Does eBay automatically cancel auctions that contain "CDR" or "CDRW" on principle? Because if not, and an employee actually READ the bid description, I'm sure (ok, relatively sure) Ziemann put on there that this was his own music. If so, why didn't they just email him and ask to clear up any confusion?
Just becuase he only anticipated selling 20 CDs doesn't mean he should be cheated that opportunity simply because eBay employees are tools.
Now, I know that my little ol' Athlon runs hot as a mother, so I can't imagine the cooling necessary to keep this baby running at an optimal temperature. Last I heard (and I could be mistaken), Crays were cooled by bring submerged in liquid nitrogen, and more recently with some sort of liquid plasma cooling (don't ask me, I have NO idea how something like that would work). Does anyone have any information on how they're going to keep this thing from incinerating itself the moment it's turned on?
I think that they're overestimating the number of audiophiles that are out there. There just aren't enough of them to warrant an ENTIRELY new medium. Yes, it has copy protection enabled, but we've all seen how quickly that is rendered ineffective, not to mention that's not exactly high on consumer's list of "Things Desired in a Music Format". And the "features" such as the added music videos and such that can be included, as well as the "3D" sound (which I believe is impossible, seeing as how sound has neither height, width, nor depth) would probably never be used by Joe Consumer. There is just no good reason (for the consumer) to switch to this format right now. CDs and digital media (read as: mp3, ogg, etc) are a much better way to go IMHO.
...javascript wasn't even invited to the party. Doesn't that violate some kind of anti-discrimination law? I mean, just because it's constantly disabled doesn't mean it's not a valuable member of programming society too...
I'm waiting for an install process that isn't quite as big a pain in the ass. I've installed several distros, and am relatively competent, however Gentoo's install is royally messed. Boot from the CD, copy files over, uncompress, install, grab another bz2 file, copy it over, etc. It doesn't have to be GUI, but something less draconian would be nice.
I think Lindows is trying to follow the Napster model: 1. Create a product (it doesn't have to be any good).
Oh, that's right, Napster *was* a crappy product, despite the fact that it was one of the first of its kind, and managed to almost single-handedly change the face of music online. Napster was the cream of the crop when it started, despite the fact that it started to tank later on in its life.
Lindows has no such claim to fame. From what I can tell (not having used the OS), it just seems like a sloppy distro, made to look pretty, with a name that (erroneously) implies that it'll run MS products. It very well may do more harm to the Linux (GNU/Linux, whatever) cause than good.
If the government decides to allow the RIAA and/or MPAA to pollute/attack/royally fsck the P2P networks, who's to say it won't get out of control? Hilary Rosen says that the right won't be abused, but who will enforce that? The government? I'm seriously not comfortable with that.
They've already got a demo version out for linux for client AND server. Even though the FAQ site doesn't say it, one would THINK that would mean that UT2003 will be released with the windows version (or shortly thereafter).
I know you mentioned getting them used to Mozilla, but Opera's a damned good browser too (personally, I think it's better, but hey, that's just me). And the Win32 version and linux version are damned near identical.
The problem with Photoshop's UI is just that. It's THEIRS. Lame, I know, but didn't they just sue Macromedia for ripping off their UI design (infringing on their patent for tabbed pallettes is what I think it was called)? Scary thing is, Adobe won too. Admittedly, 8 days later, Macromedia won countersuit, and won almost twice what they had to pay out.
Ah, right, my point. I don't think that if the Gimp changed to using "tabbed pallettes", the creators could weather that kind of litigation.
Shame is, Adobe DOES have a nice, simplistic layout. Ah well.
However, if he is as influential as he is made out to be, leaving the job *does* make a strong statement. It says, basically - "To hell with you guys, I'm taking my (considerable) skills elsewhere, most likely a competitor." Yes, I know the OS community is one great, big happy family - you know what I mean. I know RedHat is big in the community, but you know, I'm hearing a lot about this "Mandrake" thing (humor). Maybe he'll go back there?
