Moust of the spam does NOT come from the US. It's retarded to assume that these spammers all over the world are expected to change their core business model because the US passes some law.
I think you are incorrect in this assumption. spamhaus
shows that, of the 200 or so top spammers (that create 90% of the spam) almost all are american or canadian based. They are also invariably advertising US goods and websites, priced in US dollars, from US-based companies, with the one exception of nigerian scammers. If America can get it's house in order, then the world spam problem will be massively reduced.
Admittedly, much of the spam is bounced off asian proxies, or trojaned windows boxes; but that just shows that american and european ISP's crackdown on open relays and spammers is having at least some effect.
What NEEDS to happen is
a) much greater action by american law enforcement for fraud by the sellers and spammers, along with prosecution of the other major offenses.
b) laws specifically drafted to make spam illegal, unless opt-in, with heavy penalties and again, strong enforcement.
Client side spam filters are a sticking-plaster on an amputated limb. They help filter your own mail, at the risk of false positives (which are increasing, given the increasing attempts by spammers to make their mail pass baynesian filters). They do nothing to reduce the massive load on the infrastructure caused by spammers.
Currently, this is a US problem that is affecting the world.
the 'nv' driver is the opensource, reverse-engineered driver for nvidia cards that comes with XFree86, and has nothing to do with binary driver you got from nvidia.
On gentoo, there is a program called/usr/sbin/opengl-update that switches between nvidia's opengl and xfree's, which you need to do in parallel with changing the 2D driver (i.e. nv or nvidia) in XF86Config-4, might be worth checking to see if such exists on mandrake.
In order to use the binary driver, you need to use 'nvidia' in XF86Config, and make the other changes that people have mentioned in this thread.
On top of that, there's at least one mistake in the format of the survey.
When entering processor speed, 1.1Ghz to 2Ghz is two options.
The whole thing just feels somewhat unprofessional and hacked together. The options just don't gel.
Given the amount of time and effort real marketing men put into surveys (and I've been on the wrong end of far too many), it just doesn't feel like something microsoft would put out.
Plus, they would normally use microsoft.com to do the survey; http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/communi ty/centers/management/surveys/sus_survey.aspx for example. Or, they'd contract out to a survey company, which is their normal route.
Kazaa, and other truly decentralised p2p software clients have no control over what what files pass through the network.
Unlike napster 1, who provided the central server for passing on who was sharing what, kazaa have NO ability to tell what is being shared.
Napster were the warehouse owners; kazaa are more like warehouse builders, who then sell them on to other people.
They don't know what infringements are being made, and don't want to. They join the long list of people who provide a tool with legitimate and illegitmate uses, like lockpick makers, warehouse builders, or video players with a record button.
And if you argue that p2p has no legitimate uses, I point you to bittorrent, that is regularly used to distribute large files. I also use emule to grab game demos or patches, both legal downloads.
The channel tunnel, between england and france, cost more than $21 billion, for a 31 mile undersea tunnel.
I suspect the $30m is for the 3 year planning, not the tunnel dig itself.
Thank said, such a tunnel would of great interest. The chunnel takes cars (on trains) and train passengers much faster between the UK and the rest of europe than ferries.
Once the new high-speed london to kent rail link is finished, it will be possible to go from London to Paris in 2 1/2 hours.
One can only imagine how much economic benefit it will bring to drastically shorten the travel time between southern europe and northern africa. Hell, it's interesting to think whether it could compete with trans-Mediterranean shipping that heads down to the suez canal to the middle east...
I'm stating that the person who creates something that hasn't existed before owns that "thing" and controls all rights to it until he. at his option, transfers some or all of tgose rights elsewhere.
We fundamentally disagree. I disagree that ideas written down are 'things', for a start (apart from the physical media it's stored on, obviously). They share some of the attributes of physical property, but not enough of them as to be classed as simple property, i.e. 'things' under the law. They are classed as something else, which after the law expires, ceases to be protected from it's natural state, that of being shared.
I'm stating that the person who creates something that hasn't existed before owns that "thing" and controls all rights to it until he. at his option, transfers some or all of tgose rights elsewhere.
EVEN when it comes to physical things, there are restrictions, rights, and responsibilities that come with that creation. Take the most fundamental of physical properties, a house and land. Be it building regulations, inheritance taxes, mortgage taxes, compulsorary purchase orders, mineral rights, or other laws affecting human action and human ownership of that property, we cannot be said to own and control everything about a thing. Such is the bargain we strike for living in a modern civil society.
also agree that current U.S. copyright duration is too long. That, however, doesn't indicate the fallacy of copyright or intellectual property anymore than overly long (or overly short) prison terms indicates the fallacy of prisons.
But prisons, like copyright, are a means to an end. If a new form of technology allowed us to 'cure' prisoners with a higher rate of effectiveness than prison, and allow us to punish them in a humane way that detered others more than going to prison, would that not that replace prisons?
As it so happens, I happen to think copyright is still probably the most effective way to ensure a fair balance between someone's right of remuneration for sharing their work, and migration to the commons.
