I'm canadian and have nothing against mullets. It just sounded cool as a generic name.
It's racist. It shows your true colors.
If you don't want your kids to be badly influenced by something, be a parent and tell them about it, dammit. It's not by shielding them from reality that you'll achieve anything. Next you'll be in favor of burning "dangerous" books and putting people in jail for thought crimes.
I am not in favor of GOVERNMENT burning anything. Reality is not a person telling you to beat up women, rape them, kill them, burn their bodies, and sell them into prostitution. Reality is not extolling the virtues of killing cops. Reality is NOT what is being sold often. You can tell your children about all the bad things AND still enforce a policy of them not induldging in massively damaging messages of violence, rap, obscenity, sex, and immorality. Telling a child one thing - no matter how often - and then throwing them to the pop culture wolves - is a stupid, mis-guided, and ultimately failure-bound policy.
putting people in jail for thought crimes.
No, that's the GOVERNMENT again. I am however, supportive of my right to purchase media that conforms to my own political, moral, and social views.
I just hope you are not the kind of person who is offended by sex on the TV and finds it okay for his kids to watch terminator.
I think simulated violence is a *much* bigger problem than sexual content.
But I do have something against censorship and the "I know better than you what you need" folks like you who accept it as something normal and good.
Well you haven't said what in a way that makes sense. If I want my children to have unfiltered access to popular culture, that's fine, I know how to provide that. Wal-Mart fills a role that real actual people want, and find valuable. An organization able to filter that *massive* amount of pop-culture that is advertised to the masses.
Nice troll.
In any case, you are the troll. You've exposed yourself as a racist, and a person who builds up strawmen by implying that support of Wal-Mart censorsing indicates a support for "book burning" and "jailing people for thought crimes".
For joe mullet that lives in a small town that doesn't have indie music stores and such, wall-mart is often the place when he first discovers music (at age 11 or whatever). If all they carry is a "weeded out" selection, it could affect his tastes for years and reduce his horizons quite a bit.
See, the problem here, is that you are clearly and elitist asshole - at least that is how your post places you.
"Joe Mullet" is a racial slur against what you clearly consider "small town" ignorant trash.
It seems to me that you are most upset that people support Wal-Mart's censorship. The fact is that Wal-Mart recognizes that parents have an interest in censoring what their children hear. This is the market that Wal-Mart is targetting. The parents of "Joe Mullet" who is an 11 old have taken an interest in his upbringing and have decided that Wal-Mart can effectively censor what their child hears. It seems clear that you hate that prospect. You want him to be able to "expand his horizons" despite his parents wishes. You think he should have access to any type of vile, violent, brash, foul, obscene, and damn to anyone who gets in the way of that.
Well here is a news flash: individuals trust Wal-Mart to censor the unabridged crap that most record labels attempt to sell. Parents trust Wal-Mart to filter the bile that is marketed to their kids.
And YES, it does pressure artists to conform. That's the whole point. That's their stated goal. You want to be sold at Wal-Mart? Meet these parameters. Just like towels, just like bannana's, just like motor oil.
So get over it. People are all for it. Previewing and approving music before letting "Joe Mullet" 11-year old buy it is time consuming, expensive, and fraught with omissions and errors. Wal-mart will do it, and Americans are happy to let them.
The API in question is the Inet interface provided by Internet Explorer since IE4.0.. it isn't a "standard", nor is it published anywhere outside of MS, nor is it sanctioned by any standards body. It's just an API they created to allow developers to use IE's HTML rendering engine.
It is not covered under the settlment.
So... WHAT EXACTLY is your reference to Konq/Moz and how is it relevant?
So say what you will about jerkoffs writing pop-up spam not being able to access the pop up manager, i'm firmly placing myself in the skeptic arena.
Okay, well, we will have to see. That's going to take some time. The theory is sound. And historically you can't run API that accesses ActiveX that is not scripting safe from the IE. There have been numerous bugs, but they have all been patched as far as I can tell.
HTML writers - web page authors - cannot just bypass the pop-up manager changes. The new interface they reference is for applications that use IE to render HTML. This new interface is part of the Win32 API essentially, and cannot just be called willy-nilly from a webpage (just like any piece of Win32 API).
The little FAQ snippet makes this distinction bu but not very clearly. For app-developers this means that instead of using a little piece of Javascript to open a window they will have to hitch into the API to create a new window.
Basically its just a move to allow app-developers to still use the renderer in an effective way with minimal code changes. Most developers I know however do not use the HTML engine to open new windows. They instead create a new window with API or a language construct and then assign a new instance of the IE activex object to that handle. It's a much more reliable way of opening new HTML windows in applications.
If only there was some type of document, or article, that laid out the facts of the case.. it'd make things so clear and straightforward. I mean, gosh, wouldn't be nice if a person interviewed the relevant people and put the results in some type of hyperlinked document attached to this story?
We did *not* support (we = the US) the Taliban. We supported the mujamehedin. These people were fighting against the Russians *invasion* of thier country with the intent of gaining strategic advantage.
What we did do was train uneducated non-military regulars (aka, today's terrorists or insurgents) in non-conventional warfare (aka, terrorism).
The Thing of It is that we were completly justified. The afgan's were being repressed terribly. The US was unable to intervene directly because of world politicans and nuclear complications.
What happened after the CIA left Afganistan is that a fundamentalist extremely brutal system of clerical control assumed power in the vacuum left by the USSR. Since the Soviets tried to supress all religion in the Afganistan the people and rulers basically turned as far opposite of that as possible.
"The Taliban" was essentially, as we know it, a milita or clan of armed men bribed by clerics to support their rule.
There is a lot of bad information floating around about how we supported the Taliban etc etc. In Mike Moore's movie and speeches he has repeated it, telling people the US support the Taliban with cash contributions for stopping heroin production. In fact, the US didnt even recognize the Tabliban as a legit government. Any foreign aide to Afganistan was distributed by NGOs like the UN and Red Crescent.
2) Technologically experienced people refer to an OS by the correct name simply because of their disdain for the opposition.
