The first amendment gives you the right to free SPEECH, not free listeners.
Just because you say it doesn't mean everyone (or anyone) has to listen to you.
So true. When I was in college, I saw a bible thumper escorted off of campus kicking and screaming about "free speech". The campus police reminded him that he needed a permit for such a thing and that nobody was required to listen to his shouting and ranting.
do "online dating services" have constitutional rights?
I need to speak with a corporate lawyer to find out what is required of me to incorporate myself so I can get some of these rights that the constitution alludes to.
*ANY* action (legal or not), if it doesn't affect you on work time and doesn't use work resources shouldn't matter.
"Gee, you were speeding to get to work on time. That's illegal. You're fired"
I disagree.
Your axe murderer may not have the patience to do tech support or something like that. Even if they only axe people on their own time, its part of their personality. And its generally seen as a "bad thing".
If your a professional driver, and your driving record sucks, even on your own time in your own car, for insurance reasons and others, its not good or in some cases not possible for you to continue driving professionally.
The whole "Drugs are bad, M'kay" thing does have some, at least perceptual, merit. Currently, we are in a catch 22 because of the prohibition on basically any desirable mood altering substance besides alcohol. They are illegal because they are illegal, and although there is little to no data that supports that getting high does anything besides get you high, you are still "going against the rules". You have dismissed the 'authority', and thought for yourself. Thinking for yourself or independent thought is a detriment to most jobs.
Re:OT: where'd all the 4/5 comments go?
on
Xbox 360 for $300
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· Score: 1
BTW, your post has been modded +4 Interesting, and has a score of +5 by my settings.
I've noticed this as well. I believe that the slashdot guys have been monkeying around with the slashcode, and have disabled or greatly reduced moderation, but this has appeared to have changed in the past couple of hours. I've also noticed a larger discrepancy between the front page and the story pages with the "X of Y comments" where Y is the total number of comments, and X is the ones above your minimum threshold. For the past two days, it was not uncommon to see 0 of 200 comments, but if I clicked on the article, I got like 8 or so comments with little or no moderation to them, and typically all 8 were dumb comments to boot. I'm assuming that they are working on different cacheing methods to reduce the load on the database. It seems as though slashdot stability and speed has greatly been reduced since the friend/foe thing and the individual user assigned thresholds and custom +/- points for different criteria. That is when the infamous 503 errors came about. I could not imagine the extra tax on the database to do the friend/foe stuff, but I do like that feature. The signal to noise ratio is much better with it. I've foed every single one of those damned free{ipod,mini,whatever}, and by that criteria alone, the quality of posts above my threshold are pretty good. Sometimes I wish I could assign a negative score to some of those extra verbal people that usually are friends of friends that rarely say anything of substantive value, but they sure say a lot:) Yes, garcia, you are the first that comes to mind. I'll let you slide between Aug 1 and Aug 9th for the sake of Jerry, but you sure do post a ton of stuff were the people you reply to are below my threshold and your posts with no moderation are above my threshold, so I see your one sided view of a dying thread. I digress.
When I'm doing something major to a multiuser system, I let people know. Being that this website is as much or more the users vs the "editors", it would seem that there would be more interaction between the slashcode people and us guys that pay for it.
I've been using a Linux desktop for several years now. I develop software for Unix and Linux based systems. All of the tools I use are either open source, or have documented APIs.
Why would I ever consider, let alone recomend, a Microsoft product?
I've found that the closed model of Microsoft's products carries over into its developers too, inside and outside of the Microsoft company.
There are so many OSS projects to learn from, and they learn from each other. When I was a developer on the Microsoft platform, I felt isolated. No code examples. 3rd party documentation does not get embedded into Visual Studio like its documentation. Half of the APIs were "reserved", poorly documented, or simply weird. Differing opinions of MFC vs win32. MFC "gurus" that create their own classes that are half attempts at already standard MFC ones. NOTHING would build cleanly as downloading something, running./configure, make, make install.
This was years ago, before.NET and whatnot. The only thing I found good about that development environment was that creating GUIs was pretty easy. It could have been much easier. I remember having some issues with radio buttons or something like that, but it was doable.
I've always considered good MS programers to be some of the brightest, because they have almost nothing to work with. They also seem pretty anti-social and unknown. Aside from people I personally know, I cannot think of a MS developer by name. I can think of many for other platforms.
Its a completely different world. It was never that attractive to me, but I guess the majority of people disagree.
How much is your bandwith worth to you? Would they follow a model like empornium where I would have to keep my share up? What if I didn't want to give out *any* bandwith would I still get to download?
My DSL connection costs about $60/mo.
My bandwidth is worth about $40 a month today. That is what my bill and checkbook say anyway.
I keep my torrents open to obtain an average up/down ration of about 1 or greater. I hate those weasels that drop their connection as soon as _their_ download finishes. My roommate is one of those weasels, and with me paying for the internet connection, the electricity, the computer and disk space, he still doesn't get it (yet).
My outgoing traffic is almost always at its maximum, and I barely notice or care that its being used. For the most part, torrents are almost exclusively what goes out of my house to the net.
If I paid by bandwidth, or if it were a more shared system like in a work environment, that would be an entirely different story.
