Imagine, if there had been lemon laws in place on software from the start. The early software that some companies produced may have put them out of business. Imagine if Microsoft's MS-DOS ended up costing them money. They didn't start out with much, and they would have folded up before anyone had ever even heard of Windows. Imagine what something like that would have done to the computer industry. Yah, a lot of us don't like MS, but you have to admit, they've helped sell a lot of computers. If not for Windows, or another similar OS at a somewhat decent price (debatable I know), then where would your PC manufacturers be today? Would anyone but geeks have a PC in their home? Would the average end-user buy a $4000-5000 box that they have to blow another $1000-2000 for just the operating system?
And what about the other end of the spectrum? Businesses lose enormous amounts of money if their servers go out. Would IBM be around today if they lost a bank a half a billion dollars every once in a while? Or would the businesses even buy something that would cost 5-10x or more over what they pay today? Just ask your IT manager how hard it is to get his budget.
And yes, Open Source. People writing code for the commmon good. Like losing the Good Samaritan laws, people trying to do nothing other than help would end up bankrupt, in jail, or worse. Besides, its not like most of them are geting paid, or have any other incentive to write code for hours on end.
No, Lemon Laws for computer software would be bad for everyone. I'm not sure that even MS would survive the consequences. Though I feel that a company should be liable for gross neglience. We're not gonna sue MS for my server crashing, but I'd like to if it got hacked and destroyed because of a gaping security flaw. At least give me my money back.
C'mon, seriously. Does anyone really expect 'copy-protection schemes' to actually work? How many different methods have various industries come up with to try to hinder use and/or copying? Macrovision? All that did was make me want to get a GoVideo. CSS? Cracked in so many different ways that to outlaw them all, the government would have to destroy all computers in the US. How long will it take for someone to crack this crap?
I mean, AudioCD protection? Get real. I refuse to buy CD's for just this reason. (Don't get me wrong, I like to buy CD's, and I still buy local artist's albums) But I don't listen to CD's. They get stored. Ripped and stored. It's just easier to listen to my music when it's stored on a server in the closet. Not to mention, I don't have to worry about losing the disc quite as easily. I've had them stolen, scratched, lost, etc. Does this mean I no longer have the rights to the information on it? Just because my R.E.M. CD won't play anymore, does that mean that it was illegal for me download the entire disc off the internet? (to quote the great Stigmata:) FALSE.
There will be some problem with trying to implement this new technology. I have a CD player. It came with the stereo that's hooked to my computer. It plays Red Book format discs. I don't know that it's going to play Cactus format discs. Do I expect it to? No. From here on out, I plan to buy Philips equipment, because I know that it is going to work the way I expect it to, and play the CD's I buy the way it's supposed to. If I want to buy CD's that I can't listen to, I'll just buy some bricks. At least those I can throw at RIAA executives.
And don't throw the DMCA into this. I'm sick of this stupid law. It goes against so many things I believe in, and the very basic tenant of our freedoms. This will come to a climax, and one side will fall. Whether it's the people or the corporations, is yet to be seen.
I'm glad to see this... MP3's have received so much attention, none of the other codecs haven't been in the news much. Sure, there's the random article comparing 4 or 5 codecs that no one's ever going to use, or the little articles saying that people hear an improvement in Ogg over MP3. But have you seen people using.ogg's? I do. Everything I've ripped is now in Ogg. Better quality, more flexibility, and a superior acoustic model.
I thought listening to the BBC over Ogg was cool. I remembered the first time I'd heard it over shortwave. Not to mention that it worked flawlessly. Then again, I'lve always got the latest plugin for my Winamp, and my XMMS. No annoying RealPlayer crap. No proprietary codecs. It works on my non-Windows boxes.
I sent a brief, yet eloquent note to the BBC webmaster when the original test completion was finished, and will probably send another encouraging this continued project. I would encourage the same from others.
Support your local hackers. (no, not crackers. hackers. Damn Hollywood crap.)
