"Just use Total Recorder, it "intercepts" the audio sent to your soundcard, and allows you to record it!"
And according to the language of the bill would be perfectly legal as long as you record manually for personal, private usage.
This one isn't really super restrictive on the end user, since as many people have pointed out you can just record what's coming through the soundcard. It is, however, VERY restrictive for satellite and internet based "radio" stations. If you are a physical radio station operator you already pay a license fee to the music industry to broadcast their music, but according to this bill you would also have to pay a fee to broadcast that same music in digital format.
Like many of the posters here I am opposed to this one in principle, but can think of numerous LEGAL ways I could still make copies for my own personal use.
"Their world is all windows and if you try to get them to open up to new ideas they put their hands over their ears and shout "Na, na, na, I'm not listening!!!"."
If you replace Windows and Linux in the previous sentence with any other competing ideas (or swap them), you will pretty much still have a valid point.
People who have time, energy and money invested in Windows aren't going to want to switch to Linux. People committed to Linux aren't going to want to switch to Windows. Or Mac. Or Amiga for that matter...
You can make the same arguments for religions, metric system vs. English, emacs vs. vi, republican vs. democrat, tastes great vs. less filling, etc, etc, etc.
Most people like the feeling of belonging to a group. Not all, of course, but most. There are many kinds of groups including the "outsiders" who like to hang out together because they don't feel they belong in other groups.
If I identify myself as a member of group A, it is very difficult to truly have an open mind about the beliefs of group B. Sometimes I even begin to believe that the members of group B are intentionally bad. Part of identifying what makes group A distinct is by contrast with group B. Our biology is wired to make binary distinctions about our environment (I eat it vs. it eats me). That makes for quick decisions. Our SOCIAL systems are almost always made up of a VAST number of shades of gray. A truly open minded person realizes that there are good things and bad things about both group A and B, and then wieghs which group meets their needs best, but acknowleges that for some people group B is a better fit.
For some people Linux is better, for others Windows is better. It is all in the definition of "better". If you want a stable, low-cost, open source system, then Linux is "better". If you want a system that runs specific software you need for your buisiness and it only runs on Windows, then Windows is "better".
It is much easier to judge an operating sytem based on your own criteria and then decide that the one that matches those criteria is empirically better. If you are a "technical" person whose criteria are solely technical then you are likely to arrive at a different conclusion from a "business" person whose criteria are solely business based. Neither of you is emperically right or wrong. Balancing and blending the two is the art.
"What would you do if you found a coworker has been stealing office supplies?" (actual question)"
I think a good answer would be something like:
"I would gouge his eyes from their sockets with the very pens he was stealing, then rip off his testicles with the staple-remover he was stealing and cut his heart out with the letter opener he was stealing. Such traitorous acts to the beloved mother company can NEVER be tolerated!"
Unless I was trying to get a job at Enron or Arthur Anderson (the list goes on and on and on), in which case it would be something like:
"I would destroy all evidence as a matter of course."
No kidding. Hard core doesn't even begin to describe these guys.
The first guy goes by the trail name "Flyin' Brian" (Brian Robinson) and he was the first to hike all three trails in one year. The second guy, Mat Hazley (trail-name Squeaky), was the first to hike them all without skipping around. Brian switched from the AT to the Continental Divide Trail so that he could avoid the deep snows in New England and then came back to the AT to finish.
Squeaky didn't cook. He said he ate poptarts for breakfast then power bars all day. He made it through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park section of the AT (about 73+ miles) in ONE DAY.
You are right about not experiencing the trail in as much detail, but these guys were specifically going for records. I believe Brian is now a competitive trail runner.
Another good podcast in the series is about "The Barefoot Sisters" who yo-yo hiked the AT in one year (that means going all the way, then turning around and walking back) and they did about 1000 miles of it barefoot.
One thing about trailcast is that it definitely makes you want to get out there. I'm not interested in speed or records, but I would like to through hike the AT one day. At various points in my life I've either had enough money or time to try it, but never both at the same time...
