And, as far as I can tell, the one that is most often attacked by the US government (and others, but then many of them don't actually grant that right, so it is at least less hypocritical, if just as evil).
I don't know about the U.S., but in Canada, technically money received from gifts is taxable. And while that's never really enforced, it probably would be if someone pulled THAT.
While I can't think of any particularly good innovations (I am after all NOT a media player developer), one needs only to use mplayer or media player classic to figure out exactly how far MS still has to go to catch up to the current playing field, let alone innovate.
So essentially taking a completely established interface from one device to another constitutes enough of an innovation to warrant a patent? Sweet merciful crap. At the very least, the current patent system (and in my opinion patents as a whole) are just plain stupid. We would do well to realize this.
If he's anything like most people who want to lose weight, no. No he couldn't. Why not? Because chances are he doesn't like exercise for the sake of weight loss. Evidently he does like exercise for the sake of video games, which is what makes the weight loss work.
Having said that, my reaction to Dance Dance Revolution remains "oh, dear God, that's disturbing".
So it's legally okay for me to not pay taxes? It's legally okay for me to not call an ambulance on my cellphone if I witness a horrible crash (hint: it's not, at least in Canada). It's legally okay for me to continue living in a house that the government has decided to build a highway through?
In case it's not obvious, the point I'm getting at is that there are certainly laws that punish you for not doing something, hopefully the "right thing".
While I see your point about law stopping people from considering right and wrong, I take issue with the claim that there are market incentives to Do The Right Thing in the absence of law.
I think there are market incentives to get your market hooked and charge them repeatedly for no real reason. To form monopolies, and gouge customers for all the money you can.
Consider Microsoft. Not that I think the antitrust situation has been all that hard on them, but would they really be a pinnacle of morality if they didn't have anything to face up to? Consider Walmart. Last I checked, it wasn't a legal requirement to undercut everybody's prices until you're the only business in town. As such, it's probably market incentives that made them do it. Repeatedly.
While customers probably SHOULD get pissed off and leave companies that do this, customers are frequently far too short-sighted to look past the lowest current price, if they're even aware enough to look at it.
Seriously, however, perhaps the best ways to have a secure product are to examine the implementation yourself, or try to attack it yourself, or wait for those who know more than you to do the same, and read about it.
An Optisoft spokesman is quoted as saying it will be "four times" harder for copyright holders to trace infringers... Exactly how is that quantifiable?
Me too... However... It'd be nice if EITHER ONE would implement some of the things that Trillian can do, particularly working file transfer (at least, all of mine in Kopete mess up at 98% either way for no reason I'm aware of, and I don't think Gaim even tries).
I would also love the ability to have sounds only when the window in question is out of focus. A skinnable interface that can be made transparent is nice. Kopete should really get the ability to be integrated into the Universal Sidebar (to approximate Trillian's docking ability) also, although I think they're working on this one.
"Our votes should be accessible online so that we can check to make sure our vote has not been changed by wrong-doers"
People will almost invariably respond to this with "But this opens the potential for people to abuse those with different votes than theirs". However, I've been in agreement with you for quite a while anyway. Those that are afraid to stand up for their vote simply wouldn't get one. Unfortunate, but I think it has a chance at making people appreciate their vote MORE rather than less.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't outsourcing a shining example of capitalism working exactly as it should? People always get so bent out of shape about it, but fundamentally it's rewarding the people/countries who are willing and able to do the same work for less. If you look at the unequal distribution of wealth as a problem (which I do), then the good news is that poor countries will get richer, as will the uber-rich that now have to pay their workforce less. The bad news is for the middle class. American left-wingers would do well to remember that the people receiving out-sourced jobs probably need them more than Americans. And American right-wingers would do well to remember that unless they're very rich, they're likely getting shafted.
The Wall is one of my favourites too. My approach is to keep the DVD around for when I want the whole thing, and keep some of the tracks with the most flow into each other encoded together.
