluting the power of the constitution with these causes, irrespective of their legitemacy, we are now in a situation where real social and political pressures are coming to bear on our way of government (the Copyright Cartels' attacks on our most basic freedoms, the War on Terrorism and many of the unconstitutional methods being used to wage it domestically, not to mention the recent election debacle), and we no longer have a strong constitutional foundation to fall back on.
We sold it cheap in the name of "the children" to wage our War on Drugs, our War On Pedophiles, now our War on Terrorism and, comming soon to a computer near you, Our War On Copyright Violators.
The future is no longer terribly bright. Indeed, by selling out our most fundamental values for a perceived short term societal gain (who wouldn't want child pornographers jailed?) we've now insured that the future is a dark, bleak, ugly place
A very tragic end to a visionary who lost patience with a visionless west (whose space programs have more or less languished since the 80's) and wanted to build a working gun to proove his ideas irrespective of the consiquences.
... he could have completed the gun and they could have bombed it and obliterated it, all without murdering a relatively innocent scientist. I say relatively because, while he was no more of a criminal than Einstein or Oppenheimer, his judgement in putting his talents to work for a man such as Hussein, even as blinded by his own vision as he was, was certainly lacking IMHO. Israel's stasi-like response was of even poorer judgement.
... everything but people and delicate parts could be launched with this method for dollars, instead of thousands of dollars, a pound.
Mossad were fools to murder such a man
His idea is correct, though
So, if the Justice Dept. hadn't settled, they could've gotten a restraining order on Microsoft's sales division? Jesus, people. Not everything in this country revolves around Microsoft.
No, but when one is discussing Microsoft's behavior, it is not at all unreasonable to point out that the Dept. of Justice's new willingness to let Microsoft off with a slap on the wrist and effectively snatch defeat from the jaws of victory to the benefit of of a convicted monopolist (with said conviction holding up on appeal), has obviously had a detrimental effect on deterring Microsoft from unethical behavior of this kind...which the suit was effectively doing for a number of years even prior to the initial judgement.
Microsoft's gloves really didn't come off until after it was clear they had successfully bought the current administration, and the DOJ, off and would effectively walk away scottfree, criminal conviction notwithstanding.
So, while the world does not revolve around Microsoft, this story, and this discussion, certainly do, and contrary to your implication, the comment you responded to was not at all out of line, or out in left field, in pointing out how the government's new unwillingness to enforce the law against a convicted monopolist has encouraged the sort of strong-arm tactics we have been reading about, and discussing, here.
While much of your post is insightful, I think you make some assumptions that are questionable, if not perhaps outright wrong.
This differs from the actual experience of seeing as we know it, and taking those concepts away would be tramatic. Most people would be unable to cope with this.
People have their preconceptions shattered every day. You are right, it can be a very traumatic experience, but people can and do cope with it, often so well that they become more than they were previously as a result. I think you are wrong to asert that most people would be unable to cope with it. I'm not even sure most people would choose not to cope with it and remain blind, given the choice.
Lastly, this is part of who the person is no matter how much it is disliked or how much of an inconvience it is.
Being cancer prone, or obese, or having a sexual dysfunction is also a part of what a person is. People change, sometimes for the worse, hopefully for the better.
Althoug I have no idea what it would be like to be blind, I can say with absolute certainty that if someone came along and offered to implant a Guizgovot(tm), that would offer me a new sense hitherto unknown to any life form on earth ("a gestalt sense of mean density of matter within two hundred miles, with acuity down to the molecular level accessible by different levels of concentration and focus, coupled or decoupled from the mean electromagnetic flux of the same" the advertisment might read) I would jump at the opportunity to enhance myself in such a way, even being relatively clueless as to how my mind would interpret such a sense, or what good it would do me. An opportunity to experience the world around me with a new and different sense, to sense it in a whole new way, would be a profoundly precious opportunity.
It might change an aspect of who I am, and certainly become a part of who I am, but it by no means would denigrate my identity or eradicate who I was. Neither would getting a prosthetic eye to replace a dysfunctional one, any more than a wheelchair, or a walker, denigrates the identity of or changes who a person with said disability is.
