If you don't like how the iPod and iTunes work, DON'T USE THEM.
That's good advice. I don't use them, I think they're shit. A shiny silver case and a scroll wheel on your player do not makeup for DRM and a pricing structure that mirrors RIAA price gouging without even so much as giving you a CD with liner notes.
iPods/iTunes are cool because the music industry are getting their ton of flesh, and are prepared to say that they're cool. If that's good enough for you, go to town.
When I see ogg vorbis on hardware with legacy mp3 support, free as in beer music online with integrated support for buying tickets and t-shirts then maybe you'll get my money. Until then, I'll stick with mp3/DC++/Winamp/CDR.
I just dont need firefox to load 3-5x faster, it loads fairly fine as it is, i dont really notice how slow firefox goes, seeing as i havnt used anything else for a very long time now
By itself, running solo on a modern machine, yeah, no prob, runs great.
But when you're running IIS, MSSQL, and Postgres servers, K-Lite, eMule and DC++ clients, crunching video using VirtualDub in the background and playing NWN and you've tasked out to check the web on where to find that last item you need for your quest, you really notice the difference. The machine crawls while its paging out the massive memory footprint that firefox needs.
Now, don't get me wrong, I continue to use it instead of IE, but lets not pretend that its a lightweight browser, because its not.
I mean, the Germans during the holocaust had no idea what they were doing was terrible. The slaveowners actually thought they were doing a service by beating their slaves and forcing them to labor.
That is quite possibly the stupidist thing I've read in weeks.
And don't say Microsoft doesn't continue to innovate. OneNote is a pretty promising newcomer to the Office family. The stuff Microsoft is doing with XML export and BizTalk Server is all pretty interesting.
You mean the stuff where they're leveraging their office suite to go after the server market?
I don't like versioning control. I find it cumbersome to work with, time consuming, and an annoyance. When I need to work with it, I will, but if I can get away with not using it, I do.
Most developers I've met feel the same way. It's one of those inconveniences you're compelled to participate in, like keeping track of how many hours you work for each client when you'd rather just solve the problems, get the kudos and go home.
The only time I've found it useful is when you've got multiple developers working together on a project small enough that you're going to be modifying the same files at the same time and need the merging functionality that CVSs bring.
Its a shame that so many people can be mislead into believing that the crackpots' views fairly represents what a movement (any movement) is trying to achieve.
They do. The more the representatives of the movement speak, the more they alienate members that don't want to be held among them and attract members that agree with them.
If you belong to a political movement, have the balls to stand up for what it represents or don't identify yourself with them in the first place.
I call bullshit! You can play a FPS with a keyboard if you're of a mind to, but real gamers know that its all about the fast twitch and cranking your mouse sensitivity to the max. Touchpads are not going to give you this like a clitstick will.
Face it, touch pad users are in there with keyboarders and modem users. You're free frags.
My point was that by saying "feminsts say..." he either meant:
a) "All feminists say..."
b) "Most feminists say..."
or c) "some feminists say"
If he intended a or b he is factually incorrect, and if he intended c, he is being misleading
Or it could be he meant "Notable feminists who operate in roles that are generally accepted as allowing them to speak on behalf of their political movement say..."
Feminists are part of a political movement, and have leaders that speak on their behalf, representative of all members.
And yeah, I hate the feminists too... they're no better than any other self-serving prejudiced special interest group.
"We're not building everything from scratch here"(leveragin), we've got some "powerful and stable"(enterprise) stuff prebuilt that "we can customise"(solution) to "reduce the development time"(leveragin). And our system is "developed with a growth path so you don't have troubles if you are successful and the scope of your operations increases beyond your current specified requirements"(scalable)"
1) Attaches to and detatches from my keychain. 2) Is small enough to be a convenient keychain. 2) Is in every way tougher than my keys. 3) Holds a retarded amount of data, enough that I can keep all my music on it incidentally to being a massive portable data store. Half a terabyte would be good. 4) Has wireless earbuds. 5) Beeps when I call for it
I know at first glance Monsanto sounds like the RIAA, and Slashdotters are apparently all too willing to villify them, but they spend a lot of money developing these crops and they have a right to decide how they're licensed.
