If neither Google nor Doubleclick have offices in the EU, and someone from the EU visits a website in the USA that has Google ads and Doubleclick adds, which set of laws apply?
Both Google and DoubleClick do have offices in many EU member states, so your point is academic.
The automatic Google translation (from French to English) is relatively of really good quality. Try plugging the original article into Babelfish and see how lousy it does by comparison.
One point that particularly amazed me is that Google not only tanslates the acronym right (GRC => RCMP), but even the acronym's meaning (Gendarmerie royale du Canada => Royal Canadian Mounted Police), even though that's not anywhere close to a literal translation!
Does anyone know more about how they do this? Do they use user suggestions for this?
I'm a FreeBSD user myself, but will use Slackware if I need proprietary drivers for a laptop. But I recently put Kubuntu on my work laptop. After last week's Kubuntu 7.10, I started to realize that "KDE-friendly" distros will also bloat their KDE. If you want to know what KDE is really like, build a plain vanilla KDE from sources.
Or use Slackware, which does that for you. (I don't know if FreeBSD does or not.)
Will somebody please start writing games for Linux so I can be free of this nonsense?
http://www.happypenguin.org/
http://www.linuxgames.com/
Sure, you can say they're inferior, but you can't say they don't exist. At the end of the day it's a question of whether you value your freedom more than the latest whizbang games.
Looks like the IFPI site was there from March 30, 2003 at the latest until October 19, 2006 at the earliest. Between that time and February 2, 2007 someone appears to have snagged it (legally or not, I have no idea). Then it briefly became a blog. I guess the blogger then gave it to TPB.
Modern OS tend to get confused with distributions and go the Emacs-way of bloat).
Actually, the complete Emacs "operating system" takes up less than 75 MB, uncompressed and including all documentation and LISP source code. The main emacs package is just 25 MB uncompressed. By today's standards, that's positively tiny. Damn Small Linux claims to fit a complete OS in only 50 MB, but like many Live CDs, it "cheats" by storing everything in compressed form and decompressing it on the fly.
Rantlet from a casual Wikipedia editor
on
Has Wikipedia Peaked?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
http://www.wikitruth.info/ has some info... but don't take it's word on it. Give editing Wikipedia a shot and see the shitstorm it can raise.
I'm a casual Wikipedia editor -- I edit Wikipedia on and off, semi-regularly but certainly not enough to be part of any incrowd. I have never run into any shitstorms. In my impression, most of the people who keep running into conflicts are actively looking for them. The site you cite is a nice case in point -- the whole tone of it screams extreme, borderline-psychotic hostility. It seems designed to create problems rather than solve them.
If you're civil, respect established community consensus without accepting it as gospel, familiarize yourself with rules and traditions so that you can follow them or break them wisely, offer constructive and well-argumented criticism, and generally avoid behaving like a bull in a china shop, you should be allright. In the rare cases in which you get nowhere, just edit something else for a while, or take it to the arbitration committee if you feel that strongly about it. Yes, Wikipedia has mechanisms for conflict resolution -- funny how the critics never seem to try those!
Even if it's true that some articles are guarded by people with a sense of ownership or control over them (and it probably is true), the only difference between them and those bitter critics is that the former managed to gain control, and the latter tried and failed. Both categories of people have control issues, otherwise the critics wouldn't be so bitter over their lack of control over Wikipedia. Non-control freaks, on the other hand, don't generally have a problem reaching consensus, even on Wikipedia.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people lack an essential life skill: the ability to accept that not everyone everywhere is always going to agree with you. Wikipedia seems to attract such people by the bucketload for some reason. It's actually possible to learn to let go of a silly conflict without taking your ball and going home. But some people seem so blinded by spite and bitterness they can't seem to see that anymore. Sad.
Why are people still using these? Why haven't they been replaced by forums?
Because web forums suck.
You're limited to whatever interface the web forum admins chose. You cannot choose your own interface. You have to use a different interface and/or register a new account for each forum.
Most forums lack basic features such as threading and decent filtering/sorting/killfiling. (So do most email programs, but at least you can choose one that has these features!)
Web interfaces are s-l-o-w.
Outages or being offline means you can't get to the forum.
You have to remember to go to them. Mailing lists come to you. (That what really kills most web forums for me. Slashdot is an exception.)
If I were in NZ and installed a fresh new Debian system today, I believe it would be within reason to expect it to behave correctly with respect to things like time. The fact that Debian is structured to not have this feature is, IMHO, a very serious drawback to Debian.
So, name one operating system released at the time that Debian Etch was released or before, that contained this time zone update out of the box. I don't think you can, because their publishers would have had to be psychic or have a super-duper-accurate crystal ball.
