Not to be mean or elitist it's just that the purpose of the OS community does not necessarily include being a help desk for people who are to lazy or ignorant to look through the documentation, search the web or generaly try to be self sufficiant users of technology.
Then what should be said is "I don't know how to do that, here's the link to the documentation". Instead, the grand-parent said "If you don't know how to change it, you're too stupid to use the software". This is the attitude that needs adjusting in people who regard themselves as OS evangelists. One of these responses acknolowdges your own ignorance, but is helpful, the other maintains your sense of superiority, but provides absolutely no information whatsoever. While the people pushing OS treat newbies like scum, then nobody is going to become a newbie. And if you get no newbies, you get no mature users either. And, as an aside, "RTFM" does not count as a helpful comment, particularly if people do not understand the acronym, do not know where the manual is located, or, as is often the case with OS, don't know which "manual" is meant. Also, people often feel offended when sworn at, even in the form of an acronym.
As it happens I don't know how to enable that feature either
Well, if you agree with what the grand-parent said, you should stop using it. If you don't know how to change every option of a piece of software, then you have no business using that software, despite the fact that the user documentation for that software makes no mention of that feature.
ORG is for "miscellaneous organizations", NOT non-profits. The idea of.org being for non-profits is some sort of wierd meme that everyone believes, for no particular reason.
Actually, the reason I believe it is because in order to register.org.au, you must be a registered non-profit organisation. In fact, in Australia, it is impossible for an individual to own a domain name. You have to enter an ABN (Australian Business Number) or a non-profit organisation number on the form.
I realize that.org.au is not.org, but it still goes to prove that reality is not always RFC-compliant.
Re:PHP or Perl?
on
Learning PHP 5
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If you really want the ultimate in execution speed, efficiency and flexibility, code everything in assembler. If you see anything you like in a PHP script, simply re-invent the whole thing from scratch.
If, on the other hand, you are not a masochist, you want to write something quickly and easily, something relatively easy to debug, something that isn't going to get multiple hits per second - use PHP. That's what it's there for.
But to the point - PHP. When I am forced to use PHP for something, I am constantly amazed at the poor design and horrific bloat of the language. Case in point - there are no less than eleven different sort routines.
The number of sorting routines isn't necessarily bad - they're all well documented, and all have differences. I don't think having multiple sort routines slows the language down at all, so I don't see the problem.
One might think that having all these different routines might make it easier to perform a custom sort. Nothing further from the truth
That is more of a problem, I think. If coding a customize sort is more difficult in PHP than in an other language, then that's bad. I can't really see how that would be though - implementing a custom sort algorithm doesn't depend hugely on the features of a language - its all basic loops and conditions.
I code in PHP and ASP.NET. I much prefer ASP.NET - things are much neater, better organized, and there is a clear division between form and content. But you don't need ASP.NET for most sites, and most sites I've done didn't. They needed something quick, simple and fairly lightweight. And PHP worked fine there. PHP is easy to use - if you aren't doing anything particularly hard. It's exceptionally easy to do easy stuff, and hard to do the hard stuff with PHP. So use it for the easy stuff, and use ASP.NET for the easy stuff. Problem solved.
PHP 4 is comparable to ASP. From what I've heard (I haven't used it myself) PHP 5 is comparing itself to ASP.NET
If you have to run it on a non-windows platform, PHP is more suited than ASP - I think there's an ASP module for apache, but I don't think the ASP.NET module and mono are quite working well together.
Also, there's a heck of a lot of community-contributed code. Something like PEAR is a great resource for extra functionality in your PHP scripts. I also find that there's more free documentation, tutorials and community-based support for PHP than there is for ASP.
the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.
Like, for example, the bit about copyrights being time-limited, so lets just extend them every twenty years? This "bright-lining" is going on on both sides of the game. Why should one side respect the rules, when the other side is bribing the referees?
What was once a "socially beneficial copyright law" is now a no-holds-barred money-grab. It's not exactly the *AAs fault though; it was never their mandate to give a stuff about citizens. That's the government's job (and, by extension, the voters), and they seem to be asleep at the wheel.
You really have no idea what discrimination means do you.
1. The act of discriminating. 2. The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment.
3. Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice.
And denying sexual favours to an individual based on the fact that they live in their mother's basement and last bathen in 1997 shows a discriminating taste. You may also want to check out the definition of "comic" before posting again as well.
Stop defending Google! It it were Microsoft who had released this software everybody here would bang on them.
