Game developers and companies need to think about us people who can't get computers faster than 1 MHz! Yes, I am one of the C64 users. I can't play Q3A, HL, games, etc. very nicely due to my 540
KHz CPU, and lack of AGP or PCI graphics. No hard drives or CD-ROMS here. Other options are just too expensive or won't work (i.e. tape drive for RTS gaming?)
Come on people, this is pathetic. We can always cry about being left behind, but it will do no good. If you want games that support your modem/C64/whatever, write them yourself, or stick with old classics. Sheesh.
DISCLAIMER: I'm more familiar with Canadian copyright law, but I have a feeling this generalization applies there too.
It all depends on who actually owns the copyright. If you are the owner of the copyright, then you're free to release it under the GPL and any other licenses you want. To satisfy the client, you could GPL it and license it to them under a separate license that lets them do whatever they want. If they own the copyright (i.e., if it's considered a "work for hire"), then it's up to them how they want to license it. Check your contract for terms and conditions, and talk to a real lawyer.
A bit of GPL trivia: (IANRMS) I believe the GPL allows you to incorporate GPLed code into your closed-source project, provided you do not sell or distribute that project. If it's just for in-house use, I think you're in the clear.
You should try coming to Vancouver. Internet cafes? We have internet laundries, for crying out loud. Besides, who wants internet cafes when everyone has web-enabled cell phones (thanks to Clearnet et al.)?
Gambling? I was at a casino earlier tonight. As for prostitution, while I have no personal experience, I understand those services can be found on many street corners downtown...
I might as well turn this into a shameless Vancouver plug. Here goes: Whistler/Blackcomb (the world-class ski resort, not the shit-ass OS) is nearby, the scenery is gorgeous, lots of high-tech, the Canadian dollar is worth $0.0175 US (OK, more like $0.65) so your money goes far, and, if it interests you, BC bud.
Correction: it's not good science, but it is science. Building a model volcano that erupts or a model of the planets isn't science at all, nor are most of the other "experiments". That girl's experiment is probably far, far above the caliber of every other experiment there.
I bet no 8-year old in the country knows how to do the kind of statistical analysis and experimental design to make this experiment scientifically sound, but this one is on the right track.
If all the experiments were held to the same science standards, they'd have to disqualify everyone.
I listen to bands because I like their music. I don't care about t-shirts, mugs, or other non-listenable things. I have enough CD jewel cases cluttering up my place already. All I want are the MP3s. I suspect there isn't a lot of money to be had in band memorabilia, or else the RIAA would be all over it.
Sure, buying songs for $1 wouldn't be that bad, but it would be more expensive than buying the CD (BTW, CDs cost $12-16 Canadian here--that's about $9-10 US). Considering the savings in manufacturing and distribution, $0.30 is more reasonable.
Of course, why would I pay money to the label when I could get the song free, and donate 100% of my cash directly to the artist (or just rip them off, if I was so inclined)? Music companies would still have to try to stamp out piracy. Things would be less broken, but they wouldn't be fixed. Maybe if the RIAA had gotten a cheap pay-per-MP3 service up two years ago, Napster wouldn't have gotten big, and this would still be possible. The cat's out of the bag now, though. Better luck next time, try again.
I'm sort of referring to the editors, here. Their little comments on the stories tell you how they feel about a given issue, and you can see they disapprove here. Yet they also disapproved of the prosecution of Napster. I'm pretty sure there are some users who agree with them. I also noticed a distinct absence of a "Go RIAA" sentiment in the comments about the RIAA suing Napster.
You have the classic free-rider problem, though. Even if you're guaranteed to get your money back if X isn't published, you're still better off by letting others pay, and getting the product free.
Also, how would the street performer protocol deal with "One Hit Wonders"? Bob publishes his smash hit single "Crying for Napster", and everyone loves it. Subsequently, everyone donates money to fund the publishing of "Gunning for Gnutella", which turns out to suck the big one.
In the current system, you wait for the reviews, and you just don't buy it if it sucks. In the SPP, you've already paid by the time anyone finds out it sucks.
Yes, reputation, yadda yadda, but how well will that work in areas where a given person often only publishes one or two works (think college textbooks)?
Not too many people on/. have clued into this, but most of the injustices slashdotters complain about are perpetrated by the government. The remaining crap is usually the result of braindead laws (DMCA, UCITA, patent laws)...
Yes, someone will say that stupid laws get passed because corporation X bought senator Y. Think about this: corporations don't vote--people do. If the public actually gave a shit, they would take a peek at campaign finance records (which are generally publically available) and figure out who was on the take. The problem is voter apathy.
