I don't particularly have a problem with law enforcement, provided there is a presumption of innocence, and you are not investigated without some reasonable evidence of wrongdoing (not just the BPI waving your IP address around).
However, I do have a problem with ISPs monitoring the bytes going down my wires.
Imagine if BT said they were going to tap your lines and send you a letter if they caught you singing 'happy birthday' (a copyrighted work) down the phone.
Apple insists on selling all single tracks for 99 cents. Amazon, which sells tracks for anywhere from 89 cents to over a dollar, offers the pricing variability the labels want.
This is the key, I think. The labels want to play Amazon and Apple off eachother in order to push prices up.
iPhone is a big experiment for Apple. Clearly, there is a lot of potential for iPhone software and services beyond what you get with it right now.
I expect Apple prefers to keep it closed while it settles down and they see how it all pans out, to have time to see where best to take it next, and to develop and sell the new services themselves without losing out to some fleeter third-party developer.
Consumers may have a lot to gain from an open iPhone, but I don't see that Apple does right now.
That's just one reason though. If it were fully open and documented, the first thing people would do is throw VOIP & IM onto it, which would piss off AT&T.
Hey NBC: I have chosen not to have cable, but want to pay you for Heroes. Guess what my only alternative will be if you pull it from iTunes?
Not watch it? Or did you mean, break the law?
If you want to break the law, go ahead. But don't pretend anyone's forcing you to, and accept the consequences of your actions. If you think the law is wrong, protest.
Is there some crucial service under government control (like DNS root servers or something) that could be switched to IPv6-only in such a way that other systems would have to be configured to cope with both IPv4 and IPv6, thus making a later total switch to IPv6 less painful?
What I'd really be interested in is a recumbent bike generator, something that I can pedal at while slouched at my desk (and is ergonomically designed to support my slouch), gives me on-screen feedback for motivation, and turns my pedalling into power.
Until open standards are the norm, Linux and the Open Source world will always be playing a game of catch-up as far as proprietary technologies are concerned. In many cases, we'll probably never see a functioning OSS alternative.
Unfortunately, I expect patents are a major barrier to the community developing its own standards independently of those with an interest in restricting technologies. Perhaps the best hope is the public sector, e.g. the BBC's Dirac codec.
I like the idea of GM. It's exciting. Humans have always bent nature to suit their goals, and modifying foods at the genetic level is just another manifestation of our ingenuity. Great things are possible.
The problem with GM is that the goals of the people doing it are at worst nefarious (make profit come what may) and at best unknown.
Anatomically modern humans have been around for ~160,000 years. For millions of years before that, and up to about 12,000 years ago (the rise of agricultural societies), evolution optimised us to live off whatever nature threw our way. Then we started doing stuff like drinking cows' milk, and there are some evolutionary optimisations for that.
GM foods -- where genetic modifications are made to foods that could not arise in nature, even through selective breeding -- have been around for what, 15 years? 20?
If I were calling the shots, I would require that GM development happen in strict, bioweapon-level quarantine conditions (since you're dealing with a novel organism of unknown behaviour), and undergo clinical trials at least as rigorous as those required for medicines.
Slashdot Mirror
Wheels are overrated. I want to ride one of these! http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog
Merge this with the new MIT solar dish and you're in business!'
Ah cool, now we know:
I don't particularly have a problem with law enforcement, provided there is a presumption of innocence, and you are not investigated without some reasonable evidence of wrongdoing (not just the BPI waving your IP address around).
However, I do have a problem with ISPs monitoring the bytes going down my wires.
Imagine if BT said they were going to tap your lines and send you a letter if they caught you singing 'happy birthday' (a copyrighted work) down the phone.
Perhaps we will see 'cloud computing' at the LAN level rather than the WAN level.
Can anyone help? I installed the 2.6.26 kernel on my pentium, but it keeps saying I have version 2.6.25999999999993 installed?
I guess this means EULAs are legally binding?
Or was it only shrink-wrapped EULAs that we were worried about?
