I myself have a dedicated phone line just to my computer room, even though I also have a cable modem.
The reason? Simple, I don't like cell phones! I honestly can't stand the damn things (being antisocial and all, I see no reason to own one, and since I don't go outside much I have no reason to think that I will be stuck in an avalanch soon!)
I really would perfer a device with a ethernet port on it, @Home rents out Static IP's at the ridiculasly low price of $5.95 a month (upto a max of three, and I have 2 in use already, so I might have to setup a proxy, ugh.) but there is one thing that people are managing to forget here:
If the gaming service ISP is good (for dreamcast and such) then whether its modem or broadband doesn't really matter. In all honesty after awhile your KP/S becomes irrelivent (28.8 is actualy fast enough, believe it or not!) but rather your latency/ping time becomes far more important (not going to bother to differiate between latency and ping, it has already been done WAY better then I could ever hope to define it.)
If I am getting a ping of 60-100 to a local server, but I am only connected at 33.6 (my lines can to 56k, but with all of the backround interference in my computer room, even sheilded twisted pair cables get really f-ed up, can we say florecent lights?::shudders:: )
The basic point I am trying to make, is that what I want is a good gaming service, and if I am going to have to pay my $9.95 a month either way (fat chance, I'll find some way around the fee!) I mine as well take the easiest to use rout. If that means an auto-config ethernet card (why can't somebody get those working? Auto-config servers exist, but are never used by ISPs, pisses me off!) or a good ol' analog modem, then so be it.
In other words;
just make the damn things work! (which would be a first for the entertainment industry!)
It is about time, as it is I am getting tired of this pirated version (shush, don't tell anyone, heh! Betcha there are more pirated versions out there then legal versions, fact is that a program that costs $3000+ for the student version is more then 20% of my households annual budget, in other words, its far to expensive!) that has none of the standard included textures maps! Why in the world would someone rip the friggin texture maps, without those 3DSM's usability drops by around 40% (unless you are experiences enough to make your own texture maps, but if I was that experiences I would be making enough money as a proffesional 3d modeler to be able to afford the regular version of 3DSM).
In addition they also ripped the help files from the pirated verison, ugh! The friggin help files! That makes the program mucho harder to use, especialy considering all of the tutorial sites consider you smart enough to have read the manual and to know the basics.
Compared to a program such as Rhino3d::everybody applauds the wonderus Rhino3d:: which has an obvious and easy to use interface (read: nothing like 3DSM's interface which is just plain hard to use), 3DSM is almost useless without a help file!
Anyways, I hope this "stripped down" version has no great deficiences, unlike adobe's LE and SE versions which where USELESS.
And I mean USELESS, those things are pieces of garbage, no good at all. Windows Paintbrush has better interfaces and useability then those versions of photoshop (and I should know, I have had to do all of the graphics work for finals using nothing but paintbrush!)
All in all, the texture maps are going to have to be included, as well as all of the animation capabilities, and the IK, and well, I don't really know what they are going to be able to cut from the program (surly not the modeler, the modeler in 3DSM is non-existent, that is what Rhinoceros 3d is for)
It had better still be able to output AVI files (or else I will have no use for it, heh)
Of course Discreet (the old ktx.com site was better, more info) is also building customer loyalty by doing this, simular to the way that Microsoft gives "free" computers to schools (then again, so does Apple) it gets people used to the 3DSM interface. (LOL, used to, interface, and 3DSM in the same sentance don't mix well!)
Anybody ever stopped to think that mabye, just mabye, napster was actualy a bad thing?
Face it, even if you use the "home music copying act thingy" (whatever the full offical name is) the spirit of the law was basicaly that you shouldn't be sent to jail for giving a friend or two a boot-legged copy of a tape.
It was not intended to allow people to have thousands upon thousands of songs illegialy, nor was it intented to allow people to give out their sonds to thousands of other people.
MP3's are a bad thing, they ar illegial, get over it! Every MP3 collecter I have talked to admited (after a bit of mental shoving around) that yes MP3's are illegal but that they DON'T CARE.
They don't care that they are breaking the law! Sheesh, is that what america's morals have come to? A situation where america's public is darn near just as corrupt as its politictions? They don't CARE if they are breaking the law? Whats more, people actualy start complaining WHEN THE LAW IS ENFORCED!
You actualy expected the courts to uphold a service which you all knew was used to share files illegaly, you all actualy expected the courts to go and say "sure, keep stealing music".
Try walking out of a music store with a number of CD's containing the total number of songs you have on that 20gig partition of yours, let me tell you, the price of those CD's will begin to add up towards grand theft pretty darn fast! (heh, what is grand theft considered now days anyways? I remember that it isn't really all that high, but still)
If you where held accountable for each MP3 you have on your HD, think of all the world of trouble you would be in. You would have to access/. from jail for a year or two (at least!)
Yet here you go on, considering MP3's OK just because it suits you.
Is it OK for a person to steal a car from a car-lot just because they want to? The car manufacturers are large, bloated, and corrupt. Yet the only moral difference is the price of the object that you are stealing. Want to add a legal loop-hole? Say you are taking it for an extended test drive! Same thing, right?
Of course its not, any idiot can see that a test drive is not the same thing as theft, and any idiot can see that sharing a tape with 2 or 3 friends is not the same as offering cd's up for the whole world to copy and take. There IS A DIFFERENCE between sharing music harmlessly, and illegaly giving dozens of copies out.
