Yeah, and some countries are just `wrong`, unless you think that women shouldnt be able to drive/work/read etc...
Amen to that brother. Relativism my ass!
Xian Fundie: - Grrrrrrr!!! Islam Fundie: - What, you want a war? I'm game. Xian Fundie: - No, I'm just envious of how you managed to keep your side in the Middle Age and I didn't. Islam Fundie: - Ah, don't be so sore. With patience and hard work I'm sure you'll be able to bring them all back to unreason. Xian Fundie: - Well, you're right, the dumbification of the West is going rather well... but it's so maddeningly slow! Islam Fundie: - Patience, brother. Patience and persistence. In the meantime, shall we have a little war to relax? Xian Fundie: - Let's.
2) The filesystem. It kicks ass, and reached its splendor in 3.12. From then on, it had to share CPU cycles & memory with NDS, but still was obscenely fast. Nothing, I tell you, NOTHING running on i386 ever matched the performance of a NetWare file server. NFS is a joke, Windows networking is a joke, Samba (although crucial for interoperability) is the emulation of a joke. I'd hate to see that code go up in smoke as Novell finally dies.
Netware was a peculiar beast. There were about 5 or 6 different pools of memory allocation, with different management and different use, which you had to fine-tune for maximum performance. A sizeable chunk of the manual was dedicated just for that.
Ok, that's enough nostalgia rant tonight. Now I really gotta sleep. Bye.
Use the extension.ovo -- isn't that the name of Peter Gabriel's new album? It's "egg" in Portuguese.
"Music in an egg". Hmmmm. Egg breaking, musical notes coming out of it.
Use an egg as a logo. Explain it isn't an egg, it's an ogg.
Or I'm slightly deranged and everything in this message is gibberish, including this. It's late, I gotta sleep. But first I'm gonna have a snack. Some fried eggs maybe.
VQF died because it was proprietary. A shame, actually. Same-quality audio occupies roughly 80% of what MP3 does. But if Ogg Vorbis delivers what it promises the point will be moot.
...if it wants to succeed. Not as a plugin developed by someone else, but in the main distribution of WinAmp (so Joe Q. Public who just downloads and runs Setup has it available straight away).
Also, maybe off-topic in the current state of development, but it would be nice to have ID3-like tags allowing for longer titles than how it is now.
It's not a crime and I'm not angry. It's just market forces in action -- I'll buy the product which makes me feel more secure about performance/reliability/upgradability.
Not being open source IS a liability for a hardware product in the Linux world. What happens if they suddenly feel like stopping work on the driver? The kernel keeps evolving to the point that the older driver is incompatible. Not only that but you're forbidden to find a way out through reverse engineering. You're hosed.
I currently dual-boot between Windows and Linux, and although I don't use Linux for gaming, it would be nice if I hadn't to worry about my graphics card actually working there.
BTW, thanks for the Matrox G400MAX suggestion. Anyone else has another?
Take a look at the License Agreement (or should it be EULA?) The agreement reads, in part:
2.1.2 Limitations.
No Reverse Engineering. Customer may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE, nor attempt in any other manner to obtain the source code.
Now correct me if I'm wrong (IANAL), but aren't there places in which you CAN'T forbid people from reverse engineering and therefore such license terms are void?
Now what happens if someone (in a perfectly legal fashion) decides to reverse-engineer this driver in one of these countries (in a clean room set-up of course) and publish the source? Will people from non-free countries (USA for instance*) be in legal trouble if they download/use/distribute such new, Free driver?
* I'll categorize the USA as such until the Supreme Court strikes down the DMCA. If you don't like it... tough. You don't have to read what I write.
What I want to know is: Is there ANY graphics card in the same class (or better) as NVidia which has open-source'd (GPL or otherwise) drivers for Linux? It's very likely I'll buy one... I'm running on a PC Chips mobo with the onboard Sis 530. YECCHH!!
I'll ONLY buy a graph adapter if there's a Linux driver and it's Free Software. Even if the board itself is more expensive.
Suggestion: it would be nice if everybody who buys a non-NVidia board because of its non-opensourcedness sends a little e-mail message to NVidia stating the fact... preferrably with an attached photo of you holding the board.
yeah, I bet the Artist Formerly Known as Prince did it all himself too--he sure can "C the Future".
Two corrections:
1. Now he's The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.
2. I doubt he can do much more than "Visual Basic the Future".
Not that his diatribe against the labels wasn't thoroughly enjoyable.
Face it, the record companies aren't doing anything that any other industry is doing.
