So if someone walks off with the payroll checks for a.com Internet startup, it's not really stealing because the checks would have bounced anyway?
IANAL, but I don't think that would be stealing if it was common knowledge that the checks were worthless (besides the paper they were printed on anyway). A check is a negotiable instrument. If there's no money in the account, it's non-negotiable. The only thing gained from taking the checks is the paper they're on.
I like the thing about how asking you if you want to put all your desktop items in a folder is "a great way to conserve system resources." Let's see, system resources: cycles, memory, drive space, and, oh yes, desktop space, precious desktop space!
That would've been funny if you knew what the hell you were talking about. Unfortunately, you obviously have no clue.
What do you think keeps track of those icons? What's that you say? Your mother? Nope, sorry...it's "cycles" and "memory".
Where do you think those icons are (permanently) stored? What? Your junk drawer? Bzzzzt. Wrong again, it's "drive space".
GDI relates to, basically, all the little widgets, icons, and fonts Windows (at least in Win9x, not sure how WinNT handles this...IIRC, this is a throwback to Win 3.1's paintbrushes and palettes, so NT may be different when not running WOWexec) has to keep track of. GDI is a major component of that number that you see called "System Resources".
Don't believe me? Clean boot your Win9x system and check your resources. Now delete all your icons from the Desktop. Now change to no wallpaper and a solid color background. Get rid of your Desktop theme and change to standard Windows fonts. Reboot and check those resources again. For most people, you would have just gained 1-2%.
I spent a week installing Win98 on an old P200 w/ no existing OS.
My god man, what the hell were you doing?!? Like others have said before, you either had bad hardware (hint: replace it or disable it) or crappy drivers added later (if the it's add-on drivers, then technically you did get Win98 installed, just not whatever hw device gave you fits.) If your drivers are that bad, I'd replace the hw as well!
I can install Win95/98/ME/NT/2K 6 times a day with nary a bat of the eye and time left over to read/.. True, that doesn't include setting up every imaginable now-defunct company's mysterious hardware or installing office apps, etc. (unless it's from an image), but for most common hw where drivers are included with the OS (a lot of them) or major manafacturer's hw, you should hardly ever have a problem....
This is part of the reason that modern day computers, while being so much faster then ten-year-old computers, don't actually feel or work much faster. And it's one of the reasons that an Amiga user sits down in front of a new computer that is ten to forty times as fast as his Amiga, and then complains that the newer faster computer is so darned slow.
I'll say it again. That's because people are asking their computers to do more. Don't believe me? Compare your PIII-500 with 128MB of RAM running Win2K Pro to your old 386/16 with 4MB of RAM. So, you're PIII feels slower huh? Well, there's an easy fix...
Simply put DOS and WordPerfect on you PIII, and Win2K on your 386. Now which is faster? Oh...but you miss Win2K? You miss Office 2K and Outlook reminding you of shit? Well...guess what, all that crap comes at a price. In this case, it's hardware. Deal with it.
I do remember the early days of computing. And a $1000 machine then got you lower on the relative hardware slope than a $1000 does today. There's no reason to complain here, folks. If you don't have the hardware and don't want to upgrade, don't run it.
You
re not losing out on anything here. It's a technology fact that as hardware power goes up, software requirements and features do as well. You can keep your 286/386/486 and run everything you ever ran on it before. Your 386/16 with 4MB of RAM will do everything just as well as it did in the 80's. You can run MS-DOS 5.0 with DOSShell and play PoliceQuest and Leisure Suit LArry all day long (and, if you want to browse the web, check out Arachne).
There must be some reason they don't include a customizable UI.
I've got a few reasons.
For the WinNT/2K kernel, they're mostly used in businesses. Personally, I'd rather my employees spend their time working (and reading/.) than trying out the newest l337 shell. Not to mention the huge ass-load of increased support costs, headaches, and frustrations.
For the Win9x kernel that are aimed at the home user, there's a few reasons there too. First, there's the matter of support (who here doesn't have to support friends and family from time to time? And of course, M$ itself does support, as do most PC OEMs...can you imagine the pain in the ass it would be with fully customizable UI's?). Second, there's plenty of shells out there (Litestep, DarkStep, WindowBlinds, Talisman (my favorite concept...it's all more or less HTML), etc) if you're good enough to work in a custom shell and support it yourself (as most/.'ers are), then you should be able to install/configure it yourself. I don't want every Joe Blow being able to bring up the new UI Customization Wizard and eff up their UI and then call me for help.
Desktop Themes is all the customization most people need or deserve....
That only applies to the Win9x kernel. The WinNT kernels have a more complicated hive structure, here's the breakdown for Win2K (NT is similar, but I think some files may be named differently or stored in a different place...)
