If I recall correctly, there were several thousand accounts created on the first day of user registration. With deference towards your UID, the difference between 100 and 1000 was like an hour.:)
I'd say it was fairly normal for this community to take a poke or two at people who blindly follow false profits like ole' Joe Smith.
I mean, I'm personally inclined to believe that most if not all profits are false, but none can be proven false as Joseph Smith. If you actually look into the history of the church, you'll notice that Joseph Smith couldn't even keep his own story straight. Was it God and his Son that visited him, or an angel, or multiple angels? He's told the story several ways. I'm voting none of the above.
FYI, before you get all offended over something you read on slashdot, consider this quote: "He who takes offense when none is intended is a fool. He who takes offense when it is intended is usually also a fool." -- Brigham Young
Yes, the person is technicaly offering the tracks to the public, but, they're not making a copy.
In fact, if they own the cd, and ripped that copy of a track, the particular arangement of 1s and 0s on their machine are legal, and it is the downloader who is making the copy.
Its somewhat akin to allowing people to come into your house and use your tape deck to dub a copies of your music collection. You're obviously somehow legaly responsable, but it's not quite the same as if you made a bunch of copies and started selling them or handing them out on the streets.
Furthermore, it seems that a great number of people don't entirely (or at all) understand that they are acting as a server themselves.
There are a lot more people that use Napster than there are who understand exactly what's going on.
If they have music on their hard drive, it's available for anyone to download while they're logged in to Napster's servers by default.
If they don't understand that they are becomming servers, then how are they liable for the spread of their otherwise (possibly) legal mp3s?
Am I guilty of violating copyright law if someone breaks into my house and uses my cd burner to make copies of my cd collection while i'm away, asleep, or otherwise oblivious?
Why make more programs named DeCSS?
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
Er...
Why not re-name DeCSS to something like perl, or bash or something... Heh
What the interviewer fails to ask of his subject is much more important than what was asked.
DeCSS, as we know, is not a tool meant to enable copying of DVDs, but a tool meant for expanding DVD viewing access beyond those players with the MPAA seal of approval.
The DeCSS lawsuits are not about copy control, thety're about access control.
What right (not legaly speaking, mind you) do they have to say that I can't use a linux box to watch the DVD I purchased? Would they also be pissed if I built my own VCR into my computer so that I can watch video tapes from my computer?
How about if I have the video output of my console DVD player play the movie's video signal into the TV tuner card on my PC so that I can watch it on my monitor while I work?
I don't see the difference. What if I don't use a Sony/Toshiba/Magnavox/etc TV to display the contents of the DVD? What if I use a DVD player not licensed by the MPAA (oh, that's right, I can't... and that's what this is all about.
He touched on the subject when he asked:
So what constitutes fair use of a DVD in your eyes --
To which Mr. Valenti replies: Any use by which you buy it at a price. It's like saying is there any other way you can get into a movie theater without buying a ticket. The answer is, you can sneak in, I suppose.
To think that the MPAA wants to say what hardware/software I can or can't watch a copy of a movie that I bought on is quite angering.
I can understand them not wanting me to show my copy of the movie to a stadium-full of people, that obviously hits their pocketbooks, cause people won't go pay $9 at a theatre to see the same thing(Btw, how many movies do you attend that you feel was actualy worth $7-9?)
I find myself more and more disgusted with the big IP players we have floating around these days, the RIAA, the MPAA, the WIPO, etc...
I don't know where this is all going, but I know that if we sit back and allow these collections of megamediacorp entities to mandate what/when/where/how/why/on what media we view news/music/talk radio/TV/movies/the internet/etc/etc, then we'll be in bad shape in a few years... bad shape indeed.
The stuff on the screen flash faster than the eye can pick up, and in a unique patern per section of a grid on a screen. When you pull the trigger, it registers the flash patern of the part of the screen that the gun is aimed at. The gun then sends the info about which section of the screen it "hit" back to the console system, which then reflects said "hit" on the screen.
This explanation made sense to me... I'm sure there's a whitepaper somewhere explaining it much better than I can.
