...we have these people to warn us about movies like Dogma. Otherwise, we might have been subjected to "homosexual suggestions", "excessive exposure of female posterior", and "adult in underwear". And that's just in the "Sex/Homosexuality" category! --
I think what is meant here is that you can't sincerely subscribe to Christianity and Islam at the same time. "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." and all that. That's not to say that either group must necessarily wipe out the other, although instructions (or at least hints) to that effect are encoded in the scripture. --
My reading of the The Hacker Crackdown was interrupted when an attempt to load the next chapter timed out. That was a few hours ago and www.eff.org is still down.
Bring on the conspiracy theories:-)
Seriously though, anybody know what's up with www.eff.org? --
The man was talking about presenting both sides of the issue and he showed an excellent example of how people sometimes fail to do that. He wasn't saying that protection of the rainforest isn't a worthy endeavour or that farmers' rights are more important than the environment. Perhaps he thinks that, but there's no rational way to deduce that from his posting. --
I love Outlook Express, but I'm not going to talk about that. Instead, I'd like to say a few words about mh (or nmh, actually) because somebody mentioned "The UNIX way(tm)".
nm is a suite of programs, each of which does one thing well. There's comp to compose mail. It calls your favorite editor and then hands the message off to send, which sends it. When you receive mail, you call inc to move the messages from the spool file to mh's mail directory, where each message is one file. Inc will show you a list of new messages. You can get a list of all your messages with scan. Use show to read a message, repl to reply to one, forw to forward. These can take a message number as an argument. All these are normal shell commands that you can type interactively or put in a script. Since each message is a file, you can also use normal file handling commands like mv and cp to organise your mail and you can script those operations as well. Configuration is distributed. If you don't like how mh sends your mail, you configure send; nothing else. For someone who prefers the UNIX way, mh is heaven.
I still prefer a really good integrated client to mh, though. It's just that there aren't any really good ones for Linux. (Yes, I'm actually saying that Outlook Express is better than any mail client available for Linux. Sue me. (Yes, I've used mutt) --
I'm feeling kind of left out in all this talk about writing your congressman. The laws we talk about here on Slashdot are usually US ones, but even though I don't live in the US, these laws have a big impact on my on-line existence because much of it is spent consuming information from the US--from people bound by these laws. What am I supposed to do apart from joining the EFF? --
Section 1201(a)(2) of the Copyright Act, part of the DMCA, provides that:
"No person shall . . . offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any technology . . . that---
"(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under [the Copyright Act];
"(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under [the Copyright Act]; or
"(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under [the Copyright Act].''
I notice they're saying "person" now instead of "party". This must be an effort to make laws easier to understand for us IANAL types. It didn't help me much. Perhaps I'm just hopelessly optimistic and naiive, but I actually came away from reading that clause with the belief that the only thing banned was distributing something that is primarily intended to assist in (and not really useful for anything but) illegally copying protected material. I thought (B) was there to exclude things that were really useful for something other than making illegal copies.
Boy, was I wrong:
Second, even if DeCSS were intended and usable solely to permit the playing, and not the copying, of DVDs on Linux machines, the playing without a licensed CSS "player key'' would "circumvent a technological measure'' that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work and violate the statute in any case.
I went back and reread the DMCA excerpt. It's obvious to me now that the DMCA doesn't just ban the circumvention of copy protection schemes for illegal copying, but for any purpose, including watching DVDs you own legally. --
Thanks, I would have included a link if I'd just remembered where I read the joke but I figured a lot of readers would make the connection nonetheless. --
It's my understanding that making a commercial, closed dvd player (or at least one in which the decrypting module is closed) is not a problem license-wise (Don't take this as fact just because I said it. I'm not particularly well informed). So I think the companies that make dvd players for Windows could make them for Linux, FreeBSD, or whatever else they chose. It's just that they aren't choosing to do that. The reason would obviously be the size of the market. Justified or not, there's a perception that users of free operating systems won't pay for software, making the market even less attractive than other markets of similar size.
If it's true that this is possible, and it's untrue that free os users won't pay for software, then that presents an opportunity to anybody who can create software for the free operating systems. Just license the technology and release a player.
As for making friends, don't count on it. Every time a company gives something to the free software community on terms that aren't perfectly agreeable to the community, the company gets flamed to a crisp.
Anyone selling a licensed dvd player to free os users would have to do it on terms we don't like: closed source and region locking. I, for one, would not buy such a player until there was something like Zone Selector available for it.
On the whole, though, I think a developer could make money this way. --
To complete the "offtopicness" of this thread, let's bring up Microsoft:
Most computer users use Microsoft Word.
People like receiving documents in a format they're familiar with.
Therefore, to make the MOST people happy...
UTC is the baseline. Those not already familiar with their UTC offset should LOOK IP UP and LEARN IT; they're going to have trouble in the world otherwise.
