I disagree with that characterization, on the grounds that
a) the usps *does* get a big fat subsidy as you say (at least that's my feeble understanding, though it doesn't fit with my point b) and I'd appreciated correction) and
b) they hold a monopoly on 1st class mail, the profits from which (around a billion in some recent years, not sure latest) subsidize their other services.
quasi-government, maybe, but about as private sector as Air America.
the iPAQ is silly, Sony's machines may be (?) great for some things (smart, like some HPs, to include both a CD-RW and a CD-R drive), and the Dell WebbedPC was a silliness that I bet still causes laughter in Round Rock.
Yes, Apple makes cool hardware in a way that no one else yet matches. The ultrathin Vaios (and the picturebook) are about the only notebooks which approach the current PowerBook (or even the iBook) in design excellence, IMO. (I like certain others for various other reasons, and I think ThinkPads look cool, but for shape spiffiness, Apple wins.) Not color (see below), but for shape, the iBook is rad. Wish it had an XGA screen and a DVD player -- in that case, I would buy one. The shape f the G3 ThinkPads is pretty cool, but a wee bit too contrivedly curvacious, and I think it fits less well there. I'm into the pixie shape of the iBook (Dominique Swain) a little more than the swoopier, fishnetted G3 (Lena Olin), even though I'd like the actual capabilities of the G3/400 more, and I want a 5-hour .
If they would make a *black* and clear iBook, all the males who don't savor carrying a disgusting orange notebook and who are a little iffy even on the gender-corrected baby blue one but would *enjoy* a sprightly, long-battery-life, Airport-ready notebook would snatch them up.
Those colored panels can't *really* cost that much, guys at Apple -- why not make them available to *anybody in any color they want?!* (or at the very least in the various colors you already buy the little plastic beads for, from snow to ruby...) So you need another order of lime green beads (hey, I liked my old green iMac, despite its flaws) and none of tangerine (ick -- so what?!) Aren't apples supposed to conform you your personality and all that?! Heck, IBM is currently offering more "personality matching" with their interchangeable color covers on some lines. That's stodgy, "any color so long as it's battery..blue," "a big ship takes long to turn," "nobody ever got fired for buying" frickin' IBM!
Weren't the iBooks going to have a sort of slip cover that would take paper inserts like a protective book cover?
So, agreed with jetso123 -- Apple is raising the state of the art in desktop computers. G3/G4 cases are nicer to work with than any PC case I've seen; Airport is relatively cheap for the Mac; fanless is rad. Bring it on with OS X. But please, upgrade the iBook (that graphite SE barely ranks notice, and not a couple of bills) with XGA, DVD and a video out...
If you've ever tried to interview anyone at Microsoft, you know that they are quite zealous about it -- an engineer at Microsoft would have to be cleared by the company to answer questions the way Ingo did. Are Redmond-cleared answers ones it would be worth fighting the bureacracy to obtain? I can't really see it...
More importantly (and to the point), I asked Ingo if he would mind answering questions in/. interview format after I saw him already answering questions at great length in the initial thread about TUX. If I find Microsoft engineers doing the same, then I would *absolutely* [Ja, hey Marge, you betcha!] solicit the same from them!:)
"Hey I agree about the DCMA. But with regards to cheap storage, in a couple years you will be able to ship people 1 gig harddrives for the same prive as a burned CD-R."
Well, I guess 1-gig drives aren't worth very much now, even;) but I can't buy that they'll be worth as little as a CD-R anytime soon. The materials alone are worth more in a hard drive, which has lots of little moving parts, integrated circuits, etc, than the materials in a CD-R / CD-RW. The size of one CD-R keeps becoming a smaller percenage of a typical hard drive (yay!), but if that CD-R will hold the length of a typical movie at acceptable quality (better than VHS resolution, a few artifacts I can live with, must include stereo if not surround sound), then I'd be willing to stick to it for a while rather than shuffle hard drives.
"Cheap compression will keep getting created, and thanks to opensource, someone will create something comparable to DivX or DVD or Zip or Tar or whatever. So why be concerned about the MPAA? Take your money elsewhere."
