From the looks of the study, the effects only occur if you're using these devices 24 hours a day for long periods of time. Unless you're a Hairy Man-Beast, one shouldn't worry.
"As though an organization only focuses on one thing at a time"
No, that's not what it means.
Yes, that's what implied.
It means that since the FBI failed to prevent 9/11 last time, it means they need to spend MORE effort next time.
Who says they aren't? Besides, it's really the CIA's fault 9/11 happened. What exactly are you arguing here, that the FBI should completely ignore all domestic issues to prevent terrorist threats? You do realize they've been preventing terrorist threats for decades, don't you?
Since their resources are finite, it would be better by far to prevent another 9/11. The way to do this would be to stop being the protection ARM of the MPAA and RIAA (et al).
They are the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Their sole job is not to prevent another 9/11. The FBI is involved with all sorts of things. You speak as though they're just some ragtag group of investigators who don't have the time to--gasp--hire some logo guy to draw up a logo for distribution. My god, the resources spent on THAT one. Please.
I hope that's clear.
Moron.
It's okay, I know you're just a downloader trying to battle any sort of anti-piracy movement that might threaten the convenience you've grown used to all these years. But I'm sorry to inform you that what you're doing is illegal...and immoral. But that doesn't matter, right? "Moron."
Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad
on
FBI Anti-Piracy Seal
·
· Score: 1
Incidentally, a security advisory dated today states there is an exploit in kernels up to 2.4.24 and 2.6.2
As I've written before, Slashdotters feel their niche mindset applies to absolutely everybody. You might ignore the the symbol, but the rest of society might not.
Should they pretend piracy isn't happening? What exactly is the big deal? It's just a little symbol. Are you arguing that money and time should not be contributed to attempts at stopping piracy?
What's the point of this article? I have a feeling it was only posted so all the pirating Slashdotters can make fun of it. "But they already have one, it's called (c)." "Will I have to update the warning logos on my burned movies now?"
I don't see how it's newsworthy. They're acknowledging that illegal piracy is becoming a big trend amoung the younger kids and so want to keep the reminder out there that it is against the law by putting up a logo.
I remember software of the early 90s displaying big red text boxes with SPA anti-piracy hotline numbers and everything upon program exit. Try starting up Doom/Doom 2 sometime and see the warning text as the game loads!
Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad
on
FBI Anti-Piracy Seal
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You'd think they had more importaint things to do like prevent another 9/11.
I hate this line of thinking. As though an organization only focuses on one thing at a time. "I guess they don't have more important things to do." As though deciding to put out an anti-piracy logo consumed 100% of their resources and manpower. They probably hired some marketing company to do it anyway.
It's the big record companys who are keeping the majority of artists poor whilst keeping CD prices high that are in the wrong because they are gouging both customer and artist. The vast majority of recording artists Recive hardly any money for there effort as most of it's taken by the record compan'ys
Again--you seem to have missed the point--those artists freely signed those contracts. You're trying to "protect" the artists from something they did themselves. It's a completely irrelevant point and I don't know why people bring it up anyway, because it DOES NOT justify stealing their music.
it's not Slashdot that belive artist don't deserve to be paid
If you believe downloading music without paying for it is to be championed, what else are you professing?
it's the RIAA and those like them (i.e you).
I believe artists should be paid. That means not being ripped off. By downloaders. If their label gave them a bad deal, they should sue their managers/lawyers for forcing them into contracts they didn't like.
If I'm going to pay money for something that cost's a lot of money and the artist is going to get very little of that then I am going to make sure it is worth buying and the artist is worh the small support RIAA allows me to give by downloading and seeing if I like there music.
How does downloading their music give them any money at all? Why do you think the artist gets such a low cut? Distribution, marketing, interviews, photo shoots, radio play, illustrators, fashion designers, video shoots, and whatever else the label has to pay for. They get recouped according to the contract the ARTIST WILLINGLY SIGNS. Get over yourself.