I've said it before, and I'll be called upon to say it again...
IF NO ONE ASKED YOU TO CREATE SOMETHING, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO EXPECT TO GET PAID FOR DOING SO!
If we didn't live in such a tremendously fucked up society, I'd say there's one word for people that "spend a lot of money developing these crops" and that one word would be STUPID.
But we do live in a tremendously fucked up society, so I'm forced to switch that word to EVIL.
Have a nice day Monsanto execs... and look both ways before you cross the street, cause I won't be slowing down for you, you scumbags.
None of your arguments have any bearing on the main point of mine, which is that whether you want to call it stealing or "duplicating the things other people worked hard to create without their permission," it's still wrong. Your slippery slope scenario doesn't change the fundamental issue either.
The gist that you were supposed to get from all that was this: I don't think duplicating things is wrong, many other people don't think duplicating things is wrong, and many more people will agree that they don't think it is wrong either if they take a moment to think about it. So you better keep calling it stealing and keeping those people from thinking about it.
Backups deal with 4 situations, in the order of most importance:
a) Oh my god, I deleted the file!!!! or its variant Oh my god, the file is corrupt!!!
b) Oh my god, the hard disk crashed!!!
c) Oh my god, the entire computer is ruined by some electric failure, taking the disk with it!!!
d) Oh my god, the plqce burned down taking the computer, disk and files with it!!!
a) is what causes 95% of file restores. Mirroring is useless here. A mirror of a deleted file is still deleted.
b) covers most of the rest of the 5%, and mirroring helps here.
c) seldomly happens, and mirroring does not help. This is why you make tape backups away from the computer.
d) is probably rare, but this is why you have off-site backups or at least keep your tapes in a fireproof safe.
See how often mirroring helps? Not that much, actually.
Staggered mirrored offsite ghosts. Have you sorted from all of the above in minutes.
a) Need a file restored? Get your sysadmin to remotely mount one of the ghosts and grab it from there.
b) You've got a mirror. Go buy a drive. Don't have a mirror? Run your ass to the store, buy a drive, restore your ghost.
c) Run your ass to the store, buy a computer, restore your ghost
d) Freak out, call your service provider, have them set your ghost up on their machines for a lot of money, send the bill to your insurance company
Those are all euphemisms used to try to justify stealing the things other people worked hard to create.
I believe the phrase you're looking for is "Those are all euphemisms used to try to justify duplicating the things other people worked hard to create without their permission."
Funny thing about defining this precisely, rather than calling it "stealing" as big media likes to do.
When you think of stealing as in taking my bike, most people will agree that it is wrong and something they don't defend.
But when you think of it in terms of using what tools you have to make one of your own just like someone elses, it becomes a lot less obvious that there's something wrong.
It might even be possible that you decide that you don't think people ought to be able to tell you you're not allowed to make stuff, regardless of whether they made it first or not.
You might even make the determination that you think laws that allow people to send the cops after you for doing so are wrong, immoral, and contrary to the public good.
You might even get self righteous about it, get pissed off about it.
Hell, you might even decide that the more you can do to cut the cartels that own all the media off from their money, the better.
And that the more you can do to pattern people not to think they should be forced to pay these dues, the better.
These moral judgements can lead you to all kinds of places can't they...
Better hope people keep calling it stealing... no one likes having their bike stolen...
You have the freedom to write it, not write it, release it, not release it. No compulsion involved.
I have the freedom to take what I have and make more of them in the privacy of my home. No compulsion involved.
I have the freedom to take what i learn and use what i know to make whatever i want. No compulsion involved.
