Some parents have this habbit of letting some gadget rase there kid. A nanny is ok, the TV is pushing it the Internet is totally inapropreate. When they find the Internet is full of child inapprorpreate matereal do they yank there kids off? No they go screaming fuzzy blue mud. My mother did let me go on BBSes when I was a kid but far short of rasing me on the computer she'd be right there to talk with me about what I'd find reguardless of what I found. If your not prepaired to do something similer you shouldn't place your kids infront of the net or control your childs net access.
I guess thats to be expected to some degree. Anyone compatent enough to review a book on open source or about an open source company will tend to give it a good review if the words "open source is good" are contained in the pages. The problem is anyone who could review this book would allready be bies tword it. Over all I'd say this was a very good effort to review the book. Personally I'm not fond of thies CEO bios. Oh wow the CEO of StupidThings inc has put out a book. They make lots of money doing stupid things let's get the book and see how they do it.
Theres a lot of advantages of the Internet over BBSes thats a given however as much as has been gained a lot was lost. The Sysop never had specal hardware/software requirements. If you could call one BBS you could call them all. You were never forced to use defective software or expensive hardware. Some BBSes let you access the operating system directly such as RCPM systems and a Forth BBS. Everything was basicly free. Excluding the LD phone rates. But if you called only local BBSes you didn't have to worry about that. Issolated BBS communitys ment the goofballs had there own BBSes and you never had to deal with them at all where as with the BBS we all have to make an effort to get along and there will allways be a few who try to mess things up for everyone else. But what I really miss is more of a byproduct of the times not directly a BBS thing. A few people would call for censorship of BBSes akin to the CDA and other efforts. The calls to censor BBSes fell on deff ears as only BBS users knew what a BBS was. If your ignorent enough to believe the rantings then you wouldn't know what a BBS was and thusly not understand the rantings in the first place. Picture this: Lunitic: We have to ban thies evil pronographic gif files on BBSes Senitor: Shure I'll support a tax on expensive gifts..
I'm basicly trying to say it's good to put a hold on teriffs becouse I feel the people in power are to ignorent of technology to do any sort of software tarif with out doing masive damage.
It's not clear becouse it's a really stupid rant... It takes a lot of digging and I'm sorry for the low quality of my post...
Very good annolog however it's so much easyer to understand the effects of environmental damage than it is to understand the effects of tech abuse. More often than not any restrictions on technology end up hurtting the whole community. Due to a compleate lack of understanding of technology. For example as far as lawmakers are conserned the worst problems of the internet are terrorism and porn making two of the worse problems [censorship and lack of privacy] even worse. Worse yet they have no impact on Internet terrorism [crackers] and Porn [woohoo more porn sites]. Why? Becouse they havn't a clue what they are trying to restrict. Porn isn't even a problem. Shure it's everywhere but you have to go looking for it. I have no problems finding anything I want and I never come across porn unless thats what I am looking for. Ohh and Internet terrorism.. While they worry about some terrorist triggering a bomb with an encripted code sent over the Internet more realistic crackers grep passwords over unencrypted data streams. In short they make worse what they try to prevent. Just brlient people.
I'm allways nervous when people want to regulate anything with out understanding it.... Any attempt to restrict such regulation is a good thing at least for now while the generall public gets an understanding of the Internet.
We are pritty familure with Microsoft doing what ever sutes them. However it's importent to rember they are still a member of the software community and if the whole industry is hurt then Microsoft is hurt. So maybe on occasion Microsoft dose things to our benifit. Not to protect the whole but to protect themselfs. Try to picture it this way.. a galatic hord comes to earth to distory all life on it... a corprate tyrent could shoot his mega gun wiping the hord from existence and save earth or keep his wepon a secret and die with everyone else.
In short it's ok to occasionally agree with Microsoft no matter how self serving Microsofts actions maybe becouse on occasion it's all or nothing. It's no fun to watch Microsoft go away if everyone else dies with em.
