Ho hum. And the people who staged sit-down strikes for civil rights in the 60's were participating in a denial of service attack as well
YES!
The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a willful disruption of society. The fact that it had a moral puprose and a good effect does not change the fact that it was a very basic DoS attack. In this extreme case, two wrongs DID make a right, becasue the second wrong showed how bad the first wrong was.
I find that these types of demonstrations are going to be getting alot of people in trouble if they lack the ability to cover their tracks.
I have no respect for someone who wants to say something, and then "covers their tracks."
Sure, I have less respect for corrupt public officials who make such things necessary--but the appropriate reaction is to go into hiding / become transient / go public, NOT try and be anonymous.
For the record, I don't think that "protest" is an idea (or even desirable) method of speech. Better to create a new communication commons, than to make our lowest-common-demoninator form of dissent more efficient.
The problem is legal, not technical--and legal problems should have legal solutions. Lobby the government to requrire any organization with law-making powers to host (or target to) dissent. Since the WTO is a governmental body, it's paid for by taxpayers and it can spend some effort to help the dissent be clear.
(Heck, they'd probaby save money if they could simply organize and clarify the dissent, and eliminate the protest rallies.)
We as a whole cannot let this type of totalitarian behavoir exsist unchecked. Be it corperate, government, private citizen. We as a whole (planet) are letting the world fall back into the clutches of fascism under the guise of "freedom."
Welcome to the real world. People want to control other people. The protesters demand to be heard. The WTO demands to do their business in peace. "Freedom" is, by and large, an ability to make a choice that often is overruled by social pressure.
However this type of protest is not recognized as a proper form of policial/economic protest.
By whom?
Proper political action is just that--action. It's not "protest."
Protest is nothing more than an interruption of society by a minority with a percieved wrong. Sometimes they're right; as often as not, they're overblown.
Forget easy access to voting -- something should be done to make it HARDER to vote. Heinlein didn't have a bad idea with military service requirements to vote, but that's not entirely practical -- instead, we should re-instate a poll tax of $400. If you aren't willing to pay hard cash for your rights to vote, then you shouldn't be able to vote. I honestly don't want apathists running the government anymore.
That's a bad, bad, BAD idea. The rich can vote on a whim. The poor simply can't afford to vote.
A better idea would be either service of some kind (military, non-military government, or charity), a minimum level of education, or [my favorite] a test.
If people, at the voting booth, have to pass a rather simple competency test, that'd screen out those that don't have a clue.
Or, we could have an "informed choice" law, that provided unbiased evaluations of each canditate's views. Or maybe just hvae an electronic reader that gives each candidate for each position five hundred words to express why they should be in office.
Briefly, aggregation does not necessarily imply being a derivative work. If the interface (using pipes and sockets) between the hypothetical Microsoft Ghostscript and the rest of Microsoft Office is clean enough, then Microsoft would only be responsible for releasing their changes to Ghostscript.
The FSF does not, and can not, give a clear answer to this. And neither can MS's lawyers.
To be a part of office, MS Ghostscript would integrate at least as well as Adobe Acrobat does--which is a bit more than, say, Mozilla does.
Microsoft also has a corporate tendency to mingle code; even if they did keep MS Ghostscript completely seperate--if they just included current Ghostscript in the office installer--they would run the risk of the FSF taking them to court.
(Please note that I said "integrate", which means more than "bundle with the rest of them.")
here's a quote from the page you linked to:
By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program.
Office currently exchanges a fairly "complex internal data structure" between Word and Acrobat when you save a structured Word DOC as as PDF; MS and Adobe no doubt have an agreement that makes this kosher.
But if we were to make Ghostscript work at least as well as Acrobat 5 does, we'd have to duplicate this--which would probably mean, again, a court battle that could very well go in MS's favor.
Once again: the BSD license allows a software company to choose their business model when using BSD-derived code. The GPL eliminates most of the common business models for software companies. In other words, the GPL has more restrictions than the BSD licenese; whether this means that it's "less free" or just "fair" is a semantic argument.
For instance, who would have thought that most people actually don't *want* video phones or flying cars or talking computers? Or at least, they don't want them enough to drive the technical development of these things, since standard phones, autos, and Windows seem to do the job well enough.
I think that all three are more of a case of poor technology than lack of desire.
I would love a working video phone where I could use my TV as the screen; but I don't have that, and neither have I ever seen it.
I would love a flying car--a VTOL, efficient, computer-controlled flying vehicle that is no larger than a current large automobile. But I'm not going to get it, because no one can figure out how to make the darn things float when powered down.