Deaf people who are objecting to devices that can cure deafness, which is by any reasonable definition a deficit or challenge, if not an outright disability, are simply luddite jackasses IMHO, and while deafness might be a blessing in some situations (a screeching el-train going by comes to mind as one) and sign language is something we all should probably learn anyway (I've often wished I could hold a conversation in sign language when hanging out in a loud bar, or, again, as a loud train goes by overhead), rejecting access to a new sense because you think it somehow denigrates others with the same disability is just plain Stupid.
Hey, I merely grouped him with the morons, I made no judgement based on his citizenship but on his decision to apparently treat the word "socialism" as a synonym for "dictatorship"
... most will, if they think about it, make the distinction, but because we've all been subjected to rather forceful, ongoing indoctrination to equate them in our minds, so much so that despite knowing better it require conscious effort to remember not to write 'communist' or 'socialist' when you mean 'dictator.'
No worries (I agree). I was just using your post as a starting point for pointing out that his misconception is a common one (in the United States) because all of us Americans under 60 have been subjected to propoganda promoting exactly the myth he blurted out virtually every day of our lives. People here in the US, often very intelligent people, will use the terms communism, socialism, and authoritariansim (or dictatorship) interchangably. Not because they are ignorant
The power of suggestion, and in inability of even the smartest or strongest willed person to withstand ongoing conditioning over time, has to be one of the most unpleasant flaws in the human psyche we are confronted with.
The most important aspect of Linux isn't the freedom, it's the goddamn functionality. You want religion, shave your head and join a cult. You want good software, install what works best.
You sir, are a part of the reason most western democracies are heading rapidly toward authoritarianism, and why our traditionally free markets are rapidly becoming stagnant oligarchies.
Concern with freedom, even evangalizing freedom, is not a religious stance, it is a political one. There is a difference, in case you slept through your grade school, high school, and college civics courses.
The politics of freedom can be very important. If certain political foundations for freedom do not exist, are not maintained, and are not fought for (in a metaphorical sense), then the necessary freedoms to write good code may likely go away. Good free code first, but only a little later good code period. Indeed, without a foundation in freedom, you are likely to see a situation in which the freedom necessary to conduct your business with any tools whatsoever is simply no longer there.
Don't believe me? Consider the history of MS DOS 6.2, which stagnated for years until the Microsoft monopoly began feeling pressure from outside and squelched superior competing products with their shoddy Windows product, a product which remained shoddy until 1998 and even now fails to live up to many of the technical standards hobbiest have managed to put together in several free operating systems.
That is one way to lose such freedom: an unassailable monopoly.
Another way is legislation, such as the DMCA, UCITA, and SSSCA. This again is a political, not religious, process that you'd better start caring about, or you may find your business legislated out of legitimacy.
Then consider software patents: the ultimate form of "I got my letter off to the patent office first, now no one can write anything remotely similiar. Nah Nah!" Another way your freedom to write code that works may quite possibly vanish.
There are other ways you can lose the ability to write code, or even have access to, code that works, indeed, the entire foundation of our free market economy can go away, and the only way to prevent that is through getting off your fat ass and having a little political insight and concern, and doing something to challenge and oppose such trends. Or perhaps you've so equated any passion for a particular political or philisophical with religious fanatacism that you are no longer emotionally capable of taking any kind of stance, for fear of looking like a balding Hari Krishna?
So, in summary, unless you want to lose the choice of using any free operating system at all, whether on technical, political, or aesthetic merits, and quite possibly lose the right to write, or even have access to, quality code of any kind, you'd better start caring a little bit more about politics and stop equating politics (and the few people who are passionate and involved enough to step up to the political plate and take a stance) with religious cults.
It is only correct if you call BSD's GNU/BSD when they use a majority of GNu tools. Stallman has said on numerous occasions that he ONLY wants it used on Linux.
/ports tree if you wish)
BSD has its own separate set of tools. For example, you'll find BSD's version of 'ls' to have different (mostly less) options than the GNU equivelent. None of the core, required tools come from the GNU project AFAIK (though you can optionally add GNU tools like bash and the like from the
So, while the gcc compiler has given FreeBSD a boost, it (a) wasn't the only compiler FreeBSD had available (the same was not true of GNU/Linux), and (b) the GNU project did not contribute the majority of code included in the core operating system (as it did with Linux).
