The fact that you don't actually need time to harvest an IP aside, is what you're doing technically illegal? I thought the ruling was that the uploader is making the illegal copy, not the downloader. It is true that you download as you upload over bittorrent. But as you don't have a real file, you're not really uploading anything copyrighted.
Is there such a thing as "intent to commit copyright infringement?"
As a side note, is anything about this scheme illegal on the studio's side? It is illegal to misrepresent files / etc for malicious activities, but is it illegal to misrepresent files simply to annoy people?
Didn't Linux get people used to great software with no packaging?
I'm actually really excited about this, as it is long overdue. There is really no reason for software to be purchased through traditional retail channels anymore. Not only should this be slightly cheaper, but it will allow for impulse purchases without spending the few hours it would take to go get the stuff. See a positive review of Halo? Go and download the game. Need to edit a PDF file before your meeting tomorrow? Instead of waiting for the store to open tomorrow morning, or running off to Kinkos and run up a dollar-a-minute bill, just buy the software you need right now and use it. All of your software would be available in a centralized location somewhere, helping to make things easy to find with Microsoft's legendary User Interface skills (cough cough).
The only potential (and probably highly likely) problem that I can see is if it were unnecessarily expensive to get into Microsoft's little digital mall that it became dominated by a few big retailers. The UI could also be crappy, the application might crash all of the time, the DRM could make it difficult to carry things between computers... So there are other potential problems. But as a fundamental ideal, buying software in 100% digital form, and in a forum that comes with every system is kind of nice. I'm sad that Apple didn't do this first, but I'm glad somebody other than Valve did.
A: Not everyone on Slashdot is the same person. Really.
B: There are noninfringing reasons to trade copyrighted works, and there are illegal but valid reasons to trade copyrighted works. For example, there was a movie recently that many, many people recommended that I see, but had been unavailable through traditional retail channels for many years. So I just downloaded it from a P2P network. I've discovered a lot of German Trance and other musical acts through P2P networks that I can't even buy over traditional retail channels, even importers. I've found many, many acts that I would not otherwise have been exposed to, from Argentine Tango ripped from Vinyl to obscure local acts. I've just got a Russian version of Hamlet that you would never find in Suncoast, and culturally significant games from the mid 80's that are completely unavailable even on Ebay. I've downloaded television shows from foreign countries as well as ones that my local cable monopoly simply decided weren't worth carrying.
I think the reason why P2P networks are so revered is that they're our only counterweight in the encroachment against our rights. The content industries control Television, Movies, Radio, most local concert venues, the Congress, and are getting protection schemes into television and playback hardware. They've been convicted of monopoly price fixing, yet didn't change a single practice. They lie about profits to avoid paying their artists. They've slipped stupid things into laws that make it illegal for people to describe Rot-13. They've ensured that copyright never expires, that nothing ever returns to the public domain. They own the culture that is imprinted in your brain.
What do we have as citizens? Civil disobedience via P2P. Want to find good new music? You could to go the Clear-Channel owned radio stations who use technically illegal payola from the major record labels to decide what gets played... or you can go on P2P networks, download a whole bunch of stuff, and see what you like. Want to listen to your music on-the-go? You could buy a CD, only to find that you can't convert it to MP3's to listen on your iPod, or you could just go online and download the fscking MP3's. Want to use a snipped from The Song of the South or from Der Fuhrer's Face in a lecture on popular responses to cultural crisis? Since Disney is pretending that neither of these historical films exist, your only recourse is to go on P2P and get it yourself.
I'm saying this as a person in the content generation industry... I help make videogames for major publishers. And piracy of games I've worked on has happened on P2P networks. Yet I still feel that the open nature is an important counterbalance to traditional distribution networks which have become dominated by a few small, self-serving companies. Culture remaining in control of the people is far more important than a slight sales loss to a highly profitable convicted monopolist.
More importantly, Limewire is Open Source! If you don't like the new restrictions, just set "Is_Licensed = 1;" If past performance is any indication, within hours of this change we will see a "Limewire Lite" that is completley DRM free.
So people can go to other networks, or can go to other clients on the same network, or can just tweak the client. This seems a bit silly. The only thing I can see this doing is driving people from the official LimeWire client to unofficial ones, ensuring that the people who make the client will be getting even less money.
The theory seems to be that you start small, and you get progressively bigger and bigger until all of the problems are solved. The first time it may have been a small motor with a battery climbing a 100 foot rope up the side of a building. This time it was an 18th generation lifter with cargo capacity climbing a 1,000 foot high tensile ribbon connected to a balloon. Next time it may be a climbing a 10,000 foot high tensile double ribbon using laser power. Or maybe it will be a 1,000 foot carbon nanotube wire in a year-long stress test, with a climber specifically designed to do maintenence on the tether.
Eventually they'll get there, and this is a definite step in the right direction. While the tether may be the biggest unknown of the project, we still don't have much experience with this sort of thing. What safety systems should be on the lifter? How should it be powered? How long will such a thing last before it breaks down? How long will the tether last? How will the system weather storms? How will it weather space debris? How will you find a patch of ground strong enough to anchor the thing to? How do you keep the climber from jumping the track? How do you keep parts from freezing as it goes from wet tropical climate into space? The theoretical engineering may be done except for the cord, but many, many practical engineering considerations remain.
I applaud this team's efforts, and wish them much luck.