This software is just the same as Microsoft's own search feature - except that it works better. I never heard anybody attacking MS over that - unless it was because of its stupid animated puppy dog.
I had a look through that article - and the replacement query he describes uses subqueries. I think MySQL 4.1 works with subqueries, but most hosting companies I have seen still only offer 4.0. If MySQL only supports bad queries, then it is then engines fault, because the poor developer has to hack around its incomplete implementation.
Um, it is a security hole. It allows a third party to control your hardware. Just because it isn't often exploited, and has few disastrous consequences when it is, doesn't make it any less of a security hole - it just makes it an unimportant one.
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 1
Copyrights and royalties help support creative individuals so that they can continue to prosper and be creative without being driven into poverty or beholden to the wealthy or dependant on the state.
Nope - its just moved it so they are beholden to the publishers rather than the wealthy. Producing and distributing a book/song/movie is a very expensive process. As internet publishing gains momentum - especially P2P technologies, which mean the publisher does not have to pay for all the bandwidth - then you may see individuals publishing without being beholden to anyone.
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 1
If your going to insult me, please try and connect it at least tangentially to the argument at hand.
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 2
Now do you see why copyright laws are needed to encourage creativity today?
No, frankly, I don't. Copyright laws today do not encourage creativity. They encourage intellectual hoarding.
In the 'old days' the execution of the idea was at least as valuable as the intellectual copyright. So what if you steal the "idea" for the mona lisa? You could never create a painting that equalled it, because if you had that kind of skill you would be spending the time creating something of your own that was equally as good - hence the low number of mona lisa bootleg copies in existence.
Their have been plenty of "bootlegs" of paintings. Usually not of the Mona Lisa, because it would be obvious they are fakes (especially since the location of the original is well established), but there are plenty of counterfeiters and counterfeits out there - and nobody is queueing up to see them for their "subtle naunces". But the Mona Lisa is not an accurate comparison to today's art - the Mona Lisa was a unique work. There is very little comparable today - all our art is designed for mass production and mass consumption.
I went through a Creative Writing degree at University; pretty much everyone who graduated that degree was resigned to the knowledge that they would have to work another job and write in their spare time, that they would likely not become a success, and that only the very, very few authors on the top of the pile manage to make enough money to write full-time. Nobody at all knowledgable about the industry goes into writing with the incentive of making money - because, most likely, you won't. I assume the same goes for music and the visual arts - the visible few get richly rewarded, the vast majority get nothing. Copyright does not provide an incentive for the people creating the artwork. It provides a reward for the few whose work is accepted by the publisher, marketed by the publisher and acceptable to the public taste, which is notoriously hard to pin down.
Now anyone can rip a DVD to create a near perfect copy in minutes, with zero skill - and so, many people do. Are those people as talented as the film's creators?
Who cares? They're not claiming to be. They're not claiming to be the creator of the film, any more than the people who work at the DVD manufacturing plant that produces legit DVDs are.
What people are missing is that copyright is not an inalienable right. If it was, it would not expire, and could not be bought and sold. In fact copyright isn't a "right" at all. As has been stated numerous times on this forum, it is an agreement between the artist and the public, that the artist get an exclusive right to reproduce his work, if, in exchange, that work is eventually signed over to the public. If the public no longer believes that agreement is beneficial to them (as they are showing through their actions), they should withdraw from the agreement - particularly as the original agreement has been changed so many times over the years.
Are people still prepared to pay for the original after they see a copy? in most cases no, and no.
Any numerical proof of that? Or just your statement. Some anecdotal evidence: I download most movies that look interesting when they first come out. I also own over 100 DVDs, most of which are movies I have already seen, many of which I previously downloaded copies of. The only difference downloading DVDs has made to my purchasing practices, is now I can make sure I'm not buying a pile of crap without shelling out for it first. Many people do appreciate the real thing - which explains why prints of the Mona Lisa are a dime a dozen, while the real thing is still priceless.
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 4, Insightful
And don't go off on any college-kid horseshit about 'artists' doing their thang anyways, in the copious amounts of time they have after spending 8-12 hours a day working at a job...etc
Which is precisely why there were no works of art produced before copyright law was enforced.
Just a technicality, but the game is *published* by Mayfair, it wasn't created by them. The game was created by Klaus Teuber. In fact, Mayfair is only the American publisher - I believe the German company Kosmos was the first company to produce Catan. Just a niggle, but I think Klaus deserves to have his name assosciated with his own game.
