Huh, I stand corrected. I wonder on what basis they're going after people if they don't have the backing of the original copyright holder? I mean, it's not like I could just start suing people for trading mp3s, could I?
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
A quibble: they're not really self-appointed, they're getting paid by the RIAA, MPAA, etc. Apparently not enough, though, if they're going out of business. It's not like there aren't enough IP violations out there to keep them going:)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
But filtering software for adults isn't needed, and even where and when filtering software might be a good idea, it shouldn't be done by the state and it shouldn't be implemented in a way that makes the 'net kid-friendly even for adults.. Making things kid-friendly for kids is a parent's job.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
First off, I don't see why the culture of the 'net shouldn't belong to those who were there first. In any other sort of society, cultural parameters are defined by the first people on the scene. I venture to say that never has a influx of newcomers so quickly wrenched a society away from its original norms of behavior.
Second, I don't mind sharing the 'net, but I mind when people move in and think they can take it over. The early-adopter scientific community was always happy to share with newcomers and explain how things are done, but the new folks didn't want any part of the existing culture, and they are now trying to force the old guard to submit to their new narrow-minded mold. The 'net wasn't for kids, it still mostly isn't, and adults are the people getting hurt in this attempt to rewrite the rules.
Gentrification's OK sometimes, until they tell you that you can't park your truck on the street any more. At that point it's not sharing any more; it's a land grab.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
This isn't directed at you personally, but more as a general question: when did the Internet become expected to be a big kid-friendly space, full of rounded corners, cushiony floor mats, easy-to-grip building blocks, and nonthreatening ideas? The 'net was originally a batchelor pad for scientists - they did work over it, and they had fun over it, often fairly adult fun. Almost from the start the biggest electronic business on the 'net has been pornography and other adult-themed content that you can't get as easily in Real Life.
I'm always a little surprised that the newer, more easily-offended netizens react in this way. You've essentially moved into someone else's neighborhood, and now you're going to make the clean it up whether they like it like that or not? It seems like there's a strong streak of moral superiority and just plain yuppiehood involved here, one that residents of San Francisco, or any other area where the cheap historic districts are attracting new money at a record rate, will recognize.
Put plainly: where did you get the idea that the 'net was kid-friendly, that it was somehow going to become kid-friendly once you got on board, or that it was ever kid-friendly to begin with? Maybe you got online thinking that it was like the town square, but the 'net is really a bunch of twisty little passages (all alike) through the world's biggest library - you never know what you'll find in there. I'm sorry if AOL or Earthlink fooled you on that one, but you should really take that up with them, and leave the rest of us to our porn.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Well, that's just NASA funding though, those states will still get other federal funding for roads, health programs, etc. The total will be more than 6%.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Fair enough. I guess I assumed that it would be quicker to click through the initial install than it would be to whip out a script, but I guess it's possible that the script would be quicker in some cases.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
It may depend more on your hardware than anything. Both the Debian text-console install and the two Mandrake graphical installs I've had to do gave me a functional system at the end. These were on a hand-assembled PC without any custom or even particularly advanced hardware. Now after I started tweaking things it didn't *stay* functional, but that's another story...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Why should you go to the trouble of writing a script for one install? Sure, as a guru you could do so, but it would be wasted effort if you know you're only going to do it once. There's no point in unnecessarily proving your guruhood. The easiest way for even a guru to do a single install would be for the installer to ask all the questions up front during the normal install process, and then go off on its own for 45 minutes and do the install. Having to write a script to do a perfectly stock install prior just to get the installer to work the way that it logically should in the first place is the Wrong Way, IMHO.
Admitted, I'm not a W2K guru. But this is a good example why - your choices are doing it the easy consumer way, or the exactly one expert way that Microsoft has provided. Since there is an expert way to do it, there's no impetus to make the normal user way easier to use. Windows just seems to put too many illogical constraints on me for it to ever feel comfortable as a system I could really work with.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
I agree that some knowledge of computer internals would be advantageous for someone installing their own OS, at least a (purportedly) business-class OS like W2K. But there's no reason to make things any more difficult than they have to be. Knowledge of boot partitions and installed hardware is a reasonable headache to have to live with, babysitting the installer for 45 minutes, when you could have answered all the questions up front and done something else with your time, is not a reasonable headache. There's no added level of guru-ship to be demonstrated by having to shepherd the install step-by-step.
Especially since even Linux installs work better than that (and have for a while).