Well, the four letters that bother me more are really DMCA, it's just that the MPAA is one of the annoying DMCA suitors. You're right, no encryption / obfuscation will hide data forever, but the point is no industry should get to dictate private use of purchased materials. That should be a matter of contract -- if Tower Records starts exclusively *leasing* their stock, with terms in big print and agreed to by all purchasers, then Fine -- everyone enters with informed consent, even if the terms are silly. It's true that no one's forcing you to participate. But if you can purchase a movie and can't use it for reasons that are political more than they are practical, that's crummy.
Partly. General mutt, but, yeah, some Scottish. (Clan Graham, in fact, but I've learned there are two basically unrelated Clans Graham, and I can't say which... my brother claims some direct ancestor is featured as a character in Braveheart, and dies in the climactic battle, but I can't say I know how he researched that!)
And I like the word "ken" anyhow. In fact, look how many 3-letter words there are that share the same 2nd and 3rd letter!
ben den e'en (OK, an archaic contraction, but still) fen gen (commonly accepted shorthand for "generation") hen Jen (shorthand for Jennifer but also a name of its own sometimes) ken men pen ten yen zen
I think in the construction [noun or consonant] + [vowel] + n, *en wins hands down. And most of them could be used in Scrabble!
a) reverse engineering. The DMCA has some bad provisions in it. I've got nothing against the MPAA's members getting together and making it so annoying and inconvenient to view movies with other than approved hardware that doing so isn't worth the bother. Well, actually, I do have *something* against it, but I say that's within their rights. To make this into a point of law ("You're not even allowed to *try* to watch that movie on other than our approved hardware, mister!") I think is a terrible precedent. Not that it's alone... it's illegal to unscramble cable, too.
b) I've bought quite a few movies, but have no DVD player, having returned the two crummy Apex 600s which at least allowed me to briefly watch Casablanca and Annie Hall before dying. I'd like to watch movies on my monitor, or in the living room, without spending a few or several hundred more dollars on a player which does nothing an 80-dollar internal drive ought to be able to do.
c) Big studio releases -- is there really a 15th Anniv. edition of "Teen Wolf"?! Horrible! -- are one thing, but if the DivX format is widespread, we could see more independent, small-time filmmakers able to cheaply distribute their work on cheap CD-Rs. HOw many do you know who could mass-produce DVDs? With the right coupons, you can usually find blank CD-Rs for what, 30 cents apiece? Same goes for computers-as-VCRs; if I could put a few hours worth of shows onto a CD-R instead of a VHS tape for my personal timeshifted viewing, I'd prefer it. I could watch it on my desktop, on a laptop (when I get one -- anyone have a G3/400 PowerBook for sale, cheap?;) ), and I bet soon on DVD players which also playback the DivX format. Yes, I know it's not the same as the CircuitCity P.O.S. -- but how long did it take for DVD players to also play V-CDs and (finally) MP3s? Why not (the new) DivX?
So it's not the movies per se that are all that important (to me), it's the availability of readable formats and of high-quality compression for all the various uses it could be put to.
There could be a DivX-Plus (again, why not?) which mimicked features of DVD like greater interactivity / scene selection, etc -- would make a good format for instructional videos, say.
Them's my thoughts, which may have large holes in them.
Unless there is a way to defeat it within the VCR (they may be, but I don't know it), hooking a DVD player up to the aux video input on my family's (old, cheap) VCR results in activation of the Macrovision system -- the VCR detects a Macrovision-encoded video signal and says "uh, uh" -- the picture that leaks through is Macrovisioned splotchy / wavy / dark.
When I turn(ed*) off Macrovision, the picture was great.
That's why, for me anyhow:) The fuzzy logic of fighting unauthorized copying has led to some pretty silly micromanagement of home electronics when I can't take advantage of a single video input on a TV to watch more than one source without buying a distribution amp!
And as far as movies from India (or elsewhere), well... OK, so that doesn't interest you. To some others, it may be a big deal. We all have different tastes and priorities. Perhaps movies in their language aren't widely available in the U.S. Perhaps (and I know people with this complaint) they bought a number of movies before moving to the U.S. and some of those may never be made into Region 1 disks. Or maybe you move frequently from one country to another for work. The point to me is that it's needlessly restrictive.
The movie industry is free to engage in the petty tyranny of region coding as far as I'm concerned, but they're breeding the same kind of "respect" that scrambled cable did -- region-coded releases I think demonstrate a fairly crass indifference to the customer who purchases a film. And so many people have no compunction about breaking their system with hardware hacks like this.
timothy
*before I brought back the two separate P.O.S. Apex players, that is.
