in a democracy (which the U.S. arguably still is),
"Arguably", indeed.
If the people of the United States of America want "DLing of copyrighted works w/o reimbursing the copyright holder" to be legal, it's going to be made legal. End of story.
Dream on. Just like when the people of the United Stated of America (*gasp, that was long, have to inspire*) wanted Al Gore to be president...
Now, the constant ads were only mildly irritating. But I thought, "Hey! I can always use Add/Remove Programs to get rid of this." So I removed WhenU, and my machine was happy.
Same thing happened to me. Popped in the SuSE CD, went to the install menu, and my machine was as happy as never before;-)
Until, that is, I rebooted. And it was back, with its stupid pop-ups.
Strange. When I rebooted, windows didn't come back. Good riddance!
'...the fact is that the computer user consented to this detour when the user downloaded WhenU's computer software from the Internet,' and 'Alas, we computer users must endure pop-up advertising along with her ugly brother, unsolicited bulk e-mail, "spam," as a burden of using the Internet.'
Well, if we put it that way, the fact is that WhenU consented to having its website vandalized as soon as they plugged in the Internet connection of their corporate information infrastructure. Alas, corporations must endure web defacement along with its ugly brother, unsolicited security consulting, "blackmail" as a burden of having an Internet presence.
In the Middle Ages, when piracy on the high seas was still a common business model, the smarter pirates made sure they "worked" for the good cause... by only raiding ships of the "enemy".
In exchange for their valuable services, they got official permission from their government to act in such manner: these were the "letters of marque".
Maybe the Open Source community should do something similar? Yes, Burst's behavior may look like patent privateering. But it is directed against the enemy. This can't be all bad;-)
Why didn't Microsfot simply *buy* the company?
on
Microsoft vs. Burst.com
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That way, they could have had the technology for themselves, and also prevented the competition from having it, without the legal mess that they are in now.
(Well, they could still have been sued for anticompetitive behaviour, but not for outright theft...)
What message is this supposed to send? Why would the EU change its mind because a few sites decided to protest? How does the absence of a few sites hurt the EU? More likely, they'll only hurt themselves.
In the words of Berthold Brecht:
"Wer kampft kann verlieren, aber wer nicht kampft, hat schon verloren."
(anybody knows why Slapdash insists on adding spelling mistakes to my comment?)
Actually, we are makeing quite some progress, not just with this action, but also with other actions undertaken:
real-world petitions (with pen and paper! has more impact than an electronic one)
meetings with national politician (who then convince their European peers)
counter-lobbying directly at the European institutions
protest events, such as the one last Wednesday in Brussels
Taken together, these actions have resulted in several postponments of the vote, and at each proposed date, the number of votes of the pro-patent lobby is dwindling...
So, Linux distros vendors are acting like advisors for the customers. But, the problem is not resolved at all, which distro should I pick?
Isn't that actually the same situation as with the travel agent? The travel agent skims the situation and presents the consumer with a short list of three choices... But before it gets to this point, which travel agent should the consumer chose? And I think that this other choice is the reason why travel agents don't like people going home to ponder what choice they are going to make... because while they are at it, they might also question the choice that they've already made;-)
Seriously, although identity theft also occasionnally happens here, it's a much rarer occurrence than on the other side of the pond. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that banks and other financial institutions don't rely on the knowledge of a publically known number as a password... When opening an account, you need to show a proof of identity that is somewhat more conclusive than just knowing the SSN of the person you claim to be.
I am currently working for a bank and we were upgrading branches with new servers and network equipment and such and had to reboot the ATM to get it to come up. As we didn't get it right the first time around, we had to retry several times. We were in the back room and behind the ATM that stuck out the other side of the wall. I am new so the guy with me was messing with it and when he opened a small flap, we saw a strange guy out there on the sidewalk, pointing at our ATM, and giggling mindlessly. Weird people!
It's not enough to kill a server, but I posted links to three images, around 80KB each, on my home server a few days ago fairly deep down in the discussion and got 3904 hits from it.
Wow. Impressive. However, I would have hoped that by now the Slashbots would have learned not to click on image links occuring in a random Slashdot comment...
The government can only borrow the quantity of gold that exists.
Not exactly true. The government could borrow gold, spend it, and then borrow it again (from those that have it now), spend it again...
That's basically how it is possible that the banking system increases quantity of money (even without printing privileges): Customer A deposits (paper) money in bank (into his checking account or savings account). Customer B takes a credit and gets the money A paid in. B spends the money, and the guy he paid it to may again deposit it in a bank... All while A still has the usage of his money (he may spend it via check or electronic transfer) ===> banks create scriptural money. Of course there are limits to the process, as banks are forced by law to keep a certain percentage of the deposits in their vaults (
Cooke ratio), but due to this phenomenon there is actually ten times more money in circulation than exists physical money (paper, coins)!
I'm thinking that it's some KGB reference but still not sure. I should get out more.
No, you should get out less! With all your partying and socializing, you don't have time to keep up with your Slashdot reading, and miss all the in-jokes...
It is, however, a criticism of their hiring and monitoring policies.
Or maybe of their firing policies. Maybe the guy somehow got wind that we was on the list for next month, and decided to do something... In this economy, this seems more likely.