Peaceful?! No way, we don't need no hippie lava lamps, we need to KILL!!! To take a big gun and blow something into little pieces! We're unix users damnit, we don't need more peace, we need more coffee and guns!
> The fetus is already in progress to become a person, just as the newborn is
By God(tm)! You're right, while we're at it, lets outlaw spermacides, as sperm is in the process of becoming a person, just as a fetus and a newborn is.
It would much more efficient to just install tamper proof cranial bombs/transmitters into our heads at birth that sent our serial numbers to a large tracking satelite so that they can more easily keep track of terrorists and illegal aliens.
Katz writes commentary. If he knew as much about technical stuff as you, he would prolly be a sysadmin instead of a writer.
I would agree with your harsh assesment of his writing if it were some sort of documentation or howto, but for what it is, I think that despite his technical inaccuracy, he got his point across, regardless of he meant it literaly.
Also, now that we have the ability to filter out stories by author, I don't see why anyone bitches about Katz unless they just want to have something to bitch about. In other words, if you hate Katz so much, filter him out.
I've been interested in DVD for quite some time, but I refuse to rely on Windows to do it.
I'm happy to see that someone is working on it, and I hope that there is enough interest generated to push this through, as this would be yet another reason to switch for people who say, "yeah, but I can't play games/watch DVDs/have decent hardware support"
I think that the idea, at least for me, is that we shouldn't have to lie about how we're going to be using their service.
Fooling them would be easy.... no problem.. but i refuse to do that. I want to stand up and say, "I'm a linux user, and I don't need to further line Bill Gates' pockets to get decent bandwidth."
As much as I may want the service, I am unwilling to sacrifice my principles to get it.
I daresay that like myself, most other linux users who are getting DSL right now wouldn't want the telco installer to touch their box anyway.
I would be quite happy for them to leave the 10-T DSL modem sitting on my desk with a piece of paper listing DNS/Gateway/IP etc and be on their marry way.
From a customer support POV, troubleshooting on their part should be limited to standard TCP/IP stuff anyway, about which I would guess the average DSL subscribing, Linux using user would understand far more than the average Windows user anyway.
At the very least, they should not refuse to install DSL if it is destined to be plugged into the back of a linux box. I can understand them not wanting to commit the time and resources to ensure that their outsourced tech support contractors were capable of doing the linux support, but their current policy snubs a particularly large and growing percentaege of their customer base. Surely if they refused to take support calls from the linux-using subscribers to their service, they would save themselves the hassle of having to support it, but hey, at least we would have access to the service, and I'm pretty used to that kind of attitude anyway. As long as I can get the drivers/specs/physical hardware running into my house, I can be willing to give up my support contract.
I fully support this ruling, and hope that it leads to the loostening or abolishing of export restrictions on crypto, but I don't think it's going to happen.
I betcha the executive branch will come out and put its foot down and play the "matter of national security" card to prevent it. As dumb as it is, I don't see them giving up their position that easily.
>And how is society supposed to prevent future Littleton tragedies if they can't single out people who they suspect may have problems.
Erp! Well, one might start by doing their own parenting, instead of letting the TV raise their children.
I think that TV and movies are to blame only when they're used as a substitute for raising your children.
I beleive that its a parent's responsability to give their children the tools to make the right decisions so that when faced with adversity they can react without turning to violence etc.
When we have a society of people capable of behaving properly, we will all be able to express our individuality without having to worry about being singled out as someone who is going to start shooting up their school.
Millions of people have been listening to wierd music, dressing differently, and playing socialy unacceptable games for many many years. Now that two people that happen to fit that description go psycho, the whole world seems out to get anyone with different tastes.
I think that going against social principals just to be different is kinda dumb, but I also refuse to change my behaviour because its not socially accecptable.
>The 3 day rule throws away most of the inertia in >the moderation system, which will cause chaotic >instability: moderation will become much more >noisy.
Agreed. Further, I see a possible trend that could arise from this. If a moderater had x points and 3 days to spend them, he might just feel obligated to spend them on something that didn't deserve moderation to avoid wasting them.
