whoop-de-do, we've got another one. so you have a perfectly working battery that's been around for a while too? honestly, who cares? so you were lucky. does that help any of the other people that have useless paperweight batteries? i think not.
seriously, give it up. if this wasn't a significant problem (i.e., a large number of customers with serious product usability issues), this wouldn't be getting so much press. but it is. so be glad that you have a perfectly working two year old ipod battery. but please, don't be so arrogant to assume that just because you haven't had any problems, everyone else's issues are invalid.
i'm with you on that one. a "free market" economy implies (at least to me), that all things are equal in the participants of that economy. that means same cost of living, same median wages, same economic structure, same industry regulatory bodies (or at least multiple bodies with similar regulations). while we're talking about the tech sector, that also means same technological infrastructure and same level of education.
i don't see "because it's cheaper" as a valid excuse in and of itself to do anything. the purpose of a government is to allow the people that it represents (the people, not corporations) to prosper and live well. though a part of me feels somewhat bigoted and nationalistic (to me, 'nationalistic' is usually a 4-letter word) to say this, i feel we need laws in place that make it a bitch for corporations to outsource overseas. that's fine in a free market where everything is equal. but we don't have that. come back and try me again when we have a world government and everyone in the world has the same standard of living.
Re:Internet does not work that way
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correct, but that wasn't a response to the increased traffic point. you originally made a point (an incorrect one) about domains that do not exist. you said that, for this to work, a receiving mail server would have to contact a nonexistant domain, and have some sort of timeout after which it decides the domain doesn't exist. you went on to say that the timeout would have to be short to decrease lag in mail delivery, but if a server is overloaded, it may miss the timeout, and a legitimate mail would be dropped.
this just isn't how it works. the receiving mail server would make a normal dns request for idontexist.com. the local dns server obviously doesn't know anything about it, so it either tries another dns server directly higher in the chain, or it consults the root servers. one of those servers is going to return "NXDOMAIN" - nonexistant domain. the buck stops there. the domain doesn't exist, and thus the From: header is forged. let me make that clear - a _lack_ of a response (i.e. via a timeout mechanism) _cannot_ indicate that a domain doesn't exist. only a specific dns reply from an authoritative source saying "this domain is not registered to any entity in the world" will make a mail server believe that the domain doesn't exist. there is no timeout involved.
Exactly. Good Christians can also be neutral observers. They just have to avoid letting the facts threaten their faith (and therefore their judgement).
i'm not sure i really understand what you're saying here. "avoid letting the facts threaten their faith" <- this sounds like denial to me: "so we have these facts, and they contradict my faith, so i'm just going to ignore them." or do you mean what i hope you mean? that new facts shouldn't "threaten" one's faith (and lead to an emotional, illogical outburst), but should make one think, and either modify beliefs as necessary, or find a way to reconcile the facts with current beliefs.
either way, i don't believe i've ever seen a 'neutral' christian in the face of belief-challenging ideas. at worst i've seen angry rebuttals, and at best i've seen calm denials of facts. i'm not saying scientists are perfect, but i at least have known several science-types that accept defeat when their treasured theories have been destroyed (not saying it's accepted with a smile, but accepted nonetheless).
no, locks protect the consumer. i install a lock on the door to my house, it protects me and my house. when i buy a car it comes with a lock which protects me and my car. in both cases, the locks belong to _me_. in both cases, if i do not wish to avail myself of that protection, i can _choose_ to either remove or not use the lock.
when i buy a copy-protected cd it comes with a lock to protect the corporation that created it. in this case, the lock belongs to the corporation. i cannot remove this lock. i cannot choose not to use this lock. i find a means to disable this lock. laws like the DMCA make doing so illegal.