I guess the idea here is you start from MacOs or Windows and install Linux. If your using BeOs or something other than Mac Or Windows your probably not intrested in Linux and your not going to be intrested in RedHat. At least that seems to be the idea here. Unfortunatly thats not a realistic view as users of many alternitive operating systems may dual boot Linux.. Also the Sun Sparc with Solaris preinstalled may also run RedHat Linux. Wops!!!
If you saw the movie "WarGames" you'll rember Woper was a big black box with an LCD display on it. A rather sleak looking mini mainframe. In the book however Woper was 7 Cray 2s. The book was writen when the Cray 2 was still in develupment. The Movie was produced in the late 1970s this puts the book and thus the idea of distributed computing into the mid 1970s. One has to presume the auther got the idea from an existing project to do just that posably sticking the original consept back into the 1960s. It's posable if someone probes around they'll find an internal memo an a computer firm back in the 1950s calling the whole idea silly as a distributed system would posably cover the surface of the planet (considering the size of computers in the 1950s). Anyway the publishing date of "War Games" should be the date of the invention and predating Intels patent by a few years.
People can and will violate rules when the reason seems like nonsence. With law you don't get that kind of freedom. You have to challange nonsence. With that clarifyed I'll repeate and agree with your sentiments... After X users an FTP site becomes overloaded so an FTP site refuses connections after X point... A United States site carrying crypto may chouse to enforce national bounderys due to crypto paranoia laws in the United States. But denying minnors access to a Linux destro based on a misguided understanding of the law is nonsence and should be challanged. As for the traffic and crypto issues... get rid of the stupid crypto laws and use mirror sites.
I've long noticed people have not had a clear deffinition of alpha/beta/gama testing... It's all based on what you call a beta. Alpha is "the stage before" beta.
Microsoft has no alpha they go directly into beta.. at least from what I have seen. They break down the beta into stages but they call it all beta posably for market reasons. It dosn't mean they don't do critical stages of testing mearly they call all the stages "beta". In some ways Microsoft earns some ridicule for saying "it's only a beta" when a Microsoft beta dose something a beta shouldn't do.
But what IS a beta? One online game defines a beta as a basicly stable product that needs some premarket testing to get at the hidden bugs. A gama test is a "specal" quality test that is really not needed but when done insures a higher quality not usually found in powerful software products. A gama is a test of a "production" or "releace" quality product just to find those really annoying hidden bugs.
I like that deffinition... This leaves Alpha as the first stage tests. Unstable and posably unusuable but the hope is a product enters an alpha test phase as a stable usable product. The Alpha isn't just a proving test like Gama it's to hunt down why it isn't all it is in the lab. Alpha is also a test to see what is missing. It's great on Linux FVWM but Linux KDE has web browser enhancement features it could take advanatge of.. thats the kind of thing that can show up in a gama test as well but Alphas a good place to bring that out.
Thats how I define a beta but I know others don't and I live with that.....
Mind over mussle, Smart is sexy, Death geek [picture geek with two robots behind him looking hard at a bully.. the geek has an evil smile] You'll never know until it's to late.
I'd like to have an update on the folowing issues... The Poter IPO and./ix The Krel invasion force.. The Aibos, Lego Mindstorms, Furbes, whatever... Programmed to take over the world... Hostile takeover of Microsoft... Rivised vision statments for Poter and Commander Taco as the new year comes.. we have to get those new vision statments in... wow are those like new years resilutions? And theres a race to see who can ignore there visionstatment the fastest:)...
Oh yes amd one last thing...... The fish is in the closet....
I had Geeks in space playing on my computer and the boss asked me to do something about the "voices" in the office.:) Someone overheard it and was like "someone is haunting the office?" So now Slashdot haunts us...:)
It depends on the software you use to record.. Software? Well yeah if you record directly to ram the sound quality is like phonominal. But if you code in single tasking type style [and many of us still do] you have to keep everything in ram while recording and that eats megs of memory really quickly. What I've found is the software recording tools you have a choice pick from good programming where stuff gets saved while recording with out screwing everything up or something that makes decent recordings. It seems audiophiles aren't great programmers and visa versa. So there it is. Someone makes a small mistake and you lose EVERYTHING in ram the program crashes, Linux shuts it down and cleans everything up and you get to start all over. THAT is at least one way you can lose an eppisode. I did my own little rant thing on RealAudio for a while and I lost a lot of eppisodes but it didn't matter becouse no one ever lissend. But when you can get it right it's kinda cool. Now that they are using profesional equipment instead of what they did before we can hope there are no more lost eppisodes..... wops the dat recorder just GPFed... what do you mean it runs Windows CE?
