P.S. That enhanced text link they speak of [Sponsored Links above and beside Google search results] can't (as far as I can tell) be opened in a seperate window.
Huh? I tried middle-clicking and right-clicking in Mozilla 2002022603 on Windows ME; both methods correctly opened new windows on all Sponsored Links that I tried. Anyone else?
Slashdot using an Aqua-ish theme poses no threat to Apple in any way; why would Apple sue Slashdot?
Aqua and the Aqua look and feel elements are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. In order to protect its trademark rights under the Lanham Act, Apple must either sue or license others who use the mark. (This is not true of copyrights or patents.) Licensing and suing are the only options; ignoring enough infringers could convince the courts that you intend to grant an implied license to all comers.
I'd say that those tasks [reading Internet e-mail and browsing the World Wide Web] are exactly where Linux is perfectly able to replace and outperform Windows most completely.
Not necessarily. Those tasks require a connection to the Internet, and most users still connect to the Internet by using a modem to dial-up to an ISP. In general, name-brand PCs under $1000 tend to come with modems that do not emulate a Hayes modem connected to a 16x50 UART. Instead, they offer a proprietary interface to either a DSP or a mere DAC. These "winmodems" come with software that lets Microsoft Windows treat them as a Hayes on a UART, but most do not have driver support under any OS other than Windows. A few chipset vendors have released proprietary Linux drivers, but this doesn't help users of BeOS, Solaris operating environment, or *BSD systems (which are not dying).
The states are trying to force Microsoft to release Windows without "middleware." That could seriously jeopardize the definition of an OS... There are thousands of things that can be removed from an OS that can be called "middleware" but they're all important for a viable commercial OS.
What about the bootloader restrictions? BeOS for x86 flopped largely because Microsoft's OEM license agreements prohibited installing a bootloader that could load both M$ and non-M$ operating systems unless the OEM paid for a copy of the retail edition of the OS (at wholesale prices, which are half of MSRP but double OEM) for each computer.
If you try to take a screenshot of PowerDVD using printscreen, when you paste it in the editor, there's a sort of "hole" in the picture where you can see the movie playing (find a copy of the demo and you'll see what I'm talking about)
What you're seeing is a DirectX overlay. It essentially sets up a transparent color key on the frontmost (GDI) surface that allows a DirectX surface to shine through. Print Screen grabs only the GDI surface. In many apps such as RealPlayer version <= 8, it's possible to get Print Screen to work by turning off "DirectX" or "accelerated video".
For example, self erasing emails were discussed on Slashdot a short while ago.
A properly implemented digital rights management system could enable this by the originator setting a mandatory expiry date and setting the "no archive, no cut 'n' paste, no print" permissions on the email.
The makers of that system forgot about one thing: Windows itself is already a circumvention device. Just press Print Screen, start MS Paint, import the clipboard, and then save, OCR, or print the document. Does this mean that users of e-mail DRM can sue Microsoft under 17 USC 1201? Can they sue OCR software vendors?
He loves it, and has been copying games like gangbusters--he probably bought his last cartridge.
I have a Flash Advance linker and a 256 megabit flash cartridge. I use them mostly for homebrew development, which is the primary purpose for which the manufacturer markets them. (Here's what I've done so far.) I don't pirate Game Boy games unless there is a clear indication that the publisher has no intention of bringing them to store shelves in the United States. (Yes, I'm referring to the Noddy and Kururin games.)
You merely bought the media, the actual content is licenced (buying a piece of paper with a copyrighted work printed on it doesn't mean you've bought the rights to that work)
But buying a piece of paper with a copyrighted work printed on it does grant you fair use rights and first sale rights in your copy of the work, and for computer software, such rights include the right to copy the software into RAM and to make backups. However, if a contract presented before the sale specifies that instead of buying a copy, you are perpetually renting one, then you are not "the owner of a copy," and none of this applies. Also, none of this applies outside the United States.
Yes. IANAL, and I don't know much about paging services, but I'm pretty sure that SMS is considered an unspammable "paging service" under U.S. law, and paging services typically charge a nominal fee per month, not per message received, if that's what you were thinking.
