A cruise missile? Isn't that a little... dangerous? It reminds me of the time my pops and I were driving across the U.S. and our van broke down near a truck gas station in New Mexico. Luckily, we had all kinds of tools and extra parts with us, knowing that our van would likely break down during this long trip. My padre needed to cut a rubber hose for something or other but he couldn't find a knife, so he asked me to buy one in the gas station. I went in there and asked if they had a "pocket knife." The girl pulls out a knife from a leather pouch and unfolds the blade... it seriously looked like a murder weapon. I said, "Ooh, that looks dangerous! I just need to cut a rubber hose!"
Well that's what happens when English is your third language and you don't know all the lingo yet. At some later time, I found out that I should have asked for a utility knife. Well, that could fit in your pocket, couldn't it?
The way I see it, this is a huge pile of B.S. It all goes back to the fact that the original 1790 copyright lengths have been increased to the point that nothing made in our lifetimes is likely to go into the public domain. By the time it does, it will probably be irrelevant anyway, especially if it is software.
Ideally, copyright lengths should be reduced back to the original 1790 values. I know this probably won't happen but it is certainly the best way to put things back in balance. Currently, the so called "content providers" own all information and charge out the ear for it. That is unacceptable. Information should go into the public domain such that other people can use it, modify it, grow it and make better things with it. That was the whole purpose of copyright in the beginning, anyway! To give people incentive (for a few years) to release their works such that OTHERS could use them to make this country advanced and strong. In today's fast paced business environment, nothing makes more sense than staying ahead of the competition by continuously improving things and coming up with wackier and better things all the time. This is how progress is made in arts, sciences and everything else. Progress is not made by passing more and more criminal laws to protect "intellectual property" that is really just information that SHOULD be free and useful to people.
Back to the discussion about SCO... I think that when software goes out of copyright (after the 1790 time limit), an entire build environment including all code should be released. Since earlier code cannot possibly contain code copyrighted at a later date, this cannot present the legal problem that things still in copyright need to be released as well. Even if such a drastic change does not take place, the executable program should become public domain. That, at least, would give people the ability to use older programs, if not necessarily to fix bugs in them. And therefore, I think the SCO thing is a pile of B.S. I don't know for sure, but I believe that if copyrights had retained their 1790 time limits, this "valuable" code (that probably implements printf or something stupid like that) would already be in the public domain anyway. (On a side note, how advanced would Linux be now if all code since the 60's was released and available for modification and inclusion?)
The way I see it, a central repository for GPL'd code should be set up so that anybody putting their changes into code can make archival copies of an entire build environment on a public server.
This way, if someone needs to modify the software and/or if the company that made it goes out of business, a copy is available in a central place such that anybody can obtain it and continue to use it. Also, the company wouldn't have to worry about making released code available because it already is.
The FSF would be the perfect organization to set up this kind of system, considering that the license was their idea anyway. But if someone else sets up such a thing, that would be cool too. The important thing is to mirror the archive.
The way I see it, Microsoft should get out of the operating system business and get into the toilet business.
If I had the priveledge of working on this project, I would release a product called Microsoft Toilet XP. The features of my fine product might include items such as:
Toilet must boot up before you can use it:
Toilet normally takes two to three minutes to boot.
If user is in a hurry and the situation is an emergency, toilet enters Murphy's Law Mode and takes an additional three or four minutes to boot.
Occasionally when toilet is booting in Murphy's Law Mode, toilet will crash, find new hardware when the configuration hasn't changed or perform otherwise erratic behavior to require additional reboots and delay the use of the toilet.
Toilet has a network connection:
Dumping Rights Management (DRM) would require communication with Microsoft's central servers to determine whether user is legally authorized to take a dump in toilet.
DRM would require monthly subscription fee and/or Gold registration, giving a particular client unlimited use of a single toilet.
Multiple users may not use same toilet unless licensed.
If network connection cannot be found, which is randomly the case for the user's inconvenience, toilet refuses to function.
Toilet randomly behaves erratically:
Toilet might flush by itself.
Toilet might not flushed when the flush handle is depressed, due to bugs in the software.
Toilet might overflow.
Hackers will get in and shove a digital dildo right up your ass.
Upon completion of toilet usage, toilet must be shut down properly or a lengthy scandisk process must take place the next time toilet enters Murphy's Law Mode, after other actions of that mode take place.
SpyWare will be randomly installed in toilet, without user's consent, to send a digitally coded sample of the user's shit and/or piss to random companies for inclusion in their lists. These would be used to:
Send highly targeted dieting advertisements to users based on the content of their shit.
Make information about your diet and gastral intestinal status available on the Internet for casual browsing by anybody.
Microsoft Toilet XP 2003 End User License Agreement:
By us having written this licensing agreement, you have agreed to be bound by its terms...
This post represents humor, parody and opinions of the poster, protected by the Constitution. Microsoft is obviously a registered trademark of itself and everybody knows that so it needs not be recounted here.
A weed KILLER?! No, no, no... you've got it all wrong. What we need is a high tech 'weed' GROWER!! Believe me, such a thing will earn you a huge profit, especially if it'll keep the cops from finding out.
(I mean, because planting weeds in your garden might hurt the other plants by taking away all of their soil moisture and that might be illegal under the Fair Treatment of Plants Act or some such thing that they'll invent for the purpose of arresting you.)
