Question: when you say "engineers", do you mean people who are part of a professional engineering association, or do you mean "a bunch of jackoff code monkies from community colleges"?
It's always been mightily confusing to me when people use the term "engineer" and talk about OS advocacy in the same breath.
ISPs and businesses use this to block stuff at the mail server. Which means that most people will not be able to recieve mail from the addresses listed by SPEWS. I suppose you could make the same argument about censorware companies, except ISPs usually require you to "opt-in" on their censorware service, whereas the user usually has no say in how spam filtering is achieved at the ISP offices. AOL, for example, doesn't default new accounts to children's level filtering. These email censoring service offer less latitude to the individual, not more, than web censorware.
Because people perhaps have less money to spend and are thus willing to pay a lower maximum fee for broadband? Did you consider exchange rates? There is a nearly infinite number of variables when you are comparing the prices of services as complex as broadband internet access across national boundaries. It's a subject that is best suited for doctoral dissertations and I would be way out of my depth there.
The goal of any publicly-traded company is to maximize profits. Monopolies have just as much reason to be efficient as any other company. Also, monopolies are more efficient than competitive companies because they operate under a single, unified infrastructure (no more overhead incurred from leasing access).
Long distance was more expensive in the past because of the limitations of past technology. There has been a huge increase in the last decade in the capacity of long distance voice networks that brought a corresponding drop in prices, independent of whether there was a monopoly and competition.
Besides, it's hardly fair to compare phone service to consumer-class broadband data connections. Phone service is an essential, you didn't really have a second or third choice for instantaneous communication at the time that Ma Bell was broken up. In contrast, you can downgrade your internet connection at any time and still connect to the internet if you find that you don't want to pay for broadband. You're still connected to the internet and getting the same service, you just can't pirate movies as fast as you could before.
Instead of begging people to invest money in somone's education or begging programmers to fix bugs in open source programs, why don't you invest money yourself? If you think you can run the business better than the old pros at the cables and phone companies, go to your local bank and consider your loan options.
Perhaps you will soon find out that these "monopolies" are operating on some really thin margins.
Consumers can't really do squat about price gouging. Sorry to disappoint you.
OK, I'm not being 100% truthful. In a free market system, prices are tied to demand. The higher the demand, the higher the price. However, I didn't mention the one way out of this because it would involve sacrifice, which seemsto be a foreign concept to most of Slashdot's readership. That's right, kids, you'd have to boycott broadband and live with 56k until enough people dropped the services that the providers would be forced to lower rates to attract people back.
There really isn't any other way to deal with "gouging", except to pass more laws and create more government bureaucracy in an ill-concieved attempt to implement price controls. This is obviously a bad idea, so basically it boils down to "if you don't like it, don't buy it."
Ok, so maybe the company that is suing isn't the greatest example of someone expressing free speech, but systems like SPEWS (which is implicated in the article) and especially MAPS are responsible for furthering the political aims of the administrators of the system just as much as they are for blocking legitimate spam.
I think SPEWS deserves this lawsuit. Even though they are a real marketing company, they can set a precedent that allows individuals who really were censored by these flawed anti-spam solutions to air their grievances in a court of law. Bravo, T3 Marketing.
To me, it feels like an attempt to eliminate the moral ambiguity of Han Solo. In making Greedo shoot first, Solo was no longer the agressor; he was merely defending himself. To me, this takes away a lot from the original movie, where Solo was more or less portrayed as a sketchy character in the tradition of film noir flicks. The very things that make most characters interesting is their unpredictability that is derived from an unclear vision of their moral convictions.
To put it bluntly, characters who are purely good or purely evil are very boring.
A lockpicking set? Good God, man, read up on the law before you do shit like that! The people who carry those (locksmiths) have to be specially licensed to do so. Otherwise, it's quite easy to get arrested for carrying what could only be tools for breaking and entering. There is nearly no "dual use" with such devices: if something is locked, it was probably meant to stay that way unless you have the key.
What are you planning on your friend's daughter doing, anyway? The included LED light sounds like you're hoping for a career in burglery. What in the world would you be doing with these at college? I went through 4 years of undergrad and 5 more years to get my PhD in CS, but I never found myself having to break into other people's property.
Besides, the gun nuts (no offense intended) at this site will tell you that one of the best ways to get shot and killed is to break and enter on an armed person's premesis.
I'll admit it, I really did enjoy the original Star Wars Trilogy.
