Hey, 6 months of a several-hundred-dollar product for $1.50 isn't so bad... If you're anti-piracy, but want to use a Microsoft product that you can't afford right now, it sounds like quite a price-reasonable way to go.
While I find some of Microsoft's business practices to be anticompetitive, handing over monies to governments isn't really going to do anything. Giving money to competitors won't help anything, since they won't learn to be competitive with handouts...
Honest question, not trolling... I'm wondering what they should really be doing, besides forcing Microsoft to stop doing business in member states as long as they remain noncompliant, perhaps.
The big question is who's going to be hurt by this... and I suppose that it'll be Microsoft Office users... I'd bet that the resulting PDFs from MS's implementation would probably be a bit more efficient than some of the "print to PDF" programs available for free.
Unless, of course, MS was "embracing and extending" and their PDFs look as horrible as their Save as HTML documents.
Contract law? How does a party who's never been in possession of the copyrighted content fall under any contract?
Intellectual property law should certainly be questioned. It is not a matter of the relationship of individuals with one another. It may be civil and not criminal law, but a) piracy often leads to criminal proceedings, and b) IP laws preserve the "rights" to control "property" for the public good. It is in the name of the citizens that IP rights are granted. The only rights preserved vehemently are those of the content creators or licensees, with very little respect for those of society.
Yeah, I don't think that anyone really believes that DivX copies of Meet the Fockers should be floating around the internet, but one can certainly argue that IP produced in the 1950s has more value as a public resource than it does commercial value preserved by the exclusivity of copyright.
Novell no longer has the marketing might to make such a switch happen. They're in a significantly smaller share of the business market, and can't incentivize the switch.
I think that something along the lines of an OS platform switch will have to start with companies who outsource their entire IT infrastructure to a company like IBM Global Services, where all of the "figure it out" and "just make it work" bits are Someone Else's Problem.
I know that IBM has financial ties to Novell, and has an interest in keeping it alive. I just don't know that they'll be willing to make it Their Problem on thousands of desktops.
A Texas company called Accupoll had an electronic voting device which provided a VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail), which was approved in several municipalities, and was certified HAVA (Help Americans Vote Act) compliant.
Too bad "On January 30, 2006, AccuPoll filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Pursuant to this filing, AccuPoll will cease operations and liquidate its assets. Therefore, AccuPoll voting systems are no longer available for purchase."
If you got an extra two weeks of vacation, enjoy it.
When I quit HP, they paid me to stay at home for two weeks, and my unused vacation. 6 weeks of pay for 2 weeks at home. Time to recover and prepare for my new job, buy new clothes, and figure out the bus schedule.
The professional way to handle it is to stop whining and enjoy.
Online storage is always an issue, since no matter what level of redundancy you have, if a command to erase or write over the data can be run, you're fucked. Error, virus/trojan, etc.
I'm going to have to assume that you're saying that because I must have a closed mind and hate America.
Quite to the contrary. I'm idealistic about my country, and despite that, I realize the compromises which must be made in order for it to work. Freedom to do good implies freedom to do bad. Freedom means that some will win, some will lose. Some will take advantage, and some will be taken advantage of.
If you think it's unethical to have anyone ever starve, then freedom is unethical. If you think it's unethical to deprive people of freedom, then it's unethical to force people to give to others so they won't starve.
Ethics, unfortunately, can't be compared against absolutes.
I think that we can agree that killing large groups of your population is probably unethical. Most of the industrialized world considers capital punishment unethical.
Most of the world considers terrorism to be unethical. Most of the world considers what the US and UK and others seek to do to those suspected of any involvement in terrorism unethical.
Heck, fear makes a lot of unethical things done on your behalf seem unethical.
It all comes back to compromise. Whether or not we're better than most, we also come as a country from a set of ideals embodied in a Constitution which both called a slave 3/5 of a person, but also set forth some pretty amazing principles. Luckily, we've come a long way from the former... unfortunately, we've also come too far from the latter as well.
What have we learned over the last 229 years?
We should hold ourselves to a higher standard. We should hold our neighbors to a higher standard. We should hold our country to a higher standard.
But, then again... as I said in the prior post... we have to compromise to get anything done.
If ethics mattered, companies in what other country would be dealing with the US? You can't possibly be so deluded to imagine that we're ethical. Maybe in some cases we're "more ethical", but in absolute terms, we're far from the ideal.
Compromise is necessary to get anything done, including some compromise of ideals. You do it with yourself every day.
It's just unfortunate how little traffic they have. I have a #1 result for a term on AskJeeves, and it sends me less traffic than #72 for that term on Google.
The Teoma engine (which powers AskJeeves) produces results that appear to be far better filtered than Google. It also produces fewer results, from a smaller number of total pages, but... depending on the term, it can give quite nice results.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the thing about Trojans, is that the victim installs them.
This article is complete and utter bullshit.
"VoIP" is not a single computing platform or implementation.
Hell, dude, it's even worse. Interactivity means being able to turn features on which do prerecorded things, on demand. Wow.
On-demand multiple streams of recorded content took only 35 years after videos first made it to optical discs?
Hey, 6 months of a several-hundred-dollar product for $1.50 isn't so bad... If you're anti-piracy, but want to use a Microsoft product that you can't afford right now, it sounds like quite a price-reasonable way to go.
At least they always know where their towels are, wet or not...
At least if we had him in a VM, hacking CowboyNeal wouldn't jeopardize the rest of /.
Is there something that you'd prefer?
While I find some of Microsoft's business practices to be anticompetitive, handing over monies to governments isn't really going to do anything. Giving money to competitors won't help anything, since they won't learn to be competitive with handouts...