Re:That is why Microsoft gets all the customer bas
on
Debian NetBSD
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· Score: 1
Some people truly don't understand the possibilities of things like porting. Or they have no idea what porting is. Porting, in case that is the case, is making software useable to many people on different operating systems and hardware configurations. Say you want to run a program, and you're running Solaris on a SPARC. But the person who originally wrote the program wrote it for Linux, on x86. Its useful, but not to you, since you don't have what it takes to use it. Now someone comes along and ports it to Solaris/SPARC. You can now use that program. Whee!
That is why Microsoft loses a customer base. Flexability.
Its also what's great about various *NIX distros. If there's something you don't like about, say Suse (just as an example, I liked Suse) - but like some other things about it. Now someone else comes along with a Suse-based distro, or just another distro altogether, which has more of what you want. Switch. Simple as that. Use whatever you want, however you want. But if you make changes, especially really cool ones, let other people use them, too. That's just being nice.
Well, providing that something like this has a chance of getting passed...
What are the odds of if being inforced on large corporations? Microsoft has been fighting the anti-trust case for how long now? Lawyers have a way of interpreting anything that's not very carefully worded any way their company wants.
Besides, I'd imagine that the wording of the rules would allow for unknown vulnerabilities. You can't really punish soneone for a simple mistake. Yes, more than one of MS's security holes has been known by MS for longer than publicly known, but will they admit that they knew? Somehow I doubt it.
And what about patches? The laws would have to provide the company to release a patch to solve the security problems. And in that case, whose fault it is when Code Red hits your company's web server? It is the corporate megalith that released a bad piece of software, but provided a patch to solve this particular problem, or is it the lazy/incompetent sysadmin who didn't bother to keep his system up-to-date?
Now what about your everyday programmer? He contributes to an open-source project. A flaw is discovered, now who do you blame? The company who made the software? There may not be one. The organization? The guy who wrote that exact piece of code?
Besides, an open-source program that isn't kept up-to-date can have as many flaws as a program made by a large company. Again, it comes down to keeping current. And I don't expect my mother to update her Windows(R) unless I call her and tell her to.
Yes, I believe that Microsoft has released some gaping holes into the computing world, but the problem is going to be placing blame. And for the law to decide at what point it becomes so blatant that you can hold the software creator responsible.
...something we don't get often enough. I remember when I first loaded Linux, Gnome was the greatest. It was easy to use, stable (well, relatively), and it looked nice. The GTK+ helped get some great programs available.
But since then, Gnome has remained Gnome. No new, fantastical releases. No big news. KDE has taken the spotlight.
And between the two, I now prefer KDE. I mean, KDE 2.2.2 is fabulous. The desktop icons are easy to work with, the panel is just sweet. So much easier to use than Gnome. Konqueror is come so far. The first time I loaded Konqueror, I thought it was useless. I actually preferred Netscape (blech). Now whenever I'm in KDE, I use Konqueror almost as much as I use Mozilla. Especially when I don't want any cookies being passed without my knowledge. I know people that use Koffice exclusively.
Don't get me wrong, I am -so- glad to see some big achievements from the Gnome camp. One of the biggest and greatest attractions to Linux is choice. Choice to use whatever you want, and to have as many options as you can handle.
I'm not a developer, I wish I was, but don't we all? I didn't read the code in that article too closely, so I may have missed some great points. But GTK+ 2 looks like it has a promising future. As long as they keep going on it, making it easier to use (and install), maybe they'll surpass KDE again.
Or maybe everyone will just go back to the CLI.
Personally, I use AfterStep. Dunno why, I just like it. Talk about hard to configure, though.
Well, Mr. Clarke did not concieve of the space elevator. In the acknowledgements from The Fountains of Paradise, he attributes the idea to a Leningrad engineer, Y.N. Artsutanov (Komsomolskaya Pravada, 31 July 1960) who named the device a "Heaveanly funicular," envisioning it to life no less than twelve thousand tons per day to a synchronous orbit. Clarke may have popularized the idea a bit, however.
In Imperial Earth, Clarke used the idea of a VLA. (very large array, many satellite dishes acting as one) Though the book was released in 1976, and it is probably that the VLA was alrady under construction at this time.
