Rather than ask, "Why MS?" a better question might be, "Where are Tower Records and Virgin Megastore and Fye and Sam Goody?"
I have THE solution, and have said it before. Here it is, I WANT them to implement it, so they are welcome to steal it from me. (hey, just give me a little credit for revitalizing the music industry):-)
Music stores should have a HUGE database of MP3s/WAVs in the store. I mean every damn song ever recorded.
Every song older than 10 years old is $0.10.
Every song 5-10 years old is $0.25.
Every song 2-5 years old is $0.50
Every song 2 years old to 6 months old is $0.99
Anything newer than 6 months you have to buy on CD. (maybe this could be rolled into the 0.99 if it didn't fly)
1. You have kiosks set up so customers can browse the database, creating their own CDs of songs (either audio, or burned as MP3s - ZERO DRM)
2. They submit the request for the CD to be burned, which is all done behind the counter. (to avoid the customer support nightmare if they did it themselves)
3. While they are waiting for their CD to burn, they can browse the latest CDs, merchandise, etc.
4. They could charge a reasonable fee for the media and the burn. Maybe $2 per CD? Free songlist, but artwork might cost you an extra buck.
Advantages:
It gets people back into the stores! One of the first rules is to get them into the store, and they will spend money.
It isn't online, so you don't have to worry about people hacking in.
It is reasonably priced. Imagine building your favorite songs of the 80s for a few bucks. Those songs are just sitting around not making money anyway.
Maybe there is an online service where you can build your CD and submit your request, and you can go in and pick up your CD, or have it shipped to you.
They could list other people's CD compilations. Maybe have a voting system, so you could see the top 10 compilations.
Future: DVD burns of videos, concert footage, interviews, Behind the Music, etc.
Make record stores a cool place to visit again! Give people the music they want at a reasonable price, and you will be rewarded. Am I the only one who sees this?
I think a counter-spoof against Microsoft would be quite in order. The MS-SCO connection, aliens trying to undermine society and technology by force-feeding the world substandard software with draconian EULAs.
is that, traditionally at least, laws in the UK have never counted for much. Bad laws get broken all the time - but only criminals and minor traffic offenders get punished. If the politicians want to make stupid laws, it's easier just to let them - and then go ahead and carry on doing what we used to do anyway.
No no no no no! The same thing pretty much happens here in the US too. In theory, it sounds workable, I know. Why don't they go after everyone who speeds? Because they have bigger issues to deal with. Why don't they go after every person who they suspect of downloading music illegally? Because they don't have the time or the resources. Here is the kicker - what if they had the time and the resources? Do you think they would go after every single downloader? I do. I know they would. Technology is their friend too you know. You can bet your ass that they are trying to figure out ways to do this. Why wouldn't they? It is free money.
You can say "they wouldn't sue everyone, it is impossible" all you want. But what if they could go to every ISP and legally get your download logs, and send you a ticket in the mail? I know, I know, it sounds stupid. I used to think it was implausible. Now I am not so sure. The point is, they WOULD go after each and every violator of copyright if they could. All they need is the means to do it, and I am sure they are working on it. If you allow the flaws into the system, and rely on the fact that they aren't enforced *today*, a very cold slap in the face could be awaiting us all. After all, it is much easier to get a law repealed than it is to get it passed. Your argument of "this law is stupid" is pretty much nullified after it is on the books. It then becomes "I should be allowed to break this law." That is a much harder argument to win, because now you aren't a concerned citizen, you are a criminal.
Umm, let's not lose context here. The original poster said this:
Someone willing to commit fraud is not automatically capable of murder.
Considering that the great majority of computer users on the web probably pirate software, music, and other forms of media every day, that makes us all criminals (at least, according to the RIAA.) Do you feel like killing anybody?
To which you partially quoted as...
that makes us all criminals (at least, according to the RIAA.)
Uh, not "according to the RIAA," but according to the law. Not to mention the moral issues.
I love how Slashdot tries to force the issue into some sort of legal gray area when it's very simple. You're getting music without paying for it like you're supposed to. It's like pirating software, which is for some reason not as trumpeted around here. Why isn't that in the same legal gray area? Oh, that's right, because of Slashdot double standards.
First, allow me to comment on the original posters comment: You are right, the RIAA is very willing to commit fraud, but have yet to commit a murder.
I think you believe their hype-machine, if you believe "the great majority of computer users on the web probably pirate software, music, and onther forms of media every day". Do you have any idea how many people that is? You cut that out of your quoting of the comment, but it is a very HUGE assumption. But let's look at it, shall we?
