I don't know about you guys, but this whole "fastest supercomputer in world" bit is getting kind of old. It seems like every week someone is releasing a new world's fastest supercomputer. Think about it, it's nothing new. String a whole bunch of processors together, put a ton of memory in it and build a huge RAID or SCSI disks and I have the world's fastest supercomputer. In another 5 - 10 years we will have desktop machines that rival this multi-million dollar supercomputer and yes, it will run Linux.
Taxes aren't absolutely necessary for government (there are alternative ways for a mimimal government to raise revenue)...
That's not the point. If the government takes taxes out of my paycheck to repair roads, build schools and protect the country, that's fine. But when the government starts taxing either me or the manufacturer of the goods I am buying and handing that money to a corporation, that bothers me. It's not like the RIAA needs the extra money or that MP3's are crippling them, like they would have us believe, and they need some type of retribution. Maybe the makers of CD players should ask for royalities from the RIAA because their CD players will eventually be used to play songs by RIAA artists. It makes about as much sense.
I work for a large government contractor and just, today, returned from a DII/COE training seminar. I had a similar question regarding Linux and DII/COE compliance and this is what I came up with...
As of right now the major DII/COE compliant systems are Solaris, NT4, HP-UX and IRIX (which just recently was approved by DISA). The reason that Linux is not and will never (as long as the DII/COE rules stay they way they are) be DII/COE compliant is because it is open-source. One of the big things with DII/COE is that you can not get into the source code and "tweak" it thereby comprimising the integrety of it. The open-source nature of Linux sets off a red flag, to most government officals, that says "UNSECURE." For obvious reasons security is a big factor for the government and therefor is something the government takes extremely seriously and is evident from this quote right from the DII/COE SRS...
"The use of TFTP could create an unsecure state on the system and could be used to provide a distribution point for hacker files, pornography and pirated software."
Also, I noticed that some others were asking why NT was one of the DII/COE compliant systems, well read on... One of the reasons NT4 is DII/COE compliant, and this provides a humorous anticdote, is because of the Navy. A few years back the US Navy decided that instead of using UNIX based systems it wanted to use NT. So it spent several million dollars outfitting a battleship with NT servers and software. When the ship was finally completed it set sail for a week long trial run. A mile from port one of the NT servers "blue-screened" and froze up the entire ship. In fact, they had to send out a couple tug boats and tow the ship back to port.
I have to agree and disagree with you. Let me explain. When the iOpener was first introduced, it was marketed towards people who are afraid of or feel that they have no need for a computer. That's the advantage, the iOpener is simple to use, does nothing but go on-line, it's all one peice so there are no cabling issues (kind of like the iMac except the iMac has more functionality), there is little to no setup involved. Much the reason it was not initially offered with an ethernet connection; the majority of the people it was marketed towards don't have high bandwidth connection because all they use the internet for is checking their e-mail, finding movie times and occasionally looking up p0rn. However, recently geeks have found uses for this nifty little gadget. It wasn't long until someone found a way to put Linux on it and get a 40GB hard drive into it. And geeks began realizing other uses for it. Like a kitchen appliance for checking e-mail and Slashdot. I mean who else would find the need of having an internet ready appliance in the living room so that while watching the Simpsons reruns you don't have to run all the way upstairs to check your mail during the commercials.
gettings cable and cablemodem services up at school, + the equipment rental costs about half as much as my RENT for my APPARTMENT with ALL OF THE UTILITIES INCLUDED.
I would kill someone for a place whose rent + utilities was twice my cable modem bill!! However, I would be afraid that someone would kill me in such a neighborhood!!!
Fair enough. I can agree that there may not be any natural (ie: intuitive) way to interact with a computer. There are very few (if any) machines or even tools that are purely intuitive. However, I feel that there are much better (read: easier) ways to interact with a computer. For example, using this Linux powered watch to monitor your pulse and note any irregularities and from there suggest a course of action. I don't know if that would work, but it's an example of a method of interaction that would be easier than our current methods.
I agree with you 100%. However, the physical components we use to interact with a computer are not the only problem. True that the keyboards and mice are not the most intuitive of devices, but I think that more of the problem lies with the actual interfaces (ie: GUIs). Most GUIs fall short or delievering a natural way of navigating, controlling and interacting with a computer. We have to learn to look past the typical idea of a computer consisting of a 17" monitor, a large box to which all the paripherals connect to a machine that people can interact with and incorporate into their everyday lives without changing their habits. The goal (of software development and computer design) should not be to use the system but to create computers and software that are unabtrusive and fit into peoples everyday lives without the people having to change and mold around the computer.
