Remember, this the guy is the one who threatened to block the federal "Do not call" list poroposal. That time, he backed off when he realized he was going to get crucified because the FCC let him get attacked by the media. This time, he may have his shit in order. The most disturbing thing is that he's on the commerce committee. One more example of the fox guarding the henhouse, eh?
Hey, anyone think it's time to give this Tauzin fucker the Ralsky treatment? See if THAT changes his tune.
I already have problems with my 2-year-old son scratching my CD collection. DVDs are even MORE sensitive to scratching. As the wavelength shortens and density increases, it seems reasonable to expect the thing to be a lot more sensitive to scratching. If the format stores a disc in a cartridge, then this is not a problem. However, cartridges seem to have died out years ago.
That's probably true assuming the same format. But if they wanted, it would be smart to take advantage of that huge capacity by increasing the error-checking redundancy. That way you could take a belt sander to the damned thing and still maybe read it. Well, maybe not quite...but you get the idea.
...just fucking retarded. Most slashdotters don't knoiw the difference between a troll, flamebait, and joke. YES IDIOT WHO MODERATED PARENT THAT MEANS YOU!
Flame: A post that is antagonistic in character. This is generally pointed toward a specific person or group and is hostile.
Troll: post intended to derive a reaction from a certain segment of slashdotters. The difference between a troll anbd a flame is that the author isn't serious, and, assuming the troll is well-crafted, this can be discerned from the post itself. Also, the post isn't personal in nature, and isn't usually hostile.
Joke: a post that attempts some sort of humor. It generally doesn't attempt to get anyone riled up, and is generally straightforward in nature - distinguishing it from a troll, whose humor lies in deception.
So let's analyze g-parent's post:
First, is it serious? No. G-parent isn't really in international waters as his post claims. Is it a troll OR flamebait? Not likely. No one is insulted. No strange and wacky belief is espoused or even belittled. The only possible group that is flamed or trolled is spammers.
Second, assuming spammers took offense, would this have been a flame or a troll? Well, there's certainly no deception present. Did we think he really was a spammer? Not likely. So, moderators, that COULD NOT HAVE BEEN a troll.
Now, moderators, when you go to mod me down, do it correctly. Is this post deceptive? No. So it's not a troll. Is it on topic? Well, not really. So you could mod me down off-topic. Is it redundant? No, haven't seen this post elsewhere recently. Is it a flame? Probably, as a specific group of people have been attacked (namely, the fuckwit who moderated parent's post). So when you mod me down, do it right.
Shit, they said that about the damned VCR. Neither their goals nor ours (a broad "us" I realize, but I digress) have changed in 20 years. They want money, we want freedom.
Despite this, they've won. Why? We don't have libbyists! The EFF doesn't have enough money. What we need are for some high-profile geeks that are commercially successful and not particularly political in the real world (read: not Stallman) to openly back the EFF, donating money and such.
Think if the EFF was even as powerful as the ACLU. Stupid laws like the DMCA would be immediately challenged and shit-canned. Copyright wouldn't last millennia. It's time to have these bullshit industry lobbying groups fear us for a change.
I'm not a fullscreen supporter, but in fairness, that is not really an acceptable solution. The zoom feature on my DVD player will zoom only to the center of the picture. Since the area of interest may move around on the screen, you really need some intelligence determining which part of the full picture to show for each frame.
Sounds like a fitting punishment to me. If they don't notice that half the damned movie's missing anyway...
find them??? how hard is that?? I mean they are selling something (99%) and surely they want their money......
so how hard is it really to find them??
What do you do if they're foreign? What do you do if they host their site through temporary web pages that use IP numbers instead of URL's for links? What if they use PayPal to collect money?
There are a lot of ways that spammers can be anonymous. So suing them isn't always an option, as gratifying as it might be.
That is true but it's also a bit like saying why write a home mechanic manual for a car, since you want an expert to repair it?
Although you may need an expert to build it, you should be able to do repairs etc with minimum knowledge. Making the web more accessable is good news for everyone.
Yeah, and things like changing oil and spark plugs fit the bill. However, unless you yourself are an expert, next time your car needs the head gasket replaced, you're taking it in. That's all there is to it.
Web's the same way. You want a static page, well, that's pretty easy, and well within the capabilities of something like Frontpage or whatever. Need dynamically created content linked to an SQL database? Sorry, but you're not doing this yourself unless you're an expert. There is pretty much no way of making this available to the average schmoe, unless you want to make a cookie-cutter it-installs-itself version.
