I'm so tired of all the bloat in Open Office, now someone will finally be able to optimize it and get rid of all those "open standard" hippie mumbo jumbo.
For those of you who think this is an April Fools Joke, please note, it's April 2nd somewhere in the world.
Since in its infinite wisdom most webservices allow password resets to happen via email. Wouldn't it just be a matter of time to find out soemone's email address and then have the "oops I lost my password" feature on a number of websites utilized?
I wonder how many slashdot accounts, internet domains, and amazon accounts are linked via an @gmail.com address.
This is most certainly not a "little" problem by any means...
Forgive me for wondering, but if you feel the need to post how thinkgeek, newsforge, etc are all owned by your parent company in every story that comes from those (and the rest) of the sites. Then why don't you mention that this company may not be paying you, but did give you something to inspire you to talk about them so well on a website?
I guess I'm just lost here... you want full disclosure, most of the time?
This thing is not a monster laptop, it's a portable all in one desktop that has a builtin ups (battery). It's not that cool (the price tag which you fail to mention this time around, is pretty high). All I ask is that if you want full disclosure, then practice what you preach...
Queue the flaimbait, off topic, redundant, etc mods.
This release we've completely overhauled our old text-based arcane impossible to use installer and replaced it with a graphical installer. Accepting the fact that every computer sold today is designed to support an OS that has GUI support.
Plug and Play Autoconfiguration of peripherals and hardware:
Taking the cue from our linux counterparts, we've decided to autosense hardware like every other installer does. Now along with our graphical installer, we've provided a way to easily be able to just turn support for a specific piece of hardware on or off, with a simple easy to use GUI based control panel.
Support for exciting new ISO and IEEE Standards:
Support for USB 2.0 has finally arrived in OpenBSD, we weren't sure if this standard was going to catch on, so we've never ever provided support for it ever until now.
It's secure:
Like every release before it, it's one of the most, if not the most, secure operating system out there. If you don't take into account that our installer is insanely hard to use, rarely any major internet provider uses our operating system, and that no one really has ever wanted to take the time to actually write exploits for our wildly unpopular operating system, then we are certainly secure. Remember, it's BSD, which is like Unix, except its not.
any slashdot entry that starts with "Steve Jobs is the chief executive of two of the most powerful technology brands in the world: Apple and Pixar." is for sure, something I do not want to read. Why? Because I like my news and articles to be objective. If I wanted to read a fanboy article, I'd go read some blog/fake news source on the web (Ironic, you betcha).
I'm not sure exactly where the "Independent" stands, seeing as I don't live in the UK. But it disturbs me that I can't find in the begining or end of the article who wrote it. So we have an obvious piece of fan boy or advertisement posing as actual news.
You wouldn't believe this, but there are other technology companies out there than Microsoft, Apple, and Google. I don't mean nVidia, Intel, AMD, ATI, or Oracle either. There are straight up other innovative places out there.
I kind of miss the "Old Slashdot"(TM). You know, where we went crazy over linux running on something. Or where there was new speculative stories about ESR convincing more things to go open source. Or straight up cool hacks. Where is the halloween hack articles. Someone who managed to take the plates out of a harddrive and break the head to make an eeerry screeching noise. Or someone that lit their pumpkin with LED's...
Ohh well, I'm just old and bitter... I'll go eat my rice pudding and read google news on my iMac running virtual pc.
You gotta admit... even with a name like "Black Death" it's hard to do any type of good. It's hard to beat a reputation like that. I think if we were to run with this... we should rename "Black Death" to... "Happy Bunny Furry Vitamin".
Because, there's nothing threatening about a happy furry bunny that HELPS you...
I'll have the marketting department get right on this.
I'm not sure which is worse... the fact you thought this all the way out... or the fact that you thought it all the way out and were then noted as insightful...
Kudo's to Madison thought, I have a chance to park between Monona and Mendota everytime I go visit the folks. Downtown Wisconsin is actually a rather nice place to hang out with a lot of eateries, coffee shops, and "bars". Not to mention with UW Madison sitting in the heart of downtown as well, this network will see heavy useage.