OK, TO GET SERIOUS NOW: The way I see it, such a device could be used to grow enormous amounts of food in warehouses. You put plants on large (say 6 foot diameter) plates or bowls with soil in them, and these are mounted in several levels (one on top of the other) in a vertical arrangment, reaching the 6 story high ceiling and extending from one end of a 1,000,000 square foot warehouse to the other and from side to side. Each plate would have lighting as well as hoses for dispensing water, carbon dioxide and whatever else is necessary for sustaining the life of the plants in that bowl.
A 3D imaging system mounted on a track for navigating through the entire warehouse would constantly circle around and use plant-recognition software to recognize the state of the plant's growth. The system would use this feedback to route water and necessary nutrients and gases to each plant in the exact amounts appropriate. When the plant (be it carrots, potatoes, grapes, or even apples on an apple tree (mounted on a much larger bowl with more clearance, obviously) reach their ripe stage, a message is dispatched to pick those plants. If the plant appears to be attacked by insects, a message is dispatched to immediately take care of these plants to prevent further spread. In fact, the system might zap these plants immediately. (A Matrix style robot goes around to pick ripe plants and get rid of bad ones?) This might not be so far fetched and could certainly provide enough food (given enough warehouses) to feed our planet five times over. When we come to the stage that food is produced so cheaply that throwing it away is more expensive than giving it away, we'll be fine.
From the article: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." And that's as correct as anything I've ever heard.
Here at my job, we have such a mixture of different computers dating from the '70's to just two months ago. To squeeze every possible bit of value out of the money we spend, this company has never put a computer out of commission, partly because doing so could wreak havoc on our system, considering how ad hoc it is, characteristic of things that started out small and then grew, and grew, and grew. That's how our network is... and nobody around here is brave enough to make drastic changes.
Besides, we've got a huge investment in various software packages and custom programs that translate data between them. These run on so many different hardware configurations and operating systems that it isn't even funny.
In fact, the way some computers are attached to each other is funny... there are the old coaxial cables, there are newer cat5 cables, there are RS232 cables and "LapLink" cables. Hell, there are even little boards that one of our guys here built in his garage some years ago, to get some of our older dinosaurs communicating. Each of these things was put into place one by one, to solve a very particular short term problem, each turned into a very permanent part of our organization, and all are still functional and are being used extensively.
There are a bunch of newer boxes here, made out of computer scraps that people have "donated" over the years, running Linux, and in my spare time I like to write scripts to automate all kinds of repetitive tasks. I like the way our network is because it gives the thing a lot of character, kind of like old towns have, as opposed to cities that are engineered onto a huge grid. And I like to think of this network as a town in the wild west... It's so much fun to screw around with these petty things, but then, we all bring our junk cars and old hot rods into work on the weekends to fix them, or to take parts off and sell them; we all have this way of doing petty little shit all the time, and believe me, we love every moment of it!
I really liked the Original Series. Then, the Next Generation came along and turned out to be a pretty awesome series, too. Then, there was an enormous marketing blitz about the next great thing, Deep Space Nine. Well, DS9 SUCKED in my opinion. The entire series was just a drawn out docudrama about political problems with the Cardasians... if I wanted politics, I would watch the news! So then, they announced Voyager, but that was just an endless show about how their ship breaks down a million times on their way home from 70 light years away. Then, a few years went by without too much damage to the Star Trek name. On the contrary, the movies released during this time were pretty cool. Finally, they announce Enterprise. When this happened, I knew it was gonna suck but I watched the first episode just to give 'em a chance... and it sucked.
CONCLUSION: I will purchase a DVD player when all of the following conditions have been fulfilled:
The original Mission Impossible series is released on DVD.
The "New" Mission Impossible series is released on DVD.
The entire Original Series of Star Trek is released on DVD.
The entire Next Generation series of Star Trek is released on DVD.
The DMCA is revoked as illegal and as such all content scrambling and/or other technologies that prevent access to information for such illegitimate reasons are illegalized.
But until then, I'll just chill here with my Negra Modelo in one hand and my Patrón Añejo in the other. C2 H5 OH. Because denial is a big river in Africa.
Sorry about the abbreviations. They typed themselves automatically! D.F. stands for Distrito Federal (Federal District), which you could consider the Mexican equivalent of Washington D.C. It is a common name for Ciudad de México (Mexico City), usually called simply México or D.F. for short.
Hopefully there are no more points of confusion in what was supposed to be a simple post about sheep.
I've been waiting for this release for a number of months now and want to express my gratitude to the OpenBSD folks. Of course, that means buying a few more of their CDs. Heh, heh... Shameless support for my favorite OS. What's in their best interest is in the best interest of my computing environment, right? Good!
Now where is that post I wrote a few days ago about building a new distro called AbiertoBSD out of used car parts?
It is Nahuatl, the Aztec language. The story goes that the Mexicas (the Aztecs), were one of the greatest empires and had built the most beautiful and technologically advanced city at the time: Tenochtitlán, now called Mexico City, or more simply, México. Their victories were based on skills in war and politics and their greatness was based on architecture and technology, which included tunnels, bridges and canals for transporting water. During the last forty years of their reign (let's throw the figure of 1480 to 1520 d.C.), their luck began to run out as they suffered great defeats by other groups, like the Taracans. The situation only became worse when Hernán Cortez arrived. Cortez liked the beauty he saw in Tenochtitlán and wanted to place it under his control. The Mexicas' broken situation made them especially vulnerable and their great reign had come to an end. Thus: In otin ihuan in tonáltin nican tzonquíca. Which means: Here end the roads and the days.
Its long history (along with the pyramids, volcanoes and other nice things relatively closeby) is one of the reasons that D.F. is so full of character.
