No, the Senate and the House of Representatives are two separate groups. Together, they constitute Congress. The parent of your post, in addition to deserving a Funny mod (but I just spent my points), is entirely correct in naming the various bodies.
You're probably confused because the term "Congressman" is often used to describe members of the House of Representatives, but never used to describe members of the Senate. Yet senators are in Congress, too.
Now, if you want to be picky, Congress doesn't have the authority to disband itself. The most it could do is start a Constitutional ammendment to that purpose rolling; then it would need to be approved by the States.
As the submitter of this article, I just want to point out that I originally quoted the Post in saying that culture had become Japan's biggest export, period -- not just "among" its leading exports. That's why I thought it was significant -- it suggested that Japan had crossed the line from an industrial to an information economy.
However, in fairness to CmdrTaco, the Post's characterization isn't really supported by the statistics given in the article. They only indicate that cultural exports are growing at a far greater rate than manufacturing exports.
The article says the adapters are 1/4 the size of current models. So you could bundle two together (perhaps in a single case, with a switch) and it would still be only half the size.
You might just need to rearrange the space where you keep your Tivo. I had mine in a mostly-closed cabinet under the TV -- there was a large hole in the back, mainly for wires, and small cracks along the edges of the front glass doors. In this situation, the Tivo gradually built up to 50C (as reported by the System Information menu), and stuttered.
I tried leaving the front doors open, and that brought down the temperature considerably -- maybe 42C, though I don't clearly remember. That was enough to stabilize it. But it also let all the noise out, and the open doors were awkward.
So finally I closed the doors, and instead pulled off the cardboard back of the cabinet. (The sides, top and bottom were (are) thick particle board; the back had little or no structural value.) To my surprise, the temperature went down even further, to around 37C, while the sound was muffled just about as well as with the cardboard on. Plus, I now had easier access to all the cables in the back.:-)
I don't think it's supposed to mean anything more than that 1080 is a bigger number than 720. Among videophiles, there's really no consensus on whether 720p (as used by ABC) or 1080i (CBS, NBC) looks better.
I'd guess that button is to control the output resolution. (Some HDTV sets have native support for only 720p or 1080i.) Anyway, I sure don't see the "Temp" indicator referred to in the submitter's comments.
No, it's going to stop people from doing much of anything on Series 2 units (the only ones currently in production), if they can't get hold of an image of an earlier version of the software.
The first version of the software that came with the HDVR2, known as 3.1u5, allowed access through a "backdoor" involving the environment variable BASH_ENV. Later releases of the software plugged this hole. Consequently, to hack a Series 2, you've either got to find 3.1u5 somewhere (and either use that, or use it as a starting point for kernel monte), or else desolder the PROM chip from the motherboard and burn a new one.
For a long time, I felt like I couldn't justify upgrading my slow, old 4x2x24 HP burner because it still ran (runs) perfectly after four (or five?) years. In this context, less reliable hardware might've been a blessing in disguise.;-)
I finally did replace it a few months ago, with a $150 DVD+RW, and passed it on to my mother, who only had a CD-ROM. Of course, it's still outperformed by new $20 drives.
I also just replaced my laser printer, after a ca. 1990 unit that I bought for $2 at a thrift store died. I only got a few years' service out of that.
But I was annoyed when my new (2000) monitor died this year, just out of warranty. My motherboard, also three years old, died a few months earlier, just inside the warranty. It does make me wonder if quality is declining... I have much, much older monitors (like a Commodore 1084S) still hanging in there.
Yes, this should be in Slashback. I got taken in the last time this kind of story appeared here, when the president was supposedly going to announce a Mars initiative. Of course, that was bunk. I wasn't fooled this time.
Dvorak the PC Magazine columnist and the Dvorak keyboard layout are, perhaps surprisingly, unrelated. The keyboard is older than the columnist. It just never caught on until the era of computers, with their easily-remappable keys. (Arguably, it still hasn't really caught on; but anyway...)
"They worked fine"? How do you know? Sure, it may have looked fine from your end, but did it count your vote correctly? You've got no way of telling. The worst voting machine problems I've heard about have shown up as irregular vote tallies (e.g., the 144,000 votes from a 19,000-voter district), not as user-visible errors.
