Maybe Mom & Pop don't need to upgrade, but they also don't use the computer for the tool it was designed to be.
<RANT>
Who the fsck are you to judge that? What is it with some gamers and this strangely arrogant attitude towards what a computer is supposed to do anyway? It seems that quite a lot of current computer users think the purpose of a computer is:
watching movies
playing games
buying more stuff to get better benchmarks
bragging about benchmark scores
Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing wrong with using a computer for being entertained by your favourite entertainment industry, but it seems that quite a lot of current computer "geeks" can't wrap their minds around the idea that it could also be used for quite a lot of other things. The notion that someone could buy a computer to do Boring Things like drawing graphics, writing code and all that sort of creative hippie not-so-1337-g33k stuff seems to be absolutely alien to them -- or, even worse, that someone could even want to have a computer for useless things like writing documents or communicating with friends and family. In fact, the whole idea that people are using computers for something else than what they are using them for seems to be completely unfathomable to them.
Clue: One of the things that makes computers so damn cool is that you can use them for just about anything you want to. Whether you want to write code, read E2 nodes all day long, listen to music, make music, watch movies, play games, write documents, exchange emails with other people, or any combination of the above, you can build a computer that will do it. Which one of these is The Right Way to use a computer? They all are. No matter how much the hardware industry (in glorious cooperation with Microsoft and most of the game industry) is trying to make you believe that nothing short of a 3GHz P4 is enough for satisfactory performance in Notepad, the truth is that the vast majority of computer users don't need the massive power of current hardware. More power to them if they don't play the part of brainwashed consumers.
Now that I'm in rant mode and on the subject of gamers.....
simon@merlin:~$ dict -d jargon gamer
No definitions found for "gamer", perhaps you mean:
jargon: lamer
Theming a desktop can be fun, and having fun is (for me, anyway) a purpose of computing in its own right. On my Linux desktop I've fiddled around with Enlightenment, FluxBox (which is what I'm currently running), GNOME+Sawfish and others, and seriously, tweaking how your desktop looks to make it suit your tastes can be quite an amusing way to kill a lazy afternoon. Also, in a desktop with decent themability, you can theme to cut down on eye candy while maintaining a look you like. I don't see what is wrong with that. Theming desktops isn't necessarily about filling them up with heavy crap, it might as well be removing all the heavy crap, or adding lightweight eye candy (it does, in fact, exist -- takes more effort to make than heavyweight stuff, though).
That said, am I the only one who doesn't understand why recent MS desktops apparently have to look plastic-like, garish and cartoony?
Why would you want that? Remember, there's also a time limit set. If you donated money but the total amount wasn't reached, and the software was released only after the time limit, then you helped fund it, help it to live until that limit. If you actually paid, then you thought it was worth it, and, in the end, you had it become free software anyway... What do you lose?
The point with the ransom seemed to be that if enough money is paid, the software would be freed before the set date. This is the service you'll be paying for, not to "help it live" -- it would be released on that date anyway, as you even point out yourself. So essentially, if they never hit the magic number, you are paying for a service that is not delivered (not good, and illegal in some countries).
I think this idea undermines some of the often-touted arguments for Free Software -- the principle of a million watchful debugging eyes, the argument that Free Software makes even poor college students or the computer-owning minorities of poor regions of the world able to run quality software, the idea of keeping our software out of corporate clutches, as well as the security implications of open or Free software.
Also -- this might apply more to the Free Software world than to Open Source -- an idea that had me attracted to Free Software is that of community-driven rather than corporate-driven software development. There isn't nearly as much money involved in Free Software as there is in corporate software development, and that leaves less doors open for killing good projects with greed. I thought part of the whole idea was that if even a hobby programmer managed to cook up a good Free program, he could find a large part of the Free Software community helping him with support, debugging and similar tasks, in principle allowing the program to rival corporate programs in the end?
Considering the short supply of ethics on the corporate Internet, trusting code you can't audit (or have people you trust audit for you) is foolish. So what if they release it as GPL and I find out that I'd been running a spyware/other scumware infected system for months? The ransom model means that things like that can be worked out in time, but that won't help if you have already been abused. Someone has already used your computer for something you might not agree with, and the whole point of Free Software is to return control over your computer to you, its user, rather than corporations.
That said, I don't think there are malicious motivations behind the software for ransom idea at all, I just think there is serious possibility for abuse by less ethical players. With a name like that you can be sure such people will take notice, and be inspired.