That's false I believe. There are millions of people out there who know exactly what Windows, Mac OS, and Linux are, and call thme by there proper names because, well, that's their name. Not to discredit Windows. That assumption is absurd and drastically general. It presumes to know that *everyone* who knows about alternatives implicitly dislikes Windows, which is provably false.
1) Technopolitically untainted people DO call other GUIs "Windows"
If they do, its out of error, not because they generally think of the GUI as "Windows". If you received a random phone call from any computer user randomly selected, and they asked you a question about "Windows", you personally could say with 99% level of confidence they are reffering to a MS product, couldn't you?
But they do refer to their window managers and GUIs by that "generic" term. There are many people that don't disassociate their GUI OS interface from the underlying OS, hence XWindows is really just a part of the operating system to them.
But that number is very small, as in, the number of people (who at the heyday of Xerox) who correctly identified Xerox machines and non-Xerox machines.
Today, if you receive call from any random person, complaining about a problem with "Windows", you know with 99% level of confidence they are talking about a Microsoft product, right?
I have never made a "xerox" before, and when people use that I word incorrectly I correct them.
However, "xerox", like "band-aid" was deemed to have become part of the American lexicon, used to refer to products of a genre rather than a brand. People using Mac OS X or Linux don't call their OS "Windows" like MS customers do. That's the defining test.
Windows is context of computer software is not a generic term. It has been made specific. Even if it is not a valid trademark for purposes of genericity, it is clear that Lindows was and is attempting to capitialize on the name similiarity.
I find it ironic that you talk about movies on your homepage yet say you could care less if they dissapear.
They are not important to the matter of my life. If they disappeared I would not be affected for the worse. Seeing a movie or two doesn't mean they are a substantial part of my life.
You also claim that customers are being abused. Again, the market determines that under capitalism.
Two things. First, rights are endowed by our creator, not by the economy. The US Constitution guarantees our rights to fair use. The media industry is constantly working to undermine that. Hence abuse.
Second, the media industry does not operate under capitalism. It is a natural monopoly. It operates under *entirely* different rules.
No one is forcing people to watch movies. No one is taking money away from them.
No and yes. I never claimed they are being forced. However, value is being removed. The realm of what is legal to do with purchased media has declined. That loss of value is what the media industry calls piracy for them. For us, it's theft.
In any case, you clearly fit into the example that I cited: right-wing groups unhappy with liberal movies and hence want to see the destruction of Hollywood.
I couldnt care less about the liberal/not liberal aspect of Hollywood. I would love to see their destruction because of the meddlesome holier-than-thou atmosphere they project as well as the tangible harm they do to the nation abroad. For many peoples across the world all they know of America is it's media. And that cause lots and lots of problems, since the media is not an accurate representation of America. Imagine if all you knew of America was what you saw on "Will and Grace" or "Friends". Would you admire America?
Blaming Hollywood for being "meddelsome, condescending, elistist, racist, and obnoxious" is kind of lame, given that every other industry is like that. In fact, there are other industries that are far worse.
There are other industiries that are worse, but not many and not by much. Especially considering the size and influence ratio. They wield an unbelievable large club for such a small industry. And in terms of international influence I mentioned, they are pratically lethal. They have lobbied for more drastic legal changes than other industry out there. They meddle more than *any* other industry. Most industries goal is to stay far far far from government intervention or regulation. Now that the top down distrubition model of the media industry is threatened, they have to go screaming for uneeded laws that will not only 100% secure them of a prosperus future, but in fact increase their dominance and power to new levels. They are demanding a complete top-down reworking of *every* digital device created by the US for the purpose of protecting their works. In effect they want to cripple US high-tech industry (which is 100's of time bigger than the media industry), the software industry, the artistic community, the web industry, and stiffle innovation across dozens of fronts to protect thier monopoly on distribution. That is why I would be happy to see them take a hit. It's tim they realized they are *not* the most important industry in this country.
If you really weren't going to buy it or weren't interested, you wouldn't even use it/hear it/listen to it
When I do use it/listen to it, it's incidental. I couldn't care less. Literally, it's one way or another and I don't care.
If anything, you are simply behaving the way you do because the technologies that permit you to share/enjoy exist.
I actually dont pirate, cause like I said, I don't care. I dont enjoy the media, it's mostly crap. And seperating crap from not is hard.
Consider the following example. I'll never buy a Ferrari. But let me just take it out for a spin. I'll return it in the same condition.
Go to a dealership. Ask for a test drive. So long as they think you aren't going to steal it, you can do exactly that. Really, really, really bad analogy.
Or how about software? Do you extend that view to software too? Should anyone be paying for ANY software?
I am all for enforcing personally made contracts. Most software you pay for you agree to a contract with additional limitations on top of copyright - an EULA. I agree to no such limitations with DVDs, Magazines, or CDs.
That is NOT true under capitalism. Everyone will be impacted. Remember, any wage is permitted under capitalism (although government intervention and worker movements impact this somewhat via minimum wage laws, etc). If a company loses money, they won't just cut the high salary personnel! They generally do across the board cuts. Layoff people, make them work harder, lower their wages, etc. Have you looked at other industries? Who loses when a company struggles? Do CEOs lose their jobs, or get their wages cut?
The fact is that there is not much fat that doesn't relate to top stars in a movie. There just isn't. If you want a movie, you need a certain number of people. In a lot of movies that number is as low or damn near as low as possible already. They've been squeezing them for *decades* in case you haven't been paying attention. The only place that hasn't felt the pinch of more movies and less audience is the top tier actors. They will be the first to feel a real pinch.
Apart from the fact that you are either cruel or jealous (like the latter), you can already do that. If you pirate movies, you WILL impact these actors (along with countless other workers). Of course, you need to get a movement going but it is quite within the power. There are already many right-wing anti-Hollywood movements that boycott.
No, I am not cruel. I have a sense of justice. Hollywood has been a meddelsome, condescending, elistist, racist, and obnoxious sore on this country for decades. They walk about moaning about how important the industry is, and how everyone must bend all of the laws to fit their silly needs. Well, frankly, it's time they realized they aren't a significantly large industry (small than all heavy industry, computers, software, video games, and lots of other stuff) to demand as much law making as they ask for. And best yet, they can go to pot for all I care. You abuse customers long enough, hard enough, and given the opportunity they will fuck you back when they can.