I personally think a universal flat rate tax on net access is not that right way to resolve the issue of widespread infringement, but some form of opt-in pre-paid licence may work and be fair. Or, a non-DRM version of itunes would also work. We've managed to find a way with TV and radio to avoid pay-per-use. Hopefully we can do the same with music, and still give people a way to avoid paying for industry-sanctioned content that they don't want.
Actually, while I'm on that subject, I think DRM is extremely bad form; either you should get the protection of copyright, or you should be able to lock your material away from the commons for good with technological means (and laws to prevent circumvention of those means). I don't think you should have the benefit of both DRM laws and copyright, any more than you can benefit simultaneously from patents and trade secret laws for a particular business idea.
Anyway, I suspect there is little chance of either of us changing the other's mind, so I will probably make this my last entry to this thread. Still, it's been interesting discussing this with you.
For a start, the slashdot effect has grown a lot heavier in the last three years. Now, anything smaller than a medium news or corporate site is likely to crumple under the sheer spike of traffic.
The fact that slashdot makes money out of allowing people to see the article links before the site gets crushed to oblivion is quite telling. Especially since that crushing often involves heavy financial penalties from the owner's isp.
In addition, google, and the wayback machine are just two examples of websites that cache other people's content quite easily these days.
Slashdot should do what they do; cache the site, with a secondary link to the original, and remove the cache if the site owner complains.
Certainly, there is no way to assert that, at the moment of its creation, a work is owned by any one other than its creator.
Actually, I do assert that. To claim that a creator works in a complete vacuum of the society around him is naive at best. Whether it's a poem, book, song, photograph, painting or film, all creators are influenced by the culture, people and existing art that surround them. If we look at music for example, the amount of reuse of existing chords, themes, lyrics and melodies is huge.
When it comes to human creativity, of all forms, you can't ignore the use of that pre-existing, freely reusable body of content that is the commons. As Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants". Any creator already owes a large debt to the society that inspires him.
Therefore, if you are to assert the ownership of that work by society, you must account for the transfer of ownership from the work's creator to that amorphous thing called "society"
Well, I also disagree that a creator can be said to 'own' a non physical work. Now, something physical, like a book, or a CD, or a computer. Those are tangible goods, and I don't think anyone is claiming that such goods are not property, and should be donated to 'the greater good'. That said, we all give money to the government to distribute for the greater good...
Anyway, I digress. If it is a physical good, and I take it from you, you don't have it any more. I have deprived you of it. If I do that without your permission, that is theft, so stealing definitely covers the theft of a book, or a CD, or a computer.
'Intellectual property' does not have that asset. If you have a campfire, and I come and light a taper at your fire so I can light my own, I have not stolen your fire; you still have it. I now also have a lit fire, thus benefiting at no loss for you.
Ideas, music, stories (and what are stories or music except particular specific ideas written down?) are similar in nature to that fire. If you tell me a story you thought of around that fire, I now know that story too. You don't forget it because you told me, and I can go and tell other people that story without diminishing that story for either of us. Hell, if you let me read your written story, and I copy it, then you have no lost no physical good, yet I have gained one.
Such shared material is what we call 'culture' and it enriches us all, the more we have of it.
Which is where copyright and patents come in. As I said before, I'll stick to copyright, as that is what is relevent to this particular thread.
You, as a story writer, or a song singer, want to make a living doing this. We, as a society (the public domain) are enriched by you doing this. But you are afraid that if you write stories, or sing songs, other people will copy them, and you will not get much money for your work.
Therefore laws are passed making you the sole distributer of that work for a limited time. It is not a 'natural' right, in the US constitution at any rate (more on this in a moment) - it is a right granted for a limited time. After that time, the work passes into the public domain, where it is available for other artists to build on, and create their own works. To see this at work, just look at any recent disney film. They are almost invariably remakes of old stories that have since passed out of copyright, and are free for reuse in new works.
The assertion that copyright restrains the spread of ideas is without merit.
I disagree most strongly. To go back to disney, they create works based on others work all the time. Yet we, the public, are not free to do the same, because Disney constantly and successfully lobbies for increases in copyright terms every time steamboat willie comes up for expiration, altering the bargain further to their favour.
What bargain? The bargain that after being given a period of time to be the sole distributer of a work, it would go into the public d
Governments oppose piracy because it is illegal, not because piracy has an impact on music sales.
And who exactly made it illegal in the first place? Governments!
THe problem is, there are two ways you can treat ideas, and the concrete expression of those ideas.
1) They are the property of the person that wrote them down, and should be protected like other property
2) Culture and society is made up of these shared ideas, and by sharing them, we do not deprive the existing holders of their copy, so the creation and sharing should be promoted.
The problem is, things like ideas, music and stories don't fit solely into either of those categories.
Copyright (and patents, but that's another rant) is the government attempt to strike a balance. Unfortunately, in recent decades copyright has been moving much more towards the property rights than encouraging a shared culture.
Combine that with the industry association acting like a private police force, along with applying the maximum penalties designed for large scale commercial infringement, and you'll see why there is such a popular groundswell against the companies.
