What if I want to listen to one track from one CD, and two tracks from another CD, and maybe a few from a third one as well? So I have to open and close my CD drive every few minutes and waste the time and effort in putting in the new CD and changing the tracklist? The technology exists that allows me to digitally encode all of those CDs and put them on my computer and enjoy my music the way *I* want to own it. Note that *I PAID FOR* my CDs, they are *my propert*, and I am attempting to protect my rights. I don't use filesharing apps, and I don't share my MP3s with other people on usenet or by burning CDs for them. My wife and I each have our own computers and we can both access our home MP3 server and listen to whatever we want whenever we want. And that is exactly what the RIAA wants to prevent. They don't want to protect their property or their rights, they want to control what you listen to and when and how you listen to it.
My wife and I resolved the conflict between the expectations of society (and more particular, certain relatives and friends) and our own tendency towards fiscal and social responsibility by getting her a stunning cubic zirconia in a very nice setting. CZ these days are good enough that it's fooled every jeweler that's seen it. We were more interested in things like hardware upgrades and a replacement for our dying car at the time. My ring is a simple white gold band, no decoration at all.
How the hell did I get a free subscription?
on
Ziff Davis Teeters
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· Score: 2
I wrote about the problem with PC Mag a few weeks back. Nice to see I'm not the only one who feels that way...
> Most honeypots out there tend to be Redhat Linux as it's has the worst record for security out of pretty much every OS out there, and so it makes for a good honeypot since the goal is to get hacked.
Same situation @ USDA. One department has pushed for XP (the internal equivalent of a marketing dept) and the proof-of-concept failed miserably. There is one machine in our building with XP, out of about 1800 machines, so we can test if the web stuff we're building is viewable. All desktops are NT 4sp6, Office 97 is the standard with no intent of upgrading in the forseeable future. Servers are a hodgepodge of linux, solaris, and AIX, with just a hint of NT Server 4.
Actually, junk mailers are largely subsidized by first class mail (that's the mail you send when you pay your bills, etc). Postal rates on first class go up fairly regularly, postal rates on bulk (third class) do not. Ask 100 mail carriers about third class mail and I would be willing to bet 99 of them would rant and rave about the subsidy. Your point that if they want to pay through the nose isn't a valid comparison to snail mail, because snail mailers don't pay through the nose, they pay about 1-3 cents per item.
My point is that a business has a right to say "We don't want to do business with company X". This spammer is trying to use the courts to force Qwest to provide service to him when Qwest sees a valid business reason to NOT do business with him and therefore doesn't want to do business with him.
He seems to missing a fundamental point: You do not have a Constitutional right to an internet connection. You cannot (or should not be able to) force a company to do business with you if they don't want to. If Qwest sees that they are losing customers because they provide internet access to you, they have a fiduciary duty to terminate their business relationship with you. I think I'll start buying stock in telecoms and ISP's just for the purpose of filing shareholder lawsuits against companies that cave in to spammers like this. Breach of fiduciary duty is extremely serious to large companies, and you can sue individual CEOs/board members/etc as well as the company. He wants to use the courts to force companies to provide services, the shareholders have a right to use the courts to make sure the companies DON'T provide those services to him.
Having lived 80% of my life in the "Great Socialist Utopia" I'm well aware that the only people who call it that are libertarians and other extreme right wingers. If you don't like it go the fuck back where you came from and leave it to people who appreciate a responsible progressive society that encourages people to participate rather than just observe.
For less afluent people, CDs/CD players are too expensive. Which, of course, puts DVD players way out of their range. But I guess it's OK for poor people to not be able to afford entertainment, right?
I don't have a DVD player yet, and don't have plans to get one. I rent movies once in a while, I tape shows to watch at my convenience a *lot*. And don't give me that "You should just get a Tivo" bullshit. Not everyone spends their every last penny on geek toys. Some of us have families to support.
The site quite clearly at the top in the first paragraph says it does *not* come with Windows.
Microtel PCs with Lindows OS
These computers do not ship with Microsoft Windows. They ship with an exciting new UNIX based Operating System (OS) named Lindows. This exciting new OS delivers the stability of UNIX with the ease of Windows and the ability to run most Microsoft programs. These computer systems are a perfect low cost alternative to computers preloaded with Microsoft Windows.
The "is it a good idea or not" question is to vague. It all depends on the specifics of the situation. Your relationship with your employer, the current job market, your standing in the tech community (reputation, experience, etc), the general culture of your company, how long you've been there, how long since your last raise, etc etc etc.
