Well, everybody should do their part. China is good at controlling Internet Access, and spammers are one group of criminals for whom labor/re-education camps would be actually approporiate and helpful. When they start a crackdown on spam under international pressure, I am sure they'll have excellent results.
In the meantime, Ohio can jail CEOs of companies that advertise through spam.
I guess I don't support the view that the technology that is mostly useful for illegal activity should hide behind an occasional legal use to remain unregulated. Video tapes, mp3 players and CD rippers have obvious legal uses and I would think are mostly used legally.
On the other hand, I don't think copying song and movies that someone let you buy and bring home should be illegal. You sell me stuff, I use it as I please. If CDs are not profitable without unnatural restrictions on people, let them make money from life concerts.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. It's entirely possible to punish the murderer and the gun dealer if he is found irresponsible but not go after people less directly involved.
Do you think Sharman networks is marketing to 300 million legal users or 2.7 billion pirates? Would you accept the same argument from a gun dealer on self-defence vs murder? Granted, sharing a file is far better than killing a human, but does their argument have any validity at all?
P2P can have serious legal uses and shouldn't be banned just for the convinience of some big companies. But does anyone here doubt for a second that Sharman networks business model is based on music piracy? If they were strong believers in copyright laws, they would at least have some kind of filters for top stolen songs.
I realize farmers need hunting rifles and people living in messed up places need small guns for self defence (until effective non/less-lethal weapons are developed). But dealers marketing guns to murderers should be held responsible for use of their goods.
The sad thing is I am not sure about morality of intellectual property laws. Content creators obviously need to be able to make a living in order to create more stuff. But on the other hand, copyright and patent laws introduce such unnatural restrictions that one could argue they cripple human nature and prevent further innovation. If you sell me a certain piece of plastic and let me take it home, I should be able to use it in any way I can figure out how.
So then, should we support bogus arguments of sleezy Sharman networks because the alternative is giving more power to bogus laws?
Be it only that human rights and labor laws were globalized. Governments and companies will take every chance to stiff you otherwise. US is not exempt of course, but does have laws on the books that sometimes work.
Want to do some chores for your boss which are not related to your job description - getting groceries at best, sexual favors at worst?
Say you have a heart attack. Think your job provides health insurance that would cover bypass surgery? Will your job be still waiting for you after you recover?
Will your office building have asbestos? Unsafe ceiling that can fall on your head and kill you? Lack of A/C and temperatures bad for human health?
Will you fired once you are 30 for younger more, energetic workers? Or because you got married, had/fathered a child and so on?
Say you went to a nice christian workshop or spiritual excersize group. Want to spend the next 5 years locked up in a government re-education camp with hard labor because it happens to be some church/philosophy not approved by the government?
I say stick around and fight for your job - be it through politics, civil disobedience or being a more valuable employee. There is still lots to lose.
You must be below 30. One day you will realize that being able to read stuff on a 10" screen is not forever. Of course then you will probably get a backache from lagging 8lbs laptops. Oh well, the progress keeps moving.
Which "pirate" in his right mind is going to sell pirated software to anyone and leave a paper trail long enough to implicate him in the form of a bill?
Ah, but lack of a paper trail will not make your pissed off users forget where they bought their computer. Say, a policeman out of uniform stops by at your store to do a little shopping, then makes a call to Microsoft to validate the Windows copy they got on their HD?
And abandon it they will because the only way to sustain this is to keep dishing out Windows free, which of course MS cannot possibly do.
What's the harm to give a free copy to people who are already using your stuff without paying and are likely trying to come clear?
It's funny that you mentioned it though, because I believe eventually Microsoft will have a free basic OS and sell stuff that runs on top of it. Think of what happened when Netscape released a good, free web browser. Once Linux functionality reaches certain level and PC+monitor can be had for $200 or so, vendors will start to take a notice of even $20 OEM copy price. Then there is only one thing Microsoft can do to compete.
"In this scenario, the office productivity user creates a marketing presentation and supporting documents for a new product. The user receives email containing a collection of documents in a compressed file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while a virus checking software scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed and the user begins creating the collateral documents. The user also accesses a database and runs some queries. A collection of documents are compressed. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet and used to generate graphical charts. The user then transcribes a document. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution. The user edits and adds elements to a slide show template. Finally, the user looks at the results of his work (both the slide show and the portable document) in an Internet browser."
I would bet anything Apple users would bit Windows ones by far by having a more pleasent/intuitive UI, better written productivity apps, Applescripts to automate repetitive tasks in documents and lack of viruses to scan for. But what does have to do with processor performance? I don't see how these tasks would be CPU bound for either 3.2GHz P4 or 1.33Ghz G4.
