"When one seeks answers when none
exist, it's understandable to extend blame,"
Fitzsimons said.
Where was this guy after the columbine shootings? How come we didn't hear opinions like this from school administrators when it was video games, music, movies, the internet, etc. that so many less intelligent but very loud people were looking to blame?
This kid killing himself sounds to me like a case of terminal stupidity. Either that or he was sheltered by his family and therefore unaware of how things actually work here in America, even though he was born here. I've seen that kind of thing myself in people whose parents are from cultures that are vastly different from ours. The parents try to raise the kid as if they're still living in Bangladesh, which is a mistake. Its amazing just how effective parents can be at information control when they're really committed to it. Holy roller christian types are much the same, the kids don't grow up and get a clue about how things really are until long after they've left home. Some never get a clue and go on to do the same things to their kids.
So here you've got a kid who is either not too bright, or completely clueless and thought he was going to end up in a cell with Bubba. So far the evidence points to the latter, in which case I blame mom and dad for not raising him to be more street-smart.
Accept it? I came up with it. Others have as well of course just like most cultures came up with the wheel.
Just so you know it isn't Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha etc. that are stopping the minds of people, it is religion itself. To me religion has always been an organized system of group and self delusion. When the figures you mention came along, they actually worked to start the minds of the people they affected. Each one encouraged others to set aside the religous dogma of the past. The problem of course is that after these people had departed the scene, their followers quickly created new religous dogma. The more things change the more they stay the same.
People who choose to accept religion X choose to accept as facts not only things that haven't been or can't be proven, but as time goes by and human knowledge moves forward things that have been long disproven. Evolution vs. Creationism is a perfect example of this. There is a mountain of evidence supporting evolution. Creationists have nothing to fall back on but the bible, which in case you didn't know it isn't exactly evidence of anything outside anthropology and the study of religion itself. Believing things that are demonstrably false is a good portion of the definition of insanity.
I do think that I should revise my statement though. I've come to the conclusion that religion does not stop minds. Rather that people who are unable or unwilling to think for themselves are attracted to religion as a way of saving them from that burden. You can't stop a mind that never started. People like me who do think for ourselves are simply immune to the BS that religions are because we aren't in need of anyone or anything telling us who to be or what to think.
As for Newton and the rest, they are similar to Jesus, Buddha etc in that they were able to set aside religious dogma in the pursuit of something greater. While Jesus and the rest replaced one religious philosophy with another, Newton and the rest furthered man's knowledge or artistic wealth. Who knows, perhaps these people have done more than simply broken free of their religious brainwashing. Perhaps they have found a way to see through the dogma and BS and extract that which is good from relgion while leaving the rest to those with lower IQ and EQ scores. To me this isn't much different from extracting the venom from a snake for medical purposes.
Why any company would think that they can break even, let alone make a profit, from software that, after they spent the time and money developing it, they would be forced to give away.
If you can't charge money for your services you won't be able to provide those services for long. Non-profit entities that have actually managed to stick around learned that lesson a long time ago. Some seek public funding, others charge a nominal fees for their services. In either case it is known and understood that you've got to make money to spend that money to further your cause or achieve your goal.
Why anyone with a lick of sense thought they could base a for-profit company off a model that won't even work for a non-profit firm is something I'll never understand.
When are people going to realize that free as in speech doesn't necessarily have to mean free as in beer? If Easel has been able to create their own license, such that while anyone can use Easel for free, and anyone can do what they want with the source for free, anyone who wanted to bundle it for sale within a larger package would have to pay for the privilege. In other words when you bought a copy of RedHat, or Caldera, or you name it, part of the money you spent would be going to Easel to further finance their work.
The inextricable binding of free speech to free beer is the surest way to introduce a free rider scenario that I've heard of in a long time.
I would LOVE to see the totalitarian regime that is China collapse. I'd pay good money to help ensure that it does. Tell me a story about oppression crumbling and freedom thriving and I'll be nothing but thrilled.
Freedom is the most precious thing anyone has. It is more valuable than life itself because it is what makes life worth living.
