It was likely part of her training. With no return ticket, no visa, etc., she probably thought that you were a fugitive using a fake passport and trying to escape the country.
h.264 is a good example of this. The compression algorithms were mostly developed by academics. I recall hearing one gloating startup exec who had got a piece of the h.264 pie talking about how he had "monetized" a particular video compression algorithm. In his mind it was him who deserved the money for selling it, not the academics for inventing it. After all, they might have released this important technology for free and for everyone to use rather than adding it to the witches' brew of the MPEG-LA patent pool! You know... "Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble..."
Yes or no, depending on the scale. Remember, each e-book is simply data, whereas each physical book is a little bit more pollution. So an e-reader versus 5 books might create more pollution, but versus 500? I doubt it.
This is a beautiful, simple solution. It's a pity it'll never be properly implemented.
Most people are just too stupid to figure out how encryption works or to try to understand why they need it. Even if they use it daily (say, as a part of their job) they will likely neglect it, passing off encryption keys to anyone and everyone. Furthermore, due to the fact that insurance companies and employers love to spy on people's medical records, they would almost certainly be given access in some way, allowing the records to be compromised by an outside source without the control of the patient. Furthermore, in many jurisdictions patient records are defined as the property of the doctor, not the patient, so it would really be doctors controlling the system rather than individual patients. Finally, many doctors are simply too arrogant due to their high-status job to puzzle out even the simplest computerized system; and if they don't screw up, clerks (as the people who will update the database) will. Even a beautiful system like yours would be hacked up, trodden on, and would have all of its secrecy compromised and destroyed. Think again.
That's like saying, "if there were no criminals, we wouldn't need laws." Regardless of everything else, "piracy" and the restoration of functionality (removal of functionality-breaking DRM) will always be around in some form, no matter what. Even if all "pirates" vanished tomorrow, they would still be used as a bogeyman and an excuse to gain even more control, as CD checks are replaced by or augmented by smart "protection engines" which scan the Windows registry for disk imaging tools like Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools (even if they are being used for unrelated purposes), disabling of screen recording of games (which kill walkthroughs, Let's Plays, "greatest hit" compilations by gamers, etc.), and encryption/obfuscation of game assets (in case some modder wanted to change a skin or mesh or add them to a custom map). Essentially, they take over any computer they are (usually silently) installed on.
Indeed, I would say that the study is oriented towards the humanities except for the fact that, in the humanities, attribution is a major part of defining "plagiarism". In retrospect, it doesn't seem to be oriented towards anything other than scaring people with made-up words and fishy numbers.
Of course, but most people only have a fuzzy idea of what "liberty" is, anyway. Do you think that many Word users know why their word processor is named that?
Sounds like they don't like anonymity very much. Any particular reason? I've heard that it's very Catholic, which could be a possible cause for such an extremist attitude. Can you see a major cause?
"For the children" excuse, data retention, "cracking down", child molesters . . . Although I think almost all of these stories have the same elements, we would need new livers soon enough.
It depends. In many Commonwealth countries, copyright is jointly held between the photographer and subject. I believe this was because of generic crowd scenes with identifiable faces that were later used as the placeholder picture for picture frames and such, which is why landscape art, animals, and models are used exclusively now.
This is why it's generally a bad idea to trust keygens. Both keygens and game cracks are small enough to be easily distributed and are executable files, so they're easy to sneeak viruses into. As well, many AV companies unhelpfully flag legitimate cracks as infected on the publishers' request. The best approach is to rely on mounted ISOs as much as possible and to use serials (you can't infect plaintext) rather than keygens.
Depressing but true. It reminds me of the supposed survey that said that most Americans would give up their right to vote forever in exchange for a pizza lunch.
People see themselves as having very little individual effect, particularly software users who see themselves as having little effect on development or design decisions, despite the fact that they're the whole reason the software exists in the first place. One of the important parts of free software is that, at least to some degree, the users should give feedback and participate in the development of the project by submitting bug reports and patches, something that was severely lacking in OpenOffice development.
Remember, it wasn't so long ago that only 0.5% of all people in the world used computers at all. There is such a capacity for rapid change that something like the free software movement has the power to take hold when it would fail in other areas. We should give it support and criticize it if it goes astray, not give up right after we've started.
Indeed, the "splitting up" is part of how free software is (theoretically) supposed to work -- instead of a one-size-fits-all bloated suite, have small, specific programs for usage circumstances. The point of forking is supposed to be to provide a new design direction or to aim your software at a slightly different userbase. However, forks often attract bad legal issues and disputes, as the developer of the original software (especially if they are a commercial outfit) might want to hold onto it and control it even if it was GPL'd.