If it were true, that most computer users pirate all kinds of media, then wouldn't the entertainment industry have collapsed by now? Surely if most computers users were stealing money right out of their pockets, then they would be broke. Right?
OK, so maybe the original argument doesn't hold water. Let's look at what you believe: "You're getting music without paying for it like you're supposed to." Like you're supposed to? According to who? If you are a good little consuming sheep, you'll buy this (pun intended). But I don't. Not because I want something for free, but because I learned that the marketing machine behind the music industry leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. I have had enough of it through the years. Do I hate music? No! I love music, but I have been turned against the music industry by those in control of it. I support musicians and artists, but not the industry that treats them as indentured servants.
Yeah, there are people out there who just want music for free, and will download it in violation of copyright to get it for free. But there are also a lot of people who are tired of the same old crap, who want GOOD music, and are willing to find it. Who do get music for free because the musicians want to give it away. Open your damn eyes (and ears) and step out of "the system" that has been created around the music industry for a second. Stop playing their game.
It's like pirating software, which is for some reason not as trumpeted around here. Why isn't that in the same legal gray area? Oh, that's right, because of Slashdot double standards.
You can't pirate what is [F/f]ree, and you are amongst a Free Software community. Go prattle on about software piracy somewhere else.
My latest case is one I picked up at work. They were throwing out an old Compaq dual Pentium Proliant server with SCSI drives. I actually got it working, but decided I wanted the case for my computer. It is a big honkin' steel tower case. I figured it would be good for cooling (lots of room inside) and noise (heavy steel, not flimsy crap or aluminum). I took the SCSI drives out, but can use the drive cages for my IDE drives. When done, it should be a monster case, just shy of 3 ft tall and about 75 lbs. I think I'll put a picture of Calvin on there whizzing on a window-modded aluminum case.:-)
I think personal websites are cool back in the day when... well, HTML isn't so complicated, and the average website is a few tables with a few pictures.
My web page has this big disclaimer at the top:
Please excuse this page, it is really old, and a lot of the stuff here is pretty lame. Sue me, I am not a web developer.
I use my personal web space for, well, personal stuff. I use it to post pictures, so I can email friends/family a URL instead of sending them a 15MB zip file of pictures. I get a few hits here and there for various things I host. There is nothing exciting about my website, but I have had one up since 07-26-1996. I still have those pages, kind of as a nostalgia piece. I still edit my pages by hand, simple HTML.
I used to be very active in the martial arts, and before search engines were useful, I had one of the most visited sites related to martial arts. It was a page of links that I maintained. I frequented rec.martial-arts, and people would email me pages they wanted added. I did it all by hand, and eventually that caught up to me. I had about a hundred requests in my inbox, and I didn't have the time to maintain it. I "retired" the page when AltaVista made it possible to find just about anything on the net anyway. Maintaining a link page didn't make sense anymore. Hey, my personal website was featured in the September 1996 issue of Boardwatch magazine. Lame now, but at the time I thought "this is pretty cool".
I think the beauty of personal websites is that they can be as little or as much as you want them to be. It is expression. You can be a droning, self-involved egomaniac and run a blog where you prattle on about your daily activities, or you can just post pictures for your family. You can do whatever you want, that is the point.
I have several friends who are CS majors and use Windows 98
Prison is not an adequate punishment.
This may sound like some kind of self-help meeting, but I got my BS-CS in '93, and have been working in the computer industry since then. I run Windows98 on two machines at home, mine and my wife's.
I know the original post was supposed to be funny, and it is. My main machine is running Redhat 7.3, and my Win98 machine has pretty much been relegated to playing Half-Life (The Gate, currently) and Quake MegaTF. And a couple of other games, but that's pretty much it. Is it directly connected to the net? Are you crazy? Firewalls, baby, that is what they are for.
So why don't I have something newer? Well, I do have a copy on NT Workstation that I got with an old PC I bought years ago, but I never took the time to reinstall the machine. I also heard that gaming on NT wasn't that great. I am not going to go out and buy Win2k. Could I grok it from somewhere? Of course. But why? Why break it in a different way if it isn't really broken? I don't think installing Win2k would be a "fix". Better than Win98? Sure. More exploitable? Maybe. But for the maybe-once-a-week that I fire the machine up, it isn't worth it. My wife's computer sees more use, but again, It isn't worth it to mess up her whole environment just to upgrade to a new set of headaches. Even though we weren't hit at home with the latest rash of worms/viruses, some of them didn't even affect Win98.:-)
But to the topic, imagine that your parent's PC is compromised. Should they be held accountable? I know my parents barely get the idea of computers, let alone security. Although I have scared my mom so badly about viruses that she won't hardly open any attachment in her email.