For a start, think about what's required to implement such restrictions. If I'm to be prevented from distributing it outside my LAN, that means that it can't be stored as a plain MPEG on my harddrive. It has to be encrypted, DRM'd, and handled only by "trusted" (read: closed-source, DRM-enabled) apps. That means they control the features of such apps -- they control when and how I watch it.
And here's the corporate thinking on that: "Let's see, what rights should we give the user... Run on Linux? Hell no, that's only for dirty hackers. Make screen caps? No, that's infringing our precious IP! Skip commercials? Surely you jest!"
I see plenty of griping about the EU. Personally, I gripe most about the U.S. because that's where I live, so what happens here matters most to me, and it's also the country I have the best odds of affecting. Never mind that it has unrivaled influence over the rest of the world.
What you're missing is the definition of "public domain". I guess I shouldn't be surprised; it's widely misunderstood. Back in the BBS shareware era, I used to see code that was simultaneously labelled as "public domain" and "copyright", which is contradictory; or as public domain, but with restrictions, which is also contradictory.
"Public domain" describes work that is not copyrighted. This includes work whose copyright has expired, work that is uncopyrightable, and work the authors chose not to copyright. (To my great surprise, I recently discovered that this last category is slightly controversial. But let's skip that for the moment.)
Copyright is a limited grant of exclusive control over a work, provided by the goverment to authors as an incentive to creativity -- "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," as the Founders put it. (Here, as elsewhere, I'm giving the U.S. version. Internationally it's quite different in some respects.) It is NOT a natural right, as the MPAA and RIAA would like you to believe. However, under current law, copyright is given automatically when a copyrightable work is created, unless the copyright owner actively disclaims it. (Whether the copyright owner even CAN disclaim it is the surprisingly controversial part.)
Apart from being of limited duration, copyright is limited in other ways. EULAs notwithstanding, copyright doesn't give the creator the right to tell you how to use the work. Like the name says, it just gives them the exclusive RIGHT to COPY the work -- or to delegate that right to others, such as a publisher.
GPL'd work is copyrighted. What the GPL does is merely to delegate the right to copy (and alter) the work to ANYONE who agrees to the terms of the license. This is radically different from traditional publishing, but still well within the framework of copyright law.
Material in the public domain can ALSO, of course, be copied and altered by anyone. Only, they don't have to agree to the terms of any license; they are free, for example, to take public domain software, alter it, and sell the altered program without releasing source code.
That's why the GPL exists -- it was undoubtedly inspired by experience with the public domain, but the GPL is an attempt to extend the benefits of free and open code, paradoxically, by restricting it. Public domain code (as well as BSD-licensed code) can become incorporated into closed-source code; GPL'd code cannot. Thus, anyone who wants to use GPL'd code must in turn GPL it; thus, in theory (and indeed in practice), the world gets more and more free code, as the new is built upon the old.
I don't think the people viewing porn at work, in your example, have a case; but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the dress code issue. First, they are public schools, which means they're run by the government. Second, attendance is compulsory (unless you want and can afford a private school or home schooling), which means that no one can opt out of the rules. Third, clothing can most definitely be expressive -- maybe not in the case of a high hemline, but what about a t-shirt with a political slogan? Those have been banned in some cases, in the interest of "order"; yet they seem to me to be clearly protected speech.
However, none of this has anything to do with the GPL.
For the sake of argument, if the GPL is invalid, it does SCO no good. The code reverts to a proprietary status, not the public domain.
But even if, in some insane parallel universe, it COULD become public domain, then that wouldn't help SCO either -- since they've released their own "stolen" code in the Linux kernel under the GPL.
Serious answer: No, by now I'd have to call them an intellectual property holding company. They produce nothing, just try to collect money on other people's ideas.
There are actually a lot of companies like this, unfortunately. SCO is just the most notorious of the moment.
The main reason I bought this printer is that it was only $100 after rebate. (That was at Office Depot, but the same deal is at Best Buy this week.) It has limitations: It's USB-only (no parallel port) and GDI-only. (Samsung has another model, the ML-1750, which is very similar but includes a parallel port and PCL6; but it doesn't seem to have the rebate.) Normally I'd shy away from such a unit, but the promise of Linux compatibility on the box helped persuade me. And it's turned out well so far, being by far the fastest printer I've ever had.
