Which is exactly why I find it strange that this comment was moderated a 'troll' or 'offtopic'.. This is a factual statement about a MAJOR problem some Iomega products had. In reality I hope and expect that experience has made Iomega a lot more attentive to reliablity problems. I guess we'll find out.
Well, I was one of the people who modified it "troll" (obviously that will go away now that I'm posting this message.) What I really wanted to modify it was "irrelevant," which is close to "offtopic," except that I figured that it could be an attempt to get people to talk about something irrelevant, which would make it a troll.
All of this is based on my opinion that the idea that this product could suffer from the "click of death" is absurd. This a completely different product, and I highly doubt that iomega puts zip or jaz disks in it.
If the original claim had been "I hope it don't suffer from quality control problems such as the click of death" the situation would have been completely different. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I hate to see ignorance displayed, and if the post had ended up being modded to oblivion, the poster (oops, looks like that's you) would have been saved some embarrassment.
as always, extraordinary results require extraordinary proof
Huh?
I think you're referring to the statement "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." This is a false statement with no basis in reality. Proof is a sufficient amount of evidence. Extraordinary claims might require extraordinary amounts/quality of evidence to prove them, but that is not what the statement claims.
Put a different way: the claim that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" is an extraordinary claim. Do you have any proof, or even evidence, of its truthfulness?
Actualy, it's pretty unlikely that the indians ever had a population close to that of europe.
When I studied the subject in college, I was told that the population of south and central America peaked at about 20 million and N. America at about 10 million. So we're at least talking about the same ballpark, especially when the massive deaths in Europe due to the bubonic plague are considered.
Almost all of america was vast, untouched wilderness before the europeans came.
This is incorrect (unless you quibble about "almost all.") Many areas of New England had been cleared of forest for the purpose of agriculture by the natives, who were later nearly wiped out by smallpox and other diseases. When Europeans such as the Pilgrims arrived, they found cleared fields and no people, and they concluded (falsely) that the New World was a "virgin" land.
I recommend further study, if you're interested. I'm not, which is why I don't know much more than this.
After all, you are allowed to try to talk your way out of a speeding ticket - as soon as you've pulled out the wallet, you've gone into a completely different domain, which we call bribery.
If that's so, then where are non-purse-carrying people supposed to store their drivers' licenses? Tattooed to their foreheads?:)
"Why buy a PhotoShop educational license when you can use GIMP for free and with no obligations? Why lock-in to properiatary apps?"
Because Photoshop supports many features REQUIRED by professional design and printing firms. Photoshop became the industry standard image editing application because it caters to the needs of the design community. Simply put, the GIMP does not.
Who cares about professional design and printing firms? We're talking about college classes here.
If you look carefully, you'll find that.com,.edu and.mil are not organized according to content..com is not organized at all,.edu is restricted to some educational institutions, and.mil is restricted to some military organizations. The contents of each of these varies widely.
1) bnetd is the _only_ way to play warez copies of the game online. If not for bnetd this type of infringement would not be occuring.
No it's not; I can set up a VPN between myself and other people who I want to play with, and play a "LAN" game.
2) ftp, some p2p software, copy machines etc. have _substantial_non-infringing_uses_ Blizzard's position is that bnetd has no non-infinging uses. They claim that under the EULA _any_ use of bnetd is infringement.
That is an accurate description of Blizzard's position, but their position is wrong, because it is based on the EULA, which is not a valid contract.
Of course your argument of ownership rights is moot as long as courts continue to enforce EULA's as contracts.
Do courts enforce EULA's as contracts? It is my understanding that this is the whole point of UCITA: to make EULA's as valid as contracts. If that's the case, then EULA's are only valid as contracts in the US states that have passed UCITA, which I think are Virginia and Maryland.
So, it all comes down to the EULA. If the EULA is valid bnetd is done.
I agree with you: in jurisdictions where the EULA is valid, bnetd development/use is quite possibly illegal.