Watch a little more closely ...
on
Deep in the Core
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
While I agree this is a pretty impressive sight to see... even the video shows this isn't exactly as it appears. That "ricochet" that plops it halfway around it's course so quickly, is actually almost an entire earth year. There is still quitea bit of speculation on whether or not Black Holes even exist.
While the idea of black holes, dark matter, etc seems intringing, it is still a lot of theory. It is nice to see that people haven't given up, but that's not to say that this article is just as much speculation as the next.
With that said, wouldn't it be nice to focus all of humanities efforts on answering the questions we don't yet know the answers for... instead of killing each other? I know that we already have the answer, but 42 only answers the ultimate question, we can't even answer the simple things like "do black holes exist?"
it actually wasn't meant to be a troll... it was meant to be funny... I figured SLASHDOT would be an okay place to pretend that comic book characters were real people.
I couldn't do something stupid like say Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, or Peter Parker worked with me. Those names are too "famous" and sellout wannabe's would be able to get the joke.
No, my joke could only be appreciated by someone with a minimum level of nerd to them, or in this case, someone with a minimal amount of sleuthing skills (IE: google the names).
I thought it would be OBVIOUS as a joke seeing as all the "factual" people and places were made up with the same theme.
Oh well, I'm happy to see that some people were amused:-)
But don't most "hobbiest" or "enthusiasts" or "people who build their own computer", shop around? I mean if you have the common sense enough to build your own computer, then you're doing it because you know you'll save money. It's been long known that you get "more bang for the buck" from AMD, so this just seems like something that is becoming more of a mainstream "known".
People still buy from Dell, but more and more people are building their own systems, or having someone build one for them.
Now for people to argue with me about how much "bang" you get for a "buck"....
Note: Take into account the amount of money saved through popular amd chipsets (IE: nforce). It's not a lot, but it is something. Plus you're cool because you have something your neighbors don't which is nearly priceless.
Bullhockey indeed. I too was brought in to start the design specifications and class role functions. I remember that meeting, HER name was Ororo Munroe and man did she have one hell of a stormy attitude. I didn't get three seperate offers, but I did manage to get a stock offer along with what at the time was a pretty decent salary.
They did video tape the presentation and it has been added to the microsoft underground archives at 1407 Graymalkin Lane. So much has been put away there, ideas that were deemed to "risky" but never allowed their creators to have because of non-compete and non-disclosure agreements. I remember my lawyer spent almost 8 hours going over my NDA and NCA before he even new what all I was agreeing to.
The POSIX design was needed for the certain government contracts, but don't forget the way that we managed to get the CMMI Level 5 before we even had a released product. The one thing that bothered me more than anything was the conversation they had 3 after the one you mentioned..
After getting the entire crew on board with the design specs and milestone timeline the NT CTO Erik Lehnsherr called a meeting of the respective heads. The delimna was the actual networking protocol, at the time there was NetBios, AppleTalk, and TCP/IP and they all pretty much sucked. We had some code from meeting the IEEE standards for IPv4, but the implementation was beyond ugly.
We ended up actually "borrowing" a lot of the code from FreeBSD. So I guess while the filesystem, operating structure, standard binary compliance, and pretty much everything else, NT did have POSIX compliance.
Did you ever work with Henry McCoy while he was there?
I was going to get tested for ADD, but that would take so long, not to mention I'd have to look up the place to get the test done, then have to go there, wait for them to administer the test, and then wait for the results.
I just don't have the attention span for that kind of commitment. Anyways, time to go find something else to post about...
I know I've stolen this from numerous comedians...
Even now, I have to keep my kids away from the video games in most movie theater lobbies because some of them are ridiculously violent--more violent than some of the crap on the movies playing there. I have to carefully watch what games are demoed at Toys-R-Us. I have to keep a close eye on what my kid sees on the covers of the game boxes.
