That's pretty damn funny - do you know where it came from, or did you make it up?
I can't claim credit for originating the phrase, but it's been so long since I heard it, I couldn't tell you for sure where it came from. I just thought it was rather apropos to the discussion.;)
Re:EULA enforcability is a fiction...
on
EULA In Games
·
· Score: 2
EULAs, like old deed stiplations from the 50s that restrict the race that owners can supposedly can sell to, are in all non-UICTA states, nothing but legal fiction.
Awesome! That means I don't have to distribute the source code to modifications I make to GPLed software when I distribute the binaries, right?
it would have been better in every way just to expand area codes to four digits
Four digit area codes would introduce ambiguity into the actual meaning of the digits you dialed.
Currently, the rules for dialing are relatively simple:
Any call beginning with 2-9 is a number that consists of seven digits, except if the initial digit is followed by two 1's.
Any call beginning with 1 is a number that consists of 11 digits, unless the next three digits are 010, in which case, the next three digits are used to specify a long distance carrier (220, for example), which is then followed by the remainder of the original number. (Originally the long distance carrier choice only needed to be proceeded by a 0, but recent changes in the phone network have required the extra 1-0).
0#, or 0 followed by a timeout will get you to an operator. 0 followed by 10 digits will get you operator help for that specific number. 0 followed by 1, followed by other numbers is the format for international dialing.
How would four-digit area codes fit into the system without creating any ambiguity? Perhaps if a direct call began with 11, but what about the other methods of dialing an area code?
By adding the # and * characters into the currently allowed dialable digits you would get 4,159,780,352 (12^9 - 10^9) new numbers to work with.
This is impossible in the current phone system because the # key is used to signal the end of dialing, as opposed to the phone system waiting for your dialing to time out. Its main use right now is with international dialing, but I believe it works with domestic calls as well.
War on Drugs Bush: I think it goes without saying that the war on drugs is an unqualified failure. I, for example, have not been caught doing drugs under the Clinton administration. I believe that the drug surplus should be equally spread to every American citizen, and not just the most addicted 1%. Gore: When I was in Congress, I took the initiative in creating the war on drugs. When I'm your President, I will make sure that a rating system is put in place categorizing just how harmful drugs are to your children.
Minority Religions... Bush: Back in Texas, my record shows that minorities have been receiving extra special treatment when it comes to law enforcement. As president, I will do everything in my power to put those same policies to work for the nation. Gore: The rights of people who follow minority religions are definitely in need of protection. That is why I propose putting all of them in an iron-clad lockbox, where Congress can't interfere with them.
Why give a tax cut? Bush: When I was in Texas, I received a lot of money from big oil companies, and guess what? I liked it. I think the American people will like having extra money too. Gore: I agree with G.W. Bush on this one. As the economy starts to weaken, the American people will need extra money in their pocket to feed their children. I will also take the initiaitive in creating a rating system so you can be sure to know how much of a tax cut you'll be receiving.
electoral reform Bush: Those numbers you quoted are a good example of fuzzy math. In my plan, if someone gets 51% of the popular vote in California, that candidate will receive 85% of the electoral vote, while the other candidate will receive 64% of the electoral vote. Gore: I firmly believe that a webcam should be set up in the electoral college, so you can see the system at work.
How Do You Feel About Intellectual Property? Bush: In Texas, three 11th graders were found to have plaguarized several reports in their English classes. Guess what's gonna happen to those three students? They're gonna be put to death. Gore: Intellectual Property rights need to be protected. Which is why when I am President, I will lock all intellectual property in an iron-clad lockbox.
Encryption.... Bush: That's where you take all the big numbers and multiply them together? It's fuzzy math. I want to give privacy to all citizens, not just the top 1%. Gore: When I was in Congress, inventing encryption, I was thinking about these very same issues. I support the free use of encryption, as I believe everybody has a right to lock their data in an iron-clad lockbox.
Rising Political Protests Bush: When I was in Texas, we didn't have a problem with globalization. When I am President, I predict the same thing. Gore: By requiring mandatory gun registration and trigger locks, I feel we can take a lot of the danger out of political protests.