If you break the law by infringing on someone's intellectual property, and do so repeatedly in spite of warnings, what do you think will happen?
Caveat: I don't think it's right to enforce copyright laws AND impose a blank-media tax. That's screwing consumers, left, right, and center. You should only be screwed once:-)
Slashdot cried when the record companies went after Napster. "Deal with the law-breaking individuals," they said, "leave the company alone." Now, the record companies and artists are going after the users, and we're still crying. Why? Are we all hypocrits?
I agree that much is broken with the current copyright system and recording industry. That doesn't give you carte blanche to rip off artists. Personally, I fulfil my moral obligations to the artists by donating through Fairtunes. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like many other people do (judging by donation stats).
Go ahead and flame me. I ask only one thing of you if you do: come up with a viable scheme for artists to make money from their work. If you can't think of one, you can hardly blame the record companies for clinging to what they have.
The US economy could go backwards for 10 years and still probably be ahead of Europe. Hell, California alone is probably ahead of almost every European country. (Of course, Europe has electricity;-)
The choice is not "DMCA or CD tax"... There's a third option--not screwing over consumers. Many people don't use their CD-Rs for audio, and those that do probably aren't burning much Canadian content (only Canadian artists get money from the tax, and who knows how it's distributed).
Do you really want to have every form of digital media taxed based on how you *might* use it?
Copyright is part of a social contract. It requires the public to generally respect and honour it, or it won't work. Period.
These kinds of ridiculous overzealous regulations are why Europe's economy sucks compared to the US. You'd think that Europe, with it's high population densities, "universal education" (at least in some countries), mass transit that actually works, and "progressive" social programs, would be a socio-economic dynamo. Sadly, it's not. Why? Over-regulation.
Now, we could blame the French for this--the British have been doing that for years. Truthfully, though, I don't think they deserve all the blame. Lots of it, yes, but...
I'm well aware Canada does many of the things I'm criticizing about Europe. Don't get me wrong--stuff sucks here, too.
The energy savings is in power loss. I suspect space/weight savings are secondary. Superconductivity means no resistive power loss, whereas normal transmission means usually lose you 10% or so.
As for the cost of cooling the nitrogen, that's trivial. LN2 is as cheap as soda pop.
This summer, I'll be working at the local particle accelerator doing beta-NMR and muon spin rotation experiments on high-temperature superconductors... Should be lots of fun! We aren't studying that particular kind, though (I think just the Yt-Ba-CuO ones).
Would that be big enough to build a micro communications satellite? It would, of course, run Linux or BSD, use mostly off-the-shelf hardware, and require some small stabilization system.
Why stop there, though? Put enough of these up there, give them lasers to communicate with each other, and you have your own orbital internet, free from governmental control.
Maybe I'm getting carried away. Maybe 10 cm ^3 isn't enough space for this. Then again, Apple built a computer smaller than this.
This is what my (former) employer did. We advertised a $30 rebate for our product. When customers bought the product, they found out that the expiry date on the rebate had already past. This was intentional--we advertised a rebate even though we knew the coupons were expired. If the customer called to complain, we told them the rebate had been "extended".
With this system, only about 30% of people sent in the rebate, but we could advertise the product as "Available for the low, low price of $69* (* fine print: with mfg. rebate)"
Our sales and marketing VP was a subhuman piece of shit, which is why we did crap like this. I hope he personally gets sued for fraud over it...
Anyway, the moral of the story is that rebates are basically a fradulent way of deceiving customers. Never factor the rebate discount into your price comparisons, and try to avoid rebate-giving companies all together.
That's 61 cases of fraud for which people were caught, tried, and convicted. The actual number of frauds committed is much, much higher.
My mother works as an independent consultant to a number of insurance companies. She's also served as an expert witness in a few claimant vs insurance company cases. She sees a lot of fraud cases that slip by simply because it would be too difficult or expensive for the insurance company to prosecute. Also, the courts are strongly biased in favour of the "little guy", even if the little guy is screwing all of us through fraud.
Re:Science is ignoring global warming?
on
Spidergoats
·
· Score: 2
Dude, we don't even know for sure if global warming is happening. This isn't just random bullshit on the web, either. The True State of the Planet, ed. Robert Bailey, has similar data, (only up to 1992, unfortunately), and it shows a cooling trend. Bailey's book gives all its references, so you can fact-check to your heart's content.
There also happens to be a few dissenting voices in the scientific community--15,000 of them, in fact.
