Although your question was very specific in some respects, it was vague in others. Possibly purposely. Still, I have a few questions of my own for the original poster:
Is your intent commercial software, free software or other?
If your intent is free software then are you thinking Open Source?
If your intent is commercial software, then why do you think this product would be any better than the other commercial packages out there?
What is the overall goal for this - professional quality animation? Movie or TV quality work? Video Game design?
Are you working alone?
How is it that you will have the time to devote to this? What makes you think you will finish?
And finally, if it turns out that you are an individual from a commercial organization willing to undertake such a tremendous task in a crowded field with such strong players, why do you think Slashdot will be a good place to get meaningful advice?
Don;t get me wrong - I'm not trying to slam you or your idea or anything but these are the questions that popped into my head when I read this. I know history is filled with projects like this but for every Linus Torvalds who sits down and makes his own OS (and yes I have read the GNU/Linux FAQ) there are thousands that get 10% in and say screw it.
...who is it that sends in these virus discoveries? I mean, I think we've all had weird things happen to us and most of my BSOD experiences I've chalked up to random occurences. Sure, if I found my hard drive wiped out tommorow I'd probably think a virus was afoot, but who is it that says "I think I have a virus" and is right?
On the other side of the spectrum though have to be those who think everything that goes wrong is a virus. I can't find my document, it's a virus! (no it's not, you saved it somewhere else, doofus) I can't highlight this word in Excel - it's a virus! (no, you just need to RTFM) I'm getting spam, so I must have a virus! (sigh...)
It's true - getting some people online is a Sisyphean ordeal. My parents bought a Dell because of the kid in the commercials...
Re:Time Traveler
on
High Score
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Can we clear something up about Time Traveler? Namely that it did not use holograms.
What it did was this - it used an optical illusion involving lenses and mirrors and it made a video on Laserdisc (I assume) appear to be "standing in midair". I've seen patent diagrams Sega filed and while I admit the machine was complex, short of the laser used to read the Laserdisc, there were no lasers used in making these "holograms". If you moved from side to side while watching this game you didn't see the other sides of the figures, all you saw was the same thing, only the angle kinda threw the picture out of thwack. These holograms were about as 3-D as the characters in the original Wolfenstein 3-D (remember the bodies on the floor that looked the same from all angles?)
Also did anyone else notice how the machine was kinda generic, in the same way that Neo Geo arcade machines were generic? I think the original idea was to have a string of "Hologram" games, but since the idea died away quicker than you could say "Dragon's Lair II" it didn't happen.
And yet, with the exception of the review linked above, I've always heard this game referred to as using holograms. Now, am I the stupid one here? Is this what is considered a hologram? I know we all see the Holodeck on ST:TNG and we all figure that eventually "holograms" will be these things we use to make fake people and situations, but do we have a generation of people thinking we have holograms in existence already because they saw a video game? Or am I just sorely misunderstanding this whole thing - are the things in Time Traveler actually what we're calling holograms now?
Oh, and the game was "ported" (snicker) to the PC and to DVD players. Digital Leisure has made a niche industry out of porting Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, et al to the PC (in many times in many formats) and recently employing very creative use of DVD Video authoring. Of course the problem was always the somewhat flaky remotes that come with DVD players - they weren't meant to be game controllers. So when Sony releases the PS2 and the controller is the remote, it's a perfect match for their titles, so they slap a "Works with PlayStation 2!" sticker on the discs and they get lumped in with the PS2 games at your better Toys 'R Us stores. This is precisely what Sony feared and XBox (since DVD Video isn't a given) and GameCube (since DVD just isn't) nicely avoided - games for their console relying soley on DVD authoring capabilities and not owing Sony a dime in royalties or development costs. I hear there's a porn game industry that does the same thing...
I fired up the preview Fortran.NET edition. It becomes instantly obvious why this is around and, for some, neccessary. They showed how Windows Forms and ASP.NET can work with existing Fortran code and they have some interesting examples. Mathematical modeling that was written back in 1985 is rendered on a Windows Form.
The real reason of course why we have a Fortran.NET is because it's being done (primarily) by Lahey, and without Fortran, Lahey is nothing. They're not about to let this ".NET Thing" pass them by.
FYI, The reason that the story is the same for MSNBC and news.com is that MSNBC has a utility you can download which can give you headline alerts - big stories from MSNBC, tech stories from C|Net, etc. When you get a C|Net story the site you get directed to is msnbc-cnet.com.com, which is the same site as news.com.com with a different URL. When you go anywhere else on the C|Net site you're still on msnbc-cnet.com.com, so the site isn't really MSNBC at all, it's just a way to see who came from the utility.