Given MS' track record and general sentiments towards open or free software, I seriously can't see how anyone can think they don't have some sort of plan to make life difficult for.NET on non-Windows platforms -- or, at least, an ulterior motive with.NET in general. Killing Java is certainly one, but I doubt it is the only motivation they have.
Perhaps I'm wearing tinfoil, but I can't help but think that Mono and DotGNU are somehow being played the fool by Microsoft.
.....and immediately after the transformation, the Slashdotter would realize that while geeks are socially well-equipped to deal with talking frogs, attractive female blue-bloods are a different story altogether......
Actually, they were named Agnus, Fat Agnus, Super Fat Agnus, and Alice. Alice was the final incarnation of the chip, from the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000's AGA chipsets.
There might have been others in the specialty Amigas, such as Dave Haynie's prototype "A3000+" which was (according to rumor) only produced in two specimens, but there was no Obese Agnus in a general-production Amiga.:)
/s/blog/technobabble and that looks pretty much like something out of Star Trek....
Re:Gentoo is a great iso-linux distro
on
LFS 4.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
It appears to me that gentoo in general hits a nerve with you. If someone came out and posted "GENTOO RULeS EVERYTHING ELSE SUCKS@!##@!#" then I'd be right there with you. However you're not. Lighten up. Believe or not, not everyone has heard of gentoo yet.
I have nothing against Gentoo. It's a great distribution, I've used it myself and liked it a lot. I have more fun with LFS though, but that's a matter of taste. And no, the original poster of this post did not spout Gentoo zealotry. My post was more of a general observation of Gentoo users' behaviour on various forums (I've seen a lot of it here and on Newsforge, especially when the subject is either Slackware or LFS) than about him in specific. Users of Gentoo, like users of any other distribution, come in many different sizes and shapes. Unfortunately, there really does seem to be a lot of them who seemingly can't resist the twitch in the g3nt00 0wn5 muscle when people are talking about other distributions. I'm not saying that all Gentoo users are like that -- they aren't. I'm not even sure if it's most Gentoo users, it could just as well be a loud minority.
The problem is that it seems to either be a larger group within the Gentoo community than elsewhere, or it's just that their loud minority is louder. I don't have numbers or something similar to back this up, it is just an observation from around the discussion forums I've followed. My observation could be biased because I'm interested in Gentoo and LFS, and Gentoo (or LFS -- but there doesn't seem to be as many of those) zealots are obviously more likely to pop up in such discussions than elsewhere. It's also my experience from offline conversations about Linux distros that there appears to be a large number of 'preachy' Gentoo fans. This honestly annoys me, because I hate preaching and technological zealotry about as much as I like Gentoo.
Of course, my observation can be wrong, but if it isn't, I think the likely explanation is simply because Gentoo caters to a specific kind of user, namely the geeks/tech enthusiasts. There's nothing wrong with this, LFS caters to that userbase as well, and I regard myself as one of its members. However, there does seem to be a certain tendency towards zealotry in this particular group -- emacs vs. vi, Perl vs. Python, Linux vs. BSD, OOP vs. any other programming paradigm, you get the picture. Geeks tend to develop feelings for their tools of choice, and a lot of us seem to believe that a positive feeling for our favourite distro/language/paradigm/processor/whatever automatically applies to everyone else, and that whoever disagrees with them are wrong. That's what fuels all our silly holy wars, and it's stupid.
My comment was really more about geek psychology in general (specifically manifested in what seems to be a too large part of the Gentoo userbase) than about the Gentoo distro, or the original poster. If I seemed abusive, I'll blame caffeine deprivation.;.)
That mangled sentence makes no sense at all, and the emphasized part was supposed to read "that different distros exist for a reason". My apologies, it seems I chopped that sentence apart.
Re:educational value
on
LFS 4.0 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The GNU tool you're referring to is probably Stow.
Other good package management tools for LFS use include Depot, Graft, swpkg, opt_depot and the countless other free package managers whose names I have forgotten.
Re:Gentoo is a great iso-linux distro
on
LFS 4.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why is it that every time someone mentions any other distro (especially LFS), Gentoo users apparently feel duty-bound to storm out and preach the glories of their distro?
