When will you Atheists realise that your beliefs are just as much a religion as anthing you find in the Bible or the Quran?
I am so tired of religious people saying that atheism is just another religion. Atheism is simply the absence of belief, not a belief that there is no God. To claim that atheism is a religion is like saying that silence is just another sound or that darkness is some kind of light.
I think some people simply can't grasp that someone might simply not believe in any kind of God and they try to paint this stance as being just as irrational as any other religion. Doing so allows them to use the 'everybody has a right to his own opinion' argument to legitimize their way of thinking. Underlying that, of course, is the assumption that all opinions are equally valid, wich is, simply put: bullshit.
Somehow most people seem to understand that irrational beliefs should be discarded, except in the case of religion. If I started saying there was a banana floating mid-air in front of me, people would ask for proof before they believed it. Without proof, they would not pay much respect to my claims, and they'd be right to. I could go on claiming I have the power to make bananas float forever, but as long as I can't demonstrate it, people would say: bullshit.
Yet somehow, when religion is concerned, that simple test is thrown out the window. Not only people don't expect to be called up on their claims and beliefs, but they expect that their opinions should be respected as being as valid as any other. Anyway, I just wish that religious people would simply understand that not believing in (to atheists) fairy tales does not mean atheism is some other kind of irrational belief. It's just the same as not believing that some guy can make bananas float. That's not religion, it's just rational, critical thinking.
I'd just like to point out that the successor of floppy disks are NOT cds. If you boot DOS from a cd, you're not going to be able to write to the media and for flashing that means no BIOS back-up. CDs just aren't the solution.
I don't understand why so few seem to know about the "new" floppies, namely the USB memory keys. These things are smaller than floppies, blazingly fast (USB 2.0 vs traditional floppies anyone?) and all modern BIOSes can boot from one, either through a floppy emulation (el-torito-like) or even as a normal block device for very recent BIOSes.
Yes, they are still relatively expensive compared to a floppy disk, but they are getting cheaper fast. I just bought a new 128MB key for $25. It's not that bad considering you can carry it around on a keyring. Mine boots DOS and has all kind of recovery programs, such as partition magic, NTFS-Dos, various drivers, etc. You can also write to them without problem. OS support is good too. Linux 2.4 can read USB block devices, so can Win98 and up. You just plug it in your front USB port and you're set. And for those without front USB, a lot of keys come with a 3 feet USB extention (such as the Apacer ones) that you can use, allowing you not to mess around the back of the computer.
So yes, floppies are dead, but there are replacements already available that are incredibly superior.
I was messing around with an old parallel port drive in DOS, when the device driver flaked out or something. DOS helpfully printed out this error message:
I just have to reply to this. I've noticed your handle several times on slashdot... in spite of your complaint about how "slashdot isn't to be taken seriously anymore", you sure do post a lot. Your posts are usually more intelligent than this one though. Seeing this angered me enough to reply,and I *don't* post a lot.
Anyway, to the point. I frequently download movies over the internet. I occasionnally go to the cinema, maybe once every six weeks (8 to 10 times a year I guess). I'm by no means an avid cinema fan, but I like to go from times to times with friends or gf. Now, I've had this pattern for years. The fact that I'm downloading and watching movies didn't change the number of times I'm going to the cinema. Nor did it change the number of movies I rent at the local video club. Am I stealing? I sure get to watch more movies than I did previously. I mean, I'm not rich, and I couldn't afford to go to the cinema for every movie I download.
But I'm still giving what I can afford to the movie industry. Maybe I'm not "entitled" to view these extra movies, but they sure make me somewhat happier, as I'm being entertained more. Isn't all that matters? When I can afford more, I'm going to pay for more. In the meantime, I don't feel like I'm stealing anything.
I'm canadian, not american though. So maybe the more... socialist point of view shocks you. But believe it or not, here, we don't treat people only by the money they carry. No one here pays for health care. Basic things like water aren't metered, we just pay a global tax and we can use as much as we want. Sure, the guy next door with a swimming pool consumes more than I, but it's *water*. It should be available to everyone, and everyone should support the water infrastructure equally.
Poor people here are allowed on the bus, if they don't have enough to pay (as long as they don't make an habit out of it). But *surely* they are stealing service?! Well, someone who can't afford the bus would have had to walk, maybe for several hours. That person wouldn't have paid anyway, and the bus was already there. Is she stealing? No. When she gets better financially, then she can pay. No problem.
Do you get my point? Sure, I believe that someone making large-scale copies of movies and selling them is in the wrong. But aunt Lucy downloading a copy of "A Beautiful Mind"? Come on.
I wonder how many people browsing slashdot are going to find this "shocking", the fact that you could willingly support a certain number of freeloaders. I guess most of America has become too individualistic for views like that to be shared by many. It's sad, if you ask me.
Just a little tip for those annoying IE pop-up windows:
You can close any IE window instantly by hitting ctrl+W. That works for every browser windows, even those without a close button. And it also has the advantage of not triggering the onClose() function that pops-up more windows.
That said, I strongly suggest you simply switch to mozilla. I've been using it as my primary browser for months now, and I can go everywhere on the 'net with it. I did find like 4 or 5 pages in 6 months of browsing that didn't like mozilla, but you can still use IE for those, it's a rare happening.
Hum, sorry to wake you up, but 95% of DSL services aren't full-duplex, meaning that when your upstream pipe is maxed out, your downstream grinds to a halt.
My current connection is 1024/128, and if I'm uploading near 16k/s, I can't download anything above 10k/s, and the lag is simply too high even for web browsing. This is the case of the great majority of DSL users btw, I'm not alone in this situation.
The only broadband option right now that are full-duplex, are cable or wireless access. So before saying that upstream doesn't affect downstream, please check your facts.
