Windows 95 is over 7 years old in most jurisdictions you would no longer need to keep the receipts for the tax man. So all I have to say is GET REAL.
One of the things about buying commercial software is that you know that the BSA may ask for an audit. It's horrible, it's nasty but by purchasing commercial software you understand that it might happen.
If you still run Windows 95, you still should keep the licences for it. Whether it's 1 year or 7 years old. Period.
Office equipment is different. You keep it for the lifetime of the warrenty and guarantee and then it doesn't matter whether you have the receipt or not. Office equipment cannot be copied or downloaded from the internet, it is a tangible item.
Software is not, and as long as you purchase it, you have to accept that the BSA can (and will) chase you up for proof that you obtained it legally.
This is where free software has it's advantages. No cost, no BSA and no requirement to keep licences.
In that case, since you're an expert as to what organizations do, I'm sure that you have proof of purchase for every piece of office furniture that you have in your office, don't you?
Yes.
It came in bulk and we have the receipts filed away. If anything goes wrong then we have proof that we purchased it, from who and when. When suppliers try to weasil out of giving you a replacement (and they will try) they often find that they can't argue much when you have the receipts in front of you.
They represent corporate greed, they 'blackmail' companies into paying for huge site licenses to cover all the workstations and then some, or face a 'software audit' in which they'll no doubt find some violations.
Harsh. If you purchase a product then the very least you should do is purchase the correct number of licences. This is the nature of commercial software after all.
Have a 100 machine site license and a hundred machines, but just bought that new desktop for the boss? Lost the paperwork for the server in the corner?
Then you're one hundred percent in the wrong. When you're an organisation you should be keeping detailed records (after all you probably do when it concerns money owed to you).
You can't use lazyness and sloppyness as an excuse for violating a licence. Whatever that licence is.
If someone used that excuse as a reason for violating the GPL, I doubt it would wash - so why do you think it should the other way?
Ignoring the first part, it doesn't look sweet at all. Lets just ignore all the specs and just look at the thing.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm going to fork out over 300 UKP for a product, I damn well want it to actually look like it's worth that amount.
The Treo 15 looks like it was made by Fisher Price. Quite frankly it looks revolting.
The Odyssey 100 looks like a iPod. Well sort of. Horrific pink lettering, four buttons and what looks like some sort of jog dial in the middle. Also it looks like it's made from cheap plastic.
I'm sorry that's not an iPod competitor. As someone else put it, it's a cheap knock-off from a company that can't design a good looking product to save their life.
That's sad, why couldn't they use C, C++ or even Java for such projects
Because for mission critical applications the US Department of Defence consider C, C++ and Java to suck.
See here for a brief history about why the US Department of Defence found that they were using 450 odd languages and needed to standardise on one common one that did everything right.
They produced a specification of what the language should do and found that nothing out there did what was required well enough. So a competition was born and ADA was the language that won it.
Well ignoring the first part, lets get some perspective on this:
The OQO is:
0.1" higher than the 10 gig iPod
0.5" wider than the 10 gig iPod
0.06" thicker than the 10 gig iPod
A little thick? Christ, you have a 256 meg product with a 10 gig HD running up to 1 gigahertz and you're a little worried about it being a paltry 0.15cm wider than an iPod!!??
My only concern is the battery life? What do you reckon? 45 minutes tops?
I admit I know very little about film projection technology, but it took him 6 years to double the speed of a projector and camera???
I mean, it's a nice idea and simple and it's been known that more frames = better quality for years. It's not like he had to sit around and actually think a lot about how to make the quality better, just the way of doing it. 50% of his work was already done for him!
Would it have been SOOOOO hard to build in a Vorbis decoder from xiph.org's BSD-licensed reference decorder?
You forgot to add "for the 150 people who read slashdot that actually use it?":)
But seriously. When you have a deadline and it costs to implement things you often one of those horrible things called a "cost/benifit analysis".
I'm willing to bet that for all the cost in time and effort it would take to impelement it, they probably couldn't see why there would be any decent return.
I hate to be a cynic but outside slashdot very very few people have actually heard of Ogg Vobis, let alone care.
