I would really like to see a PDA with a high resolution screen (2.5" by 3.5"). Most people don't have any trouble seeing (and if they do, they can use glasses), so why not put in a 640x480, or 800x600 screen? Simply double scale the image for quick viewing (grabbing a phone number), but allow one to turn the unit to high-res landscape mode for (albeit eye squinting) viewing of spreadsheets, web sites, graphics, and such. I think it's more practical then scrolling around.
While I'm on the subject, I also really wish manufacturers would stop worrying so much about weight. I'd love a solid 16 or 20oz PDA with great battery life, lots of features and performance, and a high res screen, packed into a sturdy steel case. Besides, it feels more expensive.:)
Go ahead, I'm waiting. Go ahead. I want to hear the rationalizations again. Every time something like this comes up on Slashdot, it makes me angry to the very core of my being that there are people out there who think pornography is harmless.
I am harmed when I read about people who go to jail for no good reason. I know how you feel - seriously. I read an article about a teen that was jailed for "raping" his girlfriend (who was 15). He "raped" her because she's not allowed to consent to the activity, but they still wanted to have sex. She committed suicide after he was sentenced.
That sorta shit sends me spiraling into a sea of anger, hatred, and depression.
I dunno. I guess we can all get fucked up by different sorts of passive things. But to mask them instead of confronting them is a recipe for longterm disaster, IMHO.
Hi Ellen.. (moderators - I know this is offtopic but please don't kill my karma:)
I think you're right about the transmit and receive angles.. that throws a wrench into my theory.:)
But about my "all men are great before declaring war on humanity," it's actually something that I uttered on IRC while I was talking to my brother. I kind of snapped one night while reading something (I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something about a person who was imprisoned for something that I don't consider to be wrong). I'm one of those liberal anarchist apologists.:)
Anyway I always considered myself to be a good person.. but every time I read something about a grevious misjustice (guy thrown in jail for 5 years for smoking weed.. 15 year old thrown in jail for "abusing" 16 year old girlfriend (because consent is not possible when you're only 16. Ahem.) or intellectuals threatened or jailed for speaking their mind) I would feel this hate for the perpetrators (read: conservative/religious folks in a position of power). Anyway this one night I was talking casually (on IRC) to my bro about this article I was reading, and it eventually degenerated into a heated argument (only for the sake of argument; he agreed completely) and I started to imagine myself killing the judge.. the police officers.. and anyone involved with removing this person from society. I was totally convinced that I was right, and that the only way to stop the world from destroying itself was to kill all the people who aggressively hunt people they disagree with (whether or not the "criminals" were hurting anyone). This article really fucked me up at the time.
I was in this sort of quiet rage for about half an hour.. when suddenly I realized.. what the hell makes me so damned special? What differentiates me from the people I'm fantasizing about killing (while yelling fuck you agressor - you incarcerate innocent people, you die). It was like.. bam.. everything that I believed I was.. was.. not right.
I kinda dropped a level of conciousness at this point. I think this is what happens before people go insane.:) I don't remember what happened, but apparently I starting saying weird shit for like 15 minutes (that quotation is one of the things I said). When I came to, I was crying. Wierd night, to say the least.:)
I thought.. so this is how it happens.. If you're strong, when you go insane like this, you throw yourself out the window. If you're weak, you grab a shotgun and maul 100 innocent bystandards. If you're lucky like me, you realize that it's time to relax. The world is a fucked up place, and the best you can hope to do is talk.. tolerate.. and try to understand.
All people who declare war on humanity (as I did that night) are great. We all have good intentions. But we're always wrong. There is no way to win the war on humanity.
Anyway. That's the story behind my quotation.
There is no possibility a city will get fried by microwave energy. First of all, any system beaming energy from orbit would use a laser based targetting system. There would be an electrical cutoff if the laser failed to reach the satellite along the return path (which would presumably not be software controllable). So, if the microwave emitter lost the laser "signal" from earth (which would presumably only be receivable on a perpendicular to the ground) by drifting off course or because of a mechanical failure, the microwave emitter would shut down.