Napster was designed for illegal purposes, the law saw this, they shut it down, get over it!
Ugh, this is horrid, and just another example of why I don't like apples software R&D department (there hardware department is nice though, great proccessors).
I can write at about, err, a page per hour, a page per 90 minutes if I need it to be legible (begining to see why I perfer computers? heh:) but I can type up a page in about 20minutes (depending on difficulty of orignal thought, this is compleatly free-form here folks, no willy-nilly sissy copying stuff, I am talking about pure orignal thought!).
At a pure typing speed I can probebly do a page in 10-15 minutes (I have never actualy time myself on just rut page entry.)
hmm, lets see, 10 minutes, or 90 minutes, 10 minutes, or 90 minutes.
Last time I tried to use an OCR (closest I've used to a handwritting reconiction program) I had to re-type over 40% of the work, even worse, I had to go and spend over an hour correcting the mistakes that the computer had entered into my work!
Now I admit that a handwritting system would be **VERY VERY** handy for math problems, but it would have to have what would be the equivilent of almost an AI in terms of its problem form reconition (just look at how hard it is to enter a problem on a TI calculator and all of the parathesis's that are needed and you'll see what I mean).
But as it is, there is no way in the world that i would want to have to do anything by just writting in it.
http://www.slashdot.org/
Sheesh, it is MUCH easier to type that in that to write it in! (then again, I may start using my bookmarks if such a hand-writting system became common place on all laptops!)
Can you imagin having to WRITE IN your credit card number? Eech, destroys the whole point on online conviencence.
This reminds me of the yee-old nerd joke about the new data storage format, its double sided, variable density, highly portable, and it supports all known charecter sets.
Its call a paper and pencil.
Heh, ok ok, old, but still good.
Anyways, my point here is that Apple is just taking a step backwards, as it is, I refuse to by a Palm PC, instead I am opting for a Pocket sized PC (which come standard with a 98% or so keyboard, which is still too small for me actualy, I can't even type right on those older Macintosh keyboards, as it is I am perfetly happy with my Microsoft Natural Keyboard, the orignal models!)
Sheesh, and with the size of my writting, and the known accurecy of Watcoms pens (their only good pens cost almost as much as a laptop!) there is no way that I am going to buy, or even suggest (or think about suggesting. . . . ) such a poorly designed piece of equipment.
Ugh, knowing apple its likely to be see through too!
For crying out loud folks, you are supporting an illegal action, this is no different from napster (which I don't support either.)
If the DVD cracks out there could actualy be used for somthing good (sure, yah, right, for making indepentend movies, LOL, considering that there isn't even a DVD write standard yet which works on regular DVD players, thats a load of bull!) instead of just copying off movies then I wouldn't complain.
Granted, I think that the public needs to have access to all codecs and should be able to do create whatever they want (in fact my strongest belief is in that of freedom of information) but watching the latest POS movie from hollywood hardly falls under the first admendment (especialy if you didn't pay for that movie!)
The proper course of action would have been for the Linux commmunity to gather a large number of signitures (and if they couldn't manage this then it must not be wanted all that much!) to encourage the MPAA to release a closed source (ooh, evil evil word!) DVD player and recorder. Granted, closed source may not be the nicest system and all, but it would have been better then all of this legal manuvering.
As it is, I agree that the licening fee's for DVD movie recording is outragus, but do you really think that some company wouldn't have released a free DVD recorder after a DVD-Writable standard came out? Come on, the huge market possabilities! Even if it had some limitations on it (splash screen at the start of the movie) the product would have come, even if the MPAA yelled their respective bloated heads off at it. What this whole entire DVD crack thing has done is actualy band the movie and DVD player companies together to create an even stronger anti-free speach system (an example being the recall of Sony PS2's which could play DVD's of any region).
What it comes down to is that by advertising DVD's weaknesses the linux (and computing community as a whole) has done nothing else but REDUCE their chances of letting varius DVD issues slip under the MPAA's noise.
First rule: it has to scare off the idiotic newbies.
Hmm, that sounds alot better to me.
GUI? Why? How about a nice little text bar.
You want to delete a file, heck, forget the trashcan metafore.
Type delete
copy?
Copy
Move?
Move
Format?
Format
Simple isn't it?
Instead of a text file having microscopicaly sized text of in to "look" like a text file, why not just name it *.txt or *.doc?
That is intuative, txt stands for text, get it, got it, good.
Its simple folks, and I really can't figure out as to why people keep cooing over GUI's, GUI's are pieces of useless garbage.
An OS should NEVER be based around a GUI, an example being the MacOSx. Look at it, OpenGL acceleration for opening and closing windows. Now THAT is bloatware! Also notice how long GUI's take to load, they need to load the drivers to load the drivers, sheesh! It really is quite ridiculas!
This is espcialy true for a consumer based OS. Linux really isn't simple because it defaults to a complex setup (excuse me, but why in the world are you looking for scsi drives, I have no scsi driver, trust me on this one!)
To finish this rant off, computers should do what I tell them too, not what they want to. A gui that pops up error messages is doing what IT wants to, an OS which doesn't crash at all is doing what *I* want it to. If a program has an error, dump the program and get on with the show, the computer should never freeze! (heck folks, I have kept DOS running for weeks without anything happening to it, and its a Microsoft OS!)
