I think he was referring to the fact that if you have logs, then you're computers could be confiscated in the event that someone used your service for any illegal activity. I mean, catching the bad guys is good and all, but you're still quite inconvenienced when you get your computers taken away. If you keep no logs, then they might not catch the bad guys, but they also don't have a reason to take your computers away.
Did they seize every router through which regular traffic would have had to travel to get to the forum? How far is it going to go. Are the going to seize all the computers from a major German ISP? because i'm sure somebody used their networks.
I've been a solid Mandriva user for about 4 years now. I keep on looking for something better when I get a little annoyed, but really, I haven't been able to find anything better. There's always little stupid things that don't work in other distros that really start to annoy me. Recent problems include:
SUSE 10.1 not being able to install any updates because of some weird error.
SUSE 10.1 not being able to install packages and reporting that it could not resolve dependancy XXXX where XXXX is some stupid number that means nothing. It should at least tell me which file or package name i'm missing as a dependancy.
Fedora completely failing to initialize X, even when trying to use standard VESA drivers, when all the other distros i've tried (probably around 6 or 7) have no problems.
Fedora not including mp3 support out of the box. Sorry, i know there's patent problems and everything, but give me a break. Most other distros include it, and stuff like this only helps to perpetuate the myth that Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
Ubuntu opening up an entire desktop in order to start the install process, and then not making the install all that straight forward.
Ubuntu only including a single CD, which means that there's a lot of software that isn't included on the installation disk. Most distros is up to 3 CDs by now. Mandriva RC1 2007 is almost a full DVD (although only because it's dual architecture).
Gentoo offering no installation procedure whatsoever except to enter a bunch of text commands on the console. Sorry, but it's 2006, get a graphical install program. I am quite handy with the console, but I only have 1 computer, and don't really like having to print out the install instructions, and then have to type in a bunch of stuff. I don't care if it's text based, just include something so that I don't have to figure out some obscure procedure.
Stuff like this is why I have stuck with Mandriva for so long. There are some kinks, it's not perfect, but it seems to be devoid of stupid little problems that plague other distros. It's really the best desktop distro i've ever tried, and it's the only reason i've been using linux as long as I have. If i'd have to put up with some of the usability issues i've experienced with other distros.
Once you start putting videos on the ipod and running movies on it, I think you'll quickly find that you lose that 8 hour battery life. If you have the harddrive spinning, and the screen on for the whole time, plus the processor working harder, because there's just so much more data to decode, then you're probably looking at a 2 hour battery life. Which still isn't bad, you could watch 1 movie, but probably not what a lot of people want. You could save on battery power by storing the movies on memory cards, and reading off there, but I suspect the screen would probably be too much of a drain to give the type of experience people expect from iPods.
What's obvious is that the writer didn't have a technical understanding.
Wow, I've never seen that happen. I mean, writers always completely understand the technology they are writing about. I think this is the first time I've ever read an article where the writer didn't understand what he was writing about.
Or at least something with the same rights as DVDs. If you're going to charge the same as the DVD, then offer something that is at least as good, in all respects, not just quality.
GPL is specifically worded such that the software is free, and remains free. With the BSD license, someone else can take your source code, make a few changes, and rerelease it as their own in a closed format, making the code essentially non-free. I do see your point about the fact that restrictions exist meaning that you are not free to do with the code as you please. However I don't think that's what free software is about. I believe that free software is about having the source code open, and keeping it open. Not making it open so that others can use it, close it up, and make your code less free than it was before.
Yeah, I know this is the way bittorrent works, and the way ed2k worked before that. I'm not trying to pretend I invented the idea. I was just pointing out that it would be a good idea from unbox to use in their system. Especially when you are downloading 2 Gig files.
That's a great idea. I never knew that there existed manufacturers that didn't require you to send back the entire unit in order to obtain a refund. How do they protect against people taking off the faceplates, and replacing them with another sheet of metal, and sending back the original faceplate to basically get a free drive? I guess you'd have to do it in a clean room to stop dust from getting on the disk, but if you already had a cleanroom at your disposal, then what's to stop you.
