the real situation is much more complex than what the US gov gives lip service to.the real situation is much more complex than what the US gov gives lip service to.
I have no trouble believing this. However, I reiterate the point that the US Government was hurt far less than a whole bunch of comparatively innocent office workers who, as I pointed out, don't generally take to the streets in celebration when Israel does something violent to Palestinians.
Ironically, I'd predict that the end result will be beneficial to the US Economy. There's going to be a major investigation, obviously. That requires the purchase of a lot of goods and services. I'd be surprised if it didn't at some point involve a great deal of money going to defence contractors, ironically enough. It's almost funny that one of the primary beneficiaries, economically speaking, of this attack on US Economy and military are organizations that are sometimes reviled as being the worst of both...
There is only one appropriate response to this: All out war.[...]I'm not sure I'm even ruling out a nuclear response.
Honestly, I tend to agree. But as with capital punishment, we need to make absolutely certain we know who to make war ON.
The idea of turning terrorist-sponsoring countries into a gigantic glass parking lot with nukes does have some appeal, but remember that even in fairly radical countries there are going to be plenty of innocent populations that had nothing to do with terrorism.
Personally, I think what's needed is something a bit more surgical than nukes. What needs to be destroyed is the political structure that fosters and supports the popularity of cowardly terrorist actions through propoganda and other cultural manipulation. That means particular individuals and organizations, and THEIR attendant facilities, with as little damage as possible to the potentially-sympathetic innocent, who will hopefully be left to take over where the radical freaks once ruled. If we just bomb the crap out of the whole area, we're just going to make MORE desperate enemies with plenty of popular support among survivors of our attacks who otherwise might have been sympathetic to us.
There are also concerns on the domestic front - If all-out war pops out, will we see a repeat of WW-II era policies? "Loose lips sink ships"? (Better do something about that Internet thing!) Internment camps for USA citizens of IranIraqAfghjaniPakistani descent? Even more corporate welfare to suppliers of military supplies, such as munitions (which, I remind readers, includes cryptography and other "intellectual property" which has already spawned several out-of-control laws in the US).
In short, what *I* hope happens is a well-conducted, very careful investigation to identify the organizations responsible for these acts, and careful, deliberate, surgical, but firm, thorough, and final wiping off of the face of the earth of those specific organizations....
It's another closed-source, binary-only codec (or so it seems looking at the site)
On *nix, at least, it seems even those plugins are only available for xanim and the relatively new "openquicktime" project (which I think IS open source) that they're working on (Can't even tell if the codec can be used for ENcoding on *nix, or just decoding)
I suspect that if a good encoder were available (open!) on *nix along with being open enough that it could be added to the various video players available on *nix, they might get some popularity. As it is, to me it looks like it's "just another windows/mac video format" (which may or may not be good, but windows and mac already have a plethora of codecs to choose from, by comparison with *nix, so there may be nothing to make 3ivx stand out...)
Don't know if any of my speculation here is TRUE, but it's my best guesses...
...and nobody's mentioned (admittedly still in 'planning' stage) Ogg Tarkin yet? Shocking...
'Course, there doesn't seem to be any actual code yet, while the developers seem to have been busy with Vorbis instead, but it looks like there are interested people working on it, anyway.
I noticed their mailing list archives show some discussion of whether the vp3 codec mentioned in one or two other posts might make an interim codec to use for an Ogg video file format while Tarkin is under development...
The term "interactive digital device" means "any machine, device, product, software, or technology, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine, device, product, software, or technology, that is designed, marketed or used for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving, or copying information in digital form."
This goes way beyond "whole computers". If I read that right, this would include:
Serial port cards/chipsets.
USB Ports/chipsets
Network cards.
Network hubs and switches
Modems
IDE and SCSI subsystems and cards
Video cards
Sound cards
Digital cell phones
(etc.)
