If there were to be life in that pool, regardless of what evolutionary level, can you imagine what the benefits to science would be? Einstein's visit to the Galapagos yielded the results it did because the ecosystem was almost completely isolated from the outside.
Anything found in the pits of Mars would be completely isolated from Earth's biosphere. Not a couple dozen miles of ocean - completely isolated. Would it have DNA? Cell membranes? Mitocondria, which many theorize to be a symobite within the cell, almost a seperate lifeform? Does the lighter gravity of Mars let the cell size be larger? Does unicellular life have more possibilitites on Mars because of this increased cell size? Or is it all a question of surface area? Or, is there no life at all?
We can conclude nothing about life on other planets because we have only one sample. Earth. Surely it's a bargain to go to Mars and double the sample size, and if there were to be life on Mars, it'd likely be here.
The problem is that a polymer created by a research team of thousands using million dollar research labs and million dollar steel plants, that cost 23 million dollars to design, falls under the same protections as what the executives at Amazon.com came up with during a power lunch.
Maybe the length of the patent should be variable to the expense involved. If I can prove that I spent a million dollars coming up with an idea, the government might grant me a 25 year patent, while an idea resulting from a much less expensive process might only get a 2 or 3 year patent.
Or, hell, maybe all patents should last only as long as the company has not recouped the research costs.
Crap. None of this is enforcable. Ditch the patent system.
Unless you already happen to be a programmer, Perl syntax makes zilch sense and gives you horrible habits if you ever want to learn any other language. It's not a good place to start. I love perl, but it's just not a starting language.
Now we can't use the term vaporware anymore - we're going to have to say vaporhardware and vaporsoftware. Nice shot, Intel, and we both know the market never learns...
I just realized that all of this anti-trust crap consists of the immoral destruction of a profitable company. I guess it just took me a while.
If the issue at hand is that Microsoft is using unfair buisness practices to hurt other buisnesses, then why can't those other buisnesses bring trial against Microsoft? If Microsoft is hurting lots of other companies, why can't those companies get together and go for a really *big* settlement? If people hate mircosoft, stop using thier product!
No, those companies would rather go whine to the government, who, since the government is incapable of wielding a surgical instrument smaller than a multi-megaton nuke, will shrug it's shoulders, ascede to demand, and blow the company in two. We have the biggest, most powerful, most profitable software company in the world right here in the USA, and we are going to rip it in half? (no guarantee that we'll get two functioning halves - we might put a couple hundred thousand people out of work.)
Yes, Microsoft makes crappy products. Yes, they have illegally applied pressure to other companies. Yes, Microsoft's buisness practices have often made me ill. (I still lament the vaporware-caused death of Turbo Basic.) But does this radical measure really even help those who have been hurt? Is Borland getting a check? No. It's a vindictive, impractical, useless move.
Maybe I'm becoming conservative. But I don't think it's moral or fair to harm or destroy one company because it hurt other companies. Damages? Hell, yes. I'd love to see Borland get a billion dollars so they can resume some neat products that died. But destroying a company because they destroyed other companies just leaves us short companies. And jobs.
Re:There is no one to blame: It's fiction.
on
Copyrant
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· Score: 1
Have another example: To combat unsanctioned copying, Unreal Tournament uses a form a copy protection that checks for the presence of the CD in the drive. This technique is easily hackable, and w4r3zed copies exist. However, Quake-3 uses a central server-based authentication system based on the CD key you have to type in when you install the game. When you try to play on the net, it sends your key to your-papers-please.idsoftware.com (note: may not be actual server name), which then grants you permission to use your property. id's system is foolproof and unhackable, since they alone maintain the database of valid keys.
Interesting thought, but this system is just as hackable. You figure out exactly how the system works, then route the requests through tinkering with the IP layer, which routes the requests back to a port on your computer, which says, "Sure, sure! That's a valid key - this user can play Quake 3 as much as he wants!"
It's a different type of hack - and I don't think it's been done. CD hacks are old hat. This is new - but crackable.
Re:Reminds me of this UNIX "virus" I recieved once
on
Gnutella VBS Worm
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· Score: 1
Dammit! You've infected my system now. Why'd you have to dump this in a public forum where so many people would hit it?
