I think they must mean MPEGs - Loki's smpeg works pretty well and far better than xanim. Now if I could just find a DGA wrapper for all my regrettably windowed movies and games -- full-screen stuff always looks better, and Loki's player doesn't do it.
Gods, did we really need another example? While this idea is kinda creepy, I can see why some people would want such a reminder of lost ones. But why is this patented? This is a computer program, not an invention that's truly original, creative, and deserves patent protection. I see no reason why someone who had the money for patent protection should be the only one who can make such a program.
You patent inventions. You copyright programs. That's the way it should be, at least. The only saving grace is that I can think of at least two examples of prior art in fiction (Adamantium by L.E. Modestitt Jr. and Dirty Pair: Fatal but Not Serious) of computer programs of the dead, and I'm sure there's more. Patent reform must be coming, sooner or later...
While I haven't used Caldera, I've installed Debian several times. Most of it seems pretty easy and about what you'll find with most distributions. It even adds a normal user for you - something Redhat visibly lacks I think. The menus of choices while installing is less than perfect, but okay.
But the package management is godawful. First, pick a role for your computer. Or if you don't like that, pick tasks. You'll still have no idea what you're picking, or how much space it adds up to. After that's done, try to use that ugly excuse for an application designed by someone who truly hates users - dpakg or whatever its hateful name is. And then it segs and drops a core somewhere halfway through the install. Debian seems to be a nice distribution, but that ugly package manager needs to die.
Of course, my favorite installers are a dead tie between Slackware and FreeBSD, so...
Re:Could you believe I used to be a republican?
on
New Cyberlaws
·
· Score: 1
Or a liberal who's sick of most other liberals' hypocrisy... but yeah, 50% right.
Try writing HTML using one of their tools and then look at it in another operating system. Quite often, it'll look fscked up because the HTML that MS programs write don't use the standard character set, but a MS one.
and the American equivalent. That's the only reason they don't like crypto. If the US Govt really wants to get at what you're doing, they will. Forget crypto, just use Van Ecks/TEMPEST and grab everything off the monitors. Or just bug their house.
The fine line between security and fascism is simple: is it automated? Cause I don't really care what the govt' intercepts as long as they have to go through each and every message by hand. Let them. It's when they hook it up to an automated system that makes it easy and convenient to break our civil liberties that you have to watch out.
Okay, maybe I'm just being paranoid, but does anyone else find the following quotes a little scary?
Proponents said a larger U.S. investment in nanotechnology, which promises major advances in electronics, materials, biomedicine and national security
trade-offs between military and civilian research will have to be made
How exactly are they planning on having national security enhanced by nanotechnology, and in what capability are the military researching nanotech? Miniature cameras that float through the air, killer nanites to assassinate dictators, total interdiction of the border similar to the NeoVictorian border in The Diamond Age? Thing is, those ideas only took a second, and I'm sure the govt. has far more people far more inventive then me thinking about possible uses already.
What about little bombs implanted in every citizen's cortex that explode on signal in conjunction with biomedical chips (already being researched) that tap into the ocular nerve (nerve interfaces exist - look up the old technology of cochlear implants and the new ones of ocular implants), scan for forbidden words using a newfangled version of OCR, and then blow the cortex if the wrong ones are found. Paranoid fantasy? I know. It's just an example of what could happen.
This better be damn open - would you trust closed source for running the nanomachines that control your body? Not necessarily GPL, but... what an opportunity this will be. All those Metal Ages, The Atomic Age, The Nano Age...
answers this question. Not to ruin it for anyone, but basically the Dirty Pair (Lovely Angels!) finish off an opponent continually repaired by internal nanomachines by beating the crap out of him - to the point where the heat from the repair broils him and the entire system overheats. If you can stand the fact that it's an American redo of a Japanese series, it's pretty entertaining.
