There have not been three stories about OS/2 in the last two days!
Alternative operating systems need software support to stay relevent, and without a base of relevent open/free software, it becomes much harder to be a new entrant. Without new entrants, inevitably we end up with a single dominant platform that everyone has to use.
As I say in my user info, I'm a strong believer that people should eschew the bomb in favour of the ballot box. That means keeping informed, not just talking about it on Slashdot.
The death of OS/2 is sad indeed. I remember in the early nineties OS/2 was being taken seriously as a potential Windows killer. Ironically, one reason was that it came with Windows (3.x, needless to say) and this meant that users had access to a 32 bit platform (Win95 was a while away, and MS wasn't pushing NT) that was stable, while retaining compatability with their existing apps.
Microsoft's actions to kill OS/2 are well documented and need not be repeated here, except to say that they did a good job making it look like IBM's fault - MS basically told IBM if they distributed it with their own machines or continued to market it (and Lotus Smartsuite which died under similar circumstances) MS would do everything to prevent IBM from having access to Windows 95 in any sane way short of refusing to sell it to them. IBM capitulated, and the rest is history. For more details, the entire story is documented in the Findings of Fact in the Microsoft trial.
OS/2 follows BeOS, not to mention half a dozen other upstarts, in disappearing. I could say it's another nail in the coffin for choice, but I guess that nail was driven into OS/2's coffin in 1995. Right now the free software community seems to be the only place where choice may stay alive - by keeping platforms open, and by making source available allowing for the possibility of porting almost any open application to any open platform, choice has a chance, and probably the first chance it's had in several years. Vendors like Sun and RedHat have become a part of this (despite the constant protests about Sun, I think they're one of the good guys, NIS, NFS, OpenLook, OpenOffice, and many other innovations and applications have been given to the community over the years, and while Java isn't open source or free, it is source available, and the restrictions - given the 500lb gorilla that stands against Sun - are rational if disappointing.)
Linux, the BSDs, Atheos, and the upcoming BeOS clones, are only viable though because of this base of software that can either run on them now, or can be made to run on them. That means constant work keeping the base of free and open software relevent.
Making the alternatives stay sensible and rational will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator
[senate.gov]. Tell them that choice is important to you, and that it's important that the base of open, free, software available with source is constantly kept up to date, viable, and relevent to today's needs. Tell them that you appreciate the efforts of free and open software producers, but if one day those applications ceased to be updated in line with modern needs, you would be forced to find less secure
and intelligent alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break
whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and
servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and
choice, and how monopolies and a failure to keep the alternatives relevent destroys all three.
Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU
vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his
or her policy on choices, on relevence, and keeping the free and open software base relevent.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right,
treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives
informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
Nothing. And it'll stay that way unless you're prepared to get off your backside and act: write to your lawmakers. Join a local branch of the party you feel is closest to your views and influence its choice of candidates. Write to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Strike up conversations with co-workers and put pamphlets in shared areas such as company coffee tables and smoking areas.
If you don't act, if you ignore the opportunities democracy gives you, you only have yourself to blame when you don't get what you want. The NRA can uphold the second amendment through strength in numbers and by making lawmakers aware of how they feel. The environmental groups can prevent the building of Nuclear Power plants through local activism, making everyone on a local, regional, state and federal level aware of their feelings. Now it's your turn.
I understand what you're saying, but in practical terms - the terms its inventors defined for it - X.25 has pretty much become an also-ran. Banks are also heavy users of OS/2, but few would argue that OS/2 is a success.
X.25 was, at one point, going to be the WAN packet switching system. All businesses would interconnect with it, sending email using X.400 and connecting using that wierd not-quite-connectionless not-quite-stream thing it did in nicely meterable minutes and bytes. In that respect, it's failed. Almost all businesses use TCP/IP exclusively. Almost all individuals who are involved in WANs use the Internet and TCP/IP. And this is worldwide - unlike, say, ISDN which was a flop in the US and UK and a success in most of Europe.
