The reason the what's-his-name invented Napster in the first place was so his l33t buddies could get the songs they want.
I wasn't there, and I did not know this.. have a link?
Even if you buy into this ludicrous "hey, all we want is our users to exchange legal songs", you can't deny that 99.9% of all activity was illegal.
I personally never used it for an illegal purpose.. The only songs I downloaded using Napster were to recreate old cd's that I had had for years and eventually became to scratched to be usable.. Perhaps some activity was illegal... but then again perhaps some wasn't.. why should the tool be baned when it did have legal uses? The illegal users should definately be punished.. but a tool is a tool... treat it as such.. no tool should ever be made illegal because it's uses could possible be illegal.. stop the people from breaking the law.. don't take away legitimate (or even non-legitimate) tools.. i.e. don't intrude on MY freedom because someone else broke the law...
Not to mention that Napster has been totally abandoned once the heavy duty filtering was in place. If Napster was primarily legigitimate, then that should have made almost no difference in traffic, right?
Wrong.. this is a prime example of my point above.. the filtering assumed EVERYONE was breaking the law, so the legitimate uses were destroyed because someone could use it for illegal purposes.. the filtering killed the service for the legitimate users because it stoped file sharing without discrimenation of the legality of the downloads.. A prime example of someone destroying my freedoms because someone else broke the law..
No, because the primary purpose of stocking caps and cars is legitimate. The primary purpose of Napster was to facilitate piracy of copyrighted material.
First you are wrong on this point.. the primary purpose of Napster is file sharing, which is perfectly legal and legitimate (the legitimacy of FTP and Gopher has never been challeneged yet it has the exact same purpose in a less user friendly manner). Naspter is a tool that CAN be used illegally, but for that matter so is a baseball bat. The primary focus of Napster is a tool to share legal files, unfortunately it was misused; however, the tool shouldn't be punished the users that misuse the tool should.
Don't like that analogy? How about this one: The mafia owns a pizza parlor. Perfectly legitimate business -- until they start laundering money. Then it is a crime, because the primary purpose is not selling pizza, it's to launder money.
Using this as an analogy in the Napster case means that ALL pizza palor's must be shut down because one person choose to use a legitimate tool (a pizza parlor) for illegitimate uses (laundering money) so, instead of arresting the person that used the tool incorrectly (the owner of this pizza parlor) you shut down ALL pizza parlor's in the world because they could potentially be used to launder money. So instead of shutting down the individual that is breaking the law (the person downloading music that he doesn't own) the RIAA has decided to kill the tool that makes it possible (Napster, which has a perfectly legitimate use as a tool). A screwdriver can be used to break the lock on a house does that mean that all screwdrivers should be illegal? Instead, wouldn't it make sense to jail people who used screwdrivers to break into houses?
If you facilitate people breaking the law, you are no better than the people breaking it.
This is so incorrect that it frightens me.. you are condoning thought police. You are saying that because a tool (one that has a perfectly legitament use) can be used to break the law it should be illegal.
Last week I robbed a store with a friend of mine.. he put on a stocking cap and walked into the store with a gun.. he held the clerk at gun point and demanded all of the money in the store.. he then walked out of the store and got into my honda civic and we drove off..
Obviously this didn't really happen.. but if it did by your logic guns can be used to facilitate crime and should be illegal.. however, Stocking Caps and Cars can also be used to facilitate crime, so if Honda doesn't immediately shut their doors and stop producing vehicles they are no better than my fictional robbers. In fact, Napster specifically requires you to agree to the fact that you wont use their software illegally before you are allowed to use it.. when I bought my Honda no one asked if I was going to use it as a get away vehicle for a store robbery.. they didn't in the slightest way even recommend that I not use it illegally..
I'm sorry but there used to be an old cliche 'innocent until proven guilty'.. that no longer applies.. this case proves that just because a legitament tool CAN be used illegally, that it will be assumed that all uses are illegal and the tool is contra-ban.. think about that next time you drive down the street in your potential law breaking apparatus.. The thought police ARE coming, and they will be here soon.. it all starts with the recovation of innocent until proven guilty, which is clearly the presidence that this case sets..
It seems remarkable to me that just because people
cannot fathom the reason why something is designed
in a counterintuitive fashion it means that either
a god did it for some inscrutable reason or because
it's inherently wrong.
Steady there big guy.. I was doing this thing called 'making a joke'.. I wasn't questioning if there was a god (I don't believe in god) or if he was right or wrong (if I did believe in god I would probably have an opinion on this.. but atm since I don't believe in him, no opinion).. I have no opinion about the whole silly nerve ending's direction thing.. it matters not to me.. I just thought it was funny sounding.. like you know.. something a wisen old hacker would do in order to get a product out the door, regardless if there is rhyme or reason to it.. *shrug*.. see.. joke.. funny..laugh.. not serious.. got it?
yeah, it makes sense if you don't think about it. the actual cells of the eye are evolved to try to cope with the way that nerves lead out of the eye. to argue that these adaptations are a good reason for the way the nerves are is simply irrational; it's putting the cart before the horse.
I'm by far not a creationist (I am an atheist!, but that is just so I can be an ist of some kind).. darwin all the way and stuff.. but when I read this the first thing I thought was that it sounds like some kind of hack from god's nerve department.. like they found a bug in using the nerves turned the correct direction, and when playing around found that bug was less common when turned backwards, so in order to make the shipping deadline (7 days to ship isn't much time!) they turned the nerves around and released.. for better or worse..:).. rofl..
No, they've only destroyed the inefficient competition of Mom & Pop stores, quaint as they might be. Free people vote with their dollars and go to Walmart. Are you saying they should be forced to go to higher-charging Mom & Pop stores under thread of jail?
Heh.. the problem with voting with dollars is that stupid people vote..:) Look at it this way.. I have virtually unlimited resources, mom and pop don't.. so I drop my prices so low that that I am loosing thousands of dollars a day making sales.. mom and pop just can't do this.. people vote for me with their dollars.. mom and pop go under.. now it's time to make a profit, I triple my price..:) That is how mega-corporations work, use your resources to kill the competition completely..
