i'm up in canada and when the power went out our internet conenction didn't. i know this because one of the guys from our offices out west called and asked me what was going on. tho our network did go down due to our ups running out of juice.
the only thing that did NOT go down during the power outage up here was our telephone system. i'm not sure about our other net conenctions tho, i know my home cable connection went down, that's cause cable was out in certain areas, tho in other areas the cable was fine, our bell dsl was fine because bell's authenication servers are in quebec, who would have guessed the french were useful?
i'm guessing that all of our networks were up, i guess the diesel generators a lot of the big data centers have installed came in handy.
i have a sony tape player/radio, that's over 25 years old, if not more, i forget cause i've had it since i've been little.
as of now, it still works partially, the tape motor is on it's dying days but the radio works fine. the battery slot doesn't work and hasn't for a while but i've never really needed it. i'm just amazed it still works.
this thing has been dropped countless times on concrete and pavement, grass, dirt and other such surfaces, i've taken it camping and on various trips here and there. it's taken a good licking and still works after all this time.
i use mplayer, i like mplayer, i've had a few issues with certain mplayer builds but it gets fixed. i can see the developers point of doing binary distributions because they'd have to do different binaries cause of all the libs it can use, so one binary would have all the libs linked, one would have none, one would have only certain ones linked. you do the math and see how difficult it would be to support all those things
i've got no issue with debian, i think it's a good distro, tho i use gentoo and slack before that and i think slashdot ran on debian and maybe still does.
however with that being said this thread here is going to evolve into a flame war and pretty darn fast. with both sides having some good points.
i think the main thing about mplayer was one of the debian people not responding to them at all and going so far as to deny they even tried to contact him.
/covering butt on
this next part is only my opinion from what i've seen and it's not indictive of everyone in said community. /butt covering off
/opinion
most of the debian users i've had the chance to meet i've found are more fanatical that stallman is about the gpl and most are rather unfounded about it. the gpl is good and all but the gpl isn't the answer to everything.
i've found that most of the users i've ran into have no real clue about the inner workings of the system or how to do basic things, like compiling from source cause there's no apt-get for the package, and will bitch and complain about not being gpl compliant without a clue on why their actually saying it, i'm sure the top guys are a bit more knowledgable than the users i've run into. /opinion off
honestly i think everyone should just take a deep breath, count to 10 and look at this with clear heads, tho i doubt that will happen.
maybe one day we'll all get along with this nice little religous war we're having but i doubt it as well. so carry on and flame away
i know that censorship is bad, however there are some cases where it is valid and there is a need for it. one of these prime examples is when someone's right to a fair trial is at stake.
i am canadian and i don't think that it's an overly bad idea to censor like that until the trial starts, they are only banning the media until the trial begins, if i'm not wrong the same thing happened with the oj trial or at least they tried to stop it. i remember it being a big issue cause of all the media coverage that they moved the trial because they couldn't find an impartial jury and the same with the rodney king trial.
don't get me wrong i'd love to see that guy go to jail for a long time, same thing with paul bernado. i know that the crown, the government's lawyers, wants to see him locked up just as much as the rest of us do. they just want to make sure that he gets a fair trial so he can be locked up and the key tossed away, would you really like a person like that to be set free cause of an impartial jury?
as for the reporters, well if they really want they can remove their work visa and they have to leave the country, it's a priviledge for them to be here, not a right.
i know of a few other times the american government censors information. just go through the yro of this website and i'm sure you'll find several articles dealing with it. or how about looking through the jfk files and such, notice the liberal use of the black magic marker on the documents or all the stuff after sept 11.
so don't go jumping down canada's back when they are just trying to get the guy locked up and the key tosses away. we're just going through all the steps our legal process deams neccessary for a fair and impartial trial.
see there is a small problem with this. people won't boycott anything, they might say they will but in reality they'll follow along with the norm to fit in with society.
i personally try not to buy stuff from major labels and go see movies for several reasons:
1. i don't like most of the music made by the mainstream/riaa member labels, there are a few exceptions to that rule.
2. the bands and music i do like aren't on riaa member labels.
3. indie movies for the most part are well crap, once again a few exceptions to the rule but those are usually picked up by large studios.
4. all the mainstream music sounds the same, well with in the genre it is particular to. all rap sounds the same, all alternative/punk/grunge/college sounds the same, all metal sounds the same and well rap is just rehashing lots of old stuff and has repeated itself for years.
not for the sole purpose that they are not members of the riaa, tho that helps, but because i like the music and also for the most part they all give away free mp3s for you to listen to.
the majority of the people on slashdot tho won't take the bold step to listen to something that deviates from the norm. tho they are big proponents of saying "down with the riaa/mpaa"
the movie thing i'm guilty of cause well i like eye candy and good stories, however i rarely go to the movie theatre, the last few movies i went to are lotr:fotr, spider-man and attack of the clones. before that i think it was maybe episode 1 or a movie i took a date to, but the point is it was a while since i went to the movies.
everyone here can talk the talk but frankly most aren't willing to walk the walk.
i kinda do both but it's not because it's to be cool, it's cause i like that thing better than what is considered "popular" or the "in thing".
however if the music i liked was part of the riaa i'd probly still listen to it no matter what cause i genuinely like the music and unfortunately that's the boat most people are stuck in. that and a lot of them are unwilling to take a step and be a bit different than the rest of us. that and we have all this pop-culture crap shoved down our throats constantly it's hard to ignore, tho i can do it because of choices i've made and my personal preferences, when there's "no market" aka no payola from the label to play the music then it's not on the radio so when i do listen to the "radio" it's via netcast most of the time.
all people really need to do is get some balls and take a step and be different but they won't and will say stuff on here and yet go out and by the latest snoop dogg or britney spears cds and watch survivor and take what ever the riaa/mpaa dish out.