Morality IS logical. I'm sorry. Morality as in "set of rules on how to behave so that the maximum number of people can have the maximum level of hapiness". That's the ideal society in which everyone would like to live in, where everybody is perfectly happy. But of course, it can never be reached.
So yes, using this goal as a start, we can define a general "morality". And it will be logical, it doesn't need to involve any kind of God or religion. The problem actually comes WHEN religion is involved somehow, because the various beliefs are often quirky and illogical, so they introduce sets of rules that have nothing to do with increasing the population's general well-being.
We can very logically conclude that, for example, murder is wrong. If you allow anyone to kill anyone else, obviously this rule will also apply to you too (risk of getting killed by anyone). No one wants their lives to be endangered this way, so for the general well-being of the population, murder should not be allowed. It's that simple.
That's simply not true, and I challenge you to prove it. Why is WinAmp so popular when Windows Media Player can play MP3s? Why is Acrobat popular when WordViewer is free? Why is ICQ popular when MSN Messenger is bundled?
The reason that these programs are still popular today is rather simple : they came first. Winamp was an mp3 player long before Media Player was one, and it has 10% the memory footprint. The acrobat format is popular because it is portable and will print the same on any platform. Without this, it simply wouldn't exist. There is no WordViewer for UNIX or even Macs to my knowledge (you have to buy the full word). And for ICQ it's once again the came first thing. If 90% of your friends had been using ICQ for two years when MSN came out, well if you chose to use MSN you were simply left out. Between you and me, ICQ is probably one of the buggiest popular program floating around the 'net today. Totally shitty. But before it, there wasn't anything else, so it stuck. Notice that it's definitely losing ground to other IM clients. Especially MSN. Because it comes with IE, which comes with windows.
Hum, I grew up in Montreal, and graduated elementary and high school with the public catholic system. First of all, it's obvious that you haven't actually attended the schools here. Religion courses aren't mandatory. They haven't been for at least 20 years (when I went to school). If the parents don't want their children to have religion courses (a single course a week mind you), they their children don't. It is replaced by some kind of morality course, a little bit like philosophy. And, from grade 3 (childrend are 8 or 9 years old), the children are actually allowed to override their parents' choice in religion courses.
Another thing to mention... I suspect you don't have a good idea of what religion courses are like. I took religion classes until grade 9, and there isn't much indoctrination done there at all. It's mostly catholic and christian religion history and practices, teachings, etc. Things like the commandments, etc. Very little emphasis is placed on sinning and such, it's very positive and not meant to induce behavior. I'm an agnostic btw, and I have been since age 14. I still took some religion classes because it was rather interesting. They don't assume you're a believer in these classes. You don't have to be, and many aren't. So in that aspect I think it is very different than the idea you have of a "religious class".
I'm surprised at how clueless some comments are here on slashdot. Obviously, a lot of people complaining about PPPoE have never used it. I've been using PPPoE for over a year now, on a 1mbit DSL line provided by Sympatico (canadian ISP).
First, PPPoE allows uses of multiple IP addresses over a single modem. Kinda like what you get with a PPtP VPN. Not hard to do either. Plug the DSL modem in a switch/hub. Plug computers in said hub. Have each comp make a PPPoE connection. Each gets a separate ip.
As for the ip not being static... Well if you have a router that has PPPoE support in the firmware, and always leave it plugged, you indeed get a pretty static ip. I've been connected for months in a row and my ip never changed.
Some other people were complaining about... overhead! Now get serious. The overhead is so near zero that it's not in ANY way perceptible. Unless maybe you have a Gigabyte connection. My 1Mbit DSL always download at around 126k/s, which is the line's max throughput. Ok, in theory it's 128k/s, but I doubt many people would notice a 1k/s difference. And I'm not even sure it's caused by the PPPoE protocol, it might just be the line.
The only problem I've had with PPPoE is that it doesn't work for software that tries to communicate directly with your ethernet port. nmap is an example of this. It's extremely rare occurance though.
PPPoE isn't a bad solution for the user, really. Just the simplicity for having multiple computers with their own ip over the DSL is worth it for most users with more than one comp. And if the ISP is reliable, you'll keep your ip for months. I think most people are complaining just because it makes them feel nice to complain. Well... this is slashdot after all.
You sir, are ignorant. Have you even seen a good join/part flood on IRC? A good botnet of over 30 hosts, disconnecting and reconnecting with a new name every second, joining then parting. This prevents any legitimate chat in a channel.
The problem is that these 30 hosts are mostly rooted boxes or misconfigured proxies. But there's no shortage of such boxes on the 'net. Having no ops would mean letting these kids kill any channel they want. They just have to hit the channel with such a flood, once a day. Who wants to have to type a/ignore *!*@*.somehost.com 30 times a day just to stay on a channel?
There's clearly the need for some authority powers. I op in some rather controversial channels (but legal) and we are hit by such floods regularly. If we could not ban the users, our channel would sink under. And re-creating isn't an option, as the flooders would simply change their target.
You are living in another world if you think channel authority should not be implemented.
Of course. Ideas based on solid knowledge such as "sex is harmful to children" or "homosexuals cannot marry" or even "sexuality involving anal penetration is illegal". You see, there's a big problem with your conception of government control. A lot of laws that the different governements maintain/promote aren't based on any scientific ground, just a "moral" one. Give me one reason why it should be illegal to walk the street naked. A logical one I mean. Not a religious one. I'm taking sex laws here because they are the most obvious, but a lot of other laws are as silly.
You see, the internet gives the means to question lots of cultural things people usually simply take for being true without thinking about it. Such ideas should not be regulated in any way. You are suggesting censorship for no good reasons. Do you really think Hitler's anti-semitic campain would have been more successful with the internet? Hell no. Because, in the WWII Germany, you could get shot for not believing in the system and criticizing it. With the internet though, you would have had millions of people invoking logical arguments against nazism. It's more likely that Hitler would have needed to ban 'net access for his troups, less they would have revolted at what was asked of them.
