More games? Surely there is something better to put on ones hard drive than porn.
Yeah, install GTA3 and expansion packs, download all the Q3/HL/UT/SoF/RtCW/etc packs and maps you can find, etc.
After all, violence is far better for you than sex. Talk about screwed up values. Yes, most porn may have little to do with love, but demonizing sexuality is a bit of puritanical history that the world could do without.
Oh, and for the record, I do play FPS's. Stopped downloading porn a few years ago, not because I found it despicable, or because I don't like the female form (my wife will vouch for the fact that I do), but simply because I'd had "enough" and it wasn't as titillating as it was as a teenager.
Probably within two years based on release schedules. About a year ago the biggest drive you could buy was ~100 GB. Now we're talking about 320 GB drives in a few months. And both IBM and Seagate have demonstrated higher yet storage densities in the lab, so they'll filter down in the next year or so.
it't not like transferring $100.00 requires ten times the amount of bits to move through the wire than $10.00
No, but it is ten times the risk. The bank is lending out money, usually at a very short term rate. They have to make the money somehow, and also cover their asses in case the debt goes bad (what happens if you never pay back that $100? I've worked in the high risk credit industry -- 10-15% chargeoff is par for the course).
Not cheering or jeering Paypal here, just pointing out some economic realities.
Wow, you utterly missed the real "bad" that for most people outweighs the "good" by leaps and bounds -- by releasing only the specs and not having any direct support the time lag between card release and usable driver availability is so long that by the time you get drivers the card will have ceased being viable in the retail market.
Or, at least, that's true currently. If ATI incrementally improves the cards then, in theory, you can reuse large chunks of code and the gap will become smaller. Of course, ATI can't even do this for it's own Windows drivers, so it may not be viable for the Open Source community either (but it may, since the OSS developers are not be hamstrung by management here).
Realize that nVidia cannot release specs or driver code (at least to the extent desired). They are prohibited by law from doing so. nVidia has cross-licensing agreements with SGI that are related to the hardware, the firmware, the drivers, and the interfacing between all of them. So while it's nice to sit and whine about nVidia being evil, the fact of the matter is that nVidia has no decision in the matter.
Whether or not nVidia would release the info if they weren't beholden to SGI is another matter, but it's purely speculation, and all the pondering in the world won't change the fact that they can't.
However that's not what Larry was talking about. He quite explicitly is talking about God. Singular and in his case Christian.
No, now you're adding your own layer on top of it.
Larry stated a requirement for two things - that you acknowledge the existence of God, and that Good Things Happen to Those Who Believe in God.
Ok, so if you go strictly by that then yes, polytheistic religions are right out. If, however, you do a s/God/Higher Power/g then what God(s) you believe in are irrelevant. Larry stated that he believes in Jesus, but the rest was vaguely enough stated that it didn't necessarily tie it to Judeo-Christianity.
Another poster said it very well - if there is a God (or higher power, or whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it), then all the various religions may very well be akin to the blind men describing an elephant. They're all basing their beliefs on an inadequate picture of the whole, and yet they're all touching upon some of the truths incorporated by that whole.
When you strip off a lot of the crap that humans have added to religion (as opposed to faith/belief), most of them do come down to similar cores. There's something that created everything and would you quit screwing over everyone else for your own personal gains?
My personal standpoint is that part A isn't true, but I'll admit that a lot of that is predjudice against a lot of the bullshit that religious extremists spew. I deeply believe in part B, and often wish that more people would stop trying to screw each other over (often because the aforementioned extremists exhort them to do so).
So, I suppose that you're going to ignore the numerous studies that show that "people of faith" have a higher survival rate for cancer and other long term illnesses? Or, at the very least, suffer less depression? (Yes, unsurprisingly, different studies have had different results).
Yes, I'm an atheist. And I raise an eyebrow at these studies as well, but to some extent I'm unsurprised. There's a great deal of psychology when it comes to survival of a long term illness, and people who believe in a "higher power" may very well have a better attitude toward all of it, believing that God will pull them through, or that if they die then they're at least going to a better place. Ask any Oncology doctor -- they'll tell you that a good attitude is essential to surviving, and as such believers may be more likely to have that attitude.
And, of course, others have made commentary regarding how you measure "better", and that some measurements may not be accurate. I know that I'd rather be poor and happy rather than rich and miserable. (Of course, I can say this having never really been poor... shrug... but I've been deeply unhappy before in my life and I know I don't like that, and that money doesn't solve it).