I run Mandrake on a desktop system where suspend mode seems largely useless -- it leaves a loud fan running -- so I can't comment much on that. ISTR that not everything came back up properly when I tried it, but that was a long time ago (long before the current distro and kernel).
You would think 3 years would be enough time to catch up.
With a format that's not only undocumented, but deliberately obfuscated? Not necessarily.
Don't forget, even old versions of Word can't read documents made by later ones. Not because they're full of snazzy new features, but because Microsoft intentionally breaks compatibility, trying both to force everyone to upgrade, and to keep down competitors (like Open Office).
One of the main purposes of an O/S is to provide device support. Even basic stuff like sound cards, video cards are still a major headache to get working.
Not if you buy from the supported list. If you don't, you have only yourself to blame. Yeah, Windows "just works", but only because the hardware manufacturers make it so, and don't bother to do so for Linux -- because of their respective market shares. (Catch-22.) But as I've seen from my recent printer purchase, that seems to be changing.
The other day, for the first time that I can recall, I bought a new piece of hardware that prominently advertised its Linux compatibility on the box, along with Windows and Mac support: a Samsung ML-1710 laser printer. It even had an automatic driver setup disk for Linux*, which worked very well, though it insisted on replacing the link to lpr with its own version. (The original was still there and still worked; I changed the link back to point to it.) In my case, I first had to recompile the kernel to add USB printer support, but that's only because I'm running a custom kernel -- if I'd been using the one that came with my distro, it would've had the drivers built as modules already. Anyway, I was very impressed with all this.
But back when I first bought my current system (in 2000), I chose all the pieces from the Linux Hardware Compatibility list. When I got it, I popped in a Mandrake CD, and it set everything up automatically. Checking the HCL first is the only sensible way to go if you're planning to run anything other than Windows.
* Only one actual CD came with the printer, presumably covering all three supported systems; but when I stuck it in, it cleverly came up with only the Linux files showing. I haven't tried it from Windows yet, nor tried to access the Windows files from Linux.
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No, the Senate and the House of Representatives are two separate groups. Together, they constitute Congress. The parent of your post, in addition to deserving a Funny mod (but I just spent my points), is entirely correct in naming the various bodies.
You're probably confused because the term "Congressman" is often used to describe members of the House of Representatives, but never used to describe members of the Senate. Yet senators are in Congress, too.
Now, if you want to be picky, Congress doesn't have the authority to disband itself. The most it could do is start a Constitutional ammendment to that purpose rolling; then it would need to be approved by the States.
As the submitter of this article, I just want to point out that I originally quoted the Post in saying that culture had become Japan's biggest export, period -- not just "among" its leading exports. That's why I thought it was significant -- it suggested that Japan had crossed the line from an industrial to an information economy.
However, in fairness to CmdrTaco, the Post's characterization isn't really supported by the statistics given in the article. They only indicate that cultural exports are growing at a far greater rate than manufacturing exports.
Anybody know the overall numbers?
The article says the adapters are 1/4 the size of current models. So you could bundle two together (perhaps in a single case, with a switch) and it would still be only half the size.
Or Disaster Area levels of black, eh?
The appearance. Duh. Not that I necessarily agree that it's "cool", but it certainly has a unique look, as does the TV.
You might just need to rearrange the space where you keep your Tivo. I had mine in a mostly-closed cabinet under the TV -- there was a large hole in the back, mainly for wires, and small cracks along the edges of the front glass doors. In this situation, the Tivo gradually built up to 50C (as reported by the System Information menu), and stuttered.
:-)
I tried leaving the front doors open, and that brought down the temperature considerably -- maybe 42C, though I don't clearly remember. That was enough to stabilize it. But it also let all the noise out, and the open doors were awkward.
So finally I closed the doors, and instead pulled off the cardboard back of the cabinet. (The sides, top and bottom were (are) thick particle board; the back had little or no structural value.) To my surprise, the temperature went down even further, to around 37C, while the sound was muffled just about as well as with the cardboard on. Plus, I now had easier access to all the cables in the back.
I don't think it's supposed to mean anything more than that 1080 is a bigger number than 720. Among videophiles, there's really no consensus on whether 720p (as used by ABC) or 1080i (CBS, NBC) looks better.
