If only one state passws UCITA, even if it is the state I call home, it's not so bad. The U in UCITA is for Uniform, and it's hardly that if only one state passes the law. It also can't go into effect if only one state passes it, simply because that causes myriad distribution problems.
The problem is, if one state passes it, more will follow. And companies, realizing they got away with this travesty, will push for more laws, and these will be passed too. I would be ashamed to see my home state be the one which touched off the destruction of consumer rights. I'm already ashammed that no one in the House seems to have heard the people's pleas. Normally I'm politically neutral, but I can't stand by while this happens. This law serves no one but Big Business; it's been universally denounced by every consumer group I know because it's a self-serving law, created by businesses to increase their gluttony on the backs of their customers. Why can legislators not see this? Do businesses really have enough money to bribe every legislator in every state?
What version of Toast were you using? For the longest time I'd heard that Toast couldn't support ISO images. As it is I'm stuck with 3.5 for the moment, and I'd like to know if I can use Toast with the ISO before I download the image...
I believe the old RedHat-style installer is still present (I know it can still be used if you prefer that method of installation). But for 99% of the Linux-using population, the GUI installer is enough, and it's always good to have things be a little easier, if only because it's more convenient.
You can do that much. What you can't do is resize partitions.
Actually, FWB has a semi-solution, their Hard Disk Toolkit program (the personal edition's not too expensive, and it comes with just about every Mac hard drive out there).
It can only shrink partitions, not grow them, unfortunately. Well, it can make a partition bigger if it had been previously shrunk, and there's ways to cheat around this limit. But it's still no PartitionMagic.
They used their tests improperly, and they call it mind-blowing?
Look. It's a 1:37-million chance if you're comparing one person's DNA to one sample (probably found at the crime scene) That's why you only use DNA testing to weed people who couldn't possibly have been involved from a very narrow range of subjects. You can't pick out one suspect from a huge list.
This is the problem with archiving everyone's DNA. You know it'll be used for stuff like this, because law enforcement will get lazy.
DNA testing is a Good Thing. It's a very safe, reliable way to identify suspects. But only if you use it properly. This is hardly a "proper" use of the tests, and I'm not at all surprised that this happened. It's a case of lazy law enforcement more than faulty testing.
Damn; MS is good, but I didn't think they were this good. They've manipulated the facts to make Solaris look less reliable than Windows. But look at the "facts" again:
Despite Sun's claim that their high-end servers are highly reliable and built with redundant components, customers report that failures in service processors, controllers, processor cards, and other components have caused entire production systems to fail.
Those are hardware problems, not OS problems. I don't see many Wintel boxes built with these components either, yet these exact things can and do happen to Wintel boxes. Or, just get Solaris/Intel if the situation is really that bad; that product nullifies any claims M$ makes right there.
Analyst reports have repeatedly raised the issue of reliability problems with Sun platforms, and have gone so far as to recommend that customers not use Sun servers in environments that require high availability.
And they've done the same for Windows. Much more often, in fact.
In one day alone, Dec. 7, 1999, a leading auction site suffered a system outage of more than three hours when both Sun E10000 servers running the site's back-end auction system failed. Meanwhile, the company's Web site front-end, running on a Windows NT®-based server farm, has provided continuous availability with no single point of failure.
One: both servers going down at once? That's basically a freak chance, and certainly can't be attributed to Sun. Two: Two servers versus a whole farm? Gee, I wonder how stacked the deck was. I also notice they they only say the farm's has no single point of failure, implying that multiples could well have existed.
Multiple vendors offer availability guarantees for Windows platforms, including IBM, HP, Unisys, and Compaq.
Four vendors out of God only knows how many. Is that something to be proud of? Besides which, they're guaranteeing the hardware, not the software.
And now, on to the "Hype #1"...
Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide; Sun runs 19 percent. 45 percent of secure Web sites run on Windows; Sun runs 11 percent. 52 of the top 100 Internet shopping sites run on Windows. 57 percent of top business-to-business marketplaces run on Windows.
You can't rely on these numbers. I can find Webserver statistics out there that say anything you want them to say. I can find statistics saying that Linux leads the way in these. Hell, I've found Webserver stats saying Linux is first, Mac OS is second, all other Unices are third, and the Windows systems are dead last.
Dell, the largest e-business on the Internet, runs on Windows.
Easy enough to find out that one business runs on Windows. But on which scale are they measuring, such that Dell is the "largest"? I know of sites which do much more business than Dell; what do they run? M$ doesn't say. No doubt Dell is the largest E-business site that runs Windows. But is it the largest E-business site out there? I'd like to see some numbers asserting that claim, please.
Other major sites include Barnes & Noble, InfoSpace, Data Return, buy.com, monster.com, reel.com, bigcharts.com, Hotbot.com, Nordstrom's, realtor.com, eHome, MarthaStewart.com, cooking.com, and Compaq, to name a few.
Simple bandwagon advertising. The usual "everybody's doing it" idea. So what? Everybody once believed the Sun orbited the Earth, too.
Electrolux, Accounting.com, Pro2Net and thousands of other companies have switched their web sites from Sun platforms to Windows.
And thousands more have switched from Windows to Sun, Linux, and others. Hell; several major sites have even switched from Windows to MacOS. What's your point?
Linux's marketers are great. Even I was taken in by this load of bull for a moment before I stopped to think about their data. Problem is, most people don't stop to think, and that's why M$ has retained its popularity over the years.
The VGS swap trick isn't one people should be trying, because it has the potential to damage your CD-ROM drive. I'm not saying what it is, not fur security through obscutiry's sake (read my posting history and you'll know I'm against that myth) but because it's dangerous, and not something people should try. And you know that everyone with VGS is going to want to try this one, whether or not they want to actually pirate or not.
While, strictly speaking, the Connectix product enables users to play their PlayStation back-ups on their G3, we all know that this is not primarily the use to which it will be put.
Actually, Connectix has been extremely conscientious about antipiracy measures. A "modchip patch" exists for Version 1.0 of the software (which sucked compared to later versions) but no such patch exists for later versions of the software. I'm not even certain it can be done.
Also notable is that CVGS cannot use disk images; you must use CD's. This kills most pirates right there. Those who do have burners are harder to stop, but someone who really wants to pirate software is, simply put, going to do it; you can't stop those people. It's no easier with VGS than a "real" PSX.
