If I run X using startx, then switch to another VC using ctrl-alt F2, then log on as root and start an X session to use some graphical tools, then quit the root session, if I do Alt-F7 to get to the original session, I get a crash every time. I suppose a positive result of this is that I use sudo much more frequently, but I don't even recall some of the names of some of the KDE tools to run them from the command line. It's a bit inconvenient. Apart from that, things work fine. Q3Arena works well, though I don't see any improvement when I activate r_smp 1 to get SMP support. In fact, I get about.4 fps lower than with r_smp set to 0. I'm still too new at this to really troubleshoot that properly, though.
I think Metallica made an interesting point in their Slashdot interview. I don't believe that it's controversial that artists should be able to say who can copy their work. If you don't agree with this, you can stop reading here, because we don't have a common basis for what follows. It's all about how to allow artists to have their say about what people do with their work.
I'd like to add to, and probably slightly contradict this. I think it is reasonable for a society to create priviledges for those who create things which add to the culture of that society. That is why I support copyright. I no more think an artist has the right to determine the actions of others (control who can copy their work) than it is my parents right to control how I think because of the fact that it is their genetic material and food and resources which got me here. The only way I would say you have a right to decide who gets information and who does not is if you get a contractual agreement with everyone that they will handle this information in a certain way. Now, if I buy music and I agree to this contract and break it, then you have legal recourse against me. But not against parties who never agreed to it (i.e., the people I decided to give the music to). I wanted to state that because I think too many people are starting to think of a copyright as a God given right, rather than as a privilege granted by government for the public good. Now, I support copyright holders' going after violators, such as those making copyrighted materials available to others illegally, but I am much more leary about them legally being able to go after other parties. So, I think it is reasonable for them to ask Napster to block the offending users, and I think a civil suit against the company is a reasonable action, and then we can see what the courts have to say. My suspicion is that the Napster people designed their system to facilitate the violations, but that should be decided by a court of law rather than funky new laws put into place by a desperate music industry.
Doesn't exist yet, Netscape is ugly and the fonts are to small. Mozilla is looking good, but it is not stable enough yet. Konquerer looks pretty cool too, but I haven't tried it yet (but I am going to try the KDE2 betas soon).
Can't help with the overall looks, but adding the following to the.Xdefaults file which is probably in your home directory would probably help. I did this a couple of days ago and it has made all the difference:
I pretty much use KMail for all my email reading under X. Kmail comes with KDE, but I use it everywhere. The only annoying thing is that it launches KFM whenever you click a URL. I wish I could make it lauch other programs, but I don't often click links from email, so it isn't a huge issue with me. XFMail is pretty cool, too. I hope you meant "shouldn't cause much trouble" in point number 4, because I haven't had any difficulty with multimedia stuff once I got the sound card recognized, which Mandrake did perfectly right off the bat. Oh, and you can try different font sizes instead of that 100. It might help.
I would like to know how democratic you feel that the current political system in the USA really is. Please take into account that only some 25% of the electorate votes, that they are generally middle to upper class. Also include that most voters allow representatives to maintain no amount of accountability, re-electing them although they have not fulfilled any of the goals or values from their platform.
That is democracy! Democracy does not dictate that people make wise choices.
Bottom-up control is the kind of Democracy that is the real defintion of the word, the kind imagined by Thomas Jeffereson, Adam Smith and many other 'forefathers'. Today, unfortunately, there is a different definition of democracy, and I hope that you can help us see which one you prefer.
I see no evidence that the founding fathers wanted democracy. What we are supposed to have is a Republic, and many of the problems we are beginning to face is the direct result of too much democracy and too little leadership. Democracy is just about the worst form of government out. Democracy is just another word for Mob rule and no principles except for the transient desires of the masses.
I figured I'd hear this eventually. I checked out DSL Reports to find out whether I could get DSL, since I knew I could not get the ADSL from the phone company because of my distance from the CO. While I was there, I found that I could get an expensive and slower DSL called SDSL (only 144Kb, and anywhere from $90-$125 a month) After some shuffling of bills and whatnot, I looked at the ISPs who provided the $90 service, and one was Flashcom. Fortunately, dslreports.com has user reviews. Flashcom was consistently the lowest ranked provider, so I went with SpeakEasy. It took 3 months to get it, due to some "incompatible pair" problem Covad was reporting that BellSouth was having. But, things did come online Saturday before last. Then, the next day, a storm blew out the line. Speakeasy has been easy to get support from, and they won't bill me until the line is back up and running, despite the fact that it was working fine for 24 hours before the storm. It's hard to get times for Covad to show up, because they are booked on weekends, but I have heard pretty good things about Speakeasy, but nothing but bad news about Flashcom.
