I'll tell you who's using the majority of the Win98 boxes: the parents and grandparents of the world.
Not here -- it's my kids (all pre-teen) that run it. Supports all their old "edutainment" software, as well as some not so old. The younger two aren't even on the network (and they're running on 64M, P166 boxes), and the older uses Firefox, etc behind the household firewall. The younger ones have been clamoring for internet access, but I'm going to set up a squid filtering proxy first.
I'm also upgrading their PCs (to slightly newer old used PCs) with default boot to Linux with Wine to run the Windows apps. (With a win98 partition as fallback). The older one already uses Firefox and OpenOffice for homework, so won't notice a difference there.
I have no clue what the laws are in other states, but according to newspaper reports on the nutcase that recently confessed (apparently falsely) to killing Jon Benet Ramsey, he was extradited back to California on outstanding misdemeanor charges of possessing child porn.
This intusiveness seems excessive for something that's only going to be prosecuted as a misdemeanor.
(And if viewing a depiction of an illegal and immoral act were itself a crime (as it is for child porn, but extend that for any depiction of a crime), we'd pretty much have to charge anyone who ever watched TV or a movie. Even Disney kids' movies. Or visited an art gallery, come to that. And what about that old Coppertone billboard?)
Now, if they only going after those who upload the stuff, then they only need to ask ISPs to retain those logs.
Yep. There is more content out there than one could possibly watch, listen to, or read in a lifetime. Broaden your horizons a little.
Providers will stop putting Digital Restrictions on content when it starts reflecting negatively on their bottom line. Distributers ditto -- look what happened to DAT and to DIVX (the old Circuit City scheme, not the codec deliberately named in its "honor").
GPL based distros are going to be handicapped [...]. While BSD based distros will not.
The NVidia drivers aren't available at all for most of the BSDs. Just FreeBSD. And then only on 32-bit x86. (NVidia supports Linux on x86_32, x86_64 and IA_64.) So, who's handicapped, now?
Re:Space Station and Shuttle, against the Sun
on
Chemical Leak on ISS
·
· Score: 2, Funny
That's gotta be the strangest shaped sunspot I've ever seen.;-)
Yes, and we have laws against illegal confinement, slavery, and the like to discourage people from preventing others doing what they will. The GPL is like that.
The GPL doesn't prevent anyone from getting hold of Nvidia's drivers if they want them. It does prevent NVidia from benefitting from somebody else distributing NV's proprietary drivers with free code. In other words, the intent is to discourage NVidia, but the only legal method is to discourage NVidia's unwitting accomplices.
As for lawsuits, what do you supposed FreeBSD would do about a distribution that stripped out the BSD copyright notices and disclaimers?
Nope, the GPL wasn't telling Kororaa what to do with 3rd party software. It was telling Kororaa what they COULDN'T do with GPL'd software. One thing they couldn't do was combine it with non-GPL'd software and distribute the result. The FSF even gives an example of how to get around this -- distribute the non-free modules on a separate disc.
(The only exception to the above is aggregations of software that are independant of each other. The original Kororaa CD was clearly dependent upon the non-Free software, so that exception doesn't apply.)
Heck, many libraries have pretty decent DVD collections, come to that, although some of the more popular titles (that aren't blockbuster movies) may have long hold lists. (I'm still waiting on the last couple of discs for "Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, 2nd GIG", for example.)
Look at it this way: if nobody on the internet can access your shared folders, then you don't have to worry about the RIAA taking a screenshot of your shared folder, downloading the music files therein, and suing you.
On the other hand, if anyone on the internet can access your shared folders, then you'd better worry about RIAA doing the above. Sure, perhaps it shouldn't be your responsibility to make sure the internet can't see your shared folders that you only meant to share internally -- but do you want to argue that in court? (See, btw, "attractive nuisance"). Do you want to try proving your intentions? (Civil suits merely rely on a "preponderance of evidence" to show guilt, not "beyond a reasonable doubt".)