Stallman refused to appear in the article unless the reporter got his terminology straight, which is reported as "Stallman insists Torvalds' work should properly be called GNU/Linux, because early contributors adapted GNU components for Linux - never mind that the Linux core is non-GNU and now approaches 6 million lines of code."
stallman's insistence on this crap really gets to me. i suppose this is somewhat debatable, but to me an operating system is a software layer between hardware and application software. thus the linux kernel is an operating system. GNU ls, GNU bash, GNU gcc, etc. are all applications that run on the linux _operating system_.
the kernel itself has _nothing_ to do with GNU. i'll repeat it in case you didn't get it: the linux kernel has _nothing_ to do with GNU. the fact that it is licensed under the GNU GPL is a consequence of the fact that it seemed to work for linus development-wise when he started work on linux.
insisting that _torvalds'_ work be called GNU/linux is ridiculous. _torvalds'_ work is unrelated to GNU.
i don't know where you live, but where i live, a kWh costs around $0.08. 100W-17W = 83W (difference between operating the computer vs. the router, as mentioned above somewhere).
multiply that by $0.08, and that's on the order of $58 he'd be saving per year running a linksys router instead of a computer. assuming the router costs $40, he's paid for it in a little over 8 months. less, actually, since he wouldn't have had to buy his friend the case of beer ^_~.
and that's assuming the figures are correct. the 17W quoted was for a wireless router, and i'd bet they use a bit more power then the non-wireless kind. i'd also tend to think that a computer would clock in at more than 100W, even if it's a simple system with no extraneous hardware.
still tho, i'm not saying that a new linksys router would be a better choice - i'd personally rather have the flexibility of a bsd or linux box as a router/firewall. but regardless, don't make wild claims about electricity costs without a quick math check ^_~.
agreed. i think it just boils down to finding a balance between government intervention and self-made remedies to make our lives less... annoying. and where is that balance? does this national do-not-call registry promote this balance, or does it go a little to far? i happen to think it's a step in the right direction, but i can't say that i believe i'm definitively right. maybe things like this law hinders development of 3rd-party technologies (etc.) to combat spam/telefreaks (i.e., "if the gov't will do it for us, why bother" attitudes). maybe not. maybe yes, but with minimal impact.
but what i can say is that i know my dad will be much less annoyed now that the 15+ calls he gets daily will slow down a bit. (and i'd be happy too if i hadn't ditched my landline in favour of a cell.)
And sheesh. Really. Just because I chide Slashbots to maybe put the old Thinking Cap(tm) on... I should think that the same brilliant minds that go around doing crazy stuff like internet-enabling TI calculators or building terabyte RAID filesystems out of 5.25 inch floppy drives would be excited to think up fun and interesting ways to defeat spammers and telemarketers.
eh- i think in some ways we slashbots are just tired of trying to find ways of defeating the spammers and telemarketers. spam filters are getting better, but some junk still gets through. and i don't think they'll ever be at the level that i'll feel comfortable trusting its decision - i let the junk folder run to about 250 messages, and then i have to scan the senders and subject lines for false positives. and while i don't find many, one does crop up every 3000 messages or so.
as for telemarketers, there isn't much you can do. you can be careful about using your phone # when signing up for stuff (same as for giving out your email address), but phone companies still do sell their lists, and that doesn't protect you from the numeric equivalent of dictionary attacks. and once you start getting calls, you can ask each individual caller to put you on a do not call list, but when you're getting 10+ calls a day, that isn't feasible. i could go on, but you get the point.
we're just tired. we find a trick to slow things down, and they get around it. we find another, they get around it. and now a law comes along - hey look, all i have to do is sign up with my email address and phone number, and if they ever call me they'll be fined. for someone that hates telemarketing calls, how could you be against something like this? (yes, i know full well why some people fitting that description would be, but, frankly, i think they're idiots.)
i'm sure i'll get modded as flamebait like the others, but so be it.
have a little perspective! the attacks of 9/11 were terrible, to be sure, and i'm both sorry for those that lost friends and family, as well as thankful i didn't lose anyone i know. but one of the worst tragedies ever? hardly. look at history - the holocaust comes to mind. think of those that have died in slavery - no, i don't have exact numbers. how about natural disasters? a single earthquake, flood, etc. has often resulted in much larger loss of life. how about people - children, even - that die in less-developed countries every day due to malnutrition and easily-curable diseases?
