Yeah, it surely was bad when industry decided they were above the law of the land and got Congress to create unconstitutional copyright laws that created eternal monopolies on content to people who weren't the creators of that content. Once citizens saw that copyright was about greed rather than about allowing artists to make a living off their work, it ceased to be effective.
Do you really believe the majority of copyright violators are merely downloading "Steamboat Willie" or other such material that would do no harm to anyone if publicly released? Not likely, but rather they are downloading movies before they hit the theaters and new music by the disk-full. If I were a content producer I would be upset about it too. These copyright violators are greatly to blame for this whole DRM mess. If P2P were not such a huge problem, why would anyone bother to institute DRM? The solution lies not in a change in technology but in a change in society. We need a world where people respect one another regardless of if they can be seen by the other party or not. We need to start by educating people that stealing is wrong and it is stealing to take something without paying against the wishes of the owner. Yes, I agree information wants to be free, but if you say your information costs money I will either consider the value of your information or turn to a free source. But I hope I would never take it against your wishes.
I get a little tired of hearing any little happening tied to human-produced global warming. Although I am all for cleaning up all manner of human pollution, it seems a little like Post Hoc to say that polar bears' drowning has anything to do with human activity. The environment should be kept clean for its own sake, I don't think we need to use global warming as an excuse.
Maybe we could just use the truths that we know to promote environmental friendliness and leave out the unprovable theories. There are too many factors in the atmosphere to even predict local weather, let alone the cause of global warming.
With only an RSS feed to rely on (no games icon), I was thinking this article was maybe something about fans aboard the Hubble space telescope being disabled and thus preventing some scientist a view of distant galaxies. Would it have been that much trouble for editors to use the full title of the game or "Star Wars Galaxies"?
I totally agree with keeping the home dir organized and using it as a desktop. So why oh why do so many programmers decide to put directories in the home dir without asking me permission? For example: the sidenet config for wine places a 'c' directory in the home dir; iPodder puts a 'data' dir in the home dir. Don't these programmers realize what the dot is for at the beginning of the rest of my programs' data directories? If they all could use this convention it would make life so much easier.
I'm not sure how anything non-material COULD be taught in a science class. Science is the study of nature and the material world, it says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of supernatural forces or entities. Supernatural explanations might well be correct, but they aren't measurable or testable, so in the context of science there simply isn't much to discuss. The alternative is that every measurement you take and experiment you perform has to be disclaimed as possibly supernatural in result, which again may be correct but doesn't add anything to the discussion.
That is why a materialist philosophy should not be taught alongside science. Scientists who are materialists have a prior commitment to look for material causes for every phenomenon, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Materialism is a philosophy because it is not measurable in the way same way gravity or the speed of light is measurable. It is a theory which states "there never was, nor never can be, more than matter in the universe". If true, that means the thought itself is a result of chemical or material processes in the brain.
So I agree that if materialism should be taught, leave it outside of the science class. It is clearly in the range of philosophy and should have nothing to do with science. True science explores all possibilities equally without pre-supposing only one valid cause.
I was waiting for someone to ask this - and the reason is very simple. As a desktop OS, Linux sucks. If you look at what Windows and OSX has going for it, you'll quickly note that it's simple and easy to do just about anything.
I am tired of hearing this kind of ignorant statement. Anyone can say an OS sucks, but can you back it up? I happen to be of the opposite opinion--as a desktop OS, Windows sucks. Why? It is full of annoyances. When you do a new Windows install you get popups everywhere. First a popup wizard to "assist" you connecting to the internet (but really tries to push you to sign up with some particular ISPs). Then when you finally "next" through all of it you get a popup on your desktop telling you "You have 30 days left to activate." Not only do you have to type a 20 digit alphanumeric key to install Windows, you also have to call a 1800 number when your hardware changes. Then when you finally fire up IE it has the annoyance of starting on a flash-filled spam site (MSN) and the address bar will always bork the address you type in because IE puts the cursor at the beginning of the address bar everytime a page loads, so you often get an address like gle.comwww.goo.
That is just the tip of the iceburg. I won't even mention that Windows is closed source so you can't change any of its hard-wired behaviors even if you're a programmer.