If you make computer users accountable for being compromised, then all you are doing is widening that digital divide. As much as my parents like email, they aren't going to go to jail over it. If owning a computer becomes a hassle (security) then they just won't use it. It has to be easy for the average person to use it. That is how Microsoft got to where they are today, remember?
Holy crap, another completely useless term created for no good reason.
You deprive someone of something without paying for it. You're stealing the money you owe them.
No. You have deprived them of nothing, they still have it. You have infringed copyright, and it is arguable that you owe them money, but you certainly did not steal money from them. The law is very clear, why can't YOU understand it? If copyright infringement was the same as stealing, there would be no reason to have the term "copyright infringement" and an entire section of laws pertaining to it.
This is so insanely simple. Not that it matters. I don't know why Slashbots feel the need to point out that it's not "theft" constantly. It doesn't make it any less illegal or immoral.
You are right, it is simple, but you don't get it. You are also right that it doesn't make it less illegal. (no reason to talk about morals here, they are subjective) It makes it a different *KIND* of illegal. That is a huge difference. Civil vs Criminal illegal, to be exact. By calling it theft, you are changing it from a civil offense to a criminal offense. There *IS* a difference between them. The law makes a distinction between them, why can't you?
Although it's not possible to do this with "modern" window managers such as metacity, in fvwm when you drag a window it is completely tranperant (aka wireframe).
Yeah, that isn't anything new. But I would like to have truly transparent windows - not just ones that show the background, but show what is REALLY behind the window. Like I'll have an xterm up and it covers gkrellm. If it was semi-transparent, I could see if I have an email waiting, or whatever else I might want to check at a glance, without having to move the window.
Yeah, I know there are other solutions, but I think I would use transparent windows. But the transparency would have to be adjustable.
NOW will you leave us the fuck alone? Seriously, if it was dead, wouldn't it just BE dead. You don't have to point out over and over that Elvis is dead, he just.... IS.
Lookie here MS - you obviously believe in your product, and I will admit that some of what you produce is pretty good. You have a pretty solid lock on most of your customers. You are THE largest and most successful software company on the friggin' planet.
So I have to ask you - who are you trying to convince that OSS is dead?
Am I the only one who just uses plain ol' fvwm anymore? Since 60% of what I do is typing in a window, with another 30% surfing and 10% doing wordprocessing/gimping:-) do I really need a huge bloated eye-popping-candy-filled window manager?
Don't get me wrong, if you have fast hardware and are trying to convert grandma from "some other environment" go for it, but for me personally I will take lean, mean, and quick any day of the week.
Most people install the distro and use Gnome or KDE. Some may install something else, but most won't. I don't care much for some of the eye-candy, but things like translucent windows would be nice for functional reasons. My windows always overlap, and it would be cool to be able to see through them. I think a slider control on each window to fade the transparency level would be sweet. (and have a default transparency set for all windows, depending on type of course)
If you are looking for light and fast, try out icewm instead of fvwm. It is very configurable via cfg files. I used to use fvwm on the old Sun boxes back in the day, but I tried it recently on my Linux machine and really hated it. My main machine is KDE, but I have a couple of others (older hardware) that run icewm.
Have a checkin comment for why a configuration change got made. Be able to roll back a failed experiment reliably. Find out when a change happened.
If you just make changes willy-nilly to your config files (or most any file) without making a backup copy, or putting comments in your config files, then you deserve to have bad things happen to you. How do I know? I have screwed myself over too many times. Now I always put comments in my files. If I am replacing a value in a config file, I copy that line and comment it out. I usually put my initials on a comment above the line, so I can quickly find what lines I have modified.
Now if other people are changing files, I could see how this could be a good thing. Or just as a neat experiment. But I think people should put good practices in place before trying to find some magical way to do things for you that you should already be able to handle.
Hey, shouldn't Bruce be working on his answers? . I know he is a busy guy, but I was really looking forward to them. By the time he gets to them some of the relevant ones will be outdated.
If you have an iPod and had the choice of MusicMatch or iTunes what would you choose?
MusicMatch:
1) WMA-Crippled Music Downloads
2) Pay more for more features
3) Shit-poor interface
iTunes
1) AAC-crippled Music Downloads that play on the iPod
2) Full features (ripping, smart playlists, etc) for free
3) Great interface
Sorry, no competition here. Move along.
Umm, the point is that you shouldn't have to choose one over the other, you should be able to use both.
OK, so you know there has to be a Simpsons reference *somewhere*. Well, sort of...