well i'll start out by saying i'm not a gun fan to begin with, however if you like hunting or collecting old antique guns or a target shooter, that's fine cause your gun is being used for something useful. however the hobbiest, not one of the aforementioned hobbiests, or the person who gets the gun for "personal protection" is more likely to use the gun in a way it's not intended to be used, ie on another person.
the "personal protection" people worry me the most cause a lot of them think that since they have a gun they can shoot anyone that pulls a gun on them. ask any cop and they will say "don't be a hero give the person with the gun what they want cause if you don't you'll probly get shot"
this is very true if there is any doubt, call your local police station and ask them what you should do. if there's further doubt look into how many convient store clerks get shot or other people who try to be heroes, the few that do live are lucky and there's always the quote in the paper of the officer saying something to the effect of "well this isn't something you should normally do that person was very lucky they didn't get shot"
the fact of the matter is people who try to be heroes in that way 9 time out of 10 get shot, most die and some get wounded.
gun control doesn't stop people from getting guns it just tells the powers that be who has what gun. criminals will always get guns cause well they probly aren't registered in the first place and well they're criminals so what's one more law to break.
if you have the gun for legal purposes why should it matter who knows who has it. the government knows your liscence plate and it's registered to your car. they know your social security/social insurance numbers and they point to you. so why not guns that are rather violent weapons?
i think it's ok for them to know who owns it
however what having gun control does do is stop the criminal from being overly trigger happy. if they know you don't have a gun they will be less likely to shoot first and ask questions later, also it stops people from wanting to be john wayne,john mclane or some other hero type who wins the day by killing the bad guy.
it also stops kids from having access to the guns and inadvertantly shooting themselve or others, ala columbine.
one last thing it stops is police from doing their job, now they don't have to violent deal with people who may or may not be packing a hand cannon.
i live in canada and we do have strict gun laws. we must have trigger locks on all the guns, the ammunition must be stored in another locked cabinet on the other side of the house and there's something with the keys as well but i'm not sure totally as ianal but i'm sure there will be someone here who can fill you in on that info.
also up here we don't have the opp, rcmp or other provincial police pulling guns on the person when they get pulled over like the state troopers do. harking back to the shoot first ask questions later attitude and the surprise of the person packing a hand cannnon.
as for our murder rate it's pretty low compared to the states. a quick survey of the statistics canada website will give you the info you need on murder by method
in 2001 there was a one to one ratio of shooting and stabbing murders, i doubt the american methods are anywhere close to that.
i've heard people argue about it protecting from invading forces, though last time i checked invaders was a military issue not some weekend warrior issue. i mean if an army comes in i doubt there's much that a single person can do and if they know the citizens are armed then it's kill them all and let god sort them out. so more people die that don't have to.
hopefully this clears up some issues, tho it will spiral into some annoying flame war more than likely cause i've found americans are rather touchy about gun control. tho i've found once a family member or friend has their head blown off, either accidently or in a way that could have been prevented, they change their tune about the whole issue.
well personally i've burned a couple hundred cdr's this year, mostly iso images and other files here and there.
i won't say i haven't burnt music onto cdr cause i'd be lying however i have only burnt music that i either owned and here's a list of what i DID burn that was music:
ltd cds i didn't want to ruin or lose the original cd cause it's worth money
music i downloaded that was allowed to be downloaded by the artists themselve, such as live performance of the legendary pink dots, edward ka-spel, dj lithium's sets, another dj friend's sets and other music the artists released to the general public
mixed cds i've made as a gift or just for my listening pleasure cause i wanted a few songs on one cd
i'd say all those are fair use of my own personal property as i've not sold ANY to anyone nor made any money off of them. however i am in canada and we are allowed to burn a cd we burn off of a friend cause we pay a levy on all recordable media that goes back to both the music industry and i think the software industry (don't quote me on the second part but i know about the music industry)
however on the flipside i can count on one hand how many cds i've boughten from the big record labels this year and need my second hand and maybe a foot to count the amount of cds i've gotten from the big labels in the past 2 years. i tend to only buy music from the "independant" record labels, such as:
most have either partial or full mp3's or other audio formats you can listen to their artists from, in projekt's case each artist has their own mp3.com site and you can download several full songs from each artist and distribute them, the owner loves mp3s and knows that they help the music industry and doesn't hurt it.
well since i was looking for freeamp the other day and i noticed it wasn't around any more, i found another free as in both speech and beer open source mp3 player. it's called zinf
freeamp is good just wish the website was still around. zinf seems to be the exact same thing tho just with a name change.
as the title of the comment says you can't do anything, the waiver they are having you sign is something that all companies do to cover their butts.
i used to work for an online college that's in ontario and the lovely new proprietors claimed our jobs were not going to be lost and we got laid off two weeks later and i had to sign the same piece of paper.
i asked someone who went through the same thing with a large financial institution and they said sign the paper, you'll just lose money and waste money talking to a lawyer about it. they took the lawyer route and had to pay money and didn't get the severance package.
unless you have a reason to sue, just sign the paper and take the severance package and be on your merry way.
that is easier said than done considering waterloo is one of the top computer schools in north america, their math department is their big money maker. they are one of the two schools in north america to offer degrees in telcom.
hopefully the student body that pays the money to go there, will have a better say at changing the tide, considering the university of waterloo has spawned their own unix distro, licq and tux racer, among other linux and unix projects. so tho m$ might have a say what they students could learn, there will always be *nix friendly users and projects.
well there's one simple way of doing this, and i'm sure that most slashdotters have seen it already.anyways here goes and all appologies to robert zemeckis and micheal j fox.
