Actually, VB was created because of HyperCard, not vice versa. And, like everything else out of Microsot, it was only a pale imitation.
I used to use HyperCard too, though I got into it later than you did. It was some great stuff. But its time has come. It's been superseded by how many different technologies now? Let's see; QuickTIme, AppleScript, Cocoa, [i]and [/i]Flash all have either HyperCard's power (QuickTime), ease of learning (AppleScript), or both (QuickTime, Flash). Put a good GUI builder on top of AppleScript, perhaps integrating it into ProjectBuilder/InterfaceBuilder, and you basically have HyperCard; the language AppleScript was, despite what the HC bigots out there loudly deny, based off of the language, and in fact they take it a step further.
HyperCard is a nice tool. It's what got me into programming. But its time has come; better things are out there. Things more powerful and faster, and even easier to learn. I think it's sad that HyperCard is dying, but I'm satisfied in that there are plenty of capable replacements on the Mac, and even on OSX. ----------
If any websites could be said to encourage terrorism, it's these sites. I'm pro-life myself, but terrorism just plain goes too far. I don't see how the Appeals Court could possibly be blind enough to see that this site wasn't encouraging violence against these doctors.
And even if they weren't encouraging violence against said doctors, their lists were a marked privacy violation. I very much doubt those doctors were asked if their personal information could be put up on the Web. That's another count against it, perhaps far more damning.
However, I suppose there's an upside to this. If this one managed to get through the court system, then I don't see how any site could fail to get through it in the future. Or, to put it another way, if they'll defend this, they're likely to defend anything. ----------
And the bookburners suffer another defeat... ah, this makes my day (along with the release of OSX).
I'm inclined not to worry about Ashcroft. It may be best that the old fool was made Attorney General, because he's no longer a lawmaker. This leaves him with perhaps the ability to influence, but utterly impotent to take a direct hand in lawmaking anymore. ----------
Just to reiterate, this is not the entire Mexican government that's making the switch (at least, not yet). This is only the government of Mexico City itself, not the whole nation.
Granted, this is still a cause for Much Rejoicing, but there's still a long way to go. ----------
I'm all for copy-protection. But only if it's of an ethical sort. In my book, to be ethical, it needs to follow four basic guidelines. All four of these are equally important, so don't go reading into the order or anything:
It must account for fair use. Things like time-shifting, space-shifting, research, criticism, parody, and the like. CPRM fails this test miserably.
It must stop working when the copyright expires. This is why encryption as a copy-protection tool is not a Good Thing, ditto for DVD's region lockouts as they are currently implemented and used.
It must not invade the user's privacy more than is absolutely necessary. GPS-based systems are right out.
It must presume innocence of infringement when a user makes a copy of the file, unless it can find proof that the user is guilty. This is where CPRM dies.
Of course, these four violate other guidelines than the ones I mentioned, but I used each of these examples because they're particularly well-known for the problem I listed them under.
Note that no known computer-based copy-protection scheme falls under these. But other methods work. Among them: competent law enforcement. There are many other ways to capture pirates. They're not as effective, but unlike the current popular methods they don't punish perfectly innocent people along with The Bad Guys. ----------
Creationist: We have the Bible, so creationism must be true!
Article: We have the genome, so evolution must be true!
See any difference? I sure don't. Articles like this with no scientific proof whatsoever are nothing but an embarrassment to those who believe in evolution. This guy shows a marked bitterness towards creationists for being "unscientific," and yet he's fallen into exactly the same trap.
As for which I believe in, I do in fact believe in evolution. But honestly, when someone claims to be a scientist, they should be scientific about things, not like this. ----------
The correct quote is "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" actually.
The quotes come from ZeroWing, an old space shoot-em-up by some company no one seems to remember. When it was rleeased for the Genesis, it had an opening sequence tackes onto it. This sequence is generally considered the worst-translated video game dialogue of all time, with at least one error in every single sentence, and often more.
Lately, thanks to a fandub OverClocked did of it, the opening has gained a cult following in gaming/geek circles. ----------
My sisters are identical twins, and certainly they're no less human for that, nor does either feel that she is.
