Why not? It's not that I can't get anything I want (theoretically) off the internet now anyway for free - copy protection doesn't do squat to deter the criminals but it does annoy the hell out of paying customers. That's why I don't buy any Media with Copy Protection - mandatorily watching the FBI screen for 15 seconds each time on a DVD I legitimately own isn't worth my time anymore.
Yes, I would think companies will bend to their customers will, if the customers scream at them loud enough - after all, media companies have been selling digital music (without Copy Protection in most cases) offline for years now - they're called Compact Discs. So let's not make believe Copy Protection has always been the norm.
I recently spent quite a bit of time researching the Swedes, and I'm very surprised at the amounts of freedoms they had in a country that has typically been considered socialist.
Please expound on the specific freedoms. Hearing from friends - Sweden/Finland/Norway in particular of the European countries are known for being very expensive - mostly stemming from Socialism (but then, in countries without healthcare for the people, is it any cheaper just because you pay a "friendly" corp instead of a government? Most likely not.)
I was actually surprised by the headline once I read the article. It's like WTF?! This is way bigger than iTunes, this is like the anti-DMCA coming!
Come one people - we've been bitching and moaning about the DMCA for year, and now that a government is passing a law that seems to be the opposite (FAIR USE) - it get's disguised as some sort of iTunes issue?
This is great news for consumers - up to now in the digital era, most popular services tried to lock people in with proprietary formats into a product that was/is arguably worse quality than its hardware tied predessors (CDs -> mp3/whatever lossless format, DVDs -> iTunes Video), we should at least be getting free transference and real ownership over the files in the deal.
Please keep in mind it was written circa 1990, some of it was meant as pure comedy. Though, I think the point of expertness that you bring up dovetails with their complaint about the complexity of the system.
Check out chapter 7 titled "The X Windows Disaster: How to make a 50-Mips Workstation run like a 4.77MHz IBM PC"
I especially like the opening quote:
"If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which fol- lowed the same principles--but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that."--Marcus J. Ranum, Digital Equipment Corporation
You know, the thing is, if you turn on the webcam on at the right time, I'm sure you'd catch most programmers acting that way at least once a month towards the computer when things don't just go right.....
I'll disagree - it's a series of articles by people who worked with Unix (back then) and have other systems to compare it to, I consider many of the articles surpass the atyppical +5 posts here on slashdot^_^
No. Not everything is a file in Unix (exceptions started piling on as hacks for originially unintended devices, etcetera started piling on), that's why there is Plan9 - where everything is a file - from the original creators of Unix at Bell labs.
Of course the truth is somewhere in the middle - duh! The outcry against patents is that in this day and age that it's being pushed to one extreme. It's not about the lone inventor in his basement or even the researcher in his lab - it's about corporations and their lawyers.
Instead of asking if patents are single incentive for inventors and thus is crucial - perhaps this article should have us asking - do patents hurt inventors and despite them, we, as a society, get things done? After all, there was Alexander Graham Bell and then there were 3-4 other guys whose efforts meant collectively zilch after the patent was granted.
Don't get me wrong, I like that in order to get patents, companies have trade the knowledge in exchange for protection - so that we don't have secretive guilds like in the middle ages any longer - but it's coming to a point where many things that just require a semi-unique situtation + an hour's thought are becoming patentable.
he is right - Too many incompatable distros are hurting the advancement of linux in the corp marketplace. In a way having just one overweling popular distro making up 80% of the Linux marketplace would actually help with Linux's more wide acceptance.
If this attitude was prevalent 10 years ago, we wouldn't have the great new distros of today (Gentoo, Ubuntu) but something that's probably more 1998-ish in quality because everything would have lagged behind.
The competition between distros is a great thing. The marketplace needs competition for the offerings to get better over time. Without competitors, monopolies tend to rest on their laurels because the current incarnation of their product would be "good enough."
Plus, a lot of people moved to linux to have something different, not just the plain vanilla flavor of a distro. For some, Ubuntu is great, others prefer the speed of Gentoo/Arch, others like the customizability of Gentoo/LinuxFromScratch, still others love the simplicity of Slackware. Without these distros, where would the movers and shakers, those who evangelize Linux the most have gone?
