There is actually enough context for us to determine this isn't a good situation. Half my income buys me a comfortable, spacious, apartment or home, and for the most part, virtually everyone I know can at the very least get a room in a shared house working 40 hours a week minimum wage in America. The same is true throughout the UK.
Half your income at this factory, spent working rather more than 40 hours a week, gets you a bed in a massive dormatory. The money left over is arguably only acceptable because you're not exactly going to spend it on amassing belongings. Where the fuck would you put them? Be clear about this: we're talking about thousands of workers who have no privacy. Not "Their supervisor occasionally peeks at their emails", but seriously no privacy.
Leaving aside immediate moral issues, it's also a vicious cycle. Chronically low wages means low-to-non-existant spending, which prevents growth, which prevents the surrounding economy actually benefiting materially from the work being done. As a result, the factory remains a principle employer in the area with little or no competition springing up. There's nowhere to escape to. There will not be, unless something is done.
One person must not write any kernel code concerned with the driver. That person must read the existing driver, document the hardware, and publish the document. The document should not reproduce algorithms in the existing driver unless they are integral to driving the device and there isn't another way to do it.
That's one way of doing it, and is only necessary if it's not possible to determine how a device works by examining its operation (ie you must have someone see source code)
The OpenBSD 3945abg driver, on the other hand, was reverse engineered by taking the open source component, modifying it (in accordance with the GPL), and having that essentially spy on the binary-only proprietary daemon, allowing the author to determine what registers are used and how they're used. Technically the author "saw" the GPL'd driver and then wrote a BSD driver, so a very, very, stretched case could be made that the author may have unwittingly copied code and be relicensing it in violation of the GPL, but obviously for a Linux developer, this wouldn't be an issue as the Free Software driver would fall under the GPL anyway.
I've had to reverse engineer stuff before. I generally find it easier to grab a hex editor and look at the input and output of a proprietary module than disassemble code which typically results in hundreds of thousands of lines of cryptic, undocumented, uncommented, not-even-self-documenting, code to examine. If you have a rough idea of what needs to be in the output of some code (for example, three or four sets of coordinates representing a spline in an outline font), you can start to build a bigger picture relatively easily.
I think your comment actually says more about you than the story (I know that sounds patronising, but I'm trying to explain the issue, and my feeling is you basically took the headline the wrong way.)
The issue here isn't one of "Who's got the most", it's "Here's an area Linux appears to be going badly wrong." Anyone who's had to fuck around with the ipw3945 driver will tell you that the degree to which people are happy to leave heavily-non-free-dependent drivers in the kernel unreplaced is harming Linux and its usability. We're seeing less and less proper drivers, and more and more non-free, userland+kernel type things.
The fact OpenBSD is making headway at developing free drivers for these devices shows that it is possible. OpenBSD people are Free Software zealots in the most positive sense of the word. They will not accept non-free software into their kernel. They will not accept kernel components that require the use of non-free software. They are, in essence, doing what we thought the Linux people were trying to do, and are repeatedly failing at at the moment.
There are two responses to that. Linux people can go "Yah boo sucks! We're better anyway, nah-nah", or Linux people can go "How can we learn from OpenBSD's example?"
(Of course, there's a third route, which is that the Linux people start donating to OpenBSD, either in software or money, to support that development effort, while simultaneously taking the best of OpenBSD, and using it to replace those parts of Linux that can be replaced. Given the BSD vs GNU "war" is a bullshit concept, and free software is free software, I think that's a good direction myself.)
I think you're trying to justify the unjustifiable. THe fact the word "only" is missing from the article doesn't mean that the wording isn't such that it essentially says you HAVE to have a mod-chip to hack the GC, and no other options exist. (I'm not even aware of a mod-chip that exists for the Gamecube. It may well do, but I suspect virtually nobody uses one.)
In practice, I'm not even sure you can get a mod-chip for the Gamecube. Like most consoles, you need a certain amount of equipment to get your software on to it (eg flashcards or network adapters et al) but if anything, the requirements are less than the GC's main rivals. There is a healthy Gamecube hacking scene. It's of questionable value, but it exists.
It's an extremely misleading article when it comes to the Gamecube. If that paragraph is typical of the article's accuracy, then it's a lousy article, and you'd find out more about hacking consoles by reading the ingredients list on a box of cornflakes.
Even if the RIAA did start to go down the "sue individuals" after she left, it seems unlikely that this is not a direction she helped point the organization in.
Why?
The RIAA is a lobbying/representative group. It will advise its members on what it believes to be the best course of action, but the members have the final say in what it does for them. It's quite possible that Rosen argued against going down this road, but BMG, Sony, et al, insisted upon it. In public, Rosen would have had to "support" the action (or at least, not disagree with the action) as their representative. In private, she could have been saying anything.