I'd guess that button is to control the output resolution. (Some HDTV sets have native support for only 720p or 1080i.) Anyway, I sure don't see the "Temp" indicator referred to in the submitter's comments.
No, it's going to stop people from doing much of anything on Series 2 units (the only ones currently in production), if they can't get hold of an image of an earlier version of the software.
The first version of the software that came with the HDVR2, known as 3.1u5, allowed access through a "backdoor" involving the environment variable BASH_ENV. Later releases of the software plugged this hole. Consequently, to hack a Series 2, you've either got to find 3.1u5 somewhere (and either use that, or use it as a starting point for kernel monte), or else desolder the PROM chip from the motherboard and burn a new one.
HMO is not charged for monthly; it IS a one-time charge.
For a long time, I felt like I couldn't justify upgrading my slow, old 4x2x24 HP burner because it still ran (runs) perfectly after four (or five?) years. In this context, less reliable hardware might've been a blessing in disguise. ;-)
I finally did replace it a few months ago, with a $150 DVD+RW, and passed it on to my mother, who only had a CD-ROM. Of course, it's still outperformed by new $20 drives.
I also just replaced my laser printer, after a ca. 1990 unit that I bought for $2 at a thrift store died. I only got a few years' service out of that.
But I was annoyed when my new (2000) monitor died this year, just out of warranty. My motherboard, also three years old, died a few months earlier, just inside the warranty. It does make me wonder if quality is declining... I have much, much older monitors (like a Commodore 1084S) still hanging in there.
Yes, this should be in Slashback. I got taken in the last time this kind of story appeared here, when the president was supposedly going to announce a Mars initiative. Of course, that was bunk. I wasn't fooled this time.
Dvorak the PC Magazine columnist and the Dvorak keyboard layout are, perhaps surprisingly, unrelated. The keyboard is older than the columnist. It just never caught on until the era of computers, with their easily-remappable keys. (Arguably, it still hasn't really caught on; but anyway...)
"They worked fine"? How do you know? Sure, it may have looked fine from your end, but did it count your vote correctly? You've got no way of telling. The worst voting machine problems I've heard about have shown up as irregular vote tallies (e.g., the 144,000 votes from a 19,000-voter district), not as user-visible errors.
For a start, think about what's required to implement such restrictions. If I'm to be prevented from distributing it outside my LAN, that means that it can't be stored as a plain MPEG on my harddrive. It has to be encrypted, DRM'd, and handled only by "trusted" (read: closed-source, DRM-enabled) apps. That means they control the features of such apps -- they control when and how I watch it.
And here's the corporate thinking on that: "Let's see, what rights should we give the user... Run on Linux? Hell no, that's only for dirty hackers. Make screen caps? No, that's infringing our precious IP! Skip commercials? Surely you jest!"
I guess you haven't been following the ebook controveries. Printed matter seems relatively "free" only because it's still so cumbersome to copy it.
The snopes.com link is really shocking. I notice it dates to '96... I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it until now.
I see plenty of griping about the EU. Personally, I gripe most about the U.S. because that's where I live, so what happens here matters most to me, and it's also the country I have the best odds of affecting. Never mind that it has unrivaled influence over the rest of the world.
What you're missing is the definition of "public domain". I guess I shouldn't be surprised; it's widely misunderstood. Back in the BBS shareware era, I used to see code that was simultaneously labelled as "public domain" and "copyright", which is contradictory; or as public domain, but with restrictions, which is also contradictory.
"Public domain" describes work that is not copyrighted. This includes work whose copyright has expired, work that is uncopyrightable, and work the authors chose not to copyright. (To my great surprise, I recently discovered that this last category is slightly controversial. But let's skip that for the moment.)
Copyright is a limited grant of exclusive control over a work, provided by the goverment to authors as an incentive to creativity -- "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," as the Founders put it. (Here, as elsewhere, I'm giving the U.S. version. Internationally it's quite different in some respects.) It is NOT a natural right, as the MPAA and RIAA would like you to believe. However, under current law, copyright is given automatically when a copyrightable work is created, unless the copyright owner actively disclaims it. (Whether the copyright owner even CAN disclaim it is the surprisingly controversial part.)
