This really annoyes me. The web is a visual medium. It should not be compulsory to cater for those that can't benefit from a visual medium, in a visual medium.
I've worked with blind people : there's a lot of simple services and entertainments that aren't accessible to them simply because selfish brats like you say "to hell with them, this or that isn't designed for them so why should we go out of our way to allow them to access it.".
Guess what: blind people go to art museums to touch sculptures, they go shooting at the range, they play golf,... and they have a ton of fun doing it, just because someone a little more open-minded than you invented some gadget or method to allow them to have fun.
I wish you'd go blind for a day, just to make you feel what it's like to be denied entertainment because of selfish people who don't give a flying fuck about anything but themselves.
If you want to test if your webpage is accessible to visually deficient people, you can ask Bobby to scan it and analyse it. Best accessibility report tool in town, I use it on all my pages.
At the end of the article: "I must confess, I downloaded Napster, and then Napster was found to be the wrong thing," he said. "I stopped."
So, he's a former roadie, and a Senator, and he waited until the justice declared Napster the wrong thing to stop using it? when he downloaded songs off Napster, shouldn't he have sensed that guilt that should have come from his being a former roadie, and his current position as (supposedly moral) senator?
So yeah, go Senator, but I wonder if he's not just another file swapper with a louder voice than everybody else, who tries to hide the fact behind "I recognize the very legitimate concerns about copyright infringement" statements, so as to not be labeled as a pirate by the RIAA.
ISPs are afraid of losing customers. It's easier to delay the RIAA, pay some lawer fees and look like the good guys trying to protect their subscriber's anonymity than the guys who blow the whistle immediately.
Somehow though, I suspect ISPs would rather disclose the names of the P2P users the minute they get subpoenaed, and not be hassled by the RIAA, if they could get away with it...
under a different IP via dhcp. ... using one or several ISPs that logs what IP was leased to you at what time. Or maybe you d/l things from your workplace, in which case your company's admin is an idiot for leaving the firewall open to P2P inbound connections and will take the heat in your place if the RIAA knocks at his door.
Fact: unless you use someone else's ISP account, you can be busted, no matter how clever you think you are.
It seems the RIAA is targeting a wide reach of music, including Hip Hop, R&B, Rap, Rock, Pop and Country songs. Artists such as Ludacris, Michael Jackson, NAS, Busta Rhymes, Keith Sweat and Musiq
Basically the RIAA targets people who enjoy crap. Sounds like they are inviting people to rediscover Rachmaninoff, Sati, Vierne, Bach, Ligeti, Vivaldi and all the other real composers, which would be go a long way to raise today's music standards.
I never thought I'd say this : for once, thanks RIAA!
As for the art of morse code "dying", the poster has no idea that there are hundreds of contests that take place yearly on a international level.
It is not dead yet, but it is dying. WRC'03 made it quite clear. When morse requirements are completely taken off licenses, nobody will learn it anymore.
I personally had to learn CW because I wanted to go on 10m. I hated it when I learned it, then I slowly changed my mind and now I don't do anything else on the air. Do you really think enough people will spontaneously be interested in it and learn it on their own for the activity to stay a living one?
You can connect a CW oscillator/keyer to the soundcard's line input. I know several people who do it, and chat over echolink or MSN Messenger with VoIP.
a copy of Windows XP would take the average paddy field worker six months to earn
Who gives a turkey? (1) unfortunately, paddy field workers don't buy XP because they would need another year to buy the computer equipment, and (2) how much do you bet rich chinese people who can afford computers copy XP right and left, laughing their ass off when they see the SPA and BSA gesticulate beyond the PRC's borders ?
Are you talking about a battery charger, or a device to restore batteries to their former glory? because if it's the latter, have you noticed any negative-ion air purifier for sale in the store ?
They have been described as Hollywood's digital detectives and they have a warning for anyone illegally trading music or movies: "You can run but you can never hide."
Hell, given that most computer geeks have trouble getting out of their chair, let alone run, I'd say they're in pretty deep trouble...
"The Continuator system [...] which learns in real-time the style of a performing pianist [...]"
"[...] to allow a composer to assemble components of a musical phrase"
"[...] Hyperscore, a visual composition program which is intended for childen to be able to easily create complex and fantastic music sequences"
So, with all those coming fantastic tools, and the ones we already have, how come the music market is flooded with inane Britney Spear-ish crap, bad techno and shitty teenage bands?
I'm not a great fan of rock-whatever, but I notice a great portion of radio air-time is filled with oldies, and also new releases, from long-established bands that happen to play actual instruments with (supposedly) their talent and hard work as primary source of arrangements, musical phrases and fantastic music sequences. Maybe old-timer know something newer "artists" don't...
