Why in hell was this story posted at all? Is Taco now Cringley's bitch? If Cringley wants people to send him their predictions, don't post them to Slashdot, send them to Cringley. If you already read Cringley you don't need Taco telling you this, and if you don't read Cringley you probabley (like me) don't read him for a reason. I don't need or want Taco or anyone else telling me what I missed in this week's column.
How far shall we extend this logic? Those of you who read LWN don't need things repeated here... those who don't, don't for a reason... How 'bout Wired, New York Times, etc....
You understand what Slashdot does, right? It links to news/commentary/stuff that exists elsewhere on the net. ALL of this can be viewed without Slashdot.
I know, we all want Slashdot to just post the COOL stuff, and not the LAME stuff, but guess what, that's different for everyone, so you're gonna get some of each. So just quit bitching.
What in hell is on-topic for this story? If you post a prediction here, you're doing it in the wrong place -- you should send your predictions to Cringley.
Last I checked, Cringley doesn't have a large-scale discussion board. There's no rule that says you can't do both. Besides, I wouldn't be shocked if the man reads Slashdot.
Did it ever occur to the rather focused poster that the reason they used OnStar is because the car was STOLEN and that's one of the things it's FOR.
ME: Officer, I'd like to report my car stolen.
OFFICER: OK sir. I have to tell you that our rate of finding stolen cars really isn't very good.
ME: But I know where it is.
OFFICER: Really? Great! We'll get right on that. How do you know where it is?
ME: I have OnStar.
OFFICER: Ooh... Uh.. We can't really use that, so ah... we'll have to use our normal techniques, but I have to tell you that our success rate isn't very good...
Re:Were is my pointy-horned cap?
on
UT2003 LiveCD
·
· Score: 1
Well, I don't know exactly what the LiveCD does, but I will say that if you're trying to impress them with the game, then I'm not sure that the Linux demo is going to be that impressive to Windows people. If I were a Windows-only user, I'd ask them what the big deal was, since I could play it on my Windows machine already. And I'd point out that, despite the fact that NVIDIA cards are pretty widespread, the demo on Windows supports a wider range of cards, including the lowly 3dfx Voodoo3. And that it doesn't require rebooting the machine.
I know it seems obvious to us, the technically elite, but you have to remember that not everyone is so technically savvy. This is yet another example of how technology is changing things.
What's interesting about this is how different it is from the world of physical security. Consider a bank, for example. In that case, it's nearly impossible for employees do any damage, and very easy to cover what limited exposure there is.
My freshman year in college (somewhat overwhelmed by the new social scene) I averaged about 4 hours per night. I fell asleep standing up, etc. It was bad. But the REALLY scary thing was how long it took to recover. That summer, I slept 10+ hours every night and still had trouble staying awake at the wheel on 10 minute trips at noon. It took me years to recover.
the productivity calculation is tricky
Here's an extreme example: I can sleep 8 hours and put in a good day's work. I can alternatively sleep 4 hours and have an extra four hours! But do I get four hours more of work done? No way, probably less. This can be a tricky optimization, especially due to the long-term effects of your sleeping patterns.
For me, I am most productive when getting 8 hours of sleep. With that amount, I NEVER drift toward sleep unintentionally. That's my rule. If I start to doze, I need more sleep.
I just wanted to address a couple of issues that seem to come up repeatedly (and sometimes incorrectly).
Heat: It's not obvious that optical computers would not have the heating problems the electon-based ones have. Sure, it wouldn't be based on the same mechanism (resistance), but you still have the problem of absorption. The same process by which the sun heats up your car in the afternoon would be a problem here.
Any time you shine light through something, some of it is transmitted, some is scattered and some is absorbed. The last two will cause signal losses and absorption will cause heating.
Heating may not be the biggest hurdle, but it will still be an issue.
Electron vs Photon speed: As a number of people have pointed out, wires to not carry signal at the speed of the electrons. A good (medium level) analogy to understand this is marbles in a plastic tube.
Let's say I have 100ft of plastic tubing full of marbles. We decide that every second, I'm gonna push a marble in my end (1) or I'm not (0). That's a 1bps data rate. Now, the speed at which the data travels is 100ft devided by the time between when I push on a marble and when one falls out the other end. Obviously, that's gonna be pretty fast.
The point is that the bit gets from one end of the tube very quickly even though any given marble will take a long time to get from one end to the other. Similarly, the electrons can carry information faster than they actually move.
(Disclaimer: This analogy is correct only in the sense of this last paragraph. I am not claiming otherwise)
You can send the source code of a virus to anyone you like, as long as you never compile it or attach it in an active form. The fact that Outlook will run scripts attached to a message as source complicates this issue. But just because Outlook is broken doesn't mean you should arrest people for distributing source code.
Don't get me wrong. I am making no statement about the validity of the EULA. I understand that there are problems with the EULA. I was simply stating that the mechanism of the EULA's publication (in an EXE rather than ascii, or paper) does not diminish its power.
The original poster was suggesting that the license was invalid because it was in an EXE and others have suggested that they were not affected by the EULA because the avoided it via winzip. These suggestions are incorrect.
The analogies were only meant to point out that ignoring a legal statement (copyright notice, licence agreement, whatever) does not free you from it. That is the ONLY way that I meant the EULA and book examples are similar.
