Alright, folks, thanks for clarifying the European / American bit. I'll take that into account next time I start rambling about copyright.:)
Concerning the ACLU reply, there are laws in this country that forbid even private organizations from discrimating based on race, religion, sex, disability, etc. So the ACLU is protecting the rights of *everyone*. The Boy Scouts, if someone wanted to sue for it, would be required to admit girls, gays, etc. under current law. All forms of discrimination are illegal in America.
I posted this in the Dr. Dre article mentioned earlier, but it seems appropriate for here, too. It's a bit off-topic, so I won't mind it getting moderated as such, but moderators, if you feel the information in this is useful then mod it up so more people will see the resources I have listed.
Yes, the RIAA will hate this.
But that is not the problem.
The underlying problem is this: we have broken intellectual property laws.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has taken America's already stringent copyright, trademark, registration, and patent laws and forced them upon signing members in slightly revised format.
So now all of these broken laws are *entrenched* the world over. Dr. Dre, even as huge (no pun intended) as he is, will not make a difference changing these laws any more than you or I. I've said it before, people. The only thing that will finally fix these problems is getting a *huge* player - someone like AOL/Time Warner, General Electric, or Microsoft to stand up and say, "Hey! We feel that the current intellectual property laws are stifling competition, encouraging frivolous lawsuits with exponentially too large damages, and generally causes the state of mankind's advancement to diminish. Their reach should be reduced, and their protections should be diminished." then we will *not* get IP reform.
So that leaves the average Slashdot reader three choices:
1) Whine about it, do nothing, whine some more 2) Write your congress people, consumer advocate groups, and manufactureres of IP and try to educate them on the true damage that current IP laws are causing 3) Create and support a viable alternative that will gain momentum from consumer and commercial support that eventually can replace current business models and content-creator demand
There are several projects in all three groups that have been started already. Some links:
For item 1: Slashdot.org - seriously, there's more whining on here than just about anywhere else I go.
For item 2: Please note that these links are very US-centric. As I am from the US, I do not know the laws or government structure of other countries and cannot make recommendations on who or what to write.
http://www.house.gov - Write your representative. It is their *job* to voice the opinions of their constituents (though usually they voice the opinions of whoever contributes the most to their campaign fund).
http://www.senate.gov - See above.
http://www.whitehouse.gov - Write the president. Your letter may not be read, but please try.
http://www.aclu.org - American Civil Liberties Union. These guys *try* to protect your freedoms. Try to make this an issue of civil liberties rather than commercial interests.
http://www.eff.org - Electronic Frontier Foundation. DONATE! They need your money to continue fighting our fight!
http://www.futureofmusic.org - Future of Music Coalition. They're trying to come up with a compromise. I don't know if it'll work, but it's worth the reading.
http://www.lp.org - Libertarian Party. Support candidates that support you! The Libertarian Party believes in a system of government that doesn't restrict individual freedoms.
http://www.democrats.org - Democratic Party. Write to their leaders. Encourage their platform to support legislation that would reduce the life of a copyright or encourage the rejection of software and "method" patents.
http://www.gop.org - Republican Party. See above.
For item 3:
http://www.boycott-riaa.com - Discussions on getting the RIAA out of the picture. It's not totally productive, but some good ideas have come from their members.
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/6540 - A new peer-to-peer network that may actually get started. Developers and content-creators are especially encouraged to read this article AND the user comments.
http://www.azoz.com - GREAT site. It's the home page of the guy who wrote the previously mentioned article
Yes, Dr. Dre booted people from Napster. Yes, Dr. Dre is very outspoken against pirated music. Yes, Dr. Dre lost a copyright infringement suit.
But the underlying problem here is not Dr. Dre, and it is not the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The underlying problem is this: we have broken intellectual property laws.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has taken America's already stringent copyright, trademark, registration, and patent laws and forced them upon signing members in slightly revised format.
