What we see on the photos is at best a mockup made out of plexiglas and at most likely a render.
Lets see, a completly transparent screen. Because as well know nanotech makes things transparent. Apparently in a mere seven years we will have a material that looks a nice uniform light transparant green but can be used as pixels, wires, battery, antenna, electronics, it can be be reshaped at will without deforming at random.
In seven years?
Come on, this isn't a concept, it is just wishfull thinking with absolutly no bases in reality.
If you can shape a screen, how do you stop it from deforming when you don't want it to? Do you enjoy reading leaflets outside where the wind flaps them about?
I am just getting to old for this non-sense. I don't mind concept products where designers and engineers wonder "what if". But please at least use tech that MIGHT BE. After all if we are randomly speculating I can come up with far more intresting stuff. How about a mobile phone that sits on your eye like a contact lense and is controlled by thought? In seven years? I can even show you how one might look, someone got a place to host a picture of a contact lense?
You beat your cat. Well sure it will behave "better" from then on, the cat is too scared to do anything lest it gets noticed and gets another trashing. You are not raising a well adjusted normal cat, you are raising a scaredy cat who "behaves" in order to avoid punishment.
Same with people, I lived in places where discipline in the family was enforced and yes those kids on the surface seemed well behaved, but they grow up NOT as mature responsible adults but as people who are deadly afraid to be found out. But oh my god their behaviour when they think they are "safe" from being found out.
Check where the highest levels of sexual child abuse take place. In communities that seem oh so well behaved, until they are behind closed doors. I grew up among kids like that, all squaky clean on the surface until they thought the adults were no longer watching. My first porn mag did NOT come from my own liberal school, it came from a friend from a strongly christian family who obediently attended bible classes.
If you want to raise a cat properly the only thing that works is to be there when it is learning the 'rules' of its new home and discipline it at ONCE. No need to beat it, a spray of water or a loud stamp is enough. It will then hopefully learn that the punishement was for what it was doing (don't be to sure about this) and refrain from doing it again. It is fairly easy, but I easily train cats to use their scratching post without ever having to resort to violence. If it is scatching somewhere just pick it up and put it at the post and puts its claws on the post. Also make sure to PLAY with it at the post from time to time especially when it is scratching it on its own so that it learns that this is a fun place to sharpen the nails.
Beating it when you come home and find the wallpaper scatched just gives you a nervous cat afraid of you. Sure it "behaves", but who would want a cat like that. Or a person who is constantly afraid to get noticed because they might get punished?
What does such a person do when they think they are safe from being punished? My first was a good catholic girl and I sure as hell wasn't her first. I suggest that next time your wife looks a little deeper. What goes on when thse well-adjusted decent girls don't have an adult near that could tell on them so they get another beating?
Offcourse there are limits, but the right path is somewhere in between total neglect and beatings. That is why parenting is so bloody difficult, there is no hard and fast rule. Sometimes yes, a spanking or a slap can be in order, as direct punishment for an activity that must stop now. Childeren go through phases where you sometimes need to be able to make it BLOODY clear that the line has been crossed.
That is the other problem with regular beatings, they loose their power. A child that gets a single smack when it gets out of line will see that as far thougher discipline then a child who gets the belt for being late for dinner.
Sadly there is no simple guidebook to follow and state regulation often has to find a way to curb the extremes, anti-child abuse laws like this are created by people that seen the worsed and sadly in their fevour to stop real child abuse introduce laws that go a bit to far. But frankly I seen one rather disturbing case that suggests to me that those who complain have something to hide. It was a co-worker who complained about social services becoming involved after she disciplined her child physically by spanking her. So how come social services ever knew about such a harmless thing? Well the school informed them, because the child could not sit still from the pain of the broken skins from this "spanking". Sure, you could possibly link to a story where a childinformed on his/her parents after the mildest of touches BUT that is life. Every law will fail to stop some things it is meant to stop and catch some that it didn't.
Raising things is hard especially if you want to raise a free thinker, not somebody constantly cowering in your presence.
The belief that porn is good is unpopular (among certain people). The belief that freedom of speech is more important then stopping kids from seeing boobies is UNPOPULAR!
There is NO leap to make. Censoring porn IS the leap.
Why do you think REAL freedom advocates leapt to the defence of Larry Flint when attempts were made to censor him and his works? Because they want Hustler? No, because the fight for freedom is lost if you allow censorship ANYWHERE.
If you believe in free speech then you MUST defend my desire to watch smut. If you care about freedom you will defend my right to fap and "think of the childeren" rethoric should be discarded as the obvious tool of dictators.
This is one of those super rare, once in a lifetime occassions where Slashdot gets the headline wrong. I know, I know, difficult to believe but true nonetheless.
A lot of the comments suggest that the taliban is afraid of the cellphones they use being tracked by the US. This does not seem to be the case.
Rather the taliban objects to the fact that the cellphone network is being used as a communication network for the US to gather intelligence on the taliban. Simply put, people call on their cellphone to tell about the taliban.
In effect this would be like a gang of criminals demanding that 911 be taken down because people keep calling it to report on them.
About half the comments already get this right, they seem to want to take out a communication network that allows people to inform the western forces about their activity at night.
What is amusing about this is that obviously the Taliban with all their anti-western rethoric still needs this very western tech to be operational part of the time for some reason, else they would just demand the towers be torn down and launch attacks against the towers themselves makingthe network go dark 24/7.
For some reason I don't think they "allow" the network to beactive during daylight is out of concern for the common public, obviously they need it for their own purposes.
Neither do they strictly want it to go down to stop US forces or orgnanised "spies". Either would just use other means of communication. No, they want the general public to be incapable of making a call at night, when the taliban is most active.
This is in a way hopefull news, it suggests rather strongly to me that the general public is a bit to fond in taliban eyes of calling the supposedly hated occupier whenever they show up.
After all if the taliban was popular among the common public then this cellphone spy network would work both ways, why is the taliban prepared to give up the chance for any freedom loving afghani to call the taliban and inform on the invader? Don't they want to get a call telling them a convoy is on the move?
This is a bit of a subtle conclusion on my part, but on the whole you don't destroy a bit of infra-structure when you still need it. You don't blow up the bridge your forces still need and you do NOT disrupt a communication service unless you have no need for it. I think the Taliban uses the phone network therefor occasionally to communicate but does no longer have the support that would allow it to use the phone network to receive intelligence of its own during the night.
It will be intresting to see what happens next. Is the taliban really willing to disrupt communications for the common public (the occupying forces don't need it) AND themselves to avoid their activities being reported by the common public? If the towers remain up and are not assaulted I think that proves just how feeble the taliban has become, radio's ain't that expensive to buy, why is the taliban so depended on the cellphone network to wish it to remain active during the day?
I don't actually have the Crysis box but every game I seen with a minimum set of requirements on it ALSO listed a recommended spec.
MS with this Vista advertising campaign made a simple mistake, they designed a sticker that was not clear enough about what was promised.
With PC games, a reasonable person would assume that if you see who different specs then it is obvious that this means that the game will look perform less well on this lower hardware. You would only expect it to run well on the recommended spec.
MS left this out, they basically said "This PC can run Vista". No further explenation was given. It is clear how unclear this was by the fact that MS later added extra information on its website to explain what it meant.
Basically MS screwed up. Now it is for the legal to decide wether people should have known better, wether this is all just a simple misunderstanding or wether MS is guilty of false advertising. Considering MS own people have had doubts during the development of this campaign I think MS has a case to answer.
Advertisers always push the truth as far as it can go. Remember the claims that linux can run on a 386? Why sure it can. The kernel. Run a full distro on it and prepare for slideshow hell. Run windows on the minimum amount of memory? Sure you can, just hope you never have to anything remotely tasking.
It is possible that MS marketting went to far in this case. They could have put on the sticker "This PC is Vista Basic ready". They didn't. They didn't for the simple reason that this would have been less attractive to consumers. Personally I think truth is important, yes "The PC is Vista ready" is the truth, but "This PC is Vista Basic ready" is the greater truth. Sometimes even when you are telling the truth you can be lying.
Do you have any idea exactly what a classic Ferrari goes for, a car with no ABS, no traction control, no airbags, no radio etc etc etc? Yes it probably does have windshield wipers, I give you that.
In fact for these kind of car nuts the LACK of these features is the attraction.
different markets, why do people find that so hard to accept? Android and the iPhone are designed for different customers.