Are some people doing it because they don't want to pay for music? Sure. But then, people get music on the radio for free, they can borrow it from libraries for free, they can listen to a friends copy for free, they can buy second hand CD's and the artist and companies don't see a penny. Free != morally wrong
Peoples expectation of the law, and of their estimation of the product have changed. They are unlikely to change back. so either we live with the ever increasing friction because of the gulf, or the government and the businesses need to adapt to their customers expectations.
in which case installing the software on two machines using the same key is unacceptable to begin with
Not if it's a reinstall it isn't. Not if it's a change of motherboard it isn't.
Also, what if you scrap one machine, and re-use its licence on another? That's made a lot harder by things like making the OEMs stick the licence number to the original machine case, and enforced limits on product activation.
There's a reason people call it the microsoft tax, it's because microsoft acts like it is owed a fee every time a machine is bought, regardless of whether it has an existing licence installed on it, or even whether it's destined to have another OS it from day 1.
As you say, WPA is truly broken, and always will be until we have
1) a police state
2) hardware under the control of the software vendor, not the hardware owner
Oh, and don't forget the fun that WPA causes for system builders. Do you pre-activate the software (which you're not supposed to do, because the user doesn't then read the EULA), or do you give the customer a machine they can't use until they have a net connection, or have to make a long phone call?
You can turn off anti-aliasing at certain font sizes, which is what windows does.
In KDE, you can set it right in the font configuration panel (just exclude what feels right, excluding 8pt to 12pt is what windows does)
Not so sure of how to do it with gnome, but you could try putting something in ~/.fonts.conf, or look up how to control AA using xft, specifically, disabling it at specific font sizes.
The other thing worth checking is whether you have freetype compiled with the bytecode interpreter or not. That is patent encumbered, so is usually turned off. Personally, I don't like it on my LCD screen, but I know a lot of people love it. Redhat ships with it disabled, so you could try turning it on and see what you think. (http://lists.linux.org.au/archives/tlug/2 003-Nove mber/msg00061.html)
As far as fonts go, use either your windows fonts, the free truetype web core fonts, (http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/) or the bistream-vera-fonts. All the rest of the fonts on linux are questionable quality.
Now gentoo has reached 1.4, they provide livecds for a variety of different processors architectures. Each livecd has binary packages for the common and big ebuilds, thus allowing you to install a complete system from scratch quickly with binaries built for your system. You can even build a complete desktop distro with no network connection from the CD.
The advantage is that you get a quickly installed system, compiled specifically for your processor, will all the flexibility and power of ebuilds for later updates.
Admittedly, the install is still more complex than say, redhat, but it's a lot easier to maintain and upgrade your system later. I got so sick of reinstalling from scratch after a major version upgrade on the binary-only distros butchered the system.
No, you're not wrong. Redhat is primarily a gnome distro. In order to make bluecurve work, they've modified both kde and gnome to look very similar, in effect creating a 'middle ground' that is uniquely redhat, i.e. bluecurve.
It has to be said, they broke a lot more kde than they did gnome, but then, they have a lot more experience with it than kde.
If you want a commercial kde based distro, go with SuSE. They are very much backers of kde, and will do it right. Gnome on suse though is *shudder*
Mandrake, is fairly agnostic, in that it provides a pretty much unmodified gnome and kde, with the mandrake extra config tools on top, and a galaxy theme that is pretty similar on both.
Gentoo provides kde and gnome 'as is' without giving you any gui tools at all on top.
Fraid I don't use any other distros, so can't comment on their policies.
France and Germany have imvaded far more countries than the U.S. ever has....
The French would probably apologize and surrender to the terrorists. ...
The left-wingers in Europe will do anything, let any atrocity go unchallenged, let any terrorist bomb women and children, just to uphold their pacifist stupidity.
So are continental europeans warmongering mass invaders, or despicable pacifists not willing to stand up to anyone? Make up your mind.
Do you think Iraq would have left Kuwait without being forced? You do realise there was a massive international coalition (hint, that included France and Germany) in the first Gulf War? That non-US forces made up 24% of the troops? That Germany and Japan ponied up $16 billion of the $61 billion cost? That it was backed by UN resolution?
That when the CIA encouraged the kurds to attack saddam, on the understanding that the US would help them, the US left them to be butchered?
Fast forward to Gulf War 2. No UN resolution. Virtually no allies. Off the top of my head, only the UK and Australia sent combat troops. Massive, MASSIVE anti-war protests throughout Europe, including the UK.
Have it crossed your mind that people didn't want to invade Iraq because they a) thought it was wrong to invade without a good reason b) felt that containment, i.e. sanctions, were sufficient to keep Saddam in check c) didn't accept the 'evidence' about WMD, which have still to turn up d) thought the tieing together of 9/11 and Saddam was rediculous
Monsters exist in the real world, and no matter how much you wish otherwise, you can't ignore them and hope they will "see the light."
Yes. Indeed. Thats why we had sanctions, yes? No fly zones, yes? Inspections, yes?
