I'm not really taking a side here, but if I understand correctly this is the central issue: Does making it possible to commit an illegal act make one a party to the illegal act?
The NRA's position on this debate is clear: "Guns don't kill. People do."
The legal ramifications of a win by RIAA could have impact beyond the music industry. The fact that Napster exists does not cause people to commit copyright violations any more than the legal and easy availability of firearms causes people to commit gun-related crimes.
Given that Napster or some similar service is certainly never going to go away (whether commercial or otherwise), I am driven to ask this question:
What ever happened to the days when artists made their money by actually performing their music? Undoubtedly, the music industry has changed irrevocably since then. I would imagine CD's are the bread and butter of many musicians, since they are so much cheaper to produce than concerts.
The fact is, the music industry has to change again to survive. They need to provide added value that you can't get from a free download (which people will get whether it's from Napster, gnutella, FreeNet or some other source). In the days where I would copy songs off the radio onto a cassette, the added value was the whole album. I suspect that's still the great appeal of CD's. What should the new value add be? Music videos?
Write a good review of Mandrake, receive a copy of some free software.
So, I write a favorable review of Linux-Mandrake 7.0, which indicates I am happy with the software. Mandrake later sends me Linux-Mandrake 7.1....
Help! I'm being bribed! They're sending me free software!
(Linux is free software, see....)
This will have no negative impact on Monterey.
on
Endgame For SCO
·
· Score: 1
I believe Monterey will continue regardless of the fate of SCO. From where I sit, it appears that there is no alternative. As a previous poster said, it seems more likely that IBM would simply buy SCO (or even more likely, just UnixWare) if it looks as if SCO's current situation might present a problem. Furthermore, Intel would probably provide some financial aid for the successful continuity of the Monterey project if it appeared to be in jeopardy.
Monterey is an integral part of IBM's Unix strategy. The future of the Monterey project is intimately connected to AIX; at this point it appears to me that it would be extraordinarily undesirable to separate the two in any sense, either for IBM or for anyone who might buy that piece of SCO property associated with Monterey.
The real question is where the upcoming SCO Linux distribution will go if SCO folds. Since IBM's Unix strategy is also currently tied to Linux, it might seem logical to conclude this might be a valuable acquisition for IBM. However, I believe this is unlikely; my impression (and hope) is that IBM would rather provide its middleware applications running on a third party's Linux distribution that take on the immense burden of testing, updating, and internationalizing yet another operating system.
As the article suggests, Novell is as likely a candidate as any to pick up pieces of SCO. Personally, it think it is unlikely they would want to pick up UnixWare again (though what might be gained through the Monterey association might make it worthwhile). However, I look into my crystal ball and see... Novell NetLinux, anyone?
Damn right. If it's not about death, it's not real art.
God bless the self-absorbed, angst-ridden, coffee-drinking, black clothes-wearing, nihilistic philosophy-quoting, psuedo-intellectual bourgeois bohemians.
Without them, how would we ever be able to identify Art without referring to our old Simon and Garfunkle album covers?
Intellectual-spotting tip #3: You see, real intellectuals aren't by necessity always depressed. Furthermore, those who are depressed tend to slowly kill themselves with alchohol rather than merely giving themselves ulcers with coffee.
Face it, if you are reading "News for Nerds", whether you are male or female, it is indicative of the fact that you see yourself as outside the mainstream.
I agree that this article makes sweeping generalizations which are not entirely correct. However, in my experience, it seems that more women in the demographic described (ages 13 to 30) do fit Katz's description than not. A lot more.
The real flawed stereotype in this article is that of men, that they are geekhood-inclined. While it is undeniably true that nearly all men think the net was built to more effectively propagate photographs of nude women (and if they say otherwise you must understand that it is only out of consideration for the feelings of others), it is equally untrue that most men want to have the foggiest notion of how the computer works.
Men are foolish animals. They are not inherently geeks. Women are similar to men in this respect except they (thankfully) tend to be far more attractive... to me, anyway.;-)
In other words, most men on the net are not geeks, just as most women on the net are not geeks.
However, I would also like to point out that I know a large number of women professionally who do not fit the Katz stereotype. This is because they are among the (unfortunately small) number of women who have had the decency to join the ranks of the engineering (software or hardware) instead of being steered by social prejudices into "softer" fields like education or law.
These women may be slightly likely to read slashdot, but on the average I would say they are as geeky as the men who are their colleagues. Geeks are geeks, regardless of gender. They are exceptions. That is why they are called "geeks" instead of being described as "cool".
