Even better, all you need to understand why your computer doesn't boot is the 37 fundamental building blocks of computers, roughly divided into the plastics (acrylic, etc.), liquid crystals, metals (steel, iron, copper, silver, etc.), and silicon.
While the physically random properties can't be cloned, any digital system must derive a digitized, binary version of that signature, and that can be cloned.
In the end, this gives you a little extra security relative to just putting a bunch of bits in a PROM, but not much.
You're right that there is no out-of-the-box VoIP for GChat on Linux. But Google is doing the right thing for that: they are creating open standards for integrating VoIP into Jabber. This involves a lot of negotiation and dialog with a lot of people and groups and open source developers.
Short of waving a magic wand and have the standards appear out of nowhere and implement themselves, what do you want them to do?
I think I take exception at saying it is ISP greed; I'm more inclined to say it is a small handful of P2P users that can rationalize their theft of copyrighted material as (astonishingly) helping the people they are stealing from.
Although I agree with most of what you say about bandwidth, as an ISP, you have no business judging what I send across the line. Whether it is "theft of copyrighted material" or fair use is up to me and the copyright holder.
P2P and home servers are enormously important for private and personal use, as well as for not-for-profit redistribution of CC material (e.g., Miro).
As an ISP, your best bet is to shut up and completely forget about what people transmit over your lines or you open a Pandora's box.
I have a problem with charging per gigabyte. The thing is its very ambiguous how much gigabytes you're using. Theres nothing like an odometer to measure you're overall useage of bandwidth.
It's not ambiguous at all, it simply takes a lot of hardware to measure.
These ISPs are SERIOUSLY overselling their network capacity to create an artificial scarcity.
Bullshit. ISPs are selling you a volume limited, high bandwidth account. They simply haven't been imposing the volume caps because it's hard and costly to measure.
In other words they're being greedy and their own actions (overselling)
No, *you* are being greedy. They could simply bandwidth limit everybody to 1Mbit/sec, charge you the same amount, and be done with it. Everybody can max out their lines.
But it's preferable to give people high burst bandwidth because it's nice when pages load fast. And it's nice not to have to spend billions on bandwidth metering when statistics say that there are only a few bad apples that try to get a maxed out line on a consumer priced subscription.
So, take your pick: for your $30/month, you can get 16Mbps burst bandwidth with an (implicit) volume cap, or 1Mbps sustained. You can pick either one. You can't get 16Mbps sustained for $30/month, it's just not economically feasible yet.
Why should they? There are several excellent options for Linux as well, and they are pre-installed. How could they possibly do better than that?
So, they are better because they're offering is closed source and thus encouraging people to use another client?
No, they are better because they rely on existing solutions where they exist. Linux ships with XMPP clients, Windows does not. Hence, they need to do something for Windows. Windows is the exception here that requires extra work. Linux and Google work together the way they should.
I think it would make sense for IBM to buy Sun. IBM gets Sun's enterprise customers and they get full control of Java (which means that they can finally open source it for real). I suspect IBM is just waiting for Sun's stock to fall to the right level.
No, you don't "have to be pretty dumb to try to use your cell phone as a modem for browsing the internet." There are countries that have unlimited Internet access for maybe $20/month, including tethering, and it's quite reasonable to expect to be able to do that with your phone.
By creating this kind of uncertainty, cell carriers are really hurting themselves: people end up being afraid of using their phones and look for alternatives to regular plans: WiFi, iPhone, Hiptop, whatever.
Carriers should do something like cap monthly charges at, say, 200-300% of what you would pay for an unlimited (US) subscription anyway. That means maybe $100-$150/month if you really go all out. People would still have an incentive to subscribe to unlimited plans, and people on limited volume plans wouldn't be afraid to use it and probably sooner or later subscribe to an unlimited plan.
I [can't] think of one album and one movie that I've purchased more than once.
Well, then you're simply too young. The industry has been changing formats every decade or so in order to force you to upgrade.
They sell mp3s that can be transferred or copied wherever you like, but can be traced to you if they're found on P2P.
That model is just as broken as other kinds of DRM because you effectively still can't sell the music you bought to others and because it destroys the anonymity of reading and listening.
And why bother with all this copyright and DRM anyway? What's the benefit to society? Most of the world's great works have been produced without copyright protection.
It's still not perfect, but if you've got a better model, implement it and put them out of business.
That's kind of like trying to put drug dealers and the mafia out of business with a "better business model". It's absurd.
That's the point of the 250G cap: so that I don't have to pay for your insatiable appetite for DVDs you're never going to watch.
If you're going to buy hundreds of movies from Amazon at $15/movie, you might as well pay another $100 or so to get full bandwidth 24/7; don't make pay for your bandwidth lust.
In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS.
Bullshit. Companies don't implement DRM to combat piracy, they implement DRM to limit fair use. Without DRM, within a decade, there would be so many perfect, legitimate copies in the market that they couldn't make any more profit.