The implication is that ALL add-on cards and pieces of individual digital communications equipment will have to INDIVIDUALLY add government-approved "content control"...It's going to get REALLY expensive to sell "US Government compliant" equipment...
if you are an american citizen, you MUST do something about this!
I fully intend to write my representatives and senators, but also want to ask the help of NON-USA'ians in this...
Regardless of what a few crackpots in the US Government may think, the USA can NOT prosper as an isolated "island". Other countries around the world are vital to the health of our economy and the well-being of our citizens (access to the results of other countries' scientific and medical research , for example.)
I urge, no, in fact I BEG all of you in other countries express any concerns you have regarding the disturbing precedent that USA laws like this set. Let your own governments know that you strongly oppose giant-corporation-feeding, individual-liberty-stifling laws of this nature, and that you worry about the effects that horrible US laws may have on your country, both directly and indirectly. If you're so inclined, I'd even say go ahead and write to whatever US government agencies seem relevant to you - perhaps write to the US Congress via the "Speaker of the house", perhaps to the commerce department, maybe even the Immigration and Nationalization service. You get the idea.
If the US Government thinks it's just selling the rights of a handful of fringe nerds to big corporations, it won't care, and as the US Media conglomerates are the ones paying to pitch these bad laws to Congress, they know nobody will ever hear about the abuses of these laws on the news. If, however, they become aware of just how widespread knowlege and disapproval of these laws are, MAYBE they'll pause to think about what they're doing...
This was one of several comments in this style and I suddenly feel compelled to reply. Curse those voices in my head...:-)
"Who cares about the fucking suits?"
I'll say up front that, on the whole, I actually agree almost completely with the sentiment of this post - "we" are not, on the whole, here to sucker consumers out of money so we can buy power and luxuries. (I suspect most of "us" would LIKE to, but aren't entirely driven by it...)
On the other hand, there ARE useful reasons to appeal, at least a bit, to the less clueful "mainstream" markets. Having a bunch of middle-managers running, say, KDE and Konqueror (to keep this post at least a little on-topic for this article) isn't in-and-of-itself useful - but more "mainstream" visibility also increases visibility with, for example, hardware manufacturers and game publishers...and having hardware manufacturers make hardware specifications available for driver-writing because they can SEE that the Linux market is big enough that it can't be ignored outright IS a benefit.
Jokes about world domination aside, I for one will be quite happy when Linux hits the point where it is widely recognized for having, say, 10-15% of the desktop market. That would make it, I think, even more popular in hardware and software maker's minds than MacOS as "the OTHER platform for our products". (I.E. if they're going to work with ANYTHING besides MS Windows, it'll be Linux, rather than MacOS).
On the other hand, though, I strongly agree personally with: This is not a fucking powerpoint presentation.
Which, in my opinion, exemplifies the difference in focus between Free Software/Open Source software development and commercial software development in general.
Anyway, just a random thought that's been bouncing around in my head lately.
Many of you are quick to bash Microsoft for tying Internet Explorer into every part of Windows[...]Konquerer is[...]doing the same thing
From my perspective at least, there is a subtle but important difference.
With MS Windows, Explorer "is" windows. With KDE, Konqueror is "the favored interface to all file-handling activities" (i.e. handling files over http, ftp, sftp, scp, the local filesystem, etc.) but it does not feel like it "is" KDE.
It, for me, is purely a "feel" thing, but essentially it is the difference between "tightly and inextricably integrated" and "fits and works smoothly and cleanly with"...
It's Gnome compliant, of course, and takes my theme just nicely.
It seems to support KDE fine, too (it added itself to my menu and such)...so much for the "horrible burden" of having to support different window managers/"desktop environments" that the minimally clueful among pundits have mentioned a few times...GO Loki!
After reading the descriptions and reviews of Kohan, I've been eagerly awaiting the Linux port. I don't play many games these days, but this one's nice.