Most importantly, I agree that developers should be free to determine the disposition of their work. BSD or GPL licenses are valid choices that I am myself likely to be more comfortable with as a software *user* but sure, if a programmer / company prefers a proprietary license, that's up to them! No argument from me on that point. I don't believe in coercion -- doesn't mix well with creativity!
But since I neither want to use software against the legitimate wishes of its owner (though I have on occasion) nor do I want to spend my Hershey Bar money on software I'm not free to pass around myself. I will if that's the best option I see, though...
I like open source projects because I know they can / will be furthered as long as programmers are interested enough in them to work on their guts. Some of my favorite proprieatary programs, though, didn't succeed very well, because *my* mindshare wasn't enough to support their continued existence;) (T/Maker's WriteNow word processor for the Mac, for instance, I wish was Free / open source, so it could be updated for Linux... since it ran on NeXT machines before the Mac, that doesn't seem so outrageous...)
And anyhow, I'm personally more concerned about open / unobfuscated *file formats* than ridding the world of proprietary applications. So, really, I hope that if file converters *do* come out of the StarOffice thing that they are mostly in the direction of Word --> (XML / html / other documented format).
"Maybe the other office suites will improve as a result. I hope so. However, the Open Source community consistently projects the attitude that Free software from corporations presents nothing but a feeding ground for carrion birds. Why can't you improve StarOffice itself? Why do you flaunt your open hostility to commercial ventures that have chosen to support you?"
Whoah!:) I wrote the lines you object to, and I feel misinterpreted.
I can't flaunt open hostility toward anybody at all about Sun GPLing StarOffice, because I save my hostility for my zen-rock-garden social life! ("25y/o SWM, reasonable looking and employed, seeks curious, down-to-earth pixie with" -- oh never mind) I'm happy / pleased / surprised / impressed that they're even thinking about releasing it under an other-than-closed license.
As to it helping other projects, well... that wouldn't detract from SO, would it? There's risk (or several parallel risks) they take by releasing it GPL -- but SO is also free then to take code from AbiWord and other GPL projects. The street runs both ways! The license tiffs among the various One True Free Software Licenses are *nothing* beside the stark difference between Free (whether that means BSD, GPL or some other TLA to you) and proprietary.
Re: Leading, not following -- this may be a glass half empty glass half full type of issue, but it seems to me that a GPL'd star office will possible inspire several / many other efforts the same way Mozilla has -- perhaps it will provide the glue that an otherwise stuck project requires (as someone else has pointed out, import filters would be very helpful) or the inspiration to one-up SO in one or more vital aspects. No more harmful than WOrdPerfect and Word jockeying by adding things they think users will like. (Except with Free software, if you think the result is overburned, you can fix it to the limit of your time and inclination). Your description makes software sound like more of a zero-sum game than I think it really is, particularly with sharing-encouraged licenses.
Standing on the shoulders of giants and things like that is the end result I hope emerges, because I selfishly want to find / contribute at least some kvetching to a good Free word processor. I mentioned AbiWord because I like it's style and speed, but it would be even better if the unimplemented featuers *were* implemented. If I'd said "perhaps now SO can inherit some of the great design and ease of use of AbiWord," would that have jarred the same nerves? To me, they're morally equivalent ideas, I just see one as being closer to my ideal than the other. ymmv...
Also, "upstart Linux operating system" or even the "plucky OS that could." 10 years old (in present guise, count backwards as you like to the invention of UNIX, the invention of the telegraph, the invention of fire, etc) and millions of users may be a small slice of the pie, but it's not an "upstart" and it's plucky the way Lou Albino is plucky.
However, there could be much more rigidly defined things which Mitnick would be disallowed from doing which I would find reasonable. I don't know the exact terms of his parole, but not being able to use a computer for things like writing a column (like it or not, computer security is his area of expertise) or other innocuous things is like saying that the rapist doctor can't even enter a hospital to use the restroom.
I'm not particularly defending K. Mitnick here, really, but again, I'm worried about an era of perpetual, incremental punishment. There's a danger to an environment of ubiquitous graduated punishment and tailored prohibionism. I wonder when his probation's up; will he one day be allowed to touch a keyboard again?
Rombuu wrote: "Sure they can [deny Kevin Mitnick the right to computers]... people on probation can't buy guns, and no one seems to have a problem with that."