You people really sometimes come across as zealots. I've messed a bit around with both Gentoo and LFS myself (I liked both), but one of the main reasons I don't do Gentoo at the moment is simply that I'm so fed up with the legion of Gentoo fanboys who can't understand thatreason. Grow the hell up. Just because Gentoo is a nice, even great, distro doesn't mean that the rest of the Linux distro scene sucks.
Does the tech community really need all this ridiculous zealotry and misguided "advocacy"? If craftsmen felt the same way about their tools as we computer people do about ours, we'd have screwdriver fans advocating the use of a screwdriver for driving nails and chopping wood, while the chainsaw fanboys are out trying to drill holes and change tires with their chainsaws. Hint: Different distros, different text editors and different programming languages exist for a reason: People are different. "Different" does not necessarily have to become a question of better or worse.
</RANT> -- this might be flamebait, but don't say I didn't warn you.
I submit to you a different vision of the future... eventually people who really know what they are doing with computers will no longer be a novelty. There is a generation of people behind us who were raised on computers. For them, the skills needed to become a programmer or network adminstrator may be as common as those needed to work retail today.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, most of that generation is raised on computers that run software specifically designed to not require computer literacy. The user-friendliness paradigm used in modern software is not about making programs that help the user becoming knowledgeable in their operation, but about making programs that require an absolute minimum of knowledge to use. Most modern young computer users know what a CPU is and why it's better to buy AMD than Intel, they know how to set up a gaming LAN and the like, but they don't know
about processor architecture or how TCP/IP works. Why learn about TCP/IP when you can set everything up with buttons and menus, and who wants to learn HTML if you can make your gaming clan's webpage in Frontpage?
Of course there are exceptions. There always are when we make generalizations. But all in all, I don't think high computer knowledge is that much more common among that generation than it was earlier. The general level is higher (people can put together computers themselves, perform upgrades and repairs), but the ratio of people who actually know what they're doing doesn't seem to be that much higher than what it used to be.
Mr. Jackson is entitled to all the cosmetic surgery he wants and can afford, just like anyone else. However, if he opts to have surgery done that makes him look like a member of another ethnic group, it will make him come across as a hypocrite if he uses his ethnicity to get sympathy (especially when he's using it for a seemingly completely unrelated cause).
Likewise, a white person would be a hypocrite if he had surgery to make him look, say, black or Asian, and proceeded to call for sympathy because of his white ethnicity. That never happens though, because white people don't face the oppression that black people do, so there's little point in trying to get sympathy for being white. Well, unless you're a racist schmuck or something similar, but that's another matter.
My apologies if my choice of wording is poor, or if I misunderstand the political climate that regards these things; I don't live in the US, so I'm not really sure I know which restrictions you're referring to, or what you mean by "smartly categorized group". Feel free to elaborate if you have the time.
But that's exactly the problem. "{Pure,True} capitalism" does not exist, because strong forces in capitalist societies concern themselves with keeping markets alive, to keep the capital flowing and the economy feasible. In doing this, they may keep a market alive that would be better off dying (the recording industry stands as a prime example -- technology is available to cut out their distribution work).
To make matters worse, a commercial entity can easily get away with screwing its customers if it has enough money and market control. Microsoft and the RIAA member companies are great examples of this. Neither entity would exist in "true capitalism", but it is exactly this behaviour from the companies that prevent such a form of capitalism from existing. Letting the market decide prerequires that the market exists, and with the basis for the RIAA's market dwindling, they have to resort to a variety of draconian measures to try to keep the market around, even though their time should rightly be drawing to an end. Advocates of a pure form of capitalism aren't usually keen on trying to regulate commercial entities' behaviour, but their unregulated behaviour is what is preventing such a form of capitalism from existing.
On a side note, I think that music is better off as art than industry. Industry kills fun, we computer people should know that better than anyone.
I don't know whether Michael Jackson's skin disease is myth or reality (people seem to claim both), so I won't comment on that.
However, it is a fact that mr. Jackson has received surgery to make him look more "white" as regards his facial features etc., which is why it appears very hypocritical when he claims that fighting for him is fighting the cause of all black people. If he himself believed in that cause, why would he pay to have his appearance altered to look less "black"?
It's true! Al Gore not only invented the Internet, he also spearheaded the invention of computer science as we know it! Why else do you think it is called an "AlGorithm?"