My favorite, however, is TrailCast. It is for hikers and focuses on long-haul thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, etc.
Sound quality is good. The guy who produces it has done a great job of setting up a high quality recording studio in his bathroom.:-)
My biggest beef with 95% of podcasts is that they are made with $5 microphones on a big, noisy PC and it shows.
Trailcast sounds great and the content is always cool. I love listening to tales of trails from people who have done some insane things like hike the "triple crown" in one year. That is the PCT, AT AND Continental Divide Trail which total up to about 7,500 miles. In one year. Yowza. The two guys who did this were AVERAGING about 40-45 miles per day.
Highly recommended. The podcast that is, not hiking the triple crown in one year...
Yeah, 23 comments in/. so far and I'm already getting a "connection refused" message. Glad I don't have a report due today that I must work on using this service...
Granted they can scale up their servers to handle the load, but shouldn't they have done that BEFORE announcing to the world how they are going to kick Microsoft's butt??
UPDATE: I just got in. It looks impressive, but it is very slow. Kind of a dancing bear scenario. Will be interesting to see where they go with it and how they intend to make money with it.
This is a very good point. Not only are you better at finding out how, you are more willing to do so.
I don't care what group of humans you are talking about 20% of the people do 80% of the work, with the others more than happy to wait for someone else to do the work. Be it a club, company, religious organization, or whatever there is always a core of people who do all the work and a larger group who reap the benefits of that core group.
My wife and I are active in our church as well as Scouts, and you always know which of the parents can be counted on to do the work and which can be counted on to complain that the rest of us aren't serving them adequately.
Same thing at work. A small core of people do most of the work while a larger group complains and asks us to help with their work...
"Surely it would have provoked an international emergency with sensible adults suddenly beating each other up in the streets."
You forget Rule #1: You do not talk about fight club.
Of course adults all over the world began beating each other up, but NOT ON THE STREETS! They did it in private! And why didn't you hear about it? YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!
I thought I would like the thumb keyboards, but after trying out the new Windows Mobile Treo (plus a few other devices) with tiny keyboards, I found that my hands get very cramped within just a couple of minutes.
Like the marketing manager in Dilbert I want a small, phone sized device with a 20" screen, full-sized keyboard, full sized keyboard and analog joystick with appropriate game buttons, plus a 30 GB drive, and 40+ hour batteries; and I want it all for $99.
I agree, but evidently NON-geeks seem to be adopting the bluetooth "clothespins". I stopped for gas this morning (in a suburb of Atlanta) and of the 5 or 6 people getting gas I was the ONLY one NOT wearing one (and I'm pretty sure I was the biggest geek onhand). The funniest part is that people who wear them DON'T take them off. They were all walking around inside the building getting coffe, etc. while wearing their large, obtrusive ear-pieces. Only Lt. Uhura had a more obtrusive ear-piece!
I've long held the opinion that if you gave one of these things to one of the homeless guys who stand on the street and talk to unseen people, they would cease to look crazy, but rather "productive". Go figure.
When I first got my Pocket PC I raved about its handwriting recognition. It reads my handwriting correctly about 85-90% of the time. I would tell everyone how great it was... that is until I let them try it.
To my horror virtually everyone who tried it would get about 45-50% recognition. That meant I had to stand there like an idiot explaining and demonstrating how good it was at reading MY handwriting even though it thought THEIR handwriting was pretty much random scratchings.
Evidently I just happen to have handwriting characteristics that the machine can transcribe. Oddly enough most PEOPLE can't read my handwriting. The reason I bought a Pocket PC (I was a Palm user before that) was that the HP device on the shelf at CompUSA could read virtually everything I scrawled on it, both in cursive and print. So it isn't a matter of my device learning my patterns over time.
My guess is that whoever Microsoft used to train the recognition originally must have handwriting similar to mine. Most likely under the assumption that if the machine could read poor handwriting that it could certainly read good handwriting. The result was that it "rewards" poor handwriting.
This is all well and good for me, but I can not support an industry...