Of course, the real reason we are in this mess to begin with is because copyrights have been extended far beyond the 15-20 years they should be; that's only been possible because of massive bribery and corruption of Congress. Turn back the clock on copyrights and most infringement goes away automatically.
The way to combat their broken business model is boycott, not copyright infringement.
It's not clear that non-commercial sharing should be copyright infringement at all. We pay a blank media tax (yes, even in the US).
The dirty secret is that we're supposed to pay for the same content over and over and over again. That's what we need to fight.
I think having volume caps and network neutrality is a good compromise. Once there are volume caps, however, there shouldn't be an preferential treatment to one kind of traffic or another. ISPs simply aren't in a position to decide which network traffic is important and which network traffic is not. For example, I'd like my VNC-over-SSH to be treated as just as important and real-time as someone's VoIP traffic.
US patents are granted for all sorts of things that the holders didn't invent.
Yes, but if the holders didn't invent it, the patents aren't valid and people don't need to license them.
Besides, HP probably already has patent cross-licensing agreements with Apple. Patents are primarily being used from protecting creaky old behemoths like Apple, Microsoft, and HP from innovative small competitors.
still no decent browser
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Hundreds of megabytes to display a dozen web pages? Single process or multiple process, that's just bullshit. Chrome, IE8, and Firefox all sound ridiculously bloated.
The section that people cite explicitly says "by submitting, posting or displaying the content"; this refers to content you submit to Google services, not arbitrary content you submit through the Chrome browser.
Furthermore, later, Google says explicitly that you retain all your rights to your content.
All they need from you is a license to display the stuff that you asked them to display. This is boilerplate and it is justified for the kind of services they offer.
I suppose it could be written a little more clearly so that even total morons understand its scope, but, hey, it's a beta release. Looks like they already clarified it.
Slashdot Mirror
Even better, all you need to understand why your computer doesn't boot is the 37 fundamental building blocks of computers, roughly divided into the plastics (acrylic, etc.), liquid crystals, metals (steel, iron, copper, silver, etc.), and silicon.
Now, go fix that BSOD.
I didn't know Spore had one of these stupid DRM systems.
Now I do, and I won't buy it.
While the physically random properties can't be cloned, any digital system must derive a digitized, binary version of that signature, and that can be cloned.
In the end, this gives you a little extra security relative to just putting a bunch of bits in a PROM, but not much.
Out of the box VoIP perhaps?
You're right that there is no out-of-the-box VoIP for GChat on Linux. But Google is doing the right thing for that: they are creating open standards for integrating VoIP into Jabber. This involves a lot of negotiation and dialog with a lot of people and groups and open source developers.
Short of waving a magic wand and have the standards appear out of nowhere and implement themselves, what do you want them to do?
I think I take exception at saying it is ISP greed; I'm more inclined to say it is a small handful of P2P users that can rationalize their theft of copyrighted material as (astonishingly) helping the people they are stealing from.
Although I agree with most of what you say about bandwidth, as an ISP, you have no business judging what I send across the line. Whether it is "theft of copyrighted material" or fair use is up to me and the copyright holder.
P2P and home servers are enormously important for private and personal use, as well as for not-for-profit redistribution of CC material (e.g., Miro).
As an ISP, your best bet is to shut up and completely forget about what people transmit over your lines or you open a Pandora's box.
I have a problem with charging per gigabyte. The thing is its very ambiguous how much gigabytes you're using. Theres nothing like an odometer to measure you're overall useage of bandwidth.
It's not ambiguous at all, it simply takes a lot of hardware to measure.
These ISPs are SERIOUSLY overselling their network capacity to create an artificial scarcity.
Bullshit. ISPs are selling you a volume limited, high bandwidth account. They simply haven't been imposing the volume caps because it's hard and costly to measure.
In other words they're being greedy and their own actions (overselling)
No, *you* are being greedy. They could simply bandwidth limit everybody to 1Mbit/sec, charge you the same amount, and be done with it. Everybody can max out their lines.
But it's preferable to give people high burst bandwidth because it's nice when pages load fast. And it's nice not to have to spend billions on bandwidth metering when statistics say that there are only a few bad apples that try to get a maxed out line on a consumer priced subscription.
So, take your pick: for your $30/month, you can get 16Mbps burst bandwidth with an (implicit) volume cap, or 1Mbps sustained. You can pick either one. You can't get 16Mbps sustained for $30/month, it's just not economically feasible yet.
if they'd push it more and lean on other IM services to support it
They tried. They pushed hard form AIM interoperability, and they didn't even get that really working.
It's the other services that aren't doing it.
by not providing an option for Linux
Why should they? There are several excellent options for Linux as well, and they are pre-installed. How could they possibly do better than that?
So, they are better because they're offering is closed source and thus encouraging people to use another client?
No, they are better because they rely on existing solutions where they exist. Linux ships with XMPP clients, Windows does not. Hence, they need to do something for Windows. Windows is the exception here that requires extra work. Linux and Google work together the way they should.
