Qt is available for Windows, so ports should theoretically be little harder than a recompile (unless there's Unix-specific code in there; that will have to be rewritten, but the Qt code should not).
However, Qt is a very different beast on Windows. In particular, the "Qt Free Edition" does not exist there; you have to pay licensing fees as if your app were commercial on Unix. That could complicate things considerably. ----------
that governments are seldom more than corporate shills anymore, and nowhere more than in the US.
I like this bit: "if software companies are liable for glitches, it will stifle innovation." I say good; far better that our technology is reliable, rather than just being The New k-r@D l33t $7uPh Microsoft and its ilk try to push on us on a yearly basis.
Of course, there needs to be a law out there forbidding any software license (or any other IP license for that matter) from prohibiting activities defined as fair use. No more of this presumption-of-guilt crap from IP-based businesses who see someone copying a DVD to his hard drive and assuming he's going to pirate it. Come to think of it, I've often wondered if fair use should be formally defined; anyone have a take on that? ----------
Arguably even more successful than Takahashi, we have this all-female team, with such credits to their collective name as X1999, RG Veda, Tokyo Babylon, and so forth.
Oh, and that one they don't like people mentioning: a little thing called Rayearth. But come on, they can't be totally perfect, now can they? ----------
Read that article on character assassination, folks. It's one of the most hypocritical pieces I've ever read.
If you read the piece, it attempts to do a very thorough job of accusing Bush and the Republicans of attacking Gore with no evidence, and even has links to back these arguments up.
Then, though, it immediately launches into exactly what it accused the Republicans of doing, only this time against Bush. No evidence to back up its claims whatsoever. As though it's bad when the Republicans do it, but not when Democrats do.
There's a problem with that, namely that nothing has "intrinsic" value, at least in terms that would make it passable currency.
Diamonds, for example. Currently, they're considered quite valuable. Why? Except for certain inductrial concerns, most of it's marketing; diamonds are not actually particularly rare (emeralds, for example, are much rarer).
While gold has had value historically, there is nothing saying that cannot change. Some new source could be found. Or perhaps some cheap method of synthesizing the stuff might be discovered (scientists actually have turned lead into gold using particle accelerators and other really neat atomic tricks, but there's this little problem of expense at the moment).
Consider, as a final example, checks. The government has actually never declared these as legal tender. Many places will accept them as payment, simply because they are in common usage. Likewise for credit cards; although they are not, strictly speaking, money, they are commonly accepted in place of it.
My point is that tying money to a commodity really doesn't do very much, because in the end it's all subject to the whims of the markets concerning whatever it is backed by. Also interesting to note is that the federal reserve existed long before the US went off the gold/silver standard, so while abolishing the federal reserve would certainly make it necessary to accomplish your goals it's not strictly necessary for that to happen. I do see what you're trying to get at, and frankly I prefer your idea (in theory) to the highly volatile systems in place at the moment. That said, however, I do see potential problems with it. ----------
Which lawsuit is 3Dfx getting the favorable rulings on?
The Slashdot post seems to say it's the one NVidia brought against 3Dfx, covering several patents including one that seems to be for hardware 3D acceleration itself (at least, that's how the patent looked when I read it). Rather ridiculous patents, at any rate. But the MSNBC one seems to be talking about the one 3Dfx brought against NVidia, covering several equally ridiculous patents like multitexturing.
The problem with the Second Amendment is that it's poorly worded (quite possibly the only slip-up in what was otherwise a very carefully written document).
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The major problem is that the Framers felt it necessary to justify this amendment, so they built it in. The worst problem with this was their choice of wording with "well-regulated."
The Constitution was written by people who had recently revolted against a corrupt government, and was their second try at making a replacement which worked. Nonetheless, they were not naive; they knew that somehow, there was still the possibility that their new government might someday become as corrupt as the one they had just fought. They were very afraid that this might occur, and thus the entire Constitution, if you look at it, is little more than a set of restrictions to reduce the possibility of corruption as much as possible.
