The overwhelming majority of human brutality has been the simple territorial imperative (i.e. England in the 100 Years' War), ethnic hatred (i.e. the Turkish slaughter of Greeks and Armenians over the past century) or personal megalomania (i.e. Hitler, although there's a good measure of ethnic hatred there too.
That's probably the root cause, and the kings and generals knew that. However the rallying cry to the troops wasn't "We Need More Land!" Troops were organized under a banner of culture, ethnicity and religion. Religion is one of the more powerful influences too. If you say "if you fail in your quest you'll have less land" people confronted with death might turn back. If, however, you say "if you fail in your quest you'll go to hell" then it's another matter entirely.
I believe that the root cause of all wars, is the same as the root cause of everything humans do. This belief stems from a belief in "evolution", not necessarily the theories of Darwin, but an idea that species with superior traits prosper, making species without those traits less common. This fundamental cause is "advancement of the genes". Territorial pressures result from a need for more resources, which comes from the genetic benefit of having sufficient resources for all the offspring.
So if you were to see a miracle - defined, say, as an insufficiently caused effect - would that change your mind? And if the answer is no, how can you possibly stand by the above statement?
If I could see something that is not possible with the current understanding of science or any other future science... sure. But I don't see how that's possible. To a caveman a 747 is a miracle, but a 747 is not inexplicable, just not up to caveman physics.
I admit, I hadn't thought of the communist revolutions as a pro-athiest movement, and I see how it could be seen that way. I still see a difference. Communism was a huge political force, advocating an entirely new system of government which included a belief that religion was useless. Where past political wars had been "kill all the people who don't share our religious beliefs", this was more "kill all the people who don't like our new system of government". A small difference but a significant one.
And how many athiest "martyrs" have there been? Maybe one? Athiesm doesn't encourage martyrdom.
I'm somewhere between an agnostic and an athiest. I don't know whether there is a god, many gods or no gods, but the whole idea seems pretty far-fetched to me. However I don't think too much about god / gods because there aren't too many "supernatural" events in my life that get me wondering about them. I believe in science because it's a pretty decent set of rules to live by. It's convenient to think that gravity exists because every time I've let go of something it has dropped.
However nearly every day I'm assaulted by organized religion. The most recent annoyance was the Super Bowl. Religious players seemed to think that "God" wanted one team to win, and were intent on thanking "Him" for every point. (Strangely however nobody was evidently angry with "Him" for their team losing -- maybe they just accept he wanted the other team to win).
Organized religion, and religious doctrine in particular has been given as a reason for a lot of brutality in history. It has also been the way monarchs maintained power, and that a class system was maintained.
To answer the questions in the original post:
Why am I an athiest?
Because it is the easier and simpler belief.
How much study have I done on the subject of atheism
None whatsoever. However, unlike organised religious study, athiesm doesn't require any study.
How do I know there isn't a god
I don't, but I know I've never seen anything that would make me think there might be.
How much of my belief system comes from my parents
Admittedly a lot. My dad didn't believe in any gods, and although my mom is now back to her Catholic religion she wasn't practicing when I was younger.
Why do you want to be right so badly?
I don't really care, whether there is or isn't a god the laws of physics are not likely to spontaneously turn off. Life will go on as normal. Maybe when I die I'll find out there was a god and I'll go to heaven/hell/purgatory, but I'm not going to live my life differently on the off chance that happens. I guess the main reason I want to be right is the Wizard Of Oz type of thing. It would be sort-of disappointing to see the current nice self-consistent world be ruined by the extra metaphysical baggage of a god.
I think the big misunderstanding comes from the belief that being an athiest is simply another set of religious beliefs like being a catholic. I think that's completely wrong.
The athiest takes the world as what it appears to be. A sum of what our senses and sensors tell us is there. A person who believes in gods adds to that world view yet another "item", a god.
I see no reason to use the more complicated world system. I don't believe in gods, however I'm not going to shove my views in people's faces and constantly decry "there are probably no such things as gods!". As long as other people don't shove their views in my face I don't really care what they believe.
Unfortunately most religious beliefs seem to require the believer to spend time in worship or in prayer. They also seem to encourage people to follow leaders and to spread the belief system. These are things that athiests and agnostics don't have. This last difference is the reason you see Christians, Muslims and Jews involved in religious wars but you rarely see an army of athiests trying to kill all the people who believe in gods.
Anyhow, I know this is probably going to upset people but it's not meant to do that -- it's just that I get so tired of having organized religion in my face so much I sometimes have to vent. I apologize for it being a rambling post, but I won't apologize for my beliefs.
Sadly, I think the cons outweigh the pros. That "SDMI Compliant" part is the worst. SDMI sounds like a very unworkable solution to something that should be a non-problem. It's sad to see many good MP3 playsers ruined by this "security".
Here's what I want in an MP3 player:
USB interface
Upload and download of files (not just MP3s)
Minimum of 64 MB of RAM, expandable
no SDMI
Good mechanical design
Good playback functions (random, repeat, programmed, bass, treble)
Sadly I haven't found anything that meeds those requirements. USB is one because it's fast, it's much easier than a parallel port device, and it should be "plug 'n play". Upload and download of files is an important thing too. I want to be able to use this thing to move a file from one computer to another as well as to play MP3s. A 64 MB file transfer device sounds really useful. Of course if the thing is SDMI Compliant that would probably be impossible. And finally I want the thing to be at least as good a portable music device as my portable CD player. It should be rugged and still have good music functionality.
