Yeah... only thing is, it still doesn't work. You need to believe you're sane, and others need to believe you're sane. A massive conspiracy has gone to putting this together... It could have only been rationalized under the guise of a religious belief; there is no other way. Blah, I'm rambling, and not making any sense. Hopefully someone gets my point.
I'm taking bets on how prohibitive the "Digital Rights Management" software will be to include in open source software, forget for a minute that we don't want it. I'm willing to bet that the source code will be under NDA, and/or require a per-instance fee to use... Any other ideas about potential evilness? Possible "Death of Open Source" showstoppers?
Credit card companies, as a rule, pay very close attention to every charge made on their credit cards. I ordered the parts to build a computer system, something I had not done before, all in one hour.
Visa [I think it was visa, we have more than a few credit cards] assumed that my card had been stolen, and denied almost all of the charges. It took a few phone calls to Visa, the companies I ordered parts from, and about a week, to convince Visa that I was actually the person ordering the parts, and that I really did want to buy them;)
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Re:Big business and online music.
on
Nazis on Napster
·
· Score: 5
Don't get me wrong. I hate Nazis. They're nutcases, provably wrong, violent stupid thugs lacking any shred of sense, dignity, or humanity. There was a time I'd as soon beat one up as talk to one. If Naziism were wiped off the planet I'd be one very happy human being. They have as much right to free expression as we do, and we all lose when free expression is put under corporate control.
Just to emphasize a point that seems to agree with you, but was not emphasized.... we're not really free speech advocates until we fight to protect speech that we disagree with.
I have been using the unofficial (phase2) debs of XFree86 4.0.1 for a while, and they are impressive. They actually work a lot better than compiling from source for me. In case it matters to anybody, the nv.o module even supports GeForce2GTS and other cards only supported in CVS as of now.
These debs seem fairly stable to me and are worth the download for most cards. Enjoy!
I am currently posting this from QNX, right now. It installed in a few minutes on a 1GB partition (didn't try smaller, but it seems that 500M would have been more than enough). It is very fast. (For the record, I am running an Athlon 700 with a GeForce 2 GTS, so... even windows is very fast.) The web browser displays slashdot nicely, and all of the fonts are beautiful. They get even better if you turn on antialiasing,:-), but even without it they are far better than X. The network installer seems a bit flaky (it seems to display different packages at different times), but it does not seem to be much of a problem. Actually, all of the network code seems a bit flaky... but it seems to autoconfigure itself and fix whatever is wrong (i'm using a dhcp cable modem.) While typing, I just connected to IRC succesfully... (first time.) Lastly, the GUI is... cool. Try it, it's a small download compared to... even BeOS.
Freedom of information act, of course *laws* don't mean anything to the FBI, do they? There is enough crap being passed through right now that if anybody pisses off a member of the gov't, high enough in the 'system', they can be thrown in jail with no warrant, and no trial in the forseeable future. You *know* the FBI is not going to release information gathered via carnivore to the public. What makes you think it would even be released in a courtroom setting?
But they'll never do that... because they can't make any money! They're not in it to stop a crime, they're in it to stop a new technology. Just like with cassettes and cdr's and vcr's and so many other new media. And, considering the track record of killing new technologies to prevent lawbreaking, they will fail here too.
I am a lawbreaker. I have stolen countless copywrited songs. But I haven't stolen enough for the RIAA to bother suing me. They want the big fish.
So for all of you Napster users with balls enough to admit it, reply to this message with your true name, email address, and the number of commercial songs you've stolen.
I have no intention of giving out my address on slashdot, because of the trolls. However if you feel like emailing me to argue my stance (or replying to this post), feel free. I'm not going to list the number of commercial songs i've stolen, because it's impractical *G* there are so many.
Yes, I have broken laws. Plenty of people have broken laws without being evil people. I'm not going to debate my evility, but I will say that I am not evil because of mp3s. I think this rant is long enough now, but nobody got this far anyway:-)
If they did it right, then you would be able to... say, invisible|ignore to *@aim. Of course odds are that however they do it, it won't be the right way
Everyone is missing the point (or joking, and hilariously:-) when talking about "The only secure way is to melt the drive", or "THERMITE!!!". It seems to me that the point is to erase all data, while still being able to USE the hard drive. Utilities like Wipe cannot act quickly enough to erase your hard drive when the FBI comes busting down your door... considering that, if they are looking for your computer, the first thing they will do is unplug it and tote it away.
Point being, 99% of the time, if you want to get rid of all of the data on a hard drive... you'd probably like to be able to use that drive again in the future. The security of my data is not worth the $200 that I payed for my drive (I have nothing important), however if I can protect myself by writing over the data x times, in pattern y, then I am interested.
