what can I do against European DMCA?
on
Ask Alan Cox, Activist
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Why the hell doesn't anyone ask this?
Oh wait, that's not my question to AC. This is:
I haven't been able to act against the DMCA much, because I'm not an American and thus haven't got much ground to criticise the American law system (even if I'd like to). But I'm Dutch and I would love to take any opportunity to act against restricting acts within Europe, of course. I've been informed by Slashdot lately that such acts are in the making. Some guy named Alan Cox seems very exited, but the article doesn't direct me, as European citizen proposing such laws, further.
I'm Dutch. I never could protest the DMCA because it was American, and I have no saying in what Americans do with their country, of course.
Now the DMCA comes to my country and it seems like there's no organized protest beyond Britain. Please point me to any organisation that bundles individual efforts of this matter and supports my country in that...
I understand that they forbid you to uninstall their program in part. You get it as a whole, it's copyrighted as a whole and you're not allowed to modify it because of copyright, so you have to take it as a whole.
...or you just don't take it ("uninstall it as a whole"), because it sucks.
...is similar in its demands to the GNU GPL, just waay stricter. Another argument that M$ doesn't dislike the GPL for the reasons they say they dislike it. Anyway...
OK, so remember this: the next time someone asks you about the benefits of OSS, you'll have another great example. Especially as this project is said to work better already than some of the Be emulation projects that mostly wrote everything by hand. Stuff like this couldn't be done in a closed source environment.
Having said that, it may not really sound like news to you, but I believe that this is a very good example of this benefit of OSS.
Have a complaint? File a bug report. Almost every greater OSS project works like this. Now understand me right, I am not totally against this system. But I try to elaborate here that it doesn't work 100% natural to users.
Because, what happens? You have an installed version of the system, but you would like fearture this-and-that. You go to (e.g.) IRC, to find out if you're the only one having this bug or feature request. Together with other IRC enthousiasts, you formulate quite an exact description of the problem. Next thing, you're reffered to the bug system.
You read the instructions on the bug system. Says: always get the very latest version before filing a complaint. Makes you use CVS and stuff instead of this simple Debian package you used earlier.
Now try to imagine that you, as a normal user, didn't give up at this point. Amazing, but OK. You checked out CVS, built the darn thing [got root access] and installed it. Bug still there, but sy least you're now free to file it.
Next, enter Bugzilla. To everyone who has ever seen Bugzilla I bet it's needless to say more. To those who haven't: it's like the cockpit of a plain. And I can't fly. Actually, AFAIK, I never got to filing a Bugzilla bugreport.
The core of this problem is, that for the sake of smooth functioning, the user has become part of the development system. And not just that, but it has become part of this in quite a high level, at least for some. Lots of people give up filing bugreports when they're confronted with all the protocol. It's like filling in your tax forms is easier. Often their bug might already been filed, but its hard to find it back, exactly.
Now of course this isn't a problem in itself. It gets problematic when:
People get around the bureaucracy and complain in other ways (the AbiWord problem)
Lots of people give up testing because it's for the elite (the Linux Kernel problem)
Question is of course: where is the solution? I've found that many bug databases do function as a healthy discussion board. BugZilla does. But for many people it still feels like your bug is bound to get lost somewhere within the bureaucracy.
Some say they don't want to make bugfiling more attractive, because this keeps the quality of the bugs that do come through, high. This way, the AbiWord problem remains, of course.
I don't know. Maybe some kewl combination of a discussion board and bug system, where you can e.g. just discuss everything, and when you've found you've reached an important topic, you can mark it as a bugreport or feature request, and from there do the same things as in other BTSes (e.g. merge it with another report, etc.)
I think most current BTSes are modeled after the idea of maintaining bugs within a company, the closed source way. Being open, there might be need for another approach. I might be wrong, though.
I once read a piece about the move of the Debian packages' documentation from/usr/doc to/usr/share/doc . It was said that the transfer would require altering of thousands of packages. (Here, thousands is to be taken literally.) In the end I believe they came up with some kind of symlink hack to resolve the problem of altering all these packages.
Just for the figure, I wonder exactly how much documentation we are talking about now.