If you look at DivX benchmarks, the fastest Pentium M lags behind the fastest P4 by about 20%. This is to be expected - if Intel could make a faster processor all around, they would just dump P4 and put M on desktops and servers. It's more likely that P4 has unacceptable power usage at full speed and notebooks shut it down for a while or run it at reduced speed, letting it ekk out 3 hours on one battery charge but making performance really bad. While Pentium M still only lasts 3 hours on one battery, but at least runs at it's natural speed.
How do you know iBooks have exactly the same power problems? 5-6 hours on one charge that they get might suggest the opposite. If both G4 and Pentium M are allowed to run at full speed, and G4 is more efficient in terms of instructions/program (more registers!) and clocks/instruction, are you sure your notebook is still faster?
All right, you got an ugly 7 pound notebook which is probably slower than an iBook (1.33Ghz G4) and has a more expensive retail price. The second battery probably either has to be swapped or goes into DVD slot, adds weight beyond 7lbs and has an unreasonable charge time.
If it does everything you need, good for you. But Apple notebooks are still competitive in many cases, especially if you get a 50% off deal:-) I just wish x86 notebook makers stopped being so lazy and feeled these gaps as well.
Well, this thing will appear in various prominent spots of your house/appartment for several years. Do you really want an eyesore?
Besides, if I am paying $3K for something, I expect I can get it in any color/design/material that pleases me. Handcrafted leather case is only like $200 and electrolytic gold cover can not be that much:-)
Answer: the same as number of partitions in a bucket, provided it doesn't suffer from titanic-style cascade failures. If your Web Browser runs in a Java VM, with security manager that prevents it from starting programs or accessing any files outside it's own cache directory, it's not going to take over my computer no matter how many holes it has.
Pity on you for running unsecure bucket where everyone has root access to all the water. Pity on the rest of us with flimsy partitions and a lot of important water accessible to the web browser.
So? You chose a top-of-the line professional model. Current Intel 17' notebooks are also >2K (PowerBook is $2700 in US). Otherwise you can "make do" with an $1300 14' iBook. Actually my friend is looking for an Intel notebook with comparible price and features. Here is what he wants:
Reasonable weight. No 8 pound monsters, please
3D graphics, TV output
Built in wireless and CD burner
5 or more hours battery life without swapping
Pleasent, big keys on the keyboard
No sharp edges or breakable components on the outside when folded
A sturdy case in some color other than black or "Windows XP Space theme". Please no Dell black plastic"
Don't forget that 97% of desktop users "forked off" Linux by using another OS, mainly Windows. When you are in a cult, it's easy to assume everyone loves your leader because there is little opposition that you see among the converted.
Oh well, I am sure everyone loves Linus as a person. But kernel development is mostly driven by cool research features, open source purity (replacing firmware binaries) and corporate users. If it was otherwise, kernel wouldn't have SMP until every Winmodem is supported, kernel modules would only need recompiling once in several years, and there would be a stable interface ATI and NVIDIA could use for their binary drivers.
If that was the focus of Linux from the beginning, it would surely have a double-digit market share by now. And yes, people would be complaining about Linus and forking the code - because there would be more people to do these kind of things.
UI modules?! Do you have any idea what the separation between user-mode and kernel-mode is?
Yes, how does it preclude having a binary compatibility between versions? Good for you that your drivers are in the stock kernel, not everyone is so lucky.
And why do you think it's less important to support source and binary compatibility or high-level language features for kernel modules than for UI modules (applications)? I heard the situation is not too shabby under WinNT, MacOSX or even MS-DOS.
NVIDIA drivers will remain closed source for a long time. Apparently a good part of their performance is in software that they don't want ATI to rip off. And even if the driver is open source, how would you find an updated version without say, a working network card?
On regular Palm devices, you can read from and write to database records directly. It goes something like this:
MemHandle mh = DmQueryRecord(db, recNum); void *p = MemHandleLock(mh); MemSemaphoreReserve(true);// write-unprotect storage memory // Do some access to database record here MemSemaphoreRelease(true);// Restore protection
Granted, MemSemaphore calls are undocumented and Palm asks you to use DmWrite to update a database block instead. The trouble is, Palm devices used to have 36K(!) of regular heap and for recent ones it's around 256K. And C++ compiler wants like 30K for each program/shared library (which is another sorry tale) for virtual functions, exceptions and jumps between 32K segments that you need to partition your code into. Finally, say your database record is a list of stuff >36K and you want to sort it. Imagine how good 2 DmWrite calls to do every record exchange will be for your performance and code readability.