I would love, love, love it if my PC really could hold an intelligent conversation; but the voice-command programs are no better than a keyboard (natural language Command line would be a better place to start) and the voice-recognition programs require too much time to train (and still get words wrong) and voice-speaking programs just sound bad.
Thats why I love the GPL - the only people it pisses off are the companies that have enough resources not to need it.
Microsoft was only one example out of many. If ID released Doom III under the GPL on its retail disk, they'd have no recourse to keep levels out of it; if they tried, the FSF would probably take them to court.
The GPL inconveniences a heck of a lot more people that large companies; in fact, I think that large companies (IBM, Dell, Apple) are the ones it inconveniences the least
When Ballmer or whoever said the GPL was anti-American, I just had to laugh. Look at the BSD licence.. whats more anti-american than giving something away for free and demanding nothing (not even that that person honour your wish that they release their source code)..
Er, charity is a longtime standing American value. We don't, as a country, force people to do good works; we set up a mechanism where they can do good works, encourage them to do good works, and then allow them to not do good works if they don't want to.
Both licences have their times and places, and I'm not putting either above or below the other one, but it always struck me how the BSD licence is truely the anti-capitalist license in the sense that the 'cost' of using BSD'd software seems to be way lower than the cost of using GPL'd software.
How is that less capitalist? BSD allows a company to create a program re-using BSD'd code, keep it closed for a time sufficient to make back development cost, and then release the source code when it is no longer profitable to support it.
The GPL forces you into a "you can't sell the software, but you can charge for distribution" model.
Like all the folk who will swear blind that CD sound is grossly inferior to vinyl...
It is. Assuming, of course, that your analog vinyl equipment (including speakers) are state-of-the-art high-quality.
And even then you'll hardly hear the difference...
But it is there. Just like there's a difference between a 4 megapixel camera and a 35 mm; sure, at 3x5 you'll never notice the differnece (ignoring lens differences for the moment), but it's still there.
And it transfers with USB 2.0, which is both faster than the iPod's FireWire, and is also more commonly available on the PC platform.
USB 2.0 is spec'd at peak transfer rate. Firewire, as its proponents will no doubt exclaim, has a significantly higher sustained rate; plus it carries power. (AFAIK, USB 2.0 doesn't--at least, not to the degree that Firewire does.)
So why is this "junk"? If anything its good competition.
Now, it's been a while since I've read the GPL, but last time I checked, it's possible to charge whatever you want for GPL'ed software.
But you have to give whomever you sell it to access to the source code and a license to redistrubite (and even sell) your GPL'd software without paying you, asking you, or even notifying you.
If Microsoft were to take, oh, let's say Ghostscript, and integrate it into MS Office, they would most likely go out of business within a quarter, because all of office would now be GPL'd. MS wouldn't have a choice.
The GPL was designed by Stallman to work this way, and he & the FSF don't see it as a lack of "freedom"--but some people do. Some people like to have the option of not giving away their coding effort, which the GPL demands as payment for use of GPL'd code.
Re:Actions in China count heavily against them
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AOL's new Linux PC
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· Score: 2
However, they cooperate with the PRC in censoring their own citizens.
So what? They're a business, not a charity.
I do think it's better to support a government and encorage that government to be good, than to blacklist that government and leave them no way to save face and back down at the same time...
Hey, wait, that's the USA's national policy towards China! And AOL Time Warner's an American Company... hey, wow, we can hate companies just for helping the government! It's 1962 all over again!
[Hey, and I'm -18... sweet! No taxes for 34 years!]
Evolution also refers to two things, one is a fact, the other a theory.
Hey, someone gets it!
The idea that life did not suddenly appear fully fledged, but that simpler forms appeared and gradually more complex forms developed from the simple forms is indesputable except by total weirdos.
Er, no. Historical species-genesis evolution is a theory that treads on religious grounds.
However, the idea that this evolution was driven simply by random mutations coupled with natural selection *is* just a theory.
*sigh*.
Evolution is a principle we can observe. We think we even know how it works--this is the "factual" part of evolution, that only blistering morons don't accept. It fits the "Theory of Speaker design" definition.
Extrapolating observed evolution backwards is pure theory--without a time machine, we simply cannot prove that it really happened this way. This is a "Theory" in the same way that the Big Bang is a theory; we don't have any better agnostic/scientific answers, so we go with it.
There would be no debate about the principle of evolution if its proponents didn't insist on coupling it with an extrapolation that needlessly contradicts religion. "Scientific theories on the past" should be taught sepearte from their irrefutable principles; I have yet to hear a good reason why they shouldn't.
No, it didn't. It wasn't a Final Fantasy plot, it wasn't an american plot... and it wasn't even a very good Jappanese plot.
it was bloodthirsty, distopian, anti-establishment, and mundane. Every good FF game I've ever seen has magic and a villian that the heroes actually fight and face down... Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did not.
