They are stealing eyeballs, they are stealing users!. And all of us know that users are property. Everything belongs to the intermediary corporations that distribute stuff, duh.
Look, running these servers are going to cause Variant to loose money, it?s a simple as that. So? Who ever said that Variant had a god given right to make money the way they planned? They might be pissed, but if they are, they have no legal leg to stand on (no-reverse engineering clauses are not legally binding in any way). So what? Should we ban anything that might cause someone to loose money? Why?
Civil Disobedience is breaking the law for a higher purpose, breaking unjust laws. And the whole point is to get caught. What your describing is, well it isn't anything. We are free to do whatever we want, and if it causes a company with a bad business model to go out of business, then, that?s just to bad.
People like Spider-man and the fantastic-4 were never ostracized by the 'normal' people in the Marvel Universe. But mutants were, so why don't the mutants say that something 'happened' to them, rather then say they were mutated? Why don't people in the Marvel-verse despise and fear regular super-heroes with regular origins?
Do you honestly believe that people who choose to dress in black, etc, or even do things like play quake and doom should be ostracized? Scientific study after scientific study has shown that people who feel alienated by society and other individuals will act belligerently. And things like junior high alienate a lot of us.
It isn't that the people started off like that, but that they were alienated for things that they couldn't control. Lack of social graces, etc. That alienation feeds itself until the point where those alienated have no desire to be a part of the system that hurts them? What do you propose they do? Simply forget all the pain? Do you think those that torment them would even give them that option?
If you do, then you are some sort of idiot. (Or troll)
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
He isn't that far off the mark in this case
on
Slashdot Meets X-Men
·
· Score: 1
The over-all vibe of the X-men has always been about alienation. An outgrowth of the 1960's, it's always been about equality and discrimination (as well as fights in outer space, or course). The whole mutant/human issue is, and can be, compared to any kind of ostrifcation(sp?). And there are a lot of parallels between the 'mutant registry' and things like WAVE and computerized geek profiling, etc. In fact, it fits almost exactly.
People excluded, not just by peers, but by the system, because they are different.
Is Katz a little over-zealous? Is he a little reactionary? Probably, but the comparison here is not off.
(and don't forget who it is who reads these comics)
Actually, IBM does this, and they provide whets called a 'security audit' for companies for a fee. Interestingly, IBM has a lot more luck simply walking into companies and walking out with their systems in their arms then they do with breaking into systems. (about 70% success vs. 20% success)
My high school tried a similar tact when testing out some crappy Mac software, unfortunately the guy they got to test the software a huge moron (The school wasn't really that bright, they only provided 3gigabytes of storage for 1700 students, they ran out of space 3 weeks into the first semester). The major problem with the security wasn't security, but the fact that the software managed disk space, and program crashes by deleting random (or all) files.
Don't get the wrong idea. Security is always a good thing, but in my mind, I don't see what the point of this is. Why not just use OpenBSD, with uncompromising security, and then stick your Linux boxes behind a firewall? For a home user, simply simply following standard procedures and closing off unnecessary ports can achieve a reasonable level of security.
For a business, a real firewall, protecting the weaker systems can be enough. I'm not saying I'm a BSD zealot, and there isn't anything wrong with having an 'ultrasecure' Linux for its own sake, but I don't really see why this is needed.
This car is just cool. Gas electric, and pure electric vehicles have far more potential for pure performance then internal combustion engines. Internal combustion is a 90-year-old technology, and while it still works, it's clearly sub-optimal.
I read an article in wired several months ago about drag racers who used electric cars they built themselves. Turns out, you can get way, way more horsepower with batteries and motors then you can with normal gas engines. The key to saving the environment, they thought, was to make electric cars not a sacrifice, but simply better. Simply more exciting then normal cars. Like the ars-technica article said, the green stuff is simply gravy.
Videos compressed with a hacked version of Microsoft's Mpeg4 implementation look really nice, I just saw Natual Born Killers for the first time in Divix and I was blown away by the quality. Way better then VCD, way better (and full resolution to). And the file was only 700megs.
I would assume that M$'s secure content uses the same codec, as Divx
Some encryption is 'belived' perfict, they are not, however, mathimaticaly proven. But no one with any clue knows how to crack them (unless you give 'em a quantum computer)
Even then, that encryption can still be cracked given enough time (say, a few million years)
Copy protection, on the other hand, is always crackable, beacuse you need to have a decrypted form somewhere on the client machine. That means you have to have the encrypted keys rigth there with the media. see DeCSS.
