Windows 2000 automatically set the permissions to the file in such a way that I could no longer modify the file on that computer (trying to add comments, or even allowing administrator to read/write to the file).
That's effectively chmod, which can be a checkbox. It's not an access control mechanism.
I'm sure that it would be trivial for them to make their own windows media files write or copy protected.
Unless and until Microsoft controls the PC BIOS (effectively turning it into an Xbox), it'll always be possible to run the entire OS in Plex86, Bochs, Virtual PC, or VMware and capture stuff that way. (Ignore that those apps might need minor updates to run new operating systems, as that's standard practice.)
They don't call themselves Dutch
on
Patent Nonsense
·
· Score: 1
I doubt this poster knows much about the world at all. (The use of the Bushesque term 'Netherlandian' says it all)
That term is closer to the truth than you may think. Netherlanders do not call themselves by any name that resembles "Dutch". To them, their country is Nederland (singular), and their language is Nederlands, which means "Netherlandish".
Taxes are different than fees. Paying a fixed fee for a copyright is different than paying taxes on a percieved value of said copyrighted material.
Taxes and user fees are no different if the copyright law assumes a fixed dollar amount $X as the value of a work and then charges Y% of $X as the property tax^W^W renewal fee.
If a book is out of print and no longer being sold, should the gov't have the right to continue to tax the author simply because the gov't feels that IP has value?
Yes. This is called a "copyright renewal." It was a feature of the Copyright Act of 1909, abolished for new works in 1976 and for all post-1964 works in 1992.
If I create a GPL'ed program, retain the copyright to it many folks the world over find it to be an incredibly useful bit of code (one that helps lots of companies save money / generate revenue) should I (as the owner of the IP) be taxed year after year because the gov't determines that bit of code has value?
After ten years, how much value do you still perceive in that code? You could just donate the code to the PD and stop paying the renewal fees.
Lawrence Lessig, a law professor and author of popular books about thought monopolies, has advocated a return to copyright renewal. Here's my slightly modified version of his system: Make copyrights on new works last 10 years. Then every 5 years, you have to file an extension to keep your monopoly, you can only file an extension a small number of times (I'd say 13 times, for a maximum term of 75 years), and after 25 years have expired, compulsory licensing under RAND terms for both verbatim copies and derivative works comes into effect.
Keeping users stupid is the key to our survival. If computers were as easy as Mircowaves, we would be out of jobs
Keeping the Eloi stupid is the key to our survival. If self-defense were as easy as picking berries, we would be out of meat to eat.
Can anybody see any difference between the tech industry and the Morlocks from H. G. Wells's novel The Time Machine (not the movie, which blows)?
Jury nullification of an unjust law
on
EFF Takes Bnetd Case
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The real point of contention is whether what they're doing is legal (or moral, though that's not relevant for the court case).
The judicial systems of the United Kingdom and United States (except Louisiana state law) are built on the common law. The common law has a concept of "jury nullification," which specifies that a jury may find the defendant not liable on grounds that the law is unjust. Want more info? Ask Google.
I've also seen problems painting the screen with various artifacts, almost always when I've been scrolling with a wheel mouse.
This is a known problem (bug 121230) with alpha-transparent PNGs: drawing partial images doesn't work correctly, as it seems to flip the image vertically before selecting which chunk to render.
I'd like a page on the mozilla site explaining what the... required-by-law [folder is]
required-by-law contains software whose license (typically GNU GPL or LGPL) requires those who distribute binaries to also mirror the full source distribution of all packages involved in the build that don't already come with the operating system. From the GNU GPL (the LGPL has similar wording):
For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains... [except] anything that is normally distributed... with the major components... of the operating system... If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code
So far, such packages include GLib and GTK+, which are both under the LGPL.
The "experimental" folder contains builds that demonstrate new large patches. It's part of the Patch Landing Tool.
If [ sizeof(int *) ] returns '4' you are using a 32-bit memory model
Defining the "bitness" of a processor this way has its flaws too. Are you claiming that the 6502 (NES and C=64 chip) was a 16-bit processor and that the 8086 was 32-bit when running "large" model DOS apps?
Why force an Apple product into a mold that Linux already fits into?
Because the Apple software is more likely to have higher quality on Apple hardware. On the other hand, Linus concentrates on making Linux the best UNIX-clone kernel for x86 machines and has even rejected some patches that fix a kernel panic on Alpha because he was too busy to consider patches that didn't directly improve the x86 version. (I can't find the link; can anybody else help?)
I need to be able to run it headless, without a GUI, or replace/upgrade the GUI to fit my needs or fix it as needed without rebooting. OS X doesn't give me these things (yet).
