No, I like factual criticism of Microsoft, not childish name-calling, particularly when Microsoft had nothing to do with the discussion.
I guess I am just tired of fools who mindlessly bash in order to raise themselves up. It wasn't enough for him to simply make his point, he had to drag Microsoft into it as if that makes his point more solid. It's just lazy thinking.
I don't think we should be censoring posts based only on one faceless Be representative.
After all, there is a reason it's so much faster, and it's very suspicious when the card does most of the work.
I think this AC had a valid point, and at least to my eyes, it doesn't read like a troll. If someone wants to refute it with real facts/measurements, then that's OK. But we shouldn't assume it's a troll just because someone with a very significant interest says so.
Could you please cite references when Microsoft "cheated" and fudged benchmarks? Of course, Be has neverpreannounced any products.
Of course, your credibility is only strengthened by using "Micros~1" and "Windoze".
With people like you at Be, and with those sort of attitudes, it's no wonder it's been such a failure (choose your measurement), and hasn't been able to capture any significant amount of the developer market. Who wants to work with a bunch of zealots who clearly can't see the industry with any sort of objectivity? Yes, the childish name-calling was a dead giveaway.
Thank you for confirming my suspicians regarding Be. What a great rep you are for your company.
Damn right! I detest many of the namings in the Linux community, many who feel they have to be oh-so-clever by making unpronouncable names. At least Linus had the excuse of a foreign language. What's RMS' excuse? "Gah-nu" indeed. "Napster" is easy on the tongue and memorable. Gnome (aka Gah-nome) is absolutely idiotic and difficult to say.
I simply don't understand the hostility to easily pronouncable names in the Gnu community.
Ah, the lovely arrogance of the Slashdotter. This is a similar sentiment to "I don't need chrome on my desktop, just give me command lines" and "Don't make Linux easier! That will just let them in."
What this type of person doesn't realize is that appreciation of aesthetics (including naming aesthetics) is an important part of being human. If people like you ran the world, we'd all be living in gray concrete houses, completely modular. If you want a bigger house, just put two blocks together! Isn't that efficient? Two stories, just stack them up!
If you haven't figured it out by now (probable), intelligence is not a function of how austere a lifestyle you can stand.
I would direct your attention to Jeff Bezos and Amazon who make money (through a blind stockmarket) for doing nothing (they have yet to turn a profit).
Ah yes, the infamous Amazon myth. I got news for you, Amazon makes a lot of money. They also spend a lot of money building brand. Amazon could turn a profit anytime they want to.
Their are a lot of Internet companies to criticize, but Amazon is not one of them. They are not wasteful.
If there were no income tax and no social security collection, that would straight out allow a 3 or 4 day work week, because everyone would just have more money.
No, everyone would still work 5 day weeks, because they would want more money. Everyone already can work 4 days for the most part, except people like high living standards more. Look at how many parents sacrifice their children by working two jobs rather than just cutting back their lifestyle.
Granted, I think taxes are too high, but that's not the only reason.
And it has nothing to do with "corporate shareholders", considering that people work far harder in small companies with way fewer benefits than in large companies.
To tell you the truth, I think workers are unbelievable spoiled as it is compared to 100 years ago. 40 hours a week, out of 168? That's a vacation to those of us who have small companies.
Quote: "If you are using Word 6 and 95 for Windows 32-bit Operating Systems, this converter will allow you to open files created by people using Word 97/2000."
I wish people on Slashdot would learn to read. Oh, I forgot, we're talking about Microsoft, therefore they probably put up this page just to fool the DOJ and converter doesn't really work.
You have the right to believe what you want (it's not Orwell-land here, you know !). However, there are some very specific beliefs and behaviour (namely, Negationism (negating the Holocaust), and all incitation to Racial Hatred) which are totally forbidden *to* *advocate*.