I've both accepted and rejected counter offers, and for the right reasons. It has worked out fine so far every time.
I think there is a world of difference between someone exploiting problems with outlook to infect someone's computer with a virus and someone using a p2p network to promote a CD. Saying an audio file is the new N'Sync single when it is in fact a promo for the album is wildly different from a corporation misrepresenting a product in order to sabotage a competitor.
The iMac firmware issue is completely unrelated, and quite irrelevant to what I posted. Do I think it's crappy? Yes. I think the music industry as a whole sucks and should be destroyed (and will be, primarily thanks to new technology), but I have a hard time accepting people bitching about how the free files they downloaded weren't what they thought.
That's the price you pay for not paying for your music. I'm quite serious about that. If you are getting music for free, why bitch about the fact that it isn't perfect? If you're getting music for some cool indie band that doesn't have a label, then chances are they aren't spoofed files. If you're getting music from todays top 40 charts, then you obviously haven't paid for something that is generally not free. The labels are just taking advantage of that fact and trying to promote the track you are trying to get without paying for it.
Note, I'm not preaching about how you "shouldn't steal music" (see my rant about what's wrong with DRM). I'm just saying if you get something free, don't bitch that it isn't perfect.
I'm disappointed that they didn't include Kevin's Red Hat Uber Distribution. Kevin Fenzi is the author of the Linux Security HOW-TO, and the hardened version of Red Hat that they produce has served me quite well for over a year.
And this is why I have a problem with the hard line that RMS takes. I should use an inferior product because of a philosophical position? How is this any different from the mindset of any organized religion?
I use the best tool for the job because I want it to work. If there are two products that are technically equal, then I will give philosophy consideration and most likely go with the FSF choice. I will not make my life miserable by using a crap tool because it doesn't conform to a rigid view of good and evil that I don't necessarily agree with.
I've heard that LinuxPOS is pretty decent, but never used it myself. It would not be wildly complex to write a web based POS system in Zope/PHP/Perl against PostGRE in a weekend. Hell, if you already have an online store, you already have a POS system. You just need to add the capability for a clerk to do returns and maybe some enhanced searching for in store and you're done. There are already Zope/PHP/Perl apps that do this. Check freshmeat.net and go nuts.
I disagree with this. Ubiquity is key. People expect shit to just work in the store. The people in the store (including mgmt people) are going to be dealing with Linux every day and will depend on it to stay in business. It performs well, they have a positive impression of Linux. Managers will get tired of switching between Windows in the office and Linux on the sales floor, and some of them will try linux on their office computer.
Customers see how reliable the POS is (esp at christmas) and want to know why the store never seems to have problems with their computers (trust me, it happens. I had several conversations during Xmas of 98 about the benefits of UNIX (SCO in that case, but I generalized to all unixes) vs Win98 with businessmen-type customers who asked). People will rationalize: If Sherwin-Williams/big car company/home electronics store/blah blah blah trusts their business to linux, maybe I should look into it too...
Note, I am a Mac user and strongly encourage the use of Macs especially in education whenever possible. However:
A *LOT* of schools have a budget of perhaps $0.00/computer to spend. They take what is donated. If PC hardware is what is donated, then their best option is to use and operating system that doesn't cost anything and that they don't have to worry about licensing issues for.
A group I'd been working with for several years was hired as a group to do research for a Boston based company in July of 2000. By November they were on the ropes and told us they were going to lay one guy off. We countered with a voluntary 20% pay cut for all of us to keep the one and they took it. We all focused all our efforts after that on reducing debt and building up savings for the inevitable next round. When it came, I bailed on Colorado and moved someplace cheaper with a better job market. No bills, low fixed expenses, and lots of ready cash. That's the way to live.
You're going to see more and more companies trying this sort of thing to prohibit you having software that they consider threatening on your computer. AOL used to screw with the setting of any competing ISP's on your system (on "accident"), IE used to cripple Netscape (on "accident"), and MSFT is now saying that you can't use some of their technology in conjunction with ANY GPL software. If we can't maintain our monopoly one way, we'll try another. This of course is a nasty step forward that even billg hasn't tried, but only because he knew there would be hell to pay. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
Re:I'm really trying to get a grasp on whether use
on
Zope Bible
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· Score: 2
My first experience with Zope was "Hi, it's your first day and we want to migrate our website to Zope. We've never used it, but our architect thinks it looks interesting." I'd heard of neither Python nor Zope before, and had it up and running in 2 days. www.planetcad.com
National Petroleum Radio is liberal? When did that happen?