the 9/11 attack has had so much spin put on it it's ridiculous. a terrible, horrifying occurrence, yes. the worst thing to happen ever, no. and i'm sure saying that makes me "unamerican" or some silly thing like that. my country disappoints me sometimes.
the bigger problem isn't, unfortunately, whether or not congress gave the FTC the power to enforce this law - if this law is found to be unconstitutional due to the 1st amendment, it is unenforceable.
now i'm glad i didn't sign up for the list (i only have a cellphone, and i have gotten zero telemarketing calls over the past year or so *knocks on wood*). if by chance this do-not-call registry is overturned, then it looks like the FTC has just given a list of 50 million phone numbers to willing telemarketers.
i don't think it will get overturned, tho. and even if it does, i think the telemarketing/spam/privacy problem has been rising in importance with enough people that i wouldn't be surprised to see a constitutional amendment in the next 5-7 years to allow legislation that "violates" telemarketers' free speech "rights" in favor of citizens' privacy.
They can't prosecute you for making 'fair use' copies, but whatever they want to throw in the way of you making said copies is their right to do.
were that correct, i would just about agree with you. unfortunately, you aren't, and this is the crux of the problem. because of the DMCA, they _can_ go after you. take a DRMed content-holding device, whether it's an ebook, a CD, DVD, anything, break the copyright protection, and you are in violation of the DMCA and can be the recipient scary legal action. sure, you were just exercising your fair use right to copy that section of music or video clip, but the DMCA illegalises the _method_ you used to do so.
oh, great idea, pick slavery on which to build an argument like that.
and to what problems are you referring? so the unfortunate filthy rich landowners had to actually pay people to do work for them. awww, i'm so heartbroken. if you're talking about the civil war, forget about it. the civil war was about a lot more than the abolishment of slavery.
regardless, with slavery, we're talking about a fundamental human right that was being deprived. IP laws don't deal with people. they deal with inanimate objects, and often intangible ideas. no actual harm is being caused to anyone because of IP laws. perhaps their lives are made somewhat inconvenient because of them, but no one is dying or being denied person-status because of them. to put it in a different way: do you believe that you have a fundamental human right to damage another person's livelihood by stealing their ideas and representing them as your own? if you do, then your poor choice for an argument-backer is the least of your problems.
forget it. the parallels here are meager and worthless.
ah, if only the world were only as simple as you seem to think. current IP laws aren't perfect. far from it. they need some serious rethinking. but getting rid of them all together will only create more problems than it solves.
i'd have to agree here for the most part, and it's nice to see a less extremist viewpoint such as this here on/.
is current IP law broken? yes. is IP law unnecessary? it would simplify things so much if that were the case, but i think IP law is most definitely necessary.
while i'm a proponent of free software (both as in speech and in beer), i refuse to tell other people what their philosophies should be. if others want to write software, make music, write books, invent new ways of doing things, etc., and try to sell the fruits of their work, then i think there should be some protections in place to make that possible. for every group of honest people, there's at least one group of dishonest people that would take another's work, and try to sell it as their own. for that reason i think copyright and patent laws are good.
but the current state of affairs - i don't remember exactly what the current copyright term is, but i remember it used to be life+75 years. and i think that's a bit excessive. i'd almost advocate that a person's copyright should only be in effect as long as that person is alive. one type of scenario make me reconsider - random author dude writes some novels, they get published. freak car accident, random author dude dies. random author dude loses copyright and children and wife/husband suffer. i don't like that. i would think that life+10 or life+20 is more than sufficient.
i'm going to ignore patent law and trademark law for the time being, tho i think those have their problems as well (despite being founded with good intentions).
however, DRM is a sticky area. i do not believe it is possible to create a DRM solution that protects the rights and interests of the media creators/distributors without unfairly restricting our rights as consumers. there are currently music CDs out there that use a form of DRM to prohibit copying. that violates my fair use right to make a backup copy. that also means i can't rip the CD to mp3 files so i can listen to the tracks individually on my CD player, or mixed with other tracks from other CDs i own on an mp3 player. this also infringes upon my rights as a consumer. once DRM can be created that can understand the difference between the copy i make for my own use and the copy joe pirate makes to distribute on kazaa, then i'll accept it. that may be impossible, and if that's the case, then DRM will not be on any product i buy.