Don't believe me? Go sample 20 random people in the street. You'll be lucky if you find one person that knows what you're talking about. But well over three quarters of them will have heard of mp3.
No no no. When you hit the drop button, the piece should immediately drop straight down and land on the pile. You hit it when you've got your piece lined up and then you go right on to the next piece.
No no no. Talking to my mate (who lives, breathes codes and design computer games) the block should move faster when you hit down. In addition for every frame in which it moves at a faster speed, the player gets extra points. That way, you achieve a bonus for playing faster than the current level speed.
One thing really bugged me about Tetris clones. That is, many people seem to think that when you hit "down" the piece should just vanish and appear at the bottom of screen.
Some enlightened souls used to add a bit of functionality so that you could see where that piece would appear when you hit "down".
Which irked me even more. You've written a version of Tetis, you haven't got the control method right (when you hit down, the movement should speed up) and then you code additional functionality to help people deal with your incorrect implementation!
Second, cutting and pasting has never been a problem in the X environment with *any piece of software* but KDE 1 and 2. There have been established standards for cut-and-paste interoperability for X some time (Athena era, at least).
I find that sometimes I have to use Ctrl-C/V and other times I have to hilight and middle click. It can be a little annoying at times.
I *much* prefer to know if my filesystem might be totally trashed in a minute than to just have it happen because a system blindly started guessing what to do.
Well, maybe you're more l33t than me, but when it asks me if I want to fix inode xxx my questions often are:
What is referenced by this inode?
Why does it need to be fixed?
What will happen if it isn't fixed?
Looking at a bunch of inode numbers and having to go through and say Y/N to them is, for me, pointless.
It's like a car mechanic coming to you and saying "your car is broken, shall I fix area 7 of the car?" without offering (or allowing you to ask) anything about what area 7 is, whats broken with it and what will happen if you don't fix it. In the end, you shrug your shoulders and say "well, I guess so".
Bad analogy i know - but it's the best i can come up with.
I'm aware of this, but the username in question was "ibtagmrq" which to me doesn't look susceptible to dictionary attack
It was set up purely in the interests to see how quickly it would receive spam if every option was off. I picked random letters and not someones name so if spammers were using a list of popular names and generating random hotmail addresses they wouldn't be likely to catch it.
The letters actually stand for "I Bet This Account Gets Mailed Real Quick":)
In other words, i was looking for something so close to being completely impossible to just guess.
It took 4 weeks before the spam started. Although to be honest, it's dead now as I haven't logged in for over 6 months.
I've found that Spam Assassin has made life easier, but I still have to ban domains like yahoo.com, hotmail.com, mail.com - and *.ru and *.cn. I sort through the spam periodically, but the collateral damage is still there.
I see that sending the boys round to Hemo's house for a good beating with the procmail man page worked.
Right... one down... anyone know Taco's home address?
To be honest i'm not interested in anything that plays digital music by Sony. Why? Because they don't have their heart in it.
Take the Minidisc. Beautful piece of kit. Small, light, long battery life, very cheap digital media, feature packed. Lovely. Ideal for sticking your MP3's on there. LP2 compression and two albums (22 odd tracks for 3 UKP). Pretty good going.
But nooooo. Sony come up with a one way device, with flakey software that requires you to check in and check out your songs. That is, they place restrictions on the music that YOU own. Once the music is on the minidisc, you can't do anything with it, but check it back out again (yep, the MD won't let you delete it).
Oh yes, and you have to convert it to Sony's music format (ATRAC) - so now you have two music formats floating about on your HD.
So, in short, what could have been a pretty damn good MP3 app, gets absolutely shafted and restricted up to the hilt because on one hand Sony wants to capitalise on the MP3 boon but on the other wants to kill it dead and replace it with something more controlling.
The only thing you can't really upgrade is your motherboard. Processor upgrades, memory, video cards, hard drives, sound cards... all of these are readily available for Macs, most of them the same pieces of hardware you'd put in your PC. I have two main desktop computers at home - a dual Athlon box running RedHat Linux 7.3 and a dual 800MHz PowerMac running MacOS X 10.1.5. Both of them use standard memory, standard video cards, standard hard drives. The price you pay for the "PC" version is the exact same price you would pay for a "Mac" version. Why? They're the same hardware.