(P.S.: FP w.o. whining about what licences Debian should accept!!;-))))
Well, the patent most certainly looks like a standard mask-like image manipulation. So I understand people to get paranoid about this (given that PNG uses a mask for its alpha transparancy). I still doubt if the GIMP wouldn't be influenced by this patent.
This big building with three large black neon letters in the topleft corner: 'O', 'S', 'I'. The 'S' is blinking, the other two are out. The camera zooms in and moves focus to one of the building windows. It's thick with dust, so we only get a vague view on the inside.
And inside, there's a table with 1 cm of dust on it. Around this table are some chairs. Just as many mummies are sitting upon these chairs with their heads on the table, spider rags going from their heads to the table and back again.
Then suddenly one of these heads rises. A low, low voice speaks.
"Guys, people haven't really heard from us lately. Let's approve some licenses, or something."
The other mummy heads also rise from the table. Mumbling. "Yeah, good idea."
(Sorry if I be a little short-sentenced. I just wrote a whole story then Mozilla went nuts so now I am doing it again.)
Two things: First, with 2.4 we were `promised' journaling and devfs. Both are still marked experimental, and of journaling, only ReiserFS is included as an appetizer, but the subsystem is still heavily in development. Some smaller things that were supposed to be improved at 2.4 are also still marked experimental. My guess is that most people -like me- are still using ext2 and device nodes, silently but eagerly waiting until journaling and devfs (and these other smaller things) get marked `stable' (by the proper authorities;-), and that, as a result, journaling and devfs will really become mainstream when 2.5 is in good sight. So while 2.4 was supposed to bring us these two big features, in reality, well, it doesn't. Yes, I know, it provides the basis, is being worked on, can be obtained by patches etc. etc., but that doesn't practically make it much difference from 2.2, because as I said, for what I guess, most people still aren't encouraged to take the step to a journaling filesystem.
Second: think GCC-2.96 (IIRC). RedHat has the power to shape the Free Software market a little bit the way they like it. With the inclusion of the compiler marked as GCC-2.96 they have practically released a GCC version without involving the GCC team. When RedHat issues a kernel that does ext3 (not just as an option, but as a default feature), I guess at least some of the results are the same as with the GCC-2.96 case. Although maybe this time not `faced with the facts' (that RedHat issued GCC-2.96), but merely `by popular demand' (from other distro's that want to use journaling by now), there will be some pressure on other distro's and the kernel developers to get journalining in.
Hmm. Maybe I'm really exaggerating the case. And do keep in mind that I'm not mad that I don't `get what I'm promised' or something like that. It just makes me nervous that I can't find ext3 anywhere in my fresh kernel sources (2.4.7; debian testing doesn't have 2.4.8 yet but I don't think the differences are that big wrt journaling and `marked experimental' stuff AFAIK from the changelogs) while the ext3 patches for the 2.2 series _are_ in the distro. And I really can use that stable VM of 2.4; earlier on the GIMP crashed my box, now it just crashes itself when loading huge things. I do get complete keyboard blocks once in a while, but no trashing anymore, and hey, that's what the reset button was built for, right?
Besides the obvious, yet important arguments of RAM and disk usage, there's yet another thing.
Admitted, it's a silly thing.
Have you ever seen those older Windows or MacOS apps running on your bright new machine and making your machine look like it's at least ten years aged? That's because they statically link with GUI libraries. These libs beautify in time, but your app stays ugly. Your app stays, well, static, while the system dynamically changes in time.
OK, so that's beauty. I guess that's a minor thing.
How 'bout bugfixes? With shared libs, you get the bugfixes when you get a new libversion.
Some things should just be kept out of an executable IMHO. If you make a little GNOME text editor, and statically link it, the executable itself is suddenly loading themes, drawing lines, etc. Rather, I see shared libs as separate programs that do these things for you.
Often when I write a program (or library!) that is linked with other libs, these other libs don't specify well what they depend on.
So for instance if I write an application that uses some minor GNOME conversion function which happens to be in libgnomeui, I'll often find myself ending up specifically linking my program with gtk, gdk, esound, etc. just to resolve some of the symbols found in libgnomeui.