First of all, I hardly think my preference for random translates to a lower attention span since many of the tracks on my playlist are half an hour or longer. Furthermore, a lower attention span is not necessarily a bad thing. It has been noted by more intelligent people than me that there is an extreme overabundance of information in this world. Perhaps a short attention span is a defense mechanism to help filter out people's bullshit.
I don't think it's too much money, after all, I know 99% or more of the songs I want to know the names of, and as such wouldn't bat an eye at the one out of 100 I didn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but under normal copyright law you don't have the right to redistribute the code at all until the GPL comes in, right?
So it offers an agreement for you to redistribute the code under certain conditions, which even if you don't accept you can still do anything you could normally do with the code.
Since you can't legally "decide to redistribute the code" without the GPL, how can you possibly view the GPL as placing restrictions, except maybe relative to some other licenses?
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that even if the GPL gets struck down somehow, that would likely mean that everything draconian and evil about EULAs would get struck down too. Although I suppose there is a difference, namely that the GPL is really granting you the right to copy stuff, where EULAs are generally removing stuff. Hmm, maybe that means we can keep the power of the GPL and lose the power of EULAs... Sound good to anyone else?
Offtopic? Wow. Mods are idiots. I've said it before and I'll say it again, democracy simply doesn't work.:)
For those that don't understand her (I assume Liselle is a her?), the point is that this is the second Slashdot article on this topic, and the AC simply copied verbatim a highly-modded post from the first one.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it ironic that, in my opinion, the main reason this has a good chance of catching on is that it looks really good.
And, as far as I can tell, the one that is most often attacked by the US government (and others, but then many of them don't actually grant that right, so it is at least less hypocritical, if just as evil).
I don't know about the U.S., but in Canada, technically money received from gifts is taxable. And while that's never really enforced, it probably would be if someone pulled THAT.
While I can't think of any particularly good innovations (I am after all NOT a media player developer), one needs only to use mplayer or media player classic to figure out exactly how far MS still has to go to catch up to the current playing field, let alone innovate.
So essentially taking a completely established interface from one device to another constitutes enough of an innovation to warrant a patent? Sweet merciful crap. At the very least, the current patent system (and in my opinion patents as a whole) are just plain stupid. We would do well to realize this.
If he's anything like most people who want to lose weight, no. No he couldn't. Why not? Because chances are he doesn't like exercise for the sake of weight loss. Evidently he does like exercise for the sake of video games, which is what makes the weight loss work.
Having said that, my reaction to Dance Dance Revolution remains "oh, dear God, that's disturbing".
So it's legally okay for me to not pay taxes? It's legally okay for me to not call an ambulance on my cellphone if I witness a horrible crash (hint: it's not, at least in Canada). It's legally okay for me to continue living in a house that the government has decided to build a highway through?
In case it's not obvious, the point I'm getting at is that there are certainly laws that punish you for not doing something, hopefully the "right thing".
While I see your point about law stopping people from considering right and wrong, I take issue with the claim that there are market incentives to Do The Right Thing in the absence of law.
I think there are market incentives to get your market hooked and charge them repeatedly for no real reason. To form monopolies, and gouge customers for all the money you can.
Consider Microsoft. Not that I think the antitrust situation has been all that hard on them, but would they really be a pinnacle of morality if they didn't have anything to face up to? Consider Walmart. Last I checked, it wasn't a legal requirement to undercut everybody's prices until you're the only business in town. As such, it's probably market incentives that made them do it. Repeatedly.
While customers probably SHOULD get pissed off and leave companies that do this, customers are frequently far too short-sighted to look past the lowest current price, if they're even aware enough to look at it.
More buzzwords!
Seriously, however, perhaps the best ways to have a secure product are to examine the implementation yourself, or try to attack it yourself, or wait for those who know more than you to do the same, and read about it.
Novell sues Caldera for revealing Novell's hand in it.