I looked at some of their binary interchange format. It looks like a valid Perl program to me! *rimshot*
Still waiting for Perl to make use of the Euro key as an operator...
Let's celebrate when the fine has been paid.
But all that is true of CSS, and yet we have the ability to include external CSS in both HTML and in CSS itself.
Good to see they're binning frames.
But - why has there never been an include mechanism in HTML?
This is the key, I think. The labels want to play Amazon and Apple off eachother in order to push prices up.
Is it the postal service's responsibility to open every package and check what's inside, in case I'm trying to send you a photocopied novel?
Maybe they're clever, and they can in fact decrypt it, but they want you to think they can't?
iPhone is a big experiment for Apple. Clearly, there is a lot of potential for iPhone software and services beyond what you get with it right now.
I expect Apple prefers to keep it closed while it settles down and they see how it all pans out, to have time to see where best to take it next, and to develop and sell the new services themselves without losing out to some fleeter third-party developer.
Consumers may have a lot to gain from an open iPhone, but I don't see that Apple does right now.
That's just one reason though. If it were fully open and documented, the first thing people would do is throw VOIP & IM onto it, which would piss off AT&T.
Not watch it? Or did you mean, break the law?
If you want to break the law, go ahead. But don't pretend anyone's forcing you to, and accept the consequences of your actions. If you think the law is wrong, protest.
Ok, let's say I want to update some software.
In the KDE menu, do I go for Control Center, System > Control Center (YAST), or System > Configuration > Control Center (YAST)?
I'll pick one of the YAST ones.
Ok, now do I go for Software > Online Update, Software > System Update, or Software > Software Management?
I'll go for Software Management.
Ok, now I'm faced with the bizarrest interface I've seen in a long time.
It really shouldn't be this hard. Of course if I switch to Ubuntu/Red Hat/Debian etc I have to learn a completely different way of doing it.
For some things, choice is great. But seriously, for installing software, do we really need a billion systems?
Hmm...
Is there some crucial service under government control (like DNS root servers or something) that could be switched to IPv6-only in such a way that other systems would have to be configured to cope with both IPv4 and IPv6, thus making a later total switch to IPv6 less painful?
I'm sure this news will come as a great surprise to the slashdot readership.
They don't.
Perhaps captcha bots will evolve into the first programs to pass the Turing Test?
In a gesture of goodwill, I hereby announce that I will reciprocate by not suing Microsoft over Linux patents.
Thankyou.
What I'd really be interested in is a recumbent bike generator, something that I can pedal at while slouched at my desk (and is ergonomically designed to support my slouch), gives me on-screen feedback for motivation, and turns my pedalling into power.
Until open standards are the norm, Linux and the Open Source world will always be playing a game of catch-up as far as proprietary technologies are concerned. In many cases, we'll probably never see a functioning OSS alternative.
Unfortunately, I expect patents are a major barrier to the community developing its own standards independently of those with an interest in restricting technologies. Perhaps the best hope is the public sector, e.g. the BBC's Dirac codec.
I like the idea of GM. It's exciting. Humans have always bent nature to suit their goals, and modifying foods at the genetic level is just another manifestation of our ingenuity. Great things are possible.
The problem with GM is that the goals of the people doing it are at worst nefarious (make profit come what may) and at best unknown.
Anatomically modern humans have been around for ~160,000 years. For millions of years before that, and up to about 12,000 years ago (the rise of agricultural societies), evolution optimised us to live off whatever nature threw our way. Then we started doing stuff like drinking cows' milk, and there are some evolutionary optimisations for that.
GM foods -- where genetic modifications are made to foods that could not arise in nature, even through selective breeding -- have been around for what, 15 years? 20?
If I were calling the shots, I would require that GM development happen in strict, bioweapon-level quarantine conditions (since you're dealing with a novel organism of unknown behaviour), and undergo clinical trials at least as rigorous as those required for medicines.
Why not anonymise the data after zero months? Are they required by law not to?