The files are stored in C:\Winnt\system32\config.
DEFAULT=HKU\.Default
SAM=HKLM\SAM
SECURITY=HKLM\Security
SOFTWARE=HKLM\Software
SYSTEM=HKLM\System
There's also.log and.sav files (logs are changes to registry since last boot and.sav are last known goods).
Then, there's a file in C:\documents and settings\
ntuser.dat=HKCU
But, for even more registry goodness, I've got more for you! Check out the associations in the registry itself...
HKCU=ntuser.dat=HKU\[SID]
HKCR=HKLM\Software\Classes+HKCU\Software\Classes
HKCC=HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\HardwareProfile s\Current
That's all for Win2K Registry tutoring today folks. Tune in next week for to learn the reason why M$ came up with the registry to begin with! (Hint: I have no earthly idea...something about a non-relational, non-indexed, non-organized by rows and columns database was easier than a few plain-text.ini files....)
Does it finally do fixed positioning? This was promised for IE 5.5, but alas. Does IE6
Try NetCaptor and be done with opening up seperate windows for each IE incarnation. Right now I have 6 sites open in one window and can switch back and forth quite easily. And it uses roughly the same amount of memory as 1 IE window, and scales better for more sites.
Oh, but to answer your question, IE 6 on my Win2K system does open new windows in a logical order.
Could someone who knows more about accounting explain how a company that really lost millions of dollars can say they broke even, after adjusting the score to losing only $600,000?
Without a really close examination of the books, NOBODY knows. Publicly traded companies have to meet a truckload of regulations, but in the end, there is a lot of accounting chicanery going on.
Bull. Companies must file an annual report dictating their financial dealings every year to be publicly traded. This report will give you all the information you'll need (and more) to know about any "accounting chicanery" (barring outright fraud both by RedHat and whoever it's independent auditor is).
The likely difference that RedHat is citing are called "one-time expenses". These are usually acquisition costs (say, another company, or a patent folder, etc), lawsuits, natural disasters (could the recent stock market downturn be classified as one?), etc. Since these aren't likely to be repeated next (fiscal) year, they don't really have any bearing on RedHat's long-term financial situation, so they aren't factored into their operating income.
As for depreciation and whatnots, these are valid accounting practices. Let's say RedHat purchases a building for it do business out of. Does it make sense to expense the $10 million dollar building in the 1st quarter of 2001, and show no costs for it ever again? Of course not. They will continue to receive the benefit of that building for 10-25+ years, and so the building is depreciated over a larger time period and each year shows only a portion of the expense. If that wasn't the case, financial statements would be extremely cyclic as whenever large (expensive) assets were bought and/or sold, there would be a huge drop and/or gain in revenue.
That being said, there is window dressing that can be done to make your annual reports look more attractive. That's why you must take into account a few years worth of reports to note trends and if any accounting procedures were changed, you must wonder why. For instance, if RedHat was using stragiht-line depreciation last year, and now has changed to (IIRC) graduated depreciation, that could definitely affect it's financial statements. The responsible thing to do would be to point out the change in procedures, why it was made, and adjusted revenues for the previous years. I believe it's illegal to not point out the changes. It's up to whoever is analyzing the sheets to question why they did it, and how much better it made their statements look.
If combined with a limited free read of the website, then a $3/month charge or so may work out decently. Say, you're allowed to browse thru Salon (for instance) 1 time per IP address for 15 minutes. If you'd like to continue reading Salon, then it's $3 for the first month.
There are still problems, however. First is the issue of giving up a credit card number to an online merchant for regular billing. Due to recent news stories regarding Egghead.com and others, some people may not do this. Second is that it's still a hassle to have to pay before you play and to pull out the CC for just this one purchase. Perhaps a better (and novel) idea would be to combine online reading with offline billing. Say, you sign up for the website and fill in your address. They give you 2 days of a (perhaps limited) free read while your password is sent via snail mail to your address (to verify). Then they bill you, a la magazine subscription. This doesn't rquire you to use a CC, and meshes with a magazine's subscription service. And, a cancel service should be implemnted as well.
But, what I think would be an even better idea, would be to merge offline and online. Online websites have no real tangible good to sell. If Salon were to implement, say, a monthly offline issue with the best of the month's articles (and/or unique items), then that's something they could definitely charge a subscription fee for. And, of course, they could get increased ad revenue as well. Just like a offline company (NY Times, Consumer Reports, etc) builds a name for itself offline, then carries that over to an online presence, Salon could do it in reverse. And I think that may be a winner.