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Re:Your use of "Liberal Myth" is a generalization
on
OSX/Win2K Deathmatch
·
· Score: 1
So the Nazis didn't make any global generalizations? How about that whole "Aryan superiority" thing? Wasn't that a generalization?
The original poster was just trolling with the "liberal" reference, and your hint hasn't made things any more clear.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
The real humor is that some moderators didn't recognize this as a well-known non sequitur and marked it "Informative". Next time you may have to actually include the smiley to help out some of our "special" moderators...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
You might be OK in two cases: either your mail wasn't commercial in nature, or else if you labeled it as requested by the law. In practice your emails wouldn't really be anonymous political speech anyway, unless you used a chain of anonymizing remailers. And I imagine most of those have strict controls over the quantity of spam you can send specifically to ward off spammers.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
The difference is that a pack of wolves won't always cooperate if they perceive their interests to differ, but the different arms of Microsoft will of course always cooperate to help each other. Microsoft is more like the tentacles of an octopus than a pack of wolves.
It's really not so much that Microsoft is a monopoly in various markets that is illegal; mere possession of a monopoly could come about by a variety of legal means. However, once you are a monopoly, there are stricter standards on your actions in the interest of maintaining a competitive market in the interests of society as a whole. Using monopoly power in one market to create a new monopoly in a different market is a powerful way to destroy competition, which is why those actions are illegal. It doesn't matter whether your competition is very capable or not; since they lack the power of multiple market monopolies, they're no match for you as new markets open up.
In the true Darwinian sense, the monopoly would of course expand (like the pack of wolves), until eventually it destroys its business ecosystem (eats all the game), and everything dies back (famine) until a new ecosystem can take root (first the prey starts to come back, and then new predators emerge). The point of going after Microsoft now is so that society as a whole doesn't have to ride the roller-coaster down along with them.
If Microsoft had acquired its monopolies independently through the creation of superior products and their sale at better price than their competitors, I don't think there would be nearly the condemnation of them that is seen in this forum. The fact that Microsoft can't compete on a level playing field, or at least refuses to try, is what most people have a big problem with.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Hmmm...when I watch cable, I'm watching my local TV stations much of the time. Are you telling me that TW is
censoring the ads run by (in my case) WMAR or WJZ?
If you're watching local TV through your cable connection, then TW could indeed refuse to carry local stations that run ads for competing ISPs, although I don't allege that this is occurring. It's possible, though.
For sure they're not controlling billboards, radio (well, they probably have some influence there), newspapers,
magazines, and guys walking up and down wearing sandwich boards. Contrary to what your cable company may
tell you, they are far from the only game in town when it comes to advertising, and most especially when it comes
to local and regional advertising, which is, after all, the topic here.
The big problem here is that AOL/TW is using a monopoly (in some areas, at least) in cable television access to help create a monopoly in Internet access. I guess the issue hinges on whether the market is all kinds of local advertising, or just local television advertising.
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Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the principle of logic here, but I deny that taxes => rights because it isn't true. Rights aren't defined in terms of the taxes that you pay in the USA. It is not impossible that some society would have such an arrangement, but that is not currently the case in the U.S.
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Ah, but MSN wouldn't have survived in its original incarnation if it wasn't propped up by profits in Microsoft's other markets. Monopoly power will be generally immune to natural selection in the business arena. You can't count MSN as a success of evolution anymore than a big hydroponic tomato is a triumph of Nature.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Boy, you picked the wrong forum on which to demonstrate an alternative use of the phrase "free software":)
Oh, wait, its only LA,T. You've been here long enough to know better, which makes you a troll instead. At least I'm not the only one that took the bait...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
The difference is that VA Linux isn't the only game in town. If you couldn't run your ads on VA Linux properties, you could run them elsewhere. If you can't run your ads on AOL/TW cable, and they have the monopoly in your area, then you can't run them anywhere.
Monopolies have to play by different rules, otherwise they'd end up owning us all.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Um, sorry, thanks for playing. Rights are defined by society (or endowed by the Creator, if you lean that way), but they're definitely not a result of paying taxes. If that were the case, then poor people who had no taxes for a year would have no rights for that year.
The argument could be better phrased as: currently society affords corporations some rights, in some cases rights which provide corporations an advantage over ordinary citizens. Does society still believe that this is how things should be?
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
You could make the argument that the TV broadcasters have a copyright over the whole broadcast, including both commercials as well as programming. To play a derivative of this copyrighted work (that is, to leave out the commercials) might be construed as a copyright violation.
