They are hiding the Krull homeworld... Last I heard the Krull empire has returnned home once they discovered ESRs secret starship strike force. Originally they belived it was owned by Bill Gates but when they found instead of MicroSofties it was "manned" by Tux clones. At that sight they turnned around and ran away. ESRs attack force took out 50 ships in retreat. The Krull will not be back any time soon. We need to keep the home world secret.
It has been out for a long long time now. My first voice recognition system was Voice Master for the Commodore 64.
I'm sure there is a long list of systems that allready has this feature. However I'd like to see Linux on that list. A project exists to do just that but I'm unimpressed with the results so far
I believe the Internet should be taxed like mail order is. However this IS NOT the kind of sales tax states want to apply to the Internet. Instead they want to tax the busness for the state the user and maybe the state the busness is in and if a diffrent state than the busness then tax the website as well.
They should retain a ban on sales tax on the Internet for as long as there is no single taxation stratagy. With a brick and morter busness that means the tax is at the phisical location of the busness. With mail order the tax is only if the user and busness are within the same state. With the Internet it's any state who wants to lay clame to the cash.
Normally compeating means they have to compeate with the guy acrost the street with the Internet they have to compeate with the whole world.
Look at the busness modles for Wal-Mart and Circuit City. Wal-Mart is the "Drive em out of busness" style. Circuit City is the "Over charg to death" style.
Nither have a really strong sence of what is fair.
What they do have is busnesses that can not handle compeating with a global market. Instead they are strictly local economy busnesses. E-Commerce changes things. Wal-Mart can push the local Mon and Pop out of busness but Mom and Pop dot com isn't going away any time soon.
You can shop around and get pritty close to what you want on-line. This means you won't be going to Circuit City where you pay a bit over the line and get less that top line support. If you want/need topline support you can get it on-line. If you want cut throat prices you can get it on-line. If you want top line support at cut throat prices dream on buddy it's not gona happen. Circuit City trys to provide a decent ballence between the two while making a healthy markup. Having to compeate with the whole planet at once dose not make that very easy.
In the mean time I still do most of my shopping in the phisical world.
Not a correction becouse as far as I know everything you said is correct:)
"Where in the world" originally was writen for the Apple II due to it's popularity at the time for eductaion. The target market however was homes as most united states schools could not accually afford to buy software (some were but the majority of schools were crying about a lack of funds.. much like today)
It later made it to PC clones (running [Pc/MS]Dos). It has also found it's way to the Mac and Windows. It is currently still being sold as a MsWindows title. It also was incarnated as an educational game show on PBS however the statis of this game show is unknown to me.
The game entered the market AFTER Apple replaced the Commodore PET as the computer of choice by united states schools. The switch from the PET may have been unavoidable as Commodore seemed oblivous to the schools needs. The Apple][ computers simply outnumbered the PETs in united states schools. There were never more than a few PET computers and only when it was belived vital. On the other hand there was a flood of Apple][ computers. One for every classroom.
The "Where in the world" title did make it to the Commodore 64 and other brands of computers however the title focused only on computers populare in the United States.
During the main run of the software title the UK had it's own computers that were populare. Commodore was sereous about the UK market at that time but I doupt few if any other US computer makers were intrested in compeating in the UK.
Finnal note.. The UK has long had a Risc based home computer, the Acorn I belive it is named. It originally had a 6502 but the system was upgraded to a Risc. This was a cost cutting move only the Risc was selected for it's low R&D costs not for it's power and based on the speed of the chip selected I would suspect they picked a Risc that did not throw any money into speed.
This is an intresting point. In this one case I don't think guns have anything to do with it or video games or anything that can be easly blammed.
But for many others the fact that kids do not learn a healthy respect for guns is part of the issue.
How do we keep kids off drugs? We teach them about drugs. How do we deal with teen pregnency? We teach our kids. How do we deal with teen violence? We blame it on video games, rock and roll, TV, Movies. Hay lets blame world hunger on politics. Let's blame the mars lander on Microsoft. Let's blame the lack of bandwith on Radio Shack. Why? Becouse someone will believe it. To spite the fact that it has no connection at all whatsoever.
But who cares. We don't want you to teach your kids about guns.... A gun is after all a tool. An evil tool true but still a tool.
Before it can kill (as per it's design) a person must use it. It is up to parents to give kids the morals needed to not pick up a gun to start with. To know what it means. "Live by the sword die by the sword" Guns are a tool and ends to a means. Let is presume the imposable. Assume all guns have vanished from the face of the earth.... It changes nothing.... The gun was the tool. The desire for this kind of evil tool is uneffected by access to guns. Knifes are also populare.....
First go after Smith & Weson then go after Ginsu. For many box cutters or other knifes are the wepons of choice. Not guns.
Ohh but we can not ever admit that parents must teach kids a sense of right and wrong.
One game that was populare in the 1980s was Assasin.
One person would be the GM and assigne "targets" to other players. There were rules set by the GM as to when you could attack your target. Using water guns or some other wepon (water guns usually simply becouse it makes it easyer.. other wepons would have to be bought by the GM to insure the players had the correct brand name toy).
As players became adults problems came up. Adult players had problems seperating reality from fantacy. Refused to folow the rules and took the game personally.
SCA had similer problems. Some of the people didn't know how to behave. The people in charg were careful enough to be sure whomever joinned could tell fantacy from reality. They make mistakes but was usually handled.
