A lot of us don't want to understand it. It makes our heads hurt every time we have to explain to someone how Linux can be free, Free, and $30 bucks at BestBuy all at the same time. We want the English libre. We want the Libre Software Movement. We want to be able to say that our new project will be libre and have everyone understand the concept without any further explanation. Most of all, we don't want to waste time here and elsewhere explaining and defending this position.
But we do it anyway. Because we feel that it makes sense; because we feel that we're not the stubborn ones and that if everyone just looked at it objectively, it would save all of us a lot of time and effort.
RMS doesn't give a turd about what most people think.
but
... but apparently he intends to convince everyone to move to his [definition of freedom]...
Obviously he does give a turd about what most people think, because he's going to quite a length to change their minds. Even if he doesn't give a turd about what they think, what they think impacts what does (ie, he wouldn't be bothered explaining Free Software vs. Open Source vs. Freeware). So, we can conclude that he does want to change their minds. We can also conclude that he wants to go about it in the most inefficient way possible (by taking so much time and effort to explain FS vs. OS vs. FW instead of actually promoting FS). It's clear he values semantics over FS. FS will be FS whether or not you call it FS, and fewer people will warm to it if you insist on calling it FS.
Personally, I hate having to make the distinction between free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech everytime I use the word "free" anymore. Hell, Free isn't Free anyway. If it were Free, and I were Free to use it anyway I wanted, I would be Free to make it not Free. (I can charge tickets to hear a speech I'm giving, can't I? Aren't I Free to do that, a protected part of Free speech? Isn't the public domain the only true Free way of distributing software?)
If the wrapper works the way I think it does (and it probably doesn't), the wrapper is authorized to run on the PS2. The wrapper runs Crystal Space games, indescriminately of what Sony wants. You can produce Crystal Space games of any sort without Sony's permission without paying a dime, and even make them 100% "Free" if you want. A GNU/Linux user can play it on a 100% verified "Free" distro of Linux. Someone else can play it on the PS2 with the dirty implementation, regardless of what you (as the developer of the game) or Sony thinks.
RMS seems to see this as a loss of the availability of the source, but when in reality all it is the gain of "practical convience," as he likes to call it. We have two possible scenarios, one where a binary only version is distributed, and one where no version is released at all. In either scenario there is no source and there is no "Free Software." But in the former scenario, we have this "practical convience" that Stallman quickly derides as unimportant and insiginificant. I'm not convinced that it is all that unimportant and that it's value is overwhelmed by the opportunity to "snub" a giant like Sony. Hell, by having Crystal Space on the PS2, third party developers will have a chance to develop otherwise impossible 98% "Free Software" PS2 titles, ruining an evil empire that wants to keep its API proprietary.
They've refused to use the technology to bend to the whims of certain oppressive governments, thus far.
IMO, that's worse than anything else they've done. Because they're saying what's oppressive and what's not. They've got this massive technology that can effectively ruin freedom on the internet, and they're deciding by themselves what's to be enforced and what isn't. Where do you draw the line? Pedophilia? Virii? Piracy? Hate speech? Who decides? Why do they get to decide? Just because they thought of it first?
The problem here is that all of this obviously immense power is weilded by an instutitution that isn't ultimately responsible to the people it monitors. Even if it were regulated by the government, the Internet isn't just one country and shouldn't be regulated by just one.
"divx on linux using a win dll : what the hell of genius is that ?"
Divx is a hack of a Microsoft codec. As the Divx people don't really know how it all works themselves and couldn't write it from scratch if their lives depended upon it, every Divx codec on every platform requires the original Microsoft files to do all the real work. (Well, unless there's another one I don't know about.) That Microsoft hasn't shut down all of Divx by now is a mystery to me.
"I agree with you that mp3s just don't sound the same, regardless of bitrate..."
If you can read German, read this article from c't magazine which claims that 256 cbr is approximate to CD quality on a professional speaker system.
I got it from this page, which goes into depth on how to properly encode MP3s for near-CD quality. The entire site contains lots of information about encoding, ripping and MP3 quality in general. I'm not claiming it's all true; much of it is quite subjective. But I would cite the c't test as a definitive response to the oft-held belief that MP3s suck for quality no matter what. Granted, you won't find many LAME VBR encoded MP3s on Napster, but that's not to say that Napster or MP3s are worthless. If Napster users really wanted that quality, they could have it; this only shows how little that quality matters to most people.
