19,141,092 MicroSD cards will fit in a 2014 Chevy Suburban
19M SD cards. Let's be crazy and say you can insert an SD card, read all its content and remove it in 10 seconds (which is *highly* optimistic at 64Gb per SD card). You are looking at 190M seconds just to read which translates to over 6 years! Let's be even crazier and suppose that writing takes the same time and we're now at over 12 years.
That read and write time does lower the "New York to Los Angeles" bandwidth significantly (even more so if we use realistic read and write times).
I guess it depends on what you want to do (backups might fit not so badly in this scheme maybe?) and sneakernet might have uses, but AC makes a valid point.
Have a look at what your typical DSDT looks like and you may get an idea why shit doesn't work well (well, not always).
Basically, the DSDT is a table which the BIOS passes to the system to tell it what the ACPI is on the current machine. One of the "nice features" of the DSDT is its use of conditionals which look something like this (in BASH-like pseudo-code):
if [ _OS = "Windows XP Pro" ]; then/*Define the DSDT for Win XP here*/ else if [ _OS = "Windows 98" ]; then/*define the DSDT for Win98 here*/ else/*Well, we don't support you, so you are on your own*/ fi
One of the ways Linux-acpi tried to get this to work was to define _OS as "Windows XP Pro", but IIRC that didn't work because some vendors provide really broken DSDT who enable certain things under Win98 but disable it under Win XP (and conversely). In short, it is a mess. So, at some point the way to get things to work was to extract the DSDT, modify it to pass Intel's compiler checks and once everything was sane, override the system one with this correct one via a bootloader option. This approach was eventually abandoned and the current approach is to try to get things to work "out-of-the-box". How that can be pulled off in these conditions is beyond me.
I do not know how to explain why the fact that the company that dev'ed the hardware developing the Windows drivers means it works there but nowhere else.
What if the application developer doesn't change the behavior after those some years have passed?
Then the application gives a "clean break" at compile-time or segfaults if not recompiled. This happens all the time (“if not maintained, software rots”), use maintained applications or don't update your kernel.
Isn't ensuring backwards compatibility one of the reasons that Windows has had so many security issues? If so then do you really want to have to be constantly on the lookout for those same issues in the Linux kernel?
Security bugs are most likely handled differently, I do not know.
Finally, why does Linus insist on acting like a child?
That's your opinion. When you actually understand what he talks about, you may understand why he “acts like a child” (I'm not exactly sure what that means anyway). I'm guessing Linus is pretty good at what he does considering how nobody decided to fork yet.
The rhetoric is that a child is not legally able to give consent, so all sex with a child is legally rape. A line had to be drawn somewhere, be it 16, 18 or 21 or whatever else in your country.
As for hypothetical situations where two children have sex, you take naked pictures of yourself as a child and circulate them as an adult, etc. I do not know. I suppose it would have to be tried in court.
The ".localhost" TLD has traditionally been statically defined in host DNS implementations as having an A record pointing to the loop back IP address and is reserved for such use. Any other use would conflict with widely deployed code which assumes this use.
That being said, I am not sure "ignoring" the attacks is the *right* way to react to terrorism, although for different reasons. I think the right way to handle terrorism is to "ignore" the attacks but to oppose the behaviour causing the attacks in the first place.
What do I mean by that? I mean this world of ours is West-dominated. I mean that there is food for thought on whether the West is really the good guy it is depicted to be in culture. I don't think I can explain what I mean in a short enough form for it to be readable by the Internet passerby, so I'll just add this: I think that while some Westerners are acting in good faith (humanitarian work mostly), the policy-makers of the "powerful and free" US and its friends are probably causing these outbreaks.
"Imposing" peace with guns is the equivalent of cooling boiling oil by dropping ice in it: it is too violent, too sudden.
It seems a widespread belief in the security field that security through obscurity (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.06.obscurity.aspx, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity) is not a good security measure (it is better than nothing, but it isn't on par with real security measures).
In this sense, the openness of GNU/Linux makes it easier for people to understand and secure systems while Windows' closed-sourceness makes it harder.
