Of course pi-based music is copyrightable. TFA even states explicitly: "That doesn't mean Erickson's copyright is invalid." Both Erickson and Blake retain copyright over their respective songs, which (other than both being based off pi) are distinct. What is not copyrightable is the idea of basing a song off pi. The title should have read "Judge Rules Pi Is Non-Copyrightable."
Not necessarily. If people tend to lose their inhibitions when communicating via a keyboard (as opposed to in-person communication), then they will either be more honest or more dishonest â" i.e. more of what they would have been anyway. So the Internet can make the population in general both more likely to tell the truth and more likely to lie.
-- Along with the versioning scheme comes lack of support for older versions
Actually, 3.6.x gets security updates to this day.
-- The version scheme is a pain in the neck for add-ons, which depend on versions
Every add-on worth installing has long since adapted and anticipates several versions in advance. I've never had a problem.
-- Normal version numbers give the user information; the version number tells us whether it has had major features, bug fixes, etc. Firefox's versioning has the effect of concealing this information from the user.
Yes. Like I said, it's silly. It's also not a big enough thing to make this huge fuss about, much less to stick to old and buggy versions. In my experience, FF has been getting much better and faster.
You know, if only you could get rid of your fixation on the version number and just keep up with the latest version, it would be so easy to make yourself happy because the latest release has all those bugfixes you're looking for. What is it with this silly fixation that some people have on the silly versioning scheme? Yes, I know the new versioning scheme is silly, but it's just a fucking versioning scheme. Get over it already.
Yes, and?
"Redacting" a PDF by changing the text colors is not a computer maintenance issue, it's a basic failure to understand the fundamentals of using a computer. It's the equivalent of driving into a house because you don't know how the steering wheel works.
The toaster or TV analogy only works for computers that are restricted to walled gardens, such as the iPad. A real computer is more analogous to a car. You have to know how to drive it in order to use it safely. You have to build up experience in order to use it effectively.
Cut it out with the reactionary rhetoric already. It's an opt-in filter that allows people who so choose to read about "controversial" subjects without being confronted with graphic images of hardcore blood, gore, pornography, etc. - and there will be categories of filters, so it may even allow Muslims to read about their prophet without having to see depictions of him, without depriving others of access to those images. This seems like a good thing.
Other methods of communication become irrelevant if everyone you have reason to communciate with uses Facebook or Google+ exclusively, which is already the case for many, many people.
The way Skype solves this problem is by identifying clients that aren't behind NAT. Those clients are used to proxy the media for other clients that are behind NAT. In other words, if you use Skype and you aren't behind NAT, there's a good chance you will be carrying traffic for those that are behind NAT.
I did pretty much exactly this, starting in 2004. It looks like you have the opportunity to make this fun for yourself. Show some initiative and try something new. Off-hand, my advice would be:
Keep it simple, stupid. For a network that small, consumer-grade routers in combination with a few medium-grade switches will do fine.
Screw the cloud; host everything yourself. You don't want confidential company data on computers managed by strangers.
If non-Windows desktops are acceptable, I've had great success with Linux in combination with Linux Terminal Server Project. Saves boatloads on licensing costs and desktop hardware. You get to centralize all the management for free. LTSP comes integrated in Debian and a few other distros. There's a learning curve but it's very much worth it. XFCE makes for a good lightweight end user desktop environment.
Even where Windows desktops are required, have all the network services run on Linux. No hassle with licenses and restrictions.
Become fluent in Linux/UNIX shell. It's convenient and very powerful.
1. All server-to-server communication is TLS encrypted and authenticated. All wave origins are verified using digital signatures, so, to quote from wikipedia,
Therefore, a downstream wave provider can verify that the wave provider is not spoofing wavelet operations. It should not be able to falsely claim that a wavelet operation originated from a user on another wave provider or that it was originated in a different context.
Thus, spam really ceases to be an issue
This reflects a common and unfortunate misunderstanding about spam. The vast majority of spam does not forge the sender and has no need to. Most spammers want responses, after all. Besides, email has already solved this problem (SPF, DomainKeys) and it did nothing to deter the spammers. Phishers now simply register domains that look similar to the real ones. Spammers register domains in bulk so they don't care if they get blocked or shut down. Wave would do nothing to solve any of this. Spam is a social problem, not a technical one, so it can only have a social solution.