It's not the kids that worry me. The kids can seperate reality from fantacy. It's the adults who can not make the same seperation. The real scarry part is it dosn't take Quake, movies or TV to trigger thies people. A good political debate can get such a person going the wrong way. A killing spree can manifest itself from an adults own imagination.
In the mean time people write books about kids going psycho. More kids are going to driven over the edge by paranoid parents imagining things than by any videogame.
To be honnest I suspect the talk of how violent video games are trainning kids to go on killing sprees had a great deal more impact than anything else. They had Doom becouse someone told them it would teach them to be killers. If someone said McDonalds had the same effect you'd find McDonalds food wrappers. If Microsoft were blamed for violence they would be MSCE.
At first I wonder where Wyse plans to get drivers. Thin clients arn't exactly "off the sheff" design. If drivers exist for ANY os it is likely a slap job and not a real effort making significant changes in the hardware.
If the plan is to build a low priced system the added cost of WinCE puts an end to that...
666 However I disagree... We automaticly presume that "The Beast" is Microsoft. However I have heard people refer to bulky powerful computers as "a beast" or "my beast". At times a "beast" isn't bulky but in fact deceptivly small.. a Cray in a pocket watch for example (however I have never seen such a beast) but it is NEVER underpowered. A Beast is allways over powered.. Blow out the doors.. Quake 4 ready.. "My name is Hal" Beast...
As old 386s, 486s and Pentiums get tossed it becomes easyer and easyer to get a larg connection of computers together to build a larg beast using Linux. Ohh yes... and what is 666? chmod 666.... The beast is an as yet non-existent Linux array. Or maybe it's not Linux... Linux dosn't default to 666... Nore would it be BSD for the same reason... No.. a yet to be writen Unix like operating system who defaults to 666... That is the beast.... Microsoft? Who knows.. maybe they will write it.... But I doupt it.... 666 The number of AoL/OS?!?!? Hay... AoL needs a beast to run things.... it would make sence...
This works "for now" The next move should be to construct a NEW format. Not DVD or DVIX but one that is open source to start with. We know how DVD works enough that we can create a NEW format. Make it a tad more flexable however. Give it a streaming video codec for video content and a high quality movie format for CD.
And we could write an open format liccens that would be binding WITH OUT having to redefine the DMA to sute us.
In the mean time we can let the DVDCCS situation play itself out.
For those who are stuck on the copyright violation issue... This akin to clamming auto repair is a volation of the auto makers patents.
An issue of accessing data allready in our hands. Not of cracking into someones secret files. An issue of viewing movies with out having an offical sanction of a corprate entity to do so with the operating system you chouse. The computer can do it, the hardware is there the only thing standing in the way is the blessing of a corprate entity.
Once we have a compeating format it is a matter of getting movies into that format (No easy task) start small.. with indupendent film makers. Demonstrate the value of selling movies on the new format and push every inch. Eventually reaching the larg film companys. At the start there would only be streamming media (the value of the streamming media version is to have a place to start). Get people to sign an aggrement saying they will refuse to buy DVD movies ever again and await releases in the new format. Deliver this to the larg movie studios to show the strength behind the new format.
For now we don't have indupendent movies comming on a new format.. for now we don't have a new format... For now we have this to play DVDs with. This will do for the short term.... Whats the long term plan?
All the ISP needed to do was to TRY. This means issuing a message to have the file erased. Would it work? Hell no.. Most servers ignore that now as it's far to easy to fake.
Thats why they never bothered. It IS dumb on one side to think an ISP can do anything about a message once it is out. But legally speaking they need to try... Say like... THE DVDCCS guys saying "We have to say this for legal reasons... please erase our code becouse the DVDCCA dosn't want you to have it... thank you"
But it's not that they legally must monitor everything just that they legaly must push the big red button connected to nothing.
It's silly... but it's nothing major.. just legally required to try..
Two things to realise about the Internet.. One is "Internet time" is extreamly fast.. 6 months is a lifetime. The other is that the "online world" is still pritty young. The Internet has not even reached "the dark ages" yet. We (the whole human race) tend to assume the Internet as a socity have allready reached the 21 century. However socal develupment on the Internet has not yet reached this stage. We have barbarian hords (crackers) and all form of socal strangness. To make matters worse.. We are not just living in the Internet. The real world is trying to make the whole Internet match the fragment of real world they exist in. You have people who think they can plop a kid and walk away and socity will rase it. They are horrifyed to find the Internet houses strange people all to willing to take on the job and corupt the child to there own whims. Somehow thies people don't exist in the real world as far as they are conserned. You have corprations who would put an end to anything that interfears with proffitability. You have those who are are horrifyed to realise they can not roam about with total annonimity. Government agentcys who think they should be able to put camras in your bathroom.
The socal norms were established long ago in the real world. We all know a camra in the bathroom is plain wrong and that if you behave rudely people will rember you. Busnesses are aware of the line as are consummers. But on the internet people are not clear on the diffrences between an individual putting a webcam in his office and a boss doing the same.
For now many will have an idea of what rights they have on the Internet and others will violate same while exersising there own rights.
The Internet will change a great deal in the future... but this is importent.. The Internet is far from civilised... The Internet.. is the Roam of the on-line world... We are all barbarians at the gate...
We allready had the "running as root" problem.. Thats where the first Linux virus came from.