It was the US that yanked the inspectors prematurely, that ignored the UN when it wouldn't do what the US wanted (hint, the US has applied far more vetos to security council resolutions than any other member), and is now trying to rebuild a country from scratch. Is Iraq better off than it was under Saddam? No. Might it be in the future? Maybe. Are there WMD in Iraq? No. Was the war illegal without a UN resolution? Yes. Has it massively increased resentment against the US and west in general, and greatly increased the risk of future terrorism from countries like Saudi Arabia? Yes.
Who was it that built Iraq's nuclear reactor in the 80's? FRANCE. Which was wrong, why, exactly? Iraq and Saddam was an ally of the west against Iran in the 80's. The West sold him all sorts of things in the 80's, including the Americans selling him chemical weapons which he later used against the Kurds. If you want to blame the French for lack of foresight, that same claim can equally be laid at the Americans for arming him in the first place.
Who was it that knowingly laundered all of Saddam Hussein's money, the money he got violating the U.N. embargo in the 90's? FRANCE. The only reference I can find to this is where France was being paid by Iraq in return for goods supplied under the 'oil for food' program - you know, the UN backed one allowed non-military supplies past the sanctions in exchange for money from selling oil? If you have other references, I suggest you post them, because it sounds like FUD to me.
Who built all his bomb shelters and REPEATEDLY sold him military weapons in violation of the U.N. embargo? FRANCE and GERMANY.
"WARSAW, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Polish troops in Iraq have found four French-built advanced anti-aircraft missiles which were built this year, a Polish Defence Ministry spokesman told Reuters on Friday.
France strongly denied having sold any such missiles to Iraq for nearly two decades, and said it was impossible that its newest missiles should turn up in Iraq.
"Polish troops discovered an ammunition depot on September 29 near the region of Hilla and there were four French-made
What the?? For a start, the quote is direct from the Teleread site - which is an american news site. They reported, correctly, Convert Lit has shut down it's old UK based site (lycos.co.uk), and moved to a polish one. Those are the facts.
Few know what EUCD means, but everyone has heard about the DMCA.
Very true. But the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) is very definitely european legislation. Thus calling it the 'EU-style DMCA' is a way of clueing people in that it is similar to the DMCA, but comes from the EU. Which it does. It's European legislation, applying to all member states. Many EU nations helped draft it, not least the UK (the patent office is very keen on it). It was passed at the european level.
Why not mention that instead that directly, without the round-about route of the EU Because the DMCA has no legal power in the UK, or anywhere else in europe. It's American legislation, which only applies to the US. Thus, the DMCA has no force whatsoever that can be applied to a UK hosted website. It would be rediculous to say the DMCA had caused this directly, as that would be untrue.
It is the EUCD (which no-one has heard of, remember) which is causing Convert Lit to move from an EUCD signatory, the UK, to a non european, non-EUCD signatory, Poland.
As it happens, the EUCD is not yet implemented in the UK, but it is only a matter of time, as it is required under European Law.
But I guess if one wants to knock the EU, one must find the bad things it does that similar to the bad things the US do and knock those instead.
So we're agreed the EUCD is similar to the DMCA, both are bad, and that the EUCD is a piece of european legislation, passed by all branches of the EU, which applies to all member states, that is forcing a UK website to move outside the EU? Reported by an American site? Then quoted word for word by another American site, slashdot?
Please explain to me how you came to the conclusion that someone (you don't specify who) is a stereotypical EU-hating Brit?
Don't be such a stereotypical EU-hating Brit and look at the real source of the DMCA, how about it?
The DMCA is crap legislation, of course. The EUCD is equally crap legislation passed by the European Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers. Convert Lit is one of the casualties of the legislation. But blaming the DMCA and the americans is pointless in this case, as the DMCA has NO LEGAL FORCE in the UK. it is the EUCD that is to blame, no more, no less. If it was a French or German website, it would be equally as affected.
Therefore, to call it a British anti-EU bias appears to be disingenuous at best, libel at worst.
Uhh, I suspect he was referring to the EUCD, a piece of legislation very similar to the DMCA, already passed at the european level. It is now the responsibility of each european nation to implement the EUCD into local law. (they should have done so already, but in the UK at least, the patent office is still working on it)
If you want to know why the EUCD is bad, try http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/WhyTheEUCDIsBad.h tml
You know, if I had a machine that was no longer accepting windows messenger messages, and I needed it to, the first thing i'd check would be general network connectivity, then I'd check that the service was running.
Spending hours or days to track it down would be a symptom of an incompetent engineer.
Prudence requires checking for system failures or security breaches. You're worried about security breaches, yet happy to let the CEO dial direct to the internet with an insecure connection via AOL?? While he's connected to the corporate network??
NAT without a properly configured firewall is basically a false sense of security, and is trivially easy to get around.
If you have a proper firewall in place to protect your machines, (i.e. block all unauthorised inbound and outbound ports) with NAT as well, then fine. But NAT is a one-to-many hack, not a security feature.
IPv6 will mean you won't have to use all the kludgy port forward hacks you do when using NAT, while still being able to protect machines properly with a firewall.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are incorrect in this assumption. spamhaus shows that, of the 200 or so top spammers (that create 90% of the spam) almost all are american or canadian based. They are also invariably advertising US goods and websites, priced in US dollars, from US-based companies, with the one exception of nigerian scammers. If America can get it's house in order, then the world spam problem will be massively reduced.