Most are music of an older generation which I would never get to hear often enough to decide if I like them if the RIAA had it's way those artist's would have sold less records but i suppose that's ok by you
That doesn't even make sense. The RIAA doesn't decide who sells things. The RIAA is simply a lobbying group that represents several major labels. Major labels are still selling those CDs--I see them in stores all the time and hear them on the radio.
As for hearing them before buying them, it's called iTunes/radio/MTV/Fusion/whatever you want to use.
Call it a "culture movement" or whatever you like, but it's not about ripping anybody off.
I didn't call it a culture movement. Justifiers like you have.
The thought process is about art, not demonizing the RIAA or thief.
For fuck's sake--give me a break. The thought process is about "art?" When a college kid installs Kazaa and rips the latest Linkin Park CD in 30 minutes, he's thinking about how artistic he's being and preserving music? Get real. You're justifying it as an art movement to remove the attachment of guilt that lands upon you when you download music you should be paying the artist for.
It happens, to people with this mindset, that these are causalities in a dilemma of understanding. Understand that the mindset is that music, like any other art form, is created by those who have a passion for it, those who want to give/explain/justify their view of the world to the world. That those people would be doing this not matter what, money, fame, whatever. Call it a purist view of the world, but don't miss understand it.
If you appreciate their worldview so much, how does stealing it support them financially to make more? A lot of artists do this for a living.
Given that viewpoint, the RIAA and those "shiny, Barbie doll artists" would be the antithesis of the purists view on music as art, seeking (only?) to profit from an art form. But this is the nature of a capitalist economy driven by consumerism.
It's nature, period. You trade for something. Artists sign distribution deals in exchange for a return of the profits to the labels who will be producing their video, filming it, hiring directors, hiring producers, renting a studio, clothes, setting up photo shoots, interviews, etc.
As to the legality issue, there is no question that the law bodes against the practice of file sharing.
That should be the end of it. Not only legally, but morally. However, I fully expect some sort of moral justification to follow--
I will remind you however, that the law was also, once, in favor of slavery, civil rights abuses, women's rights, etc. The "LAW" is a living document subject to change with the ebbs and flows of society.
Ah, and there it is. The fact that slavery and other civil abuses once existed somehow translates into the idea that it's okay for people to download music without paying for it. Law is NOT a living document subject to the ebbs and flows of society. Law is a strict code of ethics. Only when it is changed through further legislation does it EVER change. Right now, it is against the law.
I very much appreciate the irony of you bringing up rights violations of the past to JUSTIFY rights violations of artists.
The question remains, would you take the same stance on the issue, if you were charged $12-18 per painting or collection at your local art gallery for sub par works of artists seeking a profit. Most likely not.
What would you be doing paying for $12-18 paintings you thought were sub-par? Does that make it okay for you to freely make copies of them and distribute them on the Internet?
So yes, under the current model, artist, labels, and the organizations that represent them deserve to be paid. But, I think the point that everyone is trying to make is that the model needs to be changed.
You don't make that point by ripping off the artists. They willingly signed those contracts. The anti-RIAA, pro-artist bullshit is just a justification to try to shed the image of illegality that will always haunt this mindset--it's a distraction of the issue. "We're getting music albums without paying for them--blame the RIAA!" This rampant moral relativism to justify the convenience of thievery disgusts me.
The Record Industry isn't losing money at all. This is simply a monopoly leveraging it's power.
You're right--
Millions of people downloading billions of songs from thousands upon thousands of music albums magically equates to being a good thing and not affecting sales at all.
There is no alternative. You either sign up with RIAA, or you get no record, no air time, and no tour dates.
Absolutely, completely, 100% false. Apparently, you believe there is some gun pointed at a band's head forcing them to willingly sign a standard business contract. Are you even aware of the European market, or the indie genres, or the non-RIAA mediums? Are you aware there exists such a thing as an Internet? iTunes? I could go on and on and on.
That's why the RIAA was formed, to monopolize the production of (bad) music.
