"If you can't protect what you own, you don't own anything," Valenti said in a statement.
It's interesting to hear Mr. Valenti of the RIAA admitting this, because it basically implies that they don't own anything. I'm sure he did not intend to make that point, but he did.
Sure, the RIAA keeps trying to impose copy protection on their content, but as Schneier eloquently explains, their efforts are futile:
... software content protection does not work. It cannot work. You can distribute encrypted content, but in order for it to be read, viewed, or listened to, it must be turned into plaintext. A clever enough hacker with good enough debugging tools will always be able to... capture the plaintext after decryption. And he can write a software program that allows others to do it automatically. This cannot be stopped.
Read the parent post again. The GPL is a voluntary agreement. You do not ever have to agree to the GPL. Most of the time, you can even use GPL software without agreeing to the GPL.
If the GPL is invalid, then all GPL software reverts to the default state of software under copyright law. This default state, however, is not what you think it is. Many people think that GPL software would revert to being fully copiable if the GPL were invalid. But, by default, software is uncopiable without specific permission, so if the GPL were invalid, all GPL software would revert to being unlicensed and uncopiable until such time as the owner chooses to relicense it.
The GPL is not a EULA. EULA means End User Licensing Agreement. The GPL imposes no conditions on users, only on distributors. The GPL does not require you to accept the license. Finally, the GPL only grants rights, it does not take any away. And that's the reason why nobody has ever tested the GPL in court--because a successful invalidation of the GPL would only cause you to lose the GPL-granted rights, without gaining you any rights in return.
It was always kind of pointless and a little insulting to sell the same K7 design with a cripplingly small cache at a discount.
The Duron's cache is not that small. People tend to forget that the Athlon/Duron has 128 kB of L1 cache. This is four times as much as the PIII/Celeron and sixteen times as much as the Pentium 4. Because the K7's L2 cache is exclusive, the L1 and L2 caches combine for 192 kB of total usable cache on the Duron, which certainly compares favorably to the 128 kB of total cache on the Coppermine Celerons.
I think the Duron owes its failure to the fact that Athlons are already so cheap as to leave no room for Durons in the marketplace. Even so, the Duron does have some advantages (e.g. much lower heat output), and it's too bad to see it go.
Microsoft and Apple spend millions of dollars when developing new operating systems or UIs
I have no idea how much each spent, but, judging by the results, whatever money was spent was much better spent at Apple than MS.
The now classic Fitts's law column on AskTog explains a great number of points that Apple got right and Microsoft (and, for the most part, GNOME and KDE as well) got wrong. Although the column is more than three years old, the majority of the items are still not corrected even in the latest Microsoft Windows. Compare this with the Macintosh which got most of the items right from the beginning, in 1984.
A bunch of people have already pointed out that today's optical mice don't need the special mousepad that the Sun optical mice needed.
In my experience, another big thing going for the modern optical mice is that they're a hell of a lot lighter than the old Sun mice. I find it a lot more comfortable to mouse around all day with a light mouse than a heavy mouse.
forward time travel ratio
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 1
there must be a way to improve that ratio.
Actually, there is. As has been pointed out, in special relativity, if you are moving then time passes slower in your reference frame relative to everyone else's. So all you have to do is speed up (preferably as close as possible to the speed of light), and you can travel into the future at higher than a 1:1 ratio.
This effect has been empirically confirmed using the atomic clocks on board the GPS satellites, so, no, it's not hogwash.
ways around the time travel paradox
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There are a number of ways to resolve this apparent paradox. While I'm not claiming that any of these are for real, like all speculations they are not easily dismissed either.
First of all I assume by "someone in the future" you mean a human on earth. In this case, one of the simplest ways to avoid the future time travelers paradox is to posit that a backwards time travel of N years must physically be accompanied by a spatial displacement of more than N light years. That way, nobody who travels back in time can interact with anything affecting their own past, since they can't interact outside of their light cone.
Another way out of the time travel paradox is to adopt the "parallel universes" viewpoint put forth in the article, and provide some mechanism for explaining why we always stay in the one universe out of these that has not seen time travelers.
Finally, if by someone in the future you mean aliens from somewhere other than earth, then this problem is also easy to resolve: since we have not seen any aliens at all (roswell notwithstanding), it's unreasonable to expect to find alien time travelers.
I listen to music on my PCs (all Linux), Pioneer DVD player, and my Rio Volt. All of these play mp3s, and almost everything I listen to now is in mp3 form.
I think $20 for a (real) CD is good deal, but I decided several years ago to stop financing the RIAA attacks on our free society. As a result, I have not bought a North-American-made CD since 1997. All of the thousands of dollars I've spent on CDs since then has been on discs made outside this continent (mostly east asian music; my first language is Chinese).
