Exactly, so addressing the reason that people misuse a creation of his is a perfectly good way of answering a loaded question like that.
I disagree, I think that would be out of scope. I think it would have been far more effective to list the legal uses and focus on the positive. It's possible to violate copyright with a lot of different items - cameras, CD Burners, pencil and paper, a photocopier, a scanner, etc. But - that's not exactly "newsworthy", is it?
Also, is there any way to list metrics of exactly what people are downloading via BitTorrent? If there isn't, it's only an opinion that BitTorrent is used primarily for copyright violations. I could argue that the legal uses are numerous, and I can think of a number of sites like this one that have numerous, legal Torrent links, and looking at the traffic stats, Distrowatch gets a lot of hits.
So that fact that a bunch of linux distro's being released as.torrent links means nothing, eh? Just because some people are using BitTorrent to violate copyrights does not mean it has no legitimate use. I can get a shiny new (legal).iso image in far less time over torrent then I can over an http download, in almost every case.
BitTorrent is a tool. Nothing more. It is the person who misuses it, not the tool, that's the problem.
Griping about the RIAA / MPAA would have been completely innappropriate. Besides - if you don't like the RIAA / MPAA, quit sending them your money. You don't *have* to see movies you know... after all, as amazing as the LOTR movies are, I enjoyed the books even more. You also don't have to buy CD's - support your favorite artists by seeing them in concert. But when asked about a legitimate software tool like torrent, discussing the RIAA / MPAA would have been a tangent and seen as a dodge.
I would (and have in fact done so previously) that on Open Source Operating System merely creates a level playing field that no one can exploit the way MS can with Windows.
For example - look at the strides GNOME and KDE have made over the past few years. The progress is amazing, and I doubt it would have been as amazing had they not been in competition with each other.
Linux is, in my opinion, far more capitalistic then Windows, as it fosters good competition in the application space, providing better and better applications.
In your hatred, you have forgotten one crucial principle behind the US legal system: innocent until proven guilty. Yes, the people locked away in Cuba might be "savages" who deserve it, but that determination is made through due process.
They were captured in Afghanistan, at an Al Qaeda run training camp. These are members of a group that have sworn to destroy us, and they have fired on US Military and CIA. They are not innocent.
During WWII American pilots dropped incendiary bombs on various cities, and caused deaths of enemy civilians in the hundreds of thousands at a time. They did so in uniform.
Not to mention nuking two cities, but unfortunately in war there is what is called "collateral damage". Yes, it's unfortunate, but it's a reality that war is a terrible thing. And, while these terrorists are locked away at Gitmo, they aren't in Afghanistan training to hijack planes or shooting at the US Military.
It is better to find a real way to deal with captured terrorists, rather than hide in the legal limbo between US law and the Geneva Convention.
I agree with this statement - we need to hurry up and process these people, and if found guility, execute them. If innocent, dump them back in Afghanistan. Keeping them locked up and fed 3 meals a day is just a waste of taxpayer money.
The people at Gitmo were captured at terrorist training camps that were run by bin Laden and his cronies. These are people in the same group that murdered over 3000 US Civilians in the 9/11 attack, not to mention the first WTC attack, the USS Cole, the Kenyan Embassy, etc.
Al Qaeda's goal is the complete annihilation of Americans, and by wanting to extend them rights that they don't have under our constitution, you demonstrate a grave lack of thoughtfulness into this.
And you're right about one thing - My attitude is "fuck them" because their group has killed thousands of my countrymen, civilian and military, and if given the chance, would do the same to me.
Except for the fact that he's an American citizen, while the savages locked away at Gitmo are not.
The US Constitution applies to US Citizens ONLY. Foreign nationals are granted NO constitutional protections, unless they become US Citizens.
Illegal combatants are designated as such because they do not wear military uniforms, instead they try to blend in with the population, setting off car bombs and trying to kill as many people as possible. If the terrorists want to be treated as POW's under Geneva, then fine - just as soon as they start identifying themselves with some form of uniform or mark (which would have the added benefit of making them easier to find and kill.)
John Henry (Boston Red Sox) can't hire or fire anyone either, that's the GM's job.
And yeah, John Henry led the Red Sox to the series, but honestly Grady Little had a chance - instead of asking Pedro Martinez "How do you feel?" he should have said "Give me the ball.". Also - yes, the Sox came back from a 3-0 deficit in the ALCS, but - I'd credit a lot of that to Curt Schilling stapling his achilles tendon and showing a lot of other millionaire babies on the field what a man does when he wants to win. I can only imagine how bad that hurt...
