Bills on the floor in the House or Senate are not laws yet. They do not affect you yet. They may never affect you.
Some of this is true, but you have to ask yourself this: "When is the right time to speak up about them?"
It's not a matter of the right time, in my opinion, so much as the right place.
Has Slashdot ever changed the course of history simply by bitching about a new bill or law? All that wasted effort and empty rhetoric (and mindless, sheeplike bleating) would be better directed at the people making the laws, but slashbots (my term of endearment for the bulk of the soundalike whiners on this site) tend to think that the battle is lost before it's even begun.
I sometimes wish there were records kept showing how many people here complained about the DMCA before its passage vs. those who actually tried to do something about it. I fear, however, that the numbers would be so lopsided in favor of the slashbots that it would make people who actually gave a shit look like fools for trying.
The bottom line, as I see it, is this: slashbots are all talk and no action.
People who spew ridiculous tripe about some law or another without even getting the spelling of the law right. It's DMCA.
Here's some more shit that bugs me:
The RIAA controls the music industry, not the MPAA.
The MPAA controls the movie industry, not the RIAA.
Hilary Rosen doesn't care too much if you steal a copy of "Moulin Rouge". Jack Valenti doesn't care too much if you steal a copy of NSync's "No Strings Attached". (see above.)
Copyright law is not trademark law. Trademark law is not copyright law.
Neither have anything to do with patent law.
Bills on the floor in the House or Senate are not laws yet. They do not affect you yet. They may never affect you.
I'm sure there's more, but that's all I could think of on short notice.
The antipathy toward weblogs, I'm sure, has little to due with honest and considered opinion and a lot more to do with the members of the Slashdot boy geek fetish cult once again proving their tribal membership by rising in unthinking conformity to express their distaste for anything that's different.
Thanks. I'd been thinking of getting one myself, mostly because it looked pimp and would've been a nice replacement for my sprint PCS Sanyo meowphone (which met an untimely demise earlier this year when the company I worked for stopped paying the phone bill.)
Now that I know how much it sucks, though, I think I'll wait. What the hell is up with Verizon's phone selection, anyway? It's got to be the worst of all the major providers.
I use it for taping concerts (and nothing else). It's very, VERY slow. Slower than any other modern laptop. The Crusoe chip REALLY is nothing to write home about. It's probably as fast as a PII-500, if that. The screen is tiny but it's sharp. The hard drive is slow, but quick enough to record audio.
Like I said, all I use it for is taping, mostly because it's tiny and the battery lasts forever. It doesn't seem to be a very practical day-to-day laptop. I have another laptop (PII-266) that I use as my "actual" laptop.
Let's put your booting troubles aside for a minute. I need you to answer a question for me:
But the lack of high speed internet connection over the summer prevented me from keeping up with the various patches/updates. Many services--sendmail, apache, etc.--were shutdown one by one because of security vulnerabilities. Recently I decided that instead of trying to catch all those patches I missed in the last few months, I might just as well do a clean install of FreeBSD.
So, let me get this straight: You have a perfectly good operating system that you're pretty familiar with, but it has a few security holes that you didn't (at one time) have the bandwidth to fix them, even though a bunch of one-off fixes, when downloaded one by one over time, wouldn't really have taken much effort or time to keep up with at all.
So, instead of upgrading your Mandrake install, which worked perfectly fine, or patching your install to eliminate security holes now that you have bandwidth, you'd rather destroy all that customization and work you probably put into your installation to run an operating system that you quite clearly have not researched enough, which will probably also get deleted once you lose track of security updates for it.
Unless widely publicized, nobody is going to go to eBay for something like that. Whoever bought it is going to make a fortune if they can figure out how to sell it properly in order to reach interested parties.
Foxwoods (the casino in CT) runs a lot of P-series IBM gear in their server rooms. Apparently they were upset with the fact that IBM's RS/6000 gear comes in black, IBM being "Big Blue", and all. So, they had every IBM rack sent down to Texas so they could be spraypainted blue, at Foxwoods' cost. Not much of a mod, but a hell of a lot of money (which I'm sure they probably recouped in about 15 minutes from the slot machines alone...)
Do you, in fact, have any idea of how much work it would be to port IRIX to anything other than MIPS?
