This was proposed in Sweden, and it's as lousy an idea now as it was then. There was a public outcry since the only thing something like this will do is to legitimize spam. Enforced opt-in or a ban of spam altogether is the real solution. And, honestly, how many people think that this opt-out list will be used as anything except a list of addresses to spam? Now the governent does the address harvesting for you!
A quick comment about all movies being released
simultaneously everywhere: this looks like it's
actually happening. Here in Sweden, the time from the US release to the screening here has gone down quite noticably the last year. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut took ten months to get here, now one month or two seems to be the standard. I have no proof, but I suspect this is due to Region 1 DVDs being available before the movie went into theaters.
I believe you should forward your concerns to British Telecom. They have recently shown great interest in handling a prodigy.
Re:Ancient games should not be copyright released
on
Warez and Abandonware
·
· Score: 1
Abandonware is not a matter of profit or loss.
It is a matter of preservation of culture. We are
seeing a new form of expression and entertainment,
and it is a part of our legacy, just like books
or movies - except books don't come in proprietary
formats which will be unredable when the issuing
company goes out of business.
We can still watch the innovations in early cinema by Gorges Méliès. Why should we not also be able
to play the original Pacman and Space Invaders?
History will mention people like David Braben and
Shigeru Miyamoto in the same breath as Méliès
and Eisenstein, and history will thank us for svaing their works for the enjoyment of those who
come after us.
Assuming it is, this is the kind of stuff that belongs in a real museam. I'd hope that whoever wins will set up some sort of public display. That way everyone can enjoy it.
Actually, this is the reason that we need to keep abandonware, share and enjoy it. We need to write those emulators and keep them running. We must not
bow to those who fight abandonware just to show their power.
Why? Because video games are not less a form of culture than moviemaking. But we can still watch
the movies such as "Metropolis" that defined cinema. We should - nay, we must - also be able to play the original Pacman and Space Invaders, to name but a few.
Video games have become full-scale Hollywod-style productions. We need to know our roots and where we come from. Names like Andrew Braybrook, David Braben and Shigeru Miyamoto deserve to be mentioned
almong the side of Gorges Melies, Sergey Eiesenstein and Akira Kurosawa. This does belong
in a museum, but more importantly: The software and the means to play it should be preserved, or a
part of history will be lost.
Actually, the VIC20 has 4 Kb of memory by default.
I think the reason for the "VIC20" name was the 20 column display! (The C64 did indeed have 64 Kb of RAM once you switched out the ROM, but a 40 column display.)
The Swedish national newspaper Aftonbladet
published a story (in Swedish) this week about how lousy
the security of Hotmail really is.
To get the password of another hotmail user,
all you have to do is to send a forged mail to
hotmail staff and claim you have lost your
password. The only information you are asked
for is your victim's real name and birthday.
Hilariously, when asked to comment, a Microsoft representative stated that "Your hotmail address should not be distributed to unknown people."
And, let's not forget the "read anyone's mail" Hotmail incident some time back.
I don't think anything like this is feasible,
for the simple reason that a healthy species
*needs* genetic variation to survive.
Imagine the inbreeding problems when an entire
population is basically copies from one or a
few individuals!
There is also the question of whether the ecosystems have adapted to being without the extinct species for so long, that reintroducing that species will have the the same potential for messing up the ecosystem as introducing an alien species.
The Swedish Royal Library (which, similarly to the Library of Congress, archives everything published in its country), started a project like this in 1996. They're trying to archive stuff in Swedish, even if it's outside of.se. Swedish policy on registering domain names used to be stupidly restrictive until recently (only stock-holding companies were allowed to register under.se), so many people registrered under.com or.nu instead.
The contents downloaded will be saved as a "cultural heritage", and will most likely be held private by the researchers until copyright has expired. Yes, in the future, people will look at
your crummy homepage and see what people thought at that time!