That's just how life works - there are aspects of both car repair and web design that are within grasp of morons, and aspects that aren't. And I think html is already pretty easy to work with thanks to creation engines (hell, it ain't that hard to write in emacs, but I digress).
Oh, and for what it's worth, the article kind of read like an ad for that guy's small-business web hosting. It seems to me that Bricklin's less interested in making information freely available than he is in the proliferation of for-profit tools - namely his. So don't forget the conflict of interest here.
Before the flames start, I'm NOT a web designer. I'm the guy with the shitty page written in a text editor. But at least it loads faster than you can blink.;)
Re:Resolved: NOTGNOME
on
GnomeDex 3.0
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· Score: 1
Re:Resolved: NOTGNOME
Resolved? Somebody used to debate. What kind did you do?
I think it's GREAT that they're targeting amputees, and it's about time. My uncle lost his arm in a piece of farm machinery and found windows impossible to use.
Now it'll be really a good idea when they come up with a retina-tracking mouse so my poor one-armed uncle can Netscape his pr0n while jerking off.
You're right about patent-rights-loss. But this is not a patent case, nor a trademark case. This is a copyright case.
Not quite sure where you got that idea. See Here for info. Note "patent" in title. Copyright wouldn't be a problem unless the code went in completely unchanged (which NEVER happens with the linux kernel), and would be easy to fix - gut it and re-implement it "cleanroom." Since it's a patent though, it doesn't matter how it's implemented, it's a violation if it has the same functionality.
SCO's patents on UNIX have long expired
The original ones, yes. But there are numerous follow-up patents dealing with multi-processor design which weren't part of the original Unix. It is these patents that are under discussion, and they are under the time limit. This is stuff, some developed in cooperation with IBM, that was worked on in the last maybe 5 years. Definitely not old and expired.
For what it's worth, if it were a matter of copyright, we'd be more screwed timeline-wise, as they last a VERY long time. What is it up to, 80 years or something? And even if it were copyrights, those DO NOT have to be defended either. The only thing that does is trademark, which, as you point out, has no relevance here.
To reiterate: you CANNOT lose patents OR copyrights by not defending their use.
Since they are claiming Trade Secret status on the System V code, isn't failure to perform even basic attempts (such as contacting Linus) to minimise the impact of this leak enough to void the Trade Secret status of their code?
I wouldn't swear to it, but I don't think so. That's definitely the case for a trademark and "look-and-feel" type crap - if you don't defend it, it can become public domain. Patents don't work the same way. You can't lose rights to a patent until A) You release it to PD, B)You lose in court on challenge, or C)It expires.
In terms of credibility for a lawsuit, though, your point is well taken - the more they say and do, the more it's obvious even to a moron that they're begging for a buyout. I think they barked up the wrong tree though this time, as IBM seems none too amused.
...the sky is falling! Seriously, linux as we know and love it is fine. If it's proven true then the corporate distros are in potential trouble, although they would likely C&D. I use slackware. Like SCO is going after them.
beer? I would really like to know what sort of beer is the best inpirational beverage for coding? Is there a different best beer per language/platform? Or do some platforms require liquor instead? I hear Java is much better with Irish cream...
I am firmly of the opinion that assembly requires 190 proof pure grain. Especially on the fucking IBM 360/370. Nothing else dulls the pain.
What happended to the good old days when you could just wander into the local mom & pop Apple retailer with a couple blank floppies and they would gleefully (and legally) dup it for you?
What happened, I believe, is that Apple hardware got comparatively so expensive that people are holding onto machines longer, meaning that Apple needs to leverage them for revenue.
Another thing that happened is that Apple started working a LOT harder on making a world-class operating system that can be appreciated on many levels - not just the "shiny widget" level. And I really think they deserve to make some cash off of it. OS X is that good. And I've been a lifetime PC user and NEVER thought I'd say that.
You can do that now, it's just not cost effective. Duh, Darwin is open source! Modify it if you need to, and run OS X on top of your modified Darwin. Same could be done with x86, and for much cheaper. And with over an order of magnitude more people using x86, you can be sure there would be hacks out the first day OSX/x86 comes out. Boom, Apple dead.
Right, because you can of course run OSX binaries compiled for Motorola chips on an x86. Dumbass.
Oh, and be sure to convince Apple that people don't really mind noisy fans to dissipate all the heat (no really, those people complaining about the MDD Macs were just being sarcastic, Apple didn't really need to send out those replacement power supplies to be nice to their customers and give them back their nice QUIET machines!).