I played EQ for nearly 3 years and have some solid friendships that have come of that. More importantly, I have my wife, who I met in game. We chatted in game, then via Internet audio (Gamevoice), and then met and dated for awhile before going further.
And I'm not the only one either - a couple of our best friends met via a MUD while in college and have been married for nearly 8 years. And my father-in-law met his second wife online.
Of course, I know a bunch of people who treat relationships as convienences, and I've watched them burn people left and right both online and in real life (when they met). Mostly because they never quite got that there was someone on the other end of the pixels and they were due just as much respect as you yourself are.
I know I was honest with other people online, and so maybe that's why it's worked for me. I know our friends and my father-in-law are the same way. Because, frankly, if you don't treat others well online they're not going to trust you or treat you well either. What goes around comes around and all that.
This isn't saying to be a doormat. Nor does it mean that you can't do well in the game -- I was in the uber-guild on my server and was one of the best equipped characters of my class.
If you want a possible fix - go to 9th Tee and order some of the power strip jumper cables - they're about 8 inches long and work fine. Simple idea, but I've never seen them elsewhere, and they're great for either plugging into walls or outlet strips.
Well, none of the blocking software actually "fights spam" under your definition either. Because all they do is block you from seeing it -- depending on where the anti-spam software is, the bandwidth has already been used to the ISP (at a minimum) and perhaps to you.
Actually, Sneakemail and its ilk do improve things, or at least shifts them. Disable an address that's being spammed and you'll no longer receive the mail. It won't use any bandwidth from the ISP to you, and it won't even use bandwidth to the ISP (note - some of the bandwidth gets shifted to Sneakemail, who tells the sender "no such address" when the SMTP connection is made -- which you noted). Even so, this is a net reduction in the bandwidth used, which is more than the anti-spam filters can say.
Neither is an ideal solution. Until we get some serious anti-spam laws there's nothing that'll be done.
Uh, and exactly how does one's finger slip into a quarter inch gap?
Because by the time the plug has power on it that's how much space is between the faceplate and the plug face, at least if you have a plug designed in the past 80 years or so.
The one thing that should be done (and is done by electricians worth a damn) is that the plug should be installed "upside down" -- that is with ground (earth) on the top. That way if the plug isn't completely connected and something falls on it will hit the ground plug (if there is one) before shorting hot/neutral.
It cracks me up how many people have passwords such as that and are supposedly worried about security
Most passwords are crap, and there's nothing you can do about it. Passwords are doomed to be crap. You have two choices - be loose, and hope people use secure passwords (result: a few people will, most people won't), or be strict and force secure passwords (result: average users write down the new password, people who use secure ones normally get pissed off and start using crappy pw's).
I have about a half dozen secure passwords that I rotate around -- none of them have ever been cracked, and you're not going to guess them from social engineering, profiling, or dictionary attacks. I know that some of them are inherently "less secure" because they're used more commonly, and the more places they're used the more likely they'll get snarfed. When you make me exceed my normal password capacity then I'm going to use stupid things like "Abcdef1".
About the only solution is to use something like SecureID - which annoys me since I know my pw's are solid, but at least it takes care of the 90% of people who can't remember a password unless it's their SO's name, their pet's name, or a birthdate of one of the aforementioned.
Oh, and obscure anime characters are fine, as long as you use some non-alphabetic characters at the front, end, or middle. Of course, we're preaching to the choir here. The problem is the average user.
Most others already said it - video editing, video encoding, high end math. If your compile environment needs that kind of horsepower, then you're probably using bad tools or doing something horribly wrong in your code (duh, there are exceptions, but for 95% of the coding out there?)
In the business world there are often needs for more CPU - although more often than not the issue is I/O throughput rather than CPU.
As for NWN - shrug... I'm running it on an Athlon 750 w/ a 32 MB GF2. Am I missing out on some of the eye candy? Probably, but it still runs just fine.
I do plan to buy a new system in the near future though - but I'm playing the waiting game right now since I don't need a new one yet and some of the parts I want (or would like) aren't available yet. Mainly I'm waiting on the NV30 to be released. A 333 MHz bus Athlon would be nice (although there's a slim chance of returning to a P4 -- I'm still vaguely looking for someone doing benches comparing an RDRAM and DDR setup) and Serial ATA would be nice. USB2.0 and Firewire are everywhere now, and all the new MBs for Athlons will do thermal die checks.