Actually, the Insane Clown Posse filmed a press conference for their upcoming album and encoded it as a QuickTime file. The conference was over an hour long and the four files made up some 550MB of video (they went a little overboard). When they tried to host it on their website, the demand completely hosed their server and their ISP. Not wanting to deprive fans of the video but being unable to host it themselves, they put it on Kazaa and after a while pretty much everyone was able to download it with no sweat.
So this would be a perfect example of how a P2P network can be used for good, and as a marketing tool. Interesting to note that this artist didn't seem to mind the notion that the legion of Kazaa users they probably just created might then go and pirate all their songs, but given that ICP charged some $100 to get in to this packed conference and convention, they've obviously found some alternative revenue sources.
The problem with the "it has legitimate uses!" argument is that there aren't enough examples like this to offset the illegal ones. Note to artists: don't webcast your concerts - no one can watch them anyway with server overload and no one wants to watch U2 in RealMedia anyway. Do this sort of thing instead.
Well it's more like this: That MP3 I download can't be used to kill someone. I don't feel the need to have MP3's on my hard drive to defend against other people who have MP3's and might try to kill me with them.
As for the knives argument - knives are sharp and can hurt/kill if used improperly. Some things can't do their intended purpose without being dangerous. However since the intended use is not for that, no one is ever going to sue a knife maker. Not unless they go on about how their knives are resistant to blood and fingerprints.
The real point I was trying to make is this - this is a company that makes a software product that they know damn good and well is being used to pirate music. They do it in such a way that it is legally ambiguous but hell, we saw how Napster got handled. They have proven that they are willing to make money off of something whose main purpose is to break the law. They're willing to go toe to toe with the law on this one. With the Napster precedent they're probably not so cocky. But since no laws exist for commission manipulation via web (yet), the only thing they're testing the bounds of are ethics. And this brings me back to my main point.
2a) Get users used to using Windows since they have it.
2b) Make users want Windows on their next PC
2c) Makers of their next PC buy OS from us
2d) Sell users tons of software which requires Windows to run on
2e) Sell developers software to write more software which runs on Windows which everyone has
2f) Since users are used to Windows and everything runs on Windows then organizations and businesses have to buy all the above mentioned software.
Also, don't forget Phase 4:
4) Then make Windows XP difficult to casually pirate.
This is clearly what happened. Force the PC makers to buy copies of DOS/Windows for every PC they make. Then when the DOJ says you can't do that anymore you've already got the market share.
Then, when you've got > 90% of the PC market, put the screws to the end users by forcing product activation on them. Make more money.
Now, I actually like Microsoft and Windows and I don't have a problem with paying for software and operating systems. I've never been "bitten" by product activation and I don't think many people have. But with every person who you could concievably prosecute for piracy there's another one that goes to your alternative (Linux). Microsoft's not stupid. Microsoft just thought of us (USA) as a "developing" country prior to XP.
The article says the plan is not to make Mac OS X run on Intel PC's, so this isn't like they're competing with Linux/MS. It would be Apple contracting Intel to make a "special" Pentium (4) chip and the new Mac OS X would be designed to only run on that, effectively maintaining control of the hardware bit.
Of course, we wonder how long it will be until some astute hacker makes this ability null and Mac OS X will be able to run on Beige Boxes. And if this happens, will it be a big problem? I mean, if Microsoft hauled off and proclaimed "you must now use Dell systems and if you don't you're not allowed to gripe about BSOD's anymore" people would have their head (again), but Apple wouldn't even have to say that - they could come out with an Intel OS and it would just be agreed/assumed that no one using a non-Apple box could go stuff themselves. Developers could have the best of both worlds - the Intel architecture they're used to and the closed nature consoles afford them (plus they can use this to make non-game applications, to boot).
Still, on the topic of similar hardware I'm shocked that it's been close to a year and we've had no XBox emulators for the PC. I mean, sure there's things to work around on the XBox (not the least of which is supposedly the fact that the data on XBox DVD's is backwards) but I figure if they can get Linux on the XBox, surely they could get XBox games to run on the PC. Perhaps the above scenario isn't so plausible after all.
yeah but then you say "I buy a few CD's and listen to them incessantly during the course of the year, especially now that they're so expensive" and the RIAA then complains that CD sales are down this year and that it must be because of MP3 and the record labels have to raise the price of CD's to account for the decrease in sales, never thinking that it might be those higher prices that fuel lower sales and drive people to MP3 in the first place.