God, you know an architecture is dead when the best argument someone can come up with is heat dissipation and the sound of fans. Yeah, Motorola chips dissipate heat well, they don't run fast enough to make much heat! If apple switched to x86, the cost savings at a given processing power would leave you more than enough money to liquid cool the goddamned thing, with no fan, producing 0 dB of noise. If that's your best argument, you lose.
When you get down to it, the Motorola line is dead. Supposedly Apple is going to go with some 64-bit chips from IBM for their next major change. They could have gone with x86, but decided not to. But either way, staying with Motorola would have been suicide.
For one, the Finder is the butt of jokes, and needs multithreading and greater power.
I think you could have abbreviated that to "The finder is BUTT" without losing any accuracy. Seriously, I think Windows Explorer is better, and that must have been difficult for Apple to accomplish.
Second, I think Samba needs more work.
Well YOU just won the understatement of the year award! Samba implementation on the mac has been pretty spotty. I've had some issues with disconnects between the "apple" username and the "BSD" username, with the result that I simply couldn't use samba for certain user accounts. That has to change. Also, I can't mount stuff by hand really well from command line with mount -t smbfs. If I do, it will recognize it and give me a mounted volume icon. But then, if I go to eject it, it hangs with the SBOD (spinning beachball of death), and I have to force quit finder. Not cool.
Also, if they would change the way they do aliases/links, that would be good. It should be integrable with unix, and now it's not. I want to be able to create an alias under Mac OSX, and then, when I mount that volume under samba from a linux/windows machine, I want it to be navigable (if the alias is a directory). Right now, apple aliases don't work like that, and just show up as a file in samba. Not so good. I want aliases, in the future, to be implemented pretty much as symlinks.
I'm gonna stop handing out gifts at birthday parties and what not, because I don't want them stealing the gift from me.
Next time I go to a birthday party I'm gonna tell the person I give a present to that it's GPL-licensed. That way, if they actually use the present, they have to go give it away.
I don't know anyone who runs any software that has a minor version number of 0.;)
Seriously, I'll give them a break with 10.0. They completely switched architectures. That was damned ambitious, and I'm inclined to give them some leeway on that.
Besides, while 10.0.0 kind of sucked, 10.0.4 was OK, and that was free.
...and presumably it will cost another $130 for the upgrade.
I agree, that is a bit steep for a 1-year upgrade, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt on pricing before we start vilifying them. As for cost, I thought Mac-heads were supposed to be used to paying 2-3 times typical cost for stuff. (NO, that's NOT flamebait!)
The question is also, can you keep using 10.2 when 10.3 comes out? I suspect so. In fact, I kind of like the way this works - they release a new upgrade every year, but probably the last 3-4 years of upgrades work perfectly. This way, though, there is a *new* version of Mac OS out whenever you upgrade. That's pretty cool. So the only people who really get gouged are people who feel like they have to have an updated OS every year, which you couldn't even get from M$ if you wanted it. (Yeah, service packs don't count;))
I've been using Macs since 1984, but I've given up now. The only reason I'm keeping my Mac is to run legacy apps.
Interesting, I wouldn't even touch the damned things until 10.2 came out...
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Hey, anyone think it's time to give this Tauzin fucker the Ralsky treatment? See if THAT changes his tune.
It's actually because we don't fucking care. On our maps Canada is usually listed as "Southeast Alaska."
Aw, don't cry, I'm just kidding. One of my best friends is a dirty Canuck. Eh?
That's probably true assuming the same format. But if they wanted, it would be smart to take advantage of that huge capacity by increasing the error-checking redundancy. That way you could take a belt sander to the damned thing and still maybe read it. Well, maybe not quite...but you get the idea.
Flame: A post that is antagonistic in character. This is generally pointed toward a specific person or group and is hostile.
Troll: post intended to derive a reaction from a certain segment of slashdotters. The difference between a troll anbd a flame is that the author isn't serious, and, assuming the troll is well-crafted, this can be discerned from the post itself. Also, the post isn't personal in nature, and isn't usually hostile.
Joke: a post that attempts some sort of humor. It generally doesn't attempt to get anyone riled up, and is generally straightforward in nature - distinguishing it from a troll, whose humor lies in deception.
So let's analyze g-parent's post:
First, is it serious? No. G-parent isn't really in international waters as his post claims. Is it a troll OR flamebait? Not likely. No one is insulted. No strange and wacky belief is espoused or even belittled. The only possible group that is flamed or trolled is spammers.