(To answer your 'vida loca' comment, Nahuatl is so different from Spanish and yet we seem to have inherited so many words from it that I often wonder what they used to speak in Spain before the 1500s.)
Hoisting glasses, huh? It's just like that scene in the Fifth Element, right after Bruce Willis gets the stones and calls the president to tell him... Two seconds later, everyone is hoisting glasses and popping open bottles of champaigne when someone turns around from his console and says, "Mr. President?"
The president says, "Yes, now what?"
Oh, just the small detail that the evil entity hasn't been defeated yet and is now heading straight for Earth at a somewhat excessive speed. And you know what? I think the EVIL in that movie symbolized the RIAA. The Fifth Element symbolized freedom. And the whole This is a police alert; Put your hands in the yellow circles. thing symbolized the way WE are gonna live if things don't change... in apartments that look like some Industrial Zone in Doom II, with yellow circles and KEEP CLEAR painted on your wall, and police will look inside your apartment anytime they want and snatch you away in a body bag if someone so much as accuses you of a crime. Only in our REAL future, there won't be any Fifth Element to come along and rescue us. That's how things will be if organizations like the RIAA have their way. See my other posts about sheep, et cetera. It's just like the title of my post says...
I've just spent the past fifteen minutes perusing peoples' comments about about what makes these ads suck and whether or not Mozilla could be made to avoid these things... But I haven't seen anything about this:
There are places in the world where people pay for their Internet connection based on the amount of bandwidth they use. In other words, their service providers know how many megs of information was sent down that person's line and charge accordingly. Now imagine for a moment that you live in one of these places and you receive all kinds of ads. Not just web site ads, either. I'm talking about all ads... banner ads, popup ads, and even SPAM mail. Sure, your email program might be configured to erase SPAM mail, but it still has to get downloaded to you. Which leaves you doing what? Paying good, hard-earned money, our of YOUR pocket, because some jackasses in China or at some CBS site are sending you JUNK.
Online advertising simply sucks, especially when you can just go into Google and punch in what you're looking for. (Here at Harvard we do not end a sentence with a preposition. Alright, punch in what you're looking for, asshole.)
Why is this happening? Because too many people are sheep.
Yes, an enormous number of people are sheep, just following, unconciously, what the herd is doing. And guess what? Consumer mass-marketing is simply a science devoted to pulling sheep around by the strings. People are unconscious. See, in Spanish, we have a way of saying that someone is unconscious such that you would understand what I'm talking about... if you say that someone está inconsciente, you mean that he/she is medically unconscious, as when a big hammer falls on someone's head or something. But if you say that someone es inconsciente, you mean that he/she is unconscious as in Orwell's 1984, where the people don't think that the Party is unfairly controlling them simply because they don't think. The world is passing them by like some kind of television show and they're just letting it carry them along for the ride. This is the audience of sheep that we're talking about. There is such an alarming number of these sheep that it is going to reduce our world to a piece of shit. Legislation that doesn't really bother the sheep, but takes away real, useful rights of intelligent people like YOU. Television programming that sucks and is filled with commercials made for stupid people. So, you have technology that removes ads from webpages? Oh, well, we've already patented that (tomorrow), and we've already made it federally illegal with jail terms of at least 500 years (the day after tomorrow). And that pisses me off.
This is caused by shitty education systems that get people used to following directions and not thinking for themselves. Oh, there's an ad I have to look at for 15 seconds... oh well, maybe I'll buy their product so I can put it in my already cluttered beyond recognition house, so that my car has to be out on the driveway because the garage is full of so much shit.
You're gonna educate your peers about the alternatives to Wintel? Let me tell you something:
*** THEY ALREADY KNOW IT ***
Yes, that's right... The three other people at your school who would consider joining your club are going to know about these things already. And to be honest, chicks aren't gonna dig the geeks who get into this club.
*** WANT TO REACH AN AUDIENCE? ***
Then do something more popular, interesting and hip.
Start a club called The Future Club. In this club, cover all issues facing our future, including environmentalism, science and technology. The science and technology part can include discussions about everything from space technology to software, a category that includes discussions of alternative operating systems. The environmentalism part is in there for several reasons:
All the hot chicks are liberal environmentalists. Take 'em out on dates, convert them to libertarians, and get some smooching done at their daddies' houses.
It will increase the size of your audience because there are a LOT of environmentalists and liberals.
It will spark interesting discussions, like how science and technology can be used to fight environmental damage... For example, can technologies invented for survival in space, like a "cycle of life" inside a space station that must work without outside help, turn our polluting cities into clean, total-recycling, engineered living environments that support (rather than damage) our planet?
Do this and you'll be popular, your voice will be heard and you'll be screwing three different chicks all at the same time and none of them will know about the other two. Oh yeah, and your words will be more respected when you tell these folks to chuck Windows in favor of some geeky thing called csh, where they can type such horrors as 'rm -rf *' while logged in as root. Not to mention the fact that these hot chicks will be talking to YOU!!! Like that cute blondie that sits in the row in front of you in social studies... Yeah!
This is such an old story and has appeared on/. before. It was so long ago that I won't even bother to search for it and put a link, but believe me, it's here somewhere.
Yes, this definitely sucks for the consumer. On the other hand, HP claims that the ink goes bad, dries out, and causes all sorts of technical problems that they're trying to prevent for the consumer. Whether they're telling the truth or not is beyond me, since I don't own an HP printer. The way I see it, the best way to go is to use a laser printer for most of your crap and keep an inexpensive but relatively good inkjet around for printing photos and whatnot. I currently only have an inkjet and I can't tell you how often I am "too lazy" to print something out that I otherwise might because it's too much trouble.