It will be yet annother thing stupid newbes will do and they will get bitten quickly... Not nessisarly vea a virus... But this one ranks up with turnning power off before shutting down... and trunning on telnetd with no root password... Or.. and the all time favoret... entering commands someone gives you on IRC...
As for the e-mail virus myth... It would still be a myth if Microsoft hadn't tryed to tie everything into e-mail...
The whole notion that a virus could be containned within text is still silly... Better watch out.. this post might contain a virus.... ohhhhhhh
Viruses are not magical... They work becouse the computer trusts any given program to "play nice"... Linux dosn't....
Linux viruses exist.. they are dead... Linux has allready tempted the crackers.. We allready premote Linux as secure... Linux is allready high profile.. we are the "challanger to Microsoft".. on the news.. Hidding under a rock is nither practical nore posable...
True viruses will be made and they will be crushed..
"Anything is posable" true... But many things are incredably unlikely... this is one of those things...
Yes it's true this will attract some crackers who want to prove they are hot stuff and some who just want to "disprove the hype".. However I'm more fearful some terrorist will find a way to attack the United States millitary than I am worryed about some cracker writing a Linux virus. [I am not even slightly worryed about such attacks.. I am worryed that some of our people may get hurt in attempts but thats all]
Viruses like the Y2K bug are not magical and do not do magical things. They require one thing.. unrestricted access. On Linux this means root. If your really paranoid there is allready a project to prevent anyone from modifying programs on the system even as root. Linux allready provides this protection to some degree. Some programs when running can not be modifyed by anyone... piriod.
Viruses remind us how importent security is for EVERY system we use. They are not a given. They are posable if you get stupid. Otherwise they are a non-event.
On the other hand if a virus can get root so can a script kiddy and there is a lot more a random script kiddy can do to your computer than any virus could ever do.
Yes I grow tired of virus warnings. Linux has been around long enough.. if a virus epedemic were to happen.. it would have allready come to pass... Viruses will be writen and they will be crushed. Being fearful of what dose not as yet exist dose nothing. Let us cross the bridge when we come to it...
When virus experts want to clame the big "badass" Linux virus is comming it is up to us to crush this myth. There is no Linux virus epedemic comming. There is no baddass virus.
No Unix or Unixlike system is anywhere near as suseptable to viruses as Dos/Windows this is a fact.
If we don't stand up for Linux now and let the general public believe the Linux virus epedemic is comming we set ourselfs up... Unix venders will not hesistae to take Linux down a peg. And Microsoft would have a spin...
Linux didn't get this far by being fearful something "horrable" might go wrong... Linux is stable.. we premote this.. Occasionally Linux boxes crash.. this hasn't hurt us...
What could be worse than premoting Linux as "User Friendly"? There will be viruses and we will deal with them. But don't pretend this is an eppedemic... An eppedemic is a 10 year old operating system running 20 year old viruses... (Windows running Dos viruses)... never being able to do anything to stop viruses.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but . . .
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Linux faces the issue of "Not made for you"... Linux is allways playing catchup in drivers.. Hardware venders only release drivers for the primary operating system of the target hardware. They do not bother with Linux drivers. To make matters worse many companys won't release specs so if Linux drivers are to be made the hardware has to be reverse engeneared.
Considering all this Linux ports to PC, Mac and Sparc pritty well.
With as well as Linux dose in keepping up on Linux hostile hardware Linux should work wonders on a Linux friendly platform. Linux dose have Plug and play support but as hostile environments rarely plug and "play fair" Linux tends to backoff rather than push the issue and crash..
Re:But is it because Linux is superior?
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It's the ability to make any changes the develuper sees fit with out letting anyone know anything is being develuped at all. Yes Linuxes popularity plays a roll but not in the marketting. It's all those programs that a develuper can addapt to the appliance. Cut down on develupment time making minimal changes to the source such as rewriting the vertual console to run on a specalised chipset rewrite the sound drivers to use a costume sound chip rewrite the video4Linux drivers to use a specallised video sample chipset. All the while making minnor changes in existing applications to run on the system. Add to that an existing romdrive allready in the kernel and an operating system thats not to fussy about how it boots and you have the ideal operating system for appliances.
TiVo and i-Opener appeals to gadget freaks... there is a larg Linux geek gadget freak overlap to create the illusion of "Linux appeal" However in my famaly the gadget freak is my sister and I am the Linux geek. She wants TiVo.. I don't..
While the cost cutting advantages are a plus it's really a matter of getting from the drawing bord to the maket fast with out letting anyone outside know you are doing anything. Beat the compeditor to the market while doing your best to make sure there are no compeditors...
When I see the translucent iMac case I think of those neon phones that were trendy during the late 80s (Eeek there goes that Y2K bug again) and early 90s. (Thats 19xx btw for you historian types who are reviewing this in the Y3Ks) When I see the case shape of the iMac I think of the Dec VT100 who has the same shape. The iMac is mostly taken from the Mac but the look is very much cloned. The engenearing is however Apples own design.
He was just making an anolog statment. Just to extend the setement I have seen errors made in corprate websites that NEVER get fixed.
Websites are by nature "source available".. not allways open source but the benifit discribed is a benifit to any code with source available. Open source simply protects this with a liccens like GPL where as "liccensed source" restricts access to source code. Both however have this benifit.
Yes his rant containned a bit of closed source bashing* but this sort of thing is hard to avoid when your talking about the benifits of open source. Just as the top of the thread is open source bashing.