Finally, the steps we have taken to curtail global warming (Kyoto Accord, for instance) are really just a joke. To seriously cut back greenhouse gas emissions, we'd have to go back to the stone age, and that would come at a serious cost in standard of living and ultimately human lives. The burden would be especially heavy in developing countries, where modern pollution control technologies simply aren't available.
For a long time, one portion of the population has been paying significantly more for car insurance due to a specific genetic characteristic. That characteristic? A Y chromosome
Where's the difference? You have no more control over your sex than you do the rest of your genome, so how is it permissible to discriminate for car and life insurance on the basis of sex, but not other genetic factors? Just because it takes some fancy testing to determine those factors doesn't change the situation one bit.
OK, given the recent quality of Slashdot journalism, I don't know how accurate the information actually is. That said, if it is true, WTF?
Aren't universities supposed to be the last bastion of free speech? Doesn't it now seem like they're the first to crumble any time something threatens individual rights (banning Napster, overzealous political correctness, busting "hackers", etc.)?
The "culprits" are now safely back in Canada. They're tired, but very happy.
Their three goals? Coverage on international press (Sydney, Australia covered it), coverage on CNN (accomplished), and coverage on Slashdot.
As for all you weenies saying they should be prosecuted or forced to pay for all the time lost, just go ahead and subtract that from the $200 million+ your state has stolen from our province.
I submitted this very story yesterday before, and it was rejected.
2001-02-06 02:50:18 Engineers Suspend VW Bug from Golden Gate Bridge (articles,humor) (rejected)
Even the wording was very similar. What's with Slashdot's submissions process? There seems to be a strong bias towards only accepting articles from a certain "in" group. Bastards...
In the case of privacy the conflict is over a liberty of being able to keep private information. People want to keep it, however they need very complex and costly process of organizing a boycott to force companies to change their policies
If you don't like a company's privacy policy, don't buy from them. Last time I checked, it was still possible to eek out a basic existence without buying anything online. When the day comes that you can't buy food without revealing your life's history, then I'll be worried. Until then, I have all the choice I need in a market system.
Companies cannot force you to buy their products, and, likewise, you cannot force them to change their privacy policies. A natural balance between your interests and those of the company is reached through a market. Why should you have the right to dictate policy to a company (which is really just another group of individuals)? You vote with your dollar, and that's where your influence should end.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on people, this is pathetic. We can always cry about being left behind, but it will do no good. If you want games that support your modem/C64/whatever, write them yourself, or stick with old classics. Sheesh.
DISCLAIMER: I'm more familiar with Canadian copyright law, but I have a feeling this generalization applies there too.
It all depends on who actually owns the copyright. If you are the owner of the copyright, then you're free to release it under the GPL and any other licenses you want. To satisfy the client, you could GPL it and license it to them under a separate license that lets them do whatever they want. If they own the copyright (i.e., if it's considered a "work for hire"), then it's up to them how they want to license it. Check your contract for terms and conditions, and talk to a real lawyer.
A bit of GPL trivia: (IANRMS) I believe the GPL allows you to incorporate GPLed code into your closed-source project, provided you do not sell or distribute that project. If it's just for in-house use, I think you're in the clear.
Check out Fairtunes. It's a way to ensure all your money goes to the people who earned it--the artists, songwriters, etc.
You must be from some backwater part of Canada...
You should try coming to Vancouver. Internet cafes? We have internet laundries, for crying out loud. Besides, who wants internet cafes when everyone has web-enabled cell phones (thanks to Clearnet et al.)?
Gambling? I was at a casino earlier tonight. As for prostitution, while I have no personal experience, I understand those services can be found on many street corners downtown...
I might as well turn this into a shameless Vancouver plug. Here goes: Whistler/Blackcomb (the world-class ski resort, not the shit-ass OS) is nearby, the scenery is gorgeous, lots of high-tech, the Canadian dollar is worth $0.0175 US (OK, more like $0.65) so your money goes far, and, if it interests you, BC bud.
Correction: it's not good science, but it is science. Building a model volcano that erupts or a model of the planets isn't science at all, nor are most of the other "experiments". That girl's experiment is probably far, far above the caliber of every other experiment there.
I bet no 8-year old in the country knows how to do the kind of statistical analysis and experimental design to make this experiment scientifically sound, but this one is on the right track.
If all the experiments were held to the same science standards, they'd have to disqualify everyone.
The stars are crossed against you, Mir. That's my guess (let's say noon GMT, Ides of March).
I listen to bands because I like their music. I don't care about t-shirts, mugs, or other non-listenable things. I have enough CD jewel cases cluttering up my place already. All I want are the MP3s. I suspect there isn't a lot of money to be had in band memorabilia, or else the RIAA would be all over it.
