The ability to legally time-shift, format-shift and backup was made legal last month in Australia.
No. The government has merely flagged a move (read your linked article again) to legalise these. That's not the same thing, and given their record for rolling over when the money talks, I won't believe it until it's happened.
can you shine some light onto why all the major online music stores sell music sampled at 128kbps?
I expect so. It simply costs less in bandwidth. That's one of several reasons why I don't bother with iTunes. I prefer to buy the CD and rip my own mp3s at 192kb/s. Not because that format/bitrate is ideal by any means, it just gives me an optimum sound quality to storage space ratio for my iPod and mp3-CD car stereo.
In any case, the argument about pressed CDs being longer-lasting is moot. I am very picky about storing and handling my CDs properly in order to minimise damage, but I have noticed a number of pressed full-price discs in my collection have become degraded enough over a 10 year period to cause skipping. So far, fortunately nothing so bad that it can't be recovered with cdparanoia and burnt on to a blank.
This is still, in fact, illegal here (Australia) but I don't care. If anybody cares to argue with me about it, they had better be prepared to expect some injuries.
In any case, I also have a lot of home-burned CDs which have given me no trouble at all over the same period or longer.
...so even if this guy pays some service to get him "certified" with Hotmail, that won't do the trick.
In that case, it would seem that hotmail itself is not particularly functional as a useful or reliable place to address communication. If people insist on using a broken email service, they have no business complaining when they don't get any mail. Their problem.
Technically, every American citizen is the government.
Let's hope most Americans don't really believe that's true. Otherwise those of us in the rest of the world should really start to worry, if they haven't already.
In all seriousness, what would you suggest instead as a way to learn about Linux internals?
You don't really have to look very far: Linux From Scratch.
You can get the same experience over a much longer period of time by playing with Slackware or whatever, but Gentoo's cookbook approach (while possibly useful for generating a hardware-optimised system) will in all likelihood teach very little.
I've reported bugs that have taken years for nVidia to fix which I would've been happy to try and fix myself if only the code was open.
Agreed (sort of), but my feeling is that nVidia still provide just about the best support there is for graphics cards on non-windows platforms, and I applaud their efforts at being inclusive rather than taking the snotty pro-windows stance that other developers assume. Sure, I would be even happier if their code was open-source, but by far the majority of users are not interested in hacking that code anyway.
For some reason the initrd system makes me uncomfortable.
It's also usually unnecessary. Building your own kernel (apart from being fun) gives us the opportunity to simplify your setup without having to resort to arcane hacks, provided that your init scripts are up to the job. This is one of the (many) reasons why I still prefer Slackware over other distros; the BSD-ish init scripts are (IMHO) much simpler to deal with than SysVinit.
Furthermore, dvdrtools are not developed by an arrogant prick who feels the need to insist that everybody uses SCSI devices on Solaris. Reading Schilling's documentation always makes me want to hit him.
I haven't investigated this comprehensively, but the clips do work with the linux Flash player on the second page of selections, so I guess someone's just goofed somewhere...
In any case, once you've seen one, you've seen the lot. You get no idea of the what the underbelly of the distro looks like, you pretty much just get to see what colours they like to use for their default X themes.
I would prefer my potential employers didn't discern my tastes for Linux and booze.
Agreed (though no employer of mine has any problem with Linux); here we have a simple example of what not to say about yourself that you don't want repeated in the wrong circles.
But I guess anyone who is stupid enough to drop themselves in the poo in public shouldn't be a prime candidate for employment.
After all, there's no pressing reason why anyone has to use their real name almost anywhere on the internet. But I still get some strange looks when I proudly boast that my name produces zero hits on Google.
There's a whiff of xenophobia about all this. I mean, let's take this piece by piece... what's wrong here?
Where do we start? That has to be one of the most inflammatory posts I have read for some time.
It is hardly xenophobic to take a dim view of sacking your workers to replace them with cheap labour offshore. There is nothing holy about capitalism that says shitting on people is fine and dandy. This is another symptom of a failure to recognise that organisations are a part of the community that they do business with, and that involves a certain level of trust and loyalty.
Businesses usually demand and expect loyalty from their employees, but don't deserve it if none flows in the other direction. Anyone who has had to endure the run-around we get from some banks' or telcos' helpdesks in Bombay will attest to the fact that they are not delivering a quality service. A recognition that this fails to make good business sense does not make one a socialist.
It's too late now for me to have retired at 40, but having known a number of people of similar age who have dropped dead of heart attacks, I guess I'd probably feel a bit stupid in my dying moments thinking "now if only I hadn't taken that second job".
the manufacturers are unwilling to make large phones with big aerials any more. If size doesn't bother you, some phones still have a sockets for an external aerial...
I would qualify that by suggesting an experiment. My LG U8120 works just as well (wrt both reception and battery-life) if I unscrew the aerial altogether. Which is why I replaced the standard fixture with a little stubby aerial, just to keep crap out of the hole.
I want a simple mobile phone that can text message.
Agreed. And I want it to take up much less space in my pocket. I'm sure that would be perfectly possible if they got rid of those crappy cameras and other unnecessary bells and whistles that never get used.
and you won't have to buy the song four times so you can listen to it on the train, on the bus, while biking and at the gym.
There's nothing stopping people from buying CDs and encoding their own MP3s or AACs. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only way to go in any case.
Much as I like my iPod, the compressed sound is just not an adequate signal for playing through my fairly high-end stereo system at home. It's fine for circumstances where there's background noise and other distractions, but if I had to pay twice for every track, I would rather do without the iPod.