The government they set up is based on a system of checks and balances. Congress makes laws, but the President can veto them and the Supreme Court can overturn them. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional, but the President appoints the justices and Congress can start the process of amending the Constitution to overturn the Court's decision. The President must approve laws, but Congress can override vetoes and the Supreme Court is the one with final say in any impeachment process (though it's never been used in that capacity). And so on, and so forth.
The people have two checks against the government itself as well. The first, of course, is the vote. At least in theory, the people pick who makes the laws. But there is another check built into the Constitution, one meant to be used only as a last resort: the ability to revolt. To do this, the people need a fighting chance (no pun intended) against a "Government COntrolled Army, Navy, and Airforce." Since these bodies have guns, there's only one way to ensure this fighting chance: the people must have them as well.
Now, the government has its own check against revolution: it's illegal. In other words, if you decide to revolt, you'd damn well better have enough popular support that you can actually win so you can pardon yourself. Otherwise, you're screwed. And you can't get the kind of support you'd need unless the government did truly become so corrupt it was unmistakable. Thus, an adequate set of checks and balances.
That's what "well-regulated" meant. An armed populace is the Constitution's way of checking the military, so that it (ideally) must face the possibility of an uprising that might actually succeed, should the higher-ups ever consider going corrupt.
Don't forget that. The first half of the Second Amendment was nothing more than justification for the second half. A poorly-worded explanation, yes, and not strictly necessary, but an explanation nonetheless.
Am I against all gun control? Certainly not. Mandatory inclusion of trigger locks as a part of gun sales, for example, makes perfect sense. Such locks won't reduce gun crimes one iota, but they will reduce gun accidents.
One final note. Check crime statistics in states which have implemented concealed-weapons permits. You'll notice that in every case, crime (particularly violent crime) has gone down since the permits were instituted, not up. Just something to think about. ----------
Um... I can't say I saw that one coming. Who'd have thought you could apply patent law in fighting this thing? And given the US government's subservience to corporations (Nader put it best when he talked about "patenting everything under the sun"), I don't think this is one corner they'll be able to back out of very easily.
Well, this is a fine dilemma to be in. On one hand, it's a patent issue relating to software (though I don't think Germany allows software patents anyway, so that's not the issue in and of itself). On the other hand, it's a case of fighting Echelon. Hmmm; who to root for... ----------
Under normal circumstances, there would be a difference.
But nowadays, the corporations are all trying to get the legal system to play along. Thus, we have things like the DMCA, which bans copy-protection-circumvention devices based on presumption of guilt (never mind the many legitimate uses of such devices). ----------
So now Microsoft has finally gotten in on the presumption-of-guilt game? Notice in the article that they claim everyone buying a "naked PC" will just install a pirated copy of one operating system or another (with strong implications that it'll be Windows, of course).
You know, someone really needs to find a way to put a stop to that kind of crap. It's unconstitutional for our legal system to presume someone guilty of a crime until proven innocent, so why should it be legal for corporations to do so? ----------
I'm probably just begging to be whacked upside the head with the Clue Stick, but...
From the way this article reads, it sounds like the anti-circumvention measures of the DMCA don't go into effect until the 28th. IANAL, but it sounds like this would mean that any uses of it as a defense in court cases before that time would be considered an attempt to apply the law ex post facto, which is explicitly unconstitutional.
Wouldn't this mean that all charges pressed under that clause of the DMCA, including the infamous DeCSS case, be legally groundless?
Like I said, IANAL and IAPC (I Am Probably Clueless), but it seemed like something to think about... ----------
Apple uses the USB connection to make the monitors automatically calibrate themselves when needed. It's actually a pretty neat trick, particularly if you have color profiles for your printer too (and if you've got a scanner, one for it as well). Makes sure the colors match up exactly (at least in theory) at all times. ----------
ADC is just Apple's name for another standard called "Plug & Display." There was a Slashdot story on this a while back, in fact.
The standard never caught on, it seems. I don't know why; IMHO it makes a lot of sense. Then again, it seems very few standards get popular until Macs start including them on all its machines. Witness USB, which existed but was languishing in no-peripheral-support limbo until the iMac came along and gave it the boost it needed. ----------
...is maybe more characters from other alternative OS's.
