It would also make it much easier to "plug-n-play" a new box when one malfunctions. Imagine a 42U rack filled with identical 1U boxes. Still not a cheap solution, though.
...and thus all other worthwhile online music stores that follows - would
[not] have *existed* in the first place if it wasn't for *some* DRM capability.
Umm, your definition of worthwhile and mine are radically different. The most worthwhile online music store I can find to date is magnatune. I cancelled my eMusic subscription when I found out about magnatune. And guess what: it comes with no DRM attached. Buy music from them. I'm not affiliated with them. I just like their non-evilness.
Face it folks, there are excellent options out there if you just want to listen to good music, pay the musicians you like a reasonable fee, and have no limits on your fair use of the music. The only reason anybody bitches about this is because they want to listen to major label music without following the content owner's rules.
So, to recap:
iTMS is not all that
magnatune is awesome
vote with your dollars
don't bitch about the behavior of major labels if that's all you want to listen to
When they take away our ability to play media on older hardware (e.g., a movie-on-demand whose codec is only available in broadcast flag compatible hardware and whose emulation would be too inefficient to be practical), then we're screwed.
When they do that, stop watching. Money talks. This is the only answer.
I wasn't in on the EMusic.com thing when it started up, but I am now. $9.95/month for 40 downloads when I can hear a 30-second preview of every tune on there seems like a pretty good deal to me. Still, I probably won't stay a subscriber for long though simply because I don't like monthly recurring charges and I already have a large library of CDs ripped to ogg files.
To me, it's not worth it because I probably won't keep downloading 40 songs a month. There's a point where they run out of music I'm interested in. The pace of new additions I like is not 40 songs a month. Over all, I find their selections wanting; but, thankfully, I have found a few artists I had never heard of that I quite enjoy...and thankfully they've got some Tom Waits. So props to EMusic.com for that.
Anyway, I think a lot of customers are unrealistic. They want unlimited music downloads for US $10-20/month. But that $10-20 may not even cover the cost of the load those users put on the service. I think it's fair to limit it. I think it's too bad they weren't smart enough to get it right to begin with because then they just pissed a bunch of users off...but mostly just the unreasonable ones.
Oh, and FYI: copyright infringement is not theft. It's a different crime covered by a different set of laws. Even though the NET Act uses the word "Theft" in its title, it does not legally describe copyright infringement as theft. It makes it a criminal offense, instead of just a civil one, but it's still not theft. Thank you.
Wiser men have said it: If it can be read, it can be copied.
This is why the corps with $$$ to lose are after the legal system. The only way they can hope to control it is to make legal punishment harsh. They will also need to make the same laws around the world because if it's illegal everywhere except BFE-kistan then the point is moot.
This is also why there have been attempts to "close the analog loophole" as they say. So you can't even aim your camcorder at your HDTV and copy it that way.
Finally, this will not go away IMHO until enough people get "mad as hell" and decide they're not gonna take it anymore. Which brings me to the questions I'd like to ask Mr. Godwin:
What likelihood is there that the interests "of the people" can prevail over the interests of our current plutocracy?
Where does the idea that a thought, expressed into the world, can be controlled and owned like physical property? It's idiotic...so where did the notion come from originally? And why?
NT was designed as a microkernel OS but once 4.0 came out the GDI was put right in with the kernel and runs entirely in ring 0 because Microsoft thought cool/fast graphics was more important than system stability and couldn't make it run fast enough otherwise...well, anyway, I wouldn't call it a microkernel.
Checking post history on/. is, imho, a bit like following you to a local "watering hole" and listening to the conversations that ensue.
/., as with most Internet sites I actually post, is a place to hang out and blow off steam. That is its purpose for a lot of people.
I'm certain if you looked over my posts, you might see an overall cynical trend. You'd probably get, just from my nick alone that I'm fed up with things. I don't come here looking for solutions to what ails me. I come here to commiserate. But that is worthless information in a hiring situation. Unless you think people should *never* complain, and are one of those "I'm upbeat 100% of the time!" people who really thinks supposedly motivational platitudes on posters are meaningful, you're probably an idiot, a fool, or corrupt.
Personally, I think looking at/. for any guidance on any decision is foolhardy.
I'm obviously not the parent poster and I'm not familiar with Terazona, but I'll take a stab at your question based on this sentence.
It sounds to me like what the guy is saying is this: The map is divided up (distributed object-view) among servers and no one server ever has the entire map in-memory. If everybody in the game moves to one part of the world, you've got servers sitting there doing nothing...so they switch (dynamic ownership) to the part where everybody is to balance the load. As players move out of that area to other areas, some of the servers would "move" with them so to speak.