Guess what... the world... is full of sex and violence. It's not just the video games, it's reality and teaching your kids to ignore the truth is sure going to help them grow up and be closed minded idiots... just like you.
Turning off the news, ignoring the papers, and putting your fingers in your ears while screaming *la la la la la la la la* does NOT, I repeat, DOES NOT, make the worlds problems go away. You think being a parent is hard? Try doing it in a country where you fight every day to make sure your children are fed and not raped everyday. What? Is your ivory tower too tall to realize that making sure your children don't see sex (something natural and not icky) and violence in a video game... that you fail to realize that parents around the world are making sure their children don't die of disease or war?
Feel lucky that your biggest worry is making sure your little brat doesn't see breasts or guns.
I guess I missed the fact that sex was a bad thing. You... among all people... should realize that SEX... is what made you a fucking parent.
I'm getting off topic here... forgive me. Children knowing things is not a bad thing. It's your job as a parent, to make sure that they're safe and that they are mentored. You help them to make sound decisions and to have a foundation to build from. Teaching them that the first thing they need to do is HIDE from things that they don't think are "appropriate" is a great lesson indeed.
It's hopless, you're just another stupid... parent.
This will get thrown out in court. These laws have been tried in Indiana, Missouri, and are now popping up in Illinois and California.
The problem is, that there is already judicial precedence on the issue.
Kendrick, Teri, et al. v. American Amusement Machine Association (docket no. 00-3643) Appeal: Cert. denied, Oct. 29, 2001.
Issues: Does an Indianapolis, Ind., law against minors playing violent video games in video parlors violate the First Amendment?
Summary: The ordinance forbids any operator of five or more video-game machines in one place to allow a minor unaccompanied by a parent, guardian, or other custodian to use "an amusement machine that is harmful to minors," requires appropriate warning signs, and requires that such machines be separated by a partition from the other machines in the location and that their viewing areas be concealed from persons who are on the other side of the partition. The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ordinance does violate the rights of those under 18 years of age. Judge Posner wrote the decision.
Decision: In denying the appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court makes no ruling on the merits of the law or the challenge to it. It merely means that the case could not get the minimum vote of four justices needed to hear the appeal. It also means that all similar laws in the jurisdiction of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals are void under that court's ruling.
The above is from http://fact.trib.com/1st.01.02supr.html... which is the denial of appeal when the Indianapolis city government was told their law was UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
So this is nothing new people. Ever since the ID brought us a world where we could literally kill and watch Nazi's die (even before that really). This has been an ongoing debate.
The one thing you MUST realize is that this is not a bill being pushed by the Right-Wing Conservative Nut Jobs (granted they aren't really all against it), this is being pushed by DEMOCRATS. You want to know who hates freedom of speech? Hillary Clinton, after the Columbine murders ordered the surgeon general to find a link between school shooting tragedies and Quake. He found no conclusive link, but that didn't stop her, Lieberman, and the rest of the gang from going hog wild trying to censor video games. I lean left politically, but you can bet your ass I don't agree with censorship.
Maybe I'll just keep making weekend rants ...
on
No Office Suite Google
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Here let me just go ahead and use a fake form...
What pissed me off about the article: Google co-founder Sergey Brin has quashed speculation that the giant ad broker is to introduce a web-based Office suite
Why did it piss me off: Because Google is not a giant ad broker?
Aight here's the deal, last week my issue was with google being the next MS-Killer... so this post is essentially right along those lines.
GOOGLE IS A COMPANY THAT DOES INTERNET APPLICATIONS MAINLY SEARCHING.
They're biggest competition is Yahoo, not microsoft. Let's see... what company started off mainly as a search engine, then became a portal, started offering services that other sites did (Like driving directions, email, instant messaging, newsgroups, etc)? It wasn't microsoft, it was Yahoo.
People you've absolutely killing me here. First off people are google fan boys for no real apparent reason, like apple, they are a company whos main concern is to make money and as much of it as possible.