So if you want to do some good stuff in your program, you just allocate "database" pointers and use them as your regular heap. I doubt it would for with Flash on Treo 650, since it will not even know which records are dirty. Even if they still support these calls, performance of your heap being swapped out to flash in 512 byte chunks would be dreadful.
The trouble is, programs that needed to use MemSemaphore calls are probably the ones that do something worthwhile. Try business applications, 3D games, VM-based programming languages... They are going to cripple the most cool programs written for their platform. Should have just included a rechargable backup battery just enough to swap out RAM on power failure.
I think that's mostly because they have to make a new burger every time you eat one. If you had the same sandwich millions of people already ate, I doubt you would feel it's fair to pay to for it the second time.
Although thinking about this too much makes me want to go to life performances instead.
Hey I went to that site and tried to check what kind of software and games Gmini 400 supports. The thing is, links keep running away from my cursor when I try to click them. This behaviour is actually cross-browser between Safari and Firefox, so it looks engineered in like that shrinking Kerry button on diebold voting machines rather than just a bug. Are they trying to keep us non-Windows pirates out or something?
So is this thing good to jog with in a shoulder strap? Does it support Macs well? Did anyone figure out how to program it, or if not does it already have usable PDA-type applications? If it's done right, this could make many iPod users think about Ebay. If only they let us actually read their web site:-)
Nothing is really wrong with the iPod. It's small/light/skip-protected enough for sports, holds my whole music library and looks good. Why should I buy a "me-too" product for only at most 20% less? Some ideas for creative:
Music/Video player/Game player with camera, gameboy-sized screen and TV output and still feasable to fit in the pocket. Will not displace iPod, but will sure have it's own market. Pictures/video at iPod original size are IMHO useless.
Light, small $100 device with >1GB capacity. Have no idea if that's feasable yet.
A cell phone with >1GB MP3 capacity which is still not too huge/heavy. Again, don't know about technology.
PJMS (Pure Java music store) that runs on Win95, MacOS9 or X and Linux in addition to current Microsoft offerings. Yes, DRM would be breakable, but so is Apple's. Music downloads are still for early adopters, so supporting non-XP users could give Creative significant traction.
It's not political aspirations of a few, it's the rest of us suffering because all US presidents are in 1% of demographic once you figure in income level and don't have firsthand experience with the issues the rest of us face or knowledge of solutions that actually work. Having a female, a minority or a lower-middle-class president would have far more effect on American politics than one extra house member from an area with average demographics.
Anyway, if you were a member of the Congress, you could vote for allowing anyone who has been a citizen for 20 years run as a president and for letting DC have their representitive. How does one preclude the other?
And why do you think Arnold shouldn't be a president if that's what people want? If he was running against Kerry, I would have to give it a thought. No social bible-thumping and smaller government that doesn't take so much of our money? Why not! Then next time we can elect an asian lady to restore social programs which are really worthwhile.
Orin Hatch, isn't he also the guy trying to alter the Constitution so foreigners can be President?
Why, you think a Chinese girl who was adopted by American parents and brought to states when 2 years old understands this country any less than Bush or Kerry? Ok, I know you stopped reading after "Chinese" and "girl".
But you know what - it's not asian women who are suffering by not being allowed to run for office. It's us, white males, and our families that will keep getting screwed as long as we keep electing candidates because they are filthy rich, white and male rather than rotating candidates with diverse backgrounds, so that all our needs are looked at one time or another.
Want to "stengthen american families and morals"? Think your mother might know more about such things than you? Then support her to run for office, goddamnit!
Then why did Clinton created the DMCA monster? Now, killing thousands of people in Iraq is far worse than not letting me watch DVDs on Linux. But as for current issue, Democrats are no better. Do liberatarians have guts to recognize copyright is an artificial restriction imposed by the government?
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Well, everybody should do their part. China is good at controlling Internet Access, and spammers are one group of criminals for whom labor/re-education camps would be actually approporiate and helpful. When they start a crackdown on spam under international pressure, I am sure they'll have excellent results.
In the meantime, Ohio can jail CEOs of companies that advertise through spam.
I guess I don't support the view that the technology that is mostly useful for illegal activity should hide behind an occasional legal use to remain unregulated. Video tapes, mp3 players and CD rippers have obvious legal uses and I would think are mostly used legally.
On the other hand, I don't think copying song and movies that someone let you buy and bring home should be illegal. You sell me stuff, I use it as I please. If CDs are not profitable without unnatural restrictions on people, let them make money from life concerts.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. It's entirely possible to punish the murderer and the gun dealer if he is found irresponsible but not go after people less directly involved.