Apart from being of limited duration, copyright is limited in other ways. EULAs notwithstanding, copyright doesn't give the creator the right to tell you how to use the work. Like the name says, it just gives them the exclusive RIGHT to COPY the work -- or to delegate that right to others, such as a publisher.
GPL'd work is copyrighted. What the GPL does is merely to delegate the right to copy (and alter) the work to ANYONE who agrees to the terms of the license. This is radically different from traditional publishing, but still well within the framework of copyright law.
Material in the public domain can ALSO, of course, be copied and altered by anyone. Only, they don't have to agree to the terms of any license; they are free, for example, to take public domain software, alter it, and sell the altered program without releasing source code.
That's why the GPL exists -- it was undoubtedly inspired by experience with the public domain, but the GPL is an attempt to extend the benefits of free and open code, paradoxically, by restricting it. Public domain code (as well as BSD-licensed code) can become incorporated into closed-source code; GPL'd code cannot. Thus, anyone who wants to use GPL'd code must in turn GPL it; thus, in theory (and indeed in practice), the world gets more and more free code, as the new is built upon the old.
I don't think the people viewing porn at work, in your example, have a case; but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the dress code issue. First, they are public schools, which means they're run by the government. Second, attendance is compulsory (unless you want and can afford a private school or home schooling), which means that no one can opt out of the rules. Third, clothing can most definitely be expressive -- maybe not in the case of a high hemline, but what about a t-shirt with a political slogan? Those have been banned in some cases, in the interest of "order"; yet they seem to me to be clearly protected speech.
However, none of this has anything to do with the GPL.
For the sake of argument, if the GPL is invalid, it does SCO no good. The code reverts to a proprietary status, not the public domain.
But even if, in some insane parallel universe, it COULD become public domain, then that wouldn't help SCO either -- since they've released their own "stolen" code in the Linux kernel under the GPL.
Silly answer: No, they're a law firm.
Serious answer: No, by now I'd have to call them an intellectual property holding company. They produce nothing, just try to collect money on other people's ideas.
There are actually a lot of companies like this, unfortunately. SCO is just the most notorious of the moment.
Do you have a link to the ad you're choking on?
The main reason I bought this printer is that it was only $100 after rebate. (That was at Office Depot, but the same deal is at Best Buy this week.) It has limitations: It's USB-only (no parallel port) and GDI-only. (Samsung has another model, the ML-1750, which is very similar but includes a parallel port and PCL6; but it doesn't seem to have the rebate.) Normally I'd shy away from such a unit, but the promise of Linux compatibility on the box helped persuade me. And it's turned out well so far, being by far the fastest printer I've ever had.
I run Mandrake on a desktop system where suspend mode seems largely useless -- it leaves a loud fan running -- so I can't comment much on that. ISTR that not everything came back up properly when I tried it, but that was a long time ago (long before the current distro and kernel).
Don't forget, even old versions of Word can't read documents made by later ones. Not because they're full of snazzy new features, but because Microsoft intentionally breaks compatibility, trying both to force everyone to upgrade, and to keep down competitors (like Open Office).
Not if you buy from the supported list. If you don't, you have only yourself to blame. Yeah, Windows "just works", but only because the hardware manufacturers make it so, and don't bother to do so for Linux -- because of their respective market shares. (Catch-22.) But as I've seen from my recent printer purchase, that seems to be changing.
The other day, for the first time that I can recall, I bought a new piece of hardware that prominently advertised its Linux compatibility on the box, along with Windows and Mac support: a Samsung ML-1710 laser printer. It even had an automatic driver setup disk for Linux*, which worked very well, though it insisted on replacing the link to lpr with its own version. (The original was still there and still worked; I changed the link back to point to it.) In my case, I first had to recompile the kernel to add USB printer support, but that's only because I'm running a custom kernel -- if I'd been using the one that came with my distro, it would've had the drivers built as modules already. Anyway, I was very impressed with all this.
But back when I first bought my current system (in 2000), I chose all the pieces from the Linux Hardware Compatibility list. When I got it, I popped in a Mandrake CD, and it set everything up automatically. Checking the HCL first is the only sensible way to go if you're planning to run anything other than Windows.
* Only one actual CD came with the printer, presumably covering all three supported systems; but when I stuck it in, it cleverly came up with only the Linux files showing. I haven't tried it from Windows yet, nor tried to access the Windows files from Linux.