I said IP packets are often encapsulated in UDP packets, not the other way around. The other way around is obvious. IP over UDP is a common way of tunnelling over the Internet.
As for the rest, X.25 is a complete protocol stack. It includes reliable stream based transport mechanisms and low level packets normally encapsulated in HDLC frames.
I do recommend the link I posted, it's pretty informative about the problems with X.25 and why it never took off. Being too low level isn't one of them, quite the reverse in fact...
You do realize that Congressmen could care less what you have to say
That's good. I'd hate that they couldn't care less, but that they could must imply that they do indeed care.
On top of the fact that big business has alreay $voted$, the opinion of small factions like the technically inclined matters little. They care what Joe Blow thinks, and Joe Blow thinks his AOL internet is just super, as long as it works.
And, you see, that's what needs to change. As long as 25% of eligable voters actually bother turning up at the ballot box, and fail to keep themselves informed, instead believing any old trip Fox and Limbaugh spouts this week, nothing will change. The votes of big business will continue to matter more than the opinions of the constuents.
Defeating this quagmire of misrepresentation, where people do not vote because politicians do not take any notice of them, and politicians take no notice of people because they do not vote, will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that their opinions and policies are important
to you - that you have the right to vote them into, and out of, office. Tell them that you appreciate their efforts as a lawmaker, but that in the absense of full accountability, you will have
to find less secure and intelligent alternatives. Let them
know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy
OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have
about freedom, openness, and choice, and how accountability only to big business destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that
effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be
influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on freedom and democracy.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right,
treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives
informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
The thing is that isn't completely true. The two major parties in the US are made up substantively of local organizational roots, each local party having a large say in the people who represent them. This is part of the reason the religious right has achieved a certain degree of dominance with one of those parties, despite apparently being at odds with the corporate agenda (I doubt AOLTW is entirely happy with valuable TV frequencies being used by psuedo-religious stations, as an example of conflicting interests.) And when a grassroots movement is well organized, it can achieve impressive results: The Late Paul Wellstone didn't get into power by hiding his radical agenda, he revelled in it.
No, it's not easy, but you don't have to bribe anyone to make sure at least one of the two parties has an agenda close to that of your own - you just have to be willing to do something other than post to Slashd... etc...
(Isn't this great? Nobody knows whether to mod my posts insightful because of the first bit, or overrated because of the second...)
There's a good critique of X.25 as part of the Internet's RFC system (RFC874). X.25 certainly was seen as the system the telecommunications industry wanted us all to standardize on when the Internet community was pushing TCP/IP.
ATM, maybe. X.25, nope. X.25 is the set of protocols that the telecommunications industry wanted everyone to use during the 1980s. It includes both packet and stream (PAD, IIRC) based higher level protocols, just like TCP/IP has TCP and UDP. You may have been mislead because IP was, at one point, often encapsulated in X.25 packets - but IP is also often encapsulated in UDP packets. The reason it was done that way was that for a long time X.25 networks were just about the only thing major telecom providers provided.
FWIW, TCP/IP isn't a straight map onto the OSI model. That's why there's a seperate standard based on TCP/IP (whose name temporarily escapes me) which is.
It seems ironic that at the very time there is clearly an abundance of bandwidth, the very companies that could be supplying this are instead locking down their resources - putting caps on cable modem and DSL usage, charging by the byte, putting up rates to lock businesses out of higher quality high-QoS high bandwidth services, closing the door on Internet telephony, and generally doing what they can to ration bandwidth as if there is a serious shortfall.
Much of the problem has to do with the short term needs of bandwidth providers. Many are bankrupt, those that are not still require substantial investment in better "end-point" equipment - routers, switches, hubs, etc. A chaotic telecommunications industry that is at odds with Internet systems (ATM and X.25 vs TCP/IP) is also creating uncooperate rivalries that makes it harder and harder to make efficient use of what's available.