Sure, buying songs for $1 wouldn't be that bad, but it would be more expensive than buying the CD (BTW, CDs cost $12-16 Canadian here--that's about $9-10 US). Considering the savings in manufacturing and distribution, $0.30 is more reasonable.
Of course, why would I pay money to the label when I could get the song free, and donate 100% of my cash directly to the artist (or just rip them off, if I was so inclined)? Music companies would still have to try to stamp out piracy. Things would be less broken, but they wouldn't be fixed. Maybe if the RIAA had gotten a cheap pay-per-MP3 service up two years ago, Napster wouldn't have gotten big, and this would still be possible. The cat's out of the bag now, though. Better luck next time, try again.
I'm sort of referring to the editors, here. Their little comments on the stories tell you how they feel about a given issue, and you can see they disapprove here. Yet they also disapproved of the prosecution of Napster. I'm pretty sure there are some users who agree with them. I also noticed a distinct absence of a "Go RIAA" sentiment in the comments about the RIAA suing Napster.
Yes, saying "all" was overly broad of me.
You have the classic free-rider problem, though. Even if you're guaranteed to get your money back if X isn't published, you're still better off by letting others pay, and getting the product free.
Also, how would the street performer protocol deal with "One Hit Wonders"? Bob publishes his smash hit single "Crying for Napster", and everyone loves it. Subsequently, everyone donates money to fund the publishing of "Gunning for Gnutella", which turns out to suck the big one.
In the current system, you wait for the reviews, and you just don't buy it if it sucks. In the SPP, you've already paid by the time anyone finds out it sucks.
Yes, reputation, yadda yadda, but how well will that work in areas where a given person often only publishes one or two works (think college textbooks)?
There are many, many flaws with SPP.
Not too many people on /. have clued into this, but most of the injustices slashdotters complain about are perpetrated by the government. The remaining crap is usually the result of braindead laws (DMCA, UCITA, patent laws)...
Yes, someone will say that stupid laws get passed because corporation X bought senator Y. Think about this: corporations don't vote--people do. If the public actually gave a shit, they would take a peek at campaign finance records (which are generally publically available) and figure out who was on the take. The problem is voter apathy.
Remember, only governments have armies.
If you break the law by infringing on someone's intellectual property, and do so repeatedly in spite of warnings, what do you think will happen?
:-)
Caveat: I don't think it's right to enforce copyright laws AND impose a blank-media tax. That's screwing consumers, left, right, and center. You should only be screwed once
Slashdot cried when the record companies went after Napster. "Deal with the law-breaking individuals," they said, "leave the company alone." Now, the record companies and artists are going after the users, and we're still crying. Why? Are we all hypocrits?
I agree that much is broken with the current copyright system and recording industry. That doesn't give you carte blanche to rip off artists. Personally, I fulfil my moral obligations to the artists by donating through Fairtunes. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like many other people do (judging by donation stats).
Go ahead and flame me. I ask only one thing of you if you do: come up with a viable scheme for artists to make money from their work. If you can't think of one, you can hardly blame the record companies for clinging to what they have.
The US economy could go backwards for 10 years and still probably be ahead of Europe. Hell, California alone is probably ahead of almost every European country. (Of course, Europe has electricity ;-)
The choice is not "DMCA or CD tax"... There's a third option--not screwing over consumers. Many people don't use their CD-Rs for audio, and those that do probably aren't burning much Canadian content (only Canadian artists get money from the tax, and who knows how it's distributed).
Do you really want to have every form of digital media taxed based on how you *might* use it?
Copyright is part of a social contract. It requires the public to generally respect and honour it, or it won't work. Period.
These kinds of ridiculous overzealous regulations are why Europe's economy sucks compared to the US. You'd think that Europe, with it's high population densities, "universal education" (at least in some countries), mass transit that actually works, and "progressive" social programs, would be a socio-economic dynamo. Sadly, it's not. Why? Over-regulation.
Now, we could blame the French for this--the British have been doing that for years. Truthfully, though, I don't think they deserve all the blame. Lots of it, yes, but...
I'm well aware Canada does many of the things I'm criticizing about Europe. Don't get me wrong--stuff sucks here, too.
Good point. Maybe they should switch to DC for these lines. Then there would be effectively no inductance losses, either.
Oops, that's Y Ba_2 Cu_3 O_6 superconductors, and I may also get to play with NbSe_2 superconductors, too. The cyclotron is pretty cool, too.
The energy savings is in power loss. I suspect space/weight savings are secondary. Superconductivity means no resistive power loss, whereas normal transmission means usually lose you 10% or so.