Second, assuming spammers took offense, would this have been a flame or a troll? Well, there's certainly no deception present. Did we think he really was a spammer? Not likely. So, moderators, that COULD NOT HAVE BEEN a troll.
Now, moderators, when you go to mod me down, do it correctly. Is this post deceptive? No. So it's not a troll. Is it on topic? Well, not really. So you could mod me down off-topic. Is it redundant? No, haven't seen this post elsewhere recently. Is it a flame? Probably, as a specific group of people have been attacked (namely, the fuckwit who moderated parent's post). So when you mod me down, do it right.
Despite this, they've won. Why? We don't have libbyists! The EFF doesn't have enough money. What we need are for some high-profile geeks that are commercially successful and not particularly political in the real world (read: not Stallman) to openly back the EFF, donating money and such.
Think if the EFF was even as powerful as the ACLU. Stupid laws like the DMCA would be immediately challenged and shit-canned. Copyright wouldn't last millennia. It's time to have these bullshit industry lobbying groups fear us for a change.
Sounds like a fitting punishment to me. If they don't notice that half the damned movie's missing anyway...
so how hard is it really to find them??
What do you do if they're foreign? What do you do if they host their site through temporary web pages that use IP numbers instead of URL's for links? What if they use PayPal to collect money?
There are a lot of ways that spammers can be anonymous. So suing them isn't always an option, as gratifying as it might be.
Although you may need an expert to build it, you should be able to do repairs etc with minimum knowledge. Making the web more accessable is good news for everyone.
Yeah, and things like changing oil and spark plugs fit the bill. However, unless you yourself are an expert, next time your car needs the head gasket replaced, you're taking it in. That's all there is to it.
Web's the same way. You want a static page, well, that's pretty easy, and well within the capabilities of something like Frontpage or whatever. Need dynamically created content linked to an SQL database? Sorry, but you're not doing this yourself unless you're an expert. There is pretty much no way of making this available to the average schmoe, unless you want to make a cookie-cutter it-installs-itself version.
That's just how life works - there are aspects of both car repair and web design that are within grasp of morons, and aspects that aren't. And I think html is already pretty easy to work with thanks to creation engines (hell, it ain't that hard to write in emacs, but I digress).
Oh, and for what it's worth, the article kind of read like an ad for that guy's small-business web hosting. It seems to me that Bricklin's less interested in making information freely available than he is in the proliferation of for-profit tools - namely his. So don't forget the conflict of interest here.
Before the flames start, I'm NOT a web designer. I'm the guy with the shitty page written in a text editor. But at least it loads faster than you can blink. ;)
Resolved? Somebody used to debate. What kind did you do?
Yeah, I know this is OT moderators, so sue me
I think it's GREAT that they're targeting amputees, and it's about time. My uncle lost his arm in a piece of farm machinery and found windows impossible to use.
Now it'll be really a good idea when they come up with a retina-tracking mouse so my poor one-armed uncle can Netscape his pr0n while jerking off.
You WERE talking about amputees, right? ;)
Single-crystal semiconductors don't count?
Hmm...I mean that's a great idea and all...but what the hell are you doing HERE???
Not quite sure where you got that idea. See Here for info. Note "patent" in title. Copyright wouldn't be a problem unless the code went in completely unchanged (which NEVER happens with the linux kernel), and would be easy to fix - gut it and re-implement it "cleanroom." Since it's a patent though, it doesn't matter how it's implemented, it's a violation if it has the same functionality.
SCO's patents on UNIX have long expired
The original ones, yes. But there are numerous follow-up patents dealing with multi-processor design which weren't part of the original Unix. It is these patents that are under discussion, and they are under the time limit. This is stuff, some developed in cooperation with IBM, that was worked on in the last maybe 5 years. Definitely not old and expired.
For what it's worth, if it were a matter of copyright, we'd be more screwed timeline-wise, as they last a VERY long time. What is it up to, 80 years or something? And even if it were copyrights, those DO NOT have to be defended either. The only thing that does is trademark, which, as you point out, has no relevance here.
To reiterate: you CANNOT lose patents OR copyrights by not defending their use.
I wouldn't swear to it, but I don't think so. That's definitely the case for a trademark and "look-and-feel" type crap - if you don't defend it, it can become public domain. Patents don't work the same way. You can't lose rights to a patent until A) You release it to PD, B)You lose in court on challenge, or C)It expires.