How does the law define "advocating"? If I believe something, doesn't that mean I'm advocating it in some way, even if it's just generally voicing that opinion? I mean, the only way to not advocate a belief is to be forbidden to voice it, which seems then that (in practical terms) it's illegal hold the opinion.
I heard recently that it is actually illegal to believe that the jewish holocaust never happened, or other similar ideas, and in fact the law actually defines that history to be true. Is that true?
Given France's, er, generally wacky nature, it wouldn't surprise me, but I thought I would put it out for verification.
P.S. Yes, I believe the holocaust happened, etc, etc
As for "how good is it". Well the skinny is that it's a little bigger then mp3, and a little lower quality, also encoding a 5 minute song a PII 500 took around 1/2 an hour. However REMEMBER IT'S 1.0. windows 1.0, Gnome 1.0, all sucked. This doesn't suck. And it's not even 1.0.
I don't think this is comparable to Gnome, etc. When you're doing a UI, it's really a pretty mechanical process. You pretty much know where to go, it's just a matter of spending enough time.
Music compression is different. It's very much more art than science. I recall an article on Slashdot a few weeks ago that described the process the guy who developed MP3 went through to perfect it. There was an enormous amount of tuning and tweaking that went into it before it reached the stage it was at now. It simply is not the case that any 2-bit hacker can whip up an audio compression algorithm given enough time.
Now, it sounds like the people working on this new CODEC may be smart people who know what they're doing. However, it is not a given that this will ever reach the quality of MP3. On the other hand, since it's open source, it may fall into the hands of people who can do something with it, so there is hope.
The problem is that objective evidence is going to be hard to come by. Already we see a lot of people posting here on Slashdot saying "Hey! The quality sounds fine to me!" when subjective statements like this are just absurd. Unless you are doing blind A/B listening tests with decent equipment across a wide variety of music (Classical, Rock, Jazz, Electronic, Opera, etc), along with electronic measurement tests, you simply won't be able to tell which is better (unless one is just far inferior to the other).
I wish them success, but I also think people need to keep in mind the difficulty of the task.
That was my very first computer, bought by my dad in 1980 (model II). 16K of memory (upgraded from 4K), 2Mhz Z80 (no 8080s, baby), 40x16 char screen, upper case characters only (my dad was too cheap to buy the upgrade), 80x48 pixel B&W graphics, Incredibly unreliable cassette-tape storage. We later got the 5 1/4" floppy drive; 135K/floppy, about 80K left with bootable TRSDOS on it. Even back in those days, it seemed pretty skimpy though.:)
Trivia 1: A one-second time delay loop in BASIC was "for i = 0 to 500:next i"
Trivia 2: The command line editor used 'vi' keys. Who says Bill Gates didn't know anything about Unix?
and they can even go make a *billion* dollars off it without showing me a red cent, or even telling me.
Versus the GPL which will show you a red cent and obligates people to inform you of anything?
I've got news for you... RedHat, VA etc have already made a billion dollars, and had no obligation to show anyone else jack.
The only difference between the GPL and BSD is that the BSD has more freedom to the recipient. There is no economic advantage to the creator either way.
...network has mirroring capabilities and built-in redundancy. You cannot shut down the network.
Exactly when did the RIAA state that they wanted to shut down the Internet? I must have missed that story. I thought they were trying to shut down Napster.
Oh, you mean all that bullshit was meaningless hyperbole, and is totally irrelevent to the point? How Katzian of you.
As I understand it, the GNU philosophy is to take away most of the control of the software from the creator, and give it to the user (without giving ownership). To have it any other way is to be controlled by those who make the software.
The key word is "most". You are very restricted in what you can do with GPL source code. You are not allowed to distribute a binary, or use the code in a project that you give away without source code. The limitations of your freedom (strong verbiage intended:) ) are enforced using copyright law. Many people like these limitations of freedom, but when the shoe is on the other foot, they want to eliminate copyright law. Do you notice where the similarity lies? Yes -- in each case, they are for whatever benefits them the most, creator be damned.