Ubuntu 5.10 is a dream compared to Windows. Gnome is much more responsive for me than XP with its themes. I would always run XP with themes turned off but Gnome handles themes without sacrificing speed. In Gnome I get thumbnails of movies, pictures, even PDFs! I can install thousands of programs with just a few clicks. All of the programs are in a repository, not spread out accross the web. 99% of the software is FOSS so I don't have to worry about getting out my credit card to play some little game or use some little basic utility like FTP. Not even to mention the fact that I never have install anti-adware,-spyware,-virus,-trojan, or firewall software!
Today marks the release of YATA 999,999,999.1, Yet Another Troll Article, and with it comes the death of Slashdot. Finally, today, nerds can enjoy the power of Real Life when they step outside of their musky basements in droves to see what else the world has to offer.
In China 99.9999% of computers run Windows.
99.999% of them run pirated Windows.
Why would the Chinese switch to a free OS (as in FOSS) when, to them, Windows is also free (as in pirated)?
It would take MS enforcing their licensing to cause a change so great as that. And what are the chances of that when MS knows they will still make money on all of their other products that are too difficult to pirate, secure, or install without MS's help? They will turn a blind eye to the nearly 100% pirated desktop OS when the companies that use the desktops must pay for their servers, etc. And when the Chinese government itself is using pirated Windows, good luck trying to stop the average person.
Stealing software...insightful? Hrmph
Good thing FOSS is doing well, I certainly wouldn't make any commercial software with this attitude coming from geeks.
I agree 100%! Who's with me? Don't buy any more DRM'ed music, movies, or games and soon they will cease to exist. Half-life 2 was enough of a headache to teach me to never buy this junk again. I have never bought DRM'ed music online and never will. Instead I have purchased Magnatunes music (an entire album for $5) and couldn't be happier with it. I don't care for the Hollywood garbage anyway, so I will pay extra for non-pirated foreign movies. Let's not even mention the Microsoft fiasco of Windows XP activation where you have to call up a company to "verify" you have the right to use your own software! Why not just use Linux and never fear that you can still use the same OS ten years from now without paying a single extra cent?
Re:Maybe an OSS future isn't that bright afterall
on
Nessus Closes Source
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· Score: 1
Linux desktops suck? Which ones have you used? I would say compared to Ubuntu that Windows sucks. Ubuntu just works. If you have an annoying "feature" in Windows, can you turn it off? Sometimes easily, sometimes only through the registry, and sometimes not at all. Since Linux is open-source I can modify any part of my desktop to exactly the way I like it. I didn't like Ubuntu's non-spatial Nautilus configuration so I turned it off, through a GUI nonetheless (gconf-editor). I wanted a screensaver to appear at the login screen--I followed some simple steps found on a community site and it works. How much really useful information have you found through MS Knowledgebase? The MS community is usually not so helpful either, although this is somewhat balanced by their sheer number.
I think I'm typical.
And that is a major problem in this world. People are all to easily satisfied with mass-produced, one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead of learning how something works and tweaking it to one's personal tastes, people would rather accept what's "good enough", even if that "good enough" is not really good enough. Windows machines, on average, are like flytraps attracting every bit of dirty code that can exploit its many weaknesses. Windows users will continue to exist as long as Hollywood movies and RIAA music continues to be popular, I guess. The rest of us will have to be content to find our own happiness.
They already have this and it's called NFS with NIS, or LDAP. I have it set up on campus so that teachers can login at any lab computer and get the same desktop. I can login in my room too.
Didn't you read the summary? It's because Opera is going ad-free. Finally I can enjoy some Puccini without the breaks. And I can see the costumes just fine, thank you.
Wow,/. can even keep them letters from spilling into them pictures and vicy-versy. Who'da thunk someday they'd even clean up der mess? I 'member the day we'd just hafta wonder when dey might figure out them code thingys could be used to make things look better 'stead t'other way 'round.
Adopting OpenGroupware at my university has garnered few complaints. It is still beta though and there are a few areas that show it. But we're willing to stick with it and watch it grow. All of the basic functionality is there: news, calendar, email, tasks, projects, even interface with Evolution or Outlook (with a non-free plugin). The only problems seems to be a bit of a learning curve for the users and the lack of some more advanced news editing features like HTML or any kind of formatting tags.