Oh, yes they are. They (and other information-selling industries like software) enforce an artificial scarcity on goods (as opposed to the real scarcity of most material objects) in order to make money. It's as if you weren't allowed to breathe unless you buy air from some company. Free-breathers would be called "oxygen infringers" or something.
You're so wrong... Nothing microsoft makes is art:)
Ha! Couldn't have answered better myself. By the way, that AC failed to spot Ben Franklin waving in the air and insisted on saying "why should them give it away". Is this what you Americans call a "straw man"?
Piquette says Microsoft does not differentiate between abandonware and traditional software piracy and will pursue both with equal vigor.
- OK, I want a copy of Windows 3.11. No, I don't want Windows 98. No, I don't want Windows 2000. I want Windows 3.11. Here's US$ 100,00 (waving Ben Franklin). What should I do?
Just imagine that mannah (sp?) starts falling from the sky, just like in the Bible. Edible, tasty, with high nutrition value, cholesterol-free mannah. What would McDonald's think of it? Would they like it? Hell, NO! More probably they'd lobby for a law making it illegal, then secure exclusive right to themselves somehow. McMoses or something like that.
Anything that solves some kind of scarcity (be it food, music, software, books, clothes, whatever) is bound to piss off some big corporation. If people can eat/read/play all they need/want for free, why buy? Doesn't matter if the game is old or new, if the food is burger or veggies. There's only so much space in your stomach / time for playing / body surface to wear.
What does all that mean? The bottom line is, corporations wish our ill-being, period. That doesn't make them "evil" in the Biblical sense, that's just the way they are. Just like a hungry shark can't help but eat you if you're floating around.
The natural solution, therefore, is to fight back. Either with the Law or with other means (boycotts, political activism etc.)
Federal requirements? No. But local jurisdictions should have every right to put blocking software on their library computers. Or, as somebody else suggested in a thread a couple days back, have some filtered and some unfiltered computers, and have parents indicate on the minor's library card whether they're allowed filtered or unfiltered access.
That would be the best of both worlds. I'll further add: every public library MUST have at least as many unfiltered computers as filtered ones.
Of course, we are talking Common Sense, a thing which will be outlawed by Constitutional amendment if GWB, Falwell et al get their way. Sigh.
Thank God I live elsewhere. Flying back home in, uh, 5 hours. B'bye.;)
What? Is income from sale of their work not 'something'?
Not in the property sense. You could also argue that a raper deprives his victim of innocence, or a murderer deprives his/her victim of life, but that does not make these theft. Heck, you could argue that every crime deprives somebody of something, so everything is theft? No, there ARE crimes both less and more grave than theft which are NOT theft. Copyright violations are among then. Anything else is spinmeistering.
Of course, nobody calls a murderer a thief because murder is incommensurably graver than theft. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, is a minor violation (at least when not-for-profit or for personal use) which is being presented as an evil atrocity by the parts interested. I wonder when will they start calling the DeCSS and Napster authors terrorists.
Welcome to the realm of Newspeak, my friends. A doubleplusgood day for all.
I don't want to seem combatative, and I myself have downloaded a great deal from napster, but anyone who maintains it's anything other than theft made easy is rationalizing.
For %@$#&'s sake, will people ever stop calling copyright violations "theft"? It's NOT theft. Theft is when you DEPRIVE someone of something. You can steal a CD (a physical object). You cannot steal someone's ideas except by claiming them as yours. And I don't see people saying the songs they share on Napster were written by themselves.
Unauthorized copying / copyright violation may be illegal / criminal / felony / misdemeanor / whatever, but theft it is not. Use of the word "theft" in this context is the result of the Goebbels-like propaganda spewed by the media honchos.
It's the same as calling a person guilty of using inside information in stock exchange a "terrorist". Absolute nonsense.
Linguistically, it's the exact opposite of euphemism. Both are malicious wording.
Get real please. If you want to create something and give it away willy nilly then do it. Noone will stop you.
Not YET. Picture this: in their never-ending war against copying, the media honchos (software included) instruct their spin doctors to spew the following propaganda:
"This so-called 'free-software movement' is nothing but an incentive to piracy. People who are enticed by their rhetoric, download their software, and read their political manifestoes start believing copying software (and copying in general indeed) is good. They'll start being more sympathetic to piracy. They'll refrain from denouncing other pirates. They'll have a moral excuse to pirate themselves if their 'Gnu' alternative doesn't perform so well. After all, we're just a greedy immoral mob, aren't we?
"Therefore, we urge for the criminalization of the so-called 'free-software movement' and immediate prosecution of their leaders, for incitation to crime.
"While we're at it, let's prosecute all those 'free software' companies for dumping. They're releasing competing products at zero price for chrissake!"