I'd love to hear of someone who has found a player that does all that, so if you know of one, speak up. Until I find one I'm going to stick with my CD player.
I dunno. I would guess that the flyer is too political to work. Show that to the average Joe and he'll see it as the same kind of shady mod-chip deal. "The evil MPAA wants to stop us from playing our pirated movies.".
A better flyer would explain the deeper issues. What is "fair use", why was DeCSS created, what other option to Linux users exists? What is reverse engineering?
Just so we know what we're talking about. From that site:
What SDMI is: A forum for these industries to develop the voluntary, open framework for playing, storing and distributing digital music necessary to enable a new market to emerge. SDMI is working on two tracks. The first has already produced a standard, or specification, for portable devices. The longer-term effort is working toward completion of an overall architecture for delivery of digital music in all forms. What it is not: SDMI is not producing a single format, technology or design. The SDMI framework allows a variety of competing technologies and download formats to be used within its system.
"Can't you read? From the article refrenced: ". Yeah, because we all know that ZDNet never makes mistakes or says untrue things, right?
Maybe you should go read the AltaVista press release. They don't say anything like "Here is our source code, and here is the license". They talk a lot about business solutions and how you can obtain a modified version of their search engine. In a 5 minute look around their site I wasn't able to see anything about what license they were planning to use, or even verify that the search engine they were allowing you to download was not in binary form.
I hope that ZDNet got their story right, but the way the said things I was expecting to see a press release from AltaVista saying "AltaVista open-sources search engine technology!". Not seeing that bothers me.
C'mon, you should know better than to accept at face value what you read in something at ZDNet without checking the source of the story.
If you're a windows user like I'm forced to be, I strongly recommend AtGuard. It was recently bought out by Symantec, but I think you can still get trial versions and stuff.
The way this thing works is that it scans TCP/IP requests and never transmits the ones matching a certain pattern. I end up seeing less than 0.1% of the banner ads on the 'net, and when I do see one, I just add the relevant pattern to my block list and never see ads from that site again.
AtGuard also does one more amazing thing -- it stops animated GIFs from looping. About time!!
Along with AtGuard I use Cookie Pal. It basically intercepts the Netscape or IE cookie request dialog, and handles it. What makes it better than Netscape or IE is:
It keeps a list of sites to accept / reject with wildcards. I reject anything from *.doubleclick.net for example. Once that site is in your list, you never get asked about cookies from that site again.
On sites not found in your lists it asks: "Accept a cookie from www.spamsite.net?" with the options "Yes, No, Always, Never" and a checkbox allowing you to apply the always/never rules to *.spamsite.net. This flexibility far exceeds what browsers can do with their one-time Yes / No capability.
Eventually (once it's more stable and I have more time) I plan to get Mozilla and, if someone hasn't done it first, add all these features to the source. At one point I had read enough of the Mozilla source to know how to stop the animated GIFs but I never got around to adding the changes. Until then these tools are amazing and I can't recommend them enough.
Moderators: I know this is endorsement of commercial Windows products by a Windows user. I know it's not accompanied by the requisite amount of Slashdot Windows trashing or anti-commercial ranting, but let's face it, many of us have to use Windows, and many of us are willing to pay a few bucks for a good commercial tool when there's no open source alternative. Please help me get the word out and help people regain their privacy and freedom from advertising by bumping this up a couple of points. (And no, I'm not associated with either product, just a happy user).
The fish sez: So far the albums " Razorblade Romance " of the group of Him and " My private ones are were concerned " the former Independent Heroen Philip Boa & The Voodoo club.. Man them krauts are kinky. They have a group called "My private ones were concerned"? Kinda makes "Limp Biskit" look silly doesn't it?
According to the fish, "The copy protection prevents [...] a playing on all D-CRcOcM-cDrives"! How will I listen to it?? I play all my music through my 26x D-CRcOcM-cDrive!
The fish also tells me that "Possibly also the seal Compact Disc digital audio is not entitled to the product". Ok, well that may be fine for "Compact Disc digital audio" but what about my pet seal Lenny? Is Lenny entitled to the product? (Man those germans have wierd names for their seals).
Ah, fun with babelfish, it never gets tiring. For those of you who haven't tried it, try a modern day version of "telephone". Write a simple paragraph into the box, translate it to german, translate it back to english, translate it to french, translate it back to english, and so on until you've done all the languages... then compare your original paragraph with the translation.
According to the warning letter, LinuxOne's lawyer uses a hotmail account. Sounds like a pretty prestigious law firm.
The letter doesn't even look like a letter written by a lawyer. For example when does a lawyer call him/herself a lawyer and not an attorney? I, unfortunately, have received a "cease and decist" letter from a lawyer at one point, and this looks nothing like what I received. The one I received gave specific directions on what they wanted me to do, and legal specifics of what they were accusing me of doing. Maybe you poor folks who have been involved with the DeCSS stuff can comment on your legal letters? This one talks about "lies you have been spreading over the internet". Last I heard, lying on the 'net was legal.
I knew this kid named Jimmy when I was growing up. Jimmy was, how shold I put it... "Special". Jimmy loved to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That's why I think pb & j is the appropriate smell for these guys
And in the same spirit, that vomitey, greasy, sugarey, metallic smell you find near big rollercoasters for them
And the muddy, porcine smell you'd find around that prize-winning heiffer that just keeps eating and getting bigger for these freaks. Of course you know that animal is the main ingredient for the spiced ham smell that you'd find here
http://www.house.gov/ -- the smell that comes out the back of a bull, covered by a strong perfumed masking smell
http://www.microsoft.com/ -- anxious sweat, money, the smell that comes out the back of a bull, the smell of a deisel engine (you know, like the ones that power steamrollers and bulldozers)...