Now, don't get me wrong--the CG was great, the design of the gagets was great, and the story had a message... but between every character aside from the two non-military folk dying and the utter lack of FF's traditional "different" feel, it just wasn't a good movie.
Great CG. Bad Movie.
I really suspect it flopped only due to the same anti-animation prejudice American audiences have against anime in general. I don't know a single person who said they hated it - But at the same time, I don't know more than two or three people who actually saw it.
The last movie I saw that I hated was "Superstar," and I got dragged to go see that. I'm an anime fan, I saw the movie twice... and while I won't say that I hated the movie, I hate the fact that they wasted the chance they had with a bad script, lousy voice sync, and bad market research.
Making a movie isn't art. Making a scene or playing a character is, but making a movie is a business, just like making an art gallery is.
You just pulled this one out of your arse, didn't you? Or can you back it up somehow? Can you cite any studies? Why do you find it so obvious that healthy children might not become more aggressive by constantly viewing and engaging in virtual violence? You just say that "it's dumb," but for what reason we are never told.
Here's one for you.
Children have been playing at violent activities for generations. For us, it was video games. Before that, cowboys & indians. Before that, it was wooden swords.
While it's certainly *possible* that their violent tendencies will increase, linking a traditional boyhood pastime (violent fantasy life) with an abnormal increase in [violent antisocial]* activitiy is the kind of junk-psychology that created the MPD scare of a few years back, and the possible discussion of BADD's allegations about D&D, and a whole generation that doesn't think they can handle their problems on their own.
A normal child can distinguish between fantasy and reality, and knows that things done in play (like tacking the quarterback) are not the same as things that are done in not-play (like not tackling a police officer.) The study in the article appears to state that a "violent fantasy life" is normal behavior--and normal people doing normal things do not become abnormal.
* = (agressiveness is, AFAIK, a natural assertiveness that isn't necessarilly bad, while violence usually is) activity
Re:Let's check the math...
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RC5-64 Success
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· Score: 1
I probably miss something about why the 8 years becomes 13,
"because no one's used 64-bit encryption since 1997."
I know it's not common practice now, and I pulled a random number from the Umbra as an example.
My credit card number hasn't changed since I first got it, same thing for my bank account.
Your Credit Card number and bank account number can be found by either a simple mugging or some discreet garbage scavenging--and they can be switched in about a week by any competent financial institution.
The goal is not for it to be secure only now, but also in the future. You may think about other examples involving national security if you prefer.
National security... I think the gov't assumes that if someone gets access to a file, they're going to read that file, and that encryption will only slow them down.
Then again, I think that government does indeed think that it's always acting in the best interest of the country, so what do I know?;)
Let's check the math...
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RC5-64 Success
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Ok... "thousands of computers" and 1700 days. Let's call it 2000 computers putting in full 24 hours days. And let's assume that Moore's Law will remain true...
Cracking RC5-64 took 384,000 computer/hours today. There are 168 hours in a week. So, for one computer to crack RC5-64 in a matter of weeks (less than five) would require a computer about 460 times faster than what we have now; assuming moore's law keeps going, we'll get those in about 13 years (2015).
In five years (48 months), computers will be about 2.6 times as fast powerful as they are now; it'll still take over 147,000 computer-hours to crack the same code; one computer would take 16 years to crack that.
(The same 2000 computers, once upgraded, could replicate their feat in a measly 654 days--still, two years.)
And, of course, this assumes that Moore's Law remains constant, there's no overhead, and distributed.net's brute force test is a good example; it could have gotten lucky, or it could have taken them an unusually short time to find the right code.
For a realisitic cracking scenerio, let's say our cracker has ten computers and wants to crack the code in a week... he'd still have to wait 8 years to be able to do it, and who'd want to bother with 13 year old data for cracking, anyway?
I don't know about your machine, but when I log into my linux boxen, I find very little actual GNU software running.
Considering that a combination of MS Word and general lack of time for the necessary backups and repartitioning have kept me from trying out Linux yet, I cna safely say that I'm running 100% non-GNU software on my box.;)
The proper place for "GNU" is in the many lists of attributions. The overall "system" name is properly the assembler and the OS name. This machine is properly called "RedHat Linux". Another that I use a lot is properly "FreeBSD" (and it also contains a lot of GNU tools in its libraries).
I agree 100%. Can we program this into a clue-stick and give it to someone to thwack Stallman with?
And a lot of other people took that kernel, added GNU tools into a distribution that would be usable for a lot of folk, and called that Linux.
