Well, downloading copyrighted, not-for-public-redistribution content *is* illegal, but if you bought it later, I don't see how the RIAA could complain. I mean, you gave them the money, so one way or the other, they and the artists got paid. It would seem a little wrong-headed to say, "You gave us the money we asked for, but you did it after breaking the law -- you need to give us *more* money."
Then again, I don't think suing your customers is a good idea either...
Umm... speaking as the proud owner of a 20GB second-gen (touch-wheel) iPod, the advantages over a MP3 CD player are:
- better interface (c'mon, you *really* want to find the song you want to hear on the dinky little two-line LCD screens?)
- smaller (ugh. can't really slip a CD player in your pocket, unless you have *really* big pockets.)
- longer battery life (I get six to eight hours on a single charge. Two AA batteries can't compete.)
- larger selection (with iPods closing on 60GB, you can store a *lot* of music on there).
- ability to use it as a portable hard drive (so you can take your video files, documents, and anything else you need with you -- especially helpful if you routinely schlep large files or tons of smaller ones. How about having ISO's of your favorite Linux distro ready to burn wherever you are?)
There's a lot of reasons the iPods are nice devices -- sure, you can find another product that does something functionally similar, but it won't do it in a package with the same form-factor, nor will it do it as well. Heck, if price is your problem, you can find good used 10GB iPods on eBay for about the same price as your MP3 CD player.
I agree that 3D is over-used. It doesn't *have* to be used to create fun games -- all of these play on Linux, and most (maybe all?) play on Windows and other platforms as well.
SuperTux is a Mario Brothers "clone" that's really quite nice. Apparently it was the Linux Game Tome Game of the Month for March 2004, which is like Extreme Makeover for Linux games. OpenGL acceleration is nice (gives me about 30fps extra on my AMD64 3200+ with nVidia FX5900XT card), but it runs pretty decently without it. You should note that to make Tux run or shoot fireballs in the game, you need to hold down the left Control key... I didn't know that and ended up cheating with the level editor. I finally discovered the key-mappings, and I'm currently slightly addicted to it...:)
Pingus is a cool, open-source, penguin-themed (of course:) Lemmings-like game that doesn't require any kind of acceleration, just a decent system. There aren't many levels available yet, but it's a good-looking game and fun to play around with.
Project: Starfighter is also pretty good, although I find the levels a little too hard for my liking. Hardware acceleration is pretty much required, unfortunately.
And there's always the venerable and *highly* addictive Frozen Bubble... that game has wasted so much of my time... and I've enjoyed every minute!
I've been really impressed -- there seems to be an explosion of good, free games for Linux lately, though it could just be that I'm finally finding out about them. Although I don't have too much of a problem with 3D, I knew Neverball was getting to me when I started dreaming about it...
As should be (but obviously isn't) common knowledge by now, you can right-click on a folder, select "Browse Folder," and use the old "browser" Nautilus.
*Or* you can go to the Gnome menu, select "Browse Filesystem," and use the old "browser" Nautilus.
*Or* you can edit gconf. *Or* you can use the terminal. *Or* you can just get used to the new spatial mode. Frankly, I don't mind spatial mode (middle-click opens a new folder and closes the parent, making navigating a deep directory structure less painful).
But it is quite easy to go back to "browser" mode, whatever your preference.
It is slightly worrying. What's *more* worrying is that, in a proprietary software company, the software package might have been *released* like that, because no one on the devel team thought it was a bad idea. That's the beauty of open-source -- you're bringing many, many eyes outside the devel team to look at and critique your design decisions, and if something is flawed, someone will notice it and persuade people with CVS access to fix it, many times before the software in question is released. In a sense, we're *all* part of the devel team, if we want to be.
I'm serious -- my music collection is becoming stale, and, hey, a random Slashdotter has as valid an opinion as anyone else I'd be liable to ask.:) So -- what are you listening to?
Perhaps it's IE4 I'm remembering. I *personally* switched at IE3, partly because of the price.
All the same, when IE3 came out there were *not* a lot of Web sites that required things like switch in Javascript or rollover images. The Popup Menace was still a few years off.