Clarke did indeed publish a paper on the theory of communication satellites in 1945, hence the 'Clarke Orbit' for satellites. In Prelude to Space, written just two years later, "[Prelude to Space] was probably the first work of fiction in which the idea of comsats was advocated." (Prelude to Mars, 1965) Also in that book, Clarke used the idea of a launch track for a rocket, which NASA has considered for use. The spacecraft in this book consisted of two parts, one that would, once put in space, would stay there, and the second that was a transport vehicle from the Earth's surface to its partner in orbit. The idea of multi-part spacecraft has been used, albeit not in the exact same way, from the lunar missions to the space shuttle and the ISS.
Then, of course, there's 2001. Ideas used here include videophones, voice print identification, and charge cards (see the videophone scene). There's also the use of 'space food' - the liquid food packets on the Pan Am flight. Also on Discovery 1, HAL played one of the first games of man vs. computer chess. (Deep Blue eat your heart out)
As for so many of the other ideas, they're not science fact quite yet. Don't forget, nothing is impossible until it's possible.
Farscape is a unique take on a space-exploring sci-fi show. Crichton is thrust into a completely alien environment, with no other humans. (although Sebatians don't really require makeup). Each of the other main characters are different species, a couple of them are non-humanoid, and are therefore puppets. The other planets and races they run into are strange and bizarre, and you never know what to expect.
The ship itself, which the pilot is connected to biologically, is itself a living being, and sometimes makes decisions on its own. The show seems to have explored the living-ship aspect quite well.
The show's main focus is usually on Crichton, who is confused from the start. He doesn't understand anything, much less how he got there. Of course, he learns quickly (Humans have to be good for something.) but is still considered by the rest of the crew to be inferior.
The crew, being made of excaped prisoners, is always on the run, but they don't start off by trusting each other, except by necessity. On more than one occasion, one member has betrayed the rest. Each different species has their own quirks, and biological differences, from D'Argo's self-poisonous blood to Rigel farting helium.
The language-barrier is tacked by implanted microbes, which, while something that has to be tackled by the type of show, doesn't immediately take effect on Crichton. The different languages also cause problems with other non-implanted beings later. But at least it's not the 'magic auto-translating badge' or other methods used elsewhere.
The plots are good, the episodes are well-written and interesting, and the acting is great. While watching it, I forget that Rigel and Pilot are puppets. I recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction, just watch a couple episodes. It's not for everybody, but what is?
Terraforming? Who said that? I'm picturing a sealed enclosure on the moon, since it lacks the gravity to keep an atmosphere. The technology exists (or almost does) to keep a self-sustaining colony on the lunar surface. NASA had originally planned to have one on Mars by 2010. (See missing craft / budget cuts == changed plans)
And no, I have never gone scuba diving. It looks cool, though. But don't forget, there are places in the ocean that humans cannot reach, yet. It's easier to live in space than reach the bottom of the ocean. And I don't know what you're talking about with "Disposable." That's just out of the blue.
And remember what they say: "Nothing is impossible until it's possible."
Well, at least NASA is continuing its Mars exploration program, even if it is a miracle they can get the funding. Perhaps this will help gain popular support, but most likely not - If they're too small minded to care about space, they won't care if their names are out there. At this rate, who knows when the next human will leave the grip of Earth. It's amazing they've gotten as far as they have on the Space Station.
No human has set foot on any extraterrestrial surface since December 1972. We obviously don't lack the technology, just the ambition. A Moon Base, while still sounding like Sci-Fi, would be well within our grasp if we had continued moon missions. From there, it is an easy jump to Mars. (Not distance wise, but the moon is a lot easier to take off from.)
Out future lies in space. It is inevitable, as so many things are. I'd rather have my tax money spent on space programs than most other things. Although I will not live to see it, I would like the day to come when we can left the earth behind (as we may have to do some day), and head into the unknown, with only the stars to guide us.