Last I checked they were moderate with a vaguely right wing tilt on fiscal/business/foreign policy issues and a vaguely left wing tilt on social issues.
I would have to agree that there is a small but vocal subset of the OS community that is less than helpful. However, in my experience those who are helpful far outnumber those who are not. Try checking out something like Desktop Linux. Full disclosure: I help maintain Desktop Linux.
I know, don't take rejections personally, blah blah blah. I did submit my review about 4 months ago, and posted it on my site as well. At least the producer linked to my review;)
It really is a great documentary, and can serve to show people (esp. business types) that the OS/FS community is not only diverse and innovative, but also easy to get along with and eager to help.
Slashdot Mirror
What if I want to listen to one track from one CD, and two tracks from another CD, and maybe a few from a third one as well? So I have to open and close my CD drive every few minutes and waste the time and effort in putting in the new CD and changing the tracklist? The technology exists that allows me to digitally encode all of those CDs and put them on my computer and enjoy my music the way *I* want to own it. Note that *I PAID FOR* my CDs, they are *my propert*, and I am attempting to protect my rights. I don't use filesharing apps, and I don't share my MP3s with other people on usenet or by burning CDs for them. My wife and I each have our own computers and we can both access our home MP3 server and listen to whatever we want whenever we want. And that is exactly what the RIAA wants to prevent. They don't want to protect their property or their rights, they want to control what you listen to and when and how you listen to it.
My wife and I resolved the conflict between the expectations of society (and more particular, certain relatives and friends) and our own tendency towards fiscal and social responsibility by getting her a stunning cubic zirconia in a very nice setting. CZ these days are good enough that it's fooled every jeweler that's seen it. We were more interested in things like hardware upgrades and a replacement for our dying car at the time. My ring is a simple white gold band, no decoration at all.
I wrote about the problem with PC Mag a few weeks back. Nice to see I'm not the only one who feels that way...
Um, US Courts have no jurisdiction over China. It's a foreign country.
> Most honeypots out there tend to be Redhat Linux as it's has the worst record for security out of pretty much every OS out there, and so it makes for a good honeypot since the goal is to get hacked.
Obviously, he's never heard of Windows.
Same situation @ USDA. One department has pushed for XP (the internal equivalent of a marketing dept) and the proof-of-concept failed miserably. There is one machine in our building with XP, out of about 1800 machines, so we can test if the web stuff we're building is viewable. All desktops are NT 4sp6, Office 97 is the standard with no intent of upgrading in the forseeable future. Servers are a hodgepodge of linux, solaris, and AIX, with just a hint of NT Server 4.
Actually, junk mailers are largely subsidized by first class mail (that's the mail you send when you pay your bills, etc). Postal rates on first class go up fairly regularly, postal rates on bulk (third class) do not. Ask 100 mail carriers about third class mail and I would be willing to bet 99 of them would rant and rave about the subsidy. Your point that if they want to pay through the nose isn't a valid comparison to snail mail, because snail mailers don't pay through the nose, they pay about 1-3 cents per item.
My point is that a business has a right to say "We don't want to do business with company X". This spammer is trying to use the courts to force Qwest to provide service to him when Qwest sees a valid business reason to NOT do business with him and therefore doesn't want to do business with him.
He seems to missing a fundamental point: You do not have a Constitutional right to an internet connection. You cannot (or should not be able to) force a company to do business with you if they don't want to. If Qwest sees that they are losing customers because they provide internet access to you, they have a fiduciary duty to terminate their business relationship with you. I think I'll start buying stock in telecoms and ISP's just for the purpose of filing shareholder lawsuits against companies that cave in to spammers like this. Breach of fiduciary duty is extremely serious to large companies, and you can sue individual CEOs/board members/etc as well as the company. He wants to use the courts to force companies to provide services, the shareholders have a right to use the courts to make sure the companies DON'T provide those services to him.
Having lived 80% of my life in the "Great Socialist Utopia" I'm well aware that the only people who call it that are libertarians and other extreme right wingers. If you don't like it go the fuck back where you came from and leave it to people who appreciate a responsible progressive society that encourages people to participate rather than just observe.
Mod me down fascist bastards!
For less afluent people, CDs/CD players are too expensive. Which, of course, puts DVD players way out of their range. But I guess it's OK for poor people to not be able to afford entertainment, right?
