I disagree.
At my work place, I use SuSE (i'm from the U.S.).
one of my co-workers is Chinese and uses mandrake. One of my co-workers is Mexican and uses Red Hat. I had a co-worker (an intern) who was Russian. He used Red Hat, then switched to Slackware and then switched to Mandrake (he switched because he changed machines and used the cds that were closest to his computer). I'm also using Debian at work on a test machine and at home on a machine.
ohyeah, I use gnome on SuSE, and the people on mandrake and Red Hat are all using KDE.
i guess what i'm saying is that in my experience they distributions are doing just fine at being cross-cultural.
I guess he must have gone into a coma or something and completely missed the NES, Genesis, TG-16, SNES, Neo*Geo, Saturn, Play Station, etc.:-)
i dont think he missed them. he probably couldnt justify taking the time to understand those systems down to the metal because he never worked on those platforms.
he didnt say that it's the first fixed platform system since the original 4.77 MHz pc, he said it's the first time since working on the original 4.77 MHz pc that he's worked on a fixed platform.
OF COURSE they're going to subscriptions, just like every other content provider throughout history. magazines, cable tv, newspapers
i notice you skip the most obvious contradictory example. you mention cable tv and skip broadcast tv.
broadcast tv makes it's money from advertising revenue. or does broadcast tv not constitute a content provider, in your opinion?
there are other workable ways for a content provider to make money. (granted, the ad revenue idea doesnt really seem to work on the internet)
i dont work there or anything, but on a guess i'd say equipment costs, rent for their business' offices, paychecks for the guys who reverse engineered it, etc.
personally, i expect the total cost is more than $150,000 in that respect.
(which is to say that, to me, that number does look little.)
i imagine the vast majority of people who are experts in security as it relates to computers are actively watched as opposed to having govt. security clearance.
the security clearance these people have dont mean that they are security experts, it means they can keep a govt. secret.
the problem people have with it is that when it comes to having a group whose job it is to make sure the govt. isnt abusing it's power, you dont want that group to owe their paychecks or jobs to the govt. you also dont want them to be agents of the group they are supposed to be criticising.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Re:[Potential troll] What DviX is really used for
on
DivX ;-) Deux Update
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· Score: 1
Yes I know about making backups, about control over media, etc etc but you have to admit this does make pirating movies easier (much easier than image-copying DVDs with CSS in tact).
ok so you know about valid and legal reasons why someone might use this software. clearly it's sole use is not to commit an illegal act.
the fact that it might make committing an illegal act easier is irrelevent...in exactly the same way it is irrelevent when dealing with VCRs.
VCR makes copying movies easier.
guns make killing people easier. (i hesitate to mention this for fear of starting a giant gun control debate. please dont.)
port scanners make attacking servers easier (or at least more convenient)
they all have valid uses and none of them should be banned.
there's a significant difference between having the potential to be used illegally an actually being used to do something illegal.
when it gets used to do something illegal, then they'll have a reasonable case. it wont be against DivX or against DeCSS; it'll be against the person who committed the crime.
and the rest of us can get back to watching 600 meg versions of movies, copied from our paid for dvds, on our laptops (running a linux distro) while on a plane flying over idaho (or something).
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Re:A rant on licensing and open source
on
CueCat At It Again
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· Score: 1
Cuecat has a pretty solid license agreement that you must agree to before taking the device. And it pretty much confirms what the cease-and-desist letters say more verbosely: the CueCat is licensed, not sold or given away.
really? that's interesting because i didnt sign a license agreement (and never saw one) when i got my free Cuecat reader from Radio Shack.
i took the device, but i never agreed to any license agreement. maybe the license agreement is on that cd i've never opened?
The DMV doesn't give you permission to kill people with your car, they give you a license to drive it.
not really a relevent comment since the govt. didnt give you the car and doesn't restrict where you can drive it. (among a vast array of other reasons why that statment has no relevence that i'm sure are obvious)
A more appropriate description would be the chrysler can't sell you a car and tell you that you cannot tinker with the engine if you want. It's yours, feel free to break it.
they also can't tell you that you are only allowed to use Exxon gasoline because that's what they intended when they built it.
