The diamond cartels aren't suffering either, but it doesn't make a smash and grab at the Kay's in the mall legal.
It's a completely irrelevant point. Robbing from the rich is still robbing. In any sane society, Robin Hood would be locked up like any other mugger/thief.
That's not to say I agree with this law or the state of copyright, but your point is completely irrelevant.
saying: "Download KazAAm for $5.00 and get access to all the copyrighted songs and movies you want!" is "inducement".
saying: "KazAAm 2.0 is released, it is a P2P network designed for decentralized distribution of binary files" isn't.
Sort of like selling a smartcard reader/writer is no crime, but advertising it as a tool to hack DirecTV is.
Frankly, there are regulations governing other businesses that could be "shady". Most municipalities have pawn shops licensed and required to report every transaction, and it's illegal for them (or anyone else) to knowingly buy stolen goods.
I think the goal here is to stop companies from profitting by promoting an illegal product. The law probably sucks though, because laws always go to far.
No, you end up with (IMO) the perfect compromise for the unacceptable DVD situation.
We have CSS locking up DVDs, so there's no DVD player for linux.
Now we can go ahead and write a BluRay player for linux, and support everything but MS's encumbered codecs. I'll be able to burn my own BluRay discs, and read them, and play them in my set top player. I won't be able to play/copy content that wants to lock itself up in MS's codec. Big deal, they lost a sale, doesn't bother me.
The porn industry won't use MS's codec (at least a lot of them wont), since it'll just be a royalty to pay. Lots of porn DVDs have no CSS protection, for example. They don't care. And if the porn industry doesn't care, neither do I, and neither should you.
But in every office I've been in, the app that keeps them locked into MS Office is Access.
I know there are a million and one scripting languages and database engines out there in the FOSS world. Anything available as a package that could drop in and replace Access? It would need to import it's data, make it as easy as possible to migrate it's VBA code and forms?
I've screwed around with mysql + various front ends (perl, tcl+tk, java), and it's not the same. End users need all the visual drag and drop kind of stuff, they don't want to touch code.
Access is no industrial-strength RDBMS, but it's a pretty decent for plenty of single-user data mangling, and of course the magical keyphrase is it's *easy to use*.
Doesn't matter how good AbiWord or OO.o get, until we can ditch Access, MS Office will reign in much of the business world.
n-gage appeals to the masses? I must have missed the slashdot article about it. Did NetCraft confirm it, or was it an SCO sponsored study?
Seriously, do you know anyone who owns an n-gage? I don't, and I know a whole lot of nerds with severe gadget fetishes. Hell, I have one myself but I've never seen anything remotely compelling about it.
Well, how much for a nano-itx board, external-modem sized case, wall-wart PSU, handful of RAM - a thin client shouldn't need much, and a CompactFlash-IDE boot drive? Or can you boot a nITX board over the 'net?
I can't imagine something like that costing too much if it was assembled for the mass market, and it meets all the specs you want. I'm not sure how many watts they suck down, but it can't be much.
Mosix won't migrate any processes that access local files, share memory, etc.. So in practicality a mosix-based application server wouldn't be terribly useful.
Yes, it does. In all respects except for cost (which you've already shouldered).
Office 97 is probably the most widely used version out there. They haven't enhanced it in subsequent releases enough to make people upgrade (not much left to enhance, really.)
Seems the answer to make KDE a nice responsive desktop is simple. Get two phone lines, and two modems. Phone yourself, open NX in a gnome session, connect to a KDE session. Hooray!
Maybe you haven't used it recently (version 10+), or havent paid for the commercial licensed version, and have the crippled crap edition, or you don't know how to tweak it?
With the type of stuff I use it for, 4 color mode is fine, and it works well. I've found PCAnywhere's file transfer mode is faster than ftp too.
I run sessions over shit dial-up connections, like 16.8kbit or so, and the responsiveness is decent. If I get a full 56.6 connection, it's really good.
I know we cheerlead for OSS around here, but is this a brand new amazing wonderful thing, or just another VNC protocol? And does KDE need more stuff? The K is for "Kram it all in!"
If you already own an iPod, fine, go ahead and store shit on it.
But recommending you go and buy an iPod just to use as portable storage is moronic.
I don't want a music player. I don't listen to music. At all. The whole RIAA/iPod/Napster/indy/fair-use clusterfuck has completely killed the artform for me. Besides, even if I wanted to, my smartphone can already play MP3s (WMAs/OGGs/whatevers).
Rather than porting all that existing work, or seeking migration tools, just reinvent the fricking wheel. Waste your companies time fixing something that "aint broke". And use the weakest components available.
Next year rewrite it for Ruby+Firebird, the year after that, rewrite it for PostgreSQL+Perl. Waste as much time rewriting your app every time OSS nerds pick a new favorite scripting language or database engine.