I just have checked the pricing on their website. It's DM 89 (ca. 45 US$) for the personal and DM 129 (ca. 65 US$) for the professional version. Compare this to DM 229 (ca. 115 US$) for Red Hat Deluxe. So they are still pretty reasonable priced.
Except if you look at Suse's pages, one of the differences between the personal and professional versions is that the professional version includes "development tools". I looked at this closer, and the personal version does not include the header files necessary for building stuff with GTK, Gnome, QT or KDE. The SbLive driver is missing from the personal version. No PGP/GPG. No Enlightenment. The "personal" edition is pretty *badly* crippled, folks.
Those who don't want to hassle with the New York Times registration can use this URL to get straight to the article.
Seriously, I can't see any reason other than misguided RIAA-style "showing who's boss" to still guard 8-bit era software. I know, I have a page dedicated to my favourite C64 games and once received an appreciating letter from the creator of one of the games I included.
Just making an errata to my previous post here - there will be Slot A Durons / Thunderbirds made, but they will only be shipped to OEMs, which doesn't improve the situation for upgraders.
It's just too bad that these processors will be made available in a socket interface instead of the slot interface all current Athlon motherboards are available as. It makes upgrading a bit more expensive, as a new motherboard is needed. Apparently, it's also not feasible to make "slotket" converters for the Athon / Duron / Thunderbird / Mustang / K7 / Whatever.
"You can bypass the click-though licence agreement on Microsoft's PAC specification by opening the file with WinZip instead of running the file". There. Have you violated the DMCA today?
This whole thing sinks or swims on the trade secret argument. Can a trade secret be widely distributed and protected with a clickwrap agreement?
Microsoft migtht have a legitimate concern with the posts where the contects of the specification were posted verbatim. That's a question of copyright, not trade secrets. Of course, the question in that case is whether Slashdot can be made accountable for what something else posed in an unedited forum - do you sue the owner of a bathroom because someone wrote naughy stuff on the wall?
Then, there are the other posts Micros~1 wanted removed that were pointers. There Micros~1 is either relying on intimidation instead of common sense or expect us to be as stupid as them.
"You can bypass the click-though licence agreement on Microsoft's PAC specification by opening the file with WinZip instead of running the file". There. Have you violated the DMCA today?
Well, you can't accuse Microsoft of not coming up with innovative ways of shooting themselves in the foot.
If the world was sensible, I'd look forward to having this tried in court - many of the requests to remove material are so obviously preposterous that Micros~1 ought to be laughed out of court. With the DeCSS / CyberPatrol / MP3.com idiocy going on, I'm not so sure any more.
"You can bypass the click-though licence agreement on Microsoft's PAC specification by opening the file with WinZip instead of running the file". There. Have you violated the DMCA today?
You know, it's sad that Jon Katz has proven himself to be an alarmist, overreacting, attention-seeking gasbag in desparate need of recognition, since this *is* an important issue to think about.
When you attend a school, you are not a someone working at a job. You are a slave, bound by law to spend your time there, no matter how bad the conditions. Even here in Sweden, a nation not known for school violence, some telling articles hit the papers. In one school, urinary tract infections were increasing at an alarming rate. Why? The school board decided to close down most of the school's restrooms after one toilet had been vandalised. This is not an isolated instance. It is quite common for the whool school to be punished for the actions of one student. An environment not suitable for humans is not the place to grow up in.
Don't forget the classic "The Last Ninja", which spawned The Last Ninja 2, The Last Ninja 3, and Ninja Remix (a rerelease of Last Ninja 2 with an added intro and different music).
Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that the Academy lost the category for Best Score in a Musical or Comedy just in time for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut - one which it deserved not only to be nominated in, but to win?
This might be the Academy making up for it, but the other nominees (Music of the Heart, Magnolia, Toy Story 2, Tarzan) suggests they were short of options.