I saw this story and thought "ehh, mildly interesting". Then I noticed on my Simpsons wall calendar that today is Guy Fawkes Day. It is quite a nice calendar, every day has birthdays of variously famous people (today is Myron Floren - 1919, Art Garfunkel - 1941, Gram Parsons - 1946). It also has other interesting days listed, such as tomorrow being Saxaphone Day, and Friday being Arbor Day in Samoa. It is quite an interesting calendar, and several times it has sparked my interest to look up something on the net.
I doubt there would be spam like we have now on email, the range is simply to short. But I can see supermarkets or similar companys using this to send you messages while in there store.
Annoying sure, but at least semi-relevant to what your doing.
Spam from a bookstore
"Read a book, gain some knowledge"
But you walk on by
Dog doo spelling skills
Are commonplace on Slashdot
Generation Duh
Karma is burning
It is mine but I don't care
It has to be said
I thought the subbed version was great. It's when you decide to cast Billy Bob Thornton as a Buddhist monk that you begin to run into problems... (of course, Gaiman had nothing to do with this....)
I always prefer the original language with subtitles. Have you seen the dubbed version of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon ? I thought it was pretty bad, even though I love the movie itself. The dubbing always seems to take something away. Unless it is an old Kung Fu movie, then you *have* to have it. It wouldn't be as hilarious without it.
Science/tech created the problem, let it also fix it without this miserable 24/hr discipline shit.
Wow, dude, are you in denial. Please explain how science/tech caused you to sit on your ass for hours on end and eat fast food 4 meals a day. Until you realize that *YOU* are the problem, all your diet efforts will be in vain. Convenience food is convenient, not mandatory. Did you get insanely fat overnight? No, it probably took you years and years of abusing your body to get that way. So stop looking for the easy way out and change your life. Learn how to fix the *problem* and not just patch the symptoms.
I wonder how far off is the day in which software will be available to auto-correct typos? In other words, people could write "their," "they're" and "there" incorrectly, but you'd have a plug-in in your browser so that it would (using similar technology to Word's grammar checker, I suppose) be able to determine the correct spelling and auto-correct it while your reading.
Yeah, but unfortunately there is nobody qualified enough to write the software.:-)
I cannot actually think of a single major HOWTO that I've actually found up-to-date enough to be useable on a linux distro released in the last 2 years.
That's because you are probably installing one of those candy-ass distros on new fancy-pants hardware. Why, just the other day a HOWTO helped me to install a PCMCIA network card on a P75 laptop.
Seriously, it did.
When HOWTOs refer to config files and the like, they do get outdated. I have actually been pretty surprised how relevant a HOWTO from 1997 has been. The problem is, the people who need the HOWTOs are the ones who don't know how to do something, and once you learn it, you don't think to update the HOWTO. I know I don't. Shame on me.
Wow man, chill. I wasn't attacking you; I was "making a funny." And apparently 3 moderators agreed.
Yeah, I know. It was yelling at you and more importantly all the people out there who are proud of they're inability to spell the simplest things correctly. (heh - did that one on purpose just to get your hopes up.):-) Hey, if you can't spell something complex, no big deal, put a (sp?) after it. But to not be able to tell the difference between the easy stuff (their, they're, there, your, you're, etc) is just plain dumb. I am speaking in general here when I say "you", I am not talking to you in particular.
Your posts remind me of Grandpa Simpson's picture in the paper, "Angry man yells at cloud." Do you really think you'll change anyone's mind with this vinegar? Honey catches more flies, y'know.
You know, some days I feel like Grandpa Simpson.:-)
As far as I'm concerned, a typo and a misspelling are exactly the same thing -- it's a sign of laziness and sloppiness, on the writer's part.
Well, I don't really agree. The difference is knowledge. I may know if I have misspelled a word, or done a typo. Everyone makes mistakes. But continuously misspelling the same words over and over in the face of correction is just dumb. Someone types "your" instead of "you're", I might point it out. At that point, instead of saying "Yeah, I get those mixed up", they usually lash out and make rude comments. I just get so sick of how things like this are acceptable. With the internet being the way it is, your inadequacies are much more pronounced for everyone else to see. (and yes, I had to look that one up to be sure). There is just this apathy for correctness, and it just gets to me. What is wrong with being correct? Is it cool to be stupid, and am I just an old man yelling at a cloud? Well dagnabbit, so be it then.
Typical selective reading of the ignorant. Do you really think that is how I think "checkers" is spelled? You'll point this out:
Hey, instead of relying on spell checers, learn how to spell.
Yet you ignore this Typos are different, they may happen because of fingering mistakes.
Modded as funny, revenge of the lazy, dumb kids. Boy, congratulations. You really showed me. But you are still stupid, and the only people who don't notice your stupidity are people who are just as stupid. Everyone else just laughs at you.
