This reminds me of the April Fools Day ask Slashdot question:
"Isn't it possible that Microsoft is using GPL code in Windows, and we could NEVER KNOW ABOUT IT?! Since we'd never know, they're probably doing it already. Has anyone notified the FSF? What are we going to do about this!?"
The obvious place to look for answers to this sort of question is in the VS license. If you don't like the terms of that license, use Emacs, dude.
Hehe. "I wrote my novel using MS Word. Now that I'm selling it, couldn't MS come after me for copyright infringement, since I used their pagination tools?"
I've worked in QA where employees have had to open dialup ISP accounts on personal credit cards so that they could actually test the products they were given.
The product would try to go contact our company's webserver for some kind of content, but it wasn't proxy-aware. And they still wouldn't put us out on the internet.
We never had to escalate it, 'cause of some employees taking it into their own hands, but that was incredible. Blew my damn mind.
I don't understand why my firewall/NAT appliance is any less a viable solution than your cheap PC. My NAT appliance was a hell of a lot cheaper, and barely uses any electricity.
And the problem isn't that geeks can't poke holes through their firewall. The problem is that non-geeks don't. That means there are probably millions of potential peers out there that will continue leeching until we make it absolutely as simple as possible for them to poke through their NAT. Running some special software on a dedicated NAT box doesn't count.
Sure, they finance and ensure the marketability of a product, but they're occasionally cabable of quality and innovation. They haven't tried to arrest the majority of their customers yet, either.
Making games cost money. Game publishers have money. They'll be around for a while.
I'm not an engineer, but the kind of force applied when you push down on one pedal and pull on the corresponding handlebar seems like you'd be attempting to twist and bend the bamboo poles. The bamboo is only stronger than steel when you're pushing on each end.
You'd eventually wear out your bike like that. Much faster than any commonly used bike material, I'm sure.
I'd be concerned about the glue being too brittle to deal with serious vibrations, too, but they might be able to come up with the right kind, I'm sure.
Hehe. Yeah. The only time I ever got a Speakeasy tech to patronize me was when I called up and said, "Um, you guys don't sell local phone service, by any chance, do you?"
"No, sir, we are a DSL internet service provider." And then he told me what an ISP was.
George Lucas makes a point of not looking at Star Wars fan fiction because he doesn't want to leave himself vulnerable to the guy who'll scream "Hey, you stole that scene/character/whatever in Episode III from my story!".
As much as I hate fan fiction, somehow I feel like that would make for a much better Episode III.
The amount of pirated material available online today is staggering. In the course of prosecuting piracy we have found servers containing over 20,000 titles of pirated software, movies, music and games. The value of the copyrighted material on servers like this is frequently in the millions of dollars. Factor in the number of times those titles are distributed over the Internet, and the damage amounts skyrocket. The sentencing structure reflects this harm.
Well, I guess it's codified in law. This is why Kevin Mitnick got charged with doing billions of dollars of damage. I wish we thought of asking them about the legitimacy of calculating damages by multiplying the number of copies and the suggested retail value of the stuff being copied.
Er, not the legitimacy, (Apparently it's legitimate.) but rather the morality. Doesn't there have to be a more realistic manner of calculating damages?
No, you aren't being too cynical. The vast majority of the discussion in the House has been about ownership of local television stations. As it stands currently, if the local Fox affiliate wants to run a debate on Thursday at 8:00PM, they might bump a sitcom for political coverage.
If Fox owns all their affiliates, then there is no local decision making, and they'll never bump a sitcom for local programming. It reminds me of the legislation over telephone solicitation where political groups are exempt from the law.
On NPR today, they were interviewing a pro-consolidation radio expert. I imagine he worked for ClearChannel or something. His reasoning for why consolidation was a good thing was twofold. First of all, before consolidation, most radio stations were losing money. Second, since consolidation, there are no longer six country stations competing for the same listeners, so there is money and frequency available to new formats. Of course, if you can tell the difference between the new formats and the old formats... you've a better ear than I do.
IMHO, I don't understand the public reaction to this issue. I can't possibly imagine that our radio, television, and newspapers could ever become more homogenous than they already are. The reason for this is that it's the most profitable. I don't care if I have a local DJ playing homogenous crap, or a national DJ playing homogenous crap. It sells. That's what the people (idiots) want to listen to.
Praise Jesus that they carved out some spectrum for public radio, so I can listen to some decent music. I don't know what I'd do without college radio.
Of course, if they ever want to *actually* deregulate the airwaves, and make the same rules govern FM as govern 2.4 gHz, then I'll be pro-deregulation. 'Till then, it's just debating who gets to be the privateer.
A couple of years ago there was a university project somewhere that implimented an ENIAC on a modern chip. I wonder if the museum has that. Maybe sitting besides the original to demonstrate the rapid pace of development or something.
That was at the University of Pennsylvania. The Moore School of Electrical Engineering. They've got the schematics of the chip up on the wall next to the little Eniac museum. Their project page is here. While it was obviously a challenging and interesting project, the schematics for the chip make it look pretty simple to eyes used to Pentiums, Athlons, etc.