Come up with an analogy that applies to the lottery, and we'll talk. The lottery protects NO ONE. Arrests keep dangerous criminals away from people they hurt. (I'll give you that arrests don't always happen to dangerous criminals, but at least they help something.)
The lottery does not help anyone. (except 1 in 20 billion.) Arrests help plenty.
Hardly... when you compare speeds, CDRW has become far speedier than floppies. Try writing 650M of data to floppies in 15 minutes. (This is how long my burner (4x) takes... there are much better burners available, which could do it in 5 (maybe not rw tho).) Then think about the cost of buying 650M worth of floppies... CDRW is impractical for trading text files, yes... but that's what email is for:-P heh
Note the "fully". Until you can run 5 miles of cat5 (and establish a connection, without about 100 repeaters (more?)), I can't send my friend a text file via ethernet. Of course that's not to say that I can't send it to him via the internet... which would take less time than driving there with a floppy disk. Regardless, point being that ethernet is not a complete replacement for floppies. I have not heard of any projects to backup data onto an ethernet cable (cool plan), fed-ex a few ethernets (bad syntax, i s/floppys/ethernets/'d...) to your buddy across the country, etc... ok i'm ranting, you get the point. Ethernet hasn't entirely replaced floppys, but it has replaced one use for floppies, and other uses have been replaced by other things. Floppies are in fact (for the most part) useless, and you are correct there.
Yes, I too dislike rpms... that's why I don't use an rpm-based system. Debian is great. Upgrading will not involve downloading an obscene amount of packages, but rather "apt-get upgrade". The packages will be tested for quality before they're even put on the apt mirrors, and you will barely notice the upgrade, until you discover the faster performance. This is why debian is so much better than all of those OTHER distributions:-P
all of the great empires (except the British) started to collaps when scientific research for the sake of science was cut in funding to help fund, mostly military, but also other programs.
I agree with this fact, but I disagree that it caused the downfall of empires. IANA(person who studies ancient cultures), but I would tend to think that "scientific research for the sake of science" was cut as a symptom, not as a cause, of the collapse of empires.
And to put an even more hilarious spin on it, our military is horribly out of date.
The whole point of maintaining a military, is so that those lesser nations that we are not friendly with do not become more powerful than us. As long as the US is far enough more powerful than everybody else, of course we will be at peace. Do you think that Iraq likes being bombed, without even having the chance of striking back at our country's actual territory? Of course not.
The way I see it (IANAMS), we are not at war with anyone at the moment, because we would win. And they know this. Sounds elitist of me, yes, and it probably is (see IANA military strategist,) but think about it... if you've got the great big army, don't you think that you will suddenly have a lot more friends?
Slashdot Mirror
You people should be ashamed of yourselves.
Sounds like my kinda fun.
Look at me! First post! I rock so much.
Yeah... only thing is, it still doesn't work. You need to believe you're sane, and others need to believe you're sane. A massive conspiracy has gone to putting this together... It could have only been rationalized under the guise of a religious belief; there is no other way. Blah, I'm rambling, and not making any sense. Hopefully someone gets my point.
Second Post!
First Post! probably not...
I'm taking bets on how prohibitive the "Digital Rights Management" software will be to include in open source software, forget for a minute that we don't want it. I'm willing to bet that the source code will be under NDA, and/or require a per-instance fee to use... Any other ideas about potential evilness? Possible "Death of Open Source" showstoppers?
How about an equally meaningless number, like BogoMIPS?
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Visa [I think it was visa, we have more than a few credit cards] assumed that my card had been stolen, and denied almost all of the charges. It took a few phone calls to Visa, the companies I ordered parts from, and about a week, to convince Visa that I was actually the person ordering the parts, and that I really did want to buy them ;)
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Don't get me wrong. I hate Nazis. They're nutcases, provably wrong, violent stupid thugs lacking any shred of sense, dignity, or humanity. There was a time I'd as soon beat one up as talk to one. If Naziism were wiped off the planet I'd be one very happy human being. They have as much right to free expression as we do, and we all lose when free expression is put under corporate control.
Just to emphasize a point that seems to agree with you, but was not emphasized.... we're not really free speech advocates until we fight to protect speech that we disagree with.
*bows*
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Immediately? no. TTFs are now supported natively however, and I understand development is coming along for AA fonts in X. We all want them, I know.
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These debs seem fairly stable to me and are worth the download for most cards. Enjoy!