Tivo doesn't give you permission to break down their proprietary video encoding technology, just to hack the hard drive and other non-critical bits (this is how companies make money).
Tivo also cannot stop you from taking apart your legally bought Tivo box and tinkering with the insides if you want. If you break it, too bad, the warranty is voided.
Remember, i never signed any license. i was given the hardware by the girl at Radio Shack. I own it now.
Sure, I could devote my life to developing Linux and giving it away for free. I could also never marry and starve my future children to death.
that's incredibly trollish and implication is stupid so i'll just say this:
Yeah, poor Linus. He really looks like he's starving.
Some companies need to make money to survive.
i'm cool with that. i got no problem with a company making money providing a product or service that's useful. but if they give me free stuff and then whine when i use it in a way they didnt intend, that's their problem.
Or should i be worried about the statue my girlfriend made out of all those free AOL cds?
(maybe there's a license on them saying i'm only allowed to use them to connect to AOL and the statue violates their intellectual property!)
i agree that the 800 million is probably calculated in whatever way is most favourable to her goal. (which is to say horribly inflated)
of course, that's for the total amount of time she's had the site. i have no idea how long that is, but i seriously doubt it existed before '96.
most people on earth dont have internet access or dont care about the internet, but that still leaves a lot of people who do. on a quick look, i couldnt find any numbers to supply.
considering she's backed by playboy, i would expect her audience to be worldwide.
(not to mention it's porn....it probably comes up in every search done on the net.)
well, you could still fake the data for something like doubleclick too. you'd just have to write a script that simulates clicks on the link and you could "stuff" you total clickthrus.
the trick would be in writing a script to do it that would be subtle enough to not be caught by someone analyzing the logs and yet get enough clickthrus to make it worth the profit.
yeah hits are inflated because a lot of hits come from an individual. page views are supposed to take that into account. the problem is that page views isnt exactly defined anywhere. the statistical package i'm most familiar with (NetTracker) allows you to define what constitutes a page view.
Personally, i think that's good because how many pages deep someone goes on a single view will change depending on the site and it's content so it should be a flexible definition, but it does give people who want to sound impressive the ability to tweak their stats however they like.
i guess the real answer is that nonbiased 3rd parties should run the stats on the raw logs and determine how to calculate a view.
internally, i would think the company would want those statistics as accurate as possible so they can make business decisions, but for advertising or venture capital hunting, they might inflate their numbers. i certainly would trust the numbers a company gave me, without verifying them myself, if they were trying to get me to invest millions in them.
apparently she sent them her server logs. according to the story she got 121 million downloads of her image from her free site and 120 million downloads of her image from her pay site.
by the way, that 800 million shouldnt just be broken up into how many US citizens would have had to download her image. there's a few billion people in the non-US citizen population who could have downloaded her image too.
I know this thread is off topic, but hopefully i wont be moderated into oblivion for responding to it...
Here's an article all about deep linking and it's legal ramifications. GigaLaw Deep Linking Article
Also, as far as copyright violation goes, at least one U.S. District Judge disagrees with Brad Templeton as he ruled that deep linking did not constitute copyright violation. (it's on page 4, Ticketmaster vs. Tickets.com)
(well, to be honest he said it's not copyright violation as long as it's clear that you are being transported to another site....so no opening them into frames).
realistically, i think Voodoo Extreme is making a lot more money off of everyone at slashdot jumping directly to the article and being served the ad banner that's on the article pages. (i'm assuming there's one there since they are slashdotted and i cant check...but it's a pretty safe assumption considering i've never seen a news site that only served ads on their main page)
nope. that's not right. it's actually almost 180 degrees off from what the story is about.
Hemos posted that Voodoo Extreme has an interview with John Carmack on their site.
the interview is broken into 3 parts.
