Oh I almost forgot, I'm open to the usual slag that I'm not credible because I don't pay for music or software. The opposite is actually true. I stopped buying music because it is all crap. I continue to buy crappy software.. but that's crappy for different reasons.
That means I have a collection of CDs which I haven't added to in roughly 5 years. I don't even listen to commercial radio anymore. It's all crap.
Oddly, there are plenty of good bands in my city, but the record industry will have nothing to do with them.
The mantra of the record industry is "money money money money", not "music music music music."
My point is... let them die. They are to music what McDonald's is to food. Music will never die.
The record-industry model is flawed. Technology has caught up with it. They provide very little value-added to the music industry. Now they sit on copyrights while monopolizing and impeding distribution.
The only real work they do is marketing and production. If they can't find a way to sell that, that shouldn't be repaired by changing the laws throughout the world.
On the other hand, I guess they're fighting obsolecence the only way they know how.
You sound like you know a lot about screwdrivers, can you help me? My screwdriver suddenly started stripping my screws. I don't understand. Did I violate my license agreement? Or did I screw in too many screws?
I asked my nephew about this, he's good with screwdrivers, and he says that it's because I'm using a cheap screwdriver and it's not compatible with my Philips screws.
I've been told that I should abandon Philips and use Torx screws in my doorframe. But Torx screws and screwdrivers aren't very common.
Using words like "created" in reference to subject matter which involves time is self-defeating.
The "point" and "what" existed "before then" is all really just asking for the answer to the life the universe and everything.
Religion and science are orthogonal. Science can answer how the universe formed and how mathematical models can define time and space, but it can't answer "why."
Yep, original media, EULA and certificate of authenticity have absolutely nothing to do with a license. A license is not a physical thing... Microsoft tries really hard to make you think that it is, but it is not.
Reciepts or the logs of your software supplier are the key.
Of course I've never tested this in the courts.... and I'm not a lawyer... it's just an interpretation of the EULA... but this is Slashdot.
Every freaking PHB will have you scrambling for CDs and Certificates of authenticity, but that's all baloney. I bet the BSA would accept it too, because an awful lot of software gets sold when people think they need those papers.
Filter based on a central sig DB with dictionary words, whitelists and obfuscation methods
Use some kind of tree-of-trust
The dictionary word filter would run the spam through a filter which would first throw out all graphics-only email, and all but the most simple HTML email.
It would then apply a very simple spell-checker algorithm, finding the most common dictionary words for your language (including many creative mis-spellings)
It would then run these these dictionary words and a soundex algorithm (to catch creative homonyms and common misspelling) through a very simple grammar checker, discarding all randomly-generated sentences or padding.
Finally, a signature would be taken of the result and compared to that of a central DB. If the central DB has the email, it is tagged as spam and discarded.... a system similar to Vipul's razor with signatures based on only the human readable content.
Unfortunately... really small messages would have to be ignored since it would be impossible to filter messages like:
Hey, how's it going?
But what it does do is block stuff like:
Hello ssfvvz668!,
Do we have an opportunity for you 235534!
padding padding pdding paaing pdding padding random stuff...
we<!--nothing-->'re inter<!--nothing-->ested in you!
On the other hand, if you can use GPG to do a tree-like structure of trust, where you can have three levels of trust: Trusted, Unknown and Untrusted, then you could indicate that you trust your personal friends. And your personal friends trust their personal friends, somebody trusts the corporation they work for, and that corporation probably trusts lots of people, etc.
The important part would be that if you get some SPAM, you would need to see who the weak link is in your trust system and cut them off as untrusted.
Any system where it is on everyone's honour not to screw it up is doomed to fail.
Major innovations which will change the way we live... because people will be willing to pay for them incrementally:
Improved material science for hyperallergenic cleanliness, asthetics and fire prevention
Improved ventilation and environment control, no more dust bunnies crawling through central air units, ticking radiators, inefficient and inconvenient electric baseboard heaters... no more hotspots, coldspots and lower power bills.
Better, cheaper and faster food.
Smaller, quieter and more efficient appliances (combined washer/driers, conventional/convection and microwave ovens)
More material science and better medical science to develop better chairs, better beds (and better folding beds)
Better sound systems and personal entertainment systems.