And yes, I think it is unfair that HP has put technology into their ink cartridges to prevent them from working. A warning that the ink might go stale is enough, and if the consumer wants to risk a mess (or if the consumer is stupid like many people are and doesn't use its brain or doesn't have one) then it's their own damn fault if the printer gets screwed up and the warranty document should describe that. But technology that deliberately prevents non-weapon technology from functioning should be illegal. (Meaning that some sort of handprint technology on a handgun is a good idea to prevent a kid from finding his daddy's gat and blowing a hole in someone or something but CSS on DVDs and this thing HP put into their printer cartridges should be illegal, or at least unenforceable under law.)
This is excellent news. Linux has enjoyed widespread publicity and use, but unfortunately, I think that most people who use Linux (and are new to "alternative" operating systems) are using Red Hat or one of the larger distros and don't really understand its ins-and-outs. For many people, this is perfectly acceptable because all they care about is reading their email and word processing anyway. For them, DOS 2.0 with some kind of quick GUI would be more than enough, let alone Windows XP LX SE 2010. Putting together your own distribution with step-by-step instructions will probably make anybody a better user, admin, developer, etc. And with a book to show you how to build a usable distro, you simply can't go wrong. I think I'm going to dig some junk out of my computer graveyard and try this one out tonight... it'll be a long night!
While I'm all for what the United States has done in Iraq, and firmly believe that it should do even more in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, before taking care of other troublemakers in the region, I think that assigning some asshole from the RIAA to write Iraq's copyright law is simply wrong. This is obviously being done because the embargo on Iraq is going to be lifted once they are under control that is acceptable to the United States, and, like China, pirating is going to be rampant over there because, as every reasonable consumer knows, $20.00 for a music album, that quite frankly sucks, is too much, and Iraquis without food aren't going to pay it. On the contrary, they'll set up shops to copy CDs and sell them in niche markets that China hasn't penetrated yet.
This is simply an example of trying to solve a problem by creating a bigger one, then trying to solve it by creating yet a bigger one, etc., etc., ad infinitum (or however you say). At first, copyright law gave people a temporary monopoly in order that they will RELEASE their works for the public to use, eventually to become public domain such that it can be used to further human progress. But the copyright term was extended, then extended again, and again... and now, any work created in our lifetimes won't likely go out of copyright when our children would otherwise benefit from them. This causes piracy as a backlash because the laws are flawed and unfair. Copyright terms should be reduced back to the original length for all works. And tell those fuckers at the RIAA, MPAA and other control-freaks to stop being so militant about copyright. An electrician does not live forever off wiring a single light switch. A carpenter does not live forever off making a single cabinet. Neither should a musician live forever off writing a single song and pulling 9 more out of his asshole in order to fill an album. Or a writer, off a single book. Or a programmer, off a single program. To continue earning a living, these people should have to continue doing their job, just like the rest of humanity.
Finally, something that makes sense comes out of the government. This is a free country, so you should be free to do anything, as long as you don't deliberately harm someone, and if you don't want people getting into your networks, then secure them for cryin' out loud!
Too many folks have become accustomed to the myth that huge multinational corporations have a God-given right to eternal, perpetually increasing profits and market share. This view is wrong because:
The market is finite.
At some point, someone will come up with a better equation (to selling), displacing the current market leader.
Arrogance in a large corporation, in conjunction with utter greed, two negative virtues that have a tendency to come to those in power, will cause the downfall of even the most powerful entity.
One day, people will figure out the sorry fact that what goes up must come down.
Some corporations in silicon valley have figured out what small business owners have always known and used to their advantage: In a time of economic bust, one of two things happen:
You go miserably out of business.
You innovate so that when things turn around, you have a head start against the competition.
Don't worry, though... They'll forget this lesson long before the next economic downturn.
Any company would have to be STUPID to release a product WITHOUT making up restrictions like this.
Hey... imagine that you're the dude at AMD who has to write the checks to pay back consumers who blew up their stupid chip and claimed it was defective. How would YOU feel about that? It makes your company look stupid. It makes your product look defective. It costs you money. It damages your business in every way.
So what do they do? They get some smart engineers to figure out something that works and that's what everybody is gonna do with their chips--if they want to retain their warranty, that is. You're still FREE (as in libre, as opposed to gratis) to mess around with the thing and put whatever you want on it, be it thermal grease, a different heatsink, or, hell, the radiator off your hermano's 35-year-old Chevy II that's sitting on blocks behind the house, if that's what you're so inclined to do. Just don't come crying to AMD that you blew up your chip, cuz IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT!!!
The human mind parses speech by using both senses of sight and sound. They demonstrated this on the news one time by repeating a word over and over. They instructed the viewers to look at the screen while listening, then at some random time, to close their eyes and then open them again after waiting an interval, all while continuing to listen. Sure enough, when I closed my eyes, the word I heard was a completely different word, even though when I looked at the screen, I wasn't necessarily looking at the person's lips. In other words, your cabeza does this automatically. Obviously, the two words were similar enough in sound that this worked, but it demonstrated that in addition to using context to provide meaning, your brain uses other information as well.
Pushing Linux to the masses is obviously a difficult thing to do, especially when you consider that it is not quite ready for desktop use by the masses of sheep out there who:
Have no knowledge of technology.
Have no interest in knowing technology, no matter how much it rules their lives.