Do you really think that anybody at Ferrari or any of their customers CARE that you can't go into the local carshop and buy decals for it?
The iPhone simply didn't launch like that, it was shiny, it was Apple and that is why it sold so well. You might as well talk about how hard to upgrade the Apple Mini is. Sorry, nobody buys it to upgrade it.
In the meantime we got two products that have NOTHING in common (iPhone is a phone, android a platform) of which one sold millions and the other sold NOTHING yet. Lets wait a bit and see what happens when the first Android phone actually arrives shall we? Then we can make any kind of judgement on what will be the biggest success, but remember, specialist car makers making cars that do not offer any of the 3rd party extra's and ease of use of bigger makers are still around making a profit.
Not everything has to be same grey goo aimed at the largest market share. If Android outsells the iPhone a hundred to one, Apple still had a huge success.
They managed to break records with a phone that lacked many features people have come to accept as standard, with a horrible choice of plans/carriers at a premium price.
Nobody at all seemed to care about the lack of 3rd party apps on it when they handed over their cash for the device. They broke into the cellphone market with just 1 product in record time and you say they got the disadvantage?
Android may do even better BUT it will do in a totally different way. First off there will be NO google phone. Android is closer to Symbian or even MS Mobile OS (whatever they renamed it to this month) then the iPhone. With the iPhone you bought a Apple product, with Android you will buy a phone from any number of phone makers that just happens to run a software suit in which Google had a hand in the development.
Their most likely won't be a google branded phone and none of the others have enough status to sell a phone just because their logo is on it.
Android and the iPhone are completly different products and Apple doesn't need to worry about the same things Google has too. I might buy an Android phone for its openess, but I think absolutly nobody bought an iPhone for any similar concerns. It would be like saying that Ferrari needs to publish the specs for their new car early so 3rd parties can develop roof racks and child seats for it early. Sorry, Ferrari and the people who buy them could care less about that.
One episode has Arnold Rimmer self-convict him over his actions that led to the death of all the crew of the red dwarf.
Kryten then seeks to defend him with the plea that Arnold is just to stupid to ever be held accountable for such an action.
Kryten: A man so incompetent...
Arnold: OBJECTTION
Kryten: so incompetent that he would even object to his own defence
I am not quite sure wether I would call it just being intelligent, but it is certainly possible for people who are in other areas pretty intelligent to be complete idiots in others.
It is entirely possible for this guy to be on the one hand smart enough to develop a filesystem that outperforms anything else on themarket including stuff made by huge companies, and on the other hand be a complete idiot when it comes to listening to his own lawyer or knowing when to shut up.
This is NOT about IQ (if you even believe in that) but rather about personality. This Hans may very well be an opinionated loud mouth who is incapable of just shutting up and let other people do the talking but being a twit is NOT a crime.
The problem for his lawyer is that offcourse he has to sugar coat it. With an opinionated loudmouth for a client he can't just plead that his client is a freak who doesn't have the social skills of a 6 year old. So he has to dress it up FOR HIS CLIENT that his client is too intelligent.
The problem I see is that it really isn't much of a defence because it works both ways, while his actions CAN be explained as being innocent because Hans simply did them without ever considering how they might look he might ALSO have done them because he arrogantly believed that with his intelligence his actions would be so brilliant nobody else could see through them. Several Columbo eps have this, where the suspicion is raised because the crime is too perfect.
Hans may well have done those actions that look to suspicious because he hoped for exactly that effect that people would ask "why would an intelligent person do such a stupid thing".
But really, this is one of those "truth is stranger then fiction" cases. We got a friend who the wife slept around with who has confessed to being a serial killer.
On the other hand, if Hans is so brilliant perhaps he used this as an alibi? He killd his wife and hoped that his wifes lover would be blamed for it? That would certainly suit me, slaughter the cheating bitch and get her lover to fry for it.
We got three suspects here, a russian woman whose past is to say the least a bit odd (much is made of the fact that she has a high education etc etc but she worked for a dating service and accepted a 50.000 dollar job, neither impress me, exactly what background does she come from?)
We got Hans who seems to be a typically socially inept geek who however apparently has enough social skills to run an international business in ways that suggest he is not entirely adverse to a little risky/shady business.
And we got a self-confessed serial killer.
If you were an editor faced with this script you would just drop it because no audience would buy it.
If they make this into a Law & Order ep it will have tobe a two-parter at least to follow all the twists.
Odd case and with no clear evidence I think we will never know the real truth.
Computers communicate by ip address not domain name. For instance the slashdot server I am posting this on has IP 66.35.250.150
Now that doesn't mean that ALL of slashdot is hosted on that address, it doesn't mean ONLY slashdot is hosted on that address and it doesn't even mean slashdot the site/code is there.
What it means is that if my computer requests a connection on port 80 with certain information from that IP I will be given a slashdot page.
There might be a NAT solution with 66.35.250.150 being nothing more then a router, it might be a server where the webserver swiches me to the right set of pages based on the requested domain name.
There are PLENTY of solutions to host multiple sites from a single IP or have multiple servers behind a single IP.
The problem is that one of them are "sexy".
The problem is that shared IP is used mostly for cheapo sites, those sites where you share a server with many others. These solutions are typically very bad making everyone who has a site dream of the day they can afford a dedicated server.
Now there is no real reason why a dedicated server (the computer) could not share an outward IP address with other servers BUT that is not the way these things are done. IP adresses are cheap and plentifull and if you get your own dedicated server your hosting company will gladly give you a handfull of IP's to go with it.
What might be needed but will be very hard to do is convince people that they don't need their own ip for their site. Good luck with that, until the crunch becomes really thight what hosting company is going to take away something their customers have taken for granted for the good of the rest of the world? Might as well expect a car maker to stop making big gass guzzlers to save the enviroment.
Yes it is possible to host sites under a single IP. The only limit is how much the hardware/software that redirects the requests it receives to the right site can handle.
Think of it like this, the limit to the performance of your NAT solution at home is your router. You can't host 10 100mbit sites behind a 10mbit router.
But the tech doesn't matter, the problem is simply that people don't want it.
That is one way to do it, keep patching it up and hope it becomes somebodies elses problem.
The problem is simple, the way we want to use the internet means we are getting more and more devices which desire their own internet adress. Some people suggest solutions like NAT but these only have so many uses especially when mobile phones become internet capable. If you want your internet node to be independent then you need an ip adress.
Don't believe me? Fine, give up your internet connection with its own IP and use the NAT solution of your ISP. Good luck running a torrent.
We could easily solve the entire problem if we just used NAT for every major ISP. It would free up countless adresses and keep IP4 usuable for decades rather then years.
So who is first? Who is going to give up their IP for their home for the greater good?
Thought as much, absolutly nobody.
It is the problem with humans, we don't want new power installations, we don't want to use less power and we refuse to switch to more economical appliances. Something has to give, but goverment or business is NOT going to do it. Sooner or later it just breaks down (see the LA brownouts) and finally a decission will have to be made.
Same with a solution to IP4 limited adress space. We will keep coming up with patches and ignore the problem until finally it can no longer be ignored and then we will have to really bite down to implement it at great cost and inconvenience when we could have solved it easily right now.
Because lets be honest, it ain't all that much of a problem. In the EU we switched currencies. A hell of a job but because it became accepted that it had to be done, it just happened.
We could easily do a switch to IP6 but only when the majority just accepts that it has to be done, and bites the bullet.
Analog mobile phones no longer work in the US, holland no longer airs analog tv signals, switches happen all the time. It is nothing special, but in each case somebody just had to say "we are switching and if you are not ready, though".
So what if countless devices will no longer work, at a given point you just have to be able to say "upgrade or be left behind" or you will be forced to increasinly bend over backwards to accomadate out of date tech.
This might work against hijackers, that is hijackers relying on box-cutters or other simple weapons. A hijackers who uses for instance a knockout gas would not be stopped.
It does nothing against a suicide bomber or indeed anyone who does NOT care if they get killed as long they can first complete their objective.
This is in fact one of the problems dealing with terrorists or crazies, the police is used to dealing with criminals who want to enjoy the fruits of their labour by remaining alive.
That hollywood shootout with the two bankrobbers in heavy armour showed the problem, no normal bankrobber would have done that. A normal criminal would just have surrendered rather then trust in a piece of clothing to stop a hail of bullets.
