Perhaps his neighbors are cheap bastards. Or worse (and probably more likely) -- the cable company is a bastard and won't put a shared line out for everybody. Extortion at its best.:)
Getting back on topic, I don't suppose your telco will put a CO out near your place (If it's Bell Atl^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HVerizon, you might be able to get one depending on your skills at bitching.)
Someone mentioned satellite -- if I'm not mistaken, aren't one of those mini-dish companies (DirecTV, Dish Network, or whoever) starting to offer access?
How about a writing Perl-obfuscator in obfucsated perl? Then, just crank your code through enough times that even you can't recognize it, and submit!
Would the obfuscator have to produce code that produces the same output as the original?
Note that I'm not putting down obfuscation in any way. I have been known to use several hundred #define macros and quite a few heavily nested ?(?:):(?:) constructs in my old C projects.
I'm the last person to want to side with the record companies, but i gotta admit... anything that keeps George Michael from making albums can't be all bad.
True, but consider the alternative: when he didn't make albums - he jerked off in a public toilet...
Besides, 35 years from now -- who'll still be listening to Christina Aguilera or 'N Sync?
Until recently (relatively speaking), slavery was right - does that mean that it's wrong to say that slavery is wrong?
Depends on when/where you're speaking. Charleston, SC, circa 1800, it might be. Thebes, Egypt, circa 2000BCE, it'd probably get you executed.
We have systems that prevent abuses of the market - Microsoft, for instance. Our judicial system decides on these.
Problem: The judicial system is way slower than the advance of technology, and a damn sight slower than the methods to circumvent it.
In the meantime, that which can be sold, will be sold - it's simply an extended bartering. It fosters intellectual growth, and encourages new product development. Ultamitely, people will buy what people want; and the corporations will make what the people want.
And if the corporations don't make what the people want; or, they make what people want but of poor quality? And if said corporations destroy the other corporations that *do* make what the people want?
Ah, yes, our justice system jumps in. See above commentary.
If journalism is what the people want, the corporations will make that. And note the plural - because of that, we can have several voices in the marketplace.
Not if the loudest voice keeps his mouth going and clamps the mouths of the other voices.
Indeed, this is the dream of the early Free Market pioneers.
True, but we're still a damn sight away from that. This all can be traced back to the late 19th century, when the governmental sport of the era was Trustbusting.
Lemme sum up academia's focus over the last, say, 5000 years.
In times of war, research was focused on better methods of killing other people. Examples: catapults, chariots, longbows, swords, muskets, rifles, cannons, howitzers, frigates, submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers, tanks, missiles, fighter planes, SDI. (Is it me, or does that slightly resemble the pattern of weaponry in CivII?:)
In times of peace, research was focused on better methods of making money. Examples: barter, gold & silver mining, banks, stock, corruption, tax evasion, playing professional sports.
From an Anonymous Coward who blatantly destroyed my post:
I first used Windows '95 at my job in 1995 and thought..."Man, why does this look a lot like a perverted cross between MacOS and NeXTStep?" Then I realised that it was actually sitting on MS-DOS. What a concept - an ugly unusable GUI with a broken command line shell! And it could only read DOS floppies! It had a slow i80486, no onboard sound, and no DSP, so it had the best bits of PC hardware without actually running a real OS (oops, flamebait). And it had no on-board SCSI, so I couldn't connect much of anything to it. I actually tried to read some UFS disks in it, but ended up having to format the hard disk twice and reinstall Windows each time.
I hated those machines.
The DOJ liquidated Microsoft this year (our European friends have been laughing at us all along). I bought a new P3 with W2K for US $2500 anyway. It still crashes regularly whenever I feel like breaking away from the few things the evil OS company assumed I might want to do. DEATH TO MICROSOFT!
(with apologies to the original poster and just about anyone else:)
No apologies necessary. Anonymous Coward, I hold my beer up on high for you.
...If I'm allowed to de-encrypt DVD's to play them on my computer, then I should be allowed to de-compile software to port it to other operating systems, right? I should be allowed to distribute this de-compiler at large so that people can run their software under unintended operating systems? I don't hardly think so.
Do you have such a de-compiler? De-compiling is rather difficult (if not damn-near impossible) and the resultant code might not compile elsewhere, assuming a different platform/compiler.
Your analogy for porting to other OS's doesn't hold here anyway; the main issue here is Fair Use. Porting usually doesn't fit in that category. What would fit under Fair Use, for example, is using the de-compiler to show a CS class how compilers work. What would be illegal would be to use the decompiler to distribute code for copyrighted software.
The same applies to DVD's: it'd be illegal (piracy) to use DeCSS to decrypt VOB files and stick them on gnutella. It's fine (Fair Use) to use DeCSS to decrypt a VOB file, take a clip from a movie and show it to an acting class to demonstrate acting techniques.
The other issue I brought up elsewhere in this discussion is the regional encoding -- a Brit has a DVD encoded in the European Region and wants to use a snippet in a presentation he's giving in the US. He goes to put it into a US DVD player -- DENIED. Another violation of Fair Use, amongst other trade agreements.
I believe they did -- but my question was whether *only* the Supreme Court can declare a law unconstitutional, or can a federal judge (or circuit court of appeals judge, for that matter) can also declare laws unconstitutional. I fell asleep during 9th grade civics class at that time.:)
IANAL, but it seems that (indirectly) the EFF is also arguing against regional encoding, in addition to everything ELSE they cover. In essence, if you buy this disc, you should be able to watch it everywhere you'd could possibly desire to. This rocks.:)
They should, but methinks it'd have to be appealed all the way to the World Court -- regional encoding is a violation of the world trade laws (don't ask me which ones). Anyone well-versed in international trade law please clarify.
Better yet, Gate$ should be sued for knowingly integrating VBScript in Outlook, as it could (and obviously has) lead to virus propagation and the loss of trillions* (why lose trillions when you could lose--BILLIONS?:) of dollars by companies whose servers and workstations were crashed.
<cynicism=on>
Of course, when individuals and small companies whine about losing money because of a large corporation's f**kup, nothing happens.
When a big honkin' group (e.g. RIAA, MPAA) whines about possibly losing money because of a little program that subverts a monopolization technique, the consumer gets the shaft.
</cynicism>
*-blatant exaggeration, but if the MPAA/RIAA can do it, why can't I?:)
Take a look at the FreeBSD Ports Collection under "games". Here's a link. Sure, most of them suck. Deal with it.
Most geeks are too busy writing scripts'an'programs'an'config files'an'nat to do *real* work rather than write games. I haven't seen too many games written by DMR, Eric Allman, Kirk McKusick, RMS*, et. al.
At the most the average geek has an xpilot or freeciv session running.
If I wanted to play games, I'd buy a Dreamcast and put it in my cubicle. And even then, I'd be too busy trying to help port NetBSD to it.:)
Isn't progress great, its spammers like this that kill off things like Usenet and now Gnuetella. Mark my words, this program will do more damage to Gnutella than the RIAA could ever hope to.
<conspiracy mode=on>
My God, you've hit on it -- RIAA are trying to destroy gnutella through spam! If they can't sue it, they subvert it.
</conspiracy>
I believe I've already seen something of this nature in gnutella - getting the search-string and reporting a file "[string].mp3.vbs".
Hopefully nobody on gnutella is stupid enough to download an unknown vbs script.:)
Sorry, but photovoltaics are worse for the environment than almost all the conceivable alternatives. First of all, the large scale production of them would seriously contaminate the environment.
I agree on the basis that large-scale deployment of photo-voltaics is expensive and land-consuming. Photovoltaics are best used in smaller devices, IMHO. Scroll up to my previous post in this article about using them in laptops/PDAs.
However, that doesn't completely rule out solar power as a means of large-scale (the buzzword in this post) energy production. Use the old parabolic-mirror-setup to reflect/focus sunlight onto a water pipe and use the traditional steam turbine method. It's been done before (with major problems, of course, with the mirrors.)
There are probably other methods of collecting solar energy that nobody has thought of as yet. But that doesn't mean the focus should remain solely on a star ~93 million miles off. (e.g. Iceland can't be the only place around with potential for Geothermic power, right?)
Better yet, maybe I can power a Palm with 4 hamster wheels. THE FUTURE IS IN SMALL RODENT POWER!
Excuse me, I have to go beat off several PETA stormtroopers.:)
I first used a NeXT my freshman year at tiny Westminster College (New Wilmington, PA) in 1996 and thought..."Man, why does this look a lot like a perverted cross between MacOS and Win95?" Then I realized that they were actually sitting on Mach. What a concept - a pleasing GUI with a break-out to a real command line & shell! And it could read/write from both MAC & DOS floppies! It had a MC68040, onboard sound, and a MC56000 DSP port, so it had the best bits of MAC hardware without actually running MacOS (oops, flamebait). And it had on-board SCSI, so I could connect my ZIP drive to it! I actually formatted two ZIP disks for under the NeXT filesystem, which I believe was actually 4.3BSD's UFS.
I loved those machines.
WC liquidated the NeXTs last year (our European friends are laughing at our college's initials, I guess.:) I bought a slab/monitor/keyboard/mouse/laser printer combo for US$25. It still runs NeXTStep 3.3 in my bedroom whenever I feel like breaking away from the evil OS. LONG LIVE NEXT!
Why don't we environmentally-minded consumers just stop buying polluting products like cars and aerosol sprays?
I drive an '87 Chevy Nova (I can hear our Spanish-speaking friends laughing) that still gets ~40 MPG on the highway. Fuel-efficient, low-emission, and still runs nicely. And I don't wear hairspray.
But I digress.
Solar-powered laptops/PDA's could be the rage pretty soon. I figure once you've removed the biggest power-hogs from them, you could run them on very little power:
Use a low-voltage proc.
Lose the hard drive - use ethernet/modem for drive access via NFS or whatever.
Lose the fan - Once the hard drive is gone, all that's left that creates heat is the processor and maybe a few controllers, which pro'lly wouldn't be in a PDA anyway.
Lose M$ Windoze - What else sucks power harder than Monica Lewinsky?:)
Figure out a way to put your favorite Linux/BSD on it and give your beloved geek a reason to go outside!
Aw yeah. That'll be one sweet calculator. If I combine this and my fashionable pocket protectors, I'll be the perfect chick repellant.
Actually, I found back in high school that Casios actually bring in the chicks. Not that they wanted anything to do with me -- they just wanted to play Blackjack on my CFX-9800.
They all forgot about me quickly after I ported it to the TI-81/82.:(
Meanwhile, the guys with HP's were writing music, playing Minesweeper, and proclaiming FIFO as their god. And 2 out of 3 of them got decent looking chicks.
No, after 5½ years, I'm not bitter....no, really....
Hmm...small OS's on small boxen? Again?
on
Linux In A Box
·
· Score: 1
Doesn't this kinda resemble PicoBSD a little bit? You all remember - a lightweight FreeBSD-3.0 kernel & tiny compressed MFS filesystem & drivers for several ethernet cards & slip/ppp* & routed* on a floppy? Am I going to be given a (0, flamebait) for this post?:)
*-depends on what version you downloaded.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps his neighbors are cheap bastards. Or worse (and probably more likely) -- the cable company is a bastard and won't put a shared line out for everybody. Extortion at its best. :)
Getting back on topic, I don't suppose your telco will put a CO out near your place (If it's Bell Atl^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HVerizon, you might be able to get one depending on your skills at bitching.)
Someone mentioned satellite -- if I'm not mistaken, aren't one of those mini-dish companies (DirecTV, Dish Network, or whoever) starting to offer access?
Note to self: Perl jokes open up a big-ass can of worms on /.
How about a writing Perl-obfuscator in obfucsated perl? Then, just crank your code through enough times that even you can't recognize it, and submit!
Would the obfuscator have to produce code that produces the same output as the original?
Note that I'm not putting down obfuscation in any way. I have been known to use several hundred #define macros and quite a few heavily nested ?(?:):(?:) constructs in my old C projects.
How are you able to tell the difference between Obfuscated & Un-Obfuscated Perl? :)
Make your bets now: Will this post be Funny or Flamebait?
I'm the last person to want to side with the record companies, but i gotta admit... anything that keeps George Michael from making albums can't be all bad.
True, but consider the alternative: when he didn't make albums - he jerked off in a public toilet...
Besides, 35 years from now -- who'll still be listening to Christina Aguilera or 'N Sync?
Depends on when/where you're speaking. Charleston, SC, circa 1800, it might be. Thebes, Egypt, circa 2000BCE, it'd probably get you executed.
We have systems that prevent abuses of the market - Microsoft, for instance. Our judicial system decides on these.
Problem: The judicial system is way slower than the advance of technology, and a damn sight slower than the methods to circumvent it.
In the meantime, that which can be sold, will be sold - it's simply an extended bartering. It fosters intellectual growth, and encourages new product development. Ultamitely, people will buy what people want; and the corporations will make what the people want.
And if the corporations don't make what the people want; or, they make what people want but of poor quality? And if said corporations destroy the other corporations that *do* make what the people want?
Ah, yes, our justice system jumps in. See above commentary.
If journalism is what the people want, the corporations will make that. And note the plural - because of that, we can have several voices in the marketplace.
Not if the loudest voice keeps his mouth going and clamps the mouths of the other voices.
Indeed, this is the dream of the early Free Market pioneers.
True, but we're still a damn sight away from that. This all can be traced back to the late 19th century, when the governmental sport of the era was Trustbusting.
Lemme sum up academia's focus over the last, say, 5000 years.
<sarcasm>
</sarcasm>
DNA is the fundamental molecule of Life, it is capable of self-replication. Creating computers with DNA can lead to self-replicating computers !
So what happens when it mutates? It turns into Windows ME.
From an Anonymous Coward who blatantly destroyed my post: :)
I first used Windows '95 at my job in 1995 and thought..."Man, why does this look a lot like a perverted cross between MacOS and NeXTStep?" Then I realised that it was actually sitting on MS-DOS. What a concept - an ugly unusable GUI with a broken command line shell! And it could only read DOS floppies! It had a slow i80486, no onboard sound, and no DSP, so it had the best bits of PC hardware without actually running a real OS (oops, flamebait). And it had no on-board SCSI, so I couldn't connect much of anything to it. I actually tried to read some UFS disks in it, but ended up having to format the hard disk twice and reinstall Windows each time.
I hated those machines.
The DOJ liquidated Microsoft this year (our European friends have been laughing at us all along). I bought a new P3 with W2K for US $2500 anyway. It still crashes regularly whenever I feel like breaking away from the few things the evil OS company assumed I might want to do.
DEATH TO MICROSOFT!
(with apologies to the original poster and just about anyone else
No apologies necessary. Anonymous Coward, I hold my beer up on high for you.
Dammit - I've always hated hex math. :)
C# = 13 pounds (base 10).
Coincidentally, that's how much the documentation weighs. Problem is, it's on 13 pounds of CD-ROMs.
I believe they did -- but my question was whether *only* the Supreme Court can declare a law unconstitutional, or can a federal judge (or circuit court of appeals judge, for that matter) can also declare laws unconstitutional. I fell asleep during 9th grade civics class at that time. :)
IANAL, but it seems that (indirectly) the EFF is also arguing against regional encoding, in addition to everything ELSE they cover. In essence, if you buy this disc, you should be able to watch it everywhere you'd could possibly desire to. This rocks. :)
They should, but methinks it'd have to be appealed all the way to the World Court -- regional encoding is a violation of the world trade laws (don't ask me which ones). Anyone well-versed in international trade law please clarify.
Better yet, Gate$ should be sued for knowingly integrating VBScript in Outlook, as it could (and obviously has) lead to virus propagation and the loss of trillions* (why lose trillions when you could lose--BILLIONS? :) of dollars by companies whose servers and workstations were crashed.
:)
<cynicism=on>
Of course, when individuals and small companies whine about losing money because of a large corporation's f**kup, nothing happens.
When a big honkin' group (e.g. RIAA, MPAA) whines about possibly losing money because of a little program that subverts a monopolization technique, the consumer gets the shaft.
</cynicism>
*-blatant exaggeration, but if the MPAA/RIAA can do it, why can't I?
We could hope it gets appealed to the Supreme Court and the DMCA is declared UNCONSTITUTIONAL. (Or can a federal judge make that ruling?)
Point taken, for now.
There are NO games
- /usr/games
- Take a look at the FreeBSD Ports Collection under "games". Here's a link. Sure, most of them suck. Deal with it.
- Most geeks are too busy writing scripts'an'programs'an'config files'an'nat to do *real* work rather than write games. I haven't seen too many games written by DMR, Eric Allman, Kirk McKusick, RMS*, et. al.