The 3 parts are called Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.
Day 1 and Day 2 are already available on their site. Day 3 will be available tomorrow.
Hemos specifically says he's not posting anything about it tomorrow.
There is a difference between libraries making decisions about what to buy and arbitrarily deciding not not carry things that dont cost them any money.
If a mechanism existed whereby a library could carry every book ever written for free, they would. as it stands they make decisions on what is most valuable for them to get and get that. The rest of the stuff they dont get isnt left out because of it's content but because there wasnt a big enough budget to include it.
Filtering software excludes content that it costs absolutely nothing for the library make available. As long as the content itself isnt illegal, there's no real reason to not provide access to it and allow adults and parents to make their own decisions about what is appropriate for themselves and for their children.
Maybe the libraries should just ban use of computer systems for anyone under 18 who is not accompanied by a legal guardian.
Denis Leary summed it up nicely in No Cure for Cancer when he described the modern parent's attitude towards children.
"Here's my kid, he matches my couch!"
the story said linux was the top server in germany.
you are counting "windows boxes for home use, which dial up and connect to the internet" as servers?
i would think it's an incredibly reasonable assumption on the part of the people doing the survey to assume that only machines with permanent connections should be counted as servers.
it also doesnt appear to be about numbers of boxes, but about number of sites served from the os. (otherwise solaris would have been last since most solaris sites are being served from 2 boxes)
I cant read the German article either. i'm basing my understanding on the same information yours is based on.
i might be mistaken about this but i recall having heard that the german vines were bred off of french vines and that at one point a disease of some type ravaged vineyards in france and they had to go get some of the german vines to repopulate the french vineyards.
i remembered that when i read that german wine was a poor substitute for french wine in the above post.
personally, i dont drink wine much. my girlfriend does, but she prefers plum wine.
(hey, at least it was on the same topic as the parent post, even if they're both off topic)
you are missing the fact that he waived any right to apply additional restrictions to the distribution when he accepted the terms of the gpl to get his hands on the quake souce.
he already agreed to give up his right to do exactly what he's doing. so his doing it is in violation of that agreement and he doesnt have the right to distribute any of the copyrighted quake source at all.
dont you think that the fact that your list of books libraries shouldnt waste money on and the AFA's list of books libraries shouldnt waste money on are different demonstrates nicely why neither of you have the right to dictate these things?
the best people to decide how the library spends it's money are the library administrators. they know who makes up their community, what proportions to buy the materials in, and what what they have in stock already (and what they are short of). someone should keep an eye on them to make sure they do their jobs, but it really should be their decision.
same goes for internet access. they can regulate it and determine if the usage is appropriate or not.
maybe they could do some kind of logging in system where people had to sign in to use the computer and were assigned a computer to use. then the urls the browser went to could be logged somewhere where the administrator of the lab could scan the logs to see if any obvious porn urls or something were listed.
it's still a bit invasive and probably not the best idea on the matter, but when i worked in a computer lab in a university library, it would have been an easier way to enforce the lab policy against going to porn sites.
I haven't studied recent (living) scientists, but at least Isaac Newton and Einstein would agree with me in getting rid of evolution theory having been Christians. that's some very seriously flawed logic. this assumes that all Christians oppose evolution. Since there are plenty of Christians who dont oppose evolution, being Christian is not enough to assume they oppose evolution.
Being a Christian myself, I see physics and all other real laws something that God considered a Good Thing(TM). I've met plenty of christians who would disagree with that. there's an entire sect of christianity that disagrees with this. why are these sciences still taught in schools when there are groups of christians who believe these elements of science go against god?