Asteroid Defenses Bush: I propose we build a death star. Gore: I agree. And I think we should hook a webcam up to it.
The Future of the Country, and of Humanity Bush: The answer is simple. What is five times seven? 42. Gore: I will put the country in an iron-clad lockbox. And then I will rate it.
Columbine advanced the hysterical ideal that computer games were not only unhealthy, but mortally dangerous. This idea has become the central rallying cry of the neo-Luddites.
And, ironically enough, it's also become the central rallying cry of Jon Katz.
I've been using a 1x1 transparent GIF for 18 months, but not for spacing. I use it to trigger a CGI program when the index.html home page is loaded. The purpose of this CGI program is to rotate the cartoon and other eye candy on the page, so that a reload gives a new look. After its work is done, the CGI program spits out a one-pixel transparent GIF just to keep the http server and the browser from being too disappointed at not getting what it is expecting.
The point is that in order to get a straight html page to also activate a program automatically whenever it is loaded, you have to use something like a IMG SRC.
Wouldn't you be better off in that case just executing your maintenance script via SSI, rather than relying on a seperate web request from the client?
Something like
<!--#include virtual="updatemainpage.cgi" -->
would do the same thing, and not rely on the client. Assuming, of course, your server can do SSI. If not, you could use an index.cgi instead of index.html, just have it dump out the page, then do the maintenance as part of that request. It'd save you on network traffic too.
Using a 1x1 IMG to do it is one solution, but it's not by any means, the only solution.
RIAA pretty much accepts now that they're the Borg of music... go check out RIAA.com, look under their left navigation menu, under "Licensing and Royalties"...
You're forgetting something - the half-life of web applications is frighteningly small. Websites tend to get rewritten and redesigned every year or so in order to stay 'fresh'.
You missed part of the point though.
web site != web application
Web sites are the more consumer-oriented wishy-washy "it needs to look pretty" type of thing that you're referring to.
Web applications are usually reformulations of existing legacy applications to a web interface in order to make them more accessible. For example, a bank might port its software so all account management is done over their LAN with a web browser, instead of on a Wyse through a telnet session.
The added benefit is that you have a nice graphical interface, rapid development, and it's extensible to a wider area network if the need ever arises. The browser even provides security and such.
Browsers today include features that you'll never see being used on the "consumer web", but are extremely vital for the application space. IE can be completely embedded into another program as a COM object, in fact, IE can serve the ENTIRE user interface for a 100%-local application. NS4 couldn't do that. Gecko can. It's what the market wants.
With Gecko, these applications can run on any platform. With IE, they're locked into Win32.
The worst part of the delays in a final release of Mozilla/NS6 is that NS4 is so horribly outdated, so horribly unstable, that users are forced to choose an alternative.
Opera won't ever succeed in taking more than a small niche of the market, simply because they want money for their browser.
The only other realistic choice is IE. IE might not be standards compliant, but users don't care.
Mozilla/Netscape is going to have a hell of a time trying to rebuild their market share at this point in the game. Netscape fell from glory while the web was still relatively young. There wasn't much legacy code out there, so switching to a Microsoft-centric web was easy. Now, many web applications are written to Microsoft's browser, many webpages are written to render in Microsoft's browser, and many companies have switched to IE as their standard platform.
Will AOL use Netscape 6 as the browser in the next version of the AOL software? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends how much of the web is incompatible with NS6 by the time it finally reaches release.
A better strategy for the Mozilla team would have been to write an IE-compatible browser, instead of a standards-compatible browser. There's just as much documentation, and there's a reference platform to compare against. The standards are quickly become irrelevant, and by the time Mozilla/NS6 makes it out the door, they may have been completely forgotten by the webmasters-at-large. At least if Mozilla was IE-compliant, they'd still be able to compete.
I know I'm sacrificing my karma to make that statement, as the prevaling attitude around here seems to be "if you make it standards-compliant, they will come", but in reality, that's not the case. "If you make it do what the users want, they will come."