I have the freedom to give away what i've made to my mom or sell it or do whatever with it. No compulsion involved.
Now you say you have the right to forbid me duplicating what you have made. Making this happen means the government must enforce the rule you set out.
The government takes away my rights to give you what you percieve as your rights, when they weren't yours until the government agreed to enforce them, so they're not really "rights" at all, but more "enforced entitlements".
Making something and selling it to someone else doesn't automatically give you any rights to what they then proceed do after the trade is done. The only reason you have those entitlements is because the government will back them up with the use of force if necessary, and the only reason you think you have an inherent right to those entitlements is because you've always seen it done that way.
Clear as mud and articulate as a rib I know, but you get my point. If you want to argue the merits of the rules, fine. But they are based on power and enforcement, not your personal rights and freedoms. You only confuse an intelligent discourse on their merits when you try to pretend otherwise.
I've quit smoking for a long period for financial reasons and started again after I wasn't addicted.
Why did I do this? Because I like smoking.
I like leaving my project and going outside for a smoke. I like the way it tastes, and I like the way it goes well with my coffee. I like how it makes me feel. I like the social interaction of it. Cigars are good too.
Smoking rocks!
Nicotine is a kick ass drug. I was reading in some quit-smoking literature that it is a stimulant in large doses and a depressant in small doses, and that you can control your mood with it by automatically adapting how much you smoke. This is supposed to make you quit? Sounds like a kick ass drug to me!
And smoking makes you sick when you get old. Whah. Getting old makes you sick when you get old. Old people that dont die of lung cancer will die of something else. Big fuckin deal.
Smoking makes your breath stink and it costs way too fucking much. That is the start and the end of what is bad about smoking.
If I recall correctly ASL stands for age, sex, location and is a common abbrevation in flirt chat rooms. The funny-modded comment can be read as the answer to "hey, what's your ASL"?
I think it's more like
--**Uma69 comes into the room**--
BigBud43: Hey Uma
CyberBoy11: **UMA!**
Hung21CA: How's it goin Uma
Uma69: Hi everyone
BigBud43: Uma: Wanna cyber with a hot stud
Uma69: ASL plz
BigBud43: 32/M/New York
CyberBoy11: 17/M/Delhi
Hung21CA: 28/M/Toronto
Princess21: 24/F/Melbourne
BigBud43: Uma?
Hung21CA: You there Uma?
Sitting behind a two-way mirror, watching first-time users struggle with our software, reminded me that programmers are the least qualified people to design software for novices.
That would mean you can't demand a refund for refusing the terms in the EULA. Doesn't mean you can't get a refund for other reasons. I bought a book and got a refund, it didn't have an EULA.
My understanding, and I may be wrong here, is that EULAs are not enforcable because you didn't agree to them, and have never been successfully enforced. So basically, they're a bunch of bullshit that you can safely ignore.
Now this decision is a great step, if you accept the premise that EULAs have legal merit in the first place, but if my understanding is correct and they do not, then it's a terrible step, because it's establishing a legal foundation for their enforcement.
I'd much rather not be able to return the bloody software and be able to safely ignore the EULA as long as I'm respecting the law of the land than to be forced to accept the legal merit of the damned thing and have the option to return the software.
Considering that a great many of us are required by our environment to use these software packages regardless of how we feel about these agreements, it's giving a whole bunch of new legal clout to untrustworthy companies that never had it before. It lets them place whatever restrictions they like on how you use your computer.
"For security reasons, you are not permitted to install and use this software on machines that also have software not on this list installed."
Slashdot Mirror
Duron 600@933, 512MB PC133 SDRAM, GF2MX400 AGP + S3 Virge DX/GX PCI, GameTheater XP, 20/40/60/80/120G HDs, CDROM, CDRW, DVDROM, 2x10/100 NIC, W2KASwSP4
If you don't like how the iPod and iTunes work, DON'T USE THEM.
