Seeing as how Xbox has a DVD player you have to pay another $30 to "unlock," putting Linux to watch movies might be useful to many who'd rather just put that $30 towards a game or, in this case, movies.
I'll just go ahead and poke a stick at an angry bear. What the hell do I care, karma doesn't buy groceries anyway.
The point of the hostility (for me at least) directed towards NeoNapster was never that they were violating the GPL (we understand they aren't) but that they suck b/c they're taking advantage of it. Most of the comments I read are of the "so what, they're within their rights" nature. Like it's that easy. It's perfectly fair that they would like to make a profit but they're attempting to do this by piggybacking a very nice program with all types of invasive and much derided (especially here on Slashdot) technology. The message I get is that if AOL or MS pull this kind of shit, it's bad, evil, terrible, a blot on humanity, but if someone does it under the cloak of Open Source, it's no big deal. Spyware and Adware is just that no matter what licensing scheme it is under. As far as I'm concerned, NeoNapster needs to understand that what they've done is a scumball-used-car-salesmen tactic.
Media Player has absolutely no authority to play any media files on my machine unless it is absolutely necessary such as in the case of proprietary MS files (which I don't use anyway). All video and audio formats are associated with third-party software (try Media Jukebox 8.0, it's pretty nice).
So my question is, if Mplayer supposedly has free reign to disable other software programs that circumvent copy protection, how the hell is it going to do that if it never gets used? All it is doing at this point is taking up drive space. Perhaps MS will one day allow users the options of easily uninstalling it. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go have passionate sex with several supermodels on a bed of $100 bills.
I'm about 100 pages from the end, it's way overdue at the library so I need to hurry up. Anyway, I've enjoyed many aspects of this book and with any KSR book, it's subject matter is well-informed if not a bit too well-informed. I think it tends to go overlong on character introspection and because it spans many centuries, developing these characters beyond anything other than a 50-100 pages is impossible.
KSR slips the confines of mortality by reincarnating his characters in subsequent chapters but unless you're keeping track of who is who, it's hard not to feel like you're simply starting over. Also, I wish he had spent more time developing the Americas and its indigenious peoples. He basically ignores Africa (other than to say, yes, it is predominantly Muslim and yes, African slaves are used in other parts of the world) and chooses instead to spend all his time in India, the Middle East and China. I know that this is where much of the story is supposed to spring, but sufficed to say, I came into it expecting more of a treatment how the rest of the world would appear, especially the Americas since it is interesting to think of how things might have been different there if settled by the Chinese and Muslim cultures.
Anyway, like I said, I'm almost finished and I'm, for the most part, satisfied with it but I think maybe KSR might have bitten off more than he could digest in a single book. Most everything he writes is in trilogy form, why not this particular subject? Regardless, there is a hell of a lot of material to try to take in a single reading but I seriously doubt the re-read value because of its tendency to drag on but I suppose if you really wanted to study it as alternative history then you could really glean a great abount of theoretical value from it.
"I ask them, 'What have you done last week?' They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, 'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an A too? Would that bug you?' So this sense of personal investment does ring true with people."
WTF? It's not the same thing... if I take someone's A paper and put my name on it quite obviously that is plagirism. If I take my firends Sheryl Crow CD and burn it and listen to it on my computer, I haven't put my name on it or taken credit for the Sheryl Crow's music. You still know it is Sheryl Crow. Jesus, much of the intent of copyright is to prevent one's work from being appropriated by others, not to prevent stealing. I don't think anyone in their right mind would try to pass off a Britney Spears CD as their own work (and why would they want to). Insofar as trying to make the point that burning a copy of a copyrighted, widely distributed compact disc by a internationally known recording artist is the same thing as putting your name on some run of the mill term paper by an unknown high school student is a lot like comparing apples and oranges (or some cliche like that).
Slashdot Mirror
After reading this article and the current post, I think we should just disown Delaware.
