Why don't we all install liberation fonts and be done with it?
Because they only solve part of the problem. They provide free alternatives to Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New, which is great, but that doesn't help for sites that use popular fonts like Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Comic Sans, etc, let alone the small but growing number of sites that favour the new ClearType fonts that Microsoft is promoting with Vista and Office 2007.
It's great to have more free fonts available, but sadly they only solve one very specific problem, and there's a long way to go before Linux will be able to compete with Windows or OS X typographically without the user having to supply a lot of additional non-free fonts.
now Apple is the largest (in units shipped) certified Unix(tm) vendor in the world.
How can Apple be "the largest (in units shipped)" when they haven't shipped a single unit? They won't even be releasing their certified Unix product till October.
This a quote from a thoughtful article on Ebert's comments?
Yes, but you need to look at the context: as it happens, "the maturity of an honest and articulate 4-year old" is a direct quote from Ebert's original article, where Ebert himself used it to describe Barker! Which kind of changes the way you see things a little, doesn't it?
Well done, though - you've illustrated nicely what really harms the reputation of gaming: the fact that people automatically assume that gamers are immature, and therefore anything a gamer ever says that might possibly be taken to reinforce that stereotype will be taken out of context and misinterpreted in the worst possible way.:)
The wikipedia community might want to take it on themselves to promote a "Real Name" system that casts suspicion on and removes the benefit of the doubt from those who choose to post anonymously.
How exactly would these real names be verified? Amazon can do it because they can compare the name you give with the name on your credit card, but that really isn't an option for community projects for all sorts of reasons.
And sorry, but FPS games demand more realism and the Wii can't provide it.
People used to think sports games demanded realism, with vendors competing to try to model every blade of grass on the pitch and make every single footballer individually recognisable down to the last pore on his nose. And, lo, they were all bewildered by the way people were buying Wiis just to get their hands on the simplistic cartoony sports games that were bundled with the console...
Yeah, Wii games aren't going to compete with your Haloes or Half-Lifes for pure shininess, but the sports experience shows that there's a significant market that doesn't give a toss about shininess, and there's no reason to assume that wouldn't work just as well with a simple and fun FPS title.
What should an email client do? How about -- email. Just email. Not email and newsgroups
No thanks. Newsgroups make up a significant part of my Thunderbird usage. Take them away, and I'd have to switch to something like Outlook Express - not a pleasant thought.
Basically, you're making the mistake of reducing Thunderbird to what you see it as useful for. But Thunderbird isn't an "email client". It's an email/NNTP/RSS client. To make it into a pure email client would be to change its very nature, and at this stage that could only lose it users.
IIRC TOR provides plausible deniability in that any given packet may have came from anyone on the TOR network.
And this is all very well and good... for as long as your government values the rule of law.
However, if your government ever decides that TOR is an evil program that is only used to traffic in child pornography and to plan terrorist atrocities, it can just outlaw any use of the software, on the grounds that running a TOR node of any sort means you are either a paedophile, a terrorist, or someone who is helping them commit dreadful crimes by forwarding their encrypted traffic.
You might want to start looking for a better government at that point, of course.:)
It's more about that they're using popular languages that people know (HTML, CSS, Javascript) to do things that traditionally were done by unpopular languages (C, Python, etc.)
Now before you flame me about calling those languages unpopular all I mean is that not as many programmers know them
Um, but surely people who know HTML and CSS but not a conventional programming language like C or Python are not programmers - they are web site developers. (Now, before you flame me, I'm not saying that they're inferior, I'm just saying they're different.)
The people who write the code that drives web apps are programmers, but they all know languages like Ruby, PHP, Java, and so forth. That's what they use to write web apps in the first place. You can't use AJAX if there's no server for you to send your AJAX requests to, and the code running on that server is not written in HTML. It could theoretically be written in Javascript, of course, but that's pretty rare, if it happens at all. Why? Probably because more programmers know languages like PHP and Python than know Javascript...
Basically, I do not believe there is any significant number of people who are capable of using Javascript to do more than copy and paste trivial scripts, but do not know any other programming language. Yes, Javascript can be used to write complex applications; but my point is that the people who are capable of doing that are also capable of using conventional tools for the same purpose, so while this project might indeed enable some interesting new applications, it is unlikely that there will be many people capable of developing with it who would not be equally capable of developing without it.
Why is the Linux kernel being bloated with things that are clearly not going to be used by anyone other than tinkerers and hobbyists? It just gives weight to the Microsoft claims that Linux is for hobbyists.
Well, for one thing, Linux is for hobbyists. It is also for a wide variety of other users, but it would be dishonest to deny that hobbyists are an important part of the Linux audience.
It's one thing for hobby tools to be bundled with distributions like Gentoo, but for there to be code like this directly in the kernel, well, it makes it hard to argue that Linux is a serious kernel for serious applications.
Why? That's like saying that Windows is unsuitable for business use just because it comes with Freecell.