Come on now. Is this guy serious? I think he needs to get out more. This is not as serious a problem as this guy seems to think it is. He is acting as if cheating in multiplayer games is the moral decay of society instead of looking at it for what it is, some hackers having some fun. There is a limited number of people who, have the knowledge and will waste their time to reverse engineer a game simply to be able to cheat at it. If you are ever playing a game on-line and you start to get genuinly upset about someone, you suspect, is cheating it's time for you to shut the game off and get out of your halogen lit room in your parent's basement.
One of the biggest limitations the hard drives faced were the number of sectors. Originally a hard drive had to have the same number of sectors on track 0 that it had on track n. I'm sure you can see where the problem is. If you have 1024 sectors each holding x KB's on the inner most track you need to have 1024 sectors holding x KB's on the outter most track. Therefor there is a lot of wasted space as you move from the inner most to the outter most track on the platter. Recently they found a way to over come this with variable speed platters and heads so you could better utilize the space on the platter.
But you could say the same thing about drugs. It's virtually impossible to eliminate drugs and people are going to use drugs even though they are clearly illegal. However, no one says anything when they make laws banning drugs. But people get all worked up about gambling.
You can't tell me that gambling and drugs are very different for a few reasons. 1) People who are addicted to gambling go gambling to 'get their fix', just like addicts. 2) There are tons of casual gamblers, just like there are tons of casual drug users. 3) There are many drugs that are legal (alcohol, cigaretts, nitrous oxide, etc...) just like there are forms of gambling that are legal and forms that are illegal. 4) Gambling addiction leads to just about the same problems that drug addiction does. Loss of money, family, possible even life. 5) There are plently of places you can go to get help with your gambling addiction just like there are for drugs and alcohol.
Frankly I say make drugs legal. Sell them in the super market next to the cigarettes and tax the sh*t out them. Lower my taxes so some crack head can get his fix. Even if drugs where legal I don't think it would increase their usage much if at all. People who are going to do drugs are going to do drugs. Those who are not going to do drugs are going to avoid them.
My senior year in college, I as taking a course in human-computer interaction and the topic of sounds came up. At first most of the students were in agreement that the noises a computer makes are quite annoying, it was then purposed to us that sounds may actually be a very important part of computing. Not necessarily the fans whirring away but the grinding of the hard drive. It lets people know that the machine is doing something and not in a locked state. For the most part, experienced computer users can tell when the machine locks (and in some cases even the most advanced of us can't be sure) but a novice may mistake a momentary pause, as the hard drive transfers a large amount of data and the processor cranks through it, as a lockup. A cruching hard drive can let them know that something is indeed happening.
If the lights get to be too bothersome, just open up the case and unplug them from the motherboard. It's a quick, easy fix that I find more attractive than tape or anything else. But, it's just a suggestion.
If you have sudo installed (tested with CU Sudo version 1.5.9p1) AND you are in the/etc/sudoers file, try this:
sudo (command)
use whatever command you are allowed to run in the sudoers file. make sure it is NOT a NOPASSWD marked one.
sudo will print a few lines of text, then ask you for a password. enter some crap. it will spew out funny lines, different ones each time. some examples:
"That's something I cannot allow to happen." "I've seen penguins that can type better than that." "You do that again and see what happens..."
1. Using LINUX 2.2.1 (havent checked others), with bidirectional printer support 2. Print from the network and force a printer jam (tear a corner off a piece of paper and put back into th printer) 3. Issue a print command 4. Watch the output of the console (says lp0 printer on fire!)
Has anyone ever gotten the feeling that some people use Linux just to tell others that they don't use Windows? I was reading the blurb on the front page and it said something like "Linux is the hot new thing..." I began to wonder why that is. What happened in the last few years that made Linux the "hot new thing?" I work with people who brag about how they don't use Windows on their home PC's as if begging the question "well what OS do you use?" Just so they can say Linux and hopefully impress someone. At least that is the feeling I get. I use Linux because it is a powerful, stable and completely open OS that I can tinker and learn with. I was wondering if others get the same impression of if it's just me.
Excellent points! You would think that RMS would be happy to have others join his crusade for "free software" but it seems he only wants the ones who he deems suitable. Granted he has the right to pick and choose, but...
It is my understaing that they created Unix to run the 5ESS switch.