I have full faith in physics, mathematics, computer science and all such stuff, but if a theory is contradictory with the Bible, according to the logic (which is something that cannot be wrong by definition) either the Bible must be interpreted wrong, or the theory is wrong (that ok, if two things are directly contradictory they cannot both be correct. that's fine. however, logic works by proving a positive, not a negative. the goal isnt to prove something is wrong. the goal is to either, prove something directly contradictory is right, or to prove there is a flaw in the argument being used to prove something is right.
is, I can't say there wasn't a big bang, because the Bible doesn't say anything contradictory; it might have been the way God did it). In this case, I see it impossible to interprete the Bible so that humans are apes gone through evolution, and as such it must be false. the logical problem here is that you are assuming the bible is always right. this is not an assumption that the vast majority of the people who disagree with you will share. therefore, for you to use this as a foundation for your conclusion, you have to prove this to be the case. since your argument hinges on something you feel to be true but cannot prove to be true your argument doesnt stand. just out of curiosity, what in the bible directly contradicts the theory of evolution?
Note that many scientists, even those who don't believe in God, find every now and then new false predictions in evolution theory. Eg. that long 'tail' in our spine when we're still in the mother's womb is no longer considered a vestige of a tail, but rather something which is necessary for our skeletal development (or something; the point wasn't in the details). this doesnt invalidate evolution as a theory. it just means that one idea for why that tail is there turned out to not be the case and another idea took it's place. this is the scientific method in action. the fact that science is readily able and willing to drop hypotheses and theories that dont hold up against the physical evidence only demonstrates that the physical evidence supports (or at least doesnt contradict) evolution theory.
i like the beginning. the first 40 minutes or so was good. however, there comes a point when you try to build too much tension and all you achieve is making it incredibly tedious. this movie finds that point and then keeps going.
What was tied up in the bundle of sticks? A piece of Josh? Could we tell what bit? If it was a piece of Josh, did she tell Mike? I didn't think she did. If she did, why would they still be hoping to find him in the house?
the bundle was soaked in blood and contained Josh's tongue and (i think) his eyes. they were wrapped in a piece of Josh's shirt. She didnt tell Mike, at least, not on camera. If she didnt tell Mike, that would explain why he was rushing through the house looking for Josh, she seemed more hesitant. It was still pretty stupid in light of what she had found in the bundle.
That was Mike standing in the corner? How did he get there so fast? And why was he just standing there? I didn't understand that bit about the legend. If somebody tells me to stand in a corner while he kills my friend, I would think I'd be trying to get away? Maybe it was Josh standing there (if it wasn't a piece of him that she found). But then where did Mike go? She was right behind him coming down the steps.
Mike went into the basement while she was still on the second floor filming the walls. My impression was that he was propped in the corner either dazed, unconscious, or dead. At first i thought he was taking a leak (he just looked like that's what he was doing). As for the kids, people do weird things when they are put in extreme situations like that, especially small kids. if the adult told them to stand in the corner and not look, i can believe a kid might actually do that.
What were all the stick figures in the trees? Did they have any connection to anything else we saw in the movie? I would gather that the piles of stones represented the dead -- 7 original disappeared, 7 piles. 3 of them, 3 piles. But all the stick figures were never really explained.
the stick figures were just occult symbology. they looked basically like burning man figures. also, when they found the large group of them, i took the smaller ones to be children, the more prominent ones that were in the center to be the characters, and the one that had leaves all over it to be the blair witch (she's covered in fur, so the leaves represented the fur).
Unless you mean stealing time on a university computer to develop a BASIC? Hmmm. Seems to remind me of how a lot of Open Source products get started...
creating stuff and then releasing it for free is pretty much normal acceptable and expected behaviour at universities. i cant think of a university i've heard of having a rule against this. (it is certainly possible, i just dont know of any)
however, most of the universities i am familiar with do have specific rules against using school resources for personal financial gain.
so i dont think comparing using time to build a product you are going to sell and using time to build something you give away is really a valid way to vindicate that behaviour.
i liked Johnny Mnemonic (the movie) also. It wasnt the same as the story, but it was a good movie it it's own right. Maybe the problem was in translating a short story to a movie length...
