I don't know about you, but the last few DVDs I bought have this 5 minute mandatory intro on them that plays before it gets to the main menu.
I too have NOT seen this behavior. What DVDs do it? I own about 40 DVDs and none of them do this. I find I can either press the "next track" button or fast forward through them.
In the event I saw the behavior you are desciribing, I'd boycott whatever studio did it. Not out of principal, just out of annoyance.
Airplane hijackings used to end with everyone, or at least most people, surviving the event. In the last four hijackings, everyone died, and thousands more were killed on the ground. As a result of this, people who are on board an airliner that is being hijacked will attack the hijackers. Remember what happened to the terrorists aboard Flight 93 as well as that shoe-bomber idiot.
I certainly wish these facts were more often considered in our response to the events of September 11.
Yup, you're right. I didn't realize the screenshots were coming from suse.de. Well, I guess it's nobody's fault but their own. Well, actually, I imagine its just the theme that that developer was using, and he probably wasn't expecting his screenshots to be showcased on/.
This was simply the most recent case of a non-default theme I've seen in a review, and finally figured I'd make a comment. The actual issue that bothers me is when independent reviewers create a review with their own screenshots, after they've spent an hour in the theme prefs adjusting it to their own personal taste. I've seen it done way too may times to the RedHat 7.x series, for example.
Is there some requirement that states that media reviewers of an operating system must modify its default color scheme and appearance in such a way as to make the user interface appear as undesireable as possible?
Yes, the user interface is configurable. But the distributor spent a great deal of time deciding on defaults that will appeal to most of its customers. It's unprofessional to review a product and post screenshots with modified settings.
I wholeheartedly agree with 99% of your statement, right up until the last line:
Instead, we have Dubya
This pretty much destroys any credibility your statement had. To blame this situation on "Dubya" is silly. The RIAA's monopoly ran entirely unchecked through the Clinton years, as well as through "Dubya's" dad's term. There is certainly room to dislike the current administration, but labeling longstanding problems on the sitting president makes no sense.
Before you go bashing George W. Bush, keep in mind whose signature is on the DMCA.
The ultimate goal is to retire the so-called "Red Book" CD standard that was developed in 1980 by Sony and Phillips, and which is embedded in nearly every recorded compact disc sold today.
I own a 200 disc DVD/CD changer made by Sony. I have nothing but good things to say about this product, as it plays CD, CD-Rs, and DVDs quite well. It has one minor issue though: it won't play anything but Red Book compliant CDs. For example, I have to burn copies of all the CDs I buy that use the new "Enhanced CD" format in order to use them in this player. The replacement cost for this product is US$800. The exact player I own is still for sale in the US. Anyone want to venture a guess as to whether Sony will be liable if they deliberately make this product obsolete and fail to warn potential consumers?
I have no incentive to replace this player if it is made obsolete by the RIAA. Whatever anti-piracy technology they create will be cracked and then I'd be forced to replace it again with the next anti-piracy-compliant music technology. No thanks.
privilege: A peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor; a right or immunity not enjoyed by others or by all; special enjoyment of a good, or exemption from an evil or burden; a prerogative; advantage; franchise.
"Driving is a privilege, not a right" is one of those statements that somehow became commonly accepted because thousands of ignorant people repeated it.
My state allows me to drive on its public road system, which I contribute a portion of my income to maintaining. I am in fact guaranteed the use of that system if I obey certain requirements that myself and other citizens have agreed upon through our government. Driving is in no way a privilege.
Yes, I can't go drive my car like I do the "Barracks OL" in the video game "Grand Theft Auto 3," and expect to be allowed to continue to use the public road system. But at the same time, the state does not have the right to place potentially unconstitutional burdens on my use of the road system which I pay for.
I live in Southern California (we're next), and have one of the FasTrack transponders. Due to my limited usage of the toll roads, I originally elected not to get a FasTrack and instead pay the 50 cent surcharge for using cash.