A big problem with this whole idea of OSS, and then measuring it against traditional metrics, is the issue of motiviation/demand.
In a corporate setting, programmers are coding because "That's my job". People say "I am a programmer". They get paid for it, money, career, fullfillment, retirement, are the goals.
In the OSS world, the motivations are vast. For some its fun. I like to program. Why not give away a piece of my hobby to others? I don't need it. For some its profit. If I write this program maybe a corporate sponsor will back me, or maybe individuals will donate to me. For yet others its anti-someone-else-ism. If I write this it'll be the gutter for Microsoft.
This is all well and good. The problem is that in the first setting it is much easier to get someone to do something hard and unrewarding. Write a device driver for a crappy USB chip? Yessir. Write and update a comprehensive design document? No problem-o.
In the OSS world, there is a glut of people working on fun projects - or projects that are rewarding. You have dozens of people working on chat programs. You have a strong number of people working on projects that will thumb MS in the eye- OpenOffice for one.
But in the OSS world, there isn't a lot of work going into unfun projects - and the work that is being done mostly by corporate sponsors (who can say, again, 'do this' to a programmer for hire).
Examples come to mind: in the closed source world there is plenty of really good desktop publishing software. In the open source world, it's not a fun project. It's hard. It requires lots of industry knowledge. It's a small market and therefore a small pool of programmers. It's unrewarding - you won't have a cult of personality like Linus. Another example already mentioned is device drivers. Even when documentation exisits getting a really nice high-quality device driver is somewhat rare. It is easy to cut corners and implement only what is needed for a specific job.
This is an important thing. A lot of small companies I've seen have been turned off about using OSS as a development model because expectations are high. Just because a product is released as OSS doesn't mean developers will flock to aid the project.
This disparity in motivation can lead to a hard time quantifying results. A project that is fun, high profile, or highly profitable will have excellent results compared to a typical corporate project. A project that is non-fun, not likely to go anywhere, but somewhat more "down and dirty" is likely to fall far far behind commerical development standards.
Every time a media product is pirated takes away some of the incentive for the production company to make more.
Liar. Liar. Liar. I am going to make this real clear. I *never* buy certian magazines or music products. However, if I read an article in a magazine at my friends house the publisher is not being ripped off. Likewise for music, or a DVD.
In those cases I got the benefit but paid nothing. Zero. Zilch.
Now, what *exactly* is the difference if that MP3 was e-mailed to me? Nothing. None. I still didnt buy it (I wasnt going to, anyways), and they still didnt sell it.
The same thought extends to P2P.
There is no way in hell I am paying for $14, or $12, or $9 CD. Period. Not-going-to-happen. I havent bought a mass produced CD for myself in... well, probably ever (if you dont count 2nd hand CDs).
The fact is that a download does not constitute a lost sale. It *may*, but it does'nt necessarily mean a sale was lost.
One last point: the main effect of pirating movies and lost revenues that may occur from it will be a reduction of top-tier movie stars. Regardless of what these bozo's in the ad campaigns tell you, there jobs are not really at risk. You need light guys, you need sound guys, you need reel guys, stunt guys, etc. You *have* to have them. You do not need to pay an actor $25-million instead of $22.5 million, or $20 million, or $10 million.
In fact, if I knew that my pirating would induce a Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis or Susan Sarandon to lose a few million bucks over a course career, I'd be doing it for sport.
and then screw around for the rest of the year.
Umm.. no.
They mostly have other seasonal summer jobs.. like landscaping, truck driving, auto-repair (which in N.E. is a pretty seasonal gig actually), etc.
300/hr is great, but chances are, thats a handful of nights per season. Even if you make $1500-2000 grand for a night, you have to pay for the truck, the gas, the insurance, plus leave enough for you to live on.
It's not a bad deal, but still... its not work 10 nights a year have 355 off.
When you only *recount* (as in, the count, the recount, and then the *recount) selected areas - areas which one candidate believes he will gain a number of significant votes - that is undemocratic. Every vote deserves to have the same standard applied to it, and you simply cannot count one vote in one county with one standard and apply a seperate standard to another vote in another county. Each vote demands the same level of consideration and deserves the same standard.
It's not "one-sided", it's unjust and illegal.
Have you tried OCR lately? It requires a human check to weed out the mistakes.
When the margin of a vote is within the margin of error on a counting machine, an automatic recount is triggered by law (in MOST states). So of course, those cases deserve a hand-recount.
Frankly, the election was so close across the country (several electoral votes going one way or the other by less than 2,000 votes) that it is absurd for anyone to think we *truly* know who won the election.
Because everyone knows its more important for a president to have a good personality rather than havve policies that are good for the country
Did I say that? Why did you right that? Starting with "Because" indicates that you are rebutting what I said.. but I can't figure out what you are responding to..
, that doesnt mean he was best qualified for the job
I have news for you, I'd be willing to be bet that in the last 100 years there hasn't been a single president elected that was the the most qualified for the job.
and it certainly doesnt mean hes not running the country into the ground now.
Did I claim elsewise?
Why did you post again? Just to piss and moan or what?
Re:So wait
on
AOL's $299 PC
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
OTOH, maybe someone would like to have a computer cost $199 instead of $299 and be willing to learn.
Um... I have negioted deals for XP in bulk before, and, it is not $100 more expensive than Lindows. Windows XP home in bulk does not cost $199 retail or $99 retail that you see in stores. If you buy 10,000 copies you can get it for about $42. I am sure Lindows is cheaper, but not enough to lower the price $100 per unit...
I was going to college in NH during the last election.. I met *every* single candidate for President on the primary ballots in NH at least *two* times, including G.W. Bush three times, including a sitdown-meal, a five-person roundtable, and a 35-person private reception.