Hey, this should like a great idea. I have no problems at all with corporations scanning people for drug use, as long as they actualy follow up on the usage and have the police arrest the known users (read: they would have to verify their results first.)
As for the DNA scanner, it couldn't actualy impede free speach, we could still say or do whatever we wanted to (within the bounds of the law of course.) but if somebody decided to rob a bank or such, the police could have the suspects ID, even if it did take a few days for the lab results to get back.
Imagin they get the ID's of all the people in the bank, and then check up on each person individualy. At the end of their search, they find one person who was not on the security video tapes yet who's DNA they collected.
Bingo, theres your prime suspect.
Of course this could be defeated quite easily, just make sure you where in the same bank eariler that day (though in a different disguise) and that you perform some normal transactions, that way your DNA would be OK'd by the computer.
Any GUI which used openGL acceleration to OPEN AND CLOSE WINDOWS is a ABSOLUTE WASTE OF CPU CYCLES.
Hmm, lets see here now, how exacly would that work with those pages that open up about 10 more pop-ups?
Ever been in those loops, where if you close the pop-up it opens up even more pop-ups?
Oh great, crash an Apple, open up a few dozen windows!
Ugh, evil evil thing.
3d-boarders, whats next, real time enviromental bump mapping (and if ANYBODY and I mean ANYBODY, responds to this and says that feature is already implemented on all MacOSx windows, I swear to god I will be IMMENSLY pissed, for one thing, they will have missed the point entirly. Though I do HOPE it isn't implemented, ugh, mabye I'm giving apple ideas::shudders::)
When I start up a computer I want it to GO.
As in fast.
As in WORK.
As in MACHINE AGE.
I like beige, heck, I LOVE beige, there are so many different variations of beige it is amazing.
I also love steel, as in my 486 case which is darn near (mabye it is?!?!?) bullet proof.
This this has been stepped on, dropped, squished, thrown arounds, etc.
It still works.
I would like to see you do that with an IMac (unshatterable case, hardly, give me a good hammer and I'll give ya at least a crack or two!)
BSD system lies underneath? Yah, so what, its wasted on the stupidest user base that crawls on the face of the earth ( thats crawls, as in what snails and other lower forms of life do, C-R-A-W-L-S, most oftem times through the muck.)
GUI research, ok, heres your GUI research.
USE A DAMN COMMAND LINE.
Its *QUICKER*
Its *FASTER*
Its *MORE EFFICENT*
and
It *DOES NOT CRASH*
Seriusly though folks, even DOS, heck, when was the last time DOS (pre 6.22, heh) crashed on ya?
If somthing goes wrong, it should NEVER BE THE OS.
OS's should be under 100k, and written entirly in assembly/binary.
Anything else is a waste.
Anything which required me spending 10 seconds+ to find an icon to run a single program is a waste.
how to I cope with win9x?
Simple,
Windows Key-R
I run it all through the little run box, I have almost every program directory on my fat32 partition memorized.
Give it up for true Nerdome folks,
Oh yah, and don't forget to through out the GUI's
(except for Rhino3d's GUI, NICE GUI, heck, great GUI, I especialy love the fact that it has a, you guessed it, command prompt built in! Heh, I can't stand a 3d-package that doesn't allow me to just type in Square and draw a square!)
I have a very low opinion of geeks, they can go shove it for all I care.
Quick refresher: Diffrence between a geek and a Nerd:
geeks get drunk, Nerds read technical manuals.
geeks goto parties, Nerds continue to learn.
geeks waste their lives, Nerds dedicate their lives to knowledge.
Ok, nuff said on that.
The problem is that society has brainwashed the female population so that a very small percentage of them (even fewer then the male population, which is already has a very small ratio of Nerds:jocks) want to abandon any hopes of a social life in order to devote themselves to the completly unselfish goal of obtaining more knowledge to aid the human race.
In addition, society has also brainwashed the female population so that they believe in emotions even more so then males. Emotions are the leading deteriunt to a person being able to completly switch over to a life of acedemic and scholerly acomplishment.
In other words, the day that females don't give a rats ass about how they look or who they know, is the day that females over-take the male population in computer literacy.
Of course, considering what small percentage of the male population is computer literate (oh, about 1% of Slashdot readers sounds about right) you only really need a few dozens females to actualy accomlish said goal.::smirks in an evil fashion::
Survival of the fittest, if some stupid shithead goes out and flies across the country to meet a pedophile then they deserve to get rapped and killed.
I have been on BBS's since I was 9 years old and I have not had a single problem with perv's ped's or druggies, though I have seen (online) my far share of all.
Basicaly what the US goverment is slowly doing is attempting to bypass the laws of darwanism.
I of course have NEVER put my real age date or name in anything, as a result, would you believe it, I don't get contacts from anybody names PornoBob nor do I have to worry about some a-hole I offended online coming upto my door with a shotgun (and I have had more then one local BBS're threaten so much, heh:)
Common sense says: Don't give out your real age/name anyways.
Don't talk to anybody you don't know.
If you don't like whats on your computers moniter, TURN THE DAMN THING OFF.
Easy as pie. As I said, I have been doing it since I was 9, (and I tought myself how to setup my own modem too, pretty nice considering no manual, no help, and I had only seen a modem once before, heh:)
I suport the efforts to create the Perfect Baby!