Ummm... This can't happen in the United States of America. The junk fax law prohibits sending unsolicited advertisements to mobile phones: "It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States... to make any call [other than emergency or opt-in] using any automatic telephone dialing system... to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call" (47 USC 227).
The same section of law prohibits sending spam to a fax machine, which is defined so as to include any computer that has a modem.
My school had to implement and upload/download limit on internet1 traffic whlie they go over the options on how to control this problem... Becasue of our schools privacy policy and unrestrictive content, the school doesn't want to censor or block any incoming material or outgoing. They don't monitor content.
Then just start throttling ports whose protocol isn't defined by an IETF RFC. This allows legit traffic on FTP, HTTP(S), Usenet, e-mail, ssh, etc., to continue unimpeded while maintaining a neutral stance on both content and services, and it gives your school a reputation of supporting open protocols. For instance, Rose-Hulman restricts the ports that OpenNap, Gnutella, FastTrack, and WinMX use to 2.4 Mbps (about 40% of total bandwidth), and it works well. The IT department also grants exceptions to users that can prove a legitimate educational need such as a comparison and contrast of p2p filesharing networks for a computer networking course.
Perhaps, but what's supposed to happen is that new companies are supposed to enter the field when they see others making a profit, driving the supply up and moving the total profit/loss towards equilibrium.
In the United States, the FCC's monopoly on broadcasting prevents this. It's hard for a new independent radio station to get a broadcasting license in the consumer FM band (88.1 to 107.9 MHz), and without a sizable number of independent radio stations, radio listeners hear what Clear Channel wants them to hear, and the RIAA member labels pay a puppet promoter to pay Clear Channel to play RIAA music and only RIAA music. These bribes come most often not in the form of cold hard cash but in free non-conforming promotional discs and free tickets to live performances.
Extra bonus material is starting to cost way too much becuase actors and directors are starting to have pay for that bonus material getting written into contracts.
Columbia/Sony lately has been solving this problem by leaving out bonus DVD features, allowing mastering to greatly increase the bitrate for the primary video signal, making the DVD look as good as a 480-line picture can provide. See Columbia's Flash site for details.
The obligatory jokes about the country formerly known as East Germany and Konami's Dance Dance Revolution every time Slashdot posts a story about double data rate SDRAM are getting so old that they're already in the encyclopedia.
KDE has implimented the CTL+(C|V|X) method that windows uses. I don't get how people, that I would assume be coming from windows, not be familiar with CTRL+(X|C|V) for cut/copy/paste?
Let's do the same operation (select, accel+C, select, accel+V) on Mac OS (Windows is the same), the KDE desktop, and the GNOME desktop.
Mac. Select, Cmd+C: Copy first selection to clipboard. Select, Cmd+V: Replace second selection with copy of first selection. Mac users and Windows users are used to this behavior.
KDE. Select: Copy first selection to clipboard. Ctrl+C: ignored. Select: Copy second selection to clipboard. Ctrl+V: No change, because second section is replaced with copy of second selection, the first selection being forgotten entirely.
GNOME. Select: Copy first selection to X clipboard. Ctrl+C: Copy X clipboard to GTK+ clipboard. Select: Copy second selection to clipboard. Ctrl+V: Replace second selection with GTK+ clipboard (which contains the first selection).
Did everyone just forget that KDE does that and assume it used the standard highlight + button2 thing to copy/paste?
KDE's semantics are the same as the oldskool X method, with Ctrl+V simply sending a button2 at the insertion point. GTK+ and some other toolkits have solved the problem by keeping a second clipboard for ^X ^C ^V.
Hey.. that doesn't sound as stupid as I thought... any pro bono lawyers?
Never say "pro bono" in the context of copyright. I know it's officially short for "pro bono publico," or "for the public good," meaning that an attorney volunteers her time, but the word "Bono" brings to mind a certain Copyright Term Extension Act. There are other terms that denote working for free as in beer without connoting perpetual control of Mickey Mouse. (Read More...)
Ximian didn't invent Evolution, it copied the Outlook (sole decent MS product, hmm, maybe not) application..NET Framework isn't a Miguel original. It's an MS invention! Where did all creativity go?
