Wow, how far from the bard that phrase has traveled. Discontentment indeed...
Life imitates art?
on
Titanic Saturn
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Code Of The LifeMaker, by James Hogan, is a SF novel about the first explorations of Titan--nitrogen atmosphere, methane seas, water-ice continents covered by nitrogenous-hydrocarbon soils. And, of course, its indigenous population of sentient, medieval robots, that destroy the first Terran probes and subsequently meet humans.
Hogan's a clunky, dated writer, but it's an entertaining read. And if Huygens mysteriously fails on the surface next year...
I'm pretty ignorant on this subject, but could you just cool the entire room? (Less heat, use A/C, whatever.) Lowering the ambient temp will certainly allow the system to shed heat more efficiently, which should mean less fan use.
Hey, during winter this solution might even save you money!
Bzzzzt! Wrong! Look at the computer that's used to control Morpheus' Nebuchaneezer (in first movie, anyway)--logo is taped over, but it's definitely a Powerbook.
Personally, I wouldn't mind a system where I would be charged $0.05 to read a particular article. I usually only read a few items each day.
The problem I see with this is it provides a huge financial incentive to run overwhelmingly "popular" articles--Scott/Laci Peterson, Condit, sharks, OJ, Olsons, et al--and makes those articles about quirky, unusual subjects that much harder to justify. (I know, I know, I'm elitist.) Sure, a paper like the NYT will still run them, but the incentive structure seems clear.
On the other hand, never again seeing a Maureen Dowd column does have its attractions.
I completely agree with the basic point, and how support for online content has to come from someplace, it's just worth keeping potential side effects in mind.
Probably two incentives. First, civic duty. The U.S. Treasury can make a pretty good argument to Adobe that,/. tinfoil-hat-types notwithstanding, the United States has a strong incentive to make life harder for counterfeiters. Photoshop is the primary tool worldwide for doing cool things like (as another poster here notes) changing banknote serial numbers.
Second, money. I sort of assume that Treasury paid for the time required to implement this feature.
No, Microsoft marketing doesn't write the law. But Microsoft legal does write the contract under which we use their software, and that--like it or not--has so far been enforceable in the courts. So I think "installed legally" is pretty accurate. That is, they can demand that you have only one serial number running at a time on a network.
But I agree, the situation you and I both describe in the above posts is stupid, and asinine of Microsoft. You'd think that the checking code would (for instance) allow for 5 minutes of use before giving a warning, then another 5 before demanding a shutdown. Since it doesn't, I'm comfortable, ethically, with using ipfw on it.
Finally: come on, it is somewhat about preventing piracy. Sure, they also would like to force users to buy multiple copies, but it's not like the piracy thing is complete fiction.
Gee, if you have Office X installed legally, that "finking" is not a problem.
And if you have it installed on your laptop and desktop which are occasionally on the LAN together (not a situation that makes me personally lose sleep over illegality), blocking a single port (udp 2222) via ipfw will take away the problem.
Or if you're a science kinda person...a lot of people in the sciences are giving this *nix-running-MS Office-with-no-viruses combination a pretty hard look.
If you're a bizness kinda person, however, particularly in a large organization, using a Mac is much more problematic. (Sometimes technically, usually bureaucratically.)
The flat-screen iMac is pinched, price/performance-wise. As you say, why not buy a lower-end G5, unless you're really into the desktop beauty factor? And if you don't have the cash, why not go down to the eMac? (For my money, the best value in Apple's entire lineup for the average consumer.)
Apple is trying to leverage "beauty" and "cool" quite a bit with the iMac, betting that consumers will pay for them. I'm not sure it's succeeding in this case.
This has been discussed previously on apple.slashdot. The short answer, as I remember, was yes, you can usually do one-by-one reloads of the appropriate libraries, drivers, etc., without a restart--but why would you go to that trouble? (Unless you're super-anal about your uptime.) Restarting is fast and easy.
Also, the installer doesn't force you to restart that instant; just hide it, go on working, and restart at your convenience.
Umm...as long as you only needed to run one application at a time; were comfortable hand-setting memory sizes for your important programs; had the skill to sort through system extensions and control panels to find problems; had no use for a command line; and didn't need multiple users or serious security on your machine.
Boy, after Apple's recent Firewire drive and FileVault data erasure issues, I think I'll let someone else go first. Let me know how things look, post-update, tomorrow morning...
Absolutely. Not only does this have nothing to do with MS in particular, it has nothing to do with Macs. He made a mistake, they came down hard, but entirely justifiably.
That said, best of luck to the blogger in getting a new job.
If only we had a word processor that would flag those kinds of things automatically. Acutally, why not correct them automatically, too? And maybe have some sort of animated character to interact with the user...yeah, right, THAT'S the ticket!
What about Omniweb? Now that it's using Apple's WebCore, it's faster, though not like Safari. Excellent cookies and animation control; I'm not sure if it does tabbed browsing.
Mossberg was pretty hard on Apple in the 90s, when they were turning out some real crap. You can certainly agree or disagree with his reviews, but I think implying that he's a "blind zealot" is inaccurate and unfair.
The question is not is it *yours* once bought, but is it *yours to copy* once bought?
And the argument (whether you agree with it or not) is that these two rights can no longer be conflated together, in an age of perfect and lossless copying.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a nuclear winter of discontentment
Wow, how far from the bard that phrase has traveled. Discontentment indeed...
Code Of The LifeMaker, by James Hogan, is a SF novel about the first explorations of Titan--nitrogen atmosphere, methane seas, water-ice continents covered by nitrogenous-hydrocarbon soils. And, of course, its indigenous population of sentient, medieval robots, that destroy the first Terran probes and subsequently meet humans.