The time zone update is pushed to anyone who tracks volatile (along with their antivirus updates, for example), this is not different from Microsoft auto-update or any other OS.
What the AC said. As a matter of principle, pushing non-security "security" updates that change functionality is asking for trouble. The updated time zone package has been available for months, a national time zone change should be common knowledge, and anyone in NZ who has not yet installed it is ignorant, or negligent, or both. This article submission is indeed a troll.
I believe Novell is shipping some homegrown components with OpenSuse that make it work better with MS. Those portions may (or may not) infringe upon (invalid?) MS patent(s) and MS tried to do a PR run with this offer. Novell would have been stupid to turn it down, as it's actually a major PR victory for them, and for FOSS in general (why? Because if it's safe under Suse, then it's safe for all based on the GPL).
That's where you're wrong. Novell does not own most of the software in their SuSE distribution, they've just licensed it under the GPL/LGPL like everyone else. Any patent deal Microsoft made with Novell only applies to Novell and does not make anyone else any safer.
Re:Is this really different from the RIAA or MPAA?
on
GPL Lawsuit May Not Settle
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Using GPL software without complying with the GPL is a liability for any business.
More correctly, distributing GPL software without complying with the GPL is a liability for any business. The GPL only covers distribution, not use. Everyone is perfectly free to use GPL'ed software without any restrictions whatsoever.
To prevent open source you'd have to prevent any unsigned code,
Precisely, and if you think Microsoft wouldn't like to do exactly that if it could get away with it, you're hopelessly naïve. In fact, for drivers, it has already gotten away with it. Closed-source driver developers meekly pay the Microsoft tax to get their code signed, and open-source drivers are effectively locked out.
But hey, never mind those inconvenient little facts -- just believe Microsoft will look out for your interests, it's so much easier. Sweet dreams.
Yes, Linux is really important. Open standards are meaningless if a single dominant closed operating system can control and restrict every program that runs on the computer, and this is the direction in which Windows is going. If left unchallenged, it may not even be able to run open soure software, some years from now. Linux is essential in being that challenge.
Much of his reasoning can be equally well explained by social conditioning, especially the networking issues. I like what he's saying, I just think he's far overstating his case, and proposing unlikely mechanisms for how it happens, when it seems possible that it's just due to how people are raised and what expectations they absorb from society. If women musicians don't have any reasonable expectation of becoming famous through their compositions -- or indeed becoming famous at all -- why would they expend much effort composing?
Because composing is inherently rewarding and fame is not actually the main motivator? (In fact I'd argue it's more likely to be a major deterrent!)
Johann Bach's wife composed a lot of wonderful music, and it wasn't until 200 years later that anyone even realised they were her compositions, rather than her husband's.
Case in point. Not getting recognized didn't stop her from composing all that wonderful music, why should it stop anyone else?
I love OO as an idea but I've always said I can't use it till it gets competitive with excel. you think you had problems with 500kb file? I got a core 2 duo but my files are more along the lines of 40 mb..... open office just dies. excel doesn't do much better but I can be sure it'll run.
Seems to me that if you work with 40 MB spreadsheet files, you're using the wrong tool for whatever it is you're trying to do, anyway. Are you using Excel as a database?
I remember when typical end-users were expected to deal with things like extended memory, upper memory, special boot disks to set up memory right to play games, etc. And they did it without complaint.
No they didn't, they did it with lots of grumbling and muttering and complaining. In fact most of them didn't do it at all, they either had their resident geek do it for them or they rejected computers altogether as being too difficult to use for the average person -- remember, in the DOS days most people didn't even have a computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Presto!
Both Google and DoubleClick do have offices in many EU member states, so your point is academic.
Sorry, even American companies need to obey EU law while doing business in the EU.
The automatic Google translation (from French to English) is relatively of really good quality. Try plugging the original article into Babelfish and see how lousy it does by comparison.
One point that particularly amazed me is that Google not only tanslates the acronym right (GRC => RCMP), but even the acronym's meaning (Gendarmerie royale du Canada => Royal Canadian Mounted Police), even though that's not anywhere close to a literal translation!
Does anyone know more about how they do this? Do they use user suggestions for this?
I feel a great disturbance in the Reality Distortion Field. As if millions of Mac Fanboys cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
According to that silly reasoning, all code is proprietary. Try again.
Or use Slackware, which does that for you. (I don't know if FreeBSD does or not.)
Read it again, you're not getting it. The issue is whether you can trust the compiler to produce machine code that corresponds to your source code.
http://www.happypenguin.org/
http://www.linuxgames.com/
Sure, you can say they're inferior, but you can't say they don't exist. At the end of the day it's a question of whether you value your freedom more than the latest whizbang games.
archive.org does: http://web.archive.org/*/http://www.ifpi.com
Looks like the IFPI site was there from March 30, 2003 at the latest until October 19, 2006 at the earliest. Between that time and February 2, 2007 someone appears to have snagged it (legally or not, I have no idea). Then it briefly became a blog. I guess the blogger then gave it to TPB.