Seriously, I don't care. I was pointing out that offering a cheap evaluation copy of IRIX for cheap hardware could boost sales for IRIX powered equipment quite a bit. I was not suggesting that this should be done even if their departments don't have the money to do it.
So you think SGI, a company who does nothing but bleed money, should drop what they're doing and pay a dozen or so programmers' salaries for a year or two to get a semi-working version of IRIX for "cheap [x86] hardware" simply because you think it might boost sales of machines whose base price is about $6000?
No, actually, you fucking retard, I did none of that, because I bought my computer to use as a computer and my XBox to use as a video game console like most normal fuckers out there.
What a total fucking waste of time the XBox hacking project is.
If you're throwing a second drive in there anyway, why not just spend the 5 minutes required to create a mirror of the first disk?
The tar kludge is more trouble than it's worth; why reinstall and re-customize your entire OS when you could've been mirroring the disk the whole time?
Remember how IBM harddisks are not designed to run 24/7? Harddisks do have a limited number of start/stop cycles before something breaks, but that number is high enough to allow for conservative disk sleep settings.
Explain why we lose a disk or two (out of several hundred) every time we have a scheduled power shutdown, then.
Stopping and starting hard disks more often than "never" shortens their lifespan. If you replace your disks often, this is not important.
Even running full-bore, the fastest x86 CPU available uses no more power than an incandescent light bulb. (Now, please don't tell me you're one of those freaks who have replaced all their bulbs with white LEDs...)
Slashdot Mirror
It's illegal. This company figured a way to stop it.
So, you can't download the latest Lord Of the Rings DiVX? Cry me a river.
- A.P.
I'm still waiting for the live-action Overfiend series.
- A.P.
Bills on the floor in the House or Senate are not laws yet. They do not affect you yet. They may never affect you.
Some of this is true, but you have to ask yourself this: "When is the right time to speak up about them?"
It's not a matter of the right time, in my opinion, so much as the right place.
Has Slashdot ever changed the course of history simply by bitching about a new bill or law? All that wasted effort and empty rhetoric (and mindless, sheeplike bleating) would be better directed at the people making the laws, but slashbots (my term of endearment for the bulk of the soundalike whiners on this site) tend to think that the battle is lost before it's even begun.
I sometimes wish there were records kept showing how many people here complained about the DMCA before its passage vs. those who actually tried to do something about it. I fear, however, that the numbers would be so lopsided in favor of the slashbots that it would make people who actually gave a shit look like fools for trying.
The bottom line, as I see it, is this: slashbots are all talk and no action.
- A.P.
Here's some more shit that bugs me:
The RIAA controls the music industry, not the MPAA.
The MPAA controls the movie industry, not the RIAA.
Hilary Rosen doesn't care too much if you steal a copy of "Moulin Rouge". Jack Valenti doesn't care too much if you steal a copy of NSync's "No Strings Attached". (see above.)
Copyright law is not trademark law. Trademark law is not copyright law.
Neither have anything to do with patent law.
Bills on the floor in the House or Senate are not laws yet. They do not affect you yet. They may never affect you.
I'm sure there's more, but that's all I could think of on short notice.
- A.P.
The antipathy toward weblogs, I'm sure, has little to due with honest and considered opinion and a lot more to do with the members of the Slashdot boy geek fetish cult once again proving their tribal membership by rising in unthinking conformity to express their distaste for anything that's different.
Yes. We all agree that you suck.
- A.P.
People have a perfect right to say and publish what they want, when they want, how they want.
Yes, and he was publishing his opinion: weblogs are gay.
- A.P.
Thanks. I'd been thinking of getting one myself, mostly because it looked pimp and would've been a nice replacement for my sprint PCS Sanyo meowphone (which met an untimely demise earlier this year when the company I worked for stopped paying the phone bill.)
Now that I know how much it sucks, though, I think I'll wait. What the hell is up with Verizon's phone selection, anyway? It's got to be the worst of all the major providers.
- A.P.
The camera swivels a full 180 degrees.
- A.P.
I use it for taping concerts (and nothing else). It's very, VERY slow. Slower than any other modern laptop. The Crusoe chip REALLY is nothing to write home about. It's probably as fast as a PII-500, if that. The screen is tiny but it's sharp. The hard drive is slow, but quick enough to record audio.