If you're doing something that might upset somebody else, then try to keep it quiet. Close the blinds, firewall your server, whatever.
Would it be fair to say that, when a lawyer says "the law is unsettled" (possibly preceded by "I don't know the answer to that because"), it really means that it's a crapshoot because some judges are going (have gone) to go one way, and some another -- and it won't really be settled until somebody manages to drag it up though the appeals process to the Supreme Court?
In other words, just because you and I may think that the law should be interpreted a certain way, some judge may think differently, and unless the Supreme Court (or at least the Appeals Court for that Circuit) has rendered a decision on it (and in favor of our interpretation), we could be SOL. (Of course if a given judge has already decided a similar case, you've got a pretty good idea of what his interpretation is -- and you can bet that RIAA is going to try to venue shop for a friendly judge.)
number of people who claim that BASIC programs are somehow interacting with the computer on a lower level than C++, that BASIC somehow underpins the whole object-oriented system. Can someone explain what they're talking about?
It's hard to explain the inexplicable;-) My guess is that they've been exposed to VB (like one would be exposed to a virus or to radiation) and generally been braindamag^H^H^H^H^Hwashed by Microsoft.
Um, I hope you're joking and I'm just missing the subtle hints that might prove it, but the gp was talking (at least, I thought he was, maybe I'm wrong) about physical models, not digital models. You know, plastic kits, acetone-based glue, tiny Testors paint jars, that whole scene.
You know, something not requiring a computer. (Yeah, I know, on/. that's close to heresy.)
Well, not to dispute your main point, with which I agree, (my first two computer languages -- simultaneously -- were Algol and APL, talk about mixed paradigms) but:
BASIC is a horrible language for learning to code [...] It is not designed as a learning language.
Unfortunately, it was designed as a learning language: Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Of course it was developed in the era of Fortran and Cobol (and years before Paul Allen and Bill Gates created a stripped-down version for the MITS Altair), so I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.
But Dijkstra mostly has it right, although he's a bit pessimistic about "without hope of regeneration". There's always some hope, although it's probably inversely proportional to the amount of BASIC the programmer has been exposed to.
How do you run Linux without a keyboard or mouse? They aren't free, you realize.
No, but they're cheap. I just picked up a couple of keyboards and some mice, new retail, for $3.99 ea for the keyboards, $1.49 ea for the mice (at MicroCenter). Admittedly not the best quality, but they do the job. (Replacements for my young kids' computers in my case.)
Why else would he have started with Episode IV? Usually, you start at the beginning.
My guess would be that IV is just as boring (over long stretches) for someone who saw them the first time in the "right" order (i.e. new trilogy first, old one last). Because it, again, explains a lot. A lot that you already know when you've seen I-III.
Lucas got it right with starting with ep IV, but blew it by doing ep VI before doing I, II and III.
Ever see "Pulp Fiction"? The movie starts and ends in the diner, the two scenes in fact overlap (different POVs). But the end (and beginning) of the movie is chronologically in the middle of the events that the movie relates. After the opening diner scene we go back a bit in time, then go chronologically (more or less) to the end, then jump back again to before the diner scene and move forward to the end (in the diner) of the movie. Something similar could have been done with Star Wars.
By the end of "Empire" (ep V), we pretty much know all we need to know about Anakin, Luke, and Leia, but not in any detail. Yeah, there's a cliffhanger with Solo -- mainly an excuse (at the time) to do ep VI, since the "grand arc" of Anakin/Vader's fall and redemption just isn't there yet. Episodes I, II and III should have been released between "Empire" and "Return" -- although I'd squeeze the 3 down to 2, probably cut "Empire" a little before where it ended (eg, perhaps right after the "I am your father" line). You'd have to cut a lot of the fat out of the first three (now sandwiched between TESB and ROTJ -- you'd have to renumber them) because of the cliffhangers.