So distributors big enough to make a difference with noncompliant hardware (which, if it does circumvent a DRM scheme, is a priori illegal under the DMCA)
However, I think that in a DRM vs. circumvention hardware scenario, the biggest players on the circumvention hardware side wouldn't be in the US or EU, where the draconian copyright laws are effective. The Sklyarov case showed that someone breaking the DMCA outside the US can be prosecuted if he enters the US, but (for example) a Chinese hacker isn't likely to do that anyway. You're absolutely right that the DMCA gives DRM schemes an extra set of teeth though, since it means an attack on free computing using BOTH law and technology.
[...] will also be big enough make attractive legal targets.
Sure. And those distributors would lose in advance. If they were based outside the US, importing their circumvention hardware would be illegal. People would smuggle it in anyway, though. Smaller distributors would most certainly also exist inside of the US and EU. As long as there have been contraband items, there have been black markets.
What I'm saying isn't that DRM isn't dangerous to open computing. It most certainly is; it would be foolish to believe otherwise. My point is just that while DRM will hinder open computing, it'll take more than that to deliver the death blow.
Eventually, someone would probably figure out a way to make non-DRM hardware pose as DRM hardware.
Security and copy protection can be circumvented even if it is implemented in hardware. Hence all the mod chips for gaming consoles, the felt tip marker trick for the "copyproof" CDs, etc.
Besides, if the entertainment industry and Microsoft go toe-to-toe with the hacker and tinkerer communities using *technology* instead of buying legislation or using marketing ploys, I'm pretty sure who my bet would be on.
But that's exactly the point. The RIAA *wants* you to buy the same CD several times if it gets scratched. If you rip it for backup purposes, it means you won't lose the music when you lose the medium, and that's a lost sale.
It's one thing that mainstream media continually refers to crackers as "hackers", but I didn't think a Slashdot headline would do so to.
The bill is about CRACKING, not hackers.
Which methods are there to allow such a network to deal with the possibility of an attacker who makes compromised RPMs available? P2P package sharing seems to be a brilliant idea (and a very good use for P2P), yet I'm not quite sure how that security problem could be dealt with. One possibility could be to have the system compare MD5 checksums of P2P-downloaded packages with the official ones -- but that has the problems that the user also needs to get a MD5 checksum of the official package, and that it's likely that the packages distributed on a P2P package network wouldn't all have official counterparts (homegrown packages, etc.).
Note: I'm not very familiar with how RPM packaging works in the first place, as I have mainly used dpkg and various source package managers. (swpkg, depot, graft, etc.)
He's saying that the right to free expression is not some right you inherently get for being human.
But since free speech is a human right, that's exactly what it is -- or at least, what it is supposed to be.
He's saying it is a privelage you get for belonging to certain groups, such as the USA.
Only if the human rights were abolished, and only national rights (like the US constitutional rights) applied. Fortunately, that's not how it is -- at least not in theory. The fact that many nations don't respect the human rights doesn't mean that they become privileges rather than rights.
Slashdot Mirror
EXTRA: First merger of US Armed Forces and private enterprise has shown result as the Navy and Air Force reveal their new Microsoft Cruise Missiles.
In related news, sighs of relief were heard all over Baghdad.
da_Den_man wrote:
<RANT>
Who the fsck are you to judge that? What is it with some gamers and this strangely arrogant attitude towards what a computer is supposed to do anyway? It seems that quite a lot of current computer users think the purpose of a computer is:
Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing wrong with using a computer for being entertained by your favourite entertainment industry, but it seems that quite a lot of current computer "geeks" can't wrap their minds around the idea that it could also be used for quite a lot of other things. The notion that someone could buy a computer to do Boring Things like drawing graphics, writing code and all that sort of creative hippie not-so-1337-g33k stuff seems to be absolutely alien to them -- or, even worse, that someone could even want to have a computer for useless things like writing documents or communicating with friends and family. In fact, the whole idea that people are using computers for something else than what they are using them for seems to be completely unfathomable to them.
Clue: One of the things that makes computers so damn cool is that you can use them for just about anything you want to. Whether you want to write code, read E2 nodes all day long, listen to music, make music, watch movies, play games, write documents, exchange emails with other people, or any combination of the above, you can build a computer that will do it. Which one of these is The Right Way to use a computer? They all are. No matter how much the hardware industry (in glorious cooperation with Microsoft and most of the game industry) is trying to make you believe that nothing short of a 3GHz P4 is enough for satisfactory performance in Notepad, the truth is that the vast majority of computer users don't need the massive power of current hardware. More power to them if they don't play the part of brainwashed consumers.
