Your inability to do so much as type "Heinlein" into Google (~100,000 hits) is not.
If you remain unable to answer even the simplest questions on your own, how can you hope to even understand the daily news without prior spoon feeding of the history, technology, and other information it depends on? I hope you haven't reached voting age yet.
I haven't looked in almost a year now, but the last time I did, there was an alpha (rendered lots of graphics correctly, lots incorrectly) patch for Mozilla and no SVG support for IE or any other browser. Did everybody catch up while I wasn't looking?
1. MS charges all OEMs the SAME price for Windows regardless of who they are.
No: MS charges everybody the SAME price for Windows, regardless of whether they're a big OEM, a small OEM planning to replace IE with Netscape or sell dual booting systems, a shrinkwrap retailer, your grandma, or a Satanic cult planning to sacrifice the CD in a microwave.
Anything else leaves wiggle room for Microsoft.
"Well, we sell all our OEMs Windows XP at half price - but we've been talking with Dell about what they do with Windows after we sell it to them, to make sure they're still really an OEM and not an end-user we'd have to raise prices for."
"OEM copies of Windows are half-price - of course, that's for a hard drive image only. If you want a copy of Windows that you could, say, reinstall after repartitioning the drive, then you'll have to pay the full price."
If you throw a nuclear missile at your enemy's city, then you get nuked in return, start World War III, and generally make a mess of things.
If you can change the course of an asteroid, then you can cause the same magnitude of destruction without it being traceable to you, and indeed without it being a proveably unnatural event. So you got to destroy a city or an ultrahardened target free from retaliation. Of course, this is only useful for an unprovoked attack, so it requires a level of "rat bastard" thinking that's probably too much for the DoD. CIA, maybe.
Or am I missing something?
Sort of, but don't feel bad about it - at least you didn't make an ass of yourself like the AC a few posts below you.
The original poster was suggesting that/bin,/usr/bin, and such are obsolescences in the same way that the 16-bit code (and non 64-bit clean code) in Windows is. I was explaining why that is not the case. You are being a unnecessarily insulting jerk.
Does that explain everything?
If you're talking about C:\Windows, you should also set up a Linux box and mount / over a network.
The first German rocket scientists supposedly freaked out the same way you did, when they couldn't figure out why their guidance systems still left their rockets apparantly wobbling in all directions. It turned out not to be the guidance systems at all - just the wind. The rocket paths were straight, but shifting winds at different altitudes blew them into crazy lightning-strike looking things as the rocket was still aloft. I'd be surprised if the same phenomenon wasn't the explanation for that photo.
Tell you what - I'll set up a computer mounting/usr/lib over the network (or off a CD-R, or a ROM device), and you try to mount C:\Windows\ (or was it C:\Windows\System?) the same way, and we'll compare notes on what doesn't break and what does.
Yeah, it seems crazy, but there are good reasons for keeping around most of the Unixisms that Linux still has. There are no good reasons for many of the hacks and 64-bit incompatibilities in the Win32 API, or for Win16 to ever have existed.
13 moon positions and 20 sun positions over 13 moon cycles that are each 28 days in length.
Would that be the 27.3 day sidereal Lunar month or the 29.5 day synodic Lunar month that you've got the length wrong for?
The ratio of the lunar month (either way you measure) to the year is an irrational number that changes as the moon's orbit recedes. Any calendar that makes a real attempt to follow both cycles won't be good for much except driving people nuts.
However how many people do you hear complaing regarding the quality of Windows 2000 (on which XP is based)?
About 3 out of 6 I've talked to. That's a pretty serious improvement, though, as it could imply that the old Microsoft lie of "it's just bad hardware drivers crashing our flawless operating system" could finally have some truth to it.
Of course, the downside to that is Microsoft can't afford to hype the stability too much; if Joe Public loads the new ultra-stable XP on his Compaq-saved-$2.50-on-cheap-parts motherboard, he's not going to care that it's the nonconformant APM hardware crashing, he's going to blame Microsoft.
vcr with the Indeo 5.0 codec. vcr for me drops about 1 frame in 2000 - not as good as it should be, but acceptable. And the resulting files are VirtualDub readable, which is good - I haven't found any better way to cut commercials and merge multiple AVI files in Linux.
There's a nice symbiosis there, because the Windows bttv driver generally bluescreens on me within the first minute or two of recording. I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't dual booting.
I was under the impression that one of the benefits of using IDEA (or the other PGP/GPG ciphers) over, say, XOR, is that hostile intercept of multiple encrypted messages (even with plaintext provided!) does not ease cryptanalysis. If they have one encrypted message of yours, they can try brute forcing a 128-bit keyspace to break it (or try brute forcing a 2048-bit keyspace of primes to get your public key). If they have 1000 encrypted messages of yours, well, they still have to do the same (universe-exhausting) brute force attack.