They probably keep up by asking potential customers who curently use Oracle what they like / dislike about it.
I'm sure they also know that the TPC benchmark record was set by Oracle... running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and so they probably know how much faster they need to make SQL Server in order to compete.
I'm also sure they read the same benchmarks that show ReiserFS kicking NTFS's ass in (hence the upcoming WinFS).
Thundersnatch is right - IE and WMP do indeed run in userland, but the problem is that typical windows users log in with an Administrator account (aka root) allowing these applications access to everything.
If you were to compare a clean install of Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and were to compare all of the products (IE, WMP, Wordpad, etc. vs. KDE, mplayer, gvim) to a major distro like Mandrake or Fedora Core, I think that not only would you find that the full Linux distro has fewer bugs and exploits, but the damage potential would be much, much less in Linux then under Windows, since Linux does a much better job with memory access permissions.
Even some critical flaws in Linux only affect the user (who can easily be deleted and re-added), whereas most critical flaws in Windows severely damage the entire system.
That's funny - I had a CSE professor deduct points for NOT using a recursive function. Instead, I used an iterative solution because there was a level of recursion that would blow the stack and crash the program if I had done it his way.. When I pointed this out, the Prof's response was "I don't care about memory or the stack, I just want to type less."
Further proving that those who can, do, and those who can't, teach.
No, but this certainly favors Open Source - as severe exploits are typically fixed far faster in open source projects than they are in closed source projects.
Also - it's better to know there is a chance you could hit with an exploit, and take steps such as a backup, or closing down a firewall port, etc., then to be caught by an exploit with your pants down. If there's a possibility my machine could get 0wned, I want to know about immediately so I can keep an eye out for it if nothing else.
From a Biblical perspective, Human bodies were not created with death in mind. Adam and Eve, and their offspring, were meant to be immortal. However, when they sinned, and sin was introduced into creation, sin began corrupting everything and introduced death into nature.
What's also interesting is that Humans were *not* allowed to eat animals until after the flood, and I honestly do not remember when Methuselah (the oldest guy in the Bible) lived (pre or post flood). If he lived pre-flood, perhaps the longevity could also be partially attributed to some kind of now extinct plant that people consumed. But, it seems that the more that time passes in the Old Testament, life spans on average seem to get less and less - which could be caused by the continuing sin decay of creation.
Linus Torvalds has a Masters Degree in Computer Science, and a "real job", and yet he's a "Pro-Am?"
Alan Cox has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied Mathematics, and a "real job", and yet he's a "Pro-Am"?
I have a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Texas and a "real job", and I'm a Pro-Am when I contribute to open source projects?
I feel insulted by this article, and I strongly disagree with the point that it makes. While it is true that there are Amateur OSS contributors, when you look at the major players (note: I'm not claiming to be a major player.) they all have advanced degrees in Computer Science, Math, or another Engineering method. These are some exceptionally bright people, and to dismiss them as "Professional Amateurs" does them a pretty great disservice. Just because an OSS contributer is not getting paid does NOT make them an amateur anymore then a laywer doing pro-bono work is an amateur.
Capsella ruled. I think that toy more than any other fostered my inner engineer. The gears, the floaters, the batteries, the propellors, designing a machine out of capsella that would walk, etc... man I wish those were still on the market - I'd buy them for my nephews.
Well, I was only half kidding. The Clippy part was a joke, but as far as a Service Pack 3 for XP doing something to try and hurt Google, well.... Microsoft has done it before. Just go to Microsoft's own website and look at the list of applications broken by Service Pack 2 for XP. Many more are NOT listed. For example, I was unable to get JDK 1.4.2_04 to install on a machine with SP2. 1.4.2_05 does, but 04 would not.
Not to mention - and someone who knows for sure, help me job my memory - But wasn't there a lawsuit where IBM sued MS (and won) because an NT 4 Service Pack (2?) would INTENTIONALLY burn up Cyrix processors? I remember reading about that a number of years ago.
Re:What reason would someone switch?
on
MSN Search Roundup
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Well they do until Windows XP Service Pack 3, where your IE home page is set to the MSN search, and if you try to type in Google's URL, Clippy comes up and says "I see you're trying to search the web. Would you like assistance in using MSN Search?"
