Let's take a copy of Styx Grand Illusion. I make a copy of it for my car that's cassette. am I causing $50,000 of damage to Styx. No way in hell.
But let's say I sell a copy to someone else. Am I causing damage to Styx? While not a major crime, but yea only the respective copyright holders have a right to profit from their creations. Not $50,000 worth, and one could agrue that without the offical published media, it's not worth record store prices, but present laws say at the very least copyright holders should get royalities. How much isn't clear, the CD costs like $10.00 last time I looked.
Let's say I sold 5000 duplicated copies of Styx The Grand Illusion without permision of the copyright holders. Assuming $10 bucks a pop, that would be roughly $50,000. You could argue the comercial value of it, but $10.00 or so can easily be documented as cost in a record store. This actually could be $50,000 in damages.
So why are the laws not reflecting this form of common sence, attempting extort large sums of money out of either fair use home users or pirates, when in reality the punishment fits bootleging on a scale of thousands of copies?
It's only common sence, as Thomas Paine once. If government won't give you basic rights... you better get another government.
That's nothing, the idea was probally inspired by the book's popularity during the 1960s, taking too much LSD waiting around for Frank Mills and people saw little round men in leotards in front of the Waverly.
For our next theatrical production... It's Beavis and Butthead do Les Miserabls... with the voices of James Earl Jones, "that would suck" as Butt head / Jean val Jean and Gilbert Godfreed as Bevis / Javare "yea well...."
"I met a chick, she's a protitute, she's got no hair, she's cool"
"I am the great corn holio, I need freedom for my bunghole"
I don't mind buying lemmas waffers when they're only two gold piece. You might call it decicance, but when their onsale for 1/2... i'll buy two bag.... i'll buy too bags... yea!
This was a tragic lost to the civilized world, and possily lots of Homer's other works were destroyed never to be seen again, not to speak of of the astrometery of Ptolemy and Eratosthenes.
Eratosthenes, who i've always been a personal fan of, is credited with measuring the earth with a stick, or rather, by making measurments of the shadows cast at noon on a stick between Alexandria and Syene. No rockets, no computers, simple geometry established, assuming the earth was a perfect sphere, he determined represented 1/50th of a circle. Using modern mesurements, that's 500 miles * 50 = 25,000 miles (mental reference from scientific american sited verivied on the web) Pretty useful for people like Columbus, oh but wait.. we lost alot of our useful navagation knowlege cause it was burnt. Guess it wasn't christrian enough for Emperor Theodosius of Rome.
[http://www.planetarybiology.com/science_philoso ph y/philosop8.htm used to get the spelling correct]
There are so many other scientists, artists, pholophiers from this era. Hell Galileo wrote his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Principal Systems of the World" was published in about 1632, which chalanged Aristotle's geocentric view, something debated by atleast Aristarchus of Samos circa 230 BC or so. Who else might have published works who's theories can be proven by modern day methods.
Now would you consider this act a crime against humanity. Lost wealth of knowlege leading to the fall of knowlege it self?
---
Now... can we compair private libraries of books and music by users of P2P networks to the Library of Alexandria, a center of civilized thought? Could be, because for the first time in history distance has become obsolete. What survived from this era are not what could be considered the holy grail of wisdom, but literal scraps of information scattered from a varity of sources, not employed researchers or librarians, but something close to our amature collectors.
If it wasn't for this new Eutopia, I wouldn't have been able to find Eratosthenes's experiment, and been able to reproduce it, for the benifit of my nieces and nephews. A simple experiment over 2000 years ago that shows someone good evidence of the fact that they live on a planet.
While some would agrue that music and movies are not a human right. This is true. Got to make a living, we do presently have an industry, stuff costs money. Ok.. great! But DRM threatenes to permit the loss of works. At present i'm willing to pay for a CD... to play for my self and a friend. If I really like it, i'll keep the CD for 5 years, 10 years, and until I am dead. Someone who is curious about me, my life, like at the dawn of the 21st century might be at a loss if no one can obtain the right anymore. While you may think a obscure mixed metaphore like "the way the beach is kissed by the sea, poluted now but in our hearts still clean" {Insane Jane in a tribute to Pete Townshend) is important enough to preserve... but what about the works of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, or Einstein. With DRM... if the companies who published their work digitaly no longer exist, how can we access it.
We no longer need a natural disaster, global war, nor fanatical zeliot oh a quest for our welfare in the afterlife in order to drive this planet into another dark age. All we need are hard core encryption schemes, criminal penalities for circumventing them, and the loss of ability to lock them, a loss by some site on the net shutting down after declairing bankrupsy.
This isn't about depriving copyright holders of their rights to publish their works, nor about our distaste for an established system of enterprise. This is about standing at the edge of a new dark age where we stand to loose countless millenia of history, and a responciblity we have to the human race, and so long as we continue to permit these actions we are as guility as those responcible for the loss of the library of Alexandria.
Moraly it's wrong, their for it must be politicly correct.
Where's there a whip... there's a way
on
LOTR The Musical!
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Hey, it worked for the cartoon "The Hobbit" and "Return of the King".
An epic saga that is much akin to human growth, the adventure of youth and the burdon of responcibility over back drop of middle earth dragons and wizards is the perfect musical material, in the same sorta way that Les Miserables works. Les Mis sorta takes place in a romantised volitile time in French history, people vs the establishment, rocks and baracades. Not everyone's glass of tea, but it's something I enjoyed, even if it's a bit over the top. One thing that is considered a mark of good litature is something that can be enjoyed by all audiances... and The Lord of the Rings is something that can be read a child and read as an adult and still be enjoyed.
But to this day I still remember the edition of "Return of the King" cartoon, with the Orcs in Mordor chanting, "Where there's a whip, there's a way". While it was a sorta cheezy dumbed up cartoon, that is just classic.
I personaly could care less about a monopoly if they provide an adquate product for an adquate price.
AOL IMHO simply does not.