Actually, I do have a problem with a (non-violent) probationer being unable to buy a gun.
I worry about a multi-tiered society where what should be rights are instead viewed as priveleges, and on a sliding scale... [instead of slashdot pure, it could be "citizen ranking"]
I guess I prefer either concrete material damages assessed (for non violent crimes) or time served (for violent crimes) and after that, no lingering aftertaste imposing petty tyrannies of the sort mitnick has to. He (nearly) might as well be in jail.
What if a great musician picked people's pockets to the tune of millions of dollars while they were distracted by the sound of his (for instance) spellbindingly good kazoo playing. Would it be right to deny him the use of a kazoo once he's out of prison? A harmonica? Anything that makes notes?
Things like McIntosh componentry, and Wadia, some Arcam... they look utterly, ruggedly functional... like something out of a 50's space command center. Scientific, even.
The best thing about the new indrema look (to me) is the blue LED. I don't really like the asymetrical, lozengy, "swallowed by a large slug" look of this. It's sleek, but as Charlie Brown once asked Lucy, "How can a jumprope be hi-fi?"
Geese can be said to come in flocks as well as in gaggles; gaggle is mostly an archaism, though it is a nice one.
And the geese around Holland (where the scripts were thought of) have been hardened by years of industrial pollution, foul weather, fouler Norweigan- and Dutch-based swearing, and the day-of-the-dead fumes which permeate the region, whitening flesh and bracing the lungs. Evolution has formed them into extraordinary birds -- they can catch rabies, write symphonies and cook a six-course dinner -- and think nothing of it. They manifest more tropical diseases than you'd care to know about, too. Just shrug 'em off.
I should point out that David Tseng (of http://www.morrissey-solo.com) helped me find those titles by pointing me to http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~moz/.
And re: The Smiths: The day I turned 12, I got The Queen is Dead on cassette from a guy named Jeff Wilke, which cassette then took up a very large space in my brain as I listened to it nonstop for months. The older sister of a middle-school chum (Meg, sister of Mike Storey) got me hooked on Meat is Murder, Hatful of Hollow and Louder than Bombs. "I won't share you" has a pretty emotional twist for me, lemme tell you...
Lots of people submitted news about the NIC before it was really on sale again. The thing itself isn't that new (we covered it a while ago - the link I gave is to May 9th) but a lot of folks didn't use the search engine to find that out.
Your accusation of "rewriting without attribution" is simply way off base. In a snippet that short, there's bound to be overlap of information (now selling, cost, no longer donationware), but saying that someone plagiarized you is simply not nice. I saw several submissions about this, but yours was not among the ones that I read.
surfsalot wrote:"I think tim should get a life of his own. Too bad I'm too lazy to take him of the list of people whose postings I look at. Just cause rob likes the who and tim wants to be just like rob (who has the best posts) he has to mention the who. get a life of your own... "
Well, the guy who submitted the article mentioned the Who, but I sure have nothing to do with the Who. Rob likes them, and Rob is a nice and intelligent guy, but I'm not sure I could even identify a Who song other than "Pinball Wizard," which my middle-school music teacher foisted on my class in 7th or 8th grade (a while ago). I know there's a guy named Pete Townsend or Townshend or Townedshend (well, I know there's a guy with a name sort of like that) and, uh, that the kids are alright and uh... that's about it. People are free to like the Who, but I'm in the wrong demographic or something, since I think I would trade Who tickets for a nice dinner of Korean or Indian food and not feel cheated. The Pet Shop Boys are another matter!
Sorry about that laziness problem, but until you get some vivarin I guess you can just not click on stories I post:)
1) jumperless processor tweaking (not new by itself) 2) console-based chip multiplier changing 3) Duron support, which is neat considering that Durons are brand new, and will have at least one speed-enhancing MoBo from a reputable company basically from launch.
There are a lot of people who would like to play with overclocking but are too butterfingers to follow all the "Careful, this will void your warrantee" blowtorches-n-dremel tool directions of hardcore, "fine-line-between-treaking-and-destruction" insane overclockers. At least, I know there's at least one person in that category;)
OK, that was a flub (re. Javascript). Good point, sorry:)
But the rudeness of site certainly affected me -- I get to their intro site, and hitting the "back" button only relooads it. (I'm using Netcape 4.7, haven't done it with Mozilla yet).