There are two things the public will never be told. The Y2K bug effects accounting data nothing else. If the computer dosn't do any sort of accounting it won't be effected. The second thing the public will never be told is we have to be ready for any sort of crash becouse stuff happends and in some cases it happends a lot. Even for the havok the Y2K bug COULD cause... there are Sysadm making shure systems stay on-line and working all the time. It's not as if the Y2K bug is the only thing that can take down a system. Any number of things can do that. Bad hardware, bad software, bad admin, script kiddy, idiot user, time paradox and Microsoft features. We have so many REAL bugs to worry about the Y2K bug dosen't really have a chance of wrecking any real havok. Worse posable sinareo.. no one monitors anything and instead gets sloshed on the Y2K partys.... More damage will be done by rioters and script kiddys than by Y2K bugs. "Fear is the mind killer" - Dune "MTV is the Mind Killer, fear is a parasite that feeds on the results" - Me when in a really pissy mood. In the mean time people are going to do what they can to make money off Y2K paranoia. Including TV news. I like what one Y2K preparedness company had to say about it. They said at worst 3 days thats all you need. They sell survival kits and people asked for Y2K kits so they are selling 3 day kits. The other kits are for "Real" disasters and last for weeks and are far more expensive. They recomend getting the other kits becouse you arn't as likely to need it for Y2K problems as you will for other disasters. I happen to agree and I'll order my survival kit in January when the demand goes down.
Time to watch my Karma drop... Thats what you get for making insightful comments:) Yes some/.ers get a bit extream about open source but we all have to pay the bills.
By the way...if anyone knows of an open-source game that doesn't suck, I'd like to know about it. http://www.timecity.org It's still in develupment however... It uses the Crystal Space engen that is also in develupment.
No doupt software venders and other entitys do make use of the pirate image to cast a bad light on "media theft". However thats more becouse the term is being used than any ability to pick it. I'm shure you can spin doctor any term used.
Perhaps they should just call it a EULA violation or copyright violation instead of piracy. "copyright violation" is a bit wordy. But at least it dumps it on software venders to premote the issue rather than relying on handy imagry such as the one used by "piracy"...
As for treatment it depends on how you want to mesure it. In terms of scummyness burnning and selling is worse as they knowingly and willfully scam the costummer BUT the guy who buys a CD and burns copys for friends dose more end damage... not directly as he only gives it to 2 to 5 friends but indirectly when they give it to 2 to 5 friends and so on creating something of a pyramid of distrobution that results in a huge number of copys what makes it truely unfair is this "violator" didn't even know better. The legal system seems to treat "pirates" in the same way they treat "drug dealers" to be honnest and I don't think even the people who burn 5,000 WinNT CDs for sale deserve that. And that brings us to treatment of drug dealers.... Now we are offically so far off topic it is amazing.. so maybe drop me e-mail if you want to continue this:)
How do they show up in statistics? Using statistics.. How many webhits you get from a browser, how many Windows machines how many Linux.. And server counting projetcs. When computers interact as they do today they let others know what software your using and many people gather that information and record it for using statitics. Thies statistics are considered more useful than "registured users" and "units sold" becouse of piracy and free software.
"illegal copying" whats that? I'd say that that term is pretty decent. It means copying software illegally as opposed to copying software legally. The important thing is that people not be mislead into believing that ALL software copying is illegal I agree:) I was going a bit over with that:)
However I think it would be a mistake to call it "illegal copying".. We make it "copying" and not "piracy" we make it identical to the legal act but by calling it "piracy" it becomes someting very diffrent. The problem here is short attention span. "Piracy" dosn't give a person a sence of knowing what is going on but once they hear "illegal copying" they know all copying is illegal and figure thats all they need to know.
The ONLY time I'm in agreement with Gates and Gore is on software Piracy.