After (historically) "Empire", though, SW was obviously being written for kids (Ewoks? Young Anakin? Jar Jar? GMAFB.) and that kind of convoluted plot thread is way above that audience. Although the more I think about it, the plotting and characterization (ie, the writing) overall stinks. Nice effects, sets, cinematography, and score though. Sigh.
Re-read the post to which I was replying. Go ahead, I'll wait. The key text is: "Shouldn't someone go to jail for this? I agree it's fraud, let's treat it as such."
Now, what the hell does your comment have to do with what I said? People get fired or demoted all the time for things that may not be, legally, jail-worthy.
It's not fraud. For it to be fraud, money (or equivalent negotiable assets) has to have been acquired through the deception. In this case, the intent of the deceit was to obtain information, not cash.
Historically you can claim to be anybody you like, so long as it is not with intent to defraud (or hamper a police investigation). Historically, "pretexting" hasn't even been illegal -- laws against it are only on the books in a couple of states and are fairly new. PI's and "investigative journalists", among others, have a long history of doing this. One of the reasons that this whole thing is getting as much coverage as it is, is because that this time some journalists were the target. Journalists hate when somebody does unto them as they do unto others, and hence are making a colossal stink over it.
Well, yes and no. Robbie the robot -- the actual prop from "Forbidden Planet" (on the left)-- did appear in a couple of "Lost In Space" episodes, but the regular LiS robot of "Danger, Will Robinson!" fame (the one on the right) was a slightly different design and a different prop, with a slightly different personality. Enough similarities though to see the connection, at least until later in the series when the whole thing was becoming more of a comedy.
And yes, Robbie also appeared in a few other shows.
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I'll tell you who's using the majority of the Win98 boxes: the parents and grandparents of the world.
Not here -- it's my kids (all pre-teen) that run it. Supports all their old "edutainment" software, as well as some not so old. The younger two aren't even on the network (and they're running on 64M, P166 boxes), and the older uses Firefox, etc behind the household firewall. The younger ones have been clamoring for internet access, but I'm going to set up a squid filtering proxy first.
I'm also upgrading their PCs (to slightly newer old used PCs) with default boot to Linux with Wine to run the Windows apps. (With a win98 partition as fallback). The older one already uses Firefox and OpenOffice for homework, so won't notice a difference there.
What has Citrix solved that X Windows and VNC haven't solved decades earlier?
How to market to PHBs.
I have no clue what the laws are in other states, but according to newspaper reports on the nutcase that recently confessed (apparently falsely) to killing Jon Benet Ramsey, he was extradited back to California on outstanding misdemeanor charges of possessing child porn.
This intusiveness seems excessive for something that's only going to be prosecuted as a misdemeanor.
(And if viewing a depiction of an illegal and immoral act were itself a crime (as it is for child porn, but extend that for any depiction of a crime), we'd pretty much have to charge anyone who ever watched TV or a movie. Even Disney kids' movies. Or visited an art gallery, come to that. And what about that old Coppertone billboard?)
Now, if they only going after those who upload the stuff, then they only need to ask ISPs to retain those logs.
If you don't want DRM content, then don't buy it.
Yep. There is more content out there than one could possibly watch, listen to, or read in a lifetime. Broaden your horizons a little.
Providers will stop putting Digital Restrictions on content when it starts reflecting negatively on their bottom line. Distributers ditto -- look what happened to DAT and to DIVX (the old Circuit City scheme, not the codec deliberately named in its "honor").
GPL based distros are going to be handicapped [...]. While BSD based distros will not.
The NVidia drivers aren't available at all for most of the BSDs. Just FreeBSD. And then only on 32-bit x86. (NVidia supports Linux on x86_32, x86_64 and IA_64.) So, who's handicapped, now?
That's gotta be the strangest shaped sunspot I've ever seen. ;-)
Freedom is about letting people do what they will
Yes, and we have laws against illegal confinement, slavery, and the like to discourage people from preventing others doing what they will. The GPL is like that.