RMS didn't invent GNU, it copied the UNIX (sole decent Lucent product at the time, hmm, maybe not) system. Selling a stable OS to home users isn't an MS original, or even an Apple original. It's a Mandrake innovation! Where did all creativity go?
I'm not sure why they don't use satellites for internet
Satellite Internet access is available, but the speed of light introduces heavy latency. I don't think a 1000ms MINIMUM ping would help the web experience much, and forget about playing online video games.
Well DUH. I thought it was obvious that I was suggesting that I'd been doing it for a while.
I'm just used to the NES emu lists where we routinely get messages such as "this ROM doesn't work in NESticle; therefore, it must be a bad dump" or "I wrote this ROM, but it only works in NESticle". My standard reply is "ditch NESticle; it's a very inaccurate emulator."
Slashcode is horrible, ever run it through a validator?
So write your own HTML 4.01 conforming template and post a link to it on slashcode.com. I'm pretty sure that if somebody instigates a W3C conformance patch for slashcode, somebody will pick it up and run with it.
Bloodlust's emulators (NESticle, Genecyst) are very dated.
Did the Genesis have any analog components that make it impossible to get it perfect (like beyond-the-ability-of-the-ear-to-ever-tell-perfect )?
The Genesis has a 6-channel Yamaha FM chip and a simple 4-channel tone generator similar to the ones in the Game Boy and NES. A typical game (such as Zero Wing or Sonic the Hedgehog) uses FM channels 1-5 for music, 6 for drum hits, tone generator channels 1-3 for simple 8-bit-style sound fx, and 4 for 8-bit hi-hats and explosions.
Slashdot Mirror
P.S. That enhanced text link they speak of [Sponsored Links above and beside Google search results] can't (as far as I can tell) be opened in a seperate window.
Huh? I tried middle-clicking and right-clicking in Mozilla 2002022603 on Windows ME; both methods correctly opened new windows on all Sponsored Links that I tried. Anyone else?
Slashdot using an Aqua-ish theme poses no threat to Apple in any way; why would Apple sue Slashdot?
Aqua and the Aqua look and feel elements are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. In order to protect its trademark rights under the Lanham Act, Apple must either sue or license others who use the mark. (This is not true of copyrights or patents.) Licensing and suing are the only options; ignoring enough infringers could convince the courts that you intend to grant an implied license to all comers.
I'd say that those tasks [reading Internet e-mail and browsing the World Wide Web] are exactly where Linux is perfectly able to replace and outperform Windows most completely.
Not necessarily. Those tasks require a connection to the Internet, and most users still connect to the Internet by using a modem to dial-up to an ISP. In general, name-brand PCs under $1000 tend to come with modems that do not emulate a Hayes modem connected to a 16x50 UART. Instead, they offer a proprietary interface to either a DSP or a mere DAC. These "winmodems" come with software that lets Microsoft Windows treat them as a Hayes on a UART, but most do not have driver support under any OS other than Windows. A few chipset vendors have released proprietary Linux drivers, but this doesn't help users of BeOS, Solaris operating environment, or *BSD systems (which are not dying).
The states are trying to force Microsoft to release Windows without "middleware." That could seriously jeopardize the definition of an OS ... There are thousands of things that can be removed from an OS that can be called "middleware" but they're all important for a viable commercial OS.
What about the bootloader restrictions? BeOS for x86 flopped largely because Microsoft's OEM license agreements prohibited installing a bootloader that could load both M$ and non-M$ operating systems unless the OEM paid for a copy of the retail edition of the OS (at wholesale prices, which are half of MSRP but double OEM) for each computer.
If you try to take a screenshot of PowerDVD using printscreen, when you paste it in the editor, there's a sort of "hole" in the picture where you can see the movie playing (find a copy of the demo and you'll see what I'm talking about)
What you're seeing is a DirectX overlay. It essentially sets up a transparent color key on the frontmost (GDI) surface that allows a DirectX surface to shine through. Print Screen grabs only the GDI surface. In many apps such as RealPlayer version <= 8, it's possible to get Print Screen to work by turning off "DirectX" or "accelerated video".