I curse that my moderation period was a few days ago. Listen to this man! I'm not making anything respectable and I'm socking away at least 500 a month - usually more. Sit down. Do the math. Stare at it some. Yes, with the right savings and some conservatism, you can retire at 50, or even 40.
I don't see anything wrong with attempting to crash a machine that is attempting to crash you. Think about it. If the opposing machine is owned by a good guy, then the good guy's security has already been breached. One, thier carelessness is placing your buisness in danger. Two, if you do take down thier machine - do they really *want* a breached machine up and running?
I think it's simple. Thier machine lost it's right to be up once it started attacking mine. I think it was the only way to effectively defend against a well-prepared DDoS attack, and were I the guy making the calls over there, I'd do it. Remember, any machine participating in a DDoS has been breached, so there's already a case of negligence on the other end should the case end up in court.
Re:The real purpose of DeCSS
on
DeCSS Update
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· Score: 1
DeCSS has two uses: ripping DVDs for distribution over the net, and integration into an open source linux player.
How about education? What if I'm just curious about how DvDs are encrypted, because I need similar encryption in a product I'm working on? What if I'm a student who wants to get past the bunny crap in school and learn some real applications? This, for me, has always been the real and first advantage of Open Source. I can learn.
I've learned all sorts of wonderful things about windows programming and direct sound from the FreeAmp source code. While there (on the mailing list), I managed to have a useful piece of info or two for them, too. Thier code being open source, I could both learn and help.
Writing a Linux DvD player, or a serious Piracy Aid program, is a technically complicated undertaking that few can do. But thousands of people can read the code and learn for it. And I'll wager more have done so than have compiled or used the code. There's probably a person or two for whom it's the first source code they read. If we are talking mere use numbers, then education is the primary purpose by this logic.
I have to agree with Scott Miller here. Does slashdotting not only cause server bandwidth usage but obscene amounts of protest email towards whatever slashdot implies might be bad?
I went and read the document link, expecting to be outraged by Apogee's attempt to squelch criticism of thier product, and I saw, to my suprise . . . a pretty standard legal restatement of thier trademark rights, with some additional legal protection thrown in. Nothing worth a protest, or even irritation. I mean, dammit, guys, the document is giving you rights. They are relinquishing a portion of thier trademark rights so you can do stuff above and beyond what the law allows with thier intellectual property. You're angry? Why?
And slashdotters are getting irritated because Apogee is telling them that they're being stupid. Well, I agree with Mr Miller. Those angry angst ridden Apogee-time-wasting protest emails you guys are getting so bitter about Apogee laughing off ARE pretty stupid.
In the interview, Lonn was bitching about not being profitable and just not having the revenue to maintain the current employee level. My response to that is, Maybe the whole "let's get TL into the market by giving it away FREE!" move wasn't such a hot idea. For every copy of TL that was sold at CompUSA (or wherever) for $20 that had a $20 rebate on it, TL took a bath. Instead of making money for each sale, they were spending money to cover the cost of the CD's, books, and boxes. Apparently, TLS and TCLS sales didn't quite pull in enough to make up that deficit, did they? Maybe whoever came up with that idea should have been laid off a few months ago.
What, you getting sick of innovative software companies having to turn to some unholy conglomeration of ads and begging for venture capital to turn any kind of profit, because everyone and thier grandmother is giving product away for free? Me too.
I personally hope that someday in the future, there are technological methods in place that allow for easy direct payment and get rid of this craziness. I'm tired of advertising. All ads do is shuffle money from one company to another - someone, somewhere, has to actually sell something and deprive people of a portion of thier paychecks. I'm tired of people thinking that a company that makes no profit is, in any way, a good idea.
Yes, yes, there are places out there making money through some kind of seven tiered money routing model. I guess I'm just old fashioned - I don't mind paying for a product. Paying for the product makes me feel I have some right to expect something from the company that I am paying.
Many people have mentioned the boiloff of atmosphere that comes from the fact that Mars is a pretty tiny planet. I think that this is a valid concern in any terraforming effort. However, if we can build an atmosphere in the first place, then we probably can work out the technological issues involved in maintaining that atmosphere. Keep in mind that the atmosphere leaks off in geologic time spans, not at any rapid rate. Maintaining the atmosphere would probably be trivial next to the difficulty of building it in the first place.