As for the cost of cooling the nitrogen, that's trivial. LN2 is as cheap as soda pop.
This summer, I'll be working at the local particle accelerator doing beta-NMR and muon spin rotation experiments on high-temperature superconductors... Should be lots of fun! We aren't studying that particular kind, though (I think just the Yt-Ba-CuO ones).
Would that be big enough to build a micro communications satellite? It would, of course, run Linux or BSD, use mostly off-the-shelf hardware, and require some small stabilization system.
Why stop there, though? Put enough of these up there, give them lasers to communicate with each other, and you have your own orbital internet, free from governmental control.
Maybe I'm getting carried away. Maybe 10 cm ^3 isn't enough space for this. Then again, Apple built a computer smaller than this.
This is what my (former) employer did. We advertised a $30 rebate for our product. When customers bought the product, they found out that the expiry date on the rebate had already past. This was intentional--we advertised a rebate even though we knew the coupons were expired. If the customer called to complain, we told them the rebate had been "extended".
With this system, only about 30% of people sent in the rebate, but we could advertise the product as "Available for the low, low price of $69* (* fine print: with mfg. rebate)"
Our sales and marketing VP was a subhuman piece of shit, which is why we did crap like this. I hope he personally gets sued for fraud over it...
Anyway, the moral of the story is that rebates are basically a fradulent way of deceiving customers. Never factor the rebate discount into your price comparisons, and try to avoid rebate-giving companies all together.
That's 61 cases of fraud for which people were caught, tried, and convicted. The actual number of frauds committed is much, much higher.
My mother works as an independent consultant to a number of insurance companies. She's also served as an expert witness in a few claimant vs insurance company cases. She sees a lot of fraud cases that slip by simply because it would be too difficult or expensive for the insurance company to prosecute. Also, the courts are strongly biased in favour of the "little guy", even if the little guy is screwing all of us through fraud.
Dude, we don't even know for sure if global warming is happening. This isn't just random bullshit on the web, either. The True State of the Planet, ed. Robert Bailey, has similar data, (only up to 1992, unfortunately), and it shows a cooling trend. Bailey's book gives all its references, so you can fact-check to your heart's content.
There also happens to be a few dissenting voices in the scientific community--15,000 of them, in fact.
Finally, the steps we have taken to curtail global warming (Kyoto Accord, for instance) are really just a joke. To seriously cut back greenhouse gas emissions, we'd have to go back to the stone age, and that would come at a serious cost in standard of living and ultimately human lives. The burden would be especially heavy in developing countries, where modern pollution control technologies simply aren't available.
That's why not much has been done.
For a long time, one portion of the population has been paying significantly more for car insurance due to a specific genetic characteristic. That characteristic? A Y chromosome
Where's the difference? You have no more control over your sex than you do the rest of your genome, so how is it permissible to discriminate for car and life insurance on the basis of sex, but not other genetic factors? Just because it takes some fancy testing to determine those factors doesn't change the situation one bit.
OK, given the recent quality of Slashdot journalism, I don't know how accurate the information actually is. That said, if it is true, WTF?
Aren't universities supposed to be the last bastion of free speech? Doesn't it now seem like they're the first to crumble any time something threatens individual rights (banning Napster, overzealous political correctness, busting "hackers", etc.)?
We live in a sad world...
The "culprits" are now safely back in Canada. They're tired, but very happy.
Their three goals? Coverage on international press (Sydney, Australia covered it), coverage on CNN (accomplished), and coverage on Slashdot.
As for all you weenies saying they should be prosecuted or forced to pay for all the time lost, just go ahead and subtract that from the $200 million+ your state has stolen from our province.
I submitted this very story yesterday before, and it was rejected.
2001-02-06 02:50:18 Engineers Suspend VW Bug from Golden Gate Bridge (articles,humor) (rejected)
Even the wording was very similar. What's with Slashdot's submissions process? There seems to be a strong bias towards only accepting articles from a certain "in" group. Bastards...
In the case of privacy the conflict is over a liberty of being able to keep private information. People want to keep it, however they need very complex and costly process of organizing a boycott to force companies to change their policies
If you don't like a company's privacy policy, don't buy from them. Last time I checked, it was still possible to eek out a basic existence without buying anything online. When the day comes that you can't buy food without revealing your life's history, then I'll be worried. Until then, I have all the choice I need in a market system.
Companies cannot force you to buy their products, and, likewise, you cannot force them to change their privacy policies. A natural balance between your interests and those of the company is reached through a market. Why should you have the right to dictate policy to a company (which is really just another group of individuals)? You vote with your dollar, and that's where your influence should end.