I think it's really strange that anything that promotes DRM is an evil PLOY to steal our rights. I mean, I'm just as paranoid, anti-Microsoft, zealot etc. as the next guy on Slashdot, but I mean come on, it's not like DRM is an inherently evil idea, there IS an arguement for it. I disagree with the arguement but DRM isn't nearly the proven evil of other things.
*cue "you must me new to Slashdot" comments and moderators ignoring or modding down my comment*
The river flooded because of prolonged heavy rains which would normally mean you would open up the gates on your dams to let more water flow through. However, the dams which broke had not been properly designed and maintained to deal with sedimentary build up along these gates so many of the gates could not open. All of these dams which broke were built around the same time as part of the same Chinese initiative to dam the Yangtze river for hydo-electric power so they were all designed similarly, all having the same flaws.
"The Great Firewall of China" is China's most spectacular cover-up? What? That doesn't even remotely compare to when 62 dams in China failed in the course of one night. No news of these dams collapsing came out of China until years later despite the fact that this huge catastrophe caused at least 20,000 deaths (some estimate as high as 230,000 but really nobody knows) and over 1,000,000 survivors became homeless or famine-struck as a result of the floods.
Was the Plan9 license ever changed? I know for a while the FSF had a page listing the reasons why they don't consider Plan 9 a "free" OS regardless of the openess of it's source (blah blah, difference between open and free, blah blah, speech, blah blah, gratis).
I think it'd be really great if Plan9 were released under a more "free" license.
...so basically I'm too lazy to use the internet to answer my questions... please find answers for me slashdot!
For some reason a couple people have posted so far questioning the usefullness of this. I've used Trillian's SecureIM encryption a number of times and I'll try to give an example of a situation where encrypted IM was useful.
I needed a root password from my brother, we were both running Trillian so we just turned on SecureIM and he gave it to me. This was far easier than any other encrypted messaging we could have done. We've traded passwords a couple other times the same way.
You aren't allowed to patent a business process (i.e. "the assembly line") and I don't understand why this should be any different when the internet, computers or software are concerned. Some software patents like compression algorithms and such are somewhat arguable but patents like "online auctioning" are just stupid...
...and this is different from philosophy of the past how? Seriously, philosophy has always been at least 95% self-masturbatory bullshit. Nothing's changed.
I have a program for my Palm that lets me print from it via IR on IR enabled printers.
Step 1: Download program
Step 2: Find IR and Postscript enabled printer(s)
Step 3: Annoy somebody beyond reason
(NO PROFIT!!!!)
I never really understood the pricing for a lot of art, I mean I can understand why a really nice picture might be worth a couple hundred dollars -- prints cost money, mounting them costs money and the artists needs to make some money on it. I could easily see paying a couple hundred or more for a picture I really like. Some of these though are ridiculous. Like this print, it says retail price $1200!!! Besides the fact that I can't imagine anybody actually wanting to own that picture I just don't understand where that value comes from. Anybody could make a picture of a Windows XP dialog box saying something like that... it's not even an original idea! Things like that are put up on the web all the time! This one's just as bad and it's $2000.
If you tax e-mails then somebody will make up a new protocol and people will begin to use that, if that new protocol becomes taxed then another new one will pop up, etcetra, etcetra, ad infinitum.
The only way this could work out would be to tax all communication over the internet which I don't think I need to tell you wouldn't work, it'd be like a tax on speaking, just wouldn't work. Furthermore, for it to actually be effective against spammmers the tax per packet or whatever would have to be high enough that it would kill the downloading of any large files.
IGNORING ALL OF THAT there's still the problem of enforcement -- it's somewhere between ridiculously difficult and impossible. Either way spam would still get through.
People who don't understand the internet shouldn't be making laws regulating its use.
I was hoping this article would have a couple pictures of Richard Stallman trying to strangle somebody on the KDE team while being held back by some of his FSF cohorts. I mean, they use kvim and they're developing KDE, which was previously "not free as in freedom".
*sigh* it was still very interesting, but a little disappointing to say the least.
I think a friend of mine said it best; "You can be into ham radios and you can be into computers, but being into both is taking it just a little too far".
...but mosaic wasn't the first web browser, just the first that most people used. Tim Berners-Lee wrote a graphical browser for NeXT -- his preferred platform at the time and the GUI platform he was most familiar with. For the Unixes there were only lame command-line/text-mode browsers at the time, but even those count as browsers that predate Mosaic.