Why not leave it up to the individual to decide? According to your argument any cell capable of growing into an autonomous human being is designated as a seperate life. How do you differentiate this from lost blood from a cut finger, I'm sure that each of these cells could be used to create a new life (albeit a cloned life). Why does the DNA Sequence necessarily have to be different in order to qualify a cell as a seperate life?
Actually, a blood cell cannot grow into an autonomous human - it is already differentiated, it can't grow into anything apart from a blood cell. It is possible, however, that scientists could take that cell, extract its DNA, stick it into an undifferentiated cell, and grow a genetically identical human being - but that hardly qualifies as a "cell capable of growing into an autonomous human being" does it?
The DNA sequence doesn't have to be different in order for it to be a distinct human life - I don't think you could find many people who would claim identical twins are really one entity.
It's a distinct consciousness that diferentiates two entities, but unfortunately, we haven't found a way to measure the soul yet (Feel free to insert scientific nomenclature - "locus of awareness" maybe - if you don't like soul).
Personally I feel that as an adult and a responsible individual the choices I make regarding my bio-chemistry should be mine and mine alone. It should be my decision as to what I do with my Biology and the Biology of any potentially autonomous lifeforms I may be responsible for, and when there is a decision concerning a second person, then a consensus should be reached with this person.
You say you can make decisions for the biology of any potential autonomous lifeforms you are responsible for. But when does "potential" become "actual"? That's what the whole debate hinges on. Many people believe that a foetus *is* an actual lifeform, not merely one in potential. And, as there is little evidence on either side, it is a perfectly valid belief.
It's not really a choice for the individual, any more than the decision on the morality of murder is. The morality of the situation is contingent upon one question - "Is a foetus a human being?" If the answer is yes, then it is morally equivelant to murder. If the answer is no, then it is not. So far, rationalism has yet to provide an answer to that question, which is why debate still rages.
The key to this type of decision making for individuals lies in education and rationalism. These are the types of choices that need to be taught in schools. If people want to make a moral choice for themselves based on these viewpoints, that's fine. But their ideas should not be forced upon others.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. It's fine for individuals to make decisions regarding actions which directly affect only them. But if an action would harm another, that's when law intervenes and forces its morals upon the individual. And that's as it should be.
I second that. I've been using no-ip for 2 years for domain registration, dynamic DNS and mail backup. Not even a whiff of a problem in all that time, nor even in the time before that when I was using their free service.
The difference is that you can't get thrown in jail for not knowing the laws of physics. To know every law, regulation and ordinance of the place in which you live (ranging from county, state and national laws) is quite impossible; yet the law assumes that everybody knows and understands all the laws - ignorance is no excuse, etc. This is helped a little by the fact that many laws can be intuited based on simple principles, such as the right to life, right to property, right to be safe in one's person, etc. But, and this is increasingly the case, many cannot be extrapolated from such rights.
If the law is formulated in such a way that Joe Blow needs a degree to understand it, how can the law enforcers expect people to follow it? As Tacitus says, "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws".
How is audible.com once your actually signed up? I was going to sign up, until I found that the titles I was primarily signing up for wouldn't be sold to people who signed up under an Australian address. There's still a lot of content there I'd like though, so I'm still considering signing up. How is the service, in your opinion? I know they use a proprietary format, but I also know there are ways to decode it (and have procured myself an older copy of their program, just to use if the need arises).
One year at my old school, a computer renowned for his odour received six cans of deoderant in his in-tray at Christmas time. I'm pretty sure he got the point...
Some signifigant points however: With Trusted Computing you can really only make one good servant Alinda for each Alice you surgically dissect. One dificult surgery, one liberated clone. If you try to pump out Alinda clones and give them to your friends then at some point some Bob is going to report back to his maker Satan multiple sightings of "Alice" (actually Alinda). At that point Satan puts Alice on a banned list and Alinda effectively drops dead. Also if you are not careful enough Bob might somehow notice that "Alice" has misbehaved and tattle that back to Satan, again getting Alice on the banned list and killing Alinda.
But you don't need to duplicate massive quantities of Alinda. Once you have one chip under your control, you can then strip out the encryption and produce un-encrypted video that could then be distributed. In which case, as it so often is now, the "pirated" material would be more valuable than the original.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to be mean or elitist it's just that the purpose of the OS community does not necessarily include being a help desk for people who are to lazy or ignorant to look through the documentation, search the web or generaly try to be self sufficiant users of technology.