Okay, I admit now I know very little about Mac's and their hardware. But, given as you said that, they use standard video cards, hard drives etc. how feasible is it to crowbar OSX onto your standard Wintel box?
Since it's not been done I assume there is a real problem somewhere down the line, but i don't really know what it is.
Humour me, if you were going to try and build your own computer with OSX on it, what would you use and how far could you get?
I think most of us who want to support these projects are more willing to just simply send them some money than to run an ad screensaver.
Ignoring the problems that have already been pointed out, this has an advantage over direct contributions. That is, the users don't have to part with their cash.
Although there are people who will donate money for something, they are the small minority. If you can find a way to allow users to help fund a project they like without getting them to part with money - then you're more likely to get a better take up.
If i've paid for the bandwidth, why am I not allowed to shove it over WiFi and have a few mates use it? What is the difference between that and a Linux box running IP Masquerading hooked up to a home network?
Unless they are charging people for using the bandwidth (ie. reselling it) then once they've purchased the bandwidth then they're pretty much free to use it how like like.
(unless the terms and conditions they signed in the first place expressly disallow this)
2. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and place a cap of some sort on their monthly transfers or bandwidth.
I'm surprised there isn't a default monthly cap at the moment. It could be set to something very high that would cause a problem for only a select few people but would easily knock out WiFi sharers.
Mind you, if they advertise unlimited bandwidth then this is going to be a problem. I do however see the side of the network company who offer bandwidth only to find that they lose a number of customers simply because one person is sharing out his.
Microsoft has always offered an option for people to store their credit card information on Passport, but only 14 percent of Passport users did, because they didn't feel the system was secure enough, Litan said.
I think you'll also find that a lot of people didn't store their credit card details because they saw no need for the system to have it. I've lost count of the number of places i've signed up and they want some personal details that they definately do not need.
You don't just go hand out your credit card number to anyone who asks for it. Well I don't anyway.
Subnote: Having said that, porn sites don't seem to have any problem with people giving their credit card details over for a "free" trial. Mind you, then they start getting billed for it and can't get it stopped. So maybe there are mugs out there.
leave it going overnight, and delete the 80 crappy ones and keep that one 256VBR ot 192 bitrate mp3 that was encoded propery and with a good encoder.
Well I suppose it's better, but it's hardly good.
Especially if you have bandwidth limits and you don't want to go crashing over them. I don't find the notion of wasting 320 meg to find one decent 4 meg MP3 particulary appealing.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the things about buying commercial software is that you know that the BSA may ask for an audit. It's horrible, it's nasty but by purchasing commercial software you understand that it might happen.
If you still run Windows 95, you still should keep the licences for it. Whether it's 1 year or 7 years old. Period.
Office equipment is different. You keep it for the lifetime of the warrenty and guarantee and then it doesn't matter whether you have the receipt or not. Office equipment cannot be copied or downloaded from the internet, it is a tangible item.
Software is not, and as long as you purchase it, you have to accept that the BSA can (and will) chase you up for proof that you obtained it legally.
This is where free software has it's advantages. No cost, no BSA and no requirement to keep licences.
Yes.
It came in bulk and we have the receipts filed away. If anything goes wrong then we have proof that we purchased it, from who and when. When suppliers try to weasil out of giving you a replacement (and they will try) they often find that they can't argue much when you have the receipts in front of you.
Next question?
Harsh. If you purchase a product then the very least you should do is purchase the correct number of licences. This is the nature of commercial software after all.
Have a 100 machine site license and a hundred machines, but just bought that new desktop for the boss? Lost the paperwork for the server in the corner?
Then you're one hundred percent in the wrong. When you're an organisation you should be keeping detailed records (after all you probably do when it concerns money owed to you).
You can't use lazyness and sloppyness as an excuse for violating a licence. Whatever that licence is.
If someone used that excuse as a reason for violating the GPL, I doubt it would wash - so why do you think it should the other way?