However, Lucas just didn't figure out that he should've quit while he was ahead. So we get bullshit like Episode I. What an utter disappointment. That was the last new Star Wars movie that I'll ever be tricked into seeing. What remains is only the manifestation of Lucas's desire to ride the wave of merchandising income driven by the sheer inertia of the franchise. The only people that I really see as enjoying the new breed of Star Wars movies are those who are in denial of its poor quality, those who refuse to believe that the best days of their favorite Sci-Fi adventure series is behind them.
Sorry, folks. All good things must come to an end.
I'm hardly surprised that the second-largest source of software and movie piracy in the world would want to create a "royalty-free" format. Do their people have the ability to create, or are they just parasites who live off the work of white, American artists?
I'm happy for this. Not only does the consumer win with every price cut that happens in the chip industry, but one of the market leaders will be able to keep up with AMD.
I mean, sure, AMD's chips are dirt cheap, but sometimes I just want to have a chip that I can be sure to depend on over the years. Certainly, the newest offerings from Intel are the coolest running in the competitive gaming market (not like an AMD, which I could probably cook my breakfast over). I'm sick of my room getting all stuffy and hot just from leaving my Athlon machine on for more than 10 minutes, despite the best efforts of the air conditioning unit and the ceiling fan.
Also, I have a DDR SDRAM motherboard for my Athlon, and I've figured that it'd at least work as a stopgap measure until I could afford something better. Fortunately, now that the final price barrier is gone on the alternative, I can finally get some nice Quake III framerates with an RDRAM-based board. That extra memory bandwidth sure is nice.
So, score one for Intel, and score one for my power bill. My wallet will thank me later.
I know that IBM is a huge company when comparing on terms of most Linux companies, but it still boggles the mind when one considers the sheer number of hackers that they have working on this task.
What I want to know is, why bother to get so specialized? I mean, sure, I suppose focusing on one section of code works better, to a point, but isn't IBM's effort overkill? Also, how do you like working under defense contracts? I heard that the government's new cyberwarfare effort was underway, but I didn't know that it was this public. I am, of course, assuming that you are selling your hacking services to the military (since they are the ones with the most need for clandestine activities and such).
I know that BugTraq is a huge source of information for the amateur hackers out there. Do you guys write most of your own code, or do you rely on someone else's scripts to break into other computers? I think it'd be cool to have a professional force out there to clean out all the stupid kiddies who usually write this stuff (not to mention, easier to read.).
There's certainly something to be said for proprietary memory technology. Sure, it's expensive, and Rambus does all kinds of dishonest lawyer tricks with the patent system, but you probably won't find that level of integration between the processor and the memory on a standards-based SDRAM system. AMD now faces even more serious competition from Intel, who could bury them, performance-wise, with this kind of memory bandwidth.
I wonder how expensive a graphics card with RDRAM would be, or if it would be any faster?
... current GMR (giant magnetoresistance) harddisk technology will not achieve terrabit-per-square-inch densities. Experiments with EMR (extra-ordinary magnetoresistive)...
I'm not buying another one until it comes with Super Duper Magnetoresistance.
It's almost as regular a feature on Slashdot as MPAA bashing and touting the latest "geeky" multi-million dollar movie. Case design and selection does not have to be this hard. There are obviously many cases that are simply inexcusably poorly-constructed and poorly-designed and, most of all, ugly. It doesn't take an expert to notice these things.
What I want to know is why someone hasn't come out with a decent PC case that emulates Apple's approach to case design. You can tell, just by looking at one, that Apple has their shit together. I mean, you don't even need to remove panels or get out a screw driver to do something like add memory or change out the processor; it just swings open with the pull of a latch. Sure, it may not be as expandable as some of the full tower ATX monsters (of which I am an owner), but, in my opinion, it is far superior for its lightness and ease of use.
Secondly, note their construction. These aren't just steel boxes. They're made out of bullet-proof plastic. In fact, we just wired one of my school's computer labs with network cable and used one of the new G4 towers as a stepping stool for those hard-to-reach areas up in the panelled ceiling. They're light, well-ventilated (not that you'd need much ventilation in a cool-running Mac), and, most of all, they're nearly indestructable.
Finally, these things look good. They're unquestionably the best looking cases in the industry. They aren't some cheap-looking riced-up "modded" case that you're likely to find for sale on eBay, they're professional and tasteful. They certainly beat the hell out of ugly beige metal boxes.
The only thing I'm waiting for is for Apple to start selling cases without the expensive computer hardware.
No, running the TiVo software is in your interest. TiVo staying in business though subscription fees and advertising revenues is also in your interest. The difference could not be less clear.