Hopefully Neuromancer will come off closer to the original novel. The thing that concerns me is that they will probably have to cut stuff out to get fit it into a "viewable length" (as defined by hollywood). I'm more concerned about them butchering it when they edit it for length.
As for the Matrix, i'm sure a lot of individuals will think it's trying to capitalize on the Matrix's success (and i imagine that's part of the reason why it suddenly has enough backing to be made), but only the truly clueless who have done absolutely no research into the genre (and who've never been to the sci-fi section of Borders) will actually slam it in a movie review for being "matrix-like".
As far as Keanu goes, i've come to two conclusions about him..... he should only take roles in cyberpunk movies (and then only as the "what the fuck is going on!?!" character) and he should never, ever, do anything that involves period pieces (dracula, dangerous liasons, etc.)
i'm not trying to knock suse (or you, or anyone) here... but how much does it cost red hat to ship to germany? what kind of import tariffs are they paying?
Suse's overhead to distribute in Germany is almost certainly lower than Red Hat's. It's not necessarily enough to warrant Red Hat costing twice as much, but it is something to consider before assuming they are inflating their prices in microsoftian tradition.
Slashdot Mirror
At my work place, I use SuSE (i'm from the U.S.). one of my co-workers is Chinese and uses mandrake. One of my co-workers is Mexican and uses Red Hat. I had a co-worker (an intern) who was Russian. He used Red Hat, then switched to Slackware and then switched to Mandrake (he switched because he changed machines and used the cds that were closest to his computer). I'm also using Debian at work on a test machine and at home on a machine.
ohyeah, I use gnome on SuSE, and the people on mandrake and Red Hat are all using KDE.
i guess what i'm saying is that in my experience they distributions are doing just fine at being cross-cultural.
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
i dont think he missed them. he probably couldnt justify taking the time to understand those systems down to the metal because he never worked on those platforms.
he didnt say that it's the first fixed platform system since the original 4.77 MHz pc, he said it's the first time since working on the original 4.77 MHz pc that he's worked on a fixed platform.
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
i notice you skip the most obvious contradictory example. you mention cable tv and skip broadcast tv.
broadcast tv makes it's money from advertising revenue. or does broadcast tv not constitute a content provider, in your opinion?
there are other workable ways for a content provider to make money. (granted, the ad revenue idea doesnt really seem to work on the internet)
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
personally, i expect the total cost is more than $150,000 in that respect.
(which is to say that, to me, that number does look little.)
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
i imagine the vast majority of people who are experts in security as it relates to computers are actively watched as opposed to having govt. security clearance.
the security clearance these people have dont mean that they are security experts, it means they can keep a govt. secret.
the problem people have with it is that when it comes to having a group whose job it is to make sure the govt. isnt abusing it's power, you dont want that group to owe their paychecks or jobs to the govt. you also dont want them to be agents of the group they are supposed to be criticising.
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Yes I know about making backups, about control over media, etc etc but you have to admit this does make pirating movies easier (much easier than image-copying DVDs with CSS in tact).
ok so you know about valid and legal reasons why someone might use this software. clearly it's sole use is not to commit an illegal act.
the fact that it might make committing an illegal act easier is irrelevent...in exactly the same way it is irrelevent when dealing with VCRs.
VCR makes copying movies easier.
guns make killing people easier. (i hesitate to mention this for fear of starting a giant gun control debate. please dont.)
port scanners make attacking servers easier (or at least more convenient)
they all have valid uses and none of them should be banned.
there's a significant difference between having the potential to be used illegally an actually being used to do something illegal. when it gets used to do something illegal, then they'll have a reasonable case. it wont be against DivX or against DeCSS; it'll be against the person who committed the crime.
and the rest of us can get back to watching 600 meg versions of movies, copied from our paid for dvds, on our laptops (running a linux distro) while on a plane flying over idaho (or something).
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
really? that's interesting because i didnt sign a license agreement (and never saw one) when i got my free Cuecat reader from Radio Shack. i took the device, but i never agreed to any license agreement. maybe the license agreement is on that cd i've never opened?