you, of course, have totally missed the point. the fact is, it _does_ matter to some people. it's apparently mattered to enough people that someone (or several someones) at IBM did some research into it and came up with a way of decreasing boot time. it's irrelevant if this was only prompted by marketing claims - "winxp boots in x seconds, why is it that linux takes y>>x seconds to boot??" (where '>>' is of course mathematical notation for "much greater than," not in the CS sense of a logical right shift, for you pedants out there). in any case, someone wants this to happen, and in the true OSS sense of the "if you want it done, do it yourself," it's been done (prototypically, at least).
you may not care if your system boots 15 or 30 seconds faster, but that doesn't mean that everyone who does is a fool. open up your mind a little. a person's level of patience is totally unrelated to whether or not they should be using a computer.
seriously... after reading through a bunch of these posts, i see soooo many "why do i care how long it takes to boot up? i just boot it and leave it for a year." a few are joking, but most are just ignorant idiots. sure, there are some of us (myself included) that don't turn off their machine (i probably would to save on the utilities bill, but i host websites for a few student orgs at my school, among other things). anyway, there are _plenty_ of people that could make a faster boot useful. laptop users, for one. people that only use their computers for a few short tasks a day, and turn it off. people that don't need to run it overnight for whatever reason, and actually like the idea of saving a little energy.
get a little perspective, people. ignorance is so first millennium...
i don't think it would be enough to maintain a car's speed at, say, a highway speed, let alone handle acceleration, but it could be a nice supplement to power (or help power) the rest of a car's electronics - cd player, interior/exterior lights, etc.
on the other hand, if you look at the images from the wired article, you'll notice that the windows give you a mosaic pattern of light inside the buildings. i wouldn't think that that would be a great idea for a window that you need to be looking out of constantly, so the front windshield is out. and as for the rest of the windows, it's just a matter of how confusing/distracting the distorted light pattern is.
or, you could kindly explain what the hell you're talking about.
regardless, assuming your ISP has a well-configured mail server (either it uses some form of authentication, or it only relays mail sent from IP addresses in its netblock), i still maintain that you have no reason to use anything butyour ISP's mail server for outgoing mail.
Well if the option's there then it must work!
right, and of course you choose to ignore the part of my sentence "i've never tried the smtp ssl support." either that or you have a problem understanding, so i'll enlighten you: i was merely informing that mozilla has an ssl option for smtp - i was not saying it works. i explicitly said that i didn't know. get a clue.
perhaps you should do some reading on something you obviously know nothing about. at the very least, removing the stick from up your ass would do wonders for your disposition.
I should be able to got to RIAA.com (or wherever) and pick 12 songs from their archive, paypal them $5, and then a couple days later, I get my cd in the mail, with jewel case, liner notes and lyrics for each song in the packaging.
Shipping and Handling should be 2.95 (non-priority) for up to 10 CDs.
There would be no more incentive to run all the P2P networks to get music.
no more incentive? what are you smoking?
12 songs, liner notes, lyrics:
RIAA: $5.00 + $2.95s+h
P2P service, band info/lyrics websites: $0.00 + a little effort
do you see it too?
snide comments aside, i _do_ agree with you on this for the most part. this is a service i would probably pay for.
i can't compare my experience on linux, of course, since there is no native IE for linux. but on windows, i've found mozilla to be every bit as fast as IE (considerably faster in some cases). the larger memory footprint is annoying - mainly due to the increased load time.
but seriously - mozilla as an open source browser has only really existed for about 5 years now, and, if i recall correctly, the project didn't have anywhere near its current momentum until about 3 years ago. IE has an amazing head start in that area. plus, IE developers only work on a web browser, whereas before the advent of phoenix/firebird, mozilla was an application suite. add that to the fact that the mozilla team created a cross-platform component architecture on which to build the browser, and it's no wonder that mozilla is behind IE in memory footprint after 3-5 years of development. to make matters worse, IE has only a small subset of the features mozilla has.
