Why not respect the wishes of the authors who have been good enough to make the content available for free?
That is a good question. And indeed, this is a very generous offering (though I wonder if the authors still retain the copyright, or if it was assigned to CRC Press).
While the restrictions on redistribution, and personal use are reasonable in this context, it strikes me as rather absurd that I can't print out the chapters on individual sheets of paper, and place them in a single binder.
Perhaps, "binding" is meant in the traditional book-printing business, with sections, glue, and covers -- the idea being that if I want a book, I should buy the book. And, a professionally bound book suggests a strong intent to redistribute, in the same way that having multiple printed copies around might.
However, if the intent is to restrict holding the pages together in a manner that one might wish to do with other closely related pieces of paper that were otherwise obtained seperately (i.e. with a three ring-binder, or cheesy "do-it-yourself" plastic cover and hot glue binding), I think that is unreasonable, and as other have pointed out, probably not enforcable at law.
I personally feel we are continuing to provoke such things through our economic agenda, and that what bush's policy has been shortsighted and really retro-active. Others feel that the world climate is changing for the worst, and we simply need to start protecting ourselves more. What do you think?
Both.
When I was a small child, I was taught to not approach the cute little bear cubs that would sometimes wander close to my parent's vacation home in the spring time. Yes, it was our property, and yes, bears can be destructive, but the cub was doing what cubs do, which, in and of itself, was not harming anything. Mama bear, of course, was expected to be close behind.
So it is when dealing with the affairs of others. OBL attacked the U.S. ostensibly because of American presence in Saudi Arabia, which he repeatedly denounced.
Executive Summary: When your government, put in place either through your winning electoral choice, or your acceptance of a democratic process pisses someone off, you increase your risk of dying.
Right or wrong, heinous or noble, justified or not -- such words vulnerable to the winds of propaganda matter didly squat to your corpse rotting at the bottom of a pile of rubble.
So, you must chose carefully, those acts in which you, or your representatives engage, for you will be faced with the burden of defending against their consequences. This does not mean that one should cower and hide in the face of those who disagree with what you believe are your rights, but it does mean you should pick wisely when chosing what's worth risking death at the hands of those you enrage.
Somehow, I have a hard time believing any sane American who values his or her freedoms would accept that U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia were worth the loss of some 3000 lives or the liberty-suspending measures purported to to be able to prevent such a loss in the future.
Sometimes, it IS better to let the bully have his corner of the sandbox -- if you're willing to fight him lest he cross some arbitrary line in the dirt, let him pick the line and see if it is all that unreasonable. Then you can defend both your turf and the moral high ground.
P.S. You know, as an aside, I chuckle about the semantic hack OBL pulled: the U.S. can't declare "war" war against an individual, only a nation, and so can't legally muster the "war-mode" enabling powers it otherwise could. Yet it clearly faces a situation that any sane person would clearly interpret as an "act of war". Heh, doublespeak bites the usual government mouthpiece on the ass. I'll leave it to the gentle reader to decide whether that's adding insult to injury or poetic justice, dripping in bloody irony.
I didn't. mwjlewis, in the grandparent comment did, when s/he wrote: No one person could really use all this storage in a home/personal computing needs (THAT ARE LEGITMATE)
That's tantamount to saying that large hard disks are circumvention devices under the DMCA. And it wouldn't be too hard for an overzealous prosecutor to make that tortuous argument.
If such suggestions (i.e., large hard disks only have illegal uses) are allowed to go unchallenged, pretty soon you won't be able to own digital storage of arbitrary capacity. I think the DMCA is quite relevent when it comes to large hard disks, espescially when one of the arguments for deCSS not being a piracy tool was that no one would be able to afford the storage for unencrypted movies -- an argument that loses force with each technical advance.
...you said it's just like the Nazis and the Jews.
And that's a perfect example of the kind of ignorance and stupidity we face: someone who can't recognize an existance proof by example, in extremis.
The point being made, oh dim anonymous one, is that just because something is a law does not mean it has to be followed blindly: there exist laws which should not be followed. As with most existance proofs, it is usually involves a boundary condition -- in this case, an extreme socio-political situation.