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 1
Hey, hows this for an idea?
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, IMPROVE THE DAMN HUMAN RACE.
Really now folks, is somebody had been kind enough to give me vision in both my eyes I WOULDN'T HAVE COMPLAINED ONE DAMN BIT.
This pisses me off folks, we here at Slashdot.org are supposed to be at the forefront of technology, using science to better the human race and all that.
Hey, how about we actualy do that?
Whats moraly wrong with the perfect baby?
Better then his peers? So what, in a few generations everybody would be perfect. It would be eutopia.
Notice I said mabye, this is ONLY if worry warts like Katz and the Southren Babtists don't put a halt to progress first.
Hey, prosthetic limbs can be used to help people, lets outlaw those too!
How about laser eye surgery, boy, can't have EVERYBODY seeing properly now can we?
Hmm, ouchies, if somebody has cancer, must be the will of god, let'em die.
Notice the sarcasm there folks.
If somebody had had the kindness to boost my IQ by 50 points and give me a mnemonic memory, I really wouldn't have complained. In fact, I would have thanked them.
While we're at it, maby be can get rid of the human sex drive too. Kill two birds with one stone, genetic imperfections AND the population problem.
I meant all the idiots who are yelling in support of napster.
Another victory for napster, or another defeat for common sense?
Of course, I don't support the RIAA either, the music they publish is just as crappy as the music that is pirated over napster, it being the same music and all.
I am sick and tired of hearing about MP3s and the whole entire situtation with them being pirated left and right. For crying out loud, what asshole let the comman civilion idiot onto the Internet to begin with? The constent pirating and trading of MP3's is nothing more then just one more example that the common everyday citizen of the world cannot handle the responsability that is required to be on the Internet and participate in an educational and scholorly enviroment.
For crying out loud, then a company comes along and creates an open source MP3 alternative, crap, this really shows how "on the ball" the open source movement is, considering that the basic algorithims for MP3's where devised in the late 80's, it looks like the open source movement is a mere 11 years behind in technology.
Sheesh, I cannot belive that the computer using community would stoop so low as to follow popular trends in standard non-tech culture.
First people argue about the legality of MP3s
Oh, its big bussiness, who cares?
Try taking a few actual CD's from a music store and see *WHO* cares, (besides the cops that is).
So what if its a big bussiness, it's not the money that is the problem, but rather the morality of theft itself. Theft is theft is theft, and unless you are starving to death, it is wrong, period.)
Then people begin to argue about the evil bands and how they are deserting their listeners.
Hell folks, anybody who listens to the crap that is called modern music (either rock or cRAP, take your pick, both are garbage, and that goes for r&b too) deserves whatever they get. I myself would have them all executed for stupidity.
While this is going on, people are arguing over how they have the "freedom" to bog up university Internet connections with napster downloads.
For crying out loud folks, WHAT IN THE HOLY HELL gives *YOU* the right to interupt some LEGITIMENT students *WORK* so that you can ILLEGALY download some piece of crap song that describes a sinnfull way to get some measure of enjoyment out of your pathetic and worthless life?
Then this company goes ahead and plans to release a opensource MP3 alternative, just so that when the recording industry has a slight chance of getting things under control, all hell can break loose again.
And people wonder why I have lost faith in the human race.
OS X has far to much extra baggage in the ways of fancy graphics and slow user interfaces (I really DO NOT want to wait for my windows to zoom in and out of icons) to ever make it as a professional OS. While it might be OK for artists and such, for a person like me who wants to get the job done and get it done now, I really don't want to have to worry about transluctent buttons are OpenGL accelorated icons. MacOS (and for that matter, most Linux GUI's too) have a disgusting "fun" look to their interface, for crying out loud here folks, this is a TOOL I am using, NOT a toy (though it can be quite fun at times, heh) Even on a G3, any macintosh OS after (and including) 8 runs sloooow. You think Windoze is slow? Just imagine how horrid it would be without the options to skip loading windows and going diretly to the command prompt! Oh yah, and the command line still lives on, there are very few things in this world which can be done faster by GUI then by a macro/script/batch files. Compare the following steps for running a program in Macintosh OS (almost any version) to running a simular program in DOS. In MAC OS Click apple icon Sort through the 50+ programs that are listed Move your mouse to the desired program Left Click. Now, in Dos Type in the name of the program that you want to run. Enjoy your program. Of course, both steps assume that you have setup a link within the apple menu on Mac OS or that you have setup a batch files in DOS. In fact, even setting a batch file in DOS is easier then setting up the neccisary links in Mac OS. Of course, once you get to Linux you have even more powerfull scripting potential, but you also get multitasking to boot (heh, the one thing that DOS does lack, often times I find myself using windows just as a multitasker between multiple DOS programs.) One more itsy bitys thing, if anybody thinks that microsoft is keeping a lid on their source code (and they are, I might add) just compare that to apples marketing strategy, ugh! Horrid horrid horrid, they officaly (and quite proudly!) announce that they are a monopoly. Granted, this leads to 100% guarenteed hardware compatability, but hell, I myself perfer to be able to tinker around with things, and there is NO way that I am buying a product from a company that has such close ties to ATI (makers of the worlds slowest graphic cards!) ---Question somthing, just so long as it isn't me
Slashdot Mirror
I myself have a dedicated phone line just to my computer room, even though I also have a cable modem.