This is a university an a teacher was giving a class lecture when it happened to him. I have seen countless Windows machines produce pop-ups without even opening IE first. And when you do open IE you get them from Google, Amazon, or whatever site you visit.
Because we need to crush Microsoft. I mean, really, are you content to use a superior OS on your own desktop but wherever you go, whenever you need to work on someone else's computer you must use Windows? How about when you have to give a presentation and the virus infested OS does porn pop-ups over your slideshow? What if you want to do some secure online banking when you travel? Do you really want your ATM to use Windows? And when your mom, aunt, coworker, or neighbor says "Help me get my email from off that intarweb thingy" do you want to deal with their Windows ME viruses and spyware?
I can't understand why someone who appreciates Linux would want to limit its success in any way. Unless its out of a gloating sense of superiority that says: "Haha, look at all the peons buying their Windows PCs and paying the Microsoft tax. I'm glad I'm such a 1337 h4X0r."
I read that headline as: a black hole was discovered in someone's home.
I can imagine the scenario:
Man: Don't go in there officer, trust me!
Officer: Are you trying to hide something boy?
Man: No, it's just that, umm...
Officer: Well we'll just see about what's behind this door, shall we?...Noooooooo...being sucked in...force of gravity too powerful...aaaaaaahhhhh!!!
Speak for yourself. I for one would feel disgusted by illegally taking something without paying for it. Why should I lower my standards of right and wrong to get something so measly as RIAA music or MS software? I'd rather use free alternatives and/or support the artists/companies that I feel are worthy. It's your kind of attitude that has made MS so powerful. Those who pirated Windows made it the de facto standard in the world and now everyone pays for it.
Leave it to the /. crowd...
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
To defend something like this. Why is it that porn is often praised and seldom censured here, but in the workplace how many of you would lose jobs for expressing such sentiment? If this is really the reaction from the readers of news for nerds then I hope to stop reading and never become a so-called "nerd".
Should being an inquisitive, well-informed, technologically adept person generally mean one is also morally debased, maladjusted, or incapable of normal, healthy relationships? From the reaction here it would appear so. And for anyone who would rebut me, go say it to someone of the opposite sex--and not another miscreant but a handsome, virtuous creature and watch the expression of disgust and horror on his or her face. We all know it in our hearts to be wrong, but so many of you are so hardened in your contempt and disrespect of women that you don't even hesitate to defend it. Not even to consider the morale, dignity, or feelings of anyone subjected to such disgrace. This is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen on Slashdot.
If anyone out there agrees with me, please join in support. Otherwise, I could care less what you say as you are the most boorish of the boors and do not deserve the respect of any reply.
What about when you want to work on a large number of systems at the same time? Do you open a VNC window to each one? How about using cluster ssh to administer a group of machines on the command line. In one command you can set permissions on a whole network of computers.
This story seems to me a bit of an understatement. I have only known Baidu as a source of pirated material, specifically mp3.baidu.com which is a search engine for any kind of music, kind of like a Chinese Napster.
Knowing this I was a bit suprised to hear Google is a shareholder for this company. Actually, most Chinese websites contain pirated material, for example, the university where I work has movies and mp3s right on their website for anyone's enjoyment! Also, almost every city has a local website that is full of every new movie and can be watched as a stream. They are so popular that there are always queues on the weekends.
It takes average users switching to Linux to solve the problem of only finding Windows software in attachments and at CompUSA. I have installed Ubuntu Linux on other people's Windows laptops that were too virus ridden to be useful and I just told them up-front that they wouldn't be able to run the average piece of software as they were accustomed to. But when I showed them everything they can do (make Powerpoint/Word/Excel documents in OpenOffice, use StarDict in place of Powerword, Kino instead of Windows Movie Maker, etc.), they were more than happy to have it all on a stable, free system.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we could just use the truths that we know to promote environmental friendliness and leave out the unprovable theories. There are too many factors in the atmosphere to even predict local weather, let alone the cause of global warming.