So now all of these broken laws are *entrenched* the world over. Dr. Dre, even as huge (no pun intended) as he is, will not make a difference changing these laws any more than you or I. I've said it before, people. The only thing that will finally fix these problems is getting a *huge* player - someone like AOL/Time Warner, General Electric, or Microsoft to stand up and say, "Hey! We feel that the current intellectual property laws are stifling competition, encouraging frivolous lawsuits with exponentially too large damages, and generally causes the state of mankind's advancement to diminish. Their reach should be reduced, and their protections should be diminished." then we will *not* get IP reform.
So that leaves the average Slashdot reader three choices:
1) Whine about it, do nothing, whine some more 2) Write your congress people, consumer advocate groups, and manufactureres of IP and try to educate them on the true damage that current IP laws are causing 3) Create and support a viable alternative that will gain momentum from consumer and commercial support that eventually can replace current business models and content-creator demand
There are several projects in all three groups that have been started already. Some links:
For item 1: Slashdot.org - seriously, there's more whining on here than just about anywhere else I go.
For item 2: Please note that these links are very US-centric. As I am from the US, I do not know the laws or government structure of other countries and cannot make recommendations on who or what to write.
http://www.house.gov - Write your representative. It is their *job* to voice the opinions of their constituents (though usually they voice the opinions of whoever contributes the most to their campaign fund).
http://www.senate.gov - See above.
http://www.whitehouse.gov - Write the president. Your letter may not be read, but please try.
http://www.aclu.org - American Civil Liberties Union. These guys *try* to protect your freedoms. Try to make this an issue of civil liberties rather than commercial interests.
http://www.eff.org - Electronic Frontier Foundation. DONATE! They need your money to continue fighting our fight!
http://www.futureofmusic.org - Future of Music Coalition. They're trying to come up with a compromise. I don't know if it'll work, but it's worth the reading.
http://www.lp.org - Libertarian Party. Support candidates that support you! The Libertarian Party believes in a system of government that doesn't restrict individual freedoms.
http://www.democrats.org - Democratic Party. Write to their leaders. Encourage their platform to support legislation that would reduce the life of a copyright or encourage the rejection of software and "method" patents.
http://www.gop.org - Republican Party. See above.
For item 3:
http://www.boycott-riaa.com - Discussions on getting the RIAA out of the picture. It's not totally productive, but some good ideas have come from their members.
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/6540 - A new peer-to-peer network that may actually get started. Developers and content-creators are especially encouraged to read this article AND the user comments.
http://www.azoz.com - GREAT site. It's the home page of the guy who wrote the previously mentioned article. More details on the p2p thing plus details on creative commons license, defeating RIAA propo
Have you looked at the open-source Clara OCR? I've used it for some very unique texts in the recent past. It's accuracy is quite good. Besides that, the proofing mechanisms are great!
...considering I just finished setting up PTR records for all 172 of our domain names. It's not at all difficult, and it doesn't exactly take up a lot of time.
Actually, I didn't even know they were "optional" (if not in the standard then in practice). Oh, well... I guess that makes me a responsible net. admin.?
While I'm talking about DNS, since this is my first go at it, what is this "@" sign that I see in example db.domain files?
SMTP was designed in the days where network administrators could trust each other. There was no spyware. There were very few viruses. Open relays were not only common, but it was considered "rude" not to have one. Software was distributed as source code so that everyone could benefit... Ah, the good ol' days.
Unfortunately, commercial interests, greed, and stupidity has perverted all of that. SMTP needs to be rewritten to take these "bad things" into account. There was a recent Slashdot article about this: The Case for Rebuilding The Internet From Scratch.
It must be done eventually. Unfortunately, it will take a lot of people a long time to get it out to the "masses". Look how long it's taken us to get absolutely nowhere with Ipv6!
Easy, offer a "market development fund" to manufacturers who agree only to install Windows on all their PCs. Manufactures who install Linux are not eligible.
And then Microsoft will get YAAS (Yet Another Anti-trust Suit) slapped on them. It's the same predatory tactics that were *supposed* to be solved by the original US DoJ suit. Of course, since when has Microsoft ever listened to anyone - especially the governemnt.