First of all, I would like to say that I don't block the ads because they don't bother me, but really I don't see anything wrong with people who DO block the ads.
I think I have the right to modify any program or file on my computer the same way I have the right to modify anything else I buy -- if I buy a painting I can change the painting however I want, if I buy a car I can modify it however I want, if I buy a videogame system I can modify it anyway I want, if I buy a CD I am allowed to modify the music contained on it any way I want.
For stuff like a CD you might be able to question whether I have the right to redistribute it after I've modified it, but certainly I can modify it and not distribute it.
I like Opera, but I really can't afford to donate (or buy, whatever you want to say) for the non-ad version. When I can I probably will, but right now I can't and I see no reason why I should feel bad about modifying the version I have now. The fact that I'm using it and recommend it to almost everybody I know alone is a more valuable (although less evident and tangible) to them than my paying would be.
Now why is it that scripting languages blow up when projects get bigger?
It's not like this is a feature inherant to scripting languages, Python has very good OO implementation and capabilities and would very easily expand for larger projects. The same is not true of PHP or Perl with their somewhat half-hearted attempts at OO.
Don't get me wrong though you PHP and Perl fans, both of those languages are still great at a lot of things and I'm not trying to slam PHP or Perl. I love PHP, it's a very very fun and useful language, I use it a lot, but there are some things it can't do and some things that Perl can't do that Python, Java and other languages can.
Copyright applies only to creative works in their original form, and it's not ownership; it's a limited monopoly on the rights associated with copying it.
ahh... that's the idea of copyright, but nowadays it's not limited! Copyright has been extended so many times now that it has become effectively indefinite. Very little has come into the public domain now that copyright terms are lasting 70+ years and still growing!
Furthermore, the right to copy is a right "the people" have traded away in copyright law because for the greater part of history (up until maybe 20 years ago) hardly anybody would have taken advantage of their right (they would need a printing press, a record making machine, all kinds of stuff out of their reach!) so it was to their advantage to trade away their right to copy. Unfortunately now "the copyright industry" feels that their monopoly over the copying is a natural right like the freedom of speech.
The MPAA and RIAA do feel that their members own their content and I doubt either Jack Valenti or Hilary Rosen would dispute this.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha, that was the other possibility, that people would just read the subject line and not the post and think "troll". I fucking hate slashdot.
I think it's really strange that anything that promotes DRM is an evil PLOY to steal our rights. I mean, I'm just as paranoid, anti-Microsoft, zealot etc. as the next guy on Slashdot, but I mean come on, it's not like DRM is an inherently evil idea, there IS an arguement for it. I disagree with the arguement but DRM isn't nearly the proven evil of other things.
*cue "you must me new to Slashdot" comments and moderators ignoring or modding down my comment*
"The Great Firewall of China" is China's most spectacular cover-up? What? That doesn't even remotely compare to when 62 dams in China failed in the course of one night. No news of these dams collapsing came out of China until years later despite the fact that this huge catastrophe caused at least 20,000 deaths (some estimate as high as 230,000 but really nobody knows) and over 1,000,000 survivors became homeless or famine-struck as a result of the floods.
Hmm... I thought that was just the way the English spelled it...
Come on, don't mod me down, just realise humour.
Was the Plan9 license ever changed? I know for a while the FSF had a page listing the reasons why they don't consider Plan 9 a "free" OS regardless of the openess of it's source (blah blah, difference between open and free, blah blah, speech, blah blah, gratis).
...so basically I'm too lazy to use the internet to answer my questions... please find answers for me slashdot!
I think it'd be really great if Plan9 were released under a more "free" license.
Talking about how Mozilla and Opera show the advantages of open source software kind of blows up in your face since Opera is closed source.
For some reason a couple people have posted so far questioning the usefullness of this. I've used Trillian's SecureIM encryption a number of times and I'll try to give an example of a situation where encrypted IM was useful.
I needed a root password from my brother, we were both running Trillian so we just turned on SecureIM and he gave it to me. This was far easier than any other encrypted messaging we could have done. We've traded passwords a couple other times the same way.
I just downloaded it, registered, looked around it for a little bit and then uninstalled it.
Does that make me anti-social?
You aren't allowed to patent a business process (i.e. "the assembly line") and I don't understand why this should be any different when the internet, computers or software are concerned. Some software patents like compression algorithms and such are somewhat arguable but patents like "online auctioning" are just stupid...