I really don't want a whole lot of unification on Linux. I use different distro's for different tasks: For example, for a system recovery / rescue disk, I use Knoppix. For my in-law's home computer, I installed Mandrake, and it's easy to use configuration tools. For the datacenter server I'm designing at work for a project, I'm recommending Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Microsoft has the unparralleled advantage of maintain strict control on its own platform. It can push an agenda much more easily than a disparate group of distros.
Yes, in fact they can break your application, and even burn your CPU with a Service Pack. (Google Microsoft Service Pack Cyrix for more info). With Linux, if you decide you don't like Fedora Core, there's Mandrake or SuSE, along with hundreds of others.
I also disagree with everything being harder under Linux. Setting up my home DSL connection was a snap, and as far as applications even when my wife boots my machine into Windows she's running the same OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Opera that I'm running on my Linux drive. The only reason there's Windows at all is because she needs Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop etc. and refuses to learn the GIMP.
Now a standard type of app installer? That's a fantastic idea. I'd love to see something along the lines of Wise Installer or InstallShield for Linux. Wizard UI's are ridiculously easy to write, and it's a pretty safe bet that any linux distro is going to support Perl for scripting... and InstallShield really isn't much more then that. It would also enable more non-techies to run Linux, because most non-techies are terrified of their computers and tpying "make" followed by "make install" is just too tough for them. (Yes, it's *their* problem, but we can be magnanimous and allay their fears...)
Unfortunately, there is a number of factual errors in your post:
The only connection to the Bush campaign that the Swifties had was a lawyer, Benjamin Ginsberg. Ginsberg merely advised them on the McCain/Fiengold law. There is NO coordination between the Swifties and the RNC, or the Bush Campaign.
Contrast that to how many special events (Bush Bash) that are being coordinated between the DNC and MoveOn.org.
Secondly, Bush earned the required number of points every year in the Guard, thus fulfilling his requirement to the Guard.
Okay, so clearly the liars trying to trash John Kerry are getting nearly three times the press in the past six months as the press has spent looking into legitimate issues with Bush's record in the past 12 years.
Like using obviously forged documents from Kinko's? Oh wait - no, that's Dan Rather that thinks memos typed up in MS Word and faxed from a Kinko's in Abeliene are authentic.
By the way - Name ONE charge that the Swift Boat Vets have retracted. Now contrast that to how many times John Kerry has changed HIS story on the matter. Big difference, isn't there?
As far as lying, I can name several John Kerry lies off the top of my head, like spending Christmas in Cambodia, being in Vietnam when MLK was killed (hint: Kerry arrived in Vietnam MONTHS after the MLK assasination).
it is important to know what that person was doing when it was their time to serve
and letting the government tell them what they can and cannot know.
Right. Because we all know how much press the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth got from CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN when they made they're anti-Kerry charges. If the media was in the White House's pocket, the lead story for the past month would be Kerry's war record and the allegations that he padded his record to make him look like a war hero. Instead, for the 4th time in his political career, the liberal media is making the *still* unfounded allegations that Bush went AWOL, even though he earned his required points every year he was in the guard.
Hint to Democrats: The Bush / Guard story had no legs when Ann Richards tried it, it had no legs when Gary Mauro tried it, it had no legs when Al Gore tried it, and it has no legs now.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree, I think that would be out of scope. I think it would have been far more effective to list the legal uses and focus on the positive. It's possible to violate copyright with a lot of different items - cameras, CD Burners, pencil and paper, a photocopier, a scanner, etc. But - that's not exactly "newsworthy", is it?
Also, is there any way to list metrics of exactly what people are downloading via BitTorrent? If there isn't, it's only an opinion that BitTorrent is used primarily for copyright violations. I could argue that the legal uses are numerous, and I can think of a number of sites like this one that have numerous, legal Torrent links, and looking at the traffic stats, Distrowatch gets a lot of hits.
So that fact that a bunch of linux distro's being released as .torrent links means nothing, eh? Just because some people are using BitTorrent to violate copyrights does not mean it has no legitimate use. I can get a shiny new (legal) .iso image in far less time over torrent then I can over an http download, in almost every case.
BitTorrent is a tool. Nothing more. It is the person who misuses it, not the tool, that's the problem.
Griping about the RIAA / MPAA would have been completely innappropriate. Besides - if you don't like the RIAA / MPAA, quit sending them your money. You don't *have* to see movies you know... after all, as amazing as the LOTR movies are, I enjoyed the books even more. You also don't have to buy CD's - support your favorite artists by seeing them in concert. But when asked about a legitimate software tool like torrent, discussing the RIAA / MPAA would have been a tangent and seen as a dodge.