Oh, why do I want a new system? UT2k3 and Doom3 of course. Duh.
The previous company I worked at did this as well. Pissed the hell out of me, since I could no longer get to my email and I prefer to not give out my work email out over the net to avoid the spam.
The really idiotic think is that they blocked sites like Sneakemail too, which is just a redirector service.
I can understand the need to block webmail sites, since there are too many idiots out there, but at least be intelligent about what gets blocked.
Either comply or look for another source for your needs
We do. Thus we use Boost, OTL, and other C++ libraries with non-GPL licenses. Realistically it hasn't been an issue for us -- there aren't any libraries that we've wanted to use but were prevented from by the license. If there were, we'd either find an alternative or write it ourselves.
Problem is, a lot of people do write code, hoping for it to be used widely and then GPL it. Yes, LGPL is the right license, but it doesn't get nearly as much press as the GPL and so a lot of people unfamiliar with the particulars of both licenses might not get it.
I'm not asking to subvert the GPL. I'm asking that it be far more clear as to what constitutes a derivative work -- Bruce took a good step towards that IMO.
It's not a question of "should anyone have it" -- it's a question of whether or not/., as a news site, should link to it.
The answer is no, they should not. And sure as hell not without also linking the patch. Doing otherwise is yellow journalism, and borders on criminal negligence.
Contrary to what you may think I'm not a MS fanboy. I code in Unix every day, all day. But that doesn't mean that I don't expect responsibility from others.
The proposed revision of the GPL does "fix" some of the murkiness related to dynamic linking -- but does so by implicitly claiming them as derivative works.
I know this is what RMS wants, and perhaps it's what the community as a whole wants, but it's also why most commercial companies won't touch GPL code with a 10' pole.
At the very least an API as you define it should be able to form a firewall between GPL and non-GPL code (note - not necessarily commercial - I may want to distribute my code under BSD license, but it still needs to be untainted by GPL for that to be an option).
Without this provision companies will continue to avoid GPL code for fear of losing core business logic. I code in Unix, use open source tools, and we avoid any GPL libraries even though there's no intent to distribute the code outside our company. It's simply not worth the risk that one day we'll have a component that does need to be distributed and potentially tainting everything else -- which is core business logic.
Odds are it's running over the same circuits. But that doesn't mean it's going to be the same service.
If you have Earthlink or some other ISP service your DSL instead of the phone co. then you are relying on the ISP for switching and routing. The ISP may have better tech support, may have better bandwidth (e.g. - 10 customers for every T1 instead of 50-100 customers for every T1), better services (static IP, more mailboxes, more webspace, etc.).
Then again, the ISP may be worse than the phone co. But, at the very least, you're helping to break the monopoly at least a bit. So yes, it is competition. At least some competition.
I have Earthlink service currently and while I only occasionally have problems, I know that their tech support is pretty useless (which wasn't true back in the Mindspring days). No real issues with bandwidth, but your mileage may vary.
If you want to see a list of local broadband providers, go to DSLReports -- they've got some nice tools and a good listing of ISPs (and even show who the ISP uses for circuits -- if you find an ISP that uses Covad or anyone-but-the-RBOC then that's as close as you'll get to real competition -- the circuit provider is still leasing floor space from the RBOC).
How many of you posting or modding this up also support the free exchange of ideas, including how to back up or media shift a DVD, or extract a portion for review?
There is a difference.
The first has no purpose except to exploit a hole and cause damage to a computer or a network. It has no higher purpose, no one in the industry or the man-on-the-street would approve of its usage, and linking to it (and not linking to the previously released patch) is nothing but yellow journalism.
The latter has uses which may or may not fall under the "Fair Use" clauses of copyright law, but which would be generally considered acceptable by both people in the industry and the average Joe.
Frankly, there is such a think as responsibility, and even more so in the journalism trade. Slashdot bills itself as "News for Nerds", and thus places itself squarely in the journalism trade, regardless of whether or not the editors have had any training in it. They may not be (and should not be) responsible for comments made by users, but they damn well are responsible for the front page and should not do something this inane.
Free exchange of knowledge is all fine and dandy, but you can't have freedom without responsibility. Anarchy is not freedom.
The reason it is a good idea is because anything used by the government is public property, and public property must be subject to public review.
Ah. Ok. So I suppose that the blueprints to every vehicle the government buys also need to be available? And I suppose that whatever computers are purchased had better have the transistor-level designs available too.