Generally speaking, if something gets a name like NW2345, it will also at some point acquire an actual name that people can call it. You can't call something hill NW3464 in casual conversation... there just isn't enough redundant transmission to be clear that you don't mean hill NW3646 or NWT464 or NW3474. But if you say that you're sending the rover to lutefish hill, everybody knows where you are going.
Why not have all of the planets in the solar system named sol-1, sol-2, sol-3, etc? Why not number people by social security number? Because there isn't enough redundant distinction in normal conversation to overcome noise and know what the heck you're talking about. That's why you have a slashdot ID number, 465911, but you have an actual name as well, syousef. Or why species have their technical taxidermy names, but are also called things like "dung beetle" "giant squid" and "platapus."
All of the features on Mars already have coordinates. Now they just need to be called something.
This sounds mysteriously like predictions from 10 years ago, and 10 years before that, and 10 years before that. I don't think Sun was the one to make that prediction the first time, but they sure were making it 10 years ago. So far it just seems to keep getting less and less true. The network is not the computer. The network is the input. The computer is the computer.
There are quite a few problems with the remote-PC option. For one, latency is a killer which we can only overcome by client-side predictions, so most UI will be intollerably unresponsive without enough power to run things locally.
For another, just because the computer is physically remote doesn't mean the user doesn't have to administer it. It's still their 'GoToMy' PC. They can still screw it up, unless you're not going to let them install applications, at which point it becomes a bit useless as a computer. If users want autoupdating, why not just write software that autoupdates?
Third, we all know that network black boxes in this country come as tied to specific services. And we know that technology dongles like this fail.
Fourth, while some network apps have taken off, like webmail, others have failed miserably. Browser-based text editors come to mind. Some things you just want local.
And Fifth, with computers so cheap, why network? Where is the huge performance or convienience increase that would convince everyone to switch?
Latency basically kills the possibility of playing games over a black box even with high-speed broadband. You would need to do the kind of expensive client-side predictions currently in use to keep the game playable, at which point you would by definition have a client capable of playing the game.
But ultimately I think the basic problem is that people want to own their things. They don't usually want to lease their telephones, or rent their software by the year. When I buy a computer, I want that feeling of "well, i've got that computer problem solved." I want my private data on a local disk. I want to be able to kick something. I just don't see the compelling argument that would alter computing from the current independent model to a client-server model.
Your experiences are the exception. While apple desktops are comparatively expensive, apple laptops are actually a good deal. PC notebooks are getting milked for as much money as possible by system builders to make up for the razor-thin margins on the desktop... Expect to spend 1-2.5k on a PM notebook, which is basically the same range as Apple's iBook/PowerBook line. I've seen a lot more problems with stability on PC laptops, but I generally see the lower end (1k models) or the experimental end (sony's Vaio). But iBooks are generally rock solid.
Linux-on-Powerbook is actually quite really popular. Tons of sysadmins and programmers buy iBooks and replace OSX with Debian (or red-hat, or install-of-choice). I'm guessing this has to do with the power architecture being the same as that of some of IBM's servers. Or maybe they just like the hardware. Either way I'd guess that half of friend's iBooks are running already running Linux.
"Xbox 360 SOLD OUT! We are currently sold out of our popular Xbox 360 bundles. Check back frequently for more opportunities to pre-order an Xbox 360, Microsoft's next-gen gaming system that ships November 21."
Oddly enough, it doesn't actually say that EB itself is sold out of pre orders, or that there won't be any more available. From the recommendation to "check back frequently," it sounds like they might just be holding some back in order to try to enduce panic buying. Then they'll release the rest of their stock. Or maybe the brick-and-mortar parts of the chain are hogging all of the available presales, to be sure that they can sell some in every territory. This is all speculation, of course.
Annoyingly enough, you have to pre-order anything you want at EB: They never get more than one or two per store. It's like they have no idea what a demand curve looks like. That's why I stopped shopping there. I lost a lot of faith in EB when the copy of Zelda that I had "pre-ordered" mysteriously didn't show up with their first batch of games, but every other store in the mall still had plenty.
This is wonderful news! We can stop the wave of plane hijackings that are plaguing this country! This will make it much safer to fly into hurricane devastated wastelands and siphon gas from abandoned vehicles.
Man, those plane hijackings really have been dominating the news recently, haven't they?
Grandparent's point was that libraries don't need permission from the copyright owners to have the books on their shelves. Loaning a book to people is not a question of IP law, it's a simple question of owning the book.
It's one of those creeping IP things. If you own a DVD, you have every right to lend it to whomever you want, no permission or end user license agreement required. Same thing with CD's, printer cartridges, and steak knives.
Many companies are pushing to have IP-style EULA's and rules extended to physical objects. Others are attempting to convince consumers that the companies retain "ownership" over the objects that people purchase. Neither of these is correct. It is our job to be careful walking through this minefield, and to push back on the encroachment of this not just unjust but also legally incorrect way of looking at the world.
you have the source, so you can fix things yourself, and to hell with everyone else... Until the F/OSS community stops acting like a bunch of petulant kids and starts behaving like responsible adults, this will be a very serious problem, one that many people within the community don't even see.
This seems to be related to the server vs desktop model.
If you were running your own FTP server, and you wanted to alter the functionality, you can alter the code to your server and run it. Everyone who connects to your server gets the increased functionality, which could be tens of thousands of users. Upgrades are relatively rare, and are usually predicated on major shifts either in either technology or just plain old fashioned hardware replacements. This makes sense.