It's refreshing to see someone standing up for their beliefs. Despite the fact that I actually don't know who this is, the fact that CNet and Slashdot covered it leads me to believe he is someone of worth and recognition in the OS community, and hopefully his leaving will raise more than a few eyebrows.
...whether or not it's better than DivX/MPEG4, only that that would be its main competition. Does that mean that they're banking on the fact that they'll never start charging licensing fees, but they're not *quite* as good as DivX? Or that they're just as good, if not better, but are going to let the people make up their own minds?
Either way, I'm stoked. Ever since I discovered Ogg Vorbis, I haven't regretted it and haven't looked back since. Hopefully I'll be able to say the same about Ogg Theora.
Everyone comes out happy: the cell phone company has a local monopoly
There's the problem with your statement. Monopoly. That's a 4-letter word nowadays. I don't see how that would be good for customers though. If there's only one provider, what if they decide to be evil and charge exorbitant rates? People would have no choice then, and have to pay the rates, or go without something they've grown used to (*cough* Road Runner *cough* Time Warner *cough*).
I do agree that the government should help install a wireless infrastructure, make it able to be easily upgradeable to the latest and greatest, and backward compatible for those who are happy with their 802.11b. But after the infrastructure is laid, back off. I don't want to have the government controlling my wireless access. Sell it to whomever can afford it, but don't limit it to one vendor in an area. Let many of them do it. Drive the price down, and stimulate cash inflow. Seems like everyone wins.
What about the new legislation (forget the name) that makes 'hacking' a federal crime, and heavily punishable. I think I remember reading that you can get a life sentence for hacking? What the hell? And I can guarantee you that they're just WAITING for another Kevin to come around so they can make an example of him:
"See? Look what he did! He 'hacked' into someone's computer, and now he's someone's bitch for life."
"But he didn't do anything damaging."
"He was HACKING. That's BAD. He's gone for LIFE. Let that be a lesson."
The lesson is that curiousity is now punishable by life in prison. Great. Don't get me wrong, traipsing into someone's computer isn't exactly ethically RIGHT (I don't care HOW wide open they leave it), but it's certainly not criminally WRONG.
I thought Google's indexing/spidering system was innovative because it ranked pages in terms of how popular and prevalent they are on OTHER pages. I would think that it takes a small amount of time for this kind of "popularity" to build up. Are they changing their methods for the news section? Using their traditional methods, it wouldn't be "news" anymore. Is it just taking the headlines from the most popular websites and posting them there? Don't get me wrong, Google's the best at what it does, so this will probably end up being a good thing, I'm just curious about the methodologies employed.
Correct me if I'm wrong (which I very well may be), but this sounds like the situation with RPMs. RPMs were designed by RedHat to "easily" install programs, check dependencies, etc. Now, even though other distros have their own distribution methods (Debian's apt-get, Slackware's SlackPaks), don't they all support RPMs to a varying degree? There's even conversion utilities to convert RPMs to whatever format is used by your distro. Seems like this is the industry standard, as it were, simply because most people use RedHat, and therefore RPMs. So, while they can utilize whatever they choose for whatever reasons they choose, there is always an RPM to use.
Couldn't they make a utility that would act like CVS, but if you're using another method, it would simply look at the tree, and repackage in a way that is useful to the utility? I don't currently use CVS, so forgive me if it already does this.
I've been a Marvel fan for quite some time, and am well aware that there are many charaters in there, however, that number is quite finite. Once people snatch up all the pre-existing characters, how do they plan on having anyone else play? Make up your own character? Give them whatever powers you choose? Maybe have 1,836 people ALL playing Spider-Man (not to mention all the irritating Venom/Carnage/clone divergents)? Sounds like an interesting idea, I'm all for anything that brings comics to the forefront, and dispels the notion that they're ONLY for children. Hope they can pull it off.
Slashdot Mirror
Does eBay automatically cancel auctions that contain "CDR" or "CDRW" on principle? Because if not, and an employee actually READ the bid description, I'm sure (ok, relatively sure) Ziemann put on there that this was his own music. If so, why didn't they just email him and ask to clear up any confusion?
Just becuase he only anticipated selling 20 CDs doesn't mean he should be cheated that opportunity simply because eBay employees are tools.