Yes, there's still a VERY little-known disk-swap trick (and no, I won't say what it is) that you can do with VGS. You can also do this on a regular PSX, so there's no difference.
So this judge has just made it harder for a company engaged in lawful business to earn its justified profits. And why? To protect a principal.
I think you mean "principle." Last I checked there were no school directors involved here.
But you're wrong about one thing. Sony takes a loss on every console it sells. A rather substantial one at that. This is made up for by game sales, yes. But for every copy of VGS sold, Sony saves money. As much as it makes from more than ten individual non-Sony PSX games, or four Sony-made ones. In other words, each person has to do a lot of pirating before Sony takes a loss. It still earns its justified profits before them.
A quick cruise of Hotline or IRC shows the reality.
Yeah. So you should look at it yourself. PSX games are actually quite hard to get on Hotline or IRC. The process often involves bounces all over the Web, signing oneself up for porn lists and/or ad companies, finding passwords, and downloading obscenely huge files which still take hours to download over even the fastest connections. Of course you might be lucky enough to find a "free" server. In this case each image will take days, as the overwhelming traffic will slow the server to a crawl. These servers don't tend to carry many images (few sites do because of space demands) so you'll be bouncing back and forth between servers, repeating the process multiple times to get all the images you wanted. Oh, and since most PSX backup sites don't actually carry the emulators, once you have the images you need you have to go through the process again to find the emulator, and probably several more times to find a patch that works. And then, of course, the game still has to work with the emu.
My point: this isn't what you're making it out to be. Not at all.
They may be France's closest allies, but they're also pretty damn powerful enemies. If France tried to go to war with the US and the UK, they'd find the whole might of NATO turned against them. That would be outright suicide.
No, France can't take that route, and they know it. Frankly, the Airbus thing is probably just an excuse; they know they won't get their money back. What they're trying to do is set a precedent. Open the way for other nations to sue. And hopefully destroy Echelon in the process; knowing the US they'll destroy Echelon rather than hold onto it and destroy their reputation (sad to say, the only thing the U.S. government values more than keeping its power is keeping what little image it has left). This is a ploy to make the US and UK lose face, and I'm all for it if it'll hurt Echelon even a little bit.
We're just Slashdotters. When all's said and done, there's really nothing we can do about Echelon; we simply don't have the kind of power it takes. France has tons more than we do, but even it can't do much by itself. But if it takes a stand, other nations will too, and the combined power of several large nations can do something about Echelon.
I could go on for several more paragraphs extolling the guts France is showing by taking this move, but knowing my luck I'd only start a flamewar. So I'll just shut up now.
By the way, before anyone tries to nail me on the RSA patent fiasco: yes, that too is an abuse of the patent system. Yes, it's a patent on a specific device, and not on public-key encryption in general. It's a different kind of abuse.
And just a word of warning: I'm about to rant big time here.
When R, S, and A (I can't remember their full names at the moment) first discovered their algorithm, they published it far and wide. Even now, you'll find the algorithm in any decent textbook on discrete mathematics and number theory (believe me, I have several). They in essence created their own "prior art." Most countries recognized this, which is why RSA isn't patented in most places. But when they applied for it several years later, some idiot in the US who probably never took a day of number theory in his (her?) life decided to grant them the patent anyway, even though they'd already put the thing out so widely that the patent was pointless (I thought you couldn't make patents retroactive like that anyway). That was seventeen years ago this September (when the patent finally expires). Seventeen years during which effective crypto couldn't be widely adopted in the US because of these restrictions. And if it can't be adopted in the US, it can't be adopted anywhere on the Net, simply because the US is such a large part of it that you can't reasonably exclude it. In other words, seventeen years that R, S, and A have set back Net security, all in the pursuit of The Almighty Buck.
And this is why I think R, S, and A are the scum of the computing universe, ten times worse than Bill Gates and M$ if not more. Had they set aside those concerns seventeen years ago, I'd consider it likely that crypto (with 17 years of an effective, patent-free algorithm) would already be too ubiquitous for anyone to stop it. The current restrictions never went into effect until RSA had been patented, so crypto would have beaten governments to the punch. Big Brother would have become truly pointless. We would have had the privacy that is dying now, because we would have had our crypto long before governments could have done a thing to stop it. These three people are very talented; I can't argue that. But they have so much to answer for that I don't think they'll ever be able to justify it.
The GPL does state that any patented code you use must be licensed free for everyone's use. So I'm afraid this does violate the GPL unless the author licenses the code for free to everyone.
1) Consider how recent it is. It certainly took the government there some time to get a clue. It's there, but it took long enough.
2) Look at the wording difference between the two. The CCRF guarantees the right. The U.S. Constitution guarantees that this right cannot be taken away, something which the Charter you've linked to does not do. It grants the right but does not guarantee it.
3) All right, the US is one of two nations. If anyone else can find another nation with a free-speech clause, I'm sure we'd all be glad to hear it. I stand by the assertion that while other nations might practice it for the time being, there are now only two nations which speficically grants that right, and is the only nation to actually guarantee it.
Most Slashdotters aren't against patents in general, per se. Patents are, generally speaking, Good Things, when applied correctly.
Consider the case of Stradivarius, the violin-maker. There were no patents at the time, so in order to be able to work as a violin-maker, he had no choice but to keep his methods secret. Alas, he took those secrets to the grave with him. To this day, in fact, even with all our modern technology, no one has ever made the equal of a Stradivarius violin, because no one knows how he did it. This is why you can still get them, but each one costs millions.
But there's a problem when you try and patent software. You see, Tesla didn't try and patent AC itself. If he had, then Slashdotters probably would have had problems. What Tesla patented was specific devices that use AC. Nothing wrong with that. But software patents take a different tack, They don't patent the device (the code, in this case); they try to patent the concepts behind it.
Consider the Imatec case. This might not be the best example, because the courts found that they didn't own the patents they claimed, but it still fits somewhat. Imatec sued Apple over ColorSync, claiming it violated Imatec's patents. What was the patent Imatec claimed to own? Not a patent on a specific color-matching system, but on the concept of color-matching in general.
This is supposed to be illegal by the regulations on patents, but thanks to the fact that software makers have obscene amounts of money to bribe out representatives with, they've gotten the patents upheld. Patents weren't meant for ideas, they were meant for implementations of those ideas.