Then what should be said is "I don't know how to do that, here's the link to the documentation". Instead, the grand-parent said "If you don't know how to change it, you're too stupid to use the software". This is the attitude that needs adjusting in people who regard themselves as OS evangelists. One of these responses acknolowdges your own ignorance, but is helpful, the other maintains your sense of superiority, but provides absolutely no information whatsoever. While the people pushing OS treat newbies like scum, then nobody is going to become a newbie. And if you get no newbies, you get no mature users either. And, as an aside, "RTFM" does not count as a helpful comment, particularly if people do not understand the acronym, do not know where the manual is located, or, as is often the case with OS, don't know which "manual" is meant. Also, people often feel offended when sworn at, even in the form of an acronym.
As it happens I don't know how to enable that feature either
Well, if you agree with what the grand-parent said, you should stop using it. If you don't know how to change every option of a piece of software, then you have no business using that software, despite the fact that the user documentation for that software makes no mention of that feature.
ORG is for "miscellaneous organizations", NOT non-profits. The idea of .org being for non-profits is some sort of wierd meme that everyone believes, for no particular reason.
.org.au, you must be a registered non-profit organisation. In fact, in Australia, it is impossible for an individual to own a domain name. You have to enter an ABN (Australian Business Number) or a non-profit organisation number on the form.
.org.au is not .org, but it still goes to prove that reality is not always RFC-compliant.
Actually, the reason I believe it is because in order to register
I realize that
If you really want the ultimate in execution speed, efficiency and flexibility, code everything in assembler. If you see anything you like in a PHP script, simply re-invent the whole thing from scratch.
If, on the other hand, you are not a masochist, you want to write something quickly and easily, something relatively easy to debug, something that isn't going to get multiple hits per second - use PHP. That's what it's there for.
But to the point - PHP. When I am forced to use PHP for something, I am constantly amazed at the poor design and horrific bloat of the language. Case in point - there are no less than eleven different sort routines.
The number of sorting routines isn't necessarily bad - they're all well documented, and all have differences. I don't think having multiple sort routines slows the language down at all, so I don't see the problem.
One might think that having all these different routines might make it easier to perform a custom sort. Nothing further from the truth
That is more of a problem, I think. If coding a customize sort is more difficult in PHP than in an other language, then that's bad. I can't really see how that would be though - implementing a custom sort algorithm doesn't depend hugely on the features of a language - its all basic loops and conditions.
I code in PHP and ASP.NET. I much prefer ASP.NET - things are much neater, better organized, and there is a clear division between form and content. But you don't need ASP.NET for most sites, and most sites I've done didn't. They needed something quick, simple and fairly lightweight. And PHP worked fine there. PHP is easy to use - if you aren't doing anything particularly hard. It's exceptionally easy to do easy stuff, and hard to do the hard stuff with PHP. So use it for the easy stuff, and use ASP.NET for the easy stuff. Problem solved.
PHP 4 is comparable to ASP. From what I've heard (I haven't used it myself) PHP 5 is comparing itself to ASP.NET
If you have to run it on a non-windows platform, PHP is more suited than ASP - I think there's an ASP module for apache, but I don't think the ASP.NET module and mono are quite working well together.
Also, there's a heck of a lot of community-contributed code. Something like PEAR is a great resource for extra functionality in your PHP scripts. I also find that there's more free documentation, tutorials and community-based support for PHP than there is for ASP.
the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.
Like, for example, the bit about copyrights being time-limited, so lets just extend them every twenty years? This "bright-lining" is going on on both sides of the game. Why should one side respect the rules, when the other side is bribing the referees?
What was once a "socially beneficial copyright law" is now a no-holds-barred money-grab. It's not exactly the *AAs fault though; it was never their mandate to give a stuff about citizens. That's the government's job (and, by extension, the voters), and they seem to be asleep at the wheel.
But the polar ice-caps are already there - them melting wouldn't create any extra mass, it would just distribute it more evenly over the globe.
You really have no idea what discrimination means do you.
1. The act of discriminating.
2. The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment.
3. Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice.
And denying sexual favours to an individual based on the fact that they live in their mother's basement and last bathen in 1997 shows a discriminating taste. You may also want to check out the definition of "comic" before posting again as well.
Stop defending Google! It it were Microsoft who had released this software everybody here would bang on them.