Changing the statute of limitations for a crime does not change the definition of a crime (so doesn't violate the first clause you italicized) nor does it change the penalty for the crime (so it doesn't violate the second clause). I agree that there's a bit of questionable morality going on here, but they're careful to keep it Constitutional, and that seems to be sufficient to keep it within UN guidelines as well.
Absolutely. In fact, any doubt in my mind about the nature of DeCSS's programmers and users was erased when I saw the rapid appearance of point-and-click Windows programs that allowed, nay, encouraged the pirating of DVD movies.
That's funny:
Any doubt in my mind about the nature of DeCSS's programmers and users was erased when I saw the rapid appearance of point-and-click Linux programs that allowed the playback of DVD movies.
Of course, all of this is beside the point - you appear to believe that software developers are somehow responsible for how their tools are used by others. Ridiculous. Should we hunt down Stallman for "cp"?
Microsoft may not be quite as important in the future, but they're in no danger of crashing. How many other companies do you know that could lay off 99% of their employees (they still need the guys running the CD press and the shrinkwrap machine) without feeling a revenue drop for a year? They've got enough unearned revenue in the form of CDs waiting to be pressed and sold at "discount prices" to cushion any fall they take.
Also, the nice thing about ditching all those stock options to employees is that it spreads out the impact of the fall. If Microsoft stock takes a plunge, Bill Gates feels it and Joe Cubicle feels it, but the company accountants just realize they can't issue any new stock for a while, and that's the end of it for them.
What, did the moderator points get distributed to retarded monkeys today?
Here's a free clue: When you see something really funny posted to a mostly-unrelated Slashdot article, ask yourself, "is this a cut and paste"? Even a 10 second Google search may reveal, for example, that you are reading a spoof written by Jon Hamkins 4 years ago that is being copied without attribution by a karma whore today.
Of course, I realize I'm casting pearls before swine, explaining this. Anyone who would mod up "Trolligula" without thinking can't be the sharpest crayon in the box.
If fair use is a birthright, then they can't take it away from us.
If fair use is a result of the sale contract, then they can take it away from us... but they won't. What kind of twisted record store is going to make me sign a contract (necessary to override the implicit contract of copyright law rights) before I walk out with a CD?
Repeat after me:
If you open the box, and see a piece of paper claiming that you have forfeited some rights, throw that piece of paper away. It is not a contract.
If you start up a piece of software that you have completely paid for (e.g. there is no continuing online service), and you are supposed to click through some dreaded EULA before it will install, then unless you're in one of the damned UCITA states, ignore that EULA. It is not a contract.
If someone wants to take away your rights, they need to do it with an actual contract, which can be read and agreed to by you before you give them your money!
The current practice of deceiving people out of their rights with unenforceable legalese-sounding claims should be considered fraud. Can anyone out there afford to buy a congressman and get this looked into?
Disclaimer: IANAL, and I suspect that the violations of corporate perogative above may be dangerous even if not violations of law. Don't blame me if you listen to some random Slashdot user and end up as the next Dimitri.
There's a big difference between a megabit and a megabyte, a difference which unfortunately only gets abbreviated as "Mb" vs "MB" When someone doesn't seem to know the similar difference between abbreviations of "milli" vs. "mega", you have to wonder whether they've got the bit/byte dichotomy entirely figured out either.
Apologists for corporate efficiency simply slough off the recent dotcom debacle as the price one pays for a free market.
Yes, indeed, if millions of people simultaneously make stupid business decisions, you will indeed see economic failures like the dot-com bubble. Do you have a better idea? Would you care to point out to me the specific congressmen who were acting as the voice of warning, whom you trust enough to make the members of the Committee for Central Planning? Would you point out to me the authors of reasonable, technologically literate legislation whom you trust enough to be in direct control of the evolution of computers and computer networks in the future?
I'd like to see it. As bad as it is to live with an economy that can be easily trashed by 5 million idiots, I suspect an economy that could be easily trashed by 500 idiots would be worse.
Besides, it's a somewhat self-correcting problem. When someone in the private sector wastes his company's or his investors' money, he doesn't usually get the chance to repeat the process.
When someone in Congress wastes the nation's money, we call him an "incumbent".
afterall, who many americans think that the 'founding fathers' that gave birth to the American REVOLUTION were not "TERRORISTS" to the Brits?
Would you care to enlighten this ignorant American with some specific examples of American Revolution terrorism? I thought that "London Bridge is falling down..." was just a song.