2. Waves can be embedded. Blog comment sections can be replaced by waves; forum threads by waves. All comments would appear in your inbox. Email cannot even hope to replicate this other than with the clunky-and-annoying "notify me when someone responds" forum setting.
That is not a problem with email, but a problem with blogs. Besides, what is the difference between "notify me when someone responds" and "all comments would appear in your inbox"? Nothing is stopping blogs from sending all comments to your inbox now. There is a reason why they don't usually do that, and that reason would apply equally to Wave.
3. You can easily add people to the discussion. The only way to do so with email is to re-forward the whole chain of emails to them and ask them to reply-all; or to include them in the next reply-all and hope that noone else responds first. This is a pretty glaring flaw of email that Wave fixes.
Mailing lists fixed this in the 1970s. Even simple mailing lists are more efficient for discussions than Wave and blogs combined. All you need is a decent email program with threading and filtering. The recipient is in total control, and it's simpler to learn than Wave.
4. There are of course a ton of other reasons why Wave was more than just "chat with a couple of features", but these were big. Wave had the chance to completely redo how we communicated,
You bought the hype. But even if this were true, it would have put Google in total control of all our communications. No thanks.
Yeah, that is precisely my point. Hilarious or not, user friendliness is all about presentation. Linux software repository = impenetrable, only for geeks. iPhone app store = your mom can use it. It's a fact. Linux is not succeeding on the desktop because programmers fail to understand this.
This is true, but "app stores" are all the rage right now and the term has enormous "brand recognition". It does make it immediately obvious to most anyone's mom that this is a place where you can get shiny new software.
Besides, there is actually commercial software for Linux too, and I don't see a reason why commercial packages shouldn't be available under a tab of their own in the same place.
I think Linux distros can learn a lot from the iPhone and Android and other smartphones. They were the first to figure out a truly user-friendly way to install software. And since app stores are just glorified repositories, the transition should be easy.
I'm an advanced user and I don't every want to know what a repository is. My mom definitely doesn't give a shit.
So call it an "app store", except all the apps are free. Your mom will eat it up.
The Right to Read
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Instead of this piece of fluff (which should have been titled "The End of Freedom"), it's better to re-read The Right to Read by RMS: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html. He saw this coming back in 1997.
Umm, not really. Tabs are based on the idea of "stacking" or grouping related "papers" together.
Which is a function that the window manager should have been providing all along. The application is the wrong place to implement it, but they are forced to because the window managers in dominant operating systems are woefully inadequate.
It just gets scary when our leaders import daft ideas they hear from your idiots, so please keep them quiet. Our politicians keep on copying them and try to better them. Please don't give our politicians any more ideas.
In other words, we Europeans are just as crazy as the Americans, but we don't even have the courage or the wits to be original about it. Instead we are content to be America's docile little lapdog. That's hardly a cause to boast, is it?
This really made me sad. Slackware is the garage-built Apple II of the Linux world (I figure SLS was the Apple I). Unfortunately, Linux has moved on from what one person can really package together.
Has it? Somehow PV manages just fine with KDE and XFCE. Apparently, GNOME is the only thing that has moved on from what one person can really package together. I'd say that says a lot more about GNOME than it does about Linux, or Slackware.
(Never mind that, contrary to popular belief, PV has a team of helpers, residing mostly at slackbuilds.org.)
Every time I see a new Slackware version it makes me sad. Like seeing an old man wheezing on for another birthday. I'd rather see it go now, than continue to bleed marketshare into complete irrelevancy.
Boo hoo. You're just whining because PV is still snubbing GNOME for being a convoluted piece of crap.
Parent is not insightful; it's a troll. Downloading illegally is not even in the same league as downloading and then republishing without even identifying the author, no matter how much the RIAA/MPAA want you to believe otherwise.
Just use one of the freely available text-only Usenet servers, like news.eternal-september.org, or choose to support a cheap one, like the excellent individual.net which costs just 10 euros (15 US dollars) per year.
Usenet is consolidating. It's not dying. Services like these continue to provide a spam-free, binary-free, high-quality Usenet feed.