I don't know if anyone remembers "Gem" or not. Back before Windows was created, the first DOS-based GUI for the PC was Gem. I actually remember using it. It was nice, and it worked well, and was much more widely used than Windows. But Apple decided that it looked too much like their Mac OS, and sued them over it. This lead to a large court battle, which tied up Digital Research (I believe that's who made GEM) and allowed MS Windows 3.0 to be released before the next version of GEM, and consequently, Windows is now what it is today.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine, if there had been lemon laws in place on software from the start. The early software that some companies produced may have put them out of business. Imagine if Microsoft's MS-DOS ended up costing them money. They didn't start out with much, and they would have folded up before anyone had ever even heard of Windows. Imagine what something like that would have done to the computer industry. Yah, a lot of us don't like MS, but you have to admit, they've helped sell a lot of computers. If not for Windows, or another similar OS at a somewhat decent price (debatable I know), then where would your PC manufacturers be today? Would anyone but geeks have a PC in their home? Would the average end-user buy a $4000-5000 box that they have to blow another $1000-2000 for just the operating system?
And what about the other end of the spectrum? Businesses lose enormous amounts of money if their servers go out. Would IBM be around today if they lost a bank a half a billion dollars every once in a while? Or would the businesses even buy something that would cost 5-10x or more over what they pay today? Just ask your IT manager how hard it is to get his budget.
And yes, Open Source. People writing code for the commmon good. Like losing the Good Samaritan laws, people trying to do nothing other than help would end up bankrupt, in jail, or worse. Besides, its not like most of them are geting paid, or have any other incentive to write code for hours on end.
No, Lemon Laws for computer software would be bad for everyone. I'm not sure that even MS would survive the consequences. Though I feel that a company should be liable for gross neglience. We're not gonna sue MS for my server crashing, but I'd like to if it got hacked and destroyed because of a gaping security flaw. At least give me my money back.
I have a copy of Spriggan on DVD. I've had it for almost a year now. Mind you, I don't think there's an English track, but I've never looked for one.
Is the new one a new release for different markets? I got this one direct from Hong Kong.
C'mon, seriously. Does anyone really expect 'copy-protection schemes' to actually work? How many different methods have various industries come up with to try to hinder use and/or copying? Macrovision? All that did was make me want to get a GoVideo. CSS? Cracked in so many different ways that to outlaw them all, the government would have to destroy all computers in the US. How long will it take for someone to crack this crap?
I mean, AudioCD protection? Get real. I refuse to buy CD's for just this reason. (Don't get me wrong, I like to buy CD's, and I still buy local artist's albums) But I don't listen to CD's. They get stored. Ripped and stored. It's just easier to listen to my music when it's stored on a server in the closet. Not to mention, I don't have to worry about losing the disc quite as easily. I've had them stolen, scratched, lost, etc. Does this mean I no longer have the rights to the information on it? Just because my R.E.M. CD won't play anymore, does that mean that it was illegal for me download the entire disc off the internet? (to quote the great Stigmata:) FALSE.
There will be some problem with trying to implement this new technology. I have a CD player. It came with the stereo that's hooked to my computer. It plays Red Book format discs. I don't know that it's going to play Cactus format discs. Do I expect it to? No. From here on out, I plan to buy Philips equipment, because I know that it is going to work the way I expect it to, and play the CD's I buy the way it's supposed to. If I want to buy CD's that I can't listen to, I'll just buy some bricks. At least those I can throw at RIAA executives.
And don't throw the DMCA into this. I'm sick of this stupid law. It goes against so many things I believe in, and the very basic tenant of our freedoms. This will come to a climax, and one side will fall. Whether it's the people or the corporations, is yet to be seen.
I'm glad to see this... MP3's have received so much attention, none of the other codecs haven't been in the news much. Sure, there's the random article comparing 4 or 5 codecs that no one's ever going to use, or the little articles saying that people hear an improvement in Ogg over MP3. But have you seen people using .ogg's? I do. Everything I've ripped is now in Ogg. Better quality, more flexibility, and a superior acoustic model.
I thought listening to the BBC over Ogg was cool. I remembered the first time I'd heard it over shortwave. Not to mention that it worked flawlessly. Then again, I'lve always got the latest plugin for my Winamp, and my XMMS. No annoying RealPlayer crap. No proprietary codecs. It works on my non-Windows boxes.
I sent a brief, yet eloquent note to the BBC webmaster when the original test completion was finished, and will probably send another encouraging this continued project. I would encourage the same from others.
Support your local hackers. (no, not crackers. hackers. Damn Hollywood crap.)
