Currently working for large governemt department. We are assessing bittorrent as a method of distributing large read only databases to multiple servers as a way to reduce load on individual servers and speed up average deployment times. Having said that, the likelyhood of MediaDefender seeing our tracker would be very low as this would be on an intranet with very low exposure to the rest of the net.
This does highlight one important point for us. How do we protect our trackers form hosting any old thing?
If the police felt like it, they could charge me with posession of stolen goods. If I did the sensible thing and turned over all goods that were stolen to the police I would probably not even be charged with that. A policeman would probably note the broken window and muddy footprints and start pondering who would do such criminal damage...
May I suggest we wait for the FBI to do their work and then MediaDefender to pheonix.
Power hungry individuals have been using religion as an excuse to wage war with the rest of the world since it was invented.
Most muslims I know are peaceful people who try to practice their religion. Most jews I know are also peaceful people. Most christians, bhudists, taoists, hindus, jedis, and pastafarians are peaceful. The ones who aren't peaceful are usually pushing an agenda separate to the religion.
I don't pretend to be an expert on Islam in any way and am willing to be corrected.
The problem seems to be that Islam teaches that you must support anyone who is a muslim. The way this is dealt with by the moderate majority of Islam is to simply ignore the radicals and hope they go away. If they criticize the radicals then they are not supporting muslims. If they don't then they are passively supporting radicals. It's a real catch 22 for them.
The only way I can see of getting out of this is perhaps invoking the "God's Name In Vain" clause. This however would only work for Muslim vs Muslim justice as anyone else opposing a muslim can be painted as an infidel.
Opera, Mozilla/Firefox don't have this problem so why should Microsoft.
My current version of Firefox does not pass Acid2. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Any browser that follows the standard deserves my admiration. Adding more meta tags where this stuff should be in the doc type is not a correct decision and should be reviled.
Correct. There isn't a lot to learn. Having said that, I used IE7 for 5 minutes and was uncomfortable with the layout. I returned to a browser that had a similar layout to the original browser I "Learned" (in this instance "Netscape navigator Version 2 I think) And once I was back with firefox I was happy again.
The same can be said of Office. What I want in an office product is features to be layed out in the same way so when I reach out for the "Make this line a header" tool, I'm grabbing the right tool first time. Now I am not a power user by any stretch, but if I spend more time "Learning" where they hid the (up the font size by 2, make bold and underline) key then I am not spending that time writing the paragraph below which contains job related information.
In short make your interface intuitive or if you can't manage that, make it the same as the last one. Office 2K7 managed to break both these rules. Open Office 2 has a very similar interface to all the office products before it.
Given the hit that classic DRM is taking in the PR space now, and given that the media company execs haven't all dropped acid and wandered back into the sixties, I think it's a safe bet that they're going to work on DRM II (New and improved, patent pending).
As long as I can copy my files from one device I own to another I own with little to no extra power overhead. They can have their DRM II.
I'm kinda lucky in Australia. We get to make copies of copyrighted works as much as we like, provided they don't leave the household.
I thought that right up until 2 weeks after I bought my shiny new box, The damn thing blue screened on boot. 1 hour to reinstall the OS. 1.5 hours to reinstall the drivers and antivirus. 2 hours to install the nessessary software (Acrobat, Flash, Quicktime, Google Desktop, Skype) 30 minutes for Microsoft to patch itself up.
I am quite good at such things, and none of the questions asked during the process caused me any grief. God help Joe Sixpack in the same state.
To be fair, XP does give you a nice ride out of the showroom. It just gives you a bit more grief in the garage.
Just bought a Dell Inspiron 1520 in Australia. Yay. To get Vista on it cost (included in price) to get XP cost AU$20 (~$17-18US). But that did include a CD as opposed to a "Burn it yourself" thingy.
When I looked around the online retailers and in store retailers, Dell were the only ones who would do this at all without some under the counter shenanigans from Mom and Pop's computer emporium. I do know there is a steady stream of people who buy their PC from Mom and Pop, and 2 days later return it asking to get Vista replaced with XP. My friend who works there puts the figure at %80.
So the number of people who purchased Vista versus the number of people using Vista would be entirely different figures and I would doubt that one indicates the other. The problem is that Microsoft now gets two bites of the cherry. One for a Vista licence, and the next for an XP licence.
It's getting easier and easier for me to get rid of Ubuntu CDs. (and before some snot nose kid says "Ubuntu sux coz you cant run..." I don't care.)
I think you have a point here that tax breaks should not be taken for granted. If an organisation is doing deeds that benefit society for alturistic reasons, and the government want to encourage this behaviour, tax breaks are one way of doing it.