Besides, who said the artist really chose non-redistribution as a license? It was forced upon them by their contract with the record company. The record companies control the artists too.
Nobody forced them to do anything. No gun was held to their head to sign the contract. What's basically happening is that record company gives them a huge wad of production money up front in exchange for certain rights to distribution. For some reason, nobody remembers that initial big wad of money that goes down the drain if the band craters (which 9 out of 10 do).
If a band wants to go direct, nothing's stopping them. And many do. But they better be willing to pick up of the cost of production and promotion themselves.
Without copyright source code availability could not be guaranteed, but how many proprietary products out there have borrowed code from free ones? How would you ever know? Who really cares?
That's the point: RMS cares. [Disclaimer: I'm not necessarily a fan of the GPL...]
My understanding of this (and my understanding of RMS is not necessarily complete) is that this is the essential difference between "open source" and "free as freedom software" that RMS talks about. RMS intentionally made it so that people who used GPL'd software would be forced to follow the "morals" (RMS's word) of the free software movement, otherwise they would be forbidden to reuse GPL'd code. That is the "virus" aspect of the GPL.
Granted that the GPL has never been tested in court, but it still attempts to stand on the foundation of copyright law.
If there was no copyright, then there would be little need for the GPL,
How do you figure that? That GPL is enforced using copyright. The GPL forces people who use the software to follow the rules of GPL, like a) forcing availability of source code, and b) not being able to use GPL code in a closed product.
If there was no copyright, you would have a license such as BSD, which is basically unrestricted.
--
Attn Napster: Here's the solution
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 2
Hello, Napster, Inc. I thought I would give you the solution for building the index of "blocked songs". It's pretty easy, and I won't even charge you my usual consulting fee!
First, take your current index. Accumulate the names of songs and bands for a week or two. Sort this list and eliminate duplicates. Now go through and identify the few hundred or so legitimate titles (I might be too generous, there...).
That is now your blocking list. Now take some of the $15 mill and hire a staff to review logs of transfers. The number of transfers should now be a trickle, so you probably only have to start with one person. Heck, Yahoo has a staff of hundreds of reviewers! Surely a small staff to maintain the blocking list shouldn't be too difficult?
Of course people will rename the songs, but you just keep adding the new variations to the list. Eventually, the songs will be so renamed that people won't be able to find them anyway.
No, no! Don't thank me. I just aim to be a service to the community.
--
Re:Understanding what Napster is
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 1
Okay, so, um, lessee: the RIAA wants to force Napster to block MP3s with 'Metallica' in their title?
No, you block "Metallica - Unforgiven". and "Metallica - [album name] - Unforgiven". and...
You're trying to find a shortcut, but there isn't one. It's called brute force building of an index.
They have 15 million dollars. They can afford to hire a bunch of staff to start building the index. Trust me, it's not an undoable task.
--
Re:Understanding what Napster is
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 2
Insisting that Napster remove content is insisting that Napster invade individuals personal computers and delete files, an illegal act in most jurisdictions.
Wrong. They are seeking an injunction to force Napster to block transfer of music at the index level. This has nothing to do with "invading individual's personal computers" or some such nonsense.
I don't know why people think this is so impractical. You just have to look at the names of the songs. Sure, people can just rename them. But it's a war of attrition that Napster will win. Eventually, the songs are renamed so much that nobody can find them anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, educate me. How are they appointed now?
BTW, I have nothing against the UK, but when the guy brings up slavery from 135 years ago...
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No, I like factual criticism of Microsoft, not childish name-calling, particularly when Microsoft had nothing to do with the discussion.
I guess I am just tired of fools who mindlessly bash in order to raise themselves up. It wasn't enough for him to simply make his point, he had to drag Microsoft into it as if that makes his point more solid. It's just lazy thinking.