To me, torrents are one of the best thing to hit the internet since the web browser. No, its not because "I get tons of free stuff!", but I like the way that we can work together to make the net more efficient and downloads faster. The amount of data going over the net without bittorent would not work on the standard client/server model.
I can't wait until EVERYTHING is able to be torrented. Think about having your DVR hooked up to all of your neighbors (anonymous, torrent style, not open to browse). Or even having web content locally cached and torrented all over the place. Why should I download a software update for my Mac all the way across the country to Cupertino on Apple's server, when a few thousand people in my state have already downloaded it? Its like a grid for downloads.
I look forward to having a torrent style download more universal. Its a good thing.
Torrents for commercial files that are charging users for the download? Kiss my butt, unless you are paying me for the bandwidth.
You already are paying for the bandwidth. If downloads from a commercial company require more bandwidth, do you think they are just going to suck up the cost or possibly even loose money and go out of business?
Nope. Up the cost to cover expenses.
If they go with a torrent style download, _everybody_ pays less, and odds are we all get faster downloads.
All of this is null and void if you pay bandwidth by usage.
Apple is perfectly aware that intelegent users can handle more than one button at a time. They just don't believe that the average developer can handle more than one button at a time. At least, not and keep a good interface.
I was one of those people that dinged Apple for years for the one button mouse. But, the angle from the developer point of view, and another thing that I learned is that a Mac with a touchscreen works as advertised. Its kinda difficult to right click with one finger on the screen.
For those that don't know, control+click is the equivalent of right click. Also, for something like the past 10 years or so, if you buy a multi-button mouse, the right button can be mapped to control+click, and you are in business. I have a 3 button/scroll wheel for my PowerBook. I have a bluetooth one button wonder for my iMac at home. I almost immediately bought a multi-button bluetooth mouse, but I realized that there are many click combinations that still require a hand on the keyboard. Apple or command click, shift click, control click are frequently used, especially in the Finder.
I can honestly say that I think that I am going to keep my Apple one button mouse. My laptop is different because I just don't like touchpads that much. They are acceptable for cordless use when I'm on battery for portability, but if I'm at a desk, I prefer a real mouse.
Didn't they also give us the "Capability Maturity Model"? I've seen organizations race to get to CMM-3 or CMM-4, and it's all been a joke.
I've worked at a CMM-3 company before. It looks like the CMM has actually been superseded by something else so Its not easy to get the list of qualities for each level, but they are something like 1) random monkeys writing code 2) random monkeys writing more than one program 3) random monkeys writing code "repeatedly" with a content management system (CVS or similar) 4 and 5 I don't remember, but its not anything remarkable beyond what you like about quality software.
Anyway, the CMM system is/was not very earth shattering, it did give companies some outside accreditation beyond marketers saying "we are great!". For certain government contracts, a CMM minimum level was required like a college degree or HS degree for a job applicant. When I worked there, this was my first programming position for a "for profit" company (I have worked before and since at a University). I came from an open source background. By that I mean that I learned how to program, do system administration, and kernel/low level OS stuff by reading code and various websites, newsgroups, READMEs, or whatever.
My point, is that I code from the styles that I learned from various GNU projects and the Linux kernel (not X consortium or others). And the habits I learned were up there on the CMM scale, and _below_ what my company was doing at CMM-3. Granted, this is not a large sample size, but this was a national company that did large government and commercial contracts.
Back on topic, software quality is variable across the board. OSS software, Windows freeware/shareware, Mac freeware/shareware, commercial software, etc. On all areas, I've seen everything from excellent and I could not ask for much more to complete shit and a waste of time. I've thought about having a software rating system and how good that would be.
FUD. Bush has NEVER said Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. Lots of "sources" have said that he did, but it never happened. Even the NY Times admits that much. Yet, so many still persist that he did, similar to the whole "Al Gore said he invented the Internet" nonsense. Just because people keep saying that he said it, doesn't mean he said it. Either one of them.
WE ARE OFFTOPIC, but politics.slashdot.org has pretty much gone away.
I agree that Bush never directly said Iraq did 9/11, but it gets press anyway. Before I officially banned my local "news"paper, I sent a letter to the editor asking them to correct an AP or some other newsfeed that said the Bush did the Iraq thing because of 9/11.
Unfortunately, I do not have the mails with the editor, but he said it was not worthy of a correction because of the way the sentence was worded. Something like "instigated" vs caused or something similar. I still disagreed, and was politely told to fuck off. I tried to be clear that it was irresponsible news reporting to print crap like that, but I guess they are in the business of selling newspaper advertisements vs reporting news.
It is almost a crime to think that a vast majority of the US population believes that the Iraq war was due to 9/11. These misinformed people also have the same vote power as I do, actually more of one because the ignorant have become a majority.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize Bush, (like the WDMs) but Iraq and 9/11 simply isn't one of them.
Inquiring minds blame the pet goat. The pet goat mesmerized the President of the United States, the Secret Service, NORAD, and the most powerful Air Force in the world into inaction during the largest attack within the borders of the United States.
Solaris 10's new stack is supposed to be the new top dog of the TCP/IP world.