So use the Darwin operating system. It's the core of Mac OS X (kernel plus command line tools) minus the GUI. Throw X11 on top of Darwin and install a free GUI. Be happy.
I can't call [Mac OS X] a Mac OS because it's just so damned funky.
I thought "funky" was a compliment.
The *nix underpinnings really aren't like any *nix I'm used to.
Think of GNU-Darwin as BSD mixed with Linux mixed with some unique stuff. You'll get used to it, just as you got used to the other six *n?x flavors you mentioned (Solaris, Linux, IRIX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD).
Also, the Power4 is a 64bit chip, and the G4 is still 32bit.
Define "bit." The G4 has AltiVec, a SIMD instruction set that works on 128-bit vectors. (Yes, I know the Power4 has multiple CPUs on-die, but it's out of the price range for CPUs used in typical consumer workstations.)
Yet why in the name of all that is good do they not realize that C is an inherently unsafe language. There are some really good free alternatives to C, so why the heck are those numbskulls not using them?
Because most distributions of GNU/Linux operating systems don't install any compiled languages but C and C++. (There is no language called "C/C++".)
Because popular libraries have C bindings.
Because compilers can optimize C code for machines with limited resources. (Java technology is a memory hog partly because of the 16-byte overhead of java.lang.Object.)
Because people think in "step 1, step 2, step 3" of an algorithm, rther thn in functionl style (partially ruling out CL, ML, and Haskell).
Take your choice: Eiffel, Ada, Modula-3
Which of these languages is in the default devel install in all the major distros and can link to libraries' C bindings?
Is it just me, or do these all-in-one gadgets fly in the face of the UNIX idea of compartmentalized utilities that do one specific function, and that's it?
Imagine if all apps had to be statically linked to a large library. Then the UNIX idea of compartmentalized utilities at 4 KB a piece breaks down. Under the current design conventions for handheld devices, every device has to be "statically linked" to at least a memory card slot, a display, and a case.
It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.
The real reason why AOL(tw) won't release an America Online for PC Linux: there'd be no way to stop a kid with a debugger (easier to obtain on Linux than on Windows XP) from breaking into the Time Warner content because the machine owner is root and the publishers can't do jack about it. (SSSCA aims to change that.)
The graphics system performs the scaling
on
Tiqit Handheld PC
·
· Score: 1
Problem is, the software will treat it like a VGA screen, it will be trying to do things like put up a full page on the screen.
Properly written applications will specify fonts and GUI widgets in terms of point size (a point is defined as 1/72 of an inch), and then the operating system's graphics layer will scale those to a pixel size based on the display resolution. That's why I explained how to set the display resolution in grandparent. The biggest littleness problem may lie in the icons, and recent Windows can scale those too.
Accesses to these items are not being denied, but more closely ristricted to the origninal copyright licensee. As long as this ristriction does not prevent your use of the product (under the license) they are fulfilling their obligations to you.
Unless I signed something to the contrary, I as a U.S. citizen am subject to the default license (you may not copy, make derivative works, etc., except subject to 17 USC 107 (fair use), 109 (sell genuine copies), and 117 (computer software backup)). Publishers should not be able to take away my rights under that license (especially 107), but lately, I've found Congre$$ too bought to legislate rationally.
Not to mention that it looks nothing like the new iMac - the whole system is contained in the same case as the display, which the iMac specifically avoided.
In other words, it looks a bit like an old iMac, except with an LCD panel. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This is off topic, but this YYMMDD system date only back to the way where machine and Binder appeared to help sorting.
YYYY-MM-DD is also the native date format in Japan and some other cultures that have strongly head-final languages (subject-object-verb sentences; adjective-noun and adverb-verb modifier structures).
ObTopic: Too bad this movie doesn't touch on any language barrier; it would have been very appropriate and cute for the Eloi people to speak Toki Pona. Note to creative staff of future films: If a movie is PG-13 or higher, you can use subtitles, as most of your target demographic group can read. In PG and G movies, show a language barrier with obvious dubbing that represents foreign language by distorting lip synchronization. (This is common in kung fu films and in anime.)
Slashdot Mirror
User: "Hey, an MP3! Save it to disk!"
Storage Medium: "FILE ERROR!"
User: WTF? emusic.com and mp3.com [1] don't work. Let me try this "Man-drake" thing I keep hearing about from my friends. *format*
If Microsoft breaks Windows's file system in such a way as to kill popular and legitimate applications, the effects can only be spelled S-U-I-C-I-D-E.
[1] Two popular sources of legit MP3s.