Your solution depends on that fact that the passengers have time to respond and are capable of responding when the bad guy acts.
Further problem, people have lost all sense of control before in aircraft, do you really think it is wise to give these people guns?
US courts are okay with them, this is the EU/UK
on
UK Report Slams EULAs
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· Score: 4, Insightful
There is a difference, in the EU consumer rights mean something.
Do you know about dead pixels in LCD screens? The one the industry tells you are acceptable? Dutch law clearly FORBIDS this. ANY LCD with a single defective SUB-pixel has to be replaced. No argument possible. The netherlands is the only country where sony replaced every PSP with ANY pixel problems.
So you are right in saying these EULA's are not illegal in the US, but the EU has far better laws for protecting the consumer and it has long been known by any who follows consumer afair programs they are entirely without worth within the EU and any company that tries to take you to court over one will find a very hostile judge. Hence why they never been tested, the companies know they will loose it.
The stories are submitted by the READERS (that is you), the comments are submitted by the READERS, the moderating is done by the READERS, the testing of new features is done by the READERS, the polls are suggested by the READERS, the new layout was created by a READER!
Who earns money from this site? NOT the READERS!
Normally you would expect a site to present content the site owner produced and then display it for money. Social sites, wether it is slashdot, youtube or facebook don't have any content of their own, instead they provide a space for the readers to present content to other readers. This is NOT that new. The letters page in any newspaper gives the paper "free" content as well, but it is nonetheless an odd thing.
There is an unspoken agreement that in exchange for giving you a space to voice your opinion, you allow the space provider to use your comment to make a profit. But slashdot trained monkeys who call themselves editors do occasionaly come up with their own stories, and add idiotic conclusions. Newspapers have other pages then the letter page.
But sides like youtube or myspace have NO content at all of their own. It then becomes a rather difficult question of exactly how much you own them for giving you a space to express yourselve. Remember "free" homepages? The one you probably still have with your ISP subscription? It seems pretty clear there that YOU own the contents of the page. Why should it be different for a social website?
I agree with the article, we seriously need to question just who owns what. Remember the writers strike? One of the things a lot of people mentioned was that reality shows would be on the increase because they don't employ writers. Actually reality shows are written as well (writers do more then just write dialogue), but you might even ask yourselve wether these "real" people that create content through their lives for the TV stations to sell don't qualify as writers as well.
Could the maintainer of a myspace site be listed as a writer? Why is a columnist a writer, but not a blogger? Who owns your content? When do you go from a letter writer to a journalist?
Just how much do you own the hoster of you content in exchange for this service. Myspace has a lot of nudie pics, say it decided to host all these pics on a pay-per-view portion of the site. You agreed for it to be public, but there is a difference between a flasher pic on your own page and it being displayed on a site with nothing but nudie pics. Just how far can myspace go with your content?
Intresting questions, and I fear that sooner or later we will find a story where a site owner goes to far.
younggirls.org I started from the bottom and this page CLEARLY has naked girls UNDER the age of 18. Legal images as they are photographs by David Hamilton. They fall under art but are absolutly 100% of girls under the age limit you mention.
I am not going to do the whole bloody list, but a sampling shows me that a LOT of it is from porn sites with quite a bit of questionable content.
The entire defence of the Hamilton work depends on the fact that the images have artistic merit and are not just there to arouse (as porn is). Putting them on a porn site among clear porn images sort of suggests that the owner of the site is not intrested in them for the art.
Various site also contain images of underaged "models". This is a worldwide thing where girls who are absolutly without a shadow of a doubt (hamilton girls could be 18, although they are not) underage posing in poses that have nothing to do with either art or modeling.
Browse the list a little bit further and you will find images that are highly questionable. Wether they actually fall under child porn I cannot say, it is a difficult subject not made any easier by the fact that women's ages can be hard to guess.
But let us not forget that there have been several cases of legit porn turning out to have underaged actresses in them.
Frankly the blocklist seems pointless, but it should be attacked with facts, not speculation. Now is anyone here willing to browse the complete list? Because the poster of the list claims that there are real childporn sites among it and frankly I don't need to see that again (once worked at a sysadmin job where my task was to investigate claims of inappropriate material. Goatse? you ain't seen nothing yet).
Charity has always had the problem that the person performing the charity will invariably attach some conditions to the charity. The simplest clearest example is religion related charity. Take for instance orphans raised by the catholic church. Yes ain't we nice, we raise these kids society has ignored. Why yes, offcourse we raise them as catholics, why do you ask?
It is not evil perse, there is nothing wrong with a catholic upbringing and since the religion apparently is 'good' enough to donate money to the raising of kids they clearly do something right BUT where does it stop? Would an orphaned child of a different religion still be allowed to the freedom of religion we so value in the west?
It is even simpler with straight cash donations, lots of slashdotters claim that politicians who accept cash donations from special interest groups are just one small step away from bribery.
If I donate a million dollars to my childs school, just how much say does this give me in how this school is run? If a school becomes totally depended on money from Bill Gates just how unbiased towards MS software will its IT department be?
Because at the receiver ends an old saying goes, "don't bite the hand that feeds you".
The article makes it clear how far this go, a worker who did excellent work was nonetheless fired because he upset one of the donors. He bit the hand that fed him.
The money that flows around Bill Gates has been linked more then once to attempts to influence the world in a way that clearly benefits Bill Gates. Look at the money that flowed around SCO, around OOXML etc etc. Just how come that the case against MS was dropped so quickly when the guard changed in the white house? How much did Billy boy and his old boys network donate?
Note this is NOT simple corruption. It is far more dangerous. Simple corruption in away is open by its nature. If everyone KNOWS it costs 1000 bucks in unmarked bills in a brown envelope to get a permit, then that is just the cost of living. Openly corrupt societies are actually very easy to deal with, just have enough cash on hand to get things done.
The charity/donations corruption is far harder to deal with. It ain't just Bill Gates you have to deal with, but all his friends as well. Even if you don't get any money from Billy you still have to watch out because you might be dependent on an organisation which does, or from one of his friends.
The article already shows this, upset the rockefellers and loose your job.
Say Bill Gates visits one of the schools he sponsors, do you think that any administrator of that school would allow a student to wear a penguin on his t-shirt? Show a BSD project? Have a demo class with Mac's?
It doesn't even matter if Bill Gates would cut his donations, the fear of it is enough.
They are talking about hundreds of "worlds" in our SOLAR SYSTEM. Say then there might be trillions is a bit silly. If there were trillions of worlds in our SOLAR SYSTEM then we would certainly know about on account of constantly bumping into them. Our solar system would look like one of thise gumball machines.
The solar system is our sun and whatever circles around it. Like the term world it is kinda vague as to what falls under our solar system and what doesn't, but however you measure it, it is rather small compared to the universe as a whole.
Even our milky way has only so much space for planets, if you want trillions of worlds you need to look at the universe as a whole, then it is certainly possible.
This is NOT just nitpicking, the claim that our solar system may contain hundreds of worlds is rather outlandish and depends highly on what you consider a "world". Remember the whole business about poor Pluto? It is no longer considered a planet. Why then should other objects its size in our solar system be considered worlds?
Oh dear, MS trolls becoming a bit desperate? Is this really the best you can do, Windows is better because I am used to it? You can get used to practically anything. Basically you are saying,"I am to lazy to change". Well good luck to you then, wonder how you deal with the changes with each new windows version however.
* I have a lot invested in Windows software that isn't available natively on Linux. (Yes, some of it could run under Wine)
So your locked in, good for you. You have become completly dependent on MS for your software need. Good luck getting MS to listen to you after admitting this, they got you by the short and curlies, another customer they know has no choice but follow their rule. You WILL install Vista, because you have given yourselve no choice.
* Graphics drivers. I installed Fedora about a year ago and installing their graphics drivers felt like I was hacking my own computer. Maybe that's part of the fun of Linux (heck, of course it is!), but for a wide base of consumers it's also part of the fear.
Yeah god forbid you control your own computer. This driver thing always comes up, despite the fact that various linux distro's I have run over the years never had problems and windows always requires me to find the right drivers myself, going to the point of having to hack ATI's radeon drivers to work under W2003. Now that was "hacking" not just configuration.