Compared to what? Solaris 9. Somewhere between Solaris 8 and 9 the TCP/IP stack suffered a 30% performance hit on the same hardware compared to Solaris 7. I have no data for Solaris 10, but hopefully they have fixed something.
a) What you're doing. b) Why you're doing it. c) How you're doing it.
Although I'm not a fulltime code monkey, I used to be, and I've never heard of the what, why, how approach (I never took a CS class either, so it could be something I've missed).
I understand the what, but the why and how seem irrelevant. I've never heard a why explanation. Seems too philosophical for writing code. How, _should_ be clear from the code, unless its a very long function.
I've always appreciated comments for global or module variables that do not or cannot have a name that is self descriptive. I also appreciate function comments that say what the inputs are, what the function does, and what the outputs are.
A pet peeve of mine is inconsistency. I've seen sparsely documented code that had a comment like:
int i;/* loop counter */
Why someone thought that a one character loop variable needed a comment for clarity is beyond me.
Say you're using their connection to do some illegal stuff like black hat hacking or spam fraud and the IP gets traced back to your neighbors, then what?
Yeah, it sucks that anti-social, immoral, and criminal people aren't more social, moral, and law abiding.
...the door is unlocked = no encryption, no security....turning the handle gives access to anyone that tries - the router hands out IPs to anyone that asks....the door can be locked very easily - the WiFi network can be configured to deny access easily....accidentally opening the neighbour's unlocked door = Windows automatically connecting to a WiFI network
Analogies in general are a poor way to make an argument because most of the time after the analogy argument is made, the analogy is then nit picked and the original argument has been forgotten.
However, one thing to add to your analogy:
the neighbor's door is on my property
Going around trying unlocked doors and entering a home is still trespassing and possibly breaking and entering. It also carries the risk of death. A stranger in my house when I'm there will not leave alive. Although I'm sure someone might kill another person for using their WAP, its not nearly the same as physical entry.
Hey, you use your car for maybe an hour each way to work. It's being wasted the rest of the day. Fair that I grab it without you knowing in between then?
The difference from using someone's car and someone's internet connection:
1) A car can get in an accident that is no fault of the driver, but the car could be totally inoperable. This will not happen on an internet connection.
2) A car can get stolen or physically damaged because of how or where the person borrowing the car drives it. This does not happen to wifi waves.
3) A car requires regular maintenance that is based on use (oil, gas, etc). WAPs use a fixed amount of electricity.
4) A borrowed car cannot be used simultaneously by the owner and the borrower. WAPs can.
5) A car usually has a specific insurance plan based on the predominant driver and their driving habits. Only a moron would pay insurance for a $50 WAP.
These are just what I thought about off of the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more similar points.
Nothing wrong with sharing a link, it's just good manners to ASK before taking things.
True, but good manners are just a social convention, they have nothing to do with the law or what's right. Its "good manners" in the US to convince someone that the evil sprits have been neutralized by saying "Bless you!" when someone sneezes. Aside from it being good manners, its a completely stupid ritual.
What is not so widely known is that it is ILLEGAL (in the USA) to:
a) BUY a PC b) BUY a copy of OSX c) Make "b" run on "a".
You heard me - against the law to do it in the privacy of your own home, like sodomy in Texas.
Its commonly known that when governments make crimes out of things that are not crimes it only discredits their authority in the eyes of its citizens. Sure it may invoke fear in those that don't think for themselves, but for the rest of us, we just know which laws are valid and enforceable, and we follow those.
Sysadmins have one of the most thankless jobs in the world.
Yup. Its up there with janitor. If everything is OK, nobody even knows you come in at night an clean everything up. If you don't do your job, people notice that, and complain.
I really get a good feeling when I get a rare comment like "When I use another system, its not as nice. I really miss, SOMETHING_HERE". That is cool, but its very rare that I hear such a thing.
100% uptime is impossible.
No. 100% uptime for eternity is impossible:)
My biggest deterrent to my uptime is weather (hurricanes specifically), electrical problems (like turning off a building's power for 8+ hours), and hardware issues. Being that I have little to no control over these things, I'm happy with my uptime (current average for my machines is 338 days:)
Regardless of what you think about Lynn's tactics, or Cisco's, or ISS's, or Blackhat's, the bottom line is that the FBI is now investigating. The government is going after a private citizen for releasing information about routers, because it's "critical to the national ingfrastructure"
All he has to do is invoke fear in someone and he is now a terrorist, and could be detained at Guitmo without being charged of a crime, no lawyer, and no expectation of being released.
I believe that most people think that the US has failed in iraq
Most people are idiots, and think that we went into Iraq because of 9/11.
Contrary to popular believe, the war in Iraq was a complete and total success.
1) It was/is a war, so all of the defense people get their money. 180+ billion of our tax dollars were spent. I know of no other way to spontaneously spend that much money unless everybody thinks its OK so "we wont get attacked".
2) Iraq will not switch their base oil trade currency from the dollar to the euro. So inflation is check for a while so long as our dollars are spread far and wide.