What the average schmoe will be absolutely unable to afford:
Real-estate within reach of urban employment
The bigger better jobs will go to home offices, maybe... just maybe... as thoroughly extravegant and self-loving as the Microsoft vision.
So where does that leave the average person?
In a one-room apartment with artificial windows (not wonderful wrap-around ones, unless you splurge), a fold-out bed, a washer and drier quiet enough to sleep next to (because that's what you'll be doing), a minimal kitchen (because real-estate and time is more precious than the cost of the new and improved forms of fast food)
All the while, you will dream of leaving the factory/fast food franchise/service industry to move towards some job you can perform from a home office outside the city.
His kids just know better than to trust TV for anything but cartoons and commercials.
The jerks at CNN are already speculating online as to what might have caused it, trying to keep the viewership from changing the channel back. No doubt they've contacted some "experts" by now.
With the non-tradition use of the GPL in the QT library, it is certainly free as in beer, meaning you can use it without cost....
However, you have to pay for a developers license to have any freedom as to how your code will be distributed. But even then, you can't allow other people who receive the code to have similar freedom unless they too pay for a developer's license.
But because it is GPL, it is certainly free to have certain personal freedoms... but other personal freedoms cost money.
So I guess it is free like a U.S. citizen.
The bottom line though is that developing QT apps for KDE has far more restrictions than developing for Win32.
"Hello Sir/Madam, we noticed that you are not on the Do Not Call List, this means that at any moment, perhaps even now, a telemarketer might be trying to reach you. For the low, low price of $5, you can be added to this list. It's easy, just press 1 and never be bothered again."
As I understand it, it has to do with copyright holders controlling the way their holdings are used.
Circumventing a technology which implements a control is against the DMCA.
Communicating methods to circumvent a control is against the DMCA.
Evil DMCA... evil... and some other Slashdot mumblings.
I remember building a machine back then...
on
The 1991 "X-Box"
·
· Score: 1
I was in high-school and I didn't have very much money.
If I recall, it ran me roughly the following:
Used 65MB RLL HDD w. controller: $160 CDN
Used and assumed broken 1.44MB floppy drive: $10CDN
286 w. 1MB of RAM: $80CDN
EGA card (with composite output): $60
Used AT case and P/S: $25
Buying the stuff new would have cost significantly more. A floppy drive would have definately cost me at least $70 or so.
Around that time, I got my hands on some TSX distribution which I believe was an ancient Linux. I was nowhere near the minimum system requirements though. Why bother when I had everything I needed with Windows 3.0 and DOS 4. I could play solitaire, minesweeper, and it even had truetype fonts... except for the fact that it was painfully slow:-)
I downloaded TSX with a 2400 baud modem. 2400 was so fast that text would scroll by faster than you could read it. I couldn't even afford a proper cable to plug my modem in, so I ran the 25-pin ribbon cable with the connector from the motherboard straight to the external modem.
In early 1993, I upgraded to an integrated 386DX40 motherboard w. 2MB of RAM. The board ran at least $150CDN. I think I paid $70CDN for the 2MB, but only because it was used and I was going on the cheap with low-end 32pin 256k SIMMs. RAM around that time was ~$70-$80 for a 1MB SIMM, and you needed them in sets of four.
The composite out on the EGA card was sorely and horridly disappointing. When they say composite out, I figured out that they meant for those little green or amber composite monitors. The output signal wasn't colour.
I got a really bad 8-bit Zoltrix sound card for $120CDN in a bundle with speakers, a joystick and some other stuff. I think that was in 1993. I vaguely recall being impressed that with a sound card you could hear the guards yell in Wolfienstein.
It wasn't until late 1994 that I put 5MB of RAM in my machine and I met the minimum requirements for TSX... in the summer of '95 I found Slackware though. I had to partition my 65MB drive to install it:-)
My point is, that like everyone else said, this guy is full of it. If you wanted to create a video-game console in 1991, you would have been better off gutting and repackaging a C=64. It had better sound, better video and better graphics than most PCs out there.
Why didn't everyone just get C=64s if they were so much better?