That said, in the early part of this decade, most people, including those on Slashdot, were arguing that the music industry should be suing users of services like Napster, rather than Napster itself. The argument was that what Napster was doing was "legal" because it was just a "tool", that could be used for good or bad. The fact Fanning started it as a way to make the whole IRC-based trading of unlicensed copyrighted files a little easier was neither here nor there, apparently. Perhaps Rosen agreed with those on Slashdot. Or perhaps she didn't. Either way, there's no way to tell what Rosen's view was, or what she was advising the RIAA's members, based upon the RIAA's public actions, any more than you can judge a general's view of the morality and practicality of a war based upon the fact that they're prosecuting it.
Call back when he can easily retain all of the track info.
(not all CD/DVD drives support CD-text. Not all CD rippers support CD-text.)
So what? Rip the music in the same tool you used to burn it, iTunes. You must have iTunes to burn it, and ripping it back into iTunes is easy. iTunes will rip it into any bitrate (including VBR) MP3 you want, or AAC if you want (and AAC's better quality than MP3 at the same bit rate, and generally you lose the least if you do a AAC+DRM -> CD -> AAC cycle. I can't hear the difference. If your MP3 player supports AAC, that's the way to go.)
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with those who argue that iTunes DRM makes using a non-iPod music player more of a PITA than it should be, but your comment doesn't refer to a real roadblock. As someone in the middle of a switch back to GNU/Linux, I have to say I'm glad I kept to my policy of generally buying CDs rather than online music, as the collection of restricted music I have is bigger than I'd like as it is, given the amount of burning I'm going to have to do.
I find that keeping the MP3 bitrate up rediculously high (say 320kbps) helps quite a lot
Well, obviously, but it still causes a certain amount of artifacts. For example, the "rid" part of the word "ridiculous" is often so distorted it sounds like the word "red", resulting in millions of people thinking the word is spelt "rediculous" rather than "ridiculous".
If only we all used Ogg Vorbis, at 1440kbps, using a 32 bit/88kHz PCM source, we wouldn't have these "rediculous" artifacts. Still, when you consider people still use regular plastic volume controls, rather than proper wooden ones, and people keep letting speaker cable lie on the ground rather than using pillars to support it a few inches above, not to mention the refusal of the average, Kenwood or Sony buying "consumer" to use proper filtered AC carried using gold plated screened power cables, it's not surprising most people can't tell the difference between a 128kbps AAC and a CD.
First off, with man pages you have to know the command first to be able to get the help.
That would be false. You can do a keyword search with man -k.
Then, there is the structure of every single man page I've seen. Quite difficult to actually find what you need. Then again, Windows Help has never been any help to me either. The best way to figure something out computer related has been the internet for me. And before that? Jeez, I think I had to actually ask someone who knew.
No computer has ever had a perfect help system. The worst I've seen is in the supposedly user-friendly Mac. OS X's help system is unbelievably slow, and searches usually result in many links with similar names, some of which sound vaguely relevent but rarely are.
All of which said, Unix man pages, for the most part, have always been the most helpful to me. Yes, some of them are large and could do with a little breaking down, but they have a structure to them that ensures everything gets documented, the documentation is factual, and even the worst programmer will knock out a useful man page by following the rules. They also print well.
But the PS3 isn't a home computer, at least as announced. To begin with, where's the keyboard and mouse?
It can be turned into one, but this is a little like describing the Amiga CD32 and CDTV, or the Atari XEGS as home computers on the grounds that they, too, could be upgraded to be full home computers (machines roughly equivalent to the Amiga 1200, 500, and Atari XE, respectively.)
It's actually worse than that because unlike the examples given, the "real" home computer doesn't exist. The PS3 cannot be upgraded to match the specification of an actual home computer, which means there's little incentive for anyone but a small hard core to do so. Which means that there isn't going to be a mix of professionally produced third-party applications for this machine, it's just going to be games, and whatever you, the end-user, can port from x86 Linux. People who bought CDTVs knew that buying the add-on keyboard, mouse, and disks meant they had access to the wealth of AmigaOS software. People who bought XEGSes knew that buying the add-ons gave them access to the preprosumer stuff for the XE. No such wealth of applications will ever exist for the PS3
Don't get me wrong. If Sony really is serious about this, and not just trying to make the best of a bad picture, and they actually plan to release a "HomeStation" line of machines that are, essentially, full home computers based upon the PlayStation 3 architecture, I'd be delighted. The death of home computing has always been a sore spot for me, as that's where the innovation in the industry was always at its height. The collapse of Commodore occurred when Commodore was producing significantly better software, and better designed, lower-cost, hardware, than the PC world. The disappearance of Atari occurred when Atari's ST was a real integrated machine with the user friendliness of the Mac, and PC users were still trying to get Windows 3.1 to fit into memory. Even Sinclair, eaten by Amstrad in the mid-eighties, had a niche, creating fun, exceptionally low cost, units that exposed many of us to programming for the first time and the excitement of creating something new.