No, for that you'd need a spelling checker, which is beyond our puny 2003 tech. It's the stuff of madmen's dreams.
I am pretty sick of people blaming spell checkers for their ignorance. A spell checker won't be able to tell the difference between "your" and "you're", just like most stupid people. Hey, instead of relying on spell checers, learn how to spell. Why is this such a hard thing? If you don't know how to spell a particular word, you can look it up. Typos are different, they may happen because of fingering mistakes. Ignorance can be corrected, if you aren't too lazy to put forth a little effort.
In short, learn how to friggin spell. I have always complained about it, but the other day I realized how bad it had become. On MTV I saw another common mistake on the name of a video that was playing. The name of the song was "Harder To Breathe", but it was spelled "Harder To Breath". All the bad spellers out there like to yell "Stop being so anal! Spelling isn't important if you understand the meaning!" Hey, you are the ignorant one, not me. I am surprised at how many people are proud of their stupidity these days.
Open source is supposed to be about freedom and choice. Seems counter productive to me, to force people to use open source.
Open Source is about those things - however, Vietnam is NOT about those things. This issue is not about the ideals of Open vs. Closed Source. It is about stopping piracy. If you require that computers are shipped with software that cannot be pirated (by definition), your piracy problems will be vastly reduced if not eliminated. Maybe they are tired of getting hammered because of their high rates of piracy, when the software costs about 1/3 of someone's yearly annual income.
If open source advocates try to encourage this kind of behavior, how are they better than Microsoft?
You are assuming that Open Source advocates have anything to do with this decision. Applauding the decision and making that decision are two entirely different things. I applaud the *reasons* that they chose OSS because of the ideals behind OSS.
Slashdot Mirror
I have THE solution, and have said it before. Here it is, I WANT them to implement it, so they are welcome to steal it from me. (hey, just give me a little credit for revitalizing the music industry) :-)
Music stores should have a HUGE database of MP3s/WAVs in the store. I mean every damn song ever recorded.
Every song older than 10 years old is $0.10.
Every song 5-10 years old is $0.25.
Every song 2-5 years old is $0.50
Every song 2 years old to 6 months old is $0.99
Anything newer than 6 months you have to buy on CD. (maybe this could be rolled into the 0.99 if it didn't fly)
1. You have kiosks set up so customers can browse the database, creating their own CDs of songs (either audio, or burned as MP3s - ZERO DRM)
2. They submit the request for the CD to be burned, which is all done behind the counter. (to avoid the customer support nightmare if they did it themselves)
3. While they are waiting for their CD to burn, they can browse the latest CDs, merchandise, etc.
4. They could charge a reasonable fee for the media and the burn. Maybe $2 per CD? Free songlist, but artwork might cost you an extra buck.
Advantages:
It gets people back into the stores! One of the first rules is to get them into the store, and they will spend money.
It isn't online, so you don't have to worry about people hacking in.
It is reasonably priced. Imagine building your favorite songs of the 80s for a few bucks. Those songs are just sitting around not making money anyway.
Maybe there is an online service where you can build your CD and submit your request, and you can go in and pick up your CD, or have it shipped to you.
They could list other people's CD compilations. Maybe have a voting system, so you could see the top 10 compilations.
Future: DVD burns of videos, concert footage, interviews, Behind the Music, etc.
Make record stores a cool place to visit again! Give people the music they want at a reasonable price, and you will be rewarded. Am I the only one who sees this?
And how exactly would this be a spoof?
No no no no no! The same thing pretty much happens here in the US too. In theory, it sounds workable, I know. Why don't they go after everyone who speeds? Because they have bigger issues to deal with. Why don't they go after every person who they suspect of downloading music illegally? Because they don't have the time or the resources. Here is the kicker - what if they had the time and the resources? Do you think they would go after every single downloader? I do. I know they would. Technology is their friend too you know. You can bet your ass that they are trying to figure out ways to do this. Why wouldn't they? It is free money.
You can say "they wouldn't sue everyone, it is impossible" all you want. But what if they could go to every ISP and legally get your download logs, and send you a ticket in the mail? I know, I know, it sounds stupid. I used to think it was implausible. Now I am not so sure. The point is, they WOULD go after each and every violator of copyright if they could. All they need is the means to do it, and I am sure they are working on it. If you allow the flaws into the system, and rely on the fact that they aren't enforced *today*, a very cold slap in the face could be awaiting us all. After all, it is much easier to get a law repealed than it is to get it passed. Your argument of "this law is stupid" is pretty much nullified after it is on the books. It then becomes "I should be allowed to break this law." That is a much harder argument to win, because now you aren't a concerned citizen, you are a criminal.