The interesting question then becomes, if there is some law which should clearly not be followed because of the depravity it represents, are there less-depraved laws which should also not be followed? The implication is that there may be a line to be drawn. Given the existance of such a line, it stands to reason that debate of whether a particular law is on one side or the other of that line is worthwhile, and just becase there may be a more deprived law does not mean the answer is no. (By analogy, if this were case, rape would be legal because it was not murder, and murder would be legal because it was not genocide. Genocide, of course, is legal when the "other side" does not do it to you first. See where this goes? Not a nice place.)
Those that decry an activity simply because it is illegal need to learn that while the law can be a useful proxy for a moral compass, it is not an absolute one, and should be questioned. In fact, effective participation in a democracy almost demands that all laws be examined to determine who they benefit and who suffers by them. It is a sad state of apathy that hangs in the air when people only care about extreme laws.
If we don't want implants in our brain, no government on earth is going to put them in.
Yes, but until a supposed law requiring such implants is repealed (which means it no longer has force) or is declared unconstitutional (which means it never had force), disobeying it would be illegal.
Far too many people derive their moral compass from what is and is not illegal, and that is a dangerous trend when it comes to getting rid of bad law. Occasionally, the will of the people does require them to act illegally.
Good point, but I think that even if the public at large knew and understood all the implications of the DMCA, they wouldn't care. And if they did, the trend these days seams to be "...this law can't be that bad... that one's worse." So, they wouldn't complain if they did care.
It's probably fair to say, unlike those of us who are geeks and can imagine obvious uses to technology that would make our lives easier, more convenient, and just plain mor fun, the average Joe and Jane are totally clueless: denying them something they don't even know is possible does not seam like a great loss. The average person still thinks of content in terms of storage media (well, perhaps todays kids with MP3 players are more "with it", but they don't vote, er count, er, vote).
I brought up the extreme example I did for a reason: more and more, when I object to some bad legislation, the voting lemmings come out in droves and argue, "It can't be all that bad -- they aren't killing people, after all." The only merit that argument has is that, yes, there may be greater attrocities out there. But, fighting for the small freedoms, before they are lost altogether, makes it easier for organize and fight for the big ones. Freedom of speech, and assembly may be "little" freedoms, when compared to losing one's life, but with out them, and the ability to rally against a large common threat that they facilitate, one's life suddenly becomes a lot easier to lose. So is it too, with the freedom to maintain personal libraries -- the knowledge they contain can be frivolous enttertainment fluff, or historical documents.
Imagine a future where everything you learn is "the state", and can be erased with a mind DMCA implant (as someone else suggested). Me, I uh kinda want to be able to backup what I know, ya know.
No one person could really use all this storage in a home/personal computing needs (THAT ARE LEGITMATE)
Ahem.
Traditional fair use archives of digital entertainment? Like movies and music? I want a home server with all my CDs and DVDs archived on it so I can send the data to thin-clients around the house, like STBs. 160 GB barely is enough for my CD collection, and boy, do DVDs fill up a disk quick!
To argue that this is wrong because of defeating the DVD CSS in a DMCA-defying act is like arguing it's suddenly O.K. to roast Jews because Nazis in power passed a law saying so. (Yes, yes, Godwin's Law, and the concentration camps' purpose was somewhat hidden from the populace, so the analogy isn't perfect). The point is just because something is a law does not mean that disobeying it is wrong, or that obeying it is right. I provide a proof, in extremis, by example. Because this is possible it is reasonable to question whether any law is correct to follow or moraly bankrupt. Extreme and less extreme laws differ only in the difficulty of answering that question, and not whether it should be asked.
The DMCA, in many ways, is a horribly insidious law: it sets the precendent that something that can be used to harm is now illegal. I'd venture that anything can be used to cause another harm. The DMCA sets to stage for rendering all activity illegal, at the whim of prosecution and judge. Well, fuck, if everything is now illegal, I've got a lot less incentive to care if I obey the law -- obedience to arbitrary law suddenly becomes a very weak proxy for a moral compass.
The kind of person who thinks something should be enforced "just because" it is the law, is the same kind of person that stands around when innocent people are killed by the state. Not the kind of person I want standing near me.