On the desktop, if you want to change the functionality of an FTP client, you would need to change your code. And the code on the server to recognize your code. As updates are weekley, since desktop software is released loooooong before it is stable, you will have to repatch and recompile things for yourself frequently. All of your users still get the functionality, but that now means just you. This is too impractical to do, in other words.
Different mindset. It doesn't quite translate from server to desktop in a day-to-day sense, I'm afraid.
I don't think they're karma whoring at all. Even with computers you don't want a chat application that also compiles code. Little things that you stick in your pocket are very hardware interface dependent, and that generally doesn't carry between devices. A cellphone PDA MP3 player might be a convienient device, but it also would have an inherently unintuitive interface. There wouldn't be a lot of redundancy between the three, as the part of the cellphone that takes up the most space is the radio broadcast and particular interface parts, the mp3 player the MP3 specific parts, and the PDA... well... you know. You also need 3 times the battery anyway since you're using 3 times the power. All you've managed to do is glom on a bunch of specific hardware chips into the same device, making it all the more expensive to replace when the screen finally cracks.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still looking for the perfect conversion device. But I haven't seen any indication that such a thing is on the horizon any time soon.
That's funny. I've had the same experience. There happened to be a name I was interested that was being squatted. I asked them for a quote, and it came back at 10,000 dollars. I said that was way out of my league, and thank you but no. They asked me to make a counter offer. I said that I really hadn't been planning on going above 100 dollars, as I didn't have a lot of cash. After that, for 6 straight months, offers kept trickling in every week or two... first for 6,000, then 3,000, then 1,000, 900... I didn't respond to any of these, but they kept coming in. Eventually they sent me a message saying they accepted my offer of 100 dollars. Unfortunately by this point I had been laid off and was desperately scrounging for pennies, so I had to say no.
A year later, after which point I've gotten another job, and they contact me about the website again. This time it gets ugly and personal, as they seemed rather pi$$ed that I had a fixed price, and I was rather pi$$ed that I had a project that I wouldn't mind using the website for but didn't have 6 months to haggle over it. After 6 months of fighting over it they still wouldn't touch their previous price, and they were quite combative about it. And I was quite angry about having them jerk me around for so long when they could have just made the sale or said no. And all of the free time that I had to use the website for was gone anyway. So finally I told them to F--- off and never contact me again.
About 6 months after this, they contacted me again...
I'm actually thinking of writing them again, just to see what they would say.
Thanks. Please feel free to send it to the Opera people... I'd love it if they'd publish a full list of all of the functions of the application. Opera does have a "features list," but they skip a lot.
I'm still learning new things that it does and forgetting the old. And they keep adding stuff! If you've grabbed 8.50, go up to view->fit to window width, then try scaling your window down really small. Yup, they're scaling everything intelligently to keep the person from having to scroll. And thanks to menu.ini, that would be pretty easy to add to a right-click menu. I hope they make this the standard behavior in future builds.
I also forgot that you can view the source of an HTML file, edit it, save it, and reload from cache. (tools->advanced->Reload From Cache) That way you can see changes immediately as if they had come from the server, but without actually uploading them.
There is also a ton of hidden functionality, like disabling the splash screen while editing a preferences.ini file. The customization forums on Opera's site are full of juicy little tidbits, and lots of the ini files have their own internal documentation.
I'm sorry you missed Opera 3.65... That was a really stable build. I don't know if I could have put up with 4.x for long.
I didn't mean to imply that the functionality listed wasn't available through Firefox extensions. Really, the thing that draws one to Firefox is the extensive extensions library. Basically all functionality in Opera is available through Firefox extensions, except for a few that seem like they're coming on in 1.5 (time to upgrade the firefox install!).
But there are problems with extensions. They seem to range from dead on perfect to the quality of a cheap VB script. Sometimes they conflict. When I've got enough extensions installed, it seems like Firefox is creaking a bit. Documentation of extensions and their behavior is sometimes iffy. Certainly integration, like using the functionality of an extension in a menu item, for example, is difficult to do. But overall the extensions architecture works really well for firefox, and I'd love to see such a thing for Opera. At this point it is a choice, one is not necessarily better than the other.
There is also something aesthetically nice about being on Opera. As I've said, it was the first with Virtual folders. It was the first with Mouse Gestures. The MDI interface, precursor to tabbed browsing, has been standard since day 1. While they did catch up to iCab by having the pseudo command line, they were the first windows browser to have it. They've been saving sessions since Mozilla was in early Beta. From a design standpoint, Opera is just excellent, and is usually the first (sometimes by a long time) to implement a feature that then becomes standard across the industry. Open in Background has been standard in Opera since 3.x, also while Mozilla was in Beta. Their coding follows the same philosophy, as it is pretty clear the browser is highly efficiently and well coded by a tight team. Firefox is open source, which is a definite plus, but I have no problem supporting a tiny company that fool heartedly decided to take on the titans of an industry.
These days with Firefox's extensive extension library, people implement favorite features from Opera a lot more quickly. Sometimes they do this well. Again I really envy the extensions architecture and the extensions community. But somehow that feels like remixing Doors Hits into moody emo and trying to claim it as your own. Sure for anyone who wants the functionality it is a godsend, but it isn't quite as integrated, doesn't work quite as well, and feels a little bit like credit is due.