Seems to me Google is better, since they are actually encouraging the use of other clients.
I think it would make sense for IBM to buy Sun. IBM gets Sun's enterprise customers and they get full control of Java (which means that they can finally open source it for real). I suspect IBM is just waiting for Sun's stock to fall to the right level.
No, you don't "have to be pretty dumb to try to use your cell phone as a modem for browsing the internet." There are countries that have unlimited Internet access for maybe $20/month, including tethering, and it's quite reasonable to expect to be able to do that with your phone.
By creating this kind of uncertainty, cell carriers are really hurting themselves: people end up being afraid of using their phones and look for alternatives to regular plans: WiFi, iPhone, Hiptop, whatever.
Carriers should do something like cap monthly charges at, say, 200-300% of what you would pay for an unlimited (US) subscription anyway. That means maybe $100-$150/month if you really go all out. People would still have an incentive to subscribe to unlimited plans, and people on limited volume plans wouldn't be afraid to use it and probably sooner or later subscribe to an unlimited plan.
It doesn't matter how cheap it is, as long as it costs something, it becomes a hassle to install since you need a financial transaction with someone.
When it's free, it can become part of the Linux package systems and get installed automatically.
The Mac morons are obviously out in force again today, using the moderator accounts to beat down anything that disagrees with their corporate masters.
Get a life guys. Oh, and here's a dime, buy yourself a real computer.
The provisions still don't apply.
In any case, Google has updated the language to make it so clear that even the most pedantic nerds get it.
Interesting. Evidently, it's the Amazon-Apple-Microsoft axis of evil.
I [can't] think of one album and one movie that I've purchased more than once.
Well, then you're simply too young. The industry has been changing formats every decade or so in order to force you to upgrade.
They sell mp3s that can be transferred or copied wherever you like, but can be traced to you if they're found on P2P.
That model is just as broken as other kinds of DRM because you effectively still can't sell the music you bought to others and because it destroys the anonymity of reading and listening.
And why bother with all this copyright and DRM anyway? What's the benefit to society? Most of the world's great works have been produced without copyright protection.
It's still not perfect, but if you've got a better model, implement it and put them out of business.
That's kind of like trying to put drug dealers and the mafia out of business with a "better business model". It's absurd.
That's the point of the 250G cap: so that I don't have to pay for your insatiable appetite for DVDs you're never going to watch.
If you're going to buy hundreds of movies from Amazon at $15/movie, you might as well pay another $100 or so to get full bandwidth 24/7; don't make pay for your bandwidth lust.
In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS.
Bullshit. Companies don't implement DRM to combat piracy, they implement DRM to limit fair use. Without DRM, within a decade, there would be so many perfect, legitimate copies in the market that they couldn't make any more profit.
Of course, the real reason we are in this mess to begin with is because copyrights have been extended far beyond the 15-20 years they should be; that's only been possible because of massive bribery and corruption of Congress. Turn back the clock on copyrights and most infringement goes away automatically.
The way to combat their broken business model is boycott, not copyright infringement.
It's not clear that non-commercial sharing should be copyright infringement at all. We pay a blank media tax (yes, even in the US).
The dirty secret is that we're supposed to pay for the same content over and over and over again. That's what we need to fight.
I find the iTunes interface to be a big hassle, actually. Also, iTunes coverage of movies is rather limited.
I think having volume caps and network neutrality is a good compromise. Once there are volume caps, however, there shouldn't be an preferential treatment to one kind of traffic or another. ISPs simply aren't in a position to decide which network traffic is important and which network traffic is not. For example, I'd like my VNC-over-SSH to be treated as just as important and real-time as someone's VoIP traffic.
US patents are granted for all sorts of things that the holders didn't invent.
Yes, but if the holders didn't invent it, the patents aren't valid and people don't need to license them.
Besides, HP probably already has patent cross-licensing agreements with Apple. Patents are primarily being used from protecting creaky old behemoths like Apple, Microsoft, and HP from innovative small competitors.
Hundreds of megabytes to display a dozen web pages? Single process or multiple process, that's just bullshit. Chrome, IE8, and Firefox all sound ridiculously bloated.
The section that people cite explicitly says "by submitting, posting or displaying the content"; this refers to content you submit to Google services, not arbitrary content you submit through the Chrome browser.
Furthermore, later, Google says explicitly that you retain all your rights to your content.
All they need from you is a license to display the stuff that you asked them to display. This is boilerplate and it is justified for the kind of services they offer.
I suppose it could be written a little more clearly so that even total morons understand its scope, but, hey, it's a beta release. Looks like they already clarified it.
Why do they NEED it?
Because most of Google's services involve storing your data, and they can only do that if you give them permission to do it.
Because you fucking have to agree to it before you can download the browser!
That doesn't mean it applies to the browser, it may simply apply to Google services connected with use of the browser.
You mean just like crash reporting on Macintosh, Windows, Linux, the iPhone, and dozens of other platforms?