wasn't regional caching supposed to solve this problem? look, you attach a terabyte harddrive to your router, and when you notice the second request for a file, you cache the file. keep it around until requests stop rolling in. if the internet had a little more chaching going on (just like with nameservers) then slashdotting wouldn't happen.
when i went to school five years ago, i bought a desktop machine. i liked it. but when wireless internet came to my campus, i was left in the dark. i believe that the age of the desktop machine has past, especially on college campuses. buy a laptop.
after i graduated, i bought an iBook and i farking love it. when i go back to my campus (Dartmouth, one of the mose wired campuses) i can use the local wireless network and it's simply fabulous.
anything that can be streamed can be saved to a file, even if iTunes doesn't have explicit support for it. also, just because you can't save the file to disk doesn't mean it's not 'piracy' and doesn't mean it's not illegal.
why does the article (and the link) claim that the machine has no i/o? when i first saw that i thought to myself "now what use is a computer with no i/o? that's about as useful as a brick -- literally". the thing clearly has wireless i/o. a computer with no input or output functionality is completely useless.
i wonder about that too. not that i'm worried about RIAA goons storming my home in the middle of the nite to take my hard drive, but in addition to the zillions of MP3s which came straight from my stack of CDs are a bunch of MP3s which came straight from CDs which i have since had stolen. i can't imagine a judge telling me i have to buy a new CD to legally listen to music i ripped before having the original CD stolen, but i also can't imagine a judge believing my story. some of my MP3s are also from old casettes i had.
damn i'm glad someone said that so concisely. look, i'm a bush-hating hippie like the rest of you but when my friends say dumb, dumb, dumb things like "bush lost the election" i just want to slap them. what farking outcome did they want? did they want Gore to rise above the Rule of Law (the law in this case being the electoral college) and establish himself president with a coup or something? did they want the supreme court to ignore the rules which were CLEARLY laid out before the election? did they want some body BESIDES the supreme court to make the dicision? do they think it would be better if the opinions of FOUR member of the supreme court trumped the other FIVE opinions? like, what the hell are you asking for, gorelovers?
point of order: the security council is not a democratic body. why the hell would anyone try to claim it is? it's not elected and it has permanant members with veto power. i don't think the security council was ever supposed to be democratic.
another point of order: who is trying to say that Bush brooks no dissent? he's had tens of thousands of protesters chanting outside his bedroom window for a whole year now. i don't think saddam allows that.
finally, a point about peace: IF you view saddam as a hitler-like figure (and Bush does), THEN it makes sense to "preserve peace" by waging war, doesn't it? it sure did sixty years ago. let's not forget the lesson of WWII.
look, i'm a hippie liberal peace-loving beatnik like the rest of you, but let's not be completely stupid about it.
Re:Michael Moore's Letter to Governor Bush
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
point of order: we have a 225 year history of strong presidencies, of presidents setting foreign policy, of presidents waging war when they deem it necessary. i don't think there's much argument to that.
also, congress has control over the declaration of war as a check to the president's power to wage war; but that doesn't mean that congress is "supposed" to set the agenda then tell the president to go implement it. why? because that wouldn't work. most of us agree that a president is in a unique position to know what is best, militarily, and thus should have some power to act, militarily.
Re:Not How its Supposed To Be
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
i hate to point out the obvious, but the UN as ALREADY weak, and the EU hasn't really become STRONG yet. all Bush did was make everyone TALK about how lame the UN is. in fact, i never realized how often the UN has dropped the ball (summary: always) until this whole war thing. anyone who thinks the UN is the seat of peace on earth is wrong. only now maybe they'll work on making it true.
i'm not sure exactly what kind of Verizon support you're after (are you talking about plugging a laptop into a cell phone?), but i use Verizon DSL on my OS X machine at home. i couldn't find any howtos on their website but i called them and they told me that OS X was supported natively (no Verizon software needed) and stepped me thru setting up PPPoE (very simple). it was clear that the service tech was just reading off of a piece of paper; i suggested they post that howto online but clearly it's not up to that guy.