However, there's a big difference between twins and clones, namely that with twins there is no sense of "original" and "copy." That's where the potential problem lies. Twins don't work for that. ----------
I don't like the WSP's methods on this one, but I wholeheartedly agree with their goals.
What people seem to be missing is that standards-compliant Web pages will be accessible to everyone, not just the people with the IE/Opera/Mozilla/whatever. The whole point is to get other browsers in on the action too.
Even the WSP seems to be missing this one at the moment, with their insistence on The Big Three. That's not what standards are all about. Yes, I'm a vehement supporter of standards-only pages; I've even chided Slashdot and Freshmeat for not going fully-compliant (though the later is making improvements in this aspect). But my reasons for going standards-only are to be inclusive, not exclusive like this. ----------
The "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" quote comes from ZeroWing, one of the worst-translated games in existence. It is generally followed by "YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION!"
The proper response, by the way, is "WHAT YOU SAY?!"
There's a fandub of the opening floating around the Net; check it out if you can find it. ----------
I don't care much for Napster. Never really used it; I tried it one or two times but I just don't like it. And I don't agree that MP3 piracy is fair use.
But at the same time, I hope Napster wins this. Mainly because its loss would set several extremely dangerous precedents. First, the idea that a service provider is liable for its users. Second, the idea of presumption of guilt (not all Napster users engage in piracy, after all). And third, an erosion if the idea of space-shifting as fair use (even this "modified injunction" defeats this important right).
Honestly, I don't care about Napster itself. It can go down for all I care. But I hope it doesn't drag consumers with it, as losing in a court case like this would cause. ----------
The Acheolus Project....
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 2
Personally, I don't think it has a chance of succeeding, and even if it does the only thing it will accomplish is drive Apple as a hardware company into the ground, thus forcing us into a demonstrably inferior architecture. Thanks, but no thanks.
But hey, if that's what you want, go check it out. ----------
I like the new layout. I very much like his increased standards support, though I could wish he'd gone all the way. A quick run through Tidy corrected all the errors (less than 50; a respectably low number) and had no effect on the layout other than to change the width of the columns slightly (the same situation in both Netscape and IE), so the amount of work to make the HTML fully valid would be minimal at best (mostly just inserting tags at certain places, and making the one quick tweak in the CSS to get the columns back to normal).
But the site is much improved, regardless. I could wish Slashcode would do the same with its standards support (a run through Tidy corrected some 450 errors, generated CSS that even Netscape interpreted beautifully, and the only change made in the layout was the indentation on the lists in Slashboxes, again easily changed in the CSS).
However, all the same, keep up the good work! The sites are looking better all the time, and the functionality is improving too. And for the record, I was one of the (apparently few) people who liked the old layout and wrote in a letter of support. But I like this layout too. ----------
So, they show their true face at last...
on
Clever Girl Bess
·
· Score: 4
So now we find out that not only are these guys bookburners, but they're spies as well. I suppose this should not surprise anyone.
But this is exactly why I'm almost thinking that censorship may be good in a single case: banning censorship itself. I'm sorry, but if parents aren't going to invest the time needed to teach their children right from wrong (and don't give me that crap about "I don't have time"; you know you do) then we shouldn't be allowing them to entrust their kids to a piece of mindless software that literally can't tell the Mona Lisa from the goatse.cx guy.
I really think we need to put more effort into compiling lists of blocked sites. Show the blacklists for what they are. Maybe that will get people's attention. It seems nothing else has yet. And who knows; maybe we'll finally realize that there is no substitute for simple responsible parenting and schooling. ----------
I don't like DirecTV much. I don't agree with the proprietary signal DirecTV uses. I also just plain don't like the service as well as I liked my old Primestar (dammit; why'd DirecTV have to buy them out?)
Neither do I support stealing channel access by the hackers, though. This isn't a fair use issue; the difference is the same as copying a book from a library (fair use) vs. stealing it from the bookstore (shoplifting). Frankly, I think this was an unbelieveably cool move by DirecTV. I do find it somewhat scary that they were actually able to make this work, but what they did is truly an ingenius anti-hack method.