I dual-boot between linux and Windows 2000 on my machine, true. And I also run as an admin equiv on my Windows 2000 machine. It doesn't mean that I run as root when I boot in linux. I don't know if you've used Windows NT/2000 extensively, but LOADS of stuff require admin access. And this isn't like *NIX OSes: you can't just su or switch to another console to perform a task as an adminstrator, you have to do a full log-off (closing all programs you were working with) and then log back on.
This is why I think that the multi-user model of WinNT/2000 is flawed somewhat. It doesn't give any easy way to log on with more than one user at the same time. See how ackward it is: let's suppose I want to do some db profiling. So I log as my sub-admin user, I start to code, do some tests. Now suppose I want to restart the mySQL service. I'm screwed. I have to close everything I was working on, log-off, log back on as an admin, log-off, log back as my user and restart every program. Ooooh. Just wonderful. So, sorry, but I'll keep running Windows 2000 with an admin-equiv account.
Well, firstly I have to say that this "API" for ICQ is hardly new. I remember doing some research about ICQ specs around a year ago, and it was already available.
Second, it isn't an API at all. It doesn't let you do anything, except some kind of remote-controlling of ICQ. What I wanted to do at the time was a PGP plug-in for sending messages, but with this "API", it's impossible. An example of what you can do with this API is sending a message from another program (using the dll), using ICQ. Note that ICQ must be installed for this to work, and even worse, the UIN of the person you're sending the message to must also be on the user's list (you can add it first of course, but you get the idea). It isn't an API at all, just a set of functions to remote-control ICQ. The specs are still completely closed, and this API is all but useless for doing anything with the ICQ protocol.
That's so funny. Usenet. I don't think that, ten years ago, all of usenet together got even 1% of the hits/. gets each day. There just wasn't enough people online. That's what I meant by "reaching the masses".
I supposed I shouldn't have answered to an obvious troll, but it shows so well the "elitist" stupidity of some people. Sure. Keep most of the people in ignorance, and you just promote a society where most don't have a clue and just follow around yelling "Bleeeeeh!". You're not l33t because you just happened to use Usenet 10 years ago. Though I suppose some people just need to feel superior about SOMETHING.
Ok, I'm done venting.
You made some interesting points, but I think you're simply looking at all the bad things without balancing them with the positive side.
Look at/. Would it have been thinkable to see such a phenomenon 10 years ago? Depsite the mandatory trolls/flamers you get for every story, there are some mighty discussions going on here. I can't think of any other place where important philosophy issues are discussed so much, except maybe university philo classes. You miss completely the power of the net. Sure, the noise ratio went up dramatically as the 'net grew more and more popular, but on the other side we can now reach this mass.
Sites like/. are politicizing a LOT of people. I've seen it happen. I've seen friends wondering why I was reading/. every day, come here and have their eyes opened to political issues. Then they, too, become avid readers and posters. I think it's time to stop complaining about the sheeple, and try to cut their numbers instead of being elitist. In the end, this is what's going to make a better place to live in. The less drones you have, the harder it will be to pass fascist laws and for big corporations to bully Mr Everyone-without-tons-of-money.
Instead of wanting it back the way it was by reducing the number of people, you should be working to get the sheeple out of their self-made intellectual lazyness. Maybe we'll actually be able to change things then.
P.S. My english's not very good, especially when I haven't had my first coffee. I just had to reply.
I got all excited when I saw a "submitting" related link. I was expecting leather-clad, whip-holding women, but all I got was something about linux. Dunno 'bout you, but the image of a leather-clad penguin isn't all that appealing to me.
Hold on for a minute now. They say that, since the video is uncompressed, it will not be possible to copy it and trade it over the internet? Do these people have any clue of what they are talking about?
I don't know about you, but I've never seen a whole DVD mpeg-2 movie copied, or traded over the net. An mpeg-2 DVD movie is over 4 Gb! Even with high bandwidth and disk space, it's easy to understand that you won't copy too many movies if you have to take so much bandwidth/space. The thing is that people don't care what the inital format of the movie is. They'll take the movie, make it into a bandwidth/space-friendly format, such as mpeg-4 (DivX) and THEN they'll store and trade it.
This 200 Gb movie will be just around 1 Gb once it's compressed into mpeg-4, just like any other movie out there. Saying that this will prevent copying or trading just shows that they have no idea of what the actual problem is.
The only computer that can't be hacked over the internet is a computer that can't be accessed over the internet.
You obviously don't know anything about hacking or security. Hello? Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris? That rings a bell? If every computer could be hacked remotely over the internet, there would be no web sites, no need for SSL (Hey, if someone can remotely get root for sure, he can install an SSL sniffer right? Why use SSL?) and web sites wouldn't be up for over a few days before being defaced.
Saying that "Every computer is hackable" is idiotic. Hacks result from design flaws, they aren't inherent to any system. Go tell any online banks that their system is hackable and they'll laugh at you. Granted, there might be undiscovered remote root exploits left in the system, but it's extremely unlikely.
Hmmmm. Let me get this straight. I've been reading every post and they all seemed to mention electicity being generated by fossil fuels or nuclear power, etc, etc. Well I'd just like to mention that I live in Quebec, Canada. We are the world's bigger producer of hydro-electricity. For those who don't know, the power is generated by water pressure-activated turbines. It's 100% emission free, except for a few gases that are released when the reservoir is filled for the first time. It's so efficient that we are producing enough for almost all of Ontario, Quebec, and 4 US states. And we still have a lot more rivers where we can put new dams if needed.
Electrical power doesn't have to be generated by fossil fuels. In fact hydro power is probably one of the cleanest way to generate electricity.