However, according to an article I just googled, there are quite a few disable people. 18% of Americans have disabilities and 12% of Americans have severe disabilities. So while you're probably going to turn this around on me to say that it represents a very large percentage of the population and therefore, businesses should be forced to comply, it shows that there are enough people, that even without laws stating that you must comply, and even with businesses that will not comply, that some (and many) businesses will find it worth their while and extremely beneficial to support this segment of society. I don't think that this should be something that has to be legislated in, or something that businesses are fined for. If a business doesn't want to go through extra work to attract a certain part of society, then that should be their own choice. However, there will always be businesses that do find it worth their while. Wouldn't you be a little angry if you spent $5000 putting in a ramp and didn't have a single person use it?
It's not the the same as racism. They aren't saying that blind people aren't allowed to access their site, they're saying they don't want to take the time such that the current tools allow them to access the site easily. Many people don't have cars, but that doesn't mean that my business which is out in the middle of nowhere without public transportation must provide transportation to all those who want to come to the store yet do not have their own car. Maybe if there's enough sites on the internet that don't follow the guidelines then they should come up with better tools so that even sites which don't follow the rules can be accessed. Obviously some which are flash only will be hard to do, but sites like target where most of the stuff is in text should be able to be handled. Even if they do have to do a little bit of OCR on the images with text.
The problem is that if it isn't required, it won't be done.
That's kind of a cop out. Most stores don't sell stuff that's made for left handed people. However there's stores that have realized this and decided to sell only left handed stuff, and they make pretty good money at it. In the same way, if businesses weren't forced to be accessible, I believe that there would be more businesses specifically catering to people with disabilities. And they'd probably get better service from those stores specifically catering to their needs, rather than just regular businesses just following the minimum standards to comply with the law.
Shouldn't you download the file in small chunks, each with their own SHA1SUM, to ensure that the entire file isn't corrupted and you don't have to download the entire file (2 gigs) again, just because there's a flipped bit in the file?
But how many businesses really comply? Does iTunes UK operate differently than iTunes Canada. Because if it doesn't it's very much not friendly to the blind. I think it's one of those laws that they write in order to make it look like the government cares, but that they really don't enforce it. Does Every second story store have to have elevator access. I know there's plenty of stores in Canada with a second floor, and many that exist on only the second floor of a building that are only accessible via stairs.
But that's a risk that the business should decide on it's own if they want to take. If they will only gain $100 in profit, (not sales) from making their stuff accessible, and they would have to spend $1000 to make it accessible, then they should be free not to make their business accessible. Even if they could gain money from making their services accessible, it should still be their own choice. A bike shop may very well be able to make money selling recumbent hand bikes that parapeligic people can ride. But that doesn't mean they have to sell them.
I can understand when government has to be accessible, because people with disabilities pay taxes too, and the government is responsible for all its citizens, not just the ones with disabilities. However, when it comes to private enterprise, I believe it should be up to the business whether or not they want to provideo services to those with disabilities, especially when it comes at an increased cost. Should world of telescopes be required to ensure their services are open to the blind? Should the running equipment store have to ensure that their store is wheelchair accessible? Should the music store have to contain written lyrics of all their albums for sale? I think that businesses should do what they can for those with disabilities, however, they shouldn't be forced into it. There's businesses where it really isn't worth it for them to make their services accessible to all. As easy as it might be to follow ADA guidelines and make an accessible site, it's hard to find developers who know how to make the site accessible, rather than just getting VS.Net to generate all their HTML for them.
You'd might, but with the slim margins your presidents have won with in recent years, you may end up with a minority government. You may also end up with decromats and republicans sitting together and discussing things, and having to come to an agreement before decisions are made, instead of only one side sitting around discussing their own interests.
Let this be the official thread where we post our opinions that we've written in our blogs. But summing it up, my opinions are pretty much the same as yours, plus terms of service that allow them to delete the movies and discontinue the services at anytime.
The Services are available only to customers located in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, you may not use the Services and you may not transfer Digital Content outside the United States. As used herein, "United States" refers to the 48 contiguous United States, the District of Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii.
So now if I download a movie and bring my laptop on a trip out of the country, then I'm breaking the terms of service. That's pretty draconian.