Having no imagination, think that a computer is a box with a keyboard, mouse, monitor and speakers running some version of Microsoft Windows, and don't even imagine that computers serve other purposes in the world.
Will let the government and the big greedy corporations take away one liberty after another, through the use of technology and unfair laws, because they are too worried about superficial things, like what kind of mountaineous SUV they drive, to worry about anything that actually makes sense.
Considering the above points, why don't you make a fortune by pushing the kind of superficial, stupid product that the idiot sheep support, by using the kind of mass marketing that considers its audience stupid, because they are, instead of putting so much effort into pushing Linux, which actually has merit and makes sense, though appears to have little potential for real return?
I bet someone at Microsoft is going to get seriously FIRED for this. I am absolutely certain that this move has not been authorized by anybody with any real power over there because if it had been, I think they would be lobbying for the opposite goal.
After all, I firmly believe that Microsoft's secret mission statement is, "To screw over the competition as well as the consumer by charging outrageous prices for value-removed products and marketing these to the extent that nobody has any choice but to suffer our wrath." I'm sure of this because two different people, who claim they don't know each other (but if you ask me, they look like identical twins and might in fact be the same person claiming to have two different names on the same day and during the same conversation) told me something like that a few years back, when I was an avid Microsoft supporter.
Obviously, these are merely my opinions and do not represent the opinions of any person or entity, including, but not limited to, my neighbors, my employer, my friends, my family, my fourth grade teacher Miss Focker, myself, or any other person or entity.
This post is satire and is copyright (c) 2003 by rice_burners_suck. All rights reserved, including, but not limited to, the right to read my own post, to print it out, to post it on/., to publish it in a local newspaper, or any other right, now known or later developed.
"... to create a flicker or other patterns that would be picked up by recording devices..."
Recording devices... any my eyes. It's true. I cannot even stand looking at most CRT monitors unless the refresh rate is 90hz or more. I get headaches and my eyes strain. If I do look at a monitor with a refresh rate too low for me, I actually see the flicker. After long exposure, I feel my eyes straining. When I close my eyes at night, I might even feel these tiny (but really annoying) spasms caused by the muscles being so strained. I would have to leave a theater if they used this kind of thing.
Here's one to watch out for: Fraudulent calls to 900-like numbers in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Yup. Someone can call your house and leave a message, telling you that there is an important matter and you need to call them back. The phone number has an area code that looks NOTHING like 1-900. Kind of like those 877 and 888 numbers that are toll-free, except that these are toll-cost numbers. So you call back and hear a recording, the only purpose of which is to keep you on the line for as long as possible. Next thing you know, you get a phone bill for $1000.00 or so because this company charged you $500.00 a minute for two minutes. It's fraud but it's international, so you're screwed.
I never call back numbers that I don't recognize. If it's important, they'll call me again.
Slashdot Mirror
Well that's what happens when English is your third language and you don't know all the lingo yet. At some later time, I found out that I should have asked for a utility knife. Well, that could fit in your pocket, couldn't it?
I didn't buy that knife, by the way.
Ideally, copyright lengths should be reduced back to the original 1790 values. I know this probably won't happen but it is certainly the best way to put things back in balance. Currently, the so called "content providers" own all information and charge out the ear for it. That is unacceptable. Information should go into the public domain such that other people can use it, modify it, grow it and make better things with it. That was the whole purpose of copyright in the beginning, anyway! To give people incentive (for a few years) to release their works such that OTHERS could use them to make this country advanced and strong. In today's fast paced business environment, nothing makes more sense than staying ahead of the competition by continuously improving things and coming up with wackier and better things all the time. This is how progress is made in arts, sciences and everything else. Progress is not made by passing more and more criminal laws to protect "intellectual property" that is really just information that SHOULD be free and useful to people.
Back to the discussion about SCO... I think that when software goes out of copyright (after the 1790 time limit), an entire build environment including all code should be released. Since earlier code cannot possibly contain code copyrighted at a later date, this cannot present the legal problem that things still in copyright need to be released as well. Even if such a drastic change does not take place, the executable program should become public domain. That, at least, would give people the ability to use older programs, if not necessarily to fix bugs in them. And therefore, I think the SCO thing is a pile of B.S. I don't know for sure, but I believe that if copyrights had retained their 1790 time limits, this "valuable" code (that probably implements printf or something stupid like that) would already be in the public domain anyway. (On a side note, how advanced would Linux be now if all code since the 60's was released and available for modification and inclusion?)
This way, if someone needs to modify the software and/or if the company that made it goes out of business, a copy is available in a central place such that anybody can obtain it and continue to use it. Also, the company wouldn't have to worry about making released code available because it already is.
The FSF would be the perfect organization to set up this kind of system, considering that the license was their idea anyway. But if someone else sets up such a thing, that would be cool too. The important thing is to mirror the archive.
If I had the priveledge of working on this project, I would release a product called Microsoft Toilet XP. The features of my fine product might include items such as:
- Toilet must boot up before you can use it:
- Toilet normally takes two to three minutes to boot.
- If user is in a hurry and the situation is an emergency, toilet enters Murphy's Law Mode and takes an additional three or four minutes to boot.
- Occasionally when toilet is booting in Murphy's Law Mode, toilet will crash, find new hardware when the configuration hasn't changed or perform otherwise erratic behavior to require additional reboots and delay the use of the toilet.
- Toilet has a network connection:
- Dumping Rights Management (DRM) would require communication with Microsoft's central servers to determine whether user is legally authorized to take a dump in toilet.