GNU didn't make the OS. All they did was make a bunch of tools that the guy who wrote the kernel found useful, and a bunch of people who bundled distributions also found useful. And they named most of them "Gnu*", and most of them are acronyms, and they're all GPL'd.
Stallman himself admits that Linux isn't the GNU OS... therefore, he's just trying to steal Linux's thunder since the "real GNU OS" has been so long in coming. (Is it here yet?)
Now that I think about it, if we're going to be nitpicking about "primary contributors," how about the hardware folk? Shouldn't the name of the OS be "GNU/Linux-x86" or something?
Heck, what exactly is "GNU/Linux?" Does he mean the family of OSes distrubted by RedHat, Suse, and anyone who wants to bundle a Linux kernal with some apps? What about no-GNU distributions? Are they a different catagory?
I don't agree that FSF agenda is in any way either irrational or trivial
Neither do I. But it is poorly understood, and ran by people who have somehow managed to get a repuation for not knowiwng how to get their agenda across.
The FSF needs less coders and more politicians, oddly enough. Engineers and idealism aren't a natural, or easy, mix.
The FSF is only asking that it be called by it's proper name.
The FSF made GNU tools, AND the GPL, and if they wanted any say in the "proper name" of what someone else has when they take GNU tools and components and makes something, they should have written it into the GPL.
If the FSF wanted to have this "proper name," they should have supported Linus in the early days and asked for the nomenclature from the get-go. Them trying to instigate a change of the popular name for the OS family after the fact is a boldfaced attempt to ride the shorttails of Linux's popularity.
If they want "GNU/Linux", they should make a "pure GNU" distribution of Linux.
everyone who doesn't call the operating system by it's correct name is
Come again?
There are two viable ways to describe operating system, Stallman's "usable computer" argument aside. (By his measurement, Windows isn't an OS until you install office, and probably Visual Studio...)
1: The kernel - just what is needed to control the hardware and run middleware + apps. DOS is an OS, Windows is an OS + explorer.
2: Everything needed to get to the basic user experience - Linux + KDE, or windows.
Now, if we use the first definition, then the issue is clear--it's Linux, 'cause that's what Linux & co want it called.
If we use the second definition, neither Linus nor GNU have final say--the distributors (bundlers? Drat, forgot the name) are. The OSes are "Red Hat Linux" or "SuSe Linux" or "Lindows", which can all be referred to as "Linux OSes" because of the claimed common base.
While it's a good thing to make sure credit is given to GNU software by asking people to use the right nam
Credit is given. AFAIK, no one has renamed GNU tools something else. Gnome is Gnome. Gnucash is Gnucash.
simply not understanding what the advantage of free software is
The benefits of free software are simple: It's low to no cost, and you can do what you want with it.
The benefits of the FSF agenda, on the other hand, are not so clear. Wasting time on trival things like renaming Linux ensures that they remain that way.
I have not ever given money to the FSF, and I suspect that I never will.
The same bill of rights that allows their crazy cult to exist is the same one that allows me to make fun of them.
IANAL--and it's clear that neither are you.
The Cult of Scientology is a private organization, and can censor whomever they want. They can exert copyright law and quasi-appropriate legal tactics to silence their oppponents--and the Bill of Rights can't touch them.
Chalk this one up as a fault of the first amendment, and whenever you think that the bill of rights is infallible and perfect, remember that it allows scientology to do this, and ties the hands of the only organization that's in a position to squash them for it--the Federal Government.
It's one thign to believe in an all powerful deity that created the universe. It's another thing to believe in a book that some guy wrote, because some other guy bet that he couldn't create a religeon.[sic]
It doesn't matter where the religion came from--it's a religion, at least until you get to OT 8 or wherever. I could found the "cult of Doug" right now, and if I get enough followers and the darn thing carries on after I'm gone, and it doesn't disrupt everyone's life who joins it, then it's a religion.
Doesn't anyone have balls anymore?
The Scientologists apparantly do. Xenu.net does. The DOJ, ever since Bush got in office, seems to have lost theris.
(nitpick: It's "God" and "Him." Proper english grammar is to alwyas capitalize a name or pronoun used to refer to the Allmighty.)
I highly doubt that God really hates those 3:12 a.m. sites. But the simple embarassment of having to answer for going to those is a great check on the hypocricy that is otherwise prevalent in my religion.
To wit: Both Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrish were Christians.
In short... Mozilla needs some marketing oriented types instead of more nerds. For example, it needs help making Chatzilla work for people like my gf who can use AIM but get confused when chatzilla doesn't find a server and complains.
No, it doesn't. That's what Netscape is for--Mozilla for non-nerds, with branding and hand-holding and chat programs that are better than IRC.
