I agree, but I won't even bother starting a long winded post about this, because it's so obviously wrong.
I'll just say that the title is: Linux Has Better Windows Compatibility Than Vista
While the article claims: What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox.
These tell two completely different stories.
That there are exceptions to the rule that games in general work better on Windows Vista than on Linux.
But that's pretty much it. Hopefully, most here realize this already.
Although it was, that parent should not just have been modded "funny", but insightful too.
It's an all too common fallacy in discussions to assume people are constantly changing their minds, when the many minds may actually often be decided from the start, just that there are many opinions.
I just recently heard it all the time with a recent game release. People complained on that it was taking so long to get done, and then people complained that it had bugs on its release date and was rushed. Some others then inevitably stepped in and went "But make up your minds, people!" Bzzzt!
It's really kind of surprising how often it happens when you start thinking about it.
I agree. If you keep not trying to break things, the end result can easily be worse than if you dare to do.
Yes, there's the inevitable scary transition period with backwards incompatible upgrades, but after that's done, you'll be ready to reap the rewards.
I can't for example not thank Microsoft enough for making my life with Visual Basic code (yes, I have to deal with that occasionally in my job) far easier when they scrapped Visual Basic 6 and made something that must have been hundreds of incompatible changes to the language in Visual Basic 7 /.NET and onwards. The reward was a full fledged object oriented language that can barely even be compared with its hack job to a predecessor.
Granted, the difference will surely not be as great here, but this will most likely also mean that the transition will not be nearly as harsh either.
Or something like 3 years has actually been planned as a reasonable support length for Python 2.x? Isn't that reasonable? I mean, that's not a catastrophic time for a big programming language to exit a transition of a major update.
They are good hearted and follow the advice given here too in making it expensive to register your domains with them. I'm sure they're just waiting for others to catch on!
I don't agree with this. I agree with this opinion if it's about e.g. serious things like starting pre-emptive wars on dubious facts, but not in case these detectors have for example been shown to signal false positives in lab environments under fairly normal conditions. That could be a real hazard that is just waiting to happen, and I don't think the price to pay would be too great if setting some certification requirements these detectors need to pass.
At this point, yes, if they're outright banning these and not coming up with alternatives, then that could be a problem with being worse off from before out of a shady "fear" in them misdetecting, but if they'd on the other hand come up with a new wave of certified detectors as well as having real facts backing up these fears, then I don't think this is a bad idea at all.
So for me it depends a bit on what exactly will happen, but I can at least go as far as to say that I don't agree with a blanket statement that it's better to sit on one's butt and not try to ban cheap detectors that risk having cops spend their valuable time in places that are perfectly safe. So if they have the science to back these claims up, and a reasonable way to provide citizens with what they want, such as by certification and better controls here, I'll just say -- go for it.
They don't really even have to use the "Google defense", because that defense is really just the DMCA safe harbor. However, the DMCA do not even exist in Sweden. What defense they have to use is pretty much just that no pirated material pass through there servers (and it don't) and that no pirated material is stored on their servers (and it isn't). So I also think they're pretty safe here. So far, it seems like it too -- the *AA, Microsoft, DreamWorks, Electronic Arts, Apple, Waner Brothers, etc. have all had nothing really to pick on, and I think that's because a common denominator here is that they want them to remove material because it could be used to spread their copyrighted material, although they don't directly have it / share it on their servers. And that's really DMCA territory, i.e. N/A here.
Google, or an ISP, can reasonably argue that they provide services that are mostly used for lawful purposes, even though some illegal activity takes place. OK, yes, this is exploiting the "safe harbor" clause of the DMCA.
However, Sweden has no DMCA, which led to the story about Pirate Bay mailing their lawyers about sodomizing themselves with their batons, and the lawyers not being able to push that case further than their scary letters.
What TPB is supporting themselves on is an old BBS law that set a precedent to cases like these. It says that a public "bulletin board system" (probably a quite broad concept which TPB claims they fall under) is not posting illegal content if it merely links to it. And in this case, torrent files are considered being the "links" as they are not the copyrighted files themselves. It's just descriptive metadata for the shared material. So TPB claims that since they do not share copyright infringing material (you can search a torrent tracker server all you want for that, and you won't find any), they are safe. So far, that seem to be holding up from rather extreme pressure from *AA, Microsoft, IFPI, the Swedish police, and many other large organizations.