now i'm not saying all these are great excuses - some may argue that it's more important to have a fast speedy, featureless app first, and then add in the goodies. i just don't happen to be one of those people. i have no problem with throwing ram at the thing to make it happy. and i'm happy because i have a browser and email client that can do just about anything i want and a bunch of things i don't care about, but obviously a bunch of other people do.
i think you are misunderstanding something. XUL is not a GUI toolkit. it's just a cross platform interface definition language. XUL, as interpreted by mozilla's widget libraries, rely on the underlying OS to create widgets. on windows, they're the familiar windows widgets generated via the win32 api. on linux, there isn't an OS-specific widget library. well, you could say that Xlib/Xt/Xaw is somewhat of a widget library. but it's butt-ugly and a pain to work with. gtk is what mozilla uses to draw its widgets. there used to be the option of building mozilla using straight xlib, or using qt, but i believe that code is no longer being maintained.
as for using the same version of gtk - it's getting there. gtk2 support is not quite complete, tho it's quite useable. hopefully we'll start seeing gtk2 in default builds for all of the mozilla-based apps soon. (all performance arguments aside, i can't stand looking at gtk1.2 widgets after using gtk2.)
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whoop-de-do, we've got another one. so you have a perfectly working battery that's been around for a while too? honestly, who cares? so you were lucky. does that help any of the other people that have useless paperweight batteries? i think not.
seriously, give it up. if this wasn't a significant problem (i.e., a large number of customers with serious product usability issues), this wouldn't be getting so much press. but it is. so be glad that you have a perfectly working two year old ipod battery. but please, don't be so arrogant to assume that just because you haven't had any problems, everyone else's issues are invalid.
i'm with you on that one. a "free market" economy implies (at least to me), that all things are equal in the participants of that economy. that means same cost of living, same median wages, same economic structure, same industry regulatory bodies (or at least multiple bodies with similar regulations). while we're talking about the tech sector, that also means same technological infrastructure and same level of education.
i don't see "because it's cheaper" as a valid excuse in and of itself to do anything. the purpose of a government is to allow the people that it represents (the people, not corporations) to prosper and live well. though a part of me feels somewhat bigoted and nationalistic (to me, 'nationalistic' is usually a 4-letter word) to say this, i feel we need laws in place that make it a bitch for corporations to outsource overseas. that's fine in a free market where everything is equal. but we don't have that. come back and try me again when we have a world government and everyone in the world has the same standard of living.
correct, but that wasn't a response to the increased traffic point. you originally made a point (an incorrect one) about domains that do not exist. you said that, for this to work, a receiving mail server would have to contact a nonexistant domain, and have some sort of timeout after which it decides the domain doesn't exist. you went on to say that the timeout would have to be short to decrease lag in mail delivery, but if a server is overloaded, it may miss the timeout, and a legitimate mail would be dropped.
this just isn't how it works. the receiving mail server would make a normal dns request for idontexist.com. the local dns server obviously doesn't know anything about it, so it either tries another dns server directly higher in the chain, or it consults the root servers. one of those servers is going to return "NXDOMAIN" - nonexistant domain. the buck stops there. the domain doesn't exist, and thus the From: header is forged. let me make that clear - a _lack_ of a response (i.e. via a timeout mechanism) _cannot_ indicate that a domain doesn't exist. only a specific dns reply from an authoritative source saying "this domain is not registered to any entity in the world" will make a mail server believe that the domain doesn't exist. there is no timeout involved.
either way, i don't believe i've ever seen a 'neutral' christian in the face of belief-challenging ideas. at worst i've seen angry rebuttals, and at best i've seen calm denials of facts. i'm not saying scientists are perfect, but i at least have known several science-types that accept defeat when their treasured theories have been destroyed (not saying it's accepted with a smile, but accepted nonetheless).
no, locks protect the consumer. i install a lock on the door to my house, it protects me and my house. when i buy a car it comes with a lock which protects me and my car. in both cases, the locks belong to _me_. in both cases, if i do not wish to avail myself of that protection, i can _choose_ to either remove or not use the lock.