Keep in mind that there is a market for a trans-national ISP, and things like "AOL" and "Compu$serve" have dialups in way out of the way places. This gives them major bonus points dispite the fact that both sport bloated extra software that I really don't need. I once had a compuserve account back in 1982 when it didn't seem at all out of bounds to pay $6.00 an hr for e-mail... after all it was equilivent to a long distance call between seattle and richmond at the time. [yes $12.00 for 1200/2400 baud] A monopoly at the time for sure, but the only option at at a price that didn't seem all that offencive till roughly one decade later.
I don't know how much headway MSN has gotten as far as the transnational market, but MSN has serious bonus points over both AOL and Compuserve because you can turn off that garish interface [At one time, the dialup connections for Compu$erve were PPP, please correct me if they still are].
But I can't honestly say that "AOL" is a monopoly. For the most part, there is a choice for ISPs out there, at least in my region. MSN, who I personaly class in a very diffrent group, is not a monopoly as not only are there a vast number of choices for ISPs, but you can "choose" to connect to MSN via your own ISP at NO charge the last time I checked, provided you had a valid MSN passport. This information might be out of date, as I don't run the software. Pretty much the same with AOL, fee based but you can choose your own isp. Compu$erve i'm totally out of touch with, there was a time where this was not an issue.
If these companies, though they only issue windows and possibly mac editions of their software, while we could call them bastards, are not monopolies... (microsoft is to some extent), but on the point of MSN / AOL, there presently are choices out there. Because you can choose to use their services via a diffrent isp, there isn't really an anti trust issue here that I can tell. I'd be the first to say AOL sucks large rocks... but so long as there is a perfectly viable solution for network access... everything is spiffy.
Now... if someone were to actually create an OSS solution that creates a sorta internet experence for the average end user like aol/msn/compuserve do, then we'd have something. While I personaly wouldn't use such a beast, I could see it being remarkably useful under any platform. A spiffy front end that even isp techincal support can reccomend users download so that they can walk users through the connection process.
I recently downloaded a series of atari 5200 games and an emulator. To be honest I haven't tried to use anything resembling a 6502 emulator for years. At least on my 733 pentium III machine, it seems quite adquate.
Question: What about making a nice little transparent wrapper so that an existing wealth of games can be used under this new platform. While I'm sure some of the classics like pac-man and such are still protected under copyright, but after seeing recently an atari joystick with essentally a 2600 onboard, i'm under the impression that a comercial enterprise could successfuly purchace legit license for reasonable fee. I would think that companies like Atari would be overjoyed at the possibility of their classic stuff that pretty much has squat in the way of market value actually making a buck or two.
I must admit, one one of those people that the applice newton had some form of apeal to, who was very disapointed when the Palm Pilot came out, and found lacking in the way of features.
Now, I can't tell based on the site wether or not the screen offers handwriting reconition like the old newton did, but it being linux i'm sure it can adapt if nessicary. One aspect I did enjoy abou the newton was it's ability to take notes in class, while it wasn't quite mature enough to be trully reliable, writing on it "explore your world" it seemed to think I was trying to say, "trust the fungus", it's ability to take hand doddles and actually straighten out the lines and before I knew it, I actually good looking readable diagrams and schematics.
I'm sorta going by http://www.yopy.at/features.html
[babble fish for people like me who don't do deutch] http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/ urltrurl? tt=url&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yopy.at%2Ffeatures.htm l&lp=de_en
It looks like, to me, that stylus is designed to go on the screen, rather then the Palms that don't really have that feature. While my handwriting skills are pretty poor, I can work with just about any basic graphics application and clean up my my scetchs for something presentable. And too boot, it's based on linux, a product I use and can find applications for, yay.
Too rich for my blood presently, but on a buy from that geek who just got the go faster stripes model list.
http://yopy.com/english/products/yp3700_software.h
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Posted due to slashdotting effect
--- This is the background of the YP3700. You can change the background with a photo or picture you like for your taste ---
PIMS
Task
Memo
Schedule
Diary
Contact
PIMS Backup
Multimedia
MP3 Player
Painter
Recorder YOPY Office
Text Edit
YOPY Sheet
YOPY Word
YOPY Viewer Game
Sokoban
Freecell
Solitaire
XRick Utility
Package Manager
Calculator
Wallpaper
IrDA
Xterm Network
Internet Browser
E-mail
Network
WLAN Config File Manager
File Manager Settings
Settings --- - Copyright(c)2000 G.MATE, Inc All Rights reserved
http://yopy.com/english/products/yp3700_features.h
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Posted due to slashdotting effect
----- * Folder like Design
- Innovative and Attractive Design
- Extreme Portability
- Screen Protection from scratch or break
* Excellent Hardware Specs
- Fast Operation (206Mhz) and Big Memory (128MB RAM/32 MB ROM)
- 2300mAh Li-ion Polymer Battery
- MMC Slot and IrDA port
- Outstanding 65,536 color TFT LCD
- Colorful LED Indicator
- CF-II Slot
* Convenient Keypad
- Performing/Ending/Editing Programs with Keypad
- Same arrangement of keypad as Desktop PC (QWERTY Type)
- Fast and handy data input
* Wireless Internet Access anywhere, anytime
- Wireless Internet Access anywhere, anytime
- Wireless E-mail
- Wireless Lan
* Joyful Multimedia PDA
- MP3 Player
- Recorder
- Painter
- Making background freely - You can do it using the Wallpaper program or the Painter easily for yourself. ----- - Copyright(c)2000 G.MATE, Inc All Rights reserved
I know it's elitist and all, but I seriously wonder sometimes if many of the people out there using MS and AOL are the kinds of people the Free Software Movement should be wooing.
Because AOL and MSN, like it or not, is easy for people to use. The target market is your grandmother, and they have a big bold friendly "you've got mail".
Friend of the family in this age group, I'm sure you know the one, the one who got your number dispite the fact that you said, "don't ever give this person your number"... was switched to MSN rather then the local telco based ISP. They got hooked into MSN 8, big bloated piece of filth they have been sporting. They loved it, big buttons, easy to under stand, can always check their e-mail. But they were wondering why their computer was crashing. Basicly I told 'em, "look, the software you are running, while you find it easier, is a bug ridden piece of filth. It's not your computer, it's MSN 8. Everything works fine when i'm here because I don't click on MSN 8. The program that crashed, the one I told you to write down the details is MSN 8. So you can either "choose" to use this product that you like but causes your whole system not to work, or you can stop using it, click on the more standarized "connect here" use This web browser and this mail client. It's 3 clicks for your typical session, but 3 clicks = reliable where msn = flacky".