I don't think that moderator points should time out(at least not so quickly, I can see how it would suck for someone to have 30 or 40 saved up for a rampage) simply because it comoditizes them. I've already seen instances of moderators moderating aparently, simply because they can. Even in this set of comments, I've seen one line me too posts with a score of 2 or greater. I don't think we need to give anyone more reason to moderate simply because they have the points.
I think that perhaps the alignment concept is a bit flawed as well.
Like Bruce says, it's entirely possible that someone who writes great comments may want to write something without it having to be "golden prose" On the other hand, it's also possible that the worst troll on slashdot could come up with a profound, insightful comment that half the readers would miss because their alignment is -12. Like someone else mentioned earlier, each comment should be judged by it's indivitual merit.
The goal is to build up as many points as possible while maintaining a positive alignment.
You get to roleplay one of several classes: open source political freak, 14 year old script kiddie, stuck up programer whose ideas are somehow automaticaly more valid than anyone else's, or just plain troll.
Watch for your copy in local comic and gaming stores,
What I really hope to see from RedHat, given the cash they've been receiving from industry leading hardware and software companies is for them to continue to do what they've done with great coders like Alan Cox.
RedHat would be doing themselves and the community a great service if they used all this money to hire programers, programers already involved in open source projects, and pay them to do what they do best.
If RedHat could bring in more coders, working on GPL'd software, they could speed up development that is currently slowed by said programer's need to eat and have a place to live, and thus being able to afford less time spent working on their projects because they have a Real Job(tm) doing unrelated stuff.
I'm happy with the job they've done thus far in keeping their distribution OSS because we all bennifit from work done at RedHat.
Slashdot Mirror
If I recall correctly, there were several thousand accounts created on the first day of user registration. With deference towards your UID, the difference between 100 and 1000 was like an hour. :)
What? There's a market for that?
I'd say it was fairly normal for this community to take a poke or two at people who blindly follow false profits like ole' Joe Smith.
I mean, I'm personally inclined to believe that most if not all profits are false, but none can be proven false as Joseph Smith. If you actually look into the history of the church, you'll notice that Joseph Smith couldn't even keep his own story straight. Was it God and his Son that visited him, or an angel, or multiple angels? He's told the story several ways. I'm voting none of the above.
FYI, before you get all offended over something you read on slashdot, consider this quote: "He who takes offense when none is intended is a fool. He who takes offense when it is intended is usually also a fool." -- Brigham Young
With the release of the UltraSprac 3 we've solved all of our "ecache bit-flipping cause your machine to crash at random times" issues.
I bet the open source community could actually get DR working on the 10k.
I can't believe they changed the color!
The red book is actualy the second edition.
I still have an old crusty copy of the first edition, aptly known as the yellow book.
It'd be kinda silly for them to go from the yellow book to the red book to the red book.
I'm having a bit of trouble with this, actualy.
Yes, the person is technicaly offering the tracks to the public, but, they're not making a copy.
In fact, if they own the cd, and ripped that copy of a track, the particular arangement of 1s and 0s on their machine are legal, and it is the downloader who is making the copy.
Its somewhat akin to allowing people to come into your house and use your tape deck to dub a copies of your music collection. You're obviously somehow legaly responsable, but it's not quite the same as if you made a bunch of copies and started selling them or handing them out on the streets.
Furthermore, it seems that a great number of people don't entirely (or at all) understand that
they are acting as a server themselves.
There are a lot more people that use Napster than there are who understand exactly what's going on.
If they have music on their hard drive, it's available for anyone to download while they're logged in to Napster's servers by default.
If they don't understand that they are becomming servers, then how are they liable for the spread of their otherwise (possibly) legal mp3s?
Am I guilty of violating copyright law if someone breaks into my house and uses my cd burner to make copies of my cd collection while i'm away, asleep, or otherwise oblivious?
Er...
Why not re-name DeCSS to something like perl,
or bash or something... Heh
What the interviewer fails to ask of his subject is much more important than what was asked.
DeCSS, as we know, is not a tool meant to enable copying of DVDs, but a tool meant for expanding DVD viewing access beyond those players with the MPAA seal of approval.