IANAL, but I could see how someone who is might take up this argument.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
OK, the part about "BillG just feels like making you say Uncle" may have been untrue, but on the other hand it was pretty funny and in line with Microsoft SOP. Heaven forbid we judge them on the basis of their past track record or anything.
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Slashdot Mirror
Huh, I stand corrected. I wonder on what basis they're going after people if they don't have the backing of the original copyright holder? I mean, it's not like I could just start suing people for trading mp3s, could I?
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
A quibble: they're not really self-appointed, they're getting paid by the RIAA, MPAA, etc. Apparently not enough, though, if they're going out of business. It's not like there aren't enough IP violations out there to keep them going :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
But filtering software for adults isn't needed, and even where and when filtering software might be a good idea, it shouldn't be done by the state and it shouldn't be implemented in a way that makes the 'net kid-friendly even for adults.. Making things kid-friendly for kids is a parent's job.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
First off, I don't see why the culture of the 'net shouldn't belong to those who were there first. In any other sort of society, cultural parameters are defined by the first people on the scene. I venture to say that never has a influx of newcomers so quickly wrenched a society away from its original norms of behavior.
Second, I don't mind sharing the 'net, but I mind when people move in and think they can take it over. The early-adopter scientific community was always happy to share with newcomers and explain how things are done, but the new folks didn't want any part of the existing culture, and they are now trying to force the old guard to submit to their new narrow-minded mold. The 'net wasn't for kids, it still mostly isn't, and adults are the people getting hurt in this attempt to rewrite the rules.
Gentrification's OK sometimes, until they tell you that you can't park your truck on the street any more. At that point it's not sharing any more; it's a land grab.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
This isn't directed at you personally, but more as a general question: when did the Internet become expected to be a big kid-friendly space, full of rounded corners, cushiony floor mats, easy-to-grip building blocks, and nonthreatening ideas? The 'net was originally a batchelor pad for scientists - they did work over it, and they had fun over it, often fairly adult fun. Almost from the start the biggest electronic business on the 'net has been pornography and other adult-themed content that you can't get as easily in Real Life.
I'm always a little surprised that the newer, more easily-offended netizens react in this way. You've essentially moved into someone else's neighborhood, and now you're going to make the clean it up whether they like it like that or not? It seems like there's a strong streak of moral superiority and just plain yuppiehood involved here, one that residents of San Francisco, or any other area where the cheap historic districts are attracting new money at a record rate, will recognize.
Put plainly: where did you get the idea that the 'net was kid-friendly, that it was somehow going to become kid-friendly once you got on board, or that it was ever kid-friendly to begin with? Maybe you got online thinking that it was like the town square, but the 'net is really a bunch of twisty little passages (all alike) through the world's biggest library - you never know what you'll find in there. I'm sorry if AOL or Earthlink fooled you on that one, but you should really take that up with them, and leave the rest of us to our porn.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Well, that's just NASA funding though, those states will still get other federal funding for roads, health programs, etc. The total will be more than 6%.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Fair enough. I guess I assumed that it would be quicker to click through the initial install than it would be to whip out a script, but I guess it's possible that the script would be quicker in some cases.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
It may depend more on your hardware than anything. Both the Debian text-console install and the two Mandrake graphical installs I've had to do gave me a functional system at the end. These were on a hand-assembled PC without any custom or even particularly advanced hardware. Now after I started tweaking things it didn't *stay* functional, but that's another story...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Why should you go to the trouble of writing a script for one install? Sure, as a guru you could do so, but it would be wasted effort if you know you're only going to do it once. There's no point in unnecessarily proving your guruhood. The easiest way for even a guru to do a single install would be for the installer to ask all the questions up front during the normal install process, and then go off on its own for 45 minutes and do the install. Having to write a script to do a perfectly stock install prior just to get the installer to work the way that it logically should in the first place is the Wrong Way, IMHO.
Admitted, I'm not a W2K guru. But this is a good example why - your choices are doing it the easy consumer way, or the exactly one expert way that Microsoft has provided. Since there is an expert way to do it, there's no impetus to make the normal user way easier to use. Windows just seems to put too many illogical constraints on me for it to ever feel comfortable as a system I could really work with.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Agreed - he always seems to be thinking "Hey, I mixed up all this Kool-Aid for you guys, how come you aren't drinking ?!"
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
I agree that some knowledge of computer internals would be advantageous for someone installing their own OS, at least a (purportedly) business-class OS like W2K. But there's no reason to make things any more difficult than they have to be. Knowledge of boot partitions and installed hardware is a reasonable headache to have to live with, babysitting the installer for 45 minutes, when you could have answered all the questions up front and done something else with your time, is not a reasonable headache. There's no added level of guru-ship to be demonstrated by having to shepherd the install step-by-step.