Take Eli Whitney's cotton gin, for example. Had he used the same logic as most software manufacturers today, he would have instead tried to patent the concept of getting seeds out of raw cotton before processing it. Then he could have sued every plantation owner in the nation for using "his" process, even if they had never heard of the cotton gin, because they used other means of doing this. Granted, those "other means" were typically slaves, and far be it from me to say slavery is a Good Thing, but that hardly makes the situation I've stated here any better.
So give Slashdotters here a little credit. We're not against patents. We're against their misapplication and abuse, as software manufacturers do. I'd imagine most of us wouldn't have been against Amazon had they patented their system of one-click ordering, but instead they patented the very concept on one-click ordering, and that's where the patent runs afoul of us. Certainly a patent on an AC generator wouldn't.
I hope the employees go for a class-action lawsuit for privacy violations.
If a business wants to search its own computers for evidence that's, well, its business. The computers are its property, and it has the right to search it.
But going for employees' personal computers is way out of line. This is not cool. And this bit about abridging free speech to only poitical matters: no way. I'm sorry; the US government is bad in a lot of ways, but it's done one thing I'm proud of: it's the only nation with a free speech clause in its Constitution. And no, that doesn't mean just political matters. It means all speech. Whether or not a few fat-cats in penthouse corner offices like it. Whether or not a few crazed zealots like it. Whether or not perfectly reasonable, sane people like it. It doesn't matter. It's all speech.
Yeah, if you're using speech to commit a crime (like shouting "Fire!" in a theater) that's one thing; the right to swing my fist ends at the other man's nose. But this is hardly such a case. No crime was comitted, and no one has the right to cause such a gross privacy invasion on those grounds.
This does not block the howling horde from publishing lists of sites and keywords that they want people to never ever see.
A large part of the problem is that the zealots keep their lists secret. They claim all sorts of things, but think about it. What if there were a list of sites posted by the zealots? A list of "evil sites" that "decent people" must never see?
Doesn't that sound kind of like a McCarthy-esque blacklist? Or maybe a witch-hunt? A list of books to be burned, perhaps?
This is part of the thing; the zealots are getting away with this because they're managing to make themselves look good. Force them into a situation where they have no choice but to show themselves for what they really are, and their position will start to weaken. That's one part of the key.
People may be pretty lazy as a general rule, but most will fight when they see that their rights really are being taken away. People don't fight gun control because they don't see it as the taking away of any rights. It's also why many people don't fight things like flag-burning amendments. It's not too different here.
GNOME won for most improved is because it was so bad in the first place. Even with all of the supposed imporvements, it still can't touch KDE.
You know, you could try not flaming. Why can't Gnome touch KDE? And yes, Gnome was pretty bad to start. That's why it's called improvement.
KDE is more stable, has more features, and is overall a much better project, with nicer project leaders and a better toolkit.
One: you're dead wrong about stability. Compare the two, and it's a wash; both are pretty good but both still have a way to go. Features: Pray tell, what does KDE have that Gnome doesn't? Nicer project leaders: I'll grant, the KDE project leaders are nice. Even their responses to flames are nice (take it from someone who once flamed KWM and got called on it, by KWM's maintainer no less). But I don't see how Gnome's project leaders are any less nice. You'd better be ready with examples for this one... Four: Better toolkit? Ever programmed in both of them? Unless you have, you have no right to compare.
We've been arguing with the zealots about censorship for ages. The zealots are, sad to say, currently winning. I've been looking at the arguments, though, and I think I'm beginning to get an idea as to why.
Simply put, we're going about this the wrong way. We're not arguing from the right angles. We talk about "adults must be able to view as they please" which the zealots view as "we want to see our pr0n and you can't stop us." They talk about "protecting the children"; there aren't many ways to argue against that without coming out looking like the scum of the Earth (which isn't exactly productive).
In other words, we need to revise our tactics. How many anime fans are on Slashdot? It might surprise most of us to know that at one point not too long ago, Japan went through similar media censorship troubles. Pick several anime at random and look through them; chances are you'll find ample evidence that the censorship advocates didn't succeed. Why didn't they succeed there?
Simply put, people came forward against censorship who were truly brilliant. They argued just as strongly and just as convincingly against censorship as our fundamentalist friends in the U.S. argue for it. We need to look at these, take our example from them. They managed to argue convincingly where we are failing. And what's more, they won.
Look into it. These are the sort of people we're going to need to emulate. Somehow, in some way, they managed to successfully argue against censorship, that is, they did it without looking as though they were doing something wrong that they didn't want criminalized. And I wish I had links to more information, but I don't right now. I'll post them as soon as I can find them.
Ever since Andover bought Slashdot, the quality of the articles and of the comments have dropped dramatically. Perfectly valid and interesting stories are being rejected in exchange for stories relating to Linux and Microsoft. There would be at least 100 comments in the 0 and -1 range.
The only change I've noticed is that there've been far fewer quickies posted (which is a shame; I liked those). Whatever changes you may have noticed aren't Andover's fault anyway; they have no editorial control, remember?
The server's performance has also slowed. It would be frequently be down and would take a long time to get any sort of HTML back from them.
Here, you have a point. However, the reason behind that is the same reason for the increase in trolls. Slashdot's simply getting more famous, and because of that more "good" people are coming on, but so are more "bad" people. Slashdot is by definition Slashdotted every day, but as the crowds keep getting bigger even Slashdot's servers won't be able to hold up forever. That's when it's time to get new ones, and Slashdot will be getting those anyway.
Geez; eventually Slashdot will probably have to run on a Beofulf cluster of servers:)
If VA gives Slashdot some servers and some more bandwidth to host it on, and at the same time help with making the environment over here cleaner, then go ahead. Otherwise, I think both Andover and VA have overstated their welcome, and Slashdot should split off from the combined company and run indenpendently, just like the old days.
VA is giving Slashdot new servers, and I'd imagine more bandwidth too. But how can they make the envorioment cleaner? There are ways to do it, but no one here at Slashdot seems to want to take those steps.
And Slashdot is rune more or less independently anyway. Come to think of it, I can't figure out what Andover ever got out of the deal, besides being able to say that they'd bought Slashdot.
The argument against the first cause is if that if god caused that first thing, then god must be a remarkable and complex being. For the same reason that all the other things that are complex *must have had a cause, then *god* must have had a cause too!
Interesting argument, however there's a flaw.