It could be argued that openness means easiness to crack into, but that is not really important because you don't need to understand exactly how a system works to crack into it (I am not well versed in cracking, but I know that some reputed crackers use techniques such as randomly changing bits in the input one at a time until an application crashes and go from there). That means that open or not, crackers can exploit a system. But, an open system is easier for security professionals to review and therefore to fix (that does require intricate knowledge of how the system works).
In that sense, openness means better security. In the most extreme case, you could review all parts of Linux and therefore run only code you trust yourself. In the case of Windows, you have to trust Microsoft (in itself, that is not a problem as you need to have a network of trust, the problem is that you are FORCED to trust them).
Why do you think a/. ID has any bearing on knowledge, intelligence, or carefactor?
In fatalwall's defense, a low Slashdot ID means the person registered with Slashdot a long time ago which means they should be somewhat knowledgeable about stuff Slashdot talks about. I think it is a reasonable assumption on fatalwall's part.
More importantly an alternate use for a DNS resolution, really doesn't help the case to retain it.
Why not? Why can't I use my domain primarily as a nameserver, a mail exchanger or simply to connect to the machine it resolves to for any other activity than Web? This is a genuine question by the way as I am unaware of the rules regarding domain name disputes and squatting.
In this case, I don't think it is squatting per se. As the comments on TFA point out, it seems more like the guy registered a domain relating to the first-gen Xbox (xbox one like Play Station 1, Iron Man 1, Gears of War 1, Halo 1, what-have-you-single-title-turned-into-a-franchise 1).
Then again that is pure speculation on my part and I have no proof to back up my claim.
I think what your Parent meant was that illegally downloading movies is non-commercial (in the cases we are talking about at least) and that the worst those people would face should they decide to go to court is 5000$ (with a likely fine of 100$).
Re:Because of course those are the only two option
on
The Real Job Threat
·
· Score: 1
Hey, here's a thought - maybe we could ask rich people to pay a little more in taxes and use the funds to keep people from starving in the streets, provide job training, provide useful services - which would produce enough demand that we could enjoy technology without having our jobs terminated.I know, it's crazy talk.
It's not crazy talk, actually, it has been tried before, they call it communism (same wage for everybody).
Suppose you do tax the wealthiest more (say you increase the tax rate by delta_x %) to provide assistance to the poorest. Now, suppose that for one reason or another you need more, what do you do, tax wealthy people even more? Repeat as necessary. I am not saying there is such a thing as a perfect system, but your rhetoric begs the question: "More, ok, but how much more?". At some point, if by making more money (probably by working more than you would have otherwise) people just end up giving it in taxes, my guess is that they will either change country/find a way to avoid it (1$ salary)/not work to earn more (hence, everybody gets the same wage -> communism*)
On the other hand, there will always be people that live by achieving as little as possible (I'm certainly not saying every poor person is like that), giving them education/services/etc. won't change them unfortunately.
What's my point? None in fact save for saying I don't think fixing the world's problems is as easy as that.
*No need to tell me how communism isn't only about equal wage, thank you
OpenWRT code wasn't stolen. If anything, Brainslayer (main dd-wrt dev) just doesn't respect the GPL fully (dd-wrt integrates proprietary binary-only drivers in a way that the GPL forbids).
That being said, even though I don't fully agree with how Brainslayer treats the GPL, I think it is fair to say that dd-wrt contributes in a positive manner to popularizing OpenWRT (Brainslayer and OpenWRT devs even seem to talk and share code and advices from what I read).
If you want to learn more, here's an article about it and if you really don't agree with how dd-wrt does things, use OpenWRT, Tomato, HyperWRT or whatever else. Personally, I use OpenWRT (you have to know your way around to use it), but for most people, OpenWRT is too complicated and dd-wrt is already less proprietary than default (and it gives more exposure to projects like OpenWRT).
It's only stealing if the "victim" does not consent to it.
Depends on where you live. Theft is defined, for example, in Canada's Criminal Code here (the definition says "if you take something without having been specifically allowed to" rather than "only if you are specifically denied the right to").
But that definition is mostly irrelevant here since OpenWRT code wasn't stolen.
That being said, the Michael Jackson case may have been a bad example, but I'm still pretty sure my statement is true: "Paul McCartney and John Lennon (and Lennon's estate, now that he's dead) have always received their 50% songwriter's share of the royalties for all Lennon-McCartney songs"
Lennon's estate still receive Lennon's share (authorship?).