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I agree completely that companies would take up the slack if something happened to MS, but it wouldn't be an overnight thing. There would be a "power vacuum" for a while, where other companies tried to take over the empty space.
If only one company grew and took up the MS slack, say RedHat (it's already well known and the biggest of a bunch of small fish) -- it would have to grow a couple of orders of magnitude in size. If instead everyone else increased proportionatly in size, they'd all have to grow an order of magnitude. MS is just that big.
"The burden of proof in establishing a market for antitrust purposes is on the plaintiff." R.C. Dick Geothermal Corp. v. Thermogenics, Inc., 890 F.2d 139, 143 (9th Cir. 1989). Plaintiffs contend that the relevant product market in this case is limited to "operating systems for Intel-compatible personal computers." (Pls. Conclusions at 4.) This purported market is too narrow to constitute a relevant product market for analysis in this case as a legal matter because it excludes many of the most serious competitive threats faced by Microsoft's operating systems.
Now I am not a lawyer, but this seems to be saying that Microsoft can't be considered a monopoly because the area they dominate (Intel-compatible PC OSes) is just one of many types of computer, and with Macs, Linux, and good ole mainframes out there MS isn't a monopoly.
Hmm... where I work there are about 60 computers, all Intel compatible, all running a flavour of Windows (although a few also run another OS as well). Maybe I'm confused, but I thought that the majority of desktop computers were Intel-compatible. Guess I'm wrong huh MS?
More cute quotes: "There is no finding, nor could there be, that Microsoft controls a significant percentage of the productive assets in the software business or any part thereof."
From what I can find, Microsoft has a Market Cap of $564,000,000,000. The next biggest public software companies are Oracle and SAP which have Market Caps of $78,000,000,000 and $75,000,000,000 respectively. If Microsoft has an order of magnitude in size over these guys, yet doesn't control a "significant percentage of the productive assets in the software business", they must have a hell of a lot of unproductive assets.
"In fact, existing operating system competitors, such as the producers of BeOS or Linux, could readily expand their "output" to meet the entire demand for operating systems without acquiring new productive assets. It is simply a matter of signing new license agreements."
Nice of them to acknowledge Linux and BeOS as competitors. Anyhow, the above quote just shows that the issues are different when it comes to software so you can't use the same rules as for groceries. But even so, the above argument is obviously untrue. Commercial Linux vendors and other OS venders, whoever they may BeOS do still have to provide upgrades, tech support, and a distribution channel for their OSes. At this stage no commercial entity could take up the slack if MS stopped selling Windows.
As the Court found, Microsoft itself invests hundreds of millions of dollars "each year inducing ISVs to write applications for Windows." (Findings P. 43.) In fact, each time Microsoft releases a new version of Windows, "Microsoft must convince ISVs to write applications that take advantage of new APIs, so that existing Windows users will have incentive to buy an upgrade." (Id. P. 44.) The Court thus found that "Microsoft may spend more on platform 'evangelization,' even in relative terms, than any other PC operating-system vendor."
And to think -- if they produced a decent product people would evangelize it because they liked it! This above just goes to show that the advances between subsequent versions of Windows OSes are so minor that they have to spend money convincing people to pretend the changes are useful and develop software that requires the advances, therefore requiring people to buy the new copy of Windows.
This doesn't show what they want it to -- that competitors don't face an entry barrier that MS does not because they too have to spend money on marketing. If MS didn't spend these millions people would still be developing for Windows -- maybe not for Windows SE 4.10.2222A, but for Windows nonetheless. Are they seriously trying to claim that the fact they have a 90% market share doesn't give competing OSes a disadvantage in getting people to develop applications for them?
Anyhow, there are tons of funny bits in this document. I encourage everyone to at least skim it so they actually know what this is all about. MS does make a few good and relevant points, but overall the arguements just don't make sense to anyone who understands the facts.
C. The Alleged Tie Does Not Foreclose a Substantial Amount of Sales of the Tied Product.
A lot of this hinges on strangeness that both Netscape Navigator and IE are free products. Microsoft can claim a lot since both IE and Netscape are free to download.
Adding IE doesn't change the price of Windows 98 because they're the same product and IE is free anyhow (of course they simply bury the cost of IE in the price of Windows...)
But this line is where they cheat. The legal requirement is that the tie forcloses a substantial amount of sales of the tied product. The fact is that Netscape Navigator is free now, but it used to be a product you were supposed to pay for if you were going to use it for non-educational uses. This wasn't strictly enforced, but it most definitely was for sale. It seems pretty clear to me that Netscape was forced to give Netscape away because they were trying to compete with Microsoft who was giving IE away for free. Therefore doesn't this prove that Microsoft cost Netscape a substantial amount of sales of Navigator? It didn't deny anyone the ability to download Navigator, but it sure did deny sales.
And one more question here -- at one point Microsoft announced that IE was free and would always be free. Microsoft is now claiming that IE and Windows 98 are not seperate products, but are in fact the same thing. Does this mean that Windows 98 is free?
This sounds like the perfect opportunity to thank you guys for what you've done.
Slashdot stands out in my eyes, and I'm sure in the eyes of many others, as a site that shows what the 'net can do when used properly.