The end result is that we are allowed to use 5% of what could be available without substantial further investment. Caps and per-byte billing is popular in a way it really ought not to be. These entirely unnecessary caps and metering charges immediately destroy many potential benefits the Internet can bring, from being a remarkable force for the distribution of new works of art (music, films, etc), to a point-to-point person-to-person network that far exceeds anything the telephone could have brought us.
Defeating this quagmire of untapped bandwidth and short term commercial interests destroying the long term viability of super high bandwidth digital communications it will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted,
and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it
on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that you're concerned about the clampdown on bandwidth use that's happening at a time when there is clearly a bandwidth glut. Tell them you appreciate the efforts of telecommunication companies to open up bandwidth
in this area, but that in the absense of unlocked resources and free (as in speech) use of what's available, you will have
to find less secure and intelligently designed alternatives to the Internet. Let them
know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy
OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have
about freedom, openness, and choice, and how arbitrary caps and per-byte charges destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that
effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be
influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on opening up bandwidth.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right,
treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives
informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
Sad, inevitable, but if people would act...
on
Goodbye, Liquid Audio?
·
· Score: 2, Troll
Liquid Audio was a fair attempt, but with competition both from the free filesharing networks, and a reluctance from the music industry to support new technologies that might challenge - or at least confuse - their existing business models, LA never really had much of a chance. Indeed, towards the latter period of this company's history, it seemed more content to persue lawsuits than attempt to dig itself out of a hole it was already too deep within to climb out.
All of which is a pity - a genuine Internet based electronic music (and content in general) distribution method that can raise revenues and other incentives for artists while making it cheap and affordable for people to obtain content is a wonderful thing. It can happen, it must happen: Distribution costs right now far out-strip revenues for artists (typically a few percentage points of the cover price of a CD will go to the creator) while prices continue to rise as the costs of bricks-and-mortar delivery methods rise above and beyond inflation.
Challenging the status quo - creating new networks that independent artists can use and which afford reasonable benefits for those who would otherwise have not the time to produce wonderful content - will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted,
and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it
on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that open, non-proprietry, content distribution are important
to you - that you believe it is important for strong alternatives to the existing music distribution systems exist so that all voices are heard, not just those a small minority feel are the most profitable. Let them
know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy
OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have
about freedom, openness, and choice, and how locked up networks destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that
effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be
influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on open distribution networks.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right,
treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives
informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
It's good to see Real opening up some of their previously entirely proprietry platform. Of course, it's still the case that a significant amount remains locked as closed source, specifically the codecs. Real's problem is that it cannot completely unlock what it has because there is no level playing field - Microsoft is under no such similar obligation to unlock their codecs, and nor is Apple/Soroscen. This leaves those who have copyrighted materials - both those who create and those who use - in a dillemma because they are effectively prevented from using the material they have without the permission of the codec producer - note, not the artist, producer, or copyright owner, but the owner of a tool involved in redistributing the content in an efficient form.
There are ways of fighting this kind of lock in. One is to produce open codecs that, byte for byte, deliver equivalent or better quality to those in the "private domain". This is what the Ogg project is trying to do. Indeed, it's what the MPEG project is doing - the specs are open in the sense that anyone can look at them and create readers and writers, although as detractors are quick to point out, those who do implement the MPEG codecs and share their work, commercially or non-commercially, with third parties, are usually obligated to agree to pay royalties. Still, this is a situation infinitely better than the Apple/MS/Real situation.