In terms of credibility for a lawsuit, though, your point is well taken - the more they say and do, the more it's obvious even to a moron that they're begging for a buyout. I think they barked up the wrong tree though this time, as IBM seems none too amused.
Those UN inspectors couldn't find a turn in a sewer.
...the sky is falling! Seriously, linux as we know and love it is fine. If it's proven true then the corporate distros are in potential trouble, although they would likely C&D. I use slackware. Like SCO is going after them.
goddamit, I knew somebody would nail me on my slant analogy. ;)
I am firmly of the opinion that assembly requires 190 proof pure grain. Especially on the fucking IBM 360/370. Nothing else dulls the pain.
What happened, I believe, is that Apple hardware got comparatively so expensive that people are holding onto machines longer, meaning that Apple needs to leverage them for revenue.
Another thing that happened is that Apple started working a LOT harder on making a world-class operating system that can be appreciated on many levels - not just the "shiny widget" level. And I really think they deserve to make some cash off of it. OS X is that good. And I've been a lifetime PC user and NEVER thought I'd say that.
Did they really use to give away the OS for free?
Right, because you can of course run OSX binaries compiled for Motorola chips on an x86. Dumbass.
Oh, and be sure to convince Apple that people don't really mind noisy fans to dissipate all the heat (no really, those people complaining about the MDD Macs were just being sarcastic, Apple didn't really need to send out those replacement power supplies to be nice to their customers and give them back their nice QUIET machines!).
God, you know an architecture is dead when the best argument someone can come up with is heat dissipation and the sound of fans. Yeah, Motorola chips dissipate heat well, they don't run fast enough to make much heat! If apple switched to x86, the cost savings at a given processing power would leave you more than enough money to liquid cool the goddamned thing, with no fan, producing 0 dB of noise. If that's your best argument, you lose.
When you get down to it, the Motorola line is dead. Supposedly Apple is going to go with some 64-bit chips from IBM for their next major change. They could have gone with x86, but decided not to. But either way, staying with Motorola would have been suicide.
I think you could have abbreviated that to "The finder is BUTT" without losing any accuracy. Seriously, I think Windows Explorer is better, and that must have been difficult for Apple to accomplish.
Second, I think Samba needs more work.
Well YOU just won the understatement of the year award! Samba implementation on the mac has been pretty spotty. I've had some issues with disconnects between the "apple" username and the "BSD" username, with the result that I simply couldn't use samba for certain user accounts. That has to change. Also, I can't mount stuff by hand really well from command line with mount -t smbfs. If I do, it will recognize it and give me a mounted volume icon. But then, if I go to eject it, it hangs with the SBOD (spinning beachball of death), and I have to force quit finder. Not cool.
Also, if they would change the way they do aliases/links, that would be good. It should be integrable with unix, and now it's not. I want to be able to create an alias under Mac OSX, and then, when I mount that volume under samba from a linux/windows machine, I want it to be navigable (if the alias is a directory). Right now, apple aliases don't work like that, and just show up as a file in samba. Not so good. I want aliases, in the future, to be implemented pretty much as symlinks.
So when you get down to it, FIX SAMBA!!! ;)
Next time I go to a birthday party I'm gonna tell the person I give a present to that it's GPL-licensed. That way, if they actually use the present, they have to go give it away.
I don't know anyone who runs any software that has a minor version number of 0. ;)
Seriously, I'll give them a break with 10.0. They completely switched architectures. That was damned ambitious, and I'm inclined to give them some leeway on that.
Besides, while 10.0.0 kind of sucked, 10.0.4 was OK, and that was free.
I agree, that is a bit steep for a 1-year upgrade, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt on pricing before we start vilifying them. As for cost, I thought Mac-heads were supposed to be used to paying 2-3 times typical cost for stuff. (NO, that's NOT flamebait!)
The question is also, can you keep using 10.2 when 10.3 comes out? I suspect so. In fact, I kind of like the way this works - they release a new upgrade every year, but probably the last 3-4 years of upgrades work perfectly. This way, though, there is a *new* version of Mac OS out whenever you upgrade. That's pretty cool. So the only people who really get gouged are people who feel like they have to have an updated OS every year, which you couldn't even get from M$ if you wanted it. (Yeah, service packs don't count ;))
I've been using Macs since 1984, but I've given up now. The only reason I'm keeping my Mac is to run legacy apps.
Interesting, I wouldn't even touch the damned things until 10.2 came out...
...that's why they BSD-licensed the shit. But good troll!