Second of all - the microwave beam would not be wide enough to cause mass destruction anyway. The waves would be directed so that it bathes a small target on the ground (less than 10 feet in diameter). So even if the guidance cutoff failed and the satellite were to hit a city with microwaves, the damage would be fairly localized (imagine a disaster the scale of a 747 crashing into a neighborhood - not a nuclear or biological weapon event).
All in all I think this will be an interesting project. Best of luck to them.
I see a lot of posts on here shouting "this is useless against piracy! You can't stop the copying of digital information! Pirates will find a way!"
People - please! This has nothing to do with piracy. It never has had anything to do with piracy. This is about control of the average viewer.
We (those of us who copy information without authorization of the copyright holder) are insignificant when compared with the bulk of average consumers. We could copy TV signals, DVDs, and MP3s until we turned collectively blue in the face, and it wouldn't even register on the revenue statement (neither figuratively or literally:).
Even the big boys out in Hong Kong represent little more than a nuisance to the content industry. There are millions - perhaps billions of consumers who "legitimately" buy content. And they are the ones that the content industry are hoping to affect.
By training the public that everything is licensed, that copyright is absolute, that encryption is necessary, they are setting the stage for increased profit. They need to subvert control over every aspect of use, not duplication, to further increase profit margins.
Think pay-per-view. Think subscription. Think replacement media. Think time/use limited content. These are cash cows - and the more the public gets wracked with "content protection is OUR RIGHT," the more they will believe it.
The good news - this doesn't affect us in the slightest. We're smart. We can override the use controls. We can hide.
The bad news - the rest of the world can't. The arts will suffer. Content will homogenize. Billionaires will become trillionaires.
I guess it's not all that bad.:) I mean - this is the way it has to be. Just ask the record industry.
The duplications and 'time-shifts' (read: piracy) are simply copying without the authorization.
While this is a true statement, it is not relevant. The supreme court of the United States has determined that authorization of the copyright holder is not required to legally timeshift material.
It's the same situation as illegally copying mp3s or downloading movies off of gnutella.
No, it isn't. It's different because it is not illegal (see above).
It's illegal, and it's robbing the ones who created it by allowing you to sit around and watch it without even looking at their ads--their one source of lifeblood. How would you like it if your source of income was subverted based solely on the cry "Information wants to be free!!!"?
Again - it is the supreme court which ultimately determines the legality of doing things, not you. While it may be "robbing the ones who created it" in your view, that view is not similarly held by the court.
On a more personal note, I would not appreciate it if my income was subverted based solely on the cry "information wants to be free," but rather than fighting a losing battle agains the supreme court, I would modify my business plan to avoid this "subversion of income."
I didn't realize that it had been defeated in the US. I was talking to a Canadian lawyer about it, and he was the one who implanted these strange ideas in my head.:)
Amazing what they can get away with, these days.:/
To go beyond this, another interesting thing to contemplate is this: once you have purchased a software package, you have purchased the right to execute the code. While this right is not inalienable (it can be removed with a contract), you did not sign or agree to any contract when you purchased the software. The window that appears (which is NOT a contract) is merely a bug in the software preventing you from entering.
It would be nice to see this argued in court. It would put to an end all of the aggressive behaviour on part of the BSA, at least.
In summary - In order for a contract to override the rights granted during the purchase of copyrighted material, the contract must be signed by both parties at the time of purchase (not afterward).
All things considered, I still think living in China would be a better long-term decision than living in the US. With regards to information freedom, China can only get better, while the US can only, and is, getting worse.
When will they converge? And when will China become a state more free?
While I was reading the letter I thought up a scheme which would prove interesting to watch unfold in court.
What if someone were to change all of the tabs in some musical way? Like.. shift all of the notes up or down, add in new notes (according to a map), and change the tempo. In other words, do enough to the song so that if played, it wouldn't sound much like the original. Would the court find these tabs to be in violation? What if there were a utility available to convert the tab back to the one the author intended? Would this utility become a circumvention utility?
How close does a song have to be to the original before it can be declared the original?
How would you design a filesystem for a storage device with 1GB or more? It seems to me that the directory tree concept would be unwieldy, too much stuff would get lost.
Above 1 MB, with multiple processes interacting on the data, it would seem to me that the storage device would start to look like a massive collection of cassettes and tape reels. Perhaps the racks and index card concept could be used.