The Phantom Menace could stand alone on its eye candy.
Eye candy != groundbreaking effects. There were some software innovations in TPM's production, but The Matrix was inarguably more innovative.
Furthermore....
Perhaps a completely vaccuous 10-year-old or younger would find enough entertainment in the (admittedly impressive) visual effects fo TPM to say that is "enough to carry the movie". Even Disney has never produced a childrens movie with as little consistency, wit, sophistication and character development as there is in TPM.
In short, Lucas apparently set out to make TPM a movie suitable for his own children. He seemed to feel that children required nothing in the way of quality writing to be satisfied with a movie heavy on special effects. He was, perhaps successful in his endeavor to satisfy his own children, but the result was neither edifying nor innovative enough to be worth watching for children who are capable of even a modicum of critical thought.
I have also been using cbb for a couple years now. The functionality is quite sufficient to keep track of my accounts and credit cards.
However, I would very much like to convert to gnucash, which looks like a much more full-featured, easier-to-use product, and seems (for the last few months) stable enough to be useful.
Of course, the first thing I tried in pursuit of conversion to gnucash is the export and import QIF functions of cbb and gnucash respectively. However, this is a huge disaster because the nature of a "category" is substatially different in gnucash than in CBB. Specifically, in CBB a "category" is a description of a transaction within an account, whereas in gnucash (and in Quicken?) a "category" is associated with an account.
Thus, when one attempts to export the QIF for an account from CBB and import QIF to gnucash, the result tends to be a large number of accounts in gnucash, one account for each transaction category from CBB.
At least, this was my experience last time I attempted the conversion. Anyway, the idea of manually re-entering all those old transactions is particularly unappealing.
Thus, my question: Does anyone know of a conversion utility that will convert from CBB to gnucash which results in 1 CBB account yielding 1 gnucash account?
Unfortunately, the written product of an incredibly busy guy who has a limited understanding of the specific issues surrounding the politics of technology is a very brief and very bland article.
No doubt a ghostwriter would have written a more substantive and compelling piece, but Al certainly deserves the credit for doing his own work (however incredibly boring it is).
How could you possibly think that a ghostwriter would have mis-ordered "Control-Alt-Delete"? Is that a dig at Gore's staff?
For someone who spends every day saying the same innocuous things again and again (say, during a campaign), the excercise of putting a few of them in writing (as in this article) doesn't take long. Anyone who works "on Capitol Hill" should know that.
Actually, imbibing alchohol will slow your metabolism....
But you are missing the point. The idea stated by mmmmbeer is to "carry a bottle of scotch". Obviously, the thinking is as follows: The idea is to carry with you additional mass (here, the bottle of scotch), causing you to exert the extra effort needed to carry the bottle, which will result in additional energy being released by your body, which becomes trapped in the insulating layers of dress and the blanket, thus creating an environment conducive to retaining your body heat.
You see, in this way, the bottle of scotch makes you more comfortable despite the freeze. However, I'm not qualified to say whether the same principle will apply to Debain's Potato distribution; that calls for the opinion of a biotechnologist.
Potato under the Christmas tree?
on
Debian Freezing
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps the proliferation of commercial Debian-based products will help to get the system tested and released by the end of the year... (please, please....) Speaking of which, what kind of support (if any) have those commercial distributions actually provided support to the process of solidifying Debian 2.2?
Meanwhile, I guess those of us who mercilessly keep our machines on the bleeding edge regardless of the consequences will need to get around to reporting the breakages (mea culpa). Stability actually looks really good so far, though.
In short, I'm excited. A new release, a new bleeding edge, a new world of pain for my computers!
The question is, how many DVD's will be needed for the base Debain 2.2 distribution?
Some years ago (about 1995) when I was but a simple grad student studying English literature, I started using Linux, and discovered LaTeX. From that point on, I have created every document, every letter (except a few special ones I wrote by hand), every resume, and every mailing label with vim and LaTeX.
I suppose the beauty my mailing labels is probably lost on the hard-working employees of the United States Postal Service. It is likely that my former professors may not have always appreciated the fact that they were appraising the most attractive documents they would receive from a student. Regardless, it makes me feel good to know that in some way I have contributed to the aesthetic improvement of the world of consumer-produced printed material.
Furthermore, I sneer from my moral high ground at my colleagues and friends who use commercial products to produce an inferior grade of print, while I use software which is completely free and open source. So there.
An "iamb", according to Websters, is "a metrical foot consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable or of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable."
"Pentameter" indicates that a line of verse contains five parts. Thus, "iambic pentameter" is verse consisting of lines containing five iambs.
