That started as a joke, but now I really want to know: Why DO we care?
Why do we care about most things in the news -- hardly any affect us personally or directly. If you insist on a practical application; this is a sign of a massive explosion, a gigantic energy release. If we survive, we will need to know how to do things like that in a few million years -- they'd be ultimate WMDs, sterilizing an entire galaxy, or more hopefully have a constructive use.
In astronomic dimensions, yes, that's not really far away....you're using a unit that doesn't lend itself well to the distances measured.
It's a hell of a lot of light years -- 440 million light years. If the universe is 17 billion years old, as it was last time I checked, that's about 2% of the radius of the universe, a respectable number. Or more locally, M31 in Andromeda is "only" 2.9 million light years away, so the "nearby" explosion is 150 times further than that.
You might get away with "cosmologically", but it's much further away than most familiar astronomical features.
Note: the link is an article about someone who did Steps 1 and 2, and has reached Step 3.
Suffering? They got some nasty emails. Meanwhile, they're gettng free publicity and selling loads of blasphemous T-shirts. Call them martyrs AFTER they've actually been bombed. Talk is cheap.
> "Considering that virtually all software distributed physically claims copyright protection to the maximum extent possible..."
Only for some very odd definition of "virtually all". If you said "most," I wouldn't argue a bit, but I think that free/libre/open-source software
I said "virtually all distributed physically". As in, on a CD, in a box, etc; which is what TFA is concerned with.
I think you're right, but then where do we draw the line between reasonable and unreasonable?
That's what he case was about, and the court was apparently comfortable with large amounts of confidential data unencrypted on a laptop kept in a home. So the bar is very low.
In your case; well can't it be set in BIOS to only boot from the hard disk? Though there must be a way to defeat that with a screwdriver. Maybe just a paper or foil seal over the drive bays that would reveal any unauthorised physical meddling.
I don't think it's overly harsh to expect a copyright enforcement agency of the government *to*read*and*understand*copyrights* before starting an enforcement action.
Considering that virtually all software distributed physically claims copyright protection to the maximum extent possible, it probably seemed an empty formality. However, obviously they did check with the Mozilla people before laying charges. I do wonder though if the same shop wasn't also selling bootlegs of Adobe, MS, etc... those places tend to just sell software at a flat rate per CD, and the reason the officer was put out was that she couldn't just say "500 illegal CDROM copies of copyright software", but now had to check and categorise each one individually.
I believe not too long ago, Slashdot had an article concerning the cooking of an egg situated between two cell phones.
That's a hoax, written six years ago, and Slashdot editors were suckered by it, as they have been many times before.
Ivermee, a 60-year old archiver in a law firm in South Hampton, has written almost all of the pieces on the Wymsey site, including the egg article, which he wrote back in 2000. In the piece, he outlines eight ridiculous steps for hard boiling an egg using the transmissions of two cellphones pointed at each other with the egg in between.
"I really underestimated how many people would take it seriously," he tells Gelf over email. "No other page on the site has grabbed people's attention and ire button as much as this one. What seems to be happening is that it 'travels' from blog to blog, forum to forum. It was big in Australia last year and seems to be big in the US right now."
Radon though is a real risk, but this is from natural sources mostly:
EPA
in 1984... a nuclear plant worker in Pennsylvania discovered radioactivity on his clothing while exiting his place of work through the radiation detectors. The source of the radiation was determined to be radon decay products on his clothing originating from his home....
Most of the public's exposure to natural radiation comes from radon which can accumulate in homes, schools, and office buildings. EPA estimates that the national average indoor radon level in homes is about 1.3 pCi/l of air. We also estimate that about 1 in 15 homes nationwide have levels at or above the level of 4 pCi/l, the level at which EPA recommends taking action to reduce concentrations. Levels greater than 2,000 pCi/l of air have been measured in some homes.
nuclear waste can be used to power unmanned spacecraft, like voyager,
That's a few kilos, and shielded. Not tons. And that wasn't "waste", but refined isotopes. (There was probably several kilos of waste produced for every kilo of fuel.) As well as being insanely dangerous, it's insanely expensive.
Shoot them into deep space? Not ideal, but it's hard to cause damage to an environment all ready saturated with radiation.
We can't launch space shuttles with 100% safety now. What happens when one carrying this blows up a mile above the launch pad?
You put it in a hole in the ground, away from any ground water or earthquake zones. Not perfect, but the best option. That will keep them for a few centuries, by which time, if we're not extinct, we can deal with them permanently.
There's a former power plant worker out there that's DQ'd for life from working in a nuclear power plant because he absorbed too much radioactivity from his house. The bricks were made from coal ash.