But that's not what Sony, thus-far, have actually announced. Out of the box, PlayStation 3 buyers will have little inkling that what they have is little more than a console and next-gen DVD player. It will be hooked up to a TV and tucked underneath, as the design implies. Software will be loaded by hitting the Eject button, putting the disk in, and pushing the tray until it closes itself. Hidden in the machine will be a GNU/Linux install, and a few hardy hackers will grab a USB keyboard and mouse from their existing machines, have a play, and determine it's nice and everything, but, y'know, their existing machine's already set up, and it's already hooked up to a monitor, and they don't have to unplug it from a TV, drag it into the bedroom, hook it up to the monitor, and then reverse the process later so the kids can play Meteoroid Clone: The Rip-Off With The Slightly Different Name, and a little later the family can sit around and watch X-Men 4.
Here's a suggestion Sony: Stop. Please, for crying out loud, stop, take a step back, look at what you're doing, and at least try to make improvements. Get rid of that $499 "low-end" machine, and replace it with an all-in-one computer thing that plugs into a VGA monitor. You know, something with the form factor of the Amiga 500 or Atari ST. Make it boot into GNU/Linux if no CD's inserted. Make it something people will instantly see is a computer, and will buy as one, and generate third party support for. Call it the HomeStation, so people know it's more than just a console. Advertise its power, and its PlayStation 3 compatibility.
Keep the PS3 $600 version, though at least consider dropping the price. That's the "set top box" that continues in the PlayStation spirit (and with the PS name) That'll be the one most people slip under the TV, with a handful upgrading to be a computer so they can run all the stuff developed for
You have to consider that Lenovo has been under a lot of international pressure, including concerted campaigns from Human Rights groups, to close their operations in Scotland, a country infamous for its low wages, and poor treatment of prisoners, many of whom are subjected to various inhumane tortures such as bagpipe music, and being fed only haggis washed down with "Special Brew".
It's not surprising they closed the plant and moved operations back to China.
I think most people are wrong in seeing BluRay as the next Betamax. Betamax went up against a comparable product and failed in the market. There are various reasons for that (urban legends about higher quality and/or porn not amongst them.) At that time though, this was an entirely new market. Of the two consumer grade video recording systems, VHS won. Both VHS and Betamax were relatively poor quality, the TVs of the time, as today, were of higher resolution than either standard.
What happened after VHS "won" was the emergence of another standard, this time focussed on quality rather than mass consumer sales. It didn't compete with VHS, largely because it was in the manufacturer's best interests to position it as a high-end product. That standard was Laserdisc.
I'm thinking, with DVDs being very entrenched, with DVD recorders being increasingly common, with consumers having just gone through a round of buying large amounts of their content again, and with DVD quality generally good (not fantastic, but good, considerably better than on standard NTSC/PAL TVs) on HDTVs, Bluray and HD-DVD are, ultimately, competing to be the next Laserdisc. So we may never see a serious drop in price for the standard, in the same way we saw DVD prices plumet within a few years of their introduction.
It's just you. Sony has gone downhill of late, and a lot of people are critical of them. There are some stories about them that are unfair, such as that "OMG! Reading from graphics memory takes aaaaaaages on the PS3!!! We should get PCs with good old AGP graphics instead" thing, but they're no longer the great inventive powerhouse they once were.
I'm not a great fan of Sony (no, honestly, see prior posts), but the fact this story was misleading at best was obvious to me the moment I read the headline. There's simply no way Sony would release a flagship product with a serious hardware design flaw at this level (maybe at a lower, unseen, level, but not one at this level that's so obvious.)
I think I understood what you were trying to say...
Actually, we do have always-on cellphones when it comes to TCP/IP. Both of the major international standards, GSM and IS95 (well, ok, the latter isn't that major, but it's #2 so it gets a mention) have always-on TCP/IP packet data. GSM has GPRS and EDGE, and the 3G variant, UMTS, also has packet switching as a basic service.
For the people rubbishing this, I have one thing to say: WTF is wrong with you people? Why do you short-sighted twits appear the moment anyone mentions a technology combination you've not thought of?
This is just the implementation of a protocol. No, hosting your blog, let alone a major ecommerse site, on a cellphone is probably silly, but if you're looking at implementing some base services, especially for something like telemetry, HTTP is an obvious choice if you have the hardware on the remote end that supports it.
HTTP is well supported in Java,.NET, Python, Perl, and a host of other languages, so the software that runs "back at the base" becomes far simpler to implement if you're going to be accessing information via HTTP, rather than convoluted customized protocols based upon UDP or SMS. What do you think's easier? A call to the HTTP library to fetch http://mobilstation7.intranet/cgi-bin/getcurrentte mperature.exe or custom formatting some UDP packet with a custom designed library and sending that?
Is the objection that HTTP has too much overhead? A bare-bones, stripped down, Apache isn't that large, and look at what you're talking about running it on. A modern mobile phone typically has several megabytes of RAM and 8-16Mb of flash, plus bluetooth or USB interfaces. If it didn't, the camera on it wouldn't work.
A mobile phone isn't a dumb handset, it's a moderately powerful computer that acts as a mobile terminal in a cellular network. You may use yours purely for voice applications. That doesn't mean the only application for this remarkable technology is voice driven. Telecommunications is a versatile instrument, and anything that makes certain types of application easier to implement is to be welcomed, not laughed at.