Aren't they the ones that went in and shot up everyone? How exactly is it that anyone else is responsible for their actions?
Why is anyone looking to blame video games, the internet, their parents, the music the listened to, the color of their socks, etc? Put the blame where it belongs, on the shooters themselves.
I don't remember anyone wanting to blame the practice of camping for the crimes of the Unabomber. I don't remember anyone blaming Jack Daniels for the crash of the Exxon Valdez. No one blames cigar companies for what Bill Clinton did with their products. So why are we looking to blame anyone and everyone other than those truly responsible, Klebold and Harris?
Now you might be thinking that the fact that they were young meant they weren't responsible for their actions. Bullshit. They were 17 and 18 YEARS old, not 17 and 18 months old. Neither had been a child for some time.
If you're old enough to understand your actions and the consequences of them, you are old enough to be held accountable for them. I don't think anyone can argue that the two didn't know what they were doing or what the end results would be.
I really do wish that just for once the public would place blame for a crime on the person truly responsible, the criminal themself.
I agree with you wholeheartedly except when it comes to one thing, I don't think guns are a social evil. Guns are, as George Washington put it, the people's liberty's teeth.
Democracy depends upon many things, one of them being the ability of the people hold the government accountable for its actions. The people are senior to the government, not the other way around. Firearms provide the power to the people necessary to maintain that relationship. A people disempowered are a people disenfranchised. Something else that democracy depends upon is that the people be well informed. When information is controlled people are controlled. The first and second amendments to the constitution are, in a very real sense, the true foundation of our nation.
Why anyone would want to jeopardize either one is beyond me. I think that there are an awful lot of people out there who are simply not informed. They're ignorant, misled, and running as fast as they can towards a precipice that they don't know is there. The problem is that they're trying to drag the rest of us along with them.
One of the most valuable tools anyone can have is a knowledge and understanding of history. Of course the subject is itself riddled with political BS, but not everything is skewed, and its not too hard to see through the BS when it is there provided you seek out enough sources. Study history and an awful lot of things that are going on in the world and in our country today will seem almost comically familiar. Its the same old song and dance, just a different tune. History repeats itself because, while times may change, and situations may vary, human nature is static.
Is there room for a runner-up among products that compete based on open standards?
NetBSD and OpenBSD both have niches that are theirs, namely portability and security. FreeBSD on the other hand aims to be a full featured Unix just like Linux does. So the question is, what does FreeBSD do better than Linux? Is it faster, more stable, better under high loads?
The truth is I don't know how things are now, but I do know that as time goes by Linux will pull ahead in these areas because it is where most people are putting their attention. Companies like IBM, SGI, HP, etc. are all working on Linux, making it better. The pace of development will only increase as Linux further penetrates various markets.
I hope there is room for FreeBSD in spite of this, if only because it will offer a different way of doing things and help avoid intellectual inbreeding.
Both the Indrema and the X-Box are nothing but PCs stuck in funky boxes. Therefore you aren't going to get any extra performance or added features that aren't already available in a standard PC. Whoever makes them is also going to be forced to sell them below cost just to get people to buy them. There are some people who will spend four or five hundred dollars on a gaming console, but they are not the average gamer. The average gamer might spend a couple hundred dollars on a common console and as much as three hundred for a hot off the press, state of the art, kick ass, newfangled console. Of course a PC in a pretty box with a TV hookup is none of these things. Selling the console below cost means that you'll be forced to make up your profits by charging more for the games themselves. This works for Sony and Nintendo, where the company directly or indirectly controls what titles are available and gets a cut of the profits from any title sold. It won't work for a company that is encouraging others to create the games independently.
A Linux platform for gaming already exists, its called a standard PC with a supported 3d accelerator. I'm using one right now as I write this.
