The article is a very nice introduction for us non-physicists, but nothing it relates is by any means definitive. As this latest discovery proves, our understanding of the universe is constantly being updated, and older theories are being refined or replaced.
So, I don't think we yet have any real knowledge of whether the Universe is curved or flat, or whether it will expand infinitely or begin to contract inwards at some point. The truth is, there are still so many other pieces of the puzzle that haven't been clearly and conclusively placed yet, that we couldn't possibly see what the whole picture is going to be, or even whether there is a conclusive "whole picture" at all--if quantum physics has taught us anything, it's that we can't be certain what surprises lie ahead.
I mean, so much has changed in terms of what theories are most accepted and which are minority theories, just in the five years since I studied physics in college. And minority theories could be correct--just because 70% or even 95% of physicists believe something, doesn't make it so. Maybe the other 5% are the more brilliant ones, you never know.
I enjoy reading about physics and cosmology immensely--but we don't know much yet. There's still so much to confirm, discover, and rethink. Maybe that's why I like it so much.:-)
The issue is very simple, and I'm not sure why people aren't seeing the simple answer. The GPL would prevent the University from doing certain things with the code, such as using it in a project which is closed-source in such a way and circumstances as to violate the GPL.
However, there is absolutely nothing which prevents the code from being licensed to the University without the restrictions imposed by the GPL, and also to the rest of the world under the GPL. After all, the University's requirements state:
> such license shall grant the University the right to use the original work in its internally
> administered programs of teaching, research, and public service on a perpetual, royalty-free,
> non-exclusive basis.
The key word here is non-exclusive. Just let the University use the code for whatever as long as they stick to that paragraph and don't use it in a way which violates it, and also release it under the GPL to everyone else. The author of a piece of code can license it out to as many people on a non-exclusive basis as he wants, under as many different licenses as he wants.
Of course, reading that paragraph I don't see that it conflicts with the GPL in any way since it only requires that the University be allowed to use the code any way it wishes "in its *internally* administered programs," and the GPL is compatible with that. But just in case the University wants to get nitpicky, I wouldn't push it. After all, as long as the code is GPLed for everybody else, and as long as the University doesn't violate its own clause by using the code publicly in a closed-source manner, I don't see a problem, unless you want to get really zealous about it.
Of course, if you do insist on putting it under GPL for the University's use as well,/. is not the place to ask about it. Just ask whoever in the University is in charge of administering such things. And if no one knows, or no one can figure out who's in charge of such things, just attach the GPL to it and be done.
You clearly do not understand the difference between word and deed, just as the censors in our Puritanical country fail to. You want it to be OK for people to take down sites they don't like or find offensive? Gee, then get rid of the whole.gov listings first, crack them into submission, since they are the biggest abuser of freedom and perpetrator of crime in the country. I think the FBI alone has violated more civil rights than all the Klansmen who ever lived.
The thing about the Internet is, what goes on there is almost always word and image, not real life deed. You yourself fail to make a distinction--for instance, it isn't illegal to be a pedophile or necrophile. A pedophle is someone who is sexually attracted to children, and a necrophile is someone who is sexually attracted to corpses. These are merely thoughts, and are not and cannot be illegal. It is only when they cross into the real world of actions that they can take illegal forms. In other words, it is legal to be a pedophile, since that's a thought; it's illegal to have sexual contact with children, because that's an action.
This is what we fail to take into account. The Internet ain't real life, people, and no amount of "A Rape in Cyberspace" type rhetoric will change that. If I talk about being sexually attracted to corpses (icchhy) that's my right, and I cannot and should not be arrested or DDOSed for it. It's your right to listen or ignore or tell me to go fuck my dead grandma and get out of your chatroom or other community (if it is yours). Likewise, it's my right to have a website devoted to necrophilia, if I can find a host willing to host it. Molesting corpses is illegal, but talking about being attracted to them is not. Nor are pictures of corpses illegal, though depending on their content, they might be illegal because of being obscene, since obscenity is not Constitutionally protected.
The problem is when we make speech or expression illegal which is *not* obscene. That's where all the abuses take place, as well as with people like Ashcroft who consider all porn to be obscene. (Porn between consenting adults should never be illegal, since it is nothing more than a depiction of adult human sexuality, which is only different from any other part of life if you're a fucked-up Puritan trying to impose your own religiously-driven sexual morals on others). Take "child pornography" as an example--in the late 70's Congress made and the Court upheld laws making pornography involving minors illegal even if it is not obscene. The problem with that is, if it's not obscene, it should be protected speech and expression, even if the action being depicted by a word or image is illegal itself. For example, you can publish all the images you want of people being murdered, and the images are not illegal, nor is your publication of them. But if you publish a photograph of a 17 year old having sex, publishing the image is illegal, and possessing the image is illegal. It gets more convoluted if you take into account that the action depicted may not even be illegal--what if the age of consent in a state is 15? Than possessing an image of a legal action is illegal. That makes *no* sense at all. Legakl to perform an action, but illegal to pho0tograph it? And as I said, it would be legal to possess or distribute photos of any other crime, like murder or assault. And the Court has ruled that even photos of underage people wearing clothes can be considered child porn and hence illegal--as in the case of a man who was videotaping some high school cheerleaders jumping up and down at a game, and zoomed in on their clothed butts and whatnot.
Now, I would have no problem with things like this being covered under obscenity laws--many communities would find it obscene for an adult man to be going around misusing underage cheerleaders as pornographic objects. Likewise, many types of clearly pornographic images involving underage people would be clearly considered obscene in any community. That is how it should be handled. But instead the Congress and the Court took the absurd position that we need a special category for child pornography since some of it might not be considered obscene. That has led to prosecutions and attempted prosecutions of mothers for taking pictures of their half-nude kids playing quite normally (as in the recent Lifetime movie *Snap Decision*), and of artists or their publishers or bookstores for taking what are clearly harmless artistic nudes (Jock Sturges and David Hamilton, e.g.).
Well, this confusion is what happens when you make an image--which is just information, harmless data, not ations--illegal to merely possess or produce or distribute. We don't need such laws when the actions themselves are illegal--molest a kid and you should go to jail for a very long time for the molestation; there's no need to make picture-taking illicit, since the act is illicit. And in the case where the state has an age of consent that's, say, 16, why should it be illegal to make an image of something that's legal to do? It makes no sense whatsoever.
I've used your example of pedophilia as the basis of the discussion, but the same holds true for necrophilia, which you also mention. It's illegal to fuck a corpse, so if you're found posting images of yourself fucking a corpse, you should be arrested for fucking the corpse, not for posting an image of it (even though the image may be obscene). Indeed, I have my doubts about all obscenity laws, based on the fact that they punish thoughts and expressions in word or image, rather than actual actions. You need not make images of bestiality illegal through obscenity, when the action itself of sex with an animal is obscene and the action should be punished not the expression in image form.
Indeed, on a philosophical level I have my objections against making any expression through word or image or sound or otherwise illegal, whether perceived to be "obscene" or not. Even the Justice who wrote the decision affirming that obscenity is not Constitutionally protected speech later said that he regretted the dicision and its reliance on the vague notion of "contemporary community standards". It seems like the reasonable measure would be to make it illegal to sell or otherwise pander "obscene" material to minors, while allowing adults to choose what they themselves want to have access to. Information in and of itself causes neither harm nor good, and all an image or word is is information. Information and action should therefore be considered quite separate, since actions can inherently cause harm but information and expression cannot.
This brings us to the question of how to regulate the access of minors to potentially objectionable material on the Internet while allow3ing adults unfettered access. Well, I was watching *The O'Reilly Factor* when Bill was interviewing the CEO of Lycos, and he said something that made a lot of sense. Instead of all the censorious solutions now proposed, why not regulate the Net by requiring only that sexually explicit or otherwise "adult" sites have to have a certain label or disclaimer, so that filtering software parents can choose to use will automatically be 100% effective? The only grey ara left would be people who challenge that their site is not adult-oriented, and that could be decided at Court, but would not prevent access to the site by anyone who does not choose to use filtering software for themselves or their children. Instantly the Internet would become clean for those who wish it so, and remain open for we wish it to be open.
Most of the companies that produce the telecines and anamorphic transfers and do the specials are wholly owned by the same companies that own the studios, hence almost all profits across the board stay within the family. It's the same thing that drives CD prices up, and it's all artificial.
Or, take the case of what's holding up the *Dogma:SE* disc for many months. Disney sold out the distribution rights because they're assholes who didn't want to distribute a controversial film like *Dogma*. Then, when it came time to publish the Special Edition DVD with all the extras and deleted scenes, Disney said, "Hrmm, you don't own those, so pay us more to use them." Thus, Disney gouges a bit more profit that ultimately comes from the consumer's wallet, and my money means more to me than a few more dollars means to Disney. Fuck that. It's all creative accounting designed to gouge the consumer.