Sheesh. And you wonder why you FOSS slashbots are unemployed.
A 120gig HDD and USB2.0 enclosure would run you about 80 if you shopped smart. And it won't overheat if you actually try to use it as a HDD for any extended period of time. I've seen them used as HDDs, they get real hot. And they don't charge over USB. And the batteries arent replacable.
Backups you always keep with you? Burn it on to a business card sized CD. Total cost? About a buck including a nice little hard-case that fits in your wallet.
Why do slashbots keep modding up people who tout the virtues of a $400 dollar iPod as a $90 external drive, when it's really a pretty miserable external storage solution.
I could tolerate the endless Mac advertarticles, and even quietly ignore people who claim Apple invented (well, anything really). But come on, this is supposed to be a geek tech site.
Yeah, you can use an iPod as an external HDD. But you shouldnt because it sucks at it. Actually pretty much any mp3 player can do the task. I can use my cell phone as a USB drive and mp3 player, but I dont go around recommending people piss away 600 bucks on the thing to back up their files.
Slashdot Mirror
The diamond cartels aren't suffering either, but it doesn't make a smash and grab at the Kay's in the mall legal.
It's a completely irrelevant point. Robbing from the rich is still robbing. In any sane society, Robin Hood would be locked up like any other mugger/thief.
That's not to say I agree with this law or the state of copyright, but your point is completely irrelevant.
Apple huh?
Well as a loyal slashdotter, I absolutely love the INDUCE act now that I know Steve Jobs invented it.
As soon as it comes in lavendar I will order 3 and astroturf here endlessly about how awesome and innovative they are!
Heh, just wait till you get there.
At least the US govt is predictable because you can understand what motivates it ($$$$$). Canadian govt is just plain fuckin insane.
Tell Sheila Copps I never got my flag if you see the bitch.
saying: "Download KazAAm for $5.00 and get access to all the copyrighted songs and movies you want!" is "inducement".
saying: "KazAAm 2.0 is released, it is a P2P network designed for decentralized distribution of binary files" isn't.
Sort of like selling a smartcard reader/writer is no crime, but advertising it as a tool to hack DirecTV is.
Frankly, there are regulations governing other businesses that could be "shady". Most municipalities have pawn shops licensed and required to report every transaction, and it's illegal for them (or anyone else) to knowingly buy stolen goods.
I think the goal here is to stop companies from profitting by promoting an illegal product. The law probably sucks though, because laws always go to far.
How DARE they refuse to offer me a feature I don't want!
GREEDY BASTARDS!
Is bluetooth not "Beta" to 802.11s "VHS" anyways?
To be fair, the Philly story was posted, and will doubtless be posted again tomorrow at the latest in case you missed it.
Why does a bunch of different lines of code mean anything other than they were necessary to run under a (NetCraft-confirmed dead) OS?
No, you end up with (IMO) the perfect compromise for the unacceptable DVD situation.
We have CSS locking up DVDs, so there's no DVD player for linux.
Now we can go ahead and write a BluRay player for linux, and support everything but MS's encumbered codecs. I'll be able to burn my own BluRay discs, and read them, and play them in my set top player. I won't be able to play/copy content that wants to lock itself up in MS's codec. Big deal, they lost a sale, doesn't bother me.
The porn industry won't use MS's codec (at least a lot of them wont), since it'll just be a royalty to pay. Lots of porn DVDs have no CSS protection, for example. They don't care. And if the porn industry doesn't care, neither do I, and neither should you.
And OO.o really isn't that bad either.
But in every office I've been in, the app that keeps them locked into MS Office is Access.
I know there are a million and one scripting languages and database engines out there in the FOSS world. Anything available as a package that could drop in and replace Access? It would need to import it's data, make it as easy as possible to migrate it's VBA code and forms?
I've screwed around with mysql + various front ends (perl, tcl+tk, java), and it's not the same. End users need all the visual drag and drop kind of stuff, they don't want to touch code.
Access is no industrial-strength RDBMS, but it's a pretty decent for plenty of single-user data mangling, and of course the magical keyphrase is it's *easy to use*.
Doesn't matter how good AbiWord or OO.o get, until we can ditch Access, MS Office will reign in much of the business world.
My wife just asked me if we could get a 'web phone'. I showed her the vonage page, she's into it.
So seriously, does the shit actually work or not? I'm in no position to bring home another 3DO or WebTV.
Gameboys are fuckin cool, cooler than slashdot. harder to play at work though. Way better than iPods.
n-gage appeals to the masses? I must have missed the slashdot article about it. Did NetCraft confirm it, or was it an SCO sponsored study?