I personally find the/. ads not obtrusive in the least, so/. wouldn't get money from me
Aaaarrrggghhh!!! Don't let/. know that! Now we're going to start seeing Flash Ads before every comment! =)
I personally find/.'s ads very obtrusive, and am constantly finding myself clicking on them accidentally because they take up so much of my screen. Then, I always end up buying something just to get back to the original article. So,/., please stop using such obtrusive advertising. Thank you.
[whisper]See, now they won't change anything....hehe[/whisper]
Well, of course it won't look like that silly! Not on our crappy-assed 487 lines of horizontal resolution (with an eye-popping 60Hz interlaced refresh rate)!
[Note for/.'s rather large European community: Please substitute 576 lines of horizontal resolution and an eye-popping 50Hz (interlaced as well) refresh rate for your PAL-compliant TV sets]
The more we stay silent, the more the companies begin to realize they can shaft us even more, increase their margins, lower quality on the product while raising it on the ad, until they sell us an empty box and we're convinced we're leading a better life because we bought the 'product'.
You're under the assumption that consumers believe the ads are representative of the true product. Personally, if there are people out there who believe that a MickeyD's burger in a TV ad is the same as the one you're going to get for $0.99 at your local drive-thru, then I say they're idiots!
First off, the TV burger is probably dripping with WD-40 to keep it from drying out, and the bun is painted light brown to keep any white flour spots out of the view. The onions are styrofoam, and the tomatoes are plastic. The ketchup is equal parts red food coloring and petroleum jelly (real ketchup would become extemely watery under the hot lights), and the mustard is the same! Now, does anyone really want that at their local McDonald's? (Note: I have no idea how McDonald's photographs their burgers, the preceding was a fictional hypothetical example. I do know, however, that they use Elmer's white glue instead of milk in cereal commercials (real milk would have a slight blue tint)).
So, I say, nobody (except the marketing guys) are actually being fooled here. And, if you buy the empty box and are "convinced [you're] leading a better life because [you] bought the 'product'", then haven't you got what you paid for? A better life?
And if I say something illegal over the phone, can I then reach out and remove it from the memories of the people who heard it? Of course not, but by not exercising control over the contents, I think/. could be classifed as a public space/forum, where the user should be held solely responsible for their actions.
Scientology aside, you wouldn't want people posting say, scanned novels, or uuencoded warez, or anything else of the sort. Yet some moron probably will, and then the editors will have to remove it since the moron can't.
I would argue that allowing any and all copyrighted, offensive, tasteless, etc. material is a good thing. I would like to see anyone fit a uuencoded warez file, or a scanned novel, into a Slashdot comment. I would laugh my ass off. There's much easier ways to get copyrighted material than reading/.'s inane comments...=)
Seriously, though, in this instance, the Scientologist text was offered up as a "comment" on the article in question. I consider that fair use, and no different than reading it over the phone to somebody while your discussing Scientology. This was done in good faith as a way to share the information contained, not for profit or credit or any other ulterior motive. Copyright laws were designed to enable the creator to profit from his/her work...not to restrict the flow of information or to protect creator's from the public's critical eye.
If slashdot were able to defend any posting of copyrighted material using the common carrier defense, then pretty soon slashdot would become the next napster, because hey, there's nothing anyone can do about it. Someone has to be responsible.
You're right...someone does have to be responsible. That someone is you and me...not the people who simply have provided a forum for us to discuss in. You are responsible for your own actions. I think/. is a great example of a community. The moderation system allows us to filter out the lamest of the lame comments, and, in general, the signal to noise ratio is pretty good.
/. has never given in to demands to remove postings before, yet no one has tried to slip 650,000,000 comments of UUEncoded warez thru, why do you think someone would ever try? Isn't that what Usenet is for?
Actually, I believe TCP/IP predates the OSI model, and does not necessarily conform to it all that well. It can be squeezed to fit, but technically, it only covers 4 or 5 of the layers.
That being said, I believe that "OSI protocols" could be defined as network protocols that adhere to and are modeled after the OSI 7-layer model.
This is a notice to you, vheissu, that you are hereby in violation of the DMCA for attempting to reverse-engineer and decrypt the comments of Trollfeeder(tm).
Trollfeeder(tm)'s comments were obviously encrypted by the patented Yoda-speak(tm) method (US Patent 5,401,445 and 5,233,109, other patents pending), and your admitted use of the controversial and illegal "rot13" hacker method of decryption puts you in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, subsection (c), US Title XVII, article 8.
You are hereby ordered to pay resultant damages to our client, Trollfeeder(tm) and immediately remove any knowledge--prior, present, future, or otherwise--from your memory of Trollfeeder(tm)'s decrypted comments. You are also required to disclose any information of your "rot13" decryption technique, and are forbidden from posting or linking to any information detailing the uses of this method to decrypt our patented Yoda-speak(tm) algorithm.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
Sincerely,
the RIAA, the MPAA, and our Government Whores
I've got to say I admire that with one hand,/. removes the comment as asked. OTOH, however, they put a headline about it and link to even worse information about the Scientologists!