uh, you might have missed something. you say that the average clod doesn't care about their OS so long as they have their Office, but the entire point of the article is that the OS was messing up this guy's Office experience, and THEREFORE switching OSs is worthwhile.
i SWEAR i was watching the discover channel or somesuch last week and there was a show about "The Weapons We'll Use Against Iraq" and exactly this type of weapon was detailed. they showed a computer graphic of a "bomb" (looked like a missile to me) flying over terrain, past a little city, sending out little lightning bolts (microwaves, duh) to fry the local electronics, then flying on, past the city, and terminating in a mountainside. there was every indication that the weaponry was long since conceived, built, and tested -- and that it was war-ready.
I agree. It's not that I want the police rifling thru peoples trash all the time (I don't, and I agree with the article in calling it "reprehensible"), but what other legal conclusion could you come to? I mean, at what point DOES trash become public?
Clearly it has to become public at SOME point, right? You don't think it should be criminal for the people at the junkyard to, for instance, sift thru trash looking for soda bottles do you? Or rubber tires? I mean, you THREW IT AWAY, you SENT IT OFF via public servants to a public land, to be stored by agents of the state. Do you think you still "own" the trash you threw out in 2001? 1996? 1939? Why not? At WHAT POINT did you think you lost that ownership?
Anyway, like I said, I think it's sneaky, but I also think the Supreme Court made the only reasonable legal decision. Here's the bottom line: if you want to throw away something incriminating, break it apart, shread it, or what have you, first; take it to a public dumpster; no, take it in pieces to FIVE public dumpsters; better yet, don't throw it away in the first place.
It makes me wonder whether an entrepeneur could make money with a "private" trash collection scheme, where things are left on your driveway (private land), picked up by private trashmen, put in a private truck, and taken to a private landfill where things are (perhaps) stirred up, burned, crunched, and otherwise mangled before being burried forever -- where the government would have no rights to the stuff. Hmmm...
Are you talking about Minux == [M]icrosoft L[inux] or are you talking about Minux == Minix, the UNIX-like predecessor to Linux? If you're talking about the former, no I probably wouldn't have a problem with it ESPECIALLY if Microsoft was making their own braned Linux distro. If you're talking about the latter, I still probably wouldn't have a problem with it since Minux hasn't been a used piece of software for 15 years so the protection on that name (an INVENTED, ARBITRARY name) is expired (in my mind).
Are you trying to say that Linux is a word in the English language, like windows is a word? That's retarded. There's clearly a difference. As is so perfectly pointed out in the article, "windows" is not a word invented by Microsoft.
Look, if Microsoft wants to name it's product PowerPoint, fine; if it wants to name its product VisualBasic, fine.
But if it wants to name its products Word, Windows, Internet Information Server, or Dot-Net, they're walking on thin ice because those are generic terms.
Seems the major problem open source developers are having with the BitKeeper license is that it places a certain requirement on them, just like the GPL. The GPL community response to criticism has always been, "don't use GPL code if you don't like the license." Seems perfectly reasonable. If you don't like the BitKeeper license, then don't use BitKeeper. When you get down to the basics, it's the same damn issue.
the BK license and the General Public License do, in fact, both "place certain requirements" on the people who agree to the license, but (this is important, because so few out there seem to get it) THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT "JUST THE SAME".
please stop claiming that they are the same. for future reference:
(1) as stated in the preamble, the GPL is designed to PRESERVE the freeness of the software; propriatary licenses are designed to ELIMINATE the freeness of the software
(2) the GPL does NOT apply to end-users; it is a license upon the people who wish to use the SOURCE CODE: end users are EXPLICITLY ALLOWED in the license to do any darn thing they want with the software (ANYthing) whereas propriatary licenses are controls on the end users, and explictly DISALLOW certain uses of the software (eg decompiling, using for purposes other than the intended, using it to develop competing software...)