Hogan's a clunky, dated writer, but it's an entertaining read. And if Huygens mysteriously fails on the surface next year...
I'm pretty ignorant on this subject, but could you just cool the entire room? (Less heat, use A/C, whatever.) Lowering the ambient temp will certainly allow the system to shed heat more efficiently, which should mean less fan use.
Hey, during winter this solution might even save you money!
Bzzzzt! Wrong! Look at the computer that's used to control Morpheus' Nebuchaneezer (in first movie, anyway)--logo is taped over, but it's definitely a Powerbook.
My last PC will be my last.
Certainly can't argue with that.
Personally, I wouldn't mind a system where I would be charged $0.05 to read a particular article. I usually only read a few items each day.
The problem I see with this is it provides a huge financial incentive to run overwhelmingly "popular" articles--Scott/Laci Peterson, Condit, sharks, OJ, Olsons, et al--and makes those articles about quirky, unusual subjects that much harder to justify. (I know, I know, I'm elitist.) Sure, a paper like the NYT will still run them, but the incentive structure seems clear.
On the other hand, never again seeing a Maureen Dowd column does have its attractions.
I completely agree with the basic point, and how support for online content has to come from someplace, it's just worth keeping potential side effects in mind.
Probably two incentives. First, civic duty. The U.S. Treasury can make a pretty good argument to Adobe that, /. tinfoil-hat-types notwithstanding, the United States has a strong incentive to make life harder for counterfeiters. Photoshop is the primary tool worldwide for doing cool things like (as another poster here notes) changing banknote serial numbers.
Second, money. I sort of assume that Treasury paid for the time required to implement this feature.
just think, string together half a dozen of these w/ a controller, and you'd have... iPod RAID!
Never, ever, have a song skip.
No, Microsoft marketing doesn't write the law. But Microsoft legal does write the contract under which we use their software, and that--like it or not--has so far been enforceable in the courts. So I think "installed legally" is pretty accurate. That is, they can demand that you have only one serial number running at a time on a network.
But I agree, the situation you and I both describe in the above posts is stupid, and asinine of Microsoft. You'd think that the checking code would (for instance) allow for 5 minutes of use before giving a warning, then another 5 before demanding a shutdown. Since it doesn't, I'm comfortable, ethically, with using ipfw on it.
Finally: come on, it is somewhat about preventing piracy. Sure, they also would like to force users to buy multiple copies, but it's not like the piracy thing is complete fiction.
Gee, if you have Office X installed legally, that "finking" is not a problem.
And if you have it installed on your laptop and desktop which are occasionally on the LAN together (not a situation that makes me personally lose sleep over illegality), blocking a single port (udp 2222) via ipfw will take away the problem.
Just wait until they try and pass them...will make childbirth seem easy.
which is fine if you're a artsy kinda person
Or if you're a science kinda person...a lot of people in the sciences are giving this *nix-running-MS Office-with-no-viruses combination a pretty hard look.
If you're a bizness kinda person, however, particularly in a large organization, using a Mac is much more problematic. (Sometimes technically, usually bureaucratically.)
The flat-screen iMac is pinched, price/performance-wise. As you say, why not buy a lower-end G5, unless you're really into the desktop beauty factor? And if you don't have the cash, why not go down to the eMac? (For my money, the best value in Apple's entire lineup for the average consumer.)
Apple is trying to leverage "beauty" and "cool" quite a bit with the iMac, betting that consumers will pay for them. I'm not sure it's succeeding in this case.
This has been discussed previously on apple.slashdot. The short answer, as I remember, was yes, you can usually do one-by-one reloads of the appropriate libraries, drivers, etc., without a restart--but why would you go to that trouble? (Unless you're super-anal about your uptime.) Restarting is fast and easy.
Also, the installer doesn't force you to restart that instant; just hide it, go on working, and restart at your convenience.
Mac OS 9 was a fast, strong OS
Umm...as long as you only needed to run one application at a time; were comfortable hand-setting memory sizes for your important programs; had the skill to sort through system extensions and control panels to find problems; had no use for a command line; and didn't need multiple users or serious security on your machine.
Given all those conditions, yes, 9 rocked.
Thanks; no thanks to the moderator who slapped a flamebait on my post above.
Boy, after Apple's recent Firewire drive and FileVault data erasure issues, I think I'll let someone else go first. Let me know how things look, post-update, tomorrow morning...
So, Dave, are you going to be pushing for one of these at UW?
Exactly. Maybe everyone should just calm down? Jeez.
Absolutely. Not only does this have nothing to do with MS in particular, it has nothing to do with Macs. He made a mistake, they came down hard, but entirely justifiably.
That said, best of luck to the blogger in getting a new job.
If only we had a word processor that would flag those kinds of things automatically. Acutally, why not correct them automatically, too? And maybe have some sort of animated character to interact with the user...yeah, right, THAT'S the ticket!
What about Omniweb? Now that it's using Apple's WebCore, it's faster, though not like Safari. Excellent cookies and animation control; I'm not sure if it does tabbed browsing.
As if you know what I read and don't read...
Mossberg was pretty hard on Apple in the 90s, when they were turning out some real crap. You can certainly agree or disagree with his reviews, but I think implying that he's a "blind zealot" is inaccurate and unfair.
The question is not is it *yours* once bought, but is it *yours to copy* once bought?
And the argument (whether you agree with it or not) is that these two rights can no longer be conflated together, in an age of perfect and lossless copying.