If indeed the universe was created by God, then God must have existed before the universe did. Which also means that God must not be originally of this universe. Therefore, even if God did have a cause, such cause would have no meaning here. Therefore, "God" (or whatever name you choose to call it) still is the first cause of this universe, even by your definition.
There is absolutely no need to get personal here, but it seems like Apple is a company which has historically aimed its' products at the customers who like userfirendly interfaces, windows, buttons, mice, etc.
True, true. That's almost everyone, though.
They have not been known for their great performance.
Um... not quite. Ever since the PPC was invented, it's always been faster than whatever Intel-based chip was on the market at the time, assuming identical clockrate. The exception was the 601, because you couldn't get equal clockrates; the minimum speed for the 601 was 60 MHz; 486's never went that fast the the Pentium didn't come out for a few months after the 601 did. With the old 68K-based Macs, you have something (though again, the first Macs were faster than the first Intel-based machines, though Intel would catch up and then take the lead once the PC market began to explode).
Their latest product is the iMac.
Huh? Three years ago, their latest product was the iMac. They've only completely revamped their product line since then. And they've introduced products since the latest iMac revisions too (Revision D).
Why then go and attempt to build a high-performance machine?
Why not? Apple's got what it takes to do it. Besides which, people like high performance, especially gamers, and Apple's kind of trying to cater to the gamer market now. Note that I said kind of; Apple seems to have a love/hate relationship with gamers. It's well-known that back in the earliest years, Steve Jobs discouraged games for the Mac, because he didn't want it to be seen as a toy. If you ask me, he's still afraid of that, but he's starting to recognize that games are important for a platform's health. I just wish he'd be a bit more enthusiastic about it; as it is it's rather clear that the Apple talks about gaming only grudgingly. It would still rather not have games on the Mac platform but it sees them as a "necessary evil."
And yes, I do think that little hangup of Apple's is completely and totally insane.
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if this survey were totally fair and the results were as accurate as the best surverys are (I know it's neither, but hear me out here). That's part of the biggest problem, not necessarily with M$, but with computing in general today: people don't know what's going on.
MS has always been good at hiding the things they're really doing. You'd be surprised at just how few people really understand the issue (most Slashdotters do, I realize, but we're a comparatively tiny minority). The DOJ trials have helped raise awareness (I know several people who thought before the trial that I was just taking things a bit too far when I tried to explain about M$, but now they're quite firmly on our side). But they're not enough, what with Microsoft (who's in this for personal gain) and many Objectivists (most of whom don't yet seem to realize that the things M$ has done actually go against their philosophy, not in agreement with it) spreading FUD.
In the end, the only real way to fight M$ will be education (it's odd, just how many things can only be fought by that). That's also where the problem comes in; convicing people that Microsoft really isn't everything it claims to be is not an easy task. But I'd say it has to be done. It's hard to believe that a company that's only ever produced one decent program (Excel) and one decent hardware innovation (the mouse wheel, if that was even their idea to start with; I don't know) has risen to power. But if you don't know just how bad their software really is, or where the rest of their so-called "innovations" really came from, then it becomed easier, and that's what needs to change.
If they were giving away free music over the internet, they probably would own the scene, but how would that benefit them? They would be giving away intellectual property and getting nothing in return but maybe some advertising revenue.
Wow. Did you even read the rest of my post?
First, you're underestimating the power of ad revenue; keep in mind that entire commercial radio stations are run on nothing but that. Even television stations run on little else. However, that's not the main point.
Look again at what I said. Radio increases sales of music; it doesn't hinder it. Think about it: why do you normally buy CD's? Sure, some people follow certain artists, but even they buy other music as well. In most cases, it's because they hear a song they like over the radio, and want to buy the whole album for more. Not all returns are direct, you see. Look at concert tours. Those things are hideously expensive to finance. They aren't even really all that profitable. But they fuel record sales like you wouldn't believe, not to mention the merchandising deals, so in the end you get a net profit overall.
The RIAA's paranoia over their music being stolent is real. When faced with a choice between paying and just taking, a lot of people will just take.
Unfortunately, the reality of the situation proves you to be dead wrong. Given a choice, most people still buy the music, rather than just keep the MP3's. I've bought CD's after downloading tracks from them before myself.
And as time goes on, it's looking less and less like there is anything the RIAA can do to stop people from just taking.
Here, you have a point. However, RIAA hasn't been able to do anything about the situation for years.
The question now is, how can creators make a living from their intellectual property in a world where their work can be accessed by anyone, anytime, without paying them?
Creators, for the most part, already don't. You'd be surprised at how little artists actually see of the revenue generated by their albums; it's a tiny fraction (which I don't think is right, buw we're dealing with the way things are here, not the way they should be). The money is in distribution. For every dollar that an artist makes, distributors make ten, often more. Simply because the medium changes doesn't mean that everything goes down the tubes. You have to change to adapt to the current situation, or you'll be passed by. That's how the universe has worked for untold billions of years and I'll be damned if a few ethically-questionable record execs who mostly can't even carry a tune themselves are going to change that.
...but there's a problem with his approach. Namely, implementation. What's the best way to do it? The basics are already in place, perhaps, but work still needs to be done.
This would, in the end, be very similar to radio. Incidentally, adio is probably the single biggest contributor to CD saled out there, actually; I can think of one, maybe two CD's I've ever gotten for reasons other than the fact that I'd heard a song on the radio that I'd liked.
I pity RIAA more than anything else, to be honest. They're getting left behind in the course of technological evolution, and they're being held back by nothing but first paranoia (people will steal our music), then greed (let's stop that by making it pay-per-listen), then stupidity (yeah, the public will stand for that... sure). If RIAA had harnessed the power of MP3 and streaming when these technologies had first come out, they would have owned the scene by now. But they refused, and now they're paying the price. I'm not too certain they'll be able to recover from it, in fact.
But this guy gets it. He's on to something, even if he's forgotten some of the details. He'll never convince the RIAA that it'll work, but he has the right idea regardless.
The judge can talk all he wants, but this isn't justice (and frankly, I wonder how much DVD-CCA paid him for that decision). This one can go to the Supreme Court, and I hope it does.
And even if it doesn't, there are other completely legal ways to fight this...
Slashdot Mirror
If only one state passws UCITA, even if it is the state I call home, it's not so bad. The U in UCITA is for Uniform, and it's hardly that if only one state passes the law. It also can't go into effect if only one state passes it, simply because that causes myriad distribution problems.