Lots of free web-page hosts like to call themselves communities, but that's a farce. Slashdot is a community. Like all communities it has its problems: unruly neighbors shouting "First Post" at the crack of dawn, pompous fools who talk because they like the sounds of their own voices, and of course the neighbors who seem nice, but whose opinions are simply wrong! (*grin*). But it's also got the best parts of a community, some celebrities living just around the corner who will come over for a bbq, skilled neighbors who will come help you fix your lawnmower, and buddies who love to get together and cheer on the home team.
As a place to spend/waste time, it's nearly impossible to top Slashdot. If you're really busy, you can skip it one day (theoretically speaking of course) and still catch the news in "older stuff". If you're really bored, you can lower your threshold, follow all the links, and contribute. While you can do a lot of the same things with other sites, It's hard to top Slashdot in how easy it is to get what you want out of the site.
So thanks to you guys and to everyone else who has made Slashdot what it is. And let's hope things only get better from here. Thanks, and congratulations.
Even before they crashed I was getting pissed at CiHost. PHP / MySQL web pages that should have worked fine, and did work fine at home, simply hung on their machines. They talked about all these wonderful things they could do (e-commerce etc) but never gave the details. Now this.
So, where do I go? Any recommendations for a *good* provider with decent backups, uptime, big pipes, available tech support, reasonable prices and (most importantly) MySQL and PHP support?
The strange thing is that I bet any 9 year old computers running FreeBSD have Y2K BIOS issues and will fail in what now, less than 2 weeks?
Good thing most of us won't be around to see it, as the Korean, Indian and Pakistani nukes simultaneously launch at 12:00:00 on Jan 1st and wipe us out, turning the survivors into horrible mutant-zombies.
Completely off-topic but (and maybe this would make a good Ask Slashdot) does anybody have any good suggestions for post-apocalyptic type movies to watch over the next couple of weeks? How about video games? For that one I know only of the "Fallout" series.
Just because it's likely to be a big part of this discussion I'll mention Asimov's 3 laws of robotics.
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov's robot books dealt a lot with these laws and the conflicts arising from them. His primitive robots had trouble understanding the subtleties of the laws and dealing with the problems when the laws conflicted. The more advanced robots knew how to weigh the importance of the order. For example, for a robot to destroy itself, the order to do so would have to be very forceful otherwise the third law would prevent it.
Anyhow, I loved all Asimov's books, esp. his robot novels and highly recommend them to anyone who likes *good* sci-fi, detective stories, and deep thinking about what it means to be human/alive/sentient. I doubt this movie lives up to the amazing quality of his books, but maybe it will at least be a way to introduce people who wouldn't otherwise read an Asimov book to his work.
I think one of the greatest dangers of cookies is that right now they're insecure an invisible.
I had a friend who had his browser set up to accept all cookies. I was ranting to him one day about how I hate being forced to accept cookies at some sites, and how I nearly always refuse to accept them. He decided to check out his cookie file. Guess what he found...
Some site (I don't remember the offender) had set a cookie that contained a ridiculous amount of information about him: full name, home phone number, home address, job title, etc. Obviously he had filled out some kind of form at some point and they just dumped the info into a cookie. This meant that without his knowledge, every time he used their website, all of his personal info was being sent back and forth in plain text.
A system that allows this kind of abuse is seriously flawed.
I don't think it's time to rewrite the whole cookie spec -- and I don't like the alternatives to cookies either, but this current situation isn't acceptable.
What I'd like to see is some "cookie" icon in the statusbar of your browser that's shown whenever the site you're communicating with is using cookies, and clicking on that "cookie" would give the full cookie details.
I also think that all new browsers should have cookie filtering built in. I don't mind accepting any cookie from Slashdot.org, but I don't want to accept a single cookie from doubleclick. I'd also like to see some content based filtering available. This would allow me to refuse cookies that try to do dumb things like store my password in the cookie.
In the mean time, I'll keep plugging Cookie Pal for Windows users. It does a great job of filtering and handling cookies, and is very unintrusive and small. I'm a satisfied user, but don't have anything to do with the company other than that.
I'm developing an online shopping system for someone, and, of course, am trying to reduce the number of clicks it takes to do what someone wants.
I have never bought anything using Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but I might end up getting sued for independently coming up with a way of doing things that's too similar to their way of doing things.
I have a friend who worked for a company doing reverse engineering at some point. My recollection is that it was legal under certain strict circumstances. The people doing the reverse engineering had to make sure they didn't know anything about the device they were reverse-engineering, and that when they were done, all they did is write reports, which other people then used to create a device using the same technology.
Would something like that protect me in this case? I can't be violating their IP because I don't know anything about it?
At least for a while the US will have a huge advantage in the world economy because of technology.
The Internet seems to be the focus of the greatest growth in the new worldwide economy. The US has a huge advantage in this new Internet economy.
First of all, the default language of communication across the world is currently english. The US gets a huge advantage here English is the default American language.
Secondly, the US was the birthplace of the Internet and still is a dominant force in the control of the Internet. Most registrars are US based, and NSI is still the main control point for registration -- and it's US based. Most task forces seem international, but US dominated.
Thirdly, the Internet is still very anarchic. The US is still one of the places in the world most free from government interference. The growth of the Internet, like most new technologies (from the printing press to the VCR) will at first be boosted by borderline legal and unwholesome (Porn, MP3...) uses.
But the US does have reasons to worry. Just as traditional companies have moved some operations overseas for cheaper labour, Internet-only companies might move much of their operations outside the borders. Certain countries have even friendlier laws and fewer taxes.