Actually that is not true. In late 1968/69 AT&T was shaken up by the failure of Multics. So, when Richie and Thompson suggested the idea of an alternative to Multics, Bell Laboratories wanted nothing to do with it. Thompson wrote proposal after proposal to the executives at Bell Laboratories and AT&T asking for a PDP-10 in order to create a new OS. However, every one was rejected. To quote Dennis Richie "[...] we were asking the Labs to spend too much money on too few people with too vague a plan. Moreover, I am quite sure that at that time operating systems were not, for our management, an attractive area in which to support work." Shortly thereafter Thompson created a game called "Space Travel" but the cost about "$75 for CPU time on a big computer" so Thompson dug up a little used PDP-7 and they (Richie, Thompson) ported the game to the PDP-7. Around this time Thompson began working on a file system for the PDP, once they got the file system and assembler running the OS could support itself and then a set of utilities were added, for example copy, print, delete, and edit files, and a shell. After this, Thompson showed the OS to Bell Labs and asked for a PDP-11 to continue development. Bell Labs still was not sure about the whole OS thing and considered turning him down. For some reason, they decided to appease him and get the PDP-11. Richie and Thompson created some text editing tools and various other improvements then released it around AT&T. At that point AT&T saw how widely used the OS was began to realize it's potential. My previous post picks up from here.
I'm not saying that the merger is a bad thing nor am I saying it's a good thing. I am going to withhold jusgement until I see what happens.
Yeah Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie worked for Bell Labs when they created UNIX on an old unused PDP-7. But, because AT&T was involved in an anti-trust lawsuit, they were forbidden from selling UNIX for a profit. In the early 1970's Thompson and Richie put together a paper on their new UNIX operating system and presented it at an operating system conference. Because of that a lot of educational institutions became interested and AT&T agreed to "sell" UNIX (for a modest price) and the source code to academic institutions for their personal use. One of the institutions who was very interested was Berkley and most specifically the Berkley Software Development group (BSD). They added features like TCP/IP networking, a better UFS and others. Then they allowed people to download the source code and use their operating system for free. It really makes you think and raises the questions: If AT&T hadn't been in the middle of that lawsuit at the time UNIX was released, would they have kept it proprietary (in other words protected the source code and sold the operating system)? If they had, what would the open source community be like today and would even be one? Would Linux have ever been developed? And further more would IBM have gone with DOS, as the opeating system for their new PC, and decided to do business with a small unknown company, at the time, Microsoft or would they have gone with AT&T's UNIX (or System V as they called it)? Or, on the oposite side of the spectrum, would AT&T have blown off Thompson and Richie dismissing UNIX as not being worth it and squashing UNIX right away (after all, Thompson and Richie had to beg AT&T/Bell labs to buy them a PDP-11 so they could implement UNIX in C)?
I have to agree, I read Accidental Empires and loved it. It was very entertaining and gave an interesting insight into large, powerful and... well... accidental empires. It does not really document the history of operating systems, but it is worth reading anyway.
I wrote to CowboyNeal and got the URL for the Slashdot summit pics. For all of those who are interested click here. Let it be known that CowboyNeal wrote back to me very quickly (within minutes). By the way, it's 'cassady'.
Lars is an absolute moron?? A brick could challange him on an intellectual level.
He says: "[...] I know we are also quite smart."
Who is judging this?? He claims to have listened to the opinions of people who are "Internet savvy" about MP3's and Napster but it is obvious from his rambling, incoherent responses that he has no idea what he is talking about. It appears to me that the only opinions he respected about these issues are the ones that benifited him. Maybe he should get some other opinions from some other "Internet savvy" individuals. Better yet, never listen to anyone who calls themselves "Internet savvy" because in most cases they aren't.
From there he goes on to say: "[...] that the feel they have a right to any piece of information that comes to them through the Internet."
That is exactly what the Internet was invented to do, spread information. Who is Lars to determine what information is suitable for me? Information is free and I do have the right to any information that comes my way. What I do not have the right to are things that are illegal for example child pornography or even Metallica's music (seeing as how it is copy righted and their work).
I am not saying that I agree or disagree with Metallica's suing of Napster (actually I am torn on the issue) but I do think that Metallica should learn a little more about what's going on. An example is when he claims to know what Gnutella is then says that he is going to take action when the company becomes active. Obviously he has no idea. Oh well, I regress.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about you guys, but this whole "fastest supercomputer in world" bit is getting kind of old. It seems like every week someone is releasing a new world's fastest supercomputer. Think about it, it's nothing new. String a whole bunch of processors together, put a ton of memory in it and build a huge RAID or SCSI disks and I have the world's fastest supercomputer. In another 5 - 10 years we will have desktop machines that rival this multi-million dollar supercomputer and yes, it will run Linux.