get someone who is not attached to you really, such as a friend or cousin or something like that get an agent, being a courrier, lawyer, bank or any other group that will be around for a while, like the masons or shriners, to hold on to the item or discovery until such time as it can be released.
the bank and lawyer and courier won't be able to open it legally until they are allowed to or deliver it to said persons. having another person give the discovery would take suspicion off of you.
so there's the solution and i'm sure eveyone here has seen a variation of this.
the electronic music everyone forgets
on
Electronic Music 101?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
everyone always lists and discusses mindless and well in my opinion crappy electronic music and that's what they always consider that the whole electronic genre. however paul oakenfold and the like aren't the only nor the best form of electronic music out there. so here's some good AND NON-riaa labels, well mostly.
vnv nation - one of the hotest ebm bands out there right now, good beats HIGHLY intellegent lyrics with a lot of meaning and feeling. piro from megatokyo loves them. covenant- sweedish based band with big bouncy beats and great lyrics. icon of coil- trancier band on their new album really hard hitting on their original one but still a very high energy band. apoptygma berzerk- trancy type sythpop from norway, pretty good and rather dancy. haujobb- drum and bass influnced music that is very catchy and relaxing. side projects are cleen/cleener and a couple others funkervogt- harsher beat and sampled music that deals a lot with war and uses distorted vocals fictional- a better version of funkervogt ravenous- same as fictional cevin key- from the legendary band skinnny puppy with many side projects including plateau, hilt, download and a couple others. and one- the kings of synthpop, really catchy and fun lyrics, songs are both good and funny. phil western- formly part of download, but a great minimalist techno artist who's website is colourspeaks :wumpscut:- harsh sample oriented dance music influenced by skinny puppy. wolfshiem- great synthpop band that's depeche mode influenced. das ich- great german electronic band that sings entirely in german decoded feedback- very good and dancy sample based band with great lyrics and no they aren't using distortion, tho it sounds like it.
most of these bands can be found at metropolis rrecords
i have however left a couple bands for the last cause they practically started the whole genre and they are also on some riaa labels due to popularity and such
skinny puppy- one of the most influencial bands in the electronic field today and their canadian to boot front 242- the band that started the whole ebm, electronic body music, about 20 years ago now and still going strong, with music that is even revolutionary now. frontline assembly and delerium yes these guys are the SAME people, well person now since it's just bill leeb. frontline is a beat, synth and sample oriented music where delerium is more ambient in earlier incarnations and more dancy and female based lyrics in their later releases
the place i work has gone through changes. when i first started here it was a satelite office and only 2 of us in the office all day and a part time person after 5.
honestly we didn't socialize outside because really we were from different generations and such, tho i did socialize once in a while with the part time people. we couldn't do the during work beer thing as there was only 2 ppl here and we kinda had to be there.
a little over a year ago our office and the head office merged, so we got more people here. then we started to be more social. still tho we mostly stuck to our own generation.
once the office got populated tho we did start to do things such as go out for beer and what not at lunch.
tho some of them do things together after work, mostly cause they were friends before they worked here, we don't really do a lot of things together outside of work. only one of the guys do i really know his girlfriend and such outside of work mostly cause we share a lot of the same intrests and i drag him and his girlfriend to concerts in a quest to make him mo' poe or so he claims and we do the occasional night of mindless debauchery.
personally i think the anti-social thing is pretty relative. it all depends on the place, i've been in factories where they aren't social after work at all and same with other jobs. so this question really shouldn't be limited to just the tech community it should be about all job places.
well if you are worried about them snooping your packets don't use their "high speed" proxy servers. they are a big waste of garbage and you do not get stuff any faster, you are on a broadband connection.
i use rogers@home and i used to use their proxies but not now i have no use for them and i configured myself statically when i ran windows many moons ago because their dhcp servers would go down a lot or they would kill my tcp/ip stack when trying to renew the ip. when i switched to linux, since it "wouldn't support" dhcp i had myself configured statically and their was my "firewall" problems as well.
but if you really want to switch isp, some of them such as videotron in quebec and dsl.ca charge you for bandwidth use and i'm sure there are other ones around the world too
***DISCLAIMER***first off DON'T take this as flamebait because it's not, it's a collection of observations that fit the subject matter. so no flames please.
now that's done with on with my post.
living in canada i have the joy of being a third party witness to the shinnanegans of the riaa and the mpaa without it affecting me THAT much, it still does tho. some of these court cases the riaa is doing would not happen up here, they would be tossed out.
i know americans make fun of canada but we have court systems and governments that work for the people and not the corpate intrests. i do believe the american constitution reads "for the people, by the people" something i think a lot of americans don't realize is the government should help THEM and not a corperation that gives them a nice infusion of cash.
yes there are sometimes that politicians in canada are swayed by the corprate world but that's few and far between and usually they are found out and get REALLY bad press and something does happen to them when they are found out.
a canadian judge would look into the matter and see if a group like the riaa is really after groups for their own good, such as reputation or copyright/trademark infringement, or if they are after them just for the money. if it's just for the money the canadian courts have a good habit of either tossing the case out, rewarding in the favor of the plantiff but for some trivial amount but making them pay court fees or finding for the defendant and making the plantiff pay for the court fees, yes in canada you have to pay court fees so it can get fairly costly.
now with this story if a canadian company or mexican one for that matter made either cdr's or burners they could go after the riaa under the terms of nafta. it's a nasty piece of legislature but it does have some good usages and screwing the riaa over is a good one. i do believe it would be loss of business or not allowing them to carry on normal business, i don't know nafta off by heart so i can't quote it exactly but it's in there.
now as much as the wto sucks this is something that companies can at least try and put a stop to is the bully mentality of the riaa and the mpaa. both nafta and the wto stuff are VERY powerful pieces of legislature and some companies should learn to use them to their advantage.
i was mildly surprised when i saw this for a couple reasons.