I remember when SGI did their previous idiotic move of dumping the old, recognized, cool logo for the new one. One of the big reasons they gave for the change in logo and in company name (S.G.I. to SGI) was that they weren't just in the graphics business anymore -- afterall, they also owned Cray.
And now they're selling Cray for less than the cost of one of Cray's machines? So... the whole "identity change" exercise was pointless?
Who is it over at SGI that is in charge of aiming the gun they're using to shoot themselves in the foot?
Slashdot Mirror
That's probably the root cause, and the kings and generals knew that. However the rallying cry to the troops wasn't "We Need More Land!" Troops were organized under a banner of culture, ethnicity and religion. Religion is one of the more powerful influences too. If you say "if you fail in your quest you'll have less land" people confronted with death might turn back. If, however, you say "if you fail in your quest you'll go to hell" then it's another matter entirely.
I believe that the root cause of all wars, is the same as the root cause of everything humans do. This belief stems from a belief in "evolution", not necessarily the theories of Darwin, but an idea that species with superior traits prosper, making species without those traits less common. This fundamental cause is "advancement of the genes". Territorial pressures result from a need for more resources, which comes from the genetic benefit of having sufficient resources for all the offspring.
If I could see something that is not possible with the current understanding of science or any other future science... sure. But I don't see how that's possible. To a caveman a 747 is a miracle, but a 747 is not inexplicable, just not up to caveman physics.
I admit, I hadn't thought of the communist revolutions as a pro-athiest movement, and I see how it could be seen that way. I still see a difference. Communism was a huge political force, advocating an entirely new system of government which included a belief that religion was useless. Where past political wars had been "kill all the people who don't share our religious beliefs", this was more "kill all the people who don't like our new system of government". A small difference but a significant one.
And how many athiest "martyrs" have there been? Maybe one? Athiesm doesn't encourage martyrdom.
I'm somewhere between an agnostic and an athiest. I don't know whether there is a god, many gods or no gods, but the whole idea seems pretty far-fetched to me. However I don't think too much about god / gods because there aren't too many "supernatural" events in my life that get me wondering about them. I believe in science because it's a pretty decent set of rules to live by. It's convenient to think that gravity exists because every time I've let go of something it has dropped.
However nearly every day I'm assaulted by organized religion. The most recent annoyance was the Super Bowl. Religious players seemed to think that "God" wanted one team to win, and were intent on thanking "Him" for every point. (Strangely however nobody was evidently angry with "Him" for their team losing -- maybe they just accept he wanted the other team to win).
Organized religion, and religious doctrine in particular has been given as a reason for a lot of brutality in history. It has also been the way monarchs maintained power, and that a class system was maintained.
To answer the questions in the original post:
Because it is the easier and simpler belief.
None whatsoever. However, unlike organised religious study, athiesm doesn't require any study.
I don't, but I know I've never seen anything that would make me think there might be.
Admittedly a lot. My dad didn't believe in any gods, and although my mom is now back to her Catholic religion she wasn't practicing when I was younger.
I don't really care, whether there is or isn't a god the laws of physics are not likely to spontaneously turn off. Life will go on as normal. Maybe when I die I'll find out there was a god and I'll go to heaven/hell/purgatory, but I'm not going to live my life differently on the off chance that happens. I guess the main reason I want to be right is the Wizard Of Oz type of thing. It would be sort-of disappointing to see the current nice self-consistent world be ruined by the extra metaphysical baggage of a god.
I think the big misunderstanding comes from the belief that being an athiest is simply another set of religious beliefs like being a catholic. I think that's completely wrong.
The athiest takes the world as what it appears to be. A sum of what our senses and sensors tell us is there. A person who believes in gods adds to that world view yet another "item", a god.
I see no reason to use the more complicated world system. I don't believe in gods, however I'm not going to shove my views in people's faces and constantly decry "there are probably no such things as gods!". As long as other people don't shove their views in my face I don't really care what they believe.
Unfortunately most religious beliefs seem to require the believer to spend time in worship or in prayer. They also seem to encourage people to follow leaders and to spread the belief system. These are things that athiests and agnostics don't have. This last difference is the reason you see Christians, Muslims and Jews involved in religious wars but you rarely see an army of athiests trying to kill all the people who believe in gods.
Anyhow, I know this is probably going to upset people but it's not meant to do that -- it's just that I get so tired of having organized religion in my face so much I sometimes have to vent. I apologize for it being a rambling post, but I won't apologize for my beliefs.
The pros:
The cons:
Sadly, I think the cons outweigh the pros. That "SDMI Compliant" part is the worst. SDMI sounds like a very unworkable solution to something that should be a non-problem. It's sad to see many good MP3 playsers ruined by this "security".
Here's what I want in an MP3 player:
Sadly I haven't found anything that meeds those requirements. USB is one because it's fast, it's much easier than a parallel port device, and it should be "plug 'n play". Upload and download of files is an important thing too. I want to be able to use this thing to move a file from one computer to another as well as to play MP3s. A 64 MB file transfer device sounds really useful. Of course if the thing is SDMI Compliant that would probably be impossible. And finally I want the thing to be at least as good a portable music device as my portable CD player. It should be rugged and still have good music functionality.
I'd love to hear of someone who has found a player that does all that, so if you know of one, speak up. Until I find one I'm going to stick with my CD player.
I dunno. I would guess that the flyer is too political to work. Show that to the average Joe and he'll see it as the same kind of shady mod-chip deal. "The evil MPAA wants to stop us from playing our pirated movies.".