- DRM would require monthly subscription fee and/or Gold registration, giving a particular client unlimited use of a single toilet.
- Multiple users may not use same toilet unless licensed.
- If network connection cannot be found, which is randomly the case for the user's inconvenience, toilet refuses to function.
- Toilet randomly behaves erratically:
- Toilet might flush by itself.
- Toilet might not flushed when the flush handle is depressed, due to bugs in the software.
- Toilet might overflow.
- Hackers will get in and shove a digital dildo right up your ass.
- Upon completion of toilet usage, toilet must be shut down properly or a lengthy scandisk process must take place the next time toilet enters Murphy's Law Mode, after other actions of that mode take place.
- SpyWare will be randomly installed in toilet, without user's consent, to send a digitally coded sample of the user's shit and/or piss to random companies for inclusion in their lists. These would be used to:
- Send highly targeted dieting advertisements to users based on the content of their shit.
- Make information about your diet and gastral intestinal status available on the Internet for casual browsing by anybody.
Microsoft Toilet XP 2003 End User License Agreement:By us having written this licensing agreement, you have agreed to be bound by its terms...
This post represents humor, parody and opinions of the poster, protected by the Constitution. Microsoft is obviously a registered trademark of itself and everybody knows that so it needs not be recounted here.
(I mean, because planting weeds in your garden might hurt the other plants by taking away all of their soil moisture and that might be illegal under the Fair Treatment of Plants Act or some such thing that they'll invent for the purpose of arresting you.)
OK, TO GET SERIOUS NOW: The way I see it, such a device could be used to grow enormous amounts of food in warehouses. You put plants on large (say 6 foot diameter) plates or bowls with soil in them, and these are mounted in several levels (one on top of the other) in a vertical arrangment, reaching the 6 story high ceiling and extending from one end of a 1,000,000 square foot warehouse to the other and from side to side. Each plate would have lighting as well as hoses for dispensing water, carbon dioxide and whatever else is necessary for sustaining the life of the plants in that bowl.
A 3D imaging system mounted on a track for navigating through the entire warehouse would constantly circle around and use plant-recognition software to recognize the state of the plant's growth. The system would use this feedback to route water and necessary nutrients and gases to each plant in the exact amounts appropriate. When the plant (be it carrots, potatoes, grapes, or even apples on an apple tree (mounted on a much larger bowl with more clearance, obviously) reach their ripe stage, a message is dispatched to pick those plants. If the plant appears to be attacked by insects, a message is dispatched to immediately take care of these plants to prevent further spread. In fact, the system might zap these plants immediately. (A Matrix style robot goes around to pick ripe plants and get rid of bad ones?) This might not be so far fetched and could certainly provide enough food (given enough warehouses) to feed our planet five times over. When we come to the stage that food is produced so cheaply that throwing it away is more expensive than giving it away, we'll be fine.
Here at my job, we have such a mixture of different computers dating from the '70's to just two months ago. To squeeze every possible bit of value out of the money we spend, this company has never put a computer out of commission, partly because doing so could wreak havoc on our system, considering how ad hoc it is, characteristic of things that started out small and then grew, and grew, and grew. That's how our network is... and nobody around here is brave enough to make drastic changes.
Besides, we've got a huge investment in various software packages and custom programs that translate data between them. These run on so many different hardware configurations and operating systems that it isn't even funny.
In fact, the way some computers are attached to each other is funny... there are the old coaxial cables, there are newer cat5 cables, there are RS232 cables and "LapLink" cables. Hell, there are even little boards that one of our guys here built in his garage some years ago, to get some of our older dinosaurs communicating. Each of these things was put into place one by one, to solve a very particular short term problem, each turned into a very permanent part of our organization, and all are still functional and are being used extensively.
There are a bunch of newer boxes here, made out of computer scraps that people have "donated" over the years, running Linux, and in my spare time I like to write scripts to automate all kinds of repetitive tasks. I like the way our network is because it gives the thing a lot of character, kind of like old towns have, as opposed to cities that are engineered onto a huge grid. And I like to think of this network as a town in the wild west... It's so much fun to screw around with these petty things, but then, we all bring our junk cars and old hot rods into work on the weekends to fix them, or to take parts off and sell them; we all have this way of doing petty little shit all the time, and believe me, we love every moment of it!
CONCLUSION: I will purchase a DVD player when all of the following conditions have been fulfilled:
- The original Mission Impossible series is released on DVD.
- The "New" Mission Impossible series is released on DVD.
- The entire Original Series of Star Trek is released on DVD.
- The entire Next Generation series of Star Trek is released on DVD.
- The DMCA is revoked as illegal and as such all content scrambling and/or other technologies that prevent access to information for such illegitimate reasons are illegalized.
But until then, I'll just chill here with my Negra Modelo in one hand and my Patrón Añejo in the other. C2 H5 OH. Because denial is a big river in Africa.Hopefully there are no more points of confusion in what was supposed to be a simple post about sheep.
I've been waiting for this release for a number of months now and want to express my gratitude to the OpenBSD folks. Of course, that means buying a few more of their CDs. Heh, heh... Shameless support for my favorite OS. What's in their best interest is in the best interest of my computing environment, right? Good!
Now where is that post I wrote a few days ago about building a new distro called AbiertoBSD out of used car parts?
Its long history (along with the pyramids, volcanoes and other nice things relatively closeby) is one of the reasons that D.F. is so full of character.