Ohh, they can make a new DOOM all they want, it just won't be the same as the original! Hey, I mean, look at what they just WON'T be able to re-create:
- No more hassle loading half-working IPX packet drivers in DOS. I really enjoyed spending hours trying to get extremely bad coded TSRs to work for Multiplayer DOOM!
- No more sluggish, horrible mouse control where you had to mess with the mouse driver's sensitivity to make it any usable, so that it would give you an unfair edge in the game.
- No more "visual" weapons, like the BFG. (Ha, my shot hit the wall, but then, who cares, I was looking at you, so now you're getting torn into little pieces anyway!)
- No more "Hey! That's unfair, my keyboard buffer was full, it just kept beeping while I stood there silly! You're taking unfair advantage, YOU SUCK!!"
- And finally, no "global sound" allowing you to know exactly where the others are, just by hearing the sound of a swith pulled on the other side of the map.
So you see? I just won't be it. I don't care if they call it DOOM, it won't be MY DOOM. How sad. (Wet eyes, *SNIFF*)
Somehow, after all these months of legal fighting over MP3s, I'm getting the feeling that it's already too late to stop the flood. We are seeing more and more lawsuits filed against sites like mp3.com and, at the same time, we are seeing more and more people trading the mp3s over the net. Don't beleive me? Just log on any IRC network and do a channel search on "MP3". Their average user load increases at about 5 a day, and when the channels get too crowded, another one forms.
My point? Net users (especially young people, who don't have a lot of money to spare) have been accustomed to having free music. Sure, most still pay for cds, etc. Don't we all? I'll be the first to admit that downloading mp3s can lead to buy cds, as it happened to me, and not only once. But the fact is that very few of us are paying for more than 50% of their music.
Don't hide your hand in the sands there, I know some of you will avoid any kind of piracy, but you just can't fail to see that it's not the case of the majority. I think that artists will simply have to adapt, probably by selling their tunes directly to the customer over the net at a very reasonable price, say, US $50 cents, so that a lot more will be willing to support their favorite groups. It's certainly sad news for the record industry. However, I think they will have to drop cd production to go back to what is their primary goal, after all : publicity for new artists. I'm sure they will be able to find a profit on the net, as everyone will eventually have to. It's the dawn of a new economic model, in which providers of products and services will have a more "direct" access to their customers than they had previously.
The net will make it easier for everyone with a genial idea to profit from it. Because here it will matter less what you will hear about a product from publicity, but more what you hear your friends saying in chat rooms, forums, etc. It will finally allow customers to decide for themselves what's a good idea and what's not. Innovations, (true ones, not the kind claimed by Microsoft) will come with less resistance and will have a better chance to impose. Truly, a new kind of economics.
Hey people, don't you realize that this is the same kind of argument as: "What do you mean, smoking causes lung cancer? My grand-father smoked all his life and he lived to see his 100th birthday!"
Now come on! It's obvious that open-sourcing a program won't magically turn it into a secure one. Just the same with smoking: it won't automatically mean you'll develop lung cancer. It's all about average. You can say that, in general, open-source program (especially those about security) will be a lot safer if everyone can look at the code and check if it has holes. Yes, this bug stayed around for a long time. So what? If the program had been closed source, it's quite possible that it would never have been found. It's not because something breaks a general trend that it automatically nullyfies this trend. Don't jump into the propaganda band-wagon!
I'm amazed to see how many people in the open source community fear commercial software. It seems to me as obvious that, as linux and other alternate OSes to Windows will gain popularity, we will see more and more commercial software developped for them.
It's true that a lot of software for linux and other open source OSes are free (as in beer) mostly because the companies making them seek to gain acceptance in the open source community. If there had been a larger market, they might have sold it instead. For a lot of companies, it's more of a marketing strategy than pure belief that software should be free (as in freedom).
The thing is, it doesn't change anything. Whatever happens, open source projects can never be "taken over" by greedy profit-driven companies, because the nature of open-source itself won't allow it. Commercial software can't hurt linux, it's quite the opposite. I can understand that a company could want to make money with their powerful, 3D-Studio like application. What's wrong with that? People can use their Free OS to run a commercial program just like any GPLed one. More software, open-source or not, free or not, would help linux get a larger user-base and that's a Good Thing.
Re:Would you stand for advertising to your kids?
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Laptops In Education
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Kids see some of that, and as a parent I have the right to censor what my kids see.
Okay, you warned us not to criticize your values, as you probably know a lot of people disagree with them. I simply have to add my two cents however. You say you won't have a TV in your house so that your kids won't see all the violence/sex. I agree that there is a lot of mindless violence on TV, and that it *could* have a negative effect on kids (It's not been proved). But sex? Panty ads? Now come on, I think you should understand a few things.
When you see a woman wearing only panties on TV, you classify this as porn? Oh, of course, IT'S FLESH! IT'S DIRTY, DON'T LOOK! This kind of behaviour is much more likely to teach your kids a warped view of sexuality, instead of a healthy one. Now when your kids will be old enough to see a sexual scene in a movie,wether you want it or not, they'll react this way: "Oh, look, this is GROSS! They aren't wearing any clothes! And... Oh, they're... they're touching each other! DISGUSTING! It's bad, it's dirty!".
This is a lot more likely to cause problems than solve them. For example, the kid will be a lot more curious about sex, which can lead to premature intercourse, without the child understanding fully what's happening. It can also lead to obsessive behavior. Kids should be brought to sex early, so that they consider it a normal thing of life (which it is). Take a look at what they do in Germany. Over there, children are taught very early about their sexuality. Day care centers accept, to a reasonable limit, sexual exploration by children. Being curious about sex is normal, and this curiosity should be satisfied by clear answers from adults. The result? The child pregnency rates over there are not even a fifth of what it is in the US. Children act a lot more responsibly toward sex, they are less afraid of it, they don't think it's "dirty".