To make it even worse, I'm told that many wifi cards are only legal because they're not open-source. Sound bizarre? When they're sold, they're sold with certain restrictions on frequency and power. These restrictions are located entirely within the drivers. If they distributed open-source drivers, those restrictions would either have to be moved into hardware (expensive) or disabled (causes horrific problems with the FCC.)
This makes no sense whatsoever. Why can't they just release the driver source code with a note adding that it is illegal to use the driver if you remove the restrictions?
You might as well say that it is illegal to make open-source FTP programs, because only closed-source FTP programs could include effective restrictions to stop them being used to download child pornography.
It doesn't seem that you've named any problems that weren't solved by docking stations a decade ago.
Well, sure, a laptop in a docking station is basically a desktop, except that you have to pay far more for the same thing, making the whole exercise seem rather pointless.
And the increased speed and reach of modern networking means that the benefit of being able to undock your computer and take it home with you is decreasing. I mean, why spend umpteen dollars on a laptop plus two docking stations and peripherals, and go through all the constant hassle of docking and undocking, and also face a significantly increased risk of a single theft completely depriving you of a computer and all your data -- when you could spend less, get two desktops and a smartphone, and keep your files synchronised over the internet?
I have a hackproof system for password management. It's called a "brain." I remember my passwords, then I retrieve them from memory when I need them.
This has been proven countless times to be highly vulnerable to social engineering attacks, such as targetted phishing. There is also a strong correlation between use of the "brain" system and persistently choosing weak passwords or reusing passwords across multiple sites.
In other words, it might work very well for you - if you have a good enough memory to store unique strong passwords for every site you use, and if you are so careful that you would never, ever fall for a phishing scam, however carefully crafted it might be to target you specifically. But it's not a general solution, because most mere mortals just can't handle that kind of thing.
Is that a correct spelling in the OED? Look it up. It's not there.
That's because you're not searching the OED. You're searching the Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English - it's hardly surprising that it doesn't contain archaic spellings! "Surprize" is, of course, in the OED; COED is not an abridged version, it is a separate work that has nothing much in common except its publisher. (The abridged OED is SOED, which does include "surprize" in example sentences s.v. "surprise", though does not of course give it as a current variant spelling.)
I am an English teacher and I would correct "surprize" to "surprise" in any work handed to me by my students.
I presume you mean in any work intended to be written in modern standard English. I hope you wouldn't if, for example, they had written a story set in the early 19th century and had used that spelling in a representation of the written language of the day!
If Mutopia transcribes a Bach piece into lilypond format, can someone sue them because they transcribed it from a commercial (allegedly copyrighted) score and not an original?
If it's possible to tell that it was transcribed from a particular commercial score, then clearly that commercial score must contain features not present in other versions of the piece. I don't think it's unreasonable for original, distinctive features to be copyrightable.
Obviously any damages would have to be proportionate to the extent of originality in the setting. We'd be talking about a pittance. In fact, any such case would almost certainly be settled out of court with a simple public apology and release of a new version without the copyrighted features. And that would benefit everyone, because it would make the Mutopia version closer to the original, so it's hard to see how a company protecting their modern changes could be considered harmful in this particular case.
The same goes for many of the other examples given in the summary. Modern editions of Shakespeare, for example, take years of preparation and extensive research to create an original text representing the editor's interpretation of a wide variety of Elizabethan and Jacobean editions, and good ones are typically accompanied by a volume of original commentary, notes, and annotations that may be many times greater than the text of the actual play. We are talking about serious added value here. Only an anti-copyright fundamentalist could claim that that degree of creative work should not be protected by copyright. Clearly a straight reprint of a Quarto or Folio text (or a modern edition from the Victorian era) could not be copyrighted, and probably mere mechanical editing like modernising the spelling and punctuation should not qualify for copyright, but the moment an editor starts interpreting the text and emending it to recover what s/he believes Shakespeare actually intended, you have a creative act taking place that can reasonably claim protection.
I miss being able to go anywhere in the world like I could in Daggerfall.
Your memory's playing tricks with you, then, because it was only Arena where you could go anywhere in the world. Daggerfall limited you to certain parts of High Rock and Hammerfell, IIRC.
It is kind of like getting angry that your Zune didn't work on a 64-bit version of Linux.
I would, if I was in the slightest bit inclined to buy a Zune in the first place. Because there's no good reason for a Zune to require specific platform support. It's a USB storage device that happens to have audio playback capability. I can mount any standard USB storage device on 64-bit Linux and copy files to it with any software I choose -- assuming I want to retain control of what goes on there instead of having my music collection taken over by iTunes-style control-freakery, why shouldn't I expect the same to be true of a Zune or an iPhone?
What if (say) Microsoft was including some Apple products in Vista - and hadn't responded to Apple's questions for 22 days. Would you be saying "Calm down, give Microsoft some more time to seek legal advice"?
Yes, since you ask.
These issues are far more complicated than the average jerky-kneed Slashbot can comprehend. I'd far rather that any company, having made a mistake, took their time to get things right, than that they started following every unreasonable demand of the baying mob, because that would set a truly terrifying precedent that would very likely come back to bite us one day.
