Keep the documents on your web-site (in HTML or PDF, if you must). Protect access to the site with customer-specific usernames/passwords. Instead of mailing out entire documents (in a proprietary format), mail out links to them instead — and save us all some bandwidth.
Yes, a user with elementary knowledge of computers will be able to download your doc (especially easy with PDF) and then e-mail. But all the other little schemes are defeated with the same amount of elementary knowledge.
You can also put some limitations into your PDF-files (such as no printing), but, as I say, these are all defeated fairly easily.
Making Democrats out to be particularly heinous because they accept money from the RIAA
I don't find RIAA neither heinous, nor leaching on society. At all.
But you — and a number of other slasdhdotters do. My "troll" was trying to point out, that both, the subjects of the article and the RIAA are chasing people over an IP-address. And both groups are Democrats.
Not investing in programmers may cause problems, that no amount of hardware can solve. A difference between a linear search though and array vs. implementing a hash-table explodes very quickly, for example, and no hardware can keep up.
So, if you only have junior developers, who a) don't anticipate this sort of problems; b) only test on small data-sets, you'll hit a wall — and will need a (very expensive) consultant to solve a customer's production problem. A human being can't distinguish a millisecond from a microsecond. Times a million, however, the former turns into 15 minutes, but the latter is only a second...
Then comes the difference between programmers, who can write a program, and software engineers, who can maintain a software project — not only writing the first version, but managing the project's growth, implementing (and enforcing!) automatic non-regression tests. If you ignore this last aspect, for example, as one company I know did, you'll paint yourself into a corner very quickly with per-customer source-code branches. Why? Because, without proper non-regression tests, fixing one bug may either create or expose another. Bitten by this, your customers will reject upgrades with "pre-emptive" fixes for problems, they haven't encountered (yet) — they'll be (justifiably) afraid of encountering problems, your recent bug-fixes created instead.
In short, hardware is only one part of a computer system, and solves only some of the problems, that better developers can solve. You may not need many of them (indeed, this leads to its own set of problems), but you need at least some of them to be really good.
(Oh, and just as we thought, hardware is fast enough for just about anything, XML was imposed to set us all back ten years or so...)
Recent days have brought to light four more highly "inconvenient truths" for our global warming alarmists. The first caused acute embarrassment to Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), exposing a serious flaw in its record of US surface temperatures since 1880. The error was so glaring that, on August 7, GISS had to post revised figures which show, instead of temperatures reaching their highest level in the past decade, that the hottest year of the 20th century was not 1998 but 1934. Of the 10 warmest years since 1880, it turns out that four were in the 1930s and only three in the past decade.
The significance of this is that James Hansen, the head of GISS, has been Al Gore's closest scientific ally for nearly 20 years in promoting the global warming scare. The revised figures relate only to temperatures in North America but the fact that the pre-eminent scientific champion of the orthodoxy has been promoting erroneous data has considerable implications.
Can you tell me with a straight face that you agree with every single one of your representative's and senators' votes on every single bill, resolution and lunch special?
I can't, of course. And so when choosing a representative, I do chose the lesser of the evils. But I don't deny that...
My beef is not your choosing the one you perceive to be less evil. It is your way of measuring the evil, that bugs me...
No, it is the Western illiberals, who seem to think so. Because, you know, there is no absolute evil in the world — with the exception, of course, for those people, who think, that there is — those must be fought tooth-and-nail... Growing up in the USSR and hearing about "progressive humanity" agreeing with Communists (and denouncing Capitalism), I was flabbergasted: how could they possibly be so stupid?
Maybe the West is making too big of a deal over this, as many Chinese citizens seem to like it that way.
Yes, that's what I'm talking about... Who are we to judge, what's right — we have our problems too, don't we?..
And then, of course, there are uber-Conservatives, who "understand" the motivations of hitlers, stalins, and putins of the world and recommend, the US leaves their countries alone and stops preaching those pesky inalienable rights, that all people are endowed with — not just the US citizens.
Because as a representative democracy, it would be impossible for us to operate if we were required to agree and believe in every last opinion and action of our representative.