Taxes aren't absolutely necessary for government (there are alternative ways for a mimimal government to raise revenue)...
That's not the point. If the government takes taxes out of my paycheck to repair roads, build schools and protect the country, that's fine. But when the government starts taxing either me or the manufacturer of the goods I am buying and handing that money to a corporation, that bothers me. It's not like the RIAA needs the extra money or that MP3's are crippling them, like they would have us believe, and they need some type of retribution. Maybe the makers of CD players should ask for royalities from the RIAA because their CD players will eventually be used to play songs by RIAA artists. It makes about as much sense.
Read my other post to find out about NT4 and DII/COE compliance...
I work for a large government contractor and just, today, returned from a DII/COE training seminar. I had a similar question regarding Linux and DII/COE compliance and this is what I came up with...
As of right now the major DII/COE compliant systems are Solaris, NT4, HP-UX and IRIX (which just recently was approved by DISA). The reason that Linux is not and will never (as long as the DII/COE rules stay they way they are) be DII/COE compliant is because it is open-source. One of the big things with DII/COE is that you can not get into the source code and "tweak" it thereby comprimising the integrety of it. The open-source nature of Linux sets off a red flag, to most government officals, that says "UNSECURE." For obvious reasons security is a big factor for the government and therefor is something the government takes extremely seriously and is evident from this quote right from the DII/COE SRS...
"The use of TFTP could create an unsecure state on the system and could be used to provide a distribution point for hacker files, pornography and pirated software."
Also, I noticed that some others were asking why NT was one of the DII/COE compliant systems, well read on... One of the reasons NT4 is DII/COE compliant, and this provides a humorous anticdote, is because of the Navy. A few years back the US Navy decided that instead of using UNIX based systems it wanted to use NT. So it spent several million dollars outfitting a battleship with NT servers and software. When the ship was finally completed it set sail for a week long trial run. A mile from port one of the NT servers "blue-screened" and froze up the entire ship. In fact, they had to send out a couple tug boats and tow the ship back to port.
Hope that helps....
I have to agree and disagree with you. Let me explain. When the iOpener was first introduced, it was marketed towards people who are afraid of or feel that they have no need for a computer. That's the advantage, the iOpener is simple to use, does nothing but go on-line, it's all one peice so there are no cabling issues (kind of like the iMac except the iMac has more functionality), there is little to no setup involved. Much the reason it was not initially offered with an ethernet connection; the majority of the people it was marketed towards don't have high bandwidth connection because all they use the internet for is checking their e-mail, finding movie times and occasionally looking up p0rn. However, recently geeks have found uses for this nifty little gadget. It wasn't long until someone found a way to put Linux on it and get a 40GB hard drive into it. And geeks began realizing other uses for it. Like a kitchen appliance for checking e-mail and Slashdot. I mean who else would find the need of having an internet ready appliance in the living room so that while watching the Simpsons reruns you don't have to run all the way upstairs to check your mail during the commercials.
gettings cable and cablemodem services up at school, + the equipment rental costs about half as much as my RENT for my APPARTMENT with ALL OF THE UTILITIES INCLUDED.
I would kill someone for a place whose rent + utilities was twice my cable modem bill!! However, I would be afraid that someone would kill me in such a neighborhood!!!
Fair enough. I can agree that there may not be any natural (ie: intuitive) way to interact with a computer. There are very few (if any) machines or even tools that are purely intuitive. However, I feel that there are much better (read: easier) ways to interact with a computer. For example, using this Linux powered watch to monitor your pulse and note any irregularities and from there suggest a course of action. I don't know if that would work, but it's an example of a method of interaction that would be easier than our current methods.
I agree with you 100%. However, the physical components we use to interact with a computer are not the only problem. True that the keyboards and mice are not the most intuitive of devices, but I think that more of the problem lies with the actual interfaces (ie: GUIs). Most GUIs fall short or delievering a natural way of navigating, controlling and interacting with a computer. We have to learn to look past the typical idea of a computer consisting of a 17" monitor, a large box to which all the paripherals connect to a machine that people can interact with and incorporate into their everyday lives without changing their habits. The goal (of software development and computer design) should not be to use the system but to create computers and software that are unabtrusive and fit into peoples everyday lives without the people having to change and mold around the computer.