Sure, they might still buy armor-piercing rounds, but they'd be far more likely to purchase a weapon which could be conveniently and safely hidden inside their letterman's jacket.
However, you can't learn how to use any kind of weapon by playing Half-life on your computer. To suggest that is to delude one's self. It takes hands-on experience to learn how to load the weapon, release the safety, aim and pull the trigger.
Generally speaking, while video games may lead to eyestrain and repetitive motion disorders, they are not deadly weapons.
Basically, the aspect of this to which people are objecting is the "secret" part. It is different in no way than the ability of investigators to secretly tap your phone line or enter your home without your knowledge.
The issue is not whether investigators should be allowed monitor your computer use at all, but whether it should be made easier for them to get the warrants which allow them to do so.
Let me be more clear; I was thinking of "free" in the sense of being available for public consumption, rather than the sense of not costing money. There is nothing about information that demands it not have a price, only that it can be attained (even if for a price).
Let your information be free, but it's okay to make them pay for it.
Data is not information until somebody becomes informed. Before data is received by someone (or something) capable of understanding it, the data can not be said to have meaning and therefore is not, in any literal sense, "information". Thus, in a sense, information _does_ in fact "want to be free".
Well, to be fair, I don't think anyone has devised a means to kill another person purely by using cryptography as it is designed to work. I'm not sure the handgun analogy is apt.
Apparently Acer, Apple, Compaq, Dell, and anyone else making portable computers with builtin wireless data-transfer technology owe money to these jokers.
That's the real beauty of the patent; the device described is no less (and no more) than a modern notebook-style personal computer. I'll be rather amused when they start trying to collect fees from the big boys....
"Open Source DOES NOT innovate"?
on
Microsoft Janus
·
· Score: 1
Wow, my imagination has been getting the best of me. Apparently the HURD, gnome, enlightenment, and the Berlin project all don't really exist. Of course, if they did, they would be examples of open source innovations. Yeah, that must be it. I've just been deluding myself.
Thus demonstrating engineers and computer scientists tend not to have any respect for "IT" types....
A "well designed NT box" is certainly not "more stable than" a well-designed Linux system. Furthermore, for many client applications, NT is not "faster", either.
In summary: You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you have never built (or used, apparently) a Linux box.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not really taking a side here, but if I understand correctly this is the central issue: Does making it possible to commit an illegal act make one a party to the illegal act?
The NRA's position on this debate is clear: "Guns don't kill. People do."
The legal ramifications of a win by RIAA could have impact beyond the music industry. The fact that Napster exists does not cause people to commit copyright violations any more than the legal and easy availability of firearms causes people to commit gun-related crimes.
Given that Napster or some similar service is certainly never going to go away (whether commercial or otherwise), I am driven to ask this question:
What ever happened to the days when artists made their money by actually performing their music? Undoubtedly, the music industry has changed irrevocably since then. I would imagine CD's are the bread and butter of many musicians, since they are so much cheaper to produce than concerts.
The fact is, the music industry has to change again to survive. They need to provide added value that you can't get from a free download (which people will get whether it's from Napster, gnutella, FreeNet or some other source). In the days where I would copy songs off the radio onto a cassette, the added value was the whole album. I suspect that's still the great appeal of CD's. What should the new value add be? Music videos?
I had thought this "obey authority regardless of whether it is right or wrong" question had been settled at Nuremberg.
If we learn nothing from history, we have surely earned a bleak future.
Let me sort this out:
Write a good review of Mandrake, receive a copy of some free software.
So, I write a favorable review of Linux-Mandrake 7.0, which indicates I am happy with the software. Mandrake later sends me Linux-Mandrake 7.1....
Help! I'm being bribed! They're sending me free software!
(Linux is free software, see....)
I believe Monterey will continue regardless of the fate of SCO. From where I sit, it appears that there is no alternative. As a previous poster said, it seems more likely that IBM would simply buy SCO (or even more likely, just UnixWare) if it looks as if SCO's current situation might present a problem. Furthermore, Intel would probably provide some financial aid for the successful continuity of the Monterey project if it appeared to be in jeopardy.
Monterey is an integral part of IBM's Unix strategy. The future of the Monterey project is intimately connected to AIX; at this point it appears to me that it would be extraordinarily undesirable to separate the two in any sense, either for IBM or for anyone who might buy that piece of SCO property associated with Monterey.
