That's actually an interesting idea... Any physically capable individual receiving welfare benefits for greater than a given period of time could be required to join the reserves. If they don't find work after, say, 6 mos. - 1 yr. of being in the reserves, they would have to either stop receiving welfare benefits, or join the armed forces full-time.
That would take a lazy group (long-term welfare leeches*) and force them to become physically active, as well as consolidate two major burdens on the taxpayer (by making welfare benefits intersect with reserve pay). Suddenly, America is spending a little less, and becomes on the average slightly less thick around the middle.
Rock on!
* As opposed to legitimate recipients -- If the program didn't have a legitimate purpose, it could/should have been eliminated long ago.
OT: Re:$44 trillion is PV of debt in perpetuity
on
A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 1
Thank you. I've made the same argument in response to the "No War For Oil!" people, and I appreciate the fact that someone else took the few minutes of actual thought to realize this as well.
I read an article recently (can't find the URL offhand) that said that the U.S. and OPEC both have similar goals: to keep oil prices just where they're at (somewhere between $20 and $30 a barrel, IIRC). I don't recall the justification, and I'm already late for a job interview, so I don't have time to find out why;)
But, the members have OPEC have gone on record as not wanting to allow a reformed Iraq back in to the organization. This could mean a reduced oil supply due to war, not a larger one.
Also of random interest (insert obligatory I Am Not A Historian): I seem to recall something about the US having entered Vietnam because France was there and needed assistance.
It's sad how many people ignore away messages to bother you anyways.
I do miss ICQ's "levels" of away-ness: away (leave me a message, I'll return it), occupied (busy, don't expect much of a response), DnD (don't fucking talk to me), etc., etc.
I'm reminded of Wine's rating system (does it still exist?) of app functionality, though. It was rated 1-5, where 1 is "doesn't work", 4 was "I've used it for months flawlessly", and 5 was rated "Don't ever give a program a 5", just to keep people from creating a false appearance of functionality.
Every damned program on the list had a 4 or a 5, because people assume that their perception (that the program launched and didn't crash) was universal (that the program would always launch and not crash).
Many people tend to disregard DnD/Occupied/whatever messages, which is why ICQ's "away to user" and "invisible to user" options rocked. People too often assume that anyone they see online is as bored as they are, and want to chat.
You can talk to people with AIM while away without killing the away message -- you just have to directly connect to them before setting your away message.
It's a pain when you've already set an away message, but with a little foresight, it's possible.
Not picking arguments, just sharing a tip for those using AOL's IM client.
Hofstadter is definitely an amazing author. I'm about 200 pages into "Godel, Escher, Bach -- an Eternal Golden Braid", and it's hands down the best book I've ever written. It won a Pulitzer, IIRC.
It's rare that someone has such a grasp of both conteptual material and language as to be able to explain concepts such as addressed in GEB, and to relate them to each other. Hofstadter addresses the concept of "Strange Loops" (self-referential structures), using Bach and Escher to explain the importance of Godel's work (and using Godel and Bach to explain Escher's art, and using Escher and Godel to describe Bach's music).
This book uses self-reference to explain the self-referential works of all three minds, all in a way which manages to be both astoundingly lucid and refreshingly amusing for a 700-page text addressing such complex topics.
I feel that this book will be as good (or better) of a read the second time through -- of course, the second time through I'll be taking more notes, and looking for more puzzles as well as a deeper understanding of the meaning of the text. Much like a work by Escher, Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" has surprises for the attentive observer on many levels.
3com's IP phones support doing this, as does their MBX telephony hardware.
I went to a 3com IP phone training session about two and a half years ago in which we learned to set up their telephony boxes. Most of the guys there were telecom installers, guys who'd been servicing telephone equipment for years but hadn't used computers more than the average guy, so I saw things from a different perspective. Neat hardware, quite flexible, and ran some form of *nix, but configuration was through a tastefully designed browser interface.
Anyways, the guys running the show said that all 3com Ethernet hardware (yes, including NICs) is compatible with the power-over-LAN features, but non-3com devices required a "filter" adapter to prevent frying the circuitry.
It made sense in that it was easier to simply provide cat5 and use 3com hardware than to worry about powering all of the phones (do we have enough outlets/power strips/whatever?).
Win for the business: simple configuration and deployment.