The problem is, if one state passes it, more will follow. And companies, realizing they got away with this travesty, will push for more laws, and these will be passed too. I would be ashamed to see my home state be the one which touched off the destruction of consumer rights. I'm already ashammed that no one in the House seems to have heard the people's pleas. Normally I'm politically neutral, but I can't stand by while this happens. This law serves no one but Big Business; it's been universally denounced by every consumer group I know because it's a self-serving law, created by businesses to increase their gluttony on the backs of their customers. Why can legislators not see this? Do businesses really have enough money to bribe every legislator in every state?
What version of Toast were you using? For the longest time I'd heard that Toast couldn't support ISO images. As it is I'm stuck with 3.5 for the moment, and I'd like to know if I can use Toast with the ISO before I download the image...
I believe the old RedHat-style installer is still present (I know it can still be used if you prefer that method of installation). But for 99% of the Linux-using population, the GUI installer is enough, and it's always good to have things be a little easier, if only because it's more convenient.
You can do that much. What you can't do is resize partitions.
Actually, FWB has a semi-solution, their Hard Disk Toolkit program (the personal edition's not too expensive, and it comes with just about every Mac hard drive out there).
It can only shrink partitions, not grow them, unfortunately. Well, it can make a partition bigger if it had been previously shrunk, and there's ways to cheat around this limit. But it's still no PartitionMagic.
They used their tests improperly, and they call it mind-blowing?
Look. It's a 1:37-million chance if you're comparing one person's DNA to one sample (probably found at the crime scene) That's why you only use DNA testing to weed people who couldn't possibly have been involved from a very narrow range of subjects. You can't pick out one suspect from a huge list.
This is the problem with archiving everyone's DNA. You know it'll be used for stuff like this, because law enforcement will get lazy.
DNA testing is a Good Thing. It's a very safe, reliable way to identify suspects. But only if you use it properly. This is hardly a "proper" use of the tests, and I'm not at all surprised that this happened. It's a case of lazy law enforcement more than faulty testing.
Damn; MS is good, but I didn't think they were this good. They've manipulated the facts to make Solaris look less reliable than Windows. But look at the "facts" again:
Despite Sun's claim that their high-end servers are highly reliable and built with redundant components, customers report that failures in service processors, controllers, processor cards, and other components have caused entire production systems to fail.
Those are hardware problems, not OS problems. I don't see many Wintel boxes built with these components either, yet these exact things can and do happen to Wintel boxes. Or, just get Solaris/Intel if the situation is really that bad; that product nullifies any claims M$ makes right there.
Analyst reports have repeatedly raised the issue of reliability problems with Sun platforms, and have gone so far as to recommend that customers not use Sun servers in environments that require high availability.
And they've done the same for Windows. Much more often, in fact.
In one day alone, Dec. 7, 1999, a leading auction site suffered a system outage of more than three hours when both Sun E10000 servers running the site's back-end auction system failed. Meanwhile, the company's Web site front-end, running on a Windows NT®-based server farm, has provided continuous availability with no single point of failure.
One: both servers going down at once? That's basically a freak chance, and certainly can't be attributed to Sun.
Two: Two servers versus a whole farm? Gee, I wonder how stacked the deck was. I also notice they they only say the farm's has no single point of failure, implying that multiples could well have existed.
Multiple vendors offer availability guarantees for Windows platforms, including IBM, HP, Unisys, and Compaq.
Four vendors out of God only knows how many. Is that something to be proud of? Besides which, they're guaranteeing the hardware, not the software.
And now, on to the "Hype #1"...
Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide; Sun runs 19 percent.
45 percent of secure Web sites run on Windows; Sun runs 11 percent.
52 of the top 100 Internet shopping sites run on Windows.
57 percent of top business-to-business marketplaces run on Windows.
You can't rely on these numbers. I can find Webserver statistics out there that say anything you want them to say. I can find statistics saying that Linux leads the way in these. Hell, I've found Webserver stats saying Linux is first, Mac OS is second, all other Unices are third, and the Windows systems are dead last.
Dell, the largest e-business on the Internet, runs on Windows.
Easy enough to find out that one business runs on Windows. But on which scale are they measuring, such that Dell is the "largest"? I know of sites which do much more business than Dell; what do they run? M$ doesn't say. No doubt Dell is the largest E-business site that runs Windows. But is it the largest E-business site out there? I'd like to see some numbers asserting that claim, please.
Other major sites include Barnes & Noble, InfoSpace, Data Return, buy.com, monster.com, reel.com, bigcharts.com, Hotbot.com, Nordstrom's, realtor.com, eHome, MarthaStewart.com, cooking.com, and Compaq, to name a few.
Simple bandwagon advertising. The usual "everybody's doing it" idea. So what? Everybody once believed the Sun orbited the Earth, too.
Electrolux, Accounting.com, Pro2Net and thousands of other companies have switched their web sites from Sun platforms to Windows.
And thousands more have switched from Windows to Sun, Linux, and others. Hell; several major sites have even switched from Windows to MacOS. What's your point?
Linux's marketers are great. Even I was taken in by this load of bull for a moment before I stopped to think about their data. Problem is, most people don't stop to think, and that's why M$ has retained its popularity over the years.
You're forgetting that as manufacturing costs dropped, the retail price of the PSX also dropped. It had to, just to stay competitive.
Translation: Sony's still taking a loss on the hardware. They probably will with the PSX2, too.
The VGS swap trick isn't one people should be trying, because it has the potential to damage your CD-ROM drive. I'm not saying what it is, not fur security through obscutiry's sake (read my posting history and you'll know I'm against that myth) but because it's dangerous, and not something people should try. And you know that everyone with VGS is going to want to try this one, whether or not they want to actually pirate or not.
While, strictly speaking, the Connectix product enables users to play their PlayStation back-ups on their G3, we all know that this is not primarily the use to which it will be put.
Actually, Connectix has been extremely conscientious about antipiracy measures. A "modchip patch" exists for Version 1.0 of the software (which sucked compared to later versions) but no such patch exists for later versions of the software. I'm not even certain it can be done.
Also notable is that CVGS cannot use disk images; you must use CD's. This kills most pirates right there. Those who do have burners are harder to stop, but someone who really wants to pirate software is, simply put, going to do it; you can't stop those people. It's no easier with VGS than a "real" PSX.