My point is that censorship is usually a bad thing. I'm not saying we shouldn't hide a murder scene to a child, so that he/she won't have nightmares about it. I'm just saying that we should teach children how to think, not what to think. Don't hide important things like sex from them, tell them exactly what it is and help them make enlightened decisions about it.
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I am so tired of religious people saying that atheism is just another religion. Atheism is simply the absence of belief, not a belief that there is no God. To claim that atheism is a religion is like saying that silence is just another sound or that darkness is some kind of light.
I think some people simply can't grasp that someone might simply not believe in any kind of God and they try to paint this stance as being just as irrational as any other religion. Doing so allows them to use the 'everybody has a right to his own opinion' argument to legitimize their way of thinking. Underlying that, of course, is the assumption that all opinions are equally valid, wich is, simply put: bullshit.
Somehow most people seem to understand that irrational beliefs should be discarded, except in the case of religion. If I started saying there was a banana floating mid-air in front of me, people would ask for proof before they believed it. Without proof, they would not pay much respect to my claims, and they'd be right to. I could go on claiming I have the power to make bananas float forever, but as long as I can't demonstrate it, people would say: bullshit.
Yet somehow, when religion is concerned, that simple test is thrown out the window. Not only people don't expect to be called up on their claims and beliefs, but they expect that their opinions should be respected as being as valid as any other. Anyway, I just wish that religious people would simply understand that not believing in (to atheists) fairy tales does not mean atheism is some other kind of irrational belief. It's just the same as not believing that some guy can make bananas float. That's not religion, it's just rational, critical thinking.
I don't understand why so few seem to know about the "new" floppies, namely the USB memory keys. These things are smaller than floppies, blazingly fast (USB 2.0 vs traditional floppies anyone?) and all modern BIOSes can boot from one, either through a floppy emulation (el-torito-like) or even as a normal block device for very recent BIOSes.
Yes, they are still relatively expensive compared to a floppy disk, but they are getting cheaper fast. I just bought a new 128MB key for $25. It's not that bad considering you can carry it around on a keyring. Mine boots DOS and has all kind of recovery programs, such as partition magic, NTFS-Dos, various drivers, etc. You can also write to them without problem. OS support is good too. Linux 2.4 can read USB block devices, so can Win98 and up. You just plug it in your front USB port and you're set. And for those without front USB, a lot of keys come with a 3 feet USB extention (such as the Apacer ones) that you can use, allowing you not to mess around the back of the computer.
So yes, floppies are dead, but there are replacements already available that are incredibly superior.
I was messing around with an old parallel port drive in DOS, when the device driver flaked out or something. DOS helpfully printed out this error message :
Out of paper on Drive D:
Hum, sure.
I just have to reply to this. I've noticed your handle several times on slashdot... in spite of your complaint about how "slashdot isn't to be taken seriously anymore", you sure do post a lot. Your posts are usually more intelligent than this one though. Seeing this angered me enough to reply,and I *don't* post a lot.
Anyway, to the point. I frequently download movies over the internet. I occasionnally go to the cinema, maybe once every six weeks (8 to 10 times a year I guess). I'm by no means an avid cinema fan, but I like to go from times to times with friends or gf. Now, I've had this pattern for years. The fact that I'm downloading and watching movies didn't change the number of times I'm going to the cinema. Nor did it change the number of movies I rent at the local video club. Am I stealing? I sure get to watch more movies than I did previously. I mean, I'm not rich, and I couldn't afford to go to the cinema for every movie I download.
But I'm still giving what I can afford to the movie industry. Maybe I'm not "entitled" to view these extra movies, but they sure make me somewhat happier, as I'm being entertained more. Isn't all that matters? When I can afford more, I'm going to pay for more. In the meantime, I don't feel like I'm stealing anything.
I'm canadian, not american though. So maybe the more... socialist point of view shocks you. But believe it or not, here, we don't treat people only by the money they carry. No one here pays for health care. Basic things like water aren't metered, we just pay a global tax and we can use as much as we want. Sure, the guy next door with a swimming pool consumes more than I, but it's *water*. It should be available to everyone, and everyone should support the water infrastructure equally.
Poor people here are allowed on the bus, if they don't have enough to pay (as long as they don't make an habit out of it). But *surely* they are stealing service?! Well, someone who can't afford the bus would have had to walk, maybe for several hours. That person wouldn't have paid anyway, and the bus was already there. Is she stealing? No. When she gets better financially, then she can pay. No problem.
Do you get my point? Sure, I believe that someone making large-scale copies of movies and selling them is in the wrong. But aunt Lucy downloading a copy of "A Beautiful Mind"? Come on.
I wonder how many people browsing slashdot are going to find this "shocking", the fact that you could willingly support a certain number of freeloaders. I guess most of America has become too individualistic for views like that to be shared by many. It's sad, if you ask me.
Just a little tip for those annoying IE pop-up windows :
You can close any IE window instantly by hitting ctrl+W. That works for every browser windows, even those without a close button. And it also has the advantage of not triggering the onClose() function that pops-up more windows.
That said, I strongly suggest you simply switch to mozilla. I've been using it as my primary browser for months now, and I can go everywhere on the 'net with it. I did find like 4 or 5 pages in 6 months of browsing that didn't like mozilla, but you can still use IE for those, it's a rare happening.
Hum, sorry to wake you up, but 95% of DSL services aren't full-duplex, meaning that when your upstream pipe is maxed out, your downstream grinds to a halt.
My current connection is 1024/128, and if I'm uploading near 16k/s, I can't download anything above 10k/s, and the lag is simply too high even for web browsing. This is the case of the great majority of DSL users btw, I'm not alone in this situation.