Software pirates wouldn't have ever paid for commertal titles. Instead they chouse to steal. They are potental open source users. When they steal they still show up in using statictis and that hurts us. There are enough pirates that if they'd use free software instead of stealing commertal titles the busness community wouldn't risk alinating us.
As it is software pirates act like they have no choice and if they keep it up it may soon be true.
Anyway the image of pirates commiting murder on the high seas is a bit of a farce.. piracy is not murder it's theft and high seas pirates kill about as often as theafs in urban america.
Other terms don't fit quite as well. Some make it seem ok such as "illegal copying" whats that? Or "IP imbeslment" I'm shure Microsoft would LOVE that terminology.
Piracy was a term picked by legal experts having more to do with the act than any other term available. The romantic imagry dosn't even carry over. Or when it dose it's more of a joke.. costummed fakes.. Like the printed "tux" t shirts. Not to be taken sereously
Sorry for going off topic with this but I do feel strongly about IP theft. It just underminds the whole free software movement....
Bill Gates has lots of money Al Gore needs lots of money to continue campaigning for the presedency. If Al Gore can not get the support he needs soon his run for the office is doomed. Microsoft is in danger of being broken up. Will Bill Gates coff up to keep Microsoft from being broken up? Will Al Gore accually do anything if he dose?
Rember Bill Gates is known for backstabbing and Al Gore is a fast learner.
Future job for Linux zellots as Linux consultents?
The problem is thies industry experts are accually just Windows experts. A dangerous position to be in. If Microsofts market domonence is weakend to much they could be out of a job. Instead of worrying they just tell themselfs what they tell there clients... Microsoft is forever. But in reality if Microsoft is cut back to 55% of the market with everyone else holding the 45% thies experts won't be able to give "working" advice. [Working advice meaning advice that works to spite being wrong. This is enough to convence clients your right sence they can't see whats wrong unless it blows up in there faces]
Eventually the generall public will catch on. It's unavoidable. Eather that or people will let us install what ever we want and charg what ever we like. "Oh yeah this 6402 running Forth is top of the line" [No insult to Forth and 6502.. if you ask me everyone should use Forth 6502 trainner].
Basicly as long as someone is ready to gather information they need only be pointed in the right direction.
Give em/. Linux Today Os Opinion and the pro Linux ZD articals and let nature take it's course. Don't be conforntational. Be a good little employee just helpping his boss be as informed as he can be. I wonder what Dilbert would say to this tactic? I picture Dogbert screaming "No thats dangerous.. he'll.. acually.. try.. to.. do.. somthing.." Computer blows up to show pointy haired boss sitting at it "I installed Linux..":)
Picture this.. Seller is in China... Website in United States.. buyer in Australia.. Wait it gets more complex... Manfactuer is in england as well as a werhousing company that accually pacage and ships the product... the costumer has the pacage (a gift) shipped to a friend in Cannida not to himself in Australia.
Who gets the sales tax?
Wait a few years... that website could be in orbit...
Me thinks we Westerners who rant about there own nations screw ups should be given the leway to rant about others as well.:) As long as it's not "We are great and you suck" mentality it should be acceptable.
For me there is no point in really ranting about China sence I'm not there. As for us... we have a really sad habbit of murging a governments agenda with it's people's phlosophy even if we ourselfs don't allwase get this luxury. The people of China are really very cool people. In my view they have a bad government but thats my opinion based on second and third hand reports. The sad part is we are taking out what we think is happening to the people in China on the Chinese. They arn't the bad guys if anything they are the victoms. On the other hand if the Chines government really is folowing the will of the people then it's a good government and not something to rant about but something to learn from. Need to cover my basses in case it really is a "by the people for the people" type situation we are told we have here [but I don't see it].
Ok but then I take a "Everybodys wrong even me" type aproch to everything:) We are all wrong we just have to work at being less wrong in the future.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Some parents have this habbit of letting some gadget rase there kid. A nanny is ok, the TV is pushing it the Internet is totally inapropreate.
When they find the Internet is full of child inapprorpreate matereal do they yank there kids off? No they go screaming fuzzy blue mud.