Windows 2000 automatically set the permissions to the file in such a way that I could no longer modify the file on that computer (trying to add comments, or even allowing administrator to read/write to the file).
That's effectively chmod, which can be a checkbox. It's not an access control mechanism.
I'm sure that it would be trivial for them to make their own windows media files write or copy protected.
Unless and until Microsoft controls the PC BIOS (effectively turning it into an Xbox), it'll always be possible to run the entire OS in Plex86, Bochs, Virtual PC, or VMware and capture stuff that way. (Ignore that those apps might need minor updates to run new operating systems, as that's standard practice.)
All of the input, lets call them downvotes, (no upvotes allowed with this sorry) is simply a suggestion which is viewed by the google administration
Are you sure this would scale? There are three billion items in Google's index.
(background info: the origin of the term downvotes. Are you now calling E2's system "organized whining"?)
if you've got 4000 machines to administer, use the names of towns
That's a no-no. It could confuse clients into thinking that those machines serve those respective towns.
Mail Exchangers: a.mx.domain.com, b.mx.domain.com
I see "mx" and think "Mexico." Don't do that.
I doubt this poster knows much about the world at all. (The use of the Bushesque term 'Netherlandian' says it all)
That term is closer to the truth than you may think. Netherlanders do not call themselves by any name that resembles "Dutch". To them, their country is Nederland (singular), and their language is Nederlands, which means "Netherlandish".
Taxes are different than fees. Paying a fixed fee for a copyright is different than paying taxes on a percieved value of said copyrighted material.
Taxes and user fees are no different if the copyright law assumes a fixed dollar amount $X as the value of a work and then charges Y% of $X as the property tax^W^W renewal fee.
If a book is out of print and no longer being sold, should the gov't have the right to continue to tax the author simply because the gov't feels that IP has value?
Yes. This is called a "copyright renewal." It was a feature of the Copyright Act of 1909, abolished for new works in 1976 and for all post-1964 works in 1992.
If I create a GPL'ed program, retain the copyright to it many folks the world over find it to be an incredibly useful bit of code (one that helps lots of companies save money / generate revenue) should I (as the owner of the IP) be taxed year after year because the gov't determines that bit of code has value?
After ten years, how much value do you still perceive in that code? You could just donate the code to the PD and stop paying the renewal fees.
Lawrence Lessig, a law professor and author of popular books about thought monopolies, has advocated a return to copyright renewal. Here's my slightly modified version of his system: Make copyrights on new works last 10 years. Then every 5 years, you have to file an extension to keep your monopoly, you can only file an extension a small number of times (I'd say 13 times, for a maximum term of 75 years), and after 25 years have expired, compulsory licensing under RAND terms for both verbatim copies and derivative works comes into effect.
Keeping users stupid is the key to our survival. If computers were as easy as Mircowaves, we would be out of jobs
Keeping the Eloi stupid is the key to our survival. If self-defense were as easy as picking berries, we would be out of meat to eat.
Can anybody see any difference between the tech industry and the Morlocks from H. G. Wells's novel The Time Machine (not the movie, which blows)?
The real point of contention is whether what they're doing is legal (or moral, though that's not relevant for the court case).
The judicial systems of the United Kingdom and United States (except Louisiana state law) are built on the common law. The common law has a concept of "jury nullification," which specifies that a jury may find the defendant not liable on grounds that the law is unjust. Want more info? Ask Google.
I use ... blank casstte tapes solely to record myself playing the guitar
If you publish those recordings, you become an independent label, and you may be able to collect some of those royalties back.
I've also seen problems painting the screen with various artifacts, almost always when I've been scrolling with a wheel mouse.
This is a known problem (bug 121230) with alpha-transparent PNGs: drawing partial images doesn't work correctly, as it seems to flip the image vertically before selecting which chunk to render.
God knows why [the Mac OS interface designers] chose "W" for Close.
W is for close Window. Accel+C was taken (copy), so Apple used another key combination (Accel+W) that could be pressed easily with the left hand.
I'd like a page on the mozilla site explaining what the ... required-by-law [folder is]
required-by-law contains software whose license (typically GNU GPL or LGPL) requires those who distribute binaries to also mirror the full source distribution of all packages involved in the build that don't already come with the operating system. From the GNU GPL (the LGPL has similar wording):
So far, such packages include GLib and GTK+, which are both under the LGPL.
The "experimental" folder contains builds that demonstrate new large patches. It's part of the Patch Landing Tool.
If [ sizeof(int *) ] returns '4' you are using a 32-bit memory model
Defining the "bitness" of a processor this way has its flaws too. Are you claiming that the 6502 (NES and C=64 chip) was a 16-bit processor and that the 8086 was 32-bit when running "large" model DOS apps?