A locked house is reasonable protection. If that absolves me of someone's death, then surely it absolves someone of having their computer stolen.
TFA discusses this point: what is "reasonable" protection. The data could easily have been encrypted; but it wasn't. Or was it "reasonable" for a consultant to have copies of 550,000 customer files on his laptop at his home at all? If you're allowed to have a gun at all for personal protection, you have to be able to keep it in your home, but the same doesn't go for data.
There may well be, though I suspect that many use GS code under the hood. Who cares? Certainly not most end users. They only care if it works or not. You demonstrated by pointing him to something that doesn't work so well. Congrats again.
This guy (or is it you under another name? I wonder why you're so determined to defend some random poster) didn't ask "What's a good way to make PDFs? Please advise." What he said was:
(Score:-1, Troll) by Saven Marek (739395) on Tue Feb 21, '06 12:53 AM (#14761696) This is the thing. PDF belongs to adobe and to develop using it you have to pay them for their patents use. So if you want to distribute yourself some PDF that's OK but if you want to use any generating PDF or reading PDF programs you need to pay adobe the big money. And that's just leading to more and more lockin.
If this can take off instead of PDF and also be free, it will quickly kill PDF. Why would you pay more for something when you can get the same for free? people are lead by their pocketbook and if you can save them some dollars you'll be theirs for life.
My original reply pointed out, economically, that he was wrong in his assumptions and conclusions. That's all.
Total care that you think I'm a fool. Zero. You sir have the social skills of an intellectually handicapped gnat. Good day. Somehow you've construed that I've called you a fool. Well, with my deficient social skills I'm incapable of subtle insults, so I'm afraid you were off the mark. But since you're spoiling for it, I'll give you closure: You're a pretentious twat.
If I was watching a pirated DVD, that crap would have been trimmed out anyway so whats the point in making us watch it?
Actually, people tell me that pirated DVDs often include all the anti-piracy ads too, they just rip and dupe the whole thing. The only giveaways are the typos on the cover.
You must be very new to the Internet Oh yeah. First login around 1995. Very new Hey, pissing contest! I first went online about 1978. On the web about 1994.
A personal attack on someone who has made a factual error is not at all appropriate. If that had been all he'd said, I would have been gentler. But he proceeded to launch an attack on Adobe's policies on the basis of his made-up fact. A bit like invading a country after claiming they have WMDs with no proof, and deserving of the same response.
There are much better free PDF solutions than Ghostscript out there There may well be, though I suspect that many use GS code under the hood. I only needed one example, and GS is the one I'm familiar with (Yes, I actually use it; before PDF it was about the only way to proof PS on screen, and I used it for a while to render to a PCL LJ3.)
My point was exactly that the argument was trivially refuted Your point was to call someone who posted a comment with a factual error in it a fool. Yes, that too. But the world is full of fools (this is a straight line for you, if you want); I don't respond unless it's an issue I care about.
am I glad I don't work with you. You don't see a problem with insulting a total stranger out of the blue for being (admitedly very) wrong, but are willing to admit your insult was inprecise. You must be a lonely, lonely person.
You must be very new to the Internet. If you want to spend your life remonstrating with anonymous posters about their lack of civility you have a long disappointing task ahead of you. Good luck. Though I personally rarely indulge in name-calling these days, in this case it seemed appropriate. In real life, of course, I'd just back away from someone expressing their ignorance in such a way.
By the way I did notice the link but since typing Ghostscript into google gets you the same, I'd say that is redundant.
I didn't mod my post, if someone did think it was "informative" or whatever take it up with them. My point was exactly that the argument was trivially refuted, not that Ghostscript is an arcane subject only I know about.
Actually, I wrote "Gostscript". And I gave a link to the GS home page, which was presumably what people thought was informative. As for "idiot", yes, not very polite, but the OP was not just in error on an abstruse detail, but completely wrong on a simple matter of fact, and proceeding to abuse companies on the basis of his falsehood. So maybe "dickhead" or "troll" would have been more appropriate than "idiot".
To me, this does tend to indicate that perhaps he's not such a brilliant actor... not by the normal definitions of what makes a good (or brilliant) actor. Yes, he wrote a very funny sitcom and played a very, very funny character. But you're right: he *is* that character
No, he's not. If you've seen him in anything else, or just being himself in an interview, you'd know that he IS NOT David Brent, though naturally he draws on aspects of his life in playing him. And if you think how despicable Brent is in many Office episodes, you could hardly imagine him revealing himself so nakedly -- that it appears to be "real life" is a testament of his skill.
For printing tasks, PostScript seemed to work perfectly fine before PDF existed. For web browsing, users should never be subjected to a format which stores text as binary.