Come on now. Is this guy serious? I think he needs to get out more. This is not as serious a problem as this guy seems to think it is. He is acting as if cheating in multiplayer games is the moral decay of society instead of looking at it for what it is, some hackers having some fun. There is a limited number of people who, have the knowledge and will waste their time to reverse engineer a game simply to be able to cheat at it. If you are ever playing a game on-line and you start to get genuinly upset about someone, you suspect, is cheating it's time for you to shut the game off and get out of your halogen lit room in your parent's basement.
One of the biggest limitations the hard drives faced were the number of sectors. Originally a hard drive had to have the same number of sectors on track 0 that it had on track n. I'm sure you can see where the problem is. If you have 1024 sectors each holding x KB's on the inner most track you need to have 1024 sectors holding x KB's on the outter most track. Therefor there is a lot of wasted space as you move from the inner most to the outter most track on the platter. Recently they found a way to over come this with variable speed platters and heads so you could better utilize the space on the platter.
But you could say the same thing about drugs. It's virtually impossible to eliminate drugs and people are going to use drugs even though they are clearly illegal. However, no one says anything when they make laws banning drugs. But people get all worked up about gambling.
You can't tell me that gambling and drugs are very different for a few reasons.
1) People who are addicted to gambling go gambling to 'get their fix', just like addicts.
2) There are tons of casual gamblers, just like there are tons of casual drug users.
3) There are many drugs that are legal (alcohol, cigaretts, nitrous oxide, etc...) just like there are forms of gambling that are legal and forms that are illegal.
4) Gambling addiction leads to just about the same problems that drug addiction does. Loss of money, family, possible even life.
5) There are plently of places you can go to get help with your gambling addiction just like there are for drugs and alcohol.
Frankly I say make drugs legal. Sell them in the super market next to the cigarettes and tax the sh*t out them. Lower my taxes so some crack head can get his fix. Even if drugs where legal I don't think it would increase their usage much if at all. People who are going to do drugs are going to do drugs. Those who are not going to do drugs are going to avoid them.
My senior year in college, I as taking a course in human-computer interaction and the topic of sounds came up. At first most of the students were in agreement that the noises a computer makes are quite annoying, it was then purposed to us that sounds may actually be a very important part of computing. Not necessarily the fans whirring away but the grinding of the hard drive. It lets people know that the machine is doing something and not in a locked state. For the most part, experienced computer users can tell when the machine locks (and in some cases even the most advanced of us can't be sure) but a novice may mistake a momentary pause, as the hard drive transfers a large amount of data and the processor cranks through it, as a lockup. A cruching hard drive can let them know that something is indeed happening.
If the lights get to be too bothersome, just open up the case and unplug them from the motherboard. It's a quick, easy fix that I find more attractive than tape or anything else. But, it's just a suggestion.
Here are a couple of easter eggs in linux.
/etc/sudoers file, try this:
-
If you have sudo installed (tested with CU Sudo version 1.5.9p1) AND you are in the
sudo (command)
use whatever command you are allowed to run in the sudoers file. make sure it is NOT a NOPASSWD marked one.
sudo will print a few lines of text, then ask you for a password. enter some crap. it will spew out funny lines, different ones each time. some examples:
"That's something I cannot allow to happen."
"I've seen penguins that can type better than that."
"You do that again and see what happens..."
-------------------------------------------------
1. Using LINUX 2.2.1 (havent checked others), with bidirectional printer support
2. Print from the network and force a printer jam (tear a corner off a piece of paper and put back into th printer)
3. Issue a print command
4. Watch the output of the console (says lp0 printer on fire!)
Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.
If you want to know about Easter Eggs in games, apps, OS', movies, etc... go to E-eggs. They have some pretty interesting ones there.
Has anyone ever gotten the feeling that some people use Linux just to tell others that they don't use Windows? I was reading the blurb on the front page and it said something like "Linux is the hot new thing..." I began to wonder why that is. What happened in the last few years that made Linux the "hot new thing?" I work with people who brag about how they don't use Windows on their home PC's as if begging the question "well what OS do you use?" Just so they can say Linux and hopefully impress someone. At least that is the feeling I get. I use Linux because it is a powerful, stable and completely open OS that I can tinker and learn with. I was wondering if others get the same impression of if it's just me.
I respecfully dissagree...
Excellent points! You would think that RMS would be happy to have others join his crusade for "free software" but it seems he only wants the ones who he deems suitable. Granted he has the right to pick and choose, but...
For more info, read Dennis Richie's paper on it.
Yes UNIX could have been squashed by AT&T very easily.
