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User: Pogue+Mahone

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Comments · 360

  1. Re:Moderately impressive on The Rolling Stones' Business Model · · Score: 2
    If you were old enough, you might remember that Mick studied at the London School of Economics...

    If you had read the article you would have known that too.

  2. Roll up, roll up ... on Fighting Music Piracy with Glue · · Score: 2
    .... see the daring Pogue Mahone violate the DMCA (again) ...

    the headphones are glued to the players too, to prevent any authorized output

    Why not cut the headphone lead and solder a suitable connector onto the Walkman end?

  3. Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate on Ogg beats MP3 & The Rest In Listening Test · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Maybe there is no need to convert to ogg...

    Whatever you do, folks, don't convert your MP3 files to ogg. If you do, you'll end up with the MP3 artifacts encoded in the ogg file, along with the music.

    Better to re-rip. If that's not possible, keep the MP3s.

  4. Re:He has a case (legally) on Online Auctions Patented, eBay Sued · · Score: 2
    You have to protect your patent... otherwise it is null and void.

    Nope, sorry, that's trademarks. With patents you can sue all you like.

    Anyway, looks to me like E-Bay can see that the validity of the patent is v. shaky, but didn't want to start the fight, so to speak.It's probably not financially viable to initiate the court case to have it struck down. Better to just "infringe" and wait for the patent holder to sue. That way it only costs money if he does sue.

  5. Re:Heh... on The Two Towers Hits the Net · · Score: 2
    the movie is just a way to see how well the books can be fleshed out

    I preferred the book of TFOTR - the special effects were much better (in my version at least) ;-)

  6. Re:How old? on Finding BIOS Upgrades? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The old MoBos used to have socketed EPROMS for the BIOS - quite easy to replace, as long as you have a programmer. But buy a new device, so that if all goes pear-shaped you can plug the old one back in. Anyway, you don't need your BIOS to recognise more than 500MB. Simply make a small partition (10MB should be enough) at the start of the disk, and put your kernel etc. there. Mount it as /boot. That should work with most good distros. Apart from boot time, a Linux system doesn't need the BIOS. The only exception to this BIOS problem that I know of is with some old caching disk controllers. I have one that has a 2048-cylinder hard limit in the controller, which limits the disk size to about 1 GB. But that was in an absolutely ancient (ca. 10 years old) 486i - all ISA.

  7. Re:8 Character limitation on Eight-Character Password Limit in Mac OS X · · Score: 2

    I've been using passwords longer than 8 characters for quite a while now (Slackware). Strange that the SuSE setup that I've got now also has the 8-character limitation.

  8. Re:read Digital Copyright on What Is Public Domain? · · Score: 2
    In short, the laws don't specifically say you can give up your copyright on a work and since the right to put something into the public domain before its natural expiration hasn't been challenged in court, its still a grey area.

    This statement is very worrying, because it seems to imply that the very basis of law is changing. It used to be the case that anything that wasn't explicitly forbidden by law was lawful. AFAICT the law doesn't explicitly forbid placing something in the public domain, so it must be lawful. Unless the basis of law is changing so that everything is unlawful unless explicitly allowed.

    I don't know about you, but that worries me.

  9. Re:Wow, taking on IBM mainframes... on 'Unbreakable Linux' · · Score: 4, Funny
    Everyone knows the ultimate in reliability and security is MPE running on an HP3000...

    Nah - MSDOS 3.1 (and nothing else) running on a 486 is far more reliable and secure, but probably not as useful. If you did't bother to switch it on it would be even more reliable and secure, and not much less useful. ;-)

  10. Re:here's a scary thought... on Win32/Linux Cross-Platform Virus · · Score: 2
    The virus running on Windows has full access to the whole filesystem, so can infect (say) /bin/ls and also make it setuid root.

    Even worse, it could infect the kernel.

  11. Re:not so terrible? on Surveillance Update · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I don't think I'm alone in saying that I will gladly give up a little privacy in exchange for a lot of security.

    The question you should really be asking yourself is "Would I gladly give up a lot of privacy for a false impression of security?", because that's what is really happening.