Now, the next question is, when are the hackers going to run around this system too? ----------
If it's BSD, all you have to do is give proper credit.
If it's LGPL, then you can isolate the code in a shared library and Open-Source that, while keeping the rest closed. It does have to be a shared library, however; static ones won't do.
If it's GPL, your chances are slim, but all is not lost. Ask the authors of the code for permission to use their code in your project. You never know; they just might let you do it. ----------
Um, I'm sorry, but unless there's been a big change in the DivX code, I don't see how they're going to be able to separate it from Microsoft's code (which they obviously cannot Open-Source.
It's a shame 3ivX seems to have basically failed. It truly is a better codec, but the team was absolutely moronic to release it without an encoder to go along with the decoder. Of course no one will want to use the codec if they can't encode anything to it. ----------
I dont even know where to start with your misinformation garbage
Dude, cut it out; you're embarassing us Mac zealots. Seriously. There was much misinformation in his post, yes, but your response has even more.
first of all you cant run darwin or anything on x86 yet, nobody has ported it.
Actually, they have.
thirdly, apple hardware is not second rate, the g3 with altivec in the imac dv edition is the state of the art (3.2x intel speeds)
One, what happened to "secondly"?
Two, the G3 doesn't have AltiVec; the G4 does.
Three, the iMac doesn't use the G4 anyway, not even the DV+SE.
Four, while the G4 is in fact much faster than any Pentium-class chip out there at equal clockrate (though clockrate is meaningless across platforms anyway), even Apple hasn't ever made the sort of claims you're making.
It is true, however, that by Intel's own testing the G3 and G4 trounce any chip Intel has ever put in the production lines, at least MHz-for-MHZ and currently the fastest G4 is faster than the fastest P4 (though we have Intel to thank for that, considering that the P4 is actually slower than the P3).
finally, mac os is very relevent - i have worked at many major newspapers that use them ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY that is maybe an windows nt box here and there for some reason...
I tend to believe your bit about some, or even many, newspapers using Macs almost exclusively (though you obviously didn't work in any department involving copy-editing). But I also think you're exaggerating.
maybe you should check your facts before you go trashin somethng u dont know about
Yes, he should. And so should you. Or step back and let those of us Mac defenders who actually know what we're talking about do the work for you. ----------
I hate to tell you this, but in the US privacy is not constitutionally-protected. The closest thing we have is protection from unreasonable search and seizure, but this only applies to law enforcement and so isn't sufficient to really qualify.
It's one of the great shames of the United States in this day and age, but it's true. ----------
...The spam-banning is a very good idea, but it has to be implemented very carefully, so as not to tread on freedoms.
The way I'd do it is as follows. All advertising sent over the Internet, solicited or not, must have the option attached in some manner to not receive advertisements from that company at any future date. Whether this is via a Web form, replying to an e-mail with specific commands, or whatever does not matter, so long as the option exists.
Once a user opts out, they are sent one final message confirming this, as a sort of receipt so they can prove that they opted out. If the company ever sends them advertising over that channel again, they can be held liable for harassment.
Another possible implementation of this would instead require all direct-marketing advertising to be opt-in; a company may not send advertising to someone who has not previously given his or her explicit consent. This one leaves more of a bad taste in my mouth, though; it has the potential to set some rather nasty precedents.
A third approach would be to ban direct-marketing outright, on the grounds that it is necessarey to violate a person's privacy in order to obtain the requisite data. This one's only arguably good, though. It's true that no speech is actually being banned (you simply have to resort to mass-marketing techniques in order to say it, in the case of advertisements), but again some very dangerous precedents could be set here.
The fact is, we do have a right to free speech, and this is a Very Good Thing. But we also have the right to not be harassed, and that's basically what spam does. It's all about striking a good balance. I'm not sure what the ideal balance is. Anyone else have thoughts on this? ----------
With 3Dfx now officially pushing up the daisies, your choices have become a lot more limited.
You can still get 3Dfx cards, yes. But there's a catch: for anything higher than Voodoo3 (meaning V4 and V5) you need to get 3Dfx's Mac-specific version of the card (they added some stuff to the Mac cards that you don't get on the PC, like QuickTime acceleration, but they also took some things away, like DVD playback). You also have to find the drivers, which isn't a very simple task now that the 3Dfxgamers site is down.
