The Revolution? Ha! For a mere penny, you can get 12 revolutions now, if you just join the AOL/Time Warner Revolution of the month club and agree to buy 12 more revolutions in the next 24 months for our low, low regular retail prices. Check off your preferred kind of revolution -
-- Communist
-- Religious
-- Internet-based
-- Libertarian
-- Sexual (must be 18 to select)
-- Authoritarian
-- Bloody Anarchy
Sign up by Feb 13, and you will get your very own Weatherman figurine, a 29 dollar value, so you will always know which way the wind blows.
The parent post was brilliant - I was thinking of that song, too...
Really. If a spoon fed, customized media experience is what you're looking for, you can find that on the web. If you're looking for something different and unpredictable that has a different way of getting people to relate to one another you can find that on the web also. I just love it when people make gross generalizations about a section of the web and try to apply it to society as a whole. There are things going on that people regard as revolutionary in their own lives, whether it makes Slashdot or Wired or not. There are also people who are pretty much using the web as a more individualized version of their local newspaper or TV station.
One last quibble - "flamers and spammers" have driven people "underground"? In what universe? There's this magical thing called the delete key. Hit it and you don't have to deal with them, and if that doesn't work you can always ignore them. Most people are smart enough to figure that out. And how do you define underground in an environment where 99.9% of the activity doesn't get noticed by the mass media anyway? This is the problem with the quotes from the book and Jon Katz' review - lots of buzzwords and rhetoric, but not as much thinking.
Alright, these people in Medocino are plainly deluded - but a claim there's never been any hard evidence that low intensity radio waves harm anyone skips an important issue - how could there be? We've been saturated in them for the last 50 or so years and by the time anyone thought of asking what the long term effects of this might be it was too late - you can't have a study like this without a control group and no control group is possible. And putting people in a radio free room and seeing if they can predict bursts of energy aimed at them only proves that people can't decect bursts of energy aimed at them. It does nothing to prove or disprove what the long term psychological or physical effects may or may not be.
Let's look at some other things that have happened for the last 100 years. There are increased rates of depression, autism, schizophrenia, cancer and birth defects. The population of songbirds and amphibians has decreased remarkably. Violence has increased and so has fear. Is all of that due to radio waves? I really doubt it - one can find a lot of alternate explanations. Could some of it be due to the increase in radio waves?
How could we possibly know? There are too many variables between the world of 100 years ago and now to say. If there is any place where one can find a group of people to study who've lived a modern lifestyle and avoided radio wave effects, (if any), I don't know about it. In short, this may be an issue that we are incapable of understanding scientifically with the tools we currently have. But just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it can't exist or can't affect us.
Where does that leave us? Pretty much in the dark on this issue. We can prove or disprove effects of higher levels of this radiation, but the long term effects of lower levels are unknown. Forget about the people with their tinfoil hats in Medocino; there are valid reasons to investigate this issue, if we can find a way to do so. Scoffing at the people with extreme opinions is not going to resolve the question. And part of having an a scientific mindset is recognizing a good question when one sees one, not just attributing the issue to hysteria or paranoia.
For the record, I don't believe I have any conditions caused by radio wave exposure, and don't have an informed opinion on what the effects of long term radiation might be. Neither, as far as I know, does anyone else. Neither the proposition "radio waves are doing things to us" or "radio waves aren't doing thing to us" are provable. A true skeptic has to treat both as dubious statements. I'm a little disappointed that no one replying to this article has taken this point of view.
Netscape was faced with a rival that had an order of magnitude more resources and cut off their major source of revenue for development. As a result their browser became a buggy mess as they didn't have the time to do the decent development there were doing before.
What you say seems to make sense, but there's a question that shows a flaw in your argument - if Netscape couldn't afford to develop a decent, bug free browser with their resources, how is it that Opera, with less resources, has managed? How is it that Konquerer is a lot more useful and stable? Netscape has had a lot of time to get their program back together and they just haven't done it. They were stuck at 4.7 for the longest time, and it was a buggy mess. Their real problem was they didn't do a very good job on their product and they took a long time to realize they were at a developmental dead end and it was time to start over.
You're absolutely right to point out that only a few people are going to be benefitting from the new nature of work and the new economy. Most people aren't, and the huffy attitude of "well, you should have gotten an education and done something real in your life" doesn't cut it. First, people don't magically go away when they become unemployable through lack of job skills. No, they stick around and if they feel they've been screwed by the world, they often choose to act out violently. Second, a world full of people who do nothing but program is stupid and unrealistic - who's going to grow your food? Put it on a shelf for you to buy? Who's going to fix the potholes? Who's going to pick up the garbage?