The efficiency of the socialist model is why we see so many Cuban flags on the Moon. It drives me nuts to see people drive up in a Volvo, wearing their Benneton sweaters and Doc Martens, decrying the evils of globalization.
And it drives us Volvo driving Doc Marten wearing socialists nuts when you gun toting, Dubya voting, right-wingers compare dictatorships like cuba to socialism..:)
Well, if ya really want to do stupid things with your money, you could eat it. Make sure to shred it well with your teeth, otherwise it gets clumped up in your epifloggital sac.
Gambling... all gambling... is for losers. Even if you win, you lose.
Baugh. I played the lottery once. Lost a dollar. Never played again. Got the point.
Heh.. smart man, I always felt like a tax collector for the stupid when I was working in the gambling industry.. the ONLY reason anyone should ever gamble is for Entertainment, and it sure does not entertain me for one.. You should look at gambling like a video game (you put in your money, you get to see some pretty things, your money is gone).
I have seen people loose their lives to my paycheck when I was in the industry, and no, that didn't upset me in the slightest. I was always up front with anyone that asked that you will NEVER beat the house gambling (it's not possible, the house is a group of professionals, you aren't).. Never once did that deter someone from gambling and thinking they would win that I know of, but seriously YOU WON'T WIN... it's just not possible, the odds are typically astronomical..
Actually, I was making a "witty" commentary on something that happened here in montreal. A hyper-addicted gambler watched and recorded all the kino games for a period of time. And found a flaw in the so-called "random" number generation (computerised), he successfully was able to predict the outcome on a large number of occasions, and the Casino tried to sue him for the money back.. unsuccessfully. They then started using real balls to get the numbers.:)
Actually that definately was not a 'flaw' persay other than the fact that the pseudo random number generator must have been displaying every number called in order.. ALL pseudo random number generators (i.e. every computer generated random number sequence) is a repetive sequence.. given the same seed it will produce the same results.. it's a fact of life, random number generation isn't possible algorithmically.. I know, I used to write them for gambling applications for a living.. What the player must have done was sit through enough iterations of the random number generator to realize what the pattern was (say, they seeded with time, using only the hours and minutes, and if the game started at 9:00 the numbers would always be the same).. I have heard rumors about this kinda stuff happening.. but I have never seen any REAL proof that a programmer was lax enough to get this out on the market.. In fact when some of my games went through the regulatory procedures, people at the agencies that verified the games had basically the same story (urban legend?) happening in atlantic city casino's.. funny enough, every time I've heard it it's been keno, but I would think there would be much easier and less detectable games to do this with (computerized blackjack)..
It's important to realize that just like counting cards at a poker game in Vegas, this IS illegal and I'm quite sure that if it could be proven it the casino would win a lawsuit (and probably the person counting the deck so to speak would serve jail time also)...
We got around this with our generator by selecting numbers from the deck even when we weren't being asked for a number, so a 'random' amount of numbers were drawn in between each time that a 'random' number was drawn.. that and the random seed was not only second from epoch but a serial number and various other things (like the content of a 'random' location in memory) all added together..
Every gaming market I have been too requires at LEAST a Chi-Square test on the generator to ensure even distribution of random numbers.. Most test the random number generator much more vigorously.. I can't imagine something slipping into the field that a player could cheat easily.. It seems to me that probably this is a legend that started with someone with basic random number generator knowledge saying "Hey, theoretically you could cheat these generator's IF..." that got spread into a real legend that it happened.. but then again.. I've met some poor programmers in my time, and seen extremely lax validation agencies.. so it's possible that something like this really happened..:)
There's an easy way to win at Keno - don't play. If you're looking to win at gambling, first remember that hotels are big and fancy for a reason, and second, play blackjack - that's as close as you're going to get to having "good" odds.
Actually, if you want good odds play bingo.. in bingo you acutally give a bit to the house in order to play the game against the other players, as opposed to other games in which the house can win... look at it like this:
Slot machines, you have a very small chance to win, that is why the house makes out like a bandit, because if you don't win the house does.. you are playing against the house at very low odds..
Bingo, lets say you pay $5 to play.. the house will take 25 cents and then put the other $4.75 into a pot, the winner of the game gets the pot of cash that is $5 per person minus the 25 cents the house took from each entry... so the house is garunteed to make a bit of cash off every player, and they have an incentive to make sure that lots of players make lots of money (they make more every time someone plays, not every time someone looses).. Bingo is the best game for the player because there is no incentive for the house to cheat players into not winning, like say having games that pay out 99% in the off times and 80% in the peak times that some casino's (NOT VEGAS!) do with their slot machines... vegas is a different story all together, very well regulated, but still driven to make the player loose more than the house (after all, that is how vegas makes it's money)...
You, sir, are a moron. (No personal offense, of course...)
Ahh.. but it is you who is the dumbass (personal offense of course).. I only provided a link to articles that made this claim.. if you would read my statements and realize that I was trying to get you to read a bit further into the matter you would realize that I am not making ANY claims, other than just a few days ago I had read articles that were talking about this very subject.. which I clearly linked at the bottom of my message.. I'm clearly NOT wrong in any way, because I DID read those articles and I did point out that the articles are there to be read.. they articles very well could be wrong.. but that doesn't make me a moron...
Fry's Linux Technology Center has 200 programmers working full-time to improve Linux, and he estimates 10 times that number are working within the company on Linux when other activities such as sales or server design are included.
Fry's has a Linux Technology Center?!
More importantly, They have 200 linux developers yet only 30 total customer service rep's spread amongst all their locations?:)
The articles you cited are by people with a vested philosophical interest in the DVORAK keyboard not being what it's cracked up to be; it is is, then they're wrong about markets, and they'll never admit that.
It doesn't disprove the research, but it's grounds for skepticism.
Okay.. I'll agree with you, you have made a very valid statement; however, the research that was done in the first place was done by a man with extremely vested interest in the product (Dvorak himself). Using your argument, we can't trust the experimentation. At least we can't trust it until the experiment is repeated and the results verified. After all, we do this with EVERY other major scientific study (Cold Fusion anyone?). We can't just take the inventor's word for it that the product is better and never test again.
