These digital files of movies released are out there, we can get them free, and it won't be stopped. It's not much use defining something as wrong, because it doesn't actually HURT anyone.
What are you talking about? Smoking a little too much weed lately? From the most fundamental rules that govern a CIVIL group of individuals, you are taking something that DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU, you are GIVING IT TO OTHER PEOPLE (most likely against the wishes of its owners), and you are DEPRIVING ITS OWNERS the right to do with it as THEY see fit. The MPAA has a right to use whatever (legal) means necessary to pursue people that steal its property.
If you don't like the idea that a movie is property, maybe someone else won't like the idea that your car is property.
Re:The Apprentice
on
Defining Google
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Speaking of The Apprentice, that show cracks me up. Does the Trumpster really think that ONLY Ivy-leaguers could come up with the crap that those contestants did? Give me a break. And what about the episode right before the finale, where those two women were hissing away at each other...PLEASE...it sounded more like a high-school tiff (they even TALKED like high-school girls). I'd NEVER expect something like this from a professional. This was supposed to be the creme de la creme, but I guess the joke was on them.
If corporations that distribute copyrighted material are granted a stipend for something that might happen, this is effectively the beginning of a free market that has been dismantled. In other words, it's not a free market any more. What's to stop this from becoming an even greater source of corporate welfare, as the tax is increased to compensate for downward trends in revenue that have nothing to do with the (purported) illegal use of copyrighted material? This almost becomes a form of corporate Marxism...the beginning of what some have termed a "living death".
I haven't had any Microsoft stuff on my machines (except for one box running Windows) since I decided not to upgrade Office 98 on the Mac.
The motivattion for my comment was simply to point out that in this case, where adoption is a primary issue, "different" is not necessarily "better," as it results in extra effort required by those considering a switch. Embrace, then extend.
It's unfortunately, really, that projects like OpenOffice and AbiWord are graded, not upon their own features and merits, but on how well they interoperate with the de-facto standard, Microsoft Office.
Considering that any switch involves real resources (time and money), the idea is to try and convince them that they can switch AND avoid any residual pain. In other words, OpenOffice has to be as much of a drop-in replacement as possible. It means that whatever OO offers will need to be a lot like their Windows equivalents. It's not something that a lot of Open Source fans probably like, but it's reality.
If the government decided that it would be for the "greater good," the current distance between houses and the highway is no impediment. They'll just take the land, and pay its owners what ever its version of the going market rate is.
Due to....what? An elitist mentality that presumes that any college graduate is automatically better than anyone without a four-year degree? Does 15+ years of prior work experience count for anything?
A little story: I managed a small group of people for a while, two of which were recent college grads, and one other of which was a bright kid in high school. This kid ran CIRCLES around them. They couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. I asked them to do a small project, left them on their own, and two months later, they had barely anything to show for it. If that's what employers are after, I regret to say that I'm not qualified. Here's something even funnier - they had the cajones to ask for salaries that were on a par with mine,
In order to level the playing field, maybe the USPTO should adopt a new fee arrangement. Very small fees for the little guys, and very large ones for the big guys. It sounds like the concept behind progressive taxation, but the motives are quite different. Perhaps the fee could start out the same for each, regardless of size, but increase substantially with respect to the number of applications submitted within a given year. This means that companies would have to pick and choose wisely, and it may put an end to the steaming piles of crap that are currently masquerading as "innovation". $700 isn't even chump change to many large companies. $70,000 on the other hand, might make them think twice.
I've worked in the technology sector most of my professional life. I've recently invested a considerable amount of time enhancing my skills by learning Java, with the intent of becoming certified (I've worked with other languages as well). One thought that has been lingering is that it might all be for naught, due to the current trends in outsourcing. Should I jump ship and swim in another direction?
Corporation is a privately held company founded in 1998, and it was issued US Patent No. 5,910,988 and US Patent No. 6,032,137 in 1999 and 2000 for image capture, centralized processing and electronic storage of document and check information.
well, well--- I remember working for a financial institution long before this- they were in the process of installing a new system that scanned, stored, and retrieved information....hm. Maybe ScanOptics might have something to say about this.