With only an RSS feed to rely on (no games icon), I was thinking this article was maybe something about fans aboard the Hubble space telescope being disabled and thus preventing some scientist a view of distant galaxies. Would it have been that much trouble for editors to use the full title of the game or "Star Wars Galaxies"?
abcde: http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/
A Better CD Encoder does all of ripping, encoding to ogg, and tagging in one command: abcde. Or encode to flac with abcde -o flac.
I totally agree with keeping the home dir organized and using it as a desktop. So why oh why do so many programmers decide to put directories in the home dir without asking me permission? For example: the sidenet config for wine places a 'c' directory in the home dir; iPodder puts a 'data' dir in the home dir. Don't these programmers realize what the dot is for at the beginning of the rest of my programs' data directories? If they all could use this convention it would make life so much easier.
That is why a materialist philosophy should not be taught alongside science. Scientists who are materialists have a prior commitment to look for material causes for every phenomenon, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Materialism is a philosophy because it is not measurable in the way same way gravity or the speed of light is measurable. It is a theory which states "there never was, nor never can be, more than matter in the universe". If true, that means the thought itself is a result of chemical or material processes in the brain.
So I agree that if materialism should be taught, leave it outside of the science class. It is clearly in the range of philosophy and should have nothing to do with science. True science explores all possibilities equally without pre-supposing only one valid cause.
I am tired of hearing this kind of ignorant statement. Anyone can say an OS sucks, but can you back it up? I happen to be of the opposite opinion--as a desktop OS, Windows sucks. Why? It is full of annoyances. When you do a new Windows install you get popups everywhere. First a popup wizard to "assist" you connecting to the internet (but really tries to push you to sign up with some particular ISPs). Then when you finally "next" through all of it you get a popup on your desktop telling you "You have 30 days left to activate." Not only do you have to type a 20 digit alphanumeric key to install Windows, you also have to call a 1800 number when your hardware changes. Then when you finally fire up IE it has the annoyance of starting on a flash-filled spam site (MSN) and the address bar will always bork the address you type in because IE puts the cursor at the beginning of the address bar everytime a page loads, so you often get an address like gle.comwww.goo.
That is just the tip of the iceburg. I won't even mention that Windows is closed source so you can't change any of its hard-wired behaviors even if you're a programmer.
Ubuntu 5.10 is a dream compared to Windows. Gnome is much more responsive for me than XP with its themes. I would always run XP with themes turned off but Gnome handles themes without sacrificing speed. In Gnome I get thumbnails of movies, pictures, even PDFs! I can install thousands of programs with just a few clicks. All of the programs are in a repository, not spread out accross the web. 99% of the software is FOSS so I don't have to worry about getting out my credit card to play some little game or use some little basic utility like FTP. Not even to mention the fact that I never have install anti-adware,-spyware,-virus,-trojan, or firewall software!
Today marks the release of YATA 999,999,999.1, Yet Another Troll Article, and with it comes the death of Slashdot. Finally, today, nerds can enjoy the power of Real Life when they step outside of their musky basements in droves to see what else the world has to offer.
In China 99.9999% of computers run Windows.
99.999% of them run pirated Windows.
Why would the Chinese switch to a free OS (as in FOSS) when, to them, Windows is also free (as in pirated)?
It would take MS enforcing their licensing to cause a change so great as that. And what are the chances of that when MS knows they will still make money on all of their other products that are too difficult to pirate, secure, or install without MS's help? They will turn a blind eye to the nearly 100% pirated desktop OS when the companies that use the desktops must pay for their servers, etc. And when the Chinese government itself is using pirated Windows, good luck trying to stop the average person.
Stealing software...insightful? Hrmph
Good thing FOSS is doing well, I certainly wouldn't make any commercial software with this attitude coming from geeks.
1. Why don't people subscribe?
2. Please stop blocking Slashdot ads
3. It's not like we are making any profits as it is
I agree 100%! Who's with me? Don't buy any more DRM'ed music, movies, or games and soon they will cease to exist. Half-life 2 was enough of a headache to teach me to never buy this junk again. I have never bought DRM'ed music online and never will. Instead I have purchased Magnatunes music (an entire album for $5) and couldn't be happier with it. I don't care for the Hollywood garbage anyway, so I will pay extra for non-pirated foreign movies. Let's not even mention the Microsoft fiasco of Windows XP activation where you have to call up a company to "verify" you have the right to use your own software! Why not just use Linux and never fear that you can still use the same OS ten years from now without paying a single extra cent?
