Solid agreement here. Of course it's irony++ when the same people turn around and bitch about age discrimination.:-/ Oh well, I console myself with the idea that when I'm old enough to have the kind of organizational clout they do, I'll remember how crappy these people's behavior was and do a better god damned job...
To save people having to muck around on the thomas.loc.gov site too much (their search interface is horrid IMHO), here's a link to what I think (c.f. horrid interface again) is the final text of the CDA as passed. Of particular interest to this discussion would be Title II (common carrier crud) and Title V (things that excite senators,er, pr0n and stuff).
This is a big, complicated piece of legislation in which the laws of unintended consequences are in full force. That's why if you want to argue on it, you have to read the thing becuase there are so many little codiciles and amendments and stuff that what you think it says based on a soundbite level of knowledge and what it actually says may well be quite different (well, this is true of any legal discussion, but with complicated bills like this doubly so).
Basically, NS 4.x is so different from the most commonly used web browser (IE of course) that testing the site with the browser you're clients will be using may well be what keeps you on win32. In addition to the obvious and extremely large differences in the DHTML arena, NS and particularly NS on linux just render shit differently. If your site designs are to a very tight tolerance in terms of appearance, this could become a huge pain in the ass.
Then again there is vmware to use IE. Or run it under wine. Or have the graphic designers/user interface designers stay on windows while the middle/back-end code monkeys move to linux.
Just go to someplace like astalavista.box.sk a search for "vmware 2.0.3 linux" to find a crack for it.:-) oh, and forget vmware if you have less than a 450 Mhz processor and 128 meg of ram.
Or if you don't want to be an evil warez dood, just use something like vim/emacs for code editing. If you don't use raw code for sites anyway, well, linux ain't the OS for you. The JS debugging thing y ou can sort of mimic by turning on the javascript console in Netscape (javascript:console as a url in 4.x, maybe the same way in mozilla)
Given that the majority of the congresscritters in the Lege are devoted to one thing and one thing only (namely "fostering a healthy biddness climate"), it's almost certain to pass in Texas[1]. This state has a long history of passing pretty much anything a business lobbyist asks for. If you need an example of this consider the grandfathering of pollution emitting plants that lead to things like the Alcoa smelter in Rockdale (one of the largest sources of airborne pollutants in texas and possibly the west becuase it has no pollution controls and burns lignite[2] at a prodigious rate; a few years back there was a ruckus over this and "something must be done!" so a "Strong Resolution" was passed that basically told the grandfathered plants they should clean up and if they didn't then the State would send them to their rooms without dessert.:-( It's easy to get real mad if you're a texas liberal.).
[1] the Lege and executive offices are all dominated by Republicans now, and even if it were the other way the Democrats here are usually so conservative they'd be Republicans anywhere else...
[2]lignite is a "soft" coal that's very common. Its main virtue is that it is cheap (easy to mine becuase it's close to the surface, and common). Its disadvantages are: it is close to the surface so usually it's strip mined, which has long-term negative effects on the local environment; and it is very high in sulfur content, the burning of which leads to SOx in the atmosphere, which is a greenhouse gas IIRC and also leads to the formation of acidic rainfall. The Rockdale smelter burns millions of tons of this crap every year.
I've studied CS in a collegiate environment (right now I'm a computational chemistry major, due to graduate RSN). I've also written code for a living in a corporate environment, working on some reasonably large projects.
Non-collaboration policies always struck me as really dumb becuase in the "real" world you don't take a dump without a) a plan, and b) at least one partner, much less write a line of code. Yes, I can see the educational value of learning to do something from scratch by yourself, but I also very strongly feel that collaboration should be an integral part of the learning experience, not a forbidden zone. The most frequent complaint I've heard about fresh CS/eng graduates is that they don't know how to work in a team, because their whole educational experience has been conducted in an environment that discouraged this.
If Brown has one of the top CS departments, I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with this policy, but rather with the caliber of faculty they attract (which is pretty much a function of how much they pay and how liberal they are with tenure). (I say if not becuase I doubt they're good, I just don't keep up on rankings.:^) )
Quite simply, (linux || unix)'s main virtues are power and flexibility. Taking advantage of either of these virtues requires that you as the user take the responsibility to understand what you are doing. In other words, as someone whose name I can't recall said: "Unix is hard to learn but easy to use, windows is easy to learn and hard to use." Another way to put it is that Unix is extremely user-friendly, but to a different set of users than windows or MacOS.