Win for 3com: It's easier for the consumer to use _all_ 3com hardware than to worry about filtering all ethernet devices.
Neat stuff, in development 3+ years before/. noticed;)
Has anybody else experienced connection delays when connecting a Linux box to an NFS share on an OS X machine? I get a mysterious 3 minute delay every single time on every Linux box, and no amount of Googleing seems to yield any answers.
Make sure the OS X machine isn't trying to do reverse DNS lookups on the Linux box. I've seen many programs (including NFS stuff) delay initial connection considerably because one end or the other wasn't entirely happy with the information available (or unavailable) through DNS.
why can't I take a RedHat 9 package and run it on a RedHat 5.2 box?
For the same reasons that a program intended for Windows 2000 probably won't run under Windows 3.1, or even 95 for that matter. I'm honestly not sure whether you're a troll or just an idiot.
Many DOS apps won't run under 2000, or even XP. If you think a modern 32-bit application will run "way back to 95, and hell who knows maybe even 3.1", I invite you to try to run Microsoft's own Wordpad under Windows 3.1, let alone Office XP.
I'm talking about those doing the encoding. I understand that if media exists, it's nice to be able to decode it.
However, I was asking whether there was a valid reason for people to _encode_ in one of 30 different formats, instead of one in two or three or five or whatever.
Are there generally technical reasons to use one video encoding format over another?
I realize that like gif vs. jpeg there will be tradeoffs in quality between various formats. However, the sheer number of codecs out there seems a bit rediculous. There are a small number of commonly used image formats (.png,.gif,.jpg,.pcx,.bmp, etc.) and a relatively small number of commonly used audio codecs (Vorbis, MP3,.wav,.voc,.au, etc.).
Other than attempts to corner the market through proprietary software, can anyone explain the need for more than a handful of different codecs?
Because the RIAA wants to make an example of these students.
I would highly doubt that a call to local authorities would yield results. Are you confident that your local police force has the technical knowledge to be able to correctly determine what violations, if any, are happening?
I can call my local police department and report the use of marijuana in a residence. However, this does not mean that the police department has the resources to investigate every call like that. They may show up and use scare tactics as much as possible, but I really doubt that anyone would face huge fines or jail time.
Besides, have you heard of probable cause? It would take more than a "simple phone call to the local sherrif [sic]" to motivate the local authorities to go to the trouble of obtaining warrants to search the students' rooms and computer.
By filing civil suits they put pressure on the local authorities to act. Issuing press releases draws attention to the case, both to serve as a warning to potential violators of copyright, and again to pressure the local authorities to act in order to avoid negative press coverage ("Students accused of copyright violation on a local campus; local authorities turn their heads. Film at 11.").
In a case like this, unless the defendants were coordinating a large ring of piracy (which they weren't; running a search engine is not the same as acting as ringleader to a piracy group) they probably wouldn't be arrested, and it would be up to the RIAA to file civil suits seeking compensation for damages.
The RIAA wanted people to see that copyright violation can have expensive consequences. Are you suggesting that a "simple phone call to the local sherrif [sic]" would have generated this much media attention?
It is my understanding from the "last 5 times" this story was posted" that these students did not just create search engines; they were in possession of pirated MP3 files.
Everyone yelling about how much more money the RIAA has for legal fees is ignoring the fact that possession of music which is not "licensed" to you is against the law.
Unless you want to argue that someone with a sufficient legal budget could take this case as far as possible until they are either denied further appeals or the laws are declared unconstitutional, then these complaints of insufficient legal fees do not make sense.
This is not a case of "RIAA sues Google for providing search services", a case of "RIAA sues Google employee for having illegal music on company-owned equipment.
What people don't want to address here is that legally, the RIAA seems to be correct.
Don't blame the RIAA for reduced diversity -- blame the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which destroys earlier limitations on the ownership of radio stations. Stations were limited to owning only low number of stations (I forget specifics, but it was somewhere between 8 and 40).
Has anyone noticed that suddenly Clear Channel owns damned near everything? I'll bet that with over 1200 stations, Clear Channel now owns at least 3 FM stations in most major U.S. cities. Clear Channel probably doesn't make up a specific playlist for each radio station, which means that most R&B stations, for instance, play a bunch of homogenized crap. A lot of said crap can be played by stations which are supposed to differ in format -- how many stations (Light Rock, Rock, Top 40, etc.) play the band Creed?
