What's wrong with OpenFirmware? Hasn't that been used for 10 years or so now? Why re-invent the wheel in a way that won't be compatible with anyone else... oh yeah, I forgot who we were talking about for a sec.
Maybe if game developers could dream up a genre other than fantasy, problems like this would be averted...
Maybe if companies would stop trying to trademark or patent English words, we'd stop seeing such a stupid abuse of the legal system...
There's nothing wrong with the fantasy genre that a little imagination can't cure...
How about a fantasy setting where lawyers have taken control of all three branches of government and wield the mighty One Dollar to control all aspects of human life?
If SCO wants to claim ownership of things in errno.h, then I want monetary compensation for each and every segfault, since they are now SCO's responsibility, not mine!
Boy, no more having to double-check pointers in my code, whoo hoo!
Follow Apple's lead (again!) and dump the 20-year-old DOS core of your OS, replacing it with one of the unix variants out there. Now, go rewrite your GUI and desktop API to work on top of it.
Make a legacy layer (MS-WineX?) to run "old" apps, and have a well-documented standard API -- just ONE -- no "magical hidden" parts for people with deeper pockets -- which all developers can use to write applications. If you need help with this, find an old AmigaOS kernel/intuition reference set and read it.
Force the hardware industry (and MS is the only one really able to do that) to get rid of the antique BIOS garbage, and adopt something more flexible like what recent Suns use. While you're at it, ditch ISA and let it rust in peace. Send the keyboard/ps2 moue controllers off with it and standardize on USB.
At that point, you'd have a solid stable environment which CAN emulate all the bugs of yesteryear, but doesn't have to. You'd also have nicely put yourself in place as the desktop linux solution.
One other tip.... listen to your customers. When they've been telling you your system is bug-ridden, unstable, and insecure for YEARS on end, and are CONSISTANT about these reports... maybe you should do something more than have Steve Ballmer run around on stage yelling about how great your company is?
Just like the nuclear non-proliferation treaty has really prevented all those non-superpower countries from figuring out how to build nuclear weapons...
By trying to ban cloning technology, we are just inviting the criminals and black-markets of the world to figure it out themselve and make lots of profit because it's illegal.
Drugs are another example. Drugs are bad (m'key...), but many have postulated that legalizing the most common drugs would destroy the drug market (and most of the abusers as well), since the price would drop tremendously, and there wouldn't be a need to "push" them (no profit in doing so). But, our moralistic big-brother instinct tells us that if something is bad, we should step in and remove the choice from people instead of letting nature deal with it. Hence, people kill one another to buy that one more dose, because it's expensive, and because money is to be made by selling it.
I'm not looking forward to the farms of milk-fed human-clone-cattle with toe-tags for "liver" and "heart". Nor do I really relish the idea of wandering around and seeing myself (if they ever find a way to accelerate growth, people will buy clones to do crimes for them!). BUT, if we don't do it, others will, and we'll be left behind and surrounded by foreign-grown clones sold to us under high tarrifs (or on the black market).
So really, we can thank Al Gore for SPAM... since if the internet hadn't been commercialized, it'd still be fast and full of useful information without offers to enlarge various genitals while making money and helping deposed dictators, right?
Day 7781, 8am: Sitting at desk, white cubical walls surround three sides, monitor in front with 1024x768 changing pixels. Fingers on keyboard move. Mouse moves every so often. Coffee level drops.
Day 7781, 1pm: Sitting at desk, white cubical walls surround three sides, monitor in front with 1024x768 changing pixels. Fingers on keyboard move. Mouse moves every so often. Water level drops.
Oh yeah, if you want to add sound recording:
"God damn windows!" "Bite me Bill Gates!" "You want me to code WHAT?" "Grrrr, why isn't cut-and-paste consistant in X?" "*mumble* site must be slashdotted again"
Hmmm, what's that F in FCC stand for again? Ummmm, Fscked? No. Fancy? No. Futile? Nooo.... Ah! FEDERAL. As in non-global, non-international, and thus no power or influence outside the boundries of the United States.
Now, the internet thingy.... that seems to be a global network that reaches places outside of the US.
Now then, what was this about a US-Centric FCC attempt to regulate the content of my packet stream (which is just plain-old encrypted packets)?
I thought so... go away and take your ball with you.
You know, the whole idea of a "registry" of ANY kind of criminal that's accessible to those outside the FBI or other law enforcement agencies is rather counter-productive to the stated goals of the justice system.
First, we [used to] have the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Beyond placing the burden of proof on the prosecution, this also means that judge and jury are supposed to walk into a case with the belief that the defendant is indeed innocent. It's the job of the prosecution to convince them otherwise. Keeping a list of criminals that anyone can access pretty much defeats that concept.