Energy has no mass? Think again. That famous equation (verified countless times in the Nevada desert, in the Russian wastelands, and over two certain cities in Japan) works both ways, you know.
Well, the equation speaks of equivalence, rather than sameness. It is not saying that Energy is, in fact, mass multiplied by the speed of light squared, it is saying that one can calculate energy in that way. That being said, every way of actually transferring energy that I can think of involves mass. Indeed, heat has no meaning without particles, and electricity cannot exist without electrons, but I never thought of E=mc^2 in the sort of literal way you implied.
What ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
Not applicable. Ebay is a private company, and don't have any obligation to allow all legal sales. They could disallow all software sales, or only allow software sales, and are free to do so. Now, if they are in violation of their own advertised policies, you may be able to sue them for fraud, but this is not a civil rights issue. Just because the Constitution (in the case of us Americans) says that Congress can make no law prohibitiing certain actions, that does not mean any entity has the affirmative obligation to facilitate your exercising of this protected right.
Re:We don't burn books, we delete them
on
Fahrenheit 451
·
· Score: 1
The only way to make true child pornography is to enlist participants who cannot legally enter into such contracts. Child pornography laws are not in place to prevent viewing on the part of the receivers, rather to prevent the crime of using children to make it. That is a crime with or without censorship. Would it be censorship to ban an actual snuff film?
Play Q3 in Win98, pull up a console and type/r_smp 1 and see what happens.
Curiously, when I did this in my Linux install of Q3 demo, I got.3 fps less with r_smp set to 1 than I did with it on zero. I run a dual PII 333 setup with Mandrake 7.0. Is there any trick to getting Q3 to use both processors?
Re:We don't burn books, we delete them
on
Fahrenheit 451
·
· Score: 1
The government decides you can't read child pornography. I guess the people are supposed to watch them.
That being said, the argument can be made that the purpose of such a law is to prevent the exploitation of children, not to prevent the viewing of the material specifically.
I remember reading that when Boo.com came out, their page had so much stuff going on that it was distracting. I went there after the supposed facelift, and I still found it too much for me.
IMHO, Andover / Slashdot would do more good than bad overall by going ahead and publishing the book. Sure, a few people might not be credited with their brilliant musings, but the people who really NEED to read this book, will be more likely to read it if it's on paper!
If you only concentrate on a single long term end, all manner of horrible short term means may be employed. If you will not adhere to principles when adherence is inconvenient, then you don't really have any to begin with.
I saw my cookie when I tried it with IE that comes with 2000. Of course, that only happened because I rebuilt the machine and forgot to reset my Internet settings. I normally don't allow cookies or scripting unless I specifically authorize the site to do so.
eriously, think really hard about what you're saying here. If we abort (kill) these children, they won't be able to commit violent crimes. So why stop there? Let's take this line of reasoning all the way to its end. Why not just kill anyone who has a propensity for violence, or anyone who is a potential criminal? Then go ahead and label it a retroactive abortion; the courts will call it a Constitutionally-protected right.
The problem of violence isn't going to be solved with more violence -- especially violence against the unborn.
No argument from me. I didn't recommend aborting babies. I was just offering a contribution to the discussion on youth violence. If the study is correct, that would explain the dropping rates of youth violence. Video games may or may not contribute to youth violence, but I doubt the effect would be as pronounced as millions of people not being here because they were aborted. Even if it could conclusively be shown that crime is substantially reduced by massive use of abortion, I would not support it. Even so, I don't much go for forbidding knowledge, or candy coating studies because of the fear that they might be used to justify horrible policies.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
How come if video games spur violence among the young, that violence among the young is dropping to its lowest levels since the depression.
There is an article in Scientific American that suggests that legalized abortion may have something to do with this. The most likely children to be aborted are probably the most likely to be neglected, and therefore most predisposed to criminal behavior. By aborting them, you get rid of a lot of potential criminals.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
I guess YMMV applies to negative as well as positive experiences, eh?