The comment itself probably didn't get anywhere near the exposure the headline and removal will get. So, while it may seem that our boys at/. have sold-out or are spineless, I see it as creative rebellion.
I am, however, slightly worried about the implications of editorial control over the forums now. Does this mean the common carrier defense is no longer valid? Personally, I don't think so, simply because in this case, they were alerted to the problem, then asked to remove. If they had noticed it themselves, then removed it, I'd be taking a different stand....
I think you both missed the point. The original poster's point was that if both Napster and GraceNote are databases with (essentially) the same info in them, why is one being sued by the RIAA and the other is being used to help the RIAA.
I'm not really sure what the hell your point was...
But, the real point is that Napster is not just a database of song names, and the database is not the problem. The problem is that this little database contains the links to thousands of MP3's.
In case people haven't realized it, the courts are trying to essentially remove all links to questionable information (remmeber 2600 and DeCSS?). They can't stop the masses from trading/sharing in it because there's too many to police. But, if they can stop the large sites and companies from linking to it, then they have effectively removed it from 95% of the WWW users.
Expect search engines to come under fire next, with orders to remove links to pages offering MP3 or similar downloads. Then, they may even go to Usenet and remove the offending binaries groups from the major ISP's Usenet servers (this might be a stretch, as most Usenet users are pretty tech-savvy and would be able to point to a new server pretty easily).
At the end, we'll be left with what we had before. Only underground sources will be available for use. You're going to have to know to go to Astalavista to get your cracks, or IRC for your warez and MP3's. And, then the mom-and-pop users won't know where to find these things, and the RIAA and MPAA folks will be happy, because they know "us-types" aren't going to buy their crap anyways.
Congress doesn't seek to protect freedom of speec/press, and for that matter, neither does the Constitution. The 1st Amendment is a very cleverly worded statement saying that the US Congress can't make a law restricting the freedom of speech or press.
Remember the context of the Bill of Rights. It was a concession to the States that the then-new federal government would behave itself. State congresses, your employer, your kids school, your university, the US Supreme Court, US Circuit Appeals court, etc. can (and in some instances do) make laws or regulations that restrict freedom of press/speech. (Note that the other half of law that's written in code (statutory) is case law (precedent). The various courts in the US all have the power to set precedents, and if it's not overturned by a higher court, it's usually followed by other courts.)
Ok, Kahuna. First off, a definition of perspective.
4a. The relationship of aspects of a subject to each other and to a whole
4b. Subjective evaluation of relative significance
4c. The ability to perceive things in their actual interrelations or comparative importance
I am not "laboring under the assumption that having worse examples out there makes a groups behaivior ok." I am simply looking at things in perspective (see definition above), and realizing (as any sane person would have to) that the Scientologist's "punishment by lawsuit" is a lot tamer than the cited religious groups historical persecutions. If you think otherwise, then I would suggest you rethink your perspective on this matter. Perspective is not, as you imply by your oh-so-witty baby's blood comment, an outright lie.
Hmmm.... my opinions are "spouting off on Jolt cola" (which I havn't drank since high school, does that crap still exist?) but you are an expert on moern western culture. How odd. have you talked to your shrink about this hypersensitivity where you assign extream emotions to anyone countering your opionon? It seems common on the net and usenet. maybe there's a paper in this.
No, your opinions aren't "spouting off on Jolt cola", but you so seem a bit of a troll. But, then again, I never did mind feeding an ugly troll. As for my "hypersensitivity where [I] assign extreme emotions", I don't think Jolt! cola use really classifies as an extreme emotion...
Anyway, if you are unaware of the use of lawsuits as harrasement, and actually think that their use by the sci cult is meant to "resolve differences of opinion" rather than bankrupt their critics, if you simply ignore the many stories of threats, blackmail and psychological abuse, well, what can I say. Live in your world, it sounds real nice there.
Yes, I'm aware of the use of lawsuits as harassment. Yes, I've been subject to them before. Do I think the Scientologist's lawyers feel they have a semi-decent case? Yes, since filing an obvious waste of time case could get them disbarred and fined. Do I think they should win their case? I have no idea, I haven't really studied the matter...that's what we have judges for.
As for "threats, blackmail, and psychological abuse", once again, in religious history perspective, that is perfectly common behaivior...and it can get much worse from there. Personally I don't care what the Scientologists, Christians, Muslims, Neo-Nazis, or any other cult (yes, they are all cults) does...they're all based on the same principles of cultism. And one is no better or worse than the other. Perhaps more obvious and/or more successful, but not any more right or wrong, or better. That's my perspective (in this case, you could translate that as point-of-view).