Hence, they are no different from any other for-profit company out there. End of story, google is no less "the man" than microsoft is. They are a company traded on the stock market, they are in the business not to change the world, but to... let's here it... MAKE MONEY.
Anyways, I hope that they keep the airconditioning on in your ivory tower...
I'm just happy that I can turn off the google story topic when I don't want to see what ELSE is happening in the world. So I'm not really going to blame slashdot here... I think the only one to blame for all my hostility is me, for actually cruising the google stories during the weekends.
I actually just did the same. Purchased the whole t-shirt, button, sticker, and album package... it should be here by friday.
I figured I'd paste the email I sent to them as well...
Subject: Just wanted to say... thank you
From: SuperDuG To: management, publicity, webmaster
Hello to everyone!
I just want to say thank you for doing this. I'm currently hosting the torrent of the album in both ogg and mp3 format and I don't plan on shutting either of them down for at least the entire month of October. Along with that I also went ahead and bought the album, sticker, shirt, button package on the websites main page. The reason I'm making a point to tell you this is simple, I want to encourage this type of behavior. Lets just put it this way, I hope you start a trend.
This of course will go next to my other two Harvey Danger albums.
Way to go guys... great idea with the free download.
It goes pretty good for a birthday present... along with my EFF renewal:-)
Here's my problem. Well let me list my precursor problems first. 1.) Why is it that everytime someone writes some stupid story about google that it ends up on the front page? 2.) Why is google any more different than any other successful IT company? 3.) The search engine war is never EVER going to end.
Google is in no way shape or form a Microsoft company. Microsoft is a solid company that makes software, hardware, and a crap-ton of other things. They are not a "one really whizbang product" kind of company. I'm not an MS fan boy by any meas, but lets face facts here, MS is bigger, stronger, and richer than google. No questions asked, they are, period.
However, this brings up an interesting problem. Everyone thinks that MS is going to fail, but give them time, they have just recently announced that they plan to topple google. Let me remind everyone of some past MS "failures" and company's that "Couldn't be beat". Lets start out a little early...
*Cue the flashback music*
Remember when the PC was something that was really expensive and that no one really knew what to do with except it could be used as a fancy typewriter and play games? Remember when there were a few company's at the time (for this flashback we'll only acknowledge two) Microsoft and Apple. Apple was going to revolutionize the world with the MAC. Moral of the story... how many Mac's are there in comparison to PC's running windows?
*Cue more flashback music*
Remember when Mosaic and Navigator were the best kids on the block for viewing gopher:// and http:/// sites? Wow, those were the days. You had to pay for a copy of netscape... PAY FOR A BROWSER. Life was good, then Mosaic's IP got bought by this weird company called Microsoft. And... wouldn't you know it, they released Internet Explorer. Well one thing led to another and... Moral of the story... how many people use Internet Explorer now?
*Cue a Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the fire*
Now we find ourselves in the world of Office suite software. No longer is the office suite a word processor! No! In this world there is email, word processing, typesetting, flyer making, and who knows what else. Anyways There used to be this bastard of a product called Word Perfect (by bastard follow who all owned it... Novell Corel... etc) and then there was Microsoft Office. I'm not going to do anything catchy here, but lets face it, no one even really remember Word Perfect or Word Star or Star Office, or any of it. They use Microsoft Office...
*Cue the rest of We Didn't Start the Fire*
Remember when if you wanted a network server, you used Unix or Novel? (Again for arguments sake we'll focus on the big boys). Remember when MS announced it was going to be bigger than Unix and Novel? Remember when everyone was sure that there was no way to ever be bigger than any of the network operating solutions? How many NT/Server 2k0/3 are out there now?
*Cue something classical... Aerosmith perhaps*
Back to a generation some of you youngsters might remember. Remember when the three big players for video game consoles were Nintendo, Sega, and Sony? Remember who sold almost a comparable amount of X-Box's to the PS-2 (by year not in whole). Yup, Microsoft again.
What I'm getting at is this. If there's one thing Microsoft knows, it knows how to create a market for itself and give the market what it needs. When it wants to dedicate resources to taking something over, it does it, and it does it full out. The new MS search isn't really all that great right now, but lets just look at the facts...