As another person noted, RMS is promoting the Free Software Foundation and the Freedoms it represents by asking people to use the GNU prefix, not himself. He isn't asking anyone to call it RMS/Linux or Stallmanix. It isn't about ego, it is about evangalizing freedom. Agree or disagree as you like, but stop mischaracterizing the guy.
Before the flames fly, hear me out.
... something we might not be doing (and either be unaware of, or taking for granted) otherwise.
1) The author of the article is correct when he points out that the FSF and RMS are making a tactical error in trying to emphesize the GNU prefix to GNU/Linux (though I respect their wishes and use it as a show of respect for their contribution), in that it distracts discussion away from the freedom RMS is trying to promote with the distraction and misconception that RMS is out to stroke his ego.
But then again, does it? I'm not so sure, now that I write this. After all, we are discussing the FSF and the freedoms it represents
2) RMS is right to place the value of freedom above that of short term 'shortcuts,' and Linus' aversion to idealogy notwithstanding, there have been some harsh reminders of the dangers in trusting one's data (such as the entire cananonical kernel source tree) to a proprietary application in a proprietary format. I personally saw several hundred hours of Blender work become worthless overnight when NaN ceased operations, and while that value might one day rise again from zero of NaN stages a comeback and somehow manages to resurrect their Blender product, it will never really be safe as long as it is beholden to a single product.
RMS has been accused of fanatacism for years for vocally warning everyone about the dangers of trusting their data to proprietary products and formats, and has stressed that the safety in storing ones data in an open format far outweights what inconvinience involved in using a less polished free alternative.
He is right. Our data is worth far more than the hardware upon which it resides, and the software used to access it.
Linus is wrong. If the folks at Bitkeeper, who I believe are as well meaning and kind as the folks at NaN were, find themselves in Chapter 11, or worse, projects which rely on that product have an unpleasant migration ahead, at best.
Subversion, CVS, arch, or other open repositories may not be as simple to use, but there exists absolutely no danger of their going away because of fiscal hard times or an unexpected economic downturn. Proprietary products do not offer this kind of insurance, and that makes trusing one's valuable data to them risky at best, often reckless, and sometimes downright suicidal (in a metaphorical sense).
3) RMS lacks tact and diplomacy. He is a talented coder and a valuable "Big Thinker," but he does make the classic mistake of equating one thing (e.g. his message of the 4 basic freedoms the GPL offers and the FSF stands for) with another (the IMHO legitimate desire to have the FSF's contribution to the GNU+Linux operating system, which is well over half the code of what arguably constitutes the core operating system).
Yes, if people are kind they will do him the favor of calling the entire system GNU/Linux in recognition of their contribution and as a favor to a man who has given us so very much, but Linus is absolutely right to eschew doctrine and idealogy as an end in themselves, and is perfectly within his rights to call the kernel Linux and not GNU/Linux. Those who bundle the various OS parts together (e.g. Debian GNU/Linux, Source Mage GNU/Linux, Gentoo GNU/Linux, Mandrake Linux, Red Hat Linux, Suse, etc.) have the right to call their product whatever they like.
Calling the system GNU/Linux rather than just Linux is a request we are all free to honor, or reject, as we see fit. Personally, with all that RMS has given us, I figure typing an extra 4 characters every time I type the name, or saying one syllable every time I speak it, is the very least I can do in return.
And in the end that is what it is all about, freedom. Freedom to agree, or freedom to disagree, and freedom to argue (quietly or loudly, depending on one's style) one's perspective in opposition to another's. Which is why I hold a number of mutually acrimonious, well known free software/open source personalities in high regard for their contributions to free software and, hence, to freedom, even when I disagree with some of them on some issues.
You might want to check out a satelite or HD tuner with a firewire modification. Run it through your computer via firewire, do any scaling necessary in software, and display using whatever display device you prefer (24" LCD, 50"-60" Plasma, projector).
:-)
Contrary to popular myth, DVDs viewed using a computer and the proper software scaling look better than anything consumer or even most prosumer products can deliver. Anyone telling you "it looks best on an old interlaced TV" simply hasn't done their research, or has limited their lines of inquiry to traditional, consumer media electronics (i.e. they haven't considered a PC with good scaling and filtering software).
have fun!
Capitalism always turns into socialism does it? So all we have to do is wait and all of a sudden we'll have a healthcare free at the point of delivery, an end to poverty, equal pay for equal work, etc?