I would have no problem with Pastafarians handing out warm pirate coats bearing an image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to homeless people and receiving a tax break. (apologies to all offended Pastafarians for not understanding your beliefs.)
I would object to any organisation who uses this loophole to be more "profitable". Surely if you are receiving a tax break for being alturistic, the thing you should be doing is being more alturistic.
And yes, one mans charity is another mans insult. You are better off teaching a man to fish over handing them a freshly caught one.
And now we have the truth. Any half decent pr0n filtering system will drop this discussion like a rock for having this comment in it. Think of it as a clever trick by M$ or backers to censor unfavorable discussion on the web about their products.
Well, damnit, it's my cat, and all I want is credit for my own work.
So, register your copyright before you publish. If you don't care enough about your work to take some ELEMENTARY steps to protect it, you are asking for trouble.
Question is, how long will it take to code the voting software using GTK librarys? If they did that, then multiple paths of already available and scrutinised software becomes available. The voting machine manufacturers don't deserve my sympathy on this one. MS can keep it's code secret. Whilst BSD, GNU/Linux, xorg and (my|postgres)SQL are available as stacks that will do the job, this problem comes down to bad design.
Where Vista falls down is third party apps, but this can hardly be laid completely at Microsoft's feet. More than 6 months since release and Cisco still doesn't have a reliable VPN client. Is MS's new network stack so fiendishly complex that Cisco can't cope, or is Cisco dropping the ball. I think the latter.
OR that third party suppliers are thinking, "Hey, it worked on the old version, Let's assume that the new version still has the same calls with same functionality. MS is known for back compatibility." and are surprised when they don't. MS is between a rock and a hard place. If they get too innovative, they break things. If they don't innovate enough, they don't have new features and can't sell things.
I think the most sane thing companies like Cisco can do is to provide black box solutions. Plug in ethernet here, and get VPN out here. Sell black box with java configuration tool, and job done.
You're right of course. There is still some RTFM floating around. Most times in the forums these days it's also accompanied by a link to the appropriate page of TFM. The other problem is brief statements from coders who say "Feature/Bugfix is in subversion". Whilst someone who understands what subversion is, and that because they have added the feature to the code base, that the coder has given the feature/bug some thought and implemented a fix which will be available in the next version. Because of the brevity of the message, a newbie is left wondering if they have been heard and been thought an idiot.
Probably needs a "Fixed in subversion. Follow link to find out what that means or if you are feeling adventurous, find out how to build this project from subversion." response to help newbies help coders. Just a thought.
Well said. I forget who said it, but the quote goes ~ "The internet sees censorship as a traffic problem, and routes around it". This could be extended to "Consumers see DRM as a computer error and routes around it."
Fortunately (at least in Australia) the lawmakers are seeing the light. Format switching is now legal. Selling or handing on the new format is illegal, as it should be. DRM will therefore by extension be seen as a limitation of trade, and will therefore become illegal very shortly.
Sometimes even my government gets some things right.
Don't forget the trite advice it gives you if you ask for help. "This device seems to be a USB2 device in a USB1 hole. click here for help" "Erm, I had a look at your system, you dont seem to have any usb2 ports" "Ever thought of going out and buying one?"
Using Ubuntu, I have never had any problems with USB keys or drives. Maybe I got lucky. The other nice thing is that if I do plug a usb2 device into a usb1 hole, I don't get the nag. I don't get the speed either. But I was expecting that.
I think our issue here is registration of copyright material. Let's say that anyone who wishes to copyright a work has to pay around $20 per year (or the price it costs to register such a work and save it in a protected archive for a year). They do so. They now get issued a certificate for that year saying that they have the right to any royalties. Cool. Next year they bring that certificate along complete with proof that they are who they say they are. If the royalties dip below the $20, then they have a choice to either renew at a loss, or loose rights to that work in perpetuity. (the work becomes public domain.)
Now the cildren of the author do not receive income, because they are not the author. Corporations can play by the same rules. If they go bankrupt, copyrights are not considered assetts.
This has the added benefit of people always knowing who is entitled to royalties for a work. If you do not have your registered certificate, then you don't own the work.
This system has the benefit of timing out when the author does or when the work is no longer of value to the author.
In todays world, where it is more and more cost effective to publish a work, the "publishing houses" will be selling us enhanced works. The pages rathert than just the text. The CD and case rather than just the music. You can get the text for free and print it up yourself if you like.
Unfortunately, there is in the US a copyright standard that does not require registration to be owned. This must be fixed first.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny as it seems, I'm currently having a play with Ubuntu: Fire alarm edition, so you should be ok if Toaster Edition crashes and burns...