Aesthetically, I like the original. Likewise, data persistence is a problem in Firefox (which it sounds like 1.5 fixes... YAY!). And certain other functionality is just better integrated with Opera. And, again, it is very, very easy to reconfigure the interface to your personal browsing tastes and needs.
These days it is a choice of personal preference, but for me due to certain details, I choose Opera. YMMV
Re:Can someone please explain to me...
on
Opera Free as in Beer
·
· Score: 5, Informative
As an avid Opera user, and a fan of Firefox, they can similar to a light or average user. I'll assume here that you're familiar with both.
I like to think of Opera as a highly configurable tool for heavy users who like to get their hands dirty with their tools, and Firefox for everyone else. Opera is highly configurable, has nice data semi-permanence features, and there are a million advanced options that speed up use for people willing to learn about what it can do.
If you don't like where the menu bar is, you can move it to the bottom of the screen, or to the sides, or you can move the buttons to a different bar, or move the buttons from other bars to that one. You can liberally re-arrange everything about the interface to suit your particular tastes, and can add and remove buttons and functionality as you please. I've seen people who have all of the functionality of the browser on a single pop-up address bar on the side of the window, and others that spread everything around onto dozens of little areas.
And there are quick and easy buttons available in the interface for everything: from zooming to above 100% to changing your "identify as" to toggling javascript. Basically all of these behave intelligently. If you hold the zoom drop-down button you get a standard drop-down menu to select the zoom resolution you want, and if you click on it, it automatically resets to 100%. And you move buttons by simply grabbing and moving them, which is very easy and convienient.
If you're comfortable editing a simple menu.ini file, you can add or subtract menu options. As a real-world example, you can add menu options for "open in I.E." "Validate HTML" "Validate Links" and "Spell Check" pretty easily to the right-click menu. While these can't be completely new code, you can pipe existing functions together in new ways to create things that do new behaviors.
Unlike Firefox's extensions you can't add extensive code that doesn't already exist. You can, however, run external applications which seems to cover the extreme cases. But if I needed to code an HTML editor in an extension, for example, I would recommend Firefox as a base over Opera. But for nearly all other personal customization, I'd go with Opera.
Data permanence is also a big issue in Opera. If you go backwards and forwards in Firefox, you lose any text you may have typed into a comment box. If you go backwards and forwards in Opera, your comment stays right where it was. On Slashdot this lets you go a couple of links back, launch a new window with the story in it, and go back forwards to what you were writing. It also caches the rendered page, so that going forwards and backwards is instantaneous.
You can also undo closing tabs. I can't tell you the number of times this has come in handy. Unfortunately, comment fields are not permanent across tab or application closures, something I wish they would fix. However, you do keep your history on that tab, which is nice. You also have windows open across sessions. If the application crashes or is accidentally closed, you can re-open it with all of your tabs still in place, and can still go back and forwards through their histories. Basically, Opera crashing is a 3 second fix, while Firefox crashing requires tediously going back through the history figuring out where all of your tabs were.
You can also save all of your open tabs or windows as a session, and can re-open sessions as bookmarks, on startup, etc.
There is also basic psuedo command line functionality, in that you can convert any *.[space]TEXT into http://www.yoursearchengine.com/search?q=TEXT. "g footloose" will search google for the term "footloose". "z firefly" will search amaZon for "firefly." I personally have searches setup for ebay, friend's bulletin boards, language translators, and a whole lot else.
The mail client was the first mail client that I know of to use freestanding searches as virtual folders, but tha
Slashdot user 11846: Your unauthorized use of Kris Kristofferson's IP and it's dissemination to millions of people on the internet is unconscionably un-American. However, we are willing to compromise and defer a civil suit if you admit guilt and bring a penalty of 3,500 dollars in small, non-sequential bills to the northwest corner of 1330 Connecticut Avenue, Washington, DC.
Except that they're not held to a double standard. Microsoft sits on the boards for OpenGL and a lot of other standards. Microsoft has been to Linuxworld and other open-source or Linux conferences. They also show up at Macworld and other Apple conferences.
They might grumble a lot, but Open Source supporters seem to have given Microsoft as many rights as anyone else in the community may have. Microsoft doing a MONO/.net promotion at a Linux conference would be completely acceptable.
In case you haven't noticed, the "hard core technical users" are usually the ones with a room full of scavenged parts, running e-mail servers from dual-proc P2 machines and file servers on sidewalk special sparc stations. I don't know a single "hard core technical user" that would bemoan a Celeron, though they're currenly more likely to own an AMD, or some tiny half-sized notebook from Japan running a transmeta.
Unless they're requiring some form of system-side authentication application, which is a bad idea in general, you shouldn't have any problem with linux on your school's network. My college refused to provide support for Linux, basically because they didn't know anything about it (Linux was extremely new then), but they didn't ban it and there was no technical reason why it wouldn't work on the network... Except, of course, the difficulty in getting an ethernet card to run under Linux in the early days.
Be a rebel. Stick it to the man and use Linux on your campus network, you wild child.
I don't mean this to troll, but why does Linux have to dethrone desktop Windows to be considered successful as an operating system? Why can't it just live happily as a rock-solid server OS with a desktop component that some advanced users use?
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that you don't actually need time to harvest an IP aside, is what you're doing technically illegal? I thought the ruling was that the uploader is making the illegal copy, not the downloader. It is true that you download as you upload over bittorrent. But as you don't have a real file, you're not really uploading anything copyrighted.