Oh, the "lesser of the two evils" excuse... Wow... McCain must've bean a real evil incarnate then — I can't imagine a worse infringement on personal freedoms, than being forced to join a union. Everything, that he got marred with (mostly — unswervingly, BTW) like unauthorized wiretaps, threatened only the privacy and only of the very few. Getting drafted into a union is an immediate danger to not only privacy (the union gets to know a lot about you), but one's wallet (the guarantor of freedom) and this danger now threatens a lot more people, than any government could possibly wire-tap...
Why would he be so concerned about union growth that he would try and take steps to lower the bar on organizing groups of people who probably don't even want it?
Why the rotten politicians want unions is quite understandable — and Blagojevich is on tape explaining the top reason.
What's less obvious, is why did the techies, who are justifiably against joining unions themselves, have voted for the party, that's trying to make unions much harder to avoid for other workers. One of the top items on the Unions' wish-list is elimination of the secret-ballot voting, which an employer can currently demand, before a workplace is unionized. Called THE EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT (while promising the exact opposite of free choice) it has a high chance of passing, because Democrats owe unions quite a bit — and both need each other.
Having spent the better part of the last century trying in vain to make everyone equally rich, the two groups are now settling on making (almost) everyone equally poor — as long as large pools of money remain available for retiring politicians in exchange for favors such as Senate appointments.
So, why did techies, who, as a group, don't want unions, vote for people, who are trying to impose them?
Which basics? Different pieces are owned by different people, organizations, or are in public domain.
Should we locate the heirs of Shakespeare and give them $1000 for each book, film and song containing quotes, references or straight out adaptions of his works?
We don't need to locate them, but if any come forward, they can make their claims.
If copyright should be eternal that would be the logical thing to do.
Yes.
Why call it stealing instead of rape, murder or terrorism?
Because it is the closest to stealing — unlike murder and terrorism, there is no violence (or threat thereof) involved. Like theft, the perpetrator benefits from something without the owner's permission. That the owner remains in possession of the original is little consolation, because each such theft slightly dilutes the value of that original.
Regardless, even if it is not exactly like theft — it is still wrong, and I don't understand, why I am supposed to feel any sympathy towards people, who do it and get into legal trouble.
If you just need to find a word to make it seem more morally wrong [...]
Thanks for agreeing, that it is, indeed, morally wrong.
Satisfying couple of "pure 64bit 133t" nerds shouldn't be at first of list.
It should not. Just give us the source-code. We'll make it build... Do you hear me, Adobe? That said, the "pure 64bit nerds" are far more than "couple". For example, FreeBSD's amd64 flavor does not even come with 32-bit binaries from FreeBSD/i386 (although it would run them, if you bothered to add them manually).
There are very good reasons for "pure 64bit" — the main being: sizeof(size_t) == sizeof(off_t).
Having paid off our congress to continuously extend copyright far beyond its intended utility does not give them even a sliver of moral credibility.
For all I care, it may be perpetual — just like ownership of tangible property.
The works in question did not spring from a vacuum. They are the fruits of our common culture.
Here comes the justification! That's right, Metallica would never have thought of that tune, if they weren't breathing the same air as me, so now they owe me. It is amazing, how people don't recognize, how slippery a slope this is — this justification is applied very easily to the theft of tangible property as well. Then, again, given the sudden surge in popularity of income-redistribution (a.k.a. wealth-spreading) recently, I guess, I should not be surprised...
Seriously, you still call copyright infringement "stealing" despite having it explained to you hundreds of times exactly why it isn't in any way related to stealing?
Seriously? Not in any way related? Not even in the getting something for nothing against the will of its creator way related? Please, don't come back, claiming, RIAA aren't creators, but merely owners — it is irrelevant. Metallica sells through their own label, but you would you steal from them just as well...
but they don't fix them when they are clearly brought up in court.
What's to fix? The legal guardian is still responsible for the misdeeds of the minor in their care — even if the guardian themselves aren't capable of doing the misdeed.
The unauthorized copying is no different in this respect from breaking windows — even the grandmother can't throw a rock herself, she still has to pay for the glass broken by her grandchild.