I've seen similar designs at football games. A few LEDs on a stick spell out "Go [local football team]!" when you move your hand and the stick swings about the handle. I thought it was pretty neat. AFAIK, it works exactly like this clock does, except without a motor.
I'm trying to find a link to anything like it, but I'm not finding anything. ARGH! It does exist, I tell you! I've seen it!
That tears it. I'm moving to Canada ASAP. ASAP, unfortunately, isn't for four years more at least. I'm going to college in California, then I have to get a job that pays enough to allow me to expatriate, as well as a similar job in Canada.
Wake up Canucks, we Americans are running the border (and there isn't even a river to be crossed in the middle of the night! muhaha).
I think Dirtside has done an excellent job of proving his point, and I think posts like this do an excellent job of proving his point too.;)
Music taste is fermly set early in life, and it's not surprising to hear music fans claim their favorite genre is infinitely better than any other genre, especially "new" genres and songs. No one would rightly expect a folk music fan to like 20 popular hits of the 90's; there's a giant blinder there that isn't your fault, and no one can or should convince you to ignore your personal preference.
The simple argument (that no one has successfully disproven to my satisfaction) is that people tend to forget what was wrong about old music/games/movies when it's so easy to remember what was right about it. I would dare you to come up with a bad song from the 60's for every good song you've listed, as well as a mediocre song.
Because the guy who bought Boo, Boo's former competitor, bought the entire company for chump change. The place could make a buck a year and still be profitable. I'm exaggerating, of course.
The whole thing (about Boo) was on 48 hours (US TV show) the other day.
His name is even Plotnikov! Bahahaha.... god this is funny.
"I am Plotnikov! I have many plots, Mr. Bond. Now, die a slow death as my N=NP solution eats away your brain!"
Once again, the hacker vs. cracker debate is brought back to pointless bickering about semantics. As easily as you argue that hacker activities weren't considered malicious attacks, one could argue that the author was making a distinction between a hacker's random script-kiddie attack and a more serious one. For him, a "malicious hacker attack" might have been redundant.
The simple fact is that it cannot be determined through the quote alone whether or not the author thought of the word hacker the same way the so-called hacker community thinks of it. However, it is evident that he thought whatever these "hackers" were doing was something negative that should be prevented, even if that was "merely poking around."
You are killing me. FireWire's not on YOUR motherboard, so it's not successful? Who cares about YOUR motherboard, other than you, exactly?
Abit, who made my motherboard. If FireWire was important enough to them (and other motherboard manufacturers) then it'd be on every motherboard. At this point, it's not. Something must be done to make it important enough.
What could be more successful than being 1) the IEEE standard, 2) the ONLY method? EVERYBODY who is doing anything with DV has at least one FireWire device, and probably two or three, and that includes everybody from the first-time iMac DV buyer to George Lucas working on Episode II.
Did I mention that I don't do anything related to DV? This is the point. While FireWire has had success in the DV arena, there are many more potential FireWire applications completely unrelated to DV that aren't being realized by anyone. I do want FireWire, but I want to be able to do more with it than DV. DV is a drop in the bucket when absolutely everything and anything connected to a computer could be running through FireWire.
I'm not saying this to diminish the success that FireWire has had with DV applications, but we really, really, need FireWire for more applications. Think about it. External hard drives running full speed on FireWire. Internal hard drives running full speed on FireWire (one of several suggestions to replace IDE). Without FireWire, what do we have for component connectivity? USB. At 12Mbps.
We need FireWire for more than just DV, and we're not going to get it unless companies realize they can use it for things other than DV.
Call it "Firewire", "I-Link", or "IEEE 1394", it's the standard for DV communications.
Screw DV communications, I want it on my motherboard. In fact, I want it on every motherboard. I want there to be as many Firewire devices as there are USB devices. More.
Does this have anything to do with Apple? Not really. Most of Firewire's success (or lack thereof) lies in PC land where Apple has little control. So, all in all, this post wasn't really pertitant to the discussion.
The moral: it's not Apple's fault, though I still don't consider it successful enough.