Defeating this quagmire of content locked by the tools that distribute it will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that open, non-proprietry, codecs are important to you - that you should have the right to control that that you store on your own disks. Tell them that you appreciate Real Network's efforts in this area, but that in the absense of full disclosure, you will have to find less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how arbitrary file format locking destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on open codecs.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
OpenBSD needs SMP support. Theo, Todd, and the rest of the gang have done an excellent job, but virtually any reasonable non-Intel machine these days is an SMP based system. As well as the potential security and stability enhancements (imagine two processes seperated not merely by an MMU, but by not even being run on the same processor) and speed improvements (anyone who's run SSH on their 40MHz Sun Sparcstation firewalls knows the more raw CPU power thrown at OpenBSD, the better, and knows it's less likely insecure systems like rlogin and rsh will be used in their place out of raw necessity), SMP may well allow forms of security that haven't existed before - admins able to lock down processes in to specific CPUs, etc.
This will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted to implementing such functionality, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them OpenBSD is important to you. Tell them that without OpenBSD, you would have to find less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on OpenBSD.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
FreeBSD, as an operating system, would not exist if it wasn't for an army of volunteers who are willing to put the time in to make things happen. It's very easy to just talk about this kind of thing on Slashdot, but without your help, FreeBSD is never going to grow.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them FreeBSD is important to you. Tell them that without FreeBSD, you would have to find less managable and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on FreeBSD.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
Time to debunk the great myth of universal Macrovision...
Only some DVDs have Macrovision turned on. Macrovision is optional, and costs the DVD producer money in patent royalties to enable. Some DVD producers such as MGM rarely if ever enable the "enhancement". Generally, DVDs with the feature have "Copy Protected" or a Macrovision logo on the back with all the other DVD feature logos.
I haven't seen the Scooby Doo DVD, so can't comment on it specifically, but I'll say that around 50-60% of those DVDs in my collection that are mainstream studio releases do not have it enabled. Include the budget horror, etc, and it's more like 90%.
Would you, perchance, be talking about the TV stations that talked about nothing except Clinton's penis throughout the last two-three years of that administration, and about nothing except Gary Condit (CNN even covered the story for about 23 hours a day for three months prior to 9/11) since Bush got into office?
And are you also talking about the TV stations which describe every speech by Bush as compelling and statesmanlike despite the fact he can barely talk for two or three words without having to pause for effect?
Perhaps you're talking about the "left wing" press that claimed Bush would have won Florida according to the consortium recount when the recounts said the exact opposite - in 8 out of 10 of the scenarios, Gore won?
There's nothing "left wing" about the current media. There hasn't been in a decade. CNN apes Fox, and the rest of the media is beholden to interests that happen to want the Republicans in power. If the media was left wing, Clinton might have had a chance with his health care plans, and AWOL Bush's legitimacy might actually be mentioned by characters other than token left-wing pundits.
(*cough*) RealPlayer does.rm/.ram/etc in *n[iu]x. The latest MPlayer can use RealPlayer's codecs directly too. Quite awesome really, as it's mencoder tool means you can convert.rm/etc into another, more portable, format...
MPlayer is a credit to the GNU/Linux community, and Joel Barr can go bite himself.
You don't need to sign a EULA to eat peanut butter, which can also cause harm or even death to people with the wrong allergies. Generally, even in this legalistic society of ours, a notice along the lines of "Warning: Contains peanuts" is generally considered more than enough if prominent enough and on the outer labelling.
I think it's reasonable to rely on disclaimers, and if our law makes EULAs necessary because disclaimers do not have enough force, then perhaps the disclaimers should be given legal wieght in the same bill that pre-empts EULAs.
Neither this bill nor Boucher's will pass, because there is no huge lobby (or $$) for this cause like Hollywood has.
Quite. These bills would only benefit the technology companies - companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Dell, Sun, et all - and the consumer electronics giants such as Philips, Apex, etc. It's not like they have a lot of money!
It's not an EULA. An EULA is a type of license that must be agreed to by the end user. The GPL imposes no such condition - you may continue to use GPL'd software even if you reject the license - however, doing so means that you only have "fair use" rights when using the software, and what those rights are depends on your jurisdiction.
Typically if all you want to do is run the program and make personal backups, you don't need to agree to the GPL at all.