The DeCSS lawsuits are not about copy control, thety're about access control.
What right (not legaly speaking, mind you) do they have to say that I can't use a linux box to watch the DVD I purchased? Would they also be pissed if I built my own VCR into my computer so that I can watch video tapes from my computer?
How about if I have the video output of my console DVD player play the movie's video signal into the TV tuner card on my PC so that I can watch it on my monitor while I work?
I don't see the difference. What if I don't use a Sony/Toshiba/Magnavox/etc TV to display the contents of the DVD? What if I use a DVD player not licensed by the MPAA (oh, that's right, I can't... and that's what this is all about.
He touched on the subject when he asked:
So what constitutes fair use of a DVD in your eyes --
To which Mr. Valenti replies:
Any use by which you buy it at a price. It's like saying is there any other way you can get into a movie theater without buying a ticket. The answer is, you can sneak in, I suppose.
To think that the MPAA wants to say what hardware/software I can or can't watch a copy of a movie that I bought on is quite angering.
I can understand them not wanting me to show my copy of the movie to a stadium-full of people, that obviously hits their pocketbooks, cause people won't go pay $9 at a theatre to see the same thing(Btw, how many movies do you attend that you feel was actualy worth $7-9?)
I find myself more and more disgusted with the big IP players we have floating around these days, the RIAA, the MPAA, the WIPO, etc...
I don't know where this is all going, but I know that if we sit back and allow these collections of megamediacorp entities to mandate what/when/where/how/why/on what media we view news/music/talk radio/TV/movies/the internet/etc/etc, then we'll be in bad shape in a few years... bad shape indeed.
It was explained to me like this:
The stuff on the screen flash faster than the eye can pick up, and in a unique patern per section of a grid on a screen. When you pull the trigger, it registers the flash patern of the part of the screen that the gun is aimed at. The gun then sends the info about which section of the screen it "hit" back to the console system, which then reflects said "hit" on the screen.
This explanation made sense to me... I'm sure there's a whitepaper somewhere explaining it much better than I can.
Peaceful?! No way, we don't need no hippie lava lamps, we need to KILL!!! To take a big gun and blow something into little pieces! We're unix users damnit, we don't need more peace, we need more coffee and guns!
:)
Now. Go back to your MacOS, you hippie.
> The fetus is already in progress to become a person, just as the newborn is
By God(tm)! You're right, while we're at it, lets outlaw spermacides, as sperm is in the process of becoming a person, just as a fetus and a newborn is.
It would much more efficient to just install tamper proof cranial bombs/transmitters into our heads at birth that sent our serial numbers to a large tracking satelite so that they can more easily keep track of terrorists and illegal aliens.
Katz writes commentary. If he knew as much about technical stuff as you, he would prolly be a sysadmin instead of a writer.
I would agree with your harsh assesment of his writing if it were some sort of documentation or howto, but for what it is, I think that despite his technical inaccuracy, he got his point across, regardless of he meant it literaly.
Also, now that we have the ability to filter out stories by author, I don't see why anyone bitches about Katz unless they just want to have something to bitch about. In other words, if you hate Katz so much, filter him out.
Well, I'm not forking out that kind of cash to ZD by any means, but I'll certainly make the trip from Dallas for a gettogether.
/.-con" Wheeeeeeee.
"TX
I would definately pay upwards of $250 for this.
I've been interested in DVD for quite some time, but I refuse to rely on Windows to do it.
I'm happy to see that someone is working on it, and I hope that there is enough interest generated to push this through, as this would be yet another reason to switch for people who say, "yeah, but I can't play games/watch DVDs/have decent hardware support"
I think that the idea, at least for me, is that we shouldn't have to lie about how we're going to be using their service.
Fooling them would be easy.... no problem.. but i refuse to do that. I want to stand up and say, "I'm a linux user, and I don't need to further line Bill Gates' pockets to get decent bandwidth."
As much as I may want the service, I am unwilling to sacrifice my principles to get it.
I daresay that like myself, most other linux users who are getting DSL right now wouldn't want the telco installer to touch their box anyway.