CON: I still like to think that Linux has a "clue-shield" about it that prevents people from being able to use it without having to learn a thing or two. AOL is the antithesis of Linux in this respect; it is designed to remove all barriers to the clueless, and specifically panders to them.
If you buy one of these things from CompUSA or wherever, without reading anything about it, then I'd be money that you could use it for years without realizing that Linux is on it. Because it's not going to have the whole Linux OS - it's likely going to have the linux kernel, AOL, and Netscape. The Linux kernel, probably with a few extensions, will be there to replace an OS.
I hear that the only reason the Americans are focusing so much on this region is because of the undetermined status of several areas of natural resources 'freed up' by the earlier collapse of the USSR.
They currently (via Office) support 4 fairly distinct versions of Win32: Win95/98, NT 3.51, NT 4, and Windows 2000. So-called Linux fragmentation has *nothing* on these guys. Given that nearly all application software in the forseeable future is going to be supporting these same 3 platforms it makes the task of running it much easier. That in turn buys time to implement whatever trick new things get added in Win2000, Windows Millenium, etc, etc.
Eh. If you've ever gone through the soul-crushing process of reading microsoft documentation, it's almost always lots of small changes. NT does more things because it's more powerful, in some ways. It does less things in other areas because it's designed to be more secure. Windows CE does nothing because it's a chopper of an OS. But skipping Windows CE, the subset of API calls that work on all of the Windowsish OSes is pretty large. It's sizeable even with CE thrown in, actually.
So this isn't going to win Wine's game. It's not even going to get them free throws.
1.0 is not the end. The 1.0 release will not mean that Wine will run everything out there, maybe not even half of it. What it will mean, will be that the core, the foundation of all the functionality contained within, has finally been stabilized, and that from that point, Wine should be a robust and stable platform to implement additional functionality on top of, i.e. to implement additional MS dlls, and to port applications to Unix with Winelib.
I think what they are looking for is the famous quote: "This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
As a friend of mine pointed out, this movie is straight Hong Kong action. Woo didn't even bother to file the serial numbers off of some of the things that he borrowed from his other movies. I knew from the first 20 minutes of the movie that eventually flocks of birds were going to be used for dramatic effect, and so forth...
In fact, the only thing that he didn't do that he normally does: kill the chick. Usually the Girl Caught Between Two Men dies some kind of horrible death in the middle of the violence. Not even an intentional death - just some bullet flying about finds it's way into her. Guess he felt he had to pull his punch there for the American Audience.
I really enjoied this movie. But, like Mister Taco, I liked Gladiator better.
Sherman, set the wayback machine for the early 1990s. A new trend had started among the big retail music chain stores. Used CDs. Racks and racks of them. This got the ire of the music industry to threaten stores with no more new CDs to sell if they didn't yank the used ones. Drugstore cowboy singer Garth Brooks made himself the pulpit boy for the cause. The claim was that used CD sales is "theft" from the artists because the sound quality on used CDs degrade. A used CD sounds just as good as a new one. Brooks and the RIAA wanted to ban used CD sales or at least to 'tax' them with the kickback going to the RIAA to make up for loss to artists (/me scratches head at logic here). The issue was LAUGHED at by the public at large. Garth Brooks was seen as a raving idiot and the issue faded away.
Now it's Napster. Same shit all over again.
I can't believe this got moderated to 5 : Insightful. What does this have to do with anything? It's interesting trivia but the only thing that it has in common with Napster is that Used CD sales and Napster are both things that tick the RIAA off.
Did anyone else notice that Lars dodged that question better then Bill Clinton and Bush combined? Slick one that Lars is, have to watch him or he'll get away from ya. I would like to get a direct answer from him. Wonder if his Label has him under some non-disclose agreement about that type of stuff??
Oh, come on. He's under no obligation to tell you how much he makes, which is essentially what this part of the question asks. But he *did* answer the majority of the question, the important part in my opinion.
The focus of this part of the interview is, "Have you considered bailing on the record company?", and Lars answered, in sufficient detail, "Of course! Wouldn't you? When it's viable we'll seriously look into it." And that's all we really need to know.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows has a philosophy. You know Unix, "Everything is a file!". Well, meet Windows, "Everything is a problem!".
If he doesn't know, then he doesn't know!