The problem lies with a brain-dead Congress. Had anyone actually bothered to educate themselves on the potential effects from the passage of a law allowing software patents, I dare say it never would have seen the light of day. But then, no one knew what the P4tri0t Act was about, either.
What good is a game where you can simply buy your way to the top? It's pointless. There's nothing to distinguish the players from the poseurs, and that makes it a game not worth playing.
Take Lineage2 for example. I was totally drawn in by the artwork and the breadth of the overall environment. It's one of my favorite games in this regard. However, it's a game I no longer play, because I don't think it's fair. Anyone who has played Lineage2 knows about excruciatingly long hours required to level up a character, and equip it with newer and better items. And yet, as someone who put in the time (and paid NCSoft to do it no less), what's the difference between my effort, and the minimal effort from someone who buys their way up? NONE. I'll not waste my time, thank you. I see enough of that crap in real life.
I just now discovered the ability to add tabs in the main panel. VERY NICE. This reduces window clutter by a substantial amount, and makes things much easier. I'm actually impressed with this.
How recently have you read the EULA on most commercial software products?
What bugs are fixed, and under what kind of time frame? Who decides? You? No way. You are subject to THEIR priorities, which means that some bugs may be overlooked entirely, merely because the ROI isn't high enough.
You may not have the expertise to fix the bugs yourself, but I know from my own experience, we had a problem with a commercial software package whose recent upgrade not only introduced a serious bug that affected our workflow, but we were powerless to do much about it. At least with OSS,we could have considered the option of hiring a programmer to make the necessary changes.
I think the government with this "war on terror" is trying its damnedest to piss up a rope. The volume of information that passes over wires across the net is far too voluminous and far too chaotic to produce any tangible results, in my opinion. If there are any, I suspect they will appear after the fact, as they once again try to piece together what led up to an incident, rather than exercising any degree of competency in preventing it in the first place. Then, just as with Bush's "but we THOUGHT there were weapons of mass destruction," they'll change the spin..."see, look at all the information we have now with our ability to spy on absolutely everyone, for absolutely any reason" They'll conveniently leave out the fact that it didn't help accomplish a damn thing, and we'll go on believing that it's all necessary in order to produce results that we'll never see.
Re:My Problem with the Gimp
on
GIMP 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have been using it for most of my image manipulation, but I often get frustrated, and here's why. Say you need to crop an image. You select the Crop tool, and click at the upper left corner of the cropped region, ready to drag a rectangle around the region of interest. Up pops a damn dialog that completely OBSCURES what you're doing! The same thing happens with the dropper tool. I was also reminded just yesterday that you cannot select more than one layer at time (say I want to move a group of objects), and worse, you have to keep moving back and forth between your image window and the Layers dialog, because pressing an arrow keey while the Layers dialog is active will change your selection. To add salt to the wound, the selection tool MUST be selected in order to nudge objects with the arrow keys. Why?
I like the Gimp - I think it has a lot to offer, and I use it when I can. Even though the interface is a lot nicer in 2.0, more work needs to be done.
It's just as useless as the US government saying that something will cost "X billion over the next 10 years". Where did this little trick come from? Anyone with half a brain knows that a lot can happen in 10 years that can easily change that figure - making it anywhere from zero, to several times the originally stated amount.
More secure? Yes. But there are a few VERY annoying interface anomalies- the most salient is probably all the dialogs that come up asking me this, telling me that... Truth is, I really don't care. I know where I want to go, and I want to get there without having my train of thought constantly interrupted. I feel like I'm being nagged every time I do a little surfing.
Perhaps this shouldn't be the default behavior, but at least let me turn them off. I have to say that this is every bit as annoying as some of the crap that Microsoft has come up with.
Slashdot Mirror
This was an attempt at humor - if a rocket ever were to have it's engines shut off, there's only one probable outcome. ("Hello? Is that you Gravity?")
They'll just shut off the rocket engines and jave it come back down.
"They won't be spying, because we will.