The only broadband option right now that are full-duplex, are cable or wireless access. So before saying that upstream doesn't affect downstream, please check your facts.
Morality IS logical. I'm sorry. Morality as in "set of rules on how to behave so that the maximum number of people can have the maximum level of hapiness". That's the ideal society in which everyone would like to live in, where everybody is perfectly happy. But of course, it can never be reached.
So yes, using this goal as a start, we can define a general "morality". And it will be logical, it doesn't need to involve any kind of God or religion. The problem actually comes WHEN religion is involved somehow, because the various beliefs are often quirky and illogical, so they introduce sets of rules that have nothing to do with increasing the population's general well-being.
We can very logically conclude that, for example, murder is wrong. If you allow anyone to kill anyone else, obviously this rule will also apply to you too (risk of getting killed by anyone). No one wants their lives to be endangered this way, so for the general well-being of the population, murder should not be allowed. It's that simple.
That's simply not true, and I challenge you to prove it. Why is WinAmp so popular when Windows Media Player can play MP3s? Why is Acrobat popular when WordViewer is free? Why is ICQ popular when MSN Messenger is bundled?
The reason that these programs are still popular today is rather simple : they came first. Winamp was an mp3 player long before Media Player was one, and it has 10% the memory footprint. The acrobat format is popular because it is portable and will print the same on any platform. Without this, it simply wouldn't exist. There is no WordViewer for UNIX or even Macs to my knowledge (you have to buy the full word). And for ICQ it's once again the came first thing. If 90% of your friends had been using ICQ for two years when MSN came out, well if you chose to use MSN you were simply left out. Between you and me, ICQ is probably one of the buggiest popular program floating around the 'net today. Totally shitty. But before it, there wasn't anything else, so it stuck. Notice that it's definitely losing ground to other IM clients. Especially MSN. Because it comes with IE, which comes with windows.
Hum, I grew up in Montreal, and graduated elementary and high school with the public catholic system. First of all, it's obvious that you haven't actually attended the schools here. Religion courses aren't mandatory. They haven't been for at least 20 years (when I went to school). If the parents don't want their children to have religion courses (a single course a week mind you), they their children don't. It is replaced by some kind of morality course, a little bit like philosophy. And, from grade 3 (childrend are 8 or 9 years old), the children are actually allowed to override their parents' choice in religion courses.
Another thing to mention... I suspect you don't have a good idea of what religion courses are like. I took religion classes until grade 9, and there isn't much indoctrination done there at all. It's mostly catholic and christian religion history and practices, teachings, etc. Things like the commandments, etc. Very little emphasis is placed on sinning and such, it's very positive and not meant to induce behavior. I'm an agnostic btw, and I have been since age 14. I still took some religion classes because it was rather interesting. They don't assume you're a believer in these classes. You don't have to be, and many aren't. So in that aspect I think it is very different than the idea you have of a "religious class".
I'm surprised at how clueless some comments are here on slashdot. Obviously, a lot of people complaining about PPPoE have never used it. I've been using PPPoE for over a year now, on a 1mbit DSL line provided by Sympatico (canadian ISP).
First, PPPoE allows uses of multiple IP addresses over a single modem. Kinda like what you get with a PPtP VPN. Not hard to do either. Plug the DSL modem in a switch/hub. Plug computers in said hub. Have each comp make a PPPoE connection. Each gets a separate ip.
As for the ip not being static... Well if you have a router that has PPPoE support in the firmware, and always leave it plugged, you indeed get a pretty static ip. I've been connected for months in a row and my ip never changed.
Some other people were complaining about... overhead! Now get serious. The overhead is so near zero that it's not in ANY way perceptible. Unless maybe you have a Gigabyte connection. My 1Mbit DSL always download at around 126k/s, which is the line's max throughput. Ok, in theory it's 128k/s, but I doubt many people would notice a 1k/s difference. And I'm not even sure it's caused by the PPPoE protocol, it might just be the line.
The only problem I've had with PPPoE is that it doesn't work for software that tries to communicate directly with your ethernet port. nmap is an example of this. It's extremely rare occurance though.
PPPoE isn't a bad solution for the user, really. Just the simplicity for having multiple computers with their own ip over the DSL is worth it for most users with more than one comp. And if the ISP is reliable, you'll keep your ip for months. I think most people are complaining just because it makes them feel nice to complain. Well... this is slashdot after all.
You sir, are ignorant. Have you even seen a good join/part flood on IRC? A good botnet of over 30 hosts, disconnecting and reconnecting with a new name every second, joining then parting. This prevents any legitimate chat in a channel. The problem is that these 30 hosts are mostly rooted boxes or misconfigured proxies. But there's no shortage of such boxes on the 'net. Having no ops would mean letting these kids kill any channel they want. They just have to hit the channel with such a flood, once a day. Who wants to have to type a /ignore *!*@*.somehost.com 30 times a day just to stay on a channel?
There's clearly the need for some authority powers. I op in some rather controversial channels (but legal) and we are hit by such floods regularly. If we could not ban the users, our channel would sink under. And re-creating isn't an option, as the flooders would simply change their target.
You are living in another world if you think channel authority should not be implemented.
You see, the internet gives the means to question lots of cultural things people usually simply take for being true without thinking about it. Such ideas should not be regulated in any way. You are suggesting censorship for no good reasons. Do you really think Hitler's anti-semitic campain would have been more successful with the internet? Hell no. Because, in the WWII Germany, you could get shot for not believing in the system and criticizing it. With the internet though, you would have had millions of people invoking logical arguments against nazism. It's more likely that Hitler would have needed to ban 'net access for his troups, less they would have revolted at what was asked of them.