If you want simplicity of use (by that I mean pointy-clicky-screw-the-details) and you don't want all the microsoftian crud, take a look into BeOS (it retains much of the power and flexibility of linux but in a more "refined" user environment, IMHO). You can get pretty much the full OS for free (free.be.com IIRC). There are ways to install the free BeOS without a host operating system but Be, Inc. deserves your monetary support, because, again IMHO, their product is actually worth the price they're asking (something like $80 bundled with a tome and productivity suite, I think).
It is a common fallacy for a new user of linux/unix to compare it to some previous OS they used and say "linux needs X, Y, and Z to take over the world / survive". Linux/unix is perfectly well suited for the set of uses it is currently doing. These uses are generally not on the desktop or oriented at desktop users. If you want linux to fulfill some new role: easy, write code.
Want linux in your wristwatch or on your mainframe or playing every new game that comes down the pike? Easy, just start or join a project to add features to the linux experience, and write code.
Semi-ranting aside, welcome to a new world. I hope you have fun (yes, the first 3-6 months are fustrating, but a whole world of potential is there if you stick with it).
The copyright on a written work stays active for something like 70 (or was it 120?) years after the author's death. The revenues go the author's family, and they can re-up the copyright IIRC. So for all practical purposes, under the current rules, copyright may as well never expire.
... at least for me. I do support increased freedom of information (<-- preaching to the choir here, I know;-) ), as it increases the rights I think that we all have as users of that information. Fair use is not a concept developed to deprive artists of fair revenue, but rather the fundamental concept of being able to derive reasonable benefit from an economic transaction.
Still, I think that as users of information we do have the responsibility to make sure that fair use doesn't cross the line into outright piracy, for as Mr. Ellison is saying, this hurts the creators of the information. The grey areas I think pop up when middlemen try to appeal to the powers that be for increased protections in the name of the creators, when we all know that very rarely would any increased revenue end up in the hands of said creators (e.g. how many people believe that all of the blank audio media levy goes to the little bands who can't afford a stable of lawyers?)
In an ideal world there would be a simple and reliable method of direct (micro?)payment to a creator (in effect compensating them for a "viral" net-based distribution chain). In the real world, I suspect that the "free rider" problem will be a significant roadblock for some time to come ("free rider" refers to the cost of public works that are supposed to be user-supported from voluntary contributions, not everybody pays like they should).
Well, you can download the "web fonts" from microsoft. I forget the link, but it does make surfing using a free unix a bit nicer due to all the crappy web designers that automatically use font style=verbana whether they need to or not.:-) See the howto that was called something like X11-Font-Deuglification for the link IIRC.
Minor sidenote: I think the P actually expands to {Perl, Python, PHP}. I seem to recall seeing that on their LAMP site. (Man, I wish O'Reilly would come out with a Postgres book...)
Seriously, if you're doing work that is too sensitive for 128-bit WEP (need both AP and client cards to be 128, obviously), well, yeah, wireless is inappropriate. (If your work is this sensitive, as the CTO how secure your LAN cable is against emission snooping or unauthorized taping.)
Further, are you in a crowded office building? Are your 2-6 side-sharing neighbors competitors? How absorbant are the walls (I mean of RF radiation)?
Plus, let's not forget that 128-bit gear isn't cheap. Not uber-expensive, but definitely not cheap either (especially if you have a large number of potential clients which means you will need several access points in addition to many client pcmcia cards; you might need several access points to begin with if you office has lots of structural walls and whatnot in it).
I was in shock yesterday when I saw a CD at the office for SQL 7 for WinCE. WTF???!?!??!
Hey, if Oracle can make Personal Oracle for win95...;-)
Realistically though, probably it's either just the client tools to hook up to a real MSSQL database or the equivalent of Personal Oracle (in other words like Access but probably a little more robust and with an interface that the Oracle or MSSQL using business analyst will be comfortable with; plus might be easy to export database records this way such that it's trivial to reimport them into a "real" Oracle or MSSQL installation. I'm not a DBA so all this is basically conjecture on my part.).
here on gamedev.net. It is an interesting overview of the special characteristics and constraints of developing games for the PocketPC, making the case that PocketPCs are one of the best handheld game platforms currently extant.