This software is just the same as Microsoft's own search feature - except that it works better. I never heard anybody attacking MS over that - unless it was because of its stupid animated puppy dog.
I had a look through that article - and the replacement query he describes uses subqueries. I think MySQL 4.1 works with subqueries, but most hosting companies I have seen still only offer 4.0. If MySQL only supports bad queries, then it is then engines fault, because the poor developer has to hack around its incomplete implementation.
Um, it is a security hole. It allows a third party to control your hardware. Just because it isn't often exploited, and has few disastrous consequences when it is, doesn't make it any less of a security hole - it just makes it an unimportant one.
Copyrights and royalties help support creative individuals so that they can continue to prosper and be creative without being driven into poverty or beholden to the wealthy or dependant on the state.
Nope - its just moved it so they are beholden to the publishers rather than the wealthy. Producing and distributing a book/song/movie is a very expensive process. As internet publishing gains momentum - especially P2P technologies, which mean the publisher does not have to pay for all the bandwidth - then you may see individuals publishing without being beholden to anyone.
If your going to insult me, please try and connect it at least tangentially to the argument at hand.
Now do you see why copyright laws are needed to encourage creativity today?
No, frankly, I don't. Copyright laws today do not encourage creativity. They encourage intellectual hoarding.
In the 'old days' the execution of the idea was at least as valuable as the intellectual copyright. So what if you steal the "idea" for the mona lisa? You could never create a painting that equalled it, because if you had that kind of skill you would be spending the time creating something of your own that was equally as good - hence the low number of mona lisa bootleg copies in existence.
Their have been plenty of "bootlegs" of paintings. Usually not of the Mona Lisa, because it would be obvious they are fakes (especially since the location of the original is well established), but there are plenty of counterfeiters and counterfeits out there - and nobody is queueing up to see them for their "subtle naunces". But the Mona Lisa is not an accurate comparison to today's art - the Mona Lisa was a unique work. There is very little comparable today - all our art is designed for mass production and mass consumption.
I went through a Creative Writing degree at University; pretty much everyone who graduated that degree was resigned to the knowledge that they would have to work another job and write in their spare time, that they would likely not become a success, and that only the very, very few authors on the top of the pile manage to make enough money to write full-time. Nobody at all knowledgable about the industry goes into writing with the incentive of making money - because, most likely, you won't. I assume the same goes for music and the visual arts - the visible few get richly rewarded, the vast majority get nothing. Copyright does not provide an incentive for the people creating the artwork. It provides a reward for the few whose work is accepted by the publisher, marketed by the publisher and acceptable to the public taste, which is notoriously hard to pin down.
Now anyone can rip a DVD to create a near perfect copy in minutes, with zero skill - and so, many people do. Are those people as talented as the film's creators?
Who cares? They're not claiming to be. They're not claiming to be the creator of the film, any more than the people who work at the DVD manufacturing plant that produces legit DVDs are.
What people are missing is that copyright is not an inalienable right. If it was, it would not expire, and could not be bought and sold. In fact copyright isn't a "right" at all. As has been stated numerous times on this forum, it is an agreement between the artist and the public, that the artist get an exclusive right to reproduce his work, if, in exchange, that work is eventually signed over to the public. If the public no longer believes that agreement is beneficial to them (as they are showing through their actions), they should withdraw from the agreement - particularly as the original agreement has been changed so many times over the years.
Are people still prepared to pay for the original after they see a copy? in most cases no, and no.
Any numerical proof of that? Or just your statement. Some anecdotal evidence: I download most movies that look interesting when they first come out. I also own over 100 DVDs, most of which are movies I have already seen, many of which I previously downloaded copies of. The only difference downloading DVDs has made to my purchasing practices, is now I can make sure I'm not buying a pile of crap without shelling out for it first. Many people do appreciate the real thing - which explains why prints of the Mona Lisa are a dime a dozen, while the real thing is still priceless.
And don't go off on any college-kid horseshit about 'artists' doing their thang anyways, in the copious amounts of time they have after spending 8-12 hours a day working at a job...etc
Which is precisely why there were no works of art produced before copyright law was enforced.
No, it's a big long spear that you stick into people on horses.
Just a technicality, but the game is *published* by Mayfair, it wasn't created by them. The game was created by Klaus Teuber. In fact, Mayfair is only the American publisher - I believe the German company Kosmos was the first company to produce Catan. Just a niggle, but I think Klaus deserves to have his name assosciated with his own game.