That's good advice. I don't use them, I think they're shit. A shiny silver case and a scroll wheel on your player do not makeup for DRM and a pricing structure that mirrors RIAA price gouging without even so much as giving you a CD with liner notes.
iPods/iTunes are cool because the music industry are getting their ton of flesh, and are prepared to say that they're cool. If that's good enough for you, go to town.
When I see ogg vorbis on hardware with legacy mp3 support, free as in beer music online with integrated support for buying tickets and t-shirts then maybe you'll get my money. Until then, I'll stick with mp3/DC++/Winamp/CDR.
I just dont need firefox to load 3-5x faster, it loads fairly fine as it is, i dont really notice how slow firefox goes, seeing as i havnt used anything else for a very long time now
By itself, running solo on a modern machine, yeah, no prob, runs great.
But when you're running IIS, MSSQL, and Postgres servers, K-Lite, eMule and DC++ clients, crunching video using VirtualDub in the background and playing NWN and you've tasked out to check the web on where to find that last item you need for your quest, you really notice the difference. The machine crawls while its paging out the massive memory footprint that firefox needs.
Now, don't get me wrong, I continue to use it instead of IE, but lets not pretend that its a lightweight browser, because its not.
I mean, the Germans during the holocaust had no idea what they were doing was terrible. The slaveowners actually thought they were doing a service by beating their slaves and forcing them to labor.
That is quite possibly the stupidist thing I've read in weeks.
And don't say Microsoft doesn't continue to innovate. OneNote is a pretty promising newcomer to the Office family. The stuff Microsoft is doing with XML export and BizTalk Server is all pretty interesting.
You mean the stuff where they're leveraging their office suite to go after the server market?
I don't like versioning control. I find it cumbersome to work with, time consuming, and an annoyance. When I need to work with it, I will, but if I can get away with not using it, I do.
Most developers I've met feel the same way. It's one of those inconveniences you're compelled to participate in, like keeping track of how many hours you work for each client when you'd rather just solve the problems, get the kudos and go home.
The only time I've found it useful is when you've got multiple developers working together on a project small enough that you're going to be modifying the same files at the same time and need the merging functionality that CVSs bring.
Its a shame that so many people can be mislead into believing that the crackpots' views fairly represents what a movement (any movement) is trying to achieve.
They do. The more the representatives of the movement speak, the more they alienate members that don't want to be held among them and attract members that agree with them.
If you belong to a political movement, have the balls to stand up for what it represents or don't identify yourself with them in the first place.
And who the hell is David Duke?
With a touchpad I can even play FPS's.
I call bullshit! You can play a FPS with a keyboard if you're of a mind to, but real gamers know that its all about the fast twitch and cranking your mouse sensitivity to the max. Touchpads are not going to give you this like a clitstick will.
Face it, touch pad users are in there with keyboarders and modem users. You're free frags.
My point was that by saying "feminsts say..." he either meant:
a) "All feminists say..."
b) "Most feminists say..."
or c) "some feminists say"
If he intended a or b he is factually incorrect, and if he intended c, he is being misleading
Or it could be he meant "Notable feminists who operate in roles that are generally accepted as allowing them to speak on behalf of their political movement say..."
Feminists are part of a political movement, and have leaders that speak on their behalf, representative of all members.
And yeah, I hate the feminists too... they're no better than any other self-serving prejudiced special interest group.
leveraging best-of-breed scalable enterprise solutions
I think that means
"We're not building everything from scratch here"(leveragin), we've got some "powerful and stable"(enterprise) stuff prebuilt that "we can customise"(solution) to "reduce the development time"(leveragin). And our system is "developed with a growth path so you don't have troubles if you are successful and the scope of your operations increases beyond your current specified requirements"(scalable)"
1) Attaches to and detatches from my keychain.
2) Is small enough to be a convenient keychain.
2) Is in every way tougher than my keys.