I found it to be thought provoking - kind of a tounge-in-cheek way of looking at a very serious problem. It's a hell of a lot more insightful then what I get from mainstream media.
I, for one, would *instantly* be sent to jail for the crimes I committed this weekend, if the cost of enforcing the law on me were low enough. Luckily, the cost of enforcing the law to such a degree that I could be caught smokin some weed is high enough that I was able to commit my criminal offense, and get away with it.
The cheaper and easier it gets to enforce the law, the more likely it is that I'll get arrested - and that sucks!
Shit. My illegal encryption software could bite me a year or two. Hell - I've even sent it to friends! And let me tell you... my mp3 collection... that's worth a beheading.
Maybe I should be concerned about the 18km/h over I was doing on the freeway today. Good thing there's no chip in my car!
Oh.. and then there's that girl.. she must have been 16 or 17.. that I was grindin up on in that club on Friday. I'm sure there's some religious fuckwit loser conservative mid-40's type that would like to see me electrocuted for that.
It amazes me the lengths people will go to try and convice us that Linux (or Redhat or whatever its called these days) is a viable gaming platform. Time
and again the general public has voted with its wallets and bought Windows ME as a games platform or a playstation/dreamcast etc.
Why do Linux people continue with the fantasy that their operating system is anything other than a tool for elitist, arrogant techies (nost of whom long for
the days when computers were hard to use, and resent Microsoft for making computers easy for the man in the street).
First of all: take a deep breath. Relax.
I don't think Loki's (or anyone else's) intention is to make Linux a killer gaming platform. I think they're trying to make a few bucks selling games to Linux users.
I am a Linux user. I use Linux (and other Unix flavors) exclusively. I do so not because of arrogance or a love of things complicated, but because for what I do, it works very well. Sure - occasionally I need to access a Windows application, but I do that through Citrix, or VMware. The other 99% of the time, when I'm irc'ing, web browsing, playing mp3's, playing games, administrating servers, writing documentation, or just screwing around, Windows is a hinderance to my style of computing.
I am a member of the market that Loki is targetting. If they create a new market at the same time - great! That would be awesome. If not, there are still (in theory) enough users like me to support their development costs (and take home a nice piece of change).
My $0.02.
In my experience, its been much easier to get something to work on my Windows box than on a Linux box.
That's great, if you have a Windows box.
I don't. I can't stand it. This is not a religious thing or due to a lack of knowledge; I've been using my Unix (and Linux) workstations for longer than DOS has been around, and I'm very comfortable with them. The way I use computers causes major headaches on PCs. I can't explain it.:)
I'm glad that these games have been added to the collection of games that I'm able to play. I'm ready to order Tribes II, anyway.
The long-lived "behemoth" model of programming hit a brick wall in the late 80's/early 90's. Applications were getting so large that any number programmers could not handle the complexity of a single project.
It's not a difficult question. I believe IBM answered it years ago with Smalltalk and OS/2.
... the concept is not new, but the
implementation [innovation] that Microsoft chose was very innovative.
This doesn't make any sense. Basic implementation of an existing idea is not, in and of itself, innovative. And compared with DDE, OLE is nothing particularly special. (DDE?:)
This is only one
example of where Microsoft has pushed technology forward, because it was a requirement to continue developing ever-more complex software.
I'm sorry, but it is thoroughly unconvincing (to me, at least).
Microsoft was the first company to implement desktop publishing software on PC's that could create professional-looking
publications easily with little-to-no effort.
Wordperfect?
They have rid PC's of arcane keyboard commands and have made software easier to use for years.
Sigh.
In my
opinion, this is where they excel and where they continue to innovate.
They do innovate. Don't get me wrong; they've done some neat things that other people haven't thought of. But my point was that the majority of their products are not built on innovation; they are simply reimplmentations. This isn't really a weakness here. It's just a fact.
Last time I checked, Microsoft has been innovating in many, many areas (notably Outlook and COM+). Let us not forget that they were first to bring
professional quality desktop publishing and ease of use to the PC either.
Gotta take issue with you there, friend.
Microsoft did not "innovate." Microsoft reimplemented and marketed. It's still good; the world might be in sorry shape if they didn't. In general, Microsoft products are decent implementations - consistent and well marketed - but not innovative.