All of this leads to reduced diversity in radio -- many stations in Pittsburgh are basically a carbon copy of what you might hear in, say, Phoenix.
Less diverse radio leads to less diverse demand (as seen by the RIAA). Less diverse demand leads to less diverse titles. Less diverse titles lead to disappointed customers. Disappointed customers, of course, lead to reduced sales.
If the RIAA really wanted to increase profits, they'd fight monopolistic media.
If you count how many lines of code in a running system come from the GNU project, you will get a large number.
That's an understatement. From http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/hello.html:
The GNU `hello' program produces a familiar, friendly greeting. It allows nonprogrammers to use a classic computer science tool which would otherwise be unavailable to them.
Yes, this really is the classic program that prints "Hello, world!" when you run it. Unlike the elementary version often presented in books like K&R, GNU hello processes its argument list to modify its behavior, supports internationalization, and includes a mail reader. The primary purpose of this program is to demonstrate how to write other programs that do these things; it serves as a model for all of the GNU coding standards.
If their "Hello, World!" implementation is any indication of the compactness of GNU code, I think that pretty much proves the correctness of your assertion.
There's somebody that's covered what Eminem does in a format targetted towards listeners, instead of just trying to please the media whores?
Can you provide pointers? I'd like to hear it.
I've heard too much Creed and more than my share of Britney. Have you listened to any Eminem other than what gets media play?
Apache is unoriginal. Linux is unoriginal. Hell, most of computing today is, quite frankly, unoriginal. It's a matter of being clever about it that makes things interesting.
I'm not out to start any religious wars over Eminem here, but I'm just wondering what prior art you can point to which would justify saying that Eminem does not have any originality.
I suppose my use of "support" here is in the context of some earlier posts: that you be able to create an SXW file in a non-MS word processor, then open it in Word, make changes, and save back to SXW without degrading the formatting or otherwise munging the document in a way that would make it generally undesirable to use Word to maintain a document which is also often edited in a non-Word program.
Yeah.
For instance, AW -> MSW -> AW produces the same document (not necessarily byte-for-byte, but in regards to content/formatting) after saving in AbiWord the first time as it does the second time, after having loaded and saved the document in Word format.
I guess here it's probably best for me to shut up -- I actually have no idea how well RTF is "supported" by various programs using this definition, so I suppose the quality of any Word support would depend on Word's ability to not munge RTF format, as well as the quality of the conversion tools.
Do you have and quick links (or search topics) documenting the Word plugin system?
Also, can I assume that AbiConvert supports SXW->RTF? Is this code licensed in a way that would permit the development of Word plugins that are based on it?
It seems to me that at least in the near future, a document format must be usable in Word before it'll be given any respect in the non-free software world. I'd love to see the world of open source use Microsoft's own embrace-and-extend tactics to push a more open file format: get Word to support it, then let the editors compete based on function, not based on how well they support MSFT formats.
Okay, I'll stop bugging you. Thanks for the response!
I bet that you'll be seeing a lot more SXW files floating around the 'net. And this is a *very* good thing.
I'd never heard of the SXW format until now. Thanks a lot, a-hole, now I've got another thing on my list of stuff to read about while putting off actual work. I'm never going to get anything done around here if people keep posting interesting things to Slashdot.
All joking aside, this does sound neat, but I feel like roles are reversed a bit here: you say that SXW is increasingly supported by GnomeOffice, KOffice, and AbiWord. Here my question is: This sounds truly awesome, but does it work in my environment (MS Word)?
It's great to know that there's a format actively supported by groups of developers. However, one of the things that people bring up against the MS Word format is interoperability with Microsoft products. Are you aware of any attempts to build a plugin (set of filters) for MS Word that would allow support for SXW?
For that matter, do you have any idea whether it's even possible (for more attainable values of 'possible') to develop such a plugin?
Thanks for your informative post, and for sharing your developmental efforts with the world. Active open-software developers rule!
Yeah, it's pretty sad, really, although I suppose it is probably a good thing that at least _someone_ is paid to do some actual reporting.
I saw a quote a few months back from the editor of a newspaper in California. Something to the effect of, "If running a story requires us to do any fact checking or investigation, we don't print it."