The file transfers in Gnutella use HTTP, so downloading from Gnutella is no less unstable/slow then downloading from the web.
If someone tried to host a popular website on their AOL-14.4 baud modem, they would encounter the same problem.
on the other hand, these sightsound people probably already have a good webserver that they can run a Gnutella client. As long as you're downloading from them, and not some moron who decided to mirror the encrypted data
Of course, given that copy-protection isn't even theoretically possible, I can just see search results for a sightsound movie showing up right next to cracked versions of the same thing:P
ICQ has got to be one of the worst put together pieces of software in general use. On a lot of people's machines it takes longer to load ICQ then it does to boot windows. What the hell is taking so long?
The interface is just terrible, here's just one example: If you want to do an operation on a user name, you pull up a menu. In most windows programs, using the right mouse button causes a context menu. But not in ICQ. In ICQ you can switch it. Clicking on the other mouse button causes I dialog box asking if you want to switch them (complete with a big bitmap of a mouse).
What the hell is that?? If there's only one single click operation why not just make **BOTH** mouse buttons do it? Instead of having the other one pull up the stupid "would you like to switch mouse buttons" dialog???
The whole thing is chunky, the interface sucks ass... it's just bad software.
Since I have absolutely zero money, I can't really buy anything...:P
This is a great Idea, at least in the 'pr stunt' way, since Gnutella doesn?t really beat out the Web in terms of ease of use, or stability. (On the other hand, users would be more likely to find these things just randomly searching for movies (just add divix-avi-mpg to the filename:P).
Its certainly good that 'mainstream media' is taking a positive view of Gnutella, after all it does have a much greater claim to legitimacy then Napster. (It's not about breaking copyright, its about finding good porn!)
f by "they" you mean AOL, then that's not possible... ICQ isn't owned by America Online.
Um, yes it is. moron. AOL baught that den of idiot programmers Mirablis (or whatever). I don't know why they didn't take over the codebase, those ICQ programers should all be taken out and shot.
Everyone who works at AOL (myself included) as well as other stockholders want this merger to go through.
The idea doesn?t bother you? Don't get me wrong, I like AOL as much as everyone else (*cough*), but doesn?t the idea of one company having so much power disturb you? AOL has constantly been disruptive force online. And their policies about things like free speech are not anywhere near the policies laid out in the US constitution.
When I had an AOL account, back in the day, the provided free web space. And they still do, it's just, you need to have a huge add plastered up on your site. I find that disgusting. Profiting of other peoples work (when they are already paying for the service). AOL is commoditizing its user base in more ways than I can imagine (this is a company that used to sell mailing lists of its users). I don't think AOL owing one of the largest 'old media' companies in the US (and the world) doesn't exactly warm my heart.
It used to be the dream that the Internet would break down the barriers of nation and the world. And in some ways, it has. The other day I got an ICQ message from someone in Iran. But in that world it isn't the individual that's being empowered, it?s the corporation.
First of all, I'd love to see the AIM protocol be opened. AIM is way, way, better then ICQ, and opening up the protocol could allow it to become an open standard like HTTP, available everywhere. Making it even easier to find hot guys to chat with whenever I want? While this could certainly be about trying to make the AOL-TW merger more 'palatable'. It would also be a boon to the open source community. AOL has often, in the past few months done very 'nice things' for the open source community not the least of witch is maintaing Mozilla. I wonder if AOL sees Open Source as a way to harm Microsoft, and possibly remove them as a powerful player in new-media. As well as talk about using FreeBSD in set top boxes. Arguably, MS is the only company right now with the power to stop AOL. They're really the only ones trying to play AOL's game anymore. (other then perhaps @home ). If M$ goes away, there will be nothing to stop AOL's quest for world domination or whatever. So maybe they don't 'get it', not the same way we do, but what they do get is that Open Source can kill M$
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Re:problem is you guys aren't even trying anymore
on
Acts Of The Apostles
·
· Score: 1
When I first found the 'trolltalk' sid, I thought it was the coolest thing, but after a while, it became kind of redundant. Your troll was ether obvious, or so subtle that it was no different from a normal post.
Although, I think my favorite troll ever was a post saying that RMS was a money grubbing whore, and that ESR was a great person:) That got some good response.