The fact that this is a major project that has been successfully forked is very significant and shouldn't be ignored.
"Libre" (which has now been included in OSS... oops, FOSS, oops... FLOSS, for all those free software-loving dentists) is generally used as an alternative to "free" and "open". Despite all of Stallman's efforts, many people associate "free" with cost, and "open-source" has been partially turned into a buzzword by companies. "Libre" is used by others since it implies freedom (liberty, etc.) without really being a term from either "camp". However, I agree that it makes a poor name for a piece of software; while many programs have somewhat descriptive names, "LibreOffice" and "OpenOffice" don't really give much room for competitors and appropriate a term to describe a type of software for themselves (similar to MS Office simply being called "Office").
OpenOffice was really only renamed that because it would be incongruous for it to continue to be named StarOffice (since StarOffice fit into Sun's astronomy theme with Solaris and such). I think it makes a good introduction to FOSS (heh, here we go again) for users who might not know anything about it.
Somehow, the news that LibreOffice is right on track is spun into a negative diatribe against FOSS. We should be happy that we dodged a bullet and ditched an Oracle-controlled project. As well, this is another piece of proof that a major project can be forked without too much trouble. To me, this is nothing but positive, yet it's been spun into something else.
I agree. I think one of the fallacies is that people are comparing FF4 (major, new release with tons of features (and tons of "features") that will have problems) with FF3.6 (mature and stable, but slow and not very fully-featured). Features that are just appearing in FF4 and are miles ahead of other browsers might be dismissed now, but will be powerful incentives down the road. The fact that FF4 is introducing a large number of new features without a major performance slowdown (supposedly) should be recognized.
I second this. Compared to the bloat of Adobe Reader, Evince is space- and memory-friendly and is much more responsive. It isn't as fully-featured as Reader, but most PDFs don't use these features anyway. I find that the performance is the best with large (50+ pages) PDFs that Adobe Reader takes forever to load.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps, but many people would simply have those children anyway. It is not a choice for ones who don't believe in birth control.
It was likely part of her training. With no return ticket, no visa, etc., she probably thought that you were a fugitive using a fake passport and trying to escape the country.
I'm not sure if this was said before, but...
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Is that really so different?
h.264 is a good example of this. The compression algorithms were mostly developed by academics. I recall hearing one gloating startup exec who had got a piece of the h.264 pie talking about how he had "monetized" a particular video compression algorithm. In his mind it was him who deserved the money for selling it, not the academics for inventing it. After all, they might have released this important technology for free and for everyone to use rather than adding it to the witches' brew of the MPEG-LA patent pool! You know... "Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble..."
Yes or no, depending on the scale. Remember, each e-book is simply data, whereas each physical book is a little bit more pollution. So an e-reader versus 5 books might create more pollution, but versus 500? I doubt it.
... Is that only some of them work. Yours doesn't. His does.
As evidenced by the Germans and Soviets during the Second World War.
They're an advertising company and run ads on their site. They will be happy to get slashdotted.
This is a beautiful, simple solution. It's a pity it'll never be properly implemented.
Most people are just too stupid to figure out how encryption works or to try to understand why they need it. Even if they use it daily (say, as a part of their job) they will likely neglect it, passing off encryption keys to anyone and everyone. Furthermore, due to the fact that insurance companies and employers love to spy on people's medical records, they would almost certainly be given access in some way, allowing the records to be compromised by an outside source without the control of the patient. Furthermore, in many jurisdictions patient records are defined as the property of the doctor, not the patient, so it would really be doctors controlling the system rather than individual patients. Finally, many doctors are simply too arrogant due to their high-status job to puzzle out even the simplest computerized system; and if they don't screw up, clerks (as the people who will update the database) will. Even a beautiful system like yours would be hacked up, trodden on, and would have all of its secrecy compromised and destroyed. Think again.
That's like saying, "if there were no criminals, we wouldn't need laws." Regardless of everything else, "piracy" and the restoration of functionality (removal of functionality-breaking DRM) will always be around in some form, no matter what. Even if all "pirates" vanished tomorrow, they would still be used as a bogeyman and an excuse to gain even more control, as CD checks are replaced by or augmented by smart "protection engines" which scan the Windows registry for disk imaging tools like Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools (even if they are being used for unrelated purposes), disabling of screen recording of games (which kill walkthroughs, Let's Plays, "greatest hit" compilations by gamers, etc.), and encryption/obfuscation of game assets (in case some modder wanted to change a skin or mesh or add them to a custom map). Essentially, they take over any computer they are (usually silently) installed on.