3) Holds a retarded amount of data, enough that I can keep all my music on it incidentally to being a massive portable data store. Half a terabyte would be good.
4) Has wireless earbuds.
5) Beeps when I call for it
I know at first glance Monsanto sounds like the RIAA, and Slashdotters are apparently all too willing to villify them, but they spend a lot of money developing these crops and they have a right to decide how they're licensed.
I've said it before, and I'll be called upon to say it again...
IF NO ONE ASKED YOU TO CREATE SOMETHING, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO EXPECT TO GET PAID FOR DOING SO!
If we didn't live in such a tremendously fucked up society, I'd say there's one word for people that "spend a lot of money developing these crops" and that one word would be STUPID.
But we do live in a tremendously fucked up society, so I'm forced to switch that word to EVIL.
Have a nice day Monsanto execs... and look both ways before you cross the street, cause I won't be slowing down for you, you scumbags.
( ) News for Nerds.
( ) Stuff that matters.
Hmmm...
None of your arguments have any bearing on the main point of mine, which is that whether you want to call it stealing or "duplicating the things other people worked hard to create without their permission," it's still wrong. Your slippery slope scenario doesn't change the fundamental issue either.
The gist that you were supposed to get from all that was this: I don't think duplicating things is wrong, many other people don't think duplicating things is wrong, and many more people will agree that they don't think it is wrong either if they take a moment to think about it. So you better keep calling it stealing and keeping those people from thinking about it.
The PC market has more competition for your buck. There are WAY WAY more games available for the PC than any console.
Backups deal with 4 situations, in the order of most importance:
a) Oh my god, I deleted the file!!!! or its variant Oh my god, the file is corrupt!!!
b) Oh my god, the hard disk crashed!!!
c) Oh my god, the entire computer is ruined by some electric failure, taking the disk with it!!!
d) Oh my god, the plqce burned down taking the computer, disk and files with it!!!
a) is what causes 95% of file restores. Mirroring is useless here. A mirror of a deleted file is still deleted.
b) covers most of the rest of the 5%, and mirroring helps here.
c) seldomly happens, and mirroring does not help. This is why you make tape backups away from the computer.
d) is probably rare, but this is why you have off-site backups or at least keep your tapes in a fireproof safe.
See how often mirroring helps? Not that much, actually.
Staggered mirrored offsite ghosts. Have you sorted from all of the above in minutes.
a) Need a file restored? Get your sysadmin to remotely mount one of the ghosts and grab it from there.
b) You've got a mirror. Go buy a drive. Don't have a mirror? Run your ass to the store, buy a drive, restore your ghost.
c) Run your ass to the store, buy a computer, restore your ghost
d) Freak out, call your service provider, have them set your ghost up on their machines for a lot of money, send the bill to your insurance company
Those are all euphemisms used to try to justify stealing the things other people worked hard to create.
I believe the phrase you're looking for is "Those are all euphemisms used to try to justify duplicating the things other people worked hard to create without their permission."
Funny thing about defining this precisely, rather than calling it "stealing" as big media likes to do.
When you think of stealing as in taking my bike, most people will agree that it is wrong and something they don't defend.
But when you think of it in terms of using what tools you have to make one of your own just like someone elses, it becomes a lot less obvious that there's something wrong.
It might even be possible that you decide that you don't think people ought to be able to tell you you're not allowed to make stuff, regardless of whether they made it first or not.
You might even make the determination that you think laws that allow people to send the cops after you for doing so are wrong, immoral, and contrary to the public good.
You might even get self righteous about it, get pissed off about it.
Hell, you might even decide that the more you can do to cut the cartels that own all the media off from their money, the better.
And that the more you can do to pattern people not to think they should be forced to pay these dues, the better.
These moral judgements can lead you to all kinds of places can't they...
Better hope people keep calling it stealing... no one likes having their bike stolen...
Is anyone able to comment on the availability of the various 3rd party tools on the windows platform?