No, it was formed as a lobbying group to represent several major labels. The contracts Slashdotters bitch about come from the RECORD LABELS, not the RIAA. So it's a bit perplexing that Slashdotters equate "evil" contracts with the RIAA to begin with, when the RIAA has nothing to do with the business contracts of their represented members.
In any case, it doesn't matter--the artist signs a contract, or they don't. This ridiculous charge that people have against the RIAA treating artists badly is completely insane. If you want to bitch at somebody, bitch at the artists you're supposedly protecting. They're the ones who didn't seem to think it was so bad signing the contracts.
I doubt anyone here has even been involved in the music industry, so all the complaining about something nobody even really knows about also perplexes me--though it's not surprising. It's basically an internal justification for using Kazaa without feeling guilty--blame it all on the RIAA. Right?
The RIAA doesn't give a crap about the artists, all they care about is fattening their own pockets.
It's called business. It's called a contract--THAT THE ARTIST SIGNED.
Britney Spears didn't even write most of her music. She doesn't get all the money, because part of it goes to her image-makers and marketers, part of it to her songwriters, part of it to her producers and developers, and part of it to the label. That's what happens when you're a pop singer who doesn't write your own music or have your own image.
An artist should shop around for a better contract, or not sign one. This crap about "The RIAA doesn't care about artists" when those artists are the ones who freely signed the contracts in order to get a deal is bogus--you think those artists think they need you to pity them when they put down their signatures willingly?
There's a lot that goes into CD distribution, from marketing to production to hiring to etc.
To Slashdot, it's a "culture movement" because artists don't deserve to be paid for the work they put in to renting a studio, spending a month recording something, pressing CDs, and marketing it with their label.
There's an organization called the RIAA that happens to represent their label, so suddenly it's okay to pirate the artists' music. The legality issue is completely ignored.
Longhorn is targeted for late 2005/early 2006. This has never, EVER changed.
I don't know why Slashdotters keep acting like there's some sort of release date slipping when there's never been a release date, and the target date has only changed by months.
Just an off-topic rant on your little "Longhorn circa 2008" quip...it seems to keep showing up in other misinformed comments.
The nice, clean config file will be replaced by some arcane XML format.
Yeah--heaven forbid that config file get replaced by a clean, efficient, STANDARD format that will easily allow graphical tools to configure it.
Better to stay in the era of the 80s for the rest of our lives--editing text files by hand to enable our extra mouse buttons. You're clearly biased towards the XFree86 developers in some way.
Features will be piled in on a whim, without long-term planning.
I guess all those roadmaps just magically don't exist at the KDE and GNOME websites.
It'll require libfoo-1.6.1pl3 but not any earlier or later.
So patch it yourself.
It'll take twice as long to start up, and need 64MB RAM to work.
Sounds like XFree86 already. Have you looked at the code for that thing? It could use a cleaning several times over.
Let's face it, XFree86 is antiquated. We're still using it only because it's become a standard--just like Microsoft Office, and how everyone bitches about it but still uses it.
There is no "Linux Operating System" - it's GNU/Linux, or even GNU.
No--it's Linux. Linux is the system operating my computer. I can remove GNU applications (I rarely use them anyway) and keep using Linux. It's the one running my hardware and booting my laptop and letting me use it.
GNU/Linux is ugly, wrong, and suggests we should prefix all our operating systems with the app userspace--Office/Windows? XFree86/GNU/Linux? Give me a break.
Okay, NOW can we get a replacement for XFree86? Pretty please?!
I'm not even talking about the "slowness" or "bloat"--there are fundamental architectural reasons why we need to get off this 20 year old application that still requires us to configure it with a bizarrely formatted text file. I still haven't been able to figure out how to enable all the buttons on my mouse, including the scrollwheel, no matter what solutions I try online. And we only recently got the ability to change resolutions without restarting!
Seriously--this will NOT fly if people are to be accepting Linux as their main desktop. I could go on and on, but I'll just plead with some good coder to please start a new project or lend help with some of the ones already out there--we need to get off of XFree86.
The Linux desktop movement is based in an idea of Freedom. To accept a less than 'free' desktop for the 'free' desktop movement would not make sense.