when i buy a copy-protected cd it comes with a lock to protect the corporation that created it. in this case, the lock belongs to the corporation. i cannot remove this lock. i cannot choose not to use this lock. i find a means to disable this lock. laws like the DMCA make doing so illegal.
the kernel itself has _nothing_ to do with GNU. i'll repeat it in case you didn't get it: the linux kernel has _nothing_ to do with GNU. the fact that it is licensed under the GNU GPL is a consequence of the fact that it seemed to work for linus development-wise when he started work on linux.
insisting that _torvalds'_ work be called GNU/linux is ridiculous. _torvalds'_ work is unrelated to GNU.
speaking of the government, i think i'd better go put on my "anal bum cover."
*sigh*, ok, let's do the math...
i don't know where you live, but where i live, a kWh costs around $0.08. 100W-17W = 83W (difference between operating the computer vs. the router, as mentioned above somewhere).
so, 83W * 24 h/day * 365 days/yr * 1kW/1000W = 727 kWh/yr.
multiply that by $0.08, and that's on the order of $58 he'd be saving per year running a linksys router instead of a computer. assuming the router costs $40, he's paid for it in a little over 8 months. less, actually, since he wouldn't have had to buy his friend the case of beer ^_~.
and that's assuming the figures are correct. the 17W quoted was for a wireless router, and i'd bet they use a bit more power then the non-wireless kind. i'd also tend to think that a computer would clock in at more than 100W, even if it's a simple system with no extraneous hardware.
still tho, i'm not saying that a new linksys router would be a better choice - i'd personally rather have the flexibility of a bsd or linux box as a router/firewall. but regardless, don't make wild claims about electricity costs without a quick math check ^_~.
agreed. i think it just boils down to finding a balance between government intervention and self-made remedies to make our lives less... annoying. and where is that balance? does this national do-not-call registry promote this balance, or does it go a little to far? i happen to think it's a step in the right direction, but i can't say that i believe i'm definitively right. maybe things like this law hinders development of 3rd-party technologies (etc.) to combat spam/telefreaks (i.e., "if the gov't will do it for us, why bother" attitudes). maybe not. maybe yes, but with minimal impact.
but what i can say is that i know my dad will be much less annoyed now that the 15+ calls he gets daily will slow down a bit. (and i'd be happy too if i hadn't ditched my landline in favour of a cell.)
as for telemarketers, there isn't much you can do. you can be careful about using your phone # when signing up for stuff (same as for giving out your email address), but phone companies still do sell their lists, and that doesn't protect you from the numeric equivalent of dictionary attacks. and once you start getting calls, you can ask each individual caller to put you on a do not call list, but when you're getting 10+ calls a day, that isn't feasible. i could go on, but you get the point.
we're just tired. we find a trick to slow things down, and they get around it. we find another, they get around it. and now a law comes along - hey look, all i have to do is sign up with my email address and phone number, and if they ever call me they'll be fined. for someone that hates telemarketing calls, how could you be against something like this? (yes, i know full well why some people fitting that description would be, but, frankly, i think they're idiots.)
i'm sure i'll get modded as flamebait like the others, but so be it.
have a little perspective! the attacks of 9/11 were terrible, to be sure, and i'm both sorry for those that lost friends and family, as well as thankful i didn't lose anyone i know. but one of the worst tragedies ever? hardly. look at history - the holocaust comes to mind. think of those that have died in slavery - no, i don't have exact numbers. how about natural disasters? a single earthquake, flood, etc. has often resulted in much larger loss of life. how about people - children, even - that die in less-developed countries every day due to malnutrition and easily-curable diseases?
the 9/11 attack has had so much spin put on it it's ridiculous. a terrible, horrifying occurrence, yes. the worst thing to happen ever, no. and i'm sure saying that makes me "unamerican" or some silly thing like that. my country disappoints me sometimes.
the bigger problem isn't, unfortunately, whether or not congress gave the FTC the power to enforce this law - if this law is found to be unconstitutional due to the 1st amendment, it is unenforceable.