Admittedly, much of the spam is bounced off asian proxies, or trojaned windows boxes; but that just shows that american and european ISP's crackdown on open relays and spammers is having at least some effect.
What NEEDS to happen is
a) much greater action by american law enforcement for fraud by the sellers and spammers, along with prosecution of the other major offenses.
b) laws specifically drafted to make spam illegal, unless opt-in, with heavy penalties and again, strong enforcement.
Client side spam filters are a sticking-plaster on an amputated limb. They help filter your own mail, at the risk of false positives (which are increasing, given the increasing attempts by spammers to make their mail pass baynesian filters). They do nothing to reduce the massive load on the infrastructure caused by spammers.
Currently, this is a US problem that is affecting the world.
You know that if you right click, properties on 'My Documents', you can change it's location, right?
How about a bike - motor or pedal-powered up to you ;)
the 'nv' driver is the opensource, reverse-engineered driver for nvidia cards that comes with XFree86, and has nothing to do with binary driver you got from nvidia. On gentoo, there is a program called /usr/sbin/opengl-update that switches between nvidia's opengl and xfree's, which you need to do in parallel with changing the 2D driver (i.e. nv or nvidia) in XF86Config-4, might be worth checking to see if such exists on mandrake.
In order to use the binary driver, you need to use 'nvidia' in XF86Config, and make the other changes that people have mentioned in this thread.
On top of that, there's at least one mistake in the format of the survey.
i ty/centers/management/surveys/sus_survey.aspxr example. Or, they'd contract out to a survey company, which is their normal route.
When entering processor speed, 1.1Ghz to 2Ghz is two options.
The whole thing just feels somewhat unprofessional and hacked together. The options just don't gel.
Given the amount of time and effort real marketing men put into surveys (and I've been on the wrong end of far too many), it just doesn't feel like something microsoft would put out.
Plus, they would normally use microsoft.com to do the survey; http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/commun
fo
I smell hoax.
Kazaa, and other truly decentralised p2p software clients have no control over what what files pass through the network.
Unlike napster 1, who provided the central server for passing on who was sharing what, kazaa have NO ability to tell what is being shared.
Napster were the warehouse owners; kazaa are more like warehouse builders, who then sell them on to other people.
They don't know what infringements are being made, and don't want to. They join the long list of people who provide a tool with legitimate and illegitmate uses, like lockpick makers, warehouse builders, or video players with a record button.
And if you argue that p2p has no legitimate uses, I point you to bittorrent, that is regularly used to distribute large files. I also use emule to grab game demos or patches, both legal downloads.
I've got into the habit of calling it Digital Restrictions Management.
I suspect the $30m is for the 3 year planning, not the tunnel dig itself.
Thank said, such a tunnel would of great interest. The chunnel takes cars (on trains) and train passengers much faster between the UK and the rest of europe than ferries.
Once the new high-speed london to kent rail link is finished, it will be possible to go from London to Paris in 2 1/2 hours.
One can only imagine how much economic benefit it will bring to drastically shorten the travel time between southern europe and northern africa. Hell, it's interesting to think whether it could compete with trans-Mediterranean shipping that heads down to the suez canal to the middle east...
We fundamentally disagree. I disagree that ideas written down are 'things', for a start (apart from the physical media it's stored on, obviously). They share some of the attributes of physical property, but not enough of them as to be classed as simple property, i.e. 'things' under the law. They are classed as something else, which after the law expires, ceases to be protected from it's natural state, that of being shared.
I'm stating that the person who creates something that hasn't existed before owns that "thing" and controls all rights to it until he. at his option, transfers some or all of tgose rights elsewhere.
EVEN when it comes to physical things, there are restrictions, rights, and responsibilities that come with that creation. Take the most fundamental of physical properties, a house and land. Be it building regulations, inheritance taxes, mortgage taxes, compulsorary purchase orders, mineral rights, or other laws affecting human action and human ownership of that property, we cannot be said to own and control everything about a thing. Such is the bargain we strike for living in a modern civil society.
also agree that current U.S. copyright duration is too long. That, however, doesn't indicate the fallacy of copyright or intellectual property anymore than overly long (or overly short) prison terms indicates the fallacy of prisons.
But prisons, like copyright, are a means to an end. If a new form of technology allowed us to 'cure' prisoners with a higher rate of effectiveness than prison, and allow us to punish them in a humane way that detered others more than going to prison, would that not that replace prisons?
As it so happens, I happen to think copyright is still probably the most effective way to ensure a fair balance between someone's right of remuneration for sharing their work, and migration to the commons.
I personally think a universal flat rate tax on net access is not that right way to resolve the issue of widespread infringement, but some form of opt-in pre-paid licence may work and be fair. Or, a non-DRM version of itunes would also work. We've managed to find a way with TV and radio to avoid pay-per-use. Hopefully we can do the same with music, and still give people a way to avoid paying for industry-sanctioned content that they don't want.