Well what I was thinking was more along the lines of a glorified Pay Per View where you could serve up any movie any time. I know there's some stuff flirting with that idea but nothing yet.
For every Ken Burns, there's an army of non-fiction film makers who are utterly ignored
Yeah but think of the number of documentaties that are made out of love or for fun. Many are film school projects or are mainly for Oscar consideration. Few documentarians are in it for money - many have a point of view to express or have an agenda.
Just remember that the bottom line is this - I have a wallet. The wallet has money in it. The money goes towards things. I can pay $17-$18 for the soundtrack album to a movie or I can pay $20 for the movie itself. Yeah, I know about how both industries work. Yeah, I know there's like 50 people to pay with the CD. Yeah, I know the musicians on the CD are hard working artists who deserve to be paid. But my wallet doesn't care about that. My wallet says $20 for a movie is a better deal than a $17 CD. I buy the DVD instead of the CD. And not because I can't afford both - I can. The CD, given that it's audio only, just seems like such a ripoff.
Perhaps I'll feel the same about DVD's one day. Perhaps someday there will be a $20/month service that lets me watch whatever I want to watch whever I want to watch it forever. When that day comes I'll feel like $20 per movie is a ripoff.
Plus, its interesting to note how much of this is about possession. Right now the above scenario seems so dirty - I want to have the movie on disc. Think about all the people who download movies they see in theaters - crappy picture, horrible sound - but there they go burning them to VCD and playing them on their DVD players. And then when the movie comes on DVD they buy the DVD and throw their VCD away. It's like it was just holding a spot for the DVD. People download more MP3's than they can possibly listen to - they just like having them. People download thousands of MAME ROMs, knowing they won't play them all (or even understand the Japanese ones) because we like having things and possessing them.
Look at how the pay-per-download music systems have failed (and how Napster would have failed, given the chance) - they took away the one thing people wanted: possession. I say, give people the ability to download MP3's for $20/month and do what they want with it and few will bother to give it to others - they'll tell the others to buy their own. This DRM stuff is for the birds.
Still, isn't that better than installing something with established spyware? I'd rather install something that might have Spyware for a little while than something that definitely has Spyware that can't go away.
How do you know they didn't put another "home-made" spyware into Kazaa Lite?
The way you know is this - you fire up Ad-Aware, the NAV of Spyware, and you check. Check before and after you install it.
The deal is this - "real" Kazaa has spyware. Remove spyware and Kazaa refuses to run/work. Kazaa Lite is a hacked Kazaa that uses an empty file instead of the Spyware DLL Kazaa uses. When you install Kazaa Lite it tells you to let a particular file slip past Ad-Aware, as Ad-Aware will think it is a spyware file but really it's an empty useless file (pop it into Notepad to verify).
If Kazaa Lite "pulled a Gator" and just replaced Kazaa's spyware with its own then Ad-Aware would catch it. Is it possible that Kazaa Lite could just replace the spyware DLL with its own? Yeah, it's possible, and if that possibility scares you off then file sharing is not for you.
I'm not sure what country you're in but here in the U.S. the age is 18. Ergo, 18 is "barely legal" and 17 is "kiddie porn". If 17 were the cutoff then there would be 17 year olds in magazines. Same goes for any age you throw out there. At the age of 18 in the U.S. you're considered an adult (your parents are even cut off from your records), so that's the legal age.
Consequently if you go on a shooting spree when you're an 18 year old you're a "crazy person". If you do the same thing when you're 17 then you're "disturbed" and "tainted by the media".
There's also the fact that women are biologically designed to be their most fertile between the ages of 18 (or 16) and 25 - thus Nature makes them look their best - to attract a mate. Of course, society says that nowadays people go to College and generally don't graduate until 23/24 and therefore miss most of those years. Women who give birth at 18 are often considered bad or have screwed up.
Well, nearly 100% of people who don't do drugs as adults also drank milk as kids, so the "precursor" argument is null since the cause/effect reasoning is invalid.