*If it is Microsoft bashing to refer to software defects then surely it is a well earned bash.
While it is true that the artist has opted to do busness with a given label I do not wish to do the same. To be fair that means I must not lissen to artists who do busness with labels I object to. To lissen to lables I object to would be theft as I am not buying the lables CDs. The primary reason for having a CDrom drive in my computer is to play CDs. I know thats not true for most people but it's true for me. However as long as CD makers fight mp3 format music I fight back by refusing to lissen to any CDs (or any music from CDs) this task of course being much easyer for me now that my radio dosn't work:) In short the only music I am lissening to thies days is music originally made for mp3 distrobution and old CDs I have laying around.
The reality is the cat was leaving the bag a long time ago with standard audio file formats and digital sample sound cards. It was only a matter of time before a mp3 came out or bandwith was high enough to distribute high quality.wav files... Looking at the Linux archives at metalab.unc.edu in the sound applications you'll see early efforts to do "internet radio" one program was for sending a radio signal over a lan. Napster allready existed under a diffrent name waiting for enough bandwith to work. If Moors law applyed to bandwith (it dosn't) we'd have had the bandwith for this Napster like system allready.
Instead we have Napster. A system requiring significantly less bandwith than the older software. So? The point? The missing element from existing software is compression. It is not a complex issue to write the inital software the only issue is adding realtime data compression. This also isn't a major issue. It dose mean you can not slap software together but it also means anyone 31337 enough to have the bandwith and run a server can write his own mp3 server. After all Napster isn't even the first mp3 server out there. It's just the latest incarnation of the idea. There will allways be a Napster... there will allways be digital sound files.. and there will allways be sound compression. Who is going to be the first to tell Microsoft they have to remove sound compression from the.wav format? Who is the first to tell Sun the same thing? Who is the frist to imbed this into the Linux sound drivers? Who is the first to imbed it into the sound card? Who has the balls to make any of this illegal...
> The figure probably contains the 750,000 beta testers' copies in the count.
Microsoft offers some sort of pacage deal to certify people and keep them up to date by giving them the latest versions of software. You pay for this pacage and I don't rember how much it was.
How many Microsoft cerifyed Techs are out there? Theres your 1 million Win2K cds... I know one of thies people.. runs every version of Windows... Os/2 warp.. I gave him a Linux CD:) He has several computers...
On the 64k bug myth... AntiMicrosoft FUD from Microsoft? It wasn't clear but let me state what you didn't.. it's 64k issues. I have a hard time believing there are 64k issues but Microsoft dose say they are still there.. just not how many of the 64k are left... The irronic part is to the avrage open source develuper issues are bugs. So when people say "64k bugs" they DO mean "64k issues" becouse in technobable/geek speek.. there are no issues.. only bugs...
Now on Microsofts develupment secrecy... I'm not supprised in the slightest that Microsoft codes this way. This means each group can not compare code to other groups. Instead they have to rely on specs and hope what they need is done. It is an unhealthy coding environment that can easlly premote bugs kludgey workaronds and redundent code.
I do suspect Microsoft won't worry but I also believe Microsoft isn't trying to pull anything. They really don't want early dev versions of products floating around.
Warze d00ds would figure only companys who would want to sell pirated stuff would want source code and even in warze people who SELL warze are scum. So even if they had the source code (and Microsoft is a bit to secritive to allow that) they wouldn't distribute it.
Also the binary tests should be nearly the opposate. Open to many.
I personally would rather have the source code myself:) But fear not... you can decompile binarys...:)
It is very likely Win2k+1dev isn't even functional yet (by Microsofts standards)... It would be a neat preview but I doupt it would be useful for anything. I also doupt Microsoft would bother going after Win2k+1dev FTP sites... They might even be hopping Win2k+1dev displaces Win 9x,NT and 2K copys... I doupt that would happen... If it did then when Win2k+1 offically releases (next year of course) they will have no choice buy to BUY the legal version..
This is more ammusing than anything. In the grand sceam of things it just means a really early incarnation of next years Windows is out there. It's very unlikely Windows 2K+1 release will look anything like it. Or be as stable.. hay no feature.. no functions.. no anything... how much more stable can you get?
I would hope that programmers would go byond just compiling QT apps. While WinCE and the lesser known PenWindows were miserable failures in moving Windows to the PDA PenGeos made the move quite nicely and continued to move into cell phones where it lives today.
The key diffrence (byond Zoomer dying and nearly taking Geoworks with them) is that as Geos moves from platform to platform it changes to take advantage of that platform. The apps also changed.
I would hope thats the plan with QT. It's not binary compatable but sorce compatable. I suspect we are expected to modify existing programs for the imbeded system and not run them as is. Anything in binary form for the PDA should be a full port.
The use of the framebuffer suggests to me that porting is left up to the Linux kernel and taken out of the hands of QT. A rather smart move.
Coca-Cola once had Cocain.. a long time ago... this is where the name comes from and why it shares the nickname "Coke" with the drug. However Coca-Cola has not containned any cocain sence it became illegal.
The nickname Coke belongs to Cocain and is mearly on-loan to Coca-Cola.
I sereopusly doupt you could trademark a nickname in the first place... most certenly not the nickname of a compleatly diffrent product.
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They are hiding the Krull homeworld...
Last I heard the Krull empire has returnned home once they discovered ESRs secret starship strike force.
Originally they belived it was owned by Bill Gates but when they found instead of MicroSofties it was "manned" by Tux clones.