A C=64 had terrible printers, awfully expensive floppy drives, the text wasn't sharp, it wasn't 80 columns and it had no good wordprocessors or spreadsheets. An 8088 with 256k of RAM and a mono monitor was a FAR better business machine.. and in it's heyday... FAR more expensive too. IIRC, the C=64 was cheap and well in decline in 91.
Just because you found a problem which fits the solution, doesn't mean it isn't a solution looking for a problem:-)
BTW, congratulations on finding the second problem which suits the solution. We now have a device good for:
People who need mobility, but can't sit down
Mail carriers
So we'll have sales for medical conditions where wheelchairs can't be used, and for people who can't use bicycles because it takes too long to get on and off of them.
No that I'm having any second thoughts about the device's uselessness, but I would love to see how the device with its gyroscopic balancing handles on the ice.
There could be a whole market for gyroscopic stand-up mini-taboggans.
IMHO they're a pretty stupid idea. Most sidewalks are so chaotic that they wouldn't be worth riding anyways. They're too expensive to lock outside, too heavy to carry into the office or onto public transit, too big to stuff under your desk... never mind how they'll do for vehicle range or power consumption. They're not sheltered, so there's no advantage in the rain, they're too slow for the roads, too slow for bicycle lanes even, but too fast to go anywhere people go.
That's why there's one criminal charge for "Break and enter" and there's another criminal charge for "Theft over blah." I believe they also look at the intent.
Analogies suck. They don't work for this sort of thing. But we're forced to use them because the laws aren't tailored for these kinds of crimes.
If a 15 year old kid walks up to a bank, pulls the door key from under a mat, walks in, reads the vault combination from a sticky note on the manager's desk, opens up the vault and relieves himself, then walks away with the doors wide open, should they be charged with the same thing as a 30-year old who walks in afterwards and takes all the money?
One is trespassing and vandalism, the other is theft, oddly enough, neither to me is break-and-enter. I would love to know the opinion of a lawyer.
The argument that web sites have to be rebuilt and re-secured is stupid. Just imagine what a judge would say "So you're saying that your web site was secure, a 15-year old broke in, and now soley because of their action, the site can no longer be considered secure?"
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you fall into coding-by-hacking. Ie:
"I think this does what I need it to..."
<hack><hack><hack>
<compile>
<boom>
"No, not that... let's try this..."
<hack><hack><hack>
<compile>
<boom>
Not that I advocate such a method... I may do it from time to time... but I don't advocate it.
Oh I almost forgot, I'm open to the usual slag that I'm not credible because I don't pay for music or software. The opposite is actually true. I stopped buying music because it is all crap. I continue to buy crappy software.. but that's crappy for different reasons.
That means I have a collection of CDs which I haven't added to in roughly 5 years. I don't even listen to commercial radio anymore. It's all crap.
Oddly, there are plenty of good bands in my city, but the record industry will have nothing to do with them.
The mantra of the record industry is "money money money money", not "music music music music."
My point is... let them die. They are to music what McDonald's is to food. Music will never die.
Taking? No.
Copying? Yes.
Property? No.
Intellectual Property(TM)? Yes.
The record-industry model is flawed. Technology has caught up with it. They provide very little value-added to the music industry. Now they sit on copyrights while monopolizing and impeding distribution.
The only real work they do is marketing and production. If they can't find a way to sell that, that shouldn't be repaired by changing the laws throughout the world.
On the other hand, I guess they're fighting obsolecence the only way they know how.
What do you do when you need to do a CTRL+Right-click? Like when changing fonts in an xterm?
I'll suffer a mod-down to support that sentiment.
You sound like you know a lot about screwdrivers, can you help me? My screwdriver suddenly started stripping my screws. I don't understand. Did I violate my license agreement? Or did I screw in too many screws?
I asked my nephew about this, he's good with screwdrivers, and he says that it's because I'm using a cheap screwdriver and it's not compatible with my Philips screws.
I've been told that I should abandon Philips and use Torx screws in my doorframe. But Torx screws and screwdrivers aren't very common.
Help?
Using words like "created" in reference to subject matter which involves time is self-defeating.
The "point" and "what" existed "before then" is all really just asking for the answer to the life the universe and everything.
Religion and science are orthogonal. Science can answer how the universe formed and how mathematical models can define time and space, but it can't answer "why."