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I don't think we should be censoring posts based only on one faceless Be representative.
After all, there is a reason it's so much faster, and it's very suspicious when the card does most of the work.
I think this AC had a valid point, and at least to my eyes, it doesn't read like a troll. If someone wants to refute it with real facts/measurements, then that's OK. But we shouldn't assume it's a troll just because someone with a very significant interest says so.
Please moderate this up.
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Could you please cite references when Microsoft "cheated" and fudged benchmarks? Of course, Be has never preannounced any products.
Of course, your credibility is only strengthened by using "Micros~1" and "Windoze".
With people like you at Be, and with those sort of attitudes, it's no wonder it's been such a failure (choose your measurement), and hasn't been able to capture any significant amount of the developer market. Who wants to work with a bunch of zealots who clearly can't see the industry with any sort of objectivity? Yes, the childish name-calling was a dead giveaway.
Thank you for confirming my suspicians regarding Be. What a great rep you are for your company.
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but it's my understanding of English that when a G is followed by an N, the G is silent, as in "gnat," or "gnarled."
In the sane, normal world, you are correct, but check out this entry in the Jargon File.
And while I'm on the subject, even the great Knuth is not immune. TeX == "Tekh". I mean, why be so damn deliberately difficult? Why not "tecks"?
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Americans, OTOH, seem to think that 'democracy' and 'freedom' was born in the US, long before you'd finished rounding up native people.
And how long did it take to eliminate positions in UK government based on birthright? Oh, I forgot, you still have them.
Yeah, a House of Lords is real democratic and free.
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Damn right! I detest many of the namings in the Linux community, many who feel they have to be oh-so-clever by making unpronouncable names. At least Linus had the excuse of a foreign language. What's RMS' excuse? "Gah-nu" indeed. "Napster" is easy on the tongue and memorable. Gnome (aka Gah-nome) is absolutely idiotic and difficult to say.
I simply don't understand the hostility to easily pronouncable names in the Gnu community.
--
Ah, the lovely arrogance of the Slashdotter. This is a similar sentiment to "I don't need chrome on my desktop, just give me command lines" and "Don't make Linux easier! That will just let them in."
What this type of person doesn't realize is that appreciation of aesthetics (including naming aesthetics) is an important part of being human. If people like you ran the world, we'd all be living in gray concrete houses, completely modular. If you want a bigger house, just put two blocks together! Isn't that efficient? Two stories, just stack them up!
If you haven't figured it out by now (probable), intelligence is not a function of how austere a lifestyle you can stand.
--
I would direct your attention to Jeff Bezos and Amazon who make money (through a blind stockmarket) for doing nothing (they have yet to turn a profit).
Ah yes, the infamous Amazon myth. I got news for you, Amazon makes a lot of money. They also spend a lot of money building brand. Amazon could turn a profit anytime they want to.
Their are a lot of Internet companies to criticize, but Amazon is not one of them. They are not wasteful.
--
If there were no income tax and no social security collection, that would straight out allow a 3 or 4 day work week, because everyone would just have more money.
No, everyone would still work 5 day weeks, because they would want more money. Everyone already can work 4 days for the most part, except people like high living standards more. Look at how many parents sacrifice their children by working two jobs rather than just cutting back their lifestyle.
Granted, I think taxes are too high, but that's not the only reason.
And it has nothing to do with "corporate shareholders", considering that people work far harder in small companies with way fewer benefits than in large companies.
To tell you the truth, I think workers are unbelievable spoiled as it is compared to 100 years ago. 40 hours a week, out of 168? That's a vacation to those of us who have small companies.
--
Wrong-o.
Quote: "If you are using Word 6 and 95 for Windows 32-bit Operating Systems, this converter will allow you to open files created by people using Word 97/2000."
I wish people on Slashdot would learn to read. Oh, I forgot, we're talking about Microsoft, therefore they probably put up this page just to fool the DOJ and converter doesn't really work.