Average people, that's who. And as someone who works with them and lives among them, I can tell you that they're getting pissed and demoralized. The only thing that's kept them from making a lot of trouble is that they've managed to hang on to enough bread and circuses to keep them satisfied, if uneasy. Take this away from them and we will see all hell break loose. I don't think people have much loyalty to the system or much obedience to their "betters" left. If times should get hard, they will cause turmoil and strife and they will be heard.
One of the ideas behind a stable, working society is that it works for the majority of people. If it stops working for them, eventually they will get sick of it and forcibly change it, or tear things to pieces attempting to do so. This is not a desirable outcome.
This isn't a case of hackers getting into people's systems, it's a case of people who don't understand their own computer's directory structures sharing a bunch of files they shouldn't, unless there's something I missed in this poorly done news story. The real security risk here is not Gnutella, it's ignorance. I know the manual for Win ** is very thin and sketchy, but directories are covered in it.
It's depressing to think that a lot of people put their computers on a network without even understanding basic concepts like this. (It's even more depressing to call tech support at an ISP and realize you understand more about the problem then they do, but now I'm rambling.)
We all remember the "Tragedy of the Commons" lesson back in basic economics class: the commons is an open green field (common property, hence the name) where all the residents of a village are allowed to graze their sheep free of charge, with no limitations. The tragedy of the title comes about when all the villagers, beholden to no one as to the use of the commons, blithely allow their sheep to overgraze the precious grass. Soon there is no grass for anyone, because everyone got too greedy.
The analogy with the music "industry" is clear.
Excellent point, but there's something that should be made clearer. The reason that the limited land that was the "commons" was overgrazed was because the nobles had already taken most of the land from the people. Now make the analogy and it becomes even better. Corporations (nobles) have taken culture and turned it into a commodity, thus cheapening and plasticizing (overgrazing) it. They keep wanting more and more that once belonged to the commons; a few of the artists gather fortune and fame, while others are ignored and work at other jobs. Before all this happened, artists worked on a small scale for a small audience, and yes, they probably did something else for a living, but they were respected members of the community. Now they are either ciphers or hyped up false gods in the eyes of mass media.
Mark my words, the real terrifying part of what the music industry fears is not song trading - it's artists connecting to the community without middlemen, without "the star-making machinery behind the popular song" (J. Mitchell). It's people deciding that what they download from Joe Blow's web site is as entertaining as what they could buy at Tower Records on an RIAA label. The industry is trying the same kind of freeze-out and trash talking tactics with today's real music and the way it's distributed that they tried in the 50's and 60's with that awful rock and roll and those uppity independent labels that were releasing a lot of it. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. Probably in the '10s they'll learn how to deal with the new world of music, but by that time, much of what they're used to will be irrelevant. I have news for the execs. The reason they can't make money on an artist before they sell 500,000 units is they spend too much money recording and promoting them, too much effort sterilizing and marketing them so they might, might be a big, big hit and make them zillions. Meanwhile, artists who record themselves and throw out their goods to whoever will listen to them often break even after a few thousand sales. They'll never be big, but they don't care.
Gosh, if they have digital rights management on every digital device in existence, I sure hope that doesn't prevent people like me from recording our own music and distributing it for nothing, if we want to. Wanna bet they'll try stopping us?
Yes, the thought that music should be free for the listener scares them. The thought that it should be free for the artist scares them even more.
If you can't even correctly name our form of government, you should have no say in what happens here. You are being untrue to the many men and boys who have fought and died over the last 225 years by being such a moron. How your idiotic comment got rated to 3 "Insightful" is beyond me. A free clue: the US is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy, for one major reason.
Oh, technically, you're right, but that doesn't explain why we've been "making the world safe for democracy" etc. since 1917. But what would our leaders know about it?
Did you ever take the Alcoma (?) train tour? They pick you up at your American motel on the bus, and count how many people there are on the bus then take you to the Ontario train station for the tour.
That's it. No ID, no inspection, no nothing. Same thing on the way back. And to think we stashed our drugs in our cars because we were afraid of getting busted...
This was in the early 90s - things may have changed.