Google has gmail, which is pretty popular. Microsoft has hotmail, which is more popular.
Google has gtalk (or whatever the hell its called). Microsoft has
You forget one particular thing. When you buy a CD, you're not only paying for the music on it, but the cost of that shiney jewel case, the insert, and the actual cost to ship it to the location where you bought it.
Therefore getting a copy digitally that does not require somoene to insert, package, wrap, and deliver. Take into account that and the actual cost of the material that is printed, wrapped, burned, and glued, and you'll realize that you're argument is flawed.
The cost of the music isn't all that goes into the cost of a CD.
Furthermore, find me a record label that doesn't turn a profit? This shit certainly isn't sold at cost.
Do I care that you feel comfortable paying the prices they charge? nope. But don't blow smoke up everyone's ass to justify your reasoning for paying for something everyone else is getting for free.
Essentially this is just a word of caution, Toshiba has in the past had faulty designs on overpriced hardware and screwed over the people who buy their products. I'm not just pulling this out of my ass, Toshiba claimed guilt on both of their laptop design class action law suits.
My biggest fear though is that this is just a ploy to knock the settlement figure down to a more acceptable level. The RIAA knows it can't save face and NOT sue the people they subpoena. That does not mean they can't convince you to settle their multimillion dollar lawsuit for a few bucks.
I hope they keep up and tell the RIAA where they can shove their lawsuit. All it will take is one judge to rule in favor of any one of these single mothers to set a JUDICIAL PRECEDENCE nullifying every other case the RIAA tries to file.
Now back to reality, this will probably not happen this way. I'm not saying that the right to download a song is the exact same as the right to die or right to chose what to do with your own body, but everyone knows that these lawsuits are rediculous.
I hope they stick with it until the end, through all the appeals... and win one for everyone. This is where we all knew that it would come down to. Whichever one of these cases actually makes it to court, will be the case that people refer to.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually was about to say that, but you beat me to it.
For those of you who think this is an April Fools Joke, please note, it's April 2nd somewhere in the world.
I wonder how many slashdot accounts, internet domains, and amazon accounts are linked via an @gmail.com address.
This is most certainly not a "little" problem by any means...
Forgive me for wondering, but if you feel the need to post how thinkgeek, newsforge, etc are all owned by your parent company in every story that comes from those (and the rest) of the sites. Then why don't you mention that this company may not be paying you, but did give you something to inspire you to talk about them so well on a website?
I guess I'm just lost here ... you want full disclosure, most of the time?
This thing is not a monster laptop, it's a portable all in one desktop that has a builtin ups (battery). It's not that cool (the price tag which you fail to mention this time around, is pretty high). All I ask is that if you want full disclosure, then practice what you preach...
Queue the flaimbait, off topic, redundant, etc mods.
Interface:
This release we've completely overhauled our old text-based arcane impossible to use installer and replaced it with a graphical installer. Accepting the fact that every computer sold today is designed to support an OS that has GUI support.
Plug and Play Autoconfiguration of peripherals and hardware:
Taking the cue from our linux counterparts, we've decided to autosense hardware like every other installer does. Now along with our graphical installer, we've provided a way to easily be able to just turn support for a specific piece of hardware on or off, with a simple easy to use GUI based control panel.
Support for exciting new ISO and IEEE Standards:
Support for USB 2.0 has finally arrived in OpenBSD, we weren't sure if this standard was going to catch on, so we've never ever provided support for it ever until now.
It's secure:
Like every release before it, it's one of the most, if not the most, secure operating system out there. If you don't take into account that our installer is insanely hard to use, rarely any major internet provider uses our operating system, and that no one really has ever wanted to take the time to actually write exploits for our wildly unpopular operating system, then we are certainly secure. Remember, it's BSD, which is like Unix, except its not.
any slashdot entry that starts with "Steve Jobs is the chief executive of two of the most powerful technology brands in the world: Apple and Pixar." is for sure, something I do not want to read. Why? Because I like my news and articles to be objective. If I wanted to read a fanboy article, I'd go read some blog/fake news source on the web (Ironic, you betcha).