I look forward to Bill Gates parachuting into the UK and depositing a ... ahem ... small donation to help us sort out the mess that is our railways!
Ignoring the first part, it doesn't look sweet at all. Lets just ignore all the specs and just look at the thing.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm going to fork out over 300 UKP for a product, I damn well want it to actually look like it's worth that amount.
The Treo 15 looks like it was made by Fisher Price. Quite frankly it looks revolting.
The Odyssey 100 looks like a iPod. Well sort of. Horrific pink lettering, four buttons and what looks like some sort of jog dial in the middle. Also it looks like it's made from cheap plastic.
I'm sorry that's not an iPod competitor. As someone else put it, it's a cheap knock-off from a company that can't design a good looking product to save their life.
Because for mission critical applications the US Department of Defence consider C, C++ and Java to suck.
See here for a brief history about why the US Department of Defence found that they were using 450 odd languages and needed to standardise on one common one that did everything right.
They produced a specification of what the language should do and found that nothing out there did what was required well enough. So a competition was born and ADA was the language that won it.
Well ignoring the first part, lets get some perspective on this:
The OQO is:
- 0.1" higher than the 10 gig iPod
- 0.5" wider than the 10 gig iPod
- 0.06" thicker than the 10 gig iPod
A little thick ? Christ, you have a 256 meg product with a 10 gig HD running up to 1 gigahertz and you're a little worried about it being a paltry 0.15cm wider than an iPod!!??My only concern is the battery life? What do you reckon? 45 minutes tops?
And of course the insane price this will be.
--------> Michael Copps
I win!
I mean, it's a nice idea and simple and it's been known that more frames = better quality for years. It's not like he had to sit around and actually think a lot about how to make the quality better, just the way of doing it. 50% of his work was already done for him!
Neat. Ummm, at the risk of sounding stupid, what is a 6-to-4 pin cable?
It's just a pity that my major source of bandwidth is at work and they'd never ever let me open up my machine to stick in a firewire card :(
You forgot to add "for the 150 people who read slashdot that actually use it?" :)
But seriously. When you have a deadline and it costs to implement things you often one of those horrible things called a "cost/benifit analysis".
I'm willing to bet that for all the cost in time and effort it would take to impelement it, they probably couldn't see why there would be any decent return.
I hate to be a cynic but outside slashdot very very few people have actually heard of Ogg Vobis, let alone care.
Don't believe me? Go sample 20 random people in the street. You'll be lucky if you find one person that knows what you're talking about. But well over three quarters of them will have heard of mp3.
No no no. Talking to my mate (who lives, breathes codes and design computer games) the block should move faster when you hit down. In addition for every frame in which it moves at a faster speed, the player gets extra points. That way, you achieve a bonus for playing faster than the current level speed.
and that's how God himself intended it
Maybe, but he was obviously ignored :)
Some enlightened souls used to add a bit of functionality so that you could see where that piece would appear when you hit "down".
Which irked me even more. You've written a version of Tetis, you haven't got the control method right (when you hit down, the movement should speed up) and then you code additional functionality to help people deal with your incorrect implementation!
Worst offenders for this was nearly every version of Tetris for the Palm Pilot.
However after playing nearly all of them, I thankfully come across one that does it properly. Definately worth it.
I find that sometimes I have to use Ctrl-C/V and other times I have to hilight and middle click. It can be a little annoying at times.
I *much* prefer to know if my filesystem might be totally trashed in a minute than to just have it happen because a system blindly started guessing what to do.
Well, maybe you're more l33t than me, but when it asks me if I want to fix inode xxx my questions often are:
- What is referenced by this inode?
- Why does it need to be fixed?
- What will happen if it isn't fixed?
Looking at a bunch of inode numbers and having to go through and say Y/N to them is, for me, pointless.It's like a car mechanic coming to you and saying "your car is broken, shall I fix area 7 of the car?" without offering (or allowing you to ask) anything about what area 7 is, whats broken with it and what will happen if you don't fix it. In the end, you shrug your shoulders and say "well, I guess so".