The best thing these guys could do is work to make better tools for creating games under Linux. If they're hot-shot game programmers maybe they should be contributing to a game engine like CrystalSpace. Maybe they should be working to expand the range of 3d accelerators that Linux supports. There are all sorts of effective and useful things they could be doing. Trying to create a Linux based X-Box isn't one of them. Don't be fooled into thinking that the X-Box is a great idea just because Microsoft is the one doing it. Remember Microsoft Bob? I think that the X-Box is going to be a flop in the short run. Whether it is a success in the long run I can't say, but I doubt it.
DON'T USE AOL
Any and all problems with this ISP can easily be avoided by simply using another provider. We should be doing everything we can to encourage and assist others to upgrade from AOL. Until such time as AOL stops behaving this way there is simply no reason to deal with them in any way.
We may be stuck with Microsoft products for the time being, but ISPs are a dime a dozen. There's no reason why anyone should have to subject themselves to AOL's shenanigans.
History has certainly proven Mr. Dvorak wrong about Macs. Seventeen years have passed since the Macs were introduced and today they have as much as seven percent of the personal computer market. There are dozens of software titles available for them and almost that many peripherals. You can find a whole shelf of mac software in most computer stores. Some places like Fry's might have even two or three shelves.
Macs are historically important because they opened up the world of computers to those who were not willing to learn how to use a regular computer of the day. Before Macs came along computer users were actually expected to know and understand a little of how their system worked. The Mac proved that a person could be utterly ignorant of the system they were using and yet still be able to make it do something. Today that philosophy has permeated the industry and the computer illiterate everywhere are able to stay illiterate. Its too bad that no one has been able to apply the Mac philosophy to books. Imagine how great out world would be if no one had to learn how to read or write?
The article does NOT say that the rent-a-center version of Windows will not play MP3 files. Neither does it say that it will be fundamentally crippled when it comes to the creation of MP3 files.
What it does say is that Microsoft will limit the ability of the built-in media creation tools to create MP3 files in favor of their own MWA format.
In other words it doesn't matter. Anyone wanting to create MP3s will simply use something else.
But to read the responses that people post, you'd think that XP had an anti-MP3 layer built in to the OS itself preventing both the playback of existing MP3's, as well as causing applications that can create them to crash.
A conclusion is a foolish thing to jump to.
If the word.DOC format is any indication, I wouldn't touch WMA with a ten foot pole. Why give M$ yet another way to create incompatibilities and headaches when you try to use someone else's products?
In the big picture open standards are best, even if the standards are not as good as other standards that are proprietary.
Censorship and facism isn't the sole parlance of the Republicans, the Democrats will meet or beat them in this department any day of the week. The plain fact is, young people are at the mercy of older people. Some of these older people see the young as a way to gain political power. They will quite readily exploit the young, abuse their civil rights, etc. if it will allow them to further their own agenda.
Once upon a time someone said not to trust anyone over 30. They were right.
All they are doing is displaying their own ignorance. FreeBSD is not a server OS, and it is not a desktop OS. It is simply a unix variant that is capable of playing multiple roles. FreeBSD is used in server configurations, but then so is Linux. Its also used in desktop configurations, just like Linux.
The bottom line is, if it works for you and you like it then to hell with what your friends say.
They just love to go after people who say bad (but true) things about them online. They would like nothing better than to be able to identify anyone and everyone because it makes it easier to harrass critics. Remember anon.penet.fi? You can thank the clams (scientologists) for its demise. Check out www.xenu.net if you want to know the whole story about this criminal organization that pretends to be a religion
What the hell is going on down there in Australia? Since when was the attorney general in charge of drafting laws? What kind of a country is it where laws are broad or ambiguous enough that the attorney general could re-interpret them? It sounds to me like that country has a bad case of the government not being answerable to the people. When that happens its time to either reform it or overthrow it.
Before I was born my parents had the opportunity to move to Australia. I'm glad they didn't.
Does anyone really think that they are losing fidelity by using analog outputs?
Dump the "secure audio" to a metal formula cassette tape (assuming you've got a deck that will actually use it well), a DAT tape, or an audio cd burner.
Seriously, you a lot of fidelity from the mp3 encoding process to begin with and virtually none from the analog output to your speakers. All it takes is one person with a DAT drive with line level inputs to supply everone else with an unencumbered version of anything at all.