Of course, I could be totally wrong on my understanding of what Terazona does because I'm basing it solely on what I've read about it here on/.
I wouldn't call it the evolution of stupidity in the users. It is, however, an overall de-evolution of users. This is by management design. Payroll is almost always the most expensive part of any business. In efforts to manage cost, businesses will invariably utilize available technology to replace *thinking* workers (skilled, intelligent people cost more) with workers who can't think their way out of a paper bag. This is natural, because idiots cost less and are more readily replaced.
Lowering labor cost is a Holy Grail of most corporate management teams. Be it outsourcing to countries like India and lovely China, or doing everything possible to dumb-down any job so the only requirement is a pulse and an ability to follow simple (elementary school level) directions. ("Hi, thank you for calling tech. support...No, sir...I'm sorry...I have to follow the script...I don't know that...I can't...did you reboot?...but I...my head would explode if I tried to answer that question...")
Don't blame users for being stupid. Blame management. I'll say again: it's by design.
</rant>
Umm, if there are no exploits to begin with, then why does microsoft need to issue a patch?
I'm not trying to defend the parent poster to which you replied; but, the reason *anybody* needs to issue a patch even when there are no exploits to begin with is because sooner or later, one will exist.
See, if some researcher finds a hole, he's not the only genius in the world who can find it. Someone else will eventually. If the manufacturer of the product with the newly discovered hole sits on its arse and does not issue a patch, even if no known exploits exist, said manufacturer is leaving its customers vulnerable to attack. This is a disservice to those customers...and one that will lose said customers. Especially when it comes out that the latest worm/crack/etc. exploited a vulnerability the manufacturer knew about for six months, but sat on it instead of fixing it for you.
What Microsoft wants to do, I'm sure, is to make distribution of patches similar to AOL's software update. You turn on your computer, boot up Windows, and it initiates an encrypted conversation with Microsoft HQ...then says to you: "Windows needs updated, please wait..." while it downloads and installs whatever it is Microsoft wants to install on your PC today without telling you what that is.
That would be Microsoft's "security" wet-dream, if you ask me.
A) I will make no value judgement. Good or bad is up to the individual to decide.
B) Evolution is specifically designed to "be like Outlook" It has a look/feel about it that mimics Outlook. Basically, Open Office, Mozilla, and Evolution (and a number of other apps) simply try to be a better widget than Microsoft's version. If Microsoft had chosen to release Office for platforms other than Windows & Mac, and had chosen to play nicely instead of trying lock-in via file-format (and the 3 Es), most of these products wouldn't exist now or would be much less developed because there'd be much less motivation to have them.
All that aside, I was simply attempting to be witty through the clever use of irony. Microsoft says basically, "If not for us, we wouldn't have so much innovation..." and I agree. If not for their sub-optimal products, draconian licensing, underhanded tricks, etc., many of the really awesome and cool technologies we enjoy *wouldn't* exist...but that's not because Microsoft made them. Microsoft just made them possible and (by their own actions) inevitable.
And I find that ironic, and funny...but this needn't be mod'ed as such.
Without a Microsoft monoculture, he said, most of the recent progress in information technology could not have happened.
Really? Could someone more familiar with Microsoft and their products kindly give me examples?
Well, look at it this way, without Microsoft, we probably wouldn't have any of the following:
I was so sad when my diskettes of GeoWorks Ensemble 2.0 died. To this day, I'd be pleased to use it on my old 486. Plus I have docs written in GeoWrite I can't get to anymore that I want back.
if they can depend on this being a one-time charge...
Well, with Microsoft involved, what you can depend on is an area of concern in my mind.
And if you can't tell what they're using, ext2 or any number of filesystems may be usable. But, if you're a manufacturer selling through a channel, you may want to offer diagnostic and repair licenses to resellers. FAT32 may be a better choice merely for the simplicity of unplugging the drive from the device and plugging it into a PC that will in most cases be running Windows for diagnostic/repair work. And it is likely perceived as easier by the manufacturer to train certified repair shops on Windows-based tools as opposed to Linux ones.
Not true. Many embedded devices could use FAT with no "standard interface" for you to know about it.
For example, I have a digital multitrack recording studio with an embedded 20GB IDE HDD. It just happens to be formatted FAT32. I know this because the manufacturer was polite enough to sell a USB add-in card for me to connect the device to a PC or MAC for importing/exporting tracks.
Now, had the manufacturer chosen not to offer a USB port...and only allowed me to import/export tracks via the built-in CD-ROM burner, they could've still used FAT32 for the internal HDD format, and I'd have no way of knowing without cracking the thing open and plugging the HDD into a PC.
