You throw around the term "alternative OS" without giving much thought to what it means. Alternative as in less than the majority of people using it? Hell, why not try a Mac, there's good hardware support for it, slick apps, basically a wholesome workstation environment that you can make good use of. Need some of that UNIX power? Go with SUN or DEC, they make some great "alternative" hardware and the software optimized to run on it.
But no, you have to use Linux. You have to fuck with the very philosophy of the OS. Why, may I ask? Because it's cool? Because it's free? Cheap? Obviously not because you understand that Linux is where it is today in its markets (servers and task-specific workstations, not gaming rigs, if I need to spell it out for you and the other Johnny-come-latelys-I-run-Linux-cause-it-allows-me -to-compile-the-latest-sploit-and-show-o ff-to-my-lamer-friends) because of people like Stallman and their appreciation of the power of free software. Look at your setup. No, not the 98SE one, boot back into Linux. 100% of what makes your box run is GPL'd.
Honestly, I can't fathom why people like you (and sadly you are the majority now) would want to run Linux. What is wrong with Windows that you'd want Linux support from companies like Nvidia? Can't you just run Win2k? I do, for games and other everyday shit with fully functional v5.14 drivers from Nvidia for my TNT2. It's great, and I don't have to bash Stallman and his ilk because they delay the rise of my favorite "alternative OS" to mainstream status so that 20 million AOLosers can enjoy its stability. So why do you have to run Linux, polluting its foundation with your closed-sourced, commercialized bullshit? What does GNU/Linux offer you that Win2k or 98 doesn't? Why do you and your kind have to come and fuck with a genuinely revolutionaty solution? That's really all I want to know.
And you think this information is available from what TV program you watch?
The concept is not as preposterous as you seem to think. Think about Amazon. They use a completely ridiculous CVM model, trying to cross-market you merchandise that you are supposed to like given your reading, listening or viewing habits. It doesn't work (yet) and is more funny than nefarious, but still, someone believes in this idea strongly enough to spend untold millions of dollars to implement it. Customer analysis and cross-marketing is the lifeblood of the so-called new economy. Providing you, the consumer, with a quality service or product is becoming sidelined by trading you as a commodity, and that's the fucked up part. No matter what the computer logic behind the act might be, if my cell phone gets spammed by advertising for cell phone accessories, it doesn't make me any happier than if it had been spammed by ads for dog food.
Also, if businesses can trade seemingly innocuous information like viewing or surfing habits without the majority of the people opposing them, the slope becomes slippery pretty fast. Analyzing your credit card usage to see if you're consuming a lot of high cholesterol food and occasionally purchase cigarettes and alcohol to provide you, the valued customer, with more accurate pricing on your health insurance? Already doing that. Tracking your EZPass to derive driving patterns to provide you with a customized car insurance and loan solution? Already doing that. Computing your entertainment patterns to evaluate your potential risk as a home or business loan applicant? Sure, didn't you know that people who tend to eat out a lot have traditionally had a higher loan default rate than the national average?
As much as I dislike government intervention in private matters, I am all for a European-style regulation of the uses and discolsures of private information held by businesses.
Re:fire that moderator! Re:reverse.c
on
QNX Crypt Cracked
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· Score: 1
Posting source to slashdot is not redundant. The linked web page is probably going to be shut down within a week, whereas the source will remain in an easily accessible form on slashdot. Beats looking for mirrors.
This thread might also shed some light on the controversy. Check out article #43 and below, with a rather interesting perspective on the current state of affairs in that part of the community.
Re:the source for the php gnutella -- mirror!
on
GNUTella Search Tool
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· Score: 1
It's actually not that dumb, when you think about it. Another way of keeping the code out there, in an easily accessible forum like Slashdot, as well. You never know, someday you just might use it.
Now, when they shell out the bucks to send a process server to your location, or if you actually sign for a certified letter, THEN I'd think about doing what they ask -- but only after consulting a lawyer first.