> But I agree with you that it's basically becoming a 'Winmodem' where the CPU usage will
> shoot up to (IMHO) unacceptable levels. DSL modems aren't that much $...
Well, I think the idea is more like, recycling old PCs for use in projects like this. After all, how many/.ers have old 486 or Pentium machines running as firewalls/routers? You *could* just have a software firewall running on your PC, or you *could* buy an expensive hardware firewall/router, but the best of both worlds is cheaper if you have a free old PC lying fallow.
I think that's the purpose of things like this--an old Pentium machine sitting in a closet and an old SoundBlaster can take the place of a modem that usually costs between 120 and 300 dollars.
> This is simply not a free speech issue. The University of Utah, as do most universities, has
> a code of conduct. If he violated it, then they have no obligation to support his speech by
> lending him their servers, bandwidth, domain name, etc.
You missed the whole point to concentrate on one non-issue: the use of the university network. The University had and has no obligation to provide him with server and bandwidth, sure--but no one ever claimed they did. RED HERRING.
In addition, if he has violated the University's code of conduct, they have every right to expel him. But again, not the issue. Has he violated the code of conduct in the first place? Tell us how. Go and read their code of conduct and tell us exactly what he violated. You can't, can you? Then why go around assuming he did violate it? RED HERRING #2.
It *is* a free speech issue because the University is not only suspending and possibly expelling him *for operating a site that allowed nothing more than free speech*, but *claiming ownership of all his code, and all user comments*. That my friend is a FREE SPEECH issue.
No one *EVER* claimed that the University had an obligation to support him or his site. That is not the issue, and whoever modded you up to 5 is obviously on crack because what you've said is effectively an off-topic troll since you missed the mark entirely.
The real issue is, does the University have the right to steal his code and the users' comments and claim that they are the University's property? Now, unless there was a disclaimer saying so, then copyright for the users' posts belongs to the users, and copyright for the code belongs to the author, who was not writing it under contract or employment but who wrote it and gave it for use by the student government.
In addition, the University is not a private institution and as such, since it is a public institutuion that accepts state and federal money, has a legal obligation to not violate its student's Constitutional rights. That is an issue of FREE SPEECH and of CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS being ABUSED BY A GOVERNMENT ENTITY.
So everything you've said is wrong, and misses the boat entirely.
In addition, I have to add that since the Slashcode is GPL, the University cannot claim a copyright on it or the gentleman's modifications, even if he *were* doing it specifically "for" the University, as long as the gentleman made those modifications available to others as per the GPL's clauses.
So if you're reading, Mr. Martyr-for-Free-Speech, do you get what I'm hinting at? You can use your backups of the code you modified, to restart the site elsewhere, because if you've ever redistributed your modified Slashcode to anyone for public use, it's GPL and not copyrightable by the University. So, find some people you've distributed it to for their use, or get some close friends willing to lie about it, and the University can go fuck its Mormon self.
Well let's see, I've only been running it at 1600x1200 for about a year now, ten hours a day six days a week, and have yet to smell burning plastic.
In addition, I'm using the PC inf downloaded from Apple itself, which lists 1600x1200 as supported. So I'm not going to be smelling burning plastic any time soon.
My guess would be that, when the docs on the ColorSync were written, the maximum resolution supported by the video cards that came with Apple's PowerPC line was 1280x1024, which is why the monitor's max res in the docs is listed as that. The ColorSyncs use, BTW, the standard Sony Trinitron, which has been capable of 1600x1200 for many years now.
Only legal-aged ones, like in the clip I posted to a.b.a.o-t. Did the 21 year old Canuck gal make you horny, baby?
I'm surprised to get recognized here, but hey, if you recognize me you obviously frequent some interesting places. Lemme guess, you only go there to report people to the FBI, right? Yeah.:-)
If you've been there long enough, you'll remember that I first dropped by to ask some questions for a book I was writing one of whose characters was a pedo and part of which takes place in that USENET group. I still post text in that USENET group because I like the people--the PU guys have a great sense of humor, even if I can't agree with their taste in girls.
And since I'm only attracted to post-pubertal females, I'm not in fact a "pedophile fuck." I'm a "heterosexual fuck". But thanks anyway for playing.:-)
BTW, sorry all for going off-topic, but I was just addressing someone who recognizes my nic from USENET and who felt like being a horse's ass. And I promise not to feed the troll any more. You won't punish me for that, will you mods? Oh nooooo...I can feel the karma being drained from my body...ahhhhh...kkkhhh....
Isn't that the term the Border Patrol is using now in their reports on illegal crossings? You know, like "Illegal immigrant resolution this month reached 2 mexapixels, and is expected to climb to almost 4 mexapixels as the harvesting season approaches and brings the yearly influx of migrant workers."
But with the nonstandard 1600x1024 resolution, don't think you're going to be doing any good full-screen gaming. Not that there aren't plenty of uses for the beautiful thing, but if it's to be the display for your all-around PC, forget it and get something else.
Me, I've never understood the fetish for flat panels. I have a 21" Apple ColorSync monitor that suits my PC just nicely, with the VGA converter that allows it to be used on a PC. I know there are cases where its depth would rule out a big CRT, but it fits nicely on most any decent desk and the screen's curvature isn't a distraction even though it's got a high curvature compared to newer monitors (the ColorSync is about 3 or 4 years old). Plus, it does all standard VGA and weird Mac resolutions up to 1600x1200 (though Apple's site lists max res at 1280x1024--I don't know why)--meaning it's beautiful when running the Basilisk II Mac emulator. But I digress...
Anyway, I just don't understand, unless you work or live in a tiny cubicle, why flat panels are all the rage. CRT is not only good enough for most uses, but far cheaper and much more versatile resolution and refresh wise. I think a tiny curvature and a bit of desktop real estate is worth the CRT's advantages. It ain't as sexy, but it's sure as hell more versatile and isn't that what counts?
Oh well. And BTW, I got my Apple ColorSync 21"--which gives you more usable screen real estate that that squeezed-down Cinema Display Apple hawks now--used for $300. I'd really look into picking one up through a dealer near you if you want versatility and utility over empty style.
Since they're both little oddly designed computer items, I have to slip in this question that's been annoying me for ages. Okay, can anyone tell me what that darn little black rocket-shaped thingie is on all those commercials about corporate networks? Forgive my ignorance, I'm probably the last person on/. to know, but what the hack are they? Is it an actual product that looks like that, or is it just an abstract representation of their product? If it actually looks like that--how odd. Those commercials annoy me because not a damn one has explicitly said what the little rocvket thing is. Switch? Router? Firewall? Intranet hub? Paperweight? Aleegory? What?!?
So, please excuse my ignorance and tell me what it is. Not knowing annoys me.
I hate to say it, but maybe it's a good thing that online music will start out, now that these skirmishes are largely decided, in the hands of the RIAA. The reason is that, they're going to mess up big time, and the long-term benefits of them faltering may be better than the short-term benefits of easily trading music.
See, they've already been found guilty of price-fixing on CD and tape sales for the last 15 to 20 years, and although nothing has really come of that finding for the consumer, we know that the RIAA will not be able to resist charging similar prices in cyberspace to the ones they charge in meatspace. Well, what is the music industry's excuse for expensive music? "We don't own the whole process, not only are there promotional costs, but production costs for the cover art and costs of the actual press run blah blah blah blah blah." In reality the conglomerates which are the record companies own the whole process in subsidiaries, so the actual costs are next to nothing.
But on the Internet, there is no need for a press run. Costs of duplication are effectively equal to bandwidth costs, which are small relative to a meatspace CD press. And there is no need for shipping costs, no expenses for space at the retail store, etc. So when the music industry charges almost the same thing to download an album as it charges to buy the physical version, there will be a backlash. And thanks to a few enlightened ones like Orrin Hatch, Congress will get involved. I predict that in the long run the current high price structure, and lack of sufficient pay to artists, will be forcefully ironed out when the transition to cyberspace sales is made and the RIAA members try to keep charging their insanely inflated prices.
But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong. But let's hope they shoot themselves in the foot, eh?:-)
Copyright did not exist in an enforceable form at all until the early 18th century--it certainly wasn't "perpetual" until the 1710 Statute. In fact, authors were usually never even paid a "pittance," but had their works freely copied by any publisher who wanted them. This is easily proven by the variety of editions of any popular writer at the time, particularly playwrites since their work was widely printed and performed with their only payment being from the acting company which originally commissioned the work. The simplest example is Shakespeare--his plays were published by disparate sources few of which ever paid him, and many of which obtained his plays not by getting access to a good prompt copy but by stationing someone in the audience to quickly jot down the lines, resulting in horribly mangled versions.
Indeed, in the preface to the First Folio, Shakespeare's friends lament that publishers treated him and his plays badly, and that that fact was a main reason for publishing the First Folio, copied from authoritative editions rather than from badly copied notes or early drafts.
