Okay, here's a scenario. You make hard drives. You develop a bad ass new disk defragmentor (or whatnot), you package it for your drives. It's designed to only work with YOUR hard drives. A competitor comes along, decompiles your sofware and adds in support for their drives, then they start distributing their version of YOUR software (not open source) with their drives. Doesn't that sound a bit like they have hijacked your work?
I don't think the company was distributing a stolen version of iDVD, they were distributing a patch that allowed iDVD to work with their drives. I would think its closer to maybe supplying a driver...
To quote the story: "In response, Other World Computing began bundling a product called DVD Enabler with its external Mercury Pro DVD-R/RW FireWire drive. DVD Enabler modified iDVD so the application would save completed DVDs to a FireWire-connected drive."
Maybe now we can have UBER patches for ALL M$ products
We do, its called linux.
Re:Nethack is playable because...
on
Nethack 3.4.0
·
· Score: 1
Nethack is a universe that is vast enough that winning is exceptionally difficult, even if you read all the spoilers. Yet you still have the impression that it is easy throughout.
That is the BEST description of Nethack's feel I've yet to read. Nethack is addictive because its so easy to actually PLAY while making it hard to win and also giving you amazing depth without having you read tons of manuals etc..
Actually I'm not justifying anything. I'm not saying that its less wrong because I bought the CD...just that the act itself made me buy the CD. Which means that in this case, this illegal activity gave them profit rather than reduced it as they would claim...
Please! This is basically more of big, rich media companies convicting all their customers without a trial. Guilty because you own a piece of hardware. Yeah, file-sharing and copying is rampant...does it take away their profits? That's not clear...and in MY opinion, it doesn't since there's no guarantee that I would have purchased a CD containing a song I download...yet I know that many times, I've downloaded a song, liked it, then bought the CD.
As for the Apple campaign, nothing in it is promoting criminal behavior, only fair use...which is what these people would LOVE to stamp out.
Does this mean that if I buy the BMW I get to speed and break the law?
Actually you should take evasive action at the drop of a hat, since this will be the only way to feel you haven't been ripped off (Kudos to Neal Stephenson).
In the REAL world, person a may or may not have bought the movie (or computer game in most cases), thus that $10 loss is really $5 or less (because maybe half the time they would have bought it legally, etc.)
Don't forget the ones who check out the pirated movie to see if it doesn't suck, find out they like it...then decide to shell out the thirty bucks for a "collector's edition DVD" or some such. (Although it's rare that anything out of Hollywood these days DOESN'T suck)
The author wants to "expose the fallacy of the belief in the "inherent security" of Open Source software" (many eyes make safer code) and gives the REAL way to make software more secure of which these 3 caught my eye:
Code audits
Testing
Design reviews
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that exactly the "many eyes make safer code" theory? That open source, having the code available, can have more people do code audits, testing and design reviews than a company with closed source can.
In the real world, he's right, those extra eyes aren't necessarily qualified...but still, on AVERAGE wouldn't there be MORE qualified eyes to do this stuff along with the unqualified?
You should always make a judgement of the credibility of any information you receive.,
The problem these days is that its damn hard to judge the credibility of the information that you have access to these days, I mean when huge media companies own most of the papers, when any moron can put up a webpage on the net and ethics seem to have been removed from the business vernacular, how do you KNOW you can trust the source?
All too often they fail to realize that MS is on to a good thing
Well I think what all the MS-bashing is obscuring is that a lot of people (MS-haters aside) do NOT think that.NET is a "good" thing as you say. I agree with them.
Government studies indicate that water is wet! More on this story at 6.
Re:What does AI say about...
on
Arguing A.I.
·
· Score: 1
common sense, personality, emotion, and instinct?
Most people these days don't have the first two and the occurrences of the last two are rapidly dwindling...how can you expect computers to have these traits?
Still, she's not bothered by critics of spamming or those who find the tactic bothersome.