When people lament this choice, I either take it they are confused what they themselves should get. I usually point them to distrowatch.com to do some reading, or Ubuntu just to get something fairly fast and easy.
Or I take it they want everything perfectly running out of the box and that's the real complaint. Sorry, 1 king linux distro isn't going to do that either.
Or perhaps it's simply a cry for more Cathedral-like architecture - in which case they should investigate a *BSD or Plan9/Inferno. They are all good choices, I wouldn't begrudge them - I like aspects of Plan9 myself much better than linux.
But those aspects I like better, ironically, I don't know if they come from just Cathedral-like architecture vs. Bazaar - or for the lack of competition? For instance, if X windows had a serious competitor (like distros do), would the linux world have have something better/easier/more sane?
"With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)," the notes in the original Google presentation state.
Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in his presentation made a cryptic comment that one goal of Google was to "store 100 percent" of consumer information.
What is so damned cryptic about that? This has been google's strategy from the beginning, the more info they have about you, the users - the better they can market to you, the users.
I would be worried, of course, about the obvious bad possibilities that can from from this unprecedented access this gives google to our info. But that discussion has been played out with every google took.
Not only the $400B, we have to keep paying into the future - soldier's benefits aren't cheap plus the soldiers wounded are a long-term (rightfully so) expense as well and veteran's benefits make up a significant portion of the yearly budget and is not part of the military budget itself.
All of that, so we could show the world how awesome our toys are. Oh, and spreading democracy throughout the world.
I'm in your camp. The last thing I need is for all the people around me surf/downloading pron on my dime. And I don't exactly want to waste my time "proving it wasn't me" if the RIAA/MPAA/Childporn_Police come knocking on my door because somebody decided to do something on my connection they wouldn't dare do on theirs.
I honestly don't understand all the openess hype in this instance. Just because it's wireless? When I was in college a few years back, everybody shared their broadband with ethernet cables as well as their cable with a few feet of coaxial (adjoining apartments).
to better themselves. In terms of gadgets, Japan is a tough market with lots of competitors, but like fighting any tough opponent, it would have made them better.
It looks like they kept trying to push themselves onto the Japanese instead of adapting themselves, what with not adopting 3G and using a brickphone profile for their phones. How dumb is that? Was it a result of purely top-down leadership without some bottom-up feedback? I don't know but it looks that way if they are pulling out of Sweden too. Many companies try to do that when entering a foreign market, but they are usually spanked early on for their mistakes. I believe McDonalds serves lamb in India and wherever they go conform their menu to the locality.
I imagine most people pick mp3 because although it may not be the best... it's by far the most wildly supported. Conversion tools between "better" codecs usually mean worse sound quality than getting it in a format that pretty much every player can handle.
I don't doubt you, but why wouldn't most people pick a lossless format? They can always change it to anothor lossless format without data loss (by definition), put it on CD sounding as good as an original CD, or put encode a second copy on the lossy format of their choice. It would really be the best longterm solution on the investment someone makes when buying online. The only possible downside is the downloading time.
BTW, I'd bypass all that online crap anyway, I'd rather just buy the cds on new (of non-RIAA artists of course), on discount or preferably used (if I feel no need to support that particular artist) and then just take the five minutes to rip it to FLAC so I never have to touch the CD again. But that's just me.
That kind of mechanical engineering has clearly hit its fundamental limits in terms of size. To get a real breakthrough, you'd have to find a way to do without moving the sensor over the image. You can already image a piece of paper with a digital camera -- and some digital cameras are very tiny indeed. But they don't include the ability to correct the image for the arbitrary positioning of the camera. Invent that, and you'd have a handheld scanner worth talking about.
No, a camera wouldn't be good. The sides would get distorted due to the lens and the resolution wouldn't be there.
You are correct on the limitation of current handheld scanner.