[ObGrumble]Well, if they would sell something even *vaguely* "genre" at airport bookstores, instead of expensive, glossy-covered versions of the New York Times Bestseller List over and over and over until anyone trapped in the building has lost their marbles or bought something...[/ObGrumble]
Many schools will allow a magazine article to stand in for a book.
Yeah, because if they're not reading a novel or a textbook, they shouldn't be reading.
Seriously, don't you get that impression? At my school, it was "You Must Read and Take Computerized Tests on X Pages Worth of Novels That We Deem Good and Appropriate and Can Afford to Purchase Tests For. If You Do Not, You Shall Fail." It didn't motivate me in the slightest to read -- I barely squeaked by on the limits, and I always had my nose in a book. Most of the tests were on books I wasn't interested in (Great Expectations... yeah, right) or had already read. Magazines are fine -- really. You know that idea that boys read less than girls? It's bullshit, if you count forms of reading that aren't novels. Even crosswords involve reading, and, hey, if kids enjoy them, there's nothing wrong with that.
And for the record, I'm more than halfway through Neal Stephenson's The Confusion.
If schools want to promote literacy, they should encourage the enjoyment of reading in all its forms, not just focus on novel-reading.
(cf. Thirteen Ways to Raise a Non-Reader from Horn Book -- PDF, sorry. See, for example, "12. Make sure your kid reads only books that are 'challenging.' Easy books are a complete waste of time. That goes double for comic books and Mad magazine." I tell you, if my parents had followed that advice, I would be *so* much better off... [/sarcasm])
Actually, the Google Zeitgeist statistics *support* the idea that Firefox, Mozilla, and other browsers (eg. Opera) are gaining marketshare. Look really closely at the lavender line that represents Mozilla at the bottom of the graph -- see it rising? The light yellow line that signifies "Other" browsers is rising too. The rising red line and descending blue and yellow lines that form a big X on the graph simply show that most users are switching from IE 5.0 and 5.5 to 6.0.
Gotta make sure you're looking at the right statistics, y'know... (wink)
The Taguba Report -- see Part 1 sections 5 and following (the findings on detainee abuse).
From Part 1 section 6:
6. (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:
1. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees;
jumping on their naked feet;
2. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and
female detainees;
3. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various
sexually explicit positions for photographing;
4. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and
keeping them naked for several days at a time;
5. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's
underwear;
6. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate
themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
7. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and
then jumping on them;
8. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box,
with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his
sfingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
9. (S) Writing "I am a Rapest" (sic) on the leg of a
detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old
fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
10. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked
detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a
picture;
11. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female
detainee;
12. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles)
to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least
one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
13. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
And from section 8:
8. (U) In addition, several detainees also described the following acts of abuse, which under the circumstances, I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses (ANNEX 26):
1. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the
phosphoric liquid on detainees;
2. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
3. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
4. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a
chair;
5. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;
6. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the
wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed
against the wall in his cell;
7. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and
perhaps a broom stick.
8. h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and
intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one
instance actually biting a detainee.
Except libraries *already* had to answer to warrants. Nobody is disputing that that is probably a good idea.
The *bad* part is that they can get a warrant without dealing with a judge or jury or having to prove anything beyond "we think this guy is doing something bad" -- and then the librarians can't tell anyone about it.
The problem is, you can't kill *all* terrorists everywhere without killing every person on the face of the earth. Nuking Mecca would kill a few Muslim terrorists, but to kill the rest you would have to nuke Iraq and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and Pakistan... And then maybe Chechnya, and North Korea, and China, and Cuba, and Libya... and then you realize that some US citizens (Unabomber, Okalhoma City) are terrorists... You can't "win" the War on Terrorism that way.
If Bush were to nuke Mecca, I think Muslims would be the least of his worries. It would make a *lot* of US citizens willing to avail themselves of the opportunity promised them by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson -- namely, that when the government ceases to serve the people's interests, breaking its contract with them, then the people have the right to instate a new government that does.
Maybe those Second Amendment rights are good for something after all.
Why does Microsoft care about the market share of a product that it bundles for free with its operating system? They aren't losing money when people switch to Mozilla or Opera.