Only to Linux idealogues. The rest of the computing world doesn't care about the community's "idea of Freedom." They care about results.
Amusingly, the very creator himsef of the Linux kernel doesn't share you're strict definition of using things that are only "free." I think the most hilarious thing about the community is the fact that while they in-fight over various things, Linus just uses whatever works for him.
It makes the whole community look foolish. In a time when Linux needs to be making strides forward, new users are just going to see in-fighting over something about the latest version of the major GUI for Linux, something about its license...they'll just leave, not wanting to bother with it.
It IS theft. It's theft of intellectual property. There are laws on this.
I don't know why Slashdotters keep arguing this. It's clearly defined by the law. If you obtain something without paying for it, it doesn't matter that the medium happens to allow a direct copy of it. It's irrelevant.
But Slashdotters want anything to shove in the RIAA's face as "wrong," ignoring the real issue of people downloading artists' music without paying them for it. It doesn't matter to them.
See, you can copy lines of code, but the original remains. But when you steal market share, it has to be subtracted somewhere. You can steal money and bananas. You cannot steal music and movies.
Uh, yes you can. You steal something when you don't pay for it. You steal owed payment. You steal value (by diminishing it with a copy).
What gets me is that Slashdotters all pretend to be against software piracy, because it hurts their heroes like John Carmack...but music and movies are okay, because we pretend there aren't humans making these things, but faceless monikers ("MPAA," "RIAA"...never mind that these organizations merely represent the people making the content that otheres are ripping off).
This bizarre obsession over the semantics of the word "steal" just shows that Slashdotters try to blur and distract the very valid issue of the illegality of downloading music and movies you have not paid money for. Yes, it is theft. That point is supported morally, ethically, and legally.
Slashdot Mirror
From the looks of the study, the effects only occur if you're using these devices 24 hours a day for long periods of time. Unless you're a Hairy Man-Beast, one shouldn't worry.
"As though an organization only focuses on one thing at a time"
No, that's not what it means.
Yes, that's what implied.
It means that since the FBI failed to prevent 9/11 last time, it means they need to spend MORE effort next time.
Who says they aren't? Besides, it's really the CIA's fault 9/11 happened. What exactly are you arguing here, that the FBI should completely ignore all domestic issues to prevent terrorist threats? You do realize they've been preventing terrorist threats for decades, don't you?
Since their resources are finite, it would be better by far to prevent another 9/11. The way to do this would be to stop being the protection ARM of the MPAA and RIAA (et al).
They are the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Their sole job is not to prevent another 9/11. The FBI is involved with all sorts of things. You speak as though they're just some ragtag group of investigators who don't have the time to--gasp--hire some logo guy to draw up a logo for distribution. My god, the resources spent on THAT one. Please.
I hope that's clear.
Moron.
It's okay, I know you're just a downloader trying to battle any sort of anti-piracy movement that might threaten the convenience you've grown used to all these years. But I'm sorry to inform you that what you're doing is illegal...and immoral. But that doesn't matter, right? "Moron."
Incidentally, a security advisory dated today states there is an exploit in kernels up to 2.4.24 and 2.6.2
What do you think I was referring to in my sig?
As I've written before, Slashdotters feel their niche mindset applies to absolutely everybody. You might ignore the the symbol, but the rest of society might not.
Should they pretend piracy isn't happening? What exactly is the big deal? It's just a little symbol. Are you arguing that money and time should not be contributed to attempts at stopping piracy?
What's the point of this article? I have a feeling it was only posted so all the pirating Slashdotters can make fun of it. "But they already have one, it's called (c)." "Will I have to update the warning logos on my burned movies now?"
I don't see how it's newsworthy. They're acknowledging that illegal piracy is becoming a big trend amoung the younger kids and so want to keep the reminder out there that it is against the law by putting up a logo.
I remember software of the early 90s displaying big red text boxes with SPA anti-piracy hotline numbers and everything upon program exit. Try starting up Doom/Doom 2 sometime and see the warning text as the game loads!