Slashdot Mirror
The NIC sounds good for a lot of thing, but has two big problems, IMO:
...
... hmmm.
1) If I'm going to have a little hang-on-network / sit on counter Anything Box, I greedily want it to play DVDs.
2) The resolution. If it can't do XGA, I dunno if it's worth it. It's just not an 800x600 world any more
It's still very tempting as a public terminal for the common room in my apt, so my two roommates can check their email from it
timothy
I disagree with that characterization, on the grounds that
a) the usps *does* get a big fat subsidy as you say (at least that's my feeble understanding, though it doesn't fit with my point b) and I'd appreciated correction) and
b) they hold a monopoly on 1st class mail, the profits from which (around a billion in some recent years, not sure latest) subsidize their other services.
quasi-government, maybe, but about as private sector as Air America.
timothy
is the best word for it, and I was.
... unless this is a total hoax," right? ;)
I apologize -- it seemed plausible at the time. (and really, *wouldn't* a parasite co-processor like this make sense for some things?)
From now on, I should end any story I post with "
timothy
the iPAQ is silly, Sony's machines may be (?) great for some things (smart, like some HPs, to include both a CD-RW and a CD-R drive), and the Dell WebbedPC was a silliness that I bet still causes laughter in Round Rock.
...) So you need another order of lime green beads (hey, I liked my old green iMac, despite its flaws) and none of tangerine (ick -- so what?!) Aren't apples supposed to conform you your personality and all that?! Heck, IBM is currently offering more "personality matching" with their interchangeable color covers on some lines. That's stodgy, "any color so long as it's battery ..blue," "a big ship takes long to turn," "nobody ever got fired for buying" frickin' IBM!
...
Yes, Apple makes cool hardware in a way that no one else yet matches. The ultrathin Vaios (and the picturebook) are about the only notebooks which approach the current PowerBook (or even the iBook) in design excellence, IMO. (I like certain others for various other reasons, and I think ThinkPads look cool, but for shape spiffiness, Apple wins.) Not color (see below), but for shape, the iBook is rad. Wish it had an XGA screen and a DVD player -- in that case, I would buy one. The shape f the G3 ThinkPads is pretty cool, but a wee bit too contrivedly curvacious, and I think it fits less well there. I'm into the pixie shape of the iBook (Dominique Swain) a little more than the swoopier, fishnetted G3 (Lena Olin), even though I'd like the actual capabilities of the G3/400 more, and I want a 5-hour .
If they would make a *black* and clear iBook, all the males who don't savor carrying a disgusting orange notebook and who are a little iffy even on the gender-corrected baby blue one but would *enjoy* a sprightly, long-battery-life, Airport-ready notebook would snatch them up.
Those colored panels can't *really* cost that much, guys at Apple -- why not make them available to *anybody in any color they want?!* (or at the very least in the various colors you already buy the little plastic beads for, from snow to ruby
Weren't the iBooks going to have a sort of slip cover that would take paper inserts like a protective book cover?
So, agreed with jetso123 -- Apple is raising the state of the art in desktop computers. G3/G4 cases are nicer to work with than any PC case I've seen; Airport is relatively cheap for the Mac; fanless is rad. Bring it on with OS X. But please, upgrade the iBook (that graphite SE barely ranks notice, and not a couple of bills) with XGA, DVD and a video out
timothy
If you've ever tried to interview anyone at Microsoft, you know that they are quite zealous about it -- an engineer at Microsoft would have to be cleared by the company to answer questions the way Ingo did. Are Redmond-cleared answers ones it would be worth fighting the bureacracy to obtain? I can't really see it ...
/. interview format after I saw him already answering questions at great length in the initial thread about TUX. If I find Microsoft engineers doing the same, then I would *absolutely* [Ja, hey Marge, you betcha!] solicit the same from them! :)
More importantly (and to the point), I asked Ingo if he would mind answering questions in
timothy
Well, I guess 1-gig drives aren't worth very much now, even
Well, the four letters that bother me more are really DMCA, it's just that the MPAA is one of the annoying DMCA suitors. You're right, no encryption / obfuscation will hide data forever, but the point is no industry should get to dictate private use of purchased materials. That should be a matter of contract -- if Tower Records starts exclusively *leasing* their stock, with terms in big print and agreed to by all purchasers, then Fine -- everyone enters with informed consent, even if the terms are silly. It's true that no one's forcing you to participate. But if you can purchase a movie and can't use it for reasons that are political more than they are practical, that's crummy.
timothy
Partly. General mutt, but, yeah, some Scottish. (Clan Graham, in fact, but I've learned there are two basically unrelated Clans Graham, and I can't say which ... my brother claims some direct ancestor is featured as a character in Braveheart, and dies in the climactic battle, but I can't say I know how he researched that!)