He mentions Stallman in a reply to one of the comments, where he invents a scenario where someone might create an organization that uses the term "Free Software" in the name, but is actually ideologically at odds with the FSF. According to ToR, Stallman would immediately leap into action, issuing Cease and Desists (or at least, that's implied, because O'Really is suggesting the scenario is comparable.
To the best of my knowledge, this is bullshit on a grand scale. I don't doubt that Stallman would complain, probably writing a long-winded missive that will be summarized as meaning something completely different on Slashdot, and then repeated for years later as an example of, I don't know, RMS claiming he invented the Internet or something.
But RMS sending legal threats over the use of language strikes me as unlikely. And whatever O'Reilly tells otherwise, a Cease and Desist is an implied legal threat, as he acknowledges himself during his attempt to rubbish the idea.
It hasn't happened. RMS hasn't done anything of the sort. O'Reilly is making shit up.
I'm sure Tim's upset that his acknowledged error has been compounded by amplification across the Internet with condemnation continuing well after he's tried to set things right, but these things happen. If he'd dressed up as a Jedi and filmed himself dancing around using a cucumber as a light saber, I'm pretty sure that'd have been blown up out of proportion too. But somehow I doubt many people would have been surprised, or liable to apportion most of the blame, to anyone but O'Reilly in that instance. The difference between that and what happened is that O'Reilly dancing with a light saber is his own damned business. His minions issuing legal threats to third parties isn't.
I'm pretty sure they didn't. Apple dropped Display PostScript from Mac OS X because they didn't want to pay Adobe licensing fees. They based Quartz on a PDF-model (note, not on PDF itself, but on the model) and went the next, obvious, step and made it easy to output PDF from Quartz. I'm not sure why they'd have gone to that trouble if the whole reason from removing DPS in the first place was to break from Adobe.
FWIW, I do hope Adobe sues PDF995/997. Because it sucks. Someone has to.;-)
I'm not sure what part of my message you're responding to. 10 new shows and movies on PPV per day strikes me as better than 10 new movies on more expensive PPV per week. Or the "Yes I do" is refering to the current service (which I got wrong, BTW, it's 7-8 movies per week, not 10 per month), in which case that's not the question I asked. Also it's "not another box", because whether you answered my actual question or the fake one, the question was phrased as a replacement for current service, not an addition. Unless you're one of the 3 people in the world with cable decoders on PCMCIA-style cards that plug directly into your TV, this will be replacing a box, not adding one.
But even looking at the current service: I can see people prefering to pay $2-4 per movie instead of $40-100 per month, with 100 movies at any time being a good enough choice. Others, like yourself, would probably prefer the $40-100 per month for a choice of what's on various channels right now + those DVRd, plus $3-7 per movie for any of the movies in the choice of about 10 your cable company offers.
Personally, if I could get a decent broadcast signal here, and if they can incorporate a DVR, it + broadcast service probably would replace satellite for me, even in its current form. $60 a month vs $2.18-4.36 per movie + a $10-15 DVR subscription? Not a hard choice to make.
100 movies available at any time. Presumably more when hard drives start getting bigger. (Not to mention no satellite or cable service required.)
This may well be the prototype of the future of television. Imagine not "100 movies" but "1000 shows and movies", not "10 new movies per month" but "10 new shows and movies per day". Pay for the shows you watch. Still want cable or satellite?
I'm not reading anything in it that makes it sound like it's for the technically oriented. The article goes to great lengths to describe how the system is increadibly easy to use, and, at the end of the day, it's a simple "This is a box we sell off the shelf that's easy to set up and once running does one thing and does it well" type sell. It's not aimed at the technically oriented, it's aimed at a diverse group of people who like watching movies.
It'd be nice if they put 802.11 or an Ethernet jack in it too, as an alternative, but POTS is fine for the target demographic. There aren't that many people without POTS who could afford this service. Right now, only students spring to mind as a large body of people without POTS access.
The GPL is a license governed by copyright law, not a contract. Unless you agree to the GPL, you don't have the right to redistribute anything. And if it's "invalid", that it's not possible to read as a license but only as a contract, you still don't have the right to redistribute anything, so it's in your best interests to shut up if you think it is.;-)
I don't think that's a legitimate comparison. The bar owner in your example is not the one suing his "customers" (which it would be if the analogy held up), it's the State suing the bartender for serving under-age patrons. Nobody is suing the owner of the website, he's suing the people who came in against his rules.
As if to make matters worse, a significant group who'd be in violation of the bar owner's rules aren't actually able to consent to such rules to begin with. (Which is why I've always felt the pseudo-legal screens barring access to minors for certain websites are completely ridiculous. Take this (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) example. Very nice, but if a 15 year old says he's 25, what, exactly, protection does the screen offer? The 15 year old isn't in a position to compensate the site's owner for any fines et al he suffers for letting the guy in, and moreover the site owner has no legal recourse because the 15 year old's "signing" of the screen wasn't something he was able to do in the first place.