Still, its going to be pretty damned cool to watch those guys float up the coast. Never ceases to amaze me how they navigate those sorts of distances... What is it that penguins use, anyway, astronavigation or something like waterflow/current recognition? Smell? Geographical landmarks?
It's due to the wonderful Open Source properties of the Penguin. If a Penguin gets lost, somebody will fill the need for navigation and will end up pointing the Penguin in the right direction.
If enough Penguins get lost in the same place, the fix become part of the Standard Penguin Distribution and all future Penguins will benefit from the upgrade.
Of course the scenario blissfully overlooks the lack of Mac OS X drivers for the large collection of PC compatible perhipherals, and just somehow assumes that Apple can overcome the long-standing technical hurdles toward true plug-and-play on the PC platform.
The reason Windows hasn't done it yet isn't entirely due to Microsoft's incompetence.
Even if by some stretch of the imagination you believe that the government has a place dictating matters in the software industry, this decision does NOTHING to address the real issues of the case. This is a "show decision", that's all.
Instead of one monopoly, this decision creates two of them. You think Microsoft-Apps will port Office to Linux? Why would they? Breaking Windows into a seperate company doesn't make Linux any more profitable as a target platform.
If anything (believe it or not), this decision might even make an eventual Linux port of Office LESS likely, because without the Windows cash cow to fall back on, MS-Apps will be less interested in gambling by investing signifigant development time in a non-mainstream platform.
Regardless, the Court of Appeals has historically been more favorable toward Microsoft than Judge Jackson, so I have no doubts Microsoft will WIN their appeal... especially with all the potential for oversight they can point to. The judge seemed almost TOO willing to rush the case through as fast as possible. A decision like breaking up a company shouldn't be rushed.
I can't believe that got moderated up. (Score: 5, Baseless FUD)
If Microsoft really wanted to "create extensive profiles on users", do you really think they'd have to stick a cartoon character on the desktop to do it?
On a similar vein, why do you suppose Perl uses the $ to mark off variables.... OF COURSE!! There's special hidden code attached to the $ key that emails your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, your favorite food, what kind of porn you like, and the brand of soap you use to a SeKReT email address on Hotmail.
Would be a version of a distributed file sharing client (like Gnutella) that uses covert channel #3 (bouncing forged packets off a third party host) to anonymize the server.
are you gonna come and sue me? Did I miss the click agreement that specified that I couldn't view certain parts of your page without viewing others?
I didn't say it was illegal to block certain parts of the site, my commentary was more directed at the fact that someone had the nerve to say that ads are somehow stealing from him as a user (I do think the newer Shockwave and other heavy-media based ads are stretching it a bit).
If you wish to install blocking software to block off ads, more power to you. If an inconspicuous and tiny graphic bothers you that much, by all means, block it. You're probably the same type of person that's downloaded hundreds of commercial songs via Napster, and thinks that's perfectly fine. (This isn't directed at the post I'm replying to, just in general)
Realize, however, that when your practice of screwing money out of the webmaster becomes wide-spread, that content you were so desperate to see uninterrupted by ads might just disappear completely. I run ads to pay for the server I run my site on. Yes, they do pull in a little bit more than the cost of the server, but I'm not getting rich off them by any stretch of the imagination, especially compared with the time I put into my site. By blocking the ads, you're taking money out of my pocket.
No, there's no click agreement, and you're not legally bound to view them, but you should be morally bound to at least tolerate them.
Slashdot Mirror
...there is no danger, however, as the satellites are now expected to land in Quasi, an uninhabited part of the Australian outback.
That's pretty damn funny - do you know where it came from, or did you make it up?
;)
I can't claim credit for originating the phrase, but it's been so long since I heard it, I couldn't tell you for sure where it came from. I just thought it was rather apropos to the discussion.
EULAs, like old deed stiplations from the 50s that restrict the race that owners can supposedly can sell to, are in all non-UICTA states, nothing but legal fiction.
Awesome! That means I don't have to distribute the source code to modifications I make to GPLed software when I distribute the binaries, right?
Yeah!! That's sticking it to Corporate America!
Is a pencil intuitive? What if you have never seen a pencil before? The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
it would have been better in every way just to expand area codes to four digits
Four digit area codes would introduce ambiguity into the actual meaning of the digits you dialed.