If there were to be life in that pool, regardless of what evolutionary level, can you imagine what the benefits to science would be? Einstein's visit to the Galapagos yielded the results it did because the ecosystem was almost completely isolated from the outside.
Anything found in the pits of Mars would be completely isolated from Earth's biosphere. Not a couple dozen miles of ocean - completely isolated. Would it have DNA? Cell membranes? Mitocondria, which many theorize to be a symobite within the cell, almost a seperate lifeform? Does the lighter gravity of Mars let the cell size be larger? Does unicellular life have more possibilitites on Mars because of this increased cell size? Or is it all a question of surface area? Or, is there no life at all?
We can conclude nothing about life on other planets because we have only one sample. Earth. Surely it's a bargain to go to Mars and double the sample size, and if there were to be life on Mars, it'd likely be here.
Millions of questions, and maybe a few answers...
The problem is that a polymer created by a research team of thousands using million dollar research labs and million dollar steel plants, that cost 23 million dollars to design, falls under the same protections as what the executives at Amazon.com came up with during a power lunch.
Maybe the length of the patent should be variable to the expense involved. If I can prove that I spent a million dollars coming up with an idea, the government might grant me a 25 year patent, while an idea resulting from a much less expensive process might only get a 2 or 3 year patent.
Or, hell, maybe all patents should last only as long as the company has not recouped the research costs.
Crap. None of this is enforcable. Ditch the patent system.
Perl? Perl?
Unless you already happen to be a programmer, Perl syntax makes zilch sense and gives you horrible habits if you ever want to learn any other language. It's not a good place to start. I love perl, but it's just not a starting language.
Now we can't use the term vaporware anymore - we're going to have to say vaporhardware and vaporsoftware. Nice shot, Intel, and we both know the market never learns...
I can't believe that nobody mentioned Gale, and now it's too late for me to mention it and have a significant portion of people see it. Ack!
Gale
Straight from my current project:
int j; // once a control variable/now a counter/life is like that
I just realized that all of this anti-trust crap consists of the immoral destruction of a profitable company. I guess it just took me a while.
If the issue at hand is that Microsoft is using unfair buisness practices to hurt other buisnesses, then why can't those other buisnesses bring trial against Microsoft? If Microsoft is hurting lots of other companies, why can't those companies get together and go for a really *big* settlement? If people hate mircosoft, stop using thier product!
No, those companies would rather go whine to the government, who, since the government is incapable of wielding a surgical instrument smaller than a multi-megaton nuke, will shrug it's shoulders, ascede to demand, and blow the company in two. We have the biggest, most powerful, most profitable software company in the world right here in the USA, and we are going to rip it in half? (no guarantee that we'll get two functioning halves - we might put a couple hundred thousand people out of work.)
Yes, Microsoft makes crappy products. Yes, they have illegally applied pressure to other companies. Yes, Microsoft's buisness practices have often made me ill. (I still lament the vaporware-caused death of Turbo Basic.) But does this radical measure really even help those who have been hurt? Is Borland getting a check? No. It's a vindictive, impractical, useless move.
Maybe I'm becoming conservative. But I don't think it's moral or fair to harm or destroy one company because it hurt other companies. Damages? Hell, yes. I'd love to see Borland get a billion dollars so they can resume some neat products that died. But destroying a company because they destroyed other companies just leaves us short companies. And jobs.
Have another example: To combat unsanctioned copying, Unreal Tournament uses a form a copy protection that checks for the presence of the CD in the drive. This technique is easily hackable, and w4r3zed copies exist. However, Quake-3 uses a central server-based authentication system based on the CD key you have to type in when you install the game. When you try to play on the net, it sends your key to your-papers-please.idsoftware.com (note: may not be actual server name), which then grants you permission to use your property. id's system is foolproof and unhackable, since they alone maintain the database of valid keys.
Interesting thought, but this system is just as hackable. You figure out exactly how the system works, then route the requests through tinkering with the IP layer, which routes the requests back to a port on your computer, which says, "Sure, sure! That's a valid key - this user can play Quake 3 as much as he wants!"
It's a different type of hack - and I don't think it's been done. CD hacks are old hat. This is new - but crackable.
Dammit! You've infected my system now. Why'd you have to dump this in a public forum where so many people would hit it?