"Of course there is [a right to anonymity], and the Supreme Court has upheld it."
There is not, and they have not.
You are wrong.
"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Great works of literature have frequently been produced by authors writing under assumed names. Despite readers' curiosity and the public's interest in identifying the creator of a work of art, an author generally is free to decide whether or not to disclose her true identity. The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry. Accordingly, an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."
U.S. Supreme Court, McIntyre v. Ohio (1995).
I found this at http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/.
Public figures, such as government officials, celebrities, well-known individuals, and people involved in specific public controversies, are required to prove actual malice, a legal term which means the defendant knew his statement was false or recklessly disregarded the truth or falsity of his statement.
Is there a reason why a corporation shouldn't be considered a public figure here? Aren't they "well-known" and often involved in "specific public controversies"? Has anyone ever attempted to argue this in a libel case?
Music apps. Modplug tracker, Cubase 5 VST, Acid Pro 3.0, lots of VST and Direct X soft synths and effects processors...
What does Linux have that compares to these programs? And I'm familiar with Dave Phillip's Linux Sound and MIDI apps page, I know what's out there, I've got some of it installed. It just doesn't compare to what windows has. I wish it did.
Add to this, the age old games problem... Well, it looks like I'm going to be running Windows a lot. Someday, I'll use Linux more than I do now. But there's going to have to be more reason for me to do so.
I've been using Win98 for 3 years, and I've found that as my hardware improved, the OS was more stable. Recently, I installed Litestep as my shell instead of Windows Explorer and am using Opera 6.0 instead of IE. I have discovered that my system doesn't crash anywhere near as much as it used to. My biggest cause of crashes is attempting to write CDs.
I don't think installing a lot of software hurts Windows all that much - the key here is regular maintenance, such as defragging when the system starts slowing down. I also think it helps to keep as much off the C: drive as possible and to make sure the swap file is large enough that it won't have to change sizes to accomodate what you're doing. I've got 256 megs of RAM and have mine set at a minimum of 512. This saves a lot of resizing and reduces fragmentation.
Still, it's nowhere as stable as my Mandrake 8.1 partition is - that hasn't crashed yet.
Nothing to worry about, 7.5 billion years is LOT of time, even with todays technology you could probably colonize whole damn galaxy by then,
The problem is, that's not the time limit we have to deal with - we have to start the process before we run out of readily available resources and before we destroy our civilization (or an asteroid or whatever does it for us). If civilization is destroyed, the survivors will have a lot harder time bootstrapping themselves back up to our level because much of the easily mined resources may have already been used up and what's left takes a certain level of technology to get. If they need the technology to get the resources, but need the resources to get the technology, they're checkmated.
An optimistic guess is that we have a few hundred years to get our act together and get off the planet. A pessimistic guess would be that it's already too late. I think we've got 50 to 100 years, but that's a short time to learn to live in space and get a critical mass of self-reproducing culture and techology up there. We should have done more than we have. We need to start soon. There may be only one chance and this may be it.
I really don't see what mental instability would promote the thought that humans - or really any sort of life - would exist on earth after that period of time. Hello, people! There's this little thing in our world called entropy - it makes stuff break
True, but that's only a showstopper in a closed system, which Earth is not. Furthermore, we can leave...
What's your alternative to having to wade through the comments of millions of McPeople and their McOpinions, to paraphrase your opinions roughly? Being spoonfed by the mass media as we know it? Having only people who are informed and knowledgable speak, according to what a certain set of self-appointed elites define as informed and knowledgable? What internet are you on that important issues like the WTO are ignored, as I've been reading quite a bit on that subject?
No, you want media to define what's important for people and have them be quiet while their social superiors tell them what they should "know". Yeah, what's the good of the Industrial Revolution or TV if it enables the rabble to talk to one another and express their opinions freely? They should all shut up and go back to being the ignorant peasants they are - hell, I don't even know why we let them vote.
I suppose you don't consider listening to what the great unwashed masses have to say about the issues of their world and their lives mentally challenging enough. It's not free thought or independent thinking unless they happen to agree with what you consider enlightened and learned opinion.
Give me a break. Go and read the New York Times and the National Review and Infoworld and whatever the hell else you consider informed sources and you won't have to listen to the rest of us jabbering monkeys and our witless drivel about vulgar things that aren't truly important. Go and talk with your elite friends about the things that Truly Matter and share your Well-Informed Opinions and shake your head at the Ignorant Proles and their thickheadedness in insisting on listening to each other instead of Enlightened Souls such as your self. But whatever you do, please don't call us provincial.
