Damn, and I *love* Disneyland. I don't care how commercial it is, even pushing 40 the place is incredible fun. I went there just last September and had one of the best times of my life.
Still, adding this to my list of 'places or businesses I no longer patronize' looks like a must. Every business I've done this too has never been taken off the list because the business hasn't tried to redeem itself. So it looks like my last trip to Disneyland might've been, well, my last trip to Disneyland.
I dunno, when I wanted to check out the new Alanis Morisette album on Gnutella I used Bearshare and downloaded half of the cd a week before it was released in the U.S. Based on what I heard I went and bought it the Tuesday it came out.
It seems that the Gnutella network has most of what I'm looking for, unless it's porn. A sad, sad lack of quality of porn. Still have to go to IRC for that.
It isn't the open-source folks screaming on and on about how all software should be free. Open source folks just believe that when you buy a piece of software it shouldn't be a black box - you should get the code with it so you can see *exactly* how it works, and modify it to your own specs.
It's the *Free Software* folks who make incredible fools out of themselves. They're the ones who blather on about how immoral it is to make non-free software, and even suggest that government should control yet more of our lives by passing laws banning the development of commercial software. These guys are complete assholes and should be shot at the earliest opportunity.
I'm open source. I want to know exactly what's on my machine and how it works - or at least have the opportunity to look under the hood if I'm curious or suspicious about something. I do use closed-source products (e.g., Opera to make this post) but only when there aren't any open-source equivalents that meet my standards. I'll gladly pay for open source software if the creators are charging for it - I have no qualms about making sure they get a paycheck at the end of the month.
(And please, no browser wars. I like Opera far more than any other browser out there - my opinion, it won't change any time soon, let's avoid the whole conversation, I'm invoking Godwin's Law right here and now you twisted Nazi freaks!)
Like Microsoft or not, you don't build the world's largest software company from a staff of morons.
Nah, you become the world's largest software company by engaging in a life of crime. The decision-makers at Microsoft could give the Mafia lessons in committing crimes and getting away with them, even when convicted.
It has nothing to do with 'allowing' oneself to be exploited. People are exploited because they have no other choice - unless they want to starve. But who knows, maybe that qualifies as a 'choice' in your version of reality.
What utter bullshit. You're obviously insane, driven to bizarre paranoia through a combination of a severe psychotic break and watching too many episodes of the X-Files while jacking off to Scully.
Please, cite one empirical source published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal to support your ludicrous claims. I dare you, Jack. C'mon, I'm calling you a liar in front of 250,000 people. Prove you aren't a complete lunatic whacko.
There are none. 'marketable' and 'flash' have nothing to do with one another, a lesson that people *still* haven't learned even after the dot-bomb stupidity.
Making a nuclear bomb isn't something some maladjusted geek moron can do in his basement. Aside from obtaining a substantial minimal amount of the proper radioactive material (a hundred thousand gameboys wouldn't have the mass required, even if they did use plutonium), you need a precision device using high explosives to drive a tremendous implosion in on the (perfectly spherical) material. Making this device requires the kind of machining that can only be done by specially-built equipment.
You *cannot* do this at home. Even if you could collect the nuclear material (without killing yourself in the process) all you'd do is set off a conventional, normal explosion that would blow plutonium dust over a few city blocks. Lung cancer for everyone in the area but *no nuclear explosion*.
It's a Hollywood myth that some wild-eyed idiot with a deathwish can make a bomb. Only governments have the resources to make bombs.
It's good to know that stories like these get published, while entirely irrelevent subjects are rejected in record time by our watchful editors. I mean, just take these two for example:
- MS Paints Bulls-Eye On AOL. Certainly of no import to the technically oriented. Little squabbles over who's going to control internet access for millions isn't much of a news item.
- Stupid White Men Debuts At Number 3 On New York Times Best-Seller List. Everyone knows the average geek can't stand to read more than five minutes of political commentary, especially if it has nothing to do with Linux. Little things like investigating the shenanigans surrounding the 2000 presidential elections aren't at all interesting - in fact, they're downright unpatriotic! Besides, most techies are white and we wouldn't want to offend their touchy egos.