A better flyer would explain the deeper issues. What is "fair use", why was DeCSS created, what other option to Linux users exists? What is reverse engineering?
http://www.sdmi.org/
Just so we know what we're talking about. From that site:
What SDMI is: A forum for these industries to develop the voluntary, open framework for playing, storing and distributing digital music necessary to enable a new market to emerge. SDMI is working on two tracks. The first has already produced a standard, or specification, for portable devices. The longer-term effort is working toward completion of an overall architecture for delivery of digital music in all forms. What it is not: SDMI is not producing a single format, technology or design. The SDMI framework allows a variety of competing technologies and download formats to be used within its system.Ok, here you go: /company_info/press/pr013100.shtml
http://doc.altavista.c om/company_info/press/press_news.shtml.
or in particular:
http://doc.altavista.com
See, that's what's called a "press release". There's a difference between a press release and a news article. I know, I must be really bored if I'm going to respond to childish flames from an ignorant coward, but hey, it's Tuesday.
That's why I said to look at AltaVista's press releases. Check out the source of the information.
"Can't you read? From the article refrenced: ". Yeah, because we all know that ZDNet never makes mistakes or says untrue things, right?
Maybe you should go read the AltaVista press release. They don't say anything like "Here is our source code, and here is the license". They talk a lot about business solutions and how you can obtain a modified version of their search engine. In a 5 minute look around their site I wasn't able to see anything about what license they were planning to use, or even verify that the search engine they were allowing you to download was not in binary form.
I hope that ZDNet got their story right, but the way the said things I was expecting to see a press release from AltaVista saying "AltaVista open-sources search engine technology!". Not seeing that bothers me.
C'mon, you should know better than to accept at face value what you read in something at ZDNet without checking the source of the story.
If you're a windows user like I'm forced to be, I strongly recommend AtGuard. It was recently bought out by Symantec, but I think you can still get trial versions and stuff.
The way this thing works is that it scans TCP/IP requests and never transmits the ones matching a certain pattern. I end up seeing less than 0.1% of the banner ads on the 'net, and when I do see one, I just add the relevant pattern to my block list and never see ads from that site again.
AtGuard also does one more amazing thing -- it stops animated GIFs from looping. About time!!
Along with AtGuard I use Cookie Pal. It basically intercepts the Netscape or IE cookie request dialog, and handles it. What makes it better than Netscape or IE is:
Eventually (once it's more stable and I have more time) I plan to get Mozilla and, if someone hasn't done it first, add all these features to the source. At one point I had read enough of the Mozilla source to know how to stop the animated GIFs but I never got around to adding the changes. Until then these tools are amazing and I can't recommend them enough.
Moderators: I know this is endorsement of commercial Windows products by a Windows user. I know it's not accompanied by the requisite amount of Slashdot Windows trashing or anti-commercial ranting, but let's face it, many of us have to use Windows, and many of us are willing to pay a few bucks for a good commercial tool when there's no open source alternative. Please help me get the word out and help people regain their privacy and freedom from advertising by bumping this up a couple of points. (And no, I'm not associated with either product, just a happy user).
The fish sez: So far the albums " Razorblade Romance " of the group of Him and " My private ones are were concerned " the former Independent Heroen Philip Boa & The Voodoo club.. Man them krauts are kinky. They have a group called "My private ones were concerned"? Kinda makes "Limp Biskit" look silly doesn't it?
According to the fish, "The copy protection prevents [...] a playing on all D-CRcOcM-cDrives"! How will I listen to it?? I play all my music through my 26x D-CRcOcM-cDrive!
The fish also tells me that "Possibly also the seal Compact Disc digital audio is not entitled to the product". Ok, well that may be fine for "Compact Disc digital audio" but what about my pet seal Lenny? Is Lenny entitled to the product? (Man those germans have wierd names for their seals).
Ah, fun with babelfish, it never gets tiring. For those of you who haven't tried it, try a modern day version of "telephone". Write a simple paragraph into the box, translate it to german, translate it back to english, translate it to french, translate it back to english, and so on until you've done all the languages... then compare your original paragraph with the translation.
According to the warning letter, LinuxOne's lawyer uses a hotmail account. Sounds like a pretty prestigious law firm.
The letter doesn't even look like a letter written by a lawyer. For example when does a lawyer call him/herself a lawyer and not an attorney? I, unfortunately, have received a "cease and decist" letter from a lawyer at one point, and this looks nothing like what I received. The one I received gave specific directions on what they wanted me to do, and legal specifics of what they were accusing me of doing. Maybe you poor folks who have been involved with the DeCSS stuff can comment on your legal letters? This one talks about "lies you have been spreading over the internet". Last I heard, lying on the 'net was legal.
Btw, I'm a hot blonde, 6'2", 36-24-36... *grin*
Haddock, Salmon, Pike, Bass, Cod, Tuna
I knew this kid named Jimmy when I was growing up. Jimmy was, how shold I put it... "Special". Jimmy loved to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That's why I think pb & j is the appropriate smell for these guys
Nervous sweat is the smell for these guys and these guys too
For these guys it's obvious, rocket fuel.