(3) as you so sagely (and cluelessly) stated, "the GPL community response to criticism has always been 'don't use the GPL *code* if you don't like the license'" whereas the BK license says "don't use the SOFTWARE if you don't like the license".
don't flame me and tell me that the GPL is God's gift to free software. i'm not saying that. don't flame me to say that the GPL doesn't place restrictions. i'm not saying that, either. what i'm saying is that it's completely absurd and FALSE to claim that the GPL is restrictive "just like" other licenses.
it never fails to amaze me how few people understand that very important point: yes, yes, the public domain is clearly the FREE-est "license" for the SOFTWARE, but not for the people. claimnig that GPL takes away freedom may be true in some stretch of the imagination, but only insomuch as Democracy is less "free" than Anarchy. hey, i believe in freedom and liberty, but if your definition of "being free" means "being free to rape, pillage, plunder, and kill" then you can take your freedom and shove it; and if your definition of "free software" is "free to take the software and profit from it, and then keep other people from profiting in the same way i did" then you can kindly not use software i wrote.
i always figured you didn't need new law. in our society, people aren't allowed to claim they are things they are not: i can't claim i'm a lawyer, or a doctor, or a certified public accountant; i can't claim to be an individual who i am not; i think there are even specific laws which make it illegal to put a false return address on regular mail. why don't those laws naturally extend to email?
maybe my libertarian ways just want society to work with a couple thousand simple laws. the tens of millions of micro-laws we have seem, to me, a terrible way to govern.
is there SERIOUSLY a pro-capitalism congressman from Washington named Adam Smith? wow. that's awesome.
for the record, if the public pays for software dev, i don't think it sould have a license at all: i think it should be regular, simple public domain. sure that allows companies to "steal" the code, but only insomuch as they can close off access to IMPROVED versions of it -- sinister, but not criminal.
people complain about having to take their hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. it's not moving my hands that bothers me, it's having to glance over at the mouse, or fumble around for a second looking for it. i imagine, sitting next to my keyboard, a big half-dome -- maybe six or more inches across, and not quite a half-dome. it's big so you can find it no problem with your hand -- no fumbling. to control the cursor, you tug the thing up or down or left or right. it would be basically just like the little 'nub' cursor controllers on a lot of laptops, only friggin' huge.
to click, i'd probably want to tap right on the top of the thing (no button needed -- maybe a textured area). you can see that this would be different than a trackball -- much larger, and you wouldn't "roll" the thing around, merely tilt it or tug it or something.
furthermore, while we're (not) on the subject, where the hell is a Programmers' Keyboard? I'm looking for a keyboard without a row of numbers on the top -- that's what the numeric keypad is for (well, i dunno, maybe we could save the number row) -- and instead a row (probably two rows) of SYMBOL keys on them. why the hell do i have to hold down the shift key and find the "4" button to get a dollar sign? i hit that damn key a thousand times a day (perl)! way WAY more often than many of the alpha keys. and trying to touch-type right parens, underscores, and equals signs (all next to eachother up there) is difficult, too. i'm thinking two rows of additional keys, with parens, brackets, braces, ampersands and all the other shift- symbols, and so on. what the hell? there are MILLIONS of programmers out there; wouldn't they all want one of these?
note to electrical engineers: i need no royalties; a free NUBMouse and ProgKey Keyboard will do just fine. thanks.
this should be modded as "interesting", not "funny". the first state that legalizes those things will have a new resident (me) due to the fact that it would be a clear indication that the people of that state have finally removed their head from their ass. seriously, nevada has almost convinced me. the day pot becomes legal there, i'm movin'.
this may have been pointed out already, but here is the "answer" to your "question": the Supreme Court has interpreted the 'Commerce Clause" to mean that Congress can legislate anything that AFFECTS interstate commerce (in my opinion, not an entirely absurd interpretation). thus, since the state of California growing marijuana AFFECTS the interstate drug trade, the Feds can intervene.
(For reference, the decision took place upon the situation of a farmer who grew his own feed, raised his own cattle, and sold it all only to people in his state. there was NO interstate commerce being conducted, so he wanted to be free from FDA regulations on clean meat. the US Supreme Court said no, he was participating in a fudamentally interstate trade, thus must follow Fed rules.)