Until someone comes up with a way to encrypt something up to the point that it reaches our ears then there will be no such thing as "secure audio."
Unless you're a mormon, Utah itself and Salt Lake City in particular are very creepy places to be. How would you like to live in a place dominated by a kooky cult?
Lee Reynolds
Not to be confused with "Battlefield Earth", which was made by another cult, the "church" of scientology.
Check out this web page for more info on the mormon/BG connection.
Check out this web page for more info on the clams:
The declaration of independence was drafted in 1776. The constitution, the charter which incorporated the US government, was drafted in 1788 and ratified a few years later.
2001
-1788
------
213
Do the math.
Prior to this the america was governed under the articles of confederation. Prior to this each colony was an independent entity subject to british rule.
As for the rest, it is not small vocal groups that gives the second amendment teeth, it is LARGE vocal groups, aka the american people as a whole. Firearms are a guarantee against tyrrany because they put real power into the hands of each citizen of this country. If someone or some group were to come along and try to disenfranchise the people, they wouldn't get too far before bullets would start flying. I'll take a civil war to defend freedom over peace at the cost of my freedom any day of the week.
Just because an X window shows up on a particular screen does not mean the application driving that window window is running on the same computer.
My computer's clock is chronically off, mostly because I don't need it to be on time.
You are right that it could be a fake, but I'd much more strongly suspect that the X clock is from an other system than jump to the conclusion that it is a fake.
Who is seriously going to drop the rock-solid, BSD-based OS X for another operating system which is "free" (in theory anyway), but far less functional?
Anyone who wants to use standard hardware. Until Apple ports OS X to the PC, its marketshare will be stunted by the need to buy Apple hardware. Most people aren't going to be willing to buy two computers, one to run all their normal software on and a second just to run OS X. In fact the only group willing to do this are the techies. This leaves two area of play for OS X within the marketplace, techies and the people who still use Macs. Neither of these markets is all that large, although the techie market is more influential. In the end, if OS X is to be anything more than a "Gee-whiz" product, it will have to be ported to the hardware platform that 95% of computer users own, the PC. The fact that the PowerPC hasn't scaled as well as the P-III and Athlon is one more reason why Apple needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Of course Apple won't do this. The reason why is that they are not willing to play ball in a game where they don't control everything. This is why they killed the Mac clones. The Mac market is something they want exclusive domain over and they will never do anything that might jeopardize their complete control over it, even if it means creating a bigger market and putting money in their pockets. So instead they've got all the pieces of a continuously shrinking pie. Pretty soon they'll learn a hard lesson, 100% of 0 is nothing. There is a chance of course that they'll get smart, fire Steve Jobs, and become a real company that listens to the market place and works to supply what it is demanding. As it is now the "company" is more like some kind of religion that spends its time and money trying to sell an ideology to people who truly aren't interested or impressed. I for one am tired of hearing them beat on their broken drum.
OS X will certainly be interesting, and it is refreshing to see a commercial OS that's built right. It's sad to know that it may never ammount to anything beyond what something like the BeOS has simply because it won't run on standard hardware. Apple needs to port it, get out of the hardware business, and work as hard as they can to build developer support for the OS. Microsoft is highly unlikely to create anything for it, which means other developers can create something without having to worry about Microsoft coming along and destroying them. If anything developers should be more than happy to develop for the OS since it means they'll be able to sell software to a user base which is potentially as large as the installed base of PC users.
Will Apple do this? Probably not, at least not until they're nearly dead and the sharp bite of reality becomes strong enough to make them wake up. At which point it might truly be too late.
Slashdot Mirror
"When one seeks answers when none
exist, it's understandable to extend blame,"
Fitzsimons said.
Where was this guy after the columbine shootings? How come we didn't hear opinions like this from school administrators when it was video games, music, movies, the internet, etc. that so many less intelligent but very loud people were looking to blame?