But in this case... MSN 8 was used cause it was put in front of 'em, basicly calling the MSN help desk on how to connect, they were *asked* to download MSN 8 because it would make them *able* to connect. MSN was their ISP after all, they know best. And if it wasn't for the fact that MSN 8 craps out, i'd say "use it, use it till you are blue in the face, use that gawdy oversided bloated interface interface to your hearts content". That was if it worked... if someone really wants to plop down a the cash for a 2000+mhz athlon system with a 1/4 gig of ram just to make this bloated application run just fast enough to use, i'd say terriffic.
and they don't "get" what a file is versus a folder, or what an email "address" is. And part of this stems from the watering down of the tech world by companies like this to the point now where everyone bases their idea of what a Killer App (tm) is on the abilities of either the mythical "Joe User" or someone's grandma.
Ding Ding Ding Ding
You've got it. These applications target your grandmother's skill level. Either they come with the system, and target your grandmother, or they are told by someone to use this application. This is why they are successful, cause like it or not the vast majority of computer users on the planet are your grandmother.
Hell this is one reason that Macs were successfully marketed, they understood that this is a new technology and people are not going to buy things they don't understand how to use.
And, unfortunatly, these are the same people who actually decide for us what becames an accepted standard. This is one thing that gives me a warm *hopeful* feeling in side, the fact that Munich and India based on prior slashdot articals are going for OSS solutions. Perhaps with their influence perhaps they can actually make a contribution to this grandmother market and actually work on a good balance between ease of use and fucationaity so geeks like us can be happy and tweek under the hood, and they can be happy with "you've got mail".
But rather, send mall bits of code to SCO, 5, 10, 15, 20 lines at a time, perhaps a block if nessicary. Ask, nicely, if any of these lines violate what they consider to be their IP.
Be respectful to the fact that they don't want to release what they consider to be *their* IP and they have every right to defend what they consider to be theirs, and by the same token should beable to identify their property, and actually are required to if they want their claims to be valid.
Admit this: Who of you purchased any SCO product over the last years? How many of you didn't hear about SCO before, or just heard the name without associating it with anything? What share of the computer market does SCO control?
I rather thought that one of the primary market for Sco were people who bought Mas90, who either don't desire or are too lazy to move all their old accounting data to to a diffrent platform. You can get Mas90 for NT/2k, but why bother when you already have a working system. And some people are happy with the fact that they have a machine that no one wants to use, that no one knows how to use, and doesn't get gummed up with some fool who clicked on the Bonzi buddy install, for example.
Time is money and downtime isn't. Also there were a few worms and exploits in linux that caused some people to shy away from it as a viable solution for their business system, based under the old Novel rule, "Secure cause no bugger knows jack about it".
But I think the people who continue to buy SCO products are support companies who need to educate their staff on how to deal with SCO, because there are a decent amount of these machines out there, and a market for either maintance or moving away from SCO. Typicaly speaking it's easy to sell support to SCO, but it's harder to sell a cost saving platform change.
It is not a line or two here or there. It {...five to 10 to 15 lines of code...}was quite a surprise for us.
So the answer is simple. Get the source, mark the lines that are eledged to be in violation, submit to author, move on. Or better yet... *remove* these lines from the linux source, submit to author, and move on. This way you are not disclosing anything, you are simply removing the eledged IP from something publicly distrubted.
The someone else can note the diffrences, and publish what SCO's IP is. Problem solved.
Then the courts will battle with the idea wether or not 5 lines of code are protected under IP laws, or 10 lines of code, or 15 lines of code, or a block.
Oh yea, I know some people in my region got caught for this scam, though it was more along the lines of, "we are experencing trouble, please try your card again later" sorta deal. After all outright theft of card and it gets reported stolen. {remember kids, don't try this at home}
On a side note... I've noticed that it's practicaly impossible to return a lost card. I know in two cases i've actually noted cards in cash machines. I thought i'd do the honest thing and actually try to contact the card holder and say, "look, found you card, I think you might want that". In one case it was from an Alaska Credit Union, thinking to my self the holder living so far away is probally on vacation I'll try my damnest to contact the bank and work out some sorta arangement to return the card to the card holder. This does not work... I understand they don't give out addresses of card holders, what I don't understand is them not taking my address / number to give to the card holder, and they can actually phone the card holder. Basicly it was a "please destroy it", which I thought was a waste, esp when I was willing to return the card to prove it was *lost* rather then *stolen*. After a week I gave up, and I think I used it to apply epoxy to my car.
For future reference, I think i'll stick to returning lost purses / wallets. usually there is some form of ID in them where I can contact the owner without getting frustrated by banks who are not equiped to handle someone trying to be nice. And if all else failes, the US postal service will return them provided there is something with an address inside.
I should give this a shot
on
ClusterKnoppix
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
I have here a compaq contura Aero 486 sx/33 with 4megs of ram and a 170 meg HD. I find that Caldara, while being one of the only things that will run on it, is a might bit slugish.
The contura Aero is particulary annoying because of it's use of a Pcmcia floppy drive, and only 1 type II slot. For those unfamilar, it's not like you can hot swap the floppy and have it still work or anything useful like that.
For me it's either the laptop or a old net terminal for telnet fuctionality, and the laptop takes up less space.
Let's face it... credit cards are based on pretty old technology. Hell, there was a nice little 1970's film, can't remember the title off the top of my head, where one of the sub plots was a lady geek got fed up getting a job at a bank, proposed a security upgrade for their cash machines, got the cold sholder, and decided to rip off the cash machines. While I think it's a little far fetched to do such a thing from the safty of a van without modifying the equipment, it would be easy enough to visit a 2nd hand shop, buy a credit card terminal, modify it to relay all information it recieves, all the CC information as well as the pin associated, and transmit it to an outside source, which could be via radio or heck even one of those pay as you go phones. And because the technology is so dated, one can easily build a credit card writer, in fact I know 2600 had an artical on one you could build using cassette heads and a steper motor from a teac floppy drive (though 5.25 inch hard drive stepper moters are a whole lot more fun).