Actually, while I'm on that subject, I think DRM is extremely bad form; either you should get the protection of copyright, or you should be able to lock your material away from the commons for good with technological means (and laws to prevent circumvention of those means). I don't think you should have the benefit of both DRM laws and copyright, any more than you can benefit simultaneously from patents and trade secret laws for a particular business idea.
Anyway, I suspect there is little chance of either of us changing the other's mind, so I will probably make this my last entry to this thread. Still, it's been interesting discussing this with you.
The fact that slashdot makes money out of allowing people to see the article links before the site gets crushed to oblivion is quite telling. Especially since that crushing often involves heavy financial penalties from the owner's isp.
In addition, google, and the wayback machine are just two examples of websites that cache other people's content quite easily these days.
Slashdot should do what they do; cache the site, with a secondary link to the original, and remove the cache if the site owner complains.
Actually, I do assert that. To claim that a creator works in a complete vacuum of the society around him is naive at best. Whether it's a poem, book, song, photograph, painting or film, all creators are influenced by the culture, people and existing art that surround them. If we look at music for example, the amount of reuse of existing chords, themes, lyrics and melodies is huge.
When it comes to human creativity, of all forms, you can't ignore the use of that pre-existing, freely reusable body of content that is the commons. As Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants". Any creator already owes a large debt to the society that inspires him.
Therefore, if you are to assert the ownership of that work by society, you must account for the transfer of ownership from the work's creator to that amorphous thing called "society"
Well, I also disagree that a creator can be said to 'own' a non physical work. Now, something physical, like a book, or a CD, or a computer. Those are tangible goods, and I don't think anyone is claiming that such goods are not property, and should be donated to 'the greater good'. That said, we all give money to the government to distribute for the greater good...
Anyway, I digress. If it is a physical good, and I take it from you, you don't have it any more. I have deprived you of it. If I do that without your permission, that is theft, so stealing definitely covers the theft of a book, or a CD, or a computer.
'Intellectual property' does not have that asset. If you have a campfire, and I come and light a taper at your fire so I can light my own, I have not stolen your fire; you still have it. I now also have a lit fire, thus benefiting at no loss for you.
Ideas, music, stories (and what are stories or music except particular specific ideas written down?) are similar in nature to that fire. If you tell me a story you thought of around that fire, I now know that story too. You don't forget it because you told me, and I can go and tell other people that story without diminishing that story for either of us. Hell, if you let me read your written story, and I copy it, then you have no lost no physical good, yet I have gained one.
Such shared material is what we call 'culture' and it enriches us all, the more we have of it.
Which is where copyright and patents come in. As I said before, I'll stick to copyright, as that is what is relevent to this particular thread.
You, as a story writer, or a song singer, want to make a living doing this. We, as a society (the public domain) are enriched by you doing this. But you are afraid that if you write stories, or sing songs, other people will copy them, and you will not get much money for your work.
Therefore laws are passed making you the sole distributer of that work for a limited time. It is not a 'natural' right, in the US constitution at any rate (more on this in a moment) - it is a right granted for a limited time. After that time, the work passes into the public domain, where it is available for other artists to build on, and create their own works. To see this at work, just look at any recent disney film. They are almost invariably remakes of old stories that have since passed out of copyright, and are free for reuse in new works.
The assertion that copyright restrains the spread of ideas is without merit.
I disagree most strongly. To go back to disney, they create works based on others work all the time. Yet we, the public, are not free to do the same, because Disney constantly and successfully lobbies for increases in copyright terms every time steamboat willie comes up for expiration, altering the bargain further to their favour.
What bargain? The bargain that after being given a period of time to be the sole distributer of a work, it would go into the public d
And who exactly made it illegal in the first place? Governments!
THe problem is, there are two ways you can treat ideas, and the concrete expression of those ideas.
1) They are the property of the person that wrote them down, and should be protected like other property 2) Culture and society is made up of these shared ideas, and by sharing them, we do not deprive the existing holders of their copy, so the creation and sharing should be promoted.
The problem is, things like ideas, music and stories don't fit solely into either of those categories.
Copyright (and patents, but that's another rant) is the government attempt to strike a balance. Unfortunately, in recent decades copyright has been moving much more towards the property rights than encouraging a shared culture.
Combine that with the industry association acting like a private police force, along with applying the maximum penalties designed for large scale commercial infringement, and you'll see why there is such a popular groundswell against the companies.
Are some people doing it because they don't want to pay for music? Sure. But then, people get music on the radio for free, they can borrow it from libraries for free, they can listen to a friends copy for free, they can buy second hand CD's and the artist and companies don't see a penny. Free != morally wrong
Peoples expectation of the law, and of their estimation of the product have changed. They are unlikely to change back. so either we live with the ever increasing friction because of the gulf, or the government and the businesses need to adapt to their customers expectations.
Not if it's a reinstall it isn't. Not if it's a change of motherboard it isn't.
Also, what if you scrap one machine, and re-use its licence on another? That's made a lot harder by things like making the OEMs stick the licence number to the original machine case, and enforced limits on product activation.