IE3 was gaining market shares on Netscape 3 and it was a much worse browser.
Umm... no. IE3 was at the very least comparable to Netscape 3, and it was in general a nicer browser to work with. Microsoft's business practices (ie. giving away IE) may have been shady, but part of the reason they won the First Browser War was that IE was simply a better browser.
The theater I work at had an intermission for the Civil War drama Gods and Generals, mostly because, at almost four hours, the film was too large to fit on a single platter, so during the intermission the projectionist had to run to the booth and thread the second half into the projector.
That and allowing people to void their bladders and/or purchase additional popcorn and pop, of course.
I understand your confusion, and I think the difference boils down to this:
The problem with copy-protection on music CDs is that (as it is currently implemented) it infringes on our fair-use right to rip our CDs. Not to mention that implementations have been known to destroy speakers, render Macs inoperable, install unwanted programs on users' computers, and other nasty things.
Copy protection on software has generally proved to be more of a pain to legitimate users than to w4r3z d00ds. It's an extra hoop to jump through, and it's especially annoying when it prevents people from reinstalling software after a hard drive crash or suchlike. *If* a "perfect" copy-protection scheme could be devised, (perhaps a la Palladium) that does *not* prevent computers from running "unauthorized" OSS software, and does *not* prevent backups, reinstalls, and other such necessary things, but *does* prevent unauthorized duplication of, say, XP and Office CD's, then that copy-protection will be all right.
That said, the more annoying the copy-protection technologies become, and the more effective they become at preventing average people from installing pirated software, the more appealing OSS will look -- as long as those technologies don't prevent people from running OSS in the first place.
That's a good point. As the AC mentioned, it's supported by the C99 standard but *not* the ANSI (C90) standard. I prefer to declare stuff as I go along because I find it makes my code more manageable, and since the compilers I'm using support C99, I haven't had any problems with it. I wasn't aware the change had been made, though, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
If you're using a compiler that gets a little -pedantic, all you have to do is move the variable declarations to the top of the function.
Right -- if my memory hasn't failed me, in GW-BASIC it was
10 CLS 20 SCREEN 7
You're comparing kumquats to laptops, however, since most BASIC variants (and in fact most operating systems of the era) *started* with a black screen. While the SDL code may be longer (though not by much) it is a *lot* more powerful.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, well, you can still use the HP wireless card and the DVD-ROM drive.
That would be 'I' as in "sit," making the word "prihmer."
Well, downloading copyrighted, not-for-public-redistribution content *is* illegal, but if you bought it later, I don't see how the RIAA could complain. I mean, you gave them the money, so one way or the other, they and the artists got paid. It would seem a little wrong-headed to say, "You gave us the money we asked for, but you did it after breaking the law -- you need to give us *more* money."
Then again, I don't think suing your customers is a good idea either...
Umm... speaking as the proud owner of a 20GB second-gen (touch-wheel) iPod, the advantages over a MP3 CD player are:
- better interface (c'mon, you *really* want to find the song you want to hear on the dinky little two-line LCD screens?)
- smaller (ugh. can't really slip a CD player in your pocket, unless you have *really* big pockets.)
- longer battery life (I get six to eight hours on a single charge. Two AA batteries can't compete.)
- larger selection (with iPods closing on 60GB, you can store a *lot* of music on there).
- ability to use it as a portable hard drive (so you can take your video files, documents, and anything else you need with you -- especially helpful if you routinely schlep large files or tons of smaller ones. How about having ISO's of your favorite Linux distro ready to burn wherever you are?)
There's a lot of reasons the iPods are nice devices -- sure, you can find another product that does something functionally similar, but it won't do it in a package with the same form-factor, nor will it do it as well. Heck, if price is your problem, you can find good used 10GB iPods on eBay for about the same price as your MP3 CD player.
I agree that 3D is over-used. It doesn't *have* to be used to create fun games -- all of these play on Linux, and most (maybe all?) play on Windows and other platforms as well.
:)
:) Lemmings-like game that doesn't require any kind of acceleration, just a decent system. There aren't many levels available yet, but it's a good-looking game and fun to play around with.