  12. Now I really do feel old ... on April 1, 1972: Write Only Memory · · Score: 3, Funny
    I remember this one when it first appeared. Does that make me "venerable"?

    On a similar line, somewhere at home I have a spoof datasheet from Nominal Semidestructors giving information about the new Polish Operational Amplifier.

    What I'm missing, however, is my copy of the table of variation of pi with temperature and pressure, which I believe was given to all engineering freshmen at Cambridge at one time. If anyone can help me to locate a new copy I'd be grateful. Please reply here or email me (see homepage).

  13. Re:Ugh. on Free Software Licensing Quiz · · Score: 2
    Question 8 proved me wrong.

    I'd challenge the given answer to question 8 on 2 (maybe 3) grounds: 1. The LGPL (linked in the answer) says that you must allow reverse engineering for debugging purposes. It doesn't extend that requirement to reverse engineering for any private purpose, as asked in the question. 2. You don't have to explictly allow reverse engineering in any case. All you have to do is refrain from forbidding it. If you do nothing, you comply. Maybe 3. Many enlightened countries have written the right to reverse-engineer for "compatibility" into law, trumping anything to the contrary in so-called licensing agreements.

  14. Re:Newsflash! on KaZaA Collapses · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But whose copyright laws do you have to obey?

  15. Re:A word to the editors on Can FAQs Be Copyrighted? · · Score: 2
    You'd trigger frivolous legal action, ...

    Which you could then put into the FAQ ...

    I'm sure I should be able to contrive a "Russell's Paradox" out of that, but nothing springs to mind.

  16. Re:Damage Report from New Jersey.. on 5.2 Earthquake Shakes Up SF Bay Area · · Score: 2

    Nope.... sorry

  17. Re:Damage Report from New Jersey.. on 5.2 Earthquake Shakes Up SF Bay Area · · Score: 2

    No, I'm deadly serious. If it had been a joke, I would have inserted a smiley.

  18. Re:Best way to increase hard drive performance: on Hard Drive Performance - ATA100 vs ATA133 · · Score: 2

    Call me old fashioned, but I reckon you can't beat go-faster stripes down the sides.

  19. Re:Damage Report from New Jersey.. on 5.2 Earthquake Shakes Up SF Bay Area · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is that free as in speech, free as in beer, or free() as in malloc()?

  20. Re:Republican, not democratic! on Peruvian Congressman vs. Microsoft FUD · · Score: 2
    A republic [dictionary.com] is a political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.

    By this definition, the US would appear not to be a republic, since, apparently, the citizens' elected officers and representatives are not responsible to them.

  21. Re:disgusting on Turner CEO: "PVR Users Are Thieves" · · Score: 3, Funny
    (I actually saw this argument on TV a while ago, so *of course* it must be true. ;-)

    The people who are paying for the TV shows are those who buy goods from the advertisers, regardless of whether they watch the shows or not - the viewers are being subsidised by those who buy anyway.

    So if you really want to get your TV for free, you have to watch *all* the commercials on *all* the channels, and avoid buying *anything* from the companies who advertise. Simply ignoring the commercials isn't good enough, because you might inadvertently buy something that was advertised and thus make a contribution to the TV channel's budget.

  22. Re:I have been a thief for decades! on Turner CEO: "PVR Users Are Thieves" · · Score: 2

    I have 1024x768 and Moz. maximised, and I still had to scroll sideways :-(

  23. Re:dollars on AOL-Time Warner's Money Pit · · Score: 2

    All these stock values are of course pure fiction, because if all the stockholders decided at the same time to (try to) cash in on their fortune, the stock price would drop like a lead Zeppelin.

  24. Re:News To Me on Linux "is not piracy" Says Microsoft Lawyer · · Score: 2
    Yeah, I know it's late, but I just can't resist....

    ...compile me latest booty!

    Long John Silver: Load the booty into the boats, Jim lad!
    Jim: Aye aye, Cap'n, I'll start the booty loader right away

    So mod me down ...

  25. Re:ok, on Q&A With Vivendi Rep About Bnetd · · Score: 2

    You'd have to replace "use" with "distribute" too. Anyone can use GPL software, if they can get it.