I can say this clearly: by far, he was *the* most likeable, *the* most personable, *the* most appealing candidate on the surface. We talked about lots of things, including politics, policies, big issues, local issues, etc. He was literate, considerate, and lucid at all times.
Gore, whom I met twice (one sit down meal, one private reception of about 50, total time spent was probably 2 hrs), was stiff, unfunny, whiny, condescending, and came off as overplanned. He called over the photographer several times for "candid" photo-ops. He gesticulated wildly hoping to get caught on camera in a typical political moment - you know, mouth open, looking smart, hands waving, looking concerned but involved in a pro-active way - and often succeeding.
Bradely was brillant. McCain was fun and witty and likeable. But Bush shone.
Was the election a popularity content? Who knows. But Bush definately can win a room.
(*) everyone = riaa/mpaa members, msft themselves, anyone who pays premium prices to develop software using msft tool
If you and me enter in a contract for me to sell you some data, I have to trust you that you will follow the terms we set forth. When I download and distribute GPL'd code, the original author trusts me to follow the GPL.
The core of NGSCB is that the hardware will use encryption to enforce the terms set forth on a piece of data.
The way this works is really pretty simple but involved:
1. A piece of hardware loads some code. It performs mathemetical calculations to produce a hash for this code. It is stored in a piece of memory that is only able to phsyically be written once per boot. It can be read again and again, but only set once per phsyiscal power on.
2. That same piece of hardware executes the program.
3. That program loads the OS and iniates the system.
4. A piece of "trusted application code" is started and is executed in the new piece of hardware in such a manner that the rest of the OS and all other trusted applications cannot see its inner workings. It is essentially executed in a phsyscially seperate CPU core. ALl of the memory associated with this application is encrypted by hardware and phsyically seperated from other trusted applications and non-trusted uses (OS, other apps, etc).
5. The trusted code then checks the write-once piece of memory and validates that it trusts the hash of the original code loaded before the OS. If it does, it is free to continue. If not, it aborts (presumbably, that is up to the developer.. they could decide what action to take)..
6. The trusted code then can create and/or access sealed storage areas, which are hardware encrypted data stored on any media - optical, magnetic, flash, etc.
In effect this will allow developers to ensure that only applications they want can access certain data.
MS could use this to lock users into Word/Office/whatever. As long as the all the network traffic, file interchange, converters, etc all run as trusted code, and all data storage is done in sealed space, 100% control of the data by the trusted application code is possible.
As for your other crap:
That includes forcing us to use a BIOS that will only "trust" their OS and thus render most hardware useless except for Windows.
Umm.. no. The system is simple, and there are NO technical barriers to an alternative OS using the same hardware to get to the same point. In fact, 100% of the code involved could be in fact open source, as well as the hardware design, since the system relies on heavy strong encryption for security. That is a good thing.
The test will be what LEGAL challenges MS will employ to keep this technology locked up for just them. There is nothing about this forces "us" to trust "them". But the whole idea of the system is that application code decides how and where the data assigned to it (whether it be video, music, text - whatever) is used. This means you could create a music download system that is 100% crptographically secure or an Office suite that you can never migrate from. It means that applications can force you lock in and that there is no pratical way to get yourself out.
But important things to note are:
A. There is no central trusting authority. No one has to sign all "trusted code". Thats a good thing. All trusted code does not have access to all sealed data. There is a 11 correlation. Trusted app #1 cannot read data from trusted app #2, and vice versa.
B. Under a system like this, sealed data is secure from just about every known attack. Without hardware modification (and they've comitted to hardened physical hardware specs), sealed data would be unable to be accessed by anything other than a specific binary. That rules out most virus vectors, malicious user vectors, and buggy-3rd-party app v
(*) everyone = riaa/mpaa members, msft themselves, anyone who pays premium prices to develop software using msft tool
That is just the stupidest thing, ever.
The whole point of this whole system is that you dont have to run trusted software, that the *hardware* physically will protect the system from divulging that data which is protected. Using encryption and a special piece of hardware, data that is sealed can only be accessed by software that has the proper key. The point being that there is no required central authority. Any piece of software that runs in the trusted mode of hardware would create it's own sealed data storage area (effectively just hard drive storage space but tightly protected using strong encryption.. but possibly this could be flash, optical media, anything).
I am sure there will be pimping involved, but essentially, the idea of the system is that hardware allows code to execute on the CPU in a way that it can't be spied on (debugged, register checked, etc), allows that code to easily open encrypted storage that only it can access in the future, and communicate securely over a network with a host for data interchange.
For a good example, see the iTunes hack dreamed up Jon. Under a Palladium/NGSCB system iTunes would run as a trusted mode app, and therefore, the code could not be spied in on. It would create storage space for the music you download and store it using strong encryption. It would decode and playback music using the sealed storage and protected code mechanisms of the nexus and send music through a protected pathway (essentially an all digital sound-system which only coverts back to analog at the last late phase - in the speaker itself).
The bottom line being that the iTunes hack of tapping into the stream of music after decryption and writing to a parallel file would be impossible. Additionally most decent analog hole tricks would be eliminated.
Now, this begs a bigger question about the ethics of copy protection - meaning essentially, are we serious about it or do we just like to pretend we have it - but on a technical level and a practical level, it is *very* secure in terms of unauthorized access to code and data.
I'd love to run a personal finance package as a trusted app with my data stored as sealed storage. I could ensure that no other app could spy on my data, it wouldn't be comprised if I forget to apply the latest ssh or kernel patch, and that it wasn't going to be corrupted, accidentally deleted, etc.
But before you go off on a total rant, I defy you to provide any documentation that shows this system would require central signing. It doesn't, and I dont think its even feasible to be modified to support it. If you have such a link, I'd love to see it (really, not sarcastic.. I'd like to know about it)...
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I'm canadian and have nothing against mullets. It just sounded cool as a generic name.
It's racist. It shows your true colors.