At that sight they turnned around and ran away. ESRs attack force took out 50 ships in retreat. The Krull will not be back any time soon.
We need to keep the home world secret.
It has been out for a long long time now.
My first voice recognition system was Voice Master for the Commodore 64.
I'm sure there is a long list of systems that allready has this feature.
However I'd like to see Linux on that list. A project exists to do just that but I'm unimpressed with the results so far
I believe the Internet should be taxed like mail order is.
However this IS NOT the kind of sales tax states want to apply to the Internet. Instead they want to tax the busness for the state the user and maybe the state the busness is in and if a diffrent state than the busness then tax the website as well.
They should retain a ban on sales tax on the Internet for as long as there is no single taxation stratagy.
With a brick and morter busness that means the tax is at the phisical location of the busness. With mail order the tax is only if the user and busness are within the same state. With the Internet it's any state who wants to lay clame to the cash.
Normally compeating means they have to compeate with the guy acrost the street with the Internet they have to compeate with the whole world.
Look at the busness modles for Wal-Mart and Circuit City.
Wal-Mart is the "Drive em out of busness" style.
Circuit City is the "Over charg to death" style.
Nither have a really strong sence of what is fair.
What they do have is busnesses that can not handle compeating with a global market.
Instead they are strictly local economy busnesses.
E-Commerce changes things. Wal-Mart can push the local Mon and Pop out of busness but Mom and Pop dot com isn't going away any time soon.
You can shop around and get pritty close to what you want on-line. This means you won't be going to Circuit City where you pay a bit over the line and get less that top line support.
If you want/need topline support you can get it on-line. If you want cut throat prices you can get it on-line. If you want top line support at cut throat prices dream on buddy it's not gona happen.
Circuit City trys to provide a decent ballence between the two while making a healthy markup. Having to compeate with the whole planet at once dose not make that very easy.
In the mean time I still do most of my shopping in the phisical world.
Not a correction becouse as far as I know everything you said is correct :)
"Where in the world" originally was writen for the Apple II due to it's popularity at the time for eductaion. The target market however was homes as most united states schools could not accually afford to buy software (some were but the majority of schools were crying about a lack of funds.. much like today)
It later made it to PC clones (running [Pc/MS]Dos).
It has also found it's way to the Mac and Windows. It is currently still being sold as a MsWindows title.
It also was incarnated as an educational game show on PBS however the statis of this game show is unknown to me.
The game entered the market AFTER Apple replaced the Commodore PET as the computer of choice by united states schools. The switch from the PET may have been unavoidable as Commodore seemed oblivous to the schools needs.
The Apple][ computers simply outnumbered the PETs in united states schools. There were never more than a few PET computers and only when it was belived vital. On the other hand there was a flood of Apple][ computers. One for every classroom.
The "Where in the world" title did make it to the Commodore 64 and other brands of computers however the title focused only on computers populare in the United States.
During the main run of the software title the UK had it's own computers that were populare. Commodore was sereous about the UK market at that time but I doupt few if any other US computer makers were intrested in compeating in the UK.
Finnal note.. The UK has long had a Risc based home computer, the Acorn I belive it is named. It originally had a 6502 but the system was upgraded to a Risc. This was a cost cutting move only the Risc was selected for it's low R&D costs not for it's power and based on the speed of the chip selected I would suspect they picked a Risc that did not throw any money into speed.
This is an intresting point.
In this one case I don't think guns have anything to do with it or video games or anything that can be easly blammed.
But for many others the fact that kids do not learn a healthy respect for guns is part of the issue.
How do we keep kids off drugs? We teach them about drugs. How do we deal with teen pregnency? We teach our kids.
How do we deal with teen violence? We blame it on video games, rock and roll, TV, Movies.
Hay lets blame world hunger on politics. Let's blame the mars lander on Microsoft. Let's blame the lack of bandwith on Radio Shack.
Why? Becouse someone will believe it. To spite the fact that it has no connection at all whatsoever.
But who cares. We don't want you to teach your kids about guns....
A gun is after all a tool. An evil tool true but still a tool.
Before it can kill (as per it's design) a person must use it.
It is up to parents to give kids the morals needed to not pick up a gun to start with. To know what it means.
"Live by the sword die by the sword"
Guns are a tool and ends to a means.
Let is presume the imposable. Assume all guns have vanished from the face of the earth....
It changes nothing....
The gun was the tool. The desire for this kind of evil tool is uneffected by access to guns.
Knifes are also populare.....
First go after Smith & Weson then go after Ginsu.
For many box cutters or other knifes are the wepons of choice. Not guns.
Ohh but we can not ever admit that parents must teach kids a sense of right and wrong.
One game that was populare in the 1980s was Assasin.
One person would be the GM and assigne "targets" to other players.
There were rules set by the GM as to when you could attack your target.
Using water guns or some other wepon (water guns usually simply becouse it makes it easyer.. other wepons would have to be bought by the GM to insure the players had the correct brand name toy).
As players became adults problems came up. Adult players had problems seperating reality from fantacy. Refused to folow the rules and took the game personally.
SCA had similer problems. Some of the people didn't know how to behave. The people in charg were careful enough to be sure whomever joinned could tell fantacy from reality. They make mistakes but was usually handled.
It's not the kids that worry me. The kids can seperate reality from fantacy. It's the adults who can not make the same seperation.