You're missing the point. If Chrome records zoom levels for particular sites, each such record is proof by implication that you visited the site. The Incognito mode is supposed to prevent recording of what sites you visit.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Of course, if Erickson had patented that idea, success would have been pretty much guaranteed. :-/
Of course pi-based music is copyrightable. TFA even states explicitly: "That doesn't mean Erickson's copyright is invalid." Both Erickson and Blake retain copyright over their respective songs, which (other than both being based off pi) are distinct. What is not copyrightable is the idea of basing a song off pi. The title should have read "Judge Rules Pi Is Non-Copyrightable."
Not necessarily. If people tend to lose their inhibitions when communicating via a keyboard (as opposed to in-person communication), then they will either be more honest or more dishonest â" i.e. more of what they would have been anyway. So the Internet can make the population in general both more likely to tell the truth and more likely to lie.
-- Along with the versioning scheme comes lack of support for older versions
Actually, 3.6.x gets security updates to this day.
-- The version scheme is a pain in the neck for add-ons, which depend on versions
Every add-on worth installing has long since adapted and anticipates several versions in advance. I've never had a problem.
-- Normal version numbers give the user information; the version number tells us whether it has had major features, bug fixes, etc. Firefox's versioning has the effect of concealing this information from the user.
Yes. Like I said, it's silly. It's also not a big enough thing to make this huge fuss about, much less to stick to old and buggy versions. In my experience, FF has been getting much better and faster.
You know, if only you could get rid of your fixation on the version number and just keep up with the latest version, it would be so easy to make yourself happy because the latest release has all those bugfixes you're looking for. What is it with this silly fixation that some people have on the silly versioning scheme? Yes, I know the new versioning scheme is silly, but it's just a fucking versioning scheme. Get over it already.
Yes, and? "Redacting" a PDF by changing the text colors is not a computer maintenance issue, it's a basic failure to understand the fundamentals of using a computer. It's the equivalent of driving into a house because you don't know how the steering wheel works.
The toaster or TV analogy only works for computers that are restricted to walled gardens, such as the iPad. A real computer is more analogous to a car. You have to know how to drive it in order to use it safely. You have to build up experience in order to use it effectively.
Cut it out with the reactionary rhetoric already. It's an opt-in filter that allows people who so choose to read about "controversial" subjects without being confronted with graphic images of hardcore blood, gore, pornography, etc. - and there will be categories of filters, so it may even allow Muslims to read about their prophet without having to see depictions of him, without depriving others of access to those images. This seems like a good thing.
Other methods of communication become irrelevant if everyone you have reason to communciate with uses Facebook or Google+ exclusively, which is already the case for many, many people.
The way Skype solves this problem is by identifying clients that aren't behind NAT. Those clients are used to proxy the media for other clients that are behind NAT. In other words, if you use Skype and you aren't behind NAT, there's a good chance you will be carrying traffic for those that are behind NAT.
That is not correct. The Skype proxy actually punches holes in the NAT on both ends so they can talk directly. See http://www.h-online.com/security/features/How-Skype-Co-get-round-firewalls-747197.html.
I did pretty much exactly this, starting in 2004. It looks like you have the opportunity to make this fun for yourself. Show some initiative and try something new. Off-hand, my advice would be:
The Mac also has a dearth of good code editors. On Linux, I really liked nEdit.
You claim to be aware of the existence of MacPorts, yet it never occurred to you that you can just use nEdit (or any other "Linux" editor) on the Mac?
The record companies wanted to raise prices, particularly on the one or two hits that'd otherwise sell an album but Apple refused.
Actually, Apple has been allowing that since April 2009.
1. All server-to-server communication is TLS encrypted and authenticated. All wave origins are verified using digital signatures, so, to quote from wikipedia,
Therefore, a downstream wave provider can verify that the wave provider is not spoofing wavelet operations. It should not be able to falsely claim that a wavelet operation originated from a user on another wave provider or that it was originated in a different context.
Thus, spam really ceases to be an issue
This reflects a common and unfortunate misunderstanding about spam. The vast majority of spam does not forge the sender and has no need to. Most spammers want responses, after all. Besides, email has already solved this problem (SPF, DomainKeys) and it did nothing to deter the spammers. Phishers now simply register domains that look similar to the real ones. Spammers register domains in bulk so they don't care if they get blocked or shut down. Wave would do nothing to solve any of this. Spam is a social problem, not a technical one, so it can only have a social solution.