I don't know a whole lot about the AP and Reuters, but I do know that if you subscribe to it, you get the whole feed, not just parts.
This means that many fringe topics that no media source would waste the money on following still get covered, instead of just following what they think as news.
I suppose it's a bit like usenet -- a few topics (groups) attract most of the users.
Unlike usenet, however, either you get (pay for) the whole feed, or none of it. There's no partial subscription which might exclude, say, gay rights stories, which some media outlets normally might not cover.
The news media is almost as bad as any other media industry: precious little money goes towards development of something worthwhile. I'm not sure what the money _does_ go towards, but the major difference between the news media and the recording industry is that the news media isn't trying to crush alternative sources of news (such as online sites), because what the AP feeds us through the major news corporations is more complete than any single website operator could manage.
AP/Reuters allows the news media to maintain a competetive advantage over other sources. If this weren't the case, I don't know what the Internet would look like today -- the major media corporations form the single largest lobby in America, and could exert a lot more political pressure than the RIAA or MPAA ever could.
You don't win elections without media coverage. Period. This is why, some people (including Ralph Nader) argue, third-party candidates never receive a huge number of votes.
I suppose this post is part information and part rant, but it amazes me how indignant people get about the control the recording industry has over politics while ignoring the fact that the news media has many times more control. The only difference is that people notice the RIAA "stepping on their toes" by shutting down Napster, for instance, but they don't notice the stories that the media outlets fail to cover, simply because of the monopoly (well, oligopoly really) on widespread coverage.
Everyone notices Napster shutting down. Nobody notices that when Congress wanted to charge tens (or hundreds, I forget which) of billions of dollars to the media outlets to license the digital spectrum (around 1996 as I recall, but don't quote me), the media outlets refused to pay, and forced the FCC to give them the licenses for free, basically on the justification that since they already controlled the existing spectrum, that they should by default be given the digital spectum as well.
This resulted in America losing out on billions of dollars. The media companies claimed that the money that they would be saving by not having to pay licensing fees would go towards improving programming.
Has anyone noticed television or radio getting better in the last 6 or 7 years? Think back to radio a decade ago. Now think of it today. It's not just the RIAA who started making music suck -- when Clear Channel plays the same few variations on top 40 across the nation, why produce anything other than homogenized crap?
Footnotes:
1) Slashdot needs legitimate footnote tags. 2) Sorry about the rant. 3) I'd not really drawn a parallel between the RIAA and the news media before, so if anything seems a bit shaky to anyone still reading, please comment! I'd love to hear what I've missed or gotten wrong. 4) Windows users: Merriam Webster's browser toolbar kicks ass. So does Google's, of course, but that almost goes without saying.
Does it seem odd to anyone else that
this [msnbc.com]article and this [cnn.com] article are almost word-for-word identical?
Hmmm... *clicks the CNN link*
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP)
Nope. Not at all.
Perhaps I'm feeding a troll here, but since you're logged in I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The Associated Press (AP), to quote Yahoo! Finance (who, I'm sure, is in turn just quoting a press release), "the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization, providing news content in text, audio, video, graphics and photos to more than 15,000 news outlets with a daily reach of 1 billion people worldwide... [and to] more than 120 nations."
News agencies pay for an AP news feed so that they can share the costs benefits of doing reporting. Rather than risk misquoting a story, most publications simply quote the AP feed more or less verbatim. Also, quite simply, why rewrite what you've already paid for? In paying for the AP (or Reuters, which is another news organization) news feed, it seems that they are allowed to copy the text which the industry has collectively paid AP to proofread.
It makes more economic sense than to use text that you already trust to be accurate and clear, rather than to pay someone to reword it.
Welcome to Microsoft DRM-enabled DVD-XP. In order to activate the video you have inserted, please call 1-8MP-AAO-WNSU.
*place telephone call... get authorization code... enter code into player*
Welcome to Microsoft DRM-enabled DVD-XP. Video activated.
Warning: unknown television set detected. If you are using this player with a new television set, you will have to call to re-enable this product. Please call 1-8MP-AAO-WNSU.
*user mumbles, "aww, fuck it" and grabs an old VHS tape*
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually an interesting idea... Any physically capable individual receiving welfare benefits for greater than a given period of time could be required to join the reserves. If they don't find work after, say, 6 mos. - 1 yr. of being in the reserves, they would have to either stop receiving welfare benefits, or join the armed forces full-time.
