"What would _you_ do with the source if it were available?" I would use the extensions created by others, and enjoy the feeling of security caused by the fact that others can and do look at the code.:)
Seriously.
I use what works best for me, and Firefox works best for me because of all the extensions. I have no beef with Opera, but I think it'd be fair to say that open source has some benefits to the end user.
Thanks for trying, but you're not really saying anything. A 500 megapixel image printed on a 10 kilometer by 10 kilometer screen and viewed at a distance of 1 meter will be easily distinguishable by the human eye. As another poster pointed out, it's actually not area that matters but angles, or if you use area you should consider the viewing distance also.
Call me a noob, but does anyone have any idea how much resolution the human eye can detect (per some unit of area, of course)?
Please note that I am not calling these devices worthless. Even if the human eye can't detect that much resolution on a poster there could still be applications for enlargements etc. I would think.
When I was little, I believed we had free speech. The older I get, the more exceptions I see. We aren't allowed to lie about people, we aren't allowed "hate speech", we can't infringe on others' copyrights, we can't plan crimes, we can't instruct others how to commit crimes... It doesn't sound SO bad when I phrase it this way, but we've ben starting to see this kind of thinking applied to examples like: - online gambling, of course - downloading music - reverse engineering of hardware and software
Leaving aside the potentially financial motivations of the creation of these laws, personally I'm starting to question the morality of them. As distasteful as, say, racist speech might be, I'd rather hear it than not be allowed to talk about whatever the government decides to make illegal. That is, after all, the whole point of the first amendment, isn't it? To prevent the government from controlling speech?
I manage a tech support call centre, and we get MANY calls that go something like this: Customer: "I'm getting an 'invalid username or password' error, is your service down?" Agent (after checking logs): "No, you're typing the wrong username."
Other thrilling examples include "So, is my modem my hard drive or is it my screen?", "What's an X?", "What is a phone?", and "What is a keyboard?" (This last one was from someone who spoke fluent English and said she only used the internet for Yahoo mail, and after 5 solid minutes of explanation using phrases like "The thing your hands touch when you type an e-mail" she still couldn't grasp the concept).
Why is this relevant to net neutrality? People have no idea what the internet IS, let alone how it works. You can't expect understanding of a "complex" issue like network neutrality from someone who thinks he must be connected to the internet because his computer is on.
Senators are not necessarily more technically inclined than anybody else. Believe me, honest misunderstanding, or just lack of understanding, can account for FAR more than you think.
While I disagree with that kind of censorship of both news and videogames, I find the phrasing "we'd better keep them as far away from reality as possible" ironic, since escapism is kinda the point of video games.
And coincidentally, I moved on to my next "I'm bored" target, fark.com, which has this story at the top of its list. I wonder if prostoalex perhaps submits to both or submitted it here just because he saw it on Fark? Shrug.
Somebody was complaining about this guy having a bunch of sleazy but successful Slashdot submissions the other day. Since I'm too lazy to research it myself, anybody know how this guy gets so many stories up? And is this one self-promoting?
If he's doing it for business reasons, then you probably have a very high opinion of capitalism. However, if it's indeed business reasons, one would have to wonder why Microsoft, Yahoo, et al have not been pulling out too.
Presumably, that assumes that the plaintiff can demonstrate that there was an oral contract at all. That might be difficult or impossible in this case, regardless of who is telling the truth.
I disagree with whoever modded you off-topic. Shrug.
Anyway, there are many answers to your question. In Canada or the US, the constitution grants us rights. Obvious further questions include "Who created it?" and "Who enforces it?" and ultimately these boil down to the writers of the constitution, elected officials (since they can change the constitution with a large enough majority) and police/armies that enforce it. At a low enough level, it's just "might makes right" since the combined force of police and army is stronger and/or more passionate than any organized resistance. Additionally, there are groups like the UN that purport to grant us rights, but the question of enforcement ability is even more obvious there.
With regard to this article specifically, copyright law originally granted the creators of content an exclusive right to profit from it for a short period of time. Recently, depending on location, this has been changed to become "an exclusive right to profit as well as the right to prevent others from copying it freely". If you disapprove of this change (and I do), then you may either blame the politicians that made the laws, the voters that elected the politicians, the media companies that financed the politicians, the consumers that financed the media companies by purchasing their product, or the founding fathers for setting up a system so easily corrupted by money. Take your pick.
I suppose I would slightly disagree with both of you. The purpose of patents, from the standpoint of the people who set up the whole patent system (the government) is to encourage innovation by allowing inventors a chance to make money exclusively for a short period. Basically to balance the rewards between the inventor and the public. It's a nice thought, but...