There were many professional quality desktop publishing products for PCs before m$ came along (where have you been for the last 20 years?).
As a client OS, Linux pales in comparison to the professional quality of products Microsoft offers.
It all depends on what you do with your client. If you develope code, administrate servers, play mp3s, surf content oriented web sites, and talk on IRC, Unix may be a better client OS. For more common applications, you do have a point.
... why are we so hell-bent on abandoning our children to the adult world as soon as possible?
What's wrong with the "adult" world?
We
try children in adult courts
Now this is a good point. The double standard is apalling. Kids can't drive, smoke, drink, practice their own religion, choose to move out on their own, choose to have sex, or speak their minds. They are not equal citizens. Yet, they can be held accountable for their actions. They have the responsibility, but not the rights. That's a shitty contract. And you're telling me the government wants to protect the children, and we aren't letting them?
Why must children in public libraries be able to view every piece of filth availible?
To gain a little perspective. *shrug*
And because there's nothing we can do to stop it (short of assigning an adult to sit with the child - something rather rare these days, or so the slashdot crew would assume.;)
The sooner kids begin their education on the "real world" (what you refer to as the adult world) the more happy and successful they tend to be in it (as far as I've observed, anyway). Blindly shielding them from reality does nothing to further their development.
Until then, children need to be protected, though, not used as pawns in a libertarian game.
You have way to much faith in government. Better watch it. They might take advantage of you.:)
Dude.. the frustrating part is that all of this legislation doesn't just hurt you! In the end, it also hurts the very children they're trying to "protect."
In order for kids to learn to survive on their own, they must get hurt a little. Teaching them that the world is unconditionally a safe, clothed, happy, easy place is failing them in our duties as teachers, parents, and adults.
Although my kids might hate being occasionally exposed to reality (and learning from their mistakes), I'd rather them have a "tough life" for 5 years, then 50 years.
But, for the purpose of cryptography, what's important is perspective.
That is, from any given perspective (ie: the user which is trying to predict the next number in a sequence), if the next number cannot be determined (because information which led to that number is unavailable, such as seed generated from keyboard interrupts), the data can be considered truly random.
I mean - technically nothing can ever be absolute (we can't be sure 1+1==2; we've just observed it throughout all of recorded history) so long as time is not infinite (which is also difficult to prove;). So, if we are going to round up probabilities to absolutes, randomness is best considered from a specific perspective (in which case we can say, for someone, "this data is truly random").
Slashdot Mirror
I would really like to see a PDA with a high resolution screen (2.5" by 3.5"). Most people don't have any trouble seeing (and if they do, they can use glasses), so why not put in a 640x480, or 800x600 screen? Simply double scale the image for quick viewing (grabbing a phone number), but allow one to turn the unit to high-res landscape mode for (albeit eye squinting) viewing of spreadsheets, web sites, graphics, and such. I think it's more practical then scrolling around.
While I'm on the subject, I also really wish manufacturers would stop worrying so much about weight. I'd love a solid 16 or 20oz PDA with great battery life, lots of features and performance, and a high res screen, packed into a sturdy steel case. Besides, it feels more expensive. :)
--
All men are great
before declaring war
Who naturally feels the need or desire to kill other humans? Serial killers, I guess. But I don't think I'd go as far as to call murder "natural."
--
All men are great
before declaring war
I am harmed when I read about people who go to jail for no good reason. I know how you feel - seriously. I read an article about a teen that was jailed for "raping" his girlfriend (who was 15). He "raped" her because she's not allowed to consent to the activity, but they still wanted to have sex. She committed suicide after he was sentenced.
That sorta shit sends me spiraling into a sea of anger, hatred, and depression.
I dunno. I guess we can all get fucked up by different sorts of passive things. But to mask them instead of confronting them is a recipe for longterm disaster, IMHO.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
Let me get this straight. Driving to work in your SUV is natural. War is natural. McDonalds is natural.
News @ 11 is natural (as is the TV on which you watch it). Hockey, pro wrestling, robocop, and schools are natural.
But nudity, and the human mating process, is harmful.