So there you have it. Let's fight it BEFORE they get too cozy with the idea.
Some other poster said that sensitive information should be in the hardware, not the drivers. I not only agree with that but think we can use that as a criterium (sp?) for choosing hardware. Follow the logic:
Company XYZ is squeamish about open-sourcing their driver. They say it's because it would release sensitive information. If this is true, there are important functions being performed by software (the aforementioned driver) Then the hardware is less-than-optimal and your CPU will do unnecessary work. BUY FROM THE COMPETITION!
Oh, BTW people talk a lot about graphics boards but what about those horrid WinModems and WinPrinters? IMHO, even people who only use Windows should refrain from buying these.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to that brother. Relativism my ass!
Xian Fundie: - Grrrrrrr!!!
Islam Fundie: - What, you want a war? I'm game.
Xian Fundie: - No, I'm just envious of how you managed to keep your side in the Middle Age and I didn't.
Islam Fundie: - Ah, don't be so sore. With patience and hard work I'm sure you'll be able to bring them all back to unreason.
Xian Fundie: - Well, you're right, the dumbification of the West is going rather well... but it's so maddeningly slow!
Islam Fundie: - Patience, brother. Patience and persistence. In the meantime, shall we have a little war to relax?
Xian Fundie: - Let's.
2) The filesystem. It kicks ass, and reached its splendor in 3.12. From then on, it had to share CPU cycles & memory with NDS, but still was obscenely fast. Nothing, I tell you, NOTHING running on i386 ever matched the performance of a NetWare file server. NFS is a joke, Windows networking is a joke, Samba (although crucial for interoperability) is the emulation of a joke. I'd hate to see that code go up in smoke as Novell finally dies.
Netware was a peculiar beast. There were about 5 or 6 different pools of memory allocation, with different management and different use, which you had to fine-tune for maximum performance. A sizeable chunk of the manual was dedicated just for that.
Ok, that's enough nostalgia rant tonight. Now I really gotta sleep. Bye.
"Music in an egg". Hmmmm. Egg breaking, musical notes coming out of it.
Use an egg as a logo. Explain it isn't an egg, it's an ogg.
Or I'm slightly deranged and everything in this message is gibberish, including this. It's late, I gotta sleep. But first I'm gonna have a snack. Some fried eggs maybe.
VQF died because it was proprietary. A shame, actually. Same-quality audio occupies roughly 80% of what MP3 does. But if Ogg Vorbis delivers what it promises the point will be moot.
Also, maybe off-topic in the current state of development, but it would be nice to have ID3-like tags allowing for longer titles than how it is now.
Hmm, I'm not so sure about that *coughUCITAcough*
Not being open source IS a liability for a hardware product in the Linux world. What happens if they suddenly feel like stopping work on the driver? The kernel keeps evolving to the point that the older driver is incompatible. Not only that but you're forbidden to find a way out through reverse engineering. You're hosed.
I currently dual-boot between Windows and Linux, and although I don't use Linux for gaming, it would be nice if I hadn't to worry about my graphics card actually working there.
BTW, thanks for the Matrox G400MAX suggestion. Anyone else has another?
2.1.2 Limitations.
No Reverse Engineering. Customer may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE, nor attempt in any other manner to obtain the source code.
Now correct me if I'm wrong (IANAL), but aren't there places in which you CAN'T forbid people from reverse engineering and therefore such license terms are void?
Now what happens if someone (in a perfectly legal fashion) decides to reverse-engineer this driver in one of these countries (in a clean room set-up of course) and publish the source? Will people from non-free countries (USA for instance*) be in legal trouble if they download/use/distribute such new, Free driver?
* I'll categorize the USA as such until the Supreme Court strikes down the DMCA. If you don't like it... tough. You don't have to read what I write.
I'll ONLY buy a graph adapter if there's a Linux driver and it's Free Software. Even if the board itself is more expensive.
Suggestion: it would be nice if everybody who buys a non-NVidia board because of its non-opensourcedness sends a little e-mail message to NVidia stating the fact... preferrably with an attached photo of you holding the board.
Two corrections:
1. Now he's The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.
2. I doubt he can do much more than "Visual Basic the Future".
Not that his diatribe against the labels wasn't thoroughly enjoyable.
Uh... simultaneously?
Oh, yes they are. They (and other information-selling industries like software) enforce an artificial scarcity on goods (as opposed to the real scarcity of most material objects) in order to make money. It's as if you weren't allowed to breathe unless you buy air from some company. Free-breathers would be called "oxygen infringers" or something.
Their server is temporarily (I hope) kablooie. Sorry for the inconvenience. No, RIAA was not involved in this. ;-P
> I love puzzles!