Well, it was that, and the fact that we were being associated by people sans-clue with all the 'hot grits' posters and stuff. What was really annoying were the people who would do the same thing, over and over again. Like the guy who kept linking to that don knots story over and over again.
I also decided I was spending way to much of my time on slashdot...
I was invited into the 'elite troll guild' or whatever a while back, but currently I have no idea whats going on in the 'community' any more. While trolling was fun for me, it was just to time consuming.
Anyway, while there were really multiple communitys based on diffrent goals, one of the things I always hated was the 'don knots/CNN' guy. The guy that would post the same link to the same fsking page over, and over, and over again. What kind of reativity was that? I it was just so annoying.
Anyway, I just wanted to vent about the DK guy. God, what an idiot.
Don't use tables at all, use CSS layout, you'll find it makes it a lot easier to seperate content, people with 4.0+ browsers will see the cool stuff, and people with older browsers will see some old-school, highly readable HTML. Table layout is dead, long live CSS...
Most HTML+CSS pages are readable right from the source, and would be easy to translate the file in whole.
If I were in your place, I'd put every paragraph in a database table, with each row having the text in each language. That way, the translators could work on one paragraph at a time, and it would still be easy to update.
Originally the Cobalt machines ship with a custom version of Linux, and now everyone can run his favourite Open Source operating system on it.
Assuming, of course, that everyones favorite Open Source OS is ether Linux or NetBSD. And that everyone who might want to use one of these things is a guy.
Btw, does anyone know if these things can run Java, or Java Servlets? or is it just the webserver and perl or something?
I wouldn't be surprised if they took out the "damned dirty apes" line with "you poor misguided fellows"
There's no way that they could take out the signature line from the movie. And I did think they did a good job of building up Neo's 'faith' during the movie, in a logical progression. Epiffany(sp?) is posible, you know.
The matrix is a beautiful movie. Visualy stunning, and it has cool fight scenes. Ok, so it didn't really have much meaning other then the requisit surface gloss, but it was well put together and enjoyable.
Slashdot Mirror
If you buy lights, you still need to pay for electricity to use them.
Should the eletrical company be able to sue someone for giving away free solar cells and batteries?
Sure, the servers need to be paid for somehow, but why shouldn't someone else be able to provide an alternative service?
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
They are stealing eyeballs, they are stealing users!. And all of us know that users are property. Everything belongs to the intermediary corporations that distribute stuff, duh.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Look, running these servers are going to cause Variant to loose money, it?s a simple as that. So? Who ever said that Variant had a god given right to make money the way they planned? They might be pissed, but if they are, they have no legal leg to stand on (no-reverse engineering clauses are not legally binding in any way). So what? Should we ban anything that might cause someone to loose money? Why?
Civil Disobedience is breaking the law for a higher purpose, breaking unjust laws. And the whole point is to get caught. What your describing is, well it isn't anything. We are free to do whatever we want, and if it causes a company with a bad business model to go out of business, then, that?s just to bad.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
People like Spider-man and the fantastic-4 were never ostracized by the 'normal' people in the Marvel Universe. But mutants were, so why don't the mutants say that something 'happened' to them, rather then say they were mutated? Why don't people in the Marvel-verse despise and fear regular super-heroes with regular origins?
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Do you honestly believe that people who choose to dress in black, etc, or even do things like play quake and doom should be ostracized? Scientific study after scientific study has shown that people who feel alienated by society and other individuals will act belligerently. And things like junior high alienate a lot of us.
It isn't that the people started off like that, but that they were alienated for things that they couldn't control. Lack of social graces, etc. That alienation feeds itself until the point where those alienated have no desire to be a part of the system that hurts them? What do you propose they do? Simply forget all the pain? Do you think those that torment them would even give them that option?
If you do, then you are some sort of idiot. (Or troll)
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
The over-all vibe of the X-men has always been about alienation. An outgrowth of the 1960's, it's always been about equality and discrimination (as well as fights in outer space, or course). The whole mutant/human issue is, and can be, compared to any kind of ostrifcation(sp?). And there are a lot of parallels between the 'mutant registry' and things like WAVE and computerized geek profiling, etc. In fact, it fits almost exactly.
People excluded, not just by peers, but by the system, because they are different.
Is Katz a little over-zealous? Is he a little reactionary? Probably, but the comparison here is not off.