I'm certain any manufacturer of embedded products could use FAT32 for embedded drive formats, but use some kind of reverse-engineering crap in the DMCA to prohibit you from knowing it's FAT32.
Yes. You missed the part where someone, in a most holier-than-thou attempt to differentiate himself from the throng and make himself feel better than the rest of us, will predict all the things that the slashdot horde will say about the article.
Slashdot Mirror
It would also make it much easier to "plug-n-play" a new box when one malfunctions. Imagine a 42U rack filled with identical 1U boxes. Still not a cheap solution, though.
Nvidia couldn't be a little pissed they're out of the XBOX2, could they?
Face it folks, there are excellent options out there if you just want to listen to good music, pay the musicians you like a reasonable fee, and have no limits on your fair use of the music. The only reason anybody bitches about this is because they want to listen to major label music without following the content owner's rules.
So, to recap:
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!!!
I wasn't in on the EMusic.com thing when it started up, but I am now. $9.95/month for 40 downloads when I can hear a 30-second preview of every tune on there seems like a pretty good deal to me. Still, I probably won't stay a subscriber for long though simply because I don't like monthly recurring charges and I already have a large library of CDs ripped to ogg files. To me, it's not worth it because I probably won't keep downloading 40 songs a month. There's a point where they run out of music I'm interested in. The pace of new additions I like is not 40 songs a month. Over all, I find their selections wanting; but, thankfully, I have found a few artists I had never heard of that I quite enjoy...and thankfully they've got some Tom Waits. So props to EMusic.com for that.
Anyway, I think a lot of customers are unrealistic. They want unlimited music downloads for US $10-20/month. But that $10-20 may not even cover the cost of the load those users put on the service. I think it's fair to limit it. I think it's too bad they weren't smart enough to get it right to begin with because then they just pissed a bunch of users off...but mostly just the unreasonable ones.
Oh, and FYI: copyright infringement is not theft. It's a different crime covered by a different set of laws. Even though the NET Act uses the word "Theft" in its title, it does not legally describe copyright infringement as theft. It makes it a criminal offense, instead of just a civil one, but it's still not theft. Thank you.
This is why the corps with $$$ to lose are after the legal system. The only way they can hope to control it is to make legal punishment harsh. They will also need to make the same laws around the world because if it's illegal everywhere except BFE-kistan then the point is moot.
This is also why there have been attempts to "close the analog loophole" as they say. So you can't even aim your camcorder at your HDTV and copy it that way.
Finally, this will not go away IMHO until enough people get "mad as hell" and decide they're not gonna take it anymore. Which brings me to the questions I'd like to ask Mr. Godwin:
NT was designed as a microkernel OS but once 4.0 came out the GDI was put right in with the kernel and runs entirely in ring 0 because Microsoft thought cool/fast graphics was more important than system stability and couldn't make it run fast enough otherwise...well, anyway, I wouldn't call it a microkernel.
Checking post history on /. is, imho, a bit like following you to a local "watering hole" and listening to the conversations that ensue.
/., as with most Internet sites I actually post, is a place to hang out and blow off steam. That is its purpose for a lot of people.
/. for any guidance on any decision is foolhardy.
I'm certain if you looked over my posts, you might see an overall cynical trend. You'd probably get, just from my nick alone that I'm fed up with things. I don't come here looking for solutions to what ails me. I come here to commiserate. But that is worthless information in a hiring situation. Unless you think people should *never* complain, and are one of those "I'm upbeat 100% of the time!" people who really thinks supposedly motivational platitudes on posters are meaningful, you're probably an idiot, a fool, or corrupt.
Personally, I think looking at
It sounds to me like what the guy is saying is this: The map is divided up (distributed object-view) among servers and no one server ever has the entire map in-memory. If everybody in the game moves to one part of the world, you've got servers sitting there doing nothing...so they switch (dynamic ownership) to the part where everybody is to balance the load. As players move out of that area to other areas, some of the servers would "move" with them so to speak.
Of course, I could be totally wrong on my understanding of what Terazona does because I'm basing it solely on what I've read about it here on
I wouldn't call it the evolution of stupidity in the users. It is, however, an overall de-evolution of users. This is by management design. Payroll is almost always the most expensive part of any business. In efforts to manage cost, businesses will invariably utilize available technology to replace *thinking* workers (skilled, intelligent people cost more) with workers who can't think their way out of a paper bag. This is natural, because idiots cost less and are more readily replaced.
Lowering labor cost is a Holy Grail of most corporate management teams. Be it outsourcing to countries like India and lovely China, or doing everything possible to dumb-down any job so the only requirement is a pulse and an ability to follow simple (elementary school level) directions. ("Hi, thank you for calling tech. support...No, sir...I'm sorry...I have to follow the script...I don't know that...I can't...did you reboot?...but I...my head would explode if I tried to answer that question...")