Some people truly don't understand the possibilities of things like porting. Or they have no idea what porting is. Porting, in case that is the case, is making software useable to many people on different operating systems and hardware configurations. Say you want to run a program, and you're running Solaris on a SPARC. But the person who originally wrote the program wrote it for Linux, on x86. Its useful, but not to you, since you don't have what it takes to use it. Now someone comes along and ports it to Solaris/SPARC. You can now use that program. Whee!
That is why Microsoft loses a customer base. Flexability.
Its also what's great about various *NIX distros. If there's something you don't like about, say Suse (just as an example, I liked Suse) - but like some other things about it. Now someone else comes along with a Suse-based distro, or just another distro altogether, which has more of what you want. Switch. Simple as that. Use whatever you want, however you want. But if you make changes, especially really cool ones, let other people use them, too. That's just being nice.
Flexability.
Well, providing that something like this has a chance of getting passed...
What are the odds of if being inforced on large corporations? Microsoft has been fighting the anti-trust case for how long now? Lawyers have a way of interpreting anything that's not very carefully worded any way their company wants.
Besides, I'd imagine that the wording of the rules would allow for unknown vulnerabilities. You can't really punish soneone for a simple mistake. Yes, more than one of MS's security holes has been known by MS for longer than publicly known, but will they admit that they knew? Somehow I doubt it.
And what about patches? The laws would have to provide the company to release a patch to solve the security problems. And in that case, whose fault it is when Code Red hits your company's web server? It is the corporate megalith that released a bad piece of software, but provided a patch to solve this particular problem, or is it the lazy/incompetent sysadmin who didn't bother to keep his system up-to-date?
Now what about your everyday programmer? He contributes to an open-source project. A flaw is discovered, now who do you blame? The company who made the software? There may not be one. The organization? The guy who wrote that exact piece of code?
Besides, an open-source program that isn't kept up-to-date can have as many flaws as a program made by a large company. Again, it comes down to keeping current. And I don't expect my mother to update her Windows(R) unless I call her and tell her to.
Yes, I believe that Microsoft has released some gaping holes into the computing world, but the problem is going to be placing blame. And for the law to decide at what point it becomes so blatant that you can hold the software creator responsible.
...something we don't get often enough. I remember when I first loaded Linux, Gnome was the greatest. It was easy to use, stable (well, relatively), and it looked nice. The GTK+ helped get some great programs available.
But since then, Gnome has remained Gnome. No new, fantastical releases. No big news. KDE has taken the spotlight.
And between the two, I now prefer KDE. I mean, KDE 2.2.2 is fabulous. The desktop icons are easy to work with, the panel is just sweet. So much easier to use than Gnome. Konqueror is come so far. The first time I loaded Konqueror, I thought it was useless. I actually preferred Netscape (blech). Now whenever I'm in KDE, I use Konqueror almost as much as I use Mozilla. Especially when I don't want any cookies being passed without my knowledge. I know people that use Koffice exclusively.
Don't get me wrong, I am -so- glad to see some big achievements from the Gnome camp. One of the biggest and greatest attractions to Linux is choice. Choice to use whatever you want, and to have as many options as you can handle.
I'm not a developer, I wish I was, but don't we all? I didn't read the code in that article too closely, so I may have missed some great points. But GTK+ 2 looks like it has a promising future. As long as they keep going on it, making it easier to use (and install), maybe they'll surpass KDE again.
Or maybe everyone will just go back to the CLI.
Personally, I use AfterStep. Dunno why, I just like it. Talk about hard to configure, though.
p24t
Well, Mr. Clarke did not concieve of the space elevator. In the acknowledgements from The Fountains of Paradise, he attributes the idea to a Leningrad engineer, Y.N. Artsutanov (Komsomolskaya Pravada, 31 July 1960) who named the device a "Heaveanly funicular," envisioning it to life no less than twelve thousand tons per day to a synchronous orbit. Clarke may have popularized the idea a bit, however.
In Imperial Earth, Clarke used the idea of a VLA. (very large array, many satellite dishes acting as one) Though the book was released in 1976, and it is probably that the VLA was alrady under construction at this time.