Unmarked envelope from a foreign country or one that clearly states its provenance as some stateside law firm? The postman'd be on his way pretty quick. Unless, of course, Mattel bothers to pay the price of organizing a legitimate process serving initiative abroad, which, given the number, location and divergent local laws of the myriad of people outside of the US who put the software up, seems highly unlikely. Things like that really make me giddy at the thought of the good ole nation state.
And I think you are absolutely right about email not being quite the legitimate legal media Schwartz & Co. purports it to be. MS Word documents? Bizarre.uni files? But all I have is my C64! Like serving a printed restraining order to a blind person, I'm sure there are laws against it.
It's surprising that Salon would publish an article that could've come straight from the pages of a RIAA press release or music trade mag. Using a record exec as the spokesperson for the starving artists doesn't quite help the piece's credibility. Some artists' comments are spliced in for good measure, sure, but the author (an editor at Rolling Stone, which to the music establishment is what the WSJ is to the business world) apparently couldn't find any well-known, big-selling names to support his argument. The article also chooses to almost completely ignore those artists who support the MP3 phenomenon, mentioning proven, publically-acclaimed performers such as Chuck D only in passing, and instead devoting the best of three pages to quoting middling record execs and their unsuccessful acts.
Unfortunately for the Rolling Stone hack and his corporate backers, the initiative backfires, since even a mildly critically minded person can see right through the bullshit of statements such as "We send them to Napster and they see all their work being given away for free, and they're stunned and horrified." The artist as a weak puppet in the hands of the omniscient record exec who always looks out for his proteges' best interests? I don't buy it. If your music is good and I dig your stuff, however, I will go out and buy the album, if for no other reason than finding entire, properly ripped albums on Napster is next to impossible, unless your searches consume most of your waking time.
Perhaps you should heed your own advice and read a few of Marx's writings, instead of bundling his profoundly humane and equitable theories with the historically unsound and just plain repulsive ideas of the holocaust nay-sayers. As you so eloquently put in your post, ignorance is no solution to the world's problems.
Another disingenious attempt to whitewash America's brutal past.
Don't you want _your_ country to continue to exist? How are _your_ rights protected? By whose blood?
More often than not in the 20th century, it was local blood that was spilled to protect people's rights against American-sponsored dictatorial regimes. Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Iran, the Philippines, just to cite a few examples you always ask of others but never quite manage to produce yourself.
If Hussein gasses his own people, that's the Iraqi's business, in accordance to UN directive. .. and then Don't get me started......short answer: go ask a Kuwaiti survivor of the Iraqi atrocities how 'unjust' the war was...for that matter, go ask a Kurd.
Positing hypocritical double standards as the basis of one's argument is pretty weak. Why don't you go ask a Kurd about how it felt to be gassed in 1987 when Iraq was America's surest rampart against Khomeni's Iran or slaughtered by American allies in 1999, under the vigilant eye of brave American pilots patrolling the unilateraly declared no-fly zone.
Don't you wish you lived here where we are _FREE_ to sign our names and proud?
Proud to be the laughingstock of every thinking person in the world, boy?
Bribing might be illegal, but it's naive to think that American corporations would operate by an ethics code different from their European counterparts. In business, whatever gets you the profits analysts expect gets done, as demonstrated by the wholesale bribery of local officials by American oil companies operating in post-Soviet Central Asia and elsewhere.
Don't expect a government that actively spies on behalf of corporate interests (thus transfering public money into the private sector) to be overly mindful of a little corruption here and there. After all, it's all about "unprecedented growth" and "American jobs", isn't it.
Nothing on CNN, nothing on MSNBC. And so millions of shee^H^H^H^Hvoters will go on with their patriotic lives believing in the high ideals of American benevolence and the free market.
Quite sad indeed.
Re:Out Standing In Its Field (an obituary)
on
R.I.P. Iridium
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· Score: 1
Dysprosium
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek dysprositos hard to get at
Funny that you mention it. Back when Slashdot got a Netfinity server from IBM and people were up in arms about sacrificing integrity for profit. Of course, that was before the whole Linux market hysteria.