* Installing software. There's so many distro's of linux and seemingly packages built for individual flavors, installing new software "feels" risky, and running into package conflicts is a bit nasty. Do I trust the people who seem to build and redistribute packages on random websites? I don't know. There's a bit of a difference between commercial vendors and some guy with a popular FTP repository. I also downloaded and compiled some apps myself because I couldn't find packages for certain things for the version of Fedora I was using. Are regular consumers expected to do this?
Oh geez, now I know you are trolling. Various linux distro's ALL come with systems for easily installing software. Wether it is apt-get or emerge, installing software on linux is far far easier then it is in windows. No, my friend you are just re-hashing stuff you heard somewhere. You clearly got no idea what the hell you are talking about. A guy with a popular FTP? WTF? If I check the mirror list for various linux distro's then it is universities and ISP's that do the hosting. My own most frequently used mirrors are run by the dutch univerty of twenty and tiscali.
* Accessing my Windows files was a bit of a PITA. I had to install an NTFS driver manually, which meant editing some conf files to auto-mount partitions. Again, that ought to have been automatic to make switching OS's easier. Maybe it's included in more recent distros?
Ah, so MS has locked your data on their filesystem and now it is the task of others to get you out of this hole. This is exactly the reason NTFS drivers are so hard to make, because MS WANTS your data to be only readable if you paid them.
* Back to the nVidia graphics drivers: I quickly discovered that something like gEdit was very simple to use, much like Notepad. Then I tried editing some conf files from the shell. With vi. Enough said.
Yes indeed enough said, you are an idiot. gEdit is a GUI program, so why would you expect it to work in a shell, does notepad work under the dos shell? Why not simply edit the conf files with gEdit? It ain't that hard, again, you simply seem to be re-hashing something you hard earlier without ever grasping what it actually means. You could even edit the conf files with notepad if you wanted. For that matter you don't even have to use the shell to start editing the files anyway, you can use a file browser to get to them, or the open dialog in your editor.
* I had a nice soundcard (Creative Audigy 2), and when I installed Linux some of it's advanced features were n
Cancel/Allow? The XP puppy search, the always on boot-up sound etc etc etc. No MS does NOT listen to its customers, if it did Vista wouldn't be the dog it is.
The personal computer that ran MS-DOS and later Windows on a x86 has won the battle for dominance NOT through excellence, but by being on the whole not as completly crap as their competitors. The clone makers, MS and Intel/Amd have just avoided over the years making as many mistakes as their competitors.
During the recent discussion about OS/2 source code the simple analysis of why the OS failed was, "I wanted to try it, but couldn't find it anywhere (for free/pirated)". I and many another a "geek" would have loved to have tried it out, but it was hard to "pirate" so we never did, so we didn't ever get to use it and learn how good (or bad) it really was. Meanwhile how many of us back then could get a copy of MS software? For years my entire social circle got its MS software from one guys MSDN (or whatever) subscription. Piracy helped MS software spread to the point where it was the most widely used software, NOT because it was best, but simply because it was available.
This has led to MS software becoming the norm in a lot of peoples eyes and software that does it differently is then "wrong". It goes to the point where you claim that MS does it right and listens to its customers. No it doesn't. That it is easy to use.
The most common failing with would be designers like you is to that you seem to think that you are absolutely right, that there is ONE way to do things and that everyone should fall to your feet and follow your guidance.
That is simply not the way linux development works. There are dozens of window managers that all work slightly differently precisly because nobody can agree on what is the best way to do things. MS is easier in that way to use. MS tells you "this is the way it is, deal with it" and that leads to a standard. MS software is NOT easier to use then linux, people are just more used to it. You would be suprised for how much this count.
MS has done nothing BUT telling users what is best for them and flatly refused to listen.
Go ahead, call Bill Gates and tell him to drop UAC, good luck.
Now go ahead and chance whatever opensource program you don't like.
Linux is about freedom, that includes the freedom of the developer to ignore people who want to turn everything into a MS clone, but at least you got the freedom to change things yourselve. Has MS ever listened to you?
I totally agree. Weve said for years that web hotels who are making millions, even billions, by renting out web space to file-sharing websites should take more responsibility and control these websites, Giacobbi said.
What the? This firm is called web sherrif, you would think they would have a slightly better grasp of the terms of the trade. It makes me almost instantly classify this suit as totally without merit and just a case of some stupid musicians being conned by a lawyer who smells a fat check (and not coming from the direction the musicians think).
Claims of millions of whatever currency are already laughable enough, does this guy really think that thepiratebay its isp or in fact anyone even remotely connected to P2P makes billions? Does he even understand how much money that is wether you measure it in dollars, euro's or kronen?
Does privacy matter? The poster presumes it does, but somehow is unable to think of any reasons. If privacy REALLY mattered to him, he could think of reasons why it mattered and then tell them.
What I think is that the poster is one of those people who latch onto an idea without ever fully realising why. Instead of just flapping out that privacy is important and then wondering why nobody seems to "get it" is useless. First ask yourselve why YOUR privacy is so damned important, then you will have the answer you can tell to others.
But don't just take a position and then look for arguments to convince others. That works for a debating club where you are given a topic, not for persuading people to do something you care about.
Deborah Hale at SANS suggested that PC users find friends with Macintosh or Linux machines and have them check for malware before plugging any device into a PC.
Oh boy, you gotta love that bit. Amusing as the suggestion that Mac's and Linux "machines" are not PC's may be, do you realize just how damning of MS software this is? SANS, a security organisations basically says that if you don't trust a piece of hardware, then it is okay to plug it into a mac or linux machine, to test wether it is safe to plug it into a windows pc.
Is this like those warnings on tv, kids do not try this, if you want to do this experiment, get an adult to help you. Kids do not use windows blindly, if you do wish to add a new device, get someone with a real OS to help you out.
Oh well, to all the windows using women out there, remember, the standard rate for getting a guy to help you out is ONE blowjob. Please form an orderly cue.
There is a huge difference between a pacemaker and these RFID capsules and a pacemaker.
First there is the ethical difference, a pacemaker makes a sick person better. A RFID capsule is NOT medicine. First do no harm, ever heard that?
Second, the pacemaker is not injected into tissue but rather implanted in the body. The cancer is claimed to be caused be the tissue surrounding it becoming inflamed.
There is a huge difference between implanting a device in a person via surgery who would otherwise die and injecting a device into healthy tissue into a person who has got nothing wrong with them. If you can't see that, you suck as a doctor and for that matter as a human being.
That company must have gone ages ago, after all, you say there is not enough of a market compared to simpler games, so since they were founded in 1958, by now they should have gone belly up.
Ah but no, Avalon Hill has spend decades succesfully making a profit selling extremely complex games. Way more complex then Monopoly, and still somehow making a profit, enough to satisfy the parent company Hasbro. Mmm, were have I heard that name before. Hasbro, don't they also own Parker Brothers, the publishers of Monopoly?
Why on earth would Hasbro publish both a lowest common denominator game like monopoly (fans, please lynch the OP for those words, not me) and extremely complex games?
Because unlike you the managers at Hasbro ain't completely devoid of any business sense whatsoever.
You can't sell the maximum amount of goods if you only sell to the majority. The smart person will identify the various groups that exist and try to meet each of them with their own line of products.
Idiots MBA's often just don't get this most basic premise, they see a the majority market (and often get that wrong as well) and then think EVERY product should be aimed at that market. It is extremely short-sighted especially when that market is already being dominated with an other product. Don't try to out Coca-Cola Coca-Cola. Don't try to out WoW WoW.
This is what Nintendo did with the Wii, realizing they could NOT compete directly with Sony or Microsoft they instead tapped in another segment of the market although it is important to note that the Wii has more "adult" games then the Gamecube had before. Even nintendo seems to realize that trying to shoot for just one corner of a market at the expense of all others isn't smart which is why you got violent shooters on a Nintendo a console giant who in the west once censored blood and anything nasty or naughty.
What gets me in stories like these is that some people seem to think market share is important, it isn't. Profit is. If you can make a living selling a product to 10 people out of 6 billion you got a lousy market share, but are still a success.
It is almost like saying that simple movies get the largest audiences so everyone should make simple movies. TV execs already live by this rule, does gaming have to follow?
Slashdot Mirror
What we see on the photos is at best a mockup made out of plexiglas and at most likely a render.
Lets see, a completly transparent screen. Because as well know nanotech makes things transparent. Apparently in a mere seven years we will have a material that looks a nice uniform light transparant green but can be used as pixels, wires, battery, antenna, electronics, it can be be reshaped at will without deforming at random.
