Would you be willing to pay $600 for a console with all of the capabilities of a standard OEM PC?
Sort of a silly question to ask this crowd. Virtually all of us already have a relatively decent PC, and upgrade it regularly. An XBox almost certainly wouldn't meet our needs.
This will probably appeal more to the less technically-literate population. Instead of buying the $600 Dell and the $250 game console for the kids, you buy the $600 XBox instead. If marketed correctly, Microsoft should clean up on this.
Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
The law certainly says that it covers reproducing (copying), not just distribution. It so happens that most instances of copying without distribution are allowed -- making backups, format shifting, and so forth -- but copyright law itself governs the legality of doing so. (Remember the DMCA.)
Who the heck moderated the parent offtopic? (The AC parent, which is now at -1.) An AC makes a valid point, MoneyT says something completely unrelated, AC calls him on it... and the AC gets modded down?
I must have missed the place in your original post when you specified that you were talking about early-90's vintage dialup services instead of the hypothetical ISPs from the article.
It's commonly believed on slashdot that copying copyrighted material and giving it to your friend is legal. It's also commonly believed that this is called "fair use." Both of these are misconceptions (the former may sometimes be true; the latter is wrong.) "Fair use" applies to duplicating a copyrighted work for comment, criticism, education, etc. -- burning a copy of the latest Britney CD is not covered.
If you're going to comment on copyright issues, do yourself a favor and read Title 17, Sec. 107 -- link. (In fact, it would do the slashdot crowd good to read the whole thing -- it's really not that long, and they might not come off sounding so stupid most of the time.)
This isn't intended as a flame towards you; it's just that since we see thousands of posts on slashdot every single day about copyright issues, we ought to at least understand a bit about copyright law.
Look on any forum, people are not complaining about noise. People are whining about overheating...
Obviously, you're only frequenting forums that cater to overclockers. Most of us in the real world have absolutely no trouble with our computers overheating. On the other hand, spending eight hours next to a noisy machine (and then, for most of us, going home and spending another ten...) to enough to convince us that quieter fans would be a great thing.
But what if you bet double or nothing every time you lose, and keep the same bet if you win?
Eventually, you'll end up losing all of your money when you don't have enough left to double your last bet.
Statistics always win.
Incidently, there's a book called "Conned Again, Watson!" that covers all sorts of examples of probability and statistics in the world of Sherlock Holmes -- this problem is included. It's a bit light, but an entertaining and interesting read that I would highly recommend. Here is a link to the book.
Now before you start yelling: "But FreeNet doesn't work!". Think again: Since about mid-May, it works well again! Try it!
People have been saying this for years now. Every time someone says "Freenet doesn't work," somebody else responds with "It's been massively improved in the last month!" So I download it and try it again, and it sucks just as much as ever. At this point, I'm not going to bother, and I bet that many people feel the same way I do -- I have absolutely no faith that it works, testmonials or no.
This depends on how you define things. I'm aware that DOS still existed under the hood of Win95; that doesn't mean that Win95 wasn't an OS. (It was at that point where Microsoft stopped distributing DOS as a standalone OS.) Compare to Linux distributions -- the boot system, shell, GNU utilities, X, and so forth are generally considered to be part of the OS, even though they're less tightly integrated than Win95 / DOS.
And unless people commonly referred to "DesqView" as "Windows," which I rather doubt, it's not evidence of "Windows" being a generic term for an operating system.
However, the real question is (or at least should be) if "Windows" is a generic term for an operating system. After all, that's what the trademark refers to; after all, Microsoft doesn't insist that Apple get permission to call a rectangular set of pixels on the screen a "window."
Of course, the water becomes muddied because you could argue that originally, Microsoft's product was actually a graphical DOS shell, and that it didn't become a full-fledged OS until the days of Win95.
Read the link that I posted. You're not converting all of it to energy, but you are converting some portion of it to energy. E=mc^2 is the right equation.
If you're interested in some of the specifics, a little googling turned up this, which talks about fusion in relation to the sun. The number that they cite is actually a factor of about 1:1 billion. (It depends, of course, on exactly what fusion fuel and fossil fuels you're talking about.)
It sucks because unlike marketing efforts and vendors' sales messages, which everyone has learned to always take with a grain of salt, I'm inclined to believe, often instantly and completely, a slashdot posting endorsing product X, because the poster seems unaffiliated and genuine and doesn't really have anything to gain from endorsing it.
If you believe everything you read in a slashdot post, you've got bigger problems than a bit of astroturfing.
Why is it that whenever somebody mentions a flaw in open source, there are always a million slashbots that jump up to say "well, proprietary software's no better!" Pointing fingers makes you look like four-year-olds.
Incredibly, SBC wants to take $1 billion out of our members' pockets in wages...
What a great statement. Next year, when I don't get the $100k raise I'm aiming for, I'll be able to claim that my employer "took $100,000 out of my pocket."
Try timing how long it takes to search your entire HD for a file containing a particular phrase. The existing tools are good and powerful, but they're less than ideal as far as speed goes.
But only if you're not a terrorist. If you are, then we'd respectfully request that you continue to use e-mail. In fact, if you could CC: president@dhs.gov, it would be helpful. Thanks!
Unfortunately, you may be creating a precedent so that method cannot be used to distribute any content.
So what? Try applying your argument to the guy in the street with a loudspeaker at 2 a.m., to telemarketers, to someone spraypainting on your walls, to somebody inserting propaganda into school textbooks... The first amendment doesn't give people the right to do whatever they want.