Now that I'm in rant mode and on the subject of gamers.....
simon@merlin:~$ dict -d jargon gamerNo definitions found for "gamer", perhaps you mean:
jargon: lamer
</RANT> -- don't say I didn't warn you.
I don't run Windows, but.....
Theming a desktop can be fun, and having fun is (for me, anyway) a purpose of computing in its own right. On my Linux desktop I've fiddled around with Enlightenment, FluxBox (which is what I'm currently running), GNOME+Sawfish and others, and seriously, tweaking how your desktop looks to make it suit your tastes can be quite an amusing way to kill a lazy afternoon. Also, in a desktop with decent themability, you can theme to cut down on eye candy while maintaining a look you like. I don't see what is wrong with that. Theming desktops isn't necessarily about filling them up with heavy crap, it might as well be removing all the heavy crap, or adding lightweight eye candy (it does, in fact, exist -- takes more effort to make than heavyweight stuff, though).
That said, am I the only one who doesn't understand why recent MS desktops apparently have to look plastic-like, garish and cartoony?
rbp wrote:
The point with the ransom seemed to be that if enough money is paid, the software would be freed before the set date. This is the service you'll be paying for, not to "help it live" -- it would be released on that date anyway, as you even point out yourself. So essentially, if they never hit the magic number, you are paying for a service that is not delivered (not good, and illegal in some countries).
I think this idea undermines some of the often-touted arguments for Free Software -- the principle of a million watchful debugging eyes, the argument that Free Software makes even poor college students or the computer-owning minorities of poor regions of the world able to run quality software, the idea of keeping our software out of corporate clutches, as well as the security implications of open or Free software.
Also -- this might apply more to the Free Software world than to Open Source -- an idea that had me attracted to Free Software is that of community-driven rather than corporate-driven software development. There isn't nearly as much money involved in Free Software as there is in corporate software development, and that leaves less doors open for killing good projects with greed. I thought part of the whole idea was that if even a hobby programmer managed to cook up a good Free program, he could find a large part of the Free Software community helping him with support, debugging and similar tasks, in principle allowing the program to rival corporate programs in the end?
Considering the short supply of ethics on the corporate Internet, trusting code you can't audit (or have people you trust audit for you) is foolish. So what if they release it as GPL and I find out that I'd been running a spyware/other scumware infected system for months? The ransom model means that things like that can be worked out in time, but that won't help if you have already been abused. Someone has already used your computer for something you might not agree with, and the whole point of Free Software is to return control over your computer to you, its user, rather than corporations.
That said, I don't think there are malicious motivations behind the software for ransom idea at all, I just think there is serious possibility for abuse by less ethical players. With a name like that you can be sure such people will take notice, and be inspired.
Given MS' track record and general sentiments towards open or free software, I seriously can't see how anyone can think they don't have some sort of plan to make life difficult for .NET on non-Windows platforms -- or, at least, an ulterior motive with .NET in general. Killing Java is certainly one, but I doubt it is the only motivation they have.
Perhaps I'm wearing tinfoil, but I can't help but think that Mono and DotGNU are somehow being played the fool by Microsoft.
"Cheap beer is good, because it is cheap and good."
--Polish proverb
.....and immediately after the transformation, the Slashdotter would realize that while geeks are socially well-equipped to deal with talking frogs, attractive female blue-bloods are a different story altogether......
Actually, they were named Agnus, Fat Agnus, Super Fat Agnus, and Alice. Alice was the final incarnation of the chip, from the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000's AGA chipsets. There might have been others in the specialty Amigas, such as Dave Haynie's prototype "A3000+" which was (according to rumor) only produced in two specimens, but there was no Obese Agnus in a general-production Amiga. :)
/s/blog/technobabble and that looks pretty much like something out of Star Trek....
I have nothing against Gentoo. It's a great distribution, I've used it myself and liked it a lot. I have more fun with LFS though, but that's a matter of taste. And no, the original poster of this post did not spout Gentoo zealotry. My post was more of a general observation of Gentoo users' behaviour on various forums (I've seen a lot of it here and on Newsforge, especially when the subject is either Slackware or LFS) than about him in specific. Users of Gentoo, like users of any other distribution, come in many different sizes and shapes. Unfortunately, there really does seem to be a lot of them who seemingly can't resist the twitch in the g3nt00 0wn5 muscle when people are talking about other distributions. I'm not saying that all Gentoo users are like that -- they aren't. I'm not even sure if it's most Gentoo users, it could just as well be a loud minority.