Let's say they start searching the computers of all criminals they arrest, regardless of their crime. I bet the percentage of non-pedophile criminals with kiddie porn is down in the single digits. Same goes for non-criminals
The main reason child pornography is illegal (as I follow it, IANAL), is that children are not only considerably younger than the legal age (18), but also because they don't possess the mental maturity to make any decisions involving their involvement in pornography, much less what it really is. Therefore, the trick is to go after the perpretrators of the child porn, but since there would be no child porn were there no demand, simply make the demand illegal.
It doesn't take too many "BARELY LEGAL!!" websites and magazines to realize that were possession and distribution of child pornography not illegal, it would surely be a huge market.
Yeah I knew some LOGO back in the day. Back when the Apple ][e was top of the line and programs came in magazines as source code.
Of course this was also back in the day when computers were this novelty item that everyone was pretty sure would be important when the little shitheads got out of school - in the meantime they were just devices that scared old teachers.
But back then there was this notion that the only way to use a computer was to program it. Of course back then that wasn't too far from the truth - programs did their thing and nothing else. The spreadsheet and the GUI had yet to take off or mature and of course the Internet was nothing. Consequently, while everyone knew that computers would be important, there wasn't much that teachers could do for their students other than teach them programming (and it was always something like your name dancing across the screen or changing fahrenheit to celsius and back) and teaching them WordPerfect for DOS, which is useless now (unless you're a legal/medical secratary).
The result? When I got to college I was surrounded by people who could program Pascal but that couldn't turn their computer on. A lot of people still believe that since you have to jump through hoops to get computers to do anything (i.e., write a program in a language like Pascal, which for all its pinnings to English is still Greek to many) they were completely turned off by the whole thing.
And on it goes. People don't do anything to their PC's other than what is neccessary to get it to print something. Apple's made a career of idiots. Linux won't ever hit the desktop at this rate.
Not that it's the teachers' fault. There wasn't Microsoft Office or web browsers to teach 15 years ago. The Apple ][ and Commodore 64 were pretty much toys. But if you wonder why Joe Q. Public doesn't want to fool with computers and why your average person just wants to run Windows and nothing else, this is the real reason - it's not that they don't know about Linux, it's that they don't care.
I was in a restaurant the other day and whatever station they were playing in the background was playing the theme song
And now for the obligatory history of "Faith of the Heart".
Every time I walk into Albertson's I hear it, too - but it's not Russell Watson that's singing it. Probably wasn't him singing it when you heard it, either - it was probably Rod Stewart.
The story (as I follow it) is this - the song was written by Dianne Warren. She's famous for the big, boisterous, overdone theme song from movies. "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing", "My Heart Will Go On" - all hers. She was commissioned to write a song for the movie Patch Adams, so she writes "Faith of the Heart", and they get Rod Stewart to record it.
Thing is, the producers for whatever reason decide it's not good enough to be in the movie (doesn't really fit) and so they relegate it to the end credits (and I don't think it was the first song in the end credits, either.
So when the producers of Enterprise need a song, they want a "big" song for the opener, seeing as how they've decided to deviate from the "Whoosh!" formula of shows past. They figure out that there's a potential Dianne Warren gem that's been tossed to the side and they can pick it up for cheap. Of course, they don't want to afford Rod Stewart so they decide to have the song re-recorded using an unknown, Russel Watson, who just sounds a whole lot like Rod Stewart.
And so the flame wars rage on, what with the "Patch Adams Reject" song opening the show. Personally, I kinda like it. Sure, I'm not as diehard a Trekker as others, but I'm cool with the song.
Actually something I've noticed with XP is that most stuff that required reboots before now don't anymore. I use W2K at work and XP Pro at the house and things I install on both will require a reboot on 2K and not on XP. Sometimes I'll reboot XP just to be safe (God, that's almost depressing). I think it has to do with the "DLL-Hell" curing aspects of the Fusion notion in Whistler products (like.NET server).
Slashdot Mirror
- Is your intent commercial software, free software or other?
- If your intent is free software then are you thinking Open Source?
- If your intent is commercial software, then why do you think this product would be any better than the other commercial packages out there?
- What is the overall goal for this - professional quality animation? Movie or TV quality work? Video Game design?
- Are you working alone?
- How is it that you will have the time to devote to this? What makes you think you will finish?
- And finally, if it turns out that you are an individual from a commercial organization willing to undertake such a tremendous task in a crowded field with such strong players, why do you think Slashdot will be a good place to get meaningful advice?