1. they actually were able to do it, this quickly
2. it was said that nvidia had no chance of ever being able to do something like this as it they weren't serious graphics cards.
this comes from an article several months ago on maximum pc (sorry i checked for the link but it's not to be found, but if a staff member from there reads this and they can find the link please link it) which was about a flame war that someone from nvidia and one of the guys from sgi (i might be wrong on sgi, sorry if i am and i forget the names, it's not cause i don't want to leave them out it's that i don't remember), where the guy from sgi said that nvidia was off his rocker with saying that nvidia cards could ever come near the level of performance to do something like toy story and it would be many years, tho the article is less than a year old.
well i guess the guy from sgi is eating crow now after reading what the nvidia cards are doing what they said would take years till bill gates becomes a linux lover in less than a year and right now i don't think that bill has really embraced the penguin quite yet.
it was just an interesting side note to this story.
ok this might piss people off but frankly i don't care and it has to be said.
if you want to make sure what your child is looking at sit down with them and monitor what they are looking at and yes 15billion britney spears and backstreet boys sites might such to go through but hey if you want it to be "safe" then surf with her.
i seriously am sick and tired of parents today, most shouldn't even be parents. they plop their kids down in front of the tv and let the tv raise them. and then they wonder why their kids are such mouthy little buggers.
i know that people blame their careers and such, well if you career gets in the way of having kids, dont' have kids instead of spitting out babies and letting the tv raise them and wonder why they won't listen to you and they are juvenille deliquents. it's not marilyn manson that's making your kids out to be bad people, it's you.
anyways if you really want to make sure she does have a good and safe exerience on the net then sit down with the child and browse with her instead of letting her do it yourself. you can probly leave her if she's talking to a friend on icq or what not but still keep an eye on her.
i know as much as people hate them, there is some good, if you go to amazon.com when you look at items they do give you suggestions of other related artists and other stuff that customers bought that bought that product. yes i know they suck but still it's a good service. i know cdnow.com has this service too. when i go to those places i know what i want and i'm not really affected by it, unless i happen to notice something i don't have.
user/friend suggestions are good, i being a music lover, my lack of money in the bank and piles of cds and vinyl will attest to this, try and follow this as much as possible. i even get record stores suggesting stuff for me to buy or they pick up the cd or vinyl at their distributor if they know i want it. and yes i do that if you spend enough money at the store.
personally i don't listen to the radio anymore since they never play the music i like. our local alternative station claims there's no market for my music, yet somehow when bands i request at the club packs the floor and when the bands come around they easily sellout the show. so most of my selection comes from either friends, links or browsing record labels
i will say tho that there is a total lack of a push of the music industry. if the label doesn't have enough money to bribe, errr ummm i mean push, the artist on radio stations. then well the band and the label are sol and have to work with word of mouth promotion and small club promotions or if there is a local university (or college) radio station.
this lack of distribution is one reason i like napster and mp3s. if used properly people DO go out and buy the mp3s of a band they have downloaded the mp3 of. if they don't well the artist never really lost anything since the person wasn't going to buy the cd anyways. also it is one of the reasons i like to put the list of my cds on the net and i do offer to make mp3s of any of the cds i have so people can have a taste of the band.
maybe one day the riaa will realize that it's head is secure wedged up it's behind and pull it out and see what a mess it has created of the music industry but i doubt that. it's akin to ask microsoft to write stable, secure and standard compliant software. it will never happen.
well i can say with having the joys of calling into radio stations that they are affected by the good old payola. they won't play stuff they aren't paid for, i have bugged them to play electronic music and they claim there's "no market for them" however electronic bands, when they come around regularly sell out and even have lines around the corner waiting to buy extra tickets.
it will also explain why they do not play music from independant labels, they aren't being paid to play them. so no money to play them means no airplay for that label
there are several labels i chan thing of that this affects metropolis records , projekt records , gashed records , inception records none of them are part of the riaa, so i gladly buy their albums but the downfall of this is they get no air play due to a "lack of a market" even in the light of over sold shows.
frankly i hope the ftc and the crtc (the canadian version of the ftc for you non-canucks) actively looks into this because it really is detrimental to our independant record labels and artists who aren't on a big label and get the big push or should i say pay off to the radio station now?
i have seen many suggestions, such as online cops and such, but i got a good idea that might work and might get some sys admins mad and actually to take responsbitity for their comprimised boxes.
well here is the idea i came up with if there's a known script kiddie or comprised box the admin refuses to deal with that network should be blackholed, don't allow them to route to any place outside their own network, until they can prove it has been fixed. some admins won't listen to another person screaming at them to fix THEIR problem, i know this from personal experience, but give them several hundred or thousand paying customers and people who pay them yelling to fix the problem and then you will see how fast things change.
oh don't forget we also have claim to fame to
1. the poem "In Flanders Field"
2. pam anderson
3. william shatner and james doohan for all you trekkies
4. higher alcohol percentage in our beer
5. the rock legends known as rush
6. anne murray and leonard cohen
7. insulin
8. the telephone
i could go on but i can't think of a lot of stuff right now.