Like I said, all I use it for is taping, mostly because it's tiny and the battery lasts forever. It doesn't seem to be a very practical day-to-day laptop. I have another laptop (PII-266) that I use as my "actual" laptop.
- A.P.
Let's put your booting troubles aside for a minute. I need you to answer a question for me:
But the lack of high speed internet connection over the summer prevented me from keeping up with the various patches/updates. Many services--sendmail, apache, etc.--were shutdown one by one because of security vulnerabilities. Recently I decided that instead of trying to catch all those patches I missed in the last few months, I might just as well do a clean install of FreeBSD.
So, let me get this straight: You have a perfectly good operating system that you're pretty familiar with, but it has a few security holes that you didn't (at one time) have the bandwidth to fix them, even though a bunch of one-off fixes, when downloaded one by one over time, wouldn't really have taken much effort or time to keep up with at all.
So, instead of upgrading your Mandrake install, which worked perfectly fine, or patching your install to eliminate security holes now that you have bandwidth, you'd rather destroy all that customization and work you probably put into your installation to run an operating system that you quite clearly have not researched enough, which will probably also get deleted once you lose track of security updates for it.
My question is this: are you retarded?
- A.P.
Unless widely publicized, nobody is going to go to eBay for something like that. Whoever bought it is going to make a fortune if they can figure out how to sell it properly in order to reach interested parties.
- A.P.
...you're designing computer-controlled hydroponic marijuana gardens, or something?
Call it "420 studies".
- A.P.
Foxwoods (the casino in CT) runs a lot of P-series IBM gear in their server rooms. Apparently they were upset with the fact that IBM's RS/6000 gear comes in black, IBM being "Big Blue", and all. So, they had every IBM rack sent down to Texas so they could be spraypainted blue, at Foxwoods' cost. Not much of a mod, but a hell of a lot of money (which I'm sure they probably recouped in about 15 minutes from the slot machines alone...)
- A.P.
You do realize this word means "next-to-last", right?
So, what's the ultimate fortran program?
- A.P.
Do you, in fact, have any idea of how much work it would be to port IRIX to anything other than MIPS?
Seriously, I don't care. I was pointing out that offering a cheap evaluation copy of IRIX for cheap hardware could boost sales for IRIX powered equipment quite a bit. I was not suggesting that this should be done even if their departments don't have the money to do it.
So you think SGI, a company who does nothing but bleed money, should drop what they're doing and pay a dozen or so programmers' salaries for a year or two to get a semi-working version of IRIX for "cheap [x86] hardware" simply because you think it might boost sales of machines whose base price is about $6000?
You're either an idiot or you're on crack.
- A.P.
I know this was a troll/joke, but it really helped prove just how much crack the moderators have been smoking lately.
Tnx 4 dat!
- A.P.
Now they'll find even more nothing.
- A.P.
You can play games on the XBox?
From reading this site, I assumed it was just another Linux platform.
- A.P.
It's sure a shame you can't steal music and movies at the speed you were expecting. You should sue someone, or something.
- A.P.
No, actually, you fucking retard, I did none of that, because I bought my computer to use as a computer and my XBox to use as a video game console like most normal fuckers out there.
What a total fucking waste of time the XBox hacking project is.
- A.P.
They got a PC-based platform to run a PC based operating system inside another PC based operating system.
I do that now with my Athlon 2000 MP.
- A.P.
If you're throwing a second drive in there anyway, why not just spend the 5 minutes required to create a mirror of the first disk?
The tar kludge is more trouble than it's worth; why reinstall and re-customize your entire OS when you could've been mirroring the disk the whole time?
- A.P.
Remember how IBM harddisks are not designed to run 24/7? Harddisks do have a limited number of start/stop cycles before something breaks, but that number is high enough to allow for conservative disk sleep settings.
Explain why we lose a disk or two (out of several hundred) every time we have a scheduled power shutdown, then.
Stopping and starting hard disks more often than "never" shortens their lifespan. If you replace your disks often, this is not important.
- A.P.
Even running full-bore, the fastest x86 CPU available uses no more power than an incandescent light bulb. (Now, please don't tell me you're one of those freaks who have replaced all their bulbs with white LEDs...)
- A.P.
Their "ask slashdots", oddly enough, are the same as ours. (Mostly how to configure NT machines...)
- A.P.