In seven years?
Come on, this isn't a concept, it is just wishfull thinking with absolutly no bases in reality.
If you can shape a screen, how do you stop it from deforming when you don't want it to? Do you enjoy reading leaflets outside where the wind flaps them about?
I am just getting to old for this non-sense. I don't mind concept products where designers and engineers wonder "what if". But please at least use tech that MIGHT BE. After all if we are randomly speculating I can come up with far more intresting stuff. How about a mobile phone that sits on your eye like a contact lense and is controlled by thought? In seven years? I can even show you how one might look, someone got a place to host a picture of a contact lense?
You beat your cat. Well sure it will behave "better" from then on, the cat is too scared to do anything lest it gets noticed and gets another trashing. You are not raising a well adjusted normal cat, you are raising a scaredy cat who "behaves" in order to avoid punishment.
Same with people, I lived in places where discipline in the family was enforced and yes those kids on the surface seemed well behaved, but they grow up NOT as mature responsible adults but as people who are deadly afraid to be found out. But oh my god their behaviour when they think they are "safe" from being found out.
Check where the highest levels of sexual child abuse take place. In communities that seem oh so well behaved, until they are behind closed doors. I grew up among kids like that, all squaky clean on the surface until they thought the adults were no longer watching. My first porn mag did NOT come from my own liberal school, it came from a friend from a strongly christian family who obediently attended bible classes.
If you want to raise a cat properly the only thing that works is to be there when it is learning the 'rules' of its new home and discipline it at ONCE. No need to beat it, a spray of water or a loud stamp is enough. It will then hopefully learn that the punishement was for what it was doing (don't be to sure about this) and refrain from doing it again. It is fairly easy, but I easily train cats to use their scratching post without ever having to resort to violence. If it is scatching somewhere just pick it up and put it at the post and puts its claws on the post. Also make sure to PLAY with it at the post from time to time especially when it is scratching it on its own so that it learns that this is a fun place to sharpen the nails.
Beating it when you come home and find the wallpaper scatched just gives you a nervous cat afraid of you. Sure it "behaves", but who would want a cat like that. Or a person who is constantly afraid to get noticed because they might get punished?
What does such a person do when they think they are safe from being punished? My first was a good catholic girl and I sure as hell wasn't her first. I suggest that next time your wife looks a little deeper. What goes on when thse well-adjusted decent girls don't have an adult near that could tell on them so they get another beating?
Offcourse there are limits, but the right path is somewhere in between total neglect and beatings. That is why parenting is so bloody difficult, there is no hard and fast rule. Sometimes yes, a spanking or a slap can be in order, as direct punishment for an activity that must stop now. Childeren go through phases where you sometimes need to be able to make it BLOODY clear that the line has been crossed.
That is the other problem with regular beatings, they loose their power. A child that gets a single smack when it gets out of line will see that as far thougher discipline then a child who gets the belt for being late for dinner.
Sadly there is no simple guidebook to follow and state regulation often has to find a way to curb the extremes, anti-child abuse laws like this are created by people that seen the worsed and sadly in their fevour to stop real child abuse introduce laws that go a bit to far. But frankly I seen one rather disturbing case that suggests to me that those who complain have something to hide. It was a co-worker who complained about social services becoming involved after she disciplined her child physically by spanking her. So how come social services ever knew about such a harmless thing? Well the school informed them, because the child could not sit still from the pain of the broken skins from this "spanking". Sure, you could possibly link to a story where a childinformed on his/her parents after the mildest of touches BUT that is life. Every law will fail to stop some things it is meant to stop and catch some that it didn't.
Raising things is hard especially if you want to raise a free thinker, not somebody constantly cowering in your presence.
Don't confuse liberal parenting with neglect.
The belief that porn is good is unpopular (among certain people). The belief that freedom of speech is more important then stopping kids from seeing boobies is UNPOPULAR!
There is NO leap to make. Censoring porn IS the leap.
Why do you think REAL freedom advocates leapt to the defence of Larry Flint when attempts were made to censor him and his works? Because they want Hustler? No, because the fight for freedom is lost if you allow censorship ANYWHERE.
If you believe in free speech then you MUST defend my desire to watch smut. If you care about freedom you will defend my right to fap and "think of the childeren" rethoric should be discarded as the obvious tool of dictators.
This is one of those super rare, once in a lifetime occassions where Slashdot gets the headline wrong. I know, I know, difficult to believe but true nonetheless.
A lot of the comments suggest that the taliban is afraid of the cellphones they use being tracked by the US. This does not seem to be the case.
Rather the taliban objects to the fact that the cellphone network is being used as a communication network for the US to gather intelligence on the taliban. Simply put, people call on their cellphone to tell about the taliban.
In effect this would be like a gang of criminals demanding that 911 be taken down because people keep calling it to report on them.
About half the comments already get this right, they seem to want to take out a communication network that allows people to inform the western forces about their activity at night.
What is amusing about this is that obviously the Taliban with all their anti-western rethoric still needs this very western tech to be operational part of the time for some reason, else they would just demand the towers be torn down and launch attacks against the towers themselves makingthe network go dark 24/7.
For some reason I don't think they "allow" the network to beactive during daylight is out of concern for the common public, obviously they need it for their own purposes.
Neither do they strictly want it to go down to stop US forces or orgnanised "spies". Either would just use other means of communication. No, they want the general public to be incapable of making a call at night, when the taliban is most active.
This is in a way hopefull news, it suggests rather strongly to me that the general public is a bit to fond in taliban eyes of calling the supposedly hated occupier whenever they show up.
After all if the taliban was popular among the common public then this cellphone spy network would work both ways, why is the taliban prepared to give up the chance for any freedom loving afghani to call the taliban and inform on the invader? Don't they want to get a call telling them a convoy is on the move?
This is a bit of a subtle conclusion on my part, but on the whole you don't destroy a bit of infra-structure when you still need it. You don't blow up the bridge your forces still need and you do NOT disrupt a communication service unless you have no need for it. I think the Taliban uses the phone network therefor occasionally to communicate but does no longer have the support that would allow it to use the phone network to receive intelligence of its own during the night.
It will be intresting to see what happens next. Is the taliban really willing to disrupt communications for the common public (the occupying forces don't need it) AND themselves to avoid their activities being reported by the common public? If the towers remain up and are not assaulted I think that proves just how feeble the taliban has become, radio's ain't that expensive to buy, why is the taliban so depended on the cellphone network to wish it to remain active during the day?
I don't actually have the Crysis box but every game I seen with a minimum set of requirements on it ALSO listed a recommended spec.
MS with this Vista advertising campaign made a simple mistake, they designed a sticker that was not clear enough about what was promised.
With PC games, a reasonable person would assume that if you see who different specs then it is obvious that this means that the game will look perform less well on this lower hardware. You would only expect it to run well on the recommended spec.
MS left this out, they basically said "This PC can run Vista". No further explenation was given. It is clear how unclear this was by the fact that MS later added extra information on its website to explain what it meant.
Basically MS screwed up. Now it is for the legal to decide wether people should have known better, wether this is all just a simple misunderstanding or wether MS is guilty of false advertising. Considering MS own people have had doubts during the development of this campaign I think MS has a case to answer.
Advertisers always push the truth as far as it can go. Remember the claims that linux can run on a 386? Why sure it can. The kernel. Run a full distro on it and prepare for slideshow hell. Run windows on the minimum amount of memory? Sure you can, just hope you never have to anything remotely tasking.
It is possible that MS marketting went to far in this case. They could have put on the sticker "This PC is Vista Basic ready". They didn't. They didn't for the simple reason that this would have been less attractive to consumers. Personally I think truth is important, yes "The PC is Vista ready" is the truth, but "This PC is Vista Basic ready" is the greater truth. Sometimes even when you are telling the truth you can be lying.
Do you have any idea exactly what a classic Ferrari goes for, a car with no ABS, no traction control, no airbags, no radio etc etc etc? Yes it probably does have windshield wipers, I give you that.
In fact for these kind of car nuts the LACK of these features is the attraction.
different markets, why do people find that so hard to accept? Android and the iPhone are designed for different customers.
Do you really think that anybody at Ferrari or any of their customers CARE that you can't go into the local carshop and buy decals for it?