TPB has no 'registered users'. There's no signup process and no accounts. This is not true. You register an account there to upload and track your uploaded torrents. You also need an account to view the porn!
"This will spur innovation in unprecedented ways in the coming years in the UK!"
I would be able to say that if, with this change, the patent system would be improved to further function as intended in... Uhh, 1474. Only more efficiently.
The period of protection was back then 10 years to protect the profit from new innovations, so inventors didn't get ripped off immediately, in turn keeping them interested in innovating. A great idea! Really, I think patents are in general a great idea, no sarcasm involved. They were then released after 10 years, fairly early at the time of technological evolution back then, so that it also didn't halt competition and innovations that were based on it. You also needed to have the product out. Because otherwise, there's not much to protect, you know? People back then didn't think mere ideas should be patentable.
Now, two main things seem to have changed. First, patents are now in effect for 20 years. And you can patent stuff before products are out and in use. Actually, you can patent without even planning to innovate anything! This of course has very harmful effects for innovation, and forms the breeding ground for businesses exploiting this as their business model, suing others for infringing on their oh-so-valuable patents.
As for the extended lifetime, it would still work out fairly well if this interesting graph just wasn't in effect. (note: that graph is logarithmic; it's actually an exponential rate) Unfortunately for our patent situation, but fortunately for us living in this interesting day and age, history itself has proven it is. We don't even need to speculate, because it's historical evidence, not about anything that may happen in the future. The facts here are that we know which key events have happened in history (we know if something is a key event or not by looking at what the product of the paradigm shift was) and when they did, and that's pretty much all we need to see patent lifetime extensions are the least we have needed.
So, what I think must be done to restore patents to a working state again would be two main things:
1. Once again, like a long time ago, we should only be able to patent what's released, or possibly (in fear of day 1 patent hijacking after insider leaks) some duration less than e.g. a year in advance, but then the company will immediately have the patent expire if this goal is not fulfilled, along with having a hefty penalty associated with it, possibly a percentage of a company's revenue for some duration X (for an example, how about X being the time in advance the patent was granted?). So the more a company would "guess" and just throw things out without being sure of themselves, the greater risk of real losses they would run. They would now be forced to weigh the risk against the benefit. If they definitely have something worked on and are sure of themselves, sure, they could then submit the application, no special risks involved. Because they would be using the system as intented. I'm not sure if a patent should be allowed to be cancelled with no penalty, because that could be used to stall competition. Maybe that a project might not bear fruit and getting abandoned would have to be a risk a company submitting quite early patents would simply have to take.
2. Second, we need to adjust patent lifetimes to the accelerating rate of paradigm shifts in order to not risk slowing them down. This risk should logically increase the further into the future we get. The doubled patent lifetime since 1474 should probably instead have been halved by now. The adjustment was made in the opposite direction as demaned by society and rate of innovations. The lifetime may also need to be adapted to various business needs. For example, computer software is often considered old in 5 years. Within that timeframe, even Microsoft will have had time to develop Windows Vista, including the project reboot in between PDC 2003 and Beta 1, so that's not saying little.
... I think it was lost among some in law enforcement a long time ago. Do some lawyers, and apparently some judges, even remember why copyrights exist anymore?
Copyrights are there to among other things let the copyright holder be credited for the work and benefit financially from the work through being an exclusive distributor of the work.
I agree, the advantage doesn't lie in posting this junk on Fark, but rather watching others do it! You'll learn the syntax for LOLCODE in the process! Think of it as a free programming course.
Here are the Blu-ray Disc Association members:
* Apple Inc.
* Dell Inc.
* Hewlett-Packard Company
* Hitachi, Ltd.
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* Sun Microsystems
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson SA
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Buena Vista Home Entertainment
* Warner Home Video Inc.