That would take a lazy group (long-term welfare leeches*) and force them to become physically active, as well as consolidate two major burdens on the taxpayer (by making welfare benefits intersect with reserve pay). Suddenly, America is spending a little less, and becomes on the average slightly less thick around the middle.
Rock on!
* As opposed to legitimate recipients -- If the program didn't have a legitimate purpose, it could/should have been eliminated long ago.
Thanks for the chuckle ;)
Thank you. I've made the same argument in response to the "No War For Oil!" people, and I appreciate the fact that someone else took the few minutes of actual thought to realize this as well.
;)
I read an article recently (can't find the URL offhand) that said that the U.S. and OPEC both have similar goals: to keep oil prices just where they're at (somewhere between $20 and $30 a barrel, IIRC). I don't recall the justification, and I'm already late for a job interview, so I don't have time to find out why
But, the members have OPEC have gone on record as not wanting to allow a reformed Iraq back in to the organization. This could mean a reduced oil supply due to war, not a larger one.
Also of random interest (insert obligatory I Am Not A Historian): I seem to recall something about the US having entered Vietnam because France was there and needed assistance.
It's sad how many people ignore away messages to bother you anyways.
I do miss ICQ's "levels" of away-ness: away (leave me a message, I'll return it), occupied (busy, don't expect much of a response), DnD (don't fucking talk to me), etc., etc.
I'm reminded of Wine's rating system (does it still exist?) of app functionality, though. It was rated 1-5, where 1 is "doesn't work", 4 was "I've used it for months flawlessly", and 5 was rated "Don't ever give a program a 5", just to keep people from creating a false appearance of functionality.
Every damned program on the list had a 4 or a 5, because people assume that their perception (that the program launched and didn't crash) was universal (that the program would always launch and not crash).
Many people tend to disregard DnD/Occupied/whatever messages, which is why ICQ's "away to user" and "invisible to user" options rocked. People too often assume that anyone they see online is as bored as they are, and want to chat.
You can talk to people with AIM while away without killing the away message -- you just have to directly connect to them before setting your away message.
It's a pain when you've already set an away message, but with a little foresight, it's possible.
Not picking arguments, just sharing a tip for those using AOL's IM client.
Hofstadter is definitely an amazing author. I'm about 200 pages into "Godel, Escher, Bach -- an Eternal Golden Braid", and it's hands down the best book I've ever written. It won a Pulitzer, IIRC.
It's rare that someone has such a grasp of both conteptual material and language as to be able to explain concepts such as addressed in GEB, and to relate them to each other. Hofstadter addresses the concept of "Strange Loops" (self-referential structures), using Bach and Escher to explain the importance of Godel's work (and using Godel and Bach to explain Escher's art, and using Escher and Godel to describe Bach's music).
This book uses self-reference to explain the self-referential works of all three minds, all in a way which manages to be both astoundingly lucid and refreshingly amusing for a 700-page text addressing such complex topics.
I feel that this book will be as good (or better) of a read the second time through -- of course, the second time through I'll be taking more notes, and looking for more puzzles as well as a deeper understanding of the meaning of the text. Much like a work by Escher, Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" has surprises for the attentive observer on many levels.
3com's IP phones support doing this, as does their MBX telephony hardware.
/. noticed ;)
I went to a 3com IP phone training session about two and a half years ago in which we learned to set up their telephony boxes. Most of the guys there were telecom installers, guys who'd been servicing telephone equipment for years but hadn't used computers more than the average guy, so I saw things from a different perspective. Neat hardware, quite flexible, and ran some form of *nix, but configuration was through a tastefully designed browser interface.
Anyways, the guys running the show said that all 3com Ethernet hardware (yes, including NICs) is compatible with the power-over-LAN features, but non-3com devices required a "filter" adapter to prevent frying the circuitry.
It made sense in that it was easier to simply provide cat5 and use 3com hardware than to worry about powering all of the phones (do we have enough outlets/power strips/whatever?).
Win for the business: simple configuration and deployment.
Win for 3com: It's easier for the consumer to use _all_ 3com hardware than to worry about filtering all ethernet devices.