And I like the word "ken" anyhow. In fact, look how many 3-letter words there are that share the same 2nd and 3rd letter!
ben
den
e'en (OK, an archaic contraction, but still)
fen
gen (commonly accepted shorthand for "generation")
hen
Jen (shorthand for Jennifer but also a name of its own sometimes)
ken
men
pen
ten
yen
zen
I think in the construction [noun or consonant] + [vowel] + n, *en wins hands down. And most of them could be used in Scrabble!
Boy this sure is strong coffee, mmm-mmm.
timothy
(and might not to certain others!) :)
... it's illegal to unscramble cable, too.
a) reverse engineering. The DMCA has some bad provisions in it. I've got nothing against the MPAA's members getting together and making it so annoying and inconvenient to view movies with other than approved hardware that doing so isn't worth the bother. Well, actually, I do have *something* against it, but I say that's within their rights. To make this into a point of law ("You're not even allowed to *try* to watch that movie on other than our approved hardware, mister!") I think is a terrible precedent. Not that it's alone
b) I've bought quite a few movies, but have no DVD player, having returned the two crummy Apex 600s which at least allowed me to briefly watch Casablanca and Annie Hall before dying. I'd like to watch movies on my monitor, or in the living room, without spending a few or several hundred more dollars on a player which does nothing an 80-dollar internal drive ought to be able to do.
c) Big studio releases -- is there really a 15th Anniv. edition of "Teen Wolf"?! Horrible! -- are one thing, but if the DivX format is widespread, we could see more independent, small-time filmmakers able to cheaply distribute their work on cheap CD-Rs. HOw many do you know who could mass-produce DVDs? With the right coupons, you can usually find blank CD-Rs for what, 30 cents apiece? Same goes for computers-as-VCRs; if I could put a few hours worth of shows onto a CD-R instead of a VHS tape for my personal timeshifted viewing, I'd prefer it. I could watch it on my desktop, on a laptop (when I get one -- anyone have a G3/400 PowerBook for sale, cheap?;) ), and I bet soon on DVD players which also playback the DivX format. Yes, I know it's not the same as the CircuitCity P.O.S. -- but how long did it take for DVD players to also play V-CDs and (finally) MP3s? Why not (the new) DivX?
So it's not the movies per se that are all that important (to me), it's the availability of readable formats and of high-quality compression for all the various uses it could be put to.
There could be a DivX-Plus (again, why not?) which mimicked features of DVD like greater interactivity / scene selection, etc -- would make a good format for instructional videos, say.
Them's my thoughts, which may have large holes in them.
timothy
Unless there is a way to defeat it within the VCR (they may be, but I don't know it), hooking a DVD player up to the aux video input on my family's (old, cheap) VCR results in activation of the Macrovision system -- the VCR detects a Macrovision-encoded video signal and says "uh, uh" -- the picture that leaks through is Macrovisioned splotchy / wavy / dark.
:) The fuzzy logic of fighting unauthorized copying has led to some pretty silly micromanagement of home electronics when I can't take advantage of a single video input on a TV to watch more than one source without buying a distribution amp!
... OK, so that doesn't interest you. To some others, it may be a big deal. We all have different tastes and priorities. Perhaps movies in their language aren't widely available in the U.S. Perhaps (and I know people with this complaint) they bought a number of movies before moving to the U.S. and some of those may never be made into Region 1 disks. Or maybe you move frequently from one country to another for work. The point to me is that it's needlessly restrictive.
When I turn(ed*) off Macrovision, the picture was great.
That's why, for me anyhow
And as far as movies from India (or elsewhere), well
The movie industry is free to engage in the petty tyranny of region coding as far as I'm concerned, but they're breeding the same kind of "respect" that scrambled cable did -- region-coded releases I think demonstrate a fairly crass indifference to the customer who purchases a film. And so many people have no compunction about breaking their system with hardware hacks like this.
timothy
*before I brought back the two separate P.O.S. Apex players, that is.