Investigate PDF workflows for prepress sometime. That's the reason it's so popular in publishing. When everything had to be done in PS, the tools available were few, cumbersome and very expensive. PS is, once you get slightly complex, device dependent and it's difficult to retask. I can do a lot on my desktop to put a book together that 10 years ago I'd have been using physical paste-up and film-stripping for.
As for browsing, I'm less enthused, but it allows publishers to very simply make information available online that was designed for print. The user's manuals for many devices, for instance, that I often refer to, would probably be huge TIFF files if they were available at all. HTML might be preferable, but with imperfect and tedious translation needed mostly it just wouldn't happen at all.
Michael Corleone:"...My father taught me many things here - he taught me in this room. He taught me - keep your friends close but your enemies closer."
. But again you don't see a site like "microsoftOSforfree.com" giving you accurate detail. You will need to find and hunt down the files.
Apple while it just entered the arena want's to secure there OS but instead of suing the living shit out of you it's being reasonable by at least giving you a chance to remove those links.
The links in question are NOT free copies of OSX, they're to patches enabling you to do interesting things with your own, legally purchased software. There are uncountable sites doing the same for MS software; MS doesn't take down tweaking sites.
Apple has been anal like this for years. They threaten sites that put up the LINKS to service manuals for Macs allowing users to maintain their own machines -- links to apple.com. The logic of leaving something on an open website while insisting it's a trade secret escape me, but they still waved the big litigation stick intimidating almost everyone into deleting these links.
He had to buy an external for his notebook.
He's 800 miles away in college and he doesn't call home before making decisions.
He's not a technician or computer expert. He acted on information the local Apple dealer provided him with.
I thought you were talking about an internal laptop drive, which might be hard to find, not to mention install, but an external is quite generic. Five minutes online would have given him a list of cheaper, compatible hardware. You can hardly blame an Apple dealer for not directing him to a non-Apple shop. But at least it'll look nice and should have a good warranty.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do we care about most things in the news -- hardly any affect us personally or directly. If you insist on a practical application; this is a sign of a massive explosion, a gigantic energy release. If we survive, we will need to know how to do things like that in a few million years -- they'd be ultimate WMDs, sterilizing an entire galaxy, or more hopefully have a constructive use.
It's a hell of a lot of light years -- 440 million light years. If the universe is 17 billion years old, as it was last time I checked, that's about 2% of the radius of the universe, a respectable number. Or more locally, M31 in Andromeda is "only" 2.9 million light years away, so the "nearby" explosion is 150 times further than that.
You might get away with "cosmologically", but it's much further away than most familiar astronomical features.
Suffering? They got some nasty emails. Meanwhile, they're gettng free publicity and selling loads of blasphemous T-shirts. Call them martyrs AFTER they've actually been bombed. Talk is cheap.
Only for some very odd definition of "virtually all". If you said "most," I wouldn't argue a bit, but I think that free/libre/open-source software
I said "virtually all distributed physically". As in, on a CD, in a box, etc; which is what TFA is concerned with.
That's what he case was about, and the court was apparently comfortable with large amounts of confidential data unencrypted on a laptop kept in a home. So the bar is very low.
In your case; well can't it be set in BIOS to only boot from the hard disk? Though there must be a way to defeat that with a screwdriver. Maybe just a paper or foil seal over the drive bays that would reveal any unauthorised physical meddling.
Considering that virtually all software distributed physically claims copyright protection to the maximum extent possible, it probably seemed an empty formality. However, obviously they did check with the Mozilla people before laying charges. I do wonder though if the same shop wasn't also selling bootlegs of Adobe, MS, etc ... those places tend to just sell software at a flat rate per CD, and the reason the officer was put out was that she couldn't just say "500 illegal CDROM copies of copyright software", but now had to check and categorise each one individually.
No it wasn't. "Communications".
That's a hoax, written six years ago, and Slashdot editors were suckered by it, as they have been many times before.
Radon though is a real risk, but this is from natural sources mostly:
That's a few kilos, and shielded. Not tons. And that wasn't "waste", but refined isotopes. (There was probably several kilos of waste produced for every kilo of fuel.) As well as being insanely dangerous, it's insanely expensive.
We can't launch space shuttles with 100% safety now. What happens when one carrying this blows up a mile above the launch pad?
You put it in a hole in the ground, away from any ground water or earthquake zones. Not perfect, but the best option. That will keep them for a few centuries, by which time, if we're not extinct, we can deal with them permanently.
Oh really? Do you have a source for this story?
TFA discusses this point: what is "reasonable" protection. The data could easily have been encrypted; but it wasn't. Or was it "reasonable" for a consultant to have copies of 550,000 customer files on his laptop at his home at all? If you're allowed to have a gun at all for personal protection, you have to be able to keep it in your home, but the same doesn't go for data.