It is a strange situation. As a commercial software developer, I can't really decry UCITA for the obvious reasons. As a consumer, however, I'm indignated by the actions of the oppressive corporate lords that hope establish a new era of servage on the ruins of our democracy (republic, whatever, don't nitpick).
I've personally resolved that issue by increasingly relying on GPL'd software for my personal computing needs, and with projects like Mozilla and KOffice getting fast to the level of full day-to-day usability, a fully GPL'd (or at least following the Open Source guidelines) system is almost palpable reality.
I know this is a limited approach, possibly ignoring the larger ramifications of an increasingly restrictive corporate government, but it does alleviate that pesky cognitive dissonace a little bit.
Slashdot Mirror
You throw around the term "alternative OS" without giving much thought to what it means. Alternative as in less than the majority of people using it? Hell, why not try a Mac, there's good hardware support for it, slick apps, basically a wholesome workstation environment that you can make good use of. Need some of that UNIX power? Go with SUN or DEC, they make some great "alternative" hardware and the software optimized to run on it.
But no, you have to use Linux. You have to fuck with the very philosophy of the OS. Why, may I ask? Because it's cool? Because it's free? Cheap? Obviously not because you understand that Linux is where it is today in its markets (servers and task-specific workstations, not gaming rigs, if I need to spell it out for you and the other Johnny-come-latelys-I-run-Linux-cause-it-allows-mAnd you think this information is available from what TV program you watch?
The concept is not as preposterous as you seem to think. Think about Amazon. They use a completely ridiculous CVM model, trying to cross-market you merchandise that you are supposed to like given your reading, listening or viewing habits. It doesn't work (yet) and is more funny than nefarious, but still, someone believes in this idea strongly enough to spend untold millions of dollars to implement it. Customer analysis and cross-marketing is the lifeblood of the so-called new economy. Providing you, the consumer, with a quality service or product is becoming sidelined by trading you as a commodity, and that's the fucked up part. No matter what the computer logic behind the act might be, if my cell phone gets spammed by advertising for cell phone accessories, it doesn't make me any happier than if it had been spammed by ads for dog food.
Also, if businesses can trade seemingly innocuous information like viewing or surfing habits without the majority of the people opposing them, the slope becomes slippery pretty fast. Analyzing your credit card usage to see if you're consuming a lot of high cholesterol food and occasionally purchase cigarettes and alcohol to provide you, the valued customer, with more accurate pricing on your health insurance? Already doing that. Tracking your EZPass to derive driving patterns to provide you with a customized car insurance and loan solution? Already doing that. Computing your entertainment patterns to evaluate your potential risk as a home or business loan applicant? Sure, didn't you know that people who tend to eat out a lot have traditionally had a higher loan default rate than the national average?
As much as I dislike government intervention in private matters, I am all for a European-style regulation of the uses and discolsures of private information held by businesses.Posting source to slashdot is not redundant. The linked web page is probably going to be shut down within a week, whereas the source will remain in an easily accessible form on slashdot. Beats looking for mirrors.
This thread might also shed some light on the controversy. Check out article #43 and below, with a rather interesting perspective on the current state of affairs in that part of the community.
It's actually not that dumb, when you think about it. Another way of keeping the code out there, in an easily accessible forum like Slashdot, as well. You never know, someday you just might use it.
Unmarked envelope from a foreign country or one that clearly states its provenance as some stateside law firm? The postman'd be on his way pretty quick. Unless, of course, Mattel bothers to pay the price of organizing a legitimate process serving initiative abroad, which, given the number, location and divergent local laws of the myriad of people outside of the US who put the software up, seems highly unlikely. Things like that really make me giddy at the thought of the good ole nation state.
And I think you are absolutely right about email not being quite the legitimate legal media Schwartz & Co. purports it to be. MS Word documents? Bizarre .uni files? But all I have is my C64! Like serving a printed restraining order to a blind person, I'm sure there are laws against it.