They may be running a version of this for the PC in 2005, but it won't have to be run on that. I bet when the next Playstation comes out, they'll be using this OS - they're not just trying to bring us a new operating system, they're probably trying to reinvent the personal computer. And Sony alone is large enough to take care of a relatively middling company like Microsoft.
In 5 years, the PC as we know it will be on the way out. It's about time, too.
Today I got a review copy of an Oval (raise your hands if you've heard about them... right, didn't think so)
I've heard a couple of things by them. It's ironic that people who make a good deal of their music by altering and hacking CD data would copy protect the results. Here's someting from their website (http://www.formandfunction.net/en/artists/oval/ov al2.htm)-
"The process-software is a self-developed audio-productivity-environment, that contains oval-sounds as well as the possibility to feed it with own samples by the user. It documents the methods of Oval as some kind of interactive invitation, the user changes from consumer to producer. Apart from all music-maker-products with their simple cut-and-paste-philosophies, this software offers easy-to-understand direct manipulation, allows extensive and detailled sound-de- and reconstruction in real time. Aesthetical decisions instead of coordinative perfomance, questioning the features, developing alternative standards for music. Oval declares itself open source and becomes public domain. From read-only-music to process. Ovalprocess as design for a workplace. Interference in standards, formats, specifications and methods."
Perhaps they know nothing about this CD being copy protected.
Slashdot Mirror
The Revolution? Ha! For a mere penny, you can get 12 revolutions now, if you just join the AOL/Time Warner Revolution of the month club and agree to buy 12 more revolutions in the next 24 months for our low, low regular retail prices. Check off your preferred kind of revolution -
...
-- Communist
-- Religious
-- Internet-based
-- Libertarian
-- Sexual (must be 18 to select)
-- Authoritarian
-- Bloody Anarchy
Sign up by Feb 13, and you will get your very own Weatherman figurine, a 29 dollar value, so you will always know which way the wind blows.
The parent post was brilliant - I was thinking of that song, too
How is today's life different than 100 years ago?
1. We can wipe ourselves off the planet.
2. We can instantly communicate across the planet.
3. We can leave the planet.
4. We can socialize with people who don't live anywhere near us.
5. Soon, we will be able to have offspring without doing the Wild Thing, even by test tube.
6. Soon, we will have machines that are smarter than we are.
7. Soon, our children will be living much much longer.
8. Soon, we will make for ourselves individual worlds where we feel loved and accepted, even if it doesn't involve real people.
The internet is just a mere preview of coming attractions.
Really. If a spoon fed, customized media experience is what you're looking for, you can find that on the web. If you're looking for something different and unpredictable that has a different way of getting people to relate to one another you can find that on the web also. I just love it when people make gross generalizations about a section of the web and try to apply it to society as a whole. There are things going on that people regard as revolutionary in their own lives, whether it makes Slashdot or Wired or not. There are also people who are pretty much using the web as a more individualized version of their local newspaper or TV station.
One last quibble - "flamers and spammers" have driven people "underground"? In what universe? There's this magical thing called the delete key. Hit it and you don't have to deal with them, and if that doesn't work you can always ignore them. Most people are smart enough to figure that out. And how do you define underground in an environment where 99.9% of the activity doesn't get noticed by the mass media anyway? This is the problem with the quotes from the book and Jon Katz' review - lots of buzzwords and rhetoric, but not as much thinking.
Alright, these people in Medocino are plainly deluded - but a claim there's never been any hard evidence that low intensity radio waves harm anyone skips an important issue - how could there be? We've been saturated in them for the last 50 or so years and by the time anyone thought of asking what the long term effects of this might be it was too late - you can't have a study like this without a control group and no control group is possible. And putting people in a radio free room and seeing if they can predict bursts of energy aimed at them only proves that people can't decect bursts of energy aimed at them. It does nothing to prove or disprove what the long term psychological or physical effects may or may not be.
Let's look at some other things that have happened for the last 100 years. There are increased rates of depression, autism, schizophrenia, cancer and birth defects. The population of songbirds and amphibians has decreased remarkably. Violence has increased and so has fear. Is all of that due to radio waves? I really doubt it - one can find a lot of alternate explanations. Could some of it be due to the increase in radio waves?