Bad analogy i know - but it's the best i can come up with.
It was set up purely in the interests to see how quickly it would receive spam if every option was off. I picked random letters and not someones name so if spammers were using a list of popular names and generating random hotmail addresses they wouldn't be likely to catch it.
The letters actually stand for "I Bet This Account Gets Mailed Real Quick" :)
In other words, i was looking for something so close to being completely impossible to just guess.
It took 4 weeks before the spam started. Although to be honest, it's dead now as I haven't logged in for over 6 months.
Is there a page out there that details which websites sell your email addresses? It would be rather useful.
Personally I nominate hotmail.com - unless you're telling me that ibtagmrq@hotmail.com is a popular name.
I see that sending the boys round to Hemo's house for a good beating with the procmail man page worked.
Right ... one down ... anyone know Taco's home address?
Take the Minidisc. Beautful piece of kit. Small, light, long battery life, very cheap digital media, feature packed. Lovely. Ideal for sticking your MP3's on there. LP2 compression and two albums (22 odd tracks for 3 UKP). Pretty good going.
But nooooo. Sony come up with a one way device, with flakey software that requires you to check in and check out your songs. That is, they place restrictions on the music that YOU own. Once the music is on the minidisc, you can't do anything with it, but check it back out again (yep, the MD won't let you delete it).
Oh yes, and you have to convert it to Sony's music format (ATRAC) - so now you have two music formats floating about on your HD.
So, in short, what could have been a pretty damn good MP3 app, gets absolutely shafted and restricted up to the hilt because on one hand Sony wants to capitalise on the MP3 boon but on the other wants to kill it dead and replace it with something more controlling.
Okay, I admit now I know very little about Mac's and their hardware. But, given as you said that, they use standard video cards, hard drives etc. how feasible is it to crowbar OSX onto your standard Wintel box?
Since it's not been done I assume there is a real problem somewhere down the line, but i don't really know what it is.
Humour me, if you were going to try and build your own computer with OSX on it, what would you use and how far could you get?
You obviously missed my comment one paragraph later in your haste to hit "Reply" :o)
To quote: (unless the terms and conditions they signed in the first place expressly disallow this)
So, yes, I agree with you :o)
Ignoring the problems that have already been pointed out, this has an advantage over direct contributions. That is, the users don't have to part with their cash.
Although there are people who will donate money for something, they are the small minority. If you can find a way to allow users to help fund a project they like without getting them to part with money - then you're more likely to get a better take up.
If i've paid for the bandwidth, why am I not allowed to shove it over WiFi and have a few mates use it? What is the difference between that and a Linux box running IP Masquerading hooked up to a home network?
Unless they are charging people for using the bandwidth (ie. reselling it) then once they've purchased the bandwidth then they're pretty much free to use it how like like.
(unless the terms and conditions they signed in the first place expressly disallow this)
2. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and place a cap of some sort on their monthly transfers or bandwidth.
I'm surprised there isn't a default monthly cap at the moment. It could be set to something very high that would cause a problem for only a select few people but would easily knock out WiFi sharers.
Mind you, if they advertise unlimited bandwidth then this is going to be a problem. I do however see the side of the network company who offer bandwidth only to find that they lose a number of customers simply because one person is sharing out his.
I think you'll also find that a lot of people didn't store their credit card details because they saw no need for the system to have it. I've lost count of the number of places i've signed up and they want some personal details that they definately do not need.
You don't just go hand out your credit card number to anyone who asks for it. Well I don't anyway.
Subnote: Having said that, porn sites don't seem to have any problem with people giving their credit card details over for a "free" trial. Mind you, then they start getting billed for it and can't get it stopped. So maybe there are mugs out there.
George isn't exactly good at doing dark himself you know.
It's acknowledged by a large number of people that the darkest episode of Star Wars is V (The Empire Strikes Back).
Which was directed by Irvin Kershner.
Well I suppose it's better, but it's hardly good.
Especially if you have bandwidth limits and you don't want to go crashing over them. I don't find the notion of wasting 320 meg to find one decent 4 meg MP3 particulary appealing.