Sorry, no they're not. Public review does not mean what you seem to think it means. Public review means that the public can review the discussion and decisions of the government. It doesn't mean we get to micromanage every little thing.
Now pursuant to the actual definition of public review we may want to mandate that public documents be stored in a documented format -- preferably one that is free to create and use, but at the very least one that has a publicly available interface format.
No, "free" isn't going to happen either. If it was then you couldn't store audio data in CD or WAV format -- because they are patent encumbered. The fact that they are is irrelevant - both standards are documented and will be recoverable in the future because of that.
If you want popup killing (and ad killing, and lots of other nifty stuff), try The Proxomitron. Has worked pretty flawlessly for me (and bypass mode fixes things when it becomes overzealous). I need to spend some time learning how to selectively disable it though -- I don't mind ads on some sites (like/.).
For tabbed browsing, try MyIE2 or CrazyBrowser -- it's not a must for me so I haven't bothered trying either.
Of course, people will inevitably whine that Mozilla comes with all of this built in while you have to download add ons for IE. Which is amazingly hypocritical, since the traditional Unix mantra is that small programs that extend functionality are better than monolithic programs. Yes, I know Mozilla is extensible as well, but to bash IE for being extensible to include additional functionality is just bashing for bashing's sake.
Your complaint about Mozilla and the middle mouse button seems off. This is not a function of Mozilla - it's a function of your drivers. Tell your drivers to make middle click middle click instead of autoscroll, then Mozilla should treat it properly.
That's because bandwidth has little to do with latency. And latency is what online gaming is all about.
If you have a steady 185 ms ping with a 56k modem you're better off than an erratic 20-80 ms ping with a broadband connection.
That was true in 1997, and it's true now. If you could adjust your aim for that 185 ms ping then, you can now too -- I get railed regularly by people pinging 3x me because they've adjusted for their ping. One of the best Q1/2 players I know was on a modem the entire time and regularly beat people on T1 lines.
Slashdot Mirror
More games? Surely there is something better to put on ones hard drive than porn.
Yeah, install GTA3 and expansion packs, download all the Q3/HL/UT/SoF/RtCW/etc packs and maps you can find, etc.
After all, violence is far better for you than sex. Talk about screwed up values. Yes, most porn may have little to do with love, but demonizing sexuality is a bit of puritanical history that the world could do without.
Oh, and for the record, I do play FPS's. Stopped downloading porn a few years ago, not because I found it despicable, or because I don't like the female form (my wife will vouch for the fact that I do), but simply because I'd had "enough" and it wasn't as titillating as it was as a teenager.
Hope the troll is full now.
Probably within two years based on release schedules. About a year ago the biggest drive you could buy was ~100 GB. Now we're talking about 320 GB drives in a few months. And both IBM and Seagate have demonstrated higher yet storage densities in the lab, so they'll filter down in the next year or so.
it't not like transferring $100.00 requires ten times the amount of bits to move through the wire than $10.00
No, but it is ten times the risk. The bank is lending out money, usually at a very short term rate. They have to make the money somehow, and also cover their asses in case the debt goes bad (what happens if you never pay back that $100? I've worked in the high risk credit industry -- 10-15% chargeoff is par for the course).
Not cheering or jeering Paypal here, just pointing out some economic realities.
Wow, you utterly missed the real "bad" that for most people outweighs the "good" by leaps and bounds -- by releasing only the specs and not having any direct support the time lag between card release and usable driver availability is so long that by the time you get drivers the card will have ceased being viable in the retail market.
Or, at least, that's true currently. If ATI incrementally improves the cards then, in theory, you can reuse large chunks of code and the gap will become smaller. Of course, ATI can't even do this for it's own Windows drivers, so it may not be viable for the Open Source community either (but it may, since the OSS developers are not be hamstrung by management here).
Realize that nVidia cannot release specs or driver code (at least to the extent desired). They are prohibited by law from doing so. nVidia has cross-licensing agreements with SGI that are related to the hardware, the firmware, the drivers, and the interfacing between all of them. So while it's nice to sit and whine about nVidia being evil, the fact of the matter is that nVidia has no decision in the matter.
Whether or not nVidia would release the info if they weren't beholden to SGI is another matter, but it's purely speculation, and all the pondering in the world won't change the fact that they can't.
However that's not what Larry was talking about. He quite explicitly is talking about God. Singular and in his case Christian.
No, now you're adding your own layer on top of it.