My beef with keyboard based input is that it has to be a FULL SIZED KEYBOARD since I am a touch typist. Ironically I learned to touch type when my 7th grade teacher refused to accept any hand-written assignements from me because my handwriting was so bad.
Sometimes the world is a weird place. Or maybe it's just me that's weird. There, I said it so anyone who follows up this post by saying I'm weird is just copying me! All other insults are fair game, mind you, you just can't say I'm weird. "Tea-twizzling twit" would be acceptable (and alliterative), for instance as would "lackluster, hackneyed hornblower" (but not alliterative). Extra points for creativity and imagination.
"If you know what you're doing, creating a dual or multiple partition hard drive isn't that hard at all."
Ah, but we are talking SPECIFICALLY about people who DON'T know what they are doing, and the reasons they might NOT choose to use Linux, aren't we?
One GIANT reason that Linux hasn't made much headway in the mainstream (read "typical desktop user") is that newbies tend to be treated VERY badly by SOME Linux users. If you want to know if you have ever treated a newbie badly, ask yourelf "Have I ever used the accronym RTFM".
Even though the majority of Linux users bathe regularly and are capable of establishing and maintaining relationships with other human beings, it only takes a few to turn off the ordinary person.
If Joe User calls Microsoft support, he may experience a variety of problems, but RARELY is he going to be personally insulted.
"It's been a couple years since I last created a dual-boot system in order to test-drive the latest Linux - probably time to do it again."
If you just want to take a peek at the current state of Linux, I'd recommend going with a live-cd or dvd distribution like Knoppix or Gnoppix (I'm not putting a link so it will hopefully moderate them getting slashdotted...).
It's not perfect but the combination of a boot DVD and USB thumb drive is pretty cool. You can pop the thumb drive in the usb and boot from the DVD on different computers, yet have the same environment and all your files, settings, etc.
I wouldn't try setting up a dual boot until AFTER I was sure I thought the state of Linux was such that I wanted to risk toasting my current OS.
I have had both good luck and bad over the years creating dual-boots... any where from "no sweat" to "no working OS". Live media distros alleviate that since they don't harm the existing installed OS(es).
I've never played a game that was fun for as long a span of time as ET.
Haven't played in nearly a year now, so I'd die real quick like, but I used to be a pretty good Engy. They say if the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail, but give me needlenose pliers! I can fix machine guns and tanks, build bridges, and blow up a wide assortment of stuff.
I'll never forget the day I realized I could bounce grenades around corners... that was a magical day.
I never installed ET on my new computer so that I could get some stuff done. It was the right decision, but I sure do miss ET.
" they don't pay you for your blood in the uk, its called a donation"
Here in the US of A we don't sell our blood or donate it; we rent it out to the highest bidder. I personally favor a nice "lease-to-own" program for my clients. Sweet recurring revenue for me, eventual ownership for my clients. If this were '98 or '99 I'd be talking to venture capitalists by now...
First thought I have is "how much energy would be required to do this?"
Eight THOUSAND barges pumping enough water to make a layer seven METERS thick? EACH YEAR.
I'm no scientist, but it seems to me we'd be pumping out some greenhouse gases somewhere in this mix...
Would these be nuclear barges? No greenhouse gases, but instead spent nuclear fuel to contain for a really long time.
They estimate $50 billion USD to do this, but they don't say if that is the ongoing yearly amount.
Maybe easier just to genetically engineer all the plants and animals to deal with the new conditions rather than try to control the ocean currents (and for the humor impaired -- that sentence is meant as a joke).
Mono is an option. It is a more open alternative to Microsoft's C# and.Net. Can run on Windows, Linux and Mac.
I believe it uses GTK# for its GUI. C# (and a few other languages) for coding. Mono exists because Microsoft submitted the C# language specs and the CLR (interpreter more or less like the Java JVM - not exactly, but I'm trying to be brief...) to the ECMA standards body. Basically anyone can implement a version of PARTS of.Net. Microsoft reserved certain libraries so they would still have the most attractive version of.Net.