I hope I'm not the only one looking at that and thinking 'What the hell kind of media besides HDD am I going to back this up on?
Media? More and more, it seems to me that the only practical backup method is to use a geographically remote friend's computer (and let that friend use one of mine.) With incremental backups, the bandwidth use would be minimal, and extra hard drives are plenty cheap. Hm... I think I have that new project that I've been looking for.
You seem to be (deliberately?) ignoring the fact that while bnetd is giving away their service they are also aiding the piracy of Blizzard software.
They are not explicitly aiding the piracy; piracy is a (presumably unintended, since we presume innocence) side-effect. Admittedly, analogies are flawed, but to continue this one: Blizzard claims that you are only allowed to use its forks to eat at its own cafeteria. The idea of "first sale" and ownership rights say that I can use my fork to eat wherever I want. Likewise, I have purchased a copy of Starcraft, so I should be allowed to play Starcraft using Blizzard's server, or using Starcraft itself to host a LAN game, or by building my own server to use instead of Blizzard's.
bnetd contributes to software copyright infringement (I don't like to call it "piracy" because it's not) in the same way that ftp or p2p software does. The proper course of action is not to attack the people who create ftp software, or p2p software, or bnetd software; the proper course of action is to attack the people doing the infringing.
Except Blizzard is the cafeteria lady who wants you to pay before you eat, and bnetd is the geek showing you the way to sneak out without paying. Since I _can_ get up from the table in most restaurants and calmly walk out without paying the check, should I. If I pay for my meal am I "bending over" because I could get away with it and I chose not to?
If Blizzard is the cafeteria lady who wants you to pay before you eat, bnetd is the farmer across the street giving away his fresh produce for free. Starcraft, in this analogy, is the silverware that you brought with you to the cafeteria.
Well, if SSSCA passes, there won't be any video on linux.
What are they going to do, search the entire world to find and destroy machines/archives with linux video software? Because that's what it would take for there to be no "video on linux."
Why so much money, time and energy is spend researching how to create more human beings, when the world is so clearly overpopulated right now.
I disagree with your claim that the world is currently overpopulated. Starvation exists because of political and economic problems, not because of lack of food. If we solve (even some of!) those political and economic problems, then birth rates will stabilize and we will not reach a point where the earth cannot support us all.
Of course, how to solve those problems is another question entirely...
If we slowly but surely remove all tests of fitness (even infertility!) then there is no particular direction the species is going, which would be the same as the end of evolution
There never was a "particular direction the species was going"--we are here because it is the vector sum of the set
You appear to be arguing that a vector does not have direction.
Using technology to improve kernel maintenance is so sensible that sooner or later somebody will come up with a solution that Linus likes. One improvement that has already been made is the use of other people as maintainers for older kernel versions.
And if you've got a better way, start your own Unix style OS project.
That's no attitude to take. What we need is cooperation and competition, each in its place, where people discuss the issues and the best ideas/implementations win. If each person who contributes to the linux kernel would have started their own kernel instead of contributing, linux would be much worse off today.
If you something to contribute, then attempt, through polite reason and good code, to do so.
This is something that IBM and others of Big Iron vendors of *NIX have said - as Linux grows in maturity, they want to replace their *NIX with Linux.
Have IBM and other big iron vendors actually said this? Of course the linux community speculates about it, and there are good arguments both for and against it, but I am not aware of any official IBM or other source saying "we're phasing out this OS in favor of Linux."
You're right, I hadn't considered the "malicious litigation" aspect when I made my post.
I guess it just goes to show the value of having lots of lawyers on retainer... well, in the long run it's probably more practical to simply control the government.:)
Document retention as defined here is only an issue if the company behaves in a manner that could be construed to be illegal, unethical, embarrassing, etc. Such is not always the case.
At my company, management treats its email archive as an asset and requires us to save as much work-related email as we think is prudent. (Obviously we don't save every last piece of spam or "what are you doing for lunch" email.) Since it's a relatively small company the hardware requirements for this storage are not very high.