Slashdot Mirror
Ho hum. And the people who staged sit-down strikes for civil rights in the 60's were participating in a denial of service attack as well
YES!
The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a willful disruption of society. The fact that it had a moral puprose and a good effect does not change the fact that it was a very basic DoS attack. In this extreme case, two wrongs DID make a right, becasue the second wrong showed how bad the first wrong was.
I find that these types of demonstrations are going to be getting alot of people in trouble if they lack the ability to cover their tracks.
I have no respect for someone who wants to say something, and then "covers their tracks."
Sure, I have less respect for corrupt public officials who make such things necessary--but the appropriate reaction is to go into hiding / become transient / go public, NOT try and be anonymous.
For the record, I don't think that "protest" is an idea (or even desirable) method of speech. Better to create a new communication commons, than to make our lowest-common-demoninator form of dissent more efficient.
The problem is legal, not technical--and legal problems should have legal solutions. Lobby the government to requrire any organization with law-making powers to host (or target to) dissent. Since the WTO is a governmental body, it's paid for by taxpayers and it can spend some effort to help the dissent be clear.
(Heck, they'd probaby save money if they could simply organize and clarify the dissent, and eliminate the protest rallies.)
We as a whole cannot let this type of totalitarian behavoir exsist unchecked. Be it corperate, government, private citizen. We as a whole (planet) are letting the world fall back into the clutches of fascism under the guise of "freedom."
Welcome to the real world. People want to control other people. The protesters demand to be heard. The WTO demands to do their business in peace. "Freedom" is, by and large, an ability to make a choice that often is overruled by social pressure.
However this type of protest is not recognized as a proper form of policial/economic protest.
By whom?
Proper political action is just that--action. It's not "protest."
Protest is nothing more than an interruption of society by a minority with a percieved wrong. Sometimes they're right; as often as not, they're overblown.
Forget easy access to voting -- something should be done to make it HARDER to vote. Heinlein didn't have a bad idea with military service requirements to vote, but that's not entirely practical -- instead, we should re-instate a poll tax of $400. If you aren't willing to pay hard cash for your rights to vote, then you shouldn't be able to vote. I honestly don't want apathists running the government anymore.
That's a bad, bad, BAD idea. The rich can vote on a whim. The poor simply can't afford to vote.
A better idea would be either service of some kind (military, non-military government, or charity), a minimum level of education, or [my favorite] a test.
If people, at the voting booth, have to pass a rather simple competency test, that'd screen out those that don't have a clue.
Or, we could have an "informed choice" law, that provided unbiased evaluations of each canditate's views. Or maybe just hvae an electronic reader that gives each candidate for each position five hundred words to express why they should be in office.
Hmm....
in 1943, there probably was a market for about five computers.
:)
But then people saw these things, came up with new ideas for them, and the market grew.
Briefly, aggregation does not necessarily imply being a derivative work. If the interface (using pipes and sockets) between the hypothetical Microsoft Ghostscript and the rest of Microsoft Office is clean enough, then Microsoft would only be responsible for releasing their changes to Ghostscript.
The FSF does not, and can not, give a clear answer to this. And neither can MS's lawyers.
To be a part of office, MS Ghostscript would integrate at least as well as Adobe Acrobat does--which is a bit more than, say, Mozilla does.
Microsoft also has a corporate tendency to mingle code; even if they did keep MS Ghostscript completely seperate--if they just included current Ghostscript in the office installer--they would run the risk of the FSF taking them to court.
(Please note that I said "integrate", which means more than "bundle with the rest of them.")
here's a quote from the page you linked to:
By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program.
Office currently exchanges a fairly "complex internal data structure" between Word and Acrobat when you save a structured Word DOC as as PDF; MS and Adobe no doubt have an agreement that makes this kosher.
But if we were to make Ghostscript work at least as well as Acrobat 5 does, we'd have to duplicate this--which would probably mean, again, a court battle that could very well go in MS's favor.
Once again: the BSD license allows a software company to choose their business model when using BSD-derived code. The GPL eliminates most of the common business models for software companies. In other words, the GPL has more restrictions than the BSD licenese; whether this means that it's "less free" or just "fair" is a semantic argument.
For instance, who would have thought that most people actually don't *want* video phones or flying cars or talking computers? Or at least, they don't want them enough to drive the technical development of these things, since standard phones, autos, and Windows seem to do the job well enough.
I think that all three are more of a case of poor technology than lack of desire.
I would love a working video phone where I could use my TV as the screen; but I don't have that, and neither have I ever seen it.
I would love a flying car--a VTOL, efficient, computer-controlled flying vehicle that is no larger than a current large automobile. But I'm not going to get it, because no one can figure out how to make the darn things float when powered down.