Having used cash for about a month, one day I got a letter in the mail fining me $25 for running a toll booth. Having done no such thing, I called the TCA and requested more information on the violation. They stated that I had run the "cash lane," where the booth actually is attended by an tollway employee who takes your cash. On the date and time in question, I had been on the tollway where the violation supposedly occurred.
Their story was that I simply drove right through the toll booth. They had a picture of the license plate of my truck, and correctly identified its make/model based on that picture. The attendant even had to manually push a button in order for the picture to be taken and the violation issued. The attendant was supposedly a senior tollway employee, and as such they stated that it was very likely his story was correct.
After spending between 2-3 hours with the tollway attendant, and (legitimately) indicating that if they did not undo this ticket we would be in court, they removed the violation and required me only to pay the $3 toll.
As a result of this incident, I decided to obtain a FasTrack transponder. I've used it about five times in the past four months (my tollway usage has dropped almost to zero since this incident). At this point it probably makes sense to give them back their transponder.
One minor clarification: I've used earlier versions of the CrossOver plug-in... I don't have any experience with the Office version, or its performance.
I'd love to hear anyone's experience using CrossOver as a method to run Internet Explorer for the purpose of testing Web applications from a Linux machine. I need IE to behave just like it does on Windows, such that I can test applications and have the results be entirely indicative of their behavior on a real Windows machine. I'd also like to run multiple versions of IE, which is impossible without multiple machines or a VM.
I've tried earlier versions of CrossOver (to get QuickTime support), and while it does "work", the startup time is terrible and it does not work well with multiple desktops. (The QuickTime window is present on ALL desktops and does not behave well with the window manager (Sawfish)).
I completely disagree with your statement. While JavaScript might serve only aesthetic purposes when creating Web sites, it is an absolute necessity for creating Web-based applications.
To analogize JavaScript to a C++ compiler is pure sensationalism. JavaScript in its current iteration is designed to securely execute unknown and therefore potentially malevolent code. There are no flaws in the specification of the language, only in various implementations. Your statement that brand X Web browser is broken doesn't make your analogy any more relevant, as software from that company tends to be that way. If you're after security, I suggest upgrading your browser to one developed by folks who tend to be more careful in building their product and have a better history of responding to security issues.
If you want to avoid the annoyances of JavaScript, I suggest that you just don't visit sites with annoying ads. iVillage, Inc., being a for-profit corporation, isn't getting rid of pop-up advertising to improve your Internet experience, they are doing it to gain and keep visitors.
but never ever have I encountered 1 single hotfix which killed a webapplication nor did I hear from collegues that hotfixes killed their webapplications.
Does this count?...
Microsoft broke their JDBC-ODBC bridge in a fix for IE. I don't know if this qualifiies in your eyes as a hotfix or not, as it was a minor (though, as usual, highly recommended) IE update. Applying the update resulted in our J++ based web application killing the IIS process (The JVM ran in-line with IIS). The problem was that the JDBC-ODBC bridge would cause the VM to crash (I'm pretty sure it was a native-code JDBC driver) when retrieving (or possibly it was setting...don't remember) "text" columns in a SQL table with more than 2k of data.
I wrote a simple test case that caused the failure (about 20 lines of code) and called MS tech support. After making my way through their support ranks I finally found someone clue-enabled enough to be able to run my test-case, see the failure, and realize it was a bug in their product. This took a week. Then I got this email back from the support guy:
"I'm closing this case "non-decrement" now. I'll try to pressure a resolution. I'll let you know when the fix arrives. Feel free to ping me in the mean time."
The fix didn't arrive for six months. And this was back in the days before Sun and MS got in the big Java brawl.
I have a Sony Vaio PCG-FXA35, with the AMD 1.0GHz chip in it . Absolutely wonderful Linux notebook, with one exception: the battery life is 30 minutes *or less* when running Linux...which pretty much means it has to be plugged in all the time.
