Magnatune and AudioLunchbox also provide non-DRM formats (ALB has your choice of mp3 or Ogg Vorbis). ALB also frequently has sales, or gives away free songs, and while single tracks are normally a buck, whole albums don't go above $10. As others have pointed out, $10 a month is only a better deal if you actually do download at least ten tracks in that month. There just isn't that much good music out there -- better to pay only for what you do get, rather than what you might get.
Nice. I'd pay for those. There was something I had years ago called "Tensegritoy", which consisted of small dowels with slots in each end, loops of bungie/elastic cord, and little plastic caps to hold the cord in the slots...you could make all kinds of nifty squishable shapes with that. Don't know if it still exists or not though. I think you could get them in pretty large sets, too. They scaled better than the Hoberman thing looks like it would.
And speaking of nifty things to be done with polygonal shapes (yeah, it's offtopic. sorry)...can we have Prey, please? I've been waiting a long time, and I don't know that I'm a representative sample of your target audience, but I'd certainly rather have Prey than Duke Nukem Forever...
Geeks and Nerds are indeed very different, I would say. Both are typically characterized by a strong intellectual bent, a tendency to hyperfocus on things they're interested in, and often but not always, a set of interests heavily weighted toward math, science and technical things. There are, however, nerds and geeks in any field you care to name, not just math and computer science.
Nerds mostly only care about the subject(s) they're nerdy in. They generally don't socialize well, don't understand social groups, and take whatever they're nerdy about very seriously--in fact, they tend to take themselves, and really just about everything, more seriously than they ought to. They are often competetive about their fields, and are more likely to get into dicksize wars than geeks are (not that geeks don't do this quite often).
Geeks tend to have more fun. Geeks more often have stronger interests outside their fields of geekery, and don't take things so seriously. Geeks also do socialize, contrary to popular perception. They don't socialize "normally", but they generally get along perfectly well in groups of other geeks (though "normal" people would probably have a great deal of trouble understanding the dynamics of geek social group). Nerds don't usually socialize well even with other nerds. Geeks tend to be less self-conscious, and more willing to weird out the "normals". Some, of course, take this too far.
Geeks are also much more likely to go to Rocky Horror Picture Show showings--in fact, most people who go to RHPS, in my experience, are geeks in some way or other.
"what we publish can influence a lot of people's lives"...
Am I the only one who thinks that if a web bulletin board has any kind of significant influence on your life, you've got bigger problems than whether or not the site deletes offensive comments?
Gah. After several attempts to get the user login to work in lynx, I have given up.
Anyway, I wanted to respond to the questions people have been posting as to whether source code ought to be considered protected, expressive speech.
In short, yes. If you read the opinion, or even the first paragraph of it, you'll see that the primary point it makes is that the export restrictions constitute a prior restraint on scientific expression. This is a crucial point, that not many people seem to have remarked on, and I'm very happy that the court saw how important it is. I've been involved in the scientific community most of my life (my parents are both marine biologists at a major oceanographic research institution), so I have a particular interest in this aspect. Free exchange of scientific ideas is, as anyone who understands the issues will tell you, absolutely essential to scientific progress. We like to talk about how wonderful our culture of openness and sharing of source code and ideas is, and I'm not saying it isn't, but you know what? We didn't come up with it. We borrowed it from the tradition, which has existed as long as anyone has done scientific or mathematical research, of publishing one's results in peer-reviewed journals, of sharing one's information, and of helping other people doing similar projects. Collaboration and sharing of knowledge is one of the most important principles of scientific research, just as it is of the free software community.
The Matrix is one of the most fun movies I've seen in a theater in the past several years. I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with Rob's and Jon's reviews.
I'd also like to note that it had a lot of similarities to Dark City, another movie I enjoyed a great deal. Not that this is a bad thing.
When I saw it, it had a trailer for a movie called The 13th Floor, which has a similar, and likewise interesting concept to The Matrix and Dark City, but looks like it's not carried off nearly as well--an interesting juxtaposition.
So how should we feel about this? The ZDnet article only discusses the facts of the situation, which is as if should be, though there's a slight air of "this privacy-invading software feature helped catch a bad guy so it's OK" to it.
Is it good that the author's been traced? yeah, I suppose so. Doesn't matter all that much really, but I dislike viruses and their authors as much as the next person. If there's good enough proof that this is the author, and some damage can be shown, then I suppose I'm all for prosecuting.
But I care a lot less about that than about the way they caught him. It seems to me we can't just go along, and say what the ZDnet article seems, ever so slightly, to be implying: that it's all right for MS (and by extension, Intel) to build identifiers like this into their products so that anything people who use those products do is traceable, just because once it helped catch someone who was doing something illegal. That's like saying "sure, the FBI can go ahead and install a wiretap on everyone's phone--fine by me, I'm not doing anything illegal, and only people who are would have to worry about that." I don't think anyone in their right mind would agree to something like that; and it violates all the principles on which our legal system is founded: "presumed innocent until proven guilty."
It's good that they caught the author of the virus, if that were all that this meant. But it's not. I hope they don't try to prosecute unless they obtain stronger evidence, through more valid means; and if they do prosecute, I hope they don't try to use the Office-ID-number-trace in court. If they do, we're all going to have to start worrying. And looking over our shoulders.
Slashdot Mirror
Magnatune and AudioLunchbox also provide non-DRM formats (ALB has your choice of mp3 or Ogg Vorbis). ALB also frequently has sales, or gives away free songs, and while single tracks are normally a buck, whole albums don't go above $10. As others have pointed out, $10 a month is only a better deal if you actually do download at least ten tracks in that month. There just isn't that much good music out there -- better to pay only for what you do get, rather than what you might get.