The officials in charge of regulating the publishing industry at the time were only interested in censoring too-bawdy works, and in preventing unauthorized publishing of works by wealthy people with influence. The average writer had no copyright protection whatsoever.
And as for the U.S., our copyright system has absolutely nothing to do with an English statute and nothing at all to do with being for the authors. It is instituted for the purposes of advancing the useful arts and sciences, by giving writers and inventors the exclusive right to profit from their creations for a limited time, originally 14 years. In fact, the Constitution reads "Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The idea that copyright in the U.S. has anything to do with upholding a self-evident right of the author, or anything to do with his benefit, is false. The Constitution grants Congress this power for one reason alone--that it promotes the advancement of arts and sciences by giving people an incentive to create. Thus, it has to do with the advancement of the people's interests in having more literature and inventions and knowledge, and nothing to do with the author's benefit.
> The problem comes in only if the prediction I made comes true: that Google Groups grows to
> become the primary way for people to post to UseNet due to continuing decay of ISP support
> for UseNet.
Umm, who cares if Google, AOL, or MSN, or my local dentist becomes the primary way to access USENET? By its nature and design, there will always be other ways to access USENET since USENET is not controlled locally, nor could it be unless the whole system were redesigned from the ground up, in which case it would be something other than USENET and the old USENET would go on.
See, ISP support for USENET is unimportant. I know of *no* ISPs which have good USENET support. No one I know of who cares enough about USENET to be a major contributor actually uses his ISP as his primary access. We use "premium" USENET services for pay, and/or free accounts through big servers that offer remote accounts. That's because few if any ISPs have good feeds with high retentions.
USENET is not and will never be the Internet, so it is understandable and reasonable to get access from someone other than your ISP. Google is merely one way to do this, and as far as I'm concerned it promotes involvement by lamebrains who couldn't otherwise get real access.
Google is essentially a web-based frontend for the newsgroups, which doesn't even explain to users what USENET is, how or why it's different from the Internet, or that USENET isn't just a bunch of chat room type thingies hosted at Google. Serious USENET users already pony up a small, very affordable unless you're well below the poverty line, monthly fee to a commercial server for a good feed and long retention. For example, I have had at times an account with Altopia, Easynews, or The Slurp (back when it offered individual accounts, which it no longer does).
In addition, I know of a few free servers which offer free SLIP accounts with access to news feeds.
None of this is going away any time soon. Just because one free service has offered free accounts which now have more restricvtions, has no impact whatsoever.
And as far as I'm concerned, I wish Google/Deja would have stopped allowing free posting privileges. In my experience, for every guy like you who probably uses his account for positive contributions, there are a couple hundred AOL type guys who have no idea what USENET is who use their accounts for bandwidth-and-storage-wasting me-toos and attempts to meet "13 year old" FBI agents.
I wish USENET were only the domain of people who know what NNTP is. It may be elitist and politically incorrect for me to say it, but it's my honest opinion and if it were the way things are, if services like Google didn't allow free and simplified Web-based posting, then 90% of the clueless and always will be clueless contingent wouldn't bother with USENET, leaving it for the clueful and willing-to-learn-cluefulness and the spammers who would dry up a bit since most of their target audience--lamers who don't know better--wouldn't be there anymore.
Speaking of emulators with crappy graphics:
on
BoyCott Advance
·
· Score: 1
"from the slashdot-emulator-needed dept.
"
No, there's already a Slashdot emulator. It's called Kuro5hin.;-)
This new Iomega POS is just useless. I'm sorry, but it doesn't do anything useful that someone hasn't already done, and for less money.
To begin with, Iomega has a very bad track record with their proprietary media being short-lived, hence the "click of death" syndrome. If they couldn't design durable 100MB drives and media, why would anyone trust them with 20GB of data?
Not to mention that Sony's 10GB tape drives have been available for years, costing less for the drive and *a lot less* for the media--last time I noticed, about $30 for 10GB, but it may have gone down considerably since then. Are they parfect? No. Would I trust them more than an Iomega product? Yes. Especially with the price differential.
And then there are portable external Firewire and USB hard drives, which are cheaper and probably last longer, although I've heard some people complain about poor drivers.
But what we really need--and I mean *badly*--is high capacity optical storage. A high quality optical disk will last 50 or 100 years if taken care of, whereas any magnetic storage isn't going to have that longevity. I'm not talking about cheap optical storage like bargain-basement brands of CD-R, but a quality medium. That way we could be assured of safe data storage and retrieval.
As it is, I have GBs of data that won't fit comfortably on CD-Rs and which I wish I could back up to something more reliable than a second hard drive--but I can't. No big optical disks. That's why DVD-R is going to be such a boon when it's finally available at a competitive rate--it won't hold 20GBs, but that data could be backed up to a couple or a few DVD-Rs and most likely be safer there than anywhere else except on magneto-optical storage, which is too small capacity and too expensive.
Not to mention the fact that any hack who would use the word "cock-tease" in an article about alleged over-sexedness in an industry can be safely ignored. That in itself is proof that we live in a day and age when sex has mass appeal and is not considered by most to be impropriety when used like this. The majority of society--not just geekdom--is accepting of sexuality as an everyday part of existence, not something that needs to be kept private but something to be used as any other tool and any other type of appeal. This writer is just out of touch, and believes all the out of touch statements by old and out of date people like Sen. Lieberman and the others who are trying to close the gate after the horse has already left the barn.
Gaming is not a market for the old. It is a market for the young, the bulk of the industry aimed at teens through 30. As such, it is natural that the gaming community should reflect the values of its audience. And those values include treating sexuality openly. When the writer speaks of "the industry's dogged unwillingness (or inability) to join the mainstream," he's being ignorant of the fact that the behaviour he is denigrating is actually the mainstream.
It's ironic that at the same time old throwbacks like Lieberman who want to return culture to the 50s, are complaining that Hollywood is marketing sex and violence to teens, that this writer is ignorant enough to try to try to separate Hollywood from the gaming industry based on the gaming industry's wealth of sexuality and violence that is exactly akin to a typical Hollywood blockbuster. When he complains that gaming is an industry "with no genuine celebrities, or pop-cult recognition outside its narrow subculture" he conveniently ignores the fact that any given teen or twentysomething, and many older folks, can list their fvorite games just as they can their favorite films, and list their main characters just as they could list film stars. The lack of flesh-and-blood gaming icons outside the hardcore community is merely a reflection of the fact that people don't star in games--computer generated characters do, at least so far. So that's the fair comparison to make. Whether Mario or Lara Croft or Frogger, mainstream people know these characters and their games just as they know Hollywood stars and their movies.
Most of them are sheer and utter bullshit moneymaking bait-and-switch ventures. Who do you think puts up most of the small pr0n sites and their advertising? Yeah, there are a lot of big, "legitimate" (now there's a convoluted use of the word) adult sites that have original content and turn a profit. But all of them charge a membership fee directly, not using any sort of age verification service because when they charge your credit card *that* is their verification that you are at least 18.
The "age verification services," however, set up tons of tiny little pr0n sites, most of which steal content from the "legitimate" sites or just get filled with magazine scans or content dredged from USENET binaries groups. Then they proceed to SPAM everywhere about "hot horny naked passed-out cheerleader coed highschool sluts FREE WITH AN ***AGE PASS GOLD*** MEMBERSHIP!!!!!!!!!" Of course, by free with membership, they mean invented to get you to join in the first place, for a significant monthly recurring fee. Which is of course the opposite of free, since you pay to access, though in theory you're paying a third party who in practice is the same party or a related venture sharing the profits.
For the government to *require* an adult to pay money to a shady, spamming POS con outfit to view what it defines--and too broadly--as "adult material" is not only a violation of the first amandment, but of more basic human dignity.
Not to mention the fact that the law would be misapplied to cover noncommecial web sites put up by private individuals. You just *know* the government would be falling all over itself to show that such websites are commercial anyway, if they dare have banners or links or any sources of revenue to defray hosting costs, or worse yet are hosted on a free server that places banners or ads.
It would effectively kill the ability of American to communicate as adults using the Internet.
This is why I hate my country. Each and every day I wake up and see worse abuses of baic freedoms, and feel more and more deeply that Jefferson was right when he wrote that each generation should have a revolution against the last. You see, what's really hurting us is that the older generation, who'd be thankfully dead and unable to push their values on us, now has modern medicine to keep them alive long enough to hinder progress and social change--so that they try legislation like this to curb the "degenrated" mores of a younger generation who no longer see sex as something secretive and to be kept to oneself. Just imagine--it's only going to get worse, people, looking at the population statistics which show a population getting progtressively older in ever increasing numbers. Social progress and liberated values are no longer going to be an option in this country.
But I digress... Go to USENET for your porn needs anyway...
Looks like a bizarre reality instead of a weird joke. I can't really see William Shatner hosting Iron Chef--I mean, even Patrick Stewart would be a better choice. But hey, it's all opinion I guess.