Yep, original media, EULA and certificate of authenticity have absolutely nothing to do with a license. A license is not a physical thing... Microsoft tries really hard to make you think that it is, but it is not.
Reciepts or the logs of your software supplier are the key.
Of course I've never tested this in the courts.... and I'm not a lawyer... it's just an interpretation of the EULA... but this is Slashdot.
Every freaking PHB will have you scrambling for CDs and Certificates of authenticity, but that's all baloney. I bet the BSA would accept it too, because an awful lot of software gets sold when people think they need those papers.
I have two pet ideas...
The dictionary word filter would run the spam through a filter which would first throw out all graphics-only email, and all but the most simple HTML email.
It would then apply a very simple spell-checker algorithm, finding the most common dictionary words for your language (including many creative mis-spellings)
It would then run these these dictionary words and a soundex algorithm (to catch creative homonyms and common misspelling) through a very simple grammar checker, discarding all randomly-generated sentences or padding.
Finally, a signature would be taken of the result and compared to that of a central DB. If the central DB has the email, it is tagged as spam and discarded.... a system similar to Vipul's razor with signatures based on only the human readable content.
Unfortunately... really small messages would have to be ignored since it would be impossible to filter messages like:
Hey, how's it going?
But what it does do is block stuff like: Hello ssfvvz668!,
Do we have an opportunity for you 235534!
padding padding pdding paaing pdding padding random stuff...
we<!--nothing-->'re inter<!--nothing-->ested in you!
On the other hand, if you can use GPG to do a tree-like structure of trust, where you can have three levels of trust: Trusted, Unknown and Untrusted, then you could indicate that you trust your personal friends. And your personal friends trust their personal friends, somebody trusts the corporation they work for, and that corporation probably trusts lots of people, etc.
The important part would be that if you get some SPAM, you would need to see who the weak link is in your trust system and cut them off as untrusted.
Any system where it is on everyone's honour not to screw it up is doomed to fail.
Major innovations which will change the way we live... because people will be willing to pay for them incrementally:
What the average schmoe will be absolutely unable to afford:
The bigger better jobs will go to home offices, maybe... just maybe... as thoroughly extravegant and self-loving as the Microsoft vision.
So where does that leave the average person?
In a one-room apartment with artificial windows (not wonderful wrap-around ones, unless you splurge), a fold-out bed, a washer and drier quiet enough to sleep next to (because that's what you'll be doing), a minimal kitchen (because real-estate and time is more precious than the cost of the new and improved forms of fast food)
All the while, you will dream of leaving the factory/fast food franchise/service industry to move towards some job you can perform from a home office outside the city.
But that's just one vision.
It is almost a very dry pun, but I don't get it either.
It could be a cry for help.
But you also see lots of people being very critical of the speculation.
His kids just know better than to trust TV for anything but cartoons and commercials.
The jerks at CNN are already speculating online as to what might have caused it, trying to keep the viewership from changing the channel back. No doubt they've contacted some "experts" by now.
With the non-tradition use of the GPL in the QT library, it is certainly free as in beer, meaning you can use it without cost....
However, you have to pay for a developers license to have any freedom as to how your code will be distributed. But even then, you can't allow other people who receive the code to have similar freedom unless they too pay for a developer's license.
But because it is GPL, it is certainly free to have certain personal freedoms... but other personal freedoms cost money.
So I guess it is free like a U.S. citizen.
The bottom line though is that developing QT apps for KDE has far more restrictions than developing for Win32.
Oh no.... new business plan:
"Hello Sir/Madam, we noticed that you are not on the Do Not Call List, this means that at any moment, perhaps even now, a telemarketer might be trying to reach you. For the low, low price of $5, you can be added to this list. It's easy, just press 1 and never be bothered again."
Damn, that's worth a patent.
These kids need some violent video games to relieve their destructive tendencies and to keep them away from these "outdoors."
As I understand it, it has to do with copyright holders controlling the way their holdings are used.
Circumventing a technology which implements a control is against the DMCA.
Communicating methods to circumvent a control is against the DMCA.
Evil DMCA... evil... and some other Slashdot mumblings.
I was in high-school and I didn't have very much money.