These guys recently released their newest game as a free download, with a $30 charge to register an account to play it online Actually, one don't even have to go look at smaller game companies for this -- ArenaNet + NCsoft decided to market Guild Wars so that people can either purchase the game box as usual with the CD key included, or purchase a code from the in-game store, which is accessible from the freely downloadable game client at some ridiculous size like a few MB's, if even that. Their game client makes use of full offline game data if it's there, but if it's not, it instead simply streams the game from their servers after having made an account.
It's also possible to do something like this in World of Warcraft, actually. You can get to playing the full game if you simply download their free trial and then choose to upgrade the trial to the full game.
Also, Eve Online supports a similar model. They don't even sell boxed copies. You download the game for free and then simply decide for how long you want to pay to play it.
I think easening the entry like this will keep getting more common. A whole lot are no longer on modem lines, many even on uncapped Internet subscriptions, and then not having to order and wait for a game to arrive over a few days can feel bothersome when you know that a game with a decent streaming solution in place (i.e. no need for the full game to start playing; it downloads as you go) and a credit card nearby could let you start playing it in 30 minutes.
What sort of value do this "guidance" of the government have to space science?
I somehow feel the scientists are more well introduced in what is the most cost efficient use of their budget, at the same time as I doubt landing on the moon will make a bang in the world like it did in 1969.
Sure, there'll be a lot of YouTube vids, funny amateur remixes, and so on, but really, it has already been done. So I think the PR part of the whole thing can safely be skipped here, and the US should rather strive to get to Mars ASAP. If the Moon isn't well suited for that as an intermediate step out of economy and perhaps other reasons (time?), then I think they should look for other ways, such as using asteroids. I mean, it's landing on Mars that hasn't been done and what will be of greatest scientific benefit. Well, and they might learn something from doing more intimate science with asteroids too. It sounds like a nice synergy there to me, especially if it will be wiser from an economy and time point of view as well.
Now that they are actually starting to follow the standard, they are scrambling trying to make sure that it doesn't look like they were ever wrong. Not really -- if they wished to make it look like that, they wouldn't have introduced a tag like this. To me, this is Microsoft's way of, to the contrary, confirming that they've been wrong in the past. Not that that makes the situation any better.
Slashdot Mirror
After all, it's really hard to make a profit on the Super Bowl.
:-(
After all, the advertisements were set at an as low rate as $90,000 per second.
Seriously, let's think of the NFL for once.
I agree, but I won't even bother starting a long winded post about this, because it's so obviously wrong.
I'll just say that the title is:
Linux Has Better Windows Compatibility Than Vista
While the article claims:
What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox.
These tell two completely different stories.
That there are exceptions to the rule that games in general work better on Windows Vista than on Linux.
But that's pretty much it. Hopefully, most here realize this already.
I agree, I thought it was just me until I down here started seeing comments on the link not working. :-p
Well, as the target it tries to forward me to is their ads, I guess I'm not missing much.
*brings out the popcorn*
Although it was, that parent should not just have been modded "funny", but insightful too.
It's an all too common fallacy in discussions to assume people are constantly changing their minds, when the many minds may actually often be decided from the start, just that there are many opinions.
I just recently heard it all the time with a recent game release. People complained on that it was taking so long to get done, and then people complained that it had bugs on its release date and was rushed. Some others then inevitably stepped in and went "But make up your minds, people!" Bzzzt!
It's really kind of surprising how often it happens when you start thinking about it.
I agree. If you keep not trying to break things, the end result can easily be worse than if you dare to do.
.NET and onwards. The reward was a full fledged object oriented language that can barely even be compared with its hack job to a predecessor.
Yes, there's the inevitable scary transition period with backwards incompatible upgrades, but after that's done, you'll be ready to reap the rewards.
I can't for example not thank Microsoft enough for making my life with Visual Basic code (yes, I have to deal with that occasionally in my job) far easier when they scrapped Visual Basic 6 and made something that must have been hundreds of incompatible changes to the language in Visual Basic 7 /
Granted, the difference will surely not be as great here, but this will most likely also mean that the transition will not be nearly as harsh either.
Or something like 3 years has actually been planned as a reasonable support length for Python 2.x?
Isn't that reasonable? I mean, that's not a catastrophic time for a big programming language to exit a transition of a major update.