I like the Greens and the Libertarians, I work with those folks on issues, but I don't think that my promoting their individual parties should take precedence over my achieving actual change. That might happen better through a major party
As well as it happened via a major computer manfacturer? Somehow I thought you smarter than setting yourself up to make the same mistake twice.
About the only thing this achieves, when a celebrity of sorts gets canned, is illustrate the hypocricy of the organization that welcomed him with open arms as a PR stunt -- that's no news to the savvy free/open source disciple, but may sway naive members of the public at large, for a while, until their short attention spans return them to their ignorant bliss. But, after too many firings, large organizations will no longer see a PR benefit in hiring non-corruptible open source advocates, and your only avenue will be smaller outfits that do not (yet) put profit ahead of principle. Obviously, self-employment (contracting) fits this definition.
Free software has always been about people helping each other such that others can't benefit from their efforts without contributing themselves. Open software allows for such free-loading benefits and can help to entrench it's use in profit-minded organizations. Both of these social philosophies are disruptive to profit ventures based on restricted access to code and data formats(i.e. Microsoft). Ultimately, I think that the age of mass-market closed-source software will disappear, and the profit potential with it -- too many geeks will band together to solve the common problems with an open/free solution. The only countering force would be legislation making this illegal (and we are starting to see this) -- but, if history is any guide, oppressive laws delay, but do not eliminate, social change.
But, unlike a better widget that "does more", and does not render the old-fashioned widget obsolete (because it still does "enough", and cheaper, you can't market closed and open/free software that does the same thing to different target markets: you will be robbing Peter to pay Paul, and likely piss off Peter's friends. So, if HP wants to embrace the future, while still milking the profitable teat of the past, they'd have to open source things that Windows does not provide: device drivers for printers, perhaps, or at least provide specs so others could do this. Even that, might get Microsoft angry because it demonstrates a commitment to the merits of a competing philosophy (i.e. you can't sell Coke and diet Pepsi at the same restaurant).
I've gone a bit off topic here, but the notion that you can evangelize about this particular disruptive social/technological force within old-guard organizations to get them to adapt faster, is, IMHO, a mistake.
For the sake of his child, I hope his adversarial ways don't prevent him from meeting his parental obligations.
As the father of a two (and nine) year old, and a free software advocate, I can see the conflict of interests here: do you sacrifice short-term comfort for long term principles, when it affects other people, particularly, one's offspring? I suspect being in a position to have to make that choice is one reason that RMS does not want children,... or a mortgage,... or the usual trappings of a comfortable life.
One should always try to stick up for a principled stand, as much as possible, and not put one's self in situations where that has to be compromised. When finding one's self having to compromise one's principles so one can feed, clothe, and house one's family, one should try to get away from that situation, as fast as possible.
I vaguely remember some famous speech about "chains resting lightly" and chosing "death" over the loss of "liberty"... some guy by the name of Henry, I think.
While we are not all so free, noble, or principled, as old PH, that does not mean we should not heed his words and strive to live by them.
... er, I wasn't going to look at it long enuf to decide how old she appeared... at least not at work.
Re:With enough storage, Chess could be solved too.
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 2
Ah! So his opponent erred by forcing him into a position where he wasn't in check, yet could not move without putting himself into check. This would have been silly if it happened on the promotion, and not a later move.
Re:With enough storage, Chess could be solved too.
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 2
Once I had an opponent cause a stalemate by promoting his pawn to a queen; if he had chosen a rook instead, he would have won.
Eh?
And, what attack pattern can a rook offer that a queen can't?
I suppose that a rook can castle, but not if moved from it's home square. Hmm, does this mean that a pawn promoted to a rook, returned to a rook's home square, can castle? I'd think not since the rook that was there was already moved.
The cabling will cost me less then $100.00, probably including all of the tooling that I will need. The boxes for the wall jacks, might run around $100.00 or so, with the faceplates
Er, a good modular crimping tool (i.e. Greenlee) will set you back US$50 alone, as will a 110/66 block punch-down tool (for the headend). A spare blade for the punch (they usually include a 110 or 1 66 but not both, and Murphy says they'll come with a 66 when you want a 110), is around US$15.