I'm trying to be factual without inserting opinions about the motives of any of the parties involved or their relative worths, and I am not currently using Mono, nor am I specifically recommending it,.Net or C#. I'm just trying to point out one of very many options to the orignal poster.
If anyone wants to debate the value of.Net, Mono, Microsoft, ECMA, emacs, vi, Linux, Mac, Apples, Oranges, or whatever, feel free. I, however, am not interested in a debate.
Me, I'd like the Star Trek HMO. If you get lucky, you get Dr. Crusher. If you're not you the the bloody holo-doc from voyager. If you want to hear a bunch of "that's not my department" you get Dr. McCoy.
Slashdot Mirror
And according to the language of the bill would be perfectly legal as long as you record manually for personal, private usage.
This one isn't really super restrictive on the end user, since as many people have pointed out you can just record what's coming through the soundcard. It is, however, VERY restrictive for satellite and internet based "radio" stations. If you are a physical radio station operator you already pay a license fee to the music industry to broadcast their music, but according to this bill you would also have to pay a fee to broadcast that same music in digital format.
Like many of the posters here I am opposed to this one in principle, but can think of numerous LEGAL ways I could still make copies for my own personal use.
If you replace Windows and Linux in the previous sentence with any other competing ideas (or swap them), you will pretty much still have a valid point.
People who have time, energy and money invested in Windows aren't going to want to switch to Linux. People committed to Linux aren't going to want to switch to Windows. Or Mac. Or Amiga for that matter...
You can make the same arguments for religions, metric system vs. English, emacs vs. vi, republican vs. democrat, tastes great vs. less filling, etc, etc, etc.
Most people like the feeling of belonging to a group. Not all, of course, but most. There are many kinds of groups including the "outsiders" who like to hang out together because they don't feel they belong in other groups.
If I identify myself as a member of group A, it is very difficult to truly have an open mind about the beliefs of group B. Sometimes I even begin to believe that the members of group B are intentionally bad. Part of identifying what makes group A distinct is by contrast with group B. Our biology is wired to make binary distinctions about our environment (I eat it vs. it eats me). That makes for quick decisions. Our SOCIAL systems are almost always made up of a VAST number of shades of gray. A truly open minded person realizes that there are good things and bad things about both group A and B, and then wieghs which group meets their needs best, but acknowleges that for some people group B is a better fit.
For some people Linux is better, for others Windows is better. It is all in the definition of "better". If you want a stable, low-cost, open source system, then Linux is "better". If you want a system that runs specific software you need for your buisiness and it only runs on Windows, then Windows is "better".
It is much easier to judge an operating sytem based on your own criteria and then decide that the one that matches those criteria is empirically better. If you are a "technical" person whose criteria are solely technical then you are likely to arrive at a different conclusion from a "business" person whose criteria are solely business based. Neither of you is emperically right or wrong. Balancing and blending the two is the art.
NEEEEERRRRRRRDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!
I think a good answer would be something like:
"I would gouge his eyes from their sockets with the very pens he was stealing, then rip off his testicles with the staple-remover he was stealing and cut his heart out with the letter opener he was stealing. Such traitorous acts to the beloved mother company can NEVER be tolerated!"
Unless I was trying to get a job at Enron or Arthur Anderson (the list goes on and on and on), in which case it would be something like:
"I would destroy all evidence as a matter of course."
The first guy goes by the trail name "Flyin' Brian" (Brian Robinson) and he was the first to hike all three trails in one year. The second guy, Mat Hazley (trail-name Squeaky), was the first to hike them all without skipping around. Brian switched from the AT to the Continental Divide Trail so that he could avoid the deep snows in New England and then came back to the AT to finish.
Squeaky didn't cook. He said he ate poptarts for breakfast then power bars all day. He made it through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park section of the AT (about 73+ miles) in ONE DAY.
You are right about not experiencing the trail in as much detail, but these guys were specifically going for records. I believe Brian is now a competitive trail runner.
Another good podcast in the series is about "The Barefoot Sisters" who yo-yo hiked the AT in one year (that means going all the way, then turning around and walking back) and they did about 1000 miles of it barefoot.