It will be fun to see if they will play the nominated songs, as they ususally, and in that case, what they'll do with the line:
And my boy Eric once had my picture on his shelf But now when I see him he tells me to fuck myself
On a side note, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut just went up in theaters here in Sweden. (No, it doesn't ususally take that long for movies to get here.) The Swedish ratings board gave it a rating of Suitable For Children 7 and up, which is more lenient than E.T., but harsher than the G-rated American Pie.
This is news because Directrory Opus is one of the two reasons I kept using my Amiga even when it went way outdated, and why I could use it to feed my/. addiction even this week when my usual Linux box went down.
For those who don't know what DirOpus does, it's a file managment tool in the vein of Norton / Midnight commander, except it's everything those tools ever wanted to become. A port of it would be a Good Thing (TM).
Besides, I feel more manufacturers should set their software free when the commercial value of it has run dry. After all, that's not the only kind of value a program has. A good example is Ian Bell's release of Elite.
Please note that my native tounge is the closely related Swedish and not Norwegian, so there may be errors in this.
Computer-Jon on US television
Now the American broadcast news too have caught interest in the sensational action of the Economic Crimes Division against Jon Johansen (16). Today ABC News is in Vestfold to interview the Norwegian computer genius.
The feature is planned to air on World News Tonight, (comparison with a Norwegian show), aired across the entire USA.
"We want to meet him at his school to shoot him in the surroundings there, and at home in front of the computer, where we will interview him about his view on things. Of course we will link this to the current trials in the US, where the film industry want to remove links to Johansen's program", says Norwegian Svien Mikkelsen of ABC News.
"Could be something big"
"We will also interview Jon Bing, and perhaps someone from the Economic Crimes Division. Currently we are the first of the major networks with this news", Mikkelsen says.
He works at the London office of ABC, and was the one to bring the matter to the attention of the editors in New York from the Norwegian media.
"This could be something big, even if computer news are traditionally seen more as fringe stuff. It's also possible for the feature to air in the weekend edition", Mikkelsen says.
It was on Monday the Economic Crimes Division raided the home of Johansen, after the americam film giants has reported him for crimes against penal and copyright law. They claim that Johansen has cracked codes on DVD movies and constructed a program which can be used for unlawful copying of movies.
Johanses claims that the purpose of the program is to allow playing DVD movies on PCs with the Linux operating system, and that it's both lawful and (user friendly | beneficial to users).
Not Alone
In the wake of the enormous attention this matter has recieved it has also been brought forth that Jon Johansen didn't perform the actual cracking. But he informed Verldens Gang of that himself in an interview in November last year:
"It is annoying that the media prints "15-year-old cracks code". I didn't do this alone, but in cooperation with others, a Dutch and a German. You're not getting the names, but we call ourselves MoRE," Jon said that time.
The German is alleged to have performed the actual cracking, and constructed the DeCSS program that Johansen put on his home page.
Could someone please explain to me all the hype behind XML and why it's supposed to change anything? They way I see it, it's nothing except SGML light. Though SGML gave us HTML, a good thing, I don't see anyone hyping that old workhorse as Our Next Savior.
While having unified file formats is a good thing, is there a way to specify the actual semantics of the markup and not just the syntax? That is, how does a XML user read $4711 and know anything else that it's syntactically valid and matches the string of symbols "price"?
Sure, you can write your own DTD, and others can parse and validate it, but can they understand it?
In my opinion, the kiss of death of XML is the "support" for XML file formats in Office 2000, which I've heard are just the bastardized incompatible embrace-and-extend jobs we'd come to expect from Redmond. The promise of XML was that anyone could read an XML word document and reconstruct Word's intentions from it - obviously this is not happening.
Please understand that is is just my look at things, and that I may be wrong in any number of the above assertions. These questions are not rethorical.
Slashdot Mirror
This was proposed in Sweden, and it's as lousy an idea now as it was then. There was a public outcry since the only thing something like this will do is to legitimize spam. Enforced opt-in or a ban of spam altogether is the real solution. And, honestly, how many people think that this opt-out list will be used as anything except a list of addresses to spam? Now the governent does the address harvesting for you!