Just think about it for a second. Add in the FreeBSD Daemon, maybe the Linux Fox, Wilber the Gimp (finally, we get to see what the rest of him looks like), and maybe even Clarus the Dogcow (Darwin and all that). Of course, we'd have to think of something to represent Be too; any Be users know of a candidate?
And maybe just for fun, even throw in the Windows logo as a secret character, but it's only half as fast as the other characters and automatically aims toward obstacles so it crashes all the time:) ----------
That's not how you're supposed to eject disks, anyway. There's a menu that's supposed to be used, and it's in fact called "Put Away" (or "Eject" in OSX). The Trash can thing is just a shortcut.
There was actually a feature in OSX DP3 that didn't make it into DP4, and it's one I miss. If you dragged a disk over the Trash, it would change into an Eject button. Drop the disk on the Eject button, and it got ejected. Much nicer than the drag-to-the-Trash trick, which has initially scared the bejeezus out of every Mac newbie I've shown it to.
As I remember, the Mozilla project started two years ago. I remember hearing about Project Magic (the Opera porting efforts) back when I was in high school; that's nearly twice as long. ----------
In any physical society, a person can generally get a good feel for his/her reputation simply by watching how people react to him. On huge virtual societies like Slashdot, you can't do this, because you only have one measure of reaction: the written word. There's far more to seeing your reputation than what people say to you, particularly in a community so large that very few people speak on a regular basis within its confines.
Karma can be used, among other things, as a measure of your reputation on Slashdot (a very crude and rough measure, yes, but a measure nonetheless). If you find your Karma going up, it's a pretty safe bet that you're well-liked by the community. If it's going down, then you're not doing so well (unless you're a troll, in which case you're doing quite well). If you're serious about being a good Slashdotter and you see your Karma going down, you know that you need to find out what's going on and take steps to correct it. You can't get this otherwise. Posting histories are unreliable because the score is bounded (I could be modded down 50 times on a single post and lose 50 Karma, but the score on the post would remain at -1). Looking at reactions is also unreliable, because people don't always post their reactions (remember, moderators cannot post reactions in a thread they mod at all, or their moderation is undone).
So it's still necessary to at least give people the option to know what their Karma is. ----------
The FBI lied. Carnivore can do more than they originally said it could.
There are still things they aren't telling us. Remember, two-thirds of the information was withheld. Even the name of Omnivore's predecessor is still classified as "secret" (meaning that, were the secret leaked, national security would be harmed significantly, at least in the eyes of the classifiers).
Now, the SecurityFocus article also adds one other thing: Carnivore is in fact capable of performing certain kinds of searches without a warrant. According to the FBI it can only do this in "pen mode," and that mode restricts the kinds of searches it can perform, but we know already that they cannot be trusted where Carnivore's capabilities are concerned.
People talk about balancing Constitutional rights vs. "law enforcement." The fact is, the Constitution has already set the balance. We have a right to not be searched. But law enforcement can override that by getting a warrant or "probable cause" (which must by definition be established without performing any search), at which point they are allowed to search us. That is the balance, and it suffices for enforcing the law (prevention of crime is another matter, but this is not the job of any law enforcement agency, so the point is moot). ----------
Honest question here. I doubt you're making this up yourself, and I want to see the real source of this.
Oh, and do stop with the goatse.cx linking in the sig, "Bob." No one (and it probably really is at least pretty close to "no one") wants to see that. Your trolling stands just fine on its own. ----------
Gotta do this, gotta do that, conform to this standard, use that API, blah blah blah.
And this is bad? The very fact that API's were actually standardized is why the Mac hardware works so well. The standards Apple set has allowed Apple to avoid the major headaches of Wintel-based hardware, while still allowing for a great deal of third-party freedom.
Compare that to the idea of using a Free/Open operating system as a base and you've got a (potential) radical change.