It is my understaing that they created Unix to run the 5ESS switch.
Actually that is not true. In late 1968/69 AT&T was shaken up by the failure of Multics. So, when Richie and Thompson suggested the idea of an alternative to Multics, Bell Laboratories wanted nothing to do with it. Thompson wrote proposal after proposal to the executives at Bell Laboratories and AT&T asking for a PDP-10 in order to create a new OS. However, every one was rejected. To quote Dennis Richie "[...] we were asking the Labs to spend too much money on too few people with too vague a plan. Moreover, I am quite sure that at that time operating systems were not, for our management, an attractive area in which to support work." Shortly thereafter Thompson created a game called "Space Travel" but the cost about "$75 for CPU time on a big computer" so Thompson dug up a little used PDP-7 and they (Richie, Thompson) ported the game to the PDP-7. Around this time Thompson began working on a file system for the PDP, once they got the file system and assembler running the OS could support itself and then a set of utilities were added, for example copy, print, delete, and edit files, and a shell. After this, Thompson showed the OS to Bell Labs and asked for a PDP-11 to continue development. Bell Labs still was not sure about the whole OS thing and considered turning him down. For some reason, they decided to appease him and get the PDP-11. Richie and Thompson created some text editing tools and various other improvements then released it around AT&T. At that point AT&T saw how widely used the OS was began to realize it's potential. My previous post picks up from here.
I'm not saying that the merger is a bad thing nor am I saying it's a good thing. I am going to withhold jusgement until I see what happens.
Unix came out of Bell Labs right?
Yeah Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie worked for Bell Labs when they created UNIX on an old unused PDP-7. But, because AT&T was involved in an anti-trust lawsuit, they were forbidden from selling UNIX for a profit. In the early 1970's Thompson and Richie put together a paper on their new UNIX operating system and presented it at an operating system conference. Because of that a lot of educational institutions became interested and AT&T agreed to "sell" UNIX (for a modest price) and the source code to academic institutions for their personal use. One of the institutions who was very interested was Berkley and most specifically the Berkley Software Development group (BSD). They added features like TCP/IP networking, a better UFS and others. Then they allowed people to download the source code and use their operating system for free. It really makes you think and raises the questions: If AT&T hadn't been in the middle of that lawsuit at the time UNIX was released, would they have kept it proprietary (in other words protected the source code and sold the operating system)? If they had, what would the open source community be like today and would even be one? Would Linux have ever been developed? And further more would IBM have gone with DOS, as the opeating system for their new PC, and decided to do business with a small unknown company, at the time, Microsoft or would they have gone with AT&T's UNIX (or System V as they called it)? Or, on the oposite side of the spectrum, would AT&T have blown off Thompson and Richie dismissing UNIX as not being worth it and squashing UNIX right away (after all, Thompson and Richie had to beg AT&T/Bell labs to buy them a PDP-11 so they could implement UNIX in C)?
I have to agree, I read Accidental Empires and loved it. It was very entertaining and gave an interesting insight into large, powerful and... well... accidental empires. It does not really document the history of operating systems, but it is worth reading anyway.
I wrote to CowboyNeal and got the URL for the Slashdot summit pics. For all of those who are interested click here. Let it be known that CowboyNeal wrote back to me very quickly (within minutes). By the way, it's 'cassady'.
Lars is an absolute moron?? A brick could challange him on an intellectual level.
He says: "[...] I know we are also quite smart."
Who is judging this?? He claims to have listened to the opinions of people who are "Internet savvy" about MP3's and Napster but it is obvious from his rambling, incoherent responses that he has no idea what he is talking about. It appears to me that the only opinions he respected about these issues are the ones that benifited him. Maybe he should get some other opinions from some other "Internet savvy" individuals. Better yet, never listen to anyone who calls themselves "Internet savvy" because in most cases they aren't.
From there he goes on to say:
"[...] that the feel they have a right to any piece of information that comes to them through the Internet."
That is exactly what the Internet was invented to do, spread information. Who is Lars to determine what information is suitable for me? Information is free and I do have the right to any information that comes my way. What I do not have the right to are things that are illegal for example child pornography or even Metallica's music (seeing as how it is copy righted and their work).
I am not saying that I agree or disagree with Metallica's suing of Napster (actually I am torn on the issue) but I do think that Metallica should learn a little more about what's going on. An example is when he claims to know what Gnutella is then says that he is going to take action when the company becomes active. Obviously he has no idea. Oh well, I regress.
Follow the link in the article and read about it.