Well, what do you feel would have been the appropriate punishment for breaking into a US Government computer system and using it to store illegally-downloaded movies?
A fine. After all he only caused economic damage, and not a lot, either. The criminals in Enron caused incomparably more damage and I don't think many (or any?) of them will be put behind bars anyway.
Nobody is proposing to ban RFID, people here just don't want RFID forced on them. But hey, that wouldn't fit your argument so nicely, so I guess you can just ignore it.
I don't know if this secret API exists or not, but this argument is nonsensical:
How was this "secret" API call discovered since people don't have the source code to SQL Server.
The same way vulnerabilities or hidden features are discovered without the source code: you can always look at the disassembly, and there are plenty of powerful code analysis tools that don't need (or benefit) from the source code.
I have used Modplug extensively the last years, since, as you say, it has been the best option for Impulse Tracker fans. But it feels... too little. Its development has stopped, meaning we won't ever see important features such as decent MIDI import or, you know, Linux support.
I just refuse to believe that there aren't better alternatives.
I know of cheesetracker and have used it somewhat. It's buggy and feels like a beta. The development has been really slow. The code is not very well done. The author didn't even answer a couple mails I sent him offering my help.
I regret to say this because in spite of everything it was one of the most promising Linux trackers, but I'm almost certain that it will be abandoned before it gets to a mildly usable state.
My problem with MusE is that it has a Steinberg-style interface. I'm not proficient enough with a MIDI keyboard to use it for any serious work and trying to write a song with Steinberg's and MusE's mouse-based note input facilities is a nightmare.
Trackers, on the other hand, were designed to be nicely usable with only a keyboard and mouse, but ever since Impulse Tracker died I haven't found one to my liking.
I know of many trackers for Linux and Windows, but all of them are too unstable, their development stopped years ago and can't be made to work with current hardware and software, or are seriously lacking in features and usability. Especially those trying to imitate Fast Tracker 2 seem to have a fondness for absolutely crammed interfaces with tiny letters and icons.
Can you recommend some software that does not require a MIDI keyboard to be usable and actually works for you?
That kind of price tag certainly provides an incentive for Roadsend to publish attractive benchmarks. I think it would be better to wait until there are independent benchmarks before we proclaim that "the performance is pretty good", as the submitter does.
I hope it's not as buggy as Fallout and Fallout 2. I really liked the concept behind those games, but I couldn't get myself to finish them because every time I tried, I got too angry at the BIG OBVIOUS HONKIN' BUGS they had, and abandoned.
Gates implies that anything that prevents the sell of a certain product (in this case commercial software) is necessarily bad for the economy, which is pretty obvious nonsense. After all, the money the potential buyer would have used to buy that product doesn't magically vanish because that particular transaction won't take place, will it? The buyer still has it and can use it to buy other products instead.
What matters is the net effect in the economic activity, and I contend that free software is actually good for the economy, because it gives small companies cheaper and more convenient access to the basic software tools they need, improving their chances of success.
What's better for economic activity and employment, having twenty more small companies succeed because of their savings in software, or having another million dollars in Gates's hands? The answer seems obvious.
As a side note, this book (El ingenioso Hidalgo, Don Quixote de la Mancha) is to the Spanish Language as The Count of Montecristo is to French, Luther's New testament translation is to German, and the works of Shakespeare are to English.
And don't forget this project is from a Spanish contractor, Deimos Space. Find more information in their site (in English).
This was a political party suing citizens for making a political statement.
Well, I can't speak for Spanish society, but I wouldn't consider calling someone a murderer as political speech.
As an example, a famous British journalist interviewing Henry Kissenger a while ago told him that he thought he was a war criminal. I guess that journalist would now be in jail if he was in Spain!
I don't think libel is punished with jail time in Spain. If these students are convicted, they will likely get away with a small fine.
No, I think you're well informed this time:-). Anyway, I don't understand how Aznar's party suing the students could be seen as outrageous. In Spain, publicly calling someone a murderer is libel, and not something you can do lightly. Is this different in the UK? Could a British newspaper call Tony Blair a murderer without fear of being sued?