Clarke did indeed publish a paper on the theory of communication satellites in 1945, hence the 'Clarke Orbit' for satellites. In Prelude to Space, written just two years later, "[Prelude to Space] was probably the first work of fiction in which the idea of comsats was advocated." (Prelude to Mars, 1965) Also in that book, Clarke used the idea of a launch track for a rocket, which NASA has considered for use. The spacecraft in this book consisted of two parts, one that would, once put in space, would stay there, and the second that was a transport vehicle from the Earth's surface to its partner in orbit. The idea of multi-part spacecraft has been used, albeit not in the exact same way, from the lunar missions to the space shuttle and the ISS.
Then, of course, there's 2001. Ideas used here include videophones, voice print identification, and charge cards (see the videophone scene). There's also the use of 'space food' - the liquid food packets on the Pan Am flight. Also on Discovery 1, HAL played one of the first games of man vs. computer chess. (Deep Blue eat your heart out)
As for so many of the other ideas, they're not science fact quite yet. Don't forget, nothing is impossible until it's possible.
Farscape is a unique take on a space-exploring sci-fi show. Crichton is thrust into a completely alien environment, with no other humans. (although Sebatians don't really require makeup). Each of the other main characters are different species, a couple of them are non-humanoid, and are therefore puppets. The other planets and races they run into are strange and bizarre, and you never know what to expect.
The ship itself, which the pilot is connected to biologically, is itself a living being, and sometimes makes decisions on its own. The show seems to have explored the living-ship aspect quite well.
The show's main focus is usually on Crichton, who is confused from the start. He doesn't understand anything, much less how he got there. Of course, he learns quickly (Humans have to be good for something.) but is still considered by the rest of the crew to be inferior.
The crew, being made of excaped prisoners, is always on the run, but they don't start off by trusting each other, except by necessity. On more than one occasion, one member has betrayed the rest. Each different species has their own quirks, and biological differences, from D'Argo's self-poisonous blood to Rigel farting helium.
The language-barrier is tacked by implanted microbes, which, while something that has to be tackled by the type of show, doesn't immediately take effect on Crichton. The different languages also cause problems with other non-implanted beings later. But at least it's not the 'magic auto-translating badge' or other methods used elsewhere.
The plots are good, the episodes are well-written and interesting, and the acting is great. While watching it, I forget that Rigel and Pilot are puppets. I recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction, just watch a couple episodes. It's not for everybody, but what is?
p24t
Terraforming? Who said that? I'm picturing a sealed enclosure on the moon, since it lacks the gravity to keep an atmosphere. The technology exists (or almost does) to keep a self-sustaining colony on the lunar surface. NASA had originally planned to have one on Mars by 2010. (See missing craft / budget cuts == changed plans)
And no, I have never gone scuba diving. It looks cool, though. But don't forget, there are places in the ocean that humans cannot reach, yet. It's easier to live in space than reach the bottom of the ocean. And I don't know what you're talking about with "Disposable." That's just out of the blue.
And remember what they say: "Nothing is impossible until it's possible."
Well, at least NASA is continuing its Mars exploration program, even if it is a miracle they can get the funding. Perhaps this will help gain popular support, but most likely not - If they're too small minded to care about space, they won't care if their names are out there. At this rate, who knows when the next human will leave the grip of Earth. It's amazing they've gotten as far as they have on the Space Station. No human has set foot on any extraterrestrial surface since December 1972. We obviously don't lack the technology, just the ambition. A Moon Base, while still sounding like Sci-Fi, would be well within our grasp if we had continued moon missions. From there, it is an easy jump to Mars. (Not distance wise, but the moon is a lot easier to take off from.) Out future lies in space. It is inevitable, as so many things are. I'd rather have my tax money spent on space programs than most other things. Although I will not live to see it, I would like the day to come when we can left the earth behind (as we may have to do some day), and head into the unknown, with only the stars to guide us.
I don't know if anyone remembers "Gem" or not. Back before Windows was created, the first DOS-based GUI for the PC was Gem. I actually remember using it. It was nice, and it worked well, and was much more widely used than Windows. But Apple decided that it looked too much like their Mac OS, and sued them over it. This lead to a large court battle, which tied up Digital Research (I believe that's who made GEM) and allowed MS Windows 3.0 to be released before the next version of GEM, and consequently, Windows is now what it is today.