I think you could do it by expanding the files to a ram drive and loading win.exe from there,
Indeed, and you could use MEMDISK to implement such RAM disk which would be bootable from CD. Maybe if you can rig memdisk to uncompress its ramdisk image using bzip2 or upx, you might even succeed in putting the whole Windows on one single (XDF) floppy;)
Slashdot Mirror
So, was John Titor truly a time traveler, or just a Dean Kamen employee?
(Hint for the moderators: it's not the nose that's the most disgusting body part...)
"Arguably", indeed.
If the people of the United States of America want "DLing of copyrighted works w/o reimbursing the copyright holder" to be legal, it's going to be made legal. End of story.
Dream on. Just like when the people of the United Stated of America (*gasp, that was long, have to inspire*) wanted Al Gore to be president...
Same thing happened to me. Popped in the SuSE CD, went to the install menu, and my machine was as happy as never before ;-)
Until, that is, I rebooted. And it was back, with its stupid pop-ups.
Strange. When I rebooted, windows didn't come back. Good riddance!
Well, if we put it that way, the fact is that WhenU consented to having its website vandalized as soon as they plugged in the Internet connection of their corporate information infrastructure. Alas, corporations must endure web defacement along with its ugly brother, unsolicited security consulting, "blackmail" as a burden of having an Internet presence.
Have fun and hack away, it's legal!
In exchange for their valuable services, they got official permission from their government to act in such manner: these were the "letters of marque".
Maybe the Open Source community should do something similar? Yes, Burst's behavior may look like patent privateering. But it is directed against the enemy. This can't be all bad ;-)
(Well, they could still have been sued for anticompetitive behaviour, but not for outright theft...)
What message is this supposed to send? Why would the EU change its mind because a few sites decided to protest? How does the absence of a few sites hurt the EU? More likely, they'll only hurt themselves.
In the words of Berthold Brecht:
(anybody knows why Slapdash insists on adding spelling mistakes to my comment?)
Actually, we are makeing quite some progress, not just with this action, but also with other actions undertaken:
- real-world petitions (with pen and paper! has more impact than an electronic one)
- meetings with national politician (who then convince their European peers)
- counter-lobbying directly at the European institutions
- protest events, such as the one last Wednesday in Brussels
Taken together, these actions have resulted in several postponments of the vote, and at each proposed date, the number of votes of the pro-patent lobby is dwindling...Here you go: trojan arses
Isn't that actually the same situation as with the travel agent? The travel agent skims the situation and presents the consumer with a short list of three choices... But before it gets to this point, which travel agent should the consumer chose? And I think that this other choice is the reason why travel agents don't like people going home to ponder what choice they are going to make... because while they are at it, they might also question the choice that they've already made ;-)
Especially since it's spelled inflammable (i.e. "which can be inflamed").
Wasn't Windows ME based on the same line? Oh, I see: you said "the last good release..."
What the fuck are you talking about? Should we outlaw knives because they are used to stab people?
Except that the hack happened in March. It's only that's its been discovered right now. So there goes the conspiracy theory...
Seriously, although identity theft also occasionnally happens here, it's a much rarer occurrence than on the other side of the pond. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that banks and other financial institutions don't rely on the knowledge of a publically known number as a password... When opening an account, you need to show a proof of identity that is somewhat more conclusive than just knowing the SSN of the person you claim to be.
I am currently working for a bank and we were upgrading branches with new servers and network equipment and such and had to reboot the ATM to get it to come up. As we didn't get it right the first time around, we had to retry several times. We were in the back room and behind the ATM that stuck out the other side of the wall. I am new so the guy with me was messing with it and when he opened a small flap, we saw a strange guy out there on the sidewalk, pointing at our ATM, and giggling mindlessly. Weird people!
I guess that's why the comment was moderated Funny rather than Inciteful. No, BSD is not crippled, especially not when compared to Linux ;-)
And when was windows crippled?
I think it was born that way... Or maybe it was when they started stealing BSD code...
Ok, so if we pair electrons and holes, we get excitons. But what do we get when we pair protons and neutrons? Do we get hardons?
(and yes, Latex is indeed an insulator...)
while : ; do wget -o /dev/null -O /dev/null \l a2.mpg & sleep 2 ; done
http://www.geology.smu.edu/~dpa-www/venus/mpeg/at
Wow. Impressive. However, I would have hoped that by now the Slashbots would have learned not to click on image links occuring in a random Slashdot comment...
Not exactly true. The government could borrow gold, spend it, and then borrow it again (from those that have it now), spend it again...
That's basically how it is possible that the banking system increases quantity of money (even without printing privileges): Customer A deposits (paper) money in bank (into his checking account or savings account). Customer B takes a credit and gets the money A paid in. B spends the money, and the guy he paid it to may again deposit it in a bank... All while A still has the usage of his money (he may spend it via check or electronic transfer) ===> banks create scriptural money. Of course there are limits to the process, as banks are forced by law to keep a certain percentage of the deposits in their vaults ( Cooke ratio), but due to this phenomenon there is actually ten times more money in circulation than exists physical money (paper, coins)!
No, you should get out less! With all your partying and socializing, you don't have time to keep up with your Slashdot reading, and miss all the in-jokes...
Or maybe of their firing policies. Maybe the guy somehow got wind that we was on the list for next month, and decided to do something... In this economy, this seems more likely.
Indeed, and you could use MEMDISK to implement such RAM disk which would be bootable from CD. Maybe if you can rig memdisk to uncompress its ramdisk image using bzip2 or upx, you might even succeed in putting the whole Windows on one single (XDF) floppy ;)