As echo boomers grow up, they'll have to learn that life is not just a series of headlines and highlight reels
I don't know when "grown up" is, but I think that people should be "grown up" in their late 20s. However, a majority of people less than 30 have not learned that life is not just a series of headlines and highlight reels. Nor do they seem to have ever experienced things like delayed gratification, nor have any insight beyond today. They are broke right before every payday, etc, etc.
The only advantage to all of this is that people that have the foresight to plan ahead and can wait for something are able to make a perpetual small profit off of those that need this instant gratification. I would almost consider this a business plan.
IM is for instant messaging, email is for persistent messaging.
As a group, teens have more time to sit and chat than adults, hence the preference for IMing friends. IM is just the electronic equivalent of hanging out at the mall.
Also, as the attention span decreases and need for instant gratification increases, things like waiting for an email is unacceptable. Much like snail mail has become unacceptable as a form of communication between people (except for people in prison, they have all the time in the world, and no other means of communication with the outside world).
At least for work stuff, email is my preferred method of communication, and has been for many years. I can access my email anywhere at any time. Sometimes (believe it or not), I do not want to drop or cannot drop what I am doing at this time to answer the phone. Email lets me have a written record of what was said, when it was said, and I can easily go back and look something up if I forget a detail.
All in all I agree with the parent about IM being the electronic equivalent of hanging out at the mall. I guess I'm "old" now, I've never gotten into IM. But then again, I simply do not need the chronic attention from other people to feel good. Its amazing the value of idle nothingness with the companionship of another person. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy "hanging out at the mall" type of relationships and entertainment, but I still think its weird.
Why is a company that chooses not to filter UV any more liable than a government that chooses not to install a giant pair of Oakley sunglasses over the entire U.S.?
Thats up to the jury. Its much more likely that you will win a case against a company vs the government, so the company is more liable.
If it were an American female android, they would have to add the bitchiness, "I deserve ____", and then you get to loose your house that you worked for and bought and a good chunk of your income monthly as severance pay until she finds someone else to extort. The American female android would also cost a bunch more for the extra development by Indian programmers to add the American female characteristic algorithms. Oh, and they will be mass produced, so if your American female android becomes inoperable because of an "accident", the new one will be the same as the old one.
(Note, I have never been married. This is based on my observations over the years of other marriages and the 3 women I've lived with.)
But really, you guys are full of crap. Sure, you illegally downloaded content that didn't belong to you. Then you went and spent money at a show or bought it. To you, that justifies copyright infringement. But it doesn't mater what you think, it's against the law and it's not really that hard to understand why. You are getting things for free that you should be paying for. If the artist is cool with free downloads, fine, but they aren't.
FWIW, I don't "illegally" download music.
But, my philosophical question is "Who besides the people that are trying to sell other people's work care about these 'illegal' download?"
Value for everything is deemed by the buyer, not by the seller.
What are we paying for to buy a CD or to buy a music file online? The physical CD has physical value, it is property. It has a nice 5x5 inch picture on the front, maybe on the back, if your really lucky it will have more than a blank page on the insert with random information. You are also paying for the promotion (we all lover marketers), recording, and for the distribution of the product. For online purchases, what are you paying for? The bandwidth, marketing, recording, and whatnot. With the online purchase, you loose the album art, you have no physical property, and usually the sound quality of the file is worse than the already antiquated sound quality than "CD quality". Possibly, you can justify buying a track for the convenience of doing it online.
I have argued that there is little to no value for MP3s. I don't see them on eBay. I rarely, if ever see them independently sold on the web. I've never seen one in a retail store. Hell, the recording companies don't even sell them.
I won't argue, the RIAA is evil. They price fix and people should be legally going after that monopoly. But just because some group is using crappy practicies, it doesn't give you the right to break the law.
So fuck 'em. If you want to participate in evil, don't buy CDs, go join the Church of Satan or something constructive.
Why can't the RIAA simply up the bar and provide a new product? Every other _surviving_ industry must do that. It would be nice to have a decent selection of DVDaudio to choose from. The difference between a CD and DVDaudio is significant. The difference between DVDaudio and your average MP3 makes the MP3 painful to listen to.
What I am getting at, is that if the RIAA simply has to provide a product that has some value to their customers. Its quite clear (from them at least) that they are not providing that now.
When you take into account that people have so many other options for entertainment. There are DVD videos, cable/satellite TV, radio, etc. Plus there are new expenses, especially for younger people like cell phone bills.
Again, FWIW, I'm a music freak. I have probably near 1,000 CDs or more. I go to concerts regularly. I am in the process of setting up a recording studio in my house (for the hell of it, I'm not looking to get RIAA rich and complain about it). Also, most all of my purchased CDs were legally??? bought from used record stores. A vast majority of my CDs are from live concerts from bands that allow the trading of their music (some that don't, but I don't care, the concert is over).
Although it may be "illegal" to download MP3s or whatever. I don't care. Look at all of the stupid things that have been illegal and legal over the years like slavery, alcohol, drugs, women voting, stealing the land from the Indians (or now "Native Americans"), gambling, sex of different kinds (Its illegal in my state to get a blowjob from your wife), etc.
Who gives a fuck? I've been laid off from my job before, and I didn't sue my former employer for it. So if some RIAA guys need to get another job? I had to do it. I didn't die of starvation.