The iPhone simply didn't launch like that, it was shiny, it was Apple and that is why it sold so well. You might as well talk about how hard to upgrade the Apple Mini is. Sorry, nobody buys it to upgrade it.
In the meantime we got two products that have NOTHING in common (iPhone is a phone, android a platform) of which one sold millions and the other sold NOTHING yet. Lets wait a bit and see what happens when the first Android phone actually arrives shall we? Then we can make any kind of judgement on what will be the biggest success, but remember, specialist car makers making cars that do not offer any of the 3rd party extra's and ease of use of bigger makers are still around making a profit.
Not everything has to be same grey goo aimed at the largest market share. If Android outsells the iPhone a hundred to one, Apple still had a huge success.
They managed to break records with a phone that lacked many features people have come to accept as standard, with a horrible choice of plans/carriers at a premium price.
Nobody at all seemed to care about the lack of 3rd party apps on it when they handed over their cash for the device. They broke into the cellphone market with just 1 product in record time and you say they got the disadvantage?
Android may do even better BUT it will do in a totally different way. First off there will be NO google phone. Android is closer to Symbian or even MS Mobile OS (whatever they renamed it to this month) then the iPhone. With the iPhone you bought a Apple product, with Android you will buy a phone from any number of phone makers that just happens to run a software suit in which Google had a hand in the development.
Their most likely won't be a google branded phone and none of the others have enough status to sell a phone just because their logo is on it.
Android and the iPhone are completly different products and Apple doesn't need to worry about the same things Google has too. I might buy an Android phone for its openess, but I think absolutly nobody bought an iPhone for any similar concerns. It would be like saying that Ferrari needs to publish the specs for their new car early so 3rd parties can develop roof racks and child seats for it early. Sorry, Ferrari and the people who buy them could care less about that.
One episode has Arnold Rimmer self-convict him over his actions that led to the death of all the crew of the red dwarf.
Kryten then seeks to defend him with the plea that Arnold is just to stupid to ever be held accountable for such an action.
Kryten: A man so incompetent...
Arnold: OBJECTTION
Kryten: so incompetent that he would even object to his own defence
I am not quite sure wether I would call it just being intelligent, but it is certainly possible for people who are in other areas pretty intelligent to be complete idiots in others.
It is entirely possible for this guy to be on the one hand smart enough to develop a filesystem that outperforms anything else on themarket including stuff made by huge companies, and on the other hand be a complete idiot when it comes to listening to his own lawyer or knowing when to shut up.
This is NOT about IQ (if you even believe in that) but rather about personality. This Hans may very well be an opinionated loud mouth who is incapable of just shutting up and let other people do the talking but being a twit is NOT a crime.
The problem for his lawyer is that offcourse he has to sugar coat it. With an opinionated loudmouth for a client he can't just plead that his client is a freak who doesn't have the social skills of a 6 year old. So he has to dress it up FOR HIS CLIENT that his client is too intelligent.
The problem I see is that it really isn't much of a defence because it works both ways, while his actions CAN be explained as being innocent because Hans simply did them without ever considering how they might look he might ALSO have done them because he arrogantly believed that with his intelligence his actions would be so brilliant nobody else could see through them. Several Columbo eps have this, where the suspicion is raised because the crime is too perfect.
Hans may well have done those actions that look to suspicious because he hoped for exactly that effect that people would ask "why would an intelligent person do such a stupid thing".
But really, this is one of those "truth is stranger then fiction" cases. We got a friend who the wife slept around with who has confessed to being a serial killer.
On the other hand, if Hans is so brilliant perhaps he used this as an alibi? He killd his wife and hoped that his wifes lover would be blamed for it? That would certainly suit me, slaughter the cheating bitch and get her lover to fry for it.
We got three suspects here, a russian woman whose past is to say the least a bit odd (much is made of the fact that she has a high education etc etc but she worked for a dating service and accepted a 50.000 dollar job, neither impress me, exactly what background does she come from?)
We got Hans who seems to be a typically socially inept geek who however apparently has enough social skills to run an international business in ways that suggest he is not entirely adverse to a little risky/shady business.
And we got a self-confessed serial killer.
If you were an editor faced with this script you would just drop it because no audience would buy it.
If they make this into a Law & Order ep it will have tobe a two-parter at least to follow all the twists.
Odd case and with no clear evidence I think we will never know the real truth.
Computers communicate by ip address not domain name. For instance the slashdot server I am posting this on has IP 66.35.250.150
Now that doesn't mean that ALL of slashdot is hosted on that address, it doesn't mean ONLY slashdot is hosted on that address and it doesn't even mean slashdot the site/code is there.
What it means is that if my computer requests a connection on port 80 with certain information from that IP I will be given a slashdot page.
There might be a NAT solution with 66.35.250.150 being nothing more then a router, it might be a server where the webserver swiches me to the right set of pages based on the requested domain name.
There are PLENTY of solutions to host multiple sites from a single IP or have multiple servers behind a single IP.
The problem is that one of them are "sexy".
The problem is that shared IP is used mostly for cheapo sites, those sites where you share a server with many others. These solutions are typically very bad making everyone who has a site dream of the day they can afford a dedicated server.
Now there is no real reason why a dedicated server (the computer) could not share an outward IP address with other servers BUT that is not the way these things are done. IP adresses are cheap and plentifull and if you get your own dedicated server your hosting company will gladly give you a handfull of IP's to go with it.
What might be needed but will be very hard to do is convince people that they don't need their own ip for their site. Good luck with that, until the crunch becomes really thight what hosting company is going to take away something their customers have taken for granted for the good of the rest of the world? Might as well expect a car maker to stop making big gass guzzlers to save the enviroment.
Yes it is possible to host sites under a single IP. The only limit is how much the hardware/software that redirects the requests it receives to the right site can handle.
Think of it like this, the limit to the performance of your NAT solution at home is your router. You can't host 10 100mbit sites behind a 10mbit router.
But the tech doesn't matter, the problem is simply that people don't want it.
That is one way to do it, keep patching it up and hope it becomes somebodies elses problem.
The problem is simple, the way we want to use the internet means we are getting more and more devices which desire their own internet adress. Some people suggest solutions like NAT but these only have so many uses especially when mobile phones become internet capable. If you want your internet node to be independent then you need an ip adress.
Don't believe me? Fine, give up your internet connection with its own IP and use the NAT solution of your ISP. Good luck running a torrent.
We could easily solve the entire problem if we just used NAT for every major ISP. It would free up countless adresses and keep IP4 usuable for decades rather then years.
So who is first? Who is going to give up their IP for their home for the greater good?
Thought as much, absolutly nobody.
It is the problem with humans, we don't want new power installations, we don't want to use less power and we refuse to switch to more economical appliances. Something has to give, but goverment or business is NOT going to do it. Sooner or later it just breaks down (see the LA brownouts) and finally a decission will have to be made.
Same with a solution to IP4 limited adress space. We will keep coming up with patches and ignore the problem until finally it can no longer be ignored and then we will have to really bite down to implement it at great cost and inconvenience when we could have solved it easily right now.
Because lets be honest, it ain't all that much of a problem. In the EU we switched currencies. A hell of a job but because it became accepted that it had to be done, it just happened.
We could easily do a switch to IP6 but only when the majority just accepts that it has to be done, and bites the bullet.
Analog mobile phones no longer work in the US, holland no longer airs analog tv signals, switches happen all the time. It is nothing special, but in each case somebody just had to say "we are switching and if you are not ready, though".
So what if countless devices will no longer work, at a given point you just have to be able to say "upgrade or be left behind" or you will be forced to increasinly bend over backwards to accomadate out of date tech.
This might work against hijackers, that is hijackers relying on box-cutters or other simple weapons. A hijackers who uses for instance a knockout gas would not be stopped.
It does nothing against a suicide bomber or indeed anyone who does NOT care if they get killed as long they can first complete their objective.
This is in fact one of the problems dealing with terrorists or crazies, the police is used to dealing with criminals who want to enjoy the fruits of their labour by remaining alive.
That hollywood shootout with the two bankrobbers in heavy armour showed the problem, no normal bankrobber would have done that. A normal criminal would just have surrendered rather then trust in a piece of clothing to stop a hail of bullets.
Your solution depends on that fact that the passengers have time to respond and are capable of responding when the bad guy acts.