Why not leave it up to the individual to decide? According to your argument any cell capable of growing into an autonomous human being is designated as a seperate life. How do you differentiate this from lost blood from a cut finger, I'm sure that each of these cells could be used to create a new life (albeit a cloned life). Why does the DNA Sequence necessarily have to be different in order to qualify a cell as a seperate life?
Actually, a blood cell cannot grow into an autonomous human - it is already differentiated, it can't grow into anything apart from a blood cell. It is possible, however, that scientists could take that cell, extract its DNA, stick it into an undifferentiated cell, and grow a genetically identical human being - but that hardly qualifies as a "cell capable of growing into an autonomous human being" does it?
The DNA sequence doesn't have to be different in order for it to be a distinct human life - I don't think you could find many people who would claim identical twins are really one entity.
It's a distinct consciousness that diferentiates two entities, but unfortunately, we haven't found a way to measure the soul yet (Feel free to insert scientific nomenclature - "locus of awareness" maybe - if you don't like soul).
Personally I feel that as an adult and a responsible individual the choices I make regarding my bio-chemistry should be mine and mine alone. It should be my decision as to what I do with my Biology and the Biology of any potentially autonomous lifeforms I may be responsible for, and when there is a decision concerning a second person, then a consensus should be reached with this person.
You say you can make decisions for the biology of any potential autonomous lifeforms you are responsible for. But when does "potential" become "actual"? That's what the whole debate hinges on. Many people believe that a foetus *is* an actual lifeform, not merely one in potential. And, as there is little evidence on either side, it is a perfectly valid belief.
It's not really a choice for the individual, any more than the decision on the morality of murder is. The morality of the situation is contingent upon one question - "Is a foetus a human being?" If the answer is yes, then it is morally equivelant to murder. If the answer is no, then it is not. So far, rationalism has yet to provide an answer to that question, which is why debate still rages.
The key to this type of decision making for individuals lies in education and rationalism. These are the types of choices that need to be taught in schools. If people want to make a moral choice for themselves based on these viewpoints, that's fine. But their ideas should not be forced upon others.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. It's fine for individuals to make decisions regarding actions which directly affect only them. But if an action would harm another, that's when law intervenes and forces its morals upon the individual. And that's as it should be.
I second that. I've been using no-ip for 2 years for domain registration, dynamic DNS and mail backup. Not even a whiff of a problem in all that time, nor even in the time before that when I was using their free service.
The difference is that you can't get thrown in jail for not knowing the laws of physics. To know every law, regulation and ordinance of the place in which you live (ranging from county, state and national laws) is quite impossible; yet the law assumes that everybody knows and understands all the laws - ignorance is no excuse, etc. This is helped a little by the fact that many laws can be intuited based on simple principles, such as the right to life, right to property, right to be safe in one's person, etc. But, and this is increasingly the case, many cannot be extrapolated from such rights.
If the law is formulated in such a way that Joe Blow needs a degree to understand it, how can the law enforcers expect people to follow it? As Tacitus says, "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws".
How is audible.com once your actually signed up? I was going to sign up, until I found that the titles I was primarily signing up for wouldn't be sold to people who signed up under an Australian address. There's still a lot of content there I'd like though, so I'm still considering signing up. How is the service, in your opinion? I know they use a proprietary format, but I also know there are ways to decode it (and have procured myself an older copy of their program, just to use if the need arises).
computer teacher. You know, I always thought they put the preview button there for a reason
One year at my old school, a computer renowned for his odour received six cans of deoderant in his in-tray at Christmas time. I'm pretty sure he got the point...
Ok, it depends on what your goal is.
True. But the stated goal of this technology is to stop piracy. I was just trying to show that it doesn't.
Some signifigant points however: With Trusted Computing you can really only make one good servant Alinda for each Alice you surgically dissect. One dificult surgery, one liberated clone. If you try to pump out Alinda clones and give them to your friends then at some point some Bob is going to report back to his maker Satan multiple sightings of "Alice" (actually Alinda). At that point Satan puts Alice on a banned list and Alinda effectively drops dead. Also if you are not careful enough Bob might somehow notice that "Alice" has misbehaved and tattle that back to Satan, again getting Alice on the banned list and killing Alinda.
But you don't need to duplicate massive quantities of Alinda. Once you have one chip under your control, you can then strip out the encryption and produce un-encrypted video that could then be distributed. In which case, as it so often is now, the "pirated" material would be more valuable than the original.