::shudders:: )
The reason? Simple, I don't like cell phones! I honestly can't stand the damn things (being antisocial and all, I see no reason to own one, and since I don't go outside much I have no reason to think that I will be stuck in an avalanch soon!)
I really would perfer a device with a ethernet port on it, @Home rents out Static IP's at the ridiculasly low price of $5.95 a month (upto a max of three, and I have 2 in use already, so I might have to setup a proxy, ugh.) but there is one thing that people are managing to forget here:
If the gaming service ISP is good (for dreamcast and such) then whether its modem or broadband doesn't really matter. In all honesty after awhile your KP/S becomes irrelivent (28.8 is actualy fast enough, believe it or not!) but rather your latency/ping time becomes far more important (not going to bother to differiate between latency and ping, it has already been done WAY better then I could ever hope to define it.)
If I am getting a ping of 60-100 to a local server, but I am only connected at 33.6 (my lines can to 56k, but with all of the backround interference in my computer room, even sheilded twisted pair cables get really f-ed up, can we say florecent lights?
The basic point I am trying to make, is that what I want is a good gaming service, and if I am going to have to pay my $9.95 a month either way (fat chance, I'll find some way around the fee!) I mine as well take the easiest to use rout. If that means an auto-config ethernet card (why can't somebody get those working? Auto-config servers exist, but are never used by ISPs, pisses me off!) or a good ol' analog modem, then so be it.
In other words;
just make the damn things work! (which would be a first for the entertainment industry!)
*cough* x-band *cough*
It is about time, as it is I am getting tired of this pirated version (shush, don't tell anyone, heh! Betcha there are more pirated versions out there then legal versions, fact is that a program that costs $3000+ for the student version is more then 20% of my households annual budget, in other words, its far to expensive!) that has none of the standard included textures maps! Why in the world would someone rip the friggin texture maps, without those 3DSM's usability drops by around 40% (unless you are experiences enough to make your own texture maps, but if I was that experiences I would be making enough money as a proffesional 3d modeler to be able to afford the regular version of 3DSM).
::everybody applauds the wonderus Rhino3d:: which has an obvious and easy to use interface (read: nothing like 3DSM's interface which is just plain hard to use), 3DSM is almost useless without a help file!
In addition they also ripped the help files from the pirated verison, ugh! The friggin help files! That makes the program mucho harder to use, especialy considering all of the tutorial sites consider you smart enough to have read the manual and to know the basics.
Compared to a program such as Rhino3d
Anyways, I hope this "stripped down" version has no great deficiences, unlike adobe's LE and SE versions which where USELESS.
And I mean USELESS, those things are pieces of garbage, no good at all. Windows Paintbrush has better interfaces and useability then those versions of photoshop (and I should know, I have had to do all of the graphics work for finals
using nothing but paintbrush!)
All in all, the texture maps are going to have to be included, as well as all of the animation capabilities, and the IK, and well, I don't really know what they are going to be able to cut from the program (surly not the modeler, the modeler in 3DSM is non-existent, that is what Rhinoceros 3d is for)
It had better still be able to output AVI files (or else I will have no use for it, heh)
Of course Discreet (the old ktx.com site was better, more info) is also building customer loyalty by doing this, simular to the way that Microsoft gives "free" computers to schools (then again, so does Apple) it gets people used to the 3DSM interface. (LOL, used to, interface, and 3DSM in the same sentance don't mix well!)
Anybody ever stopped to think that mabye, just mabye, napster was actualy a bad thing?
/. from jail for a year or two (at least!)
Face it, even if you use the "home music copying act thingy" (whatever the full offical name is) the spirit of the law was basicaly that you shouldn't be sent to jail for giving a friend or two a boot-legged copy of a tape.
It was not intended to allow people to have thousands upon thousands of songs illegialy, nor was it intented to allow people to give out their sonds to thousands of other people.
MP3's are a bad thing, they ar illegial, get over it! Every MP3 collecter I have talked to admited (after a bit of mental shoving around) that yes MP3's are illegal but that they DON'T CARE.
They don't care that they are breaking the law! Sheesh, is that what america's morals have come to? A situation where america's public is darn near just as corrupt as its politictions? They don't CARE if they are breaking the law? Whats more, people actualy start complaining WHEN THE LAW IS ENFORCED!
You actualy expected the courts to uphold a service which you all knew was used to share files illegaly, you all actualy expected the courts to go and say "sure, keep stealing music".
Try walking out of a music store with a number of CD's containing the total number of songs you have on that 20gig partition of yours, let me tell you, the price of those CD's will begin to add up towards grand theft pretty darn fast! (heh, what is grand theft considered now days anyways? I remember that it isn't really all that high, but still)
If you where held accountable for each MP3 you have on your HD, think of all the world of trouble you would be in. You would have to access
Yet here you go on, considering MP3's OK just because it suits you.
Is it OK for a person to steal a car from a car-lot just because they want to? The car manufacturers are large, bloated, and corrupt. Yet the only moral difference is the price of the object that you are stealing. Want to add a legal loop-hole? Say you are taking it for an extended test drive! Same thing, right?
Of course its not, any idiot can see that a test drive is not the same thing as theft, and any idiot can see that sharing a tape with 2 or 3 friends is not the same as offering cd's up for the whole world to copy and take. There IS A DIFFERENCE between sharing music harmlessly, and illegaly giving dozens of copies out.