You may not like it, but they couldn't offer that feature any other way.
They could test the patent in court, prove how ridiculous it is, then use it as they wish. However, they chose to license it, making things even harder for anyone who comes after them to win in a court battle.
Quick! Someone patent 2-Click shopping and license it to Microsoft!
--
Re:[Potential troll] What DviX is really used for
on
DivX ;-) Deux Update
·
· Score: 2
However, I see little need for VCD anymore. If you really, really, really need to see your illegal bootleg screeners on your TV, why not just get a video out card? If you must balk at the cost of a video out card, then why do you have a computer? a burner? a DVD player? VCD will die whenever they start releasing DivX--or better yet, MicroDVD--capable hardware players.
In any event, for all this time and effort we spend on this, we could just go buy a hardware DVD player and buy the titles legally.
Think what he could do with the climatic love scene using these techniques!
I was watching the Fight Club DVD (yes, DVD, not DivX, and yes, probably some of the money to buy it went to the MPAA) and on the second disk they had a dissection of a sex sequence done partly in CGI which included FOUR people: Brad Pitt, Marla, and a body double for each of them. They shot the four people from two different angles to get a blur effect and digitally merged all of it into an actually fairly subtle visual effect with just two people.
So, just in case you were wondering, it's already been done.
What I find far more disturbing is that really long distances are now measured in football fields, as football seems to be more common than both kilometers and miles.
Well, that is a huge topic - this is a "because it was there" effort, I'm sure, so it's more a question of what the developers find interesting than not being aware of anything better to do...
I think the guy's point is that there's a lot of other stuff that can be done "because it was there," and some stuff that's more important and more interesting while retaining the same hack value. I don't know what those things are, as most things that have hack value and broad impact are usually done really quickly, often by large corporations.
Slashdot Mirror
Most other /. readers understand it.
A lot of us don't want to understand it. It makes our heads hurt every time we have to explain to someone how Linux can be free, Free, and $30 bucks at BestBuy all at the same time. We want the English libre. We want the Libre Software Movement. We want to be able to say that our new project will be libre and have everyone understand the concept without any further explanation. Most of all, we don't want to waste time here and elsewhere explaining and defending this position.
But we do it anyway. Because we feel that it makes sense; because we feel that we're not the stubborn ones and that if everyone just looked at it objectively, it would save all of us a lot of time and effort.
--
RMS doesn't give a turd about what most people think.
... but apparently he intends to convince everyone to move to his [definition of freedom] ...
but
Obviously he does give a turd about what most people think, because he's going to quite a length to change their minds. Even if he doesn't give a turd about what they think, what they think impacts what does (ie, he wouldn't be bothered explaining Free Software vs. Open Source vs. Freeware). So, we can conclude that he does want to change their minds. We can also conclude that he wants to go about it in the most inefficient way possible (by taking so much time and effort to explain FS vs. OS vs. FW instead of actually promoting FS). It's clear he values semantics over FS. FS will be FS whether or not you call it FS, and fewer people will warm to it if you insist on calling it FS.
Personally, I hate having to make the distinction between free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech everytime I use the word "free" anymore. Hell, Free isn't Free anyway. If it were Free, and I were Free to use it anyway I wanted, I would be Free to make it not Free. (I can charge tickets to hear a speech I'm giving, can't I? Aren't I Free to do that, a protected part of Free speech? Isn't the public domain the only true Free way of distributing software?)
--
If the wrapper works the way I think it does (and it probably doesn't), the wrapper is authorized to run on the PS2. The wrapper runs Crystal Space games, indescriminately of what Sony wants. You can produce Crystal Space games of any sort without Sony's permission without paying a dime, and even make them 100% "Free" if you want. A GNU/Linux user can play it on a 100% verified "Free" distro of Linux. Someone else can play it on the PS2 with the dirty implementation, regardless of what you (as the developer of the game) or Sony thinks.