I'm not sure exactly where the "Independent" stands, seeing as I don't live in the UK. But it disturbs me that I can't find in the begining or end of the article who wrote it. So we have an obvious piece of fan boy or advertisement posing as actual news.
You wouldn't believe this, but there are other technology companies out there than Microsoft, Apple, and Google. I don't mean nVidia, Intel, AMD, ATI, or Oracle either. There are straight up other innovative places out there.
I kind of miss the "Old Slashdot"(TM). You know, where we went crazy over linux running on something. Or where there was new speculative stories about ESR convincing more things to go open source. Or straight up cool hacks. Where is the halloween hack articles. Someone who managed to take the plates out of a harddrive and break the head to make an eeerry screeching noise. Or someone that lit their pumpkin with LED's...
Ohh well, I'm just old and bitter ... I'll go eat my rice pudding and read google news on my iMac running virtual pc.
Because, there's nothing threatening about a happy furry bunny that HELPS you ...
I'll have the marketting department get right on this.
I'm not sure which is worse ... the fact you thought this all the way out ... or the fact that you thought it all the way out and were then noted as insightful ...
There were 250 arrests and 20 people were hospitalized ... forgive me if I think you are a bit naive.
How about this Halloween you don't have RIOTS ??
Kudo's to Madison thought, I have a chance to park between Monona and Mendota everytime I go visit the folks. Downtown Wisconsin is actually a rather nice place to hang out with a lot of eateries, coffee shops, and "bars". Not to mention with UW Madison sitting in the heart of downtown as well, this network will see heavy useage.
While the idea of black holes, dark matter, etc seems intringing, it is still a lot of theory. It is nice to see that people haven't given up, but that's not to say that this article is just as much speculation as the next.
With that said, wouldn't it be nice to focus all of humanities efforts on answering the questions we don't yet know the answers for ... instead of killing each other? I know that we already have the answer, but 42 only answers the ultimate question, we can't even answer the simple things like "do black holes exist?"
Or am I missing some non-obvious shared characteristic?
I couldn't do something stupid like say Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, or Peter Parker worked with me. Those names are too "famous" and sellout wannabe's would be able to get the joke.
No, my joke could only be appreciated by someone with a minimum level of nerd to them, or in this case, someone with a minimal amount of sleuthing skills (IE: google the names).
I thought it would be OBVIOUS as a joke seeing as all the "factual" people and places were made up with the same theme.
Oh well, I'm happy to see that some people were amused :-)
People still buy from Dell, but more and more people are building their own systems, or having someone build one for them.
Now for people to argue with me about how much "bang" you get for a "buck" ....
Note: Take into account the amount of money saved through popular amd chipsets (IE: nforce). It's not a lot, but it is something. Plus you're cool because you have something your neighbors don't which is nearly priceless.
+2 points for knowing not only all the characters, but catching the address too ... NICE
They did video tape the presentation and it has been added to the microsoft underground archives at 1407 Graymalkin Lane. So much has been put away there, ideas that were deemed to "risky" but never allowed their creators to have because of non-compete and non-disclosure agreements. I remember my lawyer spent almost 8 hours going over my NDA and NCA before he even new what all I was agreeing to.
The POSIX design was needed for the certain government contracts, but don't forget the way that we managed to get the CMMI Level 5 before we even had a released product. The one thing that bothered me more than anything was the conversation they had 3 after the one you mentioned..
After getting the entire crew on board with the design specs and milestone timeline the NT CTO Erik Lehnsherr called a meeting of the respective heads. The delimna was the actual networking protocol, at the time there was NetBios, AppleTalk, and TCP/IP and they all pretty much sucked. We had some code from meeting the IEEE standards for IPv4, but the implementation was beyond ugly.