To which you partially quoted as...
Uh, not "according to the RIAA," but according to the law. Not to mention the moral issues. I love how Slashdot tries to force the issue into some sort of legal gray area when it's very simple. You're getting music without paying for it like you're supposed to. It's like pirating software, which is for some reason not as trumpeted around here. Why isn't that in the same legal gray area? Oh, that's right, because of Slashdot double standards.
First, allow me to comment on the original posters comment: You are right, the RIAA is very willing to commit fraud, but have yet to commit a murder.
I think you believe their hype-machine, if you believe "the great majority of computer users on the web probably pirate software, music, and onther forms of media every day". Do you have any idea how many people that is? You cut that out of your quoting of the comment, but it is a very HUGE assumption. But let's look at it, shall we?
If it were true, that most computer users pirate all kinds of media, then wouldn't the entertainment industry have collapsed by now? Surely if most computers users were stealing money right out of their pockets, then they would be broke. Right?
OK, so maybe the original argument doesn't hold water. Let's look at what you believe: "You're getting music without paying for it like you're supposed to."
Like you're supposed to? According to who? If you are a good little consuming sheep, you'll buy this (pun intended). But I don't. Not because I want something for free, but because I learned that the marketing machine behind the music industry leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. I have had enough of it through the years. Do I hate music? No! I love music, but I have been turned against the music industry by those in control of it. I support musicians and artists, but not the industry that treats them as indentured servants.
Yeah, there are people out there who just want music for free, and will download it in violation of copyright to get it for free. But there are also a lot of people who are tired of the same old crap, who want GOOD music, and are willing to find it. Who do get music for free because the musicians want to give it away. Open your damn eyes (and ears) and step out of "the system" that has been created around the music industry for a second. Stop playing their game.
It's like pirating software, which is for some reason not as trumpeted around here. Why isn't that in the same legal gray area? Oh, that's right, because of Slashdot double standards.
You can't pirate what is [F/f]ree, and you are amongst a Free Software community. Go prattle on about software piracy somewhere else.
My latest case is one I picked up at work. They were throwing out an old Compaq dual Pentium Proliant server with SCSI drives. I actually got it working, but decided I wanted the case for my computer. It is a big honkin' steel tower case. I figured it would be good for cooling (lots of room inside) and noise (heavy steel, not flimsy crap or aluminum). I took the SCSI drives out, but can use the drive cages for my IDE drives. When done, it should be a monster case, just shy of 3 ft tall and about 75 lbs. I think I'll put a picture of Calvin on there whizzing on a window-modded aluminum case. :-)
My web page has this big disclaimer at the top:
Please excuse this page, it is really old, and a lot of the stuff here is pretty lame. Sue me, I am not a web developer.
I use my personal web space for, well, personal stuff. I use it to post pictures, so I can email friends/family a URL instead of sending them a 15MB zip file of pictures. I get a few hits here and there for various things I host. There is nothing exciting about my website, but I have had one up since 07-26-1996. I still have those pages, kind of as a nostalgia piece. I still edit my pages by hand, simple HTML.
I used to be very active in the martial arts, and before search engines were useful, I had one of the most visited sites related to martial arts. It was a page of links that I maintained. I frequented rec.martial-arts, and people would email me pages they wanted added. I did it all by hand, and eventually that caught up to me. I had about a hundred requests in my inbox, and I didn't have the time to maintain it. I "retired" the page when AltaVista made it possible to find just about anything on the net anyway. Maintaining a link page didn't make sense anymore. Hey, my personal website was featured in the September 1996 issue of Boardwatch magazine. Lame now, but at the time I thought "this is pretty cool".
I think the beauty of personal websites is that they can be as little or as much as you want them to be. It is expression. You can be a droning, self-involved egomaniac and run a blog where you prattle on about your daily activities, or you can just post pictures for your family. You can do whatever you want, that is the point.
Prison is not an adequate punishment.
This may sound like some kind of self-help meeting, but I got my BS-CS in '93, and have been working in the computer industry since then. I run Windows98 on two machines at home, mine and my wife's.
I know the original post was supposed to be funny, and it is. My main machine is running Redhat 7.3, and my Win98 machine has pretty much been relegated to playing Half-Life (The Gate, currently) and Quake MegaTF. And a couple of other games, but that's pretty much it. Is it directly connected to the net? Are you crazy? Firewalls, baby, that is what they are for.