...and this is different from philosophy of the past how? Seriously, philosophy has always been at least 95% self-masturbatory bullshit. Nothing's changed.
I have a program for my Palm that lets me print from it via IR on IR enabled printers. Step 1: Download program Step 2: Find IR and Postscript enabled printer(s) Step 3: Annoy somebody beyond reason (NO PROFIT!!!!)
If I had access to this robot the _very first_ thing that I would do is make it kick out the jams and dance "the robot".
I never really understood the pricing for a lot of art, I mean I can understand why a really nice picture might be worth a couple hundred dollars -- prints cost money, mounting them costs money and the artists needs to make some money on it. I could easily see paying a couple hundred or more for a picture I really like. Some of these though are ridiculous. Like this print, it says retail price $1200!!! Besides the fact that I can't imagine anybody actually wanting to own that picture I just don't understand where that value comes from. Anybody could make a picture of a Windows XP dialog box saying something like that... it's not even an original idea! Things like that are put up on the web all the time! This one's just as bad and it's $2000.
That's ridiculous.
My company and I will give up IPv4 when you pry it from our cold dead hands.
If you tax e-mails then somebody will make up a new protocol and people will begin to use that, if that new protocol becomes taxed then another new one will pop up, etcetra, etcetra, ad infinitum.
The only way this could work out would be to tax all communication over the internet which I don't think I need to tell you wouldn't work, it'd be like a tax on speaking, just wouldn't work. Furthermore, for it to actually be effective against spammmers the tax per packet or whatever would have to be high enough that it would kill the downloading of any large files.
IGNORING ALL OF THAT there's still the problem of enforcement -- it's somewhere between ridiculously difficult and impossible. Either way spam would still get through.
People who don't understand the internet shouldn't be making laws regulating its use.
I was hoping this article would have a couple pictures of Richard Stallman trying to strangle somebody on the KDE team while being held back by some of his FSF cohorts. I mean, they use kvim and they're developing KDE, which was previously "not free as in freedom".
*sigh* it was still very interesting, but a little disappointing to say the least.
I think a friend of mine said it best; "You can be into ham radios and you can be into computers, but being into both is taking it just a little too far".
His dad "took it too far" by the way.
...but mosaic wasn't the first web browser, just the first that most people used. Tim Berners-Lee wrote a graphical browser for NeXT -- his preferred platform at the time and the GUI platform he was most familiar with. For the Unixes there were only lame command-line/text-mode browsers at the time, but even those count as browsers that predate Mosaic.
First of all, I would like to say that I don't block the ads because they don't bother me, but really I don't see anything wrong with people who DO block the ads.
I think I have the right to modify any program or file on my computer the same way I have the right to modify anything else I buy -- if I buy a painting I can change the painting however I want, if I buy a car I can modify it however I want, if I buy a videogame system I can modify it anyway I want, if I buy a CD I am allowed to modify the music contained on it any way I want.
For stuff like a CD you might be able to question whether I have the right to redistribute it after I've modified it, but certainly I can modify it and not distribute it.
I like Opera, but I really can't afford to donate (or buy, whatever you want to say) for the non-ad version. When I can I probably will, but right now I can't and I see no reason why I should feel bad about modifying the version I have now. The fact that I'm using it and recommend it to almost everybody I know alone is a more valuable (although less evident and tangible) to them than my paying would be.
I'll give them money when I can.
regardless of whther it's been debunked or not, it would still be an amusing quote.
Longer ago than that, I was looking at them on kuro5hin this morning (~10 ET I believe).
Don't get me wrong though you PHP and Perl fans, both of those languages are still great at a lot of things and I'm not trying to slam PHP or Perl. I love PHP, it's a very very fun and useful language, I use it a lot, but there are some things it can't do and some things that Perl can't do that Python, Java and other languages can.
Furthermore, the right to copy is a right "the people" have traded away in copyright law because for the greater part of history (up until maybe 20 years ago) hardly anybody would have taken advantage of their right (they would need a printing press, a record making machine, all kinds of stuff out of their reach!) so it was to their advantage to trade away their right to copy. Unfortunately now "the copyright industry" feels that their monopoly over the copying is a natural right like the freedom of speech.
The MPAA and RIAA do feel that their members own their content and I doubt either Jack Valenti or Hilary Rosen would dispute this.