... I suspect it will as groups, be they businesses or collectives, in competition will ultimately have a winner and a loser, and the winner will then yield undo power over the loser ... ergo, authoritarianism emerges once again.
... until perhaps the supreme court hears the case (and even then, unlike 20 years ago, we can not count on a fair or sane decision).
Or are you another moron confusing "Socialism" with "Dictatorship"?'
Well, he's not exactly a moron for doing so. He is but a symptom of how effective 60 years of propoganda equating socialism with communism, and communism with authoritarianism, has been in the United States. You are likely a victim of similar disinformation, perhaps equating americans with uneducated bozos, Germans with Nazis, or some other equally absurd notion that has been pounded into your head by your regional media since birth. We are all of us victims of such things, and learning to recognize and repair these blindspots is a challenge we all face, and will likely continue to face all our lives.
It is interesting that the argument that capitalism always leads to a form of authoritarianism is gaining some very significant credibility with the current trends WRT copyright trumping free speech[1], wholesale corporate buyouts of governments both within and outside of the USA, the formation of unelected, transnational authorities such as WIPO and the WTO that have been given the authority to repeal local laws (and have used it, for example to remove one of California's environmental laws).
Communism may or may not tend toward authoritariansim (there was an anarchistic form of communism that worked for a number of years in Spain, until it was absorbed and legislated out of existence by the capitalist authorities, with the support of the authoritarian communists of eastern Europe who saw their own arguments in favor of authoritarianism threatened)
So I think economic systems are orthogonal to authoritariansim vs. liberal democracy or republicanism, and they all likely tend to lead toward a small, privileged class excersizing inapprpriate authority over the rest of humanity.
The only real defense against an emergent authoritarianism has nothing to do with the economic system in place, so long as it is not a centerally managed one. It has everything to do with a strong constitution that places strict limits on government, a government that adheres to that constitution, a relatively open and uncorrupted fourth estate (journalism), and an educated populace who gives a damn.
Unfortunately, we only have a strong constitution that limits government. We do not have a government that obeys that constitution, nor do we have a relatively open and uncorrupted fourth estate (a handfull of companies controls virtually every media outlet in the western world, troublesome books are routinely privished[2], journalists routinely threatened and/or bought off to silence stories[2], and editorial revisions which routinely change the meaning within the story are but a few examples of how dysfunctional the fourth estate has become). What is more, we do not have an educated public, nor do we have a public which gives a damn.
[1]The First Amendment guaranteeing free speech must always trump copyright, just as any amendment modifies the original document and/or any preceeding amendments. But then, the courts have by and large stopped even paying lip service to the constitution, so this minor fact is unlikely to get in the way of upholding a flagrantly unconstitutional law
[2]c.f. Into the Buzzsaw - 18 Award Winning Journalists expose the myth of a free press (including several Peabody award winners, a Pulitzer Prize winners, and several other well known and widely respected journalists)
In response to an incredibly uninformed reply, Anonymous wrote:
:-), not only without a loss in quality but with an actual gain in quality.
You're absolutely 100% dead wrong
Amen.
Not only that, but there are deinterlacers, interpolators, and various image enhancement/sharpening filters that (and, using transcode under GNU/Linux for example, or VirtualDub under Windoze) can take a less than perfect TV image regardless of source (for the clue challenged, this includes DVD) and improve the image in resolution, color quality, and just about every other measurable metric over the original source.
Any source correctly filtered in this manner can have its resolution upscaled to 1080p or, in my case, 1200p
How is this possible? Hint: interpolation and some of the various other filters actually create information. The more intelligent filters make very good educated guesses as to what belongs in the missing space, so much so that your jaw will drop when you see the result.
The poster to which you replied (indeed both followup posts) may want to believe that a fuzzy TV looks better playing back a DVD or a recorded video source, but that is only true if one is using consumer playback products, rather than their PC, which can do so much more with the image. Those of us who have built their own, super-high-quality PVRs will never go back to watching painfully low-res, interlaced television.
... even with the same video signal. Whoever modded the parent post up as "insightful" has shit for brains.
In answer to the question posted: Why not just get an el cheapo dvd standalone unit for your TV. You get a remote and probably a bigger picture. Why would anyone watch DVDs on their computer, Gnu/Linux or Windows?