(To answer your 'vida loca' comment, Nahuatl is so different from Spanish and yet we seem to have inherited so many words from it that I often wonder what they used to speak in Spain before the 1500s.)
The president says, "Yes, now what?"
Oh, just the small detail that the evil entity hasn't been defeated yet and is now heading straight for Earth at a somewhat excessive speed. And you know what? I think the EVIL in that movie symbolized the RIAA. The Fifth Element symbolized freedom. And the whole This is a police alert; Put your hands in the yellow circles. thing symbolized the way WE are gonna live if things don't change... in apartments that look like some Industrial Zone in Doom II, with yellow circles and KEEP CLEAR painted on your wall, and police will look inside your apartment anytime they want and snatch you away in a body bag if someone so much as accuses you of a crime. Only in our REAL future, there won't be any Fifth Element to come along and rescue us. That's how things will be if organizations like the RIAA have their way. See my other posts about sheep, et cetera. It's just like the title of my post says...
There are places in the world where people pay for their Internet connection based on the amount of bandwidth they use. In other words, their service providers know how many megs of information was sent down that person's line and charge accordingly. Now imagine for a moment that you live in one of these places and you receive all kinds of ads. Not just web site ads, either. I'm talking about all ads... banner ads, popup ads, and even SPAM mail. Sure, your email program might be configured to erase SPAM mail, but it still has to get downloaded to you. Which leaves you doing what? Paying good, hard-earned money, our of YOUR pocket, because some jackasses in China or at some CBS site are sending you JUNK.
Online advertising simply sucks, especially when you can just go into Google and punch in what you're looking for. (Here at Harvard we do not end a sentence with a preposition. Alright, punch in what you're looking for, asshole.)
Why is this happening? Because too many people are sheep.
Yes, an enormous number of people are sheep, just following, unconciously, what the herd is doing. And guess what? Consumer mass-marketing is simply a science devoted to pulling sheep around by the strings. People are unconscious. See, in Spanish, we have a way of saying that someone is unconscious such that you would understand what I'm talking about... if you say that someone está inconsciente, you mean that he/she is medically unconscious, as when a big hammer falls on someone's head or something. But if you say that someone es inconsciente, you mean that he/she is unconscious as in Orwell's 1984, where the people don't think that the Party is unfairly controlling them simply because they don't think. The world is passing them by like some kind of television show and they're just letting it carry them along for the ride. This is the audience of sheep that we're talking about. There is such an alarming number of these sheep that it is going to reduce our world to a piece of shit. Legislation that doesn't really bother the sheep, but takes away real, useful rights of intelligent people like YOU. Television programming that sucks and is filled with commercials made for stupid people. So, you have technology that removes ads from webpages? Oh, well, we've already patented that (tomorrow), and we've already made it federally illegal with jail terms of at least 500 years (the day after tomorrow). And that pisses me off.
This is caused by shitty education systems that get people used to following directions and not thinking for themselves. Oh, there's an ad I have to look at for 15 seconds... oh well, maybe I'll buy their product so I can put it in my already cluttered beyond recognition house, so that my car has to be out on the driveway because the garage is full of so much shit.
SHEEP!
*** THEY ALREADY KNOW IT ***
Yes, that's right... The three other people at your school who would consider joining your club are going to know about these things already. And to be honest, chicks aren't gonna dig the geeks who get into this club.
*** WANT TO REACH AN AUDIENCE? ***
Then do something more popular, interesting and hip.
Start a club called The Future Club. In this club, cover all issues facing our future, including environmentalism, science and technology. The science and technology part can include discussions about everything from space technology to software, a category that includes discussions of alternative operating systems. The environmentalism part is in there for several reasons:
Do this and you'll be popular, your voice will be heard and you'll be screwing three different chicks all at the same time and none of them will know about the other two. Oh yeah, and your words will be more respected when you tell these folks to chuck Windows in favor of some geeky thing called csh, where they can type such horrors as 'rm -rf *' while logged in as root. Not to mention the fact that these hot chicks will be talking to YOU!!! Like that cute blondie that sits in the row in front of you in social studies... Yeah!
Yes, this definitely sucks for the consumer. On the other hand, HP claims that the ink goes bad, dries out, and causes all sorts of technical problems that they're trying to prevent for the consumer. Whether they're telling the truth or not is beyond me, since I don't own an HP printer. The way I see it, the best way to go is to use a laser printer for most of your crap and keep an inexpensive but relatively good inkjet around for printing photos and whatnot. I currently only have an inkjet and I can't tell you how often I am "too lazy" to print something out that I otherwise might because it's too much trouble.
And yes, I think it is unfair that HP has put technology into their ink cartridges to prevent them from working. A warning that the ink might go stale is enough, and if the consumer wants to risk a mess (or if the consumer is stupid like many people are and doesn't use its brain or doesn't have one) then it's their own damn fault if the printer gets screwed up and the warranty document should describe that. But technology that deliberately prevents non-weapon technology from functioning should be illegal. (Meaning that some sort of handprint technology on a handgun is a good idea to prevent a kid from finding his daddy's gat and blowing a hole in someone or something but CSS on DVDs and this thing HP put into their printer cartridges should be illegal, or at least unenforceable under law.)
HP SUCKS!
This is excellent news. Linux has enjoyed widespread publicity and use, but unfortunately, I think that most people who use Linux (and are new to "alternative" operating systems) are using Red Hat or one of the larger distros and don't really understand its ins-and-outs. For many people, this is perfectly acceptable because all they care about is reading their email and word processing anyway. For them, DOS 2.0 with some kind of quick GUI would be more than enough, let alone Windows XP LX SE 2010. Putting together your own distribution with step-by-step instructions will probably make anybody a better user, admin, developer, etc. And with a book to show you how to build a usable distro, you simply can't go wrong. I think I'm going to dig some junk out of my computer graveyard and try this one out tonight... it'll be a long night!