Now, I know that my little ol' Athlon runs hot as a mother, so I can't imagine the cooling necessary to keep this baby running at an optimal temperature. Last I heard (and I could be mistaken), Crays were cooled by bring submerged in liquid nitrogen, and more recently with some sort of liquid plasma cooling (don't ask me, I have NO idea how something like that would work). Does anyone have any information on how they're going to keep this thing from incinerating itself the moment it's turned on?
I think that they're overestimating the number of audiophiles that are out there. There just aren't enough of them to warrant an ENTIRELY new medium. Yes, it has copy protection enabled, but we've all seen how quickly that is rendered ineffective, not to mention that's not exactly high on consumer's list of "Things Desired in a Music Format". And the "features" such as the added music videos and such that can be included, as well as the "3D" sound (which I believe is impossible, seeing as how sound has neither height, width, nor depth) would probably never be used by Joe Consumer. There is just no good reason (for the consumer) to switch to this format right now. CDs and digital media (read as: mp3, ogg, etc) are a much better way to go IMHO.
...javascript wasn't even invited to the party. Doesn't that violate some kind of anti-discrimination law? I mean, just because it's constantly disabled doesn't mean it's not a valuable member of programming society too...
I KNEW something seemed off when I wrote it. But, in true /. fashion, I wrote it anyway, knowing someone else would correct me. =)
I'm waiting for an install process that isn't quite as big a pain in the ass. I've installed several distros, and am relatively competent, however Gentoo's install is royally messed. Boot from the CD, copy files over, uncompress, install, grab another bz2 file, copy it over, etc. It doesn't have to be GUI, but something less draconian would be nice.
I think Lindows is trying to follow the Napster model:
1. Create a product (it doesn't have to be any good).
Oh, that's right, Napster *was* a crappy product, despite the fact that it was one of the first of its kind, and managed to almost single-handedly change the face of music online. Napster was the cream of the crop when it started, despite the fact that it started to tank later on in its life.
Lindows has no such claim to fame. From what I can tell (not having used the OS), it just seems like a sloppy distro, made to look pretty, with a name that (erroneously) implies that it'll run MS products. It very well may do more harm to the Linux (GNU/Linux, whatever) cause than good.
If the government decides to allow the RIAA and/or MPAA to pollute/attack/royally fsck the P2P networks, who's to say it won't get out of control? Hilary Rosen says that the right won't be abused, but who will enforce that? The government? I'm seriously not comfortable with that.
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
[/blatant Douglas Adams ripoff]
Ok, YES, it's not OS, I cocked that one up good and proper. Sorry.
My mistake. I read "Open Source" as "things that run on linux". Won't happen again. =)
They've already got a demo version out for linux for client AND server. Even though the FAQ site doesn't say it, one would THINK that would mean that UT2003 will be released with the windows version (or shortly thereafter).
I know you mentioned getting them used to Mozilla, but Opera's a damned good browser too (personally, I think it's better, but hey, that's just me). And the Win32 version and linux version are damned near identical.
The problem with Photoshop's UI is just that. It's THEIRS. Lame, I know, but didn't they just sue Macromedia for ripping off their UI design (infringing on their patent for tabbed pallettes is what I think it was called)? Scary thing is, Adobe won too. Admittedly, 8 days later, Macromedia won countersuit, and won almost twice what they had to pay out.
Ah, right, my point. I don't think that if the Gimp changed to using "tabbed pallettes", the creators could weather that kind of litigation.
Shame is, Adobe DOES have a nice, simplistic layout. Ah well.
However, if he is as influential as he is made out to be, leaving the job *does* make a strong statement. It says, basically - "To hell with you guys, I'm taking my (considerable) skills elsewhere, most likely a competitor." Yes, I know the OS community is one great, big happy family - you know what I mean. I know RedHat is big in the community, but you know, I'm hearing a lot about this "Mandrake" thing (humor). Maybe he'll go back there?