Personally I think licensing debates are just about the most boring possible topics of discussion. Still, I think that in some cases they're warranted. In the article (on the last page), the author says something to the effect of the quake and doom engines are available for free under the GPL, so you can use them in your games. True, but he doesn't mention the source-release clause(s) of said license, which I doubt many game developers will want to abide by. OTOH, the author does provide a link to id's technology licensing page (interesting reading in of its own right), where it states that for $10,000 you can use a non-GPL (i.e. normal, closed-source) license. I'm not exactly sure from reading their page if you could use the engine unmodified along with your own non-engine code and content (maps, characters, et al.) and be abiding by the GPL while releasing a closed-source, commercial game (maybe if you said it uses the engine and where to get the source?). Maybe they mean the LGPL? Either way, $10,000 is a pittance compared to some other costs a (commercial) game developer faces.
I remember somebody once saying that the only difference between a highly classified intelligence report and the story about the same subject or event on CNN is that the intelligence report would have more names and more correlating data. Sounds plausible.
Personally I thought they should have left it there, given it's apparent well-designed linkage. It'd make an interesting monument to human ingenuity as well as a slightly subversive statement regarding people being too uptight to see the humor in a VW bridge-dingleberry ("dingleberry- n. southern US slang, the little bits of fecal matter that stick to the fur/feathers of an animal's nether regions post-evacuation"). And hey, the beetle is also a nod to the counter-culture mecca SF was in the 60s.
Seriously, go read it. It's an afternoon well spent, in that hopefully after reading it you'll understand why comparing MySQL to Oracle is comedic. You have to understand your tools before you pick which one to use (MySQL is for your MP3 id3 tags, Oracle is for your hospital's data storage or for your credit card company's data storage.)
Well, don't get me wrong, I love Postgres, but I doubt it could handle the transaction load of eBay. Further I doubt it could run on hardware robust enough to not instantly croak under the load (eBay's peripheral machines like webservers are all NT/2K (dumb IMHO), but the central database last I heard was pure oracle on solaris (and presumably one to several big Enterprise machines); I guess you could compile postgres on solaris, but would it be able to take advantage of the features of something like an E10K?).
It's when moderator N thinks moderators 0 through (N - 1) moderated your comment up too high. Sucks when you're at the auto-+1 stage (start at 2) and at max karma. If somebody thinks your comment is funny/informative/whatever, you gain no karma. If somebody then later disagrees with the first moderation(s), you _lose_ karma for the overated moderation. So this means that potential the math works like this: 50 + 3 - 1 = 49. Sucks. IMHO the overrated and underrated moderations should be removed, becuase their intent (discouraging unfair moderation) is aptly handled by meta-moderation.
Well, I'm hardly the FreeBSD expert but a) I know it supports >2gb files, and b) I'm pretty sure daemons are either available or easily portable from linux to speak the Appletalk (assuming you use that flaming piece of crap network protocol for your macs instead of tcp/ip, I had to support macs in a heterogenous netowrk in two jobs and trust me, tcp/ip is the way to go) and Novell network filesystem protocols. WRT to the backup software stuff, please, there must be a $MAX_INT backup solutions providers that use or interface with UNIX (if it's good enough for NASA it's good enough for your salescritters).
I can only think that the decision process was influenced by M$ somehow (we'll take away support for you if you don't cooperate, we'l cut you a deal if you cooperate, we'll make a donation to the Maxtor Employee's Benevolents Fund it you cooperate, etc.), because I really don't think there is any technical validity to their decision...
This just goes to show that the RIAA is always lying through their teeth when they way "We aren't concerned about
casual copying. We are just trying to stop mass piracy."
Well, far be it from me to argue on the side of RIAA et al. (fuck them and their children in the ass) but I'll play the devil's advocate here.
This is intended to stop mass piracy. E.g. people making black-market copies of CDs and selling them en masse (like software pirates). Pirate sells disc for $5, makes huge profit, buyer gets perfect digital copy (presumably they'd print up labels and inserts too), musician gets zero (which is just slightly less than they get in the normal scenario after the record company fucks them). Just like software makers, they don't care if individual consumers' lives are made more complicated as long as they can zap the big counterfiters in places like SE Asia and central/south america (see the machine-locking of windows licenses on recent machines from places like Dell).
Slashdot Mirror
Solid agreement here. Of course it's irony++ when the same people turn around and bitch about age discrimination. :-/ Oh well, I console myself with the idea that when I'm old enough to have the kind of organizational clout they do, I'll remember how crappy these people's behavior was and do a better god damned job...