Most of the commercial game code I run was written for PS/2, which is MIPS.
No, the PS/2 was x86. The MIPS was still pretty new and untested in 1987, so there was no way IBM was going to pick anything but the trusty old 8086 for their new platform.
T-mobile offers unlimited data on their Sidekick plans for only $20 a month (this includes internet, email, aim, and text).
Is this "unlimited" as in "unlimited", or the more usual "unlimited" as in "the limit is secret, and if you exceed it we'll tell the press you were stealing movies"?
Slashdot Mirror
It's great to have more free fonts available, but sadly they only solve one very specific problem, and there's a long way to go before Linux will be able to compete with Windows or OS X typographically without the user having to supply a lot of additional non-free fonts.
This tutorial is also very helpful for prospective new vi users.
Well done, though - you've illustrated nicely what really harms the reputation of gaming: the fact that people automatically assume that gamers are immature, and therefore anything a gamer ever says that might possibly be taken to reinforce that stereotype will be taken out of context and misinterpreted in the worst possible way.
Yeah, Wii games aren't going to compete with your Haloes or Half-Lifes for pure shininess, but the sports experience shows that there's a significant market that doesn't give a toss about shininess, and there's no reason to assume that wouldn't work just as well with a simple and fun FPS title.
Basically, you're making the mistake of reducing Thunderbird to what you see it as useful for. But Thunderbird isn't an "email client". It's an email/NNTP/RSS client. To make it into a pure email client would be to change its very nature, and at this stage that could only lose it users.
However, if your government ever decides that TOR is an evil program that is only used to traffic in child pornography and to plan terrorist atrocities, it can just outlaw any use of the software, on the grounds that running a TOR node of any sort means you are either a paedophile, a terrorist, or someone who is helping them commit dreadful crimes by forwarding their encrypted traffic.
You might want to start looking for a better government at that point, of course.
The people who write the code that drives web apps are programmers, but they all know languages like Ruby, PHP, Java, and so forth. That's what they use to write web apps in the first place. You can't use AJAX if there's no server for you to send your AJAX requests to, and the code running on that server is not written in HTML. It could theoretically be written in Javascript, of course, but that's pretty rare, if it happens at all. Why? Probably because more programmers know languages like PHP and Python than know Javascript...
Basically, I do not believe there is any significant number of people who are capable of using Javascript to do more than copy and paste trivial scripts, but do not know any other programming language. Yes, Javascript can be used to write complex applications; but my point is that the people who are capable of doing that are also capable of using conventional tools for the same purpose, so while this project might indeed enable some interesting new applications, it is unlikely that there will be many people capable of developing with it who would not be equally capable of developing without it.
You might as well say that it is illegal to make open-source FTP programs, because only closed-source FTP programs could include effective restrictions to stop them being used to download child pornography.
And the increased speed and reach of modern networking means that the benefit of being able to undock your computer and take it home with you is decreasing. I mean, why spend umpteen dollars on a laptop plus two docking stations and peripherals, and go through all the constant hassle of docking and undocking, and also face a significantly increased risk of a single theft completely depriving you of a computer and all your data -- when you could spend less, get two desktops and a smartphone, and keep your files synchronised over the internet?
In other words, it might work very well for you - if you have a good enough memory to store unique strong passwords for every site you use, and if you are so careful that you would never, ever fall for a phishing scam, however carefully crafted it might be to target you specifically. But it's not a general solution, because most mere mortals just can't handle that kind of thing.
Fluendo's MP3 plugin is free. So you don't even have to buy it.
Obviously any damages would have to be proportionate to the extent of originality in the setting. We'd be talking about a pittance. In fact, any such case would almost certainly be settled out of court with a simple public apology and release of a new version without the copyrighted features. And that would benefit everyone, because it would make the Mutopia version closer to the original, so it's hard to see how a company protecting their modern changes could be considered harmful in this particular case.
The same goes for many of the other examples given in the summary. Modern editions of Shakespeare, for example, take years of preparation and extensive research to create an original text representing the editor's interpretation of a wide variety of Elizabethan and Jacobean editions, and good ones are typically accompanied by a volume of original commentary, notes, and annotations that may be many times greater than the text of the actual play. We are talking about serious added value here. Only an anti-copyright fundamentalist could claim that that degree of creative work should not be protected by copyright. Clearly a straight reprint of a Quarto or Folio text (or a modern edition from the Victorian era) could not be copyrighted, and probably mere mechanical editing like modernising the spelling and punctuation should not qualify for copyright, but the moment an editor starts interpreting the text and emending it to recover what s/he believes Shakespeare actually intended, you have a creative act taking place that can reasonably claim protection.
These issues are far more complicated than the average jerky-kneed Slashbot can comprehend. I'd far rather that any company, having made a mistake, took their time to get things right, than that they started following every unreasonable demand of the baying mob, because that would set a truly terrifying precedent that would very likely come back to bite us one day.