I think the breakthrough would be different:
Have you ever had a copymachine where it feeds from the top and the light of the scanner sits in one place while the paper gets pulled through? The light doesn't move like a normal copy, the paper does. I imagine the next generation device would be something that can fit in a notebook, be the size and shape of a portable like this:
And it will pull the paper through itself while the scanning light/line is stationary. I think that is doable today and would give much better results.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not? It's not that I can't get anything I want (theoretically) off the internet now anyway for free - copy protection doesn't do squat to deter the criminals but it does annoy the hell out of paying customers. That's why I don't buy any Media with Copy Protection - mandatorily watching the FBI screen for 15 seconds each time on a DVD I legitimately own isn't worth my time anymore.
Yes, I would think companies will bend to their customers will, if the customers scream at them loud enough - after all, media companies have been selling digital music (without Copy Protection in most cases) offline for years now - they're called Compact Discs. So let's not make believe Copy Protection has always been the norm.
Please expound on the specific freedoms. Hearing from friends - Sweden/Finland/Norway in particular of the European countries are known for being very expensive - mostly stemming from Socialism (but then, in countries without healthcare for the people, is it any cheaper just because you pay a "friendly" corp instead of a government? Most likely not.)
I was actually surprised by the headline once I read the article. It's like WTF?! This is way bigger than iTunes, this is like the anti-DMCA coming!
Come one people - we've been bitching and moaning about the DMCA for year, and now that a government is passing a law that seems to be the opposite (FAIR USE) - it get's disguised as some sort of iTunes issue?
This is great news for consumers - up to now in the digital era, most popular services tried to lock people in with proprietary formats into a product that was/is arguably worse quality than its hardware tied predessors (CDs -> mp3/whatever lossless format, DVDs -> iTunes Video), we should at least be getting free transference and real ownership over the files in the deal.
I was being sarcastic, sorry about forgetting the sarcasm tags^_^
Please keep in mind it was written circa 1990, some of it was meant as pure comedy. Though, I think the point of expertness that you bring up dovetails with their complaint about the complexity of the system.
Check out chapter 7 titled "The X Windows Disaster: How to make a 50-Mips Workstation run like a 4.77MHz IBM PC"
I especially like the opening quote:
"If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer
than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which fol-
lowed the same principles--but you'd be able to shift gears with your
car stereo. Useful feature, that."--Marcus J. Ranum, Digital Equipment Corporation
Heh, I think the author messed up and should have gotten evil^2 at the end:P
You know, the thing is, if you turn on the webcam on at the right time, I'm sure you'd catch most programmers acting that way at least once a month towards the computer when things don't just go right.....
I can't make up my mind. If the recent years has shown me anything - yes, people in large groups are that stupid. But they shouldn't be.
Since I can't make up my mind, I'm glad that, ultimately, I simply don't care either way. Funny what disillusionment/disaffection does to a person.
I'll disagree - it's a series of articles by people who worked with Unix (back then) and have other systems to compare it to, I consider many of the articles surpass the atyppical +5 posts here on slashdot^_^
No. Not everything is a file in Unix (exceptions started piling on as hacks for originially unintended devices, etcetera started piling on), that's why there is Plan9 - where everything is a file - from the original creators of Unix at Bell labs.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/plan_9_wiki/
Maybe it would be easier to see what Unix is by pointing out the weaknesses, reading "The Unix Hater's Handbook" for instance:
http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
Which, despite the name is not a mindless bashfest and is interesting.
--Plan9/Inferno and Lisp Machine advocate--
flammable Audio pronunciation of "flammable" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (flm-bl)
e
adj.
Easily ignited and capable of burning rapidly; inflammable.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=flammabl
Of course the truth is somewhere in the middle - duh! The outcry against patents is that in this day and age that it's being pushed to one extreme. It's not about the lone inventor in his basement or even the researcher in his lab - it's about corporations and their lawyers.
Instead of asking if patents are single incentive for inventors and thus is crucial - perhaps this article should have us asking - do patents hurt inventors and despite them, we, as a society, get things done? After all, there was Alexander Graham Bell and then there were 3-4 other guys whose efforts meant collectively zilch after the patent was granted.
Don't get me wrong, I like that in order to get patents, companies have trade the knowledge in exchange for protection - so that we don't have secretive guilds like in the middle ages any longer - but it's coming to a point where many things that just require a semi-unique situtation + an hour's thought are becoming patentable.