Where's my virus scanning software?
I curse that my moderation period was a few days ago. Listen to this man! I'm not making anything respectable and I'm socking away at least 500 a month - usually more. Sit down. Do the math. Stare at it some. Yes, with the right savings and some conservatism, you can retire at 50, or even 40.
I don't see anything wrong with attempting to crash a machine that is attempting to crash you. Think about it. If the opposing machine is owned by a good guy, then the good guy's security has already been breached. One, thier carelessness is placing your buisness in danger. Two, if you do take down thier machine - do they really *want* a breached machine up and running?
I think it's simple. Thier machine lost it's right to be up once it started attacking mine. I think it was the only way to effectively defend against a well-prepared DDoS attack, and were I the guy making the calls over there, I'd do it. Remember, any machine participating in a DDoS has been breached, so there's already a case of negligence on the other end should the case end up in court.
How about education? What if I'm just curious about how DvDs are encrypted, because I need similar encryption in a product I'm working on? What if I'm a student who wants to get past the bunny crap in school and learn some real applications? This, for me, has always been the real and first advantage of Open Source. I can learn.
I've learned all sorts of wonderful things about windows programming and direct sound from the FreeAmp source code. While there (on the mailing list), I managed to have a useful piece of info or two for them, too. Thier code being open source, I could both learn and help.
Writing a Linux DvD player, or a serious Piracy Aid program, is a technically complicated undertaking that few can do. But thousands of people can read the code and learn for it. And I'll wager more have done so than have compiled or used the code. There's probably a person or two for whom it's the first source code they read. If we are talking mere use numbers, then education is the primary purpose by this logic.
The problem isnt Apogee, it's UCITA. If you look at ANY EULA in light of UCITA, trembling rage ensues.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that companies can suddenly stop making End User License Agreements.
Sheesh! Back to important work...
I have to agree with Scott Miller here. Does slashdotting not only cause server bandwidth usage but obscene amounts of protest email towards whatever slashdot implies might be bad?
I went and read the document link, expecting to be outraged by Apogee's attempt to squelch criticism of thier product, and I saw, to my suprise . . . a pretty standard legal restatement of thier trademark rights, with some additional legal protection thrown in. Nothing worth a protest, or even irritation. I mean, dammit, guys, the document is giving you rights. They are relinquishing a portion of thier trademark rights so you can do stuff above and beyond what the law allows with thier intellectual property. You're angry? Why?
And slashdotters are getting irritated because Apogee is telling them that they're being stupid. Well, I agree with Mr Miller. Those angry angst ridden Apogee-time-wasting protest emails you guys are getting so bitter about Apogee laughing off ARE pretty stupid.
In the interview, Lonn was bitching about not being profitable and just not having the revenue to maintain the current employee level. My response to that is, Maybe the whole "let's get TL into the market by giving it away FREE!" move wasn't such a hot idea. For every copy of TL that was sold at CompUSA (or wherever) for $20 that had a $20 rebate on it, TL took a bath. Instead of making money for each sale, they were spending money to cover the cost of the CD's, books, and boxes. Apparently, TLS and TCLS sales didn't quite pull in enough to make up that deficit, did they? Maybe whoever came up with that idea should have been laid off a few months ago.
What, you getting sick of innovative software companies having to turn to some unholy conglomeration of ads and begging for venture capital to turn any kind of profit, because everyone and thier grandmother is giving product away for free? Me too.
I personally hope that someday in the future, there are technological methods in place that allow for easy direct payment and get rid of this craziness. I'm tired of advertising. All ads do is shuffle money from one company to another - someone, somewhere, has to actually sell something and deprive people of a portion of thier paychecks. I'm tired of people thinking that a company that makes no profit is, in any way, a good idea.
Yes, yes, there are places out there making money through some kind of seven tiered money routing model. I guess I'm just old fashioned - I don't mind paying for a product. Paying for the product makes me feel I have some right to expect something from the company that I am paying.
Many people have mentioned the boiloff of atmosphere that comes from the fact that Mars is a pretty tiny planet. I think that this is a valid concern in any terraforming effort. However, if we can build an atmosphere in the first place, then we probably can work out the technological issues involved in maintaining that atmosphere. Keep in mind that the atmosphere leaks off in geologic time spans, not at any rapid rate. Maintaining the atmosphere would probably be trivial next to the difficulty of building it in the first place.