Slashdot Mirror
#!/bin/bash
/porn/
/dev/null
if $1 == porn then
mv $1
else
mv $1
fi
i think that's all the file management anyone really needs
i'm up in canada and when the power went out our internet conenction didn't. i know this because one of the guys from our offices out west called and asked me what was going on. tho our network did go down due to our ups running out of juice.
the only thing that did NOT go down during the power outage up here was our telephone system. i'm not sure about our other net conenctions tho, i know my home cable connection went down, that's cause cable was out in certain areas, tho in other areas the cable was fine, our bell dsl was fine because bell's authenication servers are in quebec, who would have guessed the french were useful?
i'm guessing that all of our networks were up, i guess the diesel generators a lot of the big data centers have installed came in handy.
i have a sony tape player/radio, that's over 25 years old, if not more, i forget cause i've had it since i've been little.
as of now, it still works partially, the tape motor is on it's dying days but the radio works fine. the battery slot doesn't work and hasn't for a while but i've never really needed it. i'm just amazed it still works.
this thing has been dropped countless times on concrete and pavement, grass, dirt and other such surfaces, i've taken it camping and on various trips here and there. it's taken a good licking and still works after all this time.
i think we're missing the biggest point of this whole ask slashdot topic.
:)
:)
most of his problem with all these useless keys and such is the fact that he's a mac user.
i mean apple got rid of the other "useless" mouse buttons, so why shouldn't they get rid of the rest of the "useless" keys on the keyboard?
so this whole problem of "useless" keys would be solved if he just got a real operating system and a real computer
i use mplayer, i like mplayer, i've had a few issues with certain mplayer builds but it gets fixed. i can see the developers point of doing binary distributions because they'd have to do different binaries cause of all the libs it can use, so one binary would have all the libs linked, one would have none, one would have only certain ones linked. you do the math and see how difficult it would be to support all those things
/covering butt on
/butt covering off
/opinion
/opinion off
i've got no issue with debian, i think it's a good distro, tho i use gentoo and slack before that and i think slashdot ran on debian and maybe still does.
however with that being said this thread here is going to evolve into a flame war and pretty darn fast. with both sides having some good points.
i think the main thing about mplayer was one of the debian people not responding to them at all and going so far as to deny they even tried to contact him.
this next part is only my opinion from what i've seen and it's not indictive of everyone in said community.
most of the debian users i've had the chance to meet i've found are more fanatical that stallman is about the gpl and most are rather unfounded about it. the gpl is good and all but the gpl isn't the answer to everything.
i've found that most of the users i've ran into have no real clue about the inner workings of the system or how to do basic things, like compiling from source cause there's no apt-get for the package, and will bitch and complain about not being gpl compliant without a clue on why their actually saying it, i'm sure the top guys are a bit more knowledgable than the users i've run into.
honestly i think everyone should just take a deep breath, count to 10 and look at this with clear heads, tho i doubt that will happen.
maybe one day we'll all get along with this nice little religous war we're having but i doubt it as well. so carry on and flame away
i know that censorship is bad, however there are some cases where it is valid and there is a need for it. one of these prime examples is when someone's right to a fair trial is at stake.
i am canadian and i don't think that it's an overly bad idea to censor like that until the trial starts, they are only banning the media until the trial begins, if i'm not wrong the same thing happened with the oj trial or at least they tried to stop it. i remember it being a big issue cause of all the media coverage that they moved the trial because they couldn't find an impartial jury and the same with the rodney king trial.
don't get me wrong i'd love to see that guy go to jail for a long time, same thing with paul bernado. i know that the crown, the government's lawyers, wants to see him locked up just as much as the rest of us do. they just want to make sure that he gets a fair trial so he can be locked up and the key tossed away, would you really like a person like that to be set free cause of an impartial jury?
as for the reporters, well if they really want they can remove their work visa and they have to leave the country, it's a priviledge for them to be here, not a right.
i know of a few other times the american government censors information. just go through the yro of this website and i'm sure you'll find several articles dealing with it. or how about looking through the jfk files and such, notice the liberal use of the black magic marker on the documents or all the stuff after sept 11.
so don't go jumping down canada's back when they are just trying to get the guy locked up and the key tosses away. we're just going through all the steps our legal process deams neccessary for a fair and impartial trial.
see there is a small problem with this. people won't boycott anything, they might say they will but in reality they'll follow along with the norm to fit in with society.
i personally try not to buy stuff from major labels and go see movies for several reasons:
1. i don't like most of the music made by the mainstream/riaa member labels, there are a few exceptions to that rule.
2. the bands and music i do like aren't on riaa member labels.
3. indie movies for the most part are well crap, once again a few exceptions to the rule but those are usually picked up by large studios.
4. all the mainstream music sounds the same, well with in the genre it is particular to. all rap sounds the same, all alternative/punk/grunge/college sounds the same, all metal sounds the same and well rap is just rehashing lots of old stuff and has repeated itself for years.
for the most part i listen to stuff from:
metropolis records
projekt records
ipecac records
soliel moon records
invisible records
not for the sole purpose that they are not members of the riaa, tho that helps, but because i like the music and also for the most part they all give away free mp3s for you to listen to.
the majority of the people on slashdot tho won't take the bold step to listen to something that deviates from the norm. tho they are big proponents of saying "down with the riaa/mpaa"
the movie thing i'm guilty of cause well i like eye candy and good stories, however i rarely go to the movie theatre, the last few movies i went to are lotr:fotr, spider-man and attack of the clones. before that i think it was maybe episode 1 or a movie i took a date to, but the point is it was a while since i went to the movies.
everyone here can talk the talk but frankly most aren't willing to walk the walk.
i kinda do both but it's not because it's to be cool, it's cause i like that thing better than what is considered "popular" or the "in thing".
however if the music i liked was part of the riaa i'd probly still listen to it no matter what cause i genuinely like the music and unfortunately that's the boat most people are stuck in. that and a lot of them are unwilling to take a step and be a bit different than the rest of us. that and we have all this pop-culture crap shoved down our throats constantly it's hard to ignore, tho i can do it because of choices i've made and my personal preferences, when there's "no market" aka no payola from the label to play the music then it's not on the radio so when i do listen to the "radio" it's via netcast most of the time.
all people really need to do is get some balls and take a step and be different but they won't and will say stuff on here and yet go out and by the latest snoop dogg or britney spears cds and watch survivor and take what ever the riaa/mpaa dish out.
well i'll start out by saying i'm not a gun fan to begin with, however if you like hunting or collecting old antique guns or a target shooter, that's fine cause your gun is being used for something useful. however the hobbiest, not one of the aforementioned hobbiests, or the person who gets the gun for "personal protection" is more likely to use the gun in a way it's not intended to be used, ie on another person.