Granted I've seen tons of people logon here and say "I've used the Dvorak keyboard before, and it's much better, therefore I am right and you are wrong" (PARAPHRASED!, I know it wasn't word for word what they said). I want a study, if Dvorak's studies were the modern miracles of scientific research that some people have stated they were, then reproduce them. It will be easy, good experiments are designed to be reproduced, anyone should be able to reproduce them! Yet no one will give me one piece of hard evidence that the experiments were reproduced successfully. All I get is people who reply and say "I reproduced them, the keyboard is much better, trust me." Don't you publish? Why are you reproducing the experiments and not publishing, just to ease your curiosity? I sorta doubt that, no offsense. Give me an url, or an ISBN, or any published work with the results of an experiment. If this keyboard is SO much better than a QWERTY keyboard, someone, somewhere should publish their reproducable experiment proving it, and someone else will verify that experiment.
Now, I'm willing to bet that the Dvorak keyboard is SLIGHTLY better than a QWERTY keyboard in some respects (I doubt faster, but perhaps more ergonomic). However, why can't anyone show me proof (other than making blind statments like "I ran several iterations of the DAWKAJLD-V2287 tests against this keyboard, and it proved to be MUCH better; however, I never published my results, you can't see my experiment, and I think you are obviously trying to oppress me by doubting the results that I have conviently told you could exist somewhere!") Come on.. I just want PROOF!
I have conducted experiments and GOMS-type simulations comparing these two keyboards. I have read much of the research on the subject, including Dvorak's book, the Navy report, and the more recent scientific work and popular press coverage. It is simply not true that the only research that demonstrated the advantage of the Dvorak keyboard was done by Dvorak. What is true is that the research he did was very good, even by today's standards. Furthermore, he was not interested in "Getting Rich" off the invention--he was a professor pioneering the field of human factors, and his main interest was in developing the optimal layout. Had he wanted to capitalize on it, he would not have spent ten years developing the keyboard, nor would not have cared about the left- and right- handed versions. He really wanted to give people a better way of typing, and probably his biggest failure is that he didn't market it very well.
Perhaps.. but I do ask you to read the articles on the link I provided.. again.. I only stated that I had read the articles before and that they implicated some massive failures in Dvorak's mode's of experimentation (one specific claim was that he performed the test, wasn't pleased with the results, destroyed them.. then later did a different test that was more weighted towards his keyboard). I wasn't there.. I don't know.. you may be God's own personal keyboard assitant, the Dvorak keyboard may not only increase ones typing 100 fold but also produce pure gold in it's spare time.. I have no idea.. I've never seen one nor do I care which is better..
But, what is even more interesting is that there are also a bunch of Qwerty Evangalists out there. These are people who are utterly convinced that the Dvorak keyboard is a hoax, and attempt to convince everybody that they are right. There are probably more websites out there about why Qwerty is better than Dvorak than vice versa. I find these people very interesting (pcidevel appears to be one of them),
Not in the slightest.. If I had my way people would use whatever keyboard they wanted.. I only offered a link that said that provided someone who had researched the Dvorak keyboard and said that it seemed to not be quite as wonderfull as the creator wanted. *shrug*.. If it is so much better, PLEASE show me some proof.. I agree that there probably is a HUGE conspiracy of QWERTY users out there that are trying to suppress the right minded Dvorak minority, however; I'm not on their newsletter list and I perfer to keep it that way.. The ONLY statement I made is that I provided a link to someone who said that Dvorak's tests were not scientific.. I agree with that person.. would a scientific test prove that Dvorak's keyboard is better than a QWERTY?.. MAYBE.. I have no idea.. I've never done it.. and so far no one else has provided me with proof that is has been done.. *shrug*..
Bottom line is, urban legend or not, Dvorak is much more comfortable to type with than QWERTY. I wish people would wait until they are proficient at both before spouting of their "knowledge" on the subject.
The only knowledge that I spouted on the subject had nothing to do with which keyboard is superior.. only that the tests the 'prove' Dvorak keyboards are superior were performed by Dvorak himself, and seem to be falisfied when one looks at the evidence.. I'm sorry that you feel so strongly about Dvorak keyboards, but please don't accuse me of spouting knowledge that I don't have.. I have never seen nor used a Dvorak keyboard, and I probably never will.. however, I had read a bit on the subject and provided a link to the article.. The only urban legend I pointed out was the the QWERTY keyboard is not in any way designed to slow down a typist, which is a very common myth.
I could offer MANY arguments against the Dvorak is much more comfortable statement that you made.. like 1) Different people have different typing styles, an experiment with a sample size of 1 is a completely invalid experiment.. or 2) how do I know you HAVE used a Dvorak keyboard and you aren't just another Troll.. and so on and so forth.. but I'm not here to argue that one is better than the other, only that no scientific experiment has been performed that proves it one way or another (as people often state on slashdot when there is a new keyboard presented)..
...if memory serves me correctly, then QWERTY was actually developed to SLOW down the human typists because the physical typing machines couldn't keep up and kept jamming. Unfortunately, for almost a hundred years now we've been stuck using this piece of crap language format. IMHO, it's time to redesign with an emphasis on speed since it's now the humans that can't input fast enough.
Actually, this is a common urband legend, the QWERTY keyboard was designed to make keyboards wear out less quickly because the typing load was balanced over each hand. The Dvorak keyboard is shrouded in false legend, in the fact that people seem to think that 'tests' prove that the keyboard is better than a QWERTY keyboard. The tests that are cited happen to be tests that Dvorak himself conducted to prove that his product was better. In fact there is much indication that his product proved inferior, so he falsified much of the data to make it appear the keyboards are better. A good account of this can be read at this link (leads to urbanlegends.com).