The real question is where the upcoming SCO Linux distribution will go if SCO folds. Since IBM's Unix strategy is also currently tied to Linux, it might seem logical to conclude this might be a valuable acquisition for IBM. However, I believe this is unlikely; my impression (and hope) is that IBM would rather provide its middleware applications running on a third party's Linux distribution that take on the immense burden of testing, updating, and internationalizing yet another operating system.
As the article suggests, Novell is as likely a candidate as any to pick up pieces of SCO. Personally, it think it is unlikely they would want to pick up UnixWare again (though what might be gained through the Monterey association might make it worthwhile). However, I look into my crystal ball and see... Novell NetLinux, anyone?
Damn right. If it's not about death, it's not real art.
God bless the self-absorbed, angst-ridden, coffee-drinking, black clothes-wearing, nihilistic philosophy-quoting, psuedo-intellectual bourgeois bohemians.
Without them, how would we ever be able to identify Art without referring to our old Simon and Garfunkle album covers?
Intellectual-spotting tip #3:
You see, real intellectuals aren't by necessity always depressed. Furthermore, those who are depressed tend to slowly kill themselves with alchohol rather than merely giving themselves ulcers with coffee.
I agree that this article makes sweeping generalizations which are not entirely correct. However, in my experience, it seems that more women in the demographic described (ages 13 to 30) do fit Katz's description than not. A lot more.
The real flawed stereotype in this article is that of men, that they are geekhood-inclined. While it is undeniably true that nearly all men think the net was built to more effectively propagate photographs of nude women (and if they say otherwise you must understand that it is only out of consideration for the feelings of others), it is equally untrue that most men want to have the foggiest notion of how the computer works.
Men are foolish animals. They are not inherently geeks. Women are similar to men in this respect except they (thankfully) tend to be far more attractive... to me, anyway. ;-)
In other words, most men on the net are not geeks, just as most women on the net are not geeks.
However, I would also like to point out that I know a large number of women professionally who do not fit the Katz stereotype. This is because they are among the (unfortunately small) number of women who have had the decency to join the ranks of the engineering (software or hardware) instead of being steered by social prejudices into "softer" fields like education or law.
These women may be slightly likely to read slashdot, but on the average I would say they are as geeky as the men who are their colleagues. Geeks are geeks, regardless of gender. They are exceptions. That is why they are called "geeks" instead of being described as "cool".
Eye candy != groundbreaking effects. There were some software innovations in TPM's production, but The Matrix was inarguably more innovative.
Furthermore....
Perhaps a completely vaccuous 10-year-old or younger would find enough entertainment in the (admittedly impressive) visual effects fo TPM to say that is "enough to carry the movie". Even Disney has never produced a childrens movie with as little consistency, wit, sophistication and character development as there is in TPM.
In short, Lucas apparently set out to make TPM a movie suitable for his own children. He seemed to feel that children required nothing in the way of quality writing to be satisfied with a movie heavy on special effects. He was, perhaps successful in his endeavor to satisfy his own children, but the result was neither edifying nor innovative enough to be worth watching for children who are capable of even a modicum of critical thought.
No, what's ridiculous is your spelling. ;-)
Ditto what the other respondants say: It's not illegal to possess the software unless it has been used for a crime.
I have also been using cbb for a couple years now. The functionality is quite sufficient to keep track of my accounts and credit cards.
However, I would very much like to convert to gnucash, which looks like a much more full-featured, easier-to-use product, and seems (for the last few months) stable enough to be useful.
Of course, the first thing I tried in pursuit of conversion to gnucash is the export and import QIF functions of cbb and gnucash respectively. However, this is a huge disaster because the nature of a "category" is substatially different in gnucash than in CBB. Specifically, in CBB a "category" is a description of a transaction within an account, whereas in gnucash (and in Quicken?) a "category" is associated with an account.
Thus, when one attempts to export the QIF for an account from CBB and import QIF to gnucash, the result tends to be a large number of accounts in gnucash, one account for each transaction category from CBB.
At least, this was my experience last time I attempted the conversion. Anyway, the idea of manually re-entering all those old transactions is particularly unappealing.
Thus, my question:
Does anyone know of a conversion utility that will convert from CBB to gnucash which results in 1 CBB account yielding 1 gnucash account?
No doubt a ghostwriter would have written a more substantive and compelling piece, but Al certainly deserves the credit for doing his own work (however incredibly boring it is).
How could you possibly think that a ghostwriter would have mis-ordered "Control-Alt-Delete"? Is that a dig at Gore's staff?
For someone who spends every day saying the same innocuous things again and again (say, during a campaign), the excercise of putting a few of them in writing (as in this article) doesn't take long. Anyone who works "on Capitol Hill" should know that.