The GPL doesn't prevent anyone from getting hold of Nvidia's drivers if they want them. It does prevent NVidia from benefitting from somebody else distributing NV's proprietary drivers with free code. In other words, the intent is to discourage NVidia, but the only legal method is to discourage NVidia's unwitting accomplices.
As for lawsuits, what do you supposed FreeBSD would do about a distribution that stripped out the BSD copyright notices and disclaimers?
I wish people would call it Unix. It's a better way to be inclusive of GNU,
But, but...GNU's not Unix.
Nope, the GPL wasn't telling Kororaa what to do with 3rd party software. It was telling Kororaa what they COULDN'T do with GPL'd software. One thing they couldn't do was combine it with non-GPL'd software and distribute the result. The FSF even gives an example of how to get around this -- distribute the non-free modules on a separate disc.
(The only exception to the above is aggregations of software that are independant of each other. The original Kororaa CD was clearly dependent upon the non-Free software, so that exception doesn't apply.)
I'd like to see what it does with a blivet.
Heck, many libraries have pretty decent DVD collections, come to that, although some of the more popular titles (that aren't blockbuster movies) may have long hold lists. (I'm still waiting on the last couple of discs for "Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, 2nd GIG", for example.)
Who watches broadcast TV anymore anyway?
Look at it this way: if nobody on the internet can access your shared folders, then you don't have to worry about the RIAA taking a screenshot of your shared folder, downloading the music files therein, and suing you.
On the other hand, if anyone on the internet can access your shared folders, then you'd better worry about RIAA doing the above. Sure, perhaps it shouldn't be your responsibility to make sure the internet can't see your shared folders that you only meant to share internally -- but do you want to argue that in court? (See, btw, "attractive nuisance"). Do you want to try proving your intentions? (Civil suits merely rely on a "preponderance of evidence" to show guilt, not "beyond a reasonable doubt".)
If you're doing something that might upset somebody else, then try to keep it quiet. Close the blinds, firewall your server, whatever.
Would it be fair to say that, when a lawyer says "the law is unsettled" (possibly preceded by "I don't know the answer to that because"), it really means that it's a crapshoot because some judges are going (have gone) to go one way, and some another -- and it won't really be settled until somebody manages to drag it up though the appeals process to the Supreme Court?
In other words, just because you and I may think that the law should be interpreted a certain way, some judge may think differently, and unless the Supreme Court (or at least the Appeals Court for that Circuit) has rendered a decision on it (and in favor of our interpretation), we could be SOL. (Of course if a given judge has already decided a similar case, you've got a pretty good idea of what his interpretation is -- and you can bet that RIAA is going to try to venue shop for a friendly judge.)
number of people who claim that BASIC programs are somehow interacting with the computer on a lower level than C++, that BASIC somehow underpins the whole object-oriented system. Can someone explain what they're talking about?
;-) My guess is that they've been exposed to VB (like one would be exposed to a virus or to radiation) and generally been braindamag^H^H^H^H^Hwashed by Microsoft.
It's hard to explain the inexplicable
Um, I hope you're joking and I'm just missing the subtle hints that might prove it, but the gp was talking (at least, I thought he was, maybe I'm wrong) about physical models, not digital models. You know, plastic kits, acetone-based glue, tiny Testors paint jars, that whole scene.
/. that's close to heresy.)
You know, something not requiring a computer. (Yeah, I know, on
(Besides, polygons? NURBS, man.)
Well, not to dispute your main point, with which I agree, (my first two computer languages -- simultaneously -- were Algol and APL, talk about mixed paradigms) but:
BASIC is a horrible language for learning to code [...] It is not designed as a learning language.
Unfortunately, it was designed as a learning language: Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Of course it was developed in the era of Fortran and Cobol (and years before Paul Allen and Bill Gates created a stripped-down version for the MITS Altair), so I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.
But Dijkstra mostly has it right, although he's a bit pessimistic about "without hope of regeneration". There's always some hope, although it's probably inversely proportional to the amount of BASIC the programmer has been exposed to.