Actually, the complete Emacs "operating system" takes up less than 75 MB, uncompressed and including all documentation and LISP source code. The main emacs package is just 25 MB uncompressed. By today's standards, that's positively tiny. Damn Small Linux claims to fit a complete OS in only 50 MB, but like many Live CDs, it "cheats" by storing everything in compressed form and decompressing it on the fly.
It still exists, you might want to give it a try...
I'm a casual Wikipedia editor -- I edit Wikipedia on and off, semi-regularly but certainly not enough to be part of any incrowd. I have never run into any shitstorms. In my impression, most of the people who keep running into conflicts are actively looking for them. The site you cite is a nice case in point -- the whole tone of it screams extreme, borderline-psychotic hostility. It seems designed to create problems rather than solve them.
If you're civil, respect established community consensus without accepting it as gospel, familiarize yourself with rules and traditions so that you can follow them or break them wisely, offer constructive and well-argumented criticism, and generally avoid behaving like a bull in a china shop, you should be allright. In the rare cases in which you get nowhere, just edit something else for a while, or take it to the arbitration committee if you feel that strongly about it. Yes, Wikipedia has mechanisms for conflict resolution -- funny how the critics never seem to try those!
Even if it's true that some articles are guarded by people with a sense of ownership or control over them (and it probably is true), the only difference between them and those bitter critics is that the former managed to gain control, and the latter tried and failed. Both categories of people have control issues, otherwise the critics wouldn't be so bitter over their lack of control over Wikipedia. Non-control freaks, on the other hand, don't generally have a problem reaching consensus, even on Wikipedia.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people lack an essential life skill: the ability to accept that not everyone everywhere is always going to agree with you. Wikipedia seems to attract such people by the bucketload for some reason. It's actually possible to learn to let go of a silly conflict without taking your ball and going home. But some people seem so blinded by spite and bitterness they can't seem to see that anymore. Sad.
Because web forums suck.
So, name one operating system released at the time that Debian Etch was released or before, that contained this time zone update out of the box. I don't think you can, because their publishers would have had to be psychic or have a super-duper-accurate crystal ball.
The time zone update is pushed to anyone who tracks volatile (along with their antivirus updates, for example), this is not different from Microsoft auto-update or any other OS.
What the AC said. As a matter of principle, pushing non-security "security" updates that change functionality is asking for trouble. The updated time zone package has been available for months, a national time zone change should be common knowledge, and anyone in NZ who has not yet installed it is ignorant, or negligent, or both. This article submission is indeed a troll.
That's where you're wrong. Novell does not own most of the software in their SuSE distribution, they've just licensed it under the GPL/LGPL like everyone else. Any patent deal Microsoft made with Novell only applies to Novell and does not make anyone else any safer.
More correctly, distributing GPL software without complying with the GPL is a liability for any business. The GPL only covers distribution, not use. Everyone is perfectly free to use GPL'ed software without any restrictions whatsoever.
But for people to switch OS, there actually has to be an OS for people to switch to. That is why Linux really is important.
Precisely, and if you think Microsoft wouldn't like to do exactly that if it could get away with it, you're hopelessly naïve. In fact, for drivers, it has already gotten away with it. Closed-source driver developers meekly pay the Microsoft tax to get their code signed, and open-source drivers are effectively locked out.
But hey, never mind those inconvenient little facts -- just believe Microsoft will look out for your interests, it's so much easier. Sweet dreams.
Yes, Linux is really important. Open standards are meaningless if a single dominant closed operating system can control and restrict every program that runs on the computer, and this is the direction in which Windows is going. If left unchallenged, it may not even be able to run open soure software, some years from now. Linux is essential in being that challenge.
Because composing is inherently rewarding and fame is not actually the main motivator? (In fact I'd argue it's more likely to be a major deterrent!)
Case in point. Not getting recognized didn't stop her from composing all that wonderful music, why should it stop anyone else?
Seems to me that if you work with 40 MB spreadsheet files, you're using the wrong tool for whatever it is you're trying to do, anyway. Are you using Excel as a database?
No they didn't, they did it with lots of grumbling and muttering and complaining. In fact most of them didn't do it at all, they either had their resident geek do it for them or they rejected computers altogether as being too difficult to use for the average person -- remember, in the DOS days most people didn't even have a computer.
Funny, that sounds a lot like Debian (and Ubuntu) to me. Just look at the changelog file of any debian package.