I agree that patents suck, and yes, I agree that cases like this are part of why they suck. Society wastes time litigating that could be spent on productivity. Worse examples of why patents suck include the NTP vs RIM case (basically NTP doesn't do anything except sue, all 5 of their patents were issued temporary rejections, and due to the uncertainty of the patent status, RIM was essentially forced to settle because of the potential for almost limitless losses), Amazon's 1-Click Shopping patent (can we say "non-innovative"?), and the Eolas vs Microsoft case (this will fuck over all browsers from IE to Safari to Firefox to Konqueror while forcing Microsoft to seek defensive patents, and while giving Microsoft the excuse to use horrifying patent tricks like this themselves against OSS). As far as I'm concerned, the entire patent system (along with the copyright system, but that's another story) needs to be rethought or removed entirely. It is no longer benefiting the public, and as such the public should force their government to make a new set of rules.
"Even unmeritorious class action lawsuits are expensive to defend" Assuming for a second that the quoted individual isn't full of it, why are any unmeritorious lawsuits expensive to defend? Don't courts do things like order one party to pay the other's legal fees in cases like that?
"you wouldn't let a FACT stand in the way of just repeating talking points about how elections were stolen." *I* didn't make any claims one way or the other, except that using Diebold machines is a horrible idea, which is a claim that is backed up by the article. All I did was ask for the previous poster to support his claims. I most certainly did not say that the election was stolen, and the person I replied to did not post any facts for me to let stand in the way, let alone sources I could use to verify them.
I appreciate your answers to my questions, but they'd be better if: 1. you gave me a link or something else I can use to verify what you're saying, and 2. you weren't being an ass to someone who's merely asking questions. All it does is make me suspicious of your claims.
1. Do you have any stats to back this up? I am unconvinced by someone saying the word "FUD". 2. Diebold doesn't need to tamper with the election to make using their voting machines a horrible idea. As this article points out, there are extreme security flaws that allow others to tamper, which means Diebold has failed miserably at the goal of creating secure voting machines. 3. Assuming your stats are correct, is it a coincidence that the Diebold machines were installed in heavily Republican areas? Who got to decide on the voting machines/mechanisms used? 4. You say "yet another liberal urban legend" without giving any examples. Do you think there are more liberal urban legends than conservative ones? That would be a very difficult claim to defend. Which is probably why you just put it out there as if it was obvious in hopes that people would just agree. Sadly, this works all too well all too often in the political world. Your post is a couple of undefended partisan claims, and nothing more. If you're actually thinking about anything, please show us what you're thinking. Otherwise you might as well just say "REPUBLICANS RULE! DEMS SUCK! GO BUSH!" and keep contributing to the us and them sports fan mentality that American politics has become. Well that turned into a bit of a rant, didn't it?
Communism's been tried? Where? I have been told that Marx never espoused a single party system, which as I see it is the problem with all the "communist" governments that have been around. Cuba, China, the USSR, all single party... Personally, I'd be very curious to see what a communist system (i.e. the government owns everything, etc) combined with democratic elections (or some other means of forcing at least some accountability on the government) would be like.
1. Wouldn't Microsoft likely implement ODF and then all their amazing accessibility stuff would be right there and ready to go? I always thought of MS as the "make ours able to open their stuff, keep changing our stuff so they can't open it, and make ours the default" crowd. 2. If they don't, I'm all for disabled rights, but there is no damn way that I should be required to pay a company to read public documents so that a blind person can have equal access WHEN THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM IS THE COMPANY'S REFUSAL TO IMPLEMENT AN OPEN STANDARD!!! Talk about rewarding the wrong behaviour.
The big problem I see is the same one I've seen with legal music downloads: The end product is at least in some ways worse than the one you can get for free from emule or torrent sites. Specifically, if I buy mp3s of the new Tool album from iTunes, I have to figure out payment, I have to either keep the mp3s in their limits or jump through hoops, and I don't even think you can play the tracks in a non-iTunes player (I don't actually know, to be honest). On the other hand, if I just download it from a p2p program, I can do whatever I want with it. iTunes has the advantages of keeping the quality constant and avoiding litigation, but that's about it. All the same stuff applies here, except I'm fairly certain that the limit of one computer is more stringent (read: worse) than iTunes. I don't know, call me crazy, but if I'm paying for something, I'd rather it be at least as convenient as what I can download for free.
And that's ASIDE from wanting to bring down the horrible bastards that are the record industry.:)
We do new signups too. Those are random. The percentage only goes up for people calling the tech line. Frankly I suspect there are even some people that try to call us and fail because they can't comprehend what to do.
Slashdot Mirror
"What would _you_ do with the source if it were available?" :)
I would use the extensions created by others, and enjoy the feeling of security caused by the fact that others can and do look at the code.
Seriously.