And in the same spirit, that vomitey, greasy, sugarey, metallic smell you find near big rollercoasters for them
And the muddy, porcine smell you'd find around that prize-winning heiffer that just keeps eating and getting bigger for these freaks. Of course you know that animal is the main ingredient for the spiced ham smell that you'd find here
http://www.transmeta.com/ -- I could smell you, but then I'd have to kill you
http://www.hemp-sisters.com/ -- Let's just say it's a pretty strong smell.
http://www.house.gov/ -- the smell that comes out the back of a bull, covered by a strong perfumed masking smell
http://www.microsoft.com/ -- anxious sweat, money, the smell that comes out the back of a bull, the smell of a deisel engine (you know, like the ones that power steamrollers and bulldozers)...
http://www.getyoursoftware.com/ -- spiced ham
http://www.loc.gov/ -- very musty
http://www.as400.ibm.com/ -- very musty
http://www.slashdot.org/ -- jolt cola, fried silicon, solder, sweat, ozone...
Make that "every Best Buy in the states". TiVO is illegal to export, so we can't even get it here in Canada.
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I agree completely that companies would take up the slack if something happened to MS, but it wouldn't be an overnight thing. There would be a "power vacuum" for a while, where other companies tried to take over the empty space.
If only one company grew and took up the MS slack, say RedHat (it's already well known and the biggest of a bunch of small fish) -- it would have to grow a couple of orders of magnitude in size. If instead everyone else increased proportionatly in size, they'd all have to grow an order of magnitude. MS is just that big.
Now I am not a lawyer, but this seems to be saying that Microsoft can't be considered a monopoly because the area they dominate (Intel-compatible PC OSes) is just one of many types of computer, and with Macs, Linux, and good ole mainframes out there MS isn't a monopoly.
Hmm... where I work there are about 60 computers, all Intel compatible, all running a flavour of Windows (although a few also run another OS as well). Maybe I'm confused, but I thought that the majority of desktop computers were Intel-compatible. Guess I'm wrong huh MS?
More cute quotes: "There is no finding, nor could there be, that Microsoft controls a significant percentage of the productive assets in the software business or any part thereof."
From what I can find, Microsoft has a Market Cap of $564,000,000,000. The next biggest public software companies are Oracle and SAP which have Market Caps of $78,000,000,000 and $75,000,000,000 respectively. If Microsoft has an order of magnitude in size over these guys, yet doesn't control a "significant percentage of the productive assets in the software business", they must have a hell of a lot of unproductive assets.
"In fact, existing operating system competitors, such as the producers of BeOS or Linux, could readily expand their "output" to meet the entire demand for operating systems without acquiring new productive assets. It is simply a matter of signing new license agreements."
Nice of them to acknowledge Linux and BeOS as competitors. Anyhow, the above quote just shows that the issues are different when it comes to software so you can't use the same rules as for groceries. But even so, the above argument is obviously untrue. Commercial Linux vendors and other OS venders, whoever they may BeOS do still have to provide upgrades, tech support, and a distribution channel for their OSes. At this stage no commercial entity could take up the slack if MS stopped selling Windows.
And to think -- if they produced a decent product people would evangelize it because they liked it! This above just goes to show that the advances between subsequent versions of Windows OSes are so minor that they have to spend money convincing people to pretend the changes are useful and develop software that requires the advances, therefore requiring people to buy the new copy of Windows.
This doesn't show what they want it to -- that competitors don't face an entry barrier that MS does not because they too have to spend money on marketing. If MS didn't spend these millions people would still be developing for Windows -- maybe not for Windows SE 4.10.2222A, but for Windows nonetheless. Are they seriously trying to claim that the fact they have a 90% market share doesn't give competing OSes a disadvantage in getting people to develop applications for them?
Anyhow, there are tons of funny bits in this document. I encourage everyone to at least skim it so they actually know what this is all about. MS does make a few good and relevant points, but overall the arguements just don't make sense to anyone who understands the facts.
C. The Alleged Tie Does Not Foreclose a Substantial Amount of Sales of the Tied Product.
A lot of this hinges on strangeness that both Netscape Navigator and IE are free products. Microsoft can claim a lot since both IE and Netscape are free to download.
Adding IE doesn't change the price of Windows 98 because they're the same product and IE is free anyhow (of course they simply bury the cost of IE in the price of Windows...)
But this line is where they cheat. The legal requirement is that the tie forcloses a substantial amount of sales of the tied product. The fact is that Netscape Navigator is free now, but it used to be a product you were supposed to pay for if you were going to use it for non-educational uses. This wasn't strictly enforced, but it most definitely was for sale. It seems pretty clear to me that Netscape was forced to give Netscape away because they were trying to compete with Microsoft who was giving IE away for free. Therefore doesn't this prove that Microsoft cost Netscape a substantial amount of sales of Navigator? It didn't deny anyone the ability to download Navigator, but it sure did deny sales.
And one more question here -- at one point Microsoft announced that IE was free and would always be free. Microsoft is now claiming that IE and Windows 98 are not seperate products, but are in fact the same thing. Does this mean that Windows 98 is free?
This sounds like the perfect opportunity to thank you guys for what you've done.
Slashdot stands out in my eyes, and I'm sure in the eyes of many others, as a site that shows what the 'net can do when used properly.
Lots of free web-page hosts like to call themselves communities, but that's a farce. Slashdot is a community. Like all communities it has its problems: unruly neighbors shouting "First Post" at the crack of dawn, pompous fools who talk because they like the sounds of their own voices, and of course the neighbors who seem nice, but whose opinions are simply wrong! (*grin*). But it's also got the best parts of a community, some celebrities living just around the corner who will come over for a bbq, skilled neighbors who will come help you fix your lawnmower, and buddies who love to get together and cheer on the home team.