They also had some of the programmers for the ENIAC on hand for a few celebrations of some 50th anniversary. I really regretted not meeting them.
AFAIK, the only times Microsoft has ever used software patents have been defensively, or as FUD.
The FUD they've done amounts to, "Gosh, Linux sure is a lot of code. Sure could be some patents in there. Hell, maybe even some of *our* patents. Seems like a landmine to me." I forget where they've said that exactly, but they have.
I'd say that's pretty harmless. They've always been on the right side of the fence on this issue.
We're a wonderful, fucked up town. Come check us out before we get devoured by all the starving dot commers and crack babies.
Check out North Beach, and see all the titty bars that inspired the beat poets. And the Haight, where you can see the tattoo/piercing shops that the hippies came from. In the Mission district, you can see the crackheads that originally founded the city of San Francisco, when California was still owned by Mexico.
It's like Naples, with fog instead of smog. And we have street cleaning. Ok, sometimes we have street cleaning. And our crime is much less organized.
No, just buy SCO shares, and sue all the execs when they become worthless. They're already rich. Not giving them millions more is hardly punishment enough.
Yeah, more or less. A few of my friends have iBooks, and I'd love for them just open up and run. Also, my roommates have two computers, and I'd prefer to never, ever, ever have to touch them.
I've got a project computer that never seems to be running the same operating system for over a month or two.
If it were just my machines, I'd probably be fine without DHCP. It's just so convenient.
Unfortunately, with my NAT box, that means I have to turn off DHCP. I don't want to give up that convenience.
I realize that part of my problem may be unique, but still, many, many potential peers out there are not peers, simply because they can't receive transfer requests.
I've never understood why my Gnutella clients won't let me poll an ultrapeer for push requests (a la AOL IM file transfers). Maybe it's in the protocol, but I've never seen it happen. It still wouldn't let me transfer files to another user behind NAT, but it'd be a step up.
Slashdot Mirror
It's insurance. Decide if you want insurance.
Personally, I'd get extended AppleCare, and use that as a selling point when I unload it on ebay two years later.
This reminds me of the April Fools Day ask Slashdot question:
"Isn't it possible that Microsoft is using GPL code in Windows, and we could NEVER KNOW ABOUT IT?! Since we'd never know, they're probably doing it already. Has anyone notified the FSF? What are we going to do about this!?"
The obvious place to look for answers to this sort of question is in the VS license. If you don't like the terms of that license, use Emacs, dude.
Hehe. "I wrote my novel using MS Word. Now that I'm selling it, couldn't MS come after me for copyright infringement, since I used their pagination tools?"
I've worked in QA where employees have had to open dialup ISP accounts on personal credit cards so that they could actually test the products they were given.
The product would try to go contact our company's webserver for some kind of content, but it wasn't proxy-aware. And they still wouldn't put us out on the internet.
We never had to escalate it, 'cause of some employees taking it into their own hands, but that was incredible. Blew my damn mind.
Will the next must-have computer input device be a slab of wet mud?
Look, these anti-Macintosh trolls need to stop.
That's going to be pretty hard on our credit based economy.
I don't understand why my firewall/NAT appliance is any less a viable solution than your cheap PC. My NAT appliance was a hell of a lot cheaper, and barely uses any electricity.
And the problem isn't that geeks can't poke holes through their firewall. The problem is that non-geeks don't. That means there are probably millions of potential peers out there that will continue leeching until we make it absolutely as simple as possible for them to poke through their NAT. Running some special software on a dedicated NAT box doesn't count.
See subject.
Sure, they finance and ensure the marketability of a product, but they're occasionally cabable of quality and innovation. They haven't tried to arrest the majority of their customers yet, either.
Making games cost money. Game publishers have money. They'll be around for a while.
what more could you ask for?
A dry computer?
I'm not an engineer, but the kind of force applied when you push down on one pedal and pull on the corresponding handlebar seems like you'd be attempting to twist and bend the bamboo poles. The bamboo is only stronger than steel when you're pushing on each end.
You'd eventually wear out your bike like that. Much faster than any commonly used bike material, I'm sure.
I'd be concerned about the glue being too brittle to deal with serious vibrations, too, but they might be able to come up with the right kind, I'm sure.
Since it's only got one gear, would it be possible to control speed with the chain?
If those 5% of users are running Win2K, then this is interesting. If those 5% of users are running Win95... then no one is really surprised.
Which is it? When did we first get crash reporting in Windows? I wouldn't know, I've only run Windows since Win2K.
(I was also crashing more than twice a day for a long while, due to some issues while in 3D mode w/ my GeForce2MX.)
The Abyss, anyone?
Exactly. I feel the same way about my VD.
Well, *his* college might be over rated. His statement is certainly true for graduates of my local community college.
Hehe. Yeah. The only time I ever got a Speakeasy tech to patronize me was when I called up and said, "Um, you guys don't sell local phone service, by any chance, do you?"