Napster was designed for illegal purposes, the law saw this, they shut it down, get over it!
Ugh, this is horrid, and just another example of why I don't like apples software R&D department (there hardware department is nice though, great proccessors).
I can write at about, err, a page per hour, a page per 90 minutes if I need it to be legible (begining to see why I perfer computers? heh:) but I can type up a page in about 20minutes (depending on difficulty of orignal thought, this is compleatly free-form here folks, no willy-nilly sissy copying stuff, I am talking about pure orignal thought!).
At a pure typing speed I can probebly do a page in 10-15 minutes (I have never actualy time myself on just rut page entry.)
hmm, lets see, 10 minutes, or 90 minutes, 10 minutes, or 90 minutes.
Last time I tried to use an OCR (closest I've used to a handwritting reconiction program) I had to re-type over 40% of the work, even worse, I had to go and spend over an hour correcting the mistakes that the computer had entered into my work!
Now I admit that a handwritting system would be **VERY VERY** handy for math problems, but it would have to have what would be the equivilent of almost an AI in terms of its problem form reconition (just look at how hard it is to enter a problem on a TI calculator and all of the parathesis's that are needed and you'll see what I mean).
But as it is, there is no way in the world that i would want to have to do anything by just writting in it.
http://www.slashdot.org/
Sheesh, it is MUCH easier to type that in that to write it in! (then again, I may start using my bookmarks if such a hand-writting system became common place on all laptops!)
Can you imagin having to WRITE IN your credit card number? Eech, destroys the whole point on online conviencence.
This reminds me of the yee-old nerd joke about the new data storage format, its double sided, variable density, highly portable, and it supports all known charecter sets.
Its call a paper and pencil.
Heh, ok ok, old, but still good.
Anyways, my point here is that Apple is just taking a step backwards, as it is, I refuse to by a Palm PC, instead I am opting for a Pocket sized PC (which come standard with a 98% or so keyboard, which is still too small for me actualy, I can't even type right on those older Macintosh keyboards, as it is I am perfetly happy with my Microsoft Natural Keyboard, the orignal models!)
Sheesh, and with the size of my writting, and the known accurecy of Watcoms pens (their only good pens cost almost as much as a laptop!) there is no way that I am going to buy, or even suggest (or think about suggesting. . . . ) such a poorly designed piece of equipment.
Ugh, knowing apple its likely to be see through too!
For crying out loud folks, you are supporting an illegal action, this is no different from napster (which I don't support either.)
If the DVD cracks out there could actualy be used for somthing good (sure, yah, right, for making indepentend movies, LOL, considering that there isn't even a DVD write standard yet which works on regular DVD players, thats a load of bull!) instead of just copying off movies then I wouldn't complain.
Granted, I think that the public needs to have access to all codecs and should be able to do create whatever they want (in fact my strongest belief is in that of freedom of information) but watching the latest POS movie from hollywood hardly falls under the first admendment
(especialy if you didn't pay for that movie!)
The proper course of action would have been for the Linux commmunity to gather a large number of signitures (and if they couldn't manage this then it must not be wanted all that much!) to encourage the MPAA to release a closed source (ooh, evil evil word!) DVD player and recorder. Granted, closed source may not be the nicest system and all, but it would have been better then all of this legal manuvering.
As it is, I agree that the licening fee's for DVD movie recording is outragus, but do you really think that some company wouldn't have released a free DVD recorder after a DVD-Writable standard came out? Come on, the huge market possabilities! Even if it had some limitations on it (splash screen at the start of the movie) the product would have come, even if the MPAA yelled their respective bloated heads off at it. What this whole entire DVD crack thing has done is actualy band the movie and DVD player companies together to create an even stronger anti-free speach system (an example being the recall of Sony PS2's which could play DVD's of any region).
What it comes down to is that by advertising DVD's weaknesses the linux (and computing community as a whole) has done nothing else but REDUCE their chances of letting varius DVD issues slip under the MPAA's noise.
This really does make me sick, its all garbage.
First rule: it has to sell to newbies.
How about this instead,
First rule: it has to scare off the idiotic newbies.
Hmm, that sounds alot better to me.
GUI? Why? How about a nice little text bar.
You want to delete a file, heck, forget the trashcan metafore.
Type delete
copy?
Copy
Move?
Move
Format?
Format
Simple isn't it?
Instead of a text file having microscopicaly sized text of in to "look" like a text file, why not just name it *.txt or *.doc?
That is intuative, txt stands for text, get it, got it, good.
Its simple folks, and I really can't figure out as to why people keep cooing over GUI's, GUI's are pieces of useless garbage.
An OS should NEVER be based around a GUI, an example being the MacOSx. Look at it, OpenGL acceleration for opening and closing windows. Now THAT is bloatware! Also notice how long GUI's take to load, they need to load the drivers to load the drivers, sheesh! It really is quite ridiculas!
This is espcialy true for a consumer based OS. Linux really isn't simple because it defaults to a complex setup (excuse me, but why in the world are you looking for scsi drives, I have no scsi driver, trust me on this one!)
To finish this rant off, computers should do what I tell them too, not what they want to. A gui that pops up error messages is doing what IT wants to, an OS which doesn't crash at all is doing what *I* want it to. If a program has an error, dump the program and get on with the show, the computer should never freeze! (heck folks, I have kept DOS running for weeks without anything happening to it, and its a Microsoft OS!)