Re:Awesome! Finally, a 3G phone...wait a second...
on
Nokia 6650, Super 3G Phone
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Er, nope.
WCDMA is a component of UMTS, the world wide 3G telecommunications standard being put together under the auspices of the ITU.
CDMA2000 is US PCS technology company Qualcomm's rival 3G standard.
The reason for CDMA2000 is primarily because Qualcomm wants to keep control over CDMA technology, and because UMTS has limited capabilities to integrate with old cdmaOne type networks such as that used by Sprint PCS and Verizon. It's also strictly a one-airinterface-technology standard.
Re:How many other websites have been around this l
on
Slashdot Turns 5
·
· Score: 1
...and ironically, when there are "monopolies", the publishers rarely abuse them. A glance at NAXOS's catalogue will give you a list of a whole bunch of works you will not find anywhere else, but they rarely go above the $10 mark. I'm listening to some Walter Piston Violin Concertos right now which were $8 on Amazon. Who the hell does them except NAXOS?
And the occasional opera or ballet may cost more than $30, but representing several hours of music and usually with copious printed materials included (librettos and such), they're usually value for money too.
Wonder why the economics are such as they are. If it's lack of popularity, long may classical remain "uncool"...
Slashdot Mirror
Alternative operating systems need software support to stay relevent, and without a base of relevent open/free software, it becomes much harder to be a new entrant. Without new entrants, inevitably we end up with a single dominant platform that everyone has to use.
As I say in my user info, I'm a strong believer that people should eschew the bomb in favour of the ballot box. That means keeping informed, not just talking about it on Slashdot.
Microsoft's actions to kill OS/2 are well documented and need not be repeated here, except to say that they did a good job making it look like IBM's fault - MS basically told IBM if they distributed it with their own machines or continued to market it (and Lotus Smartsuite which died under similar circumstances) MS would do everything to prevent IBM from having access to Windows 95 in any sane way short of refusing to sell it to them. IBM capitulated, and the rest is history. For more details, the entire story is documented in the Findings of Fact in the Microsoft trial.
OS/2 follows BeOS, not to mention half a dozen other upstarts, in disappearing. I could say it's another nail in the coffin for choice, but I guess that nail was driven into OS/2's coffin in 1995. Right now the free software community seems to be the only place where choice may stay alive - by keeping platforms open, and by making source available allowing for the possibility of porting almost any open application to any open platform, choice has a chance, and probably the first chance it's had in several years. Vendors like Sun and RedHat have become a part of this (despite the constant protests about Sun, I think they're one of the good guys, NIS, NFS, OpenLook, OpenOffice, and many other innovations and applications have been given to the community over the years, and while Java isn't open source or free, it is source available, and the restrictions - given the 500lb gorilla that stands against Sun - are rational if disappointing.)
Linux, the BSDs, Atheos, and the upcoming BeOS clones, are only viable though because of this base of software that can either run on them now, or can be made to run on them. That means constant work keeping the base of free and open software relevent.
Making the alternatives stay sensible and rational will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them that choice is important to you, and that it's important that the base of open, free, software available with source is constantly kept up to date, viable, and relevent to today's needs. Tell them that you appreciate the efforts of free and open software producers, but if one day those applications ceased to be updated in line with modern needs, you would be forced to find less secure and intelligent alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how monopolies and a failure to keep the alternatives relevent destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on choices, on relevence, and keeping the free and open software base relevent.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
If you don't act, if you ignore the opportunities democracy gives you, you only have yourself to blame when you don't get what you want. The NRA can uphold the second amendment through strength in numbers and by making lawmakers aware of how they feel. The environmental groups can prevent the building of Nuclear Power plants through local activism, making everyone on a local, regional, state and federal level aware of their feelings. Now it's your turn.