Remarkable.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
I think you're right about the transmit and receive angles.. that throws a wrench into my theory. :)
But about my "all men are great before declaring war on humanity," it's actually something that I uttered on IRC while I was talking to my brother. I kind of snapped one night while reading something (I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something about a person who was imprisoned for something that I don't consider to be wrong). I'm one of those liberal anarchist apologists. :)
Anyway I always considered myself to be a good person.. but every time I read something about a grevious misjustice (guy thrown in jail for 5 years for smoking weed.. 15 year old thrown in jail for "abusing" 16 year old girlfriend (because consent is not possible when you're only 16. Ahem.) or intellectuals threatened or jailed for speaking their mind) I would feel this hate for the perpetrators (read: conservative/religious folks in a position of power). Anyway this one night I was talking casually (on IRC) to my bro about this article I was reading, and it eventually degenerated into a heated argument (only for the sake of argument; he agreed completely) and I started to imagine myself killing the judge.. the police officers.. and anyone involved with removing this person from society. I was totally convinced that I was right, and that the only way to stop the world from destroying itself was to kill all the people who aggressively hunt people they disagree with (whether or not the "criminals" were hurting anyone). This article really fucked me up at the time.
I was in this sort of quiet rage for about half an hour.. when suddenly I realized.. what the hell makes me so damned special? What differentiates me from the people I'm fantasizing about killing (while yelling fuck you agressor - you incarcerate innocent people, you die). It was like.. bam.. everything that I believed I was.. was.. not right.
I kinda dropped a level of conciousness at this point. I think this is what happens before people go insane. :) I don't remember what happened, but apparently I starting saying weird shit for like 15 minutes (that quotation is one of the things I said). When I came to, I was crying. Wierd night, to say the least. :)
I thought.. so this is how it happens.. If you're strong, when you go insane like this, you throw yourself out the window. If you're weak, you grab a shotgun and maul 100 innocent bystandards. If you're lucky like me, you realize that it's time to relax. The world is a fucked up place, and the best you can hope to do is talk.. tolerate.. and try to understand.
All people who declare war on humanity (as I did that night) are great. We all have good intentions. But we're always wrong. There is no way to win the war on humanity. Anyway. That's the story behind my quotation.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
There is no possibility a city will get fried by microwave energy. First of all, any system beaming energy from orbit would use a laser based targetting system. There would be an electrical cutoff if the laser failed to reach the satellite along the return path (which would presumably not be software controllable). So, if the microwave emitter lost the laser "signal" from earth (which would presumably only be receivable on a perpendicular to the ground) by drifting off course or because of a mechanical failure, the microwave emitter would shut down.
Second of all - the microwave beam would not be wide enough to cause mass destruction anyway. The waves would be directed so that it bathes a small target on the ground (less than 10 feet in diameter). So even if the guidance cutoff failed and the satellite were to hit a city with microwaves, the damage would be fairly localized (imagine a disaster the scale of a 747 crashing into a neighborhood - not a nuclear or biological weapon event).
All in all I think this will be an interesting project. Best of luck to them.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
People - please! This has nothing to do with piracy. It never has had anything to do with piracy. This is about control of the average viewer.
We (those of us who copy information without authorization of the copyright holder) are insignificant when compared with the bulk of average consumers. We could copy TV signals, DVDs, and MP3s until we turned collectively blue in the face, and it wouldn't even register on the revenue statement (neither figuratively or literally :).
Even the big boys out in Hong Kong represent little more than a nuisance to the content industry. There are millions - perhaps billions of consumers who "legitimately" buy content. And they are the ones that the content industry are hoping to affect.
By training the public that everything is licensed, that copyright is absolute, that encryption is necessary, they are setting the stage for increased profit. They need to subvert control over every aspect of use, not duplication, to further increase profit margins.
Think pay-per-view. Think subscription. Think replacement media. Think time/use limited content. These are cash cows - and the more the public gets wracked with "content protection is OUR RIGHT," the more they will believe it.
The good news - this doesn't affect us in the slightest. We're smart. We can override the use controls. We can hide.
The bad news - the rest of the world can't. The arts will suffer. Content will homogenize. Billionaires will become trillionaires.
I guess it's not all that bad. :) I mean - this is the way it has to be. Just ask the record industry.