Secondly, if someone IS found guilty of a crime, they are given a punishment that's [supposed to be] fitting for the crime they've committed, and the circumstances involved. More importantly, once you've "done your time", you are supposed to be absolved, and presumed innocent for any future charges. If you're on a list, you can't be presumed innocent anymore.
If we don't want people who have committed crime X (currently rape) to ever live near anyone else for the rest of their lives, then perhaps we should add that crime to the list of mandatory death sentances (currently only treason?). There's no point having the charade of processing and rehabilitation through the justice system if we just want people to shun them when they get out anyways.
Well, I can always whine that it STILL requires software to sync, rather than just showing up as a network share (via samba or the equivalent)... but that's mostly just me whining about how most of the newer crop of memory-based players don't show up as plain USB drives...
How about that it uses moving parts and doesn't have support for crystal memory yet?:)
The big problem is that the constitution doesn't recognize money as a form of power.
If you look at all the various checks and balances in the constitution (and the Bill of Rights), it does a wonderful job of restricting Powers and ensuring that each branch of the government has some way to control the others... except that Money can be used to override all of them.
Sure, you have to have a majority vote by representatives to do thing X, but since those with the most money are leaning on the reps, guess which way the votes go?
Yeah, the judicial system doesn't accept bribes... but the dockets are done via percieved urgency, and again money makes a thing seem more important, or can make lots of other things jump ahead of a thing.
The executive branch might be ok, but in each place that government money is controlled, private funding and personal wealth of the members can be used, and thus again ensure that money wins.
Until some way to control the amount of money spent on a given bit of legislation (or to bury it) is found... that will be how things work. The only hope of the common man is that ENOUGH of us all stop spending LONG enough to have a noticeable impact on the wallets of these people. Not an easy thing to do in this day and age.
We need DRM on those headphone things QUICK! They're sharing files without using a LAN or anything... think of the lost revenue if just anyone can LISTEN to music without buying it and an approved playback device!
Come to think of it, the REAL problem is those eardrum things that most humans have illegally acquired through evolution. There are literally BILLIONS of UNREGISTERED eardrums wandering around the planet, listening to God only knows what, and all of it illegal.
Indiana Jones is reportedly suing Red Hat, Inc. for casting his trademark headgear in a bad light. Doctor Jones's lawyer says that the term "Red Hat" could also be subject to trademark, as one of Indy's seldom worn spring outfits featured a red fedora.
In other news, Darl McBride was seen running amuck in the downtown area, stealing any hats he could get his hands on while screaming 'They're ALL MINE! MINE!!!'
What do those do? I think you used to order pizza over them before you could get it from the internet...
3. Use your back-up computer.
Ummm, they're all on the same LAN, and the internet is down... how would this help?
4. Install a Game.
Good idea! Ok, installing.... needs a patch via the web... DAMN! Ok, online registration? DAMN! Ah, finally got it installed with no patches... now to find players on the net... DAMN!
5. Perform Routine Maintenance.
Sure, why not? Checking for new security updates... no connection to internet. DAMN!
6. Turn on a television or radio.
Hmmmm, no radio reception because of all the computers. I can watch cable TV though... I have a cable modem, it's down... so is the television! DAMN!
7. Read
Ok. http://slashdot.org/..... nothing there to read, it's still down. DAMN!
8. Go Outside.
I did. The cable is still physically connected to the house, and to the pole. Didn't help.
9. Spend Time with Your Spouse.
I'm supposed to meet here online for a private chatroot with web cam??? DAMN!
10. Use your Emergency AOL Disk
Ok, I put my coffee on it instead of directly on the desktop. Network is still down. What now?
And how, exactly, are they going to decide if my equipment is "secure"? I'll wager that if I hook my C64 up to the internet, it won't be susceptible to many viruses. I imagine the same is true of my vt340 terminal... but they probably aren't going to respond to some random probe that asks if they're secure.
I'll say it again. A router's job is to ROUTE PACKETS. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want a firewall to keep virii out, get one. If your ISP wants a firewall to keep your virii off the net, THEY can get one and have IT filter traffic. That holds true all the way to the backbone. It doesn't belong in a router. It doesn't belong in a piece of consumer-end equipment that will be talking to whatever random equipment gets connected to it.
Fast low-latency connectivity to every home, via a low-cost fiber-optic cable?
I remember Ye Olde Phone Company, back in 1995, was telling me (on a tour of the "copper racks" no less) that they planned to start installing residential fiber right into people's houses next year, and that the whole city would be wired up within 5 years...