If you violate any of the terms or conditions of this Agreement or otherwise abuse the Service, your license to Rental Digital Content and Purchased Digital Content will immediately terminate and Amazon may, in its discretion, immediately revoke your access to the Service without notice to you and without refund of any fees. In such event, you must delete all copies of Digital Content that you have downloaded, and Amazon shall have the right to automatically delete all Digital Content on your Authorized Device without notice to you.
Oh, and they can delete the content automatically if they find i'm breaking the terms of service.
I live in Canada, and we have a parlimentary system. It works a lot better, because you don't vote for the guy on top. You vote for a guy who's supposed to be looking out for the people in his riding. Naturally, it doesn't always work out perfectly, but I think in this system the people we we voting for have a much closer connection to the people who voted for them.
NetMD was a great alternative to MP3 Players. You could run them for 30 hours on a single rechargable AA battery, they were smallish, and if you were going on a long trip, you could bring a bunch of discs and bring a lot more music than you could usually fit on a comparably priced MP3 player. It was also non-skip, and the discs are very sturdy. That hard case means you can drop of even throw them without worrying about breaking them. The only downside was the terrible software they installed with it, that made it a real pain to transfer your music to it. It had a bunch of DRM crap to ensure that you didn't have more than 3 copies of a song on different disks. It was also painfully slow. But if they won't have screwed up the software and DRM it would have been amazing. However, I see Sony making the same mistake this time around for the memory stick movies.
However you'll also remember that when windows XP was released, there was a whole bunch Of CD writing software that stopped working. Nothing worked except the stuff that was installed, and anybody who had purchased CD burning software for Windows 98 or 2K had to wait and hope for their software to be updated, or buy new software.
How well does the Live-DVD fit into ram on a $299 Dell that only came with 256 MB of Ram? Sorry but there's lots of other problems you aren't considering. Like where to store the Data that your ripping off the DVD. You'll need to copy the files to the hard drive, especially if you only have 1 DVD/DVDWriter drive. Oh, and better hope those NTFS drivers are working flawlessly, or you might lose some of their precious data.
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I think he was referring to the fact that if you have logs, then you're computers could be confiscated in the event that someone used your service for any illegal activity. I mean, catching the bad guys is good and all, but you're still quite inconvenienced when you get your computers taken away. If you keep no logs, then they might not catch the bad guys, but they also don't have a reason to take your computers away.
Did they seize every router through which regular traffic would have had to travel to get to the forum? How far is it going to go. Are the going to seize all the computers from a major German ISP? because i'm sure somebody used their networks.
I've been a solid Mandriva user for about 4 years now. I keep on looking for something better when I get a little annoyed, but really, I haven't been able to find anything better. There's always little stupid things that don't work in other distros that really start to annoy me. Recent problems include:
SUSE 10.1 not being able to install any updates because of some weird error.
SUSE 10.1 not being able to install packages and reporting that it could not resolve dependancy XXXX where XXXX is some stupid number that means nothing. It should at least tell me which file or package name i'm missing as a dependancy.
Fedora completely failing to initialize X, even when trying to use standard VESA drivers, when all the other distros i've tried (probably around 6 or 7) have no problems.
Fedora not including mp3 support out of the box. Sorry, i know there's patent problems and everything, but give me a break. Most other distros include it, and stuff like this only helps to perpetuate the myth that Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
Ubuntu opening up an entire desktop in order to start the install process, and then not making the install all that straight forward.
Ubuntu only including a single CD, which means that there's a lot of software that isn't included on the installation disk. Most distros is up to 3 CDs by now. Mandriva RC1 2007 is almost a full DVD (although only because it's dual architecture).
Gentoo offering no installation procedure whatsoever except to enter a bunch of text commands on the console. Sorry, but it's 2006, get a graphical install program. I am quite handy with the console, but I only have 1 computer, and don't really like having to print out the install instructions, and then have to type in a bunch of stuff. I don't care if it's text based, just include something so that I don't have to figure out some obscure procedure.
Stuff like this is why I have stuck with Mandriva for so long. There are some kinks, it's not perfect, but it seems to be devoid of stupid little problems that plague other distros. It's really the best desktop distro i've ever tried, and it's the only reason i've been using linux as long as I have. If i'd have to put up with some of the usability issues i've experienced with other distros.