"I really wouldn't care, if I could get somebody to see it," she said. "Maybe somebody'll see it and have a job opening."
Do we have another Bernie on our hands?
Man, people just don't care who they piss off anymore, as long as there's a chance that they get their way
(makes NO SENSE to have a proprietary char set that nothing supports... except to microsoft).
It makes perfect sense if you're Microsoft and want to use a hundred little ways to bolster your monopoly...
Basically this makes all ' look like O's with an accent mark above them and other annoying features when viewed with Opera.
How many inexperienced users, inquisitively switching to Opera or something else, switched back to IE when seeing this, thinking that Opera is the app that's screwing up and not the char set?
But someone else might say "if you let people punish others, the whole network will be overrun by people who punish for no good reason and everyone will hate it." This study would provide evidence to support adding the punishment feature.
The article doesn't mention who was chosen to participate...but I'm almost certain that it was a small number of reasonable adults (and perhaps some students)...try it on a huge group loaded with idiotic script kiddies and you'll see that you WILL be overrun by clobber happy morons who love to cause trouble.
In small groups, I'm certain this system would work...but for large groups (or the whole of the net) forget it, heck just browsing here at -1 shows you why it wouldn't work.
Well now you're just being a jerk for the sake of being argumentative if you don't see a difference between watching a MOVIE (which would be unprofessional conduct) and listening to music (which in my opinion, neither increases or decreases my performance...but certainly makes the day more pleasant and less stressful).
I'm guessing you probably have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time...
Just don't run Windows and Microsoft has no say in what you can and can't do.
You're missing my point...I already don't do windows where I HAVE a choice...and at work I do not.
Now, if Microsoft were pushing for LAWS stating that all Operating Systems must include some verification technique like, say, I don't know, Passport? Then I'd be upset..
That's what I was trying to get across...if Microsoft ever gets powerful enough to attempt this...it will already be too late to stop them. You don't see tobacco companies going out of business anytime soon do you? And they weren't pushing quite as hard as THIS company does
Note: I'm not doing a direct comparison between the acts of big tobacco and Microsoft...I'm just pointing out that once you're big enough, laws and lawmakers and even insane amounts of money don't mean diddley squat.
If you disagree with the idea of Passport, don't use the Zone
Ok fine, I won't use the zone...no loss to me mind you. HOWEVER, what happens when Microsoft gets powerful enough to say "If you disagree with the idea of Passport, then DON'T BOOT YOUR COMPUTER"?? That's what people are indignant about (the smart ones anyway). There's also as certain amount of anger due to the fact that they couldn't even implement their own software initiative properly (yeah, THAT'll inspire confidence!).
those that don't want to use Opera because it has a huge ad banner
Oh COME ON...a banner that's about an inch by 5 or so is HUGE?..its not even in the viewing area! Besides, you can always just BUY the registered version...or find a crack..I'm sure there's one out there
Personally I switched to Opera when 5 came out and now I've moved up to 6 and I have to say its a really good browser, nice and stable, FAST and once you lie to some webpages (ie: make Opera say its MSIE 5) they all come out beautiful...
The fact of the matter is that many gamers love playing older games. New games can be fun, but I often find myself longing for the days of 2D, side-scrollers.
Not that I want to revive the old games vs new games rant...but I can't help it...I TOTALLY agree with this, most older games were a truckload more fun than most new games (with few exceptions).
"Another solution is to find volunteers to rewrite from scratch the concerned documents"
Nothing like the glory of writing the help files. Its the most visisble part of any program... and easier to explain to your mother than kernel hacking.
Of course writing all of this in a couple of days is what makes the usual help file like a man page crystal clear and helpful to both the new user and guru alike!