The source of the problem, as far as I can tell, is the lack of Linux support for ACPI, which appears to be the successor to APM. The laptop has no power management configurability in the BIOS, it all must be done in software. There is no Linux software that I know of that will do this, and altering settings in WinXP appears to only affect the power usage when running WinXP.
If anyone has any suggestions, I'd most appreciate hearing them. At this point though, I think my next laptop will be a Titanium powerbook, as they appear to have pretty good Java support, 5 hrs of battery life, instant-on/off, and run a BSD-based OS.
What I find most pathetic about their argument is statements like this one (from the Microsoft Embedded page):
An example of this risk can be taken from NVIDIA. An NVIDIA programmer, in the course of developing a driver for one of its products, used a portion of code from a freely available video driver. The developer failed to realize the code was licensed under the GPL and would therefore require NVIDIA to release the source code for its entire driver. Because NVIDIA did not want to release the source code to its commercial software, the company incurred substantial cost to develop a new driver that did not contain the GPL code.
If you're going to use someone else's source code, you better sure as heck check the license they are providing it under.
This case is not much different than a hypothetical where a developer takes a chunk of Microsft's proprietary source code and uses it in a piece of their own proprietary software. The only difference is that with the GPL, the developer has the option of either making his license compatible with the GPL or removing the component from his project.
The Earth will not expire in 2050. Simple economics will keep it from doing so. When certain resources become scarce, they will become expensive, and people will be forced to stop using them and seek alternatives.
Interesting they compare the United States' use of resources to that of Burundi. This comparison is truly startling. For those who enjoy startling statistics, allow me to offer a few others:
The population of Burundi is expanding at three times the rate of the United States. The percentage of people in Burundi infected with HIV/AIDS is 20 times that of the United States. The average lifespan in Burundi is 31 years shorter than that of a person living in the United States. The literacy rate of Burundi is 35%. 1 in 3000 people have Internet access. (Statistics courtesy of CIA World Factbook).
Are you still interested in reducing your resource consumption by a factor of 24? Personally, I'm not interested in selling my pickup, as I don't think it has any connection to the fact that the number of black rhinos has fallen from 65,000 to 3,100. Considering that my "extravagant lifestyle" doesn't involve poaching, I don't think I can help.
As an aside, this article brings one more thing to mind: every environmentalist needs to understand that he is not "saving the Earth." He is only saving himself and his descendants. The Earth will recover from every incosiderate act man has done to it in the blink of an eye (relative to its lifetime), and graciously replace us with other species if we destroy our way of life.
And Timothy, you might want to encourage your brother to go ahead and buy that new SUV. If his current car is more than five years old, that new SUV will be adding less pollution to the atmosphere.
Doesn't exactly sound like a ready for the desktop product to me.
I'm not 100% certain on this, but I believe that if you are running Gnome2, you either compiled it yourself or use debian. That essentially means its not "ready for the desktop" in the sense that you are referring. Once it ships with distros and is available through Ximian, users shouldn't have to read release notes and readmes. But when a reviewer is compiling it himself and fails to take these steps, I believe the error falls to the reviewer.
If there were security bugs in Linux or Freeamp, would it warrant front page news?
Yes. If there were a security bug in Linux, Mozilla, XMMS, FreeAmp, etc, that allowed your computer to be compromised, it would warrant front page news on Slashdot.
Or was that supposed to be one of those rhetorical questions?
From the article: "Despite the passage in 1998 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, piracy continues to nag at copyright holders and businesses."
In other news, burglars are still burglarizing homes despite the practice having been illegal under various statutes for the past few millennia.
Remember people--by definition--criminals break laws. If only lawmakers would realize this fact in creating legislation, as the only people who are affected are those who are willing to obey it.
Slashdot Mirror
...do they mean automatically, as for those of us with pivoting displays that can be viewed landscape or portrait?
I don't know about you, but the last few DVDs I bought have this 5 minute mandatory intro on them that plays before it gets to the main menu.
I too have NOT seen this behavior. What DVDs do it? I own about 40 DVDs and none of them do this. I find I can either press the "next track" button or fast forward through them.