Then again, I might not understand the linking process completely here. (I once wrote a ten-liner program and gave the wrong ld command, which resulted - after quite a while - in an executable of over 30 Mb; it probably included all libs completely...;-)
Could someone tell me how one commonly links with shared libraries using ld? (I know there are better, platform independent tools such as libtool, but I just don't seem to understand how to link "manually" using ld.)
Concerning the "dll crisis": well, linking takes time, so that's a problem. But shared libs allow for the reuse of modules, so please don't consider it "bad by nature" if a program depends on other libs.
Very often programmers pride themselves of having written stuff "from scratch". That's not really something to be proud of, you know. Remember, good programmers are lazy! So what if your app depends on the GTK+ libraries, most people have these anyway, they instantly make your apps portable to any platform GTK+ is ported to -- no problemo! Or, you could write yet another redundant 'libmytoolkit', forcing more redundant and badly desktop-integrated bloat on people's computers when they want to run your program.
Still leaves the question open, though, how it can be that there's so much to link to in this example.
Every musician (or artist) would like to make a living out of his hobby. Traditionally, they are very dependent on labels, syndicates, presses, and stuff like that. Just think about it: who owns the copyright to the work of Prince? To the Charlie Brown and Garfield comics (that'll be United Features Syndicate or something)? Situations like Metallica's, who are still the owners of their own music, are considered exceptions. Because it seems like the only way up, many bands (and other artists) agree to this kind of practices.
Then there is the problem with these record companies, but also with digital media creators. Law and hardware are both turning against their consumers by means of copy protection schemes.
That's the whole problem in a nutshell.
Now what did whe do when software started to look like this? Well, I didn't do that much really, but there was this Richard Stallman figure who did a lot. The movement he started now seems a crucial factor for fair competition in the computer world.
So what should we do when art starts to look like this? A Free Art Foundation? Providing people with liberated music licenses in which they can specify precisely what you may do with their art (use, modify)? Where people can learn that they don't *need* to give away their freedom for fame?
Just a thought, but hey, if well set up, it could just be the kind of counterstrike we need.
"FAF. The only record label that guarantees your freedom to copy this CD.";-)
A friend of mine came along this site, which fits well in the line of wicked sites like Alex Chiu's and the Time Cube's. Could anyone give his/ her view on this? Is this real? (If yes, it's very cruel of course.)
Some people on the 'net (like Alex and this Time Cube figure and then this site) can make you really doubt who or what is _really_ behind the scenes, and what they are trying to reach.
In Germany they dub every single movie. Alf screams "komm mal, kittie kittie kittie"[1] and Fred Flintstone screams "Vylma!". Or Bugs Bunny: "wass ist los, Doc?"
In Holland we only dub children's cartoons, because these children can't read undertitles. But even Cartoon Network is mostly English here. Some of the Dexter, Powerpuff girls etc. cartoons have been dubbed, but these versions are only displayed early in the morning when children watch.
The network operators are very hesitant when it comes to dubbing these cartoons, and for a good reason. It just ain't popular here.
I recently tried to view "Back to the Future" on a German channel. "Sie mussen Zurueck nach dem Zukunft!". Yeah, right! I turned it off immediately.
As the FF movie will not be for children, I hope they do not plan to dub it here. Otherwise I'll take the English version anyway, and I guess a lot of folks will do the same.
[1] I am not even trying to spell my German correct. Apologies for that;-)
Wait... lemme try to get it. This is the same guy claiming that 2600 isn't an illegal cracker's hangout, and that linking to DeCSS is legal due to first amendment thingies and stuff?
Then I really have to say that this was a stupid action from him, regardless what ANY amendment has to say about it.
If you're smart, you'll take Henson's case as a warning. You'll think about what your own statements would look like, with their context totally removed, and in the harsh spotlight of a courtroom. Do you really need to post that joke, or wouldn't the judge find it funny?
Now that's definitely a good old-fashioned threat like the cops give 'em to the scum on TV.
I am really a little bit confused about this announcement. I thought Bonobo was part of GNOME 1.4? And that the GNOME 1.4 release was a release of *stable* packages with a *stable* API? I thought Bonobo was the core component of GNOME 1.4 (also used in, e.g. Nautilus)?
And now, a few days after the release of GNOME 1.4, Bonobo gets stable. Can somebody explain me what's happening? Thanks!