--
I meant advocating the belief (i.e., attempt to convince others of the truth of the belief), not advocating the acts of the Holocaust.
--
You have the right to believe what you want (it's not Orwell-land here, you know !). However, there are some very specific beliefs and behaviour (namely, Negationism (negating the Holocaust), and all incitation to Racial Hatred) which are totally forbidden *to* *advocate*.
How does the law define "advocating"? If I believe something, doesn't that mean I'm advocating it in some way, even if it's just generally voicing that opinion? I mean, the only way to not advocate a belief is to be forbidden to voice it, which seems then that (in practical terms) it's illegal hold the opinion.
--
I heard recently that it is actually illegal to believe that the jewish holocaust never happened, or other similar ideas, and in fact the law actually defines that history to be true. Is that true?
Given France's, er, generally wacky nature, it wouldn't surprise me, but I thought I would put it out for verification.
P.S. Yes, I believe the holocaust happened, etc, etc
--
As for "how good is it". Well the skinny is that it's a little bigger then mp3, and a little lower quality, also encoding a 5 minute song a PII 500 took around 1/2 an hour. However REMEMBER IT'S 1.0. windows 1.0, Gnome 1.0, all sucked. This doesn't suck. And it's not even 1.0.
I don't think this is comparable to Gnome, etc. When you're doing a UI, it's really a pretty mechanical process. You pretty much know where to go, it's just a matter of spending enough time.
Music compression is different. It's very much more art than science. I recall an article on Slashdot a few weeks ago that described the process the guy who developed MP3 went through to perfect it. There was an enormous amount of tuning and tweaking that went into it before it reached the stage it was at now. It simply is not the case that any 2-bit hacker can whip up an audio compression algorithm given enough time.
Now, it sounds like the people working on this new CODEC may be smart people who know what they're doing. However, it is not a given that this will ever reach the quality of MP3. On the other hand, since it's open source, it may fall into the hands of people who can do something with it, so there is hope.
The problem is that objective evidence is going to be hard to come by. Already we see a lot of people posting here on Slashdot saying "Hey! The quality sounds fine to me!" when subjective statements like this are just absurd. Unless you are doing blind A/B listening tests with decent equipment across a wide variety of music (Classical, Rock, Jazz, Electronic, Opera, etc), along with electronic measurement tests, you simply won't be able to tell which is better (unless one is just far inferior to the other).
I wish them success, but I also think people need to keep in mind the difficulty of the task.
--
No, you're right, it must be senility setting in. It was 64 columns, 128x48 graphics. :)
On the other hand, the Model II did have cassette backup. I have vivid memories of how much it sucked.
--
That was my very first computer, bought by my dad in 1980 (model II). 16K of memory (upgraded from 4K), 2Mhz Z80 (no 8080s, baby), 40x16 char screen, upper case characters only (my dad was too cheap to buy the upgrade), 80x48 pixel B&W graphics, Incredibly unreliable cassette-tape storage. We later got the 5 1/4" floppy drive; 135K/floppy, about 80K left with bootable TRSDOS on it. Even back in those days, it seemed pretty skimpy though. :)
Trivia 1: A one-second time delay loop in BASIC was "for i = 0 to 500:next i"
Trivia 2: The command line editor used 'vi' keys. Who says Bill Gates didn't know anything about Unix?
--
and they can even go make a *billion* dollars off it without showing me a red cent, or even telling me.
Versus the GPL which will show you a red cent and obligates people to inform you of anything?
I've got news for you... RedHat, VA etc have already made a billion dollars, and had no obligation to show anyone else jack.
The only difference between the GPL and BSD is that the BSD has more freedom to the recipient. There is no economic advantage to the creator either way.
--
Exactly when did the RIAA state that they wanted to shut down the Internet? I must have missed that story. I thought they were trying to shut down Napster.