RMS seems to see this as a loss of the availability of the source, but when in reality all it is the gain of "practical convience," as he likes to call it. We have two possible scenarios, one where a binary only version is distributed, and one where no version is released at all. In either scenario there is no source and there is no "Free Software." But in the former scenario, we have this "practical convience" that Stallman quickly derides as unimportant and insiginificant. I'm not convinced that it is all that unimportant and that it's value is overwhelmed by the opportunity to "snub" a giant like Sony. Hell, by having Crystal Space on the PS2, third party developers will have a chance to develop otherwise impossible 98% "Free Software" PS2 titles, ruining an evil empire that wants to keep its API proprietary.
--
They've refused to use the technology to bend to the whims of certain oppressive governments, thus far.
IMO, that's worse than anything else they've done. Because they're saying what's oppressive and what's not. They've got this massive technology that can effectively ruin freedom on the internet, and they're deciding by themselves what's to be enforced and what isn't. Where do you draw the line? Pedophilia? Virii? Piracy? Hate speech? Who decides? Why do they get to decide? Just because they thought of it first?
The problem here is that all of this obviously immense power is weilded by an instutitution that isn't ultimately responsible to the people it monitors. Even if it were regulated by the government, the Internet isn't just one country and shouldn't be regulated by just one.
--
Maybe you're trying to be funny, but a TLD refers to a Top Level Domain rather than a Three Letter Domain.
--
"divx on linux using a win dll : what the hell of genius is that ?"
Divx is a hack of a Microsoft codec. As the Divx people don't really know how it all works themselves and couldn't write it from scratch if their lives depended upon it, every Divx codec on every platform requires the original Microsoft files to do all the real work. (Well, unless there's another one I don't know about.) That Microsoft hasn't shut down all of Divx by now is a mystery to me.
--
Hilarious and appropriate sig.
--
"I agree with you that mp3s just don't sound the same, regardless of bitrate ..."
If you can read German, read this article from c't magazine which claims that 256 cbr is approximate to CD quality on a professional speaker system.
I got it from this page, which goes into depth on how to properly encode MP3s for near-CD quality. The entire site contains lots of information about encoding, ripping and MP3 quality in general. I'm not claiming it's all true; much of it is quite subjective. But I would cite the c't test as a definitive response to the oft-held belief that MP3s suck for quality no matter what. Granted, you won't find many LAME VBR encoded MP3s on Napster, but that's not to say that Napster or MP3s are worthless. If Napster users really wanted that quality, they could have it; this only shows how little that quality matters to most people.
--
"I seam to slaughter homonyms when I type to fast."
Did you do that on purpose? If so, it's not funny. If not, it's pretty funny.
--
I've seen similar designs at football games. A few LEDs on a stick spell out "Go [local football team]!" when you move your hand and the stick swings about the handle. I thought it was pretty neat. AFAIK, it works exactly like this clock does, except without a motor.
I'm trying to find a link to anything like it, but I'm not finding anything. ARGH! It does exist, I tell you! I've seen it!
--
That tears it. I'm moving to Canada ASAP. ASAP, unfortunately, isn't for four years more at least. I'm going to college in California, then I have to get a job that pays enough to allow me to expatriate, as well as a similar job in Canada.
Wake up Canucks, we Americans are running the border (and there isn't even a river to be crossed in the middle of the night! muhaha).
--
I think Dirtside has done an excellent job of proving his point, and I think posts like this do an excellent job of proving his point too. ;)
Music taste is fermly set early in life, and it's not surprising to hear music fans claim their favorite genre is infinitely better than any other genre, especially "new" genres and songs. No one would rightly expect a folk music fan to like 20 popular hits of the 90's; there's a giant blinder there that isn't your fault, and no one can or should convince you to ignore your personal preference.
The simple argument (that no one has successfully disproven to my satisfaction) is that people tend to forget what was wrong about old music/games/movies when it's so easy to remember what was right about it. I would dare you to come up with a bad song from the 60's for every good song you've listed, as well as a mediocre song.
--
But, uhm, isn't Mars' atmospheric pressure even lower than that of Earth?
--
Because the guy who bought Boo, Boo's former competitor, bought the entire company for chump change. The place could make a buck a year and still be profitable. I'm exaggerating, of course.
The whole thing (about Boo) was on 48 hours (US TV show) the other day.
--
His name is even Plotnikov! Bahahaha.... god this is funny. "I am Plotnikov! I have many plots, Mr. Bond. Now, die a slow death as my N=NP solution eats away your brain!"