now i'm glad i didn't sign up for the list (i only have a cellphone, and i have gotten zero telemarketing calls over the past year or so *knocks on wood*). if by chance this do-not-call registry is overturned, then it looks like the FTC has just given a list of 50 million phone numbers to willing telemarketers.
i don't think it will get overturned, tho. and even if it does, i think the telemarketing/spam/privacy problem has been rising in importance with enough people that i wouldn't be surprised to see a constitutional amendment in the next 5-7 years to allow legislation that "violates" telemarketers' free speech "rights" in favor of citizens' privacy.
oh, great idea, pick slavery on which to build an argument like that.
and to what problems are you referring? so the unfortunate filthy rich landowners had to actually pay people to do work for them. awww, i'm so heartbroken. if you're talking about the civil war, forget about it. the civil war was about a lot more than the abolishment of slavery.
regardless, with slavery, we're talking about a fundamental human right that was being deprived. IP laws don't deal with people. they deal with inanimate objects, and often intangible ideas. no actual harm is being caused to anyone because of IP laws. perhaps their lives are made somewhat inconvenient because of them, but no one is dying or being denied person-status because of them. to put it in a different way: do you believe that you have a fundamental human right to damage another person's livelihood by stealing their ideas and representing them as your own? if you do, then your poor choice for an argument-backer is the least of your problems.
forget it. the parallels here are meager and worthless.
ah, if only the world were only as simple as you seem to think. current IP laws aren't perfect. far from it. they need some serious rethinking. but getting rid of them all together will only create more problems than it solves.
i'd have to agree here for the most part, and it's nice to see a less extremist viewpoint such as this here on /.
is current IP law broken? yes. is IP law unnecessary? it would simplify things so much if that were the case, but i think IP law is most definitely necessary.
while i'm a proponent of free software (both as in speech and in beer), i refuse to tell other people what their philosophies should be. if others want to write software, make music, write books, invent new ways of doing things, etc., and try to sell the fruits of their work, then i think there should be some protections in place to make that possible. for every group of honest people, there's at least one group of dishonest people that would take another's work, and try to sell it as their own. for that reason i think copyright and patent laws are good.
but the current state of affairs - i don't remember exactly what the current copyright term is, but i remember it used to be life+75 years. and i think that's a bit excessive. i'd almost advocate that a person's copyright should only be in effect as long as that person is alive. one type of scenario make me reconsider - random author dude writes some novels, they get published. freak car accident, random author dude dies. random author dude loses copyright and children and wife/husband suffer. i don't like that. i would think that life+10 or life+20 is more than sufficient.
i'm going to ignore patent law and trademark law for the time being, tho i think those have their problems as well (despite being founded with good intentions).
however, DRM is a sticky area. i do not believe it is possible to create a DRM solution that protects the rights and interests of the media creators/distributors without unfairly restricting our rights as consumers. there are currently music CDs out there that use a form of DRM to prohibit copying. that violates my fair use right to make a backup copy. that also means i can't rip the CD to mp3 files so i can listen to the tracks individually on my CD player, or mixed with other tracks from other CDs i own on an mp3 player. this also infringes upon my rights as a consumer. once DRM can be created that can understand the difference between the copy i make for my own use and the copy joe pirate makes to distribute on kazaa, then i'll accept it. that may be impossible, and if that's the case, then DRM will not be on any product i buy.
you, of course, have totally missed the point. the fact is, it _does_ matter to some people. it's apparently mattered to enough people that someone (or several someones) at IBM did some research into it and came up with a way of decreasing boot time. it's irrelevant if this was only prompted by marketing claims - "winxp boots in x seconds, why is it that linux takes y>>x seconds to boot??" (where '>>' is of course mathematical notation for "much greater than," not in the CS sense of a logical right shift, for you pedants out there). in any case, someone wants this to happen, and in the true OSS sense of the "if you want it done, do it yourself," it's been done (prototypically, at least).