I don't think it's that simple. IIRC the Sun browser plugin uses Just-In-Time compilation of Java code, and porting the 32-bit one to 64-bit is more like writing another compiler than "recompile everything", and takes longer (well, too long).
No, it does not. The plugin is, pretty much, a bridge between the browser and the separate process running JVM. Its job is to coordinate the GUI and, maybe, pass around values of variables. There is no in-browser JVM.
As mentioned in several posts above, the IcedTea Java plugin has been supporting 64-bit platforms for a long time.
Terrific. Why is this news, then?
The source was out there for years!
on
64-Bit Java For Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Unlike Flash, Java source-code was perfectly open and available for years (it has even been GPL-ed for a while, but before that was still available). Why did anyone have to wait for Sun to release the 64-bit plugin instead of compiling one? A fairly small patch was required (long vs. size_t somewhere deep inside)...
FreeBSD was providing Java (with the plugin) for both i386 and amd64 for years now...
What does the fact, that this is news, tell us about Linux developers? First they holler at Sun to release the source, that's already available for download under GPL. And then they still would not touch it, until Sun gets around to it... "Freedom to tinker" my behind.
What about the people who either don't have a computer or no internet access that were sued by the RIAA?
Such cases are very few and all (or most) of them are explained by computer-illiterate parent/guardian getting sued for the theft done by a tech-savvy minor in their care...
What you are opposing is holding the elderly, who can't throw a rock any more, responsible for windows broken by their grandchildren.
As long as nobody is forced to deal with a RIAA-member to publish their music, the charges of "ripping off" don't hold any water. Further, a number of bands use their own labels, and are quite adamantly against people sharing their music without permission. So, let's eliminate RIAA from the argument for a secon. My argument still holds: stop stealing and law-suits will stop. Your argument falls apart immediately...
and producing bland, over-compressed, payola-driven crap instead of music.
As long as nobody is forced to buy it, your argument, likewise, holds no water.
You seem to think, musicians ought to exist and work to provide you with entertainment. Or, in a more polite fashion: to advance the society's culture. That's not true. They produce music because that's their inalienable right. Just as inalienable is their right to do as they please with their creations. That includes giving it away and selling it — to anyone, including a RIAA-member.
If that does not work for you somehow — tough shit. Forcing musicians to give their music away on your terms against their will is patently dishonest...
The most vicious irony here is that you call the music "crap", but insist on illegally downloading it and, presumably, listening.
Given the RIAA's history of suing people who don't even have computer and/or an internet connection
Actually, such cases are very few. And when they do happen, under the bombastic headline there is a simple explanation — the sued computer-illiterate is the parent/guardian of a tech-savvy minor, who did engage in stealing...
Just stop sharing copyrighted works against the wishes of their creators and owners. And — woo-hoo — no calls from RIAA, no demands, no problems. Their hated lawyers lose their jobs, and everyone is happy enjoying the music.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep the documents on your web-site (in HTML or PDF, if you must). Protect access to the site with customer-specific usernames/passwords. Instead of mailing out entire documents (in a proprietary format), mail out links to them instead — and save us all some bandwidth.
Yes, a user with elementary knowledge of computers will be able to download your doc (especially easy with PDF) and then e-mail. But all the other little schemes are defeated with the same amount of elementary knowledge.
You can also put some limitations into your PDF-files (such as no printing), but, as I say, these are all defeated fairly easily.
I don't find RIAA neither heinous, nor leaching on society. At all.
But you — and a number of other slasdhdotters do. My "troll" was trying to point out, that both, the subjects of the article and the RIAA are chasing people over an IP-address. And both groups are Democrats.
Let's not get distracted, uhm?
If you're the RIAA or some other Democratic crusader, that's all you need to sue.
There, fixed that for you...
Oh, you didn't know, **AA are solidly Democratic? Then you have not been paying attention...
Not investing in programmers may cause problems, that no amount of hardware can solve. A difference between a linear search though and array vs. implementing a hash-table explodes very quickly, for example, and no hardware can keep up.