Slashdot Mirror
wasn't regional caching supposed to solve this problem? look, you attach a terabyte harddrive to your router, and when you notice the second request for a file, you cache the file. keep it around until requests stop rolling in. if the internet had a little more chaching going on (just like with nameservers) then slashdotting wouldn't happen.
when i went to school five years ago, i bought a desktop machine. i liked it. but when wireless internet came to my campus, i was left in the dark. i believe that the age of the desktop machine has past, especially on college campuses. buy a laptop.
after i graduated, i bought an iBook and i farking love it. when i go back to my campus (Dartmouth, one of the mose wired campuses) i can use the local wireless network and it's simply fabulous.
you're a party pooper
(waggles tongue)
anything that can be streamed can be saved to a file, even if iTunes doesn't have explicit support for it. also, just because you can't save the file to disk doesn't mean it's not 'piracy' and doesn't mean it's not illegal.
why does the article (and the link) claim that the machine has no i/o? when i first saw that i thought to myself "now what use is a computer with no i/o? that's about as useful as a brick -- literally". the thing clearly has wireless i/o. a computer with no input or output functionality is completely useless.
pfft. no i/o. really.
i wonder about that too. not that i'm worried about RIAA goons storming my home in the middle of the nite to take my hard drive, but in addition to the zillions of MP3s which came straight from my stack of CDs are a bunch of MP3s which came straight from CDs which i have since had stolen. i can't imagine a judge telling me i have to buy a new CD to legally listen to music i ripped before having the original CD stolen, but i also can't imagine a judge believing my story. some of my MP3s are also from old casettes i had.
eh. forget it. i'm not worried.
damn i'm glad someone said that so concisely. look, i'm a bush-hating hippie like the rest of you but when my friends say dumb, dumb, dumb things like "bush lost the election" i just want to slap them. what farking outcome did they want? did they want Gore to rise above the Rule of Law (the law in this case being the electoral college) and establish himself president with a coup or something? did they want the supreme court to ignore the rules which were CLEARLY laid out before the election? did they want some body BESIDES the supreme court to make the dicision? do they think it would be better if the opinions of FOUR member of the supreme court trumped the other FIVE opinions? like, what the hell are you asking for, gorelovers?
point of order: the security council is not a democratic body. why the hell would anyone try to claim it is? it's not elected and it has permanant members with veto power. i don't think the security council was ever supposed to be democratic.
another point of order: who is trying to say that Bush brooks no dissent? he's had tens of thousands of protesters chanting outside his bedroom window for a whole year now. i don't think saddam allows that.
finally, a point about peace: IF you view saddam as a hitler-like figure (and Bush does), THEN it makes sense to "preserve peace" by waging war, doesn't it? it sure did sixty years ago. let's not forget the lesson of WWII.
look, i'm a hippie liberal peace-loving beatnik like the rest of you, but let's not be completely stupid about it.
point of order: we have a 225 year history of strong presidencies, of presidents setting foreign policy, of presidents waging war when they deem it necessary. i don't think there's much argument to that.
also, congress has control over the declaration of war as a check to the president's power to wage war; but that doesn't mean that congress is "supposed" to set the agenda then tell the president to go implement it. why? because that wouldn't work. most of us agree that a president is in a unique position to know what is best, militarily, and thus should have some power to act, militarily.
i hate to point out the obvious, but the UN as ALREADY weak, and the EU hasn't really become STRONG yet. all Bush did was make everyone TALK about how lame the UN is. in fact, i never realized how often the UN has dropped the ball (summary: always) until this whole war thing. anyone who thinks the UN is the seat of peace on earth is wrong. only now maybe they'll work on making it true.
i'm not sure exactly what kind of Verizon support you're after (are you talking about plugging a laptop into a cell phone?), but i use Verizon DSL on my OS X machine at home. i couldn't find any howtos on their website but i called them and they told me that OS X was supported natively (no Verizon software needed) and stepped me thru setting up PPPoE (very simple). it was clear that the service tech was just reading off of a piece of paper; i suggested they post that howto online but clearly it's not up to that guy.
uh, you might have missed something. you say that the average clod doesn't care about their OS so long as they have their Office, but the entire point of the article is that the OS was messing up this guy's Office experience, and THEREFORE switching OSs is worthwhile.
sorry to point out the obvious.