No, I'm not being deliberately misleading. I think there is a real cause for concern when a very significant number of politicians are "black listed" from politics without due process.
I too think there's a real cause for concern. I'm concerned. But this measure wasn't taken lightly. It has been obvious to everybody for more than twenty years that AuB (and its predecessors) were an ETA front. I don't think there's so much as a 1% of the Basque population that denies this. The convenience of illegalizing this party has been discussed many times through the years, and yet it wasn't done until very recently.
You see, judiciary action against individual members of AuB wasn't working. Investigation, trials and appeals would take many years, giving more than enough time for ETA to reorganize and replace the missing members.
Not a lie, but having read a bit more about it I accept that the statement is factually incorrect.
It's not just factually incorrect, it's the opposite of truth. Separatists not only have political representation in the Basque Country, they are in the power and probably will continue there.
I think illegalizing political parties is very dangerous. In a democracy with freedom of speech, there should be parties that represent the whole political spectrum, even extremes that you don't necessarily agree with.
As I explained, they weren't illegalized because they weren't agreed with. The rest of separatist parties (i.e. EA in the Basque Country or ERC in Catalonia) haven't been illegalized and won't be.
But terrorism should not be used as an excuse to stifle political discourse, and there is little doubt in my mind that Aznar is doing exactly that.
Aznar does use fear of terrorism politically, and I think that's foolish and shortsighted of him. On the other hand, many of his opponents are accusing him and his party of being heirs to the Franco dictatorship, which is also foolish and shortsighted. I'm afraid Spanish politicians aren't much better than everywhere else.
I think even you (who I guess supports Aznar)
I don't support Aznar not have I ever liked him as a politician (or voted for him). But that doesn't mean I have to oppose every decision he makes if I think there are enough reasons for my support.
would find the example of Aznar's party trying to send a political lecturer to jail for having a web site critisicing the war in Iraq incomprehensible in a modern democracy.
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. I've read Aznar's party has sued the authors of a web site (who are college students, not a political lecturer) for calling them murderers. Maybe you're talking about something else, or maybe you're misinformed again.
The Basque Country situation is quite complicated and no comment in Slashdot would be enough to describe it accurately. Also, people who know and care the most about this situation are also the most likely to have an agenda, and finding a truly impartial source is almost impossible. The best you can do is reading sources that are biased in as many directions as possible, and taking your own shot at interpreting them.
Still, I'd say the parent is being deliberately misleading when it suggests that Aznar is trying to hinder political separatism by promoving the illegalization of AuB. In fact, "practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned" is an outright lie. The truth is that the parties in the Basque government (PNV, EA and IU) are quite pro-independence -- especially EA. These parties are going to benefit immensely by the illegalization of AuB since they'll get a significant share of AuB's votes (against the wishes of AuB's direction, by the way). These parties are also leaning more towards separatism in order to increase their appeal to AuB's voters. If anything, Basque Country separatism is bound to be augmented by AuB's illegalization.
There are also good reasons to illegalize AuB. By participating in the Basque institutions, AuB had access to a lot of infrastructure that has been very useful for ETA in the past. The loss of this infrastructure is going to be hard blow for ETA, and I'm all for that.
About three years ago I was a happy user of XFree86 3.3.6; then XFree86 4.0 was released and my Matrox Mystique stopped working. After carefully determining that the cause was almost certainly a bug in the XFree86 4.0 driver, I decided to send a bug report to XFree86. I read all the relevant instructions on the web site, collected the required data, and sent a polite and detailed bug report to the appropriate mailing lists.
After some weeks I had received no answer. Bad luck, I thought, so I rechecked I had done everything as indicated in the XFree86 site and reposted my bug report. Zero feedback again. I sent about eight bug reports along three months more or less, and got no answer from any XFree86 developer.
I did get mails from some people with the same problem as me, wanting to know if I had found the solution. I had tried to debug the driver myself, but I don't really had the necessary skills and experience, not to talk about the technical specifications. So there was nothing users who suffered this problem could do; we had to stay with 3.3.6.