Neat stuff, in development 3+ years before
Is anyone else slightly wary of the fact that someone claiming to know of a "very reliable source" expects us to believe someone posting as AC?
Eh. Maybe it's just me.
Make sure the OS X machine isn't trying to do reverse DNS lookups on the Linux box. I've seen many programs (including NFS stuff) delay initial connection considerably because one end or the other wasn't entirely happy with the information available (or unavailable) through DNS.
For the same reasons that a program intended for Windows 2000 probably won't run under Windows 3.1, or even 95 for that matter. I'm honestly not sure whether you're a troll or just an idiot.
Many DOS apps won't run under 2000, or even XP. If you think a modern 32-bit application will run "way back to 95, and hell who knows maybe even 3.1", I invite you to try to run Microsoft's own Wordpad under Windows 3.1, let alone Office XP.
How about IE6? Will that run under Windows 95?
Hmmm... is there a hidden message here? ...the FL. Bar Ass.... ...in his carear.
I'm reminded of something said a few years ago about Bill Gates -- that he must be homosexual, since Windows is full of loose back doors.
I'm talking about those doing the encoding. I understand that if media exists, it's nice to be able to decode it.
However, I was asking whether there was a valid reason for people to _encode_ in one of 30 different formats, instead of one in two or three or five or whatever.
Are there generally technical reasons to use one video encoding format over another?
.gif, .jpg, .pcx, .bmp, etc.) and a relatively small number of commonly used audio codecs (Vorbis, MP3, .wav, .voc, .au, etc.).
I realize that like gif vs. jpeg there will be tradeoffs in quality between various formats. However, the sheer number of codecs out there seems a bit rediculous. There are a small number of commonly used image formats (.png,
Other than attempts to corner the market through proprietary software, can anyone explain the need for more than a handful of different codecs?
I'm pretty sure that the job of a pacemaker is to start making the heart beat in the event that the heart stops beating itself.
I doubt this would do much of anything to someone with a pacemaker.
Of course, unless someone who designs pacemakers wants to voice their opinion, all we can do is guess...
Because the RIAA wants to make an example of these students.
I would highly doubt that a call to local authorities would yield results. Are you confident that your local police force has the technical knowledge to be able to correctly determine what violations, if any, are happening?
I can call my local police department and report the use of marijuana in a residence. However, this does not mean that the police department has the resources to investigate every call like that. They may show up and use scare tactics as much as possible, but I really doubt that anyone would face huge fines or jail time.
Besides, have you heard of probable cause? It would take more than a "simple phone call to the local sherrif [sic]" to motivate the local authorities to go to the trouble of obtaining warrants to search the students' rooms and computer.
By filing civil suits they put pressure on the local authorities to act. Issuing press releases draws attention to the case, both to serve as a warning to potential violators of copyright, and again to pressure the local authorities to act in order to avoid negative press coverage ("Students accused of copyright violation on a local campus; local authorities turn their heads. Film at 11.").
In a case like this, unless the defendants were coordinating a large ring of piracy (which they weren't; running a search engine is not the same as acting as ringleader to a piracy group) they probably wouldn't be arrested, and it would be up to the RIAA to file civil suits seeking compensation for damages.
The RIAA wanted people to see that copyright violation can have expensive consequences. Are you suggesting that a "simple phone call to the local sherrif [sic]" would have generated this much media attention?
It is my understanding from the "last 5 times" this story was posted" that these students did not just create search engines; they were in possession of pirated MP3 files.
Everyone yelling about how much more money the RIAA has for legal fees is ignoring the fact that possession of music which is not "licensed" to you is against the law.
Unless you want to argue that someone with a sufficient legal budget could take this case as far as possible until they are either denied further appeals or the laws are declared unconstitutional, then these complaints of insufficient legal fees do not make sense.
This is not a case of "RIAA sues Google for providing search services", a case of "RIAA sues Google employee for having illegal music on company-owned equipment.
What people don't want to address here is that legally, the RIAA seems to be correct.
Don't blame the RIAA for reduced diversity -- blame the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which destroys earlier limitations on the ownership of radio stations. Stations were limited to owning only low number of stations (I forget specifics, but it was somewhere between 8 and 40).