(and don't forget who it is who reads these comics)
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Actually, IBM does this, and they provide whets called a 'security audit' for companies for a fee. Interestingly, IBM has a lot more luck simply walking into companies and walking out with their systems in their arms then they do with breaking into systems. (about 70% success vs. 20% success)
My high school tried a similar tact when testing out some crappy Mac software, unfortunately the guy they got to test the software a huge moron (The school wasn't really that bright, they only provided 3gigabytes of storage for 1700 students, they ran out of space 3 weeks into the first semester). The major problem with the security wasn't security, but the fact that the software managed disk space, and program crashes by deleting random (or all) files.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Don't get the wrong idea. Security is always a good thing, but in my mind, I don't see what the point of this is. Why not just use OpenBSD, with uncompromising security, and then stick your Linux boxes behind a firewall? For a home user, simply simply following standard procedures and closing off unnecessary ports can achieve a reasonable level of security.
For a business, a real firewall, protecting the weaker systems can be enough. I'm not saying I'm a BSD zealot, and there isn't anything wrong with having an 'ultrasecure' Linux for its own sake, but I don't really see why this is needed.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
This car is just cool. Gas electric, and pure electric vehicles have far more potential for pure performance then internal combustion engines. Internal combustion is a 90-year-old technology, and while it still works, it's clearly sub-optimal.
I read an article in wired several months ago about drag racers who used electric cars they built themselves. Turns out, you can get way, way more horsepower with batteries and motors then you can with normal gas engines. The key to saving the environment, they thought, was to make electric cars not a sacrifice, but simply better. Simply more exciting then normal cars. Like the ars-technica article said, the green stuff is simply gravy.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
and what reason, pray tell, is there for aligning the eyes horozontaly? as opposed to say, 3 'eyes' in a triangle?
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Videos compressed with a hacked version of Microsoft's Mpeg4 implementation look really nice, I just saw Natual Born Killers for the first time in Divix and I was blown away by the quality. Way better then VCD, way better (and full resolution to). And the file was only 700megs.
I would assume that M$'s secure content uses the same codec, as Divx
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Some encryption is 'belived' perfict, they are not, however, mathimaticaly proven. But no one with any clue knows how to crack them (unless you give 'em a quantum computer)
Even then, that encryption can still be cracked given enough time (say, a few million years)
Copy protection, on the other hand, is always crackable, beacuse you need to have a decrypted form somewhere on the client machine. That means you have to have the encrypted keys rigth there with the media. see DeCSS.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
The file transfers in Gnutella use HTTP, so downloading from Gnutella is no less unstable/slow then downloading from the web.
:P
If someone tried to host a popular website on their AOL-14.4 baud modem, they would encounter the same problem.
on the other hand, these sightsound people probably already have a good webserver that they can run a Gnutella client. As long as you're downloading from them, and not some moron who decided to mirror the encrypted data
Of course, given that copy-protection isn't even theoretically possible, I can just see search results for a sightsound movie showing up right next to cracked versions of the same thing
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
ICQ has got to be one of the worst put together pieces of software in general use. On a lot of people's machines it takes longer to load ICQ then it does to boot windows. What the hell is taking so long?
The interface is just terrible, here's just one example: If you want to do an operation on a user name, you pull up a menu. In most windows programs, using the right mouse button causes a context menu. But not in ICQ. In ICQ you can switch it. Clicking on the other mouse button causes I dialog box asking if you want to switch them (complete with a big bitmap of a mouse).
What the hell is that?? If there's only one single click operation why not just make **BOTH** mouse buttons do it? Instead of having the other one pull up the stupid "would you like to switch mouse buttons" dialog???
The whole thing is chunky, the interface sucks ass... it's just bad software.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Since I have absolutely zero money, I can't really buy anything... :P
:P).
This is a great Idea, at least in the 'pr stunt' way, since Gnutella doesn?t really beat out the Web in terms of ease of use, or stability. (On the other hand, users would be more likely to find these things just randomly searching for movies (just add divix-avi-mpg to the filename
Its certainly good that 'mainstream media' is taking a positive view of Gnutella, after all it does have a much greater claim to legitimacy then Napster. (It's not about breaking copyright, its about finding good porn!)
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Windows runs command stored in these registry keys:
r entVersion/Run
e ntVersion/Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/software/Microsoft/Windows/Cur
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/software/Microsoft/Windows/Curr
As well as like runOnce and every thing like that in the same directorys.
Btw, a good way to find something in the registry is to do a search for something like the program file name.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
f by "they" you mean AOL, then that's not possible... ICQ isn't owned by America Online.