Larry stated a requirement for two things - that you acknowledge the existence of God, and that Good Things Happen to Those Who Believe in God.
Ok, so if you go strictly by that then yes, polytheistic religions are right out. If, however, you do a s/God/Higher Power/g then what God(s) you believe in are irrelevant. Larry stated that he believes in Jesus, but the rest was vaguely enough stated that it didn't necessarily tie it to Judeo-Christianity.
Another poster said it very well - if there is a God (or higher power, or whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it), then all the various religions may very well be akin to the blind men describing an elephant. They're all basing their beliefs on an inadequate picture of the whole, and yet they're all touching upon some of the truths incorporated by that whole.
When you strip off a lot of the crap that humans have added to religion (as opposed to faith/belief), most of them do come down to similar cores. There's something that created everything and would you quit screwing over everyone else for your own personal gains?
My personal standpoint is that part A isn't true, but I'll admit that a lot of that is predjudice against a lot of the bullshit that religious extremists spew. I deeply believe in part B, and often wish that more people would stop trying to screw each other over (often because the aforementioned extremists exhort them to do so).
So, I suppose that you're going to ignore the numerous studies that show that "people of faith" have a higher survival rate for cancer and other long term illnesses? Or, at the very least, suffer less depression? (Yes, unsurprisingly, different studies have had different results).
Yes, I'm an atheist. And I raise an eyebrow at these studies as well, but to some extent I'm unsurprised. There's a great deal of psychology when it comes to survival of a long term illness, and people who believe in a "higher power" may very well have a better attitude toward all of it, believing that God will pull them through, or that if they die then they're at least going to a better place. Ask any Oncology doctor -- they'll tell you that a good attitude is essential to surviving, and as such believers may be more likely to have that attitude.
And, of course, others have made commentary regarding how you measure "better", and that some measurements may not be accurate. I know that I'd rather be poor and happy rather than rich and miserable. (Of course, I can say this having never really been poor... shrug... but I've been deeply unhappy before in my life and I know I don't like that, and that money doesn't solve it).
Sorry, it's just you.
I played EQ for nearly 3 years and have some solid friendships that have come of that. More importantly, I have my wife, who I met in game. We chatted in game, then via Internet audio (Gamevoice), and then met and dated for awhile before going further.
And I'm not the only one either - a couple of our best friends met via a MUD while in college and have been married for nearly 8 years. And my father-in-law met his second wife online.
Of course, I know a bunch of people who treat relationships as convienences, and I've watched them burn people left and right both online and in real life (when they met). Mostly because they never quite got that there was someone on the other end of the pixels and they were due just as much respect as you yourself are.
I know I was honest with other people online, and so maybe that's why it's worked for me. I know our friends and my father-in-law are the same way. Because, frankly, if you don't treat others well online they're not going to trust you or treat you well either. What goes around comes around and all that.
This isn't saying to be a doormat. Nor does it mean that you can't do well in the game -- I was in the uber-guild on my server and was one of the best equipped characters of my class.
If you want a possible fix - go to 9th Tee and order some of the power strip jumper cables - they're about 8 inches long and work fine. Simple idea, but I've never seen them elsewhere, and they're great for either plugging into walls or outlet strips.
Well, none of the blocking software actually "fights spam" under your definition either. Because all they do is block you from seeing it -- depending on where the anti-spam software is, the bandwidth has already been used to the ISP (at a minimum) and perhaps to you.
Actually, Sneakemail and its ilk do improve things, or at least shifts them. Disable an address that's being spammed and you'll no longer receive the mail. It won't use any bandwidth from the ISP to you, and it won't even use bandwidth to the ISP (note - some of the bandwidth gets shifted to Sneakemail, who tells the sender "no such address" when the SMTP connection is made -- which you noted). Even so, this is a net reduction in the bandwidth used, which is more than the anti-spam filters can say.
Neither is an ideal solution. Until we get some serious anti-spam laws there's nothing that'll be done.
Maybe you're blocking stories from michael?
Considered doing it, given how much editorializing he does. Particularly since it's usually wrong.
Uh, and exactly how does one's finger slip into a quarter inch gap?
Because by the time the plug has power on it that's how much space is between the faceplate and the plug face, at least if you have a plug designed in the past 80 years or so.
The one thing that should be done (and is done by electricians worth a damn) is that the plug should be installed "upside down" -- that is with ground (earth) on the top. That way if the plug isn't completely connected and something falls on it will hit the ground plug (if there is one) before shorting hot/neutral.