For example - look at the strides GNOME and KDE have made over the past few years. The progress is amazing, and I doubt it would have been as amazing had they not been in competition with each other.
Linux is, in my opinion, far more capitalistic then Windows, as it fosters good competition in the application space, providing better and better applications.
They were captured in Afghanistan, at an Al Qaeda run training camp. These are members of a group that have sworn to destroy us, and they have fired on US Military and CIA. They are not innocent.
During WWII American pilots dropped incendiary bombs on various cities, and caused deaths of enemy civilians in the hundreds of thousands at a time. They did so in uniform.
Not to mention nuking two cities, but unfortunately in war there is what is called "collateral damage". Yes, it's unfortunate, but it's a reality that war is a terrible thing. And, while these terrorists are locked away at Gitmo, they aren't in Afghanistan training to hijack planes or shooting at the US Military.
It is better to find a real way to deal with captured terrorists, rather than hide in the legal limbo between US law and the Geneva Convention.
I agree with this statement - we need to hurry up and process these people, and if found guility, execute them. If innocent, dump them back in Afghanistan. Keeping them locked up and fed 3 meals a day is just a waste of taxpayer money.
Al Qaeda's goal is the complete annihilation of Americans, and by wanting to extend them rights that they don't have under our constitution, you demonstrate a grave lack of thoughtfulness into this.
And you're right about one thing - My attitude is "fuck them" because their group has killed thousands of my countrymen, civilian and military, and if given the chance, would do the same to me.
The US Constitution applies to US Citizens ONLY. Foreign nationals are granted NO constitutional protections, unless they become US Citizens.
Illegal combatants are designated as such because they do not wear military uniforms, instead they try to blend in with the population, setting off car bombs and trying to kill as many people as possible. If the terrorists want to be treated as POW's under Geneva, then fine - just as soon as they start identifying themselves with some form of uniform or mark (which would have the added benefit of making them easier to find and kill.)
Also, it's spelled "indefinitely".
And yeah, John Henry led the Red Sox to the series, but honestly Grady Little had a chance - instead of asking Pedro Martinez "How do you feel?" he should have said "Give me the ball.". Also - yes, the Sox came back from a 3-0 deficit in the ALCS, but - I'd credit a lot of that to Curt Schilling stapling his achilles tendon and showing a lot of other millionaire babies on the field what a man does when he wants to win. I can only imagine how bad that hurt...
Oh - it's not Molester, it's Mole-Ster (like Hulkster, brutha). Hm.
I'm sure they also know that the TPC benchmark record was set by Oracle... running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and so they probably know how much faster they need to make SQL Server in order to compete.
I'm also sure they read the same benchmarks that show ReiserFS kicking NTFS's ass in (hence the upcoming WinFS).
If you were to compare a clean install of Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and were to compare all of the products (IE, WMP, Wordpad, etc. vs. KDE, mplayer, gvim) to a major distro like Mandrake or Fedora Core, I think that not only would you find that the full Linux distro has fewer bugs and exploits, but the damage potential would be much, much less in Linux then under Windows, since Linux does a much better job with memory access permissions.
Even some critical flaws in Linux only affect the user (who can easily be deleted and re-added), whereas most critical flaws in Windows severely damage the entire system.
Further proving that those who can, do, and those who can't, teach.
Also - it's better to know there is a chance you could hit with an exploit, and take steps such as a backup, or closing down a firewall port, etc., then to be caught by an exploit with your pants down. If there's a possibility my machine could get 0wned, I want to know about immediately so I can keep an eye out for it if nothing else.
It would certainly be better than the room full of chimps on typewriters sitcoms are using now.
What's also interesting is that Humans were *not* allowed to eat animals until after the flood, and I honestly do not remember when Methuselah (the oldest guy in the Bible) lived (pre or post flood). If he lived pre-flood, perhaps the longevity could also be partially attributed to some kind of now extinct plant that people consumed. But, it seems that the more that time passes in the Old Testament, life spans on average seem to get less and less - which could be caused by the continuing sin decay of creation.
Alan Cox has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied Mathematics, and a "real job", and yet he's a "Pro-Am"?
I have a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Texas and a "real job", and I'm a Pro-Am when I contribute to open source projects?