Sigh.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
While this is a true statement, it is not relevant. The supreme court of the United States has determined that authorization of the copyright holder is not required to legally timeshift material.
It's the same situation as illegally copying mp3s or downloading movies off of gnutella.
No, it isn't. It's different because it is not illegal (see above).
It's illegal, and it's robbing the ones who created it by allowing you to sit around and watch it without even looking at their ads--their one source of lifeblood. How would you like it if your source of income was subverted based solely on the cry "Information wants to be free!!!"?
Again - it is the supreme court which ultimately determines the legality of doing things, not you. While it may be "robbing the ones who created it" in your view, that view is not similarly held by the court.
On a more personal note, I would not appreciate it if my income was subverted based solely on the cry "information wants to be free," but rather than fighting a losing battle agains the supreme court, I would modify my business plan to avoid this "subversion of income."
Hope this helps to clear things up.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
I didn't realize that it had been defeated in the US. I was talking to a Canadian lawyer about it, and he was the one who implanted these strange ideas in my head. :)
Amazing what they can get away with, these days. :/
--
All men are great
before declaring war
It would be nice to see this argued in court. It would put to an end all of the aggressive behaviour on part of the BSA, at least.
In summary - In order for a contract to override the rights granted during the purchase of copyrighted material, the contract must be signed by both parties at the time of purchase (not afterward).
--
All men are great
before declaring war
When will they converge? And when will China become a state more free?
--
All men are great
before declaring war
What if someone were to change all of the tabs in some musical way? Like.. shift all of the notes up or down, add in new notes (according to a map), and change the tempo. In other words, do enough to the song so that if played, it wouldn't sound much like the original. Would the court find these tabs to be in violation? What if there were a utility available to convert the tab back to the one the author intended? Would this utility become a circumvention utility?
How close does a song have to be to the original before it can be declared the original?
--
All men are great
before declaring war
Above 1 MB, with multiple processes interacting on the data, it would seem to me that the storage device would start to look like a massive collection of cassettes and tape reels. Perhaps the racks and index card concept could be used.
Look to the past, my friend. :)
--
All men are great
before declaring war
--
All men are great
before declaring war
I don't think it was intended to be.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
Ah. But what if you have done something wrong?
I, for one, would *instantly* be sent to jail for the crimes I committed this weekend, if the cost of enforcing the law on me were low enough. Luckily, the cost of enforcing the law to such a degree that I could be caught smokin some weed is high enough that I was able to commit my criminal offense, and get away with it.
The cheaper and easier it gets to enforce the law, the more likely it is that I'll get arrested - and that sucks!
Shit. My illegal encryption software could bite me a year or two. Hell - I've even sent it to friends! And let me tell you... my mp3 collection... that's worth a beheading.
Maybe I should be concerned about the 18km/h over I was doing on the freeway today. Good thing there's no chip in my car!
Oh.. and then there's that girl.. she must have been 16 or 17.. that I was grindin up on in that club on Friday. I'm sure there's some religious fuckwit loser conservative mid-40's type that would like to see me electrocuted for that.
I hope you get my point.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
Why do Linux people continue with the fantasy that their operating system is anything other than a tool for elitist, arrogant techies (nost of whom long for the days when computers were hard to use, and resent Microsoft for making computers easy for the man in the street).
First of all: take a deep breath. Relax.
I don't think Loki's (or anyone else's) intention is to make Linux a killer gaming platform. I think they're trying to make a few bucks selling games to Linux users.
I am a Linux user. I use Linux (and other Unix flavors) exclusively. I do so not because of arrogance or a love of things complicated, but because for what I do, it works very well. Sure - occasionally I need to access a Windows application, but I do that through Citrix, or VMware. The other 99% of the time, when I'm irc'ing, web browsing, playing mp3's, playing games, administrating servers, writing documentation, or just screwing around, Windows is a hinderance to my style of computing.
I am a member of the market that Loki is targetting. If they create a new market at the same time - great! That would be awesome. If not, there are still (in theory) enough users like me to support their development costs (and take home a nice piece of change). My $0.02.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
That's great, if you have a Windows box.