Well.. within the last 10 mins or so the page has gone 404.. I clicked on it, it was there.. read a few comments.. it was gone.. so either some strange slashdotting, or more likely.. they've yanked the file!:)
Seriously, though, I just found it interesting that they called the thing 'Fnord,' which is, in Robert Shea's Illuminatus! Trilogy, everywhere but seen by almost nobody. That'll probably map pretty well here; almost everyone won't see this server, one of the few (if there are even any others?) GPL'd packages to come out of Microsoft.
Being on of the biggest fans of Robert Shea's (and Robert Anton Wilson cowrote!) Illuminatus Triology, I immediately started laughing when I saw the name of the program and the page it was on.. the most perfect thing ever.. but unfortunately I realized that it is a program that has been around for several years and has been called Fnord! since it's inception, when it was written by a college student (that is now a MS employee). In other words, MS didn't name it, the name was already there..
Alrighty.. I think that is the best I have ever seen prophet work when mispelled as 'profit'... the RIAA really is the PROFIT of doom!.. I love it.. you rock.. if you did that on purpose it's brilliant.. and if you didn't, then it's even more perfect (can we say fruedian slip?:)
Lets not attack the developers, but the publisher. This is one of the reasons Richard Gariott left origin. EA forced them to release a product that obviously wasn't ready. Richard knew it, Richard explained it to the bigwigs at EA, EA wanted it released, so they had to release it. EA should be chastized, but not Origin.
Regardless.. we still vote with our dollars, and in a case like this we should vote an outstanding NO. As long as we as consumers take this crap they will continue to do it. It doesn't matter in the slightest if it is the publisher's fault or the developers fault, we still should not support a game that isn't complete until 8 months after you purchased it. It's like buying a car that advertises 40 miles per gallon, but when you arrive home you find out that it only gets 8 miles per gallon, and when you complain the manufacturer says 'Ohh.. we haven't finished the engine design yet, but we'll install the new engine as soon as we figure out how to make it get 40 mpg.. don't worry about it'..
As consumers we need to stop taking the regular abuse that the software industry dishes. My boss at a previous job working for one of the largest manufactures of CPU's once told me 'We ship when the engineer says that the product is %80 complete, if we wait for him to say he is %100 complete it will take too long.'
The GPL itself doesn't say anything specific [IIRC], but RMS has decided that dynamic linking in a DLL is not OK, but dynamic linking to non-GPL OS functions [at load time] is OK, which is a completely arbitrary distinction based more on intent than on actual technical differences.
Actually this is incorrect. libc is distributed under the LGPL which allows dynamic linking. The GPL explicitly forbids dynamic linking. This guy could have released his code under the LGPL if he wanted to allow this use, he didn't. Read my statement above as to why this is VERY unfortunate for the Free Software and Open Source movements. This will be our most harmfull moment ever.
IMHO: The LGPL seems to be meant to be applied to static libraries, ala the C libraries, for example. Dynamic linking is an entirely different beast, and since DLL's are *really* seperate executables, I don't see how the GPL can be applied to a program that USES a DLL with GPL code in it. Now if they had created a library (in C, a Unit in Pascal, etc) and then linked against that, their entire project would need to be open sourced and under the GPL, or else they wouldn't be complying.
Re-read the LGPL.. the LGPL applies ONLY to dynamic linking.. if you statically link the lib you have to release the entire binary under the GPL. Only if you dynamically link the lib under the LGPL can you release your producted as non derived.
I think this case is horribly unfortunate. This is the ammo M$ has been waiting on to PROVE once and for all that the GPL is a horrible viral lisence, and here we go, feeding the FUD machine. This should be dubbed Operation Foot Bullet (stolen from the Operation Clambake pages!), because there is no better way for the FSF to shoot the collective Free Software (and hence Open Source) movement in the foot than to bring this to court. Of course the worst possible outcome is that the case looses. That will still feed the FUD machines (avoid costly legal battles, use MS products) and it will provide a huge hole in the armor that is the GPL (make every GPLed program as a DLL or SO and never have to put your code back in the pool). But even winning this case isn't a win for the GPL or Free Software. If only this could be shuffled under the rug and forgotten, too bad that can never happen...
It's hard to argue airplanes are inherently dangerous to people or in this case, business and IP. There is already plenty of evidence that P2P can cause harm, hense the DMCA and lawsuits. The EFF is attempting to show that P2P isn't all bad. Just like Sony needed to prove that VCRs had a good number of non-infringing legitimate uses.
Actually it's just as easy to argue that Airplanes are as dangerous as P2P (if not more so, because airplanes can cause loss of life much easier). In fact, the moral decay of the US can directly be attributed to airplanes. Lets look at how dangerous airplanes are for society:
1. Airplanes can be used to smuggle items into the US that are otherwise contraban. See the War on Drugs for more examples.
2. Airplanes are used to move Pirated IP from Hong Kong to the US on a daily basis. Massive amounts of bootleg IP has been moved using airplanes (tourists purchase bootleg items over seas all the time).
3. Airplanes can carry Bombs that are a terrorist threat to the people of the US.
4. Airplanes could crash, and coss loss of life and property Damage.
5. Airplanes have allowed buisnesses to grow to the point where they are international monopolies. This has harmed the consumer for decades (see MS for more examples).
6. Airplanes have proliferated negative social trends (Punk Rock, Cocaine, etc.) in areas that would have otherwise been inaccessible without cheap, fast transportation.
As you can see, if you attack Airplanes with the same lack of logic as the RIAA attacks P2P, it's very easy to show that airplanes are just as band, if not worse, to society as P2P...
Lately I haven't had any trouble finding Playstation 2's in stores, and I'm not even interested in buying one. I have yet to ever see one in a store like Best Buy, but places like Funcoland, Target and Wal-Mart seem to always have at least one.
I was lazily walking through my local, Beaverton OR, Best Buy a month or so ago and low and behold, an entire stack of PS2's staring me in the face. I quickly checked to ensure the boxes were indeed filled with electronic goodness and then bought one for my very own. Last couple of Best Buy trips has proven to me that the shortage is indeed over, so perhaps your very own Best Buy will have a stack of PS2's to deploy! The system isn't really as bad as everyone says.. well.. maybe..:)
Slashdot Mirror
Come on, let's not pretend here.
:)
Okay, I won't..