Yes, the more I read slashdot the more I'm convinced that our editors do a wonderful job of culling out all those 'unimportant' stories so that we don't have to exercise our brains and do the culling for them. Especially when it's so much more critical to know about the latest kernel release, or the newest toy.
This story is completely wrong. The source is available and has been. The "update" leads you to believe they some how gave in when they always complied. Do the editors check anything ? Of course not this is slashdot.
Par for the course. Hey, if we pay for subscriptions do ya think we might actually get an editor or two that, well, edits?
Well, I was one of those blokes who got sent to the principal's office more than just about everyone else in my class combined. A born button-pusher, especially when I thought that what I was being told was a crock of shit. Which was pretty darned often, in the public school system.
I'm also a movie fan and have rented hundreds, probably thousands of movies. My wife and I go to the movies at least once a month. And we buy cds as well, because although I feel like I'm getting reamed every time I pay the outrage prices the ripped shit on the internet *just isn't good enough*. Good enough to sample, but not good enough to listen to on a regular basis.
This doesn't contradict my convictions that CD prices are way too high, that the RIAA and MPAA are robber barons, and that legislation like the SSSCA is something only Satan himself, through his minions - the U.S. Congress - could come up with.
So if it's passed I won't buy DRM hardware and I won't stop running Linux. The government can wrap it's oily, pus-filled lips around my nether regions before I give up my equipment or my OS. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
That will be my protest, along with the loud bitching and yelling I'll continue to do at my reps. It may not meet your standards, but it certainly meets mine.
Imagine if this law was passed in the U.S. and in Europe, but not, say, in Canada. Many programmers would protest, ineffectively, and decide to live with it no matter how distasteful; but a not insignificant minority might say "Canada's looking pretty good right about now".
If even this minority decided to move to Canada the country would suddenly inherit a wealth of technical expertise - unfettered technical expertise - which would result in a boom in its technological industries. Along with a resultant expansion in the economy and the creation of thousands of new jobs.
All you need is one savvy, future-oriented nation to say "no thanks" to these kinds of laws while it sits back and reaps the rewards of dissent in other nations. Not to mention the sales (roundabout or direct) of non-crippled devices to countries which have outlawed their own industries from producing these goodies.
(I'm using Canada as the example because, so far, they don't appear to be caught up in the same sort of digital hysteria that seems to be sweeping the U.S. and Europe. I could be wrong - any resident Canadians, feel free to correct me.)
The man seems rather arrogant to me, insisting that customization will reduce productivity and therefore is a Bad Thing(TM). With this kind of logic we should insist on only right-hand mouse settings since 90% of the people who use the computer are right-handed and would be less productive if they had to change the settings when they sat down at some left-handers computer.
Fact is, people generally customize their computers to make things easier on themselves, and to make the machines more pleasant to work with. Nothing wrong with that. Most machines are used by a single person anyway, and if that person moves on then the next will customize it according to his or her preferences. I can't see how the Ultimate UI will radically improve performance; this 'Ultimate UI' would probably just end up annoying a whole lot of folks who don't like what the 'specialists' think is the key to greater productivity.
Now, if the man was serious about improving productivity in the work place he'd abandon this topic altogether and lobby to ban web browsers from company computers. I'd bet my last dollar that web browsers are the source of more wasted time at work than all UI 'issues' put together.
"the only way we can get there is for all of us to make our voices heard, and to use the system to fight the system. as many have said before"
Or if you think that the system is fundamentally broken you could just decide to emulate our forefathers and shoot all the sons of bitches. I'm game.
Apparently the moderators have no sense of humor today. Not whacking off enough, I'd wager. No doubt they also think that King George is the best damned monarch we've ever had!
The GPL is democratic in the sense that it requires coders to surrender some of their coding rights as an individual (restricting what they can do with the code, even if they've heavily modified it) as they become a part of the group that works on the program (ie. the majority). The GPL protects the rights of the group over that of the individual by more or less forcing the individual to join the group.
Your argument is faulty, to say the least. The GPL requires nothing nor does it force any individual to certain action. If you refuse to comply with the GPL you can simply not use GPL'd code. It's that simple. Write your own if you don't like the GPL.
Your choice, completely free and completely up to you.