Don;t get me wrong - I'm not trying to slam you or your idea or anything but these are the questions that popped into my head when I read this. I know history is filled with projects like this but for every Linus Torvalds who sits down and makes his own OS (and yes I have read the GNU/Linux FAQ) there are thousands that get 10% in and say screw it.On the other side of the spectrum though have to be those who think everything that goes wrong is a virus. I can't find my document, it's a virus! (no it's not, you saved it somewhere else, doofus) I can't highlight this word in Excel - it's a virus! (no, you just need to RTFM) I'm getting spam, so I must have a virus! (sigh...)
It's true - getting some people online is a Sisyphean ordeal. My parents bought a Dell because of the kid in the commercials...
What it did was this - it used an optical illusion involving lenses and mirrors and it made a video on Laserdisc (I assume) appear to be "standing in midair". I've seen patent diagrams Sega filed and while I admit the machine was complex, short of the laser used to read the Laserdisc, there were no lasers used in making these "holograms". If you moved from side to side while watching this game you didn't see the other sides of the figures, all you saw was the same thing, only the angle kinda threw the picture out of thwack. These holograms were about as 3-D as the characters in the original Wolfenstein 3-D (remember the bodies on the floor that looked the same from all angles?)
Also did anyone else notice how the machine was kinda generic, in the same way that Neo Geo arcade machines were generic? I think the original idea was to have a string of "Hologram" games, but since the idea died away quicker than you could say "Dragon's Lair II" it didn't happen.
And yet, with the exception of the review linked above, I've always heard this game referred to as using holograms. Now, am I the stupid one here? Is this what is considered a hologram? I know we all see the Holodeck on ST:TNG and we all figure that eventually "holograms" will be these things we use to make fake people and situations, but do we have a generation of people thinking we have holograms in existence already because they saw a video game? Or am I just sorely misunderstanding this whole thing - are the things in Time Traveler actually what we're calling holograms now?
Oh, and the game was "ported" (snicker) to the PC and to DVD players. Digital Leisure has made a niche industry out of porting Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, et al to the PC (in many times in many formats) and recently employing very creative use of DVD Video authoring. Of course the problem was always the somewhat flaky remotes that come with DVD players - they weren't meant to be game controllers. So when Sony releases the PS2 and the controller is the remote, it's a perfect match for their titles, so they slap a "Works with PlayStation 2!" sticker on the discs and they get lumped in with the PS2 games at your better Toys 'R Us stores. This is precisely what Sony feared and XBox (since DVD Video isn't a given) and GameCube (since DVD just isn't) nicely avoided - games for their console relying soley on DVD authoring capabilities and not owing Sony a dime in royalties or development costs. I hear there's a porn game industry that does the same thing...
The real reason of course why we have a Fortran.NET is because it's being done (primarily) by Lahey, and without Fortran, Lahey is nothing. They're not about to let this ".NET Thing" pass them by.
What will Fortran look like 10 years from now?
Who knows? But no matter what it looks like they'll still call it Fortran...
OK, not exactly a rimshot joke
FYI, The reason that the story is the same for MSNBC and news.com is that MSNBC has a utility you can download which can give you headline alerts - big stories from MSNBC, tech stories from C|Net, etc. When you get a C|Net story the site you get directed to is msnbc-cnet.com.com, which is the same site as news.com.com with a different URL. When you go anywhere else on the C|Net site you're still on msnbc-cnet.com.com, so the site isn't really MSNBC at all, it's just a way to see who came from the utility.
So this would be a perfect example of how a P2P network can be used for good, and as a marketing tool. Interesting to note that this artist didn't seem to mind the notion that the legion of Kazaa users they probably just created might then go and pirate all their songs, but given that ICP charged some $100 to get in to this packed conference and convention, they've obviously found some alternative revenue sources.
The problem with the "it has legitimate uses!" argument is that there aren't enough examples like this to offset the illegal ones. Note to artists: don't webcast your concerts - no one can watch them anyway with server overload and no one wants to watch U2 in RealMedia anyway. Do this sort of thing instead.
As for the knives argument - knives are sharp and can hurt/kill if used improperly. Some things can't do their intended purpose without being dangerous. However since the intended use is not for that, no one is ever going to sue a knife maker. Not unless they go on about how their knives are resistant to blood and fingerprints.
The real point I was trying to make is this - this is a company that makes a software product that they know damn good and well is being used to pirate music. They do it in such a way that it is legally ambiguous but hell, we saw how Napster got handled. They have proven that they are willing to make money off of something whose main purpose is to break the law. They're willing to go toe to toe with the law on this one. With the Napster precedent they're probably not so cocky. But since no laws exist for commission manipulation via web (yet), the only thing they're testing the bounds of are ethics. And this brings me back to my main point.