If you don't want your kids to be badly influenced by something, be a parent and tell them about it, dammit. It's not by shielding them from reality that you'll achieve anything. Next you'll be in favor of burning "dangerous" books and putting people in jail for thought crimes. I am not in favor of GOVERNMENT burning anything. Reality is not a person telling you to beat up women, rape them, kill them, burn their bodies, and sell them into prostitution. Reality is not extolling the virtues of killing cops. Reality is NOT what is being sold often. You can tell your children about all the bad things AND still enforce a policy of them not induldging in massively damaging messages of violence, rap, obscenity, sex, and immorality. Telling a child one thing - no matter how often - and then throwing them to the pop culture wolves - is a stupid, mis-guided, and ultimately failure-bound policy.
putting people in jail for thought crimes.
No, that's the GOVERNMENT again. I am however, supportive of my right to purchase media that conforms to my own political, moral, and social views.
I just hope you are not the kind of person who is offended by sex on the TV and finds it okay for his kids to watch terminator.
I think simulated violence is a *much* bigger problem than sexual content.
But I do have something against censorship and the "I know better than you what you need" folks like you who accept it as something normal and good.
Well you haven't said what in a way that makes sense. If I want my children to have unfiltered access to popular culture, that's fine, I know how to provide that. Wal-Mart fills a role that real actual people want, and find valuable. An organization able to filter that *massive* amount of pop-culture that is advertised to the masses.
Nice troll.
In any case, you are the troll. You've exposed yourself as a racist, and a person who builds up strawmen by implying that support of Wal-Mart censorsing indicates a support for "book burning" and "jailing people for thought crimes".
For joe mullet that lives in a small town that doesn't have indie music stores and such, wall-mart is often the place when he first discovers music (at age 11 or whatever). If all they carry is a "weeded out" selection, it could affect his tastes for years and reduce his horizons quite a bit.
See, the problem here, is that you are clearly and elitist asshole - at least that is how your post places you.
"Joe Mullet" is a racial slur against what you clearly consider "small town" ignorant trash.
It seems to me that you are most upset that people support Wal-Mart's censorship. The fact is that Wal-Mart recognizes that parents have an interest in censoring what their children hear. This is the market that Wal-Mart is targetting. The parents of "Joe Mullet" who is an 11 old have taken an interest in his upbringing and have decided that Wal-Mart can effectively censor what their child hears. It seems clear that you hate that prospect. You want him to be able to "expand his horizons" despite his parents wishes. You think he should have access to any type of vile, violent, brash, foul, obscene, and damn to anyone who gets in the way of that.
Well here is a news flash: individuals trust Wal-Mart to censor the unabridged crap that most record labels attempt to sell. Parents trust Wal-Mart to filter the bile that is marketed to their kids.
And YES, it does pressure artists to conform. That's the whole point. That's their stated goal. You want to be sold at Wal-Mart? Meet these parameters. Just like towels, just like bannana's, just like motor oil.
So get over it. People are all for it. Previewing and approving music before letting "Joe Mullet" 11-year old buy it is time consuming, expensive, and fraught with omissions and errors. Wal-mart will do it, and Americans are happy to let them.
Get off your high-culture elitist racist horse.
What the hell are you talking about?
The API in question is the Inet interface provided by Internet Explorer since IE4.0.. it isn't a "standard", nor is it published anywhere outside of MS, nor is it sanctioned by any standards body. It's just an API they created to allow developers to use IE's HTML rendering engine.
It is not covered under the settlment.
So... WHAT EXACTLY is your reference to Konq/Moz and how is it relevant?
So say what you will about jerkoffs writing pop-up spam not being able to access the pop up manager, i'm firmly placing myself in the skeptic arena.
Okay, well, we will have to see. That's going to take some time. The theory is sound. And historically you can't run API that accesses ActiveX that is not scripting safe from the IE. There have been numerous bugs, but they have all been patched as far as I can tell.
I think you misunderstand:
HTML writers - web page authors - cannot just bypass the pop-up manager changes. The new interface they reference is for applications that use IE to render HTML. This new interface is part of the Win32 API essentially, and cannot just be called willy-nilly from a webpage (just like any piece of Win32 API).
The little FAQ snippet makes this distinction bu but not very clearly. For app-developers this means that instead of using a little piece of Javascript to open a window they will have to hitch into the API to create a new window.
Basically its just a move to allow app-developers to still use the renderer in an effective way with minimal code changes. Most developers I know however do not use the HTML engine to open new windows. They instead create a new window with API or a language construct and then assign a new instance of the IE activex object to that handle. It's a much more reliable way of opening new HTML windows in applications.
If only there was some type of document, or article, that laid out the facts of the case.. it'd make things so clear and straightforward. I mean, gosh, wouldn't be nice if a person interviewed the relevant people and put the results in some type of hyperlinked document attached to this story?
Huh.. that's interesting.. I did, my wife did, and two of our friends did (actually, we all did better, about 20% in reality)..
For some people things are just fine.. for others.. not so much...
That is actually, false.
We did *not* support (we = the US) the Taliban. We supported the mujamehedin. These people were fighting against the Russians *invasion* of thier country with the intent of gaining strategic advantage.
What we did do was train uneducated non-military regulars (aka, today's terrorists or insurgents) in non-conventional warfare (aka, terrorism).
The Thing of It is that we were completly justified. The afgan's were being repressed terribly. The US was unable to intervene directly because of world politicans and nuclear complications.
What happened after the CIA left Afganistan is that a fundamentalist extremely brutal system of clerical control assumed power in the vacuum left by the USSR. Since the Soviets tried to supress all religion in the Afganistan the people and rulers basically turned as far opposite of that as possible.
"The Taliban" was essentially, as we know it, a milita or clan of armed men bribed by clerics to support their rule.
There is a lot of bad information floating around about how we supported the Taliban etc etc. In Mike Moore's movie and speeches he has repeated it, telling people the US support the Taliban with cash contributions for stopping heroin production. In fact, the US didnt even recognize the Tabliban as a legit government. Any foreign aide to Afganistan was distributed by NGOs like the UN and Red Crescent.
Anyways
I tell you what.. drop any farmer with some cows a quick note and you'll be able to find someone who has direct access to anthrax in no time..
It's not really a hugely deadly and/or rare find. It's pretty plain vanilla...