So, the argument is, why should I not "illegally" download music?
Slashdot Mirror
The first amendment gives you the right to free SPEECH, not free listeners.
Just because you say it doesn't mean everyone (or anyone) has to listen to you.
So true. When I was in college, I saw a bible thumper escorted off of campus kicking and screaming about "free speech". The campus police reminded him that he needed a permit for such a thing and that nobody was required to listen to his shouting and ranting.
Gotta love the South!
do "online dating services" have constitutional rights?
I need to speak with a corporate lawyer to find out what is required of me to incorporate myself so I can get some of these rights that the constitution alludes to.
*ANY* action (legal or not), if it doesn't affect you on work time and doesn't use work resources shouldn't matter.
"Gee, you were speeding to get to work on time. That's illegal. You're fired"
I disagree.
Your axe murderer may not have the patience to do tech support or something like that. Even if they only axe people on their own time, its part of their personality. And its generally seen as a "bad thing".
If your a professional driver, and your driving record sucks, even on your own time in your own car, for insurance reasons and others, its not good or in some cases not possible for you to continue driving professionally.
The whole "Drugs are bad, M'kay" thing does have some, at least perceptual, merit. Currently, we are in a catch 22 because of the prohibition on basically any desirable mood altering substance besides alcohol. They are illegal because they are illegal, and although there is little to no data that supports that getting high does anything besides get you high, you are still "going against the rules". You have dismissed the 'authority', and thought for yourself. Thinking for yourself or independent thought is a detriment to most jobs.
BTW, your post has been modded +4 Interesting, and has a score of +5 by my settings.
I've noticed this as well. I believe that the slashdot guys have been monkeying around with the slashcode, and have disabled or greatly reduced moderation, but this has appeared to have changed in the past couple of hours. I've also noticed a larger discrepancy between the front page and the story pages with the "X of Y comments" where Y is the total number of comments, and X is the ones above your minimum threshold. For the past two days, it was not uncommon to see 0 of 200 comments, but if I clicked on the article, I got like 8 or so comments with little or no moderation to them, and typically all 8 were dumb comments to boot. I'm assuming that they are working on different cacheing methods to reduce the load on the database. It seems as though slashdot stability and speed has greatly been reduced since the friend/foe thing and the individual user assigned thresholds and custom +/- points for different criteria. That is when the infamous 503 errors came about. I could not imagine the extra tax on the database to do the friend/foe stuff, but I do like that feature. The signal to noise ratio is much better with it. I've foed every single one of those damned free{ipod,mini,whatever}, and by that criteria alone, the quality of posts above my threshold are pretty good. Sometimes I wish I could assign a negative score to some of those extra verbal people that usually are friends of friends that rarely say anything of substantive value, but they sure say a lot
When I'm doing something major to a multiuser system, I let people know. Being that this website is as much or more the users vs the "editors", it would seem that there would be more interaction between the slashcode people and us guys that pay for it.
I've been using a Linux desktop for several years now. I develop software for Unix and Linux based systems. All of the tools I use are either open source, or have documented APIs.
./configure, make, make install.
.NET and whatnot. The only thing I found good about that development environment was that creating GUIs was pretty easy. It could have been much easier. I remember having some issues with radio buttons or something like that, but it was doable.
Why would I ever consider, let alone recomend, a Microsoft product?
I've found that the closed model of Microsoft's products carries over into its developers too, inside and outside of the Microsoft company.
There are so many OSS projects to learn from, and they learn from each other. When I was a developer on the Microsoft platform, I felt isolated. No code examples. 3rd party documentation does not get embedded into Visual Studio like its documentation. Half of the APIs were "reserved", poorly documented, or simply weird. Differing opinions of MFC vs win32. MFC "gurus" that create their own classes that are half attempts at already standard MFC ones. NOTHING would build cleanly as downloading something, running
This was years ago, before
I've always considered good MS programers to be some of the brightest, because they have almost nothing to work with. They also seem pretty anti-social and unknown. Aside from people I personally know, I cannot think of a MS developer by name. I can think of many for other platforms.
Its a completely different world. It was never that attractive to me, but I guess the majority of people disagree.
How much is your bandwith worth to you? Would they follow a model like empornium where I would have to keep my share up? What if I didn't want to give out *any* bandwith would I still get to download?
My DSL connection costs about $60/mo.
My bandwidth is worth about $40 a month today. That is what my bill and checkbook say anyway.
I keep my torrents open to obtain an average up/down ration of about 1 or greater. I hate those weasels that drop their connection as soon as _their_ download finishes. My roommate is one of those weasels, and with me paying for the internet connection, the electricity, the computer and disk space, he still doesn't get it (yet).
My outgoing traffic is almost always at its maximum, and I barely notice or care that its being used. For the most part, torrents are almost exclusively what goes out of my house to the net.
If I paid by bandwidth, or if it were a more shared system like in a work environment, that would be an entirely different story.
To me, torrents are one of the best thing to hit the internet since the web browser. No, its not because "I get tons of free stuff!", but I like the way that we can work together to make the net more efficient and downloads faster. The amount of data going over the net without bittorent would not work on the standard client/server model.