:)
"No, sir, we are a DSL internet service provider." And then he told me what an ISP was.
Aside from that, they've been excellent
George Lucas makes a point of not looking at Star Wars fan fiction because he doesn't want to leave himself vulnerable to the guy who'll scream "Hey, you stole that scene/character/whatever in Episode III from my story!".
As much as I hate fan fiction, somehow I feel like that would make for a much better Episode III.
The amount of pirated material available online today is staggering. In the course of prosecuting piracy we have found servers containing over 20,000 titles of pirated software, movies, music and games. The value of the copyrighted material on servers like this is frequently in the millions of dollars. Factor in the number of times those titles are distributed over the Internet, and the damage amounts skyrocket. The sentencing structure reflects this harm.
Well, I guess it's codified in law. This is why Kevin Mitnick got charged with doing billions of dollars of damage. I wish we thought of asking them about the legitimacy of calculating damages by multiplying the number of copies and the suggested retail value of the stuff being copied.
Er, not the legitimacy, (Apparently it's legitimate.) but rather the morality. Doesn't there have to be a more realistic manner of calculating damages?
No, you aren't being too cynical. The vast majority of the discussion in the House has been about ownership of local television stations. As it stands currently, if the local Fox affiliate wants to run a debate on Thursday at 8:00PM, they might bump a sitcom for political coverage.
If Fox owns all their affiliates, then there is no local decision making, and they'll never bump a sitcom for local programming. It reminds me of the legislation over telephone solicitation where political groups are exempt from the law.
On NPR today, they were interviewing a pro-consolidation radio expert. I imagine he worked for ClearChannel or something. His reasoning for why consolidation was a good thing was twofold. First of all, before consolidation, most radio stations were losing money. Second, since consolidation, there are no longer six country stations competing for the same listeners, so there is money and frequency available to new formats. Of course, if you can tell the difference between the new formats and the old formats... you've a better ear than I do.
IMHO, I don't understand the public reaction to this issue. I can't possibly imagine that our radio, television, and newspapers could ever become more homogenous than they already are. The reason for this is that it's the most profitable. I don't care if I have a local DJ playing homogenous crap, or a national DJ playing homogenous crap. It sells. That's what the people (idiots) want to listen to.
Praise Jesus that they carved out some spectrum for public radio, so I can listen to some decent music. I don't know what I'd do without college radio.
Of course, if they ever want to *actually* deregulate the airwaves, and make the same rules govern FM as govern 2.4 gHz, then I'll be pro-deregulation. 'Till then, it's just debating who gets to be the privateer.
A couple of years ago there was a university project somewhere that implimented an ENIAC on a modern chip. I wonder if the museum has that. Maybe sitting besides the original to demonstrate the rapid pace of development or something.
That was at the University of Pennsylvania. The Moore School of Electrical Engineering. They've got the schematics of the chip up on the wall next to the little Eniac museum. Their project page is here. While it was obviously a challenging and interesting project, the schematics for the chip make it look pretty simple to eyes used to Pentiums, Athlons, etc.
They also had some of the programmers for the ENIAC on hand for a few celebrations of some 50th anniversary. I really regretted not meeting them.
Bill G has always said that himself.
AFAIK, the only times Microsoft has ever used software patents have been defensively, or as FUD.
The FUD they've done amounts to, "Gosh, Linux sure is a lot of code. Sure could be some patents in there. Hell, maybe even some of *our* patents. Seems like a landmine to me." I forget where they've said that exactly, but they have.
I'd say that's pretty harmless. They've always been on the right side of the fence on this issue.
We're a wonderful, fucked up town. Come check us out before we get devoured by all the starving dot commers and crack babies.
Check out North Beach, and see all the titty bars that inspired the beat poets. And the Haight, where you can see the tattoo/piercing shops that the hippies came from. In the Mission district, you can see the crackheads that originally founded the city of San Francisco, when California was still owned by Mexico.
It's like Naples, with fog instead of smog. And we have street cleaning. Ok, sometimes we have street cleaning. And our crime is much less organized.
No, just buy SCO shares, and sue all the execs when they become worthless. They're already rich. Not giving them millions more is hardly punishment enough.
Take it all away.
If it weren't for those nasty college kids with Kazaa, that sort of thing wouldn't...
Wait a second...
Yeah, more or less. A few of my friends have iBooks, and I'd love for them just open up and run. Also, my roommates have two computers, and I'd prefer to never, ever, ever have to touch them.
I've got a project computer that never seems to be running the same operating system for over a month or two.
If it were just my machines, I'd probably be fine without DHCP. It's just so convenient.
Unfortunately, with my NAT box, that means I have to turn off DHCP. I don't want to give up that convenience.
I realize that part of my problem may be unique, but still, many, many potential peers out there are not peers, simply because they can't receive transfer requests.
I've never understood why my Gnutella clients won't let me poll an ultrapeer for push requests (a la AOL IM file transfers). Maybe it's in the protocol, but I've never seen it happen. It still wouldn't let me transfer files to another user behind NAT, but it'd be a step up.