I would love, love, love it if my PC really could hold an intelligent conversation; but the voice-command programs are no better than a keyboard (natural language Command line would be a better place to start) and the voice-recognition programs require too much time to train (and still get words wrong) and voice-speaking programs just sound bad.
Thats why I love the GPL - the only people it pisses off are the companies that have enough resources not to need it.
.. whats more anti-american than giving something away for free and demanding nothing (not even that that person honour your wish that they release their source code) ..
Microsoft was only one example out of many. If ID released Doom III under the GPL on its retail disk, they'd have no recourse to keep levels out of it; if they tried, the FSF would probably take them to court.
The GPL inconveniences a heck of a lot more people that large companies; in fact, I think that large companies (IBM, Dell, Apple) are the ones it inconveniences the least
When Ballmer or whoever said the GPL was anti-American, I just had to laugh. Look at the BSD licence
Er, charity is a longtime standing American value. We don't, as a country, force people to do good works; we set up a mechanism where they can do good works, encourage them to do good works, and then allow them to not do good works if they don't want to.
Both licences have their times and places, and I'm not putting either above or below the other one, but it always struck me how the BSD licence is truely the anti-capitalist license in the sense that the 'cost' of using BSD'd software seems to be way lower than the cost of using GPL'd software.
How is that less capitalist? BSD allows a company to create a program re-using BSD'd code, keep it closed for a time sufficient to make back development cost, and then release the source code when it is no longer profitable to support it.
The GPL forces you into a "you can't sell the software, but you can charge for distribution" model.
Like all the folk who will swear blind that CD sound is grossly inferior to vinyl...
It is. Assuming, of course, that your analog vinyl equipment (including speakers) are state-of-the-art high-quality.
And even then you'll hardly hear the difference...
But it is there. Just like there's a difference between a 4 megapixel camera and a 35 mm; sure, at 3x5 you'll never notice the differnece (ignoring lens differences for the moment), but it's still there.
And it transfers with USB 2.0, which is both faster than the iPod's FireWire, and is also more commonly available on the PC platform.
USB 2.0 is spec'd at peak transfer rate. Firewire, as its proponents will no doubt exclaim, has a significantly higher sustained rate; plus it carries power. (AFAIK, USB 2.0 doesn't--at least, not to the degree that Firewire does.)
So why is this "junk"? If anything its good competition.
Exactly.
Now, it's been a while since I've read the GPL, but last time I checked, it's possible to charge whatever you want for GPL'ed software.
But you have to give whomever you sell it to access to the source code and a license to redistrubite (and even sell) your GPL'd software without paying you, asking you, or even notifying you.
If Microsoft were to take, oh, let's say Ghostscript, and integrate it into MS Office, they would most likely go out of business within a quarter, because all of office would now be GPL'd. MS wouldn't have a choice.
The GPL was designed by Stallman to work this way, and he & the FSF don't see it as a lack of "freedom"--but some people do. Some people like to have the option of not giving away their coding effort, which the GPL demands as payment for use of GPL'd code.
However, they cooperate with the PRC in censoring their own citizens.
So what? They're a business, not a charity.
I do think it's better to support a government and encorage that government to be good, than to blacklist that government and leave them no way to save face and back down at the same time...
Hey, wait, that's the USA's national policy towards China! And AOL Time Warner's an American Company... hey, wow, we can hate companies just for helping the government! It's 1962 all over again!
[Hey, and I'm -18... sweet! No taxes for 34 years!]
Evolution also refers to two things, one is a fact, the other a theory.
Hey, someone gets it!
The idea that life did not suddenly appear fully fledged, but that simpler forms appeared and gradually more complex forms developed from the simple forms is indesputable except by total weirdos.
Er, no. Historical species-genesis evolution is a theory that treads on religious grounds.
However, the idea that this evolution was driven simply by random mutations coupled with natural selection *is* just a theory.
*sigh*.
Evolution is a principle we can observe. We think we even know how it works--this is the "factual" part of evolution, that only blistering morons don't accept. It fits the "Theory of Speaker design" definition.
Extrapolating observed evolution backwards is pure theory--without a time machine, we simply cannot prove that it really happened this way. This is a "Theory" in the same way that the Big Bang is a theory; we don't have any better agnostic/scientific answers, so we go with it.
There would be no debate about the principle of evolution if its proponents didn't insist on coupling it with an extrapolation that needlessly contradicts religion. "Scientific theories on the past" should be taught sepearte from their irrefutable principles; I have yet to hear a good reason why they shouldn't.