The DNA thing was merely an example (perhaps not a perfect one though).
My point was and still is: as easy as faking a signature might be, denying you did something (sign a contract in our case) is even easier, easy to the point where pretty much anyone able to communicate with others can do it.
With that, we're back to square one: it can't be known with perfect accuracy which party is right. But the law doesn't work on perfect accuracy, it works on absence of reasonable doubts; and in a case where you are simply denying signing a contract without any further evidence, my bet is on the party with the contract and signature.
I'm guessing it must be like for copyright owned by individuals: control of the copyright is inherited (see Michael Jackson's copyright on The Beatles's songs: the Jackson family controls it now). How everything works down to the details, I don't know, I suppose a lawyer would be able to tell you that.
Yup, some people prefer to live in fear and compliance.
You're judging infringing copyright and freeing slaves as if there was some sort of moral footing common to both.
It can also be looked up from a different perspective: in the case of slaves, it would be unjust to report them. In the case of copyright, the same thing can be said if you look at things from the copyright holder's perspective.
*The following is an expansion of my reasoning for people who would like to comment. I separate it from the beginning because it is not targeted to anyone in particular (by opposition to the above which is targeted towards parent)* And let's be objective and realize that copyright holders can't be anything other than some big evil company, it can be small company or even normal people. Furthermore, even if the copyright holder is some big company that didn't create the content and is charging you big money, that doesn't make it right to rip the content: they still paid the author (however little) while ripping pays said author sweet nothing.
Now, does this mean I think copyright is a perfect system or needs to be more aggressive? No, my recommendation is to choose the most morally acceptable choice on a case-by-case basis, see response to parent for more information.
Most televised broadcasts in the United States are paid for by some permutation of subscription fees to a cable or satellite service and/or advertisements. Imagine the conundrum presented if most torrents of these broadcasts contained identical ads*. The content creators couldn't necessarily argue that they were losing out on any inherent value, because the commercials would receive even greater exposure! Yes, yes, I know that's not the point that they'd argue, but it would be at least vaguely appealing if some network said "Hey, as long as you leave commercials our supporters paid for in the torrent, we don't mind."
* Presume that the content consumers were either too lazy or not savvy enough to strip these out.
Except it doesn't exactly work that way: advertisers pay a certain fee per view per minute or something along those lines. Advertisers probably won't pay for views the TV networks can't account for with a certain degree of certainty which would be the case with BitTorrent downloads (and that's assuming a world where people wouldn't just fast-forward over ads and where such contents wouldn't get repackaged ad-free in a different Torrent).
If we go back to basics, signatures themselves aren't actually worth much. You have a squiggle that you say was my signature agreeing to some contract, I say I never agreed and I didn't put that squiggle there. You say but that's your squiggle. I say it's a copy. Even an "expert" can't be 100% sure and the cost of such an analysis exceeds the value of most contracts by an order of magnitude or more.
You could also kill somebody and, when the forensics find your DNA say that it isn't your DNA, it's a copy grown in a tube or that somebody took it from elsewhere or whatever.
In the case of criminal law (at least in Canada and the US), you are considered innocent until proven otherwise. In most other forms of law I know of (I assume contract law to fall in this category in most jurisdictions), prejudice is granted in favor of the most trustworthy party. That is, if they have your signature on a contract to back their claims and you have absolute nothing to back yours, chances are they will win.
That being said, I am not a lawyer and laws change depending on jurisdictions. Still, I don't think your scenario would be worth much in a civil court.
An interesting POV indeed, yet one I don't agree with.
>It doesn't matter whether you look at the stats from Statcounter, W3Schools, Net Applications.... Popularity, although generally a good indicator of quality is not always. For example, I know a great number of people (men, I never go in the ladies' bathroom) don't wash their hands after peeing/#2ing yet that's hardly a better thing to do than actually washing your hands. A great number of people smoke, eat fast food, don't exercice, lie, speed, waste and throw things in the wild. Arguably, the aforementioned items do have some "benefits": smoking makes you look cool in high school, eating fast food saves you the hassle of doing the groceries and cooking, exercising can be excruciating, etc. Yet, in all the previous cases, popularity isn't necessarily a good indicator of quality (the fact that many people do it doesn't _imply_ it's the right thing to do).