Other good fictional examinations of nanotechnology include The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (If you haven't read it, why are you reading slashdot? Go get his books!), Steel Beach by John Varley, the comic series Transmetropolitan and Gunmn/Battle Angel Alita (Name varies by country), and the incredibly inventively named anthology Nanotech. I suggest all of these strongly except for the last; it's wildly varying in quality, just check it out if possible.
If I remember correctly, 'Japan' comes from Marco Polo and his travels. Somehow, the Chinese word for the country mutated into Japan when brought back to Europe.
One day... and that was after an all-night rave. Now I'm just waiting for his next book, containing the two subplots he couldn't add in due to book size restraints, to come out so I can have some real time reading again.
While this is great news, and I'll be rejoicing with my friends if this passes, there's one part about it that's less than perfect.
In Congress specifying that we have a right to use encryption of any length or method, we acknowledge that we are given the right to do that, and the possibility that it will be revoked at a later date/during 'emergency' periods. I'd much prefer a stronger protection, although I'm encouraged by its summary as an "affirmation" of the right to use encryption.
One possible argument comes from the US Govt. itself and its restrictions on exporting crypto: they claim it's a munition. Could that mean the 2nd Amendment applies to encryption?
Ah well. I'm just playing devil's advocate. I will be ecstatic if this passes. I think I just found out which House members are getting my vote in 2000.
Losing a war doesn't equal massacre. We didn't drag German women and children out and kill them.
As for France - guess what! They had gun control at the time, including registration of every gun owner and his/her weapons. So when the Nazis went in, they grabbed the lists, found the owners and told them to give up their weapons or die. The French resistance still managed to play a role.
As for the Vietnamese - are you honestly telling me the average Vietnamese had weapons that he personally owned? No, Ho Chi Minh armed them - and like it or not, they drove off the US Army. I wouldn't call that a massacre.
Just because they can fight back doesn't mean they're not being oppressed. Removing the means to oppress them, on the other hand might help. A fact all too many people seem all to happy to ignore.
Just as much as gun control advocates fail to realize that such laws have to be enforced with guns - and governments have killed and oppressed far more than individual citizens. It's not like those weapons are being removed as well. Unless you're advocating global pacifism, this is a bogus argument.
Did you ever learn, in history class or otherwise, what happened in Warsaw during the Holocaust?
A few guns and molotov cocktails enabled one Jewish ghetto to drive off the entire might of the German army around Warsaw for months. They had to raise the entire neighbourhood just to get at them. Read about it here and realize that you're desperately wrong. Makes me damn glad that side of my family got out of Germany before it was too late - and came back later as members of the US army to crush the Nazis.
Oh, and do me a favor. If guns don't prevent tyranny, name one heavily-armed group that's been massacred in large numbers.
Actually, I personally thought she was pretty painful to watch. Kinda had a "Why am I saying these lines?" attitude. She didn't seem to get into the same spirit that the woman from the first movie did, even if she was a Fembot.
Che... I hate to say it, but something like this exists for Win9x. The new PGP 6.0i (always go for the International version!) has a PGPDisk which creates encrypted drives that unmount when a key combination is hit or a screensaver goes on.
Hopefully, a similar product will be come from them for Un*x type OSes soon.
Works fine until you run into the wacko libertarian fanatics that would rather die an unpleasant death than give in. Same with any other group this could happen to: a poison tooth's always effective.
Actual (well, paraphrased) conversation I overheard:
Parent: So, this PGP key you made for me, what's the chances of it being broken?
Child: Universe will die of heat-death first. Only real chance anyone would have is to get the passphrase.
Parent: So, if the NSA held my life for your passphrase?
Child: Oh, I'd give it to them... Parent sighs right now. I haven't done anything that would justify that... yet. Mutterings of 'paranoia'
Mmm. But unlike any other OS that has a shot at World Domination, Linux's distributions should provide enough competition to keep everyone honest. I believe it's worked so far - Red Hat spoke about how afraid they were of upsetting us, the developers and users. It's relatively easy to change from one distribution to another, so they have to keep us happy.