2. Waves can be embedded. Blog comment sections can be replaced by waves; forum threads by waves. All comments would appear in your inbox. Email cannot even hope to replicate this other than with the clunky-and-annoying "notify me when someone responds" forum setting.
That is not a problem with email, but a problem with blogs. Besides, what is the difference between "notify me when someone responds" and "all comments would appear in your inbox"? Nothing is stopping blogs from sending all comments to your inbox now. There is a reason why they don't usually do that, and that reason would apply equally to Wave.
3. You can easily add people to the discussion. The only way to do so with email is to re-forward the whole chain of emails to them and ask them to reply-all; or to include them in the next reply-all and hope that noone else responds first. This is a pretty glaring flaw of email that Wave fixes.
Mailing lists fixed this in the 1970s. Even simple mailing lists are more efficient for discussions than Wave and blogs combined. All you need is a decent email program with threading and filtering. The recipient is in total control, and it's simpler to learn than Wave.
4. There are of course a ton of other reasons why Wave was more than just "chat with a couple of features", but these were big. Wave had the chance to completely redo how we communicated,
You bought the hype. But even if this were true, it would have put Google in total control of all our communications. No thanks.
Yeah, that is precisely my point. Hilarious or not, user friendliness is all about presentation. Linux software repository = impenetrable, only for geeks. iPhone app store = your mom can use it. It's a fact. Linux is not succeeding on the desktop because programmers fail to understand this.
This is true, but "app stores" are all the rage right now and the term has enormous "brand recognition". It does make it immediately obvious to most anyone's mom that this is a place where you can get shiny new software. Besides, there is actually commercial software for Linux too, and I don't see a reason why commercial packages shouldn't be available under a tab of their own in the same place. I think Linux distros can learn a lot from the iPhone and Android and other smartphones. They were the first to figure out a truly user-friendly way to install software. And since app stores are just glorified repositories, the transition should be easy.
I'm an advanced user and I don't every want to know what a repository is. My mom definitely doesn't give a shit.
So call it an "app store", except all the apps are free. Your mom will eat it up.
Instead of this piece of fluff (which should have been titled "The End of Freedom"), it's better to re-read The Right to Read by RMS: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html. He saw this coming back in 1997.
Which is a function that the window manager should have been providing all along. The application is the wrong place to implement it, but they are forced to because the window managers in dominant operating systems are woefully inadequate.
It just gets scary when our leaders import daft ideas they hear from your idiots, so please keep them quiet. Our politicians keep on copying them and try to better them. Please don't give our politicians any more ideas.
In other words, we Europeans are just as crazy as the Americans, but we don't even have the courage or the wits to be original about it. Instead we are content to be America's docile little lapdog. That's hardly a cause to boast, is it?
This really made me sad. Slackware is the garage-built Apple II of the Linux world (I figure SLS was the Apple I). Unfortunately, Linux has moved on from what one person can really package together.
Has it? Somehow PV manages just fine with KDE and XFCE. Apparently, GNOME is the only thing that has moved on from what one person can really package together. I'd say that says a lot more about GNOME than it does about Linux, or Slackware.
(Never mind that, contrary to popular belief, PV has a team of helpers, residing mostly at slackbuilds.org.)
Every time I see a new Slackware version it makes me sad. Like seeing an old man wheezing on for another birthday. I'd rather see it go now, than continue to bleed marketshare into complete irrelevancy.
Boo hoo. You're just whining because PV is still snubbing GNOME for being a convoluted piece of crap.
Parent is not insightful; it's a troll. Downloading illegally is not even in the same league as downloading and then republishing without even identifying the author, no matter how much the RIAA/MPAA want you to believe otherwise.
Just use one of the freely available text-only Usenet servers, like news.eternal-september.org, or choose to support a cheap one, like the excellent individual.net which costs just 10 euros (15 US dollars) per year.
Usenet is consolidating. It's not dying. Services like these continue to provide a spam-free, binary-free, high-quality Usenet feed.
You're missing the point. If Chrome records zoom levels for particular sites, each such record is proof by implication that you visited the site. The Incognito mode is supposed to prevent recording of what sites you visit.
The two industries start from different premises, so that's why software can be free whereas media cannot.
Your opinion is belied by the fact that there is plenty of free media out there.