I like the demo. Not being expected or able to micromanage or "resource rush" (i.e. produce 100 peasants/workers/whatever then quickly build up a massive army and rush them all over to your opponent) makes the game much more enjoyable for the way I tend to play them.
I do wish there were a little more documentation with the demo, though. While I "get" the 'production ratings' of stone, wood, iron, etc., I DON'T "get" how you tell what your current stockpile is. (i.e. I couldn't see anything happening when I slipped into negative production ratings)...
Presumably the documentation with the full game explains it, so I should see it in a week or so once I've had a chance to order it...
Just figured I'd ask - for me, the compile is bombing out with a bunch of errors in kscript_locale.cc.
I'm GUESSING it's because I'm running a bleeding-edge cvs version of kdelibs/kdebase (Konqueror now tells me it's version "pre2.9"), but figured I'd check to see if anyone using "normal" libraries is running into a problem...
I just hope I don't have to install too many libs. (I'm on Slack.)
Just the current kdelibs (2.2 or more recent) should be all you need. I'm running a recent CVS snapshot of kdelibs/kdebase, hopefully that'll work too.
I've played a bit with the most recent StarOffice 6 (build 638, if I recall correctly). It also seems quite nice, though much slower currently than KOffice. If I could get KPresenter to import "powerpoint" files (the office insists on using it) I'd be set...
Over a year? I have a really hard time understanding this.
According to the article on Linux Today, the "employee" in question was also effectively a huge investor as well. He couldn't just "pack up and leave" because he'd already sunk large amounts of money into the company (including - again according to the claims in the article - paying for Loki's payroll off of his personal credit card! I'd say that, foolish or not, sinking over $100,000 into a company you work for is pretty strong incentive to hang around trying to get it profitable as long as possible...)
Personally, it's starting to sound like the best thing for Loki is to move on, either as a different "legal entity" or not (i.e. have Loki liquidate its assets and have the remaining employees and other interested parties start a new company, buying Loki's liquidated assets) or still as Loki, but with somebody besides Draeker running it.
...It's one of the classic blunders. Like trying to win a land war in Asia.;)
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect....It's one of the classic blunders. Like trying to win a land war in Asia.;) [..]
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
I'm having a vision...
VezziniMicrosoft sits laughing at the Dread Pirate Roberts Java developers:
"That's what's so funny! I switched glasses plugin technologies while your back was turned! [...] Never go in against a SicilianMonopoly when DEATHMARKET SHARE is on the line! HA HA HA HA! HA HA HA...(Microsoft keels over...)
Yah, I know, wishful thinking. I've been staring at this computer screen for too long...
One comment that seems to have come up a couple of times is that many linux users use their machines for work (whether it's "recreational work" [e.g. kernel hacking] or otherwise) rather than play, and that they have a playstation/playstation2/N64/etc. console for pure games...
I wonder if Loki's in a position to concentrate on working with Sony to build a PS2 emulator for Linux...that would instantly make a fair number of top-notch games available for Linux. I know I'd actually buy such a beast if it was available for me...
3) That it is legal and Constitutional to restrict a tool because it is used to commit illegal acts. (Example: People commit murders with hammers. Should hammers be made illegal?) The Constitution clearly says otherwise. Where, exactly, does the constitution say that? If you are refering to the second amendment, why would it apply in the DeCSS case?
Hmmmm. "The right to keep and bear arms..." - does US Government, Inc, still classify encryption as "munitions"? Maybe the 2nd amendment can be made to apply after all...
[...]read the manual if they were in comic book format ?
Oooo. I like that idea.
Maybe we could get Larry Gonick (of "Cartoon History of the Universe vols' 1 and 2" and "Cartoon Guide to Genetics" and several others) to do a few O'Reilly publications...
(Hey, if you can do "The Cartoon Guide to Physics" and/or "The Cartoon Guide to Statistics", why not "The Cartoon Guide to Perl Compatible Regular Expressions" and whatnot?)