Further problem, people have lost all sense of control before in aircraft, do you really think it is wise to give these people guns?
There is a difference, in the EU consumer rights mean something.
Do you know about dead pixels in LCD screens? The one the industry tells you are acceptable? Dutch law clearly FORBIDS this. ANY LCD with a single defective SUB-pixel has to be replaced. No argument possible. The netherlands is the only country where sony replaced every PSP with ANY pixel problems.
So you are right in saying these EULA's are not illegal in the US, but the EU has far better laws for protecting the consumer and it has long been known by any who follows consumer afair programs they are entirely without worth within the EU and any company that tries to take you to court over one will find a very hostile judge. Hence why they never been tested, the companies know they will loose it.
The stories are submitted by the READERS (that is you), the comments are submitted by the READERS, the moderating is done by the READERS, the testing of new features is done by the READERS, the polls are suggested by the READERS, the new layout was created by a READER!
Who earns money from this site? NOT the READERS!
Normally you would expect a site to present content the site owner produced and then display it for money. Social sites, wether it is slashdot, youtube or facebook don't have any content of their own, instead they provide a space for the readers to present content to other readers. This is NOT that new. The letters page in any newspaper gives the paper "free" content as well, but it is nonetheless an odd thing.
There is an unspoken agreement that in exchange for giving you a space to voice your opinion, you allow the space provider to use your comment to make a profit. But slashdot trained monkeys who call themselves editors do occasionaly come up with their own stories, and add idiotic conclusions. Newspapers have other pages then the letter page.
But sides like youtube or myspace have NO content at all of their own. It then becomes a rather difficult question of exactly how much you own them for giving you a space to express yourselve. Remember "free" homepages? The one you probably still have with your ISP subscription? It seems pretty clear there that YOU own the contents of the page. Why should it be different for a social website?
I agree with the article, we seriously need to question just who owns what. Remember the writers strike? One of the things a lot of people mentioned was that reality shows would be on the increase because they don't employ writers. Actually reality shows are written as well (writers do more then just write dialogue), but you might even ask yourselve wether these "real" people that create content through their lives for the TV stations to sell don't qualify as writers as well.
Could the maintainer of a myspace site be listed as a writer? Why is a columnist a writer, but not a blogger? Who owns your content? When do you go from a letter writer to a journalist?
Just how much do you own the hoster of you content in exchange for this service. Myspace has a lot of nudie pics, say it decided to host all these pics on a pay-per-view portion of the site. You agreed for it to be public, but there is a difference between a flasher pic on your own page and it being displayed on a site with nothing but nudie pics. Just how far can myspace go with your content?
Intresting questions, and I fear that sooner or later we will find a story where a site owner goes to far.
younggirls.org I started from the bottom and this page CLEARLY has naked girls UNDER the age of 18. Legal images as they are photographs by David Hamilton. They fall under art but are absolutly 100% of girls under the age limit you mention.
I am not going to do the whole bloody list, but a sampling shows me that a LOT of it is from porn sites with quite a bit of questionable content.
The entire defence of the Hamilton work depends on the fact that the images have artistic merit and are not just there to arouse (as porn is). Putting them on a porn site among clear porn images sort of suggests that the owner of the site is not intrested in them for the art.
Various site also contain images of underaged "models". This is a worldwide thing where girls who are absolutly without a shadow of a doubt (hamilton girls could be 18, although they are not) underage posing in poses that have nothing to do with either art or modeling.
Browse the list a little bit further and you will find images that are highly questionable. Wether they actually fall under child porn I cannot say, it is a difficult subject not made any easier by the fact that women's ages can be hard to guess.
But let us not forget that there have been several cases of legit porn turning out to have underaged actresses in them.
Frankly the blocklist seems pointless, but it should be attacked with facts, not speculation. Now is anyone here willing to browse the complete list? Because the poster of the list claims that there are real childporn sites among it and frankly I don't need to see that again (once worked at a sysadmin job where my task was to investigate claims of inappropriate material. Goatse? you ain't seen nothing yet).
Charity has always had the problem that the person performing the charity will invariably attach some conditions to the charity. The simplest clearest example is religion related charity. Take for instance orphans raised by the catholic church. Yes ain't we nice, we raise these kids society has ignored. Why yes, offcourse we raise them as catholics, why do you ask?
It is not evil perse, there is nothing wrong with a catholic upbringing and since the religion apparently is 'good' enough to donate money to the raising of kids they clearly do something right BUT where does it stop? Would an orphaned child of a different religion still be allowed to the freedom of religion we so value in the west?
It is even simpler with straight cash donations, lots of slashdotters claim that politicians who accept cash donations from special interest groups are just one small step away from bribery.
If I donate a million dollars to my childs school, just how much say does this give me in how this school is run? If a school becomes totally depended on money from Bill Gates just how unbiased towards MS software will its IT department be?
Because at the receiver ends an old saying goes, "don't bite the hand that feeds you".
The article makes it clear how far this go, a worker who did excellent work was nonetheless fired because he upset one of the donors. He bit the hand that fed him.
The money that flows around Bill Gates has been linked more then once to attempts to influence the world in a way that clearly benefits Bill Gates. Look at the money that flowed around SCO, around OOXML etc etc. Just how come that the case against MS was dropped so quickly when the guard changed in the white house? How much did Billy boy and his old boys network donate?
Note this is NOT simple corruption. It is far more dangerous. Simple corruption in away is open by its nature. If everyone KNOWS it costs 1000 bucks in unmarked bills in a brown envelope to get a permit, then that is just the cost of living. Openly corrupt societies are actually very easy to deal with, just have enough cash on hand to get things done.
The charity/donations corruption is far harder to deal with. It ain't just Bill Gates you have to deal with, but all his friends as well. Even if you don't get any money from Billy you still have to watch out because you might be dependent on an organisation which does, or from one of his friends.
The article already shows this, upset the rockefellers and loose your job.
Say Bill Gates visits one of the schools he sponsors, do you think that any administrator of that school would allow a student to wear a penguin on his t-shirt? Show a BSD project? Have a demo class with Mac's?
It doesn't even matter if Bill Gates would cut his donations, the fear of it is enough.
They are talking about hundreds of "worlds" in our SOLAR SYSTEM. Say then there might be trillions is a bit silly. If there were trillions of worlds in our SOLAR SYSTEM then we would certainly know about on account of constantly bumping into them. Our solar system would look like one of thise gumball machines.
The solar system is our sun and whatever circles around it. Like the term world it is kinda vague as to what falls under our solar system and what doesn't, but however you measure it, it is rather small compared to the universe as a whole.
Even our milky way has only so much space for planets, if you want trillions of worlds you need to look at the universe as a whole, then it is certainly possible.
This is NOT just nitpicking, the claim that our solar system may contain hundreds of worlds is rather outlandish and depends highly on what you consider a "world". Remember the whole business about poor Pluto? It is no longer considered a planet. Why then should other objects its size in our solar system be considered worlds?
* It's what I'm used to.
Oh dear, MS trolls becoming a bit desperate? Is this really the best you can do, Windows is better because I am used to it? You can get used to practically anything. Basically you are saying,"I am to lazy to change". Well good luck to you then, wonder how you deal with the changes with each new windows version however.
* I have a lot invested in Windows software that isn't available natively on Linux. (Yes, some of it could run under Wine)
So your locked in, good for you. You have become completly dependent on MS for your software need. Good luck getting MS to listen to you after admitting this, they got you by the short and curlies, another customer they know has no choice but follow their rule. You WILL install Vista, because you have given yourselve no choice.
* Graphics drivers. I installed Fedora about a year ago and installing their graphics drivers felt like I was hacking my own computer. Maybe that's part of the fun of Linux (heck, of course it is!), but for a wide base of consumers it's also part of the fear.
Yeah god forbid you control your own computer. This driver thing always comes up, despite the fact that various linux distro's I have run over the years never had problems and windows always requires me to find the right drivers myself, going to the point of having to hack ATI's radeon drivers to work under W2003. Now that was "hacking" not just configuration.
* Installing software. There's so many distro's of linux and seemingly packages built for individual flavors, installing new software "feels" risky, and running into package conflicts is a bit nasty. Do I trust the people who seem to build and redistribute packages on random websites? I don't know. There's a bit of a difference between commercial vendors and some guy with a popular FTP repository. I also downloaded and compiled some apps myself because I couldn't find packages for certain things for the version of Fedora I was using. Are regular consumers expected to do this?