Which KDE? Certainly not 2.2.1, which, although useable, is still pitifully slow compared to Win98 on my K6-2 300 laptop w 160MB RAM
I don't get that, I have a gateway solo2500 which is a P333 (192 Megs of Ram) with a dual boot of Win98 SE and Mandrake 8.1 which runs KDE2.2.1 and I gotta say both are more than "useable"...KDE is running fast, dependable and VERY usable....the only thing that's stopping me from wiping out the 98 partition altogether are some of the games that I play and some of the software projects I need to support for work...
I have to admit that I had problems with speed on my desktop machine which is a 1Ghz Athlon with 512 Megs of ram, when I installed KDE 2.2.0 with Mandrake 8 (the ONLY problem - once I switched to iceWM it went away). However a quick install of Mandrake 8.1 has solved that problem and it rocks too...
Your monopoly on some piece of software you develop derives solely from copyright law -- you have no natural or moral rights to it. Only what other people choose, through the government, to give you.
The user can, if he wants, control things on a much more fundmental level than the developer. The most you could do would be to take your ball home with you, but this doesn't result in any additional value for you!
I can't argue with that...copyright law IS something that was chosen by the people, through the government, on the basis that people who create and contribute SHOULD have FAIR compensation (or rather the CHANCE of..) for the work they do. A leech doesn't contribute, just uses. That's what I was talking about...why should I put a LOT of hard work into something only to know that 1) I'm not going to get any support from most people for it (never mind compensation) and 2) I have no rights to it whatsoever if I decide to share it in anyway. The SPIRIT of the copyright law is a good compromise (although its current IMPLEMENTATION is something I question). I don't want a perpetual monopoly, just the right to choose what I want to do with what I create and possibly profit from it. People don't have a right to have others create stuff for their use free of charge..that's a gift as much as anything
(and of course note that you recieve value from such a scheme, because much more software -- everyone else's -- becomes available for you to improve as well)
That's assuming others DO create more software. And while there's a LOT of good stuff in open source, most people won't eat much ONLY creating open source stuff. Eventually, most people who create will just turn around and say "why bother? I need to do something to pay the rent and get groceries", and it will ultimately lead to less product (ie: Software, art, books etc...).
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, here's a scenario. You make hard drives. You develop a bad ass new disk defragmentor (or whatnot), you package it for your drives. It's designed to only work with YOUR hard drives. A competitor comes along, decompiles your sofware and adds in support for their drives, then they start distributing their version of YOUR software (not open source) with their drives. Doesn't that sound a bit like they have hijacked your work?
I don't think the company was distributing a stolen version of iDVD, they were distributing a patch that allowed iDVD to work with their drives. I would think its closer to maybe supplying a driver...
To quote the story: "In response, Other World Computing began bundling a product called DVD Enabler with its external Mercury Pro DVD-R/RW FireWire drive. DVD Enabler modified iDVD so the application would save completed DVDs to a FireWire-connected drive."
We do, its called linux.
Nethack is a universe that is vast enough that winning is exceptionally difficult, even if you read all the spoilers. Yet you still have the impression that it is easy throughout.
That is the BEST description of Nethack's feel I've yet to read. Nethack is addictive because its so easy to actually PLAY while making it hard to win and also giving you amazing depth without having you read tons of manuals etc..
Actually I'm not justifying anything. I'm not saying that its less wrong because I bought the CD...just that the act itself made me buy the CD. Which means that in this case, this illegal activity gave them profit rather than reduced it as they would claim...
Please! This is basically more of big, rich media companies convicting all their customers without a trial. Guilty because you own a piece of hardware. Yeah, file-sharing and copying is rampant...does it take away their profits? That's not clear...and in MY opinion, it doesn't since there's no guarantee that I would have purchased a CD containing a song I download...yet I know that many times, I've downloaded a song, liked it, then bought the CD.
As for the Apple campaign, nothing in it is promoting criminal behavior, only fair use...which is what these people would LOVE to stamp out.
Does this mean that if I buy the BMW I get to speed and break the law?