Slashdot Mirror
I have no trouble believing this. However, I reiterate the point that the US Government was hurt far less than a whole bunch of comparatively innocent office workers who, as I pointed out, don't generally take to the streets in celebration when Israel does something violent to Palestinians.
Ironically, I'd predict that the end result will be beneficial to the US Economy. There's going to be a major investigation, obviously. That requires the purchase of a lot of goods and services. I'd be surprised if it didn't at some point involve a great deal of money going to defence contractors, ironically enough. It's almost funny that one of the primary beneficiaries, economically speaking, of this attack on US Economy and military are organizations that are sometimes reviled as being the worst of both...
Nice going, terrorist boogerheads.
No. But on the other hand, I don't recall ever hearing of New York office workers celebrating in the streets when Palestinians were killed...
Is this just sheer volume of normal interest, or is the implication here that there's some sort of DOS going on?
I hope not. I really DON'T want any "Emergency Executive Orders" dropping draconian regulations on the 'net in the USA...
Honestly, I tend to agree. But as with capital punishment, we need to make absolutely certain we know who to make war ON.
The idea of turning terrorist-sponsoring countries into a gigantic glass parking lot with nukes does have some appeal, but remember that even in fairly radical countries there are going to be plenty of innocent populations that had nothing to do with terrorism.
Personally, I think what's needed is something a bit more surgical than nukes. What needs to be destroyed is the political structure that fosters and supports the popularity of cowardly terrorist actions through propoganda and other cultural manipulation. That means particular individuals and organizations, and THEIR attendant facilities, with as little damage as possible to the potentially-sympathetic innocent, who will hopefully be left to take over where the radical freaks once ruled. If we just bomb the crap out of the whole area, we're just going to make MORE desperate enemies with plenty of popular support among survivors of our attacks who otherwise might have been sympathetic to us.
There are also concerns on the domestic front - If all-out war pops out, will we see a repeat of WW-II era policies? "Loose lips sink ships"? (Better do something about that Internet thing!) Internment camps for USA citizens of IranIraqAfghjaniPakistani descent? Even more corporate welfare to suppliers of military supplies, such as munitions (which, I remind readers, includes cryptography and other "intellectual property" which has already spawned several out-of-control laws in the US).
In short, what *I* hope happens is a well-conducted, very careful investigation to identify the organizations responsible for these acts, and careful, deliberate, surgical, but firm, thorough, and final wiping off of the face of the earth of those specific organizations....
Not sure, but my guess is:
- It's another closed-source, binary-only codec (or so it seems looking at the site)
- On *nix, at least, it seems even those plugins are only available for xanim and the relatively new "openquicktime" project (which I think IS open source) that they're working on (Can't even tell if the codec can be used for ENcoding on *nix, or just decoding)
I suspect that if a good encoder were available (open!) on *nix along with being open enough that it could be added to the various video players available on *nix, they might get some popularity. As it is, to me it looks like it's "just another windows/mac video format" (which may or may not be good, but windows and mac already have a plethora of codecs to choose from, by comparison with *nix, so there may be nothing to make 3ivx stand out...)Don't know if any of my speculation here is TRUE, but it's my best guesses...
...and nobody's mentioned (admittedly still in 'planning' stage) Ogg Tarkin yet? Shocking...
'Course, there doesn't seem to be any actual code yet, while the developers seem to have been busy with Vorbis instead, but it looks like there are interested people working on it, anyway.
I noticed their mailing list archives show some discussion of whether the vp3 codec mentioned in one or two other posts might make an interim codec to use for an Ogg video file format while Tarkin is under development...
Hmmm. How long before US Government, Inc, starts selling indulgences? (Openly, that is)?...
New Zealand, perhaps? I hear they've already outlawed DVD region coding...
One hopes it doesn't come to that, though...
Sensitive, are we? I don't see how disagreeing with what you wrote equates to a "personal attack" on you.