Could you back up such a claim that 99.95 percent of American households with a TV set have a home computer, let alone cable Internet access? I sure couldn't.
Sure, it's called "proof by assertion." It's a slightly more effective version of "proof by assumption." See it in action by reading pretty much any slashdot thread.
Slashdot Mirror
Sort of a silly question to ask this crowd. Virtually all of us already have a relatively decent PC, and upgrade it regularly. An XBox almost certainly wouldn't meet our needs.
This will probably appeal more to the less technically-literate population. Instead of buying the $600 Dell and the $250 game console for the kids, you buy the $600 XBox instead. If marketed correctly, Microsoft should clean up on this.
However, according to Sec. 106,
The law certainly says that it covers reproducing (copying), not just distribution. It so happens that most instances of copying without distribution are allowed -- making backups, format shifting, and so forth -- but copyright law itself governs the legality of doing so. (Remember the DMCA.)
Who the heck moderated the parent offtopic? (The AC parent, which is now at -1.) An AC makes a valid point, MoneyT says something completely unrelated, AC calls him on it ... and the AC gets modded down?
I must have missed the place in your original post when you specified that you were talking about early-90's vintage dialup services instead of the hypothetical ISPs from the article.
It's commonly believed on slashdot that copying copyrighted material and giving it to your friend is legal. It's also commonly believed that this is called "fair use." Both of these are misconceptions (the former may sometimes be true; the latter is wrong.) "Fair use" applies to duplicating a copyrighted work for comment, criticism, education, etc. -- burning a copy of the latest Britney CD is not covered.
If you're going to comment on copyright issues, do yourself a favor and read Title 17, Sec. 107 -- link. (In fact, it would do the slashdot crowd good to read the whole thing -- it's really not that long, and they might not come off sounding so stupid most of the time.)
This isn't intended as a flame towards you; it's just that since we see thousands of posts on slashdot every single day about copyright issues, we ought to at least understand a bit about copyright law.
I don't suppose that you can back this up with a reference to a definition of the internet that says this, can you?
It may decrease the internet's utility, but claiming that it makes it "not the internet" is utter nonsense.
Obviously, you're only frequenting forums that cater to overclockers. Most of us in the real world have absolutely no trouble with our computers overheating. On the other hand, spending eight hours next to a noisy machine (and then, for most of us, going home and spending another ten...) to enough to convince us that quieter fans would be a great thing.
Eventually, you'll end up losing all of your money when you don't have enough left to double your last bet.
Statistics always win.
Incidently, there's a book called "Conned Again, Watson!" that covers all sorts of examples of probability and statistics in the world of Sherlock Holmes -- this problem is included. It's a bit light, but an entertaining and interesting read that I would highly recommend. Here is a link to the book.
People have been saying this for years now. Every time someone says "Freenet doesn't work," somebody else responds with "It's been massively improved in the last month!" So I download it and try it again, and it sucks just as much as ever. At this point, I'm not going to bother, and I bet that many people feel the same way I do -- I have absolutely no faith that it works, testmonials or no.
Amazing. You got modded up by presenting an argument that didn't actually address a single point he made.
This depends on how you define things. I'm aware that DOS still existed under the hood of Win95; that doesn't mean that Win95 wasn't an OS. (It was at that point where Microsoft stopped distributing DOS as a standalone OS.) Compare to Linux distributions -- the boot system, shell, GNU utilities, X, and so forth are generally considered to be part of the OS, even though they're less tightly integrated than Win95 / DOS.
And unless people commonly referred to "DesqView" as "Windows," which I rather doubt, it's not evidence of "Windows" being a generic term for an operating system.
However, the real question is (or at least should be) if "Windows" is a generic term for an operating system. After all, that's what the trademark refers to; after all, Microsoft doesn't insist that Apple get permission to call a rectangular set of pixels on the screen a "window."
Of course, the water becomes muddied because you could argue that originally, Microsoft's product was actually a graphical DOS shell, and that it didn't become a full-fledged OS until the days of Win95.
Read the link that I posted. You're not converting all of it to energy, but you are converting some portion of it to energy. E=mc^2 is the right equation.
If you're interested in some of the specifics, a little googling turned up this, which talks about fusion in relation to the sun. The number that they cite is actually a factor of about 1:1 billion. (It depends, of course, on exactly what fusion fuel and fossil fuels you're talking about.)
No need for us to prove it. You can do it yourself. The equation is E=mc^2. c is a really big number.
If you believe everything you read in a slashdot post, you've got bigger problems than a bit of astroturfing.
Why is it that whenever somebody mentions a flaw in open source, there are always a million slashbots that jump up to say "well, proprietary software's no better!" Pointing fingers makes you look like four-year-olds.
Of course not! There are thousands of slashdot posts asserting that it's not true. If that doesn't constitute proof, I don't know what does.
What a great statement. Next year, when I don't get the $100k raise I'm aiming for, I'll be able to claim that my employer "took $100,000 out of my pocket."
Try timing how long it takes to search your entire HD for a file containing a particular phrase. The existing tools are good and powerful, but they're less than ideal as far as speed goes.
P.S.
But only if you're not a terrorist. If you are, then we'd respectfully request that you continue to use e-mail. In fact, if you could CC: president@dhs.gov, it would be helpful. Thanks!
So what? Try applying your argument to the guy in the street with a loudspeaker at 2 a.m., to telemarketers, to someone spraypainting on your walls, to somebody inserting propaganda into school textbooks... The first amendment doesn't give people the right to do whatever they want.
Tell you what. Hold onto that question until the next "Linux will take over the world next year!" article gets posted to slashdot.