NVidia has yet to come out with a retail Mac card; at the moment they appear to be OEM-only, though all of their current chips could at least theoretically work in a Mac.
Then, of course, there's ATI. Decent cards, but extremely crappy drivers. You can try this one if you want, but watch your back; they may not be what you'd expected.
Formac makes a very nice Mac-specific card with a nifty little gadget: computer 3-D glasses which Formac claims really enhance the experience (I haven't tried it, but I do know that normal 3-D glasses won't work in this case). However, be prepared to shell out the dough.
I don't know if VillageTronic still makes their MacPicasso stuff, but these were absolutely wonderful cards in their time. Definitely check into this line; the card had a modular design so it could be expanded without replacing the whole card. ----------
The U.S. has already had this type of legislation in effect for years.
It's true that there's a tax like this on audio-grade DAT tapes. But the tax currently does not apply to any other storage media, including computer-grade DAT tapes.
This legislation, by contrast, appears to affect all storage media. And while even just doing this to DAT tapes is a great shame, taxing all media is a totally different -and even worse- beast. ----------
...chalk up another one for The Bad Guys. The corporations have managed to get presumption of guilt into the legal system when their precious money's involved.
This is one of those times I'm glad not to live in the EU. Of course, I somehow doubt it'll be too long until the US starts eyeing this, and then I'll be screwed either way. ----------
After Microsoft has been directly responsible for disabled battleships, countless security holes (need I remind you why the Army's servers went Mac?), and general screwups because of depressingly low-quality software, the government would go back to them for something this important?
I'm not going to say who should be the builders of something like this, because I'm not certain who should, but clearly Microsoft should be among the last people the government should want to do this.
Great; so now we'll have machine counts that are so unreliable we'll have to go through this crap of endless recounting every four years, because hand-counting actually will be more reliable and less error/tamper-prone than Microsoft's stuff.
Of course, given that this is a government thing, perhaps it would be possible to demand the source code under FOIA? It'd be sad if this were the only way to get at it, but this is one of those things where the source absolutely must be made public. ----------
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, VB was created because of HyperCard, not vice versa. And, like everything else out of Microsot, it was only a pale imitation.
I used to use HyperCard too, though I got into it later than you did. It was some great stuff. But its time has come. It's been superseded by how many different technologies now? Let's see; QuickTIme, AppleScript, Cocoa, [i]and [/i]Flash all have either HyperCard's power (QuickTime), ease of learning (AppleScript), or both (QuickTime, Flash). Put a good GUI builder on top of AppleScript, perhaps integrating it into ProjectBuilder/InterfaceBuilder, and you basically have HyperCard; the language AppleScript was, despite what the HC bigots out there loudly deny, based off of the language, and in fact they take it a step further.
HyperCard is a nice tool. It's what got me into programming. But its time has come; better things are out there. Things more powerful and faster, and even easier to learn. I think it's sad that HyperCard is dying, but I'm satisfied in that there are plenty of capable replacements on the Mac, and even on OSX.
----------
If any websites could be said to encourage terrorism, it's these sites. I'm pro-life myself, but terrorism just plain goes too far. I don't see how the Appeals Court could possibly be blind enough to see that this site wasn't encouraging violence against these doctors.
And even if they weren't encouraging violence against said doctors, their lists were a marked privacy violation. I very much doubt those doctors were asked if their personal information could be put up on the Web. That's another count against it, perhaps far more damning.
However, I suppose there's an upside to this. If this one managed to get through the court system, then I don't see how any site could fail to get through it in the future. Or, to put it another way, if they'll defend this, they're likely to defend anything.
----------
And the bookburners suffer another defeat... ah, this makes my day (along with the release of OSX).
I'm inclined not to worry about Ashcroft. It may be best that the old fool was made Attorney General, because he's no longer a lawmaker. This leaves him with perhaps the ability to influence, but utterly impotent to take a direct hand in lawmaking anymore.