I can't wait until EVERYTHING is able to be torrented. Think about having your DVR hooked up to all of your neighbors (anonymous, torrent style, not open to browse). Or even having web content locally cached and torrented all over the place. Why should I download a software update for my Mac all the way across the country to Cupertino on Apple's server, when a few thousand people in my state have already downloaded it? Its like a grid for downloads.
I look forward to having a torrent style download more universal. Its a good thing.
Torrents for commercial files that are charging users for the download? Kiss my butt, unless you are paying me for the bandwidth.
You already are paying for the bandwidth. If downloads from a commercial company require more bandwidth, do you think they are just going to suck up the cost or possibly even loose money and go out of business?
Nope. Up the cost to cover expenses.
If they go with a torrent style download, _everybody_ pays less, and odds are we all get faster downloads.
All of this is null and void if you pay bandwidth by usage.
Apple is perfectly aware that intelegent users can handle more than one button at a time. They just don't believe that the average developer can handle more than one button at a time. At least, not and keep a good interface.
I was one of those people that dinged Apple for years for the one button mouse. But, the angle from the developer point of view, and another thing that I learned is that a Mac with a touchscreen works as advertised. Its kinda difficult to right click with one finger on the screen.
For those that don't know, control+click is the equivalent of right click. Also, for something like the past 10 years or so, if you buy a multi-button mouse, the right button can be mapped to control+click, and you are in business. I have a 3 button/scroll wheel for my PowerBook. I have a bluetooth one button wonder for my iMac at home. I almost immediately bought a multi-button bluetooth mouse, but I realized that there are many click combinations that still require a hand on the keyboard. Apple or command click, shift click, control click are frequently used, especially in the Finder.
I can honestly say that I think that I am going to keep my Apple one button mouse. My laptop is different because I just don't like touchpads that much. They are acceptable for cordless use when I'm on battery for portability, but if I'm at a desk, I prefer a real mouse.
Didn't they also give us the "Capability Maturity Model"? I've seen organizations race to get to CMM-3 or CMM-4, and it's all been a joke.
I've worked at a CMM-3 company before. It looks like the CMM has actually been superseded by something else so Its not easy to get the list of qualities for each level, but they are something like 1) random monkeys writing code 2) random monkeys writing more than one program 3) random monkeys writing code "repeatedly" with a content management system (CVS or similar) 4 and 5 I don't remember, but its not anything remarkable beyond what you like about quality software.
Anyway, the CMM system is/was not very earth shattering, it did give companies some outside accreditation beyond marketers saying "we are great!". For certain government contracts, a CMM minimum level was required like a college degree or HS degree for a job applicant. When I worked there, this was my first programming position for a "for profit" company (I have worked before and since at a University). I came from an open source background. By that I mean that I learned how to program, do system administration, and kernel/low level OS stuff by reading code and various websites, newsgroups, READMEs, or whatever.
My point, is that I code from the styles that I learned from various GNU projects and the Linux kernel (not X consortium or others). And the habits I learned were up there on the CMM scale, and _below_ what my company was doing at CMM-3. Granted, this is not a large sample size, but this was a national company that did large government and commercial contracts.
Back on topic, software quality is variable across the board. OSS software, Windows freeware/shareware, Mac freeware/shareware, commercial software, etc. On all areas, I've seen everything from excellent and I could not ask for much more to complete shit and a waste of time. I've thought about having a software rating system and how good that would be.
FUD. Bush has NEVER said Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. Lots of "sources" have said that he did, but it never happened. Even the NY Times admits that much. Yet, so many still persist that he did, similar to the whole "Al Gore said he invented the Internet" nonsense. Just because people keep saying that he said it, doesn't mean he said it. Either one of them.
WE ARE OFFTOPIC, but politics.slashdot.org has pretty much gone away.
I agree that Bush never directly said Iraq did 9/11, but it gets press anyway. Before I officially banned my local "news"paper, I sent a letter to the editor asking them to correct an AP or some other newsfeed that said the Bush did the Iraq thing because of 9/11.
Unfortunately, I do not have the mails with the editor, but he said it was not worthy of a correction because of the way the sentence was worded. Something like "instigated" vs caused or something similar. I still disagreed, and was politely told to fuck off. I tried to be clear that it was irresponsible news reporting to print crap like that, but I guess they are in the business of selling newspaper advertisements vs reporting news.
It is almost a crime to think that a vast majority of the US population believes that the Iraq war was due to 9/11. These misinformed people also have the same vote power as I do, actually more of one because the ignorant have become a majority.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize Bush, (like the WDMs) but Iraq and 9/11 simply isn't one of them.
Inquiring minds blame the pet goat. The pet goat mesmerized the President of the United States, the Secret Service, NORAD, and the most powerful Air Force in the world into inaction during the largest attack within the borders of the United States.
Solaris 10's new stack is supposed to be the new top dog of the TCP/IP world.
Compared to what? Solaris 9. Somewhere between Solaris 8 and 9 the TCP/IP stack suffered a 30% performance hit on the same hardware compared to Solaris 7. I have no data for Solaris 10, but hopefully they have fixed something.
a) What you're doing.
/* loop counter */
b) Why you're doing it.
c) How you're doing it.