Yes, there's still a VERY little-known disk-swap trick (and no, I won't say what it is) that you can do with VGS. You can also do this on a regular PSX, so there's no difference.
So this judge has just made it harder for a company engaged in lawful business to earn its justified profits. And why? To protect a principal.
I think you mean "principle." Last I checked there were no school directors involved here.
But you're wrong about one thing. Sony takes a loss on every console it sells. A rather substantial one at that. This is made up for by game sales, yes. But for every copy of VGS sold, Sony saves money. As much as it makes from more than ten individual non-Sony PSX games, or four Sony-made ones. In other words, each person has to do a lot of pirating before Sony takes a loss. It still earns its justified profits before them.
A quick cruise of Hotline or IRC shows the reality.
Yeah. So you should look at it yourself. PSX games are actually quite hard to get on Hotline or IRC. The process often involves bounces all over the Web, signing oneself up for porn lists and/or ad companies, finding passwords, and downloading obscenely huge files which still take hours to download over even the fastest connections. Of course you might be lucky enough to find a "free" server. In this case each image will take days, as the overwhelming traffic will slow the server to a crawl. These servers don't tend to carry many images (few sites do because of space demands) so you'll be bouncing back and forth between servers, repeating the process multiple times to get all the images you wanted. Oh, and since most PSX backup sites don't actually carry the emulators, once you have the images you need you have to go through the process again to find the emulator, and probably several more times to find a patch that works. And then, of course, the game still has to work with the emu.
My point: this isn't what you're making it out to be. Not at all.
They may be France's closest allies, but they're also pretty damn powerful enemies. If France tried to go to war with the US and the UK, they'd find the whole might of NATO turned against them. That would be outright suicide.
No, France can't take that route, and they know it. Frankly, the Airbus thing is probably just an excuse; they know they won't get their money back. What they're trying to do is set a precedent. Open the way for other nations to sue. And hopefully destroy Echelon in the process; knowing the US they'll destroy Echelon rather than hold onto it and destroy their reputation (sad to say, the only thing the U.S. government values more than keeping its power is keeping what little image it has left). This is a ploy to make the US and UK lose face, and I'm all for it if it'll hurt Echelon even a little bit.
We're just Slashdotters. When all's said and done, there's really nothing we can do about Echelon; we simply don't have the kind of power it takes. France has tons more than we do, but even it can't do much by itself. But if it takes a stand, other nations will too, and the combined power of several large nations can do something about Echelon.
I could go on for several more paragraphs extolling the guts France is showing by taking this move, but knowing my luck I'd only start a flamewar. So I'll just shut up now.
I couldn't have put it better myself.
By the way, before anyone tries to nail me on the RSA patent fiasco: yes, that too is an abuse of the patent system. Yes, it's a patent on a specific device, and not on public-key encryption in general. It's a different kind of abuse.
And just a word of warning: I'm about to rant big time here.
When R, S, and A (I can't remember their full names at the moment) first discovered their algorithm, they published it far and wide. Even now, you'll find the algorithm in any decent textbook on discrete mathematics and number theory (believe me, I have several). They in essence created their own "prior art." Most countries recognized this, which is why RSA isn't patented in most places. But when they applied for it several years later, some idiot in the US who probably never took a day of number theory in his (her?) life decided to grant them the patent anyway, even though they'd already put the thing out so widely that the patent was pointless (I thought you couldn't make patents retroactive like that anyway). That was seventeen years ago this September (when the patent finally expires). Seventeen years during which effective crypto couldn't be widely adopted in the US because of these restrictions. And if it can't be adopted in the US, it can't be adopted anywhere on the Net, simply because the US is such a large part of it that you can't reasonably exclude it. In other words, seventeen years that R, S, and A have set back Net security, all in the pursuit of The Almighty Buck.
And this is why I think R, S, and A are the scum of the computing universe, ten times worse than Bill Gates and M$ if not more. Had they set aside those concerns seventeen years ago, I'd consider it likely that crypto (with 17 years of an effective, patent-free algorithm) would already be too ubiquitous for anyone to stop it. The current restrictions never went into effect until RSA had been patented, so crypto would have beaten governments to the punch. Big Brother would have become truly pointless. We would have had the privacy that is dying now, because we would have had our crypto long before governments could have done a thing to stop it. These three people are very talented; I can't argue that. But they have so much to answer for that I don't think they'll ever be able to justify it.
The GPL does state that any patented code you use must be licensed free for everyone's use. So I'm afraid this does violate the GPL unless the author licenses the code for free to everyone.
But even still, three things about that.
1) Consider how recent it is. It certainly took the government there some time to get a clue. It's there, but it took long enough.
2) Look at the wording difference between the two. The CCRF guarantees the right. The U.S. Constitution guarantees that this right cannot be taken away, something which the Charter you've linked to does not do. It grants the right but does not guarantee it.
3) All right, the US is one of two nations. If anyone else can find another nation with a free-speech clause, I'm sure we'd all be glad to hear it. I stand by the assertion that while other nations might practice it for the time being, there are now only two nations which speficically grants that right, and is the only nation to actually guarantee it.
Most Slashdotters aren't against patents in general, per se. Patents are, generally speaking, Good Things, when applied correctly.
Consider the case of Stradivarius, the violin-maker. There were no patents at the time, so in order to be able to work as a violin-maker, he had no choice but to keep his methods secret. Alas, he took those secrets to the grave with him. To this day, in fact, even with all our modern technology, no one has ever made the equal of a Stradivarius violin, because no one knows how he did it. This is why you can still get them, but each one costs millions.
But there's a problem when you try and patent software. You see, Tesla didn't try and patent AC itself. If he had, then Slashdotters probably would have had problems. What Tesla patented was specific devices that use AC. Nothing wrong with that. But software patents take a different tack, They don't patent the device (the code, in this case); they try to patent the concepts behind it.
Consider the Imatec case. This might not be the best example, because the courts found that they didn't own the patents they claimed, but it still fits somewhat. Imatec sued Apple over ColorSync, claiming it violated Imatec's patents. What was the patent Imatec claimed to own? Not a patent on a specific color-matching system, but on the concept of color-matching in general.
This is supposed to be illegal by the regulations on patents, but thanks to the fact that software makers have obscene amounts of money to bribe out representatives with, they've gotten the patents upheld. Patents weren't meant for ideas, they were meant for implementations of those ideas.