It cracks me up how many people have passwords such as that and are supposedly worried about security
Most passwords are crap, and there's nothing you can do about it. Passwords are doomed to be crap. You have two choices - be loose, and hope people use secure passwords (result: a few people will, most people won't), or be strict and force secure passwords (result: average users write down the new password, people who use secure ones normally get pissed off and start using crappy pw's).
I have about a half dozen secure passwords that I rotate around -- none of them have ever been cracked, and you're not going to guess them from social engineering, profiling, or dictionary attacks. I know that some of them are inherently "less secure" because they're used more commonly, and the more places they're used the more likely they'll get snarfed. When you make me exceed my normal password capacity then I'm going to use stupid things like "Abcdef1".
About the only solution is to use something like SecureID - which annoys me since I know my pw's are solid, but at least it takes care of the 90% of people who can't remember a password unless it's their SO's name, their pet's name, or a birthdate of one of the aforementioned.
Oh, and obscure anime characters are fine, as long as you use some non-alphabetic characters at the front, end, or middle. Of course, we're preaching to the choir here. The problem is the average user.
Most others already said it - video editing, video encoding, high end math. If your compile environment needs that kind of horsepower, then you're probably using bad tools or doing something horribly wrong in your code (duh, there are exceptions, but for 95% of the coding out there?)
In the business world there are often needs for more CPU - although more often than not the issue is I/O throughput rather than CPU.
As for NWN - shrug... I'm running it on an Athlon 750 w/ a 32 MB GF2. Am I missing out on some of the eye candy? Probably, but it still runs just fine.
I do plan to buy a new system in the near future though - but I'm playing the waiting game right now since I don't need a new one yet and some of the parts I want (or would like) aren't available yet. Mainly I'm waiting on the NV30 to be released. A 333 MHz bus Athlon would be nice (although there's a slim chance of returning to a P4 -- I'm still vaguely looking for someone doing benches comparing an RDRAM and DDR setup) and Serial ATA would be nice. USB2.0 and Firewire are everywhere now, and all the new MBs for Athlons will do thermal die checks.
Oh, why do I want a new system? UT2k3 and Doom3 of course. Duh.
One day I'll drag the name of that webmail provider out of you!
Sigh... freaking morons.
The previous company I worked at did this as well. Pissed the hell out of me, since I could no longer get to my email and I prefer to not give out my work email out over the net to avoid the spam.
The really idiotic think is that they blocked sites like Sneakemail too, which is just a redirector service.
I can understand the need to block webmail sites, since there are too many idiots out there, but at least be intelligent about what gets blocked.
... to read each and every one of the 300+ spam emails I get daily to my Hotmail account.
Either comply or look for another source for your needs
We do. Thus we use Boost, OTL, and other C++ libraries with non-GPL licenses. Realistically it hasn't been an issue for us -- there aren't any libraries that we've wanted to use but were prevented from by the license. If there were, we'd either find an alternative or write it ourselves.
Problem is, a lot of people do write code, hoping for it to be used widely and then GPL it. Yes, LGPL is the right license, but it doesn't get nearly as much press as the GPL and so a lot of people unfamiliar with the particulars of both licenses might not get it.
I'm not asking to subvert the GPL. I'm asking that it be far more clear as to what constitutes a derivative work -- Bruce took a good step towards that IMO.
No, you miss the point.
/., as a news site, should link to it.
It's not a question of "should anyone have it" -- it's a question of whether or not
The answer is no, they should not. And sure as hell not without also linking the patch. Doing otherwise is yellow journalism, and borders on criminal negligence.
Contrary to what you may think I'm not a MS fanboy. I code in Unix every day, all day. But that doesn't mean that I don't expect responsibility from others.
Well stated.
The proposed revision of the GPL does "fix" some of the murkiness related to dynamic linking -- but does so by implicitly claiming them as derivative works.
I know this is what RMS wants, and perhaps it's what the community as a whole wants, but it's also why most commercial companies won't touch GPL code with a 10' pole.
At the very least an API as you define it should be able to form a firewall between GPL and non-GPL code (note - not necessarily commercial - I may want to distribute my code under BSD license, but it still needs to be untainted by GPL for that to be an option).
Without this provision companies will continue to avoid GPL code for fear of losing core business logic. I code in Unix, use open source tools, and we avoid any GPL libraries even though there's no intent to distribute the code outside our company. It's simply not worth the risk that one day we'll have a component that does need to be distributed and potentially tainting everything else -- which is core business logic.