I mean, it had a decent plot
No, it didn't. It wasn't a Final Fantasy plot, it wasn't an american plot... and it wasn't even a very good Jappanese plot.
it was bloodthirsty, distopian, anti-establishment, and mundane. Every good FF game I've ever seen has magic and a villian that the heroes actually fight and face down... Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did not.
Now, don't get me wrong--the CG was great, the design of the gagets was great, and the story had a message... but between every character aside from the two non-military folk dying and the utter lack of FF's traditional "different" feel, it just wasn't a good movie.
Great CG. Bad Movie.
I really suspect it flopped only due to the same anti-animation prejudice American audiences have against anime in general. I don't know a single person who said they hated it - But at the same time, I don't know more than two or three people who actually saw it.
The last movie I saw that I hated was "Superstar," and I got dragged to go see that. I'm an anime fan, I saw the movie twice... and while I won't say that I hated the movie, I hate the fact that they wasted the chance they had with a bad script, lousy voice sync, and bad market research.
Making a movie isn't art. Making a scene or playing a character is, but making a movie is a business, just like making an art gallery is.
You just pulled this one out of your arse, didn't you? Or can you back it up somehow? Can you cite any studies? Why do you find it so obvious that healthy children might not become more aggressive by constantly viewing and engaging in virtual violence? You just say that "it's dumb," but for what reason we are never told.
Here's one for you.
Children have been playing at violent activities for generations. For us, it was video games. Before that, cowboys & indians. Before that, it was wooden swords.
While it's certainly *possible* that their violent tendencies will increase, linking a traditional boyhood pastime (violent fantasy life) with an abnormal increase in [violent antisocial]* activitiy is the kind of junk-psychology that created the MPD scare of a few years back, and the possible discussion of BADD's allegations about D&D, and a whole generation that doesn't think they can handle their problems on their own.
A normal child can distinguish between fantasy and reality, and knows that things done in play (like tacking the quarterback) are not the same as things that are done in not-play (like not tackling a police officer.) The study in the article appears to state that a "violent fantasy life" is normal behavior--and normal people doing normal things do not become abnormal.
* = (agressiveness is, AFAIK, a natural assertiveness that isn't necessarilly bad, while violence usually is) activity
I probably miss something about why the 8 years becomes 13,
;)
"because no one's used 64-bit encryption since 1997."
I know it's not common practice now, and I pulled a random number from the Umbra as an example.
My credit card number hasn't changed since I first got it, same thing for my bank account.
Your Credit Card number and bank account number can be found by either a simple mugging or some discreet garbage scavenging--and they can be switched in about a week by any competent financial institution.
The goal is not for it to be secure only now, but also in the future. You may think about other examples involving national security if you prefer.
National security... I think the gov't assumes that if someone gets access to a file, they're going to read that file, and that encryption will only slow them down.
Then again, I think that government does indeed think that it's always acting in the best interest of the country, so what do I know?
Ok... "thousands of computers" and 1700 days. Let's call it 2000 computers putting in full 24 hours days. And let's assume that Moore's Law will remain true...
Cracking RC5-64 took 384,000 computer/hours today. There are 168 hours in a week. So, for one computer to crack RC5-64 in a matter of weeks (less than five) would require a computer about 460 times faster than what we have now; assuming moore's law keeps going, we'll get those in about 13 years (2015).
In five years (48 months), computers will be about 2.6 times as fast powerful as they are now; it'll still take over 147,000 computer-hours to crack the same code; one computer would take 16 years to crack that.
(The same 2000 computers, once upgraded, could replicate their feat in a measly 654 days--still, two years.)
And, of course, this assumes that Moore's Law remains constant, there's no overhead, and distributed.net's brute force test is a good example; it could have gotten lucky, or it could have taken them an unusually short time to find the right code.
For a realisitic cracking scenerio, let's say our cracker has ten computers and wants to crack the code in a week... he'd still have to wait 8 years to be able to do it, and who'd want to bother with 13 year old data for cracking, anyway?
I don't know about your machine, but when I log into my linux boxen, I find very little actual GNU software running.
;)
Considering that a combination of MS Word and general lack of time for the necessary backups and repartitioning have kept me from trying out Linux yet, I cna safely say that I'm running 100% non-GNU software on my box.
The proper place for "GNU" is in the many lists of attributions. The overall "system" name is properly the assembler and the OS name. This machine is properly called "RedHat Linux". Another that I use a lot is properly "FreeBSD" (and it also contains a lot of GNU tools in its libraries).
I agree 100%. Can we program this into a clue-stick and give it to someone to thwack Stallman with?
And a lot of other people took that kernel, added GNU tools into a distribution that would be usable for a lot of folk, and called that Linux.