Well, it really deosn't matter. You see, when the RIAA agreed to Section 1008 of the Home Recording Act (in exchange, I might add, for large sums of money), they agreed that "no action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of
copyright" based on activities defined in the Act. Well, unfortunately, I believe that to allege/prove contributory or vicarious infringement, you must first allege/prove the infringement.
Assume for a moment that Napster's users' actions fall under Section 1008 protection. Well, now we can't say that Napster's users are infringing, because then we'd be alleging infringement (in essence, they are-since Section 1008 never says that it is now legal to do these things, it simply says that nobody can allege that these things are illegal). Since we now have no infringers, we can no longer have a contributory infringer, can we?
For those that still didn't get it, how's this for an explanation. Can you be charged with accessory to murder (not conspiracy to commit murder, as I'm sure someone will bring up) if nobody's dead? How about if we're not sure if anybody's dead? How about if somebody is dead, but they were killed in self-defense (therfore-no murder...)? I would say the answer to all those are 'no'.
Now, the only thorn is to prove that Napster's users do indeed fall under the scope of Section 1008. Well, the US Gov't, being the business whore that it is, feels they do not. Read their brief here. Unfortunately, they didn't pay their lawyers enough to write this brief, and I explain why here.
If you don't want to look, here's the basics. Npaster's software falls under the definition of "device", as does a PC's audio recording functions, as does a CD-R. Napster's users are making "digital musical recordings", you just have to think in terms of hard drive clusters, not the entire hard drive. Napster's users are engaged in noncommercial copying, not public distribution "by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or
lending". Napster is used to make "digital audio recordings" (copies of the music in the brief's own words). Napster's users can't be said to be infringing.
Do you really think Britain, the US, or any other country would "blow Sealand out of the water"? I think most of the UN nations would be aghast at this, not to mention civil protests, the field day at the President's office, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
DOS? Unstable? WTF are you talking about? DOS was the most stable OS MS ever produced.
IANAL, but I don't think that would be stealing if it was common knowledge that the checks were worthless (besides the paper they were printed on anyway). A check is a negotiable instrument. If there's no money in the account, it's non-negotiable. The only thing gained from taking the checks is the paper they're on.
That would've been funny if you knew what the hell you were talking about. Unfortunately, you obviously have no clue.
What do you think keeps track of those icons? What's that you say? Your mother? Nope, sorry...it's "cycles" and "memory".
Where do you think those icons are (permanently) stored? What? Your junk drawer? Bzzzzt. Wrong again, it's "drive space".
GDI relates to, basically, all the little widgets, icons, and fonts Windows (at least in Win9x, not sure how WinNT handles this...IIRC, this is a throwback to Win 3.1's paintbrushes and palettes, so NT may be different when not running WOWexec) has to keep track of. GDI is a major component of that number that you see called "System Resources".
Don't believe me? Clean boot your Win9x system and check your resources. Now delete all your icons from the Desktop. Now change to no wallpaper and a solid color background. Get rid of your Desktop theme and change to standard Windows fonts. Reboot and check those resources again. For most people, you would have just gained 1-2%.
My god man, what the hell were you doing?!? Like others have said before, you either had bad hardware (hint: replace it or disable it) or crappy drivers added later (if the it's add-on drivers, then technically you did get Win98 installed, just not whatever hw device gave you fits.) If your drivers are that bad, I'd replace the hw as well!
I can install Win95/98/ME/NT/2K 6 times a day with nary a bat of the eye and time left over to read /.. True, that doesn't include setting up every imaginable now-defunct company's mysterious hardware or installing office apps, etc. (unless it's from an image), but for most common hw where drivers are included with the OS (a lot of them) or major manafacturer's hw, you should hardly ever have a problem....
I'll say it again. That's because people are asking their computers to do more. Don't believe me? Compare your PIII-500 with 128MB of RAM running Win2K Pro to your old 386/16 with 4MB of RAM. So, you're PIII feels slower huh? Well, there's an easy fix...
Simply put DOS and WordPerfect on you PIII, and Win2K on your 386. Now which is faster? Oh...but you miss Win2K? You miss Office 2K and Outlook reminding you of shit? Well...guess what, all that crap comes at a price. In this case, it's hardware. Deal with it.
You re not losing out on anything here. It's a technology fact that as hardware power goes up, software requirements and features do as well. You can keep your 286/386/486 and run everything you ever ran on it before. Your 386/16 with 4MB of RAM will do everything just as well as it did in the 80's. You can run MS-DOS 5.0 with DOSShell and play PoliceQuest and Leisure Suit LArry all day long (and, if you want to browse the web, check out Arachne).