2) Technologically experienced people refer to an OS by the correct name simply because of their disdain for the opposition.
That's false I believe. There are millions of people out there who know exactly what Windows, Mac OS, and Linux are, and call thme by there proper names because, well, that's their name. Not to discredit Windows. That assumption is absurd and drastically general. It presumes to know that *everyone* who knows about alternatives implicitly dislikes Windows, which is provably false.
1) Technopolitically untainted people DO call other GUIs "Windows"
If they do, its out of error, not because they generally think of the GUI as "Windows". If you received a random phone call from any computer user randomly selected, and they asked you a question about "Windows", you personally could say with 99% level of confidence they are reffering to a MS product, couldn't you?
But they do refer to their window managers and GUIs by that "generic" term. There are many people that don't disassociate their GUI OS interface from the underlying OS, hence XWindows is really just a part of the operating system to them.
But that number is very small, as in, the number of people (who at the heyday of Xerox) who correctly identified Xerox machines and non-Xerox machines.
Today, if you receive call from any random person, complaining about a problem with "Windows", you know with 99% level of confidence they are talking about a Microsoft product, right?
I have never made a "xerox" before, and when people use that I word incorrectly I correct them.
However, "xerox", like "band-aid" was deemed to have become part of the American lexicon, used to refer to products of a genre rather than a brand. People using Mac OS X or Linux don't call their OS "Windows" like MS customers do. That's the defining test.
Windows is context of computer software is not a generic term. It has been made specific. Even if it is not a valid trademark for purposes of genericity, it is clear that Lindows was and is attempting to capitialize on the name similiarity.
I find it ironic that you talk about movies on your homepage yet say you could care less if they dissapear.
They are not important to the matter of my life. If they disappeared I would not be affected for the worse. Seeing a movie or two doesn't mean they are a substantial part of my life.
You also claim that customers are being abused. Again, the market determines that under capitalism.
Two things. First, rights are endowed by our creator, not by the economy. The US Constitution guarantees our rights to fair use. The media industry is constantly working to undermine that. Hence abuse.
Second, the media industry does not operate under capitalism. It is a natural monopoly. It operates under *entirely* different rules.
No one is forcing people to watch movies. No one is taking money away from them. No and yes. I never claimed they are being forced. However, value is being removed. The realm of what is legal to do with purchased media has declined. That loss of value is what the media industry calls piracy for them. For us, it's theft.
In any case, you clearly fit into the example that I cited: right-wing groups unhappy with liberal movies and hence want to see the destruction of Hollywood.
I couldnt care less about the liberal/not liberal aspect of Hollywood. I would love to see their destruction because of the meddlesome holier-than-thou atmosphere they project as well as the tangible harm they do to the nation abroad. For many peoples across the world all they know of America is it's media. And that cause lots and lots of problems, since the media is not an accurate representation of America. Imagine if all you knew of America was what you saw on "Will and Grace" or "Friends". Would you admire America?
Blaming Hollywood for being "meddelsome, condescending, elistist, racist, and obnoxious" is kind of lame, given that every other industry is like that. In fact, there are other industries that are far worse.
There are other industiries that are worse, but not many and not by much. Especially considering the size and influence ratio. They wield an unbelievable large club for such a small industry. And in terms of international influence I mentioned, they are pratically lethal. They have lobbied for more drastic legal changes than other industry out there. They meddle more than *any* other industry. Most industries goal is to stay far far far from government intervention or regulation. Now that the top down distrubition model of the media industry is threatened, they have to go screaming for uneeded laws that will not only 100% secure them of a prosperus future, but in fact increase their dominance and power to new levels. They are demanding a complete top-down reworking of *every* digital device created by the US for the purpose of protecting their works. In effect they want to cripple US high-tech industry (which is 100's of time bigger than the media industry), the software industry, the artistic community, the web industry, and stiffle innovation across dozens of fronts to protect thier monopoly on distribution. That is why I would be happy to see them take a hit. It's tim they realized they are *not* the most important industry in this country.
If you really weren't going to buy it or weren't interested, you wouldn't even use it/hear it/listen to it
When I do use it/listen to it, it's incidental. I couldn't care less. Literally, it's one way or another and I don't care.
If anything, you are simply behaving the way you do because the technologies that permit you to share/enjoy exist.
I actually dont pirate, cause like I said, I don't care. I dont enjoy the media, it's mostly crap. And seperating crap from not is hard.
Consider the following example. I'll never buy a Ferrari. But let me just take it out for a spin. I'll return it in the same condition. Go to a dealership. Ask for a test drive. So long as they think you aren't going to steal it, you can do exactly that. Really, really, really bad analogy.
Or how about software? Do you extend that view to software too? Should anyone be paying for ANY software?
I am all for enforcing personally made contracts. Most software you pay for you agree to a contract with additional limitations on top of copyright - an EULA. I agree to no such limitations with DVDs, Magazines, or CDs.
That is NOT true under capitalism. Everyone will be impacted. Remember, any wage is permitted under capitalism (although government intervention and worker movements impact this somewhat via minimum wage laws, etc). If a company loses money, they won't just cut the high salary personnel! They generally do across the board cuts. Layoff people, make them work harder, lower their wages, etc. Have you looked at other industries? Who loses when a company struggles? Do CEOs lose their jobs, or get their wages cut?
The fact is that there is not much fat that doesn't relate to top stars in a movie. There just isn't. If you want a movie, you need a certain number of people. In a lot of movies that number is as low or damn near as low as possible already. They've been squeezing them for *decades* in case you haven't been paying attention. The only place that hasn't felt the pinch of more movies and less audience is the top tier actors. They will be the first to feel a real pinch.
Apart from the fact that you are either cruel or jealous (like the latter), you can already do that. If you pirate movies, you WILL impact these actors (along with countless other workers). Of course, you need to get a movement going but it is quite within the power. There are already many right-wing anti-Hollywood movements that boycott.