And not for the better. This is why there's no Plug and Play on the Wintel platform; because the various companies never got around to standardizing even the simplest of hardware operations (well, except maybe the BIOS and processor instruction set, and even the instruction set isn't fully standardized anymore with MMX and KNI and 3DNow! and God only knows how many others), you're trapped in Driver Hell, without which nothing works. Contrast this with Mac hardware, where you can get at least basic functionality out of almost any device without the drivers (printers notwithstanding, but that's for another rant), but you can get drivers for the more extended stuff.
Getting at the guts of the OS is a Good Thing, and you can do this with OSX. But it's not worth sacrificing the functionality that comes with interoperable standards, such as the ones Apple set up (before you go into a rant, I mean interoperable across peripherals; they're certainly not interoperable across platforms but this is not Apple's fault). Otherwise, you get the mess that is the Wintel platform, where installing most new hardware puts you into Setup Hell for hours as you work to get everything harmonious again. It's all about balance; nothing is good when taken to extremes. Even freedom, when taken to extremes, degenerates into anarchy, which is what we see on the Wintel platform and is a large part of why it doesn't work as well.
By the way, these standards do exist in Linux too, but the only ones that ever get followed are low-level ones (such as, say, glibc's and X's own API's, and to a lesser extent video4linux). This is unfortunate; even a set of human interface standards that actually got followed by everyone would help Linux's acceptance in the workplace. I love Linux too (use it quite often, actually), but it really needs work in this area. Not "standard implementations," just standard API's. ----------
On the Windows platform, Mozilla's still quite small. It's only on Mac and Linux that it gets huge.
I think this has to do with XPCOM. For some reason, when the Mozilla team decided to do a cross-platform component-based architecture, they made it in such a way that it conveniently wraps around Windows' COM stuff. That means they don't have to include it on Windows, which trims out quite a lot of stuff.
Hey, how else could you explain why the Windows Mozilla downloads are a full third smaller than the Mac or Linux ones? ----------
The thing is, there have been two Macintosh models called "Power Macintosh G3."
The first one was the last machine they released before going on their translucency craze. I'm using one right now. The official color os Platinum, but everyone calls it "Beige."
The second model was the first of the colored desktop lines and was blue and white (sometimes shortened to "Blue G3." This had a substantially different design from the older models, including a totally new motherboard architecture, lack of floppy, ADB, and SCSI (though ADB was added in the second revision of the Blues), and several other things.
This is very important, because of the motherboard architectures. Every Mac from the iMac on up has used essentially the same motherboard design, called UMA-1 (Unified Motherboard Architecture, Revision 1). There have been various "personalities" plugged into them, depending on the model; this is how a PowerMac G4 can have the same motherboard as an iBook, a PowerBook G3, an iMac, and a Cube, with them all still being substantially different.
This is a big deal, because the Beige G3 is the only supported Mac model that does not use this architecture (for those interested, the first revision of the motherboard was codenamed Gossamer, the second and third were Silk). As such, it has some rather unique issues, such as built-in SCSI and a floppy drive, that must be dealt with. The only one that's made any difference to me (Beige G3 owner) is that my G4 processor upgrade doesn't work yet, so I've reverted to the original chip for the time being (the upgrade maker, Sonnet, is working on a fix).
So for the most part, the color of a person's Mac doesn't matter. But in one special case, namely the G3 desktop systems, it does. ----------
If I remember right,.nom is supposed to be for personal sites. Why was this chosen?
Seems to me,.sum (Latin for "I am") would be a more appropriate choice; IANALS (I Am Not A Latin Student), but unless I'm mistaken, something like "millennium.sum" is even gramatically correct, the dot notwithstanding.
Yet another boneheaded maneuver making ISP's responsible for people they don't employ and cannot be reasonably expected to control. Also, due to the mandatory take-down policy (noting, by the way, that the policy mandates that the ISP take doen "infringing" material before there's proof that any infringement is even taking place), we have yet more evidence that RIAA and its ilk want to consider you guilty until proven innocent, undermining our Constitutional rights.