When I installed faceplates and connectors (Cat5, RJ14, 2xRG6/U), it came to about $20 a plate -- I installed 8. Headend stuff was about $20 for 110 blocks, and modular panels (each, not total). Figure $75 for Leviton wall-mount enclosures. I went through 2000 feet of Cat5e ($200) and RG6/U ($200) cable.
Don't get discouraged, but do realize that you should probably look at US$1000 to do things on the cheap (and that does not include the cost of a router/firewall, satellite multiswitch, RF-amps, etc.)
I have a nice Sony WEGA Trinitron TV in the living room. I am also wiring the whole house for CAT-5. My plans include having a central "Media Server" to house all my music files.
You and me both.
Well, in my case it's a Sony HDTV-ready set (though still 4:3 'cause there's so little 16:9 HD stuff broadcast), I have wired the whole house with 2xCat5e and 2xRG6/U, and I too want a central media server, though for movies as well as music (I have about 160 GB of the latter, unompressed). Yes, I have the obligatory DirectTV system with 18"x24" dish and twin dual LNBs, 5x8 multiswitch at the headend, and a terrestrial HD/SD/analog antenna.
I've looked at GCT Allwell'siDVD3036 for a local quiet thin client for an application similar to yours, but there are a few problems, not the least of which is the poor GNU/Linux support for the Sigma Designs em8400 H/W MPEG2 decoder and CyberPro 5005 graphics chip. A proprietary library for the em8400 is available, as well as proprietary X drivers for the CyberPro, but the latter doesn't handle digital overlays and alphablending very well. Register-level documentation is available for both chips, but I lack sufficient video graphics card architecture knowledge to make much sense of it without some kind of tutorial context. About the only nice thing about that combo is the use of digital CCIR601 overlay ports on the CyberPro for the output of the em8400 (and a TV tuner) -- this avoids loss of sharpness due to a more common analog overlay.
Now, what makes this system interesting, is the use of more standard video and the availabiliy of a PCI slot: one could drop a Sigma Designs Netstream 2k in there, and analog overlay the X output. You also get stock composite, svideo, and component outputs from the em8400 directly, so, using multiple inputs on the TV, and an SVGA to svideo converter, go between displaying an X display with a scaled PIP live video image and a full-screen video image, with better resolution (or just get a TV with SVGA-in).
Of course, replacing the slim-line CD drive with a DVD drive, and swapping out the HDD for a DOC would probably be called for.
This leaves the issue of streaming data to the box: does it sport on-board 100 Mb/s ethernet?
The first computer I got to play with (other than via a teletype and 110 baud acoustic-coupled modem) was an Altair 8008.
I built a cassette interface, and a program to load and store programs from the digital tape drives (5120 baud!) on a TI Silent-700 terminal, via a serial port. This was around December of 1975. I was 14 years old at the time.
It let one terminal monitor (and, with version 3.x, capture) the output of another (and feed it input), with terminal control translation. That was my dirty work, as a hack, for Udisco, Ltd. (an Alpha Micro dealer), waaaaay back.
Maybe it was just that the first computer that I ever had had only 500 megs of hard drive space
Heh.
The first hard drive I had, on loan, mind you, had 10 Megabytes of space. I was the size of a small beer fridge, weighed 300 pounds, dimmed the lights when it spun up (which took about a minute), sounded like a jet taking off, and cost about $10,000 (which is why I had it on loan).
It sported TWO 5 megabyte platters: one fixed and one removable -- 14" diameter, IIRC. I remember that CDC Hawk well.
It went well with the Alpha Micro computer, portable teletype, two terminals, and a 300 baud Smart Modem that also occupied my room.
Back in the day, when I used Clearcase with Linux (c. 1999-2001), our Sun boxes were set up to make Clearcase views visible as NFS-mounted directories. No shmancy proprietary MVFS-hacked Linux. We used Multisite without any problems, either.
Now, it's true that one had to handle checkins and checkouts from a Sun box, but, as the build farms mounted the exported views read-only, what's the big deal? Is it really necessary to integrate the source control system that tightly with the Linux-based development environment?