I'm still rooting for the portable time tag though. --
Instead of putting raw text into articles to indicate time, how about offering article (and comment) writers a time tag that gets translated to the reader's selected time zone?
Or at least put the UTC time in there so that people will only have to know their own time zone. --
I read that thread too and thought along those lines. Companies can even set up scripts to compile and publish the modules automatically whenever the output of finger @ftp.kernel.org changes.
One point I'd like to add: apparently there are more factors than just the kernel version. SMP-ness and even the compiler used matter as well. --
Slashdot Mirror
...we have these people to warn us about movies like Dogma. Otherwise, we might have been subjected to "homosexual suggestions", "excessive exposure of female posterior", and "adult in underwear". And that's just in the "Sex/Homosexuality" category!
--
Anyway, what's wrong with ./configure&&make all install?
--
Actually, a lot of Makefiles today have an uninstall target. You do have to keep the source tree around for that to work, though.
--
I think what is meant here is that you can't sincerely subscribe to Christianity and Islam at the same time. "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." and all that. That's not to say that either group must necessarily wipe out the other, although instructions (or at least hints) to that effect are encoded in the scripture.
--
--
Bring on the conspiracy theories :-)
Seriously though, anybody know what's up with www.eff.org?
--
The man was talking about presenting both sides of the issue and he showed an excellent example of how people sometimes fail to do that. He wasn't saying that protection of the rainforest isn't a worthy endeavour or that farmers' rights are more important than the environment. Perhaps he thinks that, but there's no rational way to deduce that from his posting.
--
No, not 'just because they can', but French truck drivers tend to do this whenever they want higher wages.
--
Other distributions don't put things in /usr/local either, but they still include it in their paths. I think that's a sensible thing to do.
--
nt
--
nm is a suite of programs, each of which does one thing well. There's comp to compose mail. It calls your favorite editor and then hands the message off to send, which sends it. When you receive mail, you call inc to move the messages from the spool file to mh's mail directory, where each message is one file. Inc will show you a list of new messages. You can get a list of all your messages with scan. Use show to read a message, repl to reply to one, forw to forward. These can take a message number as an argument. All these are normal shell commands that you can type interactively or put in a script. Since each message is a file, you can also use normal file handling commands like mv and cp to organise your mail and you can script those operations as well. Configuration is distributed. If you don't like how mh sends your mail, you configure send; nothing else. For someone who prefers the UNIX way, mh is heaven.
I still prefer a really good integrated client to mh, though. It's just that there aren't any really good ones for Linux. (Yes, I'm actually saying that Outlook Express is better than any mail client available for Linux. Sue me. (Yes, I've used mutt)
--
I'm feeling kind of left out in all this talk about writing your congressman. The laws we talk about here on Slashdot are usually US ones, but even though I don't live in the US, these laws have a big impact on my on-line existence because much of it is spent consuming information from the US--from people bound by these laws. What am I supposed to do apart from joining the EFF?
--
You sound happy to be moving from Outlook to Notes. Strange. You must never have used Notes.
--
Boy, was I wrong:
I went back and reread the DMCA excerpt. It's obvious to me now that the DMCA doesn't just ban the circumvention of copy protection schemes for illegal copying, but for any purpose, including watching DVDs you own legally.--
Thanks, I would have included a link if I'd just remembered where I read the joke but I figured a lot of readers would make the connection nonetheless.
--
If it's true that this is possible, and it's untrue that free os users won't pay for software, then that presents an opportunity to anybody who can create software for the free operating systems. Just license the technology and release a player.
As for making friends, don't count on it. Every time a company gives something to the free software community on terms that aren't perfectly agreeable to the community, the company gets flamed to a crisp.
Anyone selling a licensed dvd player to free os users would have to do it on terms we don't like: closed source and region locking. I, for one, would not buy such a player until there was something like Zone Selector available for it.
On the whole, though, I think a developer could make money this way.
--
If you want to "torture yourself with GUI software", Darxite is pretty cool.
--
Not in the long term. Think ex-employees, for instance.
--
Please, people, just say "untruth", "exaggeration", "outright lie", or whatever. Not all untruths are FUD.
--
Most computer users use Microsoft Word.
People like receiving documents in a format they're familiar with.
Therefore, to make the MOST people happy...
UTC is the baseline. Those not already familiar with their UTC offset should LOOK IP UP and LEARN IT; they're going to have trouble in the world otherwise.
I'm still rooting for the portable time tag though.
--
Or sheep's face.
--
Or at least put the UTC time in there so that people will only have to know their own time zone.
--
If the US hasn't already given all their excess vowels to Croatia, I suggest they sprinkle some into those traffic reports.
--
One point I'd like to add: apparently there are more factors than just the kernel version. SMP-ness and even the compiler used matter as well.
--
Come on, you're telling me biker doesn't turn you on? :-)
--