Television looks like shit. It is interlaced, with only 480 lines of resolution (NTSC) or 576 lines (PAL). This means that each stroke of the electronic pen only writes 240 lines (288 lines PAL) per stroke, with each stroke happening 60 times / second (50 times / second PAL). In short, the image is low res, flickery, and fuzzy.
Contrast that with a 1920x1200 24" LCD monitor, which can play DVDs in progressive, rather than interlaced mode (meaning each swipe of the electronic pen across the screen, 60 times each second, writes all 480 [PAL: 576] lines, rather than just have of them), and can do so at resolutions most consumer televisions simply cannot match, such as 720p.
Hell, you can take analog video signals, captured with either V4L(1|2) or firewire, encode and compress them into xvid format, and have a better picture than the TV was capable of displaying during the live broadcast. I know. I've done this with two episodes of Max Headroom, with astonishing results. Even my old 8-mm college videos (not hi-8 mind you, just 8-mm video tape) looks better after it has been digitized, deinterlaced, and displayed on a computer monitor than it does fresh from the master source displayed on the same monitor (but still interlaced), much less the low res television.
Then there are all kinds of scaling issues involved when trying to use consumer DVD players with high quality monitors or plasma screens, so much so that many videophiles build HTPCs (Home Theatre PCs) in order to fix the scaling artifacts and achieve better quality output than is possible even if spending tens of thousands of dollars on specialized scan converters and scaler hardware designed to do the very same thing.
The general purpose computer is the best A/V display device available to normal people today, and will remain so for the forseeable future, unless congress decides normal folks shouldn't be allowed to possess the power of a home computer and passes the Hollings Bill or some variant thereof, in which case it is time to emigrate.
Why would a professional in a third world country want an uncommon TLD that is just part of an *English* word? There are lots of other domain names possible, no-one at all is forced to use .pro
.professional TLD, for example, or any number of other intuitive toplevel TLDs that would enable sufficient competition for the .pro TLD to be priced at fair market value.
.uk and .ca) have competing registrars that keep the price of a domain name in check. Those that don't (many counry specific ones like .tv) tend to be priced higher than a market of competing registrars would result in. .pro has no competing registrar, so it does enjoy something of a monopoly, or at least an oligarchical postion, in that ICANN severely restricts who can offer competing TLDs and has disallowed competing registars for .pro.
The problem is that the entire marketplace for domain names is unfree at several levels. ICANN enjoys an effective stranglehold on who is and is not allowed to join the domain name cartel and "compete." So while there are other names available, no one is free to start up a competing
The other TLDs (including some country-specific ones like
This does not a free market make, and until there is a truly free market (which would probably require the dismantling of ICANN to achieve) it is a fallacy, and a mistake, to assume that market forces will even be able to function in an unfettered fashion, with anything approaching the results one would normally expect and require from a market (lower prices and better quality, in short service of the public good).
I'm not excatly sure how legal something like this is and what rights MS has to prosecute if the school simply ignores them and only notes PCs runnning windows?
Since it is a contract, it may not be that illegal (though it may be unenforcable).
On the other hand, it is identical behavior to that which they engaged in with OEMs in the past, that led to an investigation, lawsuit, and Consent Decree which Microsoft subsequently ignored with impunity. That might play a role in making said contracts unenforcable, and perhaps illegal outright.
The DOJ, in bending so far over backwards to throw the case and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory have sent a very powerful, and very clear, message to Microsoft: Thank you for your campaign contribution, you are now excused from these pesky antitrust laws.
Is it any wonder Microsoft believes they are above the law, despite being a convicted monopolist? Not at all, given the current, reprehensible behavior of the US Department of Justice.
This is only to be an issue for casual copying. A commercial pirate organisation isn't going to stopped by needing to get a few legit copies...
Commercial pirate orginazations aren't going to be stopped by any of the proposals presented, even the most draconian ones. The thing the Media Cartels claim to be worried about is casual sharing via the internet, which serialization in the same manner that software has been doing for over a decade does reduce very dramatically.