You have the freedom to write it, not write it, release it, not release it. No compulsion involved.
I have the freedom to take what I have and make more of them in the privacy of my home. No compulsion involved.
I have the freedom to take what i learn and use what i know to make whatever i want. No compulsion involved.
I have the freedom to give away what i've made to my mom or sell it or do whatever with it. No compulsion involved.
Now you say you have the right to forbid me duplicating what you have made. Making this happen means the government must enforce the rule you set out.
The government takes away my rights to give you what you percieve as your rights, when they weren't yours until the government agreed to enforce them, so they're not really "rights" at all, but more "enforced entitlements".
Making something and selling it to someone else doesn't automatically give you any rights to what they then proceed do after the trade is done. The only reason you have those entitlements is because the government will back them up with the use of force if necessary, and the only reason you think you have an inherent right to those entitlements is because you've always seen it done that way.
Clear as mud and articulate as a rib I know, but you get my point. If you want to argue the merits of the rules, fine. But they are based on power and enforcement, not your personal rights and freedoms. You only confuse an intelligent discourse on their merits when you try to pretend otherwise.
I smoke because I want to.
:D
I've quit smoking for a long period for financial reasons and started again after I wasn't addicted.
Why did I do this? Because I like smoking.
I like leaving my project and going outside for a smoke. I like the way it tastes, and I like the way it goes well with my coffee. I like how it makes me feel. I like the social interaction of it. Cigars are good too.
Smoking rocks!
Nicotine is a kick ass drug. I was reading in some quit-smoking literature that it is a stimulant in large doses and a depressant in small doses, and that you can control your mood with it by automatically adapting how much you smoke. This is supposed to make you quit? Sounds like a kick ass drug to me!
And smoking makes you sick when you get old. Whah. Getting old makes you sick when you get old. Old people that dont die of lung cancer will die of something else. Big fuckin deal.
Smoking makes your breath stink and it costs way too fucking much. That is the start and the end of what is bad about smoking.
Smoke em if you got em
If I recall correctly ASL stands for age, sex, location and is a common abbrevation in flirt chat rooms. The funny-modded comment can be read as the answer to "hey, what's your ASL"?
I think it's more like
--**Uma69 comes into the room**--
BigBud43: Hey Uma
CyberBoy11: **UMA!**
Hung21CA: How's it goin Uma
Uma69: Hi everyone
BigBud43: Uma: Wanna cyber with a hot stud
Uma69: ASL plz
BigBud43: 32/M/New York
CyberBoy11: 17/M/Delhi
Hung21CA: 28/M/Toronto
Princess21: 24/F/Melbourne
BigBud43: Uma?
Hung21CA: You there Uma?
*
*
*
Sitting behind a two-way mirror, watching first-time users struggle with our software, reminded me that programmers are the least qualified people to design software for novices.
:P
Sounds very narcissistic
That would mean you can't demand a refund for refusing the terms in the EULA. Doesn't mean you can't get a refund for other reasons. I bought a book and got a refund, it didn't have an EULA.
My understanding, and I may be wrong here, is that EULAs are not enforcable because you didn't agree to them, and have never been successfully enforced. So basically, they're a bunch of bullshit that you can safely ignore.
Now this decision is a great step, if you accept the premise that EULAs have legal merit in the first place, but if my understanding is correct and they do not, then it's a terrible step, because it's establishing a legal foundation for their enforcement.
I'd much rather not be able to return the bloody software and be able to safely ignore the EULA as long as I'm respecting the law of the land than to be forced to accept the legal merit of the damned thing and have the option to return the software.
Considering that a great many of us are required by our environment to use these software packages regardless of how we feel about these agreements, it's giving a whole bunch of new legal clout to untrustworthy companies that never had it before. It lets them place whatever restrictions they like on how you use your computer.
"For security reasons, you are not permitted to install and use this software on machines that also have software not on this list installed."
Try dating a brunette.