Wasn't this exactly the plot device behind the Bond movie "Goldeneye"? Now we know where the USA's top military minds get their ideas from!
A quick comment about all movies being released simultaneously everywhere: this looks like it's actually happening. Here in Sweden, the time from the US release to the screening here has gone down quite noticably the last year. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut took ten months to get here, now one month or two seems to be the standard. I have no proof, but I suspect this is due to Region 1 DVDs being available before the movie went into theaters.
I believe you should forward your concerns to British Telecom. They have recently shown great interest in handling a prodigy.
We can still watch the innovations in early cinema by Gorges Méliès. Why should we not also be able to play the original Pacman and Space Invaders?
History will mention people like David Braben and Shigeru Miyamoto in the same breath as Méliès and Eisenstein, and history will thank us for svaing their works for the enjoyment of those who come after us.
Why? Because video games are not less a form of culture than moviemaking. But we can still watch the movies such as "Metropolis" that defined cinema. We should - nay, we must - also be able to play the original Pacman and Space Invaders, to name but a few.
Video games have become full-scale Hollywod-style productions. We need to know our roots and where we come from. Names like Andrew Braybrook, David Braben and Shigeru Miyamoto deserve to be mentioned almong the side of Gorges Melies, Sergey Eiesenstein and Akira Kurosawa. This does belong in a museum, but more importantly: The software and the means to play it should be preserved, or a part of history will be lost.
To get the password of another hotmail user, all you have to do is to send a forged mail to hotmail staff and claim you have lost your password. The only information you are asked for is your victim's real name and birthday.
Hilariously, when asked to comment, a Microsoft representative stated that "Your hotmail address should not be distributed to unknown people."
And, let's not forget the "read anyone's mail" Hotmail incident some time back.
Imagine the inbreeding problems when an entire population is basically copies from one or a few individuals!
There is also the question of whether the ecosystems have adapted to being without the extinct species for so long, that reintroducing that species will have the the same potential for messing up the ecosystem as introducing an alien species.
The contents downloaded will be saved as a "cultural heritage", and will most likely be held private by the researchers until copyright has expired. Yes, in the future, people will look at your crummy homepage and see what people thought at that time!
You can find out more at http://kulturarw3.kb.se/html/projectdescription.ht ml.
Seriously, I can't see any reason other than misguided RIAA-style "showing who's boss" to still guard 8-bit era software. I know, I have a page dedicated to my favourite C64 games and once received an appreciating letter from the creator of one of the games I included.
Just making an errata to my previous post here - there will be Slot A Durons / Thunderbirds made, but they will only be shipped to OEMs, which doesn't improve the situation for upgraders.
"You can bypass the click-though licence agreement on Microsoft's PAC specification by opening the file with WinZip instead of running the file". There. Have you violated the DMCA today?
Then, there are the other posts Micros~1 wanted removed that were pointers. There Micros~1 is either relying on intimidation instead of common sense or expect us to be as stupid as them.
"You can bypass the click-though licence agreement on Microsoft's PAC specification by opening the file with WinZip instead of running the file". There. Have you violated the DMCA today?
If the world was sensible, I'd look forward to having this tried in court - many of the requests to remove material are so obviously preposterous that Micros~1 ought to be laughed out of court. With the DeCSS / CyberPatrol / MP3.com idiocy going on, I'm not so sure any more.
"You can bypass the click-though licence agreement on Microsoft's PAC specification by opening the file with WinZip instead of running the file". There. Have you violated the DMCA today?
Seriously, I'm a bit skeptical to the idea of construction by essentially throwing dice.