I dual-boot between linux and Windows 2000 on my machine, true. And I also run as an admin equiv on my Windows 2000 machine. It doesn't mean that I run as root when I boot in linux. I don't know if you've used Windows NT/2000 extensively, but LOADS of stuff require admin access. And this isn't like *NIX OSes: you can't just su or switch to another console to perform a task as an adminstrator, you have to do a full log-off (closing all programs you were working with) and then log back on.
This is why I think that the multi-user model of WinNT/2000 is flawed somewhat. It doesn't give any easy way to log on with more than one user at the same time. See how ackward it is: let's suppose I want to do some db profiling. So I log as my sub-admin user, I start to code, do some tests. Now suppose I want to restart the mySQL service. I'm screwed. I have to close everything I was working on, log-off, log back on as an admin, log-off, log back as my user and restart every program. Ooooh. Just wonderful. So, sorry, but I'll keep running Windows 2000 with an admin-equiv account.
Well, firstly I have to say that this "API" for ICQ is hardly new. I remember doing some research about ICQ specs around a year ago, and it was already available.
Second, it isn't an API at all. It doesn't let you do anything, except some kind of remote-controlling of ICQ. What I wanted to do at the time was a PGP plug-in for sending messages, but with this "API", it's impossible. An example of what you can do with this API is sending a message from another program (using the dll), using ICQ. Note that ICQ must be installed for this to work, and even worse, the UIN of the person you're sending the message to must also be on the user's list (you can add it first of course, but you get the idea). It isn't an API at all, just a set of functions to remote-control ICQ. The specs are still completely closed, and this API is all but useless for doing anything with the ICQ protocol.
That's so funny. Usenet. I don't think that, ten years ago, all of usenet together got even 1% of the hits /. gets each day. There just wasn't enough people online. That's what I meant by "reaching the masses".
I supposed I shouldn't have answered to an obvious troll, but it shows so well the "elitist" stupidity of some people. Sure. Keep most of the people in ignorance, and you just promote a society where most don't have a clue and just follow around yelling "Bleeeeeh!". You're not l33t because you just happened to use Usenet 10 years ago. Though I suppose some people just need to feel superior about SOMETHING.
Ok, I'm done venting.
You made some interesting points, but I think you're simply looking at all the bad things without balancing them with the positive side.
/. Would it have been thinkable to see such a phenomenon 10 years ago? Depsite the mandatory trolls/flamers you get for every story, there are some mighty discussions going on here. I can't think of any other place where important philosophy issues are discussed so much, except maybe university philo classes. You miss completely the power of the net. Sure, the noise ratio went up dramatically as the 'net grew more and more popular, but on the other side we can now reach this mass.
/. are politicizing a LOT of people. I've seen it happen. I've seen friends wondering why I was reading /. every day, come here and have their eyes opened to political issues. Then they, too, become avid readers and posters. I think it's time to stop complaining about the sheeple, and try to cut their numbers instead of being elitist. In the end, this is what's going to make a better place to live in. The less drones you have, the harder it will be to pass fascist laws and for big corporations to bully Mr Everyone-without-tons-of-money.
Look at
Sites like
Instead of wanting it back the way it was by reducing the number of people, you should be working to get the sheeple out of their self-made intellectual lazyness. Maybe we'll actually be able to change things then.
P.S. My english's not very good, especially when I haven't had my first coffee. I just had to reply.
I got all excited when I saw a "submitting" related link. I was expecting leather-clad, whip-holding women, but all I got was something about linux. Dunno 'bout you, but the image of a leather-clad penguin isn't all that appealing to me.
Hold on for a minute now. They say that, since the video is uncompressed, it will not be possible to copy it and trade it over the internet? Do these people have any clue of what they are talking about?
I don't know about you, but I've never seen a whole DVD mpeg-2 movie copied, or traded over the net. An mpeg-2 DVD movie is over 4 Gb! Even with high bandwidth and disk space, it's easy to understand that you won't copy too many movies if you have to take so much bandwidth/space. The thing is that people don't care what the inital format of the movie is. They'll take the movie, make it into a bandwidth/space-friendly format, such as mpeg-4 (DivX) and THEN they'll store and trade it.
This 200 Gb movie will be just around 1 Gb once it's compressed into mpeg-4, just like any other movie out there. Saying that this will prevent copying or trading just shows that they have no idea of what the actual problem is.
You obviously don't know anything about hacking or security. Hello? Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris? That rings a bell? If every computer could be hacked remotely over the internet, there would be no web sites, no need for SSL (Hey, if someone can remotely get root for sure, he can install an SSL sniffer right? Why use SSL?) and web sites wouldn't be up for over a few days before being defaced.
Saying that "Every computer is hackable" is idiotic. Hacks result from design flaws, they aren't inherent to any system. Go tell any online banks that their system is hackable and they'll laugh at you. Granted, there might be undiscovered remote root exploits left in the system, but it's extremely unlikely.
Hmmmm. Let me get this straight. I've been reading every post and they all seemed to mention electicity being generated by fossil fuels or nuclear power, etc, etc. Well I'd just like to mention that I live in Quebec, Canada. We are the world's bigger producer of hydro-electricity. For those who don't know, the power is generated by water pressure-activated turbines. It's 100% emission free, except for a few gases that are released when the reservoir is filled for the first time. It's so efficient that we are producing enough for almost all of Ontario, Quebec, and 4 US states. And we still have a lot more rivers where we can put new dams if needed.
Electrical power doesn't have to be generated by fossil fuels. In fact hydro power is probably one of the cleanest way to generate electricity.
Ohh, they can make a new DOOM all they want, it just won't be the same as the original! Hey, I mean, look at what they just WON'T be able to re-create:
- No more hassle loading half-working IPX packet drivers in DOS. I really enjoyed spending hours trying to get extremely bad coded TSRs to work for Multiplayer DOOM!