I'm still trying to figure out the mess that is IPv4! Once I get our internal networks configured as perfect as I can get them, I'll start researching IPv6. Until then, I'll continue to figure out all the problems with the older protocol.
Good memory! I had almost forgotten about that. I now can remember how stupid I thought the whole "I'm a monkey" thing was at the time.
I guess that makes sense, though, considering the word "helix" is simply a term that describes a shape (not even a shape, really). That'd be like someone trademarking the term "windows" or "works"... oh, wait...
Slashdot had an article a long time ago about going beyond the efficiency of Dvorak and determining what is better through genetic algorithms. You can read the Slashdot article here.
I'm one of the lucky few who still owns a perfectly working Atari 2600. Although I've had to make some repairs on it over the years...
To me, these 10-in-1 games are a really great idea for getting the games that I played growing up out to the "unwashed masses" who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to play them. Believe it or not, most computer users AND computer games, I would dare say, do not know about emulators.
Go down to your local RPG or war game store. Most of those people probably play video games. Ask them, "Did you know you can play old NES and Atari games on your computer using an emulator?" Most of them will give you blank stares!
But I digress - the on-topic part of this post is simply this. Retail outlets for these games no longer exist. When you buy them at a garage sale or at a flea market, the publisher and/or copyright holder do *not* receive any portion of that sale.
So how can the IDSA argue that it's hurting the copyright holder since these games are no longer available for retail sale (or, for that matter, for purchase directly from the probably-out-of-business-by-now developer)?
All of this copyright and patent stuff that's going on right now WILL have serious consequences for the future. I, for one, do not want to live in a world where I merely lease content for a certain period of time where I only can use it in one of three "pre-approved" ways or some such.
The IDSA be damned. Someone with some money needs to put up a big site full of these games for free download. Wait for the IDSA. When they come, BAM!, take them to court. Yes, you'll lose the initial battle, but take it up. Keep appealing. Once it reaches a court high enough, you'll begin looking at the laws themselves, and maybe people will start to see how corrupt the copyright and patent system has become. It'll be a long and expensive fight, but it MUST happen before things will get any better.
I'm currently developing mod_highlight for Apache. It will have functionality similar to the highlighting in Google's cache.
The reason I'm developing it as free software is out of good will. I sincerely hope that others can benefit from my work, and I look forward to receiving their feedback so that I can make my product better.
That's simple. Almost every program like you have described that I have ever used has run on a commercial UNIX (SCO UnixWare, AIX, HP-UX, etc.). I guess Microsoft has realized that universities and research facilities do not feel the need to use an operating system that is so prone to crashes?
I'd love to live on a flat earth. Maybe something that sits on the back of four (five?) giant elephants riding on the back of a big, slow space turtle...;)
The term you should use is not "fragmentation" but "slackspace". Fragmentation is when one file is "fragmented" between different non-adjacent sectors on a drive. Slackspace is when a 512 byte file occupies 4 kilobytes of space because that is the size of a "cluster" of sectors - thus, you lose 3.5 KB of space in the process.
I have found that NASA's dedication to safety is one of the main things holding them back. Imagine, if you will, that the Spanish government spent as much time and money on making sea-travel safe in the 1400s. Mr. Columbus and friends would not have ventured to sea due to ridiculous costs and the need for government sponsorship.
I use Windows at work because our accounting data is kept in Peachtree 2003 for Windows. WINE does not run any Peachtree past version 7 with much success.
I use GNU/Linux at home for games, website development, etc.
Mozilla is my browser of choice at work, while Konqueror is my favorite at home (though I have Mozilla installed on my workstations).
I was not implying that an MRI is destructive. I was merely noting that this is *another* form of non-destructive testing.
Sorry if there was any miscommunication.
Slashdot Mirror
Alright, folks, thanks for clarifying the European / American bit. I'll take that into account next time I start rambling about copyright. :)
Concerning the ACLU reply, there are laws in this country that forbid even private organizations from discrimating based on race, religion, sex, disability, etc. So the ACLU is protecting the rights of *everyone*. The Boy Scouts, if someone wanted to sue for it, would be required to admit girls, gays, etc. under current law. All forms of discrimination are illegal in America.