Obviously, 5 years of Corporate Time!
So, I have my cable modem, which is nice for downloads... but still sucks for latency.
Hmmmm, replace the word "database" with the word "list". Don't the lists from various trading cartels over the centuries constitute prior art? I mean, if nothing else, the mafia should have a much strong claim for keeping databases of "friends" and their "friends".
Ok, even if you don't care about the continuity of the story, or about keeping close to the original novels...how can you pass up the chance to have Christopher Lee's character push around a bunch of helpless halflings, and instill in them the virtues that made America great (destroy and pillage nature and personal liberty, in the glorious pursuit of profit)?
There, now the trolls will have full bellies and I have a lighter Karma load to carry.:)
Heh, last time I did this to a Win98 system, I disabled virtual memory, rebooted into linux via a cd, tar'd the windoze partition up to a network share, then switch drives, format/initialize the mbr, restore the tarball onto the new hard drive.
dd works if you aren't switching drives, but if you go to a bigger drive, it will leave you with a partition table that looks like the older (smaller) drive and you have to go fix it.
Heh, I purchased one of those nice DVD recorders this summer (Phillips), and while I'm overall pretty pleased with it... there is one nagging little problem with Ye Olde Macrovision.
Namely, the recorder won't record anything that has macrovision in the input stream. Obviously, this was intended to try and keep people from pirating rentals... but it also nicely prevents me from migrating some of my store-purchased video tapes onto DVD.
Soooo, the MPAA has helped create a nice little industry in macrovision removal tools, since the only way I can do this is to violate the DMCA by building my own capture device, or spend $50 to buy an inline macrovision stripper.
Just remember, the industry doesn't want you to BUY anything, they want you to LEASE the right to watch/listen-to things. If they had more influence with congress, it would be a "multimedia tax" that you'd pay for the right to watch/listen-to anything, even if you don't.
Slashdot Mirror
What's wrong with OpenFirmware? Hasn't that been used for 10 years or so now? Why re-invent the wheel in a way that won't be compatible with anyone else... oh yeah, I forgot who we were talking about for a sec.
Maybe if companies would stop trying to trademark or patent English words, we'd stop seeing such a stupid abuse of the legal system...
There's nothing wrong with the fantasy genre that a little imagination can't cure...
How about a fantasy setting where lawyers have taken control of all three branches of government and wield the mighty One Dollar to control all aspects of human life?
...comes great responsibility.
If SCO wants to claim ownership of things in errno.h, then I want monetary compensation for each and every segfault, since they are now SCO's responsibility, not mine!
Boy, no more having to double-check pointers in my code, whoo hoo!
Follow Apple's lead (again!) and dump the 20-year-old DOS core of your OS, replacing it with one of the unix variants out there. Now, go rewrite your GUI and desktop API to work on top of it.
Make a legacy layer (MS-WineX?) to run "old" apps, and have a well-documented standard API -- just ONE -- no "magical hidden" parts for people with deeper pockets -- which all developers can use to write applications. If you need help with this, find an old AmigaOS kernel/intuition reference set and read it.
Force the hardware industry (and MS is the only one really able to do that) to get rid of the antique BIOS garbage, and adopt something more flexible like what recent Suns use. While you're at it, ditch ISA and let it rust in peace. Send the keyboard/ps2 moue controllers off with it and standardize on USB.
At that point, you'd have a solid stable environment which CAN emulate all the bugs of yesteryear, but doesn't have to. You'd also have nicely put yourself in place as the desktop linux solution.
One other tip.... listen to your customers. When they've been telling you your system is bug-ridden, unstable, and insecure for YEARS on end, and are CONSISTANT about these reports... maybe you should do something more than have Steve Ballmer run around on stage yelling about how great your company is?
Just like the nuclear non-proliferation treaty has really prevented all those non-superpower countries from figuring out how to build nuclear weapons...
By trying to ban cloning technology, we are just inviting the criminals and black-markets of the world to figure it out themselve and make lots of profit because it's illegal.
Drugs are another example. Drugs are bad (m'key...), but many have postulated that legalizing the most common drugs would destroy the drug market (and most of the abusers as well), since the price would drop tremendously, and there wouldn't be a need to "push" them (no profit in doing so). But, our moralistic big-brother instinct tells us that if something is bad, we should step in and remove the choice from people instead of letting nature deal with it. Hence, people kill one another to buy that one more dose, because it's expensive, and because money is to be made by selling it.
I'm not looking forward to the farms of milk-fed human-clone-cattle with toe-tags for "liver" and "heart". Nor do I really relish the idea of wandering around and seeing myself (if they ever find a way to accelerate growth, people will buy clones to do crimes for them!). BUT, if we don't do it, others will, and we'll be left behind and surrounded by foreign-grown clones sold to us under high tarrifs (or on the black market).