The reason the what's-his-name invented Napster in the first place was so his l33t buddies could get the songs they want.
I wasn't there, and I did not know this.. have a link?
Even if you buy into this ludicrous "hey, all we want is our users to exchange legal songs", you can't deny that 99.9% of all activity was illegal.
I personally never used it for an illegal purpose.. The only songs I downloaded using Napster were to recreate old cd's that I had had for years and eventually became to scratched to be usable.. Perhaps some activity was illegal... but then again perhaps some wasn't.. why should the tool be baned when it did have legal uses? The illegal users should definately be punished.. but a tool is a tool... treat it as such.. no tool should ever be made illegal because it's uses could possible be illegal.. stop the people from breaking the law.. don't take away legitimate (or even non-legitimate) tools.. i.e. don't intrude on MY freedom because someone else broke the law...
Not to mention that Napster has been totally abandoned once the heavy duty filtering was in place. If Napster was primarily legigitimate, then that should have made almost no difference in traffic, right?
Wrong.. this is a prime example of my point above.. the filtering assumed EVERYONE was breaking the law, so the legitimate uses were destroyed because someone could use it for illegal purposes.. the filtering killed the service for the legitimate users because it stoped file sharing without discrimenation of the legality of the downloads.. A prime example of someone destroying my freedoms because someone else broke the law..
No, because the primary purpose of stocking caps and cars is legitimate. The primary purpose of Napster was to facilitate piracy of copyrighted material.
First you are wrong on this point.. the primary purpose of Napster is file sharing, which is perfectly legal and legitimate (the legitimacy of FTP and Gopher has never been challeneged yet it has the exact same purpose in a less user friendly manner). Naspter is a tool that CAN be used illegally, but for that matter so is a baseball bat. The primary focus of Napster is a tool to share legal files, unfortunately it was misused; however, the tool shouldn't be punished the users that misuse the tool should.
Don't like that analogy? How about this one: The mafia owns a pizza parlor. Perfectly legitimate business -- until they start laundering money. Then it is a crime, because the primary purpose is not selling pizza, it's to launder money.
Using this as an analogy in the Napster case means that ALL pizza palor's must be shut down because one person choose to use a legitimate tool (a pizza parlor) for illegitimate uses (laundering money) so, instead of arresting the person that used the tool incorrectly (the owner of this pizza parlor) you shut down ALL pizza parlor's in the world because they could potentially be used to launder money. So instead of shutting down the individual that is breaking the law (the person downloading music that he doesn't own) the RIAA has decided to kill the tool that makes it possible (Napster, which has a perfectly legitimate use as a tool). A screwdriver can be used to break the lock on a house does that mean that all screwdrivers should be illegal? Instead, wouldn't it make sense to jail people who used screwdrivers to break into houses?
If you facilitate people breaking the law, you are no better than the people breaking it.
This is so incorrect that it frightens me.. you are condoning thought police. You are saying that because a tool (one that has a perfectly legitament use) can be used to break the law it should be illegal.
Last week I robbed a store with a friend of mine.. he put on a stocking cap and walked into the store with a gun.. he held the clerk at gun point and demanded all of the money in the store.. he then walked out of the store and got into my honda civic and we drove off..
Obviously this didn't really happen.. but if it did by your logic guns can be used to facilitate crime and should be illegal.. however, Stocking Caps and Cars can also be used to facilitate crime, so if Honda doesn't immediately shut their doors and stop producing vehicles they are no better than my fictional robbers. In fact, Napster specifically requires you to agree to the fact that you wont use their software illegally before you are allowed to use it.. when I bought my Honda no one asked if I was going to use it as a get away vehicle for a store robbery.. they didn't in the slightest way even recommend that I not use it illegally..
I'm sorry but there used to be an old cliche 'innocent until proven guilty'.. that no longer applies.. this case proves that just because a legitament tool CAN be used illegally, that it will be assumed that all uses are illegal and the tool is contra-ban.. think about that next time you drive down the street in your potential law breaking apparatus.. The thought police ARE coming, and they will be here soon.. it all starts with the recovation of innocent until proven guilty, which is clearly the presidence that this case sets..
It seems remarkable to me that just because people
cannot fathom the reason why something is designed
in a counterintuitive fashion it means that either
a god did it for some inscrutable reason or because
it's inherently wrong.
Steady there big guy.. I was doing this thing called 'making a joke'.. I wasn't questioning if there was a god (I don't believe in god) or if he was right or wrong (if I did believe in god I would probably have an opinion on this.. but atm since I don't believe in him, no opinion).. I have no opinion about the whole silly nerve ending's direction thing.. it matters not to me.. I just thought it was funny sounding.. like you know.. something a wisen old hacker would do in order to get a product out the door, regardless if there is rhyme or reason to it.. *shrug*.. see.. joke.. funny..laugh.. not serious.. got it?
yeah, it makes sense if you don't think about it. the actual cells of the eye are evolved to try to cope with the way that nerves lead out of the eye. to argue that these adaptations are a good reason for the way the nerves are is simply irrational; it's putting the cart before the horse.
:).. rofl..
I'm by far not a creationist (I am an atheist!, but that is just so I can be an ist of some kind).. darwin all the way and stuff.. but when I read this the first thing I thought was that it sounds like some kind of hack from god's nerve department.. like they found a bug in using the nerves turned the correct direction, and when playing around found that bug was less common when turned backwards, so in order to make the shipping deadline (7 days to ship isn't much time!) they turned the nerves around and released.. for better or worse..
No, they've only destroyed the inefficient competition of Mom & Pop stores, quaint as they might be. Free people vote with their dollars and go to Walmart. Are you saying they should be forced to go to higher-charging Mom & Pop stores under thread of jail?
:) Look at it this way.. I have virtually unlimited resources, mom and pop don't.. so I drop my prices so low that that I am loosing thousands of dollars a day making sales.. mom and pop just can't do this.. people vote for me with their dollars.. mom and pop go under.. now it's time to make a profit, I triple my price.. :) That is how mega-corporations work, use your resources to kill the competition completely..