For example, self erasing emails were discussed on Slashdot a short while ago. A properly implemented digital rights management system could enable this by the originator setting a mandatory expiry date and setting the "no archive, no cut 'n' paste, no print" permissions on the email.
The makers of that system forgot about one thing: Windows itself is already a circumvention device. Just press Print Screen, start MS Paint, import the clipboard, and then save, OCR, or print the document. Does this mean that users of e-mail DRM can sue Microsoft under 17 USC 1201? Can they sue OCR software vendors?
BTW, I hadn't ever even heard of a Flash Advance linker, but bought one for my kid the day of the Slashdot story on Zophar's store.
You mean this story
He loves it, and has been copying games like gangbusters--he probably bought his last cartridge.
I have a Flash Advance linker and a 256 megabit flash cartridge. I use them mostly for homebrew development, which is the primary purpose for which the manufacturer markets them. (Here's what I've done so far.) I don't pirate Game Boy games unless there is a clear indication that the publisher has no intention of bringing them to store shelves in the United States. (Yes, I'm referring to the Noddy and Kururin games.)
You merely bought the media, the actual content is licenced (buying a piece of paper with a copyrighted work printed on it doesn't mean you've bought the rights to that work)
But buying a piece of paper with a copyrighted work printed on it does grant you fair use rights and first sale rights in your copy of the work, and for computer software, such rights include the right to copy the software into RAM and to make backups. However, if a contract presented before the sale specifies that instead of buying a copy, you are perpetually renting one, then you are not "the owner of a copy," and none of this applies. Also, none of this applies outside the United States.
You are charged to recive SMS's in the US?
Yes. IANAL, and I don't know much about paging services, but I'm pretty sure that SMS is considered an unspammable "paging service" under U.S. law, and paging services typically charge a nominal fee per month, not per message received, if that's what you were thinking.
Ummm... This can't happen in the United States of America. The junk fax law prohibits sending unsolicited advertisements to mobile phones: "It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States ... to make any call [other than emergency or opt-in] using any automatic telephone dialing system ... to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call" (47 USC 227).
The same section of law prohibits sending spam to a fax machine, which is defined so as to include any computer that has a modem.
Then just start throttling ports whose protocol isn't defined by an IETF RFC. This allows legit traffic on FTP, HTTP(S), Usenet, e-mail, ssh, etc., to continue unimpeded while maintaining a neutral stance on both content and services, and it gives your school a reputation of supporting open protocols. For instance, Rose-Hulman restricts the ports that OpenNap, Gnutella, FastTrack, and WinMX use to 2.4 Mbps (about 40% of total bandwidth), and it works well. The IT department also grants exceptions to users that can prove a legitimate educational need such as a comparison and contrast of p2p filesharing networks for a computer networking course.
In appropriate contexts, "RIAA" is accepted Slashdot shorthand for "RIAA member labels."
Or are you thinking of the recent uncertainty about the "work for hire" status of sound recordings published by RIAA labels?
Perhaps, but what's supposed to happen is that new companies are supposed to enter the field when they see others making a profit, driving the supply up and moving the total profit/loss towards equilibrium.
In the United States, the FCC's monopoly on broadcasting prevents this. It's hard for a new independent radio station to get a broadcasting license in the consumer FM band (88.1 to 107.9 MHz), and without a sizable number of independent radio stations, radio listeners hear what Clear Channel wants them to hear, and the RIAA member labels pay a puppet promoter to pay Clear Channel to play RIAA music and only RIAA music. These bribes come most often not in the form of cold hard cash but in free non-conforming promotional discs and free tickets to live performances.
Extra bonus material is starting to cost way too much becuase actors and directors are starting to have pay for that bonus material getting written into contracts.
Columbia/Sony lately has been solving this problem by leaving out bonus DVD features, allowing mastering to greatly increase the bitrate for the primary video signal, making the DVD look as good as a 480-line picture can provide. See Columbia's Flash site for details.
The obligatory jokes about the country formerly known as East Germany and Konami's Dance Dance Revolution every time Slashdot posts a story about double data rate SDRAM are getting so old that they're already in the encyclopedia.