There's a reason people call it the microsoft tax, it's because microsoft acts like it is owed a fee every time a machine is bought, regardless of whether it has an existing licence installed on it, or even whether it's destined to have another OS it from day 1.
As you say, WPA is truly broken, and always will be until we have
1) a police state 2) hardware under the control of the software vendor, not the hardware owner
Oh, and don't forget the fun that WPA causes for system builders. Do you pre-activate the software (which you're not supposed to do, because the user doesn't then read the EULA), or do you give the customer a machine they can't use until they have a net connection, or have to make a long phone call?
You can turn off anti-aliasing at certain font sizes, which is what windows does.
/ xf t.html
2 003-Nove mber/msg00061.html)
In KDE, you can set it right in the font configuration panel (just exclude what feels right, excluding 8pt to 12pt is what windows does)
Not so sure of how to do it with gnome, but you could try putting something in ~/.fonts.conf, or look up how to control AA using xft, specifically, disabling it at specific font sizes.
http://thesapphirecat.iwarp.com/present/program
The other thing worth checking is whether you have freetype compiled with the bytecode interpreter or not. That is patent encumbered, so is usually turned off. Personally, I don't like it on my LCD screen, but I know a lot of people love it. Redhat ships with it disabled, so you could try turning it on and see what you think.
(http://lists.linux.org.au/archives/tlug/
As far as fonts go, use either your windows fonts, the free truetype web core fonts, (http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/) or the bistream-vera-fonts. All the rest of the fonts on linux are questionable quality.
Blimey, I stand (fully) corrected!
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=chomp
Now gentoo has reached 1.4, they provide livecds for a variety of different processors architectures. Each livecd has binary packages for the common and big ebuilds, thus allowing you to install a complete system from scratch quickly with binaries built for your system. You can even build a complete desktop distro with no network connection from the CD.
The advantage is that you get a quickly installed system, compiled specifically for your processor, will all the flexibility and power of ebuilds for later updates.
Admittedly, the install is still more complex than say, redhat, but it's a lot easier to maintain and upgrade your system later. I got so sick of reinstalling from scratch after a major version upgrade on the binary-only distros butchered the system.
No, you're not wrong. Redhat is primarily a gnome distro. In order to make bluecurve work, they've modified both kde and gnome to look very similar, in effect creating a 'middle ground' that is uniquely redhat, i.e. bluecurve.
It has to be said, they broke a lot more kde than they did gnome, but then, they have a lot more experience with it than kde.
If you want a commercial kde based distro, go with SuSE. They are very much backers of kde, and will do it right. Gnome on suse though is *shudder*
Mandrake, is fairly agnostic, in that it provides a pretty much unmodified gnome and kde, with the mandrake extra config tools on top, and a galaxy theme that is pretty similar on both.
Gentoo provides kde and gnome 'as is' without giving you any gui tools at all on top.
Fraid I don't use any other distros, so can't comment on their policies.
The problem happened yesterday; my home connection was very flaky for several hours in the afternoon/ eary evening at least.
u s- display.pl?site=PIPEX§ion=Network
Specifically, the DNS servers, failed to cope well with the loss of major traffic to the net, and name resolution failed a lot.
Eventually pipex managed to route more traffic via different backbones, and got everything back online.
Since about 8pm yesterday, I've been running as normal.
http://www.connection.pipex.net/cgi-bin/nsus/ns
The most likely station they'll broadcast on will be radio 4, as that is the talk radio station that gets dramas, series, comedy etc.
If they do, there's a good chance it'll end up archived on listen again, or possibly BBCi H2G2
France and Germany have imvaded far more countries than the U.S. ever has. ...
...
The French would probably apologize and surrender to the terrorists.
The left-wingers in Europe will do anything, let any atrocity go unchallenged, let any terrorist bomb women and children, just to uphold their pacifist stupidity.
So are continental europeans warmongering mass invaders, or despicable pacifists not willing to stand up to anyone? Make up your mind.
Do you think Iraq would have left Kuwait without being forced?
You do realise there was a massive international coalition (hint, that included France and Germany) in the first Gulf War? That non-US forces made up 24% of the troops? That Germany and Japan ponied up $16 billion of the $61 billion cost? That it was backed by UN resolution?
That when the CIA encouraged the kurds to attack saddam, on the understanding that the US would help them, the US left them to be butchered?
Fast forward to Gulf War 2. No UN resolution. Virtually no allies. Off the top of my head, only the UK and Australia sent combat troops.
Massive, MASSIVE anti-war protests throughout Europe, including the UK.
Have it crossed your mind that people didn't want to invade Iraq because they
a) thought it was wrong to invade without a good reason
b) felt that containment, i.e. sanctions, were sufficient to keep Saddam in check
c) didn't accept the 'evidence' about WMD, which have still to turn up
d) thought the tieing together of 9/11 and Saddam
was rediculous
Monsters exist in the real world, and no matter how much you wish otherwise, you can't ignore them and hope they will "see the light."
Yes. Indeed. Thats why we had sanctions, yes? No fly zones, yes? Inspections, yes?