How could we possibly know? There are too many variables between the world of 100 years ago and now to say. If there is any place where one can find a group of people to study who've lived a modern lifestyle and avoided radio wave effects, (if any), I don't know about it. In short, this may be an issue that we are incapable of understanding scientifically with the tools we currently have. But just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it can't exist or can't affect us.
Where does that leave us? Pretty much in the dark on this issue. We can prove or disprove effects of higher levels of this radiation, but the long term effects of lower levels are unknown. Forget about the people with their tinfoil hats in Medocino; there are valid reasons to investigate this issue, if we can find a way to do so. Scoffing at the people with extreme opinions is not going to resolve the question. And part of having an a scientific mindset is recognizing a good question when one sees one, not just attributing the issue to hysteria or paranoia.
For the record, I don't believe I have any conditions caused by radio wave exposure, and don't have an informed opinion on what the effects of long term radiation might be. Neither, as far as I know, does anyone else. Neither the proposition "radio waves are doing things to us" or "radio waves aren't doing thing to us" are provable. A true skeptic has to treat both as dubious statements. I'm a little disappointed that no one replying to this article has taken this point of view.
Netscape was faced with a rival that had an order of magnitude more resources and cut off their major source of revenue for development. As a result their browser became a buggy mess as they didn't have the time to do the decent development there were doing before.
What you say seems to make sense, but there's a question that shows a flaw in your argument - if Netscape couldn't afford to develop a decent, bug free browser with their resources, how is it that Opera, with less resources, has managed? How is it that Konquerer is a lot more useful and stable? Netscape has had a lot of time to get their program back together and they just haven't done it. They were stuck at 4.7 for the longest time, and it was a buggy mess. Their real problem was they didn't do a very good job on their product and they took a long time to realize they were at a developmental dead end and it was time to start over.
Not quite true - once the threads are archived all -1 posts are gone aren't they? Including a very famous one ...
Check the supply of buggy whips.
There seem to be quite a few available. But I can't find any mention of horses.
You're absolutely right to point out that only a few people are going to be benefitting from the new nature of work and the new economy. Most people aren't, and the huffy attitude of "well, you should have gotten an education and done something real in your life" doesn't cut it. First, people don't magically go away when they become unemployable through lack of job skills. No, they stick around and if they feel they've been screwed by the world, they often choose to act out violently. Second, a world full of people who do nothing but program is stupid and unrealistic - who's going to grow your food? Put it on a shelf for you to buy? Who's going to fix the potholes? Who's going to pick up the garbage?
Average people, that's who. And as someone who works with them and lives among them, I can tell you that they're getting pissed and demoralized. The only thing that's kept them from making a lot of trouble is that they've managed to hang on to enough bread and circuses to keep them satisfied, if uneasy. Take this away from them and we will see all hell break loose. I don't think people have much loyalty to the system or much obedience to their "betters" left. If times should get hard, they will cause turmoil and strife and they will be heard.
One of the ideas behind a stable, working society is that it works for the majority of people. If it stops working for them, eventually they will get sick of it and forcibly change it, or tear things to pieces attempting to do so. This is not a desirable outcome.
This isn't a case of hackers getting into people's systems, it's a case of people who don't understand their own computer's directory structures sharing a bunch of files they shouldn't, unless there's something I missed in this poorly done news story. The real security risk here is not Gnutella, it's ignorance. I know the manual for Win ** is very thin and sketchy, but directories are covered in it.
It's depressing to think that a lot of people put their computers on a network without even understanding basic concepts like this. (It's even more depressing to call tech support at an ISP and realize you understand more about the problem then they do, but now I'm rambling.)
I have seen code from Apple II games from 1987 show up in brand new product releases in 2001.
Deer Hunter's that old?
We all remember the "Tragedy of the Commons" lesson back in basic economics class: the commons is an open green field (common property, hence the name) where all the residents of a village are allowed to graze their sheep free of charge, with no limitations. The tragedy of the title comes about when all the villagers, beholden to no one as to the use of the commons, blithely allow their sheep to overgraze the precious grass. Soon there is no grass for anyone, because everyone got too greedy.
The analogy with the music "industry" is clear.