Don't you love it when governments become little more than fronts for corporations? ----------
Slashdot Mirror
Qt is available for Windows, so ports should theoretically be little harder than a recompile (unless there's Unix-specific code in there; that will have to be rewritten, but the Qt code should not).
However, Qt is a very different beast on Windows. In particular, the "Qt Free Edition" does not exist there; you have to pay licensing fees as if your app were commercial on Unix. That could complicate things considerably.
----------
that governments are seldom more than corporate shills anymore, and nowhere more than in the US.
I like this bit: "if software companies are liable for glitches, it will stifle innovation." I say good; far better that our technology is reliable, rather than just being The New k-r@D l33t $7uPh Microsoft and its ilk try to push on us on a yearly basis.
Of course, there needs to be a law out there forbidding any software license (or any other IP license for that matter) from prohibiting activities defined as fair use. No more of this presumption-of-guilt crap from IP-based businesses who see someone copying a DVD to his hard drive and assuming he's going to pirate it. Come to think of it, I've often wondered if fair use should be formally defined; anyone have a take on that?
----------
Arguably even more successful than Takahashi, we have this all-female team, with such credits to their collective name as X1999, RG Veda, Tokyo Babylon, and so forth.
Oh, and that one they don't like people mentioning: a little thing called Rayearth. But come on, they can't be totally perfect, now can they?
----------
Read that article on character assassination, folks. It's one of the most hypocritical pieces I've ever read.
If you read the piece, it attempts to do a very thorough job of accusing Bush and the Republicans of attacking Gore with no evidence, and even has links to back these arguments up.
Then, though, it immediately launches into exactly what it accused the Republicans of doing, only this time against Bush. No evidence to back up its claims whatsoever. As though it's bad when the Republicans do it, but not when Democrats do.
Just some food for thought.
----------
There's a problem with that, namely that nothing has "intrinsic" value, at least in terms that would make it passable currency.
Diamonds, for example. Currently, they're considered quite valuable. Why? Except for certain inductrial concerns, most of it's marketing; diamonds are not actually particularly rare (emeralds, for example, are much rarer).
While gold has had value historically, there is nothing saying that cannot change. Some new source could be found. Or perhaps some cheap method of synthesizing the stuff might be discovered (scientists actually have turned lead into gold using particle accelerators and other really neat atomic tricks, but there's this little problem of expense at the moment).
Consider, as a final example, checks. The government has actually never declared these as legal tender. Many places will accept them as payment, simply because they are in common usage. Likewise for credit cards; although they are not, strictly speaking, money, they are commonly accepted in place of it.
My point is that tying money to a commodity really doesn't do very much, because in the end it's all subject to the whims of the markets concerning whatever it is backed by. Also interesting to note is that the federal reserve existed long before the US went off the gold/silver standard, so while abolishing the federal reserve would certainly make it necessary to accomplish your goals it's not strictly necessary for that to happen. I do see what you're trying to get at, and frankly I prefer your idea (in theory) to the highly volatile systems in place at the moment. That said, however, I do see potential problems with it.
----------
Which lawsuit is 3Dfx getting the favorable rulings on?
The Slashdot post seems to say it's the one NVidia brought against 3Dfx, covering several patents including one that seems to be for hardware 3D acceleration itself (at least, that's how the patent looked when I read it). Rather ridiculous patents, at any rate. But the MSNBC one seems to be talking about the one 3Dfx brought against NVidia, covering several equally ridiculous patents like multitexturing.
So which one is it?
----------
The problem with the Second Amendment is that it's poorly worded (quite possibly the only slip-up in what was otherwise a very carefully written document).
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The major problem is that the Framers felt it necessary to justify this amendment, so they built it in. The worst problem with this was their choice of wording with "well-regulated."
The Constitution was written by people who had recently revolted against a corrupt government, and was their second try at making a replacement which worked. Nonetheless, they were not naive; they knew that somehow, there was still the possibility that their new government might someday become as corrupt as the one they had just fought. They were very afraid that this might occur, and thus the entire Constitution, if you look at it, is little more than a set of restrictions to reduce the possibility of corruption as much as possible.