Later in this thread, dmd intends to defy the poster and give three (identical) responses. ;-)
Actually, imbibing alchohol will slow your metabolism....
But you are missing the point. The idea stated by mmmmbeer is to "carry a bottle of scotch".
Obviously, the thinking is as follows:
The idea is to carry with you additional mass (here, the bottle of scotch), causing you to exert the extra effort needed to carry the bottle, which will result in additional energy being released by your body, which becomes trapped in the insulating layers of dress and the blanket, thus creating an environment conducive to retaining your body heat.
You see, in this way, the bottle of scotch makes you more comfortable despite the freeze. However, I'm not qualified to say whether the same principle will apply to Debain's Potato distribution; that calls for the opinion of a biotechnologist.
Perhaps the proliferation of commercial Debian-based products will help to get the system tested and released by the end of the year... (please, please....) Speaking of which, what kind of support (if any) have those commercial distributions actually provided support to the process of solidifying Debian 2.2?
Meanwhile, I guess those of us who mercilessly keep our machines on the bleeding edge regardless of the consequences will need to get around to reporting the breakages (mea culpa). Stability actually looks really good so far, though.
In short, I'm excited. A new release, a new bleeding edge, a new world of pain for my computers!
The question is, how many DVD's will be needed for the base Debain 2.2 distribution?
Some years ago (about 1995) when I was but a simple grad student studying English literature, I started using Linux, and discovered LaTeX. From that point on, I have created every document, every letter (except a few special ones I wrote by hand), every resume, and every mailing label with vim and LaTeX.
I suppose the beauty my mailing labels is probably lost on the hard-working employees of the United States Postal Service. It is likely that my former professors may not have always appreciated the fact that they were appraising the most attractive documents they would receive from a student. Regardless, it makes me feel good to know that in some way I have contributed to the aesthetic improvement of the world of consumer-produced printed material.
Furthermore, I sneer from my moral high ground at my colleagues and friends who use commercial products to produce an inferior grade of print, while I use software which is completely free and open source. So there.
Much as I hate to pick a nit (well, not really):
An "iamb", according to Websters, is "a metrical foot consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable or of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable."
"Pentameter" indicates that a line of verse contains five parts. Thus, "iambic pentameter" is verse consisting of lines containing five iambs.
Sure, they might still buy armor-piercing rounds, but they'd be far more likely to purchase a weapon which could be conveniently and safely hidden inside their letterman's jacket.
However, you can't learn how to use any kind of weapon by playing Half-life on your computer. To suggest that is to delude one's self. It takes hands-on experience to learn how to load the weapon, release the safety, aim and pull the trigger.
Generally speaking, while video games may lead to eyestrain and repetitive motion disorders, they are not deadly weapons.
Basically, the aspect of this to which people are objecting is the "secret" part. It is different in no way than the ability of investigators to secretly tap your phone line or enter your home without your knowledge.
The issue is not whether investigators should be allowed monitor your computer use at all, but whether it should be made easier for them to get the warrants which allow them to do so.
No, guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.
Let me be more clear; I was thinking of "free" in the sense of being available for public consumption, rather than the sense of not costing money. There is nothing about information that demands it not have a price, only that it can be attained (even if for a price).
Let your information be free, but it's okay to make them pay for it.
Data is not information until somebody becomes informed. Before data is received by someone (or something) capable of understanding it, the data can not be said to have meaning and therefore is not, in any literal sense, "information". Thus, in a sense, information _does_ in fact "want to be free".
Well, to be fair, I don't think anyone has devised a means to kill another person purely by using cryptography as it is designed to work. I'm not sure the handgun analogy is apt.
Apparently Acer, Apple, Compaq, Dell, and anyone else making portable computers with builtin wireless data-transfer technology owe money to these jokers.
That's the real beauty of the patent; the device described is no less (and no more) than a modern notebook-style personal computer. I'll be rather amused when they start trying to collect fees from the big boys....
Here's the stupid patent description
Wow, my imagination has been getting the best of me. Apparently the HURD, gnome, enlightenment, and the Berlin project all don't really exist. Of course, if they did, they would be examples of open source innovations. Yeah, that must be it. I've just been deluding myself.
Thus demonstrating engineers and computer scientists tend not to have any respect for "IT" types....
A "well designed NT box" is certainly not "more stable than" a well-designed Linux system. Furthermore, for many client applications, NT is not "faster", either.
In summary: You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you have never built (or used, apparently) a Linux box.