We ended up actually "borrowing" a lot of the code from FreeBSD. So I guess while the filesystem, operating structure, standard binary compliance, and pretty much everything else, NT did have POSIX compliance.
Did you ever work with Henry McCoy while he was there?
I just don't have the attention span for that kind of commitment. Anyways, time to go find something else to post about...
I know I've stolen this from numerous comedians ...
Guess what ... the world ... is full of sex and violence. It's not just the video games, it's reality and teaching your kids to ignore the truth is sure going to help them grow up and be closed minded idiots ... just like you.
Turning off the news, ignoring the papers, and putting your fingers in your ears while screaming *la la la la la la la la* does NOT, I repeat, DOES NOT, make the worlds problems go away. You think being a parent is hard? Try doing it in a country where you fight every day to make sure your children are fed and not raped everyday. What? Is your ivory tower too tall to realize that making sure your children don't see sex (something natural and not icky) and violence in a video game ... that you fail to realize that parents around the world are making sure their children don't die of disease or war?
Feel lucky that your biggest worry is making sure your little brat doesn't see breasts or guns.
I guess I missed the fact that sex was a bad thing. You ... among all people ... should realize that SEX ... is what made you a fucking parent.
I'm getting off topic here... forgive me. Children knowing things is not a bad thing. It's your job as a parent, to make sure that they're safe and that they are mentored. You help them to make sound decisions and to have a foundation to build from. Teaching them that the first thing they need to do is HIDE from things that they don't think are "appropriate" is a great lesson indeed.
It's hopless, you're just another stupid ... parent.
The problem is, that there is already judicial precedence on the issue.
The above is from http://fact.trib.com/1st.01.02supr.htmlAlso check here http://www.constitutioncenter.org/education/ForEdu cators/DiscussionStarters/BanningViolentVideoGames .shtml
and here http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers /walsh.html
So this is nothing new people. Ever since the ID brought us a world where we could literally kill and watch Nazi's die (even before that really). This has been an ongoing debate.
The one thing you MUST realize is that this is not a bill being pushed by the Right-Wing Conservative Nut Jobs (granted they aren't really all against it), this is being pushed by DEMOCRATS. You want to know who hates freedom of speech? Hillary Clinton, after the Columbine murders ordered the surgeon general to find a link between school shooting tragedies and Quake. He found no conclusive link, but that didn't stop her, Lieberman, and the rest of the gang from going hog wild trying to censor video games. I lean left politically, but you can bet your ass I don't agree with censorship.
Do what I did, I joined the EFF http://www.eff.org/ and joined the ACLU http://www.aclu.org/
Aight here's the deal, last week my issue was with google being the next MS-Killer ... so this post is essentially right along those lines.
GOOGLE IS A COMPANY THAT DOES INTERNET APPLICATIONS MAINLY SEARCHING.
They're biggest competition is Yahoo, not microsoft. Let's see ... what company started off mainly as a search engine, then became a portal, started offering services that other sites did (Like driving directions, email, instant messaging, newsgroups, etc)? It wasn't microsoft, it was Yahoo.
People you've absolutely killing me here. First off people are google fan boys for no real apparent reason, like apple, they are a company whos main concern is to make money and as much of it as possible.
Hence, they are no different from any other for-profit company out there. End of story, google is no less "the man" than microsoft is. They are a company traded on the stock market, they are in the business not to change the world, but to ... let's here it ... MAKE MONEY.
Anyways, I hope that they keep the airconditioning on in your ivory tower...
I'm just happy that I can turn off the google story topic when I don't want to see what ELSE is happening in the world. So I'm not really going to blame slashdot here... I think the only one to blame for all my hostility is me, for actually cruising the google stories during the weekends.
I figured I'd paste the email I sent to them as well...
It goes pretty good for a birthday present ... along with my EFF renewal :-)
Google is in no way shape or form a Microsoft company. Microsoft is a solid company that makes software, hardware, and a crap-ton of other things. They are not a "one really whizbang product" kind of company. I'm not an MS fan boy by any meas, but lets face facts here, MS is bigger, stronger, and richer than google. No questions asked, they are, period.