Disable unused services.
I've got a few reasons.
For the WinNT/2K kernel, they're mostly used in businesses. Personally, I'd rather my employees spend their time working (and reading /.) than trying out the newest l337 shell. Not to mention the huge ass-load of increased support costs, headaches, and frustrations.
For the Win9x kernel that are aimed at the home user, there's a few reasons there too. First, there's the matter of support (who here doesn't have to support friends and family from time to time? And of course, M$ itself does support, as do most PC OEMs...can you imagine the pain in the ass it would be with fully customizable UI's?). Second, there's plenty of shells out there (Litestep, DarkStep, WindowBlinds, Talisman (my favorite concept...it's all more or less HTML), etc) if you're good enough to work in a custom shell and support it yourself (as most /.'ers are), then you should be able to install/configure it yourself. I don't want every Joe Blow being able to bring up the new UI Customization Wizard and eff up their UI and then call me for help.
Desktop Themes is all the customization most people need or deserve....
The files are stored in C:\Winnt\system32\config. .log and .sav files (logs are changes to registry since last boot and .sav are last known goods).
DEFAULT=HKU\.Default
SAM=HKLM\SAM
SECURITY=HKLM\Security
SOFTWARE=HKLM\Software
SYSTEM=HKLM\System
There's also
Then, there's a file in C:\documents and settings\
ntuser.dat=HKCU
But, for even more registry goodness, I've got more for you! Check out the associations in the registry itself...
HKCC=HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\HardwareProfile s\Current
HKCU=ntuser.dat=HKU\[SID]
HKCR=HKLM\Software\Classes+HKCU\Software\Classes
That's all for Win2K Registry tutoring today folks. Tune in next week for to learn the reason why M$ came up with the registry to begin with! (Hint: I have no earthly idea...something about a non-relational, non-indexed, non-organized by rows and columns database was easier than a few plain-text .ini files....)
Try NetCaptor and be done with opening up seperate windows for each IE incarnation. Right now I have 6 sites open in one window and can switch back and forth quite easily. And it uses roughly the same amount of memory as 1 IE window, and scales better for more sites.
Oh, but to answer your question, IE 6 on my Win2K system does open new windows in a logical order.
Without a really close examination of the books, NOBODY knows. Publicly traded companies have to meet a truckload of regulations, but in the end, there is a lot of accounting chicanery going on.
Bull. Companies must file an annual report dictating their financial dealings every year to be publicly traded. This report will give you all the information you'll need (and more) to know about any "accounting chicanery" (barring outright fraud both by RedHat and whoever it's independent auditor is).
The likely difference that RedHat is citing are called "one-time expenses". These are usually acquisition costs (say, another company, or a patent folder, etc), lawsuits, natural disasters (could the recent stock market downturn be classified as one?), etc. Since these aren't likely to be repeated next (fiscal) year, they don't really have any bearing on RedHat's long-term financial situation, so they aren't factored into their operating income.
As for depreciation and whatnots, these are valid accounting practices. Let's say RedHat purchases a building for it do business out of. Does it make sense to expense the $10 million dollar building in the 1st quarter of 2001, and show no costs for it ever again? Of course not. They will continue to receive the benefit of that building for 10-25+ years, and so the building is depreciated over a larger time period and each year shows only a portion of the expense. If that wasn't the case, financial statements would be extremely cyclic as whenever large (expensive) assets were bought and/or sold, there would be a huge drop and/or gain in revenue.
That being said, there is window dressing that can be done to make your annual reports look more attractive. That's why you must take into account a few years worth of reports to note trends and if any accounting procedures were changed, you must wonder why. For instance, if RedHat was using stragiht-line depreciation last year, and now has changed to (IIRC) graduated depreciation, that could definitely affect it's financial statements. The responsible thing to do would be to point out the change in procedures, why it was made, and adjusted revenues for the previous years. I believe it's illegal to not point out the changes. It's up to whoever is analyzing the sheets to question why they did it, and how much better it made their statements look.
There are still problems, however. First is the issue of giving up a credit card number to an online merchant for regular billing. Due to recent news stories regarding Egghead.com and others, some people may not do this. Second is that it's still a hassle to have to pay before you play and to pull out the CC for just this one purchase. Perhaps a better (and novel) idea would be to combine online reading with offline billing. Say, you sign up for the website and fill in your address. They give you 2 days of a (perhaps limited) free read while your password is sent via snail mail to your address (to verify). Then they bill you, a la magazine subscription. This doesn't rquire you to use a CC, and meshes with a magazine's subscription service. And, a cancel service should be implemnted as well.