An Optisoft spokesman is quoted as saying it will be "four times" harder for copyright holders to trace infringers... Exactly how is that quantifiable?
Let's see... Users supporting a platform Mac hasn't bothered to... Could lead to more iPod sales... I'm going to go with yes.
http://www.chick.com/bc/2002/dnd.asp
Quote from the link: "The goal of the game [D&D] would be to see who could obtain the most erotic pleasure"
As my friend who sent me the link originally so accurately stated, "I don't know about you, but my D&D sessions were never like that."
Btw... D&D is 30... But what about its other attributes? What's its alignment? Strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc? Okay I'm a nerd.
Yes, China, that world-renowned last bastion of free speech. They'll SURELY be the answer to our prayers. :P
Me too... However... It'd be nice if EITHER ONE would implement some of the things that Trillian can do, particularly working file transfer (at least, all of mine in Kopete mess up at 98% either way for no reason I'm aware of, and I don't think Gaim even tries).
I would also love the ability to have sounds only when the window in question is out of focus. A skinnable interface that can be made transparent is nice. Kopete should really get the ability to be integrated into the Universal Sidebar (to approximate Trillian's docking ability) also, although I think they're working on this one.
"Our votes should be accessible online so that we can check to make sure our vote has not been changed by wrong-doers"
People will almost invariably respond to this with "But this opens the potential for people to abuse those with different votes than theirs". However, I've been in agreement with you for quite a while anyway. Those that are afraid to stand up for their vote simply wouldn't get one. Unfortunate, but I think it has a chance at making people appreciate their vote MORE rather than less.
... there has been a bank error in your favour. Collect $200. :)
...is hearing about these things before they're actually available. Note to Google and Walla!: FINISH THE DAMN BETA ALREADY!!!!!!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't outsourcing a shining example of capitalism working exactly as it should? People always get so bent out of shape about it, but fundamentally it's rewarding the people/countries who are willing and able to do the same work for less. If you look at the unequal distribution of wealth as a problem (which I do), then the good news is that poor countries will get richer, as will the uber-rich that now have to pay their workforce less. The bad news is for the middle class. American left-wingers would do well to remember that the people receiving out-sourced jobs probably need them more than Americans. And American right-wingers would do well to remember that unless they're very rich, they're likely getting shafted.
Or, perhaps, by watching the DVD. :)
The Wall is one of my favourites too. My approach is to keep the DVD around for when I want the whole thing, and keep some of the tracks with the most flow into each other encoded together.
First of all, I hardly think my preference for random translates to a lower attention span since many of the tracks on my playlist are half an hour or longer. Furthermore, a lower attention span is not necessarily a bad thing. It has been noted by more intelligent people than me that there is an extreme overabundance of information in this world. Perhaps a short attention span is a defense mechanism to help filter out people's bullshit.
I don't think it's too much money, after all, I know 99% or more of the songs I want to know the names of, and as such wouldn't bat an eye at the one out of 100 I didn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but under normal copyright law you don't have the right to redistribute the code at all until the GPL comes in, right?
So it offers an agreement for you to redistribute the code under certain conditions, which even if you don't accept you can still do anything you could normally do with the code.
Since you can't legally "decide to redistribute the code" without the GPL, how can you possibly view the GPL as placing restrictions, except maybe relative to some other licenses?
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that even if the GPL gets struck down somehow, that would likely mean that everything draconian and evil about EULAs would get struck down too. Although I suppose there is a difference, namely that the GPL is really granting you the right to copy stuff, where EULAs are generally removing stuff. Hmm, maybe that means we can keep the power of the GPL and lose the power of EULAs... Sound good to anyone else?
Offtopic? Wow. Mods are idiots. I've said it before and I'll say it again, democracy simply doesn't work. :)
For those that don't understand her (I assume Liselle is a her?), the point is that this is the second Slashdot article on this topic, and the AC simply copied verbatim a highly-modded post from the first one.