Do you think Sharman networks is marketing to 300 million legal users or 2.7 billion pirates? Would you accept the same argument from a gun dealer on self-defence vs murder? Granted, sharing a file is far better than killing a human, but does their argument have any validity at all?
P2P can have serious legal uses and shouldn't be banned just for the convinience of some big companies. But does anyone here doubt for a second that Sharman networks business model is based on music piracy? If they were strong believers in copyright laws, they would at least have some kind of filters for top stolen songs.
I realize farmers need hunting rifles and people living in messed up places need small guns for self defence (until effective non/less-lethal weapons are developed). But dealers marketing guns to murderers should be held responsible for use of their goods.
The sad thing is I am not sure about morality of intellectual property laws. Content creators obviously need to be able to make a living in order to create more stuff. But on the other hand, copyright and patent laws introduce such unnatural restrictions that one could argue they cripple human nature and prevent further innovation. If you sell me a certain piece of plastic and let me take it home, I should be able to use it in any way I can figure out how.
So then, should we support bogus arguments of sleezy Sharman networks because the alternative is giving more power to bogus laws?
I say stick around and fight for your job - be it through politics, civil disobedience or being a more valuable employee. There is still lots to lose.
You must be below 30. One day you will realize that being able to read stuff on a 10" screen is not forever. Of course then you will probably get a backache from lagging 8lbs laptops. Oh well, the progress keeps moving.
Which "pirate" in his right mind is going to sell pirated software to anyone and leave a paper trail long enough to implicate him in the form of a bill?
Ah, but lack of a paper trail will not make your pissed off users forget where they bought their computer. Say, a policeman out of uniform stops by at your store to do a little shopping, then makes a call to Microsoft to validate the Windows copy they got on their HD?
And abandon it they will because the only way to sustain this is to keep dishing out Windows free, which of course MS cannot possibly do.
What's the harm to give a free copy to people who are already using your stuff without paying and are likely trying to come clear?
It's funny that you mentioned it though, because I believe eventually Microsoft will have a free basic OS and sell stuff that runs on top of it. Think of what happened when Netscape released a good, free web browser. Once Linux functionality reaches certain level and PC+monitor can be had for $200 or so, vendors will start to take a notice of even $20 OEM copy price. Then there is only one thing Microsoft can do to compete.
Nice benchmark method:
"In this scenario, the office productivity user creates a marketing presentation and supporting documents for a new product. The user receives email containing a collection of documents in a compressed file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while a virus checking software scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed and the user begins creating the collateral documents. The user also accesses a database and runs some queries. A collection of documents are compressed. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet and used to generate graphical charts. The user then transcribes a document. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution. The user edits and adds elements to a slide show template. Finally, the user looks at the results of his work (both the slide show and the portable document) in an Internet browser."
I would bet anything Apple users would bit Windows ones by far by having a more pleasent/intuitive UI, better written productivity apps, Applescripts to automate repetitive tasks in documents and lack of viruses to scan for. But what does have to do with processor performance? I don't see how these tasks would be CPU bound for either 3.2GHz P4 or 1.33Ghz G4.
If you look at DivX benchmarks, the fastest Pentium M lags behind the fastest P4 by about 20%. This is to be expected - if Intel could make a faster processor all around, they would just dump P4 and put M on desktops and servers. It's more likely that P4 has unacceptable power usage at full speed and notebooks shut it down for a while or run it at reduced speed, letting it ekk out 3 hours on one battery charge but making performance really bad. While Pentium M still only lasts 3 hours on one battery, but at least runs at it's natural speed.
How do you know iBooks have exactly the same power problems? 5-6 hours on one charge that they get might suggest the opposite. If both G4 and Pentium M are allowed to run at full speed, and G4 is more efficient in terms of instructions/program (more registers!) and clocks/instruction, are you sure your notebook is still faster?
All right, you got an ugly 7 pound notebook which is probably slower than an iBook (1.33Ghz G4) and has a more expensive retail price. The second battery probably either has to be swapped or goes into DVD slot, adds weight beyond 7lbs and has an unreasonable charge time.
:-) I just wish x86 notebook makers stopped being so lazy and feeled these gaps as well.
If it does everything you need, good for you. But Apple notebooks are still competitive in many cases, especially if you get a 50% off deal
Well, this thing will appear in various prominent spots of your house/appartment for several years. Do you really want an eyesore?
:-)
Besides, if I am paying $3K for something, I expect I can get it in any color/design/material that pleases me. Handcrafted leather case is only like $200 and electrolytic gold cover can not be that much
Answer: the same as number of partitions in a bucket, provided it doesn't suffer from titanic-style cascade failures. If your Web Browser runs in a Java VM, with security manager that prevents it from starting programs or accessing any files outside it's own cache directory, it's not going to take over my computer no matter how many holes it has.