Currently, the rules for dialing are relatively simple:
Any call beginning with 2-9 is a number that consists of seven digits, except if the initial digit is followed by two 1's.
Any call beginning with 1 is a number that consists of 11 digits, unless the next three digits are 010, in which case, the next three digits are used to specify a long distance carrier (220, for example), which is then followed by the remainder of the original number. (Originally the long distance carrier choice only needed to be proceeded by a 0, but recent changes in the phone network have required the extra 1-0).
0#, or 0 followed by a timeout will get you to an operator. 0 followed by 10 digits will get you operator help for that specific number. 0 followed by 1, followed by other numbers is the format for international dialing.
How would four-digit area codes fit into the system without creating any ambiguity? Perhaps if a direct call began with 11, but what about the other methods of dialing an area code?
By adding the # and * characters into the currently allowed dialable digits you would get 4,159,780,352 (12^9 - 10^9) new numbers to work with.
This is impossible in the current phone system because the # key is used to signal the end of dialing, as opposed to the phone system waiting for your dialing to time out. Its main use right now is with international dialing, but I believe it works with domestic calls as well.
A summary of the State of the Nation
(http://www.ihatelinux.com/images/TIME_cover.jpg)
War on Drugs
Bush: I think it goes without saying that the war on drugs is an unqualified failure. I, for example, have not been caught doing drugs under the Clinton administration. I believe that the drug surplus should be equally spread to every American citizen, and not just the most addicted 1%.
Gore: When I was in Congress, I took the initiative in creating the war on drugs. When I'm your President, I will make sure that a rating system is put in place categorizing just how harmful drugs are to your children.
Minority Religions...
Bush: Back in Texas, my record shows that minorities have been receiving extra special treatment when it comes to law enforcement. As president, I will do everything in my power to put those same policies to work for the nation.
Gore: The rights of people who follow minority religions are definitely in need of protection. That is why I propose putting all of them in an iron-clad lockbox, where Congress can't interfere with them.
Why give a tax cut?
Bush: When I was in Texas, I received a lot of money from big oil companies, and guess what? I liked it. I think the American people will like having extra money too.
Gore: I agree with G.W. Bush on this one. As the economy starts to weaken, the American people will need extra money in their pocket to feed their children. I will also take the initiaitive in creating a rating system so you can be sure to know how much of a tax cut you'll be receiving.
electoral reform
Bush: Those numbers you quoted are a good example of fuzzy math. In my plan, if someone gets 51% of the popular vote in California, that candidate will receive 85% of the electoral vote, while the other candidate will receive 64% of the electoral vote.
Gore: I firmly believe that a webcam should be set up in the electoral college, so you can see the system at work.
How Do You Feel About Intellectual Property?
Bush: In Texas, three 11th graders were found to have plaguarized several reports in their English classes. Guess what's gonna happen to those three students? They're gonna be put to death.
Gore: Intellectual Property rights need to be protected. Which is why when I am President, I will lock all intellectual property in an iron-clad lockbox.
Encryption....
Bush: That's where you take all the big numbers and multiply them together? It's fuzzy math. I want to give privacy to all citizens, not just the top 1%.
Gore: When I was in Congress, inventing encryption, I was thinking about these very same issues. I support the free use of encryption, as I believe everybody has a right to lock their data in an iron-clad lockbox.
Rising Political Protests
Bush: When I was in Texas, we didn't have a problem with globalization. When I am President, I predict the same thing.
Gore: By requiring mandatory gun registration and trigger locks, I feel we can take a lot of the danger out of political protests.
Asteroid Defenses
Bush: I propose we build a death star.
Gore: I agree. And I think we should hook a webcam up to it.
The Future of the Country, and of Humanity
Bush: The answer is simple. What is five times seven? 42.
Gore: I will put the country in an iron-clad lockbox. And then I will rate it.
Let's see here, the IIS has a projected lifespan to 10 to 25 years.
That's just what Microsoft wants you to think.