You'd think they had more importaint things to do like prevent another 9/11.
I hate this line of thinking. As though an organization only focuses on one thing at a time. "I guess they don't have more important things to do." As though deciding to put out an anti-piracy logo consumed 100% of their resources and manpower. They probably hired some marketing company to do it anyway.
It's the big record companys who are keeping the majority of artists poor whilst keeping CD prices high that are in the wrong because they are gouging both customer and artist. The vast majority of recording artists Recive hardly any money for there effort as most of it's taken by the record compan'ys
Again--you seem to have missed the point--those artists freely signed those contracts. You're trying to "protect" the artists from something they did themselves. It's a completely irrelevant point and I don't know why people bring it up anyway, because it DOES NOT justify stealing their music.
it's not Slashdot that belive artist don't deserve to be paid
If you believe downloading music without paying for it is to be championed, what else are you professing?
it's the RIAA and those like them (i.e you).
I believe artists should be paid. That means not being ripped off. By downloaders. If their label gave them a bad deal, they should sue their managers/lawyers for forcing them into contracts they didn't like.
If I'm going to pay money for something that cost's a lot of money and the artist is going to get very little of that then I am going to make sure it is worth buying and the artist is worh the small support RIAA allows me to give by downloading and seeing if I like there music.
How does downloading their music give them any money at all? Why do you think the artist gets such a low cut? Distribution, marketing, interviews, photo shoots, radio play, illustrators, fashion designers, video shoots, and whatever else the label has to pay for. They get recouped according to the contract the ARTIST WILLINGLY SIGNS. Get over yourself.
Most are music of an older generation which I would never get to hear often enough to decide if I like them if the RIAA had it's way those artist's would have sold less records but i suppose that's ok by you
That doesn't even make sense. The RIAA doesn't decide who sells things. The RIAA is simply a lobbying group that represents several major labels. Major labels are still selling those CDs--I see them in stores all the time and hear them on the radio.
As for hearing them before buying them, it's called iTunes/radio/MTV/Fusion/whatever you want to use.
Call it a "culture movement" or whatever you like, but it's not about ripping anybody off.
I didn't call it a culture movement. Justifiers like you have.
The thought process is about art, not demonizing the RIAA or thief.
For fuck's sake--give me a break. The thought process is about "art?" When a college kid installs Kazaa and rips the latest Linkin Park CD in 30 minutes, he's thinking about how artistic he's being and preserving music? Get real. You're justifying it as an art movement to remove the attachment of guilt that lands upon you when you download music you should be paying the artist for.
It happens, to people with this mindset, that these are causalities in a dilemma of understanding. Understand that the mindset is that music, like any other art form, is created by those who have a passion for it, those who want to give/explain/justify their view of the world to the world. That those people would be doing this not matter what, money, fame, whatever. Call it a purist view of the world, but don't miss understand it.
If you appreciate their worldview so much, how does stealing it support them financially to make more? A lot of artists do this for a living.
Given that viewpoint, the RIAA and those "shiny, Barbie doll artists" would be the antithesis of the purists view on music as art, seeking (only?) to profit from an art form. But this is the nature of a capitalist economy driven by consumerism.
It's nature, period. You trade for something. Artists sign distribution deals in exchange for a return of the profits to the labels who will be producing their video, filming it, hiring directors, hiring producers, renting a studio, clothes, setting up photo shoots, interviews, etc.
As to the legality issue, there is no question that the law bodes against the practice of file sharing.
That should be the end of it. Not only legally, but morally. However, I fully expect some sort of moral justification to follow--
I will remind you however, that the law was also, once, in favor of slavery, civil rights abuses, women's rights, etc. The "LAW" is a living document subject to change with the ebbs and flows of society.
Ah, and there it is. The fact that slavery and other civil abuses once existed somehow translates into the idea that it's okay for people to download music without paying for it. Law is NOT a living document subject to the ebbs and flows of society. Law is a strict code of ethics. Only when it is changed through further legislation does it EVER change. Right now, it is against the law.