No, I am not cruel. I have a sense of justice. Hollywood has been a meddelsome, condescending, elistist, racist, and obnoxious sore on this country for decades. They walk about moaning about how important the industry is, and how everyone must bend all of the laws to fit their silly needs. Well, frankly, it's time they realized they aren't a significantly large industry (small than all heavy industry, computers, software, video games, and lots of other stuff) to demand as much law making as they ask for. And best yet, they can go to pot for all I care. You abuse customers long enough, hard enough, and given the opportunity they will fuck you back when they can.
A big problem with this whole idea of OSS, and then measuring it against traditional metrics, is the issue of motiviation/demand.
In a corporate setting, programmers are coding because "That's my job". People say "I am a programmer". They get paid for it, money, career, fullfillment, retirement, are the goals.
In the OSS world, the motivations are vast. For some its fun. I like to program. Why not give away a piece of my hobby to others? I don't need it. For some its profit. If I write this program maybe a corporate sponsor will back me, or maybe individuals will donate to me. For yet others its anti-someone-else-ism. If I write this it'll be the gutter for Microsoft.
This is all well and good. The problem is that in the first setting it is much easier to get someone to do something hard and unrewarding. Write a device driver for a crappy USB chip? Yessir. Write and update a comprehensive design document? No problem-o.
In the OSS world, there is a glut of people working on fun projects - or projects that are rewarding. You have dozens of people working on chat programs. You have a strong number of people working on projects that will thumb MS in the eye- OpenOffice for one.
But in the OSS world, there isn't a lot of work going into unfun projects - and the work that is being done mostly by corporate sponsors (who can say, again, 'do this' to a programmer for hire).
Examples come to mind: in the closed source world there is plenty of really good desktop publishing software. In the open source world, it's not a fun project. It's hard. It requires lots of industry knowledge. It's a small market and therefore a small pool of programmers. It's unrewarding - you won't have a cult of personality like Linus. Another example already mentioned is device drivers. Even when documentation exisits getting a really nice high-quality device driver is somewhat rare. It is easy to cut corners and implement only what is needed for a specific job.
This is an important thing. A lot of small companies I've seen have been turned off about using OSS as a development model because expectations are high. Just because a product is released as OSS doesn't mean developers will flock to aid the project.
This disparity in motivation can lead to a hard time quantifying results. A project that is fun, high profile, or highly profitable will have excellent results compared to a typical corporate project. A project that is non-fun, not likely to go anywhere, but somewhat more "down and dirty" is likely to fall far far behind commerical development standards.
Every time a media product is pirated takes away some of the incentive for the production company to make more.
Liar. Liar. Liar. I am going to make this real clear. I *never* buy certian magazines or music products. However, if I read an article in a magazine at my friends house the publisher is not being ripped off. Likewise for music, or a DVD.
In those cases I got the benefit but paid nothing. Zero. Zilch.
Now, what *exactly* is the difference if that MP3 was e-mailed to me? Nothing. None. I still didnt buy it (I wasnt going to, anyways), and they still didnt sell it.
The same thought extends to P2P.
There is no way in hell I am paying for $14, or $12, or $9 CD. Period. Not-going-to-happen. I havent bought a mass produced CD for myself in... well, probably ever (if you dont count 2nd hand CDs).
The fact is that a download does not constitute a lost sale. It *may*, but it does'nt necessarily mean a sale was lost.
One last point: the main effect of pirating movies and lost revenues that may occur from it will be a reduction of top-tier movie stars. Regardless of what these bozo's in the ad campaigns tell you, there jobs are not really at risk. You need light guys, you need sound guys, you need reel guys, stunt guys, etc. You *have* to have them. You do not need to pay an actor $25-million instead of $22.5 million, or $20 million, or $10 million.
In fact, if I knew that my pirating would induce a Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis or Susan Sarandon to lose a few million bucks over a course career, I'd be doing it for sport.
..and hopefully they'd find a way to remove you from the job.
and then screw around for the rest of the year.
Umm.. no.
They mostly have other seasonal summer jobs.. like landscaping, truck driving, auto-repair (which in N.E. is a pretty seasonal gig actually), etc.
300/hr is great, but chances are, thats a handful of nights per season. Even if you make $1500-2000 grand for a night, you have to pay for the truck, the gas, the insurance, plus leave enough for you to live on.
It's not a bad deal, but still... its not work 10 nights a year have 355 off.
Since when is a recount undemocratic?
When you only *recount* (as in, the count, the recount, and then the *recount) selected areas - areas which one candidate believes he will gain a number of significant votes - that is undemocratic. Every vote deserves to have the same standard applied to it, and you simply cannot count one vote in one county with one standard and apply a seperate standard to another vote in another county. Each vote demands the same level of consideration and deserves the same standard.
It's not "one-sided", it's unjust and illegal.
Have you tried OCR lately? It requires a human check to weed out the mistakes.
When the margin of a vote is within the margin of error on a counting machine, an automatic recount is triggered by law (in MOST states). So of course, those cases deserve a hand-recount.
Frankly, the election was so close across the country (several electoral votes going one way or the other by less than 2,000 votes) that it is absurd for anyone to think we *truly* know who won the election.
Because everyone knows its more important for a president to have a good personality rather than havve policies that are good for the country
Did I say that? Why did you right that? Starting with "Because" indicates that you are rebutting what I said.. but I can't figure out what you are responding to..
, that doesnt mean he was best qualified for the job
I have news for you, I'd be willing to be bet that in the last 100 years there hasn't been a single president elected that was the the most qualified for the job.
and it certainly doesnt mean hes not running the country into the ground now.
Did I claim elsewise?
Why did you post again? Just to piss and moan or what?
OTOH, maybe someone would like to have a computer cost $199 instead of $299 and be willing to learn.
Um... I have negioted deals for XP in bulk before, and, it is not $100 more expensive than Lindows. Windows XP home in bulk does not cost $199 retail or $99 retail that you see in stores. If you buy 10,000 copies you can get it for about $42. I am sure Lindows is cheaper, but not enough to lower the price $100 per unit...
I was going to college in NH during the last election.. I met *every* single candidate for President on the primary ballots in NH at least *two* times, including G.W. Bush three times, including a sitdown-meal, a five-person roundtable, and a 35-person private reception.