Want to prosecute P2P systems? Get in line...
2a) Get users used to using Windows since they have it.
2b) Make users want Windows on their next PC
2c) Makers of their next PC buy OS from us
2d) Sell users tons of software which requires Windows to run on
2e) Sell developers software to write more software which runs on Windows which everyone has
2f) Since users are used to Windows and everything runs on Windows then organizations and businesses have to buy all the above mentioned software.
Also, don't forget Phase 4:
4) Then make Windows XP difficult to casually pirate.
This is clearly what happened. Force the PC makers to buy copies of DOS/Windows for every PC they make. Then when the DOJ says you can't do that anymore you've already got the market share.
Then, when you've got > 90% of the PC market, put the screws to the end users by forcing product activation on them. Make more money.
Now, I actually like Microsoft and Windows and I don't have a problem with paying for software and operating systems. I've never been "bitten" by product activation and I don't think many people have. But with every person who you could concievably prosecute for piracy there's another one that goes to your alternative (Linux). Microsoft's not stupid. Microsoft just thought of us (USA) as a "developing" country prior to XP.
Of course, we wonder how long it will be until some astute hacker makes this ability null and Mac OS X will be able to run on Beige Boxes. And if this happens, will it be a big problem? I mean, if Microsoft hauled off and proclaimed "you must now use Dell systems and if you don't you're not allowed to gripe about BSOD's anymore" people would have their head (again), but Apple wouldn't even have to say that - they could come out with an Intel OS and it would just be agreed/assumed that no one using a non-Apple box could go stuff themselves. Developers could have the best of both worlds - the Intel architecture they're used to and the closed nature consoles afford them (plus they can use this to make non-game applications, to boot).
Still, on the topic of similar hardware I'm shocked that it's been close to a year and we've had no XBox emulators for the PC. I mean, sure there's things to work around on the XBox (not the least of which is supposedly the fact that the data on XBox DVD's is backwards) but I figure if they can get Linux on the XBox, surely they could get XBox games to run on the PC. Perhaps the above scenario isn't so plausible after all.
yeah but then you say "I buy a few CD's and listen to them incessantly during the course of the year, especially now that they're so expensive" and the RIAA then complains that CD sales are down this year and that it must be because of MP3 and the record labels have to raise the price of CD's to account for the decrease in sales, never thinking that it might be those higher prices that fuel lower sales and drive people to MP3 in the first place.
2) Since the News tab is red, what color will the next Google tab be?
Well what I was thinking was more along the lines of a glorified Pay Per View where you could serve up any movie any time. I know there's some stuff flirting with that idea but nothing yet.
Perhaps I'll feel the same about DVD's one day. Perhaps someday there will be a $20/month service that lets me watch whatever I want to watch whever I want to watch it forever. When that day comes I'll feel like $20 per movie is a ripoff.
Plus, its interesting to note how much of this is about possession. Right now the above scenario seems so dirty - I want to have the movie on disc. Think about all the people who download movies they see in theaters - crappy picture, horrible sound - but there they go burning them to VCD and playing them on their DVD players. And then when the movie comes on DVD they buy the DVD and throw their VCD away. It's like it was just holding a spot for the DVD. People download more MP3's than they can possibly listen to - they just like having them. People download thousands of MAME ROMs, knowing they won't play them all (or even understand the Japanese ones) because we like having things and possessing them.
Look at how the pay-per-download music systems have failed (and how Napster would have failed, given the chance) - they took away the one thing people wanted: possession. I say, give people the ability to download MP3's for $20/month and do what they want with it and few will bother to give it to others - they'll tell the others to buy their own. This DRM stuff is for the birds.
Still, isn't that better than installing something with established spyware? I'd rather install something that might have Spyware for a little while than something that definitely has Spyware that can't go away.
The deal is this - "real" Kazaa has spyware. Remove spyware and Kazaa refuses to run/work. Kazaa Lite is a hacked Kazaa that uses an empty file instead of the Spyware DLL Kazaa uses. When you install Kazaa Lite it tells you to let a particular file slip past Ad-Aware, as Ad-Aware will think it is a spyware file but really it's an empty useless file (pop it into Notepad to verify).