Although I'm not a fulltime code monkey, I used to be, and I've never heard of the what, why, how approach (I never took a CS class either, so it could be something I've missed).
I understand the what, but the why and how seem irrelevant. I've never heard a why explanation. Seems too philosophical for writing code. How, _should_ be clear from the code, unless its a very long function.
I've always appreciated comments for global or module variables that do not or cannot have a name that is self descriptive. I also appreciate function comments that say what the inputs are, what the function does, and what the outputs are.
A pet peeve of mine is inconsistency. I've seen sparsely documented code that had a comment like:
int i;
Why someone thought that a one character loop variable needed a comment for clarity is beyond me.
Say you're using their connection to do some illegal stuff like black hat hacking or spam fraud and the IP gets traced back to your neighbors, then what?
Yeah, it sucks that anti-social, immoral, and criminal people aren't more social, moral, and law abiding.
...the door is unlocked = no encryption, no security. ...turning the handle gives access to anyone that tries - the router hands out IPs to anyone that asks. ...the door can be locked very easily - the WiFi network can be configured to deny access easily. ...accidentally opening the neighbour's unlocked door = Windows automatically connecting to a WiFI network
Analogies in general are a poor way to make an argument because most of the time after the analogy argument is made, the analogy is then nit picked and the original argument has been forgotten.
However, one thing to add to your analogy:
the neighbor's door is on my property
Going around trying unlocked doors and entering a home is still trespassing and possibly breaking and entering. It also carries the risk of death. A stranger in my house when I'm there will not leave alive. Although I'm sure someone might kill another person for using their WAP, its not nearly the same as physical entry.
Hey, you use your car for maybe an hour each way to work. It's being wasted the rest of the day. Fair that I grab it without you knowing in between then?
The difference from using someone's car and someone's internet connection:
1) A car can get in an accident that is no fault of the driver, but the car could be totally inoperable. This will not happen on an internet connection.
2) A car can get stolen or physically damaged because of how or where the person borrowing the car drives it. This does not happen to wifi waves.
3) A car requires regular maintenance that is based on use (oil, gas, etc). WAPs use a fixed amount of electricity.
4) A borrowed car cannot be used simultaneously by the owner and the borrower. WAPs can.
5) A car usually has a specific insurance plan based on the predominant driver and their driving habits. Only a moron would pay insurance for a $50 WAP.
These are just what I thought about off of the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more similar points.
Nothing wrong with sharing a link, it's just good manners to ASK before taking things.
True, but good manners are just a social convention, they have nothing to do with the law or what's right. Its "good manners" in the US to convince someone that the evil sprits have been neutralized by saying "Bless you!" when someone sneezes. Aside from it being good manners, its a completely stupid ritual.
What is not so widely known is that it is ILLEGAL (in the USA) to:
a) BUY a PC
b) BUY a copy of OSX
c) Make "b" run on "a".
You heard me - against the law to do it in the privacy of your own home, like sodomy in Texas.
Its commonly known that when governments make crimes out of things that are not crimes it only discredits their authority in the eyes of its citizens. Sure it may invoke fear in those that don't think for themselves, but for the rest of us, we just know which laws are valid and enforceable, and we follow those.
Sysadmins have one of the most thankless jobs in the world.
:)
:)
Yup. Its up there with janitor. If everything is OK, nobody even knows you come in at night an clean everything up. If you don't do your job, people notice that, and complain.
I really get a good feeling when I get a rare comment like "When I use another system, its not as nice. I really miss, SOMETHING_HERE". That is cool, but its very rare that I hear such a thing.
100% uptime is impossible.
No. 100% uptime for eternity is impossible
My biggest deterrent to my uptime is weather (hurricanes specifically), electrical problems (like turning off a building's power for 8+ hours), and hardware issues. Being that I have little to no control over these things, I'm happy with my uptime (current average for my machines is 338 days
Regardless of what you think about Lynn's tactics, or Cisco's, or ISS's, or Blackhat's, the bottom line is that the FBI is now investigating. The government is going after a private citizen for releasing information about routers, because it's "critical to the national ingfrastructure"
All he has to do is invoke fear in someone and he is now a terrorist, and could be detained at Guitmo without being charged of a crime, no lawyer, and no expectation of being released.
PATRIOT act is not cool.
the fact that Cisco would not tell anyone about it
Free speech is now a crime. If Cisco released the same information that Lynn did, they will have the FBI after them as well.
WTF is going on in this country?
I believe that most people think that the US has failed in iraq
Most people are idiots, and think that we went into Iraq because of 9/11.
Contrary to popular believe, the war in Iraq was a complete and total success.
1) It was/is a war, so all of the defense people get their money. 180+ billion of our tax dollars were spent. I know of no other way to spontaneously spend that much money unless everybody thinks its OK so "we wont get attacked".
2) Iraq will not switch their base oil trade currency from the dollar to the euro. So inflation is check for a while so long as our dollars are spread far and wide.
As echo boomers grow up, they'll have to learn that life is not just a series of headlines and highlight reels
I don't know when "grown up" is, but I think that people should be "grown up" in their late 20s. However, a majority of people less than 30 have not learned that life is not just a series of headlines and highlight reels. Nor do they seem to have ever experienced things like delayed gratification, nor have any insight beyond today. They are broke right before every payday, etc, etc.