The government they set up is based on a system of checks and balances. Congress makes laws, but the President can veto them and the Supreme Court can overturn them. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional, but the President appoints the justices and Congress can start the process of amending the Constitution to overturn the Court's decision. The President must approve laws, but Congress can override vetoes and the Supreme Court is the one with final say in any impeachment process (though it's never been used in that capacity). And so on, and so forth.
The people have two checks against the government itself as well. The first, of course, is the vote. At least in theory, the people pick who makes the laws. But there is another check built into the Constitution, one meant to be used only as a last resort: the ability to revolt. To do this, the people need a fighting chance (no pun intended) against a "Government COntrolled Army, Navy, and Airforce." Since these bodies have guns, there's only one way to ensure this fighting chance: the people must have them as well.
Now, the government has its own check against revolution: it's illegal. In other words, if you decide to revolt, you'd damn well better have enough popular support that you can actually win so you can pardon yourself. Otherwise, you're screwed. And you can't get the kind of support you'd need unless the government did truly become so corrupt it was unmistakable. Thus, an adequate set of checks and balances.
That's what "well-regulated" meant. An armed populace is the Constitution's way of checking the military, so that it (ideally) must face the possibility of an uprising that might actually succeed, should the higher-ups ever consider going corrupt.
Don't forget that. The first half of the Second Amendment was nothing more than justification for the second half. A poorly-worded explanation, yes, and not strictly necessary, but an explanation nonetheless.
Am I against all gun control? Certainly not. Mandatory inclusion of trigger locks as a part of gun sales, for example, makes perfect sense. Such locks won't reduce gun crimes one iota, but they will reduce gun accidents.
One final note. Check crime statistics in states which have implemented concealed-weapons permits. You'll notice that in every case, crime (particularly violent crime) has gone down since the permits were instituted, not up. Just something to think about.
----------
Ano... ano...
Um... I can't say I saw that one coming. Who'd have thought you could apply patent law in fighting this thing? And given the US government's subservience to corporations (Nader put it best when he talked about "patenting everything under the sun"), I don't think this is one corner they'll be able to back out of very easily.
Well, this is a fine dilemma to be in. On one hand, it's a patent issue relating to software (though I don't think Germany allows software patents anyway, so that's not the issue in and of itself). On the other hand, it's a case of fighting Echelon. Hmmm; who to root for...
----------
Under normal circumstances, there would be a difference.
But nowadays, the corporations are all trying to get the legal system to play along. Thus, we have things like the DMCA, which bans copy-protection-circumvention devices based on presumption of guilt (never mind the many legitimate uses of such devices).
----------
"Selling" is a gerund, not a verb.
"Compares," though, was a verb, last I checked.
----------
So now Microsoft has finally gotten in on the presumption-of-guilt game? Notice in the article that they claim everyone buying a "naked PC" will just install a pirated copy of one operating system or another (with strong implications that it'll be Windows, of course).
You know, someone really needs to find a way to put a stop to that kind of crap. It's unconstitutional for our legal system to presume someone guilty of a crime until proven innocent, so why should it be legal for corporations to do so?
----------
I'm probably just begging to be whacked upside the head with the Clue Stick, but...
From the way this article reads, it sounds like the anti-circumvention measures of the DMCA don't go into effect until the 28th. IANAL, but it sounds like this would mean that any uses of it as a defense in court cases before that time would be considered an attempt to apply the law ex post facto, which is explicitly unconstitutional.
Wouldn't this mean that all charges pressed under that clause of the DMCA, including the infamous DeCSS case, be legally groundless?
Like I said, IANAL and IAPC (I Am Probably Clueless), but it seemed like something to think about...
----------
Apple uses the USB connection to make the monitors automatically calibrate themselves when needed. It's actually a pretty neat trick, particularly if you have color profiles for your printer too (and if you've got a scanner, one for it as well). Makes sure the colors match up exactly (at least in theory) at all times.
----------
ADC is just Apple's name for another standard called "Plug & Display." There was a Slashdot story on this a while back, in fact.