My mother did let me go on BBSes when I was a kid but far short of rasing me on the computer she'd be right there to talk with me about what I'd find reguardless of what I found. If your not prepaired to do something similer you shouldn't place your kids infront of the net or control your childs net access.
I guess thats to be expected to some degree. Anyone compatent enough to review a book on open source or about an open source company will tend to give it a good review if the words "open source is good" are contained in the pages.
The problem is anyone who could review this book would allready be bies tword it.
Over all I'd say this was a very good effort to review the book.
Personally I'm not fond of thies CEO bios. Oh wow the CEO of StupidThings inc has put out a book. They make lots of money doing stupid things let's get the book and see how they do it.
Theres a lot of advantages of the Internet over BBSes thats a given however as much as has been gained a lot was lost.
The Sysop never had specal hardware/software requirements. If you could call one BBS you could call them all. You were never forced to use defective software or expensive hardware.
Some BBSes let you access the operating system directly such as RCPM systems and a Forth BBS.
Everything was basicly free. Excluding the LD phone rates. But if you called only local BBSes you didn't have to worry about that.
Issolated BBS communitys ment the goofballs had there own BBSes and you never had to deal with them at all where as with the BBS we all have to make an effort to get along and there will allways be a few who try to mess things up for everyone else.
But what I really miss is more of a byproduct of the times not directly a BBS thing. A few people would call for censorship of BBSes akin to the CDA and other efforts. The calls to censor BBSes fell on deff ears as only BBS users knew what a BBS was. If your ignorent enough to believe the rantings then you wouldn't know what a BBS was and thusly not understand the rantings in the first place.
Picture this:
Lunitic: We have to ban thies evil pronographic gif files on BBSes
Senitor: Shure I'll support a tax on expensive gifts..
Eeek it was a poorly done rant I did...
I'm basicly trying to say it's good to put a hold on teriffs becouse I feel the people in power are to ignorent of technology to do any sort of software tarif with out doing masive damage.
It's not clear becouse it's a really stupid rant... It takes a lot of digging and I'm sorry for the low quality of my post...
Eeek I hate it when I get my dates wrong...
Bad cat... bad cat person...
Oh well.. thanks for da correction....
:)
Very good annolog however it's so much easyer to understand the effects of environmental damage than it is to understand the effects of tech abuse.
More often than not any restrictions on technology end up hurtting the whole community. Due to a compleate lack of understanding of technology.
For example as far as lawmakers are conserned the worst problems of the internet are terrorism and porn making two of the worse problems [censorship and lack of privacy] even worse. Worse yet they have no impact on Internet terrorism [crackers] and Porn [woohoo more porn sites]. Why? Becouse they havn't a clue what they are trying to restrict.
Porn isn't even a problem. Shure it's everywhere but you have to go looking for it. I have no problems finding anything I want and I never come across porn unless thats what I am looking for.
Ohh and Internet terrorism.. While they worry about some terrorist triggering a bomb with an encripted code sent over the Internet more realistic crackers grep passwords over unencrypted data streams. In short they make worse what they try to prevent. Just brlient people.
I'm allways nervous when people want to regulate anything with out understanding it....
Any attempt to restrict such regulation is a good thing at least for now while the generall public gets an understanding of the Internet.
We are pritty familure with Microsoft doing what ever sutes them. However it's importent to rember they are still a member of the software community and if the whole industry is hurt then Microsoft is hurt.
So maybe on occasion Microsoft dose things to our benifit. Not to protect the whole but to protect themselfs.
Try to picture it this way.. a galatic hord comes to earth to distory all life on it... a corprate tyrent could shoot his mega gun wiping the hord from existence and save earth or keep his wepon a secret and die with everyone else.
In short it's ok to occasionally agree with Microsoft no matter how self serving Microsofts actions maybe becouse on occasion it's all or nothing. It's no fun to watch Microsoft go away if everyone else dies with em.
I guess the idea here is you start from MacOs or Windows and install Linux. If your using BeOs or something other than Mac Or Windows your probably not intrested in Linux and your not going to be intrested in RedHat.
At least that seems to be the idea here.