The only advantage to all of this is that people that have the foresight to plan ahead and can wait for something are able to make a perpetual small profit off of those that need this instant gratification. I would almost consider this a business plan.
IM is for instant messaging, email is for persistent messaging.
As a group, teens have more time to sit and chat than adults, hence the preference for IMing friends. IM is just the electronic equivalent of hanging out at the mall.
Also, as the attention span decreases and need for instant gratification increases, things like waiting for an email is unacceptable. Much like snail mail has become unacceptable as a form of communication between people (except for people in prison, they have all the time in the world, and no other means of communication with the outside world).
At least for work stuff, email is my preferred method of communication, and has been for many years. I can access my email anywhere at any time. Sometimes (believe it or not), I do not want to drop or cannot drop what I am doing at this time to answer the phone. Email lets me have a written record of what was said, when it was said, and I can easily go back and look something up if I forget a detail.
All in all I agree with the parent about IM being the electronic equivalent of hanging out at the mall. I guess I'm "old" now, I've never gotten into IM. But then again, I simply do not need the chronic attention from other people to feel good. Its amazing the value of idle nothingness with the companionship of another person. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy "hanging out at the mall" type of relationships and entertainment, but I still think its weird.
Why is a company that chooses not to filter UV any more liable than a government that chooses not to install a giant pair of Oakley sunglasses over the entire U.S.?
Thats up to the jury. Its much more likely that you will win a case against a company vs the government, so the company is more liable.
If it were an American female android, they would have to add the bitchiness, "I deserve ____", and then you get to loose your house that you worked for and bought and a good chunk of your income monthly as severance pay until she finds someone else to extort. The American female android would also cost a bunch more for the extra development by Indian programmers to add the American female characteristic algorithms. Oh, and they will be mass produced, so if your American female android becomes inoperable because of an "accident", the new one will be the same as the old one.
(Note, I have never been married. This is based on my observations over the years of other marriages and the 3 women I've lived with.)
But really, you guys are full of crap. Sure, you illegally downloaded content that didn't belong to you. Then you went and spent money at a show or bought it. To you, that justifies copyright infringement. But it doesn't mater what you think, it's against the law and it's not really that hard to understand why. You are getting things for free that you should be paying for. If the artist is cool with free downloads, fine, but they aren't.
FWIW, I don't "illegally" download music.
But, my philosophical question is "Who besides the people that are trying to sell other people's work care about these 'illegal' download?"
Value for everything is deemed by the buyer, not by the seller.
What are we paying for to buy a CD or to buy a music file online? The physical CD has physical value, it is property. It has a nice 5x5 inch picture on the front, maybe on the back, if your really lucky it will have more than a blank page on the insert with random information. You are also paying for the promotion (we all lover marketers), recording, and for the distribution of the product. For online purchases, what are you paying for? The bandwidth, marketing, recording, and whatnot. With the online purchase, you loose the album art, you have no physical property, and usually the sound quality of the file is worse than the already antiquated sound quality than "CD quality". Possibly, you can justify buying a track for the convenience of doing it online.
I have argued that there is little to no value for MP3s. I don't see them on eBay. I rarely, if ever see them independently sold on the web. I've never seen one in a retail store. Hell, the recording companies don't even sell them.
I won't argue, the RIAA is evil. They price fix and people should be legally going after that monopoly. But just because some group is using crappy practicies, it doesn't give you the right to break the law.
So fuck 'em. If you want to participate in evil, don't buy CDs, go join the Church of Satan or something constructive.
Why can't the RIAA simply up the bar and provide a new product? Every other _surviving_ industry must do that. It would be nice to have a decent selection of DVDaudio to choose from. The difference between a CD and DVDaudio is significant. The difference between DVDaudio and your average MP3 makes the MP3 painful to listen to.
What I am getting at, is that if the RIAA simply has to provide a product that has some value to their customers. Its quite clear (from them at least) that they are not providing that now.
When you take into account that people have so many other options for entertainment. There are DVD videos, cable/satellite TV, radio, etc. Plus there are new expenses, especially for younger people like cell phone bills.
Again, FWIW, I'm a music freak. I have probably near 1,000 CDs or more. I go to concerts regularly. I am in the process of setting up a recording studio in my house (for the hell of it, I'm not looking to get RIAA rich and complain about it). Also, most all of my purchased CDs were legally??? bought from used record stores. A vast majority of my CDs are from live concerts from bands that allow the trading of their music (some that don't, but I don't care, the concert is over).
Although it may be "illegal" to download MP3s or whatever. I don't care. Look at all of the stupid things that have been illegal and legal over the years like slavery, alcohol, drugs, women voting, stealing the land from the Indians (or now "Native Americans"), gambling, sex of different kinds (Its illegal in my state to get a blowjob from your wife), etc.
Who gives a fuck? I've been laid off from my job before, and I didn't sue my former employer for it. So if some RIAA guys need to get another job? I had to do it. I didn't die of starvation.
So, the argument is, why should I not "illegally" download music?