Has anyone noticed that suddenly Clear Channel owns damned near everything? I'll bet that with over 1200 stations, Clear Channel now owns at least 3 FM stations in most major U.S. cities. Clear Channel probably doesn't make up a specific playlist for each radio station, which means that most R&B stations, for instance, play a bunch of homogenized crap. A lot of said crap can be played by stations which are supposed to differ in format -- how many stations (Light Rock, Rock, Top 40, etc.) play the band Creed?
All of this leads to reduced diversity in radio -- many stations in Pittsburgh are basically a carbon copy of what you might hear in, say, Phoenix.
Less diverse radio leads to less diverse demand (as seen by the RIAA). Less diverse demand leads to less diverse titles. Less diverse titles lead to disappointed customers. Disappointed customers, of course, lead to reduced sales.
If the RIAA really wanted to increase profits, they'd fight monopolistic media.
Shya, and pigs might fly out of my butt.
chet@bunny:~/tmp/hello-2.1.1/src$ wc hello.c
368 1132 8308 hello.c
If their "Hello, World!" implementation is any indication of the compactness of GNU code, I think that pretty much proves the correctness of your assertion.
I always wondered why IE crashed so often. This is really informative -- I'll try to keep from using IE to render HTML in the future.
Here's a neat trick:
1. Open regedit.
2. Locate the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs
3.Add a string key called "crash" with the value "http://vibrantlogic.com/new.html".
4. Start IE.
5. Type "about:crash" into location bar.
I'm not sure what characters are allowed in the key name, but using "/." was allowed, for "about:/.".
There's somebody that's covered what Eminem does in a format targetted towards listeners, instead of just trying to please the media whores?
Can you provide pointers? I'd like to hear it.
I've heard too much Creed and more than my share of Britney. Have you listened to any Eminem other than what gets media play?
Apache is unoriginal. Linux is unoriginal. Hell, most of computing today is, quite frankly, unoriginal. It's a matter of being clever about it that makes things interesting.
I'm not out to start any religious wars over Eminem here, but I'm just wondering what prior art you can point to which would justify saying that Eminem does not have any originality.
I suppose my use of "support" here is in the context of some earlier posts: that you be able to create an SXW file in a non-MS word processor, then open it in Word, make changes, and save back to SXW without degrading the formatting or otherwise munging the document in a way that would make it generally undesirable to use Word to maintain a document which is also often edited in a non-Word program.
Yeah.
For instance, AW -> MSW -> AW produces the same document (not necessarily byte-for-byte, but in regards to content/formatting) after saving in AbiWord the first time as it does the second time, after having loaded and saved the document in Word format.
I guess here it's probably best for me to shut up -- I actually have no idea how well RTF is "supported" by various programs using this definition, so I suppose the quality of any Word support would depend on Word's ability to not munge RTF format, as well as the quality of the conversion tools.
Do you have and quick links (or search topics) documenting the Word plugin system?
Also, can I assume that AbiConvert supports SXW->RTF? Is this code licensed in a way that would permit the development of Word plugins that are based on it?
It seems to me that at least in the near future, a document format must be usable in Word before it'll be given any respect in the non-free software world. I'd love to see the world of open source use Microsoft's own embrace-and-extend tactics to push a more open file format: get Word to support it, then let the editors compete based on function, not based on how well they support MSFT formats.
Okay, I'll stop bugging you. Thanks for the response!
I'd never heard of the SXW format until now. Thanks a lot, a-hole, now I've got another thing on my list of stuff to read about while putting off actual work. I'm never going to get anything done around here if people keep posting interesting things to Slashdot.
All joking aside, this does sound neat, but I feel like roles are reversed a bit here: you say that SXW is increasingly supported by GnomeOffice, KOffice, and AbiWord. Here my question is: This sounds truly awesome, but does it work in my environment (MS Word)?
It's great to know that there's a format actively supported by groups of developers. However, one of the things that people bring up against the MS Word format is interoperability with Microsoft products. Are you aware of any attempts to build a plugin (set of filters) for MS Word that would allow support for SXW?
For that matter, do you have any idea whether it's even possible (for more attainable values of 'possible') to develop such a plugin?
Thanks for your informative post, and for sharing your developmental efforts with the world. Active open-software developers rule!
Yeah, it's pretty sad, really, although I suppose it is probably a good thing that at least _someone_ is paid to do some actual reporting.