>all tell the same story and it is a story the geek does not want to hear, much less try to understand. >Microsoft Windows is everyone's first choice as an OEM system install. I know I'm stoopid (pun intended) for asking (as I doubt normal people actually post comments to receive answers and discuss), but may you explain me how 'OEM system install' and 'choice' can go together? Last time I checked, OEMs (at least in North America) don't let you choose your OS to be OEM installed. It is Windows [version of the year], no comments allowed (and having tried getting a refund myself I can tell you it's not something that can be done without a moderate legal incentive).
>It is a strong seller retail boxed. It is pirated everywhere and outperforms Linux in the thieves markets and bazaars of the third world. A good point, but, on the other hand, GNU/Linux is mostly free and is the underdog. I doubt there are many examples were such an item would have a high value on the black market.
>Microsoft Windows is not crap. It is not a hell for its users. 1 to1.5 billion users world-wide. >The Windows client is a purely commercial, market oriented, OS whose primary focus has always been on the needs and desires of the non-technical end >user. >It makes no concessions whatever to the FOSS zealot's notion of ideological purity or political correctness. That's arguable and I'd have a lot to argue about it. But let's assume, for the purposes of being terse and staying on subject that you are right.
>I have never found a FOSS app of the remotest use or interest to me that hasn't been ported to Windows or which began as a native Windows app. Wonder why? Because Free Software developpers (and every OSS devs I know of) care about freedom of the user: so if the user wants to run the app on Windows, they won't stop people from porting the app. But then, that idea gets misinterpreted as "FOSS zealot's notion of ideological purity or political correctness". Be happy you can have it both ways: enjoy F/OSS products and spit on its developpers for not being ready to abandon the ideals that made the product possible in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
After a quick calculation, for an optimistic 12 years, you are actually looking at 3 Gbps so yeah, not that great.
RTFA, AC.
Dude.
19,141,092 MicroSD cards will fit in a 2014 Chevy Suburban
19M SD cards. Let's be crazy and say you can insert an SD card, read all its content and remove it in 10 seconds (which is *highly* optimistic at 64Gb per SD card). You are looking at 190M seconds just to read which translates to over 6 years! Let's be even crazier and suppose that writing takes the same time and we're now at over 12 years.
That read and write time does lower the "New York to Los Angeles" bandwidth significantly (even more so if we use realistic read and write times).
I guess it depends on what you want to do (backups might fit not so badly in this scheme maybe?) and sneakernet might have uses, but AC makes a valid point.
Have a look at what your typical DSDT looks like and you may get an idea why shit doesn't work well (well, not always).
Basically, the DSDT is a table which the BIOS passes to the system to tell it what the ACPI is on the current machine. One of the "nice features" of the DSDT is its use of conditionals which look something like this (in BASH-like pseudo-code):
if [ _OS = "Windows XP Pro" ]; then /*Define the DSDT for Win XP here*/ /*define the DSDT for Win98 here*/ /*Well, we don't support you, so you are on your own*/
else if [ _OS = "Windows 98" ]; then
else
fi
One of the ways Linux-acpi tried to get this to work was to define _OS as "Windows XP Pro", but IIRC that didn't work because some vendors provide really broken DSDT who enable certain things under Win98 but disable it under Win XP (and conversely). In short, it is a mess.
So, at some point the way to get things to work was to extract the DSDT, modify it to pass Intel's compiler checks and once everything was sane, override the system one with this correct one via a bootloader option. This approach was eventually abandoned and the current approach is to try to get things to work "out-of-the-box". How that can be pulled off in these conditions is beyond me.
I do not know how to explain why the fact that the company that dev'ed the hardware developing the Windows drivers means it works there but nowhere else.
What if the application developer doesn't change the behavior after those some years have passed?
Then the application gives a "clean break" at compile-time or segfaults if not recompiled. This happens all the time (“if not maintained, software rots”), use maintained applications or don't update your kernel.
Isn't ensuring backwards compatibility one of the reasons that Windows has had so many security issues? If so then do you really want to have to be constantly on the lookout for those same issues in the Linux kernel?
Security bugs are most likely handled differently, I do not know.
Finally, why does Linus insist on acting like a child?