The real scarry part is it dosn't take Quake, movies or TV to trigger thies people. A good political debate can get such a person going the wrong way. A killing spree can manifest itself from an adults own imagination.
In the mean time people write books about kids going psycho. More kids are going to driven over the edge by paranoid parents imagining things than by any videogame.
To be honnest I suspect the talk of how violent video games are trainning kids to go on killing sprees had a great deal more impact than anything else.
They had Doom becouse someone told them it would teach them to be killers. If someone said McDonalds had the same effect you'd find McDonalds food wrappers. If Microsoft were blamed for violence they would be MSCE.
At first I wonder where Wyse plans to get drivers.
Thin clients arn't exactly "off the sheff" design.
If drivers exist for ANY os it is likely a slap job and not a real effort making significant changes in the hardware.
If the plan is to build a low priced system the added cost of WinCE puts an end to that...
I know where he bases this 6 years on
666
However I disagree...
We automaticly presume that "The Beast" is Microsoft.
However I have heard people refer to bulky powerful computers as "a beast" or "my beast". At times a "beast" isn't bulky but in fact deceptivly small.. a Cray in a pocket watch for example (however I have never seen such a beast) but it is NEVER underpowered. A Beast is allways over powered.. Blow out the doors.. Quake 4 ready.. "My name is Hal" Beast...
As old 386s, 486s and Pentiums get tossed it becomes easyer and easyer to get a larg connection of computers together to build a larg beast using Linux.
Ohh yes... and what is 666? chmod 666....
The beast is an as yet non-existent Linux array.
Or maybe it's not Linux... Linux dosn't default to 666... Nore would it be BSD for the same reason...
No.. a yet to be writen Unix like operating system who defaults to 666...
That is the beast.... Microsoft? Who knows.. maybe they will write it.... But I doupt it....
666 The number of AoL/OS?!?!?
Hay... AoL needs a beast to run things.... it would make sence...
This works "for now"
The next move should be to construct a NEW format. Not DVD or DVIX but one that is open source to start with.
We know how DVD works enough that we can create a NEW format. Make it a tad more flexable however.
Give it a streaming video codec for video content and a high quality movie format for CD.
And we could write an open format liccens that would be binding WITH OUT having to redefine the DMA to sute us.
In the mean time we can let the DVDCCS situation play itself out.
For those who are stuck on the copyright violation issue... This akin to clamming auto repair is a volation of the auto makers patents.
An issue of accessing data allready in our hands. Not of cracking into someones secret files.
An issue of viewing movies with out having an offical sanction of a corprate entity to do so with the operating system you chouse.
The computer can do it, the hardware is there the only thing standing in the way is the blessing of a corprate entity.
Once we have a compeating format it is a matter of getting movies into that format (No easy task) start small.. with indupendent film makers. Demonstrate the value of selling movies on the new format and push every inch. Eventually reaching the larg film companys.
At the start there would only be streamming media (the value of the streamming media version is to have a place to start).
Get people to sign an aggrement saying they will refuse to buy DVD movies ever again and await releases in the new format. Deliver this to the larg movie studios to show the strength behind the new format.
For now we don't have indupendent movies comming on a new format..
for now we don't have a new format...
For now we have this to play DVDs with.
This will do for the short term....
Whats the long term plan?
All the ISP needed to do was to TRY. This means issuing a message to have the file erased.
Would it work? Hell no.. Most servers ignore that now as it's far to easy to fake.
Thats why they never bothered.
It IS dumb on one side to think an ISP can do anything about a message once it is out.
But legally speaking they need to try...
Say like... THE DVDCCS guys saying "We have to say this for legal reasons... please erase our code becouse the DVDCCA dosn't want you to have it... thank you"
But it's not that they legally must monitor everything just that they legaly must push the big red button connected to nothing.
It's silly... but it's nothing major.. just legally required to try..
Two things to realise about the Internet..
One is "Internet time" is extreamly fast.. 6 months is a lifetime.
The other is that the "online world" is still pritty young.
The Internet has not even reached "the dark ages" yet.
We (the whole human race) tend to assume the Internet as a socity have allready reached the 21 century. However socal develupment on the Internet has not yet reached this stage.
We have barbarian hords (crackers) and all form of socal strangness.
To make matters worse.. We are not just living in the Internet. The real world is trying to make the whole Internet match the fragment of real world they exist in.
You have people who think they can plop a kid and walk away and socity will rase it. They are horrifyed to find the Internet houses strange people all to willing to take on the job and corupt the child to there own whims.
Somehow thies people don't exist in the real world as far as they are conserned.
You have corprations who would put an end to anything that interfears with proffitability.
You have those who are are horrifyed to realise they can not roam about with total annonimity.
Government agentcys who think they should be able to put camras in your bathroom.
The socal norms were established long ago in the real world. We all know a camra in the bathroom is plain wrong and that if you behave rudely people will rember you. Busnesses are aware of the line as are consummers.
But on the internet people are not clear on the diffrences between an individual putting a webcam in his office and a boss doing the same.
For now many will have an idea of what rights they have on the Internet and others will violate same while exersising there own rights.
The Internet will change a great deal in the future... but this is importent.. The Internet is far from civilised...
The Internet.. is the Roam of the on-line world...
We are all barbarians at the gate...
We allready had the "running as root" problem.. Thats where the first Linux virus came from.
It will be yet annother thing stupid newbes will do and they will get bitten quickly...