These digital files of movies released are out there, we can get them free, and it won't be stopped. It's not much use defining something as wrong, because it doesn't actually HURT anyone.
What are you talking about? Smoking a little too much weed lately? From the most fundamental rules that govern a CIVIL group of individuals, you are taking something that DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU, you are GIVING IT TO OTHER PEOPLE (most likely against the wishes of its owners), and you are DEPRIVING ITS OWNERS the right to do with it as THEY see fit. The MPAA has a right to use whatever (legal) means necessary to pursue people that steal its property.
If you don't like the idea that a movie is property, maybe someone else won't like the idea that your car is property.
Speaking of The Apprentice, that show cracks me up. Does the Trumpster really think that ONLY Ivy-leaguers could come up with the crap that those contestants did? Give me a break. And what about the episode right before the finale, where those two women were hissing away at each other...PLEASE...it sounded more like a high-school tiff (they even TALKED like high-school girls). I'd NEVER expect something like this from a professional. This was supposed to be the creme de la creme, but I guess the joke was on them.
If corporations that distribute copyrighted material are granted a stipend for something that might happen, this is effectively the beginning of a free market that has been dismantled. In other words, it's not a free market any more. What's to stop this from becoming an even greater source of corporate welfare, as the tax is increased to compensate for downward trends in revenue that have nothing to do with the (purported) illegal use of copyrighted material? This almost becomes a form of corporate Marxism...the beginning of what some have termed a "living death".
I use OpenOffice : )
I haven't had any Microsoft stuff on my machines (except for one box running Windows) since I decided not to upgrade Office 98 on the Mac.
The motivattion for my comment was simply to point out that in this case, where adoption is a primary issue, "different" is not necessarily "better," as it results in extra effort required by those considering a switch. Embrace, then extend.
It's unfortunately, really, that projects like OpenOffice and AbiWord are graded, not upon their own features and merits, but on how well they interoperate with the de-facto standard, Microsoft Office.
Considering that any switch involves real resources (time and money), the idea is to try and convince them that they can switch AND avoid any residual pain. In other words, OpenOffice has to be as much of a drop-in replacement as possible. It means that whatever OO offers will need to be a lot like their Windows equivalents. It's not something that a lot of Open Source fans probably like, but it's reality.
If the government decided that it would be for the "greater good," the current distance between houses and the highway is no impediment. They'll just take the land, and pay its owners what ever its version of the going market rate is.
Due to....what? An elitist mentality that presumes that any college graduate is automatically better than anyone without a four-year degree? Does 15+ years of prior work experience count for anything?
A little story: I managed a small group of people for a while, two of which were recent college grads, and one other of which was a bright kid in high school. This kid ran CIRCLES around them. They couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. I asked them to do a small project, left them on their own, and two months later, they had barely anything to show for it. If that's what employers are after, I regret to say that I'm not qualified. Here's something even funnier - they had the cajones to ask for salaries that were on a par with mine,
What kind of degree? Art? Computer Science? Business? Does it matter?
In order to level the playing field, maybe the USPTO should adopt a new fee arrangement. Very small fees for the little guys, and very large ones for the big guys. It sounds like the concept behind progressive taxation, but the motives are quite different. Perhaps the fee could start out the same for each, regardless of size, but increase substantially with respect to the number of applications submitted within a given year. This means that companies would have to pick and choose wisely, and it may put an end to the steaming piles of crap that are currently masquerading as "innovation". $700 isn't even chump change to many large companies. $70,000 on the other hand, might make them think twice.
I've worked in the technology sector most of my professional life. I've recently invested a considerable amount of time enhancing my skills by learning Java, with the intent of becoming certified (I've worked with other languages as well). One thought that has been lingering is that it might all be for naught, due to the current trends in outsourcing. Should I jump ship and swim in another direction?
Corporation is a privately held company founded in 1998, and it was issued US Patent No. 5,910,988 and US Patent No. 6,032,137 in 1999 and 2000 for image capture, centralized processing and electronic storage of document and check information.
well, well--- I remember working for a financial institution long before this- they were in the process of installing a new system that scanned, stored, and retrieved information....hm. Maybe ScanOptics might have something to say about this.