you may not care if your system boots 15 or 30 seconds faster, but that doesn't mean that everyone who does is a fool. open up your mind a little. a person's level of patience is totally unrelated to whether or not they should be using a computer.
seriously... after reading through a bunch of these posts, i see soooo many "why do i care how long it takes to boot up? i just boot it and leave it for a year." a few are joking, but most are just ignorant idiots. sure, there are some of us (myself included) that don't turn off their machine (i probably would to save on the utilities bill, but i host websites for a few student orgs at my school, among other things). anyway, there are _plenty_ of people that could make a faster boot useful. laptop users, for one. people that only use their computers for a few short tasks a day, and turn it off. people that don't need to run it overnight for whatever reason, and actually like the idea of saving a little energy.
get a little perspective, people. ignorance is so first millennium...
i don't think it would be enough to maintain a car's speed at, say, a highway speed, let alone handle acceleration, but it could be a nice supplement to power (or help power) the rest of a car's electronics - cd player, interior/exterior lights, etc.
on the other hand, if you look at the images from the wired article, you'll notice that the windows give you a mosaic pattern of light inside the buildings. i wouldn't think that that would be a great idea for a window that you need to be looking out of constantly, so the front windshield is out. and as for the rest of the windows, it's just a matter of how confusing/distracting the distorted light pattern is.
or, you could kindly explain what the hell you're talking about.
regardless, assuming your ISP has a well-configured mail server (either it uses some form of authentication, or it only relays mail sent from IP addresses in its netblock), i still maintain that you have no reason to use anything butyour ISP's mail server for outgoing mail. right, and of course you choose to ignore the part of my sentence "i've never tried the smtp ssl support." either that or you have a problem understanding, so i'll enlighten you: i was merely informing that mozilla has an ssl option for smtp - i was not saying it works. i explicitly said that i didn't know. get a clue.
perhaps you should do some reading on something you obviously know nothing about. at the very least, removing the stick from up your ass would do wonders for your disposition.
12 songs, liner notes, lyrics:
- RIAA: $5.00 + $2.95s+h
- P2P service, band info/lyrics websites: $0.00 + a little effort
do you see it too?snide comments aside, i _do_ agree with you on this for the most part. this is a service i would probably pay for.
i can't compare my experience on linux, of course, since there is no native IE for linux. but on windows, i've found mozilla to be every bit as fast as IE (considerably faster in some cases). the larger memory footprint is annoying - mainly due to the increased load time.
but seriously - mozilla as an open source browser has only really existed for about 5 years now, and, if i recall correctly, the project didn't have anywhere near its current momentum until about 3 years ago. IE has an amazing head start in that area. plus, IE developers only work on a web browser, whereas before the advent of phoenix/firebird, mozilla was an application suite. add that to the fact that the mozilla team created a cross-platform component architecture on which to build the browser, and it's no wonder that mozilla is behind IE in memory footprint after 3-5 years of development. to make matters worse, IE has only a small subset of the features mozilla has.
now i'm not saying all these are great excuses - some may argue that it's more important to have a fast speedy, featureless app first, and then add in the goodies. i just don't happen to be one of those people. i have no problem with throwing ram at the thing to make it happy. and i'm happy because i have a browser and email client that can do just about anything i want and a bunch of things i don't care about, but obviously a bunch of other people do.
i think you are misunderstanding something. XUL is not a GUI toolkit. it's just a cross platform interface definition language. XUL, as interpreted by mozilla's widget libraries, rely on the underlying OS to create widgets. on windows, they're the familiar windows widgets generated via the win32 api. on linux, there isn't an OS-specific widget library. well, you could say that Xlib/Xt/Xaw is somewhat of a widget library. but it's butt-ugly and a pain to work with. gtk is what mozilla uses to draw its widgets. there used to be the option of building mozilla using straight xlib, or using qt, but i believe that code is no longer being maintained.
as for using the same version of gtk - it's getting there. gtk2 support is not quite complete, tho it's quite useable. hopefully we'll start seeing gtk2 in default builds for all of the mozilla-based apps soon. (all performance arguments aside, i can't stand looking at gtk1.2 widgets after using gtk2.)