No doubt. If you go over to Clark Howard's website, you will find that there are numerous complaints against Best Buy, but very few against Circuit City when it comes to customer service issues. About the only things I get from Best Buy are CDs or specific models of equipment after doing extensive research (which is about the only way I buy stuff anyway).
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Ah, there's the rub. You don't have to buy it to consent. If I find a promotional CD on the side of the road, I still am bound by these laws. Normally, if an action is brought against someone for breach of contract, you have to provide evidence that the contract was agreed to. That is not necessary with copyright. The violator does not even have to be notified. I am not saying that these measures are unnecessary or unwarranted, but I think the matter should be examined carefully, especially in this day and era, one in which intellectual property is starting to generate most of the wealth.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Calm down. I'm not at all dissapointed if it helps artists who want to share their music. However, I object to "sharing" things against the will of the author. My objection is mainly to those in the slashdot peanut gallery who are acting as though this program is good because it makes piracy easy, not inspite of it.
You know, the thing that I have always been conflicted over is that if I don't want anything of mine shared, I can do one of two things: 1)not release it. Nobody is forcing me to give away some secret of mine, or 2) Enter into a contract with others so that they do not give it to someone else. I am very uncomfortable with government enforcing contracts stipulated by one party without having the explicit consent of the other. The purpose of a copyright is to benefit the public, not the artist/creator.
Now, I see some very good reasons for copyrights, but not being able to share information you have freely with others is pretty alien in human history, so don't be surprised that people generally don't do it. It's like religious laws against fornication. When people got married at 15 or 16 years old (earlier some places), this was a widely adhered to principle. Now that (at least in the West) extended adolescence is the norm, and normal marrying age comes in the early to mid twenties, is it any surprise that this principle is generally not adhered to?
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
i could go on, but i've easily bought 50 cds because i downloaded a few of the artists albums, and liked then enough to buy them. if i don't like them, i delete them. it's pretty simple.
Generally artists don't really make much off album sales (until you have a string of hits and your first contract is fulfilled). Most artists of the type you described make money off two things, performing (which is the bulk of it), and if they are smart, songwriting. If a new artist comes out and his/her CD is heavily pirated, even if we assume that every person who got the MP3 would have gotten the album, but didn't, the vast majority of the losses would be taken by the record company. The artist would lose very little actual money. What could happen, however, is the label might not push any future projects by that artist because of the lackluster sales, but I have never seen that happen to an artist who had any kind of decent following. I know that both Usher's and Bobby Brown's first albums flopped, but the company had confidence in the marketability of the artists, and approved new releases. A heavily pirated artist would be handled in the same way, I suspect.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
I have 5 of the 6 MCSE exams done and I am about to get the 6th done. When I heard about the retirement of the NT 4 exams, I really started concentrating on Linux and Unix so that I can migrate away from Microsoft altogether. I see how big a mistake it is to base my entire career on a single company.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Now that is just spooky. Same directory structure as my own machine. I guess I need to change my username.:) For a minute, I had flashbacks to my BBS days when people would embed control codes to cause variable values to appear on the screen so that you would think some complete stranger had your address and phone number. I remember reading one of those messages, and it said something like "Hello Robert, do you still live at 1425 Brookridge Ave? Can I call you at 404-263-0687? I nearly freaked out until the Admin let us newbies know the deal. "Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Well, the DHTML may not work as well as Communicator. I went to a Red Dwarf page and the DHTML page they have didn't work with Mozilla, but did work with Netscape 4.72. Go figure. "Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Slashdot Mirror
If I run X using startx, then switch to another VC using ctrl-alt F2, then log on as root and start an X session to use some graphical tools, then quit the root session, if I do Alt-F7 to get to the original session, I get a crash every time. I suppose a positive result of this is that I use sudo much more frequently, but I don't even recall some of the names of some of the KDE tools to run them from the command line. It's a bit inconvenient. Apart from that, things work fine. Q3Arena works well, though I don't see any improvement when I activate r_smp 1 to get SMP support. In fact, I get about .4 fps lower than with r_smp set to 0. I'm still too new at this to really troubleshoot that properly, though.