Shouldn't the so-called "artists" learn to read and write scores first, lean to play an instrument, then work and work at their art to get better before using all the gimmicks? A gold-plated turd is still a turd, and I have the distinct feeling that many mediocre artists think electronic gadgetry will make them better, when really the gadgetry only does its best to presents the bad music better in the end.
In other news: Acme, Inc. has announced that they won't be porting their leading product, Foocreator-4.5, to the Linux platform, CEO John Doe announced today. "The incompatibilities between Unix and Linux are minor, but significant enough that we'd have to review our entire codebase. There may not be a large enough Linux market to justify this effort." he declared today.
If coca-cola brings out a new drink, i do a chemical analysis on it and duplicate it, then bring it out at half the price in a remarkably similar bottle, i'd get sued to death. I don't see why people think the software world should work differently.
Because free software cloning doesn't work that way. When someone write a clone of some Microsoft product, it is assumed that they don't disassemble the original and copy the code (the equivalent of your chemical analysis). The clone is a completely different piece of code with the same capabilities as the originals. Pepsi Cola similarly clean-room engineered their version of sugared water without analyzing the chemical composition of Coca Cola, and they're still around.
From the article: "One thing about the GPL is that you can't just license IBM Linux, or Red Hat Linux," Gates said. "The way the GPL works, if you license any Linux, you have to license all Linux."
What a bunch of crap. This is disinformation at its best.
- Linux is a Unix kernel clone.
- There is no such thing as Red Hat Linux or IBM Linux. There are IBM or RH distributions that make use of the Linux kernel
- Wtf does "licensing any Linux" and "licensing all Linux" means ? I'm assuming Gates mean licensing any Linux-based distro, in which case you adhere to whatever licensing terms the distro is released under, licensing terms which in turn are compliant with the GPL (since Linux is included).
That blurb from Gates means rigorously nothing whatsoever. But most people aren't even aware of what the GPL is, and when they quickly read something like that, they decude "uuh, Linux is dangerous to my business" or something. That's just ridiculous.
As much as I hate RMS' rants, flamewars and stubbornness, I must admit we need him more than ever today.
In any organization, the value of using Microsoft, Mac, Linux, or any other OS can always be debated. That is, some software just runs better on this or that platform, some tasks are performed better by this or that OS... It's just a matter of picking the best option for the job, and compare the TCOs and rendered services of each options. There's usually nothing political or religious about such a decision process, despite what Microsoft, Mac or free software zealots would like to make it.
But...
For certain organizations, like governments, there are 2 issues that should overshadow all the other : (1) the issue of governmental independance from third party vendors and other countries, and (2) the issue of information integrity and security for agencies such as secret services.
Just imagine you're in a position of power in a (non US) government, and you know nothing about computers, and someone tells you you have a choice between software that you can have total control over that's free (as in speech), or a piece of software from a notoriously greedy US vendor that has a notoriously shitty track record for computer security, what would you do ? I don't know for you, but it wouldn't cross my mind one second to use the latter. I'd rather be sure my country's computers can be totally independant from any country or vendor, in peace or war time, even if that may mean paying more for auditing the entire free software suites I use, or adapt it to the country's needs. The investment is a one-off then the country is free. Cases where Microsoft or other proprietary vendors would be chosen over free software should be kept to the strictest minimum, when no other alternatives are available.
All the above is valid for the US too : of course, they don't run the risk of one day being at war with themselves and suffering from embargoes, but they still have the situation where a public organization is at the mercy of a private one for a critical part of its operating resources. And just imagine, if some country drops a bomb on Redmond (N.K. comes to mind), how long do you think the US could continue functioning ? 6 months, 1 year ? Isn't odd that the country that created ARPANET to be resilient to anything that could happen in the country runs it with computers that have software installed from one sole vendor ?
So this is what I don't understand : how come governments even ask themselves what the right choice is in the matter ?
The New York Times has an article about a way to anonymously transfer cash online (NYT registration required)
Why to I find this sentence funny ?
So, finally banking can be anonymous (yeah right, in your wildest dreams, but we still need to register with NYT? No wait, you can't do do banking with a hotmail account...
Slashdot Mirror
This really annoyes me. The web is a visual medium. It should not be compulsory to cater for those that can't benefit from a visual medium, in a visual medium.
... and they have a ton of fun doing it, just because someone a little more open-minded than you invented some gadget or method to allow them to have fun.
I've worked with blind people : there's a lot of simple services and entertainments that aren't accessible to them simply because selfish brats like you say "to hell with them, this or that isn't designed for them so why should we go out of our way to allow them to access it.".
Guess what: blind people go to art museums to touch sculptures, they go shooting at the range, they play golf,
I wish you'd go blind for a day, just to make you feel what it's like to be denied entertainment because of selfish people who don't give a flying fuck about anything but themselves.