Heh.. the problem with voting with dollars is that stupid people vote..
The efficiency of the socialist model is why we see so many Cuban flags on the Moon. It drives me nuts to see people drive up in a Volvo, wearing their Benneton sweaters and Doc Martens, decrying the evils of globalization.
:)
And it drives us Volvo driving Doc Marten wearing socialists nuts when you gun toting, Dubya voting, right-wingers compare dictatorships like cuba to socialism..
Well, if ya really want to do stupid things with your money, you could eat it. Make sure to shred it well with your teeth, otherwise it gets clumped up in your epifloggital sac.
Gambling... all gambling... is for losers. Even if you win, you lose.
Baugh. I played the lottery once. Lost a dollar. Never played again. Got the point.
Heh.. smart man, I always felt like a tax collector for the stupid when I was working in the gambling industry.. the ONLY reason anyone should ever gamble is for Entertainment, and it sure does not entertain me for one.. You should look at gambling like a video game (you put in your money, you get to see some pretty things, your money is gone).
I have seen people loose their lives to my paycheck when I was in the industry, and no, that didn't upset me in the slightest. I was always up front with anyone that asked that you will NEVER beat the house gambling (it's not possible, the house is a group of professionals, you aren't).. Never once did that deter someone from gambling and thinking they would win that I know of, but seriously YOU WON'T WIN... it's just not possible, the odds are typically astronomical..
Actually, I was making a "witty" commentary on something that happened here in montreal. A hyper-addicted gambler watched and recorded all the kino games for a period of time. And found a flaw in the so-called "random" number generation (computerised), he successfully was able to predict the outcome on a large number of occasions, and the Casino tried to sue him for the money back.. unsuccessfully. They then started using real balls to get the numbers. :)
:)
Actually that definately was not a 'flaw' persay other than the fact that the pseudo random number generator must have been displaying every number called in order.. ALL pseudo random number generators (i.e. every computer generated random number sequence) is a repetive sequence.. given the same seed it will produce the same results.. it's a fact of life, random number generation isn't possible algorithmically.. I know, I used to write them for gambling applications for a living.. What the player must have done was sit through enough iterations of the random number generator to realize what the pattern was (say, they seeded with time, using only the hours and minutes, and if the game started at 9:00 the numbers would always be the same).. I have heard rumors about this kinda stuff happening.. but I have never seen any REAL proof that a programmer was lax enough to get this out on the market.. In fact when some of my games went through the regulatory procedures, people at the agencies that verified the games had basically the same story (urban legend?) happening in atlantic city casino's.. funny enough, every time I've heard it it's been keno, but I would think there would be much easier and less detectable games to do this with (computerized blackjack)..
It's important to realize that just like counting cards at a poker game in Vegas, this IS illegal and I'm quite sure that if it could be proven it the casino would win a lawsuit (and probably the person counting the deck so to speak would serve jail time also)...
We got around this with our generator by selecting numbers from the deck even when we weren't being asked for a number, so a 'random' amount of numbers were drawn in between each time that a 'random' number was drawn.. that and the random seed was not only second from epoch but a serial number and various other things (like the content of a 'random' location in memory) all added together..
Every gaming market I have been too requires at LEAST a Chi-Square test on the generator to ensure even distribution of random numbers.. Most test the random number generator much more vigorously.. I can't imagine something slipping into the field that a player could cheat easily.. It seems to me that probably this is a legend that started with someone with basic random number generator knowledge saying "Hey, theoretically you could cheat these generator's IF..." that got spread into a real legend that it happened.. but then again.. I've met some poor programmers in my time, and seen extremely lax validation agencies.. so it's possible that something like this really happened..
There's an easy way to win at Keno - don't play. If you're looking to win at gambling, first remember that hotels are big and fancy for a reason, and second, play blackjack - that's as close as you're going to get to having "good" odds.
Actually, if you want good odds play bingo.. in bingo you acutally give a bit to the house in order to play the game against the other players, as opposed to other games in which the house can win... look at it like this:
Slot machines, you have a very small chance to win, that is why the house makes out like a bandit, because if you don't win the house does.. you are playing against the house at very low odds..
Bingo, lets say you pay $5 to play.. the house will take 25 cents and then put the other $4.75 into a pot, the winner of the game gets the pot of cash that is $5 per person minus the 25 cents the house took from each entry... so the house is garunteed to make a bit of cash off every player, and they have an incentive to make sure that lots of players make lots of money (they make more every time someone plays, not every time someone looses).. Bingo is the best game for the player because there is no incentive for the house to cheat players into not winning, like say having games that pay out 99% in the off times and 80% in the peak times that some casino's (NOT VEGAS!) do with their slot machines... vegas is a different story all together, very well regulated, but still driven to make the player loose more than the house (after all, that is how vegas makes it's money)...
You, sir, are a moron. (No personal offense, of course...) Ahh.. but it is you who is the dumbass (personal offense of course).. I only provided a link to articles that made this claim.. if you would read my statements and realize that I was trying to get you to read a bit further into the matter you would realize that I am not making ANY claims, other than just a few days ago I had read articles that were talking about this very subject.. which I clearly linked at the bottom of my message.. I'm clearly NOT wrong in any way, because I DID read those articles and I did point out that the articles are there to be read.. they articles very well could be wrong.. but that doesn't make me a moron...
Fry's Linux Technology Center has 200 programmers working full-time to improve Linux, and he estimates 10 times that number are working within the company on Linux when other activities such as sales or server design are included.
:)
Fry's has a Linux Technology Center?!
More importantly, They have 200 linux developers yet only 30 total customer service rep's spread amongst all their locations?
The articles you cited are by people with a vested philosophical interest in the DVORAK keyboard not being what it's cracked up to be; it is is, then they're wrong about markets, and they'll never admit that.
It doesn't disprove the research, but it's grounds for skepticism.
Okay.. I'll agree with you, you have made a very valid statement; however, the research that was done in the first place was done by a man with extremely vested interest in the product (Dvorak himself). Using your argument, we can't trust the experimentation. At least we can't trust it until the experiment is repeated and the results verified. After all, we do this with EVERY other major scientific study (Cold Fusion anyone?). We can't just take the inventor's word for it that the product is better and never test again.