Once you start putting videos on the ipod and running movies on it, I think you'll quickly find that you lose that 8 hour battery life. If you have the harddrive spinning, and the screen on for the whole time, plus the processor working harder, because there's just so much more data to decode, then you're probably looking at a 2 hour battery life. Which still isn't bad, you could watch 1 movie, but probably not what a lot of people want. You could save on battery power by storing the movies on memory cards, and reading off there, but I suspect the screen would probably be too much of a drain to give the type of experience people expect from iPods.
What's obvious is that the writer didn't have a technical understanding.
Wow, I've never seen that happen. I mean, writers always completely understand the technology they are writing about. I think this is the first time I've ever read an article where the writer didn't understand what he was writing about.
Or at least something with the same rights as DVDs. If you're going to charge the same as the DVD, then offer something that is at least as good, in all respects, not just quality.
GPL is specifically worded such that the software is free, and remains free. With the BSD license, someone else can take your source code, make a few changes, and rerelease it as their own in a closed format, making the code essentially non-free. I do see your point about the fact that restrictions exist meaning that you are not free to do with the code as you please. However I don't think that's what free software is about. I believe that free software is about having the source code open, and keeping it open. Not making it open so that others can use it, close it up, and make your code less free than it was before.
Yeah, I know this is the way bittorrent works, and the way ed2k worked before that. I'm not trying to pretend I invented the idea. I was just pointing out that it would be a good idea from unbox to use in their system. Especially when you are downloading 2 Gig files.
That's a great idea. I never knew that there existed manufacturers that didn't require you to send back the entire unit in order to obtain a refund. How do they protect against people taking off the faceplates, and replacing them with another sheet of metal, and sending back the original faceplate to basically get a free drive? I guess you'd have to do it in a clean room to stop dust from getting on the disk, but if you already had a cleanroom at your disposal, then what's to stop you.
However, according to an article I just googled, there are quite a few disable people. 18% of Americans have disabilities and 12% of Americans have severe disabilities. So while you're probably going to turn this around on me to say that it represents a very large percentage of the population and therefore, businesses should be forced to comply, it shows that there are enough people, that even without laws stating that you must comply, and even with businesses that will not comply, that some (and many) businesses will find it worth their while and extremely beneficial to support this segment of society. I don't think that this should be something that has to be legislated in, or something that businesses are fined for. If a business doesn't want to go through extra work to attract a certain part of society, then that should be their own choice. However, there will always be businesses that do find it worth their while. Wouldn't you be a little angry if you spent $5000 putting in a ramp and didn't have a single person use it?
It's not the the same as racism. They aren't saying that blind people aren't allowed to access their site, they're saying they don't want to take the time such that the current tools allow them to access the site easily. Many people don't have cars, but that doesn't mean that my business which is out in the middle of nowhere without public transportation must provide transportation to all those who want to come to the store yet do not have their own car. Maybe if there's enough sites on the internet that don't follow the guidelines then they should come up with better tools so that even sites which don't follow the rules can be accessed. Obviously some which are flash only will be hard to do, but sites like target where most of the stuff is in text should be able to be handled. Even if they do have to do a little bit of OCR on the images with text.
The problem is that if it isn't required, it won't be done.
That's kind of a cop out. Most stores don't sell stuff that's made for left handed people. However there's stores that have realized this and decided to sell only left handed stuff, and they make pretty good money at it. In the same way, if businesses weren't forced to be accessible, I believe that there would be more businesses specifically catering to people with disabilities. And they'd probably get better service from those stores specifically catering to their needs, rather than just regular businesses just following the minimum standards to comply with the law.
Shouldn't you download the file in small chunks, each with their own SHA1SUM, to ensure that the entire file isn't corrupted and you don't have to download the entire file (2 gigs) again, just because there's a flipped bit in the file?
You don't even have to be colourblind to not be able to read some of the sites out there with bad colour choices.
But how many businesses really comply? Does iTunes UK operate differently than iTunes Canada. Because if it doesn't it's very much not friendly to the blind. I think it's one of those laws that they write in order to make it look like the government cares, but that they really don't enforce it. Does Every second story store have to have elevator access. I know there's plenty of stores in Canada with a second floor, and many that exist on only the second floor of a building that are only accessible via stairs.