If you want to test if your webpage is accessible to visually deficient people, you can ask Bobby to scan it and analyse it. Best accessibility report tool in town, I use it on all my pages.
What next? Motif for the WWW?
...
Maybe they should have used a different name
Speaker for voice-guidance commands, MP3 player, and message playback
So when play this, does it guide you there ?
At the end of the article:
"I must confess, I downloaded Napster, and then Napster was found to be the wrong thing," he said. "I stopped."
So, he's a former roadie, and a Senator, and he waited until the justice declared Napster the wrong thing to stop using it? when he downloaded songs off Napster, shouldn't he have sensed that guilt that should have come from his being a former roadie, and his current position as (supposedly moral) senator?
So yeah, go Senator, but I wonder if he's not just another file swapper with a louder voice than everybody else, who tries to hide the fact behind "I recognize the very legitimate concerns about copyright infringement" statements, so as to not be labeled as a pirate by the RIAA.
ISPs are afraid of losing customers. It's easier to delay the RIAA, pay some lawer fees and look like the good guys trying to protect their subscriber's anonymity than the guys who blow the whistle immediately.
...
Somehow though, I suspect ISPs would rather disclose the names of the P2P users the minute they get subpoenaed, and not be hassled by the RIAA, if they could get away with it
under a different IP via dhcp.
... using one or several ISPs that logs what IP was leased to you at what time. Or maybe you d/l things from your workplace, in which case your company's admin is an idiot for leaving the firewall open to P2P inbound connections and will take the heat in your place if the RIAA knocks at his door.
Fact: unless you use someone else's ISP account, you can be busted, no matter how clever you think you are.
It seems the RIAA is targeting a wide reach of music, including Hip Hop, R&B, Rap, Rock, Pop and Country songs. Artists such as Ludacris, Michael Jackson, NAS, Busta Rhymes, Keith Sweat and Musiq
Basically the RIAA targets people who enjoy crap. Sounds like they are inviting people to rediscover Rachmaninoff, Sati, Vierne, Bach, Ligeti, Vivaldi and all the other real composers, which would be go a long way to raise today's music standards.
I never thought I'd say this : for once, thanks RIAA!
As for the art of morse code "dying", the poster has no idea that there are hundreds of contests that take place yearly on a international level.
It is not dead yet, but it is dying. WRC'03 made it quite clear. When morse requirements are completely taken off licenses, nobody will learn it anymore.
I personally had to learn CW because I wanted to go on 10m. I hated it when I learned it, then I slowly changed my mind and now I don't do anything else on the air. Do you really think enough people will spontaneously be interested in it and learn it on their own for the activity to stay a living one?
You can connect a CW oscillator/keyer to the soundcard's line input. I know several people who do it, and chat over echolink or MSN Messenger with VoIP.
Remember: a lot of people used to run their entire businesses on IBM XTs!
...
The keyword here is "used"
a copy of Windows XP would take the average paddy field worker six months to earn
Who gives a turkey? (1) unfortunately, paddy field workers don't buy XP because they would need another year to buy the computer equipment, and (2) how much do you bet rich chinese people who can afford computers copy XP right and left, laughing their ass off when they see the SPA and BSA gesticulate beyond the PRC's borders ?
I saw a recharger at a retail store today
Are you talking about a battery charger, or a device to restore batteries to their former glory? because if it's the latter, have you noticed any negative-ion air purifier for sale in the store ?
There is no lock that can't be picked and our technology ensures that there is not a rock in the world you can hide under if you are sharing files.
In non-RIAA-threatening lingo : "we know how to run tcpdump".
They have been described as Hollywood's digital detectives and they have a warning for anyone illegally trading music or movies: "You can run but you can never hide."
...
Hell, given that most computer geeks have trouble getting out of their chair, let alone run, I'd say they're in pretty deep trouble
yesterdays novelties are today's nuisances
...
So true. *cough* Clippy *cough*
No wait, Clippy's been a nuisance from the start.
"The Continuator system [...] which learns in real-time the style of a performing pianist [...]"
...
"[...] to allow a composer to assemble components of a musical phrase"
"[...] Hyperscore, a visual composition program which is intended for childen to be able to easily create complex and fantastic music sequences"
So, with all those coming fantastic tools, and the ones we already have, how come the music market is flooded with inane Britney Spear-ish crap, bad techno and shitty teenage bands?
I'm not a great fan of rock-whatever, but I notice a great portion of radio air-time is filled with oldies, and also new releases, from long-established bands that happen to play actual instruments with (supposedly) their talent and hard work as primary source of arrangements, musical phrases and fantastic music sequences. Maybe old-timer know something newer "artists" don't
Shouldn't the so-called "artists" learn to read and write scores first, lean to play an instrument, then work and work at their art to get better before using all the gimmicks? A gold-plated turd is still a turd, and I have the distinct feeling that many mediocre artists think electronic gadgetry will make them better, when really the gadgetry only does its best to presents the bad music better in the end.