Little note: there's a difference between completed product and working code. Let me explain. Of course they want help. I've given help, programming and creative, to other OSS projects before. I'm perfectly willing to play around with buggy, barely compiling code with few features. But what I'm saying, and I wish these projects would do it - have something to play with before making announcement about grandiose plans. Linus did. After you have something, then the community can help. I've had my own ideas before, but no code - no project. I freely admit - I don't have the skills to just start something like this - but once they've released something, then everyone can do the community effort thing.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I wish them luck (They've got Penn&Teller for voice actors! How cool is that?), but give people a little something that compiles first.
I hate to be pessimistic, but there's been announcement of open-source games before. What was it, Altima? It got swallowed into the Worldforge project, and while it's developing nicely (Gonna have to dl and compile it tonight), isn't yet anything revolutionary.. yet.
This announcement seem a little too PRish for me. They haven't even got the game engine they want to base it on complete yet, and storyline and plot are cheap. (Hey, I've got a million idea lying around.) What am I trying to say? Show Me The Code, and then an announcement is appropiate, so all we little eager Linux beaver can download, compile and bitch about bugs to be improved.
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I think they must mean MPEGs - Loki's smpeg works pretty well and far better than xanim. Now if I could just find a DGA wrapper for all my regrettably windowed movies and games -- full-screen stuff always looks better, and Loki's player doesn't do it.
You patent inventions.
You copyright programs.
That's the way it should be, at least. The only saving grace is that I can think of at least two examples of prior art in fiction (Adamantium by L.E. Modestitt Jr. and Dirty Pair: Fatal but Not Serious) of computer programs of the dead, and I'm sure there's more. Patent reform must be coming, sooner or later...
But the package management is godawful. First, pick a role for your computer. Or if you don't like that, pick tasks. You'll still have no idea what you're picking, or how much space it adds up to. After that's done, try to use that ugly excuse for an application designed by someone who truly hates users - dpakg or whatever its hateful name is. And then it segs and drops a core somewhere halfway through the install. Debian seems to be a nice distribution, but that ugly package manager needs to die.
Of course, my favorite installers are a dead tie between Slackware and FreeBSD, so...
Or a liberal who's sick of most other liberals' hypocrisy... but yeah, 50% right.
Or am I the only to ever hear Stallman sing the Free Software Song? It's out there somewhere, as well as the techno remix... *shudder*
My big gripe here is: the mother fscking said, "They can see it." If your parents say OK, why can't the theaters get over it?
For details, see Tom Christiansen's site.
So why bother?
The fine line between security and fascism is simple: is it automated? Cause I don't really care what the govt' intercepts as long as they have to go through each and every message by hand. Let them. It's when they hook it up to an automated system that makes it easy and convenient to break our civil liberties that you have to watch out.
Proponents said a larger U.S. investment in nanotechnology, which promises major advances in electronics, materials, biomedicine and national security
trade-offs between military and civilian research will have to be made
How exactly are they planning on having national security enhanced by nanotechnology, and in what capability are the military researching nanotech? Miniature cameras that float through the air, killer nanites to assassinate dictators, total interdiction of the border similar to the NeoVictorian border in The Diamond Age? Thing is, those ideas only took a second, and I'm sure the govt. has far more people far more inventive then me thinking about possible uses already.
What about little bombs implanted in every citizen's cortex that explode on signal in conjunction with biomedical chips (already being researched) that tap into the ocular nerve (nerve interfaces exist - look up the old technology of cochlear implants and the new ones of ocular implants), scan for forbidden words using a newfangled version of OCR, and then blow the cortex if the wrong ones are found. Paranoid fantasy? I know. It's just an example of what could happen.
This better be damn open - would you trust closed source for running the nanomachines that control your body? Not necessarily GPL, but... what an opportunity this will be. All those Metal Ages, The Atomic Age, The Nano Age...