Is there such a thing as "intent to commit copyright infringement?"
As a side note, is anything about this scheme illegal on the studio's side? It is illegal to misrepresent files / etc for malicious activities, but is it illegal to misrepresent files simply to annoy people?
Didn't Linux get people used to great software with no packaging?
I'm actually really excited about this, as it is long overdue. There is really no reason for software to be purchased through traditional retail channels anymore. Not only should this be slightly cheaper, but it will allow for impulse purchases without spending the few hours it would take to go get the stuff. See a positive review of Halo? Go and download the game. Need to edit a PDF file before your meeting tomorrow? Instead of waiting for the store to open tomorrow morning, or running off to Kinkos and run up a dollar-a-minute bill, just buy the software you need right now and use it. All of your software would be available in a centralized location somewhere, helping to make things easy to find with Microsoft's legendary User Interface skills (cough cough).
The only potential (and probably highly likely) problem that I can see is if it were unnecessarily expensive to get into Microsoft's little digital mall that it became dominated by a few big retailers. The UI could also be crappy, the application might crash all of the time, the DRM could make it difficult to carry things between computers... So there are other potential problems. But as a fundamental ideal, buying software in 100% digital form, and in a forum that comes with every system is kind of nice. I'm sad that Apple didn't do this first, but I'm glad somebody other than Valve did.
A: Not everyone on Slashdot is the same person. Really.
B: There are noninfringing reasons to trade copyrighted works, and there are illegal but valid reasons to trade copyrighted works. For example, there was a movie recently that many, many people recommended that I see, but had been unavailable through traditional retail channels for many years. So I just downloaded it from a P2P network. I've discovered a lot of German Trance and other musical acts through P2P networks that I can't even buy over traditional retail channels, even importers. I've found many, many acts that I would not otherwise have been exposed to, from Argentine Tango ripped from Vinyl to obscure local acts. I've just got a Russian version of Hamlet that you would never find in Suncoast, and culturally significant games from the mid 80's that are completely unavailable even on Ebay. I've downloaded television shows from foreign countries as well as ones that my local cable monopoly simply decided weren't worth carrying.
I think the reason why P2P networks are so revered is that they're our only counterweight in the encroachment against our rights. The content industries control Television, Movies, Radio, most local concert venues, the Congress, and are getting protection schemes into television and playback hardware. They've been convicted of monopoly price fixing, yet didn't change a single practice. They lie about profits to avoid paying their artists. They've slipped stupid things into laws that make it illegal for people to describe Rot-13. They've ensured that copyright never expires, that nothing ever returns to the public domain. They own the culture that is imprinted in your brain.
What do we have as citizens? Civil disobedience via P2P. Want to find good new music? You could to go the Clear-Channel owned radio stations who use technically illegal payola from the major record labels to decide what gets played... or you can go on P2P networks, download a whole bunch of stuff, and see what you like. Want to listen to your music on-the-go? You could buy a CD, only to find that you can't convert it to MP3's to listen on your iPod, or you could just go online and download the fscking MP3's. Want to use a snipped from The Song of the South or from Der Fuhrer's Face in a lecture on popular responses to cultural crisis? Since Disney is pretending that neither of these historical films exist, your only recourse is to go on P2P and get it yourself.
I'm saying this as a person in the content generation industry... I help make videogames for major publishers. And piracy of games I've worked on has happened on P2P networks. Yet I still feel that the open nature is an important counterbalance to traditional distribution networks which have become dominated by a few small, self-serving companies. Culture remaining in control of the people is far more important than a slight sales loss to a highly profitable convicted monopolist.
RIAA: You think you're some kind of Jedi? I'm a Lawyer, mind tricks don't work on me. Only money.
More importantly, Limewire is Open Source! If you don't like the new restrictions, just set "Is_Licensed = 1;" If past performance is any indication, within hours of this change we will see a "Limewire Lite" that is completley DRM free.
So people can go to other networks, or can go to other clients on the same network, or can just tweak the client. This seems a bit silly. The only thing I can see this doing is driving people from the official LimeWire client to unofficial ones, ensuring that the people who make the client will be getting even less money.
The theory seems to be that you start small, and you get progressively bigger and bigger until all of the problems are solved. The first time it may have been a small motor with a battery climbing a 100 foot rope up the side of a building. This time it was an 18th generation lifter with cargo capacity climbing a 1,000 foot high tensile ribbon connected to a balloon. Next time it may be a climbing a 10,000 foot high tensile double ribbon using laser power. Or maybe it will be a 1,000 foot carbon nanotube wire in a year-long stress test, with a climber specifically designed to do maintenence on the tether.
Eventually they'll get there, and this is a definite step in the right direction. While the tether may be the biggest unknown of the project, we still don't have much experience with this sort of thing. What safety systems should be on the lifter? How should it be powered? How long will such a thing last before it breaks down? How long will the tether last? How will the system weather storms? How will it weather space debris? How will you find a patch of ground strong enough to anchor the thing to? How do you keep the climber from jumping the track? How do you keep parts from freezing as it goes from wet tropical climate into space? The theoretical engineering may be done except for the cord, but many, many practical engineering considerations remain.
I applaud this team's efforts, and wish them much luck.