I know that this has been gone over and over.. But how can a EULA in an EXE be binding?
You're confusing technical issues with legal issues. Consider these analogies:
I have a book that says "No part of this publication may be reproduced..." on page 3. Skipping directly to page 5 does not mean that I'm exempt from this legally binding statement.
I cover my eyes during the FBI warning at the beginning of videos. I still can't copy them.
They are not required to force you to read and agree to a license. That's just to drive the point home and to make it harder for you to say "license? what license?" on the witness stand.
Slashdot Mirror
Why in hell was this story posted at all? Is Taco now Cringley's bitch? If Cringley wants people to send him their predictions, don't post them to Slashdot, send them to Cringley. If you already read Cringley you don't need Taco telling you this, and if you don't read Cringley you probabley (like me) don't read him for a reason. I don't need or want Taco or anyone else telling me what I missed in this week's column.
How far shall we extend this logic? Those of you who read LWN don't need things repeated here... those who don't, don't for a reason... How 'bout Wired, New York Times, etc....
You understand what Slashdot does, right? It links to news/commentary/stuff that exists elsewhere on the net. ALL of this can be viewed without Slashdot.
I know, we all want Slashdot to just post the COOL stuff, and not the LAME stuff, but guess what, that's different for everyone, so you're gonna get some of each. So just quit bitching.
What in hell is on-topic for this story? If you post a prediction here, you're doing it in the wrong place -- you should send your predictions to Cringley.
Last I checked, Cringley doesn't have a large-scale discussion board. There's no rule that says you can't do both. Besides, I wouldn't be shocked if the man reads Slashdot.
Did it ever occur to the rather focused poster that the reason they used OnStar is because the car was STOLEN and that's one of the things it's FOR.
ME: Officer, I'd like to report my car stolen.
OFFICER: OK sir. I have to tell you that our rate of finding stolen cars really isn't very good.
ME: But I know where it is.
OFFICER: Really? Great! We'll get right on that. How do you know where it is?
ME: I have OnStar.
OFFICER: Ooh... Uh.. We can't really use that, so ah... we'll have to use our normal techniques, but I have to tell you that our success rate isn't very good...
This has not been my experience with Windows. :)
If this thing can repel them, I wonder if they have something that could be used to attract them somewhere else.
As most geeks probably realize, it's generally much easier to repel a given organism than it is to attract it.
What's interesting about this is how different it is from the world of physical security. Consider a bank, for example. In that case, it's nearly impossible for employees do any damage, and very easy to cover what limited exposure there is.
My freshman year in college (somewhat overwhelmed by the new social scene) I averaged about 4 hours per night. I fell asleep standing up, etc. It was bad. But the REALLY scary thing was how long it took to recover. That summer, I slept 10+ hours every night and still had trouble staying awake at the wheel on 10 minute trips at noon. It took me years to recover.
Here's an extreme example: I can sleep 8 hours and put in a good day's work. I can alternatively sleep 4 hours and have an extra four hours! But do I get four hours more of work done? No way, probably less. This can be a tricky optimization, especially due to the long-term effects of your sleeping patterns.
For me, I am most productive when getting 8 hours of sleep. With that amount, I NEVER drift toward sleep unintentionally. That's my rule. If I start to doze, I need more sleep.
I just wanted to address a couple of issues that seem to come up repeatedly (and sometimes incorrectly).
Heat: It's not obvious that optical computers would not have the heating problems the electon-based ones have. Sure, it wouldn't be based on the same mechanism (resistance), but you still have the problem of absorption. The same process by which the sun heats up your car in the afternoon would be a problem here.
Any time you shine light through something, some of it is transmitted, some is scattered and some is absorbed. The last two will cause signal losses and absorption will cause heating.
Heating may not be the biggest hurdle, but it will still be an issue.
Electron vs Photon speed: As a number of people have pointed out, wires to not carry signal at the speed of the electrons. A good (medium level) analogy to understand this is marbles in a plastic tube.
Let's say I have 100ft of plastic tubing full of marbles. We decide that every second, I'm gonna push a marble in my end (1) or I'm not (0). That's a 1bps data rate. Now, the speed at which the data travels is 100ft devided by the time between when I push on a marble and when one falls out the other end. Obviously, that's gonna be pretty fast.
The point is that the bit gets from one end of the tube very quickly even though any given marble will take a long time to get from one end to the other. Similarly, the electrons can carry information faster than they actually move.
(Disclaimer: This analogy is correct only in the sense of this last paragraph. I am not claiming otherwise)
In fact, maybe they should arrest
Transmission interupted!
The original poster was suggesting that the license was invalid because it was in an EXE and others have suggested that they were not affected by the EULA because the avoided it via winzip. These suggestions are incorrect.
The analogies were only meant to point out that ignoring a legal statement (copyright notice, licence agreement, whatever) does not free you from it. That is the ONLY way that I meant the EULA and book examples are similar.
You're confusing technical issues with legal issues. Consider these analogies:
I have a book that says "No part of this publication may be reproduced ..." on page 3. Skipping directly to page 5 does not mean that I'm exempt from this legally binding statement.
I cover my eyes during the FBI warning at the beginning of videos. I still can't copy them.
They are not required to force you to read and agree to a license. That's just to drive the point home and to make it harder for you to say "license? what license?" on the witness stand.