I know :)
...
... they *could* do it, eh?)
It's just an idle fantasy
- good processors in tandem
- cute box
(sigh
timothy
Thanks for spotting them, fixed now. Well, the 2nd one, anyhow.
timothy
Most importantly, I agree that developers should be free to determine the disposition of their work. BSD or GPL licenses are valid choices that I am myself likely to be more comfortable with as a software *user* but sure, if a programmer / company prefers a proprietary license, that's up to them! No argument from me on that point. I don't believe in coercion -- doesn't mix well with creativity!
...
... since it ran on NeXT machines before the Mac, that doesn't seem so outrageous ...)
But since I neither want to use software against the legitimate wishes of its owner (though I have on occasion) nor do I want to spend my Hershey Bar money on software I'm not free to pass around myself. I will if that's the best option I see, though
I like open source projects because I know they can / will be furthered as long as programmers are interested enough in them to work on their guts. Some of my favorite proprieatary programs, though, didn't succeed very well, because *my* mindshare wasn't enough to support their continued existence;) (T/Maker's WriteNow word processor for the Mac, for instance, I wish was Free / open source, so it could be updated for Linux
And anyhow, I'm personally more concerned about open / unobfuscated *file formats* than ridding the world of proprietary applications. So, really, I hope that if file converters *do* come out of the StarOffice thing that they are mostly in the direction of Word --> (XML / html / other documented format).
That's my take,
timothy
Whoah!
I can't flaunt open hostility toward anybody at all about Sun GPLing StarOffice, because I save my hostility for my zen-rock-garden social life! ("25y/o SWM, reasonable looking and employed, seeks curious, down-to-earth pixie with" -- oh never mind) I'm happy / pleased / surprised / impressed that they're even thinking about releasing it under an other-than-closed license.
As to it helping other projects, well
Re: Leading, not following -- this may be a glass half empty glass half full type of issue, but it seems to me that a GPL'd star office will possible inspire several / many other efforts the same way Mozilla has -- perhaps it will provide the glue that an otherwise stuck project requires (as someone else has pointed out, import filters would be very helpful) or the inspiration to one-up SO in one or more vital aspects. No more harmful than WOrdPerfect and Word jockeying by adding things they think users will like. (Except with Free software, if you think the result is overburned, you can fix it to the limit of your time and inclination). Your description makes software sound like more of a zero-sum game than I think it really is, particularly with sharing-encouraged licenses.
Standing on the shoulders of giants and things like that is the end result I hope emerges, because I selfishly want to find / contribute at least some kvetching to a good Free word processor. I mentioned AbiWord because I like it's style and speed, but it would be even better if the unimplemented featuers *were* implemented. If I'd said "perhaps now SO can inherit some of the great design and ease of use of AbiWord," would that have jarred the same nerves? To me, they're morally equivalent ideas, I just see one as being closer to my ideal than the other. ymmv
From the vultures' nest,
timothy
Also, "upstart Linux operating system" or even the "plucky OS that could." 10 years old (in present guise, count backwards as you like to the invention of UNIX, the invention of the telegraph, the invention of fire, etc) and millions of users may be a small slice of the pie, but it's not an "upstart" and it's plucky the way Lou Albino is plucky.
;)
timothy
If only they'd uee *more than one* blue LED.
timothy
... made me think a bit. Good point.
However, there could be much more rigidly defined things which Mitnick would be disallowed from doing which I would find reasonable. I don't know the exact terms of his parole, but not being able to use a computer for things like writing a column (like it or not, computer security is his area of expertise) or other innocuous things is like saying that the rapist doctor can't even enter a hospital to use the restroom.
I'm not particularly defending K. Mitnick here, really, but again, I'm worried about an era of perpetual, incremental punishment. There's a danger to an environment of ubiquitous graduated punishment and tailored prohibionism. I wonder when his probation's up; will he one day be allowed to touch a keyboard again?
ok,
timothy
Rombuu wrote: "Sure they can [deny Kevin Mitnick the right to computers] ... people on probation can't buy guns, and no one seems to have a problem with that."
... [instead of slashdot pure, it could be "citizen ranking"]
Actually, I do have a problem with a (non-violent) probationer being unable to buy a gun.