As has been pointed out time and again, normal copyright gives you no right to use someone else's code. None. Nada. Zip. If it belongs to someone else you're out of luck unless you can contact the author and negotiate a license. If the author says no then you are out of luck. You have no recourse.
The GPL extends your rights in that it allows you to use the code without specific permission of the author so long as you abide by the terms of the GPL. You are granted additional rights which normal copyright doesn't encompass.
But again, if you find the GPL not to your liking you have every right not to use GPL'd code. You can simply write your own and be done with it.
Whining about the GPL, saying that it 'forces' you into something, is deceptive at best. People who insist that the GPL injures them in some fashion are those that want to use GPL'd code rather than write their own, but don't wish to abide by the license. Either they're too lazy or too stupid to do the job themselves, or they too cheap to pay royalties for non-GPL'd code which would fit the bill.
No one has the right to complain about the licensing terms of the GPL when they are never under any obligation to incorporate GPL'd code into their own product. What these morons need to do is either improve their work incentive and write their own code, or admit that they're idiots incapable of coding whatever it is they wish to steal for their own product.
Jones says that the mail is fine because it isn't commercial. Does that mean that if I send him 50,000 copies of a piece of mail expressing my ire - and perhaps including an entire dictionary in each one, so he can look up the word 'spam' - that this too is okay because it isn't commercial?
It used to be, before the web, that hosing an offending ISP that refused to chastise a spammer was considered to be a perfectly acceptable response. I say - given the obvious effectiveness of legislation against spam - that we return to those days once again.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, and I *love* Disneyland. I don't care how commercial it is, even pushing 40 the place is incredible fun. I went there just last September and had one of the best times of my life.
Still, adding this to my list of 'places or businesses I no longer patronize' looks like a must. Every business I've done this too has never been taken off the list because the business hasn't tried to redeem itself. So it looks like my last trip to Disneyland might've been, well, my last trip to Disneyland.
Max
And at other times you just have to pull out the hardware and shoot the sons of bitches.
Max
I dunno, when I wanted to check out the new Alanis Morisette album on Gnutella I used Bearshare and downloaded half of the cd a week before it was released in the U.S. Based on what I heard I went and bought it the Tuesday it came out.
It seems that the Gnutella network has most of what I'm looking for, unless it's porn. A sad, sad lack of quality of porn. Still have to go to IRC for that.
Max
It isn't the open-source folks screaming on and on about how all software should be free. Open source folks just believe that when you buy a piece of software it shouldn't be a black box - you should get the code with it so you can see *exactly* how it works, and modify it to your own specs.
It's the *Free Software* folks who make incredible fools out of themselves. They're the ones who blather on about how immoral it is to make non-free software, and even suggest that government should control yet more of our lives by passing laws banning the development of commercial software. These guys are complete assholes and should be shot at the earliest opportunity.
I'm open source. I want to know exactly what's on my machine and how it works - or at least have the opportunity to look under the hood if I'm curious or suspicious about something. I do use closed-source products (e.g., Opera to make this post) but only when there aren't any open-source equivalents that meet my standards. I'll gladly pay for open source software if the creators are charging for it - I have no qualms about making sure they get a paycheck at the end of the month.
(And please, no browser wars. I like Opera far more than any other browser out there - my opinion, it won't change any time soon, let's avoid the whole conversation, I'm invoking Godwin's Law right here and now you twisted Nazi freaks!)
Max
Microsoft contributes to society in the same way that syphilis or herpes contributes to sex.
Max
Like Microsoft or not, you don't build the world's largest software company from a staff of morons.
Nah, you become the world's largest software company by engaging in a life of crime. The decision-makers at Microsoft could give the Mafia lessons in committing crimes and getting away with them, even when convicted.
Max
So we got rid of the Communist jack-boots. When do we get rid of the Capitalist jack-boots?
Max
It has nothing to do with 'allowing' oneself to be exploited. People are exploited because they have no other choice - unless they want to starve. But who knows, maybe that qualifies as a 'choice' in your version of reality.
Max
What utter bullshit. You're obviously insane, driven to bizarre paranoia through a combination of a severe psychotic break and watching too many episodes of the X-Files while jacking off to Scully.