It's refreshing to see someone standing up for their beliefs. Despite the fact that I actually don't know who this is, the fact that CNet and Slashdot covered it leads me to believe he is someone of worth and recognition in the OS community, and hopefully his leaving will raise more than a few eyebrows.
...whether or not it's better than DivX/MPEG4, only that that would be its main competition. Does that mean that they're banking on the fact that they'll never start charging licensing fees, but they're not *quite* as good as DivX? Or that they're just as good, if not better, but are going to let the people make up their own minds?
Either way, I'm stoked. Ever since I discovered Ogg Vorbis, I haven't regretted it and haven't looked back since. Hopefully I'll be able to say the same about Ogg Theora.
Actually, if you check the FAQ, that's exactly where it came from.
If you check the FAQ, they do say that this name came from Max Headroom. The others, I'm not sure about, but I think so.
Everyone comes out happy:
the cell phone company has a local monopoly
There's the problem with your statement. Monopoly. That's a 4-letter word nowadays. I don't see how that would be good for customers though. If there's only one provider, what if they decide to be evil and charge exorbitant rates? People would have no choice then, and have to pay the rates, or go without something they've grown used to (*cough* Road Runner *cough* Time Warner *cough*).
I do agree that the government should help install a wireless infrastructure, make it able to be easily upgradeable to the latest and greatest, and backward compatible for those who are happy with their 802.11b. But after the infrastructure is laid, back off. I don't want to have the government controlling my wireless access. Sell it to whomever can afford it, but don't limit it to one vendor in an area. Let many of them do it. Drive the price down, and stimulate cash inflow. Seems like everyone wins.
What about the new legislation (forget the name) that makes 'hacking' a federal crime, and heavily punishable. I think I remember reading that you can get a life sentence for hacking? What the hell? And I can guarantee you that they're just WAITING for another Kevin to come around so they can make an example of him:
"See? Look what he did! He 'hacked' into someone's computer, and now he's someone's bitch for life."
"But he didn't do anything damaging."
"He was HACKING. That's BAD. He's gone for LIFE. Let that be a lesson."
The lesson is that curiousity is now punishable by life in prison. Great. Don't get me wrong, traipsing into someone's computer isn't exactly ethically RIGHT (I don't care HOW wide open they leave it), but it's certainly not criminally WRONG.
I thought Google's indexing/spidering system was innovative because it ranked pages in terms of how popular and prevalent they are on OTHER pages. I would think that it takes a small amount of time for this kind of "popularity" to build up. Are they changing their methods for the news section? Using their traditional methods, it wouldn't be "news" anymore. Is it just taking the headlines from the most popular websites and posting them there? Don't get me wrong, Google's the best at what it does, so this will probably end up being a good thing, I'm just curious about the methodologies employed.
Correct me if I'm wrong (which I very well may be), but this sounds like the situation with RPMs. RPMs were designed by RedHat to "easily" install programs, check dependencies, etc. Now, even though other distros have their own distribution methods (Debian's apt-get, Slackware's SlackPaks), don't they all support RPMs to a varying degree? There's even conversion utilities to convert RPMs to whatever format is used by your distro. Seems like this is the industry standard, as it were, simply because most people use RedHat, and therefore RPMs. So, while they can utilize whatever they choose for whatever reasons they choose, there is always an RPM to use.
Couldn't they make a utility that would act like CVS, but if you're using another method, it would simply look at the tree, and repackage in a way that is useful to the utility? I don't currently use CVS, so forgive me if it already does this.
I've been a Marvel fan for quite some time, and am well aware that there are many charaters in there, however, that number is quite finite. Once people snatch up all the pre-existing characters, how do they plan on having anyone else play? Make up your own character? Give them whatever powers you choose? Maybe have 1,836 people ALL playing Spider-Man (not to mention all the irritating Venom/Carnage/clone divergents)? Sounds like an interesting idea, I'm all for anything that brings comics to the forefront, and dispels the notion that they're ONLY for children. Hope they can pull it off.
And Microsoft holds a right to be the first to negotiate with Intentional Software if the company comes up for sale.
It sounds like Simonyi just handed the executioner his axe and said, "Now, don't use this UNLESS I say it's ok..."