They are good hearted and follow the advice given here too in making it expensive to register your domains with them. I'm sure they're just waiting for others to catch on!
Why would I need Microsoft Silverlight to view a few JPG images of their comic?
:-D
I guess only Microsoft knows the answer to that enigma.
I think I'll just stick to XKCD and Salad Fingers* then.
* Sure, that one needs Flash, but that's at least motivated since it's nost just a comic.
I think this is what RIAA needs nowadays to make up for their falling profits due to their failing business model. :-p
It's starting to get urgent over at the RIAA HQ.
Yes; if we're speaking of the kernel and not the full product, there's this picture of what was changed in Vista:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/kernel-en.doc
I don't agree with this. I agree with this opinion if it's about e.g. serious things like starting pre-emptive wars on dubious facts, but not in case these detectors have for example been shown to signal false positives in lab environments under fairly normal conditions. That could be a real hazard that is just waiting to happen, and I don't think the price to pay would be too great if setting some certification requirements these detectors need to pass.
At this point, yes, if they're outright banning these and not coming up with alternatives, then that could be a problem with being worse off from before out of a shady "fear" in them misdetecting, but if they'd on the other hand come up with a new wave of certified detectors as well as having real facts backing up these fears, then I don't think this is a bad idea at all.
So for me it depends a bit on what exactly will happen, but I can at least go as far as to say that I don't agree with a blanket statement that it's better to sit on one's butt and not try to ban cheap detectors that risk having cops spend their valuable time in places that are perfectly safe. So if they have the science to back these claims up, and a reasonable way to provide citizens with what they want, such as by certification and better controls here, I'll just say -- go for it.
They don't really even have to use the "Google defense", because that defense is really just the DMCA safe harbor. However, the DMCA do not even exist in Sweden. What defense they have to use is pretty much just that no pirated material pass through there servers (and it don't) and that no pirated material is stored on their servers (and it isn't). So I also think they're pretty safe here. So far, it seems like it too -- the *AA, Microsoft, DreamWorks, Electronic Arts, Apple, Waner Brothers, etc. have all had nothing really to pick on, and I think that's because a common denominator here is that they want them to remove material because it could be used to spread their copyrighted material, although they don't directly have it / share it on their servers. And that's really DMCA territory, i.e. N/A here.
However, Sweden has no DMCA, which led to the story about Pirate Bay mailing their lawyers about sodomizing themselves with their batons, and the lawyers not being able to push that case further than their scary letters.
What TPB is supporting themselves on is an old BBS law that set a precedent to cases like these. It says that a public "bulletin board system" (probably a quite broad concept which TPB claims they fall under) is not posting illegal content if it merely links to it. And in this case, torrent files are considered being the "links" as they are not the copyrighted files themselves. It's just descriptive metadata for the shared material. So TPB claims that since they do not share copyright infringing material (you can search a torrent tracker server all you want for that, and you won't find any), they are safe. So far, that seem to be holding up from rather extreme pressure from *AA, Microsoft, IFPI, the Swedish police, and many other large organizations.
"This will spur innovation in unprecedented ways in the coming years in the UK!"
I would be able to say that if, with this change, the patent system would be improved to further function as intended in... Uhh, 1474. Only more efficiently.
The period of protection was back then 10 years to protect the profit from new innovations, so inventors didn't get ripped off immediately, in turn keeping them interested in innovating. A great idea! Really, I think patents are in general a great idea, no sarcasm involved. They were then released after 10 years, fairly early at the time of technological evolution back then, so that it also didn't halt competition and innovations that were based on it. You also needed to have the product out. Because otherwise, there's not much to protect, you know? People back then didn't think mere ideas should be patentable.
Now, two main things seem to have changed. First, patents are now in effect for 20 years. And you can patent stuff before products are out and in use. Actually, you can patent without even planning to innovate anything! This of course has very harmful effects for innovation, and forms the breeding ground for businesses exploiting this as their business model, suing others for infringing on their oh-so-valuable patents.