Um, yes it is. moron. AOL baught that den of idiot programmers Mirablis (or whatever). I don't know why they didn't take over the codebase, those ICQ programers should all be taken out and shot.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Everyone who works at AOL (myself included) as well as other stockholders want this merger to go through.
The idea doesn?t bother you? Don't get me wrong, I like AOL as much as everyone else (*cough*), but doesn?t the idea of one company having so much power disturb you? AOL has constantly been disruptive force online. And their policies about things like free speech are not anywhere near the policies laid out in the US constitution.
When I had an AOL account, back in the day, the provided free web space. And they still do, it's just, you need to have a huge add plastered up on your site. I find that disgusting. Profiting of other peoples work (when they are already paying for the service). AOL is commoditizing its user base in more ways than I can imagine (this is a company that used to sell mailing lists of its users). I don't think AOL owing one of the largest 'old media' companies in the US (and the world) doesn't exactly warm my heart.
It used to be the dream that the Internet would break down the barriers of nation and the world. And in some ways, it has. The other day I got an ICQ message from someone in Iran. But in that world it isn't the individual that's being empowered, it?s the corporation.
I hope the FTC cuts this merger like a dead rat.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
First of all, I'd love to see the AIM protocol be opened. AIM is way, way, better then ICQ, and opening up the protocol could allow it to become an open standard like HTTP, available everywhere. Making it even easier to find hot guys to chat with whenever I want? While this could certainly be about trying to make the AOL-TW merger more 'palatable'. It would also be a boon to the open source community. AOL has often, in the past few months done very 'nice things' for the open source community not the least of witch is maintaing Mozilla. I wonder if AOL sees Open Source as a way to harm Microsoft, and possibly remove them as a powerful player in new-media. As well as talk about using FreeBSD in set top boxes. Arguably, MS is the only company right now with the power to stop AOL. They're really the only ones trying to play AOL's game anymore. (other then perhaps @home ). If M$ goes away, there will be nothing to stop AOL's quest for world domination or whatever. So maybe they don't 'get it', not the same way we do, but what they do get is that Open Source can kill M$
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
When I first found the 'trolltalk' sid, I thought it was the coolest thing, but after a while, it became kind of redundant. Your troll was ether obvious, or so subtle that it was no different from a normal post.
:) That got some good response.
Although, I think my favorite troll ever was a post saying that RMS was a money grubbing whore, and that ESR was a great person
Well, it was that, and the fact that we were being associated by people sans-clue with all the 'hot grits' posters and stuff. What was really annoying were the people who would do the same thing, over and over again. Like the guy who kept linking to that don knots story over and over again.
I also decided I was spending way to much of my time on slashdot...
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
I was invited into the 'elite troll guild' or whatever a while back, but currently I have no idea whats going on in the 'community' any more. While trolling was fun for me, it was just to time consuming.
Anyway, while there were really multiple communitys based on diffrent goals, one of the things I always hated was the 'don knots/CNN' guy. The guy that would post the same link to the same fsking page over, and over, and over again. What kind of reativity was that? I it was just so annoying.
Anyway, I just wanted to vent about the DK guy. God, what an idiot.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Don't use tables at all, use CSS layout, you'll find it makes it a lot easier to seperate content, people with 4.0+ browsers will see the cool stuff, and people with older browsers will see some old-school, highly readable HTML. Table layout is dead, long live CSS...
Most HTML+CSS pages are readable right from the source, and would be easy to translate the file in whole.
If I were in your place, I'd put every paragraph in a database table, with each row having the text in each language. That way, the translators could work on one paragraph at a time, and it would still be easy to update.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Originally the Cobalt machines ship with a custom version of Linux, and now everyone can run his favourite Open Source operating system on it.
Assuming, of course, that everyones favorite Open Source OS is ether Linux or NetBSD. And that everyone who might want to use one of these things is a guy.
Btw, does anyone know if these things can run Java, or Java Servlets? or is it just the webserver and perl or something?
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
I wouldn't be surprised if they took out the "damned dirty apes" line with "you poor misguided fellows"
There's no way that they could take out the signature line from the movie. And I did think they did a good job of building up Neo's 'faith' during the movie, in a logical progression. Epiffany(sp?) is posible, you know.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
The matrix is a beautiful movie. Visualy stunning, and it has cool fight scenes. Ok, so it didn't really have much meaning other then the requisit surface gloss, but it was well put together and enjoyable.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D