,john mclane or some other hero type who wins the day by killing the bad guy.
the "personal protection" people worry me the most cause a lot of them think that since they have a gun they can shoot anyone that pulls a gun on them. ask any cop and they will say "don't be a hero give the person with the gun what they want cause if you don't you'll probly get shot"
this is very true if there is any doubt, call your local police station and ask them what you should do. if there's further doubt look into how many convient store clerks get shot or other people who try to be heroes, the few that do live are lucky and there's always the quote in the paper of the officer saying something to the effect of "well this isn't something you should normally do that person was very lucky they didn't get shot"
the fact of the matter is people who try to be heroes in that way 9 time out of 10 get shot, most die and some get wounded.
gun control doesn't stop people from getting guns it just tells the powers that be who has what gun. criminals will always get guns cause well they probly aren't registered in the first place and well they're criminals so what's one more law to break.
if you have the gun for legal purposes why should it matter who knows who has it. the government knows your liscence plate and it's registered to your car. they know your social security/social insurance numbers and they point to you. so why not guns that are rather violent weapons?
i think it's ok for them to know who owns it
however what having gun control does do is stop the criminal from being overly trigger happy. if they know you don't have a gun they will be less likely to shoot first and ask questions later, also it stops people from wanting to be john wayne
it also stops kids from having access to the guns and inadvertantly shooting themselve or others, ala columbine.
one last thing it stops is police from doing their job, now they don't have to violent deal with people who may or may not be packing a hand cannon.
i live in canada and we do have strict gun laws. we must have trigger locks on all the guns, the ammunition must be stored in another locked cabinet on the other side of the house and there's something with the keys as well but i'm not sure totally as ianal but i'm sure there will be someone here who can fill you in on that info.
also up here we don't have the opp, rcmp or other provincial police pulling guns on the person when they get pulled over like the state troopers do. harking back to the shoot first ask questions later attitude and the surprise of the person packing a hand cannnon.
as for our murder rate it's pretty low compared to the states. a quick survey of the statistics canada website will give you the info you need on murder by method
in 2001 there was a one to one ratio of shooting and stabbing murders, i doubt the american methods are anywhere close to that.
i've heard people argue about it protecting from invading forces, though last time i checked invaders was a military issue not some weekend warrior issue. i mean if an army comes in i doubt there's much that a single person can do and if they know the citizens are armed then it's kill them all and let god sort them out. so more people die that don't have to.
hopefully this clears up some issues, tho it will spiral into some annoying flame war more than likely cause i've found americans are rather touchy about gun control. tho i've found once a family member or friend has their head blown off, either accidently or in a way that could have been prevented, they change their tune about the whole issue.
well personally i've burned a couple hundred cdr's this year, mostly iso images and other files here and there.
i won't say i haven't burnt music onto cdr cause i'd be lying however i have only burnt music that i either owned and here's a list of what i DID burn that was music:
ltd cds i didn't want to ruin or lose the original cd cause it's worth money
music i downloaded that was allowed to be downloaded by the artists themselve, such as live performance of the legendary pink dots, edward ka-spel, dj lithium's sets, another dj friend's sets and other music the artists released to the general public
mixed cds i've made as a gift or just for my listening pleasure cause i wanted a few songs on one cd
i'd say all those are fair use of my own personal property as i've not sold ANY to anyone nor made any money off of them. however i am in canada and we are allowed to burn a cd we burn off of a friend cause we pay a levy on all recordable media that goes back to both the music industry and i think the software industry (don't quote me on the second part but i know about the music industry)
however on the flipside i can count on one hand how many cds i've boughten from the big record labels this year and need my second hand and maybe a foot to count the amount of cds i've gotten from the big labels in the past 2 years. i tend to only buy music from the "independant" record labels, such as:
ipecac records
metropolis records
projekt records
soleilmoon records
invisible records
beta-lactum ring records
most have either partial or full mp3's or other audio formats you can listen to their artists from, in projekt's case each artist has their own mp3.com site and you can download several full songs from each artist and distribute them, the owner loves mp3s and knows that they help the music industry and doesn't hurt it.
well since i was looking for freeamp the other day and i noticed it wasn't around any more, i found another free as in both speech and beer open source mp3 player. it's called zinf
freeamp is good just wish the website was still around. zinf seems to be the exact same thing tho just with a name change.
as the title of the comment says you can't do anything, the waiver they are having you sign is something that all companies do to cover their butts.
i used to work for an online college that's in ontario and the lovely new proprietors claimed our jobs were not going to be lost and we got laid off two weeks later and i had to sign the same piece of paper.
i asked someone who went through the same thing with a large financial institution and they said sign the paper, you'll just lose money and waste money talking to a lawyer about it. they took the lawyer route and had to pay money and didn't get the severance package.
unless you have a reason to sue, just sign the paper and take the severance package and be on your merry way.
that is easier said than done considering waterloo is one of the top computer schools in north america, their math department is their big money maker. they are one of the two schools in north america to offer degrees in telcom.
hopefully the student body that pays the money to go there, will have a better say at changing the tide, considering the university of waterloo has spawned their own unix distro, licq and tux racer, among other linux and unix projects. so tho m$ might have a say what they students could learn, there will always be *nix friendly users and projects.
well there's one simple way of doing this, and i'm sure that most slashdotters have seen it already.anyways here goes and all appologies to robert zemeckis and micheal j fox.
get someone who is not attached to you really, such as a friend or cousin or something like that get an agent, being a courrier, lawyer, bank or any other group that will be around for a while, like the masons or shriners, to hold on to the item or discovery until such time as it can be released.
the bank and lawyer and courier won't be able to open it legally until they are allowed to or deliver it to said persons. having another person give the discovery would take suspicion off of you.
so there's the solution and i'm sure eveyone here has seen a variation of this.
everyone always lists and discusses mindless and well in my opinion crappy electronic music and that's what they always consider that the whole electronic genre. however paul oakenfold and the like aren't the only nor the best form of electronic music out there. so here's some good AND NON-riaa labels, well mostly.