That's your opinion. When you actually understand what he talks about, you may understand why he “acts like a child” (I'm not exactly sure what that means anyway). I'm guessing Linus is pretty good at what he does considering how nobody decided to fork yet.
> If a child is OK with it, why do you bother?
The rhetoric is that a child is not legally able to give consent, so all sex with a child is legally rape.
A line had to be drawn somewhere, be it 16, 18 or 21 or whatever else in your country.
As for hypothetical situations where two children have sex, you take naked pictures of yourself as a child and circulate them as an adult, etc. I do not know. I suppose it would have to be tried in court.
The ".localhost" TLD has traditionally been statically defined in
host DNS implementations as having an A record pointing to the
loop back IP address and is reserved for such use. Any other use
would conflict with widely deployed code which assumes this use.
Seems like that won't do either.
But regardless, this represents a change in Linus' historical behavior
And, you base this on what? AFAIK Linus as always been like that. When did "the change" occur?
Increased aggression, changes in mood or attitude, impaired judgement, black and white or "us versus them" thinking
Are you talking about Linus here? Did you even read the mailing-list thread? You make no sense.
Repeated abuse and disrespect is not conducive to a productive and cooperative environment.
Ok, you *definitely* didn't read the thread.
That is a good description of terrorism.
That being said, I am not sure "ignoring" the attacks is the *right* way to react to terrorism, although for different reasons.
I think the right way to handle terrorism is to "ignore" the attacks but to oppose the behaviour causing the attacks in the first place.
What do I mean by that? I mean this world of ours is West-dominated. I mean that there is food for thought on whether the West is really the good guy it is depicted to be in culture. I don't think I can explain what I mean in a short enough form for it to be readable by the Internet passerby, so I'll just add this: I think that while some Westerners are acting in good faith (humanitarian work mostly), the policy-makers of the "powerful and free" US and its friends are probably causing these outbreaks.
"Imposing" peace with guns is the equivalent of cooling boiling oil by dropping ice in it: it is too violent, too sudden.
It seems a widespread belief in the security field that security through obscurity (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.06.obscurity.aspx, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity) is not a good security measure (it is better than nothing, but it isn't on par with real security measures).
In this sense, the openness of GNU/Linux makes it easier for people to understand and secure systems while Windows' closed-sourceness makes it harder.
It could be argued that openness means easiness to crack into, but that is not really important because you don't need to understand exactly how a system works to crack into it (I am not well versed in cracking, but I know that some reputed crackers use techniques such as randomly changing bits in the input one at a time until an application crashes and go from there). That means that open or not, crackers can exploit a system. But, an open system is easier for security professionals to review and therefore to fix (that does require intricate knowledge of how the system works).
In that sense, openness means better security. In the most extreme case, you could review all parts of Linux and therefore run only code you trust yourself. In the case of Windows, you have to trust Microsoft (in itself, that is not a problem as you need to have a network of trust, the problem is that you are FORCED to trust them).
Why do you think a /. ID has any bearing on knowledge, intelligence, or carefactor?
In fatalwall's defense, a low Slashdot ID means the person registered with Slashdot a long time ago which means they should be somewhat knowledgeable about stuff Slashdot talks about. I think it is a reasonable assumption on fatalwall's part.
More importantly an alternate use for a DNS resolution, really doesn't help the case to retain it.
Why not? Why can't I use my domain primarily as a nameserver, a mail exchanger or simply to connect to the machine it resolves to for any other activity than Web? This is a genuine question by the way as I am unaware of the rules regarding domain name disputes and squatting.
In this case, I don't think it is squatting per se. As the comments on TFA point out, it seems more like the guy registered a domain relating to the first-gen Xbox (xbox one like Play Station 1, Iron Man 1, Gears of War 1, Halo 1, what-have-you-single-title-turned-into-a-franchise 1).
Then again that is pure speculation on my part and I have no proof to back up my claim.
I think what your Parent meant was that illegally downloading movies is non-commercial (in the cases we are talking about at least) and that the worst those people would face should they decide to go to court is 5000$ (with a likely fine of 100$).
Hey, here's a thought - maybe we could ask rich people to pay a little more in taxes and use the funds to keep people from starving in the streets, provide job training, provide useful services - which would produce enough demand that we could enjoy technology without having our jobs terminated.I know, it's crazy talk.