SuperTux is a Mario Brothers "clone" that's really quite nice. Apparently it was the Linux Game Tome Game of the Month for March 2004, which is like Extreme Makeover for Linux games. OpenGL acceleration is nice (gives me about 30fps extra on my AMD64 3200+ with nVidia FX5900XT card), but it runs pretty decently without it. You should note that to make Tux run or shoot fireballs in the game, you need to hold down the left Control key... I didn't know that and ended up cheating with the level editor. I finally discovered the key-mappings, and I'm currently slightly addicted to it...
Pingus is a cool, open-source, penguin-themed (of course
Project: Starfighter is also pretty good, although I find the levels a little too hard for my liking. Hardware acceleration is pretty much required, unfortunately.
And there's always the venerable and *highly* addictive Frozen Bubble... that game has wasted so much of my time... and I've enjoyed every minute!
I've been really impressed -- there seems to be an explosion of good, free games for Linux lately, though it could just be that I'm finally finding out about them. Although I don't have too much of a problem with 3D, I knew Neverball was getting to me when I started dreaming about it...
As should be (but obviously isn't) common knowledge by now, you can right-click on a folder, select "Browse Folder," and use the old "browser" Nautilus.
*Or* you can go to the Gnome menu, select "Browse Filesystem," and use the old "browser" Nautilus.
*Or* you can edit gconf. *Or* you can use the terminal. *Or* you can just get used to the new spatial mode. Frankly, I don't mind spatial mode (middle-click opens a new folder and closes the parent, making navigating a deep directory structure less painful).
But it is quite easy to go back to "browser" mode, whatever your preference.
Hmm... grandparent poster has multiple-personality disorder, methinks? (Or someone else has hir account password...)
:)
Give the man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach the man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
Shouldn't that be, "Give a man a solution, and you solve his problem for a day. Teach a man to RTFM, and you solve his problems for a lifetime"?
Umm... why would you RTFHTML? You only need to RTFHTML if you don't have a Web browser installed and are telnetting to port 80...
(wink)
It is slightly worrying. What's *more* worrying is that, in a proprietary software company, the software package might have been *released* like that, because no one on the devel team thought it was a bad idea. That's the beauty of open-source -- you're bringing many, many eyes outside the devel team to look at and critique your design decisions, and if something is flawed, someone will notice it and persuade people with CVS access to fix it, many times before the software in question is released. In a sense, we're *all* part of the devel team, if we want to be.
Go Mozilla!
*Cough*CrossoverOffice*Cough*...
Care to name some?
:) So -- what are you listening to?
I'm serious -- my music collection is becoming stale, and, hey, a random Slashdotter has as valid an opinion as anyone else I'd be liable to ask.
Perhaps it's IE4 I'm remembering. I *personally* switched at IE3, partly because of the price.
All the same, when IE3 came out there were *not* a lot of Web sites that required things like switch in Javascript or rollover images. The Popup Menace was still a few years off.
[ObGrumble]Well, if they would sell something even *vaguely* "genre" at airport bookstores, instead of expensive, glossy-covered versions of the New York Times Bestseller List over and over and over until anyone trapped in the building has lost their marbles or bought something...[/ObGrumble]
Many schools will allow a magazine article to stand in for a book.
Yeah, because if they're not reading a novel or a textbook, they shouldn't be reading.
Seriously, don't you get that impression? At my school, it was "You Must Read and Take Computerized Tests on X Pages Worth of Novels That We Deem Good and Appropriate and Can Afford to Purchase Tests For. If You Do Not, You Shall Fail." It didn't motivate me in the slightest to read -- I barely squeaked by on the limits, and I always had my nose in a book. Most of the tests were on books I wasn't interested in (Great Expectations... yeah, right) or had already read. Magazines are fine -- really. You know that idea that boys read less than girls? It's bullshit, if you count forms of reading that aren't novels. Even crosswords involve reading, and, hey, if kids enjoy them, there's nothing wrong with that.
And for the record, I'm more than halfway through Neal Stephenson's The Confusion.
If schools want to promote literacy, they should encourage the enjoyment of reading in all its forms, not just focus on novel-reading.