One thing about trailcast is that it definitely makes you want to get out there. I'm not interested in speed or records, but I would like to through hike the AT one day. At various points in my life I've either had enough money or time to try it, but never both at the same time...
My favorite, however, is TrailCast. It is for hikers and focuses on long-haul thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, etc.
Sound quality is good. The guy who produces it has done a great job of setting up a high quality recording studio in his bathroom. :-)
My biggest beef with 95% of podcasts is that they are made with $5 microphones on a big, noisy PC and it shows.
Trailcast sounds great and the content is always cool. I love listening to tales of trails from people who have done some insane things like hike the "triple crown" in one year. That is the PCT, AT AND Continental Divide Trail which total up to about 7,500 miles. In one year. Yowza. The two guys who did this were AVERAGING about 40-45 miles per day.
Highly recommended. The podcast that is, not hiking the triple crown in one year...
Granted they can scale up their servers to handle the load, but shouldn't they have done that BEFORE announcing to the world how they are going to kick Microsoft's butt??
UPDATE: I just got in. It looks impressive, but it is very slow. Kind of a dancing bear scenario. Will be interesting to see where they go with it and how they intend to make money with it.
I don't care what group of humans you are talking about 20% of the people do 80% of the work, with the others more than happy to wait for someone else to do the work. Be it a club, company, religious organization, or whatever there is always a core of people who do all the work and a larger group who reap the benefits of that core group.
My wife and I are active in our church as well as Scouts, and you always know which of the parents can be counted on to do the work and which can be counted on to complain that the rest of us aren't serving them adequately.
Same thing at work. A small core of people do most of the work while a larger group complains and asks us to help with their work...
You are on a plain that stretches as far as the eye can see. There are many ones and zeroes whizzing by above your head.
Obvious exits are:
formatData(scroll),
writeData(scroll),
deleteData(scroll).
You see:
a scroll with writing on it.
Email Man, Printer Guy and Browser Boy are here.
You forget Rule #1: You do not talk about fight club.
Of course adults all over the world began beating each other up, but NOT ON THE STREETS! They did it in private! And why didn't you hear about it? YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!
Man, you're right. I also forgot the death ray. Gots ta have me a death ray.
Like the marketing manager in Dilbert I want a small, phone sized device with a 20" screen, full-sized keyboard, full sized keyboard and analog joystick with appropriate game buttons, plus a 30 GB drive, and 40+ hour batteries; and I want it all for $99.
I've long held the opinion that if you gave one of these things to one of the homeless guys who stand on the street and talk to unseen people, they would cease to look crazy, but rather "productive". Go figure.
To my horror virtually everyone who tried it would get about 45-50% recognition. That meant I had to stand there like an idiot explaining and demonstrating how good it was at reading MY handwriting even though it thought THEIR handwriting was pretty much random scratchings.
Evidently I just happen to have handwriting characteristics that the machine can transcribe. Oddly enough most PEOPLE can't read my handwriting. The reason I bought a Pocket PC (I was a Palm user before that) was that the HP device on the shelf at CompUSA could read virtually everything I scrawled on it, both in cursive and print. So it isn't a matter of my device learning my patterns over time.
My guess is that whoever Microsoft used to train the recognition originally must have handwriting similar to mine. Most likely under the assumption that if the machine could read poor handwriting that it could certainly read good handwriting. The result was that it "rewards" poor handwriting.
This is all well and good for me, but I can not support an industry...
My beef with keyboard based input is that it has to be a FULL SIZED KEYBOARD since I am a touch typist. Ironically I learned to touch type when my 7th grade teacher refused to accept any hand-written assignements from me because my handwriting was so bad.
Sometimes the world is a weird place. Or maybe it's just me that's weird. There, I said it so anyone who follows up this post by saying I'm weird is just copying me! All other insults are fair game, mind you, you just can't say I'm weird. "Tea-twizzling twit" would be acceptable (and alliterative), for instance as would "lackluster, hackneyed hornblower" (but not alliterative). Extra points for creativity and imagination.