Actually you should take evasive action at the drop of a hat, since this will be the only way to feel you haven't been ripped off (Kudos to Neal Stephenson).
In the REAL world, person a may or may not have bought the movie (or computer game in most cases), thus that $10 loss is really $5 or less (because maybe half the time they would have bought it legally, etc.)
Don't forget the ones who check out the pirated movie to see if it doesn't suck, find out they like it...then decide to shell out the thirty bucks for a "collector's edition DVD" or some such. (Although it's rare that anything out of Hollywood these days DOESN'T suck)
The author wants to "expose the fallacy of the belief in the "inherent security" of Open Source software" (many eyes make safer code) and gives the REAL way to make software more secure of which these 3 caught my eye:
Code audits
Testing
Design reviews
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that exactly the "many eyes make safer code" theory? That open source, having the code available, can have more people do code audits, testing and design reviews than a company with closed source can.
In the real world, he's right, those extra eyes aren't necessarily qualified...but still, on AVERAGE wouldn't there be MORE qualified eyes to do this stuff along with the unqualified?
You should always make a judgement of the credibility of any information you receive.,
The problem these days is that its damn hard to judge the credibility of the information that you have access to these days, I mean when huge media companies own most of the papers, when any moron can put up a webpage on the net and ethics seem to have been removed from the business vernacular, how do you KNOW you can trust the source?
What about kids and parents like this?
http://www.nypost.com/commentary/38643.htm
All too often they fail to realize that MS is on to a good thing
Well I think what all the MS-bashing is obscuring is that a lot of people (MS-haters aside) do NOT think that .NET is a "good" thing as you say. I agree with them.
Government studies indicate that water is wet! More on this story at 6.
common sense, personality, emotion, and instinct?
Most people these days don't have the first two and the occurrences of the last two are rapidly dwindling...how can you expect computers to have these traits?
From the Post article:
Still, she's not bothered by critics of spamming or those who find the tactic bothersome.
"I really wouldn't care, if I could get somebody to see it," she said. "Maybe somebody'll see it and have a job opening."
Do we have another Bernie on our hands?
Man, people just don't care who they piss off anymore, as long as there's a chance that they get their way
(makes NO SENSE to have a proprietary char set that nothing supports... except to microsoft).
It makes perfect sense if you're Microsoft and want to use a hundred little ways to bolster your monopoly...
Basically this makes all ' look like O's with an accent mark above them and other annoying features when viewed with Opera.
How many inexperienced users, inquisitively switching to Opera or something else, switched back to IE when seeing this, thinking that Opera is the app that's screwing up and not the char set?
But someone else might say "if you let people punish others, the whole network will be overrun by people who punish for no good reason and everyone will hate it." This study would provide evidence to support adding the punishment feature.
The article doesn't mention who was chosen to participate...but I'm almost certain that it was a small number of reasonable adults (and perhaps some students)...try it on a huge group loaded with idiotic script kiddies and you'll see that you WILL be overrun by clobber happy morons who love to cause trouble.
In small groups, I'm certain this system would work...but for large groups (or the whole of the net) forget it, heck just browsing here at -1 shows you why it wouldn't work.
Why not watch DivX movies while you're at it?
Well now you're just being a jerk for the sake of being argumentative if you don't see a difference between watching a MOVIE (which would be unprofessional conduct) and listening to music (which in my opinion, neither increases or decreases my performance...but certainly makes the day more pleasant and less stressful).
I'm guessing you probably have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time...
Just don't run Windows and Microsoft has no say in what you can and can't do.
You're missing my point...I already don't do windows where I HAVE a choice...and at work I do not.
Now, if Microsoft were pushing for LAWS stating that all Operating Systems must include some verification technique like, say, I don't know, Passport? Then I'd be upset..