:wumpscut:- harsh sample oriented dance music influenced by skinny puppy.
vnv nation - one of the hotest ebm bands out there right now, good beats HIGHLY intellegent lyrics with a lot of meaning and feeling. piro from megatokyo loves them.
covenant- sweedish based band with big bouncy beats and great lyrics.
icon of coil- trancier band on their new album really hard hitting on their original one but still a very high energy band.
apoptygma berzerk- trancy type sythpop from norway, pretty good and rather dancy.
haujobb- drum and bass influnced music that is very catchy and relaxing. side projects are cleen/cleener and a couple others
funkervogt- harsher beat and sampled music that deals a lot with war and uses distorted vocals
fictional- a better version of funkervogt
ravenous- same as fictional
cevin key- from the legendary band skinnny puppy with many side projects including plateau, hilt, download and a couple others.
and one- the kings of synthpop, really catchy and fun lyrics, songs are both good and funny.
phil western- formly part of download, but a great minimalist techno artist who's website is colourspeaks
wolfshiem- great synthpop band that's depeche mode influenced.
das ich- great german electronic band that sings entirely in german
decoded feedback- very good and dancy sample based band with great lyrics and no they aren't using distortion, tho it sounds like it.
most of these bands can be found at metropolis rrecords
i have however left a couple bands for the last cause they practically started the whole genre and they are also on some riaa labels due to popularity and such
skinny puppy- one of the most influencial bands in the electronic field today and their canadian to boot
front 242- the band that started the whole ebm, electronic body music, about 20 years ago now and still going strong, with music that is even revolutionary now.
frontline assembly and delerium yes these guys are the SAME people, well person now since it's just bill leeb. frontline is a beat, synth and sample oriented music where delerium is more ambient in earlier incarnations and more dancy and female based lyrics in their later releases
as for buying these bands there are several good websites
metropolis-records mail order
isolation tank
storming the base of the alien foe a friend's record mail order service
i hope this helps you out
the place i work has gone through changes. when i first started here it was a satelite office and only 2 of us in the office all day and a part time person after 5.
honestly we didn't socialize outside because really we were from different generations and such, tho i did socialize once in a while with the part time people. we couldn't do the during work beer thing as there was only 2 ppl here and we kinda had to be there.
a little over a year ago our office and the head office merged, so we got more people here. then we started to be more social. still tho we mostly stuck to our own generation.
once the office got populated tho we did start to do things such as go out for beer and what not at lunch.
tho some of them do things together after work, mostly cause they were friends before they worked here, we don't really do a lot of things together outside of work. only one of the guys do i really know his girlfriend and such outside of work mostly cause we share a lot of the same intrests and i drag him and his girlfriend to concerts in a quest to make him mo' poe or so he claims and we do the occasional night of mindless debauchery.
personally i think the anti-social thing is pretty relative. it all depends on the place, i've been in factories where they aren't social after work at all and same with other jobs. so this question really shouldn't be limited to just the tech community it should be about all job places.
well since bill gates takes credit for creating open source software seen here at the register.
it is easy to surmise that good old bill invented packet switching too.
couldn't be al gore he just stole the idea from bill
is it me or does giving everyone a number that can identify them one of the signs of the coming of the antichrist?
well if you are worried about them snooping your packets don't use their "high speed" proxy servers. they are a big waste of garbage and you do not get stuff any faster, you are on a broadband connection.
i use rogers@home and i used to use their proxies but not now i have no use for them and i configured myself statically when i ran windows many moons ago because their dhcp servers would go down a lot or they would kill my tcp/ip stack when trying to renew the ip. when i switched to linux, since it "wouldn't support" dhcp i had myself configured statically and their was my "firewall" problems as well.
but if you really want to switch isp, some of them such as videotron in quebec and dsl.ca charge you for bandwidth use and i'm sure there are other ones around the world too
***DISCLAIMER***first off DON'T take this as flamebait because it's not, it's a collection of observations that fit the subject matter. so no flames please.
now that's done with on with my post.
living in canada i have the joy of being a third party witness to the shinnanegans of the riaa and the mpaa without it affecting me THAT much, it still does tho. some of these court cases the riaa is doing would not happen up here, they would be tossed out.
i know americans make fun of canada but we have court systems and governments that work for the people and not the corpate intrests. i do believe the american constitution reads "for the people, by the people" something i think a lot of americans don't realize is the government should help THEM and not a corperation that gives them a nice infusion of cash.
yes there are sometimes that politicians in canada are swayed by the corprate world but that's few and far between and usually they are found out and get REALLY bad press and something does happen to them when they are found out.
a canadian judge would look into the matter and see if a group like the riaa is really after groups for their own good, such as reputation or copyright/trademark infringement, or if they are after them just for the money. if it's just for the money the canadian courts have a good habit of either tossing the case out, rewarding in the favor of the plantiff but for some trivial amount but making them pay court fees or finding for the defendant and making the plantiff pay for the court fees, yes in canada you have to pay court fees so it can get fairly costly.
now with this story if a canadian company or mexican one for that matter made either cdr's or burners they could go after the riaa under the terms of nafta. it's a nasty piece of legislature but it does have some good usages and screwing the riaa over is a good one. i do believe it would be loss of business or not allowing them to carry on normal business, i don't know nafta off by heart so i can't quote it exactly but it's in there.
now as much as the wto sucks this is something that companies can at least try and put a stop to is the bully mentality of the riaa and the mpaa. both nafta and the wto stuff are VERY powerful pieces of legislature and some companies should learn to use them to their advantage.
i was mildly surprised when i saw this for a couple reasons.