Finally, I got some explanation from the last bug report I sent. It was from another user who was frustrated with the way XFree86 was developed. He explained that the public mailing lists I had sent my bug reports to (as I was supposed to do) were only occasionaly browsed by a couple XFree86 developers. Real communication among developers happened in private, closed mailing lists that only people with CVS access could post to or even read.
So the problem went unfixed. Some months later I upgraded my computer and forgot about this. Probably, to this day, owners of Matrox Mystiques with a certain chipset can't use XFree86 4.0.x, and I bet the maintainers of the mga driver don't even know. I couldn't tell them.
I suppose you're too uninformed to be aware of the Linux dedicated server that Bioware has had out for NWN.
Your gaming tastes must be pretty original if you consider a server is a game.
One has put plenty of effort and risk into writing Linux based code and is about to release a supported Linux client.
Seven months ago Bioware was about to release a supported Linux client. And three months ago. And a month ago. When and if they release, maybe you'll have something to praise them for. Until then, it's vaporware.
You must be using some rather original reasoning to reach your conclusions.
Yes, I value honesty, this original new concept.
And I know about Sam Lantinga, I bet I was in Linux gaming well before you. I don't know if Blizzard helped him with the Miles port. If they did, it looks good on Blizzard. If they did not, it looks bad on Bioware, who couldn't do in many months what Sam has done in his free time.
You call Blizzard anti-Linux for clearly stating their opinion about Linux gaming, and Bioware pro-Linux for making some promises about a Linux client and then breaking many of them. Maybe it's you who are uninformed.
Right now, Blizzard's support of Linux gamers is better than Bioware's. None of them have a working game for Linux, but at least Blizzard has not deceived Linux gamers like Bioware has. Incidentally, the sound system used by NWN has been ported to Linux by Sam Lantinga -- currently a Blizzard employee.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, what do you feel would have been the appropriate punishment for breaking into a US Government computer system and using it to store illegally-downloaded movies?
A fine. After all he only caused economic damage, and not a lot, either. The criminals in Enron caused incomparably more damage and I don't think many (or any?) of them will be put behind bars anyway.
I don't demand that spammers are jailed, even though they do a lot more damage than this guy.
A prison sentence seems a bit excessive for what he did.
First of all, check that you are not really inside a cardboard box.
Oh well, perhaps I've been the informal help desk for my family for too long.
Nobody is proposing to ban RFID, people here just don't want RFID forced on them. But hey, that wouldn't fit your argument so nicely, so I guess you can just ignore it.
"Full steam", I mean. It's a good description of what could happen when this Intel processor is run at full load.
I bet it has a much bigger market share than some of those browsers. And no, Safari is not the same.
How was this "secret" API call discovered since people don't have the source code to SQL Server.
The same way vulnerabilities or hidden features are discovered without the source code: you can always look at the disassembly, and there are plenty of powerful code analysis tools that don't need (or benefit) from the source code.
Exposure to Linux makes one out of every fifteen people break out in itchy yellow-greenish sores.
It's true! I've even heard Linux people boast about their sores. However, for some reason they always insist they're open sores.
I have used Modplug extensively the last years, since, as you say, it has been the best option for Impulse Tracker fans. But it feels... too little. Its development has stopped, meaning we won't ever see important features such as decent MIDI import or, you know, Linux support.
I just refuse to believe that there aren't better alternatives.
I know of cheesetracker and have used it somewhat. It's buggy and feels like a beta. The development has been really slow. The code is not very well done. The author didn't even answer a couple mails I sent him offering my help.
I regret to say this because in spite of everything it was one of the most promising Linux trackers, but I'm almost certain that it will be abandoned before it gets to a mildly usable state.
My problem with MusE is that it has a Steinberg-style interface. I'm not proficient enough with a MIDI keyboard to use it for any serious work and trying to write a song with Steinberg's and MusE's mouse-based note input facilities is a nightmare.
Trackers, on the other hand, were designed to be nicely usable with only a keyboard and mouse, but ever since Impulse Tracker died I haven't found one to my liking.