Granted I've seen tons of people logon here and say "I've used the Dvorak keyboard before, and it's much better, therefore I am right and you are wrong" (PARAPHRASED!, I know it wasn't word for word what they said). I want a study, if Dvorak's studies were the modern miracles of scientific research that some people have stated they were, then reproduce them. It will be easy, good experiments are designed to be reproduced, anyone should be able to reproduce them! Yet no one will give me one piece of hard evidence that the experiments were reproduced successfully. All I get is people who reply and say "I reproduced them, the keyboard is much better, trust me." Don't you publish? Why are you reproducing the experiments and not publishing, just to ease your curiosity? I sorta doubt that, no offsense. Give me an url, or an ISBN, or any published work with the results of an experiment. If this keyboard is SO much better than a QWERTY keyboard, someone, somewhere should publish their reproducable experiment proving it, and someone else will verify that experiment.
Now, I'm willing to bet that the Dvorak keyboard is SLIGHTLY better than a QWERTY keyboard in some respects (I doubt faster, but perhaps more ergonomic). However, why can't anyone show me proof (other than making blind statments like "I ran several iterations of the DAWKAJLD-V2287 tests against this keyboard, and it proved to be MUCH better; however, I never published my results, you can't see my experiment, and I think you are obviously trying to oppress me by doubting the results that I have conviently told you could exist somewhere!") Come on.. I just want PROOF!
I have conducted experiments and GOMS-type simulations comparing these two keyboards. I have read much of the research on the subject, including Dvorak's book, the Navy report, and the more recent scientific work and popular press coverage. It is simply not true that the only research that demonstrated the advantage of the Dvorak keyboard was done by Dvorak. What is true is that the research he did was very good, even by today's standards. Furthermore, he was not interested in "Getting Rich" off the invention--he was a professor pioneering the field of human factors, and his main interest was in developing the optimal layout. Had he wanted to capitalize on it, he would not have spent ten years developing the keyboard, nor would not have cared about the left- and right- handed versions. He really wanted to give people a better way of typing, and probably his biggest failure is that he didn't market it very well.
Perhaps.. but I do ask you to read the articles on the link I provided.. again.. I only stated that I had read the articles before and that they implicated some massive failures in Dvorak's mode's of experimentation (one specific claim was that he performed the test, wasn't pleased with the results, destroyed them.. then later did a different test that was more weighted towards his keyboard). I wasn't there.. I don't know.. you may be God's own personal keyboard assitant, the Dvorak keyboard may not only increase ones typing 100 fold but also produce pure gold in it's spare time.. I have no idea.. I've never seen one nor do I care which is better..
But, what is even more interesting is that there are also a bunch of Qwerty Evangalists out there. These are people who are utterly convinced that the Dvorak keyboard is a hoax, and attempt to convince everybody that they are right. There are probably more websites out there about why Qwerty is better than Dvorak than vice versa. I find these people very interesting (pcidevel appears to be one of them),
Not in the slightest.. If I had my way people would use whatever keyboard they wanted.. I only offered a link that said that provided someone who had researched the Dvorak keyboard and said that it seemed to not be quite as wonderfull as the creator wanted. *shrug*.. If it is so much better, PLEASE show me some proof.. I agree that there probably is a HUGE conspiracy of QWERTY users out there that are trying to suppress the right minded Dvorak minority, however; I'm not on their newsletter list and I perfer to keep it that way.. The ONLY statement I made is that I provided a link to someone who said that Dvorak's tests were not scientific.. I agree with that person.. would a scientific test prove that Dvorak's keyboard is better than a QWERTY?.. MAYBE.. I have no idea.. I've never done it.. and so far no one else has provided me with proof that is has been done.. *shrug*..
Bottom line is, urban legend or not, Dvorak is much more comfortable to type with than QWERTY. I wish people would wait until they are proficient at both before spouting of their "knowledge" on the subject.
The only knowledge that I spouted on the subject had nothing to do with which keyboard is superior.. only that the tests the 'prove' Dvorak keyboards are superior were performed by Dvorak himself, and seem to be falisfied when one looks at the evidence.. I'm sorry that you feel so strongly about Dvorak keyboards, but please don't accuse me of spouting knowledge that I don't have.. I have never seen nor used a Dvorak keyboard, and I probably never will.. however, I had read a bit on the subject and provided a link to the article.. The only urban legend I pointed out was the the QWERTY keyboard is not in any way designed to slow down a typist, which is a very common myth.
I could offer MANY arguments against the Dvorak is much more comfortable statement that you made.. like 1) Different people have different typing styles, an experiment with a sample size of 1 is a completely invalid experiment.. or 2) how do I know you HAVE used a Dvorak keyboard and you aren't just another Troll.. and so on and so forth.. but I'm not here to argue that one is better than the other, only that no scientific experiment has been performed that proves it one way or another (as people often state on slashdot when there is a new keyboard presented)..
...if memory serves me correctly, then QWERTY was actually developed to SLOW down the human typists because the physical typing machines couldn't keep up and kept jamming. Unfortunately, for almost a hundred years now we've been stuck using this piece of crap language format. IMHO, it's time to redesign with an emphasis on speed since it's now the humans that can't input fast enough.
Actually, this is a common urband legend, the QWERTY keyboard was designed to make keyboards wear out less quickly because the typing load was balanced over each hand. The Dvorak keyboard is shrouded in false legend, in the fact that people seem to think that 'tests' prove that the keyboard is better than a QWERTY keyboard. The tests that are cited happen to be tests that Dvorak himself conducted to prove that his product was better. In fact there is much indication that his product proved inferior, so he falsified much of the data to make it appear the keyboards are better. A good account of this can be read at this link (leads to urbanlegends.com).
Well.. within the last 10 mins or so the page has gone 404.. I clicked on it, it was there.. read a few comments.. it was gone.. so either some strange slashdotting, or more likely.. they've yanked the file! :)
Not the first time Brian has helped MS: http://www.wpi.edu/News/Wire/May97/microsoft.html fnord was his login at WPI, too, apparently.