- No more sluggish, horrible mouse control where you had to mess with the mouse driver's sensitivity to make it any usable, so that it would give you an unfair edge in the game.
- No more "visual" weapons, like the BFG. (Ha, my shot hit the wall, but then, who cares, I was looking at you, so now you're getting torn into little pieces anyway!)
- No more "Hey! That's unfair, my keyboard buffer was full, it just kept beeping while I stood there silly! You're taking unfair advantage, YOU SUCK!!"
- And finally, no "global sound" allowing you to know exactly where the others are, just by hearing the sound of a swith pulled on the other side of the map.
So you see? I just won't be it. I don't care if they call it DOOM, it won't be MY DOOM. How sad. (Wet eyes, *SNIFF*)
Somehow, after all these months of legal fighting over MP3s, I'm getting the feeling that it's already too late to stop the flood. We are seeing more and more lawsuits filed against sites like mp3.com and, at the same time, we are seeing more and more people trading the mp3s over the net. Don't beleive me? Just log on any IRC network and do a channel search on "MP3". Their average user load increases at about 5 a day, and when the channels get too crowded, another one forms.
My point? Net users (especially young people, who don't have a lot of money to spare) have been accustomed to having free music. Sure, most still pay for cds, etc. Don't we all? I'll be the first to admit that downloading mp3s can lead to buy cds, as it happened to me, and not only once. But the fact is that very few of us are paying for more than 50% of their music.
Don't hide your hand in the sands there, I know some of you will avoid any kind of piracy, but you just can't fail to see that it's not the case of the majority. I think that artists will simply have to adapt, probably by selling their tunes directly to the customer over the net at a very reasonable price, say, US $50 cents, so that a lot more will be willing to support their favorite groups. It's certainly sad news for the record industry. However, I think they will have to drop cd production to go back to what is their primary goal, after all : publicity for new artists. I'm sure they will be able to find a profit on the net, as everyone will eventually have to. It's the dawn of a new economic model, in which providers of products and services will have a more "direct" access to their customers than they had previously.
The net will make it easier for everyone with a genial idea to profit from it. Because here it will matter less what you will hear about a product from publicity, but more what you hear your friends saying in chat rooms, forums, etc. It will finally allow customers to decide for themselves what's a good idea and what's not. Innovations, (true ones, not the kind claimed by Microsoft) will come with less resistance and will have a better chance to impose. Truly, a new kind of economics.
Hey people, don't you realize that this is the same kind of argument as:
"What do you mean, smoking causes lung cancer? My grand-father smoked all his life and he lived to see his 100th birthday!"
Now come on! It's obvious that open-sourcing a program won't magically turn it into a secure one. Just the same with smoking: it won't automatically mean you'll develop lung cancer. It's all about average. You can say that, in general, open-source program (especially those about security) will be a lot safer if everyone can look at the code and check if it has holes. Yes, this bug stayed around for a long time. So what? If the program had been closed source, it's quite possible that it would never have been found. It's not because something breaks a general trend that it automatically nullyfies this trend. Don't jump into the propaganda band-wagon!
I'm amazed to see how many people in the open source community fear commercial software. It seems to me as obvious that, as linux and other alternate OSes to Windows will gain popularity, we will see more and more commercial software developped for them.
It's true that a lot of software for linux and other open source OSes are free (as in beer) mostly because the companies making them seek to gain acceptance in the open source community. If there had been a larger market, they might have sold it instead. For a lot of companies, it's more of a marketing strategy than pure belief that software should be free (as in freedom).
The thing is, it doesn't change anything. Whatever happens, open source projects can never be "taken over" by greedy profit-driven companies, because the nature of open-source itself won't allow it. Commercial software can't hurt linux, it's quite the opposite. I can understand that a company could want to make money with their powerful, 3D-Studio like application. What's wrong with that? People can use their Free OS to run a commercial program just like any GPLed one. More software, open-source or not, free or not, would help linux get a larger user-base and that's a Good Thing.
Kids see some of that, and as a parent I have the right to censor what my kids see.
Okay, you warned us not to criticize your values, as you probably know a lot of people disagree with them. I simply have to add my two cents however. You say you won't have a TV in your house so that your kids won't see all the violence/sex. I agree that there is a lot of mindless violence on TV, and that it *could* have a negative effect on kids (It's not been proved). But sex? Panty ads? Now come on, I think you should understand a few things.
When you see a woman wearing only panties on TV, you classify this as porn? Oh, of course, IT'S FLESH! IT'S DIRTY, DON'T LOOK! This kind of behaviour is much more likely to teach your kids a warped view of sexuality, instead of a healthy one. Now when your kids will be old enough to see a sexual scene in a movie,wether you want it or not, they'll react this way: "Oh, look, this is GROSS! They aren't wearing any clothes! And... Oh, they're... they're touching each other! DISGUSTING! It's bad, it's dirty!".
This is a lot more likely to cause problems than solve them. For example, the kid will be a lot more curious about sex, which can lead to premature intercourse, without the child understanding fully what's happening. It can also lead to obsessive behavior. Kids should be brought to sex early, so that they consider it a normal thing of life (which it is). Take a look at what they do in Germany. Over there, children are taught very early about their sexuality. Day care centers accept, to a reasonable limit, sexual exploration by children. Being curious about sex is normal, and this curiosity should be satisfied by clear answers from adults. The result? The child pregnency rates over there are not even a fifth of what it is in the US. Children act a lot more responsibly toward sex, they are less afraid of it, they don't think it's "dirty".
My point is that censorship is usually a bad thing. I'm not saying we shouldn't hide a murder scene to a child, so that he/she won't have nightmares about it. I'm just saying that we should teach children how to think, not what to think. Don't hide important things like sex from them, tell them exactly what it is and help them make enlightened decisions about it.