We're TELLING the aliens where we are!?!? Didn't the NASA engineers see Independance Day!?!?
i disagree. it *is* a big win because it proves that OSS is in fact competing in the marketplace.
i do not disagree that MS open-sourcing their stuff would be bigger. but that's a pretty incredible dream.
i SWEAR i was watching the discover channel or somesuch last week and there was a show about "The Weapons We'll Use Against Iraq" and exactly this type of weapon was detailed. they showed a computer graphic of a "bomb" (looked like a missile to me) flying over terrain, past a little city, sending out little lightning bolts (microwaves, duh) to fry the local electronics, then flying on, past the city, and terminating in a mountainside. there was every indication that the weaponry was long since conceived, built, and tested -- and that it was war-ready.
maybe i have some detail mixed up. dunno.
I agree. It's not that I want the police rifling thru peoples trash all the time (I don't, and I agree with the article in calling it "reprehensible"), but what other legal conclusion could you come to? I mean, at what point DOES trash become public?
Clearly it has to become public at SOME point, right? You don't think it should be criminal for the people at the junkyard to, for instance, sift thru trash looking for soda bottles do you? Or rubber tires? I mean, you THREW IT AWAY, you SENT IT OFF via public servants to a public land, to be stored by agents of the state. Do you think you still "own" the trash you threw out in 2001? 1996? 1939? Why not? At WHAT POINT did you think you lost that ownership?
Anyway, like I said, I think it's sneaky, but I also think the Supreme Court made the only reasonable legal decision. Here's the bottom line: if you want to throw away something incriminating, break it apart, shread it, or what have you, first; take it to a public dumpster; no, take it in pieces to FIVE public dumpsters; better yet, don't throw it away in the first place.
It makes me wonder whether an entrepeneur could make money with a "private" trash collection scheme, where things are left on your driveway (private land), picked up by private trashmen, put in a private truck, and taken to a private landfill where things are (perhaps) stirred up, burned, crunched, and otherwise mangled before being burried forever -- where the government would have no rights to the stuff. Hmmm...
Look, if Microsoft wants to name it's product PowerPoint, fine; if it wants to name its product VisualBasic, fine.
But if it wants to name its products Word, Windows, Internet Information Server, or Dot-Net, they're walking on thin ice because those are generic terms.
i wonder if the legislators will feel responsible when, as someone else suggested, a gun fails to save a life in self-defence because of this law.
Seems the major problem open source developers are having with the BitKeeper license is that it places a certain requirement on them, just like the GPL. The GPL community response to criticism has always been, "don't use GPL code if you don't like the license." Seems perfectly reasonable. If you don't like the BitKeeper license, then don't use BitKeeper. When you get down to the basics, it's the same damn issue.
the BK license and the General Public License do, in fact, both "place certain requirements" on the people who agree to the license, but (this is important, because so few out there seem to get it) THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT "JUST THE SAME".
please stop claiming that they are the same. for future reference:
(1) as stated in the preamble, the GPL is designed to PRESERVE the freeness of the software; propriatary licenses are designed to ELIMINATE the freeness of the software
(2) the GPL does NOT apply to end-users; it is a license upon the people who wish to use the SOURCE CODE: end users are EXPLICITLY ALLOWED in the license to do any darn thing they want with the software (ANYthing) whereas propriatary licenses are controls on the end users, and explictly DISALLOW certain uses of the software (eg decompiling, using for purposes other than the intended, using it to develop competing software...)