At one time, subscription recordings were common, particularly for classical works: money would be raised, a particular orchestra hired, and a recording produced, for the benefit of the subscribers. If insufficient money was raised, the bulk was returned, less organizational expenses, and the recording not made.
Do you see a possibility of a return to subscription recordings, for currently relatively obscure artists that make a name for themselves by offering free samples of their music on-line, to establish their reputations, if the recording industry's lock on distribution were to be diminished?
Slashdot Uncertainty Principle: The product of the relative error in a Slashdot post with a mathematical result, and the likelihood of it being first is a constant.
subject says it all... speed of sound = 1100 f/s, so 5500 f/s in 15 s = 1100 f/s in 3 s = 367 f/s^2.
10 Gs would be 322 f/s^s. Close enuf. Increased accuracy is welcome.
Slashdot Mirror
That is a good question. And indeed, this is a very generous offering (though I wonder if the authors still retain the copyright, or if it was assigned to CRC Press).
While the restrictions on redistribution, and personal use are reasonable in this context, it strikes me as rather absurd that I can't print out the chapters on individual sheets of paper, and place them in a single binder.
Perhaps, "binding" is meant in the traditional book-printing business, with sections, glue, and covers -- the idea being that if I want a book, I should buy the book. And, a professionally bound book suggests a strong intent to redistribute, in the same way that having multiple printed copies around might.
However, if the intent is to restrict holding the pages together in a manner that one might wish to do with other closely related pieces of paper that were otherwise obtained seperately (i.e. with a three ring-binder, or cheesy "do-it-yourself" plastic cover and hot glue binding), I think that is unreasonable, and as other have pointed out, probably not enforcable at law.
I think that's a rather harsh, and practically unenforcable, restruction.
Both.
When I was a small child, I was taught to not approach the cute little bear cubs that would sometimes wander close to my parent's vacation home in the spring time. Yes, it was our property, and yes, bears can be destructive, but the cub was doing what cubs do, which, in and of itself, was not harming anything. Mama bear, of course, was expected to be close behind.
So it is when dealing with the affairs of others. OBL attacked the U.S. ostensibly because of American presence in Saudi Arabia, which he repeatedly denounced.
Executive Summary: When your government, put in place either through your winning electoral choice, or your acceptance of a democratic process pisses someone off, you increase your risk of dying.
Right or wrong, heinous or noble, justified or not -- such words vulnerable to the winds of propaganda matter didly squat to your corpse rotting at the bottom of a pile of rubble.
So, you must chose carefully, those acts in which you, or your representatives engage, for you will be faced with the burden of defending against their consequences. This does not mean that one should cower and hide in the face of those who disagree with what you believe are your rights, but it does mean you should pick wisely when chosing what's worth risking death at the hands of those you enrage.
Somehow, I have a hard time believing any sane American who values his or her freedoms would accept that U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia were worth the loss of some 3000 lives or the liberty-suspending measures purported to to be able to prevent such a loss in the future.
Sometimes, it IS better to let the bully have his corner of the sandbox -- if you're willing to fight him lest he cross some arbitrary line in the dirt, let him pick the line and see if it is all that unreasonable. Then you can defend both your turf and the moral high ground.
P.S. You know, as an aside, I chuckle about the semantic hack OBL pulled: the U.S. can't declare "war" war against an individual, only a nation, and so can't legally muster the "war-mode" enabling powers it otherwise could. Yet it clearly faces a situation that any sane person would clearly interpret as an "act of war". Heh, doublespeak bites the usual government mouthpiece on the ass. I'll leave it to the gentle reader to decide whether that's adding insult to injury or poetic justice, dripping in bloody irony.
That's tantamount to saying that large hard disks are circumvention devices under the DMCA. And it wouldn't be too hard for an overzealous prosecutor to make that tortuous argument.
If such suggestions (i.e., large hard disks only have illegal uses) are allowed to go unchallenged, pretty soon you won't be able to own digital storage of arbitrary capacity. I think the DMCA is quite relevent when it comes to large hard disks, espescially when one of the arguments for deCSS not being a piracy tool was that no one would be able to afford the storage for unencrypted movies -- an argument that loses force with each technical advance.