Oh geez, now I know you are trolling. Various linux distro's ALL come with systems for easily installing software. Wether it is apt-get or emerge, installing software on linux is far far easier then it is in windows. No, my friend you are just re-hashing stuff you heard somewhere. You clearly got no idea what the hell you are talking about. A guy with a popular FTP? WTF? If I check the mirror list for various linux distro's then it is universities and ISP's that do the hosting. My own most frequently used mirrors are run by the dutch univerty of twenty and tiscali.
* Accessing my Windows files was a bit of a PITA. I had to install an NTFS driver manually, which meant editing some conf files to auto-mount partitions. Again, that ought to have been automatic to make switching OS's easier. Maybe it's included in more recent distros?
Ah, so MS has locked your data on their filesystem and now it is the task of others to get you out of this hole. This is exactly the reason NTFS drivers are so hard to make, because MS WANTS your data to be only readable if you paid them.
* Back to the nVidia graphics drivers: I quickly discovered that something like gEdit was very simple to use, much like Notepad. Then I tried editing some conf files from the shell. With vi. Enough said.
Yes indeed enough said, you are an idiot. gEdit is a GUI program, so why would you expect it to work in a shell, does notepad work under the dos shell? Why not simply edit the conf files with gEdit? It ain't that hard, again, you simply seem to be re-hashing something you hard earlier without ever grasping what it actually means. You could even edit the conf files with notepad if you wanted. For that matter you don't even have to use the shell to start editing the files anyway, you can use a file browser to get to them, or the open dialog in your editor.
* I had a nice soundcard (Creative Audigy 2), and when I installed Linux some of it's advanced features were n
http://thepiratebay.org/search/swedish%20chef/0/99/0Here you go, elementary swedish lessons by a native
Cancel/Allow? The XP puppy search, the always on boot-up sound etc etc etc. No MS does NOT listen to its customers, if it did Vista wouldn't be the dog it is.
The personal computer that ran MS-DOS and later Windows on a x86 has won the battle for dominance NOT through excellence, but by being on the whole not as completly crap as their competitors. The clone makers, MS and Intel/Amd have just avoided over the years making as many mistakes as their competitors.
During the recent discussion about OS/2 source code the simple analysis of why the OS failed was, "I wanted to try it, but couldn't find it anywhere (for free/pirated)". I and many another a "geek" would have loved to have tried it out, but it was hard to "pirate" so we never did, so we didn't ever get to use it and learn how good (or bad) it really was. Meanwhile how many of us back then could get a copy of MS software? For years my entire social circle got its MS software from one guys MSDN (or whatever) subscription. Piracy helped MS software spread to the point where it was the most widely used software, NOT because it was best, but simply because it was available.
This has led to MS software becoming the norm in a lot of peoples eyes and software that does it differently is then "wrong". It goes to the point where you claim that MS does it right and listens to its customers. No it doesn't. That it is easy to use.
The most common failing with would be designers like you is to that you seem to think that you are absolutely right, that there is ONE way to do things and that everyone should fall to your feet and follow your guidance.
That is simply not the way linux development works. There are dozens of window managers that all work slightly differently precisly because nobody can agree on what is the best way to do things. MS is easier in that way to use. MS tells you "this is the way it is, deal with it" and that leads to a standard. MS software is NOT easier to use then linux, people are just more used to it. You would be suprised for how much this count.
MS has done nothing BUT telling users what is best for them and flatly refused to listen.
Go ahead, call Bill Gates and tell him to drop UAC, good luck.
Now go ahead and chance whatever opensource program you don't like.
Linux is about freedom, that includes the freedom of the developer to ignore people who want to turn everything into a MS clone, but at least you got the freedom to change things yourselve. Has MS ever listened to you?
I totally agree. Weve said for years that web hotels who are making millions, even billions, by renting out web space to file-sharing websites should take more responsibility and control these websites, Giacobbi said.
What the? This firm is called web sherrif, you would think they would have a slightly better grasp of the terms of the trade. It makes me almost instantly classify this suit as totally without merit and just a case of some stupid musicians being conned by a lawyer who smells a fat check (and not coming from the direction the musicians think).
Claims of millions of whatever currency are already laughable enough, does this guy really think that thepiratebay its isp or in fact anyone even remotely connected to P2P makes billions? Does he even understand how much money that is wether you measure it in dollars, euro's or kronen?
Does privacy matter? The poster presumes it does, but somehow is unable to think of any reasons. If privacy REALLY mattered to him, he could think of reasons why it mattered and then tell them.
What I think is that the poster is one of those people who latch onto an idea without ever fully realising why. Instead of just flapping out that privacy is important and then wondering why nobody seems to "get it" is useless. First ask yourselve why YOUR privacy is so damned important, then you will have the answer you can tell to others.
But don't just take a position and then look for arguments to convince others. That works for a debating club where you are given a topic, not for persuading people to do something you care about.
Deborah Hale at SANS suggested that PC users find friends with Macintosh or Linux machines and have them check for malware before plugging any device into a PC.
Oh boy, you gotta love that bit. Amusing as the suggestion that Mac's and Linux "machines" are not PC's may be, do you realize just how damning of MS software this is? SANS, a security organisations basically says that if you don't trust a piece of hardware, then it is okay to plug it into a mac or linux machine, to test wether it is safe to plug it into a windows pc.
Is this like those warnings on tv, kids do not try this, if you want to do this experiment, get an adult to help you. Kids do not use windows blindly, if you do wish to add a new device, get someone with a real OS to help you out.
Oh well, to all the windows using women out there, remember, the standard rate for getting a guy to help you out is ONE blowjob. Please form an orderly cue.
There is a huge difference between a pacemaker and these RFID capsules and a pacemaker.
First there is the ethical difference, a pacemaker makes a sick person better. A RFID capsule is NOT medicine. First do no harm, ever heard that?
Second, the pacemaker is not injected into tissue but rather implanted in the body. The cancer is claimed to be caused be the tissue surrounding it becoming inflamed.
There is a huge difference between implanting a device in a person via surgery who would otherwise die and injecting a device into healthy tissue into a person who has got nothing wrong with them. If you can't see that, you suck as a doctor and for that matter as a human being.
YES, salvation is here, not only do these three companies tell you that you have a problem, they also tell you that they can FIX it for YOU!
Ain't they nice.
Never trust advertising and this is never more true then when advertisers sell their own product.
Basically the entire "article" goes, "the way you are doing it now is wrong, we sell another way and it is better according to our figures".
Statistics used by marketing, even Satan himself would balk at such devilry.
That company must have gone ages ago, after all, you say there is not enough of a market compared to simpler games, so since they were founded in 1958, by now they should have gone belly up.
Ah but no, Avalon Hill has spend decades succesfully making a profit selling extremely complex games. Way more complex then Monopoly, and still somehow making a profit, enough to satisfy the parent company Hasbro. Mmm, were have I heard that name before. Hasbro, don't they also own Parker Brothers, the publishers of Monopoly?
Why on earth would Hasbro publish both a lowest common denominator game like monopoly (fans, please lynch the OP for those words, not me) and extremely complex games?
Because unlike you the managers at Hasbro ain't completely devoid of any business sense whatsoever.
You can't sell the maximum amount of goods if you only sell to the majority. The smart person will identify the various groups that exist and try to meet each of them with their own line of products.
Idiots MBA's often just don't get this most basic premise, they see a the majority market (and often get that wrong as well) and then think EVERY product should be aimed at that market. It is extremely short-sighted especially when that market is already being dominated with an other product. Don't try to out Coca-Cola Coca-Cola. Don't try to out WoW WoW.
This is what Nintendo did with the Wii, realizing they could NOT compete directly with Sony or Microsoft they instead tapped in another segment of the market although it is important to note that the Wii has more "adult" games then the Gamecube had before. Even nintendo seems to realize that trying to shoot for just one corner of a market at the expense of all others isn't smart which is why you got violent shooters on a Nintendo a console giant who in the west once censored blood and anything nasty or naughty.
What gets me in stories like these is that some people seem to think market share is important, it isn't. Profit is. If you can make a living selling a product to 10 people out of 6 billion you got a lousy market share, but are still a success.
It is almost like saying that simple movies get the largest audiences so everyone should make simple movies. TV execs already live by this rule, does gaming have to follow?