Take Eli Whitney's cotton gin, for example. Had he used the same logic as most software manufacturers today, he would have instead tried to patent the concept of getting seeds out of raw cotton before processing it. Then he could have sued every plantation owner in the nation for using "his" process, even if they had never heard of the cotton gin, because they used other means of doing this. Granted, those "other means" were typically slaves, and far be it from me to say slavery is a Good Thing, but that hardly makes the situation I've stated here any better.
So give Slashdotters here a little credit. We're not against patents. We're against their misapplication and abuse, as software manufacturers do. I'd imagine most of us wouldn't have been against Amazon had they patented their system of one-click ordering, but instead they patented the very concept on one-click ordering, and that's where the patent runs afoul of us. Certainly a patent on an AC generator wouldn't.
I hope the employees go for a class-action lawsuit for privacy violations.
If a business wants to search its own computers for evidence that's, well, its business. The computers are its property, and it has the right to search it.
But going for employees' personal computers is way out of line. This is not cool. And this bit about abridging free speech to only poitical matters: no way. I'm sorry; the US government is bad in a lot of ways, but it's done one thing I'm proud of: it's the only nation with a free speech clause in its Constitution. And no, that doesn't mean just political matters. It means all speech. Whether or not a few fat-cats in penthouse corner offices like it. Whether or not a few crazed zealots like it. Whether or not perfectly reasonable, sane people like it. It doesn't matter. It's all speech.
Yeah, if you're using speech to commit a crime (like shouting "Fire!" in a theater) that's one thing; the right to swing my fist ends at the other man's nose. But this is hardly such a case. No crime was comitted, and no one has the right to cause such a gross privacy invasion on those grounds.
Come to think of it, is this even legal?
This does not block the howling horde from publishing lists of sites and keywords that they want people to never ever see.
A large part of the problem is that the zealots keep their lists secret. They claim all sorts of things, but think about it. What if there were a list of sites posted by the zealots? A list of "evil sites" that "decent people" must never see?
Doesn't that sound kind of like a McCarthy-esque blacklist? Or maybe a witch-hunt? A list of books to be burned, perhaps?
This is part of the thing; the zealots are getting away with this because they're managing to make themselves look good. Force them into a situation where they have no choice but to show themselves for what they really are, and their position will start to weaken. That's one part of the key.
People may be pretty lazy as a general rule, but most will fight when they see that their rights really are being taken away. People don't fight gun control because they don't see it as the taking away of any rights. It's also why many people don't fight things like flag-burning amendments. It's not too different here.
GNOME won for most improved is because it was so bad in the first place. Even with all of the supposed imporvements, it still can't touch KDE.
You know, you could try not flaming. Why can't Gnome touch KDE? And yes, Gnome was pretty bad to start. That's why it's called improvement.
KDE is more stable, has more features, and is overall a much better project, with nicer project leaders and a better toolkit.
One: you're dead wrong about stability. Compare the two, and it's a wash; both are pretty good but both still have a way to go.
Features: Pray tell, what does KDE have that Gnome doesn't?
Nicer project leaders: I'll grant, the KDE project leaders are nice. Even their responses to flames are nice (take it from someone who once flamed KWM and got called on it, by KWM's maintainer no less). But I don't see how Gnome's project leaders are any less nice. You'd better be ready with examples for this one...
Four: Better toolkit? Ever programmed in both of them? Unless you have, you have no right to compare.
We've been arguing with the zealots about censorship for ages. The zealots are, sad to say, currently winning. I've been looking at the arguments, though, and I think I'm beginning to get an idea as to why.
Simply put, we're going about this the wrong way. We're not arguing from the right angles. We talk about "adults must be able to view as they please" which the zealots view as "we want to see our pr0n and you can't stop us." They talk about "protecting the children"; there aren't many ways to argue against that without coming out looking like the scum of the Earth (which isn't exactly productive).
In other words, we need to revise our tactics. How many anime fans are on Slashdot? It might surprise most of us to know that at one point not too long ago, Japan went through similar media censorship troubles. Pick several anime at random and look through them; chances are you'll find ample evidence that the censorship advocates didn't succeed. Why didn't they succeed there?
Simply put, people came forward against censorship who were truly brilliant. They argued just as strongly and just as convincingly against censorship as our fundamentalist friends in the U.S. argue for it. We need to look at these, take our example from them. They managed to argue convincingly where we are failing. And what's more, they won.
Look into it. These are the sort of people we're going to need to emulate. Somehow, in some way, they managed to successfully argue against censorship, that is, they did it without looking as though they were doing something wrong that they didn't want criminalized. And I wish I had links to more information, but I don't right now. I'll post them as soon as I can find them.
Ever since Andover bought Slashdot, the quality of the articles and of the comments have dropped dramatically. Perfectly valid and interesting stories are being rejected in exchange for stories relating to Linux and Microsoft. There would be at least 100 comments in the 0 and -1 range.
:)
The only change I've noticed is that there've been far fewer quickies posted (which is a shame; I liked those). Whatever changes you may have noticed aren't Andover's fault anyway; they have no editorial control, remember?
The server's performance has also slowed. It would be frequently be down and would take a long time to get any sort of HTML back from them.
Here, you have a point. However, the reason behind that is the same reason for the increase in trolls. Slashdot's simply getting more famous, and because of that more "good" people are coming on, but so are more "bad" people. Slashdot is by definition Slashdotted every day, but as the crowds keep getting bigger even Slashdot's servers won't be able to hold up forever. That's when it's time to get new ones, and Slashdot will be getting those anyway.
Geez; eventually Slashdot will probably have to run on a Beofulf cluster of servers
If VA gives Slashdot some servers and some more bandwidth to host it on, and at the same time help with making the environment over here cleaner, then go ahead. Otherwise, I think both Andover and VA have overstated their welcome, and Slashdot should split off from the combined company and run indenpendently, just like the old days.
VA is giving Slashdot new servers, and I'd imagine more bandwidth too. But how can they make the envorioment cleaner? There are ways to do it, but no one here at Slashdot seems to want to take those steps.
And Slashdot is rune more or less independently anyway. Come to think of it, I can't figure out what Andover ever got out of the deal, besides being able to say that they'd bought Slashdot.