Even more interesting--and better--is that on the same program I just heard that Jeri Ryan, everyone's favorite borgalicious piece of intergalactic patch, is going to be on the show Boston Public. Now, that I look forward to. I don't know how many people here watch it, but it's one of the few shows that actually looks at both sides of an issue. They portrayed a very sympathetic geek character getting transferred to another school for making questionable comments, and the teachers simultaneously thinking it's unfair and fighting to keep him, but also saying that we live in a society afraid of school violence and kids can't go around making threatening remarks. I think it covered both sides fairly, and ultimately the geek was a very sympathetic guy. Likewise, they've dealt with teen suicide and student/teacher affairs and sexual harassment in very even-hended ways, instead of moralizing.
But anyway, I look forward to Jeri Ryan's firm--uh, discipline--in the classroom. But I can't say I'm thrilled about Shatner on Iron Chef. We'll have to see about that one...
Unless I am mistaken, most of the Islamic influence in India--not all, but most--was taken care of with the breakaway of Pakistan. Now the Hindus have a very very significant majority in India, whereas Pakistan is controlled by Islam.
I have no hard ethnographic data, though. So, I could be mistaken, though I'd expect that if Islam had that much influence in India, that laws would be more restrictive about sexuality than they are even with the new netporn ban.
Pardon me for pointing this out, but the Hundu religion prevalent in India is much more open about sexuality than the Christian religion. Your argument would hold water for Islamic countries, but definitely not for India.
Not only is Hindu literature filled with explicit sexual trysts, but sex between appropriate partners has always been acceptable there, even outside of marriage. This is one reason why prostitution is so common in India and much more open than it is in most of the West--it's socially acceptable in most circles to visit prostitutes.
This is why India's desire to censor net porn from its citizenry is so puzzling. That, and the fact that they have so much poverty, child slavery, and other severe problems that it's just absurd to waste precious resources filtering porn.
Isn't it ironic that in a country where rural girls are still sold into slavery as prostitutes, that it's illegal to access pornography on the net? Talk about inconsistencies...
Unfortunately, the best products don't always win out commercially. Especially in the software world, it's a matter of satisfying these factors:
1) Compatability--if it won't play well with other users on other systems, don't expect people to jump to embrace it.
2) Familiarity--if it works like and looks like other apps that came before it did, with similar layout and controls, people won't automatically just stick with what they've got; which is what many will do if it's new and different and requires re-learning.
3) Big Name Company--like it or not, if users know the name of the company that puts out the software, they'll be more likely to use it.
Of course, there are other factors, but I think these are the main ones. You can look at most software in the light of these points and have a few good insights on why it failed.
For example, since you mentioned word processors, look at MS Word. It started out as a knock-off of Word Perfect, the dominant app at the time--so it had compatibility, familiarity, and came from the company that made the OS it was likely to be run on (yeah, OS/2, but...). Then Microsoft got saavy and broke compatibility with their new formats, and broke familiarity a little by changing interface elements. Bang--users are locked in because they want compatibility, and they want their new word processor to look and work just like their old one. And once Microsoft had edged out Word Perfect, who could make an app that was at least as compatible, looked and worked similar, and had as much name recognition as Microsoft? No one.
Of course, as an aside, I always thought the best word processing app in terms of how well it worked and how easy it was to use, for most situations, was ClarisWorks. By version 3 it did everything you could want unless you were using your word processor for very weird things. Even small desktop-publishing businesses years ago were using it, it was so simple to use but versatile. MS Word is unintuitive bloatware compared to the elegance and simplicity that was ClarisWorks. And it was available for both Mac and Windows. To this day I'd be using ClarisWorks 4 if only I didn't need compatibility with the rest of the world, who are by and large using newer and newer MS.doc formats that ClarisWorks and AppleWorks can't handle.
Which is sad really, because a more user-friendly word processor was never written. But anyway--out of curiosity, any WordStar fans here?
Let's face it: laws and treaties like this get passed because the people in charge hear only from the big corporations. The public never has a voice, or a presence. The recent protests at a few multinational summits are a pleasant change of pace, but are the exception.
The article makes mention that the public just aren't interested. That's untrue. There is a sizable minority of people who do care--even if it's only 1% of the public who cares at all, that's still 3 million Americans. That's a lot of people.
The problem is, none of them has any idea when things like this happen. I think this is roughly the fourth event I've heard of on/. that I would have gone to if only I'd known about it. Sure, it was a panel discussion, not an event where audience members could officially participate, but wouldn't it have drawn some attention by the decision-makers and the Post reporter if fifty people had shown up wearing "DON'T PASS THE HAGUE CONVENTION!" buttons? Not as trouble-makers, but as well-behaved audience members who came out to make their opinions known to the reporters and others, during the breaks and what-not.
Something like that could have happened. Likewise, the protest against the DMCA that happened a long while back, where a disappointing 20 people showed up, could have been a major event. Why wasn't it? No one knew.
I could have come, and I'm sure there are others here who would have been glad to make a great turn-out. But instead of telling us beforehand, Slashdot whines about it after. I mean, come on! There are a lot of people who read this site who could take half a day or a day off every once in a while to participate in issues like this. But "News for Nerds" only tells us things that have already happened, complaining about how no one cares. Well, if they'd tell us a week beforehand, we could actually be there to participate.
There really ought to be a section of politically aware sites like/. devoted to upcoming events where people can participate. I know I'd be there sometimes.
So, how about it? How many people would like to see a calendar page about upcoming political events that have significance to us? What do you think? There's a large readership here, and if only a small percentage turn out...it could be noticed. But that's just my opinion.
You seem to think that things like media support and messaging integration are somehow unrelated to the OS and therefore people shouldn't have to pay for it. Again, that argument is just silly.
I never wear my seatbelt, and yet I cannot go to a dealership and buy a new car without one. Ditto for airbags, anti-lock brakes, and the "black box" electronic integration common on most vehicles of today. All of those things are just as unrelated to being a car as having Windows Media and chat integration are to being an OS. Yet, GM has a right to include them--ignoring seatbelts, which are mandatory on new vehicles, the rest are optional. Yet most new models have one or more of those things, even on the most basic version.
GM has every right to integrate these things into their cars, even though cars will work without them. I cannot for one second understand how you seem to think Microsoft doesn't have a right to do, essentially, the same thing. Their antitrust case wasn't about integrating features into their OS--they have every right to do so. It was about using their dominant market position to threaten and intimidate OEMs into not including a competing product. If MS had just integrated IE, that would be fine--it would have eventually killed Netscape, but it would have been legal; no one ever said a company is entitled to keep making a profit after times and markets change. But they wanted to kill Netscape intsantly, and threatened anyone who wanted to bundle Netscape with a new PC, and that was their illegal abuse.
A customer has no more right to buy an OS without media or chat or web integration than I have a right to buy a mustang convertible without the top. The top isn't completely necessary to the functioning of the car, and yet they do not sell new convertibles without them. If I went to the Ford dealership and said, "But, I don't plan to use the top--I'll only be driving it on clear summer days, and the rest of the time it will be in a garage, so I don't need it"--well, they'd refuse to sell you a Mustang without the top, for no other reason than that it's part of the car. You can say to your heart's content "but it's not fair that I'll have to pay hundreds of dollars more for something I'll never use, it comes right off and I don't want and shouldn't have to pay for it" and they will be well within their rights to tell you to fuck off. You have absolutely no right to buy something on your own terms. Go to a toy store and demand that they sell you a Lego set without all the corner pieces, at a reduced price, since you don't want or need the corner pieces. Sounds ridiculous, right? Just as ridiculous as you saying that customers have a right to buy Windows without Windows Media, messaging, etc.
Second, you write:
> I even respect your desire to have IE, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, and Windows Media
> Services all installed on your hard disk and, for the most part, all in memory when you're
> using your machine.
See, whenever there's a market for something, it will get made. Like, the utility 98lite which I used to cleanly install Win98SE without any trace of OE, MSN, or Windows Media. I did want IE because, well, it works--it's a pig, but it shows everything better than any other browser. I have hopes for Mozilla, but when I tried it at.8 it was a far worse resource hog than IE, so I'm not going to try again until 1.0. Also, I do use Windows Media because a lot of content comes in that format--I'd prefer an MPEG format, but beggars can't be choosers--but I wanted to cleanly install the most recent version, so I installed Windows without Media Player.
98lite lets you do things like that. And I'm sure eventually there'll be a similar util for Windows XP. Would it be better if Windows gave you more control over what gets installed? Of course. But Windows' integration is largely an advantage, especially for the sort of average users who want their computers to work for them instead of the other way around. *You* may not like integration, but 90% of users take the other view. We just want our PCs to work, without having to dick around just to figure out how to get a media file to play.