It was the US that yanked the inspectors prematurely, that ignored the UN when it wouldn't do what the US wanted (hint, the US has applied far more vetos to security council resolutions than any other member), and is now trying to rebuild a country from scratch. Is Iraq better off than it was under Saddam? No. Might it be in the future? Maybe. Are there WMD in Iraq? No. Was the war illegal without a UN resolution? Yes. Has it massively increased resentment against the US and west in general, and greatly increased the risk of future terrorism from countries like Saudi Arabia? Yes.
Who was it that built Iraq's nuclear reactor in the 80's? FRANCE.
Which was wrong, why, exactly? Iraq and Saddam was an ally of the west against Iran in the 80's. The West sold him all sorts of things in the 80's, including the Americans selling him chemical weapons which he later used against the Kurds. If you want to blame the French for lack of foresight, that same claim can equally be laid at the Americans for arming him in the first place.
Who was it that knowingly laundered all of Saddam Hussein's money, the money he got violating the U.N. embargo in the 90's? FRANCE.
The only reference I can find to this is where France was being paid by Iraq in return for goods supplied under the 'oil for food' program - you know, the UN backed one allowed non-military supplies past the sanctions in exchange for money from selling oil? If you have other references, I suggest you post them, because it sounds like FUD to me.
Who built all his bomb shelters and REPEATEDLY sold him military weapons in violation of the U.N. embargo? FRANCE and GERMANY.
"WARSAW, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Polish troops in Iraq have found four French-built advanced anti-aircraft missiles which were built this year, a Polish Defence Ministry spokesman told Reuters on Friday.
France strongly denied having sold any such missiles to Iraq for nearly two decades, and said it was impossible that its newest missiles should turn up in Iraq.
"Polish troops discovered an ammunition depot on September 29 near the region of Hilla and there were four French-made
What the?? For a start, the quote is direct from the Teleread site - which is an american news site. They reported, correctly, Convert Lit has shut down it's old UK based site (lycos.co.uk), and moved to a polish one. Those are the facts.
Few know what EUCD means, but everyone has heard about the DMCA.
Very true. But the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) is very definitely european legislation. Thus calling it the 'EU-style DMCA' is a way of clueing people in that it is similar to the DMCA, but comes from the EU. Which it does. It's European legislation, applying to all member states. Many EU nations helped draft it, not least the UK (the patent office is very keen on it). It was passed at the european level.
Why not mention that instead that directly, without the round-about route of the EU
Because the DMCA has no legal power in the UK, or anywhere else in europe. It's American legislation, which only applies to the US. Thus, the DMCA has no force whatsoever that can be applied to a UK hosted website. It would be rediculous to say the DMCA had caused this directly, as that would be untrue.
It is the EUCD (which no-one has heard of, remember) which is causing Convert Lit to move from an EUCD signatory, the UK, to a non european, non-EUCD signatory, Poland.
As it happens, the EUCD is not yet implemented in the UK, but it is only a matter of time, as it is required under European Law.
But I guess if one wants to knock the EU, one must find the bad things it does that similar to the bad things the US do and knock those instead.
So we're agreed the EUCD is similar to the DMCA, both are bad, and that the EUCD is a piece of european legislation, passed by all branches of the EU, which applies to all member states, that is forcing a UK website to move outside the EU? Reported by an American site? Then quoted word for word by another American site, slashdot?
Please explain to me how you came to the conclusion that someone (you don't specify who) is a stereotypical EU-hating Brit?
Don't be such a stereotypical EU-hating Brit and look at the real source of the DMCA, how about it?
The DMCA is crap legislation, of course. The EUCD is equally crap legislation passed by the European Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers. Convert Lit is one of the casualties of the legislation. But blaming the DMCA and the americans is pointless in this case, as the DMCA has NO LEGAL FORCE in the UK. it is the EUCD that is to blame, no more, no less. If it was a French or German website, it would be equally as affected.
Therefore, to call it a British anti-EU bias appears to be disingenuous at best, libel at worst.
Uhh, I suspect he was referring to the EUCD, a piece of legislation very similar to the DMCA, already passed at the european level. It is now the responsibility of each european nation to implement the EUCD into local law. (they should have done so already, but in the UK at least, the patent office is still working on it)
h tml
If you want to know why the EUCD is bad, try http://www.eurorights.org/eudmca/WhyTheEUCDIsBad.
You know, if I had a machine that was no longer accepting windows messenger messages, and I needed it to, the first thing i'd check would be general network connectivity, then I'd check that the service was running.
Spending hours or days to track it down would be a symptom of an incompetent engineer.
Prudence requires checking for system failures or security breaches.
You're worried about security breaches, yet happy to let the CEO dial direct to the internet with an insecure connection via AOL?? While he's connected to the corporate network??
NAT != firewall.
NAT without a properly configured firewall is basically a false sense of security, and is trivially easy to get around.
If you have a proper firewall in place to protect your machines, (i.e. block all unauthorised inbound and outbound ports) with NAT as well, then fine. But NAT is a one-to-many hack, not a security feature.
IPv6 will mean you won't have to use all the kludgy port forward hacks you do when using NAT, while still being able to protect machines properly with a firewall.