Light travels about 1/100 of an inch in a picosecond, not 45 miles. And microwaves travel just as fast through air as visible light does through fiber.
I agree with your conclusion, but almost none of your arguments:
Postal mail creates jobs
So did iceboxes. The ice men found new jobs.
packages - What's the point in all this e-commerce if nobody has anything delivered anymore?
I've had at least a dozen packages ordered online and delivered. Some used UPS, some used FedEx; none used the postal service.
Utility Bills - Until some laws are changed you must be provided with an invoice for your purchase and written notification of money owed.
I'm sure laws here vary from state to state, but I no longer legally have to get paper confirmation of every single stock trade I make, for one example, I just had to formally agree that email confirmation alone would be acceptable. There are a lot of non-utility services that are willing to go without sending you a written bill if they have a credit card number or checking account transfer information, and there are ways to pay many bills on line more manually if you feel the need to personally authorize each transaction. This is a good reason, but not a show stopper.
Taxes - Like anything done by the government, this ones going to be done the old world way for a long time.
Yeah, by people who want to do it the old world way. The IRS at least has been accepting electronic submissions on their most commonly used forms for years.
Books and periodicals - Some people (myself included) prefer to read anything of great length on paper.
Me too. But that's just an eyestrain thing with me; I'm really looking forward to seeing some of these "electronic paper" technologies being prototyped. Besides, most of my books come from a bookstore and most of my periodicals come online, nowadays.
Also there is a certain pride in owning a handsome book, admiring the cover as you put it away on a shelf, where you will never touch it again.
You have an odd sense of pride - this is really the sentence that prompted my response, as your psychology fascinates me. I have a couple untouched books on my shelves, but generally that status is a source of shame, not pride.
registered mail - any sort of mail that requires a signature is coming to you the old fashioned way. I know, there's a million technical solutions that would make this work as digital, but your written signature is an important legal tool that people will continue to hit you over the head with forever.
This you may be right about. Frankly, digital signatures are much harder to forge than the old-fashioned kind, but way too permanently stealable. Can you imagine if every instance of ILOVEYOU had installed a keyboard sniffer to grab passphrases?
Slashdot Mirror
Your inability to do so much as type "Heinlein" into Google (~100,000 hits) is not.
If you remain unable to answer even the simplest questions on your own, how can you hope to even understand the daily news without prior spoon feeding of the history, technology, and other information it depends on? I hope you haven't reached voting age yet.
I haven't looked in almost a year now, but the last time I did, there was an alpha (rendered lots of graphics correctly, lots incorrectly) patch for Mozilla and no SVG support for IE or any other browser. Did everybody catch up while I wasn't looking?
Undefined symbol? Just delete it! If nothing breaks, then it couldn't have been that important...
Okay, I'm mostly joking, but have you tried rebooting with the new (patched) kernel and using the loopback device yet?
1. MS charges all OEMs the SAME price for Windows regardless of who they are.
No: MS charges everybody the SAME price for Windows, regardless of whether they're a big OEM, a small OEM planning to replace IE with Netscape or sell dual booting systems, a shrinkwrap retailer, your grandma, or a Satanic cult planning to sacrifice the CD in a microwave.
Anything else leaves wiggle room for Microsoft.
"Well, we sell all our OEMs Windows XP at half price - but we've been talking with Dell about what they do with Windows after we sell it to them, to make sure they're still really an OEM and not an end-user we'd have to raise prices for."
"OEM copies of Windows are half-price - of course, that's for a hard drive image only. If you want a copy of Windows that you could, say, reinstall after repartitioning the drive, then you'll have to pay the full price."
If you throw a nuclear missile at your enemy's city, then you get nuked in return, start World War III, and generally make a mess of things.
If you can change the course of an asteroid, then you can cause the same magnitude of destruction without it being traceable to you, and indeed without it being a proveably unnatural event. So you got to destroy a city or an ultrahardened target free from retaliation. Of course, this is only useful for an unprovoked attack, so it requires a level of "rat bastard" thinking that's probably too much for the DoD. CIA, maybe.
Or am I missing something?
Sort of, but don't feel bad about it - at least you didn't make an ass of yourself like the AC a few posts below you.
The original poster was suggesting that /bin, /usr/bin, and such are obsolescences in the same way that the 16-bit code (and non 64-bit clean code) in Windows is. I was explaining why that is not the case. You are being a unnecessarily insulting jerk.
Does that explain everything?
If you're talking about C:\Windows, you should also set up a Linux box and mount / over a network.
OK.