Slashdot Mirror
The article is a very nice introduction for us non-physicists, but nothing it relates is by any means definitive. As this latest discovery proves, our understanding of the universe is constantly being updated, and older theories are being refined or replaced.
:-)
So, I don't think we yet have any real knowledge of whether the Universe is curved or flat, or whether it will expand infinitely or begin to contract inwards at some point. The truth is, there are still so many other pieces of the puzzle that haven't been clearly and conclusively placed yet, that we couldn't possibly see what the whole picture is going to be, or even whether there is a conclusive "whole picture" at all--if quantum physics has taught us anything, it's that we can't be certain what surprises lie ahead.
I mean, so much has changed in terms of what theories are most accepted and which are minority theories, just in the five years since I studied physics in college. And minority theories could be correct--just because 70% or even 95% of physicists believe something, doesn't make it so. Maybe the other 5% are the more brilliant ones, you never know.
I enjoy reading about physics and cosmology immensely--but we don't know much yet. There's still so much to confirm, discover, and rethink. Maybe that's why I like it so much.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
The issue is very simple, and I'm not sure why people aren't seeing the simple answer. The GPL would prevent the University from doing certain things with the code, such as using it in a project which is closed-source in such a way and circumstances as to violate the GPL.
/. is not the place to ask about it. Just ask whoever in the University is in charge of administering such things. And if no one knows, or no one can figure out who's in charge of such things, just attach the GPL to it and be done.
However, there is absolutely nothing which prevents the code from being licensed to the University without the restrictions imposed by the GPL, and also to the rest of the world under the GPL. After all, the University's requirements state:
> such license shall grant the University the right to use the original work in its internally
> administered programs of teaching, research, and public service on a perpetual, royalty-free,
> non-exclusive basis.
The key word here is non-exclusive. Just let the University use the code for whatever as long as they stick to that paragraph and don't use it in a way which violates it, and also release it under the GPL to everyone else. The author of a piece of code can license it out to as many people on a non-exclusive basis as he wants, under as many different licenses as he wants.
Of course, reading that paragraph I don't see that it conflicts with the GPL in any way since it only requires that the University be allowed to use the code any way it wishes "in its *internally* administered programs," and the GPL is compatible with that. But just in case the University wants to get nitpicky, I wouldn't push it. After all, as long as the code is GPLed for everybody else, and as long as the University doesn't violate its own clause by using the code publicly in a closed-source manner, I don't see a problem, unless you want to get really zealous about it.
Of course, if you do insist on putting it under GPL for the University's use as well,
You clearly do not understand the difference between word and deed, just as the censors in our Puritanical country fail to. You want it to be OK for people to take down sites they don't like or find offensive? Gee, then get rid of the whole .gov listings first, crack them into submission, since they are the biggest abuser of freedom and perpetrator of crime in the country. I think the FBI alone has violated more civil rights than all the Klansmen who ever lived.
The thing about the Internet is, what goes on there is almost always word and image, not real life deed. You yourself fail to make a distinction--for instance, it isn't illegal to be a pedophile or necrophile. A pedophle is someone who is sexually attracted to children, and a necrophile is someone who is sexually attracted to corpses. These are merely thoughts, and are not and cannot be illegal. It is only when they cross into the real world of actions that they can take illegal forms. In other words, it is legal to be a pedophile, since that's a thought; it's illegal to have sexual contact with children, because that's an action.
This is what we fail to take into account. The Internet ain't real life, people, and no amount of "A Rape in Cyberspace" type rhetoric will change that. If I talk about being sexually attracted to corpses (icchhy) that's my right, and I cannot and should not be arrested or DDOSed for it. It's your right to listen or ignore or tell me to go fuck my dead grandma and get out of your chatroom or other community (if it is yours). Likewise, it's my right to have a website devoted to necrophilia, if I can find a host willing to host it. Molesting corpses is illegal, but talking about being attracted to them is not. Nor are pictures of corpses illegal, though depending on their content, they might be illegal because of being obscene, since obscenity is not Constitutionally protected.
The problem is when we make speech or expression illegal which is *not* obscene. That's where all the abuses take place, as well as with people like Ashcroft who consider all porn to be obscene. (Porn between consenting adults should never be illegal, since it is nothing more than a depiction of adult human sexuality, which is only different from any other part of life if you're a fucked-up Puritan trying to impose your own religiously-driven sexual morals on others). Take "child pornography" as an example--in the late 70's Congress made and the Court upheld laws making pornography involving minors illegal even if it is not obscene. The problem with that is, if it's not obscene, it should be protected speech and expression, even if the action being depicted by a word or image is illegal itself. For example, you can publish all the images you want of people being murdered, and the images are not illegal, nor is your publication of them. But if you publish a photograph of a 17 year old having sex, publishing the image is illegal, and possessing the image is illegal. It gets more convoluted if you take into account that the action depicted may not even be illegal--what if the age of consent in a state is 15? Than possessing an image of a legal action is illegal. That makes *no* sense at all. Legakl to perform an action, but illegal to pho0tograph it? And as I said, it would be legal to possess or distribute photos of any other crime, like murder or assault. And the Court has ruled that even photos of underage people wearing clothes can be considered child porn and hence illegal--as in the case of a man who was videotaping some high school cheerleaders jumping up and down at a game, and zoomed in on their clothed butts and whatnot.
Now, I would have no problem with things like this being covered under obscenity laws--many communities would find it obscene for an adult man to be going around misusing underage cheerleaders as pornographic objects. Likewise, many types of clearly pornographic images involving underage people would be clearly considered obscene in any community. That is how it should be handled. But instead the Congress and the Court took the absurd position that we need a special category for child pornography since some of it might not be considered obscene. That has led to prosecutions and attempted prosecutions of mothers for taking pictures of their half-nude kids playing quite normally (as in the recent Lifetime movie *Snap Decision*), and of artists or their publishers or bookstores for taking what are clearly harmless artistic nudes (Jock Sturges and David Hamilton, e.g.).
Well, this confusion is what happens when you make an image--which is just information, harmless data, not ations--illegal to merely possess or produce or distribute. We don't need such laws when the actions themselves are illegal--molest a kid and you should go to jail for a very long time for the molestation; there's no need to make picture-taking illicit, since the act is illicit. And in the case where the state has an age of consent that's, say, 16, why should it be illegal to make an image of something that's legal to do? It makes no sense whatsoever.
I've used your example of pedophilia as the basis of the discussion, but the same holds true for necrophilia, which you also mention. It's illegal to fuck a corpse, so if you're found posting images of yourself fucking a corpse, you should be arrested for fucking the corpse, not for posting an image of it (even though the image may be obscene). Indeed, I have my doubts about all obscenity laws, based on the fact that they punish thoughts and expressions in word or image, rather than actual actions. You need not make images of bestiality illegal through obscenity, when the action itself of sex with an animal is obscene and the action should be punished not the expression in image form.
Indeed, on a philosophical level I have my objections against making any expression through word or image or sound or otherwise illegal, whether perceived to be "obscene" or not. Even the Justice who wrote the decision affirming that obscenity is not Constitutionally protected speech later said that he regretted the dicision and its reliance on the vague notion of "contemporary community standards". It seems like the reasonable measure would be to make it illegal to sell or otherwise pander "obscene" material to minors, while allowing adults to choose what they themselves want to have access to. Information in and of itself causes neither harm nor good, and all an image or word is is information. Information and action should therefore be considered quite separate, since actions can inherently cause harm but information and expression cannot.
This brings us to the question of how to regulate the access of minors to potentially objectionable material on the Internet while allow3ing adults unfettered access. Well, I was watching *The O'Reilly Factor* when Bill was interviewing the CEO of Lycos, and he said something that made a lot of sense. Instead of all the censorious solutions now proposed, why not regulate the Net by requiring only that sexually explicit or otherwise "adult" sites have to have a certain label or disclaimer, so that filtering software parents can choose to use will automatically be 100% effective? The only grey ara left would be people who challenge that their site is not adult-oriented, and that could be decided at Court, but would not prevent access to the site by anyone who does not choose to use filtering software for themselves or their children. Instantly the Internet would become clean for those who wish it so, and remain open for we wish it to be open.
Sounds like a good compromise to me.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Most of the companies that produce the telecines and anamorphic transfers and do the specials are wholly owned by the same companies that own the studios, hence almost all profits across the board stay within the family. It's the same thing that drives CD prices up, and it's all artificial.
Or, take the case of what's holding up the *Dogma:SE* disc for many months. Disney sold out the distribution rights because they're assholes who didn't want to distribute a controversial film like *Dogma*. Then, when it came time to publish the Special Edition DVD with all the extras and deleted scenes, Disney said, "Hrmm, you don't own those, so pay us more to use them." Thus, Disney gouges a bit more profit that ultimately comes from the consumer's wallet, and my money means more to me than a few more dollars means to Disney. Fuck that. It's all creative accounting designed to gouge the consumer.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
> But I agree with you that it's basically becoming a 'Winmodem' where the CPU usage will
/.ers have old 486 or Pentium machines running as firewalls/routers? You *could* just have a software firewall running on your PC, or you *could* buy an expensive hardware firewall/router, but the best of both worlds is cheaper if you have a free old PC lying fallow.