X.25 was, at one point, going to be the WAN packet switching system. All businesses would interconnect with it, sending email using X.400 and connecting using that wierd not-quite-connectionless not-quite-stream thing it did in nicely meterable minutes and bytes. In that respect, it's failed. Almost all businesses use TCP/IP exclusively. Almost all individuals who are involved in WANs use the Internet and TCP/IP. And this is worldwide - unlike, say, ISDN which was a flop in the US and UK and a success in most of Europe.
I said IP packets are often encapsulated in UDP packets, not the other way around. The other way around is obvious. IP over UDP is a common way of tunnelling over the Internet.
As for the rest, X.25 is a complete protocol stack. It includes reliable stream based transport mechanisms and low level packets normally encapsulated in HDLC frames.
I do recommend the link I posted, it's pretty informative about the problems with X.25 and why it never took off. Being too low level isn't one of them, quite the reverse in fact...
Defeating this quagmire of misrepresentation, where people do not vote because politicians do not take any notice of them, and politicians take no notice of people because they do not vote, will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that their opinions and policies are important to you - that you have the right to vote them into, and out of, office. Tell them that you appreciate their efforts as a lawmaker, but that in the absense of full accountability, you will have to find less secure and intelligent alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how accountability only to big business destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on freedom and democracy.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
No, it's not easy, but you don't have to bribe anyone to make sure at least one of the two parties has an agenda close to that of your own - you just have to be willing to do something other than post to Slashd... etc...
(Isn't this great? Nobody knows whether to mod my posts insightful because of the first bit, or overrated because of the second...)
Ghastly protocol. Glad it failed.
FWIW, TCP/IP isn't a straight map onto the OSI model. That's why there's a seperate standard based on TCP/IP (whose name temporarily escapes me) which is.
Much of the problem has to do with the short term needs of bandwidth providers. Many are bankrupt, those that are not still require substantial investment in better "end-point" equipment - routers, switches, hubs, etc. A chaotic telecommunications industry that is at odds with Internet systems (ATM and X.25 vs TCP/IP) is also creating uncooperate rivalries that makes it harder and harder to make efficient use of what's available.
The end result is that we are allowed to use 5% of what could be available without substantial further investment. Caps and per-byte billing is popular in a way it really ought not to be. These entirely unnecessary caps and metering charges immediately destroy many potential benefits the Internet can bring, from being a remarkable force for the distribution of new works of art (music, films, etc), to a point-to-point person-to-person network that far exceeds anything the telephone could have brought us.
Defeating this quagmire of untapped bandwidth and short term commercial interests destroying the long term viability of super high bandwidth digital communications it will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that you're concerned about the clampdown on bandwidth use that's happening at a time when there is clearly a bandwidth glut. Tell them you appreciate the efforts of telecommunication companies to open up bandwidth in this area, but that in the absense of unlocked resources and free (as in speech) use of what's available, you will have to find less secure and intelligently designed alternatives to the Internet. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how arbitrary caps and per-byte charges destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on opening up bandwidth.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
All of which is a pity - a genuine Internet based electronic music (and content in general) distribution method that can raise revenues and other incentives for artists while making it cheap and affordable for people to obtain content is a wonderful thing. It can happen, it must happen: Distribution costs right now far out-strip revenues for artists (typically a few percentage points of the cover price of a CD will go to the creator) while prices continue to rise as the costs of bricks-and-mortar delivery methods rise above and beyond inflation.
Challenging the status quo - creating new networks that independent artists can use and which afford reasonable benefits for those who would otherwise have not the time to produce wonderful content - will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that open, non-proprietry, content distribution are important to you - that you believe it is important for strong alternatives to the existing music distribution systems exist so that all voices are heard, not just those a small minority feel are the most profitable. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how locked up networks destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on open distribution networks.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
There are ways of fighting this kind of lock in. One is to produce open codecs that, byte for byte, deliver equivalent or better quality to those in the "private domain". This is what the Ogg project is trying to do. Indeed, it's what the MPEG project is doing - the specs are open in the sense that anyone can look at them and create readers and writers, although as detractors are quick to point out, those who do implement the MPEG codecs and share their work, commercially or non-commercially, with third parties, are usually obligated to agree to pay royalties. Still, this is a situation infinitely better than the Apple/MS/Real situation.