Hey, this should like a great idea. I have no problems at all with corporations scanning people for drug use, as long as they actualy follow up on the usage and have the police arrest the known users (read: they would have to verify their results first.)
As for the DNA scanner, it couldn't actualy impede free speach, we could still say or do whatever we wanted to (within the bounds of the law of course.) but if somebody decided to rob a bank or such, the police could have the suspects ID, even if it did take a few days for the lab results to get back.
Imagin they get the ID's of all the people in the bank, and then check up on each person individualy. At the end of their search, they find one person who was not on the security video tapes yet who's DNA they collected.
Bingo, theres your prime suspect.
Of course this could be defeated quite easily, just make sure you where in the same bank eariler that day (though in a different disguise) and that you perform some normal transactions, that way your DNA would be OK'd by the computer.
Still though, it could be usefull.
For craps sake people, give it up already.
::shudders::)
Any GUI which used openGL acceleration to OPEN AND CLOSE WINDOWS is a ABSOLUTE WASTE OF CPU CYCLES.
Hmm, lets see here now, how exacly would that work with those pages that open up about 10 more pop-ups?
Ever been in those loops, where if you close the pop-up it opens up even more pop-ups?
Oh great, crash an Apple, open up a few dozen windows!
Ugh, evil evil thing.
3d-boarders, whats next, real time enviromental bump mapping (and if ANYBODY and I mean ANYBODY, responds to this and says that feature is already implemented on all MacOSx windows, I swear to god I will be IMMENSLY pissed, for one thing, they will have missed the point entirly. Though I do HOPE it isn't implemented, ugh, mabye I'm giving apple ideas
When I start up a computer I want it to GO.
As in fast.
As in WORK.
As in MACHINE AGE.
I like beige, heck, I LOVE beige, there are so many different variations of beige it is amazing.
I also love steel, as in my 486 case which is darn near (mabye it is?!?!?) bullet proof.
This this has been stepped on, dropped, squished, thrown arounds, etc.
It still works.
I would like to see you do that with an IMac (unshatterable case, hardly, give me a good hammer and I'll give ya at least a crack or two!)
BSD system lies underneath? Yah, so what, its wasted on the stupidest user base that crawls on the face of the earth ( thats crawls, as in what snails and other lower forms of life do, C-R-A-W-L-S, most oftem times through the muck.)
GUI research, ok, heres your GUI research.
USE A DAMN COMMAND LINE.
Its *QUICKER*
Its *FASTER*
Its *MORE EFFICENT*
and
It *DOES NOT CRASH*
Seriusly though folks, even DOS, heck, when was the last time DOS (pre 6.22, heh) crashed on ya?
If somthing goes wrong, it should NEVER BE THE OS.
OS's should be under 100k, and written entirly in assembly/binary.
Anything else is a waste.
Anything which required me spending 10 seconds+ to find an icon to run a single program is a waste.
how to I cope with win9x?
Simple,
Windows Key-R
I run it all through the little run box, I have almost every program directory on my fat32 partition memorized.
Give it up for true Nerdome folks,
Oh yah, and don't forget to through out the GUI's
(except for Rhino3d's GUI, NICE GUI, heck, great GUI, I especialy love the fact that it has a, you guessed it, command prompt built in! Heh, I can't stand a 3d-package that doesn't allow me to just type in Square and draw a square!)
Geeks, hah, try nerds.
::smirks in an evil fashion::
I have a very low opinion of geeks, they can go shove it for all I care.
Quick refresher: Diffrence between a geek and a Nerd:
geeks get drunk, Nerds read technical manuals.
geeks goto parties, Nerds continue to learn.
geeks waste their lives, Nerds dedicate their lives to knowledge.
Ok, nuff said on that.
The problem is that society has brainwashed the female population so that a very small percentage of them (even fewer then the male population, which is already has a very small ratio of Nerds:jocks) want to abandon any hopes of a social life in order to devote themselves to the completly unselfish goal of obtaining more knowledge to aid the human race.
In addition, society has also brainwashed the female population so that they believe in emotions even more so then males. Emotions are the leading deteriunt to a person being able to completly switch over to a life of acedemic and scholerly acomplishment.
In other words, the day that females don't give a rats ass about how they look or who they know, is the day that females over-take the male population in computer literacy.
Of course, considering what small percentage of the male population is computer literate (oh, about 1% of Slashdot readers sounds about right) you only really need a few dozens females to actualy accomlish said goal.
Survival of the fittest, if some stupid shithead goes out and flies across the country to meet a pedophile then they deserve to get rapped and killed.
I have been on BBS's since I was 9 years old and I have not had a single problem with perv's ped's or druggies, though I have seen (online) my far share of all.
Basicaly what the US goverment is slowly doing is attempting to bypass the laws of darwanism.
I of course have NEVER put my real age date or name in anything, as a result, would you believe it, I don't get contacts from anybody names PornoBob nor do I have to worry about some a-hole I offended online coming upto my door with a shotgun (and I have had more then one local BBS're threaten so much, heh:)
Common sense says: Don't give out your real age/name anyways.
Don't talk to anybody you don't know.
If you don't like whats on your computers moniter, TURN THE DAMN THING OFF.
Easy as pie. As I said, I have been doing it since I was 9, (and I tought myself how to setup my own modem too, pretty nice considering no manual, no help, and I had only seen a modem once before, heh:)
Hey, hows this for an idea?
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, IMPROVE THE DAMN HUMAN RACE.
Really now folks, is somebody had been kind enough to give me vision in both my eyes I WOULDN'T HAVE COMPLAINED ONE DAMN BIT.
This pisses me off folks, we here at Slashdot.org are supposed to be at the forefront of technology, using science to better the human race and all that.
Hey, how about we actualy do that?
Whats moraly wrong with the perfect baby?
Better then his peers? So what, in a few generations everybody would be perfect. It would be eutopia.
Notice I said mabye, this is ONLY if worry warts like Katz and the Southren Babtists don't put a halt to progress first.
Hey, prosthetic limbs can be used to help people, lets outlaw those too!
How about laser eye surgery, boy, can't have EVERYBODY seeing properly now can we?
Hmm, ouchies, if somebody has cancer, must be the will of god, let'em die.
Notice the sarcasm there folks.
If somebody had had the kindness to boost my IQ by 50 points and give me a mnemonic memory, I really wouldn't have complained. In fact, I would have thanked them.
While we're at it, maby be can get rid of the human sex drive too. Kill two birds with one stone, genetic imperfections AND the population problem.
There now, wasn't that easier then a 10 page rant?
I meant all the idiots who are yelling in support of napster.
Another victory for napster, or another defeat for common sense?
Of course, I don't support the RIAA either, the music they publish is just as crappy as the music that is pirated over napster, it being the same music and all.
I am sick and tired of hearing about MP3s and the whole entire situtation with them being pirated left and right. For crying out loud, what asshole let the comman civilion idiot onto the Internet to begin with? The constent pirating and trading of MP3's is nothing more then just one more example that the common everyday citizen of the world cannot handle the responsability that is required to be on the Internet and participate in an educational and scholorly enviroment.
For crying out loud, then a company comes along and creates an open source MP3 alternative, crap, this really shows how "on the ball" the open source movement is, considering that the basic algorithims for MP3's where devised in the late 80's, it looks like the open source movement is a mere 11 years behind in technology.
Sheesh, I cannot belive that the computer using community would stoop so low as to follow popular trends in standard non-tech culture.
First people argue about the legality of MP3s
Oh, its big bussiness, who cares?
Try taking a few actual CD's from a music store and see *WHO* cares, (besides the cops that is).
So what if its a big bussiness, it's not the money that is the problem, but rather the morality of theft itself. Theft is theft is theft, and unless you are starving to death, it is wrong, period.)
Then people begin to argue about the evil bands and how they are deserting their listeners.
Hell folks, anybody who listens to the crap that is called modern music (either rock or cRAP, take your pick, both are garbage, and that goes for r&b too) deserves whatever they get. I myself would have them all executed for stupidity.
While this is going on, people are arguing over how they have the "freedom" to bog up university Internet connections with napster downloads.
For crying out loud folks, WHAT IN THE HOLY HELL gives *YOU* the right to interupt some LEGITIMENT students *WORK* so that you can ILLEGALY download some piece of crap song that describes a sinnfull way to get some measure of enjoyment out of your pathetic and worthless life?
Then this company goes ahead and plans to release a opensource MP3 alternative, just so that when the recording industry has a slight chance of getting things under control, all hell can break loose again.
And people wonder why I have lost faith in the human race.
OS X has far to much extra baggage in the ways of fancy graphics and slow user interfaces (I really DO NOT want to wait for my windows to zoom in and out of icons) to ever make it as a professional OS. While it might be OK for artists and such, for a person like me who wants to get the job done and get it done now, I really don't want to have to worry about transluctent buttons are OpenGL accelorated icons. MacOS (and for that matter, most Linux GUI's too) have a disgusting "fun" look to their interface, for crying out loud here folks, this is a TOOL I am using, NOT a toy (though it can be quite fun at times, heh) Even on a G3, any macintosh OS after (and including) 8 runs sloooow. You think Windoze is slow? Just imagine how horrid it would be without the options to skip loading windows and going diretly to the command prompt! Oh yah, and the command line still lives on, there are very few things in this world which can be done faster by GUI then by a macro/script/batch files. Compare the following steps for running a program in Macintosh OS (almost any version) to running a simular program in DOS. In MAC OS Click apple icon Sort through the 50+ programs that are listed Move your mouse to the desired program Left Click. Now, in Dos Type in the name of the program that you want to run. Enjoy your program. Of course, both steps assume that you have setup a link within the apple menu on Mac OS or that you have setup a batch files in DOS. In fact, even setting a batch file in DOS is easier then setting up the neccisary links in Mac OS. Of course, once you get to Linux you have even more powerfull scripting potential, but you also get multitasking to boot (heh, the one thing that DOS does lack, often times I find myself using windows just as a multitasker between multiple DOS programs.) One more itsy bitys thing, if anybody thinks that microsoft is keeping a lid on their source code (and they are, I might add) just compare that to apples marketing strategy, ugh! Horrid horrid horrid, they officaly (and quite proudly!) announce that they are a monopoly. Granted, this leads to 100% guarenteed hardware compatability, but hell, I myself perfer to be able to tinker around with things, and there is NO way that I am buying a product from a company that has such close ties to ATI (makers of the worlds slowest graphic cards!) ---Question somthing, just so long as it isn't me