As for the extended lifetime, it would still work out fairly well if this interesting graph just wasn't in effect. (note: that graph is logarithmic; it's actually an exponential rate) Unfortunately for our patent situation, but fortunately for us living in this interesting day and age, history itself has proven it is. We don't even need to speculate, because it's historical evidence, not about anything that may happen in the future. The facts here are that we know which key events have happened in history (we know if something is a key event or not by looking at what the product of the paradigm shift was) and when they did, and that's pretty much all we need to see patent lifetime extensions are the least we have needed.
So, what I think must be done to restore patents to a working state again would be two main things:
1. Once again, like a long time ago, we should only be able to patent what's released, or possibly (in fear of day 1 patent hijacking after insider leaks) some duration less than e.g. a year in advance, but then the company will immediately have the patent expire if this goal is not fulfilled, along with having a hefty penalty associated with it, possibly a percentage of a company's revenue for some duration X (for an example, how about X being the time in advance the patent was granted?). So the more a company would "guess" and just throw things out without being sure of themselves, the greater risk of real losses they would run. They would now be forced to weigh the risk against the benefit. If they definitely have something worked on and are sure of themselves, sure, they could then submit the application, no special risks involved. Because they would be using the system as intented. I'm not sure if a patent should be allowed to be cancelled with no penalty, because that could be used to stall competition. Maybe that a project might not bear fruit and getting abandoned would have to be a risk a company submitting quite early patents would simply have to take.
2. Second, we need to adjust patent lifetimes to the accelerating rate of paradigm shifts in order to not risk slowing them down. This risk should logically increase the further into the future we get. The doubled patent lifetime since 1474 should probably instead have been halved by now. The adjustment was made in the opposite direction as demaned by society and rate of innovations. The lifetime may also need to be adapted to various business needs. For example, computer software is often considered old in 5 years. Within that timeframe, even Microsoft will have had time to develop Windows Vista, including the project reboot in between PDC 2003 and Beta 1, so that's not saying little.
... I think it was lost among some in law enforcement a long time ago.
Do some lawyers, and apparently some judges, even remember why copyrights exist anymore?
Copyrights are there to among other things let the copyright holder be credited for the work and benefit financially from the work through being an exclusive distributor of the work.
So a big WTF at this.
http://www.yangsky.com/products/porndetect/img/pd4.jpg
Let's just hope it's not a case of a huge belly button archive!
It may just be one cat picture, but that he owns one of those digital cameras competing in the Megapixel race.
I agree, the advantage doesn't lie in posting this junk on Fark, but rather watching others do it! You'll learn the syntax for LOLCODE in the process! Think of it as a free programming course.
No, I don't know where some get that from.
Here are the Blu-ray Disc Association members:
* Apple Inc.
* Dell Inc.
* Hewlett-Packard Company
* Hitachi, Ltd.
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* Sun Microsystems
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson SA
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Buena Vista Home Entertainment
* Warner Home Video Inc.
It's also possible to do something like this in World of Warcraft, actually. You can get to playing the full game if you simply download their free trial and then choose to upgrade the trial to the full game.
Also, Eve Online supports a similar model. They don't even sell boxed copies. You download the game for free and then simply decide for how long you want to pay to play it.
I think easening the entry like this will keep getting more common. A whole lot are no longer on modem lines, many even on uncapped Internet subscriptions, and then not having to order and wait for a game to arrive over a few days can feel bothersome when you know that a game with a decent streaming solution in place (i.e. no need for the full game to start playing; it downloads as you go) and a credit card nearby could let you start playing it in 30 minutes.
What sort of value do this "guidance" of the government have to space science?
I somehow feel the scientists are more well introduced in what is the most cost efficient use of their budget, at the same time as I doubt landing on the moon will make a bang in the world like it did in 1969.
Sure, there'll be a lot of YouTube vids, funny amateur remixes, and so on, but really, it has already been done. So I think the PR part of the whole thing can safely be skipped here, and the US should rather strive to get to Mars ASAP. If the Moon isn't well suited for that as an intermediate step out of economy and perhaps other reasons (time?), then I think they should look for other ways, such as using asteroids. I mean, it's landing on Mars that hasn't been done and what will be of greatest scientific benefit. Well, and they might learn something from doing more intimate science with asteroids too. It sounds like a nice synergy there to me, especially if it will be wiser from an economy and time point of view as well.