----------
Just to reiterate, this is not the entire Mexican government that's making the switch (at least, not yet). This is only the government of Mexico City itself, not the whole nation.
Granted, this is still a cause for Much Rejoicing, but there's still a long way to go.
----------
Yes! Finally, someone who sees that thought isn't a device to be patented! Copyrighted (as a written work, namely the code), yes, patented, no.
Now, let's hope they swing the EU their way. From there, the pressure for the US to finally get a clue ought to increase.
----------
I'm all for copy-protection. But only if it's of an ethical sort. In my book, to be ethical, it needs to follow four basic guidelines. All four of these are equally important, so don't go reading into the order or anything:
Of course, these four violate other guidelines than the ones I mentioned, but I used each of these examples because they're particularly well-known for the problem I listed them under.
Note that no known computer-based copy-protection scheme falls under these. But other methods work. Among them: competent law enforcement. There are many other ways to capture pirates. They're not as effective, but unlike the current popular methods they don't punish perfectly innocent people along with The Bad Guys.
----------
Creationist: We have the Bible, so creationism must be true!
Article: We have the genome, so evolution must be true!
See any difference? I sure don't. Articles like this with no scientific proof whatsoever are nothing but an embarrassment to those who believe in evolution. This guy shows a marked bitterness towards creationists for being "unscientific," and yet he's fallen into exactly the same trap.
As for which I believe in, I do in fact believe in evolution. But honestly, when someone claims to be a scientist, they should be scientific about things, not like this.
----------
The correct quote is "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" actually.
The quotes come from ZeroWing, an old space shoot-em-up by some company no one seems to remember. When it was rleeased for the Genesis, it had an opening sequence tackes onto it. This sequence is generally considered the worst-translated video game dialogue of all time, with at least one error in every single sentence, and often more.
Lately, thanks to a fandub OverClocked did of it, the opening has gained a cult following in gaming/geek circles.
----------
My sisters are identical twins, and certainly they're no less human for that, nor does either feel that she is.
However, there's a big difference between twins and clones, namely that with twins there is no sense of "original" and "copy." That's where the potential problem lies. Twins don't work for that.
----------
I don't like the WSP's methods on this one, but I wholeheartedly agree with their goals.
What people seem to be missing is that standards-compliant Web pages will be accessible to everyone, not just the people with the IE/Opera/Mozilla/whatever. The whole point is to get other browsers in on the action too.
Even the WSP seems to be missing this one at the moment, with their insistence on The Big Three. That's not what standards are all about. Yes, I'm a vehement supporter of standards-only pages; I've even chided Slashdot and Freshmeat for not going fully-compliant (though the later is making improvements in this aspect). But my reasons for going standards-only are to be inclusive, not exclusive like this.
----------
The "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" quote comes from ZeroWing, one of the worst-translated games in existence. It is generally followed by "YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION!"
The proper response, by the way, is "WHAT YOU SAY?!"
There's a fandub of the opening floating around the Net; check it out if you can find it.
----------
I don't care much for Napster. Never really used it; I tried it one or two times but I just don't like it. And I don't agree that MP3 piracy is fair use.
But at the same time, I hope Napster wins this. Mainly because its loss would set several extremely dangerous precedents. First, the idea that a service provider is liable for its users. Second, the idea of presumption of guilt (not all Napster users engage in piracy, after all). And third, an erosion if the idea of space-shifting as fair use (even this "modified injunction" defeats this important right).
Honestly, I don't care about Napster itself. It can go down for all I care. But I hope it doesn't drag consumers with it, as losing in a court case like this would cause.
----------
There's a project to clone OSX for Intel. It's at http://sourceforge.net/projects/achelous/.
Personally, I don't think it has a chance of succeeding, and even if it does the only thing it will accomplish is drive Apple as a hardware company into the ground, thus forcing us into a demonstrably inferior architecture. Thanks, but no thanks.
But hey, if that's what you want, go check it out.
----------
I like the new layout. I very much like his increased standards support, though I could wish he'd gone all the way. A quick run through Tidy corrected all the errors (less than 50; a respectably low number) and had no effect on the layout other than to change the width of the columns slightly (the same situation in both Netscape and IE), so the amount of work to make the HTML fully valid would be minimal at best (mostly just inserting tags at certain places, and making the one quick tweak in the CSS to get the columns back to normal).