Well, shit, if it bothers you so much, don't subscribe to their service. Or watch TV. Or browse the Internet. Or read newspapers or magazines. Or look anywhere except directly in front of you when driving (taking care to avoid looking at trucks with the name of their company on the side). Oh, and come to think of it, don't leave your house. Hide under your bed with noise-cancelling headphones on for the rest of what will be a short, miserable life.
If I buy the damn machine, who the hell are Tivo to tell me which parts of the harddrive I can use for what?
They never told you what you can and can't do with your TiVo. You're perfectly welcome to hack on the hardware to your heart's content and install your own OS on it. However, it probably won't be able to run their software anymore.
By the same token, you could argue that Linux is a freedom-taking monster. Who the hell is Linus Torvalds to tell me that I can't overwrite my boot partition with a bunch of zeros?
I mean, yeah, the stuff is there on your TiVO, but it's not like it takes up recording space or anything. All it does is sit at the bottom of the main menu for a couple of days. It doesn't even get in your way if you're trying to record something else. It's all quite rationally explained in the third link in the article (which I just know 2/3 of slashdotters won't bother to read).
I fail to see what the big hoopla is about, or why this is even posted to Slashdot. After all, this isn't even the first time that this has happened.
Slashdot Mirror
It's always been mightily confusing to me when people use the term "engineer" and talk about OS advocacy in the same breath.
ISPs and businesses use this to block stuff at the mail server. Which means that most people will not be able to recieve mail from the addresses listed by SPEWS. I suppose you could make the same argument about censorware companies, except ISPs usually require you to "opt-in" on their censorware service, whereas the user usually has no say in how spam filtering is achieved at the ISP offices. AOL, for example, doesn't default new accounts to children's level filtering. These email censoring service offer less latitude to the individual, not more, than web censorware.
Because people perhaps have less money to spend and are thus willing to pay a lower maximum fee for broadband? Did you consider exchange rates? There is a nearly infinite number of variables when you are comparing the prices of services as complex as broadband internet access across national boundaries. It's a subject that is best suited for doctoral dissertations and I would be way out of my depth there.
Long distance was more expensive in the past because of the limitations of past technology. There has been a huge increase in the last decade in the capacity of long distance voice networks that brought a corresponding drop in prices, independent of whether there was a monopoly and competition.
Besides, it's hardly fair to compare phone service to consumer-class broadband data connections. Phone service is an essential, you didn't really have a second or third choice for instantaneous communication at the time that Ma Bell was broken up. In contrast, you can downgrade your internet connection at any time and still connect to the internet if you find that you don't want to pay for broadband. You're still connected to the internet and getting the same service, you just can't pirate movies as fast as you could before.
Perhaps you will soon find out that these "monopolies" are operating on some really thin margins.
OK, I'm not being 100% truthful. In a free market system, prices are tied to demand. The higher the demand, the higher the price. However, I didn't mention the one way out of this because it would involve sacrifice, which seems to be a foreign concept to most of Slashdot's readership. That's right, kids, you'd have to boycott broadband and live with 56k until enough people dropped the services that the providers would be forced to lower rates to attract people back.
There really isn't any other way to deal with "gouging", except to pass more laws and create more government bureaucracy in an ill-concieved attempt to implement price controls. This is obviously a bad idea, so basically it boils down to "if you don't like it, don't buy it."
I think SPEWS deserves this lawsuit. Even though they are a real marketing company, they can set a precedent that allows individuals who really were censored by these flawed anti-spam solutions to air their grievances in a court of law. Bravo, T3 Marketing.
I don't think anyone wants to end up like Howard Hughes.
To me, it feels like an attempt to eliminate the moral ambiguity of Han Solo. In making Greedo shoot first, Solo was no longer the agressor; he was merely defending himself. To me, this takes away a lot from the original movie, where Solo was more or less portrayed as a sketchy character in the tradition of film noir flicks. The very things that make most characters interesting is their unpredictability that is derived from an unclear vision of their moral convictions.
To put it bluntly, characters who are purely good or purely evil are very boring.
What are you planning on your friend's daughter doing, anyway? The included LED light sounds like you're hoping for a career in burglery. What in the world would you be doing with these at college? I went through 4 years of undergrad and 5 more years to get my PhD in CS, but I never found myself having to break into other people's property.
Besides, the gun nuts (no offense intended) at this site will tell you that one of the best ways to get shot and killed is to break and enter on an armed person's premesis.
What in the world are you talking about? Do your nurses realize you're out of your cell again?