Why force an Apple product into a mold that Linux already fits into?
Because the Apple software is more likely to have higher quality on Apple hardware. On the other hand, Linus concentrates on making Linux the best UNIX-clone kernel for x86 machines and has even rejected some patches that fix a kernel panic on Alpha because he was too busy to consider patches that didn't directly improve the x86 version. (I can't find the link; can anybody else help?)
I need to be able to run it headless, without a GUI, or replace/upgrade the GUI to fit my needs or fix it as needed without rebooting. OS X doesn't give me these things (yet).
So use the Darwin operating system. It's the core of Mac OS X (kernel plus command line tools) minus the GUI. Throw X11 on top of Darwin and install a free GUI. Be happy.
I can't call [Mac OS X] a Mac OS because it's just so damned funky.
I thought "funky" was a compliment.
The *nix underpinnings really aren't like any *nix I'm used to.
Think of GNU-Darwin as BSD mixed with Linux mixed with some unique stuff. You'll get used to it, just as you got used to the other six *n?x flavors you mentioned (Solaris, Linux, IRIX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD).
Also, the Power4 is a 64bit chip, and the G4 is still 32bit.
Define "bit." The G4 has AltiVec, a SIMD instruction set that works on 128-bit vectors. (Yes, I know the Power4 has multiple CPUs on-die, but it's out of the price range for CPUs used in typical consumer workstations.)
Yet why in the name of all that is good do they not realize that C is an inherently unsafe language. There are some really good free alternatives to C, so why the heck are those numbskulls not using them?
Because most distributions of GNU/Linux operating systems don't install any compiled languages but C and C++. (There is no language called "C/C++".)
Because popular libraries have C bindings.
Because compilers can optimize C code for machines with limited resources. (Java technology is a memory hog partly because of the 16-byte overhead of java.lang.Object.)
Because people think in "step 1, step 2, step 3" of an algorithm, rther thn in functionl style (partially ruling out CL, ML, and Haskell).
Take your choice: Eiffel, Ada, Modula-3
Which of these languages is in the default devel install in all the major distros and can link to libraries' C bindings?
Is it just me, or do these all-in-one gadgets fly in the face of the UNIX idea of compartmentalized utilities that do one specific function, and that's it?
Imagine if all apps had to be statically linked to a large library. Then the UNIX idea of compartmentalized utilities at 4 KB a piece breaks down. Under the current design conventions for handheld devices, every device has to be "statically linked" to at least a memory card slot, a display, and a case.
It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.
The real reason why AOL(tw) won't release an America Online for PC Linux: there'd be no way to stop a kid with a debugger (easier to obtain on Linux than on Windows XP) from breaking into the Time Warner content because the machine owner is root and the publishers can't do jack about it. (SSSCA aims to change that.)
Problem is, the software will treat it like a VGA screen, it will be trying to do things like put up a full page on the screen.
Properly written applications will specify fonts and GUI widgets in terms of point size (a point is defined as 1/72 of an inch), and then the operating system's graphics layer will scale those to a pixel size based on the display resolution. That's why I explained how to set the display resolution in grandparent. The biggest littleness problem may lie in the icons, and recent Windows can scale those too.
Accesses to these items are not being denied, but more closely ristricted to the origninal copyright licensee. As long as this ristriction does not prevent your use of the product (under the license) they are fulfilling their obligations to you.
Unless I signed something to the contrary, I as a U.S. citizen am subject to the default license (you may not copy, make derivative works, etc., except subject to 17 USC 107 (fair use), 109 (sell genuine copies), and 117 (computer software backup)). Publishers should not be able to take away my rights under that license (especially 107), but lately, I've found Congre$$ too bought to legislate rationally.
Not to mention that it looks nothing like the new iMac - the whole system is contained in the same case as the display, which the iMac specifically avoided.
In other words, it looks a bit like an old iMac, except with an LCD panel. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
One problem: where is the *D-ROM drive?
This is off topic, but this YYMMDD system date only back to the way where machine and Binder appeared to help sorting.
YYYY-MM-DD is also the native date format in Japan and some other cultures that have strongly head-final languages (subject-object-verb sentences; adjective-noun and adverb-verb modifier structures).
ObTopic: Too bad this movie doesn't touch on any language barrier; it would have been very appropriate and cute for the Eloi people to speak Toki Pona. Note to creative staff of future films: If a movie is PG-13 or higher, you can use subtitles, as most of your target demographic group can read. In PG and G movies, show a language barrier with obvious dubbing that represents foreign language by distorting lip synchronization. (This is common in kung fu films and in anime.)