I use what works best for me, and Firefox works best for me because of all the extensions. I have no beef with Opera, but I think it'd be fair to say that open source has some benefits to the end user.
Thanks for trying, but you're not really saying anything. A 500 megapixel image printed on a 10 kilometer by 10 kilometer screen and viewed at a distance of 1 meter will be easily distinguishable by the human eye. As another poster pointed out, it's actually not area that matters but angles, or if you use area you should consider the viewing distance also.
Call me a noob, but does anyone have any idea how much resolution the human eye can detect (per some unit of area, of course)?
Please note that I am not calling these devices worthless. Even if the human eye can't detect that much resolution on a poster there could still be applications for enlargements etc. I would think.
Transcode maybe? Shrug.
When I was little, I believed we had free speech. The older I get, the more exceptions I see. We aren't allowed to lie about people, we aren't allowed "hate speech", we can't infringe on others' copyrights, we can't plan crimes, we can't instruct others how to commit crimes... It doesn't sound SO bad when I phrase it this way, but we've ben starting to see this kind of thinking applied to examples like:
- online gambling, of course
- downloading music
- reverse engineering of hardware and software
Leaving aside the potentially financial motivations of the creation of these laws, personally I'm starting to question the morality of them. As distasteful as, say, racist speech might be, I'd rather hear it than not be allowed to talk about whatever the government decides to make illegal. That is, after all, the whole point of the first amendment, isn't it? To prevent the government from controlling speech?
I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it... Or at LEAST until I see a random anonymous post CLAIMING that Netcraft confirms it.
I manage a tech support call centre, and we get MANY calls that go something like this:
Customer: "I'm getting an 'invalid username or password' error, is your service down?"
Agent (after checking logs): "No, you're typing the wrong username."
Other thrilling examples include "So, is my modem my hard drive or is it my screen?", "What's an X?", "What is a phone?", and "What is a keyboard?" (This last one was from someone who spoke fluent English and said she only used the internet for Yahoo mail, and after 5 solid minutes of explanation using phrases like "The thing your hands touch when you type an e-mail" she still couldn't grasp the concept).
Why is this relevant to net neutrality? People have no idea what the internet IS, let alone how it works. You can't expect understanding of a "complex" issue like network neutrality from someone who thinks he must be connected to the internet because his computer is on.
Senators are not necessarily more technically inclined than anybody else. Believe me, honest misunderstanding, or just lack of understanding, can account for FAR more than you think.
While I disagree with that kind of censorship of both news and videogames, I find the phrasing "we'd better keep them as far away from reality as possible" ironic, since escapism is kinda the point of video games.
And coincidentally, I moved on to my next "I'm bored" target, fark.com, which has this story at the top of its list. I wonder if prostoalex perhaps submits to both or submitted it here just because he saw it on Fark? Shrug.
Somebody was complaining about this guy having a bunch of sleazy but successful Slashdot submissions the other day. Since I'm too lazy to research it myself, anybody know how this guy gets so many stories up? And is this one self-promoting?
If he's doing it for business reasons, then you probably have a very high opinion of capitalism. However, if it's indeed business reasons, one would have to wonder why Microsoft, Yahoo, et al have not been pulling out too.
"there is no reason whatsoever for anyone to lose any data. Even if it means forking over the money"
Psst... Money is a reason.
Heh, I was not saying anything good about Quicktime, believe me. Shudder.
AOL, Realplayer, WinME... These people know what they're talking about.
Presumably, that assumes that the plaintiff can demonstrate that there was an oral contract at all. That might be difficult or impossible in this case, regardless of who is telling the truth.
I disagree with whoever modded you off-topic. Shrug.
Anyway, there are many answers to your question. In Canada or the US, the constitution grants us rights. Obvious further questions include "Who created it?" and "Who enforces it?" and ultimately these boil down to the writers of the constitution, elected officials (since they can change the constitution with a large enough majority) and police/armies that enforce it. At a low enough level, it's just "might makes right" since the combined force of police and army is stronger and/or more passionate than any organized resistance. Additionally, there are groups like the UN that purport to grant us rights, but the question of enforcement ability is even more obvious there.
With regard to this article specifically, copyright law originally granted the creators of content an exclusive right to profit from it for a short period of time. Recently, depending on location, this has been changed to become "an exclusive right to profit as well as the right to prevent others from copying it freely". If you disapprove of this change (and I do), then you may either blame the politicians that made the laws, the voters that elected the politicians, the media companies that financed the politicians, the consumers that financed the media companies by purchasing their product, or the founding fathers for setting up a system so easily corrupted by money. Take your pick.
I suppose I would slightly disagree with both of you. The purpose of patents, from the standpoint of the people who set up the whole patent system (the government) is to encourage innovation by allowing inventors a chance to make money exclusively for a short period. Basically to balance the rewards between the inventor and the public. It's a nice thought, but...