The standard never caught on, it seems. I don't know why; IMHO it makes a lot of sense. Then again, it seems very few standards get popular until Macs start including them on all its machines. Witness USB, which existed but was languishing in no-peripheral-support limbo until the iMac came along and gave it the boost it needed.
----------
...is maybe more characters from other alternative OS's.
:)
Just think about it for a second. Add in the FreeBSD Daemon, maybe the Linux Fox, Wilber the Gimp (finally, we get to see what the rest of him looks like), and maybe even Clarus the Dogcow (Darwin and all that). Of course, we'd have to think of something to represent Be too; any Be users know of a candidate?
And maybe just for fun, even throw in the Windows logo as a secret character, but it's only half as fast as the other characters and automatically aims toward obstacles so it crashes all the time
----------
Oh, boy, the Trash thing again.
That's not how you're supposed to eject disks, anyway. There's a menu that's supposed to be used, and it's in fact called "Put Away" (or "Eject" in OSX). The Trash can thing is just a shortcut.
There was actually a feature in OSX DP3 that didn't make it into DP4, and it's one I miss. If you dragged a disk over the Trash, it would change into an Eject button. Drop the disk on the Eject button, and it got ejected. Much nicer than the drag-to-the-Trash trick, which has initially scared the bejeezus out of every Mac newbie I've shown it to.
Anyone know what happened to that?
----------
As I remember, the Mozilla project started two years ago. I remember hearing about Project Magic (the Opera porting efforts) back when I was in high school; that's nearly twice as long.
----------
In any physical society, a person can generally get a good feel for his/her reputation simply by watching how people react to him. On huge virtual societies like Slashdot, you can't do this, because you only have one measure of reaction: the written word. There's far more to seeing your reputation than what people say to you, particularly in a community so large that very few people speak on a regular basis within its confines.
Karma can be used, among other things, as a measure of your reputation on Slashdot (a very crude and rough measure, yes, but a measure nonetheless). If you find your Karma going up, it's a pretty safe bet that you're well-liked by the community. If it's going down, then you're not doing so well (unless you're a troll, in which case you're doing quite well). If you're serious about being a good Slashdotter and you see your Karma going down, you know that you need to find out what's going on and take steps to correct it. You can't get this otherwise. Posting histories are unreliable because the score is bounded (I could be modded down 50 times on a single post and lose 50 Karma, but the score on the post would remain at -1). Looking at reactions is also unreliable, because people don't always post their reactions (remember, moderators cannot post reactions in a thread they mod at all, or their moderation is undone).
So it's still necessary to at least give people the option to know what their Karma is.
----------
Now, the SecurityFocus article also adds one other thing: Carnivore is in fact capable of performing certain kinds of searches without a warrant. According to the FBI it can only do this in "pen mode," and that mode restricts the kinds of searches it can perform, but we know already that they cannot be trusted where Carnivore's capabilities are concerned.
People talk about balancing Constitutional rights vs. "law enforcement." The fact is, the Constitution has already set the balance. We have a right to not be searched. But law enforcement can override that by getting a warrant or "probable cause" (which must by definition be established without performing any search), at which point they are allowed to search us. That is the balance, and it suffices for enforcing the law (prevention of crime is another matter, but this is not the job of any law enforcement agency, so the point is moot).
----------
Dude, where do you get this stuff?
Honest question here. I doubt you're making this up yourself, and I want to see the real source of this.
Oh, and do stop with the goatse.cx linking in the sig, "Bob." No one (and it probably really is at least pretty close to "no one") wants to see that. Your trolling stands just fine on its own.
----------
Gotta do this, gotta do that, conform to this standard, use that API, blah blah blah.
And this is bad? The very fact that API's were actually standardized is why the Mac hardware works so well. The standards Apple set has allowed Apple to avoid the major headaches of Wintel-based hardware, while still allowing for a great deal of third-party freedom.
Compare that to the idea of using a Free/Open operating system as a base and you've got a (potential) radical change.