For commercial piracy a whole slew of laws already exist, and no amount of crippling of consumer hardware or software is going to do anything to improve that problem. Indeed, the copy of Lord of the Rings that has been circulating was clearly an inside job, probably copied from an Academy screening tape, sold to a commercial copyright violator in Asia somehwere, pressed onto DVD, and later converted by one of the purchasers into DivX for distribution on the net. At no point in that entire stream was any copy protection in place, so things like the SSSCA (or whatever we're calling it today) would have done absolutely nothing to prevent it. This is a social problem, primarily within the ranks of the film industry itself, and is addressable by enforcing existing laws and regulations.
Even the most draconian society in the world, one which would make the former Eastern Block seem like a liberal democracy in comparison, will not be able to stop this entirely. What is truly appalling is that the Media Cartels are willing to give it a try anyone, our consitution, our freedoms, our very society be damned in the process if need be. And even if they get what they want, the problem will still exist, regardless of how many lives the cartels destroy with their newfound legislative weapons.
When Microsoft has billions going into research and a dominant desktop position, how can one expect an open AV standard to become prevelent, especailly when one considers the effort that goes into creating good codecs.
... if you want a web browser capable plugin, write it and free yourself from the Microsoft monopoly. Then you at least have a comfortable codec you can use until the Asbolutely Free with No Ifs, Ands, or Buts Ogg Tarkin codec is released.
There are already good codecs out there, and more on the horizon. Nuppal or xvid come to mind as two excellent codecs (I'm encoding all of my Max Headroom episodes into xvid, and using this methodology under GNU/Linux I end up with quality video that exceeds the quality of the program on the television as I was watching the broadcast, easilly burnable onto a data DVD to boot.
Absolutely phenominal, and the xvid (a variant of opendivx if I'm not mistaken) can be scaled down as much as needed for web pages (at a cost in quality and/or resolution).
So, if you want a good, open audio/video codec write a Netscape/IE/Mozilla plugin that supports xvid video with oggvorbis encoded audio. The tools to make the video are already free and exist on virtually every platform
I guarantee you many (perhaps most) web page authors who are doing this sort of thing as a hobby (most websites) and want video would take a free(dom) codec over a non-free one given the choice, similiar capabilities, and the opportunity, and there is no reason for us to be beholden to Microsoft, Apple, or anyone else with all the free tools and implimentations available on just about every platform at this point in the game.
It might be more natural within the context of M-theory, if you buy M-theory -- but even within that theory it's hardly the only scenario that exists.
... I based the comment WRT elegance off of reviews of the theory I read in the article linked to by /., and a few others, which of course is a logical fallacy in itself (appealing to 'authority' such as it is).
... if that report is wrong or exaggerated then so too are of course the conclusions based upon it. Nevertheless I think my point stands ... rejecting the theory simply because it paints a more palletable picture may be something we as skeptics instinctively want to do, but IMHO that is as much a mistake as accepting a theory for the same reason. It will either fall or stand on its own merits.
... from what I gather both entire branes are subjected to big-bang levels of energy throughout during each 'boot' sequence (when they touch), so for an immortal wannabe like myself both theories are equally unworkable. :-)
Fair enough. My knowledge of physics is limited to college courses through quantum physics, and reading such layperson gems as "The Elegant Universe." I cannot follow the deeper math of M-Theory or the various scenerios people draw off it
It is being reported that this theory fits the data better
To be honest I don't find either theory more palatable than the other, as long term sustainability of life through the cycles this theory proposes is probably as impossible as it would be through a cyclical big-bang/big-crunch universe (let alone the various other big bang, non-cyclical scenerios)
Which is why I'm still looking for the escape hatch to the universe altogether, thus far with no luck...
I have a 1600SW I use under Linux at work, and I still haven't figured out any way to hook it up that works at full resolution with Linux and doesn't involve absurdly overpriced graphics cards. Sigh.
:-)
You can use an NVidia or radeon card (make sure you get one with the DVI serial chipset that can handle 1600x1024 resolution), and attach the DVI out to an external dongle SGI sells separately.
This works, and if you've already got the monitor its viable, but the dongle is a little finicky, and you may get some 3/2 scaler artifacts when in text mode, or watching mplayer fullscreen (the artifacts go away in normal graphics mode, and if you move the mplayer display over a few pixels), but it does work FWIW.
Nowhere near as nice as the Samsung, or the Apple 22"/23" displays, but nothing to sneeze at either.