This kid killing himself sounds to me like a case of terminal stupidity. Either that or he was sheltered by his family and therefore unaware of how things actually work here in America, even though he was born here. I've seen that kind of thing myself in people whose parents are from cultures that are vastly different from ours. The parents try to raise the kid as if they're still living in Bangladesh, which is a mistake. Its amazing just how effective parents can be at information control when they're really committed to it. Holy roller christian types are much the same, the kids don't grow up and get a clue about how things really are until long after they've left home. Some never get a clue and go on to do the same things to their kids.
So here you've got a kid who is either not too bright, or completely clueless and thought he was going to end up in a cell with Bubba. So far the evidence points to the latter, in which case I blame mom and dad for not raising him to be more street-smart.
Lee
Accept it? I came up with it. Others have as well of course just like most cultures came up with the wheel.
Just so you know it isn't Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha etc. that are stopping the minds of people, it is religion itself. To me religion has always been an organized system of group and self delusion. When the figures you mention came along, they actually worked to start the minds of the people they affected. Each one encouraged others to set aside the religous dogma of the past. The problem of course is that after these people had departed the scene, their followers quickly created new religous dogma. The more things change the more they stay the same.
People who choose to accept religion X choose to accept as facts not only things that haven't been or can't be proven, but as time goes by and human knowledge moves forward things that have been long disproven. Evolution vs. Creationism is a perfect example of this. There is a mountain of evidence supporting evolution. Creationists have nothing to fall back on but the bible, which in case you didn't know it isn't exactly evidence of anything outside anthropology and the study of religion itself. Believing things that are demonstrably false is a good portion of the definition of insanity.
I do think that I should revise my statement though. I've come to the conclusion that religion does not stop minds. Rather that people who are unable or unwilling to think for themselves are attracted to religion as a way of saving them from that burden. You can't stop a mind that never started. People like me who do think for ourselves are simply immune to the BS that religions are because we aren't in need of anyone or anything telling us who to be or what to think.
As for Newton and the rest, they are similar to Jesus, Buddha etc in that they were able to set aside religious dogma in the pursuit of something greater. While Jesus and the rest replaced one religious philosophy with another, Newton and the rest furthered man's knowledge or artistic wealth. Who knows, perhaps these people have done more than simply broken free of their religious brainwashing. Perhaps they have found a way to see through the dogma and BS and extract that which is good from relgion while leaving the rest to those with lower IQ and EQ scores. To me this isn't much different from extracting the venom from a snake for medical purposes.
Lee Reynolds
Why any company would think that they can break even, let alone make a profit, from software that, after they spent the time and money developing it, they would be forced to give away.
If you can't charge money for your services you won't be able to provide those services for long. Non-profit entities that have actually managed to stick around learned that lesson a long time ago. Some seek public funding, others charge a nominal fees for their services. In either case it is known and understood that you've got to make money to spend that money to further your cause or achieve your goal.
Why anyone with a lick of sense thought they could base a for-profit company off a model that won't even work for a non-profit firm is something I'll never understand.
When are people going to realize that free as in speech doesn't necessarily have to mean free as in beer? If Easel has been able to create their own license, such that while anyone can use Easel for free, and anyone can do what they want with the source for free, anyone who wanted to bundle it for sale within a larger package would have to pay for the privilege. In other words when you bought a copy of RedHat, or Caldera, or you name it, part of the money you spent would be going to Easel to further finance their work.
The inextricable binding of free speech to free beer is the surest way to introduce a free rider scenario that I've heard of in a long time.
Lee Reynolds
It sucked when Asimov died. It sucked when Jerry Garcia died, and it definitely sucks that Douglas Adams has died.
Lee Reynolds
I would LOVE to see the totalitarian regime that is China collapse. I'd pay good money to help ensure that it does. Tell me a story about oppression crumbling and freedom thriving and I'll be nothing but thrilled.
Freedom is the most precious thing anyone has. It is more valuable than life itself because it is what makes life worth living.
Lee
Aren't they the ones that went in and shot up everyone? How exactly is it that anyone else is responsible for their actions?