Who cares? Certainly not most end users. They only care if it works or not. You demonstrated by pointing him to something that doesn't work so well. Congrats again.
This guy (or is it you under another name? I wonder why you're so determined to defend some random poster) didn't ask "What's a good way to make PDFs? Please advise." What he said was:
My original reply pointed out, economically, that he was wrong in his assumptions and conclusions. That's all.
Total care that you think I'm a fool. Zero. You sir have the social skills of an intellectually handicapped gnat. Good day.
Somehow you've construed that I've called you a fool. Well, with my deficient social skills I'm incapable of subtle insults, so I'm afraid you were off the mark. But since you're spoiling for it, I'll give you closure: You're a pretentious twat.
Actually, people tell me that pirated DVDs often include all the anti-piracy ads too, they just rip and dupe the whole thing. The only giveaways are the typos on the cover.
You must be very new to the Internet
Oh yeah. First login around 1995. Very new
Hey, pissing contest!
I first went online about 1978. On the web about 1994.
A personal attack on someone who has made a factual error is not at all appropriate.
If that had been all he'd said, I would have been gentler. But he proceeded to launch an attack on Adobe's policies on the basis of his made-up fact. A bit like invading a country after claiming they have WMDs with no proof, and deserving of the same response.
There are much better free PDF solutions than Ghostscript out there
There may well be, though I suspect that many use GS code under the hood. I only needed one example, and GS is the one I'm familiar with (Yes, I actually use it; before PDF it was about the only way to proof PS on screen, and I used it for a while to render to a PCL LJ3.)
My point was exactly that the argument was trivially refuted
Your point was to call someone who posted a comment with a factual error in it a fool.
Yes, that too. But the world is full of fools (this is a straight line for you, if you want); I don't respond unless it's an issue I care about.
You must be very new to the Internet. If you want to spend your life remonstrating with anonymous posters about their lack of civility you have a long disappointing task ahead of you. Good luck. Though I personally rarely indulge in name-calling these days, in this case it seemed appropriate. In real life, of course, I'd just back away from someone expressing their ignorance in such a way.
By the way I did notice the link but since typing Ghostscript into google gets you the same, I'd say that is redundant.
I didn't mod my post, if someone did think it was "informative" or whatever take it up with them. My point was exactly that the argument was trivially refuted, not that Ghostscript is an arcane subject only I know about.
Actually, I wrote "Gostscript". And I gave a link to the GS home page, which was presumably what people thought was informative. As for "idiot", yes, not very polite, but the OP was not just in error on an abstruse detail, but completely wrong on a simple matter of fact, and proceeding to abuse companies on the basis of his falsehood. So maybe "dickhead" or "troll" would have been more appropriate than "idiot".
No, he's not. If you've seen him in anything else, or just being himself in an interview, you'd know that he IS NOT David Brent, though naturally he draws on aspects of his life in playing him. And if you think how despicable Brent is in many Office episodes, you could hardly imagine him revealing himself so nakedly -- that it appears to be "real life" is a testament of his skill.
Investigate PDF workflows for prepress sometime. That's the reason it's so popular in publishing. When everything had to be done in PS, the tools available were few, cumbersome and very expensive. PS is, once you get slightly complex, device dependent and it's difficult to retask. I can do a lot on my desktop to put a book together that 10 years ago I'd have been using physical paste-up and film-stripping for.
As for browsing, I'm less enthused, but it allows publishers to very simply make information available online that was designed for print. The user's manuals for many devices, for instance, that I often refer to, would probably be huge TIFF files if they were available at all. HTML might be preferable, but with imperfect and tedious translation needed mostly it just wouldn't happen at all.
Michael Corleone:"...My father taught me many things here - he taught me in this room. He taught me - keep your friends close but your enemies closer."
Idiot. Ghostscript
Whoever you are, I'll respond if you use a name. I don't argue with ACs.
The links in question are NOT free copies of OSX, they're to patches enabling you to do interesting things with your own, legally purchased software. There are uncountable sites doing the same for MS software; MS doesn't take down tweaking sites.
Apple has been anal like this for years. They threaten sites that put up the LINKS to service manuals for Macs allowing users to maintain their own machines -- links to apple.com. The logic of leaving something on an open website while insisting it's a trade secret escape me, but they still waved the big litigation stick intimidating almost everyone into deleting these links.
I thought you were talking about an internal laptop drive, which might be hard to find, not to mention install, but an external is quite generic. Five minutes online would have given him a list of cheaper, compatible hardware. You can hardly blame an Apple dealer for not directing him to a non-Apple shop. But at least it'll look nice and should have a good warranty.