I feel insulted by this article, and I strongly disagree with the point that it makes. While it is true that there are Amateur OSS contributors, when you look at the major players (note: I'm not claiming to be a major player.) they all have advanced degrees in Computer Science, Math, or another Engineering method. These are some exceptionally bright people, and to dismiss them as "Professional Amateurs" does them a pretty great disservice. Just because an OSS contributer is not getting paid does NOT make them an amateur anymore then a laywer doing pro-bono work is an amateur.
$./strongbad_mail
Dear Strong Bad,
How do you type with boxing gloves on your hands?
$rm -f
DELETED!
And for the rest of you slashdotters - Help this guy get a job - buy Libbey Glass! Or buy a Jeep. Jeep's still open there, isn't it?
Capsella ruled. I think that toy more than any other fostered my inner engineer. The gears, the floaters, the batteries, the propellors, designing a machine out of capsella that would walk, etc... man I wish those were still on the market - I'd buy them for my nephews.
Not to mention - and someone who knows for sure, help me job my memory - But wasn't there a lawsuit where IBM sued MS (and won) because an NT 4 Service Pack (2?) would INTENTIONALLY burn up Cyrix processors? I remember reading about that a number of years ago.
Or did you not get that memo? :)
Microsoft has the unparralleled advantage of maintain strict control on its own platform. It can push an agenda much more easily than a disparate group of distros.
Yes, in fact they can break your application, and even burn your CPU with a Service Pack. (Google Microsoft Service Pack Cyrix for more info). With Linux, if you decide you don't like Fedora Core, there's Mandrake or SuSE, along with hundreds of others.
I also disagree with everything being harder under Linux. Setting up my home DSL connection was a snap, and as far as applications even when my wife boots my machine into Windows she's running the same OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Opera that I'm running on my Linux drive. The only reason there's Windows at all is because she needs Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop etc. and refuses to learn the GIMP.
Now a standard type of app installer? That's a fantastic idea. I'd love to see something along the lines of Wise Installer or InstallShield for Linux. Wizard UI's are ridiculously easy to write, and it's a pretty safe bet that any linux distro is going to support Perl for scripting... and InstallShield really isn't much more then that. It would also enable more non-techies to run Linux, because most non-techies are terrified of their computers and tpying "make" followed by "make install" is just too tough for them. (Yes, it's *their* problem, but we can be magnanimous and allay their fears...)
The only connection to the Bush campaign that the Swifties had was a lawyer, Benjamin Ginsberg. Ginsberg merely advised them on the McCain/Fiengold law. There is NO coordination between the Swifties and the RNC, or the Bush Campaign.
Contrast that to how many special events (Bush Bash) that are being coordinated between the DNC and MoveOn.org.
Secondly, Bush earned the required number of points every year in the Guard, thus fulfilling his requirement to the Guard.
Okay, so clearly the liars trying to trash John Kerry are getting nearly three times the press in the past six months as the press has spent looking into legitimate issues with Bush's record in the past 12 years.
Like using obviously forged documents from Kinko's? Oh wait - no, that's Dan Rather that thinks memos typed up in MS Word and faxed from a Kinko's in Abeliene are authentic.
By the way - Name ONE charge that the Swift Boat Vets have retracted. Now contrast that to how many times John Kerry has changed HIS story on the matter. Big difference, isn't there?
As far as lying, I can name several John Kerry lies off the top of my head, like spending Christmas in Cambodia, being in Vietnam when MLK was killed (hint: Kerry arrived in Vietnam MONTHS after the MLK assasination).
it is important to know what that person was doing when it was their time to serve
And you should know, that by his own admission in front of the US Senate, under Oath, that John Kerry spent his time in Vietnam committing atrocities and War Crimes.
Would you vote for Lynndie England for President? Kerry admits to doing much, much worse.
Right. Because we all know how much press the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth got from CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN when they made they're anti-Kerry charges. If the media was in the White House's pocket, the lead story for the past month would be Kerry's war record and the allegations that he padded his record to make him look like a war hero. Instead, for the 4th time in his political career, the liberal media is making the *still* unfounded allegations that Bush went AWOL, even though he earned his required points every year he was in the guard.
Hint to Democrats: The Bush / Guard story had no legs when Ann Richards tried it, it had no legs when Gary Mauro tried it, it had no legs when Al Gore tried it, and it has no legs now.
Oh wait - you're talking about the PC, not the player. Never mind.