That's what I was trying to get across...if Microsoft ever gets powerful enough to attempt this...it will already be too late to stop them. You don't see tobacco companies going out of business anytime soon do you? And they weren't pushing quite as hard as THIS company does
Note: I'm not doing a direct comparison between the acts of big tobacco and Microsoft...I'm just pointing out that once you're big enough, laws and lawmakers and even insane amounts of money don't mean diddley squat.
If you disagree with the idea of Passport, don't use the Zone
Ok fine, I won't use the zone...no loss to me mind you. HOWEVER, what happens when Microsoft gets powerful enough to say "If you disagree with the idea of Passport, then DON'T BOOT YOUR COMPUTER"?? That's what people are indignant about (the smart ones anyway). There's also as certain amount of anger due to the fact that they couldn't even implement their own software initiative properly (yeah, THAT'll inspire confidence!).
Stop em BEFORE they're unstoppable.
No I haven't, only Archon and Archon 2...I'll have to check it out
those that don't want to use Opera because it has a huge ad banner
Oh COME ON...a banner that's about an inch by 5 or so is HUGE?..its not even in the viewing area! Besides, you can always just BUY the registered version...or find a crack..I'm sure there's one out there
Personally I switched to Opera when 5 came out and now I've moved up to 6 and I have to say its a really good browser, nice and stable, FAST and once you lie to some webpages (ie: make Opera say its MSIE 5) they all come out beautiful...
The fact of the matter is that many gamers love playing older games. New games can be fun, but I often find myself longing for the days of 2D, side-scrollers.
Not that I want to revive the old games vs new games rant...but I can't help it...I TOTALLY agree with this, most older games were a truckload more fun than most new games (with few exceptions).
Space Taxi,Archon or Zaxxon anyone?
Or even Ghost n' Goblins or Moon Patrol :)
"Another solution is to find volunteers to rewrite from scratch the concerned documents" ... and easier to explain to your mother than kernel hacking.
Nothing like the glory of writing the help files. Its the most visisble part of any program
Of course writing all of this in a couple of days is what makes the usual help file like a man page crystal clear and helpful to both the new user and guru alike!
I don't get that, I have a gateway solo2500 which is a P333 (192 Megs of Ram) with a dual boot of Win98 SE and Mandrake 8.1 which runs KDE2.2.1 and I gotta say both are more than "useable"...KDE is running fast, dependable and VERY usable....the only thing that's stopping me from wiping out the 98 partition altogether are some of the games that I play and some of the software projects I need to support for work...
I have to admit that I had problems with speed on my desktop machine which is a 1Ghz Athlon with 512 Megs of ram, when I installed KDE 2.2.0 with Mandrake 8 (the ONLY problem - once I switched to iceWM it went away). However a quick install of Mandrake 8.1 has solved that problem and it rocks too...
The user can, if he wants, control things on a much more fundmental level than the developer. The most you could do would be to take your ball home with you, but this doesn't result in any additional value for you!
I can't argue with that...copyright law IS something that was chosen by the people, through the government, on the basis that people who create and contribute SHOULD have FAIR compensation (or rather the CHANCE of..) for the work they do. A leech doesn't contribute, just uses. That's what I was talking about...why should I put a LOT of hard work into something only to know that 1) I'm not going to get any support from most people for it (never mind compensation) and 2) I have no rights to it whatsoever if I decide to share it in anyway. The SPIRIT of the copyright law is a good compromise (although its current IMPLEMENTATION is something I question). I don't want a perpetual monopoly, just the right to choose what I want to do with what I create and possibly profit from it. People don't have a right to have others create stuff for their use free of charge..that's a gift as much as anything
(and of course note that you recieve value from such a scheme, because much more software -- everyone else's -- becomes available for you to improve as well)
That's assuming others DO create more software. And while there's a LOT of good stuff in open source, most people won't eat much ONLY creating open source stuff. Eventually, most people who create will just turn around and say "why bother? I need to do something to pay the rent and get groceries", and it will ultimately lead to less product (ie: Software, art, books etc...).