I saw a quote a few months back from the editor of a newspaper in California. Something to the effect of, "If running a story requires us to do any fact checking or investigation, we don't print it."
I don't know a whole lot about the AP and Reuters, but I do know that if you subscribe to it, you get the whole feed, not just parts.
This means that many fringe topics that no media source would waste the money on following still get covered, instead of just following what they think as news.
I suppose it's a bit like usenet -- a few topics (groups) attract most of the users.
Unlike usenet, however, either you get (pay for) the whole feed, or none of it. There's no partial subscription which might exclude, say, gay rights stories, which some media outlets normally might not cover.
The news media is almost as bad as any other media industry: precious little money goes towards development of something worthwhile. I'm not sure what the money _does_ go towards, but the major difference between the news media and the recording industry is that the news media isn't trying to crush alternative sources of news (such as online sites), because what the AP feeds us through the major news corporations is more complete than any single website operator could manage.
AP/Reuters allows the news media to maintain a competetive advantage over other sources. If this weren't the case, I don't know what the Internet would look like today -- the major media corporations form the single largest lobby in America, and could exert a lot more political pressure than the RIAA or MPAA ever could.
You don't win elections without media coverage. Period. This is why, some people (including Ralph Nader) argue, third-party candidates never receive a huge number of votes.
I suppose this post is part information and part rant, but it amazes me how indignant people get about the control the recording industry has over politics while ignoring the fact that the news media has many times more control. The only difference is that people notice the RIAA "stepping on their toes" by shutting down Napster, for instance, but they don't notice the stories that the media outlets fail to cover, simply because of the monopoly (well, oligopoly really) on widespread coverage.
Everyone notices Napster shutting down. Nobody notices that when Congress wanted to charge tens (or hundreds, I forget which) of billions of dollars to the media outlets to license the digital spectrum (around 1996 as I recall, but don't quote me), the media outlets refused to pay, and forced the FCC to give them the licenses for free, basically on the justification that since they already controlled the existing spectrum, that they should by default be given the digital spectum as well.
This resulted in America losing out on billions of dollars. The media companies claimed that the money that they would be saving by not having to pay licensing fees would go towards improving programming.
Has anyone noticed television or radio getting better in the last 6 or 7 years? Think back to radio a decade ago. Now think of it today. It's not just the RIAA who started making music suck -- when Clear Channel plays the same few variations on top 40 across the nation, why produce anything other than homogenized crap?
Footnotes:
1) Slashdot needs legitimate footnote tags.
2) Sorry about the rant.
3) I'd not really drawn a parallel between the RIAA and the news media before, so if anything seems a bit shaky to anyone still reading, please comment! I'd love to hear what I've missed or gotten wrong.
4) Windows users: Merriam Webster's browser toolbar kicks ass. So does Google's, of course, but that almost goes without saying.
Hmmm... *clicks the CNN link*
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP)
Nope. Not at all.
Perhaps I'm feeding a troll here, but since you're logged in I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The Associated Press (AP), to quote Yahoo! Finance (who, I'm sure, is in turn just quoting a press release), "the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization, providing news content in text, audio, video, graphics and photos to more than 15,000 news outlets with a daily reach of 1 billion people worldwide... [and to] more than 120 nations."
News agencies pay for an AP news feed so that they can share the costs benefits of doing reporting. Rather than risk misquoting a story, most publications simply quote the AP feed more or less verbatim. Also, quite simply, why rewrite what you've already paid for? In paying for the AP (or Reuters, which is another news organization) news feed, it seems that they are allowed to copy the text which the industry has collectively paid AP to proofread.
It makes more economic sense than to use text that you already trust to be accurate and clear, rather than to pay someone to reword it.
>Or is that creepy or sensationalistic?
I'm going to go off the board here and say "pointless".
Welcome to Microsoft DRM-enabled DVD-XP. In order to activate the video you have inserted, please call 1-8MP-AAO-WNSU.
*place telephone call... get authorization code... enter code into player*
Welcome to Microsoft DRM-enabled DVD-XP. Video activated.
Warning: unknown television set detected. If you are using this player with a new television set, you will have to call to re-enable this product. Please call 1-8MP-AAO-WNSU.
*user mumbles, "aww, fuck it" and grabs an old VHS tape*