Please, cite one empirical source published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal to support your ludicrous claims. I dare you, Jack. C'mon, I'm calling you a liar in front of 250,000 people. Prove you aren't a complete lunatic whacko.
Max
Developers demand it. Clients demand it. Users just want the goddamned thing to work without long downloads and crashes caused by bad programming.
Max
There are none. 'marketable' and 'flash' have nothing to do with one another, a lesson that people *still* haven't learned even after the dot-bomb stupidity.
Max
A little too much X-Files in your diet, Johnny. Time for some Prozac....
Max
I don't know about you, but I'll be damned if I'm going to wander about with a fanny pack full of pressurized hydrogen cells.
Max
Making a nuclear bomb isn't something some maladjusted geek moron can do in his basement. Aside from obtaining a substantial minimal amount of the proper radioactive material (a hundred thousand gameboys wouldn't have the mass required, even if they did use plutonium), you need a precision device using high explosives to drive a tremendous implosion in on the (perfectly spherical) material. Making this device requires the kind of machining that can only be done by specially-built equipment.
You *cannot* do this at home. Even if you could collect the nuclear material (without killing yourself in the process) all you'd do is set off a conventional, normal explosion that would blow plutonium dust over a few city blocks. Lung cancer for everyone in the area but *no nuclear explosion*.
It's a Hollywood myth that some wild-eyed idiot with a deathwish can make a bomb. Only governments have the resources to make bombs.
Max
It's good to know that stories like these get published, while entirely irrelevent subjects are rejected in record time by our watchful editors. I mean, just take these two for example:
- MS Paints Bulls-Eye On AOL. Certainly of no import to the technically oriented. Little squabbles over who's going to control internet access for millions isn't much of a news item.
- Stupid White Men Debuts At Number 3 On New York Times Best-Seller List. Everyone knows the average geek can't stand to read more than five minutes of political commentary, especially if it has nothing to do with Linux. Little things like investigating the shenanigans surrounding the 2000 presidential elections aren't at all interesting - in fact, they're downright unpatriotic! Besides, most techies are white and we wouldn't want to offend their touchy egos.
Yes, the more I read slashdot the more I'm convinced that our editors do a wonderful job of culling out all those 'unimportant' stories so that we don't have to exercise our brains and do the culling for them. Especially when it's so much more critical to know about the latest kernel release, or the newest toy.
Max
It's a statement of opinion, which you can't sue over - ever. Statements of opinion are always protected by the First Amendment. Example:
"President Bush is a fucking idiot who'd barely be able to retain a job in the fast food industry if he hadn't gone into politics."
I can't be sued for libel. There is no libel here.
Max
This story is completely wrong. The source is available and has been. The "update" leads you to believe they some how gave in when they always complied. Do the editors check anything ? Of course not this is slashdot.
Par for the course. Hey, if we pay for subscriptions do ya think we might actually get an editor or two that, well, edits?
Max
Well, I was one of those blokes who got sent to the principal's office more than just about everyone else in my class combined. A born button-pusher, especially when I thought that what I was being told was a crock of shit. Which was pretty darned often, in the public school system.
I'm also a movie fan and have rented hundreds, probably thousands of movies. My wife and I go to the movies at least once a month. And we buy cds as well, because although I feel like I'm getting reamed every time I pay the outrage prices the ripped shit on the internet *just isn't good enough*. Good enough to sample, but not good enough to listen to on a regular basis.
This doesn't contradict my convictions that CD prices are way too high, that the RIAA and MPAA are robber barons, and that legislation like the SSSCA is something only Satan himself, through his minions - the U.S. Congress - could come up with.
So if it's passed I won't buy DRM hardware and I won't stop running Linux. The government can wrap it's oily, pus-filled lips around my nether regions before I give up my equipment or my OS. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
That will be my protest, along with the loud bitching and yelling I'll continue to do at my reps. It may not meet your standards, but it certainly meets mine.
Max
Imagine if this law was passed in the U.S. and in Europe, but not, say, in Canada. Many programmers would protest, ineffectively, and decide to live with it no matter how distasteful; but a not insignificant minority might say "Canada's looking pretty good right about now".