Unfortunatly thats not a realistic view as users of many alternitive operating systems may dual boot Linux.. Also the Sun Sparc with Solaris preinstalled may also run RedHat Linux. Wops!!!
Oh well...
If you saw the movie "WarGames" you'll rember Woper was a big black box with an LCD display on it. A rather sleak looking mini mainframe.
In the book however Woper was 7 Cray 2s. The book was writen when the Cray 2 was still in develupment.
The Movie was produced in the late 1970s this puts the book and thus the idea of distributed computing into the mid 1970s. One has to presume the auther got the idea from an existing project to do just that posably sticking the original consept back into the 1960s.
It's posable if someone probes around they'll find an internal memo an a computer firm back in the 1950s calling the whole idea silly as a distributed system would posably cover the surface of the planet (considering the size of computers in the 1950s).
Anyway the publishing date of "War Games" should be the date of the invention and predating Intels patent by a few years.
People can and will violate rules when the reason seems like nonsence. With law you don't get that kind of freedom. You have to challange nonsence.
With that clarifyed I'll repeate and agree with your sentiments...
After X users an FTP site becomes overloaded so an FTP site refuses connections after X point...
A United States site carrying crypto may chouse to enforce national bounderys due to crypto paranoia laws in the United States.
But denying minnors access to a Linux destro based on a misguided understanding of the law is nonsence and should be challanged.
As for the traffic and crypto issues... get rid of the stupid crypto laws and use mirror sites.
I've long noticed people have not had a clear deffinition of alpha/beta/gama testing...
It's all based on what you call a beta. Alpha is "the stage before" beta.
Microsoft has no alpha they go directly into beta.. at least from what I have seen. They break down the beta into stages but they call it all beta posably for market reasons. It dosn't mean they don't do critical stages of testing mearly they call all the stages "beta". In some ways Microsoft earns some ridicule for saying "it's only a beta" when a Microsoft beta dose something a beta shouldn't do.
But what IS a beta?
One online game defines a beta as a basicly stable product that needs some premarket testing to get at the hidden bugs.
A gama test is a "specal" quality test that is really not needed but when done insures a higher quality not usually found in powerful software products.
A gama is a test of a "production" or "releace" quality product just to find those really annoying hidden bugs.
I like that deffinition...
This leaves Alpha as the first stage tests. Unstable and posably unusuable but the hope is a product enters an alpha test phase as a stable usable product. The Alpha isn't just a proving test like Gama it's to hunt down why it isn't all it is in the lab.
Alpha is also a test to see what is missing. It's great on Linux FVWM but Linux KDE has web browser enhancement features it could take advanatge of.. thats the kind of thing that can show up in a gama test as well but Alphas a good place to bring that out.
Thats how I define a beta but I know others don't and I live with that.....
Mind over mussle, Smart is sexy,
Death geek [picture geek with two robots behind him looking hard at a bully.. the geek has an evil smile] You'll never know until it's to late.
I'd like to have an update on the folowing issues... ./ix :)...
The Poter IPO and
The Krel invasion force..
The Aibos, Lego Mindstorms, Furbes, whatever... Programmed to take over the world...
Hostile takeover of Microsoft...
Rivised vision statments for Poter and Commander Taco as the new year comes.. we have to get those new vision statments in... wow are those like new years resilutions? And theres a race to see who can ignore there visionstatment the fastest
Oh yes amd one last thing......
The fish is in the closet....
I had Geeks in space playing on my computer and the boss asked me to do something about the "voices" in the office. :) :)
:)
Someone overheard it and was like "someone is haunting the office?"
So now Slashdot haunts us...
Yeah rah!!!!
It depends on the software you use to record.. Software? Well yeah if you record directly to ram the sound quality is like phonominal.
But if you code in single tasking type style [and many of us still do] you have to keep everything in ram while recording and that eats megs of memory really quickly.
What I've found is the software recording tools you have a choice pick from good programming where stuff gets saved while recording with out screwing everything up or something that makes decent recordings. It seems audiophiles aren't great programmers and visa versa.
So there it is. Someone makes a small mistake and you lose EVERYTHING in ram the program crashes, Linux shuts it down and cleans everything up and you get to start all over.