But the site is much improved, regardless. I could wish Slashcode would do the same with its standards support (a run through Tidy corrected some 450 errors, generated CSS that even Netscape interpreted beautifully, and the only change made in the layout was the indentation on the lists in Slashboxes, again easily changed in the CSS).
However, all the same, keep up the good work! The sites are looking better all the time, and the functionality is improving too. And for the record, I was one of the (apparently few) people who liked the old layout and wrote in a letter of support. But I like this layout too.
----------
So now we find out that not only are these guys bookburners, but they're spies as well. I suppose this should not surprise anyone.
But this is exactly why I'm almost thinking that censorship may be good in a single case: banning censorship itself. I'm sorry, but if parents aren't going to invest the time needed to teach their children right from wrong (and don't give me that crap about "I don't have time"; you know you do) then we shouldn't be allowing them to entrust their kids to a piece of mindless software that literally can't tell the Mona Lisa from the goatse.cx guy.
I really think we need to put more effort into compiling lists of blocked sites. Show the blacklists for what they are. Maybe that will get people's attention. It seems nothing else has yet. And who knows; maybe we'll finally realize that there is no substitute for simple responsible parenting and schooling.
----------
I don't like DirecTV much. I don't agree with the proprietary signal DirecTV uses. I also just plain don't like the service as well as I liked my old Primestar (dammit; why'd DirecTV have to buy them out?)
Neither do I support stealing channel access by the hackers, though. This isn't a fair use issue; the difference is the same as copying a book from a library (fair use) vs. stealing it from the bookstore (shoplifting). Frankly, I think this was an unbelieveably cool move by DirecTV. I do find it somewhat scary that they were actually able to make this work, but what they did is truly an ingenius anti-hack method.
Now, the next question is, when are the hackers going to run around this system too?
----------
If it's BSD, all you have to do is give proper credit.
If it's LGPL, then you can isolate the code in a shared library and Open-Source that, while keeping the rest closed. It does have to be a shared library, however; static ones won't do.
If it's GPL, your chances are slim, but all is not lost. Ask the authors of the code for permission to use their code in your project. You never know; they just might let you do it.
----------
Um, I'm sorry, but unless there's been a big change in the DivX code, I don't see how they're going to be able to separate it from Microsoft's code (which they obviously cannot Open-Source.
It's a shame 3ivX seems to have basically failed. It truly is a better codec, but the team was absolutely moronic to release it without an encoder to go along with the decoder. Of course no one will want to use the codec if they can't encode anything to it.
----------
I dont even know where to start with your misinformation garbage
Dude, cut it out; you're embarassing us Mac zealots. Seriously. There was much misinformation in his post, yes, but your response has even more.
first of all you cant run darwin or anything on x86 yet, nobody has ported it.
Actually, they have.
thirdly, apple hardware is not second rate, the g3 with altivec in the imac dv edition is the state of the art (3.2x intel speeds)
One, what happened to "secondly"?
Two, the G3 doesn't have AltiVec; the G4 does.
Three, the iMac doesn't use the G4 anyway, not even the DV+SE.
Four, while the G4 is in fact much faster than any Pentium-class chip out there at equal clockrate (though clockrate is meaningless across platforms anyway), even Apple hasn't ever made the sort of claims you're making.
It is true, however, that by Intel's own testing the G3 and G4 trounce any chip Intel has ever put in the production lines, at least MHz-for-MHZ and currently the fastest G4 is faster than the fastest P4 (though we have Intel to thank for that, considering that the P4 is actually slower than the P3).
finally, mac os is very relevent - i have worked at many major newspapers that use them ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY that is maybe an windows nt box here and there for some reason...
I tend to believe your bit about some, or even many, newspapers using Macs almost exclusively (though you obviously didn't work in any department involving copy-editing). But I also think you're exaggerating.
maybe you should check your facts before you go trashin somethng u dont know about
Yes, he should. And so should you. Or step back and let those of us Mac defenders who actually know what we're talking about do the work for you.
