Oh come on... If you are witing ugly PHP code then you don't know the language.
Heh, that doesn't really change the argument, does it? PHP I've seen is either: mine or someone else's (or a combination). Mine might be pretty enough, but the vast majority of the code I've seen must have been by people who didn't know the language. Or didn't know how to maintain PHP. Or both.
Why is this guy trying to make ESR's quote, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." expand to mean that there won't be bugs?
The quote simply says: If there are a lot of people troubleshooting code, then all bugs are no big deal.
I don't know if that's provable, but it seems to be true. If you throw a whole team at fixing a bug in a proprietary program environment, then it seems intuitive that they'll understood a lot quicker than one guy working on the same problem. Why? Because when you hit the foo code, you can ask Fred, the foo expert. Then when the bug is in the bar code, you can ask Dave, the bar expert.
It doesn't say anything about there being no bugs or no security holes.
In fact, I'd say that if you wanted software that is security hole free, then the only program you can run are ones that you, yourself, audit at the assembly level.:-)
Anyway, I think the redeeming security related quality of open source is that the end-users can have some influence on the software and things like security holes are fixed really quickly.
Why is the company that has a monopoly on the infrastructure allowed to offer services on them? Wouldn't it be a good idea to have only *one* company own the wires, but then not allow them to sell services (phone, tv, internet) over them? This would work for rural as well as urban areas, since once the wires are in place and ready for a service to run on them, the cost to a phone company is pretty low. Especially given that wires (phone-wire, coax, or fibre) can run multiple "services"? Such as TV, Internet, Phone, etc.?
> Dude, why *would* I want to debug the systems' calls.
I don't think he was saying you want to debug other people's stuff. If you have a full debugging version of all the libraries (your and other peoples) it is *much much* easier to debug problems.
And even though I may not want to debug other people's libraries and such, I have had to. This is how I have found bugs in things like PHP, mod_python and such. They were corner cases to those developers, but they weren't for my applications. I'm thankful I could track those problems down, because my application got back up and running again. Not usually the case when I have proprietary closed libraries.
Your quote in the sig is very close. It should read: "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." -- George H.W. Bush, August 27, 1987
Does someone have Mr. Lyons's email address? Or some more info on him? I am not familiar with this gentleman, and would like an opertunity to explain some of the mistakes, if he indeed cares.
If he doesn't, then his editor's email address would be needed too....
I think the work is amoral, not immoral. Immoral implies that are aware of morals, and act contrary to them.
That isn't true, as you point out; they are avaricious and amoral. It's a bad combination, and it's why the original founders of the USA were against corporations; they had limited lifetimes and had to act in the public good, directly (simply not acting against the public good wasn't enough).
IANAL and I probably don't even understand the issues. I program code, not law.
My understanding is that a normal Subpoena is part of due process. But the DMCA allows subpoena's to be gotten with a clerk's signature without having a judge involved at all.
This would allow *anyone* to issue a subpoena with just a clerk's signature. Note that no legal review is needed.
We could (for example) take down the a major record label's site by submitting to a clerk (in the right district) that we own the copyright for (insert name of something you really do own the copyright for) and that their site is violating it.
The ISP will have to turn off the site for a period of time. When we get to court, we just say "oops, our bad.".
Repeat with every reader on slashdot, and it might make some sites stay off the net for a long while...
Yeah, a
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy video game would be interesting... Lends a whole new meaning to "A game is a series of interesting choices", doesn't it.:-)
Ciao!
You're not correct. I have all Linux computers, but I am an avid gamer (playing some games via WineX) and own several consoles: Dreamcast, Genesis, Gamecube, PS1, PS2 and an X-Box.
I hate Microsofts operating system. It cheeses me off to no end, and my wife isn't too fond of it, now that I make her install and manage it herself. (I got sick of it).
I know several other people (even ones who have Windows OS) who mainly play in Linux or a Console or both.
Ciao!
Not new, just new versions...
on
Corn-Based Plastic
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
While in college, I went to an Agriculture College Open House at the University of Illinios at Urbana/Champaign and they had this stuff there at the time. This would have been around 94 or so.
They even had packing peanuts made of the stuff that they handed out for people to eat (it was very very bland, but edible). I figure you could live off of it if you got trapped in a UPS truck or something.
Anyway, I think it's a neat idea. At the time, the packing peanuts were cost effective (and were going to roll out in a company someplace. I saw them a few years later) but the harder stuff wasn't yet. But they had examples of stuff molded out of it.
Yes, GTA3 is tied to the PS2. But the PS2 doesn't have a monopoly on the game console market. You have choices. In fact, you can run GTA3:VC on an emulator and that is fine.