The implication of this court ruling is "even less". And one has to hope that EULAs on products sold in stores and by mail order in forms that do not require strict agreement before the product is sold to begin with also get some kind of knock from this. It's time for Software Houses to take some responsibility, rather than competing for the most restrictive, inane, EULAs in the knowledge that nobody is even going to read the things before installing the software.
I think he was referring to the Wii, given it's the same generation as the '360, and so comparing like with like, you'd compare the BC of the Wii to the BC of the '360.
I'm trying to work out why you think there's something unusual in law enforcement deciding the obvious place to arrest someone is at home.
Staking out the local Wal*Mart for a few days strikes me as a remarkably inefficient, not to mention disruptive, way of arresting someone. Yes, with hindsight, I'm sure it would have worked out better, but the agents involved weren't blessed with the ability to see in the future.
I'm guessing that 99% of arrest warrants issued are executed at people's homes or (possibly) places of business, not at local stores the arrestees frequent. Waco was a remarkable tragedy, but post-micromanaging the decisions the people involved made and suggesting they were somehow part of a giant conspiracy to undermine rights because they didn't execute an unusual procedure in the process strikes me as playing political point games and looking for conspiracies, rather than trying to determine what went wrong and making sure it didn't happen again. There certainly is a world of difference between law enforcement trying to enforce a law and things going badly wrong, and the more major point of the legitimacy of the laws in question and whether someone should be raided for far less serious offenses than Koresh was accused of.
Without wishing to comment on the GP, which makes some presumptions that aren't really true at the moment (though he's bang-on about the privacy laws), the seller may have sold a copy (the only copy) of the data to the buyer, but the buyer still doesn't have the right to redistribute the information.
The GP is right that data protection laws are extremely strict throughout Europe, including Britain. Laws on libel and slander also do not rely upon the information being false (truth is not a strict defense against defamation charges in Britain) and, actually, the way the information has been presented, if the guy who sold the laptop isn't well-out-of-the-closet with the various alleged fetishes, he almost certainly has a strong libel case, under British law, against the buyer (actually, he probably does anyway, if the buyer can't prove the laptop wasn't broken before it was shipped.)
Quite honestly, this is the wrong way to conduct business whatever country you're in. "Alas" for the buyer, he's chosen the most extreme way to conduct business in a country where there are severe legal penalties for pulling these kinds of stunts. Even assuming the seller wasn't willing to take back the laptop, and the product wasn't shipped with insurance, there's a small claims court he could have used. Instead he's resorted to harassment, taking the law into his own hands.
Slashdot Mirror
There is actually enough context for us to determine this isn't a good situation. Half my income buys me a comfortable, spacious, apartment or home, and for the most part, virtually everyone I know can at the very least get a room in a shared house working 40 hours a week minimum wage in America. The same is true throughout the UK.
Half your income at this factory, spent working rather more than 40 hours a week, gets you a bed in a massive dormatory. The money left over is arguably only acceptable because you're not exactly going to spend it on amassing belongings. Where the fuck would you put them? Be clear about this: we're talking about thousands of workers who have no privacy. Not "Their supervisor occasionally peeks at their emails", but seriously no privacy.
Leaving aside immediate moral issues, it's also a vicious cycle. Chronically low wages means low-to-non-existant spending, which prevents growth, which prevents the surrounding economy actually benefiting materially from the work being done. As a result, the factory remains a principle employer in the area with little or no competition springing up. There's nowhere to escape to. There will not be, unless something is done.
The OpenBSD 3945abg driver, on the other hand, was reverse engineered by taking the open source component, modifying it (in accordance with the GPL), and having that essentially spy on the binary-only proprietary daemon, allowing the author to determine what registers are used and how they're used. Technically the author "saw" the GPL'd driver and then wrote a BSD driver, so a very, very, stretched case could be made that the author may have unwittingly copied code and be relicensing it in violation of the GPL, but obviously for a Linux developer, this wouldn't be an issue as the Free Software driver would fall under the GPL anyway.
I've had to reverse engineer stuff before. I generally find it easier to grab a hex editor and look at the input and output of a proprietary module than disassemble code which typically results in hundreds of thousands of lines of cryptic, undocumented, uncommented, not-even-self-documenting, code to examine. If you have a rough idea of what needs to be in the output of some code (for example, three or four sets of coordinates representing a spline in an outline font), you can start to build a bigger picture relatively easily.
No disassembly required.
No copyright lawsuits possible.
The issue here isn't one of "Who's got the most", it's "Here's an area Linux appears to be going badly wrong." Anyone who's had to fuck around with the ipw3945 driver will tell you that the degree to which people are happy to leave heavily-non-free-dependent drivers in the kernel unreplaced is harming Linux and its usability. We're seeing less and less proper drivers, and more and more non-free, userland+kernel type things.