How do you run Linux without a keyboard or mouse? They aren't free, you realize.
No, but they're cheap. I just picked up a couple of keyboards and some mice, new retail, for $3.99 ea for the keyboards, $1.49 ea for the mice (at MicroCenter). Admittedly not the best quality, but they do the job. (Replacements for my young kids' computers in my case.)
You're listing close to retail, quantity-one prices on those components. They'd be closer to half that in moderate volume wholesale.
x86 is just too difficult to design a decoder for in 1 semester.
;-)
Nah, you just do the core of the decoder as MIPS and then implement the x86 instruction set in software (microcode).
Why else would he have started with Episode IV? Usually, you start at the beginning.
My guess would be that IV is just as boring (over long stretches) for someone who saw them the first time in the "right" order (i.e. new trilogy first, old one last). Because it, again, explains a lot. A lot that you already know when you've seen I-III.
Lucas got it right with starting with ep IV, but blew it by doing ep VI before doing I, II and III.
Ever see "Pulp Fiction"? The movie starts and ends in the diner, the two scenes in fact overlap (different POVs). But the end (and beginning) of the movie is chronologically in the middle of the events that the movie relates. After the opening diner scene we go back a bit in time, then go chronologically (more or less) to the end, then jump back again to before the diner scene and move forward to the end (in the diner) of the movie. Something similar could have been done with Star Wars.
By the end of "Empire" (ep V), we pretty much know all we need to know about Anakin, Luke, and Leia, but not in any detail. Yeah, there's a cliffhanger with Solo -- mainly an excuse (at the time) to do ep VI, since the "grand arc" of Anakin/Vader's fall and redemption just isn't there yet. Episodes I, II and III should have been released between "Empire" and "Return" -- although I'd squeeze the 3 down to 2, probably cut "Empire" a little before where it ended (eg, perhaps right after the "I am your father" line). You'd have to cut a lot of the fat out of the first three (now sandwiched between TESB and ROTJ -- you'd have to renumber them) because of the cliffhangers.
After (historically) "Empire", though, SW was obviously being written for kids (Ewoks? Young Anakin? Jar Jar? GMAFB.) and that kind of convoluted plot thread is way above that audience. Although the more I think about it, the plotting and characterization (ie, the writing) overall stinks. Nice effects, sets, cinematography, and score though. Sigh.
Re-read the post to which I was replying. Go ahead, I'll wait. The key text is: "Shouldn't someone go to jail for this? I agree it's fraud, let's treat it as such."
Now, what the hell does your comment have to do with what I said? People get fired or demoted all the time for things that may not be, legally, jail-worthy.
It's not fraud. For it to be fraud, money (or equivalent negotiable assets) has to have been acquired through the deception. In this case, the intent of the deceit was to obtain information, not cash.
Historically you can claim to be anybody you like, so long as it is not with intent to defraud (or hamper a police investigation). Historically, "pretexting" hasn't even been illegal -- laws against it are only on the books in a couple of states and are fairly new. PI's and "investigative journalists", among others, have a long history of doing this. One of the reasons that this whole thing is getting as much coverage as it is, is because that this time some journalists were the target. Journalists hate when somebody does unto them as they do unto others, and hence are making a colossal stink over it.
This assumes PS3 ever actually makes it to market. Lately it looks like Sony has entered it into the release race with Vista and Duke Nukem Forever.
Interesting equivalence there between practicing holistic medicine and lobbing missiles into a city. -5 insightful on that one.
Well, yes and no. Robbie the robot -- the actual prop from "Forbidden Planet" (on the left)-- did appear in a couple of "Lost In Space" episodes, but the regular LiS robot of "Danger, Will Robinson!" fame (the one on the right) was a slightly different design and a different prop, with a slightly different personality. Enough similarities though to see the connection, at least until later in the series when the whole thing was becoming more of a comedy.
And yes, Robbie also appeared in a few other shows.