> shoot up to (IMHO) unacceptable levels. DSL modems aren't that much $...
Well, I think the idea is more like, recycling old PCs for use in projects like this. After all, how many
I think that's the purpose of things like this--an old Pentium machine sitting in a closet and an old SoundBlaster can take the place of a modem that usually costs between 120 and 300 dollars.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
> This is simply not a free speech issue. The University of Utah, as do most universities, has
> a code of conduct. If he violated it, then they have no obligation to support his speech by
> lending him their servers, bandwidth, domain name, etc.
You missed the whole point to concentrate on one non-issue: the use of the university network. The University had and has no obligation to provide him with server and bandwidth, sure--but no one ever claimed they did. RED HERRING.
In addition, if he has violated the University's code of conduct, they have every right to expel him. But again, not the issue. Has he violated the code of conduct in the first place? Tell us how. Go and read their code of conduct and tell us exactly what he violated. You can't, can you? Then why go around assuming he did violate it? RED HERRING #2.
It *is* a free speech issue because the University is not only suspending and possibly expelling him *for operating a site that allowed nothing more than free speech*, but *claiming ownership of all his code, and all user comments*. That my friend is a FREE SPEECH issue.
No one *EVER* claimed that the University had an obligation to support him or his site. That is not the issue, and whoever modded you up to 5 is obviously on crack because what you've said is effectively an off-topic troll since you missed the mark entirely.
The real issue is, does the University have the right to steal his code and the users' comments and claim that they are the University's property? Now, unless there was a disclaimer saying so, then copyright for the users' posts belongs to the users, and copyright for the code belongs to the author, who was not writing it under contract or employment but who wrote it and gave it for use by the student government.
In addition, the University is not a private institution and as such, since it is a public institutuion that accepts state and federal money, has a legal obligation to not violate its student's Constitutional rights. That is an issue of FREE SPEECH and of CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS being ABUSED BY A GOVERNMENT ENTITY.
So everything you've said is wrong, and misses the boat entirely.
In addition, I have to add that since the Slashcode is GPL, the University cannot claim a copyright on it or the gentleman's modifications, even if he *were* doing it specifically "for" the University, as long as the gentleman made those modifications available to others as per the GPL's clauses.
So if you're reading, Mr. Martyr-for-Free-Speech, do you get what I'm hinting at? You can use your backups of the code you modified, to restart the site elsewhere, because if you've ever redistributed your modified Slashcode to anyone for public use, it's GPL and not copyrightable by the University. So, find some people you've distributed it to for their use, or get some close friends willing to lie about it, and the University can go fuck its Mormon self.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Well let's see, I've only been running it at 1600x1200 for about a year now, ten hours a day six days a week, and have yet to smell burning plastic.
In addition, I'm using the PC inf downloaded from Apple itself, which lists 1600x1200 as supported. So I'm not going to be smelling burning plastic any time soon.
My guess would be that, when the docs on the ColorSync were written, the maximum resolution supported by the video cards that came with Apple's PowerPC line was 1280x1024, which is why the monitor's max res in the docs is listed as that. The ColorSyncs use, BTW, the standard Sony Trinitron, which has been capable of 1600x1200 for many years now.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Only legal-aged ones, like in the clip I posted to a.b.a.o-t. Did the 21 year old Canuck gal make you horny, baby?
:-)
:-)
I'm surprised to get recognized here, but hey, if you recognize me you obviously frequent some interesting places. Lemme guess, you only go there to report people to the FBI, right? Yeah.
If you've been there long enough, you'll remember that I first dropped by to ask some questions for a book I was writing one of whose characters was a pedo and part of which takes place in that USENET group. I still post text in that USENET group because I like the people--the PU guys have a great sense of humor, even if I can't agree with their taste in girls.
And since I'm only attracted to post-pubertal females, I'm not in fact a "pedophile fuck." I'm a "heterosexual fuck". But thanks anyway for playing.
BTW, sorry all for going off-topic, but I was just addressing someone who recognizes my nic from USENET and who felt like being a horse's ass. And I promise not to feed the troll any more. You won't punish me for that, will you mods? Oh nooooo...I can feel the karma being drained from my body...ahhhhh...kkkhhh....
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Isn't that the term the Border Patrol is using now in their reports on illegal crossings? You know, like "Illegal immigrant resolution this month reached 2 mexapixels, and is expected to climb to almost 4 mexapixels as the harvesting season approaches and brings the yearly influx of migrant workers."
:-)
You know, mexapixels.
C'mon; *someone* had to say it.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
But with the nonstandard 1600x1024 resolution, don't think you're going to be doing any good full-screen gaming. Not that there aren't plenty of uses for the beautiful thing, but if it's to be the display for your all-around PC, forget it and get something else.
Me, I've never understood the fetish for flat panels. I have a 21" Apple ColorSync monitor that suits my PC just nicely, with the VGA converter that allows it to be used on a PC. I know there are cases where its depth would rule out a big CRT, but it fits nicely on most any decent desk and the screen's curvature isn't a distraction even though it's got a high curvature compared to newer monitors (the ColorSync is about 3 or 4 years old). Plus, it does all standard VGA and weird Mac resolutions up to 1600x1200 (though Apple's site lists max res at 1280x1024--I don't know why)--meaning it's beautiful when running the Basilisk II Mac emulator. But I digress...
Anyway, I just don't understand, unless you work or live in a tiny cubicle, why flat panels are all the rage. CRT is not only good enough for most uses, but far cheaper and much more versatile resolution and refresh wise. I think a tiny curvature and a bit of desktop real estate is worth the CRT's advantages. It ain't as sexy, but it's sure as hell more versatile and isn't that what counts?
Oh well. And BTW, I got my Apple ColorSync 21"--which gives you more usable screen real estate that that squeezed-down Cinema Display Apple hawks now--used for $300. I'd really look into picking one up through a dealer near you if you want versatility and utility over empty style.
Since they're both little oddly designed computer items, I have to slip in this question that's been annoying me for ages. Okay, can anyone tell me what that darn little black rocket-shaped thingie is on all those commercials about corporate networks? Forgive my ignorance, I'm probably the last person on /. to know, but what the hack are they? Is it an actual product that looks like that, or is it just an abstract representation of their product? If it actually looks like that--how odd. Those commercials annoy me because not a damn one has explicitly said what the little rocvket thing is. Switch? Router? Firewall? Intranet hub? Paperweight? Aleegory? What?!?
So, please excuse my ignorance and tell me what it is. Not knowing annoys me.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
I hate to say it, but maybe it's a good thing that online music will start out, now that these skirmishes are largely decided, in the hands of the RIAA. The reason is that, they're going to mess up big time, and the long-term benefits of them faltering may be better than the short-term benefits of easily trading music.
:-)
See, they've already been found guilty of price-fixing on CD and tape sales for the last 15 to 20 years, and although nothing has really come of that finding for the consumer, we know that the RIAA will not be able to resist charging similar prices in cyberspace to the ones they charge in meatspace. Well, what is the music industry's excuse for expensive music? "We don't own the whole process, not only are there promotional costs, but production costs for the cover art and costs of the actual press run blah blah blah blah blah." In reality the conglomerates which are the record companies own the whole process in subsidiaries, so the actual costs are next to nothing.
But on the Internet, there is no need for a press run. Costs of duplication are effectively equal to bandwidth costs, which are small relative to a meatspace CD press. And there is no need for shipping costs, no expenses for space at the retail store, etc. So when the music industry charges almost the same thing to download an album as it charges to buy the physical version, there will be a backlash. And thanks to a few enlightened ones like Orrin Hatch, Congress will get involved. I predict that in the long run the current high price structure, and lack of sufficient pay to artists, will be forcefully ironed out when the transition to cyberspace sales is made and the RIAA members try to keep charging their insanely inflated prices.
But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong. But let's hope they shoot themselves in the foot, eh?
Copyright did not exist in an enforceable form at all until the early 18th century--it certainly wasn't "perpetual" until the 1710 Statute. In fact, authors were usually never even paid a "pittance," but had their works freely copied by any publisher who wanted them. This is easily proven by the variety of editions of any popular writer at the time, particularly playwrites since their work was widely printed and performed with their only payment being from the acting company which originally commissioned the work. The simplest example is Shakespeare--his plays were published by disparate sources few of which ever paid him, and many of which obtained his plays not by getting access to a good prompt copy but by stationing someone in the audience to quickly jot down the lines, resulting in horribly mangled versions.
Indeed, in the preface to the First Folio, Shakespeare's friends lament that publishers treated him and his plays badly, and that that fact was a main reason for publishing the First Folio, copied from authoritative editions rather than from badly copied notes or early drafts.