Generally speaking, if something gets a name like NW2345, it will also at some point acquire an actual name that people can call it. You can't call something hill NW3464 in casual conversation... there just isn't enough redundant transmission to be clear that you don't mean hill NW3646 or NWT464 or NW3474. But if you say that you're sending the rover to lutefish hill, everybody knows where you are going.
Why not have all of the planets in the solar system named sol-1, sol-2, sol-3, etc? Why not number people by social security number? Because there isn't enough redundant distinction in normal conversation to overcome noise and know what the heck you're talking about. That's why you have a slashdot ID number, 465911, but you have an actual name as well, syousef. Or why species have their technical taxidermy names, but are also called things like "dung beetle" "giant squid" and "platapus."
All of the features on Mars already have coordinates. Now they just need to be called something.
This sounds mysteriously like predictions from 10 years ago, and 10 years before that, and 10 years before that. I don't think Sun was the one to make that prediction the first time, but they sure were making it 10 years ago. So far it just seems to keep getting less and less true. The network is not the computer. The network is the input. The computer is the computer.
There are quite a few problems with the remote-PC option. For one, latency is a killer which we can only overcome by client-side predictions, so most UI will be intollerably unresponsive without enough power to run things locally.
For another, just because the computer is physically remote doesn't mean the user doesn't have to administer it. It's still their 'GoToMy' PC. They can still screw it up, unless you're not going to let them install applications, at which point it becomes a bit useless as a computer. If users want autoupdating, why not just write software that autoupdates?
Third, we all know that network black boxes in this country come as tied to specific services. And we know that technology dongles like this fail.
Fourth, while some network apps have taken off, like webmail, others have failed miserably. Browser-based text editors come to mind. Some things you just want local.
And Fifth, with computers so cheap, why network? Where is the huge performance or convienience increase that would convince everyone to switch?
Latency basically kills the possibility of playing games over a black box even with high-speed broadband. You would need to do the kind of expensive client-side predictions currently in use to keep the game playable, at which point you would by definition have a client capable of playing the game.
But ultimately I think the basic problem is that people want to own their things. They don't usually want to lease their telephones, or rent their software by the year. When I buy a computer, I want that feeling of "well, i've got that computer problem solved." I want my private data on a local disk. I want to be able to kick something. I just don't see the compelling argument that would alter computing from the current independent model to a client-server model.
includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior.
Hmm... I've never seen pornography that involves beastiality, urination, defecation, AND sadistic and masochistic behavior.
On a side note, I'm glad our government still knows its priorities.
Your experiences are the exception. While apple desktops are comparatively expensive, apple laptops are actually a good deal. PC notebooks are getting milked for as much money as possible by system builders to make up for the razor-thin margins on the desktop... Expect to spend 1-2.5k on a PM notebook, which is basically the same range as Apple's iBook/PowerBook line. I've seen a lot more problems with stability on PC laptops, but I generally see the lower end (1k models) or the experimental end (sony's Vaio). But iBooks are generally rock solid.
Linux-on-Powerbook is actually quite really popular. Tons of sysadmins and programmers buy iBooks and replace OSX with Debian (or red-hat, or install-of-choice). I'm guessing this has to do with the power architecture being the same as that of some of IBM's servers. Or maybe they just like the hardware. Either way I'd guess that half of friend's iBooks are running already running Linux.
"Xbox 360
SOLD OUT!
We are currently sold out of our popular Xbox 360 bundles. Check back frequently for more opportunities to pre-order an Xbox 360, Microsoft's next-gen gaming system that ships November 21."
Oddly enough, it doesn't actually say that EB itself is sold out of pre orders, or that there won't be any more available. From the recommendation to "check back frequently," it sounds like they might just be holding some back in order to try to enduce panic buying. Then they'll release the rest of their stock. Or maybe the brick-and-mortar parts of the chain are hogging all of the available presales, to be sure that they can sell some in every territory. This is all speculation, of course.
Annoyingly enough, you have to pre-order anything you want at EB: They never get more than one or two per store. It's like they have no idea what a demand curve looks like. That's why I stopped shopping there. I lost a lot of faith in EB when the copy of Zelda that I had "pre-ordered" mysteriously didn't show up with their first batch of games, but every other store in the mall still had plenty.
This is wonderful news! We can stop the wave of plane hijackings that are plaguing this country! This will make it much safer to fly into hurricane devastated wastelands and siphon gas from abandoned vehicles.
Man, those plane hijackings really have been dominating the news recently, haven't they?
[/sarcasm]
Grandparent's point was that libraries don't need permission from the copyright owners to have the books on their shelves. Loaning a book to people is not a question of IP law, it's a simple question of owning the book.
It's one of those creeping IP things. If you own a DVD, you have every right to lend it to whomever you want, no permission or end user license agreement required. Same thing with CD's, printer cartridges, and steak knives.
Many companies are pushing to have IP-style EULA's and rules extended to physical objects. Others are attempting to convince consumers that the companies retain "ownership" over the objects that people purchase. Neither of these is correct. It is our job to be careful walking through this minefield, and to push back on the encroachment of this not just unjust but also legally incorrect way of looking at the world.
Talking about lying, cheating bastards with a sig like that?
you have the source, so you can fix things yourself, and to hell with everyone else... Until the F/OSS community stops acting like a bunch of petulant kids and starts behaving like responsible adults, this will be a very serious problem, one that many people within the community don't even see.
This seems to be related to the server vs desktop model.