Now in the states this would be considered to be a federal crime, probally a felony, so kids don't try this at home. Damn sure this is a high crime in other parts of the world as well. My point is the struture of these cards we carry in our wallets are well documented and it's painfuly easy to create a credit card. Unlike paper currency, clerks often times don't even look at the piece of plastic you are shoving through the machine, and it's not like a cash machine cares. Again, don't try this at home, screwing with banks is bad... m'kay.
I would not be opposed to some form of smart chip, something that is a might bit more difficult to reproduce. I'm not nessicarly opposed to cards that use RF, provided that some form of physical authorization is required, like pin number, signature, thumb print. Both smart cards and RF cards can also be forged, but requires a bit more then essentally cassette tape, cassette head, stepper motor, and interface. Plus I want some form of authentication to demonstrated that I actually authorized a purchace.
One feature I found remarkable on the TI-99/4A that I couldn't really exploit at that age was the speed of the tape drive. it was 1200 baud if i'm remembering correctly, rather then the more typical 110 / 300 baud of typical tape drives. It was most useful for exchanging programs via leaving them on friend's answering machines. While this is jack squat by today's standards, this was circa 1982 when your typical 300 baud modem was, I don't know cause my only resource for hardware at the time was "Best", some out of business consumer electronics shop, who were selling 300 baud modems for $300, or rather not selling one 300 baud modem for $300.
It's usefulness didn't extend much beyond that, as it sorta required that the reciever had access to a TI, while you could do this on other systems, the TI offered blinding high speed in contrast.
Games like hunt the Wumpus had a sorta magical quality to them. They were entertaining and offered some form of logic skill development. There were others too, but essentally TI tried to hit the educational market, something that apple was far more sucessful at, for better or for worse.
One thing that the TI-99/4a computer had over other computers that were on the market place was it's text to speech abilitiees. While you needed the cartrage, either Terminal Emulator II (phonym based), extended basic (word based), or some other title with speech in it that I can't remember the name of.
Dispite having access to Socrates educational software, the TI was a poor choice in the end cause they stoped making them, and the software support was squat. But never the less, there still was a slew of games for it that were actually designed to prompte visual relation skils.
This is one thing I've observed in english majors. While they are well educated, they often times don't have the spacial relation skils required to pack boxes full of stuff when they move.
The Nintendo had some promise to it, the fact that it was based on a 6502 like Atari and Commodore were at the time, but didn't have much in the way of educational titles, unlike the 5200 which you could buy things like "Nasa space shuttle simulator".
I honestly don't know the number of projects Linus Torvalds has worked on, it's likely that sco doesn't either. For the time being i'm going to assume they are talking about something on the kernel level that *might be* SCO IP. A point that SCO has yet to prove.
Does anyone else have some sorta clue wether or not SCO is indeed talking about something on the kernel level, or possibly some rogue distrubution or program designed to give some level of compatability to SCO applications.
Also, as Novel has stated that they indeed do retain some, if not all the rights to the product that SCO licenses, wouldn't it be possible for Novel to License this product to anyone who is sited as being on SCO's list? $1.00 being the minium level of currency exchanged for a valid contract in america, unfortunatly, but based on the limited amount of my information on the subject, might very well be a viable solution.
"Dear SCO...
Thank you for bring to our attention that we need to license our product for fear of the possiblity that there might be some code that is protected under copyright laws. To this end, we have aquired a license from Novel for the sum of $1.00. Thank you very much an have an insperational day"
I really really really don't want to support our dependence on NUCLEAR power. While it's a might bit cleaner then coal atleast as far as atmospheric polution... nuclear waste is a fuck of concentrated toxic deadly. And we really don't have an adquate means of disposing of it, unless you advocate the placement of it in the salt mines of utah. I'm fortunate enough to live in a region that has reasonable hydropower, while it does have an impact on fish and wildlife, it's destructive potentical if far less then nuclear.
I must admit though, the fixed powerplant makes a fair amount of sence, as present technology is pretty prohibitive regarding pure electricly driven vehicels. Chemical power, wether it be hydrogen, or hydro-carbon chain provides far more power per weight.
I personaly feel that we shouldn't persue our quest for hydrogen in this way. Not when we do have the ability to produce alcohol or methane. The jump to nuclear should be seen as a "last resort" unless we can actually create a viable nuclear waste management program.
"People automatically picture vast quantities of drums, oozing green slime and ruining our lives," said John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association. "But the truth is that all of the waste produced by all of the world's nuclear reactors could fit in a two-story building, on an area the size of a basketball court."
If that was the only issue, then we would build a two story building to house the size of a basketball court. Problem solved? Yea right! If we were talking about something that it takes liters to be deadly, then yea. But something that it takes miligrams... no dice.
Now IF these mini-powerplants could generate enough in the way of hydrogen an oxygen to rocket the worlds nuclear waste to mercury, then you might have something. Not sure if i'd agree, but it would at least be a game plan.
1. One phone number for multi devices (I think this was covered in the article).
2. Phone numbers not tied to physical location, but rather device or authentication. Would be most nifty for mobiles to go landline. (this was covered)
3. Multi communication... end users could in theory have two telephones, and place two calls on the same line. No further need for an alarm wire from your telco.
4. No D/A loss when you copy your CD over your phone.
5. Everyone is highspeed internet ready... in theory you need 32Kbit for decent voice, perhaps 64K / 128K bit just to be safe. Pay more money to throttle you up to internet speeds... no more waiting for low paid installers.
6. Networked appliances no longer need "internet access" but rather phone access, and no gay ass 300 baud modems in your digital cable box.
Slashdot Mirror
Or rather the common sence.
Let's take a copy of Styx Grand Illusion. I make a copy of it for my car that's cassette. am I causing $50,000 of damage to Styx. No way in hell.