And that's a perfect example of the kind of ignorance and stupidity we face: someone who can't recognize an existance proof by example, in extremis.
The point being made, oh dim anonymous one, is that just because something is a law does not mean it has to be followed blindly: there exist laws which should not be followed. As with most existance proofs, it is usually involves a boundary condition -- in this case, an extreme socio-political situation.
The interesting question then becomes, if there is some law which should clearly not be followed because of the depravity it represents, are there less-depraved laws which should also not be followed? The implication is that there may be a line to be drawn. Given the existance of such a line, it stands to reason that debate of whether a particular law is on one side or the other of that line is worthwhile, and just becase there may be a more deprived law does not mean the answer is no. (By analogy, if this were case, rape would be legal because it was not murder, and murder would be legal because it was not genocide. Genocide, of course, is legal when the "other side" does not do it to you first. See where this goes? Not a nice place.)
Those that decry an activity simply because it is illegal need to learn that while the law can be a useful proxy for a moral compass, it is not an absolute one, and should be questioned. In fact, effective participation in a democracy almost demands that all laws be examined to determine who they benefit and who suffers by them. It is a sad state of apathy that hangs in the air when people only care about extreme laws.
Yes, but until a supposed law requiring such implants is repealed (which means it no longer has force) or is declared unconstitutional (which means it never had force), disobeying it would be illegal.
Far too many people derive their moral compass from what is and is not illegal, and that is a dangerous trend when it comes to getting rid of bad law. Occasionally, the will of the people does require them to act illegally.
Good point, but I think that even if the public at large knew and understood all the implications of the DMCA, they wouldn't care. And if they did, the trend these days seams to be "...this law can't be that bad... that one's worse." So, they wouldn't complain if they did care.
It's probably fair to say, unlike those of us who are geeks and can imagine obvious uses to technology that would make our lives easier, more convenient, and just plain mor fun, the average Joe and Jane are totally clueless: denying them something they don't even know is possible does not seam like a great loss. The average person still thinks of content in terms of storage media (well, perhaps todays kids with MP3 players are more "with it", but they don't vote, er count, er, vote).
I brought up the extreme example I did for a reason: more and more, when I object to some bad legislation, the voting lemmings come out in droves and argue, "It can't be all that bad -- they aren't killing people, after all." The only merit that argument has is that, yes, there may be greater attrocities out there. But, fighting for the small freedoms, before they are lost altogether, makes it easier for organize and fight for the big ones. Freedom of speech, and assembly may be "little" freedoms, when compared to losing one's life, but with out them, and the ability to rally against a large common threat that they facilitate, one's life suddenly becomes a lot easier to lose. So is it too, with the freedom to maintain personal libraries -- the knowledge they contain can be frivolous enttertainment fluff, or historical documents.
Imagine a future where everything you learn is "the state", and can be erased with a mind DMCA implant (as someone else suggested). Me, I uh kinda want to be able to backup what I know, ya know.
Ahem.
Traditional fair use archives of digital entertainment? Like movies and music? I want a home server with all my CDs and DVDs archived on it so I can send the data to thin-clients around the house, like STBs. 160 GB barely is enough for my CD collection, and boy, do DVDs fill up a disk quick!
To argue that this is wrong because of defeating the DVD CSS in a DMCA-defying act is like arguing it's suddenly O.K. to roast Jews because Nazis in power passed a law saying so. (Yes, yes, Godwin's Law, and the concentration camps' purpose was somewhat hidden from the populace, so the analogy isn't perfect). The point is just because something is a law does not mean that disobeying it is wrong, or that obeying it is right. I provide a proof, in extremis, by example. Because this is possible it is reasonable to question whether any law is correct to follow or moraly bankrupt. Extreme and less extreme laws differ only in the difficulty of answering that question, and not whether it should be asked.