I posted this in the Dr. Dre article mentioned earlier, but it seems appropriate for here, too. It's a bit off-topic, so I won't mind it getting moderated as such, but moderators, if you feel the information in this is useful then mod it up so more people will see the resources I have listed.
Yes, the RIAA will hate this.
But that is not the problem.
The underlying problem is this: we have broken intellectual property laws.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has taken America's already stringent copyright, trademark, registration, and patent laws and forced them upon signing members in slightly revised format.
So now all of these broken laws are *entrenched* the world over. Dr. Dre, even as huge (no pun intended) as he is, will not make a difference changing these laws any more than you or I. I've said it before, people. The only thing that will finally fix these problems is getting a *huge* player - someone like AOL/Time Warner, General Electric, or Microsoft to stand up and say, "Hey! We feel that the current intellectual property laws are stifling competition, encouraging frivolous lawsuits with exponentially too large damages, and generally causes the state of mankind's advancement to diminish. Their reach should be reduced, and their protections should be diminished." then we will *not* get IP reform.
So that leaves the average Slashdot reader three choices:
1) Whine about it, do nothing, whine some more
2) Write your congress people, consumer advocate groups, and manufactureres of IP and try to educate them on the true damage that current IP laws are causing
3) Create and support a viable alternative that will gain momentum from consumer and commercial support that eventually can replace current business models and content-creator demand
There are several projects in all three groups that have been started already. Some links:
For item 1: Slashdot.org - seriously, there's more whining on here than just about anywhere else I go.
For item 2: Please note that these links are very US-centric. As I am from the US, I do not know the laws or government structure of other countries and cannot make recommendations on who or what to write.
http://www.house.gov - Write your representative. It is their *job* to voice the opinions of their constituents (though usually they voice the opinions of whoever contributes the most to their campaign fund).
http://www.senate.gov - See above.
http://www.whitehouse.gov - Write the president. Your letter may not be read, but please try.
http://www.aclu.org - American Civil Liberties Union. These guys *try* to protect your freedoms. Try to make this an issue of civil liberties rather than commercial interests.
http://www.eff.org - Electronic Frontier Foundation. DONATE! They need your money to continue fighting our fight!
http://www.futureofmusic.org - Future of Music Coalition. They're trying to come up with a compromise. I don't know if it'll work, but it's worth the reading.
http://www.lp.org - Libertarian Party. Support candidates that support you! The Libertarian Party believes in a system of government that doesn't restrict individual freedoms.
http://www.democrats.org - Democratic Party. Write to their leaders. Encourage their platform to support legislation that would reduce the life of a copyright or encourage the rejection of software and "method" patents.
http://www.gop.org - Republican Party. See above.
For item 3:
http://www.boycott-riaa.com - Discussions on getting the RIAA out of the picture. It's not totally productive, but some good ideas have come from their members.
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/6540 - A new peer-to-peer network that may actually get started. Developers and content-creators are especially encouraged to read this article AND the user comments.
http://www.azoz.com - GREAT site. It's the home page of the guy who wrote the previously mentioned article
Yes, Dr. Dre booted people from Napster.
Yes, Dr. Dre is very outspoken against pirated music.
Yes, Dr. Dre lost a copyright infringement suit.
But the underlying problem here is not Dr. Dre, and it is not the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The underlying problem is this: we have broken intellectual property laws.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has taken America's already stringent copyright, trademark, registration, and patent laws and forced them upon signing members in slightly revised format.
So now all of these broken laws are *entrenched* the world over. Dr. Dre, even as huge (no pun intended) as he is, will not make a difference changing these laws any more than you or I. I've said it before, people. The only thing that will finally fix these problems is getting a *huge* player - someone like AOL/Time Warner, General Electric, or Microsoft to stand up and say, "Hey! We feel that the current intellectual property laws are stifling competition, encouraging frivolous lawsuits with exponentially too large damages, and generally causes the state of mankind's advancement to diminish. Their reach should be reduced, and their protections should be diminished." then we will *not* get IP reform.