Sorry, but there is a plethora of Linux apps that I am itching for when I have to work on a Windows box, or when I have to work with other Windows users.
Every once in a while some clueless bloke like you comes up to me asking "how can I do this-and-that?" Now I am very willing to explain such stuff.
"How can I set up a local server to test my PHP and CGI scripts [which use Sendmail and MySQL along the road]?"
"Oh, that's easy. Just install the Apache package, the PHP module and MySQL."
"...on my Windows box?"
"Oh. wait. Uhh... I know of some small free Web server for Windows that does CGI, but PHP and MySQL... hrm."
From a Mac user with a stupid FTP program: "So how can I resolve these carriage return upload problems?"
"Try ASCII upload."
"My program knows Text, MacText, BinHex [etc.], but no ASCII. Which one should I choose?"
"?? Try all of them for what I care."
"Not one worked OK. Now what?"
"Sigh. [dreaming of installing DebianPPC on that thing]"
I happen to have a couple of 100 more of these anecdotes. Whenever I am forced to work with a Windows box, I have my Linux box running as well, if possible, and through OpenSSH, smbclient, VNC, WINE and other stuff I can finally do what I have to do on that Windows box.
I am mostly using Word and Netscape on the Windows box to a) make my homework and b) do something while making my homework. But the Linux box is always there for the kewl stuff and for the programming.
It just happens to be so that Windows doesn't interoperate as well with Linux as is the other way around. In other words, when working with Windows, I _miss_ all kinds of Linux' functionalities. So YES, I am _very_ glad that Windows now finally gets some better Linux interoptability - one that doesn't require a reboot into Linux!
BTW, if you're seriously thinking that Linux folks aren't working hard on improving their "pieces of shit" evey day, *I DARE YOU* to keep up with Debian Unstable. Hehe:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Why the hell doesn't anyone ask this?
Oh wait, that's not my question to AC. This is:
I haven't been able to act against the DMCA much, because I'm not an American and thus haven't got much ground to criticise the American law system (even if I'd like to). But I'm Dutch and I would love to take any opportunity to act against restricting acts within Europe, of course. I've been informed by Slashdot lately that such acts are in the making. Some guy named Alan Cox seems very exited, but the article doesn't direct me, as European citizen proposing such laws, further.
...where the heck can I go?
Now to rewrite it from scratch...
I'm Dutch. I never could protest the DMCA because it was American, and I have no saying in what Americans do with their country, of course.
Now the DMCA comes to my country and it seems like there's no organized protest beyond Britain. Please point me to any organisation that bundles individual efforts of this matter and supports my country in that...
I understand that they forbid you to uninstall their program in part. You get it as a whole, it's copyrighted as a whole and you're not allowed to modify it because of copyright, so you have to take it as a whole.
...or you just don't take it ("uninstall it as a whole"), because it sucks.
...is similar in its demands to the GNU GPL, just waay stricter. Another argument that M$ doesn't dislike the GPL for the reasons they say they dislike it. Anyway...
OK, so remember this: the next time someone asks you about the benefits of OSS, you'll have another great example. Especially as this project is said to work better already than some of the Be emulation projects that mostly wrote everything by hand. Stuff like this couldn't be done in a closed source environment.
Having said that, it may not really sound like news to you, but I believe that this is a very good example of this benefit of OSS.
...in violation of article 3 of the GPL...
:-)
Makes the GPL sound like the Ten Commandments or the Constitution. Not like it isn't for some of us
Today I'm gonna pay with monopoly money in the stores to check out reactions.
:-)
Hell, if they imprison me for that, I've got enough of those purple 10.000 shines to bail me out
Because, what happens? You have an installed version of the system, but you would like fearture this-and-that. You go to (e.g.) IRC, to find out if you're the only one having this bug or feature request. Together with other IRC enthousiasts, you formulate quite an exact description of the problem. Next thing, you're reffered to the bug system.
You read the instructions on the bug system. Says: always get the very latest version before filing a complaint. Makes you use CVS and stuff instead of this simple Debian package you used earlier.
Now try to imagine that you, as a normal user, didn't give up at this point. Amazing, but OK. You checked out CVS, built the darn thing [got root access] and installed it. Bug still there, but sy least you're now free to file it.