(3) as you so sagely (and cluelessly) stated, "the GPL community response to criticism has always been 'don't use the GPL *code* if you don't like the license'" whereas the BK license says "don't use the SOFTWARE if you don't like the license".
don't flame me and tell me that the GPL is God's gift to free software. i'm not saying that. don't flame me to say that the GPL doesn't place restrictions. i'm not saying that, either. what i'm saying is that it's completely absurd and FALSE to claim that the GPL is restrictive "just like" other licenses.
it never fails to amaze me how few people understand that very important point: yes, yes, the public domain is clearly the FREE-est "license" for the SOFTWARE, but not for the people. claimnig that GPL takes away freedom may be true in some stretch of the imagination, but only insomuch as Democracy is less "free" than Anarchy. hey, i believe in freedom and liberty, but if your definition of "being free" means "being free to rape, pillage, plunder, and kill" then you can take your freedom and shove it; and if your definition of "free software" is "free to take the software and profit from it, and then keep other people from profiting in the same way i did" then you can kindly not use software i wrote.
:: Democracy : GPL
so remember:
Anarchy : Public Domain
i always figured you didn't need new law. in our society, people aren't allowed to claim they are things they are not: i can't claim i'm a lawyer, or a doctor, or a certified public accountant; i can't claim to be an individual who i am not; i think there are even specific laws which make it illegal to put a false return address on regular mail. why don't those laws naturally extend to email?
maybe my libertarian ways just want society to work with a couple thousand simple laws. the tens of millions of micro-laws we have seem, to me, a terrible way to govern.
is there SERIOUSLY a pro-capitalism congressman from Washington named Adam Smith? wow. that's awesome.
for the record, if the public pays for software dev, i don't think it sould have a license at all: i think it should be regular, simple public domain. sure that allows companies to "steal" the code, but only insomuch as they can close off access to IMPROVED versions of it -- sinister, but not criminal.
people complain about having to take their hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. it's not moving my hands that bothers me, it's having to glance over at the mouse, or fumble around for a second looking for it. i imagine, sitting next to my keyboard, a big half-dome -- maybe six or more inches across, and not quite a half-dome. it's big so you can find it no problem with your hand -- no fumbling. to control the cursor, you tug the thing up or down or left or right. it would be basically just like the little 'nub' cursor controllers on a lot of laptops, only friggin' huge.
to click, i'd probably want to tap right on the top of the thing (no button needed -- maybe a textured area). you can see that this would be different than a trackball -- much larger, and you wouldn't "roll" the thing around, merely tilt it or tug it or something.
furthermore, while we're (not) on the subject, where the hell is a Programmers' Keyboard? I'm looking for a keyboard without a row of numbers on the top -- that's what the numeric keypad is for (well, i dunno, maybe we could save the number row) -- and instead a row (probably two rows) of SYMBOL keys on them. why the hell do i have to hold down the shift key and find the "4" button to get a dollar sign? i hit that damn key a thousand times a day (perl)! way WAY more often than many of the alpha keys. and trying to touch-type right parens, underscores, and equals signs (all next to eachother up there) is difficult, too. i'm thinking two rows of additional keys, with parens, brackets, braces, ampersands and all the other shift- symbols, and so on. what the hell? there are MILLIONS of programmers out there; wouldn't they all want one of these?
note to electrical engineers: i need no royalties; a free NUBMouse and ProgKey Keyboard will do just fine. thanks.
this should be modded as "interesting", not "funny". the first state that legalizes those things will have a new resident (me) due to the fact that it would be a clear indication that the people of that state have finally removed their head from their ass. seriously, nevada has almost convinced me. the day pot becomes legal there, i'm movin'.
this may have been pointed out already, but here is the "answer" to your "question": the Supreme Court has interpreted the 'Commerce Clause" to mean that Congress can legislate anything that AFFECTS interstate commerce (in my opinion, not an entirely absurd interpretation). thus, since the state of California growing marijuana AFFECTS the interstate drug trade, the Feds can intervene.
(For reference, the decision took place upon the situation of a farmer who grew his own feed, raised his own cattle, and sold it all only to people in his state. there was NO interstate commerce being conducted, so he wanted to be free from FDA regulations on clean meat. the US Supreme Court said no, he was participating in a fudamentally interstate trade, thus must follow Fed rules.)
peace