:P
Heh.. or how about that time he went to work for them?.. Ohh.. didn't ya know, Brian is a MS employee..
Seriously, though, I just found it interesting that they called the thing 'Fnord,' which is, in Robert Shea's Illuminatus! Trilogy, everywhere but seen by almost nobody. That'll probably map pretty well here; almost everyone won't see this server, one of the few (if there are even any others?) GPL'd packages to come out of Microsoft.
Being on of the biggest fans of Robert Shea's (and Robert Anton Wilson cowrote!) Illuminatus Triology, I immediately started laughing when I saw the name of the program and the page it was on.. the most perfect thing ever.. but unfortunately I realized that it is a program that has been around for several years and has been called Fnord! since it's inception, when it was written by a college student (that is now a MS employee). In other words, MS didn't name it, the name was already there..
profit of doom
:)
Alrighty.. I think that is the best I have ever seen prophet work when mispelled as 'profit'... the RIAA really is the PROFIT of doom!.. I love it.. you rock.. if you did that on purpose it's brilliant.. and if you didn't, then it's even more perfect (can we say fruedian slip?
Lets not attack the developers, but the publisher. This is one of the reasons Richard Gariott left origin. EA forced them to release a product that obviously wasn't ready. Richard knew it, Richard explained it to the bigwigs at EA, EA wanted it released, so they had to release it. EA should be chastized, but not Origin.
Regardless.. we still vote with our dollars, and in a case like this we should vote an outstanding NO. As long as we as consumers take this crap they will continue to do it. It doesn't matter in the slightest if it is the publisher's fault or the developers fault, we still should not support a game that isn't complete until 8 months after you purchased it. It's like buying a car that advertises 40 miles per gallon, but when you arrive home you find out that it only gets 8 miles per gallon, and when you complain the manufacturer says 'Ohh.. we haven't finished the engine design yet, but we'll install the new engine as soon as we figure out how to make it get 40 mpg.. don't worry about it'..
As consumers we need to stop taking the regular abuse that the software industry dishes. My boss at a previous job working for one of the largest manufactures of CPU's once told me 'We ship when the engineer says that the product is %80 complete, if we wait for him to say he is %100 complete it will take too long.'
The GPL itself doesn't say anything specific [IIRC], but RMS has decided that dynamic linking in a DLL is not OK, but dynamic linking to non-GPL OS functions [at load time] is OK, which is a completely arbitrary distinction based more on intent than on actual technical differences.
Actually this is incorrect. libc is distributed under the LGPL which allows dynamic linking. The GPL explicitly forbids dynamic linking. This guy could have released his code under the LGPL if he wanted to allow this use, he didn't. Read my statement above as to why this is VERY unfortunate for the Free Software and Open Source movements. This will be our most harmfull moment ever.
IMHO: The LGPL seems to be meant to be applied to static libraries, ala the C libraries, for example. Dynamic linking is an entirely different beast, and since DLL's are *really* seperate executables, I don't see how the GPL can be applied to a program that USES a DLL with GPL code in it. Now if they had created a library (in C, a Unit in Pascal, etc) and then linked against that, their entire project would need to be open sourced and under the GPL, or else they wouldn't be complying.
Re-read the LGPL.. the LGPL applies ONLY to dynamic linking.. if you statically link the lib you have to release the entire binary under the GPL. Only if you dynamically link the lib under the LGPL can you release your producted as non derived.
I think this case is horribly unfortunate. This is the ammo M$ has been waiting on to PROVE once and for all that the GPL is a horrible viral lisence, and here we go, feeding the FUD machine. This should be dubbed Operation Foot Bullet (stolen from the Operation Clambake pages!), because there is no better way for the FSF to shoot the collective Free Software (and hence Open Source) movement in the foot than to bring this to court. Of course the worst possible outcome is that the case looses. That will still feed the FUD machines (avoid costly legal battles, use MS products) and it will provide a huge hole in the armor that is the GPL (make every GPLed program as a DLL or SO and never have to put your code back in the pool). But even winning this case isn't a win for the GPL or Free Software. If only this could be shuffled under the rug and forgotten, too bad that can never happen...
It's hard to argue airplanes are inherently dangerous to people or in this case, business and IP. There is already plenty of evidence that P2P can cause harm, hense the DMCA and lawsuits. The EFF is attempting to show that P2P isn't all bad. Just like Sony needed to prove that VCRs had a good number of non-infringing legitimate uses.
Actually it's just as easy to argue that Airplanes are as dangerous as P2P (if not more so, because airplanes can cause loss of life much easier). In fact, the moral decay of the US can directly be attributed to airplanes. Lets look at how dangerous airplanes are for society:
1. Airplanes can be used to smuggle items into the US that are otherwise contraban. See the War on Drugs for more examples.
2. Airplanes are used to move Pirated IP from Hong Kong to the US on a daily basis. Massive amounts of bootleg IP has been moved using airplanes (tourists purchase bootleg items over seas all the time).
3. Airplanes can carry Bombs that are a terrorist threat to the people of the US.
4. Airplanes could crash, and coss loss of life and property Damage.
5. Airplanes have allowed buisnesses to grow to the point where they are international monopolies. This has harmed the consumer for decades (see MS for more examples).
6. Airplanes have proliferated negative social trends (Punk Rock, Cocaine, etc.) in areas that would have otherwise been inaccessible without cheap, fast transportation.
As you can see, if you attack Airplanes with the same lack of logic as the RIAA attacks P2P, it's very easy to show that airplanes are just as band, if not worse, to society as P2P...
I was lazily walking through my local, Beaverton OR, Best Buy a month or so ago and low and behold, an entire stack of PS2's staring me in the face. I quickly checked to ensure the boxes were indeed filled with electronic goodness and then bought one for my very own. Last couple of Best Buy trips has proven to me that the shortage is indeed over, so perhaps your very own Best Buy will have a stack of PS2's to deploy! The system isn't really as bad as everyone says.. well.. maybe.. :)