Next, enter Bugzilla. To everyone who has ever seen Bugzilla I bet it's needless to say more. To those who haven't: it's like the cockpit of a plain. And I can't fly. Actually, AFAIK, I never got to filing a Bugzilla bugreport.
The core of this problem is, that for the sake of smooth functioning, the user has become part of the development system. And not just that, but it has become part of this in quite a high level, at least for some. Lots of people give up filing bugreports when they're confronted with all the protocol. It's like filling in your tax forms is easier. Often their bug might already been filed, but its hard to find it back, exactly.
Now of course this isn't a problem in itself. It gets problematic when:
Question is of course: where is the solution? I've found that many bug databases do function as a healthy discussion board. BugZilla does. But for many people it still feels like your bug is bound to get lost somewhere within the bureaucracy.
Some say they don't want to make bugfiling more attractive, because this keeps the quality of the bugs that do come through, high. This way, the AbiWord problem remains, of course.
I don't know. Maybe some kewl combination of a discussion board and bug system, where you can e.g. just discuss everything, and when you've found you've reached an important topic, you can mark it as a bugreport or feature request, and from there do the same things as in other BTSes (e.g. merge it with another report, etc.)
I think most current BTSes are modeled after the idea of maintaining bugs within a company, the closed source way. Being open, there might be need for another approach. I might be wrong, though.
I once read a piece about the move of the Debian packages' documentation from /usr/doc to /usr/share/doc . It was said that the transfer would require altering of thousands of packages. (Here, thousands is to be taken literally.) In the end I believe they came up with some kind of symlink hack to resolve the problem of altering all these packages.
;-))))
Just for the figure, I wonder exactly how much documentation we are talking about now.
(P.S.: FP w.o. whining about what licences Debian should accept!!
Well, the patent most certainly looks like a standard mask-like image manipulation. So I understand people to get paranoid about this (given that PNG uses a mask for its alpha transparancy). I still doubt if the GIMP wouldn't be influenced by this patent.
This big building with three large black neon letters in the topleft corner: 'O', 'S', 'I'. The 'S' is blinking, the other two are out. The camera zooms in and moves focus to one of the building windows. It's thick with dust, so we only get a vague view on the inside.
And inside, there's a table with 1 cm of dust on it. Around this table are some chairs. Just as many mummies are sitting upon these chairs with their heads on the table, spider rags going from their heads to the table and back again.
Then suddenly one of these heads rises. A low, low voice speaks.
"Guys, people haven't really heard from us lately. Let's approve some licenses, or something."
The other mummy heads also rise from the table. Mumbling. "Yeah, good idea."
;-)
I am one of the oddbal Debian testing (so not unstable) users; testing doesn't have kernel-source > 2.4.7 yet.
(Sorry if I be a little short-sentenced. I just wrote a whole story then Mozilla went nuts so now I am doing it again.)
;-), and that, as a result, journaling and devfs will really become mainstream when 2.5 is in good sight. So while 2.4 was supposed to bring us these two big features, in reality, well, it doesn't. Yes, I know, it provides the basis, is being worked on, can be obtained by patches etc. etc., but that doesn't practically make it much difference from 2.2, because as I said, for what I guess, most people still aren't encouraged to take the step to a journaling filesystem.
;-)
Two things: First, with 2.4 we were `promised' journaling and devfs. Both are still marked experimental, and of journaling, only ReiserFS is included as an appetizer, but the subsystem is still heavily in development. Some smaller things that were supposed to be improved at 2.4 are also still marked experimental. My guess is that most people -like me- are still using ext2 and device nodes, silently but eagerly waiting until journaling and devfs (and these other smaller things) get marked `stable' (by the proper authorities
Second: think GCC-2.96 (IIRC). RedHat has the power to shape the Free Software market a little bit the way they like it. With the inclusion of the compiler marked as GCC-2.96 they have practically released a GCC version without involving the GCC team. When RedHat issues a kernel that does ext3 (not just as an option, but as a default feature), I guess at least some of the results are the same as with the GCC-2.96 case. Although maybe this time not `faced with the facts' (that RedHat issued GCC-2.96), but merely `by popular demand' (from other distro's that want to use journaling by now), there will be some pressure on other distro's and the kernel developers to get journalining in.