----------
I hate to tell you this, but in the US privacy is not constitutionally-protected. The closest thing we have is protection from unreasonable search and seizure, but this only applies to law enforcement and so isn't sufficient to really qualify.
It's one of the great shames of the United States in this day and age, but it's true.
----------
...The spam-banning is a very good idea, but it has to be implemented very carefully, so as not to tread on freedoms.
The way I'd do it is as follows. All advertising sent over the Internet, solicited or not, must have the option attached in some manner to not receive advertisements from that company at any future date. Whether this is via a Web form, replying to an e-mail with specific commands, or whatever does not matter, so long as the option exists.
Once a user opts out, they are sent one final message confirming this, as a sort of receipt so they can prove that they opted out. If the company ever sends them advertising over that channel again, they can be held liable for harassment.
Another possible implementation of this would instead require all direct-marketing advertising to be opt-in; a company may not send advertising to someone who has not previously given his or her explicit consent. This one leaves more of a bad taste in my mouth, though; it has the potential to set some rather nasty precedents.
A third approach would be to ban direct-marketing outright, on the grounds that it is necessarey to violate a person's privacy in order to obtain the requisite data. This one's only arguably good, though. It's true that no speech is actually being banned (you simply have to resort to mass-marketing techniques in order to say it, in the case of advertisements), but again some very dangerous precedents could be set here.
The fact is, we do have a right to free speech, and this is a Very Good Thing. But we also have the right to not be harassed, and that's basically what spam does. It's all about striking a good balance. I'm not sure what the ideal balance is. Anyone else have thoughts on this?
----------
With 3Dfx now officially pushing up the daisies, your choices have become a lot more limited.
You can still get 3Dfx cards, yes. But there's a catch: for anything higher than Voodoo3 (meaning V4 and V5) you need to get 3Dfx's Mac-specific version of the card (they added some stuff to the Mac cards that you don't get on the PC, like QuickTime acceleration, but they also took some things away, like DVD playback). You also have to find the drivers, which isn't a very simple task now that the 3Dfxgamers site is down.
NVidia has yet to come out with a retail Mac card; at the moment they appear to be OEM-only, though all of their current chips could at least theoretically work in a Mac.
Then, of course, there's ATI. Decent cards, but extremely crappy drivers. You can try this one if you want, but watch your back; they may not be what you'd expected.
Formac makes a very nice Mac-specific card with a nifty little gadget: computer 3-D glasses which Formac claims really enhance the experience (I haven't tried it, but I do know that normal 3-D glasses won't work in this case). However, be prepared to shell out the dough.
I don't know if VillageTronic still makes their MacPicasso stuff, but these were absolutely wonderful cards in their time. Definitely check into this line; the card had a modular design so it could be expanded without replacing the whole card.
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The U.S. has already had this type of legislation in effect for years.
It's true that there's a tax like this on audio-grade DAT tapes. But the tax currently does not apply to any other storage media, including computer-grade DAT tapes.
This legislation, by contrast, appears to affect all storage media. And while even just doing this to DAT tapes is a great shame, taxing all media is a totally different -and even worse- beast.
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...chalk up another one for The Bad Guys. The corporations have managed to get presumption of guilt into the legal system when their precious money's involved.
This is one of those times I'm glad not to live in the EU. Of course, I somehow doubt it'll be too long until the US starts eyeing this, and then I'll be screwed either way.
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After Microsoft has been directly responsible for disabled battleships, countless security holes (need I remind you why the Army's servers went Mac?), and general screwups because of depressingly low-quality software, the government would go back to them for something this important?
I'm not going to say who should be the builders of something like this, because I'm not certain who should, but clearly Microsoft should be among the last people the government should want to do this.
Great; so now we'll have machine counts that are so unreliable we'll have to go through this crap of endless recounting every four years, because hand-counting actually will be more reliable and less error/tamper-prone than Microsoft's stuff.
Of course, given that this is a government thing, perhaps it would be possible to demand the source code under FOIA? It'd be sad if this were the only way to get at it, but this is one of those things where the source absolutely must be made public.
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