But let's say I sell a copy to someone else. Am I causing damage to Styx? While not a major crime, but yea only the respective copyright holders have a right to profit from their creations. Not $50,000 worth, and one could agrue that without the offical published media, it's not worth record store prices, but present laws say at the very least copyright holders should get royalities. How much isn't clear, the CD costs like $10.00 last time I looked.
Let's say I sold 5000 duplicated copies of Styx The Grand Illusion without permision of the copyright holders. Assuming $10 bucks a pop, that would be roughly $50,000. You could argue the comercial value of it, but $10.00 or so can easily be documented as cost in a record store. This actually could be $50,000 in damages.
So why are the laws not reflecting this form of common sence, attempting extort large sums of money out of either fair use home users or pirates, when in reality the punishment fits bootleging on a scale of thousands of copies?
It's only common sence, as Thomas Paine once. If government won't give you basic rights... you better get another government.
That's nothing, the idea was probally inspired by the book's popularity during the 1960s, taking too much LSD waiting around for Frank Mills and people saw little round men in leotards in front of the Waverly.
For our next theatrical production... It's Beavis and Butthead do Les Miserabls... with the voices of James Earl Jones, "that would suck" as Butt head / Jean val Jean and Gilbert Godfreed as Bevis / Javare "yea well...."
"I met a chick, she's a protitute, she's got no hair, she's cool"
"I am the great corn holio, I need freedom for my bunghole"
"Shut up buttmunch, no posers in our revolution"
I don't mind buying lemmas waffers when they're only two gold piece. You might call it decicance, but when their onsale for 1/2... i'll buy two bag.... i'll buy too bags... yea!
This was a tragic lost to the civilized world, and possily lots of Homer's other works were destroyed never to be seen again, not to speak of of the astrometery of Ptolemy and Eratosthenes.
o ph y/philosop8.htm used to get the spelling correct]
l ]
Eratosthenes, who i've always been a personal fan of, is credited with measuring the earth with a stick, or rather, by making measurments of the shadows cast at noon on a stick between Alexandria and Syene. No rockets, no computers, simple geometry established, assuming the earth was a perfect sphere, he determined represented 1/50th of a circle. Using modern mesurements, that's 500 miles * 50 = 25,000 miles (mental reference from scientific american sited verivied on the web) Pretty useful for people like Columbus, oh but wait.. we lost alot of our useful navagation knowlege cause it was burnt. Guess it wasn't christrian enough for Emperor Theodosius of Rome.
[http://www.planetarybiology.com/science_philos
There are so many other scientists, artists, pholophiers from this era. Hell Galileo wrote his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Principal Systems of the World" was published in about 1632, which chalanged Aristotle's geocentric view, something debated by atleast Aristarchus of Samos circa 230 BC or so. Who else might have published works who's theories can be proven by modern day methods.
[http://bell.lib.umn.edu/map/PTO/WRITE/erat.htm
Now would you consider this act a crime against humanity. Lost wealth of knowlege leading to the fall of knowlege it self?
---
Now... can we compair private libraries of books and music by users of P2P networks to the Library of Alexandria, a center of civilized thought? Could be, because for the first time in history distance has become obsolete. What survived from this era are not what could be considered the holy grail of wisdom, but literal scraps of information scattered from a varity of sources, not employed researchers or librarians, but something close to our amature collectors.
If it wasn't for this new Eutopia, I wouldn't have been able to find Eratosthenes's experiment, and been able to reproduce it, for the benifit of my nieces and nephews. A simple experiment over 2000 years ago that shows someone good evidence of the fact that they live on a planet.
While some would agrue that music and movies are not a human right. This is true. Got to make a living, we do presently have an industry, stuff costs money. Ok.. great! But DRM threatenes to permit the loss of works. At present i'm willing to pay for a CD... to play for my self and a friend. If I really like it, i'll keep the CD for 5 years, 10 years, and until I am dead. Someone who is curious about me, my life, like at the dawn of the 21st century might be at a loss if no one can obtain the right anymore. While you may think a obscure mixed metaphore like "the way the beach is kissed by the sea, poluted now but in our hearts still clean" {Insane Jane in a tribute to Pete Townshend) is important enough to preserve... but what about the works of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, or Einstein. With DRM... if the companies who published their work digitaly no longer exist, how can we access it.
We no longer need a natural disaster, global war, nor fanatical zeliot oh a quest for our welfare in the afterlife in order to drive this planet into another dark age. All we need are hard core encryption schemes, criminal penalities for circumventing them, and the loss of ability to lock them, a loss by some site on the net shutting down after declairing bankrupsy.
This isn't about depriving copyright holders of their rights to publish their works, nor about our distaste for an established system of enterprise. This is about standing at the edge of a new dark age where we stand to loose countless millenia of history, and a responciblity we have to the human race, and so long as we continue to permit these actions we are as guility as those responcible for the loss of the library of Alexandria.
Moraly it's wrong, their for it must be politicly correct.
Hey, it worked for the cartoon "The Hobbit" and "Return of the King".
An epic saga that is much akin to human growth, the adventure of youth and the burdon of responcibility over back drop of middle earth dragons and wizards is the perfect musical material, in the same sorta way that Les Miserables works. Les Mis sorta takes place in a romantised volitile time in French history, people vs the establishment, rocks and baracades. Not everyone's glass of tea, but it's something I enjoyed, even if it's a bit over the top. One thing that is considered a mark of good litature is something that can be enjoyed by all audiances... and The Lord of the Rings is something that can be read a child and read as an adult and still be enjoyed.
But to this day I still remember the edition of "Return of the King" cartoon, with the Orcs in Mordor chanting, "Where there's a whip, there's a way". While it was a sorta cheezy dumbed up cartoon, that is just classic.
I personaly could care less about a monopoly if they provide an adquate product for an adquate price.
AOL IMHO simply does not.