(cf. Thirteen Ways to Raise a Non-Reader from Horn Book -- PDF, sorry. See, for example, "12. Make sure your kid reads only books that are 'challenging.' Easy books are a complete waste of time. That goes double for comic books and Mad magazine." I tell you, if my parents had followed that advice, I would be *so* much better off... [/sarcasm])
Actually, the Google Zeitgeist statistics *support* the idea that Firefox, Mozilla, and other browsers (eg. Opera) are gaining marketshare. Look really closely at the lavender line that represents Mozilla at the bottom of the graph -- see it rising? The light yellow line that signifies "Other" browsers is rising too. The rising red line and descending blue and yellow lines that form a big X on the graph simply show that most users are switching from IE 5.0 and 5.5 to 6.0.
Gotta make sure you're looking at the right statistics, y'know... (wink)
The US today is more polarized than in any time since the Civil War.
You have a source on this? I'm curious...
From Part 1 section 6:
And from section 8:
Except libraries *already* had to answer to warrants. Nobody is disputing that that is probably a good idea.
The *bad* part is that they can get a warrant without dealing with a judge or jury or having to prove anything beyond "we think this guy is doing something bad" -- and then the librarians can't tell anyone about it.
Power corrupts.
I hope I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.
The problem is, you can't kill *all* terrorists everywhere without killing every person on the face of the earth. Nuking Mecca would kill a few Muslim terrorists, but to kill the rest you would have to nuke Iraq and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and Pakistan... And then maybe Chechnya, and North Korea, and China, and Cuba, and Libya... and then you realize that some US citizens (Unabomber, Okalhoma City) are terrorists... You can't "win" the War on Terrorism that way.
If Bush were to nuke Mecca, I think Muslims would be the least of his worries. It would make a *lot* of US citizens willing to avail themselves of the opportunity promised them by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson -- namely, that when the government ceases to serve the people's interests, breaking its contract with them, then the people have the right to instate a new government that does.
Maybe those Second Amendment rights are good for something after all.
Why does Microsoft care about the market share of a product that it bundles for free with its operating system? They aren't losing money when people switch to Mozilla or Opera.
IE3 was gaining market shares on Netscape 3 and it was a much worse browser.
Umm... no. IE3 was at the very least comparable to Netscape 3, and it was in general a nicer browser to work with. Microsoft's business practices (ie. giving away IE) may have been shady, but part of the reason they won the First Browser War was that IE was simply a better browser.
The theater I work at had an intermission for the Civil War drama Gods and Generals, mostly because, at almost four hours, the film was too large to fit on a single platter, so during the intermission the projectionist had to run to the booth and thread the second half into the projector.
That and allowing people to void their bladders and/or purchase additional popcorn and pop, of course.
I understand your confusion, and I think the difference boils down to this:
The problem with copy-protection on music CDs is that (as it is currently implemented) it infringes on our fair-use right to rip our CDs. Not to mention that implementations have been known to destroy speakers, render Macs inoperable, install unwanted programs on users' computers, and other nasty things.
Copy protection on software has generally proved to be more of a pain to legitimate users than to w4r3z d00ds. It's an extra hoop to jump through, and it's especially annoying when it prevents people from reinstalling software after a hard drive crash or suchlike. *If* a "perfect" copy-protection scheme could be devised, (perhaps a la Palladium) that does *not* prevent computers from running "unauthorized" OSS software, and does *not* prevent backups, reinstalls, and other such necessary things, but *does* prevent unauthorized duplication of, say, XP and Office CD's, then that copy-protection will be all right.
That said, the more annoying the copy-protection technologies become, and the more effective they become at preventing average people from installing pirated software, the more appealing OSS will look -- as long as those technologies don't prevent people from running OSS in the first place.
That's a good point. As the AC mentioned, it's supported by the C99 standard but *not* the ANSI (C90) standard. I prefer to declare stuff as I go along because I find it makes my code more manageable, and since the compilers I'm using support C99, I haven't had any problems with it. I wasn't aware the change had been made, though, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
If you're using a compiler that gets a little -pedantic, all you have to do is move the variable declarations to the top of the function.