So far, I am not aware of any case where management has had cause to regret this policy.
Fixing software is *hard*. It is hard to find the location of bugs in code. It is hard to fix bugs in code. It is unreasonable to assume that the average user is capable of fixing bugs on his own.
This is true; however, since the copy cost of software is near zero, all we need is for one person or group to be able to fix it, and the change can propagate quickly. Of course, this is true for both open source and closed source software.
To tie this all back into the thread, Open Source software should not be considered exempt from such a (stupid) law just because it comes with source. The source of a program is of no value to the vast majority of its users.
This does sound reasonable. I somewhat like the idea that somebody else posted about the penalty for gross negligence being a multiple of the price of the software. This would protect shareware authors (if there are any left any more) while forcing open source companies like Red Hat, as well as closed source companies like Sun and Microsoft, to do their basic due diligence.
Slashdot Mirror
Has Mozilla decreased in popularity somehow? My impression is that as it gets more usable, more and more people are using it.
Well, I was one of the people who modified it "troll" (obviously that will go away now that I'm posting this message.) What I really wanted to modify it was "irrelevant," which is close to "offtopic," except that I figured that it could be an attempt to get people to talk about something irrelevant, which would make it a troll.
All of this is based on my opinion that the idea that this product could suffer from the "click of death" is absurd. This a completely different product, and I highly doubt that iomega puts zip or jaz disks in it.
If the original claim had been "I hope it don't suffer from quality control problems such as the click of death" the situation would have been completely different. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I hate to see ignorance displayed, and if the post had ended up being modded to oblivion, the poster (oops, looks like that's you) would have been saved some embarrassment.
Huh?
I think you're referring to the statement "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." This is a false statement with no basis in reality. Proof is a sufficient amount of evidence. Extraordinary claims might require extraordinary amounts/quality of evidence to prove them, but that is not what the statement claims.
Put a different way: the claim that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" is an extraordinary claim. Do you have any proof, or even evidence, of its truthfulness?
Sex? Sex can be had anytime. 4 am is for sleep! Mmm, wonderful sleep, precious sleep...
When I studied the subject in college, I was told that the population of south and central America peaked at about 20 million and N. America at about 10 million. So we're at least talking about the same ballpark, especially when the massive deaths in Europe due to the bubonic plague are considered.
Almost all of america was vast, untouched wilderness before the europeans came.
This is incorrect (unless you quibble about "almost all.") Many areas of New England had been cleared of forest for the purpose of agriculture by the natives, who were later nearly wiped out by smallpox and other diseases. When Europeans such as the Pilgrims arrived, they found cleared fields and no people, and they concluded (falsely) that the New World was a "virgin" land.
I recommend further study, if you're interested. I'm not, which is why I don't know much more than this.
If that's so, then where are non-purse-carrying people supposed to store their drivers' licenses? Tattooed to their foreheads? :)
Who cares about professional design and printing firms? We're talking about college classes here.
Actually, if you look carefully, you'll find that more than 1/8 of the world are ignorant morons.
If you look carefully, you'll find that .com, .edu and .mil are not organized according to content. .com is not organized at all, .edu is restricted to some educational institutions, and .mil is restricted to some military organizations. The contents of each of these varies widely.
Worked for Microsoft...
No it's not; I can set up a VPN between myself and other people who I want to play with, and play a "LAN" game.
2) ftp, some p2p software, copy machines etc. have _substantial_non-infringing_uses_ Blizzard's position is that bnetd has no non-infinging uses. They claim that under the EULA _any_ use of bnetd is infringement.
That is an accurate description of Blizzard's position, but their position is wrong, because it is based on the EULA, which is not a valid contract.
Of course your argument of ownership rights is moot as long as courts continue to enforce EULA's as contracts.
Do courts enforce EULA's as contracts? It is my understanding that this is the whole point of UCITA: to make EULA's as valid as contracts. If that's the case, then EULA's are only valid as contracts in the US states that have passed UCITA, which I think are Virginia and Maryland.