Keep in mind that there is a market for a trans-national ISP, and things like "AOL" and "Compu$serve" have dialups in way out of the way places. This gives them major bonus points dispite the fact that both sport bloated extra software that I really don't need. I once had a compuserve account back in 1982 when it didn't seem at all out of bounds to pay $6.00 an hr for e-mail... after all it was equilivent to a long distance call between seattle and richmond at the time. [yes $12.00 for 1200/2400 baud] A monopoly at the time for sure, but the only option at at a price that didn't seem all that offencive till roughly one decade later.
I don't know how much headway MSN has gotten as far as the transnational market, but MSN has serious bonus points over both AOL and Compuserve because you can turn off that garish interface [At one time, the dialup connections for Compu$erve were PPP, please correct me if they still are].
But I can't honestly say that "AOL" is a monopoly. For the most part, there is a choice for ISPs out there, at least in my region. MSN, who I personaly class in a very diffrent group, is not a monopoly as not only are there a vast number of choices for ISPs, but you can "choose" to connect to MSN via your own ISP at NO charge the last time I checked, provided you had a valid MSN passport. This information might be out of date, as I don't run the software. Pretty much the same with AOL, fee based but you can choose your own isp. Compu$erve i'm totally out of touch with, there was a time where this was not an issue.
If these companies, though they only issue windows and possibly mac editions of their software, while we could call them bastards, are not monopolies... (microsoft is to some extent), but on the point of MSN / AOL, there presently are choices out there. Because you can choose to use their services via a diffrent isp, there isn't really an anti trust issue here that I can tell. I'd be the first to say AOL sucks large rocks... but so long as there is a perfectly viable solution for network access... everything is spiffy.
Now... if someone were to actually create an OSS solution that creates a sorta internet experence for the average end user like aol/msn/compuserve do, then we'd have something. While I personaly wouldn't use such a beast, I could see it being remarkably useful under any platform. A spiffy front end that even isp techincal support can reccomend users download so that they can walk users through the connection process.
I recently downloaded a series of atari 5200 games and an emulator. To be honest I haven't tried to use anything resembling a 6502 emulator for years. At least on my 733 pentium III machine, it seems quite adquate.
Question: What about making a nice little transparent wrapper so that an existing wealth of games can be used under this new platform. While I'm sure some of the classics like pac-man and such are still protected under copyright, but after seeing recently an atari joystick with essentally a 2600 onboard, i'm under the impression that a comercial enterprise could successfuly purchace legit license for reasonable fee. I would think that companies like Atari would be overjoyed at the possibility of their classic stuff that pretty much has squat in the way of market value actually making a buck or two.
I must admit, one one of those people that the applice newton had some form of apeal to, who was very disapointed when the Palm Pilot came out, and found lacking in the way of features.
/ urltrurl? tt=url&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yopy.at%2Ffeatures.htm l&lp=de_en
Now, I can't tell based on the site wether or not the screen offers handwriting reconition like the old newton did, but it being linux i'm sure it can adapt if nessicary. One aspect I did enjoy abou the newton was it's ability to take notes in class, while it wasn't quite mature enough to be trully reliable, writing on it "explore your world" it seemed to think I was trying to say, "trust the fungus", it's ability to take hand doddles and actually straighten out the lines and before I knew it, I actually good looking readable diagrams and schematics.
I'm sorta going by http://www.yopy.at/features.html
[babble fish for people like me who don't do deutch]
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish
It looks like, to me, that stylus is designed to go on the screen, rather then the Palms that don't really have that feature. While my handwriting skills are pretty poor, I can work with just about any basic graphics application and clean up my my scetchs for something presentable. And too boot, it's based on linux, a product I use and can find applications for, yay.
Too rich for my blood presently, but on a buy from that geek who just got the go faster stripes model list.
Posted due to slashdotting effect
---
This is the background of the YP3700. You can change the background with a photo or picture you like for your taste
---
PIMS
Task
Memo
Schedule
Diary
Contact
PIMS Backup
Multimedia
MP3 Player
Painter
Recorder
YOPY Office
Text Edit
YOPY Sheet
YOPY Word
YOPY Viewer
Game
Sokoban
Freecell
Solitaire
XRick
Utility
Package Manager
Calculator
Wallpaper
IrDA
Xterm
Network
Internet Browser
E-mail
Network
WLAN Config
File Manager
File Manager
Settings
Settings
---
- Copyright(c)2000 G.MATE, Inc All Rights reserved
Posted due to slashdotting effect
-----
* Folder like Design
- Innovative and Attractive Design
- Extreme Portability
- Screen Protection from scratch or break
* Excellent Hardware Specs
- Fast Operation (206Mhz) and Big Memory (128MB RAM/32 MB ROM)
- 2300mAh Li-ion Polymer Battery
- MMC Slot and IrDA port
- Outstanding 65,536 color TFT LCD
- Colorful LED Indicator
- CF-II Slot
* Convenient Keypad
- Performing/Ending/Editing Programs with Keypad
- Same arrangement of keypad as Desktop PC (QWERTY Type)
- Fast and handy data input
* Wireless Internet Access anywhere, anytime
- Wireless Internet Access anywhere, anytime
- Wireless E-mail
- Wireless Lan
* Joyful Multimedia PDA
- MP3 Player
- Recorder
- Painter
- Making background freely - You can do it using the Wallpaper program or the Painter easily for yourself.
-----
- Copyright(c)2000 G.MATE, Inc All Rights reserved
I know it's elitist and all, but I seriously wonder sometimes if many of the people out there using MS and AOL are the kinds of people the Free Software Movement should be wooing.
Because AOL and MSN, like it or not, is easy for people to use. The target market is your grandmother, and they have a big bold friendly "you've got mail".
Friend of the family in this age group, I'm sure you know the one, the one who got your number dispite the fact that you said, "don't ever give this person your number"... was switched to MSN rather then the local telco based ISP. They got hooked into MSN 8, big bloated piece of filth they have been sporting. They loved it, big buttons, easy to under stand, can always check their e-mail. But they were wondering why their computer was crashing. Basicly I told 'em, "look, the software you are running, while you find it easier, is a bug ridden piece of filth. It's not your computer, it's MSN 8. Everything works fine when i'm here because I don't click on MSN 8. The program that crashed, the one I told you to write down the details is MSN 8. So you can either "choose" to use this product that you like but causes your whole system not to work, or you can stop using it, click on the more standarized "connect here" use This web browser and this mail client. It's 3 clicks for your typical session, but 3 clicks = reliable where msn = flacky".