Pity on you for running unsecure bucket where everyone has root access to all the water. Pity on the rest of us with flimsy partitions and a lot of important water accessible to the web browser.
So where is the superior, cheap Intel hardware?
Try a black and white printer. If you want to spread fliers rather than print $100 bills, that is.
Don't forget that 97% of desktop users "forked off" Linux by using another OS, mainly Windows. When you are in a cult, it's easy to assume everyone loves your leader because there is little opposition that you see among the converted.
Oh well, I am sure everyone loves Linus as a person. But kernel development is mostly driven by cool research features, open source purity (replacing firmware binaries) and corporate users. If it was otherwise, kernel wouldn't have SMP until every Winmodem is supported, kernel modules would only need recompiling once in several years, and there would be a stable interface ATI and NVIDIA could use for their binary drivers.
If that was the focus of Linux from the beginning, it would surely have a double-digit market share by now. And yes, people would be complaining about Linus and forking the code - because there would be more people to do these kind of things.
UI modules?! Do you have any idea what the separation between user-mode and kernel-mode is?
Yes, how does it preclude having a binary compatibility between versions? Good for you that your drivers are in the stock kernel, not everyone is so lucky.
And why do you think it's less important to support source and binary compatibility or high-level language features for kernel modules than for UI modules (applications)? I heard the situation is not too shabby under WinNT, MacOSX or even MS-DOS.
NVIDIA drivers will remain closed source for a long time. Apparently a good part of their performance is in software that they don't want ATI to rip off. And even if the driver is open source, how would you find an updated version without say, a working network card?
So if you want to do some good stuff in your program, you just allocate "database" pointers and use them as your regular heap. I doubt it would for with Flash on Treo 650, since it will not even know which records are dirty. Even if they still support these calls, performance of your heap being swapped out to flash in 512 byte chunks would be dreadful.
The trouble is, programs that needed to use MemSemaphore calls are probably the ones that do something worthwhile. Try business applications, 3D games, VM-based programming languages... They are going to cripple the most cool programs written for their platform. Should have just included a rechargable backup battery just enough to swap out RAM on power failure.
I think that's mostly because they have to make a new burger every time you eat one. If you had the same sandwich millions of people already ate, I doubt you would feel it's fair to pay to for it the second time.
Although thinking about this too much makes me want to go to life performances instead.
Hey I went to that site and tried to check what kind of software and games Gmini 400 supports. The thing is, links keep running away from my cursor when I try to click them. This behaviour is actually cross-browser between Safari and Firefox, so it looks engineered in like that shrinking Kerry button on diebold voting machines rather than just a bug. Are they trying to keep us non-Windows pirates out or something?
:-)
So is this thing good to jog with in a shoulder strap? Does it support Macs well? Did anyone figure out how to program it, or if not does it already have usable PDA-type applications? If it's done right, this could make many iPod users think about Ebay. If only they let us actually read their web site
It's not political aspirations of a few, it's the rest of us suffering because all US presidents are in 1% of demographic once you figure in income level and don't have firsthand experience with the issues the rest of us face or knowledge of solutions that actually work. Having a female, a minority or a lower-middle-class president would have far more effect on American politics than one extra house member from an area with average demographics.
Anyway, if you were a member of the Congress, you could vote for allowing anyone who has been a citizen for 20 years run as a president and for letting DC have their representitive. How does one preclude the other?
And why do you think Arnold shouldn't be a president if that's what people want? If he was running against Kerry, I would have to give it a thought. No social bible-thumping and smaller government that doesn't take so much of our money? Why not! Then next time we can elect an asian lady to restore social programs which are really worthwhile.
Orin Hatch, isn't he also the guy trying to alter the Constitution so foreigners can be President?
Why, you think a Chinese girl who was adopted by American parents and brought to states when 2 years old understands this country any less than Bush or Kerry? Ok, I know you stopped reading after "Chinese" and "girl".
But you know what - it's not asian women who are suffering by not being allowed to run for office. It's us, white males, and our families that will keep getting screwed as long as we keep electing candidates because they are filthy rich, white and male rather than rotating candidates with diverse backgrounds, so that all our needs are looked at one time or another.
Want to "stengthen american families and morals"? Think your mother might know more about such things than you? Then support her to run for office, goddamnit!
Then why did Clinton created the DMCA monster? Now, killing thousands of people in Iraq is far worse than not letting me watch DVDs on Linux. But as for current issue, Democrats are no better. Do liberatarians have guts to recognize copyright is an artificial restriction imposed by the government?