So really, we can thank Al Gore for SPAM... since if the internet hadn't been commercialized, it'd still be fast and full of useful information without offers to enlarge various genitals while making money and helping deposed dictators, right?
Well, many years of it should compress nicely:
Day 7781, 8am:
Sitting at desk, white cubical walls surround three sides, monitor in front with 1024x768 changing pixels. Fingers on keyboard move. Mouse moves every so often. Coffee level drops.
Day 7781, 1pm:
Sitting at desk, white cubical walls surround three sides, monitor in front with 1024x768 changing pixels. Fingers on keyboard move. Mouse moves every so often. Water level drops.
Oh yeah, if you want to add sound recording:
"God damn windows!"
"Bite me Bill Gates!"
"You want me to code WHAT?"
"Grrrr, why isn't cut-and-paste consistant in X?"
"*mumble* site must be slashdotted again"
Hmmm, what's that F in FCC stand for again? Ummmm, Fscked? No. Fancy? No. Futile? Nooo.... Ah! FEDERAL. As in non-global, non-international, and thus no power or influence outside the boundries of the United States.
Now, the internet thingy.... that seems to be a global network that reaches places outside of the US.
Now then, what was this about a US-Centric FCC attempt to regulate the content of my packet stream (which is just plain-old encrypted packets)?
I thought so... go away and take your ball with you.
You know, the whole idea of a "registry" of ANY kind of criminal that's accessible to those outside the FBI or other law enforcement agencies is rather counter-productive to the stated goals of the justice system.
First, we [used to] have the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Beyond placing the burden of proof on the prosecution, this also means that judge and jury are supposed to walk into a case with the belief that the defendant is indeed innocent. It's the job of the prosecution to convince them otherwise. Keeping a list of criminals that anyone can access pretty much defeats that concept.
Secondly, if someone IS found guilty of a crime, they are given a punishment that's [supposed to be] fitting for the crime they've committed, and the circumstances involved. More importantly, once you've "done your time", you are supposed to be absolved, and presumed innocent for any future charges. If you're on a list, you can't be presumed innocent anymore.
If we don't want people who have committed crime X (currently rape) to ever live near anyone else for the rest of their lives, then perhaps we should add that crime to the list of mandatory death sentances (currently only treason?). There's no point having the charade of processing and rehabilitation through the justice system if we just want people to shun them when they get out anyways.
I mean, if you're careful to make sure the container isn't air-tight, it would even be vacuum packed. How much better preservation do you need?
Admittedly, the walk out to the fridge isn't one you'll make when you wake up at 3am wanting a snack...
Well, I can always whine that it STILL requires software to sync, rather than just showing up as a network share (via samba or the equivalent)... but that's mostly just me whining about how most of the newer crop of memory-based players don't show up as plain USB drives...
:)
How about that it uses moving parts and doesn't have support for crystal memory yet?
The big problem is that the constitution doesn't recognize money as a form of power.
If you look at all the various checks and balances in the constitution (and the Bill of Rights), it does a wonderful job of restricting Powers and ensuring that each branch of the government has some way to control the others... except that Money can be used to override all of them.
Sure, you have to have a majority vote by representatives to do thing X, but since those with the most money are leaning on the reps, guess which way the votes go?
Yeah, the judicial system doesn't accept bribes... but the dockets are done via percieved urgency, and again money makes a thing seem more important, or can make lots of other things jump ahead of a thing.
The executive branch might be ok, but in each place that government money is controlled, private funding and personal wealth of the members can be used, and thus again ensure that money wins.
Until some way to control the amount of money spent on a given bit of legislation (or to bury it) is found... that will be how things work. The only hope of the common man is that ENOUGH of us all stop spending LONG enough to have a noticeable impact on the wallets of these people. Not an easy thing to do in this day and age.
We need DRM on those headphone things QUICK! They're sharing files without using a LAN or anything... think of the lost revenue if just anyone can LISTEN to music without buying it and an approved playback device!
Come to think of it, the REAL problem is those eardrum things that most humans have illegally acquired through evolution. There are literally BILLIONS of UNREGISTERED eardrums wandering around the planet, listening to God only knows what, and all of it illegal.
Stop the piracy! DRM for Human Eardrums!
Indiana Jones is reportedly suing Red Hat, Inc. for casting his trademark headgear in a bad light. Doctor Jones's lawyer says that the term "Red Hat" could also be subject to trademark, as one of Indy's seldom worn spring outfits featured a red fedora.