Oh, you mean all that bullshit was meaningless hyperbole, and is totally irrelevent to the point? How Katzian of you.
--
As I understand it, the GNU philosophy is to take away most of the control of the software from the creator, and give it to the user (without giving ownership). To have it any other way is to be controlled by those who make the software.
The key word is "most". You are very restricted in what you can do with GPL source code. You are not allowed to distribute a binary, or use the code in a project that you give away without source code. The limitations of your freedom (strong verbiage intended :) ) are enforced using copyright law. Many people like these limitations of freedom, but when the shoe is on the other foot, they want to eliminate copyright law. Do you notice where the similarity lies? Yes -- in each case, they are for whatever benefits them the most, creator be damned.
Besides, who said the artist really chose non-redistribution as a license? It was forced upon them by their contract with the record company. The record companies control the artists too.
Nobody forced them to do anything. No gun was held to their head to sign the contract. What's basically happening is that record company gives them a huge wad of production money up front in exchange for certain rights to distribution. For some reason, nobody remembers that initial big wad of money that goes down the drain if the band craters (which 9 out of 10 do).
If a band wants to go direct, nothing's stopping them. And many do. But they better be willing to pick up of the cost of production and promotion themselves.
--
Without copyright source code availability could not be guaranteed, but how many proprietary products out there have borrowed code from free ones? How would you ever know? Who really cares?
That's the point: RMS cares. [Disclaimer: I'm not necessarily a fan of the GPL...]
My understanding of this (and my understanding of RMS is not necessarily complete) is that this is the essential difference between "open source" and "free as freedom software" that RMS talks about. RMS intentionally made it so that people who used GPL'd software would be forced to follow the "morals" (RMS's word) of the free software movement, otherwise they would be forbidden to reuse GPL'd code. That is the "virus" aspect of the GPL.
Granted that the GPL has never been tested in court, but it still attempts to stand on the foundation of copyright law.
--
If there was no copyright, then there would be little need for the GPL,
How do you figure that? That GPL is enforced using copyright. The GPL forces people who use the software to follow the rules of GPL, like a) forcing availability of source code, and b) not being able to use GPL code in a closed product.
If there was no copyright, you would have a license such as BSD, which is basically unrestricted.
--
Hello, Napster, Inc. I thought I would give you the solution for building the index of "blocked songs". It's pretty easy, and I won't even charge you my usual consulting fee!
First, take your current index. Accumulate the names of songs and bands for a week or two. Sort this list and eliminate duplicates. Now go through and identify the few hundred or so legitimate titles (I might be too generous, there...).
That is now your blocking list. Now take some of the $15 mill and hire a staff to review logs of transfers. The number of transfers should now be a trickle, so you probably only have to start with one person. Heck, Yahoo has a staff of hundreds of reviewers! Surely a small staff to maintain the blocking list shouldn't be too difficult?
Of course people will rename the songs, but you just keep adding the new variations to the list. Eventually, the songs will be so renamed that people won't be able to find them anyway.
No, no! Don't thank me. I just aim to be a service to the community.
--
Okay, so, um, lessee: the RIAA wants to force Napster to block MP3s with 'Metallica' in their title?
No, you block "Metallica - Unforgiven". and "Metallica - [album name] - Unforgiven". and ...
You're trying to find a shortcut, but there isn't one. It's called brute force building of an index.
They have 15 million dollars. They can afford to hire a bunch of staff to start building the index. Trust me, it's not an undoable task.
--
Insisting that Napster remove content is insisting that Napster invade individuals personal computers and delete files, an illegal act in most jurisdictions.
Wrong. They are seeking an injunction to force Napster to block transfer of music at the index level. This has nothing to do with "invading individual's personal computers" or some such nonsense.
I don't know why people think this is so impractical. You just have to look at the names of the songs. Sure, people can just rename them. But it's a war of attrition that Napster will win. Eventually, the songs are renamed so much that nobody can find them anyway.
--