The DMCA, in many ways, is a horribly insidious law: it sets the precendent that something that can be used to harm is now illegal. I'd venture that anything can be used to cause another harm. The DMCA sets to stage for rendering all activity illegal, at the whim of prosecution and judge. Well, fuck, if everything is now illegal, I've got a lot less incentive to care if I obey the law -- obedience to arbitrary law suddenly becomes a very weak proxy for a moral compass.
The kind of person who thinks something should be enforced "just because" it is the law, is the same kind of person that stands around when innocent people are killed by the state. Not the kind of person I want standing near me.
As well as it happened via a major computer manfacturer? Somehow I thought you smarter than setting yourself up to make the same mistake twice.
About the only thing this achieves, when a celebrity of sorts gets canned, is illustrate the hypocricy of the organization that welcomed him with open arms as a PR stunt -- that's no news to the savvy free/open source disciple, but may sway naive members of the public at large, for a while, until their short attention spans return them to their ignorant bliss. But, after too many firings, large organizations will no longer see a PR benefit in hiring non-corruptible open source advocates, and your only avenue will be smaller outfits that do not (yet) put profit ahead of principle. Obviously, self-employment (contracting) fits this definition.
Free software has always been about people helping each other such that others can't benefit from their efforts without contributing themselves. Open software allows for such free-loading benefits and can help to entrench it's use in profit-minded organizations. Both of these social philosophies are disruptive to profit ventures based on restricted access to code and data formats(i.e. Microsoft). Ultimately, I think that the age of mass-market closed-source software will disappear, and the profit potential with it -- too many geeks will band together to solve the common problems with an open/free solution. The only countering force would be legislation making this illegal (and we are starting to see this) -- but, if history is any guide, oppressive laws delay, but do not eliminate, social change.
But, unlike a better widget that "does more", and does not render the old-fashioned widget obsolete (because it still does "enough", and cheaper, you can't market closed and open/free software that does the same thing to different target markets: you will be robbing Peter to pay Paul, and likely piss off Peter's friends. So, if HP wants to embrace the future, while still milking the profitable teat of the past, they'd have to open source things that Windows does not provide: device drivers for printers, perhaps, or at least provide specs so others could do this. Even that, might get Microsoft angry because it demonstrates a commitment to the merits of a competing philosophy (i.e. you can't sell Coke and diet Pepsi at the same restaurant).
I've gone a bit off topic here, but the notion that you can evangelize about this particular disruptive social/technological force within old-guard organizations to get them to adapt faster, is, IMHO, a mistake.
As the father of a two (and nine) year old, and a free software advocate, I can see the conflict of interests here: do you sacrifice short-term comfort for long term principles, when it affects other people, particularly, one's offspring? I suspect being in a position to have to make that choice is one reason that RMS does not want children, ... or a mortgage, ... or the usual trappings of a comfortable life.
One should always try to stick up for a principled stand, as much as possible, and not put one's self in situations where that has to be compromised. When finding one's self having to compromise one's principles so one can feed, clothe, and house one's family, one should try to get away from that situation, as fast as possible.
I vaguely remember some famous speech about "chains resting lightly" and chosing "death" over the loss of "liberty"... some guy by the name of Henry, I think.
While we are not all so free, noble, or principled, as old PH, that does not mean we should not heed his words and strive to live by them.
... er, I wasn't going to look at it long enuf to decide how old she appeared... at least not at work.
Ah! So his opponent erred by forcing him into a position where he wasn't in check, yet could not move without putting himself into check. This would have been silly if it happened on the promotion, and not a later move.
Eh?
And, what attack pattern can a rook offer that a queen can't?
I suppose that a rook can castle, but not if moved from it's home square. Hmm, does this mean that a pawn promoted to a rook, returned to a rook's home square, can castle? I'd think not since the rook that was there was already moved.
Er, a good modular crimping tool (i.e. Greenlee) will set you back US$50 alone, as will a 110/66 block punch-down tool (for the headend). A spare blade for the punch (they usually include a 110 or 1 66 but not both, and Murphy says they'll come with a 66 when you want a 110), is around US$15.
When I installed faceplates and connectors (Cat5, RJ14, 2xRG6/U), it came to about $20 a plate -- I installed 8. Headend stuff was about $20 for 110 blocks, and modular panels (each, not total). Figure $75 for Leviton wall-mount enclosures. I went through 2000 feet of Cat5e ($200) and RG6/U ($200) cable.