Don't blame users for being stupid. Blame management. I'll say again: it's by design. </rant>
Umm, if there are no exploits to begin with, then why does microsoft need to issue a patch?
I'm not trying to defend the parent poster to which you replied; but, the reason *anybody* needs to issue a patch even when there are no exploits to begin with is because sooner or later, one will exist.
See, if some researcher finds a hole, he's not the only genius in the world who can find it. Someone else will eventually. If the manufacturer of the product with the newly discovered hole sits on its arse and does not issue a patch, even if no known exploits exist, said manufacturer is leaving its customers vulnerable to attack. This is a disservice to those customers...and one that will lose said customers. Especially when it comes out that the latest worm/crack/etc. exploited a vulnerability the manufacturer knew about for six months, but sat on it instead of fixing it for you.
What Microsoft wants to do, I'm sure, is to make distribution of patches similar to AOL's software update. You turn on your computer, boot up Windows, and it initiates an encrypted conversation with Microsoft HQ...then says to you: "Windows needs updated, please wait..." while it downloads and installs whatever it is Microsoft wants to install on your PC today without telling you what that is.
That would be Microsoft's "security" wet-dream, if you ask me.
A) I will make no value judgement. Good or bad is up to the individual to decide.
B) Evolution is specifically designed to "be like Outlook" It has a look/feel about it that mimics Outlook. Basically, Open Office, Mozilla, and Evolution (and a number of other apps) simply try to be a better widget than Microsoft's version. If Microsoft had chosen to release Office for platforms other than Windows & Mac, and had chosen to play nicely instead of trying lock-in via file-format (and the 3 Es), most of these products wouldn't exist now or would be much less developed because there'd be much less motivation to have them.
All that aside, I was simply attempting to be witty through the clever use of irony. Microsoft says basically, "If not for us, we wouldn't have so much innovation..." and I agree. If not for their sub-optimal products, draconian licensing, underhanded tricks, etc., many of the really awesome and cool technologies we enjoy *wouldn't* exist...but that's not because Microsoft made them. Microsoft just made them possible and (by their own actions) inevitable.
And I find that ironic, and funny...but this needn't be mod'ed as such.
One "innovation" nobody else could have engineered/designed/implemented 10 years earlier (or later) ...
Microsoft Bob!
Thank you, thank you...I'm here 'til Thursday...
- Samba
- FreeDOS
- WINE
- The XBOX Linux Project
- Ximian Evolution
- Open Office
- Mozilla
- etc...
Think about it: If Microsoft produced superior products and didn't try to "0WN" you, a lot of those wouldn't exist.I was so sad when my diskettes of GeoWorks Ensemble 2.0 died. To this day, I'd be pleased to use it on my old 486. Plus I have docs written in GeoWrite I can't get to anymore that I want back.
Wake me when it looks like Pam Gidley looked in 1987. Thanks.
And considering I've already got a few Canon lenses, it looks even more appealing. I'd love one.
And if you can't tell what they're using, ext2 or any number of filesystems may be usable. But, if you're a manufacturer selling through a channel, you may want to offer diagnostic and repair licenses to resellers. FAT32 may be a better choice merely for the simplicity of unplugging the drive from the device and plugging it into a PC that will in most cases be running Windows for diagnostic/repair work. And it is likely perceived as easier by the manufacturer to train certified repair shops on Windows-based tools as opposed to Linux ones.
Not true. Many embedded devices could use FAT with no "standard interface" for you to know about it.
For example, I have a digital multitrack recording studio with an embedded 20GB IDE HDD. It just happens to be formatted FAT32. I know this because the manufacturer was polite enough to sell a USB add-in card for me to connect the device to a PC or MAC for importing/exporting tracks.
Now, had the manufacturer chosen not to offer a USB port...and only allowed me to import/export tracks via the built-in CD-ROM burner, they could've still used FAT32 for the internal HDD format, and I'd have no way of knowing without cracking the thing open and plugging the HDD into a PC.
I'm certain any manufacturer of embedded products could use FAT32 for embedded drive formats, but use some kind of reverse-engineering crap in the DMCA to prohibit you from knowing it's FAT32.
Yes. You missed the part where someone, in a most holier-than-thou attempt to differentiate himself from the throng and make himself feel better than the rest of us, will predict all the things that the slashdot horde will say about the article.
1. Getting paid
--OR--
2. Not working on the case
All evidence leans towards #2. It was after the Baystar deal when SCO's filings started at least approaching the work of professional lawyers.