Not nessisarly vea a virus...
But this one ranks up with turnning power off before shutting down... and trunning on telnetd with no root password...
Or.. and the all time favoret... entering commands someone gives you on IRC...
As for the e-mail virus myth... It would still be a myth if Microsoft hadn't tryed to tie everything into e-mail...
The whole notion that a virus could be containned within text is still silly...
Better watch out.. this post might contain a virus.... ohhhhhhh
Being realistic...
Viruses are not magical...
They work becouse the computer trusts any given program to "play nice"...
Linux dosn't....
Linux viruses exist.. they are dead...
Linux has allready tempted the crackers.. We allready premote Linux as secure...
Linux is allready high profile.. we are the "challanger to Microsoft".. on the news..
Hidding under a rock is nither practical nore posable...
True viruses will be made and they will be crushed..
"Anything is posable" true...
But many things are incredably unlikely... this is one of those things...
Yes it's true this will attract some crackers who want to prove they are hot stuff and some who just want to "disprove the hype"..
However I'm more fearful some terrorist will find a way to attack the United States millitary than I am worryed about some cracker writing a Linux virus.
[I am not even slightly worryed about such attacks.. I am worryed that some of our people may get hurt in attempts but thats all]
Viruses like the Y2K bug are not magical and do not do magical things.
They require one thing.. unrestricted access. On Linux this means root. If your really paranoid there is allready a project to prevent anyone from modifying programs on the system even as root.
Linux allready provides this protection to some degree. Some programs when running can not be modifyed by anyone... piriod.
Viruses remind us how importent security is for EVERY system we use. They are not a given. They are posable if you get stupid. Otherwise they are a non-event.
On the other hand if a virus can get root so can a script kiddy and there is a lot more a random script kiddy can do to your computer than any virus could ever do.
Yes I grow tired of virus warnings.
Linux has been around long enough.. if a virus epedemic were to happen.. it would have allready come to pass...
Viruses will be writen and they will be crushed. Being fearful of what dose not as yet exist dose nothing.
Let us cross the bridge when we come to it...
When virus experts want to clame the big "badass" Linux virus is comming it is up to us to crush this myth.
There is no Linux virus epedemic comming. There is no baddass virus.
No Unix or Unixlike system is anywhere near as suseptable to viruses as Dos/Windows this is a fact.
If we don't stand up for Linux now and let the general public believe the Linux virus epedemic is comming we set ourselfs up...
Unix venders will not hesistae to take Linux down a peg.
And Microsoft would have a spin...
Linux didn't get this far by being fearful something "horrable" might go wrong...
Linux is stable.. we premote this.. Occasionally Linux boxes crash.. this hasn't hurt us...
What could be worse than premoting Linux as "User Friendly"?
There will be viruses and we will deal with them.
But don't pretend this is an eppedemic...
An eppedemic is a 10 year old operating system running 20 year old viruses... (Windows running Dos viruses)... never being able to do anything to stop viruses.
Linux faces the issue of "Not made for you"...
Linux is allways playing catchup in drivers..
Hardware venders only release drivers for the primary operating system of the target hardware. They do not bother with Linux drivers.
To make matters worse many companys won't release specs so if Linux drivers are to be made the hardware has to be reverse engeneared.
Considering all this Linux ports to PC, Mac and Sparc pritty well.
With as well as Linux dose in keepping up on Linux hostile hardware Linux should work wonders on a Linux friendly platform.
Linux dose have Plug and play support but as hostile environments rarely plug and "play fair" Linux tends to backoff rather than push the issue and crash..
It's the ability to make any changes the develuper sees fit with out letting anyone know anything is being develuped at all.
Yes Linuxes popularity plays a roll but not in the marketting. It's all those programs that a develuper can addapt to the appliance.
Cut down on develupment time making minimal changes to the source such as rewriting the vertual console to run on a specalised chipset rewrite the sound drivers to use a costume sound chip rewrite the video4Linux drivers to use a specallised video sample chipset.
All the while making minnor changes in existing applications to run on the system.
Add to that an existing romdrive allready in the kernel and an operating system thats not to fussy about how it boots and you have the ideal operating system for appliances.
TiVo and i-Opener appeals to gadget freaks... there is a larg Linux geek gadget freak overlap to create the illusion of "Linux appeal"
However in my famaly the gadget freak is my sister and I am the Linux geek.
She wants TiVo.. I don't..
While the cost cutting advantages are a plus it's really a matter of getting from the drawing bord to the maket fast with out letting anyone outside know you are doing anything.
Beat the compeditor to the market while doing your best to make sure there are no compeditors...
When I see the translucent iMac case I think of those neon phones that were trendy during the late 80s (Eeek there goes that Y2K bug again) and early 90s.
(Thats 19xx btw for you historian types who are reviewing this in the Y3Ks)
When I see the case shape of the iMac I think of the Dec VT100 who has the same shape.
The iMac is mostly taken from the Mac but the look is very much cloned. The engenearing is however Apples own design.
He was just making an anolog statment.
Just to extend the setement I have seen errors made in corprate websites that NEVER get fixed.
Websites are by nature "source available".. not allways open source but the benifit discribed is a benifit to any code with source available. Open source simply protects this with a liccens like GPL where as "liccensed source" restricts access to source code. Both however have this benifit.
Yes his rant containned a bit of closed source bashing* but this sort of thing is hard to avoid when your talking about the benifits of open source. Just as the top of the thread is open source bashing.