If you were running your own FTP server, and you wanted to alter the functionality, you can alter the code to your server and run it. Everyone who connects to your server gets the increased functionality, which could be tens of thousands of users. Upgrades are relatively rare, and are usually predicated on major shifts either in either technology or just plain old fashioned hardware replacements. This makes sense.
On the desktop, if you want to change the functionality of an FTP client, you would need to change your code. And the code on the server to recognize your code. As updates are weekley, since desktop software is released loooooong before it is stable, you will have to repatch and recompile things for yourself frequently. All of your users still get the functionality, but that now means just you. This is too impractical to do, in other words.
Different mindset. It doesn't quite translate from server to desktop in a day-to-day sense, I'm afraid.
I don't think they're karma whoring at all. Even with computers you don't want a chat application that also compiles code. Little things that you stick in your pocket are very hardware interface dependent, and that generally doesn't carry between devices. A cellphone PDA MP3 player might be a convienient device, but it also would have an inherently unintuitive interface. There wouldn't be a lot of redundancy between the three, as the part of the cellphone that takes up the most space is the radio broadcast and particular interface parts, the mp3 player the MP3 specific parts, and the PDA... well... you know. You also need 3 times the battery anyway since you're using 3 times the power. All you've managed to do is glom on a bunch of specific hardware chips into the same device, making it all the more expensive to replace when the screen finally cracks.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still looking for the perfect conversion device. But I haven't seen any indication that such a thing is on the horizon any time soon.
That's funny. I've had the same experience. There happened to be a name I was interested that was being squatted. I asked them for a quote, and it came back at 10,000 dollars. I said that was way out of my league, and thank you but no. They asked me to make a counter offer. I said that I really hadn't been planning on going above 100 dollars, as I didn't have a lot of cash. After that, for 6 straight months, offers kept trickling in every week or two... first for 6,000, then 3,000, then 1,000, 900... I didn't respond to any of these, but they kept coming in. Eventually they sent me a message saying they accepted my offer of 100 dollars. Unfortunately by this point I had been laid off and was desperately scrounging for pennies, so I had to say no.
A year later, after which point I've gotten another job, and they contact me about the website again. This time it gets ugly and personal, as they seemed rather pi$$ed that I had a fixed price, and I was rather pi$$ed that I had a project that I wouldn't mind using the website for but didn't have 6 months to haggle over it. After 6 months of fighting over it they still wouldn't touch their previous price, and they were quite combative about it. And I was quite angry about having them jerk me around for so long when they could have just made the sale or said no. And all of the free time that I had to use the website for was gone anyway. So finally I told them to F--- off and never contact me again.
About 6 months after this, they contacted me again...
I'm actually thinking of writing them again, just to see what they would say.
Thanks. Please feel free to send it to the Opera people... I'd love it if they'd publish a full list of all of the functions of the application. Opera does have a "features list," but they skip a lot.
I'm still learning new things that it does and forgetting the old. And they keep adding stuff! If you've grabbed 8.50, go up to view->fit to window width, then try scaling your window down really small. Yup, they're scaling everything intelligently to keep the person from having to scroll. And thanks to menu.ini, that would be pretty easy to add to a right-click menu. I hope they make this the standard behavior in future builds.
I also forgot that you can view the source of an HTML file, edit it, save it, and reload from cache. (tools->advanced->Reload From Cache) That way you can see changes immediately as if they had come from the server, but without actually uploading them.
There is also a ton of hidden functionality, like disabling the splash screen while editing a preferences.ini file. The customization forums on Opera's site are full of juicy little tidbits, and lots of the ini files have their own internal documentation.
I'm sorry you missed Opera 3.65... That was a really stable build. I don't know if I could have put up with 4.x for long.
I didn't mean to imply that the functionality listed wasn't available through Firefox extensions. Really, the thing that draws one to Firefox is the extensive extensions library. Basically all functionality in Opera is available through Firefox extensions, except for a few that seem like they're coming on in 1.5 (time to upgrade the firefox install!).
But there are problems with extensions. They seem to range from dead on perfect to the quality of a cheap VB script. Sometimes they conflict. When I've got enough extensions installed, it seems like Firefox is creaking a bit. Documentation of extensions and their behavior is sometimes iffy. Certainly integration, like using the functionality of an extension in a menu item, for example, is difficult to do. But overall the extensions architecture works really well for firefox, and I'd love to see such a thing for Opera. At this point it is a choice, one is not necessarily better than the other.
There is also something aesthetically nice about being on Opera. As I've said, it was the first with Virtual folders. It was the first with Mouse Gestures. The MDI interface, precursor to tabbed browsing, has been standard since day 1. While they did catch up to iCab by having the pseudo command line, they were the first windows browser to have it. They've been saving sessions since Mozilla was in early Beta. From a design standpoint, Opera is just excellent, and is usually the first (sometimes by a long time) to implement a feature that then becomes standard across the industry. Open in Background has been standard in Opera since 3.x, also while Mozilla was in Beta. Their coding follows the same philosophy, as it is pretty clear the browser is highly efficiently and well coded by a tight team. Firefox is open source, which is a definite plus, but I have no problem supporting a tiny company that fool heartedly decided to take on the titans of an industry.
These days with Firefox's extensive extension library, people implement favorite features from Opera a lot more quickly. Sometimes they do this well. Again I really envy the extensions architecture and the extensions community. But somehow that feels like remixing Doors Hits into moody emo and trying to claim it as your own. Sure for anyone who wants the functionality it is a godsend, but it isn't quite as integrated, doesn't work quite as well, and feels a little bit like credit is due.