However, this brings up an interesting problem. Everyone thinks that MS is going to fail, but give them time, they have just recently announced that they plan to topple google. Let me remind everyone of some past MS "failures" and company's that "Couldn't be beat". Lets start out a little early ...
*Cue the flashback music*
Remember when the PC was something that was really expensive and that no one really knew what to do with except it could be used as a fancy typewriter and play games? Remember when there were a few company's at the time (for this flashback we'll only acknowledge two) Microsoft and Apple. Apple was going to revolutionize the world with the MAC. Moral of the story ... how many Mac's are there in comparison to PC's running windows?
*Cue more flashback music*
Remember when Mosaic and Navigator were the best kids on the block for viewing gopher:// and http:/// sites? Wow, those were the days. You had to pay for a copy of netscape ... PAY FOR A BROWSER. Life was good, then Mosaic's IP got bought by this weird company called Microsoft. And ... wouldn't you know it, they released Internet Explorer. Well one thing led to another and ... Moral of the story ... how many people use Internet Explorer now?
*Cue a Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the fire*
Now we find ourselves in the world of Office suite software. No longer is the office suite a word processor! No! In this world there is email, word processing, typesetting, flyer making, and who knows what else. Anyways There used to be this bastard of a product called Word Perfect (by bastard follow who all owned it ... Novell Corel ... etc) and then there was Microsoft Office. I'm not going to do anything catchy here, but lets face it, no one even really remember Word Perfect or Word Star or Star Office, or any of it. They use Microsoft Office ...
*Cue the rest of We Didn't Start the Fire*
Remember when if you wanted a network server, you used Unix or Novel? (Again for arguments sake we'll focus on the big boys). Remember when MS announced it was going to be bigger than Unix and Novel? Remember when everyone was sure that there was no way to ever be bigger than any of the network operating solutions? How many NT/Server 2k0/3 are out there now?
*Cue something classical ... Aerosmith perhaps*
Back to a generation some of you youngsters might remember. Remember when the three big players for video game consoles were Nintendo, Sega, and Sony? Remember who sold almost a comparable amount of X-Box's to the PS-2 (by year not in whole). Yup, Microsoft again.
What I'm getting at is this. If there's one thing Microsoft knows, it knows how to create a market for itself and give the market what it needs. When it wants to dedicate resources to taking something over, it does it, and it does it full out. The new MS search isn't really all that great right now, but lets just look at the facts ...
Google has gmail, which is pretty popular. Microsoft has hotmail, which is more popular.
Google has gtalk (or whatever the hell its called). Microsoft has
Therefore getting a copy digitally that does not require somoene to insert, package, wrap, and deliver. Take into account that and the actual cost of the material that is printed, wrapped, burned, and glued, and you'll realize that you're argument is flawed.
The cost of the music isn't all that goes into the cost of a CD.
Furthermore, find me a record label that doesn't turn a profit? This shit certainly isn't sold at cost.
Do I care that you feel comfortable paying the prices they charge? nope. But don't blow smoke up everyone's ass to justify your reasoning for paying for something everyone else is getting for free.
Music used to be about
Essentially this is just a word of caution, Toshiba has in the past had faulty designs on overpriced hardware and screwed over the people who buy their products. I'm not just pulling this out of my ass, Toshiba claimed guilt on both of their laptop design class action law suits.
I hope they keep up and tell the RIAA where they can shove their lawsuit. All it will take is one judge to rule in favor of any one of these single mothers to set a JUDICIAL PRECEDENCE nullifying every other case the RIAA tries to file.
Now back to reality, this will probably not happen this way. I'm not saying that the right to download a song is the exact same as the right to die or right to chose what to do with your own body, but everyone knows that these lawsuits are rediculous.
I hope they stick with it until the end, through all the appeals ... and win one for everyone. This is where we all knew that it would come down to. Whichever one of these cases actually makes it to court, will be the case that people refer to.
Lets just wait and see.