Columbine advanced the hysterical ideal that computer games were not only unhealthy, but mortally dangerous. This idea has become the central rallying cry of the neo-Luddites.
And, ironically enough, it's also become the central rallying cry of Jon Katz.
I've been using a 1x1 transparent GIF for 18 months, but not for spacing. I use it to trigger a CGI program when the index.html home page is loaded. The purpose of this CGI program is to rotate the cartoon and other eye candy on the page, so that a reload gives a new look. After its work is done, the CGI program spits out a one-pixel transparent GIF just to keep the http server and the browser from being too disappointed at not getting what it is expecting.
The point is that in order to get a straight html page to also activate a program automatically whenever it is loaded, you have to use something like a IMG SRC.
Wouldn't you be better off in that case just executing your maintenance script via SSI, rather than relying on a seperate web request from the client?
Something like
<!--#include virtual="updatemainpage.cgi" -->
would do the same thing, and not rely on the client. Assuming, of course, your server can do SSI. If not, you could use an index.cgi instead of index.html, just have it dump out the page, then do the maintenance as part of that request. It'd save you on network traffic too.
Using a 1x1 IMG to do it is one solution, but it's not by any means, the only solution.
RIAA pretty much accepts now that they're the Borg of music... go check out RIAA.com, look under their left navigation menu, under "Licensing and Royalties"...
"The RIAA Collective"
I KNEW IT!
You're forgetting something - the half-life of web applications is frighteningly small.
Websites tend to get rewritten and redesigned every year or so in order to stay 'fresh'.
You missed part of the point though.
web site != web application
Web sites are the more consumer-oriented wishy-washy "it needs to look pretty" type of thing that you're referring to.
Web applications are usually reformulations of existing legacy applications to a web interface in order to make them more accessible. For example, a bank might port its software so all account management is done over their LAN with a web browser, instead of on a Wyse through a telnet session.
The added benefit is that you have a nice graphical interface, rapid development, and it's extensible to a wider area network if the need ever arises. The browser even provides security and such.
Browsers today include features that you'll never see being used on the "consumer web", but are extremely vital for the application space. IE can be completely embedded into another program as a COM object, in fact, IE can serve the ENTIRE user interface for a 100%-local application. NS4 couldn't do that. Gecko can. It's what the market wants.
With Gecko, these applications can run on any platform. With IE, they're locked into Win32.
The worst part of the delays in a final release of Mozilla/NS6 is that NS4 is so horribly outdated, so horribly unstable, that users are forced to choose an alternative.
Opera won't ever succeed in taking more than a small niche of the market, simply because they want money for their browser.
The only other realistic choice is IE. IE might not be standards compliant, but users don't care.
Mozilla/Netscape is going to have a hell of a time trying to rebuild their market share at this point in the game. Netscape fell from glory while the web was still relatively young. There wasn't much legacy code out there, so switching to a Microsoft-centric web was easy. Now, many web applications are written to Microsoft's browser, many webpages are written to render in Microsoft's browser, and many companies have switched to IE as their standard platform.
Will AOL use Netscape 6 as the browser in the next version of the AOL software? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends how much of the web is incompatible with NS6 by the time it finally reaches release.
A better strategy for the Mozilla team would have been to write an IE-compatible browser, instead of a standards-compatible browser. There's just as much documentation, and there's a reference platform to compare against. The standards are quickly become irrelevant, and by the time Mozilla/NS6 makes it out the door, they may have been completely forgotten by the webmasters-at-large. At least if Mozilla was IE-compliant, they'd still be able to compete.
I know I'm sacrificing my karma to make that statement, as the prevaling attitude around here seems to be "if you make it standards-compliant, they will come", but in reality, that's not the case. "If you make it do what the users want, they will come."
Um.....those PNGs seem to render perfectly on my copy of IE5.5.....
Sure they do, check out this example (IE 5.5 only).
Still, its going to be pretty damned cool to watch those guys float up the coast. Never ceases to amaze me how they navigate those sorts of distances...
What is it that penguins use, anyway, astronavigation or something like waterflow/current recognition? Smell? Geographical landmarks?