But, what I think would be an even better idea, would be to merge offline and online. Online websites have no real tangible good to sell. If Salon were to implement, say, a monthly offline issue with the best of the month's articles (and/or unique items), then that's something they could definitely charge a subscription fee for. And, of course, they could get increased ad revenue as well. Just like a offline company (NY Times, Consumer Reports, etc) builds a name for itself offline, then carries that over to an online presence, Salon could do it in reverse. And I think that may be a winner.
Aaaarrrggghhh!!! Don't let /. know that! Now we're going to start seeing Flash Ads before every comment! =)
I personally find /.'s ads very obtrusive, and am constantly finding myself clicking on them accidentally because they take up so much of my screen. Then, I always end up buying something just to get back to the original article. So, /., please stop using such obtrusive advertising. Thank you.
[whisper]See, now they won't change anything....hehe[/whisper]
[Note for /.'s rather large European community: Please substitute 576 lines of horizontal resolution and an eye-popping 50Hz (interlaced as well) refresh rate for your PAL-compliant TV sets]
Personally, I think that if Sony and Nintendo were to jump off cliffs, then, yes, it would be right for Microsoft to jump too. =)
You're under the assumption that consumers believe the ads are representative of the true product. Personally, if there are people out there who believe that a MickeyD's burger in a TV ad is the same as the one you're going to get for $0.99 at your local drive-thru, then I say they're idiots!
First off, the TV burger is probably dripping with WD-40 to keep it from drying out, and the bun is painted light brown to keep any white flour spots out of the view. The onions are styrofoam, and the tomatoes are plastic. The ketchup is equal parts red food coloring and petroleum jelly (real ketchup would become extemely watery under the hot lights), and the mustard is the same! Now, does anyone really want that at their local McDonald's? (Note: I have no idea how McDonald's photographs their burgers, the preceding was a fictional hypothetical example. I do know, however, that they use Elmer's white glue instead of milk in cereal commercials (real milk would have a slight blue tint)).
So, I say, nobody (except the marketing guys) are actually being fooled here. And, if you buy the empty box and are "convinced [you're] leading a better life because [you] bought the 'product'", then haven't you got what you paid for? A better life?
I would argue that allowing any and all copyrighted, offensive, tasteless, etc. material is a good thing. I would like to see anyone fit a uuencoded warez file, or a scanned novel, into a Slashdot comment. I would laugh my ass off. There's much easier ways to get copyrighted material than reading /.'s inane comments...=)
Seriously, though, in this instance, the Scientologist text was offered up as a "comment" on the article in question. I consider that fair use, and no different than reading it over the phone to somebody while your discussing Scientology. This was done in good faith as a way to share the information contained, not for profit or credit or any other ulterior motive. Copyright laws were designed to enable the creator to profit from his/her work...not to restrict the flow of information or to protect creator's from the public's critical eye.
You're right...someone does have to be responsible. That someone is you and me...not the people who simply have provided a forum for us to discuss in. You are responsible for your own actions. I think /. is a great example of a community. The moderation system allows us to filter out the lamest of the lame comments, and, in general, the signal to noise ratio is pretty good.
That being said, I believe that "OSI protocols" could be defined as network protocols that adhere to and are modeled after the OSI 7-layer model.
Trollfeeder(tm)'s comments were obviously encrypted by the patented Yoda-speak(tm) method (US Patent 5,401,445 and 5,233,109, other patents pending), and your admitted use of the controversial and illegal "rot13" hacker method of decryption puts you in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, subsection (c), US Title XVII, article 8.
You are hereby ordered to pay resultant damages to our client, Trollfeeder(tm) and immediately remove any knowledge--prior, present, future, or otherwise--from your memory of Trollfeeder(tm)'s decrypted comments. You are also required to disclose any information of your "rot13" decryption technique, and are forbidden from posting or linking to any information detailing the uses of this method to decrypt our patented Yoda-speak(tm) algorithm.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
Sincerely,
the RIAA, the MPAA, and our Government Whores
The comment itself probably didn't get anywhere near the exposure the headline and removal will get. So, while it may seem that our boys at /. have sold-out or are spineless, I see it as creative rebellion.
I am, however, slightly worried about the implications of editorial control over the forums now. Does this mean the common carrier defense is no longer valid? Personally, I don't think so, simply because in this case, they were alerted to the problem, then asked to remove. If they had noticed it themselves, then removed it, I'd be taking a different stand....
I'm not really sure what the hell your point was...
But, the real point is that Napster is not just a database of song names, and the database is not the problem. The problem is that this little database contains the links to thousands of MP3's.
In case people haven't realized it, the courts are trying to essentially remove all links to questionable information (remmeber 2600 and DeCSS?). They can't stop the masses from trading/sharing in it because there's too many to police. But, if they can stop the large sites and companies from linking to it, then they have effectively removed it from 95% of the WWW users.