Hmm. Maybe I'm really exaggerating the case. And do keep in mind that I'm not mad that I don't `get what I'm promised' or something like that. It just makes me nervous that I can't find ext3 anywhere in my fresh kernel sources (2.4.7; debian testing doesn't have 2.4.8 yet but I don't think the differences are that big wrt journaling and `marked experimental' stuff AFAIK from the changelogs) while the ext3 patches for the 2.2 series _are_ in the distro. And I really can use that stable VM of 2.4; earlier on the GIMP crashed my box, now it just crashes itself when loading huge things. I do get complete keyboard blocks once in a while, but no trashing anymore, and hey, that's what the reset button was built for, right?
Which brings us back to journaling.... Oh well
Besides the obvious, yet important arguments of RAM and disk usage, there's yet another thing.
Admitted, it's a silly thing.
Have you ever seen those older Windows or MacOS apps running on your bright new machine and making your machine look like it's at least ten years aged? That's because they statically link with GUI libraries. These libs beautify in time, but your app stays ugly. Your app stays, well, static, while the system dynamically changes in time.
OK, so that's beauty. I guess that's a minor thing.
How 'bout bugfixes? With shared libs, you get the bugfixes when you get a new libversion.
Some things should just be kept out of an executable IMHO. If you make a little GNOME text editor, and statically link it, the executable itself is suddenly loading themes, drawing lines, etc. Rather, I see shared libs as separate programs that do these things for you.
It's... It's...
Often when I write a program (or library!) that is linked with other libs, these other libs don't specify well what they depend on.
;-)
So for instance if I write an application that uses some minor GNOME conversion function which happens to be in libgnomeui, I'll often find myself ending up specifically linking my program with gtk, gdk, esound, etc. just to resolve some of the symbols found in libgnomeui.
Then again, I might not understand the linking process completely here. (I once wrote a ten-liner program and gave the wrong ld command, which resulted - after quite a while - in an executable of over 30 Mb; it probably included all libs completely...
Could someone tell me how one commonly links with shared libraries using ld? (I know there are better, platform independent tools such as libtool, but I just don't seem to understand how to link "manually" using ld.)
Concerning the "dll crisis": well, linking takes time, so that's a problem. But shared libs allow for the reuse of modules, so please don't consider it "bad by nature" if a program depends on other libs.
Very often programmers pride themselves of having written stuff "from scratch". That's not really something to be proud of, you know. Remember, good programmers are lazy! So what if your app depends on the GTK+ libraries, most people have these anyway, they instantly make your apps portable to any platform GTK+ is ported to -- no problemo! Or, you could write yet another redundant 'libmytoolkit', forcing more redundant and badly desktop-integrated bloat on people's computers when they want to run your program.
Still leaves the question open, though, how it can be that there's so much to link to in this example.
It's... It's...
Every musician (or artist) would like to make a living out of his hobby. Traditionally, they are very dependent on labels, syndicates, presses, and stuff like that. Just think about it: who owns the copyright to the work of Prince? To the Charlie Brown and Garfield comics (that'll be United Features Syndicate or something)? Situations like Metallica's, who are still the owners of their own music, are considered exceptions. Because it seems like the only way up, many bands (and other artists) agree to this kind of practices.
;-)
Then there is the problem with these record companies, but also with digital media creators. Law and hardware are both turning against their consumers by means of copy protection schemes.
That's the whole problem in a nutshell.
Now what did whe do when software started to look like this? Well, I didn't do that much really, but there was this Richard Stallman figure who did a lot. The movement he started now seems a crucial factor for fair competition in the computer world.
So what should we do when art starts to look like this? A Free Art Foundation? Providing people with liberated music licenses in which they can specify precisely what you may do with their art (use, modify)? Where people can learn that they don't *need* to give away their freedom for fame?
Just a thought, but hey, if well set up, it could just be the kind of counterstrike we need.
"FAF. The only record label that guarantees your freedom to copy this CD."
It's... It's...
A friend of mine came along this site, which fits well in the line of wicked sites like Alex Chiu's and the Time Cube's. Could anyone give his/ her view on this? Is this real? (If yes, it's very cruel of course.)