So far I have resisted the temptation to lift music wholesale from the P2P services, but I can see where you're coming from there, and I might even have considered it if the types of music that I've grown to like were easier to find on them.
Anyway, I think you should go for it, and don't worry about the smallness of your voice, because it's still greater than the zero that most people give, and that's what counts.
I don't know what planet you're on, but the SSSCA here on Earth is more terrifying than any legislation that Enron could have bought.
Think about it. All hardware and software made today would be illegal to make in the US in a post-SSSCA world. No more open PCs. No Linux. No Apache. No perl. No slashdot (which uses Linux and Apache and perl).
I'd be a lot more inclined to believe all you AC's if you'd cite a source (online or paper) backing you up.
I know that the storyboard is drawn before the sound is recorded, But the prospect of drawing in every frame of the entire animation before recording the sound is so mind-bogglingly ridiculous to me that I would certainly want to see proof if this is the case.
Moreover, even if the animation is done first, I'd bet my bottom dollar that the animation undergoes editing after the production of the soundtrack, in which case my point remains true, but modified: The original soundtrack is the only one that benefits from post-recording editing of the animation.
I've cited one source which backs me up in my series of posts here. Is it too much to ask you to do the same?
The animation is done first, then the lines are recorded.
Not true. The sound is recorded before the video is drawn. I do not know of any instance where it is done backwards (except, of course, dubs). Especially when music is involved, it would be stupid to first draw all the frames and then try to get the orchestra to synch perfectly to the video.
Online sources that discuss this subject are hard to find, but for example this page seems to back me up, at least as far as Disney animation:
While the music department carefully "times out" the action and a dialogue track is recorded, an animator studies the development of each character in the film and then produces model sheets with drawings of just how the character should look in different attitudes. Once approved, these model sheets are used as reference by all the artists involved in the animation process to insure that characters are drawn consistently.
it's Japanese animation. It's dubbed to begin with.
There is a big difference between the original soundtrack and a replacement soundtrack. As I'm sure you know, all animated movies in the world (in any language) are created by first recording the soundtrack and then going back and drawing the animations to match the already recorded soundtrack.
The replacement soundtrack is created under a very different set of circumstances. All soundtracks after the original one have to be made to match an existing animation. The original soundtrack is the only one that has the benefit of having the animation drawn to fit it, rather than the other way around.
Your argument might hold water if all members of the slashdot community were required to think alike. However (and fortunately), this is not the case. What you call "Slashdot" consists of thousands of different people with a many different opinions. It is not at all incongruous that some would think one way, and others would think the other way.
I agree with the various replies here. Otaku in English means anime fanatic; fIf^fN in Japanese means what you say it means. The Japanese language has thousands of words which originated in English but have changed or evolved in meaning since being incorporated into Japanese. It's not a terrible crime for English to have done the same.
It's correct to point out that the word "otaku" doesn't mean the same thing in Japanese as it means in English, but labeling it as misuse is, I think, going too far.
It's interesting that you picked Windows 2000 instead of Windows XP. If you're going to compare Linux with Windows and you choose the version of Windows that's one release back, you have to be fair and also choose the Linux version that's one release back, which is Linux 2.2. And no one's complained about the stability of Linux 2.2.
Perhaps the reason you picked Windows 2000 is that Windows XP has serious problems with security and reliability. If the admins quoted in that EWeek article had deployed Windows XP into production instead of on their testing systems, they would have had major issues.
Conclusion: Test your shit before you deploy, if you're not doing that then you're an idiot.
Bungie has open sourced more software than you'll ever write.
No they haven't. In my book, they haven't open sourced anything. Maybe in your book, they have. But whether or not they have open sourced anything is a point of debate, not an open and shut case.
What's the problem here? The Brett Glass Fan Club is pissed that they can't rip-off the source code and turn it into Share/Crippleware under a BSD license?
Look, buddy, I'm not saying their license is wrong. In fact, I think their non-commercial license is the right choice in this situation.
My beef is with their inaccurate labeling of this software as "open source". As others have pointed out, they can easily use another headline like "Myth Server Code Released" that wouldn't confuse people about what open source stands for.
Given that Myth is owned by Microsoft, it would be all too easy to suggest that the headline is meant to be intentionally confusing, but I think I'll go to sleep now instead of beating this horse further.
First of all, as I and others are trying to point out, the bungie.net page does indeed assert (incorrectly) in the headline that the software is open source.
Second of all, even if the mislabeling is only in the slashdot headline, I still have a legitimate case that labeling this software "open source" is incorrect. This is not like hacker vs. cracker where a minority is trying to redefine a term from the majority. The term open source was popularized by OSI and most people, when they see "open source", do think of the OSI meaning.