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Well, it is a pretty big object, so I hope they passed by reference... And I hope some day we are free()'d from it's more odious clauses.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
To save people having to muck around on the thomas.loc.gov site too much (their search interface is horrid IMHO), here's a link to what I think (c.f. horrid interface again) is the final text of the CDA as passed. Of particular interest to this discussion would be Title II (common carrier crud) and Title V (things that excite senators,er, pr0n and stuff).
This is a big, complicated piece of legislation in which the laws of unintended consequences are in full force. That's why if you want to argue on it, you have to read the thing becuase there are so many little codiciles and amendments and stuff that what you think it says based on a soundbite level of knowledge and what it actually says may well be quite different (well, this is true of any legal discussion, but with complicated bills like this doubly so).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Basically, NS 4.x is so different from the most commonly used web browser (IE of course) that testing the site with the browser you're clients will be using may well be what keeps you on win32. In addition to the obvious and extremely large differences in the DHTML arena, NS and particularly NS on linux just render shit differently. If your site designs are to a very tight tolerance in terms of appearance, this could become a huge pain in the ass.
Then again there is vmware to use IE. Or run it under wine. Or have the graphic designers/user interface designers stay on windows while the middle/back-end code monkeys move to linux.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
the only problem with sarcasm is that most people are too stupid to understand it
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Just go to someplace like astalavista.box.sk a search for "vmware 2.0.3 linux" to find a crack for it. :-) oh, and forget vmware if you have less than a 450 Mhz processor and 128 meg of ram.
Or if you don't want to be an evil warez dood, just use something like vim/emacs for code editing. If you don't use raw code for sites anyway, well, linux ain't the OS for you. The JS debugging thing y ou can sort of mimic by turning on the javascript console in Netscape (javascript:console as a url in 4.x, maybe the same way in mozilla)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Given that the majority of the congresscritters in the Lege are devoted to one thing and one thing only (namely "fostering a healthy biddness climate"), it's almost certain to pass in Texas[1]. This state has a long history of passing pretty much anything a business lobbyist asks for. If you need an example of this consider the grandfathering of pollution emitting plants that lead to things like the Alcoa smelter in Rockdale (one of the largest sources of airborne pollutants in texas and possibly the west becuase it has no pollution controls and burns lignite[2] at a prodigious rate; a few years back there was a ruckus over this and "something must be done!" so a "Strong Resolution" was passed that basically told the grandfathered plants they should clean up and if they didn't then the State would send them to their rooms without dessert. :-( It's easy to get real mad if you're a texas liberal.).
[1] the Lege and executive offices are all dominated by Republicans now, and even if it were the other way the Democrats here are usually so conservative they'd be Republicans anywhere else...
[2]lignite is a "soft" coal that's very common. Its main virtue is that it is cheap (easy to mine becuase it's close to the surface, and common). Its disadvantages are: it is close to the surface so usually it's strip mined, which has long-term negative effects on the local environment; and it is very high in sulfur content, the burning of which leads to SOx in the atmosphere, which is a greenhouse gas IIRC and also leads to the formation of acidic rainfall. The Rockdale smelter burns millions of tons of this crap every year.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Compaq is based in Houston IIRC. Dell is based in Austin/Round Rock.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
I've studied CS in a collegiate environment (right now I'm a computational chemistry major, due to graduate RSN). I've also written code for a living in a corporate environment, working on some reasonably large projects.
Non-collaboration policies always struck me as really dumb becuase in the "real" world you don't take a dump without a) a plan, and b) at least one partner, much less write a line of code. Yes, I can see the educational value of learning to do something from scratch by yourself, but I also very strongly feel that collaboration should be an integral part of the learning experience, not a forbidden zone. The most frequent complaint I've heard about fresh CS/eng graduates is that they don't know how to work in a team, because their whole educational experience has been conducted in an environment that discouraged this.
If Brown has one of the top CS departments, I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with this policy, but rather with the caliber of faculty they attract (which is pretty much a function of how much they pay and how liberal they are with tenure). (I say if not becuase I doubt they're good, I just don't keep up on rankings. :^) )
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Quite simply, (linux || unix)'s main virtues are power and flexibility. Taking advantage of either of these virtues requires that you as the user take the responsibility to understand what you are doing. In other words, as someone whose name I can't recall said: "Unix is hard to learn but easy to use, windows is easy to learn and hard to use." Another way to put it is that Unix is extremely user-friendly, but to a different set of users than windows or MacOS.