Indeed, I would say that the study is oriented towards the humanities except for the fact that, in the humanities, attribution is a major part of defining "plagiarism". In retrospect, it doesn't seem to be oriented towards anything other than scaring people with made-up words and fishy numbers.
Of course, but most people only have a fuzzy idea of what "liberty" is, anyway. Do you think that many Word users know why their word processor is named that?
Sounds like they don't like anonymity very much. Any particular reason? I've heard that it's very Catholic, which could be a possible cause for such an extremist attitude. Can you see a major cause?
I'm curious -- what country is this?
"For the children" excuse, data retention, "cracking down", child molesters . . . Although I think almost all of these stories have the same elements, we would need new livers soon enough.
It depends. In many Commonwealth countries, copyright is jointly held between the photographer and subject. I believe this was because of generic crowd scenes with identifiable faces that were later used as the placeholder picture for picture frames and such, which is why landscape art, animals, and models are used exclusively now.
This is why it's generally a bad idea to trust keygens. Both keygens and game cracks are small enough to be easily distributed and are executable files, so they're easy to sneeak viruses into. As well, many AV companies unhelpfully flag legitimate cracks as infected on the publishers' request. The best approach is to rely on mounted ISOs as much as possible and to use serials (you can't infect plaintext) rather than keygens.
Depressing but true. It reminds me of the supposed survey that said that most Americans would give up their right to vote forever in exchange for a pizza lunch.
People see themselves as having very little individual effect, particularly software users who see themselves as having little effect on development or design decisions, despite the fact that they're the whole reason the software exists in the first place. One of the important parts of free software is that, at least to some degree, the users should give feedback and participate in the development of the project by submitting bug reports and patches, something that was severely lacking in OpenOffice development.
Remember, it wasn't so long ago that only 0.5% of all people in the world used computers at all. There is such a capacity for rapid change that something like the free software movement has the power to take hold when it would fail in other areas. We should give it support and criticize it if it goes astray, not give up right after we've started.
Indeed, the "splitting up" is part of how free software is (theoretically) supposed to work -- instead of a one-size-fits-all bloated suite, have small, specific programs for usage circumstances. The point of forking is supposed to be to provide a new design direction or to aim your software at a slightly different userbase. However, forks often attract bad legal issues and disputes, as the developer of the original software (especially if they are a commercial outfit) might want to hold onto it and control it even if it was GPL'd.
The fact that this is a major project that has been successfully forked is very significant and shouldn't be ignored.
"Libre" (which has now been included in OSS ... oops, FOSS, oops ... FLOSS, for all those free software-loving dentists) is generally used as an alternative to "free" and "open". Despite all of Stallman's efforts, many people associate "free" with cost, and "open-source" has been partially turned into a buzzword by companies. "Libre" is used by others since it implies freedom (liberty, etc.) without really being a term from either "camp". However, I agree that it makes a poor name for a piece of software; while many programs have somewhat descriptive names, "LibreOffice" and "OpenOffice" don't really give much room for competitors and appropriate a term to describe a type of software for themselves (similar to MS Office simply being called "Office").
OpenOffice was really only renamed that because it would be incongruous for it to continue to be named StarOffice (since StarOffice fit into Sun's astronomy theme with Solaris and such). I think it makes a good introduction to FOSS (heh, here we go again) for users who might not know anything about it.
Somehow, the news that LibreOffice is right on track is spun into a negative diatribe against FOSS. We should be happy that we dodged a bullet and ditched an Oracle-controlled project. As well, this is another piece of proof that a major project can be forked without too much trouble. To me, this is nothing but positive, yet it's been spun into something else.
But what if the Mozilla landing party loses too many redshirts?
I agree. I think one of the fallacies is that people are comparing FF4 (major, new release with tons of features (and tons of "features") that will have problems) with FF3.6 (mature and stable, but slow and not very fully-featured). Features that are just appearing in FF4 and are miles ahead of other browsers might be dismissed now, but will be powerful incentives down the road. The fact that FF4 is introducing a large number of new features without a major performance slowdown (supposedly) should be recognized.
I agree, if you were hiring just another office drone. Anyone expected to use reasoning in their work...
I second this. Compared to the bloat of Adobe Reader, Evince is space- and memory-friendly and is much more responsive. It isn't as fully-featured as Reader, but most PDFs don't use these features anyway. I find that the performance is the best with large (50+ pages) PDFs that Adobe Reader takes forever to load.