I would be quite happy for them to leave the 10-T DSL modem sitting on my desk with a piece of paper listing DNS/Gateway/IP etc and be on their marry way.
From a customer support POV, troubleshooting on their part should be limited to standard TCP/IP stuff anyway, about which I would guess the average DSL subscribing, Linux using user would understand far more than the average Windows user anyway.
At the very least, they should not refuse to install DSL if it is destined to be plugged into the back of a linux box. I can understand them not wanting to commit the time and resources to ensure that their outsourced tech support contractors were capable of doing the linux support, but their current policy snubs a particularly large and growing percentaege of their customer base. Surely if they refused to take support calls from the linux-using subscribers to their service, they would save themselves the hassle of having to support it, but hey, at least we would have access to the service, and I'm pretty used to that kind of attitude anyway. As long as I can get the drivers/specs/physical hardware running into my house, I can be willing to give up my support contract.
Heh, real programers use cat>a.out :P
I fully support this ruling, and hope that it leads to the loostening or abolishing of export restrictions on crypto, but I don't think it's going to happen.
I betcha the executive branch will come out and put its foot down and play the "matter of national security" card to prevent it. As dumb as it is, I don't see them giving up their position that easily.
Blah.
>And how is society supposed to prevent future Littleton tragedies if they can't single out people who they suspect may have problems.
Erp! Well, one might start by doing their own parenting, instead of letting the TV raise their children.
I think that TV and movies are to blame only when they're used as a substitute for raising your children.
I beleive that its a parent's responsability to give their children the tools to make the right decisions so that when faced with adversity they can react without turning to violence etc.
When we have a society of people capable of behaving properly, we will all be able to express our individuality without having to worry about being singled out as someone who is going to start shooting up their school.
Millions of people have been listening to wierd music, dressing differently, and playing socialy unacceptable games for many many years. Now that two people that happen to fit that description go psycho, the whole world seems out to get anyone with different tastes.
I think that going against social principals just to be different is kinda dumb, but I also refuse to change my behaviour because its not socially accecptable.
blah blah, when i was your age we had to bang rocks together to get ones and zeros..
blah
>The 3 day rule throws away most of the inertia in >the moderation system, which will cause chaotic >instability: moderation will become much more >noisy.
Agreed. Further, I see a possible trend that could arise from this. If a moderater had x points and 3 days to spend them, he might just feel obligated to spend them on something that didn't deserve moderation to avoid wasting them.
I don't think that moderator points should time out(at least not so quickly, I can see how it would suck for someone to have 30 or 40 saved up for a rampage) simply because it comoditizes them.
I've already seen instances of moderators moderating aparently, simply because they can. Even in this set of comments, I've seen one line me too posts with a score of 2 or greater. I don't think we need to give anyone more reason to moderate simply because they have the points.
I think that perhaps the alignment concept is a bit flawed as well.
Like Bruce says, it's entirely possible that someone who writes great comments may want to write something without it having to be "golden prose" On the other hand, it's also possible that the worst troll on slashdot could come up with a profound, insightful comment that half the readers would miss because their alignment is -12. Like someone else mentioned earlier, each comment should be judged by it's indivitual merit.
Someone needs to market all these ideas.
Slashdot: the RPG
The goal is to build up as many points as possible while maintaining a positive alignment.
You get to roleplay one of several classes: open source political freak, 14 year old script kiddie, stuck up programer whose ideas are somehow automaticaly more valid than anyone else's, or just plain troll.
Watch for your copy in local comic and gaming stores,
What I really hope to see from RedHat, given the cash they've been receiving from industry leading hardware and software companies is for them to continue to do what they've done with great coders like Alan Cox.
RedHat would be doing themselves and the community a great service if they used all this money to hire programers, programers already involved in open source projects, and pay them to do what they do best.
If RedHat could bring in more coders, working on GPL'd software, they could speed up development that is currently slowed by said programer's need to eat and have a place to live, and thus being able to afford less time spent working on their projects because they have a Real Job(tm) doing unrelated stuff.
I'm happy with the job they've done thus far in keeping their distribution OSS because we all bennifit from work done at RedHat.