Seriously, do you know anyone who owns an n-gage? I don't, and I know a whole lot of nerds with severe gadget fetishes. Hell, I have one myself but I've never seen anything remotely compelling about it.
Naw, just multiplayer wireless with voice chat. That's not 'online gaming', which I define in my mind as "pay us 40 bucks a month/year to play".
Their customers aren't interested in online gaming, I know 'cause I'm one of 'em.
Well, how much for a nano-itx board, external-modem sized case, wall-wart PSU, handful of RAM - a thin client shouldn't need much, and a CompactFlash-IDE boot drive? Or can you boot a nITX board over the 'net?
I can't imagine something like that costing too much if it was assembled for the mass market, and it meets all the specs you want. I'm not sure how many watts they suck down, but it can't be much.
Mosix won't migrate any processes that access local files, share memory, etc.. So in practicality a mosix-based application server wouldn't be terribly useful.
It would be pretty cool, though.
Yes, it does. In all respects except for cost (which you've already shouldered).
Office 97 is probably the most widely used version out there. They haven't enhanced it in subsequent releases enough to make people upgrade (not much left to enhance, really.)
I was thinking the same thing.
Seems the answer to make KDE a nice responsive desktop is simple. Get two phone lines, and two modems. Phone yourself, open NX in a gnome session, connect to a KDE session. Hooray!
Maybe you haven't used it recently (version 10+), or havent paid for the commercial licensed version, and have the crippled crap edition, or you don't know how to tweak it?
With the type of stuff I use it for, 4 color mode is fine, and it works well. I've found PCAnywhere's file transfer mode is faster than ftp too.
This is PCAnywhere for linux?
I run sessions over shit dial-up connections, like 16.8kbit or so, and the responsiveness is decent. If I get a full 56.6 connection, it's really good.
I know we cheerlead for OSS around here, but is this a brand new amazing wonderful thing, or just another VNC protocol? And does KDE need more stuff? The K is for "Kram it all in!"
If you already own an iPod, fine, go ahead and store shit on it.
But recommending you go and buy an iPod just to use as portable storage is moronic.
I don't want a music player. I don't listen to music. At all. The whole RIAA/iPod/Napster/indy/fair-use clusterfuck has completely killed the artform for me. Besides, even if I wanted to, my smartphone can already play MP3s (WMAs/OGGs/whatevers).
Absolutely.
Rather than porting all that existing work, or seeking migration tools, just reinvent the fricking wheel. Waste your companies time fixing something that "aint broke". And use the weakest components available.
Next year rewrite it for Ruby+Firebird, the year after that, rewrite it for PostgreSQL+Perl. Waste as much time rewriting your app every time OSS nerds pick a new favorite scripting language or database engine.
Sheesh. And you wonder why you FOSS slashbots are unemployed.
Wah wah patents.
Patents aren't nearly as bad as slashdotters make them out to be. Even software patents.
Why? They expire. Relatively quickly. As in, within my lifetime.
Bezos can keep his one-click patent, milk it for all it's worth, because he's only got a couple years left.
In 7 years anyone can make an iPod, complete with it's little jog wheel. And so on, and so on.
Patent law isn't nearly as fucked up as copyright law. It's fucked up, sure, but it's really not that bad.
But what if you aren't Apple?
Oh please, we all grew up watching cheap asian animation a la Voltron, Ge-Force, Astroboy, Transformers..
You all act like you just "discoverd" something new because you call it "anime" and not "japanimation".
As nice as the artwork is, I'd sure love to see an anime that is actually animated, and doesnt look like a shockwave cartoon.
Pen and ink on animation cells, motherfuckers, 24 per second.
And chill with the tentacles and the schoolgirls.
And it only cost you 400 bucks!
Awesome!
A 120gig HDD and USB2.0 enclosure would run you about 80 if you shopped smart. And it won't overheat if you actually try to use it as a HDD for any extended period of time. I've seen them used as HDDs, they get real hot. And they don't charge over USB. And the batteries arent replacable.
Backups you always keep with you? Burn it on to a business card sized CD. Total cost? About a buck including a nice little hard-case that fits in your wallet.
Why do slashbots keep modding up people who tout the virtues of a $400 dollar iPod as a $90 external drive, when it's really a pretty miserable external storage solution.
I could tolerate the endless Mac advertarticles, and even quietly ignore people who claim Apple invented (well, anything really). But come on, this is supposed to be a geek tech site.
Yeah, you can use an iPod as an external HDD. But you shouldnt because it sucks at it. Actually pretty much any mp3 player can do the task. I can use my cell phone as a USB drive and mp3 player, but I dont go around recommending people piss away 600 bucks on the thing to back up their files.
MacGyver runs the Stargate program now.
He's out of the "shoestring+gum=assault rifle" biz, and now he has more tech than he'll ever need.