Why is anyone looking to blame video games, the internet, their parents, the music the listened to, the color of their socks, etc? Put the blame where it belongs, on the shooters themselves.
I don't remember anyone wanting to blame the practice of camping for the crimes of the Unabomber. I don't remember anyone blaming Jack Daniels for the crash of the Exxon Valdez. No one blames cigar companies for what Bill Clinton did with their products. So why are we looking to blame anyone and everyone other than those truly responsible, Klebold and Harris?
Now you might be thinking that the fact that they were young meant they weren't responsible for their actions. Bullshit. They were 17 and 18 YEARS old, not 17 and 18 months old. Neither had been a child for some time.
If you're old enough to understand your actions and the consequences of them, you are old enough to be held accountable for them. I don't think anyone can argue that the two didn't know what they were doing or what the end results would be.
I really do wish that just for once the public would place blame for a crime on the person truly responsible, the criminal themself.
Lee Reynolds
I agree with you wholeheartedly except when it comes to one thing, I don't think guns are a social evil. Guns are, as George Washington put it, the people's liberty's teeth.
Democracy depends upon many things, one of them being the ability of the people hold the government accountable for its actions. The people are senior to the government, not the other way around. Firearms provide the power to the people necessary to maintain that relationship. A people disempowered are a people disenfranchised. Something else that democracy depends upon is that the people be well informed. When information is controlled people are controlled. The first and second amendments to the constitution are, in a very real sense, the true foundation of our nation.
Why anyone would want to jeopardize either one is beyond me. I think that there are an awful lot of people out there who are simply not informed. They're ignorant, misled, and running as fast as they can towards a precipice that they don't know is there. The problem is that they're trying to drag the rest of us along with them.
One of the most valuable tools anyone can have is a knowledge and understanding of history. Of course the subject is itself riddled with political BS, but not everything is skewed, and its not too hard to see through the BS when it is there provided you seek out enough sources. Study history and an awful lot of things that are going on in the world and in our country today will seem almost comically familiar. Its the same old song and dance, just a different tune. History repeats itself because, while times may change, and situations may vary, human nature is static.
Lee Reynolds
Is there room for a runner-up among products that compete based on open standards?
NetBSD and OpenBSD both have niches that are theirs, namely portability and security. FreeBSD on the other hand aims to be a full featured Unix just like Linux does. So the question is, what does FreeBSD do better than Linux? Is it faster, more stable, better under high loads?
The truth is I don't know how things are now, but I do know that as time goes by Linux will pull ahead in these areas because it is where most people are putting their attention. Companies like IBM, SGI, HP, etc. are all working on Linux, making it better. The pace of development will only increase as Linux further penetrates various markets.
I hope there is room for FreeBSD in spite of this, if only because it will offer a different way of doing things and help avoid intellectual inbreeding.
Both the Indrema and the X-Box are nothing but PCs stuck in funky boxes. Therefore you aren't going to get any extra performance or added features that aren't already available in a standard PC. Whoever makes them is also going to be forced to sell them below cost just to get people to buy them. There are some people who will spend four or five hundred dollars on a gaming console, but they are not the average gamer. The average gamer might spend a couple hundred dollars on a common console and as much as three hundred for a hot off the press, state of the art, kick ass, newfangled console. Of course a PC in a pretty box with a TV hookup is none of these things. Selling the console below cost means that you'll be forced to make up your profits by charging more for the games themselves. This works for Sony and Nintendo, where the company directly or indirectly controls what titles are available and gets a cut of the profits from any title sold. It won't work for a company that is encouraging others to create the games independently.
A Linux platform for gaming already exists, its called a standard PC with a supported 3d accelerator. I'm using one right now as I write this.
The best thing these guys could do is work to make better tools for creating games under Linux. If they're hot-shot game programmers maybe they should be contributing to a game engine like CrystalSpace. Maybe they should be working to expand the range of 3d accelerators that Linux supports. There are all sorts of effective and useful things they could be doing. Trying to create a Linux based X-Box isn't one of them. Don't be fooled into thinking that the X-Box is a great idea just because Microsoft is the one doing it. Remember Microsoft Bob? I think that the X-Box is going to be a flop in the short run. Whether it is a success in the long run I can't say, but I doubt it.