--
I think the idea is that while something like Diablo 2 is worthy enough to justify a venture into Windows, a short movie trailor is not.
--
Once again, the hacker vs. cracker debate is brought back to pointless bickering about semantics. As easily as you argue that hacker activities weren't considered malicious attacks, one could argue that the author was making a distinction between a hacker's random script-kiddie attack and a more serious one. For him, a "malicious hacker attack" might have been redundant.
The simple fact is that it cannot be determined through the quote alone whether or not the author thought of the word hacker the same way the so-called hacker community thinks of it. However, it is evident that he thought whatever these "hackers" were doing was something negative that should be prevented, even if that was "merely poking around."
--
You are killing me. FireWire's not on YOUR motherboard, so it's not successful? Who cares about YOUR motherboard, other than you, exactly?
Abit, who made my motherboard. If FireWire was important enough to them (and other motherboard manufacturers) then it'd be on every motherboard. At this point, it's not. Something must be done to make it important enough.
What could be more successful than being 1) the IEEE standard, 2) the ONLY method? EVERYBODY who is doing anything with DV has at least one FireWire device, and probably two or three, and that includes everybody from the first-time iMac DV buyer to George Lucas working on Episode II.
Did I mention that I don't do anything related to DV? This is the point. While FireWire has had success in the DV arena, there are many more potential FireWire applications completely unrelated to DV that aren't being realized by anyone. I do want FireWire, but I want to be able to do more with it than DV. DV is a drop in the bucket when absolutely everything and anything connected to a computer could be running through FireWire.
I'm not saying this to diminish the success that FireWire has had with DV applications, but we really, really, need FireWire for more applications. Think about it. External hard drives running full speed on FireWire. Internal hard drives running full speed on FireWire (one of several suggestions to replace IDE). Without FireWire, what do we have for component connectivity? USB. At 12Mbps.
We need FireWire for more than just DV, and we're not going to get it unless companies realize they can use it for things other than DV.
--
Abit KT7. Bought it last month.
--
Call it "Firewire", "I-Link", or "IEEE 1394", it's the standard for DV communications.
Screw DV communications, I want it on my motherboard. In fact, I want it on every motherboard. I want there to be as many Firewire devices as there are USB devices. More.
Does this have anything to do with Apple? Not really. Most of Firewire's success (or lack thereof) lies in PC land where Apple has little control. So, all in all, this post wasn't really pertitant to the discussion.
The moral: it's not Apple's fault, though I still don't consider it successful enough.
--
You may not like it, but they couldn't offer that feature any other way.
They could test the patent in court, prove how ridiculous it is, then use it as they wish. However, they chose to license it, making things even harder for anyone who comes after them to win in a court battle.
Quick! Someone patent 2-Click shopping and license it to Microsoft!
--
There is too a way to convert AVI/DivX/MPG to VCD and SVCD!
However, I see little need for VCD anymore. If you really, really, really need to see your illegal bootleg screeners on your TV, why not just get a video out card? If you must balk at the cost of a video out card, then why do you have a computer? a burner? a DVD player? VCD will die whenever they start releasing DivX--or better yet, MicroDVD--capable hardware players.
In any event, for all this time and effort we spend on this, we could just go buy a hardware DVD player and buy the titles legally.
--
Think what he could do with the climatic love scene using these techniques!
I was watching the Fight Club DVD (yes, DVD, not DivX, and yes, probably some of the money to buy it went to the MPAA) and on the second disk they had a dissection of a sex sequence done partly in CGI which included FOUR people: Brad Pitt, Marla, and a body double for each of them. They shot the four people from two different angles to get a blur effect and digitally merged all of it into an actually fairly subtle visual effect with just two people.
So, just in case you were wondering, it's already been done.
--
What I find far more disturbing is that really long distances are now measured in football fields, as football seems to be more common than both kilometers and miles.
--
Well, that is a huge topic - this is a "because it was there" effort, I'm sure, so it's more a question of what the developers find interesting than not being aware of anything better to do...
I think the guy's point is that there's a lot of other stuff that can be done "because it was there," and some stuff that's more important and more interesting while retaining the same hack value. I don't know what those things are, as most things that have hack value and broad impact are usually done really quickly, often by large corporations.
--