But in this case... MSN 8 was used cause it was put in front of 'em, basicly calling the MSN help desk on how to connect, they were *asked* to download MSN 8 because it would make them *able* to connect. MSN was their ISP after all, they know best. And if it wasn't for the fact that MSN 8 craps out, i'd say "use it, use it till you are blue in the face, use that gawdy oversided bloated interface interface to your hearts content". That was if it worked... if someone really wants to plop down a the cash for a 2000+mhz athlon system with a 1/4 gig of ram just to make this bloated application run just fast enough to use, i'd say terriffic.
and they don't "get" what a file is versus a folder, or what an email "address" is. And part of this stems from the watering down of the tech world by companies like this to the point now where everyone bases their idea of what a Killer App (tm) is on the abilities of either the mythical "Joe User" or someone's grandma.
Ding Ding Ding Ding
You've got it. These applications target your grandmother's skill level. Either they come with the system, and target your grandmother, or they are told by someone to use this application. This is why they are successful, cause like it or not the vast majority of computer users on the planet are your grandmother.
Hell this is one reason that Macs were successfully marketed, they understood that this is a new technology and people are not going to buy things they don't understand how to use.
And, unfortunatly, these are the same people who actually decide for us what becames an accepted standard. This is one thing that gives me a warm *hopeful* feeling in side, the fact that Munich and India based on prior slashdot articals are going for OSS solutions. Perhaps with their influence perhaps they can actually make a contribution to this grandmother market and actually work on a good balance between ease of use and fucationaity so geeks like us can be happy and tweek under the hood, and they can be happy with "you've got mail".
Captain Murphy: But they taste like candy!
But rather, send mall bits of code to SCO, 5, 10, 15, 20 lines at a time, perhaps a block if nessicary. Ask, nicely, if any of these lines violate what they consider to be their IP.
Be respectful to the fact that they don't want to release what they consider to be *their* IP and they have every right to defend what they consider to be theirs, and by the same token should beable to identify their property, and actually are required to if they want their claims to be valid.
Admit this: Who of you purchased any SCO product over the last years? How many of you didn't hear about SCO before, or just heard the name without associating it with anything? What share of the computer market does SCO control?
I rather thought that one of the primary market for Sco were people who bought Mas90, who either don't desire or are too lazy to move all their old accounting data to to a diffrent platform. You can get Mas90 for NT/2k, but why bother when you already have a working system. And some people are happy with the fact that they have a machine that no one wants to use, that no one knows how to use, and doesn't get gummed up with some fool who clicked on the Bonzi buddy install, for example.
Time is money and downtime isn't. Also there were a few worms and exploits in linux that caused some people to shy away from it as a viable solution for their business system, based under the old Novel rule, "Secure cause no bugger knows jack about it".
But I think the people who continue to buy SCO products are support companies who need to educate their staff on how to deal with SCO, because there are a decent amount of these machines out there, and a market for either maintance or moving away from SCO. Typicaly speaking it's easy to sell support to SCO, but it's harder to sell a cost saving platform change.
#include
int main(void)
{
cout "Hello SCO!" endl;
return 0;
}
I would suspect anything under 20 lines of code that are similar are also textbook examples rather then IP.
It is not a line or two here or there. It {...five to 10 to 15 lines of code...}was quite a surprise for us.
So the answer is simple. Get the source, mark the lines that are eledged to be in violation, submit to author, move on. Or better yet... *remove* these lines from the linux source, submit to author, and move on. This way you are not disclosing anything, you are simply removing the eledged IP from something publicly distrubted.
The someone else can note the diffrences, and publish what SCO's IP is. Problem solved.
Then the courts will battle with the idea wether or not 5 lines of code are protected under IP laws, or 10 lines of code, or 15 lines of code, or a block.
Oh yea, I know some people in my region got caught for this scam, though it was more along the lines of, "we are experencing trouble, please try your card again later" sorta deal. After all outright theft of card and it gets reported stolen. {remember kids, don't try this at home}
On a side note... I've noticed that it's practicaly impossible to return a lost card. I know in two cases i've actually noted cards in cash machines. I thought i'd do the honest thing and actually try to contact the card holder and say, "look, found you card, I think you might want that". In one case it was from an Alaska Credit Union, thinking to my self the holder living so far away is probally on vacation I'll try my damnest to contact the bank and work out some sorta arangement to return the card to the card holder. This does not work... I understand they don't give out addresses of card holders, what I don't understand is them not taking my address / number to give to the card holder, and they can actually phone the card holder. Basicly it was a "please destroy it", which I thought was a waste, esp when I was willing to return the card to prove it was *lost* rather then *stolen*. After a week I gave up, and I think I used it to apply epoxy to my car.
For future reference, I think i'll stick to returning lost purses / wallets. usually there is some form of ID in them where I can contact the owner without getting frustrated by banks who are not equiped to handle someone trying to be nice. And if all else failes, the US postal service will return them provided there is something with an address inside.
I have here a compaq contura Aero 486 sx/33 with 4megs of ram and a 170 meg HD. I find that Caldara, while being one of the only things that will run on it, is a might bit slugish.
The contura Aero is particulary annoying because of it's use of a Pcmcia floppy drive, and only 1 type II slot. For those unfamilar, it's not like you can hot swap the floppy and have it still work or anything useful like that.
For me it's either the laptop or a old net terminal for telnet fuctionality, and the laptop takes up less space.