I know of many trackers for Linux and Windows, but all of them are too unstable, their development stopped years ago and can't be made to work with current hardware and software, or are seriously lacking in features and usability. Especially those trying to imitate Fast Tracker 2 seem to have a fondness for absolutely crammed interfaces with tiny letters and icons.
Can you recommend some software that does not require a MIDI keyboard to be usable and actually works for you?
you can find Adolf Hitler complaining about racism in an article. And with his first name misspelt, even.
That kind of price tag certainly provides an incentive for Roadsend to publish attractive benchmarks. I think it would be better to wait until there are independent benchmarks before we proclaim that "the performance is pretty good", as the submitter does.
I hope it's not as buggy as Fallout and Fallout 2. I really liked the concept behind those games, but I couldn't get myself to finish them because every time I tried, I got too angry at the BIG OBVIOUS HONKIN' BUGS they had, and abandoned.
This is pretty obvious nonsense from Gates.
Gates implies that anything that prevents the sell of a certain product (in this case commercial software) is necessarily bad for the economy, which is pretty obvious nonsense. After all, the money the potential buyer would have used to buy that product doesn't magically vanish because that particular transaction won't take place, will it? The buyer still has it and can use it to buy other products instead.
What matters is the net effect in the economic activity, and I contend that free software is actually good for the economy, because it gives small companies cheaper and more convenient access to the basic software tools they need, improving their chances of success.
What's better for economic activity and employment, having twenty more small companies succeed because of their savings in software, or having another million dollars in Gates's hands? The answer seems obvious.
As a side note, this book (El ingenioso Hidalgo, Don Quixote de la Mancha) is to the Spanish Language as The Count of Montecristo is to French, Luther's New testament translation is to German, and the works of Shakespeare are to English.
And don't forget this project is from a Spanish contractor, Deimos Space. Find more information in their site (in English).
This was a political party suing citizens for making a political statement.
Well, I can't speak for Spanish society, but I wouldn't consider calling someone a murderer as political speech.
As an example, a famous British journalist interviewing Henry Kissenger a while ago told him that he thought he was a war criminal. I guess that journalist would now be in jail if he was in Spain!
I don't think libel is punished with jail time in Spain. If these students are convicted, they will likely get away with a small fine.
Disclaimer: IANA Spanish L.
No, I think you're well informed this time :-). Anyway, I don't understand how Aznar's party suing the students could be seen as outrageous. In Spain, publicly calling someone a murderer is libel, and not something you can do lightly. Is this different in the UK? Could a British newspaper call Tony Blair a murderer without fear of being sued?
No, I'm not being deliberately misleading. I think there is a real cause for concern when a very significant number of politicians are "black listed" from politics without due process.
I too think there's a real cause for concern. I'm concerned. But this measure wasn't taken lightly. It has been obvious to everybody for more than twenty years that AuB (and its predecessors) were an ETA front. I don't think there's so much as a 1% of the Basque population that denies this. The convenience of illegalizing this party has been discussed many times through the years, and yet it wasn't done until very recently.
You see, judiciary action against individual members of AuB wasn't working. Investigation, trials and appeals would take many years, giving more than enough time for ETA to reorganize and replace the missing members.
Not a lie, but having read a bit more about it I accept that the statement is factually incorrect.
It's not just factually incorrect, it's the opposite of truth. Separatists not only have political representation in the Basque Country, they are in the power and probably will continue there.
I think illegalizing political parties is very dangerous. In a democracy with freedom of speech, there should be parties that represent the whole political spectrum, even extremes that you don't necessarily agree with.
As I explained, they weren't illegalized because they weren't agreed with. The rest of separatist parties (i.e. EA in the Basque Country or ERC in Catalonia) haven't been illegalized and won't be.
But terrorism should not be used as an excuse to stifle political discourse, and there is little doubt in my mind that Aznar is doing exactly that.
Aznar does use fear of terrorism politically, and I think that's foolish and shortsighted of him. On the other hand, many of his opponents are accusing him and his party of being heirs to the Franco dictatorship, which is also foolish and shortsighted. I'm afraid Spanish politicians aren't much better than everywhere else.