I very much appreciate the irony of you bringing up rights violations of the past to JUSTIFY rights violations of artists.
The question remains, would you take the same stance on the issue, if you were charged $12-18 per painting or collection at your local art gallery for sub par works of artists seeking a profit. Most likely not.
What would you be doing paying for $12-18 paintings you thought were sub-par? Does that make it okay for you to freely make copies of them and distribute them on the Internet?
So yes, under the current model, artist, labels, and the organizations that represent them deserve to be paid. But, I think the point that everyone is trying to make is that the model needs to be changed.
You don't make that point by ripping off the artists. They willingly signed those contracts. The anti-RIAA, pro-artist bullshit is just a justification to try to shed the image of illegality that will always haunt this mindset--it's a distraction of the issue. "We're getting music albums without paying for them--blame the RIAA!" This rampant moral relativism to justify the convenience of thievery disgusts me.
The Record Industry isn't losing money at all. This is simply a monopoly leveraging it's power.
You're right--
Millions of people downloading billions of songs from thousands upon thousands of music albums magically equates to being a good thing and not affecting sales at all.
Get real.
There is no alternative. You either sign up with RIAA, or you get no record, no air time, and no tour dates.
Absolutely, completely, 100% false. Apparently, you believe there is some gun pointed at a band's head forcing them to willingly sign a standard business contract. Are you even aware of the European market, or the indie genres, or the non-RIAA mediums? Are you aware there exists such a thing as an Internet? iTunes? I could go on and on and on.
That's why the RIAA was formed, to monopolize the production of (bad) music.
No, it was formed as a lobbying group to represent several major labels. The contracts Slashdotters bitch about come from the RECORD LABELS, not the RIAA. So it's a bit perplexing that Slashdotters equate "evil" contracts with the RIAA to begin with, when the RIAA has nothing to do with the business contracts of their represented members.
In any case, it doesn't matter--the artist signs a contract, or they don't. This ridiculous charge that people have against the RIAA treating artists badly is completely insane. If you want to bitch at somebody, bitch at the artists you're supposedly protecting. They're the ones who didn't seem to think it was so bad signing the contracts.
I doubt anyone here has even been involved in the music industry, so all the complaining about something nobody even really knows about also perplexes me--though it's not surprising. It's basically an internal justification for using Kazaa without feeling guilty--blame it all on the RIAA. Right?
The RIAA doesn't give a crap about the artists, all they care about is fattening their own pockets.
It's called business. It's called a contract--THAT THE ARTIST SIGNED.
Britney Spears didn't even write most of her music. She doesn't get all the money, because part of it goes to her image-makers and marketers, part of it to her songwriters, part of it to her producers and developers, and part of it to the label. That's what happens when you're a pop singer who doesn't write your own music or have your own image.
An artist should shop around for a better contract, or not sign one. This crap about "The RIAA doesn't care about artists" when those artists are the ones who freely signed the contracts in order to get a deal is bogus--you think those artists think they need you to pity them when they put down their signatures willingly?
There's a lot that goes into CD distribution, from marketing to production to hiring to etc.
To Slashdot, it's a "culture movement" because artists don't deserve to be paid for the work they put in to renting a studio, spending a month recording something, pressing CDs, and marketing it with their label.
There's an organization called the RIAA that happens to represent their label, so suddenly it's okay to pirate the artists' music. The legality issue is completely ignored.
Ever heard of BitKeeper?
"Would you rather sell sugar water to kids for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?"
Steve Jobs to that guy from Pepsi. It's on folklore.org somewhere. The Bouncing Pepsis story, I believe.
Longhorn is targeted for late 2005/early 2006. This has never, EVER changed.
I don't know why Slashdotters keep acting like there's some sort of release date slipping when there's never been a release date, and the target date has only changed by months.
Just an off-topic rant on your little "Longhorn circa 2008" quip...it seems to keep showing up in other misinformed comments.
The nice, clean config file will be replaced by some arcane XML format.