Especially since even Linux installs work better than that (and have for a while).
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
So the Nazis didn't make any global generalizations? How about that whole "Aryan superiority" thing? Wasn't that a generalization?
The original poster was just trolling with the "liberal" reference, and your hint hasn't made things any more clear.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
The real humor is that some moderators didn't recognize this as a well-known non sequitur and marked it "Informative". Next time you may have to actually include the smiley to help out some of our "special" moderators...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
You might be OK in two cases: either your mail wasn't commercial in nature, or else if you labeled it as requested by the law. In practice your emails wouldn't really be anonymous political speech anyway, unless you used a chain of anonymizing remailers. And I imagine most of those have strict controls over the quantity of spam you can send specifically to ward off spammers.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
The difference is that a pack of wolves won't always cooperate if they perceive their interests to differ, but the different arms of Microsoft will of course always cooperate to help each other. Microsoft is more like the tentacles of an octopus than a pack of wolves.
It's really not so much that Microsoft is a monopoly in various markets that is illegal; mere possession of a monopoly could come about by a variety of legal means. However, once you are a monopoly, there are stricter standards on your actions in the interest of maintaining a competitive market in the interests of society as a whole. Using monopoly power in one market to create a new monopoly in a different market is a powerful way to destroy competition, which is why those actions are illegal. It doesn't matter whether your competition is very capable or not; since they lack the power of multiple market monopolies, they're no match for you as new markets open up.
In the true Darwinian sense, the monopoly would of course expand (like the pack of wolves), until eventually it destroys its business ecosystem (eats all the game), and everything dies back (famine) until a new ecosystem can take root (first the prey starts to come back, and then new predators emerge). The point of going after Microsoft now is so that society as a whole doesn't have to ride the roller-coaster down along with them.
If Microsoft had acquired its monopolies independently through the creation of superior products and their sale at better price than their competitors, I don't think there would be nearly the condemnation of them that is seen in this forum. The fact that Microsoft can't compete on a level playing field, or at least refuses to try, is what most people have a big problem with.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
If you're watching local TV through your cable connection, then TW could indeed refuse to carry local stations that run ads for competing ISPs, although I don't allege that this is occurring. It's possible, though.
The big problem here is that AOL/TW is using a monopoly (in some areas, at least) in cable television access to help create a monopoly in Internet access. I guess the issue hinges on whether the market is all kinds of local advertising, or just local television advertising.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the principle of logic here, but I deny that taxes => rights because it isn't true. Rights aren't defined in terms of the taxes that you pay in the USA. It is not impossible that some society would have such an arrangement, but that is not currently the case in the U.S.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Ah, but MSN wouldn't have survived in its original incarnation if it wasn't propped up by profits in Microsoft's other markets. Monopoly power will be generally immune to natural selection in the business arena. You can't count MSN as a success of evolution anymore than a big hydroponic tomato is a triumph of Nature.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Boy, you picked the wrong forum on which to demonstrate an alternative use of the phrase "free software" :)
Oh, wait, its only LA,T. You've been here long enough to know better, which makes you a troll instead. At least I'm not the only one that took the bait...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
The difference is that VA Linux isn't the only game in town. If you couldn't run your ads on VA Linux properties, you could run them elsewhere. If you can't run your ads on AOL/TW cable, and they have the monopoly in your area, then you can't run them anywhere.
Monopolies have to play by different rules, otherwise they'd end up owning us all.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Um, sorry, thanks for playing. Rights are defined by society (or endowed by the Creator, if you lean that way), but they're definitely not a result of paying taxes. If that were the case, then poor people who had no taxes for a year would have no rights for that year.
The argument could be better phrased as: currently society affords corporations some rights, in some cases rights which provide corporations an advantage over ordinary citizens. Does society still believe that this is how things should be?
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Wow, you didn't preview that one at all, did you :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
You could make the argument that the TV broadcasters have a copyright over the whole broadcast, including both commercials as well as programming. To play a derivative of this copyrighted work (that is, to leave out the commercials) might be construed as a copyright violation.
IANAL, but I could see how someone who is might take up this argument.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
OK, the part about "BillG just feels like making you say Uncle" may have been untrue, but on the other hand it was pretty funny and in line with Microsoft SOP. Heaven forbid we judge them on the basis of their past track record or anything.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!