In other news, Darl McBride was seen running amuck in the downtown area, stealing any hats he could get his hands on while screaming 'They're ALL MINE! MINE!!!'
1. Panic!
Ok, I can do that.... now what?
2. Find a telephone.
What do those do? I think you used to order pizza over them before you could get it from the internet...
3. Use your back-up computer.
Ummm, they're all on the same LAN, and the internet is down... how would this help?
4. Install a Game.
Good idea! Ok, installing.... needs a patch via the web... DAMN! Ok, online registration? DAMN! Ah, finally got it installed with no patches... now to find players on the net... DAMN!
5. Perform Routine Maintenance.
Sure, why not? Checking for new security updates... no connection to internet. DAMN!
6. Turn on a television or radio.
Hmmmm, no radio reception because of all the computers. I can watch cable TV though... I have a cable modem, it's down... so is the television! DAMN!
7. Read
Ok. http://slashdot.org/..... nothing there to read, it's still down. DAMN!
8. Go Outside.
I did. The cable is still physically connected to the house, and to the pole. Didn't help.
9. Spend Time with Your Spouse.
I'm supposed to meet here online for a private chatroot with web cam??? DAMN!
10. Use your Emergency AOL Disk
Ok, I put my coffee on it instead of directly on the desktop. Network is still down. What now?
And how, exactly, are they going to decide if my equipment is "secure"? I'll wager that if I hook my C64 up to the internet, it won't be susceptible to many viruses. I imagine the same is true of my vt340 terminal... but they probably aren't going to respond to some random probe that asks if they're secure.
I'll say it again. A router's job is to ROUTE PACKETS. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want a firewall to keep virii out, get one. If your ISP wants a firewall to keep your virii off the net, THEY can get one and have IT filter traffic. That holds true all the way to the backbone. It doesn't belong in a router. It doesn't belong in a piece of consumer-end equipment that will be talking to whatever random equipment gets connected to it.
Somebody set us up the bomb!
If you think he's paranoid now... wait until he does attack the AT&T/BSD settlement and the BSD authors all sue SCO for infringement!
Afterall, a good chunk of SYSVR4 was based off BSD code at the time, and probably still is.
I think Darl needs to stop listening to "Career of Evil" all day long.
Fast low-latency connectivity to every home, via a low-cost fiber-optic cable?
I remember Ye Olde Phone Company, back in 1995, was telling me (on a tour of the "copper racks" no less) that they planned to start installing residential fiber right into people's houses next year, and that the whole city would be wired up within 5 years...
Obviously, 5 years of Corporate Time!
So, I have my cable modem, which is nice for downloads... but still sucks for latency.
You want to map the internet?
1 Setup a site saying you want to map the internet.
2 Get posted on slashdot.
3 Parse the referer logs.
4 ???
5 Profit!
Hmmmm, replace the word "database" with the word "list". Don't the lists from various trading cartels over the centuries constitute prior art? I mean, if nothing else, the mafia should have a much strong claim for keeping databases of "friends" and their "friends".
It's good to see that all those with Evil Overlord genes in their blood have bright futures in the legal profession. :)
Ok, even if you don't care about the continuity of the story, or about keeping close to the original novels...how can you pass up the chance to have Christopher Lee's character push around a bunch of helpless halflings, and instill in them the virtues that made America great (destroy and pillage nature and personal liberty, in the glorious pursuit of profit)?
:)
There, now the trolls will have full bellies and I have a lighter Karma load to carry.
Heh, last time I did this to a Win98 system, I disabled virtual memory, rebooted into linux via a cd, tar'd the windoze partition up to a network share, then switch drives, format/initialize the mbr, restore the tarball onto the new hard drive.
dd works if you aren't switching drives, but if you go to a bigger drive, it will leave you with a partition table that looks like the older (smaller) drive and you have to go fix it.
Heh, I purchased one of those nice DVD recorders this summer (Phillips), and while I'm overall pretty pleased with it... there is one nagging little problem with Ye Olde Macrovision.
Namely, the recorder won't record anything that has macrovision in the input stream. Obviously, this was intended to try and keep people from pirating rentals... but it also nicely prevents me from migrating some of my store-purchased video tapes onto DVD.
Soooo, the MPAA has helped create a nice little industry in macrovision removal tools, since the only way I can do this is to violate the DMCA by building my own capture device, or spend $50 to buy an inline macrovision stripper.
Just remember, the industry doesn't want you to BUY anything, they want you to LEASE the right to watch/listen-to things. If they had more influence with congress, it would be a "multimedia tax" that you'd pay for the right to watch/listen-to anything, even if you don't.