So, it all comes down to the EULA. If the EULA is valid bnetd is done.
I agree with you: in jurisdictions where the EULA is valid, bnetd development/use is quite possibly illegal.
Media? More and more, it seems to me that the only practical backup method is to use a geographically remote friend's computer (and let that friend use one of mine.) With incremental backups, the bandwidth use would be minimal, and extra hard drives are plenty cheap. Hm... I think I have that new project that I've been looking for.
They are not explicitly aiding the piracy; piracy is a (presumably unintended, since we presume innocence) side-effect. Admittedly, analogies are flawed, but to continue this one: Blizzard claims that you are only allowed to use its forks to eat at its own cafeteria. The idea of "first sale" and ownership rights say that I can use my fork to eat wherever I want. Likewise, I have purchased a copy of Starcraft, so I should be allowed to play Starcraft using Blizzard's server, or using Starcraft itself to host a LAN game, or by building my own server to use instead of Blizzard's.
bnetd contributes to software copyright infringement (I don't like to call it "piracy" because it's not) in the same way that ftp or p2p software does. The proper course of action is not to attack the people who create ftp software, or p2p software, or bnetd software; the proper course of action is to attack the people doing the infringing.
If Blizzard is the cafeteria lady who wants you to pay before you eat, bnetd is the farmer across the street giving away his fresh produce for free. Starcraft, in this analogy, is the silverware that you brought with you to the cafeteria.
What are they going to do, search the entire world to find and destroy machines/archives with linux video software? Because that's what it would take for there to be no "video on linux."
It breaks, right as you're about to finish the restore?
Will it be Open Soros?
I disagree with your claim that the world is currently overpopulated. Starvation exists because of political and economic problems, not because of lack of food. If we solve (even some of!) those political and economic problems, then birth rates will stabilize and we will not reach a point where the earth cannot support us all.
Of course, how to solve those problems is another question entirely...
There never was a "particular direction the species was going"--we are here because it is the vector sum of the set
You appear to be arguing that a vector does not have direction.
Using technology to improve kernel maintenance is so sensible that sooner or later somebody will come up with a solution that Linus likes. One improvement that has already been made is the use of other people as maintainers for older kernel versions.
That's no attitude to take. What we need is cooperation and competition, each in its place, where people discuss the issues and the best ideas/implementations win. If each person who contributes to the linux kernel would have started their own kernel instead of contributing, linux would be much worse off today.
If you something to contribute, then attempt, through polite reason and good code, to do so.
Have IBM and other big iron vendors actually said this? Of course the linux community speculates about it, and there are good arguments both for and against it, but I am not aware of any official IBM or other source saying "we're phasing out this OS in favor of Linux."
You're right, I hadn't considered the "malicious litigation" aspect when I made my post.
:)
I guess it just goes to show the value of having lots of lawyers on retainer... well, in the long run it's probably more practical to simply control the government.
Document retention as defined here is only an issue if the company behaves in a manner that could be construed to be illegal, unethical, embarrassing, etc. Such is not always the case.
At my company, management treats its email archive as an asset and requires us to save as much work-related email as we think is prudent. (Obviously we don't save every last piece of spam or "what are you doing for lunch" email.) Since it's a relatively small company the hardware requirements for this storage are not very high.
So far, I am not aware of any case where management has had cause to regret this policy.
This is true; however, since the copy cost of software is near zero, all we need is for one person or group to be able to fix it, and the change can propagate quickly. Of course, this is true for both open source and closed source software.
To tie this all back into the thread, Open Source software should not be considered exempt from such a (stupid) law just because it comes with source. The source of a program is of no value to the vast majority of its users.
This does sound reasonable. I somewhat like the idea that somebody else posted about the penalty for gross negligence being a multiple of the price of the software. This would protect shareware authors (if there are any left any more) while forcing open source companies like Red Hat, as well as closed source companies like Sun and Microsoft, to do their basic due diligence.