You silly maggot, cox are for mods.
Stupid kok hore.
If this attitude was prevalent 10 years ago, we wouldn't have the great new distros of today (Gentoo, Ubuntu) but something that's probably more 1998-ish in quality because everything would have lagged behind.
The competition between distros is a great thing. The marketplace needs competition for the offerings to get better over time. Without competitors, monopolies tend to rest on their laurels because the current incarnation of their product would be "good enough."
Plus, a lot of people moved to linux to have something different, not just the plain vanilla flavor of a distro. For some, Ubuntu is great, others prefer the speed of Gentoo/Arch, others like the customizability of Gentoo/LinuxFromScratch, still others love the simplicity of Slackware. Without these distros, where would the movers and shakers, those who evangelize Linux the most have gone?
When people lament this choice, I either take it they are confused what they themselves should get. I usually point them to distrowatch.com to do some reading, or Ubuntu just to get something fairly fast and easy.
Or I take it they want everything perfectly running out of the box and that's the real complaint. Sorry, 1 king linux distro isn't going to do that either.
Or perhaps it's simply a cry for more Cathedral-like architecture - in which case they should investigate a *BSD or Plan9/Inferno. They are all good choices, I wouldn't begrudge them - I like aspects of Plan9 myself much better than linux.
But those aspects I like better, ironically, I don't know if they come from just Cathedral-like architecture vs. Bazaar - or for the lack of competition? For instance, if X windows had a serious competitor (like distros do), would the linux world have have something better/easier/more sane?
What is so damned cryptic about that? This has been google's strategy from the beginning, the more info they have about you, the users - the better they can market to you, the users.
I would be worried, of course, about the obvious bad possibilities that can from from this unprecedented access this gives google to our info. But that discussion has been played out with every google took.
Not only the $400B, we have to keep paying into the future - soldier's benefits aren't cheap plus the soldiers wounded are a long-term (rightfully so) expense as well and veteran's benefits make up a significant portion of the yearly budget and is not part of the military budget itself.
All of that, so we could show the world how awesome our toys are. Oh, and spreading democracy throughout the world.
I'm in your camp. The last thing I need is for all the people around me surf/downloading pron on my dime. And I don't exactly want to waste my time "proving it wasn't me" if the RIAA/MPAA/Childporn_Police come knocking on my door because somebody decided to do something on my connection they wouldn't dare do on theirs.
I honestly don't understand all the openess hype in this instance. Just because it's wireless? When I was in college a few years back, everybody shared their broadband with ethernet cables as well as their cable with a few feet of coaxial (adjoining apartments).
to better themselves. In terms of gadgets, Japan is a tough market with lots of competitors, but like fighting any tough opponent, it would have made them better.
2 006/gb20060302_547553.htm?campaign_id=topStories_s si_5
It looks like they kept trying to push themselves onto the Japanese instead of adapting themselves, what with not adopting 3G and using a brickphone profile for their phones. How dumb is that? Was it a result of purely top-down leadership without some bottom-up feedback? I don't know but it looks that way if they are pulling out of Sweden too. Many companies try to do that when entering a foreign market, but they are usually spanked early on for their mistakes. I believe McDonalds serves lamb in India and wherever they go conform their menu to the locality.
But the idea that an American company can't do well in Japan is false, look at Apple:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar
That's all?
I was hoping for five 9's reliability!
I don't doubt you, but why wouldn't most people pick a lossless format? They can always change it to anothor lossless format without data loss (by definition), put it on CD sounding as good as an original CD, or put encode a second copy on the lossy format of their choice. It would really be the best longterm solution on the investment someone makes when buying online. The only possible downside is the downloading time.
BTW, I'd bypass all that online crap anyway, I'd rather just buy the cds on new (of non-RIAA artists of course), on discount or preferably used (if I feel no need to support that particular artist) and then just take the five minutes to rip it to FLAC so I never have to touch the CD again. But that's just me.
Yes, but the home market isn't the target for a portable scanner anyway^_^
Is this to go with our backboneless politicians?