The problem lies with a brain-dead Congress. Had anyone actually bothered to educate themselves on the potential effects from the passage of a law allowing software patents, I dare say it never would have seen the light of day. But then, no one knew what the P4tri0t Act was about, either.
What good is a game where you can simply buy your way to the top? It's pointless. There's nothing to distinguish the players from the poseurs, and that makes it a game not worth playing.
Take Lineage2 for example. I was totally drawn in by the artwork and the breadth of the overall environment. It's one of my favorite games in this regard. However, it's a game I no longer play, because I don't think it's fair. Anyone who has played Lineage2 knows about excruciatingly long hours required to level up a character, and equip it with newer and better items. And yet, as someone who put in the time (and paid NCSoft to do it no less), what's the difference between my effort, and the minimal effort from someone who buys their way up? NONE. I'll not waste my time, thank you. I see enough of that crap in real life.
I just now discovered the ability to add tabs in the main panel. VERY NICE. This reduces window clutter by a substantial amount, and makes things much easier. I'm actually impressed with this.
"It's free, no gaurentees, fix it yourself" flag.
How recently have you read the EULA on most commercial software products?
What bugs are fixed, and under what kind of time frame? Who decides? You? No way. You are subject to THEIR priorities, which means that some bugs may be overlooked entirely, merely because the ROI isn't high enough.
You may not have the expertise to fix the bugs yourself, but I know from my own experience, we had a problem with a commercial software package whose recent upgrade not only introduced a serious bug that affected our workflow, but we were powerless to do much about it. At least with OSS,we could have considered the option of hiring a programmer to make the necessary changes.
I think the government with this "war on terror" is trying its damnedest to piss up a rope. The volume of information that passes over wires across the net is far too voluminous and far too chaotic to produce any tangible results, in my opinion. If there are any, I suspect they will appear after the fact, as they once again try to piece together what led up to an incident, rather than exercising any degree of competency in preventing it in the first place. Then, just as with Bush's "but we THOUGHT there were weapons of mass destruction," they'll change the spin..."see, look at all the information we have now with our ability to spy on absolutely everyone, for absolutely any reason" They'll conveniently leave out the fact that it didn't help accomplish a damn thing, and we'll go on believing that it's all necessary in order to produce results that we'll never see.
I have been using it for most of my image manipulation, but I often get frustrated, and here's why. Say you need to crop an image. You select the Crop tool, and click at the upper left corner of the cropped region, ready to drag a rectangle around the region of interest. Up pops a damn dialog that completely OBSCURES what you're doing! The same thing happens with the dropper tool. I was also reminded just yesterday that you cannot select more than one layer at time (say I want to move a group of objects), and worse, you have to keep moving back and forth between your image window and the Layers dialog, because pressing an arrow keey while the Layers dialog is active will change your selection. To add salt to the wound, the selection tool MUST be selected in order to nudge objects with the arrow keys. Why?
I like the Gimp - I think it has a lot to offer, and I use it when I can. Even though the interface is a lot nicer in 2.0, more work needs to be done.
the Patriot Act
If you can always remember to wipe your butt, you can always remembers to watch your buffer lengths.
Well, there's the problem!
It's just as useless as the US government saying that something will cost "X billion over the next 10 years". Where did this little trick come from? Anyone with half a brain knows that a lot can happen in 10 years that can easily change that figure - making it anywhere from zero, to several times the originally stated amount.
More secure? Yes. But there are a few VERY annoying interface anomalies- the most salient is probably all the dialogs that come up asking me this, telling me that... Truth is, I really don't care. I know where I want to go, and I want to get there without having my train of thought constantly interrupted. I feel like I'm being nagged every time I do a little surfing.
Perhaps this shouldn't be the default behavior, but at least let me turn them off. I have to say that this is every bit as annoying as some of the crap that Microsoft has come up with.
Why don't you just switch back and forth between two sets of imaginative, more sucure passwords each month?