However, Lucas just didn't figure out that he should've quit while he was ahead. So we get bullshit like Episode I. What an utter disappointment. That was the last new Star Wars movie that I'll ever be tricked into seeing. What remains is only the manifestation of Lucas's desire to ride the wave of merchandising income driven by the sheer inertia of the franchise. The only people that I really see as enjoying the new breed of Star Wars movies are those who are in denial of its poor quality, those who refuse to believe that the best days of their favorite Sci-Fi adventure series is behind them.
Sorry, folks. All good things must come to an end.
I'm hardly surprised that the second-largest source of software and movie piracy in the world would want to create a "royalty-free" format. Do their people have the ability to create, or are they just parasites who live off the work of white, American artists?
I mean, sure, AMD's chips are dirt cheap, but sometimes I just want to have a chip that I can be sure to depend on over the years. Certainly, the newest offerings from Intel are the coolest running in the competitive gaming market (not like an AMD, which I could probably cook my breakfast over). I'm sick of my room getting all stuffy and hot just from leaving my Athlon machine on for more than 10 minutes, despite the best efforts of the air conditioning unit and the ceiling fan.
Also, I have a DDR SDRAM motherboard for my Athlon, and I've figured that it'd at least work as a stopgap measure until I could afford something better. Fortunately, now that the final price barrier is gone on the alternative, I can finally get some nice Quake III framerates with an RDRAM-based board. That extra memory bandwidth sure is nice.
So, score one for Intel, and score one for my power bill. My wallet will thank me later.
Probably a response typical of the Slashdot audience (since CmdrTaco is almost always representative of the people who post comments here).
Why am I not surprised? This forum is full of misogynists and homophobes.
What I want to know is, why bother to get so specialized? I mean, sure, I suppose focusing on one section of code works better, to a point, but isn't IBM's effort overkill? Also, how do you like working under defense contracts? I heard that the government's new cyberwarfare effort was underway, but I didn't know that it was this public. I am, of course, assuming that you are selling your hacking services to the military (since they are the ones with the most need for clandestine activities and such).
I know that BugTraq is a huge source of information for the amateur hackers out there. Do you guys write most of your own code, or do you rely on someone else's scripts to break into other computers? I think it'd be cool to have a professional force out there to clean out all the stupid kiddies who usually write this stuff (not to mention, easier to read.).
I wonder how expensive a graphics card with RDRAM would be, or if it would be any faster?
Why make up a warning system? No one who posts here actually reads the article anyway.
I'm not buying another one until it comes with Super Duper Magnetoresistance.
What I want to know is why someone hasn't come out with a decent PC case that emulates Apple's approach to case design. You can tell, just by looking at one, that Apple has their shit together. I mean, you don't even need to remove panels or get out a screw driver to do something like add memory or change out the processor; it just swings open with the pull of a latch. Sure, it may not be as expandable as some of the full tower ATX monsters (of which I am an owner), but, in my opinion, it is far superior for its lightness and ease of use.
Secondly, note their construction. These aren't just steel boxes. They're made out of bullet-proof plastic. In fact, we just wired one of my school's computer labs with network cable and used one of the new G4 towers as a stepping stool for those hard-to-reach areas up in the panelled ceiling. They're light, well-ventilated (not that you'd need much ventilation in a cool-running Mac), and, most of all, they're nearly indestructable.
Finally, these things look good. They're unquestionably the best looking cases in the industry. They aren't some cheap-looking riced-up "modded" case that you're likely to find for sale on eBay, they're professional and tasteful. They certainly beat the hell out of ugly beige metal boxes.
The only thing I'm waiting for is for Apple to start selling cases without the expensive computer hardware.
No, running the TiVo software is in your interest. TiVo staying in business though subscription fees and advertising revenues is also in your interest. The difference could not be less clear.
Well, shit, if it bothers you so much, don't subscribe to their service. Or watch TV. Or browse the Internet. Or read newspapers or magazines. Or look anywhere except directly in front of you when driving (taking care to avoid looking at trucks with the name of their company on the side). Oh, and come to think of it, don't leave your house. Hide under your bed with noise-cancelling headphones on for the rest of what will be a short, miserable life.
They never told you what you can and can't do with your TiVo. You're perfectly welcome to hack on the hardware to your heart's content and install your own OS on it. However, it probably won't be able to run their software anymore.
By the same token, you could argue that Linux is a freedom-taking monster. Who the hell is Linus Torvalds to tell me that I can't overwrite my boot partition with a bunch of zeros?
Exactly how does that relate to this? No really, explain this to me.
I fail to see what the big hoopla is about, or why this is even posted to Slashdot. After all, this isn't even the first time that this has happened.