And for my next trick, I'll ask the Pope if I should convert to Hinduism.
Ah, but we are talking SPECIFICALLY about people who DON'T know what they are doing, and the reasons they might NOT choose to use Linux, aren't we?
One GIANT reason that Linux hasn't made much headway in the mainstream (read "typical desktop user") is that newbies tend to be treated VERY badly by SOME Linux users. If you want to know if you have ever treated a newbie badly, ask yourelf "Have I ever used the accronym RTFM".
Even though the majority of Linux users bathe regularly and are capable of establishing and maintaining relationships with other human beings, it only takes a few to turn off the ordinary person.
If Joe User calls Microsoft support, he may experience a variety of problems, but RARELY is he going to be personally insulted.
If you just want to take a peek at the current state of Linux, I'd recommend going with a live-cd or dvd distribution like Knoppix or Gnoppix (I'm not putting a link so it will hopefully moderate them getting slashdotted...).
It's not perfect but the combination of a boot DVD and USB thumb drive is pretty cool. You can pop the thumb drive in the usb and boot from the DVD on different computers, yet have the same environment and all your files, settings, etc.
I wouldn't try setting up a dual boot until AFTER I was sure I thought the state of Linux was such that I wanted to risk toasting my current OS.
I have had both good luck and bad over the years creating dual-boots... any where from "no sweat" to "no working OS". Live media distros alleviate that since they don't harm the existing installed OS(es).
Many of the strategies and observations DO apply. Most companies take a dim view of actually killing the bosses, however.
Yeah, baby!
I've never played a game that was fun for as long a span of time as ET.
Haven't played in nearly a year now, so I'd die real quick like, but I used to be a pretty good Engy. They say if the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail, but give me needlenose pliers! I can fix machine guns and tanks, build bridges, and blow up a wide assortment of stuff.
I'll never forget the day I realized I could bounce grenades around corners... that was a magical day.
I never installed ET on my new computer so that I could get some stuff done. It was the right decision, but I sure do miss ET.
Here in the US of A we don't sell our blood or donate it; we rent it out to the highest bidder. I personally favor a nice "lease-to-own" program for my clients. Sweet recurring revenue for me, eventual ownership for my clients. If this were '98 or '99 I'd be talking to venture capitalists by now...
Eight THOUSAND barges pumping enough water to make a layer seven METERS thick? EACH YEAR.
I'm no scientist, but it seems to me we'd be pumping out some greenhouse gases somewhere in this mix...
Would these be nuclear barges? No greenhouse gases, but instead spent nuclear fuel to contain for a really long time.
They estimate $50 billion USD to do this, but they don't say if that is the ongoing yearly amount.
Maybe easier just to genetically engineer all the plants and animals to deal with the new conditions rather than try to control the ocean currents (and for the humor impaired -- that sentence is meant as a joke).
So what you are saying is that once I hit 40 in a couple of years it'll all be better, right? Right? Please, please say that's right!!!
Was that McGuyver or McVeigh?
I believe it uses GTK# for its GUI. C# (and a few other languages) for coding. Mono exists because Microsoft submitted the C# language specs and the CLR (interpreter more or less like the Java JVM - not exactly, but I'm trying to be brief...) to the ECMA standards body. Basically anyone can implement a version of PARTS of .Net. Microsoft reserved certain libraries so they would still have the most attractive version of .Net.
I'm trying to be factual without inserting opinions about the motives of any of the parties involved or their relative worths, and I am not currently using Mono, nor am I specifically recommending it, .Net or C#. I'm just trying to point out one of very many options to the orignal poster.
If anyone wants to debate the value of .Net, Mono, Microsoft, ECMA, emacs, vi, Linux, Mac, Apples, Oranges, or whatever, feel free. I, however, am not interested in a debate.
Me, I'd like the Star Trek HMO. If you get lucky, you get Dr. Crusher. If you're not you the the bloody holo-doc from voyager. If you want to hear a bunch of "that's not my department" you get Dr. McCoy.