I can say this clearly: by far, he was *the* most likeable, *the* most personable, *the* most appealing candidate on the surface. We talked about lots of things, including politics, policies, big issues, local issues, etc. He was literate, considerate, and lucid at all times.
Gore, whom I met twice (one sit down meal, one private reception of about 50, total time spent was probably 2 hrs), was stiff, unfunny, whiny, condescending, and came off as overplanned. He called over the photographer several times for "candid" photo-ops. He gesticulated wildly hoping to get caught on camera in a typical political moment - you know, mouth open, looking smart, hands waving, looking concerned but involved in a pro-active way - and often succeeding.
Bradely was brillant. McCain was fun and witty and likeable. But Bush shone.
Was the election a popularity content? Who knows. But Bush definately can win a room.
Uhh. that's all conjecture.
All of it.
(*) everyone = riaa/mpaa members, msft themselves, anyone who pays premium prices to develop software using msft tool
If you and me enter in a contract for me to sell you some data, I have to trust you that you will follow the terms we set forth. When I download and distribute GPL'd code, the original author trusts me to follow the GPL.
The core of NGSCB is that the hardware will use encryption to enforce the terms set forth on a piece of data.
The way this works is really pretty simple but involved:
1. A piece of hardware loads some code. It performs mathemetical calculations to produce a hash for this code. It is stored in a piece of memory that is only able to phsyically be written once per boot. It can be read again and again, but only set once per phsyiscal power on.
2. That same piece of hardware executes the program.
3. That program loads the OS and iniates the system.
4. A piece of "trusted application code" is started and is executed in the new piece of hardware in such a manner that the rest of the OS and all other trusted applications cannot see its inner workings. It is essentially executed in a phsyscially seperate CPU core. ALl of the memory associated with this application is encrypted by hardware and phsyically seperated from other trusted applications and non-trusted uses (OS, other apps, etc).
5. The trusted code then checks the write-once piece of memory and validates that it trusts the hash of the original code loaded before the OS. If it does, it is free to continue. If not, it aborts (presumbably, that is up to the developer.. they could decide what action to take)..
6. The trusted code then can create and/or access sealed storage areas, which are hardware encrypted data stored on any media - optical, magnetic, flash, etc.
In effect this will allow developers to ensure that only applications they want can access certain data.
MS could use this to lock users into Word/Office/whatever. As long as the all the network traffic, file interchange, converters, etc all run as trusted code, and all data storage is done in sealed space, 100% control of the data by the trusted application code is possible.
As for your other crap:
That includes forcing us to use a BIOS that will only "trust" their OS and thus render most hardware useless except for Windows.
Umm.. no. The system is simple, and there are NO technical barriers to an alternative OS using the same hardware to get to the same point. In fact, 100% of the code involved could be in fact open source, as well as the hardware design, since the system relies on heavy strong encryption for security. That is a good thing.
The test will be what LEGAL challenges MS will employ to keep this technology locked up for just them. There is nothing about this forces "us" to trust "them". But the whole idea of the system is that application code decides how and where the data assigned to it (whether it be video, music, text - whatever) is used. This means you could create a music download system that is 100% crptographically secure or an Office suite that you can never migrate from. It means that applications can force you lock in and that there is no pratical way to get yourself out.
But important things to note are:
A. There is no central trusting authority. No one has to sign all "trusted code". Thats a good thing. All trusted code does not have access to all sealed data. There is a 11 correlation. Trusted app #1 cannot read data from trusted app #2, and vice versa.
B. Under a system like this, sealed data is secure from just about every known attack. Without hardware modification (and they've comitted to hardened physical hardware specs), sealed data would be unable to be accessed by anything other than a specific binary. That rules out most virus vectors, malicious user vectors, and buggy-3rd-party app v
(*) everyone = riaa/mpaa members, msft themselves, anyone who pays premium prices to develop software using msft tool
That is just the stupidest thing, ever.
The whole point of this whole system is that you dont have to run trusted software, that the *hardware* physically will protect the system from divulging that data which is protected. Using encryption and a special piece of hardware, data that is sealed can only be accessed by software that has the proper key. The point being that there is no required central authority. Any piece of software that runs in the trusted mode of hardware would create it's own sealed data storage area (effectively just hard drive storage space but tightly protected using strong encryption.. but possibly this could be flash, optical media, anything).
I am sure there will be pimping involved, but essentially, the idea of the system is that hardware allows code to execute on the CPU in a way that it can't be spied on (debugged, register checked, etc), allows that code to easily open encrypted storage that only it can access in the future, and communicate securely over a network with a host for data interchange.
For a good example, see the iTunes hack dreamed up Jon. Under a Palladium/NGSCB system iTunes would run as a trusted mode app, and therefore, the code could not be spied in on. It would create storage space for the music you download and store it using strong encryption. It would decode and playback music using the sealed storage and protected code mechanisms of the nexus and send music through a protected pathway (essentially an all digital sound-system which only coverts back to analog at the last late phase - in the speaker itself).
The bottom line being that the iTunes hack of tapping into the stream of music after decryption and writing to a parallel file would be impossible. Additionally most decent analog hole tricks would be eliminated.
Now, this begs a bigger question about the ethics of copy protection - meaning essentially, are we serious about it or do we just like to pretend we have it - but on a technical level and a practical level, it is *very* secure in terms of unauthorized access to code and data.
I'd love to run a personal finance package as a trusted app with my data stored as sealed storage. I could ensure that no other app could spy on my data, it wouldn't be comprised if I forget to apply the latest ssh or kernel patch, and that it wasn't going to be corrupted, accidentally deleted, etc.
But before you go off on a total rant, I defy you to provide any documentation that shows this system would require central signing. It doesn't, and I dont think its even feasible to be modified to support it. If you have such a link, I'd love to see it (really, not sarcastic.. I'd like to know about it)...
But has MS ever claimed NTFS to be secure outside of Windows? I mean.. they don't claim that it is encrypted or anything like that...
Whats the big deal again?