Mandrake 7.1 beta, PII333 SMP x2, 256MB RAM
I'd like to add to, and probably slightly contradict this. I think it is reasonable for a society to create priviledges for those who create things which add to the culture of that society. That is why I support copyright. I no more think an artist has the right to determine the actions of others (control who can copy their work) than it is my parents right to control how I think because of the fact that it is their genetic material and food and resources which got me here. The only way I would say you have a right to decide who gets information and who does not is if you get a contractual agreement with everyone that they will handle this information in a certain way. Now, if I buy music and I agree to this contract and break it, then you have legal recourse against me. But not against parties who never agreed to it (i.e., the people I decided to give the music to). I wanted to state that because I think too many people are starting to think of a copyright as a God given right, rather than as a privilege granted by government for the public good. Now, I support copyright holders' going after violators, such as those making copyrighted materials available to others illegally, but I am much more leary about them legally being able to go after other parties. So, I think it is reasonable for them to ask Napster to block the offending users, and I think a civil suit against the company is a reasonable action, and then we can see what the courts have to say. My suspicion is that the Napster people designed their system to facilitate the violations, but that should be decided by a court of law rather than funky new laws put into place by a desperate music industry.
Can't help with the overall looks, but adding the following to the .Xdefaults file which is probably in your home directory would probably help. I did this a couple of days ago and it has made all the difference:
I pretty much use KMail for all my email reading under X. Kmail comes with KDE, but I use it everywhere. The only annoying thing is that it launches KFM whenever you click a URL. I wish I could make it lauch other programs, but I don't often click links from email, so it isn't a huge issue with me. XFMail is pretty cool, too. I hope you meant "shouldn't cause much trouble" in point number 4, because I haven't had any difficulty with multimedia stuff once I got the sound card recognized, which Mandrake did perfectly right off the bat. Oh, and you can try different font sizes instead of that 100. It might help.
That is democracy! Democracy does not dictate that people make wise choices.
I see no evidence that the founding fathers wanted democracy. What we are supposed to have is a Republic, and many of the problems we are beginning to face is the direct result of too much democracy and too little leadership. Democracy is just about the worst form of government out. Democracy is just another word for Mob rule and no principles except for the transient desires of the masses.
I figured I'd hear this eventually. I checked out DSL Reports to find out whether I could get DSL, since I knew I could not get the ADSL from the phone company because of my distance from the CO. While I was there, I found that I could get an expensive and slower DSL called SDSL (only 144Kb, and anywhere from $90-$125 a month) After some shuffling of bills and whatnot, I looked at the ISPs who provided the $90 service, and one was Flashcom. Fortunately, dslreports.com has user reviews. Flashcom was consistently the lowest ranked provider, so I went with SpeakEasy. It took 3 months to get it, due to some "incompatible pair" problem Covad was reporting that BellSouth was having. But, things did come online Saturday before last. Then, the next day, a storm blew out the line. Speakeasy has been easy to get support from, and they won't bill me until the line is back up and running, despite the fact that it was working fine for 24 hours before the storm. It's hard to get times for Covad to show up, because they are booked on weekends, but I have heard pretty good things about Speakeasy, but nothing but bad news about Flashcom.
Well, the equation speaks of equivalence, rather than sameness. It is not saying that Energy is, in fact, mass multiplied by the speed of light squared, it is saying that one can calculate energy in that way. That being said, every way of actually transferring energy that I can think of involves mass. Indeed, heat has no meaning without particles, and electricity cannot exist without electrons, but I never thought of E=mc^2 in the sort of literal way you implied.
Not applicable. Ebay is a private company, and don't have any obligation to allow all legal sales. They could disallow all software sales, or only allow software sales, and are free to do so. Now, if they are in violation of their own advertised policies, you may be able to sue them for fraud, but this is not a civil rights issue. Just because the Constitution (in the case of us Americans) says that Congress can make no law prohibitiing certain actions, that does not mean any entity has the affirmative obligation to facilitate your exercising of this protected right.
The only way to make true child pornography is to enlist participants who cannot legally enter into such contracts. Child pornography laws are not in place to prevent viewing on the part of the receivers, rather to prevent the crime of using children to make it. That is a crime with or without censorship. Would it be censorship to ban an actual snuff film?
Curiously, when I did this in my Linux install of Q3 demo, I got .3 fps less with r_smp set to 1 than I did with it on zero. I run a dual PII 333 setup with Mandrake 7.0. Is there any trick to getting Q3 to use both processors?
That being said, the argument can be made that the purpose of such a law is to prevent the exploitation of children, not to prevent the viewing of the material specifically.
I remember reading that when Boo.com came out, their page had so much stuff going on that it was distracting. I went there after the supposed facelift, and I still found it too much for me.