They already have this and it's called NFS with NIS, or LDAP. I have it set up on campus so that teachers can login at any lab computer and get the same desktop. I can login in my room too.
Didn't you read the summary? It's because Opera is going ad-free. Finally I can enjoy some Puccini without the breaks. And I can see the costumes just fine, thank you.
Wow, /. can even keep them letters from spilling into them pictures and vicy-versy. Who'da thunk someday they'd even clean up der mess? I 'member the day we'd just hafta wonder when dey might figure out them code thingys could be used to make things look better 'stead t'other way 'round.
Adopting OpenGroupware at my university has garnered few complaints. It is still beta though and there are a few areas that show it. But we're willing to stick with it and watch it grow. All of the basic functionality is there: news, calendar, email, tasks, projects, even interface with Evolution or Outlook (with a non-free plugin). The only problems seems to be a bit of a learning curve for the users and the lack of some more advanced news editing features like HTML or any kind of formatting tags.
This is a university an a teacher was giving a class lecture when it happened to him. I have seen countless Windows machines produce pop-ups without even opening IE first. And when you do open IE you get them from Google, Amazon, or whatever site you visit.
Because we need to crush Microsoft. I mean, really, are you content to use a superior OS on your own desktop but wherever you go, whenever you need to work on someone else's computer you must use Windows? How about when you have to give a presentation and the virus infested OS does porn pop-ups over your slideshow? What if you want to do some secure online banking when you travel? Do you really want your ATM to use Windows? And when your mom, aunt, coworker, or neighbor says "Help me get my email from off that intarweb thingy" do you want to deal with their Windows ME viruses and spyware?
I can't understand why someone who appreciates Linux would want to limit its success in any way. Unless its out of a gloating sense of superiority that says: "Haha, look at all the peons buying their Windows PCs and paying the Microsoft tax. I'm glad I'm such a 1337 h4X0r."
I read that headline as: a black hole was discovered in someone's home. ...Noooooooo...being sucked in...force of gravity too powerful...aaaaaaahhhhh!!!
I can imagine the scenario:
Man: Don't go in there officer, trust me!
Officer: Are you trying to hide something boy?
Man: No, it's just that, umm...
Officer: Well we'll just see about what's behind this door, shall we?
Should being an inquisitive, well-informed, technologically adept person generally mean one is also morally debased, maladjusted, or incapable of normal, healthy relationships? From the reaction here it would appear so. And for anyone who would rebut me, go say it to someone of the opposite sex--and not another miscreant but a handsome, virtuous creature and watch the expression of disgust and horror on his or her face. We all know it in our hearts to be wrong, but so many of you are so hardened in your contempt and disrespect of women that you don't even hesitate to defend it. Not even to consider the morale, dignity, or feelings of anyone subjected to such disgrace. This is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen on Slashdot.
If anyone out there agrees with me, please join in support. Otherwise, I could care less what you say as you are the most boorish of the boors and do not deserve the respect of any reply.
What about when you want to work on a large number of systems at the same time? Do you open a VNC window to each one? How about using cluster ssh to administer a group of machines on the command line. In one command you can set permissions on a whole network of computers.
This story seems to me a bit of an understatement. I have only known Baidu as a source of pirated material, specifically mp3.baidu.com which is a search engine for any kind of music, kind of like a Chinese Napster.
Knowing this I was a bit suprised to hear Google is a shareholder for this company. Actually, most Chinese websites contain pirated material, for example, the university where I work has movies and mp3s right on their website for anyone's enjoyment! Also, almost every city has a local website that is full of every new movie and can be watched as a stream. They are so popular that there are always queues on the weekends.
It takes average users switching to Linux to solve the problem of only finding Windows software in attachments and at CompUSA. I have installed Ubuntu Linux on other people's Windows laptops that were too virus ridden to be useful and I just told them up-front that they wouldn't be able to run the average piece of software as they were accustomed to. But when I showed them everything they can do (make Powerpoint/Word/Excel documents in OpenOffice, use StarDict in place of Powerword, Kino instead of Windows Movie Maker, etc.), they were more than happy to have it all on a stable, free system.