The web designers do realize this. The problem is getting the manager and marketing guys who are really in charge to realize this.
But that's a risk that the business should decide on it's own if they want to take. If they will only gain $100 in profit, (not sales) from making their stuff accessible, and they would have to spend $1000 to make it accessible, then they should be free not to make their business accessible. Even if they could gain money from making their services accessible, it should still be their own choice. A bike shop may very well be able to make money selling recumbent hand bikes that parapeligic people can ride. But that doesn't mean they have to sell them.
I can understand when government has to be accessible, because people with disabilities pay taxes too, and the government is responsible for all its citizens, not just the ones with disabilities. However, when it comes to private enterprise, I believe it should be up to the business whether or not they want to provideo services to those with disabilities, especially when it comes at an increased cost. Should world of telescopes be required to ensure their services are open to the blind? Should the running equipment store have to ensure that their store is wheelchair accessible? Should the music store have to contain written lyrics of all their albums for sale? I think that businesses should do what they can for those with disabilities, however, they shouldn't be forced into it. There's businesses where it really isn't worth it for them to make their services accessible to all. As easy as it might be to follow ADA guidelines and make an accessible site, it's hard to find developers who know how to make the site accessible, rather than just getting VS.Net to generate all their HTML for them.
You'd might, but with the slim margins your presidents have won with in recent years, you may end up with a minority government. You may also end up with decromats and republicans sitting together and discussing things, and having to come to an agreement before decisions are made, instead of only one side sitting around discussing their own interests.
Let this be the official thread where we post our opinions that we've written in our blogs. But summing it up, my opinions are pretty much the same as yours, plus terms of service that allow them to delete the movies and discontinue the services at anytime.
7. Limited to U.S.
The Services are available only to customers located in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, you may not use the Services and you may not transfer Digital Content outside the United States. As used herein, "United States" refers to the 48 contiguous United States, the District of Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii.
So now if I download a movie and bring my laptop on a trip out of the country, then I'm breaking the terms of service. That's pretty draconian.
If you violate any of the terms or conditions of this Agreement or otherwise abuse the Service, your license to Rental Digital Content and Purchased Digital Content will immediately terminate and Amazon may, in its discretion, immediately revoke your access to the Service without notice to you and without refund of any fees. In such event, you must delete all copies of Digital Content that you have downloaded, and Amazon shall have the right to automatically delete all Digital Content on your Authorized Device without notice to you.
Oh, and they can delete the content automatically if they find i'm breaking the terms of service.
I live in Canada, and we have a parlimentary system. It works a lot better, because you don't vote for the guy on top. You vote for a guy who's supposed to be looking out for the people in his riding. Naturally, it doesn't always work out perfectly, but I think in this system the people we we voting for have a much closer connection to the people who voted for them.
NetMD was a great alternative to MP3 Players. You could run them for 30 hours on a single rechargable AA battery, they were smallish, and if you were going on a long trip, you could bring a bunch of discs and bring a lot more music than you could usually fit on a comparably priced MP3 player. It was also non-skip, and the discs are very sturdy. That hard case means you can drop of even throw them without worrying about breaking them. The only downside was the terrible software they installed with it, that made it a real pain to transfer your music to it. It had a bunch of DRM crap to ensure that you didn't have more than 3 copies of a song on different disks. It was also painfully slow. But if they won't have screwed up the software and DRM it would have been amazing. However, I see Sony making the same mistake this time around for the memory stick movies.
However you'll also remember that when windows XP was released, there was a whole bunch Of CD writing software that stopped working. Nothing worked except the stuff that was installed, and anybody who had purchased CD burning software for Windows 98 or 2K had to wait and hope for their software to be updated, or buy new software.
How well does the Live-DVD fit into ram on a $299 Dell that only came with 256 MB of Ram? Sorry but there's lots of other problems you aren't considering. Like where to store the Data that your ripping off the DVD. You'll need to copy the files to the hard drive, especially if you only have 1 DVD/DVDWriter drive. Oh, and better hope those NTFS drivers are working flawlessly, or you might lose some of their precious data.