The officials in charge of regulating the publishing industry at the time were only interested in censoring too-bawdy works, and in preventing unauthorized publishing of works by wealthy people with influence. The average writer had no copyright protection whatsoever.
And as for the U.S., our copyright system has absolutely nothing to do with an English statute and nothing at all to do with being for the authors. It is instituted for the purposes of advancing the useful arts and sciences, by giving writers and inventors the exclusive right to profit from their creations for a limited time, originally 14 years. In fact, the Constitution reads "Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The idea that copyright in the U.S. has anything to do with upholding a self-evident right of the author, or anything to do with his benefit, is false. The Constitution grants Congress this power for one reason alone--that it promotes the advancement of arts and sciences by giving people an incentive to create. Thus, it has to do with the advancement of the people's interests in having more literature and inventions and knowledge, and nothing to do with the author's benefit.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
> The problem comes in only if the prediction I made comes true: that Google Groups grows to
> become the primary way for people to post to UseNet due to continuing decay of ISP support
> for UseNet.
Umm, who cares if Google, AOL, or MSN, or my local dentist becomes the primary way to access USENET? By its nature and design, there will always be other ways to access USENET since USENET is not controlled locally, nor could it be unless the whole system were redesigned from the ground up, in which case it would be something other than USENET and the old USENET would go on.
See, ISP support for USENET is unimportant. I know of *no* ISPs which have good USENET support. No one I know of who cares enough about USENET to be a major contributor actually uses his ISP as his primary access. We use "premium" USENET services for pay, and/or free accounts through big servers that offer remote accounts. That's because few if any ISPs have good feeds with high retentions.
USENET is not and will never be the Internet, so it is understandable and reasonable to get access from someone other than your ISP. Google is merely one way to do this, and as far as I'm concerned it promotes involvement by lamebrains who couldn't otherwise get real access.
Google is essentially a web-based frontend for the newsgroups, which doesn't even explain to users what USENET is, how or why it's different from the Internet, or that USENET isn't just a bunch of chat room type thingies hosted at Google. Serious USENET users already pony up a small, very affordable unless you're well below the poverty line, monthly fee to a commercial server for a good feed and long retention. For example, I have had at times an account with Altopia, Easynews, or The Slurp (back when it offered individual accounts, which it no longer does).
In addition, I know of a few free servers which offer free SLIP accounts with access to news feeds.
None of this is going away any time soon. Just because one free service has offered free accounts which now have more restricvtions, has no impact whatsoever.
And as far as I'm concerned, I wish Google/Deja would have stopped allowing free posting privileges. In my experience, for every guy like you who probably uses his account for positive contributions, there are a couple hundred AOL type guys who have no idea what USENET is who use their accounts for bandwidth-and-storage-wasting me-toos and attempts to meet "13 year old" FBI agents.
I wish USENET were only the domain of people who know what NNTP is. It may be elitist and politically incorrect for me to say it, but it's my honest opinion and if it were the way things are, if services like Google didn't allow free and simplified Web-based posting, then 90% of the clueless and always will be clueless contingent wouldn't bother with USENET, leaving it for the clueful and willing-to-learn-cluefulness and the spammers who would dry up a bit since most of their target audience--lamers who don't know better--wouldn't be there anymore.
"from the slashdot-emulator-needed dept.
;-)
"
No, there's already a Slashdot emulator. It's called Kuro5hin.
C'mon now, *somebody* had to say it!
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
This new Iomega POS is just useless. I'm sorry, but it doesn't do anything useful that someone hasn't already done, and for less money.
To begin with, Iomega has a very bad track record with their proprietary media being short-lived, hence the "click of death" syndrome. If they couldn't design durable 100MB drives and media, why would anyone trust them with 20GB of data?
Not to mention that Sony's 10GB tape drives have been available for years, costing less for the drive and *a lot less* for the media--last time I noticed, about $30 for 10GB, but it may have gone down considerably since then. Are they parfect? No. Would I trust them more than an Iomega product? Yes. Especially with the price differential.
And then there are portable external Firewire and USB hard drives, which are cheaper and probably last longer, although I've heard some people complain about poor drivers.
But what we really need--and I mean *badly*--is high capacity optical storage. A high quality optical disk will last 50 or 100 years if taken care of, whereas any magnetic storage isn't going to have that longevity. I'm not talking about cheap optical storage like bargain-basement brands of CD-R, but a quality medium. That way we could be assured of safe data storage and retrieval.
As it is, I have GBs of data that won't fit comfortably on CD-Rs and which I wish I could back up to something more reliable than a second hard drive--but I can't. No big optical disks. That's why DVD-R is going to be such a boon when it's finally available at a competitive rate--it won't hold 20GBs, but that data could be backed up to a couple or a few DVD-Rs and most likely be safer there than anywhere else except on magneto-optical storage, which is too small capacity and too expensive.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Not to mention the fact that any hack who would use the word "cock-tease" in an article about alleged over-sexedness in an industry can be safely ignored. That in itself is proof that we live in a day and age when sex has mass appeal and is not considered by most to be impropriety when used like this. The majority of society--not just geekdom--is accepting of sexuality as an everyday part of existence, not something that needs to be kept private but something to be used as any other tool and any other type of appeal. This writer is just out of touch, and believes all the out of touch statements by old and out of date people like Sen. Lieberman and the others who are trying to close the gate after the horse has already left the barn.
Gaming is not a market for the old. It is a market for the young, the bulk of the industry aimed at teens through 30. As such, it is natural that the gaming community should reflect the values of its audience. And those values include treating sexuality openly. When the writer speaks of "the industry's dogged unwillingness (or inability) to join the mainstream," he's being ignorant of the fact that the behaviour he is denigrating is actually the mainstream.
It's ironic that at the same time old throwbacks like Lieberman who want to return culture to the 50s, are complaining that Hollywood is marketing sex and violence to teens, that this writer is ignorant enough to try to try to separate Hollywood from the gaming industry based on the gaming industry's wealth of sexuality and violence that is exactly akin to a typical Hollywood blockbuster. When he complains that gaming is an industry "with no genuine celebrities, or pop-cult recognition outside its narrow subculture" he conveniently ignores the fact that any given teen or twentysomething, and many older folks, can list their fvorite games just as they can their favorite films, and list their main characters just as they could list film stars. The lack of flesh-and-blood gaming icons outside the hardcore community is merely a reflection of the fact that people don't star in games--computer generated characters do, at least so far. So that's the fair comparison to make. Whether Mario or Lara Croft or Frogger, mainstream people know these characters and their games just as they know Hollywood stars and their movies.
The writer is just out of touch.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Most of them are sheer and utter bullshit moneymaking bait-and-switch ventures. Who do you think puts up most of the small pr0n sites and their advertising? Yeah, there are a lot of big, "legitimate" (now there's a convoluted use of the word) adult sites that have original content and turn a profit. But all of them charge a membership fee directly, not using any sort of age verification service because when they charge your credit card *that* is their verification that you are at least 18.
The "age verification services," however, set up tons of tiny little pr0n sites, most of which steal content from the "legitimate" sites or just get filled with magazine scans or content dredged from USENET binaries groups. Then they proceed to SPAM everywhere about "hot horny naked passed-out cheerleader coed highschool sluts FREE WITH AN ***AGE PASS GOLD*** MEMBERSHIP!!!!!!!!!" Of course, by free with membership, they mean invented to get you to join in the first place, for a significant monthly recurring fee. Which is of course the opposite of free, since you pay to access, though in theory you're paying a third party who in practice is the same party or a related venture sharing the profits.
For the government to *require* an adult to pay money to a shady, spamming POS con outfit to view what it defines--and too broadly--as "adult material" is not only a violation of the first amandment, but of more basic human dignity.
Not to mention the fact that the law would be misapplied to cover noncommecial web sites put up by private individuals. You just *know* the government would be falling all over itself to show that such websites are commercial anyway, if they dare have banners or links or any sources of revenue to defray hosting costs, or worse yet are hosted on a free server that places banners or ads.
It would effectively kill the ability of American to communicate as adults using the Internet.
This is why I hate my country. Each and every day I wake up and see worse abuses of baic freedoms, and feel more and more deeply that Jefferson was right when he wrote that each generation should have a revolution against the last. You see, what's really hurting us is that the older generation, who'd be thankfully dead and unable to push their values on us, now has modern medicine to keep them alive long enough to hinder progress and social change--so that they try legislation like this to curb the "degenrated" mores of a younger generation who no longer see sex as something secretive and to be kept to oneself. Just imagine--it's only going to get worse, people, looking at the population statistics which show a population getting progtressively older in ever increasing numbers. Social progress and liberated values are no longer going to be an option in this country.