Yeah--heaven forbid that config file get replaced by a clean, efficient, STANDARD format that will easily allow graphical tools to configure it.
Better to stay in the era of the 80s for the rest of our lives--editing text files by hand to enable our extra mouse buttons. You're clearly biased towards the XFree86 developers in some way.
Features will be piled in on a whim, without long-term planning.
I guess all those roadmaps just magically don't exist at the KDE and GNOME websites.
It'll require libfoo-1.6.1pl3 but not any earlier or later.
So patch it yourself.
It'll take twice as long to start up, and need 64MB RAM to work.
Sounds like XFree86 already. Have you looked at the code for that thing? It could use a cleaning several times over.
Let's face it, XFree86 is antiquated. We're still using it only because it's become a standard--just like Microsoft Office, and how everyone bitches about it but still uses it.
There is no "Linux Operating System" - it's GNU/Linux, or even GNU.
No--it's Linux. Linux is the system operating my computer. I can remove GNU applications (I rarely use them anyway) and keep using Linux. It's the one running my hardware and booting my laptop and letting me use it.
GNU/Linux is ugly, wrong, and suggests we should prefix all our operating systems with the app userspace--Office/Windows? XFree86/GNU/Linux? Give me a break.
It's called "draconian licensing issues." I hear Slashdotters bitch about it from Microsoft all the time.
Okay, NOW can we get a replacement for XFree86? Pretty please?!
I'm not even talking about the "slowness" or "bloat"--there are fundamental architectural reasons why we need to get off this 20 year old application that still requires us to configure it with a bizarrely formatted text file. I still haven't been able to figure out how to enable all the buttons on my mouse, including the scrollwheel, no matter what solutions I try online. And we only recently got the ability to change resolutions without restarting!
Seriously--this will NOT fly if people are to be accepting Linux as their main desktop. I could go on and on, but I'll just plead with some good coder to please start a new project or lend help with some of the ones already out there--we need to get off of XFree86.
The Linux desktop movement is based in an idea of Freedom. To accept a less than 'free' desktop for the 'free' desktop movement would not make sense.
Only to Linux idealogues. The rest of the computing world doesn't care about the community's "idea of Freedom." They care about results.
Amusingly, the very creator himsef of the Linux kernel doesn't share you're strict definition of using things that are only "free." I think the most hilarious thing about the community is the fact that while they in-fight over various things, Linus just uses whatever works for him.
It makes the whole community look foolish. In a time when Linux needs to be making strides forward, new users are just going to see in-fighting over something about the latest version of the major GUI for Linux, something about its license...they'll just leave, not wanting to bother with it.
...is because of issues like this. Idealistic licensing issues.
Never mind that Google is the biggest corporate user of Linux.
Everything is a tinfoil "M$" conspiracy.
Do you realize how you zealots hurt the Linux community in the reputation arena for corporate adoption of Linux? Just curious.
It IS theft. It's theft of intellectual property. There are laws on this.
I don't know why Slashdotters keep arguing this. It's clearly defined by the law. If you obtain something without paying for it, it doesn't matter that the medium happens to allow a direct copy of it. It's irrelevant.
But Slashdotters want anything to shove in the RIAA's face as "wrong," ignoring the real issue of people downloading artists' music without paying them for it. It doesn't matter to them.
See, you can copy lines of code, but the original remains. But when you steal market share, it has to be subtracted somewhere. You can steal money and bananas. You cannot steal music and movies.
Uh, yes you can. You steal something when you don't pay for it. You steal owed payment. You steal value (by diminishing it with a copy).
What gets me is that Slashdotters all pretend to be against software piracy, because it hurts their heroes like John Carmack...but music and movies are okay, because we pretend there aren't humans making these things, but faceless monikers ("MPAA," "RIAA"...never mind that these organizations merely represent the people making the content that otheres are ripping off).
This bizarre obsession over the semantics of the word "steal" just shows that Slashdotters try to blur and distract the very valid issue of the illegality of downloading music and movies you have not paid money for. Yes, it is theft. That point is supported morally, ethically, and legally.