1. they actually were able to do it, this quickly
2. it was said that nvidia had no chance of ever being able to do something like this as it they weren't serious graphics cards.
this comes from an article several months ago on maximum pc (sorry i checked for the link but it's not to be found, but if a staff member from there reads this and they can find the link please link it) which was about a flame war that someone from nvidia and one of the guys from sgi (i might be wrong on sgi, sorry if i am and i forget the names, it's not cause i don't want to leave them out it's that i don't remember), where the guy from sgi said that nvidia was off his rocker with saying that nvidia cards could ever come near the level of performance to do something like toy story and it would be many years, tho the article is less than a year old.
well i guess the guy from sgi is eating crow now after reading what the nvidia cards are doing what they said would take years till bill gates becomes a linux lover in less than a year and right now i don't think that bill has really embraced the penguin quite yet.
it was just an interesting side note to this story.
ok this might piss people off but frankly i don't care and it has to be said.
if you want to make sure what your child is looking at sit down with them and monitor what they are looking at and yes 15billion britney spears and backstreet boys sites might such to go through but hey if you want it to be "safe" then surf with her.
i seriously am sick and tired of parents today, most shouldn't even be parents. they plop their kids down in front of the tv and let the tv raise them. and then they wonder why their kids are such mouthy little buggers.
i know that people blame their careers and such, well if you career gets in the way of having kids, dont' have kids instead of spitting out babies and letting the tv raise them and wonder why they won't listen to you and they are juvenille deliquents. it's not marilyn manson that's making your kids out to be bad people, it's you.
anyways if you really want to make sure she does have a good and safe exerience on the net then sit down with the child and browse with her instead of letting her do it yourself. you can probly leave her if she's talking to a friend on icq or what not but still keep an eye on her.
i know as much as people hate them, there is some good, if you go to amazon.com when you look at items they do give you suggestions of other related artists and other stuff that customers bought that bought that product. yes i know they suck but still it's a good service. i know cdnow.com has this service too. when i go to those places i know what i want and i'm not really affected by it, unless i happen to notice something i don't have.
user/friend suggestions are good, i being a music lover, my lack of money in the bank and piles of cds and vinyl will attest to this, try and follow this as much as possible. i even get record stores suggesting stuff for me to buy or they pick up the cd or vinyl at their distributor if they know i want it. and yes i do that if you spend enough money at the store.
personally i don't listen to the radio anymore since they never play the music i like. our local alternative station claims there's no market for my music, yet somehow when bands i request at the club packs the floor and when the bands come around they easily sellout the show. so most of my selection comes from either friends, links or browsing record labels
i will say tho that there is a total lack of a push of the music industry. if the label doesn't have enough money to bribe, errr ummm i mean push, the artist on radio stations. then well the band and the label are sol and have to work with word of mouth promotion and small club promotions or if there is a local university (or college) radio station.
this lack of distribution is one reason i like napster and mp3s. if used properly people DO go out and buy the mp3s of a band they have downloaded the mp3 of. if they don't well the artist never really lost anything since the person wasn't going to buy the cd anyways. also it is one of the reasons i like to put the list of my cds on the net and i do offer to make mp3s of any of the cds i have so people can have a taste of the band.
maybe one day the riaa will realize that it's head is secure wedged up it's behind and pull it out and see what a mess it has created of the music industry but i doubt that. it's akin to ask microsoft to write stable, secure and standard compliant software. it will never happen.
well i can say with having the joys of calling into radio stations that they are affected by the good old payola. they won't play stuff they aren't paid for, i have bugged them to play electronic music and they claim there's "no market for them" however electronic bands, when they come around regularly sell out and even have lines around the corner waiting to buy extra tickets.
it will also explain why they do not play music from independant labels, they aren't being paid to play them. so no money to play them means no airplay for that label
there are several labels i chan thing of that this affects metropolis records , projekt records , gashed records , inception records none of them are part of the riaa, so i gladly buy their albums but the downfall of this is they get no air play due to a "lack of a market" even in the light of over sold shows.
frankly i hope the ftc and the crtc (the canadian version of the ftc for you non-canucks) actively looks into this because it really is detrimental to our independant record labels and artists who aren't on a big label and get the big push or should i say pay off to the radio station now?
i have seen many suggestions, such as online cops and such, but i got a good idea that might work and might get some sys admins mad and actually to take responsbitity for their comprimised boxes.
well here is the idea i came up with if there's a known script kiddie or comprised box the admin refuses to deal with that network should be blackholed, don't allow them to route to any place outside their own network, until they can prove it has been fixed. some admins won't listen to another person screaming at them to fix THEIR problem, i know this from personal experience, but give them several hundred or thousand paying customers and people who pay them yelling to fix the problem and then you will see how fast things change.
oh don't forget we also have claim to fame to
1. the poem "In Flanders Field" 2. pam anderson
3. william shatner and james doohan for all you trekkies
4. higher alcohol percentage in our beer
5. the rock legends known as rush
6. anne murray and leonard cohen
7. insulin
8. the telephone
i could go on but i can't think of a lot of stuff right now.