DON'T USE AOL Any and all problems with this ISP can easily be avoided by simply using another provider. We should be doing everything we can to encourage and assist others to upgrade from AOL. Until such time as AOL stops behaving this way there is simply no reason to deal with them in any way. We may be stuck with Microsoft products for the time being, but ISPs are a dime a dozen. There's no reason why anyone should have to subject themselves to AOL's shenanigans.
History has certainly proven Mr. Dvorak wrong about Macs. Seventeen years have passed since the Macs were introduced and today they have as much as seven percent of the personal computer market. There are dozens of software titles available for them and almost that many peripherals. You can find a whole shelf of mac software in most computer stores. Some places like Fry's might have even two or three shelves.
Macs are historically important because they opened up the world of computers to those who were not willing to learn how to use a regular computer of the day. Before Macs came along computer users were actually expected to know and understand a little of how their system worked. The Mac proved that a person could be utterly ignorant of the system they were using and yet still be able to make it do something. Today that philosophy has permeated the industry and the computer illiterate everywhere are able to stay illiterate. Its too bad that no one has been able to apply the Mac philosophy to books. Imagine how great out world would be if no one had to learn how to read or write?
The article does NOT say that the rent-a-center version of Windows will not play MP3 files. Neither does it say that it will be fundamentally crippled when it comes to the creation of MP3 files.
.DOC format is any indication, I wouldn't touch WMA with a ten foot pole. Why give M$ yet another way to create incompatibilities and headaches when you try to use someone else's products?
What it does say is that Microsoft will limit the ability of the built-in media creation tools to create MP3 files in favor of their own MWA format.
In other words it doesn't matter. Anyone wanting to create MP3s will simply use something else.
But to read the responses that people post, you'd think that XP had an anti-MP3 layer built in to the OS itself preventing both the playback of existing MP3's, as well as causing applications that can create them to crash.
A conclusion is a foolish thing to jump to.
If the word
In the big picture open standards are best, even if the standards are not as good as other standards that are proprietary.
Lee Reynolds
If you can't say fuck, you can't say "Fuck the government." Fuck the government.
Censorship and facism isn't the sole parlance of the Republicans, the Democrats will meet or beat them in this department any day of the week. The plain fact is, young people are at the mercy of older people. Some of these older people see the young as a way to gain political power. They will quite readily exploit the young, abuse their civil rights, etc. if it will allow them to further their own agenda.
Once upon a time someone said not to trust anyone over 30. They were right.
Lee Reynolds
at something like a inch a year. A long time ago the moon appeared to be far far bigger than it is now.
All they are doing is displaying their own ignorance. FreeBSD is not a server OS, and it is not a desktop OS. It is simply a unix variant that is capable of playing multiple roles. FreeBSD is used in server configurations, but then so is Linux. Its also used in desktop configurations, just like Linux.
The bottom line is, if it works for you and you like it then to hell with what your friends say.
Lee Reynolds
Whoever tagged your post as flamebait must be a scientologist, you were right on the money.
Thank God for freedom of thought is all I have to say!
Lee Reynolds
They just love to go after people who say bad (but true) things about them online. They would like nothing better than to be able to identify anyone and everyone because it makes it easier to harrass critics. Remember anon.penet.fi? You can thank the clams (scientologists) for its demise. Check out www.xenu.net if you want to know the whole story about this criminal organization that pretends to be a religion
Lee Reynolds (yes OSA its me)
What the hell is going on down there in Australia? Since when was the attorney general in charge of drafting laws? What kind of a country is it where laws are broad or ambiguous enough that the attorney general could re-interpret them? It sounds to me like that country has a bad case of the government not being answerable to the people. When that happens its time to either reform it or overthrow it.
Before I was born my parents had the opportunity to move to Australia. I'm glad they didn't.
Lee Reynolds
Does anyone really think that they are losing fidelity by using analog outputs?