Let's face it... credit cards are based on pretty old technology. Hell, there was a nice little 1970's film, can't remember the title off the top of my head, where one of the sub plots was a lady geek got fed up getting a job at a bank, proposed a security upgrade for their cash machines, got the cold sholder, and decided to rip off the cash machines. While I think it's a little far fetched to do such a thing from the safty of a van without modifying the equipment, it would be easy enough to visit a 2nd hand shop, buy a credit card terminal, modify it to relay all information it recieves, all the CC information as well as the pin associated, and transmit it to an outside source, which could be via radio or heck even one of those pay as you go phones. And because the technology is so dated, one can easily build a credit card writer, in fact I know 2600 had an artical on one you could build using cassette heads and a steper motor from a teac floppy drive (though 5.25 inch hard drive stepper moters are a whole lot more fun).
Now in the states this would be considered to be a federal crime, probally a felony, so kids don't try this at home. Damn sure this is a high crime in other parts of the world as well. My point is the struture of these cards we carry in our wallets are well documented and it's painfuly easy to create a credit card. Unlike paper currency, clerks often times don't even look at the piece of plastic you are shoving through the machine, and it's not like a cash machine cares. Again, don't try this at home, screwing with banks is bad... m'kay.
I would not be opposed to some form of smart chip, something that is a might bit more difficult to reproduce. I'm not nessicarly opposed to cards that use RF, provided that some form of physical authorization is required, like pin number, signature, thumb print. Both smart cards and RF cards can also be forged, but requires a bit more then essentally cassette tape, cassette head, stepper motor, and interface. Plus I want some form of authentication to demonstrated that I actually authorized a purchace.
One feature I found remarkable on the TI-99/4A that I couldn't really exploit at that age was the speed of the tape drive. it was 1200 baud if i'm remembering correctly, rather then the more typical 110 / 300 baud of typical tape drives. It was most useful for exchanging programs via leaving them on friend's answering machines. While this is jack squat by today's standards, this was circa 1982 when your typical 300 baud modem was, I don't know cause my only resource for hardware at the time was "Best", some out of business consumer electronics shop, who were selling 300 baud modems for $300, or rather not selling one 300 baud modem for $300.
It's usefulness didn't extend much beyond that, as it sorta required that the reciever had access to a TI, while you could do this on other systems, the TI offered blinding high speed in contrast.
Games like hunt the Wumpus had a sorta magical quality to them. They were entertaining and offered some form of logic skill development. There were others too, but essentally TI tried to hit the educational market, something that apple was far more sucessful at, for better or for worse.
Are you genitals ergonomic?
One thing that the TI-99/4a computer had over other computers that were on the market place was it's text to speech abilitiees. While you needed the cartrage, either Terminal Emulator II (phonym based), extended basic (word based), or some other title with speech in it that I can't remember the name of.
Dispite having access to Socrates educational software, the TI was a poor choice in the end cause they stoped making them, and the software support was squat. But never the less, there still was a slew of games for it that were actually designed to prompte visual relation skils.
This is one thing I've observed in english majors. While they are well educated, they often times don't have the spacial relation skils required to pack boxes full of stuff when they move.
The Nintendo had some promise to it, the fact that it was based on a 6502 like Atari and Commodore were at the time, but didn't have much in the way of educational titles, unlike the 5200 which you could buy things like "Nasa space shuttle simulator".
I honestly don't know the number of projects Linus Torvalds has worked on, it's likely that sco doesn't either. For the time being i'm going to assume they are talking about something on the kernel level that *might be* SCO IP. A point that SCO has yet to prove.
Does anyone else have some sorta clue wether or not SCO is indeed talking about something on the kernel level, or possibly some rogue distrubution or program designed to give some level of compatability to SCO applications.
Also, as Novel has stated that they indeed do retain some, if not all the rights to the product that SCO licenses, wouldn't it be possible for Novel to License this product to anyone who is sited as being on SCO's list? $1.00 being the minium level of currency exchanged for a valid contract in america, unfortunatly, but based on the limited amount of my information on the subject, might very well be a viable solution.
"Dear SCO...
Thank you for bring to our attention that we need to license our product for fear of the possiblity that there might be some code that is protected under copyright laws. To this end, we have aquired a license from Novel for the sum of $1.00. Thank you very much an have an insperational day"
I really really really don't want to support our dependence on NUCLEAR power. While it's a might bit cleaner then coal atleast as far as atmospheric polution... nuclear waste is a fuck of concentrated toxic deadly. And we really don't have an adquate means of disposing of it, unless you advocate the placement of it in the salt mines of utah. I'm fortunate enough to live in a region that has reasonable hydropower, while it does have an impact on fish and wildlife, it's destructive potentical if far less then nuclear.
I must admit though, the fixed powerplant makes a fair amount of sence, as present technology is pretty prohibitive regarding pure electricly driven vehicels. Chemical power, wether it be hydrogen, or hydro-carbon chain provides far more power per weight.
I personaly feel that we shouldn't persue our quest for hydrogen in this way. Not when we do have the ability to produce alcohol or methane. The jump to nuclear should be seen as a "last resort" unless we can actually create a viable nuclear waste management program.
"People automatically picture vast quantities of drums, oozing green slime and ruining our lives," said John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association. "But the truth is that all of the waste produced by all of the world's nuclear reactors could fit in a two-story building, on an area the size of a basketball court."
If that was the only issue, then we would build a two story building to house the size of a basketball court. Problem solved? Yea right! If we were talking about something that it takes liters to be deadly, then yea. But something that it takes miligrams... no dice.
Now IF these mini-powerplants could generate enough in the way of hydrogen an oxygen to rocket the worlds nuclear waste to mercury, then you might have something. Not sure if i'd agree, but it would at least be a game plan.
Consumer benifits....
1. One phone number for multi devices (I think this was covered in the article).
2. Phone numbers not tied to physical location, but rather device or authentication. Would be most nifty for mobiles to go landline. (this was covered)
3. Multi communication... end users could in theory have two telephones, and place two calls on the same line. No further need for an alarm wire from your telco.
4. No D/A loss when you copy your CD over your phone.
5. Everyone is highspeed internet ready... in theory you need 32Kbit for decent voice, perhaps 64K / 128K bit just to be safe. Pay more money to throttle you up to internet speeds... no more waiting for low paid installers.
6. Networked appliances no longer need "internet access" but rather phone access, and no gay ass 300 baud modems in your digital cable box.