Seeing as how Xbox has a DVD player you have to pay another $30 to "unlock," putting Linux to watch movies might be useful to many who'd rather just put that $30 towards a game or, in this case, movies.
prohibition, war on drugs, stamping out evil, uh, stopping file sharing ... etc.
I'll just go ahead and poke a stick at an angry bear. What the hell do I care, karma doesn't buy groceries anyway.
The point of the hostility (for me at least) directed towards NeoNapster was never that they were violating the GPL (we understand they aren't) but that they suck b/c they're taking advantage of it. Most of the comments I read are of the "so what, they're within their rights" nature. Like it's that easy. It's perfectly fair that they would like to make a profit but they're attempting to do this by piggybacking a very nice program with all types of invasive and much derided (especially here on Slashdot) technology. The message I get is that if AOL or MS pull this kind of shit, it's bad, evil, terrible, a blot on humanity, but if someone does it under the cloak of Open Source, it's no big deal. Spyware and Adware is just that no matter what licensing scheme it is under. As far as I'm concerned, NeoNapster needs to understand that what they've done is a scumball-used-car-salesmen tactic.
So is this Maxtor's evil plot to slashdot the WD website?
Media Player has absolutely no authority to play any media files on my machine unless it is absolutely necessary such as in the case of proprietary MS files (which I don't use anyway). All video and audio formats are associated with third-party software (try Media Jukebox 8.0, it's pretty nice).
So my question is, if Mplayer supposedly has free reign to disable other software programs that circumvent copy protection, how the hell is it going to do that if it never gets used? All it is doing at this point is taking up drive space. Perhaps MS will one day allow users the options of easily uninstalling it. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go have passionate sex with several supermodels on a bed of $100 bills.
I'm about 100 pages from the end, it's way overdue at the library so I need to hurry up. Anyway, I've enjoyed many aspects of this book and with any KSR book, it's subject matter is well-informed if not a bit too well-informed. I think it tends to go overlong on character introspection and because it spans many centuries, developing these characters beyond anything other than a 50-100 pages is impossible.
KSR slips the confines of mortality by reincarnating his characters in subsequent chapters but unless you're keeping track of who is who, it's hard not to feel like you're simply starting over. Also, I wish he had spent more time developing the Americas and its indigenious peoples. He basically ignores Africa (other than to say, yes, it is predominantly Muslim and yes, African slaves are used in other parts of the world) and chooses instead to spend all his time in India, the Middle East and China. I know that this is where much of the story is supposed to spring, but sufficed to say, I came into it expecting more of a treatment how the rest of the world would appear, especially the Americas since it is interesting to think of how things might have been different there if settled by the Chinese and Muslim cultures.
Anyway, like I said, I'm almost finished and I'm, for the most part, satisfied with it but I think maybe KSR might have bitten off more than he could digest in a single book. Most everything he writes is in trilogy form, why not this particular subject? Regardless, there is a hell of a lot of material to try to take in a single reading but I seriously doubt the re-read value because of its tendency to drag on but I suppose if you really wanted to study it as alternative history then you could really glean a great abount of theoretical value from it.
"I ask them, 'What have you done last week?' They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, 'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an A too? Would that bug you?' So this sense of personal investment does ring true with people."
... if I take someone's A paper and put my name on it quite obviously that is plagirism. If I take my firends Sheryl Crow CD and burn it and listen to it on my computer, I haven't put my name on it or taken credit for the Sheryl Crow's music. You still know it is Sheryl Crow. Jesus, much of the intent of copyright is to prevent one's work from being appropriated by others, not to prevent stealing. I don't think anyone in their right mind would try to pass off a Britney Spears CD as their own work (and why would they want to). Insofar as trying to make the point that burning a copy of a copyrighted, widely distributed compact disc by a internationally known recording artist is the same thing as putting your name on some run of the mill term paper by an unknown high school student is a lot like comparing apples and oranges (or some cliche like that).
WTF? It's not the same thing