Currently working for large governemt department. We are assessing bittorrent as a method of distributing large read only databases to multiple servers as a way to reduce load on individual servers and speed up average deployment times. Having said that, the likelyhood of MediaDefender seeing our tracker would be very low as this would be on an intranet with very low exposure to the rest of the net.
This does highlight one important point for us. How do we protect our trackers form hosting any old thing?
If the police felt like it, they could charge me with posession of stolen goods. If I did the sensible thing and turned over all goods that were stolen to the police I would probably not even be charged with that. A policeman would probably note the broken window and muddy footprints and start pondering who would do such criminal damage...
May I suggest we wait for the FBI to do their work and then MediaDefender to pheonix.
Power hungry individuals have been using religion as an excuse to wage war with the rest of the world since it was invented.
Most muslims I know are peaceful people who try to practice their religion. Most jews I know are also peaceful people. Most christians, bhudists, taoists, hindus, jedis, and pastafarians are peaceful. The ones who aren't peaceful are usually pushing an agenda separate to the religion.
I think you missed the word CREATE in the quote. Yes you can edit, no you cant create a new document. Thanks for playing.
I don't pretend to be an expert on Islam in any way and am willing to be corrected.
The problem seems to be that Islam teaches that you must support anyone who is a muslim. The way this is dealt with by the moderate majority of Islam is to simply ignore the radicals and hope they go away. If they criticize the radicals then they are not supporting muslims. If they don't then they are passively supporting radicals. It's a real catch 22 for them.
The only way I can see of getting out of this is perhaps invoking the "God's Name In Vain" clause. This however would only work for Muslim vs Muslim justice as anyone else opposing a muslim can be painted as an infidel.
My current version of Firefox does not pass Acid2. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Any browser that follows the standard deserves my admiration. Adding more meta tags where this stuff should be in the doc type is not a correct decision and should be reviled.
Correct. There isn't a lot to learn. Having said that, I used IE7 for 5 minutes and was uncomfortable with the layout. I returned to a browser that had a similar layout to the original browser I "Learned" (in this instance "Netscape navigator Version 2 I think) And once I was back with firefox I was happy again.
The same can be said of Office. What I want in an office product is features to be layed out in the same way so when I reach out for the "Make this line a header" tool, I'm grabbing the right tool first time. Now I am not a power user by any stretch, but if I spend more time "Learning" where they hid the (up the font size by 2, make bold and underline) key then I am not spending that time writing the paragraph below which contains job related information.
In short make your interface intuitive or if you can't manage that, make it the same as the last one. Office 2K7 managed to break both these rules. Open Office 2 has a very similar interface to all the office products before it.
As long as I can copy my files from one device I own to another I own with little to no extra power overhead. They can have their DRM II.
I'm kinda lucky in Australia. We get to make copies of copyrighted works as much as we like, provided they don't leave the household.
Which is why I play a pointy bass. There is nothing like being clocked in the head with the nut of a P bass 4 times a bar to teach you timing.
I thought that right up until 2 weeks after I bought my shiny new box, The damn thing blue screened on boot.
1 hour to reinstall the OS.
1.5 hours to reinstall the drivers and antivirus.
2 hours to install the nessessary software (Acrobat, Flash, Quicktime, Google Desktop, Skype)
30 minutes for Microsoft to patch itself up.
I am quite good at such things, and none of the questions asked during the process caused me any grief. God help Joe Sixpack in the same state.
To be fair, XP does give you a nice ride out of the showroom. It just gives you a bit more grief in the garage.
Run of copper at 100mbps = 99 Meters (if I remember my CAT5e specs)
Run of plastic fibre in TFA = 300 Meters.
If you are a telco looking for a last mile solution, where you buy hundreds of kilometers of the stuff, which do you pick as a last mile solution?
Let's face it. for round the house, 802.11b/g/n will be plenty and it requires no crawling into roof spaces at all.
Just bought a Dell Inspiron 1520 in Australia. Yay. To get Vista on it cost (included in price) to get XP cost AU$20 (~$17-18US). But that did include a CD as opposed to a "Burn it yourself" thingy.
..." I don't care.)
When I looked around the online retailers and in store retailers, Dell were the only ones who would do this at all without some under the counter shenanigans from Mom and Pop's computer emporium. I do know there is a steady stream of people who buy their PC from Mom and Pop, and 2 days later return it asking to get Vista replaced with XP. My friend who works there puts the figure at %80.
So the number of people who purchased Vista versus the number of people using Vista would be entirely different figures and I would doubt that one indicates the other. The problem is that Microsoft now gets two bites of the cherry. One for a Vista licence, and the next for an XP licence.
It's getting easier and easier for me to get rid of Ubuntu CDs. (and before some snot nose kid says "Ubuntu sux coz you cant run
Disclaimer: I am Christian.