Some people on the 'net (like Alex and this Time Cube figure and then this site) can make you really doubt who or what is _really_ behind the scenes, and what they are trying to reach.
It's... It's...
OK, I've only seen the movie, but I think that I've got the base storyline right.
It's... It's...
In Germany they dub every single movie. Alf screams "komm mal, kittie kittie kittie"[1] and Fred Flintstone screams "Vylma!". Or Bugs Bunny: "wass ist los, Doc?"
;-)
In Holland we only dub children's cartoons, because these children can't read undertitles. But even Cartoon Network is mostly English here. Some of the Dexter, Powerpuff girls etc. cartoons have been dubbed, but these versions are only displayed early in the morning when children watch.
The network operators are very hesitant when it comes to dubbing these cartoons, and for a good reason. It just ain't popular here.
I recently tried to view "Back to the Future" on a German channel. "Sie mussen Zurueck nach dem Zukunft!". Yeah, right! I turned it off immediately.
As the FF movie will not be for children, I hope they do not plan to dub it here. Otherwise I'll take the English version anyway, and I guess a lot of folks will do the same.
[1] I am not even trying to spell my German correct. Apologies for that
It's... It's...
What better place to crack away than from outside the country, e.g. Tokyo?
;-)
"I haven't read the rants"... Nah, he wrote them with his eyes closed
It's... It's...
Wait... lemme try to get it. This is the same guy claiming that 2600 isn't an illegal cracker's hangout, and that linking to DeCSS is legal due to first amendment thingies and stuff? Then I really have to say that this was a stupid action from him, regardless what ANY amendment has to say about it.
It's... It's...
If you're smart, you'll take Henson's case as a warning. You'll think about what your own statements would look like, with their context totally removed, and in the harsh spotlight of a courtroom. Do you really need to post that joke, or wouldn't the judge find it funny?
Now that's definitely a good old-fashioned threat like the cops give 'em to the scum on TV.
It's... It's...
I am really a little bit confused about this announcement. I thought Bonobo was part of GNOME 1.4? And that the GNOME 1.4 release was a release of *stable* packages with a *stable* API? I thought Bonobo was the core component of GNOME 1.4 (also used in, e.g. Nautilus)? And now, a few days after the release of GNOME 1.4, Bonobo gets stable. Can somebody explain me what's happening? Thanks!
It's... It's...
Dear nerd,
:-)
Sorry, but there is a plethora of Linux apps that I am itching for when I have to work on a Windows box, or when I have to work with other Windows users.
Every once in a while some clueless bloke like you comes up to me asking "how can I do this-and-that?" Now I am very willing to explain such stuff.
"How can I set up a local server to test my PHP and CGI scripts [which use Sendmail and MySQL along the road]?"
"Oh, that's easy. Just install the Apache package, the PHP module and MySQL."
"...on my Windows box?"
"Oh. wait. Uhh... I know of some small free Web server for Windows that does CGI, but PHP and MySQL... hrm."
From a Mac user with a stupid FTP program: "So how can I resolve these carriage return upload problems?"
"Try ASCII upload."
"My program knows Text, MacText, BinHex [etc.], but no ASCII. Which one should I choose?"
"?? Try all of them for what I care."
"Not one worked OK. Now what?"
"Sigh. [dreaming of installing DebianPPC on that thing]"
I happen to have a couple of 100 more of these anecdotes. Whenever I am forced to work with a Windows box, I have my Linux box running as well, if possible, and through OpenSSH, smbclient, VNC, WINE and other stuff I can finally do what I have to do on that Windows box.
I am mostly using Word and Netscape on the Windows box to a) make my homework and b) do something while making my homework. But the Linux box is always there for the kewl stuff and for the programming.
It just happens to be so that Windows doesn't interoperate as well with Linux as is the other way around. In other words, when working with Windows, I _miss_ all kinds of Linux' functionalities. So YES, I am _very_ glad that Windows now finally gets some better Linux interoptability - one that doesn't require a reboot into Linux!
BTW, if you're seriously thinking that Linux folks aren't working hard on improving their "pieces of shit" evey day, *I DARE YOU* to keep up with Debian Unstable. Hehe
It's... It's...