I think even you (who I guess supports Aznar)
I don't support Aznar not have I ever liked him as a politician (or voted for him). But that doesn't mean I have to oppose every decision he makes if I think there are enough reasons for my support.
would find the example of Aznar's party trying to send a political lecturer to jail for having a web site critisicing the war in Iraq incomprehensible in a modern democracy.
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. I've read Aznar's party has sued the authors of a web site (who are college students, not a political lecturer) for calling them murderers. Maybe you're talking about something else, or maybe you're misinformed again.
The Basque Country situation is quite complicated and no comment in Slashdot would be enough to describe it accurately. Also, people who know and care the most about this situation are also the most likely to have an agenda, and finding a truly impartial source is almost impossible. The best you can do is reading sources that are biased in as many directions as possible, and taking your own shot at interpreting them.
Still, I'd say the parent is being deliberately misleading when it suggests that Aznar is trying to hinder political separatism by promoving the illegalization of AuB. In fact, "practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned" is an outright lie. The truth is that the parties in the Basque government (PNV, EA and IU) are quite pro-independence -- especially EA. These parties are going to benefit immensely by the illegalization of AuB since they'll get a significant share of AuB's votes (against the wishes of AuB's direction, by the way). These parties are also leaning more towards separatism in order to increase their appeal to AuB's voters. If anything, Basque Country separatism is bound to be augmented by AuB's illegalization.
There are also good reasons to illegalize AuB. By participating in the Basque institutions, AuB had access to a lot of infrastructure that has been very useful for ETA in the past. The loss of this infrastructure is going to be hard blow for ETA, and I'm all for that.
About three years ago I was a happy user of XFree86 3.3.6; then XFree86 4.0 was released and my Matrox Mystique stopped working. After carefully determining that the cause was almost certainly a bug in the XFree86 4.0 driver, I decided to send a bug report to XFree86. I read all the relevant instructions on the web site, collected the required data, and sent a polite and detailed bug report to the appropriate mailing lists.
After some weeks I had received no answer. Bad luck, I thought, so I rechecked I had done everything as indicated in the XFree86 site and reposted my bug report. Zero feedback again. I sent about eight bug reports along three months more or less, and got no answer from any XFree86 developer.
I did get mails from some people with the same problem as me, wanting to know if I had found the solution. I had tried to debug the driver myself, but I don't really had the necessary skills and experience, not to talk about the technical specifications. So there was nothing users who suffered this problem could do; we had to stay with 3.3.6.
Finally, I got some explanation from the last bug report I sent. It was from another user who was frustrated with the way XFree86 was developed. He explained that the public mailing lists I had sent my bug reports to (as I was supposed to do) were only occasionaly browsed by a couple XFree86 developers. Real communication among developers happened in private, closed mailing lists that only people with CVS access could post to or even read.
So the problem went unfixed. Some months later I upgraded my computer and forgot about this. Probably, to this day, owners of Matrox Mystiques with a certain chipset can't use XFree86 4.0.x, and I bet the maintainers of the mga driver don't even know. I couldn't tell them.
That's what I keep telling people. Man, is being a salesman for Child Shredding Machines, Inc., a tough job.
Your gaming tastes must be pretty original if you consider a server is a game.
Seven months ago Bioware was about to release a supported Linux client. And three months ago. And a month ago. When and if they release, maybe you'll have something to praise them for. Until then, it's vaporware.
Yes, I value honesty, this original new concept.
And I know about Sam Lantinga, I bet I was in Linux gaming well before you. I don't know if Blizzard helped him with the Miles port. If they did, it looks good on Blizzard. If they did not, it looks bad on Bioware, who couldn't do in many months what Sam has done in his free time.
You call Blizzard anti-Linux for clearly stating their opinion about Linux gaming, and Bioware pro-Linux for making some promises about a Linux client and then breaking many of them. Maybe it's you who are uninformed.
Right now, Blizzard's support of Linux gamers is better than Bioware's. None of them have a working game for Linux, but at least Blizzard has not deceived Linux gamers like Bioware has. Incidentally, the sound system used by NWN has been ported to Linux by Sam Lantinga -- currently a Blizzard employee.