So, if you only have junior developers, who a) don't anticipate this sort of problems; b) only test on small data-sets, you'll hit a wall — and will need a (very expensive) consultant to solve a customer's production problem. A human being can't distinguish a millisecond from a microsecond. Times a million, however, the former turns into 15 minutes, but the latter is only a second...
Then comes the difference between programmers, who can write a program, and software engineers, who can maintain a software project — not only writing the first version, but managing the project's growth, implementing (and enforcing!) automatic non-regression tests. If you ignore this last aspect, for example, as one company I know did, you'll paint yourself into a corner very quickly with per-customer source-code branches. Why? Because, without proper non-regression tests, fixing one bug may either create or expose another. Bitten by this, your customers will reject upgrades with "pre-emptive" fixes for problems, they haven't encountered (yet) — they'll be (justifiably) afraid of encountering problems, your recent bug-fixes created instead.
In short, hardware is only one part of a computer system, and solves only some of the problems, that better developers can solve. You may not need many of them (indeed, this leads to its own set of problems), but you need at least some of them to be really good.
(Oh, and just as we thought, hardware is fast enough for just about anything, XML was imposed to set us all back ten years or so...)
Oh, the joys of the Democracy...
Inconveniently, the hottest decade was the 1930s:
Securely destroying such a drive before disposing of it may be a challenge...
I can't, of course. And so when choosing a representative, I do chose the lesser of the evils. But I don't deny that...
My beef is not your choosing the one you perceive to be less evil. It is your way of measuring the evil, that bugs me...
No, it is the Western illiberals, who seem to think so. Because, you know, there is no absolute evil in the world — with the exception, of course, for those people, who think, that there is — those must be fought tooth-and-nail... Growing up in the USSR and hearing about "progressive humanity" agreeing with Communists (and denouncing Capitalism), I was flabbergasted: how could they possibly be so stupid?
Yes, that's what I'm talking about... Who are we to judge, what's right — we have our problems too, don't we?..
And then, of course, there are uber-Conservatives, who "understand" the motivations of hitlers, stalins, and putins of the world and recommend, the US leaves their countries alone and stops preaching those pesky inalienable rights, that all people are endowed with — not just the US citizens.
Oh, the "lesser of the two evils" excuse... Wow... McCain must've bean a real evil incarnate then — I can't imagine a worse infringement on personal freedoms, than being forced to join a union. Everything, that he got marred with (mostly — unswervingly, BTW) like unauthorized wiretaps, threatened only the privacy and only of the very few. Getting drafted into a union is an immediate danger to not only privacy (the union gets to know a lot about you), but one's wallet (the guarantor of freedom) and this danger now threatens a lot more people, than any government could possibly wire-tap...
Why the rotten politicians want unions is quite understandable — and Blagojevich is on tape explaining the top reason.
What's less obvious, is why did the techies, who are justifiably against joining unions themselves, have voted for the party, that's trying to make unions much harder to avoid for other workers. One of the top items on the Unions' wish-list is elimination of the secret-ballot voting, which an employer can currently demand, before a workplace is unionized. Called THE EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT (while promising the exact opposite of free choice) it has a high chance of passing, because Democrats owe unions quite a bit — and both need each other.
Having spent the better part of the last century trying in vain to make everyone equally rich, the two groups are now settling on making (almost) everyone equally poor — as long as large pools of money remain available for retiring politicians in exchange for favors such as Senate appointments.
So, why did techies, who, as a group, don't want unions, vote for people, who are trying to impose them?
Armed police weren't shooting... And in Greece they did shoot and the whole country is still struggling — perhaps, because they would not shoot again.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but simply arming everyone is not enough...
Which basics? Different pieces are owned by different people, organizations, or are in public domain.
We don't need to locate them, but if any come forward, they can make their claims.
Yes.
Because it is the closest to stealing — unlike murder and terrorism, there is no violence (or threat thereof) involved. Like theft, the perpetrator benefits from something without the owner's permission. That the owner remains in possession of the original is little consolation, because each such theft slightly dilutes the value of that original.