;-P
> Is that jcastro@appi.com.br up there?
> Or is it jbatista@apapproximationforpi.com.br?
Ain't telling ya. Nyah nyah nyah!
Ha! Couldn't have answered better myself. By the way, that AC failed to spot Ben Franklin waving in the air and insisted on saying "why should them give it away". Is this what you Americans call a "straw man"?
It was probably Don Henley who mellowed them out.
Piquette says Microsoft does not differentiate between abandonware and traditional software piracy and will pursue both with equal vigor.
- OK, I want a copy of Windows 3.11. No, I don't want Windows 98. No, I don't want Windows 2000. I want Windows 3.11. Here's US$ 100,00 (waving Ben Franklin). What should I do?
Anything that solves some kind of scarcity (be it food, music, software, books, clothes, whatever) is bound to piss off some big corporation. If people can eat/read/play all they need/want for free, why buy? Doesn't matter if the game is old or new, if the food is burger or veggies. There's only so much space in your stomach / time for playing / body surface to wear.
What does all that mean? The bottom line is, corporations wish our ill-being, period. That doesn't make them "evil" in the Biblical sense, that's just the way they are. Just like a hungry shark can't help but eat you if you're floating around.
The natural solution, therefore, is to fight back. Either with the Law or with other means (boycotts, political activism etc.)
That would be the best of both worlds. I'll further add: every public library MUST have at least as many unfiltered computers as filtered ones.
Of course, we are talking Common Sense, a thing which will be outlawed by Constitutional amendment if GWB, Falwell et al get their way. Sigh.
Thank God I live elsewhere. Flying back home in, uh, 5 hours. B'bye. ;)
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
Not in the property sense. You could also argue that a raper deprives his victim of innocence, or a murderer deprives his/her victim of life, but that does not make these theft. Heck, you could argue that every crime deprives somebody of something, so everything is theft? No, there ARE crimes both less and more grave than theft which are NOT theft. Copyright violations are among then. Anything else is spinmeistering.
Of course, nobody calls a murderer a thief because murder is incommensurably graver than theft. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, is a minor violation (at least when not-for-profit or for personal use) which is being presented as an evil atrocity by the parts interested. I wonder when will they start calling the DeCSS and Napster authors terrorists.
Welcome to the realm of Newspeak, my friends. A doubleplusgood day for all.
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
I don't want to seem combatative, and I myself have downloaded a great deal from napster, but anyone who maintains it's anything other than theft made easy is rationalizing.
For %@$#&'s sake, will people ever stop calling copyright violations "theft"? It's NOT theft. Theft is when you DEPRIVE someone of something. You can steal a CD (a physical object). You cannot steal someone's ideas except by claiming them as yours. And I don't see people saying the songs they share on Napster were written by themselves.
Unauthorized copying / copyright violation may be illegal / criminal / felony / misdemeanor / whatever, but theft it is not. Use of the word "theft" in this context is the result of the Goebbels-like propaganda spewed by the media honchos.
It's the same as calling a person guilty of using inside information in stock exchange a "terrorist". Absolute nonsense.
Linguistically, it's the exact opposite of euphemism. Both are malicious wording.
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
Are you the GnomeICU guy?
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
Not YET. Picture this: in their never-ending war against copying, the media honchos (software included) instruct their spin doctors to spew the following propaganda:
"This so-called 'free-software movement' is nothing but an incentive to piracy. People who are enticed by their rhetoric, download their software, and read their political manifestoes start believing copying software (and copying in general indeed) is good. They'll start being more sympathetic to piracy. They'll refrain from denouncing other pirates. They'll have a moral excuse to pirate themselves if their 'Gnu' alternative doesn't perform so well. After all, we're just a greedy immoral mob, aren't we?
"Therefore, we urge for the criminalization of the so-called 'free-software movement' and immediate prosecution of their leaders, for incitation to crime.
"While we're at it, let's prosecute all those 'free software' companies for dumping. They're releasing competing products at zero price for chrissake!"
So there you have it. Let's fight it BEFORE they get too cozy with the idea.
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
Company XYZ is squeamish about open-sourcing their driver.
They say it's because it would release sensitive information.
If this is true, there are important functions being performed by software (the aforementioned driver)
Then the hardware is less-than-optimal and your CPU will do unnecessary work.
BUY FROM THE COMPETITION!
Oh, BTW people talk a lot about graphics boards but what about those horrid WinModems and WinPrinters? IMHO, even people who only use Windows should refrain from buying these.
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
Brazil uses ethanol (plain alcohol, the same one present in drinks). Only Indy-style racing cars use methanol AFAIK. I wonder where that comes from.
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman