I'm using Chimera.12 to read and post this (.0.2.1 is out? Last I looked it was.13...) and I'm pretty happy with it. There are _definitely_ some holes -- no HTTP authentication, for example, and missing bookmark stuff -- but sweet holy crickets, it's fast, and good for most browsing.
Good gravy. It not working on Mac OS X is probably the only thing between me and loosing the rest of my life. I already blew two years of high school afternoons off that way. I could have learned spanish instead.
Don't get me wrong; I think the main thrust of your point is a decent one, and I'll probably include this in a letter to congress. The problem is, I can't figure out how the RIAA is really going to get a chance to go after the casual pirate -- me. How they're going to catch me emailing mp3s to my brother, or putting them in an.htaccess restricted area of my website, or putting them on the P2P app of the month -- without a pervasive technical solution.
The only other thing I can think of is invisible RIAA lawyers hovering over me. Not a pleasant thought.
(In all actuality, of course, what they REALLY need to do is simply change their cost structure and product to a point where the benefits of purchasing a legitimate copy outweigh the benefits of a pirated copy.)
Which is the FCC most likely to understand better?
This is what I don't understand. The FCC should (in theory, at least) have all the technical nuances of communication issues down, with a fair bit of serious in house expertise. If someone tries to deceive them, you'd think they'd know the difference.
The FCC's stance on low power radio was at least more inspiring than congress's. The NAB propoganda was pointing to two stations in DC whose closer-than-third-adjacent-channel seperation caused interference. They neglected to report that these two stations were broadcasting at over 30 KW, and proposed power restrictions LPFM were 100 Watts. One of my senators (at least, the staff member I talked to) was fooled... the FCC didn't seem to be.
We need a DRM standard. Not uncrackable, not universal, just present and formidable to make it so most folks who don't enjoy bypassing DRM schemes for fun will pay a fair price for media rather than wasting time pirating it.
Some kind of DRM has to happen -- say, that's 75% effective or so -- or else the powers that be are going to keep pushing (using rampant piracy as an excuse) until the distopian vision is accomplished.
"Good" (by which I mean, barely palatable) DRM might be:
* Only required on devices/software whose sole purpose is media display/playback. This leaves an OS, for example, or a hard drive out, but a playback application or portable MP3 player in. It won't catch all piracy -- there might still be non-DRM players out there -- but lots of people would probably still just use iTunes and Windows Media Player.
* Key distribution for DRM system(s) is ABSOLUTELY FREE. IE, we don't introduce any further artificial barriers to content distribution, and people can distribute their content freely, for free if they like.
Of course there's still holes, and of course there'd still be piracy, but I think by and large content producers -- from RIAA to your Indie Label -- could collect a fee a little more often and most importantly would have much less to complain about
I think the key problem here isn't piracy -- it's that RIAA and other content producers want absolute control over content and distribution. Piracy is an excellent ostensible excuse for draconian DRM measures like the SSSCA. Give the world reasonable DRM, and their case loses a lot of punch.
Actually, I think everyone's wrong. Why does the only choice have to be totally open relays or blacklisted/blocked off?
One wonders why you couldn't have an SMTP server with some anti-spam restrictions like:
1) will only deliver to a limited number of recipients -- say 1-5
2) will not accept more than 1 message every 5 minutes from any given IP ("Slow Down, cowboy!")
3) uses some kind of authentication that changes in a way easy for humans to pick up on, hard for machines
... something like that. It doesn't seem to me that any of these would be too hard, given a couple of free afternoons and Net::SMTP from CPAN. OK, I don't have anything specific in mind for #3, but 1-2 aren't rocket science and would make spamming hard.
I posted this comment a few days ago in a different thread, but it bears repeating.
The SSSCA isn't that bad, and something like it needs to happen.
So... copyright cartels get control over their stuff. So what. So people have to pay for it. Big deal.
In fact, as long as there isn't any mandate that ALL content has to go through some kind of corporate or government review in order to be distributed, we're fine. As long as distribution costs are cheap for those who want to distribute cheaply -- as long as I can give away MY music for free, or charge a quarter a song without having to give some portion of the fee to someone else -- then we're in good shape.
Because once the copyright cartels proceed to ream everyone over, then non-mainstream distribution is going to look better and better.
I don't know how to get around problems for open source running on various hardware. That does need to be addressed. But getting a death grip on their own content will cause copyright cartels to lose their grip on the market. Which is what we all want.
A friend of mine just put together this search form after reading this story.... you can search by name (no wildcarding yet, so it has to be exact). Or.... if you want to find the really substantive comments you can search by minimum number of pages! Try searching for pages > 30... it's interesting stuff.
What I've been thinking lately is that this actually needs to happen. A reasonably secure, widely implemented SOFTWARE spec for DRM needs to happen. And it's in our best interest not to fight it.
Hardware security, if it happens, will be draconian and will limit any kind of open development platform. And it's what Media industry biggies will push for -- are pushing for -- because they can't see a succesful software alternative.
Of course, there can't be a totally secure software solution. There can't be totally secure solution of any kind. But assuming we stopped fighting soft security -- or at least didn't distribute tools for doing it -- we'd soon see media biggies start to release their holdings. Slowly. Expensively. And a total rip off. And 90% of folks would be herded through the DRM scheme.
And I think, over time, in that market, it would fail. Eventually, someone would release suffeciently compelling media at a competetive price and they'd win.
I think the media biggies know this, and so they're pushing for a platform that not only allows copy protection but also utter control. They do it under the auspices of copy protection. If we give them copy protection, they lose their weapon.
Flash, as I understand it, is actually a totally open format called SWF. It's true that Macromedia's product called Flash isn't open, but they seem to have taken the strategy that they'll make money by creating the best tool for making SWF files, but leave the format open. PHP, among other languages, has a facility for generating SWF.
Someone forgot to post the obligatory 'NY times warning, free reg required'. I always avoid those stories like the plague, and would've avoided this one.
Dude, no offense, but... you're willing to sign up for a free account on slashdot of all things, but not the freakin' New York Times?
It's got some pretty good stuff in it, and a respectable history behind it (how many other publications in existence today do you think reported on the US civil war?). Registration and login are no more painful then they are here. The quality of writing (and the breadth of topic) is less painful than the writing here (much as I like slashdot).
Yeah go ahead and mod me down.
OK, but this will hurt me more than it will hurt you.:)
He says quite specifically hiding as opposed to simply wearing.
And that's true, so I guess the poster and I do not disagree on that.
Still doesn't change the fact that the thrust of MY post is that "hiding" the body is quite clearly not a concept that originated in the dark ages. Something I also state "quite specifically."
Your argument is to quote from Genesis. Amazing! You may have shown the date was wrong but you've done nothing to show that shame from nakedness wasn't invented by religious nuts.
You know, I've actually been WAITING for someone to make a stupid comment like this.
MY comment was meant to refute two ideas contained in the parent post:
1) clothing was adopted solely because of "moral" concerns 2) this was done in the middle ages
I'd say my comment did both conclusively. #2 first and foremost -- unhealth attitudes about the human body may have been reperpetrated and reinforced then, but the use of clothing as a "moral shield" most certainly didn't first come about then.
#1 wasn't demonstrated conclusively -- how do I KNOW people came up with clothes for reasons like protection and ceremony and adornment and disguise? I don't. I just know people use it for that today, across nearly every society. It stands to reason that people adopted clothing for a variety of reasons a long time ago.
So my post did exactly what it claimed to do. Yours is a Red Herring.
Now if you WANT to address issues about whether all shame from nakedness is due to religious influences, and whether religious people are nuts, specifically, those who wrote Genesis, that'd be a whole 'nother post....
While this is peer-to-peer trading, there are several important differences from Napster.
First of all, there really wasn't a large-market device for capturing _broadcast_ music (I've often wondered why, because the number of times I've heard something wonderful on the radio that I won't hear again for months or perhaps EVER has been waaay too many). There was no "time-shifting" argument.
Second of all, most of the available material on Napster was available for purchase. Yes, there were the live/bootleg/rare recordings, which I enjoyed as much as anyone, but I don't think that was the majority. Most of it seemed to be off of ripped CDs.
However, for a lot of the TV shows, there is no medium to rip from. The shows aren't available for purchase.
It's interesting that rather than see this as a great opportunity, TV studios get scared and try to wipe it out. There's quite OBVIOUSLY a market here, and filling it wouldn't be all that hard....
the town in georgia's got a law on the books
says if we all got guns then we won't have crooks now what could make them think that way?
what could make them act that way?
right wing pigeons from outer space sent here to destroy the human race they don't give a damn about you or me they just buy guns and watch tv
the lady in detroit owns a can of mace got pissed at my brother so she sprayed it in his face now what could make her think that way? what could make her act that way?
right wing pigeons from outer space sent here to destroy the human race she don't give a damn about you or me she just buys guns and watches tv
the man in the white house just don't care he starves little kids and he dyes hair now what could make him think that way? what could make him act that way?
right wing pigeons from outer space sent here to destroy the human race he don't give a damn about you or me he just buys guns and watches tv go!
Hmmmm. I'm wondering if, with the advent of apple.slashdot.org, I'll be able to come here, make pro-apple comments, and more easily get Karma.
Not that I don't have better things to do with my time... and most Apple fans I know really aren't drooling idiots.... but one has to wonder if segmenting the audience would lead to this kind of change in moderation.... kindof like talk radio shows don't tend to attract people whose views diverge wildly....
Just a thought...
Re:Combine some transparent aluminum...
on
Transparent Aluminium
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The concept of hiding the body comes from the moral ineptness of some idiotic religious nuts during the dark ages
Genesis 4:6-7
"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves aprons"
You don't have to accept this account as history to realize that at the very least, semitic societies had some sort of concept of hiding the body thousands of years back. Copies of Genesis predate the idiotic religious nuts of the dark ages by at least 2 millenia. There have probably been societies that felt it was good to hide the body from view for as long.
Not to mention covering the body for purposes other than warmth OR morality: protection from sun or sand or other dangerous substances, check against physical blows, adornment and status, disguise. Or for that matter, enticement -- if nakedness were the ultimate turn-on, Victoria's Secret wouldn't do such good business. I'm sure Victoria wasn't the first one to catch on.
Anyway, I'm overesponding, but the point is, there are lots of reasons for cloths, and most all of them are probably older than western society.
It's actually faster and easier to use the GUI to add, configure, and start a virtual web server than it was the old way (edit httpd.conf, apachectl restart)
Can you elaborate? I'm still doing this the old way on OS X....
1) I add host names to netinfo
2) I add the virtual host info to httpd.conf
3) I apachectl restart
We generally understand that dolphins are intelligent, but their intelligence is of a rather alien sort. Even if we mastered their language, a dolphin could easily be distinguished from a human in a Turing test because their life
The Turing Test (TTT) wouldn't work for dolphins, or any other alien intelligence. It speaks only of indistinguishableness from a human intelligence. Under the Turing Test, intelligence is human. This is one of its problems.
Other problems: how long do you perform the Turing test before you have subjects make a judgement? It's easy to imagine software fooling someone for a minute. With a larger set of rules, it may well be able to fool someone for an hour. I've never seen a time limit. With a suffeciently large set of rules (programmed directly or "learned"), it could be able to fool someone for a year, or lifetime.
Finally, the Turing Test has always seemed to me to be an admission about the limitations we have on testing consciousness. Very black-box. "We don't know what goes into consciousness? Well, for all intents and purposes, it's conscious if we can't tell it from another being we know is conscious...." It's totally about pragmatism in the face of the unknown. We can act "as if" there's consciousness, but we still don't know...
Apple's marketshare has grown over the last 4 years. Part of this can be attributed to getting back some of the market they lost to the clones back, but I think at least some of it has to be attributed to getting new PC buyers with their products and even stealing a few previous intel buyers away. They are selling hardware to new customers.
This makes the prospect of OS X for Intel dicey. It means that Cringley's assumptions about it not competing with Mac HW are at least partially wrong. The guy who walks into the store MIGHT buy the Athlon box over the iMac. In which case Apple loses the sale of the HW. In a market where apple is trying to grow (and succeeding), this hurts.
Cringley isn't stupid, but this idea isn't anywhere near as easy or as foregone a conclusion as he seems to think.
If people here complain about the "overpriced" apple hardware, won't they complain about the overpriced apple software? $130 for an OS? When you're used to getting that for free - $30?
Of course, that's just us open source zealouts. The average, everyday user probably doesn't care quite so much. But if you start looking at associated software for the MacOS, like say, Microsoft Office (which everyone beleives they have to have), you're looking at $400 minimum if you're not a student. Probably higher, if MS decided they don't like the fact that Apple moved into their space. And that's if it exists at all -- how easy would it be for MS to simple decide that they didn't want to develop Office for OS X Intel? Meanwhile, having Office come with your Windows PC is becoming more common.
Nope. This isn't going to work, and Apple's not going to do it.
The fact is that a lot (not all mind you) of the respondents are either companies that have a vested interest in the destruction of Microsoft
Let's reword that a little: most everyone in the software and IT industry has a vested interest in the destruction of Microsoft. A fair number of consumers do too. We have a lot to gain from a market where one player is powerful enough to consistently tip things to their own advantage, whether their solutions are superior or not.
But I'm still not sure my rewording is precise enough, so I'll try again: most everyone in the software and IT industry has a vested interest in a Microsoft that obeys the laws they've been convicted of violating, and seeing true restorative measures come about, rather than the perhaps-well-meaning-but-leaks-like-a-legal-sieve proposed "settlement". This doesn't have to include the destruction of Microsoft -- just some precise measures with real teeth. That's what most of us want.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm using Chimera .12 to read and post this (.0.2.1 is out? Last I looked it was .13...) and I'm pretty happy with it. There are _definitely_ some holes -- no HTTP authentication, for example, and missing bookmark stuff -- but sweet holy crickets, it's fast, and good for most browsing.
Wait. Don't forget, we've got to learn to cry without weeping, too.
You know, I took the poison from the poison stream....
Good gravy. It not working on Mac OS X is probably the only thing between me and loosing the rest of my life. I already blew two years of high school afternoons off that way. I could have learned spanish instead.
Unfortunately, MAME _is_ available for OS X....
And they'd do this how?
.htaccess restricted area of my website, or putting them on the P2P app of the month -- without a pervasive technical solution.
Don't get me wrong; I think the main thrust of your point is a decent one, and I'll probably include this in a letter to congress. The problem is, I can't figure out how the RIAA is really going to get a chance to go after the casual pirate -- me. How they're going to catch me emailing mp3s to my brother, or putting them in an
The only other thing I can think of is invisible RIAA lawyers hovering over me. Not a pleasant thought.
(In all actuality, of course, what they REALLY need to do is simply change their cost structure and product to a point where the benefits of purchasing a legitimate copy outweigh the benefits of a pirated copy.)
Which is the FCC most likely to understand better?
This is what I don't understand. The FCC should (in theory, at least) have all the technical nuances of communication issues down, with a fair bit of serious in house expertise. If someone tries to deceive them, you'd think they'd know the difference.
The FCC's stance on low power radio was at least more inspiring than congress's. The NAB propoganda was pointing to two stations in DC whose closer-than-third-adjacent-channel seperation caused interference. They neglected to report that these two stations were broadcasting at over 30 KW, and proposed power restrictions LPFM were 100 Watts. One of my senators (at least, the staff member I talked to) was fooled... the FCC didn't seem to be.
We don't need the SSSCA.
We need a DRM standard. Not uncrackable, not universal, just present and formidable to make it so most folks who don't enjoy bypassing DRM schemes for fun will pay a fair price for media rather than wasting time pirating it.
That's all I'm saying.
Some kind of DRM has to happen -- say, that's 75% effective or so -- or else the powers that be are going to keep pushing (using rampant piracy as an excuse) until the distopian vision is accomplished.
"Good" (by which I mean, barely palatable) DRM might be:
* Only required on devices/software whose sole purpose is media display/playback. This leaves an OS, for example, or a hard drive out, but a playback application or portable MP3 player in. It won't catch all piracy -- there might still be non-DRM players out there -- but lots of people would probably still just use iTunes and Windows Media Player.
* Key distribution for DRM system(s) is ABSOLUTELY FREE. IE, we don't introduce any further artificial barriers to content distribution, and people can distribute their content freely, for free if they like.
Of course there's still holes, and of course there'd still be piracy, but I think by and large content producers -- from RIAA to your Indie Label -- could collect a fee a little more often and most importantly would have much less to complain about
I think the key problem here isn't piracy -- it's that RIAA and other content producers want absolute control over content and distribution. Piracy is an excellent ostensible excuse for draconian DRM measures like the SSSCA. Give the world reasonable DRM, and their case loses a lot of punch.
Actually, I think everyone's wrong. Why does the only choice have to be totally open relays or blacklisted/blocked off?
One wonders why you couldn't have an SMTP server with some anti-spam restrictions like:
1) will only deliver to a limited number of recipients -- say 1-5
2) will not accept more than 1 message every 5 minutes from any given IP ("Slow Down, cowboy!")
3) uses some kind of authentication that changes in a way easy for humans to pick up on, hard for machines
... something like that. It doesn't seem to me that any of these would be too hard, given a couple of free afternoons and Net::SMTP from CPAN.
OK, I don't have anything specific in mind for #3, but 1-2 aren't rocket science and would make spamming hard.
I posted this comment a few days ago in a different thread, but it bears repeating.
The SSSCA isn't that bad, and something like it needs to happen.
So... copyright cartels get control over their stuff. So what. So people have to pay for it. Big deal.
In fact, as long as there isn't any mandate that ALL content has to go through some kind of corporate or government review in order to be distributed, we're fine. As long as distribution costs are cheap for those who want to distribute cheaply -- as long as I can give away MY music for free, or charge a quarter a song without having to give some portion of the fee to someone else -- then we're in good shape.
Because once the copyright cartels proceed to ream everyone over, then non-mainstream distribution is going to look better and better.
I don't know how to get around problems for open source running on various hardware. That does need to be addressed. But getting a death grip on their own content will cause copyright cartels to lose their grip on the market. Which is what we all want.
A friend of mine just put together this search form after reading this story.... you can search by name (no wildcarding yet, so it has to be exact). Or.... if you want to find the really substantive comments you can search by minimum number of pages! Try searching for pages > 30 ... it's interesting stuff.
What I've been thinking lately is that this actually needs to happen. A reasonably secure, widely implemented SOFTWARE spec for DRM needs to happen. And it's in our best interest not to fight it.
Hardware security, if it happens, will be draconian and will limit any kind of open development platform. And it's what Media industry biggies will push for -- are pushing for -- because they can't see a succesful software alternative.
Of course, there can't be a totally secure software solution. There can't be totally secure solution of any kind. But assuming we stopped fighting soft security -- or at least didn't distribute tools for doing it -- we'd soon see media biggies start to release their holdings. Slowly. Expensively. And a total rip off. And 90% of folks would be herded through the DRM scheme.
And I think, over time, in that market, it would fail. Eventually, someone would release suffeciently compelling media at a competetive price and they'd win.
I think the media biggies know this, and so they're pushing for a platform that not only allows copy protection but also utter control. They do it under the auspices of copy protection. If we give them copy protection, they lose their weapon.
Orthodox Christians believe God is irrational (triune: an irrational number meaning 3 yet 1, 1 yet 3). Got Faith?
Or God could be complex.... (part real, part imaginary!).
1+3i?
3+1i?
Or perhaps, some complex number which under different norms yields 3 and 1....
:)
Flash,
Flash, as I understand it, is actually a totally open format called SWF. It's true that Macromedia's product called Flash isn't open, but they seem to have taken the strategy that they'll make money by creating the best tool for making SWF files, but leave the format open. PHP, among other languages, has a facility for generating SWF.
Someone forgot to post the obligatory 'NY times warning, free reg required'. I always avoid those stories like the plague, and would've avoided this one.
:)
Dude, no offense, but... you're willing to sign up for a free account on slashdot of all things, but not the freakin' New York Times?
It's got some pretty good stuff in it, and a respectable history behind it (how many other publications in existence today do you think reported on the US civil war?). Registration and login are no more painful then they are here. The quality of writing (and the breadth of topic) is less painful than the writing here (much as I like slashdot).
Yeah go ahead and mod me down.
OK, but this will hurt me more than it will hurt you.
He says quite specifically hiding as opposed to simply wearing.
And that's true, so I guess the poster and I do not disagree on that.
Still doesn't change the fact that the thrust of MY post is that "hiding" the body is quite clearly not a concept that originated in the dark ages. Something I also state "quite specifically."
Your argument is to quote from Genesis. Amazing! You may have shown the date was wrong but you've done nothing to show that shame from nakedness wasn't invented by religious nuts.
You know, I've actually been WAITING for someone to make a stupid comment like this.
MY comment was meant to refute two ideas contained in the parent post:
1) clothing was adopted solely because of "moral" concerns
2) this was done in the middle ages
I'd say my comment did both conclusively. #2 first and foremost -- unhealth attitudes about the human body may have been reperpetrated and reinforced then, but the use of clothing as a "moral shield" most certainly didn't first come about then.
#1 wasn't demonstrated conclusively -- how do I KNOW people came up with clothes for reasons like protection and ceremony and adornment and disguise? I don't. I just know people use it for that today, across nearly every society. It stands to reason that people adopted clothing for a variety of reasons a long time ago.
So my post did exactly what it claimed to do. Yours is a Red Herring.
Now if you WANT to address issues about whether all shame from nakedness is due to religious influences, and whether religious people are nuts, specifically, those who wrote Genesis, that'd be a whole 'nother post....
While this is peer-to-peer trading, there are several important differences from Napster.
First of all, there really wasn't a large-market device for capturing _broadcast_ music (I've often wondered why, because the number of times I've heard something wonderful on the radio that I won't hear again for months or perhaps EVER has been waaay too many). There was no "time-shifting" argument.
Second of all, most of the available material on Napster was available for purchase. Yes, there were the live/bootleg/rare recordings, which I enjoyed as much as anyone, but I don't think that was the majority. Most of it seemed to be off of ripped CDs.
However, for a lot of the TV shows, there is no medium to rip from. The shows aren't available for purchase.
It's interesting that rather than see this as a great opportunity, TV studios get scared and try to wipe it out. There's quite OBVIOUSLY a market here, and filling it wouldn't be all that hard....
RIGHT WING PIGEONS (the dead milkmen)
the town in georgia's got a law on the books
says if we all got guns then we won't have crooks
now what could make them think that way?
what could make them act that way?
right wing pigeons from outer space
sent here to destroy the human race
they don't give a damn about you or me
they just buy guns and watch tv
the lady in detroit owns a can of mace
got pissed at my brother so she sprayed it in his face
now what could make her think that way?
what could make her act that way?
right wing pigeons from outer space
sent here to destroy the human race
she don't give a damn about you or me
she just buys guns and watches tv
the man in the white house just don't care
he starves little kids and he dyes hair
now what could make him think that way? what could make him act that way?
right wing pigeons from outer space
sent here to destroy the human race
he don't give a damn about you or me
he just buys guns and watches tv go!
Hmmmm. I'm wondering if, with the advent of apple.slashdot.org, I'll be able to come here, make pro-apple comments, and more easily get Karma.
Not that I don't have better things to do with my time... and most Apple fans I know really aren't drooling idiots.... but one has to wonder if segmenting the audience would lead to this kind of change in moderation.... kindof like talk radio shows don't tend to attract people whose views diverge wildly....
Just a thought...
The concept of hiding the body comes from the moral ineptness of some idiotic religious nuts during the dark ages
Genesis 4:6-7
"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves aprons"
You don't have to accept this account as history to realize that at the very least, semitic societies had some sort of concept of hiding the body thousands of years back. Copies of Genesis predate the idiotic religious nuts of the dark ages by at least 2 millenia. There have probably been societies that felt it was good to hide the body from view for as long.
Not to mention covering the body for purposes other than warmth OR morality: protection from sun or sand or other dangerous substances, check against physical blows, adornment and status, disguise. Or for that matter, enticement -- if nakedness were the ultimate turn-on, Victoria's Secret wouldn't do such good business. I'm sure Victoria wasn't the first one to catch on.
Anyway, I'm overesponding, but the point is, there are lots of reasons for cloths, and most all of them are probably older than western society.
It's actually faster and easier to use the GUI to add, configure, and start a virtual web server than it was the old way (edit httpd.conf, apachectl restart)
Can you elaborate? I'm still doing this the old way on OS X....
1) I add host names to netinfo
2) I add the virtual host info to httpd.conf
3) I apachectl restart
We generally understand that dolphins are intelligent, but their intelligence is of a rather alien sort. Even if we mastered their language, a dolphin could easily be distinguished from a human in a Turing test because their life
The Turing Test (TTT) wouldn't work for dolphins, or any other alien intelligence. It speaks only of indistinguishableness from a human intelligence. Under the Turing Test, intelligence is human. This is one of its problems.
Other problems: how long do you perform the Turing test before you have subjects make a judgement? It's easy to imagine software fooling someone for a minute. With a larger set of rules, it may well be able to fool someone for an hour. I've never seen a time limit. With a suffeciently large set of rules (programmed directly or "learned"), it could be able to fool someone for a year, or lifetime.
Finally, the Turing Test has always seemed to me to be an admission about the limitations we have on testing consciousness. Very black-box. "We don't know what goes into consciousness? Well, for all intents and purposes, it's conscious if we can't tell it from another being we know is conscious...." It's totally about pragmatism in the face of the unknown. We can act "as if" there's consciousness, but we still don't know...
Apple's marketshare has grown over the last 4 years. Part of this can be attributed to getting back some of the market they lost to the clones back, but I think at least some of it has to be attributed to getting new PC buyers with their products and even stealing a few previous intel buyers away. They are selling hardware to new customers.
This makes the prospect of OS X for Intel dicey. It means that Cringley's assumptions about it not competing with Mac HW are at least partially wrong. The guy who walks into the store MIGHT buy the Athlon box over the iMac. In which case Apple loses the sale of the HW. In a market where apple is trying to grow (and succeeding), this hurts.
Cringley isn't stupid, but this idea isn't anywhere near as easy or as foregone a conclusion as he seems to think.
If people here complain about the "overpriced" apple hardware, won't they complain about the overpriced apple software? $130 for an OS? When you're used to getting that for free - $30?
Of course, that's just us open source zealouts. The average, everyday user probably doesn't care quite so much. But if you start looking at associated software for the MacOS, like say, Microsoft Office (which everyone beleives they have to have), you're looking at $400 minimum if you're not a student. Probably higher, if MS decided they don't like the fact that Apple moved into their space. And that's if it exists at all -- how easy would it be for MS to simple decide that they didn't want to develop Office for OS X Intel? Meanwhile, having Office come with your Windows PC is becoming more common.
Nope. This isn't going to work, and Apple's not going to do it.
The fact is that a lot (not all mind you) of the respondents are either companies that have a vested interest in the destruction of Microsoft
Let's reword that a little: most everyone in the software and IT industry has a vested interest in the destruction of Microsoft. A fair number of consumers do too. We have a lot to gain from a market where one player is powerful enough to consistently tip things to their own advantage, whether their solutions are superior or not.
But I'm still not sure my rewording is precise enough, so I'll try again: most everyone in the software and IT industry has a vested interest in a Microsoft that obeys the laws they've been convicted of violating, and seeing true restorative measures come about, rather than the perhaps-well-meaning-but-leaks-like-a-legal-sieve proposed "settlement". This doesn't have to include the destruction of Microsoft -- just some precise measures with real teeth. That's what most of us want.