The term "interactive digital device" means "any machine, device, product, software, or technology, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine, device, product, software, or technology, that is designed, marketed or used for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving, or copying information in digital form."
This goes way beyond "whole computers". If I read that right, this would include:
- Serial port cards/chipsets.
- USB Ports/chipsets
- Network cards.
- Network hubs and switches
- Modems
- IDE and SCSI subsystems and cards
- Video cards
- Sound cards
- Digital cell phones
- (etc.)
The implication is that ALL add-on cards and pieces of individual digital communications equipment will have to INDIVIDUALLY add government-approved "content control"...It's going to get REALLY expensive to sell "US Government compliant" equipment...I fully intend to write my representatives and senators, but also want to ask the help of NON-USA'ians in this...
Regardless of what a few crackpots in the US Government may think, the USA can NOT prosper as an isolated "island". Other countries around the world are vital to the health of our economy and the well-being of our citizens (access to the results of other countries' scientific and medical research , for example.)
I urge, no, in fact I BEG all of you in other countries express any concerns you have regarding the disturbing precedent that USA laws like this set. Let your own governments know that you strongly oppose giant-corporation-feeding, individual-liberty-stifling laws of this nature, and that you worry about the effects that horrible US laws may have on your country, both directly and indirectly. If you're so inclined, I'd even say go ahead and write to whatever US government agencies seem relevant to you - perhaps write to the US Congress via the "Speaker of the house", perhaps to the commerce department, maybe even the Immigration and Nationalization service. You get the idea.
If the US Government thinks it's just selling the rights of a handful of fringe nerds to big corporations, it won't care, and as the US Media conglomerates are the ones paying to pitch these bad laws to Congress, they know nobody will ever hear about the abuses of these laws on the news. If, however, they become aware of just how widespread knowlege and disapproval of these laws are, MAYBE they'll pause to think about what they're doing...
2. Once you have established your connection, insert cd
3. MediaCloQ (TM) will do the rest.
So....is there a warning somewhere that you need Windows (and/or MacOS?)
This was one of several comments in this style and I suddenly feel compelled to reply. Curse those voices in my head... :-)
"Who cares about the fucking suits?"I'll say up front that, on the whole, I actually agree almost completely with the sentiment of this post - "we" are not, on the whole, here to sucker consumers out of money so we can buy power and luxuries. (I suspect most of "us" would LIKE to, but aren't entirely driven by it...)
On the other hand, there ARE useful reasons to appeal, at least a bit, to the less clueful "mainstream" markets. Having a bunch of middle-managers running, say, KDE and Konqueror (to keep this post at least a little on-topic for this article) isn't in-and-of-itself useful - but more "mainstream" visibility also increases visibility with, for example, hardware manufacturers and game publishers...and having hardware manufacturers make hardware specifications available for driver-writing because they can SEE that the Linux market is big enough that it can't be ignored outright IS a benefit.
Jokes about world domination aside, I for one will be quite happy when Linux hits the point where it is widely recognized for having, say, 10-15% of the desktop market. That would make it, I think, even more popular in hardware and software maker's minds than MacOS as "the OTHER platform for our products". (I.E. if they're going to work with ANYTHING besides MS Windows, it'll be Linux, rather than MacOS).
On the other hand, though, I strongly agree personally with:
This is not a fucking powerpoint presentation.
Which, in my opinion, exemplifies the difference in focus between Free Software/Open Source software development and commercial software development in general.
Anyway, just a random thought that's been bouncing around in my head lately.
From my perspective at least, there is a subtle but important difference.
With MS Windows, Explorer "is" windows. With KDE, Konqueror is "the favored interface to all file-handling activities" (i.e. handling files over http, ftp, sftp, scp, the local filesystem, etc.) but it does not feel like it "is" KDE.
It, for me, is purely a "feel" thing, but essentially it is the difference between "tightly and inextricably integrated" and "fits and works smoothly and cleanly with"...