The DMV doesn't give you permission to kill people with your car, they give you a license to drive it.
not really a relevent comment since the govt. didnt give you the car and doesn't restrict where you can drive it. (among a vast array of other reasons why that statment has no relevence that i'm sure are obvious)
A more appropriate description would be the chrysler can't sell you a car and tell you that you cannot tinker with the engine if you want. It's yours, feel free to break it.
they also can't tell you that you are only allowed to use Exxon gasoline because that's what they intended when they built it.
Tivo doesn't give you permission to break down their proprietary video encoding technology, just to hack the hard drive and other non-critical bits (this is how companies make money).
Tivo also cannot stop you from taking apart your legally bought Tivo box and tinkering with the insides if you want. If you break it, too bad, the warranty is voided.
Remember, i never signed any license. i was given the hardware by the girl at Radio Shack. I own it now.
Sure, I could devote my life to developing Linux and giving it away for free. I could also never marry and starve my future children to death.
that's incredibly trollish and implication is stupid so i'll just say this:
Yeah, poor Linus. He really looks like he's starving.
Some companies need to make money to survive.
i'm cool with that. i got no problem with a company making money providing a product or service that's useful. but if they give me free stuff and then whine when i use it in a way they didnt intend, that's their problem.
Or should i be worried about the statue my girlfriend made out of all those free AOL cds? (maybe there's a license on them saying i'm only allowed to use them to connect to AOL and the statue violates their intellectual property!)
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
of course, that's for the total amount of time she's had the site. i have no idea how long that is, but i seriously doubt it existed before '96.
most people on earth dont have internet access or dont care about the internet, but that still leaves a lot of people who do. on a quick look, i couldnt find any numbers to supply. considering she's backed by playboy, i would expect her audience to be worldwide.
(not to mention it's porn....it probably comes up in every search done on the net.)
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
the trick would be in writing a script to do it that would be subtle enough to not be caught by someone analyzing the logs and yet get enough clickthrus to make it worth the profit.
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Personally, i think that's good because how many pages deep someone goes on a single view will change depending on the site and it's content so it should be a flexible definition, but it does give people who want to sound impressive the ability to tweak their stats however they like.
i guess the real answer is that nonbiased 3rd parties should run the stats on the raw logs and determine how to calculate a view.
internally, i would think the company would want those statistics as accurate as possible so they can make business decisions, but for advertising or venture capital hunting, they might inflate their numbers. i certainly would trust the numbers a company gave me, without verifying them myself, if they were trying to get me to invest millions in them.
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
story link
apparently she sent them her server logs. according to the story she got 121 million downloads of her image from her free site and 120 million downloads of her image from her pay site.
by the way, that 800 million shouldnt just be broken up into how many US citizens would have had to download her image. there's a few billion people in the non-US citizen population who could have downloaded her image too.
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Here's an article all about deep linking and it's legal ramifications.
GigaLaw Deep Linking Article
Also, as far as copyright violation goes, at least one U.S. District Judge disagrees with Brad Templeton as he ruled that deep linking did not constitute copyright violation. (it's on page 4, Ticketmaster vs. Tickets.com)
(well, to be honest he said it's not copyright violation as long as it's clear that you are being transported to another site....so no opening them into frames).
realistically, i think Voodoo Extreme is making a lot more money off of everyone at slashdot jumping directly to the article and being served the ad banner that's on the article pages. (i'm assuming there's one there since they are slashdotted and i cant check...but it's a pretty safe assumption considering i've never seen a news site that only served ads on their main page)
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Hemos posted that Voodoo Extreme has an interview with John Carmack on their site.
the interview is broken into 3 parts.
The 3 parts are called Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.
Day 1 and Day 2 are already available on their site. Day 3 will be available tomorrow.
Hemos specifically says he's not posting anything about it tomorrow.