Expect search engines to come under fire next, with orders to remove links to pages offering MP3 or similar downloads. Then, they may even go to Usenet and remove the offending binaries groups from the major ISP's Usenet servers (this might be a stretch, as most Usenet users are pretty tech-savvy and would be able to point to a new server pretty easily).
At the end, we'll be left with what we had before. Only underground sources will be available for use. You're going to have to know to go to Astalavista to get your cracks, or IRC for your warez and MP3's. And, then the mom-and-pop users won't know where to find these things, and the RIAA and MPAA folks will be happy, because they know "us-types" aren't going to buy their crap anyways.
Remember the context of the Bill of Rights. It was a concession to the States that the then-new federal government would behave itself. State congresses, your employer, your kids school, your university, the US Supreme Court, US Circuit Appeals court, etc. can (and in some instances do) make laws or regulations that restrict freedom of press/speech. (Note that the other half of law that's written in code (statutory) is case law (precedent). The various courts in the US all have the power to set precedents, and if it's not overturned by a higher court, it's usually followed by other courts.)
I am not "laboring under the assumption that having worse examples out there makes a groups behaivior ok." I am simply looking at things in perspective (see definition above), and realizing (as any sane person would have to) that the Scientologist's "punishment by lawsuit" is a lot tamer than the cited religious groups historical persecutions. If you think otherwise, then I would suggest you rethink your perspective on this matter. Perspective is not, as you imply by your oh-so-witty baby's blood comment, an outright lie.
Hmmm.... my opinions are "spouting off on Jolt cola" (which I havn't drank since high school, does that crap still exist?) but you are an expert on moern western culture. How odd. have you talked to your shrink about this hypersensitivity where you assign extream emotions to anyone countering your opionon? It seems common on the net and usenet. maybe there's a paper in this.
No, your opinions aren't "spouting off on Jolt cola", but you so seem a bit of a troll. But, then again, I never did mind feeding an ugly troll. As for my "hypersensitivity where [I] assign extreme emotions", I don't think Jolt! cola use really classifies as an extreme emotion...
Anyway, if you are unaware of the use of lawsuits as harrasement, and actually think that their use by the sci cult is meant to "resolve differences of opinion" rather than bankrupt their critics, if you simply ignore the many stories of threats, blackmail and psychological abuse, well, what can I say. Live in your world, it sounds real nice there.
Yes, I'm aware of the use of lawsuits as harassment. Yes, I've been subject to them before. Do I think the Scientologist's lawyers feel they have a semi-decent case? Yes, since filing an obvious waste of time case could get them disbarred and fined. Do I think they should win their case? I have no idea, I haven't really studied the matter...that's what we have judges for.
As for "threats, blackmail, and psychological abuse", once again, in religious history perspective, that is perfectly common behaivior...and it can get much worse from there. Personally I don't care what the Scientologists, Christians, Muslims, Neo-Nazis, or any other cult (yes, they are all cults) does...they're all based on the same principles of cultism. And one is no better or worse than the other. Perhaps more obvious and/or more successful, but not any more right or wrong, or better. That's my perspective (in this case, you could translate that as point-of-view).
Assume for a moment that Napster's users' actions fall under Section 1008 protection. Well, now we can't say that Napster's users are infringing, because then we'd be alleging infringement (in essence, they are-since Section 1008 never says that it is now legal to do these things, it simply says that nobody can allege that these things are illegal). Since we now have no infringers, we can no longer have a contributory infringer, can we?
For those that still didn't get it, how's this for an explanation. Can you be charged with accessory to murder (not conspiracy to commit murder, as I'm sure someone will bring up) if nobody's dead? How about if we're not sure if anybody's dead? How about if somebody is dead, but they were killed in self-defense (therfore-no murder...)? I would say the answer to all those are 'no'.
Now, the only thorn is to prove that Napster's users do indeed fall under the scope of Section 1008. Well, the US Gov't, being the business whore that it is, feels they do not. Read their brief here. Unfortunately, they didn't pay their lawyers enough to write this brief, and I explain why here.
If you don't want to look, here's the basics. Npaster's software falls under the definition of "device", as does a PC's audio recording functions, as does a CD-R. Napster's users are making "digital musical recordings", you just have to think in terms of hard drive clusters, not the entire hard drive. Napster's users are engaged in noncommercial copying, not public distribution "by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending". Napster is used to make "digital audio recordings" (copies of the music in the brief's own words). Napster's users can't be said to be infringing.
Do you really think Britain, the US, or any other country would "blow Sealand out of the water"? I think most of the UN nations would be aghast at this, not to mention civil protests, the field day at the President's office, etc.