Did you think, at all, before you wrote that? What do you think "equilibrium" means?
The article consistently says "DeCSS" where I think it probably means "CSS". Anyone else notice that?
Nice. I'd pay for those. There was something I had years ago called "Tensegritoy", which consisted of small dowels with slots in each end, loops of bungie/elastic cord, and little plastic caps to hold the cord in the slots...you could make all kinds of nifty squishable shapes with that. Don't know if it still exists or not though. I think you could get them in pretty large sets, too. They scaled better than the Hoberman thing looks like it would.
And speaking of nifty things to be done with polygonal shapes (yeah, it's offtopic. sorry)...can we have Prey, please? I've been waiting a long time, and I don't know that I'm a representative sample of your target audience, but I'd certainly rather have Prey than Duke Nukem Forever...
Geeks and Nerds are indeed very different, I would say. Both are typically characterized by a strong intellectual bent, a tendency to hyperfocus on things they're interested in, and often but not always, a set of interests heavily weighted toward math, science and technical things. There are, however, nerds and geeks in any field you care to name, not just math and computer science.
Nerds mostly only care about the subject(s) they're nerdy in. They generally don't socialize well, don't understand social groups, and take whatever they're nerdy about very seriously--in fact, they tend to take themselves, and really just about everything, more seriously than they ought to. They are often competetive about their fields, and are more likely to get into dicksize wars than geeks are (not that geeks don't do this quite often).
Geeks tend to have more fun. Geeks more often have stronger interests outside their fields of geekery, and don't take things so seriously. Geeks also do socialize, contrary to popular perception. They don't socialize "normally", but they generally get along perfectly well in groups of other geeks (though "normal" people would probably have a great deal of trouble understanding the dynamics of geek social group). Nerds don't usually socialize well even with other nerds. Geeks tend to be less self-conscious, and more willing to weird out the "normals". Some, of course, take this too far.
Geeks are also much more likely to go to Rocky Horror Picture Show showings--in fact, most people who go to RHPS, in my experience, are geeks in some way or other.
There's a longer treatment of this (though it's somewhat in need of updating) at http://gridley.acns.carleton.edu /~madins/geek.html
Name: GnuDE.
I think we'd quickly see usage numbers for it skyrocket, leaving GNOME and KDE in the dust.
"what we publish can influence a lot of people's lives"...
Am I the only one who thinks that if a web bulletin board has any kind of significant influence on your life, you've got bigger problems than whether or not the site deletes offensive comments?
I mean, really. Go outside!
Anyone else noticed how closely this parallels recent events in GPF?
(If you don't read GPF, you should)
Then again, maybe I'm just on crack.
SCO is the Santa Cruz Operation, a commercial Unix vendor (who hasn't been doing real well lately).
Gah. After several attempts to get the user login to work in lynx, I have given up.
Anyway, I wanted to respond to the questions people have been posting as to whether source code ought to be considered protected, expressive speech.
In short, yes. If you read the opinion, or even the first paragraph of it, you'll see that the primary point it makes is that the export restrictions constitute a prior restraint on scientific expression. This is a crucial point, that not many people seem to have remarked on, and I'm very happy that the court saw how important it is. I've been involved in the scientific community most of my life (my parents are both marine biologists at a major oceanographic research institution), so I have a particular interest in this aspect. Free exchange of scientific ideas is, as anyone who understands the issues will tell you, absolutely essential to scientific progress. We like to talk about how wonderful our culture of openness and sharing of source code and ideas is, and I'm not saying it isn't, but you know what? We didn't come up with it. We borrowed it from the tradition, which has existed as long as anyone has done scientific or mathematical research, of publishing one's results in peer-reviewed journals, of sharing one's information, and of helping other people doing similar projects. Collaboration and sharing of knowledge is one of the most important principles of scientific research, just as it is of the free software community.
Scott Madin, cookieless.
http://www.student.carleton.edu/M/madins/
The Matrix is one of the most fun movies I've seen in a theater in the past several years. I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with Rob's and Jon's reviews.
I'd also like to note that it had a lot of similarities to Dark City, another movie I enjoyed a great deal. Not that this is a bad thing.
When I saw it, it had a trailer for a movie called The 13th Floor, which has a similar, and likewise interesting concept to The Matrix and Dark City, but looks like it's not carried off nearly as well--an interesting juxtaposition.
So how should we feel about this? The ZDnet article only discusses the facts of the situation, which is as if should be, though there's a slight air of "this privacy-invading software feature helped catch a bad guy so it's OK" to it.
Is it good that the author's been traced? yeah, I suppose so. Doesn't matter all that much really, but I dislike viruses and their authors as much as the next person. If there's good enough proof that this is the author, and some damage can be shown, then I suppose I'm all for prosecuting.
But I care a lot less about that than about the way they caught him. It seems to me we can't just go along, and say what the ZDnet article seems, ever so slightly, to be implying: that it's all right for MS (and by extension, Intel) to build identifiers like this into their products so that anything people who use those products do is traceable, just because once it helped catch someone who was doing something illegal. That's like saying "sure, the FBI can go ahead and install a wiretap on everyone's phone--fine by me, I'm not doing anything illegal, and only people who are would have to worry about that." I don't think anyone in their right mind would agree to something like that; and it violates all the principles on which our legal system is founded: "presumed innocent until proven guilty."
It's good that they caught the author of the virus, if that were all that this meant. But it's not. I hope they don't try to prosecute unless they obtain stronger evidence, through more valid means; and if they do prosecute, I hope they don't try to use the Office-ID-number-trace in court. If they do, we're all going to have to start worrying. And looking over our shoulders.