It's surprising that Salon would publish an article that could've come straight from the pages of a RIAA press release or music trade mag. Using a record exec as the spokesperson for the starving artists doesn't quite help the piece's credibility. Some artists' comments are spliced in for good measure, sure, but the author (an editor at Rolling Stone, which to the music establishment is what the WSJ is to the business world) apparently couldn't find any well-known, big-selling names to support his argument. The article also chooses to almost completely ignore those artists who support the MP3 phenomenon, mentioning proven, publically-acclaimed performers such as Chuck D only in passing, and instead devoting the best of three pages to quoting middling record execs and their unsuccessful acts.
Unfortunately for the Rolling Stone hack and his corporate backers, the initiative backfires, since even a mildly critically minded person can see right through the bullshit of statements such as "We send them to Napster and they see all their work being given away for free, and they're stunned and horrified." The artist as a weak puppet in the hands of the omniscient record exec who always looks out for his proteges' best interests? I don't buy it. If your music is good and I dig your stuff, however, I will go out and buy the album, if for no other reason than finding entire, properly ripped albums on Napster is next to impossible, unless your searches consume most of your waking time.
Perhaps you should heed your own advice and read a few of Marx's writings, instead of bundling his profoundly humane and equitable theories with the historically unsound and just plain repulsive ideas of the holocaust nay-sayers. As you so eloquently put in your post, ignorance is no solution to the world's problems.
Another disingenious attempt to whitewash America's brutal past.
.. and then
Don't you want _your_ country to continue to exist? How are _your_ rights protected? By whose blood?
More often than not in the 20th century, it was local blood that was spilled to protect people's rights against American-sponsored dictatorial regimes. Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Iran, the Philippines, just to cite a few examples you always ask of others but never quite manage to produce yourself.
If Hussein gasses his own people, that's the Iraqi's business, in accordance to UN directive.
Don't get me started......short answer: go ask a Kuwaiti survivor of the Iraqi atrocities how 'unjust' the war was...for that matter, go ask a Kurd.
Positing hypocritical double standards as the basis of one's argument is pretty weak. Why don't you go ask a Kurd about how it felt to be gassed in 1987 when Iraq was America's surest rampart against Khomeni's Iran or slaughtered by American allies in 1999, under the vigilant eye of brave American pilots patrolling the unilateraly declared no-fly zone.
Don't you wish you lived here where we are _FREE_ to sign our names and proud?
Proud to be the laughingstock of every thinking person in the world, boy?
Bribing might be illegal, but it's naive to think that American corporations would operate by an ethics code different from their European counterparts. In business, whatever gets you the profits analysts expect gets done, as demonstrated by the wholesale bribery of local officials by American oil companies operating in post-Soviet Central Asia and elsewhere.
Don't expect a government that actively spies on behalf of corporate interests (thus transfering public money into the private sector) to be overly mindful of a little corruption here and there. After all, it's all about "unprecedented growth" and "American jobs", isn't it.
Nothing on CNN, nothing on MSNBC. And so millions of shee^H^H^H^Hvoters will go on with their patriotic lives believing in the high ideals of American benevolence and the free market.
Quite sad indeed.
Dysprosium
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek dysprositos hard to get at
Pretty sad indeed.
Unable to connect to the database. Please email.
Looks like a mainframe should be standard equipment for any site mentioned on slashdot.
Funny that you mention it. Back when Slashdot got a Netfinity server from IBM and people were up in arms about sacrificing integrity for profit. Of course, that was before the whole Linux market hysteria.
It is a strange situation. As a commercial software developer, I can't really decry UCITA for the obvious reasons. As a consumer, however, I'm indignated by the actions of the oppressive corporate lords that hope establish a new era of servage on the ruins of our democracy (republic, whatever, don't nitpick).
I've personally resolved that issue by increasingly relying on GPL'd software for my personal computing needs, and with projects like Mozilla and KOffice getting fast to the level of full day-to-day usability, a fully GPL'd (or at least following the Open Source guidelines) system is almost palpable reality.
I know this is a limited approach, possibly ignoring the larger ramifications of an increasingly restrictive corporate government, but it does alleviate that pesky cognitive dissonace a little bit.