KDE has implimented the CTL+(C|V|X) method that windows uses. I don't get how people, that I would assume be coming from windows, not be familiar with CTRL+(X|C|V) for cut/copy/paste?
Let's do the same operation (select, accel+C, select, accel+V) on Mac OS (Windows is the same), the KDE desktop, and the GNOME desktop.
Mac. Select, Cmd+C: Copy first selection to clipboard. Select, Cmd+V: Replace second selection with copy of first selection. Mac users and Windows users are used to this behavior.
KDE. Select: Copy first selection to clipboard. Ctrl+C: ignored. Select: Copy second selection to clipboard. Ctrl+V: No change, because second section is replaced with copy of second selection, the first selection being forgotten entirely.
GNOME. Select: Copy first selection to X clipboard. Ctrl+C: Copy X clipboard to GTK+ clipboard. Select: Copy second selection to clipboard. Ctrl+V: Replace second selection with GTK+ clipboard (which contains the first selection).
Did everyone just forget that KDE does that and assume it used the standard highlight + button2 thing to copy/paste?
KDE's semantics are the same as the oldskool X method, with Ctrl+V simply sending a button2 at the insertion point. GTK+ and some other toolkits have solved the problem by keeping a second clipboard for ^X ^C ^V.
Hey.. that doesn't sound as stupid as I thought... any pro bono lawyers?
Never say "pro bono" in the context of copyright. I know it's officially short for "pro bono publico," or "for the public good," meaning that an attorney volunteers her time, but the word "Bono" brings to mind a certain Copyright Term Extension Act. There are other terms that denote working for free as in beer without connoting perpetual control of Mickey Mouse. (Read More...)
Ximian didn't invent Evolution, it copied the Outlook (sole decent MS product, hmm, maybe not) application. .NET Framework isn't a Miguel original. It's an MS invention! Where did all creativity go?
RMS didn't invent GNU, it copied the UNIX (sole decent Lucent product at the time, hmm, maybe not) system. Selling a stable OS to home users isn't an MS original, or even an Apple original. It's a Mandrake innovation! Where did all creativity go?
The innovation comes from the added freedom.
I'm not sure why they don't use satellites for internet
Satellite Internet access is available, but the speed of light introduces heavy latency. I don't think a 1000ms MINIMUM ping would help the web experience much, and forget about playing online video games.
Well DUH. I thought it was obvious that I was suggesting that I'd been doing it for a while.
I'm just used to the NES emu lists where we routinely get messages such as "this ROM doesn't work in NESticle; therefore, it must be a bad dump" or "I wrote this ROM, but it only works in NESticle". My standard reply is "ditch NESticle; it's a very inaccurate emulator."
Slashcode is horrible, ever run it through a validator?
So write your own HTML 4.01 conforming template and post a link to it on slashcode.com. I'm pretty sure that if somebody instigates a W3C conformance patch for slashcode, somebody will pick it up and run with it.
What's informative about this exactly? It's no harder to log requests to a virtual host than a dedicated one.
No harder for the hosting service, but yes harder for the customer. Some hosting services charge customers extra to be able to view the logs.
When the medic backlash hits whole hog (and believe me, it will some day), that's the time to buy stock in Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley.
Hasbro does. Hasbro won the right to prevent freeware and shareware authors from cloning its games.
Ever since Genecyst first came out,
Bloodlust's emulators (NESticle, Genecyst) are very dated.
Did the Genesis have any analog components that make it impossible to get it perfect (like beyond-the-ability-of-the-ear-to-ever-tell-perfect )?
The Genesis has a 6-channel Yamaha FM chip and a simple 4-channel tone generator similar to the ones in the Game Boy and NES. A typical game (such as Zero Wing or Sonic the Hedgehog) uses FM channels 1-5 for music, 6 for drum hits, tone generator channels 1-3 for simple 8-bit-style sound fx, and 4 for 8-bit hi-hats and explosions.
It's also unavailable unless you're paying a premium for dedicated hosting. What do you suggest for virtual-hosted users?