MS has a monopoly. It was ruled such. They are using tying (in this case VFP) to prevent anyone else (in this case WINE/WINEX) from entering their OS market to compete with them.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but neither are you. *grin* So I have no problem with discussing this with you till one shows up.
Bundling is exactly what people are talking about. If MS is asserting that VFP must only be run on windows, then they have just bundled MS OS with VFP.
You are unable to use VFP without another MS product (the OS). This is what bundling is. It's the tying of one product to another. Making one product only available with the purchase of another.
Now, IANAL but I would think that being able to buy VFP and be given the choice of a) not using it at all or b) buy an MS OS isn't much of a choice at all.
If the web designer wants to set the width, then they should use CSS and set the width based on character widths. This would allow people to bump up the font size and keep it looking good.
But then agin, the whole thing is irritating. Web designers forget, unlike TV, surfing isn't passive. You piss of a viewer, they walk.
Royalties are not paid to the artist. The artist pays for airplay. At least that's the way this reads: Don Henley's Testominial.
Ciao!
A Summary of the Section the article talks about
on
Cable TV A La Carte?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Here is a summary of the part of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 that is being refered to:
Prohibits (with exceptions) a cable operator from: (1) requiring the subscription to any tier other than the basic service tier as a condition of access to cable programming offered on a per channel or per program basis; or (2) discriminating between subscribers to the basic service tier and other subscribers with respect to rates charged for video programming offered on a per channel or per program basis.
So, it says that if a channel is offered alone, then the cable company cannot say must buy something else first. However, in the case of (for example) the Home And Garden channel, they don't sell it alone, so you cannot buy it alone.
Cable Companies have actually been doing this for a while, but you have to ask explicitly for it. Even (on occassion) forcing the sales person to talk to their manager.
Why don't they just bathe the auditorium with infrared light. The digital cam-corders and video-tape cam corders are sensitive to the IR light . It wouldn't stop good old film cameras, but I don't think they are as easy or cost effective to pirate with.
You heard it here first. Anyone want to patent this idea so?
The point would be to deliver the song, make it nice enough that it would be "okay", but anyone who liked it a long would, while listening, think "gee, I should buy the album because it sounds better".
Other alternatives could be to run it through a process to pull out the highs and lows, so it sounds more like a "radio" recording, or something similar.
128k VBR mp3s are pretty nice sounding. Maybe 96k. Ogg presents another problem, in that 64k oggs actually sound pretty nice.
The point was to offer enough for buying the CD that people want to. Extras in the CD, the fact the mp3s would be lower quality, etc.
If the low quality mp3s are good enough, then yeah, you won't buy the CD, but in the past, you probably would have been the same guy who taped the song off the radio and never buys the album anyway.
True; but if someone buys a cd, hands some MP3s to some friends and they like your CD, then go and buy it, then you'd have multiple sales where with "sooper-dooper DRM" you'd probably only have the initial one.
Remember to look at all the costs and benefits. You don't have radio (most likely, since you said you didn't have a lable) to promote you. No MTV either. So word of mouth is it.
I would suggest that you try the following: * Make your CDs a have very high quality "value added" cd booklets and such. You know, like vinyl records used to do. I find music much more enjoyable when you know the why and wherefores. * Put up crappy (but reasonable) 64k mp3/oggs on your web site, or on a data track on your CD. Say it's free for sharing. Make sure the ID3 info is correct and have a URL for buying the CD. Include descriptions and photos of the CD (all those extras, you know).
You watch, you'll get people who: * Like one song, they keep the crappy mp3 and are happy. Maybe someone else will hear it and be interested. These correspond to radio listeners and radio recorder people. * Like a lot, and buy the CD * Wanna have the CD, 'cause it's cool.
Remember, you aren't selling CDs, your selling *yourself*.
I realize, of course, that you may live off of this money, but I **really** want to see what happens when you try the above.
BTW: You forgot a link to where we could hear some of your music and learn more about you.
Slashdot Mirror
Apps have two "flags" that can be set:
* Paid -- a payment is required.
* Copy Protected -- The user isn't allowed to copy the app.
With ADP1.1, you can see and download applications as long as they don't have the copy protection flag turned on.
This means you can purchase apps or download the free ones; unless the app is copy protected.
This is because the copy protection is simply filesystem based: the apps are placed in a directory only root can access.
If you have an ADP1.1, the you can access this copy protected directory.
Google claimed that they deliberately didn't do "forward-locking" because it was error prone and ruined the experience for users.
Ciao!
That is one of the best suggested ways to use PHP I have EVER heard of. That is truely a good tip.
Ciao!
Oh come on... If you are witing ugly PHP code then you don't know the language.