If you want simplicity of use (by that I mean pointy-clicky-screw-the-details) and you don't want all the microsoftian crud, take a look into BeOS (it retains much of the power and flexibility of linux but in a more "refined" user environment, IMHO). You can get pretty much the full OS for free (free.be.com IIRC). There are ways to install the free BeOS without a host operating system but Be, Inc. deserves your monetary support, because, again IMHO, their product is actually worth the price they're asking (something like $80 bundled with a tome and productivity suite, I think).
It is a common fallacy for a new user of linux/unix to compare it to some previous OS they used and say "linux needs X, Y, and Z to take over the world / survive". Linux/unix is perfectly well suited for the set of uses it is currently doing. These uses are generally not on the desktop or oriented at desktop users. If you want linux to fulfill some new role: easy, write code. Want linux in your wristwatch or on your mainframe or playing every new game that comes down the pike? Easy, just start or join a project to add features to the linux experience, and write code.
Semi-ranting aside, welcome to a new world. I hope you have fun (yes, the first 3-6 months are fustrating, but a whole world of potential is there if you stick with it).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
The copyright on a written work stays active for something like 70 (or was it 120?) years after the author's death. The revenues go the author's family, and they can re-up the copyright IIRC. So for all practical purposes, under the current rules, copyright may as well never expire.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
... at least for me. I do support increased freedom of information (<-- preaching to the choir here, I know ;-) ), as it increases the rights I think that we all have as users of that information. Fair use is not a concept developed to deprive artists of fair revenue, but rather the fundamental concept of being able to derive reasonable benefit from an economic transaction.
Still, I think that as users of information we do have the responsibility to make sure that fair use doesn't cross the line into outright piracy, for as Mr. Ellison is saying, this hurts the creators of the information. The grey areas I think pop up when middlemen try to appeal to the powers that be for increased protections in the name of the creators, when we all know that very rarely would any increased revenue end up in the hands of said creators (e.g. how many people believe that all of the blank audio media levy goes to the little bands who can't afford a stable of lawyers?)
In an ideal world there would be a simple and reliable method of direct (micro?)payment to a creator (in effect compensating them for a "viral" net-based distribution chain). In the real world, I suspect that the "free rider" problem will be a significant roadblock for some time to come ("free rider" refers to the cost of public works that are supposed to be user-supported from voluntary contributions, not everybody pays like they should).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Well, you can download the "web fonts" from microsoft. I forget the link, but it does make surfing using a free unix a bit nicer due to all the crappy web designers that automatically use font style=verbana whether they need to or not. :-) See the howto that was called something like X11-Font-Deuglification for the link IIRC.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Minor sidenote: I think the P actually expands to {Perl, Python, PHP}. I seem to recall seeing that on their LAMP site. (Man, I wish O'Reilly would come out with a Postgres book...)
--
"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
Seriously, if you're doing work that is too sensitive for 128-bit WEP (need both AP and client cards to be 128, obviously), well, yeah, wireless is inappropriate. (If your work is this sensitive, as the CTO how secure your LAN cable is against emission snooping or unauthorized taping.)
Further, are you in a crowded office building? Are your 2-6 side-sharing neighbors competitors? How absorbant are the walls (I mean of RF radiation)?
Plus, let's not forget that 128-bit gear isn't cheap. Not uber-expensive, but definitely not cheap either (especially if you have a large number of potential clients which means you will need several access points in addition to many client pcmcia cards; you might need several access points to begin with if you office has lots of structural walls and whatnot in it).
--
"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
Hey, if Oracle can make Personal Oracle for win95... ;-)
Realistically though, probably it's either just the client tools to hook up to a real MSSQL database or the equivalent of Personal Oracle (in other words like Access but probably a little more robust and with an interface that the Oracle or MSSQL using business analyst will be comfortable with; plus might be easy to export database records this way such that it's trivial to reimport them into a "real" Oracle or MSSQL installation. I'm not a DBA so all this is basically conjecture on my part.).
--
"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
here on gamedev.net. It is an interesting overview of the special characteristics and constraints of developing games for the PocketPC, making the case that PocketPCs are one of the best handheld game platforms currently extant.