The fact OpenBSD is making headway at developing free drivers for these devices shows that it is possible. OpenBSD people are Free Software zealots in the most positive sense of the word. They will not accept non-free software into their kernel. They will not accept kernel components that require the use of non-free software. They are, in essence, doing what we thought the Linux people were trying to do, and are repeatedly failing at at the moment.
There are two responses to that. Linux people can go "Yah boo sucks! We're better anyway, nah-nah", or Linux people can go "How can we learn from OpenBSD's example?"
(Of course, there's a third route, which is that the Linux people start donating to OpenBSD, either in software or money, to support that development effort, while simultaneously taking the best of OpenBSD, and using it to replace those parts of Linux that can be replaced. Given the BSD vs GNU "war" is a bullshit concept, and free software is free software, I think that's a good direction myself.)
In practice, I'm not even sure you can get a mod-chip for the Gamecube. Like most consoles, you need a certain amount of equipment to get your software on to it (eg flashcards or network adapters et al) but if anything, the requirements are less than the GC's main rivals. There is a healthy Gamecube hacking scene. It's of questionable value, but it exists.
It's an extremely misleading article when it comes to the Gamecube. If that paragraph is typical of the article's accuracy, then it's a lousy article, and you'd find out more about hacking consoles by reading the ingredients list on a box of cornflakes.
The RIAA is a lobbying/representative group. It will advise its members on what it believes to be the best course of action, but the members have the final say in what it does for them. It's quite possible that Rosen argued against going down this road, but BMG, Sony, et al, insisted upon it. In public, Rosen would have had to "support" the action (or at least, not disagree with the action) as their representative. In private, she could have been saying anything.
That said, in the early part of this decade, most people, including those on Slashdot, were arguing that the music industry should be suing users of services like Napster, rather than Napster itself. The argument was that what Napster was doing was "legal" because it was just a "tool", that could be used for good or bad. The fact Fanning started it as a way to make the whole IRC-based trading of unlicensed copyrighted files a little easier was neither here nor there, apparently. Perhaps Rosen agreed with those on Slashdot. Or perhaps she didn't. Either way, there's no way to tell what Rosen's view was, or what she was advising the RIAA's members, based upon the RIAA's public actions, any more than you can judge a general's view of the morality and practicality of a war based upon the fact that they're prosecuting it.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with those who argue that iTunes DRM makes using a non-iPod music player more of a PITA than it should be, but your comment doesn't refer to a real roadblock. As someone in the middle of a switch back to GNU/Linux, I have to say I'm glad I kept to my policy of generally buying CDs rather than online music, as the collection of restricted music I have is bigger than I'd like as it is, given the amount of burning I'm going to have to do.
If only we all used Ogg Vorbis, at 1440kbps, using a 32 bit/88kHz PCM source, we wouldn't have these "rediculous" artifacts. Still, when you consider people still use regular plastic volume controls, rather than proper wooden ones, and people keep letting speaker cable lie on the ground rather than using pillars to support it a few inches above, not to mention the refusal of the average, Kenwood or Sony buying "consumer" to use proper filtered AC carried using gold plated screened power cables, it's not surprising most people can't tell the difference between a 128kbps AAC and a CD.
All of which said, Unix man pages, for the most part, have always been the most helpful to me. Yes, some of them are large and could do with a little breaking down, but they have a structure to them that ensures everything gets documented, the documentation is factual, and even the worst programmer will knock out a useful man page by following the rules. They also print well.
It can be turned into one, but this is a little like describing the Amiga CD32 and CDTV, or the Atari XEGS as home computers on the grounds that they, too, could be upgraded to be full home computers (machines roughly equivalent to the Amiga 1200, 500, and Atari XE, respectively.)
It's actually worse than that because unlike the examples given, the "real" home computer doesn't exist. The PS3 cannot be upgraded to match the specification of an actual home computer, which means there's little incentive for anyone but a small hard core to do so. Which means that there isn't going to be a mix of professionally produced third-party applications for this machine, it's just going to be games, and whatever you, the end-user, can port from x86 Linux. People who bought CDTVs knew that buying the add-on keyboard, mouse, and disks meant they had access to the wealth of AmigaOS software. People who bought XEGSes knew that buying the add-ons gave them access to the preprosumer stuff for the XE. No such wealth of applications will ever exist for the PS3
Don't get me wrong. If Sony really is serious about this, and not just trying to make the best of a bad picture, and they actually plan to release a "HomeStation" line of machines that are, essentially, full home computers based upon the PlayStation 3 architecture, I'd be delighted. The death of home computing has always been a sore spot for me, as that's where the innovation in the industry was always at its height. The collapse of Commodore occurred when Commodore was producing significantly better software, and better designed, lower-cost, hardware, than the PC world. The disappearance of Atari occurred when Atari's ST was a real integrated machine with the user friendliness of the Mac, and PC users were still trying to get Windows 3.1 to fit into memory. Even Sinclair, eaten by Amstrad in the mid-eighties, had a niche, creating fun, exceptionally low cost, units that exposed many of us to programming for the first time and the excitement of creating something new.