This is simply an example of trying to solve a problem by creating a bigger one, then trying to solve it by creating yet a bigger one, etc., etc., ad infinitum (or however you say). At first, copyright law gave people a temporary monopoly in order that they will RELEASE their works for the public to use, eventually to become public domain such that it can be used to further human progress. But the copyright term was extended, then extended again, and again... and now, any work created in our lifetimes won't likely go out of copyright when our children would otherwise benefit from them. This causes piracy as a backlash because the laws are flawed and unfair. Copyright terms should be reduced back to the original length for all works. And tell those fuckers at the RIAA, MPAA and other control-freaks to stop being so militant about copyright. An electrician does not live forever off wiring a single light switch. A carpenter does not live forever off making a single cabinet. Neither should a musician live forever off writing a single song and pulling 9 more out of his asshole in order to fill an album. Or a writer, off a single book. Or a programmer, off a single program. To continue earning a living, these people should have to continue doing their job, just like the rest of humanity.
Finally, something that makes sense comes out of the government. This is a free country, so you should be free to do anything, as long as you don't deliberately harm someone, and if you don't want people getting into your networks, then secure them for cryin' out loud!
- The market is finite.
- At some point, someone will come up with a better equation (to selling), displacing the current market leader.
- Arrogance in a large corporation, in conjunction with utter greed, two negative virtues that have a tendency to come to those in power, will cause the downfall of even the most powerful entity.
One day, people will figure out the sorry fact that what goes up must come down.Some corporations in silicon valley have figured out what small business owners have always known and used to their advantage: In a time of economic bust, one of two things happen:
- You go miserably out of business.
- You innovate so that when things turn around, you have a head start against the competition.
Don't worry, though... They'll forget this lesson long before the next economic downturn.Hey... imagine that you're the dude at AMD who has to write the checks to pay back consumers who blew up their stupid chip and claimed it was defective. How would YOU feel about that? It makes your company look stupid. It makes your product look defective. It costs you money. It damages your business in every way.
So what do they do? They get some smart engineers to figure out something that works and that's what everybody is gonna do with their chips--if they want to retain their warranty, that is. You're still FREE (as in libre, as opposed to gratis) to mess around with the thing and put whatever you want on it, be it thermal grease, a different heatsink, or, hell, the radiator off your hermano's 35-year-old Chevy II that's sitting on blocks behind the house, if that's what you're so inclined to do. Just don't come crying to AMD that you blew up your chip, cuz IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT!!!
The human mind parses speech by using both senses of sight and sound. They demonstrated this on the news one time by repeating a word over and over. They instructed the viewers to look at the screen while listening, then at some random time, to close their eyes and then open them again after waiting an interval, all while continuing to listen. Sure enough, when I closed my eyes, the word I heard was a completely different word, even though when I looked at the screen, I wasn't necessarily looking at the person's lips. In other words, your cabeza does this automatically. Obviously, the two words were similar enough in sound that this worked, but it demonstrated that in addition to using context to provide meaning, your brain uses other information as well.
- Have no knowledge of technology.
- Have no interest in knowing technology, no matter how much it rules their lives.
- Having no imagination, think that a computer is a box with a keyboard, mouse, monitor and speakers running some version of Microsoft Windows, and don't even imagine that computers serve other purposes in the world.
- Will let the government and the big greedy corporations take away one liberty after another, through the use of technology and unfair laws, because they are too worried about superficial things, like what kind of mountaineous SUV they drive, to worry about anything that actually makes sense.
Considering the above points, why don't you make a fortune by pushing the kind of superficial, stupid product that the idiot sheep support, by using the kind of mass marketing that considers its audience stupid, because they are, instead of putting so much effort into pushing Linux, which actually has merit and makes sense, though appears to have little potential for real return?After all, I firmly believe that Microsoft's secret mission statement is, "To screw over the competition as well as the consumer by charging outrageous prices for value-removed products and marketing these to the extent that nobody has any choice but to suffer our wrath." I'm sure of this because two different people, who claim they don't know each other (but if you ask me, they look like identical twins and might in fact be the same person claiming to have two different names on the same day and during the same conversation) told me something like that a few years back, when I was an avid Microsoft supporter.
Obviously, these are merely my opinions and do not represent the opinions of any person or entity, including, but not limited to, my neighbors, my employer, my friends, my family, my fourth grade teacher Miss Focker, myself, or any other person or entity.
This post is satire and is copyright (c) 2003 by rice_burners_suck. All rights reserved, including, but not limited to, the right to read my own post, to print it out, to post it on /., to publish it in a local newspaper, or any other right, now known or later developed.
Gee, golly... I wonder why Microsoft might get involved in something like this? Oh well... it's probably just a freak of nature.
Recording devices... any my eyes. It's true. I cannot even stand looking at most CRT monitors unless the refresh rate is 90hz or more. I get headaches and my eyes strain. If I do look at a monitor with a refresh rate too low for me, I actually see the flicker. After long exposure, I feel my eyes straining. When I close my eyes at night, I might even feel these tiny (but really annoying) spasms caused by the muscles being so strained. I would have to leave a theater if they used this kind of thing.
I never call back numbers that I don't recognize. If it's important, they'll call me again.