The problem is that it seems to either be a larger group within the Gentoo community than elsewhere, or it's just that their loud minority is louder. I don't have numbers or something similar to back this up, it is just an observation from around the discussion forums I've followed. My observation could be biased because I'm interested in Gentoo and LFS, and Gentoo (or LFS -- but there doesn't seem to be as many of those) zealots are obviously more likely to pop up in such discussions than elsewhere. It's also my experience from offline conversations about Linux distros that there appears to be a large number of 'preachy' Gentoo fans. This honestly annoys me, because I hate preaching and technological zealotry about as much as I like Gentoo.
Of course, my observation can be wrong, but if it isn't, I think the likely explanation is simply because Gentoo caters to a specific kind of user, namely the geeks/tech enthusiasts. There's nothing wrong with this, LFS caters to that userbase as well, and I regard myself as one of its members. However, there does seem to be a certain tendency towards zealotry in this particular group -- emacs vs. vi, Perl vs. Python, Linux vs. BSD, OOP vs. any other programming paradigm, you get the picture. Geeks tend to develop feelings for their tools of choice, and a lot of us seem to believe that a positive feeling for our favourite distro/language/paradigm/processor/whatever automatically applies to everyone else, and that whoever disagrees with them are wrong. That's what fuels all our silly holy wars, and it's stupid.
My comment was really more about geek psychology in general (specifically manifested in what seems to be a too large part of the Gentoo userbase) than about the Gentoo distro, or the original poster. If I seemed abusive, I'll blame caffeine deprivation. ;.)
I wrote this babble:
That mangled sentence makes no sense at all, and the emphasized part was supposed to read "that different distros exist for a reason". My apologies, it seems I chopped that sentence apart.
The GNU tool you're referring to is probably Stow.
Other good package management tools for LFS use include Depot, Graft, swpkg, opt_depot and the countless other free package managers whose names I have forgotten.
Why is it that every time someone mentions any other distro (especially LFS), Gentoo users apparently feel duty-bound to storm out and preach the glories of their distro?
You people really sometimes come across as zealots. I've messed a bit around with both Gentoo and LFS myself (I liked both), but one of the main reasons I don't do Gentoo at the moment is simply that I'm so fed up with the legion of Gentoo fanboys who can't understand thatreason. Grow the hell up. Just because Gentoo is a nice, even great, distro doesn't mean that the rest of the Linux distro scene sucks.
Does the tech community really need all this ridiculous zealotry and misguided "advocacy"? If craftsmen felt the same way about their tools as we computer people do about ours, we'd have screwdriver fans advocating the use of a screwdriver for driving nails and chopping wood, while the chainsaw fanboys are out trying to drill holes and change tires with their chainsaws. Hint: Different distros, different text editors and different programming languages exist for a reason: People are different. "Different" does not necessarily have to become a question of better or worse.
</RANT> -- this might be flamebait, but don't say I didn't warn you.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, most of that generation is raised on computers that run software specifically designed to not require computer literacy. The user-friendliness paradigm used in modern software is not about making programs that help the user becoming knowledgeable in their operation, but about making programs that require an absolute minimum of knowledge to use. Most modern young computer users know what a CPU is and why it's better to buy AMD than Intel, they know how to set up a gaming LAN and the like, but they don't know about processor architecture or how TCP/IP works. Why learn about TCP/IP when you can set everything up with buttons and menus, and who wants to learn HTML if you can make your gaming clan's webpage in Frontpage?
Of course there are exceptions. There always are when we make generalizations. But all in all, I don't think high computer knowledge is that much more common among that generation than it was earlier. The general level is higher (people can put together computers themselves, perform upgrades and repairs), but the ratio of people who actually know what they're doing doesn't seem to be that much higher than what it used to be.
Mr. Jackson is entitled to all the cosmetic surgery he wants and can afford, just like anyone else. However, if he opts to have surgery done that makes him look like a member of another ethnic group, it will make him come across as a hypocrite if he uses his ethnicity to get sympathy (especially when he's using it for a seemingly completely unrelated cause).
Likewise, a white person would be a hypocrite if he had surgery to make him look, say, black or Asian, and proceeded to call for sympathy because of his white ethnicity. That never happens though, because white people don't face the oppression that black people do, so there's little point in trying to get sympathy for being white. Well, unless you're a racist schmuck or something similar, but that's another matter.