The first German rocket scientists supposedly freaked out the same way you did, when they couldn't figure out why their guidance systems still left their rockets apparantly wobbling in all directions. It turned out not to be the guidance systems at all - just the wind. The rocket paths were straight, but shifting winds at different altitudes blew them into crazy lightning-strike looking things as the rocket was still aloft. I'd be surprised if the same phenomenon wasn't the explanation for that photo.
Yeah, it seems crazy, but there are good reasons for keeping around most of the Unixisms that Linux still has. There are no good reasons for many of the hacks and 64-bit incompatibilities in the Win32 API, or for Win16 to ever have existed.
13 moon positions and 20 sun positions over 13 moon cycles that are each 28 days in length.
Would that be the 27.3 day sidereal Lunar month or the 29.5 day synodic Lunar month that you've got the length wrong for?
The ratio of the lunar month (either way you measure) to the year is an irrational number that changes as the moon's orbit recedes. Any calendar that makes a real attempt to follow both cycles won't be good for much except driving people nuts.
Were these pages run by Netscape, Inc?
In a sane world, lying to people about your competitors' products over the internet would be called "wire fraud" and be prosecuted.
However how many people do you hear complaing regarding the quality of Windows 2000 (on which XP is based)?
About 3 out of 6 I've talked to. That's a pretty serious improvement, though, as it could imply that the old Microsoft lie of "it's just bad hardware drivers crashing our flawless operating system" could finally have some truth to it.
Of course, the downside to that is Microsoft can't afford to hype the stability too much; if Joe Public loads the new ultra-stable XP on his Compaq-saved-$2.50-on-cheap-parts motherboard, he's not going to care that it's the nonconformant APM hardware crashing, he's going to blame Microsoft.
vcr with the Indeo 5.0 codec. vcr for me drops about 1 frame in 2000 - not as good as it should be, but acceptable. And the resulting files are VirtualDub readable, which is good - I haven't found any better way to cut commercials and merge multiple AVI files in Linux.
There's a nice symbiosis there, because the Windows bttv driver generally bluescreens on me within the first minute or two of recording. I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't dual booting.
I was under the impression that one of the benefits of using IDEA (or the other PGP/GPG ciphers) over, say, XOR, is that hostile intercept of multiple encrypted messages (even with plaintext provided!) does not ease cryptanalysis. If they have one encrypted message of yours, they can try brute forcing a 128-bit keyspace to break it (or try brute forcing a 2048-bit keyspace of primes to get your public key). If they have 1000 encrypted messages of yours, well, they still have to do the same (universe-exhausting) brute force attack.
Changing the statute of limitations for a crime does not change the definition of a crime (so doesn't violate the first clause you italicized) nor does it change the penalty for the crime (so it doesn't violate the second clause). I agree that there's a bit of questionable morality going on here, but they're careful to keep it Constitutional, and that seems to be sufficient to keep it within UN guidelines as well.
Absolutely. In fact, any doubt in my mind about the nature of DeCSS's programmers and users was erased when I saw the rapid appearance of point-and-click Windows programs that allowed, nay, encouraged the pirating of DVD movies.
That's funny:
Any doubt in my mind about the nature of DeCSS's programmers and users was erased when I saw the rapid appearance of point-and-click Linux programs that allowed the playback of DVD movies.
Of course, all of this is beside the point - you appear to believe that software developers are somehow responsible for how their tools are used by others. Ridiculous. Should we hunt down Stallman for "cp"?
Microsoft may not be quite as important in the future, but they're in no danger of crashing. How many other companies do you know that could lay off 99% of their employees (they still need the guys running the CD press and the shrinkwrap machine) without feeling a revenue drop for a year? They've got enough unearned revenue in the form of CDs waiting to be pressed and sold at "discount prices" to cushion any fall they take.
Also, the nice thing about ditching all those stock options to employees is that it spreads out the impact of the fall. If Microsoft stock takes a plunge, Bill Gates feels it and Joe Cubicle feels it, but the company accountants just realize they can't issue any new stock for a while, and that's the end of it for them.
What, did the moderator points get distributed to retarded monkeys today?
Here's a free clue: When you see something really funny posted to a mostly-unrelated Slashdot article, ask yourself, "is this a cut and paste"? Even a 10 second Google search may reveal, for example, that you are reading a spoof written by Jon Hamkins 4 years ago that is being copied without attribution by a karma whore today.
Of course, I realize I'm casting pearls before swine, explaining this. Anyone who would mod up "Trolligula" without thinking can't be the sharpest crayon in the box.
If fair use is a birthright, then they can't take it away from us.
If fair use is a result of the sale contract, then they can take it away from us... but they won't. What kind of twisted record store is going to make me sign a contract (necessary to override the implicit contract of copyright law rights) before I walk out with a CD?