So why don't I have something newer? Well, I do have a copy on NT Workstation that I got with an old PC I bought years ago, but I never took the time to reinstall the machine. I also heard that gaming on NT wasn't that great. I am not going to go out and buy Win2k. Could I grok it from somewhere? Of course. But why? Why break it in a different way if it isn't really broken? I don't think installing Win2k would be a "fix". Better than Win98? Sure. More exploitable? Maybe. But for the maybe-once-a-week that I fire the machine up, it isn't worth it. My wife's computer sees more use, but again, It isn't worth it to mess up her whole environment just to upgrade to a new set of headaches. Even though we weren't hit at home with the latest rash of worms/viruses, some of them didn't even affect Win98. :-)
But to the topic, imagine that your parent's PC is compromised. Should they be held accountable? I know my parents barely get the idea of computers, let alone security. Although I have scared my mom so badly about viruses that she won't hardly open any attachment in her email.
If you make computer users accountable for being compromised, then all you are doing is widening that digital divide. As much as my parents like email, they aren't going to go to jail over it. If owning a computer becomes a hassle (security) then they just won't use it. It has to be easy for the average person to use it. That is how Microsoft got to where they are today, remember?
Holy crap, another completely useless term created for no good reason.
You deprive someone of something without paying for it. You're stealing the money you owe them.
No. You have deprived them of nothing, they still have it. You have infringed copyright, and it is arguable that you owe them money, but you certainly did not steal money from them. The law is very clear, why can't YOU understand it? If copyright infringement was the same as stealing, there would be no reason to have the term "copyright infringement" and an entire section of laws pertaining to it.
This is so insanely simple. Not that it matters. I don't know why Slashbots feel the need to point out that it's not "theft" constantly. It doesn't make it any less illegal or immoral.
You are right, it is simple, but you don't get it. You are also right that it doesn't make it less illegal. (no reason to talk about morals here, they are subjective) It makes it a different *KIND* of illegal. That is a huge difference. Civil vs Criminal illegal, to be exact. By calling it theft, you are changing it from a civil offense to a criminal offense. There *IS* a difference between them. The law makes a distinction between them, why can't you?
Yeah, that isn't anything new. But I would like to have truly transparent windows - not just ones that show the background, but show what is REALLY behind the window. Like I'll have an xterm up and it covers gkrellm. If it was semi-transparent, I could see if I have an email waiting, or whatever else I might want to check at a glance, without having to move the window.
Yeah, I know there are other solutions, but I think I would use transparent windows. But the transparency would have to be adjustable.
NOW will you leave us the fuck alone? Seriously, if it was dead, wouldn't it just BE dead. You don't have to point out over and over that Elvis is dead, he just.... IS.
Lookie here MS - you obviously believe in your product, and I will admit that some of what you produce is pretty good. You have a pretty solid lock on most of your customers. You are THE largest and most successful software company on the friggin' planet.
So I have to ask you - who are you trying to convince that OSS is dead?
Most people install the distro and use Gnome or KDE. Some may install something else, but most won't. I don't care much for some of the eye-candy, but things like translucent windows would be nice for functional reasons. My windows always overlap, and it would be cool to be able to see through them. I think a slider control on each window to fade the transparency level would be sweet. (and have a default transparency set for all windows, depending on type of course)
If you are looking for light and fast, try out icewm instead of fvwm. It is very configurable via cfg files. I used to use fvwm on the old Sun boxes back in the day, but I tried it recently on my Linux machine and really hated it. My main machine is KDE, but I have a couple of others (older hardware) that run icewm.
If you just make changes willy-nilly to your config files (or most any file) without making a backup copy, or putting comments in your config files, then you deserve to have bad things happen to you. How do I know? I have screwed myself over too many times. Now I always put comments in my files. If I am replacing a value in a config file, I copy that line and comment it out. I usually put my initials on a comment above the line, so I can quickly find what lines I have modified.
Now if other people are changing files, I could see how this could be a good thing. Or just as a neat experiment. But I think people should put good practices in place before trying to find some magical way to do things for you that you should already be able to handle.
Hey, shouldn't Bruce be working on his answers? . I know he is a busy guy, but I was really looking forward to them. By the time he gets to them some of the relevant ones will be outdated.
Umm, the point is that you shouldn't have to choose one over the other, you should be able to use both.
I saw this story and thought "ehh, mildly interesting". Then I noticed on my Simpsons wall calendar that today is Guy Fawkes Day. It is quite a nice calendar, every day has birthdays of variously famous people (today is Myron Floren - 1919, Art Garfunkel - 1941, Gram Parsons - 1946). It also has other interesting days listed, such as tomorrow being Saxaphone Day, and Friday being Arbor Day in Samoa. It is quite an interesting calendar, and several times it has sparked my interest to look up something on the net.