Defeating this quagmire of content locked by the tools that distribute it will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that open, non-proprietry, codecs are important to you - that you should have the right to control that that you store on your own disks. Tell them that you appreciate Real Network's efforts in this area, but that in the absense of full disclosure, you will have to find less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how arbitrary file format locking destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on open codecs.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
OpenBSD needs SMP support. Theo, Todd, and the rest of the gang have done an excellent job, but virtually any reasonable non-Intel machine these days is an SMP based system. As well as the potential security and stability enhancements (imagine two processes seperated not merely by an MMU, but by not even being run on the same processor) and speed improvements (anyone who's run SSH on their 40MHz Sun Sparcstation firewalls knows the more raw CPU power thrown at OpenBSD, the better, and knows it's less likely insecure systems like rlogin and rsh will be used in their place out of raw necessity), SMP may well allow forms of security that haven't existed before - admins able to lock down processes in to specific CPUs, etc.
This will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted to implementing such functionality, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them OpenBSD is important to you. Tell them that without OpenBSD, you would have to find less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on OpenBSD.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them FreeBSD is important to you. Tell them that without FreeBSD, you would have to find less managable and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on FreeBSD.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
Only some DVDs have Macrovision turned on. Macrovision is optional, and costs the DVD producer money in patent royalties to enable. Some DVD producers such as MGM rarely if ever enable the "enhancement". Generally, DVDs with the feature have "Copy Protected" or a Macrovision logo on the back with all the other DVD feature logos.
I haven't seen the Scooby Doo DVD, so can't comment on it specifically, but I'll say that around 50-60% of those DVDs in my collection that are mainstream studio releases do not have it enabled. Include the budget horror, etc, and it's more like 90%.
And are you also talking about the TV stations which describe every speech by Bush as compelling and statesmanlike despite the fact he can barely talk for two or three words without having to pause for effect?
Perhaps you're talking about the "left wing" press that claimed Bush would have won Florida according to the consortium recount when the recounts said the exact opposite - in 8 out of 10 of the scenarios, Gore won?
There's nothing "left wing" about the current media. There hasn't been in a decade. CNN apes Fox, and the rest of the media is beholden to interests that happen to want the Republicans in power. If the media was left wing, Clinton might have had a chance with his health care plans, and AWOL Bush's legitimacy might actually be mentioned by characters other than token left-wing pundits.
No problems here in Florida. I don't see what all the fuss is about. Someone's made all this up haven't they? ;-)
I completely agree. As I said, we live in a legalistic society.
MPlayer is a credit to the GNU/Linux community, and Joel Barr can go bite himself.
I think it's reasonable to rely on disclaimers, and if our law makes EULAs necessary because disclaimers do not have enough force, then perhaps the disclaimers should be given legal wieght in the same bill that pre-empts EULAs.
Typically if all you want to do is run the program and make personal backups, you don't need to agree to the GPL at all.
WCDMA is a component of UMTS, the world wide 3G telecommunications standard being put together under the auspices of the ITU.
CDMA2000 is US PCS technology company Qualcomm's rival 3G standard.
The reason for CDMA2000 is primarily because Qualcomm wants to keep control over CDMA technology, and because UMTS has limited capabilities to integrate with old cdmaOne type networks such as that used by Sprint PCS and Verizon. It's also strictly a one-airinterface-technology standard.
Yahoo?
And the occasional opera or ballet may cost more than $30, but representing several hours of music and usually with copious printed materials included (librettos and such), they're usually value for money too.
Wonder why the economics are such as they are. If it's lack of popularity, long may classical remain "uncool"...