CON: I still like to think that Linux has a "clue-shield" about it that prevents people from being able to use it without having to learn a thing or two. AOL is the antithesis of Linux in this respect; it is designed to remove all barriers to the clueless, and specifically panders to them.
If you buy one of these things from CompUSA or wherever, without reading anything about it, then I'd be money that you could use it for years without realizing that Linux is on it. Because it's not going to have the whole Linux OS - it's likely going to have the linux kernel, AOL, and Netscape. The Linux kernel, probably with a few extensions, will be there to replace an OS.
I hear that the only reason the Americans are focusing so much on this region is because of the undetermined status of several areas of natural resources 'freed up' by the earlier collapse of the USSR.
They currently (via Office) support 4 fairly distinct versions of Win32: Win95/98, NT 3.51, NT 4, and Windows 2000. So-called Linux fragmentation has *nothing* on these guys. Given that nearly all application software in the forseeable future is going to be supporting these same 3 platforms it makes the task of running it much easier. That in turn buys time to implement whatever trick new things get added in Win2000, Windows Millenium, etc, etc.
Eh. If you've ever gone through the soul-crushing process of reading microsoft documentation, it's almost always lots of small changes. NT does more things because it's more powerful, in some ways. It does less things in other areas because it's designed to be more secure. Windows CE does nothing because it's a chopper of an OS. But skipping Windows CE, the subset of API calls that work on all of the Windowsish OSes is pretty large. It's sizeable even with CE thrown in, actually.
So this isn't going to win Wine's game. It's not even going to get them free throws.
From the newsletter:
1.0 is not the end. The 1.0 release will not mean that Wine will run everything out there, maybe not even half of it. What it will mean, will be that the core, the foundation of all the functionality contained within, has finally been stabilized, and that from that point, Wine should be a robust and stable platform to implement additional functionality on top of, i.e. to implement additional MS dlls, and to port applications to Unix with Winelib.
I think what they are looking for is the famous quote: "This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Rock on, guys.
As a friend of mine pointed out, this movie is straight Hong Kong action. Woo didn't even bother to file the serial numbers off of some of the things that he borrowed from his other movies. I knew from the first 20 minutes of the movie that eventually flocks of birds were going to be used for dramatic effect, and so forth...
In fact, the only thing that he didn't do that he normally does: kill the chick. Usually the Girl Caught Between Two Men dies some kind of horrible death in the middle of the violence. Not even an intentional death - just some bullet flying about finds it's way into her. Guess he felt he had to pull his punch there for the American Audience.
I really enjoied this movie. But, like Mister Taco, I liked Gladiator better.
Sherman, set the wayback machine for the early 1990s. A new trend had started among the big retail music chain stores. Used CDs. Racks and racks of them. This got the ire of the music industry to threaten stores with no more new CDs to sell if they didn't yank the used ones. Drugstore cowboy singer Garth Brooks made himself the pulpit boy for the cause. The claim was that used CD sales is "theft" from the artists because the sound quality on used CDs degrade. A used CD sounds just as good as a new one. Brooks and the RIAA wanted to ban used CD sales or at least to 'tax' them with the kickback going to the RIAA to make up for loss to artists (/me scratches head at logic here). The issue was LAUGHED at by the public at large. Garth Brooks was seen as a raving idiot and the issue faded away.
Now it's Napster. Same shit all over again.
I can't believe this got moderated to 5 : Insightful. What does this have to do with anything? It's interesting trivia but the only thing that it has in common with Napster is that Used CD sales and Napster are both things that tick the RIAA off.
Did anyone else notice that Lars dodged that question better then Bill Clinton and Bush combined? Slick one that Lars is, have to watch him or he'll get away from ya. I would like to get a direct answer from him. Wonder if his Label has him under some non-disclose agreement about that type of stuff??
Oh, come on. He's under no obligation to tell you how much he makes, which is essentially what this part of the question asks. But he *did* answer the majority of the question, the important part in my opinion.
The focus of this part of the interview is, "Have you considered bailing on the record company?", and Lars answered, in sufficient detail, "Of course! Wouldn't you? When it's viable we'll seriously look into it." And that's all we really need to know.