If even this minority decided to move to Canada the country would suddenly inherit a wealth of technical expertise - unfettered technical expertise - which would result in a boom in its technological industries. Along with a resultant expansion in the economy and the creation of thousands of new jobs.
All you need is one savvy, future-oriented nation to say "no thanks" to these kinds of laws while it sits back and reaps the rewards of dissent in other nations. Not to mention the sales (roundabout or direct) of non-crippled devices to countries which have outlawed their own industries from producing these goodies.
(I'm using Canada as the example because, so far, they don't appear to be caught up in the same sort of digital hysteria that seems to be sweeping the U.S. and Europe. I could be wrong - any resident Canadians, feel free to correct me.)
Max
So provide some hard numbers for the actual cost of production of the average music cd.
Of course, we must wonder if these people truly clicked no thanks ...they are using AOL
Jesus H. Christ, that's from a supposed 'editor'. And with this sort of 'professionalism' they want us to pay for the site?
Max
The man seems rather arrogant to me, insisting that customization will reduce productivity and therefore is a Bad Thing(TM). With this kind of logic we should insist on only right-hand mouse settings since 90% of the people who use the computer are right-handed and would be less productive if they had to change the settings when they sat down at some left-handers computer.
Fact is, people generally customize their computers to make things easier on themselves, and to make the machines more pleasant to work with. Nothing wrong with that. Most machines are used by a single person anyway, and if that person moves on then the next will customize it according to his or her preferences. I can't see how the Ultimate UI will radically improve performance; this 'Ultimate UI' would probably just end up annoying a whole lot of folks who don't like what the 'specialists' think is the key to greater productivity.
Now, if the man was serious about improving productivity in the work place he'd abandon this topic altogether and lobby to ban web browsers from company computers. I'd bet my last dollar that web browsers are the source of more wasted time at work than all UI 'issues' put together.
Max
"the only way we can get there is for all of us to make our voices heard, and to use the system to fight the system. as many have said before"
Or if you think that the system is fundamentally broken you could just decide to emulate our forefathers and shoot all the sons of bitches. I'm game.
Apparently the moderators have no sense of humor today. Not whacking off enough, I'd wager. No doubt they also think that King George is the best damned monarch we've ever had!
Max
The GPL is democratic in the sense that it requires coders to surrender some of their coding rights as an individual (restricting what they can do with the code, even if they've heavily modified it) as they become a part of the group that works on the program (ie. the majority). The GPL protects the rights of the group over that of the individual by more or less forcing the individual to join the group.
Your argument is faulty, to say the least. The GPL requires nothing nor does it force any individual to certain action. If you refuse to comply with the GPL you can simply not use GPL'd code. It's that simple. Write your own if you don't like the GPL.
Your choice, completely free and completely up to you.
As has been pointed out time and again, normal copyright gives you no right to use someone else's code. None. Nada. Zip. If it belongs to someone else you're out of luck unless you can contact the author and negotiate a license. If the author says no then you are out of luck. You have no recourse.
The GPL extends your rights in that it allows you to use the code without specific permission of the author so long as you abide by the terms of the GPL. You are granted additional rights which normal copyright doesn't encompass.
But again, if you find the GPL not to your liking you have every right not to use GPL'd code. You can simply write your own and be done with it.
Whining about the GPL, saying that it 'forces' you into something, is deceptive at best. People who insist that the GPL injures them in some fashion are those that want to use GPL'd code rather than write their own, but don't wish to abide by the license. Either they're too lazy or too stupid to do the job themselves, or they too cheap to pay royalties for non-GPL'd code which would fit the bill.
No one has the right to complain about the licensing terms of the GPL when they are never under any obligation to incorporate GPL'd code into their own product. What these morons need to do is either improve their work incentive and write their own code, or admit that they're idiots incapable of coding whatever it is they wish to steal for their own product.
Max
Jones says that the mail is fine because it isn't commercial. Does that mean that if I send him 50,000 copies of a piece of mail expressing my ire - and perhaps including an entire dictionary in each one, so he can look up the word 'spam' - that this too is okay because it isn't commercial?
It used to be, before the web, that hosing an offending ISP that refused to chastise a spammer was considered to be a perfectly acceptable response. I say - given the obvious effectiveness of legislation against spam - that we return to those days once again.
Max