It's not crazy talk, actually, it has been tried before, they call it communism (same wage for everybody).
Suppose you do tax the wealthiest more (say you increase the tax rate by delta_x %) to provide assistance to the poorest. Now, suppose that for one reason or another you need more, what do you do, tax wealthy people even more? Repeat as necessary. I am not saying there is such a thing as a perfect system, but your rhetoric begs the question: "More, ok, but how much more?". At some point, if by making more money (probably by working more than you would have otherwise) people just end up giving it in taxes, my guess is that they will either change country/find a way to avoid it (1$ salary)/not work to earn more (hence, everybody gets the same wage -> communism*)
On the other hand, there will always be people that live by achieving as little as possible (I'm certainly not saying every poor person is like that), giving them education/services/etc. won't change them unfortunately.
What's my point? None in fact save for saying I don't think fixing the world's problems is as easy as that.
*No need to tell me how communism isn't only about equal wage, thank you
DD-WRT is STOLEN source.
Just fyi.
OpenWRT code wasn't stolen. If anything, Brainslayer (main dd-wrt dev) just doesn't respect the GPL fully (dd-wrt integrates proprietary binary-only drivers in a way that the GPL forbids).
That being said, even though I don't fully agree with how Brainslayer treats the GPL, I think it is fair to say that dd-wrt contributes in a positive manner to popularizing OpenWRT (Brainslayer and OpenWRT devs even seem to talk and share code and advices from what I read).
If you want to learn more, here's an article about it and if you really don't agree with how dd-wrt does things, use OpenWRT, Tomato, HyperWRT or whatever else. Personally, I use OpenWRT (you have to know your way around to use it), but for most people, OpenWRT is too complicated and dd-wrt is already less proprietary than default (and it gives more exposure to projects like OpenWRT).
Was the stealing shameful or not?
It's only stealing if the "victim" does not consent to it.
Depends on where you live. Theft is defined, for example, in Canada's Criminal Code here (the definition says "if you take something without having been specifically allowed to" rather than "only if you are specifically denied the right to").
But that definition is mostly irrelevant here since OpenWRT code wasn't stolen.
Well, that was an interesting read.
That being said, the Michael Jackson case may have been a bad example, but I'm still pretty sure my statement is true:
"Paul McCartney and John Lennon (and Lennon's estate, now that he's dead) have always received their 50% songwriter's share of the royalties for all Lennon-McCartney songs"
Lennon's estate still receive Lennon's share (authorship?).
The DNA thing was merely an example (perhaps not a perfect one though).
My point was and still is: as easy as faking a signature might be, denying you did something (sign a contract in our case) is even easier, easy to the point where pretty much anyone able to communicate with others can do it.
With that, we're back to square one: it can't be known with perfect accuracy which party is right. But the law doesn't work on perfect accuracy, it works on absence of reasonable doubts; and in a case where you are simply denying signing a contract without any further evidence, my bet is on the party with the contract and signature.
I'm guessing it must be like for copyright owned by individuals: control of the copyright is inherited (see Michael Jackson's copyright on The Beatles's songs: the Jackson family controls it now). How everything works down to the details, I don't know, I suppose a lawyer would be able to tell you that.
Yup, some people prefer to live in fear and compliance.
You're judging infringing copyright and freeing slaves as if there was some sort of moral footing common to both.
It can also be looked up from a different perspective: in the case of slaves, it would be unjust to report them. In the case of copyright, the same thing can be said if you look at things from the copyright holder's perspective.
*The following is an expansion of my reasoning for people who would like to comment. I separate it from the beginning because it is not targeted to anyone in particular (by opposition to the above which is targeted towards parent)*
And let's be objective and realize that copyright holders can't be anything other than some big evil company, it can be small company or even normal people.
Furthermore, even if the copyright holder is some big company that didn't create the content and is charging you big money, that doesn't make it
right to rip the content: they still paid the author (however little) while ripping pays said author sweet nothing.
Now, does this mean I think copyright is a perfect system or needs to be more aggressive? No, my recommendation is to choose the most morally acceptable choice on a case-by-case basis, see response to parent for more information.