Heh, that doesn't really change the argument, does it? PHP I've seen is either: mine or someone else's (or a combination). Mine might be pretty enough, but the vast majority of the code I've seen must have been by people who didn't know the language. Or didn't know how to maintain PHP. Or both.
Sick of the problems with PHP? Badly implimented APIs, web pages with ugly code buried everyplace doing things that it should be?
Try PSE! It cures warts, common colds and PHP!
http://nick.borko.org/pse/
Ciao!
Why is this guy trying to make ESR's quote, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." expand to mean that there won't be bugs?
:-)
The quote simply says: If there are a lot of people troubleshooting code, then all bugs are no big deal.
I don't know if that's provable, but it seems to be true. If you throw a whole team at fixing a bug in a proprietary program environment, then it seems intuitive that they'll understood a lot quicker than one guy working on the same problem. Why? Because when you hit the foo code, you can ask Fred, the foo expert. Then when the bug is in the bar code, you can ask Dave, the bar expert.
It doesn't say anything about there being no bugs or no security holes.
In fact, I'd say that if you wanted software that is security hole free, then the only program you can run are ones that you, yourself, audit at the assembly level.
Anyway, I think the redeeming security related quality of open source is that the end-users can have some influence on the software and things like security holes are fixed really quickly.
Ciao!
Why is the company that has a monopoly on the infrastructure allowed to offer services on them? Wouldn't it be a good idea to have only *one* company own the wires, but then not allow them to sell services (phone, tv, internet) over them? This would work for rural as well as urban areas, since once the wires are in place and ready for a service to run on them, the cost to a phone company is pretty low. Especially given that wires (phone-wire, coax, or fibre) can run multiple "services"? Such as TV, Internet, Phone, etc.?
Ciao!
> Dude, why *would* I want to debug the systems' calls.
I don't think he was saying you want to debug other people's stuff. If you have a full debugging version of all the libraries (your and other peoples) it is *much much* easier to debug problems.
And even though I may not want to debug other people's libraries and such, I have had to. This is how I have found bugs in things like PHP, mod_python and such. They were corner cases to those developers, but they weren't for my applications. I'm thankful I could track those problems down, because my application got back up and running again. Not usually the case when I have proprietary closed libraries.
Ciao!
Your quote in the sig is very close. It should read:
"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
-- George H.W. Bush, August 27, 1987
Ciao!
Does someone have Mr. Lyons's email address? Or some more info on him? I am not familiar with this gentleman, and would like an opertunity to explain some of the mistakes, if he indeed cares.
If he doesn't, then his editor's email address would be needed too....
Ciao!
I think the work is amoral, not immoral. Immoral implies that are aware of morals, and act contrary to them.
That isn't true, as you point out; they are avaricious and amoral. It's a bad combination, and it's why the original founders of the USA were against corporations; they had limited lifetimes and had to act in the public good, directly (simply not acting against the public good wasn't enough).
Ciao!
IANAL and I probably don't even understand the issues. I program code, not law.
My understanding is that a normal Subpoena is part of due process. But the DMCA allows subpoena's to be gotten with a clerk's signature without having a judge involved at all.
This would allow *anyone* to issue a subpoena with just a clerk's signature. Note that no legal review is needed.
We could (for example) take down the a major record label's site by submitting to a clerk (in the right district) that we own the copyright for (insert name of something you really do own the copyright for) and that their site is violating it.
The ISP will have to turn off the site for a period of time. When we get to court, we just say "oops, our bad.".
Repeat with every reader on slashdot, and it might make some sites stay off the net for a long while...
Ciao!
Yeah, a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy video game would be interesting... Lends a whole new meaning to "A game is a series of interesting choices", doesn't it. :-)
Ciao!
You're not correct. I have all Linux computers, but I am an avid gamer (playing some games via WineX) and own several consoles:
Dreamcast, Genesis, Gamecube, PS1, PS2 and an X-Box.
I hate Microsofts operating system. It cheeses me off to no end, and my wife isn't too fond of it, now that I make her install and manage it herself. (I got sick of it).
I know several other people (even ones who have Windows OS) who mainly play in Linux or a Console or both.
Ciao!
While in college, I went to an Agriculture College Open House at the University of Illinios at Urbana/Champaign and they had this stuff there at the time. This would have been around 94 or so.
They even had packing peanuts made of the stuff that they handed out for people to eat (it was very very bland, but edible). I figure you could live off of it if you got trapped in a UPS truck or something.
Anyway, I think it's a neat idea. At the time, the packing peanuts were cost effective (and were going to roll out in a company someplace. I saw them a few years later) but the harder stuff wasn't yet. But they had examples of stuff molded out of it.
Ciao!
Yes, GTA3 is tied to the PS2. But the PS2 doesn't have a monopoly on the game console market. You have choices. In fact, you can run GTA3:VC on an emulator and that is fine.