Spam from a bookstore
"Read a book, gain some knowledge"
But you walk on by
Dog doo spelling skills
Are commonplace on Slashdot
Generation Duh
Karma is burning
It is mine but I don't care
It has to be said
I always prefer the original language with subtitles. Have you seen the dubbed version of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon ? I thought it was pretty bad, even though I love the movie itself. The dubbing always seems to take something away. Unless it is an old Kung Fu movie, then you *have* to have it. It wouldn't be as hilarious without it.
And for the sake of humankind, make it a Kevorkian.
Wow, dude, are you in denial. Please explain how science/tech caused you to sit on your ass for hours on end and eat fast food 4 meals a day. Until you realize that *YOU* are the problem, all your diet efforts will be in vain. Convenience food is convenient, not mandatory. Did you get insanely fat overnight? No, it probably took you years and years of abusing your body to get that way. So stop looking for the easy way out and change your life. Learn how to fix the *problem* and not just patch the symptoms.
Yeah, but unfortunately there is nobody qualified enough to write the software. :-)
That's because you are probably installing one of those candy-ass distros on new fancy-pants hardware. Why, just the other day a HOWTO helped me to install a PCMCIA network card on a P75 laptop.
Seriously, it did.
When HOWTOs refer to config files and the like, they do get outdated. I have actually been pretty surprised how relevant a HOWTO from 1997 has been. The problem is, the people who need the HOWTOs are the ones who don't know how to do something, and once you learn it, you don't think to update the HOWTO. I know I don't. Shame on me.
Yeah, I know. It was yelling at you and more importantly all the people out there who are proud of they're inability to spell the simplest things correctly. (heh - did that one on purpose just to get your hopes up.) :-) Hey, if you can't spell something complex, no big deal, put a (sp?) after it. But to not be able to tell the difference between the easy stuff (their, they're, there, your, you're, etc) is just plain dumb. I am speaking in general here when I say "you", I am not talking to you in particular.
Your posts remind me of Grandpa Simpson's picture in the paper, "Angry man yells at cloud." Do you really think you'll change anyone's mind with this vinegar? Honey catches more flies, y'know.
You know, some days I feel like Grandpa Simpson. :-)
As far as I'm concerned, a typo and a misspelling are exactly the same thing -- it's a sign of laziness and sloppiness, on the writer's part.
Well, I don't really agree. The difference is knowledge. I may know if I have misspelled a word, or done a typo. Everyone makes mistakes. But continuously misspelling the same words over and over in the face of correction is just dumb. Someone types "your" instead of "you're", I might point it out. At that point, instead of saying "Yeah, I get those mixed up", they usually lash out and make rude comments. I just get so sick of how things like this are acceptable. With the internet being the way it is, your inadequacies are much more pronounced for everyone else to see. (and yes, I had to look that one up to be sure). There is just this apathy for correctness, and it just gets to me. What is wrong with being correct? Is it cool to be stupid, and am I just an old man yelling at a cloud? Well dagnabbit, so be it then.
Yet you ignore this Typos are different, they may happen because of fingering mistakes.
Modded as funny, revenge of the lazy, dumb kids. Boy, congratulations. You really showed me. But you are still stupid, and the only people who don't notice your stupidity are people who are just as stupid. Everyone else just laughs at you.
I am pretty sick of people blaming spell checkers for their ignorance. A spell checker won't be able to tell the difference between "your" and "you're", just like most stupid people. Hey, instead of relying on spell checers, learn how to spell. Why is this such a hard thing? If you don't know how to spell a particular word, you can look it up. Typos are different, they may happen because of fingering mistakes. Ignorance can be corrected, if you aren't too lazy to put forth a little effort.
In short, learn how to friggin spell. I have always complained about it, but the other day I realized how bad it had become. On MTV I saw another common mistake on the name of a video that was playing. The name of the song was "Harder To Breathe", but it was spelled "Harder To Breath". All the bad spellers out there like to yell "Stop being so anal! Spelling isn't important if you understand the meaning!" Hey, you are the ignorant one, not me. I am surprised at how many people are proud of their stupidity these days.
Open Source is about those things - however, Vietnam is NOT about those things. This issue is not about the ideals of Open vs. Closed Source. It is about stopping piracy. If you require that computers are shipped with software that cannot be pirated (by definition), your piracy problems will be vastly reduced if not eliminated. Maybe they are tired of getting hammered because of their high rates of piracy, when the software costs about 1/3 of someone's yearly annual income.
If open source advocates try to encourage this kind of behavior, how are they better than Microsoft?
You are assuming that Open Source advocates have anything to do with this decision. Applauding the decision and making that decision are two entirely different things. I applaud the *reasons* that they chose OSS because of the ideals behind OSS.