Other good fictional examinations of nanotechnology include The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (If you haven't read it, why are you reading slashdot? Go get his books!), Steel Beach by John Varley, the comic series Transmetropolitan and Gunmn/Battle Angel Alita (Name varies by country), and the incredibly inventively named anthology Nanotech. I suggest all of these strongly except for the last; it's wildly varying in quality, just check it out if possible.
If I remember correctly, 'Japan' comes from Marco Polo and his travels. Somehow, the Chinese word for the country mutated into Japan when brought back to Europe.
One day... and that was after an all-night rave. Now I'm just waiting for his next book, containing the two subplots he couldn't add in due to book size restraints, to come out so I can have some real time reading again.
Try turning off your Java und JavaScript. Worked for me.
In Congress specifying that we have a right to use encryption of any length or method, we acknowledge that we are given the right to do that, and the possibility that it will be revoked at a later date/during 'emergency' periods. I'd much prefer a stronger protection, although I'm encouraged by its summary as an "affirmation" of the right to use encryption.
One possible argument comes from the US Govt. itself and its restrictions on exporting crypto: they claim it's a munition. Could that mean the 2nd Amendment applies to encryption?
Ah well. I'm just playing devil's advocate. I will be ecstatic if this passes. I think I just found out which House members are getting my vote in 2000.
As for France - guess what! They had gun control at the time, including registration of every gun owner and his/her weapons. So when the Nazis went in, they grabbed the lists, found the owners and told them to give up their weapons or die. The French resistance still managed to play a role.
As for the Vietnamese - are you honestly telling me the average Vietnamese had weapons that he personally owned? No, Ho Chi Minh armed them - and like it or not, they drove off the US Army. I wouldn't call that a massacre.
Just because they can fight back doesn't mean they're not being oppressed. Removing the means to oppress them, on the other hand might help. A fact all too many people seem all to happy to ignore.
Just as much as gun control advocates fail to realize that such laws have to be enforced with guns - and governments have killed and oppressed far more than individual citizens. It's not like those weapons are being removed as well. Unless you're advocating global pacifism, this is a bogus argument.
A few guns and molotov cocktails enabled one Jewish ghetto to drive off the entire might of the German army around Warsaw for months. They had to raise the entire neighbourhood just to get at them. Read about it here and realize that you're desperately wrong. Makes me damn glad that side of my family got out of Germany before it was too late - and came back later as members of the US army to crush the Nazis.
Oh, and do me a favor. If guns don't prevent tyranny, name one heavily-armed group that's been massacred in large numbers.
Actually, I personally thought she was pretty painful to watch. Kinda had a "Why am I saying these lines?" attitude. She didn't seem to get into the same spirit that the woman from the first movie did, even if she was a Fembot.
Hopefully, a similar product will be come from them for Un*x type OSes soon.
Actual (well, paraphrased) conversation I overheard:
Parent: So, this PGP key you made for me, what's the chances of it being broken?
Child: Universe will die of heat-death first. Only real chance anyone would have is to get the passphrase.
Parent: So, if the NSA held my life for your passphrase?
Child: Oh, I'd give it to them... Parent sighs right now. I haven't done anything that would justify that... yet. Mutterings of 'paranoia'
Beware. I've heard that double-encrypting messages can actually lower the strength. IANACryptologist, but check before doing this.
...We'll stripmine the rest of the planets later"
Mmm. But unlike any other OS that has a shot at World Domination, Linux's distributions should provide enough competition to keep everyone honest. I believe it's worked so far - Red Hat spoke about how afraid they were of upsetting us, the developers and users. It's relatively easy to change from one distribution to another, so they have to keep us happy.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I wish them luck (They've got Penn&Teller for voice actors! How cool is that?), but give people a little something that compiles first.
This announcement seem a little too PRish for me. They haven't even got the game engine they want to base it on complete yet, and storyline and plot are cheap. (Hey, I've got a million idea lying around.) What am I trying to say? Show Me The Code, and then an announcement is appropiate, so all we little eager Linux beaver can download, compile and bitch about bugs to be improved.