I agree that patents suck, and yes, I agree that cases like this are part of why they suck. Society wastes time litigating that could be spent on productivity. Worse examples of why patents suck include the NTP vs RIM case (basically NTP doesn't do anything except sue, all 5 of their patents were issued temporary rejections, and due to the uncertainty of the patent status, RIM was essentially forced to settle because of the potential for almost limitless losses), Amazon's 1-Click Shopping patent (can we say "non-innovative"?), and the Eolas vs Microsoft case (this will fuck over all browsers from IE to Safari to Firefox to Konqueror while forcing Microsoft to seek defensive patents, and while giving Microsoft the excuse to use horrifying patent tricks like this themselves against OSS). As far as I'm concerned, the entire patent system (along with the copyright system, but that's another story) needs to be rethought or removed entirely. It is no longer benefiting the public, and as such the public should force their government to make a new set of rules.
"Even unmeritorious class action lawsuits are expensive to defend"
Assuming for a second that the quoted individual isn't full of it, why are any unmeritorious lawsuits expensive to defend? Don't courts do things like order one party to pay the other's legal fees in cases like that?
"you wouldn't let a FACT stand in the way of just repeating talking points about how elections were stolen."
*I* didn't make any claims one way or the other, except that using Diebold machines is a horrible idea, which is a claim that is backed up by the article. All I did was ask for the previous poster to support his claims. I most certainly did not say that the election was stolen, and the person I replied to did not post any facts for me to let stand in the way, let alone sources I could use to verify them.
I appreciate your answers to my questions, but they'd be better if:
1. you gave me a link or something else I can use to verify what you're saying, and
2. you weren't being an ass to someone who's merely asking questions. All it does is make me suspicious of your claims.
1. Do you have any stats to back this up? I am unconvinced by someone saying the word "FUD".
2. Diebold doesn't need to tamper with the election to make using their voting machines a horrible idea. As this article points out, there are extreme security flaws that allow others to tamper, which means Diebold has failed miserably at the goal of creating secure voting machines.
3. Assuming your stats are correct, is it a coincidence that the Diebold machines were installed in heavily Republican areas? Who got to decide on the voting machines/mechanisms used?
4. You say "yet another liberal urban legend" without giving any examples. Do you think there are more liberal urban legends than conservative ones? That would be a very difficult claim to defend. Which is probably why you just put it out there as if it was obvious in hopes that people would just agree. Sadly, this works all too well all too often in the political world. Your post is a couple of undefended partisan claims, and nothing more. If you're actually thinking about anything, please show us what you're thinking. Otherwise you might as well just say "REPUBLICANS RULE! DEMS SUCK! GO BUSH!" and keep contributing to the us and them sports fan mentality that American politics has become. Well that turned into a bit of a rant, didn't it?
Communism's been tried? Where? I have been told that Marx never espoused a single party system, which as I see it is the problem with all the "communist" governments that have been around. Cuba, China, the USSR, all single party... Personally, I'd be very curious to see what a communist system (i.e. the government owns everything, etc) combined with democratic elections (or some other means of forcing at least some accountability on the government) would be like.
1. Wouldn't Microsoft likely implement ODF and then all their amazing accessibility stuff would be right there and ready to go? I always thought of MS as the "make ours able to open their stuff, keep changing our stuff so they can't open it, and make ours the default" crowd.
2. If they don't, I'm all for disabled rights, but there is no damn way that I should be required to pay a company to read public documents so that a blind person can have equal access WHEN THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM IS THE COMPANY'S REFUSAL TO IMPLEMENT AN OPEN STANDARD!!! Talk about rewarding the wrong behaviour.
The big problem I see is the same one I've seen with legal music downloads: The end product is at least in some ways worse than the one you can get for free from emule or torrent sites. Specifically, if I buy mp3s of the new Tool album from iTunes, I have to figure out payment, I have to either keep the mp3s in their limits or jump through hoops, and I don't even think you can play the tracks in a non-iTunes player (I don't actually know, to be honest). On the other hand, if I just download it from a p2p program, I can do whatever I want with it. iTunes has the advantages of keeping the quality constant and avoiding litigation, but that's about it. All the same stuff applies here, except I'm fairly certain that the limit of one computer is more stringent (read: worse) than iTunes. I don't know, call me crazy, but if I'm paying for something, I'd rather it be at least as convenient as what I can download for free.
:)
And that's ASIDE from wanting to bring down the horrible bastards that are the record industry.
Preach on, brother. I'd give you mod points if I had them atm.
We do new signups too. Those are random. The percentage only goes up for people calling the tech line. Frankly I suspect there are even some people that try to call us and fail because they can't comprehend what to do.