But that's not what Sony, thus-far, have actually announced. Out of the box, PlayStation 3 buyers will have little inkling that what they have is little more than a console and next-gen DVD player. It will be hooked up to a TV and tucked underneath, as the design implies. Software will be loaded by hitting the Eject button, putting the disk in, and pushing the tray until it closes itself. Hidden in the machine will be a GNU/Linux install, and a few hardy hackers will grab a USB keyboard and mouse from their existing machines, have a play, and determine it's nice and everything, but, y'know, their existing machine's already set up, and it's already hooked up to a monitor, and they don't have to unplug it from a TV, drag it into the bedroom, hook it up to the monitor, and then reverse the process later so the kids can play Meteoroid Clone: The Rip-Off With The Slightly Different Name, and a little later the family can sit around and watch X-Men 4.
Here's a suggestion Sony: Stop. Please, for crying out loud, stop, take a step back, look at what you're doing, and at least try to make improvements. Get rid of that $499 "low-end" machine, and replace it with an all-in-one computer thing that plugs into a VGA monitor. You know, something with the form factor of the Amiga 500 or Atari ST. Make it boot into GNU/Linux if no CD's inserted. Make it something people will instantly see is a computer, and will buy as one, and generate third party support for. Call it the HomeStation, so people know it's more than just a console. Advertise its power, and its PlayStation 3 compatibility.
Keep the PS3 $600 version, though at least consider dropping the price. That's the "set top box" that continues in the PlayStation spirit (and with the PS name) That'll be the one most people slip under the TV, with a handful upgrading to be a computer so they can run all the stuff developed for
It's not surprising they closed the plant and moved operations back to China.
Is this backward posting day? Your comment reads like something the GP would respond to, not vice-versa.
What happened after VHS "won" was the emergence of another standard, this time focussed on quality rather than mass consumer sales. It didn't compete with VHS, largely because it was in the manufacturer's best interests to position it as a high-end product. That standard was Laserdisc.
I'm thinking, with DVDs being very entrenched, with DVD recorders being increasingly common, with consumers having just gone through a round of buying large amounts of their content again, and with DVD quality generally good (not fantastic, but good, considerably better than on standard NTSC/PAL TVs) on HDTVs, Bluray and HD-DVD are, ultimately, competing to be the next Laserdisc. So we may never see a serious drop in price for the standard, in the same way we saw DVD prices plumet within a few years of their introduction.
It's just you. Sony has gone downhill of late, and a lot of people are critical of them. There are some stories about them that are unfair, such as that "OMG! Reading from graphics memory takes aaaaaaages on the PS3!!! We should get PCs with good old AGP graphics instead" thing, but they're no longer the great inventive powerhouse they once were.
I'm not a great fan of Sony (no, honestly, see prior posts), but the fact this story was misleading at best was obvious to me the moment I read the headline. There's simply no way Sony would release a flagship product with a serious hardware design flaw at this level (maybe at a lower, unseen, level, but not one at this level that's so obvious.)
Actually, we do have always-on cellphones when it comes to TCP/IP. Both of the major international standards, GSM and IS95 (well, ok, the latter isn't that major, but it's #2 so it gets a mention) have always-on TCP/IP packet data. GSM has GPRS and EDGE, and the 3G variant, UMTS, also has packet switching as a basic service.
For the people rubbishing this, I have one thing to say: WTF is wrong with you people? Why do you short-sighted twits appear the moment anyone mentions a technology combination you've not thought of?
This is just the implementation of a protocol. No, hosting your blog, let alone a major ecommerse site, on a cellphone is probably silly, but if you're looking at implementing some base services, especially for something like telemetry, HTTP is an obvious choice if you have the hardware on the remote end that supports it.
HTTP is well supported in Java, .NET, Python, Perl, and a host of other languages, so the software that runs "back at the base" becomes far simpler to implement if you're going to be accessing information via HTTP, rather than convoluted customized protocols based upon UDP or SMS. What do you think's easier? A call to the HTTP library to fetch http://mobilstation7.intranet/cgi-bin/getcurrentte mperature.exe or custom formatting some UDP packet with a custom designed library and sending that?
Is the objection that HTTP has too much overhead? A bare-bones, stripped down, Apache isn't that large, and look at what you're talking about running it on. A modern mobile phone typically has several megabytes of RAM and 8-16Mb of flash, plus bluetooth or USB interfaces. If it didn't, the camera on it wouldn't work.
A mobile phone isn't a dumb handset, it's a moderately powerful computer that acts as a mobile terminal in a cellular network. You may use yours purely for voice applications. That doesn't mean the only application for this remarkable technology is voice driven. Telecommunications is a versatile instrument, and anything that makes certain types of application easier to implement is to be welcomed, not laughed at.
To the best of my knowledge, this is bullshit on a grand scale. I don't doubt that Stallman would complain, probably writing a long-winded missive that will be summarized as meaning something completely different on Slashdot, and then repeated for years later as an example of, I don't know, RMS claiming he invented the Internet or something.