It's due to the wonderful Open Source properties of the Penguin. If a Penguin gets lost, somebody will fill the need for navigation and will end up pointing the Penguin in the right direction.
If enough Penguins get lost in the same place, the fix become part of the Standard Penguin Distribution and all future Penguins will benefit from the upgrade.
Of course they're not including bands like Limp Bizkit and Offspring in this, right?
After all, those bands have said they like their songs being traded on Napster, and RIAA works on behalf of the artists, right?
Right?
What? What do you mean the RIAA is an evil corporate entity? No! I feel like I just found out Santa Claus wasn't real!!!
Am I the only one that things this feature would be better named Backslash?
Of course the scenario blissfully overlooks the lack of Mac OS X drivers for the large collection of PC compatible perhipherals, and just somehow assumes that Apple can overcome the long-standing technical hurdles toward true plug-and-play on the PC platform.
The reason Windows hasn't done it yet isn't entirely due to Microsoft's incompetence.
Even if by some stretch of the imagination you believe that the government has a place dictating matters in the software industry, this decision does NOTHING to address the real issues of the case. This is a "show decision", that's all.
Instead of one monopoly, this decision creates two of them. You think Microsoft-Apps will port Office to Linux? Why would they? Breaking Windows into a seperate company doesn't make Linux any more profitable as a target platform.
If anything (believe it or not), this decision might even make an eventual Linux port of Office LESS likely, because without the Windows cash cow to fall back on, MS-Apps will be less interested in gambling by investing signifigant development time in a non-mainstream platform.
Regardless, the Court of Appeals has historically been more favorable toward Microsoft than Judge Jackson, so I have no doubts Microsoft will WIN their appeal... especially with all the potential for oversight they can point to. The judge seemed almost TOO willing to rush the case through as fast as possible. A decision like breaking up a company shouldn't be rushed.
I can't believe that got moderated up. (Score: 5, Baseless FUD)
If Microsoft really wanted to "create extensive profiles on users", do you really think they'd have to stick a cartoon character on the desktop to do it?
On a similar vein, why do you suppose Perl uses the $ to mark off variables.... OF COURSE!! There's special hidden code attached to the $ key that emails your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, your favorite food, what kind of porn you like, and the brand of soap you use to a SeKReT email address on Hotmail.
Oh yeah, Janet Reno's in on it.
Actually, a poll is what should be done, but for once, one without CowboyNeal as an option.
I'd suggest:
A. Remove ALL posts in question
B. Remove only posts that contain the actual document, not just links to it.
C. Do nothing at all
Would be a version of a distributed file sharing client (like Gnutella) that uses covert channel #3 (bouncing forged packets off a third party host) to anonymize the server.
I'd like to see Metallica try to shut that down.
Cost to me if i do see the banner ad: $0.05
If it costs you 5 cents to download 30k, you're getting seriously screwed on your Internet access costs.
By that logic, it'd cost you $1.70 to download one megabyte. Your average dialup Internet account could only download 11 meg a month.
You should get a new ISP.
are you gonna come and sue me? Did I miss the click agreement that specified that I couldn't view certain parts of your page without viewing others?
I didn't say it was illegal to block certain parts of the site, my commentary was more directed at the fact that someone had the nerve to say that ads are somehow stealing from him as a user (I do think the newer Shockwave and other heavy-media based ads are stretching it a bit).
If you wish to install blocking software to block off ads, more power to you. If an inconspicuous and tiny graphic bothers you that much, by all means, block it. You're probably the same type of person that's downloaded hundreds of commercial songs via Napster, and thinks that's perfectly fine. (This isn't directed at the post I'm replying to, just in general)
Realize, however, that when your practice of screwing money out of the webmaster becomes wide-spread, that content you were so desperate to see uninterrupted by ads might just disappear completely. I run ads to pay for the server I run my site on. Yes, they do pull in a little bit more than the cost of the server, but I'm not getting rich off them by any stretch of the imagination, especially compared with the time I put into my site. By blocking the ads, you're taking money out of my pocket.
No, there's no click agreement, and you're not legally bound to view them, but you should be morally bound to at least tolerate them.