Regardless, even if it is not exactly like theft — it is still wrong, and I don't understand, why I am supposed to feel any sympathy towards people, who do it and get into legal trouble.
Thanks for agreeing, that it is, indeed, morally wrong.
It should not. Just give us the source-code. We'll make it build... Do you hear me, Adobe? That said, the "pure 64bit nerds" are far more than "couple". For example, FreeBSD's amd64 flavor does not even come with 32-bit binaries from FreeBSD/i386 (although it would run them, if you bothered to add them manually).
There are very good reasons for "pure 64bit" — the main being: sizeof(size_t) == sizeof(off_t).
For all I care, it may be perpetual — just like ownership of tangible property.
Here comes the justification! That's right, Metallica would never have thought of that tune, if they weren't breathing the same air as me, so now they owe me. It is amazing, how people don't recognize, how slippery a slope this is — this justification is applied very easily to the theft of tangible property as well. Then, again, given the sudden surge in popularity of income-redistribution (a.k.a. wealth-spreading) recently, I guess, I should not be surprised...
Seriously? Not in any way related? Not even in the getting something for nothing against the will of its creator way related? Please, don't come back, claiming, RIAA aren't creators, but merely owners — it is irrelevant. Metallica sells through their own label, but you would you steal from them just as well...
What's to fix? The legal guardian is still responsible for the misdeeds of the minor in their care — even if the guardian themselves aren't capable of doing the misdeed.
The unauthorized copying is no different in this respect from breaking windows — even the grandmother can't throw a rock herself, she still has to pay for the glass broken by her grandchild.
No, it does not. The plugin is, pretty much, a bridge between the browser and the separate process running JVM. Its job is to coordinate the GUI and, maybe, pass around values of variables. There is no in-browser JVM.
Terrific. Why is this news, then?
Unlike Flash, Java source-code was perfectly open and available for years (it has even been GPL-ed for a while, but before that was still available). Why did anyone have to wait for Sun to release the 64-bit plugin instead of compiling one? A fairly small patch was required (long vs. size_t somewhere deep inside)...
FreeBSD was providing Java (with the plugin) for both i386 and amd64 for years now...
What does the fact, that this is news, tell us about Linux developers? First they holler at Sun to release the source, that's already available for download under GPL. And then they still would not touch it, until Sun gets around to it... "Freedom to tinker" my behind.
Such cases are very few and all (or most) of them are explained by computer-illiterate parent/guardian getting sued for the theft done by a tech-savvy minor in their care...
What you are opposing is holding the elderly, who can't throw a rock any more, responsible for windows broken by their grandchildren.
As long as nobody is forced to deal with a RIAA-member to publish their music, the charges of "ripping off" don't hold any water. Further, a number of bands use their own labels, and are quite adamantly against people sharing their music without permission. So, let's eliminate RIAA from the argument for a secon. My argument still holds: stop stealing and law-suits will stop. Your argument falls apart immediately...
As long as nobody is forced to buy it, your argument, likewise, holds no water.
You seem to think, musicians ought to exist and work to provide you with entertainment. Or, in a more polite fashion: to advance the society's culture. That's not true. They produce music because that's their inalienable right. Just as inalienable is their right to do as they please with their creations. That includes giving it away and selling it — to anyone, including a RIAA-member.
If that does not work for you somehow — tough shit. Forcing musicians to give their music away on your terms against their will is patently dishonest...
The most vicious irony here is that you call the music "crap", but insist on illegally downloading it and, presumably, listening.
Actually, such cases are very few. And when they do happen, under the bombastic headline there is a simple explanation — the sued computer-illiterate is the parent/guardian of a tech-savvy minor, who did engage in stealing...
Just stop sharing copyrighted works against the wishes of their creators and owners. And — woo-hoo — no calls from RIAA, no demands, no problems. Their hated lawyers lose their jobs, and everyone is happy enjoying the music.
Those would not be the same people, who tell everyone, who supports Iraq War, to enlist, would they?
Paying for fresh water and sanitation seems quite redundant too. Eew, what unclean, last-millennium atavisms!