THAT is at least one way you can lose an eppisode.
I did my own little rant thing on RealAudio for a while and I lost a lot of eppisodes but it didn't matter becouse no one ever lissend.
But when you can get it right it's kinda cool.
Now that they are using profesional equipment instead of what they did before we can hope there are no more lost eppisodes..... wops the dat recorder just GPFed... what do you mean it runs Windows CE?
There are two things the public will never be told. The Y2K bug effects accounting data nothing else. If the computer dosn't do any sort of accounting it won't be effected. The second thing the public will never be told is we have to be ready for any sort of crash becouse stuff happends and in some cases it happends a lot.
Even for the havok the Y2K bug COULD cause... there are Sysadm making shure systems stay on-line and working all the time. It's not as if the Y2K bug is the only thing that can take down a system. Any number of things can do that. Bad hardware, bad software, bad admin, script kiddy, idiot user, time paradox and Microsoft features.
We have so many REAL bugs to worry about the Y2K bug dosen't really have a chance of wrecking any real havok.
Worse posable sinareo.. no one monitors anything and instead gets sloshed on the Y2K partys....
More damage will be done by rioters and script kiddys than by Y2K bugs.
"Fear is the mind killer" - Dune
"MTV is the Mind Killer, fear is a parasite that feeds on the results" - Me when in a really pissy mood.
In the mean time people are going to do what they can to make money off Y2K paranoia. Including TV news.
I like what one Y2K preparedness company had to say about it. They said at worst 3 days thats all you need. They sell survival kits and people asked for Y2K kits so they are selling 3 day kits. The other kits are for "Real" disasters and last for weeks and are far more expensive. They recomend getting the other kits becouse you arn't as likely to need it for Y2K problems as you will for other disasters.
I happen to agree and I'll order my survival kit in January when the demand goes down.
Time to watch my Karma drop... :) Yes some /.ers get a bit extream about open source but we all have to pay the bills.
Thats what you get for making insightful comments
By the way...if anyone knows of an open-source game that doesn't suck, I'd like to know about it.
http://www.timecity.org
It's still in develupment however... It uses the Crystal Space engen that is also in develupment.
No doupt software venders and other entitys do make use of the pirate image to cast a bad light on "media theft".
:)
However thats more becouse the term is being used than any ability to pick it. I'm shure you can spin doctor any term used.
Perhaps they should just call it a EULA violation or copyright violation instead of piracy.
"copyright violation" is a bit wordy. But at least it dumps it on software venders to premote the issue rather than relying on handy imagry such as the one used by "piracy"...
As for treatment it depends on how you want to mesure it. In terms of scummyness burnning and selling is worse as they knowingly and willfully scam the costummer BUT the guy who buys a CD and burns copys for friends dose more end damage... not directly as he only gives it to 2 to 5 friends but indirectly when they give it to 2 to 5 friends and so on creating something of a pyramid of distrobution that results in a huge number of copys what makes it truely unfair is this "violator" didn't even know better.
The legal system seems to treat "pirates" in the same way they treat "drug dealers" to be honnest and I don't think even the people who burn 5,000 WinNT CDs for sale deserve that.
And that brings us to treatment of drug dealers....
Now we are offically so far off topic it is amazing.. so maybe drop me e-mail if you want to continue this
How do they show up in statistics?
:) I was going a bit over with that :)
Using statistics..
How many webhits you get from a browser, how many Windows machines how many Linux..
And server counting projetcs.
When computers interact as they do today they let others know what software your using and many people gather that information and record it for using statitics.
Thies statistics are considered more useful than "registured users" and "units sold" becouse of piracy and free software.
"illegal copying" whats that?
I'd say that that term is pretty decent. It means copying software illegally as opposed to copying software legally. The important thing is that people not be mislead into believing that ALL software copying is illegal
I agree
However I think it would be a mistake to call it "illegal copying".. We make it "copying" and not "piracy" we make it identical to the legal act but by calling it "piracy" it becomes someting very diffrent.