If I wanted to play games, I'd buy a Dreamcast and put it in my cubicle. And even then, I'd be too busy trying to help port NetBSD to it.At the most the average geek has an xpilot or freeciv session running.
*-If you don't think emacs is a game itself
Isn't progress great, its spammers like this that kill off things like Usenet and now Gnuetella. Mark my words, this program will do more damage to Gnutella than the RIAA could ever hope to.
<conspiracy mode=on>
My God, you've hit on it -- RIAA are trying to destroy gnutella through spam! If they can't sue it, they subvert it.
</conspiracy>
I believe I've already seen something of this nature in gnutella - getting the search-string and reporting a file "[string].mp3.vbs". :)
Hopefully nobody on gnutella is stupid enough to download an unknown vbs script.
Sorry, but photovoltaics are worse for the environment than almost all the conceivable alternatives. First of all, the large scale production of them would seriously contaminate the environment.
:)
I agree on the basis that large-scale deployment of photo-voltaics is expensive and land-consuming. Photovoltaics are best used in smaller devices, IMHO. Scroll up to my previous post in this article about using them in laptops/PDAs.
However, that doesn't completely rule out solar power as a means of large-scale (the buzzword in this post) energy production. Use the old parabolic-mirror-setup to reflect/focus sunlight onto a water pipe and use the traditional steam turbine method. It's been done before (with major problems, of course, with the mirrors.)
There are probably other methods of collecting solar energy that nobody has thought of as yet. But that doesn't mean the focus should remain solely on a star ~93 million miles off. (e.g. Iceland can't be the only place around with potential for Geothermic power, right?)
Better yet, maybe I can power a Palm with 4 hamster wheels. THE FUTURE IS IN SMALL RODENT POWER!
Excuse me, I have to go beat off several PETA stormtroopers.
Apple has a case of Litigation Envy.
It sees Bill Gate$ throwing lawsuits around like whiskey bottles in the bleachers at Wrigley Field; thus making Apple feel somehow...flaccid.
I first used a NeXT my freshman year at tiny Westminster College (New Wilmington, PA) in 1996 and thought..."Man, why does this look a lot like a perverted cross between MacOS and Win95?" Then I realized that they were actually sitting on Mach. What a concept - a pleasing GUI with a break-out to a real command line & shell! And it could read/write from both MAC & DOS floppies! It had a MC68040, onboard sound, and a MC56000 DSP port, so it had the best bits of MAC hardware without actually running MacOS (oops, flamebait). And it had on-board SCSI, so I could connect my ZIP drive to it! I actually formatted two ZIP disks for under the NeXT filesystem, which I believe was actually 4.3BSD's UFS. :) I bought a slab/monitor/keyboard/mouse/laser printer combo for US$25. It still runs NeXTStep 3.3 in my bedroom whenever I feel like breaking away from the evil OS.
I loved those machines.
WC liquidated the NeXTs last year (our European friends are laughing at our college's initials, I guess.
LONG LIVE NEXT!
I drive an '87 Chevy Nova (I can hear our Spanish-speaking friends laughing) that still gets ~40 MPG on the highway. Fuel-efficient, low-emission, and still runs nicely. And I don't wear hairspray.
But I digress.
Solar-powered laptops/PDA's could be the rage pretty soon. I figure once you've removed the biggest power-hogs from them, you could run them on very little power:
Figure out a way to put your favorite Linux/BSD on it and give your beloved geek a reason to go outside!
Aw yeah. That'll be one sweet calculator. If I combine this and my fashionable pocket protectors, I'll be the perfect chick repellant.
:(
Actually, I found back in high school that Casios actually bring in the chicks. Not that they wanted anything to do with me -- they just wanted to play Blackjack on my CFX-9800.
They all forgot about me quickly after I ported it to the TI-81/82.
Meanwhile, the guys with HP's were writing music, playing Minesweeper, and proclaiming FIFO as their god. And 2 out of 3 of them got decent looking chicks.
No, after 5½ years, I'm not bitter....no, really....
Doesn't this kinda resemble PicoBSD a little bit? You all remember - a lightweight FreeBSD-3.0 kernel & tiny compressed MFS filesystem & drivers for several ethernet cards & slip/ppp* & routed* on a floppy? :)
Am I going to be given a (0, flamebait) for this post?
*-depends on what version you downloaded.