But I digress... Go to USENET for your porn needs anyway...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Looks like a bizarre reality instead of a weird joke. I can't really see William Shatner hosting Iron Chef--I mean, even Patrick Stewart would be a better choice. But hey, it's all opinion I guess.
Even more interesting--and better--is that on the same program I just heard that Jeri Ryan, everyone's favorite borgalicious piece of intergalactic patch, is going to be on the show Boston Public. Now, that I look forward to. I don't know how many people here watch it, but it's one of the few shows that actually looks at both sides of an issue. They portrayed a very sympathetic geek character getting transferred to another school for making questionable comments, and the teachers simultaneously thinking it's unfair and fighting to keep him, but also saying that we live in a society afraid of school violence and kids can't go around making threatening remarks. I think it covered both sides fairly, and ultimately the geek was a very sympathetic guy. Likewise, they've dealt with teen suicide and student/teacher affairs and sexual harassment in very even-hended ways, instead of moralizing.
But anyway, I look forward to Jeri Ryan's firm--uh, discipline--in the classroom. But I can't say I'm thrilled about Shatner on Iron Chef. We'll have to see about that one...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Unless I am mistaken, most of the Islamic influence in India--not all, but most--was taken care of with the breakaway of Pakistan. Now the Hindus have a very very significant majority in India, whereas Pakistan is controlled by Islam.
I have no hard ethnographic data, though. So, I could be mistaken, though I'd expect that if Islam had that much influence in India, that laws would be more restrictive about sexuality than they are even with the new netporn ban.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Pardon me for pointing this out, but the Hundu religion prevalent in India is much more open about sexuality than the Christian religion. Your argument would hold water for Islamic countries, but definitely not for India.
Not only is Hindu literature filled with explicit sexual trysts, but sex between appropriate partners has always been acceptable there, even outside of marriage. This is one reason why prostitution is so common in India and much more open than it is in most of the West--it's socially acceptable in most circles to visit prostitutes.
This is why India's desire to censor net porn from its citizenry is so puzzling. That, and the fact that they have so much poverty, child slavery, and other severe problems that it's just absurd to waste precious resources filtering porn.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Isn't it ironic that in a country where rural girls are still sold into slavery as prostitutes, that it's illegal to access pornography on the net? Talk about inconsistencies...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Unfortunately, the best products don't always win out commercially. Especially in the software world, it's a matter of satisfying these factors:
.doc formats that ClarisWorks and AppleWorks can't handle.
1) Compatability--if it won't play well with other users on other systems, don't expect people to jump to embrace it.
2) Familiarity--if it works like and looks like other apps that came before it did, with similar layout and controls, people won't automatically just stick with what they've got; which is what many will do if it's new and different and requires re-learning.
3) Big Name Company--like it or not, if users know the name of the company that puts out the software, they'll be more likely to use it.
Of course, there are other factors, but I think these are the main ones. You can look at most software in the light of these points and have a few good insights on why it failed.
For example, since you mentioned word processors, look at MS Word. It started out as a knock-off of Word Perfect, the dominant app at the time--so it had compatibility, familiarity, and came from the company that made the OS it was likely to be run on (yeah, OS/2, but...). Then Microsoft got saavy and broke compatibility with their new formats, and broke familiarity a little by changing interface elements. Bang--users are locked in because they want compatibility, and they want their new word processor to look and work just like their old one. And once Microsoft had edged out Word Perfect, who could make an app that was at least as compatible, looked and worked similar, and had as much name recognition as Microsoft? No one.
Of course, as an aside, I always thought the best word processing app in terms of how well it worked and how easy it was to use, for most situations, was ClarisWorks. By version 3 it did everything you could want unless you were using your word processor for very weird things. Even small desktop-publishing businesses years ago were using it, it was so simple to use but versatile. MS Word is unintuitive bloatware compared to the elegance and simplicity that was ClarisWorks. And it was available for both Mac and Windows. To this day I'd be using ClarisWorks 4 if only I didn't need compatibility with the rest of the world, who are by and large using newer and newer MS
Which is sad really, because a more user-friendly word processor was never written. But anyway--out of curiosity, any WordStar fans here?
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Let's face it: laws and treaties like this get passed because the people in charge hear only from the big corporations. The public never has a voice, or a presence. The recent protests at a few multinational summits are a pleasant change of pace, but are the exception.
/. that I would have gone to if only I'd known about it. Sure, it was a panel discussion, not an event where audience members could officially participate, but wouldn't it have drawn some attention by the decision-makers and the Post reporter if fifty people had shown up wearing "DON'T PASS THE HAGUE CONVENTION!" buttons? Not as trouble-makers, but as well-behaved audience members who came out to make their opinions known to the reporters and others, during the breaks and what-not.
/. devoted to upcoming events where people can participate. I know I'd be there sometimes.
The article makes mention that the public just aren't interested. That's untrue. There is a sizable minority of people who do care--even if it's only 1% of the public who cares at all, that's still 3 million Americans. That's a lot of people.
The problem is, none of them has any idea when things like this happen. I think this is roughly the fourth event I've heard of on
Something like that could have happened. Likewise, the protest against the DMCA that happened a long while back, where a disappointing 20 people showed up, could have been a major event. Why wasn't it? No one knew.
I could have come, and I'm sure there are others here who would have been glad to make a great turn-out. But instead of telling us beforehand, Slashdot whines about it after. I mean, come on! There are a lot of people who read this site who could take half a day or a day off every once in a while to participate in issues like this. But "News for Nerds" only tells us things that have already happened, complaining about how no one cares. Well, if they'd tell us a week beforehand, we could actually be there to participate.
There really ought to be a section of politically aware sites like
So, how about it? How many people would like to see a calendar page about upcoming political events that have significance to us? What do you think? There's a large readership here, and if only a small percentage turn out...it could be noticed. But that's just my opinion.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
You seem to think that things like media support and messaging integration are somehow unrelated to the OS and therefore people shouldn't have to pay for it. Again, that argument is just silly.
.8 it was a far worse resource hog than IE, so I'm not going to try again until 1.0. Also, I do use Windows Media because a lot of content comes in that format--I'd prefer an MPEG format, but beggars can't be choosers--but I wanted to cleanly install the most recent version, so I installed Windows without Media Player.
I never wear my seatbelt, and yet I cannot go to a dealership and buy a new car without one. Ditto for airbags, anti-lock brakes, and the "black box" electronic integration common on most vehicles of today. All of those things are just as unrelated to being a car as having Windows Media and chat integration are to being an OS. Yet, GM has a right to include them--ignoring seatbelts, which are mandatory on new vehicles, the rest are optional. Yet most new models have one or more of those things, even on the most basic version.
GM has every right to integrate these things into their cars, even though cars will work without them. I cannot for one second understand how you seem to think Microsoft doesn't have a right to do, essentially, the same thing. Their antitrust case wasn't about integrating features into their OS--they have every right to do so. It was about using their dominant market position to threaten and intimidate OEMs into not including a competing product. If MS had just integrated IE, that would be fine--it would have eventually killed Netscape, but it would have been legal; no one ever said a company is entitled to keep making a profit after times and markets change. But they wanted to kill Netscape intsantly, and threatened anyone who wanted to bundle Netscape with a new PC, and that was their illegal abuse.
A customer has no more right to buy an OS without media or chat or web integration than I have a right to buy a mustang convertible without the top. The top isn't completely necessary to the functioning of the car, and yet they do not sell new convertibles without them. If I went to the Ford dealership and said, "But, I don't plan to use the top--I'll only be driving it on clear summer days, and the rest of the time it will be in a garage, so I don't need it"--well, they'd refuse to sell you a Mustang without the top, for no other reason than that it's part of the car. You can say to your heart's content "but it's not fair that I'll have to pay hundreds of dollars more for something I'll never use, it comes right off and I don't want and shouldn't have to pay for it" and they will be well within their rights to tell you to fuck off. You have absolutely no right to buy something on your own terms. Go to a toy store and demand that they sell you a Lego set without all the corner pieces, at a reduced price, since you don't want or need the corner pieces. Sounds ridiculous, right? Just as ridiculous as you saying that customers have a right to buy Windows without Windows Media, messaging, etc.
Second, you write:
> I even respect your desire to have IE, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, and Windows Media
> Services all installed on your hard disk and, for the most part, all in memory when you're
> using your machine.
See, whenever there's a market for something, it will get made. Like, the utility 98lite which I used to cleanly install Win98SE without any trace of OE, MSN, or Windows Media. I did want IE because, well, it works--it's a pig, but it shows everything better than any other browser. I have hopes for Mozilla, but when I tried it at
98lite lets you do things like that. And I'm sure eventually there'll be a similar util for Windows XP. Would it be better if Windows gave you more control over what gets installed? Of course. But Windows' integration is largely an advantage, especially for the sort of average users who want their computers to work for them instead of the other way around. *You* may not like integration, but 90% of users take the other view. We just want our PCs to work, without having to dick around just to figure out how to get a media file to play.