Honest question, not trolling... I'm wondering what they should really be doing, besides forcing Microsoft to stop doing business in member states as long as they remain noncompliant, perhaps.
-Nev
Can I get stock options 2.0 for bubble 2.0? I'm in on this go-'round early enough to cash out before crash 2.0.
No, it's about using the masses as a decentralized classification system.
The big question is who's going to be hurt by this... and I suppose that it'll be Microsoft Office users... I'd bet that the resulting PDFs from MS's implementation would probably be a bit more efficient than some of the "print to PDF" programs available for free.
Unless, of course, MS was "embracing and extending" and their PDFs look as horrible as their Save as HTML documents.
Contract law? How does a party who's never been in possession of the copyrighted content fall under any contract?
Intellectual property law should certainly be questioned. It is not a matter of the relationship of individuals with one another. It may be civil and not criminal law, but a) piracy often leads to criminal proceedings, and b) IP laws preserve the "rights" to control "property" for the public good. It is in the name of the citizens that IP rights are granted. The only rights preserved vehemently are those of the content creators or licensees, with very little respect for those of society.
Yeah, I don't think that anyone really believes that DivX copies of Meet the Fockers should be floating around the internet, but one can certainly argue that IP produced in the 1950s has more value as a public resource than it does commercial value preserved by the exclusivity of copyright.
Whether or not what they do is illegal or immoral, I'm glad to see people questioning their government instead of caving.
Novell no longer has the marketing might to make such a switch happen. They're in a significantly smaller share of the business market, and can't incentivize the switch.
I think that something along the lines of an OS platform switch will have to start with companies who outsource their entire IT infrastructure to a company like IBM Global Services, where all of the "figure it out" and "just make it work" bits are Someone Else's Problem.
I know that IBM has financial ties to Novell, and has an interest in keeping it alive. I just don't know that they'll be willing to make it Their Problem on thousands of desktops.
A Texas company called Accupoll had an electronic voting device which provided a VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail), which was approved in several municipalities, and was certified HAVA (Help Americans Vote Act) compliant.
Too bad "On January 30, 2006, AccuPoll filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Pursuant to this filing, AccuPoll will cease operations and liquidate its assets. Therefore, AccuPoll voting systems are no longer available for purchase."
Maybe they're calculating it based upon "router equivalents", in the same way that RIAA calculates "burner equivalents".
Podcasting isn't a "webcast" that you can save. It's not streamed, it's downloaded. ...and webcast is an emptier word than podcast.
What the fuck is a webcast?
If you're going to be cynical, be properly cynical and stop using words that sound like buzzwords but mean absolutely nothing.
A podcast is an RSS feed with the URL of an audio file in each entry.
If you got an extra two weeks of vacation, enjoy it.
When I quit HP, they paid me to stay at home for two weeks, and my unused vacation. 6 weeks of pay for 2 weeks at home. Time to recover and prepare for my new job, buy new clothes, and figure out the bus schedule.
The professional way to handle it is to stop whining and enjoy.
Online storage is always an issue, since no matter what level of redundancy you have, if a command to erase or write over the data can be run, you're fucked. Error, virus/trojan, etc.
The LiPS (Linux Phone Standard) Forum intends to help make Linux a more standardized, interoperable mobile phone OS.
Modifying the kernel to your whim isn't the intent of this consortium. Standardization is. You appear to have missed the point of LiPS.
I'm going to have to assume that you're saying that because I must have a closed mind and hate America.
Quite to the contrary. I'm idealistic about my country, and despite that, I realize the compromises which must be made in order for it to work. Freedom to do good implies freedom to do bad. Freedom means that some will win, some will lose. Some will take advantage, and some will be taken advantage of.
If you think it's unethical to have anyone ever starve, then freedom is unethical. If you think it's unethical to deprive people of freedom, then it's unethical to force people to give to others so they won't starve.
Ethics, unfortunately, can't be compared against absolutes.
I think that we can agree that killing large groups of your population is probably unethical. Most of the industrialized world considers capital punishment unethical.
Most of the world considers terrorism to be unethical. Most of the world considers what the US and UK and others seek to do to those suspected of any involvement in terrorism unethical.
Heck, fear makes a lot of unethical things done on your behalf seem unethical.
It all comes back to compromise. Whether or not we're better than most, we also come as a country from a set of ideals embodied in a Constitution which both called a slave 3/5 of a person, but also set forth some pretty amazing principles. Luckily, we've come a long way from the former... unfortunately, we've also come too far from the latter as well.
What have we learned over the last 229 years?
We should hold ourselves to a higher standard. We should hold our neighbors to a higher standard. We should hold our country to a higher standard.
But, then again... as I said in the prior post... we have to compromise to get anything done.
If ethics mattered, companies in what other country would be dealing with the US? You can't possibly be so deluded to imagine that we're ethical. Maybe in some cases we're "more ethical", but in absolute terms, we're far from the ideal.
Compromise is necessary to get anything done, including some compromise of ideals. You do it with yourself every day.
Wasn't the information "free" when people would spread news and legend by going from town to town singing songs?
It's just unfortunate how little traffic they have. I have a #1 result for a term on AskJeeves, and it sends me less traffic than #72 for that term on Google.
The Teoma engine (which powers AskJeeves) produces results that appear to be far better filtered than Google. It also produces fewer results, from a smaller number of total pages, but... depending on the term, it can give quite nice results.
According to the distributed.net speeds page, the rc5-72 rate of an I2 1.4 is about 1Gkey/sec
Itanium 2 speeds
Since a P4M running at the same clock does 3 times as much, it wouldn't be so efficient... though we are talking about the US Gov't.
-Nev