So that leaves the average Slashdot reader three choices:
1) Whine about it, do nothing, whine some more
2) Write your congress people, consumer advocate groups, and manufactureres of IP and try to educate them on the true damage that current IP laws are causing
3) Create and support a viable alternative that will gain momentum from consumer and commercial support that eventually can replace current business models and content-creator demand
There are several projects in all three groups that have been started already. Some links:
For item 1: Slashdot.org - seriously, there's more whining on here than just about anywhere else I go.
For item 2: Please note that these links are very US-centric. As I am from the US, I do not know the laws or government structure of other countries and cannot make recommendations on who or what to write.
http://www.house.gov - Write your representative. It is their *job* to voice the opinions of their constituents (though usually they voice the opinions of whoever contributes the most to their campaign fund).
http://www.senate.gov - See above.
http://www.whitehouse.gov - Write the president. Your letter may not be read, but please try.
http://www.aclu.org - American Civil Liberties Union. These guys *try* to protect your freedoms. Try to make this an issue of civil liberties rather than commercial interests.
http://www.eff.org - Electronic Frontier Foundation. DONATE! They need your money to continue fighting our fight!
http://www.futureofmusic.org - Future of Music Coalition. They're trying to come up with a compromise. I don't know if it'll work, but it's worth the reading.
http://www.lp.org - Libertarian Party. Support candidates that support you! The Libertarian Party believes in a system of government that doesn't restrict individual freedoms.
http://www.democrats.org - Democratic Party. Write to their leaders. Encourage their platform to support legislation that would reduce the life of a copyright or encourage the rejection of software and "method" patents.
http://www.gop.org - Republican Party. See above.
For item 3:
http://www.boycott-riaa.com - Discussions on getting the RIAA out of the picture. It's not totally productive, but some good ideas have come from their members.
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/6540 - A new peer-to-peer network that may actually get started. Developers and content-creators are especially encouraged to read this article AND the user comments.
http://www.azoz.com - GREAT site. It's the home page of the guy who wrote the previously mentioned article. More details on the p2p thing plus details on creative commons license, defeating RIAA propo
Have you looked at the open-source Clara OCR? I've used it for some very unique texts in the recent past. It's accuracy is quite good. Besides that, the proofing mechanisms are great!
Go here: http://www.claraocr.org/.
It has very recently been ported to win32, and the community support (via e-mail lists) is excellent.
I see what you mean about the pointers.
Yeah, all but three of those domains point to the same IP address.
Damnit! You beat me to it. :P
...considering I just finished setting up PTR records for all 172 of our domain names. It's not at all difficult, and it doesn't exactly take up a lot of time.
Actually, I didn't even know they were "optional" (if not in the standard then in practice). Oh, well... I guess that makes me a responsible net. admin.?
While I'm talking about DNS, since this is my first go at it, what is this "@" sign that I see in example db.domain files?
SMTP was designed in the days where network administrators could trust each other. There was no spyware. There were very few viruses. Open relays were not only common, but it was considered "rude" not to have one. Software was distributed as source code so that everyone could benefit... Ah, the good ol' days.
Unfortunately, commercial interests, greed, and stupidity has perverted all of that. SMTP needs to be rewritten to take these "bad things" into account. There was a recent Slashdot article about this: The Case for Rebuilding The Internet From Scratch.
It must be done eventually. Unfortunately, it will take a lot of people a long time to get it out to the "masses". Look how long it's taken us to get absolutely nowhere with Ipv6!
Easy, offer a "market development fund" to manufacturers who agree only to install Windows on all their PCs. Manufactures who install Linux are not eligible.
And then Microsoft will get YAAS (Yet Another Anti-trust Suit) slapped on them. It's the same predatory tactics that were *supposed* to be solved by the original US DoJ suit. Of course, since when has Microsoft ever listened to anyone - especially the governemnt.
I'm still trying to figure out the mess that is IPv4! Once I get our internal networks configured as perfect as I can get them, I'll start researching IPv6. Until then, I'll continue to figure out all the problems with the older protocol.