Don't get discouraged, but do realize that you should probably look at US$1000 to do things on the cheap (and that does not include the cost of a router/firewall, satellite multiswitch, RF-amps, etc.)
You and me both.
Well, in my case it's a Sony HDTV-ready set (though still 4:3 'cause there's so little 16:9 HD stuff broadcast), I have wired the whole house with 2xCat5e and 2xRG6/U, and I too want a central media server, though for movies as well as music (I have about 160 GB of the latter, unompressed). Yes, I have the obligatory DirectTV system with 18"x24" dish and twin dual LNBs, 5x8 multiswitch at the headend, and a terrestrial HD/SD/analog antenna.
I've looked at GCT Allwell's iDVD3036 for a local quiet thin client for an application similar to yours, but there are a few problems, not the least of which is the poor GNU/Linux support for the Sigma Designs em8400 H/W MPEG2 decoder and CyberPro 5005 graphics chip. A proprietary library for the em8400 is available, as well as proprietary X drivers for the CyberPro, but the latter doesn't handle digital overlays and alphablending very well. Register-level documentation is available for both chips, but I lack sufficient video graphics card architecture knowledge to make much sense of it without some kind of tutorial context. About the only nice thing about that combo is the use of digital CCIR601 overlay ports on the CyberPro for the output of the em8400 (and a TV tuner) -- this avoids loss of sharpness due to a more common analog overlay.
Now, what makes this system interesting, is the use of more standard video and the availabiliy of a PCI slot: one could drop a Sigma Designs Netstream 2k in there, and analog overlay the X output. You also get stock composite, svideo, and component outputs from the em8400 directly, so, using multiple inputs on the TV, and an SVGA to svideo converter, go between displaying an X display with a scaled PIP live video image and a full-screen video image, with better resolution (or just get a TV with SVGA-in).
Of course, replacing the slim-line CD drive with a DVD drive, and swapping out the HDD for a DOC would probably be called for.
This leaves the issue of streaming data to the box: does it sport on-board 100 Mb/s ethernet?
I built a cassette interface, and a program to load and store programs from the digital tape drives (5120 baud!) on a TI Silent-700 terminal, via a serial port. This was around December of 1975. I was 14 years old at the time.
It let one terminal monitor (and, with version 3.x, capture) the output of another (and feed it input), with terminal control translation. That was my dirty work, as a hack, for Udisco, Ltd. (an Alpha Micro dealer), waaaaay back.
Heh.
The first hard drive I had, on loan, mind you, had 10 Megabytes of space. I was the size of a small beer fridge, weighed 300 pounds, dimmed the lights when it spun up (which took about a minute), sounded like a jet taking off, and cost about $10,000 (which is why I had it on loan).
It sported TWO 5 megabyte platters: one fixed and one removable -- 14" diameter, IIRC. I remember that CDC Hawk well.
It went well with the Alpha Micro computer, portable teletype, two terminals, and a 300 baud Smart Modem that also occupied my room.
'Course, that was way back in 1982.
Am I the only one that thinks this is analogous to frog-compatible fish?
Now, it's true that one had to handle checkins and checkouts from a Sun box, but, as the build farms mounted the exported views read-only, what's the big deal? Is it really necessary to integrate the source control system that tightly with the Linux-based development environment?
IIRC, we had that problem at a former place of employment once.
Do you see a possibility of a return to subscription recordings, for currently relatively obscure artists that make a name for themselves by offering free samples of their music on-line, to establish their reputations, if the recording industry's lock on distribution were to be diminished?
Er, the people that pay for the software so used? That is, the taxpayers, perhaps?
Slashdot Uncertainty Principle: The product of the relative error in a Slashdot post with a mathematical result, and the likelihood of it being first is a constant.
subject says it all... speed of sound = 1100 f/s, so 5500 f/s in 15 s = 1100 f/s in 3 s = 367 f/s^2. 10 Gs would be 322 f/s^s. Close enuf. Increased accuracy is welcome.