Aesthetically, I like the original. Likewise, data persistence is a problem in Firefox (which it sounds like 1.5 fixes... YAY!). And certain other functionality is just better integrated with Opera. And, again, it is very, very easy to reconfigure the interface to your personal browsing tastes and needs.
These days it is a choice of personal preference, but for me due to certain details, I choose Opera. YMMV
Others have sung it, but Kristofferson wrote it.
As an avid Opera user, and a fan of Firefox, they can similar to a light or average user. I'll assume here that you're familiar with both.
I like to think of Opera as a highly configurable tool for heavy users who like to get their hands dirty with their tools, and Firefox for everyone else. Opera is highly configurable, has nice data semi-permanence features, and there are a million advanced options that speed up use for people willing to learn about what it can do.
If you don't like where the menu bar is, you can move it to the bottom of the screen, or to the sides, or you can move the buttons to a different bar, or move the buttons from other bars to that one. You can liberally re-arrange everything about the interface to suit your particular tastes, and can add and remove buttons and functionality as you please. I've seen people who have all of the functionality of the browser on a single pop-up address bar on the side of the window, and others that spread everything around onto dozens of little areas.
And there are quick and easy buttons available in the interface for everything: from zooming to above 100% to changing your "identify as" to toggling javascript. Basically all of these behave intelligently. If you hold the zoom drop-down button you get a standard drop-down menu to select the zoom resolution you want, and if you click on it, it automatically resets to 100%. And you move buttons by simply grabbing and moving them, which is very easy and convienient.
If you're comfortable editing a simple menu.ini file, you can add or subtract menu options. As a real-world example, you can add menu options for "open in I.E." "Validate HTML" "Validate Links" and "Spell Check" pretty easily to the right-click menu. While these can't be completely new code, you can pipe existing functions together in new ways to create things that do new behaviors.
Unlike Firefox's extensions you can't add extensive code that doesn't already exist. You can, however, run external applications which seems to cover the extreme cases. But if I needed to code an HTML editor in an extension, for example, I would recommend Firefox as a base over Opera. But for nearly all other personal customization, I'd go with Opera.
Data permanence is also a big issue in Opera. If you go backwards and forwards in Firefox, you lose any text you may have typed into a comment box. If you go backwards and forwards in Opera, your comment stays right where it was. On Slashdot this lets you go a couple of links back, launch a new window with the story in it, and go back forwards to what you were writing. It also caches the rendered page, so that going forwards and backwards is instantaneous.
You can also undo closing tabs. I can't tell you the number of times this has come in handy. Unfortunately, comment fields are not permanent across tab or application closures, something I wish they would fix. However, you do keep your history on that tab, which is nice. You also have windows open across sessions. If the application crashes or is accidentally closed, you can re-open it with all of your tabs still in place, and can still go back and forwards through their histories. Basically, Opera crashing is a 3 second fix, while Firefox crashing requires tediously going back through the history figuring out where all of your tabs were.
You can also save all of your open tabs or windows as a session, and can re-open sessions as bookmarks, on startup, etc.
There is also basic psuedo command line functionality, in that you can convert any *.[space]TEXT into http://www.yoursearchengine.com/search?q=TEXT. "g footloose" will search google for the term "footloose". "z firefly" will search amaZon for "firefly." I personally have searches setup for ebay, friend's bulletin boards, language translators, and a whole lot else.
The mail client was the first mail client that I know of to use freestanding searches as virtual folders, but tha
Slashdot user 11846: Your unauthorized use of Kris Kristofferson's IP and it's dissemination to millions of people on the internet is unconscionably un-American. However, we are willing to compromise and defer a civil suit if you admit guilt and bring a penalty of 3,500 dollars in small, non-sequential bills to the northwest corner of 1330 Connecticut Avenue, Washington, DC.
Come alone.
Sincerely,
The RIAA
Except that they're not held to a double standard. Microsoft sits on the boards for OpenGL and a lot of other standards. Microsoft has been to Linuxworld and other open-source or Linux conferences. They also show up at Macworld and other Apple conferences.
They might grumble a lot, but Open Source supporters seem to have given Microsoft as many rights as anyone else in the community may have. Microsoft doing a MONO/.net promotion at a Linux conference would be completely acceptable.
What's wrong with Celerons?
In case you haven't noticed, the "hard core technical users" are usually the ones with a room full of scavenged parts, running e-mail servers from dual-proc P2 machines and file servers on sidewalk special sparc stations. I don't know a single "hard core technical user" that would bemoan a Celeron, though they're currenly more likely to own an AMD, or some tiny half-sized notebook from Japan running a transmeta.
Unless they're requiring some form of system-side authentication application, which is a bad idea in general, you shouldn't have any problem with linux on your school's network. My college refused to provide support for Linux, basically because they didn't know anything about it (Linux was extremely new then), but they didn't ban it and there was no technical reason why it wouldn't work on the network... Except, of course, the difficulty in getting an ethernet card to run under Linux in the early days.
Be a rebel. Stick it to the man and use Linux on your campus network, you wild child.
I don't mean this to troll, but why does Linux have to dethrone desktop Windows to be considered successful as an operating system? Why can't it just live happily as a rock-solid server OS with a desktop component that some advanced users use?