MS has a monopoly. It was ruled such. They are using tying (in this case VFP) to prevent anyone else (in this case WINE/WINEX) from entering their OS market to compete with them.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but neither are you. *grin* So I have no problem with discussing this with you till one shows up.
Ciao!
Bundling is exactly what people are talking about. If MS is asserting that VFP must only be run on windows, then they have just bundled MS OS with VFP.
You are unable to use VFP without another MS product (the OS). This is what bundling is. It's the tying of one product to another. Making one product only available with the purchase of another.
Now, IANAL but I would think that being able to buy VFP and be given the choice of a) not using it at all or b) buy an MS OS isn't much of a choice at all.
Ciao!If the web designer wants to set the width, then they should use CSS and set the width based on character widths. This would allow people to bump up the font size and keep it looking good.
But then agin, the whole thing is irritating. Web designers forget, unlike TV, surfing isn't passive. You piss of a viewer, they walk.
Ciao!
Royalties are not paid to the artist. The artist pays for airplay. At least that's the way this reads: Don Henley's Testominial.
Ciao!
Here is a summary of the part of the
0 12:@@@L&summ2=m&|TOM:/bss/d102query.html|
Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 that is being refered to:
Prohibits (with exceptions) a cable operator from: (1) requiring the subscription to any tier other than the basic service tier as a condition of access to cable programming offered on a per channel or per program basis; or (2) discriminating between subscribers to the basic service tier and other subscribers with respect to rates charged for video programming offered on a per channel or per program basis.
Gotten from: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:SN00
So, it says that if a channel is offered alone, then the cable company cannot say must buy something else first. However, in the case of (for example) the Home And Garden channel, they don't sell it alone, so you cannot buy it alone.
Cable Companies have actually been doing this for a while, but you have to ask explicitly for it. Even (on occassion) forcing the sales person to talk to their manager.
I would love to buy channels ala cart, though.
Ciao!
So if I'm a professional and I charge $100/hour and it takes me 3 hours to do the work, I can't take them to court?
But, if I hire out my friend to do the work at $100/hour then I can?
Seems weird, since if I'm a pro, and I end up doing "professional" work because someone messing something up....
I mean, if someone smashes into my house, and I'm a contractor and I fix it, I couldn't take them to small claims for the work I did?
Ciao!
Why don't they just bathe the auditorium with infrared light. The digital cam-corders and video-tape cam corders are sensitive to the IR light . It wouldn't stop good old film cameras, but I don't think they are as easy or cost effective to pirate with.
You heard it here first. Anyone want to patent this idea so?
Ciao!
The point would be to deliver the song, make it nice enough that it would be "okay", but anyone who liked it a long would, while listening, think "gee, I should buy the album because it sounds better".
Other alternatives could be to run it through a process to pull out the highs and lows, so it sounds more like a "radio" recording, or something similar.
128k VBR mp3s are pretty nice sounding. Maybe 96k. Ogg presents another problem, in that 64k oggs actually sound pretty nice.
Ciao!
The point was to offer enough for buying the CD that people want to. Extras in the CD, the fact the mp3s would be lower quality, etc.
If the low quality mp3s are good enough, then yeah, you won't buy the CD, but in the past, you probably would have been the same guy who taped the song off the radio and never buys the album anyway.
Ciao!
True; but if someone buys a cd, hands some MP3s to some friends and they like your CD, then go and buy it, then you'd have multiple sales where with "sooper-dooper DRM" you'd probably only have the initial one.
Remember to look at all the costs and benefits. You don't have radio (most likely, since you said you didn't have a lable) to promote you. No MTV either. So word of mouth is it.
I would suggest that you try the following:
* Make your CDs a have very high quality "value added" cd booklets and such. You know, like vinyl records used to do. I find music much more enjoyable when you know the why and wherefores.
* Put up crappy (but reasonable) 64k mp3/oggs on your web site, or on a data track on your CD. Say it's free for sharing. Make sure the ID3 info is correct and have a URL for buying the CD. Include descriptions and photos of the CD (all those extras, you know).
You watch, you'll get people who:
* Like one song, they keep the crappy mp3 and are happy. Maybe someone else will hear it and be interested. These correspond to radio listeners and radio recorder people.
* Like a lot, and buy the CD
* Wanna have the CD, 'cause it's cool.
Remember, you aren't selling CDs, your selling *yourself*.
I realize, of course, that you may live off of this money, but I **really** want to see what happens when you try the above.
BTW: You forgot a link to where we could hear some of your music and learn more about you.
Ciao!
How about linux on my Sharp Zaurus, does that count? I have sound, save games and all the treasure of Melee Island(TM) in the Palm of my hand.
More Info
Ciao!