Good memory! I had almost forgotten about that. I now can remember how stupid I thought the whole "I'm a monkey" thing was at the time.
I guess that makes sense, though, considering the word "helix" is simply a term that describes a shape (not even a shape, really). That'd be like someone trademarking the term "windows" or "works"... oh, wait...
Slashdot had an article a long time ago about going beyond the efficiency of Dvorak and determining what is better through genetic algorithms. You can read the Slashdot article here.
I don't know... Hmm... two Helix's...
Double Helix?
Could these guys have a trademark problem with these guys?
They, too, produce a product called Helix for various media type things.
I'm one of the lucky few who still owns a perfectly working Atari 2600. Although I've had to make some repairs on it over the years...
To me, these 10-in-1 games are a really great idea for getting the games that I played growing up out to the "unwashed masses" who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to play them. Believe it or not, most computer users AND computer games, I would dare say, do not know about emulators.
Go down to your local RPG or war game store. Most of those people probably play video games. Ask them, "Did you know you can play old NES and Atari games on your computer using an emulator?" Most of them will give you blank stares!
But I digress - the on-topic part of this post is simply this. Retail outlets for these games no longer exist. When you buy them at a garage sale or at a flea market, the publisher and/or copyright holder do *not* receive any portion of that sale.
So how can the IDSA argue that it's hurting the copyright holder since these games are no longer available for retail sale (or, for that matter, for purchase directly from the probably-out-of-business-by-now developer)?
All of this copyright and patent stuff that's going on right now WILL have serious consequences for the future. I, for one, do not want to live in a world where I merely lease content for a certain period of time where I only can use it in one of three "pre-approved" ways or some such.
The IDSA be damned. Someone with some money needs to put up a big site full of these games for free download. Wait for the IDSA. When they come, BAM!, take them to court. Yes, you'll lose the initial battle, but take it up. Keep appealing. Once it reaches a court high enough, you'll begin looking at the laws themselves, and maybe people will start to see how corrupt the copyright and patent system has become. It'll be a long and expensive fight, but it MUST happen before things will get any better.
I'm currently developing mod_highlight for Apache. It will have functionality similar to the highlighting in Google's cache. The reason I'm developing it as free software is out of good will. I sincerely hope that others can benefit from my work, and I look forward to receiving their feedback so that I can make my product better.
That's simple. Almost every program like you have described that I have ever used has run on a commercial UNIX (SCO UnixWare, AIX, HP-UX, etc.). I guess Microsoft has realized that universities and research facilities do not feel the need to use an operating system that is so prone to crashes?
Hehe... Indeed...
;)
I'd love to live on a flat earth. Maybe something that sits on the back of four (five?) giant elephants riding on the back of a big, slow space turtle...
I am not a physicist (IANAP?), but from what I do know about the subject shows that he is... well...
fscking nuts.
The term you should use is not "fragmentation" but "slackspace". Fragmentation is when one file is "fragmented" between different non-adjacent sectors on a drive. Slackspace is when a 512 byte file occupies 4 kilobytes of space because that is the size of a "cluster" of sectors - thus, you lose 3.5 KB of space in the process.
I have found that NASA's dedication to safety is one of the main things holding them back. Imagine, if you will, that the Spanish government spent as much time and money on making sea-travel safe in the 1400s. Mr. Columbus and friends would not have ventured to sea due to ridiculous costs and the need for government sponsorship.
Hey, now! That's not off-topic! It's in the "from the happy-birthday-to-fkp dept." just under the title! I knew I should have posted that anonymously!
Who is fkp, and why are we wishing this person a happy birthday?
I use Windows at work because our accounting data is kept in Peachtree 2003 for Windows. WINE does not run any Peachtree past version 7 with much success.
I use GNU/Linux at home for games, website development, etc.
Mozilla is my browser of choice at work, while Konqueror is my favorite at home (though I have Mozilla installed on my workstations).
I was not implying that an MRI is destructive. I was merely noting that this is *another* form of non-destructive testing. Sorry if there was any miscommunication.