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
If a mechanism existed whereby a library could carry every book ever written for free, they would. as it stands they make decisions on what is most valuable for them to get and get that. The rest of the stuff they dont get isnt left out because of it's content but because there wasnt a big enough budget to include it.
Filtering software excludes content that it costs absolutely nothing for the library make available. As long as the content itself isnt illegal, there's no real reason to not provide access to it and allow adults and parents to make their own decisions about what is appropriate for themselves and for their children.
Maybe the libraries should just ban use of computer systems for anyone under 18 who is not accompanied by a legal guardian.
Denis Leary summed it up nicely in No Cure for Cancer when he described the modern parent's attitude towards children. "Here's my kid, he matches my couch!"
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
you are counting "windows boxes for home use, which dial up and connect to the internet" as servers?
i would think it's an incredibly reasonable assumption on the part of the people doing the survey to assume that only machines with permanent connections should be counted as servers.
it also doesnt appear to be about numbers of boxes, but about number of sites served from the os. (otherwise solaris would have been last since most solaris sites are being served from 2 boxes)
I cant read the German article either. i'm basing my understanding on the same information yours is based on.
i remembered that when i read that german wine was a poor substitute for french wine in the above post.
personally, i dont drink wine much. my girlfriend does, but she prefers plum wine.
(hey, at least it was on the same topic as the parent post, even if they're both off topic)
if it holds true to the multiplayer stress test, the max number of characters in a world at a time is 5 (i think. i'm not at home so i cant check).
anyway....this is not competing with UO, Everquest, AC, etc.
it's closer to competing with Neverwinter Nights and Vampire.
he already agreed to give up his right to do exactly what he's doing. so his doing it is in violation of that agreement and he doesnt have the right to distribute any of the copyrighted quake source at all.
the best people to decide how the library spends it's money are the library administrators. they know who makes up their community, what proportions to buy the materials in, and what what they have in stock already (and what they are short of).
someone should keep an eye on them to make sure they do their jobs, but it really should be their decision.
same goes for internet access. they can regulate it and determine if the usage is appropriate or not.
maybe they could do some kind of logging in system where people had to sign in to use the computer and were assigned a computer to use. then the urls the browser went to could be logged somewhere where the administrator of the lab could scan the logs to see if any obvious porn urls or something were listed.
it's still a bit invasive and probably not the best idea on the matter, but when i worked in a computer lab in a university library, it would have been an easier way to enforce the lab policy against going to porn sites.
that's some very seriously flawed logic. this assumes that all Christians oppose evolution. Since there are plenty of Christians who dont oppose evolution, being Christian is not enough to assume they oppose evolution.
Being a Christian myself, I see physics and all other real laws something that God considered a Good Thing(TM).
I've met plenty of christians who would disagree with that. there's an entire sect of christianity that disagrees with this. why are these sciences still taught in schools when there are groups of christians who believe these elements of science go against god?
I have full faith in physics, mathematics, computer science and all such stuff, but if a theory is contradictory with the Bible, according to the logic (which is something that cannot be wrong by definition) either the Bible must be interpreted wrong, or the theory is wrong (that
ok, if two things are directly contradictory they cannot both be correct. that's fine. however, logic works by proving a positive, not a negative. the goal isnt to prove something is wrong. the goal is to either, prove something directly contradictory is right, or to prove there is a flaw in the argument being used to prove something is right.
is, I can't say there wasn't a big bang, because the Bible doesn't say anything contradictory; it might have been the way God did it). In this case, I see it impossible to interprete the Bible so that humans are apes gone through evolution, and as such it must be false.
the logical problem here is that you are assuming the bible is always right. this is not an assumption that the vast majority of the people who disagree with you will share. therefore, for you to use this as a foundation for your conclusion, you have to prove this to be the case. since your argument hinges on something you feel to be true but cannot prove to be true your argument doesnt stand.
just out of curiosity, what in the bible directly contradicts the theory of evolution?