In the event I saw the behavior you are desciribing, I'd boycott whatever studio did it. Not out of principal, just out of annoyance.
Airplane hijackings used to end with everyone, or at least most people, surviving the event. In the last four hijackings, everyone died, and thousands more were killed on the ground. As a result of this, people who are on board an airliner that is being hijacked will attack the hijackers. Remember what happened to the terrorists aboard Flight 93 as well as that shoe-bomber idiot.
I certainly wish these facts were more often considered in our response to the events of September 11.
The current RedHat beta also introduces a "resolution switcher"... I agree, it's about time!
Yup, you're right. I didn't realize the screenshots were coming from suse.de. Well, I guess it's nobody's fault but their own. Well, actually, I imagine its just the theme that that developer was using, and he probably wasn't expecting his screenshots to be showcased on /.
This was simply the most recent case of a non-default theme I've seen in a review, and finally figured I'd make a comment. The actual issue that bothers me is when independent reviewers create a review with their own screenshots, after they've spent an hour in the theme prefs adjusting it to their own personal taste. I've seen it done way too may times to the RedHat 7.x series, for example.
Is there some requirement that states that media reviewers of an operating system must modify its default color scheme and appearance in such a way as to make the user interface appear as undesireable as possible?
Yes, the user interface is configurable. But the distributor spent a great deal of time deciding on defaults that will appeal to most of its customers. It's unprofessional to review a product and post screenshots with modified settings.
I wholeheartedly agree with 99% of your statement, right up until the last line:
Instead, we have Dubya
This pretty much destroys any credibility your statement had. To blame this situation on "Dubya" is silly. The RIAA's monopoly ran entirely unchecked through the Clinton years, as well as through "Dubya's" dad's term. There is certainly room to dislike the current administration, but labeling longstanding problems on the sitting president makes no sense.
Before you go bashing George W. Bush, keep in mind whose signature is on the DMCA.
If you don't want your first ammendment right, then, for goodness sake, shut up!
Found this link in Google:
o m/ bloom.html
http://www-i5.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/mbp/blo
The ultimate goal is to retire the so-called "Red Book" CD standard that was developed in 1980 by Sony and Phillips, and which is embedded in nearly every recorded compact disc sold today.
I own a 200 disc DVD/CD changer made by Sony. I have nothing but good things to say about this product, as it plays CD, CD-Rs, and DVDs quite well. It has one minor issue though: it won't play anything but Red Book compliant CDs. For example, I have to burn copies of all the CDs I buy that use the new "Enhanced CD" format in order to use them in this player. The replacement cost for this product is US$800. The exact player I own is still for sale in the US. Anyone want to venture a guess as to whether Sony will be liable if they deliberately make this product obsolete and fail to warn potential consumers?
I have no incentive to replace this player if it is made obsolete by the RIAA. Whatever anti-piracy technology they create will be cracked and then I'd be forced to replace it again with the next anti-piracy-compliant music technology. No thanks.
From the dictionary:
privilege: A peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor; a right or immunity not enjoyed by others or by all; special enjoyment of a good, or exemption from an evil or burden; a prerogative; advantage; franchise.
"Driving is a privilege, not a right" is one of those statements that somehow became commonly accepted because thousands of ignorant people repeated it.
My state allows me to drive on its public road system, which I contribute a portion of my income to maintaining. I am in fact guaranteed the use of that system if I obey certain requirements that myself and other citizens have agreed upon through our government. Driving is in no way a privilege.
Yes, I can't go drive my car like I do the "Barracks OL" in the video game "Grand Theft Auto 3," and expect to be allowed to continue to use the public road system. But at the same time, the state does not have the right to place potentially unconstitutional burdens on my use of the road system which I pay for.
I live in Southern California (we're next), and have one of the FasTrack transponders. Due to my limited usage of the toll roads, I originally elected not to get a FasTrack and instead pay the 50 cent surcharge for using cash.