I think you have a point here that tax breaks should not be taken for granted. If an organisation is doing deeds that benefit society for alturistic reasons, and the government want to encourage this behaviour, tax breaks are one way of doing it.
I would have no problem with Pastafarians handing out warm pirate coats bearing an image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to homeless people and receiving a tax break. (apologies to all offended Pastafarians for not understanding your beliefs.)
I would object to any organisation who uses this loophole to be more "profitable". Surely if you are receiving a tax break for being alturistic, the thing you should be doing is being more alturistic.
And yes, one mans charity is another mans insult. You are better off teaching a man to fish over handing them a freshly caught one.
And now we have the truth. Any half decent pr0n filtering system will drop this discussion like a rock for having this comment in it. Think of it as a clever trick by M$ or backers to censor unfavorable discussion on the web about their products.
Or maybe this AC is just a tool.
So, register your copyright before you publish. If you don't care enough about your work to take some ELEMENTARY steps to protect it, you are asking for trouble.
Question is, how long will it take to code the voting software using GTK librarys? If they did that, then multiple paths of already available and scrutinised software becomes available. The voting machine manufacturers don't deserve my sympathy on this one. MS can keep it's code secret. Whilst BSD, GNU/Linux, xorg and (my|postgres)SQL are available as stacks that will do the job, this problem comes down to bad design.
OR that third party suppliers are thinking, "Hey, it worked on the old version, Let's assume that the new version still has the same calls with same functionality. MS is known for back compatibility." and are surprised when they don't. MS is between a rock and a hard place. If they get too innovative, they break things. If they don't innovate enough, they don't have new features and can't sell things.
I think the most sane thing companies like Cisco can do is to provide black box solutions. Plug in ethernet here, and get VPN out here. Sell black box with java configuration tool, and job done.
You're right of course. There is still some RTFM floating around. Most times in the forums these days it's also accompanied by a link to the appropriate page of TFM. The other problem is brief statements from coders who say "Feature/Bugfix is in subversion". Whilst someone who understands what subversion is, and that because they have added the feature to the code base, that the coder has given the feature/bug some thought and implemented a fix which will be available in the next version. Because of the brevity of the message, a newbie is left wondering if they have been heard and been thought an idiot.
Probably needs a "Fixed in subversion. Follow link to find out what that means or if you are feeling adventurous, find out how to build this project from subversion." response to help newbies help coders. Just a thought.
Well said. I forget who said it, but the quote goes ~ "The internet sees censorship as a traffic problem, and routes around it". This could be extended to "Consumers see DRM as a computer error and routes around it."
Fortunately (at least in Australia) the lawmakers are seeing the light. Format switching is now legal. Selling or handing on the new format is illegal, as it should be. DRM will therefore by extension be seen as a limitation of trade, and will therefore become illegal very shortly.
Sometimes even my government gets some things right.
Don't forget the trite advice it gives you if you ask for help.
"This device seems to be a USB2 device in a USB1 hole. click here for help"
"Erm, I had a look at your system, you dont seem to have any usb2 ports"
"Ever thought of going out and buying one?"
Using Ubuntu, I have never had any problems with USB keys or drives. Maybe I got lucky. The other nice thing is that if I do plug a usb2 device into a usb1 hole, I don't get the nag. I don't get the speed either. But I was expecting that.
4 000 000 * 365 = 1 460 000 000 or 1.46 billion. This is approximately 540 000 000 shy of billions. I call shenanigans.
Thankyou for the correction.
I think our issue here is registration of copyright material. Let's say that anyone who wishes to copyright a work has to pay around $20 per year (or the price it costs to register such a work and save it in a protected archive for a year). They do so. They now get issued a certificate for that year saying that they have the right to any royalties. Cool. Next year they bring that certificate along complete with proof that they are who they say they are. If the royalties dip below the $20, then they have a choice to either renew at a loss, or loose rights to that work in perpetuity. (the work becomes public domain.)
Now the cildren of the author do not receive income, because they are not the author. Corporations can play by the same rules. If they go bankrupt, copyrights are not considered assetts.
This has the added benefit of people always knowing who is entitled to royalties for a work. If you do not have your registered certificate, then you don't own the work.
This system has the benefit of timing out when the author does or when the work is no longer of value to the author.
In todays world, where it is more and more cost effective to publish a work, the "publishing houses" will be selling us enhanced works. The pages rathert than just the text. The CD and case rather than just the music. You can get the text for free and print it up yourself if you like.
Unfortunately, there is in the US a copyright standard that does not require registration to be owned. This must be fixed first.
Lanham Act. Only covers trademarks. Thanks for playing.