It seems to support KDE fine, too (it added itself to my menu and such)...so much for the "horrible burden" of having to support different window managers/"desktop environments" that the minimally clueful among pundits have mentioned a few times...GO Loki!
Choice Good!
After reading the descriptions and reviews of Kohan, I've been eagerly awaiting the Linux port. I don't play many games these days, but this one's nice.
I like the demo. Not being expected or able to micromanage or "resource rush" (i.e. produce 100 peasants/workers/whatever then quickly build up a massive army and rush them all over to your opponent) makes the game much more enjoyable for the way I tend to play them.
I do wish there were a little more documentation with the demo, though. While I "get" the 'production ratings' of stone, wood, iron, etc., I DON'T "get" how you tell what your current stockpile is. (i.e. I couldn't see anything happening when I slipped into negative production ratings)...
Presumably the documentation with the full game explains it, so I should see it in a week or so once I've had a chance to order it...
Just figured I'd ask - for me, the compile is bombing out with a bunch of errors in kscript_locale.cc.
I'm GUESSING it's because I'm running a bleeding-edge cvs version of kdelibs/kdebase (Konqueror now tells me it's version "pre2.9"), but figured I'd check to see if anyone using "normal" libraries is running into a problem...
Just the current kdelibs (2.2 or more recent) should be all you need. I'm running a recent CVS snapshot of kdelibs/kdebase, hopefully that'll work too.
I've played a bit with the most recent StarOffice 6 (build 638, if I recall correctly). It also seems quite nice, though much slower currently than KOffice. If I could get KPresenter to import "powerpoint" files (the office insists on using it) I'd be set...
According to the article on Linux Today, the "employee" in question was also effectively a huge investor as well. He couldn't just "pack up and leave" because he'd already sunk large amounts of money into the company (including - again according to the claims in the article - paying for Loki's payroll off of his personal credit card! I'd say that, foolish or not, sinking over $100,000 into a company you work for is pretty strong incentive to hang around trying to get it profitable as long as possible...)
Personally, it's starting to sound like the best thing for Loki is to move on, either as a different "legal entity" or not (i.e. have Loki liquidate its assets and have the remaining employees and other interested parties start a new company, buying Loki's liquidated assets) or still as Loki, but with somebody besides Draeker running it.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect....It's one of the classic blunders. Like trying to win a land war in Asia.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
I'm having a vision...
VezziniMicrosoft sits laughing at the Dread Pirate Roberts Java developers:
"That's what's so funny! I switched glasses plugin technologies while your back was turned! [...] Never go in against a SicilianMonopoly when DEATHMARKET SHARE is on the line! HA HA HA HA! HA HA HA...(Microsoft keels over...)
Yah, I know, wishful thinking. I've been staring at this computer screen for too long...
One comment that seems to have come up a couple of times is that many linux users use their machines for work (whether it's "recreational work" [e.g. kernel hacking] or otherwise) rather than play, and that they have a playstation/playstation2/N64/etc. console for pure games...
I wonder if Loki's in a position to concentrate on working with Sony to build a PS2 emulator for Linux...that would instantly make a fair number of top-notch games available for Linux. I know I'd actually buy such a beast if it was available for me...
Where, exactly, does the constitution say that? If you are refering to the second amendment, why would it apply in the DeCSS case?
Hmmmm. "The right to keep and bear arms..." - does US Government, Inc, still classify encryption as "munitions"? Maybe the 2nd amendment can be made to apply after all...
I don't know about that. Look which one they're frantically sending the US Government after...
Oooo. I like that idea.
Maybe we could get Larry Gonick (of "Cartoon History of the Universe vols' 1 and 2" and "Cartoon Guide to Genetics" and several others) to do a few O'Reilly publications...
(Hey, if you can do "The Cartoon Guide to Physics" and/or "The Cartoon Guide to Statistics", why not "The Cartoon Guide to Perl Compatible Regular Expressions" and whatnot?)