--
I am currently posting this from QNX, right now. It installed in a few minutes on a 1GB partition (didn't try smaller, but it seems that 500M would have been more than enough). It is very fast. (For the record, I am running an Athlon 700 with a GeForce 2 GTS, so... even windows is very fast.) The web browser displays slashdot nicely, and all of the fonts are beautiful. They get even better if you turn on antialiasing, :-), but even without it they are far better than X. The network installer seems a bit flaky (it seems to display different packages at different times), but it does not seem to be much of a problem. Actually, all of the network code seems a bit flaky... but it seems to autoconfigure itself and fix whatever is wrong (i'm using a dhcp cable modem.) While typing, I just connected to IRC succesfully... (first time.) Lastly, the GUI is... cool. Try it, it's a small download compared to ... even BeOS.
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--Benjamin Franklin
(probably paraphrased)
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Freedom of information act, of course *laws* don't mean anything to the FBI, do they? There is enough crap being passed through right now that if anybody pisses off a member of the gov't, high enough in the 'system', they can be thrown in jail with no warrant, and no trial in the forseeable future. You *know* the FBI is not going to release information gathered via carnivore to the public. What makes you think it would even be released in a courtroom setting?
--
But they'll never do that... because they can't make any money! They're not in it to stop a crime, they're in it to stop a new technology. Just like with cassettes and cdr's and vcr's and so many other new media. And, considering the track record of killing new technologies to prevent lawbreaking, they will fail here too.
I am a lawbreaker. I have stolen countless copywrited songs. But I haven't stolen enough for the RIAA to bother suing me. They want the big fish.
So for all of you Napster users with balls enough to admit it, reply to this message with your true name, email address, and the number of commercial songs you've stolen.
I have no intention of giving out my address on slashdot, because of the trolls. However if you feel like emailing me to argue my stance (or replying to this post), feel free. I'm not going to list the number of commercial songs i've stolen, because it's impractical *G* there are so many.
Yes, I have broken laws. Plenty of people have broken laws without being evil people. I'm not going to debate my evility, but I will say that I am not evil because of mp3s. I think this rant is long enough now, but nobody got this far anyway :-)
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If they did it right, then you would be able to ... say, invisible|ignore to *@aim. Of course odds are that however they do it, it won't be the right way
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#lin -- EFNet
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Point being, 99% of the time, if you want to get rid of all of the data on a hard drive... you'd probably like to be able to use that drive again in the future. The security of my data is not worth the $200 that I payed for my drive (I have nothing important), however if I can protect myself by writing over the data x times, in pattern y, then I am interested.
--
The lottery does not help anyone. (except 1 in 20 billion.) Arrests help plenty.
--
Hardly... when you compare speeds, CDRW has become far speedier than floppies. Try writing 650M of data to floppies in 15 minutes. (This is how long my burner (4x) takes... there are much better burners available, which could do it in 5 (maybe not rw tho).) Then think about the cost of buying 650M worth of floppies... CDRW is impractical for trading text files, yes... but that's what email is for :-P heh
Man I love to nest (())'s...
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Note the "fully". Until you can run 5 miles of cat5 (and establish a connection, without about 100 repeaters (more?)), I can't send my friend a text file via ethernet. Of course that's not to say that I can't send it to him via the internet... which would take less time than driving there with a floppy disk. Regardless, point being that ethernet is not a complete replacement for floppies. I have not heard of any projects to backup data onto an ethernet cable (cool plan), fed-ex a few ethernets (bad syntax, i s/floppys/ethernets/'d...) to your buddy across the country, etc... ok i'm ranting, you get the point. Ethernet hasn't entirely replaced floppys, but it has replaced one use for floppies, and other uses have been replaced by other things. Floppies are in fact (for the most part) useless, and you are correct there.
--
Yes, I too dislike rpms... that's why I don't use an rpm-based system. Debian is great. Upgrading will not involve downloading an obscene amount of packages, but rather "apt-get upgrade". The packages will be tested for quality before they're even put on the apt mirrors, and you will barely notice the upgrade, until you discover the faster performance. This is why debian is so much better than all of those OTHER distributions :-P
--
I agree with this fact, but I disagree that it caused the downfall of empires. IANA(person who studies ancient cultures), but I would tend to think that "scientific research for the sake of science" was cut as a symptom, not as a cause, of the collapse of empires.
--
The whole point of maintaining a military, is so that those lesser nations that we are not friendly with do not become more powerful than us. As long as the US is far enough more powerful than everybody else, of course we will be at peace. Do you think that Iraq likes being bombed, without even having the chance of striking back at our country's actual territory? Of course not.
The way I see it (IANAMS), we are not at war with anyone at the moment, because we would win. And they know this. Sounds elitist of me, yes, and it probably is (see IANA military strategist,) but think about it... if you've got the great big army, don't you think that you will suddenly have a lot more friends?
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