If Kazaa Lite "pulled a Gator" and just replaced Kazaa's spyware with its own then Ad-Aware would catch it. Is it possible that Kazaa Lite could just replace the spyware DLL with its own? Yeah, it's possible, and if that possibility scares you off then file sharing is not for you.
Consequently if you go on a shooting spree when you're an 18 year old you're a "crazy person". If you do the same thing when you're 17 then you're "disturbed" and "tainted by the media".
Once you turn 18 no one cares anymore.
There's also the fact that women are biologically designed to be their most fertile between the ages of 18 (or 16) and 25 - thus Nature makes them look their best - to attract a mate. Of course, society says that nowadays people go to College and generally don't graduate until 23/24 and therefore miss most of those years. Women who give birth at 18 are often considered bad or have screwed up.
Let's say they start searching the computers of all criminals they arrest, regardless of their crime. I bet the percentage of non-pedophile criminals with kiddie porn is down in the single digits. Same goes for non-criminals
The main reason child pornography is illegal (as I follow it, IANAL), is that children are not only considerably younger than the legal age (18), but also because they don't possess the mental maturity to make any decisions involving their involvement in pornography, much less what it really is. Therefore, the trick is to go after the perpretrators of the child porn, but since there would be no child porn were there no demand, simply make the demand illegal.
It doesn't take too many "BARELY LEGAL!!" websites and magazines to realize that were possession and distribution of child pornography not illegal, it would surely be a huge market.
Of course this was also back in the day when computers were this novelty item that everyone was pretty sure would be important when the little shitheads got out of school - in the meantime they were just devices that scared old teachers.
But back then there was this notion that the only way to use a computer was to program it. Of course back then that wasn't too far from the truth - programs did their thing and nothing else. The spreadsheet and the GUI had yet to take off or mature and of course the Internet was nothing. Consequently, while everyone knew that computers would be important, there wasn't much that teachers could do for their students other than teach them programming (and it was always something like your name dancing across the screen or changing fahrenheit to celsius and back) and teaching them WordPerfect for DOS, which is useless now (unless you're a legal/medical secratary).
The result? When I got to college I was surrounded by people who could program Pascal but that couldn't turn their computer on. A lot of people still believe that since you have to jump through hoops to get computers to do anything (i.e., write a program in a language like Pascal, which for all its pinnings to English is still Greek to many) they were completely turned off by the whole thing.
And on it goes. People don't do anything to their PC's other than what is neccessary to get it to print something. Apple's made a career of idiots. Linux won't ever hit the desktop at this rate.
Not that it's the teachers' fault. There wasn't Microsoft Office or web browsers to teach 15 years ago. The Apple ][ and Commodore 64 were pretty much toys. But if you wonder why Joe Q. Public doesn't want to fool with computers and why your average person just wants to run Windows and nothing else, this is the real reason - it's not that they don't know about Linux, it's that they don't care.
Every time I walk into Albertson's I hear it, too - but it's not Russell Watson that's singing it. Probably wasn't him singing it when you heard it, either - it was probably Rod Stewart.
The story (as I follow it) is this - the song was written by Dianne Warren. She's famous for the big, boisterous, overdone theme song from movies. "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing", "My Heart Will Go On" - all hers. She was commissioned to write a song for the movie Patch Adams, so she writes "Faith of the Heart", and they get Rod Stewart to record it.
Thing is, the producers for whatever reason decide it's not good enough to be in the movie (doesn't really fit) and so they relegate it to the end credits (and I don't think it was the first song in the end credits, either.
So when the producers of Enterprise need a song, they want a "big" song for the opener, seeing as how they've decided to deviate from the "Whoosh!" formula of shows past. They figure out that there's a potential Dianne Warren gem that's been tossed to the side and they can pick it up for cheap. Of course, they don't want to afford Rod Stewart so they decide to have the song re-recorded using an unknown, Russel Watson, who just sounds a whole lot like Rod Stewart.
And so the flame wars rage on, what with the "Patch Adams Reject" song opening the show. Personally, I kinda like it. Sure, I'm not as diehard a Trekker as others, but I'm cool with the song.
Actually something I've noticed with XP is that most stuff that required reboots before now don't anymore. I use W2K at work and XP Pro at the house and things I install on both will require a reboot on 2K and not on XP. Sometimes I'll reboot XP just to be safe (God, that's almost depressing). I think it has to do with the "DLL-Hell" curing aspects of the Fusion notion in Whistler products (like .NET server).