*If it is Microsoft bashing to refer to software defects then surely it is a well earned bash.
While it is true that the artist has opted to do busness with a given label I do not wish to do the same. :)
.wav files...
.wav format?
To be fair that means I must not lissen to artists who do busness with labels I object to. To lissen to lables I object to would be theft as I am not buying the lables CDs.
The primary reason for having a CDrom drive in my computer is to play CDs. I know thats not true for most people but it's true for me.
However as long as CD makers fight mp3 format music I fight back by refusing to lissen to any CDs (or any music from CDs) this task of course being much easyer for me now that my radio dosn't work
In short the only music I am lissening to thies days is music originally made for mp3 distrobution and old CDs I have laying around.
The reality is the cat was leaving the bag a long time ago with standard audio file formats and digital sample sound cards. It was only a matter of time before a mp3 came out or bandwith was high enough to distribute high quality
Looking at the Linux archives at metalab.unc.edu in the sound applications you'll see early efforts to do "internet radio" one program was for sending a radio signal over a lan.
Napster allready existed under a diffrent name waiting for enough bandwith to work. If Moors law applyed to bandwith (it dosn't) we'd have had the bandwith for this Napster like system allready.
Instead we have Napster. A system requiring significantly less bandwith than the older software.
So? The point?
The missing element from existing software is compression. It is not a complex issue to write the inital software the only issue is adding realtime data compression. This also isn't a major issue. It dose mean you can not slap software together but it also means anyone 31337 enough to have the bandwith and run a server can write his own mp3 server.
After all Napster isn't even the first mp3 server out there. It's just the latest incarnation of the idea.
There will allways be a Napster... there will allways be digital sound files.. and there will allways be sound compression.
Who is going to be the first to tell Microsoft they have to remove sound compression from the
Who is the first to tell Sun the same thing?
Who is the frist to imbed this into the Linux sound drivers?
Who is the first to imbed it into the sound card?
Who has the balls to make any of this illegal...
> The figure probably contains the 750,000 beta testers' copies in the count.
:)
Microsoft offers some sort of pacage deal to certify people and keep them up to date by giving them the latest versions of software. You pay for this pacage and I don't rember how much it was.
How many Microsoft cerifyed Techs are out there? Theres your 1 million Win2K cds...
I know one of thies people.. runs every version of Windows... Os/2 warp.. I gave him a Linux CD
He has several computers...
On the 64k bug myth... AntiMicrosoft FUD from Microsoft?
It wasn't clear but let me state what you didn't.. it's 64k issues.
I have a hard time believing there are 64k issues but Microsoft dose say they are still there.. just not how many of the 64k are left...
The irronic part is to the avrage open source develuper issues are bugs.
So when people say "64k bugs" they DO mean "64k issues" becouse in technobable/geek speek.. there are no issues.. only bugs...
Now on Microsofts develupment secrecy...
I'm not supprised in the slightest that Microsoft codes this way.
This means each group can not compare code to other groups. Instead they have to rely on specs and hope what they need is done. It is an unhealthy coding environment that can easlly premote bugs kludgey workaronds and redundent code.
Warez d00ds really don't care about source code.
:) :)
I do suspect Microsoft won't worry but I also believe Microsoft isn't trying to pull anything. They really don't want early dev versions of products floating around.
Warze d00ds would figure only companys who would want to sell pirated stuff would want source code and even in warze people who SELL warze are scum.
So even if they had the source code (and Microsoft is a bit to secritive to allow that) they wouldn't distribute it.
Also the binary tests should be nearly the opposate. Open to many.
I personally would rather have the source code myself
But fear not... you can decompile binarys...
It is very likely Win2k+1dev isn't even functional yet (by Microsofts standards)...
It would be a neat preview but I doupt it would be useful for anything.
I also doupt Microsoft would bother going after Win2k+1dev FTP sites...
They might even be hopping Win2k+1dev displaces Win 9x,NT and 2K copys... I doupt that would happen... If it did then when Win2k+1 offically releases (next year of course) they will have no choice buy to BUY the legal version..
This is more ammusing than anything. In the grand sceam of things it just means a really early incarnation of next years Windows is out there. It's very unlikely Windows 2K+1 release will look anything like it. Or be as stable.. hay no feature.. no functions.. no anything... how much more stable can you get?
I would hope that programmers would go byond just compiling QT apps.
While WinCE and the lesser known PenWindows were miserable failures in moving Windows to the PDA PenGeos made the move quite nicely and continued to move into cell phones where it lives today.
The key diffrence (byond Zoomer dying and nearly taking Geoworks with them) is that as Geos moves from platform to platform it changes to take advantage of that platform. The apps also changed.
I would hope thats the plan with QT. It's not binary compatable but sorce compatable. I suspect we are expected to modify existing programs for the imbeded system and not run them as is. Anything in binary form for the PDA should be a full port.
The use of the framebuffer suggests to me that porting is left up to the Linux kernel and taken out of the hands of QT. A rather smart move.
Coca-Cola once had Cocain.. a long time ago... this is where the name comes from and why it shares the nickname "Coke" with the drug.
However Coca-Cola has not containned any cocain sence it became illegal.
The nickname Coke belongs to Cocain and is mearly on-loan to Coca-Cola.
I sereopusly doupt you could trademark a nickname in the first place... most certenly not the nickname of a compleatly diffrent product.