My apologies if my choice of wording is poor, or if I misunderstand the political climate that regards these things; I don't live in the US, so I'm not really sure I know which restrictions you're referring to, or what you mean by "smartly categorized group". Feel free to elaborate if you have the time.
But that's exactly the problem. "{Pure,True} capitalism" does not exist, because strong forces in capitalist societies concern themselves with keeping markets alive, to keep the capital flowing and the economy feasible. In doing this, they may keep a market alive that would be better off dying (the recording industry stands as a prime example -- technology is available to cut out their distribution work).
To make matters worse, a commercial entity can easily get away with screwing its customers if it has enough money and market control. Microsoft and the RIAA member companies are great examples of this. Neither entity would exist in "true capitalism", but it is exactly this behaviour from the companies that prevent such a form of capitalism from existing. Letting the market decide prerequires that the market exists, and with the basis for the RIAA's market dwindling, they have to resort to a variety of draconian measures to try to keep the market around, even though their time should rightly be drawing to an end. Advocates of a pure form of capitalism aren't usually keen on trying to regulate commercial entities' behaviour, but their unregulated behaviour is what is preventing such a form of capitalism from existing.
On a side note, I think that music is better off as art than industry. Industry kills fun, we computer people should know that better than anyone.
I don't know whether Michael Jackson's skin disease is myth or reality (people seem to claim both), so I won't comment on that.
However, it is a fact that mr. Jackson has received surgery to make him look more "white" as regards his facial features etc., which is why it appears very hypocritical when he claims that fighting for him is fighting the cause of all black people. If he himself believed in that cause, why would he pay to have his appearance altered to look less "black"?
It's true! Al Gore not only invented the Internet, he also spearheaded the invention of computer science as we know it! Why else do you think it is called an "AlGorithm?"
So distributors big enough to make a difference with noncompliant hardware (which, if it does circumvent a DRM scheme, is a priori illegal under the DMCA)
However, I think that in a DRM vs. circumvention hardware scenario, the biggest players on the circumvention hardware side wouldn't be in the US or EU, where the draconian copyright laws are effective. The Sklyarov case showed that someone breaking the DMCA outside the US can be prosecuted if he enters the US, but (for example) a Chinese hacker isn't likely to do that anyway. You're absolutely right that the DMCA gives DRM schemes an extra set of teeth though, since it means an attack on free computing using BOTH law and technology.
[...] will also be big enough make attractive legal targets.
Sure. And those distributors would lose in advance. If they were based outside the US, importing their circumvention hardware would be illegal. People would smuggle it in anyway, though. Smaller distributors would most certainly also exist inside of the US and EU. As long as there have been contraband items, there have been black markets.
What I'm saying isn't that DRM isn't dangerous to open computing. It most certainly is; it would be foolish to believe otherwise. My point is just that while DRM will hinder open computing, it'll take more than that to deliver the death blow.
Eventually, someone would probably figure out a way to make non-DRM hardware pose as DRM hardware. Security and copy protection can be circumvented even if it is implemented in hardware. Hence all the mod chips for gaming consoles, the felt tip marker trick for the "copyproof" CDs, etc. Besides, if the entertainment industry and Microsoft go toe-to-toe with the hacker and tinkerer communities using *technology* instead of buying legislation or using marketing ploys, I'm pretty sure who my bet would be on.
We're geeks. Pitiful in that context should DEFINITELY be a +1.
But that's exactly the point. The RIAA *wants* you to buy the same CD several times if it gets scratched. If you rip it for backup purposes, it means you won't lose the music when you lose the medium, and that's a lost sale.
It's one thing that mainstream media continually refers to crackers as "hackers", but I didn't think a Slashdot headline would do so to. The bill is about CRACKING, not hackers.
Note: I'm not very familiar with how RPM packaging works in the first place, as I have mainly used dpkg and various source package managers. (swpkg, depot, graft, etc.)
But since free speech is a human right, that's exactly what it is -- or at least, what it is supposed to be.
He's saying it is a privelage you get for belonging to certain groups, such as the USA.
Only if the human rights were abolished, and only national rights (like the US constitutional rights) applied. Fortunately, that's not how it is -- at least not in theory. The fact that many nations don't respect the human rights doesn't mean that they become privileges rather than rights.