Having used cash for about a month, one day I got a letter in the mail fining me $25 for running a toll booth. Having done no such thing, I called the TCA and requested more information on the violation. They stated that I had run the "cash lane," where the booth actually is attended by an tollway employee who takes your cash. On the date and time in question, I had been on the tollway where the violation supposedly occurred.
Their story was that I simply drove right through the toll booth. They had a picture of the license plate of my truck, and correctly identified its make/model based on that picture. The attendant even had to manually push a button in order for the picture to be taken and the violation issued. The attendant was supposedly a senior tollway employee, and as such they stated that it was very likely his story was correct.
After spending between 2-3 hours with the tollway attendant, and (legitimately) indicating that if they did not undo this ticket we would be in court, they removed the violation and required me only to pay the $3 toll.
As a result of this incident, I decided to obtain a FasTrack transponder. I've used it about five times in the past four months (my tollway usage has dropped almost to zero since this incident). At this point it probably makes sense to give them back their transponder.
One minor clarification: I've used earlier versions of the CrossOver plug-in... I don't have any experience with the Office version, or its performance.
I'd love to hear anyone's experience using CrossOver as a method to run Internet Explorer for the purpose of testing Web applications from a Linux machine. I need IE to behave just like it does on Windows, such that I can test applications and have the results be entirely indicative of their behavior on a real Windows machine. I'd also like to run multiple versions of IE, which is impossible without multiple machines or a VM.
I've tried earlier versions of CrossOver (to get QuickTime support), and while it does "work", the startup time is terrible and it does not work well with multiple desktops. (The QuickTime window is present on ALL desktops and does not behave well with the window manager (Sawfish)).
IANAL, but I think that the GPL is not really all that relevant in such a scenario. It's a straight-up copyright violation.
CDEX Screenshot
NeoAudio Screenshot
I completely disagree with your statement. While JavaScript might serve only aesthetic purposes when creating Web sites, it is an absolute necessity for creating Web-based applications.
To analogize JavaScript to a C++ compiler is pure sensationalism. JavaScript in its current iteration is designed to securely execute unknown and therefore potentially malevolent code. There are no flaws in the specification of the language, only in various implementations. Your statement that brand X Web browser is broken doesn't make your analogy any more relevant, as software from that company tends to be that way. If you're after security, I suggest upgrading your browser to one developed by folks who tend to be more careful in building their product and have a better history of responding to security issues.
If you want to avoid the annoyances of JavaScript, I suggest that you just don't visit sites with annoying ads. iVillage, Inc., being a for-profit corporation, isn't getting rid of pop-up advertising to improve your Internet experience, they are doing it to gain and keep visitors.
but never ever have I encountered 1 single hotfix which killed a webapplication nor did I hear from collegues that hotfixes killed their webapplications.
Does this count?...
Microsoft broke their JDBC-ODBC bridge in a fix for IE. I don't know if this qualifiies in your eyes as a hotfix or not, as it was a minor (though, as usual, highly recommended) IE update. Applying the update resulted in our J++ based web application killing the IIS process (The JVM ran in-line with IIS). The problem was that the JDBC-ODBC bridge would cause the VM to crash (I'm pretty sure it was a native-code JDBC driver) when retrieving (or possibly it was setting...don't remember) "text" columns in a SQL table with more than 2k of data.
I wrote a simple test case that caused the failure (about 20 lines of code) and called MS tech support. After making my way through their support ranks I finally found someone clue-enabled enough to be able to run my test-case, see the failure, and realize it was a bug in their product. This took a week. Then I got this email back from the support guy:
"I'm closing this case "non-decrement" now. I'll try to pressure a
resolution. I'll let you know when the fix arrives. Feel free to ping me in
the mean time."
The fix didn't arrive for six months. And this was back in the days before Sun and MS got in the big Java brawl.
the TurboLinux website is functioning
This is a link to the TurboLinux Web site.
Everyone please go and check to make sure it is still functioning.