As a place to spend/waste time, it's nearly impossible to top Slashdot. If you're really busy, you can skip it one day (theoretically speaking of course) and still catch the news in "older stuff". If you're really bored, you can lower your threshold, follow all the links, and contribute. While you can do a lot of the same things with other sites, It's hard to top Slashdot in how easy it is to get what you want out of the site.
So thanks to you guys and to everyone else who has made Slashdot what it is. And let's hope things only get better from here. Thanks, and congratulations.
Even before they crashed I was getting pissed at CiHost. PHP / MySQL web pages that should have worked fine, and did work fine at home, simply hung on their machines. They talked about all these wonderful things they could do (e-commerce etc) but never gave the details. Now this.
So, where do I go? Any recommendations for a *good* provider with decent backups, uptime, big pipes, available tech support, reasonable prices and (most importantly) MySQL and PHP support?
If that's true then:
A list of things likely to fail before FreeBSD
The strange thing is that I bet any 9 year old computers running FreeBSD have Y2K BIOS issues and will fail in what now, less than 2 weeks?
Good thing most of us won't be around to see it, as the Korean, Indian and Pakistani nukes simultaneously launch at 12:00:00 on Jan 1st and wipe us out, turning the survivors into horrible mutant-zombies.
Completely off-topic but (and maybe this would make a good Ask Slashdot) does anybody have any good suggestions for post-apocalyptic type movies to watch over the next couple of weeks? How about video games? For that one I know only of the "Fallout" series.
Just because it's likely to be a big part of this discussion I'll mention Asimov's 3 laws of robotics.
Asimov's robot books dealt a lot with these laws and the conflicts arising from them. His primitive robots had trouble understanding the subtleties of the laws and dealing with the problems when the laws conflicted. The more advanced robots knew how to weigh the importance of the order. For example, for a robot to destroy itself, the order to do so would have to be very forceful otherwise the third law would prevent it.
Anyhow, I loved all Asimov's books, esp. his robot novels and highly recommend them to anyone who likes *good* sci-fi, detective stories, and deep thinking about what it means to be human/alive/sentient. I doubt this movie lives up to the amazing quality of his books, but maybe it will at least be a way to introduce people who wouldn't otherwise read an Asimov book to his work.
I think one of the greatest dangers of cookies is that right now they're insecure an invisible.
I had a friend who had his browser set up to accept all cookies. I was ranting to him one day about how I hate being forced to accept cookies at some sites, and how I nearly always refuse to accept them. He decided to check out his cookie file. Guess what he found...
Some site (I don't remember the offender) had set a cookie that contained a ridiculous amount of information about him: full name, home phone number, home address, job title, etc. Obviously he had filled out some kind of form at some point and they just dumped the info into a cookie. This meant that without his knowledge, every time he used their website, all of his personal info was being sent back and forth in plain text.
A system that allows this kind of abuse is seriously flawed.
I don't think it's time to rewrite the whole cookie spec -- and I don't like the alternatives to cookies either, but this current situation isn't acceptable.
What I'd like to see is some "cookie" icon in the statusbar of your browser that's shown whenever the site you're communicating with is using cookies, and clicking on that "cookie" would give the full cookie details.
I also think that all new browsers should have cookie filtering built in. I don't mind accepting any cookie from Slashdot.org, but I don't want to accept a single cookie from doubleclick. I'd also like to see some content based filtering available. This would allow me to refuse cookies that try to do dumb things like store my password in the cookie.
In the mean time, I'll keep plugging Cookie Pal for Windows users. It does a great job of filtering and handling cookies, and is very unintrusive and small. I'm a satisfied user, but don't have anything to do with the company other than that.
I'm developing an online shopping system for someone, and, of course, am trying to reduce the number of clicks it takes to do what someone wants.
I have never bought anything using Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but I might end up getting sued for independently coming up with a way of doing things that's too similar to their way of doing things.
I have a friend who worked for a company doing reverse engineering at some point. My recollection is that it was legal under certain strict circumstances. The people doing the reverse engineering had to make sure they didn't know anything about the device they were reverse-engineering, and that when they were done, all they did is write reports, which other people then used to create a device using the same technology.
Would something like that protect me in this case? I can't be violating their IP because I don't know anything about it?
At least for a while the US will have a huge advantage in the world economy because of technology.
The Internet seems to be the focus of the greatest growth in the new worldwide economy. The US has a huge advantage in this new Internet economy.
First of all, the default language of communication across the world is currently english. The US gets a huge advantage here English is the default American language.
Secondly, the US was the birthplace of the Internet and still is a dominant force in the control of the Internet. Most registrars are US based, and NSI is still the main control point for registration -- and it's US based. Most task forces seem international, but US dominated.
Thirdly, the Internet is still very anarchic. The US is still one of the places in the world most free from government interference. The growth of the Internet, like most new technologies (from the printing press to the VCR) will at first be boosted by borderline legal and unwholesome (Porn, MP3...) uses.
But the US does have reasons to worry. Just as traditional companies have moved some operations overseas for cheaper labour, Internet-only companies might move much of their operations outside the borders. Certain countries have even friendlier laws and fewer taxes.
I remember when SGI did their previous idiotic move of dumping the old, recognized, cool logo for the new one. One of the big reasons they gave for the change in logo and in company name (S.G.I. to SGI) was that they weren't just in the graphics business anymore -- afterall, they also owned Cray.
And now they're selling Cray for less than the cost of one of Cray's machines? So... the whole "identity change" exercise was pointless?
Who is it over at SGI that is in charge of aiming the gun they're using to shoot themselves in the foot?