If you only concentrate on a single long term end, all manner of horrible short term means may be employed. If you will not adhere to principles when adherence is inconvenient, then you don't really have any to begin with.
I saw my cookie when I tried it with IE that comes with 2000. Of course, that only happened because I rebuilt the machine and forgot to reset my Internet settings. I normally don't allow cookies or scripting unless I specifically authorize the site to do so.
I downloaded a program called not lame which is LAME with the codec already in it. I think it was made available in Australia where that is legal.
What does Turing complete mean anyway?
No argument from me. I didn't recommend aborting babies. I was just offering a contribution to the discussion on youth violence. If the study is correct, that would explain the dropping rates of youth violence. Video games may or may not contribute to youth violence, but I doubt the effect would be as pronounced as millions of people not being here because they were aborted. Even if it could conclusively be shown that crime is substantially reduced by massive use of abortion, I would not support it. Even so, I don't much go for forbidding knowledge, or candy coating studies because of the fear that they might be used to justify horrible policies.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
There is an article in Scientific American that suggests that legalized abortion may have something to do with this. The most likely children to be aborted are probably the most likely to be neglected, and therefore most predisposed to criminal behavior. By aborting them, you get rid of a lot of potential criminals.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
No doubt. If you go over to Clark Howard's website, you will find that there are numerous complaints against Best Buy, but very few against Circuit City when it comes to customer service issues. About the only things I get from Best Buy are CDs or specific models of equipment after doing extensive research (which is about the only way I buy stuff anyway).
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Ah, there's the rub. You don't have to buy it to consent. If I find a promotional CD on the side of the road, I still am bound by these laws. Normally, if an action is brought against someone for breach of contract, you have to provide evidence that the contract was agreed to. That is not necessary with copyright. The violator does not even have to be notified. I am not saying that these measures are unnecessary or unwarranted, but I think the matter should be examined carefully, especially in this day and era, one in which intellectual property is starting to generate most of the wealth.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
You know, the thing that I have always been conflicted over is that if I don't want anything of mine shared, I can do one of two things: 1)not release it. Nobody is forcing me to give away some secret of mine, or 2) Enter into a contract with others so that they do not give it to someone else. I am very uncomfortable with government enforcing contracts stipulated by one party without having the explicit consent of the other. The purpose of a copyright is to benefit the public, not the artist/creator.
Now, I see some very good reasons for copyrights, but not being able to share information you have freely with others is pretty alien in human history, so don't be surprised that people generally don't do it. It's like religious laws against fornication. When people got married at 15 or 16 years old (earlier some places), this was a widely adhered to principle. Now that (at least in the West) extended adolescence is the norm, and normal marrying age comes in the early to mid twenties, is it any surprise that this principle is generally not adhered to?
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Generally artists don't really make much off album sales (until you have a string of hits and your first contract is fulfilled). Most artists of the type you described make money off two things, performing (which is the bulk of it), and if they are smart, songwriting. If a new artist comes out and his/her CD is heavily pirated, even if we assume that every person who got the MP3 would have gotten the album, but didn't, the vast majority of the losses would be taken by the record company. The artist would lose very little actual money. What could happen, however, is the label might not push any future projects by that artist because of the lackluster sales, but I have never seen that happen to an artist who had any kind of decent following. I know that both Usher's and Bobby Brown's first albums flopped, but the company had confidence in the marketability of the artists, and approved new releases. A heavily pirated artist would be handled in the same way, I suspect.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
I have 5 of the 6 MCSE exams done and I am about to get the 6th done. When I heard about the retirement of the NT 4 exams, I really started concentrating on Linux and Unix so that I can migrate away from Microsoft altogether. I see how big a mistake it is to base my entire career on a single company.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
See, that's the kind of thing you don't see on most commercial product's pages.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Now that is just spooky. Same directory structure as my own machine. I guess I need to change my username. :) For a minute, I had flashbacks to my BBS days when people would embed control codes to cause variable values to appear on the screen so that you would think some complete stranger had your address and phone number. I remember reading one of those messages, and it said something like "Hello Robert, do you still live at 1425 Brookridge Ave? Can I call you at 404-263-0687? I nearly freaked out until the Admin let us newbies know the deal.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Well, the DHTML may not work as well as Communicator. I went to a Red Dwarf page and the DHTML page they have didn't work with Mozilla, but did work with Netscape 4.72. Go figure.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"