In other news:
Acme, Inc. has announced that they won't be porting their leading product, Foocreator-4.5, to the Linux platform, CEO John Doe announced today. "The incompatibilities between Unix and Linux are minor, but significant enough that we'd have to review our entire codebase. There may not be a large enough Linux market to justify this effort." he declared today.
099 2.1.2 gethostbyname [...]
102 2.1.3 getopt [...]
106 2.1.4 gets [...]
109 2.1.5 getservbyname [...]
112 2.1.6 getservent [...]
115 2.1.7 ioctl [...]
120 2.1.8 iswctype [...]
123 2.1.9 kill [...]
133 2.1.10 nice [...]
139 2.1.11 opterr, optind, optopt [...]
142 2.1.12 strptime
Pfff, we're saved. printf("Hello world\n") will still work on all platforms. Isn't it the standard portability test after all?
If coca-cola brings out a new drink, i do a chemical analysis on it and duplicate it, then bring it out at half the price in a remarkably similar bottle, i'd get sued to death. I don't see why people think the software world should work differently.
Because free software cloning doesn't work that way. When someone write a clone of some Microsoft product, it is assumed that they don't disassemble the original and copy the code (the equivalent of your chemical analysis). The clone is a completely different piece of code with the same capabilities as the originals. Pepsi Cola similarly clean-room engineered their version of sugared water without analyzing the chemical composition of Coca Cola, and they're still around.
From the article:
"One thing about the GPL is that you can't just license IBM Linux, or Red Hat Linux," Gates said. "The way the GPL works, if you license any Linux, you have to license all Linux."
What a bunch of crap. This is disinformation at its best.
- Linux is a Unix kernel clone.
- There is no such thing as Red Hat Linux or IBM Linux. There are IBM or RH distributions that make use of the Linux kernel
- Wtf does "licensing any Linux" and "licensing all Linux" means ? I'm assuming Gates mean licensing any Linux-based distro, in which case you adhere to whatever licensing terms the distro is released under, licensing terms which in turn are compliant with the GPL (since Linux is included).
That blurb from Gates means rigorously nothing whatsoever. But most people aren't even aware of what the GPL is, and when they quickly read something like that, they decude "uuh, Linux is dangerous to my business" or something. That's just ridiculous.
As much as I hate RMS' rants, flamewars and stubbornness, I must admit we need him more than ever today.
the Shuttle Bike kit.
I have one : it's great fun for much less than $850K, and you can go on the "bridge" without opening a door and sinking the vehicle in the process.
when you can do DIY!
This thing is an old milk truck trailer and has set out to go around the world.
In any organization, the value of using Microsoft, Mac, Linux, or any other OS can always be debated. That is, some software just runs better on this or that platform, some tasks are performed better by this or that OS ... It's just a matter of picking the best option for the job, and compare the TCOs and rendered services of each options. There's usually nothing political or religious about such a decision process, despite what Microsoft, Mac or free software zealots would like to make it.
...
But
For certain organizations, like governments, there are 2 issues that should overshadow all the other : (1) the issue of governmental independance from third party vendors and other countries, and (2) the issue of information integrity and security for agencies such as secret services.
Just imagine you're in a position of power in a (non US) government, and you know nothing about computers, and someone tells you you have a choice between software that you can have total control over that's free (as in speech), or a piece of software from a notoriously greedy US vendor that has a notoriously shitty track record for computer security, what would you do ? I don't know for you, but it wouldn't cross my mind one second to use the latter. I'd rather be sure my country's computers can be totally independant from any country or vendor, in peace or war time, even if that may mean paying more for auditing the entire free software suites I use, or adapt it to the country's needs. The investment is a one-off then the country is free. Cases where Microsoft or other proprietary vendors would be chosen over free software should be kept to the strictest minimum, when no other alternatives are available.
All the above is valid for the US too : of course, they don't run the risk of one day being at war with themselves and suffering from embargoes, but they still have the situation where a public organization is at the mercy of a private one for a critical part of its operating resources. And just imagine, if some country drops a bomb on Redmond (N.K. comes to mind), how long do you think the US could continue functioning ? 6 months, 1 year ? Isn't odd that the country that created ARPANET to be resilient to anything that could happen in the country runs it with computers that have software installed from one sole vendor ?
So this is what I don't understand : how come governments even ask themselves what the right choice is in the matter ?
The New York Times has an article about a way to anonymously transfer cash online (NYT registration required)
...
Why to I find this sentence funny ?
So, finally banking can be anonymous (yeah right, in your wildest dreams, but we still need to register with NYT?
No wait, you can't do do banking with a hotmail account