From TFS: "The world's six billion people can be divided into two groups: group one, who know why every good software company ships products with known bugs; and group two, who don't."
Not quite. There is a third and much larger group with vastly more pressing issues to deal with, who couldn't care less.
Slashdot Mirror
The ability to legally time-shift, format-shift and backup was made legal last month in Australia.
No. The government has merely flagged a move (read your linked article again) to legalise these. That's not the same thing, and given their record for rolling over when the money talks, I won't believe it until it's happened.
can you shine some light onto why all the major online music stores sell music sampled at 128kbps?
I expect so. It simply costs less in bandwidth. That's one of several reasons why I don't bother with iTunes. I prefer to buy the CD and rip my own mp3s at 192kb/s. Not because that format/bitrate is ideal by any means, it just gives me an optimum sound quality to storage space ratio for my iPod and mp3-CD car stereo.
In any case, the argument about pressed CDs being longer-lasting is moot. I am very picky about storing and handling my CDs properly in order to minimise damage, but I have noticed a number of pressed full-price discs in my collection have become degraded enough over a 10 year period to cause skipping. So far, fortunately nothing so bad that it can't be recovered with cdparanoia and burnt on to a blank.
This is still, in fact, illegal here (Australia) but I don't care. If anybody cares to argue with me about it, they had better be prepared to expect some injuries.
In any case, I also have a lot of home-burned CDs which have given me no trouble at all over the same period or longer.
In that case, it would seem that hotmail itself is not particularly functional as a useful or reliable place to address communication. If people insist on using a broken email service, they have no business complaining when they don't get any mail. Their problem.
Let's hope most Americans don't really believe that's true. Otherwise those of us in the rest of the world should really start to worry, if they haven't already.
Indeed; at least someone got what I was talking about. Oh well...
You don't really have to look very far: Linux From Scratch.
You can get the same experience over a much longer period of time by playing with Slackware or whatever, but Gentoo's cookbook approach (while possibly useful for generating a hardware-optimised system) will in all likelihood teach very little.
Agreed (sort of), but my feeling is that nVidia still provide just about the best support there is for graphics cards on non-windows platforms, and I applaud their efforts at being inclusive rather than taking the snotty pro-windows stance that other developers assume. Sure, I would be even happier if their code was open-source, but by far the majority of users are not interested in hacking that code anyway.
It's also usually unnecessary. Building your own kernel (apart from being fun) gives us the opportunity to simplify your setup without having to resort to arcane hacks, provided that your init scripts are up to the job. This is one of the (many) reasons why I still prefer Slackware over other distros; the BSD-ish init scripts are (IMHO) much simpler to deal with than SysVinit.
Linux is quite noisy while booting as is.
You can shut it up somewhat by adding "append = "quiet"" to your lilo.conf file.
Furthermore, dvdrtools are not developed by an arrogant prick who feels the need to insist that everybody uses SCSI devices on Solaris. Reading Schilling's documentation always makes me want to hit him.
You don't need any OS to composting, you know. You can just dig a hole in the ground and chuck in your left-over food scraps, and that will work.
;-)
In that case, stand up for your right to arm bears.
In any case, once you've seen one, you've seen the lot. You get no idea of the what the underbelly of the distro looks like, you pretty much just get to see what colours they like to use for their default X themes.
Agreed (though no employer of mine has any problem with Linux); here we have a simple example of what not to say about yourself that you don't want repeated in the wrong circles.
But I guess anyone who is stupid enough to drop themselves in the poo in public shouldn't be a prime candidate for employment.
After all, there's no pressing reason why anyone has to use their real name almost anywhere on the internet. But I still get some strange looks when I proudly boast that my name produces zero hits on Google.
Where do we start? That has to be one of the most inflammatory posts I have read for some time.
It is hardly xenophobic to take a dim view of sacking your workers to replace them with cheap labour offshore. There is nothing holy about capitalism that says shitting on people is fine and dandy. This is another symptom of a failure to recognise that organisations are a part of the community that they do business with, and that involves a certain level of trust and loyalty.
Businesses usually demand and expect loyalty from their employees, but don't deserve it if none flows in the other direction. Anyone who has had to endure the run-around we get from some banks' or telcos' helpdesks in Bombay will attest to the fact that they are not delivering a quality service. A recognition that this fails to make good business sense does not make one a socialist.
;-)
Maybe that's why the editors filed this thread under "Your Rights Online". I sure as hell can't think of any other reason...
If that were to happen, my useful productivity would probably increase dramatically. ;-)
!!
Sounds useful, if you don't want anyone to call you... ;-)
I would qualify that by suggesting an experiment. My LG U8120 works just as well (wrt both reception and battery-life) if I unscrew the aerial altogether. Which is why I replaced the standard fixture with a little stubby aerial, just to keep crap out of the hole.
Agreed. And I want it to take up much less space in my pocket. I'm sure that would be perfectly possible if they got rid of those crappy cameras and other unnecessary bells and whistles that never get used.
In any case, this notion of a lost sale is just plain silly. After all, you can't lose something you never had.
There's nothing stopping people from buying CDs and encoding their own MP3s or AACs. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only way to go in any case.
Much as I like my iPod, the compressed sound is just not an adequate signal for playing through my fairly high-end stereo system at home. It's fine for circumstances where there's background noise and other distractions, but if I had to pay twice for every track, I would rather do without the iPod.
Not quite. There is a third and much larger group with vastly more pressing issues to deal with, who couldn't care less.