The purpose of proposals is to hammer them. If there is no constructive criticism (which the OP certainly gave) then it may as well be final.
Odds are it's running over the same circuits. But that doesn't mean it's going to be the same service.
If you have Earthlink or some other ISP service your DSL instead of the phone co. then you are relying on the ISP for switching and routing. The ISP may have better tech support, may have better bandwidth (e.g. - 10 customers for every T1 instead of 50-100 customers for every T1), better services (static IP, more mailboxes, more webspace, etc.).
Then again, the ISP may be worse than the phone co. But, at the very least, you're helping to break the monopoly at least a bit. So yes, it is competition. At least some competition.
I have Earthlink service currently and while I only occasionally have problems, I know that their tech support is pretty useless (which wasn't true back in the Mindspring days). No real issues with bandwidth, but your mileage may vary.
If you want to see a list of local broadband providers, go to DSLReports -- they've got some nice tools and a good listing of ISPs (and even show who the ISP uses for circuits -- if you find an ISP that uses Covad or anyone-but-the-RBOC then that's as close as you'll get to real competition -- the circuit provider is still leasing floor space from the RBOC).
About posting a link to an exploit tool?
How many of you posting or modding this up also support the free exchange of ideas, including how to back up or media shift a DVD, or extract a portion for review?
There is a difference.
The first has no purpose except to exploit a hole and cause damage to a computer or a network. It has no higher purpose, no one in the industry or the man-on-the-street would approve of its usage, and linking to it (and not linking to the previously released patch) is nothing but yellow journalism.
The latter has uses which may or may not fall under the "Fair Use" clauses of copyright law, but which would be generally considered acceptable by both people in the industry and the average Joe.
Frankly, there is such a think as responsibility, and even more so in the journalism trade. Slashdot bills itself as "News for Nerds", and thus places itself squarely in the journalism trade, regardless of whether or not the editors have had any training in it. They may not be (and should not be) responsible for comments made by users, but they damn well are responsible for the front page and should not do something this inane.
Free exchange of knowledge is all fine and dandy, but you can't have freedom without responsibility. Anarchy is not freedom.
The reason it is a good idea is because anything used by the government is public property, and public property must be subject to public review.
Ah. Ok. So I suppose that the blueprints to every vehicle the government buys also need to be available? And I suppose that whatever computers are purchased had better have the transistor-level designs available too.
Sorry, no they're not. Public review does not mean what you seem to think it means. Public review means that the public can review the discussion and decisions of the government. It doesn't mean we get to micromanage every little thing.
Now pursuant to the actual definition of public review we may want to mandate that public documents be stored in a documented format -- preferably one that is free to create and use, but at the very least one that has a publicly available interface format.
No, "free" isn't going to happen either. If it was then you couldn't store audio data in CD or WAV format -- because they are patent encumbered. The fact that they are is irrelevant - both standards are documented and will be recoverable in the future because of that.
If you want popup killing (and ad killing, and lots of other nifty stuff), try The Proxomitron. Has worked pretty flawlessly for me (and bypass mode fixes things when it becomes overzealous). I need to spend some time learning how to selectively disable it though -- I don't mind ads on some sites (like /.).
For tabbed browsing, try MyIE2 or CrazyBrowser -- it's not a must for me so I haven't bothered trying either.
Of course, people will inevitably whine that Mozilla comes with all of this built in while you have to download add ons for IE. Which is amazingly hypocritical, since the traditional Unix mantra is that small programs that extend functionality are better than monolithic programs. Yes, I know Mozilla is extensible as well, but to bash IE for being extensible to include additional functionality is just bashing for bashing's sake.
Your complaint about Mozilla and the middle mouse button seems off. This is not a function of Mozilla - it's a function of your drivers. Tell your drivers to make middle click middle click instead of autoscroll, then Mozilla should treat it properly.
That's because bandwidth has little to do with latency. And latency is what online gaming is all about.
If you have a steady 185 ms ping with a 56k modem you're better off than an erratic 20-80 ms ping with a broadband connection.
That was true in 1997, and it's true now. If you could adjust your aim for that 185 ms ping then, you can now too -- I get railed regularly by people pinging 3x me because they've adjusted for their ping. One of the best Q1/2 players I know was on a modem the entire time and regularly beat people on T1 lines.