Dump the "secure audio" to a metal formula cassette tape (assuming you've got a deck that will actually use it well), a DAT tape, or an audio cd burner.
Seriously, you a lot of fidelity from the mp3 encoding process to begin with and virtually none from the analog output to your speakers. All it takes is one person with a DAT drive with line level inputs to supply everone else with an unencumbered version of anything at all.
Until someone comes up with a way to encrypt something up to the point that it reaches our ears then there will be no such thing as "secure audio."
Unless you're a mormon, Utah itself and Salt Lake City in particular are very creepy places to be. How would you like to live in a place dominated by a kooky cult? Lee Reynolds
Not to be confused with "Battlefield Earth", which was made by another cult, the "church" of scientology. Check out this web page for more info on the mormon/BG connection. Check out this web page for more info on the clams:
300 years???
The declaration of independence was drafted in 1776. The constitution, the charter which incorporated the US government, was drafted in 1788 and ratified a few years later.
2001
-1788
------
213
Do the math.
Prior to this the america was governed under the articles of confederation. Prior to this each colony was an independent entity subject to british rule.
As for the rest, it is not small vocal groups that gives the second amendment teeth, it is LARGE vocal groups, aka the american people as a whole. Firearms are a guarantee against tyrrany because they put real power into the hands of each citizen of this country. If someone or some group were to come along and try to disenfranchise the people, they wouldn't get too far before bullets would start flying. I'll take a civil war to defend freedom over peace at the cost of my freedom any day of the week.
Lee Reynolds
Just because an X window shows up on a particular screen does not mean the application driving that window window is running on the same computer.
My computer's clock is chronically off, mostly because I don't need it to be on time.
You are right that it could be a fake, but I'd much more strongly suspect that the X clock is from an other system than jump to the conclusion that it is a fake.
Lee Reynolds
Who is seriously going to drop the rock-solid, BSD-based OS X for another operating system which is "free" (in theory anyway), but far less functional?
Anyone who wants to use standard hardware. Until Apple ports OS X to the PC, its marketshare will be stunted by the need to buy Apple hardware. Most people aren't going to be willing to buy two computers, one to run all their normal software on and a second just to run OS X. In fact the only group willing to do this are the techies. This leaves two area of play for OS X within the marketplace, techies and the people who still use Macs. Neither of these markets is all that large, although the techie market is more influential. In the end, if OS X is to be anything more than a "Gee-whiz" product, it will have to be ported to the hardware platform that 95% of computer users own, the PC. The fact that the PowerPC hasn't scaled as well as the P-III and Athlon is one more reason why Apple needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Of course Apple won't do this. The reason why is that they are not willing to play ball in a game where they don't control everything. This is why they killed the Mac clones. The Mac market is something they want exclusive domain over and they will never do anything that might jeopardize their complete control over it, even if it means creating a bigger market and putting money in their pockets. So instead they've got all the pieces of a continuously shrinking pie. Pretty soon they'll learn a hard lesson, 100% of 0 is nothing. There is a chance of course that they'll get smart, fire Steve Jobs, and become a real company that listens to the market place and works to supply what it is demanding. As it is now the "company" is more like some kind of religion that spends its time and money trying to sell an ideology to people who truly aren't interested or impressed. I for one am tired of hearing them beat on their broken drum.
OS X will certainly be interesting, and it is refreshing to see a commercial OS that's built right. It's sad to know that it may never ammount to anything beyond what something like the BeOS has simply because it won't run on standard hardware. Apple needs to port it, get out of the hardware business, and work as hard as they can to build developer support for the OS. Microsoft is highly unlikely to create anything for it, which means other developers can create something without having to worry about Microsoft coming along and destroying them. If anything developers should be more than happy to develop for the OS since it means they'll be able to sell software to a user base which is potentially as large as the installed base of PC users.
Will Apple do this? Probably not, at least not until they're nearly dead and the sharp bite of reality becomes strong enough to make them wake up. At which point it might truly be too late.
Lee Reynolds