GNU didn't make the OS. All they did was make a bunch of tools that the guy who wrote the kernel found useful, and a bunch of people who bundled distributions also found useful. And they named most of them "Gnu*", and most of them are acronyms, and they're all GPL'd.
Stallman himself admits that Linux isn't the GNU OS... therefore, he's just trying to steal Linux's thunder since the "real GNU OS" has been so long in coming. (Is it here yet?)
Now that I think about it, if we're going to be nitpicking about "primary contributors," how about the hardware folk? Shouldn't the name of the OS be "GNU/Linux-x86" or something?
Heck, what exactly is "GNU/Linux?" Does he mean the family of OSes distrubted by RedHat, Suse, and anyone who wants to bundle a Linux kernal with some apps? What about no-GNU distributions? Are they a different catagory?
I don't agree that FSF agenda is in any way either irrational or trivial
Neither do I. But it is poorly understood, and ran by people who have somehow managed to get a repuation for not knowiwng how to get their agenda across.
The FSF needs less coders and more politicians, oddly enough. Engineers and idealism aren't a natural, or easy, mix.
The FSF is only asking that it be called by it's proper name.
The FSF made GNU tools, AND the GPL, and if they wanted any say in the "proper name" of what someone else has when they take GNU tools and components and makes something, they should have written it into the GPL.
If the FSF wanted to have this "proper name," they should have supported Linus in the early days and asked for the nomenclature from the get-go. Them trying to instigate a change of the popular name for the OS family after the fact is a boldfaced attempt to ride the shorttails of Linux's popularity.
If they want "GNU/Linux", they should make a "pure GNU" distribution of Linux.
everyone who doesn't call the operating system by it's correct name is
Come again?
There are two viable ways to describe operating system, Stallman's "usable computer" argument aside. (By his measurement, Windows isn't an OS until you install office, and probably Visual Studio...)
1: The kernel - just what is needed to control the hardware and run middleware + apps. DOS is an OS, Windows is an OS + explorer.
2: Everything needed to get to the basic user experience - Linux + KDE, or windows.
Now, if we use the first definition, then the issue is clear--it's Linux, 'cause that's what Linux & co want it called.
If we use the second definition, neither Linus nor GNU have final say--the distributors (bundlers? Drat, forgot the name) are. The OSes are "Red Hat Linux" or "SuSe Linux" or "Lindows", which can all be referred to as "Linux OSes" because of the claimed common base.
While it's a good thing to make sure credit is given to GNU software by asking people to use the right nam
Credit is given. AFAIK, no one has renamed GNU tools something else. Gnome is Gnome. Gnucash is Gnucash.
simply not understanding what the advantage of free software is
The benefits of free software are simple: It's low to no cost, and you can do what you want with it.
The benefits of the FSF agenda, on the other hand, are not so clear. Wasting time on trival things like renaming Linux ensures that they remain that way.
I have not ever given money to the FSF, and I suspect that I never will.
The same bill of rights that allows their crazy cult to exist is the same one that allows me to make fun of them.
IANAL--and it's clear that neither are you.
The Cult of Scientology is a private organization, and can censor whomever they want. They can exert copyright law and quasi-appropriate legal tactics to silence their oppponents--and the Bill of Rights can't touch them.
Chalk this one up as a fault of the first amendment, and whenever you think that the bill of rights is infallible and perfect, remember that it allows scientology to do this, and ties the hands of the only organization that's in a position to squash them for it--the Federal Government.
It's one thign to believe in an all powerful deity that created the universe.
It's another thing to believe in a book that some guy wrote, because some other guy bet that he couldn't create a religeon.[sic]
It doesn't matter where the religion came from--it's a religion, at least until you get to OT 8 or wherever. I could found the "cult of Doug" right now, and if I get enough followers and the darn thing carries on after I'm gone, and it doesn't disrupt everyone's life who joins it, then it's a religion.
Doesn't anyone have balls anymore?
The Scientologists apparantly do. Xenu.net does. The DOJ, ever since Bush got in office, seems to have lost theris.
(nitpick: It's "God" and "Him." Proper english grammar is to alwyas capitalize a name or pronoun used to refer to the Allmighty.)
I highly doubt that God really hates those 3:12 a.m. sites. But the simple embarassment of having to answer for going to those is a great check on the hypocricy that is otherwise prevalent in my religion.
To wit: Both Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrish were Christians.
In short... Mozilla needs some marketing oriented types instead of more nerds. For example, it needs help making Chatzilla work for people like my gf who can use AIM but get confused when chatzilla doesn't find a server and complains.
No, it doesn't. That's what Netscape is for--Mozilla for non-nerds, with branding and hand-holding and chat programs that are better than IRC.