So, for anyone, slashdot editor or Microsoft, to mislabel this software as "open source" is misleading, whether intentional or not.
A quick check of the software license indicates that the source code is licensed for "non-commercial purposes only". This violates clause 6 of the Open Source Definition.
It's really too bad the Open Source trademark was rejected, because tactics like this lead to a lot of genuine confusion about what open source software really means.
My major gripe with all of you Microsoft apologists is that you are silent when Microsoft plays foul but rain down a hailstorm of recriminations at the slightest hint of any misbehavior from the free software camp.
This guy is no saint for what he's doing, but it's amazingly hypocritical for you to accuse him of wrongdoing without first addressing all the wrongs that Microsoft has done and continues to do.
To punish people because of the mail client they use is pointless.
Microsoft has, for years and years and years, encouraged web site authors to write their web sites for Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer only.
If you want to call us "silly" "immature" and "asinine" for exercising our right to begin an email with "begin", then you'd have to find accusations ten times worse and levy them against Microsoft for all the dirty tricks they've foisted over the years.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting to hear Mr. Valenti of the RIAA admitting this, because it basically implies that they don't own anything. I'm sure he did not intend to make that point, but he did.
Sure, the RIAA keeps trying to impose copy protection on their content, but as Schneier eloquently explains, their efforts are futile:
If the GPL is invalid, then all GPL software reverts to the default state of software under copyright law. This default state, however, is not what you think it is. Many people think that GPL software would revert to being fully copiable if the GPL were invalid. But, by default, software is uncopiable without specific permission, so if the GPL were invalid, all GPL software would revert to being unlicensed and uncopiable until such time as the owner chooses to relicense it.
The GPL is not a EULA. EULA means End User Licensing Agreement. The GPL imposes no conditions on users, only on distributors. The GPL does not require you to accept the license. Finally, the GPL only grants rights, it does not take any away. And that's the reason why nobody has ever tested the GPL in court--because a successful invalidation of the GPL would only cause you to lose the GPL-granted rights, without gaining you any rights in return.
The Duron's cache is not that small. People tend to forget that the Athlon/Duron has 128 kB of L1 cache. This is four times as much as the PIII/Celeron and sixteen times as much as the Pentium 4. Because the K7's L2 cache is exclusive, the L1 and L2 caches combine for 192 kB of total usable cache on the Duron, which certainly compares favorably to the 128 kB of total cache on the Coppermine Celerons.
I think the Duron owes its failure to the fact that Athlons are already so cheap as to leave no room for Durons in the marketplace. Even so, the Duron does have some advantages (e.g. much lower heat output), and it's too bad to see it go.
I have no idea how much each spent, but, judging by the results, whatever money was spent was much better spent at Apple than MS.
The now classic Fitts's law column on AskTog explains a great number of points that Apple got right and Microsoft (and, for the most part, GNOME and KDE as well) got wrong. Although the column is more than three years old, the majority of the items are still not corrected even in the latest Microsoft Windows. Compare this with the Macintosh which got most of the items right from the beginning, in 1984.
In my experience, another big thing going for the modern optical mice is that they're a hell of a lot lighter than the old Sun mice. I find it a lot more comfortable to mouse around all day with a light mouse than a heavy mouse.
Actually, there is. As has been pointed out, in special relativity, if you are moving then time passes slower in your reference frame relative to everyone else's. So all you have to do is speed up (preferably as close as possible to the speed of light), and you can travel into the future at higher than a 1:1 ratio.
This effect has been empirically confirmed using the atomic clocks on board the GPS satellites, so, no, it's not hogwash.
First of all I assume by "someone in the future" you mean a human on earth. In this case, one of the simplest ways to avoid the future time travelers paradox is to posit that a backwards time travel of N years must physically be accompanied by a spatial displacement of more than N light years. That way, nobody who travels back in time can interact with anything affecting their own past, since they can't interact outside of their light cone.
Another way out of the time travel paradox is to adopt the "parallel universes" viewpoint put forth in the article, and provide some mechanism for explaining why we always stay in the one universe out of these that has not seen time travelers.
Finally, if by someone in the future you mean aliens from somewhere other than earth, then this problem is also easy to resolve: since we have not seen any aliens at all (roswell notwithstanding), it's unreasonable to expect to find alien time travelers.
I listen to music on my PCs (all Linux), Pioneer DVD player, and my Rio Volt. All of these play mp3s, and almost everything I listen to now is in mp3 form.
I think $20 for a (real) CD is good deal, but I decided several years ago to stop financing the RIAA attacks on our free society. As a result, I have not bought a North-American-made CD since 1997. All of the thousands of dollars I've spent on CDs since then has been on discs made outside this continent (mostly east asian music; my first language is Chinese).