I worry about a multi-tiered society where what should be rights are instead viewed as priveleges, and on a sliding scale
I guess I prefer either concrete material damages assessed (for non violent crimes) or time served (for violent crimes) and after that, no lingering aftertaste imposing petty tyrannies of the sort mitnick has to. He (nearly) might as well be in jail.
What if a great musician picked people's pockets to the tune of millions of dollars while they were distracted by the sound of his (for instance) spellbindingly good kazoo playing. Would it be right to deny him the use of a kazoo once he's out of prison? A harmonica? Anything that makes notes?
timothy
Things like McIntosh componentry, and Wadia, some Arcam ... they look utterly, ruggedly functional ... like something out of a 50's space command center. Scientific, even.
The best thing about the new indrema look (to me) is the blue LED. I don't really like the asymetrical, lozengy, "swallowed by a large slug" look of this. It's sleek, but as Charlie Brown once asked Lucy, "How can a jumprope be hi-fi?"
timothy
Geese can be said to come in flocks as well as in gaggles; gaggle is mostly an archaism, though it is a nice one.
And the geese around Holland (where the scripts were thought of) have been hardened by years of industrial pollution, foul weather, fouler Norweigan- and Dutch-based swearing, and the day-of-the-dead fumes which permeate the region, whitening flesh and bracing the lungs. Evolution has formed them into extraordinary birds -- they can catch rabies, write symphonies and cook a six-course dinner -- and think nothing of it. They manifest more tropical diseases than you'd care to know about, too. Just shrug 'em off.
Or so I hear.
timothy
I should point out that David Tseng (of http://www.morrissey-solo.com) helped me find those titles by pointing me to http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~moz/.
...
And re: The Smiths: The day I turned 12, I got The Queen is Dead on cassette from a guy named Jeff Wilke, which cassette then took up a very large space in my brain as I listened to it nonstop for months. The older sister of a middle-school chum (Meg, sister of Mike Storey) got me hooked on Meat is Murder, Hatful of Hollow and Louder than Bombs. "I won't share you" has a pretty emotional twist for me, lemme tell you
timothy
that's not true:)
Lots of people submitted news about the NIC before it was really on sale again. The thing itself isn't that new (we covered it a while ago - the link I gave is to May 9th) but a lot of folks didn't use the search engine to find that out.
Your accusation of "rewriting without attribution" is simply way off base. In a snippet that short, there's bound to be overlap of information (now selling, cost, no longer donationware), but saying that someone plagiarized you is simply not nice. I saw several submissions about this, but yours was not among the ones that I read.
timothy
Sorry about that, and thanks for the heads up. Damn, wish I'd seen your comment earlier, too!
timothy
surfsalot wrote:"I think tim should get a life of his own. Too bad I'm too lazy to take him of the list of people whose postings I look at. Just cause rob likes the who and tim
... that's about it. People are free to like the Who, but I'm in the wrong demographic or something, since I think I would trade Who tickets for a nice dinner of Korean or Indian food and not feel cheated. The Pet Shop Boys are another matter!
:)
wants to be just like rob (who has the best posts) he has to mention the who. get a life of your own... "
Well, the guy who submitted the article mentioned the Who, but I sure have nothing to do with the Who. Rob likes them, and Rob is a nice and intelligent guy, but I'm not sure I could even identify a Who song other than "Pinball Wizard," which my middle-school music teacher foisted on my class in 7th or 8th grade (a while ago). I know there's a guy named Pete Townsend or Townshend or Townedshend (well, I know there's a guy with a name sort of like that) and, uh, that the kids are alright and uh
Sorry about that laziness problem, but until you get some vivarin I guess you can just not click on stories I post
timothy
1) jumperless processor tweaking (not new by itself)
;)
2) console-based chip multiplier changing
3) Duron support, which is neat considering that Durons are brand new, and will have at least one speed-enhancing MoBo from a reputable company basically from launch.
There are a lot of people who would like to play with overclocking but are too butterfingers to follow all the "Careful, this will void your warrantee" blowtorches-n-dremel tool directions of hardcore, "fine-line-between-treaking-and-destruction" insane overclockers. At least, I know there's at least one person in that category
timothy
OK, that was a flub (re. Javascript). Good point, sorry :)
But the rudeness of site certainly affected me -- I get to their intro site, and hitting the "back" button only relooads it. (I'm using Netcape 4.7, haven't done it with Mozilla yet).
timothy