If I recall, it ran me roughly the following:
Buying the stuff new would have cost significantly more. A floppy drive would have definately cost me at least $70 or so.
Around that time, I got my hands on some TSX distribution which I believe was an ancient Linux. I was nowhere near the minimum system requirements though. Why bother when I had everything I needed with Windows 3.0 and DOS 4. I could play solitaire, minesweeper, and it even had truetype fonts... except for the fact that it was painfully slow :-)
I downloaded TSX with a 2400 baud modem. 2400 was so fast that text would scroll by faster than you could read it. I couldn't even afford a proper cable to plug my modem in, so I ran the 25-pin ribbon cable with the connector from the motherboard straight to the external modem.
In early 1993, I upgraded to an integrated 386DX40 motherboard w. 2MB of RAM. The board ran at least $150CDN. I think I paid $70CDN for the 2MB, but only because it was used and I was going on the cheap with low-end 32pin 256k SIMMs. RAM around that time was ~$70-$80 for a 1MB SIMM, and you needed them in sets of four.
The composite out on the EGA card was sorely and horridly disappointing. When they say composite out, I figured out that they meant for those little green or amber composite monitors. The output signal wasn't colour.
I got a really bad 8-bit Zoltrix sound card for $120CDN in a bundle with speakers, a joystick and some other stuff. I think that was in 1993. I vaguely recall being impressed that with a sound card you could hear the guards yell in Wolfienstein.
It wasn't until late 1994 that I put 5MB of RAM in my machine and I met the minimum requirements for TSX... in the summer of '95 I found Slackware though. I had to partition my 65MB drive to install it :-)
My point is, that like everyone else said, this guy is full of it. If you wanted to create a video-game console in 1991, you would have been better off gutting and repackaging a C=64. It had better sound, better video and better graphics than most PCs out there.
Why didn't everyone just get C=64s if they were so much better?
A C=64 had terrible printers, awfully expensive floppy drives, the text wasn't sharp, it wasn't 80 columns and it had no good wordprocessors or spreadsheets. An 8088 with 256k of RAM and a mono monitor was a FAR better business machine.. and in it's heyday... FAR more expensive too. IIRC, the C=64 was cheap and well in decline in 91.
Just because you found a problem which fits the solution, doesn't mean it isn't a solution looking for a problem :-)
BTW, congratulations on finding the second problem which suits the solution. We now have a device good for:
So we'll have sales for medical conditions where wheelchairs can't be used, and for people who can't use bicycles because it takes too long to get on and off of them.
No that I'm having any second thoughts about the device's uselessness, but I would love to see how the device with its gyroscopic balancing handles on the ice.
There could be a whole market for gyroscopic stand-up mini-taboggans.
How do people patent this stuff? It's not new, it's not exciting, lots of people have already thought better than to implement it.
IMHO they're a pretty stupid idea. Most sidewalks are so chaotic that they wouldn't be worth riding anyways. They're too expensive to lock outside, too heavy to carry into the office or onto public transit, too big to stuff under your desk... never mind how they'll do for vehicle range or power consumption. They're not sheltered, so there's no advantage in the rain, they're too slow for the roads, too slow for bicycle lanes even, but too fast to go anywhere people go.
They're a solution looking for a problem.
Get a Google appliance and set it loose on the web?
So if a place is insecure, and it is broken into, the criminal should be held accountable for what is involved to make the place secure?
That's why there's one criminal charge for "Break and enter" and there's another criminal charge for "Theft over blah." I believe they also look at the intent.
Analogies suck. They don't work for this sort of thing. But we're forced to use them because the laws aren't tailored for these kinds of crimes.
If a 15 year old kid walks up to a bank, pulls the door key from under a mat, walks in, reads the vault combination from a sticky note on the manager's desk, opens up the vault and relieves himself, then walks away with the doors wide open, should they be charged with the same thing as a 30-year old who walks in afterwards and takes all the money?
One is trespassing and vandalism, the other is theft, oddly enough, neither to me is break-and-enter. I would love to know the opinion of a lawyer.
The argument that web sites have to be rebuilt and re-secured is stupid. Just imagine what a judge would say "So you're saying that your web site was secure, a 15-year old broke in, and now soley because of their action, the site can no longer be considered secure?"