I have a Sony Vaio PCG-FXA35, with the AMD 1.0GHz chip in it . Absolutely wonderful Linux notebook, with one exception: the battery life is 30 minutes *or less* when running Linux...which pretty much means it has to be plugged in all the time.
The source of the problem, as far as I can tell, is the lack of Linux support for ACPI, which appears to be the successor to APM. The laptop has no power management configurability in the BIOS, it all must be done in software. There is no Linux software that I know of that will do this, and altering settings in WinXP appears to only affect the power usage when running WinXP.
If anyone has any suggestions, I'd most appreciate hearing them. At this point though, I think my next laptop will be a Titanium powerbook, as they appear to have pretty good Java support, 5 hrs of battery life, instant-on/off, and run a BSD-based OS.
What I find most pathetic about their argument is statements like this one (from the Microsoft Embedded page):
An example of this risk can be taken from NVIDIA. An NVIDIA programmer, in the course of developing a driver for one of its products, used a portion of code from a freely available video driver. The developer failed to realize the code was licensed under the GPL and would therefore require NVIDIA to release the source code for its entire driver. Because NVIDIA did not want to release the source code to its commercial software, the company incurred substantial cost to develop a new driver that did not contain the GPL code.
If you're going to use someone else's source code, you better sure as heck check the license they are providing it under.
This case is not much different than a hypothetical where a developer takes a chunk of Microsft's proprietary source code and uses it in a piece of their own proprietary software. The only difference is that with the GPL, the developer has the option of either making his license compatible with the GPL or removing the component from his project.
The Earth will not expire in 2050. Simple economics will keep it from doing so. When certain resources become scarce, they will become expensive, and people will be forced to stop using them and seek alternatives.
Interesting they compare the United States' use of resources to that of Burundi. This comparison is truly startling. For those who enjoy startling statistics, allow me to offer a few others:
The population of Burundi is expanding at three times the rate of the United States. The percentage of people in Burundi infected with HIV/AIDS is 20 times that of the United States. The average lifespan in Burundi is 31 years shorter than that of a person living in the United States. The literacy rate of Burundi is 35%. 1 in 3000 people have Internet access. (Statistics courtesy of CIA World Factbook).
Are you still interested in reducing your resource consumption by a factor of 24? Personally, I'm not interested in selling my pickup, as I don't think it has any connection to the fact that the number of black rhinos has fallen from 65,000 to 3,100. Considering that my "extravagant lifestyle" doesn't involve poaching, I don't think I can help.
As an aside, this article brings one more thing to mind: every environmentalist needs to understand that he is not "saving the Earth." He is only saving himself and his descendants. The Earth will recover from every incosiderate act man has done to it in the blink of an eye (relative to its lifetime), and graciously replace us with other species if we destroy our way of life.
And Timothy, you might want to encourage your brother to go ahead and buy that new SUV. If his current car is more than five years old, that new SUV will be adding less pollution to the atmosphere.
Doesn't exactly sound like a ready for the desktop product to me.
I'm not 100% certain on this, but I believe that if you are running Gnome2, you either compiled it yourself or use debian. That essentially means its not "ready for the desktop" in the sense that you are referring. Once it ships with distros and is available through Ximian, users shouldn't have to read release notes and readmes. But when a reviewer is compiling it himself and fails to take these steps, I believe the error falls to the reviewer.
If there were security bugs in Linux or Freeamp, would it warrant front page news?
Yes. If there were a security bug in Linux, Mozilla, XMMS, FreeAmp, etc, that allowed your computer to be compromised, it would warrant front page news on Slashdot.
Or was that supposed to be one of those rhetorical questions?
From the article:
"Despite the passage in 1998 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, piracy continues to nag at copyright holders and businesses."
In other news, burglars are still burglarizing homes despite the practice having been illegal under various statutes for the past few millennia.
Remember people--by definition--criminals break laws. If only lawmakers would realize this fact in creating legislation, as the only people who are affected are those who are willing to obey it.