So far I have resisted the temptation to lift music wholesale from the P2P services, but I can see where you're coming from there, and I might even have considered it if the types of music that I've grown to like were easier to find on them.
Anyway, I think you should go for it, and don't worry about the smallness of your voice, because it's still greater than the zero that most people give, and that's what counts.
I don't know what planet you're on, but the SSSCA here on Earth is more terrifying than any legislation that Enron could have bought.
Think about it. All hardware and software made today would be illegal to make in the US in a post-SSSCA world. No more open PCs. No Linux. No Apache. No perl. No slashdot (which uses Linux and Apache and perl).
Think about it.
I know that the storyboard is drawn before the sound is recorded, But the prospect of drawing in every frame of the entire animation before recording the sound is so mind-bogglingly ridiculous to me that I would certainly want to see proof if this is the case.
Moreover, even if the animation is done first, I'd bet my bottom dollar that the animation undergoes editing after the production of the soundtrack, in which case my point remains true, but modified: The original soundtrack is the only one that benefits from post-recording editing of the animation.
I've cited one source which backs me up in my series of posts here. Is it too much to ask you to do the same?
I still think you are wrong, and I am right. See my other post for more.
Not true. The sound is recorded before the video is drawn. I do not know of any instance where it is done backwards (except, of course, dubs). Especially when music is involved, it would be stupid to first draw all the frames and then try to get the orchestra to synch perfectly to the video.
Online sources that discuss this subject are hard to find, but for example this page seems to back me up, at least as far as Disney animation:
There is a big difference between the original soundtrack and a replacement soundtrack. As I'm sure you know, all animated movies in the world (in any language) are created by first recording the soundtrack and then going back and drawing the animations to match the already recorded soundtrack.
The replacement soundtrack is created under a very different set of circumstances. All soundtracks after the original one have to be made to match an existing animation. The original soundtrack is the only one that has the benefit of having the animation drawn to fit it, rather than the other way around.
Your argument might hold water if all members of the slashdot community were required to think alike. However (and fortunately), this is not the case. What you call "Slashdot" consists of thousands of different people with a many different opinions. It is not at all incongruous that some would think one way, and others would think the other way.
It's correct to point out that the word "otaku" doesn't mean the same thing in Japanese as it means in English, but labeling it as misuse is, I think, going too far.
Perhaps the reason you picked Windows 2000 is that Windows XP has serious problems with security and reliability. If the admins quoted in that EWeek article had deployed Windows XP into production instead of on their testing systems, they would have had major issues.
Conclusion: Test your shit before you deploy, if you're not doing that then you're an idiot.
No they haven't. In my book, they haven't open sourced anything. Maybe in your book, they have. But whether or not they have open sourced anything is a point of debate, not an open and shut case.
Just because you think I've lost doesn't mean I'll stop fighting.
I agree with you, though, on the fact that there is a battle.
Look, buddy, I'm not saying their license is wrong. In fact, I think their non-commercial license is the right choice in this situation.
My beef is with their inaccurate labeling of this software as "open source". As others have pointed out, they can easily use another headline like "Myth Server Code Released" that wouldn't confuse people about what open source stands for.
Given that Myth is owned by Microsoft, it would be all too easy to suggest that the headline is meant to be intentionally confusing, but I think I'll go to sleep now instead of beating this horse further.
Second of all, even if the mislabeling is only in the slashdot headline, I still have a legitimate case that labeling this software "open source" is incorrect. This is not like hacker vs. cracker where a minority is trying to redefine a term from the majority. The term open source was popularized by OSI and most people, when they see "open source", do think of the OSI meaning.
So, for anyone, slashdot editor or Microsoft, to mislabel this software as "open source" is misleading, whether intentional or not.
I can read, thank you, but maybe you can't.
If you read the license you'll find that the code is licensed for "non-commercial purposes only", so it's not open source in the sense of the OSD.
I'd rather have them publish the source code than not, but I'm disappointed that it's mislabeled as an "open source" release, when it's not.
It's really too bad the Open Source trademark was rejected, because tactics like this lead to a lot of genuine confusion about what open source software really means.
This guy is no saint for what he's doing, but it's amazingly hypocritical for you to accuse him of wrongdoing without first addressing all the wrongs that Microsoft has done and continues to do.
Microsoft has, for years and years and years, encouraged web site authors to write their web sites for Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer only.
If you want to call us "silly" "immature" and "asinine" for exercising our right to begin an email with "begin", then you'd have to find accusations ten times worse and levy them against Microsoft for all the dirty tricks they've foisted over the years.