Repeat after me:
If you open the box, and see a piece of paper claiming that you have forfeited some rights, throw that piece of paper away. It is not a contract.
If you start up a piece of software that you have completely paid for (e.g. there is no continuing online service), and you are supposed to click through some dreaded EULA before it will install, then unless you're in one of the damned UCITA states, ignore that EULA. It is not a contract.
If someone wants to take away your rights, they need to do it with an actual contract, which can be read and agreed to by you before you give them your money!
The current practice of deceiving people out of their rights with unenforceable legalese-sounding claims should be considered fraud. Can anyone out there afford to buy a congressman and get this looked into?
Disclaimer: IANAL, and I suspect that the violations of corporate perogative above may be dangerous even if not violations of law. Don't blame me if you listen to some random Slashdot user and end up as the next Dimitri.
There's a big difference between a megabit and a megabyte, a difference which unfortunately only gets abbreviated as "Mb" vs "MB" When someone doesn't seem to know the similar difference between abbreviations of "milli" vs. "mega", you have to wonder whether they've got the bit/byte dichotomy entirely figured out either.
I'm sick and tired of "Where do you want to go today?" It'll be sweet when they replace that:
Bill Gates, uncombed and speaking an octave below his normal voice: "Are you the keymaster?"
Apologists for corporate efficiency simply slough off the recent dotcom debacle as the price one pays for a free market.
Yes, indeed, if millions of people simultaneously make stupid business decisions, you will indeed see economic failures like the dot-com bubble. Do you have a better idea? Would you care to point out to me the specific congressmen who were acting as the voice of warning, whom you trust enough to make the members of the Committee for Central Planning? Would you point out to me the authors of reasonable, technologically literate legislation whom you trust enough to be in direct control of the evolution of computers and computer networks in the future?
I'd like to see it. As bad as it is to live with an economy that can be easily trashed by 5 million idiots, I suspect an economy that could be easily trashed by 500 idiots would be worse.
Besides, it's a somewhat self-correcting problem. When someone in the private sector wastes his company's or his investors' money, he doesn't usually get the chance to repeat the process.
When someone in Congress wastes the nation's money, we call him an "incumbent".
afterall, who many americans think that the 'founding fathers' that gave birth to the American REVOLUTION were not "TERRORISTS" to the Brits?
Would you care to enlighten this ignorant American with some specific examples of American Revolution terrorism? I thought that "London Bridge is falling down..." was just a song.
Light travels about 1/100 of an inch in a picosecond, not 45 miles. And microwaves travel just as fast through air as visible light does through fiber.
I agree with your conclusion, but almost none of your arguments:
Postal mail creates jobs
So did iceboxes. The ice men found new jobs.
packages - What's the point in all this e-commerce if nobody has anything delivered anymore?
I've had at least a dozen packages ordered online and delivered. Some used UPS, some used FedEx; none used the postal service.
Utility Bills - Until some laws are changed you must be provided with an invoice for your purchase and written notification of money owed.
I'm sure laws here vary from state to state, but I no longer legally have to get paper confirmation of every single stock trade I make, for one example, I just had to formally agree that email confirmation alone would be acceptable. There are a lot of non-utility services that are willing to go without sending you a written bill if they have a credit card number or checking account transfer information, and there are ways to pay many bills on line more manually if you feel the need to personally authorize each transaction. This is a good reason, but not a show stopper.
Taxes - Like anything done by the government, this ones going to be done the old world way for a long time.
Yeah, by people who want to do it the old world way. The IRS at least has been accepting electronic submissions on their most commonly used forms for years.
Books and periodicals - Some people (myself included) prefer to read anything of great length on paper.
Me too. But that's just an eyestrain thing with me; I'm really looking forward to seeing some of these "electronic paper" technologies being prototyped. Besides, most of my books come from a bookstore and most of my periodicals come online, nowadays.
Also there is a certain pride in owning a handsome book, admiring the cover as you put it away on a shelf, where you will never touch it again.
You have an odd sense of pride - this is really the sentence that prompted my response, as your psychology fascinates me. I have a couple untouched books on my shelves, but generally that status is a source of shame, not pride.
registered mail - any sort of mail that requires a signature is coming to you the old fashioned way. I know, there's a million technical solutions that would make this work as digital, but your written signature is an important legal tool that people will continue to hit you over the head with forever.
This you may be right about. Frankly, digital signatures are much harder to forge than the old-fashioned kind, but way too permanently stealable. Can you imagine if every instance of ILOVEYOU had installed a keyboard sniffer to grab passphrases?