I don't have a DVD player yet, and don't have plans to get one. I rent movies once in a while, I tape shows to watch at my convenience a *lot*. And don't give me that "You should just get a Tivo" bullshit. Not everyone spends their every last penny on geek toys. Some of us have families to support.
The "is it a good idea or not" question is to vague. It all depends on the specifics of the situation. Your relationship with your employer, the current job market, your standing in the tech community (reputation, experience, etc), the general culture of your company, how long you've been there, how long since your last raise, etc etc etc.
I've both accepted and rejected counter offers, and for the right reasons. It has worked out fine so far every time.
The iMac firmware issue is completely unrelated, and quite irrelevant to what I posted. Do I think it's crappy? Yes. I think the music industry as a whole sucks and should be destroyed (and will be, primarily thanks to new technology), but I have a hard time accepting people bitching about how the free files they downloaded weren't what they thought.
Note, I'm not preaching about how you "shouldn't steal music" (see my rant about what's wrong with DRM). I'm just saying if you get something free, don't bitch that it isn't perfect.
I'm disappointed that they didn't include Kevin's Red Hat Uber Distribution. Kevin Fenzi is the author of the Linux Security HOW-TO, and the hardened version of Red Hat that they produce has served me quite well for over a year.
I use the best tool for the job because I want it to work. If there are two products that are technically equal, then I will give philosophy consideration and most likely go with the FSF choice. I will not make my life miserable by using a crap tool because it doesn't conform to a rigid view of good and evil that I don't necessarily agree with.
I've heard that LinuxPOS is pretty decent, but never used it myself. It would not be wildly complex to write a web based POS system in Zope/PHP/Perl against PostGRE in a weekend. Hell, if you already have an online store, you already have a POS system. You just need to add the capability for a clerk to do returns and maybe some enhanced searching for in store and you're done. There are already Zope/PHP/Perl apps that do this. Check freshmeat.net and go nuts.
I disagree with this. Ubiquity is key. People expect shit to just work in the store. The people in the store (including mgmt people) are going to be dealing with Linux every day and will depend on it to stay in business. It performs well, they have a positive impression of Linux. Managers will get tired of switching between Windows in the office and Linux on the sales floor, and some of them will try linux on their office computer.
Customers see how reliable the POS is (esp at christmas) and want to know why the store never seems to have problems with their computers (trust me, it happens. I had several conversations during Xmas of 98 about the benefits of UNIX (SCO in that case, but I generalized to all unixes) vs Win98 with businessmen-type customers who asked). People will rationalize: If Sherwin-Williams/big car company/home electronics store/blah blah blah trusts their business to linux, maybe I should look into it too...
Note, I am a Mac user and strongly encourage the use of Macs especially in education whenever possible. However:
A *LOT* of schools have a budget of perhaps $0.00/computer to spend. They take what is donated. If PC hardware is what is donated, then their best option is to use and operating system that doesn't cost anything and that they don't have to worry about licensing issues for.
A group I'd been working with for several years was hired as a group to do research for a Boston based company in July of 2000. By November they were on the ropes and told us they were going to lay one guy off. We countered with a voluntary 20% pay cut for all of us to keep the one and they took it. We all focused all our efforts after that on reducing debt and building up savings for the inevitable next round. When it came, I bailed on Colorado and moved someplace cheaper with a better job market. No bills, low fixed expenses, and lots of ready cash. That's the way to live.
You're going to see more and more companies trying this sort of thing to prohibit you having software that they consider threatening on your computer. AOL used to screw with the setting of any competing ISP's on your system (on "accident"), IE used to cripple Netscape (on "accident"), and MSFT is now saying that you can't use some of their technology in conjunction with ANY GPL software. If we can't maintain our monopoly one way, we'll try another. This of course is a nasty step forward that even billg hasn't tried, but only because he knew there would be hell to pay. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
My first experience with Zope was "Hi, it's your first day and we want to migrate our website to Zope. We've never used it, but our architect thinks it looks interesting." I'd heard of neither Python nor Zope before, and had it up and running in 2 days. www.planetcad.com
National Petroleum Radio is liberal? When did that happen?
Last I checked they were moderate with a vaguely right wing tilt on fiscal/business/foreign policy issues and a vaguely left wing tilt on social issues.
I would have to agree that there is a small but vocal subset of the OS community that is less than helpful. However, in my experience those who are helpful far outnumber those who are not. Try checking out something like Desktop Linux. Full disclosure: I help maintain Desktop Linux.
It really is a great documentary, and can serve to show people (esp. business types) that the OS/FS community is not only diverse and innovative, but also easy to get along with and eager to help.