Personally I think licensing debates are just about the most boring possible topics of discussion. Still, I think that in some cases they're warranted. In the article (on the last page), the author says something to the effect of the quake and doom engines are available for free under the GPL, so you can use them in your games. True, but he doesn't mention the source-release clause(s) of said license, which I doubt many game developers will want to abide by. OTOH, the author does provide a link to id's technology licensing page (interesting reading in of its own right), where it states that for $10,000 you can use a non-GPL (i.e. normal, closed-source) license. I'm not exactly sure from reading their page if you could use the engine unmodified along with your own non-engine code and content (maps, characters, et al.) and be abiding by the GPL while releasing a closed-source, commercial game (maybe if you said it uses the engine and where to get the source?). Maybe they mean the LGPL? Either way, $10,000 is a pittance compared to some other costs a (commercial) game developer faces.
--
"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
I remember somebody once saying that the only difference between a highly classified intelligence report and the story about the same subject or event on CNN is that the intelligence report would have more names and more correlating data. Sounds plausible.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Since when is dingleberry a buzzword?
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Personally I thought they should have left it there, given it's apparent well-designed linkage. It'd make an interesting monument to human ingenuity as well as a slightly subversive statement regarding people being too uptight to see the humor in a VW bridge-dingleberry ("dingleberry- n. southern US slang, the little bits of fecal matter that stick to the fur/feathers of an animal's nether regions post-evacuation"). And hey, the beetle is also a nod to the counter-culture mecca SF was in the 60s.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
it's quite informative (at least read the first chapter): SQL for Web Nerds by Philip Greenspun of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing fame.
Seriously, go read it. It's an afternoon well spent, in that hopefully after reading it you'll understand why comparing MySQL to Oracle is comedic. You have to understand your tools before you pick which one to use (MySQL is for your MP3 id3 tags, Oracle is for your hospital's data storage or for your credit card company's data storage.)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Well, don't get me wrong, I love Postgres, but I doubt it could handle the transaction load of eBay. Further I doubt it could run on hardware robust enough to not instantly croak under the load (eBay's peripheral machines like webservers are all NT/2K (dumb IMHO), but the central database last I heard was pure oracle on solaris (and presumably one to several big Enterprise machines); I guess you could compile postgres on solaris, but would it be able to take advantage of the features of something like an E10K?).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
It's when moderator N thinks moderators 0 through (N - 1) moderated your comment up too high. Sucks when you're at the auto-+1 stage (start at 2) and at max karma. If somebody thinks your comment is funny/informative/whatever, you gain no karma. If somebody then later disagrees with the first moderation(s), you _lose_ karma for the overated moderation. So this means that potential the math works like this: 50 + 3 - 1 = 49. Sucks. IMHO the overrated and underrated moderations should be removed, becuase their intent (discouraging unfair moderation) is aptly handled by meta-moderation.
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Well, I'm hardly the FreeBSD expert but a) I know it supports >2gb files, and b) I'm pretty sure daemons are either available or easily portable from linux to speak the Appletalk (assuming you use that flaming piece of crap network protocol for your macs instead of tcp/ip, I had to support macs in a heterogenous netowrk in two jobs and trust me, tcp/ip is the way to go) and Novell network filesystem protocols. WRT to the backup software stuff, please, there must be a $MAX_INT backup solutions providers that use or interface with UNIX (if it's good enough for NASA it's good enough for your salescritters).
I can only think that the decision process was influenced by M$ somehow (we'll take away support for you if you don't cooperate, we'l cut you a deal if you cooperate, we'll make a donation to the Maxtor Employee's Benevolents Fund it you cooperate, etc.), because I really don't think there is any technical validity to their decision...
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
Well, far be it from me to argue on the side of RIAA et al. (fuck them and their children in the ass) but I'll play the devil's advocate here.
This is intended to stop mass piracy. E.g. people making black-market copies of CDs and selling them en masse (like software pirates). Pirate sells disc for $5, makes huge profit, buyer gets perfect digital copy (presumably they'd print up labels and inserts too), musician gets zero (which is just slightly less than they get in the normal scenario after the record company fucks them). Just like software makers, they don't care if individual consumers' lives are made more complicated as long as they can zap the big counterfiters in places like SE Asia and central/south america (see the machine-locking of windows licenses on recent machines from places like Dell).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org