And not for the better. This is why there's no Plug and Play on the Wintel platform; because the various companies never got around to standardizing even the simplest of hardware operations (well, except maybe the BIOS and processor instruction set, and even the instruction set isn't fully standardized anymore with MMX and KNI and 3DNow! and God only knows how many others), you're trapped in Driver Hell, without which nothing works. Contrast this with Mac hardware, where you can get at least basic functionality out of almost any device without the drivers (printers notwithstanding, but that's for another rant), but you can get drivers for the more extended stuff.
Getting at the guts of the OS is a Good Thing, and you can do this with OSX. But it's not worth sacrificing the functionality that comes with interoperable standards, such as the ones Apple set up (before you go into a rant, I mean interoperable across peripherals; they're certainly not interoperable across platforms but this is not Apple's fault). Otherwise, you get the mess that is the Wintel platform, where installing most new hardware puts you into Setup Hell for hours as you work to get everything harmonious again. It's all about balance; nothing is good when taken to extremes. Even freedom, when taken to extremes, degenerates into anarchy, which is what we see on the Wintel platform and is a large part of why it doesn't work as well.
By the way, these standards do exist in Linux too, but the only ones that ever get followed are low-level ones (such as, say, glibc's and X's own API's, and to a lesser extent video4linux). This is unfortunate; even a set of human interface standards that actually got followed by everyone would help Linux's acceptance in the workplace. I love Linux too (use it quite often, actually), but it really needs work in this area. Not "standard implementations," just standard API's.
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On the Windows platform, Mozilla's still quite small. It's only on Mac and Linux that it gets huge.
I think this has to do with XPCOM. For some reason, when the Mozilla team decided to do a cross-platform component-based architecture, they made it in such a way that it conveniently wraps around Windows' COM stuff. That means they don't have to include it on Windows, which trims out quite a lot of stuff.
Hey, how else could you explain why the Windows Mozilla downloads are a full third smaller than the Mac or Linux ones?
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The thing is, there have been two Macintosh models called "Power Macintosh G3."
The first one was the last machine they released before going on their translucency craze. I'm using one right now. The official color os Platinum, but everyone calls it "Beige."
The second model was the first of the colored desktop lines and was blue and white (sometimes shortened to "Blue G3." This had a substantially different design from the older models, including a totally new motherboard architecture, lack of floppy, ADB, and SCSI (though ADB was added in the second revision of the Blues), and several other things.
This is very important, because of the motherboard architectures. Every Mac from the iMac on up has used essentially the same motherboard design, called UMA-1 (Unified Motherboard Architecture, Revision 1). There have been various "personalities" plugged into them, depending on the model; this is how a PowerMac G4 can have the same motherboard as an iBook, a PowerBook G3, an iMac, and a Cube, with them all still being substantially different.
This is a big deal, because the Beige G3 is the only supported Mac model that does not use this architecture (for those interested, the first revision of the motherboard was codenamed Gossamer, the second and third were Silk). As such, it has some rather unique issues, such as built-in SCSI and a floppy drive, that must be dealt with. The only one that's made any difference to me (Beige G3 owner) is that my G4 processor upgrade doesn't work yet, so I've reverted to the original chip for the time being (the upgrade maker, Sonnet, is working on a fix).
So for the most part, the color of a person's Mac doesn't matter. But in one special case, namely the G3 desktop systems, it does.
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If I remember right, .nom is supposed to be for personal sites. Why was this chosen?
.sum (Latin for "I am") would be a more appropriate choice; IANALS (I Am Not A Latin Student), but unless I'm mistaken, something like "millennium.sum" is even gramatically correct, the dot notwithstanding.
Seems to me,
Just a nit to pick...
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Yet another boneheaded maneuver making ISP's responsible for people they don't employ and cannot be reasonably expected to control. Also, due to the mandatory take-down policy (noting, by the way, that the policy mandates that the ISP take doen "infringing" material before there's proof that any infringement is even taking place), we have yet more evidence that RIAA and its ilk want to consider you guilty until proven innocent, undermining our Constitutional rights.
Don't you love it when governments become little more than fronts for corporations?
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