Excellent point, but there's something that should be made clearer. The reason that the limited land that was the "commons" was overgrazed was because the nobles had already taken most of the land from the people. Now make the analogy and it becomes even better. Corporations (nobles) have taken culture and turned it into a commodity, thus cheapening and plasticizing (overgrazing) it. They keep wanting more and more that once belonged to the commons; a few of the artists gather fortune and fame, while others are ignored and work at other jobs. Before all this happened, artists worked on a small scale for a small audience, and yes, they probably did something else for a living, but they were respected members of the community. Now they are either ciphers or hyped up false gods in the eyes of mass media.
Mark my words, the real terrifying part of what the music industry fears is not song trading - it's artists connecting to the community without middlemen, without "the star-making machinery behind the popular song" (J. Mitchell). It's people deciding that what they download from Joe Blow's web site is as entertaining as what they could buy at Tower Records on an RIAA label. The industry is trying the same kind of freeze-out and trash talking tactics with today's real music and the way it's distributed that they tried in the 50's and 60's with that awful rock and roll and those uppity independent labels that were releasing a lot of it. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. Probably in the '10s they'll learn how to deal with the new world of music, but by that time, much of what they're used to will be irrelevant. I have news for the execs. The reason they can't make money on an artist before they sell 500,000 units is they spend too much money recording and promoting them, too much effort sterilizing and marketing them so they might, might be a big, big hit and make them zillions. Meanwhile, artists who record themselves and throw out their goods to whoever will listen to them often break even after a few thousand sales. They'll never be big, but they don't care.
Gosh, if they have digital rights management on every digital device in existence, I sure hope that doesn't prevent people like me from recording our own music and distributing it for nothing, if we want to. Wanna bet they'll try stopping us?
Yes, the thought that music should be free for the listener scares them. The thought that it should be free for the artist scares them even more.
If you can't even correctly name our form of government, you should have no say in what happens here. You are being untrue to the many men and boys who have fought and died over the last 225 years by being such a moron. How your idiotic comment got rated to 3 "Insightful" is beyond me. A free clue: the US is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy, for one major reason.
Oh, technically, you're right, but that doesn't explain why we've been "making the world safe for democracy" etc. since 1917. But what would our leaders know about it?
Do you ever stop to think that maybe an initiative like this is being done in the interest of the American people?
As expressed by the thousands of idiots I hear on talk radio and read posts by on the internet? Yes, that has occurred to me.
That's why I'm worried.
Did you ever take the Alcoma (?) train tour? They pick you up at your American motel on the bus, and count how many people there are on the bus then take you to the Ontario train station for the tour.
...
That's it. No ID, no inspection, no nothing. Same thing on the way back. And to think we stashed our drugs in our cars because we were afraid of getting busted
This was in the early 90s - things may have changed.
Life is what you make it, you know. (forgot one, didn't you?)
"Of course there is [a right to anonymity], and the Supreme Court has upheld it."
There is not, and they have not.
You are wrong.
"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Great works of literature have frequently been produced by authors writing under assumed names. Despite readers' curiosity and the public's interest in identifying the creator of a work of art, an author generally is free to decide whether or not to disclose her true identity. The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry. Accordingly, an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."
U.S. Supreme Court, McIntyre v. Ohio (1995).
I found this at http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/.
Public figures, such as government officials, celebrities, well-known individuals, and people involved in specific public controversies, are required to prove actual malice, a legal term which means the defendant knew his statement was false or recklessly disregarded the truth or falsity of his statement.
Is there a reason why a corporation shouldn't be considered a public figure here? Aren't they "well-known" and often involved in "specific public controversies"? Has anyone ever attempted to argue this in a libel case?
Boy, some of you guys are going to look like monkeys on crack when they start searching through old slashdot stories.
...
Yeah, like they'd hire anyone with weird names like xdroop or pyramid termite anyway
you need apps... Ok what?
...
... Well, it looks like I'm going to be running Windows a lot. Someday, I'll use Linux more than I do now. But there's going to have to be more reason for me to do so.
Music apps. Modplug tracker, Cubase 5 VST, Acid Pro 3.0, lots of VST and Direct X soft synths and effects processors
What does Linux have that compares to these programs? And I'm familiar with Dave Phillip's Linux Sound and MIDI apps page, I know what's out there, I've got some of it installed. It just doesn't compare to what windows has. I wish it did.
Add to this, the age old games problem
I've been using Win98 for 3 years, and I've found that as my hardware improved, the OS was more stable. Recently, I installed Litestep as my shell instead of Windows Explorer and am using Opera 6.0 instead of IE. I have discovered that my system doesn't crash anywhere near as much as it used to. My biggest cause of crashes is attempting to write CDs.