When you attend a school, you are not a someone working at a job. You are a slave, bound by law to spend your time there, no matter how bad the conditions. Even here in Sweden, a nation not known for school violence, some telling articles hit the papers. In one school, urinary tract infections were increasing at an alarming rate. Why? The school board decided to close down most of the school's restrooms after one toilet had been vandalised. This is not an isolated instance. It is quite common for the whool school to be punished for the actions of one student. An environment not suitable for humans is not the place to grow up in.
Don't forget the classic "The Last Ninja", which spawned The Last Ninja 2, The Last Ninja 3, and Ninja Remix (a rerelease of Last Ninja 2 with an added intro and different music).
You know, comments like that hurt. Do you really want to hurt me?
This might be the Academy making up for it, but the other nominees (Music of the Heart, Magnolia, Toy Story 2, Tarzan) suggests they were short of options.
It will be fun to see if they will play the nominated songs, as they ususally, and in that case, what they'll do with the line:
On a side note, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut just went up in theaters here in Sweden. (No, it doesn't ususally take that long for movies to get here.) The Swedish ratings board gave it a rating of Suitable For Children 7 and up, which is more lenient than E.T., but harsher than the G-rated American Pie.For those who don't know what DirOpus does, it's a file managment tool in the vein of Norton / Midnight commander, except it's everything those tools ever wanted to become. A port of it would be a Good Thing (TM).
Besides, I feel more manufacturers should set their software free when the commercial value of it has run dry. After all, that's not the only kind of value a program has. A good example is Ian Bell's release of Elite.
Computer-Jon on US television
Now the American broadcast news too have caught interest in the sensational action of the Economic Crimes Division against Jon Johansen (16). Today ABC News is in Vestfold to interview the Norwegian computer genius.
The feature is planned to air on World News Tonight, (comparison with a Norwegian show), aired across the entire USA.
"We want to meet him at his school to shoot him in the surroundings there, and at home in front of the computer, where we will interview him about his view on things. Of course we will link this to the current trials in the US, where the film industry want to remove links to Johansen's program", says Norwegian Svien Mikkelsen of ABC News.
"Could be something big"
"We will also interview Jon Bing, and perhaps someone from the Economic Crimes Division. Currently we are the first of the major networks with this news", Mikkelsen says.
He works at the London office of ABC, and was the one to bring the matter to the attention of the editors in New York from the Norwegian media.
"This could be something big, even if computer news are traditionally seen more as fringe stuff. It's also possible for the feature to air in the weekend edition", Mikkelsen says.
It was on Monday the Economic Crimes Division raided the home of Johansen, after the americam film giants has reported him for crimes against penal and copyright law. They claim that Johansen has cracked codes on DVD movies and constructed a program which can be used for unlawful copying of movies.
Johanses claims that the purpose of the program is to allow playing DVD movies on PCs with the Linux operating system, and that it's both lawful and (user friendly | beneficial to users).
Not Alone
In the wake of the enormous attention this matter has recieved it has also been brought forth that Jon Johansen didn't perform the actual cracking. But he informed Verldens Gang of that himself in an interview in November last year:
"It is annoying that the media prints "15-year-old cracks code". I didn't do this alone, but in cooperation with others, a Dutch and a German. You're not getting the names, but we call ourselves MoRE," Jon said that time.
The German is alleged to have performed the actual cracking, and constructed the DeCSS program that Johansen put on his home page.
While having unified file formats is a good thing, is there a way to specify the actual semantics of the markup and not just the syntax? That is, how does a XML user read $4711 and know anything else that it's syntactically valid and matches the string of symbols "price"?
Sure, you can write your own DTD, and others can parse and validate it, but can they understand it?
In my opinion, the kiss of death of XML is the "support" for XML file formats in Office 2000, which I've heard are just the bastardized incompatible embrace-and-extend jobs we'd come to expect from Redmond. The promise of XML was that anyone could read an XML word document and reconstruct Word's intentions from it - obviously this is not happening.
Please understand that is is just my look at things, and that I may be wrong in any number of the above assertions. These questions are not rethorical.