Note that many scientists, even those who don't believe in God, find every now and then new false predictions in evolution theory. Eg. that long 'tail' in our spine when we're still in the mother's womb is no longer considered a vestige of a tail, but rather something which is necessary for our skeletal development (or something; the point wasn't in the details).
this doesnt invalidate evolution as a theory. it just means that one idea for why that tail is there turned out to not be the case and another idea took it's place. this is the scientific method in action. the fact that science is readily able and willing to drop hypotheses and theories that dont hold up against the physical evidence only demonstrates that the physical evidence supports (or at least doesnt contradict) evolution theory.
i like the beginning. the first 40 minutes or so was good. however, there comes a point when you try to build too much tension and all you achieve is making it incredibly tedious. this movie finds that point and then keeps going.
by the end of the movie, i wanted to kill them.
the bundle was soaked in blood and contained Josh's tongue and (i think) his eyes. they were wrapped in a piece of Josh's shirt. She didnt tell Mike, at least, not on camera. If she didnt tell Mike, that would explain why he was rushing through the house looking for Josh, she seemed more hesitant. It was still pretty stupid in light of what she had found in the bundle.
That was Mike standing in the corner? How did he get there so fast? And why was he just standing there? I didn't understand that bit about the legend. If somebody tells me to stand in a corner while he kills my friend, I would think I'd be trying to get away? Maybe it was Josh standing there (if it wasn't a piece of him that she found). But then where did Mike go? She was right behind him coming down the steps.
Mike went into the basement while she was still on the second floor filming the walls. My impression was that he was propped in the corner either dazed, unconscious, or dead. At first i thought he was taking a leak (he just looked like that's what he was doing). As for the kids, people do weird things when they are put in extreme situations like that, especially small kids. if the adult told them to stand in the corner and not look, i can believe a kid might actually do that.
What were all the stick figures in the trees? Did they have any connection to anything else we saw in the movie? I would gather that the piles of stones represented the dead -- 7 original disappeared, 7 piles. 3 of them, 3 piles. But all the stick figures were never really explained.
the stick figures were just occult symbology. they looked basically like burning man figures. also, when they found the large group of them, i took the smaller ones to be children, the more prominent ones that were in the center to be the characters, and the one that had leaves all over it to be the blair witch (she's covered in fur, so the leaves represented the fur).
creating stuff and then releasing it for free is pretty much normal acceptable and expected behaviour at universities. i cant think of a university i've heard of having a rule against this. (it is certainly possible, i just dont know of any)
however, most of the universities i am familiar with do have specific rules against using school resources for personal financial gain.
so i dont think comparing using time to build a product you are going to sell and using time to build something you give away is really a valid way to vindicate that behaviour.
i liked Johnny Mnemonic (the movie) also. It wasnt the same as the story, but it was a good movie it it's own right. Maybe the problem was in translating a short story to a movie length...
Hopefully Neuromancer will come off closer to the original novel. The thing that concerns me is that they will probably have to cut stuff out to get fit it into a "viewable length" (as defined by hollywood). I'm more concerned about them butchering it when they edit it for length.
As for the Matrix, i'm sure a lot of individuals will think it's trying to capitalize on the Matrix's success (and i imagine that's part of the reason why it suddenly has enough backing to be made), but only the truly clueless who have done absolutely no research into the genre (and who've never been to the sci-fi section of Borders) will actually slam it in a movie review for being "matrix-like".
As far as Keanu goes, i've come to two conclusions about him.....
he should only take roles in cyberpunk movies (and then only as the "what the fuck is going on!?!" character)
and he should never, ever, do anything that involves period pieces (dracula, dangerous liasons, etc.)
i'm not trying to knock suse (or you, or anyone) here...
but how much does it cost red hat to ship to germany? what kind of import tariffs are they paying?
Suse's overhead to distribute in Germany is almost certainly lower than Red Hat's.
It's not necessarily enough to warrant Red Hat costing twice as much, but it is something to consider before assuming they are inflating their prices in microsoftian tradition.