The problem here is short attention span. "Piracy" dosn't give a person a sence of knowing what is going on but once they hear "illegal copying" they know all copying is illegal and figure thats all they need to know.
The ONLY time I'm in agreement with Gates and Gore is on software Piracy.
Software pirates wouldn't have ever paid for commertal titles. Instead they chouse to steal.
They are potental open source users. When they steal they still show up in using statictis and that hurts us.
There are enough pirates that if they'd use free software instead of stealing commertal titles the busness community wouldn't risk alinating us.
As it is software pirates act like they have no choice and if they keep it up it may soon be true.
Anyway the image of pirates commiting murder on the high seas is a bit of a farce.. piracy is not murder it's theft and high seas pirates kill about as often as theafs in urban america.
Other terms don't fit quite as well. Some make it seem ok such as "illegal copying" whats that? Or "IP imbeslment" I'm shure Microsoft would LOVE that terminology.
Piracy was a term picked by legal experts having more to do with the act than any other term available.
The romantic imagry dosn't even carry over.
Or when it dose it's more of a joke.. costummed fakes.. Like the printed "tux" t shirts. Not to be taken sereously
Sorry for going off topic with this but I do feel strongly about IP theft. It just underminds the whole free software movement....
Bill Gates has lots of money Al Gore needs lots of money to continue campaigning for the presedency.
If Al Gore can not get the support he needs soon his run for the office is doomed.
Microsoft is in danger of being broken up.
Will Bill Gates coff up to keep Microsoft from being broken up?
Will Al Gore accually do anything if he dose?
Rember Bill Gates is known for backstabbing and Al Gore is a fast learner.
Future job for Linux zellots as Linux consultents?
The problem is thies industry experts are accually just Windows experts. A dangerous position to be in. If Microsofts market domonence is weakend to much they could be out of a job.
Instead of worrying they just tell themselfs what they tell there clients... Microsoft is forever.
But in reality if Microsoft is cut back to 55% of the market with everyone else holding the 45% thies experts won't be able to give "working" advice.
[Working advice meaning advice that works to spite being wrong. This is enough to convence clients your right sence they can't see whats wrong unless it blows up in there faces]
Eventually the generall public will catch on. It's unavoidable. Eather that or people will let us install what ever we want and charg what ever we like. "Oh yeah this 6402 running Forth is top of the line"
/. Linux Today Os Opinion and the pro Linux ZD articals and let nature take it's course. :)
[No insult to Forth and 6502.. if you ask me everyone should use Forth 6502 trainner].
Basicly as long as someone is ready to gather information they need only be pointed in the right direction.
Give em
Don't be conforntational. Be a good little employee just helpping his boss be as informed as he can be.
I wonder what Dilbert would say to this tactic?
I picture Dogbert screaming "No thats dangerous.. he'll.. acually.. try.. to.. do.. somthing.."
Computer blows up to show pointy haired boss sitting at it "I installed Linux.."
your results may vary
Picture this..
Seller is in China... Website in United States.. buyer in Australia..
Wait it gets more complex...
Manfactuer is in england as well as a werhousing company that accually pacage and ships the product... the costumer has the pacage (a gift) shipped to a friend in Cannida not to himself in Australia.
Who gets the sales tax?
Wait a few years... that website could be in orbit...
Me thinks we Westerners who rant about there own nations screw ups should be given the leway to rant about others as well. :) As long as it's not "We are great and you suck" mentality it should be acceptable.
:) We are all wrong we just have to work at being less wrong in the future. :)
For me there is no point in really ranting about China sence I'm not there.
As for us... we have a really sad habbit of murging a governments agenda with it's people's phlosophy even if we ourselfs don't allwase get this luxury.
The people of China are really very cool people. In my view they have a bad government but thats my opinion based on second and third hand reports.
The sad part is we are taking out what we think is happening to the people in China on the Chinese. They arn't the bad guys if anything they are the victoms.
On the other hand if the Chines government really is folowing the will of the people then it's a good government and not something to rant about but something to learn from. Need to cover my basses in case it really is a "by the people for the people" type situation we are told we have here [but I don't see it].
Ok but then I take a "Everybodys wrong even me" type aproch to everything