But RMS sending legal threats over the use of language strikes me as unlikely. And whatever O'Reilly tells otherwise, a Cease and Desist is an implied legal threat, as he acknowledges himself during his attempt to rubbish the idea.
It hasn't happened. RMS hasn't done anything of the sort. O'Reilly is making shit up.
I'm sure Tim's upset that his acknowledged error has been compounded by amplification across the Internet with condemnation continuing well after he's tried to set things right, but these things happen. If he'd dressed up as a Jedi and filmed himself dancing around using a cucumber as a light saber, I'm pretty sure that'd have been blown up out of proportion too. But somehow I doubt many people would have been surprised, or liable to apportion most of the blame, to anyone but O'Reilly in that instance. The difference between that and what happened is that O'Reilly dancing with a light saber is his own damned business. His minions issuing legal threats to third parties isn't.
FWIW, I do hope Adobe sues PDF995/997. Because it sucks. Someone has to. ;-)
But even looking at the current service: I can see people prefering to pay $2-4 per movie instead of $40-100 per month, with 100 movies at any time being a good enough choice. Others, like yourself, would probably prefer the $40-100 per month for a choice of what's on various channels right now + those DVRd, plus $3-7 per movie for any of the movies in the choice of about 10 your cable company offers.
Personally, if I could get a decent broadcast signal here, and if they can incorporate a DVR, it + broadcast service probably would replace satellite for me, even in its current form. $60 a month vs $2.18-4.36 per movie + a $10-15 DVR subscription? Not a hard choice to make.
This may well be the prototype of the future of television. Imagine not "100 movies" but "1000 shows and movies", not "10 new movies per month" but "10 new shows and movies per day". Pay for the shows you watch. Still want cable or satellite?
It'd be nice if they put 802.11 or an Ethernet jack in it too, as an alternative, but POTS is fine for the target demographic. There aren't that many people without POTS who could afford this service. Right now, only students spring to mind as a large body of people without POTS access.
The GPL is a license governed by copyright law, not a contract. Unless you agree to the GPL, you don't have the right to redistribute anything. And if it's "invalid", that it's not possible to read as a license but only as a contract, you still don't have the right to redistribute anything, so it's in your best interests to shut up if you think it is. ;-)
As if to make matters worse, a significant group who'd be in violation of the bar owner's rules aren't actually able to consent to such rules to begin with. (Which is why I've always felt the pseudo-legal screens barring access to minors for certain websites are completely ridiculous. Take this (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) example. Very nice, but if a 15 year old says he's 25, what, exactly, protection does the screen offer? The 15 year old isn't in a position to compensate the site's owner for any fines et al he suffers for letting the guy in, and moreover the site owner has no legal recourse because the 15 year old's "signing" of the screen wasn't something he was able to do in the first place.
The implication of this court ruling is "even less". And one has to hope that EULAs on products sold in stores and by mail order in forms that do not require strict agreement before the product is sold to begin with also get some kind of knock from this. It's time for Software Houses to take some responsibility, rather than competing for the most restrictive, inane, EULAs in the knowledge that nobody is even going to read the things before installing the software.
I think he was referring to the Wii, given it's the same generation as the '360, and so comparing like with like, you'd compare the BC of the Wii to the BC of the '360.
Staking out the local Wal*Mart for a few days strikes me as a remarkably inefficient, not to mention disruptive, way of arresting someone. Yes, with hindsight, I'm sure it would have worked out better, but the agents involved weren't blessed with the ability to see in the future.
I'm guessing that 99% of arrest warrants issued are executed at people's homes or (possibly) places of business, not at local stores the arrestees frequent. Waco was a remarkable tragedy, but post-micromanaging the decisions the people involved made and suggesting they were somehow part of a giant conspiracy to undermine rights because they didn't execute an unusual procedure in the process strikes me as playing political point games and looking for conspiracies, rather than trying to determine what went wrong and making sure it didn't happen again. There certainly is a world of difference between law enforcement trying to enforce a law and things going badly wrong, and the more major point of the legitimacy of the laws in question and whether someone should be raided for far less serious offenses than Koresh was accused of.
The GP is right that data protection laws are extremely strict throughout Europe, including Britain. Laws on libel and slander also do not rely upon the information being false (truth is not a strict defense against defamation charges in Britain) and, actually, the way the information has been presented, if the guy who sold the laptop isn't well-out-of-the-closet with the various alleged fetishes, he almost certainly has a strong libel case, under British law, against the buyer (actually, he probably does anyway, if the buyer can't prove the laptop wasn't broken before it was shipped.)
Quite honestly, this is the wrong way to conduct business whatever country you're in. "Alas" for the buyer, he's chosen the most extreme way to conduct business in a country where there are severe legal penalties for pulling these kinds of stunts. Even assuming the seller wasn't willing to take back the laptop, and the product wasn't shipped with insurance, there's a small claims court he could have used. Instead he's resorted to harassment, taking the law into his own hands.