I don't. I can't stand it. This is not a religious thing or due to a lack of knowledge; I've been using my Unix (and Linux) workstations for longer than DOS has been around, and I'm very comfortable with them. The way I use computers causes major headaches on PCs. I can't explain it. :)
I'm glad that these games have been added to the collection of games that I'm able to play. I'm ready to order Tribes II, anyway.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
MVS (now OS/390)
BSD
SunOS / AIX / HPuX
Wordperfect
Autocad
Please.
Microsoft's answer was OLE.
It's not a difficult question. I believe IBM answered it years ago with Smalltalk and OS/2.
This doesn't make any sense. Basic implementation of an existing idea is not, in and of itself, innovative. And compared with DDE, OLE is nothing particularly special. (DDE? :)
This is only one example of where Microsoft has pushed technology forward, because it was a requirement to continue developing ever-more complex software.
I'm sorry, but it is thoroughly unconvincing (to me, at least).
Microsoft was the first company to implement desktop publishing software on PC's that could create professional-looking publications easily with little-to-no effort.
Wordperfect?
They have rid PC's of arcane keyboard commands and have made software easier to use for years.
Sigh.
In my opinion, this is where they excel and where they continue to innovate.
They do innovate. Don't get me wrong; they've done some neat things that other people haven't thought of. But my point was that the majority of their products are not built on innovation; they are simply reimplmentations. This isn't really a weakness here. It's just a fact.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
Gotta take issue with you there, friend.
Microsoft did not "innovate." Microsoft reimplemented and marketed. It's still good; the world might be in sorry shape if they didn't. In general, Microsoft products are decent implementations - consistent and well marketed - but not innovative.
There were many professional quality desktop publishing products for PCs before m$ came along (where have you been for the last 20 years?).
As a client OS, Linux pales in comparison to the professional quality of products Microsoft offers.
It all depends on what you do with your client. If you develope code, administrate servers, play mp3s, surf content oriented web sites, and talk on IRC, Unix may be a better client OS. For more common applications, you do have a point.
My $0.02.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
--
All men are great
before declaring war
What's wrong with the "adult" world?
We try children in adult courts
Now this is a good point. The double standard is apalling. Kids can't drive, smoke, drink, practice their own religion, choose to move out on their own, choose to have sex, or speak their minds. They are not equal citizens. Yet, they can be held accountable for their actions. They have the responsibility, but not the rights. That's a shitty contract. And you're telling me the government wants to protect the children, and we aren't letting them?
Why must children in public libraries be able to view every piece of filth availible?
To gain a little perspective. *shrug*
And because there's nothing we can do to stop it (short of assigning an adult to sit with the child - something rather rare these days, or so the slashdot crew would assume. ;)
The sooner kids begin their education on the "real world" (what you refer to as the adult world) the more happy and successful they tend to be in it (as far as I've observed, anyway). Blindly shielding them from reality does nothing to further their development.
Until then, children need to be protected, though, not used as pawns in a libertarian game.
You have way to much faith in government. Better watch it. They might take advantage of you. :)
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All men are great
before declaring war
In order for kids to learn to survive on their own, they must get hurt a little. Teaching them that the world is unconditionally a safe, clothed, happy, easy place is failing them in our duties as teachers, parents, and adults.
Although my kids might hate being occasionally exposed to reality (and learning from their mistakes), I'd rather them have a "tough life" for 5 years, then 50 years.
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All men are great
before declaring war
But, you can bring your copy of playboy into the library. There is the key difference. You are allowed to do so.
But, if you get caught, and the person who catches you feels that it is inappropriate, you will be asked to leave (or put it away).
Now, I ask you: why should we treat online access differently?
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All men are great
before declaring war
But, for the purpose of cryptography, what's important is perspective.
That is, from any given perspective (ie: the user which is trying to predict the next number in a sequence), if the next number cannot be determined (because information which led to that number is unavailable, such as seed generated from keyboard interrupts), the data can be considered truly random.
I mean - technically nothing can ever be absolute (we can't be sure 1+1==2; we've just observed it throughout all of recorded history) so long as time is not infinite (which is also difficult to prove ;). So, if we are going to round up probabilities to absolutes, randomness is best considered from a specific perspective (in which case we can say, for someone, "this data is truly random").
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All men are great
before declaring war