Most televised broadcasts in the United States are paid for by some permutation of subscription fees to a cable or satellite service and/or advertisements. Imagine the conundrum presented if most torrents of these broadcasts contained identical ads*. The content creators couldn't necessarily argue that they were losing out on any inherent value, because the commercials would receive even greater exposure! Yes, yes, I know that's not the point that they'd argue, but it would be at least vaguely appealing if some network said "Hey, as long as you leave commercials our supporters paid for in the torrent, we don't mind."
* Presume that the content consumers were either too lazy or not savvy enough to strip these out.
Except it doesn't exactly work that way: advertisers pay a certain fee per view per minute or something along those lines. Advertisers probably won't pay for views the TV networks can't account for with a certain degree of certainty which would be the case with BitTorrent downloads (and that's assuming a world where people wouldn't just fast-forward over ads and where such contents wouldn't get repackaged ad-free in a different Torrent).
Economy is a complex matter.
If we go back to basics, signatures themselves aren't actually worth much. You have a squiggle that you say was my signature agreeing to some contract, I say I never agreed and I didn't put that squiggle there. You say but that's your squiggle. I say it's a copy. Even an "expert" can't be 100% sure and the cost of such an analysis exceeds the value of most contracts by an order of magnitude or more.
You could also kill somebody and, when the forensics find your DNA say that it isn't your DNA, it's a copy grown in a tube or that somebody took it from elsewhere or whatever.
In the case of criminal law (at least in Canada and the US), you are considered innocent until proven otherwise.
In most other forms of law I know of (I assume contract law to fall in this category in most jurisdictions), prejudice is granted in favor of the most trustworthy party. That is, if they have your signature on a contract to back their claims and you have absolute nothing to back yours, chances are they will win.
That being said, I am not a lawyer and laws change depending on jurisdictions. Still, I don't think your scenario would be worth much in a civil court.
An interesting POV indeed, yet one I don't agree with.
>It doesn't matter whether you look at the stats from Statcounter, W3Schools, Net Applications....
Popularity, although generally a good indicator of quality is not always. For example, I know
a great number of people (men, I never go in the ladies' bathroom) don't wash their hands
after peeing/#2ing yet that's hardly a better thing to do than actually washing your hands.
A great number of people smoke, eat fast food, don't exercice, lie, speed, waste and
throw things in the wild. Arguably, the aforementioned items do have some "benefits":
smoking makes you look cool in high school, eating fast food saves you the hassle of doing
the groceries and cooking, exercising can be excruciating, etc. Yet, in all the previous cases,
popularity isn't necessarily a good indicator of quality (the fact that many people do it doesn't
_imply_ it's the right thing to do).
>all tell the same story and it is a story the geek does not want to hear, much less try to understand.
>Microsoft Windows is everyone's first choice as an OEM system install.
I know I'm stoopid (pun intended) for asking (as I doubt normal people actually post comments to receive answers and discuss),
but may you explain me how 'OEM system install' and 'choice' can go together? Last time I checked, OEMs (at least in North America) don't let you choose your OS to be OEM installed. It is Windows [version of the year], no comments allowed (and having tried getting a refund myself I can tell you it's not something that can be done without a moderate legal incentive).
>It is a strong seller retail boxed. It is pirated everywhere and outperforms Linux in the thieves markets and bazaars of the third world.
A good point, but, on the other hand, GNU/Linux is mostly free and is the underdog. I doubt there are many examples were such an item would
have a high value on the black market.
>Microsoft Windows is not crap. It is not a hell for its users. 1 to1.5 billion users world-wide.
>The Windows client is a purely commercial, market oriented, OS whose primary focus has always been on the needs and desires of the non-technical end >user.
>It makes no concessions whatever to the FOSS zealot's notion of ideological purity or political correctness.
That's arguable and I'd have a lot to argue about it. But let's assume, for the purposes of being terse and staying on subject that you are right.
>I have never found a FOSS app of the remotest use or interest to me that hasn't been ported to Windows or which began as a native Windows app.
Wonder why? Because Free Software developpers (and every OSS devs I know of) care about freedom of the user: so if the user wants to run the app on Windows,
they won't stop people from porting the app. But then, that idea gets misinterpreted as "FOSS zealot's notion of ideological purity or political correctness". Be happy you can have it both ways: enjoy F/OSS products and spit on its developpers for not being ready to abandon the ideals that made the product possible in the first place.