The argument against the first cause is if that if god caused that first thing, then god must be a remarkable and complex being. For the same reason that all the other things that are complex *must have had a cause, then *god* must have had a cause too!
Interesting argument, however there's a flaw.
If indeed the universe was created by God, then God must have existed before the universe did. Which also means that God must not be originally of this universe. Therefore, even if God did have a cause, such cause would have no meaning here. Therefore, "God" (or whatever name you choose to call it) still is the first cause of this universe, even by your definition.
There is absolutely no need to get personal here, but it seems like Apple is a company which has historically aimed its' products at the customers who like userfirendly interfaces, windows, buttons, mice, etc.
True, true. That's almost everyone, though.
They have not been known for their great performance.
Um... not quite. Ever since the PPC was invented, it's always been faster than whatever Intel-based chip was on the market at the time, assuming identical clockrate. The exception was the 601, because you couldn't get equal clockrates; the minimum speed for the 601 was 60 MHz; 486's never went that fast the the Pentium didn't come out for a few months after the 601 did. With the old 68K-based Macs, you have something (though again, the first Macs were faster than the first Intel-based machines, though Intel would catch up and then take the lead once the PC market began to explode).
Their latest product is the iMac.
Huh? Three years ago, their latest product was the iMac. They've only completely revamped their product line since then. And they've introduced products since the latest iMac revisions too (Revision D).
Why then go and attempt to build a high-performance machine?
Why not? Apple's got what it takes to do it. Besides which, people like high performance, especially gamers, and Apple's kind of trying to cater to the gamer market now. Note that I said kind of; Apple seems to have a love/hate relationship with gamers. It's well-known that back in the earliest years, Steve Jobs discouraged games for the Mac, because he didn't want it to be seen as a toy. If you ask me, he's still afraid of that, but he's starting to recognize that games are important for a platform's health. I just wish he'd be a bit more enthusiastic about it; as it is it's rather clear that the Apple talks about gaming only grudgingly. It would still rather not have games on the Mac platform but it sees them as a "necessary evil."
And yes, I do think that little hangup of Apple's is completely and totally insane.
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if this survey were totally fair and the results were as accurate as the best surverys are (I know it's neither, but hear me out here). That's part of the biggest problem, not necessarily with M$, but with computing in general today: people don't know what's going on.
MS has always been good at hiding the things they're really doing. You'd be surprised at just how few people really understand the issue (most Slashdotters do, I realize, but we're a comparatively tiny minority). The DOJ trials have helped raise awareness (I know several people who thought before the trial that I was just taking things a bit too far when I tried to explain about M$, but now they're quite firmly on our side). But they're not enough, what with Microsoft (who's in this for personal gain) and many Objectivists (most of whom don't yet seem to realize that the things M$ has done actually go against their philosophy, not in agreement with it) spreading FUD.
In the end, the only real way to fight M$ will be education (it's odd, just how many things can only be fought by that). That's also where the problem comes in; convicing people that Microsoft really isn't everything it claims to be is not an easy task. But I'd say it has to be done. It's hard to believe that a company that's only ever produced one decent program (Excel) and one decent hardware innovation (the mouse wheel, if that was even their idea to start with; I don't know) has risen to power. But if you don't know just how bad their software really is, or where the rest of their so-called "innovations" really came from, then it becomed easier, and that's what needs to change.
If they were giving away free music over the internet, they probably would own the scene, but how would that benefit them? They would be giving away intellectual property and getting nothing in return but maybe some advertising revenue.
Wow. Did you even read the rest of my post?
First, you're underestimating the power of ad revenue; keep in mind that entire commercial radio stations are run on nothing but that. Even television stations run on little else. However, that's not the main point.
Look again at what I said. Radio increases sales of music; it doesn't hinder it. Think about it: why do you normally buy CD's? Sure, some people follow certain artists, but even they buy other music as well. In most cases, it's because they hear a song they like over the radio, and want to buy the whole album for more. Not all returns are direct, you see. Look at concert tours. Those things are hideously expensive to finance. They aren't even really all that profitable. But they fuel record sales like you wouldn't believe, not to mention the merchandising deals, so in the end you get a net profit overall.
The RIAA's paranoia over their music being stolent is real. When faced with a choice between paying and just taking, a lot of people will just take.
Unfortunately, the reality of the situation proves you to be dead wrong. Given a choice, most people still buy the music, rather than just keep the MP3's. I've bought CD's after downloading tracks from them before myself.
And as time goes on, it's looking less and less like there is anything the RIAA can do to stop people from just taking.
Here, you have a point. However, RIAA hasn't been able to do anything about the situation for years.
The question now is, how can creators make a living from their intellectual property in a world where their work can be accessed by anyone, anytime, without paying them?
Creators, for the most part, already don't. You'd be surprised at how little artists actually see of the revenue generated by their albums; it's a tiny fraction (which I don't think is right, buw we're dealing with the way things are here, not the way they should be). The money is in distribution. For every dollar that an artist makes, distributors make ten, often more. Simply because the medium changes doesn't mean that everything goes down the tubes. You have to change to adapt to the current situation, or you'll be passed by. That's how the universe has worked for untold billions of years and I'll be damned if a few ethically-questionable record execs who mostly can't even carry a tune themselves are going to change that.
...but there's a problem with his approach. Namely, implementation. What's the best way to do it? The basics are already in place, perhaps, but work still needs to be done.
This would, in the end, be very similar to radio. Incidentally, adio is probably the single biggest contributor to CD saled out there, actually; I can think of one, maybe two CD's I've ever gotten for reasons other than the fact that I'd heard a song on the radio that I'd liked.
I pity RIAA more than anything else, to be honest. They're getting left behind in the course of technological evolution, and they're being held back by nothing but first paranoia (people will steal our music), then greed (let's stop that by making it pay-per-listen), then stupidity (yeah, the public will stand for that... sure). If RIAA had harnessed the power of MP3 and streaming when these technologies had first come out, they would have owned the scene by now. But they refused, and now they're paying the price. I'm not too certain they'll be able to recover from it, in fact.
But this guy gets it. He's on to something, even if he's forgotten some of the details. He'll never convince the RIAA that it'll work, but he has the right idea regardless.
The judge can talk all he wants, but this isn't justice (and frankly, I wonder how much DVD-CCA paid him for that decision). This one can go to the Supreme Court, and I hope it does.
And even if it doesn't, there are other completely legal ways to fight this...