I don't think installing a lot of software hurts Windows all that much - the key here is regular maintenance, such as defragging when the system starts slowing down. I also think it helps to keep as much off the C: drive as possible and to make sure the swap file is large enough that it won't have to change sizes to accomodate what you're doing. I've got 256 megs of RAM and have mine set at a minimum of 512. This saves a lot of resizing and reduces fragmentation.
Still, it's nowhere as stable as my Mandrake 8.1 partition is - that hasn't crashed yet.
Nothing to worry about, 7.5 billion years is LOT of time, even with todays technology you could probably colonize whole damn galaxy by then,
The problem is, that's not the time limit we have to deal with - we have to start the process before we run out of readily available resources and before we destroy our civilization (or an asteroid or whatever does it for us). If civilization is destroyed, the survivors will have a lot harder time bootstrapping themselves back up to our level because much of the easily mined resources may have already been used up and what's left takes a certain level of technology to get. If they need the technology to get the resources, but need the resources to get the technology, they're checkmated.
An optimistic guess is that we have a few hundred years to get our act together and get off the planet. A pessimistic guess would be that it's already too late. I think we've got 50 to 100 years, but that's a short time to learn to live in space and get a critical mass of self-reproducing culture and techology up there. We should have done more than we have. We need to start soon. There may be only one chance and this may be it.
I really don't see what mental instability would promote the thought that humans - or really any sort of life - would exist on earth after that period of time. Hello, people! There's this little thing in our world called entropy - it makes stuff break
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True, but that's only a showstopper in a closed system, which Earth is not. Furthermore, we can leave
What's your alternative to having to wade through the comments of millions of McPeople and their McOpinions, to paraphrase your opinions roughly? Being spoonfed by the mass media as we know it? Having only people who are informed and knowledgable speak, according to what a certain set of self-appointed elites define as informed and knowledgable? What internet are you on that important issues like the WTO are ignored, as I've been reading quite a bit on that subject?
No, you want media to define what's important for people and have them be quiet while their social superiors tell them what they should "know". Yeah, what's the good of the Industrial Revolution or TV if it enables the rabble to talk to one another and express their opinions freely? They should all shut up and go back to being the ignorant peasants they are - hell, I don't even know why we let them vote.
I suppose you don't consider listening to what the great unwashed masses have to say about the issues of their world and their lives mentally challenging enough. It's not free thought or independent thinking unless they happen to agree with what you consider enlightened and learned opinion.
Give me a break. Go and read the New York Times and the National Review and Infoworld and whatever the hell else you consider informed sources and you won't have to listen to the rest of us jabbering monkeys and our witless drivel about vulgar things that aren't truly important. Go and talk with your elite friends about the things that Truly Matter and share your Well-Informed Opinions and shake your head at the Ignorant Proles and their thickheadedness in insisting on listening to each other instead of Enlightened Souls such as your self. But whatever you do, please don't call us provincial.
That would be you, sir.
They may be running a version of this for the PC in 2005, but it won't have to be run on that. I bet when the next Playstation comes out, they'll be using this OS - they're not just trying to bring us a new operating system, they're probably trying to reinvent the personal computer. And Sony alone is large enough to take care of a relatively middling company like Microsoft.
In 5 years, the PC as we know it will be on the way out. It's about time, too.
Today I got a review copy of an Oval (raise your hands if you've heard about them ... right, didn't think so)
v al2.htm)-
I've heard a couple of things by them. It's ironic that people who make a good deal of their music by altering and hacking CD data would copy protect the results. Here's someting from their website (http://www.formandfunction.net/en/artists/oval/o
"The process-software is a self-developed audio-productivity-environment, that contains oval-sounds as well as the possibility to feed it with own samples by the user. It documents the methods of Oval as some kind of interactive invitation, the user changes from consumer to producer. Apart from all music-maker-products with their simple cut-and-paste-philosophies, this software offers easy-to-understand direct manipulation, allows extensive and detailled sound-de- and reconstruction in real time. Aesthetical decisions instead of coordinative perfomance, questioning the features, developing alternative standards for music. Oval declares itself open source and becomes public domain. From read-only-music to process. Ovalprocess as design for a workplace. Interference in standards, formats, specifications and methods."
Perhaps they know nothing about this CD being copy protected.